The Fail Safe

by Jack Heath

  ‘It’s okay,’ he was saying. ‘Get up. It’s not us.’

  Fero stood, shaky and confused.

  ‘It’s not us,’ Wilt said again, pointing. ‘See? It came from beyond the wall.’

  It took Fero a second to make sense of this sentence.

  ‘Besmar,’ he whispered.

  ‘Right. We’re fine.’

  Fero stared at his distant homeland. On the other side of the Anti-Terrorist Protection Rampart, the city lights had gone out. Spot fires burned around a black core. Smoke suffocated the stars.

  Fero’s mother – his real mother, who had raised him alone after the Kamauans killed his father – lived in Premiovaya. Now her city was burning.

  Zuri ran into the room. ‘What was that? What happened?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Wilt said. ‘Something blew up in Besmar. Don’t worry.’

  Fero could feel Zuri watching him, but he was too overwhelmed to conceal his horror. He wasn’t even sure what emotions to fake. Relief? Curiosity?

  Red and blue lights strobed towards the dark patch in the distance. Fire trucks and ambulances, rushing to save the wounded and collect the dead. Maybe police too, assessing the explosion and hunting the bomber.

  ‘We should go to the shelter,’ Zuri said.

  ‘It wasn’t a nuclear explosion,’ Wilt replied.

  ‘The Besmaris will blame us. They’ll launch their missiles.’

  ‘They won’t. We have missiles too.’

  Fero had never heard Wilt and Zuri argue, but he was too shocked to try to work out what their disagreement might mean.

  ‘Turn on the TV,’ Wilt said.

  Zuri still looked like she wanted to head down to the shelter. But she picked up the remote and pushed the button. The television clicked on.

  ‘. . . details, but early reports suggest an accidental detonation,’ the newsreader said. He was a square-jawed man with salt-and-pepper hair and a dark red tie. ‘A video call from a bystander’s phone appears to show the bomber on foot in the central business district of Premiovaya, moments before the explosion.’

  The grainy video showed a woman talking silently to the camera on a crowded street. A boy with a satchel had been highlighted in the background. He moved furtively and hurriedly across the ice-slicked footpath, as though late for a secret appointment. He looked up at the camera a moment before a flash shot out from his satchel, dazzling the lens and erasing everything.

  Fero recognised the shaggy blond hair, the dark circles under his eyes, the thin teenage moustache. It was Verner Heigl.

  On Fero’s first day in the Besmari army – back when he was Troy Maschenov – he had been scared and confused. Fort Kligi was a sprawling maze of warehouses and chain-link fences. He had no idea where to go or what to do when he got there. Verner Heigl was the first person who didn’t act as if Troy was supposed to know all this already. He had been recruited only a week before, but he knew his way around. He helped Troy find his barracks and his commanding officer. He then trained alongside Troy for two years.

  Now he was dead – and the Kamauan media had painted him as a terrorist.

  Fero kept his expression neutral. Wilt was watching him.

  ‘Marya Gibbitz is a counterterrorism expert,’ the newsreader continued. ‘She joins us live from Towzhik police headquarters. Marya, has the bomber been identified?’

  Gibbitz was forty-something, her cheeks smooth with makeup and her wavy hair held back with a gold clasp. ‘It’s too soon for a conclusive analysis,’ she said, ‘but the evidence seems to point to a Besmari national who appears on several government watch lists.’

  The newsreader didn’t push her for the bomber’s name. This network was run by the state. Police and government representatives were treated with reverence. ‘And in this footage he’s moving south through Premiovaya, is that right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Wilt sat down on the couch. Zuri hovered nearby.

  ‘Could that mean that he was attempting to get this bomb into Kamau?’ the newsreader asked.

  ‘We’re not ruling anything out at this stage,’ Gibbitz said, her expression unreadable.

  ‘I’m told President Nina Grigieva will soon make a brief statement . . .’

  It was a plausible story. One that made Besmaris look like lunatics, dangerous to themselves and others. Even Fero might have believed it, except that the explosion had happened only a couple of minutes ago. The media couldn’t have acquired the footage and organised an expert witness so fast without advance warning.

