The Territory

by Sarah Govett

  And then in that same moment, I saw Raf’s face fall and heard the door to the dorm slam. On autopilot I ran to the door, opened it and just disappearing round the bend at the end of the corridor, I saw a huge frame and a beacon of carrot-red hair.

  I’m like some massively unlucky charm. Do not approach unless you’re at least touching wood and chucking salt over your left shoulder.

  We were woken by the sirens at 3am, those of us that had gone to sleep. No one understood what was going on. Everyone in my dorm thought it was probably a fire drill, the sort we have at school every six months, where we have to file out onto the playing field at the back and get counted while the lamest, keenest students in yellow jackets check for the non-existent source of the non-existent flames.

  We weren’t left to think for long though. The door to the dorm was thrown open with a bang as the handle crashed into the cupboard behind. Filling the entire doorframe was a massive guard who ordered us to follow him in silence. He’d already collected a long line of students, most of whom I recognised from Hollets, and he propelled us towards the exam hall, picking up more and more students on route. Down other corridors we glimpsed similar processions and even saw one girl getting thrown against a wall by a guard for some unseen offence. It was feeling less and less like a fire drill and more and more like a military crackdown. Even though we’d been ordered to be silent, different theories were being whispered up and down the line until just one dominated.

  There was a runner.

  Helena in Mr Forbes class’s cousin had apparently had this happen to her. The siren meant someone had been seen breaking out of the Waiting Place and it only stopped when the fugitive had been caught by the guards or their dogs or shot resisting capture. Sometimes, the whispers gleefully asserted, the runner had to be shot because they’d been so badly mangled by the dogs. Either way, the siren normally stopped in less than twenty minutes.

  ‘But how could anyone get out?’ I whispered to the guy in front of me. ‘This place is like a prison.’ My question was whispered up the line and an answer duly returned.

  ‘There’s a flat roof you can reach from the first floor. From that you can climb over barbed wire and jump down over the wall. It’s a ten-foot drop though. You’d probably break your legs.’

  Inside the exam hall, we were herded into groups according to school. We were so tightly crammed it was impossible to see beyond the first circle of faces so I couldn’t seek out the comfort I craved from Raf, or Jack for that matter, not that he’d probably feel like comforting me. In a robotic monotone our guard began to read out names and check them off against this long list. When it was your turn you had to answer and go up to a screen and press your fingertip onto the touch-pad to prove your identity. So no one could go up twice to cover for the runner. The list was alphabetical. I answered mechanically to Noa Blake and touched the screen. Although I obviously am and always have been Noa Blake, I still had a moment of blind panic when I touched the screen and there was a fraction of a second delay before the little circular light turned from red to green. ‘Raf Ferris’ was answered by a ‘yes’ and my stomach double-flipped in relief. My mind kind of zoned out for the rest of the Fs to Ls. Then the guard called, ‘Jack Munro’, and there was silence followed by a frantic low-level buzz of speculation. ‘Jack Munro,’ the guard called again. Again there was no reply and the buzz grew louder. The guard grabbed the radio from his jacket. ‘We have the runner. The runner is Jack Munro. I repeat Jack Munro.’

  No one could believe Jack had run. No one apart from me and Raf anyway. To me it all made horrific, logical sense. Jack, who cared more about me passing than him, who’d sheltered and protected me all the way to this hellish place, now running away, throwing it all away because I’m a horrible selfish user. All my mind could do was replay over and over again the image of Jack running; running down the corridor; running away from me; and my mouth opening and saying over and over, ‘But I don’t want Jack, I don’t want Jack.’

  Raf managed to worm his way through the knot of students to hold my hand, but for once I got no warmth from it. His touch just intensified my guilt.

  And as Jack’s ‘best friend’, everyone came to ask me why I thought he’d done it. After the exams, they all thought he’d been smiling, relatively happy, not acting like someone who’d definitely failed and was going to take desperate measures.

  And then the siren stopped. Radios crackled and the guards started marching us back to our dorms. No word on Jack. I begged one guard to at least tell me if Jack was alive or dead, but he acted like I didn’t exist. ‘Please!’ I tugged on his arm, but then he hit me so hard that I was on the ground, tasting metallic blood for the second time in my life.

  On the way back to the dorms I saw various students passing money to Hugo. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Bernard who was in front of me. ‘Sweepstake,’ Bernard replied. Bernard mistook my scowl for confusion. ‘On how long it’d be till they got him, I mean,’ he explained. ‘Hugo won, of course.’ Then, I think out of some emotionally inept attempt at comfort, he said, ‘It was twenty-three minutes. Jack did well.’

  Bastards. Complete utter bastards.

  Results Day. In ten minutes I find out whether I’ve passed or failed.

  At precisely 11am the guards will herd us back into the exam hall to get our results. According to Helena, who seems to know more than anyone else about this place, the hall will be split into three by floor to ceiling bars. One massive cage that everyone gets put in to start with, with a raised stage at the far end. Two doors off the stage each leading to a smaller cage.

  Everyone’s name is called out in turn followed by your percentage. You have to go forward, fingerprint identify yourself and either a green or red light shines. Then a guard opens the door to the relevant smaller cage.

  Like some sick game-show host.

  Green light – right-hand door – congratulations, you’re a winner, your prize is: Life!

  Red light – left-hand door – bad luck this time, you’re a Fish. But here’s a consolation prize of a mosquito net and some iodine tablets.

  There are loads of extra guards with massive guns to prevent you trying to escape after the announcement or ‘do a Jack’ as every freakoid is now calling it.

