“Being chosen had nothing to do with when we came to the lab,” Suyin said, coming to join us. She reached out and took hold of Romy’s hand.
“What?” the Dutch girl said.
“They chose us because we were at the peak of our ovulation cycle.”
“Really.”
“Yes, now let her go.”
Realising I had been riling her, Romy glowered at me and stormed from the room.
I sat on my bunk and sighed.
“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” Suyin rewarded me with a warm smile. I was moved by the kindness radiating from her beautiful, round face.
“I shouldn’t have provoked her, I know, but I’m so sick of her getting in my face all the time.”
“She feels threatened by you, I reckon.”
I laughed, but it was an empty, lifeless laugh. “Like I’m anything special.”
“Don’t speak like that, Chelsea. We’re all equal here, and we’re all special, every one of us.”
I thought of those who lost their lives because of me, and shook my head.
“Come on, don’t be like that.” She squeezed my hand. “Now hop up, Mr. Cho wants to see the four of us.”
I lifted my eyebrows as I stood.
“Some kind of pep talk, I guess.”
I nodded and followed her from the room.
“How are you handling this whole pregnancy thing?” she asked, her face radiant.
“Feels like a dream. Reckon I’m going to wake at any moment and find out it’s not real.”
“I know what you mean. Now come on, let’s find Madison and Bhagya.”
We found them in the cafeteria. Madison was the centre of attention, practically glowing with delight as she recounted the experience we went through to the rest of the girls, who hung on her every word. All except Romy, who stood just back from the circle, bitter and resentful, and Bhagya, who wasn’t in the room. I hoped she was all right. I had the impression that all wasn’t well beneath that impassive mask she wore. I wished I could comfort her somehow.
Chapter Fifteen
I was back in high school when Monday morning came, a girl masquerading as a boy, walking through a corridor jam packed with jostling, talking, laughing boys. More accurately, I was a pregnant girl – thanks to a scientific experiment – masquerading as a boy, walking through a school corridor jam packed with boys.
Mr. Cho’s pep talk on Saturday was that we had to get on with our normal lives, at least for the time being. In around five weeks time we would have an ultrasound to check on the fetuses. That’s what he called the babies, as though they were not yet human beings, only biological experiments. He also mentioned that as Bhagya and I worked undercover as men, we would continue with our assignment only until the pregnancies began to show. (He also said I had to uncover the identity of the Patriot before that happened.) After that, we would have to remain at the lab until childbirth.
I got to homeroom a few minutes early, but couldn’t get to my desk thanks to Stefan and Mehmet blocking the aisle by having an arm wrestle at the former’s desk. Both boys had their jumpers off and were breaking out in a sweat.
As soon as he noticed my arrival, Stefan slammed the Turkish lad’s arm to the desk, causing him to yelp in pain. Considering the difference in the size of their biceps, I wasn’t surprised. Mehmet laughed good-naturedly and vacated the seat.
“Your turn, Brandon,” Stefan called out.
A number of boys looked at me expectantly, including Dylan, Isaac, Jazz and Carver. Mehmet just appraised me with a raised eyebrow.
“Pass,” was my curt reply.
“What are you, a wimp?” Stefan asked.
“No. And I’m not gay, either.”
That brought on a round of raucous hooting and jeering.
“You’re the man, Brandon,” Mehmet said.
Stefan blushed bright red. As I tried to slip past him, Jazza suddenly grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear. “Give it up and go home, Chelsea. You don’t belong here.”
Angry that he thought he could bully me into leaving, I did my best to stare him down while trying to pull my arm free. To my astonishment, it wasn’t menace I saw in his eyes, but something else entirely – something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
He let me go and I slumped into my seat.
The last class for the day was chemistry, held in one of the bona fide science rooms. We were studying how to determine the cyanide content of pips taken from fruit grown in our town’s massive greenhouses. Although the poison occurred naturally in cherry, plum, apricot and peach pits, it was even more prevalent in the biologically altered versions grown in the town. Mr. Li, a handsome teacher of Chinese descent, always managed to make science interesting.
Halfway through the class we split into small groups for the practical segment of the lesson. Using special reaction bottles, sulphuric acid and cyanide test strips, we set about determining the cyanide concentrate levels in solutions provided by the town’s scientists.
The gruelling double period finally came to an end. Slapping my books shut, I shoved them in my backpack and headed home. After I walked out the school gates, I heard someone run up behind me. Mehmet, by the sound of his footsteps.
“Hey Brandy, wait up.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “Brandy” was my brother’s nickname. Just hearing it brought back painful memories. Like that night when I was twelve and ducked into the lounge room to cry after my mother finally fell asleep.
My brother found me five minutes later, wrapping his arms around me and cradled my head against his chest. “What’s got to you, Chelz?”
“She’s too much, Brandy.”
“Which one?”
That elicited a laugh. Mother or Younger Sister both drove me crazy, but especially Mother. She’d been in my face all day, criticising everything I did or said ever since that day I sided against her with Father in attacking the chancellor’s philosophies.
