Erased

by Nick Gifford

  Brian moved away and another face appeared. Sir Peter, Liam guessed. Then he recognised the sharp, hawk-like features peering at him over the surgical mask. Principal Willoughby! Or rather, Sir Peter Willoughby.

  He said nothing. He studied Liam’s features closely, and then nodded.

  Liam just wanted this to be over. Whatever they were doing. He had no choice, no escape. Let them kill off a part of his brain and make him a dull, ordinary person like almost anyone else.

  “No, Connor,” said Willoughby. “It’s not as simple as all that. We could never let you go. Not with your pedigree. You are special. And you are ours.”

  Liam stared at him.

  “We’ve been testing you for fifteen years, Connor. You pass every time. You are our star student. You should be proud now, while you’re allowed to know this.”

  Fifteen years. They’d been monitoring him since he was born... If Willoughby was telling the truth. Tests. He remembered Alastair talking about the filtering process, trying to identify descendants of the Lost Families. But how had they known to test him from so early?

  “Oh, the filtering is only a part of it, Connor. It’s how we identify the wheat from the chaff, the raw talents who emerge through generations of mixed breeding, lost in the general gene pool. You are not part of that flotsam, though, Connor. Your bloodline is almost pure Families. We know that because we bred you. We chose the egg. We chose the sperm. You are the product of our breeding programme, just as your parents were before you. Others have been ... damaged ... but you are still intact. We have high hopes of you, Connor. High hopes indeed.”

  Liam closed his eyes, his last line of defence. Why believe this?

  “Because it’s the truth. Your father knows that. He knows where his loyalties lie.”

  Liam opened his eyes. He could hide nothing from this monster!

  My father is a cheat. He lied to me. He trapped me. He handed me over to you. I don’t care what he thinks, or who he is loyal to. Did he do this to my mother, too?

  Willoughby smiled, an unexpectedly gentle expression. “Your father is a good man,” he said. “And your mother is dead. She died nine years ago.”

  No!

  Willoughby nodded. “There’s no reason for me to lie to you now, Connor. You won’t remember this soon. The memory will be erased. We’re good with memories, you see. We have a number of techniques for managing them in our subjects. We can remove them, just like that.” He sliced a hand through the air, back past his head, to demonstrate. “And we can add them, too. We really are very good with them.”

  Liam closed his eyes, an act of resignation now rather than defiance.

  “Think, Connor. How much can you remember? How much can you really remember?”

  He thought of his mother. His weekend visit home at the start of the month. They hadn’t really done much. Just watched TV and shared the house. She was a stocky woman, a little shorter than average, with the same half-curled mid-brown hair that Kath had. Dark eyes. A narrow mouth with lips that were often pursed, in frustration or amusement or concentration.

  He couldn’t put it all together, though. Couldn’t picture her.

  But they could be doing this to him now! Muddling his thoughts. Messing with his memories. His mother was real. Had been real. He wouldn’t let her go.

  ~

  Liam watched the surgeon hold her scalpel up to the light, as if inspecting it for flaws.

  They were going to keep him awake while ... while they did whatever it was they were going to do to him.

  “Stress is a great educator,” said Willoughby, somewhere off to Liam’s right. “Think of all the stress you have undergone, Liam. The trials, the fears, the threats to your cozy existence ... all designed to help us shape the person you will become – all designed to help your talent emerge from the recesses of your mind.”

  Liam thought, then, of his missing parents, the wrecked house, the time he had spent on the run, Jake...

  “That’s right, Liam. This is a scientific programme. There is a reason for everything. Intense trauma imprints itself on the human nervous system far more deeply than we can ever reach with the knife. Believe me, we’ve tried all the alternatives.”

  The surgeon’s left hand rested lightly on Liam’s forehead.

  Something happened, higher up towards the crown of his skull. He didn’t feel it. He didn’t experience any pain, any pressure. But he knew it had happened.

  “Only a small incision,” said the surgeon. She had a gentle, kind voice. Some kind of northern accent that Liam couldn’t quite place. “Big enough for the drill. You’ll hardly notice it once it’s healed.”

