The Industry (16 page)

‘She's a little younger than we imagined,' Mai conceded, dropping back into her chair. The effort of standing to placate Fadil seemed to have exhausted her.

‘No kidding,' Anton said. ‘Should I run out and get colouring books or something?'

Kirra didn't know whether to be offended or not as Anton strode over to the lounge and openly gawked at her. It was then Kirra realised how young he was himself. He looked in his early twenties.

‘You know,' he said conversationally, ‘it's a miracle you're still alive. Truly, it is. What's your secret?'

‘Being a Translator,' Kirra said obviously.

‘Oh right,' came the reply. ‘Of course. You're no good to anyone dead.'

‘Anton,' Desmond said warningly.

Anton ignored him and flopped onto the couch. He extended his suntanned hand to Kirra, grinning warmly despite his taunting. ‘Anton Disraeli,' he said.

He smirked when he noticed her inching away from him.

‘Oh, no, you've got it all wrong,' he told her in a broad stage whisper. ‘Fadil's the one you want to be scared of, particularly as his girl took a bullet for you.'

With that, he opened another chocolate bar and took a dainty bite, seeming to forget about Kirra altogether.

Attempting to be covert, she glanced over her shoulder. Fadil, Desmond and Mai had gathered in one of the bedrooms and were just visible through the open door, having a hushed and heated argument. She could just make out the use of her name. She watched them for a few moments before Desmond threw his hands up in the air and walked away. He went into the other bedroom and shut the door with a slam.

Returning her attention to the argument, Kirra saw that Mai was pacing around, gesturing furiously and chastising Fadil in what sounded like it might be Arabic. Fadil yelled back at her, each of them shouting over the top of the other, before Mai, in her anger, tried to raise her bad arm to jab him in the chest. She gasped at the attempt and, very suddenly, the argument was at an end. After a moment in which she glared hatefully into his eyes, Mai allowed Fadil to draw her into his arms.

Kirra averted her gaze and experienced a quick pang of longing for Milo, but told herself not to dwell on it. It was only a matter of days before she would see him again.

 

Later that night, Desmond intercepted Kirra on her way out of the bathroom.

‘Feel like an excursion?' he asked hopefully.

She snuck a quick look around the place. Mai and Fadil had locked themselves in one of the bedrooms, and Anton was sprawled across the couch, chortling loudly at another reality TV show that really didn't look funny at all, his filthy shoes resting on a pillow as he placed chips, one by one, on the tip of his tongue.

‘Yes,' she said firmly, ‘I do.'

Desmond looked pleasantly surprised by her answer. ‘Thought you could do with some time away from our dear young friend.'

They made it to the car without incident, an achievement in itself, and Desmond drove them away. As he fiddled with the radio, Kirra seized the courage to ask her most burning question while they had some privacy.

‘Desmond?'

‘Mmm?' he said distractedly, hovering between two Spanish stations with a confused look on his face.

‘Why do you think I'm a Translator?'

‘I have my theories,' he said. ‘But I don't think any of them has particular weight.'

He gave her a decidedly sympathetic look, as though Kirra had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and doctors were yet to find a cure.

‘Why do you think there are only four of us?' she went on.

‘Three now,' Desmond reminded her. ‘Richard Spencer's been dead for a while. There's just you, your friend Milo and that Josephine Shaw woman.'

‘Right,' Kirra said, wondering for a second where ‘that Josephine Shaw woman' was. ‘But there are billions of people on earth, and there isn't some secret algorithm that the three of us shared. We can just do it. I've never heard of anything like that.'

‘I seem to remember you telling me you were the best maths student in your school,' Desmond said. ‘Perhaps your mind is so adept, so practised, at looking at problems that it can't help but subconsciously find a solution to every problem it sees.'

‘But you said Latham made all sorts of mathematicians and analysts look at the Spencer code and they came up with nothing. They'd be as practised at equations as I am, if not better.'

‘It's what I would call an elite skill, and a very selective one. Latham may have just asked all the wrong people.'

‘You mean more people might be Translators and he just didn't find one?'

‘Well, he didn't have any way of knowing who they were or where to look for them, especially when they wouldn't have known that they were Translators themselves.'

‘So you're saying there might be more like me and Milo?'

