Paradigm (9781909490406) (8 page)

‘I'm sorry,' she whispered, eyes filling with tears. Alice swallowed deeply and ran without stopping to look in the other bedroom. She didn't stop moving until she was back in the first flat with the jagged window.

P
utting
what she had found in the basket, Alice watched out of the window as Hutchinson pulled it up carefully, steadying it against the raw breeze that brought with it the overwhelming stench of a city in decay. While he unpacked the basket she thought, for a moment, that he wasn't going to send it back down for her and that she was going to have to stay there on level eight with the couple in one flat and the dog in the other. For the briefest of moments, in the quiet of the afternoon, Alice was terrified of being alone.

‘Major Hutchinson,' she shouted. ‘Sir, where are you?' But there was no answer and the only sound was a cold wind whipping around the tower. When the basket returned, relief overwhelmed her and she anchored it with one hand, climbing in with the other, levering her legs with the sway of the wind.

‘Thank you,' she said quietly. ‘Thank you.'

‘Well done, private,' said Hutchinson as he hauled her through the window. ‘Mission one complete. But this lot won't last us long. Tomorrow, we'll go down to level seven.'

Their tea was a relative banquet—tinned peaches and peas with a small glug of canned cream.

‘Fit for a king,' said Hutchinson, eyeing the bottle of rum she'd stolen from the bony fingers of a dead man. ‘Fit for a king.'

L
ess than an hour later
, the rain turned to hail. Big, thumping chunks of ice that battered the wood boards across the windows that Hutchinson had strengthened after they had eaten. The flat started to look like a prison.

‘Those hailstones were vicious,' he said, stepping in from the balcony. ‘And it looked like it was going to be a nice day today.' He took a large swig of the rum. His eyes were bloodshot and wild looking.

Alice shook her head and sat down on the sofa. ‘I'm tired,' she said and curled up with the blanket around her.

‘We'll need to change your bandage before you go to sleep,' he said and stripped the blanket from her legs. He picked up the scissors and started shredding the rest of the sheet on the floor.

‘I don't want to,' she said, ‘sir.'

‘Don't disobey me,' he said in an angry voice. ‘You will sleep when I tell you to.'

Alice scowled. ‘It's my house,' she said under her breath.

Hutchinson's eyes bubbled and a thick drool of spit gathered at the corner of his mouth. His fabric-ripping became more frantic and exuberant.

‘Your house?' he shouted. ‘This is a situation of war. And in situations of war there are often things that we don't want to do, but we do them anyway.' He grabbed a length of sheeting and turned it into a makeshift gag. Alice kicked and screamed as he wound it around her head, tying it in a tight knot. Then he grabbed her knee and massaged the cut with his thumb. She tried to scream again but it got lost in the cloth.

‘But we have to be brave,' he said. ‘Now hold still.' As Hutchinson moved over her undoing his belt, Alice pushed and squirmed but he had her pinned down, stinking of rum and peaches, traces of cream on his face whiskers like a vicious tiger.

‘You're my little girl now,' he said and reached for the rum, holding Alice with three bony fingers.

‘Get off me,' she screamed from under the gag and he laughed: a deep, throaty laugh that chilled her bones to the core.

‘You're your mother's daughter, aren't you?' he said and he leaned slightly off balance to swig the drink. It was enough. In the splintering of a second, Alice reached down towards the carpet for something, anything to beat off Hutchinson. Her fingers found the blunt, black metal scissors that her mother had used in making clothes for her when she was a little girl, scissors that were older than her mother, belonging to her grandmother and carefully carried from house to house, holding a legacy of history in their dull metal blades.

With everything she had left in her, Alice reached around and plunged them into Hutchinson's side, just below the armpit, driving them through the thin muscle until they hit bone. He didn't scream or shout but instead he wheezed out a long, monotone growl. It was terrifyingly easy, frighteningly simple.

Then she pulled the scissors out and pushed them back in again until his blood dripped over her and he slumped, breathing shallowly on top of her.

‘Help,' he mouthed. ‘Help me.'

