The Killables (28 page)

Evie smiled, the first smile to cross her face since they’d left Base Camp earlier that day. ‘D sounds good,’ she said. ‘If I can identify his report, that is.’

Martha smiled back and they got to work.

The Brother stared out of his window in alarm, his breath short, his heart thudding in his chest. He’d heard the reports and now he could see for himself the Evils rampaging through the streets below, their hideous moans and screams sending shivers down his spine. But it made no sense. They were coming tomorrow. Tomorrow. He had seen the messages Lucas had sent, had seen the replies. It had been set for tomorrow.

He picked up his phone, then put it down again, pacing around his room. He had to think, had to work this through in his head. Lucas could not have sent a message – the device had been disabled and he had been locked up. No one else could have sent a message. If Linus was here a day early, it could only be because . . . But no, that was impossible. That was—

There was a knock at his door. An unmistakable knock – cool, efficient. But this time no one waited for him to call out; the door opened and Lucas appeared, a thin smile on his face.

‘You? How?’ The blood drained from the Brother’s face. ‘I don’t understand . . .’ He raced to the door, looked outside for the guards, for Sam, for . . .

‘They’ve gone,’ Lucas said with a little shrug. ‘You sent them away, gave them errands to run.’

‘Errands?’ The Brother began to tremble. ‘Errands?’

‘We’re in a state of emergency here,’ Lucas said coolly.

‘But how . . . how . . . ?’ The Brother stared at him, bewildered. ‘How could I have, if I didn’t . . .’

‘Come now.’ Lucas shook his head, frowning. ‘You don’t think I have recordings of your voice? You don’t think I can transmit from your line? Brother, you underestimate the System that you like to think you control. You have always underestimated its capabilities. And now . . .’ He pulled a little face. ‘Now it’s a bit too late.’

‘No.’ The Brother shook his head vigorously. ‘No. Guards. Guards!’ he cried out.

‘There’s no use, there’s no one there,’ Lucas said icily. His eyes were impenetrable, but for once he looked like he was actually enjoying himself, as though he had been building up to this moment for a long time. Perhaps he had, the Brother realised with a jolt. ‘You think you’ve been oh so clever, but you haven’t. You’ve been played.’

‘Played?’ The Brother’s eyes narrowed, his fear turning to anger. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that you’ve always believed people are less capable than you, less capable of running their lives, less capable of understanding human nature,’ Lucas said, walking towards him threateningly. ‘You were watching me, Brother, but you forgot that I have grown up in a City where everyone is watched all the time, where I factor in being spied on.’

The Brother stared at him. ‘You set me up!’ he gasped.

‘I fed you the information I wanted you to hear,’ Lucas said evenly. ‘And now, Brother, you will ring the Gathering Bell. You will call your people to the Meeting House, safe from the Evils.’

‘To the Meeting House? Are you mad?’ the Brother asked angrily. ‘I don’t think so.’ He moved towards Lucas. ‘My guards will hunt you down, Lucas. You might have won a little battle, but you will not win the war. You will never win.’

‘The thing is,’ Lucas said, taking a gun out of the back of his trousers, ‘I’m not interested in winning. And that’s why you don’t have a chance of beating me. Move, please. We don’t have much time.’

‘So, you and Raffy.’ Martha turned to Evie. ‘Everything okay between you?’

Evie flushed. ‘Fine,’ she said dismissively, staring at the screen in front of her. She’d discovered a way of highlighting hundreds of names at a time and changing their labels and she didn’t want to stop. She had been enjoying the concentration, the thinking about something else, the not feeling tortured, miserable, uncertain and scared.

‘Only it seemed to me like maybe things weren’t so fine,’ Martha said thoughtfully.

Evie closed her eyes and exhaled. ‘Maybe not entirely fine,’ she conceded.

‘You want to talk about it?’

Evie shook her head. Then she nodded. Then she shook her head again.

‘I was in love once,’ Martha said, her eyes suddenly becoming rather misty, a little smile appearing on her face. ‘It isn’t always easy. Often it’s really quite hard. But it’s worth it. You and Raffy . . . You mustn’t give up on each other. We all need someone.’

‘Once? What happened?’ Evie asked, hoping to divert the conversation away from her and Raffy as she changed 350 labels to ‘A’.

