But I’m so tired, and moving at all feels insurmountably difficult. By the time I’ve worked up enough courage to do it, Nia’s breathing has already slowed into sleep.
It wasn’t the right time after all.
My eyelids grow heavy, and I slip into dreamlessness.
TRANSCRIPT
INITIAL INTERVIEW, CECILY CARTWRIGHT & CATO BELL
Location: Cremly Women’s Prison
CC: Huh, I didn’t think it’d actually be you. I assumed you’d send a lackey. Does every prospective participant in your experiment get this kind of treatment? Or am I special?
CB: I think we both know that you are pretty special, Cecily. Have you read my proposal?
CC: I have.
CB: And what do you think?
CC: I think you’re a megalomaniac.
CB: Will you participate?
CC: On one condition. Sign up Nia as well.
CB: Your secret girlfriend?
CC: She’ll get the same perks, right? A nicer prison, comfy cell?
CB: Yes.
CC: Then that’s my condition.
CB: Even though she turned you in?
CC: [shrugs]
CB: Cecily, do you still love her?
CC: [long pause] So where do I sign?
21
DAY 7
05:54
We wake at dawn, stiff and cold, and begin the ascent to the promontory. It’s steep, hot work, and we don’t have any food or water to make the trek more bearable. There’s no point. We either leave on the helicopter in a few hours, or Cato Bell will capture us again. It’s hard to plan for the future when those are the only two options.
We don’t talk much. My own thoughts are ragged and jittery, flickering from one imaginary scenario to another. What if the pilot is armed? What if Cato Bell is there waiting for us? What if the helicopter never comes? There are too many possibilities, and not enough options.
But whatever happens, it will happen today. This part of my story will end, one way or another.
The sun is fully up by the time we reach the promontory. My wristband tells me it’s ten-fifteen, which gives us plenty of time to find a hiding spot where the helicopter won’t see us.
The promontory juts out over the ocean, a high cliff covered in windswept grass and a few bent and gnarled trees, battered low by the coastal winds. I stare out over the ocean, looking for a sign of the helicopter. There’s a smudge on the horizon that could be another land mass, or could be a low cloud. Other than that, the ocean stretches on forever, unbroken blue. The wind buffets at us, lifting my tangled hair from my shoulders and whipping it into my face.
A dirt track emerges from the rainforest, still muddy from the rainstorm. I check, but there are no recent tyre tracks. There’s a strongbox at the edge of the track, where I assume the helicopter pilot drops the supplies. Good. That means there’s a chance Cato Bell won’t be here to meet them.
Nia and I crawl inside a clump of thick bushes and spindly trees, which cling to one side of the promontory, and cover ourselves with branches and leaves.
I make sure I can reach the hunting knife.
‘What now?’ whispers Nia, even though there’s no one here to hear us.
‘Now we wait.’
I glance down at my wristband.
10:38
Maybe Cato Bell has changed the schedule. Maybe she told it not to come.
Maybe this is a trap.
I count to a thousand in my head. There are sticks digging into me. It’s hot, and a fly is buzzing around my head.
Then, finally, I hear it. Faint at first, so faint that I wonder if it’s a trick of the wind and the sea. But as it grows louder, I feel Nia stiffen beside me.
I resist the temptation to poke my head out and look at it. We have to stay hidden. I peer through the branches and leaves, scanning the dirt track at the edge of the jungle for any sign of Cato Bell.
The noise is thundering loud, and a fierce wind whips the branches and leaves around us. The helicopter comes into view, big and black. Through the glass at the front I can glimpse the pilot, face obscured by a visored helmet.
The helicopter sinks towards the grass, which is flattened horizontal under the downwash.
‘Ready?’ I murmur to Nia.
She squeezes my hand in response.
My heart thunders in my chest, louder than the pulsing thrum of the helicopter.
I pull the hunting knife from my pocket and grip it in my fist. It feels good there.
I can do this.
The helicopter is only three metres from the ground.
Two.
One.
