For a moment, I see Nia’s expression falter, but then it’s replaced with stony resolve. ‘So do it properly,’ she says. ‘Don’t trick us into jumping through hoops so you can get the perfect press release. Put forward a case, but don’t use us. We are real people, not pawns in your political games.’
Bell raises an eyebrow. ‘So after all your posturing about doing the right thing, it comes down to this. You’ll throw everyone under the bus to save yourself.’
‘We’ve just started to figure out who we are, and we’re not going to let you take that away again,’ says Nia.
‘So you’ll let millions of people continue to suffer the injustice of a broken system, so you can keep your four-day-old memories of flirting with a pretty girl?’
Nia glances up at me and swallows.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ I warn. ‘She’s not a saviour. Remember Riley.’
‘Wait, aren’t I Riley?’ New-Riley asks. ‘Was there another Riley before me? What happened to him?’
‘I’m not going with you,’ Nia says to Cato Bell. ‘I’d rather die.’
She disentangles herself from me and takes a threatening, limping step towards the edge of the gorge.
‘Okay.’
Cato Bell is playing it cool, but I see her eyes flick to me. I’m the one she wants. She doesn’t really care about the others. If I died here, would she call off the experiment? Send everyone home? Or would she kill them too? I glance over at the gorge, the steep drop, the churning water far below.
No. I’m not going to die today. Nobody is going to die today.
‘You think you’ve figured out who you are?’ Cato Bell says with a smile. ‘Everything you think you know is something I’ve given you. Every letter. Text message. Article. I fed you that. But it doesn’t prove anything. How do you know you’re who that sticker says you are? How do you know I’m who I say I am? I could simply be some weird old woman who likes torturing people on buses. You could be anyone. Maybe you were an intern at my company. A high school kid I snatched off the street. Maybe you’re a terrorist.’
If only that were true. I’d love to learn that I was someone – anyone – other than Cecily Cartwright. I look down at the sticker on my T-shirt. It’s sodden, the texta letters blurred into a grey smudge.
Nia looks from Cato Bell to me. Then she turns and limps towards the edge of the gorge. But she doesn’t jump. Instead she steps onto the first slick, slippery wooden plank of the bridge. She takes another step forward, then another.
‘Oh, come on,’ Edwin yells. ‘I thought we agreed!’
I grab his hand and haul him after me.
The muddy treads of my sneakers slide on the splintering planks, and I reach out my hand to grab onto the rope. It’s hairy and sopping wet. I take tiny, shuffling steps. I don’t even look back to see if Edwin’s still behind me.
I can hear Cato Bell shouting my name, but with each step her voice gets drowned out by the pounding rain, and the pounding of my heart. I have never been so terrified.
White and brown churn below in a frothing, furious maelstrom. The river is high and angry. I can just make out the other side of the gorge at the end of the bridge, and it seems like a very, very long way away.
Nia is in front of me, so close that I can almost reach out and touch her. I want to tell her to turn around, to go back. But it’s too late. We’re committed to this bridge now. Maybe it won’t be like the movies. A bridge collapsing underneath us would be such a tedious cliché. We’ll be fine.
We get about five metres out – until we’re properly over the drop. There’s a dreadful snapping noise, as the ropes holding the bridge together give way, the wooden slats falling out from under our feet. Edwin reaches out to grab me as he slides off, his fingers sharp and hard, like claws. I wrap my own hands around the rope, and my heart leaps into my throat as I see Nia’s legs disappear from under her, and she drops down into the water. I scream, but my scream gets eaten up by rain and thunder because the rope I’m clutching doesn’t seem to be attached to anything anymore, and Edwin and I are plummeting towards the river.
Excerpt from Cecily Cartwright police statement
Officer: Didn’t you ever feel … bad? Doing those things? Destroying careers, breaking up couples. Some of this stuff is pretty terrible.
Cartwright: I didn’t make the wishes.
Officer: What about when Edwin Chen died? Did you feel remorse?
Cartwright: I was sorry he died. But I wasn’t responsible for his death, so no, I didn’t feel remorse.
