Cracks (10 page)

‘OK, I get it,’ I say, thickly, running my good hand under my snotty nose.

The other woman comes into the room holding a black and white cat. And not just any black and white cat – it’s the one I saw in that other place. My old life. It was there when I
walked to Riley Hall, just before I woke up.

She’s nuzzling it under her chin with a blissed out expression and Helen gives a tight smile.

‘You can’t keep that cat, Julia.’

The woman hugs the cat tighter. ‘I know, but I wish I could.’

‘I know that cat,’ I say.

Helen gestures to Julia to bring it over. ‘I’m not surprised. This cat belongs to Cavendish. He lives on site and the cat is allowed to go anywhere. But it has an important job to do
now.’

‘Job? What job? Don’t hurt it!’

‘I’m not going to hurt it,’ says Helen patiently. ‘It’s just going to help put them off the scent for a while, that’s all.’ She pulls a small collar
with a tiny leather compartment sewn into the side of it out of her pocket and picks up the tracking device from the table, which has been washed free of my blood. It only just fits into the
compartment and she has difficulty closing the top.

The cat hisses and tries to struggle free but Helen quickly puts on the collar around its neck.

‘Almost got it, almost . . . there.’ The cat jumps out of her arms and pads to a corner of the room where it watches us resentfully.

‘How long before they find out they’re not tracking Cal?’ says Julia.

Helen frowns. ‘Not long enough. You three need to get going. The rest of us will go the other way and take the cat to the moors. It will buy some time, but they’ll be employing all
their resources to find Cal. They won’t want to lose their precious research.’

I take a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes flick back to me and soften.

‘I’m sorry, but that’s what you are to them. That’s why we had to get you out.’ She claps her hands. ‘Let’s go, everyone. Now, please.’

Beardy – Nathan – whatever he’s really called, eyes me again. I’m guessing I’m not his favourite person in the world right now.

But he’s only got a busted nose. My whole world has been destroyed.

T
here’s lots of movement and conversation as they prepare to go. Helen’s speaking to me. I think she’s going on about the
antibiotics again. But there’s a weird buzzing in my brain and I can only see her mouth moving.

I grunt and turn away.

They all go outside for a minute, leaving me alone in the kitchen. I rub my one free palm on my trousers, because it’s sweaty. I can’t stop shaking all over. I look around the huge
kitchen to try to distract myself from all the feelings that are crowding in on me. Fear. Sadness. Anger. There’s plenty of anger. I clench my one good fist and bang it on the table.

I sweep my eyes broodily around the kitchen and something snags my attention. There’s a wooden dish rack attached to the wall and next to it a shelf holding neat rows of colourful spices
in small glass jars. A feeling from my old life tugs at me, like an itch I can’t reach. I frown, trying to understand it.

And then it comes.

Amil’s kitchen. His mum has those same bottles, except hers are all jumbled messily along the back of the kitchen counter. A powerful memory of being warm and safe floods through me. I can
almost smell yummy chicken curry and hear the chatter and telly sounds from next door. Then reality hits with the force of a punch and the room lurches sideways.

I’ve never really been in that kitchen.

Amil was someone else’s best friend.

These are someone else’s memories.

But it felt so
real.

The whole thing is sick. I’m breathing hard like I’ve been running. A headache throbs with a regular beat over one eye. I touch my forehead. How did they do it? Get into my brain, I
mean? I gently feel about in my hair to see if there is a scar but can’t feel anything at all. I get a sudden image of Cavendish holding a rusty old saw from Des’s shed and looming over
me in a bloodstained apron.

My stomach flips over and the room spins sickeningly fast. I grip the table, hard, like I’m going to pitch forward into some sort of black hole otherwise. I touch my scalp again with the
other hand. My head feels vulnerable, my skull eggshell-thin, like it could crack open and everything inside could spill out.

I’m not even sure what’s real any more. Maybe I’m going to wake up again and find all this was some sort of horrible nightmare and I’m back in my old bedroom. Or maybe
I’m still suspended in that pod, while people prod and probe . . .

