The Territory Truth

by Sarah Govett

  ‘It’s rusted in parts. There’s corrosion here, here and here, but … but we might still be able to retrieve some data. There’s only one way to find out! I’m going to need you to stay silent so I can focus.’

  I nodded and sat there in mute awe as Mina delved into boxes, pulling out wires, clips, circuit boards, connectors and started connecting everything up to a terminal. She tapped at a keyboard, entering fragments of code, commands, her forehead creasing and unfolding, a slow-motion earthquake as she digested the information being fed back to her.

  I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  ‘So, it is working? Can you get the signature?’

  Three slow beats.

  ‘Yes, Noa. Yes, I think I can.’

  The others returned late afternoon, their arrival announced by the heavy trudge of boots up the stairs.

  We swept out of Surveillance to meet them, our massive grins semi-neutralised by a swathe of glum faces. I caught Jack’s eye and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s off,’ he said glumly. ‘Mission’s off. The building’s impenetrable. Even the side duct is alarmed. We’re back to the bombs. I’m sorry, Noa. You know we tried. We gave it everything.’

  I mirrored his frown for a second and then my grin popped up again. Like a rubber duck you submerge in the bath that keeps coming back to the surface.

  ‘Noa, don’t you get it?!’ Lee this time. ‘This is bad news. Properly bad. Everything, the uploads, all our plans, it’s over!’

  ‘No, Lee’ I replied. ‘The thing is, it’s really not!’

  Raf emerged and joined us as my explanation was in full swing. He caught up quickly though. When I’d finished and everyone had been infected with our excitement, he snuck up behind me and kind of hovered for a moment before pinching my arm. I’m pretty sure the hesitation was him planning to hug me and then thinking better of it and going with this weird, semi-painful pinch instead.

  ‘Sorry, don’t know what that was,’ he said, clearly slightly embarrassed, ‘but good job, Noa. Always knew you weren’t a total denser.’ And then he flashed me one of his smiles. A proper wolf grin. Accompanied by green and blue 24-carat jewels. And my heart pinged.

  ‘You’ve got the best moves, Raf Ferris,’ I replied.

  ‘Shut up, or I’ll pinch you again,’ he laughed and he ran round the room after me, pinching the air like a completely malc crab impersonator.

  ‘Quiet!’ Jack’s dad shouted. ‘We need to plan!’

  As the room came to order, Lee marched over and hissed at me. ‘Raf needs to rest at the moment. Not run around a room!’

  ‘Sorry!’ I hissed back, but not feeling remotely sorry, not for a minute. For a moment there, I had the real Raf back. The one that made my stomach flip and my heart soar.

  The sun had set and the sky was a pure midnight blue, floodlit by a full moon. Everyone was sitting on the floor, in a circle. We looked like the meeting of an amateur magical society. To be fair we felt a little bit magic too. Mina had got the key. Lee had helped, a far more useful sidekick than I’d been. It hadn’t taken them long in the end. A separate piece of code at the end of the satellite data.

  ‘Very elegant,’ was how she’d described it, admiringly. ‘Very elegant indeed.’

  Our plan was coming together, the stars were aligning.

  ‘The issue under discussion,’ Jack’s dad began formally, ‘is how best to break into the Server to send out the upload now that security will be greatly enhanced.’

  ‘The army’s involved,’ Lee weighed in. ‘We passed a squadron on our way here. So we’ll probably have to get through some sort of blockade.’

  Suggestions were flung around the room, all of which involved massive amounts of weapons and lots of ‘collateral loss’ as in people dying. Random soldiers. Our friends. My euphoria evaporated. More deaths. I couldn’t handle more deaths.

  Just as I thought I’d explode if I heard the word ‘gun’ one more time, Raf cut in.

  ‘Do we have to go back to the Server at all?’

  If you could read looks, then you’d have seen twenty-odd thought bubbles of What? You denser! shooting across the room towards him.

  ‘What I mean is,’ Raf continued, unabashed, ‘Mina and Lee can code the upload here. We’ve got the digital key. All we’d be returning for is the antenna. The mast to broadcast it from. Wouldn’t it be easier to build our own mast here?’

