I Am Margaret

by Corinna Turner

  The next door was helpfully labeled CAMERA ROOM so I swiped the Menace’s card and walked in, Jon and Caroline at my heels.

  Three guards. One more than I’d anticipated. The one on the right had obviously been watching our approach on his bank of monitors, for he spun his swivel chair around.

  “Captain, should any of us go to the roof as w…” He trailed off, frowning. He’d realized I wasn’t the Captain, but hadn’t yet identified me.

  Raising the pistol, I didn’t give him the chance. I got the second one before he’d even turned around and the third one as he did so.

  “Okay?” asked Jon.

  “All down. Can you start on the uniform, Caroline? The guy in the middle looks the best size. Wait…” I carefully put a second charge into each one, then looked at the three banks of monitors. “Go ahead. Okay, how do we disable these things, Jon? You said it was simple.”

  Jon grinned.

  “Fire a few charges into them. Trust me, it’ll scramble the whole system.”

  “Oh. Simple. Deal with that humming thing, would you?”

  I fired once into each bank of monitors and Jon fired three times into the humming, twinkling tower of computer equipment. The lights went out and the humming stopped. The monitors had gone black.

  “Good.” Collecting up all three pistols, I hurried to help Caroline with the trousers while Jon stood by the door, listening.

  “This is so weird,” muttered Caroline, as we struggled with the things. “S’like undressing the world’s largest doll, only he’s all floppy. I don’t like it…”

  “I suggest you don’t become a nurse, then,” I couldn’t help laughing.

  “I’m a Borderline,” said Caroline, in a flat drone that suggested frequent repetition in the past, “it’s best if I don’t think about things like that.” She was quiet for a long moment. “But… we’re escaping, aren’t we?”

  “That’s right,” said Jon, ear still pressed to the door hinges. “Soon as we’re safely outside the walls you can start thinking about what you want to be.”

  “Where are we going? Oops…!” The trousers had come off at last.

  “It’s all organized but we haven’t got time to talk about it now,” I said, briskly folding the trousers and adding them to the neat pile Caroline had just picked up. Well, it was all organized, I just didn’t actually know where we were going, after the clearing at Rayle’s Pass. “Right, all clear, Jon?”

  “Think so. Can’t hear anyone.”

  Nice and boldly, we strode out. But I paused to fire into the card reader by the door. Keep everyone guessing a bit longer if they couldn’t get in.

  “We should’ve brought a blanket for that fellow,” I remarked, as we headed back along the corridor. “It’s not that warm today.” This gave Jon what could only be described as a fit of the giggles, for some reason. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he sniggered. “Nothing at all.”

  “Hmm.” But we’d reached the stairwell again and crossed it silently. My watch showed it’d taken almost exactly ten minutes—most of that spent wrestling the uniform off the guard.

  Our arrival was greeted with cries of delight and clapping.

  “Quick, Rebecca, into this… Wow, good thinking…” Rebecca, in her underwear, had simply let a blanket fall and grabbed the trousers. Mel stood nearby holding the bag, in which Rebecca’s clothes were clearly already packed. “Very organized! And you’re all in a crocodile already, great. As soon as Rebecca’s dressed, we’ll be off.”

  I walked once up and down the line, checking the pairs. There’d had to be a little reorganization so the original buddies of those impersonating guards had suitable partners, and final last minute changes due to Jane’s loss had put Harriet with Sarah and Bethan with Annie.

  “Are you okay, Sarah?”

  Sarah stared at me solemnly and pointed accusingly at my uniform.

  “It’s okay, Sarah, I’m not really a guard. It’s just a game. A let’s pretend game. I won’t be a guard for much longer, I promise. Now, stick with Harriet, okay?”

  Sarah nodded, still staring unhappily at my clothes.

  “I’m letting the others out,” I said, leaving the dorm again. Hooking the barred gate back, I swiped the card at the Old Year’s door and hooked that back as well. Emily was waiting, wide eyed and breathless with nerves, but with a crocodile of seven neat pairs arranged behind her.

