He opened his mouth.
‘No one!’ I insisted. ‘He’s too important.’
Reluctantly, he nodded.
Caliph and Sweeney walked in at that moment, which was timely. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked Sweeney. I seemed to be saying that a lot recently.
‘I’ve come to fight,’ said Sweeney with a scowl. His face was naturally angry looking. The scowl only increased his look of belligerence.
‘I don’t use child soldiers,’ I said.
‘I’m not a child.’
‘You’re fifteen.’
‘I’m no child. The Fabians took that away from me, you know that.’
I paused, and then I sighed. How could I argue with that? ‘There is something you could do,’ I said, ‘something important.’
‘Really? What?’
‘Look after Cyclops.’
He immediately looked suspicious.
‘I need someone I can trust to look after our genius. The success of the revolution depends on him bringing down the power and the media and then controlling it. If he fails, we all fail. I need someone there for him.’
Sweeney still looked doubtful.
‘But if you think the job’s too hard ...’
He instantly agreed. I was delighted. I thought I had placed someone I cared for somewhere safe.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Part Four
The Discard Revolution
Chapter 81
1 April 2040, 3am
In my mind, in my memory of that time, it never seemed to stop raining. I have images of dreary skies and dark drizzle. I close my eyes, and I can feel the constant damp in the air, the cold in my nostrils and my clothes clinging to me. I am uncomfortable, afraid and anxious. I fear failure more than anything. I fear it for myself and for those I love and for those I have never met. And all the time, the rain came down from grey April skies, the sun remained thin and neutral and my mind became thick with fog.
We went into our first house at 3am on the 1st April. We chose the date deliberately. We chose a date no one would take seriously. Every second counted, every moment was important; we needed the surprise. It was one of our weapons.
At that time, we went into fifteen pods in total, across the country. If a discard asked anyone where Matrix was, if they asked which one of their rescuers was the one they called God, they were told he was there. They may not meet him yet, but he was there and would at some point speak to them. We never lied; we told the truth. I was there at every single pod. Cyclops ensured that this could happen. Such is the wonder of technology.
**********************
Three in the morning and the revolution had begun.
Three in the morning and people were already dying.
Reports across the country told me this much. It would not be a bloodless revolution.
I had started playing a game of chess for real. I had wanted no casualties, no blood. It was never going to be like that.
***********************
I pulled my crutches towards me and cursed my useless leg. A hand reached out and helped me up. We were out and we were fighting. It was cold, wet and dark, and the smell of explosives filled my nostrils. I heard a scream. I glanced to my left.
‘Move on,’ said the General.
We moved on and walked into hell. No one we saw was alive. Everyone we saw had died slowly. Their last moments had been moments that would have lasted an eternity. They had been made to suffer. The room was full of discards, mutilated bodies, some lying on the ground, some hanging from the ceiling, some burnt dark brown, some simply bruised and cut beyond belief. There were perhaps ten of them, maybe more.
‘Bad start to a revolution,’ muttered the General.
‘They knew we were coming,’ said Sonia.
‘Move on,’ I said. ‘There’ll be more.’ We moved on. We found more. The smell of blood and decay became overwhelming. I saw nothing but dead, glazed eyes and contorted bodies; young girls who should have had nothing but silly, frivolous thoughts and eyes full of daydreams; young men who should have been arrogant and proud; and children who never stood a chance, thrown a poor deal right from the beginning – damned, right from the beginning; lost souls in a cold world. I gazed down at their poor emaciated bodies. ‘Get the cameras going,’ I said.
The General had been staring in disbelief and horror. He glanced at me. ‘What?’
‘You heard,’ I said.
‘You can’t!’ cried Sonia.
I turned to her. ‘I want the world to see! I want those fat apathetic masses to see this. We owe them that much.’ I turned away from her and whispered into my mouthpiece; I told Cyclops what to do and he did it.
***********************
I was Matrix. I was everywhere. There was nowhere that night and subsequent nights where Matrix was not felt, where his presence was not understood. I was Matrix and Cyclops had made sure that I would be in at least five places at once.
I needed to be everywhere. I needed to be with every discard that was taken out, to hold their hands, look into their eyes and tell them it would be alright. I needed to be there for the downfall of every NF supporter and leader – to experience it all
Cyclops had me wired up and live. He used what was known as a connector, and it did just that – efficiently and without fuss – through a simple tube wrapped around my neck, inserted into my ear and with a small mouthpiece. All the Blood Brothers wore one. It joined us together throughout the entire revolution. I was in many places at once. I knew what others knew. I could see what others could see. I swear I even felt their anguish.
***********************
We moved down dimly lit corridors and dark cavernous rooms. The place was once the home of some twenty discards – a sweat shop. Now all we saw was death. The Fabians had gone; they had left us dead bodies and disease. They had left us nothing. I stopped and closed my eyes. This was not a good start. We had been betrayed. They had known we were coming and they had known why.
