by Angie Sage
I lie back in the softness of my nest, which is made, should you be interested, from six duvets. I have only polyester fillings, for feathers are treacherous things. One can go all day with a small feather stuck into the top on one’s antenna with not one friend telling you about it and then feel an utter fool in the evening when at last you catch sight of it in the mirror. I hear that you Wingless have the same problem with spinach and teeth, although I believe this is confined to the older ones.
I would like to go back to sleep, but every time I close my eyes I see Minna Simms’s goldfish eyes staring at me. It is enough to give one nightmares. So I sit up, place Mama’s teapot back upon its cushion and gently unfurl my antennae from their sleeping pouches while I try to work out why I find Minna Simms so very unpleasant.
Slowly, the quietness of the house intrudes upon my musings. Wingless humans are noisy creatures—especially you young ones—and yet it feels so calm, almost as if no one is here. A niggle of worry makes me roll out of my nest—from the non-teapot end, naturally. I stretch to free up the carapace plates, settle my wings and go out onto the landing. I stop and listen. To my relief I hear snuffly sleep-breathing from the room opposite. I nudge open the door and peer inside. The younger one with the injured foot lies deeply asleep, curled up beneath his blankets. It is his breathing I hear. But in the corner beneath the eaves I see that the nest of blankets where the older one was sleeping is empty.
A feeling of dread steals over me. I imagine the Vermin getting free, creeping up the stairs and taking his prey. A twinge in my underwing reminds me that my Wingless girl, young Kaitlin Drew, is a fighter and I tell myself I am being foolish, for surely I would have heard something? But the twinge also reminds me that my Kaitlin Drew is impulsive. I suspect she woke early, became bored and is now exploring the house. I expect she has been held prisoner belowground in those vile crew quarters for months and she is now relishing her freedom. Feeling thankful that she clearly had the wit to keep out of the way of Minna Simms, I set off down the stairs in search of her.
Ha. I can feel you watching me and I think you know something I do not. What is it? My descent through the five floors of my dear, tall house is accompanied by an increasing feeling of dread. And when I reach the basement and look along the shard-strewn passage to see the door to the Underground hanging wide open, I want to sink to my knees and cry.
The Vermin has taken my Kaitlin Drew—I know it has. And all I can do is imagine her terror and despair.
Chapter 12
Family Matters
K
I go back the way I came—with a brother. The route is virtually the same as yesterday evening—all that has changed is the brother. Tomas has put a cable tie around my wrist and attached it to his belt with a thin and very flexible steel cord. He has said nothing to me at all. He met my eye once and that was by mistake. He could not look away fast enough.
We must present a strange picture: an Enforcer in full shimmering CarboNet, his shoulders bloody and torn from a Roach lift, with a bedraggled SilverSeed clipped to his belt. Tomas has thrown back his head covering to reveal his bruised forehead, tangled dark curls and steely-gray eyes that glint with excitement. He seems proud of who he is and strides confidently along the alleyways, daring anyone to defy him.
We walk quickly and in silence and all I can think of is Jonno waking up and finding himself alone in a strange house with a Roach. He doesn’t know Maximillian like I do and he’ll be terrified. Maybe I should tell Tomas that Jonno is still alive. Then we could go and get him, and Jonno would be thrilled to come back to his precious crew. But I know I mustn’t do that. Jonno may not appreciate it now, but he has a chance to live his life in freedom, not imprisoned beneath the ground. And Maximillian will help him, I am sure of that.
I look up at the tall buildings that rear up on either side of us, their red and yellow bricks blackened by smoke from illegal coal fires, their windows thick with grime because who wants to waste precious water cleaning windows? Some are what Dad called “well curated” with vegetables and fruits growing in every possible container—nets, bins, buckets, bags that dangle from the windowsills and even fruit bushes poking up from behind roof parapets. Many are empty but even so I get the distinct feeling of being watched. I scan the windows, hoping to find a friendly face, but all I see is a twitch of curtains or a shadow drawing away. The early morning brightness is fading now and a chill mist is dropping down from the Orb. I watch it settle on the tops of the houses and slowly creep downward so that soon it feels as though we are walking through a dark canyon miles deep. I begin to feel cold, but I am determined not to shiver. I refuse to give Tomas any reason to think I am scared.
