Pandora Jones: Deception

by Barry Jonsberg

By the time she reached her dormitory, she was exhausted. The room was deserted and Pan sank down onto her bed gratefully. Her watch was where she had left it. It was five forty-five. Another forty-five minutes until dinner. Or was her group on the second shift this week? She couldn’t remember. Pan cradled the watch in her palm. The second hand swept round the face, but she saw in its movement something sinister and threatening. Then she strapped the watch onto her wrist. It didn’t matter if she was being tracked. At least, not for the time being.

  Pan sat on her bed until the pounding in her head stopped, but she was unable to ease the annoying itch between her shoulder blades. She opened the door to her bedside locker. The torch issued to all the students at The School was long enough to reach the spot and she had to do something before she went crazy.

  But she didn’t pick up the torch. There was a piece of paper neatly folded and placed carefully on the torch’s casing. A piece of paper she had not put there. Pan’s fingers reached out to grasp it, but at the last moment she withdrew them. There was something about the paper that made her instincts cry a warning. Whatever was written on it – and she was certain it was a note – Pan was convinced she didn’t want to read it. So she sat and stared at it. This is crazy, she thought. Why am I so scared of a piece of paper? But the feeling did not diminish. Pan couldn’t rid herself of the notion that if her fingers were to make contact with that slim fold of paper they would burn and blister.

  After a minute, she shook her head. What choice did she have? It was impossible to close the locker door and pretend nothing was there. It was like the itch. It couldn’t be ignored. It would wait, lurking in the corners of her mind, calling to her. Rip it up? Maybe if she had been a stronger person, that might have been a solution. But, despite the fierce sense of danger, she knew that reading it was something she had to do. Even so, it was hard to stretch her fingers towards the note again.

  This time she snatched it up and unfolded it before her will had a chance to waver. Her fingers didn’t burn, but her mind did.

  Trust me.

  Two simple words. No signature. But Pan knew who had written it. Her skin crawled with the knowledge. Nate. A note from a dead boy. She read it a few more times, as if closer examination might reveal a hidden meaning. Trust me. Had he written this before they left for the island? But that wouldn’t make any sense. Why would he write her a note asking for her trust before they left? It made more sense to assume he’d written this after they’d got back, in which case her suspicion that his death was staged would be confirmed. Trust me. He must have snuck into the dormitory, maybe when the group was up at the Infirmary and everyone else was listening to Dr Morgan’s address. Left the note and slipped away. But why? And why not write a fuller explanation, if he wanted to put her mind at rest?

  Pan felt like crying. The more she tried to discover the truth, the more The School seemed to be playing games. Nate was part of the deception, but now he was implying that his role was scripted against his will, that his loyalties lay with her, not with The School. Or maybe he really was dead and this was simply an attempt to create further confusion, mess with her head, an exercise in disorientation. The School at work again.

  Pan folded the note and placed it back in her locker. Trust has to be earned, she thought. But no one has earned anything from me. She stood and headed for the door. This must not distract me. There are secrets to discover. This is only one among many. The problem of Nate would have to wait. There were immediate concerns, the first of which was talking to Jen. If Jen wasn’t already aware that Pan had betrayed her presence in the village, she needed to hear it from Pan’s lips. It was a conversation Pan was not looking forward to.

  She stepped outside, an itch between her shoulder blades and questions burning in her head.

  ‘Where have you been, Pan?’ asked Wei-Lin. She seemed more concerned than annoyed. ‘When we woke up this morning, your bed was empty and your watch was on the pillow. I thought we had another Cara situation on our hands. I was worried sick.’

  Pan pushed the food on her plate around and tried to force herself to eat. (Trust me.) She was hungry – she was always hungry – but her stomach rebelled against the thin slop in front of her. The remainder of her group had found her sitting by herself when they came into the canteen after their personal development sessions and Wei-Lin had sat next to her before getting herself any food. Now the rest of the group had joined them. Karl and Sam, inseparable as ever, Jen and a still-limping Sanjit. Sam and Karl leaned forward to catch Pan’s reply, but Jen simply bent her face over her own plate and avoided Pan’s eyes. Was that a problem? She would find out soon, she guessed.

