Chapter Five Faith

The next morning, Faith joined the rest of her team to give feedback to Madeleine. She had not slept well. Images of Sophia hooked up to an IV which sent a never-ending stream of femgazipane into her bloodstream haunted her whenever she closed her eyes. As she took a seat at one of the tables in what the women of the Resistance affectionately called the hub, both Diane and Laura shot concerned glances at her.

Around forty women lived in the headquarters. Hidden in the basement of the Bellator library, they were cramped and not very luxurious, but the space served them well. Central to the city, its old-fashioned purpose rendered it little more than a curiosity, and most people paid it little attention.

There had been plans in the past to bulldoze the building to make way for a more modern structure. The majority of citizens read using digital methods now, the government had argued, but there was strong support for preservation of the city's history, and the library had been allowed to remain.

Still, visitors were limited, and the head librarian had managed to assemble a team of Resistance sympathisers to run it. Providing there were no complaints about the building or its staff, the government paid it very little attention. It worked well as a front. The tunnel beneath it gave them an extra layer of security, protecting them from awkward questions about the number of women who came and went.

Since their arrival, Diane and Faith had been housed here, but there was talk of moving them to one of the safehouses the Resistance had situated around the city. The organisation was far larger than the number of women who lived at the headquarters. Many of its members lived ordinary lives in the city, working in roles which allowed them to spy or obtain important resources for the movement.

Those who lived in the library headquarters were mostly undercover. A lot of their work was done from the library itself, using datadevs to work remotely. They liaised regularly with the Resistance members who lived in the various Bellator districts. These women, in turn, completed tasks which took place in a more public setting.

Faith had been impressed at how organised the network was. As Resistance leader, Madeleine ran a tight ship. Each woman was a cog in a well-oiled machine which worked hard to undermine Danforth's government.

Madeleine was a formidable woman who was used to taking action. Until recently, she had lived in her own house in the city and provided the main link between Bellator and Eremus. A recent brush with Danforth's guards had put her at risk though, and since then, she'd had to go underground herself.

Madeleine was not enjoying life in hiding. The lack of freedom frustrated her, making her sharp-tongued and gruff. Faith had always found her intimidating, and this morning she was no less so.

"The mission was a success?" she barked.

"It was." Robyn wasn't fazed by her abruptness. "As you know, Laura and I managed to place the bug in an appropriate location. And Blake was able to copy information from Anderson's datadev." She pointed to the techie, whose head was bent close to one of the Resistance's own devices.

Blake didn't even look up. "Going through the new info right now."

"Share it with a couple of the others, please. Best to have as many eyes on it as possible, I think. And be sure you let me know immediately if there's anything you think is significant, alright?" Madeleine gestured for Robyn to continue.

"Lastly, I had Faith take photographs of a number of charts which were displayed in the inner office."

"Anything interesting?"

As the leader's gaze snapped to Faith, she jumped. Recovering, she took a breath and willed her voice to be steady. "I-it might just be copies of whatever Blake gets from the datadev…" she cringed at the leader's glare, "…but at first glance–"

"Yes?" Madeleine snapped.

"They appear to be lists of names. Student names." She forced herself to breathe in slowly. "Tests they've undergone, meds they're being given." She ran out of ideas and lowered her gaze. "I didn't have time to read it all properly, but they're definitely being used as part of Danforth's experiment."

Madeleine rolled her eyes. "And Bellator is supposed to be a place where women thrive."

"Hardly." Robyn stiffened. "Danforth's treatment of these girls is no better than her treatment of the Eremus men."

"Spend today going through that information with a fine toothcomb. Make a note of anything you think might be relevant." Madeleine's tone was severe. "And look over anything Blake finds too, see if you can shed some light on it. As a member of the school community, you might spot something the rest of us miss."

"Of c-course." Faith nodded, not relishing the idea of spending the day working with the tech nerd who disliked her.

Seeming to sense her reluctance, the leader narrowed laser-eyes at her. "I mean… the school is your field of expertise. You were the one who spent hours persuading me to let you go along on this mission, right?"

"Right. Yes. I was." Faith gave a nod she hoped looked confident. "Of course, I will."

She glanced at Blake, whose fingers were tapping away at the keyboard. The woman seemed oblivious to anything when she was engaging with technology.

"We were glad to have Faith with us in the end." Laura spoke up. Faith found herself extremely grateful for the woman's support. "She came in pretty useful, to be honest."

Madeleine's gaze sharpened. "How so?"

