Pandora Jones: Deception

by Barry Jonsberg

  Pan held out her outstretched hand over the cups, her palm hovering a few centimetres above them. She had no precedent for this, so she decided to apply the same ‘hot or cold’ technique that had worked before. She started on the cups closest to her and tried to pick up impressions. Her first thought was hot, but as she moved her hand over each cup it felt colder the further away she stretched. Pan tested each of the twenty carefully. The result was the same. The pebble was in one of the cups nearest to her, but she couldn’t identify which one. They were too close together.

  ‘It’s in one of these,’ she said, indicating the four directly in front of her. ‘But I can’t be more specific.’

  ‘I’ll spread them out,’ said Dr Morgan. He moved his hand towards the cups and then stopped. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘If I move them, you’ll hear the pebble rattling. You’ll have to leave the room again.’

  Pan rolled her eyes. ‘Are you kidding? This is going to take weeks.’

  ‘Indulge me, my dear.’

  So Pan left the room again. This time, when she was summoned back only one of the remaining cups gave a sense of hotness.

  ‘This one,’ she said, tapping it.

  Dr Morgan lifted the cup and there was the pebble. He seemed inordinately pleased.

  ‘Twenty to one,’ he said. ‘Amazing. Let’s do it again.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ said Pan, but Dr Morgan was already rearranging the cups.

  Pan did the experiment five more times and got the correct cup each time. Dr Morgan’s excitement was apparent. Then again, she’d got carried away herself. It was impossible not to indicate the correct container when she felt so certain it was right. Pan realised she would simply have to deal with the consequences of Dr Morgan’s increased interest. It ran counter to her intention to keep a low profile, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, my dear,’ said Dr Morgan when the two-hour session was up. ‘This is heartening.’

  Jen was waiting for her outside the Infirmary. Pan slipped her hand into her pocket and palmed two items into Jen’s hand as she passed. The girls did not acknowledge each other and Jen simply strode straight into the Infirmary’s entrance. Pan stood to one side and waited. It took only a minute or two before she heard Jen’s voice and then she slipped back inside and padded along to the bend in the corridor. Carefully, she poked her head around the corner. At the nurses’ station Jen was pointing at her foot, and the nurse had come from behind the counter to see what the problem was.

  ‘I fell while I was running,’ said Jen. ‘Scraped my foot on a rock. That was yesterday and since then it’s gone all puffy and I thought maybe I’d got some kind of infection in it. I wondered if maybe one of the docs should have a look at me.’

  The woman bent down and examined Jen’s foot. She sniffed.

  ‘Looks perfectly fine to me,’ she said. ‘It’s just a scrape, dear. Honestly, this is not worth bothering the doctors about.’

  ‘But it hurts,’ said Jen.

  ‘Well, of course it hurts,’ the nurse replied. ‘It’s a cut. But it appears clean to me and there’s no sign of an infection.’

  ‘Could I at least have a plaster?’ said Jen. ‘Maybe some disinfectant? It really hurts a lot.’ She twisted her mouth and for a moment Pan thought she was on the verge of tears.

  Pan couldn’t imagine Jen crying if someone took a hammer to both her legs and pulverised her kneecaps. She was without doubt the toughest person Pan had ever known.

  ‘Goodness me,’ said the nurse. ‘Such a baby. I’ll get some tea-tree oil to put on it.’ She clucked her tongue in disapproval, went behind the counter and opened a door on the back wall. As soon as she’d disappeared from sight, Pan moved quickly round the bend, past Jen and then took off to her left. It took less than ten seconds before she found herself in the ward, the expanse of French windows off to her left, a row of empty beds ranged along the wall. Empty apart from one.

  A boy lay in the bed closest to the door. He had tubes snaking from his arms and a drip suspended on a frame above the bed. Pan had no time to examine him closely, though she did note that he had a pale complexion and an untidy mop of red hair. His eyes were closed. A screen to the right of the bed traced a green line and a light flashed soundlessly. She got onto her knees and squirmed under the bed, curled herself into a tight ball. The dust made her nose twitch and she had to resist the urge to sneeze.

