Anger. It simmered beneath the complete and utter vocal silence of the protest march. It was in every breath, every fisted hand, every narrowed gaze. It was in the thousands of percussive feet tramping the brick and bitumen of the Terrace as they made their way towards Parliament Square. It was in the blanket white faces raised to the night sky.

All around, protestors wore material tied around their mouths—scarves, tea-towels, strips of fabric from old articles of clothing. Some had even found surgical face masks that reflected the moonlight and made them look even more like an army of the dead keening to a full moon. Dec covered his mouth with his sleeve in a futile attempt to blend in and stave off his chances of contracting the Desert Sickness.

To his left, a barefooted man dragged a chain adorned with padlocks. Each padlock bore the letters of the phrase, 'Free the South' in bold, black marker. A shirtless man stooped under the weight of a crucifix, soldered with the words, "No more night". Blood dripped in his wake from the place on his shoulder where the wood had chaffed through his skin. To his right, a boy no older than Mel held a homemade placard to his chest with a childish sketch of three skulls with bony hands covering the eyes, ears and mouth in succession.

As the march reached the base of the bridge and broadened into an intersecting highway, Dec slipped behind the central arch of the railway station entrance and braced himself against the cool stone. All around, trucks and cars came to a standstill while some tried to inch their way into a U-turn to go back in the direction they'd come. Further down the Terrace, towards the Western side of the city, the grounds of Parliament Square filled with silent protestors, above which, the Southern flag flopped listlessly in the breeze—red for the desert, yellow for the wheat and the sands of the coast and orange for the sun—arranged in concentric, overlapping circles.

Dec shivered as the railway clock above his head chimed the early morning hour—one, two, three—sending vibrations down his spine and over the eerie, muted crowd. A long, dark shape flickered in the corner of his eye and his head snapped towards it in the expectation of raven hair and Rain's silent approach. But it was just the elongated shadow of a protestor caught in the headlights of a truck.

Two minutes passed in which Dec re-lived the sickening crack of the firearm and imagined Rain, spread eagle on the pavement, almond eyes flat and unseeing, blood making runnels down the long disused gutter. She'd told him to wait at the train station. But how would he know if she was even coming? Hell, what if she was dead? Did the human body make some kind of tell-tale noise when it was torn through by a bullet?

As the image of Rain, spread eagle on the footpath, threatened its way into his head again, he pushed himself off the cool, stone wall and waded against the surge of the crowd towards a spiral staircase next to the unattended ticket booth. Sparing a glance back to make sure he wasn't being followed, he took the stairs two at a time, footsteps whorling upwards, eyes scanning for a place to hide the trackpad.

The stairs opened onto a platform at the edge of the overpass, boxed in by a steel safety rail on one side and a double brick retaining wall on the other, shielding him from the banked up traffic. He was alone, for now, and a quick scan of the area determined it was clear of surveillance cameras. But he needed to be quick. Crouching against the brick wall, his fingers found a crack between the grout.

He pulled the trackpad out of his sleeve.

"I told you to wait for me at the train station." The voice came from behind and he spun to meet it.

Rain stood at the top of the stairs, eyes darting between the trackpad and the cracked wall. She seemed unharmed, though her breathing tripped and stumbled like a blown tyre on a dirt road.

A strange feeling expanded in Dec's chest at the sight of her, as though up until then, his breath had not satisfied his lungs. He pushed the feeling aside. "I thought you were ... " dead. He stopped himself before saying it. " ... weren't coming."

"So you thought this would be a good place to hide that?" Rain scowled and held out her hand. "Give it to me."

Dec looked down at her outstretched hand, then up at her agate eyes. They bored with such expectancy that he took a step back. His fingers curled around the trackpad and squeezed hard.

Rain's agate eyes narrowed. "Squeeze any harder and you'll break the flexi-glass, Hancock."

Silence followed her words in which wasp lights coruscated along the Terrace, getting closer to the railway station with each flash. A truck on the highway gave a single blast of its horn, causing them both to flinch. Then, silence again.

Rain broke eye contact first and re-directed her attention to the railing, which she gripped and shook, frowning when the metal bars rattled against their screws. Before Dec could comprehend what she was about to do, she took a deep breath and swung herself up and over, using her hands as pivots. Dec's breath escaped his chest as her feet found purchase on the mere two inches of overhanging platform. He didn't breathe again until her heels were steady and her fingers were locked around the bars. She leaned out, eyes scanning the darkness below. He knew exactly what lay beneath the eastern side of the bridge. And if she planned on doing what he suspected, she was completely and utterly mad.

"You're mad," he said.

Rain gave no indication that she'd heard. "How are you with heights?"

Dec took another step backwards, successfully pressing himself against the brick retaining wall. "Does it matter? I'm not coming with you."

Rain wrung the railing between her fingers. "Do what you want, but jail isn't the place for someone like you."

"Someone like me?" Dec spluttered, momentarily disarmed by her comment. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're not ... smart."