  But what was the truth? Had Verner been blown up on the streets of Besmar by a drone strike? Or had someone tricked him into carrying a bomb for them? Either way, Fero’s friend was dead – a friend he had forgotten about until now.

  His guilt lasted only seconds before the rage took over. He hadn’t forgotten. His memories had been stolen.

  Anger was easier than grief. Anger could be taken out on someone else.

  ‘Fero?’ Wilt said. ‘Are you okay?’

  Fero turned to the man who was pretending to be his father. His posture on the couch appeared relaxed, but he was watching Fero closely. Almost as if he had known what was coming and wanted to see Fero’s reaction to the footage of Verner’s face.

  Fero couldn’t hide his fury, so he used it. ‘He tried to get a bomb into Kamau? At least he got what he deserved.’

  ‘Who did?’ Wilt asked, as though he hadn’t been paying attention to the bulletin.

  Werner’s name hadn’t been part of the broadcast. Wilt was testing him. ‘The guy with the satchel.’

  Wilt said nothing for a moment.

  ‘We should just wipe the Besmaris out,’ Fero said. ‘Drop one bomb on Premiovaya and one on Tus, just like the Americans did to Japan in the Great Patriotic War. They’ll keep attacking us until we do.’

  ‘Fero!’ Zuri sounded shocked. But Fero couldn’t tell if Wilt was convinced by his act.

  ‘They have nukes too, don’t forget,’ Wilt said.

  ‘All the more reason to get in first.’

  Wilt was about to say more when he saw the mug on the floor by the window. Fero had dropped it when the bomb went off. Tea was soaking into the carpet.

  Wilt cursed, ran into the kitchen and came back with a roll of paper towels and a salt shaker. He pressed the paper to the floor, soaking up the tea. ‘This is going to stain,’ he muttered.

  Behind him, Premiovaya burned.

  REDACTED

  My name is Troy Maschenov. I am a Besmari citizen. I joined our army when I was ten, after the Kamauans killed my father. I was recruited into our juvenile intelligence program at eleven. The Kamauans captured me at age twelve.

  Fero moved the pen lightly so as not to leave an impression on the pages beneath this one. His sweaty fingertips left warped spots on the paper. He could hardly see the markings in the dim moonlight coming through his bedroom window.

  It wasn’t just the words that were risky. He was writing in Cyrillic, an alphabet still used in Besmar but abandoned in Kamau. If anyone saw even a single letter of what he had written, he would be locked up in Velechnya State Penitentiary. Even before his conscious memories returned, that place had given him nightmares.

  But if he didn’t write it down he would go crazy. He spent every moment pretending to be Fero Dremovich, a Kamauan, the son of Zuri and Wilt. People called him Fero. He even thought of himself as Fero, although he knew there was no such person. Fero Dremovich was merely a cage, and Troy Maschenov was trapped inside.

  After they took me prisoner, they tortured me, he wrote. For a year they poisoned me with neurodisruptors and made me forget my own name. Then they convinced me that I was someone else. They lied to me. They spied on me. They risked my life. They robbed me of my identity.

  I have to get out of here.

  Writing had never been his strong suit. He’d dropped out of school to join the Besmari army. But he remembered only fragments of his life as Troy Maschenov, and they were jumbled up with all th
e false memories of Fero Dremovich. He hoped the act of writing would bring back more of the truth and make the lies weaker.

  A fly walked across the bedroom wall above his desk. It took a winding route from one crack to the next, stopping often. Two days ago Fero had spent an hour circling this room with a fly swat clenched in one hand. But there had been no fly then. He had been looking for hidden cameras above the pelmet, behind the light fitting and inside the screw holes in the door handle.

  He had found nothing. But that didn’t mean no cameras were there. He could only hope the room was dark enough and his handwriting so small that no one would see.

  He hadn’t bothered sweeping for microphones. The Library had long since turned every Kamauan mobile phone into a listening device.

  Fero stared down at the page and silently mouthed the forbidden sentences. My name is Troy Maschenov. I am a Besmari citizen.

