by Gemma Malley
That had been the end of Jude’s existence as a Legal citizen – from then on, he’d needed Underground protection. But the truth was, Legality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, not when you were the only Legal person your age in what felt like the whole city or possibly the whole country.
‘No thank you,’ Sheila said haughtily, immediately starting to push her broom around the floor. ‘I’ve actually got a lot of things to do.’
Jude grinned. ‘But we both know you’re not going to do them.’
Sheila folded her arms defensively. ‘I am. I’m not a layabout like you.’ She turned and swept some dust out of the corner, then swept it back again. He watched in amusement, but didn’t say anything. Sheila had grown up in a Surplus Hall. She never tired of telling anyone who’d listen that she wasn’t a Surplus, that her parents had Opted Out of the Declaration, forgoing Longevity so they could have her, but even so she’d still ended up being taken by the Catchers and trained to be a Valuable Asset, a housekeeper or other servant. Except it seemed that wasn’t what Valuable Assets were after all. At Pincent Pharma, she’d discovered that Richard Pincent needed them for . . . other things.
‘Suit yourself.’
‘I will. And if I were you I’d read some of those books Pip gave you. You’re lucky to be here, Jude.’
‘So what – I should make myself more valuable?’ Again he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. When they’d first been taken in by the Underground Sheila had made a big deal about the housekeeping skills she’d learned at Grange Hall, about how valuable she’d be to everyone. But the Underground tended to choose derelict and uninhabitable buildings for its premises, and it wasn’t that easy being a housekeeper in a place that was full of dust and where no one really seemed to care if the floors were clean or not. It soon turned out that Sheila wasn’t that great at cleaning anyway, nor at cooking, unless charred food was your idea of haute cuisine. Which meant that she spent most of her time trailing around the place, a slightly defensive look on her face. Jude could relate to that; he felt like he was continually trying to defend his position, his value, his usefulness.
‘I was rescued,’ Sheila said, evidently deciding that attack was the best form of defence. ‘I was in a Surplus Hall because the Catchers stole me from my parents. You’re . . . well, you were just living in a house, weren’t you? I mean, you don’t really need to be here at all.’
Jude took a deep breath. Always the same digs, the same pointed comments, as if life was a competition and if Sheila didn’t attempt to put him down at least three times a day she’d somehow be losing in the game of life. Trouble was, she’d already lost so many times and Jude knew it. A life spent at Grange Hall, her first taste of the world outside being strapped to a bed in Unit X, Pincent Pharma’s dirty little secret.
Sheila had never been on her own but he knew she’d been lonely – desperately lonely. She’d been very hazy about her friends at Grange Hall, but she sometimes told him stories about the vicious games they played there, the bullying and the punishments regularly dished out, which made Jude ache when he thought about it. He would forgive Sheila anything because of what she’d been through – her biting comments, her twisted morality, the way she watched him quietly then skulked into the shadows the moment he turned round.
‘Not like me,’ she continued. ‘I mean, I was Legal too, but the Catchers stole me from my grandparents and my parents couldn’t find me again.’
She shot Jude a meaningful look and he sighed inwardly. She’d told him this story a million times. More than a million. And last week, stupidly, stupidly, in a moment of weakness he’d agreed to see if he could track her parents down for her. Even though Pip had made it clear that he didn’t want him to. Even though Sheila had been told not to look for her parents under any circumstances.
‘Palmer, their name was,’ Sheila said, looking at him cautiously. ‘In Surrey . . .’
‘Palmer. Right,’ Jude said awkwardly, noticing a piece of paper in front of him, a list of names and addresses. He sighed. ‘OK. Look, Sheila, maybe I did a little bit of digging. The thing is . . .’ he said, biting his lip.
Sheila looked up at him excitedly. ‘Yes? The thing is what? You’ve found them? Oh, tell me, Jude. Please. I know Pip doesn’t want me to find them, but you have to tell me. You have to –’
She was interrupted by Pip himself walking into the room suddenly. ‘Sheila,’ he said, ‘we have a nurse along the corridor who could do with some help, if you’d be so kind.’ Jude looked up in surprise; he hadn’t noticed him, didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.
