The System (25 page)

He gave Christopher one final nod then watched as the wolves turned and the sled sped away.

‘So,’ he said to Jim. ‘Are you ready to change the world?’

‘So tell me more about Lucas.’

Evie looked at Frankie uncertainly.

‘Come on,’ Frankie said, rolling her eyes. ‘We’re stuck miles below the sea in this disgusting tunnel full of rats and God knows what else. I’ve told you about Milo. You tell me about this person you’re so crazy about. So far I know that he’s beautiful and good and noble. It’s not much to work on. What does he do with his spare time? What kind of things do you two do together?’

Evie cleared her throat. Lucas. She didn’t even know where to begin, didn’t know how to explain, how to describe him, who he was, how she felt about him. Frankie seemed to find it so easy to talk; she’d been talking for the past hour, telling Evie all about how she’d met Milo, how she thought she’d been streetwise, how she’d been totally suckered in by his charm. And that wasn’t all she’d told her; Evie knew pretty much everything about Frankie’s childhood, her ambitions to be a successful blogger, the constant tug between getting high Watcher numbers and writing about stuff she believed in … Evie had felt her ears burning at times, so unused to listening to such intimate details of someone else’s life. And now Frankie was expecting her to reciprocate. And she had no idea how to even begin. The truth was that they had shared such precious little time together. ‘Lucas,’ she said, desperately trying to conjure up the light tone with which Frankie had revealed her innermost secrets and failing miserably. There was nothing light about Lucas, about her feelings for him. She couldn’t encapsulate her childhood in an anecdote with an arched eyebrow and wry laugh. She had buried her stories deep inside herself; occasionally she would take them out to carefully look at them, consider them, feel the pain of remembering, before forcing them back to where they belonged: hidden, suppressed. ‘He’s …’

And then she stopped. In front of her the tunnel appeared to stop dead; she shone her torch up and down but it was entirely blocked. She turned to Frankie. ‘This doesn’t look good.’

‘You’re telling me,’ Frankie said, her voice low. They both moved forwards and felt the wall in front of them. ‘Mud,’ Frankie said. ‘It’s damp. Do you think that means the tunnel has collapsed?’

Evie didn’t say anything; a lump had appeared in her throat, because they were so close, because Lucas was so close, because she was not giving up now, not walking away, no way.

She moved slowly along the wall, painstakingly feeling every inch that she could reach, from one side of the tunnel to the next. The wall wasn’t really a wall; it felt, like Frankie had suggested, like the roof of the tunnel had collapsed; the wall was curved, uneven. And utterly dense. She examined it for about fifteen minutes, looking for openings, for gaps, for areas of weakness but there were none.

Frankie was sitting on a rock, watching her. ‘Evie, we’re screwed,’ she said with a sigh.

Evie felt her chest clench with anger. ‘We can dig our way through it,’ she muttered.

Frankie looked at her incredulously. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ she asked, standing up and walking towards her.

Evie shook her head.

‘You want to dig through mud that has probably collapsed in from the sea? Mud that is quite possibly the only thing stopping water from flooding into the tunnel and drowning us both? Sorry Evie but there’s no way. We’re turning back.’

‘No,’ Evie said sharply. ‘We’re not. I’m not anyway. We’re an hour from the UK. About that anyway. We’re going to keep going.’

‘How?’ Frankie retorted. She patted the wall, kicked it. ‘How, exactly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Evie said mutinously. ‘But there has to be a way. We have to find a way.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Frankie said, her eyebrow shooting up, to Evie’s irritation.

‘You turn back,’ Evie said, glaring at her. ‘You turn back and you hide from Infotec, run from them for the rest of your life. You’re welcome to it if that’s what you want. But I’m going to the City.’

‘You mean you’re going to die trying to dig your way through wet mud,’ Frankie said drily.

‘I mean I’m not giving up,’ Evie said through gritted teeth, starting to claw at the mud frantically.

Frankie stood watching her; Evie suspected she was laughing inwardly but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about Frankie and her worries about whether writing about parties was affecting her integrity as a blogger. Frankie didn’t know what it meant to feel a hopeless cavern of pain open up inside her. She had never really known loss. Even when Milo had tried to kill her she’d been helped. She knew nothing of fear, nothing of heartbreak, nothing of love. And nothing of Lucas.

