The Disappeared (5 page)

The stony-faced receptionist wants me to change my clothes right in front of her. I sidle into the corner and turn my back. As I unbutton Wilson’s jacket I notice something in the pocket. It’s an old-format, paperback book,
Everyman’s Book of Verse
. I wait till the woman is typing on her computer and then switch the book into my new jacket pocket. It belonged to Wilson and I’m not letting anyone else have it.

The uniform is stiff and scratchy and I’m obviously not the first person to wear it. I fold my jeans carefully. They had better put them somewhere safe; I paid a lot of money for them.

When I’m changed she scans my fingerprints and my iris. The computer bleeps as it comes up with the
No record found
banner again. I don’t understand. I feel like a ghost. Why would anyone want to remove all trace of me?

A boy in his late teens wearing the same coarse, grey uniform as me, but with a large yellow badge pinned to his chest, appears at the desk.

‘You are student number one-two-four-seven,’ the receptionist says to me. She looks at the boy and jerks her head to indicate he should take me away. He starts to walk. I don’t move.

‘I think you should know I don’t belong here,’ I say to the receptionist.

She looks at the boy. He grips me by the elbow and pulls me away.

‘Don’t you want to record my academic scores?’ I call over my shoulder.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she says without looking up from her screen.

The boy leads me down a corridor to a thick metal door. He opens it by punching in a pass code. I try to watch but he covers one hand with the other. I can’t believe that they use such an outdated system. They ought to get biometric security.

Once through the doors I try to shrug off his grip. The smell of him is making my eyes water.

He twists my arm up behind my back. ‘Don’t do that. I’m an impeccable. You do what I say.’ He gives me a shove to get me moving. ‘All times you do what I say.’

Great. As well as smelling like a caveman he also talks like one. He pushes me down a scuffed and scratched narrow metal corridor. It smells of disinfectant and something musky. It’s not cold, but my teeth start to chatter.

‘What’s an impeccable?’ I say.

‘We’ve finished Academy learning. Now we work here. We’re big good.’

I twist back and look at his glassy eyes and his collar cutting into his fat neck. If he’s one of the big good I can hardly wait to see the small bad.

Halfway down the corridor he stops at a door with another punch code machine. This time I pretend not to watch, but out of the corner of my eye I see him laboriously type in CLASSROOM. Unbelievable. If you’re going to use an old-fashioned system like this you need a nice random selection of numbers, letters and symbols. All this security is making me nervous. I know Academy students are supposed to be rough, but do they really need locking up?

The boy opens the door and pushes me inside. I turn round to point out that the shoving is unnecessary. But he’s gone and I’m facing a closed door. I turn back. I’m at the top of several steps looking down on a room which is divided up into sections by partitions of metal lattice. The sections are like tiny prisons. In each one there is a seat sunk into the floor with a boy or girl sat in it. There must be more than twenty teenagers crammed into this weird room and they’re all looking at me.

I swallow. ‘Hello, my name is J— ah, Blake, my AEP score is 98.5. There’s been some sort of mistake . . . and I really need to speak to whoever is in charge.’

Silence.

‘Do you have a group leader?’

They stare at me.

‘Your facilitator?’ I feel like I’m speaking a foreign language, I struggle for more basic vocabulary. ‘Where’s your teacher?’ I ask.

Some of the kids swivel round in their seats; I follow the direction of their gaze to the front of the classroom.

They’re looking at a cage.

There’s someone in the cage.

It’s the teacher.

‘Good morning,’ I say finally. ‘I’m—’

‘Quiet,’ the teacher says.

She’s tiny and wiry. Her jaw is prominent and clenched. She reminds me of a fierce little dog.

‘I am Enforcer Tong. Do not speak unless you are spoken to by an enforcer.’ She leans forward to stare at me. What the hell is she doing in that cage?

‘Sit,’ she says.

Because the seats are sunk into the floor I have a clear view of where there is a space in the grid. There’s only one gap, on the far side of the room. I make my way carefully between the metal walls till I reach the vacant compartment. I struggle with the catch to open the tiny door and sit in the sunken seat. I look up at the teacher. Her cage is mounted to the wall and made of metal; the gaps between the bars are so narrow that I can only make her out in long thin sections.

I let out a slow breath. This is all too weird. I never thought I’d end up in an Academy.

Locked in a classroom.

With the teacher in a cage.

Wilson would love this. Poor Wilson. Suddenly a vision of his crumpled body flashes through my mind. What am I going to do about him? I still need to find someone who will listen to me. I put my arm in the air, but the walls of the compartment are so high that only my hand sticks out. The enforcer raises her head from her computer screen very slowly. She stares at me and then at my hand.

‘I really need to see the head of this establishment,’ I say.

Someone in a nearby compartment giggles.

‘It’s urgent,’ I add.

The enforcer continues to stare. Her mouth twitches into a Halloween-mask smile. ‘Perhaps it would be best for you to meet the head.’ She snaps off the smile. ‘At the end of the session. Now put on your EMDs.’

‘What are EMDs?’ I ask.

The class laughs and the enforcer tuts.

‘On your chair,’ hisses a voice from the other side of the partition.

