Acid (5 page)

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’d love to know why you’re setting me up with a new life for apparently no reason whatsoever. I’m guessing there
is
one, but you can’t tell me about that either, right?’

She shoots me a warning look.

I sigh, and fit the komm into my ear.

I spend the rest of that day browsing the kommweb, checking the news sites on the wraparound, the holoscreen which is projected in front of your eyes and automatically adjusts to the right distance so you can focus on it comfortably. They seem to be about all I can access now I have Outer status. I realize to my horror that what Mel said about me being framed for killing Alex is not only true, but that there’s a huge reward on my head.
Everyone’s
going to be looking for me, not just ACID. Is my new face really going to be enough to keep me safe?

I don’t get much sleep that night.

Two days later, I’m feeling much stronger. Mel brings me some clothes, a pair of soft trousers and a white fitted top with lace at the hems and a tie at the waist. Then she leaves the room so I can change. I quickly take off the pyjamas and pull the clothes on. The top’s the sort of
thing
I used to wear before I went to jail, but now, after two years in a prison uniform, it feels way too feminine. The tops of my arms are so muscular that the sleeves cut into them, and even in a bra I don’t exactly have cleavage any more.

‘You look lovely,’ Mel says, smiling, when I call her back in.

I scowl.

Mel ducks out of the room and comes back with an airchair, which looks like an ordinary soft chair, but with hoverpads underneath it. I scowl again, but she insists I use it. As I sit down, a thrum goes through it as the hoverpads power up, adjusting to my weight and keeping the chair a couple of centimetres above the floor. Mel shows me which buttons to press to turn left or right, or to keep the chair moving straight ahead, then tells me to follow her.

The building’s much busier now, men and women in white coats like the one Jon wears bustling to and fro. They all seem to know Mel, and they don’t seem surprised to see me with her. Through an open door, I catch a glimpse of what looks like a lab: rows of benches with complicated-looking equipment set up on them.

‘OK, so if this place isn’t a medicentre, what
is
it?’ I ask Mel.

‘A food research and testing centre,’ she replies.

I see a tall man with rimless glasses and a shaved head walking along the corridor towards us.

‘Felix,’ Mel says as he reaches us.

Felix, who I guess to be in his early fifties, looks at me down the bridge of his nose. ‘So this is the girl,’ he says to Mel. His voice is deep with just a hint of an accent, and even though he’s only wearing a shirt and jeans under his lab coat, there’s an unmistakable air of authority about him. ‘How is she doing?’

‘She’s adjusting as well as can be expected,’ Mel says. ‘She only woke up a couple of days ago. We’re going to see Steve now about her new identity.’

Um, excuse me, I’m right here
, I want to say. Felix nods. ‘Good, good. Well, I won’t keep you.’

‘Who was that?’ I say as he walks away.

‘The boss,’ Mel says.

‘The boss here, or your boss?’

‘Both.’

‘Is this
really
a research centre?’ I say.

‘Of course,’ Mel says. But she won’t quite look me in the eye.
Aha
, I think. Finally, I have an answer to one of my questions. This place might well be what Mel says it is – the lab I saw looked too elaborate to be a setup – but behind the scenes, it’s something else. A place where people like me and this fake LifePartner I’m going to have are given new identities by whoever’s in charge – whoever Mel and Jon work for. And whoever they work for uses this place as a front, to hide what’s really going on.

Although who
they
are, I still have no clue, of course.

Mel takes me to a little room next to another lab, this one full of people looking into microscopes and speaking
data
into their komms. ‘Does everyone here know what’s going on?’ I ask her. ‘I mean, with me, and—’

‘Yes,’ she says without looking at me.

She knocks on the door, opens it and motions for me to go in. ‘Here she is, Steve,’ she says. A short, pot-bellied man with long hair tied back in a ponytail, a sandy-coloured goatee and glasses, who’s sitting behind a little desk with a holocom in front of him, looks up as I manoeuvre the airchair into the room.

‘Ah, Mia,’ he says as the door clicks shut behind me and I switch the airchair off and get out.

