The Memory Keepers (26 page)

79

When the door to the cell next opened, Seven was so surprised at who walked in his mouth dropped open.

Dolly.

As she stumbled into the room – her hands were cuffed – a man followed her. Seven’s eyes widened with surprise at a second familiar face. It was Nihail, the dark-skinned man he’d met yesterday in the ruins of the Underground, who was secretly a part of the Movement.

‘Candidate Seven,’ he said, smiling. ‘A pleasure to meet you. My name is Nihail.’

His eyes flicked to the ceiling. Seven followed them and spotted a tiny camera tucked in one corner of the room. He looked back and gave the barest of nods to show he understood: they were being watched.

Nihail bent down and picked up the toothpick Alastair White had left, presumably as a reminder for Seven as to what would happen if he didn’t comply with them (it had worked – by now, Seven had thought of hundreds of ways pain could be dealt with a single toothpick).

‘I shouldn’t be needing this,’ Nihail said, slipping the toothpick into the pocket of his red jacket, ‘because you’re going to play nice today, aren’t you, Candidate?’

‘Yes,’ Seven answered dully.

He caught Dolly’s gaze and smiled weakly. She smiled back. Or at least, it seemed like a smile. It was hard to tell. Her face was swollen, a dark purple bruise covering her cheekbone and jaw, and her lips were cracked with dried blood. Her hair had come loose from its usual buns; it fell in a straggly purple mess over her shoulders.

I did this
,
he thought, feeling guilt like a sting.
Whatever happens to her – it’s on me.

Even though Nihail was on their side, Seven knew he wouldn’t be able to let them off. Alastair White was no doubt watching through the camera. Nihail would have to act as though Seven and Dolly were any other criminals he was interrogating.

Nihail shoved Dolly forward. ‘I thought I’d bring Miss Rose along,’ he said, ‘just in case you need a reminder of what’ll happen if you don’t answer our questions. Mr White thought you’d respond better this way. Said South scum like you have so little to lose it’d be more persuasive if someone else was bearing the consequences of your actions.’

Seven scowled. ‘That’s one thing
Mr White
has got right then.’

Pushing Dolly aside, Nihail went over to Seven, clipping a small device to one of his fingers.

‘A lie-detector,’ Nihail explained, sitting on a chair he’d dragged in from outside the cell. He pulled out a tablet. ‘I’ll know if you’re trying to fool me, Candidate. For Miss Rose’s sake, I hope you save us the bother.’

Seven swallowed. He only had a moment to try and slow his heart – it was skipping along at a thousand miles an hour – before Nihail started firing questions.

‘What is your full name?’

‘Seven.’

‘Seven  … ?’

‘Just Seven.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Nowhere now, thanks to you lot.’

‘Where
did
you live?’

‘Flat 23B, Southrise Residences, Vauxhall.’

‘Where did all the memories in your flat come from?’

‘They were stolen.’

‘Who stole them?’

‘Me.’

‘What for?’

‘To surf. Sell on the black market. Don’t you guys know all this already?’

‘Who do you work for?’

‘Carpenter’s skid-thief crew. At least, until you shot him.’

Seven saw no point in lying. The tattoo was right there on his chest after all. And Carpenter was dead. There
was
no Carpenter’s skid-thief crew any more (his stomach still did a painful flip whenever he thought about it).

‘Who else is in Carpenter’s crew?’

For the first time, Seven hesitated. ‘Dunno. I’ve never met any of them.’

The tablet in Nihail’s palm began to beep. Nihail didn’t look down at it, his dark eyes still fixed on Seven.

‘I didn’t need the detector to tell me you’re lying,’ he said. Standing, he slipped the tablet into his pocket. ‘Come with me. Let me show you why.’

He removed the ties from Seven’s ankles and forced him to stand, pushing him towards the door with one hand gripping his neck. Seven stumbled. He’d been sitting so long his legs felt like jelly.

Locking Dolly behind in the cell, Nihail led Seven out into a long corridor. Clinical white walls stretched away into darkness. They passed closed doors, each numbered and marked with the name of the prisoner inside. It was eerily quiet. They stopped near the end of the corridor. Nihail unlocked a door by hitting a code into the panel beside it, and before Seven could even think about who was inside, the door swung heavily open. Still grasping him by the neck, Nihail pushed him forward.

Seven’s stomach dropped.

The girl in the cell didn’t look anything like the girl he’d known for years. She was slumped low in the chair she was tied to. Blood matted her hair. One eye was swollen shut, and the looped piercing round her bottom lip had been ripped out. Her long-sleeved top and jeans were dirty and torn.

