“I tried to warn you, Veronica,” Mr. Mayhem scolded her, “but you didn’t listen. Now the Society is in possession of an invention that will cause catastrophic damage if left in the wrong hands.”
“First of all,” Veronica said, drawing herself up to her full height, “I’ll thank you to call me ‘Miss Fortem’ in front of the students. Secondly, I find it highly unlikely that the Society of the Enlightened are here at the school, and even less plausible that they’d be interested in one of your amateur inventions. I’m sure they have access to their own technology. Why would they go to such lengths to steal yours?”
“Amateur?!” Mr. Mayhem exclaimed. “There is nothing amateur about my work, young lady. You forget yourself. I was engineering state of the art technology before you were even born.”
Will and Emily’s mouths dropped to the floor as Veronica froze mid-step, stunned at having been spoken to in such a manner. Before she could retaliate, Mr. Mayhem continued, capitalising on her temporary inability to speak.
“You might be my boss,” he acknowledged, “but you’re still thirty years my junior. I’ve been around a lot longer than you have, and I’m willing to bet I’ve seen a lot more, too. I remember all the Wars on Earth- vividly. You were just a child for most of it. Now, I might lose my job for this, but I insist that you listen to me.”
“Alright,” Veronica sniffed. “You have my attention.”
“A member of the Society has stolen a device of my creation, which they believe will turn the robot Guards on the Mayfly to their favour. What they don’t realise is that the technology is flawed. Any use of it is simply going to wipe the robot’s orders from their minds, giving them the means to act solely upon free will,” Mr. Mayhem replied.
“Okay…” Veronica said slowly, digesting the details he had given her. “Supposing all of that is true, how do you know that your device is going to work? It could be defective.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t true, Miss Fortem,” Emily interjected, taking over from Mr. Mayhem as he stared at the floor sheepishly. “Mr. Mayhem – I mean Mayheim- has already tested his device on some of the security bots at the school. That’s why they attacked Heidi’s ship.”
“You are the reason my robots went rogue?” Veronica hissed with fury, her rage directed at Mr. Mayhem. “Have you any idea how serious this is? Somebody could have been killed! Not to mention the terrible noise that thing emitted nearly caused the entire student population to go deaf.”
“If I had known what was going to happen, I’d never have used my device at the race,” Mr. Mayhem professed. “I was only trying to get the security bots to change their formation and prove my invention worked. I had no idea that they would attack an innocent girl without provocation.”
“So, are you saying the security bots attacked Heidi because your device enabled them to act on free will?” Veronica said with horror, her stomach knotting as she connected the dots in her mind.
“That’s right,” Mr. Mayhem asserted.
“I think it may have been my fault,” Veronica confessed, her face paling with stress.
“Your fault?” Mr. Mayhem repeated.
“Yes,” Veronica nodded. “The bots guarding me may have overheard me saying some untoward things to Ms. Dido about Weltraumschule’s racing team. Particularly about Heidi, and how I wished she could be removed from the competition so that we could win. Is it possible they could have taken that as in incentive?”
“That would make sense,” Mr. Mayhem concurred, relieved to be able to shift the blame away from himself.
“Well, in any case, your decision to test such a device in the presence of hundreds of students was extremely irresponsible,” Veronica said coolly, returning to her authoritarian stance. “I will have to inform the Governors of this, though I must warn you, I’d be surprised if they didn’t urge me to fire you.”
“Fine,” Mr. Mayhem said, throwing his hands up in surrender. “You can sack me. But first, I beg you to do something. Whoever stole my device needs to be stopped before they reach the Mayfly.”
“And what is it that you propose I do?” Veronica asked, raising her eyebrows with irritation.
“Use the security cameras to locate the man’s position in the grounds. He must still be here. If we can track him down, we might be able to stop him before he endangers the lives of thousands of people,” Mr. Mayhem implored.
