Special

by Georgia Blain

  ‘This wasn’t meant to happen.’ Her voice was frail. She glanced up at the roof of the autocarrier, breathing in deeply before she looked at us again.

  I could feel the weight of Wren’s lifeless body. Only the shakes and shudders of air pockets seemed to give her movement, shifting her slightly as we sped onwards.

  Sobbing, Lark knelt down next to Wren and wrapped her arms around her. ‘What happened?’

  Miss Margaret shook her head and said she didn’t know. ‘It must have been the blow to her head. It was an accident. You were all meant to be safe. I don’t know how this happened,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Wren’s hair was flat against her face, her skin pale and slightly spotty, a rare feature among Halston girls. Only two nights earlier she’d told me that this worried her, that she shouldn’t be like that. She used a cream Miss Margaret had given her, not wanting to look at the blemished line of her jaw as she rubbed it in carefully.

  I hadn’t had a lot to do with Wren in the past year. She was either with Laura or on the athletics field. They’d been trying to tap into her leadership potential with sport – an activity she’d always enjoyed, getting her to captain various teams that played for Halston. I’d heard whispers that she was never quite good enough; she was up against girls who were always that little bit better than her, and although she didn’t talk about it, she would have known.

  This was the difference with being a Lotto Girl. We had no fallback, no parents with prestigious jobs, no comfortable place to live, very little chance of marrying well. If we failed, our only hope was that a middle-ranking family may want us for their son. Unable to afford the premium genetic services for breeding, they would at least know that our make-up had the potential to deliver promising results.

  At dances, Wren spent all her time flirting with the boys from the visiting school. I would see her talking with too much animation, touching them on the arm, laughing eagerly at their jokes, pulling them out onto the dance floor. And they liked her – I could see that too. She was fun, even if it was a little tightly tuned. There were rumours that she’d slept with several of them. She was desperate, some of the girls said. Did she really think any of them would marry her?

  If Wren knew she was the subject of gossip, she never let on.

  ‘Should we say something?’ Lark asked me one day. ‘Tell her what they’re saying?’ She’d hated how they treated her. So did I. Just as Ivy’s failure had tainted us, so too did Wren’s attempts to find a way out. Yet, even though her desperation made me uncomfortable, she was one of us.

  We didn’t talk to her in the end. As I said, we saw so little of her then – and what could we say? She would only have accused us of being jealous.

  ‘Do I keep her on my lap?’ I asked Miss Margaret, knowing how stupid my question was. What else would I do with her? Let her slide to the floor? ‘I can’t,’ I suddenly said, crying then. Wren was dead.

  Lark, too, was sobbing.

  Miss Margaret drew Wren closer so that her full weight was resting on her.

  ‘Where are they taking us?’ My voice was shrill. ‘What will they do when they know we have nothing? What will become of us?’ I don’t think I had ever known such immediate terror.

  Miss Margaret sat up as the autocarrier came to a halt.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’ I asked. There was nothing.

  ‘Listen to me.’

  I looked at Miss Margaret, fully aware now of how different she seemed. The softness I’d always known was somehow sharpened.

  She shifted Wren’s body to rest on the seat. She took each of our hands in her own, and when Lark would not return her gaze, she lifted her chin so that their eyes met. ‘You must not panic. It’s all right. This is not what you think it is.’

  As the doors of the autocarrier opened, Miss Margaret stepped out first, her voice clear and direct as she told us to follow her, Wren’s body would be taken care of, we were to come with her, quickly.

  Miss Margaret led us to a room, her arms around each of us, her words comforting as she ushered us in. ‘This is a safe place,’ she said. ‘I promise you there is a reason for all this.’

  Our room was not as large as the one we shared at Halston, nor was it as comfortable. We had a bed each, and on top was a set of clothes. Miss Margaret instructed us to change.

  Surprisingly, it was Lark who resisted. She shouted and screamed, her fists pummelling Miss Margaret, and said she wanted to be let out, she would not be a prisoner, she would not.

