We stagger backwards.

  The white noise.

  There, Nathan always said, to help us relax.

  He was so insistent, relentless. ‘It’s vital you get enough sleep,’ he’d say… ‘Without it you won’t fully align.’

  Benjamin-Annie sits motionless, sedated, their mind sat­urated by Ben’s voice, his words seeping into their dreams, their subconscious.

  If that’s happening to them, then who’s to say.

  A quiet voice behind us breaks through our thoughts, mak­ing us jump.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Amelia. I didn’t know how to tell you.’

  We freeze, every muscle rigid.

  ‘What did you call me?’

  Eliza whispers, her voice barely audible, as if she’s afraid of the word.

  ‘Amelia.’

  The drugs, regular at first, then given less often, until eventu­ally we only took them before bed, before naps, before drifting off into unconsciousness.

  All those dreams – if they were dreams – never from Amelia’s perspective. Never her memories. Only Laurie’s. Always Laurie’s.

  So real, so vivid.

  And as the pills were reduced, the dreams became harder to reach. We’d jolt awake, certain we’d heard a voice.

  An intruder.

  Not an intruder after all, but a recording.

  Whenever we slept, Nathan would switch on the white noise. ‘It helps you,’ he’d say. ‘You need it to get a good night’s sleep.’

  We look again at Benjamin-Annie, lifeless in their rocking chair.

  ‘Look, Laurie-Amelia,’ Nathan would say, his voice brim­ming with pride as he showed us our brilliant sleep score. Night after night. Always so pleased. Always so proud. ‘You’re doing wonderfully. Keep this up, and you’ll have no trouble at all in aligning.’

  Our sleep score, tracked. Recorded.

  The watch.

  We look at our wrist.

  Then at Eliza.

  She’s sitting beneath the window, her face a waterlogged sponge. ‘The watch tracks your sleep patterns,’ she whispers. ‘It’s linked to the white-noise machine. The machine plays recordings – like the one of Ben – but only when you’re in a deep sleep. The white noise drowns them out otherwise.’

  All those nights we woke to the hissing, like escaping gas. Never a voice, even when we were sure someone had spoken.

  ‘Show me.’

  Eliza closes her eyes, shaking her head, refusing to meet our gaze.

  ‘Show me the recordings I’ve been hearing.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Show me, or I’ll scream,’ we threaten, our voice wavering. ‘I’ll say you’ve told me everything. That you brought me here. I’ll tell them I saw you with Albie, that you’re working with him, with the anti—’

  ‘Amelia—’

  We open our mouth to scream, but she clamps her hand over it, her touch cold and trembling. A flicker of memory surfaces. Rough hands, muffled cries.

  ‘Okay,’ she whispers, her voice shaky. ‘Okay. But I need your watch.’

  We extend our wrist, watching as she activates a screen we’ve never seen before, her hands unsteady as she enters a four-digit code.

  We watch nervously as she continues to fiddle with our watch. She could be doing anything, sending out a distress signal, calling for help. Laurie-Amelia is on the loose. At Benjamin-Annie’s house. Send backup.

  Finally, the watch beeps. Eliza exhales, her relief audible. ‘I’ve got to change the settings to make it seem as though you’re in a deep sleep,’ she mutters, her grip tight on our wrist. She continues pressing buttons, then abruptly releases her hand.

  The white noise from the nursery cuts off.

  In its place, a voice begins to play through the machine.

  ‘Oh no, I’m blind as a bat without my contact lenses,’ it says, light-hearted and cheerful.

  It’s Mum. Me. Us.

  She sounds almost giddy, like she’s on the verge of laugh­ter. ‘For years, I had to wear glasses. Amelia was terrified of eyes – even her own. It drove Mitchell mad. She couldn’t stand it when I put in my contact lenses. It always made her squirm to see my fingertip so close to my eye…’

  What the fuck.

  We pull ourselves up and peer back through the gap in the curtains.

  Benjamin-Annie’s head is still drooping, their arm dan­gling limply at their side.

