by Terry Tyler
Have I been selfish, doing this? I think maybe I have; I was so single-minded that I didn't give much thought to how it would affect everyone else. I could say that living in the megacity doesn't bring out the best in people, but I don't want to make excuses for myself.
The doors between the two rooms slide open, and Yara walks out.
"We're ready for you."
She's not smiling.
Sloane nudges Colt, inclining her head towards me, and he detaches himself from her for long enough to lean over, squeeze my hand and wish me good luck. Pale words.
I follow Yara into a long room with computers, radios, filing cabinets, noticeboards with photos stuck on them, papers everywhere―a mess. Nothing like the paper-free offices of the sterile megacity. There are four people in here, three of them heads down behind ancient laptops and piles of files.
"This is Rae Farrer. The one looking for Martine, Lilyn and John. "
One of the four looks up, an extraordinarily handsome man of colour, who smiles and holds out his hand.
"Hi, Rae; I'm King. This is Thea, that's Q, and Ace."
Thea is a woman of about my age with fair hair in plaits, wrapped around her head. She gives me a brief smile, like it's a bit of an inconvenience. Next to her I see a head of untidy, shoulder-length brown hair belonging to the person called Ace, but he doesn't look up. On the right of King, a huge bear of a man stands and holds out his hand to me. He has a bald head, a black beard and neck tattoos, and looks nothing like anyone I've ever seen in the megacity. If he didn't look so friendly, I'd be wary of him.
"Q," he says. "Welcome."
I take his hand. "Can I ask what Q stands for?"
"You might as well, everyone else does. It's Quentin. And that's the last time we mention it, okay?" I am sure no one would be likely to disobey this instruction. "Thea says I should say it's short for Queen. So we'd be King, Queen and Ace, but I don't want anyone thinking I'm a fairy."
Thea looks up, raising her eyebrows. "We're not doing homophobic today, then."
I laugh. "That would get you reported if you lived in a megacity."
"I know." His smile shows gold teeth at the back. "I escaped from MC8 ten years ago. Used to work for a charity that administered the drop-ins, 'cept one day I just wandered off at the end of my shift, and never went back."
King says, "Okay, Rae―do you want the bad news first, or the good?"
I inhale so deeply that for a moment I feel like I can't breathe at all. "Bad, please. I want to know the worst. Are they alive?"
"Sit." He indicates a chair next to him. "There's actually bad, mediocre and good, but I won't string it out. I'm afraid your mother has been dead for some years." He swings his ancient monitor round to me.
Under a photo of a drained, tired-looking woman with messy, light brown hair, it says: Martine Farrer. DOB 13/7/04. DOD 23/10/43. Presumed heart attack.
She doesn't look like me. I thought I might know her face, somewhere deep inside me, but I don't. I could have passed her in the street and not known she was my mother. She carried me for nine months inside her, gave birth to me, fed me, loved me. How can I not know her? Thirty-nine. That's all she was. How can anyone die of a heart attack at the age of thirty-nine?
"Mum." I'm aware of an overwhelming sadness.
"I'm sorry." King turns back to his screen. "And, alas, there's no trace of your brother. Apparently he walked off one day when he was nine years old, and was never seen again."
I touch my hand to my heart. My mum and my brother. I've never known them, but I feel a sharp pang of loss. "D'you think he's dead, too?"
"There's no reason to think so. Most likely he was taken to a Hope Village. That used to be common practice―patrols from the MCs would wander the wasteland, picking up lone kids. Take them to the Hope Villages where, presumably, they would make sure they never had any kids of their own. That appears to have stopped in the last few years, though, which is a worry in itself." He glances over at the tatty head of Ace, who looks up. His face is serious, with intense dark eyes. He and King stare at each other for a moment.
I ask, "Why is that a worry?"
Ace fixes his gaze on me for a moment, then looks back down. "Any change of behaviour is a worry, as far as that lot are concerned."
King says, "It means there's a possible change of agenda, which is never likely to be good news for us." He smiles. "Anyway, never mind that now."