“We’re gonna get out of here one day, Sis. Keep that thought in the front of your mind when she gets too much for you.”
I didn’t say anything, just hugged him back.
Back in the present, I sighed when I realised how far off the mark he had been. He abandoned our life long goal of escaping Newhome when his foraging teammates corrupted his previously innocent nature. And thanks to their influence and the string of poor judgements he made, he was gone. As was my plan to escape. Now I had to spend the rest of my life trying to make up for my sins.
Mehmet waved his hand in front of my face. “Anybody in there?”
“What do you want, Mehmet?” I asked as we headed down a street lined with run down gray apartment buildings.
“Can I walk you home?”
I gave him a withering look. “You want to hold my hand too?”
“Can I?” He laughed.
A smile cracked my lips.
“Good job on Stefan, this morning. He’s such a moron,” he said.
“Him and his halfwit buddies.”
“Tell me about it. Hey, Brandon, why’d you quit foraging?”
“Wanted to go to uni.”
“Oh come on, how could uni and whatever lame job it leads you to ever compare to being out there,” he pointed towards the town’s twelve foot, barbed-wire topped concrete walls.
“It’s not the picnic you think it is. The temptations are too strong.”
“Temptations?”
“Weren’t you paying attention to what we were discussing on my first day here?” I snapped. “The foragers who left were all into smuggling in drugs and prohibited goods, and more besides.”
“Like what?”
“Like porn.” And murder
“Porn?” Mehmet was all smiles.
“You idiot,” I said.
“Did you find any yourself?”
“Found some DVDs under a bed once. It was disgusting.”
“So you never smuggled in stuff like that?”
“Of course not! It’s degrading and
demeaning to women, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said dreamily.
“Imagine it was your mother or sister.”
“Ewww.”
“Now pretend every woman is your mother or sister,” I said, giving him a dirty look.
“I see your point.” He seemed to be actually listening to me. There was hope for this boy yet.
Thirsty, I grabbed my water bottle from my backpack. I popped the top with my teeth, took a mouthful, and then froze, surprised by the water’s bitter almond taste and the way it burned my tongue.
Time seemed to grind to a stop when I suddenly recalled Mr. Li telling us during chemistry class today that cyanide tasted like almonds and burned the tongue if ingested.
I spat out the mouthful of water, and panicking in case I swallowed some, stuck my fingers down my throat and vomited the entire contents of my stomach onto the nature strip beside the footpath.
“What the blazes, Brandon?” Mehmet said, jumping away from me.
“Water!” I gasped, reaching for him.
Afraid I was contagious or worse, he continued to stagger back from me. Having no time to explain, I dove at him and tore his bag from his shoulder. I grabbed his water bottle, swilled, and spat, and did it again, and again. As I did so, the enormity of what just happened hit me – someone tried to kill me! And not just me, I was pregnant!
“You’re scaring me, mate, what’s going on?” He was still trying to keep distance between us.
Enraged to the point of being practically bereft of my senses, I flung myself at him and grabbed his collar with both hands. “Did you do did this?”
“Do what?”
Pushing him away, I scooped up my drink bottle and turned it over in my hands, quickly deducing that although it had been in my bag, and for all intents and purposes looked identical to my bottle, it wasn’t mine. A series of distinctive scratches that adorned one side of my bottle were conspicuously absent from this one.
The last time I had a drink was during lunch break, which lead me to conclude that someone had switched my bottle with this one during the afternoon’s chemistry double period. I stared wild eyed at Mehmet, though not seeing him, as I ran my mind through the class, trying to work out who could have done it and when. We were in our seats for the entire class, except for when we broke into small groups for thirty minutes to do the prac segment. So that had to be when the switch was made. It was the only time I wasn’t with my bag. And that meant one of the boys in my class tried to kill me.
Not Mehmet, though, going by the bewildered expression framing his face. So who then – Jazza and his cronies? Dylan, Isaac or someone else entirely?
“Brandon, talk to me!” Mehmet demanded.
Ignoring him, I scooped my bag from the footpath, stuffed in the offending water bottle, and darted up the road towards North End. A couple of times I heard faint footfalls in my wake, but when I checked behind me, there was never anyone there.
The trip to North End’s secret door, and subsequent leg to the lab, seemed to take forever, since I kept replaying in my mind every single thing I could recall about chemistry class. Trying to place each student, their expressions, comments, and who went where when we did the prac. And I came up empty. I hadn’t paid any attention to my bag, which had been at the back of the class beneath my desk.
Letting myself into the lab by typing my code into the security panel beside the front door, I headed straight for the science room. To my profound relief, it was empty. There were sounds and voices coming from the direction of the gym, confirming the girls were doing taekwondo.
Slamming the offensive water bottle onto a tabletop, I frantically hit the bookshelves. I went through the chemistry books, looking for any article that listed the symptoms of cyanide poisoning and treatment, and upon finding one, just about fainted when it said that you shouldn’t induce vomiting if cyanide was swallowed. That shouldn’t matter, though. I hadn’t swallowed any of the water. All the same, I went through the list of symptoms, which included difficulty breathing, weakness, nausea, and confusion, none of which I had. It suddenly occurred to me that this could be another set up. Someone could have flavoured the water with almond, making me think I had been poisoned. If they wanted to scare me out of school, what better way to do it?
