Bite Risk, page 7
As my fingers touch the keys, I pause. I’m suddenly aware that I’m always talking to Chad about myself these days. He’s so willing to listen. I want to ask him about the doldrums but it strikes me that it’s kind of rude just to pop up with a demand for information when it’s been more than a week since I last messaged him. Real friendship has to have some give and take, so I don’t start grilling him right away.
Sel: How’s things with you?
Chad: Okay, I guess. I thought I might be about to Turn because I got a fever, but it was just flu. My mum got the spare cage down from the attic and made me spend the night in it just in case, though.
Sel: Ugh. Mean!
Chad: Yeah. Oh, and yesterday a Frozen Fever gang broke into our Wellness Centre and stole all the meds, so we’ve got no tranqs, none of my grandad’s blood pressure drugs, not even paracetamol.
Sel: No way! So sorry. I wish you could live here instead.
Chad: Hey, me too! How cool would that be?!
I feel so bad for him. His house might be a lot bigger than mine, but they’re always on some alert or other to stay indoors because of pirate gangs marauding with Frozen Fever. You’re burning up on the inside, but your skin gets so cold it starts to produce ice flakes, and it makes you aggressive and greedy. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in fear the whole time like that. But Chad never seems to stay down for long.
Chad: But you know what’s worse? Bucky got in the pantry and ate a cake, then pooped everywhere in the night. The whole house still stinks.
I snort. Trust Chad to care more about that than a Frozen Fever gang.
Sel: You mean Barney? Or have you got a new dog as well? Exciting!
Chad: D’oh. No new dog, still Barney. Stupid auto cat rectal.
Argh!
*Autocorrect, not auto cat rectal .
Oh the irony.
So… what’s this weird question then?
I take a deep breath.
Sel: Do you get the Confinement doldrums?
Chad: ???
Sel: You know when you feel rough, from dusk onwards. I get headachy and dizzy.
Chad: Sounds like you’re coming down with something. Take some vitamins, maybe?
Sel: No, it’s a thing. Every Confinement night. People there don’t get the doldrums?
Chad: Never heard of them.
My heart beats faster. I’ve always assumed, because people in Tremorglade talk about the doldrums, that it’s the same across the world, but apparently not. And maybe the reason Mum doesn’t remember them isn’t because she’s old, but because they didn’t exist then. I flump back in my chair.
Chad: What’s this about?
I fill him in.
Chad: What are you gonna do?
Sel: Don’t know yet. But we can’t just let it go.
Chad: Be careful. Can you trust them?
Sel: Trust who?
Chad: Like… Elena. You said she was the only other person who knew the passcode on your mum’s cage. I’ve been thinking about that. Is she legit your friend?
Sel: Totally. 100%
I try not to feel offended on Elena’s behalf. It’s not Chad’s fault. He doesn’t know her.
Chad: Well, don’t do anything stupid, okay? You’ve already been in trouble. Don’t give anyone another reason to make your life harder.
Sometimes I think Chad worries about me more than Mum does. He’s out there where armed police regularly have gunfights with gangs outside his house, but it’s almost like he thinks I’m the one in danger.
CHAPTER TWELVE MAY – 19 DAYS TO NEXT CONFINEMENT
Ms Boateng announces that normal classes are suspended this week because we’re going to be involved in some research that our regional education authority is running, across all of its schools.
First, we go into a room one by one and Ms Boateng shows us flashcards with random doodles on them. We have to say what we think they look like. I can’t be bothered to make an effort, so just say they all look like doodles, which irritates her no end. Apparently, we’ll get more flashcards for homework in a couple of weeks; we’re meant to do them during Confinement night and bring our answers the next day. Trust school to find a way to ruin our one free night.
The next bit of the research turns out to be even less exciting. It’s a survey, and not just a few tick boxes either. Everyone groans when Ms Boateng hands out a twenty-page test booklet for us to work through in silence.