Using the scissors as leverage she pushed him off onto the floor. It wasn't as physically hard as she thought it might have been—had she considered it in advance—but the disgust of his filthy, ugly body was enough. She stuck the scissors into his heart one more time and left them there, pointing outwards like a sun dial as the evening crept into twilight.

‘Now you see it, now you don't,' said Alice, her hands shaking and numb. Hutchinson's chest rose and fell and then rose again. And then he, and everything around him, fell silent.

Alice stood by a crack in the wood covering of the balcony and breathed in deeply. Everything was cold and dark with just the lap of water outside. She watched as the pieces of wood and toys and trash and shadows of dead cats bobbed up and down around the fifth floor of the tower block. And, once again, she was alone.

I
t was
three days after the fight with Hutchinson that they rescued her. Rats had eaten their way through the bottom of the door and had started nibbling at anything they could find on the floor. She hauled the remaining provisions upstairs and she slept on top of the wardrobe in her old room with the mattress dragged alongside in case she fell down in the night. His blood had pooled on the carpet and, while she wasn't entirely sure he was dead, she was absolutely positive he would not survive.

On the second day after she had stabbed him, her leg felt a lot better and she went up to the roof to get some water. Running low on food, she tried going down the stairs towards the ninth floor. Just like he had said, the ninth floor was empty and there was a jumbled barricade of furniture separating the two floors. But it hadn't been put up to stop people going down. It had been built to stop people coming up. He'd barricaded himself in, thought Alice. He had barricaded himself in. Crazy, insane old man. As horrible as it all was, she knew she had done the right thing. But she would draw the line at eating him, however hungry she got.

W
hen she heard
them shouting on a loudhailer from the boat, she thought it sounded like a call to prayer; musical and rhythmic and beautiful. It was late afternoon and the rain had fizzled into a soft, sheeted blur that you could stand outside in without getting bruised.

‘I'm here,' she shouted from the hole in her mother's bedroom window where the pigeon had flown through, and she held up the bloody bedspread out into the water to make sure they knew she was real. A real, live person.

‘Is there anybody with you?' a man shouted.

‘No,' called back Alice. ‘I'm all alone.'

‘Is there anything you can tie a rope to?' the man said. ‘We have to hurry, the rain is coming soon.' Alice grabbed the rope that had the basket attached and fixed it to the leg of the bed. Then she smashed through the window, just like Hutchinson had shown her, and lowered the rope as low as she could. She made it almost as far as the seventh floor. The man in the boat had an inflatable mattress pulled behind the boat and, when she reached the end of the rope lowered from the window, Alice jumped, landing squarely in the middle of the mattress with a dull bounce. They hauled her in and sat her on the boat.

T
he man
who was dressed in a white plastic spacesuit came over to her.

‘Was there anyone else in there?' he said.

Alice looked up at him and then back towards the block of flats.

‘No,' she said, and then added truthfully, ‘no one who could be saved.'

She shared the last boat that went out looking for survivors with two young boys and a middle-aged woman who fussed over her in the boat.

‘I'm okay,' she said and held her mouth in a completely straight line.

‘You don't need to worry anymore,' said the woman. ‘You're safe now.' Alice nodded and realised that the woman was saying it more to reassure herself than anyone else.

T
he last thing
that Alice remembered before the boat pulled up to the compound was the cat. It floated past the boat, tail high in the air. It was white with black spots—or black with white spots, Alice couldn't exactly remember. It swirled around and got tangled up with the leaves and twigs that had been scraped from the pavements and bumped up and down in the swell. She watched until it disappeared past the boat and out of sight. And then, she really and truly and properly began to cry. Her tears seeped down her cheeks and into the well of the boat, between the dirty shoes of the two boys and underneath the warped wooden seat that the woman sat on. She closed her eyes and let the tears run down her face until there was nothing more left to come.

W
hen she awoke
it was dark, and thick rain had made the deep water a dark grey-brown. The tops of buildings rose up out of the water like swan necks; others on small shallow islands lingered in the distance.

‘Where are we going?' said Alice.

One of the women in the waterproof suits who had been steering the boat pointed into the distance towards a small funnel that loomed just above the line of the water.

‘What's that?' said Alice.

‘It's the chute to Paradigm Industries Facility,' said the woman. ‘You'll be safe there.'