We pass people heading off to small workshops hidden in the backstreets, a few unregistered children on their way to their secret schools and a trickle of shoppers making their way toward a sad-looking market, which I glimpse down a side street. People react in different ways. Some see us and pretend they haven’t. They look away, stare at the ground or suddenly have the need to rummage in their bag. Two children run off crying, a young man flattens himself against the wall with his eyes closed and three girls stop dead in their tracks and gasp, hands flying up to cover their faces. But one thing remains constant—no one wants to make eye contact.
We have just entered the wide alleyway—Dog Leg Dive—that will take us all the way to the Bartizan, when an elderly disheveled woman comes out of a doorway. She stops and watches us approach. Tomas stares straight ahead, but I catch her eye and she holds my gaze and gives me an infinitesimal nod of encouragement. As we draw level I see her very deliberately take a catapult from inside her sleeve and—this happens so fast I hardly see it—she draws back the sling and sends a sharp stone flying. It catches Tomas on the back of his head. Tomas’s hand flies up to where the stone hit and he wheels around, but the woman is gone, melted into the shadows of the house. I am so impressed by her bravery. I know Tomas wants to chase after her but he has me tied to him like a weight and I pull away, refusing to move. And so, with blood trickling down his neck, I see him scan the building for its number.
“He’s got your number!” I yell out. “Take care. They’ll come for you!”
Tomas slaps my face. “Shut up,” he snarls.
I’m shocked. But I know that up there somewhere the woman is looking down at me, willing me to fight just like she did. Maybe I’m just showing off to her or maybe she’s given me courage, but whatever the reason is, I swing around and land a punch where I know it’s going to count—on Tomas’s shoulder. Tomas yelps. His hand flies from the back of his head to his shoulder and I see fresh blood oozing through the claw holes in the CarboNet. I feel a twinge of guilt and then tell myself not to be so silly. “You always were a bully,” I tell him.
“And you always were an interfering little brat,” he says through gritted teeth.
From the windows above I sense the woman watching; she must be wondering about the turn this has taken. Tomas gives a sharp tug on my cord and I pull back. “You should never have come through here,” I tell him. “I have friends looking out for me. I suggest you let me go now and run for it. You’re not going to get out of here otherwise.”
It was a good try but it doesn’t work. “We’ll see about that, won’t we,” he says and he sets off fast, his hand still clamped onto his shoulder. My cord tugs at me and I have no choice but to follow. The weird thing is that now Tomas can’t stop talking. It’s as if my punch has dislodged something inside him.
“You think you know it all, don’t you?” he says, breathless as he strides along. “But you don’t know the half of it, Kaitlin. You have no idea.” He pulls angrily on my cord. “You think I like doing this, do you?” Tomas asks, not giving me a chance to reply. “Well, I don’t. But you’re so self-obsessed I don’t suppose you think about me at all. So I’m telling you, I did this,” he says, stabbing his finger onto his triangular Enforcer badge—that for some reason has the initials T.M. embroidered on it�
�“for the family.”
I laugh. “Yeah, yeah,” I say. “And the sky is blue. I don’t think so.” And then a rush of terror changes my laugh into a weird hiccup. Because rearing up above the rooftops, blurred by the mist, I suddenly notice the dark, angular shape of the Bartizan tower. It is so close I feel I could reach out and touch it.
Tomas looks at me quizzically. He decides I am upset about Jonno. “Poor Jonno,” he says, shaking his head. “Poor little kid.”
It takes me a moment to remember that Jonno is meant to be dead. “I don’t want to think about it,” I tell Tomas. It’s true, I don’t want to think about Jonno, about how he’s all alone now and probably scared out of his brain. And also I can’t quite remember what I said.