Suddenly it banks sharply to the left, the whine of the propellers changing tone, intensifying. The helicopter starts to rise again, and it sails out over the ocean.
I can’t process it.
Was it the wind? Is it coming back? It was so close. I could have run out and grabbed onto the landing skids, then hauled myself on board.
Did the pilot see us?
What happened?
Movement flickers at the edge of my vision, and my heart sinks.
Cato Bell is standing at the edge of the jungle. She looks tired, which makes me happy. At least she’s not having a good time either.
She also looks smug, which makes me less happy.
The helicopter has vanished from view.
Cato Bell steps forward onto the grass, a tablet in her left hand. Edwin follows her, his arm in a sling.
He did sell us out. I wonder what she promised him in exchange for us, and then I realise I don’t care. She’s probably going to kill him anyway.
‘Cecily,’ Cato Bell says conversationally, ‘do you know the story of Scylla and Charybdis?’
Nia slowly reaches forward and puts her hand on mine.
‘At one point in his long voyage, Odysseus had to sail through the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and the Italian mainland. It’s a narrow strait, and on either side of it was a fearsome creature. On the Italian side was Scylla. She was once a beautiful nymph, but was turned into a monster after bathing in poisoned water. She had twelve tentacles for legs, and a cat’s tail. Around her waist hung six dog heads. She had six snakelike necks, each one topped with a grotesque head packed with shark teeth. These heads would snatch sailors from their ships and devour them.’
Edwin’s face is a picture of misery. Good. He deserves to suffer.
‘Off the coast of Sicily was Charybdis, daughter of Poseidon. Cursed by Zeus, she became a horrific bladder of a monster, with flippers for hands and legs. She was possessed by an insatiable thirst for sea water, and would constantly drink it and then vomit it back up again, creating a perilous whirlpool.’
Nia lets out a soft sigh behind me. ‘Get to the point, you old dingbat,’ she breathes.
‘Odysseus had to choose which path to take. Did he confront Scylla or Charybdis? Sacrifice a few of his men, or risk losing the whole ship in the whirlpool? There’s a Latin idiom about it. Incidit in scyllam cupiens vitare charybdim. A more modern sailor might say between a rock and a hard place. I’ve always thought it was a bit like the trolley problem.’
‘Enough,’ I mutter. ‘I can’t bear to listen to this bullshit any longer.’
‘Don’t,’ mutters Nia. ‘Don’t give her the satisfaction.’
But I’m already standing up, pushing through the branches. Nia swears behind me, and I feel her clutch at my shirt, but I yank away from her and stumble out of the bushes.
Bell’s lip curls in a smile when she sees me. ‘Which path will you take, my little Odysseus? Scylla or Charybdis? The devil or the deep blue sea? Will you sacrifice it all, or do you want to give in and beg for my mercy?’
I’ve got nowhere to go now. We can’t run again. I won’t spend the rest of my life being chased around this island, eating only limpets and coconut.
And Nia can’t either. She needs to see a doctor about her leg. I glance over at her as she emerges behind me. Her face is determined
.
She’s never going to give up. She is so brave and strong and beautiful, she’ll keep fighting until she dies.
She’ll never betray me. Not this time. She’ll never give herself up.
So I have to do it.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I tell Cato Bell. ‘If you bring back the helicopter, and let Nia get on it. Send her anywhere, just get her off this island.’
‘Um, excuse me?’ Nia’s voice is indignant. ‘You don’t get to make a deal for me. I decide what I’m going to do.’
Old, angry Nia is back. I kind of missed her, a little bit. I ignore her though, because I’m going to get her off this island if it’s the last thing I do.
It probably will be the last thing I do.
Cato takes a step towards me. ‘Cecily, don’t you see? It’s worked. You’re offering to sacrifice yourself for someone else. You’ve changed, out here. You’ve become a better person.’
‘I know,’ I say, lifting my chin. ‘That’s why I’m not going to let you kill her.’
‘So turn yourself in. It’s what a good person would do.’
‘I will. Once I see her on that helicopter and in the air.’
‘Or else what? What leverage do you have?’