‘Okay, well I’m going back,’ Frankie said eventually. ‘I admire you, Evie. I admire your determination and your strength, and I’m really grateful for this bandage you made me. But there is no way either one of us is getting through that. We need help. Or an alternative route. I’m going back to Paris. If I can’t find Glen I’ll go to Sal; maybe he’ll have an idea.’

Evie ignored her; she didn’t know who Sal was and she didn’t care either. She just knew she wasn’t going to give up. Not now. Not when she was so close. Lucas had never given up. Never.

She dug her hands into the mud, took out a handful and threw it on the ground. Then she dug her hands in again. It was slimey and slippery; the more she removed, the more she realised how futile the exercise was because more mud would just slip downwards into the hole she had created. But she didn’t care; she was going to get through the wall or she was going to die trying. There was no going back. There was no alternative.

‘Last chance, Evie. Please come with me. You’ve got to know when you’ve been beaten. And we’ve been beaten.’

‘No we haven’t,’ Evie growled.

‘Suit yourself.’ Frankie shrugged and began to walk away, hobbling slightly. Evie watched her for a few seconds, then turned back. Desperately she dug into the mud with her arms, yelling with the exertion of pulling it out; within twenty minutes she was caked in the stuff, her face, her clothes all covered; it was in her nose, in her throat, threatening to choke her when she didn’t spit it out quickly enough. And then, suddenly, she felt something. Or rather, she felt nothing. A gap. Behind the mud. She felt air.

Frantically, she dug; her arms were aching but she barely noticed as she clawed her way through, made a hole big enough to climb through before yet more mud sank into it, shouting into the space, hearing an echo, feeling her head spin as she realised that it was big, that the wall wasn’t impenetrable after all. She pulled herself up, through the hole, into the space. And then her mouth fell open because it was vast, like an ocean, the bottom filled with water; it looked like the tunnel continued on the other side but it was maybe twenty metres away. She tried to grip the wall behind her, but there was just wet, slippery mud. Instead, she turned around and slowly lowered herself down into the water. It would be shallow; it was only a metre or so above the bottom level of the tunnel. She could wade through it. She would have to wade through it. Holding onto the ledge, she felt her right foot enter the icy water; then, taking a deep breath, she let go and let herself fall. The water was so cold it made her gasp, but seconds later she was doing more than gasping. The water was deep. She couldn’t feel the bottom. She was sinking, her legs kicking frantically, her arms moving wildly as she desperately tried to get to the surface, to get oxygen in her lungs. She opened her mouth to cry out but instead filled her lungs with water; she could no longer see the surface as her arms and legs thrashed pointlessly, as she realised with excruciating pain that she was drowning.

She closed her eyes, wondering frantically if Lucas would ever know that she had tried, if he would ever find her body. And then, suddenly, she felt a tug; she was moving quickly through the water. And then she felt air on her face, she gasped as more water filled her lungs. Then pressure on her chest, an arm throttling her, forcing the water upwards, out of her mouth. She couldn’t see, could barely hear.

‘Lie on your back,’ she heard a watery voice say. ‘Stop bloody moving will you? Lie on your back and let me pull you.’

Evie did as she was told, felt herself gliding across the water. And then they stopped. Evie was pushed up onto a moist surface, put on her side. She heaved, threw up, gasped, then lay still. They were on a kind of muddy platform; below her was a large pool of water; she could see the thick wall of mud that she had pushed herself through. She turned her head; the tunnel continued from where they were lying; a few feet away she could see the ground was dryer, the roof higher.

‘Well I guess I was right about you wanting to die trying,’ the voice said, a few minutes later. Evie opened her eyes to see Frankie leaning over her.

‘You came back,’ she managed to say.

‘Yes, I came back,’ Frankie said, shaking her head. ‘Jesus, Evie, what were you thinking? Can’t you swim?’

Evie shook her head.

‘But you thought you’d just jump into this cesspit anyway? I watched you; I thought you’d seen me. But you just hurled yourself into the water. And then you started thrashing. Gave me a bloody heart attack. And it’s freezing too.’

Evie pulled herself up; she could see Frankie now, beside her, shivering; her own flesh was white, covered in goosebumps.

