by Natasha Ngan
‘Well, you’ve heard it all now,’ said Butterfly. ‘All we can ask is that you don’t turn us in, and maybe … maybe you can help us.’
Cobe brushed a hand over his shaved head. ‘Help you?’
Butterfly nodded. ‘We have to leave Neo to find Silver’s parents.’
‘But –’
‘Please.’ Butterfly grasped Cobe’s shoulder. ‘We need your help, Cobe. You’ve always been there for me, through everything. And I need you now more than ever.’
Cobe stared back at Butterfly, his cheeks flushing. Silver was convinced he was going to refuse them – she could see the fear in his eyes, the questions on his lips – but then he dropped his head and let out a long sigh, nodding. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll help.’
Butterfly smiled and lowered his hands. ‘Thank you, Cobe.’
‘Thank you.’ Silver said.
Cobe didn’t turn to her. He looked hard at Butterfly. ‘You need a way out of the city?’
‘Yes.’
Cobe licked his lips, hesitating. ‘What do you know about the Limpets?’
Butterfly turned to Silver. She shook her head. She’d never been to the slums of Neo-Babel. Only senior Elites were given assignments there.
‘Ember’s talked about it a little,’ she said. ‘She says it’s awful. Well, “disgusting” was her exact word, but …’
Cobe nodded. ‘It is horrible. But it’s also different from what most people think.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, most people think it’s complete chaos, but …’ Cobe lowered his voice. ‘Much of it is organised too. They’re smart, some of the slum rats. They’ve got businesses down there, social structures. The place operates almost like its own city.’
‘I’ve heard that from Allum,’ said Butterfly. ‘There’s a black market too. Is that what you think could help us?’
Cobe shook his head. ‘There’s something much more than that. The Council don’t like to admit it, but I’ve heard Senior Surrey talking about it, and I once had an assignment to do with it. An exit,’ he breathed. ‘A way out of Neo.’
Silver’s mouth fell open in surprise. ‘An exit?’
‘Just one tunnel out, we think,’ said Cobe. ‘But many entrances, constantly changing so the Council can’t find them.’
She felt numb with amazement. She wasn’t sure how she had thought they were going to leave the city. Silver had always imagined there was some sort of gate you could walk through, but she felt stupid for thinking that now. Why would there be a gate in and out of a city no one ever left, and no one ever entered?
They fell silent. Wind rustled the leaves of the bushes and small trees, and sounds of the city – rickshaws honking, air-trams rushing through the air, tinny strands of music – reached them from a distance. Silver felt removed from it all. She couldn’t believe the city was still out there, carrying on as though nothing had happened, when in one night her whole world had come crashing down.
Butterfly broke the silence. ‘How do we find the exit?’
Cobe shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, it’s not that easy,’ he admitted, ‘or we’d have found it and shut the system down years ago.’
‘But there has to be a way,’ Silver urged.
Cobe looked at her, and she could see something shining in his eyes. Excitement? Hope? She couldn’t place it exactly. But she felt a sudden rush of trust as she looked back into his deep brown eyes.
He nodded. ‘There is. But to get to it, I only have a name – Xiao Mae, Little Mae. That’s all we know. It seems she’s the contact, but we’ve never been able to find her.’
‘How do you know this Little Mae can deliver?’ asked Silver.
Cobe paused, glancing away. ‘I know she’s done it before.’
Before she could ask how, Butterfly spoke. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Cobe.’
Cobe focused down at his feet. ‘You’re my junior. I’ve got to look out for you.’ He looked up, his face hardening. ‘I just wish I could do more to make sure you get out safely,’ he added darkly. ‘It’s not going to be easy, and if the Council find out what you’re doing, you’re both as good as dead.’
There was no right moment, no perfect time to leave the city, Silver knew that. Though she wished there was. It would have been so much easier if there had been some sign from the gods to tell her, Yes, now is the time – go. But the gods were silent, and in the end she and Butterfly just had to gather up the courage to pick a day and leave. They decided the coming Saturday would be their best chance, just over a week after Silver’s parents’ disappearance. Every Council member would be at Tanaka’s funeral. Once they realised two Elites were missing Silver and Butterfly would already have a few hours’ head start.
