by Sarah Govett
‘How did you get all this stuff?’ I asked, incredulous. In the Territory, ordinary non-Ministry peeps couldn’t even own a mobile phone let alone a den of super-spy computer stuff.
‘We have our sources. People who support us,’ Mina replied. I waited to hear more but Mina’s mouth was a zipped pencil case, one where the zip’s half broken off so it’s locked shut permanently. In her mind we clearly weren’t proper Opposition yet. Not to be trusted with secrets.
We were in there for a while as Jack’s dad had to disappear and ‘check on something’. Lee used this as an opportunity to ask Mina if she’d look over his code for the new upload. He showed her what he’d come up with at the Server and Mina decreed that it could potentially have worked but only contained about half the relevant data and was inelegant. For Mina, code was as much an art as a science. If we were going to hack Childes’ brains, an idea she seemed immediately taken with, we were going to do it in an effective and beautiful way.
Jack’s dad returned and the tour continued. Next to Surveillance sat Operations. As Jack’s dad pushed open the door, I fully expected to see Milk Teeth (real name Jon: it doesn’t suit him) in charge, pointing at a whiteboard with a stick that he was also using to beat people. But Milk Teeth wasn’t there. Simon was. A quieter, greyer Simon than I’d met yesterday but Simon nonetheless. There was a steely intelligence to his eyes and a determination in the set of his jaw that made me feel instantly safer – that we might actually stand a chance. It also helped that he was unrolling a series of blueprints of buildings and discussing possible entrances, exits and ventilation ducts with a group of five earnest assistants. Maybe he was already planning how to get into the Ministry to find the digital key we needed.
Before I had an opportunity to ask, we were swept out again, down a flight of stairs and into a smaller room on the first floor: Security. Milk Teeth’s domain, which totally made sense and seemed to consist of him training minions in how to inflict massive amounts of pain. Everyone in there seemed to have muscles in inverse proportion to their IQ. Ironically, his room was the prettiest. The window looked out on to a flat roof, which was covered in plant pots – their vegetable garden. The leaves and flowers made Milk Teeth seem even creepier, like sweet musicbox tinkling when the evil clown appears in a horror film.
It was a relief to leave there and check out Rally Coordination – basically a box room run by Jasmine, an energetic older woman whose thin but wiry arms looked like they’d been born holding a placard. Her work was more sensitive and she had a network of informants, feeding back information as to whose sensibilities might be shifting and who might be persuaded into voicing their anger.
Finally, we reached the innocuous-sounding Planning where Jack’s dad was based. It was home to serial-killer-style wall plans with red dots, photos of groups of people with one face circled, close-up images of buildings with numbers next to them: 351; 274; 54 and so on. It made my chest constrict.
‘And these are…?’ I asked quietly.
‘Targets,’ came Jack’s dad’s clipped reply. ‘Viable targets that would deplete enemy resources.’
I swallowed. He said it so coldly. These were people, with families, buildings with workers. Targets, all of them. The Opposition I knew about didn’t assassinate and bomb. Didn’t kill. The Ministry often claimed they did as an excuse to go after their members and crush the rallies, but Dad had shown me the truth. Revealed the Ministry lies. But now they seemed to be changing strategy. Becoming more and more violent.
‘Why now?’ I asked quietly.
Jack’s dad seemed pleased by my interest.
‘We’ve been organising rallies and acts of minor sabotage for years and nothing’s changed. More and more kids are being shipped off. The fact is placards achieve nothing. Words achieve nothing. The Ministry’s been telling everyone that we kill people, that we’re responsible for countless atrocities. That we’ve blown up Womb Pods, for God’s sake. When they accused us of that, it changed things. It changed me. I thought it’s about time we started living up to our reputation.’
There was something about the ‘I’that made it jump out from the rest of the words with a different volume or resonance. He was clearly the driving force behind the new direction the Opposition was taking, and proud of it.
‘But what about our upload-hacking plan?’ I asked. ‘We can influence people without killing anyone!’
