Bite Risk, page 6
‘How am I going to—’
There’s a distant clang from down the corridor, like something’s been dropped in the communal kitchen. Must be Dora.
‘Shhh!’ He slaps a hand on my arm to quiet me abruptly, like we’re hiding from a special forces ambush, instead of a grumpy old lady getting herself a cup of tea.
We wait for a few minutes, expecting her to come into the lounge, but she doesn’t. Then we hear her door closing. Harold relaxes again.
‘This drone thing.’ He bites his lip. ‘Have you told your mum?’
I shift uncomfortably. ‘Not yet. You know how she feels about Sequest. All the fundraising she does. I don’t want to worry her without proof.’
I expect him to tell me off, but he nods. ‘Probably sensible. You must be discreet. Keep it to just us: you, me, Elena and Pedro.’
‘All right.’
But Harold won’t let up. ‘I mean it. In my experience, with these big organizations, when people start asking awkward questions… they don’t like it. They can get nasty. We must protect those we care about.’ He nods in the direction of the kitchen, meaning Dora.
I try not to smile. He’s really getting into this. ‘Okay, sure. But come on, what can they really do to us?’
He leans over and makes me look him in the eye. ‘Those people already take your blood, Sel. They have the power to do other things to you. And to your family. What about the lock on your poor mum’s cage?’
I blink in confusion. ‘What about it?’
‘Are we sure it was an accident?’
I swallow. We aren’t sure. But my prime suspect isn’t Sequest.
‘Even if they weren’t responsible, they might use it to make you look bad, so people won’t believe anything you say. I saw something like that on an episode of Deadly Business once, this pharmaceutical company got a corrupt policeman to plant evidence on someone who’d witnessed their crimes. These kinds of people play dirty.’
As so often with Harold, he’s taking this too far.
‘Deadly Business isn’t a documentary, Harold, it’s a drama. And Mum’s escape happened before we started looking into any of this. Don’t get paranoid on me. I know you don’t like Sequest, but I doubt they’re breaking the law, or giving us the doldrums on purpose.’
Harold’s not really listening. ‘Don’t you think it’s convenient, hmm? That the only people who might complain about it are the ones with the least influence: children.’
‘Harold, there’s no reason they’d want to make us sick. It’s literally the opposite of why they exist.’
He sits back with a sigh. ‘If you say so. How about another bit of cake?’
In the empty kitchen, I cut another slice of the lemon cake I brought for him. I made it myself following Mum’s special recipe. Harold insisted we leave it in here in case Dora wanted any, and I can see another big slice has gone.
There’s a hard tap on my shoulder, and I nearly knock the whole cake to the floor.
‘Why were you talking about infrasound?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Good morning, Dora! Did you enjoy the cake?’
‘Shut up about the cake. Are you poking your nose into things you should be leaving alone?’
Someone’s been listening outside the lounge, it seems. I eye her warily. It strikes me that I don’t actually know anything about Dora’s previous life. Maybe she was a physics professor or something.
‘Do you know something about infrasound, Dora?’
‘No,’ she snaps. ‘And neither should you. It’s not your concern.’
I can’t help it – I laugh. Her eyes narrow in anger. ‘Dora, look, it’s fine. Harold was… helping me with some physics homework. I can just Seekle it.’
Dora’s black pupils glitter at me. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ Her tone is cold and steely. ‘Stay off Seekle and mind your own business, if you know what’s good for you.’
At that moment, Harold pops his head round the door of the kitchen. ‘Ah! I came to find out if you were going to let me starve to death in there, Sel, but you two are having a lovely chinwag, I see. About searching for things on Seekle? I think it’s admirable, the way these young people can take control of their own education now, don’t you, Dora? The internet is a marvellous thing. So much information at the touch of a button. I wish I could get the hang of it.’
I can’t help but smile to myself. Harold struggles with his computer. Watching him try to use it is excruciating. I usually have to Seekle things for him and print them out.
Dora pushes past him to the counter with her plate, giving me proper evils.