  ‘You remind me of someone from my childhood, Nathan,’ Mum’s voice continues. ‘Walter Green was his name. He lived opposite in a small bungalow. He put me up whenever I wasn’t able to go home. He never asked questions, at least not to me. He just let me sit with him, playing board games until it was time for bed. I got to be very good at draughts… Sometimes he took me to school the next morning. I always had cornflakes for breakfast with milk straight from the fridge. I love cold milk with cornflakes…’

  A pause.

  Then another voice comes through, deep and unmistakable.

  Nathan.

  ‘Did he ever help, Laurie?’

  We know what’s coming. Word for word. The answer is burned into our memory. We mouth along with it, tears blur­ring our vision until Benjamin-Annie is no longer visible through the window. ‘He called the police once. My mother hated him for doing that, but I never did. I liked knowing he was there, looking out for us.’

  Eliza presses a button on our watch, and the white noise floods back in, swallowing up the voices.

  The nursery feels colder. Emptier. Benjamin-Annie remains slumped in the rocking chair, their posture lifeless.

  We clutch the windowsill, the recordings pressing down, rooting us to the spot.

  ‘Are you okay, Amelia? Shall I keep going?’

  Can you handle hearing more?

  We wait, straining for an answer, but nothing comes.

  We give a slow nod.

  Mum’s voice fills the room again, her words edged with pain.

  ‘I remember one time we’d been to the park. Or maybe it was the woods. Somewhere muddy. Tony started shouting as soon as we walked through the door… He reached for me before I was able to take my shoes off. I dodged him, ran upstairs and traipsed mud all over their room. He hit my mother for that. He smacked her. He split her lip right open. I sat upstairs and listened from their bedroom, rubbing my bare feet against the carpet as she received the punishment that was intended for me.’

  There’s a sniff. A pause.

  ‘Do you know that he believed himself to be a good per­son? He honestly thought he had morals. He took us to church every Sunday. And he prayed every night. He tried to preach to us, to tell us what it meant to be a good person. In my experience, the people who spend their time preaching about loving and being kind to others are often the cruellest indi­viduals. The good people, the people who would never think to do otherwise, don’t feel kindness is something that needs to be taught. It’s the people who preach about being a good person. They’re the worst ones out there.’

  The white noise rolls back in.

  We’re thrown back to the church on the day of our Passing. The tension. The nausea pooling in our stomach. The weight of his hand on our leg, the unspoken threat it carried.

  The hum fades, giving way to Mum’s voice.

  ‘The day Amelia was born, I felt delirious with love. That first moment, when our bodies touched, skin on skin, both of us crying. Amelia terrified of the bright new world, me trembling with love. I can still feel it, how that love poured into my life like a flood, unstoppable and overwhelming. But it was so difficult to relax. After losing Harrison… I took no risks. I’d spend the nights watching her, guarding her as she slept. I had this need to protect her from everything. Even when Mitchell would hold her, I couldn’t properly relax. The only time I felt I could breathe easily was when she was in my arms. It was like caring for my mother all over again.’

  ‘Tell me about how your mother died, Laurie. Talk me through it. I know you said she took her own life. How exactly? It’s important you become comfortable speaking about these things. It’s the only way the memories won’t overwhelm Amelia when you merge…’

  ‘I got home from a date… I found her in the bathtub. She was lying there… The water was almost black with blood…’

  We double over, retching violently, spitting bitter liquid that scalds our throat.

  The image is seared into our mind – the red water, her lifeless body, the quiet, suffocating horror.

  We knew this. It was always there, buried in our thoughts, haunting our dreams. But we never confronted it. Never spoke about it when we had the chance, before the voices in our head fell silent. We could have opened up. Could have faced it together, confronted the nightmares as one.

  But we were too scared. Too proud. Too afraid to fully expose the raw, broken parts of ourselves.

  So we kept it buried.

  ‘I can still see it, clear as day. Her arm was hanging limply over the edge. There was blood pooling on the tiles…’

  Why didn’t you tell me?

  The question screams through our mind. Did you think I couldn’t handle it?

