Elites

by Natasha Ngan

  Butterfly wrapped his arms round her gently. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll work out what to do. Everything will turn out fine.’

  Silver didn’t reply. She’d lied enough that day herself to recognise the lies in his words.

  5

  The Wink

  The next few weeks were a whirlwind of training sessions, lessons and restless nights as Silver lay awake in her bedpod, expecting Ember to come at her again with a blade between her teeth and a crazy glint in her eye. Yet Ember seemed to be avoiding Silver now, just as much as Silver was avoiding her. And as the days went on without any sign that Ember had acted on her words from their confrontation in the storage room, Silver started to feel hopeful that Butterfly had actually been right – everything was going to be fine – and relaxed back into her everyday life as an Elite.

  But there was still one aspect of her life that was yet to return to normal. Since the parade, Silver hadn’t been given any assignments. She started to worry it was because Senior Surrey knew the truth about her. She began to whisper to herself, in the middle of the night when it was so quiet even the gods must be sleeping, or during training as she looked around at the other Elites surrounding her: I’m useless. I’m a useless Red.

  Barely any other Reds worked in the Stacks, and certainly no other Elites were Reds. With DNA streaming deciding everyone’s place in society, this was to be expected. They had all been taught since young how Red blood had been proven by scientists to be naturally inferior, so it was remarkable that Silver had been streamed into the Elite training programme; a fact Ember took constant job in reminding her. Yet there was another side to this that Silver held onto, keeping it safe and solid inside her like a secret made real, a stone of truth she could turn over and over in her mind. That to be an Elite meant her blood – her tainted, dirty Red blood – was still superior to most people’s in the city. Even Ember couldn’t take that away from her.

  Three weeks passed without Silver receiving any assignments. Just when she’d started to convince herself that it was because Senior Surrey was planning on dropping her off the Elite training programme, and she was getting ready one morning for a trip Butterfly had planned to cheer her up, her comms cuff started beeping. Her heart leapt. That particular low beep was only used to notify Elites of an assignment. Tugging a shirt over her head, she grabbed her comms cuff from where she had thrown it to the floor before her morning shower and touched its screen.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Good morning, Silver,’ said Miss Apell. ‘Please check your tablet. Senior Surrey has an assignment for you this morning.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ answered Silver breathlessly, unable to contain the delight from her voice.

  Feeling a flush of excitement, she picked up her tablet to check the details Miss Apell had just sent her. The assignment was to oversee an information exchange at the Spotted Elephant, a chai bar in Little New India. It would take just over an hour. Butterfly wouldn’t mind her being slightly late for their trip. She could just imagine how happy he’d be for her and she couldn’t wait to tell him and their friends the good news.

  As the assignment didn’t require her to wear her uniform, Silver dressed in a floaty green shirt that was more like a dress on her slender frame, with thin leggings underneath to keep cool in the heat. She pulled on her flexi-vinyl boots, just in case there was any trouble and she needed to be quick on her feet. She slipped her stungun into the belt around her waist, its shape hidden under the loose shirt, before heading down to the galley.

  The galley was one of the eating areas in the Stacks for Council members. As usual, it was busy, full of noise, delicious aromas and the heat from the cookers. Sunlight poured in through the long slatted windows that striped the ceiling, filling the large hall with light. Food stalls serving a variety of dishes and cuisines lined the walls. In the centre of the hall were dozens of benches for seating.

  Making her way down the steps into the hall, Silver spotted Butterfly and their Elite friends at the bench where they always sat. She picked up a plate of food from a stall on her way over to them and sat at the end of the bench next to Butterfly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, dipping his head towards her so his hair fell into his eyes.

  She smiled. ‘Yes,’ she answered, and for the first time in weeks it didn’t feel like a lie.

  Just then, a deep voice with a strong Afrikan lilt boomed down the bench. ‘Baby Silver! Always under Butterfly’s wing, hey?’

  Silver looked up to see Allum laughing. She grinned back; it was impossible not to. Allum had the sort of laugh that when you heard it, you couldn’t help but fall into it. His smile was shockingly white against his smooth brown skin.

