The Resistance

by Gemma Malley

  ‘I absolutely will,’ Peter said drily. ‘And thanks for the compliment.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For saying I’m the best,’ he said lightly. ‘I am working here, after all.’

  ‘You want to be careful,’ the guard said, his voice suddenly taking on a menacing tone. ‘Because I’ll be watching you. I’ll be watching you like a hawk.’ He set off through the gates, motioning Peter to follow him, and walked towards the imposing doors at the front of the building.

  The sky was still dark outside, but Jude was restless, couldn’t sleep. Sighing, he pulled himself out from underneath his bedcovers and pulled on some trousers, two jumpers and a coat. He navigated the small patch of bare carpet in his bedroom that enabled him to get to the door, then went downstairs, swearing at the cold beneath his feet. Silently he made himself some coffee, then returned upstairs to take up his usual position at his computer. He stared at it moodily. He didn’t feel like doing any work, would rather be trying out a new computer game he’d found, a relic from the twenty-first century that he was planning to adapt to a new platform, but he needed money. There was no food in the kitchen in spite of increasingly agitated reminders from his fridge to place an order, and he was going to run out of energy in twenty-four hours if he didn’t top it up soon.

  With a sigh, he pulled up his latest project and lazily started to type. His work was sporadic but well paid; whenever funds became low, he would hack into the systems of a bank or major institution that relied on technology for its survival, then call them up and offer to improve their firewalls, for a price. It was easy money – he had a reputation now and occasionally work even came to him.

  An hour later, and money banked, he checked his watch, then, taking a gulp of the coffee he’d made earlier and which was now horribly cold, brought back up his spycode programme. He had developed it himself and updated it every couple of months; now at Version 16 it was able to render any system powerless. Most systems, anyway.

  His first computer had been a gift from his father ten years ago when Jude had been six. ‘Something to keep you occupied,’ his father had said, his breath infused with alcohol. ‘See if you can teach yourself to use it.’ It had been an Authorities computer, declassified during the Electronic Shutdown, when the Authorities led organisations everywhere in lessening their energy footprint. Smaller, more efficient machines were introduced – functional computers that offered word-processing, messaging, no colour, no downloads. But Jude’s was old school, a relic by most standards. Its functionality wasn’t great – but it allowed him to do what he wanted. On it, he’d discovered something he was good at, better than anyone else he’d ever come up against. He’d written codes, programmes that were far more advanced than anything the Authorities had thought of themselves. He’d even tried to show his father – had thought that he would be interested, impressed. But the Director General of the Interiors Ministry hadn’t been interested; had said he was too busy, had seemed embarrassed by his son’s attentions. It hadn’t taken Jude long to realise that the computer hadn’t been a gift but a sop. Not that he was bothered. He didn’t need his father to care about him; he didn’t need anyone.

  He navigated carefully, delicately breaking through several firewalls, guessing and second-guessing file names and locations. And then, across his screen, the view from a CCTV monitor flashed into life; his eyes widened slightly with excitement when he realised he’d timed it to perfection. He’d know that figure anywhere – that walk, shifty and arrogant at the same time. Jude had seen Peter on news programmes, in the newspapers; he’d even seen him on the street once. But this was much better. This was real.

  ‘How the mighty revolutionary has fallen,’ Jude muttered to himself as he zoomed in, focused on Peter’s face, his impenetrable expression. He didn’t look much like someone who could break out of a Surplus Hall and evade capture by the Catchers. Didn’t look like someone who had supposedly been working for the Underground since he was a baby. But these were the stories that circulated. Peter Pincent. The name had haunted Jude ever since he’d discovered who he was; his very presence made Jude’s life both precious and guilt-ridden. Jude had been the lucky one, he knew that, had been told enough times; he was the one who was Legal. But now Peter was too. Now they were almost on a level pegging.

