by Claire Merle
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Cole managed to flip his headlamp back on and slowly rode the bumpy terrain towards the ruins. Alone.
They’d kiled Peter. A government minister. And it was his fault. The minister would never have got involved if Cole hadn’t emotionaly blackmailed him to hand over the incriminating government recording.
*
Ana lay curled up on a mattress in Studio 8. The pain in her head shut out al thought. Her body was sore and bruised.
Only her left eye opened, letting through a narrow slit of day. She watched as the day faded and night crept in around her. Others came to lie quietly on their beds.
Occasionaly, she heard whimpering and groaning. Once she thought it might be coming from her.
After what seemed like hours, but might have been minutes, a distant bel broke the spel of lethargy cast with nightfal. Girls stirred from their beds.
A slight girl came and crouched beside her.
‘Here, take this,’ she said, pushing something smal and round against Ana’s lips. Ana grunted. ‘It’s just aspirin, for the pain.’
Ana opened her mouth. A bitter taste hit her tongue. She crunched, which made her head hurt even more.
‘Looks like your interview didn’t go too wel,’ the girl said.
‘They didn’t give me the test with al the questions.’
The girl shook her head. ‘Never heard of anyone having a test before,’ she said. ‘Come on, you need to eat.’ She hooked an arm around Ana’s waist and puled her to a sit-267
ting position. Ana’s head spun from the sudden movement, but she didn’t protest. She was starving. She hadn’t eaten since she’d left the flat at Forest Hil. That morning?
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
The girl chuckled. ‘It doesn’t make any difference. In here, we’re always in the Twilight Zone.’
The girl helped Ana across the courtyard to the door at the end of the smaler yard, which now stood open. They blundered inside and down a maze of dimly lit corridors, up some stairs and into a crowded dining room.
Slouched against a wal, chin resting on her chest, Ana waited as the girl fetched them supper.
The meagre meal consisted of soup and bread. Ana ate slowly, hunched over, eyes closed. She flinched as cutlery clanged and chairs scraped. Her head pounded.
She focused her efforts on getting a few spoons of sustenance inside her without throwing up – the soup smelt of duck-weed and tasted mouldy. No wonder half the patients were bones sticking out of blue robes. And now Ana wore a blue robe too, instead of the white one.
The nurses must have dressed her in it after her interview with Cusher. She imagined it had a number on the back denoting what meds she should be given.
Twenty minutes later, she returned to Studio 8. The girl managed to acquire another blanket for her from somewhere and helped Ana lie down on a mattress close somewhere and helped Ana lie down on a mattress close to the door but out of the draught. Sleep came eventualy. Deep and empty. When Ana woke, it was to the grating of the giant doors as they opened.
Morning crept into the dark interior. With it, the girls 268
around Ana twitched to life, pacing, whispering and picking at their beds and robes. No one left the studio.
They were waiting for something. Ana, however, could barely move.
The combination of the sedative and beating had stiffened her body and left her too sore to want to try. She wheezed, forced by the bruising on her back to take short, shalow breaths. At least tonight Cole would be waiting for her at the Forest Hil flat, and when she didn’t make it, he would contact her father. She had a way out.
But al the other boys and girls were stuck in Three Mils for months, maybe years. How did they live with that?
Thoughts of Cole sneaked through Ana’s defences. For a few brief seconds she felt the warmth of his presence, comforting and strong. She imagined him holding her the way he’d done outside his mother’s flat. Then a dozen troleys rattled across the courtyard, bringing her sharply back to reality. Girls scampered to their beds and lay face down, numbers to the ceiling.
The troleys rumbled in various directions. One grew louder, approaching Studio 8. Ana listened as it crashed over the metal door rails and into the dorm. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and suspected her least favourite orderly was, once again, posted on guard duty.