I glance around. Cato and Edwin are standing in the only route off the promontory. Around us, the cliff falls sharply to the ocean. It’s at least as high as the bridge over the river. Maybe higher. My stomach falls as I see the swirling water beneath.
I swallow. We can’t run.
I think back to the trolley problems. A choice between two shitty things isn’t a real choice.
A rock or a hard place.
Scylla or Charybdis.
The devil or the deep blue sea.
Why can’t there be a third option?
I turn to Nia. ‘We have no idea if anything she’s told us is true. Maybe you’re Cecily, and I’m Nia. Maybe we were in love. Maybe we’ve never met before. We could be anyone. But that’s … not all bad. We get to choose who we want to be.’
Nia thinks about it. ‘A clean slate,’ she says.
I nod.
‘Who do you want to be?’ I ask her.
She slips her hand into mine. ‘I don’t want to lose you again.’ I turn back to Cato Bell. ‘What if we play along for forty-eight hours?’ I ask. ‘We give you your results. Then you let us go, and we’ll disappear. You get your success story, and we get to escape. Everyone wins.’
Cato Bell snorts. ‘The success story doesn’t work unless you’re back in jail at the end of it,’ she says. ‘How do I explain to the press that you’ve up and vanished? In any case, I don’t need you to play along for forty-eight hours. All I needed was sixty seconds.’
She makes a swiping gesture on her tablet, and the band around my wrist lights up.
No.
She’s reactivated my wristband.
I turn to look at Nia, who closes her eyes in defeat.
‘Don’t,’ I say to Bell. ‘We can negotiate. Just don’t wipe us again.’
‘Negotiate?’ She laughs. ‘You have nothing to offer. And anyway, I’ve already done it. The wristband is about to play a tone that will deactivate certain neurons in your medial temporal lobe. Your memory will be gone within three minutes. This time, you’ll be separated and detained, unconscious.’
‘Detained?’
‘I’m working on an update to the wristbands,’ she says. ‘I’ll turn you on when it’s ready.’
The guards at Camp Eleos. Sitting there, blank-faced and motionless. They were turned off.
‘Mind control,’ I say. ‘You can already stop us from moving with the wristbands. But the update will control everything.’
Cato Bell smiles. ‘The perfect test case. Every movement orchestrated.’
‘How long does it last?’ Nia asks.
‘Forever.’
It’s over. Cato Bell has won. The helicopter is gone. She’s going to wipe our memories, and take away our free will.
‘This is your idea of justice?’ I ask. ‘Turning criminals into zombies?’
Cato shrugs. ‘Whatever it takes.’
Edwin strides forward. ‘I want it too,’ he says. ‘The update.’
He’s such a fool.
‘You’ll get your turn,’ Cato Bell says over her shoulder.
‘I want it now,’ Edwin shouts, grabbing Bell by the wrist with his good hand, wrenching her around to face him. ‘Wipe my memory now, and leave me blank until the update is ready. Otherwise I’m going to jump off that cliff, I swear it! I cannot live like this anymore. I cannot bear to be him for another second.’
Bell pulls her hand free from Edwin’s clutches. ‘Fine, if it will shut you up,’ she says, swiping at her tablet again.
Edwin’s wristband lights up. So does Nia’s.
And so does the one that Edwin has just clasped around Cato Bell’s wrist.
Riley’s wristband.
Cato stares at it, like she can’t quite figure out how it got there.
‘Everyone’s a jerk, Bell,’ Edwin says, taking a step backwards. ‘A wise woman once told me that.’
Cato Bell springs into action, swiping at her tablet, but whatever she’s trying to do clearly isn’t working. She drops the tablet, then slides the silk scarf from her hair and wraps it around her upper arm, pulling it tight with her teeth before tying it off. She takes seven calm, measured steps forward to where the hunting knife is lying in the grass.
I flinch backwards, but Cato doesn’t so much as glance at us. She sinks to her knees and lays her left arm on the grass, wrist to elbow. Then, with a smooth, unhurried movement, she raises the knife and plunges it into her arm, right where her hand meets the wrist.
