The Memory Keepers (13 page)

37

Seven had been so caught up in escaping the raid and the horror of Carpenter’s death, then wanting to confront Alba, that he’d forgotten all about Alastair White’s skid and Carpenter’s warning.

He stared at the DSC in Alba’s hand, stomach churning. What was so terrible about that memory that had made Carpenter – Carpenter, who never got scared – beg him to destroy it?

I thought it would protect us. That
I
could protect us by having it. Use it as blackmail, if it ever came to it. Something to keep that White pig away. And after Murray  …  But it’s bigger than that. I should’ve left it alone.

‘What is it?’ Alba asked, stepping towards him. Her eyes were wide with concern. ‘What’s wrong?’

But Seven barely registered her words. He was back in the night before, back at Borough Market, the noise of the crowd swelling around him, the stink of fish-blood and rotten vegetables so strong he felt like being sick, and a gunshot –

A gunshot that seemed to tear right through the very fabric of the world and split it into two.

The memory, S. Destroy it.

Blood spilling from Carpenter’s lip.

S-sorry.

Seven snapped back to the present. Before he could worry about the consequences of what he was about to do, he ran to Butler and powered up the machine. He sat down on the stool so heavily it skidded on the floor. His hands shook as he closed the wrist-straps round his arms, fixed the metal cap to his head.

‘Seven!’ Alba cried. ‘What are you doing?’ But her voice sounded distant, calling to him as though from another place, another world.

In the fraction of a moment when the DSC had loaded and he hit the
ACTIVATE
option, Seven wondered whether he was making a mistake. He’d told Carpenter he wouldn’t surf this memory. He’d made a promise to a dying man. What was he thinking, breaking a promise like that?

But then there was a rising, piercing sound and the flash of light like a million cameras going off, and it was too late to turn back.

‘
MEMORY ACTIVATED
.
EXPIRATION IN FORTY-NINE MINUTES, TWO SECONDS.
’

Swallowing nervously, Seven opened his eyes.

He was in a small room, bare and clinical. Strips of white light beat down from overhead. An electric hum filled the air. Through the honey-like warmth of the memory-air, Seven felt a coolness on his skin. Cold air was pumping from a hidden air-con unit.

‘Mr White?’

He turned.

A short, greying man with soft brown eyes and a brush of speckled stubble was walking towards him. He wore a white lab coat over a brown suit and plaid shirt. Round his neck hung a nametag:
Dr Merriweather, TMK Division, Chief Science Co-ordinator.

Seven’s heart thudded hard. TMK! That’s what Alba’s father had been talking to Pearson about that night outside her house.

‘Merriweather.’

Seven cringed as his voice came out in Alastair White’s cool, deep growl: it still weirded him out every time he spoke in skids as someone else. But he had to resist the urge to fight it. He had to let the instincts of the memory take control if he was going to experience it exactly as White had.

Merriweather fiddled with his hands. ‘Sorry, ah, about the delay. A technical hiccup. The team are ready for you now. It’s just this way.’

‘A technical hiccup?’ Seven asked as they went out into a narrow corridor, more tubes of light fixed to the ceiling. They passed a series of identical doors. ‘I do not expect
any
hiccups in this process, Merriweather. Especially not after what happened with the last intake.’

‘Of course, sir. Of course. Just that the cerebral cortex nerves are delicate things. Especially in, ah, Candidates as young as ours. And then with the introduction of a foreign object  …  swelling and breakages are to be expected.’

‘Indeed. But this is the nineteenth intake since TMK was initiated. I would have expected your team to have addressed these issues by now.’

‘Yes, sir. We hope to have done so with this intake, sir.’

Merriweather stopped outside the door at the end of the corridor. Above it, a red light was lit. A label beneath the light read:
LAB 32.

As the doctor bent to grasp the handle, Seven noticed a placard in the centre of the door, only just catching the last word before they went through:

KEEPERS

Keepers?
he wondered.
Keepers of
what
?

At first, the darkness of the lab blinded him. All he could make out were glaring spots of light, spaced throughout the ceiling, and a sense of space. When his eyes adjusted, Seven saw that they were in a glass atrium overlooking a large, chamber-like room. The whole place was kept in near-blackness. Strange flickers of light from machinery glowed like small thunderstorms amid a sea of dark clouds.

Merriweather bustled round him, moving to a door at the right end of the atrium. ‘This way, sir.’