The nurse began distributing medication. The troley wove between the girls, squeaking and clanking. When wove between the girls, squeaking and clanking. When the nurse reached Ana, she stopped, held out a smal toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a tiny bar of soap and a plastic container. Ana heaved her prostrate body high enough to free an arm. She took the goods, tucking the toothpaste, toothbrush and soap against her cheek. Then she squeezed 269
the seal of the eye-like container. It popped open. She tipped the contents into her mouth, accepted the cup of water and swalowed.
With a final effort she extended her arm to return the plastic cup. Nothing happened. Her chest tightened. She lifted her head and squinted at the nurse. The nurse didn’t look at her, didn’t move. From the corner of her good eye, Ana saw movement in the entrance. She wavered.
They couldn’t know she’d pressed the pils against her top gum.
She caught the eye of the girl that had helped her the night before. The girl stared at her unblinkingly, a warning lay buried behind her impassive expression.
‘Water, please,’ Ana croaked. The nurse gave her another thimble of liquid. This time Ana tipped it into her mouth and swalowed the pils. The nurse moved on.
Once al patients had received their meds, a bel sounded.
The nurse and orderlies retreated. Girls rushed out into the chil morning.
Ana struggled to her feet. Her muscles ached with each smal gesture, but she had to get to the toilet. She had to throw up.
Doubled over, clasping her blanket around her shoulders, she staggered into the yard. Her heart sank when she saw the queue for the toilets. It curled back on itself twice. At least sixty girls were waiting. The boys’ queue was shorter, but that didn’t help.
Ana peeked in the opposite direction. By the far wal on her left where the aleys ran on either side, several girls crouched, gowns lifted high on thighs, pee trickling through legs. Keeping close to the studio wals, Ana 270
lurched towards the passageways, planning to dip into the left-hand aley just long enough to jam her fingers down her throat.
At the end of the yard, she steadied herself against the gravel wal, checking quickly about for nurses, orderlies or surveilance cameras. Tension built inside her skul.
She pressed her hands to her head. Soon the chemicals would enter her stomach, would be absorbed by tiny capilaries and carried through her bloodstream to her brain. She breathed in deeply, let go of the wal and tossed herself into the passageway.
‘Whoa . . .’ Mid-manoeuvre, two firm hands caught her shoulders. ‘Steady there.’ It was a voice Ana knew wel, even if everything else about the girl had changed beyond recognition. Stunned stupid, Ana could only blink. The girl with the vine tattoo pushed her back into the yard.
‘Slow learner huh?’ Ana narrowed her semi-good eye to examine the skinny teenager. A black fringe cut a jagged line high on the girl’s forehead. Long lashes framed dark eyes. A mole sat on the right, salow cheek. Yesterday, Ana had been too dosed up and disorientated to Ana had been too dosed up and disorientated to recognise the girl with the vine tattoo. Today, as Ana absorbed her former best friend’s features, her mind hurtled back through time.
She saw Tamsin impersonating their home economics teacher the day Ana was caled to the headmistress’s office; she saw Tamsin chalenging any girl in their class to make fun of Ana after it came out she was a Big3
Sleeper; she saw Tamsin pouring her heart and soul into Portia’s monologue from The Merchant of Venice at their Year 10 school variety show.
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Ana bit a hole in her lip in an effort to come back to the
present. Blood trickled into her mouth. She wondered if Tamsin recognised her even though she was covered in bruises, and had short hair and brown contacts that were dissolving day by day and would soon be gone.
They were standing along the back wal in ful sight of the yard. The acidic tang of vomit and urine, along with the blood and Ana’s confusion, set her head spinning.
‘Pul down your knickers and crouch like the rest of us,’
Tamsin said. Ana did as instructed. Her thighs shook under her weight, her chest heaved, but she couldn’t stop gawking at the vine tattoo. ‘Wait . . . Wait . . .’
Ana held back her retching reflex.
‘OK.’
Perhaps Tamsin meant for Ana to pee, but Ana turned sideways and threw up. Two pils dribbled down the brick wal coated in brown liquid. Without pausing a brick wal coated in brown liquid. Without pausing a beat, Tamsin doused the sick with a bottle of water. The liquid mix washed away, joining a foul-looking, yelow rivulet at the foot of the wal. Relieved, and unable to restrain her blad-der, Ana peed.
