The System

  ‘Benjamin was not a man of God; like me, he believed in the redemption of humankind, but by their own hand, using strength of will, belief and a desire for good. And yet, I believe a moment of reflection is important, thinking of Benjamin, what he meant to us, how significant he was and what a difference he made.’

  Evie was sweating. She knew what was coming. She had to jump. For Benjamin. Had to jump off the roof. Had to be brave. She had to do this. So that Thomas wouldn’t win. So that Raffy had no reason to do Thomas’s bidding. She had to do it.

  Her heart was pounding, she could barely hear, barely think; it was pounding, in her chest, in her head, her blood pumping through her like an out-of-control train. She saw Linus’s head turn, briefly, towards the spot he had shown her. The spot where the roof barriers dipped down just slightly. She had to run, step up on top of them and jump.

  She couldn’t.

  She couldn’t.

  She thought of Lucas, thought of what he would do. Lucas, who had sacrificed himself again and again for what he believed in. Sacrificed himself out of loyalty. Sacrificed himself because he could; because he had no choice but to do what was right. Even if it caused him suffering. Even if …

  ‘And so, as we release Benjamin into the wind, let us all close our eyes, and pr …’

  Evie didn’t hear him finish. She ran, desperately, before she could stop herself, before she became paralysed with fear. She ran to the barrier, climbed on top of it. She could hear shouting, could hear Raffy’s voice screaming through the wind, could hear footsteps running towards her. She could feel the wind on her face, the moist, cool air. ‘I love you, Lucas,’ she cried. And then she let herself go. She didn’t jump. She just stopped balancing, let herself fall. Into oblivion. Into a better place. A different place. Into a place where she could hold her head up high because she, too, had sacrificed.

  Milo stared open-mouthed as the girl fell; rushed forwards, but it was too late. This was no escape plan. This was … Well, this was just weird. Were they all psychotic? Did they have some kind of self-destruct code that made them want to kill themselves?

  ‘Evie! Evie! What have you done? Evie!’ Raffy’s voice was all Milo could hear; he raced to the barriers to hold the boy, to stop him doing something stupid.

  ‘Raffy, easy there. She’s gone. She’s gone, Raffy.’

  ‘You killed her.’ He was like an attack dog now, his eyes wild, throwing himself at Milo. Milo looked over at the security guards, who immediately dragged Raffy off him. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, Raffy, and you know it. Take him downstairs,’ he ordered the guards. ‘Both of them.’

  He looked over at Linus, who had not moved, his face as expressionless as always. And suddenly Milo knew that he knew something. He’d seen Linus talking to the girl. Had he put her up to it?

  Milo walked towards him. ‘So you’re a murderer now, are you?’ he asked. ‘You told her to do that. You killed her. And for what? To make a point? There’s no point. This is the most fucking pointless thing you’ve ever done.’

  Linus’s face turned thoughtful. ‘Thomas is running out of hostages, Milo,’ he said, quietly. ‘Power is a funny thing, you know. One minute you have it, the next …’

  Milo stared at him then, without warning, hit him square in the jaw. He didn’t like Linus. Didn’t like the way he looked at him, didn’t like the way Thomas revered him. And he didn’t like people who killed other people to make a point.

  The guards dragged Linus off, more aggressively than was necessary; Milo enjoyed watching them twist Linus’s arm behind his back, forcing him through the trap door so that he half fell down the steps.

  Then, slowly, Thomas walked towards him. Thomas, who, like Linus, hadn’t moved when the girl had jumped, had simply watched silently, his expression unreadable.

  ‘Clear her up,’ he said. ‘And move them onto hunger rations. I want my System and I want it soon. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course.’ Milo frowned. ‘Look, I told you I was paranoid, and now …’

  ‘Now you will clear up,’ Thomas cut in frostily. ‘Do it now.’

  And before Milo could answer, Thomas turned and walked silently away, leaving Milo staring at the heavens.

  He hated when things didn’t go according to plan.

  He bloody hated it.