‘The City . . .’ Martha said quietly, looking back at the screen in front of her. ‘The City took him away from me.’

‘The City?’ Evie asked curiously. She’d known that everyone at Base Camp had at some point come from the City, but somehow she’d never really imagined them there, never thought that they had lived as she had, within the rules and strictures. ‘Were you not matched to him?’

Martha smiled sadly. ‘It wasn’t really like that,’ she said. ‘I was a . . . latecomer to the City. I’d been brought up in a small community a few miles away. We’d survived, but not much more than that. Food was a struggle. Water more so. Then the water dried up completely. We tried to find a new supply, but . . .’

‘But the City had taken it,’ Evie finished, looking down, guilt flooding her veins because it had been her City, because she had celebrated like everyone else when new dams were built.

‘But the City had taken it,’ confirmed Martha. ‘So we did what we had to do. Daniel and I came here. We offered our labour in return for entry to the City. We submitted to the New Baptism.’

She paused; the pause went on and became silence. Evie looked over at Martha and realised that tears were falling down her face.

‘And what happened?’ she prompted gently, standing up, moving towards Martha and putting her hand on her shoulders, doing her best to comfort the woman whose own past, own pain, she had never even considered before.

‘They said they’d look after us. I was pregnant with our first child. They said I would be cared for. But they took Daniel away. For the New Baptism. They said I’d see him afterwards, but . . . I couldn’t wait. I had to see for myself. I was in the same hospital; I sneaked into the New Baptism area. That’s when I saw him. Saw all of them. Mutilated. Brain-damaged. He didn’t know me. He was gone. They’d taken him . . .’ She let her head fall forward, wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

Evie felt tears prick at her own eyes. ‘The bed,’ she whispered. ‘The bed in the dormitory.’ Martha nodded. ‘What did you do?’ Evie asked then, her voice barely audible.

‘I ran,’ Martha said. ‘I knew I’d be next, so I ran back to the gate. I hid and waited for the gate to open again for new people. I should have warned them, should have told them to leave, but I didn’t. I thought only of myself. I ran, as far as I could. I hid in the forest. I cried, I raged, I nearly died.’ She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and forced a smile. ‘I lost my child. And then Linus found me. And then my life started again.’

Evie stared at her open-mouthed. She had been so caught up in the knowledge that her parents had been taken from her by the City, it had never occurred to her that she was not the only one; she was not alone in the anger that she carried around with her, the betrayal, the bitterness.

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry I said what I said. About the damaged ones. About you not caring.’

Martha reached out and grasped Evie’s hand. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I understand. We all do. Most of us have lost people. But they
are
lost, Evie. They are no longer who they were. We can look after them, but we can never find them again. We can never . . .’ She sniffed, wiped her eyes. ‘But all that happened a long time ago. You and Raffy . . . you seem to make each other so happy. It’s a shame to see you so miserable.’

‘It’s that obvious?’ Evie asked. Martha nodded.

Evie sighed heavily. ‘It’s my fault. I kept something from him. Something I did. He trusted me, and . . . and I betrayed that trust. And then I told him. And now he hates me.’

Martha appeared to digest this. ‘He hates you? No. He’s angry with you, I suspect. He wants to punish you. But he doesn’t hate you. I can see the love in his eyes when he looks at you. He adores you. He needs you.’

Evie felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. ‘You think? Really? Because I love him – so much. I always have.’

‘I know he does.’ Martha smiled. ‘Look, we’re nearly finished, aren’t we? Let’s get these labels changed and go and see him and Linus. Tell him how you feel and I think he’ll forgive you. I’m sure he will.’

Evie felt a smile wend its way onto her face, and she realised what the feeling in her stomach was. It was hope. ‘Okay,’ she said, highlighting the last few names with a flourish, changing them to A’s, then standing up, her eyes shining. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

They made their way silently up the stairs to the sixth floor, a floor that Evie had never been to before, had had no authority to go to. But she knew her way around; the floors were all set out in the same way and Raffy’s directions led her straight to the room where she and Martha found him hunched over a computer.

‘Nearly done,’ he called out when the door opened. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

They walked into the room and Raffy looked up. If he was pleased to see them he didn’t show it. ‘Oh, sorry. I thought you were Linus.’

