She whipped her arms away. ‘It’s impossible,’ she said. ‘You keep on like this and I’m calling Doctor Meyers.’ She whirled around, and with her head held high, staggered from the kitchen.
‘Tom’s death isn’t a delusion!’ he shouted after her. ‘What was he doing on a cliff top in Devon? How did he really die?’
Once the idea of filming Three Mills had entered Ana’s consciousness it seemed to take over her thoughts. All morning, as she and Cole ate breakfast, hid their bedding beneath the floorboards and filled up the tower’s toilet sink with fresh pans of water to wash yesterday’s underwear, her mind worked through questions of security and logistics.
There was only one security guard at the Three Mills footbridge entrance. If they sedated him, Cole could let her into Three Mills, take the guard’s uniform and stay on the gate. Once she was past the reception there was a side door into the compound. Ana had been taken in and out of it during her stay. It was an old building that all the orderlies used normal keys for. They’d just have to get hold of one of the keys.
She could wear a blue robe like the other patients. The nurses and orderlies only went into the compound when they were doing the medication rounds. Ana wouldn’t even be there then. She’d need ten minutes – fifteen max – to go once around the facilities, and then film the patients as they were brought back from special therapy. If they broadcast that, the whole country would see what the mental rehab homes were really like. Rumours were easily dismissed. But not video footage.
She’d fantasised about breaking into Three Mills and rescuing her friend Tamsin a hundred times since leaving there. But this wouldn’t be some wild revenge and rescue mission. This would be a controlled act of documentation. In and out. And when it was released into the public arena, it would be impossible for anyone to claim the video was fake. The Chairman of the Board would be forced to justify the atrocious conditions and the staff’s treatment of their patients. The government would have to call for an investigation. And when people saw Tamsin – a seventeen-year-old Pure girl who had been abducted by the Psych Watch – they’d realise that no one was safe. Even the Pures would start to distrust the Board.
She lay yesterday’s knickers on the loo seat to dry out and began scrubbing her bra. Cole came up behind her. He slipped his hands on her hips and kissed the back of her neck.
‘You’re thinking so hard, I can practically hear you,’ he said.
‘Really?’ she answered. ‘So what am I thinking?’
‘About how you’d get into Three Mills.’
She nodded. ‘You’re pretty good.’
‘I’m beginning to recognise the signs. So you were serious about it, then? You’d consider one of us going in there and trying to film the place?’
‘It would have to be me,’ she answered. ‘You’re injured, and you don’t know the layout.’
He limped back and leaned against the doorframe, head tilted so he could see her face.
Growing self-conscious she switched the subject. ‘Any news about the evacuation?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Maybe they’re still getting settled,’ she offered. ‘If they’ve gone out of London, they might not have reception.’
‘If Nate left the Project, he’d have sent me a message by now.’
‘But he must have gone with Simone. If the baby’s early, it could come any time now. He knows that. And he knew if the Wardens surrounded the Project, a standoff or a siege could last for days.’
‘The Project isn’t just a place for us . . .’ Cole paused. ‘When we were young it was like we’d found Eden.’
‘Eden?’
‘The Garden of Eden.’ She’d never heard of the place. Taking in her blank expression, he went on. ‘In the Bible there’s a story about the first ever man and woman living in the Garden of Eden. A place of innocence, beauty, prosperity, with all their needs fulfilled. Until the woman took a bite from the poisonous apple of knowledge.’
‘Like Snow White.’
‘Snow White’s a fairy tale. Weren’t you taught anything from the Bible at school?’
She shook her head.
‘In the Project, Nate and I were free for the first time. No looking over our shoulders wondering if the authorities would find us and put us back in an orphanage or foster home. No obligatory meds. No scrambling and scavenging and stealing for food. We were fed, clothed, went to school in the mornings and were given jobs. We worked hard, but we were no longer afraid.’
A realisation struck Ana. Cole wasn’t going anywhere. Even if Nate was safe somewhere with his pregnant wife and son, Cole wouldn’t abandon the place that had saved him as a ten-year-old child.
‘You’re not going to leave the City until this is over, are you?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know yet. I need all the facts. I need to know what the Wardens count on doing.’