  No one came.

  Miss Margaret waited until Lark’s rage had subsided and then she calmed her as she had done with each of us for as long as we could remember. At the right moment, she held Lark and then she extended her other arm to include me in the embrace. ‘Have I ever hurt you?’ she asked.

  Sniffing loudly, Lark shook her head.

  ‘Would I ever hurt you?’

  ‘No,’ Lark said eventually.

  Neither of us could imagine Miss Margaret doing us harm. And yet Wren was dead and we were being held in a place we didn’t know – all seemingly part of a plan to which she was privy.

  ‘You are here because we needed to remove you from danger,’ she said, her voice gentle, soothing. ‘You are safe. I promise you that. I need to attend to poor Wren, but I will be back.’

  Slowly disengaging herself, she turned to the door, swiping it open with what looked to be a mobie, but was not her Halston one.

  I felt around in my pocket, tapping down my side anxiously. My mobie was there. I took it out, trying to open my datastream. The screen was blank. ‘It doesn’t work,’ I said, more to myself than to Lark, panic in my voice.

  We waited nervously. Our silence would build and then one of us would talk, firing questions at the other.

  ‘Why has she done this?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe she’s telling the truth – she’s trying to protect us from something?’ Lark looked at me for affirmation.

  ‘If they were going to wipe and dump us they would have done it by now.’ As I uttered the words I ignored the blank screen on my mobie. They had wiped us. It was either that or we were in a closed data network that operated as part of the sieves, a network that we couldn’t access. But it didn’t make sense. None of it did. ‘There’s no reason why anyone would want to harm us. We’re just normal girls,’ I added. It was the first time I’d thought of myself in that way, let alone used that word to describe myself.

  Lark began to pace then and I told her to still. She ignored me.

  ‘Miss Margaret will be back,’ I said. ‘She’ll explain everything.’

  I could hear noise faintly, the sound of children ebbing and flowing. We had no windows, so I couldn’t see the passing of day or night, but the sounds that drifted past indicated a certain rhythm in the passage of hours.

  There was something ordinary about it, and I clung to that in the way I clung to Miss Margaret’s assurances.

  I don’t remember sleeping that night. I was on alert and so was Lark, both of us sitting up in our beds at the slightest noise, our eyes glistening in the dark as we looked at each other, the fear in the room a sharp smell.

  I must have dozed off because I woke to Miss Margaret returning with a trolley carrying breakfast for each of us. I sat up rapidly, Lark also awake next to me.

  Was it poisoned? I shook my head. There were far simpler ways to get rid of us. I began to eat hungrily.

  ‘Good,’ Miss Margaret said. ‘You need to eat.’

  I didn’t want to look at her, not at first, but then I glanced over. She seemed the same, but she couldn’t be, not if she’d brought us here.

  She was sitting in the corner of our room. The door was open. I could see a corridor outside and, coming off it, other rooms. There were people too – the voices we had heard before. Perhaps this was her way of letting us know we weren’t being held prisoner. But the reality was, we couldn’t leave. We didn’t know where we were. We had no data access.

  Miss Margaret
apologised for leaving us on our own for so long. ‘It was Wren,’ she said. ‘We had to make sure she was completely wiped. And we wanted to cremate her.’

  I blanched when I heard her say that. Wren’s death was too starkly pinned down by those words.

  ‘She shouldn’t have died,’ Miss Margaret continued. ‘It was a terrible error. The whole point was to keep the three of you safe.’

  ‘Why were we in danger?’ Lark asked.

  Miss Margaret looked at both of us. ‘There’s a lot I need to explain.’

  ‘Who are you and why are we here?’ This was all I wanted to know.

  ‘I’m the person you have always known,’ she said. ‘You were brought here because you were in danger at Halston.’ She took each of our plates. ‘You both look exhausted. Have a shower and freshen up, then we’ll talk.’

