Meera found one of the locks and released Max from his collar. At the same time, Stewart released the lock on his waist. Soon he was free, and the breaking irons fell to the ground with a crash. Stewart held Max. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
Max nodded then collapsed in his arms.
Chapter 91
2 April 2040, 3am
‘This is Iron Man.’
‘Are you in control?’
‘We’re in the Governor’s office. He’s given us the word. We’re ready for dialogue.’
‘Good, pass on the word to your designated sites.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Just make a few calls, Iron Man.’
There was laughter at the other end. ‘No problem.’
Hamish switched off and moved to the next prison on his list.
***********************
I was coming out of a cleansed pod. Conor walked next to me. ‘Can you take any more?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we’re on nearly seventy, but there’s still room for more. What will you do when we hit full capacity?’
‘I was hoping you had the answer to that.’
He looked puzzled.
‘You could try praying,’ I suggested.
‘Ah that! Yes of course. I didn’t know you were expecting miracles from us, as well.’
I smiled then stopped. Conor came to a halt as well, watching me in surprise. I hovered for a moment, leaning on my crutches. Conor saw me turn pale. My balance was disturbed. At that moment, the General came up behind me. I thought he was some distance away but he caught me. ‘You’re tired,’ he said, holding me up. ‘You must get some rest; you’re no good to anyone if ...’
‘Andrew is dead,’ I said.
Angus paused. He was holding on to my arm. He didn’t realise he was still doing it.
‘What!’
I stared at him, feeling the words stick in my mouth, as if merely speaking them made them come true; perhaps if I said nothing it wouldn’t be true. ‘Andrew is dead,’ I repeated.
Sonia had now joined us. She had heard me. ‘No!’ she wailed.
I turned to her. ‘I’m sorry.’
She came up to me and began to beat my chest with her fists. ‘How could you?’ she cried. ‘It’s all your fault! How could you?’ She burst into tears and then collapsed in my arms. I said nothing. She was right; it was my fault.
**********************
Paula’s House
‘It was all for nothing,’ said Max. No one said anything. Max shifted uncomfortably. Meera had dressed his wounds and given him some strong painkillers, yet still it hurt, not just the physical injuries but also the mental and emotional pain. ‘I went through all that torment, all that humiliation and fear and now he’s dead.’
The three of them had camped out in one of the rooms of Paula’s rather grand house. They had found food and drink and were taking the opportunity to have some rest before moving on. It was strange, but the luxury of the room served simply to depress them. It felt like luxury gained by fear and abuse and it chilled them inside.
Stewart sighed. ‘I’m sorry Max, but, if it’s any consolation, Matrix seems to think we can still use the recording as an example of the sort of people we’re dealing with.’
‘Except Paula wasn’t Fabian; he said so.’ He rubbed the sore patch under his arm where the probe had been implanted. The probe that had recorded everything that had been said during Max’s torture. The probe that was meant to indict Paula and other Fabian leaders, including Harrison.
‘It recorded really well,’ said Meera, ‘according to the Cyber team.’
Max shook his head in despair. Stewart passed him the bottle of whisky. ‘I’m not supposed to,’ said Max. ‘The pain killers ...’
‘Drink and then sleep,’ insisted Stewart. ‘We’ve time for just a few hours rest and then we move on. We need to get you somewhere safe.’
Max took the bottle and took a cautious sip. ‘I don’t want to go somewhere safe,’ he grumbled. ‘I want to fight.’
‘You need to get a medic to check those wounds,’ said Meera. Her words made all of them think of Andrew and their loss.
‘How did he take it?’ asked Max. ‘Matrix, I mean. The news about Andrew?’
‘How do you think?’ growled Stewart. He didn’t want to talk about it. It was his failure.
Max took another sip and then passed the bottle across to Meera. He looked at her searchingly. ‘I don’t know how you survived it,’ he whispered. ‘You wore the breaking irons for days, for weeks. I wore them for a couple of hours and it nearly killed me!’
‘You did well. You were very brave,’ she said with a soft smile.
‘I did what you suggested. I kept as still as I could, but it still hurt.’
Meera took the bottle but said nothing. How could she tell him how much she had begged her captors to take the irons off? How she had agreed to do such terrible things to avoid wearing them again. How could she even begin to explain?
Soon, Max was asleep, and Meera was staring into the distance.
‘You must sleep, too,’ said Stewart. ‘God knows when we’ll get the chance again.’
She turned round and gazed at Max. ‘He still looks so bruised and vulnerable,’ she whispered. ‘How many years has it been for him?’
Stewart looked at Max, too. ‘He was sexually abused as a child. He’s about the same age as me.’
‘And he still hurts after all this time. It never goes away.’ She looked up at Stewart. ‘What will happen to us, the discards I mean? What will they do with us when this is all over? There are so many of us and we’ll be so damaged, some irrevocably so. How can the country cope with that?’
‘You have Matrix and you have Bràithreachas,’ said Stewart. ‘This isn’t the end for us; this is just the beginning. We’ve pledged ourselves to the cause. We’ll be there for you.’
She shook her head doubtfully.
