by Claire Merle
She snatched the ID and marched over the plank. On the towpath, she strained to see the lay of the bank where they’d come down earlier. She sidled towards the slope of grass. Behind her, footsteps brushed the path. She scrambled for purchase on the incline. Her pumps slipped and slid. Something sharp scratched her right hand. She cried out and let go, skidding back down to where Cole’s six-foot silhouette waited. Mud soaked through her skirt and tights.
Cole took a step forwards.
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‘Stay away from me,’ she shouted.
He stopped.
‘Where’s Jasper? What have you done to him?’ A sob split her chest. The pressure and confusion of the day descended on her. ‘Were you folowing me to get to him?’
‘I knew Jasper was in trouble,’ Cole said. ‘He was being closely watched by the Wardens. I slipped him a piece of paper with the hotline telephone number. I was trying to help. When I saw you with him, I recognised you from the Academy. You got up to go after him and I folowed to make sure you were OK.’
Ana shook her head. No, Cole was the bad guy. He was mixing things up so that she’d trust him.
‘Why didn’t you folow Jasper to make sure he was OK?’
‘There was nothing more I could do for him. I was more concerned about you.’ The tenderness in Cole’s voice confused her. Curious, she looked at him and sensed he was teling the truth.
She slumped down on the edge of the muddy slope, groaned and wrapped her hands over her head. She felt like an idiot. No wonder he found her so amusing.
Cole squatted down beside her. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you were in court today because you thought I was involved in Jasper’s abduction?’
‘No, not at first,’ she sniffed. ‘At first I thought the Enlightenment Project had taken him. I thought because you’re an ex-member you could help me find out where they were holding him. But when I saw you’re paying Cox’s phone bils and folowing me . . .’ She trailed off.
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‘But if you didn’t know about Jasper’s phone cal to the hotline number before today, why were you looking for hotline number before today, why were you looking for me?’
‘I knew the day Jasper disappeared he’d met an ex-Project member. He’d talked about it when he told me he was in trouble. And I knew the Wardens were searching for someone caled “Enkidu”. It al led to you.’
Cole let out a huff of annoyance. ‘Jasper wasn’t very careful. No wonder they pre-empted him.’
Ana rubbed her face with the sleeve of his wooly jumper.
‘They? They who?’ she said.
‘Whoever knew what he’d got his hands on.’
‘That’s mad. How could the Pure tests be fake?’
‘Have you heard of the Human Genome Project?’
Ana shook her head.
‘The Human Genome Project,’ he said, ‘was an international research effort to map al the genes that make up the genetic blueprint for a human being. It was completed in 2003. Afterwards, there was a huge race in the global scientific community to be the first to use this information to isolate gene patterns responsible for different diseases.
Personalised preventive health care was a pharmaceutical’s wet dream. Imagine being able to provide medication before something even went wrong with a person.
‘Then came the Colapse and the Global Depression.
‘Then came the Colapse and the Global Depression.
Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, their jobs, the Petrol Wars started, and al over the world things were faling apart. You said your father helped develop the Pure test?’
She nodded. ‘My father’s Ashby Barber.’
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Cole’s eyebrows shot up. But his surprise was quickly usurped by understanding.
‘There was al that stuff a couple of years ago about Jasper binding with Ashby Barber’s daughter, Ariana,’
he said. ‘I didn’t realise. It didn’t register.’
Ana shrugged. If Cole had stepped in at the last minute to try and help Jasper, there was no reason why he should know.
‘Wel,’ he continued, ‘your father’s work and everything to do with the Pure test research was funded by one of Europe’s largest pharmaceuticals at a time when the average person had lost any sense of security or hope for the future.’
‘Novastra,’ Ana muttered.
‘Exactly. They saw an opportunity. They capitalised on it. But rumours have always flown about that they never found any of the mutated-gene patterns that could be considered responsible for the Big3, let alone any of the others.
It didn’t stop them. They had an idea, and they weren’t about to give it up.’
about to give it up.’
‘But how could they fake something so big?’
‘“The bigger the lie, the more people believe it.” Hitler’s right-hand man said that. It’s happened al through history.
Human sacrifices, witch hunts, Nazis.’
Ana lay back and crossed her arms over her chest. Mud slipped around her neck, and up into her hair.
Could it al realy be a lie? Was that why her father had been so determined she cheat the system? Was that why he’d forbidden her to take any preventative medication?
Because of the Pure test she’d spent nearly three years squeezing every irrational thought out of herself, crushing 174
her emotions into a wel-contained holow where her heart should have been.
And al this time, Jasper had believed there was nothing wrong with her and never said a word. Had he been using her to get to her father?
‘Ariana?’ Cole’s voice drifted through her awareness.
But she might as wel have been at the bottom of a cave ful of water, and he might as wel have been caling to her through a crack in the earth high, high above. ‘Are you al right?’
She didn’t bother to answer. If she just lay there, in time her body would wear a hole in the ground, decay, disinteg-rate, meld with the earth.
disinteg-rate, meld with the earth.
‘Ariana?’
She felt light-headed. In the starlit blackness of her mind, someone else spoke, as clearly as if they stood in the same room.
