by Sarah Govett
‘Looks important, shall we get your mum?’ Raf asked.
I was torn. I know I’d promised to stay put but this did seem massively important. And there was no one else around. No scientists in the corridor. Even the spacesuits had gone.
‘Come on,’ Raf urged. ‘I don’t know about you, but aren’t you at least a little curious to find out what they do down there? My dad doesn’t tell me anything.’
I gave in. Raf was right – I was curious. I knew nothing really about Mum’s work. Just that she worked on cures. Was paid by the Ministry. Was one of the good guys.
We didn’t want to catch any super-evil-bug so we put on facemasks that were hanging off the back of Mum’s door. Raf managed to operate the first airlock. There was a red lever you had to push in and twist clockwise at the same time. A bit like a safety cap on a bottle of medicine. The door opened and shut again with a horrible gulp of air. Like we were being swallowed and then spat out again by a huge fish.
It was very quiet on the other side of the airlock. I called Mum’s name and the sound seemed to bounce off the walls. The corridor narrowed and there were lots of tiny rooms off it that you could look into through circular windows at head height. The first two rooms were filled with cages of rats. White rats with pink eyes. Some seemed healthy. Others lay twitching, covered in pustules.
But it was the third room that changed everything. It was much larger than the first two rooms. We peered through the glass and saw three single beds, each covered in a clear tent with all these tubes in it. On each bed lay a teenager, a drip in their left arm. Covered in pustules. Twitching. And I recognised them all.
Lying on the beds nearest the windows and labelled ‘Subject 64’ and ‘Subject 65’ were Neil Hurst and Rosie Hood. They’d been a year above me at Hollets. Both Norms. Both had failed their TAA and everyone thought they’d been shipped off to the Wetlands. I remember them particularly as we’d all felt so sorry for them ’cos their parents had opted to stay. On the bed by the door, labelled ‘Case 42 – Immuno-Deficiency-Virus’ lay Amanda.
We watched, paralysed, as a nurse in a starched white uniform used a syringe to extract a sample of blood from one of the tubes attached to Amanda and then inject it into the tubes attached to Neil and Rosie. She then opened and injected a vial of purple liquid into a separate tube attached to Neil. A computer screen flashed rapidly increasing numbers and Neil’s chest started to heave up and down.
The nurse then turned to leave. She was about to look through the door window. Straight at us.
‘Come on,’ Raf hissed into my ear. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Now.’ I could hardly breathe. I sprinted back along the corridor, Raf behind me. We opened the airlock again and I ran into the bathroom and puked again and again until I was just heaving up this yellow rancid bile.
When I walked, zombie-like, back into Mum’s office, she was there filing some papers.
‘Noa, where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘I just asked you to do one simple thing – to stay put. I need to be able to trust you.’
I did a sort of cough/seal-bark laugh. Trust. The hypocrisy. ‘There was an emergency so I went to get you, Mum. I went down the corridor to get you.’ My words were like ice and as our eyes met, I could see fear in hers.
I look about two hundred years old, my eyes are so swollen from crying, but I finally feel a bit better. Some of the ancient cultures that were all about energy rather than medicine and blood and stuff thought crying releases bad, built-up energy and maybe that’s not complete rubbish after all.
Mum and I didn’t talk after the Laboratory. We just sat in silence in the car on the way home and it was so tense, like there was this massive pressure in the car, like when you change height suddenly and your eardrums go all weird and then pop.
When Dad got home, Mum dragged him into their room and I could hear them have this secretive conversation. All I could make out was:
Dad: ‘Oh God, so she knows. What have you told her?’
Mum: ‘Oh God. Nothing. She saw Amanda. Oh God.’
So that cleared something up at least. Dad’s a bad guy too. The popcorn-making, daughter-cuddling, Astronaut Tyrone-watching father doubles as an evil child-experimenter-on approver.
At 7pm, when we normally sit down to dinner, Mum and Dad re-emerged from their room and said, at the exact same time, ‘Noa-bean, we need to talk.’