Alice wasn't sure what safe was anymore but the woman gave her two bread rolls containing lukewarm hot dogs that Alice thought were the sweetest and best thing in the world. But they weren't like anything she'd ever tasted before.

‘These don't taste like hotdogs,' she said.

‘That's because they're not,' said the woman and steered the course of the boat closer to the chimney stack of the building that stuck out of the water.

W
hen they reached
the docking station, they were pushed into the chute that landed on a platform from which they entered the facility through a special door in the wall. Alice remembered being pushed into the chute the most; it was round and made of grey metal the colour of a whale. As she put her legs into the slide, she looked back quickly at the black night and the thick, lapping water and the moon half-covered with thick cloud.

Alice remembered that blackness so clearly. It loomed and blossomed inside her head, sometimes pinpricked with stars and other times lit by the pale moon. Alice remembered it every single day—because it was the last time she saw the sky for five whole years.

W
hen Carter woke
the next morning, he could still feel a dull throb inside his head and an ugly aching in his lower legs. As he opened his eyes, he could see the substantial bulk of Alexis casting a grey shadow across his bed, darkening the room to the quality of twilight—although Carter could just make out the dawn light behind the window covers.

‘I have just under an hour to start work. You have your orientation with the Controller General. That means we leave in ten minutes to get a Transporter from Proclamation Plaza. Welcome back.' Alexis smirked and threw a set of clean clothes onto the bed then left the room. As he sat up, Carter realised that the aching in his legs was nothing compared to the loneliness he felt in that moment.

Outside the window, there was the regular rhythm of feet stomping their way to work or wherever it was they went at that time in the morning; Carter wasn't sure he cared. Peeling back the window covers he could see a thin, wispy mist that hung in the air as the cold yellow sun hoisted itself above the horizon. He tested his legs on the floor, stretching them before putting his full weight on them. From downstairs he could hear the shuffle of rushed activity and he picked up the fresh clothes from the bed. They were medium-duty workwear, functional and second-hand, in the same dark colour Alexis has been wearing last night. They looked several sizes too big for him.

‘Are you ready?' came Alexis's voice up the stairs. Carter stood naked in the middle of the room and glanced once more at the overalls.

‘Almost,' he said and pulled on the trousers that hung off him like food sacks. He wrapped around the waistband and folded up the bottoms.

‘We leave now,' said Alexis and opened the front door. Carter took the stairs two at a time and, more by luck than design, landed at the bottom upright and ready to go. Outside as they joined the ranks, the air was crisp and cool and the low hum of conversation was melodic as the tide of workers swept out onto Unity Square and down the main street towards the central Transportation station. It reminded him of the morning he went away.

But this time, instead of their own clothes, every single one of them wore identical work suits to the one that had been provided to Carter.

‘New uniform?' he asked Alexis who was already steps ahead of him. ‘We used to all wear our own clothes.'

‘This is what the adults wear now,' Alexis responded. Then he looked squarely at Carter and added, ‘You are an adult, aren't you?' His eyes narrowed before he dropped his glance and weaved back between the crowds as far ahead of Carter as he could get.

T
o access
the main platform at Proclamation Plaza, the crowd had to pass through a wide, low tunnel that carried the magnets above them. In the main tunnel, smaller trunk tunnels curled off in different directions, headed for Transporter platforms to different sections of the Community. Determined not to lose either his trousers or Alexis, Carter followed, his eyes tracking the distance between himself and Alexis, and Alexis and the tunnel. One soft surge of the crowd behind him closed the gap between all three and Carter found himself channelled into a tunnel with his trousers around his knees.

‘Get yourself a belt and a sense of direction,' said Alexis as they surfed up the tunnel with the others towards the platform. ‘Tomorrow, Carter Warren, you're on your own.'

‘I'll be glad of that,' said Carter, sick of Ackerman's rudeness. ‘But for now, you can lead the way.'

Alexis peeled himself away from the screen.

‘I'll take you to the orientation room and then I have to work,' he said. ‘And when you're done for the day just head for the Transporter terminal, it will take you back to Proclamation Plaza. The Controller will introduce you to Lilith McDermott. She's your mentor.'

