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

by Yolanda McCarthy

  The air in the room feels stale, air freshener more obvious, so I throw open a window and lean out into the night. I wish I could just slide out and fly away.

  There’s a figure in the street, looking at the hotel. It’s Lia. No – I’ve got to keep it together, I can’t keep seeing her everywhere. It’s surely just another girl who looks a bit like Lia.

  She sees me, and gives me a little wave.

  Lia walks away while I’m still staring. Anna. Anna! Lia tried to kill Anna before. Did she find Anna while I was out with Rehan? I rush to Anna’s room, but she answers the door, her face muddled with sleep and her hair as crazed as mine. I should probably tell her that we have to leave the hotel right now, but I can’t bring myself to do it. There’s little point anyway. Lia’s already been in, and taken what she wanted. If she’d wanted to kill, Anna would already be dead.

  “Can I sleep here?” I blurt out, and her face lights up like I’ve given her the best present ever. I fetch my blankets and climb into bed next to her. Soon she’s asleep again, a smile on her lips, and I watch her, listening to her breath slow.

  I know how she felt at the cottage, now. I don’t want to take my eyes off Anna, in case she disappears.

  So I look at the shadows underneath her eyes, the delicacy of her cheekbones. I never met anyone who looked so fragile. My friends and I had a lifetime of ‘self-defence’ – assassin training, I realise now. Rehan grew up with weapons. But Anna likes painting and gardens and lakes. She reminds me of who I might have been, in a different life. Except for her condition. Agoraphobia.

  In the silent darkness, everything seems very clear. I can’t drag Anna around the country for the rest of our lives. If I stay with Anna, Lia will always find Anna, too. Our safety depends on Lia’s mood – never the most stable thing, even before Lia was on drugs.

  I take Anna’s hand in mine, her fingers limp with sleep, her hand so thin. For the first time in my life, I’m not the weakest link in the room. I have someone to protect. Perhaps more than one person… I think of the Vol children, being born all around the country, perhaps all around the world, and of my friends being tricked into hunting them, drugged into becoming accessories to murder. How many Vol are there in the world? Dozens? Hundreds? More?

  I pull a pillow over my face, but the thoughts are still there. I’m the only person who knows what’s happening, apart from Rehan. I could tell people, the police, the media, but then what? Forever would have me locked up in a moment, or a quiet death when no-one’s watching. I can prove nothing.

  Then the solution strikes me. The Forever staff aren’t talented, that’s why they stole me and my friends. The problem isn’t Forever, it’s who they have working for them. If I can just get to my friends, rescue them, like they’re trying to rescue me – then we’ll all be safe, and so will those unknown children. Forever can’t find the Vol alone.

  I just want to run and hide until Forever give up. But they’ll never stop, and children are dying.

  I watch Anna’s sleeping face, and try to think of another way. But I don’t find one. I have to give her up.

  I roll away from Anna, as quietly as I can, and rush to the bathroom, where I vomit in the toilet.

  “I’m going back to Forever,” I whisper to my reflection when I’ve finished puking, hoping that she’ll tell me not to. But she doesn’t say anything at all. She just looks sad.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning, I tell Rehan that we’re leaving Anna in Scotland, and going to London to ask for KHH’s help against Forever. He’s delighted, and says little for fear that I’ll change my mind. Instead he’s on his phone, talking to some KHH guy, then making arrangements for Anna. I wish I could do that for her, but I don’t know this outside world well enough.

  Soon, we all check out of the hotel, Anna pleasantly oblivious to our plan as we fight through the Scottish wind towards the coach station, hampered by a ridiculous amount of bags. Rehan’s delight has faded and he’s now in a foul mood about the data stick and his tablet, furious with himself for leaving them there when we went out. In the light of day, we both blame Lia rather than some random hotel maid, and try not to freak out that she was so close to us. I ask if the police could get it back, but Rehan just laughs angrily and says that this is not the movies.

  We don’t tell Anna about Lia’s visit.