I stare at my brother's scant details on the screen. John Farrer. DOB 4/6/34. There is no picture. "Colt―my friend, he used to work at Locate―he looked up his date of birth in the Hope Villages, and in the linked off-grids."
"If he's in a Hope it's possible they've given him a new name, and he might have given them an incorrect date of birth, but the good news is that a surprisingly high number of abducted kids escape once they're older. Although we have no record of him in the wasteland it doesn't mean he's not around, somewhere, and it's definitely worth looking in the independent off-grids. He's twenty-seven now; he could be anywhere. You don't want to leave any stone unturned, do you?"
"No. I've got myself out here―I want to look everywhere I can."
"That's what I thought. Now, shall we have the good news?" Tap, tap, tap, and more details appear.
Lilyn Farrer. DOB 5/3/30. And this time there's a picture.
My sister.
She's so pretty. She has an elfin face and long, wavy, messy hair, a light brownish-gold colour. She looks lovely. I touch the screen, her face, and King smiles at me.
"She looks like you, doesn't she?"
I laugh. "Now you're just being kind."
"No, she does. She's living with her partner, Dan, in Waxingham, in Norfolk. Would you like to pay her a visit?"
"I'll take her," says Yara. "We'll shoot out to Waxingham, then do the off-grids, yeah? Should take four or five days, max."
While King and I were talking she was standing behind us, hands in pockets, proudly telling Q and a few others who've gathered in the room that, yes, she's persuaded me to join the Link network. "She wasn't too pleased with my recruitment methods, but she came around!" Chortling like she was right all along, and patting me on the shoulder as if it was okay for her to have me locked me up and treated to her insanity-by-music medley.
I get angry all over again when I look at her big, coarse face and her cocky stance, great big legs in their combat pants standing astride, and I think, I don't want to go anywhere with you.
"Could someone else take me?"
She pulls her hands out of her pockets and lifts them in a gesture of incomprehension. "The fuck?"
I look at King. "I'm sorry to be awkward, but is that possible? It's nothing personal; I just don't think our personalities gel very well."
Yara gives a bewildered splutter. "Who d'you think you are, little Miss Megacity Princess? Not gel very well, my arse! When you're on a Link job, you go with whoever I damn well put you with."
King gives me a hint of a smile, and mouths you're okay. "It's a fair request, Yara; I've told you before about your process."
Ace stands up.
"I've not got much on, I'll take her. I want to go up and see Vince, anyway."
I thank him with much genuine gratitude, to which I receive only a curt nod in reply.
"Well, thank you, Ace." Yara juts her heavy chin out at me. "I hope you realise how much everyone is putting themselves out for you?"
I just stare at her. "Of course I do. I never said I didn't."
"Don't give her a hard time, Yara," says Q. "This is what Link does; she doesn't owe us anything."
Ace shakes his hair out of his eyes. "The sister in Norfolk and the northern indie off-grids, right?" He's looking at King, not me; King nods, and turns to me.
"There's one in Norfolk, near your sister, two in North Yorks, and one in Cumbria. You up for it?"
"Oh―yes. Yes!" I feel Yara's presence at my back, silently reminding me of all of the effort being made on my behalf. "Are you sure there isn't
some way I can pay you for this?"
King smiles. "I'm sure you'll contribute in time, if you're going to work with us, but, like Q said, this is just what we do. We don't deal in money out here. We make our own fuel, we grow much of our own food, and we trade. We provide certain goods to certain people, and they provide us with stuff that we need."
"Oh―right!" I feel totally green; I know nothing of how the world outside my megacity bubble actually works.
King enters some data into his computer, then turns to me. "You never know, your sister might have already found your brother. You can shoot up and see our mate Vince up near Carlisle―he's Link active in the north―then, if you've had no luck, there are two more independents down south; you can come back, regroup, and we'll take you down there."
I flop back in my chair. "Thank you. Thank you." I look up at Ace, who's slinging a backpack over his shoulder, like he's ready to go. "This is all okay with you?"
