Season 03 - Episode 24

‘beside her they’re’

“I have to go,” says the Enfo to the GovCo woman. “We'll try and hold them back but if they get through then... just do your best.”

Iz is lying in the tunnel under the air vent beneath her bed, seething. That stupid, interfering GovCo woman has ruined everything! A free bed and free food, gone, just like that.

“Fucking Inners!” she hisses to herself.

Unable to turn around in the tunnel, Iz has to crawl backwards all the way to The Scape, grumbling and cursing with every inch. By the time she clambers out through the vent she is tired and sore and if anything, even more angry than before.

Lost in her own thoughts, it takes Iz a few seconds to notice the situation around her. She notices the noise first. The Scape is filled up thick with the usual deafening cacophony of thousands of human voices. Now however, the general pitch is higher and there is more alarm.

Looking around, Iz suddenly realises that almost everyone around her is standing still, staring in horror across the great black space to the other side. She shoves her way through the crowd towards the edge and takes in the view for herself.

Directly opposite Iz and a few floors down, a great mass of people are attempting to flee. A smaller group of people, all dressed the same, all wearing large, ornate hats are piling in through the door to The Levels, hacking and bludgeoning everyone in their way.

The people are trying to escape the violence by rushing up or down the nearby metal stairs but there are too many. The escape routes are choked with bodies so that the murderous mob crash into the back of them.

“Cultist bastards!” Iz says to herself, appalled.

“Not cultists anymore, love,” says a man beside her. “They're all with The Church now. That's Order of the Harbingers.”

Iz feels something small snap sharp inside her. It releases a great rising rush of red. A furious flurry of images swarms all over her, the wealthy men who used and abused her and her neighbours; the EnFo's and their beatings and their jail cells; the stupid GovCo woman.

The images fade to reveal the current massacre happening so close and yet so far away across the tall, narrow abyss of The Scapes. She sees a grown man in a stupid hat cut down a little girl and then her mother.

Suddenly, all her previous doubts are gone, leaving pure, shining clarity. If you have to live on The Scapes then you are of The Scapes, whoever you were before. If you don't then you're an Inner, simple as that.

Iz screams, sudden, loud, long and furious so that those pressed in around her jump and stare. She turns and starts shoving, forcing her way through the crowd and up a couple of flights of stairs. She finds a feeble looking attempt at a bridge, basically just three ropes strung across, one below to walk on, one either side to hold.

Without even a flicker of hesitation, she strides straight out onto the rope and moves quickly across the chasm, her insane rage deadening her to gravity's threat below. Before she knows it, she's across, shoving through the crowds again.

She reaches the edge of a rickety old platform hanging at enough of an angle that not even the desperate will stand on it. Employing the pure white rage now coursing through her, she begins to kick and tear at one of the supports, then bellows at those around her to join in.

It takes a minute but gradually people realise what's she doing and add their own boots to the job. Within a couple more minutes the whole thing begins to groan and buckle until finally, with one last vicious kick from Iz, the heavy platform drops straight down...

...onto The Order of The Harbingers.

Most are crushed instantly. The scattered few left alive, with their ridiculous hats and bloody weapons, are swiftly mobbed and torn apart by the same people they were chasing only a moment before. A great cheer goes up from the crowds opposite, joined by the people around her. A tangled forest of arms reaches out, slapping her back and shaking her hands.

“There are more coming,” someone calls from the crowd. “What should we do?”

“I don't know,” Iz shrugs at the sudden quiet. “Why ask me? Do what you want.”

Then she shoves her way through the crowd, ignoring all the eyes.

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