A Girl From Forever (The Forever Institute series Book 1)

by Yolanda McCarthy

  I’ve never seen the outside of the Institute from a distance before, only from the exercise yard. The smoky impressions of yesterday don’t count. I take a moment to lean on Chelsea bridge, listening to the river slapping against the bridge supports as I admire my home.

  The Institute is a pale building, rows upon rows of windows. It looks vaguely like a hospital, except for the four huge chimneys. The cradle of immortality, John calls it. It doesn’t look like home, I guess because I’ve never seen this side of it before.

  There’s a man sitting on the floor not far away, wrapped in blankets with an empty plastic cup in front of him. It’s a strange place to sit, almost in the way of the people walking over the bridge, but it’s his choice I guess. I smile at him, but his returning stare makes me uncomfortable.

  “Any spare change?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve no money,” I reply.

  He snorts.

  “No, really, look.” I turn out my empty pockets, and he looks me over again, more closely. Yes, I know. I blame Rehan. And the mud.

  “Lost your wallet, have you?”

  “I left home with nothing, but I’m going back now. But my feet hurt so I’m having a rest.”

  “Good for you. Here.” He tosses a coin at me, winks. “Catch a bus, love.”

  My first money. I inspect it curiously. It’s not very shiny. “Thank you.” I smile a goodbye, and head across the bridge, nearing the Forever precinct. Next to the huge gates, builders are already at work repairing the hole in the security wall. Security guards watch over them, guns resting at their waists. It all looks more forbidding than it should.

  So. Home. I should go up to a security guard now, introduce myself, and go in. But then I see the café opposite, a tiny place wedged in between two larger shops.

  The sign in the window says that they have chocolate flavoured mint coffee. I’ve never tasted coffee, but I love chocolate and mint. I peer at the coin the man gave me. It’d be fun to tell Katrina that I’ve used money, but if I use it, I’m giving up my only souvenir. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to keep it though.

  It’s sensible to rest and have a drink now, before I go into the whirlwind of meetings and admin that my return is likely to generate.

  I’d be the only student who’s had coffee.

  I go in.

  My coin works fine, they even give me a little copper one back, so I wrap it in a serviette and tuck it away in my pocket. Unfortunately, coffee is disgusting, but it’s warm and sugary, so I drink it anyway, taking a seat at the window to watch my home as I sip slowly.

  The coffee hasn’t given me much energy, I don’t feel like moving at all. The last few hours have been non-stop, and now I’m sitting, just sitting, watching the world spin around me, with no-one telling me what to do.

  I’ll get up soon.

  I’ve no idea what time it is, and I like that feeling, I want to stretch it and roll around in it. It occurs to me that for someone with an extended lifespan, I’ve lived an awfully rushed life.

  The cup is nearly empty, a little pile of foamy bubbles and perhaps one more mouthful of coffee lurking underneath.

  I drink the final mouthful. Rehan walks past. I breathe in the coffee instead of swallowing it, and cough endlessly as Rehan waits under a lamp post nearby, only metres away through the glass. Luckily he’s gazing across the road, at Forever. I can’t go out there now. Does he know I’m here? Or is he just checking out the Institute? If he does a telepathic sweep, he’ll find me instantly.

  Home suddenly looks very far away. Would the security guards intervene, if they saw a struggle across the street? Would anyone?

  Does the café have a back exit? A toilet I could hide in until he’s gone? Should I make a dash for Forever? He might grab me.

  I sit, paralysed with indecision, as Forever’s gates open and a man walks out. His hood shadows his face, but then he shoves it back and my mouth drops open. Lucas! He walks towards Rehan, who doesn’t see him approach.

  What’s going on? Lucas was inside my home. He must have tricked them somehow.

  That’s when I see the black car, pulling out of Forever’s side gate, out of sight of Lucas and Rehan. Strange that the driver chose the side gate, when the main one is still open behind Lucas.

  Even if I hadn’t seen the car leave Forever, I’d have recognised it. This vehicle spends its afternoons parked next to the Institute exercise yard, so I know its registration plate like I know my own name. There’s not much to look at on the exercise yard during warm up, apart from the fleet.