  ‘Sorry!’ She smiled down the bench at her friends. ‘Morning, everyone.’

  To Butterfly’s right was Cobe, his senior Elite. Cobe was a pale, slim boy, always slightly nervous, with a clean-shaven head shining like a polished egg in the sun. He had dark eyes and thin lips that like Butterfly’s, were slow to smile. Opposite him was Allum, who as usual sat beside his junior Taiyo. They made a funny pair. Allum’s huge Afrikan figure dwarfed little Taiyo, who was tiny not just due to her small Japanean frame but also because of her age. Most Elite pairs had an age gap of under ten years, but with Taiyo just ten years old, she and Allum had fourteen years between them. That didn’t seem to matter though. They were by far the closest pair out of all the Elites Silver knew.

  A memory flashed into her mind then; Ember’s snarling face close to hers, the glint of a blade in the dim light of the storage room. Silver shivered. She and Ember were only six years apart, but they may as well have had whole worlds orbiting between them for how different they were.

  Talk at the bench had settled into their plans for the day. Taiyo was chatting excitedly about swimming, her cropped black hair bobbing around her face as she talked. Allum had promised to teach her the butterfly stroke, which he was taking obvious delight in joking about.

  ‘You must always make a pouty face when doing it,’ he instructed. ‘Oh, there you go – brother Butterfly is showing you how to do it right now!’

  ‘I’ll have to meet you all there,’ Silver said when everyone had stopped laughing. ‘I’ve got an assignment this morning.’

  Butterfly flashed her a concerned look, but Allum and Taiyo looked delighted.

  ‘Oh, baby girl, that’s great news!’ said Allum. ‘You haven’t had one in a while. The last time must have been …’

  ‘Before the parade,’ Silver answered quietly.

  Allum nodded. ‘Yes, the parade.’ The playful tone in his voice disappeared. ‘You know, I’ve been hearing rumours about what happened.’

  ‘I’ve heard some things too,’ Taiyo said eagerly. She leant forward across the bench, almost sticking her elbow in Allum’s plate. ‘I overheard one of the forensic team talking to Senior Surrey yesterday.’

  Allum grinned at her. ‘You didn’t tell me. Sneakier and sneakier every day.’

  Taiyo jabbed him in the ribs. ‘Shush! I’m telling everyone what I heard.’ She glanced round and lowered her voice dramatically. ‘This man was telling Senior Surrey that they’d finally traced the bullet’s trajectory. Guess where it came from.’

  Silver didn’t have to guess. For one horrible moment the world seemed to spin to a halt, the noise and activity of the galley freezing as she stared at Taiyo, her stomach dropping.

  ‘The History Museum!’ exclaimed Taiyo.

  The world started spinning again. Silver felt as though she were tipping with it. She reached for Butterfly’s hand under the table, dizzy with relief, barely listening as the others debated this news. The History Museum was on the eastern edge of Pantheon Square. Nowhere near where the actual assassin had been, up on a balcony of Hemmingway House with Silver. She couldn’t believe the forensic team had got it so wrong, but she didn’t want to waste time thinking about that when she was out of the clear.

  Beside her, Butterfly smiled. He held it a
little longer than usual.

  An hour later, Silver was in a first-class air-tram carriage on her way to Little New India. She enjoyed riding in the fast trams that hung high above the ground from reinforced strong wires strung between buildings. From high up, it was difficult to tell people apart. Afrikans, New Indians, Japaneans, Mainlanders, even Reds, all blended into each other, until they were just people, all the same, living day by day in their amazing walled city that had stayed standing even as the rest of the world fell around it.

  When the air-tram reached Little India, Silver alighted at a station that overlooked the district’s famous Brick Lane. It was a sinuous street paved entirely from red bricks to recreate a famous street from an old Mainland capital, London. As soon as she was at street level, she was swept up by foreign sights and smells. Street vendors shouted out to her, holding up brightly coloured saris and sandals, and the air was filled with exotic smells of curry vats and spices, the wind picking up the scents from the coloured mounds of the spice market. Usually, Silver would have taken her time, enjoying the atmosphere. Today, however, she rushed down the street, her mind focused on the assignment she was about to undertake. She could feel the adrenalin already pumping through her, setting her on edge. This was her chance to prove herself after everything that had happened at the parade.

