by Gemma Fowler
Anger started to pulse in waves through her. Rix hadn’t said anything about this. How could he and Mir do this without telling her? She felt her eyelids nervously; the ridge was still there. She was still just Aggie – for now.
‘Stay bright, United Earth,’ Celeste concluded with a smile.
Day-Cycle 06
Aggie squinted through the haze of dust on G Face and distracted herself with the ‘tint’ function on her visor, making the face go from orange to red to pink to yellow.
‘. . . and while we’re here,’ Mir said, gesturing to the huge black Eyes that hung from the ceiling of the vast G Dome. ‘At the party, Celeste will be recording the footage at higher angles mostly, but there’ll also be close-ups from some of the Eyes on the daisy drill as you walk around, and some vid from your visor feed, maybe. So be sure you smile as much as you can. OK?’
Aggie flipped the tint again.
‘Aggie?’
She went with pink. The face seemed a lot friendlier in pink.
‘Aggie?’ Mir said again.
Aggie nodded. Mir had been giving Aggie a ‘walk-through’ of the face all morning. It wasn’t exactly going well. Aggie was easily distracted at the best of times, but today there was one thing playing on her mind. One huge, terrifying, prisoner-shaped thing.
A week ago, only one person on the base knew the truth of her identity. Just one. The commander. A man she trusted. Aggie glanced around the face and shivered. Now there were three.
One of them was Mir.
And one of them was FALL.
She couldn’t just ignore it. She just couldn’t.
Mir sighed loudly. ‘What’s the point?’
Aggie snapped the visor back. ‘What?’
‘You’re not listening to me.’
Aggie squinted out at the face again. ‘Yes I am.’
‘OK. Well, look, there’s a whale in the top of the dome, he’ll be the main cameraman, filming you with his flippers.’
Aggie nodded, peering at the mass of red dots working in the distance. ‘Great.’
Mir gave a cry of frustration and stepped into Aggie’s path.
Aggie refocused quickly. Mir’s cheeks were flushed. ‘Whoa, what’s backfiring your drill, Mir?’
‘You are, Aggie! It’s you!’ Mir threw her arms above her head in frustration. ‘This is a big opportunity for me, you have to understand, the entire Earth will be watching and if you don’t know where the cameras are . . .’ She sighed. ‘Look, I know this is hard for you, so I see why you’re being difficult, but this is important . . . Aggie!’
Aggie had turned back to the face and was following one red dot as it moved deeper into the mine, a number blinked on her comms display: 209. Her heart started to race inside her overall. The prisoner.
Aggie started to back up towards the scrambler they’d been using to tour the face. ‘Mir, It’s cosmic. Really. I’m OK. Everything will be great. I’m sorry, but I have to . . .’
‘Where are you going? Aggie, you need to see the camera angles!’
Aggie swung her leg over the seat. ‘I need to . . . Look, we’ll do it another time.’
‘The party is in four days!’ Mir cried in frustration. Aggie felt bad, but she needed to get away – this was more important. Mir would get that, if she ever found out.
‘I’m sorry!’ Aggie shouted over her shoulder as she drove the scrambler away in a cloud of dust.
Aggie glanced back. Mir’s pale-blue overall was disappearing into the dust. She breathed out. She felt bad, running away like that. But the last thing she needed was Mir finding out what she was up to. The girl would just run straight to Rix and then she’d never have a chance to speak to the prisoner.
When Aggie finally took her hands off the scrambler’s controls, they were shaking. What was she even doing? She must have gone mad. She’d be seeing Seb’s Rock-Aliens next.
But as the red smudge of the prisoner got closer, Aggie knew that, deep down, she had to do this. She had to see him again. Ever since he’d pushed her out of the way of the debris, Aggie couldn’t get the prisoner out of her head.
She tried to calm down, to think rationally, but it was as if her limbs had a faulty connection to her brain. They didn’t move when she told them to. Her body was just reluctantly going along with what her heart was telling it – her head had nothing to do with it.