She’s blank-faced as if she were jointing a chicken.
The knife sinks in, smooth as butter. Cato lets out a low, soft, animal grunt, and wrenches the knife from side to side.
I hear a retching noise. Edwin is throwing up.
I can’t look away.
Something pops. Cato keeps wrenching back and forth, the grass around her slick with blood.
I feel ice cold trickling up the back of my neck and into my skull. It feels like the worst ice-cream headache I’ve ever had.
Cato leans back on her heels, and something flops to the grass.
Her hand.
The wristband follows it.
Cato looks up at me, her face papery white. Dark red is oozing from the stump where her hand once was.
‘I told you I wasn’t fucking around,’ she says, her voice deep and hoarse.
I take a step backwards.
Nia’s face is slack with horror, and I feel a swell of protectiveness. I want to save her. I don’t want to forget her. I’ve already lost her – lost us – once. I can’t do it again. I won’t.
She reaches out and grabs my hands, her fingers gripping tight and desperate. ‘Is there more plan? Tell me there’s more plan.’
But it’s too late.
The blank fog is coming. I can feel it rolling in, swallowing me up inside its empty nothingness.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, helplessly.
I have to hold on to Nia. I have to.
I grab her, and we kiss. I pour everything I have into that kiss, everything I feel, everything I hoped we could have. Our little house on the edge of the rice paddy. Our cat and our dog and our sunsets. Every moment that we would share, every joke. I pour in every bickering fight we had on the bus, every smart-mouthed comment and sarcastic eye-roll. Standing side by side in the watchtower, our eyes full of stars. Holding her hand in the rainforest yesterday. The feeling of my head against her shoulder as we fell asleep on the beach. Waking up, nose to nose, staring into each other’s eyes.
And I know that I won’t forget, this time. There’s no way I can forget this. Even if I do, the air will be thick with the memory of it. The grass under our feet will remember. This kiss will soak into the soil. It will get digested by worms and burrowed into by little animals. It will end up in th
e kernels of seeds that will grow to the biggest trees anyone has ever seen. It will find its way into the bellies of birds and fly to every corner of the world. It will hang, heavy and beautiful in the clouds, and fall in glittering raindrops, then evaporate and be inhaled into the lungs of every living creature on the planet.
I am Cecily Cartwright, and if I remember nothing else about who I am, I will remember this moment.
22
DAY ONE
11:22
I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, kissing a stranger.
I can smell crushed grass and ocean salt and a faint whiff of aviation fuel. The wind is whipping my hair against my cheeks. My body is pressed against the stranger’s, her arms tight around me, my hands cupping her face.
The kiss doesn’t seem to be soft or romantic, but it electrifies me nonetheless. It feels like a significant kiss. I don’t want it to end, because when I do I’m going to have to face a whole lot of things that I don’t understand, and I’m scared.
I don’t want anyone else to know I’m scared.
I want to be in control, and right now I am. I am in control of the kiss. The stranger is too, the moment perfectly balanced between us.
But it can’t last forever.
Reluctantly, we break apart. The stranger has dark stubble on her head, and cheekbones that I’d die for. Her eyes are wide and wild, and I don’t understand much about what’s going on, but I can tell that she’s in the same boat as me.
We have no memories.
The stranger is stunningly beautiful. Thick lashes frame dark eyes that flare with the fire of a thousand suns. The striking angles of her cheekbones are echoed in the strong lines of her jaw. She’s not wearing makeup, and I can see tiny holes in her ears and lip, where piercings used to be.
‘What is going on?’ she asks, her voice low and unsteady.
I don’t know who this girl is. But I trust her.
I notice my hands. Slim. White. Female. Young. My nails are filthy, encrusted with brown and dark red. I don’t bite my cuticles.
I look around. There’s an old woman wearing a black tunic and trousers kneeling on a blood-soaked patch of grass behind us. She’s clutching her wrist. There are things on the grass. A tablet. A gun. A knife. And something else.
The Erasure Initiative Page 26
