Status: Complete

Cadesa's Caress

An Envoy From The Mirror City

Gerard registers one thing as soon as he is awake: his entire body aches. For a minute he wonders if he is dead and this is some fucked-up limbo – but he doesn’t believe in that kind of shit. He can hear a strange kind of moaning, but it all sounds so far away that he can’t be sure what anyone is saying. He’s sure it isn’t the pleasurable kind though. Gerard groans – is someone beating a drum inside his head? His left hand feels sticky, too, which is a little weird.

Then a deep voice speaks, much closer to him than before. ‘I think this one’s alive!’ Gerard hears movement coming towards him and slowly opens his eyes. ‘Compared to the others he’s actually looking pretty good ....’ the voice continues and Gerard is beginning to think he knows the speaker. The voice sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place it.

Someone new has arrived and is talking to Gerard. The voice is close; they must be kneeling beside him. Gerard cracks open his eyes and turns his head, searching. Directly to his left, a tall man with curly hair is kneeling, concerned.

‘Do you feel okay?’ he asks. ‘I can’t see any wounds. Did you get hit at all?’

Gerard tries shaking his head, but the pain escalates suddenly. ‘I think I’m okay?’ he offers.

‘Right then. We need to keep checking everyone else, so as long as you think you can walk, just head south towards the group of survivors. They’re on the edge of the field, you can’t miss them.’

Survivors? Gerard needs to explain, because this ... isn’t right. He was dreaming, he should have woken up at home, not in the middle of fucking nowhere, apparently in a battle, with a weird man who seems familiar, but can’t be because everything else here is completely alien. He should call out after the two men, but doesn’t. There are other people around here, sick, wounded and dying men and women and whatever this is, he shouldn’t stop them from getting help.

Gerard clambers to his feet slowly, trying to avoid making the pain in his head any worse – does he have a concussion? – and takes a random guess at which direction is south. He isn’t walking fast, because every few feet there is a body. It’s all he can do not to throw himself down on the grass and hide, because the wounds ... they’re grotesque. A man with his stomach sliced right open, another with a scarlet hole where his mouth should be. One woman’s fingers are twitching, grabbing and Gerard runs right past her. He’s afraid that if she touches him he’ll be sucked down to her level, be forced to lie down and wait to die ....

The thought of simply ignoring everyone is disgusting though and seeing a man who is plainly alive, Gerard kneels down beside him. The man isn’t making a sound, but there’s a gaping wound in his shoulder and Gerard can see only a faint spark of life in his eyes.

‘Hi,’ he whispers.

It obviously takes a lot of effort for the man to speak and Gerard wonders if he should tell him to save his strength. But then the man – is he a soldier, Gerard wonders – mutters a low, ‘Hello.’

‘What’s your name?’ Gerard asks.

‘B-B-Blair.’ A line of blood dribbles down the man’s chin from his mouth. He looks younger than Mikey. “What’s ... yours?”

‘I’m Gerard.’ He wants to help Blair, but what can he do? The men who woke him up are helping people just as injured as Blair right now. ‘I’m gonna try and help you, okay?’ he says all the same, if only to reassure Blair, give him some peace. He can’t stand here and watch a man die, even if the voice of reason is telling him it’s inevitable. Maybe .... Gerard looks at the gaping wound in Blair’s shoulder. The young man can’t lose any more blood, that’s the main thing. Gerard pulls off his jacket and presses down over the wound. Blair grits his teeth and groans.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gerard apologises. ‘Am I – am I doing the right thing?’ He sees Blair nod and tries not to show his panic. Is this ... is it going to make a difference? He’s sure that blood dribbling from your mouth means you have internal injuries. How bad are Blair’s? How long does he have left?

Blair is speaking, Gerard realises, so quietly his voice is barely a whisper. ‘T-t-tell ... s-story ....’

‘You want me to tell you a story?’ Gerard asks hesitantly. ‘I – okay ... I’m. Well, there was a man ... and he loved a woman a lot, quite a long time ago. But he made some mistakes, big ones, and maybe she did too. They broke up. And then the man had some ... some dreams about the woman. He was sad, because they weren’t very nice dreams. But the man also realised something because of them.

‘Except ... one night he had a dream and in the dream he ... he ... he d-died.’ Gerard is watching Blair’s expression the whole time; he saw it change from content to concern when he spoke of the young lovers breaking up. Now he looks positively terrified ‘But the man woke up in a strange world. He doesn’t think it’s a dream, but it isn’t his world, either. He’s very sad, because he has family back home.’

