‘Just lucky, I think.’
‘Nice work on the GPS thing,’ I say, and she smiles at me, a real smile that makes me feel warm, deep down in my stomach.
We stare at each other for a moment, and there’s electricity between us. Something that we’ve both been aware of for a while, but we’re finally starting to acknowledge.
‘Have you checked for leeches?’ Edwin says, shattering the moment. ‘I discovered one in between my toes.’
Leeches. Great. Exactly what I need to cap off a really wonderful day.
‘Leeches?’ Nia’s voice is higher than I’ve ever heard before. She sounds genuinely rattled. Have I finally found her weakness?
I check between my own toes, and on various other parts of my body. No leeches. I guess I’m just lucky.
Nia lets out a terrified squeal. ‘There’s one on my leg. Get it off! Get it off!’
It’s a fat black slug-like thing about the size of my thumb, pulsating with Nia’s blood. I slide my fingernail underneath its sucking mouth and prise it free, tossing it onto the fire where it hisses and pops.
‘I think I’m gonna throw up,’ says Nia. ‘That was disgusting. Check there’s no more, will you?’
‘I can’t see any.’
‘Look closer. You have to be sure.’
She pulls her T-shirt over her head and then she’s in bra and undies. I move closer and run my fingers gently over her shoulders and down her back. Her skin breaks out in gooseflesh.
I inspect all the places where a leech might be hiding – her underarms, the crook of her elbow, the small of her back. Nia’s skin is smooth and brown and entirely leech-free, but I take my time. I don’t want to stop touching her. I want to touch her more. I want to press my lips to her shoulderblades, to the nape of her neck.
She’s gone very quiet. I’m not sure she’s even breathing. Edwin coughs from the other side of the fire, and I pull away.
‘No leeches,’ I say. ‘Although I didn’t look in your underwear.’ Nia’s cheeks flush, and she turns away from the fire, lifting the band of her undies and slipping a hand inside. My heart thunders so loud I’m surprised she can’t hear it.
‘It’s getting dark.’ Edwin’s voice startles me out of my decidedly impure thoughts. ‘You’ll need to get more wood if we’re going to keep the fire going through the night.’
I slip back out into the evening, and return to my fallen tree. The air is deafening with birdcalls and the ringing and vibrating of other creatures – insects and frogs, I guess.
A bush bearing fat purple berries is tempting, but death by poison berry in the middle of a rainforest isn’t exactly how I want to go. I wonder if I could catch and roast a bird, then snort to myself. The only thing I’m going to catch is a cold.
When I return, Nia has her T-shirt back on, but she’s still antsy. I stack the firewood and watch her, amused, as she scratches and puts her hands to her neck, her cheeks, her arms.
‘Gahhh.’ She shudders and shakes herself like a wet dog. ‘It’s like they’re crawling all over me. What are you grinning about? Stop it.’
‘You’re adorable when you’re freaking out.’
‘Shut up.’
I’d give anything for a baked potato, or toasted marshmallow. I wish I could remember what they taste like.
I stoke the fire and settle down. My clothes are nearly dry, and I’m not cold anymore. The light outside dims until only the flickering firelight illuminates our faces. Nia is watching me, waiting.
‘Well?’ she says.
I take a breath. ‘Paxton’s dead.’
Nia and Edwin are silent for a moment. ‘Did Cato Bell kill him?’
I carefully place another piece of wood on the fire. I could lie. She wouldn’t know. Bad Cecily would lie. ‘No,’ I say at last. ‘I killed him. It’s why you turned me in.’
Saying the words out loud feel like something breaking inside me. Something that I don’t think can be fixed. I killed him. I killed Paxton.
‘I don’t understand,’ says Nia. ‘I didn’t turn you in. We went through with the plan. The wristband …’
‘I believe she means before,’ says Edwin. ‘You turned her in before.’
‘But Paxton—’
‘The person on the bus wasn’t Paxton.’ Edwin’s voice is strangely calm. ‘He was like me. A fake. Wasn’t he, Cecily? He recognised Sandra for the same reason Riley and I did – we’d seen her on the news. She was never really his mother.’