‘Have you found out what happened? What was wrong with that woman?’ he asked hopefully, but Pip didn’t answer; instead he looked at Sheila pointedly.
She opened her mouth as though to protest, then, catching Pip’s immovable expression, shrugged heavily and wandered down the corridor.
‘So?’ Jude asked when she’d gone.
‘Sheila has had a difficult life, wouldn’t you say?’ Pip remarked, walking towards him.
Jude nodded warily. He’d learned to watch what he said to Pip, who had a way of twisting his words, making him seem to agree to things he’d had no intention of agreeing with.
‘She hasn’t seen her parents for years, I believe.’
‘Not since she was about four, I think,’ Jude said.
‘And now, for the first time in her life she is comparatively safe. She has you, and she has the protection of the Underground.’
‘That’s right,’ Jude agreed.
‘So you think that it is a good idea, now, to muddy things, to distract her with thoughts of her parents?’
Jude frowned. ‘But I –’
‘No buts, Jude. And now there is a lorry that requires tracking and I think it deserves all your focus.’
‘I am focused.’ Jude could feel his mouth fixed in an angry grimace. Did Pip not trust him at all?
‘No, Jude, you are not focused. If you were focused, you’d have noticed that the lorry has been stopped.’
Jude’s eyes widened and he enlarged the SpyNet software screen, which was hijacking Pincent Pharma’s own CCTV system in order to track the progress of Pincent Pharma lorries now heading into an Underground ambush. ‘Shit!’ he said. The lorry was on its side in the middle of the road. One lone car swerved to avoid it, but kept on driving. ‘Shit! I’m sorry, I . . .’
He turned to Pip, who smiled gently and pointed back at the screen. Jude nodded, swivelled round and watched as men dressed in khaki jumped out in front of the lorry, pulling out the driver, forcing the back open. Jude felt the familiar surge of adrenalin as he watched the scene unfold – David against Goliath, Good against Evil.
The doors were open now and Jude’s eyes were on the driver who was on the ground, two men holding him down. He looked agitated, fearful – he was shouting something. The Underground men were dragging large boxes out of the lorry; they didn’t look like the usual boxes carrying Longevity drugs. Not that it mattered – they would be torched anyway, destroyed. The Underground would leave its message loud and clear on the side of the road.
But as he watched the boxes being prised open Jude frowned, the lines between his eyes deepening. Something wasn’t right. The boxes weren’t cardboard, they were made of wood. The men were improvising, making tools from their guns in order to break into them. And then one was opened and Jude’s jaw dropped, and his hand moved towards his mouth, clamped over it, his eyes widening, his pulse quickening, a dark foreboding rising up within him.
He looked up at Pip in alarm. ‘They’re not drugs,’ he said, watching bodies tumble out of the containers – dead bodies, black, shrivelled-up bodies. The men were jumping back as they took in the horror that lay in front of them. Some were running away, others were prodding the bodies to see if they were alive.
‘No,’ Pip agreed, his gaze fixed to the screen, his clear blue eyes clouded suddenly. ‘No, they’re not.’
‘They’re like the wo
man,’ Jude gasped, fear gripping at his chest like strong, icy hands.
‘The woman? She looked like that?’ Pip asked, his voice urgent and low.
Jude nodded. ‘Exactly the same,’ he said breathlessly.
Pip didn’t say anything; he just kept looking right ahead at the screen.
‘Pip?’ Jude turned to him anxiously. ‘What does this mean? What happened to them?’
‘A very good question,’ Pip said gravely.
‘It’s Pincent Pharma, isn’t it?’ Jude said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m going to upload this on to the Web. Tell the newsfeeds. People have to see this.’
Pip turned to him, his eyes cloudy, and shook his head. ‘No, Jude. Now is not the time to act. Now is the time to wait.’
