The Fall (13 page)

In the distance, a Water Rail with a long neck and orange beak swam around the reed beds. Birds with yellow and brown speckled plumes pecked the grass. A sprawl of houses lay on the horizon, but the Wetlands was so peaceful the City almost ceased to exist.

She returned to the bird-watch tower hideout and lit the camping stove. As the water in the pan heated, she listened to the sound of Cole’s light breathing. The sleeping bag had edged down his back. He slept with his head on his arms. Dark, angular eyebrows framed his deeply-set eyes. Her fingers itched to brush along the fine hair at the top of his neck, to circle around his tattoo, to draw across the muscles of his broad shoulders.

Last night, they’d slept naked, bodies entwined. For the first time ever, she’d felt as though she truly belonged somewhere. Her heart was full of him. It was strange being on the run, hiding out with Cole, not knowing where they’d go or how they’d survive. She was scared he would regret leaving his family for her, while she felt only relief about escaping from her own father. Living in the Community had been like residing in a glass prison where she had to constantly monitor her behaviour.

The water boiled. She made herself a coffee, then double-checked the light on the alarm.

A yawn sounded from behind. ‘What’s the time?’

She turned. ‘Almost six.’

Cole rolled onto his side and grinned at her. She smiled back and skipped over to him. Flopping down on the bed, she leaned over to kiss him.

‘Do you always wake up this early?’ he asked.

She put her fist under her chin, searching for a word that described the exact colour of his eyes:
coral blue; denim blue; Lithodora ‘Star’ blue . . .
‘Bad dreams,’ she said. ‘Actually, this is pretty good for me.’

‘What’s wrong with my face?’

‘Nothing,’ she laughed. He tugged her by the top of her T-shirt so that they were kissing again.

When they broke apart smiling, she said, ‘I’ve just boiled the water. Do you want coffee?’

‘Coffee would be great.’ He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

She jumped up, crossed the dark interior and spooned instant coffee into a plastic holder. She poured in the remaining boiled water, got her own cup and went back to sit beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking his coffee. ‘So what was this dream?’

‘Don’t really remember. Something to do with the barn where my mum died. I’ve had this recurring nightmare for years about the morning I found her. There’s a fire, or flood, or poisonous gases leaking out from the doors and she’s banging to get out, but the doors are locked and I can’t find a way to open them.’

He kissed her neck, making her tingle. ‘I can see why you’d wanna wake up.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘If we could somehow disguise ourselves, we’d be able to move around the City without being recognised by Wardens. Then as soon as you’re OK to walk, we could sell my jewellery and start heading north. There must be ways to sneak across the Scottish border. Once we’re in Scotland the Wardens won’t be able to arrest you.’

‘I can’t leave yet,’ he said. ‘Not until we know what happens because of the recording.’

She felt a tight pang of dismay. Would she ever be free of the Pure test? He reached for a T-shirt from the sprawl of clothes by the bed.

‘Hang on,’ she said, putting down her coffee. ‘I should check your wound first.’ She felt Cole’s eyes on her as she peeled away yesterday’s dressing. The butterfly stitches were holding well. The cut was clean and healing fast.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just can’t leave until I know my family’s OK.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’ When he talked of his family, she wondered if he meant Rachel too. The others should all have been safely evacuated from the Project yesterday. She popped open the medical box by the bed. ‘I saw a programme a few weeks ago on these new face gel implants people can get,’ she said.

‘Yeah, I’ve heard about those. But they’re only meant to be safe for minor alterations.’

‘We could get lots of minor alterations.’ She changed the dressing on his wound and began bandaging his shoulder. Then she gently helped him put his T-shirt on. She was about to move away, when he stopped her.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’

‘Ana?’

‘I know Seton said we’re safe here, but I won’t feel safe until we’re away from London. My father’s always been able to find me. Just waiting it out here doesn’t feel right.’

‘Listen, let’s find out what’s going on, then we’ll think about how we’re going to leave the City.’ He pulled out a clean pair of boxer shorts from the camping rucksack, put them on and retrieved his interface from the back pocket of his jeans. When he switched on his interface the home page with news headlines projected on the wood-slatted wall behind their sleeping bags. As he used the projected keyboard at the bottom of the image to type in a password for his encoded account, Ana read the headlines: 

‘Ex-Project member says minister’s recording is part of the sect’s violent plan to destroy the Board.’

