“What have you been drinking?”
I shrug. “Who knows?”
“Right, come on.” His arm is around my shoulders, supporting me, and we both limp towards the main road. “Why are you limping?”
“Killer blisters. Why are you?”
“I twisted my ankle when some girl grabbed me from behind and threw me down.”
“Did she save your life?”
“Yeah, I guess she did.”
“Did you say thank you?”
“I guess I’m an actions speak louder than words kinda guy.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know you at all.”
“That isn’t true.”
We hobble onto the main road and walk, cars flashing by. A taxi zooms past us, Rehan watches it but lets it go. “One,” he says.
“Two,” another taxi. “Three, four.” He flags it down and gets in.
I hesitate. “No more hand-ties,” I say seriously. The driver snorts.
“None,” Rehan promises. I climb in.
“Why four taxis?” I ask, as he climbs in after me.
“Because you never trust the first few offers.” The taxi zooms off and I topple against Rehan in the back seat. His arm wraps around me, holding me steady. “Sleep,” he commands.
Sleep comes immediately, although I’m jolted awake each time the driver brakes, or takes a corner too sharply. I hear Rehan snap at him not to disturb me. It makes no sense, but I feel safe. When the journey ends and I’m woken by Rehan lifting me into his arms like a parent with a child, I don’t bother to ask him where we are.
Rehan carries me into a small terraced house and up the stairs, where he puts me down on a bed. It smells much better than Will’s horrible flat. I roll onto my side and let sleep tug me down again.
Chapter Nine
My dreams take me back to the Institute, to the sixth night after Rehan first contacted me. We talked every night, for hours. This was our longest conversation yet, and our best. I told him about every moment of my day.
“No-one ever listened to me like you do,” I say.
“I like listening to you,” he says. “I never met anyone like you.”
“You haven’t met me, either,” I point out. “You have no idea, even, what I look like.”
“Are you a hag?” There’s a smile in his voice.
“Worse. Hideous beyond your imagining.” I yawn. “We should sleep.”
“I know.” But he stays there, a smiling warmth wrapped around my mind.
“Tell me again about the world outside, I want to dream of it,” I mumble.
He tells me of mountains and traffic jams, the slow drip of the rain through a cracked pipe above his window, the bitter taste of coffee and the thrum of it in his blood. And the sea. I love hearing about the sea.
Imaginary waves crash around me as I drift into sleep.
Chapter Ten
I wake, and immediately try to wriggle back down into sleep, but the noise from downstairs keeps me awake. Arguing voices. Rehan, and… Lucas? I sit up in the dark room, rubbing my eyes as I hug the blanket around me. My tongue feels huge and furry, my head pounds.
I’m thirsty.
The clock on the wall tells me that it’s two o’clock, and for a moment I don’t know if that means day or night. Then I remember: daytime would be lighter.
An image of the girl in the lilac coat pops into my head and, although I want to forget her as quickly as I can, I know that memory will never fade. Her words were so few, but they pulse within my skull. I came to see you because I remembered that I would.
Remembered the future? In all our classes I never heard of anything like that. Telepathy, telekinesis, clairaudience, lucid dreaming, psychometry – those are words I was brought up with, ideas that make sense to me. But messing with time is something different, something, let’s face it, impossible. The girl was probably crazy. She was a Vol, of course she was crazy. Perhaps she shot herself when I wasn’t looking, and the Forever car was there looking for me. I never thought of that. Perhaps she went there to scare me away from my rescuers. Perhaps she’s fine, and the red stuff was paint. I didn’t even check.
Which would make me an idiot to be here.
I feel like I’m going to throw up again. To distract myself, I inspect the room.
A window. Bed. Desk. Chair. All cheap but spotlessly clean. There’s no hint of personality here, this is not a home. Safe house, Rehan called it. The only hint of personality is a jar of pebbles on the bookshelf next to the bed. I pick it up and play with it, unscrewing the lid as I listen to Rehan argue with his father.
