The Disappeared (11 page)

Looking at the map, I realise how few exits there are. Imagine what would happen if there was a fire. The enforcers would run off without so much as opening a door and hundreds of Specials would die in either the flames or a stampede.

My plan is to try all possible exits. I have to get out of here. I have to get to my mother. She’ll have tried to call me on my communicator by now and when she gets no answer she’ll try the Learning Community. What will she do when they tell her that I don’t exist? I don’t want her to think that something terrible has happened to me.

I lie awake till the breathing of everyone around me is regular, including Kay in the next bed. She’s told me she’s not going to the kitchen tonight, so there’s no chance of bumping into her. I slip out of bed and head for the bathroom, leaving the room the same way I did the night I snuck out to find Kay.

I try my first hope – the door at the bottom of the stairs which connects to the passage leading back to reception. I check down the corridor, there’s no sign of an impeccable patrol or anyone else, so I type RECEPTION into the keypad by the door. There’s the same high-pitched beep as on the bathroom door and I know I’ve got it right. A tiny screen on the keypad flashes:
Swipe ID card
. Damn. This is going to be more difficult than I imagined. I find a cancel button and press it, in the hope that no one is going to be alerted to the fact that I’ve tried to get through the door.

Why the ID card? We don’t need one for the kitchen or the bathroom. Which I suppose is lucky really. I guess the difference is that this door isn’t internal. It leads somewhere they really don’t want the Specials to go – outside. I may as well test out my theory so I head for the door near the dining hall. This time I can’t even get the code right. I try OUTSIDE, BACK DOOR, GARDEN, then I make myself stop because even if I get the code, I can see this one also has a reader for a card that I don’t have.

I had told myself that it might not happen tonight, that I might have to make plans and try again, but secretly I was hoping that by now I’d be on my way home. Suddenly, I’m desperate to get out of this place. I’ve got one last chance tonight.

My final hope is the door to the enforcers’ quarters. It’s risky, but it’s just possible that they have a separate exit to the outside world, so I have to give it a try. The door probably doesn’t work without a swipe card either, but I’ve got to see for myself. I steal down the long corridor lined with classroom doors. The last door on the right leads to the enforcers’ part of the Academy and, at the end of the corridor, the entrance to a lift juts out.

I’m about to try the door to the enforcers’ section when there’s a humming sound above me and I realise that someone is in the lift. I look up at the digital floor display. The lift is on the floor above me and it’s coming down. I’m in trouble. I look around desperately. The corridor is bare. There’s nowhere to hide. The buzz of the machinery is getting louder. If I try to get into a classroom they’ll hear the pneumatic door, but I haven’t got time to run back up the corridor. The only place to hide is in the shadow between where the lift sticks out and the corridor wall. I hope whoever it is doesn’t turn round.

I slip into the shadow and take a deep breath to try to steady my breathing. What will they do to me if they catch me? My heart is galloping.

The hum of the lift slows. There’s a
ping
and the doors slide open. I press back into the shadow. An enforcer comes out of the lift and takes the few steps back along the corridor towards the enforcers’ door. I can see only the back of his head, so I don’t know who it is. He flicks his fingers over the keypad and the door clicks open. He pushes the door and steps inside and I am about to wilt with relief when I do something without thinking. I whip over to the door and catch it before it clicks back into place. I stand there, supporting the door with my flat hands so that it remains a few centimetres open. I wince, expecting the door to be yanked open again at any moment, or for an alarm to go off, but nothing happens.

I breathe in through my nose and slowly push the door open. I’m looking down a dimly lit passageway. Everything is quiet. The enforcer has already disappeared and no one else is about. I feel in my pockets, but there’s nothing there. I can’t let the door close behind me because I don’t know the code to get back out, so I take off one of my socks and wedge the door with it.

On tiptoes I make my way down the corridor. I bet they don’t make the enforcers sleep in dormitories. I’m sure they’ve got showers that work too. I peer into the first room. It’s some sort of social area with comfortable chairs and a coffee machine. No exit in there. I turn to leave, but I catch sight of something that puts all thought of outside doors from my head.

It’s a communicator.

Checking the corridor again, I creep into the room and softly close the door behind me. The communicator is in a booth, like they have in shopping centres. I step inside and click the privacy button. The door seals and now I’m in a soundproof bubble. I lift my hand to type in my access code. No. That’s Jackson’s unique code. If P.C. Barnes was right and someone is after me, maybe I shouldn’t be activating my account. You can trace these things. Instead I type in the code of an unregistered account that I set up when Wilson and I were trying to purchase some A.I. components that nobody wanted to sell to teenagers.

The home screen pops up, showing three layers. At the top a message marked
Urgent
is flashing red. A still of my mother’s face is next to it. I didn’t know she knew about this account. I tap it with my forefinger. A projection of my mother appears in the centre of the booth.

‘J—’ she starts, then closes her mouth again. ‘
Sweetheart
,’ she says, ‘
listen to me carefully. Everything is going to be okay. I found out where you are and I’m coming to get you. Don’t tell anyone who you are. Just
–’ she takes a deep breath ‘–
just don’t move. This is really important. For now you should be safe where you are. Whatever happens, wait at, er, that place and I will come
.’ She brings a hand up to her forehead and rubs her eyebrow. ‘
I should have told you
. . .’ There’s a knock on the door behind her. She drops her voice. ‘
Just wait there for me
.’

It cuts to static.

‘Mum?’ I say out loud. What the hell happened there?

I check the date on the message. Yesterday. I touch
Reply
on the screen and, as I do so, I realise that this is not my mother’s official communication account, nor was she using a registered communicator. What the efwurd is going on? Why wouldn’t my mother use her normal account? And why is she talking about ‘safe’ places? Does she know something about what’s happened to me? The connection hums, but no one picks up. Usually accounts have a message service. It just buzzes on and on. I turn round so I can watch the door. I’m sweating. I wait and wait for an answer. Nothing.

