The System (22 page)

‘Fine,’ she called out. ‘You can keep the torch.’

Evie stopped and turned again, a look of impatience on her face. She held out her hand and Frankie handed her the torch, irritation flooding through her. ‘You know, I don’t have to be doing this,’ she said. ‘I mean I’m doing this as a favour. It’s not my home. Raffy’s not
my
boyfriend.’

She arched her eyebrow and watched Evie’s face darken.

‘Raffy is not my boyfriend either,’ she said, hotly, ‘and if you don’t want to come, don’t.’

Frankie sighed. ‘Yes, well, I don’t exactly have a choice now, do I? I mean we’re in the middle of nowhere, Glen’s gone, so I’m hardly going to go back up through that blue door and wait for Infotec to come and find me, am I?’

‘So then let’s get going,’ Evie said, no trace of sympathy in her eyes, no indication of gratitude. She was like a robot, Frankie decided. Like a cold, hard, tiny robot. If everyone else in this precious City of hers was like Evie, no wonder Thomas wanted to cut them off from the rest of the world.

‘Fine,’ Frankie said. ‘Just bloody fine. Let’s run, shall we? Let’s just run under the sea, probably to our deaths. Because hey, what else is there to do? I mean, really, I’m so pleased I’m here with you. So pleased to be appreciated.’

Evie stared at her levelly. ‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ she said. ‘Raffy did. I get that you don’t want to be here; you just want to be back promoting Infotec and worrying about what dress to wear next. Trouble is, as far as I know, you’re supposed to be dead. And dead people can’t have millions of Watchers. So stop acting like I’ve forced you to come with me. I haven’t. I just want to get to the City. And I want to get there before your best friends, Infotec, figure out what we’re doing. So I’m sorry if I’m rushing. But I don’t have the luxury of time. Okay?’

She looked so fierce, her eyes flashing, her jaw set firm, that Frankie was almost full of admiration. But only almost. ‘I did not promote Infotec,’ she said, icily. ‘I was a serious blogger who just happened to be very popular. I’m sorry if you have a problem with that. I guess you don’t know what it’s like to have loads of people interested in everything you say.’

‘No,’ Evie said, ‘I don’t. But that’s probably because I don’t talk all the time about the minutiae of my life. “Oh, I’ve broken a nail!” … “Oh, my shoes are so pretty!” … “Oh, I’m so in love!” Shame about your boyfriend. Wasn’t he the one who tried to kill you?’

Frankie stared at Evie in shock, then she reared up and took a step forward. ‘Take that back,’ she said, her voice low.

‘Take what back? You were in such thrall to Infotec you didn’t even realise they were using you.’

‘Take that back, you sanctimonious bitch,’ Frankie seethed. ‘You think you’re beyond reproach because you grew up in the UK? Well bully for bloody you. If Milo hoodwinked me, then what the hell did Infotec do to you? You say you had no idea the rest of the world even existed. I mean, how pathetic is that? And you dare criticise me. I’ve met people like you before. Jealous, bitter people who hate me because they can’t be like me. Well you know what? I don’t care. And I’m not spending another minute with you. I am going back. I don’t have to do this. You fight Infotec. If you’re so bloody clever, you don’t need me to help you.’

She turned and started to climb back up the stairs, taking two at a time.

‘And where exactly are you going to go?’ Evie demanded. ‘Where are you going to hide? You think they won’t find you? You think this is only my fight? You’re wrong.’

‘I’ll take my chances,’ Frankie called back. ‘I think I’d rather Infotec find me than be stuck in a tunnel with you.’

She continued to climb, doing her best to ignore the pain in her calves. She was fit, usually, but after walking for so long she was tired, hungry, thirsty and physically exhausted. She ached everywhere; her legs in particular were killing her, but she wasn’t stopping now. Not until she was as far away from Evie as possible. Not until she …

She screamed; her leg went from underneath her, causing her to stumble then fall, down the stairs; she grasped at the wall, at the rail, but she couldn’t steady herself, couldn’t stop herself from tumbling further down. To her death, she found herself thinking, desperately. To nothingness, pointlessness, to …

She stopped abruptly; looking up, she saw Evie looking down at her. Evie had somehow pinned her shoulders against the wall and her feet against the opposite one, breaking Frankie’s fall and stopping her in her tracks. She heard a clatter and looked up in alarm. ‘The torch?’ she asked.

‘The torch,’ Evie said.