‘And anyway,’ he continued, ‘you’re strong and you have Caliph.’
‘Except, I’m not strong!’ she cried. ‘I’m not in the least bit strong; you’ve no idea how it feels.’ Meera gazed down at her hands. Stewart passed her the bottle of whisky once more. She took a large gulp. ‘What they did to me ...’ she muttered to herself. ‘The constant abuse - it stripped me of all emotion. They stripped me of myself – my mind, my soul, who I was and who I could become. They took it all away. I thought I would never feel again.’
‘But you met Matrix and Caliph,’ said Stewart.
‘And yet no one can touch the emptiness inside,’ she said, ‘the shadows that pass through my mind and the greyness of my world; no one, not even Caliph, can touch it. It’s such a lonely place to be.’
Stewart said nothing. The room was moving into darkness and the rich furnishings and decorations were starting to disappear with it. Suddenly his heart was sickened by it all, and he longed for his simple home and his wife and daughter. He had no answers for her; he knew he wanted only a better world for his child and he would die fighting for it.
**********************
What can I say?
Andrew was like a father to me. I loved him as a father. He was the first to believe. He held out a hand of friendship to me, even before he knew the truth. He had a mind open to the world. He was kindness and generosity itself.
He was dead.
Sonia was right. It was my fault. She apologised afterwards for what she’d said. It didn’t matter; she merely told me what was in my heart, what I already knew.
He went into that house because it was Paula there and he knew what Paula had done to me. He had seen my wounds. He knew and he wanted to be there for me.
He died for me. That was the truth.
Chapter 92
2 April 2040, 3am
There were many reasons why people came on the streets to protest: some had families directly affected by Section Twenty-six or knew someone who had been affected; some were outraged by what they had learnt; some were simp
ly afraid.
Nothing destroys a country quicker than uncertainty. The people were faced with the unknown, with the possibility of food and fuel shortages, of armed gangs coming off the streets and into their homes. They saw a government who appeared undecided and a police and armed forces that were divided; everyone was divided, and there were no clear safe areas for anyone. If they found a shop open and selling food, they had no idea who they were anymore. The person who served you could be for or against you, so could your doctor; teacher or plumber, there was no way of knowing.
And all the time the screens of their media stations showed them scenes from hell; images of men, women and children with hollow eyes and withered limbs, being dragged from dark rooms, creatures who must once have looked like them but who had now been reduced to something less than human. Scenes from their darkest nightmares. And with those images came constant updates and reports on the progress of the revolution, the demands of the Brotherhood, the request for dialogue and a settlement, a cry for justice.
And so people came out onto the street, and when they came out there was someone there to pass them a Matrix banner, to show a helping hand, to press the cause for freedom, to touch their conscience.
They came out because they heard about the riots in the prisons and the threat to release prisoners. They were afraid. They saw civil unrest and armed conflict, ensuring that shops, schools and other services couldn’t or wouldn’t open.
They came out to demand a solution, and they wanted it now.
***********************
The streets were in uproar, the people were rioting, and the young girl was terrified.
She should have been used to it, the constant fear and pain, every day the same sordid cruelty. Yet, still she was terrified because this was new. She had become accustomed to the men coming in and doing things to her. She had understood the rules and she had known how to behave, how to please. She had learnt to do things that no nine-year-old should know. She had no choice. It simply was a question of that – or die.
This was different, though. She had no idea anymore what she must do to stay alive, what she must do to please and so she was terrified.
Men had come into her pod, big men carrying weapons. They had moved through the pod silently, taking everyone by surprise, but not her. She had heard them. She was awake and she was not chained. She had been in the bed of one of the carers. He often took her to bed with him. It was her treat. She was expected to be pleased. She hated it, but she pretended to like it, that was how you avoided being beaten or put in the breaking irons. That was how you survived.
So she had lain in the bed next to the sleeping carer and she had heard the men creep into the building. She had heard soft cries of surprise and then silence – and she had known exactly what to do: she had grabbed some oversized clothes, had slipped them on and had run.
She ran out of the building, dodging the men who had come in the night. They shouted and reached out to her, but she was swift and tiny and she missed their grasps.
She had run out into the street into a world alight with fires and movement. She had never seen anything like it. It was a world gone mad, full of noise and clamour; people screaming, running and fighting, sirens wailing in the distance, gunfire and explosions. She saw crowds carrying banners, lifting up arms, chanting and shouting, a world truly gone mad. She was terrified and she had run. She ran into the mayhem, praying she was invisible, that no one would see her and that she could slip by unnoticed.
She was wrong.
‘Hey look!’ shouted a man carrying a banner. On it was a horrible picture of a man’s body covered in scars and tattoos. It made her shiver to look at it. The man began to move across to her. ‘It’s one of them!’ he cried. ‘It’s a discard – a little girl. Grab her before she gets away!’
She had never been so scared. It had been frightening before. This was a new fear.
But she could run. She had been known for her running ability when she had gone to school. She knew how to run, how to duck and dive – and that’s what she did now. She ran at full pelt as many hands, once more, reached out in an effort to catch her.
‘Get her!’ shouted somebody.