  Answer me, for fuck’s sake. Why did you keep this from me? Were you trying to protect me? Shield me from your pain?

  Tears fall, hot and bitter, mingling with the guilt tightening our chest.

  We straighten, wiping our mouth with the back of our hand. How could I have missed it? How could I have been so blind to your silent struggle?

  ‘I stayed there for hours,’ Mum’s voice continues, ‘watch­ing the drip, drip of her blood. It was murder, you know, not suicide. She might have finally taken her own life, but it’s only because she was so terrified. He killed her. If it wasn’t for him, she’d have lived. She’d have met Mitchell and Amelia.’

  We’re not sure whether the crying is coming from us or the machine, not until the white noise resumes, and the sobbing stops.

  We turn to Eliza. ‘Everything coming from these record­ings. that was what we spoke about…’

  Eliza nods.

  ‘And what we saw in our dreams…’

  A bitter taste stings the back of our throat as we swallow. Eliza’s face has gone pale. She reaches out for our hand, but we step back.

  ‘Amelia…’

  ‘These recordings have been playing while we’ve been asleep?’

  She nods.

  Our finger hovers above the button Eliza’s been pressing to get the recordings to play. A part of us screams to run, to get as far from this machine as physically possible.

  But the other part of us needs to know.

  How can we understand what’s been fed to us, and what’s real, if we don’t listen?

  With a deep breath, we close our eyes. And then we press the button.

  ‘Amelia relies on being in control.’ Mum’s voice is calm. ‘It’s why we’re doing this. My Alzheimer’s isn’t something she can control unless we merge, unless she literally takes over. I always find it remarkable how different we are in that respect. Not knowing what’s coming doesn’t worry me. She takes after her father. Mitchell needed to know exactly what was happening too. Not in an overbearing way. I once worked with a woman who kept her class timetable hidden so that the poor children never knew what to expect. It made one little boy so unbear­ably anxious that he stopped coming to school altogether. She needed the power. Amelia’s not like that. She just wants to be sure everything is going to be okay. It is going to be okay, isn’t it?’

  The recordings continue, an endless stream of relentless, often mundane, conversation. We sit with our back to the wall, eyes closed, trying to remain composed.

  There’s nothing new, nothing we haven’t already dis­cussed during head-talk or experienced in a dream. Nothing we couldn’t recite by heart.

  It isn’t the content of the recordings that twists our stom­ach. It’s the realisation that we’ve been manipulated, that our minds – our memories – have been infiltrated without our knowledge.

  Every word, every detail, meticulously placed.

  And all this time, we thought we were dreaming.

  Remembering.

  Nathan’s voice filters through the machine now, smooth and matter-of-fact. ‘You said it was extremely important, Laurie. I need to document anything of major importance. You know that.’

  ‘Fine, look, I’m sure I’ve asked this countless times before but, Nathan, I need to know. Will I be able to retain memories of events that Amelia didn’t experience? I understand she’ll be able to help me recall moments she has been privy to. But what about the conversations she’s not around for? Important ones that I need to remember.’

  ‘We can’t be certain she’ll have access to those, of course, but the hope is that your memories will restore, including the ones that are yours and yours alone.’

  ‘It’s vital that I remember this. If I don’t… Well, Amelia and I… We’ll struggle tremendously.’

  ‘May I ask what it is?’

  There’s a pause. The faint sound of paper being unfolded.

  ‘Silly sod?’

  ‘I know it seems stupid. But I need to remember it.’

  ‘I’m not following, Laurie.’

  A long silence follows.

  We will the conversation to end, hoping Mum will leave it there. Hoping this won’t go any further.

  But her voice returns.

  ‘Mary’s given me a codeword. She wants proof, following our Merge, that I’m still there. If I forget it, then I won’t be able to prove that it’s worked, will I? But I can’t tell Amelia the codeword, can’t ask her to remember it for me, otherwise that defeats the purpose. I need to call Mary a silly sod when she asks for proof that I’m there. I need to remember silly sod.’

  We close our eyes, our body convulsing with sobs.