“You think that car was a coincidence? We were right outside the Institute. Which was an insane place to meet, by the way.” Rehan. I can’t hear Lucas’ reply, but I recognise the low, insistent tones.
“You what?” Rehan yells.
The pebbles spill into my hands, their cool weight my only reality. Below them, a long thin shadow divides the blanket into two halves, light and dark. I toss a pebble onto the dark half, seeing red spread across lilac. “The girl,” I whisper into the empty room.
I throw another after it. “The farmhouse.” For the scattered bodies there of people I met briefly and will never know. Another pebble. “The attack on Lucas and Rehan.”
Three pebbles, three reasons not to go home.
I flick a pebble onto the light half. “My whole life.” For – for everything I’ve ever known. For the gym and the classroom and my bedroom and the teachers with their ever changing faces but always the same smiles. I trickle nine other pebbles after it. “My friends.”
I hold a pebble in my hand for the data stick. I don’t know where this goes. If the data stick is genuine, then I should run from Forever. If it was faked by KHH, I should probably run from Rehan. Again. I’m so tired of running, of lies everywhere I look. I came here for a decent night’s sleep, and I didn’t even get that. I get up, letting the last pebble slide to the floor. I won’t find any answers sitting here.
I head into the hall, pausing when I see a bathroom. Answers can come after hygiene.
I scrub my finger around my mouth with a glob of minty toothpaste that I steal from a tube by the sink, wondering if it belongs to Rehan. It feels wonderful to splash my face clean. I try to run my fingers through my hair, but the tangle is ridiculous, and I don’t want to take the time to sort it out. There’s another bottle by the sink. I unscrew the lid. It smells like Rehan. I shove the lid back on and push it away.
The voices below have silenced, making my footsteps very loud on the wooden stairs as I head down.
Below, the living room is dimly lit and sparsely furnished. Lucas and Rehan glare at each other from opposing leather chairs, far apart, despite the empty chairs in between them. They both look relieved by my appearance, and start talking at the same time.
“This – this maniac, thinks you should go back to Forever,” says Rehan.
“Fern. Welcome. I’m so glad that Rehan found you, that you’re well. This has all gone much further than we intended, and as I was just telling Rehan, it’s time for you to go home. This isn’t your fight.”
“Jesus, Dad! It’s hers more than anyone’s. Fern, you know what we read, they’ll kill you if you go back.”
Lucas and I ignore Rehan, watching each other. Why does Lucas want me to go? Questions flash through my mind, too many to ask, fitting together to make their own answers that I can’t yet see, but can taste as they hover in the air, words waiting to be spoken. “You weren’t at the farmhouse,” I say, tilting my head in question. “After the attack.” That detached feeling is coming over me again. Why do I feel so sorry for Rehan? I push away the detached feeling, stamp on it.
“He ran off,” snipes Rehan. Lucas’ eyes shift uncomfortably as he opens his mouth to say something, closes it, then hesitates again as he catches my eye.
That word pops into my head again. Talent. I don’t have a talent, but does Lucas know that? Even if he does, he doesn’t know what else I kn
ow, we’ve hardly spoken. Am I brave enough, crazy enough, to bluff?
I sit down in one of the empty chairs, holding Lucas’ gaze. “I think you should tell Rehan, Lucas.” He pales. “Tell him everything,” I add optimistically.
“Did they – do you?” It’s Lucas’ turn to flounder in questions. I tilt my head again ambivalently, accusingly. He must know I’m bluffing, but… He’s exhausted, too.
Lucas curses. “If you didn’t know you wouldn’t be here, and it’s gone on long enough anyway, there’s no other way forward now, not as they’re insisting... Rey, it’s time for you to grow up.”
I blink. That wasn’t quite the declaration I expected. Rehan leans back, staring at the ceiling. “Great time for a lecture.”
“You’ve been living in a child’s world, a world of goodies and baddies, black and white…” continues Lucas, crouching in front of Rehan and looking at him directly.
“Seriously, do we have to?” asks Rehan of the ceiling.
