The System

  ‘What do I think?’ Frankie asked, her brow furrowing. She took a deep breath. ‘What I think is that I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running away. Those bastards are going to pay for what they’ve done.’

  Glen sucked his lips between his teeth. Then he fixed Frankie with a stare. ‘They want you dead. You know that? They are looking for you right now. You’re a loose end. A dangerous one.’

  Frankie didn’t say anything.

  Sighing, Glen opened a laptop and pressed a button; immediately the screen was filled with a picture of people weeping. She stared at it uncertainly as Glen turned up the volume.

  ‘So devastating,’ someone was saying. ‘She was in the prime of her life, engaged to be married …’ The screen was filled with images of Frankie – the real Frankie, laughing, dancing, walking down the street. Then of her imposter being put in a car by Milo, reaching out to give him one last kiss. She was wearing Frankie’s favourite pale pink dress and studded biker boots. She was wearing the engagement ring. Then the image changed again to a pile up, the car crushed, Frankie’s body being taken from the wreckage. An image of a man appeared on the screen; the voiceover described him as a loyal driver who had momentarily lost control of the vehicle. No one else had been involved in the crash. But both driver and passenger were dead. Glen closed the laptop.

  ‘Poor girl,’ he said with a little shrug.

  Frankie didn’t say anything. She was still trying to process what she’d just seen. Jim had been right. She felt her stomach clench. ‘They … they killed her?’ she managed to say eventually. ‘When?’

  ‘These images were released an hour ago,’ he said. ‘So you see there is no Frankie. Not anymore. Just you. They won’t stop looking for you.’

  Frankie shook her head desperately. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’ She let her head fall into her hands.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frankie.’

  They sat like that for a while then Frankie looked up. ‘So what’s going to happen now?’ she asked.

  Glen leant around and picked up a bag from behind his chair, then handed it to Frankie. ‘Inside here,’ he said, ‘is everything you need to know about your new identity. You’ll be leaving Paris tonight, going to Munich then Bern. From there we’ll transfer you to Australia the day after tomorrow. You’ll have a week staying in a safe house while we check that you haven’t been followed, that nothing has gone wrong. Then you get your new life and story and you’re set. We’ll contact you once a year to check everything is okay, but other than that you’re on your own. No getting in touch, no checking in, nothing. It’s too risky. I suggest you study this pack – it will give you everything you need, answer every question. But memorise it because the minute you land in Australia we’ll destroy it as a precautionary measure.’

  Frankie listened and as he talked she felt like she was somewhere else, watching what was happening. Most of what had happened over the past few hours felt like it had to be happening to someone else, but this was the first time she actually felt like she was on the outside looking in, watching herself as she nodded attentively, watching Glen as he flicked through the pack like it was the induction information for a new job or something.

  And then something happened that forced her right back into her chair, that sent a jolt through her that felt like at least forty volts of electricity. A message flashed in front of her, a message so unexpected she jumped up in the air. A message that simply said: ‘Don’t run. You’re close to the truth. Expose it. Glen can help you. I’ll help you …’

  Glen looked at her oddly. ‘Are you listening, Frankie? Is everything okay?’

  Frankie shook her head. ‘The stranger’s found me again,’ she gasped.

  ‘The stranger?’ Glen looked at her strangely.

  ‘The guy who told me about the UK in the first place. My source,’ Frankie said. ‘He’s just sent me another message.’

  Glen’s face went white. ‘That can’t be. There is no way anyone could track your new chip.’

  ‘There is a way,’ Frankie said hurriedly. ‘There has to be because he’s found me. He knows your name.’

  ‘How did he find you?’ Glen asked, the whites of his eyes visible. ‘What is he saying?’

  ‘Tell Glen I never lost you,’ flashed in front of her. ‘Tell him I know the truth. Tell him what he saw was real.’

  In a daze Frankie repeated the message. Glen’s eyes started to dart around the room. ‘This can’t be happening,’ he said, standing up. ‘No one could track you here. We changed your chip twice, three times, right? No one knows … Who is this person? How did he find you? What have you done?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything!’ Frankie said indignantly. ‘And I’ve got no idea how he found me, but he saved my life and led you guys to me, so don’t get all paranoid. He’s on our side.’

  Glen shook his head. ‘In eleven years, no one has found me,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Not since I went underground. No one has ever done this …’

  And then there was another message. Only this time Frankie suspected that it was flashing in front of both their faces because of the way Glen was staring right ahead, shaking his head in fear and wonderment.

  ‘You have to trust me,’ the message said. ‘Frankie’s right – I’m on your side. I need your help. And you need mine. I’m from the UK; I’ve been brought here by Infotec. What they’re doing needs to be exposed. You have to get to the truth, and you have to show the world. Otherwise Infotec will never be brought to justice. Otherwise everyone I love will be murdered, and no one will even know they existed.’

  ‘Who is this? Who are you?’ Glen asked, looking around the room desperately as though hoping to find the answer to his question on its walls.