“Okay. Yeah. I get that,” Tomas says and I’m sure I hear him sniff. We are walking past an open door to a tiny café and the smell of frying bacon is drifting out. Bacon is a rarity, there aren’t many pigs about, but it was something Dad often managed to get hold of for Sunday breakfast. Suddenly, Tomas stops and looks at me just like he used to. His eyes are full of tears. Are they for Dad or Mom or Jonno or me, I wonder? Or just for himself? There are so many of our family to cry for. “Kait,” he says, “how about a last breakfast together?”
I stare at him. “Breakfast? With you? Are you crazy?” I say. But I do not resist when he leads me into the darkness of the café, redolent with coffee, bacon and fresh-baked bread, and heads toward a small table at the back, with two ladder-backed chairs, a red-checked cloth and a daisy in a pot.
T
I sit down at the table farthest from the door, taking care to have my back to the wall and a good view of the alley outside, as we are trained to do. My sister sits opposite me, confusion written all over her face. She perches on the edge of her chair and places both hands upon the table in full view so that all can see the cable tie around her wrist and the steel cord running from it to my belt. She wants to make it clear that she has not chosen my company.
There is a high counter with a door behind it, and from the depths of its shadows I see the café owner staring at us. Tomas, you idiot, I tell myself. What are you doing? Take her back and get it over with. But I can’t do it. Not yet. I will, of course I will. But just not yet.
The café owner creeps out from behind his bunker, sizing up the situation. He’s a large man, florid and sweaty, and he holds his hands clamped tightly together in an effort to stop them shaking. Which is not successful. This is a typical reaction to my Enforcer uniform. In fact, this is the only reaction I get: no smiles, no banter, and no one ever asks how I am or tells me what they think of the weather—a preoccupation in our city. I am not a person anymore. I am an agent of terror.
The man gives my sister a look of pity as he gathers the courage to speak to me. “Good morning, sir. What can I do for you?” he asks.
“Two bacon sandwiches and two coffees, please,” I say.
I see a flicker of surprise cross his features when I say “please.” “With pleasure, sir,” he says. He runs the back of his hand across his forehead in obvious relief, then hurries away and disappears through the door behind his counter.
We are left staring at each other, Kaitlin and I. “We should talk,” I say, knowing as I say it how lame it sounds.
She glares at me.
“I just want to explain. So you know the truth,” I tell her.
“Tomas, you wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the butt,” she says. That’s my mouthy sister for you.
I persist. “I want you to know that I didn’t betray you. In fact, I tried to save you.”
“Yeah, right,” she says, waving her cable-tied wrist in my face. “And this is just a fancy bracelet? I don’t think so. I know what happened, Tomas. You walked out on us to join the Enforcers. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.”
“I did it to save us,” I tell her. “I figured that if I was part of the system, I’d get to know if they were after you. And then I could warn you. Honestly, Kait. Please believe me. I really thought I could do that.”
We both stare at the tablecloth. Then she looks up at me and the expression in her eyes is so full of hate it makes me curl up inside. “Well, that didn’t work out too well, did it?” she says. “Anyway, I don’t care what your stupid reasons were. All I know is that you, in your dinky uniform, brought two Bartizan thugs to our hiding place and you . . . you took our mother away.”
This hits me in the stomach like a punch. How does she know? I was hooded and voice-screened. I get my breath back and say, “Kaitlin. Listen to me, please. I didn’t bring them; they brought me. They knew exactly where to go. They knew because the Bartizan was tracking our family. We were at the top of the Persons of Interest list. I saw it.”
Kaitlin stares at me, gimlet-eyed. “I don’t care about a stupid list. All I care is that you took Mom away. I saw you, Tomas. You cuffed her hands. You did that. You didn’t have to. But you did it.”
“But I did have to,” I whisper. “I was ordered. They made me do it.” Oh, I know how bad this sounds. And I can’t bear to think of Mom and the way she looked at me when I was doing it. She knew it was me.
“And I know what they did to Mom,” Kaitlin whispers. “I asked Dad and he told me. They Astroed her.”
I can’t reply. We sit in silence. I smell the bacon frying but I’m not feeling hungry anymore. “It’s not all my fault,” I say eventually.
“Shut up, Tomas,” Kaitlin snaps back.