“You think the world has good and evil in it, and that’s my fault, I raised you like that. But it doesn’t. The world is just chaos and those trying to navigate it as best they can – to protect themselves, and the things they care about. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. To protect you. I’ve made arrangements. Done things I – wouldn’t otherwise have done.”
What was it Lucas once said to me? Something about Forever owning your soul.
“And what have you done?” demands Rehan.
“I’m not who you think I am, Rey. Neither are you.”
“You’re not my father?”
Lucas snorts. “Of course I am. But I’m not the leader of KHH.”
Rehan blinks. “What? Who is?”
“There is no KHH. There hasn’t been for a long time. What there is, is a tightly controlled outlet for people’s frustrations against Forever. I manage that outlet. When it needs to express itself, I consult with Forever and provide that expression. KHH isn’t real.”
They stare at each other. Then Lucas is talking again, faster and faster. “There will always be people trying to steal the serum, to fight Forever, restore democracy, whatever. KHH gathers them all into one convenient group, don’t you see? Of course Forever want to control that group. They gave me no choice. They own me.”
“People died attacking the Institute.” Rehan’s face is very pale, but beginning to darken with rage. “More died at the farmhouse. Marina, Artie, Chris, the others. You planned that. They were our friends!”
“You’re my responsibility. No one else.”
Rehan shakes his head, lost for words. “I don’t even know you. And I don’t want to. We’re done.”
He stands up and walks out of the room, and just before he disappears, I think I see his hand rise to wipe his eye.
Lucas stands, striding into the corridor to shout something after Rehan.
This doesn’t make any sense. KHH is a terrorist group, banned since they assassinated a group of travelling scientists. Lucas is saying that Forever did that?
Lucas is still shouting in the corridor.
“Not me, them! But yes, I knew, and I didn’t have any choice, Rehan! You think anyone would have chosen this? They chose me! You don’t have any choice either! Don’t be a fool. It’s – it’s with them, or… It’s with them.”
Rehan’s feet thunder down the stairs, he’s got his coat and backpack and he’s heading for the front door. Lucas blocks his way, matching Rehan’s movements side to side, throwing questions at him as he does so. “You’re a Vol living within a couple of miles of the Institute. You think they didn’t find you? Like they found Callie?”
Wait, his little sister is real? Or, was?
“They made me an offer, Rey! They already had a fake anti-Forever group started, but there was too much real rebellion, it was too fragmented, and their staff weren’t credible… They needed us, and I couldn’t lose both of you.”
“How many people were in that farmhouse?” snaps Rehan.
Lucas doesn’t look away. “Eighteen.”
“Eighteen lives for ours?”
“Eighteen lives for yours. This was never about me.”
“How many died at the Institute attack?”
“I’m not sure.”
Rehan shakes his head in disgust. “I don’t want to see you ever again. Fern, you coming?” He shoves Lucas against the wall, trying to move past his father’s grabbing hands.
“You can’t leave,” Lucas insists. “They’re coming to collect her, and I told them, I told them that you’d come on board.”
“You told them where we are?”
“You think they wouldn’t have found us? It’s their house, Rey! They’ll be here soon. We just need to send Fern home, and get on with the job. Together.” A hopeful smile wavers on Lucas’ face. “I know it’s a lot to take in, I know I should have told you before, but I couldn’t ask a child to keep a secret like that, and then I kept putting it off… It’s not a bad deal, Rey, you’re young, you’re idealistic… The world doesn’t want heroes, you’ll see, the world is about who has power and who doesn’t.”
“Your world might be like that,” snaps Rehan, “mine isn’t.”
“This job is the only way for you to have a seat at the table. At any table. You’ll be a powerful man, don’t you get it? Or, you’ll be dead.” Somewhere, a phone rings. We ignore it, Lucas staring down his son, white-knuckled fingers clamped into Rehan’s coat as he searches for the right words. The phone rings on and on, until my fingers itch to answer it.
The puzzle pieces are fitting together by themselves now. But…
“Why did Forever try to run you over?” I ask conversationally from behind Lucas as the phone stops ringing. They both jump, like they’d forgotten I’m here.
