by Natasha Ngan
‘Someone’s got an assignment,’ Butterfly said, picking it up. He turned it over in his hand. ‘It’s Allum’s. I’ll bring it to him.’ But he must have accidentally touched its screen, for the next moment Miss Apell’s voice sounded.
‘Good, Allum. I’m glad I’ve got you.’ She spoke so quickly they didn’t have a chance to tell her it wasn’t Allum. ‘I need you to secure the scene of what appears to be an abduction. Do not tell anyone about this – I’ll only be sending you and Ember. You’ll see why later. The police are already there. Senior Surrey will be joining you once he’s finished with a meeting here.’
‘This isn’t –’ Butterfly started as soon as Miss Apell stopped for breath, but she cut him off.
‘Just get there right away. The address is Flat Seven, Lucky Dragon Condominium, Zhangdong Street. You might recognise it.’ There was a beep as she hung up.
Silver felt sick. She stared at Butterfly in horror, her heart racing in her chest, her throat going dry.
You might recognise it, Miss Apell had said, and it was true. Silver did recognise the address –
It was her parents’ apartment.
7
The Message Under the Moneyplant
It had grown dark by the time Silver and Butterfly arrived at Zhangdong Street. White moonlight shivered on the surface of the ornamental fish pond outside Lucky Dragon Condominium, the red and orange scales of the koi inside brilliant in the inky blue light. Past the gardens, the tall building stood silent. Only shadows moving behind latticed windows revealed anyone was home.
‘What if they are gone?’ Silver whispered as she and Butterfly passed through the gate into the condominium grounds.
She hadn’t spoken for the whole journey. After hearing the message from Miss Apell, she had pulled on her boots and ran across the beach towards the lobby, stumbling as the sand shifted beneath her feet. Behind her, she was dimly aware of Butterfly’s voice, but it sounded distant, as though the air was thick, as though she was in a dream and he was reaching through it, trying to wake her. He’d caught up with Silver in the lobby, where she had been forced to slow to show her membership card to the reception staff in order to leave.
‘I’m going to my parents’ apartment,’ she had said. ‘I don’t care what Miss Apell says. I’m going there.’
‘I know,’ Butterfly had said. ‘Come on, let’s go before the others realise we’re gone.’
Now, standing in the quiet condominium grounds, Silver’s voice shook. ‘What if … what if they’re …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
Butterfly took her hand. ‘Don’t.’
They walked quickly through the gardens. In the deepening blue light of dusk, every tree and bush seemed to move, and the darkness that pooled across the ground was as thick and dark as blood. Nearing the open condominium foyer, they saw a policeman standing on the entrance steps.
Butterfly stopped. ‘They’ll be expecting Allum and Ember.’
‘Do you think Allum would’ve found the message about the assignment by now?’ Silver asked. She felt guilty at the thought of getting Allum in trouble, but right now she was too anxious over what had happened to her parents to worry about him.
Butterfly nodded. ‘Probably. Let’s tell the police for now that Allum sent us as he’s been held up. Our birthchips should see us through.’
They approached the policeman. Like all of Neo-Babel’s police force, he wore a mask stretched across his face like a pearly black shell. The masks protected the identity of the policemen, just as the identity of the Elites was a secret to protect them from attacks by anti-birthchip groups. Still, Silver had always found them unnerving. The policeman moved down the steps to meet them. Yellowy light from the lanterns hanging above the foyer entrance slid across the surface of his mask like wet flames.
‘There has been an incident in the condiminium,’ he began, his voice slightly muffled by the mask. ‘Only authorised personnel are being admitted –’
‘That’s us,’ Butterfly interrupted confidently. ‘We’ve been sent by our Elite seniors. They’re currently busy with assignments. We’re to secure the crime scene until they arrive.’
The policeman hesitated. Before he could say anything, Butterfly turned, brushing away the hair at the back of his neck to expose the skin beneath which his birthchip was buried. Silver was worried the policeman would want more of an explanation, but he just pulled out the scanner from the holster at his hip. Once he’d scanned both their birthchips, nodding in approval, they made their way towards the stairs at the end of the foyer.
Silver’s parents’ apartment was on the third floor. Police were stationed outside it too. Butterfly told them the same story, and after another scan of their birthchips, he and Silver were given the basic details about what had happened. Neighbours had reported suspicious noises coming from the apartment, and one had seen three people leaving through the living-room window.
‘But aren’t you here to secure the location?’ asked one of the policemen.
‘Yes,’ said Butterfly. ‘Just covering the basics.’
Silver had gone pale at the policeman’s account. She walked as if in a dream towards the apartment. The policeman beside the front door handed her and Butterfly a torch each.
Silver hovered in the doorway, looking into the apartment with a growing sense of unease. There was a hush in the air that set her teeth on edge. The flat was strange in the dark. It did not feel like the place she had visited all her life, filled with her parents’ laughter and the awful screeching music of Chinese opera and the sweet, smoky smell of jasmine tea brewing.
‘Come on,’ Butterfly whispered, stepping inside.
