Secrets

by Corinna Turner

  “Where is she?” the soldier was barking. “Show us.”

  “Oh, wow, there’s loads of you! That’s great! Come on, she’s just up here in the cave. We thought we might as well have our picnic where people might come. I already carried her out of the ravine she fell in, you see, and I just don’t think I can carry her any further. But you guys look really strong.” Bane’s hopeful tone made me smile, despite our desperate situation.

  A radio crackled—the soldier was reporting in. “Sarge, we’ve got a youth here says he has a female friend in the cave with a bad ankle. Checking it out now.”

  The static-y response wasn’t properly audible to me, but I caught the words ‘careful’ and ‘Resistance . . .’ coupled with a term that would’ve been better obscured by the static.

  Heavy boots crunched, and I hastily picked up a sandwich as the best available non-threatening prop, making sure to have it half-way to my mouth as the soldiers came into sight.

  “Wow!” I said in a deeply impressed tone, once they were within earshot. “Where did you find all them?”

  “They were just down the slope a little way.” Bane sat back on the boulder. “I told you I heard someone.”

  “Well, sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “That’s enough chit-chat,” barked the soldier at the front, though he seemed to have relaxed a bit when he saw me. I looked my age. He made a gesture to the other men, who fanned out around the big cave, menacing boulders, and outcrops with their rifles until satisfied it was empty. Six more had remained outside, clearly to conduct a search of the surrounding outcrops.

  The soldier’s eyes were checking us over, though, lingering on our hair—black and brown—and my double layer of jackets—brown and green. Blast. “How old are you two?”

  “Fourteen.”

  He grimaced slightly, then turned, a slight flicker of relief crossing his face.

  More boots crunched, and a voice bellowed, “What ‘ave you got, then?”

  “Fourteen-year-olds, Sarge. Two of ‘em.”

  “Fourteen, huh?” The sergeant stopped in front of us, his eyes performing the same inventory. “Kids. What you doing out ‘ere, huh?”

  “We were going to have a picnic,” I answered. “But I went and fell down a ravine and sprained my ankle. We started hobbling back towards the main road but it was such hard work, when we got to the caves we thought we’d have our picnic and see if anyone turned up. Loads of tourists come here, you know.”

  “Not this early in the year, they don’t.”

  Trying to look young and stupid, we simply shrugged.

  “And where were you planning to ‘ave that there picnic?” His eyes raked us shrewdly.

  “Oh, we’d have, uh, found somewhere nice,” said Bane.

  “Ever ‘eard of . . . train-jumping?”

  “Yeah, lots of kids do it around here,” said Bane, unhesitatingly. “At least once, anyway. Parents freak out about it, but it’s not that dangerous, really. I mean, I suppose you could trip and go under the wheels, but if kids know what they’re doing . . . Though some kids have had other problems. We, uh, even heard about some kids who tried to get on the wrong train. They actually got shot at by soldiers. Scared the life out of them. They won’t be doing that again in a hurry.”

  My heart was pounding right in my throat, or so it felt. Innocent picnickers clearly wasn’t going to wash, so I understood what Bane was doing, but I was still terrified.

  “Oh, really?” The sergeant was still eyeing Bane very narrowly. “And when was that?”

  “Oh, it was really quite recent.”

  “Was it, huh. Ever ‘eard of . . . the Young Resistance?”

  “Of course. They’re in the newspapers sometimes. Mostly graffiti and stuff. Some of it’s quite funny!”

  The sergeant’s lip twitched slightly, then firmed. “Know anyone in it?”

  Bane shrugged. “Well, how’d you tell? I mean, they wouldn’t let on, would they?”

  The sergeant grimaced slightly. “Got your ID cards?”

  “Not on us. We’re only fourteen!”

  “All right, what’re your names?”

  “Margaret Verrall.” I’d a clean record, after all.

  “You’re not going to call my mum, are you?” said Bane. “She’ll freak out if you call her! Think I’m in trouble.”

  “Is that common?”

  “No! I mean, there’s been the odd little thing, but I’ve never done anything really bad. I don’t want to be locked up!”