  Everyone’s eyes swivelled to Mina. Only she knew the mysteries of all things technical. Only she could translate the hieroglyphics.

  ‘The boy’s a genius!’ she proclaimed, racing round the circle to pat Raf on the head. For a second it looked like she was initiating a game of Duck Duck Goose.

  Thought bubbles morphed into grudging looks of respect and I leaned over and whispered in Raf’s ear.

  ‘Not a total denser after all.’

  It’s been decided. We’re adopting Raf’s plan. We’ve given ourselves a few days to build the mast and for Mina and Lee to make final adjustments to the upload.

  Jack’s dad wanted to put in coding to the effect that the Childes must all now rise up against the Ministry.

  ‘You can’t!’ I’d cried. ‘It’d make us just as bad as the Ministry. We’ve got to free them from mind control, not expose them to another version of it!’

  Jack’s dad looked unconvinced but, to my surprise, Jack joined in on my side.

  ‘She’s right, Dad,’ he said. ‘Trust me, I know they seem horrific. Freakoids. But they’re still people. And we have to give them back their free will. We need to give them the truth and trust that they draw the right conclusions. And then act on them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to Jack afterwards.

  ‘It’s nothing, Noa,’ he replied with a half-smile. ‘You know me and Raf are never going to be best buds or anything, but he’s a person. Not a lab rat. And I guess the other Childes are too.’

  The fact that he said Childe not freakoid, and that it took me a few seconds to even realise this, showed how much we were all changing. How much people could change. And I felt this sense of calm optimism wrap itself around me like a dressing gown after a warm shower.

  On the chosen day, the upload will go out at 4.30 p.m.

  This means it will reach the Childes’ Scribes when they’re back from school to do ‘homework’. Mina will work out the right frequency. It’ll be sitting there, indistinguishable from other uploads. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be two or even three uploads one day. There was no reason anyone should suspect anything.

  We’re nearly ready. Ready to change the world.

  Never trust it. That feeling that everything’s coming together and you’re going to live happily ever after. If there’s a God he’s a cruel one. One that delights in toying with human emotions. Raising and dashing hopes like they’re tiny fragile ornaments on a mantelpiece.

  The warning system was triggered at 5 p.m. Most people were out hunting for scrap metal for the aerial. Mina, Lee, Raf and me were working on the upload. Milk Teeth – I still can’t call him Jon, it just feels wrong – was sleeping off a night-time mission. I don’t know what it was but he still had dried blood above his left eyebrow.

  Mina was in the middle of adjusting a string of code when she froze. And pointed. A small red light in the corner of the room was flashing on and off, on and off, a silent siren.

  ‘No. NO! They’re here. Oh God! They’re here. Think. THINK!’

  ‘What? Who?’

  Without stopping to explain, Mina ran to wake Milk Teeth then herded us all into the rec room, turning on the TV.

  ‘Channel Seven,’ barked Milk Teeth.

  ‘I know it’s Seven,’ Mina snapped back, nerves frayed. ‘I’ve been here as long as you.’

  Grainy video footage from the shop floor appeared on the screen. Two policemen stood in front of the sales’ desk, a poster in their hands. A poster with my face on it.

  ‘Sam must have pressed the alarm,’ Mina said, her words coming out in a rus
h, running into each other. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Bolthole. Now.’ Milk Teeth took charge and sprang into action. ‘Follow me.’ He marched us into Jack’s dad’s office and up to a full-height bookcase. Standing to the left of it, he applied all his force and pushed. The bookcase slid to the right exposing a secret room. Windowless, airless, the size of a cupboard.

  ‘Get in,’ he instructed. ‘Now.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  ‘I can take care of myself.’

  Once the three of us were inside, Milk Teeth pushed the bookcase back into position. We heard footsteps as he left the room and then silence.

  It’s horrible waiting in the dark. Your eyes dance around trying to make out features, patterns, anything, and your ears strain till they start popping. All you can hear is breathing. Your breathing. The breathing of the people next to you. In out, in out. Accelerating. Faster and faster even though you know you need to conserve oxygen. You can’t run out – you don’t know how long you’re going to be there for. It wasn’t long before we heard raised voices and boots on the stairs.

