‘Your lips are blue,’ the girl beside Ana said. Shivering, Ana dropped her gaze to the smoky fire. She wondered if the girl had noticed her examining the men. The girl’s arm 91
opened like a wing. She wrapped her blanket around Ana’s back. When she took her hand away, they were left joined beneath the cover, shoulders touching. A strange nervousness crept through Ana. The intimacy of the girl’s gesture unsettled her.
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ the girl asked. Ana turned and was about to say ‘no’, when the girl spoke again.
‘It’s the eye make-up, see?’ She covered her face with
‘It’s the eye make-up, see?’ She covered her face with her fingers, spreading the middle two of each hand to peek out.
Cole’s sister.
‘You look pretty different without the mask,’ Ana said, trying not to let her surprise show. The wind-chime girl laughed with a snort.
‘Mask!’ she said. ‘Where are you from anyway?’
Ana hugged her arms tighter around her chest. ‘Around,’
she said.
The girl grinned as though Ana had said something funny again. ‘Not around here though,’ she said. ‘You don’t have an accent, but you talk weird.’
So much for blending in
, Ana thought.
‘I’m Lila,’ the girl said.
‘Oh, right. Hi.’ Ana wriggled on the crate. The hard ridges dug into her thighs. Her stiff legs felt like they might freeze, bent at the knees. ‘So, did you talk to your brother about the wind chime?’ she asked. But before she’d finished getting the last word out, Lila jumped up.
‘Tea’s ready!’ she said. ‘You can’t do that, Si,’ she scolded the pregnant woman. ‘Put it down.’
‘Oh, stop your fussing, Lila,’ the woman said. But she 92
lowered the pan of boiling water back on to the gril and let Lila take over.
Ana suddenly noticed a slight boy of about four clinging to the pregnant woman’s long skirt and poncho, like a bulky fold in the fabric. The boy readjusted himself to his mother’s position. Just before he disappeared again, Ana glimpsed his face. He had odd eyes. Haunted. Deeply sad.
She felt a sudden, cutting jab to the heart. The boy was sick
– Active.
‘Here.’ Lila passed her a mug of tea.
‘Thanks.’ Ana cupped both hands around the mug for warmth and wondered how many others in their smal gathering were Active. It wasn’t always easy to spot.
Especialy if a person didn’t take any meds, because then they didn’t have the teltale side effects like spasms and hair loss.
She dipped her nose into the steam of her drink. The tea smelt strange – bitter herbs, mint and sugar. Blowing on the watery liquid, she peeped at the barges moored along the canal inlet. At the far end, a black-painted boat was moored directly beneath a warehouse façade, which rose four storeys sheer from the quay. It was the boat Ana had slept on.
Enkidu
.
She jolted. She’d actualy slept on
Enkidu
, the one clue to Jasper’s abduction. Was it Cole’s boat? And if so, who was the girl who’d shown her to the cabin last night?
Ana decided she would wait a few more minutes, then say she’d forgotten something below deck and return aboard to have a quick look around.
Lila sat down and snuggled in beside her, adjusting her rug so it lay across the two of them again.
93
‘That’s my brother Nate’s wife,’ Lila said, gesturing to the pregnant woman she’d caled Si. ‘She’s due in three months.’
‘Do you al live together?’
‘Not my mum. Just me and my brothers, Nate’s wife, their son Rafferty, and Rachel.’
Rafferty had to be the little boy hiding in his mother’s skirts; Rachel, the woman who’d shown Ana to her sleeping quarters last night.
‘So is that one of your brothers?’ Ana nodded in the direction of the moody-looking guy with spiky hair. His discussions with Rachel looked like they were turning into an argument.
‘Yeah, that’s Nate,’ Lila said. ‘He and Rachel are always arguing. They practicaly grew up together.’
Electronic voices crackled on the air. Ana spun towards the sound. Above the footpath, the cut-up canvas sail now hung taut from the tree, like a cinema screen. The grey-bearded man sat in a chair two metres away. His interface projected on to the canvas, which had been strategicaly angled to avoid the morning sun. Either side of the man stood two cumbersome speakers.
‘Here he goes,’ Lila said. The gathering began to amble away from the fire, across the bank. ‘Come on.’ Lila away from the fire, across the bank. ‘Come on.’ Lila puled Ana up from their crate. ‘Gary gets upset if we don’t al join in.’
