Alex lights his cigarette, closes his eyes and inhales.
‘These’ll kill me before Lainie Shepherd can.’
He holds out the pack. ‘You want?’
I shake my head. The last time I smoked a cigarette was the night Julius …
‘C’mon. When else will you get the chance to do something bad?’
Alex pushes the pack closer and I end up taking one. He hands me the matches and I light up, watching the duct suck the smoke up to the ceiling. I turn the matchbox over in my hand, squeezing it until the cardboard goes limp.
‘You sure you want to do this?’
I nod.
‘Because you don’t look it.’
I guess he’s talking about the way my eyes are all red and puffy, my skin pasty-pale. Kind of an inevitable side-effect of lying awake all night thinking about Julius and Mum and Dennis, but mostly about that figure disappearing down the corridor.
‘You’re smart enough to figure things out yourself, you know. You don’t need Lainie Shepherd telling you how to live.’
‘That happens to be exactly what I need.’
‘Dot isn’t the only one who’ll love you, you know. No matter what happened before the Grace trial.’
I guess I scowl at him.
‘I can name at least one real person who does. He just hasn’t worked out how to say it.’
I inhale again and blow out smoke.
Blaze. Did he say something? Were there things Blaze could tell Alex that he couldn’t say to me, because of everything that happened to him?
‘Just say I wasn’t sure. Isn’t it too late anyway?’
‘Nothing’s decided until the implant’s under your skin. There are steps you could take. Not easy ones, but there are always steps.’
Alex grinds out his cigarette on my breakfast plate, full of uneaten, congealing eggs.
‘There’s ways you can be useful too. You don’t know this, but the Circle has –’
But I don’t want to hear. I stub my own cigarette out as I hear the door opening. Just in time, Alex clamps the warming cover over the ash-covered plate and says, ‘Marion,’ as a nurse comes in.
He sounds all cheery, almost as upbeat as Marion does when she says to me, ‘So, the big day!’
‘I’ve administered the medication,’ Alex tells Marion, which he hasn’t. The empty cup’s on the wheeled table in front of us, but I’m pretty sure the capsules are in Alex’s pocket. ‘Over to you now.’
‘Ready, honey?’ Marion asks. Her stomach strains at her Shepherd uniform. The crook-patterned fabric buckles over her thighs. Under the name on her pass there’s a round yellow sticker of a smiling face.
‘I guess.’
‘Let’s go change your life!’
____________________
I’m lying face down with my eyes closed. Marion sweeps my hair to one side.
‘Hold still.’
She takes a marker and I feel its cool tip draw a little line on my skin.
‘The new implant will go right above the old one,’ she explains. ‘Closer to your brain. That’s the technical reason, I’m sure.’
I hear her tearing something and straight after that there’s a cold, wet swipe across my neck.
‘The swab numbs the area. You can hop up now.’
I lift my face, all red and wrinkled from where it’s been pressing into the sheet. Marion brushes a few strands of hair out of my eyes for me.
‘You seem nervous, honey.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You probably don’t recall the last time. It’s painless, I promise.
No worse than a little nick with a kitchen knife. And after that? Well, you’d know better than me. No feeling blue. No fat days. No getting lonely. No broken hearts.’
Marion sighs, ‘One perfect day after the next.’
There’s a stool on the floor by the bed. Marion helps me down it. At the bottom, she holds onto me like she thinks I’ll collapse if she doesn’t.
‘I might even sign up myself, when it comes onto the market.’
She swipes the air with her hand. ‘What am I saying? My kids would have ten heart attacks each. They’re dysfunctional when I’m not there. Oh well, nice to be needed, I suppose.’
She steps towards the door. ‘I’d say they’re ready for us out there.’
____________________
Lainie Shepherd’s curved office has been redecorated for the procedure. The table and golden chair are gone. In their place are planters overflowing with newfruit blossoms. The screens have been rolled away too, revealing windows made of little panes of coloured glass. There’s a design to them, abstract I guess you’d called it. Shepherds’ crooks with newfruit twined around.