  “Here…” I gave her one of the spare guns—she’d agreed to free the boys. “That’ll deal with any guards you meet, but I think they’re all outside. Use it to keep the boys at a distance, though.”

  “I certainly will,” said Emily.

  “Hook all the doors back first, remember? And call them all out into the passage and tell them what’s going on before you open the stairwell door. Then run like billy-ho, you can’t trust them. Oh, and no more than two shots into anyone and…”

  “…keep the safety on when not in use. I’ve got it, I’ve got it. This is Rachel,” she gestured to the young woman next to her. “She’ll look after the others.”

  “Good. Nice to meet you face to face. Uh, all of you. We’re almost ready to go. Emily, you’d better set off. Could the rest of you wait in here until I call for you to come?”

  “Will do,” said Rachel. She’d always seemed pretty on the ball, so I handed her the other spare gun.

  “Would you take this and take a shot at anything that threatens you all while you’re waiting in the gym?”

  “I’m game.”

  “You’ve heard the safety talk about not shooting anyone more than twice and keeping the safety catch on?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh, please don’t shoot us if we have to come back for any reason, okay?”

  “Try not to,” she smiled.

  Returning to my dorm, I was greeted by Rebecca’s anxious, “I’m ready. I shall probably shoot myself in the foot, though…”

  “Look, just peep around the door and warn Jon if you see something he can’t hear, and don’t take the safety off unless… unless you have to take over from him, okay?”

  “You’d better drop them both first shot,” Rebecca muttered to Jon. “Or we’re sunk.”

  “Or swap with Caroline? Jon, who do you think is most likely to need a backup, you or me?”

  Jon shrugged.

  “You seem to be doing just fine. Perhaps I should take Caroline, since, no offense, Rebecca, she can actually hit what she aims at.”

  I hesitated.

  “No, Rebecca, go with Jon. And remember he can’t see and he doesn’t even have his stick, so don’t leave him. Okay?”

  Rebecca nodded firmly and I felt a bit better. Lord, let her not have to shoot. Because never mind the chances of her actually hitting anything, if she did, Jon would probably be dead. But with all the best intentions in the world, Caroline seemed more likely to panic and leave him behind somewhere.

  “Come with me then, Caroline, as planned. And if you have to shoot, don’t hesitate, all right? Remember you’re not going to hurt them.”

  Caroline nodded and came to stand beside me. If anything she looked relieved not to have the added responsibility of being Jon’s eyes.

  “Right, let’s go. Rachel?” I called down the passage, “We’re off.”

  Us ‘guards’ went two at the front and two at the back of the double crocodile, just in case anyone catching only a quick look might be fooled. The gunfire was continuing, mostly rather distantly from the east side of the compound. We were still on schedule. The stairwell was empty, everyone on the roof with the remains of the helicopter or on the east battlements providing targets for the no doubt well concealed Resistance fighters. We reached the gym without seeing anyone at all.

  “Keep everyone ready in their crocodiles,” I told Rachel. “Soon as you see us run from the base of the towers to the gate, bring everyone over. Jon, you’d better speak into the microphone on your side; after all, there’re only supposed to be two female guards in this ent
ire place, plus the Captain. So Rebecca, you’ll have to aim him at the mic. Make sure he’s too close to be identifiable.”

  “Right,” said Rebecca.

  “As planned,” said Jon calmly, though he must know I was repeating it for Rebecca’s sake. The sheen of sweat on his brow suggested he was far more nervous than he showed. Small wonder. Suddenly, making a blind person go into lethal combat seemed all kinds of cruel.

  The gunfire intensified, loud and close. Too late now.

  “That’s our cue.” My would-be light voice came out a strangled croak.

  Swiping the card through the reader beside the gym’s external doors, I eased one open, looking out. The battlements were empty, as expected. With their fancy bulletproof towers, they weren’t going to set men out as targets unless things were getting hot. From down here, the guards inside the towers were invisible, no clue how many or which way they were looking. From the crack and twang of bullets glancing off the glass, they were probably not looking at us. Just now, I’d rather be shot than stay in here, anyway.

