The Fall (10 page)
‘Ed and Blaize can go back,’ Nate said. ‘But Rach and I are coming with.’
‘Listen,’ Seton replied. ‘The fewer people who know where they are, the better.’
‘Better for who?’
‘Nate,’ Cole croaked. ‘You need to go back and take care of Simone and Rafferty. They’ll be evacuating the Project tomorrow.’ Nate stuck his head in the car and clasped Cole’s uninjured shoulder. Cole’s eyes struggled open, as if treacle held his lashes together. The brothers looked at each other. ‘Send me a message through the encoded mailbox we set up,’ Cole said. Nate nodded hard, teeth gritted. Rachel stared at Ana and Cole through the open door.
Blaize leaned up against Ana’s window. ‘You should ask them about the Writings,’ he said.
She frowned, but before anyone could say anything more, Seton put the car into gear, doors slammed, and they were off.
‘We’re headed for The Wetlands,’ Seton told her. ‘Select the map page on my multiface. I’ve already programmed it in. And here . . .’ He passed her Cole’s interface. ‘While you’re navigating, keep us well out of the way of the Wardens and the Psych Watch.’
The Wetlands was an abandoned nature reserve across a hundred acres of waterlogged land. They dumped the car and navigated the marsh slowly, Ana and Seton supporting Cole. After twenty minutes, they reached a dark wood and brick observatory tower. A padlock hung across the tower’s only entrance. Seton scouted for a key hidden on a ledge of a ground floor window. He unlocked the padlock and pushed back one of the stiff wooden doors. Inside, the tower smelt rotten. A dank chill held in the air.
Cole rested against the doorway. Ana followed Seton inside. She still carried his interface on a chain around her neck. Now she switched it on and selected an ambient-light mode.
‘Only two people know about this place,’ Seton said, crouching down at the far end of the tower room and yanking up a floor plank. ‘Me, and a man I pay to stop by every six months, check the alarm system and let me know if there are squatters.’ Ana switched the interface from ambient to directional light. Seton set aside the plank and began working on the next one along. She tilted the light into the hole. A plastic container the size of a suitcase sat in the dirt and dust. Seton removed two more planks, then reached beneath the floorboards and popped the clips on the container.
‘From the third floor,’ he said, lifting back the cover, ‘you’ve got a good visual for a mile all around the tower. Anyone crossing the Wetlands will set off one of the dozens of sensor alarms out there. You’ll have plenty of warning.’
On top of the case lay a bedroll and sleeping bag sealed in tight plastic wrapping. Seton passed them out to Ana. Beneath the bedding was a stack of food cans, a portable stove, matches and a battery-powered torch.
‘There’s enough here to last one person a week,’ he said. ‘I’ll get word to my contact and ask him to bring out supplies in a few days.’
‘How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Depends on what you’re planning on doing next. Cole could do with some rest. And now we know how keen your father is to get back the disc, we can be fairly sure the recording’s genuine. I’m going to see the guy I’ve got data analysing it tonight. I expect it’ll hit the net in the next twenty-four hours. Once that happens there’s every chance that the Board will make locating the perpetrator a top priority.’
‘So they figure out it was me, or they believe it’s Cole. Either way they’ll be looking for us.’
‘I expect so. You should probably prepare to spend a month or two here. Until we find you somewhere more permanent.’
Ana felt her face slacken.
A month or two? More permanent?
‘We’re not going to spend the rest of our lives hiding.’
‘It’s not forever,’ Seton said. He put a firm hand on her shoulder. ‘What you’ve done, it’s more than anyone’s been able to do since the Board’s inception. It’ll bring about change. But it could be slow. And right now you two just need to stay out of the way. You’ve both done more than anyone could have asked. Stay safe. Wait it out.’
Ana chewed the inside of her lip. He made sense but she couldn’t shake the frustration. ‘What if there’s a complication with his wound?’
‘Keep it clean and change the bandage once a day.’
Seton crossed the octagonal tower back to the door and began checking the alarm system. After a moment, Ana set about organising their things. She rolled out the mat and sleeping bag from the reserves under the floor. Then she went over to Cole who was half-dozing, gently shook him awake and helped him over to the bedding. A groan escaped his lips as he lay down. She stroked a hand through his hair. He looked pale and tired but he’d stopped sweating so much.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘What, for getting stabbed?’ she answered, gently teasing.
