The Rainbow Maker's Tale (37 page)

Her silence told me what I
already knew.

“What now?” she asked,
eventually.

“I don’t know. But, you’ll be
pleased to hear that Rachel and Karl
eloped
last night.”

“What?!”

I just nodded.

Cassie’s voice was a whisper.
“I don’t believe it…” She stumbled forward, nudging into my
back.

With one hand I reached out to
steady her – fearful that the four Medics around us would notice
something was wrong with her. I turned around, to check that she
was OK. She wasn’t. Cassie’s mouth hung open, in a small ‘O’ of
shock. My suit had pulled up my arm as I reached for her, and
Cassie was staring at the red mark on my wrist.

Our small procession halted
then, so there was no opportunity to say anything more. The leading
Medic opened a door to the right of us and directed me inside. I
let go of Cassie – with great effort – and walked inside ROOM 7.07
BIOCHEMISTRY. Entering the room, the scanner beeped twice as it
registered my mark. I looked back at Cassie and saw that she had
connected all the pieces now. My own fear was reflected in her
eyes, as she stared at me.

We had no more time for
questions. Today I would make my plans, and tonight we would get
out. We would get out, any way possible.

* * *

When Medic Jones re-appeared in
the biochemistry lab, I’d had no choice but to get on with the task
I had been set that morning. Whenever I was alone, I was resolutely
ignoring the tests taking place around me, and running through
various options for getting Cassie and I out of the Family
Quarter.

The door to the lab opened, but
I didn’t bother looking up, expecting another Medic dropping
something off.

“Medic Jones?”

Hearing Cassie’s voice was a
complete shock. I turned around and found her intent on the Medic,
not looking in my direction.

“Hello Cassie,” the Medic
replied.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but
Medic Karlina asked me to bring Balik to the orientation
reception.”

My confusion deepened. What
possible reason could Medic Karlina have for bringing Cassie and I
together at this time of day? Whatever it was, I was sure it would
not tie in with my plans – perhaps we could make a break for it
now?

“Of course,” I heard Medic
Jones say. He turned to me then. “Please go with Cassie.”

I was already on my feet before
Medic Jones even spoke, responding directly to Cassie’s words. She
nodded politely to him as we left the room. Only I noticed that the
scanner at the door only sounded a single double-beep instead of
two. The Medic didn’t react to the fact that it didn’t detect
Cassie at all.

Cassie led the way along the
corridor, until she paused outside the doorway to the emergency
stairwell. She looked over my shoulder, apparently checking the
corridor behind me.

“Do you have your band with
you?” she whispered, lifting her sleeve to reveal a pale flash of
silver at her wrist, before letting it fall back into place.

I nodded and pulled the
matching band from my pocket, slipping it onto my wrist. Cassie
nodded back, and opened the door to the stairwell. The scanner made
no sound at all as we passed through.

We walked down the stairs, our
footsteps echoing quietly. The sound rebounded against the hard
resin walls, before being muffled into silence.

“What’s going on?” I whispered,
as we hurried along.

“Father came to see me today,
to tell me to go straight home this evening. His mind told me there
would be a welcoming committee waiting for me to fall asleep. I
checked in with your mother as well – just to be sure – there were
identical arrangements for you.”

“So, what are we doing?” I
asked, half-realising that we were about to run away.

“We’ve no time left for working
this out: we need to get out of the system and then decide what
options we have.”

I couldn’t agree more.

We had reached the ground floor
entrance level of The Clinic. I pulled Cassie back, just as she was
about to lead the way out of the stairwell. Keeping her hand, I
guided her back towards the stairs, which continued down another
level, to the basement storerooms of The Clinic.

“If we’re getting out of the
system then we’re going to need some supplies,” I told her.
And
where better to equip ourselves with clothes, medication and
equipment than here?

Cassie shrugged her shoulders,
silently asking me what the hell I was talking about.

I grinned back. “This is where
my irritating habit of wanting to know how things work, actually
comes in useful.”

