Beardy is bending forwards, holding his nose. There are bright drops of blood falling between his fingers onto the wet earth. He looks up, eyes full of fury. The two men on either side of me start dragging me towards a pool of bright light coming from what looks like a low, long farmhouse.
A small woman in her twenties with short black hair is at the door.
‘Easy now, Cal,’ she says. ‘It’s OK, you’re safe.’
I try to wrench myself free of the two blokes holding me but their grip is firm. I twist to look at them. One is black and heavily muscled with his hair in cornrows and a tiny earring glinting in his ear lobe. He ignores me. The other is white with cropped dark hair. He gives what looks like an apologetic smile as he drags me inside.
I’m inside a country kitchen that should have homemade cake being cut by a jolly farmer’s wife. Instead, a handful of people are standing around and looking at me. There’s no Victoria sponge on the table. Instead, there’s what looks like a couple of AK47 guns. A middle-aged woman with glasses and blond hair is standing in the middle of the room. Her face softens into a smile and she approaches me, then she gasps as Beardy comes into the room holding a blood-sodden hankie over his face. He mumbles something and disappears through another door, throwing death beams at me with his eyes.
The blond woman looks to the men with a questioning eyebrow.
The dark-haired one who smiled shrugs. ‘The boy was a bit too keen to get out. Nathan copped it in the face.’ He crosses his arms and his lips twitch as though he’s trying not to laugh. ‘He’ll be all right, he’s a big boy.’
‘What the hell is going on?’ I’m standing with my hands balled into fists. I could quite easily break someone else’s nose at this precise moment.
‘Please sit,’ says the woman, gesturing to one of the chairs.
I slam it hard against the table instead. ‘Just tell me where I am!’ I shout. ‘Who are you?!’
The woman raises her hands like I’m a dangerous animal. ‘You’re right to be upset, Cal, I completely understand,’ she says. ‘The last few days must have been deeply unsettling for you. But you’re safe. For now, at least.’ She pulls out the nearest chair and sits down, folding her hands on the table. ‘My name is Helen Bonaparte,’ she continues. ‘My colleagues and I belong to an organisation called Torch and we have been trying to get into the Facility for some time to get you out. It has taken months of our people working there covertly to organise your escape today. And it wasn’t a moment too soon.’
I find myself sliding into a chair, despite still wanting to run away. ‘Look, just start speaking English because I don’t know what you’re going on about.’
Helen Bonaparte sits back in her chair, studying me. ‘What did they tell you about the coma state you were in, Cal?’
‘They told me I’d been there for twelve years,’ I say slowly. ‘That there was an accident when I was little.’ I swallow. ‘And that there was a boy who donated . . . tissue.’
She nods. ‘That’s all true. But did they tell you that they kept you in that coma? Deliberately? And basically stole twelve years of your life? And did they explain why you were given that donated brain tissue?’
I catch my breath. There’s a dull pounding in my chest that vibrates right up to my ears. I don’t know where all the words have gone because I can’t seem to find any to say right now.
Helen leans forward and clasps her hands in front of her. Her voice is gentle when she speaks again. ‘None of this is easy to hear. I’m sorry. But they did something to you, Cal. Something wrong. They inserted a chip into your brain, entirely for their own purposes’.
I can’t do anything but stare numbly. I sniff hard and swipe my eyes with my arm. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I say in a shaky voice. ‘That’s sick. I think you’re sick.’
Helen sighs. ‘I think we’re going to have to show you what this is all about. It’s the only way. I’m sorry, Cal. This is going to be a bit distressing.’ She nods to a man in a baseball hat standing by the sink.
He reaches for a long white tube and unrolls it. I realise it’s a screen, a computer screen that’s as thin and soft as paper. I don’t have time to be impressed because he spreads it out on the table and the next moment, I see an image of a room in the Facility – my room. Cavendish and some other people are standing around watching something and the view pans to take in the pod. I’m in it, eyes closed and I flush hot because I’m moving around like I’m walking along with my hands in my pockets. Thank God I’m not starkers. The camera pans round to show a computer screen just next to the pod. It’s on top of a black box with blinking lights that the people are monitoring closely. There are pictures moving across the screen and I can see them perfectly. But they don’t make any sense.
