The Rainbow Maker's Tale (35 page)

“Of course, where else would he
be working?” Her question was more a statement and did not require
an answer. “I’ve got to go back to The Clinic. One of the
nightshift has had to leave as their daughter is ill, so they need
cover.”

“You’ve already been in work
all day – aren’t you tired?”

Mother focused alert eyes on my
face. She certainly didn’t look sleepy – she looked the same as
ever – perhaps I could add
not sleeping
to my list of odd
things my parents did!

“I’m fine. Do you need anything
before I go?”

“No thanks, I’m just going to
bed. It’s very late.”

“Make sure you do. We don’t
want you getting ill, or being late for your placement in the
morning.”

“No, Mother,” I agreed, as I
walked into my bedroom.

The apartment door opened and
closed a few seconds later, and I knew I was alone. It was a
welcome surprise – it meant I could experiment on my mark straight
away – but it also felt odd. My parents never normally left me
alone overnight, why would they start now?

12.56am.

I sat on the floor of my room,
an icepack held against my arm, trying to soothe the throbbing pain
in my wrist. A myriad of equipment and empty tubes lay around me,
discarded during my experiments. I was bruised and sore, but at
least I had an answer now.

Pulling the icepack away I
examined the inflamed skin beneath. Apparently the transmitter I
had discovered underneath my mark hadn’t liked being prodded and
jabbed with chemicals. I re-covered it with the cool pack and
turned to my portable screen, which lay on the floor beside me.

I deleted all the chemical
analysis data from the screen, which had tracked everything I’d
done to myself in the last hour. There was something oddly
satisfying about making myself disappear: removing every warning
notice and investigation flag from my record, until I looked just
like everyone else.

Not
everyone
else, I
corrected immediately. I looked like every other child.

I pressed harder on the icepack
and felt the dig of the transmitter beneath my flesh. It was
something I had never known existed before, but I was sure that I
would feel it every second of every day, now that I knew it was
there. My mark was just for show: the important stuff was beneath
the surface.

Once Mother had left me alone,
I’d set myself up with a nice little experiment rig and begun
splashing and wiping my mark with a whole variety of chemicals. I
tried everything I had, in the small stock I kept hidden at home,
and even ventured into my parents’ office in search of more things
to try. It hadn’t taken long for it to became clear that the mark
didn’t do anything much on the surface.

It was when I was wiping up
some of the mess on my arm I felt something I’d never noticed
before. Pressing down harder than normal, trying to wipe off a
smear of sticky liquid, I felt a small solid lump beneath my skin.
I pulled away the cloth and pressed the area again, until I found
it. The lump was immediately below the mark: too hard to be muscle,
too small to be bone.

This had to be it.

I took a syringe and slid it
beneath my skin, into the area around the unknown mass. Depressing
the plunger, I supplied it with small amount of hormones, and
waited. At first I thought nothing had happened, but a minute later
the data feed on my viewing screen began to change. Red flags
appeared against my profile, along with new numbers depicting a
spike in my hormone levels: testosterone and dopamine. I grabbed
another syringe and installed the cartridge, before shooting the
hormones into my wrist. A minute later, more data appeared: my
oxytocin and serotonin levels had increased – and now had a
monitoring flag applied to them.

I swallowed. Whatever was
buried in the flesh of my arm was part of The Council’s monitoring
system. Not only did they test my urine and blood outside my body,
and scan me for undesirable emotional changes, I now knew that they
were inside me as well. There was no way to escape them.

I pulled the ice pack away
again, replacing it with a small freeze pack, which I bandaged to
my arm to hold it tight in place. There was no way I was sitting
here all night, now that I knew this.

I’d seen the light in Cassie’s
room go off just after midnight. It had been a surprise to find
that I could see her room from mine – I wasn’t quite sure how that
fact had by-passed me before, although on days when my hormones
were raging, not having that information probably hadn’t been a bad
thing. I didn’t want to be
that
guy.