“But it’s not,” I insist. “There was a big secret in our family that Mom and Dad never told us. And that is why all this . . . this stuff . . . has happened to us.”
“Yeah, Tomas. Blame Mom and Dad. Blame anyone but yourself,” she says.
“I’m not blaming them. I’m just telling you, that’s why our family is in pieces. It’s why they had to leave our little house by the farm. It’s why I had to split with Mattie. It’s why the Bartizan tracked you down. And when you, Jonno and Dad escaped from the basement and hid out with those Rats in that filthy hut down by the old mill, that is why they went to all the trouble of ambushing Dad. And then taking you and Jonno away. Our whole family was on their hit list.”
“Did you take Dad too?” Kaitlin asks quietly.
I shake my head. “No. It was my day off.” I see at once this is a stupid thing to say. Even though it is true.
My sister splutters with anger. “Oh, they give you days off from rounding up your family, do they? Well, isn’t that nice of them?”
“Katie . . . ,” I begin.
“You have no right to call me Katie.” She spits the words like venom.
“All right, then, Kaitlin. You know I named my crew after you: Kilo Tango. KT, get it? Like Jonno writes—I mean used to write—your name.” I stop and gulp. Poor Jonno. Poor little boy.
But Jonno doesn’t seem to bother Kaitlin at all. She’s harder than I realized. “Well, thank you, Tomas,” she says. “I feel so much better now.” Heavy sarcasm was always Kait’s favorite way to fight.
I sigh. “Look, whatever you think, it was just horrible bad luck that I was on the mission for . . . for Mom. And then for you and Jonno last night. You see, they don’t know who I am. I didn’t give them my real name. I’m not that stupid.”
“So what name did you use?”
I point to my initials on my badge: T.M. “Marne. Dunno why but it felt kind of right.”
Kaitlin is staring at me, aghast. “Tomas. You total dumbo pickle-head. You idiot numpty-brain. What a stupid, stupid name to choose.”
I frown. “I thought it was a good name. Like I said, it felt right. Kind of comfortable.”
She laughs, but not in a good way. “You know why it felt right? Because that was Dad’s old name. His real name.”
I stare at Kaitlin, dumbstruck. “What do you mean, Dad’s real name?”
“Matthew Marne. It’s in his old college books, duh. The ones you couldn’t be bothered to read. I asked him about it once.”
&nbs
p; “I bet that was a waste of time,” I say. “He never told me anything.”
But it seems Kaitlin got more out of Dad than I ever did. “He said Marne was from another life,” she says slowly. “Before I was born. I asked, ‘Was it before Mom too?’ and he looked kind of awkward and said, ‘No, not exactly.’ And then he said that our name was Drew now and I must completely forget about Marne. So, Tomas, I think they know exactly who you are. You’re just a pawn in their game.”
I feel winded. Like I’ve been knocked to the ground. I know at once that she’s right. I see now that the mission for Mom was a test of loyalty. And it is true, they did make me put the cuffs on her. I was hanging back in a real state about what was happening and the mission commander pulled me forward and ordered me to do it. I cannot believe I’ve been so naive. Pickle-head and numpty-brain doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I groan and put my head in my hands. To my surprise I feel Kaitlin’s hand rest lightly on my arm. “But why have they got it in for us?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Mom and Dad knew, but they wouldn’t tell me.”
“You asked them? So you knew something was wrong?”
I nod. “Yeah. That’s why I left. You remember? The day after your birthday?” She looks surprised that I remember her birthday. “I was out the back sitting behind the toolshed, reading, when I heard Mom talking in the kitchen. It was her tone of voice that I noticed—she sounded terrified. So I crawled over and listened in the lettuce bed under the window. I didn’t catch it all but she was going on about someone being inducted. And that it was the end for us all. Dad made this awful, terrified groaning sound and I was so spooked. They seemed to be talking about some woman who had suddenly gotten power over our whole family. Mom called her a monster and Dad wanted to give himself up in exchange for our safety but Mom told him no. She said he knew perfectly well that she would never rest until she’d destroyed us all. They were quiet after that, so I risked a quick look through the window. They were like a statue, clasping one another. Petrified.”