She looked up slowly, then froze.

‘Loe,’ Seven croaked.

Nihail stepped up beside him. In the briefest moment, shifting as though he were simply adjusting his grip on Seven’s neck, he leant in and breathed, ‘I’m sorry. They wanted you to know.’ Then, in a louder voice: ‘I’ve brought you a visitor, Loe.’

She licked her lips. ‘Seven.’ Her voice sounded dry and ragged, as though she’d been screaming. All of a sudden she was frantic. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she cried. ‘Please! It was all for Mika! You’ve got to understand! I’d lost my job – what else could I do? She was hungry! I couldn’t bear to see her like that. They told me they’d help Mika and me. They promised not to hurt you!’

Seven’s heart thumped hard. ‘I don’t understand.’

Loe strained against her ties. He saw blood dripping down her feet from where the plastic cords dug into her ankles. There was more blood on the floor beneath her, dried and crusted on the drain-cover.

‘I did it for Mika!’ She was crying, something Seven had never known her do before, and it shocked him. ‘Please. I’m so sorry! But you’ve got to understand!’

And in one sudden, horrible burst of clarity, he
did
understand.

‘You told them about Dolly,’ Seven breathed. ‘About Alba. That’s how they knew I was at her house.’

Loe was shaking. ‘Mika was starving, and the reward money for giving them information on you was just
so
much, I couldn’t  …  Seven, please! Please, understand! Mika’s got a chance now at a life I never could’ve given her –’

‘That’s enough,’ Nihail interrupted. Ignoring her protests, he twisted Seven round and shoved him back out into the corridor.

The door slammed shut behind them. As they walked back to Seven’s cell, Loe’s screams and cries followed them down the corridor, muffled but still ringing in his ears until he thought he’d never be rid of their sound, that for the rest of his life all he’d hear were her desperate, ragged screams.

80

The next two days went by so slowly she swore she could feel each minute melting into the next. Each tick of the clock on her bedside table felt like the twist of a knife.
One more minute
, Alba thought.
One more minute when Seven and Dolly could be hurting, and I can’t do a thing to stop it.
She wished she could be there with them, share some of their pain. Instead, she was trapped in her room with her useless hordes of books and trinkets and jewels.

She hadn’t quite believed her mother when she’d said life would continue as normal. It seemed ridiculous to think that life could go on as normal after everything that’d happened. Seven had kissed her. They’d watched a man die. They’d discovered the truth about The Memory Keepers.

The whole world felt different now.

Oxana was talking about Alba returning to school next week after her engagement to Thierry was announced at the Winter-turn Ball.

‘All your friends will be jealous,’ she’d said.

What friends?
Alba thought
. You’ve taken away the only two I have.

But she kept quiet. She needed her mother to think everything would return to normal. She couldn’t suspect a thing about the Winter-turn Ball, or Alba wouldn’t be allowed to go, and she had to go. For Seven. For Dolly.

For herself.

81

After two days in the cell, he forgot what it felt like to have fresh air on his skin. How blue the sky could be. The pattern of stars stitched across it. The smell before rain.

On the nights he wasn’t working, Seven used to lie on the rooftop of his block of flats and memorise every cluster and constellation, imagining they formed a secret message from some god in a language no one on earth could understand.

Now he’d never decipher the message. He’d never even see the night sky again.

Seven longed for darkness. The cell was always bright. Sometimes they broadcast noise from hidden speakers just as he fell asleep, so he’d jerk back awake, blinking, straining against his ties, wishing he could cover his ears to block out the violent sound. And yet the times they let him sleep were worse. He’d wake, and it’d be like that first moment all over again, when he’d first opened his eyes and saw the dull grey walls and knew that this time –

This
time it truly was over.

After two days, one interrogation blurred into another. It was almost always Nihail, but sometimes they sent someone different, and Seven dreaded seeing the door unlock and an unfamiliar face behind it. They never exactly hurt him because he always answered their questions, but when it wasn’t Nihail interrogating him, the fear was worse.

So far they’d only asked about his life as a skid-thief. Then, finally, on the third day –

‘Have you heard of TMK?’

It was a new person interrogating him: a Chinese man called Lin with sharp, cutting eyes and a strong, slender body. His black hair was pulled into a ponytail running down the back of his immaculate suit. He sat in a chair opposite Seven, one arm bent across his knees.

At his question, Seven’s heart started to beat so fast it sent the tablet in Lin’s pocket beeping.