  No memories surfaced. His heart raced. What was he doing? This was a foolish risk.

  Fero tore the sheet of paper into strips and stuffed them into his mouth. He chewed the paper, sucking the ink out of it as though the words could give him strength.

  He swallowed the whole gluey mess and collapsed onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The fly turned around and started walking all the way back across the wall. The apartment was perfectly silent except when Fero moved. Every rustle of the sheets seemed painfully loud.

  He hadn’t slept much since discovering who he was. At any time the two spies in the opposite bedroom could be ordered to come into his room and capture or kill him. He had left a plastic bag in front of his door so he would hear them enter, but that would only give him an extra three or four seconds of warning.

  They wouldn’t even need to come in. There was a lock on the outside of his bedroom door. Wilt and Zuri claimed that no key existed for it, but Fero was sure they were lying. If they wanted to, they could lock him in and summon the Library to pick him up and take him back to Velechnya.

  He was surprised they hadn’t done so already. Round-the-clock surveillance was expensive. The Library must still have plans for for him and his false identity. Fero didn’t want to find out what they were.

  He had filed the teeth off another key, turning it into a rudimentary lock pick. He kept it in the lining of his shoe. It would be useless if Wilt and Zuri were waiting outside the door, but it was the best he could do.

  He had learned to operate on very little sleep. He didn’t remember much of his training, but he remembered one particular test when he had spent three days and nights walking nonstop up and down a gravel track. Strapped to his back was a tank of water with a tube leading to his mouth. Several pouches of pureed pumpkin dangled from his belt.

  His feet had blistered quickly. His hips ached. He was afraid even to blink. He knew recruits who had fallen asleep on their feet and broken their noses or teeth when they hit the ground. By the time he eventually collapsed, he had walked the equivalent of two hundred kilometres.

  This was much easier. He could sit down during the day. He could doze on the train to and from school. He had access to caffeine if he needed it. And at night he could lie in a soft bed and think.

  There might not be cameras in this room, but he was certain the rest of the house was bugged. The back-to-base alarm system included motion sensors in the kitchen, foyer and living room. It was easy to plant fibre-optic cameras in those – Troy Maschenov had done it many times. It would be madness for the Library to have missed that opportunity.

  Outside the apartment he was no safer. CCTV cameras were visible on every street corner in Coralsk. Fero had found only two spots that didn’t appear to be monitored. One was in the business district, a cul-de-sac surrounded by tall buildings. Useless. The other was an escalator that led from a street – which had cameras – to a subway station, where there were more cameras.

  Worse still, Fero’s phone broadcast his location at all times. Turning it off would send a signal to the Library, and one of their agents would be on him in seconds. He was sure they had people following him whenever he left the house.

  There were no CCTV cameras inside his school. No doubt the Library would like to install them, but the Kamauan public was not yet convinced that their children needed to be surveilled. Unfortunately the students had camera phones, which fed data to the Library. The campus was fenced off, so Fero couldn’t easily slip away – and any teacher could secretly be a Librarian.

  Any student, too. Fero knew better than anyone that children could be spies.

  He had been planning his escape for weeks, and had hoped for the perfect opportunity. Perhaps a power outage would knock out the cameras, or Wilt and Zuri would lock themselves in the bomb shelter during a nuclear alert.

  But he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Wilt was suspicious. He had been studying Fero while Verner was dying on the television. Fero had to put his plan into action before it was too late.

  It was risky, but not as risky as staying here. Kamau was a nation of monsters. Sooner or later, one of them would kill him.

  Fero shut his eyes and visualised each step of his plan. He imagined all the ways it might go wrong, and how he would respond if it did.

  It will work, he told himself. It has to.

  He was going home.

  Troy’s mother was trying not to cry.

  He could tell because she was fiddling with her wooden necklace, blinking a lot and taking deep, shaky breaths. She swayed as if to music. The packet of cheese sticks she had been trying to open for him a second ago lay at her feet, forgotten.