Anyway, armed with this new
information, I felt even more uncomfortable about leaving Cassie
alone with her parents. I didn’t know everything yet, but I did
know that I didn’t trust a single adult in the Family Quarter – my
parents and Cassie’s included. Slipping the wristband over the
reddening mark on my arm, I left the apartment undetected.

1.07am.

I settled into place: opposite
Cassie’s apartment building, nestled amongst the branches of a
not-too-prickly bush. Switching on my portable screen, I kept it
hidden inside my bag. It wasn’t perfect, but it concealed the glow
enough that the light wouldn’t be noticed if someone happened to
look out of the window.

Ready to work I opened the link
to the main Family Quarter database and pulled up Ami’s data file –
understanding her story was my first step to filling the gaps in my
theories.

2.56am.

I detected movement near
Cassie’s apartment building. Because everything else was so still
and quiet, my eyes were immediately drawn to the source of the
change. I recognised Cassie’s father, and a woman, who I assumed
must be her mother. They left the avenue, walking beside one
another, as if it were perfectly normal to be out strolling at
three o’clock in the morning.

Fear tightened in my chest.
Ami’s parents had disappeared to the Retirement Quarter, the same
night Cassie dreamed of Ami’s abduction. Had something happened to
Cassie? Had I waited too long?

I snapped the screen off and
shoved it back into my bag, leaving it in the bushes. Scanning the
surrounding buildings, I saw no further movements inside or out,
and so I crept out of my hiding place and moved towards Cassie’s
apartment.

As I stole into Cassie’s
bedroom, relief flooded through me. A Cassie-shaped lump was curled
up on the bed, breathing softly, deeply asleep. I looked around me,
finding her bedroom nearly identical to my own. Then I
faltered.

What do I do now?

In the end, I decided that I
would stay for a short while, just to make sure everything was OK.
Seeing Cassie’s parents creeping out in the middle of the night
disturbed me. Putting that together with everything else Cassie and
I knew – and what I had found out tonight – I didn’t want to risk
leaving her alone.

I settled myself onto the floor
beside Cassie’s bed. She stirred in her sleep, as though her dreams
were troubling her. I froze, waiting for something more, but a
minute later her breathing returned to normal. So, I tried to relax
a little, although I wasn’t expecting to sleep: the floor was not
comfortable and my head was far too busy.

In the darkness, I lay on my
back and turned over the new information I had, and tried to tie it
to everything else. Without meaning to, I found myself pulling away
the wristband that covered my mark, to look at it. In the last few
hours, the dark red I had imagined I’d seen in Park 42, had become
real. It had blossomed into a bright crimson now and spread closer
to the centre of the shapes imprinted on my skin. There was no
denying the change and I knew that the scanners would detect it
sooner or later.

From my research tonight, I had
discovered that in the days before their marks changed, Ami and
Patrick had both been tracked through the data system. High levels
of specific chemicals and hormones had highlighted them both for
monitoring: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, testosterone and
estrogen. The same things that had brought immediate attention to
me tonight, during my experiments…the same things I had been hiding
in my own test results for weeks, and more recently Cassie’s.

Unfortunately, from what I
could see, there was no way to hide the change to our marks. Whilst
the other tests would flag up anomalies in the system, they seemed
to be treated with minimal interest, which explained why I was able
to change results with little difficulty. But, the change in our
marks…as soon as that registered, a number of alerts were raised
and circulated to unreachable parts of the system.

I hadn’t found the evidence yet
– and I certainly didn’t know
why
all this was being done –
but I was sure that some final element was needed to generate the
change in our marks…the hormones and chemicals were all connected,
but there was one more thing that they were interested in.
Something – it seemed – that was only identified through the change
in our marks.

The only thing that blocked the
mark altogether was my band. Well, not the
only
thing: I
could cut open my arm and try to remove the transmitter thing that
was inside there. But, without knowing more about it, or how deeply
it was embedded into my body, I did not like that idea.