Those last few days before leaving were tense. Saturday crept up so slowly Silver had to keep checking her comms cuff to make sure time hadn’t actually stopped, and she felt a building sense of dread at the thought of leaving the city. But when she noticed it rising, she forced her fear down. She was an Elite. She could do this. And thinking about her parents in the Outside would give her a surge of courage, of determination, and then suddenly Saturday couldn’t come soon enough.
‘When you progress to senior Elite status in three years, you’ll be issued with an N70 pistol, just like this one. I’d like to see how comfortable you are with it.’
Every two weeks on a Friday afternoon, Silver had training at the indoor shooting range at Central Police Command, a building on the northern edge of the Council District. Usually, her lessons were taken by one of the policemen’s own training officers, but today when she stepped into the range’s entrance hall it was Senior Surrey who greeted her, a gun held in his outstretched hand.
Silver took it. ‘Where’s the training officer, sir?’
‘I thought I’d oversee your training today,’ he replied, smoothing down the black tunic he was wearing. His dark eyes were as unreadable as always. He gestured at the plastiglass panel to the range beyond. ‘Shall we?’
They put on their earplugs and went into the hall, walking to a booth at the far side. Senior Surrey pulled the door shut behind them. The noise of guns firing from the other booths was loud in the small space, even with earplugs in, the air filled with the metallic clink of spent cases hitting the floor. Silver waited for instructions on how to proceed, but Senior Surrey just sat down on the bench lining one side of the booth and looked expectantly at her, a thin smile hovering on his lips.
‘I’ll just get started, then!’ she shouted.
She took position at the firing line, propping her arm on the top of the barrier. Lowering her head, she looked down the barrel through the sight. The standard range target – a life-size cut-out of a human silhouette – was set halfway down the lane. Silver aimed at its head, knowing with absolute certainty she’d hit it. Even though she’d only been training for four months, she had exceptional aim. Every officer who oversaw her training said so. It was the one time when she truly felt she belonged with the Elites.
Silver took a deep breath before exhaling slowly. Then –
Bang!
She jumped, the gunshot loud in her ear. She spun round to see Senior Surrey standing beside her, his arm extended, smoke curling from the barrel of his gun.
‘Practising with a support leads to laziness,’ he shouted over the noise of the hall. ‘Try again. Standing upright this time, no support.’
Silver turned back to the target, raising her arm, which was shaking slightly. She felt on edge all of a sudden, her heart sent thudding by the sound of a gunshot so close to her. Memories of the assassin at the parade rushed back.
No, she thought, forcing herself to keep calm. You can’t let Senior Surrey see you panic. And she pulled the trigger, hitting the target right in the forehead, the gun only kicking back in her hands for a fraction of a second.
Senior Surrey nodded. ‘Not bad.’ He touched the control panel in the wall of the booth, running his finger along an electroni
c dial. In response, the target in the lane slid back a metre. ‘Now try.’
This time, Silver’s arm was steady. The bullet punched the target square in the forehead again. Before the empty shell even hit the floor, Senior Surrey moved the target back another metre.
‘Again.’
It went on like this for half an hour. When the target had reached its furthest point near the receiving wall and Silver’s aim was still perfect, Senior Surrey made the target move, zigzagging up the lane as she shot. Then he got her to shoot while he held her left arm behind her back.
‘Whatever the situation,’ he shouted, his mouth close to her ear, ‘you have to be able to keep your focus. Tell me, Silver – when you shoot, what do you think about?’
Tanaka’s face came to her mind in an instant, his head bursting into a dense red mist.
‘Nothing,’ she lied.
Senior Surrey reached for the control panel, touching in more instructions. A moment later, the lane fell into darkness, strobe lights flashing on, dancing down the lane in a dizzying array of colours. Senior Surrey pressed closer to Silver, twisting her arm so hard she bit back a cry.