‘Who knows? I personally think so, yes,' he said after a moment. ‘Out of the, as you say, billions of people on earth I definitely wouldn't rule out the possibility of
others gifted with this special way of looking at the code. They're lucky, I suppose, that they didn't attempt that online example as you did.'

Kirra imagined, just for a moment, that it had been one of the other students in her school, and not her, who had been cursed with the most highly sought-after skill in the Contracting Industry. What if it had been Phillipa Corbel's meek friend Joanne Gaskell, who was excellent at maths, though of course, not quite as good as Kirra? Would Kirra then be at home right now? Or perhaps at school, handing in an assignment and taking a moment to wonder where her missing classmate had gone to?

‘Still doesn't explain why I can do it in the first place,' she said.

‘In the way some people can … I don't know … sing and others most definitely cannot — there mightn't be a very remarkable explanation for it,' he said. ‘I may be wrong, of course.'

‘Sing?' Kirra repeated in a disbelieving tone.

He smiled. ‘Yours is a gift on a much more exclusive scale, clearly.'

It was only as they were ascending a dusty flight of stairs within an old apartment block smeared with spray paint and grime that Kirra thought to question where this excursion was taking them.

‘To visit a Reloader,' Desmond told her, wrinkling his nose as he pulled his hand away from the banister to see his palm coated in grease.

‘What's that?'

‘It's exactly what it sounds like,' he said, finding Apartment 4 on the second level and rapping his knuckles
on the door. ‘Don't leave my side!' he added over his shoulder.

‘Who's there?' came a raspy reply from beyond the door.

Desmond cleared his throat. ‘Do you stock Gravers?'

The door flew open, and Kirra was hit with the stale stench of smoke and sweat. She took an unconscious step backward to avoid it. A man stood at the door, a squat, stinking man, wearing nothing but a pair of stained trackpants and a browning singlet. He held a lit cigarette between two thick, stubby fingers and his straggly moustache contained remnants of whatever Kirra supposed he had had for dinner.

‘Fanuco?'

The man, who had been leering at Kirra, turned his shiny, sweaty face towards Desmond. ‘Who wants to know?'

Desmond made an impatient noise in the back of his throat. ‘My name really does not concern you in the slightest,' he said haughtily. ‘I require ammunition. Am I in the right place?'

The man, Fanuco, gave a gurgling little laugh.

‘People are never in the right place when they come here,' he said, grinning slyly, ‘but yeah, I got ammo.'

Desmond followed him inside, ensuring that Kirra wasn't far behind, and shut the door in her wake.

Once inside, Kirra could taste the foul stench she'd only sniffed at before and her eyes stung and watered. It was putrid. Desmond appraised the apartment with disgust and looked as though he was trying to breathe through his mouth. The paint was peeling off the walls and the
moth-eaten furniture was piled with mail and newspapers. A straggly cat of indeterminate breed meowed softly from the corner. Fanuco squashed his cigarette into an overflowing burgundy ashtray and lit another.

‘So, Gravers ammunition?' Desmond asked again.

Fanuco raised his eyebrows. ‘Gravers, eh? I might stock 'em.'

He turned to hurry off down the corridor, but froze after his first waddled step. He swivelled around.

‘You aren't an Assassin, are you?' he asked suspiciously.

‘Why?'

‘Well, I got an order a couple of days ago, see. I'm not allowed to sell ammo to any Assassins in this area.'

Desmond frowned, interested by this. ‘Why?'

‘They don't want some runaway kid killed or something. Said she wasn't to be hurt.'

Kirra dug her hands into her pockets and concentrated hard on a congealed drop of something that looked like gravy on the floor.

‘And who made that order?' Desmond enquired. ‘Latham?'

‘Latham? Who's he?' Fanuco asked. ‘Nah, this one didn't give a name. He sounded far too young to be ordering anyone about, but he said my cheque was in the mail as long as I didn't sell anything to any Assassins round here.'

Desmond nodded, and shared a look with Kirra.

‘Well, I'm not an Assassin,' Desmond said.

‘How do I know that for sure?'

‘You don't,' Desmond informed him, stepping forward and slipping a roll of notes into Fanuco's puffy hand.

He eyed it for a split second before … ‘Luckily, I'm a trusting man.' Then he took another long look at Kirra. ‘Who's that?'

‘My assistant,' Desmond said, without missing a beat.

Fanuco nodded, a twisted smile coming over his face.

