Back on the ground I peer at the inscription: Emily & David 4ever. I took it off her hand after they both died, victims of Lorders and Slating like so many others. They were returned as contract breakers when she got pregnant: their only crime was falling in love. I need her ring: I need a reason I can hold on to, to get me through what has to be done today. I start to put it in my pocket, but then slip it on my finger, instead, and start the long run back.
After a shower I come out to the kitchen, where Mac is making sandwiches. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks. Then retracts. ‘All right, stupid question. Anything not okay that I can do anything about?’
‘No. Thanks.’ I smile at him.
‘At last: a smile. Of sorts. Sit down and eat up, it’s about time to go. Aiden? Lunch,’ he calls.
Aiden comes in, squeezes my shoulder with one hand, sits down opposite. He looks into my eyes, nods once, and his steady gaze says things are okay. A knot of anxiety inside me eases; just a little, but it’s enough.
‘Welcome to our movie studio,’ Mac says, and opens the door to a rundown farm outbuilding. Up a path a few miles from his house, from the outside it looks abandoned, but as I step through, I gasp. Inside is like an Aladdin’s cave for computer geeks: there are bits of kit everywhere.
‘You clearly didn’t just set this up for today,’ I say.
‘No. It’s been one of MIA’s hidden tech centres for ages; there’s all sorts of different stuff to play with out here. Movies are new. But we’ve got the transmitting equipment here to link up with DJ’s relay to the satellite. And Jazz and I cleared a place to do recordings last night.’
Aidan and I follow him around a crammed high row of shelving; behind it, there’s a clear area with a stool, a tarp hung to block equipment behind it. And a camera on a stand in front with lights.
‘That looks a bit more high tech than my little camera,’ I say, touching my pocket where it is once again, returned this morning after they copied the relevant content last night.
‘Nah, it’s easy. I’ll show you, then we can record my part.’
Mac starts to explain the controls to both of us when there is a loud knock.
‘Hello?’ Jazz’s voice. And another: Mum?
I bolt around the shelves, and it’s not just Mum; Amy is here, too.
Amy runs over to me, and grabs me in a hug. ‘You crazy girl. Don’t you ever do that to me again!’
‘You’ve cut your hair,’ I say, shocked. Her gorgeous thick hair is gone: cut to a short pixie.
‘Heh, if I knew where you were to check for fashion advice and that I didn’t need a seance, I’d have done so. Besides, you’re looking a bit different, too.’
‘You’re both here?’ I say to Mum, who has held back, but walks up to us now for a group hug.
Mum smiles. ‘Both my girls together! I realised this was a family decision. I had to let Amy in on what was happening, and then we had a vote.’
‘And?’ Aiden asks.
‘Amy says go for it. I’m still not sure, but there are three of us. Kyla?’
And all eyes are on me.
No. Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me decide.
I swallow. ‘If this goes wrong, it could be a death sentence for everyone involved.’
‘Including you,’ Mum points out.
I shrug. I don’t want to say, out loud, that I don’t care any more about my own life. ‘It’s different for me. They’re already after me, anyhow.’
‘You told me once before that sometimes the most important thing is doing what is right.’
‘The problem is working out what is right, isn’t it?’ Amy says.
And I stare back at Mum and Amy, standing close together. Amy was Slated, assigned to her like I was, but that doesn’t change what they are to each other now. What we are. But we’re not the only ones. ‘This isn’t just about us. It’s about every mother and daughter, every father and son. Now and in the future.’
Mum looks back at me, slowly nods. ‘Okay, then. Let’s get this show on the road.’
Mac goes first while I operate the camera. He tells about the day his school trip went wrong; when stray AGT bombs took out most of a busload of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. How he had a minor injury. How his friend Robby – Robert Armstrong – was hauled off the bus, away from his dead girlfriend. Screaming, but unhurt. Then later was on the list of the dead.
Then it is Mum’s turn to tell us about her son Robert. How she’d heard rumours for years that he’d survived and been Slated, but could find no trace of him.