Something is squeezing my chest like a vice and the walls pulse and shrink. I can’t remember how to breathe normally. Little panting sounds are coming from my own mouth but they sound
really far away too.

‘Cal? Cal, are you OK?’

That bloke who smiled is kneeling in front of me. His hand is on my arm and I shrug it off like it burns. Everything is too loud, too bright. I want to go back. I don’t want to be here. I
want to climb back into my old life with Mum and yes, even Des and Ryan. My chest hurts. The edges of everything are shadowy but little fireworks are going off too. Sharp pins and needles jab my
fingers and my hands are going numb now. Can’t seem to drag breaths in and out. Dizzy. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe! I’m going to die . . .

‘Take this, quickly. Come on, mate, you’re OK.’

Tom’s holding a paper bag. He tells me to put it over my nose and mouth. I take it with trembling hands and do what he says, too scared to care about how stupid I look.

‘That’s it, just breathe slowly. In . . . and out . . . in . . . and out.’

Somehow, after a few minutes I feel better. The clattering inside my chest slows down and the world comes into proper focus. I can breathe properly again.

I mumble my thanks.

‘No problem,’ he says gently. ‘Felt like you couldn’t breathe? Like you were going to die, right?’

I nod, frowning. How did he know?

He smiles. ‘It was just a panic attack. A bit too much carbon dioxide flooding through your body, that’s all. Breathing into the bag redresses the balance. You’re OK now.
It’s no wonder you’re feeling a bit strange. I don’t know how anyone could handle what you’ve had to deal with in the last few days without feeling a bit wobbly.’

I hand him the crumpled, damp paper bag. I don’t really know what to say so I say nothing.

Nathan comes striding into the room then, still dabbing at his nose with a balled up tissue.

‘What’s going on?’ he says sharply.

Tom looks up. ‘Nothing,’ he says easily, getting to his feet. ‘Everything’s fine, Nathan. How’s the nose?’ His face is expressionless but as his eyes meet
mine I think something mischievous twinkles in them.

‘It’s really quite uncomfortable, since you ask,’ says Nathan stiffly and starts looking in one of the kitchen cupboards.

Tom turns to me and pretends to rub his fists into his eyes like a toddler. He makes a silly face and mouths ‘boo-hoo’ silently.

A laugh surges up inside, surprising me. Beardy looks up and I turn it into a cough.

Tom checks his watch. ‘Right, it’s just gone six,’ he says, all business-like now. ‘We’ll stay here for a few hours until we hear everything’s gone to plan
and then get on the road. Anything good in there?’ he says, turning his attention to Nathan who is still rummaging through the cupboards with a miserable expression.

‘No,’ he says bluntly.

Tom goes over and has a look. ‘Oh I wouldn’t say that.’ He turns to me with a grin. ‘You, my friend, are in for a treat. It’s time for Tom’s baked bean and
tuna hotpot.’ He rubs his hands together. ‘Trust me, it’s not an experience you’ll forget in a hurry.’

I smile, despite myself. He’s nice. Funny. And he was kind to me back there when I was freaking out all over the place.

But I still don’t know if I can really trust him.

I don’t want to be around other people at the moment. ‘Is there a bathroom?’ I ask, getting up.

Nathan is leaning against the kitchen surface, texting. He ignores me.

‘First on the left upstairs,’ says Tom, tipping a can of something unidentifiable into a saucepan.

I start to walk out of the room.

‘Cal?’ Tom calls. He’s frowning.

‘Yeah?’

‘You OK?’

I nod once and leave the room.

But I’m not OK.

I’m about as far from OK as it’s possible to be.

I get into the bathroom and lock the door. I look in the mirror on the cabinet, just as I did a couple of days ago in the Facility. My world has been blown apart all over again since then. Will
it ever be normal? Has it ever been normal? I don’t want to be this lab-rat boy with a computer chip in his head. I don’t even want to be in 2024. I just want to be back in my own life,
mucking about and laughing in Amil’s kitchen. But I know that’ll never happen again. Never happened in the first place. There’s only here. Now.