He shrugs. "I offered." He doesn't look like he's going to be a very cheery companion. "You coming, then, or what?"
"Oh―yeah." I stand, feeling like something's missing; yep, it's my com. Not just that, though―all I've got are the clothes I stand up in. I haven't even got a clean pair of knickers and a toothbrush.
"Give her a minute to get sorted," says King, and turns to me. "We'll put together a pack of supplies for you. Yara said your friend Colt's supposed to be going with you, is that right? Ace, d'you want to take the van?"
Ace doesn't look pleased. "I thought it was just her and me. I was going to take the bike."
When I look for Colt, though, he's gone. I walk out to the front garden and see Mick, digging.
Mick, give her a shot, she's a feisty one.
He looks up at me, a bit sheepishly. "You okay?"
"Am now. Couldn't have said the same yesterday."
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that―Yara's methods are a bit over-zealous―"
"You don't say. Never mind, it's over now. D'you know where Colt is?"
He grins. "I saw him and Sloane eating each other's faces, and I told them to go get a room. So they did."
"I'm going off to find my sister. He was supposed to be coming with me."
Mick leans on his spade. "Good luck with that. I wouldn't want to be the one breaking the two of them up."
Great. Oh, what the hell; he never did want to come with me anyway, not really. Looks like it's just me and Mr Taciturn, then.
Dior finds me some stuff to take on the trip: a warm jacket, a change of underwear, a spare t-shirt, water, food―ready-meals and protein bars, mostly―and a few very basic toiletries.
"There are the drop-ins, but Ace won't use them."
"Oh? Why not?"
"Dunno. He won't take anything that comes from Nutricorp or the megacities. A fair few people feel like that, but they cave when times are hard, or when they need to visit a doctor; then, they justify it by saying their parents spent their lives paying into the system, which is fair enough. Not Ace, though."
Interesting. Anyway, it's time to go. I meet Ace in the hallway.
"We're going on the bike."
I smile. "A motorbike? I've never been on one."
"You're kidding." He rolls his eyes. "Do everything I say, then. And hold on tight."
I glance at King, for reassurance; I wish I was going with him, instead.
"You'll be okay." He kisses me on the cheek. In the megacity that would be illegal without consent, but out here it feels right and, oddly, makes my eyes water. "Best of luck, and I hope you find them."
Yara doesn't come out to say goodbye.
As we walk down the road to where Ace keeps his bike, I ask, "Is this your permanent home? Fennington, I mean?"
"Yeah."
"How many people live here?"
"Forty-odd."
He doesn't contribute anything else to the conversation.
I try again. "Is Ace your real name?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
Ouch. "'Cause it's so cool, I suppose. Like, the sort of name you might make up for yourself."
No reply.
"Do you have a surname?"
"Nah. Just Ace."
Fair enough. No reason why he should tell me.
He doesn't say anything else until I'm sitting on the bike; he instructs me to hold on tight. I'm thinking I should be wearing a helmet, but there doesn't appear to be one available; he hands me a thick woolly hat lined with some sort of thermal material, and a scarf, instead. And gloves.
"You'll need those. Don't let go of me, and don't fall off."
Chapter 17
Phase 10
Ezra Bettencourt scans the report. After two weeks of training, his operatives for Phase 10 will be ready to go on the appointed date. The carefully selected individuals arrived in tip-top physical shape, but the most tricky aspect is the mindset―thus, the intensive indoctrination programme and the mandatory memory erasure procedure afterwards. Meanwhile, the closure of the charity drop-ins has already begun. Ezra smiles; the idea of putting the wind up those freeloading bottom-feeders is almost too delicious to contemplate. The drop-ins have helped the rats flourish for too long.
He throws the report into the hungry log fire, and watches the flames devour it.
"Are you ready, Ezra?" Freya Wilson stands. "Shall we go into dinner?" She smiles at Caleb, and leads the way through to the dining room.
