The Glimpse (19 page)

‘The number he rang is a kind of emergency hotline for 168

people who need to disappear right-frigging-now before they get bagged.’

‘Bagged?’

‘Shot with some insane dose of LSD, so they flip out and the Watch rocks up to take them away, no questions asked.’

Ana stared at Cole, lost for words. ‘Shot by who?’ she said finaly.

‘The Watch, the Wardens . . . it depends.’

‘Fine.’ She was having a hard time making sense of any of this. ‘What’s that got to do with Jasper?’

Cole pushed himself up on both elbows and looked at her hard, as though gauging whether to say something.

For a second time, Ana managed to hold her own. But then a terrible feeling slid through her. She already knew the answer: The morning of Jasper’s abduction, his acquaintance

– the ex-Project member – had suddenly gone nuts in the street and the Psych Watch had turned up in record time, as though they’d been waiting for it to happen. He’d been
bagged
. Had Jasper thought he was next?

‘Jasper was involved in something big,’ Cole said. ‘A couple of months back, I heard a guy from your Community had got his hands on information that proved the DNA Pure tests were a scam.’

Ana baulked like a horse reaching a ten-foot-high jump.

‘What guy?’ she said. But again she knew the answer.

‘What guy?’ she said. But again she knew the answer.

She knew he meant Jasper.

Cole just looked at her.

‘My father was seminal in developing those tests,’ she said. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’

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Cole’s eyes narrowed as though he didn’t understand, as though he was trying to figure out what she meant.

‘You expect me to believe that the boy I’m bound to has been plotting to discredit my father and the whole mental health system that’s holding this country together?’

‘Listen, I . . .’ The concern in his voice made everything worse.

She sprang to her feet, fury making her wild and invin-cible. He was obviously trying to manipulate her, confuse her. Perhaps this was one of the Enlightenment Project’s brainwashing techniques – pretend to be caring and kind to a new recruit and then make them believe they’d been betrayed by the people they cared about most. She might stil be Jasper’s insurance policy, but let Cole try to stop her from leaving. Then he’d see how submissive and fragile she realy was.

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15

Lies

Ana stormed down the side of the barge to the stern. She faltered at the dark four-foot gap where Rachel had leapt faltered at the dark four-foot gap where Rachel had leapt ashore. Behind her, something knocked the wheelhouse.

She spun about and saw Cole with the gangplank. He gently brushed her to one side and laid the plank across from
Enkidu
to the shore.

In the semi-darkness, he lifted his palm to her. For a moment, she thought he was offering her the chance to change her mind – to stay with him – but when she looked down she saw an ID stick glinting in the faint light from the porthole. Her ID stick. He’d retrieved it from Nate. He was letting her go.

She snatched the ID and marched over the plank. On the towpath, she strained to see the lay of the bank where they’d come down earlier. She sidled towards the slope of grass. Behind her, footsteps brushed the path. She scrambled for purchase on the incline. Her pumps slipped and slid. Something sharp scratched her right hand. She cried out and let go, skidding back down to where Cole’s six-foot silhouette waited. Mud soaked through her skirt and tights.

Cole took a step forwards.

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‘Stay away from me,’ she shouted.

He stopped.

‘Where’s Jasper? What have you done to him?’ A sob split her chest. The pressure and confusion of the day descended on her. ‘Were you folowing me to get to him?’

‘I knew Jasper was in trouble,’ Cole said. ‘He was being closely watched by the Wardens. I slipped him a piece of paper with the hotline telephone number. I was trying to help. When I saw you with him, I recognised you from the Academy. You got up to go after him and I folowed to make sure you were OK.’

Ana shook her head. No, Cole was the bad guy. He was mixing things up so that she’d trust him.

‘Why didn’t you folow Jasper to make sure
he
was OK?’

‘There was nothing more I could do for him. I was more concerned about you.’ The tenderness in Cole’s voice confused her. Curious, she looked at him and sensed he was teling the truth.

She slumped down on the edge of the muddy slope, groaned and wrapped her hands over her head. She felt like an idiot. No wonder he found her so amusing.