“Look,” Veronica sighed. “I understand you’re upset that someone has stolen from you, but I must stress how unlikely I think it is that the Society of the Enlightened were here. I’m certain that a student must be trying to torment you. Children can be cruel. Nevertheless, thieving in any capacity is forbidden here at the school, and I can assure you that I will punish the guilty party with the severest of penalties once we get to the bottom of who’s behind this all.”
“Veronica, you’re wasting time!” Mr. Mayhem cried. “You need to accept that the Society is to blame for what’s happened. This is not the work of a student. Why is that so difficult for you to believe?”
“Because I know them!” Veronica shouted back, the words tumbling from her mouth before she had a chance to stop them.
Mr. Mayhem shared a look of bewilderment with Will and Emily.
“Who did you know, Miss Fortem?” Will asked, blinking as he attempted to make sense of her revelation.
Veronica sank into the armchair behind her, breathing deeply as she prepared to disclose a story she hadn’t uttered aloud in over ten years.
“When I was a child on Earth, I came from a very privileged background,” she began.
“Well, that much is obvious,” Mr. Mayhem interrupted. “We really don’t have time to- “
“Let me finish,” Veronica ordered him firmly. “My parents were very wealthy, and we lived a happy life, which is why it came as such a shock when the Wars broke out. The idyllic, little bubble that I lived in as a girl was violently burst, and all of a sudden, everything started to change. Slowly, our staff began to disappear, heading off to fight or flee back to their families in terror. In the end, only my parents and I were left, rattling around alone in our great big, empty mansion. The loneliness was easy to deal with, but after a while, my mother and father started to act strangely. I was only eight years old, so it was difficult to understand why they kept sneaking off in the middle of the night, leaving me in the house alone. They installed a security system to keep me safe, but it didn’t bring me any comfort. Every night, I would press my face up against the window and watch them disappear, the big, golden gate that guarded our house closing behind them. I’d stay in the same position for hours, my nose resting on the glass until my breath fogged up the window pane and I couldn’t see any more. I’d refuse to move until I’d see my parents return at dawn, hurrying inside before the first light of the day broke through the clouds and gave them away.
“Months went by. I was too afraid to ask my mum and dad what was going on, but my mind was racing with all sorts of possibilities. I thought they might have joined a gang, become spies or even that they could be stealing from the local villages to provide for us. As it turned out, they had joined a society. Not the Society of the Enlightened, but another group called the “Preservers”. The Preservers were in favour of the social divide that existed between the classes in our country, and wanted to protect their way of life, keeping the lowly downtrodden and taking the bulk of the world’s dwindling resources for who they deemed as the ‘better half’. They were in favour of The Split when it was announced and vowed to do everything in their power to keep anyone who wasn’t part of the elite from boarding the Mayfly. To this day I don’t know exactly what they were doing all night, but I know it was nothing nice. The Preservers were renowned for their brutality towards the impoverished. They didn’t view the lower class as human, so they felt no guilt in committing crimes against them.”
“That’s horrible,” Will said with repulsion. “How did you find out that’s what your parents were doing?”
> Veronica looked up at him, her face ashen as images of herself as a young girl flashed into her mind. The harrowing memory of herself screaming in peril as she desperately tried to escape the man in red flashed into her mind, and she envisioned the terrifying intruder clawing at her legs as she ran up the grand staircase in her house, bruising her arms and legs on the marble steps as she fell, succumbing to the mercy of her pursuer.
“I was kidnapped,” she replied bluntly, her voice wavering as she spoke the word. “The Society of the Enlightened took me. It turned out my parents had been part of the Preservers since before I was born. I was named after their leader – an icy woman named Veronica who had come to our house several times when I was growing up. She always frightened me with her severity, but I had no idea just how cold-hearted she really was. My mother and father had gotten themselves quite high in the Preservers rankings. The Society of the Enlightened were their enemies, and so they decided to take me for ransom. They told my parents the price of my freedom was giving up the location of their leader’s whereabouts.”
