Bite Risk, page 14
None of us can recall a single other person who’s left Tremorglade since then.
‘And Dad,’ Elena breathes. ‘All those jobs he got rejected from.’
‘I bet they interfered to make sure he didn’t get them,’ I say. ‘If you think about it, it wouldn’t even be that hard for Sequest to keep us here. Most of us wouldn’t dream of leaving, anyway. But if anyone does – if they search online for holidays or jobs or whatever… Sequest know about it, and they make sure it doesn’t happen. Set rogue tripwires. Drain car batteries.’ I swallow. ‘Even kill, if they have to.’
‘That research Doctor Adebayo was recruited for,’ Ingrid breathes. ‘Do you think…’
I finish the thought for her. ‘We’re it.’
We sit with that for a moment. We all really liked Doctor Adebayo. It seems impossible that she would agree to have any part in this. I can still see her face in the window of that passenger drone. Excited. Happy.
Elena draws in a sharp breath. ‘Just after she left was when they said Mum couldn’t be sent away to that big hospital for treatment after all. Did they… do you think they stopped it happening?’ She twists the duvet next to her, knuckles white.
There’s a sensation like ants crawling up my spine.
In three years, they must have done an awful lot. We’re only just starting to scratch the surface.
‘I want answers,’ Elena says grimly.
‘Well,’ Ingrid says, thoughtfully, ‘it’s Thursday today.’
We look at her blankly. ‘So?’
‘Dora will be out at her book club.’
* * *
Harold shifts from foot to foot on the threshold of Dora’s room, wringing his hands. Eddie is oblivious to his discomfort, trotting excitedly around between the rest of us as we search, tail wagging briskly. ‘You really mustn’t.’
‘No, we must,’ Ingrid retorts. ‘Go back in your own room, if you like.’
‘Don’t break anything,’ he says. ‘Please put all her books back exactly where they were. She’ll know.’
‘There’s no CCTV in here, is there?’ I ask, suddenly worried, scanning the ceiling for anything that might be a camera.
‘No. We don’t need it,’ he says primly. ‘We usually respect each other’s privacy here.’
I don’t remind him how often he’s found Dora in his room, poking about.
Despite all the evidence we’ve shared, Harold refuses to believe Dora has anything to do with Sequest. I can tell he’s also having trouble accepting that Ingrid is now part of our team. In fact, I think he’s half a breath away from accusing her of having planted the reports.
‘It makes no sense,’ he says for the third time. ‘Dora doesn’t use a computer.’
Ingrid grunts. ‘Maybe she didn’t write them – maybe they’re reports for her. Either way, it’s not good, is it?’
She reaches down briefly to scratch Eddie’s ears, and he leans into her blissfully.
Harold tuts. ‘Look, I don’t know how she got hold of them but there’s no way she’d be involved. She must have picked them up by mistake. You barely know her, Ingrid,’ he adds with a sniff. ‘It’s not as though you bother spending any time with her when you Caretake. None of you know her like I do.’
I slide my hand under a chair cushion. Nothing there.
Harold points a finger in the air, a sudden idea. ‘Someone working for Sequest must have hidden them in here!’
Ingrid rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, right. It would totally make sense for Sequest to hide their top-secret stuff in some rando old lady’s room, for her to find when she’s picking out her next bedtime read.’
We share an amused glance, a tiny connection between us, just for a moment. It feels nice, but weird, like when my braces came off and it took me a while to get used to how smooth my teeth were. I’m starting to see Ingrid for real, not as Sequest want me to see her.
And she’s right, of course, in her sarcastic way. All the same, I can’t help but admire Harold for defending his friend. Especially as I’ve never seen Dora be much of a friend to him in return. It crosses my mind that maybe he’s in love with her. If that’s the case, I can only pity him.
We give up shortly after that. There’s nothing else behind the books on the shelves where Ingrid found the first reports, and we soon run out of places to search. Maybe Dora’s being more careful now. Maybe she noticed some of them went missing.