I look down and notice a red light flashing on the right arm of my chair. There’s a small tray set into the arm and in it is a sort of bracelet. I slide it on to my wrist; rubbery stuff on the inside ensures that it is a tight fit. A thick metal cord connects it back to the arm of my chair. There’s another one on my left side. I put that on too. I feel like a tethered chicken. This is absurd. I’m starting to despair of getting things straightened out. What if the head teacher is as unhelpful as everyone else has been?

I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose. I tell myself that everything will be fine. This madness has to end. I can’t see the other students because of the partition walls around me, but I can hear them tapping away at their computers. My neighbour to my left is so close that I can hear the quiet click-clicking of his stylus on his screen. I look at my own computer. The screen is showing a circuit board. The aim seems to be to drag components into the right position. I pick up my stylus to look as if I’m busy and start to rehearse in my head what I am going to say to convince the head teacher that I’m not crazy.

‘What’s your name?’ comes a whisper so low I barely catch it. It’s the boy in the compartment next to me.

I open my mouth and then hesitate. ‘Blake,’ I whisper. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Ilex.’

‘Ilex, what’s an impeccable?’

‘They work for the enforcers. They’re big mean and—’

I don’t get to hear what else he was going to say next because he lets out an almighty scream.

‘
AHHHHHHH!
’

I try to jump out of my seat to help him, but it’s so cramped in the compartment that I can’t do it without opening the door and the door seems to be locked. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ I say.

‘Silence!’ says Enforcer Tong. ‘No talking, new boy. If you talk you will be punished too.’

Punished? King Hell, how on earth did she make him scream like that without even coming near him? What kind of sick place is this? It’s like she zapped him. Surely he’d have to be wired up to some sort of electric device for that . . . Then I realise.

An electric device, like the one attached to my wrists.

Hours later a buzzer sounds. The compartment doors click open. Enforcer Tong must control the locks from her computer. The other students are already scrambling out of their seats. They swarm past my compartment, pushing and shoving. I look up at the enforcer. She’s staring down at me.

‘Wait here, the head of the Academy, Enforcer Rice, will speak to you.’ She disappears through the door in the wall at the back of her cage. I pull off the silly bracelets and step out of my compartment to stretch my legs. My body aches from sitting in the cramped box and from yesterday’s beating.

I thought everyone had gone, but a thickset boy with shaggy brown hair is stood looking at me. He gives me a half-smile.

‘Hello,’ I say.

‘Hello.’

There’s a long pause.

‘I’m Ja— Blake,’ I say. How long is it going to be before I trip up on that one?

‘I know. I’m Ilex.’

‘Oh, I see. Sorry that you got that shock. I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to talk. Doesn’t exactly encourage free exchange of ideas does it? It’s bad enough that they keep you squeezed up in these pens. Why do they do that?’

Ilex squints at me. His eyes follow the arm that I’ve gestured to the compartments with. ‘This is the grid,’ he says.

‘Uh huh, but why are you in the grid?’

Ilex shrugs. ‘So we can’t get out.’

I can’t believe he’s so casual about it.

Before Ilex can say anything else, the door in the back of the cage at the front of the room opens and a muscular man with close-cut, grey hair appears. He looks annoyed. Ilex shoots another half-smile at me and then disappears out of the classroom door.

‘I am Enforcer Rice. I run the Academy. And you are new,’ the man says, as if I’ve done something particularly annoying. I don’t like the way they talk to you here.

‘I shouldn’t be here at all,’ I say. I’m about to launch into everything that has happened when I remember P.C. Barnes’ words about slipping through the net. Maybe I shouldn’t tell this man too much.

Enforcer Rice is staring at me. He’s waiting.

‘I was at a Learning Community,’ I say. ‘There’s been some sort of mix up. My records have been wiped . . .’

‘What’s your name?’ He’s not looking at me, but at a point past my left ear.

Something in the way he asks makes up my mind. Even though he’s a teacher, I don’t trust him. Before I can think about it any more, I say, ‘Blake Jones.’

‘Well,
Blake Jones
.’ He forms the name carefully like he knows it’s false. ‘Have you anything to add to this fascinating story?’

‘I . . . I was beaten up. Only yesterday. Some men attacked me and my friend. They killed him and tried to do the same to me. I think that I’ve suffered some memory loss.’

He rolls his eyes.

‘I know it sounds unlikely, but I’m sure that you can appreciate that I’m not best suited to an Academy environment,’ I say.

He purses his lips. ‘You sound more like a Learning Community brat than a Wilderness ape. I’ll give you that.’

I open my eyes wide. No wonder Academy students are so rude if this is the way their teachers talk. ‘If I sound like a Learning Community
pupil
then you’ve got to ask the question, how have I ended up here?’

There’s a long pause. ‘It’s not my job to ask questions,’ he says. ‘In fact, I find the fewer questions you ask the more likely you are to succeed. I don’t know why you are here, young man, and I do not care. I imagine that it is a punishment for whatever trouble you have caused.’

I open my mouth to protest that I have never caused any trouble, but he ploughs on.

‘The only thing that I care about is that you do not cause trouble here. And that means I don’t want to hear about your “Learning Community” past or anything else that you might imagine makes you different from the rest of the students here. Is that understood?’

This is like the police all over again. It’s so unfair. ‘I’m not going to just stay here!’ I say. ‘What about my education? What about—’

‘If you can’t accept your life in the Academy and follow Academy rules then you will be punished.’ He eyes my bruised cheek.

‘Are you threatening me?’ I say. ‘You can’t treat me like this—’