‘Cleaned off the mud, I guess,’ Frankie continued, pulling her knees into her chest. ‘But we’re going to get hypothermia if we don’t get moving soon. You okay to walk? Looks like the tunnel got compressed or something. It looks okay from here.’

Evie nodded, pulled herself up. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Frankie sighed, her teeth chattering as she spoke. ‘So we’ll take it easy, okay? Shit I’m cold.’

Evie nodded. Her head was spinning, her body felt like it wasn’t hers and her throat and chest felt as though they had been stamped on. But she pulled herself up. ‘Ready,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

Frankie stared after the mad scrap of a girl who was running into the distance, a dot of crazy energy, and found herself hotfooting it after her. And as she ran, she found herself trying to fathom how someone so tiny, someone who must be as hungry and thirsty as she was, could find the energy to run so fast, could find the determination not to give up. And it dawned upon her that she no longer pitied Evie, was no longer quite so irritated by her. She realised that her overwhelming feeling was one of respect. Because there was no way Frankie would have jumped into that pool of water of her own accord. No way she would have pushed herself through a wall of mud. Particularly with no one watching her, no one cheering her on, no one to tell her how amazing she was afterwards.

Frankie had only come back because she’d realised she’d never get up the steps on her own; had hoped that she would find Evie broken and dejected, ready to turn back. And instead she’d watched her jumping into the water; had realised immediately that she couldn’t even swim. And it was only the realisation that Evie was going to drown that had propelled Frankie to dive in, to drag Evie to the surface, to somehow get them both to the other side. She’d never have done it on her own, not for anything.

And as soon as they were over the water, even though Evie had just almost died, she’d been up immediately, looking for the way back to the tunnel, her body juddering with the cold, her lips blue but her eyes steadfast. And it made Frankie want to know what was on the other side of that tunnel, made her want to see it for herself if it was the last thing she did. Because she had never felt like that about a place, about a person, about anything. And it made her feel like it had been her, not Evie, who had been living in the shadows. It made her feel like she was finally living.

And as she ran, she felt a kind of euphoria rush through her, because it was actually going to happen. They were going to go to the UK. They were going to do something incredible, something that would have repercussions for years to come. She was finally going to make a difference. A real one.

She was finally going to make herself proud.

‘Wait,’ she called after Evie. ‘Wait up.’

‘No,’ yelled Evie, her voice more high-pitched than usual. ‘Look, there’s light. Ahead!’

Frankie forced herself forward, ignoring the pain in her ankle. And then her face broke into an excited smile. Because Evie was right. They were just fragments, but there was sunlight. Sunlight ahead. They were in the UK. They were so close. They had done it.

‘You’re amazing,’ she shouted. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

Evie stopped and turned, her expression one of surprise, then she grinned, her mouth stretching from one side of her face to the other. ‘Take my hand,’ she called to Frankie. ‘Let’s get out of here together.’

The Infotec mainframe was housed in a large, squat building in the middle of what looked to Jim like army barracks, a huge sprawling mass of small, low buildings. Not that he had first-hand experience of army barracks; there was no need for an army now that the world was peaceful, now that criminals and terrorists were unable to cause problems, unable to spark unrest, unable to unbalance the status quo. But he had seen images; everyone had. They learned about war in school; they read Wilfred Owen, saw pictures of bodies brought back from Afghanistan, listened to the first-hand experiences of those who had lived through the Horrors, those who had managed to escape in time. Everyone knew these things; everyone knew what a violent, angry world people used to live in, a world full of hate, jealousy, anger and revenge.

Jim didn’t know exactly when it was that he started to question it all. He couldn’t ever remember being entirely convinced; he could picture himself, aged eleven, putting his hand up, asking questions that his teacher brushed aside, questions about whether anger sometimes had a place, about whether terrorists were always on the wrong side. The mantra was that the world was now a safe, good place, and no one would tell him any different. Even though there were countries where Infotec offices were attacked over and over, where governments used surveillance not to maintain peace but to track down and murder current and former dissidents, their price for allowing Infotec into their countries. In other countries, resistance to adopting English as the national language ran high, and across the world bloggers wrote of their disgust at their freedoms being curtailed, before their words were wiped clean by the Infotec filter.