  ‘You can’t go up there!’ Sam’s voice. Yelling, projecting annoyance, but warning us as much as anything. Warning us that they were coming.

  ‘That’s private property. Of registered citizens. You have no right!’

  ‘Our orders are to search every building. If they’re registered, if they’re not hiding anything, they’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Silence again perforated by scrapes, footsteps, muffled voices. The policemen were going through the whole building. They were going to find everything! The voices were coming closer. Creak. The door to the office was opening. The sound of files being rifled through, things being thrown around.

  A different voice, deeper than before. ‘What do you think? This stinks of Opposition to me.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Another pair of footsteps, quieter than before.

  ‘Should we radio it in or keep trawling? Up the glory?’

  ‘Maybe radio…’

  Creak. A shout. Loud footsteps and then a crack and a scream. Thud, a heavy object hitting the floor. A second crack and a scream. And thud again.

  When Milk Teeth pushed back the bookcase his whole face and body were covered in a dusting of red.

  We didn’t look at the bodies as we walked out of the room.

  Jack’s dad face went from stony grey to purple and back to grey again as Milk Teeth filled him in.

  ‘But you’re sure they didn’t radio in?’

  ‘I’m sure. I got to them first.’

  ‘OK. OK. They won’t know where they were immediately. We have time, limited time. Twenty-four hours. Maybe thirty-six.’

  ‘What about cameras? CCTV?’ I asked, my voice shaking despite my efforts to control it. ‘Won’t they be able to track the policemen to our building?’

  ‘There aren’t any cameras for a couple of blocks,’ Mina replied. ‘It’s a rough area and we pay local kids to take them out. The policemen won’t be missed till tomorrow. Even then it’ll take them time to work out what happened.’

  ‘I’ll organise a distraction the other side of town,’ Milk Teeth suggested. ‘Draw attention away from here.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Jack’s dad. ‘Right, everyone, timetable’s changed. Everything’s moving forwards. The upload goes out tomorrow. Then we have to be out of here. Strip the place. Move on.’

  He turned his attention to Mina. ‘Is it doable?’

  She nodded back. Already tired and traumatised by our time in the bolthole, but with a flinty look in her eye. ‘We’ll make it work.’

  ‘What if they come before four-thirty?’ Raf asked, quietly.

  ‘We have ammunition, weapons,’ Jack’s dad replied. We can hold them off for a few hours. We’ll make sure the upload goes out. Whatever it takes.’

  The night was a blur of activity. Milk Teeth and Jack’s dad were planning a distraction to the south of the city for first thing in the morning, eventually going for a car-park bomb. Loud explosion, lots of damage but no loss of life. That should keep the police well away from our building for most of the day. Jack was part of Simon’s team, busy assembling the mast. Hammering and welding the metal pieces into position before crowning it with a satellite dish for transmission, ready to be lifted out on to the roof at the last minute. Nell was officially helping them, too, but was more of a bringer of water and snacks than anything.

  Me and Raf were with Mina and Lee as they refined the upload, although I admit I fell asleep in my chair just before dawn. I woke as a dishevelled, dark-eye-bagged Mina announced its completion.

  It starts with some facts about advanced Chemistry to hopefully normalise the experience for the Childes but then breaks into information about how the Ministry has been brainwashing them through the uploads, about how Norms are their equals rather than their inferiors.

  We all regrouped in the rec room for breakfast. Milk Teeth was back, mission accomplished – over twenty cars now part of a massive bonfire that had to be contained.

  ‘We have just one shot at this,’ Jack’s dad said. ‘Have we covered every base?’

  ‘Well, ideally we’d have tested the upload on a Childe, but obviously we can’t,’ Mina replied, wistfully.

  I swallowed. Did they know about Raf? His hair had grown so long it covered the base of his neck, obscured the Node. I certainly hadn’t mentioned it after the near-lynching Raf’d got at the Fort for being a freakoid. Maybe no one else had said anything either.

  There was a pause that seemed to drag and stretch and bend.

  Then it was broken by a voice.

  Raf’s.

  ‘You can test it,’ he said, quietly but clearly. ‘You can test it on me.’