We head back over to Harold’s room, closing the door behind us and whispering, despite the fact that Dora’s not due back for at least another hour. Harold opens a packet of ginger nut biscuits.
Elena grabs one and talks with her mouth full. ‘You have to promise not to tell Dora anything we talk about, Harold. Right?’
‘Of course.’ He sniffs. ‘I’m not going to put her at risk. That’s what I’ve been telling you not to do, blabbing to everyone. Fat chance you ever listen to me, apparently. And by the way, Sel, that was extremely silly of you, going to Warren’s house. When I said you should be discreet, I didn’t mean break in under cover of darkness. If I’d known, I’d have told you not to do it.’
‘Which is exactly why we didn’t tell you,’ Elena retorts.
‘Well, we didn’t find anything,’ I admit. ‘But no one’s come knocking at my door to arrest me. The thing is, it’s all got to come out somehow. Everyone needs to know what’s going on. We have proper evidence, with these reports. We just need to get them out there.’
‘Yes, but look what happened when Pedro tried to post on Tremorgossip,’ Elena points out. ‘They’ve got a stranglehold on the network. On our computers, our phones.’
‘We… uh… we photocopy them and post them everywhere around town?’ I ask.
‘And who’s to say you didn’t type them yourselves as a prank, hmm?’ Harold replies.
He’s right. Our reputation – Elena’s, mine, Ingrid’s – is at a low point right now. Sequest have done a pretty good job of making us look completely untrustworthy.
‘Might as well just ask them to kill you,’ Harold adds. ‘Your power right now is that they don’t know – yet – what you’ve just discovered. You can’t squander that. You have to use it at the right moment.’
‘Power? We have no power,’ Ingrid says, her voice dull, defeated. ‘We can’t even use our phones or computers without those stalkers seeing what we’re doing. They know everything about us.’
‘Not everything.’ Harold takes another ginger nut and crunches it thoughtfully. ‘They’re clever. Manipulative. They have a lot of private information about us. But we also know they’re sloppy. Your FIN so-called “friends”, for example, have screwed up more than once. They’re the weak link. They don’t know you’ve found out about them. Or Happy Trappers. That gives us an opportunity.’
‘To do what?’
‘Lead them astray.’
‘How?’
‘Make them think you’ve given up. That you’ve realized you were wrong. It was all a horrible mistake because you’re just silly teenagers. And then… boom.’
‘Boom? We’re going to blow them up?’
‘Metaphorically speaking. Next Confinement night, when there’s no one in authority paying attention… that’s when you finally make your move.’
‘Which is?’
‘Remove yourselves from their control. Physically come out of their network, so that you can expose them. I can’t do it. But you can.’
‘Remove ourselves? How?’
‘Leave Tremorglade.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR SEPTEMBER – 7 DAYS TO NEXT CONFINEMENT
Remi.
Remi Colletto. That’s whose name has been rattling round my head. Remi, who went into the forest with his family for marshmallows and songs round the campfire and never came back.
Maybe it was a bear that killed them. Maybe it was Sequest. Maybe it was a genetically engineered bear sent by Sequest.
But they’re all dead. That’s the main point.
Only a week to go until we follow their example. A week to go until next Confinement.
I’m lying on my bed playing Happy Trappers when Mum calls me downstairs. Even though I know it’s Sequest’s stupid game, it’s still addictive. And I don’t want to disrupt my normal routine in case they notice. I just answer the pop-ups with my usual dishonesty.
I thud down in my slippers and find Mayor Warren at the door. When I see what he’s holding, I freeze.
My trainers.
For some reason, even when I couldn’t find them the morning after last Confinement, even after Mum quizzed me on the last time I saw them, my memory drew a blank until this moment. Maybe it was the trauma. But it’s only now I see them in his hand that my brain chooses to flash up a looped GIF of myself dumping them behind a plant pot next to his house, before pitching myself through his window.
‘See what Warren found!’ Mum says, her head tilted questioningly at me.