‘Hang on,’ I say, ‘that’s —’
I’m watching an image of the house on the hill. There’s the hated shed and the old car out the front. Then there’s the school playground. A game of football is going on with Amil and other friends, who come in close, laughing. Amil’s making a loser sign with his hand against his forehead. In the pod, I kick my foot out and then turn around with my arms in the air, like I’ve scored a goal.
Just as fast, the picture switches again to one of Miss Lovett, my art teacher. But she isn’t teaching a lesson. Oh no. She’s getting out of a bath, soap bubbles slipping down her naked body and she’s blowing a kiss at me.
I slam my hand down on the paper, face on fire, and the whole image disappears instantly.
‘What was THAT?’
Helen Bonaparte moves towards me, but I step back. If she touches me, I’ll kill her. I’m buzzing all over with shame and confusion.
‘That was a secret film taken inside the Facility,’ she says quietly. ‘It showed you inside the suspension pod and it showed why you were in there. It’s what that place is all about. They implanted something into your brain that allowed them to view your thoughts when you were inside that suspension pod. It’s known as a Revealer Chip. The full name of the programme is the Cerebral Revealer Chip Study, CRCS or, as it’s nicknamed, The Cracks Programme.’ She looks down for a moment and I see her swallow.
I’m still at ‘they’ve implanted something in your brain’.
I get the urge to scratch my head violently and my hands twitch. Got to stay calm. ‘Why?’ I say, voice breaking. I will not freak out. I will not freak out. Breathe, Cal, breathe . . .
‘Well,’ says the woman slowly, ‘it started as a way to help people with severe disabilities communicate by computer. It was important work to begin with. But they wanted to see how far they could go and you, unfortunately, were their human guinea pig. They are trying to recreate the programme for mass use by testing it on others but it hasn’t . . . gone well.’
My stomach, already heaving, goes into an icy spasm. ‘What do you mean?’
She swallows again. ‘All cases so far have demonstrated severe mental distress and sometimes a total psychological breakdown. That’s the rather cruel side of the nickname for the programme. As in “cracking up”.’
I’m struggling to get air into my lungs now. I can’t imagine how I’ve ever done this without thinking. Each breath must be heaved in and out with a huge effort. Dots dance in front of my eyes.
‘Cal? Cal? Are you all right?’
I clench my fists so hard, my knuckles strain white in front of on the table. ‘Never been better.’ My voice seems to come from the end of a long, long tunnel.
Someone puts a cup of tea in front of me and I take a huge slurp, scalding my tongue but grateful for the heat and the sugar. My body and mind react to the drink and I feel myself breathing properly but my hands won’t stop shaking.
‘But why?’ I say when I trust myself to speak. ‘What’s the point? So they could have a good laugh at what was knocking about inside my head?’
‘No, I’m afraid it’s rather more sinister than that,’ says Bonaparte. ‘You’ve been out of circulation for a long time,’ she says. ‘Every
thing is about control now.’ She pauses. ‘I’m afraid that’s the reality of living in 2024.’
2024? 2024?
I hear a weird groan and realise it has come out of my own mouth. I’ve finally lost the plot. One of us is definitely mad. It’s the only explanation for the ridiculous thing I just heard her say. I goggle at her, goldfish-like, too shocked to speak.
She flicks a nervous look at the others. ‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘You must think it is still . . . what, 2012? 2013? I suppose you would.’ She breathes out a long exhalation before speaking again. ‘That’s when you would have entered the Facility in the first place as a small child. Time was essentially suspended then for you. We realise, from having been able to observe you these months, that much of what was happening inside your brain was probably based on the donor boy’s real memories. You must have been living his teenage years. I’ve no doubt that it all seemed entirely real to you.’