‘You shouldn’t trust him.’
Tamsin.
They were sitting in the school theatre, legs propped up on the backs of their auditorium seats. It was the last week of Ana’s Year 11 summer term, fourteen months before Tamsin vanished. The school variety concert had ended half an hour ago. Pure boys and young men from al of London’s eleven Pure communities were drinking juice in the gym with Ana’s peers. Except for Jasper.
Jasper had left moments after the final song.
‘He told you,’ Tamsin continued, ‘that he’s going to transfer from Oxford to Durham and do the second year of his 175
law degree there – Durham, where it’l be too expensive for him to come back until next summer. He’s avoiding you.’
‘You can’t expect him to get over his brother’s death just like that.’
‘It’s been more than a year, Ana. I’m sorry but either he’s stringing you along, or he’s messed up big time.’
‘Pures can’t get messed up big time.’
‘’Course they can,’ Tamsin said.
‘’Course they can,’ Tamsin said.
‘But they don’t get proper diseases.’
‘In Shakespeare’s day, people went crazy cos of broken hearts and lost loved ones. Why would it be any different now?’
‘Because now we know those things are just triggers. A broken heart can only trigger suicide if you’re a Big3 or bipolar or . . .’
Tamsin shook her head. ‘You should know better than anyone else. How many girls in our class would pass one of the Board’s tests you have to do every month?’
‘They don’t have to.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because even if they have symptoms they don’t have the genetic structure which wil lead to the disease, so it won’t develop.’
Tamsin sighed. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘You’re better off without Jasper.’
‘Better off in the City with al the lunatics stabbing each other and starving to death?’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘How would you know?’
Tamsin was quiet then. It made Ana wonder about her 176
best friend. She knew Tamsin sometimes accompanied best friend. She knew Tamsin sometimes accompanied her father into the City to purchase goods for their shop, and once or twice Tamsin had implied she was alowed to wander around alone. But Ana had never understood why anyone would want to.
As it turned out, Tamsin had been right about Jasper.
Ana shouldn’t have trusted him. She’d been naïve; and vain enough to think the handsome, rich, eligible Jasper Taurel would give up his perfect life for her. Except he obviously didn’t think it was perfect.
Ana roused when she realised Cole had picked her up and was carrying her. She pushed him off, insisting she could walk. They boarded Enkidu. Relieved to discover there was no one else about, she lay down on a sofa and Cole covered her with blankets.
As much as Ana didn’t want them to, al the pieces fitted Cole’s explanation. Whoever had taken Jasper – the Psych Watch or the Wardens – were probably doing the Board’s bidding to protect the Pure test, and were unlikely to ever let him go. Ana saw herself middle-aged, living a ghost life in the City. Alone. Surrounded by people who acted crazy whether they were or not. Living in fear that one day the Psych Watch would come for her, because she knew what they had done to Jasper.
As she lay there, consumed by misery, a smal part of her registered music. Wooly, holow notes. They fluttered against her like the beating wings of angels. They poured into her, as warm as sunlight.
A wet stick crackled as it caught alight in the glowing furnace. She breathed in wood smoke and gradualy al-177
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lowed the music to thread her back together, each note like a tiny pricking stitch. When the melody turned darker and more mysterious, she roled on to her front and puled herself along the sofa to peer around the edge.
Cole sat at the upright piano with his back to her. A lantern glimmered on the case top, softly shaping his face and casting shadows over his fingers as they swept up and down the keys.
She examined him. Despite everything that was happening, she couldn’t help wondering how on earth someone raised in foster homes, an orphanage and a secluded sect, could play the piano like that.
The piece guttered like a candle in a draught, notes flickering unsteadily. A final chord struck, lingered and then burnt out. His hands lowered. He sat for a moment, unmoving.
‘You stil there?’ he asked finaly, breaking a strange and powerful silence.
‘Yes.’ She sat up and puled the blankets tightly around her shoulders. She didn’t feel ready to look at him. She was too overcome by the music and embarrassed about her earlier little breakdown.
‘I’ve never heard it before,’ she said. ‘What’s it caled?’
‘“Second Sight”.’
‘“Second Sight”,’ she repeated, committing the name to memory. She knelt up on the sofa and looked over Cole’s shoulder at the sheet music. A strange form of Cole’s shoulder at the sheet music. A strange form of coded notes marked the page. He put down the piano cover and turned so that they were face to face, only a foot between them.
Up close, she could see the scar through his left eyebrow, the dent in his chin, the square tattoo on his neck. Invol-178
untarily, her eyes rested on the curve of his lower lip. The lip rounded into a smile. Suddenly realising she was staring, she puled away.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What did you think of it?’
She twisted towards the fire and watched the flames behind the blackened furnace door.
‘When I hear a piece like that,’ she said, ‘I find it hard to believe that there isn’t something more than this.’ She waved a hand at the cabin, at al the material things surrounding them. ‘Something we haven’t begun to understand, but it’s captured in the music. It’s there. You can feel it.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Exactly.’ Behind her, the piano stool creaked and something rattled. He began rummaging through a wooden storage shelf nailed into the wal and retrieved a thumb-sized disc case. ‘It’s a recording of
“Second Sight”,’ he said passing it to her. ‘You can keep it.’