Then he popped a block of microsnack in his mouth and turned his face back to the FreeScreen. After that, no further conversation passed between them for the remainder of the journey.

W
ithout any windows
Carter couldn't be absolutely sure whether the Transporter was above or below ground for the majority of the time. Although for the last ten minutes when the air was filled with the same stale stillness that he had felt on his ascent from the Catacombs, he was fairly sure that they were going deeper underground. There were two stops before his—the first was Power, the second, Manufacturing. At each stop, about a third of the passengers left and when the doors slid open to reveal the entrance to the Food Plant, for the second time in less than twelve hours, Carter was the last to leave the Transporter. Alexis led the way through a series of corridors until they reached a room marked Orientation.

‘I'll be fine from here,' said Carter. Alexis nodded grumpily and disappeared down the tangled maze of tunnels. As he lifted his arm to knock, the door slid gracefully open.

‘Carter Warren, so nice of you to join us.'

It was the same voice that he had heard the night before—the voice of Anaya Chess.

‘Yes, Controller,' he said, and watched as his name was scored off automatically on a large electronic board at the front of the room. There were six places, two others crossed off and three that remained blank.

‘Take your seats,' said Chess. ‘We're about to start your Contender orientation.'

The room was dim and Carter just about made his way to one of the benches that were laid out in rows running from the door through which he had entered to the other side of the room. In front of each bench was a thin table with a screen embedded in it. The two others on the bench moved along to accommodate him. At the far end, he recognised one boy who had been on the first Transporter with him. Then next to him sat the girl, Elizabet. All the other benches were empty. The Controller stepped out from behind a screen at the front of the room, her thin hair braided into tight cords around her head. It pulled back her skin, making her seem her twenty seven or so years, rather than the much older-looking woman who had spoken underground.

‘Good morning and welcome,' she said. ‘As you know, my name is Anaya Chess. For all three of you, this will be your first full day back in the Community and the first for several years to actively contribute to our society. There are three additional Contenders who are not with us today—depending on how you fare over the next week will depend on whether they become part of this process too.'

She glanced around at the walls, but Carter could see nothing there.

‘As you know, you have been chosen because of your skills, knowledge and the leadership you have shown as young adults during your time in the Community. Each of you has demonstrated aptitude for learning significant levels above your peers and a keen interest in the areas important for sustaining life within our Community. You are strong, determined, brave and smart—but only one of you will make Controller General. For your information, you are the youngest group of Contenders—new blood, so to speak.'

As Chess broke off to look at each of the three in the room, Carter also took the opportunity. There was the boy from the Transporter—he was short and stubby-looking with deep brown eyes and flawless dark skin, and Elizabet, a spindly yellow-haired girl who appeared even younger than he did. Between the three of them, they couldn't have looked more different. Carter guessed that personality-wise and politically, they were probably complete triangular opposites too; that was how it always worked.

‘Over the next week you will each have time to work on your Contributions—the one that presents the most impressive and impactful will likely win the day. Those of you who are not selected into the role I shall be vacating will be expected to contribute to the education of our next generation.'

‘Professors,' said Elizabet under her breath and rolled her eyes.

The boy from the Transporter looked across at Carter and eyed both he and Elizabet up and down. The girl twirled a twig-like finger around the hair that fell like fronds in front of her face. She almost looked through Carter.

‘So what's today all about?' she said, looking across the row. ‘I guess this is where the training for the others starts? I've started mine already.'

Chess stepped closer to the row and looked her closely in the eye. ‘Well, then, I expect you will be at your peak during this process,' she said. ‘But your mentor will also guide you.'

‘I don't need a mentor,' said Elizabet. ‘I can do this on my own.'

‘You will all need your mentors,' said Chess dismissively. ‘Any other questions? Carter had plenty but thought better of asking. He shrugged and, before he could say anything, the boy on the end raised his hand. When he spoke, his voice was low and quiet—hardly good for rousing a crowd. Carter had almost written him off.

‘How come there are six Contenders?' he said in a slow, deliberate boom. ‘Even three is unusual. What needs to happen to bring the others into play?'