‘She’s getting away!’
‘Grab her!’
There seemed to be hundreds of people all trying to catch her. She ran between legs and past flailing arms, her breath coming in short pants. She ran for her life and all the time she could hear the people screaming at her, the chanting of the crowds and the sounds of gunfire and explosions. She ran and she ran, straight into a deserted building. It was already bright with flames and burning hot. She didn’t care, anything was better than being caught by those people, even burning to death. So she ran deep into the furnace. No one followed her and she knew that at last she was alone.
***********************
We had stopped moving. We had pulled the bikes to one side to eat and take a break. Even Matrix has to eat, except I was not resting. I remained in contact with Cyclops. He was still inside my head, a buzzing insect, an insect I was blessing. Like an immense game of chess, my pieces were one by one being put in place; some had already achieved their objectives.
Phaedo passed me a cup of soup. I looked at it dubiously.
‘It’s okay. I’ve tested it. It’s not hot,’ he said. Trust Phaedo to understand. I drank the soup. He watched me carefully, always aware of my moods. ‘Still thinking about Andrew?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
‘I wish I could see Max,’ he said.
‘So do I,’ I said, ‘and when you do, try to convince him it wasn’t all in vain. Paula may be dead but, from what I heard, he said enough to destroy his reputation and to tarnish the image of Fabian.’
Phaedo nodded thoughtfully.
‘From all accounts, he has every reason to feel proud of what he’s achieved,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m proud of him.’
I smiled and then I twitched slightly.
‘What is it?’
I put my hand to my ear. ‘Message from Cyclops: Wallace tells us we have all the prisons.’
The General had been slouched against the wall, eating an enormous pie. He turned round now, his cheeks still full of food. ‘All?’ he mumbled.
‘All except Belmont,’ I said, taking off my gloves and rubbing my hands together. ‘We never expected Belmont. That remains outside our control.’
‘Is it enough?’ asked Sonia. She sounded tired.
‘Enough to make the army talk to me,’ I said, putting my one arm around her shoulder. She snuggled up to me. It felt good, comforting. ‘They have no choice.’
Phaedo was standing next to me looking puzzled. Like the General, he was eating a large pie. He was a man with a huge appetite, he always had been. ‘Belmont,’ he said, ‘is that where ...?’
‘They bury people,’ I said shortly. I didn’t want to talk about it. The thought of Belmont made me shiver. It always had done, even before it had loomed in the distance as a personal threat.
Belmont Detention Centre had not been graced with the title of prison. It held men –and sometimes women, in a separate wing – often without trial. They were imprisoned not so much for what they had done as for what they believed. They were people of passion. They would look you in the eye and then place a knife in their own heart if they believed it would serve their ends. The state did something much worse to them, though. They buried them alive and called it Belmont Detention Centre. I am talking about terrorists, of course.
We had control of all the prisons but we could not penetrate Belmont. No one could. I had never expected to. So ‘yes’ was the answer to Sonia’s question. It was enough, more than enough. I had told Alastor I had a secret weapon, and the world was about to find out about it, well the army was at least.
Chapter 93
2 April 2040, 4am
Euan stared at the blazing house in dismay. ‘She went into that!’ he said.
The man standing next to him
nodded. ‘She was the fastest thing you ever saw,’ he said.
‘Little red head in a man’s T-shirt?’ asked Euan.
‘Yes, that’s her.’
Euan sighed. ‘She came from that pod,’ he said. ‘She ran out as we came in. God knows why she wasn’t chained up like the rest of them.’
‘She just ran,’ said the man.
‘And you just chased her.’
‘We only wanted to help.’
Euan glared at him in frustration. ‘You scared her shitless!’ he cried.
‘Sorry.’
‘Too late!’
‘We were only trying to help,’ he repeated.
‘Next time, go easy,’ said Euan. ‘She ran to her death and she needn’t have done. We could have saved her.’ He stormed off. This one hurt. A little girl had died and she could have lived. He had saved hundreds of people that night, but he mourned her more than he could say. He mourned her death because it could have been avoided. He mourned her death because he had caught a glimpse of that pale, frightened face as she had slipped out of his grasp.
He had failed her and it was a bitter feeling.
**********************
2 April 2040, 6am
General Howard had agreed to meet me. He didn’t want to but he did. We met in a small room and faced each other for the first time. ‘So why should I talk to a terrorist?’ he demanded.
‘I have many things you need.’
‘Name me one.’
‘The prisons.’
‘What?’
‘I have control of all of the prisons now. The inmates have the keys.’
‘I’ll send in the troops. It’s not a problem. Our army’s more than a match for a mob.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I was not quite accurate just then. What I should have said is, Cyclops has the keys.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
I placed my hands carefully on the table. He looked down at them. I was wearing my Matrix Bands, but not my gloves. He looked at my scarred, tattooed hands in disgust. I disgusted him. I knew that. If he could have trodden on me and destroyed me, he would not have hesitated. I was less than an insect to him. He was so full of suppressed anger, he could barely talk. The fact that he had been ordered to speak to me infuriated him. He knew he had no choice.
The Dream Catcher Diaries Page 51