  Evie felt herself wrapped in white. Like a sheet. The clouds, she thought to herself. So this is what it’s like: I am being wrapped in clouds. She closed her eyes, waited for the nothingness that she knew would come. She felt no pain; the clouds had caught her, broken her fall. Perhaps down below there was a body, her body, but it was not her. Not anymore. She was safe. She was comfortable. She was—

  ‘Quick. Stand up.’

  She opened her eyes uncertainly to find two men staring at her. She wasn’t in the clouds. She was wrapped in a sheet that had caught her. She looked back up; could see the roof, like a speck, metres above. She looked back down again. She had jumped from the only bit of the roof that was indented, walls either side directing her fall. She had been caught by these men on purpose. Linus had known. Linus had planned it …

  She felt disoriented, felt dizzy; she steadied herself against the wall and tried to work out what she was supposed to do now, where she was supposed to run.

  Suddenly she felt a hand grab her arm.

  ‘Quickly,’ he hissed, as a car with blacked-out windows stopped in front of them. ‘Get in, quickly.’

  She did as she was told; as the door closed behind her, the two men disappeared and the car sped away. She was alone in the back seat, unable to see who was driving her, no idea where she was going. All she knew was that Linus had done this, and that he had a plan. He always had a plan.

  And she was alive.

  That, for now, was something.

  19

  Evie sat in the back of the car staring at the world outside, her eyes wide, her whole body trembling, not with cold but with trepidation, with the realisation of what had just happened, of who would be chasing her, of what this meant.

  The landscape whizzing by was so unfamiliar, so grey. And she felt a million miles away from home, a million miles away from anything she knew.

  But she had escaped.

  It was a small victory over Thomas, but a significant one.

  They were not powerless.

  The car stopped and the driver turned around. ‘You get out here,’ he said. He was thick-set, large, intimidating, but his eyes were kind. ‘You run that way. There’s a disused warehouse. A garage next to it. You’re to wait in there.’

  Evie stared at him blankly. The man looked uncomfortable. ‘I have to go,’ he shrugged. ‘I have to get out of here. There’s a path right here. See it? Right where your door opens. Run down it; it veers to the right, just follow it round, okay? You’ll find the warehouse. You’ll find the garage. You’ll be fine. Someone will come for you. But me, I have to go.’

  Evie nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said, then she got out of the car and started to run. She heard the car speeding off. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, but she didn’t have time to worry. The path appeared to stop abruptly, but as she got closer she realised that it did indeed curve round to the right so she followed it onto a scrap of wasteland. There was another path on the other side; behind it she could see the warehouse.

  Evie followed the driver’s instructions blindly; she had no other choice. She stumbled several times on brambles as she ran, but kept herself low, joined the path, ran past the warehouse and, sure enough, behind it there were three garages. Two of them were locked; the last was open. She was panting, but it felt good to be moving; for months now she had been virtually immobile, a prisoner, watching the world on screens as others lived their lives in front of her, as she sat, unable to join them, unable to do anything except hope and pray that one day it would end – that she would escape or die. Now she realised how much she had been hungering for activity, for sunlight, for the smell of outside air. The scratches on her
legs were welcome; they were real, they reminded her that she could feel. And it made her want to cry, made her want to shout with anger and rage at what Thomas had done, made her want to pull out her own hair so that she could gasp with the pain. But now was not the time; she knew that. She was out; that was enough. Now she had to do as the driver had told her. Did he work for Linus? How was that possible? She didn’t know, but now wasn’t the time to ask questions

  Instead, she opened the garage door, ran inside and closed the door behind her. It was empty; it was damp. There was no one here, and no instructions to follow. Evie paced around; she was thirsty but there was nothing inside this cold, concrete building except some metal cans, a net of some sort and three wheels propped up against the wall.

  Eventually she pulled out one of the wheels and sat on it; it was warmer than the floor, more comfortable, too.

  She drew her knees into her chest. She was cold, and not a little bit scared.

