The vehicle they were to ride was a hovercraft. To Jan and his young daughter, Eva, it was magical. She clapped her hands in excitement and ran around the pressure skirt, arriving back at the other side and cannoning into Jan. He caught her shoulder before she fell over, but couldn’t prevent a grin from breaking out on his face.

‘How does it work?’ she asked, looking up excitedly. Eva’s eyes were wide, dark hair swept back with a bandana that had once belonged to her mother. She was wearing the best clothes Jan could find; a faded but clean t-shirt with an Arco logo and a pair of trousers with lots of pockets. In his mind she already looked like a trainee civil engineer.

‘I don’t know, but they’ll teach you all about it,’ Jan smiled indulgently.

A few of the children were alone but most had come with their parents. Jan recognised the faces; people from nearby villages, some of whom his own had fought with. Such conflicts now seemed childish; on the hovercraft they were all at the mercy of Arco. Ultimately, everyone was subject to Arco, either directly or through its various hydra-like branches. It was a constant, like the false life that threatened to throttle every settlement or the rains that fell each afternoon.

Eva, oblivious to all of that, walked to the front of the transport and started looking over the controls the two drivers were working at. She reached out a hand, stopping just short of pressing a glowing green button.

‘Eva, get back here,’ Jan hissed, eyeing the black-clad enforcers warily, but they didn’t seem to mind.

‘I can see the light inside,’ Eva said, an intent look on her face. ‘It’s electric.’

‘Don’t get in their way,’ Jan warned to no avail. She’d always loved machines, but beyond a few geared windmills and one old motorcycle engine there was little Jan could do for her. He’d had little schooling as a boy, and little to teach Eva when her time came. Jan didn’t want her to grow up as he’d done, so he’d endured the stares and the silent censure of his neighbours and explained what he could to Eva of engines and gears. And then, after months of begging, pleading and cajoling he’d agreed to enrol her at a school in the nearest conurbation.

The hovercraft slid away from the edge of the jungle, then accelerated smoothly down the river, engines roaring and coughing out thick fumes that obscured Jan’s vision. The air was warm and muggy, with heavy rainclouds squatting on the horizon, a sign of the coming torrential downpour.

The sky broke up; Jan’s view of Eva smiling at the passing scenery was replaced by other things. Events from years later. His home burning and helicopters screaming overhead.

Choking tear gas canisters streaked through the air, mingling with the smoke. He heard rifle fire, the crump of a grenade. Jan ran along the badly surfaced street; one hand gripping Eva’s forearm, the other fastened around the clammy metal of a revolver, held inexpertly. A row of grey shapes emerged from the smoke, visors lowered and riot shields held ready. Eva screamed and Jan pushed her aside, motioning for her to run. There was no time for last words.

Jan and the shields closed as he fired the pistol, rounds sloughing off of armour uselessly. He swung the butt of the pistol at a visor in desperation, but the blow never made it further. A baton caught Jan across the head and he collapsed to the ground, retching uncontrollably. He tried to scream for Eva one last time, but his traitorous body wouldn’t even allow that much. He couldn’t draw another breath.

Jan jerked awake, his head bursting with a pain. The choking he’d felt in the dream didn’t abate; there was something inside his mouth, rubbery and cold. His arms and legs were bound tightly by what felt like plastic cords. His eyes opened to a dim purple light and he thrashed hard. The cords gave way slightly and Jan drew a ragged breath in through his nose. That gave him the strength to convulse until the restraints broke. He reached up with both hands, grasped whatever was covering his face, and tore it away.

Extracting himself from the creepers was easy enough, but Jan cursed himself for making such a simple mistake; he shouldn’t have been so clumsy about finding a place to sleep. Another couple of hours and he’d have become fertiliser. He sat, spluttering out greasy white and purple fragments, hoping he hadn’t swallowed any. It wasn’t all that surprising that he’d been careless when bedding down for the night. For once, he’d had a moment of unexpected good luck.

The hunger Jan had felt after the narrow escape from the Pitchfork had almost exhausted him completely – until he’d discovered an ancient cache of supplies lying amongst the tattered remains of a tent. The spherical, lurid green fruits he’d found were impossibly perfect; they grew on a symmetrical tree within the cache. The fruits were bulbous, ripe and strangely meaty, and the most delicious thing Jan had ever tasted. He recalled biting into the sweet flesh, feeling the juices run down his face.

Packing up the box was a minutes’ work. It somehow folded into itself, taking up much less space than should have been possible. Jan found he could lift it easily and he hoisted it onto his back alongside the pack. With one last look at the campsite he set off, moving silently through the jungle that steamed with the heat of the rising sun, its dappled rays almost blinding him as they spread through the mist.

