I skirt the edges at first, putting out feelers here and there, removing the path I’ve laid within moments of making it – breadcrumb tracks, so readily swept away in the wind or picked up by hungry birds. As I dive a little deeper, I begin to leave snippets for Lark, trails of a song she loved, a song that so few people would know, the sweet strains only just audible as I dip deeper still.
Nothing.
Time is running out.
Behind me, Sala is working on another screen, trying to reach Chimo directly. Her fingers move across the display with a speed I’ve seen each day at the facility.
I try again, speaking to Miss Margaret. I leave a poem she used to read to us and then the recipe for the rosecake-flavoured ice-cream we made on my first day at Halston.
Rahim is too difficult. I don’t know him, so I can’t think of a way to lure him, to let him know that I’m calling him.
Still nothing.
From outside, the old man calls to us. ‘Time’s up!’ he says. ‘No lingering. No loitering.’
‘Give a little, old man,’ Sala shouts back, ‘and the world gives back to you.’
‘Not likely.’ The harshness of his laugh cuts through the sounds of the alley.
One last try. I am scattering wildly now, racing to gather up everything behind me as I dive deeper and deeper, and then just as the old man calls out to us again, there is contact.
A flicker.
‘Wait,’ I say.
‘Who is it?’ Sala asks, rushing over as I hide the screen. ‘One minute more,’ she calls out to the old man, her eyes fixed on me.
‘No one,’ I lie.
She looks but he’s gone, his tracks covered.
We walk home in silence. Afraid of getting lost, I keep close as she winds a long and complex path back to the compound, barely glancing in my direction.
‘Is he here?’ she asks Jiminy as soon as she sees him.
He is setting up the cooking fire for the evening, his face smeared with ash and grease. He shakes his head, chewing on the tip of his finger as he does so.
‘No word?’
‘N-n-none.’
I turn to go up to my room, but she seizes me by the arm. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I promised him dinner,’ I say, nodding in Jiminy’s direction. ‘He fed me this morning.’
‘We’ve got enough.’ She points for me to sit, and I do as she says. ‘No work today, hey?’ she says to Jiminy.
‘N-n-nothing.’ He shows her his data and she rubs the top of his head.
‘You’re low,’ she agrees. ‘I’ve got some I can give you.’
‘Here.’ I hold out my mobie. ‘Take some of mine. You’ve fed me twice and you won’t let me go and get any food.’
Sala stares at me with those shrewd eyes of hers and then she takes my mobie, transferring a small amount of data onto Jiminy’s.
We eat in silence, the three of us looking at our plates, aware of Chimo’s absence. He is the one who usually talks and jokes. He is the one who buoys our spirits. The air is fetid and thick with moisture, like a dense, warm soup. I wipe the sweat from my forehead and glance up at the sky alight with mediastreams, colour floating across the swollen, grey clouds.
‘The rains are coming back,’ I say.
Jiminy nods.
Sala turns to me. ‘Your second monsoon season.’
I am clearing our plates, rinsing them in the bucket of grey water, tossing flies and mosquitoes out, and remembering my initial horror when I’d seen the water that was used for cleaning. I’d wanted to throw it out and replace it. Chimo had stopped me. ‘Don’t waste it,’ he’d said. ‘Save the good stuff for drinking.’
‘Why has no one come to get you?’ Sala’s voice is a soft hiss at my back, sliding under my skin, just as my own doubts do, insidious and nasty.
I don’t respond.
‘Maybe you will be here forever like us. Like everyone here.’
Wiping each of the plates dry, I stack them into the pack. ‘I’m going to sleep upstairs,’ I tell her. ‘It’ll be a wet night.’
‘I think I’ll join you,’ she says. She looks in the direction of Chimo’s room. ‘It floods in there on the bad nights.’
‘I didn’t invite you,’ I say.
Her eyes are fixed on mine, her voice even lower as she leans in. ‘Do you want me to reveal who you are?’
‘You’re not going to do that,’ I say, without flinching. ‘You told your brother not to. It’s not who you are.’
