The Glimpse

by Claire Merle

  ‘A week ago,’ she began, ‘Nate came to my father’s house in the Community.’

  Cole’s expression darkened.

  ‘He told me you’d gone abroad. Lila too. That you were on a ship to America. He said there was no way I could get in touch with you. When I thought I wouldn’t see you again, I couldn’t make myself care any more. I wanted to be declared Active. But then I realised there was only one way to get revenge against the Board, to undermine them, to justify al the sacrifices you and Jasper and others had made.

  So I agreed to go through with the joining. To make the Board look stupid. And because if I couldn’t be with you, 387

  it didn’t seem to matter. But when I saw you at the ceremony—’ Emotion stuck in her throat. She tried to swalow, but couldn’t go on.

  Cole gazed at her so long, she wondered if he understood what she was unable to say.

  After a pause, he straightened her disheveled sweater.

  His hand moved carefuly up her shoulder to her chin.

  She trembled at his touch.

  ‘On one condition,’ he said. ‘You let me take you.’ He tilted her chin to his lips. She closed her eyes and met his kiss.

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  32

  Destiny

  Ana sheltered her body against Cole’s as the Yamaha burred down the Archway Road heading for the Highgate Community’s northerly checkpoint. Toyne Way had one security guard and a basic 2025 ID Scanner.

  Information had to be sent to the central checkpoint and manualy processed before it entered the security system.

  If Ana’s father stil had her tagged it would mean an extra few minutes before the red flag alert arrived on his system. She had to hope he wouldn’t be anticipating her return home. There was no reason for him to imagine she might go back for Jasper’s pendant.

  With any luck, he was stil searching the Academy. It would take him at least half an hour to get to Highgate.

  And if he’d had the foresight to plant a tracer in her joining dress, he would be chasing a ghost right now because Ana had instructed Lila to give it away.

  Cole drew up in a road adjacent to Toyne Way and cut the engine. Ana descended. He reached out and slid his fingers into the short hair at the base of her neck.

  ‘This is hard for me,’ he said. ‘I feel like we’re standing outside Three Mils again, and I’ve been given a second chance. I don’t want to let you go, Ana.’

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  ‘I know.’ She leaned in and pressed her lips against his, amazed once more at the warmth and tenderness of his kiss.

  kiss.

  It was like sunshine rousing every cel in her body. After a minute they broke away. He opened her palm and placed her old ID stick inside it.

  ‘I’ve been looking after this for you. But you’l have to come back to me if you want your interface,’ he said.

  ‘I’l come back.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ He stroked a hand over her hair, down to her cheek.

  A pang of anxiety hit her. ‘This isn’t what you saw, is it?

  Us standing here now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ She smiled, relieved. He unstrapped his wrist-watch and set the countdown for twenty-five minutes.

  ‘I have an interface,’ she said. ‘My dad lent me his spare one.’

  ‘Don’t switch it on. It might be tagged. Besides this isn’t just a watch. This is your promise to me. You keep this until I get to kiss you again. And when the time is up, you run back to me. No matter what.’

  ‘OK.’ She kissed him quickly, afraid of changing her mind. As she broke away, he reached into her with his eyes and kissed her one last time. She savoured the moment.

  When he finaly let her go, she turned and stepped around the wal into Toyne Way.

  At the checkpoint, she handed over her ID to the security guard. The pulse in her neck popped in and out.

  The guard glanced at her. She braced herself for his questions.

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  His gaze wandered to his interface projection. Some TV

  series made twenty years ago. Then, as though reading her thoughts, he shook his head.

  ‘I don’t wanna know . . .’ he said. He pressed her ID

  into the 2025 scanner and waved her through the foot passage at the side of the barrier.

  Heart pounding, Ana stroled down the sycamore-lined street, veered into a narrow passage – a pedestrian short cut joining Toyne Way to Sheldon Avenue – and began to run.

  The early evening filed with drizzle. Moisture colected on her cheeks, making them tingle. A scent of grass per-meated the air. Holding her ribs, she jogged through pools of yelow streetlights that had just blinked on, past huge driveways and bay windows set back from the road.