‘Oops, I’m in your way, sorry!’ Harold mutters, and I can tell he’s embarrassed for her.
We watch as she shuffles back to her room, not before taking the slice of cake I’ve just cut for Harold.
Harold’s smile fades. ‘Oh dear. She’s quite unsteady. I do think perhaps we should get her one of these emergency necklaces, like mine.’ He fingers the plastic button on the string round his neck. He often doesn’t carry his phone around, so Mum and I thought it would be a good idea to get the button for him. If he presses it, our phones both get a notification so we can go check he’s okay. He jokes that I’m his Caretaker.
‘She seems fine,’ I say.
‘Hmm. In some ways. The other day I came back from a walk and found her in my room again. With a knife.’
I gasp. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Oh, I knew she didn’t mean anything by it, but I’ll admit I was rather taken aback. Said she was tidying up. I suggested putting it in the kitchen drawer, and off she went happily enough.’ He clocks my uneasy expression. ‘I’m perfectly safe, it’s her I’m worried for.’
‘Just… be careful, okay? Maybe lock your door.’
As we head back to the lounge with more cake, I can’t help but wonder if he’s paranoid about the wrong things.
CHAPTER TEN
After Harold wipes the floor with me at cards, I walk over to Elena and Pedro’s, keen to offload my thoughts.
But the moment I round the corner into our road I get déja vu. Ingrid is standing under the lamppost again, the one where she met me last time. She’s leaning against it, staring not at pigeons this time, but at Elena and Pedro’s house. Fee and Loretta are hanging around looking bored. I think about turning back and wandering the streets until they’re gone, but then Fee spots me and says something to Ingrid, who moves off the lamppost and blocks my path.
I try to walk past but Fee and Loretta move in front of me. Around us the street is quiet. Birds are behaving normally, the traitors, despite the presence of my nemesis.
‘Learned how to use a lock yet, Sel?’ Loretta sneers. ‘Or do you need a manual?’
My plan to remain calm collapses like a popped balloon. My hands ball into fists. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? One of you let Mum out.’
But Loretta’s nose crinkles in a confused sneer. ‘What? Don’t be stupid. We don’t have a death wish.’ She might be acting, but my instinct tells me her reaction is genuine.
Ingrid elbows her aside. ‘I want to talk about the pigeons. What did you do to them?’
At that, I’m completely wrongfooted, my anger darting around, unsure where to go.
I notice Loretta rolling her eyes at Fee, who shakes her head. ‘Ing, let’s go – who cares about the stupid birds?’
Ingrid doesn’t reply, fixing me with her hostile stare.
I smile sweetly. ‘Don’t you listen to the news? It was the weather.’
There’s a dramatic sigh from Fee, a not-so-subtle reminder that having to listen to me is ruining her day. Ingrid keeps her gaze on me but addresses them. ‘You two can get lost now, yeah?’
Their faces are a picture. Off-balance, like Ingrid’s just pulled the rug from under them. Dismissed with zero attempt at politeness. They stand there in shock for a few seconds and then hesitantly walk away, casting hurt glances back. I think Ingrid might just have fatally offended her only friends, but she doesn’t seem to care.
‘Don’t mess with me. I heard you and Elena discussing it on the way home from school. Something about a drone. What did you do?’
I’m shaken. She’s been spying on us?
Just as I open my mouth to express my outrage, there’s a noise behind me. We move over to the pavement and watch as Hale’s police cruiser swings by and parks up, blue lights flashing. He gives the siren a quick whoop whoop, making Ingrid and me jump out of our skins.
He hops out of the car, jaw working on gum, and his mirrored shades swivel in our direction. For a glorious moment I think he’s here to arrest Ingrid – maybe I’m a police-whisperer! – but then he does his cheery double finger-gun pose before trotting up Elena’s front steps and rapping on her door.
Lucas answers in his pyjama bottoms, mousy hair sticking up like he’s just got out of bed, though it’s well into the afternoon now. Hale shows him a piece of paper and Lucas peers at it groggily, then stands back to let him through. The door closes. I look round for Ingrid, but she’s disappeared.
