‘No!’ people were shouting. ‘We won’t let it in. Not within these City walls.’
‘But how do we know this? How do we know desire, pride and greed are no good? Let me tell you how.’
‘Tell us! Tell us!’ Nearly everyone was standing, their eyes wide, their faces full of rapture. Evie stood too: she wanted to feel what they felt, wanted to be flooded with happiness, relief, determination, with only love for the City filling her head.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said the Brother, his voice suddenly calm. ‘I’ll tell you how. Sit, brothers and sisters. Sit, please, and listen.’
Everyone sat down; the room was immediately silent, faces leaning forward in anticipation so as not to miss a single word.
‘A peaceful, good society is one that is predicated on fairness, on clear rules that we all follow willingly,’ the Brother said, looking around the room. Evie tilted her head, listening intently as though these words could cure her. ‘We are the saved ones. We are the chosen ones. And with our pure minds, we will continue to be strong. We will allow evil no place in our hearts, no place in our brains. Evil will try to grow, but we will not give it air to breathe. We will let the System show us when we are weak, and we will show determination in becoming strong again.’
The Brother’s sermon was coming to an end; everyone stood again, music started and hands shot up.
‘So celebrate, brothers and sisters. Celebrate the City. Celebrate our communion. Celebrate this day of rest, and tomorrow go out to work with a strong heart and the desire to start that wonderful future right here, right now.’
‘Yes! Yes!’ people called out. ‘Hail the Great Leader!’
Evie’s father turned to her, his eyes shining, and he wrapped his arm around her, then wrapped the other arm around her mother, who reached out across his back and squeezed Evie’s shoulder, a rare display of emotion that caught Evie by surprise. She felt tears fill her eyes as she reached out herself to squeeze hands, arms; to show her parents how much she valued their guidance, how much she wanted to make them proud of her.
As the Gathering finished, Evie followed her parents as they shuffled out of the Meeting Room; there were people everywhere, cheeks rosy, mouths upturned, friendly smiles exchanged between acquaintances as they passed each other.
Evie stayed close to her parents, kept her gaze straight ahead to make sure that she didn’t see Raffy, didn’t catch his eye. But at the door, her parents saw some friends – a man her father worked with and his wife – and they moved to the side to talk. Evie tried to follow them but was swept up by the throng of people moving forward, and before she knew it she was a few metres from the door, on the path, on her own. She tried to walk towards her parents but there were too many people moving in the other direction; she was trapped. Instead, she waved at them, but they didn’t notice; they were laughing, talking.
And then Evie felt someone behind her, standing still, not moving like everyone else, and she knew it was Raffy. Every instinct in her told her to reach out her hand, to touch him, to forget everything she had told herself she would do.
But she knew she had to fight her instincts. She knew it was their only hope.
‘You have to come. I can’t live without you.’
His voice was low, urgent; she felt it in the base of her stomach.
She shook her head, desperately seeking out her parents, whose strength she needed before it was too late. Raffy’s body was pressing against hers. ‘I have to go,’ she managed to say. She could hardly breathe, barely think. ‘Don’t do this again. Never look for me again. It’s over, Raffy. It has to be over.’
‘No,’ he said, a note of desperation in his voice that made her want to turn, hold him, put her lips to his as she had so many times before. But instead she pushed her nails into her palms.
‘Raffy? Come and look after Mother. Evie, what are you doing here on your own?’
Evie looked up with a start to see Lucas approaching, his expression unreadable as always. Had he seen anything? Did he know? Evie shook herself. He couldn’t have seen anything.
‘I . . . I got separated from my parents,’ she managed to reply. ‘I was just looking for them.’
‘And here they are,’ Lucas said with a tight little smile. ‘Your mother, anyway.’ He turned back to Raffy, the smile disappearing. ‘Go. Now,’ he ordered. Raffy slipped away.
‘Evie, there you are,’ her mother called, appearing through the crowd, her cheeks flushed, a rare smile on her face. ‘We’re with Philip and Margorie over there. I was just telling them how well you’re doing at work. Come over.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Evie replied, allowing her mother to take her hand and lead her back through the crowd.
As she approached Philip and Margorie, she turned, in desperation, to get one last look at Raffy and to somehow let him know that she was doing this for both of them, that there was no alternative; but the only eyes she met were Lucas’s, staring at her quizzically before he turned and walked in the other direction.
