7
NATURE’S MISCHIEF
The room Ali had been left in was plain and windowless, and something like a private room at a hospital. There was a single bed and some equipment to monitor life-signs and brainwaves, standing near it. But it contained no computer equipment. There was also a small metal table and a single chair, both bolted to the floor. Apart from that the room was empty. Lying on the bed were the white coveralls Ali had been told to put on, made of a thin material. But somehow her own clothes seemed like her last link with home and she made no move to change, sitting hunched against the wall.
There was no lock on the door and it had a large pane of shatterproof glass set into it, as if to emphasize the complete lack of privacy. Under the circumstances Ali had made no move to close the door, which the CPS operatives had left open—it would have been a pointless exercise. So she was surprised when she heard a quiet knock, although she didn’t move from her position against the wall. There was a pause, and then she heard the door swing further open as someone entered the room.
“Are you OK?” a voice asked.
Ali looked up then, if only to tell the speaker exactly what she thought of such an utterly stupid and pointless question. But she was arrested by the sight that awaited her. It was a boy, perhaps about her age, but she found it hard to tell for certain. He was painfully thin, almost emaciated, and his white coveralls hung off his scarecrow figure like rags. The sleeves of the coveralls were short enough for Ali to see the yellow bruises that covered his arms, like those of a drug user. He saw her looking and his mouth pulled into a travesty of a smile.
“My name’s Luciel,” he told her. “They’re testing to see if drugs break my connection with electronics. I guess they haven’t found the right formula yet.”
“I’m Ali,” she said, standing up awkwardly, and glancing at the open door. “Are we allowed to talk?”
“We pretty much do what we want to,” the boy said. “Unless someone’s door is guarded. That means they’re doing experiments.”
“Who exactly are they?” Ali asked, although she could already guess the answer.
“The scientists,” Luciel replied uneasily.
“Is one of them called Dr. Kalden?”
“Shhh,” Luciel warned, suddenly alarmed. “We don’t talk about them, and especially not about him.” He tried to smile again. “I came to see you because I knew you’d be scared, everyone is. But it helps that we’re allowed to talk to each other.”
“Yes, it does,” Ali admitted. She hesitated. “Can I ask you another question?”
“OK,” Luciel replied slowly.
“Is there a girl called Rachel here?” Ali asked. “She’s a . . . a friend of mine. About eleven years old, brown hair, brown eyes . . .”
“I’m sorry.” Luciel shook his head. “I can’t think of anyone like that.” Ali’s heart sank; everything felt cut from under her. But then Luciel added, “But there are a lot of people here and I don’t know them all. Your friend could still be here.”
• • •
Despite Luciel’s claim that they were allowed to go anywhere they wanted, the boy seemed unwilling to venture out into the rest of the laboratory, although he did his best to make Ali feel resigned to her new situation. He was very different from Raven. Not only did he lack her magnetism and self-confidence, he was generally much more uncertain about himself and his own abilities. After the contempt Raven had shown toward Ali’s two ventures into the net she had thought herself a novice. But, according to Luciel, no one in the facility had much more experience than that either.
However, Ali did not describe Raven to him as an example. She steered clear of the entire subject of the gangers. After all, she didn’t know who could be trusted in this place and, even more, she was beginning to feel guilty about the whole situation. She had been thinking of her venture into the lab almost as a game, but people here were being experimented on, in ways that she could only guess at. Anything she imagined could only be guesswork, as Luciel was unwilling to tell her anything about the experimentation.
“It’s better not to know,” he said when she demanded he enlighten her further.
“How can I not know?” she asked. “They’re going to be experimenting on me, aren’t they?”
“But not for a while,” Luciel replied uncomfortably. “First they run a whole lot of tests, to try to find out your capabilities, stuff like that. It’s only when they’ve found out as much as they can that the scientists really start experimenting.”
“Do they always do . . . what they’ve done to you?” Ali found it difficult to look at Luciel’s bruised arms.
“No . . . ,” he said reluctantly. “They do different things to different people. You’ll see when you meet the others.”
“OK, then.” Ali made a motion as if to leave the room, but Luciel shook his head.
“You can’t yet,” he told her. “Not until they’ve examined you.”
“Is that a rule?” Ali asked.
“No, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s just the way things are.” Luciel shrugged his thin shoulders. “They’ll probably be here soon,” he said. “I’d better go. Good luck, Ali.” He paused just before leaving the room. “You’d better put the coveralls on,” he told her, “just so as not to annoy them.”
Ali changed into the white coveralls. It wasn’t so much Luciel’s words that had affected her as the haunted look in his eyes. She wondered miserably what she had got herself into and, sitting slumped on the bed, felt bitterly angry with the gangers who had got her into all this.
“I wish I’d never met that bitch!” she said under her breath and gave a convulsive start when a voice in her ears answered:
“Do you mean me?”
“Raven!” Ali exclaimed. “You can hear me?”
“That is what this device is for,” Raven reminded her, the Hex’s voice reverberating in Ali’s ears. “According to the transmitter, you are alone and there are no monitoring devices in the room.”
