The Unleashed

by Sarah Dalton

  The spotlights revealed dozens of Enforcers going about their business, and Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. They patrolled the wall, walking slowly or tapping on their Plan-Its up ahead. They approached a guarded check point in the inner wall. The Enforcer peered at them through the glass.

  “Business?” he demanded.

  “City Patrol,” said their insurgent.

  “Thumb print needed,” the Enforcer said.

  Daniel watched the Resistance member lean out of the car and apply his thumb print to a green screen. He held his breath, waiting for the beep. It cleared.

  “All right, on you go.” The gates opened and the car pulled through.

  He exhaled at last. He couldn’t believe it could be that simple. The car moved on into the city, pulling onto a small lay-by section near what would be a busy road in the daytime. Their Resistance member indicated to pull out when Daniel felt a vibration in the panels between the boot and the back seat. Three short knocks.

  “Something’s going to happen,” Daniel said. “They’re on to us.”

  Sure enough he heard the Enforcer call for them to stop.

  “We should go,” Kitty urged.

  “We’ll lose Ali at speed. He’ll fall right off the back,” said the Resistance member.

  “That’s not an option,” Matthew said. “We’ll have to take out the Enforcer.”

  “How are we going to do that without alerting the others?” said Jonathon.

  “I can do it,” Matthew replied. “You go and we’ll meet you at the church.”

  Before anyone could argue, Matthew slipped out of the car and towards the Enforcer. Ali hopped from the back and followed him.

  The three of them exchanged words before Matthew reached for his laser gun. The Enforcer ran – ducking behind a car. He fired shots. Ali went down as Matthew shot out at the Enforcer.

  “We need to go,” said the Resistance member. The car accelerated, but Jonathon reached across and clutched the steering wheel.

  “No!” he said. “We’re not leaving them.”

  Matthew shot the Enforcer and dragged Ali to the car. Their insurgent swore, but backed up to allow them into the front. He had to hold Ali over the front seat, squashing everyone in the car.

  “Go!” he yelled. “Go now!”

  Daniel tore his eyes from Ali – who had blood pouring from his right shoulder – to the Enforcers streaming out of the gates behind them.

  Someone yelled, “Go! Now!”

  The car lurched onward into London.

  17 ~ Mina ~

  I woke in the night with an ache in my stomach. The sheets tangled around my body like ropes. A lingering sense of Daniel remained. I just couldn’t remember the dream – or shake the feeling that he was hurt. It took me a few moments to realise where I was, and then I went to the bathroom, being sure to stay silent. For some reason waking Mum seemed like a bad idea. As I splashed water on my face, I remembered the day before: the strange journey out of the Compound, the tea to make me feel better, and… Mrs Murgatroyd. I shuddered.

  I felt so stupid and helpless being stuck in the GEM – the enemy – with these strange feelings of euphoria clouding my every thought. I gripped the side of the sink, noticing a slight tremble in my fingertips; wishing for Daniel. If only I could remember my dream, or why I ended up in the car with Mum in the first place. Everything felt so disjointed and mixed up. I sighed and dried my face before climbing back into bed.

  The next morning those worries faded away after breakfast. It was just the flu I’d caught in the Compound, and Mum’s tea helped me get better. She hummed to herself in the kitchen, and little flashbacks from my childhood popped into my mind – mum’s smiling face, a song on the radio, white walls and a clean tiled floor – they came and went in a blur. While I ate she sat and wrote in a small leather bound notebook for a while.

  “Are you ready sweetheart?” she said, putting down her pen and replacing the book in her jacket pocket. She picked up her plates and took them into the kitchen.

  I drained the dregs of my tea and stood. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  She bustled back into the lounge, and came close enough to move a stray hair from my face. “I can’t wait until your hair grows longer. You’ll be the prettiest girl in the world.”

  It was like she lit me with a beacon. Her words made me feel so good about myself. But also kind of weird. I’d not realised my hair was too short. I loved it long before Mrs Murgatroyd… no, I wouldn’t think about it. That time of humiliation was over. I’d never let anyone do that to me again.