Officer: At that point, when someone had died, did you worry that things were getting out of hand?
Cartwright: No.
Officer: Do you think you’d still be doing it if you hadn’t gotten caught?
Cartwright: Yes.
19
DAY 5
17:21
The fall seems to take a long time. The shock of the water when I hit it is indescribable – cold, brown, choking. I feel my feet graze slimy rocks on the riverbed, and I kick away and rise back up, breaking the surface and gulping lungfuls of air before being sucked back down again. I thrash around a bit, but the current is too strong and the drag on my shoes and jeans is too heavy. I should kick them off, but it’s so cold I can barely move.
For a second I glimpse Nia, one leg riding high in the water – her hollow prosthesis must be buoyant. I can’t tell if she’s conscious. The river pulls me under again, and this time I can’t figure out how to come back up. The current is strong, and I am slammed against something hard – a boulder or a fallen tree trunk. I take an involuntary gasp, and my lungs fill with water. I ricochet away and something cracks across my head. Everything is brown and I can’t think, let alone move. I let the river take me, and sink into darkness.
I don’t know how long I am pulled down the river, but at some point I feel my knees scraping gravel. Then someone grasps my T-shirt and I’m hauled into the muddy shallows. Light and air feel strange after the wet brown darkness, and I roll over to my side and cough up what feels like the whole river.
A hand is on my back, and for a moment I’m terrified it’s Cato Bell, that she’s caught up with us. But I hear a voice saying my name, and I know it’s Nia. The sound of her voice is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard, and I want to cry and laugh, but I don’t do either.
I look up at her. ‘We’re okay,’ she’s saying.
I try to say speak for yourself, but my throat is still coated with river and bile, so instead I just cough.
Edwin is here too, his face the colour of mozzarella cheese, his right arm cradled to his chest. I raise up to hands and knees and scramble out of the water and onto the bank, my hands sliding and slipping in the mud.
‘Can you move it?’ Nia asks Edwin.
He shakes his head, then turns his head to the side and vomits noisily, slimy water and half-digested microwave dinner pouring out of him. I feel revolted by it, even though I just did the exact same thing. Edwin starts to cry, snot and vomit and tears mingling together in one disgusting gooey mess.
‘We need to find shelter,’ I croak, clearing my throat again and again.
I haul myself onto my feet. The soaking heaviness of my clothes makes every movement hard, the pull of gravity dragging me back down to the mud. But I rise again and plant my sodden shoes firmly, then reach to help Nia up. She can barely put any weight on her right leg, so I slide under her arm and she gratefully leans on me. We pull Edwin to his feet by his good arm, and the three of us stagger along the edge of the river.
‘Are we out of range?’ I ask Nia.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I guess so? Otherwise she would have rebooted us already. I think she has to be pretty close for it to work.’
I glance up to see if Cato Bell is watching us from the top of the gorge, but there’s no sign of her, nor of the rope bridge’s remains. We must have been swept downstream a fair way. The rain continues to fall, not as fierce as before but still steady. I turn my face to
the sky and open my mouth, letting it fill with fresh water which I swish around my teeth before spitting, trying to get rid of the taste of mud and vomit.
At least we won’t need to find water.
Food is going to be an issue, though. I don’t imagine any of us are capable of foraging for … whatever it is you forage for in a rainforest. Nuts? Berries? Mushrooms? We’d almost certainly poison ourselves and die. That’d show Cato Bell.
In any case, first priority is shelter. We can figure everything else out once we’re dry and rested.
‘There,’ gasps Edwin.
Ahead the shining black rock juts out from the sides of the gorge, creating deep overhangs. One is deep enough that it could be considered a cave. Not much of a cave, but enough to keep us out of the weather for a bit.
We scramble up the slope towards it, and crawl inside. It goes back several metres, and the rock floor is dry. We collapse there in a tangle, and lie still for a while, listening to the roar of the river and the steady drumming of rain.
‘We needed a better plan,’ Nia says at last.
‘Or any plan,’ Edwin mutters.
‘Come on,’ I protest. ‘We had the thing with the wristbands, and you made the fire. That was a plan.’