“And did they?” Emily asked quietly.
“No,” Veronica shook her head, tears pricking her eyes. “They chose to protect her over me.”
“That’s awful,” Will said quietly. “Were you hurt?”
“Will!” Emily hissed, scolding him for the personal nature of his question.
“It’s alright,” Veronica interjected. “The Society never physically harmed me, but I they did keep me in a tiny, dark cell with no toilet and nowhere to wash. I had no dignity. I survived on scraps of food and leftovers. Sometimes, the things they gave me to eat had gone rotten, but I was so hungry I’d be forced to eat them anyway. The Society’s leaders told me they wanted me to know what it felt like to live in poverty. Every week, one of the guards would come into my cell, telling me that my parents had come for me and that I’d been freed. They’d laugh hysterically at my euphoria, telling me it was all a lie. Apparently, they had a bet to see how long it would take me to give up hope.”
“How did you get out?” Emily questioned her, her voice hoarse with horror.
“After several months, the Society realised my parents weren’t going to give up the information. I heard one of the guards speaking to a leader about what to do with me. They were ordered to let me go. The higher powers were very particular about their conduct, refusing to stoop to the same evil levels as the Preservers, who would stop at nothing to achieve their ultimate goal of social cleansing.
“That night, I was bundled into a car and left on my grandparent’s doorsteps. I hadn’t seen them since I was a baby. They took me in and raised me, enabling me to live a relatively normal life. A few years later, I heard my parents had died. There was no explanation as to what killed them, but I believe the Society of the Enlightened was responsible. It was easier to grieve, knowing how they had betrayed me and left me to the Society’s mercy. When The Split eventually came around, my grandfather was accepted on board due to his high status. He brought me and my grandmother with him. I saw it as a fresh start, and slowly I began to heal from all the terrible things that happened to me as a child. I never thought I'd have to think about the Society of the Enlightened again. But then they made that broadcast in the lobby and everything changed,” Veronica concluded, her voice thick with emotion.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” Mr. Mayhem said with sincerity. “But surely, it must make you see that the Society has to be stopped before they cause any more pain.”
“You don’t understand,” Veronica shook her head. “The Society doesn’t draw attention to themselves. They work underground. Every move they make is subtle and calculated. They’d never expose themselves by coming here and stealing your device. Whoever’s responsible must be working alone.”
“Okay,” Mr. Mayhem conceded. “Even if you’re right, none of it matters! What does matter is what’s going to happen if we don’t do something soon.”
“Alright,” Miss Fortem agreed, unable to believe the words coming from her mouth. “I’ll go to my office and look at the cameras.”
“Thank you!” Mr. Mayhem cried with relief, leaping to his feet with the agility of someone half his age.
Veronica composed herself, addressing Mr. Mayhem sternly. “You will escort these two students safely back to their dormitory before joining me in our search of the grounds. Once we’ve seen who the culprit is, we can decide whether to alert the authorities,” she said.
“Understood,” Mr. Mayhem nodded. “I’ll take these two back immediately.”
“Be quick,” Veronica replied, turning her back and wiping away the tears that had escaped from her eyes as Mr. Mayhem ushered Emily and Will out of her apartment.
She walked across the room, leaning on the seat that had been installed beneath her window and looked without seeing at the spectacular view of the grounds below. It had been so long since she had revisited the trauma of her past, and several unwanted memories had been re-awakened, swimming rebelliously in the forefront of her mind.
There was something about her time as a captive that she had forgotten, her verbal recollection of the time reminding her of a detail she had omitted from her story. Her time spent imprisoned by the Society of the Enlightened had not been spent alone. In the cell next door had been a boy of about thirteen years of age. He had first made contact on Veronica’s first night, which she had been spent curled up in a ball, sobbing heartily into her knees and gasping for breath, the longing she felt for her parents stabbing her agonisingly in the chest.
“Psst!”
The noise startled her, and she scrambled to her feet, pressing her back against the far wall of her cell for safety.