The questions are all about our so-called ‘wellbeing’ – we have to decide on a scale of one to ten what our mood is like at various times during the month, how we cheer ourselves up if we’re down, and how we feel about the prospect of growing up. I tick through in a bored stupor, and entertain myself by making up stupid answers:
Are you a member of any clubs or societies in your community? How do you like to spend your free time? What do you do on Confinement nights?
YES, I AM HEAD OF A SECRET SOCIETY OF CHILDREN THAT PLANS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD. WE BELIEVE WE ARE SUPERIOR BEINGS AND WE OPERATE OUT OF AN UNDERGROUND LAIR.
I almost start to enjoy myself until I come to one question about my wellbeing on Confinement nights.
When dusk falls, do you feel a) happy b) sad c) anxious d) afraid e) excited f) tired g) sick h) no change. Tick all that apply. Write down any differences you feel after dawn the following day.
Unease slithers in my belly as it occurs to me: this has nothing to do with school. This must be on behalf of Sequest.
I flick back through the paper, looking again at the questions. A pattern emerges. They’re tracking what happens to us, mentally and physically, during Confinement nights. They know we won’t feel well. They want detailed data on how the infrasound affects us month to month, to use for… well, who knows?
This is not just some idle survey. It’s gathering the results of an experiment. On us.
I feel as though my eyes have been opened. We get exercises a bit like this every year, but now that I’m looking, I see Sequest’s tentacles everywhere.
In PE, we have to take our heart and breathing rates before and after exercise, while the coach writes it all down. He claims it’s educational, so that we understand how our bodies work, the way they respond to an increasing need for energy. But I notice he keeps the form with all the data on. I bet it goes to Sequest.
The more I think about it, the more I remember. The school disco where they used strobe lighting and then checked our eyeballs on the way out. The time we had to walk through different classrooms, each with a weird smell in. I can’t even recall what the supposed reason was for that. Only that one of them smelled like sewage and a kid called Justin fainted, hit his head on a desk and had to get stitches.
Elena’s FIN friend Trix has never heard of the doldrums either, apparently. I’m no longer surprised. If you told me Sequest were reanimating the corpses of pigeons after harvesting their organs and secretly transplanting them into humans, I’d believe you. I’m all in.
We in Tremorglade are Sequest’s lab rats. Worse, they can’t be doing it without help from inside our community. Including school. Who here is in on it?
* * *
It’s time to tell Mum. She deserves to know what’s being done to us while the adults are Turned. I don’t mention that Harold has encouraged us – she likes him, but she does think he’s eccentric; she told me once to take everything he says with a pinch of salt. I fill her in on the infrasound drones, Hale confiscating Pedro’s stuff, the weird questions at school.
She flips.
‘Where is this coming from?’ she demands. ‘This isn’t like you, coming up with a load of conspiracy nonsense. Radiation beamed from the sky? Has someone been leading you on?’
‘No! You’re not listening to me, Mum. Infrasound, not radiation.’
‘Oh, I’m listening all right. You should have reported that drone, and you didn’t, and now you’ve got your friends in trouble as a result. It’s theft.’
‘But the survey, it’s too much of a coincidence—’
She crosses her arms over her chest. ‘So let me get this right: you did some tests at school, and messed about – yes, Ms Boateng did happen to mention that you wrote a bunch of silly answers – and now you’re trying to justify it by making up a load of rubbish about Sequest? You know if it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t be alive now?’
‘I know, but—’
‘You can’t just go round saying this kind of thing with literally no evidence.’
I almost tell her that the only reason we have no evidence is because the police took it, which probably means Hale is in on it. But somehow I don’t think she wants to hear that.
* * *
‘She’s right, you know,’ Pedro muses the following day, at the café after school. He’s bought me and Elena hot chocolates. ‘Evidence. We need more before we can challenge Sequest about it.’