  Eliza wraps her arms round us, holding us tightly as we tremble uncontrollably.

  ‘I need to call Mary a silly sod when she asks for proof that I’m there. I need to remember silly sod. I need to call Mary a silly sod when she asks for proof that I’m there. I need to remember silly sod. I need to call Mary a silly sod when she asks for proof that I’m there. I need to remember silly sod.’

  The sentence loops endlessly, relentlessly, until we can’t take it anymore. We press the button, silencing the voice.

  ‘Amelia,’ Eliza whispers softly. ‘We have to get you back to the apartment. We’ve been gone far too long, and Nathan—’

  We look around The Enclave.

  Home to children.

  Children.

  Toddlers learning to read and write. Polly-Connor flicking the pine cones off the table. Erica-Alice bouncing around the classroom. They’ve been taken from their family. Put forward for the Merge by their family. Forced to live apart from their parents, from their siblings.

  Children, all indelibly marked with the symbol of Combines.

  Children.

  Without a say, without a choice. Too young to decide their own fate.

  Lara.

  We think of Lara-Jay, that walk when they finally spoke, their cheek pressed against the gravel: I can’t hear her. Why can’t I hear her?

  We stand, our legs trembling, and look in at Benjamin- Annie. Out cold.

  The drugs. Stashed in the teddy bears. Never swallowed.

  ‘Lara-Jay never took the pills,’ we whisper.

  Eliza nods, her expression heavy. ‘They were terrified of becoming addicted to Narcoproxitin. It isn’t a dangerous drug, Amelia. We wouldn’t prescribe it if it was. But they were so scared. So, they didn’t take it. I thought…’ She swallows, her voice faltering. ‘Jay regularly spoke of his fear of being medi­cated. I thought I’d put his mind at ease, that I’d convinced him Lara’s addictive tendencies wouldn’t be a problem with the prescription drugs, that I’d be monitoring them closely enough to ensure there was never an issue. But he clearly didn’t believe me. So he… Well, you know as well as I do.’

  ‘What do the drugs do?’ we whisper.

  Eliza looks through the window at Benjamin-Annie, her eyes clouded with guilt. ‘It’s like a sleeping pill, but it does more than just put you to sleep. It relaxes your men­tal inhibitions and opens your consciousness, making your mind highly receptive to suggestions when sedated, a sort of medicated hypnotic state. That’s how the recordings work, they infiltrate your thoughts. If you don’t take the pills, the suggestions can’t take hold. That’s why Lara-Jay remained unaffected. They never ingested the pills.’

  ‘So the whole time they were here in The Village…’

  ‘I doubt they experienced any head-talk.’ She sniffs, her voice cracking slightly. ‘I didn’t know about any of this, Amelia. I promise. I would never have… It was only after Lara-Jay died and we found their medication. It was you, Amelia. You opened my eyes. You showed me something was wrong. I started talking to anti-Mergers, people I’d always believed to be crazy. I needed to see if I had them wrong too, if they had answers I couldn’t find anywhere else. That’s when I met Albie. He’s been critical in helping me piece this together, Amelia. He hasn’t rested. It was Albie who first suggested that the white noise might be part of the problem.’

  We think of Lara-Jay’s cough, the way their slow, heavy movements seemed weighed down by grief.

  ‘And Benjamin-Annie?’ we ask. ‘Why did they say Combine had taken Ben? Why couldn’t they hear him?’

  ‘Annie was pregnant, Amelia. They couldn’t risk drugging her as heavily. They couldn’t risk harming the baby, but that meant she was more lucid, less susceptible to merging. It’s why we kept her apart from you, even after Teddy was born. I wanted to reunite you. I really, really did. So did Nathan. He was just waiting until he was told she was healthy.’

  We stare at Eliza. ‘She?’

  ‘Annie.’

  Not Ben. Not both. Just… Annie.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ we whisper, barely able to form the words. ‘If she’s not here, then where is she?’

  Eliza looks at us. ‘I’m so sorry, Amelia.’

  Her lips keep moving, but we—

  No.

  There is no we.

  It’s just… me.

 

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