  After several minutes, she stopped at the gates to her home and typed in the code. The gates opened. She ran up the driveway, entered a second code for the front-door and sidled down the hal into the living room. The shutters had been drawn over the French windows.

  shutters had been drawn over the French windows.

  Diffuse light from the solar-charged panels framing her father’s rock-star photographs made hazy outlines of the furniture. She wove around the coffee table up to the platform where her piano stood. She flicked the switch to raise the shutters, clicked open the French windows and stepped out into the waning daylight. On the patio, she seized a trowel from a terracotta pot and wiping the drizzle from her face, crept back inside.

  Upstairs, near her bedroom, the photographs sensed her and lit up. She tried to ignore them as she padded to the end of the hal. She didn’t want to see the tribute her father had raised to her perfect Pure-girl image. They couldn’t 391

  tel her who she was any more. The girl in those photos no longer existed.

  At her father’s office door, she wedged the tapered blade of the trowel into the crack by the lock and yanked back with both hands. The wood splintered. She tried again.

  Part of the silver lock bent away from the frame. But it wasn’t enough. She was a long way from breaking through.

  She jabbed at the lock with the point of the trowel, over and over. Shattered flakes piled up on the cream carpet.

  Her body began to shake with the thril of destroying something of her father’s. She kept hacking away, even as the lock broke off and dangled from its casing.

  A beep broke through her frenzy. She stopped, recolecting herself. Cole’s stopwatch signaled the halfway mark.

  halfway mark.

  Only twelve and a half minutes left to find Jasper’s pendant and get back to the checkpoint. She puled down the lopsided handle, thrust wide the door and froze. As she stood on the threshold of her father’s office al her rage and hate evaporated.

  Above her father’s cherry-wood desk hung a giant black and white photograph taken the morning Ana’d returned to school after learning from the Board she was a Big3

  Sleeper. Grey furious eyes stared out at her. Hurt and defiance poured through the silky paper. It was September; the first day of Year 11. Her father had been acquitted of the charges against him and the Board had announced her reprieve. She remembered how he’d escorted her to school.

  How he’d told her it would be the first of many things to test her mettle, one of many trials she would have to endure to earn her place among the Pures.

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  But he’d also made her face it alone. He had watched her enter the school gates, and as she’d tiptoed away from him she’d heard the smooth whirring of his chauffeur-driven saloon powering up. She’d turned and seen her father in the back seat reading something on his interface, his thoughts already far away, her plight already forgotten. She was sure that that was the exact moment the photo had been snapped.

  But by whom?

  The study’s three other wals held the answer. An array The study’s three other wals held the answer. An array of snapshots featured her in her mid-teens. In each she was unaware of the camera
. The photos had obviously been shot by someone hired to discreetly trail and observe her.

  They were a record of her looking furious, defiant, proud, sad. Al the emotions her father, once the Board knew of her mother’s suicide, encouraged her to suppress. The wal was like a memorial to the vulnerable, tempestuous part of her he’d tried to extinguish.

  Fumbling to his cherry-wood desk, she puled open the twin drawers on either side and threw out paper receipts, smal archaic notebooks, and strange paper diaries. Her fingers grasped around for Jasper’s pendant. But the drawers came up empty. She flung open the mahogany humidor on top of the desk. A spicy aroma of cigars shot up her nose.

  Her father’s presence solidified in her mind. Instinctively she turned to the door, checking he wasn’t there. Light from the halway shone against the battered, empty frame.

  Resuming her mission, she tipped cigars across the desk, puling the flap of the humidor’s lift-out tray. Gold glinted as the tray came up. With trembling hands, she retrieved 393

  Jasper’s watch and signet ring. Her father must have taken them the night he admitted Jasper to Three Mils.

  But the pendant – the pendant wasn’t there.

