by Teri Terry
The door opens.
‘There you are, lass. Now don’t worry about a thing, it’s all worked out. I’m taking you up tonight as no one is about until tomorrow. Best leave your coat and other things there in the van, they’ll be fine there until the morning.’
I take my coat off, extract the camera from a deep pocket. Maybe I should I have left it back at the college, but something tells me I’ll need it to get anywhere with Dr Lysander. There’s a pocket in the uniform and I slip it in.
I follow him through the underground lot to a lift. He puts a key in it to call the lift, and it is there in seconds. Up we go. ‘No one should get on, but if anyone does, nod but say nothing. I’ll handle it,’ he says.
I hold my breath but the lift doesn’t stop until the selected floor. The doors open, he peers through then gestures for me to follow.
We go down a plush hall, where all the doors have wire taped across them.
‘What is that?’
‘Security sealed electronic tape; the rooms were checked, cleared and sealed a short time ago.’
Then he opens a door at the end that leads to a narrow hall with little doors all along. He counts them along, and stops at one. ‘This is the service hatch into your friend’s room; they are normally used for breakfasts and so on. Listen very carefully. You can’t open these with the electronics on without setting off an alarm.’ He glances at his watch. ‘The electronics will go off shortly for one minute, the maximum possible without setting the alarms off. It should be just long enough to open it and for you to climb through into her room. I checked you were a little lass; I couldn’t do it. Once through, make yourself comfortable; there are spare blankets and pillows in the wardrobe. Stay out of sight of the door. Your friend is due tomorrow between 7 and 7:30 am, and you don’t want anyone to see you when she comes in and they bring her luggage. Speak to her, then come back out the same way at 8 am. The electronics will be switched off at exactly 8 am for one minute, and that is it. Here is a watch for you – it is coordinated with the hotel system so the time is exact. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ I say, slipping the watch onto my wrist. It is digital with hours, minutes, seconds shown by a faint green pulsing light.
He is watching his watch, hurriedly explaining how the service hatches work. Telling me not to touch the windows or doors in the room as they’re all alarmed.
‘It is time,’ he says and yanks doors at the back of the hatch open; it’s like a mini lift. I climb through into a small box, struggle to open the door on the other side when there isn’t enough room to extend my arms properly, but manage to pry it open.
‘Hurry,’ he says.
I crawl through; the doors swing shut.
‘Good luck, child.’ His voice is faint on the other side.
My heart is beating way too fast; that wasn’t easy to do in a minute. I’m sitting on the plushly carpeted floor in Dr Lysander’s soon-to-be room, wishing I’d asked more questions – like, can I turn on the light? Is there anything to eat?
I feel my way around the darkened room: large bed. Desk. Chair. Wardrobe. I open that and feel along the bottom. Under the promised pillows and blankets, my fingers curve around something cold and round, with a switch: a torch. I flick it on.
‘Thank you, mystery man,’ I whisper to myself. I explore the room again with the torch carefully angled down, decide the only place I feel safe is actually inside the thankfully huge wardrobe. What if I fall asleep and don’t wake up until she arrives?
I arrange the pillows on the wardrobe floor, settle onto it with the blanket. I try with the door shut, but it feels too enclosed so I push it ajar. I’m sure I’ll wake before she gets here; I’m not convinced I’ll sleep at all.
For a while I stare at the wall, imagining what I can say to Dr Lysander to get her to tell me everything she knows about me; rehearsing the words. Finally I close my eyes. What is Ben doing now? I bite my lip: I hope he doesn’t think I’m avoiding him, or don’t want to be there. Would anyone tell him where I am if he asks?
I slip into uneasy dreams, of wardrobes: Stella’s wardrobes, full of photos and tissue-wrapped memories; college student wardrobes with narrow spaces, too small to hide in. Click…switch.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
* * *
The low thud of a door; footsteps.
I open my eyes with a start, glad to see I’d pulled the wardrobe shut in the night.
‘Yes, just put it there. Thank you.’ Dr Lysander’s voice? Another voice, male, asking if she needs anything. ‘No, thank you; just some peace and quiet.’ But you can’t always get what you want.
A door shuts, and there are footsteps in the room.
I struggle to shake sleep from my mind; it had been late when I finally drifted off. I squint at the digital numbers on the watch. 7:40? Oh no. She is late. We haven’t much time.
But I stay silent, unmoving. What if I’m wrong, and when she sees me she raises the alarm? She wouldn’t do that, not after everything we’ve been through. Would she?
I listen very intently to make sure she is alone. There is a faint zipping noise – a suitcase?
It’s now or never.
I nudge the door open and peer through the slit, just in time to see she is approaching: the door is pulled open.
‘Dr Lysander?’ She jumps about a foot in the air. ‘It’s me, it’s Kyla.’
‘What?’ She is half poised to run the other way, to her door, but looks, really looks at me this time. I hold my hands out to show I’m unarmed.