“Psst!” she heard again. “Are you there?”
“Who is it?” she whispered back, her legs shaking with terror as she waited for the response.
“My name’s ‘A’,” a boy’s voice replied softly through the wall. “Who are you?”
“Veronica,” she stuttered, her bottom lip trembling as she attempted to hold back another cascade of tears.
“How long have you been here?” he asked, careful to keep his tone low in order to avoid detection from the sleeping guards outside the cells.
“This is my first night,” Veronica answered.
“I’ve been here a few weeks,” ‘A’ told her. “Do you know why they’ve got you here?”
“No,” she whimpered. “I don’t know anything. I just want to go home and see my mum and dad.”
“Don’t worry,” he comforted her. “It’s going to be alright.”
There was a moment of silence before he spoke again.
“Do you have a window in your cell?” he whispered, just loud enough for Veronica to hear.
She looked around the cell, spotting a small, oval-shaped hole in the back wall.
“Yes,” she answered. “There’s a small one.”
“I have one too,” ‘A’ replied. “If you lie down and face towards to it, you can look outside and see the moon. I do it every night. It helps me pretend I’m somewhere else. You should try it.”
Veronica did as she was told, lying down reluctantly on the dirty, straw-covered floor. She shuffled around until she had found a comfortable position, moving her head so that the full, pearly-white moon was perfectly visible through the hole.
“Do you see it?” he asked her after a moment.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
“That’s good,” he told her. “Now whenever you’re frightened, you can lie down and look at the sky. If you try really hard, you can imagine that you’re anywhere.”
“Where do you pretend to be?” Veronica asked him, hoping for some inspiration.
“It changes each time,” ‘A’ replied. “Tonight, I’m in the field behind my parent’s farmhouse. If I close my eyes and think with all my might, I can feel the grass beneath my fingers. I can smell the cattle and the sheep. I can hear my mum calling me in the distance, telling me to come inside for bed.�
��
“I wish I could do that,” Veronica said with envy, the cold, stone floor hard beneath her back.
“You can,” ‘A’ said simply. “You can pretend you’re here with me.”
“In the field?” she probed him.
“Yes, that’s right,” he confirmed. “Can’t you hear the cows?”
She listened intently for a moment, but all she was able to hear was the wind whipping harshly around the outside of their prison.
“Moooo!” ‘A’ began to call. “Moooo! See, there they are.”
“I can hear them,” Veronica laughed, listening to him ‘moo’ several more times in the darkness.
For her entire time as a prisoner, she had continued to communicate with ‘A’. Each night, he had come up with a different place for them to imagine, whispering through the wall that divided their cells. They had never learnt anything about each other, nor ever seen each other face to face, but ‘A’ had quickly become Veronica’s greatest comfort. Despite her despair, she had come to look forward to their nightly conversations, with ‘A’ somehow managing to make her laugh through even her darkest moments.
The night that Veronica had overheard the details of her release, ‘A’ had gone silent. No matter how many times she whispered his name through the wall, he didn’t respond. She was about to give up and go to sleep, hugging her arms around her knees for warmth, when she heard scratching coming from ‘A’s cell. She stood up, rushing over to find the source of the noise, and discovered a small hole in the base of the wall that she had never noticed before. As she watched, something small rolled into her cell, the moonlight glimmering from its shiny surface. Veronica scooped the item up in her hands, sprinting over to the window to properly inspect it. Holding the object carefully between her fingers, she saw that it was a small pendant depicting a beautiful, silver songbird confined in a delicate cage.
She had treasured the object, sleeping with it encased in the palm of her hand and refusing to relinquish it, even when she was pulled from her cell and stuffed into the back of a jeep, a bag secured over her head so that she wouldn’t see the prison’s location. At the time, she had no idea where she was going, and so she had gripped the charm tightly, channelling all of her fear into the bird’s tiny, fragile wings.
The Secret Society Page 20