I should wait until Hale comes out. I shouldn’t get involved.
But I’m not good at waiting. I bounce over and knock on the door before letting myself in.
* * *
‘You can’t just take it!’ Pedro is more agitated than I’ve ever seen him, pacing up and down, running his fingers through his hair, while Hale packs a box on the bed.
Inside it is not just the dismantled drone, but also Pedro’s phone and his telescope. Hale has a warrant and everything.
‘Tell me again how you got this?’ Hale says.
‘We found it crashed in the street,’ Elena tells him. I send her a silent message of thanks for not involving me in this one. She knows I’m already in trouble.
‘Uh-huh.’ His jaw works the gum.
‘Why do you want my stuff?’ Pedro says. I can tell he’s trying not to lose his temper. ‘I bought that phone with my own money. I’ve got receipts if you want to check. The telescope is older, but it’s mine too.’
‘That won’t be necessary. Listen, guys.’ Hale sighs. I can tell he started out enjoying this but now feels more Bad Cop than Cool Cop. ‘This drone is Sequest property. You’re interfering in their legitimate business.’
Elena snorts in outrage.
‘Legitimate business? You know what they’re doing with it, then? Blasting infrasound over the whole town. Why, huh? Why?’
A flash of unease in my belly. Harold said to be discreet.
Hale folds the box lid over and puts his hand on it. ‘I don’t know where you got that idea. It’s just a delivery drone. It belongs to them.’
‘But my stuff doesn’t! Who’s asking for it?’ says Pedro.
Hale sighs again and eyes the door. He wants out of here now. ‘The warrant came from the regional Police HQ out in Hastaville. I’m just executing the warrant, taking the items on the list. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know why it includes some of your belongings, Pedro. I’m sure they’ll be returned to you in due course.’
Pedro throws out his hands in resignation. ‘They better be.’
We watch from the window as Hale dumps the box in the boot of the car and drives off.
‘How on earth did the police in Hastaville know you had the drone?’ I ask. ‘That’s what I don’t get.’ I think of Ingrid, outside earlier, how she’d been listening in on us. Could she have reported it? But the others are sceptical when I share my thoughts.
‘I can’t see Ingrid cosying up to the police,’ Elena points out. ‘Those things must have trackers. Maybe Sequest checked the last known GPS and told them where to find it?’
‘Probably. But now we know they have something to hide. Why else would the police come and confiscate not just the drone, but my other stuff too?’
He’s right. This is serious cover-up behaviour.
But what does Sequest have to cover up?
CHAPTER ELEVEN MAY – 20 DAYS TO NEXT CONFINEMENT
‘This place looks like a bombsite, Ansel Archer. Are you even listening to me?’ Mum’s rummaging around my room while I fire up my laptop.
‘I’ll tidy it, I will. I just have a load of homework to do first.’
She peels a sock off the windowsill and dangles it in front of my face before dropping it in my lap. ‘Well. So long as you’re actually doing homework and not chatting to Chad. If you’re too busy to tidy you’re too busy to chat, right?’
I raise my eyebrows innocently. ‘Of course! I’ve got a ton of Explosives Theory to do. Don’t forget they’re like five hours behind or something where Chad lives, anyway. He’ll be at school, remember?’
I haven’t told her about the drone. She’s doing better now, after what happened – less pale and sad. It’d just give her something else to worry about, so I say nothing except to assure her I’m totally in homework mode.
Mollified, she leaves me to it, telling me dinner is in an hour.
I open up a tab for my homework, then click on FIN and see that the dot next to Chad’s name is green, because of course he’s online. They let them use their phones at his school (so unfair) and I swear he must never get any work done because at least half the time he’ll pop up within minutes.