‘Don’t know why they bother to put newcomers in the white gowns and pretend there’s some sort of twenty-four-hour evaluation,’ Tamsin said. ‘Everybody gets a blue one with a number the next day. No such thing as passing the interview. How can anyone prove they’re not insane to people that are?’
Ana hoisted her knickers back on and stood up. In the aley beyond, something moved. A blurry boy jerked backwards and forwards, obscured by another boy, who stood 272
with his back facing the yard and whose body sagged under some heavy weight. Ana struggled to untangle the image, her mind stil floundering over Tamsin. She caught a slither of white flesh. Then a handful of long hair. An extra arm.
She choked on her own breath. The heavy bulk was a girl
– a barely conscious girl. And the boys were . . . they were raping her. The picture burnt itself on to Ana’s retina. She held out an arm to stop herself from faling. A hand coiled around her waist.
‘They’re—’ She wanted to tel Tamsin what she’d seen, but she couldn’t form the words.
Tamsin dragged her from the wal. ‘Better move it,’ she said, leading Ana to a throng at the edge of the smaler said, leading Ana to a throng at the edge of the smaler courtyard. ‘Breakfast is on a first-come-first-served basis.’
A bel rang. The crowd pressed forward. Carried on the wave, Ana let the tears of anger and shock slide down her face. She didn’t know how much more of this madness she could take. How on earth could Tamsin be here at Three Mils? How could Jasper not know who she was? How could boys do something like that in a place where the girls were patients? They were supposed to be safe. The nightmare had no limits; it was as wide and black as the space between stars.
*
After breakfast, orderlies corraled patients into a giant, white-padded room with an arched roof. Three horizontal structural beams strung out across the ceiling.
Metal poles hung from the beams, rigged with a dozen flatscreens. Ana shuffled towards a group of patients huddled beneath one 273
of the screens and discovered that the accompanying sound became audible from a metre and a half away.
Otherwise, the padded wals muffled the quiet drone.
A long, eye-level window ran along the left-hand wal of the old rehearsal studio. Instinctively, Ana crossed to it and gazed out. A cobbled street lay directly below.
When she pressed her nose to the window she could make out the blue security door which she’d entered by.
Dannard had been right. Inside Three Mils the real world was lost. The blue door might as wel have been a porthole linking two different planes of existence.
Ana searched the drawn, sickly faces of boys and girls Ana searched the drawn, sickly faces of boys and girls coming in from breakfast. If Jasper had queued for a morning shower he could stil be a while. She moved away from the window, entering the nearest screen’s sound radius. A news report filtered through her awareness.
‘The Right Honourable Dr Peter Reed,’ an anchorper-son was saying, ‘Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, formerly Secretary of State for Health, was kiled yesterday evening close to his home at the southern boarder of the Hampstead Community.’
Ana stopped and cocked her head at the image of a sep-tuagenarian government minister. ‘The Wardens are looking for Cole Winter, who is wanted for questioning about the murder.’
A police-arrest photograph of Cole from a couple of years ago filed the screen. His shoulder-length hair hung in straggly clumps. Dark stubble made his face look gaunt and menacing.
Ana stared at the haunted eyes. Her arms hung limply at 274
her sides. She felt the blood drain from her face. Felt herself plunge headfirst into fear.
‘Cole Winter,’ the reporter continued, ‘a disciple of Richard Cox, the mastermind of the 2036 Tower Bridge bombing, was seen leaving the crime scene. Mr Winter had personal ties to Dr Reed. He is considered dangerous and should not be approached. If you have any knowledge of his whereabouts please report it to the Warden’s hotline.’
The screen image cut to a mountain of smoky rubble.
‘The colapse of the US Middle East peace process has resulted in another night of heavy bombing over the eastern coast of the United States.’