Finding his way this deep within the jungle was difficult – Jan had long since left the lands he knew and there were very few landmarks. The roads that penetrated this far were unsafe and the other wastelanders were best avoided. As Jan made his way along a crater rim, the thought suddenly struck him that he was dangerously close to forbidden territory, land that didn’t belong to him or his kind. On the other side of the half-kilometre wide rim, walled by centuries old impact glass, Jan spotted a high concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Not even Arco would dare to breach that barrier.

Jan had been moving for over an hour when he felt a vibration. He pressed his ear to the ground, hearing the rumble of an engine. It sounded powerful. Apprehension filled him; he wasn’t in the mood to meet Enforcers today. He scurried inside a collapsed building, hastily hiding in dense moss and pulling the cloak over himself. A few pale grey y-shaped worms fell softly from the wall; perfect miniatures of the Pitchfork.

A few minutes passed, with Jan barely daring to breathe as he heard the rumble of the engine grow louder. A figure dressed in drab combat fatigues passed by, then another, scouting ahead. Jan risked a glance, but from where he lay behind a low wall the source of the noise was still invisible. He spotted a row of trees fold up as if they’d been uprooted by a giant, and a small group of armed soldiers crashed through the jungle, walking directly towards his hiding spot.

Jan buried his head underneath the cloak again as the footsteps drew closer. He felt two boots plant themselves either side of his head. There was a momentary pause, and then the cloak was torn away with the tip of a bayoneted rifle. Jan stared mutely up into the face of a very young man, barely more than a teenager. Even in that moment of terror, something about the soldier struck Jan as out of place – it wasn’t just his age, it was the strange camouflage pattern he wore, not like any set of Arco fatigues. And the armband; in place of the ubiquitous delta symbol of Arco, there was a crude, hand-stitched emblem that looked like a sharp mountain or a predator’s tooth. The boy kept his rifle level and grinned, showing several missing teeth. Then he said something in a language Jan didn’t recognise, shouldered the rifle and walked back off to join the rest of his party. The rumble of the engines faded away.

Jan lay, trying to understand what he’d just seen. That war party wasn’t with Arco. If it were, he’d either be dead or handcuffed and on his way to a holding facility. He’d never seen anyone sporting that jagged mountain emblem before – they had to be insurrectionists.

By following a stream uphill, Jan was able to climb a little way above the oppressive mist, enough that the morning sun shone almost unimpeded. Squinting, he spotted the brown haze of smog that indicated a conurbation in the distance – it looked to be on his side of the horizon; he could be there by this evening. There was a column of smoke poking higher into the sky, as if a large segment of the city was on fire, and leading directly to it was a broad swathe of demolished trees – the result of whatever vehicle the strange army had used.

Jan wasn’t officially an outlaw, but only because he had no official status. He’d never accumulated so much as a single identity document to justify his existence. But, if he was looking to link up with a renegade army, that probably wouldn’t matter.

Jan sighed, leaning back against a tree and staring out at the misty rainforest. He didn’t know quite how that thought had come to him, but he knew where it would lead. An itch at the back of his mind was telling him ‘go to the conurbation’, and it looked as though his body had already decided to obey. Jan slid back down the rock face and started walking towards the distant column of smoke.

The crush outside the conurbation was unbelievable. To Jan it was almost unbearable. He’d walked straight out of the false jungle and into the overcrowded outskirts, still homing in on that tower of smoke. Bicycles and rickshaws competed for space with pedestrians, loud arguments breaking out by the minute. The dark, imposing pyramids of housing and holding facilities were seething with activity – crawling figures and flickering lights. The rooftops and walls were plated with the green and turquoise of thousands of high-density farms; most Conurbations were self-sufficient in food. Jan thought he heard shouts of protest; something about staple crops being shipped further north.

Jan continued to shove through the crowd, eliciting loud protests and a few threats as he tried to approach the fence guarding the interior. Eventually, he pushed his way into a more open space, his attention drawn by a burst of feedback from a loudspeaker. The crowd had buffeted him towards a public screen that displayed a gaunt-looking man with grey hair. A few moments of concentration and Jan had sounded out the letters underneath – ‘Ambassador Vash’. The speaker’s voice was clipped and had an accent Jan had never heard before – it sounded ancient and dry. Emotionless.

‘You have to disperse,’ Vash said, his voice calm and a little sinister. The man was dressed in a severe, neatly pressed grey uniform. An ominous note crept into his voice. ‘You are all in breach of the directives. You are placing yourself in harm’s way.’ The man clearly didn’t understand the protesters; such was true of all those like him.

