by Jane Higgins
He taught me a few Breken words. That’s what Citysiders called Southsiders: the Breken, the speakers of broken language, because of the mutilated Anglo they spoke across all their different groups. Mace had grown up speaking it. Sometimes, when there was no one else around, we’d talk to each other in Breken. But we were careful. It was the language of the hostiles, so you didn’t want to be caught speaking it, or even knowing it.
Years ago he’d told me the lock code for one of the kitchen doors in the dorm wing – just for when you want to get away, lad, and no one to know. So before anyone could say, Where the hell do you think you’re going, Stais? I was out. I wandered down the walkway between the wall and the dorms and came around into the grounds.
Lockdown blacked out the school so I was alone in the dark, which suited me fine. I sat on a bench, thought about ISIS, thought about Dash, walked under the old oaks that lined the walls, listened to the wind rustle their autumn leaves, thought some more about ISIS and wished I hadn’t said what I’d said to Dash. Now and then a siren wailed, and sometimes gunfire crackled down near the river. But mostly it was quiet out there, the way cities ought not to be.
Cold too. Autumn had come early. Penance, it felt like – payment for the summer just gone. It had sweltered, pavements baking from early morning till sundown, with no let-up after dark because then the city breathed it all back out in one long, hot, pent-up sigh.
I’d roamed the streets that summer. Everyone else had gone and Lou wasn’t allowed to bring anyone home while he made up for his bad grades with a private tutor. I stayed at school. Same old story: you watch parents arrive and gather up their kids, and for all that everyone complains about families, the kids look pretty happy slouching out of school towards summer in the country house and the parents look proud. I tell myself every time not to watch, but it’s like picking a scab. You know it’ll bleed and take longer to heal, but you can’t resist.
Once they’d gone it wasn’t so bad. I played football with the little kids in the alleyways around Sentian and Sentinel Park, which made me popular with the kids and their parents. No one ever left their kids to play outside unsupervised – there were too many stories of them being grabbed by hostiles. The kids from rich families might make it back home, because rich kids were ransomed, but others were lost forever, sold Oversea or into the Dry. Little kids were prized by the hostiles because they were ‘pure’ – uncontaminated by drugs or disease. White kids, especially. The hostiles thought their blood and organs held some kind of life-giving power. A white kid was worth a gruesome fortune over the river. Which meant everyone watched their kids every minute, and felt frantic about letting them out of sight. And everyone was happy to let me organize football in the summer.
At the end of each day I’d go and sit on Pagnal Heath and watch the sun go down over St Clare Bridge, make plans for when I got picked by ISIS, and wonder about the shadow city over the river.
Then summer was gone. The school gates were locked with the early dark and while a few of us were allowed out now and then, we had other things to worry about. Like getting the grades we needed to catch the ISIS eye.
We were told, all this time, that the fighting was going well, but we heard rumors too, of how deep the hostiles were reaching into the city. The worst unrest was upriver. Locking the bridge gates and seeding the river with mines hadn’t stopped them crossing over. Kenton Woods and Boxton out on the western perimeter had copped it bad in the last few months: those church workers hanging from Westwall Bridge, a nail bomb ripping into a crowd queuing for bread, and a church graffitied in blood. The powers-that-be said these were flare-ups that happened from time to time, nothing to indicate an organized onslaught. It was hard to know if that was true, or if in fact the war was coming, as they say, to a town near you.
Problem was, we had no real news to chew on. Every night, curfew drove people back into their homes, and us back to our dorms and dining hall, to pick over dinner and the day in private. The General or his sidekick made weekly telecasts about how great everything was going, and City News drip-fed us details now and then, but it was news-lite about the fighting. All we got from it were things like a day in the life of our boys/girls in the fray from first ‘prayer and swear’ through to supper in the mess with grinning thumbs-up from everyone. All of which was about as satisfying as candy at a carnival but it was seized on anyway, then people looked around, hungry for the next thing. We wanted to know. One of the great things about being in ISIS is that you would know.
