Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

"People with previous training?"

He shook his head. "Not usually. She prefers to train them herself."

Prefers people who know only what she wants them to know. But I didn't say it.

Still, Haru wasn't stupid. His black eyes narrowed, considering me. "You're wondering how she makes sure they're loyal, right?"

I tried to look casual. "Well, it must be a concern."

"I guess. What I heard is she chooses people who have no family, or people whose whole family is here."

Of course, that made sense. People who could be loyal to her unambiguously.

The sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon as we walked back along the rough tarmac road towards the beach. I watched it for a while, the astounding reds and pinks as the light refracted through thicker layers of polluted air. Dirt making beauty. I was sure Haru would have something to say about that.

When I looked across at him, he was still studying me, and I thought maybe he had been this whole time. "Yes, there aren't many guards," he said quietly. "But it's not that simple. To escape you need a way off the islands, or all you are is a sitting target and Queen M can come and deal with you when she wants. More importantly, you need to take care of the tracking device. No one will leave her while they've still got it in them. You might think you can persuade them, but you're wrong. You'll tell them that if everyone goes, she won't be able to hunt them down. And they'll know that's true – but she'll hunt some people down, and what if that person's you?"

I shook my head as if I didn't know what he was talking about.

He grabbed my arm, fifty metres from the beach. The schooner was waiting for me in the water, the figures of the crew black silhouettes against the sunset. "I can help you. If you'll trust me. I know this place better than you, the people too." He was talking in an urgent whisper, as if afraid that the distant figures of the crew might overhear us.

How can you help me? I wanted to ask him, when you don't even have the courage to say what you're saying out loud. But all I said was, "I'm not interested in escaping. I don't have any family out there, either. And I've got a cushy job too."

He released my arm, but he didn't stop staring at me. "Are you going to report me to Queen M?"

I shook my head, turning away from him.

I caught his crooked smile out of the corner of my eye. "Then you're not the happy little citizen you pretend to be, are you? I'll be waiting – when you're ready to talk."

The captain informed us that the flagship had moved, so the journey back would take us a couple of hours. The stars were crisp and bright, and I guessed that our crew, grizzled islanders who looked like they'd been born on the waves, were using them to navigate. I tried to talk to them about it, but the replies they gave were monosyllabic. After a while I gave up and went to stand in the bow, as far from Haru as I could put myself on the small boat. I watched our white wake, disappearing into the distance until it was impossible to distinguish it from the waves.

There's something very peaceful about sailing at night, the solitude of it. The noise of the sails as the wind caught them suddenly seemed very loud. And there it was again: a sharp flap that was almost like a whip-crack.

Except that it wasn't our sails.

There was absolutely no reason to panic. We were in friendly waters; the sea was filled with Queen M's ships. But when I saw the expression on the sailor's faces, the sudden flush of fear in Haru's pale cheeks, ghostly in the starlight, I knew that what I'd heard was the start of something very bad.

"They're windward and gaining," one of the sailors shouted, voice hoarse with panic. I was shoved aside roughly as the others hurried to the sails and swung the boom right round. A second later the wind caught the sails in the new direction and the deck tilted to a forty-five degree angle. I'd been completely unprepared. The motion flung me like a rag doll against the starboard railing – except that the railing wasn't there, it was ten feet lower than it should have been and instead of the bone-thumping crash I was expecting I just kept on falling.

The ocean looked dark and deep beneath me, and somewhere out there was whatever had caused this sudden, frantic flight. Without any conscious thought, I flung my arm out, grabbed hold of the railing as my body arched over it.

My fingers caught and held, the dead weight of my body dropping down. The pain in my shoulder was indescribable. I was sure it was dislocated. My fingers felt like every single one of them had been broken at once. But I held on, until I felt the brutal thump of my body against the side of the ship, my chest bruised to the bone by the impact. I let out one, fierce sob of mingled relief and pain.

My body bounced once, twice, against the hull. I thought I heard the sound of a rib snap, or it could have been something on the boat breaking. I was too dazed to tell. My eyes flicked shut, wanted to stay shut. My brain wanted to switch off. I wished all that noise would just go away so that I could go to sleep like I wanted to. All the shouting, the screaming. That infuriating whimpering.

My fingers had almost slipped from the railing when something inside me shouted and I jerked back into consciousness. For a second, it had sounded like a voice. Like the Voice – willing me not to let go just yet. But it couldn't be, could it? The anti-psychotics were supposed to have killed that Voice for good.

And then I didn't really care about it anymore, because my head swung round as I tried desperately to claw my other arm up to the railing, to drag myself back onto the deck – and I finally saw the boat which had been pursuing us.

At first I thought I might be delirious, that the side of the boat had cracked my head as well as my ribs. Because the people on that boat… they shouldn't have been alive. Not in any sane universe.

They were still fifty feet away and closing fast, and I could see their eyes glaring at us, even at that distance, as bright and flat as coins. They were dressed so normally, in chinos, t-shirts, loose flowing skirts… as if there was nothing wrong with them at all. But their bodies… their faces…

Twenty feet away now and I could see all five of them, leaning over the side of their boat, grappling hooks in hand, almost panting in their eagerness to get to us. Animalistic. I could see a string of drool trickling down the chin of one, a fifty-something woman. After a moment, her tongue flicked out to lick it up and I saw with a nauseous shock that the tongue was split down the middle. The two halves seemed to wriggle out of her mouth independently.

The other damage was more obvious. One of her hands was gone entirely but no one had done anything to set or heal the wound. I could see a stump of bone, poking through the centre of her arm, white in the newly risen moonlight. There were five deep cuts on her face and they were all infected. Ten feet and I could smell the corruption pouring off her, off all of them.

They shouldn't have been able to walk. Not the teenager with the gaping hole in his chest where his spleen must once have been. Or the older man with the festering pit where he once had an eyeball and the fingers of one hand all hanging off, swinging in the sea breeze on strips of skin. They should all have been screaming in agony.

But I was the one who was screaming. Ten feet now and the first grappling hook sank into the hull inches from my head. Desperation gave me strength and, at the cost of an inferno of pain in my shoulder, I managed to drag my other arm to the railing. Another grappling hook pierced the hull on the other side of me and I could feel the shift and sway as our schooner was slowly dragged off its course. I didn't have time to look, I knew the other boat was drawing closer, side on. If I didn't move soon I'd be flattened between the two vessels, slowly enough to feel every second of it. I didn't know if that would be preferable to the alternative.