Her eyes are wide, face pale, but otherwise the same as always: thick glasses, long dark hair tied back with maybe a few more grey streaks than it had before. Eyes that can see through me. She takes one of my hands to pull me up from the wardrobe. I stand next to her.
‘Kyla?’ She smiles. ‘It really is you? Your hair. But it’s you!’ And she does something she has never done before: pulls me close for a quick hug. Then, like she realises what she has done, releases me just as quickly.
‘They told me you were dead.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I’m fine.’
‘Why would they do that?’ She shakes her head. ‘How are you here, hiding in my room? What is going on?’
‘I haven’t got very much time. I need to ask you a few things, but first I’ll tell you where I’ve been.’ I realised last night: if I don’t tell her what I found out, why I want to know, she’ll never reveal what she didn’t before. I have to give her a reason, and do what we always did: trade information.
‘I went to who I thought was my mother. From before I was Slated. You know how I told you the AGT took me from a young age? I was kidnapped from my mother when I was ten. I went and found her, to get to know her again. But not long after getting there I found out she wasn’t actually my mother.’
‘Explain.’
‘She was given me as a baby after her own died, and raised me from then to age ten. She didn’t know where I came from. Her mother is a JCO and gave me to her, so it may have been from an orphanage. Before I could find out any more, my cover got blown, and I had to leave in a hurry.’ This is the part of the story I’d struggled to formulate. I can’t tell her details of where I am now or who with: I can take risks with myself, but not with those who’ve helped me. ‘Since then, I’ve been with friends. One of them found out that at higher security levels, I’m not a Jane Doe: my DNA is classified. Who am I? Tell me if you know anything; I have to know.’
She looks back at me carefully, considering. ‘Why do you need to know?’
‘Wouldn’t you want to know who you were if you found out you were adopted?’
She shrugs. ‘Maybe less than you. My family was never close, and often difficult. Why seek out another?’ She touches my hair. ‘IMET, isn’t it.’ A statement, not a question. ‘Is this where the DNA came into it? I
’m worried about you, Kyla. How much trouble are you in? Can you come back from it? Does learning more help, or hinder? What do your new friends really want with you? Are they any better for you than your AGT friends turned out to be?’
And I’m so frustrated I want to scream: as usual, she’s homed in on the one thing I won’t talk about: my friends. I breathe deeply. ‘You must know by now how wrong the system you are part of is. But in case you don’t, I’m going to show you.’ I need to shock her, to make her help me. It was the only way I could think to do so.
I pull the camera out of my pocket. ‘You know how I said I may have come from an orphanage? I went to look at the local one, don’t know why.’ I shrug. ‘It’s not like I was going to recognise a place I left when I was a baby. It is isolated, fenced in. I snuck in close, and this is what I found.’ I open the camera folder, project the image of the small Slated boys.
Her intake of breath is sharp. ‘These children, so young? No. Slating is not for them. Who would do this? Where is this place? Tell me,’ she demands, her face coldly furious.
‘Lorders have done this, and they are doing it. There were about fifty children I saw.’ I glance at my watch: 7:51. ‘The other thing I found out is that this JCO, the mother of the woman who raised me, had something to do with the AGT and having me taken. Please. I’ve told you all I know about it. I have to leave at exactly 8 am or I won’t be able to get out. Tell me what you know.’
Dr Lysander is silent a moment, thinking, and I don’t press. She finally nods. ‘I told you before. You were on the hospital records as Jane Doe. There was no mention of being classified; no other information as to your origins at all.’
‘But there is something else?’
‘Yes. A few curious things. Remember when you saw your records on the hospital system? Where the hospital board had recommended termination; it said I overruled.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t have the power to overrule the hospital board, and in any case, never tried to do so. It happened at a higher level: somebody made sure you were kept alive. Also there was more interference and care at times; the longer stay in hospital, and the Watchers you had at night, are examples. They were above the entitlement of assistance. Someone was meddling, and it had my curiosity.’
‘Is that why you took special interest, why I was your patient?’
She inclines her head. ‘That part of the motivation followed. There was an initial reason, as I’ve told you before.’
‘That I remind you of someone you used to know, someone who died in the riots.’
‘Yes,’ is all she says, but something else crosses her face in that moment, for seconds only, then is gone.
‘When you changed my brain chip number on the computer to make it untraceable, was that at the request of someone above?’
Her lips quirk. ‘No. That was entirely my own moment of insanity. The Lorders are more interested in you than they should be. I made it harder for them.’
‘One other thing. My memories: there were things from my childhood coming back when I was at the place I was raised. I was left-handed to age ten, then forced to change, Slated as right-handed. Could my memories be coming back because my handedness was changed?’ This was Stella’s theory, and asking about this isn’t on the list of reasons why DJ got me in here, but last night I knew I had to ask. I may not get this chance again.
She’s thinking again. Finally nods. ‘It’s possible that the only inaccessible memories from your Slating were those associated with being right-handed. Others may be suppressed, but accessible in the right circumstances. But this is conjecture. To my knowledge what happened to you hasn’t been attempted before, so who can say?’
