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

them in. Make examples of them. Send a message about consequences. Then we get to work on the captured. Encourage answers. Make them talk.”

Another moment of static, then, “Do it. I confirm your orders have changed. Raid the city. Use the necessary force. Bring in as many of the rats as you can. Meanwhile, you’d better come up with a damn good explanation as to why you’ve failed.”

Chapter Ten

The descent was rapid; the raids that followed, brutal.

Wulfwin and his Deaf Squad tore through the sleeping city, striking it awake with blows of havoc. Citizens were plucked from curfewed streets and hurled into the backs of waiting trucks. Where lamps were spotted in dim backrooms, quarters were raided and startled tenants taken by force. Women wept as men were shackled and dragged, their faces bloodied from a taste of physical coercion. Children cried in terror as they witnessed their parents’ violent removal, cloth sacks tied over their heads. The night’s peace was destroyed by a choir of sirens and screams.

In Spire Wells, where no curfew was in place, the arrests were more erratic. Riat’s, the noodle bar, was stormed by a unit of snarling troopers. They smashed the glass serving counter and hurled ceramic bowls against the walls, shards of china puncturing the arms of cowering customers as they tried to shield their faces. Troopers kicked over tables and raised stools over their heads, threatening to ‘crush the skulls of User scum’. They grabbed people at random, strapped their hands behind their backs and frog-marched them out onto the street and to the Pentagon: the holding ground for the Authority’s examples and a blatant display of consequence. Beaten and terrified, citizens were made to stand in silent lines until trucks came to transport them up to the notorious detention centres in the Authority Complex.

Drayloc Market was partially demolished, the ramshackle stalls presenting light work for point-proving troopers. The Raven was another prime target, its floor promptly covered with smashed glass, pooling Pyncher and blood. The Authority had long since suspected the tavern to be a popular haunt of radicals and subversives. Near enough everyone who was inside when the Squad kicked open the doors was arrested and dragged to the Pentagon.

Citizens didn’t need to spread the word. There was no call for messages to be sent warning loved ones of the dangers to come. Within an hour of the revised objective, the police and Special Forces had hit the principal targets across the city. Sirens wailed in all directions as Authority vehicles raced beneath the Elevated, commandeering the underpass. Fires burnt in Drayloc Market and along the arms of Five Wents.

Over a hundred and fifty men and women, young and old, were beaten, shackled and gagged.

Accounts of the Deaf Squad’s brutality spread. The police were harsh, but they had rules, restrictions that observed fundamental human rights. The Deaf Squad, however, had a free pass. Reasonable force was a subjective judgement. It had been a long night already. Anger and frustration at the failed raid had stoked tempers. Wulfwin’s unbridled fury had influenced impressionable minds. Excessive, barbarous force was deemed justified by those who wielded it.

Questioning of citizens could come later. There would be time to consider alibies. But not then, not in that moment. It was a period of demonstration. As far as the Authority were concerned, it was a time of learning lessons. Of proving a point. Of reasserting the notion of what it meant to disobey.

The Music Makers had evaded capture once more. Others had to pay the price. Governor Blix and Commander Wulfwin, their fury matched, demanded a fortune.

–

Despite the odds and terrifying close calls, Cole had made it back to Tempur unscathed.

He climbed up a rope he had left suspended from an aperture in his apartment. He teased open the shutter and crept through the aperture into the living room, trying not to knock over the books and ornaments that littered the sill.

The room was dark, not yet touched by the creeping light of dawn. He tiptoed, struggling to control his breathing after running halfway across the city. He froze in the centre of the room. A silhouette hovered at the far end. Terror seized him, his nerves frayed from a night on the run. Then he realised and gulped, almost choking. “Evan…”

“Cole,” said Evan, stepping forward into the half-light. His face was wet, his eyes swollen. “I thought they had you.” His voice broke and he wept.

Cole hurried forward and embraced him hard, holding his head. Fighting back his own tears, he said, “It’s okay. I’m here. We’re safe.”

–

Chase gave Ursel a leg-up over the chain-link fence that formed the outer perimeter of the Telltale Circus. They both crouched down either side of the fence, their faces almost touching.

They had run for miles, skirting the city centre, sticking to backstreets and the cover of darkness. At one point, Chase’s lungs had burnt so hard, he thought he wouldn’t be able to keep going. Then they had heard the footfall of a Deaf Squad unit and the roar of Authority motorbikes. Survival instinct kicked in and he kept on running.

Finally, as the rising sun bled light onto the broken city, they had reached Standings Cross and the relative safety of the Circus compound.

“Why don’t you hide here too? Creaser will be crawling with the A. There’s no way you’ll make it home,” said Ursel, her hand gripping the fence.

“I have to get back. I promised I’d get a message to Naylor. He’ll be worried sick.”

“He wouldn’t want you to risk getting caught.”

Chase shook his head. “I promised. And besides, I know what a state he’ll be in. He lives on the seventy-eighth floor. He would’ve seen the fires. Heard the sirens. I can’t leave him fearing the worst.”

“You’re a good friend. And a good brother. I’m sorry I judged you at the start. I got you wrong.”

“No. I think you got me about right. But I’m working on it.”

He was about to get up, then hesitated.