I felt better dressed in the
dark medic suit, with my band secured around my wrist. For a very
short time, we would be safe in full view, while we worked out our
next move. Right now, Cassie and I were moving swiftly along the
pavement – but not at a speed that would draw attention to us – on
our way to Park 42.

“Wait a minute,” Cassie pulled
on my arm, slowing my steps and turning me to face her in a single
movement.

“What’s up?”

“Park 42 – I heard my parents
last night. They were going to report the blind spots in the system
there to…” Instead of saying
The Collective
, she raised her
eyebrows to emphasise what wasn’t said out loud.

“Do you think that will already
have happened?” I was afraid to hear her answer. Right now, Park 42
was the only solution I had and felt like the safest place we could
go.

Cassie nodded her head. “It
sounded like they were concerned about where we’d been going – I
think they were going to report it this morning.”

“Great,” I muttered,
immediately deflated.

Wait a minute!

I had the stolen handheld
viewing screen from The Clinic in my bag. It should be a simple
process to get into the scanner system and track any activity in
Park 42. As long as The Council or Collective, or whoever they
were, hadn’t already figured out that I was inside their
systems.

Up ahead there was a small
park, just at the edge of the Red Zone. Steering Cassie towards the
entrance, we hurried inside. A minute later we were settling
ourselves onto soft, dry grass in a small clearing, partially
hidden on three sides by tidy, manicured bushes.

“What are we doing now?” Cassie
whispered, noting our unexpected detour.

“I’m going to check
some…umm…records,” I replied, keeping my answer brief. I couldn’t
be sure where the nearest scanners were and didn’t want to reveal
anything too incriminating.

“OK.”

“OK,” I echoed, taking a deep
breath and focusing on the task at hand.

The screen accepted my initial
registration onto the Family Quarter’s operating network and I
flicked forward through the various options, until I located the
scanner system. Then everything stopped. At first I worried that
the screen itself had frozen, but the green light still flashed
intermittently at the side of the handheld and so I knew it was
trying to process. It must have been that my code was not good
enough for access here.

I rummaged through my bag
again, searching for my personal screen, where I stored the
passwords and access codes I’d been able to find or decipher.
Hopefully, one of these would work, because otherwise it meant
hacking the system, and I’d never done that before.

To her credit Cassie sat
patiently beside me while I muttered and grunted my way through
various security blocks. I took out my frustration on the screen,
punching the numbers and letters with increasing force, until…
“There!” I got through the final screen and into the main directory
of the scanner system. From here, it was reasonably
straight-forward to navigate to the correct data screen showing the
scanner at Park 42. When the figures finally appeared on-screen, I
was disappointed with what I saw.

“What is it?” Cassie asked,
taking my angry snort as a bad sign. She was leaning forwards over
her knees now, trying to read the screen upside down.

“Well, there are no extra
scanners in Park 42 yet,” I muttered. “But, it seems to be rather
more popular than usual.”

Cassie shrugged her shoulders,
not understanding what I meant and so I spun the viewing screen
around so that she could see what I had been looking at. Reaching
across, I pointed out the source of my displeasure: the number 46
in the
Current Visitors
column. “Forty-six visitors inside
the park on the last scanning cycle: all of them adults, all of
them first time visitors.” I explained.

“Looking for us?” Cassie
panicked, her eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and
my face.

“I don’t think so,” I replied,
turning the idea over in my mind as I went back to studying the
table of numbers. Nothing obvious jumped out at me and so I went
with my gut feeling.

“I think if they were looking
for us they would be looking near to The Clinic, not all the way
across the other side of the Quarter. This is probably connected to
what you heard your parents talking about…perhaps they’re in the
process of installing more scanners in the area…”

“OK.”

Cassie appeared reassured by my
answer. If only I had the same confidence I was correct, I might
feel better.

“So, where do we go now then?”
she asked.

I looked at the viewing screen
and saw the time at the top. There was only another thirty minutes
before we were due to leave The Clinic and go home, so we probably
had an hour at the most before we were missed by our parents.