I stare at him. ‘What?’

‘Mia Richardson,’ he says. ‘That’s what we’re going to be calling you from now on.’ The screen is angled sideways, and I catch a glimpse of the word FREE and a graphic of a butterfly. Steve sees me looking at it and taps the screen so that the image disappears.

‘Take a seat, and we can start going over things,’ he says smoothly, pushing his glasses up his nose.

I do as he says, feeling more bemused than ever.

CHAPTER 7

GOING OVER MY
new identity takes nearly all morning. Steve lets me read through the details on his holocom, then quizzes me on them over and over. I’m the same age, but with a different birthday; my parents are warehouse workers; I have no siblings; I went to one of the huge city schools in Zone P, which I graduated from without any qualifications, and I’m going to be living in Zone M, in a place called Anderson Court, with a job in a factory in Zone R that makes parts for magtrams. Oh, and I’ll have one day, Sunday, off every week.

‘We can’t link the information to your komm, I’m afraid – ACID might find it – but I’ll ask for a holocom to be set up in your room later on so you can look at everything again,’ Steve says as I rub my temples, where a headache is starting to niggle. ‘And I’ve asked people to fire random questions about your identity at you so that you get into the habit of being able to answer them on the spot. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of this, but when you get out of here, it could be ACID asking you those questions.’

I nod.

‘Another thing to remember is that the arrests system
works
slightly differently in Outer. People who get into trouble with ACID in Upper are given two warnings before they’re arrested—’

‘Amber and red,’ I say, unable to hide the boredom in my tone. I’m hungry again, and my headache’s getting worse; I don’t mean to sound so grumpy, but I’m starting to feel like crap. ‘But in Outer, they just swoop in and grab them. I might have grown up in Upper, but I’m not totally naive, you know.’

I remember what my father told me when I was thirteen, and he caught me reading a hacked link on my komm I’d found by accident when I was looking for some stuff for a homework assignment. It had been a page about how the IRB used to be called the
United Kingdom
, and about how, when it was, people had the right to vote and to travel freely to other places outside the IRB, including Europe and America – places my teachers had told us were evil, full of crime and poverty and hate. As I read it, my heart began to pound. How could any of this be true? And yet, there was something about it that made me think it
was
, and I started to wonder what life would be like if we could choose who was in charge; if there wasn’t a Fence; if we could go and see those so-called evil places for ourselves.

I was so engrossed, I didn’t hear my father come into my room. ‘What are you doing?’ he said. Guilty and terrified, I tried to cut the link, but he was too quick, ripping my komm out of my ear. He screamed at me for half an hour solid, finishing with, ‘I should report you
and
get you an amber warning, just to teach you a lesson.’ Then he took my komm away.

Shortly after that, I met Dylan for the first time, at Nadia’s birthday party.

‘I’m being serious, Mia.’ Steve uses my new name without missing a beat, jolting me back to the present. ‘The one thing we cannot change about you is your DNA. If you get arrested, all ACID have to do is take a blood test, and you’ll be back inside before you can even blink.’

I look down at the surface of the desk.

‘From now on, Jenna Strong no longer exists,’ Steve says. ‘Is that clear?’

I nod, still staring at the desk.
Jenna Strong no longer exists
. Wow, that feels weird.

‘Well, it must be nearly lunch time,’ Steve says more brightly. ‘Shall I call Mel to take you back to your room, Mia?’

I nod gratefully. Steve speaks into his komm, and a few minutes later Mel appears. Back in my room, lunch is already waiting for both of us – jacket potatoes with chicken salad – and while we eat, Steve comes in and sets up a holocom on a little table in the corner.

‘What are your parents called?’ he shoots at me over his shoulder as he walks to the door.

I look up at him, startled. ‘Um . . . Martha and Anthony,’ I stammer.

Steve shakes his head. ‘No
um
, Mia.
Um
could get you into a lot of trouble.’

I feel a flush rise in my cheeks, and my stomach turns sour. I push the remains of my jacket potato away, my appetite gone.

