The Glimpse

by Claire Merle

  Ana breathed unevenly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I don’t believe it. Tom wasn’t crazy.’ Her father reached out a hand to support her. She staggered away from him.

  ‘After his death, the Wardens found this on his diary,’ he said. ‘His death wasn’t an accident. Because of my background, I was asked to examine his case. To discover how a 399

  Pure had become mentaly unstable. To see if there wasn’t some new genetic variant that hadn’t yet been wasn’t some new genetic variant that hadn’t yet been identified.’

  Ana drifted for several moments, as though she’d been cut loose in the middle of the ocean. And then an idea seized her.

  ‘Who’s to say you haven’t changed the disc? Made this up?’

  ‘You have to believe me, Ariana,’ he said. ‘And I couldn’t let Jasper abandon you for this! Throw everything away because of this rubbish. I knew what he was planning. I’d been keeping an eye on him and the Taurels for almost three years, ensuring none of them showed signs of a breakdown like Tom’s. The day you two were bound he met with someone from the conspiracy-obsessed Enlightenment Project to pass on the information. His contact flipped out, went berserk in the street. Jasper panicked. He was afraid.

  He left the concert early because he was going to disappear too. He was leaving you. For what? For this!’

  Ana hugged her arms around her shaking body.

  ‘I thought putting him in an institution would keep him out of trouble until your joining,’ her father continued. ‘To say nothing of stopping him from attracting the Board’s attention again. He was always going to be released after a couple of weeks. He needed time to appreciate everything he was about to throw away. I would have shown him the disc when he got out. When he’d calmed down and was ready to listen to reason.’

  ‘Except you were saved the bother, weren’t you?’

  ‘I had nothing to do with his electric shock treatment.’

  Ana clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.

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  Had her father realy acted to save her Pure future or his own reputation? She regarded him, the man who’d always been so cold and calculating. His eyes were begging her to listen.

  ‘Why was Warden Dombrant looking for Enkidu?’ she asked.

  Ashby ran a hand through his hair. His jaw flexed. She noticed the blood vessels on the side of his forehead pump in and out. She gasped. He’d almost fooled her.

  Almost convinced her.

  ‘Because you were folowing up any loose ends,’ she answered for him. ‘At first, you hadn’t discovered the disc in the pendant, so you weren’t realy sure whether there was something on it . . .’ She stopped. The truth of her words sunk in. This might be Tom Taurel’s ‘proof’

  but her father hadn’t known that at first. Which meant her father had been worried there was proof against the credibility of the Pure test. Which meant the man Cole had been meeting with, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, realy had possessed a twenty-year-old recording of a meeting where people now in government and heading the Board came up with the idea of Pures.

  The minister had been kiled because of it.

  Her father wasn’t a genius. He was nothing but a pawn.

  It had stopped raining. The moisture on Ana’s face began to dry in the evening breeze. The wooden star began to dry in the evening breeze. The wooden star pendant lay flat against her chest.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you. You only know how to crush people.’

  ‘I preserve,’ he said.

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  And at that moment, she knew he would not let her go.

  She was an object to him. A prize possession.

  ‘Would you stil want to leave,’ he said, ‘if you couldn’t have the boy?’

  She glanced back to the passage leading to Toyne Way.

  Only two of the hooded men remained in sight. The others must be with Cole.

  ‘I want you to stay one year in the Community, as Jasper’s wife,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow is your eighteenth birthday. The day you turn nineteen, if it’s stil what you want, I wil not stop you from walking away. Though if you choose to leave, you leave everything you have here behind you.’

  He stil thought she could be bribed by luxury, forced by habit and fear. She thought of Cole somewhere in the shadows behind the checkpoint. Unable to run. Unable to fight.

  Frozen by the immobilising device. They could apprehend him right now. He would wait up to a year for his trial. He would face a possible lifetime prison sentence in the hands of the prison’s Special Psychs.

  Ana’s legs gave way. She crumpled, smacking on to her knees.