A metal staircase led down to the hall. The lab was cold, pricking goosebumps across Seven’s skin. A soft whirring noise filled the space, along with erratic clicks and beeps of machinery. There were incubators spaced evenly throughout the room: around twenty or so, a person in a lab-coat stationed at each one, bent down to adjust something or stood making notes on a tablet.

Merriweather led Seven to the nearest incubator. It was nestled in sleek machinery, wires feeding into the clear curve of its shell and blinking displays showing complex sets of numbers and graphs. A round light hanging over the incubator gave off a comforting blue glow.

As they approached, the woman standing beside the incubator stood straighter, shifting her lab-coat into place. She bowed, smiling.

‘This is Misaki,’ said Merriweather. ‘She’s in charge of Candidate One –’

Something quick, like a flash of electricity, shot through Seven.
Did he just say Candidate
One
?

‘– who is doing well. Very well indeed. Misaki?’

‘Oh, yes, she’s a fighter, all right.’ The woman stroked the plastic curve of the incubator tenderly. ‘Candidate One has had fifteen bleeding incidents as a result of dislocation of the Controller implant after attachment, but has survived them all. Currently she’s in Phase Three, attachment having been stable for at least one month. Her vitals have been steady thirteen days now, though her blood pressure is still a touch higher than we’d like. However, her cerebral cortex seems to be adapting well to the Controller. We expect her to progress to Phase Four soon, when we will begin cognitive testing.’

Seven longed to look down and see what was in the incubator, but White seemed to have no similar urge, and he was letting the memory’s full instincts take over, still determined to experience this exactly as White had.

‘Thank you,’ he said brusquely. ‘The next Candidate, then, Merriweather.’

It went on like this for five more incubators. Then the moment came that Seven had been waiting for.

‘On to Candidate Seven, then, sir.’

Seven’s blood turned to ice, but his focus didn’t waver.

‘I’ve heard of this one,’ he said in White’s cold, curt voice. He stopped before they reached the incubator.

Merriweather nodded, shifting uncomfortably. ‘Ah, yes. Of course. The incident last week.’

‘I need your promise it won’t happen again.’

‘Most certainly not, sir.’

‘Because if it does, and word gets out about TMK  … ’

The doctor twisted the hem of his lab-coat. Even in the strange, womb-like darkness of the lab, Seven could see the fear etched in the man’s features; he’d recognised the threat in White’s voice.

‘Understood, sir. Now, ah, please. Candidate Seven.’

The man tending the incubator turned at the sound of their footsteps and nodded in greeting.

‘Sirs. Seven is stable after a stroke eighteen days ago and a prolonged period of cranial fluid leakage. He has currently had stable attachment of the Controller implant for two days. Vitals are within acceptable range. We anticipate he will progress safely to Phase Three.’

White nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, and then he bent over to look at the incubator and Seven was finally able to see what was inside.

His breath hitched in his throat.

It was a baby.

Candidate Seven couldn’t have been much older than six months; his head was still larger than proportionate, with narrow grey eyes and ears that stuck out a little. His eyes were wide, his fingers podgy. Wires crawled all over his body, some connected to a cap on his head, flickering with multi-coloured dots. A tiny heart-shaped birthmark was printed like a kiss on the sole of one foot.

Meeting his eyes, the baby smiled, and for the first time in this memory Seven felt as though someone had actually seen past his appearance as Alastair White to him inside.

But, as White, he didn’t return the baby’s smile.

‘Very well,’ he said, straightening. ‘On to the next.’

It took just under half an hour to finish the rest of the visits. Once they had finished, Merriweather led him back up to the glass atrium at the front of the lab. The doctor hesitated by the exit.

‘So, ah, I trust you are pleased with the progress, sir? Sixteen out of twenty Candidates stable. Our best intake yet.’

‘It is promising,’ Seven replied in White’s cool voice. ‘But we have been at this stage before. I want to see progression to Phase Five, Merriweather. So far, only six Candidates have passed Phase Four successfully. I want to know the Controller implant can work on higher numbers, and that the TMK project is not a waste of resources.’

‘Of course, sir. I have high hopes for this intake.’

‘I do not deal in hopes, Merriweather. I deal in results.’ White’s voice was a purr of a growl, a soft coat hiding a body of blades. ‘I will be back in a month for a further update.’

He said something more, but his words were drowned out by a high-pitched whine, growing steadily louder. There was a flash of light –

A falling feeling –

Seven opened his eyes to blue filing cabinets and the rushing sound of rain. He blinked, disorientated. His eyes adjusted slowly after the darkness of the lab. Nearby, Alba was sitting on the floor against a cabinet, her eyes closed. She must have fallen asleep while he’d been in the memory.