  I can’t stop looking at the car. I feel cold, colder than I have this whole night. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen all of this before.

  On the other side of the window, Lucas hugs Rehan, right in front of my café. The car glides towards them.

  Lucas and Rehan walk away, out of sight for me, but not for the black car.

  For a moment I think that Forever’s cameras spotted me, that the car is coming to help me, but then it crawls past the café window, navigating through the traffic in the same direction that Rehan and Lucas took.

  I leap up and shove open the café door, wishing I had a hat or hood or something to hide my face. I should stay and wait until Rehan and Lucas are far, far away, but I have to know what’s going on, and I can’t shake the feeling that some part of me already does. I feel like I’m living in a movie that I’ve seen before and I can almost remember what happens next.

  Rehan and Lucas are walking on the pavement, about twenty metres in front of me. I move steadily towards them, passing the car, which waits patiently at a traffic light. I look away as I pass it.

  I fall into step just behind Rehan and Lucas as if I’ve done it many, many, times before. Engines rev behind me, the traffic lights have changed. We move towards the street corner in a silent procession. Rehan, Lucas, me, and the sleek black shadow that makes my breath come faster and my heart pound against my ribs like a separate thing as I walk quietly a few metres behind my kidnappers. And I remember how this movie ends.

  I hate Rehan, I don’t like Lucas. But I’ve seen enough dead bodies today and it is not in me to just – watch, whatever this is. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly jump into the black car and go back to Forever, but I don’t think that I am.

  Lucas’ phone rings. He reaches into his pocket, slowing to a stop, and Rehan halts with him, just as the black car jumps forward, mounting the pavement, swerving too fast to escape it – unless you’ve been watching it, and waiting for it. Which I have.

  I hurl myself forward, into the path of the car, grabbing Lucas and Rehan by the back of their coats. Lucas’ phone flies out of his hand as I swing us round the corner, into the empty side-street. Back on the main road, the black car crunches over Lucas’ phone and slams into the wall just behind us.

  Broken glass showers from somewhere as my momentum continues to carry us forward, crashing us to the ground. Rehan turns as he falls, his startled face inches from my own, his breath mixing with mine in the cold air. We fall sideways together and there’s a moment, frozen in time, when we stare at each other. Then the ground slams into us and his eyes blink slowly, stunned.

  I’m on my feet, running away while they’re still lying on the ground trying to process what just happened. The sensation of déjà vu blows away as I run down the road, but I know that Rehan will chase me, probably is already chasing me down the empty street. I hear Lucas call him, but Rehan just shouts back. “See you here at five!” I guess Lucas isn’t too bothered about catching me.

  When the road splits, I turn right, then left, past a council estate, past a children’s playground that wants fresh paint and new swings, past a row of shops. I need to get a least a hundred metres from Rehan before I can hide, given what he said about his range. That’s easier said than done, and I’m so very tired. But – he’s slower than I expected. I risk a glance over my shoulder, and see that he’s much further behind me than I thought. He’s limping.

  I smile.


  At the end of the road, I’m going to have to choose. Looping through the streets back towards Forever, or – on.

  I run, and I think of the black car, gliding slowly out of Forever’s gates, driving steadily towards Rehan and Lucas as they stop to take a phone call.

  There is an explanation. For everything, there is always an explanation. I should go home and learn what it is.

  But at the end of the road, I move further into London.

  Away from Forever.

  Chapter Seven

  Lost in the grimy maze that is the streets of Brixton, I’m confident Rehan can’t find me now, not limping as he was. This makes me realise that my feet hurt too. I slow to a jog, then to a walk.

  My right heel has a blister forming. It throbs, demanding rest.

  I can’t believe that I grabbed Rehan and Lucas like that, they could have kidnapped me again. It wasn’t like me, to do something like that, but at the time it seemed so normal, like acting out a part I’d rehearsed many times before. I had the weirdest feeling, but my memory is foggy now when I try to think about it. I can’t remember how it felt, just what I thought at the time. As though I was in a movie I’d seen before, and I knew the ending.