  But it was still the most alive she’d been in months.

  Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes and waited.

  20

  Frankie pulled her leather jacket around herself more tightly and looked at Glen archly as they stumbled over thistles. ‘This is insane. We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

  She could see from Glen’s expression that he shared the same doubts as her, that he too was wondering if this whole enterprise was some kind of trap, some wild goose chase that would lead them right into the arms of Infotec. But she also knew that Glen wasn’t stupid; otherwise he’d never have stayed hidden for so long, would never have challenged Infotec the way he did, drawn followers to him, acted as a continual thorn in Infotec’s side. The doubts floating through her head were, mainly, her own mind trying to talk her out of what she was doing. Not for the first time she wondered if she hadn’t been a little rash insisting on staying, on fighting Infotec, on revealing the truth. She could be halfway to Australia by now, a new identity waiting for her. It was warm in Australia. They had beaches. What had she been thinking?

  She took a deep breath and focused on Milo, focused on the bastard who had tried to kill her, as she stalked after Glen. No, she told herself. Australia could wait. Right now, she wanted revenge.

  They were on the outskirts of Paris, shrubland that used to be something but wasn’t now. There were old industrial buildings that had been abandoned years ago; the train connections and roads had been irreparably damaged during the British Horrors when violence had, briefly, spread across the Channel. The French government’s response had been to close off all travel routes, to stop those bent on devastation from entering France at all. And pretty soon after that the violence had stopped. Everything had stopped. The denouement, as her parents used to tell her, their eyebrows raised, a look of fear in their eyes, fear tinged with relief that France hadn’t been caught up in it, that such a thing would never happen now. Because of Infotec. Because of openness of information.

  It was soon after the Horrors that Paris had started to have its own renaissance as all the Brits who had fled the UK stayed, moved their businesses there, Infotec’s head office moved there, and before too long native Parisians were muttering in bars about the ‘invasion Anglais’. But the truth was that it wasn’t the English survivors who made a difference to Paris; it was Infotec alone. Infotec, with its voracious growth, thousands of jobs. It was Infotec that established a new financial centre in Paris; Infotec that, bit by bit, made it so difficult to undertake a single transaction in French that soon schoolchildren were speaking only English, the global language, the only language that Infotec chose to do business in.

  And the company was only ever welcomed because it brought prosperity, brought safety, security. Infotec could see everything, hear everything; now there was nowhere left to hide. And what made it worse was that Frankie had believed in it. She’d swallowed all the bullshit. And so had her father.

  She looked at Glen, chewing her lip, like she always did when she was under pressure. ‘You really think it didn’t happen? I mean, you really think there are people alive in the UK?’ she asked as she half walked, half ran after him. She didn’t know where they were going; Glen had been incredibly secretive ever since he’d heard from the stranger direct. He’d just announced that they were leaving, that there was somewhere they had to go. Which was fine by her. She didn’t care who the stranger spoke to, didn’t care if Glen made arrangements without including her.

  No skin off her nose at all.

  ‘Infotec are hiding something and we’re going to find out what,’ he replied. ‘Come on. It’s going to start getting light soon. We have to hurry.’

  ‘Yeah, but where are we hurrying to?’ Frankie asked with a sigh. ‘Where exactly are we going?’

  ‘To retrieve something,’ Glen said, then he stopped as a message flashed in front of his eyes.

  ‘Okay, she’s there,’ he said. ‘She’s in the garage.’

  ‘Who?’ Frankie asked, her face creasing with incomprehension. ‘Who’s there?’

  But Glen didn’t answer; he just started to walk again, more quickly this time. Frankie ran to catch up with him; she didn’t want to be behind anymore. Who was in the garage? What the hell was going on?

  They marched across the scrubland, then turned down the path. In front of them were three garages. Glen walked to the last one and reached out to take the handle.

  ‘You wait around the corner. Just in case we’ve been intercepted. If it’s a trap, you run. Don’t try and rescue me, just get the hell out, do you hear?’