The white light from their torches sliced through the darkness and chaos of the apartment. The furniture had been upturned, trashed, her parents’ things strewn everywhere as though some huge tide had swept through it all. Glass crunched underfoot as they moved. The windows were broken, and moonlight slid into the room, stark and white, catching on objects and lighting them with silvery flickers.
‘They’re gone,’ Silver breathed, confirming what she’d feared ever since hearing Miss Apell’s voice on the beach. With this realisation came the stirrings of despair, but she pushed it down. Not yet, she thought. Not yet.
‘We don’t know what happened,’ Butterfly said. ‘They could be fine …’ He trailed off as she pushed past him.
Out of the window, Silver had caught sight of Ember and Allum running across the gardens towards the condominium. In a few minutes they would be in the apartment, and she and Butterfly would be thrown out. There was something she had to do before that happened.
She picked her way across the living room and into her parents’ quarters. On the far side she slid back the pretty, hand-carved shutters that hid the balcony. She searched its floor with her torch. For a moment, Silver thought that it too was destroyed along with the rest of the apartment, and she felt a twist of panic at the thought. Then her torchlight fell across what she’d been looking for and she sighed in relief. The money tree sat untouched at the end of the balcony.
‘What are you doing?’ Butterfly’s voice came from behind her as he entered the room. He moved closer. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
Silver ignored him. She gripped the leathery trunk of the tree and pulled it out of its pot, roots and soil and all. There, at the bottom of the pot, just as she had hoped, was a slip of paper. She picked it out and replaced the plant.
At the same time, voices reached them from outside; Allum and Ember would be here any second.
‘My parents always told me that if anything happened to them, they’d try and leave me a message,’ Silver explained, turning to Butterfly. ‘Underneath Dad’s money tree.’ Then, in a breathless voice full of wonder, ‘Look.’
She held out the piece of paper. It was folded in half, and on the top side someone had written in a messy scrawl:
My mei li
‘My mei li?’ asked Butterfly.
‘It means “my beautiful”. It’s what Dad calls me sometimes.’
Fingers trembling, Silver unfolded the piece of paper. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but what was written there was more surprising than what she could possibly have imagined. Inside, were just two words:
Come Outside
Her heart slammed into her chest. Her stomach squeezed, and she had to reach out a hand to grab the balcony ledge to steady herself. She stared at the note, but no matter how hard she looked, those two little words didn’t change.
Come Outside.
It could only mean one thing. The phrasing, the capital ‘o’; any Neo-Babel citizen would read the note and know what it meant.
Leave the city –
Leave Neo-Babel.
Silver looked up. Butterfly was staring at her, the same mix of fear and confusion and wonder shining in his eyes. Then she was stuffing the note into the top of her leggings as Ember and a policeman burst into the room, shouting words Silver barely registered, and as they dragged her and Butterfly out of the apartment she felt the note pressing against her skin where she’d hidden it, burning, and beating almost like a heart.
8
A Secret Overheard
‘Thank you, Ember. I’ll take it from here.’
Ember paused, her mouth half open with more angry, hissed words about how Silver and Butterfly were going to pay for their complete disregard for orders when Senior Surrey emerged at the top of the stairs.
Silver’s stomach knotted at the sight of him. The black office cape swirled round his body in the crisp night air like dark smoke. His eyes slid over her and Butterfly, who were sitting on the floor outside Silver’s parents’ apartment, their backs to the wall.
Ember straightened. ‘As you wish.’ She turned to Allum, who had been watching the events in silence. ‘Come on.’
Allum gave Silver a sympathetic look as he left. She tried to smile in response, but failed.
Senior Surrey crouched down in front of them. ‘Hello, Silver, Butterfly. It seems the two of you have already been reprimanded by Ember. I will spare you the humiliation of another lecture. But know this. You have failed to follow orders from your superiors. I will not accept either of you doing so again.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Butterfly nodded.
‘Can you promise me the same, Silver?’
She looked back at Senior Surrey as he turned to her. She’d expected him to be as angry as Ember at discovering two of his junior Elites had acted outside direct orders, but this bland impassiveness was somehow worse. Her parents had been abducted. Yes, her and Butterfly had lied to get access to the apartment. But could he really blame her for wanting to know what had happened to her parents? She felt a jolt of anger that Senior Surrey had offered no sympathy at all.
‘Yes, sir,’ she answered dully.
He nodded. ‘Good.’ He leant closer and dropped his voice to a low growl, so the policemen standing nearby couldn’t hear his next words. ‘Or I’m afraid there will be serious consequences. As you know, it is illegal to look at any Neo-Babel citizen’s birthchip records unless they are suspected of criminal activity. But perhaps I should make an exception for you two. I wonder what I might find, where you might have been.’ He focused on Silver, his eyes dark as stones. ‘The day of the parade, for instance.’
Silver couldn’t help it. She let out a small gasp. The awful events of that day up on Hemmingway House resurfaced in her mind; a weather-beaten face, stubble, the flash of metal as a gun was raised. Senior Surrey knows, she thought, staring into his cold eyes. He knows.
‘Well,’ Senior Surrey said after a long pause, straightening. ‘There is a rickshaw waiting to take you back to the Ebora Building. You will resume your normal duties tomorrow.’ And without waiting for a reply, he strode off into the apartment, his cape billowing behind him like a second shadow.
