The Territory Truth

by Sarah Govett

  ‘So?’ I said, bleakly. What else was there to say? ‘I don’t suppose I imagined that then?’

  ‘Nope,’ came Raf’s reply. He’d tried to make it sound jokey, but it fell flat. A pancake collapsing in on itself mid-flip.

  ‘I’m such a denser,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You were upset. Anyone would have lost control.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Noa.’

  ‘So, I guess I’m not going to be allowed out any time soon.’

  ‘No … I guess not. There’s a reward … a reward for handing you in.’

  ‘How much?’ It was always money. The number of zeros corresponding to the importance of the fugitive. I wondered how much I was worth. A thousand? Ten thousand?

  ‘It’s not money.’ Raf swallowed and something about the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down told it was going to be bad. Really bad.

  ‘It’s a free pass for your kid into the Territory.’

  The words lodged in my throat and choked me. This was another level. Anyone would betray me for that. The guaranteed protection of your child, the ability to skip the TAA. It was the sort of thing people would kill for. Rational, normal people. My mum had arguably done worse. There were no two ways about it; I was screwed.

  I stuffed my pillow over my head to muffle my scream and then emerged again, red-eyed.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why do they want me that much?’

  ‘Because I think they’ve worked out that we did the impossible. We broke out and back in again. I expect they want to know how.’

  ‘Great!’ I laughed bitterly. ‘So these past few months have been for what exactly! We’re still nowhere near getting the key for the uploads. We’ve hooked up with an Opposition who just seem to want to blow everything up. We’ve done nothing. Achieved nothing, except KILL MY PARENTS!’

  A flash of something crossed Raf’s brow.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. But he was fobbing me off. I know him too well. His left eye squints a bit when he’s lying.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘They’re not dead. After the pictures of you and the promise of a reward they showed images of your mum and dad.’

  I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so much.

  ‘Pictures prove nothing. They could have been from weeks ago.’

  ‘Not pictures, video, with them confirming today’s date. They’re alive, Noa.’

  ‘Oh thank God! Thank God!’ It was almost too much, a straw to clutch at. They were prisoners but still alive. There was still some hope that I could save them somehow. I leapt off the bed and started to jig around with manic energy. I hadn’t killed my parents!

  I tried to pull Raf up to join me but he resisted and pulled me back down next to him.

  ‘Noa… Oh God, this is hard… I’m going to tell you because if I don’t someone else will. This is a trap, you have to realise this. It’s clearly a Ministry trap.’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘They said that if you hand yourself in, your parents are free to go.’

  ‘I’m handing myself in.’

  I spoke as loudly and forcefully as I could and my voice filled the rec room, making everyone look up from their dinner. I’d thought about it all afternoon. How could I do anything else?

  ‘NO!’ a simultaneous command from Raf and Jack, echoed around the room by additional voices.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Noa…’ Jack started to try and reason with me when his dad cut him off and stalked over to me, bristling with anger.

  ‘Come with me,’ he snapped, dragging me into the kitchen. This time Jack let him take me. He probably wasn’t going to torture and dispose of me in the kitchen. There was only so much damage he could manage with a blunt cutlery set. Jack’s dad shut the door. This conversation was clearly for us, not for show, and when he began to speak his voice was quieter, with an edge of desperation rather than fury.

  ‘There’s going to be no debate this time. You are not doing this, Noa. What do you seriously think is going to happen if you just march up to Ministry HQ and turn yourself in? That they’ll let your parents go, with a pat on the back and a full ration card?’

  The yellow flecks in his eyes were fireballs. I looked at the floor.

  ‘I have to try,’ I murmured. ‘They’re there because of me. I can’t just sit here and do nothing!’

  ‘They won’t let them go, Noa. You know that. They’ll still kill them. And they’ll kill you. But not before they’ve made you tell them everything you know about us.’

  ‘I won’t talk.’

  ‘They’ll make you. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll betray us all. Raf, Nell, Lee … Jack – they’ll end up dead or tortured in some Ministry basement. Because of you. And the rest of us – Mina, Jasmine, Simon – think of them? You’re not the only one with family. We’ve all got responsibilities – people depending on us. Jon’s got kids, Mina too. Do you want them waking up tomorrow knowing one of their parents has been taken? You might not think I care about anyone or anything other than the cause. That’s not true. I do care. I thought about Jack every day I was away. I just couldn’t see him. I couldn’t put him in danger. It was safer for him this way.’

  If I didn’t know better I’d have thought tears were forming in the corner of his eyes.

  ‘So, Noa. I wish I could get rid of you or lock you up, but I can’t. Jack won’t let me. So instead, I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Please don’t do this. If not for me for Jack. Think about Jack.’

  With that, he strode out the kitchen and I was left to myself and my thoughts.

  Family.

  How messed up is family. You do the best and the worst things to protect the ones you love. Blood and genes, the sun around which we all orbit. I thought of Jack and his dad. Jack’s horrific mum. Raf’s … oh God. Oh God. I just realised. If the Ministry had taken my parents, they’d have taken Raf’s, too. He must realise this. He must be going through exactly what I’m going through, I’d just been too selfish to see it.