His dark pupils were holes, puling her into him. She stood up and reached out to take the recording.
‘You . . . you wrote it,’ she said, suddenly understanding.
Their fingers touched. He smiled. For a second she Their fingers touched. He smiled. For a second she gazed into the black holes and gravity abandoned her.
She was faling. She was faling and it was the scariest and most thriling feeling she’d ever had.
‘You should give it to someone who can do something with it,’ she stuttered.
‘That’s why I was giving it to you.’
‘Me?’ Why her? Cole must know plenty of proper pianists that could perform it for him. ‘I—’ She curled her fingers around the disc case, skimming his skin. ‘I’m not sure I understand. But thank you.’
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Cole gathered the sheet music and shoved it inside the piano stool along with a large messy stack of similarly drawn-up pages.
She stepped closer, resting her hand across the closed piano case. After three days’ withdrawal from her piano practice, and with so many emotions and ‘Second Sight’
bubbling inside her, the desire to play was overwhelming.
‘May I?’ she asked. He nodded. She opened the key cover.
He moved aside, giving her room to perch on the piano stool.
Gently, she struck a key and began to pick out his melody.
‘Do you stil plan on trying to find Jasper?’ he asked.
Ana tinkled on the keys, considering. There were at least sixty loony bins in the Greater London area. The Psych Watch or the Wardens could have dumped him in any one of them. Or they could have done something else with him entirely.
Jasper must have been out of his mind to even consider going up against the Board. But maybe that’s why he’d chosen to bind with her, to remind people the Board could make mistakes and if they could make mistakes then they weren’t infalible.
Jasper had as good as lied to her by not teling her about his brother’s evidence. He’d also risked his own life in an attempt to pass on evidence he thought proved the Pure test was fraudulent; evidence that affected over fifty-five milion people.
‘I can’t leave him rotting in some psych dump,’ she said.
‘This evidence he supposedly has. Where’s it meant to have come from?’
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‘His brother,’ Cole said. ‘Tom Taurel had a degree in biochemistry.’
Ana thought of Tom’s accident. Tom had just begun working in Novastra’s research department before he fel off a cliff in the abandoned county of Dorset and drowned.
Had he discovered anomalies in the Pure test? Had he been kiled for trying to expose them?
For a moment, Ana pushed aside her anger with Jasper and instead tried to put herself in his shoes. He’d wanted to avenge his brother’s death by undermining the Board.
Granted, his relationship with Ana had facilitated that –
binding with the girl whose original Pure test had somehow been faulty – but deep down she felt sure it wasn’t the only reason he’d gone ahead with it. In the handful of times they’d seen each other after her fifteenth birthday, he’d never pressed her for information about her father. And he must have believed he could hand over the evidence to the member of the Enlightenment Project (or ex-member) without being caught. If things had gone to plan, at some point in the days leading up to their joining, the ‘truth’
would have become public knowledge and the Board would have come under attack. Jasper had never intended to join with her under false pretences. She wou
ld have known the truth about the Pure tests, perhaps he’d have confessed to her what he’d been up to.
‘Are you and the guy Jasper met with stil part of the Enlightenment Project?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I thought you weren’t alowed to leave the compound.’
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Cole raised an eyebrow. ‘And yet here I am.’
Ana flicked her eyes away from him. She wished he Ana flicked her eyes away from him. She wished he wouldn’t look at her and speak to her like that – it made goose bumps appear on the tops of her arms, the back of her neck; it made it impossible to be normal around him.
‘So, I guess the Psych Watch who spiked Jasper’s contact must have taken the evidence,’ she said, directing her gaze at the piano.
‘I believe there are two copies. Jasper had a second one.’
A wal of energy slammed into Ana. Another copy!
Perhaps the evidence was stil out there. Jasper knew they were coming after him; he’d have had the time to hide the disc. If she found Jasper, not only could she tel his mother where he was but she could help him get back the disc proving the Pure tests were fake. Then she would know for sure that she’d never get sick.
‘We have to find him,’ she said. ‘We have to find out what they’ve done to him, so that his father can make a stand against the Board and get him out.’
Excitement buzzed through her as she began to play the part of ‘Second Sight’ she’d already unraveled. Without the Big3 hanging over her, she’d be a new person; she’d have a future; she’d never have to worry again about the day her own mind turned on her. The bitter-sweet melody tumbled from her fingers. Absorbed by the feel of piano keys she played until she’d woven each element of the piece back together, until the fire embers died and the cabin grew cold. When she stopped, it was long past midnight and Cole had gone.
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16
Benzidox
Hours later, Ana woke in her cabin, hungry and apparently alone aboard Enkidu. In the kitchen she found a piece of bread from the evening meal. The fridge and the cupboards were empty. She ate the chewy baguette, then showered.
Dressed again in her jeans and Cole’s chocolate-brown sweater, she ventured up on deck and was surprised to find they were moored back near Camden market.