  ‘I went into the village,’ said Pan. ‘Last night. And I got caught.’ There didn’t seem much point in hiding the information, and she’d kept too much from them anyway. ‘They had me locked up for most of today.’

  There was a stunned silence, though Pan noticed Jen still didn’t raise her eyes.

  ‘My God,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘You mean you went over the wall?’

  Pan nodded. ‘Well, under it, to be strictly accurate.’

  ‘What did you find?’ This was Sam, leaning forward, excitement written on her face. Pan thought their reactions were interesting. Not horror or even disappointment that she had broken one of The School’s rules, but curiosity at what she’d found. Was that encouraging? Pan thought it might be. They were her team and they deserved the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to open up to them about all of her suspicions. Not until she was sure.

  ‘Not much,’ Pan admitted. ‘Only that their standard of living is better than ours.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Karl.

  ‘They have TV, electricity, computers. They live in proper houses with comfortable furniture – and perhaps even pets. A long way from the conditions here.’

  There was another silence while this information was absorbed.

  ‘Why would they be treated better than us?’ asked Wei-Lin eventually.

  ‘I might be able to answer that,’ said Jen. It was the first time she’d spoken. ‘You see, I went with Pandora and saw the things she saw. Difference was, I didn’t get caught.’

  But I betrayed you, thought Pan.

  Jen mopped up the last of her meal with a piece of hard bread and pushed the plate away. ‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘although I got back to The School without being caught, they knew.’ She glanced briefly at Pan. ‘I got a visit this afternoon from a member of the Student Representative Council.’

  ‘And?’ said Sam. All members of the group leaned towards Jen. Jen took Pan’s dish and scraped up the remains of the thin gruel.

  ‘I was told,’ she said, her voice muffled by a chunk of bread, ‘that the villagers have privileges denied to us for a couple of reasons. It’s true they have computers, TVs, DVDs.’

  ‘Why don’t we have those?’ asked Karl. Pan could see the longing for computer-time etched on his features. ‘That’s not fair.’

  Jen smiled. ‘They go out into the world, risking death to bring back supplies. So it’s a kind of reward for them.’

  ‘That’s still not fair,’ said Karl.

  ‘It seems,’ Jen continued, ‘that it’s all to do with the difference between the survivors. We in The School are “humanity’s future”.’ She made quotation marks in the air. ‘So they stuck us in a kind of boot camp. We learn to survive without luxuries because later on, when we go out into the world, we need to be tough and strong. Technology would weaken us.’ She pushed Pan’s empty plate away. ‘It kinda makes sense.’

  ‘What, the villagers aren’t the future of humanity? Just us?’ said Sam.

  ‘They are the foot soldiers. We are the elite troops,’ replied Jen. ‘We’re the SAS of the new world, guys. Special training for us.’

  ‘And you believe that, Jen?’ asked Pan.

  Jen looked instead at Wei-Lin.

  ‘My problem is,’ she said, ‘I don’t know who to believe anymore.’

  ‘We nee
d to talk,’ said Pan. She’d waited for Jen to come out of the shower. She had an hour and a half of free time and there were explanations to be given, almost certainly an apology. But more than all that, Pan needed to know what Jen was thinking.

  ‘Okay, let’s talk,’ said Jen. She towelled her hair and then draped the towel over her shoulder.

  ‘Not here,’ said Pan. ‘Let’s go for a run.’

  Jen shrugged. ‘Sure. Any place in mind? On this side of the wall?’

  Pan smiled. ‘Yes. It’s a place Nate showed me.’ Her smile froze and her skin tingled. ‘I’d like you to see it while there’s still some daylight left.’

  Jen glanced at the darkening sky. ‘Better make it quick,’ she said. ‘You want to leave the watches behind again?’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Pan. ‘I can’t see the point.’

  Jen shrugged. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Lead on.’

