Fragments (11 page)

He was looking at the ground, shaking as hard as me. A snake lay at his feet, its head caved in. My stomach heaved and I covered my mouth, willing myself not to be sick.

The panels slid up, disappearing soundlessly into the ceiling and walls. Lewis walked over, still with that pleasant smile, like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

‘The bite is harmless, if a little painful,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘We’ll get your wounds tended in a minute but first I want to ask a question of all of you.’ He paused. ‘What was the point of that exercise?’

No one spoke. Then Skye tentatively raised a hand. Lewis nodded.

‘Yes, Skye?’

‘Is it, um, that you can’t predict where threats are going to come from?’

‘Go on,’ said Lewis.

‘Well, um, because of the exercise that we did just before this, Kyla and Christian were expecting the same sort of thing to happen. I mean, for the threat to be the same.’

Lewis gently clapped. ‘Well done,’ he said with a smile. ‘Top of the class.’

Stomach still churning, I beamed hatred at Lewis with my eyes. It’s true that I was expecting someone to creep up on me again, but wasn’t there a better way of getting the message across than using a
bloody snake
? I realised now that this was what was in Lewis’s mystery box.

I glanced at Christian, who had a trickle of blood running down the side of his hand. It didn’t look as bad as my wound, though, which was raining crimson drops onto the floor. It hurt so much, I had to keep checking the snake wasn’t still attached to me. I started to shake and had to hug myself to control it.

I run my fingers over the bumpy skin on my hand that still hasn’t completely healed, remembering how it felt. I guess the experience was a good reminder that I shouldn’t get too relaxed here. I don’t think any of us have families out there, judging by stuff I’ve overheard. No one will miss us if they decide we don’t fit in. A mouthy girl called Renna disappeared in the first few weeks. No one wanted to know where she went. Maybe she went to the Facility. I heard some whispers that she ended up in the loch I can see from the top of the hill.

I shiver now as I imagine plunging into that inky blankness, fighting for breath as water floods my mouth, murky and bitter. I can’t swim and the thought of drowning has always terrified me. I think I’d take any number of snakes over that.

All the hairs on the back of my neck seem to ripple then as thunder rumbles in the distance. I’ve turned to look down at the camp, spread out below. There’s not much to see there. The main building looks like something made by a kid with no imagination from grey Lego. There are small windows all across the front in darkened glass. The roof is a mess of satellite-receiver antennae and coiled barbed wire, plus some big square boxes that might be lights. It looks about as welcoming as a smack in the mouth, which is probably the idea. It seems out of place among the swollen purple hills and stormy skies.

A strange creaking sound makes me turn the other way, away from the camp. I gasp. Right there, near the bottom of the hill, is a huge, majestic stag.

It has a tangle of rough brown hair down its front like a shaggy bib. Its antlers are white-tipped spikes, like they’ve been dipped in paint, and they curl out so high and wide it seems impossible the animal can support its head. We eyeball each other and I feel a weird happiness that fills my eyes with tears. Then it makes a sort of loud huff before dipping down to munch on some grass. I laugh, suddenly filled up with the honour of sharing this space with it, like it has gone, ‘Hmph . . . I guess you can stay.’ I suddenly want – no,
need
– to get closer. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s because of that muffled, blunted sensation I mentioned before. I don’t seem to
feel
so much any more.

And that’s a good thing, right?

It’s what I wanted . . . to stop thinking about hard things so much.

To stop hurting.

But the stag is all instinct and senses; a series of powerful needs. Kind of opposite to how I’ve been feeling.

It’s
free . . 
.

The stag’s breath puffs clouds in the cool air. It tears at the grass with its mouth, then slowly chomps away, ignoring me now and totally focused on eating. I’m not important. None of
this . . 
. this shit I’ve been through, is that important.

I’ve never been the wildlife type. But it feels like the stag is the, I don’t know, guardian of all this beauty and I need it to accept me. I would have run a mile from it once. But I’m braver now than I was. I’ve had to be.

Very slowly, I begin to move forwards. It doesn’t move away. It trusts me! I creep a little faster, taking a few more steps, and then . . .