‘It was the beginning of a plan. Not a whole plan.’
Nia digs in the pocket of her jeans and pulls out Riley’s wristband, which she’s reassembled. It’s unclasped, and I can see the complicated mechanism that keeps it locked around our wrists. She places it on the ground next to her. Then she pops her fly and lifts her hips, tugging the wet jeans from her legs. Her prosthesis is as beautiful as ever, the white and gold almost luminous in the half-light. Above the thick neoprene sleeve, mid-thigh, I see her blue fairy tattoo. The sight of it sends a jolt of electricity through me.
I gave Nia that tattoo. I designed it. I close my eyes and see it, on a screen. There’s something about it. Something at the back of my mind. I think of what Cato Bell told me, about my money.
Beware the Blue Fairy indeed.
Nia starts to peel the sleeve back, and I look away, uncomfortable. I don’t know what the etiquette is here, and I don’t want to make her feel weird.
‘It’s not like you haven’t seen it before,’ she says, grimacing as she works on the rubbery sleeve.
She’s right, or at least I assume she is. We were together – I must have seen this heaps of times. Maybe looking away is worse, like I find her disgusting. I don’t. Honestly, I’m quite curious about how it all works.
‘Does it hurt?’ I ask.
‘Of course it fucking hurts,’ she says. ‘I don’t think sprinting through a soaking wet jungle, falling into a ravine and then getting swept down a flooded river appear in the list of activities recommended by the manufacturer.’
With a grunt she pulls the prosthesis free. It makes a farty wet noise as the suction releases. She lays it down and gingerly peels a thin fabric sock from her leg stump.
My breath catches in my throat. The stump is angry red and covered in fat orange blisters. Purple veins run up Nia’s thigh like spiderwebs.
‘That looks bad,’ I say. ‘I mean, not … the fact that you have a … I mean, I assume it’s not supposed to look like that. Unless it is. I’m going to stop talking now.’
Nia laughs. ‘You keep digging that hole.’
She gently massages the skin around the blisters, wincing. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ she says, her voice tight. ‘It got all hot and sweaty and wet in the socket, so there was too much friction. I’ll be fine.’
I can’t tell if she’s telling the truth, or telling me what I want to hear. ‘We’re in the tropics,’ I remind her. ‘You could get an infection.’ ‘What about you, Edwin?’ Nia asks, ignoring me. ‘How’s the arm?’
Edwin’s voice is shaky. ‘I believe it’s broken,’ he says. ‘I can’t move it.’
Nia and I exchange a look. We can’t hide out in the rainforest for much longer.
There’s so much we need to talk about. Everything that happened at Camp Eleos. What I learnt about Nia and me. It’s overwhelming, and I don’t know where to begin. And that’s only the things that have already happened. We need to figure out what we’re going to do next. We need a plan, and all I can think about is how wet and hungry I am.
‘CC?’ The way Nia says my name makes me shiver. ‘Tell us what happened to Paxton.’
I close my eyes. I’m also not ready to talk. Not yet.
‘It’s stopped raining,’ I say. ‘I’m going to see if I can find some dry firewood.’
‘We don’t have any matches.’
‘We have Edwin.’
I crawl out of the cave before Nia can argue. My legs feel unsteady beneath me, but I’m in much better shape than either Nia or Edwin, so I tell myself to toughen up, and set off. I poke around the cliff, finding strips of dryish bark and twigs nestled under the cliff overhangs. I stack it at the mouth of our cave, and then head back down into the rainforest.
Down under the canopy, it’s almost as if it’s still raining. Water drips steadily from where it’s collected on leaves and vines. I don’t know how I’m supposed to find anything dry here.
Ridiculous escape plans cycle through my mind. We could build a raft and head out to sea, in the hope of flagging down a cruise ship or something. We could light a signal fire and hope a passing aircraft notices it. We could spell out SOS on the beach in coconuts.
My stomach rumbles. I could really use a coconut right now. Maybe we should head to the beach. We could battle with one of those monster crabs and roast it over a bonfire.
