And Tori: I shudder. Why was she there? A Lorder now, like Ben. Last time I saw her she was being hauled away by Lorders, screaming threats: was she subjected to the same treatment as Ben? But there was something in her eyes, something vindictive in the way she laughed: as if she knew I was watching, and remembers me. Or did I imagine it? Even zoomed in through the camera, could I really have read her like that from so far away?
I’m overwhelmed by too many questions. Were there clues to what Ben was going to do? Could I have stopped it from happening if I’d noted them, told Florence and Aiden?
I wander back to the front room, pick up my camera from the table where I must have left it last night. I stare at in my hands, wanting to and not knowing if I can handle it at the same time. I breathe in deep, put it on and find the file of footage I took of Ben the day I tested my camera.
Ben’s smiling face projects onto the wall. I run it back and forth, looking for clues, for hints of what was to come, but see nothing. He’s just Ben as I remember him from before, isn’t he? He was more sort of jokey than he used to be if anything, less like a Slated. Bolder. I pause it, stare at his eyes on the wall, and the pain is starting to reach for me, to pull me under.
I switch it off. Concentrate on breathing in and out, casting my eyes about the room, looking for something, anything, to distract, and that is when I see something I’d forgotten: Murray the bear, stuffed up on a bookshelf. I pull him down.
‘Can it really all be over?’ I whisper to him. All we’d dared to hope: that stories like Edie’s could get out, could make a difference. Where is Edie now? Maybe she’ll end up Slated in an orphanage. Or worse.
She’s still in my camera. I pick it up again, look at the list of files: Edie is there. Along with another three witnesses I recorded. The Slated children at the orphanage. And the massacre at the college. Could it be enough? I stare at Murray. His fuzzy face seems to be saying something – or is that just the painkillers? – that we can still do this. Do it fast, before anything else goes wrong.
I go to shut off the camera, then frown. In the file list is one I don’t recognise, don’t remember having noticed before. Labelled SC, it is before the shots I took of Astrid and Nico.
Open file; click play: Stella appears. Of course: SC is Stella Connor.
I sit and listen to her message. When it is over, goosebumps trail up my arms.
‘It was there, all this time?’ I say to Murray, stunned.
Then I run to the back of the house, Skye on my heels, and bang on bedroom doors.
‘Wake up, get up!’ Skye barks, and Mac and Aiden rush out, half asleep. Alarmed.
‘What is going on?’ Aiden says.
‘We need to talk, and we need to do it now.’
‘What about?’
‘Listen to me. I’m not going to Ireland.’
Aiden starts to protest; I hold up a hand. ‘There’s more. Just shut up and listen. But first I have a question. What is up with MIA’s computer systems? Can we get information out?’
‘We were pretty much ready to go for it, but not through the usual computer channels,’ Mac answers. ‘After our systems were breached, we’d worked out a better alternative through Ireland. DJ’s contacts think they can hack the Lorder communication satellite, broadcast from there across the whole country and internationally when we’re ready.’
‘Broadcast what?’ Aiden’s voice is sceptical. ‘Most of what we had is gone – either stolen from the hacked systems, or destroyed at the college.’
I hold up my camera. ‘I’ve still got witnesses’ testimony: Edie, and three others. There are the photos of the Slated children at the orphanage, the footage of All Souls yesterday, and—’
‘It’s not enough,’ Aiden interrupts. ‘Our view – Florence’s dad’s, then Florence’s – was always that we needed meticulously documented evidence and witnesses. We haven’t got that any more. We can’t back it up.’
‘If we don’t tell their stories, they died for nothing.’
The room is silent.
‘We at least have to try,’ Mac finally says.
Aiden looks between us; does something change in his eyes? Then he shakes his head. ‘I never completely agreed with the careful long game, but is there really enough to—’
‘There’s more. Watch this,’ I say, and point the camera at the wall.