On the far wall there’s a massive silky banner with Dot’s cleverly designed face. Underneath the banner is a raised platform, and that’s where Lainie Shepherd stands in her black clothes, her blue diamond crook swinging at her chest. Her smile is serene and warm and welcoming. Next to her is a woman in that same blue crook-patterned sungarb, only she’s wearing gloves, a face mask and mesh covering her hair.
On a little stand between Lainie and her assistant, there’s a tray with a cardboard box and a scalpel, which looks like a miniature version of the coconut knife.
Between all that and me stretch rows and rows of chairs. Every one of them is full and every person sitting there is dressed in blue. When the double doors click closed and I walk into the room with Marion holding onto my arm, all the heads turn.
The people smile and nod at me, as though right now is the most wonderful moment in creation and they’re all so thrilled to be here.
I recognise the girl with the curly blonde hair and fig-coloured lips.
Alex is there too. I actually spot him first, since he’s looking at the floor. Out of everyone there, he’s the only one without a smile plastered on.
‘Here she is,’ says Lainie Shepherd. ‘Our chosen one!’
Between the chairs there’s a curving aisle down the middle of the room and that’s where Marion guides me. Behind us, a cluster of people has stepped in front of the doors. In their hands, those black objects again, the ones that shot out the white clouds of gas.
Guns
.
As I walk down the aisle, no-one says anything. Not to each other and not to me. They just stare and stare at me until I get to the little platform, which is when Lainie Shepherd says, ‘Would you please kneel?’
So I do. The carpet feels soft underneath my bare knees. Then Lainie begins to talk. How fortunate I am, just like everyone else at the Shepherd Corporation.
How wonderful it is to be part of Phase 2 of the Grace project, destined to bring hope to so many children as they grow, to give ordinary people the love they crave, unconditionally. After a while, I notice my knees beginning to itch and then to ache.
So when Lainie says, ‘Viva, are you ready to accept Dot as your creator?’ I just blurt out ‘Yes’ in this get-on-with-it way.
It doesn’t matter what Alex says. It’s not like I could say no, even if I had changed my mind.
‘Wonderful,’ says Lainie Shepherd.
With a soft hand, she brushes my hair to either side of my neck. I feel the pink shells of her fingernails on my skin. There’s this little
tink
sound as Lainie’s assistant takes her knife from the tray. A click, a rustle and a tear as the assistant opens the box and takes out the implant.
My
implant, the strongest ever created. The implant that’s going to override my doubting genes and make me feel loved forever.
‘Just a small nick,’ the assistant murmurs and I feel the blade against my skin.
The cut doesn’t even hurt because everything’s numb, inside my body as well as out. Then the assistant’s fingers close around my neck, holding everything steady to make sure the implant slides into the exact right place.
There’s this suspended feeling, like me and everyone else in the room are holding our breaths until it’s in and I’m reborn.
So when the doors at the back of the room shake, everyone exhales at the same time. In the rush of air that follows, I lift my head. The doors are open. There’s a whole other group of guards standing there. Naturally, they have guns too.
‘Room for another?’ one of the guards says.
From behind him comes another person. His Shepherd sungarb is damp and dirty. His long hair is gone, hacked off in uneven chunks. But it’s obviously him.
It’s Blaze.
‘Found him trying to get back in. Changed his mind he says. Didn’t want to leave the other one behind.’
Everyone spins to look at me. With my head raised, I feel drips run down the back of my neck. There’s a lot of blood from one little nick.
‘Touching,’ says Lainie Shepherd as the guards lead Blaze to the front of the room. ‘Really, it’s quite beautiful.’
She motions to him and he kneels down next to me. Close, but, even after everything, still not quite touching.
‘Luke,’ Lainie says. ‘Are you ready to welcome Dot back into your life?’
Blaze kind of shrugs. ‘If I have to.’
He turns his head towards me so for the first time since he came through the doors we’re looking right at each other.
‘If that’s what I have to do to be with her.’
M
E AND
B
LAZE
are side by side. My head’s bent, but through my curtain of hair I can see his profile, the one familiar thing in all this strangeness.
Lainie Shepherd’s assistant wipes away the sticky blood from my neck then runs another cool swab over the skin.