  I hurried out the kitchen to find him.

  He was sat in the corner, nose in a book.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted out. ‘I didn’t think about your mum too. I’m so sorry.’

  He wrapped his arms round me and kissed the top of my forehead.

  I didn’t need to explain what I was talking about and he didn’t need to respond. We understood each other and that was enough. As close to telepathy as we were ever going to get.

  The night seemed to stretch out forever. I couldn’t sleep, the conversation with Jack’s dad on repeat in my head. I gave up trying at about four and went downstairs instead. I got a glass of water and let myself out of the window to the roof garden. I know I wasn’t supposed to leave the building, but there weren’t any cameras here and I was still technically on the building even if I wasn’t inside. The growing plants were somehow comforting. Life. Renewal.

  A couple of hours later, dawn was finally breaking. I heard the window squeak and to my surprise Mina crawled out and sat down. When she saw me, she practically jumped out of her skin.

  ‘Sorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ she giggled. ‘This is my sort of morning ritual, before everyone’s up. I come here to phone my boys.’ She waved her mobile. Totally illegal, unlicensed. Perk of the job. ‘They’re early risers,’ she continued, ‘it’s my boost for the day. Beats caffeine, though you’re probably too young to remember that.’

  She was wrong. I remember the smell of coffee in the kitchen. Mum cradling the mug like a second baby.

  ‘Have I shown you photos of them?’

  I shook my head. She eagerly reached into her pocket and brought out two pictures. Sami and Guv. Four and six. Jet-black hair, light brown skin, snub nosed with cherub cheeks. Mina’s love for them shone from her every gesture, her every syllable.

  ‘They’re with their dad. It’d be too dangerous here for them. I get to see them
once a week. We arrange something so it’s safe. It’ll be different soon … sometime. For now it’s better this way. I’d do anything to protect them, you know that? Anything.’ Mina was speaking to the photos now, to her boys rather than to me, and her voice cracked with emotion. I think she even forgot I was there for a minute, she was so lost in her own thoughts and dreams, her own responsibilities. I felt like an intruder.

  ‘I’ll give you some space.’

  I’m not sure if Mina heard me or not, but I stood up and let myself back in through the window. I’d meant to close the window and head straight up to my room, or to the rec room at least, but instead I stayed, sat on the floor, next to the open window. The only explanation I can think is that I wanted to hear a mum’s voice. A mum talking to her kids. A mum making her kids feel safe.

  Mina had her back to me so some of her words were lost or muffled. I could hear most of them though. It was clear that it was Mina’s husband who answered the phone. There was a tenderness to Mina’s voice, no forced joviality. A mask dropped. But then tenderness was replaced by tension and Mina’s tone sharpened.

  ‘No. No … I know about the place. I don’t know if it’s one place or two? Maybe one place but we have two kids remember.’

  What were they talking about? Then it clicked. The reward. The reward for handing me in. A place for your kid in the Territory. The bottom of my stomach fell away and I could hear the rush of blood in my ears. Why was I surprised? I shouldn’t blame her. Him. It was natural. Natural to put your kids first. I had to go though. Get out of here. Now.

  I sprang up to standing, my elbow banging against the window. Mina turned round at the noise and our eyes met. Locked.

  I made to leave, but her voice dragged me back.

  ‘Noa, wait. Please, wait.’

  ‘There’s no time,’ I said quietly. ‘They’re coming, aren’t they?’

  Her eyes shifted gear.

  ‘No! God, no, Noa! Mark, my husband, he was just ranting. He’d never. I’d never.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I replied. ‘I understand. I really do.’

  She paused and her eyes deepened into brown pools that radiated sincerity. ‘I was tempted for a minute, I admit it, but you’re part of us now and that means you’re family. Family in the way that counts. And you never hurt family.’

  I found Jack’s dad in his office. He was sat at his desk talking to Jasmine but on seeing me standing in the doorway, he asked her to leave, to ‘give us a minute’.

  ‘Well?’ He didn’t bother to stand up.

  I closed the door before replying. Then went over and sat across from him. We were going to discuss this as equals; I wasn’t going to stand and squirm.

  ‘I’m not going to hand myself in.’

  The tension visibly fell from his shoulders.

  ‘Good decis…’

  ‘I’m not finished yet. There’s a condition. I won’t hand myself in if you give the upload plan a chance. Delay the bombing. Just for a week. Give it a week and if it doesn’t work out you can go back to blowing everything up. You can even blame any bombs on me. Make me the scapegoat, they want me anyway. I’ll walk into the Ministry building, hand myself in and confess to it all. Just give this a chance first.’

  Jack’s dad looked at me. Grey eyes serious. Weighing things up.

  ‘You really think this could work?’

  I met his eyes, returned his stare.

  ‘I do. We need to find the digital key, but as soon as we have that, it could work. We have to try. It would undermine the Ministry in a way that bombs and bloodshed never could. Think about it – the Childes, their most ardent supporters, realising that they’ve been brainwashed and rising up against their creators? Rebelling against the TAA. The system would lose all its support. It would crumble.’

  A beat.

  ‘I understand if you need time to think it over.’