Blair utters a single word, ‘Brother?’

Gerard nods. ‘Yes. A younger brother.’

‘Me ... too ....’

‘The man wants to get home. And he knows now that when he goes home, he’ll call the woman he loved and talk to her. He’d like to be friends again, at least. And he wants to tell his brother he was right.’

Blair’s eyes are clouded over; Gerard wonders if the young man can see. ‘G-good story... Sad .... But good ending. B-better than m-mine.’ Blair’s head lolls over to the side and with a burst of horror, Gerard realises what has happened. No ....

He just sat here and watched a man die. Let the last of the life seep out of him. Maybe he had thought Blair wouldn’t live long, but nor did he want him to go like this, right in front of Gerard .... Why didn’t he run and get someone? Why?

Because, subconsciously, he’d given up. He’d decided Blair was going to die.

It’s unreal. And Gerard hates that it feels so. In his cosy world back in New Jersey, he was so far away from suffering. Christ, even the homeless people he saw every day didn’t affect him. It was like ... he saw all this shit, he complained with Mikey about how fucked up the world was, but really, he was living in a chrysalis, not understanding or even taking the fucking time to try.

And now death is close, so close that he can brush his fingers across the latest victim. He can feel the warmth leaving Blair, the young man is growing icier and icier by the second and even though it shouldn’t matter, Gerard wishes he could cover the fallen man with a blanket. It’s a feeble effort, too little, too late, but still ... he wishes. Anything to create the illusion that it isn’t over. That Blair is still alive. How can it be over this quickly? It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Is that really what death is? Something that comes so quickly, so sneakily, you don’t even realise and then suddenly a person is simply ... gone. An empty shell on a battlefield, a bloody corpse in a wrecked car. A young man who was just that: too fucking young to die. Except really, that’s the irony of it all: who says you’re too young to die? They lied to you, whoever said that. You’re never too young to die. Just arrogant enough to think that you are.

A hand on Gerard’s shoulder startles him, pulls him right away from mourning to the here-and-now. ‘We’re going back to the others and I think you should come,’ the man who had roused Gerard before says. There is nothing in his to suggest he is paying any attention to the body.

‘What about a burial?’ Gerard asks. Is Blair really going to be left to decompose in a fucking field? Like he didn’t matter?

‘That’s not what we’re here for,’ the man says simply, but his voice is strained. ‘We don’t have much time. Now follow us.’ He sets off at a brisk pace across the field and Gerard follows behind the two men, who have now been joined by three more men and one older woman – like him, they must be ‘survivors’.

It isn’t long before they reach a mottled group of men and women. Just from looking at them, Gerard knows they have been involved in some kind of fight, a battle. Their clothing is blood-stained and many of them are sporting injuries, ranging from simple cuts to a man lying on the ground, holding his left arm tenderly. Gerard glances at it, he can’t stop himself, and nearly retches at the deep cut in it; the skin is ripped right back to reveal muscle.

There’s a feeling he can’t shake off, like these people are long-lost relatives or something. He doesn’t recognise any of them, but thinks he should. They look familiar, sound familiar ... Yet he can’t imagine how they would have met before. Whatever this place is, it’s far more vivid than any dream. Gerard thinks the only reason he isn’t completely freaking out is because he’s getting a strong feeling that these people aren’t going to hurt him.

Gerard finds himself walking beside a man who wouldn’t even be thirty years old, with a shirt of a rough-looking fabric wound around his arm, presumably holding in the seeping blood. He is limping, and after a minute Gerard offers to help him. The man accepts and each puts an arm around the other’s shoulder, moving like they would if it were a three-legged race.

‘I haven’t seen you before,’ the man puffs. ‘And the Resistance are careful about who joins them. What’s your story?’

Gerard hesitates. Is it wise to say that he doesn’t actually know himself? ‘I ... I’m new here. Just sort of wound up in ... whatever that was. A ... battle?’

The man actually stops walking and looks at him incredulously. ‘Where exactly are you from? You don’t seem to know anything about Cadesa. That ‘battle’ was meant to be the final uprising to defeat the Ministry. And it went about as wrong as an attack can go. We lost over a thousand men and women ....’

Gerard only heard one word from that sentence. Cadesa. ‘Did you say – I mean, what’s the name of this planet again?’

‘Cadesa,’ the man repeats slowly, frowning. ‘Why?’

‘I’m on Cadesa,’ Gerard says incredulously. ‘Cadesa. No fucking way. Just no. That’s ... I can’t be on Cadesa. You’re fucking shitting me.’