She pauses, looks me in the eye behind the camera. ‘But that’s not the only tragedy in my life. You know who I am: Sandra Armstrong-Davis. My father, Prime Minister William Adam M. Armstrong, and my mother, Linea Armstrong, were murdered by AGT bombs when I was fifteen. But that is not the end of the story. My parents were preparing to expose Lorder atrocities; my dad, to resign as Lorder Prime Minister and dissolve the government. My mother confided in a school friend, Astrid Connor, who deliberately leaked the information of their whereabouts to the AGT to have them assassinated and silenced. You will hear about this from Stella Connor – a childhood friend, and the daughter of the Lorder who did this.’
She pauses. ‘How was that?’
Mac, behind the camera again, gives a thumbs up. ‘Brilliant. Thanks.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Is it my turn now?’
Aiden comes over. ‘I could do the bit on All Souls. I was there also.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m the one who took the footage, and I was looking through the camera zoom and saw what happened, as it happened, in more detail than you could. I have to do it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. And there’s more I can testify about. Mum, can you and Amy stay? I want there to be no more secrets. This is all going to be out there; I want you to hear it from me.’
I settle on the stool under the lights. Amy straightens my hair. ‘It’s not a fashion shoot,’ I say. She sticks out her tongue, and gets out of shot.
‘When you’re ready,’ Mac says.
I stare down the camera, pretend I’m going to talk to myself. That no one else is here; that Edie’s teddy bear is staring at me behind the lens, and no one else can hear a word.
‘Hi. I’d like to introduce myself, but I can’t: I don’t know who I am. Before I was born, a woman you’ll hear from soon was a prisoner. Her name is Stella Connor. She’d found out her mother – a Lorder JCO, Astrid Connor – had engineered the assassinations of Prime Minister Armstrong and his wife. Stella was locked up by her mother to keep her quiet; she was pregnant at the time, and her baby died.
‘Then Astrid gave Stella another baby: me. She threatened to take me away if Stella ever said anything, and then let us go. Stella and her husband Danny, who thought I was his, loved and raised me as their daughter.
‘When I was ten years old I was kidnapped by the AGT. I was subjected to conditioning to fracture my personality, trained by the AGT terrorist Nico, and then he deliberately set me up to be captured and Slated by Lorders when I was fifteen.
‘After I was Slated and assigned to my new family, my fractured personality and memories started to come back: even though I was Slated, my Levo stopped controlling my actions when my memories returned. The AGT plan worked. I rejoined the AGT, but Lorders threatened me to try to make me betray the AGT.
‘On Armstrong Memorial Day I was present at the speeches given by my assigned mother: Sandra Armstrong-Davis, who you’ll be hearing from also.’ I pause, unable to say what comes next, twisting Emily’s ring on my finger and fighting for control. ‘I’m sorry. I had a gun strapped to my arm. Mum – Sandra – was next to me, and if she didn’t say what the AGT wanted her to say, I was supposed to kill her.’ I blink hard, will myself to not look at Mum and Amy, to keep going.
‘I couldn’t do it. I didn’t stay for the second ceremony in the grounds; I ran back to try to save Dr Lysander, who had been captured by the AGT after I’d betrayed her. Later I found out that a com Nico gave me and concealed under my Levo was a remote-controlled bomb; he’d meant to set it off during the second ceremony, when I should have been next to my family and Prime Minister Gregory.’
I breathe in and out a few seconds, fight for control. Then continue. I tell them everything I did with the AGT and what happened with Nico; the bomb that the Lorders said killed me. Going to stay with Stella and finding out she wasn’t my mother, visiting the orphanage, seeing the Slated children and realising I was going to have to run, to take this information to MIA. Seeing Astrid and Nico together. Going to Oxford, finding Ben. That Ben had been subjected to unknown procedures by the Lorders; that he betrayed us. My voice wavers as I describe the massacre at All Souls College that I filmed.
Then I stare at the camera. ‘I still don’t know who I am. Or what Astrid Connor, Lorder and JCO, was doing with Nico, the AGT terrorist who trained me and countless others to attack the Lorders. But it’s hard to imagine she wasn’t involved in everything that has happened to me from the beginning, and the plot to assassinate my family and Prime Minister Gregory.