Still, I had to make sure. Popping into the storeroom, I retrieved the requisite reaction bottle, sulphuric acid and specially prepared paper strip. Following the same procedure we used in class today, I soon had the answer I was looking for. The water was laced with a very lethal dose of cyanide.
My worst fears recognised, my knees went weak and I had to grip the bench top firmly to remain standing. Someone in my class today actually tried to kill me. The realisation that someone told Dylan’s and Jazza’s groups who I was hit home with renewed vengeance. I concluded with far greater conviction that Ryan was the only one who could have told them. I knew he denied that Jazza and his lads were part of his resistance movement, but as the truth and Ryan were strange bedfellows, that meant nothing.
“What are you doing?”
My head snapped up and I did a double take when I saw Romy standing in the doorway, scowling at me.
Chapter Sixteen
“I asked you a question, Chelsea. You’re not allowed in the science room out of school hours,” she said.
I looked at the water bottle and wondered if I should tell her, but one look at the acrid expression on her face and I realised that if I was to confide in someone, it wouldn’t be her.
“Stuffed up this experiment during today’s chemistry prac. Worked this time,” I said.
“I’ve got a good mind to report you.”
“Well don’t hold back on my account.” I hoped reverse psychology worked on Romy, otherwise I’d have some major explaining to do. Though in all honesty, I knew I should report this attempt on my life to Mr. Cho, and maybe I would, but I didn’t want to do it yet. I needed to talk to Ryan first and find out who he told about me, and why. Maybe then, we could narrow down the list of subjects of who just tried to kill me. I would be much happier going to Mr. Cho with some solid results rather than just reporting what happened.
“What’s the experiment, anyway?” Romy asked, coming into the room.
“You been following me?” I said, pushing away from the bench.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a simple question, Romy. Have you been following me out there, in Newhome Proper?”
“My goodness, but you’re vain, Chelsea!”
“What?”
“I know you think you’re better than the rest of us, but having delusions of grandeur to the extent that you think someone would actually follow you around?” She shook her head from side to side, her brown curls bouncing.
I wanted to scream in frustration. I had been beaten up, the victim of an attempted murder, and I was not imagining the furtive footfalls that followed me sometimes as I went about my business in Newhome.
“You’re such a waste of space, Romy.” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth, but was in no mood to retract them or attempt to sooth her anger. Instead, I set about packing up the science experiment, totally ignoring her as I did so.
Two minutes later, I heard her storm from the room. Good riddance.
All finished, I was about to leave when I noticed a small slip of green paper lying inconspicuously on the floor beside the door.
Why didn’t they nuke Melbourne’s central business district a century ago, why only the south-eastern suburbs?
It occurred to me that Romy could have put the note there on her way out, but quickly rejected the idea. It was impossible.
Going back to reflecting that one or more of the boys in my class had tried to kill me; I quit the lab and hurried back to Newhome Proper. It was time to have it out with Ryan, although I had no idea where to find him. My first hunch was that he was staying back at school, ostensibly preparing for the next day’s classes, though in reality snooping around
.
Another problem was that I appeared to have picked up my shadow again. I could hear their light footfalls dogging my footsteps. I tried to catch them twice, once by hiding and hoping they’d come into view, the second time by backtracking my footsteps. Although both attempts failed, I wasn’t particularly worried – if it was Romy, she was probably following me to make sure I was doing my job. Or more likely, she was hoping I’d do something illegal like visit a resistance group I was sympathetic towards, and catch me in the act.
In either case, her presence caused a significant problem. I could hardly talk to Ryan if she was listening in. So instead of making for the school, I headed in the other direction. When I rounded a corner, I made a run for it, going through a narrow lane between apartment blocks and then doubling back until I was back near the secret entrance into North End. Once I was sure I had ditched her, I hurried over to the school.
As to be expected, the schoolyard was deserted and eerily quiet. The doors weren’t locked, so I slipped into the empty corridors and paused, concentrating on what I could hear. The only audible sound was the school janitor, who was busily vacuuming the carpet on the second floor.
I made my way over to the staff room, which was on the first floor near the principal’s office. Standing outside the door, I could hear someone flipping through pages. I slipped quietly inside, finding myself in a large, open-plan room. Cubicles lined the walls, each adorned with a teacher’s name, and aged, threadbare sofas and armchairs formed a U shape in the middle of the room. A rudimentary kitchen was at the far end.
The room had one occupant – Ryan. As I had predicated, he was standing at another teacher’s desk, leafing through his journals.
I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to tell him I was pregnant, but quickly rejected it – that was a topic for another day, if ever.
“Ryan.” I spoke with my normal voice.
The undercover lieutenant jolted and whirled around, guilt plastered over his face.
“You just gave me a heart attack!” he expired, relieved to see it was only me.
“Why did you tell them who I am?” I snarled, going straight for the jugular.
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