  If Pan had a watch she would have glanced at it, but she had given that, and the tracking chip from her back, to Jen outside the Infirmary. Even now, she thought, Jen was heading back to the canteen. After that, it would be free time and Jen would put them under the pillow on Pan’s bunk. If anyone was tracking Pan’s movements through either of those devices, they would find nothing untoward. Now all she had to do was wait. Wait and think.

  Jen’s plan had been simple enough. The diversion to allow Pan to sneak back into the Infirmary was easily accomplished. The girls had talked over the possibility of Pan hiding in the toilets, rather than leaving after her personal development session, but that idea had been dismissed. Pan would have had to leave her watch and the other tracking device somewhere before going to the Infirmary and anyone monitoring her movements may have twigged. Jen had solved the problem by suggesting she take the devices and create the diversion.

  They had then discussed the alarm.

  ‘What happens when I get out from under the bed and the sirens start blaring?’ asked Pan. ‘And I’m stuck inside the locked Infirmary.’

  ‘I reckon it’s a motion sensor, probably on both the French windows and the front doors,’ Jen replied. ‘I think if you’re inside when it’s armed, you’ll be okay.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Dr Morgan is in there at night. And the alarm isn’t activated every time he needs to take a piss. Don’t be a pussy, Pandora.’

  ‘Okay. So what do I do if I find all the internal doors are locked, too?’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Jen. ‘We’ve got the lock picks.’

  ‘You have them. And I can’t use them.’

  ‘You won’t have to. I will.’

  Pan sighed. ‘And just how do we get you in there, Jen?’

  ‘Simple. After lights out, I leave my watch on my bunk, come up to the Infirmary under cover of darkness and wait in the Garden. The nurse leaves about nine-thirty and Dr Macredie leaves somewhere around ten. Dr Morgan, I reckon, doesn’t lock up or set the alarms until Dr Macredie goes. So, about nine forty-five, you open the French windows and I slip inside. Too easy.’

  ‘I can think of all sorts of things that could go wrong.’

  ‘Well, stop thinking about them. This is my plan, Pandora, and there’s no way I’m not going to be there.’

  Pan could tell by the look on Jen’s face that there was no point arguing with her. And she didn’t want to, anyway. The thought of exploring the dark Infirmary by herself, with the possibility of running into Dr Morgan or the hulking boy who was presumably stationed up there somewhere as a guard, did not fill her with enthusiasm. She would be grateful for Jen’s company. Not to mention her martial arts ability if they were caught.

  She instinctively glanced at her wrist before remembering she didn’t have her watch. How long had she been waiting? It felt like an hour, but she knew it was probably no more than twenty minutes. That would make it about seven o’clock. The canteen would be serving the second sitting. Her stomach grumbled. Even thin stew and hard bread were appealing.

  Less than three hours to go, she thought. Then – action.

  She wrinkled her nose against the dust and stifled a sneeze.

  Chapter 11

  Pan found that the best way to stop her body seizing up was to stretch out under the bed and do simple exercises. She took each of her limbs in turn and gently flexed then relaxed her muscles. It helped to relieve the boredom as well. Then she heard footsteps approaching from a distance. It made her realise that she and Jen would have to be very careful when they
were moving about later. It would be sensible to remove their boots and explore in bare feet.

  Pan lay on her side and saw two pairs of legs stop at the side of the bed. Dr Macredie and Dr Morgan checking on their patient. If she reached out she could touch their shoes. For one instant she was tempted to do just that. Instead she concentrated on staying completely still and hoped the dust, stirred up by the doctors’ arrival, would not make her sneeze.

  ‘How long do you think we should keep him here, Joy?’ came Dr Morgan’s voice.

  Joy Macredie. Pan had never heard her first name. Come to think about it, she had never heard any of the staff’s first names, apart from the Prof. She remembered her conversation with Dr Macredie after she had been caught on the other side of the wall with Nate. Her daughter’s name was Hope. Joy and Hope? It was almost a cliché. Then again, Pan reminded herself, there was no guarantee that whatever Dr Macredie said had even a passing resemblance to the truth.

  ‘I don’t think we need to rush things, Alex.’ The doctor’s quiet voice, with its singsong Scottish lilt, only just carried to Pan’s ears. ‘A wee while more. A week or two, perhaps. Give those processes time to bed in.’

