Jay pulls back. “Yeah, yer right. I’d forgotten about that.” There’s a tremor in his voice.
“You’d forgotten?” My attempt at sarcasm fails and my voice shakes even more than his.
“Not forgotten the raid, obviously …”
Just forgotten those who’d died. Gang members die every month. But there were nine who didn’t make it back from the raid and it was only a month ago. Still, apart from that, the raid had been a success. It was the first time anyone in this part of the city had attacked a government depot and actually come away with stuff. Food. Weapons. If it hadn’t been for that one guard who managed to somehow get the barrier working again, we’d have got even more. And those kids would still be alive.
The raid had been Jay’s plan. Or, at least, that’s what he’d been made to believe. I suspect Murdoch and the Chain were behind it. The guy with the brains behind the plan, who Jay had “recruited”, was one of theirs. But telling Jay that would mean explaining about Murdoch and admitting I was working for the Chain as well as the Snakes. And then he’d get mad.
“Let’s just stay away from it, okay?” I scoot back from the edge, but Jay doesn’t move.
“Have you ever heard about tunnels under the Wall?”
“Nope. Who’s been spreading rumours now?”
He shrugs. “I overheard someone on the street talking about it the other week.”
“Maybe there are tunnels,” I start carefully, “but most of them would have been flooded in the Great Flood, and even if they’re dry, they must be hundreds of years old. More than likely they’ve caved in, or are about to.”
Jay smiles wryly, giving me a gentle shove. “Always got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”
I smile back and shove him harder. “Someone’s got to think through your crazy plans before you go off and get yourself killed.”
“Well, how about you use that great brain of yours to figure out a plan to get us into that place.” He pushes me again, but I’m still off balance. I teeter, my limbs flailing dangerously close to the shimmering Wall as I try to stop myself falling.
“Hey!” Jay’s voice carries a trace of alarm and he reaches out to grab me, but he misjudges the movement and knocks me instead, and it’s enough to tip me off my precarious stance. The slick fabric of my top slips through his fingers. There’s a scream, and I realize it’s coming from me, but it sounds so far away. Time slows and it feels as if I’m floating down, not falling. Bright colours dance across my eyes and I see nothing apart from the Wall.
“Oww!”
I roll once, twice, three times. Pain shoots through my left shoulder and there’s the iron-tang of blood in my mouth. My breath comes in gasps. Colours still flash across my vision like bolts of lightning. I close my eyes.
What’s happening? Am I dead? Surely, if you’re dead you’re not supposed to feel pain?
I open my eyes. Cobblestones. Clean cobblestones. Almost gleaming. I run a finger over them. Gritty and rough. But no shards of glass, no empty chocco wrappers or old rat bones. No puddles of mud or vomit.
Hardly daring to breathe, I push myself up, ignoring the flash of pain at my elbow and shoulder, and look around. Towering above me is the Wall, the nearest mast visible along the long, narrow street.
In front of me are old-fashioned, brick-built houses. I take a step forward. “I’m alive.” My words ring out in the silence. Somehow, miraculously, I am alive. And what’s more, for the first time in my life, I’m Inside the Wall.
Chapter 2: Trey
“Goldsmith, are you paying attention?” Mr Peters frowns at me over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses.
I jerk upright in my seat. “Y-yes, sir!”
My cheeks burn as I realize my entire history class is looking at me. They’re probably thinking I fell asleep again. Tired out from rugby practice, unlike the rest of the boys who seem to have boundless energy. Sometimes, I wonder if my parents paid for any genetic enhancements at all for me.
The truth is, I’d been distracted by a strange tingling sensation in my right forearm. I examine it as Mr Peters goes back to droning on about the refugee crisis of the 2050s. It looks normal. The tingling disappears and is replaced by a throbbing as if my pulse has been magnified a hundred times.
My arm moves two inches to the right. A moment later, it twitches again and moves back to the left. Am I going crazy?
I stare in horror as my forearm begins to flop limply from side to side like a fish out of water. Every five seconds. Like an independent limb.