  Frankie considered this, then shook her head and folded her arms. ‘I’ll go in,’ she whispered firmly. ‘You wait around the corner. You’re more important than me. People depend on you.’

  Glen shook his head, but Frankie wasn’t taking no for an answer. Pushing him out of the way, she opened the door and stepped inside. Then she frowned, and moved further in. And that’s when she saw her. The girl.

  ‘Okay, I don’t think it’s a trap,’ she called out quietly, then walked towards the back of the garage where a small, bedraggled girl was fast asleep on an old tyre. She looked about fifteen; her hair was long, her skin deathly pale, almost other-worldly. Frankie saw Glen hovering at the door and motioned for him to come in. ‘Is this who we came here to find?’ she asked.

  Glen looked at the girl uncertainly, then they both jumped as her eyes opened and she threw herself at them angrily, pushing Frankie to the ground before tearing out of the garage.

  Frankie and Glen stared at each other incredulously for a second then Frankie pulled herself up from the ground. ‘What the …’ she muttered, then immediately turned to run after the girl. Glen, as always, was two steps ahead of her, already chasing the girl down. Friend or foe, she’d seen them now, and that meant danger. That meant that the girl wasn’t going anywhere.

  21

  Milo stared at the guard standing in front of him. ‘What did you just say?’

  His palms were covered in a light layer of sweat and he tugged at his shirt collar, wiped his forehead. The guard had to be mistaken. Had to have made a mistake.

  ‘I said, sir, that no body was found. We were there within minutes of the incident and there was no body, no sign of anything untoward, sir.’

  Milo felt a wave of nausea wash over him. Too many people were just disappearing. It wasn’t right. ‘You went to the wrong place, then,’ he said.

  ‘No, sir. We checked. Couple of the lads went up, looked over at the right spot. Could see us below. We were in the right place, sir.’

  ‘Then the wind blew the body further away,’ Milo said impatiently. ‘She got stuck in a tree. Something.’

  ‘No, sir. There are no trees, sir. We checked a ten-metre radius. No body, sir. No blood, no nothing.’

  Milo took a deep breath and started to pace around his desk as he thought rapidly. There had to be a body. He saw her jump. Everyone did. She went right off the roof; there was no way she could have clung on and climbed back up, or down, or
some other feat that was only possible in multimedia fiction. She jumped. Ergo, there had to be a body. And he was going to find it. Just like he was going to find Frankie.

  ‘If you are mistaken about this,’ he said, a warning note in his voice. ‘If you are wrong, then …’ He didn’t finish the sentence; he didn’t need to – a veiled threat hung in the air that didn’t need spelling out.

  ‘Yes, sir, I understand, sir, that’s why I checked myself, several times. That’s why we combed the area, sir. There’s no body, sir. Categorically, sir.’

  Milo nodded wearily. He loved his job. Loved it. Loved the prestige, the power, the money, the perks. He was a someone. He was known by everyone on the globe. He was a superstar. But recently … Recently things had got seriously fucked up. Ever since Thomas had brought those weird people back from the UK. From some satellite City that had somehow escaped the nuclear fallout of the Horrors, conducting some weird experiment for Thomas. Milo didn’t know the details; he didn’t want to. He just knew that ever since they’d got here, things had started to go wrong. And he was sick of it. The sooner that crazy loon’s new System was up and running the better.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me.’

  ‘Leave it with you, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Leave it with me.’

  ‘You mean don’t report it further, sir? Don’t file any reports, sir?’

  ‘I mean,’ Milo said, his voice slow but firm, ‘leave it with me. Just walk out of this office and forget about it until I ask you to do otherwise. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. Consider it left, sir.’

  The guard nodded and disappeared. He would stay quiet, Milo thought with relief. Buy him some time before he had to tell Thomas, before he had to face Thomas’s rage, his paranoid, crazed rage that would reverberate around the building and make life miserable for days. Hopefully he wouldn’t ever have to tell Thomas. He’d get to the bottom of the situation before Thomas needed to know.