I cut the connection and buzz her official communication account. There’s an instant pick up. Thank goodness. A projection flicks into life. But something is wrong.

It’s not my mother.

It’s a recording. A tight-lipped woman wearing a uniform.

‘
Do not retry this connection
,’ she says.

A wave of cold washes through my body. She’s staring right at me.

‘
This account has been terminated
.’

My mind is spinning. They don’t just cut off people’s accounts.

Terminated.

I have a horrible feeling that something has happened to Mother. Like she’s somehow tied up in all this craziness too. Suddenly I can’t breathe. I’m sweating, but shivering at the same time. I fumble to get out of the booth and crouch down, panting for breath. A door slams out in the corridor. I spring up, looking for a place to hide. I duck behind a sofa. I peer over the top and strain my ears for sounds of movement. The door opens and I drop back.

Someone walks across the room. I lean to the side and see the legs of an enforcer. There’s a sigh. It’s a woman. The legs move towards me and bend at the knees. I’m dead. They must have seen me. I freeze. A hand stretches out and picks up an old-style paperback book not more than thirty centimetres from my head. The hand pulls back, the legs straighten. I don’t breathe. The enforcer moves back across the room and the door clicks behind her. I
have
to get out of here.

I gently open the door, check both ways and run on bent knees. Thank goodness the door back to the main part of the Academy is still being held ajar by my sock. I scoop it up and ease the door shut behind me.

Then I run. I don’t even think about the noise, I just run all the way back to the dormitory and bury myself under the covers. The word ‘terminated’ blows up like a mushroom cloud in my head.

‘I told you not to go to the kitchen all lots,’ Kay says quietly from the next bed.

I lower my covers and glare at her.

‘Don’t you have a thing to say?’ she asks. ‘When I say a thing, most times you like to say a thing back. You think it’s a laughing thing but I—’

‘I think my mother is dead,’ I say.

She stops. The smile falls from her face and she looks right at me. ‘That’s bad,’ she says. And I know she means it. ‘How do you think it?’ she asks.

I wonder how much I should tell her. I keep it simple. ‘I called her on a communicator and her account has been terminated.’

The girl looks down in concentration. ‘A communicator? Like on the Info and you’re all talking to the person that is not here?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So don’t you think—?’

‘What’s terminated?’ she says.

‘Finished. Ended.’ My voice cracks.

‘How does that give you the think that she’s dead?’

I shake my head. ‘You don’t understand. Accounts aren’t just terminated. Everyone has an account. Everyone.’

‘I don’t,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘I don’t have a ’count. No Specials do.’

She’s got a point.

‘She might not be dead. She might be locked up.’

I stare at the girl. She’s right. The woman in the message was wearing a security uniform. My mother’s not dead, she’s just . . . caught up with the police somehow. Which doesn’t make any sense either. I can’t shake the feeling that this is all connected to what’s happened to me. But she’ll sort it out. My mother is really good at fixing stuff.

‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘She’s not dead.’

The girl nods.

‘And you know what? She’s coming to get me out of here. All I’ve got to do is wait.’

‘No mothers in the Academy,’ she says, lying back down.

‘Mine will come,’ I say.

The next day I feel better. More positive. All I have to do is keep up my false identity, try to avoid getting into any more fights, and manage to eat enough to keep healthy until my mother comes to get me. Simple.

Kay asks me to meet her in the Specials’ recreation room – the salon. Ilex shows me the way.

As we’re going downstairs, a herd of Reds come pushing past us. One of them deliberately trips me up. Ilex helps me to my feet.

‘Where are they going in such a hurry?’ I ask.

‘I think it’s a more-food time,’ he says.

‘Food? I’d like some food.’

‘It’s not for us. It’s for Reds and Hon Reds.’

I’m sick of all this Reds stuff. It’s so unfair that they get extras.

‘Where does the extra food for the Reds come from?’ I say. The whole time I’ve been here we’ve only ever had three meals a day. If you can call the slop from the feeding pod a meal.

‘It’s Academy food. On sometimes the kitchen workers get all the food things that aren’t big good and say “You can eat this” to the Reds.’

So the kitchen periodically has a clear out, but the Reds don’t let everyone else have a fair share. It makes me so angry that this group of jumped-up gingers control everything.

‘Why don’t we just go too?’ I say to Ilex.

He just looks at me, not wasting his breath to tell me what a stupid idea it is. He’s right, it would be stupid. I’d get beaten up. But I can’t just let it go.

At the bottom of the stairs I see an enforcer coming out of a classroom and heading down the corridor towards the teachers’ quarters.

‘Enforcer?’ I call.

She jumps. ‘What is it?’ she says, but keeps moving down the corridor.

I jog after her. Ilex stays at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Enforcer . . .’

She looks back over her shoulder as she walks.

‘The kitchen is giving out leftover food,’ I say. ‘Everybody is hungry. We’d all like some food . . .’

She’s reached the enforcers’ door and taps in the code.

‘Wait! Some of the students won’t let the others eat.’

She pulls open the door. I can’t believe she’s just ignoring me.

‘But it’s not fair!’ I say.

She looks me up and down. ‘We don’t interfere with the Reds,’ she says and the door closes behind her.

Ilex was right.

You can’t fight the Reds.

I slink back to Ilex, who laughs at me and shakes his head, but thankfully doesn’t say anything. He takes me to the salon, which turns out to be down the extra corridor on his map. Surprise, surprise – it’s a barn of a room. There are a lot of cheap padded chairs with the stuffing ripped out and a massive screen on one wall. As we walk in, there are a bunch of boys having a spitting competition.