  Usually whenever Troy refused to eat or tried to run away from home, she would just get angry. Her face would go cherry red, her eyes seemed to darken, and spittle flew when she talked. She would stand too close to him and her voice would become painfully loud, each syllable making him flinch. But sometimes she did this trying-not-to-cry thing instead. That was when he knew he’d really pushed her too far.

  This time, though, he couldn’t work out what he’d done wrong.

  The two police officers on the doorstep hadn’t said anything yet. They stood as still as shop-window mannequins, the woman with her hat in her hands, the man holding his clipboard like a shield. The patrol car in the driveway had the siren and lights turned off. Troy wondered if they would switch them on, if he asked. Maybe. But it seemed risky, given that he didn’t know why his mother was in a bad mood. Her sadness often turned to rage without warning. He decided to say nothing.

  Maybe the police had come to take Troy away. He hugged his mother’s leg, smearing snot on her jeans. What had he done wrong? He had been watching TV in the living room, but that was allowed. It was after three o’clock, the volume hadn’t been too loud, and he switched it off after Sparkle Kids was replaced, mid-episode, by the news. This morning he had borrowed his father’s wristwatch to play a time travel game with his sister, but he had been careful with it and had put it back afterwards. The trigger had snapped off the toy gun his parents gave him for his birthday, but he was sure they didn’t know about that. He had buried it in the bottom of the toy chest.

  ‘Jeel Iaga Maschenov?’ the female police officer said.

  His mother made a sick little sound, like the bird Troy found in the yard last summer. When he approached it, rather than flying, it had tried to run away. Dad had said its leg was broken. He’d taken it away behind the shed.

  ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news,’ the male police officer said.

  ‘No!’ Troy cried. He hugged his mother even tighter. They couldn’t take him away. Where was Dad? He would stop them.

  ‘Can we come in?’ the woman asked.

  ‘No,’ his mother replied. She slammed the door in their shocked faces.

  Troy stared at her. Was that allowed? Just sending the police away like that? Apparently so – they weren’t knocking or trying to kick the door down.

  ‘What if they come around the back?’ he asked.

  His mother didn’t respond. She was leaning against
the door, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  SUPPLY RUN

  Fero jolted awake. He spent a few seconds with one foot in the dream, unsure what was real and what wasn’t, figuring out who and where and when he was. The process was harder than it used to be.

  He rubbed his eyes and looked around. Still in the bedroom. He hadn’t been anaesthetised and transported to Velechnya during the night. None of his possessions were out of place.

  Part of his dream came back to him. I have a sister, he realised.

  It was a shock. Noelein, the Chief Librarian, had told Fero that Troy Maschenov’s father was dead and his mother was a museum curator in Premiovaya. She had never mentioned a sister. Perhaps she didn’t know.

  Fero couldn’t remember his sister’s name or picture her face. But there was something just out of conscious reach – a feminine presence in his childhood. Someone he used to compete with, even fight with, but also someone he had loved. Someone who had always been around whenever he needed her.

  Knowing that she was out there made him feel less isolated, but it also reminded him how far he was from home. When he got to Besmar, he hoped she would forgive him for forgetting her.

  He felt more refreshed than he had all week. It was partly the sleep, but mostly the knowledge that he would never see this place again. Today was the last day he would have to live as Fero Dremovich. His two identities had been tearing him apart, but once he crossed the border he would just be Troy Maschenov. Hopefully Fero Dremovich would simply dissolve.

  He dressed in a black T-shirt and cargo pants, then pulled his bright green school uniform over the top. It was snowing outside so the extra layers wouldn’t look strange. His leather shoes weren’t great for running, but it would be seem odd if he didn’t wear them. Besides, he might need the lock pick concealed inside.

  He missed the shoes the Library had given him for his mission. He had been told to sneak into Besmar ‘disguised’ as Troy Maschenov and track down Dessa Cormanenko, a missing Librarian. When he found her they’d needed to run away from the Bank, the police and the Besmari army. The fact that Noelein had tricked him into fleeing from his own people now filled him with anger. But at least she had given him the tools to do it: the shoes featured carbon-fibre springs in the heels for longer strides and increased speed. Wearing them had felt like running along a travelator.