‘Matrix,’ said Angus urgently.
I ignored him. I ignored my senses. I listened instead to my beating heart. It’s what I should have done right from the beginning. This was never going to be any normal revolution. This was not going to be ordinary in any sense. This revolution had Matrix – and you know what they say about Matrix?
He has x-ray eyes.
‘I know what we must do,’ I said.
***********************
Timing was crucial. Cyclops had to bring the power and media down at the right time, and then release a thin trickle of power as and when we needed it. He was also in control of the media. That meant I needed to be in touch with him constantly. Out of all the Blood Brothers, he was my most important connection. Very little happened that did not involve a dialogue between the two of us. I moved around the country, and Cyclops was always with me.
But Cyclops didn’t work alone; he had Fly and a group of experienced saboteurs with him – most of them had done time for hacking and various terrorist offences, although we did have some experienced ex-police officers working for us as well.
I stood listening to my communicator. ‘Cyclops is ready,’ I said. ‘Get everyone else set up. Start the blockade.’
‘What about us?’ asked Angus.
‘We move on,’ I said. ‘We have a traitor, and so we change our plans; we do the unexpected. We move on.’
‘But ...’
‘Get me Phaedo. I need to be in London now.’
Matrix needed to be everywhere at once. That was when Cyclops came up with his second plan. It was a simple plan.
It was called ... a motorbike.
Chapter 82
1 April 2040, 5am
I was on the back of the motorbike, holding on and moving rapidly through the night. Pods were being invaded across the country. The one we had taken had been the only one, so far, where a pre-emptive killing had been carried out. I received mixed reports. In some, the Fabians had
given up immediately; in others, there had been fierce fighting.
We rode through a devastated landscape, a world in chaos, a world gone mad at my word. The Matrix worm had bitten deep and the people were rising up – people who, up until now, had nothing in common with each other.
Phaedo rode at speed, as instructed. He used prearranged signals to those who would have otherwise blocked our way. The General came up behind with Sonia. We were flanked by Satan’s Children – our bodyguards.
The blockade was well under way. Roads were already becoming impassable. Trains sat at stations and were silent. It was a world about to fall into turmoil, and all the time I was in communication with Cyclops and the other Blood Brothers. I was there for the first betrayal.
***********************
Stewart stared in disbelief. ‘How can this be?’
I felt nothing but pity for him. I was not surprised. I had expected it before. We had raided pods before the revolution. Every time we had gone in, I had expected it. The General pushed the dead body with his foot and said nothing.
‘How many?’ I asked.
‘At least eight,’ said Stewart. ‘Very few Fabian, just these ... these bastards.’
‘You’re hard!’ I snapped.
‘Hard? This is betrayal of the worst kind!’
‘Is it really? I wonder how you would fare if offered the chance of holding the whip or feeling the brand. Which would you go for?’
He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
‘You warned me about this,’ muttered the General. ‘I remember your words now. I didn’t understand at the time, but this was what you meant, wasn’t it?’
Sonia was staring at the body. ‘He’s a discard, isn’t he?’ she asked. ‘A real one, I mean.’ She stopped and blushed.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s a real one. They all are. They’ve been recruited to control and to punish other discards.’
‘I don’t understand?’
‘They make the best guards because they work from fear, the fear that they might become the victims once more, that they might become the ones being beaten rather than doing the beating.’
We all stared down at the whip still clutched in the dead man’s hand. It was stained red with others’ blood. ‘They’re picked carefully. Remember there are plenty of bad boys and girls who become discards. The recruiting ground would’ve been rich. Some discards may already have been soaked in violence. They’re human. They would’ve worked from fear or pleasure. It doesn’t matter. They would’ve worked and, believe me, they would’ve been the most brutal and harsh, the most feared, the worst of their kind.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ asked Sonia.
‘Only one place to go,’ I said. ‘Forgiveness.’
Chapter 83
1 April 2040, 6am
We were on the move again. If anything, the world seemed to have been thrown into greater disorder and mayhem. It was a world taking on a new and more threatening form, one that Bràithreachas was already making its mark on. As we travelled, I could see Matrix banners hanging down from bridges, out of windows, across buildings and over placards. Someone had taken the trouble to daub the word Matrix in red paint across my chest. It made the already ugly image even more grotesque. I was unsure, at first, whether the added colour was a tribute or a threat but, as the revolution progressed, this poster began to dominate. In fact, over the coming days, more and more red paint was added to create increasingly lurid images.
We struggled now to move on roads cluttered with abandoned trucks and half completed road works. I saw bodies. I guessed they were Fabian – or at least sympathisers. I turned away. I needed anarchy, but I needed law and order just as much. We had an impossible task: rescuing discards before those bastards took them first, chasing down NF leaders and supporters, releasing propaganda, handling civil unrest and controlling the Snares. We needed to fight and manage resources, travel and survive. We needed to be everywhere, and we needed to be quick.