  Jude clicked on the camera facing Pincent Pharma’s main entrance, enhanced the zoom slightly, and followed Peter all the way to the perimeter gates. He slumped back in his chair and watched as Peter approached the security guard; a few minutes later, the two of them walked up towards the gates which opened, then closed behind them like a whale swallowing fish. Feeling his curiosity grow, Jude pulled the coat that doubled as a dressing gown tighter against the cold – all his energy coupons went towards his computer, not central heating or clothes.

  Picking up, and then rejecting, his coffee cup, he found his eyes drawn back to the Pincent Pharma camera system. It was a sophisticated set-up, with almost impenetrable codes protecting it. But ‘almost’ hadn’t protected it from Jude.

  Idly, he pressed the tab key on his keyboard. Immediately, he found himself looking at the back of Pincent Pharma, where a deserted path meandered down towards the river. He tabbed again – now he was looking at another path, surrounded by woodland, leading down to Battersea. Again, there was nothing to see. Except for the odd protest, which was always dissolved swiftly, the area surrounding Pincent Pharma tended to be fairly desolate. The nearest high street was a mile away; all habitable dwellings nearby had been demolished when Pincent Pharma had moved in – now all that was left was a kind of wasteland to the back and a patch of trees to the front. There was just one private road leading through the gates, connecting it to a perimeter road. At the back of the building, this perimeter road met a path down to the river; at the front, a slip road joined with the main road, along which armoured trucks could regularly be seen transporting Longevity drugs.

  Jude tabbed through the cameras once more, just to see if there was anything worth looking at. He frowned. Something was different at the front. Something was wrong. Jude was very proud of his instinct for such things – he had spent years learning about economic theory and moral relativism from a series of expensive private tutors secured by his father, but Jude trusted his instinct over learning every time.

  Staring at the screen in front of him, he could see clearly the outline of several men emerging from behind the trees. They were dressed in khaki – some kind of paramilitary uniform – and in their hands they clutched weapons of death: guns, rifles. Jude felt his heart quicken with excitement, though outwardly he remained still. Even to himself he liked to feign boredom and disinterest.

  Silently, he watched as four armoured trucks swung into view, turning right into the slip road from the Pincent Pharma private road, the grey smoke from their engines disappearing into the cloudy sky. Jude flicked from camera to camera, watching as the trucks trundled further away from Pincent Pharma, picking up speed until they were turning out on to the main road, and then, suddenly, the truck at the front of the convoy swerved off to the right. A few seconds later it was followed by the second and third trucks; the fourth managed to brake before skidding to a halt across two lanes and crashing into the third.

  Immediately, the khaki-dressed men emerged from the pathway and Jude realised that he had underestimated their numbers; it was a small army that swooped on the trucks, shooting their guns at the doors, pulling out the contents, pouring something on top of them before setting them alight. The drivers of the trucks didn’t attempt to get out; instead, Jude could see them frantically speaking into their phones. Minutes later, more vehicles could be seen pulling out of Pincent Pharma’s gates and speeding towards the trucks and the small, pungent fires on the road, but already, the men were disappearing – back up the pathway, along the road, behind walls. Jude watched, wide-eyed, his heart beating loudly in his chest. It had to be the Underground, he realised. He was finally seeing them in action.

 
Quickly Jude tabbed back to get a shot of the road, where men in Pincent Pharma security uniforms were helping the drivers out of the trucks and attempting to put out the fires. He saw one of the security guards shout something, then, moments later, they were dragging two of the Underground men out from the path. The men were soon surrounded, their weapons wrestled from them.

  One of the guards pulled out a walkie-talkie and said something into it. Two other guards immediately pulled the prisoners’ hands behind their backs and handcuffed them.

  Then a guard was shouting something and pointing his gun at one of the prisoners, and before Jude realised what was happening, the prisoner had fallen to his knees, blood pouring from his head. Jude caught his breath, recoiling backwards but unable to look away from the heap of khaki and the oozing red on the road. The man was dead. Actually dead. Jude’s eyes flickered up to the other guards, who had stepped back, their expressions a mixture of horror and disgust.