‘For leaving you to sort all this out with Seton.’
‘It’s fine.’ She drew her fingers through his hair again and kissed him. Smiling, he closed his eyes. Once he was sleeping, she returned to Seton near the door.
‘If it goes off it only bleeps,’ Seton said, gesturing to the alarm. ‘I rigged it so there wasn’t too much noise attracting attention.’
Ana leaned back against the wall and watched the Project’s Head of Logistics as he finished reprogramming it. ‘So what did Blaize mean, “ask you about the Writings”?’
‘Considering your upbringing, I’m not sure it’s really something we should get into.’
‘Try me.’
‘As a parting gift to those who were interested in his spiritual teachings, the shaman Tengeri wrote a poem called ‘The Hymn of Ends and Beginnings’. Many in the Project believe it is prophetic and that when it talks of the Fall, it is referring to the end of the Pure system – the tests, the Board, the population split.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘In the poem an angel appears in the Project under a full moon and signals the ‘Beginning of the End.’
‘Oh.’ She had entered the Project wearing a moon necklace. And Cole had given the council Jasper’s star pendant with the disc – a recording they anticipated would prove the Pure test was corrupt. ‘Then what happens?’
Seton turned back to the alarm system, fiddled about. ‘If you want, I could try and get you a copy of it,’ he said.
She watched him work for a minute. He was avoiding the question. He probably thought her upbringing among the Pures would make her instinctively dismissive. Faith, religion, God, omens, mysticism – she’d been taught that the need for these sorts of things were all signs of psychological imbalance. But she didn’t believe it was that simple. Not since Cole’s Glimpse had come true. Not since the night she’d confronted her father and a strange vibration had swept through her whole being, as though she were part of something bigger that had tuned her to its strength, its power, its wholeness.
‘The power of faith is a mysterious thing,’ Seton said, almost as though he’d heard her thoughts. He turned to her. ‘In many ways, it is belief that makes anything possible.’
‘Belief?’
‘A man believes his actions can change the world, he will do something. Another man believes that there is nothing he could ever do that would make any difference, he will do nothing; he will not even try. Belief . . .’
‘But does the power of this faith come from inside or outside?’
A look of surprise crossed Seton’s face. ‘Perhaps it is limiting to think of these places as entirely separate,’ he said. He paused as though considering whether to go on. ‘There are also those in the Project who think Tengeri’s poem isn’t so much prophetic, but more of a guide. Like a blazened path through the woods leading towards one possible, desirable future.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think we each have a destiny, but it is up to us to fulfil it.’ He handed Ana Cole’s interface and took back his own.
Ten minutes later, she watched him weave his way back across the Wetlands, avoiding the sensors, the ambient light from his interface a shimmering bubble leading the way in front of him. Halfway back to the mainland he turned and raised a hand at her. She waved back.
Cole once said the future wasn’t written. But was destiny like potential?
she wondered.
Realised only when a person pushed themselves to attain it?
*
Perhaps it was the exhaustion, or lying tucked up in Cole’s sleeping bag with the comforting weight of him beside her, but Ana slept for eight hours straight. No nightmares. No black zombie eyes. No Three Mills. She woke to find Cole boiling marshland water on the portable stove for their instant coffee. By the looks of things he’d already sorted out their food supplies, dividing them up into meals and days. Despite his apparent recovery, she insisted on checking his wounds. To her relief the knife cut seemed to be healing well and Cole’s knee, though still swollen, looked better than it had done last night. He assured her that it was just all the walking that had made it so painful. It was merely bruised and needed rest.
They drank watery coffee and split a packet of peanuts for breakfast. Ana moved their bedding up to the first floor and did a quick search of the tower, insisting Cole didn’t climb the stairs. On each of the three levels, wooden benches circled the central staircase. There were toilets, but they were unusable as there was no running water. Apart from the supplies they’d brought and the stash under the floorboards the tower contained nothing useful. Not even an old medical kit or a firehose lying around.
