Acid (30 page)

‘So did he find out about FREE too?’ I say.

Anna shakes her head. ‘We make sure that all our operatives appear to be working in isolation, so that if any of them
are
ever caught, they can’t be traced back to us. As far as the general knew, your parents were acting alone. What none of us had bargained on was that, instead of having them arrested, the general would send an agent – and we still don’t know who it was – to kill them. By the time we found out, it was too late. Although I’m privy to a lot of information – which is why I’m so useful to FREE – in my position, I can’t always prevent things from happening. If I’d tried to intervene back then, it would have looked incredibly suspicious.’

‘No, wait.’ I shake my head. ‘My father
can’t
have been working for FREE. He wasn’t like that. He was strict. He was . . .’ I trail off. ‘Wait. Those are false memories too, right?’

Anna nods. ‘Your father was a kind man. You were very close.’ Her voice drops as she adds, ‘I’m so sorry.’

I stare at the table top, feeling sick, feeling furious. I want to scream. I don’t know how to even start processing the things I’m finding out.

‘So is that why you got me out of jail?’ I say. ‘Why me? There must be other people ACID and General Harvey have done stuff like this to – I can’t be the only one. And if you’re so confident that FREE are going to
bring
ACID down, I’d have got out in the end anyway, wouldn’t I?’

‘You’re right, it’s not the only reason,’ Anna says. I look up, just in time to see Mel and Jon exchange glances, then quietly slip out of the room, leaving us alone.

Where are they going?
I think as Anna walks over to one of the cupboards and opens it, taking out a metal strongbox. It looks old, its surface dented and scarred, and as she comes back to the table with it, a memory buzzes at the back of my mind – I’ve seen a box like that before, quite recently, but where?

She sets it down on the table in front of me, then takes a little key from her pocket and unlocks it. Inside is a thick stack of envelopes, held together with an elastic band.
Jenna
has been written neatly on the topmost one. ‘These are for you,’ she says.

‘What are they?’ I say.

‘Letters.’

‘I mean, who are they from?’

‘Your mother,’ she says. ‘She’s been writing to you your whole life, but she never sent them. She couldn’t.’

‘My
mother
?’ Dread washes over me. ‘Oh God, is that memory false too? About my mum? You’re trying to tell me she wasn’t really there either?’

Anna shakes her head. ‘No, no, not at all. Your father had a LifePartner – the woman you remember as being your mother. But . . .’ She takes a deep breath. ‘She wasn’t actually your mother.’

‘What?’ Just when I thought things couldn’t get any
crazier
, they have. ‘But that’s impossible. He was LifePartnered. He wouldn’t have been able to—’ I dig my fingers into my temples and close my eyes. ‘I mean, she’s obviously still alive if she’s been writing to me, so . . .’

Then I realize that if Anna has these letters, she probably also has the answer to the most important question of all.

I open my eyes. ‘So if my mother wasn’t my mother,’ I say, ‘who is?’

Anna swallows, and clears her throat.

‘It’s me,’ she says.

CHAPTER 50

YOU’RE LYING, I
think.
You must be
.

That’s what my head says. But my heart knows different. The expression in her eyes – half hope, half fear – tells me that every word she’s just said is true.

‘You?’ I say.

‘I met your father when we were both eighteen, at ACID training camp,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if you know this, but ACID agents are allowed to delay Partnering or even opt out altogether and remain single, so even though your father had a Partner, I didn’t. We clicked straight away, and although we knew we couldn’t openly have a relationship – the consequences if we’d been caught would have been terrible – we made excuses to spend time together whenever we could.

‘Then our training ended, and we came to our senses. Trying to carry on our affair, even though we were both initially going to be working for the same department, would have been too difficult and dangerous. So we decided to go our separate ways. It wasn’t long before we both got opportunities for promotion and were moved to different departments anyway.’

She rubs a hand across her eyes. I don’t say anything. I can’t.

