Fragments

by Caroline Green

  . . . agonising pain rips through me and I’m flat on my back, staring up at the churning sky. Every nerve ending in my body feels like it’s on fire and I can’t move a single muscle. I lie for a few moments completely still, panting, with tears streaming down my cheeks, before the feeling gradually wears off and I can get shakily to my feet.

  I’ve been volted before. But this was different. This made me feel, just for a second, like I was dying. Sadness clings to me now. The view that had been all colours a minute before is now just grey, wet and depressing. My fingers and toes burn and my limbs weigh heavy and sore.

  I guess I’ve found the perimeter of the camp. I squint ahead of me and can just make out the slightest ripple in the air, now that I’m really looking, like heat reflecting off hot tarmac. You would never know it was here and it’s probably only activated by the tracker on me. I glance down at the stag, which chews on, ignoring me. It probably knew exactly how near I could get to it. How stupid to think it was letting me come close. I wrap my arms around myself as a light rain begins to fall and then start to trudge miserably back the way I came.

  Like I said, this place is full of nasty surprises.

  History of Terrorism, known as HT, is the part of the training that’s most like regular school. What I can remember of it, anyway.

  I didn’t mind school that much when I used to go. Liked mucking around with my mates, anyway. Think I was a bit lippy sometimes. But after Mum got sick I stopped going and although they sent some people round to find me a few times, they didn’t bother after a while. Probably presumed I’d died of pig flu too, like Mum and most of the neighbourhood. It was a crazy time, then.

  The HT teacher is called Mrs Sheehy and she’s older than Mum would be now. Maybe fifty or sixty, I don’t know. I’m not good on that. She wears the black clothes they all wear here but hers are a dark skirt and jumper with thick tights and sensible shoes with laces like a nurse would wear.

  We sit in a proper classroom with a 3D whiteboard and everything. I quite like pretending I’m a normal schoolgirl, although I don’t even know what year I’d be in now.

  The lessons are OK and actually quite interesting in places.

  We learn loads about the 2010s when suicide bombers were the terrorists of the day. Hard to get your head round in these days of the anonymous little plaster bomb. Why blow yourself up when you can cause destruction and death so easily?

  Those plaster bombs are nasty. I hear they look exactly like the sticking plasters people used to stick on cuts, which is how they got their name. They’re no more than three centimetres square, pale in colour and designed to blend into the background, but packed with enough explosive power to destroy a building. Easy to slip one under a table in a busy coffee shop, or onto the side of a train.

  We learn all sorts in this lesson. Truth is, I’m a bit embarrassed by my ignorance about politics and stuff. Like everyone, I know all about the bombing of the Houses of Parliament back in 2017 and how the government was formed out of the parties left over and the army, and renamed the Securitat. That the regular police split into two branches, with CATS having the ultimate authority.

  I know also that there are lots of different terrorist groups with a million different, confusing names. But Torch is the biggest and the most evil. They’re responsible for loads of the bombs that go off in public places. They claim they’re all about ‘freedom’ but I can’t see how killing innocent civilians helps them to be free. That’s why they have to be flushed out and eliminated, like the scum they are. And that’s going to be my job when I get out of here.

  It’s a couple of weeks after the stag thing. I didn’t sleep that well last night. Had weird dreams about Jax. He kept trying to tell me something but his words were all messed up – or foreign or something. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then I dreamed about kissing Cal. I woke up with damp cheeks.

  So I’m not paying too much attention to what Mrs Sheehy is saying in HT, until something snags my attention like a nail.

  ‘We don’t know where they got the devices from,’ she’s saying, ‘but a recent operation in the Yorkshire Dales successfully blew up what we think was a major Torch bomb factory.’

  Yorkshire Dales? That’s where the farmhouse was located. The one they blew up.

  Mrs Sheehy points her clicker at the whiteboard and the front of the room fills with an image. Every muscle in my body tenses. The walls seem to pulse and throb around me.

  It’s the farmhouse. Right after the attack. My heartbeat thuds in my ears and my blood seems to whoosh and pound through my veins. Mrs Sheehy is talking away but I can’t untangle the words to make sense. I can only stare at the image in front of me.

