The Fall (19 page)

‘Where are her friends?’

‘They’re all shockers now.’

Shockers.
Shockers was the name they gave to those patients who underwent Electric Shock Treatment. She’d already drawn enough attention to herself. She had everything she came for; she needed to get out of there. But the thought of leaving her friend sprawled face down on the ground like an animal was unbearable.

‘She’s had four weeks of ECT,’ the boy said. ‘’nother couple of weeks and she won’t remember how to piss.’

Fury built inside Ana, so sudden and violent it felt like her brain would explode. ‘They’re giving her shock treatment,’ she hissed, ‘because she was helping the other special therapy patients?’

‘Now she gets it,’ the boy said. ‘Yes, kindness kills if you live in this dump.’

Rage wiped her vision. A feeling of invincibility began to flow through her body. Nothing could stop her. Her eyes locked on the boy who’d become her shadow.

‘Carry her with me to Studio 5.’

‘You haven’t been listening to me, have you?’

Ana scooped Tamsin up. Carrying her shoulders and head, she hauled her best friend across the tarmac. She shouldn’t be doing this. But she couldn’t stand by and watch everyone cower while Tamsin was dehumanised, left bleeding, ignored. She’d promised Cole not to take Tamsin with her, not to reveal her own identity. She wasn’t breaking her promise.

Her protector suddenly caught up and lifted Tamsin’s legs. The two of them lumbered towards Studio 5. Around them patients whispered and shook their heads, mouths gaping.

They lay Tamsin on a bed close to the studio door. For a moment, tears bit through the fury: stinging, crushing, torturous. How could she leave Tamsin like this?

Cole.
That’s how. If she didn’t come out, Cole would enter Three Mills and attempt to get into the compound. Thrusting down the grief, she kissed Tamsin on the head and let the rage flow.

She peered out of the hangar door. Anxiety and tension lay thick across the compound.

‘You said they’re watching,’ she said to the boy. ‘What will they do?’

‘Unless there’s actual trouble, don’t think they’ll do anything until tomorrow when we find our names on the specials list.’ A wobble in his voice showed fear.

‘Well, who knows what’ll happen between now and then? See you later.’

She darted out into the compound, strode with her head down past the girl’s queue for the toilets and, once hidden behind a clump of patients, slunk into the wash-block. The corridor swam in blackness. She edged forwards, reaching out to avoid stumbling into anything.

There came a scuffling sound, followed by a moan.

‘Oh man,’ a voice slurred. ‘Trent man. Izat you?’

A shape formed inside the darkness, the curled up figure of the drugged boy she’d seen earlier. From the far end of the corridor, where the wash-block door opened out into the Three Mills grounds, metal clattered.

Someone was coming.

Ana scrambled towards the girls’ toilet where she’d hidden her rucksack. Daylight spiked the corridor as the far door leading outside the compound opened. She darted into the toilets and clapped the door shut. The sensor light flickered on, while the soft flap of rubber wheels over concrete approached.

‘Trent!’ The drugged boy whined. Ana looked at the camera in the far wall pointing down over the bathroom. She needed to retrieve the rucksack without it seeming like she was getting something out of the bin. The bathroom door opened with a whoosh and as her protector tumbled in.

‘Looks like you rather like this place,’ he said, closing the door behind him.

‘Sshh!’ she warned. Frustration boiled up inside her. On the other side of the door, rubber wheels and soft shoes hurried through the corridor.

‘She’s not gonna follow me in here,’ the boy said.

Beyond, the drugged boy’s whining grew louder. ‘Trent, I saw you, man. I just saw you! Wot you doin’?’

‘Listen,
Trent
,’ Ana said. ‘Sounds like your friend needs you. Why don’t you take him to lie down somewhere?’

‘Nope. I told you I’d be watching you. Now, I’ve decided it’ll be more like sticking to ya.’

‘I haven’t got time for this.’

‘Really?’ he said, eyes blazing. ‘Got an appointment you’re rushing off to, have you?’

She wasn’t getting rid of him.
Fine
, she thought. She’d have to work with it, take advantage of the situation.

‘Cover me while I get something out of the bin,’ she instructed. She stepped sideways to the sink. Trent turned to face her, his body far too close for comfort. His eyes held a spark of mischievousness. She reached down into the bin and took out Cole’s black rucksack. Trent tipped back his head and groaned in mock pleasure. Ana pulled the Stinger from her bag.

