Acid (4 page)

‘There we go,’ Mel says, pushing the door and holding it open for me. ‘I’ll wait out here. Take as long as you need.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. I take a deep breath, close my eyes and stumble against the wall.

‘Jenna?’ Mel’s voice is sharp with alarm. ‘Are you all right?’

As I feel her move towards me I straighten up, turn and kick out, aiming at the back of her right knee with the side of my foot – not hard enough to injure her, but enough to make her leg give way. She stumbles, flinging her arms out to keep from falling. I don’t wait to see if she manages to save herself.

I put my head down and run.

CHAPTER 5

IT’S NOT LONG
before I have to slow down. I’m dizzy again for real, my legs shaky and weak, and the pain in my hip has ramped up, making me grind my teeth together. I clutch my side. I have no idea where I am; all the corridors in this building look the same, their grey-white walls lined with doors. I feel as if I’m in a gigantic, colourless maze.

Turning a corner, I see a window with a slatted metal blind drawn down over it. I limp over to it and push two of the slats apart so I can see out. It’s either just getting light or just getting dark, but I’m not sure which. I’m high up, and all around me a city stretches towards the horizon, its lights glimmering. News screens flicker on the sides of the buildings, showing the square-jawed, heavy-browed face of General Harvey, ACID chief, IRB President and my one-time godfather, as he makes some announcement or other.

Which city?

Then, a mile or two away, I see the black needle of the ACID control tower with its bulbous communications room at the top, ringed with dull blue lights that seem to draw the darkness in rather than keep it at bay. Beyond
that
, a huge wall stretches from horizon to horizon with more blue lights blinking on and off along the top. The Fence.

I’m still in London, then. And in Middle, by the looks of it. The Fence was built by ACID seven years ago to separate Middle from Outer, a sheer, twelve-metre steel wall that’s blistering hot in the summer and frostbite-cold in the winter, and the only way to get past it, unless you go over in a roto, is on the mag. I remember flying to the opening ceremony with my parents, and asking my father, ‘Why are they doing this, Dad? Why do they want to make it more difficult for people to get through?’ and my mother shushing me even though, apart from the pilot, we were the only people in the roto that ACID had sent to pick us up.

‘But Mum,’ I said, glancing at my mother, who had turned to gaze out of the window, her expression thoughtful, ‘
why?
’

My father rounded on me fiercely, hissed, ‘Jenna, be
quiet!
’ Then he sat back in his seat, his face grim, and during the ceremony he held onto my arm so tightly that the next day, I had bruises.

A few months later, we were invited to another opening ceremony, this time for an invisible pulse barrier between Middle and Upper.

Guilt and sadness seep through me as I remember the look on my mother’s face. Why does
everything
still remind me of my parents?

I watch a roto lift off from the top of the tower and
lumber
slowly out towards the edge of the city. It’s definitely getting lighter. Maybe I should stay in the building and find somewhere to hide, and wait until night comes before I try to escape. There’ll be more people around during the day.

And more ACID agents.

‘Jenna!’

I let go of the blind slats. They spring back together with a metallic clatter. Jon is marching down the corridor towards me, his face grim. I step away from the window and turn to start running, but another wave of dizziness assaults me, making the walls and floor seesaw sickeningly.

Jon rushes up to me and catches me by the arm just before I fall.

‘What on earth are you thinking?’ he says, pulling me upright and putting an arm around my waist to support me. ‘You’re going back to your room now.’

Back to my room
. Like I’m a naughty kid. But I feel too sick and dizzy to protest. Seething inside, I let him lead me back.

Mel’s sitting on the chair by the bed. She doesn’t say anything as I lie down and lean against the pillow. I close my eyes and take shallow breaths in and out through my nose. Slowly, the seasick feeling eases, although my hip’s still screaming.

‘Jenna, you absolutely cannot do things like this, do you understand?’ Mel hisses when I open my eyes again. ‘You’re here for your own safety. To protect you from
ACID
. You do realize General Harvey is leading the investigation to find you?’ She sounds almost as angry as Jon.

