by Sarah Govett
The end was abrupt. Dancing to still in a millisecond. A beat and then his eyes rolled back down and stayed there, open but unseeing.
‘Raf!’ I gasped. ‘Raf, are you OK?’
Two beats. And then he blinked.
‘Oh God! Oh thank God!’ I cried, tears springing from my eyes like mini fountains.
‘That … that was strange,’ he said slowly, his words initially slurred then becoming clearer. He seemed tired, worn out, but still Raf. My Raf.
‘Did it work?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said carefully. ‘Test me on something.’
Mina handed me a sheet of facts they’d put in the upload.
‘What is the Avogadro constant?’
‘The number of constituent particles contained in a mole of a substance, namely 6 x 1023,’ Raf replied without hesitation and then looked totally freaked out. ‘That’s weird. That’s really weird – just suddenly knowing stuff. Having things, information, just inserted into your brain!’
‘Does that fact feel any different at all?’ I asked, fascinated, wondering if the uploaded information could be like cuckoo eggs, distinguishable from the real deal on close inspection.
‘No, no, it’s the same. Just the same. God, you can see why they’d all change and be so mean. There’d be no way of them telling that their opinions had been altered. That these thoughts weren’t their own.’
‘What about the information about the Ministry brainwashing kids?’ Mina asked, impatient to see if the real objective of the upload had succeeded.
Raf thought for a minute, rooting around in his brain for any new information.
‘I don’t know. I’m definitely very aware of the brainwashing but I already knew that anyway so I can’t tell. But I guess if the first bit worked, that probably went in too.’
‘So it works! It’s going to work!’ I exclaimed, jigging around the room. Move over chair legs, there’s a new dancer in town.
‘Maybe we could get you a better dancing-style upload too?’ Raf flashed me a full on wolf grin and I burst out laughing. Laughing like I’d heard the world’s funniest-ever joke. Laughing until my eyes returned to his face. Until I saw the two trails of blood winding their way from his nose to his chin.
‘LEE!’ I screamed. ‘Mina, get Lee in here now!’
Raf reached up, felt the trails and stared down at blood-stained fingers.
‘It’s noth…’
He collapsed mid-word. Sliding off his chair on to the floor. Eyes shut. Lights out.
Lee arrived within seconds. He left Raf on the floor, saying it’d be more dangerous to try to move him, and examined him there.
Fragments of information were thrown in my direction.
Still breathing.
Faint but discernible pulse.
Possible brain haemorrhage.
‘Do something!’ I screamed. ‘Someone’s got to do something!’
Lee turned to face me and spoke calmly, ever so calmly. He was no longer my friend. He was a doctor talking to the patient’s partner.
‘There is nothing I can do for him, Noa. It seems that whatever has been causing his headaches and mood swings, whether it be a shard of bone or internal bleeding and swelling applying pressure, has now worsened, possibly as a result of the upload or possibly coincidentally and his brain tissue may now be ruptured and bleeding. On the other hand, it may be less severe, more localised. The only way to tell would be through an operation.’
‘Then we take him to the most skilled brain surgeon,’ I said.
‘You know we can’t,’ Lee’s tone was patient but tired.
‘We can’t give up on him. Can’t you see that? We’ve murdered him. By plugging that lead into his head, we’ve murdered him! I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what anyone else does. You can pack up. Clear out of here and move on before it’s too late. But, I’m taking him to the Ministry and I’m going hand myself in in return for them operating on Raf and letting my parents go free!’ My whole body was trembling now and I felt cold all over.
‘Noa,’ Jack’s voice this time. He’d been drawn, like everyone else, to the noise. ‘You can’t do this. They’ll kill you. They’ve sent police out to hunt you, for God’s sake. They won’t operate, they won’t let your parents go, you’ve got nothing to trade with them, nothing that they want.’
‘He’s right,’ Lee again. ‘The best thing you can do for him is to hold him, keep talking to him. Make this time, his passing as calm as you can.’