‘But one thing I do know: the truth needs to come out. All of it. If everyone knows what really happens, what Lorders really do, what happens to the missing, then they – you – will put a stop to it.
‘Everyone needs to know.’
I’m finished talking. Still and silent now, I can’t look up, can’t meet anyone in the eye. I’m aware Mac has stopped filming, but no one says anything. I hear footsteps: Mum’s.
She walks up to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She slips her arms around me; dimly I’m aware the others are walking away, out of sight.
‘Why are you sorry?’
‘I almost killed you, you and Amy. And loads of other people as well.’
‘You didn’t know you had the bomb.’
‘I knew I had the gun. I thought I was going to use it. I thought I had no choice.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No. I couldn’t. But everything else I’ve done. And what happened at All Souls, because of Ben. It’s my fault.’
‘Caring for someone is never a bad thing, even if it doesn’t work out.’
‘It hurts,’ I whisper.
‘I know. I’ll tell you one thing for free.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If I could get Astrid and Nico in my sights right now, they’d both be dead.’
I half smile at the thought of Mum as avenging gunslinger: not a picture that readily comes to mind. ‘I’m not good at killing people. I’m better at getting them killed.’
Aiden steps back around, and clears his throat. ‘We’re going to get this movie into production now. Go if you want.’
‘I should get Amy out of here. We’re going to go stay in a quiet place with some friends for a few days, see what happens if – when, I mean – that hits the airwaves.’ Mum looks at me pleadingly. ‘Come with us? Please?’
‘No. Sorry. I’ve got to see this through.’
‘Okay.’
Amy comes round; her eyes are red. She and Mum give me hugs, and go.
Mac and Aiden get busy on computers with the different bits of recordings, still photos, our pieces from today. After a moment pulling myself together, I walk over, watch over their shoulders.
Aiden catches my eye. ‘Thank you,’ he says.
‘For what?’
‘For having the courage to do what you just did.’
I shrug. ‘I’ve been a coward for a long time. You shouldn’t thank me for that.’ I look away, not able to look him in the eye.
After a shower I come out to the kitchen, where Mac is making sandwiches. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks. Then retracts. ‘All right, stupid question. Anything not okay that I can do anything about?’
‘No. Thanks.’ I smile at him.
‘At last: a smile. Of sorts. Sit down and eat up, it’s about time to go. Aiden? Lunch,’ he calls.
Aiden comes in, squeezes my shoulder with one hand, sits down opposite. He looks into my eyes, nods once, and his steady gaze says things are okay. A knot of anxiety inside me eases; just a little, but it’s enough.
‘Welcome to our movie studio,’ Mac says, and opens the door to a rundown farm outbuilding. Up a path a few miles from his house, from the outside it looks abandoned, but as I step through, I gasp. Inside is like an Aladdin’s cave for computer geeks: there are bits of kit everywhere.
‘You clearly didn’t just set this up for today,’ I say.
‘No. It’s been one of MIA’s hidden tech centres for ages; there’s all sorts of different stuff to play with out here. Movies are new. But we’ve got the transmitting equipment here to link up with DJ’s relay to the satellite. And Jazz and I cleared a place to do recordings last night.’
Aidan and I follow him around a crammed high row of shelving; behind it, there’s a clear area with a stool, a tarp hung to block equipment behind it. And a camera on a stand in front with lights.
‘That looks a bit more high tech than my little camera,’ I say, touching my pocket where it is once again, returned this morning after they copied the relevant content last night.
‘Nah, it’s easy. I’ll show you, then we can record my part.’
Mac starts to explain the controls to both of us when there is a loud knock.
‘Hello?’ Jazz’s voice. And another: Mum?
I bolt around the shelves, and it’s not just Mum; Amy is here, too.
Amy runs over to me, and grabs me in a hug. ‘You crazy girl. Don’t you ever do that to me again!’