  I wonder if Rehan would have taken better care of the data stick and tablet if we hadn’t kissed. He was as distracted by it all as I was. Probably, we wouldn’t have even gone out, so I guess the kiss was a bit of a disaster all round. It’s weird to think he must regret kissing me.

  The wind smells of winter and change, chilling my fingers even more as I dump the bags at the coach station. I hand a parcel to Anna, asking her to hold it while I go to buy a snack. Anna is taking deep breaths, watching the pavement, too distracted by her agoraphobia to worry about us, to notice that the pile of luggage at her feet isn’t quite as big as it should be.

  And then we walk away from my mother.

  When she begins to wonder where we are, in five minutes or ten, she’ll look more closely at the parcel, see the letter I’ve left for her. Find the stack of money, and the address of a small cottage in Skye, on which Rehan has just paid a year’s rent. See my promise to meet her there when this is all over. I hope I’m not lying to her, but I’m pretty sure that I am.

  Already I want to run back to her, ask her to forgive me, promise never to leave again. But my feet keep on walking.

  I’m so sorry – mum.

  Rehan gets hold of another rental car. It’s even more uncomfortable than the last.

  Crying would be a release, but I just feel empty.

  Motorway cars flash by.

  “Do you want to stop?” asks Rehan, with a nod at the sea as we drive past.

  I shake my head.

  That kiss feels like it was between different people, in a different world. I don’t want to ask him about it and hear him tell me it was a mistake. It was but I wouldn’t mind making another mistake.

  I wish I hadn’t read so many of Geraldine’s romances. Sometimes I look at Rehan and wonder what he’d have been like in a different era. I picture him as a character from the books, as the tormented but sexy Duke, the noble Viking raider, the ravishing rake… Maybe if Viking raiders can live happily ever after with their abductees, it’s not so bad, what Rehan did.

  If he pulled over the car right now and kissed me, I wouldn’t mind. Anything to stop thinking about Anna standing at the coach station. Waiting.

  How long did she wait there? What happened when she realised that we weren’t coming back? Agoraphobic. Abandoned like a Christmas kitten. I hope the people around her were kind. I wish we’d thought of a better way to leave.

  Rehan’s tapping at the steering wheel, he’s edgy too.

  “I don’t think we should tell them who you are,” says Rehan, still watching the road. “KHH. Everyone who knew about the last operation is dead, which was basically the whole old guard, so we’ll be approaching the wider network, they’re too junior for Forever to have bothered recruiting when they already had – Dad. I hope.

  “I want to get them revved up against Forever, and I don’t want them distracted by a bunch of questions about you. They wouldn’t trust you if we told them you’re from the Institute, no matter why you were there. If this thing works, we can tell them afterwards.” And you’ll have proved yourself to them, he doesn’t say.

  “So who am I?”

  “You pick.”

  I shrug. “Some girl you picked up last week?”

  He smiles. “And we’re not even lying.”

  “And, we’ve been away for a couple of nights in Edinburgh.”

  “Why were we there?” he asks.

  “Because you thought it was romantic.”

  “Did you agree?” he asks.

  “Not really.”

  “If we say that, I’m pretty sure no-one will ask us any more questions. Although they might buy
me a drink.”

  KHH. What do I want from it? What does it want from me? Forget Rehan and his agenda, I need to start thinking about my own.

  “I want to rescue my friends,” I say suddenly.

  He nods. “Of course.”

  “I mean I just want to rescue my friends. That will stop Forever from being able to find Vol children, right? I don’t want to start some massive unwinnable fight against Forever.”

  “You’re already in a fight with Forever.” He’s not getting it.

  “What do KHH want? What do you want?” I ask.

  He glances over. “I want to help you. And I want to stop Forever.”

  “Stop them from what?”

  “Just stop them,” he says distantly, eyes back on the road.

  “So you’re ok with helping me get my friends out, and leaving it at that? KHH will help with that, leave it there?”

  “Of course we’re not going to leave it there. I can’t get everyone revved up just for that. This is the big one, we’ll only get one shot at a full attack before they plug their main weaknesses.”