  Smiling slightly at these boyish protests, the sergeant lifted his radio. “Sir? We’re up as far as the Whitly Caves, and we’ve found no Resistance terrorists.”

  The radio squawked an almost unintelligible query that included the word ‘helicopter.’

  “It’s jus’ two kids, sir, that’s all. One with a twisted ankle.”

  The radio squawked some more, rather hysterically.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said sourly, and he replaced it at his belt.

  My heart began to pound again. The sergeant had clearly figured out the truth of the situation; but, unless I was mistaken, our fate was no longer in the sergeant’s hands. Blast and botheration.

  “Look lively!” bellowed the sergeant. “Lieutenant’s on ‘is way up.”

  Some of the soldiers who’d started sitting down on boulders and leaning their rifles against walls hastily reunited themselves with their weapons and got to their feet.

  “Oh good.” Bane was still trying to act as young as possible. “If the lieutenant can give Margo a lift, she won’t need to walk so far.”

  The sergeant just gave another sour smile. I was getting a bad feeling about the lieutenant.

  To fill in the stressful wait, Bane and I began nibbling at our picnic again. We offered some to the soldiers, but they didn’t seem to dare be caught eating when the lieutenant arrived. Finally another troop lorry—or the same one?—rumbled into sight outside and came to a halt. A figure with slightly fancier epaulettes than the sergeant got out of the cab and trod eagerly into the cave, as more soldiers leapt from the back and rushed in all directions. Securing the area? Well, securing it even more.

  “Well done, Sergeant! That’s two of them in the bag! There’ll be a commendation in this, foiling an attack of this scale.”

  “Sir, we’ve found these two children—”

  “Children, pull the other leg! Look at them. Practically adults. Young Resistance, no doubt about it! Lock them up and throw away the key, I say! Better still, dismantle them and be done with it. They’ll never be useful members of society. I mean, attacking the Coldwell train! I should think they will throw the book at them. Full force of the law, make an example . . .”

  An ice-cold prickle ran down my spine. Was he right? Would the apparent enormity of our supposed crime outweigh our clean—or comparatively clean—records? Would they simply categorize us as unReformable? I tried not to shiver. Lord, I trust in You. Lord, I . . . I swallowed hard. . . I trust in You. The familiar prayer was suddenly surprisingly hard to say.

  “Sir,” the sergeant said stiffly. “After questioning the suspects, it’s my opinion that—”

  “You don’t have the pay grade to have an opinion, sergeant,” retorted the lieutenant. “Look at them, they fit the description exactly.”

  “I’ve no doubt they tried to get on that there train, sir, but I’m quite certain that—”

  “You’re going to lose that commendation if you don’t watch your cheek, Sergeant. Now, keep six men, and secure the terrorists until we’re ready to move.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lieutenant headed out of the cave, shouting orders. Most of the soldiers spread out in a long line, and disappeared from sight. The truck roared away again, with a few men in the back.

  “All right . . .” The sergeant settled heavily onto a nearby boulder. “We’ll be waiting here until they’re done searching. Could be hours. You may as well get comfortable.”

  I leant again
st Bane, starting to shiver properly. This really, really wasn’t looking good.

  Lord, help us. Angel Margaret, protect us. Angel Bane, you must’ve had lots of practice, get us out of this.

  Time crept past, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to eat the boiled sweets the soldiers eventually offered us. I caught Bane shooting a look around. Wondering if we should make a run for it? If they really were going to execute us, it could hardly make things worse. But if they weren’t . . . Surely they wouldn’t. Anyway, with my ankle, it was all academic. Bane wasn’t going to leave me, and there was no way he could take me with him.

  “Don’t even think about it.” The sergeant suddenly spoke to us. Or to Bane. “There’re soldiers all over the place. And you know what’s down there over that’a way, right?”

  What was the other way? Something dangerous, clearly. I tried to picture exactly where we were. Oh.

  “The Facility.” Bane scowled. “They shoot anyone who goes near it.”

  “They do indeed.” The sergeant sank back into a morose silence, so I just sat close to Bane and shivered even more.