Evie felt her heart sink. This was a bad idea. She couldn’t talk to Raffy. There was nothing to say.

‘Where is Linus?’ Martha asked.

‘He went out,’ Raffy said, his attention already turned back to the computer, his forehead wrinkling as he typed. ‘To get something.’

‘To get what?’ Martha asked, her tone rather abrupt.

Raffy looked up impatiently. ‘I don’t know. Something. He said he’d be back soon.’

‘And when was that?’

Raffy sighed. ‘I don’t know. A few minutes ago. Twenty minutes. Does it matter? I’m nearly done here. I just need to concentrate for a few more minutes . . .’

Martha looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Twenty minutes? Where could he have been for twenty minutes?’

Raffy banged his fist down on the table in front of him. ‘I don’t know, okay? He’ll be back. But if I don’t get this finished . . .’ He raised his eyebrows meaningfully and Martha sat down. Evie followed suit, her eyes travelling around the room where she knew Lucas had worked, as though he might have left something behind, as though some part of him might still be here somehow. Every so often she would shoot little looks at Raffy, wondering what he thought, what he really thought; wondering what he would say when she told him that she loved him, that she was sorry. She wondered if she would even get the chance, but it was as though he was completely unaware of her presence. Then, finally, he looked up.

‘Okay,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Finished.’

‘Finished?’ Martha jumped up and walked over to the computer. ‘You’ve rewritten the programme?’

‘Did exactly what Linus told me to. It can’t track any more. It’s disabled. It can’t do much, actually.’

Martha was quiet for a moment. ‘I’m going to look for Linus,’ she said after a brief pause. ‘Wait here for me.’ She slipped out of the room, leaving an awkward silence behind her.

Evie took a deep breath and stood up. ‘Raffy,’ she said quietly.

He turned to look at her, his expression not entirely hostile but not far off. ‘Yes?’

‘Raffy, I’m sorry. I need you to know that. I’m so sorry. About what happened with Lucas. I . . . I never had feelings for him. Not at all. It was just that night . . . He seemed so . . . broken. So fragile. And I was scared and I don’t know how it happened, but I need you to know that it’s you I love – only you. You I escaped with, you I want to be with. Always. And I’m sorry I hurt you and I hate myself for it.’

‘Yeah?’ Raffy said. His voice suggested a complete lack of interest, but his eyes told Evie otherwise and it gave her hope. His eyes were full of pain and defiance – those same eyes that had tugged at her heart when he’d been hounded, rejected, after his father was taken away. Eyes that made her want to weep because this time it was her fault.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly, slowly moving towards him. ‘Raffy, I’ve been so miserable. I only told you because I needed you to know the truth, because I didn’t want you loving a lie. I want you to love me, Raffy. All of me. Even the me that does stupid things.’ Her eyes were filling with tears but she brushed them away because she didn’t want pity, didn’t want to be comforted.

Raffy didn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘You really mean that? I saw him look at you. When we were with him just now. Were you looking at him?’

Evie felt her heart stop for a second. ‘Of course I wasn’t. Raffy, it’s always been me and you. Always.’

‘So why did you have to kiss Lucas?’ he said, his voice cracking then, finally. ‘Why the one person . . . Why Lucas?’

‘Because he wanted to save your life,’ Evie whispered. ‘Because I realised that he’d been on your side all that time. It was you, Raffy, not him. I feel nothing for Lucas. Nothing. You have to believe me. You have to . . .’

She looked up at him, her vision blurred by the tears filling her eyes, and suddenly Raffy was close to her, holding her, kissing her – her mouth, her nose, her wet eyes . . . And she was clinging to him and kissing his neck, his mouth, and for a moment they could have been anywhere, could have been far, far away from the City, from the System, from everything that had held them back for so long.

‘I love you,’ Raffy murmured into her ear. ‘I’ve always loved you.’

‘I’ve always loved you too,’ Evie whispered. ‘Always.’

And for what felt like hours but could only have been seconds, they clung to each other, as though trying to merge their bodies, as though they were scared to let go.

Then the door opened and they pulled apart, slowly, reluctantly, but they didn’t let go of each other completely. Evie wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to let go of him completely again.

But when they turned to greet Martha and Linus, they stopped, their eyes widening and their hearts both quickening, but for different reasons.