. . . agonising pain rips through me and I’m flat on my back, staring up at the churning sky. Every nerve ending in my body feels like it’s on fire and I can’t move a single muscle. I lie for a few moments completely still, panting, with tears streaming down my cheeks, before the feeling gradually wears off and I can get shakily to my feet.

I’ve been volted before. But this was different. This made me feel, just for a second, like I was dying. Sadness clings to me now. The view that had been all colours a minute before is now just grey, wet and depressing. My fingers and toes burn and my limbs weigh heavy and sore.

I guess I’ve found the perimeter of the camp. I squint ahead of me and can just make out the slightest ripple in the air, now that I’m really looking, like heat reflecting off hot tarmac. You would never know it was here and it’s probably only activated by the tracker on me. I glance down at the stag, which chews on, ignoring me. It probably knew exactly how near I could get to it. How stupid to think it was letting me come close. I wrap my arms around myself as a light rain begins to fall and then start to trudge miserably back the way I came.

Like I said, this place is full of nasty surprises.

History of Terrorism, known as HT, is the part of the training that’s most like regular school. What I can remember of it, anyway.

I didn’t mind school that much when I used to go. Liked mucking around with my mates, anyway. Think I was a bit lippy sometimes. But after Mum got sick I stopped going and although they sent some people round to find me a few times, they didn’t bother after a while. Probably presumed I’d died of pig flu too, like Mum and most of the neighbourhood. It was a crazy time, then.

The HT teacher is called Mrs Sheehy and she’s older than Mum would be now. Maybe fifty or sixty, I don’t know. I’m not good on that. She wears the black clothes they all wear here but hers are a dark skirt and jumper with thick tights and sensible shoes with laces like a nurse would wear.

We sit in a proper classroom with a 3D whiteboard and everything. I quite like pretending I’m a normal schoolgirl, although I don’t even know what year I’d be in now.

The lessons are OK and actually quite interesting in places.

We learn loads about the 2010s when suicide bombers were the terrorists of the day. Hard to get your head round in these days of the anonymous little plaster bomb. Why blow yourself up when you can cause destruction and death so easily?

Those plaster bombs are
nasty
. I hear they look exactly like the sticking plasters people used to stick on cuts, which is how they got their name. They’re no more than three centimetres square, pale in colour and designed to blend into the background, but packed with enough explosive power to destroy a building. Easy to slip one under a table in a busy coffee shop, or onto the side of a train.

We learn all sorts in this lesson. Truth is, I’m a bit embarrassed by my ignorance about politics and stuff. Like everyone, I know all about the bombing of the Houses of Parliament back in 2017 and how the government was formed out of the parties left over and the army, and renamed the Securitat. That the regular police split into two branches, with CATS having the ultimate authority.

I know also that there are lots of different terrorist groups with a million different, confusing names. But Torch is the biggest and the most evil. They’re responsible for loads of the bombs that go off in public places. They claim they’re all about ‘freedom’ but I can’t see how killing innocent civilians helps them to be free. That’s why they have to be flushed out and eliminated, like the scum they are. And that’s going to be my job when I get out of here.

It’s a couple of weeks after the stag thing. I didn’t sleep that well last night. Had weird dreams about Jax. He kept trying to tell me something but his words were all messed up – or foreign or something. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then I dreamed about kissing Cal. I woke up with damp cheeks.

So I’m not paying too much attention to what Mrs Sheehy is saying in HT, until something snags my attention like a nail.

‘We don’t know where they got the devices from,’ she’s saying, ‘but a recent operation in the Yorkshire Dales successfully blew up what we think was a major Torch bomb factory.’

Yorkshire Dales?
That’s where the farmhouse was located. The one they blew up.

Mrs Sheehy points her clicker at the whiteboard and the front of the room fills with an image. Every muscle in my body tenses. The walls seem to pulse and throb around me.

It’s the farmhouse. Right after the attack. My heartbeat thuds in my ears and my blood seems to whoosh and pound through my veins. Mrs Sheehy is talking away but I can’t untangle the words to make sense. I can only stare at the image in front of me.