Stella’s face fills it, a nervous smile. ‘Uh, hi. This is Stella Connor. My daughter, Lucy – and Lucy, I will call you that, you will always be the daughter I love to me—’ and she smiles— ‘a short time ago got a confession out of me I thought I’d never tell. She tried to convince me that I had to tell this story, that it had to get out. But I refused.’ She sighs. ‘I’m old, and I’m a coward. I’ve always been one, I’m just starting to see how much. Anyhow. I best get on with it.
‘I’m realising Lucy is going to have to leave my life again, no matter what I do. And on this camera I borrowed from her, I found the reason why. And yes, Lucy, you did password protect the photos so I wouldn’t see them, but I did set up the camera so have the admin override, and I snooped. And there were these very young children, Slated.’ She shudders, sits up straighter. ‘Everything keeps getting worse, so now I have to be brave, and tell my story.
‘My mother is Astrid Connor: Juvenile Control Officer for all of England, and steadily rising in Lorder ranks. Years ago I overheard her speaking to a subordinate about the assassinations of Prime Minister Armstrong and his wife, Linea, before it happened. I was a child, I didn’t really understand what I heard, and when I asked her she said they knew about it before the media did, and I didn’t question it. But years later I worked it out, and confronted her. She admitted – bragged, really – that a hardline Lorder faction she was in deliberately leaked information to the AGT for these assassinations to take place. Our family were friends with the Prime Minister’s family; Linea had confided in my mother that Armstrong was going to resign and expose violent excesses of the enforcement arm of the Lorders that he’d unearthed. It would have toppled the Lorder government.
‘Mother had me locked up to keep me from saying anything. I was pregnant, and my baby died. Months later, she gave me Lucy: the most beautiful baby. I don’t know where she got her from. Once she could see that I loved Lucy completely, Mother let us out. Said if I ever said anything, she’d take Lucy away.
‘I love you so much, Lucy. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything from the start.’ Her hand reaches for the camera. The recording stops.
I’m struggling to keep composure. Stella must have made this when I was in the boathouse. Got Ellie to bring it to me with that cryptic message when she somehow found out Astrid was on her way: brave, at last. I hope, so much, that she is all right.
I blink hard. ‘Well? Is it enough?’
Aiden and Mac are looking at each other in stunned silence. Then Mac grins. ‘We’ve got the bastards, don’t we!’ He holds up a hand in the air to Aiden. After a second’s hesitation, he raises his and high fives.
Aiden’s got his determined look back again. ‘Yes! We can do this.’ He grabs me in a hug, then lets go abruptly. ‘You still have to leave first.’
‘No. I’m the only living witness you’ve got to back anything up. I’m not going anywhere.’ I stare back at Aiden, not wavering, and neither is he.
‘How about we interrupt this staring contest with breakfast?’ Mac says, and fills the kettle, plugs it in. ‘Then perhaps you’d like to record me telling what happened to Robert after the bus bombing.’
Aiden holds up a hand, thinking. ‘There is one other thing. One other witness who’d really help.’ His eyes are on mine, apologetic.
‘Who?’
‘We need Armstrong’s daughter, Sandra Davis. Your mum here.’
‘No. No way.’ I stare at him, horrified. ‘Mum and Amy being safe is one of the things that makes me able to go on. Don’t take that away from me.’
‘Listen to me: people will believe her. They don’t know who Stella is. But if she sees what Stella says, and backs it up, and backs up Mac’s story: well. We’re home.’
Mac slips an arm around my shoulders. ‘He’s right, you know. It’s time to stop being safe, to risk everything.’ I shrug his arm off, go back to the sofa. Murray stares up at me, with a ‘he’s right’ look on his face. I shake my head. Next thing, Skye will lecture me. On cue she jumps up next to me, puts her head on my lap and looks up.
‘Okay. We can ask her, but no pressure.’ She won’t do it, will she? I’m beyond her protection, but she won’t do it if it means putting Amy at risk. ‘How are we going to get word to her?’
The front door bangs open. ‘Hello,’ a cheery voice says. One I know. I turn, and there is Amy’s boyfriend: Jazz.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
* * *
‘I’m seriously not happy,’ Jazz says, but his grin argues against that. His arms seem to have me trapped in a permanent hug since the split second that, changed hair or no, he realised it was me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?’ he demands of his cousin Mac.