I lean forwards and rest my head on my hands, fingers in my hair. I feel hollowed out, like someone scooped out everything inside that makes me who I am. ‘What about the boy?’ I say shakily. ‘Who was he?’
Bonaparte gives a helpless shrug. ‘I’m so sorry, we don’t have that information. Just that the Revealer Chip was created using brain tissue from a donor. They’d previously tried to create something of this nature with artificial materials but it failed. They realised that actual brain tissue was required. Not that this was straightforward. You would have been pumped full of drugs for the first few years so your body wasn’t able to reject the foreign object inside you.’ She leans forward, her eyes kind. ‘What I’m trying to say is that we don’t know anything about the boy’s identity. Nor, I’m afraid, anything about where you came from. But we’re working on that. We hope to find more information in time. I hope we can help you to adjust to all this,’ she says softly. ‘It’s such a lot to absorb, but the important thing right now is to get you to safety. There was a brief window of opportunity to get you out of there when you woke. We have been looking for signs that you might have been emerging from the coma, and waiting for an opportunity to get you out.’
I stare silently at the table for several minutes. Everyone’s watching me. I wish they’d stop. A picture comes into my head of a lab rat in a cage and I try to shake it away. That’s all I was. An experiment.
‘But what did they want?’ I say finally. I know I sound whiney but I don’t much care. ‘I still don’t understand why. Why do all that?’
Helen sighs. ‘It’s all about quashing any resistance. The Securitat – that’s the people in charge – are a ragtag collection of businessmen and army generals. They believe in stamping down on any opposition to their regime. They wanted to perfect the technology and then planned to roll it out first to all prisoners, to monitor their thoughts and behaviour. But we believe ultimately they want to chip the entire population. If people’s thoughts are no longer private, the authorities can root out dissenters and frighten the rest into submission. They’ll stop at nothing to control people.’
‘Can you get it out? The thing in my brain?’ I scratch my head like I can scratch it all away. I have to force myself to stop because I know it looks mad.
Helen speaks gently. ‘No. I’m afraid not. But they can only access it when you’re at the Facility. The important thing now is keeping you away from them and keeping you safe.’
The other nurse I recognise from the Facility comes back into the room. He has some blood on his shirt so I’m guessing he’s been sorting Beardy out. I feel a bit bad for smashing his face in, but what did he expect?
‘We’ve been working on getting you out for a while, Cal,’ he says. ‘I’ve been turning up the resistance pressure inside the pod so it would strengthen your muscles and get you fit.’
‘Track training,’ I whisper and they all just stare at me with sympathetic expressions. ‘I thought I was track training.’
I want to punch the walls until my knuckles split. And then the feeling drains away and I slide back into a chair and put my face in my hands. I wish I could stop thinking as easily as stopping those images on the paper screen. The idea that people have been watching me, watching every private thought I’ve had up there in widescreen feels like I’ve been burned all over. My face actually throbs from the blazing blush I can’t seem to stop. Every time I think about them watching me, watching my thoughts about Miss Lovett . . . All my dreams and fears . . .
I look up.
‘They knew I was waking up, then? If they could see everything?’
‘No, they didn’t watch you all the time,’ says the nurse. ‘I think there were signs and they gave you more drugs, but it definitely came as a surprise to them. But they were up to something new, Cal. We don’t know what, but they had some sort of bigger plan.’
‘Like what?’ I say.
‘We don’t know,’ says Helen, shaking her head, ‘but we don’t believe they would ever have let you go. You were no good to them awake. They may well have been planning to keep you in that coma for, well . . . the rest of your natural life.’
I shake so violently then I have to press down on my knees with my hands.
Helen clears her throat. ‘There’s something else, Cal. We’re about twenty miles away from the Facility but when they discover you’re gone, they’ll easily be able to track you down. They can’t do that via the Revealer Chip – it wasn’t designed for that. But there’s another way they can trace you . . . and we need to remove that possibility.’