‘I wasn’t happy, though,’ Anna continues. ‘My job had been chosen for me as a result of the tests I took at school, but I’d never really felt comfortable being part of ACID. And now I was working for them, I was starting to see just how corrupt they were, and what lengths they’d go to just to hang onto power – at any cost. People were suffering, especially in the places outside London that were being neglected while General Harvey and his cronies tried to turn the capital into a model city, to show the outside world that the IRB didn’t need it. And yet he seemed oblivious.

‘About six years after I started working for ACID, I was involved in a raid on a flat in Outer. The occupants were suspected of kommweb hacking. While I was searching one of the rooms by myself, I found a file on a holocom that hadn’t been encrypted properly, about an organization called FREE. I’d heard of them – or rather, I’d heard of the
charity
– but this file talked about action against ACID, investigations into corruption and blackmail, and gave details about a meeting – a time, date and place, and a password so whoever came could get in. Instead of reporting the find to my colleagues, I copied the file, then wiped everything off the holocom so no one else would know about it.’

I can’t help feeling a burst of admiration for Anna. She must have been terrified of being caught.

‘Did you go?’ I ask her.

‘I did,’ she says. ‘And the first person I saw when I walked in was your father. He was suspicious at first – he tried to get me thrown out because he thought I’d come to spy – but eventually, I managed to convince him I was there for genuine reasons. And when the people leading the group found out what I did for a living, they were very interested. As an ACID agent, I could be useful to them. After that, I started attending meetings regularly, and it wasn’t long before your father and I realized we still had feelings for each other. We started seeing each other again – in secret, of course – and went on like that for almost two years. Then, when I was twenty-six, my contracep implant failed.’

She takes in a deep breath. I wait in silence for her to start speaking again. ‘I still don’t know how it happened,’ she says. ‘They’re supposed to have a less than one-in-four-million failure rate. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant until I was almost four months along.’

‘Why didn’t you – you know . . .’ I can’t say
get rid of me
. That would be too weird.

‘Terminations had been illegal for decades by then,’ she says. ‘Besides which, I still wasn’t Partnered. Even FREE couldn’t find anyone who would do it – if anything had gone wrong, ACID would have found out.’

‘So you decided to keep me,’ I say, feeling oddly disappointed that she made this decision because the alternative was too risky, not because she already loved me and couldn’t bear the thought of losing me.

‘Yes,’ Anna says. ‘It was your father who came to the
rescue
. By now, he was a lieutenant, and he was able to arrange a fake notification for his Partner – the woman you were brought up to believe was your mother – so that it would look as if you were hers when the time came, and then FREE organized somewhere for me to give birth.’

I frown. ‘But what did he tell my . . .’ I want to say
mum
, but she isn’t, is she? ‘His Partner? He can’t have just turned up with a baby and gone,
Surprise!
’

Anna shakes her head. ‘He told her you were the child of a couple who’d been jailed by ACID, and that FREE had rescued you.’

I sit in silence for a moment, letting it all sink in. Anna pushes the box of letters across the table to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in. If you read the letters, things might make more sense.’

I nod and pick up the box. ‘I – I think I’ll take them upstairs,’ I say, getting up. I feel fragile, as if the slightest wrong step might shatter me into a million pieces.

‘Take your time,’ Anna says gently.

Clutching the box of letters against my stomach, I walk out of the room.

CHAPTER 51

I SPEND THE
rest of the afternoon reading the letters. Most of them cover the story Anna just told me – about meeting my father, joining FREE, their affair, her falling pregnant with me. The last few, however, are from just before and just after I got out of jail. I learn all about the trial – how earlier this year, after presenting them with the evidence they already had, FREE finally convinced the European Criminal Justice Bureau to agree to help them bring a case against ACID once they’d undertaken their last few evidence-gathering missions. And I learn how Alex Fisher was planted by FREE at Mileway when I was on trial for murder. Right from the start, he was trying to keep me as safe as he could, planning for the day when FREE would help him to get me out of there. I shake my head. No wonder I used to feel as if he was looking out for me – he
was
. In my head, I see him lying face-down on the incarceration block roof and have to swallow hard against the lump in my throat. At least I know why he did it now.

