‘Even if you see things yourself, how can you know what is behind what you see?’ Ben’s eyes are sceptical.
‘Look, I’ll show you.’ And I tell him the story of the Cumbrian orphanage, the Slated children. Get him to look into the camera at a photo of three smiling young boys with unnatural still expressions, silver glinting at their wrists.
‘But how do you know those are Levos?’
‘It was obvious they were Slated, from the way they were acting. There was no other explanation.’
‘But couldn’t they have been coached to act like that?’
‘Four-year-olds aren’t great actors. And why would anyone bother?’
‘To make Lorders – the government – look bad.’
‘Well, how about this then?’ And I tell him about Phoebe, a girl we both knew from our school, taken and Slated without charge or trial just for making offhand comments about Slateds being spies. About my art teacher, Gianelli, hauled off in front of the whole school when all he did was draw Phoebe and have an impromptu minute of silence for her. About the termination centre, where Lorders killed Slated contract breakers by injection and dumped them in the ground. And about Emily, killed by her Levo just because she was in love, having a baby, and not quite 21 and out of her sentence. I shy away from telling the rest of the story: that I was there with the AGT, attacking the centre.
Ben is quiet, drawn in.
‘There is one more story: do you want to hear it, or have you had enough?’
‘Go ahead; tell me.’
‘There was a friend of yours at school, another Slated: Tori. Her mother got tired of her taking attention, and had her returned to the Lorders. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was taken to that termination centre I mentioned, and saw with her own eyes other…’ My words trail away. ‘What is it? Do you remember Tori?’ I’m stung: he doesn’t remember me, but something crossed his face with the mention of Tori’s name. He’d always said she wasn’t ever his girlfriend, but she loved him, and she was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. It was hard to believe.
‘Of course I don’t remember her,’ he says, but his face is guarded, uncertain. ‘It’s just…hard to hear all these sad tales. Tell me what happened to Tori.’
‘She saw other Slateds killed by injection, dumped in the ground. And then…’ I trail off. Ben’s look of confusion is gone; is there a flash of something else? What is it? ‘Look: these are all things I saw. Some of them you did, too. Don’t you believe me?’
‘I just…’ And then as if a switch is flipped inside, he smiles and takes my hand. ‘Of course I do.’
‘One day I’ll show you Emily’s ring; I hid it in a tree a few miles from home. It’s real. Don’t you see, Ben: it is all their stories that make what we are doing with MIA so important. They are worth risking everything: to make them heard. To make it stop.’
He hesitates, slips his arm across my shoulders and I lean against him, so aware of him, his warmth and closeness, that it is hard to continue to think straight.
Ben points out a tower visible over the roofs of All Souls. ‘See, up there? That is one of the tallest buildings in Oxford. St Mary’s Church Tower. The views are meant to be amazing. I want to go up there with you.’
‘Okay; I’ll ask if we—’
‘No. Keep it as our secret; our special place. Leave it until I’m allowed out without a tail.’
Later, I mull over our conversation, what Ben said, the things he didn’t say flitting behind his eyes. I wonder if this is the kind of stuff Florence meant I should tell them. But that isn’t fair. He’s had his memory taken away; he’s figuring out the world, how it works, what happens in it. He has to ask questions to do that, doesn’t he?
But one point of discomfort niggles inside: he reacted to Tori’s name, I’m sure he did. Of course I never told him the rest of her story. That I was in the AGT as Rain; that Tori escaped from the Lorders, and joined too. And then there was the day that I was followed by Lorders, and Tori captured.
I shudder. I’ll never forget the pure hatred on her face, and it wasn’t just because she thought I betrayed the AGT: she’d found out from Nico I knew Ben was alive, and didn’t tell her. The venom in the words she screamed before being thrown in the back of a Lorder van rings in my ears even now: Traitor! Kyla, or Rain, or whoever you are, I’ll get you. I’ll hunt you down and gut you with my knife.