  The silence that followed showed that no one had known. It was a buzzing silence, angry, hostile – a predator had infiltrated their hive.

  Raf once more had to explain his background, his choice not to upload, as the mob transitioned through anger to doubt to admiration. I didn’t listen to the words. My ears weren’t working. It was like all the blood in my body had been diverted to my brain, which was about to explode.

  Don’t do it! I wanted to scream. If you’re too weak to be running around, you’re far too weak to be sticking some lead in your head. To be messing with your brain. And what if Mina isn’t as great as everyone says she is? She might be the best they’ve got but sometimes the best is still rubbish. Daisy’s surgeon was supposed to be the best, wasn’t he? What if it all goes wrong and you’re not Raf anymore? What if it changes you and I lose you all over again but this time it’s for good? What then?

  Lee spoke first. ‘This isn’t a good idea, Raf. You’re too weak. ’

  But Raf wasn’t listening to him. He was looking at me. Really looking, concentrating like he was reading all the thoughts that were racing through my brain, tussling and competing with each other for attention.

  ‘You know I have to do this, don’t you?’

  And as much as I wanted to rage and scream and kick, I nodded. I knew. This was the mission. This was what we’d risked everything for. This is what everyone had suffered and died for. This was why our parents were locked up somewhere. If this was the only way to test the upload, then he didn’t have a choice. I know I’d have done the same.

  Mina, Raf and me headed to Surveillance together. No one else. I’d insisted, barring Jack’s dad’s path when he’d tried to follow us. I didn’t want Raf freaked out. Watched like some experiment. Raf sat in a chair in the centre of the room and Mina picked up a lead that snaked out from a port. I held his hair out of the way as Mina coaxed the lead towards the Node. She was about to insert it when Raf put up his hand to stop her.

  ‘Please could you give us a minute, Mina?’

  Mina nodded and tactfully withdrew to the other end of the room.

  Raf squeezed my hand tight and looked up into my eyes.

  ‘Listen to me for a minute, Noa. No interruptio
ns. No jokes, OK? I love you. I think I always will. We’ve had our issues and I won’t say you haven’t really hurt me. I’m still hurting. But, I love you and I need you to know that … just in case, you know…’

  ‘I love you, too,’ I replied instantly, blinking back tears, trying to remain strong for him. And it wasn’t a lie. As the words escaped my mouth I could feel the truth in them. This boy was special to me in a way no one else could ever be. It wasn’t that he’d replaced Jack in my heart; it was like they’d always occupied different parts. Atria and ventricles. Love and friendship.

  ‘But you can tell me again after this thing, OK? Nothing’s going to go wrong. Tell me again in five minutes, OK?’

  Raf nodded, and Mina took this as her prompt to return and pick up the lead again.

  ‘I still can’t see properly, Noa!’ she barked.

  I adjusted my grip, sweeping more of his hair away from his neck and pressing it against his right ear as Mina squinted and adjusted. Finally, the lead clicked into place.

  I’d seen horrific Charles, my mum’s boss’s son, upload once when we’d done homework together. And I’d seen Raf pretend to upload that time in the library to fool Ms Jones. But neither experience had prepared me for this. I’d cared more about my arm hair than Charles and with Raf I’d watched through an internal window, the glass providing a measure of distance. This time there was no distance. And I cared. I cared so much.

  Nothing happened for the first few seconds and just as I was beginning to think it wasn’t working, that something had gone wrong, Raf’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, red veined white replacing blue and green discs, shuttering his soul. My stomach fell away and I wanted to run out the room, be anywhere but here, but knew I couldn’t. This wasn’t about me, this was about being there for him, so I ignored my irregular heartbeat, squeezing his hand tighter to let him know I was still there. Slowly at first, and then progressively faster, Raf started to shake. Twitches to shudders to jerks. A jester’s marotte. His lips were moving but no sound was coming out. An epileptic attack on mute. I wanted to yank out the lead, to end it, but Mina, seeing the look on my face, scowled me into submission. So I squeezed and blocked and listened to the clitter clatter, clitter clatter as the legs of his chair tap-danced in time to his movements.