When I walk into the dining room, I’m surprised to find the commander there before me, his back to the door. I stop, and wait for him to speak.
“Attention, Recruit Smith!” He shouts, before turning round and fixing me with a needle-like stare. I stand to attention, waiting for him to speak. He makes me wait a very long time.
“I don’t understand what I’ve just seen, Recruit Smith.” His voice is calm and controlled, but far from friendly. I open my mouth to explain, but he holds up a hand.
“I did not give you permission to speak.” I close my mouth, and look straight ahead, fighting the urge to defend myself.
“I was crossing the field at lunchtime today, and I noticed two guards at the gate who seemed entirely unaware that there were two of my recruits sitting on the ground, in their armour, with their names on, outside the camp. What’s more, the gates were locked. And I wondered – who was on duty for this morning’s run? Who managed to lose two recruits, and then lock the gates with those two recruits still outside? And who managed to convince the guards that these recruits, however much they begged to be let in, should be left to sit on the floor in the rain?”
I bite my tongue.
“Imagine my surprise when I discover that this act of either gross incompetence, or gross cruelty, is down to my lead recruit. Katrina Smith. My eyes and ears. My trusted assistant. The person with authority to stop screw-ups like this from bothering me.”
When he calls me Katrina, it’s like a stab in the gut.
“So, Recruit Smith …”
He’s about to continue, when Jackson crashes through the door, shouting at me to watch out, because the commander is looking for me.
Thanks for that, genius, because I’m not in enough trouble here already.
He stops as if he’s hit a wall when he sees the scene in the dining room. The commander turns towards him.
“Recruit Jackson! Attention!”
“Sir!” Jackson stands up straight, looking ahead.
“I think you can stay for this. I have questions for you as well.” And he turns back to me.
“Recruit Smith. What do you have to say for yourself? Can you explain to me, in very small words, what happened out there today?”
I swallow. My mouth is suddenly dry and my throat is tight.
“Sir. The recruits were late back from the run. They’ve been told that the gates will be closed before the next session begins, and they know not to be late.”
“So you locked the gates.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And you told the guards not to let them in.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“How long were you going to make them wait, Recruit Smith?”
“I was heading down to the gate when you came in …”
“So you were happy to make them wait for an hour or two, in the rain?”
“Sir, I -…”
“Yes or no, Recruit.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He nods.
“And you, Recruit Jackson.”
“Sir.”
“You ran your gun training, short two recruits, and you didn’t think to come looking for them?”
“No, Sir.”
“Why is that?”
Jackson glances at me, then back at the commander.
“I knew Ketty had them, Sir.”
The Commander nods again.
“So, knowing that Katrina had your recruits, when they were supposed to be with you, you let it slide. Is that because you knew about her plans to teach them some sort of lesson?”
Neither of us speaks. The silence stretches uncomfortably between us. The commander begins to pace across the room, ignoring the scattered paperwork, and the table thrown against the wall.
“I am extremely disappointed in you, Recruit Smith. You have been trusted with keeping the peace in my camp. You have been given access to information that no one else has been given. You have been trusted to keep the recruits disciplined, but you have also been trusted to keep them safe.
“Today, instead of keeping an injured recruit safe, you left him outside the camp with the only person who bothered to help him. Ellman missed a training session, thanks to your incompetence, and Saunders’ injury may well be worse because he was forced to wait for treatment.
“I know that one of the aims of our training here is to separate the recruits from their friends, and to instil a sense of independence. We need them to be confident for the cameras, and we need them to rescue civilians before they pick up their fellow recruits. I agree with this. I demand it.
“But what I do not demand …” he crashes his fist into a tabletop, and Jackson and I both jump. “What I do not demand is gratuitous cruelty.”
He turns and looks out of the window. Jackson and I exchange a panicked look.
“Recruit Smith. As of now, you are stripped of the title of Lead Recruit. I shall find another assistant – one who can tell the difference between a learning experience and a dangerous, petty power game.”
He turns to face us again. I clench my jaw and keep the expression on my face neutral as he continues. I don’t trust myself to speak.
“Recruit Jackson. You are no longer in the running for becoming Lead Recruit. Don’t let me find you aiding and abetting your friend here in any more stupid games. You are capable of thinking for yourself – please do so from now on.”
“Sir.” Jackson’s voice is surprisingly steady.
“Now get out. Dismissed, Jackson.”
Jackson is out of the room, and out of the dorm, before the commander can change his mind.
“Recruit Smith. Clean up this mess.” He indicates the table, and the scattered papers. “I want the paperwork filed and on my desk in fifteen minutes. You are no longer authorised to work on it.”
He walks to the door.
“You can do better than this, Katrina,” he says from behind me. “Don’t let me down again. Dismissed.”
And he leaves me alone with the mess I’ve made.
*****
We partied, Jackson and I, the night I made Lead Recruit. We went to the kitchen, where the camp staff let their hair down every night, and for once we joined them.
They weren’t impressed, at first. Two RTS soldiers gatecrashing their private party. But then Jackson pulled out the bottles of vodka he’d picked up on a rare visit to town, and you’d think we’d all been friends forever.