  I guess I’m suffering from exhaustion and post-trauma stress or whatever. Still, I saved them. Perhaps now they’ll leave me alone.

  Why did Forever try to kill them?

  They’re terrorists, Forever was acting in self-defence.

  They were unarmed, walking away.

  Rehan said that Forever will kill me, too. But he’s a liar, maybe crazy. The Institute is staffed by respected scientists, not assassins.

  I don’t want to think about this stuff, don’t want to know any of it. I shouldn’t have gone to the café. Shouldn’t even have gone to the museum. I could have been home hours ago, regaling the others with tales of kidnap and escape. Then, I wouldn’t have known that someone from Forever just tried to kill Lucas and Rehan.

  For no particular reason, an image pops into my head of self-defence class, which I’ve taken every day for as long as I can remember. We’re the first children in the world to be born with the serum in our DNA, to have cells that self-renew indefinitely. Of course we were taught to defend ourselves. Forever wanted us to be safe, and as Lucas pointed out, the world is full of people who hate people like me.

  But – garottes? Why did they train us to use garottes?

  If I turn left now, I can be home in thirty minutes.

  Someone phoned Lucas, made him stop just as the car approached. Someone killed those people at the farmhouse. Someone wrote about dissecting my brain. Probably that last one was Rehan, but… What if it wasn’t?

  The next junction reveals a road that winds back in the direction I came from. It would take me back to Forever.

  I walk past it.

  I need time and space to think. Can’t call the police, they’d just fetch Forever staff to take me home. Can’t walk around for much longer. I’m tired, and so hungry. Where does food come from, if you don’t have money?

  The people on this street don’t look very friendly – quite the opposite. I curse the yucky drink I bought earlier, perhaps the money I’d had would have bought a sandwich, but I doubt the tiny coin I have now can achieve much.

  There’s a huge building on my left, and as I glance over, a startled laugh bursts out of me. “The London Oratory School of Theatre.” LOST. How appropriate. Something within me unclenches slightly, as I watch the people walking in and out of the open doors. They stand out from the other pedestrians, chatting and laughing. Compared to the grim-faced adults walking the street, these faces seem young, my age or a little older.

  A group of them enters the building, and I tag along behind them, trying to look as if I belong. The lobby is small, but warm, and the groups of people look pleasant enough. They chat in constantly shifting groups, drifting through doors, disappearing upstairs. Perhaps somewhere here I can find a place to sit and think.

  Across the hall to my right, there’s a large double door, on which a handwritten note reads “Open Auditions for improv!” The people who entered with me head in that direction. I follow. Theatre seats… Surely no-one will bother me, or look at me, if I’m in a theatre seat.

  The auditorium is dimly lit, and almost entirely black, with perhaps a hundred seats looking down on a small stage. It’s empty except for a dozen people scattered around the room, watching the girl on stage. She waves her arms, spinning around until she falls down, burbling something to a young man sitting in a chair. A few people clap.

  I move to take a seat at the back, but then pause. There’s a table to one side of the stage. It has drinks. Biscuits. People are just walking up and helping themselves. Without making a conscious decision, my feet tap down the stairs, towards the snack table.

  I take a paper cup of water and a biscuit, guiltily shoving another two into my pocket. As I turn away, I jump, startled. A woman with a clipboard is right in front of me, beaming. Uh oh. My fingers scrabble for the last coin in my pocket.

  “Name?” she asks.

  “Fern,” I answer automatically. I guess this is where they ask me to leave.

  “Welcome, Fern. You’re up next.” I stare at her, and her smile drops a bit. “You’re here for the auditions, right?”

  I picture saying no, and being asked to pay for the biscuit. Can you get arrested for theft of a biscuit? I picture telling Katrina about this later. Telling her that I answered “no” and sidled away. So boring, so – me.

  “Absolutely,” I say, biting into my biscuit and taking another. I’ve seen improv sessions on TV, there’s no script, I think. So I can’t do anything wrong. I’ll say some stuff, then perhaps another biscuit.