‘His real name was Quinn Paget. Cato Bell shot him in front of me. To prove that she was serious.’
‘And you killed the real Paxton. Are you sure?’
‘He found out I was the Blue Fairy. I made it look like a suicide.’
‘Hold on a moment,’ Edwin says, whipping his head round to me. ‘You said that Nia was the Blue Fairy.’
‘Keep up, Edwin.’
Nia glances at me. ‘Did I really turn you in?’
I nod. ‘I mean, I did kill my boyfriend. And … and maybe the real Edwin. I don’t know. I’d turn me in too.’
Good Cecily would, anyway. Bad Cecily would try to figure out how to make the situation benefit her.
Bad Cecily would have a plan.
‘So what are our options?’ I ask. ‘What next?’
The fire pops as we all fail to come up with a genius plan.
‘What about the distress call?’ I ask Nia. ‘You said you could make the wristbands broadcast an SOS?’
Her expression turns rueful. ‘Yeah, I did it,’ she says. ‘The only problem is, Cato Bell has put a dampener over the whole island, like a dome or a blanket. It means that no signals can get in or out.’
‘And we can’t get past it?’
‘We’d have to swim out to sea.’
‘How far?’
She spreads her hands. ‘No idea. It could be a few hundred metres. It could be a few hundred kilometres.’
So nobody will be coming to rescue us. Fine. I guess we’ll have to rescue ourselves. There has to be a way.
‘I think we should turn ourselves in.’ Edwin’s face is solemn.
‘Are you insane?’
‘Quite the opposite. We did bad things. We should do our time.’
‘But didn’t you hear what Cato Bell said? The whole system is broken. Doing your time isn’t going to make anything better. It’s not going to bring back the people who died, or make their families grieve any less.’
Edwin is silent for a moment. ‘Nevertheless, I believe it is the right thing to do. It’s the punishment that’s deemed just.’
‘Who deemed it, though?’ Nia says. ‘I didn’t. And I don’t think you did either. The people with the power get to make all the rules, and we blindly follow them because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that following the law is always the right thing to do.’
‘You sound like her. Like Cato Bell.’
‘Well she’s not entirely wrong. I don’t actually disagree with her overall plan. I just don’t like the way she’s going about it.’
‘The plan is terrible,’ says Edwin flatly.
I blink. ‘Really? But you love Cato Bell.’
‘Oh, I still believe she is a genius,’ says Edwin. ‘But every genius has their share of terrible ideas. Like her vision to provide free education worldwide with VR kits?’
I frown. ‘Her what?’
Nia scowls. ‘The plan was that rich kids could pay for the VR kit themselves. Poor kids would sign a dollarmiting contract.’
‘Dollarmiting?’
‘A portion of the kid’s brain would be used for data storage. Even though it’s been proven to reduce intellectual capacity.’
‘Bloody hell. So she’s an evil genius, then.’
‘Who can say?’ Edwin says. ‘Edison invented a talking doll that was so terrifying to children that almost all of them were returned. Leonardo Da Vinci invented shoes that were supposed to walk on water, but actually just helped you drown. On the other hand, everyone thought Tesla’s work
on electrostatic conduction was totally useless, but a hundred and forty years later we use wireless charging for everything. Not every good idea works, and sometimes we don’t know if it’s a good idea for hundreds of years.’
Nia shakes her head. ‘They’re not comparable,’ she says. ‘Da Vinci’s shoes didn’t involve the torture of children.’
Edwin shrugs. ‘Anyway. Bell is a genius, but I think the Erasure Initiative is a terrible idea. It won’t work. Wiping someone’s memory and shipping them to another city doesn’t equal a fresh start. First of all, everyone will still know who the criminals are – they’re the ones with no memories. They’ll still be social pariahs. It’ll still be impossible for them to access legitimate employment, or form meaningful social and emotional networks. And secondly, they’re all going to find out who they are anyway.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Look at us! From the moment we woke up we were desperate to know who we really were. We put ourselves in mortal danger to find out the tiniest fragments of our pasts. And we don’t have the internet! Do you really believe the families left behind won’t try to find them? It’s impossible to pull off, unless you literally strand all the criminals on an island and make them start over with no technology at all. Castaway-style. Even then it’ll only be a matter of months before they figure out how to get back to civilisation.’