  The guard with the walkie-talkie barked something, then grabbed the remaining Underground prisoner whose eyes were fixed on his dead comrade, his face white. The prisoner was shouting something, trying to fight as they dragged him away, but it was useless.

  Jude sat back on his chair, barely daring to breathe. For a long time, he sat like that, perfectly still. He’d seen a man die. In a world where death didn’t occur it had shocked him to his core.

  And then he shook himself. It was only real, after all. Reality wasn’t as important as people made it out to be; to Jude it was simply the physical state in which he found himself, an environment he had limited control over. Pushing all thoughts of the Underground soldiers from his head, Jude exited the Pincent Pharma system and pulled up MyWorld, the virtual reality environment he’d been building, and surveyed his work. It was summer in MyWorld. The streets were thronged with people – young people; in its large parks, ageing adults were nowhere to be seen. Instead teenagers played football, shared jokes, sat around smoking and using mobile phones with no police harassing them. Grinning, Jude made his way along a short path to his usual spot, a bench, from where he could survey his dominion. Just as he knew she would be, his red-haired girlfriend was waiting for him smiling, looking hot in her short denim skirt.

  ‘Hi, Jude2124,’ she said, her voice sultry. ‘I’ve missed you. Where’ve you been?’

  Jude2124 grinned. ‘It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I’m here now.’

  Peter turned to see what was going on. He could hear a commotion on the main road, but it was several hundred metres away and the high walls prevented him from seeing anything. The guard turned and sneered at him.

  ‘Jumpy, are we? Little bang got you scared?’

  Peter didn’t reply; he just shoved his hands in his pocket, then watched as the guard swiped a card, pressed his fingers against a glass pad, then allowed his eyes to be scanned. Finally, the heavy doors slid open to reveal a lobby, behind which four great escalators stretched upwards. A man walked towards Peter and the guard, a serious expression on his face. Peter felt himself stiffen; the man was Richard Pincent. The guard gave a brief salute.

  ‘Peter,’ Richard said, a brief smile appearing on his lips. ‘Excuse me just one minute, won’t you? Little disturbance outside.’ He looked at the guard, the smile gone. ‘You need to get back to your post. We’ve got a Code X.’ The guard nodded, his face grim, then turned and walked quickly back towards the gate, pulling a walkie-talkie out of his pocket and clamping it to his ear.

  Peter watched him leave, then turned back to his grandfather, who was barking orders into a small device that looked like a tiny phone; his voice was low and inaudible, but the tension could be felt. Then he put the phone in his pocket, looked back at Peter and smiled again.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, then clapped his arm around Peter’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to Pincent Pharma, Peter. Welcome to the most advanced laboratory in the whole world. The envy of scientists everywhere. Welcome to your new world.’

  Chapter Three

  The lobby was vast, larger than Peter had expected from the outside. This was a place that could devour you if you weren’t careful, render you as insignificant as a flake of snow. As he followed his grandfather up one of the escalators, he tried his best not to be impressed by the scale of the place: walls that rose up a few hundred metres, huge screens displaying scientific diagrams, everything so white, so clean, so pure.

  ‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ his grandfather said dramatically. ‘This building’s been here nearly a hundred years and I still catch my breath sometimes.’

  Peter nodded, feigning enthusiasm, as his eyes darted around, looking for cameras, for anything important that Pip would find useful. He noted, archly, that there weren’t any pictures of Surplus Halls anywhere, nothing proudly displaying the darker side of Longevity; when his grandfather caught his eye and held it for a few seconds, Peter found himself wondering if Pincent Pharma’s surveillance system was so sophisticated that it could read his mind, but he knew that was impossible.

  ‘This way.’ They’d reached the top of the escalator and in front of them was a long corridor stretching to the right and left. His grandfather turned left and, after a few paces, turned right into another long corridor. ‘Easy to get lost, if you don’t know where you’re going,’ he said, leading Peter to a large viewing gallery that overlooked the reception atrium. Along it to the rear ran huge glass windows, through which rooms and laboratories were visible.