Lin raised an eyebrow, smiling pleasantly. ‘I’ll take that as a yes. Perhaps you also know what it stands for?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Which is  … ?’

‘The Memory Keepers,’ he answered with a scowl. ‘Though perhaps it should stand for The Memory Korruptors, given what you bastards use it for.’

Lin’s smile was fixed. ‘Corruption is spelled with a “C”.’

‘Just like Candidate, then.’

‘Do you know why we call you Candidate?’ Lin asked.

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

Seven glowered at him. ‘You’ve got the skid, haven’t you? Your lot took all of them from my flat. You know what I saw.’

There was a pause. Something flickered across Lin’s face. ‘What skid?’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t gone through all of them already.’ Seven looked for recognition in his eyes but saw nothing. Instead, he saw something else.

Fear.

Lin leant back. ‘Whose memory are we talking about, Candidate Seven?’

‘Alastair White’s.’

Lin blinked. Standing, he turned to the door. ‘One moment.’

As soon as he was gone, Seven’s mind began to race.

He’s actually worried
,
he thought.
They don’t know. They didn’t find White’s skid in my collection.

Who hid it – Kola? Nihail?

He drew in a sharp breath.

Seven knew the Movement had needed him as proof of TMK’s experiments. He knew they’d been counting on showing him at the Winter-turn Ball. And he also knew that was unlikely now the London Guard had caught him. But this skid; it was enough. Along with the other information they’d gathered on TMK, it would at least force an enquiry into what Alastair White, the Lord Minister and London Guard had been doing.

Excitement whirred through him at the realisation.

Lin took a long time to come back. He looked calm again as he sat down in front of Seven, though he couldn’t hide the flicker of unease in his eyes.

‘Who else has seen that memory?’ Lin asked.

‘No one.’

‘Who have you
told
about what you saw in that memory?’

‘No one.’

And the lie came easily, the detector not giving Seven away, because for the first time since he’d been brought here he felt the golden, winning force of hope.

The Movement had Alba’s father’s skid, and soon the whole world would know what was hidden inside it.

82

The day before the Winter-turn Ball – the third day since Seven and Dolly had been taken away – her father finally came to see her.

Alba looked round at the sound of the door opening from where she was lying on top of her bed. She’d drifted in and out of a restless sleep all night. It was now almost midday. The sky was a clear, pearly blue outside: a beautiful winter’s morning. Under the sun, frost glistened on the lawns of the estate.

Her father was wearing a polished suit in a dark, charcoal colour over a silver-white shirt. A golden bulldog clasp sat at the base of his throat.

He spread his arms and gave her a smile. ‘What do you think? Is this suit grand enough for the Ball tomorrow? I’ve just had the last-minute adjustments done.’

Alba stared. ‘Looks just
great
,’ she said coldly, turning back to the wall.

Her father sighed. She heard footsteps as he crossed the room, then the mattress dipped under his weight. He laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘My dear. Please – talk to me. It pains me to see you like this.’

Well, it pains me to know you’re a lying murderer
,
Alba thought, but she bit her lip, staying silent.

‘I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.’

‘Do you really want to know?’ she murmured.

‘Of
course
, my dear.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘You can tell me anything.’

Alba snorted.
Let’s see about that.

Pushing herself up, she brushed her hair back from her face. Her father’s hand dropped to her back. His gaze met hers as she looked up at him, and even though she despised him, even though she hated what he’d done, she found herself memorising the look in his eyes then, because it was kind, and loving, and for the briefest of seconds she could pretend that he was just her father and she was just his daughter, and that was all there was in the world.

Then she said, ‘I know about The Memory Keepers.’

To his credit, he had the decency to look guilty.

‘What?’ he breathed.

‘I know everything.’ Alba’s voice broke as tears rushed suddenly from nowhere. ‘I know what you make the Candidates do, and what you use the altered memories for. I know about it all!’

Perhaps she’d been hoping he’d try and tell her none of it was true. Or perhaps she’d just wanted him to apologise. To wrap his arms round her and say sorry, because he should be, he was her father and he
should be sorry
.

Instead, he stood stiffly, staring down at her with eyes that closed her out even as she looked into them, a tiny flame of hope still fluttering in her heart.

‘I expect you to keep this quiet,’ he said, before turning and striding out the room.

Alba doubled over as the door clicked shut. She let out a cry that choked away into sobs. Up until that moment, she hadn’t realised she’d still been holding onto the idea of her father as he was before all of this happened – before Seven, before TMK, before anything – and it was only now that she knew she’d lost that part of him forever.