BLUEMANTLE by Karen Langston (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📕

of propaganda posters, covering tannoy speakers with cloth sacks. Everywhere, whatever their gesture, citizens were looking up at the cameras they knew were trained on them. Their faces were serene, their eyes bright with defiance.

“These people have not lost control,” said Dent.

“Well, we have, which is tantamount to the same thing.”

“Open fire and you’ll have a full-scale massacre on your hands. Do you want to be responsible for that?”

“But—”

He turned to Fentlow and held out his hand. “I’m happy to be held accountable for the decision.”

Fentlow hesitated, glancing between Dent and the monitors. Then he handed over the radio. “The mistake is all yours.”

Dent wasted no time. He switched the channel on the radio. “All Units. This is Alpha-Charlie-One. Permission to fire denied. Order your men to stand down. I repeat. Stand down.”

Outside the Exchange, the troopers slowly lowered their guns, as stunned by the order as by the scene before them. Unit Superiors stared with gritted teeth, hungry for the denied reprisal.

Inside the Exchange, citizens filled the great hall. One by one, they opened the eighty doors around its perimeter. Climbing on each other’s shoulders, they draped fabric, torn from their clothes, over the eighty numbered boards.

The Duty Officer hung back, dreading the rumble of combat boots and the brutal consequence that would surely follow.

At odds with her fear, the citizens were jubilant, yet calm. This was no riot, no violent retaliation. Not because their hard-won trade would be jeopardised, but because of what they’d achieved besides that.

They just wanted to see signs of the change they had already brought about.

–

The gathered gradually made their way up to Leven Hyder, forming a silent congregation outside the gates of the Authority Complex.

By dusk, the first detainees were released. Hundreds of men, women and children emerged from the detention centres and staggered through the gates. Many were weak, malnourished, bearing the wounds of interrogation. Yet all were smiling, scanning the mass of faces for loved ones.

The Authority had agreed to release all prisoners deemed low risk, awaiting charge or trial. This amounted to over three thousand citizens. They had also agreed to release them before five-thirty the following morning, when the first shift klaxons would sound. If all prisoners were not released, the gathered would not return to work.

The Authority honoured their commitment.

They also honoured the commitment to terminate surveillance of all citizens for whom they had no evidence on which to bring trial.

Chase could walk free.

Yet he remained with the masses, witnessing emotional reunions. He remembered how he’d felt when Brann was finally released after five long years – how his young brother had emerged a broken man, crushed by the state who claimed to provide and protect. He thought of all those he had betrayed, who had ended up in one of the centres because of information he had supplied. All the suffering he had caused through his self-righteous war against the Scene. The ever-persecuted Scene, which was not to blame for Brann’s arrest in the first place. Then he thought of Ursel, until the shame grew too great to bear. Surrounded by elation and tearful liberation, Chase felt wretched.

Tinashe also stood among the crowd, watching the steady stream of detainees emerge. Her eyes scanned their faces, desperately searching, allowing hope to blossom into faith. For hours she persevered, asking the freed, “Do you know Weldon? Was he with you? Have you seen him?” When she eventually found someone who had briefly shared a cell with him, the limited information they had was enough to obliterate all hope. She didn’t require confirmation; it could only have ended one way. Surrounded by the joy of reunion, Tinashe stood alone, her hands covering her face, confronting the horror of loss.

Wella remained among the crowd too. She had left Chase to rejoin her new family: the followers who had been incarcerated, or who had worked tirelessly for the last five days to fight for their comrades’ release.

She stood beside Nial. Both had returned overground to fight for the Scene and for the sea change they believed was possible: a change in perspective that could help grow the Scene in ways that would never have been possible before. That’s Cole’s legacy, she thought. Bluemantle woke them. And now citizens know. Now they can stay, or leave, or they can choose to follow.

Wella had already decided what she would do. She confided in Nial as they stood amid the crowd. “I’m going to return,” she said. “To work for the Scene, wherever they end up.”

“A group of us are leaving tomorrow,” said Nial. “There’s a couple of hundred ready to go. We don’t want to wait for the Troubadours to find somewhere else. We want to search with them. Come with us?”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Why not? There’s nothing for us here.”

“There’s one last thing I need to do. Then I’ll join you.”

–

Once the agreement had been signed and the first wave of detainees released, Dent Lore had prepared for his final withdrawal.

The majority of troopers were deployed throughout the city, with orders to suppress celebration through intimidation. “We have agreed to their terms,” Fentlow had said, “but we will not lose face. Special Forces will be firmly in theirs, watching their every move. That’s control. Wydeye will do well to remember that.”

Fentlow’s insistence meant that the Complex was relatively quiet. Dent had been able to refuel the motorbike and load his few possessions and basic supplies unnoticed. He had also signed himself off sick, citing a relapse, buying himself three days before his absence would be noticed.

Before leaving, he had addressed a package, marked ‘Confidential and Urgent’, which he took to the Comms Centre. He spotted a trusted messenger, to whom he gave the package, along with a visual description of the addressee and where she might be found.

By the time he arrived back at the Troubadours’ camp, the drummer had shed his other self for the final time. He hoped Dent Lore’s parting deed achieved some small measure of atonement for the cruelty