I squirm. ‘Let me go already!’
‘You’re really okay?’
‘All in one piece,’ I say, not being able to think of how I am as okay, exactly, after everything that’s happened.
He loosens his arms but keeps me in front of him with a hand on each shoulder. ‘Amy has been so…Can I tell her?’
‘Need-to-know,’ Aiden interjects.
Jazz glares at him. ‘Yeah, well, whatever: Amy needs to know.’
‘Why not?’ I say. ‘It’ll be out soon enough. What’ll it hurt if he tells her now? She won’t say anything.’ Not after the last time. Amy had, in all innocence, told about drawings I was doing for the AGT, and a snatch-and-grab in a black van and Lorder questioning and blackmail followed.
‘And your mum?’ Jazz asks.
‘She already knows.’
‘No way. She never let on.’
‘Need-to-know,’ we say in unison, and I find myself laughing along with Jazz, some part of me surprised that I still know how.
‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. ‘Now let me go.’ He lets go with one arm but keeps the other around my shoulders, and it feels good: Amy’s boyfriend has always felt like a big brother to me.
‘We need to sort a meeting,’ Aiden says to Jazz. ‘Between Kyla and her mum. And don’t say anything to Amy, not just yet.’
‘Fine. Sure, give me a message. Which reminds me.’ He takes a small box out of his pocket. ‘Mail call.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask, mystified.
Mac takes it, holds it up. ‘The latest from DJ, I’m guessing.’
I stare at Jazz. ‘You mean you’re involved with all this too?’ A big brother with secrets of his own.
He grins. ‘Always was their messenger boy: just extra busy lately with computer communications being out. You didn’t need to know, I guess.’ I smack his arm. To think all that goes on under the surface of people’s lives, right in front of my eyes, and I had no idea. None.
Mac opens the small box. ‘Brilliant; at last.’ He holds his hand open: a com. As if on cue, it buzzes. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s for you,’ Mac says to Aiden. Aiden straightens his shoulders. Answers it, disappears down the hall and shuts a door.
Mac and I exchange a glance.
‘Does DJ know what happened yet?’ I ask, quietly.
‘I’d be surprised if he doesn’t. But he probably wants to hear a first-hand account.’
I’m overwhelmed by too many questions. Were there clues to what Ben was going to do? Could I have stopped it from happening if I’d noted them, told Florence and Aiden?
I wander back to the front room, pick up my camera from the table where I must have left it last night. I stare at in my hands, wanting to and not knowing if I can handle it at the same time. I breathe in deep, put it on and find the file of footage I took of Ben the day I tested my camera.
Ben’s smiling face projects onto the wall. I run it back and forth, looking for clues, for hints of what was to come, but see nothing. He’s just Ben as I remember him from before, isn’t he? He was more sort of jokey than he used to be if anything, less like a Slated. Bolder. I pause it, stare at his eyes on the wall, and the pain is starting to reach for me, to pull me under.
I switch it off. Concentrate on breathing in and out, casting my eyes about the room, looking for something, anything, to distract, and that is when I see something I’d forgotten: Murray the bear, stuffed up on a bookshelf. I pull him down.
‘Can it really all be over?’ I whisper to him. All we’d dared to hope: that stories like Edie’s could get out, could make a difference. Where is Edie now? Maybe she’ll end up Slated in an orphanage. Or worse.
She’s still in my camera. I pick it up again, look at the list of files: Edie is there. Along with another three witnesses I recorded. The Slated children at the orphanage. And the massacre at the college. Could it be enough? I stare at Murray. His fuzzy face seems to be saying something – or is that just the painkillers? – that we can still do this. Do it fast, before anything else goes wrong.
I go to shut off the camera, then frown. In the file list is one I don’t recognise, don’t remember having noticed before. Labelled SC, it is before the shots I took of Astrid and Nico.
Open file; click play: Stella appears. Of course: SC is Stella Connor.
I sit and listen to her message. When it is over, goosebumps trail up my arms.
‘It was there, all this time?’ I say to Murray, stunned.