  The Spotted Elephant was empty when she arrived ten minutes later, slightly flushed from having jogged up the rickety stairway nailed to the side of a building. The chai bar was large and low-ceilinged, the space sectioned into smaller areas by wooden panels. Filigreed lanterns hung from the ceiling, creating ornate-looking shadows on the floor below. The whole placed smelt of spices and sweetened milk.

  Silver took a seat near the door. A waiter in a brown waistcoat took her order, returning a few minutes later with an engraved ceramic cup of chai. She had only taken one sip when the bell above the door to the bar jingled.

  A bearded man whom she recognised as a senior Council member from the Intelligence Department hovered in the doorway. He caught her eye and gave the barest hint of a nod before taking his place at a table on the opposite side of the room. A few moments later, the bell above the door sounded again and another man entered, whom Silver guessed was the contact for the information exchange.

  The man was a Mainlander, white-skinned and tall beneath his sweeping grey robes. He walked hunched over, but his middle-aged face looked too handsome and bright for its broken body. A sweep of golden brown hair fell into his eyes. Without looking at Silver, he took his place at the table where the Council member sat. The faint scratches of their voices rose a moment later.

  Silver ordered another cup of chai. She kept her ears focused on the men’s table, listening for sounds of conflict in case she needed to step in. She wished she could hear what they were saying; she was curious about this strange Mainlander. But that wasn’t part of her assignment. All she had to do was intervene if there was any trouble. As she waited, she brushed her fingers across the handle of her stungun, still hidden underneath her shirt. She felt nervous at the thought of having to use it. Luckily, the information exchange came to an end twenty minutes later without any trouble at all.

  The senior Council member left first, not acknow-ledging Silver as he went. When the hunched man passed her table, she expected the same treatment, but as she raised her eyes to look at him she realised with a jolt that he was looking back at her. His bright green eyes twinkled. Then, so quickly she might have missed it if she’d blinked –

  The man winked.

  Silver looked down at the floor. She didn’t look back up until she heard the bell above the door jingling as the man left the bar. She sat for a while, confused. What had that wink meant? Was it just the man’s way of saying hello? Or was he indicating that he knew she’d been there to oversee the information exchange? A thought came to her: Maybe he just thought I was pretty. But she pushed it down. How could he? She was a Red.

  Once she had paid the waiter, Silver left the chai bar, her eyes squinting as they adjusted to the bright light outside. The exotic atmosphere mixed with the sunshine into a heady concoction, pushing away the unease that had stirred in her stomach. As she made her way back down Brick Lane to the air-tram station, she started to think less and less about the strange man and his wink. She was just happy she’d undertaken her assignment without anything going wrong. Perhaps now everything really would be all right. The forensic team hadn’t traced the bullet back to that balcony on Pantheon Square, and she’d completed her first assignment since the parade faultlessly.

  By the time she was back above the city, the midday sun blazing down from the blue mirrored sky, Silver had forgotten about the wink completely.

  6

  At the Beach

  Nestled in a curve of the western path of the river’s Outer Circle, next to the premium fishing farms and meat labs, was the beach. Originally designed as a public park where all could enjoy its artificially warmed sands and enclosed sea created by triple-filtered river-water, the beach had since been bought by a private investor. Now it was open only to those who could afford its annual membership fee. The Council had bought memberships for all the Elites, and it was one of Silver and her friends’ favourite places to go in the city.

  After the hectic atmosphere of Brick Lane, Silver felt a rush of calm overtake her as she stepped out of the lobby into the bay of the beach. It was as if the city had disappeared. Holoscreen-mounted walls ringed the whole enclosure, so that it looked as though the sea went on forever and ever, its deepening blue reaching out to a distant, hazy horizon. Rising behind the sloping stretch of golden sand of the beach were fake cliffs.