A giant tree rises before me. It must be three metres wide, the trunk bulging with veins and knots. The ground around it rises in curling roots, each one thicker then my leg. I tilt my head back, but I can’t see the top of the tree. It rises thick and straight high above the canopy. I wonder how many creatures live on its branches. Birds and insects and reptiles, scurrying around as though it’s a high-rise apartment tower.
At the base of the tree, the trunk splits open in a deep cleft. I reach in and smell rich, dry decomposition. There are dry sticks in there, and I gather them into a bundle.
Maybe it’s time to give up. Nia and Edwin are both banged up pretty bad. We can’t run anymore, and even if we could, where would we run to? Maybe we need to raise a white flag and go back to Cato Bell with our tails between our legs. That’s the right thing to do. We signed up for her awful experiment, after all. We agreed to all this, even if we didn’t fully understand at the time. And maybe Cato Bell’s plan is a good one. Maybe it will save lives, change the world, make paradise on earth. Isn’t that something I should want? Something I should be proud to participate in?
What would the old Cecily do, if she were here?
What would the Blue Fairy do?
I don’t have to think about it long. She’d leave Nia and Edwin behind. Injured, they’d only slow her down. She’d sneak and steal and lie to get off the island. She’d do whatever it took to secure her own freedom.
She’d kill Cato Bell.
It’s not even a morally indefensible position. Cato has killed in front of me, in cold blood. Doesn’t she believe in an eye for an eye? Doesn’t she deserve to die, to pay for the blood she spilled?
Further into the rainforest I find a fallen tree, propped up diagonally on another log. It’s old, carpeted with thick green moss. I get down onto my hands and knees and peer under it. The underside of the tree is soft and rotten, termite-eaten and flaking away in my hands. I pull it out in chunks, disturbing a millipede as fat as my finger. I shudder, and use the front of my soggy T-shirt like a pouch to collect the chunks.
Good Cecily would turn herself in. Submit to the experiment, then return to prison and do her time.
Bad Cecily would make Cato Bell pay.
Which Cecily am I?
…
When I get back to the cave, Nia is tying Edwin’s T-shirt around his arm in a sling.
I dump my wood in a
pile, and Edwin raises himself onto his left elbow, but his eyes roll back in his head and he swoons back.
‘You rest there,’ I say. ‘Don’t strain yourself. I can light the fire.’
‘No, you can’t,’ he murmurs. ‘I’m the fire guy. It’s my … thing.’
‘Right now, you’re the broken arm guy. Chill out for a minute.’
I pile the wood, bark and twigs at the mouth of the cave, then look at it all. I have no idea what’s supposed to happen next. Clearly emergency fire-making was not a big part of my Blue Fairy lifestyle.
‘You’re doing it wrong,’ Edwin observes from the back of the cave. ‘You have to make the tinder catch first.’ I hear him trying to get up.
‘Nope,’ says Nia, her hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re staying right there. Tell Cecily what to do. She can follow instructions. It’ll be a nice change for her, instead of bossing everyone around.’ Edwin sighs. ‘Fine. Make a little pile of the dry grass. Then take the hunting knife and a piece of the rock from the cave floor. Preferably one with a nice sharp edge.’
I follow the instructions, making the pile of tinder and then using the rock to shave little bits of steel from the edge of the knife, then striking the knife against the rock to make a spark.
‘I said a forty-five degree angle,’ Edwin says, his voice dripping with condescension. ‘And hold it closer to the tinder … No, no. You’re doing it all wrong.’
He sounds almost perky. Clearly being a jerk is good for him.
‘Be nice,’ Nia warns him. ‘Or I’ll break your other arm.’
I flash her a smile. I like it when Nia’s on my side.
The fire gets lit and we huddle close. As the moisture in our clothes evaporates, we start to smell very bad, like damp and sweat and mud.
‘How long until she finds us?’ Edwin asks. ‘She will find us, after all. Eventually.’
Nia shrugs. ‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘But I disabled the GPS on the wristbands, so she’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.’
‘How did she find us back there?’ I ask.
The Erasure Initiative Page 23