Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

There was a thin sheet resting over his legs and midriff, but when I pulled it back I could see the bandages swathing him from the middle of his thighs to just below his belly. They looked clean and fresh, just one small spot of blood in the centre of them.

Haru's eyes flickered open as I leant over him. I knew the moment that full consciousness returned because that was when he started screaming. He was still screaming when Kelis threw me her gun and scooped him up in her arms, flinging him over her shoulder. The scream increased in pitch, a sound of pure agony now, but she ignored him. We were running for the stairs, bounding down them, passing the same expressionless doctors we'd seen on the way in.

My finger itched to pull the trigger on them for what they'd done to Haru. But they'd done it to themselves, too, and they weren't the ones to blame.

No one tried to stop us leaving the building. They stood and watched us in silence, our panting breaths the only sound in the deserted wards and sterile white corridors. Then we were through the front doors and out. Kelis put Haru down on his feet to walk the few paces to the car.

He'd only taken one of them, face crumpled with agony, when they came. There were a few faces I recognised, many I didn't, but I'd only spent a few weeks on the boat and Queen M must have called in every reserve she had for this. She was right in the forefront of them, hair still in the same braids, wearing the same carefully studied pastiche of a pirate's outfit.

Haru's face twisted into an expression it took me a minute to recognise as pure hate. "You cunt!" he screamed. "You're too late – look what they've done to me!"

Because of course Haru was her man. Of course he'd been hers all along. I remembered with sudden clarity, the way he'd removed his watch before letting Ingo pass the current through him that killed the tracker. A spare chip hidden in the workings of the timepiece, where none of us would ever have thought to look for it. It was the final betrayal which made everything else make sense.

I think I would have killed him then, except letting him live now seemed that much crueller. And anyway, someone I hated far more was standing just a few feet in front of him, smiling that infuriatingly patronising smile of hers.

There was a moment when I was facing Queen M across the tarmac, only ten feet between us, and it would have taken less than a second to kill her. Then the moment passed and her gun, and the guns of all her men, were pointed right at me. As soon as I drew mine I'd be dead, but I was going to do it anyway. I was furious, a red mist behind every thought, but I wasn't sure if I was angrier with her or myself. "I've really been a fool," I said.

She smiled. "A useful one."

Kelis stood beside me, the muscles in her arms knotted with tension, a fierce, unforgiving hate on her face. I thought she was remembering Soren's death and here, finally, was someone she could blame. "Why?" she asked, her voice tight with fury.

"She knew about my connection to Ash," I told her, but my eyes stayed on the other woman, watching for the slightest signal that the dying was about to begin. "That's why she came to the bunker. And that's why she let me go. She was hoping I'd lead her to him, the only person who was challenging her power in her little corner of the world. Someone whose slaves were even more obedient than hers."

"And here you are," Queen M said. "Doing exactly as I intended. Who'd have thought that someone so crazy could be so… predictable."

"And here he is," Kelis said. "Did you predict that?"

But she must have, because the moment Ash's people came, the shooting began. Ash had sent everything he had: ground troops, jeeps and three helicopters, hovering over the battle like angry hornets. The noise was deafening. I took one second to think that, of course, this explained why Ash's people hadn't followed me and Kelis. They'd had bigger things to worry about.

Then it was all about surviving. I dived to the left. A moment later I felt the heavy impact as Kelis' body landed on mine, squeezing the breath out of me. A rib might have cracked, the sharp pain of it like a knife in my side. I felt a stab of anger along with the physical pain. Then some other strong feeling I couldn't identify as I realised that she was shielding me with her body. Shards of concrete spat at us and fragments of metal that took lumps of skin with them. I knew we'd die if we stayed there.

It should have been one-sided, a massacre. This was Ash's town and he held all the cards. Except every soldier he'd sent here was a man – his weakest force. He didn't want to risk the women, I realised, not now he thought these might be the only children he had.

Machine guns blazed from the sides of the helicopters, cutting through the ranks of Queen M's soldiers. I saw a spray of bullets catch one woman in the centre of her chest, just below her breasts. It left a jagged tear, the shape of her still beating heart visible in the centre of it. Her legs folded, her mouth still screaming in fear and pain even as her eyes glazed over. Then another of Queen M's people lifted a rocket launcher to his shoulder and that was the end of the helicopter; a molten mess of metal, shrapnel and, somewhere in there, scraps of flesh and shards of bone. I'd lost track of Queen M long ago, but I knew where she'd be, somewhere at the back of it all. Like Ash, she was happy to let other people do the dying for her.

Kelis' body was still a dead weight on top of me. I felt her shudder and I knew something had hit her. "Are you OK?" I asked.

She levered herself off me and I knew she couldn't be too badly hurt. "We've got to get out of here!" I shouted. She nodded, kneeling above me. I drew myself up to my knees too and tried to see any way clear of it all.

"Back through the hospital," Kelis said. She was right. Some of Queen M's men had taken shelter there, but the odds were still better than for any other route out. She leapt to her feet and I followed, shooting behind as she shot ahead, a move so fluent it was almost rehearsed.

I don't know if I hit anyone. People were dropping all around, the bullets were coming from everywhere. These were deaths I didn't have to own. Ten paces and we were at the hospital door. Kelis shot the two men before I could even train my gun, neat holes in the centre of their chests.

Then we were past them and into the lobby, and there was Haru, on his hands and knees, dragging himself away from the battle an inch at a time. A dark trail of blood flowed behind him and I could see that the bandage had come loose from around his waist. I could see what it had been covering now, the thick black thread that held shut the void at his centre – a horrible, ironic echo of the pubic hair which had once been there. His head swung round to watch as we approached him, looking like it was too heavy on his neck.

"That boy whose photo you showed me," I said. "Was he even really your son?"

"Yeah." His voice was a rough rasp. His hair hung over his eyes, limp and soggy with sweat, face whiter than I'd ever seen it. "I didn't lie to you about that."

"And he's really crippled?"

"Please," he said. "You have to help me. She'll kill me if she finds me. I'm no use to her now."

"Yeah, it's a real great lady you've chosen to give your loyalty to," Kelis said.

He laughed but it turned into a cough and then a choked scream of pain. "You gave her your loyalty too, once. You're the traitor – I never changed."

"And your son?" I asked. "The one she made you leave behind."

"Fifteen years I took care of him," he said. His voice was fading but he kept on crawling forward, one painful inch at a time. "When she took me away I woke up that first morning and I suddenly realised that I had no one to take care of. I didn't have to feed him, or listen to him, or wipe his arse. Why would I want to go back to him, when for the first time in my life I was free?" He coughed again and this time I could see the blood oozing out of him, a dark spurt of it that was more black than red, something floating in it that looked essential. A part of him he couldn't afford to lose.