‘I don’t think… Are they mine?’ I say, peering as though they’re not in focus. ‘No, they look similar but they’re not—’
‘Well, they have your name in them,’ Warren chirps.
Oh yeah. Mum and her insistence on naming all my possessions so they don’t end up in lost property. Of all the ways for her to be proved right.
‘How in the world did they end up in Warren’s garden, Sel?’ she frowns.
My mind is drawing a blank. ‘I. Have. No. Idea.’ I shake my head, smiling sheepishly, as if to say it’s just a funny old world, in which sometimes our shoes make their own way to the other side of town. ‘But at least I can stop wearing my old ones now! They’re way too small.’ Mum always keeps my last pair, in case of this sort of loss, seeing as we can’t afford to buy multiple pairs.
They’re both staring at me.
There’s a few seconds’ silence that feels like years. In my head, I can see Warren pretending to show Pedro something in that shed, hitting him—
‘Uh, thanks,’ I say, grabbing the trainers. I want to run back upstairs but I can tell Mum is already hugely embarrassed and that would just about finish her.
Mayor Warren rubs at his moustache, which I can’t help noticing looks slightly less groomed than usual. I guess his little scissors are bent after I stabbed him with them.
‘How’s the arm?’ he asks.
Not trusting myself to speak, I half lift it in a shrug and wince. It still really hurts, even in the splint and the sling.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I shall keep an eye out for any other possessions of yours that have somehow made it onto my property.’
He walks away down the path, whistling a tune that gives me a sudden flashback to his basement – ‘Eternal Melons’, the song that was banging out in his house that night. When he reaches the road, he stops and turns back. ‘Bit of advice, Sel. Look after the things you care about, or you might lose them for good.’
It’s the kind of benign, meaningless phrase he comes up with all the time. But as Mum shuts the door, I can’t shake the feeling he isn’t really talking about my trainers.
* * *
At first, even starting up FIN makes me want to puke. When I initiate a chat, the reply dots going up and down look sinister, a snake twisting and slithering its way into my home. The first time, I shut the laptop before Chad’s words can appear.
But as the days go by, it gets easier. I tell him I’m starting to wonder if my imagination hasn’t run away with me a bit lately. I ask him how likely he thinks it is that Sequest are doing experiments on us.
Chad: Honestly? I don’t think so.
Honestly? Like you would know what that word means, Chad.
After a while I find it fascinating, watching him take the bait. Encouraging me every time I express a doubt. He asks how my friends are and I tell him Elena is feeling brighter, coping better with her brother’s death. That she reckons he just got too absorbed in one of his hobbies and forgot what the time was, forgot about Confinement.
Chad laps it all up. I can almost see him smugly passing on my responses in one of those reports. I begin to enjoy myself in a way that surprises and slightly disturbs me. I feel smart, calculating. I take a brittle pleasure in the turning of the tables. All this time he was lying to me and I believed every word. Now I get to lie to him and watch him get suckered. Make him sweat a little.
I ask him if he’s ever thought about working for Sequest when he grows up. He says he’s never considered it, but they’d certainly be a good option.
Elena and Ingrid disapprove when I tell them. Elena chastises me, ‘Don’t make him uncomfortable, Sel. We don’t want him thinking too hard. We want him relaxed and confident.’
The thing is, I don’t want that. As the next week passes my anger grows. I want Chad, whoever he is, to be afraid. I want him to feel the same creeping terror and dread that’s tortured me. I want him punished for being part of the system that killed Pedro. I want him hurt, the way he’s hurt all of us in Tremorglade. Sometimes I scare myself.
But Elena is right, of course.
I rein it in, reminding myself that if I screw this up, we lose our chance.
Once we’re free of Tremorglade, our voices can finally be heard. Online. In the streets. National newspapers. Anything we can think of. And Sequest will be powerless to stop us.
* * *
We all have our blood tests without fuss this week. I apologize to Doctor Travis for running off last time, and tell her how great I think blood tests are, and how I bet Sequest are doing amazing things with the results. She studies me briefly, one eyebrow raised. ‘Okaaaaay.’