  Panic shot through her. She ran to the bookcase, the only other furnishing in the room aside from the desk, desk chair, and a low leather sofa. She puled haphazardly at chair, and a low leather sofa. She puled haphazardly at the books, knowing it was hopeless. Because now she understood. Her father had been hiding something in his office, but it wasn’t incriminating evidence to his fraudulent research. Ashby Barber had been hiding his volatile, imPure daughter.

  Ana let out a sob of frustration. Through the blur of tears she strained to see the escaping seconds on Cole’s watch. In nine minutes she was supposed to meet him.

  She couldn’t have risked everything to turn up empty handed!

  *

  The order had been given. Ariana would not be permitted to leave through any of the Highgate checkpoints.

  Ashby flexed his fingers. The bones in his knuckles ached. His shoulders were knotted with tension. Jack Dombrant sat up front, alert like a pointer, tail practicaly wagging. The girl they’d picked up sat beside Ashby, ghostly white. Ashby glanced at her and thought of her half-brother, Cole Winter. A jealous ache surfaced.

  Ariana had tried to leave Ashby for a bum she’d met a few weeks ago.

  His daughter had never understood, had never wanted to understand that someone had to teach her self-control, re-straint, unrelenting advance towards a goal. It was the only way to ensure she would survive the world’s brutality. His 394

  wife, Ariana’s impetuous, unbalanced mother, had meant he’d had to work doubly hard to succeed.

  He gazed out of the tinted window. There were two choices in life. Survive or succumb. And most people weren’t even conscious of the path they chose. Because they chose for al the wrong reasons. Love, principles, dreams, desire. The world hadn’t changed. It had always been survival of the fittest.

  *

  Ana could barely see through her tears as she tumbled down the wooden stairs, staggered through the living room and on towards the front door. Outside, it was spitting. The fresh evening rain hit her face as she began to run.

  She ran past houses she’d seen every day for seven years.

  Houses with children she’d grown up beside. There were no cars and no people. She couldn’t even hear the birds.

  Her sobbing began to subside. She didn’t have the energy to run and cry.

  As she reached the passage linking the avenue to Toyne Way, Cole’s stopwatch beeped. The alarm sent a surge of energy through her. She tore through the shortcut and exited a hundred metres from the checkpoint. Slowing to a fast walk, she struggled to catch her breath. The security guard who’d previously paid her no attention, now watched her approaching. The cabin window slid open.

  ‘ID,’ he said. She passed him her stick. He ran it across his scanner, paused, studied the information. ‘’Fraid you’l have to wait here for a minute,’ he said, ‘while I fil you’l have to wait here for a minute,’ he said, ‘while I fil out a couple of forms.’

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  Holding on to her ID, he entered information into his interface. She wiped the damp from her cheeks. If he was going to stop her from getting through, he’d have to do more than confiscate her ID.

  She ducked down and crawled under the barrier.

  Dangling metal chains swung into her face. Her ribs bashed against each other.

  ‘Oi!’ The security guard shouted. ‘Come back!’

  She batted aside the chains and using her hands, pushed to her feet with a grunt.

  There was a movement in the shadows. The tip of a motorbike edged forward, engine thrumming.

  ‘Ana!’ Cole shouted. Her heart leapt. She darted towards him. ‘No, Ana, go back—’ His voice cut off suddenly. She stopped, squinted around at the security booth. The guard stood in the half-open doorway, motionless. A sound of an engine grew closer. Except it was smoother and deeper than the throb of Cole’s bike.

  And there was more than one.

  A tingling sensation exploded inside Ana. She wobbled.

  Four men on motorbikes materialised from the misty drizzle. They fanned out around her, cutting their engines and descending, dark hooded tops drawn over their heads, faces in shadow. The thick silver rods they carried shone in the evening haze. The air around Ana vibrated shone in the evening haze. The air around Ana vibrated like a mirage in a heatwave. She remembered the zombie attack outside the courthouse. Arashans. She thought of Lila and realised the rods these men carried had to be transmitting something.

  Time to see if she could stil move.