He’s scrolling on the cheap phone he bought while he waits for his stuff to be returned. Hale won’t tell us when that will happen. Apparently, Police HQ in Hastaville still have it – the forensics department. Like his phone and telescope are from a crime scene or something. I worry that he’s being set up like in Deadly Business, but he doesn’t seem concerned about that at all. He just wants it back. Pedro’s downloaded a special app on the new phone, so at least we can record the infrasound again. In terms of evidence, it’s not much, but it’s something.
‘Okay, hear me out. What if they’re not trying to make us sick with the infrasound?’ he says. ‘What if the doldrums are just a side effect they’re tracking?’
We consider this in silence. Elena slurps her hot chocolate, before wiping her mouth with her arm. Pedro passes her a napkin.
‘We know the effect it has on humans. But what if it’s not actually aimed at us?’
I gasp. ‘It’s aimed at the pigeons!’
Pedro’s lips quirk in amusement. ‘No, dork. Bless your heart.’
Elena thumps her fists on the table. ‘Rippers. We don’t know what it does to them.’
I flush. ‘Oh. But they can’t exactly tell us what they’re feeling, can they?’
Pedro rubs his stubbly chin in thought. ‘No. But Sequest aren’t the only ones who can do experiments.’
I’m not sure I like the sound of this. Experimenting on Rippers sounds like the kind of thing only trained professionals should do. Armed ones.
But Pedro’s got that glint in his eye that Elena gets too, when there’s nothing I can say to change her mind.
‘Next Confinement, I’m going to be your lab rat.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN JUNE – CONFINEMENT NIGHT
I suggest to Mum that we get her sorted nice and early this evening, so I have plenty of time to check security. She doesn’t need any persuading. She watches me pull the new, heavy crossbar down, and then gives the door a good push, testing all the bars round the cage before she’s satisfied.
She bites her lip. ‘You’ll be here all night, won’t you?’
‘Obviously,’ I say, feeling like the lie is written across my forehead. I’m not planning on going far, only over the road to Elena’s, but I’m nervous about even doing that, now. I’ve checked everything about a zillion times and even asked Mika to do a quick sweep of our garden security before she got cracking on her own.
She nods. ‘Okay. Good. Promise me you’ll stay out of trouble?’
I wish I could explain to her that trouble seems intent on finding me and I can’t ignore it. Instead I just nod. ‘Have a nice dinner.’
We both regard it lying there unappetizingly in a wet puddle on the floor next to her. I put it there earlier, so my hands don’t have to go anywhere near the cage once she’s Turned. Which is ironic, really, considering tonight’s planned activity.
I check the garden one more time, running my fingers along the wires and inspecting each individual stun pop, then hooking and unhooking the new graphene net to make sure it’s not stuck. Next door, Mika gives me a friendly nod as she finishes up.
A gentle ping on my bracelet tells me dusk has fallen, and the familiar heaviness begins.
I let myself in at Elena’s, setting my tranq down carefully against the inside of the door so I don’t forget it. Our experiment needs Pedro to be fully conscious. I can hear their dad making a racket in his cage nearby, but ignore that and take the stairs two at a time up to Pedro’s room, where Elena is waiting, sitting on her brother’s bed. I hear her singing as I reach the door, her voice sweet and clear. She stops when I go in, and Pedro’s snarling fills the room.
I help her drag the stepladder in from a cupboard on the landing, placing it next to Pedro’s cage. Then Elena busies herself with a pair of special headphones. Pedro made them himself last week, from separate bits he ordered off the internet, because he couldn’t find any of the right kind in stock. These don’t just muffle noise, they cancel the sound waves. And they should work especially well for the regular, low sound that’s coming from the drones.
Pedro seems to be working himself up into a frenzy, biting at the bars, saliva spraying everywhere, muzzle crinkled as his lips pull back to reveal his gleaming, deadly teeth.
Faced with the reality of our plan, my throat goes dry.
Elena’s hand waving in front of my face brings me back to myself. ‘Hey, wake up. I said, did you bring the meat?’
I hold out the carrier bag with the lamb leg in it.
She peers into the bag and wrinkles her nose. ‘That’s it? It’s tiny.’