Passing. Passing! He made it sound like Raf was going to move into the next room or something. You pass a friend in the street. You pass someone a fork. This wasn’t passing. This was death. Making it calm was giving up. It was like saying – hey that kid’s fallen into some rapids, can you sing a lullaby to it while it drowns? I’m not a singer. To be fair I’m not much of a swimmer either. But I’m damn sure that I’d be jumping into the water after it.
I stared at Raf’s body, working out how I was going to get him to the Ministry. I couldn’t carry him. Maybe I could sort of prop him up over my shoulder and drag him there?
My thoughts were interrupted by a small voice from the corner.
‘There is something they’d want.’
I turned round to see the speaker – Nell – looking scared and vulnerable, yet determined at the same time. ‘Something you can trade,’ she continued.
‘What?’ I snapped. I didn’t have time to waste. Every second spent talking was a second Raf was away from a surgeon.
‘Me,’ came the reply.
I was so mad with anger and fear that I almost bit Nell’s head off.
‘What are you talking about? Why on earth would they want you?’
Nell flinched as if ducking the words, but stood her ground.
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while,’ she answered. ‘Ever since you talked about splicing – you know about what genes are and how they determine something’s characteristics and how they put genes from one thing into another when they make the Mucor bars?’
I nodded, remembering all the times I’d caught her staring at a Mucor bar packet, lost in thought.
‘Well, I must have a different gene, mustn’t I? Look at me!’ she tugged at her white blonde hair and pointed to her ghostly skin. ‘And I don’t get malaria. I don’t get ill. I could survive in the Wetlands. Others can’t, but I can. So maybe, maybe they could take my genes and splice them into normal people. Then lots of people could live out there. It wouldn’t be the greatest place, but it’d be a life. More people could live.’
I stared at her, open-mouthed. She was right, she was completely right. How I’d underestimated this girl.
‘But surely the Ministry already know about Cells?’ Jasmine chimed in. Even here, in the Opposition headquarters, the Ministry was regarded as all seeing, all knowing.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, they wouldn’t. They never go into the Wetlands, do they? They drop prisoners off, bomb the region next to the Fence and occasionally retrieve a crashed satellite, but they never patrol, never visit the settlements. I don’t think they have any idea.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ Jack broke in quickly. ‘We’re not handing Nell over to be experimented on.’ He’d always been protective of Nell, father-like. Memories of the beds in the Laboratory that Raf and me had discovered assaulted me. Children lying there, tubes in their arms, charts above their heads. Jack was right. We couldn’t just hand her over to have that happen to her. Nell’s genes might be able to save thousands of lives, maybe tens of thousands, but in the end the Ministry was kind of right in a way. Not every life is equal. It should be, but it isn’t. The Ministry prioritise money. But I couldn’t help but prioritise too. The lives of your friends and family have more weight. The concept of balance, of utilitarianism, doesn’t apply to them.
‘We wouldn’t need to hand her over.’ Lee spoke slowly, deep in thought. ‘They don’t need her to see that you’re telling the truth. They just need her DNA. All w
e need is a couple of hairs and a photo.’
‘They’ll just take the hairs and kill you,’ Jack’s voice was raised now, raised and angry. ‘We need to think this through!’
‘There’s no time!’ I yelled back. ‘They’ll need me alive as they’ll want to find Nell, examine her. Raf can’t wait. He’ll die if I wait any longer. And, have you forgotten, but we’ve got two dead policemen in the next room? People are going to come looking for them. Soon. Time is not a luxury we have.’
Jack was going to speak again but his dad silenced him with a glance.
‘Noa’s right. Go. Now.’
‘The upload?’ I asked.
‘We’ll take care of it.’
‘And Nell?’
‘She’ll come with us. We know how to disappear.’
‘Be careful,’ Mina warned as we left. ‘You’re going to give them this important, world-changing information about this new gene and you’re not going to have any witnesses. No one apart from us to know what you’re offering them. No one to ensure that you walk out safe at the end.’