‘Have you finished?’ Mel says as Steve leaves. I nod. ‘Right then,’ she says. ‘Time to meet Cade.’

She tries to get me to use the airchair again, but I refuse. I don’t want my new pretend LifePartner thinking I’m some frail little thing.

We take a lift to another floor, where Jon’s waiting for us. ‘He’s in here,’ he says, smiling as he holds a door open for me.

We walk into a lounge filled with low, comfortable-looking chairs. It’s empty except for a boy sitting in one of the chairs at the far end, a cane beside him.

‘Cade,’ Mel calls. ‘This is Mia.’

The boy turns. He has very short blond hair and a prominent Adam’s apple, acne scattered across his cheeks and forehead. As we walk towards him, a nervous frown creases his brow. ‘Hi,’ he says. As he gets up, he reaches for the cane, and his shirt rides up and I see he has a scar, identical to mine, on his left hip. So he had a spytag too. I wonder what his real name is, and which jail he’s been broken out of. Not Mileway, that’s for sure; he doesn’t look as if he’d have survived two seconds in there.

Mel gives me a nudge. ‘Um, hi,’ I say.

Silence.

‘So,’ Mel says brightly after several seconds. ‘I’ll leave you two to get to know each other, shall I?’

‘OK,’ I hear myself say.

‘Can I get you anything?’ Mel asks. ‘Tea? Coffee?’

‘I’m all right,’ Cade mutters, scowling at the floor.

‘Me too,’ I say.

‘Well, shout if you need me,’ she says and, beaming at us one last time, she bustles out.
Come back!
I want to shout. Then I realize how ridiculous I’m being. I’ve just spent the last two years in prison, for God’s sake. I can take on men four times my size and reduce them to a bloody, blubbering pulp. And now I’m nervous about being left alone with an ordinary seventeen-year-old guy?

‘So I can’t tell you anything about me, and you can’t tell me anything about you,’ I say, trying to sound lighthearted. ‘Lucky we’re not really LifePartners, isn’t it?’

He gives me a shocked look. ‘What do you mean?’

I realize I’ve said the wrong thing. He probably thinks I’ve guessed who he really is, or something. I shake my head. ‘Never mind. I was only messing about.’

‘Oh, right,’ he mumbles.

I decide to try again. ‘So what d’you reckon this place really is? D’you think they’re secret agents? They could be plotting to take over the world, and when we get sent to Outer we’ll start receiving envelopes with instructions for secret missions inside them.’

He gives me a strange look. Clearly, he thinks I’m absolutely mad.

Trying to ignore the frustration building inside me, I rack my brains to think of something else to say. I can’t.
Cade
fiddles with the hem of his shirt, studiously avoiding my gaze. The silence between us stretches out until it’s way past uncomfortable, and I have to resist the urge to bury my head in my hands and groan.

Why have I got a bad feeling about this already?

 

FOUNDATION FOR RIGHTS, EMANCIPATION AND EQUALITY GENERAL COMMUNICATION

Date: 19.04.13

Please note: access to this communication is available only to those entering the correct passcode. The file containing the communication will automatically corrupt five minutes after it is opened and become unreadable/unrecoverable
.

Update #1 – Mia Richardson and Cade Johnson

Little to report. MR and CJ left our facility two days ago for their new home in Zone M. So far, one contact has been made between them and MM and JM, who have established that they are settling well. Both started their new jobs yesterday; MR at the Zone R magtram factory and CJ at the Zone Q sub food packaging plant, as planned. No problems reported by either so far. MM and JM intend to make contact once a fortnight from now on, unless any issues arise.

Update #2 – Trial

Progress steady but slow. AH is still in the process of recovering deleted files from ACID databases. Plans are in place for the mission to Innis Ifrinn in a few months’ time. If successful, we are confident that this and all the other evidence we will have collected will be sufficient to bring ACID to trial for numerous human rights abuses. Contact has now been made with officials at the European Criminal Justice Bureau, who have agreed to allow their agents to assist us with arrests, and hold the trial for us at their central headquarters in Frankfurt, where those arrested will be taken before it begins.

No other business to report. End of communication.