We remain perfectly still, neither of us wanting to be the first to give. She looks like Chimo, I realise, surprised I haven’t noticed before. The same dark eyes, quick grin and smooth olive skin.
And then I soften. ‘I don’t know where he is. You must know that. No one has come to get me. Why would one of “my people” come to get him and not take me?’
I don’t look back as I walk off, holding my nerve, holding my nerve. It isn’t until I’m halfway up the stairs, my hands sweaty on the rusted railing, that I glance behind me. She hasn’t followed. I am alone.
It feels like an age since I’ve been in my small room, my mat on the floor, my chair under the window, the tiny squares of fabric like jewels in the gloom. No one has been in here, or at least it feels as though no one has been in here. But how would I know?
I lean out the window, hoping for the faintest puff of breeze. Nothing.
I need to think, but I’m exhausted. I will sleep for a couple of hours, I tell myself. Then I’ll try to contact him. I know it was him this evening. He was trying to reach me on the sieves.
‘Are you alone?’ he’d asked in the instant we’d communicated, and I’d told him no. ‘Come back by yourself,’ he’d urged. ‘I have something to tell you.’
He’d gone by the time Sala’s face appeared next to mine.
When I wake, it’s much later than I’d planned.
The rains have come, the sky open, a great sluice of water pouring down with a roar and a rush. I look out at the wide arc across the sky, a silvery sweep dousing everything in its wake.
The thunder of the downpour is loud, silencing any other sounds. Everyone who has a room would be inside and those who don’t are trying to escape the deluge under makeshift awnings, shivering and soaked, all signs of life drowned by the constant drum of that rain.
It’s not a night to go out, but I have no choice. And in some ways it favours me as I’m more likely to escape detection this way.
Wrapping a dark scarf around my head, I walk pressed close to the building, the mildew already blossoming, creeping rotten and sweet up the flaking walls. I make sure not to step on anyone who is seeking shelter here, bodies curled up like rags on the ground. The stairwell is the most crowded – out of the full force of the rain, families are lying together, one member always on watch, eyes glittering in the darkness.
I have no choice but to get wet. Any form of covering is pointless against the force of the downpour. My hair hangs lank around my face, my feet squelch inside my shoes and my clothes are a sodden weight on my limbs. The water is rising, parts of the street already calf-deep in murky water.
I remember the last monsoon, the filth swirling around my legs as I made my way to work, not wanting to look in the direction of the makeshift homes sitting on top of crates, appalled at how people just continued living.
I saw illnesses I’d never seen before – hacking coughs, weeping sores, animals floating away, their bodies bloated, insects clustering on gaping wounds, all part of the flow that was the monsoon, everything powerless in its force.
I had thought it would never end, that the waters would keep rising and we would all be drowned. And then, without warning, there was a faint puff of breeze in the air, just enough to ruffle the surface of the flooded areas, just enough to bring a hint of colour to the palest skin. Standing on the landing, I heard a woman singing, her voice rising and falling above the morning activity. As I walked towards her, she smiled. ‘It’s over,’ she said,
raising her hands to the skies. ‘At last.’
Now, a year later, I am still here and it is beginning again.
Miss Margaret warned us about the monsoons. ‘We will hopefully get you before they commence,’ she’d said. She must have thought it would only be a couple of months. All through that first monsoon season, I’d been convinced I’d be gone before it ended.
I need to find a datavoid.
I head to the place that Chimo took me to. I’m one of few people out walking in this rain. I clutch my scarf close, glancing behind me frequently, on the watch for anyone who may be following.
It doesn’t take me long to find it again, but the void has been cleaned up. My mobie immediately hooks into the free mediastreams around me. Sheltering in that doorway, I remember kissing him, the warmth of his body against mine, and I bite my lip against the pain. Why had I been stupid enough to think it had meant anything to him? It was loneliness, I know.
‘I lasted a long time,’ I tell myself angrily, aware that I am muttering like one of the mad. ‘I held out. I trusted no one.’
There is no time for this. I need to think. I look up and down the alley, the smell fetid.
A datavoid. That’s what I need.