  Liam stared straight ahead. The lights. The blinding, dazzling lights. They blanked out his vision. Made everything white. Hid any hint of detail. He concentrated on that whiteness harder than he had ever concentrated before.

  Somewhere, an electric motor revved, whined. Someone was gunning the drill, as if to taunt him.

  “Right now,” said Willoughby, somewhere in the far distance, “we’re working on several levels. On the one hand, a team of talent-operatives is working on your memories, selecting, sorting, re-shaping. On the other, Dr Shastri here is about to implant a device which will allow you to gain control of your powers. It’s standard practice for our more valuable assets. It will, of course, allow us more complete control over your powers, too. This is a team endeavour, and you, no matter how special you may turn out to be, are a mere squad player, Connor. And on another hand, if that were possible, the trauma of the moment is opening you up to us. Your brain is offering itself up to us in surrender, just asking us to reshape it, to blot out what you are experiencing.”

  “Come on, Sir Peter,” said Brian, the anaesthetist. “This isn’t time for one of your speeches. We don’t want the anaesthetic to wear off, do we?”

  Softly, Willoughby said, “Perhaps we should. It would intensify the trauma...”

  Liam tried to shut him out, but there was no escaping his words.

  “There’s one more thing I want to tell you, Connor.” Willoughby spoke so softly that the words seemed to be just trickling gently into Liam’s ears, seeping in. Somehow that made them seem all the more intense.

  “One thing that I want to imprint itself deep in your subconscious mind so that you always know it. Like I said, Connor, we have high hopes for you. We think you may be very special indeed. But you may also turn out to be dangerous and we cannot allow that. We are watching you. We are watching you very closely indeed. And if, in our judgement, the risk outweighs the benefits of continuing this experiment we will call it to a close. Do you understand me? We will eliminate all trace of what has happened. You will never be allowed to pose us a serious threat.”

  The whiteness. Dazzling. Liam concentrated on the light, and the silence after Willoughby’s words.

  And then he heard the electric whine again.

  He felt the drilling, despite the anaesthetic. There was no pain, but the vibration set his skull ringing, his jaw, his cheekbones, the vertebrae in his neck. The vibration jarred. It made his flesh quiver.

  And the noise...

  Like a dentist’s drill, only deeper in pitch, the vibrations slower as the bit ground through skull-bone. And louder. It droned manically in his ears, as if someone was drilling into a stone wall right next to his head.

  He closed his eyes, and still he saw the white.

  He smelt burning. Electrical burning. What was happening? No. More barbecue smoke than electrical. Was it the heat of the drill...? No, he realised the sound had stopped. They must have broken through his skull.

  “That’s right, Connor. You may experience all kinds of strange sensations now. Random firing of the nerves in your brain, now that we have found our way in.”

  The smell was apples now. It had always been apples. What had he been thinking of?

  “Ooh,” said Dr Shastri, somewhere above him. “I’d forgotten we were on the fifteen mil – look, I can get my pinky right in!�
�

  Pressure. In his head. A drowning sensation.

  Liam gasped for air.

  There was a pain behind his forehead. Something pressing on the back of his eye. Moving.

  “Wiggle wiggle wiggle!” laughed the surgeon.

  What were they doing? He was dreaming, he suddenly realised. He would wake up at home ... wherever that was.

  “This is a very delicate procedure, you know,” said Brian, leaning in close over Liam. “One slip and whooo! That’s you, vegetable of the day. Just as well you’re in the hands of professionals, isn’t it?”

  Home... he tried to remember it. Tried to think of the front door, the hall, the colour of the carpets, his bedroom. Gone.

  He felt presences in his head, pressures that were not put there by Dr Shastri. Tidying up. Erasing.

  He was powerless to resist them. He had been opened up. He had surrendered. Let them do what they will.

  He saw Dr Shastri, holding some kind of long, pointed tweezers with a small metallic cube in their grip.