‘Shit!’ he said. He flinched back from her stony glare.

‘Stop messing about.’

‘What? You . . .?’

‘Just cover me without making me throw up.’ She pressed her cheek against the wall and cracked open the bathroom door. Far down the corridor she could see the door that framed the courtyard. Another orderly was tipping a second of the shockers from a wheelchair. Unlike Orderly McCavern, the woman turned quickly, scurrying back. Ana retreated inside the girls’ toilets.

‘I can’t relax with that Stinger so close to my dick,’ Trent whispered.

‘Five minutes,’ Cole’s voice said into Ana’s earpiece, making her jump. She’d been recording now for five minutes.

Something slapped the other side of the girl’s bathroom door, close to Ana’s head.

‘Trent! Trent, I know you’re in there!’

‘Danny, man,’ Trent muttered, shaking his head. Ana leaned back against the door using all her weight to hold it closed.

‘Lemme in!’ Danny pounded the door with his fist.

The orderly would be coming back through the corridor at any moment and Trent’s friend was drawing far too much attention. The orderly didn’t look like she’d challenge them directly, but she could easily report it for someone else to follow up. Security might then take a closer look at was happening in the bathroom.

In a split second decision, she hooked the camera off her robe and tossed it into the bin. ‘We have to shut your friend up,’ she said.

Trent glanced over his shoulder at the Three Mills surveillance camera high up on the far wall. ‘I can’t just ask him to keep the noise down. And if I bring him in here and knock him out, orderlies will come.’ They shared a look, both understanding it would have to happen in the corridor. Ana retrieved a syringe and phial bottle from her rucksack and put them in Trent’s hand.

His eyes bugged in disbelief. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

Putting the rucksack on her back, she powered up the Stinger.

Trent’s doped friend was still thumping on the door.

Bang – Bang – Bang.

‘Ready?’ she said.

‘I can’t use this on him,’ Trent said, holding up the syringe. ‘No idea what he just injected himself with – something stolen from the nurses.’

Ana took back the sedative. ‘You first,’ she said. ‘He’s your friend.’ Trent thrust against the bathroom door and out into the corridor. By the time Ana followed him, he’d tackled Danny to the ground.

The orderly wheeling a now empty chair towards them, halted, reaching for the interface around her neck. Ana scrambled around the guys, who were taking jabs at each other on the floor, and held up the Stinger. ‘Stop!’

Hearing the electric hum, the orderly’s face filled with shock. She hesitated, a fraction of a second, just long enough for Ana to lunge forward and jab her. The woman’s legs gave way and her body began convulsing.

Once she lay still, Ana listened for news from Cole. If the orderly had tripped an alarm, he would say something. But nothing came through on her earpiece.

Behind Ana, the scuffles of Trent and Danny’s fight faded. She turned and saw Trent on top of his friend, Danny groaning softly. Ana grabbed the orderly’s interface and using its soft projecting light to see better, rolled up the orderly’s sleeve. Quickly, she stabbed the syringe into the silver capped phial bottle and tapped the nurse’s forearm the way she’d seen it done on net TV. Her hand shook as she held the needle up to the vein. She pressed the plunger down carefully. Once it was empty she withdrew the syringe, leaving behind a couple of drops of blood. A tiny cloud of relief skimmed over her. At least she’d tapped the vein.

‘Where can we hide the orderly?’ she asked Trent.

‘Store cupboard, near the back door.’

He got up off his friend and Danny curled into a ball, all the fight beaten out of him.

Trent helped Ana pick up the orderly. They dumped her in the wheelchair and pushed her to the end of the corridor. If anyone came through the Old Lab now, they were in serious trouble.

Trent slammed his shoulder against the storeroom door. It wasn’t locked, just stuck. On the third attempt it shifted. They rammed the wheelchair into the tight space.

‘Now what?’ Trent said.

‘We get out of here.’ Ana pulled the bump key from her robe pocket.

‘What about the security gate outside?’

‘If you want to stay, stay. Suits me.’

Trent fumbled to unhook the orderly’s key chain from her belt.

‘We don’t need those,’ Ana said. She wedged the Stinger back in her rucksack and took out Cole’s small hammer to bump the lock.

‘Yeah, but this way it looks like an inside job,’ Trent said. ‘Keep ’em guessing.’

She nodded. It was a smart idea.