As soon as they were back at the Stacks, Silver and Butterfly took a lift up to the roof garden. There was an unspoken agreement between them that this garden was where they could talk. Not the rickshaw on their way back from Silver’s parents’ apartment, nor Butterfly’s bedroom, where Cobe might be waiting. Although all Council members were permitted to visit the rooftop garden, senior staff preferred their private ornamental pleasure gardens in the east wing, and most of the other members and staff did not reside in the Stacks, so at night the roof garden was almost always deserted.
When they reached the roof, they found the garden empty, just as they’d hoped. The leaves of the trees and cropped bushes rustled in the wind that lifted off the top of the building. Silver started down a path, heading to a corner of the garden where a daybed was half hidden under a rose-covered archway. They climbed onto its mattress under the privacy of the low, rosebush ceiling, the sweet smell of the flowers pungent in the air. One side of the daybed had a brilliant view of the Council District. Silver usually loved looking out at it. It was so different from the rest of the city, with its wide, straight boulevards and elegant sparseness. Tonight, however, it just looked flat and empty. Moonlight slid across the lacquered concrete streets like black ice. Silver turned her back on the view and sat facing out towards the garden, hugging her knees to her chin.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ said Butterfly gently after a minute’s silence.
‘I do.’
He turned to look at Silver, brushing his hair back from his face so his blue eyes flashed in the darkness. ‘You do?’
She nodded, tears springing to her eyes. An image of her father’s note came to her; Come Outside. The truth was she’d known what she was going to have to do ever since reading those two words back in her parents’ apartment. Those two words were a cry for help from her parents. She couldn’t ignore them.
Butterfly’s eyes widened as he realised what she meant. ‘Oh,’ he breathed. ‘You want to leave Neo. Look for them in the Outside.’ He moved closer to Silver on the daybed. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I can’t find a note like that from my parents and not do anything about it. They wouldn’t say something like that unless they really needed me. They have to be outside the city.’ Her hand found Butterfly’s on top of the mattress. ‘I need to go, but you don’t have to.’
He shook his head. ‘Of course I’m coming.’ He said it fiercely, and Silver felt a rush of relief and guilt at the same time.
She wiped her face, nodding. ‘Do you think Senior Surrey meant what he said?’ she asked. ‘That if we went against orders again he’d look up our records?’
‘Yes.’
Silver began to shiver. Suddenly, the magnitude of leaving the city hit her at full force. She felt the weight of the consequences of doing such a thing pressing down on her, solid and impossibly heavy. Her tears flowed faster.
‘They won’t let us back in!’ she cried, clutching her hands to her chest. ‘If the Council see my birthchip records, they’ll know I was there when the assassin shot Tanaka. You heard Senior Surrey – he suspects me! Maybe Ember told him her suspicions about me working for an anti-birthchip group. And even if my parents can explain what happened and that I was only leaving the city to save them, I might be locked away for killing Tanaka –’
Butterfly took her hands, squeezing them tightly. ‘Silver, calm down! Look. You’ve got to decide. Is finding your parents the most important thing to you? Forget about everything else for a while. Just think about your parents. Do you want to find them?’
She nodded.
‘Then you can go find out what happened for yourself,’ he continued, ‘or you can ignore what you found in the letter and let the police figure deal with it.’
Silver shook her head. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said, her voice thick with tears. ‘I have to go. The Council won’t do anything about it if they think my parents have left Neo, and they won’t let us go. We have to leave without them knowing. Without anyone knowing. I know it’s wrong, but I just can’t stay here knowing that my parents might be …’
&n
bsp; She jumped up, terrified at finishing the sentence. Her hair tangled in the thorns of the rosebush overhead, and she cursed, tugging it free. A wild feeling had come over her, and suddenly she couldn’t just sit here talking about her parents when they had been abducted and taken to the Outside, and gods knew what else.
Butterfly stood up and tried to pull Silver into a hug, but she struggled away.
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I let the assassin shoot Tanaka! I let my parents get abducted! What kind of an Elite am I?’
Sobbing, she turned to run, and crashed straight into someone who’d been hiding in the darkness of the line of bushes beside the daybed. They both fell to the ground. The other person cried out as their head smacked against the floor. Silver scrambled to her feet. She saw that the person was a boy, and he was kneeling now, his head bowed between his legs.
A white, shaven head, bright in the moonlight.
‘Cobe,’ she breathed.
9
Aiming to Kill
‘How long have you been there?’ Butterfly’s voice was low as he helped Cobe up.
A drizzle of blood snaked down Cobe’s right cheek from where he had hit his head on the ground. His dark eyes shifted nervously. ‘Long enough,’ he said.
Silver felt her stomach drop.
Cobe held up his hands. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to listen in on your conversation. Taiyo told me what happened to Silver’s parents, and when you didn’t come back to our bedroom, I guessed you’d be up here. But then I heard shouting and …’
Silver eyed him carefully. She liked Cobe, but there was a part of her that was wary of him. He’d always been slightly distant with her, and she could never tell what he was thinking. Could they trust him?