I walked in the grounds, listened to the quiet, watched the moon rise above the walls, and kept an eye out for the security boys. I’d get a lecture if they saw me. There’d be paperwork and reporting and junk like that, so I did them a favor and stayed out of sight when their torch beams came waving around. Said hello to Hercules though – that’s their giant wolfhound. He sniffed around and found me sitting on a bench but he knows me, so no problem.
When they’d all gone back into the dark, I talked to my mother for a while, told her that my life was pretty much sunk now that I was heading for the army with no get-out-of-jail card. But then I felt guilty about telling her that because it wasn’t her fault that ISIS didn’t want me. She’d probably had all kinds of grand plans for me and here I was trashing all her plans and she’d probably say to not give up, where there’s life there’s hope, and all those other cheery things that people like Mace are always saying, and maybe even believing.
The night was cold but clear, and there was no one around, which was a relief from always having someone in your face or your back pocket. So I stayed and watched the night go by and the morning come – the light coloring the old brick walls and the windows.
I was thinking about going back in and whether I’d be seen, and if anyone had even noticed I hadn’t been to bed, when a song came down the path. Fyffe on a morning walk, fair hair swinging side to side, happy, somehow, with the world.
‘Hey, Nik,’ she waved and came over, sat on the bench beside me and gave me her sunny smile. She smelled of soap and linen. ‘You’re up early,’ she said. ‘Usually it’s just me. Isn’t it wonderful?’ She waved an arm at the sky, which was clear and blue, just losing the sunrise colors. No argument from me, but I mustn’t have looked too impressed because she spared me the full-on ‘praise be to God’ speech and said, ‘You shouldn’t feel bad, you know. There must be a reason. There’s always a reason.’
Yeah. Life Lesson No. 1. Hold your nerve when bad stuff happens because there’s a plan and a reason for everything, you just don’t know what it is yet, but you’ll find out one day even if you’re on your death bed when you do.
Well, maybe.
Fyffe hugged her knees and studied me. I didn’t even try to look back. People think Fyffe’s not very sharp because she’s all ‘wow! look at the trees!’ and ‘smell those flowers!’ and arms flung wide at the morning sky. But they’re wrong. She’s smart in ways that are completely out of my league. She can read you with a glance, and you don’t even know you’re being read. So you don’t go near her if you’re trying to pretend things are great when they’re not, because she’ll know.
I rubbed my hands over my face and she said, ‘You look awful.’
‘Yeah… thanks.’
‘So, what now, for you?’
‘Breakfast?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘The army, Fy. The army is what now for me.’ I smiled at her to try to show I didn’t care.
She looked away. ‘It swallows people before they’ve had a life,’ she said.
All too true. We’d got as far as senior school because we were either very rich or very bright. Whichever way, no conscription for us. Until now. Now it was my turn to join everyone who’d been kicked out of school at fifteen and assigned to one of the three Fs: Farms, Factories, Fighting. It used to be that after three years you could opt out of the one you were first sent to. But now, they can keep you fighting as long as they want. Until you’re killed or wounded o
r way too old to be useful. Which is why, if you don’t get into ISIS, you’re dead. Sometimes for real.
CHAPTER 03
‘Gorton knows,’ said Lou.
‘Yeah? Why do you say that?’
‘Did he act surprised? No.’ Lou blew smoke carefully out the dorm window. ‘Does he care? Probably not. But it makes no sense. And they took Jono. Go figure.’ He tapped ash onto the window sill. ‘Want one?’
I shook my head.
‘You should ask him,’ said Lou. ‘Gorton, I mean.’
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘It’s not for him to say, apparently.’
‘Well, who the hell can say? Bastard.’
Sunlight poured through the high windows of our dorm room and lit twelve beds, mostly ‘made,’ desks swept clean of junk because it was Wednesday and inspection day, and mirrors stuck with photos of families, girlfriends, pets, and other hangers-on. I was supposed to be helping Lou with a programming assignment but we hadn’t got very far.