They don’t even look at me as Lucas dismisses the question. “Rehan was freaking out about that car too, I was scared myself, it was a close run thing and in a job like ours, it’s easy to see conspiracy everywhere. But it was an accident, these things happen, no harm done.”
“Thanks to Fern!” Rehan adds, trying to prise Lucas’ fingers off him.
“And I am very, very grateful, Fern.” Lucas has a death-grip on Rehan’s jacket, and Rehan doesn’t know whether to keep struggling towards the front door or back away from it. “But we’ll never know who was driving that car—”
“It came from Forever,” I say. They both turn to stare at me. “I watched it drive out, I’ve seen it there loads, I know the reg. I thought you knew…”
Rehan whistles. “We do now. Well then, Dad? Still best friends with the Institute?”
Lucas’ face drains of all colour. “But I gave them back the data stick, I told them that no-one had read it.”
“That would be in the metadata,” Rehan says.
“They still have no reason to kill us, we’re too useful to them… Although if what was on the data stick was really bad, and they think we’ve read it… We have to leave. Right now.” He releases Rehan and bends to peer through the front door window.
“They’re here already,” Lucas says dully. I wonder what he saw. He stands, suddenly seeming older, his movements stiff. “Go up – high as you can, to the attic. The firewall’s thin, you can kick through. Go as far as you can through the attics, then away through one of the gardens. I’ll… Sort this out, I’ll call you later.”
“Dad… Come with us. Of course you have to come with us. Forget this, forget – everything, for now, but—”
“I need to slow them down. If you’re going, go!” He grabs a table from the living room and wedges it against the front door, leaving long scars along the wall on each side. As if by magic, there’s a gun in his hands.
“Dad, this is suicide…”
“Make it nineteen, then,” Lucas says. “Joking! Just go.” He takes up a position in between the hall and the living room, pointing his gun at the front door.
Lucas gives us a grin. “To be honest,” he waves at us to move, “I’ve always really
fancied telling them where to go. Now, you go! I might be able to talk them round.”
Rehan is shaking his head, but I grab his arm and pull him upstairs, leaving Lucas to his employers as we flee to the top floor. There’s a hatch in the ceiling which we open, tugging down a ladder, scrambling up into the attic, yanking the ladder in behind us and closing the hatch. We sprint to the firewall, where Rehan hurls his shoulder against the thin partition separating this house from its neighbour.
“Kick it!” I hiss at him.
“Bad ankle,” he grunts. “Need to be able to run.”
I forgot that he was injured. “Wait!” I tell him. He glances at me, then his eyes widen as I do a flying front kick at the firewall, punching through the plasterboard which puffs a cloud of white dust at us.
“Wha—” says Rehan.
I grab the edges of the plasterboard and start tearing until I have a hole big enough to climb through.
Somewhere below, a shot sounds. Rehan freezes. I reach back into the safe house and shake him until he follows me, through the hole, into the next attic, past old boxes and around a chimney stack into the next house. This time I don’t even hesitate, taking another flying kick at the next firewall, which crashes down even faster than the first.
House after house flashes by as we thunder through the attics of strangers. I wonder if they hear us.
My rampage through the row of houses ends at a brick wall. Barely pausing, Rehan wraps his sleeve around his fist and punches up through the rafters at the roof. The old Victorian roof tiles crumble like biscuit. We clamber through the hole and out into the night sky, slithering down to the next level of roof – thank god for London’s love of backyard extensions. Then Rehan jumps onto a water butt and crashes with it, rolling onto a lawn, instantly rising and turning, reaching up to catch me as I leap to him. Why am I always climbing off roofs with Rehan…
“Fern?” Arlo is sitting on the back garden wall, moonlight splashed across his face, a weapon resting on his knees that I recognise from our lessons as semi-automatic. Rose bushes gleaming around his ankles, he’s a prince in a dark fairy tale, and my heart sings to see him.
A Girl From Forever (The Forever Institute series Book 1) Page 8