There is part of me that is relieved the Lorders caught her, that she’ll never get a chance for her revenge. There is another part that is ashamed for thinking so.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
* * *
‘Fancy a road trip?’ Aiden says, grinning, the next morning. ‘No need for crouching in the back of a telephone van this time; I’ve borrowed a rather impressive car.’
‘Sure! Where to?’
‘It’s a surprise. But it’ll be just us and Florence today,’ he says, and I bite back my disappointment: no Ben. Now that the sun is up, last night’s worries seem foolish. Ben couldn’t remember Tori; it doesn’t make sense. I must have been projecting my jealousy, and imagined his reaction. That is all.
The car is plush and powerful, borrowed from an unnamed fellow at the college. An hour later we’re past Oxford and driving through country fields, then pulling down a long lane to a farm.
‘Are we here to see another witness?’ I ask as we get out of the car.
‘Not today,’ Florence says. ‘Come on.’
She knocks once on the door, pulls a key out of her pocket and opens it. She walks in, Aiden and me behind her, and calls out, ‘Hello?’
‘Ah, there you are at last.’ In a doorway to the kitchen stands a man I’m very surprised to see: what is he doing here? I know the face, but the rest has changed.
‘DJ?’
‘Yes, ’tis I.’ He grins. ‘And there you are, Kyla: your hair is some of my best work.’
‘You’ve changed. No more purple?’
‘That is so last week.’ Today the IMET doctor looks more tiger stripes, both hair and eyes. ‘Did you forget your glasses?’
‘I kind of lost them; sorry.’
‘There may be something else you forgot.’
I look guiltily between DJ and Aiden. ‘Oh, no. I was supposed to tell Aiden you wanted to see him! I’m sorry. Was it a problem?’
‘Nice to see how reliable you are,’ Florence snipes.
‘No dramas,’ DJ says. ‘It gave me some time to look into things a bit more before we talked about it. To look into you a bit more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You, my dear, are getting curiouser and curiouser. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, nothing is as appears.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘When we were mucking with your hair genes we had to do a certain amount of looking at your DNA. I’m connected into Lorder systems as much as is necessary, to sort out if people are who they say they are: it is a safety precaution as much as anything else.’
‘And?’
‘At lower system levels, your DNA is marked as unknown. At upper levels it gets more interesting: it is listed as classified.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘Not a clue, but I love a good mystery. And that isn’t all. There is coded protection on files relating to it, and not just any codes: so high up I haven’t been able to bribe anyone to crack them.’
All three of them are looking at me, and I cross my arms. ‘You don’t think I know anything about it.’
‘Of course not. But you know something, don’t you?’ DJ’s eyes are so weird: brown and amber stripes on orange. I can’t look away.
‘Why does this matter, anyhow?’
DJ shrugs. ‘To be honest? It may not matter. But – and it is a big one – it has been my experience that when Lorders try very hard to hide something, it is important to find it. Anything they don’t want known, I want to know.’
Aiden comes to sit next to me, slips my hand in his. ‘Kyla? Do you know anything that might help?’
‘I might.’
‘It’s okay to say anything in front of DJ. He’s one of us.’
I sigh. ‘Look. The main thing I know is that I don’t have a clue who I am. Happy?’
‘Hang on,’ Aiden says. ‘I’m not understanding this. Didn’t you just meet your mother in Keswick? Actually, wouldn’t her DNA be classified then, too – whatever that means?’
‘Aiden, I was going to tell you about this, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to you properly. She’s not my mother.’
‘What? She reported you missing on MIA. All the records show her as your mother.’
I shake my head. ‘Her baby died; I was given to her as a replacement. She doesn’t know where I came from.’
‘Given by who?’ DJ asks.
I swallow. ‘Her mother. Astrid Connor. She’s the JCO for all of England. Stella – that’s my adopted mother,’ I say for the benefit of Florence and DJ, ‘thinks Astrid might have got me from the orphanage there, but doesn’t know for sure.’