‘Get a grip on yourself, Aggie,’ she muttered through gritted teeth as she accelerated the scrambler back up to full speed. Its fat inflated wheels bounced along the trail towards the prisoner’s team, taking her around to a new, unexcavated area filled with rocks and boulders and other non-mineable ‘surface materials’. The group of prisoners were busy clearing the way for the lumite seam that must lie somewhere underneath.
Aggie parked up on the edge of the trail and watched the prisoner as he heaved rock after rock into the waiting loader truck below. The exo in his suit was taut, helping him lift the massive boulders, but still Aggie couldn’t help but notice how broad his shoulders looked.
She saw him look up, and a cold sweat erupted over her body. She pretended not to notice. Instead, she sucked her stomach in as far as she could and leant back on the scrambler. Trying to act casual.
As soon as her weight hit the trike, it made a screeching noise and fell over, sending Aggie crashing to the mine floor in a plume of choking grey dust.
A cheer sounded from somewhere. Aggie lay back and wished the ground would swallow her up.
‘For frag’s sake,’ she moaned, spitting bits of moon rock out of her mouth.
‘You should keep your visor shut if you’re going to kick up the dust,’ said a voice.
The prisoner was standing over her, the great white dome reflecting in his visor.
Aggie went cold.
‘Oh! I . . . hmm,’ she stammered, casting her arms about wildly, trying to get a grip on something solid so she could stand up.
‘Here.’ The prisoner stepped forwards and flicked her visor down. Aggie sucked in the fresh air gratefully. He offered her a hand and pulled her up.
‘You OK?’
Aggie looked up. The reflection of the dome had disappeared and for the first time, she saw his face properly. He was young, no older than nineteen. His eyes were the exact colour of the surface. They flashed in the shadows of his helmet like lumite in the seams. A thin half-moon scar traced its way down his right cheek. The soft push and pull of his breath fogged the Plexiglas on his visor as she watched – deep and steady.
Suddenly the contents of her head slipped out of Aggie like dust through her fingers. She stared up at the prisoner, empty of everything. Your name is Aggie, she reminded herself, You are standing in front of someone who probably wants to kill you – pull yourself together.
The prisoner was still staring at her.
It was now that Aggie began to panic properly. Why had she come here? Why had she ever thought this would be a good idea? She glanced to left and right, there was no one around. No one within close comms anyway. She looked at the panic button inside the palm of her glove. No. Celeste would report to Rix. That had to be a last resort.
‘Are you OK?’ Her comms crackled again. Aggie whipped her head back so fast her neck jarred.
‘What?’
‘I said, are you OK?’ The prisoner sounded younger than she remembered.
‘I . . . yeah. I am.’
‘Good.’
The prisoner began to walk away down the slope that led back to his team. That was it? No, it couldn’t be.
‘Wait!’ she cried, stumbling down the slippery hill. ‘Hey! You, wait!’
The prisoner turned sharply and Aggie came skidding to a halt in front of him.
‘What do you want?’ he said, his grey eyes flicking over her overall.
‘I . . .’ Aggie began, ‘I . . .’
The words dissolved.
The prisoner looked around them, then pointed to the black ants on the distant guard post.
‘Do they know
who you really are?’
Aggie gaped up at him in horror. Was he threatening her?
He smiled at her response. ‘Just me, then.’
Aggie felt as if she was going to collapse. ‘What are you going to do?’
The prisoner frowned at her again. ‘I’m going to get my drill,’ he said, and walked off.
This time Aggie didn’t follow. Was he going to come back? Or was that it? She watched the prisoner haul the rock he was carrying onto the loader and say something to the white-overalled foreman who stood by it. Aggie shakily pulled the scrambler back up onto its wheels. This time she remembered to flick the stabilizer down so the stupid thing stayed upright.
When she looked up again the prisoner was already walking back up to her, an evil-looking corer drill strapped to his shoulder. What was he planning to do with that?
‘I’m helping you,’ he grunted as he pushed past her towards a boulder at the back of the trail.
‘I don’t need any—’
‘You want to talk to me, right?’
