Season 04 - Episode 23

‘at her all’

Iz wakes slowly and for a while just lounges lazy, same as every morning.

Yawning and sighing, she scratches herself and tries to decide if it's even worth getting up. Just like yesterday, she has nothing to do and nowhere to go and tomorrow will be exactly the same. For all her newfound freedom, her self-built home has become just as much of a prison as the detention centre ever was.

Just as she asked them to, the people have stopped coming up to bother her. Each day however there are more offerings on the walkway outside than ever, betraying their creeping presence by night.

For days now she hasn't left her platform. Every time she does, every time she descends, the crowds won't leave her alone. Everyone wants to see her, to touch her, to talk to her. It's unbearable.

Sitting up and cracking her neck, Iz wonders if today's the day to leave. She likes the shack but can always build another. It'll be a drag to get through the throng below, but if she can just get into The Levels and then back out again, out onto some other Scapes somewhere else, maybe she can start again, be a nobody again.

The thought of it pulls the corner of her mouth and she almost but not quite smiles. Rubbing the expression from her face with dirty hands, she sighs again and finally rises. Bleary eyed, she wanders outside and goes to lean on the railings.

Looking out over The Scapes opposite, she finds them the same as ever, just as busy, just as noisy, just as filthy and alive and beautiful. Watching the flow of people however, she frowns. Something is different, not quite right. Each detail she examines is the same as ever, yet the overall motion is wrong.

It's takes her a moment to spot it but once she does she sees it everywhere. Several of the doors into The Levels are closed and barricaded meaning no inflow or outflow there. Then, above and around the doors that are open, small knots of bodies are still, suspiciously stationary islands in the never ending churn of bodies.

Iz yawns again and wonders what it all means. Then a new noise draws her eye. All the open doors into The Levels are suddenly thick with black, armoured bodies. Dense, crowds of EnFo's are pouring out onto The Scapes, shooting or bludgeoning everyone in their way without warning or mercy, a great, dark wave of mass murder spreading out as she watches.

Her shock condenses quickly to anger as she watches the skinny, dirty bodies of her kind broken and trampled by the dozen. She feels helpless as she watches and hates it, gritting her teeth and snarling her rage.

But now new, new noises are replacing the previous. As she watches, wide eyed, entire platforms, looking sturdy and solid, magically detach themselves. Great piles of apparently randomly collected junk crash down directly onto the EnFo's, crushing them instantly. Meanwhile, others are tipped slipping, straight off the edge and into the abyss.

Their formations shattered, the remaining EnFo's attempt to regroup in clusters and clumps but now other patterns are coalescing from the crowds round them. Suddenly the EnFo's are surrounded by armed, organised people, angry, co-ordinated people.

The whole thing takes less than five minutes. Iz feels as if she has been holding her breath the entire time. From seeing the EnFo's burst onto The Scapes, to watching someone shove the last remaining black clad form off a platform to fall to his death.

Now people are cheering, stamping on the armoured bodies, dancing and singing and hugging. Through it all, Iz picks out a single screeching voice. Her eyes find the source and she spots a tiny figure. A man, tall and thin, beside him a stocky little man and woman inbetween.

The tall, thin man is pointing directly at her.

She stands up, away from the railing, the hairs on her neck rising too. The man is chanting something and to her horror, as she listens, every other person on The Scapes takes up the same refrain, all turning their faces to look at her.

“All hail Iz!” they cry, thunderous in their passion. “All hail The Queen of The Scapes!”

“No...” Iz whispers to herself aghast, as the voices grow ever louder.

“No!” she screams then, back at the railings, waving her hands in denial. “NO!”

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