Stick that in your stupid report, I think.
I find myself wondering if she knows Chad. Is there some chatroom where she and Warren and Sergeant Hale and Dora and probably half of Tremorglade discuss us with their Sequest handlers?
Elena and I meet up less often than usual, as if we’re going off each other a bit. And since we can’t talk on the phone, I’ve never felt more lonely. We stagger our visits to Harold in case anyone’s watching. We don’t try looking in Dora’s room again – Ingrid, Elena and I all reckon it’s too risky, and Harold, unbelievably, just thinks it would be an invasion of her privacy. I’m glad not to run into her when I’m at Shady Oaks, at any rate.
The night before next Confinement, Mum and I eat dinner together and linger over apple crumble and custard, the kitchen warm and smelling of cinnamon. I wish I could talk to her about it all. But she still wouldn’t believe me; and if she did believe me… well. I’ve no doubt now: Sequest would kill her.
She thinks I’ve forgotten all about my strange obsession, moved on. I can sense her relief. She’s happy.
Tomorrow, I’m going to destroy that.
As she hugs me, I breathe in her familiar scent, and squeeze my eyes shut to hold back tears. There’s no choice. It’s our job to protect her, now. To protect everyone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE SEPTEMBER – CONFINEMENT NIGHT
Confinement rolls around again. It’s sunny, but with the half-hearted warmth that tells you it’s one of the last times you’ll truly feel it on your skin before autumn dies into winter.
The new school year started this week, and I’m so jumpy in physics that when Ms Boateng unexpectedly calls on me to answer a question about the mechanism used in stun pops, I leap to my feet, knocking over my chair, heart belting at my ribs, and everyone laughs.
My bag is packed. Over the past twenty-four hours I’ve pilfered bits and pieces from the cupboards and the fridge, plus a big bottle and a torch. The bike ride to Hastaville will be the longest I’ve ever done, according to the maps: some thirty miles or more, north along the forest road until the trees end, and then taking the westwards fork a few more miles into the plains. Elena estimated we can cycle eight miles an hour, though I’m not sure she’s fully taken into account how rough the road is, how likely my bike is to fall apart after ten minutes, how unfit I am and how sore my right arm is. By doing it on Confinement, we not only have the best chance of going unnoticed, but also we’ll get one full night in the forest before anyone starts to wonder where we are. Will that be enough?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the people out there, in Hastaville and elsewhere. I know they have their own problems. Big ones. But I’m guessing they don’t know what’s going on here. I’m guessing they don’t know that Sequest is experimenting on us, supposedly for everyone’s benefit.
When we tell them, I hope they believe us.
I hope they care.
Because if we’re going to put an end to it, we need their help.
* * *
I manage to hold it together when I say goodnight to Mum. I fidget around making sure her clothes are folded nicely. The meat is on the cage floor. I thought about leaving the bar up and the key in the new padlock, so at least she can get out by herself tomorrow, but that would just make her suspicious, so I’ve asked Rudy to check on her in the morning, making up a vague excuse about having to go out early. I hope he remembers. I’d have asked Mika, except our stupid basement isn’t accessible for her because of the death-trap stairs.
I dwell guiltily on how Mum will feel when I’m not there at dawn, her anxiety creeping up slowly. She’ll ask around. Then go searching.
And then there’s the fact that I might not come back at all, if it goes wrong.
I force myself up the stairs, back to my room to pick up my bag.
Ping
That’s dusk.
My stomach lurches.
Carefully, I remove my bracelet. I stuff it in the middle of the pile of laundry under my bed. That should take a while to find. Harold thinks they can track us with them.
Ingrid arrives on her bike almost immediately – Harold’s Caretaking Dora tonight, so Ingrid can come straight over. Ten minutes later, Elena joins us. We don’t say much, our nerves too jangled to waste energy on unnecessary words. We show each other our bracelet-free wrists.
‘Phones off,’ Elena reminds us. ‘And hoods up. We don’t want to be spotted by any drones away from our bracelets.’