Flip. Flop.
It feels odd, like there’s an invisible puppet string attached to my wrist, reaching up through the ceiling to an unknown puppeteer. I lift my arm experimentally. It responds to my mental command, as if there’s nothing really wrong with it. Then my wrist jerks back.
Others begin to notice. At first, there are just a couple of nervous titters and a few sidelong glances. No one wants to draw attention to themselves. Peters’ detentions are the worst. I push my hand into my desk, tensing the muscles in my forearm, willing them to stay still. One. Two. Three. Four—
The spasm throws my arm into the air. It lands with a thud back on the wooden desk. A ripple runs through my elbow. The next time, my whole arm moves, like a shockwave rippling through my muscles. There’s a slight tingling sensation in my arm, a bit like the sensation you get when you knock your funny bone. I wonder if I’ve somehow trapped a nerve.
“What are you playing at?” Theo leans over to hiss in my ear. “Surely, you don’t want detention again?”
“I’m not doing anything,” I mutter back under my breath. Should I excuse myself, say I’m not feeling well? Nerves grip my stomach. Heat rises in my cheek. What’s happening to me?
The sniggers are louder now. Chairs scrape as my classmates turn to look. Smythe seems to have developed a coughing fit at the back. Mr Peters is still gazing into the holo. “The geopolitics of the time and lack of strong leadership from the major world economic players resulted in the failure of the Berlin Refugee Summit to find a solution to the migration problem,” he says.
I lift my arm, but at that moment it jerks so violently that I end up slapping myself in the face.
It is too much for the class. I think Jones is the first to break, or perhaps it’s Branson, but the rest of the class follows quickly, unable to contain their mirth. Mr Peters spins around, his eyes narrowed.
“What is going on, boys?”
I hate the way he calls us boys, as if we were still in prep school, not in our final year.
My arm chooses that moment to spasm again. A bubble of hysterical laughter rises in my throat. Must not smile. But just thinking that makes the corners of my lips start to twitch. I grab my right hand with my left and push it down between my legs, meeting Mr Peters’ gaze.
“Is there something wrong, Goldsmith?” He punctuates each word with a trace of sarcasm. He has a well of it. I can read his thoughts. Detention. Maybe a trip to the Head. A letter home.
“N-no, sir.” Damn this stutter. Deep breaths. A wave travels up my arm, each muscle fibre passing the movement on to the next. Up to my shoulder and back down again.
What is happening to me?
“Is there something wrong with your arm, Goldsmith?” He walks over so he is standing in front of my desk. His cold eyes, so pale they’re almost white, stare down at me. “Put your hands on the desk where I can see them.”
I hesitate for a moment, squirming in my chair. My face is burning.
“Now!”
I place my hands palm down on the desk. Both of them are trembling. How long has it been since the last spasm?
Mr Peters reaches out, and at that moment I feel my muscle fibres twitch. My forearm jerks upwards, knocking his arm aside. The laughter in the classroom dies and suddenly I’m enveloped in silence. I feel the blood draining from my face through my chest to my feet. I grab my arm before it spasms again. It writhes in my grip like it’s trying to break free of my body. I stare a
t the desk, not daring to look up.
“Go and report to the medic, Goldsmith. Johnson, go with him.”
Glancing up, I see Peters has already turned to walk back to the front of the class.
“And the rest of you will stay behind for an extra fifteen minutes.”
There is a collective groan. The feeling of relief fades. Great, now I’ll be in everyone’s bad books. I keep my head down as I walk to the door, avoiding the scowls of my classmates. As I pull open the door I glance back toward Peters, who is standing back in front of the holo. He catches my eye briefly and shock ripples through me.
His face is white and drawn, as if he’s seen a ghost, and he looks as though he’s aged ten years in the space of a minute. In that split second, I realize that he knows what this is. And from the look on his face, it isn’t good.
* * *
Theo’s footsteps pound the corridor behind me as he hurries to catch up. I want to keep running, to tell him to go away and leave me alone to deal with this thing, but he’s one of the few people I’d count as a friend. I slow to a walk.