‘Four hundred Wardens surround the Enlightenment Project over reports that the sect is planning an armed attack on the City.’

‘Chairman of the Board claims minister’s recording is a fake made by the Enlightenment sect.’

A hollow formed in her stomach. These reports made the recording sound like a forgery, while turning the Project into something twisted and deadly. For a moment, fear whispered through her. Several Project members had talked of a war. They knew the Wardens would surround them after they released the minister’s recording. Had they wanted this? Had they been planning an attack on the City? She tried to swallow the doubt.

‘Nothing,’ Cole said.

Jerked from her thoughts, Ana looked up to see him signing out of his mail and returning to his home page. ‘Do they have arms in the Project?’ she asked.

‘No firearms. Only the weapons you’ve seen. Tridents, bows and arrows. Why?’

‘Look at the headlines.’

He read silently, then puffed air through his nose and shook his head. ‘I’ll kill Nate if he didn’t get out of there with Simone and Lila.’

‘And Rachel,’ Ana added quietly.

Cole shook his head. ‘Rachel doesn’t back down from a fight.’

 So Rachel would have stayed? Ana bit the side of her finger, wondering if Cole would leave the City if it was only Rachel who wasn’t safe. She got up and wandered to the closest slit window. ‘If the Project doesn’t have any firearm power,’ she said, ‘how can they hold out against the Wardens?’

‘Everyone who guards the wall knows the layout of the Heath back to front. We have some advantages.’

‘But if there are four hundred Wardens the guards will be totally outnumbered. What’s the point of trying to fight? Why not let the Wardens see the Project isn’t a threat – that there are no firearms; no plans to attack the City?’

‘Because whoever’s pulling the strings doesn’t want the Project to come out of this looking innocent. Read those headlines. With the public’s attention on the Project, the Board, Novastra and the government have hardly even bothered to deny the contents of Peter Reed’s recording. Everyone wants the Project to be guilty of faking it. Someone powerful is no doubt feeding the media these stories. Even if we co-operated, they don’t want the Project to be seen in a favourable light.’

‘But if the Project’s got nothing to hide . . .’

‘They’ll make something up. Like they did with Richard and the Tower Bridge bombing. It’s the way they operate.’

‘But why are they always attacking the Project?’

‘Because we’re the only ones trying to dig up information on Novastra and the Board. Trying to prove the problems with the Pure test.’

Ana turned and leaned back against the window, folding her arms. ‘There must be others.’

‘No one else that’s been very effective.’

She considered how the reports were designed to make people doubt the recording and fear the Project. People trusted what they saw on respectable news sites. Would the government even investigate Peter Reed’s recording if everyone believed it was fake?

‘We need people to question the Board,’ she said. ‘We need to show them that the Board can’t be trusted.’

‘Yeah, but the question’s always been how?’

An idea emerged, slipping to the front of her thoughts. ‘By showing everybody the real face of the Board,’ she said, ‘from inside one of their worst mental rehab homes.’

‘Interesting.’ Cole raised an eyebrow at her. She walked back to him and sat down, wrapping her arms around her legs. ‘You’ve got a wild streak, Ana.’ He ran a hand through the back of her hair where it was growing out. ‘Lucky for me,’ he said softly, ‘or you’d never have climbed over the Project wall.’

She dipped towards him, brushed her lips against his neck. ‘All it would need is someone to get in and pose as a patient,’ she said, ‘without actually having themselves committed. They’d need a miniature camera to film what goes on and then get back out without anyone knowing.’

Cole kissed her slowly on the lips. ‘Food for thought,’ he murmured. She couldn’t tell if he really meant it – they were both growing distracted.

‘It isn’t a bank,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not as if they’re geared up for someone to break in. All the security is designed to stop patients getting out.’

Cole began raising her T-shirt. ‘Far too risky,’ he said, lifting it over her head. His fingers brushed across the top of her chest. She closed her eyes and let her head drop back, bathing in his touch.