  If the cameras pan out far enough, you might just make out a girl lying face down in the dust with a cut cheek and a broken heart. Someone speaks.

  ‘Yes, Adam?’ says Mrs Sheehy.

  A red-haired boy speaks again. ‘How can we be sure that it was a bomb factory?’

  Mrs Sheehy nods as though she has been expecting this question.

  ‘We received intelligence from an informant within that branch of Torch. And although there are as yet no sensors developed that can detect plaster bombs, the nature of the explosion and traces found by forensic teams in the aftermath confirmed the information.’

  I keep my expression completely blank even though my heart is beating so hard it seems to boom in my ears. Clamping my teeth together until my jaw aches, I shove my hands between my shaking knees and stare at the image in front of me, trying to control the violent trembling that threatens to overwhelm my body.

  Julia, Sam, Nathan . . . they really were terrorists? And then I think of something that makes me gasp and I have to pretend I’m clearing my throat. Would they have tried to turn Cal and me into terrorists too?

  This is so terrible. I realise that, for the first time, I’m glad Cal’s dead. Better dead than working for Torch. How could I have been so naive? I want to throw up . . .

  I risk flicking my gaze to the sides, to see if anyone has noticed that I’m weirding out. But all eyes are fixed on Mrs Sheehy, who has stopped speaking for a moment. She shakes her head slowly, as though she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. After a heavy sigh, she speaks again. ‘Make no mistake,’ she says. ‘These people had very bad intentions. They would have used those bombs to kill innocent people.’

  ‘Was the mission to destroy the house a success?’ asks Skye. It seems like an odd question but I’m too distracted to think about that now.

  Mrs Sheehy’s face is grim as she clicks at the screen again. ‘Only partially,’ she says. ‘This footage shows the occupants of the house the day before the explosion.’

  A new image fills the room. This time the farmhouse is intact and seen through a night-vision infrared 3D camera. You can make out the heat shapes of seven people in various parts of the house. I know that they are Sam, Helen, Tom, Cal’s Mum and Dad. Cal . . . and . . .

  Oh, shit . . . One of those people is me . . .

  I can’t stop myself from looking around the room at the others. It feels like my pores will leak the information in some way. I can’t keep this inside, it feels too big. Skye is staring right at me. I look away, trying to deny the ferocious heat filling my body.

  ‘Our intelligence told us that there were seven people,’ says Mrs Sheehy. ‘But we were only able to find DNA from five after the mission.’ She pauses. ‘So two people got away,’ she says crisply.

  Then she turns and looks right at me.

  ‘Are you all right, Kyla?’ she says, her face softening. ‘You’re looking a little peaky, my dear.’

  I squeeze my hands into fists below the desk, trying to force all the panic there and out of my voice before I speak.

  I clear my throat. ‘Yes, thanks – I’m fine,’ I manage to force out through lips that are numb. ‘I was just wondering if it was definitely a bomb factory. It, um, looks like a normal, um, farmhouse.’

  Mrs Sheehy g
ives me a tolerant sort of look. Then the image hanging before us in 3D changes to the moment of the explosion. It’s so realistic, everyone jumps back as the black and orange flames curl into the room, out towards us. I hear someone go, ‘Woah!’ and someone else – Reo, the big meathead – says, ‘Burn, baby!’

  ‘The explosion you see here is a lot bigger and the damage more intense than the helicopter fire could have achieved alone. This is basically what happens when you put the equivalent of a match to twenty boxes of plaster bombs.’ She pauses, her expression grave. ‘This is the kind of people we are fighting. And each one of you . . .’ She looks around, meeting eyes with everyone individually. They seem to linger on mine even longer. ‘. . . will come out of here knowing how to do it. How to stop the rot before it spreads.’

  Afterwards, I pretend I have a headache and go to lie on my bed for a while. The walls are white-painted stone with a small window too high up to be any use. I lie on my stomach with my face pressed into the pillow, wishing I could scream.