‘Hey,’ the man warns, ‘watch your mouth.’ He looked around warily. ‘We might be anti-Ministry, but you can never be sure who might report you for using one of the banned words.’

Oh my God, Gerard thinks. Cadesa. That ... it can’t be. But he can’t deny it either. The Ministry. The Resistance’s failed uprising where so many died. Gerard remembers all of this; it’s painted in his mind so clearly, more so than in anyone else’s. He has pages and pages of notes on the planet, the people in it, the hierarchy and everything that happens in this story.

Gerard hasn’t the faintest idea why, but he is in his own fucking novel.

————

Gerard is recognising landmarks as they walk now, battling their way through shrubbery, so he knows there are only a few minutes before they reach Kaitama, the current headquarters for the Resistance. Roughly half of the one-hundred strong crowd have left – very few people actually live with the Resistance all year round – they have homes and day jobs of their own – actually, a lot of their income is donated to fuelling the Resistance.

Gerard doesn’t recognise everyone, but he has spotted a man named Matthew whom he knows to be an exceptional fighter and spots the wound he wrote about in the most recent chapter: a badly broken arm that will never heal perfectly, but instead means Matthew teaches himself to use his blaster with his right hand rather than his preferred left.

It’s impossible to describe his feelings, but Gerard thinks that if God were real, maybe this is what he would feel like, walking among his creations. He’s astounded, totally mind-blown because it’s his world, the planet he created and somehow ... it exists. It’s crazy, what Gerard is seeing around him now defies all kinds of reason, people don’t just get transported to a fictional planet, but somehow...here he is.

It’s as if he has an incredibly large extended family around him. Gerard often thinks of what relations his characters would be to him – the Resistance’s second-in-command is like his father, wise, and always working for someone other than himself, yet blunt. He offers advice not with phrases that stick in your mind, but in every action he carries out, albeit unknowingly. In contrast, the thief is the black sheep of the family – so different and self-focused that he throws the family dynamics off completely, yet he is unable to be quite shaken off and forgotten about.

When they step into the cave, Gerard almost gasps. He spent over a month designing and editing the caves for the Resistance’s hideout, but the end result was ideal. Kaitama is actually a series of caves, in the cliffs close to the shore. Entrance through the beach is hopeless, there’s no way down the cliffs, but if you make your way through the shrubbery, there is a lower path almost invisible between two particularly large bushes, but if you walk down, you’ll come to a tunnel which leads through to the first of three large caves.

The man he walked with – Theo, Gerard thinks suddenly. He called this man Theo – tells Gerard he should stick with him. ‘I’ll take you to Bryar; he can decide what to do with you.’ Gerard remembers writing about Robert Bryar, more commonly known as Bob, and his strong arms – very good at throwing punches. Now, he can’t help but regret making the Resistance’s second-in-command quite so strong – and quite so short-tempered.

Bob is in the second cave, already checking the injuries of the crowd and prioritising them into groups. A woman, who was carried back by two older men Gerard recognised as Fergus and William, is sent straight to the medics, Carolina and Tony. So is Matthew – not that it will do him any good, Gerard thinks darkly. Looking around him, he can feel the suffering he wrote for these people and it hurts him as their creator of course, like the maternal kind of pain, but also because it is so real. As involved in his story as he gets, Gerard knows it’s just that – fiction. This though ... whatever this is, however it happened, it is so real.

Theo waits until Bob steps back from what have now become three separate groups of people, all of who are either being helped, or about to be, before the young man steps up. ‘Sir,’ he says and Gerard remembers how abrupt Theo sometimes is, how much he admires Bob.

Bob’s eyes immediately land on Gerard, though he nods at Theo. ‘Well then,’ he says. ‘What have we got here?’

‘This is Gerard,’ Theo introduces. ‘He was involved in the battle.’

Bob nods slowly. ‘What’s your story then?’ he prompts.

Gerard isn’t sure what to say. And this probably isn’t the best place to talk, either. What are all these people going to think if he casually announces, ‘Oh yeah, I invented you!’ No one will believe him. In fact, if the Ministry found out he was here saying something like that, he would be executed.

‘I ....’ Gerard tries to think of something believable. Why is it that now, when he needs as much information as possible on Bob Bryar and what he might accept as an explanation, does his mind go blank? ‘I don’t really know ... I’m new here.’

Bob doesn’t look very satisfied as he turns to Theo. ‘And you decided to bring a stranger down to our headquarters. Who knows where his allegiances lie?’