‘You need to know why,’ he said. ‘How’re you going to find out?’
‘No idea.’
‘A little hacking into Records wouldn’t hurt.’
I shook my head.
‘Come on! If not you, then who?’
Over the tops of our trees, I could see across to the hump of Watch Hill where the General sat in his office plotting the city’s next brilliant move. Or maybe not. What if he just paced and frowned as he looked out across Sentinel Square towards the river and didn’t have a clue what to do?
I looked back at Lou. ‘They’ll be hunting for an excuse to chuck me out now. I’ve got no one breathing down their necks to say they have to keep me, and my scholarship is theirs to stop when they want. If they catch me hacking anything, I’m gone.’ I was gone anyway, but I wanted to see out the year if I could.
‘Do you want me to try?’
‘Hacking? You?’
‘Dreams are free. Not hacking, then. I could just nosy around. Ask some people.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like Dr Williams.’
‘No way!’
‘No, think about it – it can’t be your grades, and you’re too damn careful to have much of a conduct record. It’s brutal! If you’d known they were going to dump you, you could’ve had a helluva lot more fun. So it’s not grades, it’s not discipline. What’s left?’
I shrugged.
‘Jeez. What d’you think?’ Lou tapped his head.
‘Oh, great. So I’m psychotic?’
‘Well… you are sitting in a third-floor window in the middle of a city in the middle of a war. In full view of anyone with a telescopic sight.’
‘Where?’
He pointed a finger, trailing smoke. ‘There’s snipers out there, remember?’
‘Rumors of snipers.’
‘And where will that attitude get you? Nowhere you want to be. They’ve got, what, twelve years of records on you?’
‘So?’
‘So, who knows what they’ve made of them?’
‘Do I look psychotic to you?’
‘Only sometimes.’
‘Funny.’
‘Course it would help if you weren’t caught out and about all night.’
‘I wasn’t caught.’
‘And that’s down to me covering for you.’
‘Maybe I was in the infirmary, being psychotic.’
‘Fy said she saw you. She said you’d been out all night and you looked like shit.’
‘Fy said that?’
He grinned. ‘It’s what she meant.’ The lunch bell rang. ‘Oh, great.’ He picked up his assignment.
‘Give it here,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’
It was weird. One minute they’re falling all over you and you’ve got extra assignments and one-on-one tutoring and all kinds of people checking that you’re okay and worried that they’re working you too hard but they want to push you because you’ve got ‘such promise’, and the next minute, nothing. Just nothing. I could’ve put my feet on a desk, lit a cigarette, and thumbed through a comic and they wouldn’t have cared. The difference between me and Lou is he would’ve done all that just to see what would happen. But I’d been schooled in school too long. Lou called me careful, and he was right. I always had been.
Part of that was, while I wasn’t the only brown face in school, I was the only one without back-up. The Hendrys, sure, they sent hampers and gave me a home in the holidays sometimes. But all I had keeping me there was my scholarship and a record that said ‘not too much of a problem’ or words to that effect. But now that I wasn’t an asset, had I turned into a problem? I didn’t know. I did my work and most of Lou’s, and watched them ignore me.
Lou nosed around, like he promised, and came up with nothing. He reported this at lunch one day, a week or so after Victory Day. Bella smiled pouty lips at him and called him a novice, a rookie, and a greenhorn. ‘Watch and learn,’ she said. And off she went to do her own investigations, hips swinging, black ponytail bobbing. Lou groaned.
Fyffe rolled her eyes. ‘Could you try not to drool in the soup there, Lou?’
We didn’t see Dash, or Jono. They were in training with the two ISIS agents who were living in while they took a look at their new recruits. They all sat at a separate table in the dining hall, spent the days in the staff labs, and morning and evening were out on the assault course in the back fields. Dash seemed to be doing okay. She gave Fyffe the thumbs up when she thought I wasn’t looking, and she looked high on it all.
I volunteered for library detail. Dr Bonn arched an eyebrow but spared me the knowing smile. ‘You can tidy up Nanotech.’ So I got to watch the recruits, because from the shelves of dusty old volumes on Nanotech, History of, Level Three, you could see the assault course.