  So first of all I hear that the people who looked after me were harbouring bombs in that house. I know they were Torch and I know that Torch are evil, but it’s only now I can admit that a tiny part of me hoped Sam and Helen and the people who helped Cal and me were different. Seems I was wrong. I was so stupid and trusting. I should have known better than to expect any decency from Torch people.

  But the thing I can’t take in is that two people somehow escaped that blast.

  One was me.

  Who was the other?

  Could it have been Cal? And if it was . . . will I ever see him again?

  CHAPTER 11

  banana

  I’m in the rec room watching some soap with half my brain. Trying not to think about the future. It takes me a while to work out what it is I’m feeling, and then I realise.

  I’m bored. I miss having a laugh. Everyone is so serious here. No one could crack me up like Jax, though. He didn’t always mean to, which was the funniest thing of all. It was one of the reasons he was so easy to love. A pang goes through me and I draw myself into a ball, my feet tucked underneath.

  Think about something else, I tell myself.

  Skye comes into the room then and plonks down next to me on one of the big cushions.

  ‘Watching that?’ she says, tipping her head towards the telly.

  ‘No, not really,’ I say.

  She taps at the remote until she finds a music station. ‘It’s my birthday today,’ she says suddenly.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ I say. ‘Happy birthday.’ I think about my last one, when I was at Craydale Farm. I picture Ariella’s face, with that upturned little nose and her bright eyes. I wonder whether she misses me and what they told her. She’s probably used to people coming and going. I mentally shrug away the thoughts. I’m not going there, either.

  ‘How old?’ I say, sitting up straighter and turning to Skye.

  She does a huge yawn and stretch so that the sleeve of her top rides up a bit. I see silvery scars on her arm and look quickly back at the television.

  Even though we share a room, I feel like I don’t know her at all. She stares at me sometimes and then smiles but other times she seems like a robot. Like nothing is going on inside.

  ‘Sweet sixteen,’ she says and then bursts into a manic sort of laugh. ‘Pretty big deal, eh? They used to have special parties for the sixteenth. My mother had one where her parents hired a pink stretch limo and she took sixteen friends to a luxury spa.’

  Hearing her mention a mother is a surprise. Everyone has a mother, even if they don’t have them any more. But Skye could have hatched out of an egg for all I know about her.

  I don’t know what to say, so I just smile gormlessly. She’s staring at the floor now, chewing on a nail and looking like the saddest person ever. It makes me want to do something. But partly just because I’m restless and twitchy tonight. Energy seems to be building in all my limbs.

  ‘Wait here,’ I say. She looks up, half frowning, half smiling.

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘Just wait, OK?’

  I race down to the canteen. When it’s closed for the night you can still get fruit and bottles of water. The lights are low as I arrive but when I step into the vast room brightness floods the space. I know there are motion sensors everywhere. For a second I freeze, wondering if I’m going to get into trouble for wandering about at night. I don’t for a moment think I’m not being watched. But when nothing happens a few seconds later, I walk over to the counters, heart thumping loudly in my chest.

  I choose a bunch of the ripest looking bananas, a plastic fork (we’re not trusted with proper cutlery, despite the stuff they teach us here) and a paper bowl.

  Feeling a bit giddy inside, I hare back to where Skye is waiting. She’s sprawled out across the cushion with her legs hanging over one side, patting the rhythm to a song with her fingers.

  She frowns when she sees what I’m holding.

  I come over and hunker down over the table.

  ‘I got excited for a minute there. Thought it might be cake,’ she says in a dry voice.

  I mash up the bananas in the bowl, pounding them with the fork until they’re a brown mess. Feeling doubtful about my idea now, I plaster on a smile anyway. What am I doing? I have no idea. Maybe I just want to have a laugh for once. I was always doing daft stuff with Jax. I think my mouth has forgotten how to make giggle shapes now.

  ‘No cake,’ I say. ‘And we can’t go to a spa. But we can bring the spa here!’

  ‘What?’ Her eyes twinkle a little, her lips curling into a small smile. It’s not a look I’ve seen on Skye before. It suits her. ‘In what way is a bowl of stinky banana a spa?’