  “Are you okay?” Mum asked.

  I thought about the glimpse of red hair at the door. It couldn’t be her, I was just being silly. “I’m fine.”

  Mum’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Well, if you’re sure. Come on, I want to show you the labs.”

  We moved out into the corridor and I shoved my hands in my pockets as I followed her along. Mum frowned at my posture, so I removed my hands and stood up straight.

  “This is the staff quarters,” she said. “Some executives get apartments here so they can work all hours. It helps with the more intensive projects.”

  “What kind of projects?” I asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” she replied. She pushed the button for the lift. “Let me show you the building first. One step at a time, Mina.”

  We travelled down a few levels and stepped out into a light, airy hallway with pale linoleum floors. I let my fingers trail the smooth white-washed walls. Mum’s shoes tapped against the hard surface as she hurried us along. I saw the sign on the wall saying “Floor Eight” in green. To the right, I peered through the window to see a room with lots of long tables, computers and strange machines that reminded me of the printers at school, except they had little trays and a touch screen. I followed Mum into the room. It was empty apart from the equipment.

  “This is one of my old offices,” she said. “And this is a DNA Sequencer.” She trailed her hand over the machine that resembled a printer. “We make the genes for the babies here.” She lifted a flap and pointed to a small crevice inside. “We put a sample here and programme the machine to sequence the DNA from the sample.” She moved her hand across to the computer next to it on the table. “And then we change the DNA in the computer. We make the genes better – stronger, more athletic, more beautiful – and then we create the egg. We create life.”

  “This is where you make the GEMs?” I asked. I didn’t know what to make of the little machine and the computer. I’d never thought about the origins of the GEMs before. I’d certainly never imagined them made from something so simple. This all seemed so banal; almost dull.

  “Yes.”

  All the time I’d imagined something monstrous. I’d imagined evil doctors taking scalpels to babies – cutting them up to make perfection – and yet it was nothing more than a little grey box.

  “It’s not as bad as I thought,” I said. “I thought it was going to be… I don’t know.”

  “Gruesome?” she asked. She raised an eyebrow in amusement.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I laughed.

  “Mina, you’ve been expecting pure evil where there is nothing but human nature. You imagined Frankenstein’s monster and instead you have a new form of normality. Did your dad ever tell you that designer babies existed for decades before the Fracture?”

  I shook my head.

  “No, I’m sure that wasn’t on his agenda,” she muttered. “The truth is that geneticists have been helping families conceive for years, only back then we didn’t have artificial wombs, and we didn’t improve genes. Parents weren’t given as many options. The Ministry wanted little more then to empower parents. To ensure they brought the life they really wanted into this world.”

  “But what if they just want to have a normal baby?”

  “A normal baby,” she said with a thin smile. “Yes, it’s easy to label natural conception with the normal label and think everything else freakish. Isn’t that h
ow people treat your powers?”

  I blushed with shame.

  “Come on,” she said, slipping an arm over my shoulders. “We’ll go to the artificial wombs. They are very beautiful… if a little shocking at first.”

  She led the way to a set of stairs and we climbed one storey. At the doors to the lab Mum took some items from a supply cupboard and handed them to me. The unopened plastic crinkled in my hands.

  “Put these on,” she said. “It’s a sterile environment.”

  I opened the plastic cases to find latex gloves, horrible little latex hats, and booties; all in an unflattering shade of bright blue. I followed Mum’s directions and pulled on the booties over my shoes. She tucked escaping hairs under the elastic of my hat.

  “That’s better. Come on!” She stepped forward and opened the wide doors with aplomb – waving me through like a tour guide.

  I took my tentative first steps into the lab and had my breath taken from me. It was less of a room and more like a huge factory floor. People busied around with clipboards, as they chatted and leaned over small incubators lining the floor like hospital beds. An orange glow emanated from them – reminding me of sunlight.