We all use FIN – kids, mainly, but lots of adults too. The world outside Tremorglade might be a total basket case, but it’s fun to have friends out there, and this is the best way to meet them. It’s a pretty simple system – when you register it pairs you with someone in another part of the world whose interests are similar to yours. Elena talks to Trix in Rheitzland (she only knows a little Rheitzch, but Trix speaks perfect English), and I have Chad in the United Tannic Counties, all the way across the ocean. And today, I want to ask him if he gets the doldrums. I’ve been assuming everyone does. But if it’s just here… it might mean something.
I click on his icon and type:
Sel: Hey! Got a weird question for you.
Then I open up Happy Trappers in a corner of the screen while I wait for his response. The level twenty-one maze loads and I start to whizz around it as a couple of easy Rippers appear. I’ve zapped the first and am just about to ice the second when it freezes and I get one of the stupid survey questions:
What is your greatest fear?
I let out a growl of irritation –
Silent farts
– and click to resume the game. But it immediately flashes up again, the pop-up box right over the paused action.
What is your greatest fear?
I sigh. You can never get away with daft answers, though we like to try. It’s smart. It wants your data, so it can tailor ads to you and show you stuff you’re more likely to buy. But it’s not as smart as it thinks it is. It can’t make you tell the truth.
Spiders
The pop-up seems happy enough this time and I smile to myself – ha, suckers, I like spiders – and get on with the game. It feels like a victory to get one over on the data-gathering software, even if now I’ll be bombarded with ads for bug-killing sprays.
Two minutes later, I flip back to FIN and watch the dots wave up and down as Chad types his reply.
Chad and I connected on FIN when I first started using it a few years ago. We have quite a lot in common – he’s an only child, like me, and his dad died soon after he was born, like mine. Except his dad got the Rotting Plague, which we don’t have here. I looked it up on Seekle – it sounds horrific and makes me glad yet again that we live here.
I don’t exactly miss my dad, since I never knew him. But sometimes I like to imagine what he’d be like now, what we’d talk about. I think he was more chilled out than Mum, based on things she’s told me, but I suppose bringing up a kid on your own doesn’t leave much room for taking things easy, and maybe she was different back then. We don’t have any living relatives in Tremorglade – my grandparents died pretty young. My mum’s aunt might still be alive, as far as we know, but she lives somewhere down south, past the mountains, and Mum says that after the Disruption, contact with her petered out quite quickly. Mum said she got a few emails from her that sounded a bit offhand and terse, then they just stopped. I guess life has been hard out there and maybe she’s concentrating on surviving. It’s the same for all my friends – the Disruption split up a lot of extended families and people just… got lost out there. I guess it’s one of the reasons why we’re such a close-knit community here.
It’s much harder for Elena, losing her mum, Valeria, only three years ago. It wasn’t sudden – she was fading for months and months before then. The Wellness Centre did everything they could – Doctor Adebayo especially went above and beyond to try to make her better. She had the idea of getting Elena’s mum airlifted to one of the big hospitals in Hastaville, for more specialist treatment. But then Doctor Adebayo was suddenly transferred to Sequest HQ to start up some new project there, and the airlift never happened. Valeria died not long after. That’s when Lucas, Elena’s dad, started to get obsessed with moving away.
I feel like I can tell Chad anything. You have to be careful online – obviously, people might not always be who they claim to be – but I’m pretty sure I’m safe with Chad. FIN does ID checks, Mum knows about him, and there’s no chance we could ever arrange to meet up, anyway. I think I’m fairly streetwise when it comes to the internet.
His connection isn’t good enough to sustain a live video call, but Chad’s sent me links to his blog, where he uploads stuff once in a while. He’s got a massive bedroom about three times the size of mine. He lives in a place called Whipple Bay, which looks beautiful. Where we have the mountains, endless forest, a bit of sunshine and a bit of drizzle, they have palm trees, alligators, beaches and loads of scorching sun. Apparently, my grandparents went on their honeymoon there, way back in the olden days – Mum has a photo of them smiling and holding ice-creams, cuddled up on a sun lounger. You couldn’t do that now; no one sells ice-creams on the beach, and it’s best to keep moving if you’re outside.
Chad: Fire away.