  The Facility. The place they took teenagers who failed their Sorting tests at age eighteen. Where they put them through an exercise program and then dismantled them for their organs, using them to cure all the ‘perfect’ people who’d passed. The place where they took Underground members, Resistance fighters, and criminals for execution in just the same way. Or priests like Uncle Peter and ‘Cousin’ Mark, for the worst punishment of all—dismantlement without the anesthetic everyone else got.

  I shuddered. Because the thing I’d never told Bane, what I’d tried quite hard to hide, in fact, not only from everyone at school, but especially from him, was that I might not pass my Sorting. I was top of the class in most things, but not in Math. I worked five times as hard as anyone else to achieve a middling mark, but come my Sorting, I wouldn’t have five times as much time to complete the test. I might end up in that very Facility, myself.

  I wanted to tell Bane, so much. But I couldn’t. If he knew there was a chance of me failing, he’d throw everything away, insist we run. And I couldn’t run. It would put his life in danger, and quite aside from that, my parents were running a secret Mass center from our house. The hidden sanctuary must not be discovered.

  “Do you think they will . . . make an example of them?” My ears pricked up as one of the soldiers lounging nearby muttered to the guy next to him.

  “Dunno.” The other soldier carried on chewing a bit of fern. “Sometimes they do make examples of Young Resistance. But half the time you almost get the feeling they’d rather not catch them. Not till they can be tried as adults and given what all Resistance rats deserve.” He spat on the ground.

  Most soldiers were just normal guys working to support their families, with no more love for the EuroGov than the next person, but their hatred of the Resistance was rather less ambiguous. No surprise.

  “Well, throwing kids in lock-up for a bit of cheeky graffiti? Public hate it.”

  “They do more than that, sometimes.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t hijack trains! They don’t!”

  “Shhh!” The second soldier shot a look at the sergeant. But the sergeant just looked more sour than ever.

  Finally, after long hours of interminable waiting, the sergeant’s radio bleeped. “We’ll be finished soon. Order a secure transport van to take those terrorist brats to base for interrogation.” The lieutenant sounded in just as bad a mood. Clearly they’d failed to turn up any of those adult co-conspirators of ours.

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant spoke tonelessly. He selected another channel and arranged the van. Dread chilled my stomach as I listened. After that, he sat and stared at the radio for a few minutes, before finally selecting yet another channel. But he spoke so softly into it this time—softly and deferentially—that I couldn’t catch any of what he said.

  The soldiers sat around and stared glumly at the cave floor. Bane and I sat around glumly and stared at the cave floor. It was the Cave of Glum, in the heart of the Fellest, all too near the Facility of Death.

  Then the small, secure transport van appeared, bumping to a halt in front of the cave. No side windows, grilles over the rear. I swallowed. Bane swallowed, too, looking around frantically again, but then he just slipped an arm around me and snuggled me closer. Sometimes, in dark, pathetic moments of unworthy doubt, I actually worried that he did realize I might fail Sorting, and he just pretended obliviousness so he wouldn’t have to do anything. Now was not one of those moments.

  Two soldiers opened the rear doors and looked out. “Here we are, Sarge. You want us to load them up?”

  “Uh, no, we should wait for Lieutenant Bayliss. He’ll want to . . . see them properly secured.”

  The soldiers looked faintly puzzled, but shrugged and climbed out to mingle with their comrades.

  Uh-oh, another engine. Lieutenant Bayliss and his truck? What would Mum and Dad say when they heard I’d been arrested?

  Oh no! The house wouldn’t be searched, would it?

  On these charges? Of course it would!

  Oh, please, Lord, no! Surely I’d just fallen through ice—drowning in freezing horror. How many lives would our innocent little picnic claim? How could this be happening?

  Wait, not the truck. A small army jeep came into sight, bombing merrily along. It performed a perfect handbrake turn that spun it off the track and brought it up exactly next to the transport van, facing the other way—drawing a few admiring whoops from the soldiers—and switched off its engine. A shaking corporal jumped out of the passenger seat, ran around, and opened the driver’s door, out of which emerged a surprisingly young officer, considering he had even fancier epaulettes than Lieutenant Bayliss.