"We got trapped in the building," Robyn said. Faith watched Madeleine's eyes flash with something like fear. "We went to leave the way we'd come in, but someone had locked the window and the alarm had come back online."

"How did that happen?"

"Not sure. Perhaps a guard locked them while we were in the office." She scratched her head. "Anyway, Faith managed to find an alternative exit."

"We'd've gotten out without her," Blake sniffed, "if we had to." Clearly, she was paying more attention to the conversation than Faith had realised.

"Not without setting off an alarm and alerting everyone in the building to our presence," Laura shot back. "How do you think that would've gone down?"

"Not very well." Robyn attempted to smooth the situation. "We should give Faith some credit for–"

"Sounds like you all did what you had to." Madeleine cleared her throat. "Well done for managing to remain undetected. We don't want Danforth to know any more about our work than is absolutely necessary, for now. Until we have enough citizens on our side… ready to act… we have to lie low."

"Well, there you go." Robyn raised an eyebrow at Blake. "Faith was extremely useful."

Giving her trademark scowl, Blake went back to work.

"On to other business, then." Madeleine turned to another Resistance citizen. "Anything new from you yesterday, Evelyn?"

An older woman sat at the rear of the room. Slender and petite, she looked like a strong wind would blow her over. That was what made her useful, Diane said. She blended in well, escaped notice wherever she went. For that reason, she was regularly sent on solo missions, to gather intel.

When Faith and Diane had first arrived at the library, they had relayed the story of the attack which had led to them being moved out of the Eremus cave system and given them the chance to escape. Guessing that the guards had accessed the tunnels from her old home, Madeleine had been concerned. Ever since, she'd had Evelyn make undercover visits to her old district, to see if the guards had found anything suspicious.

"Far as I can tell, there's nothing much to worry about. Your old place is still boarded up, but the fire investigators seem to have stopped sniffing around."

"Really?" Laura leaned forward. "That's good news."

"Yeah." Evelyn shifted in her seat. "Seems everyone thinks the fire at your place was caused by a gas leak."

Madeleine chewed her lip. "I only hope Danforth believes it. If they dig any deeper, we risk the entire Bellator guard discovering that tunnel. And if that happens, Eremus is in real trouble."

Evelyn frowned. "Well as far as I could tell, no one's looking into it too closely."

"So they think I'm dead?"

"They do." Evelyn nodded. "I spoke to a few of your neighbours. They all believe you were home at the time of the explosion. Planting the charred animal bones there seems to have convinced everyone you perished in the blast. I think the heat's off for now. They won't be looking for you."

"But I'll have to stay hidden." Madeleine scowled.

"Well, yes." Evelyn shot her a sympathetic look. "Sorry. On another note, there are whispers that an entire team of guards has gone missing."

Robyn whistled softly. "They'll be the ones in the tunnels that you told us about." She turned to Faith. "The citizens know about that?"

"Only rumours." Evelyn shrugged. "But yes, people are talking."

Madeleine frowned. "What are they saying?"

"Your neighbours seem to believe the women were out on patrol as normal and just… vanished."

Laura looked shocked. "Wait, none of them came back?"

"Not according to my sources, no."

"Looks like Eremus got away with it, then." Robyn sounded relieved. "I mean, if they killed every guard that went down there, and the team hadn't reported their location to anyone here before they left, then they're in the clear."

Faith's hand went to her mouth. "You think Eremus killed them all?"

"What else do you think happened?" Blake rolled her eyes.

"Whatever happened, citizens are worried." Evelyn shifted in her chair. "About Danforth's ability to protect them. I even heard one woman say she thought the guards might have run away. As though simply being one of Danforth's protectors puts them in a dangerous position."

Madeleine raised an eyebrow. "That would go in our favour, if enough people believe it. We need more people on our side, doubting her."

"Anything of interest in the news today?" Robyn asked Madeleine.

One thing the leader could do while hiding was comb through the news in case there was anything of interest to the Resistance. The media was controlled by Danforth, but the articles sometimes revealed vital tidbits of information if you read between the lines, which Madeleine was good at.

"Not much." The older woman shook her head. "Some more rubbish about the wonderful advances being made in technology at BellaLab Corp." Madeleine grimaced at this, and Faith remembered her being fired from the company which had also been the starting point for Chancellor Danforth. "Oh, and something about the repair work on the hospital fertility unit nearing completion."

"Not that it'll do them much good, with all the seed being destroyed." Blake smirked. "Danforth hasn't let that little nugget of information hit the news yet, has she?"