‘When aiming to kill, you need to move with accuracy, with purpose. With a clear, hard objective. You hold it in your mind until you are thinking of nothing else. It will give you focus. It will keep your arm steady. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you have an objective in mind now?’
Silver thought of her parents’ laughter, of how she’d felt that day on the beach when she’d heard Miss Apell’s message that they’d been abducted. She thought of how she’d do anything to get them back.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Then shoot,’ growled Senior Surrey.
And even with her left arm twisted painfully behind her back and the target zigzagging down the lane, only visible in quick snatches when the strobe lights flashed on, Silver’s bullet found its mark right in the centre of the target’s forehead.
10
The Limpets
Silver slipped out of her bedpod at six thirty the next morning. She was fully dressed, having prepared for leaving the previous night, and had barely slept, counting down the minutes until she and Butterfly were to meet. As she crept across the room to the door, she heard a voice from Ember’s bedpod. Hesitating, she tiptoed over.
Ember was crying softly in her sleep. ‘Please, Quoma! Please, no!’
Silver didn’t dare to breathe. She had heard Ember saying things like this before in her sleep, in a voice Ember would never have used when she was awake. Silver didn’t know who Quoma was, or what he could have done to give someone like Ember such terrible nightmares. She waited to hear more, but Ember had fallen silent. Shaking off a momentary rush of pity for Ember, and wondering whether she’d ever see her again, Silver crossed the room and headed out of the door.
The Stacks were respectfully quiet that morning, the preparations for Tanaka’s funeral just beginning. Silver left the building and headed down Noda Parkway towards Achebe Bridge Station. She climbed up the steps to the platform and saw Butterfly waiting for her, two backpacks at his feet. He wore a white top, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and slim blue trousers. He had on the boots from his Elite uniform, but to an untrained eye they looked just like any black worker’s boots. Silver was also dressed in plain clothes to avoid raising suspicions in the Limpets. A grey jumper hung loosely off her small frame, and dark green trousers were tucked into her boots.
‘This is it, then,’ she said as she joined Butterfly.
‘This is it.’ He handed her one of the backpacks and swung the other onto his shoulder, glancing round at the station guard to make sure they were out of earshot. ‘Ready?’
Silver nodded, pulling her backpack on. ‘I am. But it’s not too late to change your mind.’ She touched his arm, hesitating. ‘You don’t have to come with me. You can go back now, and no one will ever know.’
‘You’re my family, Silver,’ said Butterfly. ‘I’m coming with you. Besides, what’s here for me? Years on end working for the Council, assignment after assignment, following orders?’ He glanced away, his eyes focusing on the buildings of the Council District behind them. ‘After the explosion, this place stopped feeling like my home.’
‘But it is,’ she said, watching his face carefully. ‘And once we leave, we might not be able to ever come back.’
Butterfly smiled tightly. ‘I know that.’
As they waited at the station platform for the air-tram, Silver looked out over the Council District. She could just make out the Stacks in the distance, morning sunlight glancing off its polished black exterior. City flags that had been put up for the parade still hung from some of the windows, unmoving in the still air. Usually she would have smiled at this view, but today all she felt was a sickening sense of unease. Over the last few weeks, her feelings towards the Council District – and the Council itself – had begun to change, lurking inside her veins like a poison. Now she looked at the Council District and saw not only the place that had been her home for nearly all her life, but also memories she’d rather forget. Tanaka’s head bursting into red, Ember’s sneering face in the darkness of the storeroom, Surrey’s threats about looking up their birthchip records. So much of her life in this place had gone sour.
Silver turned away from the Council District. She didn’t look back as the air-tram arrived and they boarded an empty carriage, nor as it slid away from the station, rising up to meet the taller buildings of the inner city. She didn’t look back even once.