There are plenty of them, hidden behind corners, down stairs, in basements – dark places. I walk blindly, checking each possibility, wanting to be out of this rain, aware that dawn can’t be far off. Although, with the clouds so heavy, it’s difficult to tell.
It takes me an hour, and the place I find is only just around the corner from the compound. I don’t know how secure it is, but I’m too tired and wet to care.
The mobie is there, sitting in the tiny room I made for him. He appears almost immediately.
‘You’re by yourself?’ Lewis asks.
It’s difficult to hear his voice above the drumming of the rain. I can see his face, so much more like mine than I’d ever wanted to admit. I press myself into the wall in order to understand his words.
‘That time I spoke to you was a set-up,’ he says. ‘I thought it was a friend of mine who’d found you, but it wasn’t. It was someone pretending to be him.’
‘Chimo?’
Lewis nods. ‘He was smart. He laid tracks to make it look like he was Jan. He pretended he was trying to help you, that he was trying to contact your networks so that you could get out of there.’
‘And Sala?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘Never heard of her.’
‘I told him everything,’ I confess.
‘I know,’ Lewis says. He looks at me, his grin slightly feeble as he tries to joke. ‘For someone who’s meant to be so clever …’
‘I’m not. You know that. I think you always knew it. There’s nothing special about me.’
He’s not having a bar of my self-pity. ‘There is, actually,’ he says. ‘You’re wanted by BioPerfect, and they’re closing in fast. That’s special enough for now. Apparently, they have people looking for you everywhere, people they pay to report back on anything unusual. Your friend Chimo was one of them.’
I’d wondered how Chimo and Sala always seemed to have so much. I’d thought it was just because they were good workers, but it was probably data for spying. Data I’d earned for them.
Behind me, the rain continues, a grey sheet, the first light of dawn like a bruise across the sky. I quickly glance out into the street. It’s difficult to see, but I seem to be alone.
‘Where is he now?’ I ask.
Lewis tells me that he was picked up by BioPerfect. ‘Word was out that he had information. They hauled him in, wanting to know why he’s been out of communication. My understanding is that he’s been denying any knowledge of you. I don’t know why and I don’t know how long he’ll be able to hold out.’
I’m surprised. Maybe Sala had been telling the truth after all. Perhaps he’d listened to her.
‘But the long and the short of it is, you’re going to need to get out of there – quickly.’
It’s strange how despairing his words make me feel. It’s not as though I like it here. The rains make it even worse. But at least I know it. At least I’ve learnt I’m capable of surviving here. I’m not sure I can go through a change again. And, if I’m honest, having some company has made it so much easier – even if it was built on a lie.
I look at Lewis and shake my head. ‘Where?’ I ask. ‘How?’
Last time I had Miss Margaret to prepare me. I had meds to soften the landing. I have none of that this time. I have nothing but an identity that has been shot to pieces, a few scraps of data – very little now, after transferring some to Jiminy – and less strength to continue than I’ve ever had.
‘I can’t do it anymore,’ I say to him. ‘I don’t see why it’s any better than just letting them find me and wipe me. It amounts to the same.’
‘Because who you are is important,’ Lewis says. ‘So much work was put into you. There’s still so much to say with you.’
I hate him for this. Even he fails to see me as anything other than a weapon against BioPerfect.
‘I don’t care,’ I say. ‘I’m not interested. Where are they all? Miss Margaret, Rahim, Lark –’ Even Ivy, I think. What’s happened to her? ‘There’s no one left to say anything. If there were, they would have come and got me. They wouldn’t have left me here.’
Pressed against the wall, with water running down my back and my face, I look out at the rain. I think of my small room and it feels like home.
‘Listen to me,’ Lewis says. ‘Rahim seems to have vanished and that was a major blow. He had most of the data they needed, he was their key weapon. No one has had any contact with him for months. It’s hard to know what’s happened. BioPerfect has put out the word that he was wiped – but they were always going to say that. They want everyone to think he’s gone.
‘The good news is that a couple of members of his team seem to have escaped detection. They have enough evidence between them to tell the story and they’re working hard on a plan for how they’re going to get the information out there. They need you, of course. It all amounts to nothing without you.
