The Disappeared (30 page)

We sit in silence for most of the evening. I can’t see any way out of the room. It’s empty apart from a couple of sleeping mats. To the left of the door is a tiny hatch. On the right-hand wall there’s a barred door through to the Isolation Room, where Rex is still passed out on the floor. He tried to punch one of the impeccables so Enforcer Rice stunned him with his taser.

Kay hasn’t spoken for hours. She’s stopped crying. She’s even stopped looking angry. Her jaw is set and her eyes stare into the distance. Her world has crashed down around her like mine did when my mother told me the truth.

There’s a clanking sound outside the door and I spring to my feet. I’ve got some crazy hope that they’re going to let us out. But it isn’t the sound of the door; it’s the hatch. I slide up its little door. In the space behind is a tray with three cups of water on. I lift the tray out, place it on the floor and then feel around the interior space. There are no gaps. Obviously this is set up so that when the little door on our side is open, the door that opens on to the corridor is covered. No way out there.

‘Kay,’ I say, ‘do you want some water?’

She doesn’t answer. She draws her knees up to her chest and rests her cheek on them. I remember her cheek on my chest and I’m filled with this ache that hurts and feels sweet at the same time. I shake my head. I’ve got to concentrate.

I slide a cup towards her and she looks down at it as if she doesn’t know what to do with it.

I pick up my cup. My mouth is dry. As I’m about to drink, Kay knocks the cup from my hands. The water splashes out and the cup spins across the floor.

‘Don’t drink that,’ she says.

She’s right. It’s not like the enforcers to think about our well-being. I bet it’s drugged. I try to work some saliva around my mouth. At least Kay seems alert again.

‘We’ve got to work out how to get out,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, let’s go.’

Kay paces around the tiny room. The door is the only way out. There’s no code keypad on this side. Kay runs her hand over the door. Halfway down on the right-hand side a box-shape sticks out. ‘This is where the lock is,’ she says.

‘Can you open it?’

She bends down and peers into a tiny gap between the plastic casing and the door. ‘I’ll get it open,’ she says. ‘I need something . . . metal.’

I look around the room yet again, as if a tool box is going to suddenly appear. There are only the cups.

Kay walks over and takes out the tray from underneath them. It’s metal. She goes back to the door and pulls a piece of shrap off the thread around her neck. She eases its thinnest edge under the lock casing and starts to pry it off.

‘What do you need the metal for?’ I ask.

She keeps pushing the shrap, trying to wriggle it further into the crack.

‘Is it a magnetic lock?’ I say.

She doesn’t answer me. While she’s working, I look through the bars at Rex. He’s still out of it. His mouth is hanging open. He’s such an ugly, dribbling pig. I look away. Kay keeps working. Easing the shrap up and down.

Then she starts screaming.

‘
Ahhhhhhhhhh!
’

‘What? What is it?’ I rush to her.

‘
AH! AH! AHHHH!
’

‘Kay!’ I get hold of her face and turn it to me. She’s not crying. Or in pain. She’s just screaming. ‘What is it?’ I say.

The door opens. A terrified-looking impeccable peers in. Kay smashes him over the head with the tray and he slumps to the floor. Kay stops screaming. She gestures to the door. It’s now propped open by the motionless impeccable. She gives me the first smile in what feels like weeks.

‘I thought you were going to get the lock open,’ I say.

She shrugs. ‘I was, but then I heard someone outside. I thought he would come to look if he heard me scream.’

‘My ears are still ringing. I think everyone heard you,’ I say.

‘I heard you,’ says a voice behind us.

Rex is awake.

‘Don’t even look at him,’ I say to Kay. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Kay, my girl,’ Rex starts.

‘She is not your girl!’ I spit at him. ‘And when everyone hears what a lousy traitor you are I don’t imagine anyone will want to be your girl.’