‘The practicality of that idea has yet to be determined. These are plans we’ve been working on for some time. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, Noa,’ he added tritely, hailing from a generation where eggs came in shells from chickens, rather than as yellow, Mucor-based powder in a box.
But breaking eggs doesn’t always result in an omelette, I thought. Sometimes you just end up with a smashed-up globular mess on the floor. I didn’t say it, though, didn’t say anything as my eyes were suddenly glued to a picture that seemed to leap out towards me, about a metre off the wall.
The Laboratory. The Laboratory was a target. Mum was a target.
A soft, ‘No!’ escaped my mouth. Jack’s dad followed my gaze and then shot a look at me. There was no mistaking its meaning: weakling.
‘You can’t!’ I said, louder this time.
‘The Laboratory is a viable target, Noa.’
‘But there’re innocent people in there!’ I continued, my voice rising to a shout. ‘Innocent people you’ll hurt, you’ll kill!’
‘We don’t hurt innocent people,’ Jack’s dad retorted coldly. ‘The people who work at the Laboratory, who experiment at the Laboratory, they’re not innocent. In no way are they innocent, Noa. And your mother might well not even be there.’
‘You’re wrong and she would be there. Of course she’d be there…’
Jack’s dad interrupted me. Crushed me with a glare and a raised hand.
‘We must put the good of the cause before everything else. We must set other emotions aside. We need to start inflicting damage or we will never win.’
I could see Jack begin to ball his hand into a fist, recognising himself as an ‘other emotion’, something to be ‘set aside’. I should have comforted him, but I couldn’t stay there. Breathing the same air as that man. I ran towards the door.
‘Noa,’ Jack’s dad shot at my back. ‘Don’t even think about trying to warn anyone. That would make you a traitor and we don’t look kindly on traitors.’
I reached the entrance to my dorm, but didn’t enter. I went past and into the boys’ dorm instead. Raf was asleep, but I shook him awake.
‘They want to kill my mum,’ I sobbed at him. ‘They’re going to kill my mum!’
I left before dawn. I had it all planned out. The whole communal living, no fixed breakfast time, and lots of individual projects thing meant that no one should miss me as long as I was back by nine. The only other person up in the dorm was Nell, but I don’t think she even registered my presence – she was just sitting there, lost in thought, staring strangely intently at a Mucor packet.
I was on the landing when I bumped into Raf. His eyes were red-rimmed and his skin was pale, but at least he was out of bed, standing. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. More like he’d been waiting for me.
‘Don’t try and talk me out of it,’ I whispered. ‘You know I have to do this.’
‘I know. I was going to say be careful.’
‘Cover for me, OK?’
‘OK… But you can’t go out the front door. There’re people in the shop already. I went to check.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘I know you, Noa. I didn’t want you to get caught.’
I thought for a moment.
‘I’ll use the flat roof… But I’ll need you to shut the window behind me. Can you do that?’
Raf laughed. A quiet, mocking laugh. ‘I know I’m a pretty weak loser at the moment, but I think I can handle a window!’
‘Sorry,’ I replied, smiling. Smiling as his eyes managed a tiny sparkle, as his teeth headed
in the direction of wolf.
We crept down the two flights of stairs to Security, listened at the door – silence – and ducked inside. Raf held open the sash window while I ducked through and climbed out on to the roof.
Three deep breaths and then I lowered myself over the side, dangling like someone stuck on the monkey bars at the playground. My arms felt like they were being wrenched out of their sockets and shook from strain. God – the pavement seemed a long way away. My head swam but there was no turning back now. Also, from a practical point of view, I’ve never managed a pull up so I couldn’t exactly lift myself up on to the roof again. The only way was down. ‘Good luck,’ Raf mouthed as I let go, dropping to the pavement below. My legs shuddered as they absorbed the impact.
I’d done it. I was out on the streets. The emphasis now was on blending in, on not being stopped. I wasn’t a total denser, I’d prepared for this. I was wearing indistinctive, blend-in clothes and had a cap tightly pulled down over my face. From across the street or from a 45-degree-angled camera, you probably couldn’t even tell if I was a boy or a girl. Walking briskly, but not too fast, nothing to attract attention, I covered the streets to the other side of town, to our apartment block. My parents’ block. After what I’d done, what I’d put them through, I guess I’d given up any claim to call it home.