  I set off across the yard at an urgent run, head bowed. Just your Captain racing to the rescue. With an audible gulp, Caroline followed. Also wondering which way the machine guns were pointing? Sand scuffed as Rebecca and Jon started for their tower, then all my attention focused on that doorway.

  Swiping the card the instant I arrived, I hovered close to the camera’s eye, until a frightened voice yelled a decidedly non-regulation, “What?” from the speaker.

  I shoved my face up against the mic and returned an equally non-regulation roar of, “Reinforcements!” Turned my head over my shoulder and added, “Hurry up, you!”

  “Thank Goh…oodness!” came from the speaker. One very rattled guard indeed.

  The light flicked green.

  I yanked open the door and dived in. Utilitarian concrete steps wound upwards. I took them two at a time, Caroline racing along behind me—no need to give these guards time to think too hard either. The door at the top had only a card reader and opened inwards, so I swiped the card and stepped forward, shielding my body behind the opening door.

  Three guards.

  Could be worse, in the circumstances. Two were hunched over their machine guns, swiveling them this way and that without firing—searching for assailants who weren’t deigning to show themselves. The third was crouched with his rifle through the gun slit, firing so wildly he couldn’t actually be aiming at anything.

  None of them looked around, so I shot the one with the rifle first, since he could most easily turn his weapon on us. Then the two with the machine guns. They slumped over, then slithered down those big guns to the floor, totally oblivious to what’d just happened. Thank you, Lord. Let Jon and Rebecca have similar success.

  Caroline was peeping around the doorway. I waved at her to stay where she was, briskly put a second shot into each guard, then got down on hands and knees and crawled to the gun slit on the west side. Keeping my head down, I carefully poked the white pillowcase out, waving it. The bullets abruptly stopped twanging off the glass, though the retorts of the guns continued. So. Bane was right: they’d been well drilled.

  The other tower stood blackly against a background of thin forest mist. After a few moments, something white appeared from its gun slit. A huge knot in my chest untangled itself.

  “Come on.” I rushed for the stairs.

  “It worked!” Caroline gasped as she tore after me. “D’you think we’re actually going to do it?”

  Lord willing. I took a cautious look at the surrounding battlements before going back into the yard. Still empty. As planned, the brief concentration of fire on this side had already died back down. But I just said, “Come on. All clear.”

  We raced across the sand to the little wall gate. Rebecca was running to meet us, towing Jon behind her. Jon picked his feet up well clear of the sand, but kept pace. It must take some trust, or effort of will, to run flat out towards you knew not what.

  “Whoa!” called Rebecca, as she skidded to a halt, causing Jon to slow down enough that he didn’t knock her flat. I flung my arms around him and hugged him.

  “Oh, you’re okay,” he sighed, hugging me back and burying his face in my hair in a way that made me glad Bane wasn’t in eyesight. But his arms were trembling slightly. “Huh, three of them, you know. I was afraid I might not hear them over all that shooting, but it was fine.”

  “We had three too. You got them all?”

  “Well, yeah, only one of them was facing me and I think he must’ve been trying to figure out who I was, so it was child’s play—none of them thought to hold their breath! S’pect you got all yours.”

  “No trouble to speak of.” I swiped the card and eased the gate open, poking out the white pillow case and waving it a few times before opening it all the way. Just in case the Resistance weren’t quite as well drilled as it appeared. The others were only meters away now, jogging across the yard in their crocodile.

  “Rebecca, you hang onto Jon, won’t you? Caroline, stick with me. In fact, go on, Rebecca, it may take Jon longer to get up that bank.”

  “Okay, come on, Jon,” Rebecca took Jon in tow again. He resisted.

  “Wait, wait, let me get my stick. Thanks, Harriet. Okay, let’s go. Coming, Margo?”

  “I’m going to make like a sheepdog and follow up the rear.”

  “You should be first out of here,” grumbled Jon, but clearly deducing that the more he delayed the crocodile the longer I’d be stuck here, he allowed Rebecca to drag him away.

  I watched them all past me, then dropped my voice slightly to be sure Jon wouldn’t hear. He was halfway up the slope by now, but.