We turned up the music, mixed drinks and danced. I must have danced with everyone – boys and girls, I didn’t care. I’d got my promotion. I’d got security clearance. I’d be noticed at HQ. I was one step closer to getting out of the camp and getting an important job – maybe even a job in London. Dad couldn’t stop me. Dropping out of school couldn’t stop me. I’d proved myself, and I’d done it on my terms. Commander Bracken, all chiselled jaw and film star good looks, had noticed me. I was unstoppable.
I remember dancing with Jackson on a table, everyone cheering us on. I remember one of the kitchen girls pulling a lipstick from her pocket and drawing war paint stripes on my cheek bones. I grabbed the lipstick and gave Jackson stripes of his own, and soon everyone was painting their faces, and whooping, and dancing on the tables.
It was my one night of crazy celebration before I had to prove myself to the commander all over again. And this time the stakes were much higher. I could screw up, or I could get myself out of there. Get myself a real job – not crowd control for teenagers, but a promotion to the grown-up world. My choice, my responsibility.
Jackson got his kiss that night, but no more. No couples allowed at Camp Bishop, and that would have been be a pathetic way to lose my promotion. Besides, I needed Jackson where he’d always been – happy to work with the commander’s enforcer, but at a respectful distance. I needed to be able to count on him, with no complications. I needed him on my team.
Revenge
I’m sitting on the floor at the end of my bed. I can’t believe what I’ve done. That I’ve thrown away my chanc
e of getting out of here. I punch the wall so hard that I make a hole in the plasterboard, and my knuckles are bleeding, but I don’t care. I’m shouting all the swear words I can think of, over and over again, but none of this is making me feel better. Nothing is helping.
I’m furious with myself, and I’m furious with Ellman. Why can’t she stick to the rules? Why can’t she keep it simple, train herself, get herself ready for being on the front line? Why doesn’t she get it?
I aim a kick at the metal bedframe, and it scrapes across the floor, the sound painful and satisfying.
She’d be a great recruit, if only she concentrated on her own training. Why does she have to look after everyone else? Why does she think she’s everyone’s mother? And her little gang. Two posh kids and three losers. What’s the attraction? What does smart, gorgeous Dan see in the rest of them? Brown, Taylor, and Sleepy – they follow her and they follow Dan like a line of ducklings. It’s as if they don’t know the rest of us are here.
We need to change this. We need to split them up. We need to show them what happens when they don’t do what we need them to do.
Someone knocks on the door, and when I don’t respond, Jackson opens it puts his head round. He’s not allowed in the female dorms, but I’m guessing he’s looked for me everywhere else.
“Can I come in?”
I sit, looking at the floor, suddenly exhausted. I shrug.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
He steps inside, closes the door, leans back against it.
“I’m so sorry, Ketty. I …” He stops. There’s nothing else to say. He’s sorry. I shrug again.
He walks into the room, pushes my bed back into place and sits down. He notices the wall, my hand. My bleeding knuckles.
He tries to take my hand, but I snatch it away.
“Ketty …”
He’s trying to be nice. He’s trying to be sympathetic, and I can’t handle this. He’s going to make me cry.
“Jackson. Shut up. There’s nothing you can do.” I stare straight ahead, teeth gritted. I will not cry in front of Jackson. I will not be weak.
He looks genuinely upset. Let him. He can cry, if he wants to. Self-indulgent snowflake. This is my loss. Not his.
We sit in silence for a while. I channel my disappointment into clear-thinking anger.
“We need to teach them a lesson.”
Jackson looks up, surprised.
“Who?”
“Bex Ellman. Dan Pearce. Their little group of losers.”
He thinks for a moment.
“We’ve finally put Sleepy in the hospital.”
“That’s true.” That does make me feel better. “What about the rest of them? What about Mummy Ellman?”
Jackson checks his watch.
“Ellman’s in the medical centre, visiting Sleepy.”
I look up, and Jackson continues. “She’s always taking walks after dinner. We could take her on a detour. No one will miss her.”
I can feel my anger building into something constructive. There is something we can do.
“Iron fists and steel toe caps?” I ask.
He grins.
*****
It’s getting dark as we walk out onto the field. There’s no one around, and there are lights on in all the buildings. The staff dorm is noisy, as usual, but everywhere else is quiet.
We walk, quickly and quietly to the medical centre, and wait in the shadows outside. The lights are on in Commander Bracken’s office, which means he’s busy, so we’re safe out here for now.
The door to the medical centre slams shut, and a figure in fatigues and a thin raincoat walks down the steps. She turns her head, and we can see that it’s Ellman. She walks away, towards the staff dorm, and we follow, treading softly on the wet grass.
She’s ambling along, hands in her pockets, looking up at the cloudy sky. It’s as if today hadn’t happened. She looks smug and happy and content.
We step up behind her. Jackson grabs her arms, and at the same time I throw my hand over her mouth, and brace it with the other hand behind her head. We pull her backwards, so she loses her footing, and we half drag, half carry her across the field to the fence.