I read the last letter –
I promise you this, though: as soon as I can, I’ll get you away from what they’ve got planned for you
– and lean back, gazing up at the ceiling. My vision
blurs
, and when I blink, I’m startled to find my eyes are full of tears.
They took my life away
, I think.
ACID took my life away
. General Harvey
took my life away
.

I swipe the tears away with the back of one hand. I’m not crying because I’m sad; I’m crying because I’m angry. I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. If I was at that ACID rally in Manchester right now, I’d happily pitch a bomb right at the general and laugh when it went off.

I’ll get him back, if it’s the last thing I ever do.

Stiffly, I stand, gather the letters up and put them back in the box. Then I realize that feeling of not-quite-remembering is nagging at me again. It was something I read in one of the letters . . . but which one?

I open the last, most recent letter again and scan it. Nothing.

I open the one dated 25 May this year.

Two-thirds of the way down the page, a sentence jumps out at me.

The key will be finding out what’s really going on at a place called Innis Ifrinn – Hell Island – in what used to be the Orkney Isles. It’s not even supposed to exist
 . . .

Innis Ifrinn. That feeling of not-quite-remembering is stronger than ever now, like an itch I can’t quite get to, tormenting me. I close my eyes, turning my focus inwards.
Remember
, I think.
You need to remember
.

Where have I seen those words before?
Where?

WHAM. A connection is made, a bolt of electricity slamming through my brain as the deep-buried
memories
I’ve been struggling to unearth explode to the surface. I’m in an office; there’s a holocom in front of me and I’m reading some text scrolling slowly across the screen.

Innis Ifrinn.

That’s where Max is.

I remember.

I remember
everything
.

CHAPTER 52

THE FORCE WITH
which the returning memories flood my brain is so powerful it makes me gasp. Cade leaving. Max trying to mug me and me taking him in. Our mad flight out of London, and finding the library. Jacob forcing us to join the NAR. Going to the rally. Our almost-kiss in the shop doorway after I linked ACID to warn them about the bombs.

Max’s face in the pale light of the glolamp after Jacob told him who I was, as if someone had reached inside him and ripped out his soul.

Another roto flies over the house, so low it makes the walls shiver, but it barely registers. I’m remembering our arrest; Anna and General Harvey interviewing me; the general telling me I could either be put to death, or LifePartnered; being taken to a medicentre and strapped to a bed, screaming as they administered the CR drugs; my life as meek, helpless Jess Stone; Evan, and the party, and finding the device in the bathroom . . .

I jump to my feet, flinging the letter on the bed, and run downstairs.

‘You have to help him!’ I say, bursting into the kitchen, where Mel and Jon have rejoined Anna at
the
kitchen table, and are looking through some documents on a little holocom.

‘Help who?’ Mel says, getting up. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Max. He’s at Innis Ifrinn,’ I say.

Mel, Jon and Anna exchange looks. ‘How . . . how did you know that?’ Anna says.

I tell her about the job I had at the ACID Stats Bureau while I was Jess Stone, and how I went up to Kerri’s office and saw the information about Max on her datascroll.

‘You have to get him out!’ I say.

Anna takes a deep breath. ‘That won’t be possible,’ she says.

‘But—’

‘Do you remember me telling you about your father finding out that General Harvey had ordered the building of an offshore prison?’ she says.

I nod.

‘
That’s
Innis Ifrinn,’ she says. ‘In a few weeks’ time, the general is going out there for an inspection. He’s asked me to come too. Along with a group of FREE operatives, I’m going to use the opportunity to gather footage to prove the place exists, and that the general has a direct link to the place, and hopefully use the evidence to prosecute him along with everyone else – the mission I talked about in the letter.’

‘But how will FREE get in?’ I say.

‘The rotoport across the fields there is where they transport prisoners and staff from. There are always two
teams
of agents at the prison to provide security, working in shifts. FREE are going to pose as one. The general and I will only be there for two days, but the rest of the group are going out a week or so before us and will stay for two months, until they’re relieved by the next team.’