The Burning Tree: Book 1: Salvation by Christopher Artinian

Author:Christopher Artinian [Artinian, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

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Rat-tat-tat. Harper tapped on the door gently. It was the early hours of the morning, and most people would still be in bed. She placed her palm against the uPVC, willing Tania to answer before she had to knock again. The door suddenly opened, but it wasn’t Tania.

“Harper,” Tony said, embracing her warmly.

Harper reciprocated but looked beyond him, desperate to see her lover. “Where’s Tania?”

“She’s not with you?” he asked, pulling back. “I heard about the arrests. I felt sure I wasn’t going to see either of you again.”

“No. She wasn’t at the pub when the guards came. If she’s not here, where is she? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Tony looked up and down the corridor. “Come in,” he said, taking Harper’s wrist and pulling her through the door. He closed it behind them, and the pair walked into the small living area.

They both sat there for a while, neither one knowing where to start. “First things first. How come you’re back down here? I felt sure you’d be sent to the surface.”

Harper was about to answer when the sound of the door opening made her stop. She looked towards the entrance of the living area, and a second later, Tania appeared. Tears immediately began to flood down both their faces, and they rushed towards each other. They held each other as though their lives depended on it, their tears merging as their cheeks met. “I thought I’d lost you,” Tania wept.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Harper replied.

“I’ve just been walking the streets. I didn’t know what to do.” They clutched each other for a few more seconds before Tania grabbed Harper’s hand and led her across to the couch. Tony and the two women sat down. “What happened? How did you escape?”

“We were in a holding cell—all of us. I was sitting with Dani, and we felt sure that they were going to take us one by one for questioning to get all the information they could before sending us to the surface. After a while, they marched us back out to the lift and I thought, This is it. They’re sending us up there. I thought I was never going to see you again.” Harper began to cry once more but eventually brought her tears under control.

“Then what?”

“Then they brought us back down here and left us all tied up and with hoods over our heads. It was a few minutes before we decided to risk doing anything, but then we broke our restraints, removed our hoods and realised that they’d let us go.”

“Oh my God. He was right. He was right about everything.”

“What are you talking about? Who was right?”

“We met a man.”

“We? We who?”

“Callie and me. He was by one of the lifts, him and his family. He was from Level Two. Callie knew him—said his name was Phil Trainor.”

“Phil Trainor? The hydroponics guy?”

“Yeah. He said that there’d been a huge fire at Farm One and they were going to cut us off down here.

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