Acid (37 page)

I fight against their pull, battling to swim up to the surface. My helmet and boots are weighing me down. The boots I can do nothing about, but I reach up and yank off my helmet. Lungs burning, I kick, pushing myself back up. Just when I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever make it, my head breaks through. I gasp, coughing and spitting sea water. All around me, the waves are churning, spray crashing over me as I tread water. The water’s bitterly cold; I can feel it seeping under my uniform and into my gloves. Spitting out more water, I scream for help.

Then I hear another cry, close by. ‘Help!’ I look around and see I’m just a couple of metres away from the bottom of the rig.

And clinging to one of the struts is the general.

He’s lost his helmet too. With one last burst of strength, I swim over to the next strut along. As I draw closer, he shouts again, ‘Help me!’

Grasping hold of the barnacle-encrusted metal, I shout back, ‘Help your fucking self!’

‘I can’t swim!’ he cries.

‘What?’

‘
I can’t swim!
’

Hugging the bottom of the strut, the waves pounding into me, I begin to laugh.

‘It’s not funny!’ the general roars.

‘No, it’s
hilarious
!’ I say. I can’t stop laughing; I’m this close to being completely hysterical.

Then I hear the buzz of a boat engine. I remember that there’s a torch on my equipment belt and fumble it free with numb fingers, praying it’ll still work after being dunked in the sea. I press the switch and, to my relief, it comes on.

‘Over here!’ I shout, waving the beam. ‘Over here!’

A few moments later I see one of the inflatables heading towards us. Rav, his visor pushed up, is at the helm. He manoeuvres it alongside the strut I’m holding and reaches out so I can grab his arm and jump down into the boat.

Fiona, Max and Anna are in there too, Anna lying on the floor of the boat with her eyes closed.

‘Is she OK?’ I say, my stomach lurching as I see how blue her lips look.

‘I don’t know, she’s lost a lot of blood,’ Max says. The boat lurches and he has to grab onto the ropes along the side with his free hand to stay upright.

Rav steers the boat over to the general. ‘Get in,’ he
says
, pointing his gun at him. ‘And don’t try anything.’

Fiona aims her gun at him too as he lowers himself into the boat. Then Rav turns it round and revs the engine and we skim across to the island, the boat going so fast that on several occasions it leaves the water altogether.

As soon as we reach the cove, the others are there, the beach lit up by their torches. Fiona hands me her gun so I can keep it trained on the general while she and Drew help Anna, who can only just walk, out of the boat. Meanwhile, Steve is helping Rebekah herd the inmates up the cliff path. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ I ask Rav as he checks that the inflatable is securely moored to the jetty. ‘They won’t all fit in the roto, will they?’

‘There are more rotos on the way to pick them up,’ he says. ‘Me, Steve, Drew and Rebekah will stay here with them until they arrive.’

‘And what about me and Fiona and Max and Anna and –
him
?’ I say, jerking the gun at the general.

‘You’ll go back with Felix and Nik. We need to get the general into custody straight away – the ECJB have already been notified.’

‘There are still those rotos out at sea,’ I say.

Max, who’s shuddering with cold, his ragged clothes soaked through, says, ‘Anna managed to link back to ACID control and get the pilots’ kommweb IDs after you ran back inside after the general. They’ve been called off.’

‘WHAT?’ General Harvey bellows.

I glance round at him. ‘Shut up,’ I say, waving the gun at him. ‘And get out.’

With a murderous expression, he clambers onto the jetty, hissing in pain as he lands on his bad ankle. ‘Kneel down,’ I say. ‘Put your hands behind your back.’

‘Here.’ Rav passes me his restraints, and I cuff the general’s wrists. He starts bellowing at me, swearing at me, calling me every bad name he can think of. I plant my foot in his back and send him sprawling onto his face.

‘Call me what you like,’ I say as he writhes and groans on the spray-soaked wood of the jetty. ‘It’s not gonna change anything. You’re under arrest.’

CHAPTER 68

‘ANNA!’ I HEAR
Fiona cry.

I look and see her kneeling over Anna, who’s collapsed onto the sand a few metres away. Her eyes are closed again. Panic stabs through me. Is she unconscious?

‘Can you keep an eye on the general?’ I ask Rav, who nods. I run across to Anna, Max right behind me. ‘What’s happened?’ I ask Fiona.

‘I’m fine,’ Anna says, her voice thin and weak, but she doesn’t look fine. She’s biting her lip, her hands pressed against the wound in her side.

‘We need to get her back to the mainland,’ Fiona says. ‘Can you help me get her over to the path?’

Between us, we get Anna to her feet and, with Max right beside us, head over there. When we get up to the cliff top, he clears a way through the group of waiting inmates so we can get her over to the roto. It’s much smaller than the one we flew over here in, with only one blade on the top and bottom. ‘We’ll put her in the front cabin,’ Fiona says. ‘There’s an emergency medkit in there – I’ll stay with her and try and get a dressing on her side. I’m really sorry, guys, but will you be OK in the prisoner hold? I don’t think there’s anywhere else to sit.’

I nod. Max and Fiona help Anna into the seat next to Nik, while Felix leans across to the control panel in front of him and starts flicking switches, powering the roto up. Max and I clamber into the prisoner hold, a small, self-contained space with a narrow seat along one wall behind the front cabin.

All at once, the shock and cold hit me. I start to shake all over, my teeth clacking together. The pain in my arm, all but cancelled out by the adrenalin rush of falling into the sea and getting back to the island, returns, travelling in sickening bolts up into my shoulder.