  The little finger of one gloved hand was smeared red up to the second knuckle.

  She moved out of view again. “Just pop this in,” she muttered.

  “We’re almost done,” said Willoughby. “You’ve been very cooperative.”

  Liam was suddenly angry. He was not going to submit to them so easily!

  “And what are you going to do, then?” asked Willoughby. “You are at our complete mercy.”

  He would remember.

  He let his eyes close again, more slowly this time, more heavy-lidded.

  He thought of Alastair, and the sensation of pushing his presence away. He tried to do that again, tried to picture a barrier between himself and Willoughby.

  And then he tried to remember.

  The Point. The ruined building. The gull that woke him at first light, peering down through the hole in the roof, throwing its head back to screech its morning greeting. He remembered 3, The Coastguards, the chips, and the realisation that no-one could give him freedom, he must create it. Hanging out at Three Trunker with Anders and Hayley. His father. The look on his father’s face as he had deceived him, trapped him, while the children sang London’s Burning in the next room.

  He clung on for as long as he could, and then he slipped.

  “He’s going,” he heard Brian the anaesthetist say. “He’s losing consciousness. I can’t bring him back.”

  “I know,” said Willoughby. “I felt him going.” And then he must have leaned closer, because his next words came right next to Liam’s right ear. “Sleep now, Connor. Open your mind to the new you.”

  12 Starting over

  The sun shone, the sky was blue with a few drifts of wispy white. Birds sang from the poplar trees. It was just another normal day, the first Monday in June, the first day of the second half of summer term. But for Liam Connor it was to be his first day at the National Academy for the Talented and Special. A new start. A big opportunity, they had told him – not everyone gets through the tough selection procedure to get into NATS.

  It was to be the first day of a new life, although Liam didn’t understand quite how true that was.

  ~

  The taxi had dropped him on a semi-circular gravelled area before the main building. They had driven up the long poplar-lined drive, and all the time Liam had looked out of the front of the car, staring at the grand building. He had only ever seen places like this on day trips: a stately home, a picnic in the grounds with peacocks strutting around, children laughing and crying. It was hard to believe he was going to be living in such a place.

  He felt very lucky.

  He thought of the grubby little flat that Aunt Katherine had in Norwich. Liam had been staying there for the last few weeks while his father was away on business, sorting out some kind of transfer at work. Dad wouldn’t tell him what that involved, but then he often couldn’t talk about his work. Liam suspected it would mean that his father was going to be away again, travelling. That was the down side to boarding at NATS: he would see much less of his father.

  The building had a long frontage, with two rows of leaded windows looking blankly out along the drive. Square towers stood at the front corners of the building, each with a flagpole, bearing on the left the Union Flag and on the right the flag of the European Union.

  Before him, wide stone steps led up between white columns to a double door, hooked open, welcoming him in.

  Liam hauled his big suitcase up the steps, then, at the top, changed grips so that it would run on its casters behind him. Inside, there was a reception desk, behind which sat a sour-faced man. Behind him, there were several ranks of pigeon-holes, some stuffed with envelopes. The man raised an eyebrow at Liam.

  “I... My name’s Connor. I’m new. I was told...”

  His heart thumped in his chest, and he could feel his cheeks flushing. It was natural to be nervous, he knew. This was a big change in his life. But ... they would help him here. With the things in his head. The things that made him feel that he was different to everyone else. That was why he was here.

  He looked around at the dark wood panelling, the big oil paintings on the walls, the wide stairs leading up to a galleried area. Nervous as he was, and grand as this building was, it felt like he was coming home.

  “Liam Connor’s here,” said the man behind the reception desk. He had picked up a telephone, and was talking into it. “Okay. I’ll tell him.” He put the phone down and caught Liam’s eye. “Someone’ll be out in a moment,” he said.

  Just then an electronic bell rang out and a few seconds later a blue-blazered boy a bit younger than Liam strode out of a nearby corridor. Liam was wearing the same uniform for the first time, and it felt odd to him, uncomfortable. This boy looked at home in his. He glanced at Liam and then was past, just as three more teenagers emerged from another corridor. A door banged open, and voices erupted, and soon the reception area was thronged with uniformed pupils, passing from lesson to lesson.