‘We’ll be OK,’ I said, more forcefully than I felt. ‘They can’t turn this down. Not something like this. And we’ve walked away before. We’ll walk away again.’
The van screeched round the corner and then Milk Teeth slammed on the brakes.
‘Careful!’ I yelled. ‘His head!’ But we were already at a standstill directly in front of the Ministry building.
Jack kicked open the back doors and we jumped out, Raf supported on a stretcher between us, Nell’s hair and the Polaroid Lee had quickly taken of her securely zipped into my jacket pocket. Jack’s dad hadn’t wanted Jack to go. Had forbidden it in fact. But it was obvious Jack wasn’t going to listen to him. So Jack’s dad had done the only other thing he could think of. Provided us with back-up.
Already police were swarming down the steps towards us. We’d encroached on hallowed ground. We were in an unmarked van in a pedestrianised zone. We were clearly trouble. Milk Teeth and gang leapt from the van, too, and threw themselves into the police’s path. Attracting their attention, drawing their batons towards them like iron nails to a magnet. I saw Milk Teeth, fighting back before disappearing under a bonfire of flailing arms. Guilt hit me. I’d hated this guy. Thought him unbearably cruel, bordering on psychopathic, but in the end he’d had his own morality. He wasn’t just on a power trip. He was a believer. Ready to die for the cause.
‘Come on!’ Jack hissed. We scuttled past the fray and up the steps, trying to keep the stretcher as steady as possible, acutely aware of each bump and jolt as we ran.
Just four more steps to go.
Three.
Two.
‘Stop!’
A policeman blocked our path. Separate from the pack. He must have emerged later from the building. Tall anyway, the two-step advantage he had over us conferred on him giant status.
‘This is Ministry property. You have no right to be here.’
He grabbed my arm and lifted his baton. Verbal persuasion clearly wasn’t his thing.
‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you recognise my face?’
The sun was in his eyes so he had to squint to focus on my features. Once he’d figured it out, the squint was replaced by the beginnings of a lazy grin.
‘Noa Blake,’ he declared. ‘Well, well, well. We’ve been looking for you.’
‘I’m here to trade information.’
‘I see.’ The policeman could still barely conceal his smile. Denser, it said. Gullible Denser. ‘And these are?’ he included Jack and Raf in a contemptuous hand circle.
‘They’re with me,’ I replied before Jack could say anything. ‘Their safety is part of the deal. We need a doctor now. A brain surgeon. Or I don’t say anything.’
‘Tell that to a minister,’ the policeman replied, his lips twitching. ‘I’m sure they’ll be very interested.’ And he escorted us to the heavy entrance doors, never once letting go of my arm. He wanted to claim credit for my capture. Maybe he had kids or there was a reward or promotion at stake.
He dragged us through the hall, waving away attempts by anyone else at assistance, and into an elevator. I silently thanked Lee for having strapped Raf in as we had to tilt the stretcher to make it fit. I scanned the board detailing the occupancies of the different floors. First Floor was marked P. Khan: Minister for Food and E. Scott: Minister for Education, Second floor was J. Cartwright: Minister for Allocation and G. Riley: Minister for Health. The list went on. Five floors of Ministers. Which would he press?
None of the above.
His finger hit B for basement and the lift started its descent. My stomach dropped. I’d learnt by now that basements were never good.
‘I need to speak to a minister now!’ I said, trying to sound authoritative but failing, and hating the sound of desperation I could hear seeping into my voice. ‘We need the operation now!’
‘All in good time,’ the policeman replied.
‘We don’t have time,’ Jack snapped back, unprepared to act as silent sidekick any longer. ‘Our friend is going to die if he’s not seen immediately. And if he dies we don’t tell you. We have information that would save tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives, and we’ll be sure to tell whoever’s in charge that it’s you who’s at fault. You who messed it all up.’