Every two hours they switched on Cole’s interface with a scrambler locked in, and checked the news. Cole had also held onto Warden Dombrant’s interface, which he’d removed the tracer from and left switched off so they couldn’t be tracked.
Throughout the day they shared stories about the lives they’d lived long before they met. Cole wanted to know what it was like for Ana growing up in the countryside before she moved to the Community; what her earliest memory was; who taught her to play the piano; and how she discovered she wasn’t Pure. Ana asked him about his foster homes; how he’d managed to get himself and Nate out of the orphanage; how he’d ended up in the Project.
They boiled half the potatoes and carrots that Lila had packed in a pan over the cooking stove for lunch. After Cole had poured out two bowls, he sat down opposite Ana on the sleeping bag. He couldn’t cross his legs because of the bruising, but stretched them out either side of her, their eyes meeting over steaming soup.
‘Mmm,’ she said, tasting her lunch. ‘He can cook!’
He laughed. ‘Totally.’
‘How long do you think the fuel will last?’
‘A good week if we use it sparingly.’
‘Seton was talking about us being here for a month or more.’
Cole grinned. ‘Sounds good to me.’ She smiled back. At least a month hiding here just the two of them: there would be no Nate accusing her of leading his brother into trouble, no ex-girlfriend to give her dirty looks and make her feel paranoid, no Minister Clemence or Lila to talk about destiny and angels and war. She would have Cole all to herself.
She gestured to her neck, mirroring where he had his tattoo: an empty black square. ‘Did it hurt?’
‘Too right it did.’
‘Why a square?’
‘I was fifteen – me, Nate and Rachel had a day off. Our first day out in the City, all together. It was her birthday. She dragged us all into the tattoo place, wanted us all to get marked. Kind of like a pact, us against the outside world. I liked the square.’
Ana nodded. Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to get away from Nate and Rachel, after all. ‘Never noticed either of theirs,’ she said.
‘Rach’s is on her leg and Nate’s is on his arm.’ He flexed his shoulders. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Jasper.’
‘You want to know about Jasper?’
‘Yup.’
Nerves tickled her stomach. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘Well . . .’ Ana wriggled to get comfortable. ‘I moved to the Community when I was eleven and every year his parents had this big Christmas party. I used to see him there once a year, but we didn’t have much to do with each other until he sent me a binding invitation. And even then, Pure girls and guys don’t hang out together until they’re actually bound.’
She squeezed her hands around her hot bowl, remembering how she’d anticipated the Taurell’s Christmas party just before her fifteenth birthday with lovesick longing. How she had decided she wouldn’t leave the party until she had talked to Jasper, and found him sitting on the servant stairs at the back of the house with a girl from the year above her at school, their hands fastened together with the binding scarf. She’d been devastated. Before Cole, Jasper was the only boy she’d ever cared for.
‘So you always really liked him?’ Cole prompted.
‘Yes.’ She looked up. It was hard to decipher what Cole thought about that. ‘I wouldn’t have let Jasper go through with the binding, given up so much for me, if I didn’t.’
Cole smiled, but a muscle in his eye twitched. Perhaps talking about their exes wasn’t a good idea. She certainly didn’t want to know the ins and outs of his relationship with Rachel.
‘Didn’t Jasper try anything . . . you know, when you went back to him after the joining?’
A memory leapt into Ana’s head, one she didn’t want to think about it, especially not in front of Cole. She ducked her head and studied her soup. In her mind’s eye, she was back in the Taurell mansion, her fourth night after the joining. She’d jolted awake to the sounds of Jasper’s howling and shouting and had crept down to the hall to his room. She’d woken him gently, the way she’d done every night since she’d been there. He opened his eyes wide, reality taking a moment to sink in. His choked breathing softened. The shaking in his hands began to lessen.
‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ he’d asked. She shrugged. He reached out and twisted a strand of her hair between his fingers. She wanted to move away but she felt guilty. Each morning when the Board came to see how she was ‘adjusting’ she would pretend that she and Jasper were a couple. Jasper played along, no questions asked. As soon as the Board left, she retreated into her piano playing or disappeared to the pool for a couple of hours. These night-time visits were the only time she sought out Jasper without an ulterior motive. And so far he’d made no demands.
