The Legacy (5 page)

‘No,’ Jude said, his brow furrowing. ‘The world needs young people. It’s not fair to stop new people just so that old people can keep on living. It’s not . . .’ He trailed off; he couldn’t think straight. All he could think about was Sheila’s proximity to him, and the strange sensations shooting around his body – like fear, only . . . different. She turned to look at him, and he reddened. ‘Don’t you . . . have chores to be getting on with?’ he asked, his voice breaking awkwardly as he spoke.

He regretted the words as soon as they’d left his mouth, but it was too late. Sheila raised her eyebrows, stole a final sip of tea from Jude’s cup, then flounced out, leaving him on his own. Sighing inwardly he looked up, allowing his eyes to travel around the room.

It was a small space, one of a handful of rooms that made up the Underground headquarters. Today’s headquarters, at any rate. Rumour had it they were moving again soon. And by rumour, Jude meant Sheila had told him, which meant it had approximately a fifty per cent chance of being true. Sheila liked to know everything, and if she didn’t know something she’d make it up rather than admit her lack of knowledge. According to Sheila, Pip told someone just the other day that they’d be somewhere else by the end of the week, and since today was Thursday, that didn’t leave many more days to up sticks and leave.

He pulled himself up and walked over to the table that he used as a desk, then sat down in his chair and put his feet on the table, like he used to when he’d lived in his own house, with his own rules. It seemed a very long time ago. Almost a lifetime ago.

In reality it had just been a few months since he and Sheila had moved in as permanent residents. A few months since Pip had deemed them both too high risk to be based anywhere else. They both knew, had seen first hand, the sordid activities taking place at Pincent Pharma, and Richard Pincent had promised to track them down and kill them in memos that Jude had hacked into.

It had made him feel important back then. Now – well, now he wasn’t so sure that Sheila didn’t have a point. It wasn’t the Underground per se. Jude was fully on board with the whole anti-Pincent thing. He couldn’t not be, not really, not seeing as how hardly anyone his age existed any more and those that had been born had been rounded up and shipped off to Surplus Halls. He knew Pip was right, knew that the Declaration – those bits of paper that people signed promising not to procreate just so they could take Longevity – was fundamentally flawed, that a world full of old people completely sucked, even if the people didn’t
look
old. And he knew that Richard Pincent was the most evil man in the whole world. No one hated him more than Jude – no one.

But he’d kind of thought the Underground would be more like an army than a . . . a . . . He searched for the right word and failed. He’d thought the Underground would be different, a hive of activity, full of soldiers, brave men and women talking about the revolution to come, making plans and carrying them out. Instead, there were hardly any people there for one thing – people came in for procedures or, occasionally, for meetings, but no one ever stopped to make conversation and you weren’t meant to look at anyone too closely because it was risky, because the idea was that people could hardly identify any other supporters if they were caught, if Richard Pincent or the Authorities got hold of them. The only people there permanently were Jude, Sheila, Pip, and one or two guards. Jude had seen more drama when he’d lived in a small close in South London.

Suddenly it hit him. A family, that’s what the Underground was like – a slightly dysfunctional family. Pip had taken on the parental role, generally disapproving of and criticising everything while being convinced that everything he did was right and the best possible way to do things. Peter and Anna were the golden children. Sheila was the youngest, indulged child. And Jude? He was the let-down, the misfit, the ‘troublesome’ one. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he was in the family at all.

Shaking his head wearily, Jude turned on his computer. There was no point thinking about it really; he’d never be Peter, would never be held in the same esteem. And in the meantime another Pincent lorry was being ambushed that afternoon and he needed to track it. It soon appeared on his screen and he watched for an hour or so then, bored, looked over at Sheila who had appeared again on the other side of the room a few minutes earlier and was leaning against the wall, broom in hand, daydreaming. He knew she was waiting for him to call her over.

‘Fancy a game, Princess?’ Princess was his nickname for her – he told her it was because she behaved like one, because she was so difficult and demanding, but really it was because the first time he’d seen her, he thought she looked like a princess in a fairy tale, frozen, scared, waiting for someone to rescue her. He’d seen her when he’d hacked into the Pincent Pharma network, when he’d realised that Pincent Pharma was more than just a pharmaceutical company – it was a prison, a torture chamber. That was when he’d given up everything he’d taken for granted all his life and wormed his way into Pincent Pharma to rescue her, to save his princess from the dark forces at play in the bowels of that odious place. That was where he’d finally met Pip and Peter and together they had made the shocking discovery that Surpluses were being shipped in and used for their stem cells to make Longevity+, the wonder drug that would treat the external signs of ageing as well as the internal renewal process.

That had been the end of Jude’s existence as a Legal citizen – from then on, he’d needed Underground protection. But the truth was, Legality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, not when you were the only Legal person your age in what felt like the whole city or possibly the whole country.

‘No thank you,’ Sheila said haughtily, immediately starting to push her broom around the floor. ‘I’ve actually got a lot of things to do.’

Jude grinned. ‘But we both know you’re not going to do them.’

Sheila folded her arms defensively. ‘I am. I’m not a layabout like you.’ She turned and swept some dust out of the corner, then swept it back again. He watched in amusement, but didn’t say anything. Sheila had grown up in a Surplus Hall. She never tired of telling anyone who’d listen that she wasn’t a Surplus, that her parents had Opted Out of the Declaration, forgoing Longevity so they could have her, but even so she’d still ended up being taken by the Catchers and trained to be a Valuable Asset, a housekeeper or other servant. Except it seemed that wasn’t what Valuable Assets were after all. At Pincent Pharma, she’d discovered that Richard Pincent needed them for . . . other things.

‘Suit yourself.’