Cole squatted down beside her. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you
were
in court today because you thought I was involved in Jasper’s abduction?’

‘No, not at first,’ she sniffed. ‘At first I thought the Enlightenment Project had taken him. I thought because you’re an ex-member you could help me find out where they were holding him. But when I saw you’re paying Cox’s phone bils and folowing me . . .’ She trailed off.

172

‘But if you didn’t know about Jasper’s phone cal to the hotline number before today, why were you looking for hotline number before today, why were you looking for me?’

‘I knew the day Jasper disappeared he’d met an ex-Project member. He’d talked about it when he told me he was in trouble. And I knew the Wardens were searching for someone caled “Enkidu”. It al led to you.’

Cole let out a huff of annoyance. ‘Jasper wasn’t very careful. No wonder they pre-empted him.’

Ana rubbed her face with the sleeve of his wooly jumper.

‘They? They who?’ she said.

‘Whoever knew what he’d got his hands on.’

‘That’s mad. How could the Pure tests be fake?’

‘Have you heard of the Human Genome Project?’

Ana shook her head.

‘The Human Genome Project,’ he said, ‘was an international research effort to map al the genes that make up the genetic blueprint for a human being. It was completed in 2003. Afterwards, there was a huge race in the global scientific community to be the first to use this information to isolate gene patterns responsible for different diseases.

Personalised preventive health care was a pharmaceutical’s wet dream. Imagine being able to provide medication before something even went wrong with a person.

‘Then came the Colapse and the Global Depression.

‘Then came the Colapse and the Global Depression.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, their jobs, the Petrol Wars started, and al over the world things were faling apart. You said your father helped develop the Pure test?’

She nodded. ‘My father’s Ashby Barber.’

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Cole’s eyebrows shot up. But his surprise was quickly usurped by understanding.

‘There was al that stuff a couple of years ago about Jasper binding with Ashby Barber’s daughter, Ariana,’

he said. ‘I didn’t realise. It didn’t register.’

Ana shrugged. If Cole had stepped in at the last minute to try and help Jasper, there was no reason why he should know.

‘Wel,’ he continued, ‘your father’s work and everything to do with the Pure test research was funded by one of Europe’s largest pharmaceuticals at a time when the average person had lost any sense of security or hope for the future.’

‘Novastra,’ Ana muttered.

‘Exactly. They saw an opportunity. They capitalised on it. But rumours have always flown about that they never found any of the mutated-gene patterns that could be considered responsible for the Big3, let alone any of the others.

It didn’t stop them. They had an idea, and they weren’t about to give it up.’

about to give it up.’

‘But how could they fake something so big?’

‘“The bigger the lie, the more people believe it.” Hitler’s right-hand man said that. It’s happened al through history.

Human sacrifices, witch hunts, Nazis.’

Ana lay back and crossed her arms over her chest. Mud slipped around her neck, and up into her hair.

Could it al realy be a lie? Was that why her father had been so determined she cheat the system? Was that why he’d forbidden her to take any preventative medication?

Because of the Pure test she’d spent nearly three years squeezing every irrational thought out of herself, crushing 174

her emotions into a wel-contained holow where her heart should have been.

And al this time, Jasper had believed there was nothing wrong with her and never said a word. Had he been using her to get to her father?

‘Ariana?’ Cole’s voice drifted through her awareness.

But she might as wel have been at the bottom of a cave ful of water, and he might as wel have been caling to her through a crack in the earth high, high above. ‘Are you al right?’

She didn’t bother to answer. If she just lay there, in time her body would wear a hole in the ground, decay, disinteg-rate, meld with the earth.

disinteg-rate, meld with the earth.

‘Ariana?’

She felt light-headed. In the starlit blackness of her mind, someone else spoke, as clearly as if they stood in the same room.

‘You shouldn’t trust him.’

Tamsin.

They were sitting in the school theatre, legs propped up on the backs of their auditorium seats. It was the last week of Ana’s Year 11 summer term, fourteen months before Tamsin vanished. The school variety concert had ended half an hour ago. Pure boys and young men from al of London’s eleven Pure communities were drinking juice in the gym with Ana’s peers. Except for Jasper.