So, it was back to the
wristband. Both Cassie and I had one, and I was certain that we
could use them to disappear completely, but that didn’t feel like a
long-term solution.

Would Cassie even come with me,
if I decided to hide?

I wasn’t sure of that either,
although I did know that time to decide was running out. Running
out fast.

Through the darkness, I heard a
quiet beep, followed by the swooshing sound of a door opening.
Footsteps followed. Rolling off my back, into a crouch, I made my
way to the edge of Cassie’s bed. If someone was coming in, I would
be ready.

I waited. One minute. Two. Then
three. No one came and I began to relax again. It must have been
her parents coming back in. That wasn’t perfect: I’d have to find a
way to sneak out of the apartment now, but I was sure I could find
a way.
Hopefully.

“No!” Cassie screamed.

She launched herself from the
bed, scaring the breath out of me, with her shout. I only just had
time to roll aside, as I thought she was going to stand on me, but
then she lost her footing and plunged to the floor.

Cassie hit the ground with a
dull thud, and shouted out again, as she jarred her shoulder. In
the next moment, I saw her gaze focus on me, and her eyes went wide
with fear. Panicking that she might scream, and bring her parents
running, I clamped my hand over her mouth. It wasn’t a perfect
idea, but I didn’t want to get caught here.

Cassie began struggling and
somehow, I ended up on top of her as I tried to keep her mouth
covered. Several times, I tried to whisper that it was me, but I
wasn’t sure she heard. Finally, she stopped thrashing around, and I
thought she had realised who I was.

“Sssshhhhh,” I whispered near
her ear, trying to calm her down.

Cassie remained still, and I
tried to readjust my position to give her more space, but couldn’t.
We were so tangled together, and my other hand was holding my
weight off her body, so that I didn’t hurt her.

Maybe I shouldn’t have worried
too much about that. A split-second later, Cassie’s right hand
lashed out and caught me hard across the throat. Bright spots
flashed in my eyes, as I rolled away and tried not to choke. Cassie
clambered to her feet, whilst I fought for breath. She looked like
she was about to run.

“Good shot!” I managed to
croak, hoping it would stop her.

She froze. “Balik...? What the
hell are you doing?!”

“I was keeping you safe,” I
wheezed, trying to sit up, then not bothering when I realised I
still didn’t have enough air in my lungs to begin moving. Cassie
had crippled me with a single blow. “Well I was trying to, but it
doesn’t seem like you need my help.”

“I thought you were – ” Cassie
paused and changed to a different question. “What are you doing
here?”

I was still struggling to
breathe. Knowing that her parents were just down the hall meant
that I couldn’t cough too loudly, so I couldn’t clear my
throat.

“What if my parents catch you
here? Or
your
parents for that matter?” She demanded, when I
didn’t answer.

With difficulty, I dragged
myself into a sitting position, leaning against the wall. Through
the dim light, I saw Cassie move towards me and take a seat on the
edge of the bed.

“Are you OK?”

“Fine.” Despite my pain, I
managed a smile, impressed by Cassie’s ability to defend herself.
Rubbing my throat, I tried to massage away some of the pain. “Like
I said, maybe you don’t need looking after as much as I
thought!”

“Thanks.” Cassie smiled. “And I
am sorry,” she pointed at my neck.

“Not your fault. You didn’t
know that it was me lying on the floor next to your bed. You did
exactly what I would hope you would do if you found a stranger in
your room.”

Cassie nodded thoughtfully,
before returning to her previous question. “So, why
are
you
here?”

“You were upset earlier and I
didn’t really want to leave you. My parents disappeared out of the
apartment after I came back and so I sneaked out. I came here
thinking that I could keep an eye on you whilst you slept.”

Keep an eye on you whilst
you slept?
Yeah, that doesn’t sound creepy at all!

Cassie didn’t seem to
notice.

“And what about
my
parents?”

“I was hiding outside at first,
but then I saw both your parents leave a couple of hours after you
fell asleep, so I crept in just to check you were OK.”