‘And your friend Miss Margaret is at the centre of all this. She’s been working closely with them. She said to tell you she’s sorry the wait has been so much longer than anticipated. She hopes that it’s almost at an end.’
Miss Margaret. She is still in hiding.
At the sound of her name, I breathe in deeply and ask the question I hardly dare ask. ‘And Lark? What’s happened to her?’
‘I don’t know,’ he tells me. ‘I haven’t had any word. Well, any I can rely on.’
I don’t understand. ‘What have you heard?’
‘BioPerfect have been saying they have her, but they’ve also been saying they have you. The difference is that no one has been in touch with her, not through any reliable channels.’
‘What about Ivy?’
‘BioPerfect are also saying she’s with them. No doubt they’ll want to use her as evidence of the necessity of design.’
There are more people out on the street now, but at least they’re walking with their heads down and their pace is hurried. Lewis and I have been hooked up for a while, longer than would normally be safe, and I’m hoping that no one will want to report anything suspicious – not in this downpour.
‘So what am I meant to do?’ I ask.
‘Don’t give in,’ he urges me.
I roll my eyes. Easy for him to say.
‘We have someone on their way to you – they should be there before noon. They’ll be ready to transfer you. They promise it will only be a matter of weeks that you’ll need to be in hiding. You just have to stay strong.’
‘How will I know?’ I ask.
‘They’ll say that Simon sent them. They’ll have everything you’ll need – new data, a new identity.’
‘Simon?’ I repeat the password to make sure I’ve heard it correctly.
He tells me to shush.
‘Meds?’
&nbs
p; ‘Hopefully. It’s been a rush, but they’re trying to get it all together.’
‘When will I speak to you next?’
‘Soon,’ he tells me. ‘You’ll need to lie low for a few weeks. As low as you can go.’ He grins again, his smile kind. ‘You’re tougher than I thought you were. That ladies’ school didn’t ruin you too much … Do you remember that song that Dad used to sing us to sleep?’
When I tell him I don’t, he hums it softly, and then I nod eagerly because I do remember.
‘Use it to contact me when you’re safe. I’m being given a new identity, so I’ll be able to emerge, maybe come and see you –’
The screen flickers and he’s gone.
Tucking my mobie back under my scarf, I step out into the rain, bowing my head to the full force of it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so soaked. My clothes hang limp and heavy and my skin is slick with the grime of it, oily and warm. Who was I kidding, I think. I hate it here. Perhaps I will be sent somewhere easier. I smile to myself. ‘You are always so optimistic,’ Lark used to say to me, shaking her head in wonder.
In the first morning light, those who live outside are trying to light fires under bedraggled shelters, huddled close against the rain. I glance across at a family, contemplating giving them the last of my data as it seems I won’t be needing it, when I see her – or at least I think I see her. Sala, running ahead.
There’s no point trying to hide. If they know who I am, I’m trackable, my data a trail of breadcrumbs leading them straight to me. Until someone comes and sets me up with new data, I’m a sitting duck – whether I’m in the compound, the workline, walking the streets or here in my room, perched high above this world.
The rain slashes against the window, the air still and thick. I open it wider for some relief from the oppressive warmth, the thin balcony offering no protection from its force.
Sitting in the chair, I look at each of those squares of fabric, put together by someone who was here before me – someone who craved and created beauty within these four mouldy walls.
I’ve been writing my story in here, retelling all that has happened to me, my years at Halston, my time in this compound, what I thought I was and all that I have learnt about myself since. I have been recording this, throwing my words into the Wasteland, where they pile on top of all the other words and images that end up here. If something happens to me, these words will just be buried in the great mass of data, the rubbish heap of hopes and dreams and vain posturings and fears and joys that people record on a daily basis, an impenetrable tangle, each single thread almost impossible to discern. I am the only one who could find my words in that jungle. I keep dropping them there, telling myself that I’m doing this for me – to understand what has happened. But I suppose there has also been a vain hope that a record of me – Fern Marlow – will remain. That one day someone will know.
Special Page 16