  After five minutes running, Pan felt the familiar ache in her side. Not having eaten certainly couldn’t have helped, but Pan pushed on and picked up pace. Toughen up, she thought. It’s not your body in charge, it’s your mind. Within a minute or two, the stitch eased and her breathing regulated.

  ‘You’re getting fitter,’ Jen observed. She kept pace easily and her voice betrayed no sign of tiredness. First Nate and now Jen, thought Pan. I’m destined to be second best to both of them. She didn’t respond. She didn’t trust her lungs to do two things at once. Pan couldn’t trust anything.

  By the time they reached the waterfall, the sun had dipped beneath the mountain peaks and the forest was bathed in gloom. The waterfall was louder than before, a consequence, Pan guessed, of the increasing volume of meltwater. Jen stood, hands on hips and looked around while Pan sank to the grass and tried to get her breath back.

  ‘Wow,’ said Jen. ‘I didn’t know this place existed. This is a different world.’

  It was a different world. The magic that Pan remembered from her last visit with Nate was still very much in evidence. The grass beneath their feet was laden with dew. High above miniature rainbows formed as the rushing water caught the last remnants of the light. There was a throbbing sense of power in the air. Everything was a reminder of a time and place removed from the rocky austerity of The School. She’d bring Sam and Karl here, Pan decided. They deserved somewhere they could be on their own, somewhere romantic – romance was in short supply at The School.

  ‘So what you wanna talk about?’ said Jen. She sat next to Pan on the grass, apparently oblivious to the dampness which had already soaked through Pan’s pants.

  ‘I told them you had come with me through the wall,’ said Pan. She forced herself to meet Jen’s eyes, though her instinctive reaction was to avoid them. Jen simply nodded.

  ‘Figured that,’ she said. ‘Either that or someone spotted me as I made my very wet way back to the dormitory. Care to tell me why, Pandora?’

  Pan felt better after her confession, but she hadn’t anticipated a question about her motives. The truth seemed unbelievable, but she could see no advantage in lying.

  ‘I was tasered in the village,’ she said. ‘Then they drugged me. When I came to, I was interrogated. Professor Goldberg, I think, though I couldn’t swear to it. He wanted to know what I already knew about The School. I wanted to resist the questioning but . . . this is difficult to explain. I was drowsy. I couldn’t focus. But I also had an overwhelming urge to tell the truth. I figure it was the drugs. Some kind of truth serum. He asked if I went to the village alone. I told him you came with me.’

  Jen plucked a blade of grass and chewed it for a moment.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ asked Pan.

  ‘Tasered. Drugged. Interrogated. Truth serum. I’ll say one thing. You don’t make it easy for me to believe you, Pandora Jones.’

  Pan scratched at the annoying itch between her shoulder blades. Then she got to her feet.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I would believe me. But I needed to explain why I dobbed you in. I’ll leave you to decide if you believe me, or not.’

  ‘Hey, don’t get all pissy on me,’ said Jen. ‘Sit, Pandora. This conversation isn’t over.’

  Pan shrugged and sat down.

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ Jen continued. ‘Either I believe you, or I believe The School. One of you is full of shit and I’m goin’ to find out which.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the million-dollar question. I have a few ideas, though. That trip under the wall was cold and ultimately pointless, but, hey, it was exciting. I could do with more of that.’

  ‘Action better than inaction?’

  ‘Always.’ Jen spat out the chewed-up grass stem. ‘And what’re your plans, Pandora?’

  ‘I’m going to escape.’ Pan wasn’t sure of the wisdom of this confession, but a large part of her was past caring. Maybe Jen couldn’t be trusted. She might have secrets of her own. Maybe The School was using her for its own purposes, like Nate. For all Pan knew, Jen might have dobbed her in. Ultimately, there was no point second-guessing. ‘I think the virus is a load of crap,’ she continued. ‘I think we were abducted. The world is going on out there as it always has. My mother and brother are alive. Everyone’s family and friends are alive. The only way to prove that is to find them. And the only way to find them is to escape from The School.’