Aggie nodded and watched mutely as the prisoner set the drill to the edge of the rock.
For a long time Aggie just shifted from foot to foot. Every muscle in her body was so tense, it felt as if she’d activated her very own internal exoskeleton. She had to keep reminding herself to breathe. Think of something to say. Anything.
‘They don’t let FALL on the base,’ she blurted, her heart beating along with the pulse of the drill. ‘You usually get the Earth prisons.’
The prisoner didn’t look away from the rock, ‘Lucky me.’
Aggie picked up a rock and started to toss it between her hands, trying to figure out the right words. ‘Thank you, for what you did. I didn’t say that before.’
‘Saving your life?’ the prisoner muttered to the rock. ‘I didn’t know who I was saving.’
Aggie’s stomach turned.
That was exactly what she’d thought. The Angel of Adrianne was a mascot for everything FALL stood against. Killing her would have made the prisoner a hero. Aggie should have been terrified – and in some ways she was – but there was something about the prisoner. That look he kept giving her was intriguing, in a life-threatening sort of way.
‘This an interrogation?’
Aggie straightened up. ‘No.’
‘You’re alone?’
Aggie took a step back. ‘No,’ she said, unconvincingly.
The prisoner shook his head and went back to his drilling. ‘No one’s alone here,’ he muttered to himself, jabbing the drill back into the seam. ‘There’s always someone watching.’
Aggie shuffled her boots in the dust.
‘Why FALL?’ she said, peering at the prisoner, trying to read the look on his face.
‘I believe in FALL,’ he said flatly.
‘FALL believes killing people is OK.’
‘So does Lunar Inc.,’ the prisoner replied, pushing the drill deeper into the rock, ‘only FALL can’t afford the PR.’
Aggie felt as if she’d been punched. He was talking about the people who died in Adrianne. ‘That was an accident,’ she hissed.
‘If that’s what you want to call it.’
Suddenly anger was building up in waves inside her. How could he think like that? How could he even compare what FALL did to what Lunar Inc. had done for the world? And how could he look so assured? So comfortable? Did he not know where he was? What he’d done?
‘FALL use bombs,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘On purpose. Usually in places where innocent people can get hurt – like Tokyo.’
The prisoner scoffed. ‘No one in the United Government is innocent.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He didn’t answer for a long time.
‘Do you ever ask why?’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about us?’
Aggie was struck dumb.
She knew FALL had become politicized after Adrianne, and were linked to Lara Komori, a member of the Founding Five. She also knew the Komori family had ties to the gangs of the Dark Days, and that they had a history with Rix and possibly her own father. The thought made Aggie shiver. Still, she had to admit, she knew little about FALL’s actual motives – they were the enemy. That was enough, wasn’t it?
The prisoner laughed. ‘If you listened to us, maybe you’d see it differently.’
Aggie folded her arms. ‘It’s hard to hear you over the sound of your bombs.’
The prisoner shook his head as if she’d never understand. ‘Well, what’s the saying?’ he said angrily. ‘To get to the lumite, you’ve got to break a few rocks.’
Aggie felt the waves of anger getting higher, threatening to overflow. ‘Can you even hear what you’re saying?’
The prisoner tapped the comms side of his helmet with his drill. ‘Loud and clear.’
‘Mir was right. You should be rotting in the Pen.’
‘Mir? Is that the girl you were following around?’ Aggie turned. ‘Were you watching me?’
The prisoner shrugged. ‘More her really—’
The rage spilt over. Aggie took two strides closer to the prisoner and smacked the drill to one side. It fell out of his hands and smashed onto the rock.
‘Did you kill anyone? In Tokyo? Or ever?’ she demanded, kicking the bits of drill away from him. ‘Are you going to kill me?’
The prisoner looked at the broken drill, then back to Aggie.
He shook his head. ‘No.’
A shiver ran over Aggie’s skin. ‘Why?’
He looked at her coldly. ‘Right now, I don’t know.’
