Acid (21 page)

‘Max, I—’

‘You lying bitch.’ His voice echoes around the empty church.

‘Max—’

‘You lying, murdering
bitch
.’ His eyes are shining with fury and hate. ‘All this time, I thought you were helping me. I thought you
cared
. And it was all
lies
.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t. I
do
care!’

‘You killed my dad,’ he says.

‘No, I didn’t! It was ACID!’

‘
Liar
.’

Outside, I can still hear the cries of the crowd, ACID shouting orders through their komms to try and get everyone under control. A roto thuds overhead. Something hits the church doors with a crash, making me jump.

‘Max, it was ACID,’ I say. ‘Your dad was the one who got me out of jail. An ACID agent caught him when he was up on the roof and tried to shoot him. He got away by throwing the guy off the roof. But then more agents
turned
up and . . .’ I close my eyes and swallow, seeing Dr Fisher lying face-down on the tarmac.

‘That’s crazy. Why would my dad do something like that?’

‘And why do
you
think your mum told you to get away when ACID came to arrest you?’ I say, opening my eyes again. ‘Whoever your dad was working for, she must have been in on it too. She must have known – and ACID thought
you
did as well.’

Max shakes his head. ‘No. That’s not possible. My parents weren’t like that.’

‘How do you know?’

‘How do
you
? You’re a murderer. You’re evil!’

‘Max, I’m not.’ My voice catches. I take a ragged breath. ‘What happened to my parents – that was an accident too.’

‘Oh, yeah, of
course
it was.’ His voice is full of bruising sarcasm.

So I tell him the whole sorry story. About Dylan; about our plan to run away together; about my dad finding out I’d been seeing him and putting me under house arrest. About Dylan appearing like a ghost at my bedroom window one night – how he got past my dad’s state-of-the-art security system, I’ll never know – and, clinging to the drainpipe he’d climbed, leaning in through the window to pass me the pulse gun. ‘Use this,’ he said. ‘Make him let you go.’

I stared at him. ‘Where did you get this from?’ I asked him.

‘It’s my dad’s.’

‘But what am I supposed to do with it?’ I said. ‘You don’t want me to shoot him, do you?’

Dylan laughed. ‘Of course not. Just threaten him with it. Do it tomorrow evening, after dinner. I’ll be waiting for you in the park at the end of the road. I’ve got enough money to get us out of London. Please, Jenna.’

And because I thought I loved him, because I thought this was what I really wanted, I took it. I hoped that he might kiss me for the first time – I felt like I’d been waiting for ever – but he just left.

I hid the gun under my mattress until the next evening, when I excused myself from the dinner table to make a start on my homework, like I always did. But instead of calling up my schoolwork on my komm, I took the gun out and went back downstairs with it.

‘I only meant to scare him,’ I said, hanging my head and closing my eyes, my voice barely louder than a whisper. ‘But my mum panicked. She tried to grab it, and it went off. Dad tried to pull her away while the charge was going through her and it arced across to him and got him too.’

‘BULLSHIT!’ Max screams at me. He’s struggling against the ropes around his arms and legs, his face flushed with anger, a vein standing out on his forehead.

‘It’s not,’ I whisper.

‘Shut up,’ he says.

‘Max—’

‘Shut UP!’

I shut up.

Then, from outside, in the direction of the square, there’s a dull, concussive
BOOM
.

And another.

And another.

I pull frantically, uselessly against the ropes, throwing my head back and shrieking. The sound echoes back at me from the vaulted roof, over and over and over.

Max watches me.

‘I bet you wish you were out there, don’t you?’ he says. ‘Watching them go off. Watching people die.’

His words are like a punch to the gut. ‘No!’ I say.

He laughs, a bitter, sarcastic sound, then falls silent.

I hear more sirens coming up the street outside. I hold my breath, waiting for them to go past.

Instead, they stop, right outside the church.

I remember what Jacob said just after he’d tied us up.
Oh, don’t you worry, I’ve got something special planned for you two
.

And I remember the seventy-five-thousand-kredz reward on my head.

But that doesn’t make sense
, I think.
He said he’d get more if he kept me in the NAR. Why would he—

Because he can make it look as if
I
was behind the bomb attack, I realize. Then he and the others can get away and he can claim the reward somehow. Perhaps that was really his plan all along.

Six ACID agents burst into the church, bringing with them a rush of noise and the bitter smell of smoke. They
spread
out, five of them shining the torches mounted on their guns between the pews, while one walks straight up the aisle. Her torch beam gets me right in the face, and with my arms tied behind me, I can’t even raise my hands to shade my eyes. I squint and blink, twisting my head to avoid the glare.

‘What . . .?’ The agent swings her gun to the right and sees Max. She turns it back to me. Back to Max. Back to me.

‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘It
is
you.’

I start to thrash and twist again, straining uselessly against the ropes. So does Max. ‘You don’t want me!’ he yells. ‘You want her! She’s a murderer!’

‘Max, I’m
not
!’ I shout.