I flinched at that. How could they think it was OK to use that name? Is ‘use a term of endearment’ listed on page twenty-nine of the official guide to being horrific phoney parents who pretend to be really good but actually kill kids?
Mum spoke first. She said she’d started to work at the Laboratory in 2029. She was twenty-three and had just met Dad. She’d just finished university, topping her year in Biochemistry, and the Ministry had only just come to power. The Dark Days were nearly over but the Fence hadn’t been built yet.
I sort of sniff-coughed at the mention of the Dark Days. Mr Daniels and other phoneys are always going on about them, but how exactly could things be much worse than now? More Ministry lies.
Dad clearly noticed my reaction and said, ‘Seriously Noa, they really were bad times. People, good, normal people, were murdered every day. Stabbed in the street, killed in their homes. Everyone was desperate — there simply wasn’t enough to go round.’
‘How many people did you kill then, Mum?’ I asked, all mock sweetness. No reply. Just a look of phoney shock. ‘Oh, the murdering started later, did it, Mum? Sorry, experimenting, isn’t it. Sciencey murdering.’
Dad did a funny sort of twitch but kept looking me straight in the eye. ‘You have no idea, Noa. People were being killed for the smallest things. Food, medicine, land. Land was everything. My older brother, Max…’ Dad stopped speaking and looked like he was silently choking. He then pulled himself together and continued. ‘Max was hung and nailed to a fence as a warning by a gang who took his house because it was on slightly higher land. He’d refused to hand it over to them. Even when they turned up with clubs and knives. I was the one who found and took down his body.’
Oh God. I swallowed. No wonder Dad had never wanted to talk about him. A tear slid down Dad’s cheek. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen him cry.
I closed my mouth and Mum took a deep breath, all Daisy’s-mum’s-yoga-video like, and kept on speaking.
The Laboratory job was a research role, looking for cures for the new, particularly horrible diseases that were infecting people in the flooded areas. The medicines produced were going to be handed out for free.
‘So you’re a saint then, are you, Mum?’
‘Noa, please, Noa, just let me try and explain. Will you do that?’ Her red eyes were so pitiful, I nodded and let her continue.
Mum rose up the department quickly. Then changes began. The Fence was built and the Territory came into being. The TAA was introduced and the Childe procedure was invented and patented. Mum and Dad were against these changes, but believed that overall Mum was doing good so should keep working there. And the Dark Days had been so bad. ‘It’s not all black and white, Noa. Life’s more complicated than that. Before the Fence, no one had the chance of a good life.’
‘Limited space requires limited numbers,’ I quoted at them in monotone. ‘And the changes didn’t affect you, did they?’ I added. I think that hit home as they both looked away from me as I said it.
Then I was born and the job, because it was a Ministry position, had its benefits. They could have had a freakoid for free if they’d wanted to, and even though they’d chosen not to, they still got free schooling at Hollets for me, which they’d never otherwise have been able to afford, not in a million years.
‘And the experiments,’ I persisted, there was no way I was going to let Mum duck this. ‘When did they start?’
Big pause. She was clearly deciding whether she could get away with a lie and realised she couldn’t, that I’d just know she was 100 per cent evil and not to be trusted and that would reall
y be it for us.
‘Five years ago,’ Mum replied numbly.
‘Five years!’ I exploded. ‘You’ve been killing kids for five years!’
Mum’s back straightened and although her voice was now trembling, she kept on talking. Five years ago their role changed. ‘Prioritisation’ was the word from the top. Medicine was no longer going to be made available to the Wetlands. All funds would be concentrated on stopping diseases reaching the Territory and curing any infection that did breach the border. To that end, human experimentation was introduced to speed up tests for potential cures. Children who’d failed the TAA and were going to be sent unaccompanied to the Wetlands were chosen as the best available test subjects as their chances of survival were next to nothing anyway.
And, more to the point, no one would miss them.
‘Your mum has saved lives too, Noa. With the cures she’s found. She’s helped children too.’