‘So that’s why you were nosing about the orphanage,’ Florence says.
I nod.
‘And so the curiosity continues,’ DJ says. ‘If that is true, why would an orphaned baby have classified DNA? And you would have been tested at school, at your medical centre: why didn’t it get registered then?’
‘You tell me.’ I shrug.
‘What else haven’t you told us?’ Florence demands.
‘Sorry I wasn’t bragging about not knowing who my parents are: is that okay? For all I know, I could have been abandoned, unwanted. I couldn’t see how it was important to anybody but me.’
Aiden raises a hand. ‘She’s right, Flo. This is personal stuff. Kyla didn’t have to tell us; it’s her choice.’
Not that I was given much choice today. ‘What do you think it means?’ I ask DJ, who has been very quiet, little wheels of thought spinning behind his eyes. Or is that just the tiger stripes?
‘I don’t know. But something tells me we had better find out.’
I drop my head in my hands. Stella hadn’t sworn me to secrecy about where I came from, but sometimes you don’t have to have said the words ‘I promise’ to know that you’ve broken one. But what about the rest of her secrets? I definitely promised Stella I wouldn’t tell anyone about Astrid being behind the assassinations; without evidence, what use would the information be to MIA, anyhow?
‘Kyla?’ Aiden’s hand is on my shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘There’s more she’s not telling us,’ Florence snaps. ‘What is it?’
Aiden asks the others to leave us alone.
‘What is it, Kyla?’ he asks, once they are gone and the door is shut.
‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I can’t help you if you don’t tell me more than that.’
‘It’s Stella. There is something else she told me – it’s not about who I am, or anything like that, but it’s important. And I promised not to tell.’
‘That’s a tough call. All I can really say is that you should do what you feel is right, in here.’ He pats his stomach. ‘Go with your guts.’ He hesitates. ‘Is not knowing going to hurt anyone?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s ancient history. Besides, there’s no way to back it up: it’s hearsay.’
‘What do you think you should do?’
‘I think I need to think about it some more. How did you get to be so understanding?’
‘Look, I’ll show you.’ And I tell him the story of the Cumbrian orphanage, the Slated children. Get him to look into the camera at a photo of three smiling young boys with unnatural still expressions, silver glinting at their wrists.
‘But how do you know those are Levos?’
‘It was obvious they were Slated, from the way they were acting. There was no other explanation.’
‘But couldn’t they have been coached to act like that?’
‘Four-year-olds aren’t great actors. And why would anyone bother?’
‘To make Lorders – the government – look bad.’
‘Well, how about this then?’ And I tell him about Phoebe, a girl we both knew from our school, taken and Slated without charge or trial just for making offhand comments about Slateds being spies. About my art teacher, Gianelli, hauled off in front of the whole school when all he did was draw Phoebe and have an impromptu minute of silence for her. About the termination centre, where Lorders killed Slated contract breakers by injection and dumped them in the ground. And about Emily, killed by her Levo just because she was in love, having a baby, and not quite 21 and out of her sentence. I shy away from telling the rest of the story: that I was there with the AGT, attacking the centre.
Ben is quiet, drawn in.
‘There is one more story: do you want to hear it, or have you had enough?’
‘Go ahead; tell me.’
‘There was a friend of yours at school, another Slated: Tori. Her mother got tired of her taking attention, and had her returned to the Lorders. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was taken to that termination centre I mentioned, and saw with her own eyes other…’ My words trail away. ‘What is it? Do you remember Tori?’ I’m stung: he doesn’t remember me, but something crossed his face with the mention of Tori’s name. He’d always said she wasn’t ever his girlfriend, but she loved him, and she was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. It was hard to believe.
‘Of course I don’t remember her,’ he says, but his face is guarded, uncertain. ‘It’s just…hard to hear all these sad tales. Tell me what happened to Tori.’
‘She saw other Slateds killed by injection, dumped in the ground. And then…’ I trail off. Ben’s look of confusion is gone; is there a flash of something else? What is it? ‘Look: these are all things I saw. Some of them you did, too. Don’t you believe me?’