He’s leading the investigation? A shock goes through me, but I quickly regain my composure. ‘Why should I stay put when you won’t tell me anything? You drug me, you spring me from jail, I’ve got
hair
, for God’s sake, and you won’t explain any of it!’

‘We
can’t
,’ Mel says. ‘Don’t you see? ACID are out there right now, combing the entire country for you. And they’ve framed you for Alex’s murder – they’re saying that you held him hostage and pushed him off the roof.’

I stare at her. ‘What?’

‘We’re doing everything in our power to keep you safe,’ Mel goes on, ‘but if – and it’s a very big if, I hope – they catch up with you, the first thing they’ll do is try to find out who helped you. So if you don’t know—’

‘I can’t tell them,’ I finish dully.

‘Exactly.’

‘Great.’ I gaze up at the ceiling, letting out a sigh. ‘Can I at least have a mirror?’

I see Jon and Mel exchange a glance. Then Jon shrugs. ‘I’ll get one,’ he says. ‘In the meantime, will you
please
eat and drink something, Jenna?’

While he’s gone, Mel hands me the tray. The covered dish contains vegetable soup, so good that after the first couple of spoonfuls my appetite wakes up and I’m soon scraping the bottom of the empty bowl. I can’t remember the last time I had a meal that actually tasted like real
food
. I eat all the crackers too, then drink the stuff in the cup, which turns out to be orange juice. It’s sweet and tangy and cold.

‘Better?’ Mel asks, smiling as she takes the tray.

‘Mmm.’
Much
better, actually, but I’d rather shoot myself in my bad hip with a pulse gun than admit that to her right now.

A few minutes later, Jon comes back in with a large hand mirror. I practically snatch it from him, squeezing my eyes shut before holding it up in front of my face.

I open one eye. Then the other.

I forget all about the pain in my hip.

The face that stares back at me has brown eyes instead of grey. The nose is smaller, the chin rounder. The eyebrows under the heavy fringe of chestnut hair are darker and heavier, and the cheekbones are more pronounced. And all my scars, the battle wounds I picked up in prison, are gone. My skin is as smooth as it was when I was a little kid.

I’m almost
pretty
, for God’s sake.

I press my chin and cheekbones, turning my head left and right, looking for evidence of surgery. There’s none. I feel numb, emptied out by shock.

‘We had one of the best surgeons in the country work on you,’ Jon says, pride tinging his voice. ‘Those implanted irises are not only a different colour, but their pattern’s been altered too, so you won’t be picked up by ACID’s iris scanners.’

‘And you’ve got nanochips in your palms, fingers,
thumbs
, toes, and in the soles of your feet,’ Mel adds. ‘They’ll give a false result on even the most advanced print-readers.’

I put a hand to the back of my neck. ‘What about my—’

‘That’s gone too,’ Jon says. ‘Sorry. But it wouldn’t have exactly helped you to blend in.’

‘Blend in
where
?’ I say.

They look at each other. Then Jon says, ‘We’ll be back to talk to you later, Jenna, OK? No,’ he adds firmly when I start to protest. ‘You need to rest now. We need to get you back to full strength as quickly as possible. You’re going to have a lot to take in over the next few days.’

Like
WHAT
? I want to scream at his back as he walks to the door. Mel picks up the tray and follows him.

All I can do is watch as the door closes behind them and they lock me in again.

CHAPTER 6

THE PAIN IN
my hip has faded to a dull ache, and the food’s made me so drowsy that my anger soon subsides. I kick off my shoes and pull the covers over myself. It’s warm in here, and the bed is comfortable, which is something, I guess. The bunks at Mileway were as hard as concrete and the cells were either freezing cold or stiflingly hot, depending on the time of year.

But as soon as I close my eyes, questions start to beat around in my head.
What is this place? Why am I here? And why am I still in London? Isn’t that the first place ACID would think to look for me? And what about Alex? Why would they say I killed him? He was the only person there who was ever nice to me. I would never have harmed him. Never
.

My stomach twists. It’s bad enough that I killed two people for real without being falsely accused of murdering someone else. I try to breathe, to stay calm. But what else is there to think about when you’re locked in a tiny room in a strange building and no one will give you a single straight answer about anything?