  Her father knelt down beside her. ‘I’m doing this for you,’ he said. ‘One day you’l understand.’ His words clawed at the numbness. His fingers pressed on the arch of her spine. In her imagination, she saw them reaching through, feeling, searching, trying to extract her very soul.

  A strange quiet fel over her, like thick, fluttering snow.

  She closed her eyes.

  And suddenly she was surrounded by stars. Clusters of galaxies burnt in the dark sky. Dazzling. Infinite. The Milky 402

  Way lay on the horizon, its spiral arms orbiting a golden centre. A sound reverberated towards her. Something close to music, yet it swept through her whole being as though she were a vibration, and it was tuning her to its strength, its power, its wholeness.

  Her eyes flicked open. She regarded her father through tangles of hair. Two years eleven months and eight days ago, when the Board confirmed her mother’s suicide and announced she was a Big3 Sleeper, she’d sworn never to let her father touch her again. Now she realised it didn’t matter. He could no longer reach in and take her.

  He couldn’t steal the beauty she saw, the compassion she felt for Jasper, the love she felt for Cole. She was beyond him.

  She stood and crossed to the car, aware of her father’s trained gaze. She opened the back door and scooted in beside Lila. As she placed the metal deflector on Lila’s beside Lila. As she placed the metal deflector on Lila’s head, Lila came around drowsily. Her baffled expression grew fearful as she absorbed their surroundings.

  ‘We haven’t got long,’ Ana said. ‘My father wil let you and Cole go if I stay. You have to make sure Cole doesn’t try and come back for me. Whatever he hears about me and Jasper, don’t let him doubt. I choose him.

  I’m staying with Jasper because I’ve chosen Cole. And I’l find a way for us to be together, as soon as I can.’

  Lila’s lips trembled. ‘I won’t let him doubt you,’ she said.

  Ana squeezed her hand.

  ‘You got it, didn’t you?’ Lila asked.

  Ana paused. It looked like Lila’s faith in the Glimpse had been justified al along and strangely, that no longer scared her.

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  ‘I got it,’ she whispered, touching the wooden star where she’d hidden the minister’s disc.

  ‘It was always about you,’ Lila smiled, tears in her eyes.

  ‘Not Cole. It was you who stood at the centre of it al.’

  Ana embraced her friend, then took the deflector band from Lila’s head and slid across the back seat to the door.

  On the street, she strode past her father and the hooded men, heading up the aley that linked to the checkpoint.

  She felt them folowing, but as long as they didn’t stop her from speaking to Cole, she didn’t care.

  Cole sat astride his motorbike, the engine stil turning.

  Two hooded men stood beside him. They moved to halt her approach.

  ‘It’s al right,’ her father caled from behind.

  The men withdrew. Ana put the band over Cole’s head and waited as he blinked to life, eyes flexing in confusion.

  As his muscles relaxed, his motorbike almost slipped from his grip. He grabbed it and steadied it. His eyes darted from the hooded men to Ana’s father.

  ‘Get on! We’ve got to get out of here!’

&nbs
p; ‘Cole—’ She reached up to touch his cheek. She could see him trying to understand what was going on. She leaned in and kissed him. ‘I won’t forget you,’ she said.

  She took off the wooden star pendant and placed the chain over his head. ‘Now you have something belonging to me and I have something of yours.’ She smiled weakly and turned, not sure she could realy walk away from him. He grabbed her arm.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘What happened? Where are you going?’

  Her legs wobbled. Her heart hurt so much she thought 404

  it would implode. Leaning close to him, breathing in the scent of soap powder and summer, she said:

  ‘It’s in the pendant.’

  ‘No.’ He held on tight. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  I saw this, so that I could change it. I’m not letting you go this time.’

  ‘This was the moment.’ As Ana spoke, she knew the truth of her words. There was something about this precise point in time. Like a star exploding in the wide, dark universe.

  This place, this instant, stood out from al the others.