  There’s still no word on Jack. Raf says, ‘No news is good news,’ but we both know he’s just trying to cheer me up as that’s a lame saying that means nothing. Everyone’s convinced he’s dead. Because surely they’d tell us if he was still alive. Wouldn’t he be allowed visitors or something? But maybe not. A regime that hunts down teenagers with dogs probably isn’t that up on human rights.

  Any sort of noise and I think the guards are here already. I think I’m going to be sick. After Jack’s escape, I’d kind of forgotten that I’ve most likely failed. I remember now though. Oh God, I remember pretty damn clearly.

  The results were boomed out of loudspeakers as soon as we were all rammed into the large holding cage. The air was charged as the first result came. ‘Finn Abbott … 73 per cent.’ I didn’t know him. He was from another school and too far away for me to see if he had a Node or not. He screamed with joy, leapt onto the stage, pressed his finger to the machine and swaggered into the right-hand cage.

  Tom Adams, a niceish Norm from the other class was the first Red light. He started crying hysterically on the stage and a puddle of pee formed at his feet. Everyone backed away from the stage and there were cries as someone got knocked over. We felt terrible for Tom. But it was like we HAD to get away from him. Like failure might be catching. The guards hit him with a baton and made him walk through the door into the left-hand cage.

  ‘Please let me pass, please let me pass.’ I chanted the mantra over and over under my breath.

  Being ‘Blake,’ I didn’t have to wait long. ‘Noa Blake.’ When I reached the stage and heard ‘76 per cent’ and the green light shone, I actually puked a little bit in my mouth from sheer relief. I wasn’t going to be sent to die. I wasn’t going
to kill my parents.

  From then on there was this sort of sound-orgy of air-punching ‘Yes!!!’ and howls of ‘No!!’. Raf passed too and I sent up a massive prayer of thanks. As he entered the right-hand cage and stood next to me, I clutched his hand and left red marks I was gripping so hard. Our eyes met and he mouthed, ‘I love you!’ and I was so high on the moment that I lost all my rubbish inhibitions and mouthed, ‘I love you too!’ right back at him.

  And then came the most shocking words of the day, ‘Jack Munro’.

  That confirmed it. Jack was alive.

  Two guards marched towards the stage carrying, or rather dragging, Jack between them. Jack, with two black eyes and a broken leg. Jack, beaten and humbled but still Jack, my Jack.

  ‘71 per cent,’ the loudspeaker announced and I literally shouted with joy. Tears started streaming down my face. He’d managed the impossible. Jack had actually passed the TAA!!! I felt like we’d all been given a second chance. That there was some sort of justice in the world after all.

  That’s when the red light shone. I choked back my disbelief. But he’d got 71 per cent. ‘They can’t do this. How can then do this?’ I whispered in rage to Raf. And then the disembodied voice of the loudspeaker continued, ‘Disqualified for attempted escape’.

  The guards unceremoniously dumped Jack in the left-hand cage.

  ‘No!’ I howled.

  A guard approached. ‘Quiet! Or you’ll be in there yourself,’ he spat. But that wasn’t the voice that stopped me.

  ‘Noa, leave it!’ It was Jack from the other side of the bars. Jack, protecting me still. Even after everything. Raf tactfully backed away.

  ‘Oh, God,’ was all I could manage, overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. ‘I’m so sorry Jack, it’s all my fault. I did this to you.’

  ‘It’s not, Noa,’ Jack replied sadly. ‘I did this to myself. I got angry and acted stupid like normal. Wish I’d just punched something – escaping was maybe a step too far.’ His attempts at humour just made my heart hurt more. He picked up on it, like he always does, like there was some form of telepathy between us. ‘I love you Noa. We both know that. But you don’t owe it to me to love me back. I get that now. So look after yourself, OK? It’s not your fault. It’s mine.’

  I started crying openly and Jack tried to pretend that he wasn’t too.

  But beneath my tears I felt some of that steel that I must have inherited from Mum.

  A guard dragged me away from the bars and Jack and back to the middle of the cage.

  Raf wrapped me in his arms. Surrounding me in comfort. In a safety where I could have happily stayed forever. But I wasn’t going to.

  I looked up into Raf’s eyes. ‘I don’t know how or anything, but I’m going to the Wetlands to get him out. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought you might.’ He looked at me, trying to work out if there was any doubt in my mind. There wasn’t. ‘OK. Just let me know when we leave.’

  And then he squeezed my hand so hard that he left red marks and I knew that he meant it.

  Acknowledgements

  Huge thanks to my husband, without whose constant encouragement I would never have made it beyond two thousand words. Thanks to Nina Duckworth, Eirlys Bellin, Sammy Mennell and Sarah Brodie for their invaluable feedback on the first draft. Thanks to my agent, Rupert Heath, for taking on an unknown and finding a home for my first novel. Thanks to Penny and Janet at Firefly for their unswerving faith and enthusiasm and to Megan Farr and Jennie Scott for their tireless PR efforts. Thanks to Jo Nicholls and Seana Johansson-Keys and everyone else who helped select the fabulous cover. And finally, thanks to my parents and thanks to my old schools for being nothing like those in The Territory.

  Sarah Govett, 36, read law at Trinity College, Oxford. After qualifying as a solicitor, she set up her own tutoring agency. Sarah has also written for children’s television.

  She has two young children and lives in London.

  First published in 2015 by Firefly Press

  25 Gabalfa Road, Llandaff North, Cardiff, CF14 2JJ

  www.fireflypress.co.uk

  Text © Sarah Govett 2015

  The author asserts her moral right to be identified as author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

  Print ISBN 9781910080184

  epub ISBN 9781910080191

  This book has been published with the support of the Welsh Books Council.