  ‘How’s the gunshot wound?’

  At least that was the truth, Pan thought.

  ‘Healing nicely. It was never life-threatening, though.’

  Pan willed them to keep talking. She remembered the conversation she had had with Dr Morgan. When was that? Their first personal development session, maybe. They had talked about the survivor and Dr Morgan had told her that the gunshot wound was life-threatening, that they were worried he wouldn’t pull through. Another lie. But in that case, why were they keeping the boy unconscious? Was it so that whatever procedure they used on The School’s students was, even now, being performed? That the drip was feeding him, not drugs to help his body heal, but memories manufactured by The School? If the doctors would just keep talking there was a chance she would find out.

  But they didn’t. The visit lasted no more than a couple of minutes and then they were gone. As far as Pan could tell they didn’t even examine the boy. But, of course, they weren’t proper doctors. Not in the real world. So who supervised the procedures in the room she had seen, where the young man that might have been Nate was connected to a machine? It wasn’t Dr Morgan, yet everything suggested a scientific operation. And if there were medical people on site, why leave the Infirmary in the hands of unqualified people? Then again, maybe her vision came from the past or from another location outside The School. Yet Dr Macredie had said ‘processes’ and needing time to ‘bed in’. Whatever the processes were, they must take place here in the Infirmary, and that seemed to indicate there were further secrets to be discovered.

  Pan mulled over the possible implications as she waited for the hours to pass, and came to the conclusion that she still possessed too little information. Maybe tonight would change that. Maybe she would find that room she had ‘seen’ and discover some answers.

  After a while, her mind turned to Wei-Lin and their decision to keep her in the dark, if only for the time being. Pan was unhappy about their treatment of Wei-Lin. Gazing at the dust-streaked floor and waiting for dusk to thicken into night gave her the opportunity to think about the situation from Wei-Lin’s perspective. She was probably more alone than Pan had ever been. The group, in which Wei-Lin had taken so much pride, had fallen apart. Cara gone. Nate gone. Sam and Karl so involved in each other that there was no room for anyone else. Those two had wrapped themselves in a bubble that no one else could pierce and, on one level, Pan was happy for them. Everyone’s grim existence and bleak states of mind might be fended off through love. Maybe only love could do it. But Wei-Lin didn’t have that. She had only the group, and they had deserted her. She seemed to be forging a bond with Sanjit, but that relationship was being built around Sanjit’s needs, not Wei-Lin’s. That only left Jen and Pan and they too had formed an exclusive partnership. Wei-Lin was locked out and she didn’t deserve it. She had only ever been friendly, warm and welcoming. Pan had promised herself she would look out for Sanjit, but it was Wei-Lin who actually had done something about it. And when the boy had burst into the dormitory looking for Jen and Pan, Wei-Lin had been the one to close ranks and protect them. She cared about all of them and what had any of them given her back in return? Nothing. It wasn’t good enough. Pan would make amends.

  The hours crawled by and night finally descended. A small light on the wall produced the red glow she and Jen had noticed through the glass only the previous night. No one had come to the ward for what must have been an hour and she felt the time was right to leave her hiding place. Her muscles, despite her best attempts to keep them loose, were in danger of cramping. She took off her boots and socks and left them under the bed. Then she stood and walked around to keep her body from seizing up. If anyone came in and turned on the light, of course she would be exposed, but she was confident she would hear anyone coming and be able to get back under the bed in time.

  Pan waited by the windows, aware that anyone outside might be able to see her through the glass. Perhaps the boy guard. She took a step or two back. There was no light outside; in fact, the only light anywhere came from the dim night light close to the boy’s bed. Pan wondered how she would see Jen when she did arrive. She wished she had some way of telling the time. Pan had little idea whether she had another hour to wait or whether Jen could appear at any moment.

  A sound from the nurses’ station caused her heart to quicken and her first instinct was to hide, but she forced herself to stay calm and walk towards the door leading to the corridor. Her bare feet scarcely made a sound against the tiles. Holding her breath, Pan leaned out.

  ‘Goodnight, Clare. See you tomorrow.’ The voice was Dr Macredie’s.

