‘Oh, bloody burning balls of crap,’ Jack snarled, far too loudly, ‘is there anyone else behind you in the bloody queue, Simon? A hedgehog with a poorly foot that only I can look after? Or a fox wanting career advice or something? Do I have to declare “base” before people respect that my day is over and I’m in bed now?!’
The silence was predictable, and horrible.
But it was quiet enough for a different voice to enter Jack’s head: one he had not heard in its physical form since he was twelve.
Jack, said a voice in his mind that reminded him of his mother, if that had truly been what she had sounded like. It’s because they rely on you. Don’t you get it? You’re valuedhere, and sometimes being valued is hard.
Jack squeezed his eyes shut. It made little difference to his vision, but it helped him to focus the chaos in his head.
There’s no easy way of living, is there? Thought Jack’s own voice.
No, came the answer. If you’re lonely it’s hard. If people depend on you it’s hard. That’s the truth of it, and I wish it were easier.
‘I’m sorry, Simon,’ Jack said, before the voice in his mind could say anything else. Somewhere in the silence, Jack was sure he heard a whisper.
‘OK?’ it said.
At first Jack thought he had invented the noise himself. Simon had never spoken to him with words before.
‘I’ll be alright, Simon. I’m sorry I got frustrated. It’s been a long night. What did you want me for?’
There was a pause, and Simon’s whisper came again.
‘OK?’
‘Yes, I’m sure I’m fine. What can I do for you?’
‘…OK?’
The penny dropped. If that was the right phrase. Jack looked in the direction of the whisper.
‘Is that what you came here for, Simon? To ask me if I was OK?’
‘Ye…’
Jack was overcome with a whole different range of emotions. It was a wonderful compliment, but it came with searing guilt. Simon had come to check up on his friend, and been ranted at in return – by a friend who almost never ranted at anyone.
But beyond the emotional struggle, it was an opportunity Jack did not get very often: someone offering to listen to how he felt rather than ask for his advice. And it was an opportunity worth taking.
‘Well, I guess my secrets are safe with you,’ Jack said, swinging his legs off the bed and switching on his torch. A moment later, he realised how the sentence had sounded.
‘Wait,’ he blurted, ‘I didn’t mean because of you not talking much. It’s because I know I can trust you. Sorry if it… well, anyway…’
Simon sat on the bed at his side, and patted him on the shoulder. Jack pretended not to hate it. Simon was being his own kind of supportive, and discouraging a selective mute from nonverbal communication would be a dreadful idea.
‘Simon,’ Jack said, ‘I think I’ve just worked out why I’m still alive.’
He shone the torchlight vaguely towards Simon: enough to see the confusion on his face.
‘I don’t know if you know this, but I tried to kill myself a couple of times. Back in the old world. I’ve not tried since Takeover Day. Never even come close. And tonight, just now, I think I’ve worked out why. It’s because people depend on me.’
Jack thought he could feel another tear, but he had stopped being bothered about them.
‘I mean, I started crying when I collapsed on this bed. And when you think about it, that was the moment nobody needed me to be OK. A whole night of looking for a house in the dead of night and I was fine. Ten seconds of everyone being OK and I fell apart. You know what that means, Simon?’
Simon huffed. Jack could not decipher what kind of huff it was.
‘It means I value the rest of you more than I value myself. So I keep myself alive and well for you all. And alright, yeah, it’s a crap reason to keep yourself going. But if it works it works, right?’
Simon huffed again, and even Jack could tell it was a huff of despondence.
‘I’ll be OK, Simon. You don’t need to worry about me.’
Jack wasn’t sure how true that was, but it seemed like the right thing to say. Simon patted him on the shoulder again, and Jack forced himself not to flinch in case it hurt Simon’s feelings. They were much more important than his, after all.
‘Thanks for the chat, Simon,’ Jack said. ‘At least someone asked if I was alright.’