‘Wish she was my assistant,' he muttered and preceded them down the corridor towards a room closed off by a roller door.

 

Kirra and Desmond left the building with several heavy bags hanging from their shoulders. Fanuco had supplied them with boxes of bullets and several guns of varying sizes and degrees of power. As Desmond piled the bags into the boot of the car he caught the curious look on Kirra's face.

‘Reloaders aren't to be trusted,' he said. ‘Everything they sell is stolen, and they'll do anything to make a quick buck.'

‘The order about me,' Kirra said after a moment, ‘came from the same person who paid Tavio, didn't it?'

Desmond closed the boot with a thud. ‘Sounds like it.'

Kirra felt her stomach twist. ‘Some recruit of Latham's?'

Desmond gave her a quick encouraging look. ‘He won't get you, so don't worry. No matter how many recruits he has, young or old, he won't get you.'

‘How do you know he won't?'

‘Because I'll kill him before he gets the chance.'

‘Well …' said Kirra. ‘That's reassuring.'

‘I knew you'd think so.'

Thursday was creeping up quietly and Kirra felt herself growing tense. Thursday was the day she was required to provide an on-site sequence. The last time she'd done one of those, she'd ended up lying trapped beneath the rubble of a half-destroyed office building, so naturally she had her misgivings.

So far, Kirra had been content to stay in the apartment, reading magazines and watching TV. Apart from the visit to Fanuco, she hadn't urged Desmond or Mai to take her out anywhere. The crowds in the city streets made her uncomfortable, the sun outright bothered her, and at times she caught herself almost missing the safety of the cell. Four walls and a tiny window with bars? She chided herself. How could anyone ever miss that?

On Thursday morning, Anton strolled into the apartment with a bag of groceries. Kirra, who was sitting at the kitchen counter reading a Spanish cooking magazine, watched him layer ham, salad, mayonnaise
and pickles between two thick slices of bread in a slow, methodical fashion that she found quite irritating. He took a small, gentle bite and appraised Kirra thoughtfully as he chewed. She tried to ignore him, wondering how he could possibly eat. She was so nervous about Aguilar's Extraction that she thought she might spew all over the place.

‘Have you decided yet?' Anton said.

Kirra looked up from the magazine. ‘Decided what?'

‘If you want to be a Retriever or an Analyst.'

She blinked.

Anton tilted his head to the side. They watched each other for a moment.

‘You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?' he said.

‘No,' she replied. ‘Should I?'

‘Hmph,' said Anton. ‘Guess they haven't told you about the Estate yet.'

He took another bite. Kirra sat up slightly in her seat, remembering that Desmond had mentioned the place the night of the Ruiz ambush.

‘What's the Estate?'

Anton grinned. ‘Oh, you know,' he said, his voice suddenly low and mysterious. ‘A top-secret sort of place.'

Kirra raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Is it?' she said in a bored tone.

‘Well,' he continued, ‘that's what Flo says anyway.'

Kirra said nothing and flicked through the pages of the magazine. She knew she wasn't going to get a straight answer out of Anton about anything.

‘So, what's so special about this Milo kid then?' he ventured after a pause. ‘Why do we need to rescue him so urgently?'

‘He's not a kid,' she said, averting her gaze from his moving mouth. His strange, meticulous way of eating annoyed her.

‘Right, right,' Anton said hurriedly. ‘What's so special about this Milo
guy
?'

She thought for a moment, and was tempted to say that Milo was her best friend, but that didn't seem right. It implied that she had an array of friends, and Milo was merely her favourite of the bunch.

‘We have a lot in common,' she told Anton evasively.

‘Well, you're the only two accessible Spencer code Translators in the world,' he said. ‘I'd say you have a fair bit in common.'

Kirra glared at him. ‘I have no friends and I can't go home,' she informed him in what she hoped was a casual tone. ‘Milo is all I have. So I have to save him.'

Anton watched her through wide eyes, chewing slowly. He swallowed — an understated, measured occurrence — and took a breath. ‘Is that all then?'

Kirra's jaw clenched.

‘We've been through a lot together. We were imprisoned for months,' she told him angrily. ‘We were inside the Bachmeier building and —'

‘The one that half-collapsed?' Anton interrupted, astonished.

‘It didn't collapse,' Kirra said quietly, her eyes scrolling over a non-stick frying pan advertisement. ‘It was bombed.'