What were our options?

Perhaps, if we stayed away from
the main inhabited areas for the next few hours – the agricultural
sector was always quiet – we could head back to Park 42 under cover
of darkness to investigate possible weak spots then. With a basic
toolkit, we should be able to –

Oh no!

“I can’t believe I was so
stupid,” I groaned, stopping just short of slapping myself on the
forehead for being such an idiot.

“What are you talking
about?”

My outburst obviously surprised
Cassie. “We’ve no tools!” I explained, my voice rising with
annoyance. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this when I knew we
were going to try and get out of here!” Punching my fist into the
soft earth beside me, I took out my frustration on the fragile
blades of grass. I had a limited stash of tools, hidden in Park 42,
but nothing suited to what we would need. I’d even put the kit
together that morning and hidden it in the apartment.

“How would we do it without
tools?” I ranted at myself. “We’re not exactly planning to walk up
to the entrance of the Married Quarter and swipe ourselves in are
we?”

Cassie nodded thoughtfully,
taking in my words. She looked less worried than I felt.

“That’s true,” she said after a
beat, forming her words carefully as she worked through things in
her head at the same time. “But, we’ve got time to get tools from
one of our apartments, before anyone knows that we’ve gone. Two of
our parents are engineers and they both keep stuff in their offices
at home, if we hurry we could get there before anyone realises
we’re missing.”

“You’re right.” If we were
quick, we might still get away with going home for the tools. But,
it would be dangerous, so close to the time they were expecting us
to be there…the time Cassie’s father had instructed her to be home…
My eyes flicked to Cassie, but I looked away before she could see
what I was thinking. I knew she would argue against me – a lot –
when I told her I was going alone.

Feeling warmth on my arm I
looked down and saw Cassie’s hand. The heat from her fingers
chilled me, as my brain spun, searching for a plan that would keep
her safe.

This was the best way to do
that
.

“I think you should wait here
while I go for the tools. It’s too risky for both of us to go.”

“No way!” Cassie exclaimed,
pulling her hand away. “You’re not going there alone, especially
not when we know what they have planned for us!”

I shook my head, just once,
trying not to see Cassie in the same situation as Ami, but I
couldn’t help it: the image was there, imprinted in my mind. Just
picturing her like that made me feel sick and angry. My hands
clenched into fists at my sides, as I imagined the violence I would
enact upon anyone trying to get close enough to hurt Cassie.

“We’re staying together,” she
said, fixing me in an unwavering glare.

The scrutiny was uncomfortable,
making me feel as though she could see deep inside me, to the dark
places where I hid my worst secrets. I didn’t want Cassie to see
them... I didn’t want her to see the lengths that I would go to, in
order to keep her away from the people who would surely be
searching for us in the next few hours.

“You can’t leave me,” she
whispered, her shoulders curling inward as she turned away from me
now. “You can’t leave me. You promised.”

I cringed, hearing her voice
break.
Leave
… I was leaving, but only for a short while –
only to keep her safe. There was some sense in staying together,
but it made more sense not to risk getting caught together. I
couldn’t risk taking Cassie with me, so close to
them
, when
we still didn’t know what was happening.

“You promised we’d stay
together – no matter what happened.”

Cassie pulled out all the stops
to guilt me into changing my mind. And it worked. In fact, I felt
worse than guilty, I felt like hell, because I knew she was right:
I
had
promised we’d stay together. But, I’d also promised
myself that I would keep Cassie safe.

“OK, OK,” I whispered back,
hearing the hollowness in my voice as I agreed and lied in a single
breath.

To hide my deception further –
scared that Cassie would see the truth if I looked at her – I
pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her fragile-feeling body.
“I know I promised,” I said, kissing her head, leaving my face
pressed against her hair.
And I’m sorry – because I can only
keep one promise, and it will be the one that keeps you safe.
“You’re right: we shouldn’t split up, we’ll go together. Don’t
worry, we’ve plenty of time.”