The journey at least allowed me to see at first hand how – even at this early hour – the country was starting to grind to a halt: the major and most minor roads were already blocked; public transport had come to a standstill. It was going to be difficult to move anyone in large numbers across land.
I was Matrix, travelling at speed across the country, tracking the Blood Brothers and Snares and moving them around like so many chess pieces. I was playing my most important game ever, but it was a game like no other, one I chose not to share with anyone – not even my General. I had no choice in this because I had nothing to share. I worked from instinct not logic, from the heart not the mind – and its beat was irregular and erratic.
I was Matrix. I needed only to understand my enemy to defeat him, and I understood him perfectly. My moment in that pod of death had given me my insight and my plan. They could have blinded me, and I would still have captured their shadow. They could have taken my ears, and I would still have heard their souls breathe.
I was Matrix, and the enemy had made its first mistake. It had sought to strike fear and dismay with blood soaked games. They had, in fact, left a bloody handprint on their crime, one that Matrix could read, and so I knew; I knew exactly how they thought. And in my insight lay their defeat.
I was Matrix – the Dream Catcher.
***********************
We came to a stop on the outskirts of London, to take down a large pod. I met up with a group of men and women from the local mosque. The Imam came up to me. ‘We’ve made space for your people in our mosque; bring them through.’
I was very grateful. Soon bodies were being carried in. Some looked as if they wouldn’t survive the night. We stood in the rain and watched as men and women ran around with bandages, drips and bags of blood. We stood by as unknown lives were being saved.
‘These people we save,’ said the Imam. ‘They may once have been our enemies, you know that?’
‘They may once have been mine,’ I agreed. ‘But now they are simply human.’
He nodded. ‘In this we are connected. This is our simple bond; there is more that unites than divides us, and yet we never see it.’
I looked at him. ‘Don’t expect the world to change because of what happens here tonight,’ I said.
He laughed.
‘The revolution will change nothing,’ I said, ‘unless we want it to.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘This is not the end of hate. It falters for a moment and then it will rise again.’
He was right – I was sure of it – but I wished so much that he was wrong.
Chapter 84
1 April 2040, early morning
The first that the ordinary person, who had nothing to do with the revolution, knew about it was when they heard on the media that all the major and most of the minor roads were blocked. This was some feat. Millions of people switched on to have a look. What they saw astonished them. They saw pictures of industrial chaos.
Trucks blocked the major roads of the country. Rubbish trucks had tipped their contents out onto streets and pavements. Overnight, roads had been dug up, drains exposed and cables pulled down. Electricity supply was at risk throughout all the major cities and towns. Bus and rail terminals had been closed as staff failed to turn up for work. Yet even as the people watched the chaos, the impact was quickly lost: people assumed this must be an elaborate April Fools’ joke.
Emergency power kicked in quickly and the army was called out. The people did nothing at first. It was an April Fools’ joke – not a very good one, not very original, not really very funny.
Reports of people being found dead soon circulated. Pictures of mutilated bodies appeared spontaneously on screens at work places and homes throughout the country. The pictures appeared first on the media stations then on workstations and on people’s freelancers and mobiles.
Suddenly the joke had turned sick.
Then came the news of the riots in the prisons – not just one prison, but all of them. Immedi
ately, the army was called in to deal with the prisons. Soldiers were required to move around the country to multiple locations at speed and, because the roads were blocked, they had to rely on air transport. Not a problem usually, in normal times, but these weren’t normal times.
The question already being asked was where were the police? No one knew the answer. That was because the police were in chaos. The unthinkable had happened: police officer had turned against police officer. No one knew why, only that there had been arrests within the force and – so it was said – deaths. Quickly the army was diverted and called in to deal with the police.
All the media channels were locked down. Everything went black. Everyone’s screen went down and became silent. All the usual mediocre and low-grade entertainment that appealed to the masses was shut down and became still. Access to the range of news reports and breaking news service was denied.
The media had gone silent. Such a thing had never been known. Never in anyone’s memory had the world faced blank screens and listened to nothing but unspoken voices. For the first time in our lives we were faced with only ourselves. The army was sent to the major media centres to find out what had gone wrong. They were also sent to power supply centres to ensure that power could be sustained.
It soon became apparent that phones were down. They were as soundless as the media stations they belonged to.
This unsettling quiet, this absence of the incoherent babble that gave meaning to people’s lives, created more alarm than I had thought possible. Suddenly the people were faced with the reality of their own loneliness. Then the power went down once more and didn’t come back on.
The world went dark.
They began to panic at last. The realisation had sunk in. This was no April Fools’ joke. This was serious. They noticed now that the only people who could move around on the roads were those on motorbikes. Suddenly the country seemed full of bikers – and they were armed.
The Dream Catcher Diaries Page 48