  “Forever doesn’t have any weaknesses.”

  “They’re sitting in an old power station by the river, built for a purpose everyone’s forgotten. Of course they have weaknesses. Arrogance, for one. Anyway, I’m going to find out. I’m going after the serum stores, the manufacture, the inventor, his records. That’s what will get KHH on board with everything they have.”

  Wow. When he said stop Forever, he meant stop them being Forever.

  “They don’t manufacture it anymore, they’re not allowed,” I point out.

  “They’re not allowed to steal children, or kill them, but they do.”

  “You can’t just uninvent the serum.”

  “Why not? There’s political appetite for it already, but the Government’s too weak to move against Forever because they need its money. But if the inventor died, if Forever had to start again, now that people know about the serum… Things would be different.”

  My dream of a peaceful life with my friends and Anna on a remote Scottish island is zipping away past the window faster than the traffic. If Rehan really kills John and destroys the serum lab, whatever’s left of Forever will never stop hunting him, me, everyone involved. Rehan would have to kill them all to stop that.

  “That’s crazy. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  “Don’t you? What about the boss? It was probably his idea to take you, to tell Anna you were dead.”

  I picture John’s cold blue gaze, musing on my failures as he watched me grow up. “I’m not a murderer,” I say firmly.

  He lets out a long, slow breath. “I’ve waited a long time for this and I’m not wasting this chance now.”

  “What chance?”

  “You know.” He waves a hand at me.

  “That’s what I am to you, aren’t I? I thought you’d stopped using me after what happened to your Dad, but it’s all the same thing, let’s use Fern to get at Forever, tell her anything to get her on side. How can you expect me to go along with everything you say? What kind of person gets a load of immortality serum and just – destroys it, anyway? Do you want the serum, is that it?”

  He yanks the car across to the slow lane, then parks on the hard shoulder as lorries roar past us.

  I look at the lorries, so close. “Is this safe?”

  “No, it isn’t, and no it’s not allowed either, but it’s safer than driving while we have this out. Do you really believe that I’m using you?” He looks really angry. “What more do I have to do to make things up to you? So I lied to you, when you were in the Institute. I pretended to have feelings for you. I manipulated you, but you know what, Forever and my Dad manipulated me, too. I haven’t lied to you since. I didn’t have a choice and I apologised.”

  “But you did have a choice. You could have told me what was going on, asked for my help.”

  “I didn’t choose the plan – look, it was all a set up by Forever, anyway, remember? Why are you so angry at me all of a sudden?”

  “Because you’re doing it again! Using me to get into Forever, to try to kill a lot of people! No-one’s manipulating you this time. And I’m sorry, but it just seems really unlikely that someone would grab a load of immortality serum and then destroy it.”

  “That’s what you think of me is it? That I’m jealous of Forever, that I want to be one of the serum-swillers? Well, I don’t, I like my DNA the way it is, I guess that’s hard for you to understand. What are you saying, you’re not going to help KHH get in? If we hit it as hard as I want to, we can get in on our own, Dad always held us back before, wanted to be careful, now I know why. All you have to do is help us understand what’s inside so we use the time effectively and keep casualties down. You don’t want to help, we’ll go in anyway. You don’t have to help kill anyone for goodness sake.”

  “If I help you and they die, it’s the same thing.” Why doesn’t he get it?

  “Do you want the serum, is that it?”

  “What?”

  “Until a few days ago you thought you were immortal, it would be understandable –”

  “No I don’t!” Immortality. It feels like me, I’ve always thought it was me. Perhaps I do want it. If I say no, do I have the right to say that for my friends? Does he? Because I bet a few people in KHH would feel differently about being a ‘serum-swiller’ if they got the chance.

  Rehan glances in the rear-view mirror as a police car pulls over behind us. “Great.” He glances at me. “You felt sick, ok? We pulled over because you felt sick.”

  “Sick of lies,” I snap.

  “You want to get arrested?”

  A policeman taps on the window and Rehan rolls it down. “You can’t stop here, sir.”