‘Don’t tell,’ says Rex. He grips the bars with both hands and pulls his face up against them. ‘If you tell, you efwurding brainer, I’ll kill you.’

‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘I won’t tell anyone . . .’

Rex’s forehead creases.

‘. . . I’ll let Kay do that.’

‘My Kay won’t tell it, will you, babe?’ he says. He switches on his wide smile.

He’s leering at her. I’m going to smash his face. I walk towards him and he takes a step backwards. Kay puts her hand on my shoulder. He’s not fit to speak to her.

‘What do you think you can possibly say to Kay that would stop her telling everyone what a nozzle-scum bastard you are?’ I say.

Rex looks away from me. He peers up through his eyelashes like he’s suddenly shy. ‘Babe,’ he says, stretching an arm through the bars and trying to reach Kay’s hand, ‘I’ll make you Dom.’

‘As if that . . .’ I start to say, but then I see Kay’s face. She’s thinking. ‘Kay!’ I say. ‘Tell him. Tell him you don’t want to be Dom any more.’

‘He doesn’t get it, does he?’ Rex says to Kay. ‘You and me, we’re Academy. We work hard. You’re a good girl, Kay, you should have the good things. I can give you things, look after you.’

Outrageous. ‘Kay, look at me,’ I say. ‘Don’t trust this back-stabber. You don’t want to be connected with him.’

But she doesn’t look at me, instead she turns to Rex. ‘All right,’ she says to him. ‘I’ll be Dom.’

It’s like a punch in the stomach. How can this be happening? Kay with Rex. I’ll kill him.

‘Good girl. I’ll make it all good for you,’ Rex says. He looks at me with a sneer. ‘She wants to be with me.’

‘I want to be Dom,’ she says to me.

‘Why?’ I say. ‘It’s all nonsense, remember? The enforcers made up those names and it’s all controlled by the Leadership and Rex is working for the enforcers and . . . and . . .’

Kay shakes her head. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘No!’ I shout. ‘No, I don’t. Are you forgetting everything that we’ve found out? Are you saying—?’

‘I’m saying I don’t care,’ Kay says. ‘I want to be Dom.’ She presses her lips together.

This is ridiculous. ‘But, Kay, we’re going to bring down the Academies.’

Rex snorts. I turn away from him and take hold of Kay’s hands. ‘We’re going to escape to where they can’t control us,’ I say.

‘Oh, Blake!’ she says. ‘Do you think that’s not a lie? That it’s more better outside? They wanted to kill you.’

‘All people want to kill him,’ says Rex.

‘It will be different,’ I say.

‘It
won’t
be different.’ She pulls her hands away. ‘It’s all the same.’

‘But we have to try, Kay. I want you to have something better than this.’

‘I don’t care,’ she says. ‘I don’t care if this is the most bad place. I want to be at the top.’

I can’t believe it. Kay doesn’t want me. She’s choosing the most despicable, idiot scum I have ever met instead of me. Everything is ruined.

‘I’ll go then,’ I say.

‘I’m sad for you, Blake-boy,’ Rex says. ‘But Specials have to be with Specials.’

I look at him. I hate him. He lowers his gaze. Then jerks his head back up.

‘You can’t tell,’ he says. ‘It’s not for me. All the Specials will be sad if you tell,’ he says. ‘Don’t say. Tell him, Kay. Specials need Reds and Rex. Don’t take it away.’

Rex is a lot smarter than I realised. He’s a manipulative bastard.

‘How are you going to stop me?’ I say and I spring forward and punch through a gap in the bars into his stomach. Then I step back so he can’t reach me. ‘If you don’t want people to know you’re an efwurding bastard, Rex, then you shouldn’t act like one.’

Kay puts a hand on my arm. ‘Please don’t tell, Blake.’

This is too much. I feel like I might explode into a million pieces because to continue existing is too much to bear. But I don’t explode. Or hit Rex again. Or fall at Kay’s feet. I just turn around and walk away.