‘I didn’t see him kill any of our people in the battle,’ Theo protests. ‘And it was Fraser who sent him over to us.’

Bob has reached a decision; Gerard recognises the slight shift in his expression: his jaw is set now. ‘Well, whoever you are, we can’t have you running off to your Ministry bosses and giving away our location. So until Toro arrives, you can consider yourself our prisoner.’

‘I’m not a Ministry supporter,’ Gerard insists.

‘Well of course, I’m really about to take the word of someone I’ve never met before,’ Bob says derisively. ‘Theo, you can handcuff him to the column out the back.’ When Theo opens his mouth, Bob barks, ‘Now! And then go get yourself cleaned up,’ he adds more kindly. ‘You brought him to me straight away at least, so that’s something ....’

————

Being held prisoner is ... weird. He’s handcuffed, but left alone. He attracts a lot of stares, but Gerard simply stares back. His characters are here, all around him. And he’s seeing the Resistance at its absolute lowest – how did he write it? Morale crushed, men and women stumbled back to their last refuge, but many hundreds remained on the battlefield, bleeding out the last of their life.

He can see the physical injuries, but worse is the sense of defeat leaking off them. Gerard watches a man he simply called Saunders stumble in and slip down against the wall. Blood is trickling down his neck, but it isn’t serious. Gerard knew such a big battle was not a fitting ending for such a man. Saunders would be lost in the masses of bodies and never thought of as more than one of many on a tragic day. No, Saunders’s demise was to be much grander, far more impacting, a day never forgotten.

When Gerard first realised what would happen to Saunders, he wrote the scene ... but now, he’s wondering something. His books, The Cadesa Trilogy, are not complete. He has written The Ringmaster and Trance, but what about the unfinished third instalment? He was halfway through and all around him are the remains of the bloodiest battle the planet of Cadesa has ever seen, with over ten thousand dead. What’s left of the Resistance, less than one hundred, is pitiful. One raid from the Ministry at the opportune moment would wipe them out.

Gerard wonders though ... what about the scenes he has written, but not placed at a specific place in the book? Saunders, will he die randomly now? And the thief ... Gerard wrote his capture, his almost-escape, but even though he knows what happens next, it has not been written. And now that the master is in his world of ink, what will happen? Who will control it?

What if Gerard becomes controlled himself?

————

As soon as the first in command of the Resistance arrives, he comes to see Gerard. ‘So,’ he says in obvious amusement, ‘you’re the “big threat” Bob told me about.’ And he proceeds to unlock Gerard’s handcuffs from around the pole and pocket them in his tunic. ‘Come through to the back with me.’

Although the man says ‘the back’, he really means the small cave off to the side – it offers privacy and Gerard wrote it in with the intention that it would be used for talking to more senior Resistance members in private. He never thought of it as being used for his own interrogation.

Gerard always knew the Resistance needed a very special person to lead it. The character of Ray Toro was born early on in the writing of The Ringmaster, but he kept changing – Gerard was constantly rearranging the format of the Resistance, so naturally, its leader needed to change in order to suit it.

Ray Toro was once a pilot for the Ministry, but was stripped of his rank and banished after he was found to have been smuggling prisoners to safety in other star systems. It was a sensational story when the Ministry broke it – a ‘model citizen’ the Academy’s chairman had called him when he graduated, top of his class – but he was ‘disgraced’, ‘an example of how far a man can fall’. It was almost certain that Ray Toro would be executed, but he disappeared underground. Extensive searches found no trace of him – but the former pilot had found the Resistance, who welcomed him into their fold. He has been there for seven years now, working his way up, and when Jethro Van Orman was captured and killed personally by Leonard Coleridge five years ago, it was Ray Toro who stepped up into the position of leader. He moved the Resistance to its new headquarters and carefully planned the attack today. It was meant to disable the Ministry enough that the Resistance could push through to the city proper and take the castle, but it failed spectacularly.

Gerard knew from the start that the battle would fail. What good is a novel where the heroes achieve their goal straight away? But now, when he looks at the suffering around him and remembers the fallen bodies in the field, something horrible twists inside him.

‘I’d like you to tell me how you came to be here,’ Ray says. His tone is perfectly even, but it isn’t a request.