Ana forced her stiff knees straight.
‘It’s not very long,’ Lila said. ‘But he thinks it binds us together. Like praying or something.’
Ana trailed Cole’s sister up the concrete steps towards 94
the patch of grass. Away from the fire, her feet felt icy and the wind bit the bare skin at her throat. She peered at Nate from beneath her bel-shaped hat which now sat so low it cut across her eyes. His body jerked slightly as he walked.
He halted beside the pregnant woman, wrapped a hand around her waist and kissed her neck. But his smal eyes and mouth remained puckered with tension.
Only the yelow-ski-jacket guy who handed out crunchy bacon in foil wrappings, and the skinny man who’d moved his crate up the hil to the screen, were unaccounted for.
Neither bore a family resemblance to Nate or Lila, and they both seemed a bit old. Perhaps Cole wasn’t there this morning. She wondered if anyone else among their group had been involved with the Enlightenment Project.
She needed to find a way to broach the subject, without alerting them to the fact she’d run a search on Cole.
Stuffing her hands in the side pockets of her leather jacket, Ana stopped beside Lila. The gathering formed a hotchpotch semi-circle. Once they’d settled, Gary turned hotchpotch semi-circle. Once they’d settled, Gary turned up the volume on the speakers.
A BBC newscaster reported live from the old US
capital, Washington or something. It was a city razed in the twenties by Kuwait or Iraq – Ana couldn’t remember
– over the Middle East and US Petrol Wars. The Petrol Wars had finished ages ago now, but anarchy stil plagued the East Coast of North America. The UK was working with the Central United States on a Pure Separation Programme to help re-establish order in the worst-affected areas.
Lila shook her head and sighed. Ana glanced at her, 95
noting how the sparkle vanished from her pretty eyes and a hardness set over her face.
Ana’s father watched BBC News. It was the only live broadcast to survive the internet after the 2018 Colapse and the Global Depression. Ana had never understood the attraction of watching live when you could select the programme you wanted, when you wanted, and forward fast or pause at your own leisure. Now she wondered if a large part of the appeal lay in the shared experience.
‘And now the home news,’ the reporter announced.
‘There has been a traumatic new turn in the abduction of Jasper Taurel, son of David Taurel, CEO of the giant pharmaceutics company, Novastra.’
Fear buzzed through Ana.
‘Oh, what now?’ Nate said scathingly. His pregnant wife, Simone, shushed him. Ana coughed nervously. A new turn in his abduction? Had the Wardens found him? Had a ransom been made?
a ransom been made?
The reporter’s eyes narrowed. He frowned into the camera.
‘The girl he was bound to, daughter of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ashby Barber, has disappeared. The Wardens believe Ariana Barber was snatched from her home yesterday evening.’
96
10
Drowning
At the sound of her own name, darkness crept across Ana’s vision. But she could stil see the photograph of herself on the screen, larger-than-life. And so could Cole’s brother and sister, and al the others in their gathering.
Afraid she would drop her mug, she gripped it tightly, overcompensating. Tea slopped down the sides, burning her skin, which was already raw with the cold. She swayed.
The earth pushed against her feet. She pressed into it in an effort to steady herself, as though they were two people back-to-back propping each other up.
‘At least they can’t blame Cole this time,’ Lila said. Ana stared at the mud seeping into her pumps. Her breath wheezed in and out of her chest. Any second now, the blatantly obvious truth would smack Cole’s sister in the face.
She raked her surroundings for an escape. She could head for the aley between the warehouses or jump a low barrier further up the canal to a car park ful of tents. She prepared to drop the mug and run.
‘Ariana is a sweet, fragile girl,’ her father’s voice continued. ‘Though she was thrown into the limelight three years 97
ago, she realy has no life experience. She is stil a child and has already suffered greatly.’
Ana’s jaw tightened. Her body grew stil – everything but her eyes, which slowly climbed the screen.
‘We are deeply concerned,’ her father continued, ‘that she wil be unable to cope with this stressful situation.’