“Did you hear my conversation with Luciel?” Ali asked.
“The transmitter can pick up any sounds within a ten-meter radius.”
“Then you heard what he said about Rachel,” Ali said, “that she might not be here.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Raven said caustically. “I have always been aware of the possibility that Rachel is already dead. But you’ll have to meet the other people being held to find out for sure.” There was a short silence, and Ali wondered if Raven had signed off before she heard the girl’s voice again. “Are you OK?”
“I can’t believe you’d be concerned,” Ali told her. There was a longer silence. This time Ali knew Raven was still there and she waited for the reply, wondering what the girl would come out with this time. But Raven’s answer, when it finally came, surprised her. “I don’t like the sound of that lab,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to be in your place.”
“I’m afraid,” Ali admitted, disarmed by Raven’s unexpected empathy.
“I’ll be in constant contact,” Raven told her, adding ironically, “I don’t know if you’ll find that a comfort.”
“If something happens . . . if they start experimenting on me,” Ali asked quietly, “will you get me out of here?” She dreaded the answer, wondered if she had asked too much too soon. Raven didn’t have her brother’s moral code, and even if the loyalty of the group lay with him, she held the sum of the power. It was Raven’s support she needed. She didn’t expect the younger girl to react with sympathy—that would have been too much to ask. But Raven hadn’t exaggerated when she said she didn’t like the sound of the lab.
“I’ll tell Wraith we should get into position,” she said eventually. “Just in case.”
• • •
Kez glanced up in surprise as Raven disengaged herself from the terminal. She had been speaking softly into its audio pickup, too quietly for him to overhear. But now she got up from her chair and stretched her aching muscles. She was still wearing the baggy
gray sweater, sweatpants, and thick socks she had slept in; the blanket lay discarded on the floor beside the computer terminal. Kez had left his silent vigil to get dressed, but Raven had been glued to the terminal for the past three hours and had looked up only once to tell him that Ali had arrived at the lab.
Now she stretched her legs to get some feeling back into them, flexing her fingers experimentally.
“Is Wraith back yet?” she asked.
“He came back about an hour ago,” Kez told her, easily able to believe that her intense concentration had blocked out her brother’s presence. It wasn’t as if Wraith had said anything to either of them. “But he went out again, almost right away.”
“I see,” Raven said and stretched again. “God, I really need a shower.”
“Wraith didn’t want you to leave the terminal,” Kez cautioned her.
“I’m still in contact,” Raven told him. “It’s harder without the net to rely on, but it can be done.” She rubbed her shoulders, wincing a little. “I feel awful,” she complained, and glanced back at Kez, “and you look worse.”
“Wraith’s really angry,” he said, looking down at the ground.
“He’ll get over it—relax,” Raven advised. “I’ve spoken to Ali,” she added.
“Is she OK?” Kez asked guiltily.
“She seems to be.” Raven wrinkled her nose. “But she wants to be sure that we can break her out if we need to. We’d better get moving. When Wraith gets back tell him to get ready to leave. I’ll call the Countess and make sure our transport’s ready.”
“Why can’t you tell Wraith?” Kez protested, wary of speaking to the ganger in his current mood.
“Because I’m going to take a shower,” Raven said definitively and left the room.
• • •
The scientists came not long after Ali had spoken to Raven. The two Hexes hadn’t had much to say to each other, their brief rapport had been too tenuous for that. But Ali did find it comforting to think that Raven was monitoring her over the transceiver link, even though that didn’t help much when she was confronted with the reality of the scientists.
In actual fact the examination wasn’t that different from the check-ups her doctor gave her, although it was a little more extensive. She was examined by a woman scientist in a spotless white lab coat wearing a face mask and thin transparent gloves over her hands, while another woman took down details on paper. Obviously the CPS weren’t risking the chance of a Hex getting linked up to a computer. Two regular CPS operatives, without lab coats, stood guard outside the door while Ali was examined. It took over an hour for the scientists to get all the results they needed, linking Ali up to most of the scanners in the room to perform some of the more complex tests.
Finally the woman who had been running tests on Ali stepped back and went to look at her companion’s clipboard.
“That’s the lot, isn’t it?” she said, in an undertone.
“Everything,” the second scientist replied. “I’d better take these results to be processed. Once we have the confirmation of the genetic scan, we can send out the notification of death to the family.”
“Fine.” The first scientist nodded, then she looked back at Ali and addressed her as if she was an imbecile, enunciating every syllable: “We have finished examining you,” she said. “Meals will be brought to you twice a day. You may interact with the other test subjects if you wish. There is a clearly signed washing room, for the use of the subjects on this corridor, three doors away from this room. We will return when it is time for your second series of tests. If you are obedient and not obstructive you will be treated well.” Then both scientists left the room, taking Ali’s discarded clothes with them in a sealed plastic bag. Ali could hear the booted footsteps of the guards following them away down the corridor.