‘Wait? For what?’ Jude asked incredulously. ‘Stop pushing me away. I can help. We should be broadcasting this. We should be using this to let the world know that Pincent Pharma is corrupt, that it’s killing people! Let me be part of the fight, Pip. Please.’ He looked up hopefully, desperately, his eyes passionate, his fists clenched. And for a moment, he thought Pip was going to say yes; for a moment, Pip looked like he was really considering it.
But then he felt himself crash down to earth as Pip shook his head. ‘A broadcast isn’t necessary or desirable, Jude. News of this will get out eventually, I assure you.’ He got up and started to walk away.
‘That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?’ Jude asked desperately. ‘What do I say to the men? What do I do?’ He looked down miserably at his handheld device. ‘Do you even realise what I’ve got here? Are you even aware that I worked for months on this communications network? That it’s unrivalled as far as I know? Do you care that I don’t just film attacks; that because of me, you or I can speak directly to the leaders of the soldiers, send for back-up, give orders when dead bodies spill out of lorries instead of drugs? Do you?’
He stared at Pip defiantly, angrily.
Pip looked back at him, then nodded. ‘Of course I know, Jude,’ he said quietly. ‘Tens, maybe hundreds of lives have been saved because of what you have done.’
Jude started in surprise. Pip had never so much as said thank you for the network, never seemed to show any interest in it. ‘So what do I tell them to do?’ he asked.
‘You tell them to go home,’ Pip said quietly. ‘And then you track the lorries back through their journeys. I want to know where they came from and where they stopped on their way. Can you do that, Jude?’
‘Track lorries? Sure, I can do that,’ Jude said heavily, turning back to the images and feeling his blood turn cold at the sight of them. ‘I can do whatever you want.’
.
Chapter Four
Richard stood at the window of his large office, looking at but barely seeing the panoramic view of London, the symbol of all his power and success. He felt ill, felt tired, felt . . . scared.
Power and success. Already it felt as if they were evaporating. He walked over to his desk and gripped it. Slowly he breathed, in, out, in, out. He would find an answer. He always found an answer.
But even as he told himself everything would resolve itself, he found his mind flooded with doubt. For so long he had buried all thoughts of Albert Fern, of his protestations as Derek led him to his death. ‘You don’t have anything, Richard . . . Without the exact formula you know nothing . . . The circle of life must be protected . . .’
Richard shuddered. How he hated his former boss, his former father-in-law, the man who had treated him with such contempt, forcing him to undertake menial tasks in the laboratory when it had been clear he was meant for greater things. But Richard had had the last laugh. It had been an article he’d happened upon while at university that had convinced him he should go and work for Albert – an interview in which Professor Fern had made an offhand remark about his pursuit of the cure for cancer, saying that he feared they would cure ageing before they cured every strain of that terrible disease. He’d done his research and from what he’d read, Albert had seemed to be the real deal. So Richard had waited for an opening, for a job to come up in his laboratory. And when it had, he’d been ready.
Everything had gone to plan too. More to plan than Richard had allowed himself to dream. Except . . .
He moved towards his large leather chair and sat down heavily, then pulled out from his top drawer the papers he’d stolen from Albert’s desk on the day of his death – meaningless scribbles, equations and streams of letters that even the most brilliant scientists had been unable to interpret. All Richard could hear in his head was Albert’s taunts about the circle of life. The circle of life? What was it?
Angrily, he let the papers fall from his hands back on to the desk. Several times over the years he’d almost thrown them away – they were meaningless drivel and he hadn’t needed them. Despite Albert’s protestations, his team of scientists had been able to recreate Longevity, as he’d named it, from the professor’s original sample. The drug had sailed through all testing and trials and had taken the world by storm, and Albert Fern had been recast in the history books as a genius who had died of natural causes before his great discovery had been accepted, adopted and legalised.
