Worlds Apart

Chapter 31

T H E • K I L L E R ' S • F A T E

The library was bustling with activity in the days following the meeting. All of a sudden, everyone within its fortified walls had been mobilised. There were far more people here than Daisha had seen, and quite a bit more than she had expected. She had thought their group was rather small, hiding in an abandoned library with nothing but uninhabitable desert as far as the eye could see.

They were preparing for a full-scale attack, a middle-aged man ambling past her with a crate full of sleek oblong metal reminiscent of bun woman's weapon on the train.

"Hey!" Naia sprung out from around the corner, running up to her with a tab in her hands.

"You'll be leaving with me and Ri," she said without preamble. "We've got a path out the back that goes right up the valley. It's too steep for us to escape but should be okay for just four people—Celnis chose not to come."

"Should be?" Daisha asked, raising an eyebrow.

Naia just waved her hand dismissively. "We'll be fine. It's the best plan we've got either way."

Daisha glanced at the pin in her shirt's collar, glinting with its own green-tinted light. The guns and the sunrays.

"Why is your mother so obsessed with this? It's no small sacrifice to show your face as a leader of an underground group."

"I thought you would understand the lengths people go for their ambition." There was a glint of something sharp in Naia's eye. She had never pinned the girl for someone to look out for. Maybe she had been...wrong.

Elin wasn't with them. The kid had been trying to speed up her recovery as much as he could so she would be ready to leave in time, and that meant far more rest.

Naia eyed those racing past them, hands full with old tomes or boxes or large pieces of equipment. "She was the Chief of Police in Wim about twenty years ago. A good one, too. A lot of people respected her for being able to get such a position without being Marked or even being from a first-tier province.

"But then about fifteen years ago, this officer on Earth-side noticed something strange in the mortality rate of a nearby city—our Gate city. There was a sudden surge in deaths which dropped just as abruptly...which was our fault when the Gate stopped working and the city got pushed all the way back to Earth-side," she said sheepishly. "But it was recent. See, the official record says the Gate shut down in 1738, which was when the Vilgash family ruled. Obviously, there was a ton of backlash for letting such a thing happen—the Gates are the basis of the entire country. They fell from power soon after, and the Cravens took the throne. They've been there ever since.

"But what this guy found was that the incident happened only about seventy years ago, under Craven rule, so you can see why they wanted him quiet. But he was well-liked and respected and when he was demoted to that very town, people noticed. So the Grapes took Mom's help to make sure it wouldn't reveal Evanos."

Naia had stopped walking, staring out of a window.

"She lost her position soon after Nemssà happened and Egality came up. Unmarked couldn't be trusted anymore. Asshole just made things worse for us. She got divorced and ended up travelling the country instead, taking a break from all the politics. She stumbled upon this library and its documents showed her what she'd unintentionally participated in: a cover-up scheme by a corrupt leadership. She made this group soon after, picking this place as her base because those records had to be protected. It was abandoned years ago and that might be the only reason the records here survived. This is the last place the truth can be found, Daisha." She stared at Daisha intently, all her usual humour evaporated. "Do you realise what that says about them? How much they've lied and wiped from history? Someone needs to make sure it comes to light, no matter the cost."