A choked sound escaped Dec's throat, which Rain ignored. She was too busy staring at something up ahead, eyes narrowed. He heard it before he saw it—a low pre-emptive rumble, followed by a blast of a horn. Vibrations travelled up his legs and into his chest, and he pushed himself even harder against the wall to steady himself.

Rain leaned over the edge of the platform at a gravity defying angle as the train chugged into view, headlights blinding, trailing dark square shadows in place of carriages behind. The perfect uniformity of those shadows and the dark outline of stencil lettering on their sides were enough to tell Dec exactly what they were.

Shipping containers.

"You're going back to the port?" He had to raise his voice to be heard over the approaching rumble of the train. "Back to the Captain? Back to the North?" He had a vision of his father, Angus Reid and his lawyer, Regulski, standing before the Cormorant with officer Montague by their side, handcuffs at the ready. "After all this?" He gestured in the vague direction of the Terrace.

Rain angled her face towards him, but kept her eyes on the train. "Why would I go back to the Captain?" she said slowly, as though speaking to an insolent child. She opened her mouth to say more, but another long blast of the train's horn cut her off. Dec closed his eyes as hot air from the diesel engine blasted their faces and the train passed under the bridge. When he opened them again, it was to the trail of midnight hair as Rain loosed her grip on the railing and dropped into the darkness.

Seconds passed where Dec neither moved, nor breathed and where his mind had the chance to draw the worst conclusions. When he finally regained control of his limbs, he shot forwards and peered out over the edge.

"Rain!" Her name slipped from his mouth and he swallowed to keep from crying out again. At first, he saw nothing but flickering shadows, but as his eyes adjusted, he could just make out the slow moving grid of shipping containers, as they turned and dipped along an undulation in the tracks before gliding southward. The railway couplings seemed too far apart, and the flash between each container too wide—wide enough for three very fat men standing girth to girth to slip through.

And no sign of Rain.

His heart pounded. Could it be possible? he wondered. Could she have made the jump? Adrenaline pulsing through his veins, he cast a quick glance back at the stairwell, then beyond the stagnant traffic on the highway at the Terrace. Bright white torchlights weaved through the protest march—dozens of them, and growing in number as the wasps infiltrated the crowds. Wasp sirens buzzed louder with each second and the steady thrum of a helicopter erupted in the distance. As the train gained speed, the vibrations spread through his body and set his teeth chattering.

The last carriage left the station.

He didn't have time to think.

Tucking the trackpad into the sleeve of his shirt, he swung himself over the railing just as he'd seen Rain do, only his feet wobbled on the other side with much less grace. The swoop of a bat startled him rigid and he thought he heard the sound of footsteps echoing up the stairwell.

He hit the unforgiving roof of the shipping container with a resounding clunk like a clapper falling from a bell, sending pins and needles through his ankles and into his knees. The movement of the train swept his feet from under him and he crashed to his left, hip and shoulder meeting steel. He tasted blood where his teeth caught the side of his cheek and for a long moment, all he could do was lie there, disabled by pain, breathing and swallowing.

As the throb in his shoulder subsided, he felt for the trackpad in his sleeve and found it, a singular roll of flexi-glass, still in one piece, no shards or splinters as far as he could tell. He groaned, part from relief and part from the pain in his shoulder as he rolled onto his stomach to take hold of a metal corrugation he'd been lucky to miss with his fall. Lucky too for as soon as he did, the train swerved around a bend and dipped beneath the overpass. The lights of the Terrace glinted through the pillars and he could just make out the shifting shadows of thousands of protestors as they were corralled by increasing numbers of black and yellow wasps.

As the train straightened again, and the lights of the Terrace snaked out of sight, Dec closed his eyes and leaned his cheek flat against the metal. The vibrations from the train shook him back three years, to the rumble of tanks and the unison tramp of soldiers boots as they contained the March protestors with perspex shields and tear gas. He remembered the silent screams, the dust-blackened faces, limbs and torsos processed by the crush of tanks and pulverised into meat and bone. He thought he heard a scream now, high and volatile, followed by the sharp crack of gunfire. But it was only the sound of metal grinding metal as the train straightened due South.

He realised he was gripping the steel container so hard, he'd stopped feeling his fingers. Blood continued to seep into his mouth. He swallowed again. A single question hovered in his mind, heavy as a rain laden cloud.

How?

How had he managed to find himself here, clinging to the top of a shipping container with a government trackpad up his sleeve and a squad of wasps on his tail? In the space of a few nights, he'd gone from a normal twenty-year-old guy some family problems to a political fugitive. He lifted his head and opened his eyes, squinting against the rush of the wind and saw her, crouched at the pilot end of the train, low and hunched, raven hair a storm cloud about her head. Although he couldn't see her face, he knew she was looking in his direction, staring at him with those piercing agate eyes. The sky hovered, black and cloudless, strung with stars. As the train gathered speed, they clung to it, like two insects on a windshield.