Evie couldn’t sleep that night; she tossed and turned as the evil within her fought with her desperation to be good, to be pure and strong just as the Brother had called for her to be at the Gathering. She wanted to renounce evil, wanted to have only good thoughts in her head, and yet all she could think about was Raffy, the devastation in his eyes and his refusal to accept what she’d told him. All she could feel was a longing deep inside her to see him again, just one more time; to think of a new way – a good way – they could still be friends, even though she knew it was impossible and that she could never see him.
Her thoughts were so feverish, her mind so full, that she didn’t hear the tap at the window the first time. And when the second tap came, it shocked her so much that she sat bolt upright in bed, pulled the bedclothes to her and stared at the window as though fearing that the Evils themselves were coming for her, that they could read her thoughts and that they knew she was one of them after all.
‘Evie. Evie.’ And then her heart stopped because it wasn’t the Evils. It was Raffy. He was here – he had come to her house. And her fear at what would happen if he was discovered was mixed with a desperate need to see him – to comfort him, to explain and to have him understand and absolve her.
Shaking, Evie approached the window and hesitantly drew back the curtain. Even though she knew it was Raffy, she still jumped when she saw him looking at her, balancing precariously on the window ledge, his face so full of sadness she almost wanted to cry.
Immediately she opened the window and pulled him in, putting her finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet, to not make a sound because if they were caught now, there would be no going back, there would be no forgiveness.
He sat on her bed; she looked at him, unable to speak, unable to think of the right words. And so it was Raffy who spoke first, his voice low, taut and tired.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ he said. ‘You can’t do this.’
‘Yes, I can,’ Evie replied, looking down. ‘And you have to, too. The System will be watching you. It probably knows everything already. I don’t know why it hasn’t punished us yet, but it will, if we don’t stop. I am going to marry Lucas. And we can’t meet again.’
‘Because the System will punish us? I don’t care. So I’ll be a D. Everyone treats me like one anyway.’
‘What if you’re not made a D?’ Evie whispered fiercely. ‘What if we’re made K’s? We’ll be thrown out of the City. We’ll be left for the Evils to claim.’ Tears of fear and unhappiness filled her eyes. ‘Raffy, there is no alternative. We have to stop seeing each other. You have to understand that.’
‘No. What I understand is that you can’t marry Lucas,’ Raffy said, his jaw clenching. ‘You just can’t. He isn’t a person, he’s a machine. He won’t take care of you. He won’t listen to you. He won’t love you. Not like I do. He doesn’t deserve you. He . . .’
Raffy’s arms reached out to touch Evie, but she shrank back.
‘He’s not a machine,’ she said, falteringly.
‘Yes, he is,’ Raffy said, his eyes seeking hers out, uncompromising.
‘Then maybe we need to become machines, too,’ Evie replied, wiping at her eyes. ‘Maybe that’s the key to being good. Maybe evil lives in emotions, in our hidden thoughts.’
‘If that’s being good then I don’t want to be good.’ Raffy stared at her angrily, challengingly, but Evie refused to rise to the bait.
‘You don’t mean that,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t I?’ He folded his arms. ‘When Dad was taken away, Lucas didn’t say a thing. He just threw all his stuff out, said he’d brought shame on our family and we were never to mention his name again. His own father. Is that good?’
Evie tried to swallow, but a huge lump had appeared in her throat. She remembered it so well – Raffy’s misery at losing his father being compounded by Lucas’s response, and the cold flash in Lucas’s eyes whenever Raffy tried to mention the man who had raised them both. ‘Your father was made a K,’ Evie said, hesitantly.
Raffy’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you’re turning into a machine too,’ he responded bitterly. ‘My father was a good man. Not evil. Not evil.’
He turned away, burying his head in his knees. Evie tentatively reached over.
‘He didn’t mean to be evil,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he didn’t. But the System . . .’
‘The System’s always right. Of course it is.’ There was a note of something dangerous in Raffy’s voice. Evie’s eyes widened as she looked at him. Could the System hear him?