  ‘I don’t.’ The reply came quicker than I’d expected. ‘You have a week. You’ll have all our resources at your disposal for a week.’

  ‘Thank you!’ I gushed, all composure gone. ‘Thank you so, so much.’

  ‘After that, you do everything we say.’

  Jack’s dad stood up and I kind of hovered uncomfortably, not sure what was expected of me now.

  ‘Well,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you have some work to do?’

  The atmosphere’s changed. Got more serious. You can tell by the fact that no one speaks at lunch, other than pass the bread, grunt, water anyone? Grunt.

  Since Jack’s dad gave the go-ahead, all the focus has been on getting hold of the digital key. We were embarking on a three-pronged mission. Simon was leading a team doing close-up reconnaissance of the Ministry headquarters, checking out a potential way in through a side ventilation duct that they’d identified from the blueprints. Jasmine was orchestrating the biggest rally for some time, using it as bait to lure police officers away from the Ministry building, towards Milk Teeth’s gang who would attack them to weaken their defences.

  And what was I doing? I was staying put at the Opposition headquarters. Nominally to help Mina and provide ‘administrative back-up’, but really so I didn’t flash my face at any more security cameras or go back on my promise to Jack’s dad not to hand myself in. Raf was here too. Still weak, he wasn’t in a position to be sprinting away from any security guards or police. Also, as he was linked to me ’cos we disappeared at the same time from the same place, everyone would be looking for him, too. I’d turned him into another liability. Lee made him swear he’d rest. Nothing more.

  I enjoyed helping Mina, though. Still wary of dislodging a lead or accidentally hitting a button of fundamental importance, I tiptoed round her as she worked, handing her the occasional sheet of paper, reading out characters from a screen when directed to do so.

  ‘What’s the idea behind all the rallies?’ I asked as we stopped for a mid-morning ‘biscuit’ break. Parsnip thins. As close to a biscuit as, well, as a parsnip can be. Which is basically light years. ‘They’re always broken up by the police and just end up with people getting arrested and worse.’

  ‘They’re the only way we have of communicating with ordinary people. Getting our message out there. The News, what’s called news anyway, is Ministry lies, all of it. Our only chance of changing things is to tell people what’s really going on. And…’ Mina paused to reach for another slice of dried-up parsnip ‘…the rallies let people know that they’re not alone in their feelings. That there are others who want to resist. Who want to change things. All we need is to keep pushing until we hit a critical mass. A tipping point. Then it will all crumble.’

  ‘And what then?’ I asked. This is what me and Raf had never been able to pin down. Like it or not, it was true: limited space meant limited numbers. It had to, to some extent, so you were still left with the question – who gets a space?

  ‘I’m not sure, Noa. That’s the truth of it. But there’s got to be something better than this. Some system which isn’t determined solely by money. The philosophy side isn’t really my forte,’ Mina continued with a laugh. ‘I’m the computer geek!’

  We ate in friendly silence for a few minutes, before the next question popped into my head.

  ‘So, will it be in a safe or something?’ I asked.

  ‘Will what?’ Mina replied, mid-bite.

  ‘The code. The private digital-signature thingy we need to send out an upload?’

  Mina burst out laughing, spraying a cloud of parsnip crumbs over the floor in the process.

  ‘You really know nothing about computers, do you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied sheepishly.

  In my head, the signature was written down on a piece of paper, maybe one of those formal scrolls with a wax seal, and sat in a gold box behind a coded door, to be taken out and copied when needed. My head is a denser that has watched too many heist movies.

  Mina tried to explain, her tone verging into patronise a moron territory, but I guess I deserved it.


  ‘My hope is that the Ministry uses the same private digital signature for all of its important communications. By infiltrating the headquarters, we hope to be able to access one such communication and determine the code from it.’

  ‘So it wouldn’t even need to be an upload then?’

  ‘No, exactly. It could be something like a communication between army bases or a message from the Ministry of Education to a Waiting Place or from the Ministry of Science to a satellite.’

  A satellite.

  A shooting star of an idea arced its way across my mind.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I said unnecessarily and bounced out the room, springs for legs, like a kid who’d just passed the TAA. As I sprinted to Lee’s dorm and rummaged through the storage cupboard my whole body was a mosquito swarm of excitement. Eheheheheheheh, the cells buzzed.

  I found his backpack at the bottom of the pile. Bashed up, ripped in places, one of the handles literally hanging on by a thread. I thrust my hand inside and it touched something cold and metallic. It was still there.

  BANG! I flung open the door to Surveillance a little too hard on my return and the door knob crashed into the wall.

  ‘Noa? What’s got into you? Mina looked amused. But amused on the edge of teetering into pretty mad.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. But look. Look Mina! Will this do?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Part of a satellite.’

  Mina’s excitement was such that her hands literally trembled as she held the satellite part. For a moment I thought she might drop it and it’d smash to pieces on the floor, our hopes ending with a fumble.

  But she didn’t – drop it that is – she got herself together and turned it over, examining it from all angles, using tweezers to untangle wires and identify their source. Like a palaeontologist studying a fossil to determine the creature it once was.

  ‘Can we use it?’ I asked, my voice strained and husky.