‘I thought so,' he said. ‘They passed it off to the media as poor construction, but it was clearly an Industry job and — wait … you were
inside
it?'

Kirra nodded.

‘Actually
inside
it?'

She nodded again.

Anton blinked. ‘But that's awesome!'

Kirra remembered the exact moment she'd realised she was trapped beneath a propped-up concrete slab buried deep beneath the debris. She also remembered wondering if she would live to see the light of day again.

‘Didn't feel so awesome,' she told him moodily, closing the magazine and stalking off.

 

They were to embark on the Extraction of Aguilar at three in the afternoon, ready to intercept his transit at four. Desmond spent the entire day drilling the plan into Kirra's head. She listened carefully, memorising all his directions word for word. She didn't want to give Desmond a reason to think she was incompetent or perhaps not worth the time he'd taken to Extract her.

Before lunch, Desmond slipped an envelope into Kirra's hand. She opened it to find a perfect replica of an Australian passport, complete with a photo of herself, one she remembered posing for. It had been taken in Year Nine, outside the Hewitt Hollandale Memorial Library in a makeshift photo booth brought in for the annual school photo day.

‘How did you get this?' she gasped.

‘It was on your high school's intranet,' he told her. ‘I've had it ready for months.'

Kirra turned the document over in her hand, running her thumb over the embossed coat of arms. ‘Is it real?' she asked, staring at it, fascinated.

Desmond gaped at her. ‘Of course not!' he said, as though it was the most absurd question he had been asked in his lifetime. ‘Katherine Hammond's a little different to Kirra Hayward.'

Kirra read the passport closely. It gave her a fake name, a fake address, a fake date of birth. According to this passport she was eighteen years old and her birthday was on the twenty-seventh of October.

‘Who is Katherine Hammond anyway?' she asked.

Desmond shrugged. ‘A phantom profile,' he told her, checking the contents of his backpack one last time.

‘A phantom … what?'

‘A profile of a person who doesn't actually exist. We slip them into the system to use for things just like this. Katherine belongs to you now.'

‘Won't they realise?' she asked after a moment.

‘With enough money you can fake anything. Even a real passport,' he said easily. ‘Nobody will question that document because I've given them no reason to.'

Kirra accepted this and secured the passport in her pocket. She returned her gaze to Desmond and after a moment he caught her staring.

‘What now?'

‘Why do you do it?' she asked.

He seemed to know precisely what she was talking about.

‘Come on,' he urged weakly. ‘No point in questions like that.'

‘Tell me,' she said.

He expelled a frustrated breath. ‘It's a job. We've all got to have them.'

‘Most people have law-abiding jobs.'

‘That's what you want?' he said. ‘You want to be
law abiding
?'

Somehow he managed to make this sound oddly derogatory, as though people with such moral aspirations were to be regarded with a measure of sympathy.

‘You know,' he said, ‘rules are all about control. The people who make them rarely follow them.'

Kirra wasn't certain she agreed with this viewpoint. She had never felt oppressed by rules before and had always found such ideologies a bit juvenile, especially when they were harboured so stalwartly by the regulars of Friday afternoon detention at Freemont Grammar.

When she said nothing, Desmond smiled.

‘You know, I used to ask myself all these questions too,' he admitted. ‘But the deeper you get into it, the less you need to justify it. It's a job, in the dullest sense of the word. The shock will wear off,' he promised, ‘and you'll understand then.'

‘I will?'

‘Most certainly.'

Kirra nodded and wondered how best to broach her next worry.

‘Desmond,' she began, ‘I — I shot someone. One of the recruits in the factory.'

She expected him to say something consoling, something that would make the guilty pangs in her stomach go away, but instead he gave an unconcerned nod.

‘You'll get over it,' he said firmly, and went to put the kettle on.

Kirra frowned at the floor, certain that wasn't the kind of reassurance she had been fishing for.

‘Were you defending yourself?' he asked.

She looked up and nodded.

‘Then, yes, you'll get over it.'

He turned away to find the teabags and a mug.

Fadil suddenly strode through the front door, his brow furrowed, and cast around for Mai. He saw her in the bedroom and stalked inside, shutting the door behind him.