There are a thousand answers Gerard could give, but very few that wouldn’t get him killed, or at least land him in a very unpleasant place. But he’s a writer. He’s good at telling stories. And now he has an answer ready. ‘It was an accident,’ he begins – and that really is the truth. Whatever this is, it’s not his fault. ‘I’m not from around here. I’m...travelling for a while and I don’t really know what I’ve arrived to.’ Liar, liar, a voice whispers, but Gerard ignores it. He can see that Ray isn’t convinced yet. ‘I was on the Atlanta back in 3015 when it made the first trip to Trusant.’

‘And you chose to stay in a foreign galaxy for the past decade instead of coming home?’ Ray asks sceptically. ‘What about your family?’

‘I don’t have any that’s alive,’ Gerard says, feeling more than a little guilty about Mikey and his parents all the way back on Earth. ‘They were killed in the raids the year before for being anti-Ministry.’

‘And you escaped.’

‘Yes. I decided to come and visit Cadesa now, but didn’t realise how bad things were. There’s a lot of propaganda over in Trusant encouraging people to come and see ‘the paradise planet’.’

Ray nods. ‘That’s right. The way we hear it, the ships of tourists are coming in, but then finding it impossible to leave. The Ministry are still searching everyone that comes for signs of the traits they want for when they start the reproducing. I suppose your being here means you don’t have those traits?’

Gerard shrugs. ‘I suppose it must.’

Ray sighs. ‘Well, I don’t think you’re going to find much out on the surface that will appeal to you, Gerard. There are raids right through the city and nowhere is safe. And what’s more, although I don’t think you seem likely to kill us in our sleep, I can’t let you go. You’ve seen the caves here and we never can be sure who’ll make a deal with the Ministry in exchange for a safe passage out. You’ll have to stay here.’

Honestly, Gerard can think of far worse things, but no tourist will be pleased with a stranger telling him he can’t leave some stupid caves he probably doesn’t like at all, so he kicks up a fuss for the pretence. ‘Why though? I’m just a regular man; I don’t want to make any deals with the Ministry or anyone else. Can’t you just let me go?’

Ray shakes his head. ‘I’m not about to endanger the Resistance anymore. Someone sold us out today, it’s the only way the Ministry could have known to bring so many soldiers when we put out the word that we would only be bringing a few hundred. But they knew there were going to be thousands of us and so they brought double that. I can’t take any chances. We won’t keep you handcuffed though, and tomorrow an expedition is going out for food. You can travel with them if you like. Bryar will be keeping an eye on you.’ Ray looks out towards the main caves. ‘I need to go and check on a few people.’ He smiles at Gerard. ‘One of those leader hardships – you definitely don’t get to put your feet up after a battle. If you talk to Theo, he’ll make sure you get some food and a place to sleep, although I can’t promise you a bed so much as a patch on the floor and a blanket ....’

————

That night, Gerard is given a thin sheet and finds a place to lie in the corner. Most people are giving him a wide berth – and understandably so. First he was handcuffed to a pole, now he is walking freely among them. That said, he has felt the stern gaze of Bob and the lighter one of Ray Toro on him almost constantly.

He can’t sleep though. Excitement has claimed him and he wants to move around and see much more of his world than the inside of one cave. And now that everyone’s asleep, he has to admit, they aren’t as interesting to watch. He wants to see his characters moving, so he can spot all the smaller characteristics he fed into them: the slumping walk of James Ransom, Vincent’s one remaining eye – the other was lost in battle when he was just twenty and Catherine Mallet’s whisper of a voice.

He waits a full hour according to his watch, then tiptoes across the floor, carefully avoiding any flung-out arms, and reaches the small side cave where Ray spoke to him earlier.

He knows this cave like he knows his own house and it’s easy to move about in the limited light. He keeps walking from the main alcove down the tunnel and, sure enough, reaches the surface. From here, he is more or less bush bashing; there’s no path at all.

Every breath Gerard takes makes him feel more and more awake and it’s the strangest thing, but he also feels more alive. He’s in a fictional world, cut off from Earth and his brother and parents, but all around him are his characters, pieces of his own mind, walking and talking and they are so real, so incredibly real, that it’s just the most bizarre thing... Everything about them is just how he imagined it, yet a thousand times clearer and so much better.

Gerard doesn’t know where he wants to go first. The bush around here is thick and his only light is the stars above. The city of Cadesa is eighteen miles to the north, but the only way for Gerard to get there is to walk. He knows how to reach the path, so once he’s on it, it’ll be fine. He figures it will be about a six-hour walk and in the middle of the night; that isn’t the greatest prospect ever, but still achievable. He isn’t afraid of getting into trouble – no one living here knows this world better than he does. With a little luck there won’t be any rain, either.