  ‘Me? My name’s Raffy. Good to meet you. Now, can we get on with the task at hand please? I need you to organise a car. Actually I need you to organise a few things. Are you ready? Because what I’m about to tell you might well blow your mind …’

  15

  Evie stared at the screen in front of her and tried to ignore the fact that the restlessness had left her, that she no longer drummed her fingers violently on any available surface, no longer jumped up several times an hour to pace around in circles muttering to herself. She was able to sit still, stare at the screen. She had given up.

  No, she told herself. She had not given up; she would never give up. She had just adjusted. She was surviving. To do anything else would be foolhardy.

  She hated this place, this claustrophobic space with its white walls and fresh coffee and food that appeared regularly so that she never even had to think about whether she was hungry or not, never had to actively do anything at all. And yet she was used to it now. She had slipped into a kind of rhythm, a way of living. And she despised herself for it as she reached out to the plate of pecan pie in front of her and took another bite.

  She looked around the room. Raffy and Linus were in their own little capsules, where they were beavering away, or not, she barely cared anymore. She saw them briefly, once or twice a day; they seemed to live parallel lives, not daring to look each other in the eye in case the pretence was shattered, in case they lost their ability to survive, to ignore, to forget.

  She looked at the full plate of food in front of her and pushed it to the side. She used to eat at the table, but now that she was largely on her own, she had taken to eating on the sofa; the large, sprawling leather sofa that had become like a second home, a despised, suffocating womb that sucked her in and would, she knew, eventually spit her out again.

  She glanced up at the television. Frankie was being driven through Paris to her final resting place and the world was crying.

  Weirdly, Evie found herself crying, too. Not right now, but whenever she saw her death reported, whenever she found herself watching long reels of Frankie alive, various commentators talking about the tragedy of such a young life cut short.

  Evie did not think much of Frankie, of the socialite who promoted Infotec, whose entire life se
emed to revolve around clothes and make-up and talking to the millions of people who Watched her every day. She was a product of Thomas’s Infotec; a doll who enjoyed being stared at, who never once asked what she was doing, what everyone was doing. She was vacuous; she was probably quite stupid. And yet, since she had been in this prison, Frankie had been Evie’s constant companion. And now she was gone.

  As she watched the people lining the roads, watched them cry out, watched them hold their pictures of Frankie aloft, signs that read ‘Frankie, we’ll never forget you’, she found her eyes pricking with tears again, real tears that soon flooded her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks.

  Was she really crying for Frankie? Or was she crying for someone else, someone who had been a true companion, who she missed with such an ache she sometimes gasped at the pain. What was Lucas doing? Where was he? Was he even alive?

  Evie watched the casket as it reached the patch of grass in a cemetery near the Seine. And then the camera panned away, to Milo, to the man who had loved Frankie, the man Frankie had hoped to marry. The man who hung around with Raffy, who smiled patronisingly at her, who worked with Thomas. He had a badge on his lapel, the ‘I’ that made Evie shiver. But he and Frankie had seemed happy; he had looked so broken the day they found her. She would do her best not to be happy that he knew what it was like to have the person you love wrenched from you.

  ‘It’s strange for me, standing here,’ he said, ‘talking about Frankie. Because I know that whilst what we had was irreplaceable, I also know that I never had Frankie to myself, because I shared her with you, because all around the world, there are people who are sharing in my pain, who wish as much as I do that Frankie could come back. And to all of you, I say thank you, because I know that Frankie loved you, loved each and every one of you, just as she loved this city, loved this new world that we have all created …’

  There was a cheer; Milo wiped his eye distractedly.

  ‘But today,’ he continued, ‘I don’t want to talk about Frankie the icon, or Frankie the freedom fighter, Frankie the blogger who argued tirelessly for openness, for sharing of information, for everything, frankly, that Infotec hoped for and is so proud to now be a part of. No, what I want to talk about today is Frankie the girl, the girl we all loved, the girl I will miss forever.’

  And then suddenly there was a ripple in the crowd as someone rushed forward. ‘What about the UK, Milo? What about the blog Frankie posted about it? What do you have to say about that?’

  Evie’s chest tightened. The person speaking was wearing a monkey mask; as soon as the cameras panned in on them, they ducked down. And as they did, the crowd rippled as suddenly black jumpers and I badges could be seen moving around; the Inforcers who had been so inconspicuous in the crowd, who were now moving inwards in a pincer movement.

  Milo’s face hardened. ‘Whoever that was,’ he said coldly, ‘I think we all know that Frankie had her accounts hacked from time to time by terrorists who weren’t brave enough to speak in their own name, the sort of terrorist that comes to a funeral wearing a mask with the sole intent of causing trouble and anguish.’

  Another ripple, and the masked terrorist was captured. ‘Frankie was killed because she was getting close,’ the man shouted as he was dragged away. Milo shook his head sadly but his eyes were like steel.