Fadil tended to ignore Kirra; in fact, he had yet to say anything to her at all. He did, however, watch her when he thought she wasn't aware, evaluating her carefully from a distance for long periods of time. His interactions with Desmond and Anton were limited to short and stilted conversations, and he spent an awful lot of time perusing a bank of files stored on his phone, with a darkly concerned look on his face. The only time Kirra noticed a change in him was when he was with Mai. He seemed stricken by her brush with death, and made it his business to ensure she had everything she needed at all times, as well as forcing her to take her painkillers four times a day like clockwork.

Once Kirra had caught them arguing: Fadil had been insisting that he needed to change Mai's bandage; and Mai, who loathed sympathy, had been attempting to swat him away so she could do it herself with one hand. Eventually Fadil had won the battle and Kirra had observed from the couch as he set about his task. Mai
had watched him closely too, her expression something Kirra couldn't quite fathom. Joy, perhaps? An emotion so strong and so infused with love that it didn't suit the tense, businesslike atmosphere of the apartment at all.

Kirra wasn't sure what she thought of Anton. He seemed a bit too young and carefree to be a part of the business she despised, yet he apparently took his profession seriously enough, because just before they left for the Extraction he intercepted Desmond in the kitchen.

‘She's coming, Des?' he asked, his voice a little lower than normal.

Kirra could hear them perfectly from the couch, where she was pulling on her boots, though she kept her eyes glued to the carpet.

‘Yes,' Desmond said shortly. ‘We need her.'

‘But … do you think it's … sensible?'

‘Sensible?'

‘Des … she's been locked up for ages. Ages and ages! She might be a bit … you know …'

‘No, I don't know,' Desmond challenged.

‘
You know
,' Anton urged, making a swirling motion with his index finger beside his head. Desmond raised his eyebrows, not remotely amused.

‘Is the word you're looking for “traumatised”?' he offered patiently.

‘Well, I was going for “bonkers” but that'll do,' Anton said, pleased that Desmond was getting his drift. ‘How do you know she's stable and won't … you know … screw things up?'

Desmond stole a glance at Kirra. He caught her watching him, and as their gazes met he seemed to regard
her with something almost akin to pride. Kirra was surprised by this and felt a small measure of appreciation for Desmond that she'd not felt before.

‘Curiously,' he informed Anton as he slung his bag onto his back, ‘she's fine.'

With that, Desmond strode to the door and held it open, waiting patiently for Kirra to follow.

 

They took two cars: Desmond's dark green sedan, which Anton drove alone, and a silver van, which everyone else piled into comfortably. Kirra couldn't sit still, so great was her excitement. As soon as this Extraction was over they would be on their way to Dusseldorf.

The two vehicles had been driving in line through the streets of Madrid for less than fifteen minutes before Mai looked down at Fadil's phone.

‘We're closing in,' she said quietly. Kirra looked at her, startled. Already? Mai reviewed the phone again, before telling them that Aguilar had just started his final transit to a maximum security facility outside of the city, and that they would come in view of him in only minutes' time.

‘There's the truck,' she said shortly after, pointing to a nondescript white transit truck ahead of them on the straight, empty highway. As they got closer, Kirra noticed a security pad on the van's rear door. Her heart started thumping.

‘Okay, Anton,' Desmond said into his phone.

Anton accelerated down the highway and overtook the transit truck at full speed. He swerved in front of it and came to a sudden stop, causing the truck to screech
to a halt to avoid a collision. Immediately Anton was out of the car, a gun trained between the two drivers.

Fadil stopped the van, and ran to provide Anton support, a gun in each hand. Desmond climbed composedly out of his seat, nodding to Kirra to go with him.

‘We have to do this quickly,' he said, zipping up his jacket.

Kirra attempted to quash her nerves. She was determined to prove Anton wrong.

‘You need this, Des,' Mai said, tossing him Fadil's phone. She climbed back into the van, in no condition to aid in the Extraction. Kirra spared her a quick glance. She seemed as unfazed as Desmond was, sitting comfortably in her seat and glaring at them as though she resented not being able to help.

Striding towards the back of the truck, Desmond dialled a number and waited.

He said the truck's serial number aloud to the person on the line, reading from a small label by the van's licence plate. Then he passed the phone to Kirra. ‘The code will come up in a moment. Read the sequence out to me.'

Kirra glanced at the screen. Sure enough the code was looking back at her, the columns of numbers and letters that were now so familiar streaming down the page. At once the sequence began to form. She read it out to Desmond, taking care to get every digit and letter correct.