  The holoscreens had not been kept well. The Council’s rationing of energy had been stricter over the last few years, and here was the evidence. Black specks dotted the cliffs where the illusion of white clay was meant to be. In several places the image shivered slightly, as though the technology was tired, feeble. Despite this, the illusion of the beach was still irresistible, especially with such a bright, shameless sun blazing in the sky. Its golden light glittered on the water’s surface like wet diamonds.

  Silver kicked off her boots and stepped from the decking. Her feet sunk into the hot sand. Holding her boots in one hand, she walked towards the shoreline where she’d spotted her friends.

  ‘Baby Silver!’ Allum waved at her as she approached.

  Both he and Butterfly were in their swimming shorts, though Butterfly also wore an unbuttoned shirt to hide his wings, which folded almost flat against his back. They leant back on their elbows, faces tilted to catch the sun. Cobe sat a little way from them. He was fully dressed in a tunic and metallic grey trousers.

  ‘Where’s Taiyo?’ asked Silver.

  Allum grinned, shrugging.

  I know that look, she thought, and no sooner had she gone to sit down when she jumped back up, laughing, as Taiyo exploded out of the sand beneath her. Taiyo’s pink bell-bottomed swimsuit made her look like an upturned strawberry ice cream.

  Giggling, the two of them scuffled until Taiyo squirmed out of her grasp. Taiyo ran away, squealing and holding her arms up high in mock terror, and Silver lunged after her, grabbing her round the waist and carrying her towards the sea.

  ‘No, no!’ Taiyo pleaded, her voice bubbling with laughter as she squirmed in Silver’s arms.

  Silver didn’t let her go until they reached the shore, where – Taiyo kicking her legs frantically now – she threw the little girl into the water. Allum roared with laughter as Taiyo jumped out of the sea. Her hair was plastered to her head like soggy seaweed.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Taiyo pouted. ‘You won this time.’ She smiled suddenly and threw herself back into the water. ‘Allum, come teach me swimming now! It’s so warm.’

  Allum flashed a smile as he passed Silver. ‘Nice one.’

  Back on the beach, Silver nodded a hello to Cobe before sitting next to Butterfly. Her eyes slid over his taut, softly muscular chest, the line of hair leading down from hi
s bellybutton. She was so used to him that sometimes it surprised her to see him so grown up. He’s sixteen now, she thought. He might get a girlfriend soon. She felt a twinge of jealousy at the idea. An image of Butterfly leaning across to kiss her jumped into her mind, but he only turned his head to greet her.

  ‘Hey.’ He was squinting against the sun. ‘How was the assignment?’

  Silver smiled. ‘It went really well. How long have you all been here?’

  Butterfly turned onto his front and laid his head on his arms, closing his eyes. ‘Just an hour or so.’ He laughed. ‘You missed Taiyo’s impression of Ember falling into the sea. It was pretty funny.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ She grinned, lying back on the sand.

  The heat of the sun made Silver feel lazy, with the steady sound of the sea lapping the shore, rustling softly across the sand as though whispering secrets to it, and soon she began to doze. They spent the rest of the afternoon drifting in and out of sleep as the sun arced in the azure sky above, Taiyo and Allum’s laughter reaching them from the sea like distant bird calls. The events of the parade felt like a whole lifetime ago. Silver felt safe and happy again, the image of Tanaka’s head bursting open a blurred memory, distant and unreal. There was a nagging thought at the back of her mind that wondered why the forensic team had made an error about the bullet’s trajectory, but she did her best to ignore it. Instead, she tried to feel lucky that they’d made a mistake.

  They stayed at the beach all day until the sun slipped down low in the sky. The air picked up a chill.

  ‘Time to go?’ Butterfly asked. ‘It’s getting cold.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m getting hungry too.’

  He smiled, raising an eyebrow. ‘When are you not?’ He helped her to her feet before buttoning up his shirt.

  ‘I’ll tell the others,’ Silver said.

  Taiyo, Allum and Cobe were all in the sea, sitting in the shallows and talking. Their chests and heads poked above the silvery water, bobbing in the swell and push of the tide; another man-made fabrication by the beach’s engineers. Silver started towards them when a low beeping made her stop. She looked down. The noise was coming from a comms cuff half buried in the sand.