As it turns out, luck isn’t on Gerard’s side at all.

————

The thief is cursing his luck even more, when the new man arrives.

‘There you go Shorty, a new playmate. Maybe he’ll keep you so entertained you won’t try any more harebrained escapes,’ the guard laughs. He and his companion push in a limp lump of a man – well, the thief thinks he’s a man, but the long hair masking his face could suggest the contrary. The guards throw him onto the floor and leave, one making sure to slam the gate firmly behind him. The door is pulled across – the door with no handle or lock accessible to the thief. They’ve really got him this time, in the new windowless cell, with its gate and door.

The new arrival lifts his head and yes, it’s definitely a man, the thief decides, despite the hair. His mouth is bloody and his eyes rather dazed. But then he focuses in on the thief.

‘You’re ... you’re Frank Iero,’ he says, voice hoarse.

‘I am,’ Frank confirms.

The man is slack-jawed. ‘I never thought ....’ He sits up. ‘I never expected .... Oh my fucking God ....’

‘In general, people tend to understand you better if you actually finish one whole sentence before starting another,’ Frank says.

The man blinks. ‘I just can’t believe .... Out of everyone. I mean, you were caught, but when they brought me here, I didn’t think ....’

‘How did you know that I was in here? Who did you hear it from?’

‘No one,’ the man says quickly.

Frank narrows his eyes. He dislikes the newcomer already. Not only is he looking at Frank with this stupid reverence in his eyes, but exactly what is going on out in the city? How widely has his capture been publicised? Frank isn’t a well-known person in Cadesa and that’s the way he likes it. So why would the Ministry waste their time announcing his capture? There are thousands of thieves all over the metropolis; what makes him special? Every day small criminals like him are executed and no one bats an eyelid.

Frank doesn’t say anything to the man, but continues to hold his gaze, intending to stare him down until the crazy dude huddles in the corner covering his eyes, too scared to meet Frank’s gaze. For a minute or two the man looks at him, puzzled, but then he seems to realise what Frank’s trying to do – and he laughs. Loud and long, he laughs, before saying, ‘Oh hell no, Iero! You don’t get to try that on me!’ Like he actually thinks he has some kind of power over Frank. What the hell is happening to him?

The man grins. ‘I knew when I wrote you –’ And then he cuts himself off with a gasp. ‘Uh ....’ Clearly he is trying to think of a way to cover up his words, but it’s too late. After a few moments of fumbling, he meets Frank’s gaze.

‘What do you mean, “you wrote me”,’ Frank says. It can’t have been a literal statement, there aren’t many people that can write or read here. Hardly anyone has even gone to an educational institute to learn.

‘I didn’t mean ....’

‘Bullshit,’ Frank growls. He doesn’t even care that he might be picked up on camera and charged with using one of the illegal words on top of the charges he’s already accumulated (theft and assault). No one fucks him over like this. Whoever the hell this man is, he doesn’t get to start talking like he knows Frank and then just totally clam up. ‘What do you mean?’

But the man shakes his head, just shakes it over and over again. It’s a never-ending cycle of Frank threatening, ranting and almost pleading for this strange man to tell him why he knows Frank – but it doesn’t work. For the first time in his life, the young thief has been truly trumped.

————

It’s all very well to invent a planet with a cruel dictatorship, but quite another to find yourself on the receiving end of its justice system. One minute, Gerard was walking through the greenery on the path, the next he had felt something cutting through the air only inches to his left. Uselessly, he ducked. It was a rope, looped like one a cowboy might use in the rodeo to catch the escaping beast.

The second rope didn’t miss him. It fell down over his shoulders in the same instant Gerard was about to run, and the rider of the horse pulled it tight around Gerard’s chest as he rode closer and closer. Gerard toppled forwards and lay in a humiliating heap when the horse came to a stop beside him.

‘Well, well, well ....’ All too easily, Gerard recognised the sneering voice of Willis, a Ministry supporter who devotes his nights to scouring the city and surrounding areas for curfew-breakers. Gerard had felt incredibly stupid – how did he not remember what happens if you’re caught after dark? It was one of the earliest decrees the Ministry passed when it came to power: after the sun has set, no one is leave their house. It was meant, of course, to make it harder for like-minded rebels to meet in secret.

‘What have I got myself here .... Another curfew-breaker.’ Gerard knew he was wisest not to say anything. Willis was dangerous and the only question was whether he would kill Gerard now, or hand him over to the Ministry to be executed in exchange for a reward.