  I put on Mum’s Jamaican accent. ‘This is some of nature’s goodness right here, girl! Ain’t no need to be spending money on no face packs.’

  Skye gives a throaty giggle. ‘Forget it,’ she says. ‘There is no way I am putting that,’ she points a disdainful finger at the bowl and then at her face, ‘there.’

  The devil is in me now. I put my fingers into the bowl and scoop out a big dollop of the gloopy banana and smear it across my cheeks.

  Skye watches me the whole time, starting to grin.

  ‘That’s a good look on you. Still not doing it, though.’

  I can feel that devil inside, even stronger now urging me on.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I take another scoop of the banana and go to put it on my face but at the last moment I take aim and splodge it straight at hers. She gives an outraged squeak and leaps to her feet. For a split second I think I’ve made a mistake. Her eyes have gone weird, like all the light has gone out of them. I actually think she’s going to punch me. Then her mouth twitches again and she calmly takes the bowl from my hand, spoons some of the mixture out of it and slaps it, a tiny bit too hard, across my cheek.

  I rub it in and then lick my fingers. ‘It’s not bad. But I’ve just remembered it’s supposed to have a whole load of other stuff in it.’

  ‘Like what?’ says Skye and helps herself to another handful. This time she dabs at her forehead. She’s playing along now. I’m a bit more relieved than I’d like to admit. She scared me for a minute there. But then I suppose it is a bit dumb to throw smushed banana at someone when you don’t really know them and we are all being trained to fight.

  We sit down, all relaxed now, and dab the mixture around our cheeks, trying (and failing) not to get any in our hair.

  ‘Yogurt, for starters,’ I say. ‘Bit of avocado used to find its way in there too. Although I don’t recommend guacamole. Chilli burns like hell.’

  Skye regards me and licks a bit of banana from the side of her mouth.

  ‘Are we having fun yet?’ she says.

  ‘Not sure,’ I reply. ‘I’ll get back to you once I’ve got this disgusting banana off my face.’

  For some reason this lights the touchpaper and we’re off, giggling helplessly – so hard, I fall forwards and get congealed banana on the sofa. It fee
ls so good to laugh. Skye keeps snorting and that sets me off even more. It’s a chain reaction; every time she’s starting to get control of herself, my hysteria goes up a notch and then so does hers. After a while we sit up and wipe our eyes. We both look a right mess. Her eyes are shining with laughter tears and her hair is all over the place. Mine has banana in it. (Not something I would recommend for curly hair.)

  There are only a few people around across the room. I see Reo watching us, then he saunters over. He stinks of the Lynx fragrance capsules he swallows all the time. I’m sure you’re only supposed to take one of those things a day, but I reckon he swallows the tabs and still douses himself in the old-school body spray. It never seems to mask the stink of sweaty man-boy he gives off anyway.

  ‘What are you two up to then?’ he says. ‘Bit of girl-on-girl action on the cards? What the hell is that on your faces?’ He gives a sort of whooping laugh. ‘Trust me, ladies, you’re already ugly enough. Don’t go making things even harder for yourselves.’

  Skye sits up straight and stares at him. That dead look is back in her eyes.

  ‘Get lost, Reo,’ she says. All the laughter has evaporated into the air.

  ‘Free country,’ he says and flumps down heavily onto the sofa next to me. I nearly fall into him. I suddenly want this stuff off my face more than anything in the world but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s spoiled our fun.

  I sit there, unsure about what to do next. I’m half looking to Skye for a cue. ‘Maybe I’ll have a go,’ says Reo and puts his fingers into the bowl.

  Then he leans towards Skye. I can’t believe his cheek. Does he think she will actually let him touch her? She moves fast. It seems like half a second later she’s squatting over him and holding the plastic fork right by his eyes. I can see the dark, sticky mess coating the plastic, but the tines are sharp enough to damage him. I don’t have any doubt in my mind that she would do it. The knowledge is just there, complete, in my head, as I’m guessing it is in hers too.