I’m about to ask her more when her eyes drop to my wrist. ‘Kyla, your watch says 7:59.’
I bolt up and run for the small doors at the service hatch at the back of her room just as my watch changes to 8:00. ‘I’m sorry we can’t talk longer,’ I say, and wrench the doors open, then curse: the car isn’t there, and what is between me and the doors on the other side is a chasm that drops far down into darkness. Then the opposite doors open; hands are there to help, and I launch myself across to them. One ankle bangs painfully against the door in Dr Lysander’s room as strong arms drag me across.
‘Where was the orphanage you visited?’ Dr Lysander says urgently as I’m pulled through on the other side.
‘Cumbria,’ I say back quietly as the doors close. Unsure if I should or shouldn’t say, but there is the trade, as always: she answered another question. So must I.
As I pull myself to my feet the mini lift whirrs into action, a car in motion is heading this way. That was close. My ankle hurts and I bend down to check it; a small cut.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Just a nick; I’m fine.’
I follow him back down the hall, listening as he explains what to say if anyone says anything, then we get on the lift. There are other staff on it but they smile, nod, and no words are spoken. They get off at another level. We go back to the van in the car park.
‘Sorry, but you’ll have to stay in here, very quietly, until my lunch break. There is some food for you on the seat.’
He opens the door, I get in, it shuts behind me. I change back into my own clothes, then find a sandwich and biscuits wrapped up and eat hungrily while I think through all that was said.
Hours later the van driver returns as promised, and takes me to a rendezvous with Aiden. On the return to Oxford I tell him what Dr Lysander said, hoping he or DJ will make more sense of it than I did.
Why would some faceless higher-up capable of overruling the hospital board and everything else they’ve done be bothered about me? I can’t answer the question, but deep in my guts I’m sure of one thing: it can’t be good.
Dr Lysander didn’t know what they are doing at that orphanage, that is very clear. I go cold inside, afraid what she will do with the knowledge. Will she end up in even worse trouble than she did the last time, all because of me?
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
* * *
‘Ben came looking for you last night,’ Wendy says. ‘So I’m guessing you weren’t with him all night long this time.’
‘I wasn’t with anybody.’
‘Don’t look so fierce, I believe you. Just listen to me a moment.’
‘What?’
‘I know I don’t know you very well, and I know enough about why you are here to know I shouldn’t ask questions. But be careful.’
‘What do you mean?’
She hands me an envelope. ‘Just be careful.’
She leaves, and I rip it open.
Ben’s handwriting: it looks just as it always did.
Dear Kyla,
My scans were good so I’ve been sprung from constant supervision, hurrah! Came by to celebrate last night – where were you?
There is only one way to make it up to me. Meet me at the top of St Mary’s Church Tower: the views are supposed to be amazing.
Don’t keep me waiting again.
Love, Ben
But there is no time specified on it. Maybe he has already been waiting there for hours!
I scramble for clean clothes, which are in short supply. I borrow a top of Wendy’s, leaving an apologetic note behind. Tuck my camera in a coat pocket and slip out of our room, down the hall.
I step out a side door of All Souls and soon find the entrance to the church. Wave my student ID at a warden and get him to point out the way to the tower.
And I start the climb. Stairs in the church, then in the tower, take me ever higher until I reach a narrow spiral staircase. The further I go up the ancient, worn stone steps, the narrower and steeper the way, and despite wanting to be there now I have to slow down, take care.
Finally I reach the top, and step out onto the tower platform, into the cold wind. No sig
n of Ben. The platform is irregular and narrow, enclosed by a stone railing with more stone curving overhead, almost as if the platform has been gouged into the tower. Hugging my arms around myself I follow the platform all around the tower, ducking into linking tunnels on the way, until I reach a dead end.
No Ben.
Either he was here already, got bored of waiting and left. Or he hasn’t come yet. Why didn’t I ask Wendy when he gave her that note? If he has been and gone I should go look for him. But then what if he comes back, and I’m not here? I decide to wait, and do the circuit again, this time with more of an eye to the views across Oxford, and the gargoyles leaning out with wide gaping mouths as if to swallow buildings below. Finally I huddle against cold stone, shivering and staring at All Souls College. Patches of both quads are visible from here, including the bench where Ben and I sat and spoke.
I’m so happy about Ben’s scans being okay, but then start to think about it. What does that mean, exactly? How could scans reassure Florence and Aiden enough to give Ben more clearance? They might show how much of his memory has been mucked with, but won’t show what he is thinking. I don’t understand. I frown to myself, then my misgivings disappear with the dim echo of approaching feet on stone steps below.
He’s here!
The steps get closer and my smile, wider. Ben said this was our secret, a special place for us. A new special place, for new memories to replace the old.
But then the face that appears in the door isn’t the one I’m expecting.
‘Aiden?’
‘Where’s Ben?’
‘I don’t know. What are you doing here?’
‘More to the point: what are you doing here? You know better, Kyla, than sneaking out without telling anyone where you are going.’