  Rani hadn’t been quite right. Miss Margaret was one of the first free designs, a precursor to the Lotto Girls. She told us this that morning.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’d like to have been able to talk to you before we left but I couldn’t risk it. We had to get you out of Halston. We wanted it to look like a hijacking. We didn’t think anyone would be hurt.’ She breathed in, and I wondered whether she was about to cry.

  Lark began to sob.

  Miss Margaret stroked her hair. ‘I can only tell you how sorry I am about Wren.’ Her hands dropped to her lap. ‘It is devastating.’ She paused before turning to me. ‘Where do I begin? With myself, I suppose.’

  She had taken us to a sitting room somewhere in the compound, walking us down corridors, past people who smiled at her, who greeted her, who seemed to know her. I had never contemplated her having a life outside of Halston.

  ‘As I said, I am Miss Margaret, your carer. That is the person you’ve always known and I am still her, but I am also someone else.’ She waved her arm around the room. ‘I am part of this as well.’

  ‘Why have you brought us here? Why were we in danger?’ I leant forward, insistent in my questioning.

  She was about to hush me and then she stopped. ‘The short answer is that BioPerfect wanted to bring you in, to test you. The long answer is much more complicated.’

  I opened my mouth to protest, to tell her that we would be fine in any testing, but the doubt that always niggled silenced me.

  ‘Do you remember when Rani told you I was one of the first Lotto Girls?’ Miss Margaret said.

  I nodded.

  Her gaze was direct. ‘She was right and she wasn’t right. I wasn’t a Lotto Girl as such, but I was created for free. She was also about to tell you something else before she saw me.’

  I remembered.

  ‘She was going to tell you that I’m infertile. You see, I was part of an early phase of BioPerfect experimentation. They had an idea to create a carer who would look after upcoming generations of designed girls, one who would not be distracted by their own … interests. I was to be part of the promise to provide the very best care, to ensure that each girl would reach her full potential.’

  There was no bitterness in her voice, but she shook her head as she spoke.

  ‘BioPerfect paid surrogates to carry us. I didn’t know who my parents were,’ she said. ‘I was brought up in a BioPerfect nursery, I went to a BioPerfect school and then I completed my training to become a housemother. This was what I was designed to do.’

  It was not a menial job, she was quick to add. The expectations were high. She was designed to be kind, compassionate, a clear communicator, able to learn readily, a teacher, more selfless than most. She looked up at us then, her smile a little too bright as she continued.

  ‘I was also created to be hardy, able to withstand the many illnesses that come as children build their immunity. I’m neither too fat nor too thin – a comforting body, I’m told. And my smell is supposedly like baked bread.’ She laughed. ‘Although I find that last one somewhat ridiculous. Marketing puff, no doubt.

  ‘When I was young I didn’t question any of this. I was like you. I just thought I was lucky – very lucky – and I had no notion of there being anything wrong with what they did.

  ‘Now I think differently.’ Her mobie was vibrating on the seat next to her. ‘I needed to get you away to a place where they couldn’t reach you. That’s why you are here.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  She ignored my question. ‘Speaking of bread, they’re making lunch. I can smell the baking.’ She checked the time. ‘Are you still hungry?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Regardless, you need more meds to cope with the environment change. Why don’t I take you to the kitchen to get a drink?’

  We followed her down the hall towards a large room at the end of the corridor. She left us at the open door, telling us to go in, she’d return. Lark and I knocked nervously before entering.

  ‘Help yourself,’ a young man by the ovens told us. He pointed at the PureAqua, his smile welcoming. ‘We haven’t met.’ He wiped his palms on his apron.

  Lark told him we’d only just arrived.

  ‘You’re Margaret’s friends?’

  I wondered who he looked like. There was a familiarity to his face that I found unsettling.

  ‘I’m Hamish,’ he said. His eyes met mine, and I blushed.

  I didn’t hear Miss Margaret behind us. She gave each of us a handful of pills. ‘You need to take them so you don’t become sick,’ she urged, sensing my hesitation. ‘Environment changes can wreak havoc on your immune system.’