‘The System
is
right,’ she said, looking around fearfully. ‘It knows us all, and it can see deep into our hearts, and—’
‘And my father went straight from an A to a K? The System can’t have been on the ball, can it?’ Raffy stood up. ‘Don’t you see, Evie? I thought you’d see. I thought you understood. It’s all rubbish. It has to be. I’m not evil. You’re not evil. The feelings I have for you aren’t evil. The feelings you have for me. Or had, I should say.’
He stared at her again; Evie felt herself getting warm.
‘Have,’ she whispered. ‘Have.’
A smile crossed Raffy’s face. He sat down on the bed again, grabbed her hands, pulled her towards him.
‘The other day,’ he said, his voice so quiet she could barely hear him, ‘when I found the glitch. It wasn’t a glitch. It was a communication device. There were messages there to people outside the City. People who must have a System too. The Brother says there’s no one outside except Evils and savages. But I saw the messages. I saw the device. Don’t you see? If they’re lying about that, they’re lying about other things, too.’
Evie’s eyes were like saucers now as her heart began to thud anxiously in her chest. She shook her head.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, Raffy. That’s impossible.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, that’s what Lucas said. Said I imagined it, that I was hallucinating. But I know what I saw.’
‘But . . . but . . .’ Evie stammered, her mind racing, compounding her confusion, making her feel like she’d lost her balance.
‘But nothing,’ Raffy said. He squeezed her hands and his eyes suddenly lit up. ‘If another place exists, then let’s go to it. Together.’
‘Go to it? You mean leave the City?’ Evie recoiled.
‘I mean, find somewhere better. With no rules. Where we can just live.’
‘You mean like the Evils live?’ Evie said, shaking her head violently. ‘No, Raffy. No. We’re not going anywhere. You’re going to go home and not come here again and I’m going to marry Lucas.’
‘No!’ Raffy cried angrily. ‘Evie, listen to me. We always talked about this, about finding faraway places where we could live happily. We always talked about escaping. Well now we can. Now we have to.’
Evie pulled her hands away. ‘That was make-believe, Raffy,’ she said angrily. ‘That was children’s talk. We’re grown up now. You have to stop living in a fantasy land. You live here, in the City. You are lucky to be here; we both are. You have to stop, Raffy. You have to . . .’ She dried her eyes, stood up on the bed and opened the window again. ‘You have to go, Raffy,’ she said. ‘Now. Please.’
‘You really want me to?’
Evie nodded; she could barely bring herself to look at him, to see the confusion and pain in his eyes which she knew would weaken her resolve.
‘Fine. I’ll go,’ he muttered, his voice angry. ‘But I’m telling you, this place exists. It’s not a fantasy. It’s real. Just like this is real.’ He grabbed her, pulled her towards him and kissed her, and she tried to pull away but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Instead she held on to him, his shoulders, his hair, pressing him into her, breathing in the scent of his skin so that she might never forget it.
‘Bye, Evie,’ Raffy said, his voice hoarse and quiet. ‘Look after yourself.’
And then he let go of her, and she had never felt quite so alone, quite so cold, quite so adrift. But she steeled herself; took a deep breath. She was doing the right thing. For once, finally, she was doing the right thing. Raffy moved towards the window; Evie pulled the curtain back further so that he could open it fully. And then they both heard something, a rustling from the garden below. They froze, staring at each other, brows furrowed. ‘What was that?’ Raffy whispered.
‘Get down behind the curtain,’ Evie mouthed, then tentatively inched up to look below and identify the source of the noise. A fox, she told herself. Another animal. A . . .
But it wasn’t an animal. She saw him immediately; he was looking right at her and now she really was falling into the abyss. Because standing in the middle of the garden, his blond hair shining under the moonlight, was Lucas. And she knew immediately that he had seen everything; they had embraced in front of the window, in front of the open curtain. He must have followed Raffy. And now he knew. And now . . . She started to sweat. She had to warn Raffy, but by turning to him, by signalling, Lucas would know beyond doubt. She had to at least pretend. Just in case he hadn’t seen. Just in case.
Evie leant out of the window. ‘Lucas,’ she whispered. ‘What are you—?’
‘Send Raffy down to me,’ he whispered back, his voice emotionless.
‘Raffy?’ she asked.
‘Evie, don’t make this worse than it is. Send Raffy down immediately. I need to take him home. Don’t make me wake your parents.’