Late one afternoon Sol Hendry came wandering by. I tried to look busy shelving books. How Lou had a brother like Sol was one of life’s genuine mysteries. He was a serious little kid with fair hair, big brown eyes, and a flair for mathematics. He’d only been at school a few terms and he was shy, not much of a talker, but he often turned up quietly at my shoulder to ask if I could make a number puzzle for him, and could I make it harder than last time, please.
‘Hi Sol,’ I said. ‘How’s things?’
He shrugged, hauled Nanobots: Fear and Fantasy in Classic Science Fiction off the shelf and leafed through it. I gave up pretending to work and stared out the window. Dash looked like she was born to the training. Fit, fast, graceful. By the end of it she’d be better still. Lethal.
Sol spoke behind me. ‘Why do you have to go away?’
‘Who says I’m going away?’
‘Everyone. Dr Stapleton. He said you’ll be gone soon. Into the army.’
‘Did he? Well, what would he know?’
‘I don’t see why you have to go. Fy said my dad will find you a job. But Lou said it’s not as easy as that. Do you want to go in the army?’
‘What else did Dr Stapleton say?’
Sol put Nanobots back on the shelf – in the right place. Sol, the perfectionist. ‘That we should do our work and not talk to people who’ll be going soon. That’s mean, hey? I think it’s mean.’ This judgment delivered, he shrugged Stapleton off and said, ‘Do you want to play football?’
‘Sol, my friend, what a good idea.’
By the time the bell went for dinner he and I were three goals up against Lou and Sol’s mate, Izzy. We’d yelled ourselves hoarse and I almost didn’t care about the ISIS woman standing under the oaks watching us.
CHAPTER 04
Just like she’d promised, Bella sailed into the girl-infested swamp that is school gossip, in which sharper guys than me have vanished without trace and maybe you’d find their bones years later cast up on some shore, still with an air of surprise that they’d been crazy enough to stray there in the first place. Bella moved through it untroubled, gathering whispers of this and rumors of that, and she might have stooped, now and then, to something a
s ungainly as an ear to the ground, but I think she had people for that.
She came back the next day with nothing. No news, not a rumor, not a whisper. Lou grinned through an entire afternoon of calculus on the back of that.
‘Ha!’ he said at dinner. ‘See? Not so easy after all.’
‘But there can’t be nothing!’ said Bella. ‘Believe me – there can’t be. Nothing is strange. It’s much stranger than something.’ Her horn-rims flashed at me and I felt like saying sorry for denting her reputation.
I’d had enough by the end of dinner and as soon as it was dark outside I made for the kitchen. But this time I wasn’t quick enough to get out before anyone could say, Where the hell do you think you’re going, Stais? because someone said exactly that as I opened the door. Dr Williams. He stood in the pantry doorway with bread in one hand and a plate of corned beef in the other. ‘Well?’
All the halfway decent excuses I could have made evaporated from my brain and I was left with, ‘Out, sir.’
‘I can see that.’ He made himself a sandwich while I squirmed. ‘You know we’re in lockdown?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You know why we’re in lockdown?’
I looked out the door. The dark smelled smoky and damp, and I could hear dead leaves rattling in the wind.
‘Stais! Where were you going?’
I considered bolting, but if I did that I wouldn’t get back, and I wasn’t ready to go yet. I closed the door. ‘Not far, sir. Just want some air.’
I waited for a pronouncement of punishment or expulsion or doom or something, but he just stood there, eating his sandwich and eyeing me. When he’d finished, he said, ‘Come with me.’
He led me through the dorm, past talk and laughter in common rooms and silence in study rooms. He nodded to the occasional teacher and told off the occasional loiterer, unlocked the staff-only door into the library and marched across its deserted ground floor with me trekking behind him. In the foyer the spotlit flag looked as though it was floating in the darkness. We arrived at last in the staff wing and he stopped at the infirmary.