  ‘This is the danger that has infected this City,’ he said then. ‘But we will not let these terrorists achieve their goal. We will not dwell on them, we will not give them the attention they crave. This is a day for celebrating Frankie, not for indulging the crazy whims of those who wanted to destroy her, to use her to further their own anti-progress ends. The UK was a great country but, as Frankie was only too aware, it is a wasteland, a nuclear wasteland and it’s not getting any safer – there are significant fears of drift of nuclear waste to our shores, in fact. If it wasn’t for that, I would send a team across to the UK to lay these insane claims to rest for the last time, but I am not going to put anyone’s life in danger simply to stop conspiracy theories from proliferating.’

  Evie watched, open-mouthed, waiting for someone to argue, to question Milo. But instead, the crowd was deathly silent. Someone ask, she begged silently. Someone say something, please. Someone say something that makes the crowd demand a search party goes right now and finds Lucas and …

  She closed her eyes. What was she even thinking? Of course no one would say anything; of course there would be no search party. She had got so caught up in Frankie’s death, in the funeral, that she’d almost believed that Milo’s grief might transcend his badge, his allegiance to Thomas.

  She sighed heavily, pulling her knees into her chest and holding them there for a few minutes. This place. This grim, comfortable, insidious, despicable place.

  Evie pulled herself up off the sofa and did her best not to look back at the screen, at the many screens around her that did their best to draw her in as they flashed images of desperate fans with tear-stained faces, of the grim stoicism of Milo as he watched Frankie’s casket being lowered into the ground.

  Slowly, she reached forward, took another bite of pie, then sat back and closed her eyes.

  16

  ‘You’ve called your central base Cassandra?’

  Raffy looked at Milo defensively. ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s a weird name.’

  Raffy pulled a face. ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘Just seemed kind of apt at the time. She’s tricky.’

  Milo laughed. He’d taken to hanging around Raffy’s cubicle for an hour or so most days; officially he was there to monitor Linus’s work, but in reality he didn’t seem that keen on spending time with the man tasked with building the System; only with the younger one who was supposed to be checking it. Raffy didn’t mind. They were getting on pretty well. And he knew Milo would be useful to him at some point soon. ‘All women are tricky. You should have had her change into a man. Much more straightforward.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll stick with Cassandra if it’s all the same with you,’ Raffy said with a shrug. ‘Not exactly a hit with the girls right now, if you know what I mean. Cassandra’s the only woman who’s actually talking to me.’ He looked meaningfully out of the glass door of his cubicle; Milo followed his gaze to where Evie was lying on a sofa, her eyes fixed on the screen ahead.

  ‘Still not talking to you?’ Milo asked sympathetically.

  ‘Not even looking at me.’

  ‘Well, plenty more fish in the sea.’ Milo winked. ‘Let’s have a look shall we?’ He leant in towards Cassandra and moved his hand towards the screen. ‘How about her,’ he said, pulling up an image of a blonde girl walking up some steps. He tapped the screen and some text came up.

  Hi, I’m Vanessa. I have 43,689 Watchers. I’m a student right now but I want to be an actor some day. I like dancing, eating out and sexy lingerie. Follow me and I can promise you a good time!

  Raffy stared at her; Milo laughed. ‘Your pupils are dilating like crazy,’ he said. ‘There are loads of them. Here, what about her?’

  A brunette appeared. Hi, I’m Sara. I have 506,782 Watchers. I work as a receptionist but my first love is winter sports. Watch me bomb down mountains, then join me for some après ski in the hot tub!

  ‘She’s nice,’ Raffy said, his cheeks reddening slightly. Then he sighed. ‘Thing is, Milo, you’re out there with these people. I’m not. And if Thomas has his way I’ll probably never be.’

  Milo pulled a face. ‘I wouldn’t say that. If he gets his System, he might release you into the wild, you never know.’

  Raffy turned sharply. ‘You think?’

  Milo shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t see why not. He likes loyalty. Are you loyal, Raffy?’

  Raffy held his eye for a few seconds then looked down. ‘I wasn’t loyal to Evie,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Thomas won’t mind about that.’ Milo grinned.

  ‘These girls … they’re really real? I mean, they’re actually out there?’ Raffy asked then. ‘Girls like this? Beautiful girls in
hot tubs and dancing in their underwear?’

  ‘They’re actually out there,’ Milo nodded, peering at the screen. ‘Sara there is in Nantes if I’m not very much mistaken. Not so far away. And she’s got great tits.’

  Raffy spluttered. If anyone had said that in the City, or in the Settlement … Well they just wouldn’t. Not ever. Just absolutely never.

  ‘What?’ Milo asked incredulously. ‘She has got great tits.’

  ‘But you’re …’ Raffy cleared his throat. ‘You and Frankie. You were in love, right?’

  Milo’s expression changed slightly. ‘Frankie? Yeah, we were. Of course we were. I’m just trying to move on, you know?’ He moved his mouth to one side, then sat back on his chair, his arms cradling his head. ‘Trying to ease the pain a bit.’