Since the disastrous encounter in the woods with Jacob, Danforth had been busy filling the papers and airways with reports of small skirmishes in the woods with a few rebel forces, but the whole thing had been spun as a victory for the guards, rather than a threat to Bellator security.

There had been articles about undercover scouts, who patrolled the woods regularly and had rooted out and executed a few rogue males, plus several guards who had been praised for bringing down the enemy. Never anything specific. The dead males had always been executed on sight in the forest, and not brought back to the city for questioning. And the news sites always downplayed the number of dead guards. Only a few were mentioned, with the sole purpose of celebrating their bravery and further demonising the masculine villains who threatened the city.

Nowhere had it been mentioned that the people in the woods were part of a large community. And none of the articles had mentioned the female citizens living there. Danforth continued to feed her people a litany of lies about how the city prospered with her in charge. She had informed her citizens that, despite the explosion in the fertility unit causing "slight issues" with their seed supply, the government had "bulletproof backup plans" which they were currently putting in place.

So far, people seemed to be swallowing her lies. How they'd react when they discovered the truth was a very different matter. Madeleine wanted the Bellator citizens to know what was really going on. Her current goal was to gather as much information as possible about what Danforth was up to before making it public. The weight of the combined knowledge would have a greater impact than any smaller nuggets of information which Danforth could easily brush aside.

When Faith had asked Robyn how they intended to do this, she'd been told Madeleine had her ways. But the Resistance leader was waiting until she had more information before taking action. The waiting was killing many of the Resistance members who were eager for change, but Madeleine was resolute. She had worked with Danforth, and insisted they couldn't afford to underestimate her power and cunning.

"We're making good progress. But we need to gather more information before we go public with any of this." Madeleine stood up. "Good work, everyone. Let's get on with our tasks for the day. I'll be listening to the conversations in Anderson's office. Those of you going through the information from the academy, report anything you think might be of importance to myself or Robyn immediately."

With that, she marched back to her office, which in reality was a small storage closet at the rear of the basement. Once she was gone, Faith attached her wristclip to a datadev and hit transfer, uploading the images so they could be read more easily on the larger screen. One glance at Blake told her not to interrupt now. She decided to ask for the information from the school's datadev later. Better still, perhaps she could delegate that task to Diane or ask Laura about it. Anything to avoid the prickly Blake.

Before she sat down to study the charts, she grabbed a glass of juice, marvelling at the basement's small kitchen and well-stocked fridge. After the days she had spent in Eremus, she would never again take such things for granted. Whilst the food here was not quite of the standard she'd been used to at the academy, it was plentiful and tasty.

She considered the way the Eremus citizens struggled to feed everyone. It seemed a crime for them to have so little when the majority of the women in the city had so much. And it made her angry that the people in Bellator believed all men to be wicked, when in Faith's experience, they were just as capable of being good or evil as women.

Faith took a seat at the datadev and tapped on the first image, enlarging it so the names were readable. She took a sip from her juice and scanned the columns at the top of the page. It looked like the girls were all being given femgazipane, in varying doses. Remembering the devastating effect of the drug on her own body, she shuddered.

Was the academy now filled with girls in various states of ill health as a result of the drug? Or had the scientists made further adjustments to improve it? And to go from the drug being given to Serene and herself, with poor results, to every single student seemed to be an extreme measure. The measures demonstrated Danforth's desperation now that the stores of male seed were gone.

She stared at the column with the pass and fail figures in it. Making comparisons between the levels of femgazipane, she could see that the higher the level of the drug in the girl's system, the more likely the girl was to have failed the test. But the chart gave no information as to the reason the test had been completed in the first place.

She was just zooming in on the column with the girls' year group, aiming to consider what impact their age had on the test results, when Diane shrieked.

The entire room turned to look. Without even being asked, Diane had joined Blake, and they appeared to have been looking over the files from Anderson's datadev together. Right now, the other Danforth student was pointing at something on the screen, but her gaze was fixed on Faith.

"What is it?" Faith pushed herself to her feet. "What have you found?"

"We were looking at the girls' records." Diane spoke quickly. "They're so detailed… diet, vitamin supplements, exercise regime… it's all here… visits to the med centre… individual status of every student… their lives are entirely controlled by the academy staff."

"And?" Faith closed the gap between them. "What did you find that made you scream?"

"It's Sophia." Diane's eyes were triumphant. "I know where she is."