‘I will. And if I were you I’d read some of those books Pip gave you. You’re lucky to be here, Jude.’

‘So what – I should make myself more valuable?’ Again he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. When they’d first been taken in by the Underground Sheila had made a big deal about the housekeeping skills she’d learned at Grange Hall, about how valuable she’d be to everyone. But the Underground tended to choose derelict and uninhabitable buildings for its premises, and it wasn’t that easy being a housekeeper in a place that was full of dust and where no one really seemed to care if the floors were clean or not. It soon turned out that Sheila wasn’t that great at cleaning anyway, nor at cooking, unless charred food was your idea of haute cuisine. Which meant that she spent most of her time trailing around the place, a slightly defensive look on her face. Jude could relate to that; he felt like he was continually trying to defend his position, his value, his usefulness.

‘I was
rescued
,’ Sheila said, evidently deciding that attack was the best form of defence. ‘I was in a Surplus Hall because the Catchers stole me from my parents. You’re . . . well, you were just living in a house, weren’t you? I mean, you don’t really need to be here at all.’

Jude took a deep breath. Always the same digs, the same pointed comments, as if life was a competition and if Sheila didn’t attempt to put him down at least three times a day she’d somehow be losing in the game of life. Trouble was, she’d already lost so many times and Jude knew it. A life spent at Grange Hall, her first taste of the world outside being strapped to a bed in Unit X, Pincent Pharma’s dirty little secret.

Sheila had never been on her own but he knew she’d been lonely – desperately lonely. She’d been very hazy about her friends at Grange Hall, but she sometimes told him stories about the vicious games they played there, the bullying and the punishments regularly dished out, which made Jude ache when he thought about it. He would forgive Sheila anything because of what she’d been through – her biting comments, her twisted morality, the way she watched him quietly then skulked into the shadows the moment he turned round.

‘Not like me,’ she continued. ‘I mean, I was Legal too, but the Catchers stole me from my grandparents and my parents couldn’t find me again.’

She shot Jude a meaningful look and he sighed inwardly. She’d told him this story a million times. More than a million. And last week, stupidly,
stupidly
, in a moment of weakness he’d agreed to see if he could track her parents down for her. Even though Pip had made it clear that he didn’t want him to. Even though Sheila had been told not to look for her parents under any circumstances.

‘Palmer, their name was,’ Sheila said, looking at him cautiously. ‘In Surrey . . .’

‘Palmer. Right,’ Jude said awkwardly, noticing a piece of paper in front of him, a list of names and addresses. He sighed. ‘OK. Look, Sheila, maybe I did a little bit of digging. The thing is . . .’ he said, biting his lip.

Sheila looked up at him excitedly. ‘Yes? The thing is what? You’ve found them? Oh, tell me, Jude. Please. I know Pip doesn’t want me to find them, but you have to tell me. You have to –’

She was interrupted by Pip himself walking into the room suddenly. ‘Sheila,’ he said, ‘we have a nurse along the corridor who could do with some help, if you’d be so kind.’ Jude looked up in surprise; he hadn’t noticed him, didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.

‘Have you found out what happened? What was wrong with that woman?’ he asked hopefully, but Pip didn’t answer; instead he looked at Sheila pointedly.

She opened her mouth as though to protest, then, catching Pip’s immovable expression, shrugged heavily and wandered down the corridor.

‘So?’ Jude asked when she’d gone.

‘Sheila has had a difficult life, wouldn’t you say?’ Pip remarked, walking towards him.

Jude nodded warily. He’d learned to watch what he said to Pip, who had a way of twisting his words, making him seem to agree to things he’d had no intention of agreeing with.

‘She hasn’t seen her parents for years, I believe.’

‘Not since she was about four, I think,’ Jude said.

‘And now, for the first time in her life she is comparatively safe. She has you, and she has the protection of the Underground.’

‘That’s right,’ Jude agreed.

‘So you think that it is a good idea, now, to muddy things, to distract her with thoughts of her parents?’

Jude frowned. ‘But I –’

‘No buts, Jude. And now there is a lorry that requires tracking and I think it deserves all your focus.’

‘I am focused.’ Jude could feel his mouth fixed in an angry grimace. Did Pip not trust him at all?

‘No, Jude, you are not focused. If you were focused, you’d have noticed that the lorry has been stopped.’

Jude’s eyes widened and he enlarged the SpyNet software screen, which was hijacking Pincent Pharma’s own CCTV system in order to track the progress of Pincent Pharma lorries now heading into an Underground ambush. ‘Shit!’ he said. The lorry was on its side in the middle of the road. One lone car swerved to avoid it, but kept on driving. ‘Shit! I’m sorry, I . . .’

He turned to Pip, who smiled gently and pointed back at the screen. Jude nodded, swivelled round and watched as men dressed in khaki jumped out in front of the lorry, pulling out the driver, forcing the back open. Jude felt the familiar surge of adrenalin as he watched the scene unfold – David against Goliath, Good against Evil.

The doors were open now and Jude’s eyes were on the driver who was on the ground, two men holding him down. He looked agitated, fearful – he was shouting something. The Underground men were dragging large boxes out of the lorry; they didn’t look like the usual boxes carrying Longevity drugs. Not that it mattered – they would be torched anyway, destroyed. The Underground would leave its message loud and clear on the side of the road.

But as he watched the boxes being prised open Jude frowned, the lines between his eyes deepening. Something wasn’t right. The boxes weren’t cardboard, they were made of wood. The men were improvising, making tools from their guns in order to break into them. And then one was opened and Jude’s jaw dropped, and his hand moved towards his mouth, clamped over it, his eyes widening, his pulse quickening, a dark foreboding rising up within him.