  “This way,” Mum instructed. She strutted off to the nearest incubator. “Here you can see the foetus growing in the artificial womb.”

  The blood froze in my body. The skin of the yellow womb – shaped into an oval pod – had a transparent quality and pulsated in a rhythmic heartbeat. It lay like a severed stomach on a white tray with wires and veins crossing the skin of the womb. The wires ran to a socket. The wombs were plugged in like electric fans.

  “Does it run on electricity?” I asked. “If you pull the plug does the foetus die?” I leaned over them, trying to see through the skin to see the half-formed baby inside. All I made out was a slightly pink lump.

  “We have back-up generators, so that wouldn’t happen,” Mum answered. A dark expression passed over her face as though the question troubled her.

  I spotted a chart hanging from the white tray. It said – Smith. The parents. It felt so strange to think the baby had an owner. Like a reserved puppy in a pet shop.

  We continued through the long lines of artificial wombs, and I realised that I wasn’t horrified. I’d never thought of the Children of the GEM as monstrous or strange. They’d never been the point of fighting against the Ministry. It wasn’t the fact they changed people through science, it was the fact that they didn’t give people the choice. It was their way or no way. They started the Operation. They called us Blemished. I had to remember that. I had to keep hold of that thought and not let the fog take it away.

  “What’s with the empty spaces?” I gestured to the many empty trays and large containers in the lab. “Are you moving the wombs?”

  “It’s nothing to worry about. We’re creating more space and shipping the wombs to a factory outside London. The containers are specially designed to keep the baby healthy on the journey.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And through here we have a small developmental centre. Not much of this is done at the GEM; we have womb factories around the country. Before the baby is delivered to the parents, it spends three years in our top of the range development and attachment centres. Here the child is exposed to images, and the scent of the parents. We use our own developmental programme to engage the brain, so that synapses increase at the optimum rate. The brain is like plastic. It needs to be moulded.”

  As we moved through more swinging doors, I saw what was more like a huge crèche – just like at the Compound – but instead of the children running wild, they sat quietly and absorbed their surroundings. Each child had a partitioned “play area” to themselves. Inside the partitions, there was a cot or bed – depending on the age of the child – a television screen, various building blocks and stuffed toys, and what I could only assume was a baby gym. This consisted of strange little machines like treadmills. I wandered towards the play area, taking in all of the surroundings. A scientist sat with a toddler on her knee, praising the child as he or she built up their building blocks.

  “As you can see we have Crawl-2-Runs for every child. They help the child progress from crawling to walking using the treadmill and harness. Each child has their own Substitute – a scientist who takes on the scent of the parents while they teach them brain optimising games. Later we use masks to imitate the parent’s face,” Mum said.

  “Why don’t they just learn all this stuff with their real parents? It must be confusing for them,” I said, watching the young scientist clap her hands along with the toddler. I had to admit that the small child did seem far more advanced than the screaming little things in the Compound.

  “It’s not what the parent wants,” Mum replied, her jaw clenched as though she was annoyed at my question. “They want to be able to work and get on with their lives. They want a child they can interact with and talk to. There are scheduled play sessions with the parents up to the age of three, and then the parents take them home. Many choose to take time from work to bond with their new child at this stage. It allows parents, and especially women, to have a career and a family life.”

  The question was on my lips, yet I didn’t utter it: why force it? Why make people live this way?

  The young woman became aware I was watching her with the child, and lifted her head. Bright blue eyes flashed and I gasped. She froze and I froze too. We stared at each other until Mum moved on to the next partition. The girl with the toddler put a finger to her lips in slow motion, and I moved away, my heart hammering against my chest. I’d just seen Elena Darcey.