Then I run to the back of the house, Skye on my heels, and bang on bedroom doors.
‘Wake up, get up!’ Skye barks, and Mac and Aiden rush out, half asleep. Alarmed.
‘What is going on?’ Aiden says.
‘We need to talk, and we need to do it now.’
‘What about?’
‘Listen to me. I’m not going to Ireland.’
Aiden starts to protest; I hold up a hand. ‘There’s more. Just shut up and listen. But first I have a question. What is up with MIA’s computer systems? Can we get information out?’
‘We were pretty much ready to go for it, but not through the usual computer channels,’ Mac answers. ‘After our systems were breached, we’d worked out a better alternative through Ireland. DJ’s contacts think they can hack the Lorder communication satellite, broadcast from there across the whole country and internationally when we’re ready.’
‘Broadcast what?’ Aiden’s voice is sceptical. ‘Most of what we had is gone – either stolen from the hacked systems, or destroyed at the college.’
I hold up my camera. ‘I’ve still got witnesses’ testimony: Edie, and three others. There are the photos of the Slated children at the orphanage, the footage of All Souls yesterday, and—’
‘It’s not enough,’ Aiden interrupts. ‘Our view – Florence’s dad’s, then Florence’s – was always that we needed meticulously documented evidence and witnesses. We haven’t got that any more. We can’t back it up.’
‘If we don’t tell their stories, they died for nothing.’
The room is silent.
‘We at least have to try,’ Mac finally says.
Aiden looks between us; does something change in his eyes? Then he shakes his head. ‘I never completely agreed with the careful long game, but is there really enough to—’
‘There’s more. Watch this,’ I say, and point the camera at the wall.
Stella’s face fills it, a nervous smile. ‘Uh, hi. This is Stella Connor. My daughter, Lucy – and Lucy, I will call you that, you will always be the daughter I love to me—’ and she smiles— ‘a short time ago got a confession out of me I thought I’d never tell. She tried to convince me that I had to tell this story, that it had to get out. But I refused.’ She sighs. ‘I’m old, and I’m a coward. I’ve always been one, I’m just starting to see how much. Anyhow. I best get on with it.
‘I’m realising Lucy is going to have to leave my life again, no matter what I do. And on this camera I borrowed from her, I found the reason why. And yes, Lucy, you did password protect the photos so I wouldn’t see them, but I did set up the camera so have the admin override, and I snooped. And there were these very young children, Slated.’ She shudders, sits up straighter. ‘Everything keeps getting worse, so now I have to be brave, and tell my story.
‘My mother is Astrid Connor: Juvenile Control Officer for all of England, and steadily rising in Lorder ranks. Years ago I overheard her speaking to a subordinate about the assassinations of Prime Minister Armstrong and his wife, Linea, before it happened. I was a child, I didn’t really understand what I heard, and when I asked her she said they knew about it before the media did, and I didn’t question it. But years later I worked it out, and confronted her. She admitted – bragged, really – that a hardline Lorder faction she was in deliberately leaked information to the AGT for these assassinations to take place. Our family were friends with the Prime Minister’s family; Linea had confided in my mother that Armstrong was going to resign and expose violent excesses of the enforcement arm of the Lorders that he’d unearthed. It would have toppled the Lorder government.
‘Mother had me locked up to keep me from saying anything. I was pregnant, and my baby died. Months later, she gave me Lucy: the most beautiful baby. I don’t know where she got her from. Once she could see that I loved Lucy completely, Mother let us out. Said if I ever said anything, she’d take Lucy away.
‘I love you so much, Lucy. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything from the start.’ Her hand reaches for the camera. The recording stops.
I’m struggling to keep composure. Stella must have made this when I was in the boathouse. Got Ellie to bring it to me with that cryptic message when she somehow found out Astrid was on her way: brave, at last. I hope, so much, that she is all right.
I blink hard. ‘Well? Is it enough?’
Aiden and Mac are looking at each other in stunned silence. Then Mac grins. ‘We’ve got the bastards, don’t we!’ He holds up a hand in the air to Aiden. After a second’s hesitation, he raises his and high fives.