‘So why is she doing it?’
‘She’s a wealthy white woman with a saviour complex. She wants to save the world. She also probably wants a government contract for the technology in the bands.’ Edwin’s fingers the white silicone around his wrist. ‘Do you remember the other parts of her proposal? Permanent incarceration for the irredeemably criminal, in a Bell Industries lab facility that will use their brains for data storage. Free rehab in exchange for neural processing power. It’s the dollarmiting scheme all over again, but with criminals instead of schoolchildren. The fact of the matter is, there’s no one simple plan that’s going to save the world. There’s no easy fix. It’s probably unfixable.’
Nia is staring at Edwin with confusion and respect on her face. ‘So you want to turn yourself in.’
He shrugs. ‘It’s the law. I can’t change the law myself, so I have to submit to it. Without the law, there’s only chaos. I did an unforgivable thing, and our society has decided that I should be punished with jail. So that’s what should happen.’
‘Don’t you want a fresh start?’
‘More than anything. But I can’t have it until I’ve paid my penance. That’s how justice works. You don’t get to run away and start over. You have to pay.’
‘An eye for an eye.’
‘Not necessarily. I’m not saying I think the current criminal justice system is good, or that we should reinstate the death penalty. I believe that if you break the rules, you must pay a price. That’s how we remain civilised.’
‘Prison will crush you,’ Nia says. ‘You’re not going to come out of there a better person.’
Edwin shrugs. ‘That’s my own fault. I’m the one who set my school on fire.’
This conversation is a waste of time. ‘She’ll kill both of you,’ I say.
They stop bickering and turn to me.
‘I’m her special guest star,’ I explain. ‘She needs me. But she doesn’t need either of you. You can’t guarantee that she’ll honour the deal you made when you signed the contract. How do you know she’ll send you back to jail? Remember Riley. Remember Paxton. And who knows what’s happened to Sandra?’
Meanwhile, I could bargain with her. Tell her she can wipe my memory in exchange for letting Nia and Edwin go. It’s what Good Cecily would do. But I can’t trust Cato Bell. She’d make the deal in a heartbeat, then kill them both as soon as my wristband was activated.
‘We’re not going back.’ Nia’s voice is firm. ‘I’m not having my memories wiped. I—’ She hesitates. ‘I honestly can’t think of anything worse than feeling like that again. No control over anything, not even myself. Unmoored, with nothing to hold on to.’ Her eyes flick to me and she swallows. ‘Anything is better than that.’
I remember the feeling of the memory fog, obscuring all the parts of me, yet I can’t agree with Nia. There are parts I’d love to wipe. The sight of Riley, spattered all over the windscreen of the bus. Not-Paxton’s blood slippery under my hands. The ringing of truth deep in my gut when Cato Bell confirmed that I was the Blue Fairy.
And yet … The thought of giving up the moment Nia and I shared on the observation tower gives me pause. Even this moment, here, huddled hungry in a damp cave. The idea of it being lost is unbearable.
‘So if we’re not going back to Cato, then what are we going to do? Live in this cave and eat fish and berries for the rest of our lives?’
‘We have to get off the island.’
‘We could kidnap her. Force her to evacuate us.’
Definitely what Bad Cecily would do. She wouldn’t flinch from inflicting pain. She’d happily torture Cato Bell, just as Cato Bell had tortured us. But Good Cecily is squirming. There has to be a better way.
‘She’s unpredictable,’ I say slowly. ‘And smart. It’d be better if we could get away without her knowing.’
‘Okay,’ says Nia. ‘Well, there must be a boat we can steal. Something.’
I think of Sandra, dashing low across the promontory.
‘Helicopter. We could steal the helicopter. It lands on a little promontory by the ocean.’
‘Can you fly a helicopter?’
‘I … don’t know? I doubt it. We’d have to keep the pilot. Convince them to take us to safety.’
Nia sighs. ‘But it’s gone. Didn’t you say it took Sandra away? We have no way of knowing when it’ll come back. It could be weeks.’