‘And what do you count on doing if the Wardens attack the Project?’
They stared at each other for a long moment. Cole wouldn’t give up, and at that moment, she realised she wasn’t going to walk away from all this either.
‘We’d need something,’ she said, ‘that could relay what the camera was recording inside Three Mills to a second back-up recorder outside.’
He flexed his shoulders as though his T-shirt had suddenly grown too tight. ‘Just in case you didn’t manage to get out? Well this is getting off to a good start. Glad you’re not sugar-coating it for me.’
‘If I got caught it would mean you’d still have the evidence – yes, that’s one reason for having a back-up. But it would also be in case the camera I had got damaged, or if we were both caught leaving. It means whoever we find to infiltrate the recording onto the net has the back-up and can do it straight away, whatever happens.’
‘We wouldn’t be able to use any of the Project’s contacts for something like that. With all that’s going on, we can’t be sure which of them the Wardens will have under surveillance.’
‘So we’d need to pick someone totally random.’
‘Something like that would cost a packet.’
‘I’ve got my jewellery,’ she said. He didn’t know about Jasper’s joining ring, but he’d seen the moon necklace with the diamond.
‘I thought you wanted to use your jewellery to get us to Scotland?’
‘You’re not going anywhere though, are you?’ She stopped. ‘And besides,’ she said, ‘maybe I’m not meant to go yet, either.’
He hobbled back into the small cubicle, cupped his hands around her cheeks. ‘Five minutes in the Project and you’re starting to sound like Lila.’
She gazed into his eyes –
sky blue topaz
, she thought,
an almost perfect match
. She wondered if she told him about Tamsin he would think her too emotionally involved to handle breaking into Three Mills. ‘There’s something else you should know.’
‘We’re just talking through things,’ he said cautiously. ‘I haven’t said yes to this incredibly dodgy plan. You realise that, don’t you?’
She nodded and placed a hand over the warm, rough fingers he held against her cheek. ‘There’s a Pure in Three Mills, from my Community. Not just from my Community. We were best friends. About a year ago she disappeared.’ Sucking back the emotion that suddenly swelled inside her, Ana dropped her hand, turned to the sink and began rinsing her bra for a second time. In her mind’s eye Tamsin lingered before her, ghost-like: black jagged hair framed her hollow face; dark, disillusioned eyes.
Promise me you won’t take any stupid risks trying to get me out . . . Promise.
Her friend’s voice echoed up through the past, and the unrelenting ache of leaving Tamsin behind in Three Mills pulverised Ana’s heart. Cole frowned. She forced herself to continue. ‘Tamsin was snatched off a City street by the Psych Watch. They sold her ID. If we film her, we can prove the corruption of the Psych Watch, the negligence and deceit of the Board, and show that no one is safe from the mental rehab homes, not even the Pures.’
He brushed a thumb across her cheekbone, sweeping aside a tear. He saw right through her. To the layers of the past stacked on top of her, suffocating. He grasped what she couldn’t say. And for that, she loved him even more.
*
Ana gathered dry sticks from nearby trees and shrubs, while Cole chopped the rest of the fresh food Lila had given them – courgette, onion, tomato and potato. They fried their lunch in the pan over a fire to save on camping fuel, too lost in their own thoughts for any conversation.
After they’d eaten and cleaned up, Cole used his interface with a scrambler to check his messages. He’d received one from Lila. She, Simone and Rafferty had left with the Project evacuees and were now staying in a ruined farmhouse on the outskirts of London. Lila had walked four miles to get reception and would try to contact him every couple of days. Nate and Rachel had stayed in the Project.
Cole wasn’t happy. He was worried about his brother, but Ana also sensed he felt guilty about leaving the Project when Nate had chosen to stay.
Throughout the afternoon they checked the news and listened to reports. The number of people gathering outside the Communities was growing, while over six hundred protestors now blocked the entrance to the Board’s Headquarters.
‘I guess not everyone’s buying into the forgery story,’ Ana said. They were sitting in the afternoon sunshine, leaning with their backs against the octagonal tower.
‘A couple of thousand out of the City’s millions. It’s a drop in the ocean.’