Her father addressed a dozen different cameras and journalists from a podium. He wore his serious, trustworthy media face. The one he’d used for the Pure Separation Survival campaign before Ana even knew Pures and Crazies existed. The one he’d flogged to death rather less successfuly when he’d been accused of altering her Pure test.
‘If you have any information, please, please contact the Warden hotline.’ He shifted his weight to look directly into the BBC camera. ‘Ariana,’ he said, ‘if you can hear me, hold on. We’l find you.’
A shudder ran up Ana’s spine. Furious wouldn’t begin to describe her father’s mood when he found out what she’d been up to. Thank goodness she hadn’t sent him an interface message yet.
‘What a phony,’ Lila muttered.
‘What a phony,’ Lila muttered.
Ana heard nothing of the rest of the news. Instead, she stared blankly at the screen, aware of her teeth chattering, her fingers as cold as icicles, her mind an empty igloo.
As the gathering dispersed, Lila took her by the arm and dragged her to the red barge moored alongside
Enkidu
.
‘This boat and the one you slept on are twins,’ Lila said, as she urged Ana down through the wheelhouse hatch.
‘
Enkidu
belongs to Cole.
Reliance
is Nate’s.’
98
Ana entered the living area. She could see the resemblance between the boats, though
Reliance
felt smaler because there was far more furniture and clutter.
It was also warmer. She made no objection when Lila pushed her on down the corridor and into a tiny bathroom with an offer to use the shower.
Standing in the handheld spray, Ana cocked her head to one side because she was too tal for the sloping roof.
The water stung her frozen skin. Heat sizzled through her body, and feeling slowly returned to her. She wished it hadn’t.
She’d rather feel numb than desolate. Her father had no idea what he’d just done. By making her disappearance national news, the Board would know she’d sneaked out of the Highgate Community when she returned home.
They’d think she’d snapped. Whether Jasper was found or not, the Board would never let their joining go ahead now. It was over.
now. It was over.
She put her fist in her mouth and bit on it hard.
You can’t
fall apart
, she told herself.
It’s not over. Your life isn’t
over.
If Lila and hundreds of thousands of other girls could survive in the City, so could she.
But why bother? Why struggle to endure the horrors of life in Crazy-land? Things could only get worse once her ilness activated.
Because you don’t have a choice. Because Jasper
needs you.
Yes, Jasper needed her. He had been wiling to consider joining with her despite the risks to himself; he’d been abducted for trying to help an ex-Enlightenment Project member escape the brainwashing sect. Her life would not be crushed into worthlessness, because she was going to rescue him. The 99
guilt she’d carried for two years eight months and seventeen days – ever since her father was acquitted of altering her Pure test and she officialy accepted Jasper’s binding invitation for a second time – vanished. She wouldn’t be responsible for ruining Jasper’s life. She would be the one giving it back to him.
As the water grew tepid, Ana quickly finished washing, then stepped out and rubbed herself dry with a towel.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink and abruptly stopped. Even wet, her long hair shone white-blonde. Her eyes were too big – like a dol.
If she wanted to get by in the City, she needed to stop looking so sweet and fragile. Swiping up a pair of nail scissors from a mug on the sink, she hacked off a strand of hair. Then another and another. A feeling of freedom and defiance flooded her heart. She would rescue and defiance flooded her heart. She would rescue Jasper!
She cut her hair as short as a boy’s. Then she drained the remains of her cold tea and rubbed the leaves into the tufts to dul the shine. She could do this. She could find out if Jasper was in the Enlightenment Project. She could save him and by doing so, save part of herself.
Not yet done, she picked through a pile of make-up shoved in a cardboard box beneath the sink and painted a smoky stripe of eyeshadow across her face. Then she attacked the gel, spiking up her hair so it made her forehead look giant compared to the rest of her features.
She gazed at the stranger reflected in the mirror. Brown-tinted eyes swam in shadow. Her hair looked like it had been butchered. Her face seemed more pointy. A pleasing result.
In the cool light of her decision, Ana considered her 100
father. Afraid of the consequences, she’d done everything he’d asked to win the approval of the Pures in her Community. Yet nothing had been enough for them or for him.
They stil made her feel like she was contagious, as bad as the defect she was carrying. At least in the City there would be no one to constantly analyse everything she said and did. She could be obstinate, impulsive and tempestuous; she could behave any way she liked.