THE AFTERMARTH

"But they couldn't have, I don't believe you". Kennis screamed at Robin across the control room.

"Well they did! You really don't believe me?" Robin yelled back. "Dan's got it all on video, look". He grabbed Kennis by the wrist and dragged her over to the monitor.

She turned her head away from it refusing to look at the evidence as Robin hit the play button for what seemed like the millionth time in the past couple of hours.

"Jeremy would never do anything so terrible, Choy maybe but not the others, not Jeremy". Kennis started to sob.

Robin didn't know what to do or say, he could scarcely believe that anyone he knew could be capable of the violence he had witnessed. He knew Kennis was desperate to defend Jeremy and that she was in love with him, that they shared years of history and had travelled across the globe together in order to join the Elite. She had trusted him and he had betrayed her and their friendship as well as the Elite.

Dan sat on a plastic chair next to the bed staring blankly at the walls of the little white hospital room, the smell and the starkness reminded him of a time not so long ago when he had sat next to his fathers hospital bed and listened to him gasp his final painful breaths, another victim of the virus, it was at that moment, before the electromagnetic pulse, before the world they lived in ended, before the riots and the chaos that he had decided to join the Elite.

The only sound was the gentle hissing of the ventilator and the beeping of the machines as they monitored the unconscious girls breathing and heart rate. Blood had congealed around the stitches in her lip and cheek and one side of her face was already discolouring with a rainbow of bruising, her torso was heavily bandaged to aid the healing of the broken ribs and punctured lung, her right hand was encased in a heavy plaster cast, where her wrist and two of her fingers had been broken.

Tears of rage pricked the back of Dan's eyes and a black ball of hatred consumed his very soul. The crime Choy and the others had committed was unforgivable and Dan was going to find a way to make them pay for attacking the defenceless girl so viciously, like a pack of rabid dogs, beating her un-mercilessly to within an inch of her life, they were at best rapists and although Dan didn't want to admit it, probably murderers. Dan was so angry the only thing he could think about was how he was going to ensure that he made them pay for what they had done.