I ought to go and find Ilex and work out how to organise a diversion, but instead I stop at the top of the stairs and sit down. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t even know if I care any more. I want my mother. I want to turn back time to how it was before. When I was at the Willows and didn’t know any of this. Why should I try and change everything when no one else is bothered?

Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Ali.

Blake,
she signs by drawing a capital ‘B’ on the palm of her hand. She gives me a huge smile.
Where have you been?
she asks.
I looked for you
.

‘I’m sorry, Ali. Enforcer Rice . . .’

She steps closer to me.

‘We got in trouble with Enforcer Rice,’ I say. ‘What are you doing out here? It’s late. You’ll get into trouble if they see us.’

I had to find you. To say sorry about your mother. Your mother was good.

‘She was. She was a really good mother.’

Ali leans against me.
What are you doing, Blake?
she asks.

I look at her peaky little face.

‘I don’t know, Ali. I don’t really know what I’m doing.’

She looks back at me solemnly.

‘What I want to do is get rid of this place,’ I say. ‘Get rid of all the Academies and get rid of The Leader.’

Ali nods.

‘But I don’t think I can,’ I say.

She pats me on the shoulder.
You can,
she signs.
Blake can
.

So we wake Ilex and in one of the cubicles in the bathroom we form as much of a plan as is possible, given that we don’t know exactly how things will happen tomorrow. Very early, before they notice I’m missing from the LER room, we need to try and get some of the other Specials onside. Then, I’ll go down and hide somewhere in the oldest part of the Academy, which is where The Leader will be giving his speech, ready to jump out and have my say. Ali will be my messenger. Once I’ve used my mother’s swipe card she can take it back to Ilex and that way he can bring in anyone who is prepared to help us make our point more forcibly. It’s not much, but it’s all we’ve got.

I get into bed. My insides seem to be heaving about like choppy water. Kay’s bed is empty. She stayed with Rex in the LER room. I picture them together, then dig my nails into my palm to take the image away.

I hardly sleep. The lighting switches to dawn setting and I allow myself to think of my mother and Wilson. Instead of getting upset, I’m furious. It’s like cold liquid metal pumping through my veins. I’m going to do this.

Ilex appears by my bed. ‘Are we ready?’ he says.

‘Well, we’re not going to get any readier,’ I say. The phrase makes me think of Kay. ‘We’d need to speak to as many Specials as possible. Ali’s dormitory is probably the safest place to talk. Start waking people up, quietly. No Reds.’

We get Specials out of their dormitories through their bathroom doors and in through Ali’s to her dormitory, where none of the Reds sleep. Soon there are several hundred students crammed into the room. I stand on a bed and look down at them. I remember when I arrived. Nobody would have come to listen to me speak then. I raise my hand for quiet.

‘My name is Blake—’

‘We know it. You’re all times saying it,’ someone says.

My face gets warm. I was a bit of an idiot in the beginning, always going on about my AEP score. ‘I know that you’ve heard me talking rubbish before—’ I say.

‘Yeah, why are we listening to this no-ranker?’ somebody says.

‘He isn’t a no-ranker,’ says Ilex. ‘He’s a one-two-er.’

‘I’m proud of that one,’ I say. And even though I don’t think that most of them know the word ‘proud’ they get the gist and they laugh.

‘That Special got us bowls,’ says someone at the back.

There’s a murmur of agreement.

‘He’s teaching Specials to read,’ Marn says. ‘He knows things. He can help us.’

Some of the Specials from the reading classes start clapping. I have to gesture for them to be quiet.

‘What do you want us to do?’ a black-haired girl asks.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’m not trying to get you to do something for me. I want you to do something for all of us. This place is wrong. Bad. Kids should not be beaten or given electric shocks or made to sleep in dirty beds. We should have a proper education. And choices.
Everybody
should have choices. If you don’t want to work in a factory then you shouldn’t have to.’