Simon smiled in the torchlight, and rose to his feet. The conversation ended there and then as Simon walked out of the door and left Jack to his own devices. Jack lay himself flat on the bed, without getting undressed or even covering himself with the duvet. It took him several hours of inactivity, but he eventually fell asleep from exhaustion.
He awoke in daylight, with his watch telling him he had slept until mid-morning. But a whole night’s sleep had not rid the conversation with Simon from his mind.
As he looked out of his bedroom window at the unfamiliar street, his thoughts turned to Ewan and the others. In a sense, they were keeping themselves alive for other people too, so maybe Jack was nothing special after all. He just hoped that by the time it struck midnight that evening and it became May 20th, his friends in New London would still have lives to keep.
*
Ewan was impressed with himself, which wasn’t a feeling he experienced often. He hadn’t thought he could spend a whole day walking around Oakenfold surrounded by clones without a single emotion appearing on his face.
Then again, most of his life had been spent masking his feelings for the convenience of others. Sixteen years of practice had led to him putting on a stellar performance that day.
Ignoring the sensory assault of his navy blue clone uniform, he took the last box of papers from the makeshift shelf and handed it to Alex, who stood beside him, equally emotionless. Alex had been given a few funny looks from clones who were not yet familiar with the new clone model, but nobody had made a fuss or even bothered to question his scar. Even Ewan’s appearance had not been questioned: perhaps they assumed him to be one of the reinforcement models from New Reading.
It was late afternoon, the day’s brightness showing warning signs of fading through the windows, and their job was nearly done.
‘This is the last of them, right?’ Alex whispered, as faintly as he could and after double-checking that they were alone.
‘Shh,’ Ewan replied anyway.
‘But it is, right?’
Ewan rolled his eyes and nodded. Thanks to Raj’s efforts in the library, there had been less paperwork to carry to the transports. He walked towards the sports hall’s exit, Alex close behind with the box in both hands.
‘We’ve spent the whole day helping the enemy, you know.’
Ewan grew impatient enough to whisper back.
‘The sooner we’re finished packing, the sooner they start the journey to New London. Besides, we’ll be burning all this stuff once it reaches the paper archive anyway.’
‘Why am I carrying the last box?’
‘Because you were daft enough to take it from me.’
‘Ewan, if I had a free hand, guess what I’d be doing with my middle finger?’
‘Picking your nose. Now shut up.’
Ewan and Alex walked out of the school entrance towards the convoy of transport vehicles in the car park. For what must have been the twentieth time that day, they walked past Raj.
His headless body had been horrifying enough the previous night, without the details being revealed in broad daylight. Of all the reasons for Ewan to struggle with keeping a straight face, the repeated sight of his friend’s exploded body was by far the most challenging.
Ewan reached their van and opened the back doors. Alex placed the final box of papers on top of the pile, and slammed the doors shut before any onlookers could see what else lay inside. The two young men in clone uniforms headed for the driver and passenger seats, Alex driving of course, and waited for the convoy to start moving in front of them.
‘This place looks familiar,’ Alex muttered as they approached the concrete guard post ahead. Ewan looked to its side, and found a semi-cylindrical tunnel that looked familiar to him too.
‘You were here when we broke out of New London last time.’
‘When I broke you out, yeah. Which means we’re just about to hear the dullest voice known to man—’
‘Soldiers in Vehicles 131 to 137,’ came a monotonous voice through the driver’s radio, ‘this is Arnold Salter, deployment director for Vehicle Port Three. Once cleared by security, park in your vehicle’s assigned bay and assist guards with inventory checks. All vehicles, please acknowledge.’
Ewan pressed the communication button on his clone radio, and produced a long beep.
‘Wow,’ said Alex, ‘three weeks since I last heard him speak, and only for a few sentences, and I was busy being an action hero at the time. But I still remember every boring inflection of Salter’s stupid voice.’