  She sprung on her heel and channeling her own surprise 396

  into motion, flew down Toyne Way. One of the men shouted. She didn’t look back. In her mind’s eye, she could see them shake off their cool advance and transform into lethal predators. She heard their light steps closing in.

  The muscles in her thighs hardened with exertion. Wind ripped down the back of her grey sweater. She could make it to the aley. But then what? She couldn’t outrun four athletic men.

  She entered the passageway, weaving with it to the left, but as the road on the other side came into view she stopped dead. A car blocked her way. Headlights blinded her.

  ‘Use the Stinger!’ someone shouted. She spun around. A hooded man advanced with a thinner rod. He was so close she could hear the electricity buzzing.

  ‘Wait,’ a voice caled. The headlights dimmed. Ana’s father stepped into view, the Warden Dombrant flanking him. Both of them wore thin silver bands around the crowns of their heads.

  The hooded men stopped advancing. As Ana watched The hooded men stopped advancing. As Ana watched her father approach, something behind him caught her eye.

  Nick the chauffeur sat immobile in the driver’s seat of her father’s saloon. Next to him, in Ana’s bridal dress, was Lila.

  Ana’s heart sank. Lila was supposed to have given it away, not played the decoy.

  ‘Here,’ her father said, offering her a metal band. She shook her head. ‘That’s a rare aptitude you have,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve only ever met one other person capable of resisting like that.’ She scowled at him. ‘Fine, we’l talk about it later.’

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  ‘I won’t be around for later,’ she said.

  He fished something out of his suit pocket. Jasper’s gold star pendant. Ana’s senses prickled with the awareness of the wooden copy she wore beneath her blouse. It stuck to her perspiring skin. The pressure inside her head was growing. Soon the headache would be unbearable.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Looking for something?’

  From the pouch in Lila’s hooded top, she lifted out the tatty piece of photographic paper she’d snatched from her bedside drawer just before leaving. The picture her bedside drawer just before leaving. The picture showed Ana and her
mother seated at an upright piano, playing a duet. Shorts and T-shirts, tanned skin, the same kink wrinkling both their foreheads where their eyebrows dipped in concentration. Ashby stared at it, then visibly relaxed.

  ‘I’m not angry with you,’ he said. ‘I understand what you’re going through. I admire your tenacity. I believe you can do whatever you set your mind to, Ariana.’ His eyes coiled around her, refusing to let her go. She baled her hands into fists. It was too late for her father’s admiration.

  She didn’t need it any more. Didn’t want it.

  ‘But I won’t let you throw your future away,’ he went on. ‘You have a crush on this boy . . .’ Ana cringed. But of course he knew about her feelings for Cole.

  Everything she’d done since she got out of hospital had probably been photographed and psychologicaly analysed. ‘How long do you honestly think it wil last?’

  he asked. ‘He’s not like you.

  He’s been in and out of trouble his whole life. He’s always 398

  going to be struggling, fighting. It’s his nature. It doesn’t have to be that way for you.’

  ‘You’ve made it that way for me.’

  ‘Al right, Ariana,’ he said. ‘We’l do this your way.’

  Clipping open the hidden slot in the gold pendant, he took out a wafer thin disc and entered it into his interface.

  From his pocket he retrieved a magnetic grip. He placed the grip on the car bonnet, then ducked into the back of the saloon and picked up his portable pad. He secured the pad to the magnetic grip. His interface began transmitting information to the screen.

  Scrawled handwriting appeared. Tight lines, crushed together, barely legible. Ana’s heart thumped in time with the throbbing in her head. Her ability to focus was slipping.

  She reached towards the spare device around her father’s wrist. He took it off and gave it to her. She secured it on her crown and felt an instant rush of released pressure.

  I’ve found a way out, she read. It’s dangerous. But they know about the key. They want the key. I’m leaving it for Jasper. The only escape route still open is through a crack in the back of my skull. I will not be able to leave with my body. But I can’t do any more here. Now it is up to Jasper. Everything rests on him. He knows about the key. He’ll find the door, open it and release the world, before they find him.