She tries everything. She tries to shout, she tries to kick. She even relaxes her whole body, and we nearly lose her, but we grab her again, and drag her dead weight between the trees to the gap under the fence.
I need to let go of her, but she’ll be able to shout. I glance around the field, but there’s no one in sight. We’re a long way from any of the buildings, and it’s getting dark, so I take a chance.
“Don’t make a sound,” I hiss in her ear, before releasing my grip on her head.
And of course she shouts. Jackson’s holding her arms with one hand, and he smacks her cheek with the other, hard enough to snap her head to the side.
“Not her face!” I can’t believe I need to explain this to him. The commander cannot find out about this. This is between me and Ellman.
I stand up, and go to the fence. There’s a line of security lights on the fence posts, and that’s a public footpath on the other side. I check up and down the path, but there’s no sign of anyone walking past. “All clear.”
Jackson drags Ellman to the fence, and crawls underneath while I hold up the bent mesh. There’s a deep puddle on the ground where the fence curls up, and Jackson drags her through it. I drop the mesh as he makes it through, and watch the sharp edges catch on her raincoat and trousers.
I hope that hurts.
She shouts and kicks as she’s pulled through the puddle, but I’m sure that no one can hear us out here. I make a final check of the field behind us, then crawl through after them.
Jackson lets go for a second, and as she pulls her arms out from behind her back, I grip them again and pin her to the floor.
“You’re in trouble, Ellman.” I keep my voice down, my face close to her ear.
“We keep telling you, Ellman”, says Jackson, his voice quiet. “Save yourself. Don’t be a martyr. Don’t go helping the useless kids who can’t make the grade. But what do you do? You make friends. You carry them home. You patch them up.” He kneels down, straddling her legs, one knee on each side in the mud, pinning her down.
“You get us into trouble.” It’s all I can do not to laugh. We could do anything to her now, and we’d get away with it. She’s outside the camp. That’s strictly against the rules – and who’s to say she didn’t drag herself out here, under the fence, for one of her evening walks?
“We don’t like trouble, Ellman. We like things to run smoothly. We like recruits who do as they’re told.”
“You need to learn to do what we tell you.” This is absurd. The speech before the beating. It’s like a gangster movie.
And it feels great.
I nod to Jackson, and he pulls back his fist. He flashes me a grin, then punches Ellman, hard, in the ribs. She flinches, and I nearly lose my grip on her arms. I lean over and pull them up, over her head, before she can react. I plant my knees on her elbows, and lean my hands against her shoulders, using my weight to push her down. Jackson nods, approvingly, and starts raining down with his fists as if she’s a punch bag in the gym.
“Not her face!” He’s out of control. I can’t have the bruises showing. He nods, flexes his fingers and clenches his fists again, aiming for her torso instead.
She’s stopped crying out. Jackson’s winding her with every hit, but she’s not shouting any more. She seems to relax, to decide to let this happen.
Good. That’s the first step to accepting the rules.
Every hit is a revenge. Every hit makes me feel elated. I can feel her moving under my hands, flinching from Jackson’s fists. This is exactly what I needed to do. We rain down justice on our disobedient recruit, and it feels utterly amazing – like touching a live wire. Like winning a game. We’re holding her life in our hands.
Jackson stops, rubbing his knuckles. We look at each other. She’s lying very still, and very quiet. I wonder ho
w long we’ve been out here. He nods. I nod back, and stand up. Ellman doesn’t move.
She needs to know how lucky she’s been. How close she’s come to really screwing up.
“You do this again, Ellman – you get us into trouble, and you won’t be walking home.”
I step away, take Jackson’s arm, and lead the way back under the fence.
We’re half way across the field when he turns to me, a mischievous grin on his face.
“Better?”
“Much better.” I’ve done something with my anger, and I’ve made Ellman understand the limits of my tolerance. I feel calm. I feel powerful. I grin back at him. “Thank you, Jackson. I’m glad you’re on my side.”
And I give him a kiss, on the cheek.
I need to keep him on my side, after all.
*****
Becoming the commander’s Lead Recruit was the gateway to a new world of information and access.
For the first time, I was seeing a clear picture of the people we were supposed to be fighting. There had been bombings and terror attacks for as long as I could remember, but they were always things that happened to someone else, somewhere a long way from me. I’d never needed to care.
But this was different. This concerned me, and my recruits. And the commander. This was important.
The terrorists wanted to overthrow the government. In report after classified report, I saw descriptions of their targets, their methods – even the confessions at their trials. I saw that there were more attacks all the time. That the government wanted more to be done to protect the population.
I saw some of the history, too. How the government had suspended elections after the Crossrail bombing. How the King had given them indefinite powers to run the country and beat the terrorists. How they’d taken down the mobile phone networks and the civilian Internet, and started executing terror suspects.
Even our TV had changed. They’d shut down all the independent news channels and created the Public Information Network, so everyone was getting the same news, and not rumours spread by the terrorists. There were lists of banned films, banned TV shows – even banned books. All the newspapers had government-appointed members of staff checking their stories for accuracy and language.
False Flag (Battle Ground YA UK Dystopia Series Book 2) Page 4