She leans over me. ‘You’ll feel a slight pressure now. No pain. Nothing to worry about.’
And then … well, it’s hard to explain the next bit exactly. This single word comes to me, and I don’t mean someone like Dot tells it to me or anything like that.
It’s more like the word blooms inside me. As in, it’s me, finally telling myself what to do.
No.
Blaze was free but he came back. To have the procedure just so we can be together. That’s enough for me to be sure I can’t let either one of us have it. Ever.
So the next thing I do, I sort of haul my head upwards. I slam it into the underside of the assistant’s jaw, crunching her mouth closed. She yelps, with surprise or pain, I don’t know which.
When she reels backwards, I get up on my feet. Beside me, Blaze is standing too and he’s yelling and yelling and the entire room just erupts.
Woven through all the shouting I hear Lainie Shepherd.
‘I suggest you stay right where you are.’
Me and Blaze start trying to move through the crowd.
‘You signed a contract. You do realise you’re obligated to have this procedure? The terms clearly state –’
‘Go!’ I tell Blaze. ‘Run!’
But there’s nowhere
to
run. The aisle is heaving with people.
The double doors are blocked. All around are security guards with those black gas guns, each one pointed directly at us.
The guns make a snapping, cracking kind of sound as they fire. A cap hits the silky banner on the wall behind my head, explodes and releases its contents with a hiss.
Lainie Shepherd is moving through the crowd.
‘Keep your mouths and noses well covered,’ she’s saying, a blue mask already covering her own face. ‘Don’t breathe anything in.’
More cracks. Caps are everywhere now, ricocheting off the walls and the chairs and the roof. A planter’s hit, sending water and newfruit blossoms arcing through the air.
The air smells like smoke and gas and panic.
The space between us and the guns is getting smaller. My head feels like it’s swollen to twice its normal size. My neck’s too reedy-thin to support it. My eyes are doing that burning thing and I’m sort of swaying on my feet.
I swing around, grabbing for anything to support me. I end up banging into the stand where the equipment was. The top of my leg slams into it so that I suddenly feel the twisted shape of Alex’s matchbox in my pocket.
Gas and fire.
Somehow, the two things are linked in my head. I don’t remember why I think so, but I’m pretty sure that something big will happen if I light a match in here.
I try taking out a match but my fingers feel too thick and stumpy to handle the tiny little mashed-up box. When I do manage to pick one up, it snaps in my trembling hands.
Another match.
The shaking in my hands is even more intense. But the match lights this time and I flick it into the air. It spins there and every sound is wiped out by this one gigantic
woomph
.
I haven’t heard a sound like that since the night Julius died.
This time, it’s deliberate.
That night, I realise now, everything that happened was a terrible, awful, painful accident.
Flames mushroom up and out. Heat crackles after them, and vents on Lainie’s roof release this stinking foam that’s meant for putting out fire.
There’s smoke, flashing lights, alarms, everything. So many people are running and shouting that it’s pretty much impossible to work out who is who.
Blaze snatches up a chair. It hurtles over our heads and straight into a window. Shards of Shepherd-blue glass fly out and clear, bright light rushes in through the jagged hole.
The silky banner with Dot’s face is torn between the eyes where the cap hit it, rippling and billowing now in the sudden gust of air.
Me and Blaze just run for the window, hands up to push our way through.
I’m afraid to jump through the hole and slash my skin and maybe that’s why I stop. Only for a second but it’s enough.
Someone grabs me and yells, ‘That’s her!’
I’m just waiting for a knee in my back or an arm round my throat. But it never comes. Right beside me another voice yells.
‘Nah, she’s work experience. The girl’s gone that way.’
The hand lets me go and suddenly I’m jumping through the window with Blaze right behind me. And then we’re running.
____________________
We are free.
Behind us, the Shepherd complex. It’s daylight and I see the whole building from the outside for the first time. It’s long and low, every window shrouded in blue-frosted glass apart from the one we just smashed. One long corridor with a curved section at one end.
I get it. It’s a shepherd’s crook.
Flames are already jumping from Lainie’s office at the curving tip of the crook. They’re working on swallowing the whole building, where Fern and Gil and everyone else are.