Fingers shaking, Seven unclipped himself from Butler. He drew in a long breath before untying his right boot and slipping off his sock. He hesitated then, staring down at the top of his foot.

‘Just do it, you wimp,’ he muttered.

Steeling himself, Seven pulled up his foot and twisted it round to examine the skin of his sole.

His breath caught in his throat.

There it was. A small, heart-shaped birthmark in the middle of his foot. No bigger than a thumbprint, no darker than the lipstick-echo of lips left on the rim of a glass.

38

She was silent for a long time after Seven finished recounting what he’d seen in her father’s memory. The sound of the rain driving down again in the night filled the memorium, and a gutter somewhere outside was dripping incessantly. But it all felt distant, as though this small room was another world. A world where North and South collided. A world where pasts were turned inside out and secrets unfurled themselves like thorned vines, winding menacingly out of the darkness.

Alba could practically feel Seven silently screaming at her to say something, and she let out a slow breath.

‘So that’s why you’re called Seven.’

‘Seriously?’ He finally stopped pacing – which was a relief as it had been making her dizzy – and glared down at her. ‘After everything I just told you, that’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘Well, I
had
been wondering why you’ve got such a strange name  … ’

Seven made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered, dropping his eyes back to the floor and resuming his pacing.

‘I just don’t know what to say.’ Alba tucked her legs underneath her to one side. She fiddled with the hem of her trousers, which were still damp from earlier. ‘I’m so sorry about what you saw in the memory. What it might mean.’

‘You’ve got nothing to do with it.’

‘But my father  … ’

He snorted. ‘Bet you’re so
proud
to have a parent like him.’

Alba flinched.

‘Sorry,’ Seven said quickly, his eyes softening. ‘I didn’t mean –’

She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. You’re angry. And I don’t blame you, after what you’ve just seen.’ She lowered her voice and looked away. ‘What I
am
surprised about is that you chose to tell me.’

After everything Seven had said earlier, outside her house, Alba didn’t think he’d have wanted to share something as personal as this with her.
Perhaps
, she thought,
he
does
want to be my friend after all.

And then he said, ‘Well, I thought you might wanna know. Anyway, I just needed to talk about it,’ and she realised she was wrong.

Of course she was. She, the daughter of the very man who had the power to take Seven’s life, was the last person on earth he’d want to be friends with.

‘Can I surf the memory?’ Alba asked after a long, tense pause. ‘I’d like to see for myself what was going on.’

Seven pointed to his memory-machine. ‘Butler would have a heart attack. Look. He’s halfway there already.’

He was right. The machine was still shaking, making wobbly, whiny noises, like a dog whimpering.

‘All right,’ Alba said, sitting up straighter. She tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Run me through it again, then. There was a laboratory filled with babies in incubators who were having some kind of experiment done on them. And this Dr Merriweather person showed Father around, getting updates about each baby, which they referred to as  …  Candidates, was it?’

‘Yup,’ Seven said, letting out a grunting laugh and pointing at himself. ‘One of which is right here, ladies and gents.’

She ignored him. Her brow furrowed. ‘Candidates – that’s what Father and Pearson were talking about the other day. Do you remember what they said? It sounded like these Candidates are having some kind of medical problem that is causing them to die from neuro-haemorrhages during memory-surfing.’ She nodded to herself, then looked up. ‘Was there anything else you noticed in the memory?’

‘Just what I already told you – your dad and the doc kept referring to TMK,’ Seven said.

Alba bit her lip. ‘Do you have any idea what TMK stands for?’

Seven raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t have a clue what
any
of this is about, Alba.’ He kicked the floor absent-mindedly. ‘Oh, and there was a sign on the lab. All I got to see was the last bit –
KEEPERS
.’

‘Keepers? Keepers of what?’

‘No idea.’ Seven thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘But what I really don’t get is that the Candidates are just surfing memories. Do you remember what that guy said to your dad? The Candidates were involved in Phase Nine training – but it sounded like that was just skid-surfing. What’s so special about that? Why all this secrecy if that’s all they’re doing?’

‘And why do they keep dying because of it?’ Alba went on. ‘People do it all the time.’

Seven stopped suddenly. ‘Maybe – maybe they’re not
just
surfing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if they’re dying during surfing,’ he explained, ‘then maybe that’s not all they’re doing in the skids. Maybe they –
we
– can do something else in memories.’

Alba took a deep breath. Her eyes were wide. ‘
Can
you do anything else in memories?’