Trent yanked the storeroom door shut, while she unlocked the Old Lab door. She edged it open and scanned the car park, the road leading towards the laundry and the therapy studios. Then the other way to the blue security gate. Not a person in sight.

‘It’s clear,’ she said. Her body buzzed with adrenalin. She wanted to wave her hands in the air and run screaming for the gate.

‘I see you,’ Cole said through her earpiece, his voice layered with panic.

‘Move it!’ she said. Trent exited and she closed and locked the wash-block behind them.

‘Who’s that?’ Cole asked as Ana began sprinting up the cobbled street towards the gate. No looking back. ‘I’m opening up.’

At the end of the street, beyond the main reception block and the patchwork of buildings, Ana saw the blue gate suck free from the magnetic release. Trent ran alongside her. At the sight of the gate his eyes popped out in amazement.

‘Still clear, still good,’ Cole said.

Almost there.

She and Trent bombed through to the other side. She was back in the outside world. Safe.

The door to the foreman’s factory house opened. Cole stood before her. Her chest sparked with such hope and love and thankfulness, she couldn’t breathe.

‘Come on,’ he said. He waved them into the security lodgings. Behind her, the gates began to automatically close. She ran to Cole, hugged him fiercely. He kissed her. ‘We’ve got four minutes till it goes live. Get changed.’

Trent hovered behind her.

‘Who’s this?’ Cole asked as Ana entered the room where the security guard lay flat on his back, hairy bare arms and legs exposed. She avoided looking at them as she pulled out the clothes from her rucksack and yanked on her jeans.

‘I’ll explain later. Give him the guard’s trousers.’ She pulled off the robe and dressed in her T-shirt and sweater. ‘Here,’ she said to Trent, as she emerged. She passed him the guard’s scuffed black shoes.

‘Won’t be able to run in those. They’re way too big.’

‘Less conspicuous than walking the streets barefoot.’

Trent was now wearing the guard’s trousers. They were so big on his skinny waist they’d bunched up where he’d pulled the belt tight. The bottoms were rolled over several times.

‘Four weeks I’ve been in that place,’ Trent mumbled, bending down to put on the shoes. ‘You made getting out look easy.’

‘Two minutes,’ Cole said. Ana nodded. Trent’s head whipped up.

‘Two minutes till what?’ he asked.

‘Till all hell breaks loose,’ Cole said.

Trent didn’t need telling twice. Seconds later, the three of them were hurrying over the bridge, putting distance between themselves and the clock tower, the factory houses, the blue gate. Distance that felt better and better the wider it grew.

They passed an old car park where several tents were pitched awkwardly on the tarmac. A few people milled around. Automatically, Ana, Cole and Trent lowered their heads. The road curved, leading them past a boarded-up Tesco’s to a road which ran parallel with the A40 dual carriageway. A hybrid Pure saloon whooshed past on the other side. Ana and Cole stopped for a second. She glanced at the interface she’d taken from the orderly. Their luck was holding. No one had reported anything amiss. Yet.

‘He’s seen our faces,’ Cole said, gesturing to Trent.

Ana thought of how she’d looked straight up at the camera in the girls’ toilets. ‘That’s the least of our problems. They’ve got a pretty good shot of me in there on camera already.’

Trent shook his head. ‘I’m not planning on going back to tell anyone who got me out,’ he said.

Cole examined him coolly.

Ana put her hand on his chest. ‘We did it,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Trent hiked up his trousers and vaulted over a railing into long grass on the side of the dual carriageway.

‘It’s been a pleasure,’ he said to Ana. ‘Whoever you are. But I do hope we never meet again.’ And, that said, he began running barefoot, the guard’s shoes tied around his neck.

Cole took her hand. ‘That was one of the worst half-hours of my life.’

She couldn’t answer. Emotions churned inside her: joy, rage, grief. They couldn’t bring Trent with them, and he was better off by himself, but after what she’d just been through, it felt strange watching him vanish forever.

 She chucked the orderly’s interface into a bush and she and Cole crossed the empty dual carriageway, the Pure saloons passing few and far between. She held his crutches as he clambered over railings, and then they headed for a side street.

‘Bow Church Station is straight on,’ he said. They’d agreed to use Bow Church because waiting for a Tube in the station across the road from Three Mills seemed risky. They moved as fast as Cole could manage. In the distance, a Psych Watch siren wailed. Cole checked the time on his interface.