  “I’m really sorry officer, my friend felt sick.”

  The policeman glances at me with disinterest. I’m still fuming, I probably do look ill. “Well unless she needs an ambulance, you’ll have to take her to a service station, the hard shoulder is for emergencies only.”

  He lets us go with a stern lecture about motorway rules and how a lorry could easily have hit us. Rehan drives on.

  I guess there won’t be any more kissing. Good.

  I pretend to doze, and eventually the lie becomes real.

  My dreams tangle together the scent of wet grass at the stone circle, the smile in Rehan’s voice, the heat in my blood as I lay in bed at the Institute, the fierce strength of my mother’s arms, the taste of the sea on my lips, and through it all, the very real hum of the car, vibrating against my skull as it carries me back to Forever.

  When I wake, the only thing that stays with me is the grief. I’m not sure what it’s for.

  I’m awake just in time to watch London appear on the Horizon, getting bigger and bigger until it swallows me up. I can see the Institute’s four towers, black against the grey sky.

  I’m going back to Forever.

  I’m not going to survive it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It’s barely five o’clock, but the sun has slipped below London’s horizon, and the light left behind is pale and weak. It’s a world of growing shadow that I climb into as I leave the car, and it smells of burning and frost.

  The car door thuds shut behind me. I take a few steps down the street, following Rehan. Somewhere to my right, a distant explosion sounds, and I freeze.

  Rehan glances back. “Bonfire night,” he mutters.

  Bonfire night. I’d forgotten. We didn’t celebrate festivals at the Institute, but after lights out, no-one could stop me from sitting at my window and watching London’s sky shatter into showers of stars. I search the sky for sparkles, but it’s too early, most people haven’t started their displays yet. So I scurry after Rehan, into an alley that leads to the brick warehouse where KHH have agreed to meet us.

  “It’s a new location,” Rehan tells me. “Dad didn’t know of it.” He’s started using past tense for Lucas.

  The building in front of us is hu
ge, an old warehouse. Its brick walls have no windows that I can see, and the door itself is black and battered, repainted over the last century by a handful of people who each cared less about the paintwork than the last.

  I drop behind Rehan as we approach. Although I asked for this meeting, the last time I met KHH I was a prisoner, and memories are hard to shake. Echoes of cable-ties dig into my wrists. I wrap my arms around my chest.

  I wonder what Anna is doing right now.

  We knock, and a bald man in his fifties opens the door cautiously. When he sees us, he throws the door wide and yanks Rehan into a hug, the tattoos on his forearms an indistinguishable bruise-like blur. “Sorry to hear about your Dad,” he mutters to Rehan’s shoulder. “Great man. Great man.”

  Rehan stiffens, and I wait for him to name Lucas a traitor, or ask how they know what happened. Whether they found Lucas’ body.

  Rehan doesn’t say anything, and returns the hug. I stand, awkward. This is not my world.

  We walk in, and everywhere it’s the same, hugs and condolences and a lie of omission from Rehan. I trail behind him, but although I get a few curious looks, no-one bothers to greet me, KHH are used to not asking questions.

  At the centre of the building lies an over-sized room made of concrete and grime, with a triple-height ceiling constructed for long dead machinery.

  I’m tiny as we walk towards the centre, where men and women of every age are waiting for us, scattered around the room, on chairs, standing, lolling on the floor… All jeans and leather jackets and a smug, aggressive brand of cool. So, this is the big bad KHH. It’s bigger than I thought, a hundred people maybe, even after the recent deaths. No wonder Forever took control of the leader.

  I’m really glad they don’t know where I’m from.

  When Rehan gets to the middle of the room, he halts. I try to drift off to the side, but he takes my hand and holds it firmly, and I realise that I have no idea what he’s going to say.

  “You know who I am,” he says to the quietening room, “and most you know that two days ago, our leader, my father, was murdered by Forever. You don’t know how. You don’t know why.” Rehan looks down, though whether from sadness or for dramatic effect, I can’t tell. Then he looks up, eyes clear and resolute.