If the cameras pan out far enough, you might just make out a girl lying face down in the dust with a cut cheek and a broken heart. Someone speaks.

‘Yes, Adam?’ says Mrs Sheehy.

A red-haired boy speaks again. ‘How can we be sure that it was a bomb factory?’

Mrs Sheehy nods as though she has been expecting this question.

‘We received intelligence from an informant within that branch of Torch. And although there are as yet no sensors developed that can detect plaster bombs, the nature of the explosion and traces found by forensic teams in the aftermath confirmed the information.’

I keep my expression completely blank even though my heart is beating so hard it seems to boom in my ears. Clamping my teeth together until my jaw aches, I shove my hands between my shaking knees and stare at the image in front of me, trying to control the violent trembling that threatens to overwhelm my body.

Julia, Sam, Nathan . . . they really were
terrorists
? And then I think of something that makes me gasp and I have to pretend I’m clearing my throat. Would they have tried to turn Cal and me into terrorists too?

This is so terrible. I realise that, for the first time, I’m glad Cal’s dead. Better dead than working for Torch. How could I have been so naive? I want to throw up . . .

I risk flicking my gaze to the sides, to see if anyone has noticed that I’m weirding out. But all eyes are fixed on Mrs Sheehy, who has stopped speaking for a moment. She shakes her head slowly, as though she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. After a heavy sigh, she speaks again. ‘Make no mistake,’ she says. ‘These people had very bad intentions. They would have used those bombs to kill innocent people.’

‘Was the mission to destroy the house a success?’ asks Skye. It seems like an odd question but I’m too distracted to think about that now.

Mrs Sheehy’s face is grim as she clicks at the screen again. ‘Only partially,’ she says. ‘This footage shows the occupants of the house the day before the explosion.’

A new image fills the room. This time the farmhouse is intact and seen through a night-vision infrared 3D camera. You can make out the heat shapes of seven people in various parts of the house. I know that they are Sam, Helen, Tom, Cal’s Mum and Dad. Cal . . . and . . .

Oh, shit . . . One of those people is me . . 
.

I can’t stop myself from looking around the room at the others. It feels like my pores will leak the information in some way. I can’t keep this inside, it feels too big. Skye is staring right at me. I look away, trying to deny the ferocious heat filling my body.

‘Our intelligence told us that there were seven people,’ says Mrs Sheehy. ‘But we were only able to find DNA from five after the mission.’ She pauses. ‘So two people got away,’ she says crisply.

Then she turns and looks right at me.

‘Are you all right, Kyla?’ she says, her face softening. ‘You’re looking a little peaky, my dear.’

I squeeze my hands into fists below the desk, trying to force all the panic there and out of my voice before I speak.

I clear my throat. ‘Yes, thanks – I’m fine,’ I manage to force out through lips that are numb. ‘I was just wondering if it was definitely a bomb factory. It, um, looks like a normal, um, farmhouse.’

Mrs Sheehy gives me a tolerant sort of look. Then the image hanging before us in 3D changes to the moment of the explosion. It’s so realistic, everyone jumps back as the black and orange flames curl into the room, out towards us. I hear someone go, ‘Woah!’ and someone else – Reo, the big meathead – says, ‘Burn, baby!’

‘The explosion you see here is a lot bigger and the damage more intense than the helicopter fire could have achieved alone. This is basically what happens when you put the equivalent of a match to twenty boxes of plaster bombs.’ She pauses, her expression grave. ‘This is the kind of people we are fighting. And each one of you . . .’ She looks around, meeting eyes with everyone individually. They seem to linger on mine even longer. ‘. . . will come out of here knowing how to do it. How to stop the rot before it spreads.’

Afterwards, I pretend I have a headache and go to lie on my bed for a while. The walls are white-painted stone with a small window too high up to be any use. I lie on my stomach with my face pressed into the pillow, wishing I could scream.

So first of all I hear that the people who looked after me were harbouring bombs in that house. I know they were Torch and I know that Torch are evil, but it’s only now I can admit that a tiny part of me hoped Sam and Helen and the people who helped Cal and me were different. Seems I was wrong. I was so stupid and trusting. I should have known better than to expect any decency from Torch people.