After forty minutes of travelling, the city began to fall away around them, first exposing the grubby graphene solar sheets covering the roofs of buildings, and then leaving empty sky, punctured only by the stilts of the air-tram supports and the shaggy circular silhouettes of the derelict skylungs, long destitute and now wreathed with moss. As the air-tram approached the eastern reach of the river’s Outer Circle, it started its descent. Silver could make out the faces of factory workers sitting by the riverside, smoking shishas and eating snacks. Their faces and clothes were grubby with dirt. None of them glanced up at the air-tram descending above their heads. She was glad. She didn’t want them to see her looking down from the pristine first-class carriage.
Silver and Butterfly finally left the air-tram at Industrial District East Station, a dilapidated platform just past the river. They chose one of the unlicensed rickshaws waiting outside the station and climbed into its passenger bench. It took them down shadowy roads between squat factory buildings, all the while heading towards an enormous mass ahead of them protruding from the city walls; the Limpets. The slums were tiered, with five or four levels stacked upon each other. Sheets of tarpaulin and rain-stained canvas were strung over its bulk, rusty pieces of corrugated iron in place of walls.
Silver felt a thrill of excitement as the rickshaw pulled up to a wide hole in the Limpets’ side. This would be her first time inside the slums. Even though she’d rather they didn’t have reason to be making this trip, she was still eager to see what the place was like. After paying the driver, they headed into the shadowy opening. In the dim light, they couldn’t see very far, but further in there were clusters of lights strung across the ceiling, melting away the darkness, and as they turned a corner, Silver let out a gasp.
They stood at the edge of an enormous cavern. Like the central hallway of the Stacks, the main chamber of the Limpets was criss-crossed all over with walkways; plaited ropes and wooden bridges, pathways made entirely from metal sheets stapled together. From many of the larger bridges hung hammocks and strings of clothing, and even what looked like little shacks, ladders running from their porches up to the walkways above. The cavern went five storeys into the ground. Ringing it above were the different floors that Silver had seen from the outside, though here their ledges hung open to the chamber, as though a huge piece had been scooped out of a giant wedding cake.
The whole place was alive with activity. People scurried across wa
lkways. Groups shouted orders to each other. Small children with no shoes shimmied down the ropes and ladders and precariously balanced staircases that led from floor to floor. Pungent odours mixed with the stink of excrement, and the acrid taste of smoke bit the back of Silver’s throat.
‘We should start looking for Little Mae,’ Butterfly said. ‘Tanaka’s funeral is about to begin. We’ve only got a couple of hours before they realise we’re missing.’
Silver threw open her arms. ‘But look at this. Little Mae could be anywhere!’
‘Exactly. So we’d better start asking around now.’
But asking around proved of little use. Over two hours later, they were deep in the Limpets, no closer to finding Little Mae than they’d been when they arrived. Silver was not just frustrated at that; the atmosphere of the Limpets was getting to her too. People shouted and spat at her and Butterfly when they tried to approach them, and she felt as though she were being buried alive in a sea of grime and poverty. Even in their plain clothes, Silver and Butterfly were by far the most well-dressed. Their healthy bodies stood out like new buds in a field of dying flowers.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Silver moaned as they came to another dead end. ‘We’ve asked and asked and asked –’
‘And we’ll ask some more,’ said Butterfly calmly. ‘Let’s go back and try another floor.’
They’d just turned round when they heard raised voices echoing down a narrow alley to their left, the dull thuds of flesh being kicked.
Silver glanced at Butterfly. She saw the flash of concern across his face. ‘It’s not our problem,’ she said, but he ignored her, heading down the alley. Reluctantly, she followed. The corridor opened onto a ledge overlooking the Limpets’ huge main cavern. Silver was disorientated for a second; she hadn’t realised they were so close to where they had started their search. Then she saw Butterfly had followed the sound of the shouting voices to a small ledge to the right that perched over the edge of the floor. She inched her way across the ledge and was almost bowled back by three young boys. They ran past her, just a blur of tatty clothes and grimy faces, cursing as they disappeared into the alley. Suppressing a curse herself, Silver regained her balance and started back along the ledge.