Frankie tried to move but she couldn’t; her leg was trapped underneath her, throbbing with pain.

‘What happened?’ Evie asked.

Frankie sighed heavily, ‘I’ve hurt my leg. But please don’t worry. Just keep on running, I’ll be fine.’

‘Did it feel like something snapped?’ Evie asked.

Frankie shook her head, then realised Evie couldn’t see her in the darkness. ‘Not snapped,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve just pulled a muscle.’

‘Okay,’ Evie said. ‘I’m going to stand up. Are you feeling steady? Hold on to the wall if you need to.’

Frankie did as she was told; Evie lightly stood up and bent over her. ‘I’m going to move your leg,’ she said, her voice different somehow, gentle, almost tender. ‘Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Frankie said morosely, then yelped in pain as Evie manoeuvred her into a sitting position.

‘Can you move this leg?’ she asked, patting Frankie’s right leg. ‘If so, can you move it forward?’

Frankie duly swung it round.

‘Okay, and now the other one.’ Frankie winced as Evie gently manoeuvred her left leg forward. It hurt like hell, but there was something about the way Evie was touching it, pressing it, that made her not want to cry out. There was nothing rough in her touch; nothing impatient. Instead, she was methodically moving her hands up and down, asking Frankie what hurt, where the pain was, which movements caused it.

Eventually she stopped. ‘I think you’ve sprained your ankle and possibly torn some ligaments around your knee. It’s going to hurt. But if we can support it somehow …’ She paused. ‘Are you going to be okay if I go and get the torch?’

‘Yeah. Of course,’ Frankie said gruffly, not really wanting her to go at all but wanting to admit that fact even less.

‘Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Frankie barely heard Evie running down the stairs; it was as though she was entirely weightless. She stared after her into the darkness. She felt really alone. More alone than she’d ever felt. There were no messages from people telling her how amazing she was; there was no one cheering her on, admiring her courage. There was no one at all.

Frankie bit her lip and sniffed, doing her best to push back the tears that were pricking at her eyes. She didn’t want to be in a bloody tunnel with a sprained ankle. She wanted to be in her apartment, getting ready for a night out, asking people whether to wear blue or green. And yet, even as she longed for the camaraderie of her Watchers, she knew that she didn’t want them. Not really. Because they weren’t real. Because they’d been just as happy to follow an imposter. Because she might have felt like she had a million friends, but actually, apart from Jim, she’d been pretty much entirely alone; even her boyfriend hadn’t given a shit about her.

‘Okay, it’s still working,’ Evie said, arriving back with the torch, shining it on her face and revealing a little smile. ‘And I found a few sticks at the bottom of the steps which we can use to support your knee. It’s not going to be the best bandage ever, but …’

She took off her cardigan, placed the sticks against Frankie’s knee and started to wrap. ‘I’m going to need your tee-shirt. For your ankle,’ she said as she worked.

‘That’s fine. I’ve got two on,’ Frankie said, quickly taking off her sweatshirt and slipping one over her head.

‘You look like you know what you’re doing.’

Evie shrugged. ‘Not really. I mean, we all had to learn … at the Settlement. There wasn’t a hospital like there was in the City. There was a doctor, but we all had to learn the basics.’

Frankie absorbed this. ‘What was it like?’ she asked. ‘I mean, what is it like? In the UK, I mean? Is it like here?’

Evie shook her head. ‘The City is. A bit. I mean, there are computers and electricity, although it’s rationed. And they get food from other settlements because they can’t grow enough themselves. They don’t tell people that, but … There. How does that feel?’

‘Good,’ Frankie said as Evie surveyed her knee. ‘So come on, how about the Settlement? That’s the place you lived when you left the City?’ The truth was, Frankie had barely listened when Evie was telling Glen about the UK; she’d been too absorbed worrying about tunnels, about the turn her life had taken. But now, now she really wanted to know.

Evie nodded. ‘The Settlement …’ She went misty-eyed. ‘It was amazing. It was this wonderful place, started by someone called Benjamin. He was an incredible man. Strong and brave and …’ She paused, took a breath. ‘Everyone was kind and happy. Everyone had enough to eat and they had teachers so you could read books and learn about history and …’ She met Frankie’s eye and reddened. ‘But it isn’t there anymore. Thomas destroyed it because Benjamin wouldn’t hand us over. Everyone’s hiding in caves and Benjamin is … dead.’