Willis looked Gerard over, his lips forming the smile of one who has come out on top in a game of cat and mouse. ‘You know, tonight’s a very lucky night for you. You see,’ Willis continues, ‘I found someone not so dissimilar to you last night, but I hadn’t eaten any dinner .... So he didn’t last very long. But I’m a little low on credits right now; you’ll be going to Coleridge’s men. Consider it a gift from me; you can stay alive for an extra couple of days. Though I hear they have men bringing in fresh wood for the fires right through the night, ready for dawn executions.’

Willis had dismounted the horse only to readjust the rope: it was now pinning Gerard’s arms to his side. He produced a gag, which he shoved in Gerard’s mouth.

‘Mm-hmm-emm,’ Gerard protested furiously.

Willis raised his thin eyebrows – like the rest of him, they were startlingly pale. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t understand that, prisoner.’

It had been an incredibly painful trip; Willis had one horse with a cart behind it, which Gerard had been carelessly tossed into. He couldn’t get his hands free from the ropes, and the sides of the cart were too high for him to roll over. (Not to mention, Willis is a very clever man, who doesn’t let his victims slip away from him.)

When they had arrived outside the Ministry’s castle – which doubled as Leonard Coleridge’s house – the guards had greeted Willis with all the familiarity of brothers, laughing in the general direction of the cart. Outside the main door, Gerard had been dragged out into a standing position and nearly fell over – that had earned him a stinging smack to the mouth, which he’s certain dislodged something inside because it hurts like hell.

Willis pulled Gerard through the corridors and it was all Gerard could do to keep up. His feet tripped over each other more than once and the movement mostly came from Willis dragging a semi-upright Gerard. He could feel blood in his mouth and his mind was starting to cloud over woozily.

They reached what Gerard had called the Examination Room, but was really just a room where Willis recounted that yes, Gerard had broken curfew, and collected his reward before leaving as swiftly as he had ambushed Gerard.

Gerard can’t remember the name of the guards who threw him in the cell with Frank, the captured thief. And now he’s really screwed up, gone and let slip those fatal words: I knew when I wrote you. He doesn’t let himself talk after that, even though he’s bursting to get closer to Frank, to ask him question after question about his childhood, when he came to the city, his thieving – all things he already knows the answer to, but wants to make sure it really is like he wrote it.

Gerard knows he faces death now. Perhaps that’s the craziest thing of all: he knows he has been defeated, but he can’t take his mind off the new character right in front of him. Gerard can’t understand why he isn’t freaking out about dying. He knows curfew-breakers are burnt to death, but his mind isn’t conjuring up images of his charred body, just more and more questions for Frank.

But he knows one thing above all others. Frank is far from trustworthy and Gerard isn’t about to spill his secret only to have Frank reveal him as a magician or involved in witch-craft and make a deal to try and save his own skin by offering them a much bigger fish.

Gerard doesn’t know how long he has to wait before they come, but the Ministry are efficient killers. The longer you leave someone stewing in a cell, the greater the risk that something will go wrong – an example being Frank’s previous almost-escape.

He doesn’t feel afraid of death itself, of dying, but then again, he never has. It’s bizarre, but perhaps, in being so exposed to the macabre when he was young, it lost any allure or power it had over him.

What Gerard will only realise years later is that it was simply sweet denial he was in. That and arrogance. He didn’t really think he was going to die, not in his own novel. He thought there was some kind of exception for authors; that he was less mortal than everyone around him; that it was like a dream, even though it has been proven to him that you can die in dreams.

So that’s why he doesn’t try and escape. That’s the reason he just waits, sits in the cell and doesn’t talk to the restless, angry thief. When the guards open the gates he is in a trance, operating on autopilot. He lets the guards handcuff him and follows them blindly. He can hear scuffling and cursing, and knows Frank isn’t going easily. He wrote fire right across Frank’s soul; the thief will be kicking, biting, punching any and all skin he can reach, doing everything in his power to stop this. They are almost complete opposites. Gerard thought for a long time about whether or not Frank was afraid of death, or just desperately did not want to die.

Finally, after a maze of corridors, the guards yelling insults at the still fighting Frank, they reach the open arena and Gerard’s mouth falls open. It’s like a sports arena, crazily modern and absolutely filled with people. He remembers writing about executions in detail back in The Ringmaster, many from Ray’s point of view. Citizens were herded in to watch the burnings of the lawless ones and whenever Ray was in the city, he would be forced to go. Frank hid during these times – and Gerard’s beginning to think the thief really is afraid of death. He is pale, incredibly pale, and all the strength and aggressiveness Gerard saw in the cell has gone completely.