  A nearby soldier sniggered. “Lieutenant-Colonel Wexford-Merrell’s still terrorizing his drivers, I see.”

  The Lieutenant-Colonel strode over to where the sergeant had just come to rigid attention, and he glanced at Bane and me. “So, these are the Young Resistance terrorists Lieutenant Bayliss has been telling me so much about?”

  “My exact words to Lieutenant Bayliss upon catching them were ‘two kids.’ Sir.”

  The Lieutenant-Colonel moved to stand in front of us, looking us up and down, Bane rather narrowly. His eyes also lingered on my arm.

  I couldn’t help looking at it myself. Uh-oh. The blood had soaked through!

  “So . . . Margaret Verrall,” he said finally. “Completely clean record. One complaint lodged by the Greater Fell Railway company eighteen months ago with the police—who ignored it—concerning you being apprehended on the roof of a passenger train in the company of a young man who, from the frightfully rude description given, was once again alongside you when you two appallingly short-sighted youngsters attempted to board the wrong train this morning. Am I correct?”

  Bane and I exchanged a look. The Lieutenant-Colonel sounded so posh his father probably owned an entire stately home, but he had an air of competence and hardness that suggested his rank was not so empty as that might lead one to believe. He also—unless I was dangerously mistaken—was on our side. Right, Lord? Bane clearly thought the same. We both took a deep breath: “Yes, sir.”

  He gave a short nod. “Very good. We found your bicycles, half an hour ago, it so happens. We left them right where we found them. They are practically sufficient to clear you all by their lonesome. No Resistance cell would use vehicles of that decrepitude for any part of any operation whatsoever, let alone something of this magnitude. Right, enough of this. I am calling this whole fiasco off.” He jerked a thumb at his jeep. “Climb in, before Lieutenant Bayliss comes and takes your names, and makes himself feel better by making you the first Salperton teens to actually be charged with train-jumping.” He swung around to the transport van soldiers. “You men, return to base. Sergeant, wait here with your men for Lieutenant Bayliss.”

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant—and most of his squad, for that matter—seemed to be trying
not to smile. Certainly it was the Cave of Glum no longer.

  Bane was already helping me to hobble toward the jeep. The driver opened a rear door and Bane maneuvered me inside.

  By the time Bane was in, the Lieutenant-Colonel was slipping into the driver’s seat again, shooting a look back at us as his resigned-looking ‘driver’ settled into the passenger seat. “I will drop you home. Do not go to the hospital unless you really must.”

  Guessed it was a gunshot wound, hadn’t he?

  He’d already leaned out of the window to speak to the sergeant and his squaddies one last time. “Oh, and listen hard, you men. This girl in all probability gave a false name. So you will not repeat such unreliable information to Lieutenant Bayliss. Understood?”

  A chorus of “yes, sir” and a few titters greeted this order. Then the Lieutenant-Colonel put the jeep in gear and his foot on the floor, and I was clutching Bane’s hand and wondering if we were going to die after all.

  Bane just grinned at me, the skunk. He was enjoying it!

  Still, a hair-raising drive was a small price to pay for our freedom and our lives.

  Thank you, Lieutenant-Colonel, Sergeant.

  Thank you, Angel Margaret, Angel Bane.

  Thank you, Lord.

  ###

  If you’d like to know what happens to Margo and Bane after Margo fails her Sorting tests, you can find out in Corinna Turner’s novel I Am Margaret. Or see what happens to her older brother Kyle when he goes on the run from the EuroGov, in the novella Brothers.

  ~~†~~

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CORINNA TURNER is the author of the I Am Margaret series for young adults, as well as stand-alone works such as Drive! and Elfling (for teens) and Someday (for older teens and adults). All of her novels have received the Catholic Writers Guild Seal of Approval (except new releases for which the Seal may be in process). Liberation (‘I Am Margaret’ Book 3) was nominated for the Carnegie Medal Award 2016 and won 3rd place for ‘Teen and Young Adult Fiction’ in the Catholic Press Association 2016 Book Awards. I Am Margaret was one of two runners-up for the ‘Teenage and Children’s Fiction’ Catholic Arts and Letters Award 2016.