‘Jenna? Are you OK?’ Max says. I shake my head, too frozen and exhausted even to speak. I twist round slightly so he can see my arm, and he curses.

Fiona slides back a viewing hatch, protected by a mesh screen, in the partition separating the hold from the cabin. ‘Are you all right in there?’ she says through it.

‘Is there another medkit in there? Jenna’s hurt her arm,’ Max says.

‘What’s she done?’

‘General . . . Harvey . . . shot me . . .’ I manage to jerk out.

A couple of minutes later, Fiona opens the hatch again, unclips the mesh screen and passes a blanket and a little medkit through.

The roto gives a shudder and starts to lift into the air. ‘Turn round a bit,’ Max says, ripping the medkit open and taking out a handful of antiseptic wipes in plastic packets. He uses one to clean his hands, then dabs at the
wound
on my arm. I grind my teeth as fresh pain stabs through it.

‘It’s not so bad,’ he says. ‘Only a surface burn. Probably why it hurts so much.’

‘That’s a good thing?’ I say through clenched teeth.

‘Definitely. If you couldn’t feel it, it would mean you had a full thickness burn. They’re really nasty.’

Gently, expertly, he cleans my arm up, then pulls two bandages out of the kit, using one to make a pad to cover the wound and the other to hold it in place. ‘There are some painkiller medpatches in here. Do you want one?’

I nod, and he opens the patch and presses it carefully against my neck. I feel a tingling sensation, and a few moments later, the pain in my arm starts to subside, dwindling to a still-there-but-bearable ache.

Max wraps the blanket around my shoulders.

‘What about you?’ I say, looking at his wet, ragged clothes, his sunken cheeks. ‘You must be cold too.’

‘I’m fine,’ he says.

I touch his hand. It’s freezing. ‘Don’t be daft,’ I say. I move up the seat so we’re right next to each other, and wrap the blanket round both of us. Gradually, between the blanket and our meagre body heat, I begin to warm up.

‘I guess I owe you an apology,’ Max says.

‘For what?’ I ask, looking around at him again. Even though his face is all bones, bruised and dirty, he’s still gorgeous.

‘For being so angry with you back at the church.’

I shake my head. ‘You had a right to be angry. You lost everything because of what your dad did for me. And I lied to you about who I was.’

‘Yeah, but you had a reason to.’

‘So what changed?’ I ask him. ‘Why aren’t you angry at me now?’

‘That place,’ he says, jerking a thumb back in the direction of the rig. ‘If you really had meant to kill your parents, then why would Dad have helped you? Why would ACID arrest Mum? And why would they send me to Innis Ifrinn?’

And that’s when I remember that he
still
doesn’t know the whole truth.

‘Max,’ I say. ‘I didn’t kill my parents
at all
.’

‘What?’

So I tell him: about Anna being my mother, about my parents being in FREE and ACID murdering them, about the general ordering me to undergo CR so ACID could frame me.

His eyes get wider and wider.

‘So all that time, you were in jail for . . . for nothing?’ he says when I’ve finished.

I nod. ‘But your dad knew. That’s why he got me out. There’s going to be a trial against ACID – Anna agreed to help gather evidence in exchange for FREE breaking me out of jail and setting me up with a new identity.’

‘Mia Richardson,’ Max says.

I nod again.

‘And what about now? Did FREE change your face again?’

‘No,’ I say. I explain about the deal the general made with me.

Max’s eyebrows draw together. ‘I hope they hang him, the bastard,’ he says.

‘Nah,’ I say, grinning. ‘He should rot in jail. Then he can
really
suffer.’

Max’s frown disappears and he smiles back. It’s a tired smile, a mere ghost of the one he wore in the picture I saw on the news screen at work that day; the one that made my heart skip a beat.

But it still has the same effect.

I remember when I got back from the factory and he was just walking out of the shower and I didn’t know where to look; the night in the bookshelf den before the Manchester rally, when he reached for my hand and held on tight and I wondered
What if
; that moment when we were crouched in the shop doorway after we escaped from the square and I’d just linked ACID to warn them about the bombs.

His smile wavers. I’ve been looking at him too long. ‘Are you OK?’ he says.

I nod, take a deep breath.

Then I lean over and kiss him.

CHAPTER 69

I CAN TELL
I’ve surprised him. His whole body stiffens.

But he doesn’t pull away.

When he kisses me back, it’s gentle, yet it steals my breath away. I feel as if I’m in the water all over again and he’s the only thing that’s keeping me from drowning. For a moment the memory of Evan kissing me at my Partnering party when I was Jess Stone, and how overjoyed I was, tries to surface. I push it away. I’ve spent years feeling guilty for things I wasn’t responsible for. I’m not doing it any more.

Instead, I concentrate on now: Max’s lips against mine; his hands against my back; the warmth inside me, spreading slowly from my core.

When, at last, we break apart, I lean my head on his chest and close my eyes. He wraps his arms around me, and rests his chin on the top of my head, and despite the hard seat and the noise from the roto, we fall asleep like that. I don’t stir until someone puts their hand on my arm to wake me.

‘Jenna, Max,’ Fiona says, leaning over us as I blink, disoriented, and realize the thumping of the roto blades has stopped. ‘We’re back on the mainland. Time to get out of here.’

EPILOGUE

Middle London

20 November 2113

‘Green or blue?’ I ask Max, who’s sitting on the bed behind me.

‘Um, I like both,’ he says as I hold the two shirts I just picked out of my wardrobe up against the black vest top and trousers I’m already wearing, and frown at my reflection in the mirror. Tonight, FREE are holding a party at Felix and Rebekah’s house in Upper to celebrate the fall of ACID, and Max and I are guests of honour.