‘I just…’ And then as if a switch is flipped inside, he smiles and takes my hand. ‘Of course I do.’
‘One day I’ll show you Emily’s ring; I hid it in a tree a few miles from home. It’s real. Don’t you see, Ben: it is all their stories that make what we are doing with MIA so important. They are worth risking everything: to make them heard. To make it stop.’
He hesitates, slips his arm across my shoulders and I lean against him, so aware of him, his warmth and closeness, that it is hard to continue to think straight.
Ben points out a tower visible over the roofs of All Souls. ‘See, up there? That is one of the tallest buildings in Oxford. St Mary’s Church Tower. The views are meant to be amazing. I want to go up there with you.’
‘Okay; I’ll ask if we—’
‘No. Keep it as our secret; our special place. Leave it until I’m allowed out without a tail.’
Later, I mull over our conversation, what Ben said, the things he didn’t say flitting behind his eyes. I wonder if this is the kind of stuff Florence meant I should tell them. But that isn’t fair. He’s had his memory taken away; he’s figuring out the world, how it works, what happens in it. He has to ask questions to do that, doesn’t he?
But one point of discomfort niggles inside: he reacted to Tori’s name, I’m sure he did. Of course I never told him the rest of her story. That I was in the AGT as Rain; that Tori escaped from the Lorders, and joined too. And then there was the day that I was followed by Lorders, and Tori captured.
I shudder. I’ll never forget the pure hatred on her face, and it wasn’t just because she thought I betrayed the AGT: she’d found out from Nico I knew Ben was alive, and didn’t tell her. The venom in the words she screamed before being thrown in the back of a Lorder van rings in my ears even now: Traitor! Kyla, or Rain, or whoever you are, I’ll get you. I’ll hunt you down and gut you with my knife.
There is part of me that is relieved the Lorders caught her, that she’ll never get a chance for her revenge. There is another part that is ashamed for thinking so.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
* * *
‘Fancy a road trip?’ Aiden says, grinning, the next morning. ‘No need for crouching in the back of a telephone van this time; I’ve borrowed a rather impressive car.’
‘Sure! Where to?’
‘It’s a surprise. But it’ll be just us and Florence today,’ he says, and I bite back my disappointment: no Ben. Now that the sun is up, last night’s worries seem foolish. Ben couldn’t remember Tori; it doesn’t make sense. I must have been projecting my jealousy, and imagined his reaction. That is all.
The car is plush and powerful, borrowed from an unnamed fellow at the college. An hour later we’re past Oxford and driving through country fields, then pulling down a long lane to a farm.
‘Are we here to see another witness?’ I ask as we get out of the car.
‘Not today,’ Florence says. ‘Come on.’
She knocks once on the door, pulls a key out of her pocket and opens it. She walks in, Aiden and me behind her, and calls out, ‘Hello?’
‘Ah, there you are at last.’ In a doorway to the kitchen stands a man I’m very surprised to see: what is he doing here? I know the face, but the rest has changed.
‘DJ?’
‘Yes, ’tis I.’ He grins. ‘And there you are, Kyla: your hair is some of my best work.’
‘You’ve changed. No more purple?’
‘That is so last week.’ Today the IMET doctor looks more tiger stripes, both hair and eyes. ‘Did you forget your glasses?’
‘I kind of lost them; sorry.’
‘There may be something else you forgot.’
I look guiltily between DJ and Aiden. ‘Oh, no. I was supposed to tell Aiden you wanted to see him! I’m sorry. Was it a problem?’
‘Nice to see how reliable you are,’ Florence snipes.
‘No dramas,’ DJ says. ‘It gave me some time to look into things a bit more before we talked about it. To look into you a bit more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You, my dear, are getting curiouser and curiouser. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, nothing is as appears.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘When we were mucking with your hair genes we had to do a certain amount of looking at your DNA. I’m connected into Lorder systems as much as is necessary, to sort out if people are who they say they are: it is a safety precaution as much as anything else.’