‘If you’ll just return to your homes, I promise that protest leaders can meet with our representatives to discuss terms – ’

Someone with a slingshot jeered and flung a rock, cracking the screen to general cheers from the crowd. As he tried harder to retreat, Jan noticed a jagged line drawing of a mountain scrawled underneath the broken screen; identical to the marking on the soldier’s armband. He was getting closer, though he couldn’t quite say to what.

The column of smoke Jan had spotted was rising some way in the distance, in the wired-off interior of the conurbation. Something about it seemed to draw him in. If he waited until nightfall it might be possible to sneak inside.

Jan found somewhere to barter the fruit tree he’d found, a provisions station that was doing a side trade forging identity papers. Slipping through the fence that guarded the interior of the conurbation, he walked closer to the rising column of smoke. The crowds within were more subdued, walking in ordered rows through grey streets or cycling down the centre on rusting old bikes and rickshaws. He spotted a few city workers hosing down another jagged mountain symbol daubed on a whitewashed wall. As he continued deeper into the conurbation, Jan became more and more conscious of just how out of place he seemed; it was becoming harder to explain just what he was doing here. It only took five minutes of fast walking to escape the cramped residential area and reach a disused industrial plant.

Suddenly, a white flash burst in the sky, shining harshly and illuminating the whole conurbation like an arc welder. The flash turned into a flickering line that divided the clouds in half and met the ground less than a mile away, just outside the conurbation’s boundary. Pressing himself up to a building, Jan felt the earthquake rumble and wash of heat as the falling star buried itself in the ground. A few people paused or shouted, turning to run away or towards the strike. A loudspeaker started ordering emergency workers to their stations. Jan merely picked himself up again and continued to walk. A strike on the protest wasn’t surprising; the crowd outside had grown large enough to seem threatening, even to eyes watching far above the sky.

Two more city blocks were sufficient to escape most of the crowd. Jan spotted a flight of helicopters overhead, moving quickly towards the site of the strike. He turned a final corner, the column of black smoke he’d spotted from miles away now easily visible. The big open plaza contained a heavy industrial warehouse; the blot in the sky Jan had spotted from far away wasn’t from a meteor strike or a battle but a working factory. His inner disappointment deepened – whatever he’d hoped to find wasn’t here. He turned to leave and walked right into the barrel of a rifle. Behind it stood the white-uniformed body of an enforcer.

‘Papers!’ the guard snapped. Jan reached inside his coat as smoothly as he could and produced the forged documents. The enforcer scanned them quickly, frowning at Jan.

‘You’re not supposed to be here.’

‘Yeah, I know. Got scared by that meteor strike. Sorry,’ Jan replied. He didn’t think he sounded convincing. The enforcer’s frown turned into a cruel smile.

‘You weren’t a part of the protest, were you? What’s your name?’

Jan cringed inwardly, realising he hadn’t bothered to read the forged papers himself. He smiled weakly at the enforcer, letting the officer think he was in control, that he had power. Then, before the pause stretched too long, Jan drove a fist at the man’s windpipe. The enforcer coughed violently and fired, the shot glancing off the concrete pavement. Jan heard shouts from the street ahead and behind him and swung another fist at the enforcer’s head, feeling something crack. The man staggered and collapsed, dropping the rifle with a loud clatter.

Jan heard loud footsteps and reached behind his back for the dotbow, clicking back the bolt and walking quickly towards the warehouse, away from the tell-tale body of the enforcer. The footfalls grew louder and turned to shouts as more guards rounded the corner. Jan didn’t bother turning, he just ran for a small side door at the warehouse and yanked down the handle. It wouldn’t turn. He pulled again, frantically, and heard the crack of a bullet glancing off the pavement behind him.

‘Give it up, wastelander!’ an enforcer shouted.

Jan sighted along the dotbow, picking out the nearest light in the gloom, and released a bolt. A strangled gasp and the light skittered to the ground. Three more rounds glanced off the warehouse door, missing Jan entirely. He was still shrouded in night while they were easy to spot by their torches, but that advantage wouldn’t last. A sense of sick panic rose as Jan realized he had nowhere to run. Even if he was fast with the dotbow three enforcers presented impossible odds. He turned desperately to the door and yanked the handle one last time.

The door twisted inwards with unexpected force and Jan stared at the face of another armed man. A round glanced off the wall outside, the shouts of the guards growing louder. The man in front of Jan was mostly in shadow, but he spotted the same mountain emblem on a breast patch; it seemed more reassuring than sinister. The man raised the rifle and pointed it at Jan, moving so fast that he didn’t have the slightest chance to react.

Two shots echoed loudly as the stranger fired over Jan’s shoulder, deafening him. He raised both hands to his ears and staggered backwards, unable to hear anything over the ringing.

‘Thanks,’ he managed to say. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

The stranger grinned back at Jan and smashed him over the head with the butt of the rifle.