“You’ll apologize to the guys from me, Theo? I can’t believe Peters gave everyone detention. And right at the end of the week, too.” Unlike me, Theo is popular with our classmates. He does well in classes and is good on the rugby pitch — both things I come pretty much bottom in. I sometimes wonder why he hangs around with me at all.
“Sure, but I don’t think they’ll mind. That was the most hilarious thing I’ve seen all week!” He nudges my arm conspiratorially. “How did you do it? It looked like all the bones in your arm had disappeared!”
My arm chooses that moment to spasm again and whacks his left arm.
“Hey, man, cut it out! We’re out of class now.” He rubs his arm.
“I can’t. It’s not something I did. It just happened.”
“What do you mean? Is there something wrong with your arm?”
“Clearly! I mean, it was fine when class started. And then suddenly this started happening.” My now independent limb jerks again. “Any ideas?” Theo is going to train to be a doctor when he leaves next year, so he spends a lot of time with the medic.
He looks thoughtful. “I’ve never heard of anything like it before. But don’t worry, I’m sure the medic will have some information on it.”
The medic is in the next block, on the ground floor. St George’s prides itself on being a “traditional” school, which means everything is firmly set in the 2000s. I think the school building itself is even older, perhaps dating back to the early twentieth century, which is probably why bits of it keep falling apart. The medic is about the one concession to modern-day life they’ve allowed, probably because there would have been an uproar from parents if their darling boys couldn’t get fixed up at the touch of a button.
The corridor is empty. A background hum of noise comes from the classrooms off to the right. On the other side, a row of arched windows look out on the gravelled landing area set into the huge expanse of green grass. A tightly packed row of tall, dense trees marks the school boundary. The late afternoon gloom is already setting in. In a few hours it’ll be dark.
“Hey, have you heard what’s been happening back in London? Apparently, things are getting feisty outside the Wall. There’s a new gang who are murdering all the other gang leaders.”
Theo is a mine of information about the Outside. His father runs the main broadcasting agency in town, which is the only one that reports and broadcasts on both sides of the Wall.
“Isn’t that what they do? Fight each other?” I don’t take much notice of the news, or what happens Outside. Something my father enjoys reprimanding me about.
“Not everywhere. Though in some areas there’s quite a lot of it. Haven’t you ever been Outside?”
I shake my head. “No, why would I? Have you?” I stop and stare at him respectfully. No one goes Outside, at least, not out of choice. The Wall was built to keep Insiders safe. Visiting the areas Outside the Wall may be exciting, but it’s not worth the risk of being hurt.
Theo snorts. “Sure, I have. Been out with the reporters a few times. It’s pretty grim. You know those holos Peters showed us last year of life before the Great Flood? Kind of like that, but with more water and mud and less electricity. You know, you’d have to pity the Outsiders if they weren’t so stupid. Some areas aren’t too bad, though. Six and Fifteen are almost as nice as Inside and you probably won’t get mugged.” He grins wickedly. “You’ll have to come out with us sometime.”
“Maybe.” Or maybe not. I get to spend little enough time in London as it is; I don’t want to waste it risking my life getting lost in the slums.
We get to the ornately carved wooden staircase that leads down to the ground floor. Theo slid down it once for a dare, got caught by Purley, and ended up scrubbing toilets for a month. If it had been anyone else, they’d probably have got expelled.
“What on Earth are the Metz doing here?”
I pause with my foot on the second step and look past Theo through the window. Two black pods with distinctive slashes of yellow are hovering over the landing site. “I thought they didn’t leave London?” I join Theo by the window to get a better look.
“They don’t usually. At least, there are branches in other cities, but they’re mostly kept busy there. I don’t think there’s any law enforcement out here in the countryside, is there? Apart from the Farms which have their own security teams. But I don’t remember the Metz ever coming here before.”