Seven shrugged. ‘Dunno. I just surf how I surf, and you do it your way. We can’t go into a skid together to see if I’m doing it any different.’

They fell silent at that.

‘Seven  … ’ Alba started tentatively after a while. ‘If you
are
a Candidate, then how come you’re here? How come you’re free? TMK is all so secret, and from what we overheard the other night it sounds as though there is a shortage of Candidates. So if you really
are
one, then why did they let you go?’

Seven stopped pacing. ‘I don’t know.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. They’re trying so hard to keep it a secret – your dad practically threatened to kill Merriweather if there was another incident which might expose the whole thing.’

‘And it’s not like my father to just let someone walk free,’ Alba added quietly.

She remembered her father’s cold laugh the night before. His mocking tone as he’d talked about the raid. How he’d discussed Candidates dying as though it were nothing, as though their lives being lost didn’t bother him in the slightest. He sentenced people to death every day but she hadn’t ever thought badly of him for it because she thought it was about justice, that he was protecting London – protecting her – from criminals.

Alba didn’t know who the criminals were any more.

A shiver of fear ran down her spine. Why
was
Seven here, being allowed to live, even though he’d been involved in such a top-secret project?

Had he somehow escaped? she wondered.

And if he had –

Was her father
looking
for him?

‘Hey,’ Seven said. ‘What’s the time? That was a pretty long memory.’

Alba scrambled up as she looked at her watch. ‘Three thirty!’ she groaned. ‘I have to get back.’ She grabbed her coat and hurriedly did up the buttons, then stopped just as suddenly.

Seven looked so lost, so broken, standing there in the middle of the room, his clothes rumpled and damp, his dark hair flopping into those strangely attractive eyes. Even though he’d told her they weren’t friends, she felt guilty leaving him like this.

‘Don’t worry ’bout me,’ he said, seeming to read her mind. He grinned, though it looked strained. ‘Done all right without you all these years, haven’t I? I’ll manage just fine for a few more.’

Alba forced herself to ignore how much that comment stung. ‘But don’t you want to find out what all this is about?’ she urged.

Seven rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. Why don’t you just waltz in and ask dear
Daddy
what on earth TMK is, and why all these Candidates keep dying, and could he pretty please explain why I’m not still locked up in some lab being forced to surf until my brain fries, thank you very much?’ His voice was hard and cold. ‘That’s how things work in your world, isn’t it? All you have to do is ask, and everything gets handed to you on an effing silver plate.’

Lips tightening, Alba glared at him.
No wonder he has no friends
, she thought acidly.
Every time I try to be nice, he throws something like
that
back in my face.

Well, let’s see how he likes it when someone throws back.

‘Yes,’ she said coolly, tossing her hair back from her face. ‘That’s
exactly
what happens, Seven.
That’s
why I’ve never been allowed to memory-surf, or make proper friends, or do anything that my parents haven’t approved first.
That’s
why I’m being married off to someone of their choosing and will probably spend the rest of my life stuck in North pretending to be happy next to some horrible man, even though really I’m dying inside.
That’s
why I was so grateful to finally meet someone who actually did something nice for me for once, and just perhaps might want to be my friend. Of course, I see how wrong about that I was now,’ she finished icily.

Everything went silent. Even the noise of the storm outside seemed muffled. Alba’s face was flushed, and she could feel her hands trembling at her sides where she’d curled them into fists.

Seven blinked. ‘You’re getting married?’

Alba gave a frustrated sigh.

‘What? It’s kinda big news!’ He let out a huff of air. ‘Congratulations, I guess.’

‘
Seven!
’

‘All right!’ he half shouted, throwing out his hands. ‘What d’you want me to say?
I’m so sorry to hear that
?
Come here, let’s hold hands and talk about our feelings over a cup of tea
? I’m no good at all this – this
friends
stuff.’

Alba blushed, something warm flaring inside of her.

He’d said
friends.

‘Look, this TMK crap has just thrown me,’ Seven went on. ‘After last night, I didn’t think things could get any worse. Then this happened.’

His eyes dropped to the floor. For once, there wasn’t a trace of sarcasm on his features, no mocking expression on his lips. His face was just soft. Open.

Alba knew exactly how he was feeling because it was how
she
felt too: that they’d lost control of their own lives. Though perhaps neither of them had any to begin with.

But here was a chance for them to take that control back.

‘We need to find out what TMK is,’ she said firmly.

Seven looked up. ‘How?’

‘Well, you’re a skid-thief, aren’t you?’ Alba’s eyes flashed. ‘Maybe it’s time you stole another memory.’