Ewan did not comment. After two minutes of waiting for the traffic to move, Alex began to trundle the van along the mile-long road to the vehicle port. The entrance became visible inside the enormous shade of New London, a tiny mouse hole compared to the concrete walls that surrounded it.
Their van drove into the port and they were ensnared by the flurry of clone soldiers running to and fro, transporting the inbound equipment on giant trolleys. Alex found his allocated spot and pulled up his handbrake.
Ewan thought it better to act while the inspection guards were busy with the neighbouring vehicle. He swung his side door open and stepped onto the tarmac, fixing his unbothered expression back in place, and once again masked all fear of the plan going wrong. He met Alex at the van’s rear, where they threw open the back doors.
Ewan and Alex leapt in pretend shock – the kind of shock a clone would feel if the two stowaways among their equipment really had been unexpected.
One of the stowaways was an old man. The other was a young woman. Ewan reached for the pistol in his holster.
His shower of bullets caught the attention of every clone in the vehicle port, and the inspection guards pelted in their direction. By the time they arrived the gunfire had ceased, leaving two blood-spattered bodies among the boxes of paper.
Ewan looked to his right as the flustered lead inspector switched to war mode, and squeezed his radio’s panic button as if trying to crack a walnut with his fingers. Arnold Salter’s reply was so quick that his opening words were lost under the beep.
‘—uards, report situation.’
The main inspector, still deep in war mode with his face reddening and hand muscles tensed, typed something with the communication button on his radio. He was using the clones’ best method of communication – a simplified form of Morse code – but Ewan could not identify what was being said.
‘I’ll report this to Grant immediately,’ came Salter’s voice, which had lost its bored monotony. ‘Vehicle staff, confirm that the rebels actually are deceased, then advance to Office 35 near Stairwell 15X for a formal identification. I will meet you there.’
Alex leapt into the van to check Kate and McCormick’s pulses, and gave a thumbs down to the guards. Ewan climbed inside, and they took one body each. With a nod to the inspection guards, their interaction was over.
‘Other vehicles,’ Salter’s voice continued through the radio, ‘be vigilant. There has never been an attack by only two rogue humans. There may be more hidden in the convoy, and they might have heard you shooting their teammates.’
Ewan smiled as discreetly as he could at Salter’s words, as he slung Kate’s body over his shoulder. Alex was unable to complain about being left with the heavier body, and followed with McCormick on his back. They climbed out of the van, leaving the dozen heavy boxes of paper for someone else to sort out.
Ewan had expected an intense, dangerous amount of interest from other clone soldiers in the vehicle port. He was surprised when they turned back to their vehicles and continued their job as if nothing had happened.
Well, I guess Underdogs are less interesting when they’re dead.
Ewan and Alex made their way through the vehicle port exit and the heavy door slammed behind them, leaving them and the bodies on their shoulders isolated in the corridors of Floor Z.
‘Thank bloody hell for that,’ said Alex with a laugh as he lowered McCormick from his shoulders. Ewan lowered Kate to the floor with a relieved smile across his face.
‘And you all doubted me,’ said McCormick, resting a hand against the wall and straightening his back. ‘I told you, didn’t I? If we can’t sneak in unnoticed, we might as well be noticed and not be seen as a threat.’
‘Good job the clone blood lasted all the way through the journey,’ added Kate, double and triple-checking the rucksack to ensure nothing had fallen out while she had been carried. ‘We’d have been less convincing covered in powdery blood.’
Ewan shrugged, not entirely surprised. The blood had been fresh when they had killed the driver and passenger at Oakenfold – with nice, silent stab wounds – and daubed the blood across Kate and McCormick’s stolen uniforms. The blood had jellied a little, but the powdering stage usually didn’t happen until after a day.
‘Guys,’ he said, ‘are we really going to stand here chatting in clone uniform? We just pulled off something brilliant. Let’s not ruin it now.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Alex. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘Well,’ answered McCormick, stretching his legs and readying himself for a jog, ‘Arnold Salter is on his way to Office 35 on Floor X, preparing to meet us and identify our bodies. Let’s make his acquaintance.’