Passing the corner of 23rd and 7th Street I could make out an Opposition rally ahead. Jasmine’s work, no doubt. The slogans were unchanged: Stop Killing our Kids; Space for All; Ministry Murderers, but there seemed to be more energy to it. The chants were louder. More defiant. It’d be the next set of parents. The ones with kids facing exams in nine months’ time. The ones with people to lose. I wanted to get closer, talk to someone, but I knew I couldn’t risk it. Already police sirens wailed their approach as they came to break it up. This was the last place in the world I should be right now. Ducking down a side street, I worked my way across the City, pausing every now and then as I got my bearings, an explorer of old navigating by buildings and landmarks instead of stars.
My heart triple-jumped inside my chest as the apartment block finally came into view. After everything that I’d been through these last months, I’d sort of expected it to look different. To have changed like I had. But apart from the fact the leaves were now falling from the trees outside, it was the same. Right down to the policeman loitering on the front steps.
Marcus.
Damn.
He’d recognise me, be sure to.
How to distract him?
I contemplated breaking a window of the neighbouring block I now crouched behind in order to set off an alarm and draw him away. But the rational section of my brain knew this was the densest idea. There were so many ways it could go wrong. I had to wait. There was nothing else for it. Wait for my chance.
My legs were stiff, rusted into squatting position by the time Marcus finally left the steps and continued on his beat. Forcing them into action, I was off, hobble-running up the steps and to the front door as the blood gradually returned to my feet.
5 – 4 – 8 – 2
With shaking fingers, I punched the numbers into the keypad and the door opened with a click. Thank God the building supervisor hadn’t changed the code.
My head resolutely down, eyes focused on feet, I climbed the three flights of stairs to the flat. In my head I rehearsed what I’d say. Mum, Dad – I’m so sorry for leaving like that… I missed you so much… Mum – you’re in danger. Tears were free flowing down my cheeks. Who would open the door? Dad? Mum? It was just before seven-thirty so neither of them should have left for work yet unless there’d been some kind of emergency.
I stood in front of the door to Flat 8 and took a deep breath to calm my nerves. I’d never before thought how eight looks like a rotated infinity sign. Infinite love from flat number eight. Home. I was home at last. Then I balled my hand into a fist, raised it and knocked. Twice. Rap rap. That’s how people in my family knock. You get some rap-de-rappers out there, but we were rap-rap people. Always would be.
The door started to open and my mouth widened in unison, like the hinge was surgically attached to my lips.
‘Hello?’
An unfamiliar voice, female but low and soft. My brain short-circuited. Who was this person?
‘Sorry, can I help you?’
The voice again. The person. There was a youngish woman with blue glasses and orange lipstick in my parents’ flat.
‘I’m looking for Mr and Mrs Blake,’ I said, acid edging its way up my oesophagus, burning.
‘Um. I think you’ve got the wrong flat, love. Colin…’ she shouted to the back, ‘you don’t know a Mr and Mrs Blake, do you?’
‘No, don’t think so,’ came the muffled reply.
I angled my head so I could see further through the door. The sofa was wrong. It was green. Our sofa was brown. Why wasn’t the sofa brown? And why was there a standard lamp? And where was our blue-and-white checked rug? There’s supposed to be a blue-and-white checked rug in the hall!
My chest tightened and I couldn’t breathe. My knees started to buckle as the squeezing intensified and my brain lost oxygen. I grabbed at the doorframe for support. As my fingers closed round the wood they touched something else. Thinner, lighter. I pulled it out and found myself staring at the torn remains of a piece of yellow paper.
My parents’ flat had been repossessed.
The Ministry had them.
‘Can I get you something, a glass of water, perhaps?’ The woman was talking to me, but her voice seemed far away, like it was coming from a distant speaker system.
Ignoring her, I stumbled towards the stairs. I had to get back. I had to get back to the others.