  ‘Through here,’ his grandfather said, walking briskly and pointing to his right, ‘is the main production area. Of course, you can’t see it. It’s so well protected it doesn’t have windows. What you can see is the finishing area where each tablet is pressed with the Pincent Pharma logo.’

  Peter turned to see machine after machine whirring, white tablets pouring out of them in their thousands. Around the machines men and women stood monitoring operations, checking quality, their faces creased in concentration. One looked up and saw Richard; immediately he looked away and began to examine the machine next to him as though his life depended on it.

  ‘Very important room that,’ Richard said, walking on. ‘The logo is how you know your drugs are genuine. Now, this area is one of our research labs.’

  He led Peter to a large laboratory full of people in white coats staring into microscopes, into screens, into test tubes.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Peter asked.

  Richard laughed. ‘Working on improvements, of course. The world doesn’t stand still, Peter. There’s always something better.’

  Peter nodded. ‘And how do you know they work? I mean, who do you test the drugs on?’

  He turned to look at his grandfather who stopped walking for a fraction of a second, then continued marching. ‘We have extensive testing programmes,’ he said dismissively. ‘People will do anything for money, you know.’

  ‘And you use stem cells, don’t you?’ Peter asked. ‘Where do you get them? You must need so many!’

  His grandfather stopped suddenly. ‘You have a lot of questions,’ he said.

  Peter felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Had he asked too much too soon? Did his grandfather suspect something? ‘I want to learn,’ he said.

  Richard paused for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, yes, of course you do. Well, I have the very thing. Follow me.’

  Peter followed him, his eyes hungrily taking in every corridor, every door, every person they passed. Eventually, Richard opened a door and Peter followed him into a lecture theatre.

  ‘A bit of history,’ his grandfather said. ‘We used to have quite a big educational programme here – students coming round, learning about Renewal and Longevity. That was back when we still had universities, of course. Now we use this room for ReTraining programmes, Induction, foreign delegations, that sort of thing. We’ve got some educational packs, if you’d like one?’

  The question, Peter realised immediately, was a rhetorical one; a pack was thrust into his hands and, under his g
randfather’s gaze, he felt compelled to open it. There were several pages of text outlining the history of Pincent Pharma, punctuated by boxes with trite information, which he scanned briefly.

  Did you know?

  • It takes two weeks to produce each and every Longevity tablet

  • Pincent Pharma employs over 5,000 of the world’s best scientists, all dedicated to improving your quality of life

  • For maximum benefits, your doctor should review your dosage every year

  Did you know?

  • Pincent Pharma supplies Longevity drugs to more than 100 countries worldwide

  • Pincent Pharma developed the first ever Longevity drug in 2015 and still owns the worldwide patent

  • Pincent Pharma quality checks every single Longevity tablet to exacting standards before they leave the production line

  Richard Pincent smiled benevolently. ‘Now, you find yourself somewhere to sit down and we’ll get started, shall we?’

  Closing the pack, Peter made his way to a seat in the middle of the room. It was a small, push-down seat surrounded by a hundred or so others, all empty. As soon as he sat down, the theatre was plunged into darkness, and the screen at the front flickered into life.

  On screen was Peter’s grandfather, looking slightly younger, standing in a vast, open-plan laboratory, full of workstations at which serious-looking scientists in white coats were positioned.

  ‘Welcome to Pincent Pharma, and the Institute of Cell Research. Under this roof, in these state-of-the-art facilities, thousands of scientists are researching the wonderful potential of cells. Cells that we at Pincent Pharma have adapted to cure human disease. Cells which we have reproduced in order to conquer degenerative conditions and catastrophic injuries. Cells which have now provided us with the ultimate answer to all the ills that have ever befallen mankind, scientific breakthroughs which have transformed not just medicine, not just science, but society at large. Welcome to the home of Longevity, the home of the future of mankind . . .’