Aggie turned back to the scrambler. With her back to the prisoner, her anger abated, leaving her feeling shaky. She checked the guard post again. Suddenly, this whole thing felt like the worst idea in the world. He was a prisoner; he was with FALL. Whether she accepted it or not, Aggie was the Angel of Adrianne, and he knew. She was better off as far away from him as possible. She should tell Rix, even, get him sent to the Pen where he belonged.
‘You’re just going to take my word for it?’
She could still feel his eyes on her.
Aggie turned back to face him. There it was again, that look in his eyes. It disarmed her.
‘What’s your name?’ she said, because she couldn’t think of anything better to say.
He pointed to the inmate number on his chest, ‘Murderer number 209.’
‘Your real name.’
He picked up the drill and inspected the damage. ‘Danny,’ he muttered. ‘For what it matters any more.’
He jabbed at the broken drill with such a force that the bit flew off and came to a halt at Aggie’s knee. The sharp diamond-head dug into the fabric on her overall and the material bubbled and hissed as it resealed itself.
‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he said quickly. He took a step towards Aggie and picked the bit up. Did she see a flicker of anxiety in that frown?
‘I’m fine,’ she said, confused by the sudden concern for her safety. ‘I need a new overall anyway.’
To Aggie’s surprise, the prisoner grinned at her. ‘Probably try to get one that’s not so yellow next time.’
Aggie looked down at herself. ‘It’s my Infospectrum rating. Analysts wear yellow.’
Danny smirked, ‘Bet you cross your heart and sing the international anthem every morning too.’
Aggie’s shoulders went up. ‘You’re part of our rainbow now, technically.’
Danny looked down at his filthy, broken prisoner’s overall and shrugged.
‘Better than a death sentence in the Pacific Pen.’
The Pacific Pen was an Earth prison run by the United Government, a place as far away from society as you could get. A labour camp like this one, but here on the Moon Lunar Inc. couldn’t afford to treat the prisoners as badly as they were treated on Earth.
Aggie shook her head and turned back to the scrambler.
‘Blue would suit you better,’ the prisoner said quietly.
Aggie’s cheeks went
hot behind her visor. Instead of leaving, she sat down awkwardly on the edge of the scrambler seat.
Danny looked at her. ‘So do you pretend to be normal? Just part of the rainbow like everyone else?’
Aggie nodded, suddenly uncomfortable again.
‘How does that work?’
Aggie glared at him. ‘Now who’s interrogating who?’
He shrugged. ‘Just a question.’
‘You lost the right to ask questions in Tokyo.’
She was distracted by a small group of black-dressed guards appearing on the dusty horizon.
‘Lunar Inc. is too good to you, you should have a bit more respect for it,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘You’re still alive, aren’t you?’
The group was coming towards them.
Aggie froze.
She’d seen something in the group of guards that made her heart start to hammer again. Two sky-blue overalls surrounded by black. Rix and Mir.
‘I thought you were alone,’ Danny said with a rueful smile.
‘You need to go.’ Aggie said, activating the scrambler.
But instead of leaving, the prisoner ducked down towards Aggie, so his head was right beside hers. ‘You know,’ he whispered, his voice distorting over the comms, ‘hiding is the worst thing you can do.’
Aggie looked up at him. He was so close she could see the stubble on his cheeks, the flecks of blue in his grey eyes.
‘You have no idea what it’s like to be me,’ she hissed and pushed him away. ‘Now, go.’
But it was too late.
Rix had come to find her. He’d told her to keep a low profile, and now he’d seen her having a chat with a prisoner. A Tokyo rioter at that! Aggie stepped away from Danny. She cursed Mir, and her perfect, protocol-loving, robotic ways.
Danny was staring at the group as they got closer. She gave him a shove, but he stayed rooted to the spot. Hands behind his back, chin up. What was he even thinking?
She looked up at him. Something about this prisoner wasn’t right. Something didn’t fit. And that something had a lot to do with the fact that she was still breathing.
As soon as Rix stepped up on to the trail, Danny started to stroll casually away in the opposite direction.