‘Stay still, both of you, or I’ll shoot!’ the agent yells.

Max and I both sag back in our chairs. The other agents come rushing up the aisle. I close my eyes so I don’t have to watch them running towards us, but I can’t block out the sound of their boots thundering against the stone floor.

It’s a sound like the end of the world.

 

INTERROGATION

CHAPTER 33

ACID Interrogation Centre, Upper London

13 June 2113

I HATE YOU
. I HATE YOU!

Every time I close my eyes, I hear Max’s words, see his face as it looked when they led him away from me, twisted in anger and fury. I try to conjure up other, happier memories, like when we were pretending to be a couple at Clearford Library, and how after a while it didn’t feel so much like pretending any more or the moment he let slip how he really felt about me and the joy that blossomed inside me, despite my almost instantaneous realization that I had to keep pretending I just wanted us to be friends.

I wish I hadn’t done that
, I think bitterly.
I wish I’d told him how I really felt too
.

But would it have made any difference, in the end?

The
clunk
of a lock being drawn back jolts me away from my thoughts about Max and back to reality: the tiny, windowless cell at ACID’s interrogation centre in Upper, with a sleeping mat, a lumpy pillow and a thin,
scratchy
blanket in one corner, and a stinking toilet with no seat or lid in the other.

I’ve been locked up in here for three days, ever since I arrived. Too wired to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, I’ve spent most of it pacing the floor or doing squats and press-ups. I haven’t been allowed to have a shower yet; I haven’t even been given a change of clothes. My hair’s tangled and greasy, my skin itches and there’s a rancid taste in my mouth. It’s just like two years ago when I was arrested after my parents’ deaths. I had to stay in my blood-soaked school uniform for almost two weeks, until it was time for me to be sentenced. Then, I cried and pleaded with them every day to let me have some new clothes. This time, I haven’t said or done anything. If they think they can break me, they’re in for a shock.

Two ACID agents enter the cell. The first trains her gun on me while the second unclips a set of wrist and leg restraints from her belt. I stand in silence while she cuffs me, smiling inwardly at her sour expression. I know I must smell as bad as I look.

‘Walk,’ she says, giving me a push between the shoulders with her gloved fingertips.

They lead me out of the cell and along a corridor outside. We pass a few other ACID agents, who stare at me. Then we reach the interrogation rooms, a line of doors with little holosigns on them. The agent with the gun taps a button beside one marked
VACANT
and, as it hisses open, gestures for me to go inside. It looks just like
I
remember: a thick plexiglass screen divides the room in half, and on my side there’s nothing but a chair with metal loops so my restraints can be fixed to it, and a microphone for me to speak into. On the other side is another door, a desk, potted plants and a jug of iced water, frosted with condensation, that I’d sell my soul for right now.

I lick my dry lips and sit down on the chair. The second agent attaches my restraints to the loops. Then they both leave.

I gaze through the plexiglass, my heart thudding, the thick silence in the room roaring in my ears. So they’re going to interview me.
At last
. But do they really believe I’m going to tell them anything?

God, I hope Mel and Jon are OK
, I think, feeling a chill in the pit of my stomach.
I hope ACID haven’t caught up with them
.

And what about Max? Is he somewhere in the building too? Ever since ACID found us, he’s almost all I’ve thought about. The knowledge that he could be just a few doors away from me – in the next cell, even – has tortured me in a way my filthy clothes and cramped cell and the terrible food can’t even come close to.

On the other side of the screen, the door slides back, and two more agents enter the room. One of them is a guy: squat as a bullfrog, shaven-headed, with a face like a lump of badly kneaded dough. The other . . .

I stare.

It’s Sub-Commander Healey. Agent Robot. She looks
even
more plastic in real life than she does on the screens. As she and Bullfrog sit down at the table, she regards me coolly. I shake my tangled hair out of my face and gaze back at her.

She touches her komm – to film the interrogation, I presume – then taps the holocom base on the table to turn it on.

‘Please state your name,’ she says, her voice coming through a speaker above me somewhere.

I lean forward as much as my restraints will let me and say into the microphone, ‘You know my name.’

‘Please state your name,’ she says.

I say nothing.

‘What were you doing in Manchester?’ she asks me.

‘I tried to tell the agents who found us,’ I say. ‘No one gave a shit then. Why are you so interested now?’

She taps the holocom base and the side of the screen facing me suddenly flickers on, showing footage from an agent’s vidfeed. Me and Max, tied to the chairs. Me squinting in the glare from the ACID agent’s torch. Me screaming as I’m untied and cuffed, ‘You have to find a guy called Jacob! He did this to us! There are more bombs out there! THERE ARE MORE BOMBS OUT THERE!’

One of the ACID agents strikes me across the face to silence me; the bruise on my cheekbone is spectacular now. ‘We know about the bombs,’ he says. ‘The guy who linked us to report that he’d apprehended you told us all about them. We’re working to defuse them right now.’

‘But that guy was Jacob!’ I cry. ‘He’s the one you want! He made us do this – there are others too—’