I go over and over everything until my head aches. And I still can’t join up the dots.

Several hours later, Mel and Jon return. The sound of
the
door clunking open jolts me back to full awareness and I scramble upright.

‘How are you feeling?’ is the first thing Mel asks.

‘Fine,’ I say, and when Jon takes the scanner out of his coat pocket to take my temperature and pulse rate, I give him such a glare he puts it away.

Mel sits down on the end of the bed, Jon in the chair. ‘We’ve come to talk to you about what’s going to happen next,’ Mel says.

My heart skips a beat. Some answers,
finally
.

‘Providing you’re well enough, you’ll leave here next week,’ she says. ‘You’re going to be living in an apartment in Outer – I know it’s not what you’re used to, but there are so many people there that it’ll be easier for you to stay under ACID’s radar.’

I shrug. Two years ago, the thought of living somewhere like Outer would have horrified me. But spending twenty-three and a half months in a place like Mileway has a way of altering your perspective. ‘Sounds fine to me,’ I say.

‘You’ll have a job,’ she goes on, ‘and we’ve set you up with a new identity which someone will start going over with you tomorrow. Jon and I are LifePartners, and live in a part of Middle that’s quite close to your part of Outer, so we’ll continue to be your contacts after you leave. And we’ve got you this – although your kommweb access will be rather limited because you’re in Outer, I’m afraid.’

She holds something out to me. A komm. It’s a
circular
piece of plastic about three centimetres wide that fits into your right ear, black with tiny purple lights pulsating on the touchpad on its outer surface. You control it by moving your head and eyes. As I take it from her, I think about how my mother used to joke about how I was surgically attached to my komm. But I was no different from any of my friends. We all spent hours on them, especially me and my best friend Nadia, linking each other to chat or play games. For the first time in ages, I find myself wondering where my old friends are and what they’re doing. They’ll all have LifePartners now, and soon, some of them might even get their notifications from ACID to say they can have a kid. I try to imagine Dylan – Dylan, who turned everything into a joke, even the fact that ACID could arrest both of us just for spending time together because we were unPartnered and underage – helping to change nappies and mop up sick.

Or did ACID catch him and send him to jail too? He gave me the gun; his prints must have been all over it.

I feel a flash of familiar bitterness. It would serve him goddamn right if they did. Even now, I still wonder what came over me, letting him convince me to go along with his crazy plan like that. Love? All I know for sure is that I’d never felt anything like it before, I haven’t felt anything like it since, and I don’t intend to feel it ever again.

‘Jenna?’ Mel says.

I realize I’ve not been paying attention. ‘What?’

‘I
said
, there are a couple of other things you need to
know
. The first and most important is about the news screen you’ll have in your flat.’

She’s talking about the holoscreens people have in their homes which show a constant feed of news and stats from ACID. We had a huge one at home, although my father was the only one who used to watch it regularly.

‘I know that in Upper, you didn’t have to watch the screen unless you wanted to, but Outer citizens are expected to have theirs on for at least five hours every day – preferably more,’ Mel says. ‘Obviously, you don’t have to sit in front of it the whole time, but whenever you’re in, it’s best to leave it on. ACID do spot-checks to make sure people are following the rule about the screens, and arrest anyone they suspect isn’t watching theirs enough.’

I nod, dismayed at the thought of constantly having to watch news reports about ACID trying to hunt me down.

‘The second thing is that in Outer and Middle, there’s recently been a curfew placed on all citizens which begins at twenty hundred hours and lasts until oh-seven hundred. It’s absolutely
vital
you don’t get caught outside your flat between those times, or you’ll be arrested immediately.’

I nod again.

‘Lastly, we’ve set you up with a LifePartner – not a real one, of course,’ she adds quickly when she sees my face fall even further. ‘He’s someone else our people are helping. No, I’m afraid I can’t tell you why, but we think
you
should get along OK together. You’ll
need
to get along OK together if you don’t want to attract any attention from ACID. You’ll meet him in a couple of days. And no, he won’t be told who you really are. Have you got any questions?’