Old memories stir at the back of my mind. Armed figures, all in black apart from two bright yellow slashes on either side of their helmets; gunshots firing, screaming, a cold fear that left my teeth chattering.
“They came here once.” My voice comes out slightly unsteady and Theo flashes me a look of puzzled surprise. I swallow hard, pushing the memory back. My hands are clammy. “When the rebels broke into the school and took a load of us hostage. I was pretty young; it must have been before you arrived here.” I smile weakly. “To be honest, I don’t remember much about it, just being terrified and my teacher grabbing me and running from the playground.” And then they shot her in front of all of us.
The pods are now on the ground, spilling men from their bellies like ants. “Fifteen men and dogs?” Theo sounds excited. “It must be something pretty serious for Pickles to have called them in. The fence is still down, isn’t it?” The fence is our main security net that surrounds the school in an impenetrable electric field. Rumour has it that it’s had a few technical problems since a squirrel managed to short circuit the system.
“What are you doing out of class?” Purley, our house master, is running up the stairs. He looks flustered and his lips are drawn into a thin line rather than his usual half smile. “Goldsmith, the Head wants to see you — I was just coming to find you. Johnson, get back to class.”
“Bu—” Theo starts to protest, but Purley lays a hand on his arm.
“Just go.”
Reluctantly, Theo turns and walks back down the corridor. Purley practically drags me down the stairs.
“I-I was supposed to be going to the medic.”
Purley shakes his head. “The medic won’t help you. John comm’d me to tell me what happened. Thank god he came to me rather than going straight to Eric.”
John? Eric? Since when did teachers use first names when talking to students?
At the bottom of the stairs, rather than taking the corridor that leads to the Head’s office, he sets off in the opposite direction. I practically have to run to keep up with him. “What’s going on?” He doesn’t answer. My arm jerks again, throwing me off balance. Has someone poisoned me? Why does Purley look so scared?
“This way,” he gasps, short of breath, and sets off down the corridor to the design and tech blocks at the end of the school. Halfway down, he pauses by a set of fire doors that lead out onto a small garden. Chest heaving, he turns and grabs my shoulders. My right arm judders away. Purley’s shorter than me, though
much stockier. A few extra decades of good food hangs around his midriff. I heard a rumour he was once the best prop in the rugby team, back in his day.
He pulls me in so our faces are only six inches apart. I stare at the mole on his cheek, wondering why he hasn’t had it removed. It has tiny grey hairs poking out of it.
“Darwin, listen to me, we don’t have much time. The Metz have come for you. They’ve activated your chip. That’s why your arm feels outside of your control.”
“W-w-why?”
“You don’t know?”
I shake my head and a troubled look crosses his face. “There was no reason given. Perhaps something your father … I don’t know. I was in Eric’s office when they called in. They have a capture-or-kill order for you. I don’t know what you’ve done, Darwin, but they’re treating you as a serious criminal. Do you understand?”
He gives me a shake to emphasize the message. My brain feels like it’s stopped functioning. Every thought swims through mud. Capture, kill. Capture, kill. A cold numbness starts in my stomach, like I’ve swallowed an ice cube whole, and begins to spread outwards. “They’re going to kill me?”
“They might try. Mr Pickles has to comply with their demands of course — we all do. He’ll delay them as long as possible, but you must get out of here. Now! The fence is offline, otherwise you wouldn’t have a chance. The gates have already been locked down. But you’re a good climber — I’ve seen you. If you can get on top of the tech building, you should be able to jump over the main wall into the forest.”
“What do I do then?”
“Run. The effect of the activation will start to spread through your body. It’s intended to stop criminals escaping. As soon as you can, you must dig the chip out. He grabs my jerking arm by the wrist, turns it so my palm faces upwards and rests his index finger on a point about a third of the way up my forearm. “It’s in here. You may have to dig deep. Do not let them catch you.” He emphasizes each word with a jab into my shaking arm. “Now, go.”
I’m not sure I can move. My feet are firmly rooted to the worn flagged floor. Purley pushes me toward the door. “Go!”
Outsider Page 6