The policeman didn’t respond. We reached the basement and the lift doors opened with a ping. My ribcage stopped working, froze. I was back in the ice tunnel of my nightmare. Shards filling my throat. I readied myself to follow him. To head down to some lightless torture chamber. I’d failed Raf. I’d failed Jack. I’d failed my parents. My vision had been right. Everyone I come into contact with dies.
But something in Jack’s words must have struck a chord with the policeman. The spectre of blame had appeared before him with an outstretched finger. Apart from a tiny shake of his head, he didn’t move. Didn’t leave the lift. Instead, his finger found the glowing 2 button and we were moving again. Ascending.
It was the Minister for Allocation’s door that the policeman knocked on. Or rather opened mid-knock, not bothering to wait for a ‘come in’.
‘What the…’
J. Cartwright clearly wasn’t used to being interrupted mid-afternoon and certainly not by a policeman and three teenagers, two conscious, one less so.
He was exactly as he appeared on TV. A small man, neat grey hair and rectangular black-framed glasses. He looked like all the other lawyers in Dad’s office. Someone plucked from a vat of indistinguishable lawyer/accountant waxworks and then animated. He was staring at a screen of figures and surrounded by a nest of files. Order was his friend. Probably his only one.
He made to turf us out of the room and call security when the policeman explained that we supposedly had information. Important information.
‘It’s Noa Blake,’ he added. ‘I’ve brought her in.’
‘Noa Blake?’
The Minister looked at me properly for the first time. Studied me. Eyes all aglow behind the frames. Like I was some particularly rare species of butterfly that he’d discovered and was going to admire before mounting on a board with a pin.
‘Now tell me, did you actually go to the Wetlands and come back again?’
‘Yes, that’s me,’ I replied, trying to look tough, channelling Milk Teeth. Everything was riding on this. On me.
‘So, where did you catch her?’ he asked the policeman.
‘Um.’
‘On the steps,’ I replied before the policeman could invent some malc story that made him look massively heroic. ‘I came voluntarily. I have information to trade in exchange for an operation for my friend and the release of my parents.’
‘Is that right?’ The Minister looked at me, frowned and then removed his glasses to clean them, rubbing them with a blue cloth he took out of his trouser pocket. To give him a better look at the specimen in front of him. He seemed almost sad. Like he knew my coming here had doomed me, that they were going to
kill me and he didn’t want them to. Not that he was going to stop them. Even though he worked in allocation, people were probably just numbers to him, pawns to be moved round a board. Life and death didn’t touch him first hand. I fought down the fear that was expanding and rising in my stomach, spreading in convection currents through the rest of my body. Told myself that he didn’t know what information I had. How game-changing it was.
‘There’s a gene,’ I said, forcing myself to keep going before the fear that had frozen my face reached my vocal chords. ‘A gene that’s arisen in the Wetlands that confers immunity to malaria. If we add that gene to future children, a whole new generation can safely colonise the Wetlands. We can do away with the TAA. We can save thousands and thousands of lives!’
As I spoke, I unzipped my jacket pocket and held out the photo of Nell for him to see. Her whiteness radiated off the paper. New. Alien. A different species almost.
Instantly, the sadness evaporated from the Minister’s face. Instead he was almost salivating from curiosity, his brain already shuffling numbers, allocating citizens.
‘This is incredible,’ he said. ‘I’d always wondered whether this might happen. Humans adapting to their environment. Genetic mutations arising, giving an adaptive advantage. Fascinating. Totally fascinating. And the practical implications … oh my.’
He was almost rubbing his hands with glee and I started to relax. Let some of the tension go from my face. They realised the importance of the gene. It would change society.
‘Where’s the girl now? I need to see the girl.’
OK. Time for the negotiations to commence.
‘You don’t see her until my friend is operated on and my parents’ release is guaranteed. Not until we all walk out of here alive.’ The tremor had left my voice and my face could have won a poker tournament. This was as high stakes as it could get and I was going all in.