‘Dad, just stay out of this now, OK?’ I shouted. ‘What about your whole lawyer spiel you’re always going on about – it’s more important to save the innocent than, well, than anything! So why didn’t you quit, Mum? That’s what I don’t understand.’ By now I was sobbing. ‘When you were asked to do this, why didn’t you just quit?’
‘Because of you,’ Mum sobbed back. ‘Because if I lost my job, you’d be taken out of Hollets and we’d be in the same position as Aunty Vicki and Ella. You wouldn’t stand a chance of passing the TAA. And from the first minute I held you in my arms I knew I’d kill for you. I just didn’t think I’d have to.’ And then the floodgates really opened and it was like I could see into her soul and see all the guilt and the love and the fierce protection just flowing out of her.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ I choked. ‘I love you, Mum.’
‘I love you too, Noa-bean.’
Raf was waiting for me as arranged outside the front entrance to school. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses even though it wasn’t remotely sunny. He wrapped his arms around me tighter and tighter, only stopping when my ribs made a funny sort of cracking sound. He then traced his finger gently round my eyes. Great, the five layers of foundation obviously failed to cover up my humungo puffy bags. Standing on tiptoes, I reached up and pulled the sunglasses from his face and then drew back in shock.
Round his green eye was a massive blue-green bruise. It was really disturbing as it was almost beautiful in a way, as all the colours sort of complemented each other, but also really ugly, like some weird painting Jack might draw.
‘What happened?’ I asked anxiously.
‘My dad wasn’t too happy when he heard about our adventure at the Laboratory.’ Raf tried to sound all sarky and relaxed like normal, but it didn’t work. The pain shone through.
He paused for a moment and then decided to drop the jokey act. ‘Noa, we’re better off without them. My dad, your mum, they’re not good people. At least we know that now.’
‘But they only did what they had to, to protect us. So that we could stay at Hollets and pass the TAA.’
Raf’s eyes blinked and his whole face seemed to go in and out of focus. Then the saddest smile spread across his face.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What did I say?’
‘Don’t worry, Noa. I guess I just wanted our parents to be alike. If they were both bad, then they wouldn’t be as bad, what they did wouldn’t be as bad, do you see?’ I did kind of understand his twisted logic.
‘But I still don’t get it,’ I continued like a moron, ‘your dad was probably doing it for you too.’
‘Noa,’ Raf spoke gently, as if I were some denser baby. ‘You and I might like to forget it and pretend it’s not true, but I’m a freakoid. I could go to any school, upload the information and pass the TAA. My dad doesn’t know I don’t upload. He didn’t do this for me. He did it for him. For the status. For the money. And I think he’s fine about that. Come on, I mean he took the job there a month ago, after they’d been doing this for years! He could easily have stayed at his old job if he’d wanted to. He was originally a mechanical engineer before he went into medicine. He could have designed robots for the refuse centre. He could have designed robots to look after old people. He just didn’t.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say so this time I put my arms round him and squeezed. He smelt of burnt leaves.
‘For what it’s worth, I’m pleased he moved jobs.’ I said and then cringed. A month ago I could never have imagined I’d turn into such a cheesemonger. And the worst bit is that whenever I try and say something real or sincere, my voice does this sort of spasm and I end up sounding massively insincere and a real phoney denser.
Raf laughed despite himself. ‘Wow, that sounded sarcastic.’
‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to.’
‘I got that. I know you pretty well now, Noa Blake. Your complete inability to sound sincere is one of the many things I love about you.’
Yes, he said love. And THAT word hung in the air like a little bubble between us. I didn’t know what to say, I just sort of stared past his face and focused on his right ear, as that seemed safely neutral. I couldn’t quite bear to look into his eyes as I felt it’d be just too intense and I might drown or spontaneously combust or something.
But what I really wanted to say was, ‘I love you too. So so much. And I’m so pleased your dad decided to move jobs and come and experiment on children because otherwise I’d never have met you and my life would be far worse.’ But I didn’t, of course. I said nothing and then the bell rang and the bubble burst.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked as we headed up the main steps.