She reaches across the table and takes hold of my hand. I’m too bone tired from trying to take everything in to resist. Her hand is warm and soft. She turns mine over so my birthmark is showing.
She looks at it and traces it gently with her finger before turning to the blond man. She sighs. ‘First generation, I’m afraid. Bigger than usual.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘It’s just a birthmark.’
‘It’s not a birthmark, I’m afraid,’ says Helen. ‘It’s a satellite tracking device that can pinpoint your whereabouts at any given time. The technology has come on considerably since it was fitted but because you’ve been there so long, you have the very earliest type.’ She pauses. ‘They fitted it when you were small, before you got used to that grotesque pod, in case you went wandering off. I’m afraid we have to remove it before we go any further.’
She’s looking searchingly into my eyes, as though she can find an answer there. Understanding plops into my stomach.
‘Remove it? What . . . you think you’re going to just cut it out? No way!’
‘Cal, I’m sorry but there’s really no alternative.’ She nods her head almost imperceptibly and the two blokes grab hold of my arms.
‘Let go!’ I struggle and try to wrench free but they’re both miles stronger than me and all I can do is wriggle sort of helplessly.
Helen winces and picks up a roll of plastic sheeting and spreads it across the table. She goes to a bag on the floor and produces a small medical kit, which she brings to the table. Then she gets out a bottle of antiseptic and the biggest, meanest mother of a scalpel I’ve ever seen. Next she goes over to the sink where she wets her hands and starts scrubbing at them with soap and a small brush, before pulling on a pair of thin flesh-coloured gloves, giving them a snap as she does so.
‘I’m very sorry about this,’ she says. Her mouth is set. ‘But it won’t hurt, I promise.’
‘NO!’ I’m struggling like crazy and another bloke rushes over. He holds me around the chest so tightly I can hardly breathe. One of the men stretches my arm out on the table into a vice-like grip and pulls my sleeve but I won’t turn my hand over. I’m all the while crying out, ‘No! Stop! You can’t do this!’ No one takes any notice. Helen rubs some sort of icy cold cloth over my hand, which immediately goes limp and numb. She nods to one of the men. ‘Hold his head away, I don’t want him to see.’
I catch the smiley bloke’s eye and he has the cheek to look upset. He says, ‘I’m really sorry about this, mate,’ and tak
es hold of my face gently. I shout, ‘NO! You’ll have to break my neck if you try to stop me!’ and he looks at Helen, who nods once. It somehow seems important that I watch. Surely she won’t really do it? ‘There must be some other way. You can’t just cut it out!’
‘Cal, you’re going to have to trust us. You’ve had too much to absorb in a short space of time and it’s impossible for you to think clearly and know what’s best for you right now. I’m very sorry, but what’s best is this. I’ll be very careful to avoid too much scarring.’
It’s a good job my hand is numb because I don’t know what I’d do with it if it wasn’t. My other arm is still tightly gripped in a way that means I can’t move in the chair. I look around the kitchen, thinking about how I can get away. Beardy, or Nathan as he seems to be called, comes back into the room. His nose looks terrible and his eyes are all puffy. Do I see something triumphant flick across his face as Helen picks up the scalpel? I’m glad it’s not him holding it.
‘Hang on!’ I shout desperately, playing for time. ‘Why did he stop me from leaving the Facility if you were going to get me out of there anyway?’
‘It wasn’t the right time,’ he says, his voice thick and nasal. ‘We didn’t have everything in place. You could have completely blown it for us. You wouldn’t have got ten metres away before they tracked you down and then security around you would have increased.’
I look down and Helen Bonaparte is actually pressing the scalpel against my skin. I can’t feel it but I shudder anyway. It looks like a pen’s drawing a thin line of bright red in an L-shape. I can only feel a slight tickling sensation as she gently tugs the skin to one side as a flap. The very worst part is a meaty smell and my stomach heaves but I can’t stop looking. She reaches for a long, thin pair of tweezers and rummages about in the gory wound while my blood pools in scarlet streams down my wrist and onto the table.
Cracks Page 6