‘You’ve cut your hair,’ I say, shocked. Her gorgeous thick hair is gone: cut to a short pixie.
‘Heh, if I knew where you were to check for fashion advice and that I didn’t need a seance, I’d have done so. Besides, you’re looking a bit different, too.’
‘You’re both here?’ I say to Mum, who has held back, but walks up to us now for a group hug.
Mum smiles. ‘Both my girls together! I realised this was a family decision. I had to let Amy in on what was happening, and then we had a vote.’
‘And?’ Aiden asks.
‘Amy says go for it. I’m still not sure, but there are three of us. Kyla?’
And all eyes are on me.
No. Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me decide.
I swallow. ‘If this goes wrong, it could be a death sentence for everyone involved.’
‘Including you,’ Mum points out.
I shrug. I don’t want to say, out loud, that I don’t care any more about my own life. ‘It’s different for me. They’re already after me, anyhow.’
‘You told me once before that sometimes the most important thing is doing what is right.’
‘The problem is working out what is right, isn’t it?’ Amy says.
And I stare back at Mum and Amy, standing close together. Amy was Slated, assigned to her like I was, but that doesn’t change what they are to each other now. What we are. But we’re not the only ones. ‘This isn’t just about us. It’s about every mother and daughter, every father and son. Now and in the future.’
Mum looks back at me, slowly nods. ‘Okay, then. Let’s get this show on the road.’
Mac goes first while I operate the camera. He tells about the day his school trip went wrong; when stray AGT bombs took out most of a busload of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. How he had a minor injury. How his friend Robby – Robert Armstrong – was hauled off the bus, away from his dead girlfriend. Screaming, but unhurt. Then later was on the list of the dead.
Then it is Mum’s turn to tell us about her son Robert. How she’d heard rumours for years that he’d survived and been Slated, but could find no trace of him.
She pauses, looks me in the eye behind the camera. ‘But that’s not the only tragedy in my life. You know who I am: Sandra Armstrong-Davis. My father, Prime Minister William Adam M. Armstrong, and my mother, Linea Armstrong, were murdered by AGT bombs when I was fifteen. But that is not the end of the story. My parents were preparing to expose Lorder atrocities; my dad, to resign as Lorder Prime Minister and dissolve the government. My mother confided in a school friend, Astrid Connor, who deliberately leaked the information of their whereabouts to the AGT to have them assassinated and silenced. You will hear about this from Stella Connor – a childhood friend, and the daughter of the Lorder who did this.’
She pauses. ‘How was that?’
Mac, behind the camera again, gives a thumbs up. ‘Brilliant. Thanks.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Is it my turn now?’
Aiden comes over. ‘I could do the bit on All Souls. I was there also.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m the one who took the footage, and I was looking through the camera zoom and saw what happened, as it happened, in more detail than you could. I have to do it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. And there’s more I can testify about. Mum, can you and Amy stay? I want there to be no more secrets. This is all going to be out there; I want you to hear it from me.’
I settle on the stool under the lights. Amy straightens my hair. ‘It’s not a fashion shoot,’ I say. She sticks out her tongue, and gets out of shot.
‘When you’re ready,’ Mac says.
I stare down the camera, pretend I’m going to talk to myself. That no one else is here; that Edie’s teddy bear is staring at me behind the lens, and no one else can hear a word.
‘Hi. I’d like to introduce myself, but I can’t: I don’t know who I am. Before I was born, a woman you’ll hear from soon was a prisoner. Her name is Stella Connor. She’d found out her mother – a Lorder JCO, Astrid Connor – had engineered the assassinations of Prime Minister Armstrong and his wife. Stella was locked up by her mother to keep her quiet; she was pregnant at the time, and her baby died.
‘Then Astrid gave Stella another baby: me. She threatened to take me away if Stella ever said anything, and then let us go. Stella and her husband Danny, who thought I was his, loved and raised me as their daughter.
‘When I was ten years old I was kidnapped by the AGT. I was subjected to conditioning to fracture my personality, trained by the AGT terrorist Nico, and then he deliberately set me up to be captured and Slated by Lorders when I was fifteen.