Aiden’s got his determined look back again. ‘Yes! We can do this.’ He grabs me in a hug, then lets go abruptly. ‘You still have to leave first.’
‘No. I’m the only living witness you’ve got to back anything up. I’m not going anywhere.’ I stare back at Aiden, not wavering, and neither is he.
‘How about we interrupt this staring contest with breakfast?’ Mac says, and fills the kettle, plugs it in. ‘Then perhaps you’d like to record me telling what happened to Robert after the bus bombing.’
Aiden holds up a hand, thinking. ‘There is one other thing. One other witness who’d really help.’ His eyes are on mine, apologetic.
‘Who?’
‘We need Armstrong’s daughter, Sandra Davis. Your mum here.’
‘No. No way.’ I stare at him, horrified. ‘Mum and Amy being safe is one of the things that makes me able to go on. Don’t take that away from me.’
‘Listen to me: people will believe her. They don’t know who Stella is. But if she sees what Stella says, and backs it up, and backs up Mac’s story: well. We’re home.’
Mac slips an arm around my shoulders. ‘He’s right, you know. It’s time to stop being safe, to risk everything.’ I shrug his arm off, go back to the sofa. Murray stares up at me, with a ‘he’s right’ look on his face. I shake my head. Next thing, Skye will lecture me. On cue she jumps up next to me, puts her head on my lap and looks up.
‘Okay. We can ask her, but no pressure.’ She won’t do it, will she? I’m beyond her protection, but she won’t do it if it means putting Amy at risk. ‘How are we going to get word to her?’
The front door bangs open. ‘Hello,’ a cheery voice says. One I know. I turn, and there is Amy’s boyfriend: Jazz.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
* * *
‘I’m seriously not happy,’ Jazz says, but his grin argues against that. His arms seem to have me trapped in a permanent hug since the split second that, changed hair or no, he realised it was me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?’ he demands of his cousin Mac.
I squirm. ‘Let me go already!’
‘You’re really okay?’
‘All in one piece,’ I say, not being able to think of how I am as okay, exactly, after everything that’s happened.
He loosens his arms but keeps me in front of him with a hand on each shoulder. ‘Amy has been so…Can I tell her?’
‘Need-to-know,’ Aiden interjects.
Jazz glares at him. ‘Yeah, well, whatever: Amy needs to know.’
‘Why not?’ I say. ‘It’ll be out soon enough. What’ll it hurt if he tells her now? She won’t say anything.’ Not after the last time. Amy had, in all innocence, told about drawings I was doing for the AGT, and a snatch-and-grab in a black van and Lorder questioning and blackmail followed.
‘And your mum?’ Jazz asks.
‘She already knows.’
‘No way. She never let on.’
‘Need-to-know,’ we say in unison, and I find myself laughing along with Jazz, some part of me surprised that I still know how.
‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. ‘Now let me go.’ He lets go with one arm but keeps the other around my shoulders, and it feels good: Amy’s boyfriend has always felt like a big brother to me.
‘We need to sort a meeting,’ Aiden says to Jazz. ‘Between Kyla and her mum. And don’t say anything to Amy, not just yet.’
‘Fine. Sure, give me a message. Which reminds me.’ He takes a small box out of his pocket. ‘Mail call.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask, mystified.
Mac takes it, holds it up. ‘The latest from DJ, I’m guessing.’
I stare at Jazz. ‘You mean you’re involved with all this too?’ A big brother with secrets of his own.
He grins. ‘Always was their messenger boy: just extra busy lately with computer communications being out. You didn’t need to know, I guess.’ I smack his arm. To think all that goes on under the surface of people’s lives, right in front of my eyes, and I had no idea. None.
Mac opens the small box. ‘Brilliant; at last.’ He holds his hand open: a com. As if on cue, it buzzes. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s for you,’ Mac says to Aiden. Aiden straightens his shoulders. Answers it, disappears down the hall and shuts a door.
Mac and I exchange a glance.
‘Does DJ know what happened yet?’ I ask, quietly.
‘I’d be surprised if he doesn’t. But he probably wants to hear a first-hand account.’