Ana couldn’t move, couldn’t even twist her neck away from the flatscreen. The reporter’s words floated around her meaninglessly.
‘Another 20,000 are estimated dead and a further 140,000 reported missing. This is the third air raid since the colapse of the peace process last week . . .’
She sucked in deeply. There are people who will hide him, she told herself. For al she knew, the Crazies in the City hated the Wardens and wouldn’t contact the hotline.
Cole could just hole up somewhere until things settled down, then go to the Project. As she grew calmer, her train of thought shifted. If the whole of London’s Wardens were on the lookout for him, he couldn’t possibly risk going back to the Forest Hil flat. He wouldn’t be there tonight. He wouldn’t know she hadn’t made it out of Three Mils.
She bent over, passing her head through her legs and forced herself to breathe. Her face tingled feverishly.
How was she ever going to get out of here?
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After a moment, she staggered back to the window. She had to try speaking to Jasper again and jog his memory, so they could figure out what they were going to do.
Minutes dragged by as she waited for him to come in Minutes dragged by as she waited for him to come in from breakfast. Finaly, as the orderlies divided the patients into groups to herd them back to their respective studios, Jasper appeared. Seeing her approach, he warded her off with the sign of the cross. Whatever decisions had to be made, she realised, whether she should confess to the psychs who they realy were, or find some other way out, she couldn’t count on Jasper.
She was on her own.
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22
The Tanks
Back in the studios, the atmosphere sparked with tension.
From snippets of conversation, Ana gathered they would soon be free to roam the inner compound. They were waiting for the orderlies to colect those few who would be taken off for morning therapy.
A bel rang and boots tramped through the yard. The scarred orderly and her usual dour companion entered Ana’s dormitory. The orderly read six names, ‘Emily’s’
included, from a clipboard. Five girls edged towards her, holding out wrists and they were shackled to a link of metal chain.
Stunned, Ana rose. She stepped forward, the fear around her palpable. Most girls kept their eyes lowered.
The scarred orderly jangled a pair of cuffs.
‘We’re not going to be having any trouble today, are we, Emily?’ she said.
Ana held out her wrists, arms weightless like in a dream.
The metal hoops crunched down on her hands, linking her to the other five patients.
The chosen girls skittered across the y
ard like leaves blown in a gust of wind. They passed through the grey building with toilets and shower facilities to a back door.
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The door led out of the compound into a wide cobbled walkway; the walkway Ana had looked down on only an hour ago.
The line of girls bunched up, grinding to a standstil.
Though no one looked at it, Ana knew they were al conscious of the blue gate lying in ful view beyond the reception.
She lowered her eyes and squeezed her shackled hands into fists. She would divulge her true identity to whichever psychiatrist they were now taking her to. She would make them listen. She would be persuasive. Her father could end any one of their careers. What would one day’s difference make to verify her story when their job was on the line?
They crossed a cattle bridge to a cluster of warehouses.
A river ran alongside the thirty-foot-high studio wals.
From time to time, a girl ahead stumbled or tripped, yanking Ana’s arm from its socket.
The scarred orderly stopped and detached Ana and one other from the group. They stood before an entrance of a other from the group. They stood before an entrance of a loading bay with a roler-shutter half open. The second orderly took up the other four girls and tussled them away.
The girl beside Ana stopped crying and began to shake.
Ana gazed at her feet, tinged blue from the cold. Liquid trickled across the dirt path towards her. She looked at the girl, and saw the girl stood in a puddle.
The scarred orderly laughed. ‘What doesn’t kil you makes you stronger,’ she said, lighting a cigarette and pushing them towards the accordion-like studio entrance.
‘It’s time. Hurry up.’
Ana obediently ducked under the roler-shutter and 278
found herself on a dark, concrete stage fifty metres long and half as wide again. The girl tumbled in beside her, letting out a cry of terror. Five glass tanks lined the sparse stage, lit up internaly like they were in an aquarium. The shutter clattered down. The studio disappeared into pitch-black nothingness. Except for the eerily glowing tanks.