  Jen was silent for a moment, and then she laughed.

  ‘Just when I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, you throw that into the mix. Good on ya, Pandora. At the very least, you’re as entertaining as shit. Tell me, though. I remember the virus. You said you remembered the virus. Now it never happened?’

  ‘They’ve implanted memories in us. That’s why so many of us remember the same things.’

  This time, Jen laughed harder. ‘Where’s a straitjacket when you need one?’ she said.

  ‘You asked me, I told you. I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.’

  Jen got to her feet and held out her hand. Pan took it and Jen pulled her to an upright position.

  ‘You might be crazy,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean your idea of escape isn’t . . . cool. Decidedly cool. Any ideas how to do it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Let me know. Maybe I’ll be of some use. And if you’re going, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jen smiled and spread her arms. ‘Why not?’

  Chapter 6

  Pan was expecting fallout from her trip under the wall, but it never materialised. That night she slept a dreamless sleep and woke feeling more refreshed than she had in a very long time. After breakfast, a tasteless meal of grainy porridge and a milk substitute, she took off towards the running track. There were still thousands of rocks littered around the base of the cliff that housed the Infirmary, and she joined a group of students working on clearing them.

  The only student she recognised was Tom, the boy with the falcon. There was no sign of his bird, and Tom was struggling to lift a boulder nearly half his size. Pan walked over to him.

  ‘Hi,’ said Tom. His hair still stuck out at strange angles and it looked like he hadn’t washed it in the last five months. His face might have been given a miss as well. For all that, when he smiled he showed a neat and even row of very white teeth.

  ‘Hi,’ said Pan. ‘How’s Kes?’

  Tom’s grin broadened.

  ‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘Her training is going really well. She’s such a quick learner. It won’t be long before she’ll be catching fresh meat for the canteen.’

  ‘We could do with fresh meat,’ agreed Pan. ‘Here, let me help.’

  Between the two of them they managed to roll the boulder to the base of the cliff where a collection was building. It was a cairn, a mound of rocks built up like a dry stone wall. Then Pan realised that most of the students were bringing their rocks, large and small, to the same area.

  ‘Are we building something?’ she asked.

  Tom nodded. ‘It’s a monument,�
�� he said with barely disguised pride. ‘Some of us got talking and we decided that if we have to clear up the rocks, why not make a statement? You know, rather than just moving them off the plain or lining the pathways, why not build something special?’

  ‘A monument for what?’

  ‘For the two students who died. Cara and that boy, Jake.’

  ‘Nate,’ said Pan. She stopped and dusted her hands. The cairn was probably about a metre and a half in height, but the way it was going and judging by the size of the base, it would be double that by the end of the session. A monument. Part of Pan was touched by the thought. Cara Smith had died, but she would still be remembered. When anyone ran around the running track or simply looked up from most places in The School, they would see the cairn and be reminded. The tribute to Nate was another matter and she preferred not to think too carefully about that. She thought about excusing herself and going for a run, maybe to the waterfall, but that, too held memories. She picked up another rock and placed it on the base. For Cara.

  Then she picked up another one. One thing Pan had determined, if she was going to escape from The School she would need to build up her strength and stamina. From now on she would throw herself into all the physical activities The School had to offer.

  ‘You missed your session yesterday, my dear,’ said Dr Morgan, smoothing an errant strand of hair from the top of his head. ‘Not good enough, Pan. Not good enough at all. We must be committed if we are to make progress.’

  Pan had run up all the steps to the Infirmary. Then, when she had reached the summit she had walked down and run up again, trying to fight her fear of heights, but only partially succeeding. Now her legs were cramping and the pain was intense, but it was an effort she knew she would have been incapable of just a week ago. Pain was going to be her constant companion for the foreseeable future. She had made up her mind.

  ‘Sorry, Doctor,’ she replied. Did Dr Morgan really not know of her arrest on the other side of the wall? It was unlikely that news had not spread to him. For the time being, Pan was going to keep her questions to a minimum. A low profile was what was called for. Until the time came when she was ready.