Richard knew that the scientific community would never have accepted the story that he himself had invented the drug, and Albert’s ‘sad and untimely’ death allowed the drug’s genesis to be fabricated, manipulated and, most importantly, kept as opaque as possible. Meanwhile, he had taken his place at the helm of the most powerful company in the whole world. But now . . . now . . . now he needed the formula, needed to understand Albert’s scribbles. But instead of helping him, they were as impenetrable as ever. He could almost feel Albert mocking him from beyond the grave.
Richard brought his fist down on the desk so hard that the papers jumped up in the air. ‘What is the bloody circle of life?’ he shouted. ‘Is it the formula? Where is it? Where is it? You bastard! You bloody sanctimonious, conniving bastard!’
Even as he shouted, he knew he had to stop this momentary lapse of control. Anger would solve nothing. But this was anger that had been building up for years – anger and fear that one day Albert’s words would come back and haunt him. Richard always liked to have all ends tied up; it was why he had told Derek to dispose of Albert rather than lock him up somewhere. Neat ends enabled you to move forward. Opponents, problems – they had to be dealt with efficiently, not left to fester. And he had succeeded too, except for the formula. However much he had told himself that he didn’t need it, that an exact copy was perfectly adequate – more than adequate – he had always suspected, known even, that this ragged end, this unfinished business would come back and haunt him. When Dr Thomas had been blathering about viruses mutating, Richard had dismissed him immediately. He knew what the problem was. Derek knew too. He suspected that they’d both been half expecting it for years.
He had to think. He had to think hard. He would find a way forward – he always did. And in doing so, he would turn the situation to his advantage. There was always an opportunity in crisis, however desperate things seemed.
His phone started to ring and he looked at it with loathing – it would be Hillary Wright, head of the Authorities, haranguing him for more information, for explanations. Dead bodies were not easily hidden in a world where no one died; illness was not easily explained away when Longevity stopped even the tiniest of infections from taking hold. As he’d predicted, the number of deaths was growing – single figures had become double and now there were hundreds of corpses piling up at Pincent Pharma, buried in hastily dug shallow pits. Pincent guards were taking them when they were ill, before anyone could witness the horror, the blackened corpses. Thankfully, living forever had meant that most marriages had broken up – a lifetime’s commitment was now rather too long for most to stomach. With no children any more the vast majority of people lived alone, making it much easier for the Authorities police to take them away in the middle of the night and bring them to Pincent Pharma to die and to be exam
ined.
Richard ignored the phone. Hillary could wait, he decided. She would have to – he had to think, had to find a way through the maze. So far he had evaded her questions, lied to her when necessary. He would not admit there was a problem until he also had the solution. He needed the formula; that was the quest. But how? It was like a puzzle, a game, only one with terrible consequences if he lost. Could he dig up Albert’s body? Bring him back to life? Torture him into revealing the exact formula?
Nice idea, he thought wryly.
But no. There had to be another way.
He stared again at Albert’s notes. Impenetrable scribblings, little doodles around the page – he’d got his best scientists to work tirelessly in an attempt to interpret them, but to no avail. The formula could not be concealed within their pages; it must be hidden somewhere else. But where? Richard had ransacked Albert’s house, his car, his office – everywhere. He’d examined everything – after his death and then again a few weeks ago when one death had turned into five and he’d realised that something was wrong.
Sighing, he scrunched up one of the pieces of paper and threw it across the room. But as he did so, his eyes were drawn to something on the page beneath – an image he’d seen somewhere before. A picture of a flower. He’d dismissed it as a doodle, but now . . . He knew he had seen it somewhere else. Where? He didn’t know. He closed his eyes, tried to picture the place he’d seen it, but . . . nothing. Then he opened his eyes again. Underneath the drawing, in tiny letters, was written, over and over again, ‘The circle of life. The circle of life. Must be protected.’
There was a knock at the door and Derek walked in, silent as always. ‘I wondered if there had been any . . . progress,’ he said.
Richard looked up and shook his head miserably. ‘The circle of life,’ he said, sighing. ‘All I have is this stupid drawing and his scribblings about the circle of life.’