  18 ~ Angela ~

  Angela’s wrists chaffed against the rope and the chains rubbed her ankles raw. Dry summer sun beat down on the nape of her neck as she shuffled through the dry grass, trying not to trip. They passed waist high and crumbling stone walls, rusting metal gates and fields full of alien shaped, white windmills, generating power for the capital. She tried not to stare at Cam – not wanting him to see her pain. After watching him lose his cool around the Moorlanders, she was frightened he would try something stupid. She glanced towards him; his hooded and dangerous eyes glowered at the ground. Above everything, she wanted to get to Area 14 unscathed with the group safe.

  Harry stalked ahead of the others. Angela had presumed him to be old with his missing teeth and dirtied wrinkles, but he walked with the pace of a young man. He never tired. Even after walking for miles. Her muscles cried out with the pain, still aching from the previous day’s walk. The Moorlanders stayed close and used themselves to separate the group. She knew Sebastian and Ginge walked behind her with a Moorlander watching their every move. They made her skin crawl, the way they stared at her with hungry eyes. She wasn’t sure if they saw something to eat, or worse – something to entertain themselves with.

  They were starving; there was no doubt about it. Perhaps there wasn’t enough to hunt on the moors, and they’d failed to grow food. At one point in her life, she would have taken pity on anyone starving – just like her Mum had taken pity on Daniel as a boy. Not anymore. They lived in a harsh world. You fought battles and lost loved ones. You took care of each other and yourself. You didn’t take prisoners to blackmail and sell as slaves. She shuddered at the thought.

  As one of the Moorlanders moved away, Cam chanced a furtive glance. Angela managed to smile back, hoping it was reassuring. His jaw was strong and his mouth set. Angela’s heart beat faster as she saw his determined expression. What was he going to do? She shook her head quickly. No, Cam. Leave it. Just let us get there. He swallowed and turned away, reading her expression.

  Her toe caught a stone, and she stumbled forwards; unable to use her arms to balance. A Moorlander laughed loudly as she fell on her face and chest in the dry soil. The pebbles scraped her cheek – drawing blood – and her chest hit the ground so hard it was bruised and sore. She shuffled, trying to twist so she could get her balance and kneel before getting to her feet, when the Moorlander pushed her back dow
n with his heavy boot.

  “No!” Cam rushed towards her, his chains jangling. Angela saw him trip over an old piece of bark, landing with a thud. The Moorlanders guffawed like hyenas.

  But she didn’t care anymore, because she was so close to Cam she could get lost in his bright blue eyes. “Cam, be careful. Don’t do anything,” she whispered. “They have all those weapons. We just need to do what they say.”

  Cam’s eyes filled with tears. He opened his mouth to speak and shook his head, turning away from them. She knew how deeply his pride hurt from the fall and the humiliation by the Moorlanders. He was such a good man that he wanted to keep her from harm, and she loved him for that. She couldn’t let him get hurt.

  “Aye,” he said eventually, turning his head as a fat tear rolled from his cheek onto the soil. The Moorlander grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him up.

  Angela’s heart ached as she saw his defeated expression and the wet skin beneath his eyes. The Moorlander smirked.

  “Little boy cry-cry,” he said in a mocking baby voice. The rest of the group erupted in laughter.

  Angela forced herself up and continued, hoping everyone would just begin walking and forget all about Cam’s tears.

  “Hark at this ‘un,” said the same Moorlander. “She gets up on ‘er own an’ starts walkin’.” He rammed his elbow into Cam’s side. “Not like this babby. Yer girlfriend’s ‘arder than you are, mate.” They laughed again.

  “What’s goin’ on back there?” said Harry. “We need t’get there before nightfall an’ yer just larkin’ about like louts. Leave them kids alone an’ walk before I ‘ave yer balls fer earrings.”

  The laughter stopped, and the mocking Moorlander shoved Cam along. Angela almost tripped again. She wanted to say that everything would be okay, but he moved away from her and stumbled forward on unsure feet. She sighed, and carried on with a heavy ache in more than just her leg muscles. Even the sharp stinging pain of her cut cheek couldn’t distract her from it. She’d lost part of Cam and it was all her fault.