Chapter 16
Office 35, Floor X. Hardly deserving of the title of ‘office’.
Ewan only needed to look around him to recognise what the room was for. Even if it hadn’t had a plaque stuck on its entrance that read ‘Identification Chamber’, its interior felt like some kind of operating theatre or a morgue, with sinks and hygiene equipment like gloves and waste bags, walls lined with desks covered with test tubes, syringes and obscure DNA analysis machines or whatever, and a central table for dead bodies.
How many of my friends have laindead on that table? Ewan asked himself, picturing Nicholas Grant personally standing at the entrance crossing names off that list of rebels. He imagined that just about all of the Underdogs who had died inside New London would have been brought to this room. He gave a shudder at the thought of Beth Foster, Thomas’ mother, lying dead on the table he was staring at. Or David and Val Riley after Roth had forced one to kill the other. Or Miles, Tim, Ben, or any of the others. Daniel Amopoulos had probably missed the chance to see this room, since they already knew his identity before torturing him to death for information. Charlie, however…
Ewan felt anger – genuine, three-dimensional anger – as he stood in the same room where the dead bodies of his allies, friends and classmates must have been dropped onto that table and autopsied.
‘You alright, Ewan?’ asked McCormick.
Perhaps it was a question that wasn’t a question. Adults loved asking those. McCormick would have seen the expression on Ewan’s transparent face and detected his mood.
‘Yeah, fine,’ Ewan answered, giving the response that adults seemed to love too. ‘You know, if you and Kate are dead you’d better get on the table before Salter arrives.’
‘Ah yes, good point,’ said McCormick, heading to the edge of the makeshift operating table. He rested himself against it, leaned backwards with the slow, creaking precision of a construction crane, and swung his legs into p
osition at a speed that made Ewan wonder how long the man would last if chased by roving clones. Kate followed suit, the concern in her face so visible that even Ewan could detect it.
Alex, however, seemed as unaffected by everything as usual.
‘I know we’re trying to make Salter talk,’ he said, ‘but let’s not encourage him too enthusiastically, OK?’
‘Our priority is to destroy the AME shield,’ McCormick answered from his morgue table, ‘and it’s likely to involve people getting hurt. I’m planning to be far more merciful to this man than most people would think he deserves. Remember who we’re dealing with, Alex: Arnold Salter would have had his minions kill all four of us if he’d had his chance. And when you command people to murder, you’re doing the equivalent of pulling the trigger yourself. No one in that position gets to claim the moral high ground.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t that,’ Alex answered with a grin. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to hear too much of his voice.’
‘Speaking of not hearing voices,’ said Ewan, ‘everyone be quiet. We’re clones, and you’re dead.’
Alex obeyed, and the identification chamber fell quiet. Five long minutes passed in dull, lifeless silence, Ewan’s fingers fidgeting in anticipation, before a beep sounded at the door. Ewan took a deep breath, and lowered his hands to his hips.
The door opened, and a short man with a face like a turtle ambled into Office 35. He was flanked on one side by the tall blonde clone model, and on the other by a clone of Japanese origin. Ewan did not recognise him. He must have been an import.
He and Alex, as agreed ten minutes earlier, waited until the precise moment the door closed and locked itself before they drew their pistols and shot both clones dead.
The clones fell lifeless to the floor. Between the two corpses, Arnold Salter wore an expression of clueless horror. His jaw hung open, but he was as wordless as the two dead clones. The whites of his eyes began to stand out more than the rest of his face.
‘You must be Arnold Salter,’ Ewan said. ‘Good to meet you face to face.’
Salter looked to his left, and let out an audible gasp as Kate and McCormick’s bodies rose from the examination table. To Salter, it must have been like watching zombies rising from their graves.
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