Once they had gone she reached up to touch the white ear-stud in her right ear. It had been concealed by her hair for most of the examination, but the few times when it must have been seen the scientist had paid no attention. She had seemed reluctant even to look at Ali, plainly considering her on a par with an unpleasant micro-virus she had been ordered to test. It was a new experience for the spoiled rich kid from Belgravia, and one that Ali was anxious to forget.
Walking to the door of the room, she looked out at the corridor. It was plain and white, stretching for quite a long way. No one was visible in either direction and Ali left the room cautiously. She could see doors set into the walls at regular intervals. One had a sign on it marked Washing Room. At one end of the corridor was an elevator; at the other end was a set of double doors with large panes of shatterproof glass set into them. Ali walked toward the end of the corridor with the doors in it, resisting the urge to look into the rooms she passed on either side. When she reached the doors, she pushed them open gingerly. There wasn’t much to see. Another corridor stretched out, again in two directions, double doors at both ends. Halfway up this second corridor was another washing room.
Ali felt any desire to explore further leeched out of her by the featureless, institutionalized atmosphere of the facility. She wondered how she would ever find Rachel. But she supposed she had better try. Returning to her own corridor, she walked down to the elevator. There was an unmarked touchpad beside it. Ali didn’t have the nerve to press it. Instead she began to methodically work her way down the corridor, looking in each of the rooms. They were all marked with a short code sequence, but the codes didn’t seem to be arranged in any order.
At first Ali’s curiosity was not indulged. The first three rooms were all empty and apparently unoccupied, not even containing the medical equipment she had found in her own. The fourth was also unoccupied, but the room was full of medical scanners; like the other equipment Ali had seen in the lab they had no computer interface. The bed was unmade and an untouched tray of food lay on the small table. The tray was plastic and divided up into sections; each of which held a puréed substance of different colors. The only utensil was a metal spoon. It was the most unappetizing meal Ali had ever seen; she wasn’t surprised that it had been left uneaten. Moving on she looked through the window of the next room.
A child lay unconscious on the bed, linked up to the machines that surrounded it. Tubes were connected to his mouth and nose, and monitors were attached to his wrists and forehead. He didn’t look more than six or seven years old. Going into the room to look at him more closely, Ali felt as if she was desecrating a tomb, one of the cemeteries that still existed in parts of Europe, unusable for farmland or industrial expansion. The boy was like the living dead, lying in the midst of a mass of machinery, like a fly in the web of a mechanical spider.
She heard footsteps behind her as someone else entered the room and she turned to see Luciel, meeting his shadowed eyes contritely.
“This is why I didn’t want you to look around, just yet,” he told her. “It’s hard to take, at first.”
“Are a lot of people like this?” Ali asked.
“Some,” Luciel replied. “Not everyone’s as bad as this, though.” He bit his lips before adding: “A few are worse.”
“What could be worse than this?” Ali asked in horror and realized almost instantaneously that she didn’t want to know.
“We don’t talk about it,” Luciel said. Not looking at the boy on the bed, he headed out of the room. Ali followed him and waited as he closed the door behind them.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” Luciel shrugged. “Does it matter? Jack or Jesse, something like that. He used to cry at night and he wet the bed. And he was always asking questions.”
“Don’t you care?” Ali asked incredulously, and she felt like Wraith.
“I don’t know.” Luciel met her eyes unashamedly. “Is it wrong to be glad it’s not me?”
“I’m not sure.” Ali thought for a while, leaning up against the corridor wall. “I think I’d feel the same way. But . . . I have a friend, a sort of friend, who said that the reason Hexes didn’t h
elp each other was that anyone clever enough to escape the CPS wouldn’t care about someone who got caught. I was angry with her for thinking that way, because she only cares about herself.”
“Was she a Hex?” Luciel asked softly, checking to see that they weren’t being overheard.
“Yes,” whispered Ali, wondering if Raven was listening, and what the girl would say later if she was.
“And she hasn’t been caught?” Luciel asked, even more quietly if it was possible.
“No,” Ali replied.
“Then maybe she was right to think that way,” Luciel said. “I didn’t and I was caught. If it would have changed anything I’d have been as selfish as I could.”
Ali didn’t say anything, but inwardly she resolved that she wouldn’t be leaving the lab alone, even if she didn’t manage to find Rachel. Now that she’d seen two other inmates, she felt guilty at the thought of leaving without them. She realized what Wraith had meant about the callousness of the experimentation; just a few hours in the lab had convinced her that he was right. But the thought of Rachel recalled her to the fact that she had a mission.
When Ali reminded Luciel that she wanted to find someone, he was perfectly willing to help.
“It’s not as if there’s anything else to do here,” he pointed out. “There’s nothing to read, and nothing to see. We don’t get access to vidscreens, and God forbid that we should even look at a computer terminal.”
“Do you know if there’s a main computer control room?” Ali asked as casually as she could.
“I guess there must be,” Luciel replied, puzzled. “But if there is, we’d never get the chance to see it.”
“I guess not,” Ali agreed. Looking down the long corridor, she felt apprehensive. “How many people are there here?”
“Hundreds, I think,” Luciel said, adding: “But people keep dying, and they bring in new Hexes all the time. Mostly kids.”
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