  “Go on, Caroline, I’ll just make sure Emily and everyone else get out okay. I won’t be far behind you. Go on, just stick with the crocodile,” I added, as she hesitated. Perhaps I’d overemphasized the buddy thing!

  One look from the grim Facility building to the green forestline decided Caroline and she jogged off to join the end of the double file. I tilted the nonLee in my hand to check the charge. A green bar still glowed.

  Don’t think about it, just do it… I ran across the yard and back inside the gym. Slipped through the Lab side door into—yes, a deserted passage—and waited by the stairwell door, looking along the passage. The next second Emily came racing through the other stairwell door with three big boys—young men. They all headed straight into the gym. Without a doubt, the young men’s attention was fixed on reaching the gate, not Emily.

  A torrent of pushing, shoving youths followed, and finally, last of all, three lads with blank, baffled expressions, being pulled and prodded along rather ruthlessly by two other boys. At least they were being brought along. So. That was all them out.

  My hands were damp on the butt of the gun and beginning to tremble. Follow those boys to the gate and in thirty seconds I would be in Bane’s arms. But this was one ‘do-unto-others’ that I simply could not ignore. Jane must still be alive. That helicopter had arrived only minutes after she’d been taken and all senior staff would’ve immediately been summoned to grovel to the EuroGov—including the dismantlers.

  I headed across the stairwell. Everyone’s on the east battlements. Everyone is on the east battlements. I just go in and get Jane, and we walk straight out again. In the very unlikely event they’ve put her under, I can wheel the gurney. Soon as I get to the gate, Bane’ll see I need a hand and come help me… All the guards are on the east battlements. It’s simple. Simple.

  I scanned the card at the door to the Lab block, pushed it open and walked in. The smell of the Lab hit me as the door clicked closed behind. Cold metal. Copper-salt blood. Death, odorless. I spun around, lunged for the door, my hands slapping hard against it as I struggled for control. Turn around, Margo. The Lab is a few meters down this corridor. There’s probably no one there. The minions will be groveling as well.

  And if there is… my thumb ran over the smoothness of the indented safety catch. If there is, I can take care of it.<
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  Breathing as though I’d just run three times around the Facility walls, I turned and began to walk along the passage, which wavered and distorted before my eyes... Keep it together, Margo. Just a few more meters…

  There, on the left, double external doors. On the right, more double doors. This is where they bring in the convicted. A smaller door opened before the double ones, with a window in it. I stepped to it and peeped through.

  The Lab. The gleaming metal and blazing lights sent a shaft of coldness right to my core and I very nearly bolted again. But... there was a figure lying on a gurney. Long limbs twisting and kicking against the restraints. Still conscious, laudate Dominum.

  The room was empty, as far as I could see. I swiped the card and went in. They’d left Jane with the door behind her—she went momentarily motionless, then began to struggle in real earnest, her breaths catching in her throat.

  “Jane, it’s okay,” I hissed. “Calm down!”

  “Margo? Margo!” Her voice was ragged as she struggled to look back at me. “By the chairman’s underpants, is it really you?”

  “It’s me.” I laid the gun to hand and unfastened one wrist strap. It seemed to take forever, my hands weren’t working properly. “There, do your other hand, will you?” I moved the gun along and set to work on the ankle straps.

  “Margo, you all right? You’re all white and shaking...”

  “Fine. Come on.” I grabbed her wrist and pretty much dragged her from the gurney and to the door, gun in hand again. “Here, take the card.”

  That left me both hands for the gun. Jane unlocked the door and out we went. Three steps along the passage and the door at the boys’ end of the corridor slammed open behind us.

  “Hey, you…!”

  No, I’m not the Captain. I shot the guard before he could get further than that and we ran.

  “HEY!”

  A glance over my shoulder showed me two more guards standing over their fallen comrade, drawing their guns. Damn. I paused to fire at the closer of the two. He went down in a heap. I was already aiming at the other one. But my gun gave a feeble beep and the man showed no sign of keeling over. A wild glance at the power gauge showed it empty. Damn. No wonder these things hadn’t taken off!