Chess smiled, although there was a dark cloudiness in her eyes. ‘This is a very unique selection,' she said, ‘unlike any other. Although you may not know it, our Community is on the verge of a very important change and, to do that, we need a different kind of leader, someone very special. I can't say much more than that but I can tell you that you will need to be able to take our Community to the next level of its evolution. You will have to undergo significant personal challenges and,' she lowered her voice a little, ‘I can tell you that this job is the hardest one that has ever existed. The question that we will be looking to answer is—are you brave enough to take that on?'

The room fell silent and Carter found himself nodding, along with the other two Contenders. Chess looked at the girl.

‘Anything else to say, Elizabet?'

The girl looked up.

‘I'm brave enough,' she said. ‘The question is...' she looked across the row at Carter and the boy from the Transporter, ‘...are they?'

Carter smiled, irritated already. ‘Bravery is relative,' he said. ‘So let's get to it.'

‘Well, now, Elizabet,' said Chess. ‘That sounds like a challenge to me.' As she finished her words, the doors clicked open and two Industry officials walked in. Without saying a word, one of the officials handed across a sliver tablet and left the room. Chess flicked her finger across the tablet and smiled.

‘Your initiation begins here,' she said calmly. ‘I have some information for each of you here—a simulation, if you like, and I will need you to plan your responses. Elizabet, you will go first, then Carter and finally, Jenson. This will require you to dig deep into who you are as individuals and what is important to you.'

Elizabet stared straight ahead, her eyes clear and bright. Jenson was looking down at his hands, rubbing his palms together slowly. A divider in the room opened, revealing three work areas, each with the name of the contender above. Carter's booth was coloured yellow and faced Elizabet's directly which was pattered with white birds.

‘Make your way to your work areas and I will visit you individually. In the time you have, I suggest you think about everything you have been in your lives until this point and the new person you will have to be to take on this,
specific
, challenge.'

Carter stood up and pushed back his chair. The others followed and they made their way to the booths—he could see that Jenson was already shaking. He sat down at the console and watched as the screen flashed into action. As the images cleared on the screen, the figures formed into faces he knew—pictures of his parents, his grandfather, his Academy friends. He strained his eyes to see the emotion in the footage that moved quickly in front of his face. He hadn't ever seen them on a screen before and had almost forgotten the brightness of his mother's eyes. She stood, holding hands with his father, staring out at the Barricades and Carter watched as they kissed and walked backwards towards the Community. Then the screen changed and there was a five-year-old Carter being lifted up into the air by his grandfather, staring at the clouds. He almost felt like he remembered that exact moment: the lightness, the blueness—a perfect blend of a day. The film faded and there were his parents again, this time with someone else, someone he knew but couldn't quite place, somewhere close to the Industry headquarters. His mother was crying, holding her swollen stomach, and his father's eyes were red. The footage played over and over again and Carter felt his throat thicken and his own eyes prickle with tears. He looked around at the other Contenders—Elizabet was talking to Chess quietly, her shoulders shaking but her gaze fixed firmly ahead. Carter could hear a mumble of words but couldn't make out the detail, until her final outburst. She pulled at her hair and banged her palm against the screen.

‘I can't!' she screamed. ‘I just can't. It's wrong; it would be the end of everything.'

Jenson kept his head down and Chess smiled over at Carter.

‘Concentrate on your own screen please, Carter Warren,' she said. ‘Your time will come.'

W
hen his time came
, Elizabet was sat in the corner of the room with a wry smile on her face and Jenson had his face in his hands. Carter couldn't see what was on either of their screens but whatever it was, it had been big. That was good. Chess sidled over to his booth.

‘Carter,' she said. ‘I need you to focus on the screen and tell me what you would do in this scenario. And while you are doing this, place your index finger against the scanning chip of your personal card. This will help us to understand your motives.'

‘What do you mean?' said Carter. ‘You can read my mind?'

Chess laughed. ‘No, no, nothing quite like that. But your card makes us feel closer to you, if you know what I mean? And it will guide your on-screen character to make decisions.' She laughed again and took Carter's hand and placed it on his card. The screen rolled into action again and Elizabet began to whimper again in the corner of the room.