Jasper had left moments after the final song.

‘He told you,’ Tamsin continued, ‘that he’s going to transfer from Oxford to Durham and do the second year of his 175

law degree there – Durham, where it’l be too expensive for him to come back until next summer. He’s avoiding you.’

‘You can’t expect him to get over his brother’s death just like that.’

‘It’s been more than a year, Ana. I’m sorry but either he’s stringing you along, or he’s messed up big time.’

‘Pures can’t get messed up big time.’

‘’Course they can,’ Tamsin said.

‘’Course they can,’ Tamsin said.

‘But they don’t get proper diseases.’

‘In Shakespeare’s day, people went crazy cos of broken hearts and lost loved ones. Why would it be any different now?’

‘Because now we know those things are just triggers. A broken heart can only trigger suicide if you’re a Big3 or bipolar or . . .’

Tamsin shook her head. ‘You should know better than anyone else. How many girls in our class would pass one of the Board’s tests you have to do every month?’

‘They don’t have to.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because even if they have symptoms they don’t have the genetic structure which wil lead to the disease, so it won’t develop.’

Tamsin sighed. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘You’re better off without Jasper.’

‘Better off in the City with al the lunatics stabbing each other and starving to death?’

‘You’re exaggerating.’

‘How would you know?’

Tamsin was quiet then. It made Ana wonder about her 176

best friend. She knew Tamsin sometimes accompanied best friend. She knew Tamsin sometimes accompanied her father into the City to purchase goods for their shop, and once or twice Tamsin had implied she was alowed to wander around alone. But Ana had never understood why anyone would want to.

As it turned out, Tamsin had been right about Jasper.

Ana shouldn’t have trusted him. She’d been naïve; and vain enough to think the handsome, rich, eligible Jasper Taurel would give up his perfect life for her. Except he obviously didn’t think it was perfect.

Ana roused when she realised Cole had picked her up and was carrying her. She pushed him off, insisting she could walk. They boarded
Enkidu
. Relieved to discover there was no one else about, she lay down on a sofa and Cole covered her with blankets.

As much as Ana didn’t want them to, al the pieces fitted Cole’s explanation. Whoever had taken Jasper – the Psych Watch or the Wardens – were probably doing the Board’s bidding to protect the Pure test, and were unlikely to ever let him go. Ana saw herself middle-aged, living a ghost life in the City. Alone. Surrounded by people who acted crazy whether they were or not. Living in fear that one day the Psych Watch would come for her, because she knew what they had done to Jasper.

As she lay there, consumed by misery, a smal part of her registered music. Wooly, holow notes. They fluttered against her like the beating wings of angels. They poured into her, as warm as sunlight.

A wet stick crackled as it caught alight in the glowing furnace. She breathed in wood smoke and gradualy al-177

177

lowed the music to thread her back together, each note like a tiny pricking stitch. When the melody turned darker and more mysterious, she roled on to her front and puled herself along the sofa to peer around the edge.

Cole sat at the upright piano with his back to her. A lantern glimmered on the case top, softly shaping his face and casting shadows over his fingers as they swept up and down the keys.

She examined him. Despite everything that was happening, she couldn’t help wondering how on earth someone raised in foster homes, an orphanage and a secluded sect, could play the piano like that.

The piece guttered like a candle in a draught, notes flickering unsteadily. A final chord struck, lingered and then burnt out. His hands lowered. He sat for a moment, unmoving.

‘You stil there?’ he asked finaly, breaking a strange and powerful silence.

‘Yes.’ She sat up and puled the blankets tightly around her shoulders. She didn’t feel ready to look at him. She was too overcome by the music and embarrassed about her earlier little breakdown.

‘I’ve never heard it before,’ she said. ‘What’s it caled?’

‘“Second Sight”.’

‘“Second Sight”,’ she repeated, committing the name to memory. She knelt up on the sofa and looked over Cole’s shoulder at the sheet music. A strange form of Cole’s shoulder at the sheet music. A strange form of coded notes marked the page. He put down the piano cover and turned so that they were face to face, only a foot between them.