‘Nothing,’ Raf replied, ‘for now.’
‘And later?’
‘I’m going to bring this whole system down.’ And he spoke with such grim determination that I believed him.
Sometimes peace offerings come in circle-shaped boxes.
Raf walked me home after school. I’d wanted to spend the evening revising with him. Things are so awkward with Jack now that he doesn’t want my help any more. But Dad said at breakfast that he wanted me at home this evening. That he wasn’t getting enough time with his little girl. He was trying to sound all casual about it, because he didn’t exactly want to say, ‘In case you fail and get shipped off to die and this is the last time we spend together on nice dry land.’ But when I thought about it, I really wanted to spend the evening with him too.
Raf walked me all the way to the bottom of the steps to my block and kissed me goodbye. We must have kissed for a while before we were finally interrupted by a friendly, ‘OK, OK break it up then.’ I looked up to see Marcus’ smiling face and felt this shiver run through me. He acted like nothing had changed. Like he was still the friendly neighbourhood policeman. Like he’d done nothing wrong. And what was scariest was that I don’t think it was an act. I think he genuinely thought he was one of the good guys.
There was no way we were going to keep snogging with Marcus watching us, so I gave Raf a quick hug goodbye and ran into the building. Dad was already upstairs; he’d finished work early specially.
‘Come on,’ he said, his face hard to read, a screwdriver in his hand. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
We went into his and Mum’s room, me wondering if he’d finally cracked and was going to go all psycho with the screwdriver. I watched as he pushed the bed to one side and used the screwdriver to prise up a now exposed floorboard. And I’d thought we’d be making popcorn or chatting this evening.
Dad felt around in the hole under the floorboards and then smiled triumphantly and pulled up a dust-covered box with a super-large, super-grim spider on top. The spider fled. Dad stood up, sat on the bed and patted the duvet next to him.
I sat down.
‘I wanted to tell you about Max,’ Dad said quietly.
And for the next half hour Dad talked, pausing now and then to fish out another photo, blink back emotion or to give in to laughter, and I finally got to know the funny, kind, fiery uncle I’d never met. How he’
d been really clever, saved Dad from loads of fights and always stood up to authority. He’d been against the idea of the Territory and the TAA and the idea of ranking kids. ‘You remind me of him,’ Dad continued. ‘He was always so full of life and just so interested in everything. He liked to know how things worked and so he collected all sorts of stuff. Old gadgets, instruments and music, he was mad about music. When we were boys, we’d always sit in the same room. I’d be reading and he’d be listening to music and his foot always used to tap the floor in time and it’d drive me mad. He’d drive me so mad…’ A sad sort of smile spread over Dad’s face.
‘This was his favourite gadget. Our granddad gave it to him. I think it was supposed to be a joke, but Max loved it.’ Dad fished in the box again and pulled out this circle-shaped box. He held it out to me and I opened it. Inside sat a silver machine thing about the width of my palm with headphones attached. Dad opened it up to check ‘if it had a disc in’ and to ‘put in some new batteries’.
‘Put the headphones on and press the black button,’ he said. The button had this arrow on. I raised one eyebrow but did what he said. There was a static noise and then the music started. Massively angry and loud and nothing like the music we got on our Scribes. The sort of music you have to dance to, but sort of fist-punch-in-the-air dancing. Not cool but you sort of have to. I got lost in it and got a massive shock when Dad tapped me on the shoulder and signalled to me to pull the headphones out.
‘I’d like you to have it,’ Dad said. ‘I’d like you to have something of his.’
I was so touched.
‘And here are some of his favourite discs.’ I must have looked a bit dense as he explained, ‘They’ve all got different music on. Different bands.’
‘I can’t wait to show everyone,’ I said excitedly.
Dad looked unsure. ‘Best keep it hidden, love. I’m pretty sure it’s banned material. You don’t want to be getting into trouble now.’ He looked at his watch and seemed horrified it was so late. ‘God, you’d better get back to studying, baby. Or your mum will kill me.’