I shrug apologetically. ‘The butcher didn’t have much left by the time I got there. Maybe it’ll get stuck between his teeth and he’ll be distracted trying to get it out.’
‘Yeah, right. He’ll start flossing and that’ll buy us some time.’ She sighs. ‘Here. Try these.’ She hands me the headphones and I position them carefully over my ears, before turning them on.
Pedro’s high-pitched yowling immediately quietens. Not a huge amount, though. I adjust the kit, trying to find the best fit, while he attacks the bars and paces around, tail swishing. His tongue occasionally runs over his fangs in a quick, restless sweep. Like every Ripper, he’s just waiting for a chance to tear my head off.
I fiddle until the spongy earpieces are as tight as they can be. The yowling is less deafening, but by no means silent. I sag slightly in disappointment.
‘I thought you said these would—’ I start, but then trail off. Although Pedro’s tantrum is still distinctly audible, there’s something else missing. It’s as though my head has cleared. It’s the exact sensation I get if I happen to be awake at dawn as Confinement ends. A lifting of pressure. An inexplicable increase of optimism. The doldrums have vanished. ‘Hey!’ I find I’m grinning. ‘That’s so cool!’
Elena smiles proudly.
‘Your brother is a genius,’ I say happily. ‘We can get Pedro to make everyone a kit like this! He’ll make a fortune! Everyone’s going to thank us.’
She takes the headphones back and rests them around her neck. ‘Now we get down to business.’
I start recording on Pedro’s phone, and prop it up on the other side of the room, checking it can see the whole cage.
Elena clatters up to the top of the stepladder, just about level with the top of Pedro’s cage. Pedro starts leaping to get to her, chomping at the air while unsuccessfully trying to cling to the bars at the top.
‘Okay, Sel. Show him the food.’
I fumble the lamb’s leg out of the bag. Pedro ignores me, still trying to reach his sister.
‘Wave it around a bit, get his attention,’ she says.
I draw closer to the cage, and, holding the leg where the bone sticks out, wave it up and down.
‘Bring it closer. Nice and high, so I’ll be able to reach his head.’ She lifts the headphones from round her neck.
The plan must have seemed rational when Pedro thought of it, but now…
‘Elena, I’m not sure they’re going to fit. He’s got a really big head.’
‘Do it, Sel! Stop messing around.’
I grip the lamb bone tightly with both hands. I need him to try to wrestle it off me for long enough that Elena can slip her arms through the top bars and get the headphones in position over his ears.
I bang it against the side bars close to his head, and for a millisecond he glances at it before resuming his attempts to get to Elena. I bang it again, and again, and again, to no effect. It thuds wetly on the bars.
And then, just like that, his teeth have the meaty end, and it slithers right through my hands.
‘Sel!’
I stare at him gnawing it on the floor of the cage, well out of Elena’s reach. ‘Oops.’
Elena looks upset for a moment, and then makes a decision. She jumps down from the stepladder and barges me out of the way, heading to the cage door. She grabs a key from her pocket and inserts it into the padlock.
‘What are you—’
She can’t go in there with him. He’ll kill her.
I glance in disbelief at the lamb bone. It’s not going to last long. He’s had two thirds of it already and is crunching on the last bit, facing away from Elena, his tail by the cage door. There’s no way she’ll get headphones on him before he finishes. And he’ll savage her over a tiny bit of lamb bone anyway.
But she’s already opened the cage door and slipped inside. I open my mouth to scream at her but stop just in time – I don’t want him to turn around.
She reaches him just as he swallows the last piece and jumps onto his back, leaning over to fit the headphones in place. He jerks up to a standing position, lifting Elena with him, and I can only watch helplessly as the inevitable unfolds. She clutches a fistful of neck fur in one hand, reaching for the headphones with the other, but they bounce away and clatter to the floor. Pedro’s head snaps round, missing Elena by millimetres, and he starts to buck and spin, trying to throw her off. There’s no way she can cling on for longer than a few seconds.