  She swallowed some herself, and Lark and I soon did as she instructed.

  ‘Hamish is Marcus’s son,’ Miss Margaret told me.

  It took me a moment to realise who she was referring to. ‘He’s here?’

  She nodded.

  ‘In the gardens,’ Hamish said, seemingly unsurprised that I knew his father.

  ‘He came here after Halston?’

  Hamish took a large tray out of one of the ovens. ‘As soon as he could.’ He offered Miss Margaret a taste of the vegetables he’d been roasting.

  ‘Delicious,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Margaret and my dad have known each other since they were young,’ he added.

  ‘We met because of my friend Rachel,’ she said. ‘Everything is because of her,’ she added. ‘In one way or another.’

  I could hear voices coming from one of the many internal courtyards, laughter and chattering, a voice I recognised occasionally rising above the others. I looked to Miss Margaret. ‘Is it her?’ I asked, standing now.

  Lark had heard it too. ‘Ivy?’

  Miss Margaret nodded. ‘Come,’ she said, beckoning us towards the door. ‘We can continue our conversation after lunch.’

  It had been over a year since we’d seen Ivy. She stood in the middle of the courtyard, the same but different. She no longer hid behind a sweep of hair, her eyes peering out, hesitant, angry. She seemed taller, but it was probably just the fact her shoulders were no longer hunched forward, her chin lifted. She looked at each of us in disbelief, then smiled. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile before, and I, too, smiled as she hugged Lark, holding her tight before turning to greet me with a surprised hello.

  We were never close. Her failure to demonstrate that she was, in fact, special, fed that constant, needling anxiety that I was also less than I wanted to believe I was. I had always pushed her away. I had even been cruel to her and, worse, I had been relieved when she had gone.

  But I was glad to see her. She, Wren and Lark represented some semblance of home to me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked Lark. She turned to Miss Margaret. ‘Are we going back to Halston?’ There was no eagerness in her voice. I could tell she didn’t want to return. ‘Or are we all staying here? I don’t understand.’

  Miss Margaret smiled at her gently. ‘Why don’t you show Lark and Fern around? Take them through to lunch.’ She turned to us. ‘We’ll talk later, I promise.’

  Ivy looked at us, unsure, then offered to take us o
ut to the dining hall. ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked. ‘Is Wren with you?’

  At the mention of Wren’s name, Lark began to cry. The panic had gone and in its place was sorrow. I, too, cried. Neither of us could speak. We stood there while Ivy looked on, frightened.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Wren has died,’ I said. I tried to explain, the facts strangely confused.

  Ivy also began to cry. They weren’t the childish tears she used to shed in Halston, but tears of shock and loss. She had shared a room with Wren for years, after all. They had grown up together.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she kept saying.

  I told her that we didn’t either. That nothing made sense.

  We looked at each other, three Lotto Girls, here in this unfamiliar place, and we tried to comfort one another.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Lark eventually asked.

  Ivy said she wasn’t sure. ‘They told me I hadn’t been doing well enough at Halston. They took me for testing – blood tests, scans, everything. I had to sit examinations. It was exhausting.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not like you. I don’t do well in those situations. I make so many mistakes. I can never seem to keep things in my brain. It all just slips away and I don’t know why.’ She sniffed loudly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I knew I’d done badly and that they’d think there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t special.’ She breathed in. ‘But no one said anything. I just did their tests and then someone came to get me. Someone I didn’t know. We were in an autocarrier when it was hijacked. I was brought here. Miss Margaret was here. She told me that it hadn’t been a real hijack, but a means of getting me away from BioPerfect and Halston, to protect me from what they might do. And then she left. And they’ve been caring for me here ever since.’

  I wanted Ivy to slow down, to go back. It was all too much to take in. Had we also been tested and failed? Was that why we were here? None of it made any sense.

  ‘Why is Miss Margaret here?’ Lark asked.