  The crowd thinned almost as suddenly as it had formed, and then Liam was left looking at a tall, white-haired man with a sharp face and penetrating pale blue eyes. “Connor,” said the man. “Good to see you again. Welcome to the Academy. I’m Principal Willoughby.”

  Liam remembered him. He had interviewed Liam a few weeks ago. He asked challenging questions and had a prickly manner, but Liam had taken to him straight away, sensing that he was a good man and NATS a good place. He was going to fit in well here.

  Mr Willoughby smiled at him, as if he somehow sensed Liam’s positive feelings. “Come along,” he said. “Let’s get you settled in. I think you’re going to like it here.”

  ~

  It all seemed vaguely familiar as he took the tour of the Academy.

  After a short talk from Willoughby in his office about the importance of teamwork and pushing oneself to the limit, a speech he must have given a thousand times, the Principal had introduced Liam to Wallace, one of the Sherborne House prefects. “Wallace will show you around,” Willoughby had told him.

  They toured the corridors of the main building, ambling past classrooms and offices. Wallace was a spotty kid, about the same age as Liam, happy to be missing the last lesson of the afternoon to show the new boy around. “You’ve seen it all before I ’spect,” said Wallace, and that was when Liam remembered that he had. Until that point, it had just been a vague sense of déjà vu but now Liam recalled seeing all this before on interview day. Dad had driven him down from Norwich and after talking to Mr Willoughby they had been given a similar tour of the Academy. No wonder it seemed so familiar.

  “Yes, I’ve seen it once,” said Liam. “But you know. It’s all new. It didn’t really register at the time.” Lots of his memories were like that: vague, pictures just out of focus, like a sketch yet to be completed or a watercolour painting partly washed away. He supposed it must be like that for everyone.

  Just as the bell went for end of lessons, they picked up Liam’s case from Reception and headed
out along a corridor by the Refectory. This was a part of the building that had a different feel to the rest, partly because it was newer and partly because it now thronged with pupils. “We’re in the Halls now,” said Wallace. “The pupils’ and house tutors’ rooms. All this is a new block, built about twenty years ago. Sherborne House is up this way.”

  They went up some stairs. The walls here were painted pale green and there was none of the heavy wood panelling and leaded windows of the main building. They came to the top and Liam put his case down, taking up the handle so he could pull it on its little wheels. He turned right and a split second later Wallace did the same. “Along here,” his guide said, looking at him curiously. “Your room’s at the end. You’re sharing with Linley. A bit of a wazzock, but he’s okay really.”

  ~

  The room wasn’t huge, but there was space for two beds, desks and wardrobes. A window to the right looked out over the playing fields towards a strip of dark trees growing out of a drift of gorse.

  The boy called Linley lay on the bed under the window, stretched out with his head on his hands, so that his feet almost reached the end of the bed. As well as being tall, Linley was thin, with a dark flop of hair and a steady gaze, now fixed on Liam.

  “Well hello,” he said. He had the kind of accent that suggested a lifetime in public schools, but Liam sensed immediately that it was an affectation. “I’m Anders Linley. Welcome to NATS, but then I expect you’ve had all that already, haven’t you? Just been on the grand tour? Okay, Wallace old boy, job done, you can toddle off now.”

  As the door closed, Anders turned back to Liam. “Grunts,” he said dismissively. “All they’re good for, eh?”

  Liam knew what he meant. Wallace had been ... flat. Anders, on the other hand, had that something extra, that spark. He could sense that there were shapes in this boy’s head.

  “Cool,” said Anders, still stretched out lazily on his bed. “I think we’re going to get along just fine. Now, important things: how’s your tea-making?”

  Liam laughed, and turned towards his half of the room. He dragged his case to the foot of the bed and then sat. The mattress was soft, and it sagged markedly in the middle, but it would do.