He’s stopped fighting, stopped moving altogether. His gaze is fixed on the two tall stakes surrounded by hundreds of piled sticks. Gerard can see the rope and he knows exactly what will happen: he and Frank will be tied to the stake, smaller bundles of sticks and straw placed strategically up their body and the entire assortment set on fire. The flames will first lick his feet and then up his legs, his torso, until finally his entire head will be engulfed in the fire. The atomic bomb of fire. That’s what he is going to become.

His insides are running cold now. Death is suddenly too close and his calm facade is starting to splinter. He can’t see anyone jumping up to save him. And how can he save himself?

The guards are frog-marching Gerard and Frank over to the stakes, over to their deaths, when Frank slumps forward suddenly. Both guards turn, slapping his cheeks, trying to shake him back to consciousness. Gerard acts then, in the moment when his arms are no longer pinned to his side. He drives his elbow up and backwards, hoping it connects with flesh – and it does. The man who was holding him has taken several steps backwards, hands clasped over his nose and Gerard pushes him over, kicking him in the knee for good measure. The man walks back onto the concrete ground and Gerard hears his head collide with the ground – the guard is unconscious now.

As soon as Gerard springs into action, Frank had catches on, popping up from what Gerard thinks was a fake faint. He has his hands wrapped around the throat of his guard, but Gerard can’t stand to see the man’s face growing steadily purple.

‘Let go,’ he growls as soon as the man passes out. ‘You’re no killer.’ Despite his words, Gerard doesn’t expect Frank to listen and his expectations are proved correct. If anything, Frank’s grip tightens. There are guards running towards them seemingly from nowhere, but Gerard is sure they were simply lurking in the shadows before.

‘Move, you asshole,’ Gerard yells, when Frank still doesn’t let go of the man. He didn’t write this guy as a killer – actually, he has some very cowardly traits. He pulls on Frank’s arm and finally, finally, Frank starts to run too. They lurch out of the arena. Gerard briefly wonders why the gates weren’t guarded, but that isn’t a concern for now, not when he’s running to save his life.

The streets of the city are narrow, filled with tight corners and easy to get lost in. Gerard is behind Frank now and cursing himself for never thinking to engage in some form of exercise. His lungs are burning and he really doesn’t think he can carry on–

‘Jesus!’ He’s run straight into Frank’s back. The thief is stationary for just a second, looking at the rope ladder dangling in front of them. Then he starts to climb up.

‘Do you want to get killed?’ a voice calls to Gerard. ‘Climb, damnit!’

Gerard looks over his shoulder. The guards haven’t turned the corner yet, but they could at any minute. They have blasters and if Gerard is climbing up this ladder and they fire on him, he’s screwed. Frank is already at the top now, monkey that he is. Gerard stops thinking and begins to climb. There’s no way he can outrun the guards, but whoever has dropped the ladder is a friend and so he starts to climb. He’s nowhere near as agile as Frank and the ladder is moving wildly, but somehow he gets to top. Already, their saviour is pulling up the ladder, squashing it into a deep pocket and running lightly along the flat roof they are now on.

‘Run,’ the person calls over a shoulder. The voice is distinctly feminine. Frank is already moving and Gerard follows. He’ll be fucked if he’s left alone, he’s realised. Even if this world is his, by no means is he immune to getting into trouble – actually, since he arrived he seems to have done nothing but that.

Where the trip to the arena was an endless maze of hallways, this is rooftop after rooftop; chimneys are dips and precarious moments along gutters. Thank fuck there are no huge jumps. Gerard is completely confused about where they might be going, but instead is placing a lot of trust in their rescuer having a plan.

He falls over once, landing with a splat, and to his amazement Frank turns back to hold out his hand. He pulls Gerard up wordlessly, then continues to run.

Gerard doesn’t have time to be grateful, but he speeds up, knowing that he is running for his life.

————

Their leader runs for what seems like hours, but then stops suddenly over a hole in a roof and jumps down into it in one fluid motion. Frank looks at Gerard. ‘After you,’ he says, but it doesn’t sound like a kind offer.

Gerard obeys, all the same – what does he have to lose?

Your life, an ominous voice reminds him.

The room he finds himself in isn’t large – actually, it’s smaller than his bathroom – and Gerard doesn’t recognise it, doesn’t remember writing anything about it at all. Frank drops down and finally their rescuer turns to face them and takes off her hood.

Gerard’s mouth drops open. ‘Lindsey?’