  The woman leads me to the steps next to the stage, as the other girl walks down, still waving her arms dramatically.

  Close to, the stage is just pieces of hardboard painted black. Not intimidating. I can absolutely do this.

  I can absolutely not do this. All of the empty chairs are staring at me, judging me, and the audience is twice as big as it was a moment ago, where did all those people come from? I look helplessly at the only other person on the stage: the man in the chair. “You’re late,” he snaps at me. I gape.

  “Got nothing to say?” he continues. “Typical. Did you at least get it?”

  “I didn’t need to,” I blurt.

  He gets to his feet. “You. Didn’t. Get it.”

  I step back automatically, then halt myself. I’ve put up with a lot over the last 24 hours. There’s no reason to let myself get bullied by some fake character for a biscuit. The sooner this is over, the sooner I can get back to the snack table. I wave a hand at him, at me. I’ve no idea what our relationship is supposed to be, but perhaps he doesn’t either. “Whatever this is, I don’t need it anymore,” I say.

  “You don’t need to get paid?”

  “I’ll be ok.” I turn away, and he grips my wrist, spinning me back round. Automatically I drop my weight, pull him slightly off balance, then twist away. He goes with it as I throw him to the stage, staring up at me as his back hits the floor.

  It was just basic self-defence, I don’t know what he’s looking at. I stalk down the steps.

  “Thanks, Fern,” someone calls, as I head to the snack table, cheeks warm. No biscuit should be this much hassle. I grab another handful, and leave.

  Back in the entrance hall, winter air rudely shoves in from the street as I wolf down the biscuits. From what I can see through the steamed-up glass doors, outside hasn’t got any more appealing. I head upstairs instead, into a café filled with sofas and students, most chatting, some just reading alone.

  No-one glances my way as I sink into a sofa without ordering, hiding behind an abandoned magazine.

  I sit there for an hour, perhaps two, watching people come and go, my head nodding gently as I try to remember why I should fight sleep. A couple sit on the sofa opposite me, chewing each other’s faces and, occasionally, toas
ted sandwiches. The smell makes my stomach rumble, and when they leave, nearly half their food remains on the table in between our seats. Ashamed but hungry, I pull the cold sandwiches towards me and finish them. It tastes better than it looks, and my hunger cramps fade.

  A couple of boys drop into the sofa opposite me, and I flush, hoping they didn’t see me eat the left-over food. Flicking through the magazine for the millionth time, I listen to them chat. Their lives sound so normal, and for the first time in a long time, I envy something that isn’t a talent. I’ve always felt so lucky to have been born Forever, but these boys have a freedom I’ve never known. They’ve chosen to study here, probably one of a long line of choices. Their days are crammed with choice, overflowing with it. I’ve made very few choices in my life.

  One of the boys leaves, and the other leans back into his sofa. Our eyes meet and he smiles at me. He’s golden haired, and something about that and his air of confidence reminds me of Arlo, the golden boy of my class. Maybe it’s because this stranger looks so open and friendly…

  “Fern, right?” he asks.

  I freeze.

  He cracks up. “I’m not stalking you, I promise. I watched your audition? Downstairs? I’m Will. You were great, I loved that move you did at the end. So, are you going to do it?”

  “Perhaps,” I answer cautiously. I’m not sure what Will’s talking about, but I’m not ready to make any decisions yet, not about anything.

  I love this in between place, away from Rehan and Forever and the cold outside. I know that it’s an illusion, that I don’t belong here, but for a little while, I’ll let myself imagine that I do. I just need everything to stop.

  “You should, it’s so much fun,” Will continues. “Also, we don’t have enough people yet for a really good session tonight. Have you done improv before?”

  I shake my head, and for a long time that’s all the answer required, as he tells me about the shows he’s been in. I’m required to do nothing except smile and admire. It’s relaxing. He’s obviously very successful and popular, passers-by keep stopping to greet him, and one boy buys us drinks and joins us for a while. The drink is cold and it burns all the way down to my stomach. I drink it anyway, there must be calories in it and I’m still hungry.