Season 05 - Episode 25

‘them the whole’

Ko has never felt so alive.

He is climbing some stairs in the heart of a crowd that seems to extend above and below him forever. The crazy plan with the projectors has worked. Simulating the entire population of The Levels to distract Pho's army while they all sipped up and away had seemed insane, impossible and yet, here they are. Silently, he thanks Ny and feels a pang of sadness.

Everyone around him is grinning and chattering however and somewhere nearby, people are singing. As he steps and steps and looks about, he sees the techniques they taught being used all around, people passing objects and messages back and forth through the crowds as they all tramp onwards and upwards.

Questions come to him, logistical concerns, practical things. He answers each in turn with confidence and calm and knows his friends are all doing the same. The Resistance has melted into the people so that they are all The Resistance now, all on the same single journey.

They reach another landing, pass through another heavy but wide open door, following the little red lights that cling to the walls all along the route. Ko glances upwards as they start a new set of stairs. He doesn't know what is waiting for them up there but for the first time in his life he knows that he is exactly where he is supposed to be.

Syl is carrying a small, sleeping child on her hip.

The child's mother is walking beside Syl, carrying another smaller child and holding the hand of her eldest. The weight of the child, the work of the stairs, all are taking their toll on Syl's back, her legs and her shoulders and yet she can't stop grinning.

The work of it, the hard, physical work of it. It feels good. Questions reach her through the chain of whispers and she answers them happily. She has spent a lifetime planning and reporting and discussing, all to help people and yet none of it felt like this. Someone has a problem, she helps solve that problem, the person is better off. Over and over again.

She is useful!

Those around her talk in lowered voices, careful not to wake the child. Strangers all, they talk to her as a friend and she realises she feels at peace. Somewhere below them people are singing of The Scapes, closer by people sing other songs too. The filthy, helpless, hopeless, ungrateful people, that single faceless mass. It doesn't exist, she realises. It never existed. All there are are people just like her and now, finally, she is one of them.

Ri is terrified.

Pressed in the middle of a crowd, the tight walls, the low ceiling, the people upon people in every direction with not enough air and no way out. She is just about managing to put one foot in front of the other to climb the stairs but can feel the red rising within her. The fear, the total, abject panic, it swells with dread, bloating and ballooning.

She knows she is about to pop, that she is about to lose control. She must get away from these people before she hurts them. The whole point of escaping her mother and joining this journey was to never hurt anyone again but she can't help it and is just so deeply afraid.

Her chest tightens to the point where she can no longer breath and her vision begins to darken. She feels her muscles tense and bulge, her arms and legs begin to twitch but now there is a hand in hers. A tiny hand. Ri looks down to her right in shock and sees a little girl with a dirty face.

“My name's Xa. I don't have a Mummy or a Daddy anymore,” says the little girl, grimly matter of fact. “Can I walk with you? Please?”

Ri feels the child's hand in hers, sees the fear behind the little girl's tight lipped facade.

“Yes?” she croaks, forcing the word from her stiff, dry throat. “Ok.”

The girl smiles and falls into step beside her holding on tight to her hand. Ri stares at the little girl for several steps more. She is shocked to realise that she knows with absolute certainty that she is now going to protect this child at all costs, no matter what. The boiling, thrashing thing inside her remains but fades, falters and grows smaller.

Now she has something more important to worry about.

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