‘Oh,’ Frankie said. ‘Sorry about that.’ She wiggled her ankle and looked at Evie incredulously. ‘Wow. That feels much better, thank you. Bloody hell. I just … it’s hard to take in. What you’re telling me, I mean.’

Evie pulled a face. ‘Discovering that the world hadn’t been all blown up was quite hard to take in too,’ she said lightly. ‘We thought we were the only survivors of the Horrors. We thought we were the lucky ones.’

Frankie breathed out and pulled herself up. ‘Thanks, Evie,’ she said. ‘I mean really. Thanks.’

‘It’s nothing.’ Evie shrugged. ‘Do you want to hold on to me?’

‘No,’ Frankie said, forcing a smile; there were limits to how much charity she could accept from this strange girl. But as she watched Evie walking carefully in front of her, as she hobbled after her, she knew with a sudden conviction that they were truly in this together now; she and Evie probably needed each other. And if she was quite honest, Evie probably wasn’t a bad person to have on her side.

‘So if Raffy’s not your boyfriend, why were you both taken by Thomas?’

Evie turned sharply; Frankie’s initial questioning had turned into a full-fledged interview and Evie wasn’t used to sharing information like this. In the City she’d always been too scared to share, too fearful that she’d be judged, that the System would be alerted; in the City no one shared confidences – they buried them, denied them, terrified about the consequences of admitting anything, whether a feeling or a thought, in case it veered from what everyone else thought, what the Brother thought. In the Settlement the women had been friendly and had always chatted as they worked, but Evie had been too shy to join in, still too nervous that she might say the wrong thing or reveal too much.

‘We …’ She frowned, not sure how to answer the question, how to explain her history with Raffy, the complicated twine that bound them so closely together. ‘I was matched with his brother, Lucas,’ she said eventually. ‘But Raffy was in danger in the City. We were … very close. So when he had to escape from the City, I went with him.’

‘Leaving Lucas behind?’ Frankie asked curiously.

Evie bit her lip; just the thought of Lucas made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, made her eyes fill with tears. ‘We were together. When Thomas found us,’ she managed to say. ‘But Linus helped him escape. We were all meant to get away, but …’ She closed her eyes, the painful memory of Raffy rushing forwards to stop her following Lucas as he took the left turning in Linus’s cave, the steep drop that led him to freedom, that should have taken her, too … She had hated Raffy in that moment, loathed him so much she would have happily killed him if they hadn’t been held at gunpoint by Thomas. But now … Now she didn’t know what she thought about Raffy. ‘It didn’t work out like that.’

‘So now I get why you’re in such a hurry,’ Frankie said, a little smile on her lips. ‘So this Lucas. Is he hot? And how about Raffy? Is he hot, too? I like his sense of humour.’

Evie found herself smiling at the ridiculousness of their conversation. Normally she’d have barked back a sarcastic comment; lives were at stake and Frankie’s questions were stupid, infantile. But they were also comforting, friendly. And Evie wanted a friend. She needed one.

‘Lucas is … beautiful,’ she said after a long pause. ‘He’s strong and he’s had to hide who he is for so long …’ She glanced over at Frankie, whose eyebrow was raised quizzically. ‘He’s hot.’ Evie giggled.

‘And Raffy?’

Evie thought for a moment, remembering Raffy the boy she used to meet secretively at night; Raffy the farmer who had proudly worked so hard at the Settlement; Raffy who had risked everything to help her escape. It was weird having someone ask about him. Weird having Frankie ask about him. Like she … liked him, or something.

She pulled a face, trying to remind herself that Frankie wasn’t being rude, or patronising. In this world, what people looked like mattered a lot. Half the people she’d watched in the apartment spent most of their time in front of mirrors, or describing other people’s appearance in great detail. ‘I guess he’s hot too,’ she said, thinking of his dark, soulful eyes, which always seemed to show Evie the thoughts he hid from everyone else; sometimes she warned him to keep them closed in company because it made him too much of an open book. She realised Frankie was waiting for her to say something and bit her lip as she tried to work out how to describe Raffy. ‘He’s darker,’ she said eventually, trying to mimic the language she’d heard on screen, the relaxed way people talked about each other. ‘Tall. Kind of brooding.’

‘Mmmm,’ Frankie said as she hobbled down the last few steps. ‘Interesting. Okay, Evie, holder of the torch. Where to now?’

Hovering in the shadows, Glen watched the station concourse. There were three or four police people visible, but he had already spotted a further two undercover Infotec guards, their eyes narrowed, focused, as they checked faces, watched the platforms.