I lean in and examine my reflection. My face is pale, apart from the grey racoon rings around my eyes. I fill the basin with cold water and plunge my head into it. The shock makes my innards
shrivel but I’m hoping it will help me get it together a little.

I dry my face on a hand towel that smells of washing powder and ordinary, normal things. My hair’s sticking up and I push it back tentatively from my forehead. I lean in even closer.

It’s there. I can see it.

A silvery-white scar along my hairline. The image of them cutting me open floods into my mind again. I drop my hair back and stand away from the mirror, heart banging. I can’t pretend
it’s not real now. The evidence that they were inside my brain is right there, etched into my skin forever.

I close the toilet seat and sit down. My mouth floods with spit and my stomach heaves. I just focus on breathing slowly for a while.

They messed with my brain. They filled my head with memories that aren’t mine. They looked in there whenever they wanted, like it was some sort of open room.

I can’t handle it. But I have to.

If what Helen Bonaparte says is true, they can only access the Revealer Chip when I’m in that pod. And I’m not there now. Maybe I can trust Torch to help keep me safe. I think about
my plan to go to Brinkley Cross and find Amil and his family. Torch might help me do that. It’s not much of a plan. But it’s the only one I have right now.

I sit up a bit straighter. One thing’s for sure. I’m never going back into the Facility again. They can kill me if they want. But they’re not getting to that Revealer.

Looks like I don’t have a whole lot of choice about trusting these Torch people right now.

I head back downstairs. Tom’s cooking and Nathan is looking out of the window. His face is still like thunder and when he sees me, he gets up and then goes outside. I can see him through
the small leaded window in the living room. He’s smoking a cigarette and pacing up and down.

‘Is laughing boy ever going to let it go?’ I say and Tom looks up. Steam billows around him and his hair is sticking to his forehead. He blows up from the side of his mouth but the
hair doesn’t budge.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘You’re not the problem.’ He carries on cooking.

It feels like something unspoken is hanging in the air. Tom sighs and stops what he’s doing to check the back door is properly closed before speaking again. ‘He’s just realised
that today’s . . . an anniversary of something. Something painful.’

I don’t say anything. Tom goes over to look out of the window, checking Nathan is still outside. He returns to the cooker and carries on stirring. ‘His younger brother was killed
exactly two years ago today,’ he says quietly. ‘He was about your age. I hadn’t realised earlier or I’d have been a bit more gentle on him. He’s just a bit pompous
sometimes and I can’t stop myself from winding him up. But I should have realised.’

‘Oh,’ I say. A wave of guilt washes over me when I think about the van door hitting him. ‘How? How was he killed?’

‘Officially he died while
resisting arrest
during a demonstration,’ says Tom. ‘He wasn’t even part of Torch. Just an engineering student trying to protest on the
streets against the regime.’ He sighs. ‘That’s the kind of people we’re —’ He stops abruptly as the back door flies open.

Nathan comes in smelling of cold air and fag smoke. He looks at us both suspiciously.

‘Right!’ says Tom in a too-loud voice, rubbing his hands together briskly. ‘It’s ready. Brace yourselves, lads, we’re going in.’

It’s not too bad, despite all his warnings, and I’m surprised to find myself finishing my plate. Tom brushes away my offer to help tidy up and he and Nathan
carefully clear up any sign that we’ve been here. He tells me that the cottage is owned by Torch sympathisers who are away on holiday and have given permission for it to be used.

‘Why do you have to be so careful, then?’ I ask. ‘If they said it was OK?’

Tom glances at me, his face serious. ‘Because we don’t want anyone else to know we were here. It would be bad for them if it was discovered that they’d harboured known
fugitives.’ He carries on cleaning up.

I gulp. That’s what I am now. A fugitive.