  ‘Ana, please. You have to tel me how I can change this.’

  ‘It’s OK. He can’t get to me any more. I understand now.’

  ‘Ana, please . . .’

  ‘You have to leave now, or my father wil have you arrested. But I’l come to the Project. I’l come as soon as I can.’

  ‘Please, I can’t lose you again.’

  She moved into him and opening up her heart, letting everything she felt flow through her, she kissed him a second time. Long, deep, unbound. When she broke away, she saw wonderment in his eyes, as though the touch of her lips had sent the vibration of strength and wholeness inside her, through him too.

  ‘We’re linked,’ she said. ‘We could lose each other a thousand times and the universe would stil bring us back thousand times and the universe would stil bring us back together. Wil you wait for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t forget the star.’

  Understanding lit up his eyes. It hurt her how beaten he suddenly looked. Unwiling to accept how he knew this 405

  would end – for now – but knowing he had to. Realising there was something hidden in the pendant.

  ‘My father’s got Lila,’ she told him. ‘Go quickly. His car is on the other side of the passage.’

  Cole revved the engine, but didn’t advance.

  ‘Go!’ she shouted. ‘Please.’

  ‘Ana—’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve known since the first time I saw you.’

  He clicked the motorbike into gear. The engine thrummed against the silent evening. He looked at her one last time, as though trying to memorise everything about her, then sped off, disappearing down the aley.

  Ana turned to her father. In the lamplight, his long shadow stretched towards her like the finger of a beckoning hand. Blood pulsed in her ears, her throat, her wrists. The electric energy was building up around her again, slowing her down. Her brain seemed to contract and expand, beating against her skul.

  ‘You won’t regret this, Ariana,’ he said. ‘I’ve given Warden Dombrant instructions to take the boy and his sister through the main checkpoint. As long as you keep your word, I guarantee their safety. And in one year, I wil wipe the boy’s arrest record and everything implicating him in Dr Peter Reed’s death.’

  For a split-second, Ana saw herself back in her father’s office, tears streaming down her face. With a final cry of frustration she’d swept away the last books on the shelf, revealing a silver disc stuck to the wal. The numbers 12.04.2021 were engraved across it. Not numbers. A date!

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  She’d grabbed it, barely thinking. But the realisation had caught up with her slowly: she’d found a copy of the recording Peter Reed, ex-Secretary of State for Health, had been kiled over. And now Cole had it, tucked away in Jasper’s wooden star pendant.

  ‘How can I trust you?’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘You want me to stay with Jasper among the Pures for a year. That’s al you’re asking?’

  ‘And you wil have no contact with the boy, his family or anyone that isn’t Pure.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s al I’m asking. Only what you’ve wanted al along.’

  along.’

  Beyond the narrow passage, an engine strained as it accelerated away. If Cole was safe, Ana knew she could deal with anything. She listened as the motorbike hum faded.

  It sank out of range, but stil she heard the gentle drone.

  It had melded with the vibration inside her as though they were part of a symphony that played on, even when no one was listening.

  The evening bore down on her. She knew it would grow darker before she felt the light again. She folowed her father through the aley to his car. She climbed in. Lila’s lavender scent lingered on the leather seats. She closed her eyes and tilted back her head. In her mind, she felt Cole’s lips, warm and soft, imprinted on her own.

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  33

  The Wal

  Three weeks later.

  Ana lay on a chaise longue by the tennis courts while David Taurel and her father played an aggressive match of singles. It was a warm, Saturday afternoon in mid-May.

  Jasper was lying down inside the west wing with one of his headaches, his sister was staying at a friend’s, and his mother was drinking cocktails and neuroticaly digging up the garden.

  Putting down a book she was only pretending to read, Ana sat up and sipped her freshly squeezed lemonade.

  Her father caught her eye and winked. She looked away.

  She didn’t want to make him suspicious by appearing to have forgiven him.

  A twinge of pain shot through her temples. She set down her drink and pressed her fingers to the sides of her skul.