Cole’s mood had been growing steadily worse since Lila’s message.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know Nate and Rachel are in the Project. You know the Wardens have surrounded the wall. But you’re still waiting for something.’
He sighed, rubbing his injured knee. ‘I’m waiting to see if the Wardens try to negotiate. The longer the standoff continues, the more likely it is they’re going to raid the Project rather than talk.’
‘And if they negotiate, what will they ask for?’
‘They’ll probably want the Project’s key players for “questioning”.’
‘The council?’
He nodded. ‘It’s what happened to Richard. He was taken to be interrogated and that was it. Four months later he was condemned for masterminding the Tower Bridge bombing.’
‘And?’
Cole’s jaw tightened. ‘Considering the nature of the recording, they may ask for the prime suspect in Peter Reed’s death.’
Her breath snagged on the sides of her throat. ‘You—’ Cole had been waiting to see if the Wardens would withdraw if he handed himself over. ‘So you’re thinking of giving yourself up?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘What
are
you saying?’
‘I need all the facts, Ana. I need all the facts, so I can make a decision.’
She jumped up and stood several feet away with her back to him, glowering at the marshes. Her insides felt like stone under a scorching sun.
Cole moved in behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘They may not even try to negotiate,’ he said.
‘Handing yourself over wouldn’t solve anything. You all say you’re fighting for the truth, but what’s the point, if when you get close to it, one of you sacrifices yourself to save the others and the truth is lost?’ Cole remained silent. She turned to face him. ‘That’s what happened to Richard Cox, isn’t it?’
He stared at her in a way that made her want to shake him. ‘You’ll be like Richard. He was convicted for the Tower Bridge bombings. You’ll be convicted for murdering Peter Reed and faking this recording. And the fact that Novastra funded the Pure tests and wanted them so they could push Benzidox onto the market, and that Evelyn Knight was in cahoots with David Taurell, it’ll all be brushed under the carpet.’ She paused. ‘You know why I never knew anything about Richard Cox, except that he was the Project leader who masterminded the bombing? Because nobody knows anything about him; nobody remembers whatever truth he was on the brink of exposing five years ago. It’s gone, lost. And in five years’ time, if you don’t follow through now, it’ll be the same thing again except it’ll be your name – you.’
The muscles on Cole’s face grew tight, eyebrows, chin, lips all squeezed towards the centre. ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘Tell me how you’re thinking of getting past the Three Mills security.’
*
They cleared away all signs of their stay at the wetland hideout in under ten minutes. Having stocked up with food, they left the rest of the supplies under the floorboards along with one of the sleeping bags and the ground mat. Outside, Ana shoved closed the dark wooden doors and replaced the padlock. She returned the key to the ledge where Seton had taken it two nights ago and hulked the larger camping rucksack onto her back. Cole wore the small black one she’d taken with her from the Project, carrying Dombrant’s Stinger, their only means of defence.
Conceding his own plan wasn’t flawless, Cole had agreed to
explore
the idea of breaking into Three Mills, which, he’d repeated several times, didn’t mean they’d go through with it. While waiting for news of the Project and the Wardens, they would see if they could find a hacker, and whether they could get hold of a key for the outhouse that led from the reception into the compound where the patients were held.
In order to move around the City without fear of someone recognising either of them, the first thing they needed to do was alter their faces. They headed for
Fantasy, Health & Beauty Salon
, located near Barnes High Street, only twenty minutes from the Wetlands. The landscape shifted quickly as they reached the urban sprawl. Pedal bikes, rickshaws and E-trikes with front and back trailers swooped up and down roads, while people selling bric-a-brac, takeaway food and second-hand clothes crowded the pavements.
Ana and Cole turned down Church Road searching for number 66. Most of the shops were boarded over, but as Ana peered inside, she saw many had been broken into, front doors wedged open and business happening within.
Number 66,
Fantasy, Health & Beauty Salon
, had a narrow entrance and one bay window with a thin sheet of plyboard half ripped off, letting in the May sunshine. The door stood open. Cole and Ana called hello into the back of the shop where it was dark. Ana imagined the electricity had been disconnected years ago.