He’d said risky, but not impossible.

*

Jasper woke late. His father was at work and his sister at school, which meant he was alone in the house with his mother. He found her in the living room, watching the flatscreen. It was 11 a.m. on a Monday and she was already drinking. She made a feeble attempt to hide the sherry glass, but it was obvious he’d seen it and she didn’t seem to care much. She wasn’t even embarrassed.

He stood in front of the flatscreen and they watched the news together in silence. There was a special report on how yesterday’s contentious, underground recording might affect the BenzidoxKid deal that the government was scheduled to sign with Novastra the following week – a billion pound contract aimed to make BenzidoxKid free to the eight million British children who were Big3 Sleepers. The deal had already been postponed once and now debates were firing up over the possibility of delaying again. The Office of Fair Trading had stated it wished to examine the government’s relationship with Novastra Pharmaceutics over the last twenty years before sanctioning any further negotiations.

After a few minutes, Jasper’s mother switched off the screen. ‘Lunch!’ she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. Jasper followed her through the house to the kitchen where she clattered about with pans, opened the fridge, searched inside it and closed it again, coming away empty handed. ‘It’s just the two of us today, Jasper,’ she said. ‘What would you like to do?’ She was acting like he was three years old and they could go on an adventure in the garden.

Jasper leaned back against the kitchen counter. ‘Something else just came back to me,’ he said.

‘Lovely.’

‘It was this time when I was about five and you were helping me and Tom paint a big dragon we’d cut out from a cardboard box. You were huge.’ At the mention of her oldest son’s name, his mother flinched. ‘You must have been pregnant with Celine.’ He paused. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You were so different.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

Jasper nodded. ‘Did you know,’ he said carefully, ‘that before Tom died, he thought he’d discovered an anomaly with the Pure test?’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Lucy looked baffled and bitter, angry and tired, all in equal amounts.

‘How did they tell you I lost my memories?’

‘Jasper, I can’t keep up. You’re jumping from one thing to another. Really, you should go and rest.’

‘And you should stop drinking so that you can see straight for five minutes.’

His mother opened her mouth aghast. ‘How dare you?’

‘Tom died in a suspicious accident. Ana’s run away with people from the City. My memories are fried. And twenty years ago, Dad bet his whole pharmaceutical fortune on the Pure genome tests so that he would have a monopoly on preventive meds like Benzidox. There’s something very wrong with everything, Mum.’

‘The recording’s a fraud,’ Lucy said, a note of hysteria entering her voice. ‘They’ve said so. That sect that abducted you, this is them talking. Putting all these awful ideas into your head.’ She waved a hand across the interface hanging around her neck to switch it on. Then she made a hand gesture that brought up a holographic phone dialling pad in front of her chest.

Jasper slapped his hand over his mother’s projection. The call pad vanished. ‘The night before last,’ he said, ‘when Ana went missing, I went to see her father. Ashby wasn’t worried about where she was or why she’d gone. He was only worried about something she’d taken from him. A day later, this recording goes viral on the net. What if this is what Ana took?’

‘Why on earth would Ashby have something like that?’

‘Because he wants to protect the legitimacy of the Pure test. He’s been hiding evidence against it. Listen, when I came back home after the abduction, Ana told me to ask questions about Tom’s death. She said that before I vanished, I’d been trying to expose the truth about Tom’s accident.’

‘Jasper,’ Lucy said firmly, trying to regain control of the conversation. ‘You’ve had a very traumatic few months. Your memory is all mixed up. And now Ana’s vanished. Let me call your doctor.’ She tried to remove his hand from her interface. They struggled for a moment until she gave up with an exasperated sigh, which didn’t hide the fright buried deep behind her glazed eyes.

‘Ashby admitted to me that I was never abducted by the Enlightenment Project,’ he said. ‘He was the one who kidnapped me. He claimed it was “to keep me safe”.’

His mother shook her head in disbelief. ‘This is all madness.’

He grasped her hands tightly in his own. ‘Mum, I remember. Ana’s father was the one who took me after the concert. I saw him before I blacked out.’