Ezra was delighted to be invited to dinner tonight, at the Bettencourt-Wilson town house in the Government Village of MC5―the part that can't be located on Earth Maps, that is. As far as the public is concerned, the PM resides in Downing Street, just as he or she has always done, but that location was long ago transformed into a stage for promotional media only. Even the news station shots of her walking out of the front door are computer generated.
If shit were ever to hit fan, if serious civil unrest ever took place, the PM would be safe; no one would know where she or her ministers could be found.
Now, dinner.
As the simple starter of moules marinière is served, Ezra informs his uncle and Freya of the success of the indoctrination programme.
Caleb Bettencourt raises a glass to him. "I made the right choice, Ezra. Some said you weren't suited to the job, but I knew otherwise."
For a moment Ezra feels the pain of resentment deep within his heart; who are these 'some' who doubted him? But never mind. What matters is proven results, not tittle-tattle and petty jealousies―and he has come through.
In decades to come, the wasteland will be seen as nothing more than a rough edge that was sanded down during the transitional period, a hangover from the old order.
By the end of the year, Phase 10 will be complete.
Chapter 18
Hope Village 9
One month earlier
Dylan grows more unhappy every day.
He curses the day that Lennox and his gang were transferred to Hope 9. Every morning the back of his neck is stiff with tension as soon as he wakes up and wonders if this will be the day when, somehow, he will fall foul of them and become a target.
He curses the day that swaggering Rocky arrived, too.
Wishes Emma loved him, not Rocky.
Rocky is buddies with Lennox's gang. On Sundays, they all sit at the big table in the community lounge. They play noisy card games, mock people, do blitz, smoke weed and drink alcohol, although the last three activities are against official Hope Village rules. Lennox and his crew don't care, and the care workers know better than to challenge them.
The older folk don't use the community lounge any more. They spend their Sundays in the canteen or the library, because they feel safer there.
"It's best to stay under their radar," says old Bob Hodges. "Don't get in their way, don't make eye contact, then they won't bother you."
But it's not so easy for Dylan. He wants to be with Emma, and Emma wants to be with Rocky, so on Sundays Dylan takes his place on her other side, around the Lennox table. He wants to keep her safe.
Not that he could do anything, if they decided to harm her. No one could. Lennox's crew have a total disregard for rules or human decency, and they know that, if asked how an arm got broken, how a cheek got slashed, no one will give them up. They know that even if they're caught, all they'll suffer is a week in the box, where the guards will turn a blind eye and allow their mates to bring in home comforts. A tablet to watch stuff on, weed, chocolate.
They don't care.
Once or twice they have killed, but the assailant has escaped incarceration. Self-defence, their lawyer pleads, backed up by Hope 9. The staff have heard the rumours about Lennox knowing where the governor lives, and are fearful that he has all their home addresses tucked away; they want to sleep easy in their beds at night.
Dylan hates Sundays. When the weather is good the Lennox gang play ball games, drink and smoke outside, so he can stay out of their way, but on rainy or cold days he can't escape them. Not if he wants to stay close to Emma.
"I know Rocky hangs out with them, but he's not in their gang," she says, often. "He wouldn't want to be, he's not like them. But he stays in with Lennox, 'cause it's the safest way―and by protecting himself he's protecting you and me, too!"
Dylan finds it hard to answer this. He knows that Rocky sells blitz for them, to the younger kids. Twelve- to fifteen-year-olds. Lennox gets it cheap if he buys in bulk off one of the Nutricorp delivery men―they make a good profit, and Rocky earns from this, too. It keeps him rich, by Hope Village standards.
Adult customers pay in digital currency or jewellery, gadgets, prescription drugs, expensive perfume; physical goods traded with various guards in return for favours. The kids pay in Hope Village credit tokens; coloured plastic disks that may be exchanged for food, vaping products, clothes, Nutri-cred, extra bedding and luxury items. The Hope Village underground network is one big black market.
Lennox chose Rocky to sell to the kids because they aren't scared of him; they like him, because he's always ready with a joke and a smile. They think he's on their side.
Sure he is. He gets them hooked on addictive drugs.