It was raining when I left the building. Large drops that landed with a splash and soaked through your clothes and obscured your vision. That mingled with tears and flowed salty sweet into your mouth.
I wasn’t looking where I was going. I wasn’t concentrating. I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to run and sprinted down a side alley. I was shaking all over and then, slowly, ever so slowly, my muscles stilled. Something primeval took me over. Something dark and animal, thousands of years old. Something that raised my head to the clouds, daring the rain to pummel my face. Something that let out a howl of despair and a declaration of war.
Arriving back outside the Opposition headquarters building, I started to head for the side alley and then stopped. This wasn’t a crawl in through a roof-terrace window moment. After what had happened, I didn’t care who saw me. Flinging open the door to the shop, I stormed straight down the stainless steel pans and sieves aisle and through the door marked ‘staff only’. Then I was off, pounding up the stairs, a trail of wet footprints and reverberating treads in my wake. Lee poked his head over the banisters and couldn’t conceal his shock at my appearance. Wet, wild-eyed, radiating rage.
‘Noa…’ he began tentatively, ‘everyone’s looking for you.’
‘Where is he?’ I demanded.
‘Who?’
‘Jack’s dad. Where is he?’
‘In the rec room. What’s going on, Noa?’
I didn’t answer him but instead pushed past and kept on going. The door to the rec room was already open. There were about twenty people sitting around, talking, finishing their breakfast. Everyone fell silent as I appeared in the doorway, the murmur of the TV on the far wall the only sound.
‘Seize her,’ Jack’s dad’s sharp order. Two girls approached and grabbed my arms.
‘Let go of me,’ I spat. ‘Take your hands off me, now!’ They ignored me and just dug their fingers in harder.
‘You disobeyed orders,’ Jack’s dad barked. ‘You went to warn her. I told you we don’t tolerate traitors.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone!’ I yelled back. ‘There was no one there to tell. And you KNEW that, didn’t you? That’s why you said she might not be at work, isn’t it? ’Cos you KNEW they’d taken her. You listen into and watch what they do and you KNEW. How could you know that a
nd not tell me?’
‘Take her downstairs,’ Jack’s dad ordered, ignoring me.
‘NO!’
Not my voice, but Jack’s. He’d positioned himself behind me, blocking the doorway.
‘No one is taking her anywhere. Is it true, Dad? Did you know?’ Jack stared at his dad. Daring him to lie. Daring him to break the thread of trust that was starting to bind them. Jack’s dad blinked first.
‘I knew,’ he replied, quietly. His voice less certain now, seeking understanding. ‘But revealing that information wouldn’t have been helpful to the cause. Noa was more likely to leave, to get distracted, to expose us.’
‘Because the cause is everything, isn’t it?’ Jack shot back. ‘God forbid anyone should value anything else!’ Jack’s dad flinched as the words assaulted him.
The girls made to move me again, but still Jack blocked the doorway.
‘You touch her and you lose me forever,’ Jack shouted. ‘It’ll be me that walks away this time and never looks back. Me.’
There was a horrid, solid silence while we waited. And the thing is, it was like I wasn’t even there, like I was just observing it. I didn’t really care what they did to me, how they hurt me. No one could hurt me as much as that piece of yellow paper had done.
‘Let her go,’ Jack’s dad had backed down. Jack put his arms towards me to hug me when suddenly everyone froze.
‘Noa!’ Lee’s voice this time, from the far corner. ‘Noa, what have you done?’
I turned and followed twenty-odd pairs of eyes to the television screen. Lee had turned up the volume so we all could hear. Not that it was the sound that hit me first. It was the image. A photo of me, my face raised to the sky, screaming and next to it the image from my old Citizen’s ID card. The word ‘WANTED’ stamped across the top of the screen. The Ministry knew I was in the First City. I was an idiot. I’d broken the first rule. The only rule of remaining undercover.
I’d looked up.
I must have gone into a kind of trance or passed out or something as next thing I knew, I was back in my bed, Raf perched on the end, watching over me like some kind of stone angel at a tomb.