‘And?’
‘At lower system levels, your DNA is marked as unknown. At upper levels it gets more interesting: it is listed as classified.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘Not a clue, but I love a good mystery. And that isn’t all. There is coded protection on files relating to it, and not just any codes: so high up I haven’t been able to bribe anyone to crack them.’
All three of them are looking at me, and I cross my arms. ‘You don’t think I know anything about it.’
‘Of course not. But you know something, don’t you?’ DJ’s eyes are so weird: brown and amber stripes on orange. I can’t look away.
‘Why does this matter, anyhow?’
DJ shrugs. ‘To be honest? It may not matter. But – and it is a big one – it has been my experience that when Lorders try very hard to hide something, it is important to find it. Anything they don’t want known, I want to know.’
Aiden comes to sit next to me, slips my hand in his. ‘Kyla? Do you know anything that might help?’
‘I might.’
‘It’s okay to say anything in front of DJ. He’s one of us.’
I sigh. ‘Look. The main thing I know is that I don’t have a clue who I am. Happy?’
‘Hang on,’ Aiden says. ‘I’m not understanding this. Didn’t you just meet your mother in Keswick? Actually, wouldn’t her DNA be classified then, too – whatever that means?’
‘Aiden, I was going to tell you about this, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to you properly. She’s not my mother.’
‘What? She reported you missing on MIA. All the records show her as your mother.’
I shake my head. ‘Her baby died; I was given to her as a replacement. She doesn’t know where I came from.’
‘Given by who?’ DJ asks.
I swallow. ‘Her mother. Astrid Connor. She’s the JCO for all of England. Stella – that’s my adopted mother,’ I say for the benefit of Florence and DJ, ‘thinks Astrid might have got me from the orphanage there, but doesn’t know for sure.’
‘So that’s why you were nosing about the orphanage,’ Florence says.
I nod.
‘And so the curiosity continues,’ DJ says. ‘If that is true, why would an orphaned baby have classified DNA? And you would have been tested at school, at your medical centre: why didn’t it get registered then?’
‘You tell me.’ I shrug.
‘What else haven’t you told us?’ Florence demands.
‘Sorry I wasn’t bragging about not knowing who my parents are: is that okay? For all I know, I could have been abandoned, unwanted. I couldn’t see how it was important to anybody but me.’
Aiden raises a hand. ‘She’s right, Flo. This is personal stuff. Kyla didn’t have to tell us; it’s her choice.’
Not that I was given much choice today. ‘What do you think it means?’ I ask DJ, who has been very quiet, little wheels of thought spinning behind his eyes. Or is that just the tiger stripes?
‘I don’t know. But something tells me we had better find out.’
I drop my head in my hands. Stella hadn’t sworn me to secrecy about where I came from, but sometimes you don’t have to have said the words ‘I promise’ to know that you’ve broken one. But what about the rest of her secrets? I definitely promised Stella I wouldn’t tell anyone about Astrid being behind the assassinations; without evidence, what use would the information be to MIA, anyhow?
‘Kyla?’ Aiden’s hand is on my shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘There’s more she’s not telling us,’ Florence snaps. ‘What is it?’
Aiden asks the others to leave us alone.
‘What is it, Kyla?’ he asks, once they are gone and the door is shut.
‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I can’t help you if you don’t tell me more than that.’
‘It’s Stella. There is something else she told me – it’s not about who I am, or anything like that, but it’s important. And I promised not to tell.’
‘That’s a tough call. All I can really say is that you should do what you feel is right, in here.’ He pats his stomach. ‘Go with your guts.’ He hesitates. ‘Is not knowing going to hurt anyone?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s ancient history. Besides, there’s no way to back it up: it’s hearsay.’
‘What do you think you should do?’
‘I think I need to think about it some more. How did you get to be so understanding?’