  Jasper wasn’t the only one suffering from headaches and lack of sleep. In the last three weeks, Ana had woken often from nightmares. She’d been frozen and buried alive a hundred times. Night after night, she’d been drowned and drugged and torn apart by zombies. She would jolt awake to the sound of her own shouting or Jasper’s howling from 408

  across the hal. While days drifted by in a surreal pretence of normality to fool the Board, reporters and their fathers, at night she and Jasper were prisoners of Three Mils.

  Ana stared at her father considering why, if he’d kept his promise and alowed Cole and Lila to leave the Community, there had been no news of the minister’s recording.

  It should have made the headlines. But she’d heard nothing, which meant one of three things: Cole was rotting in some prison or psych dump; the minister’s disc was a sham like Tom Taurel’s research; or Cole was holding on to it.

  Waiting for her. A silent message that he wouldn’t trade her freedom for information that could hurt the Board.

  Because he understood that once Ashby Barber knew his daughter had not only ransacked his office and found the dead minister’s recording, but that she’d also managed to filter it out of the Community, he’d tighten up his round-the-clock surveilance.

  Ana stretched and stood up. Despite a general lack of sleep, she’d been exercising rigorously for the last ten days

  – swimming a hundred lengths morning and afternoon.

  ‘They invited me next door,’ she said. ‘They said I could use their pool until ours is fixed.’

  Her father leapt for a shot, grunted as he struck the bal.

  Jasper’s father slammed the tennis bal back over the net.

  Her father skidded to reach it in time.

  Ana stripped off her skirt and shorts down to her swimsuit. She slipped her arms through her fluffy dressing gown and languidly wedged her feet into the slip-ons she’d borrowed from Lucy.

  ‘Bye then,’ she said.

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  ‘See you tomorrow at lunch,’ her father panted. David waved absently.

  Ana trudged through the smal copse beyond the
tennis courts, towards the neighbours. Coiled up against an oak tree, exactly as she’d left it, she found the rope. Quickly, she checked the noose before hoisting the rope over her she checked the noose before hoisting the rope over her shoulder. She began to run. Tree roots, twigs and prickly undergrowth pressed through the soles of her pumps. But at least Lucy’s shoes wouldn’t have tracers in them. And she was fairly sure her father wouldn’t have bothered hiding tracers in her dressing gown or swimsuit.

  Sprinting across tended lawns, some in ful view of porches, back doors, and verandas, Ana retraced the path she’d gone over a dozen times using an aerial map program on her interface. She’d already decided if she ran into anyone she’d simply keep going. But her luck held. By the time she reached the boys’ school footbal field she hadn’t seen a soul. To avoid the road, she scrambled up a high fence. After days of nothing but rest, swimming, and practising her breathing exercises, her fractured rib had healed, the bruises gone. She jumped down into the playing field and bolted across the footbal pitch, breathing deeply and steadily. A tingling sensation radiated out from her chest, down her arms, and into her fingers. Anticipation. Nerves.

  She was almost there. Almost at the wal.

  Reaching the road, Ana huddled down beside a cluster of young trees demarcating the field. From where she crouched, she had a clear view of three hundred metres of road in each direction. She concentrated on her breathing.

  Imagined one heartbeat for every two, the way she used 410

  to when she would practise holding her breath underwater.

  She listened. Birdsong. A distant rumble of a She listened. Birdsong. A distant rumble of a lawnmower.

  But no electric buzzing of a hybrid engine. No patrol cars.

  Now! she cried inwardly. She leapt up and bounded across the two-lane road. As she ran, she unhooked the rope from her arm and swung the knotted end towards the wal’s ten-foot-high spikes. The noose snagged. She flicked the rope. The slipknot descended to the base of the metal pole. She yanked it tight then began puling her hands one over the other, pressing her feet into the wal as she climbed.

  Her dressing gown flew apart. Her hands burnt as they rubbed the rope. Her heart leapt wildly.