‘After I was Slated and assigned to my new family, my fractured personality and memories started to come back: even though I was Slated, my Levo stopped controlling my actions when my memories returned. The AGT plan worked. I rejoined the AGT, but Lorders threatened me to try to make me betray the AGT.
‘On Armstrong Memorial Day I was present at the speeches given by my assigned mother: Sandra Armstrong-Davis, who you’ll be hearing from also.’ I pause, unable to say what comes next, twisting Emily’s ring on my finger and fighting for control. ‘I’m sorry. I had a gun strapped to my arm. Mum – Sandra – was next to me, and if she didn’t say what the AGT wanted her to say, I was supposed to kill her.’ I blink hard, will myself to not look at Mum and Amy, to keep going.
‘I couldn’t do it. I didn’t stay for the second ceremony in the grounds; I ran back to try to save Dr Lysander, who had been captured by the AGT after I’d betrayed her. Later I found out that a com Nico gave me and concealed under my Levo was a remote-controlled bomb; he’d meant to set it off during the second ceremony, when I should have been next to my family and Prime Minister Gregory.’
I breathe in and out a few seconds, fight for control. Then continue. I tell them everything I did with the AGT and what happened with Nico; the bomb that the Lorders said killed me. Going to stay with Stella and finding out she wasn’t my mother, visiting the orphanage, seeing the Slated children and realising I was going to have to run, to take this information to MIA. Seeing Astrid and Nico together. Going to Oxford, finding Ben. That Ben had been subjected to unknown procedures by the Lorders; that he betrayed us. My voice wavers as I describe the massacre at All Souls College that I filmed.
Then I stare at the camera. ‘I still don’t know who I am. Or what Astrid Connor, Lorder and JCO, was doing with Nico, the AGT terrorist who trained me and countless others to attack the Lorders. But it’s hard to imagine she wasn’t involved in everything that has happened to me from the beginning, and the plot to assassinate my family and Prime Minister Gregory.
‘But one thing I do know: the truth needs to come out. All of it. If everyone knows what really happens, what Lorders really do, what happens to the missing, then they – you – will put a stop to it.
‘Everyone needs to know.’
I’m finished talking. Still and silent now, I can’t look up, can’t meet anyone in the eye. I’m aware Mac has stopped filming, but no one says anything. I hear footsteps: Mum’s.
She walks up to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She slips her arms around me; dimly I’m aware the others are walking away, out of sight.
‘Why are you sorry?’
‘I almost killed you, you and Amy. And loads of other people as well.’
‘You didn’t know you had the bomb.’
‘I knew I had the gun. I thought I was going to use it. I thought I had no choice.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No. I couldn’t. But everything else I’ve done. And what happened at All Souls, because of Ben. It’s my fault.’
‘Caring for someone is never a bad thing, even if it doesn’t work out.’
‘It hurts,’ I whisper.
‘I know. I’ll tell you one thing for free.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If I could get Astrid and Nico in my sights right now, they’d both be dead.’
I half smile at the thought of Mum as avenging gunslinger: not a picture that readily comes to mind. ‘I’m not good at killing people. I’m better at getting them killed.’
Aiden steps back around, and clears his throat. ‘We’re going to get this movie into production now. Go if you want.’
‘I should get Amy out of here. We’re going to go stay in a quiet place with some friends for a few days, see what happens if – when, I mean – that hits the airwaves.’ Mum looks at me pleadingly. ‘Come with us? Please?’
‘No. Sorry. I’ve got to see this through.’
‘Okay.’
Amy comes round; her eyes are red. She and Mum give me hugs, and go.
Mac and Aiden get busy on computers with the different bits of recordings, still photos, our pieces from today. After a moment pulling myself together, I walk over, watch over their shoulders.
Aiden catches my eye. ‘Thank you,’ he says.
‘For what?’
‘For having the courage to do what you just did.’
I shrug. ‘I’ve been a coward for a long time. You shouldn’t thank me for that.’ I look away, not able to look him in the eye.