  ‘Goodnight, Joy.’

  The nurse was leaving. At least that gave Pan some idea of the time. According to Jen it must be about nine-thirty. Another half an hour before Dr Macredie left and only fifteen minutes before Jen was due to turn up. Pan stayed put and listened to the sounds of departure. She kept alert in case Dr Macredie came back into the ward after seeing her colleague off. Within thirty seconds she heard the front doors click closed and then the tapping of Dr Macredie’s shoes as she walked along the corridor. The sound receded into the distance and Pan let her breath out again. She moved quietly over to the French windows, unlocked them, and slid them open. There was no point waiting, she thought. Then a dark shape appeared just beyond the glass and squeezed into the gap.

  Jen slid the windows closed and latched them. Pan drew her further inside the ward and put her mouth against her ear.

  ‘Take your boots off,’ she whispered. ‘Quickly and quietly. Then follow me.’

  Jen undid her laces and slipped out of her boots. Pan led the way to the bed at the furthest end of the ward. While she had been moving around the ward, Pan had cast her eyes around for possible hiding places. The bed furthest away had a privacy screen behind it, pressed up against the wall. It did not quite extend to the floor; there was a gap of about half a metre between the material and the frame that supported it. It would have to do.

  Pan whispered to Jen, who nodded and handed her boots over. Then she squeezed behind the screen as Pan had instructed. They’d find out how effective it was as a hiding place when Dr Morgan returned to do his final check and lockup. Pan crawled back under the boy’s bed and placed Jen’s boots next to her own. Then she waited. Again.

  Jen’s hours of surveillance paid off. It all happened exactly as she’d predicted. About half an hour after the nurse’s departure, Dr Macredie left. Dr Morgan accompanied her and the girls could faintly hear their voices as they bade each other goodnight. There was the sound of a lock engaging and then footsteps that approached the ward. Even in her place under the bed, Pan flinched when the light came on. She blinked and held her breath. Once again she saw Dr Morgan’s shoes only half a metre away. This time, he barely paused at the bed, before walking over to the French wi
ndows. There was a faint sound as he checked the mechanism, a thirty-second pause, and then he crossed to the door. The light clicked off and his footsteps receded into silence.

  The girls waited for another ten minutes, though to Pan it seemed more like an hour. Finally, she could wait no longer and wriggled out from under the bed. She cocked her head at the doorway, but could detect no sounds. Even so, she didn’t want to risk whispering. The presence of the sleeping boy was unnerving, as if any sound might suddenly wake him. Pan crept over to the far side of the ward where Jen was already sliding out from behind the screen. The two stood together in the centre of the ward. Jen brought her mouth up to Pan’s ear.

  ‘We wait,’ she said. ‘At least an hour.’

  Pan groaned. Sixty minutes might seem a short time to Jen, but to Pan it represented further torture. She gritted her teeth. Jen was right. There was no point in taking risks now they had made it so far. They sat next to each other on one of the beds and Pan concentrated on mentally ticking off the minutes in her head, but after only a few she lost count and gave up. Instead she undid the laces on their boots and tied them together so they could sling their boots over their necks. If they had to make a run for it, the last thing she wanted was to leave their footwear behind. It wouldn’t exactly be difficult to work out who had broken into the Infirmary – just find the students with bare feet.

  It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before Jen stood. ‘Let’s go,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t stand this.’

  The girls turned left out of the ward and moved cautiously in the direction of the nurses’ station. There were no lights on and no sounds. Jen tapped Pan on the shoulder and nodded behind the desk. Pan followed her. Jen stepped up to a set of metal filing cabinets on the back wall and tried to open the top drawer. Locked. She fumbled in her pocket and removed the lock picks and got to her knees. The scraping of metal against metal sounded loud, and Pan hoped the noise wouldn’t carry far. In less than a minute the drawer slid noiselessly open on its tracks. Pan leaned closer and peered inside. For the first time, she regretted not bringing her torch. The cabinet held a considerable number of folders, in suspension files. Jen pulled one out and opened it, but the darkness meant it was impossible to read. Part of the problem was that the nurses’ station admitted no natural light, protected as it was by the curve in the corridor. Jen put her hand around Pan’s head and drew her close.