‘It comes every Thursday, at eleven in the morning.’
I turn to look at Edwin, who shrugs. ‘It was in one of the files Nia found. Delivery schedule.’
‘You’re amazing. Do you happen to know what day it is today?’
‘Tuesday.’ It’s Nia. ‘The seatback displays had a timestamp.’
I glance down at my wristband. That gives us a day and a half to find the promontory. It’s doable, even with Nia and Edwin in dubious physical health. I feel a little spark of hope. This is a plan that might actually work. I close my eyes and picture us, soaring up over the island while Cato Bell stands outside Camp Eleos, shaking her fist at us like a defeated villain from a cartoon.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘So we find our way to the place where the helicopter is. We hide until it lands. Then we find a way to overpower the pilot, and force them to take us to the mainland.’
There’s a pause while we all think about this. ‘I have a lot of questions,’ Edwin says at last. ‘How are we going to overpower the pilot? How do we know Cato Bell won’t be there too? Where are we going to get the pilot to take us? And what happens when we get there?’
I hold up a hand. ‘Stop. You’ll ruin the plan if you ask too many questions. There are a lot of unknowns, and we’re going to have to improvise.’
‘Isn’t that how we got into trouble last time?’
‘Trust me.’
…
We settle down to try to get some sleep, but Edwin won’t stay still. He wriggles and bats at his head with his good arm, his whole body tensing and straining at random intervals.
‘Knock it off,’ Nia snaps at last. ‘I’m never going to sleep with you jerking around like a fish on a hook.’
‘There’s a mosquito in here,’ Edwin says, his voice whiny. ‘I don’t want to get bitten.’
‘Are you serious? We’re lost in the middle of a hostile environment with no food, being hunted by an evil genius. You have a freaking broken arm. And you’re worried about a mosquito?’
‘Of course,’ Edwin replies, as though it should be obvious why. ‘This is a tropical island. I don’t want to contract malaria. Or dengue. Or zika. Or encephalitis. Or—’
‘Okay, okay.’ Nia groans. ‘I get it. An
d I wish you hadn’t said any of that, because now all I’m thinking about is mosquitoes.’
We lie there in silence for a while, listening to the fire crack and sputter.
Nia’s voice emerges from the darkness, right by my ear. ‘Is this really what you want to do?’
‘Yes.’
My voice is firm, but inside I’m a mess. I have no idea if the plan will work. Honestly, it’s not even really anything that can be called a plan. It’s a hope. A wish.
Bad Cecily knew how to grant wishes.
Good Cecily only seems to know how to make them.
How do I choose?
Ten things you didn’t know about Cecily Cartwright aka the Blue Fairy
1. Her parents, Richard and Annalise, owned MLM PureBliss before it went bankrupt.
2. Despite losing the bulk of their fortune after the resulting lawsuit, the Cartwrights recovered quickly and now own the popular INKiosk franchise, a self-service tattoo machine that can permanently recreate digital images on skin with speed and accuracy.
3. Cecily ran for student government three years in a row, but was never elected.
4. She played second chair violin in the Westbridge Orchestra.
5. She was described by her teachers as an ‘unremarkable’ student, achieving a B+ average in all subjects except for history.
6. Her friendship group included Madeline Bardsley (heir to the Bardsley chocolate empire), teen superstar Jenna Ng, and of course senatorial scion Paxton Yates.
7. She is an only child.
8. Her mother Annalise worked as a model before marrying Richard Cartwright.
9. Although Cecily spent most of her time living on campus at Westbridge, her parents own luxury homes in Paris, Sydney, Los Angeles and Singapore.
10. Jennifer Forward, the arresting officer on her case, described her as having ‘the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. There was nothing going on back there.’
20
DAY 6
05:32
I wake to the sound of birdsong.
I’m almost nose to nose with Nia, her breath warm on my cheek. In sleep, she is more beautiful than ever. There’s a softness to her, a vulnerability that she usually hides behind anger and smart comments. Her full lips are slightly parted, and I want to kiss her. I’m jealous of Bad Cecily, who got to kiss her all the time. Who threw her relationship away because her secret identity seemed more important.
The Erasure Initiative Page 24