The System (29 page)

She turned the camera around, scanned the horizon from the distant open gate to the path Evie was running down. She started to run again, and as she ran, makeshift tents made way for proper houses and gardens, roads, larger buildings, shops. People were staring at her but she just filmed them, talking as she did so. ‘These people have been living here since the Horrors. They were told that the rest of the world had been destroyed. They were left to build their own city from the ruins, to fend for themselves. All because Infotec were conducting a little experiment. That’s why they tried to have me killed, by the way. Because I dared to ask difficult questions. Nice, huh? Okay, so we’re nearing the centre of the City. Oh, and those of you who know your history, this City is built where London used to be. Not much left of it now of course. And that shouting you can hear? That’s my friend Evie.’

She zoomed in to where Evie was standing, several hundred metres away, her voice hoarse now but still shouting the same thing. ‘Lucas. Lucas, I’m here. Lucas, where are you?’

And then suddenly she saw a figure. A tall, blond man was coming out of a building, his mouth open. Frankie rushed forwards, her camera moving up and down as she ran. It was him; she knew it, knew it because of the way he was looking at her, looking at Evie with such elation, such devotion, such seriousness, such … love. And Frankie didn’t know if she’d ever seen love like this before, but he was moving towards Evie now and Evie had seen him and she was running, and now he was running, and as they reached each other Frankie felt her stomach leap and turn and tears were cascading from her eyes as they held each other’s hands, touched each other’s faces, stared at each other as though neither thought this possible, as though neither dared to blink in case it turned out to be some kind of mistake.

‘Evie was taken prisoner,’ Frankie said into the camera, her voice catching. ‘She was brought to Paris by Thomas. She came through the tunnel with me to get here. She is the bravest person I’ve ever met. She grew up in this place, and it is my honour to show you her home.’

Raffy felt something welling up inside him like a tidal wave, a choking, consuming pain that made him bend over, clutching his stomach.

Because they were there, in front of him. Because he knew it was over. Because he knew he’d never had a chance. Never.

Evie didn’t love him. Evie loved Lucas. Evie would always love Lucas. And Lucas loved her. Not in a jealous, dominating way, not needing to possess her, not obsessing over everything she did, everything she said, towering over her, blocking her sun, cutting her off from the world she loved. No, he loved her as she deserved to be loved. And it made Raffy want to die.

Linus leant over. ‘You okay?’ he asked gently, as though reading his mind. ‘We did it. You did it. Benjamin would be so proud of you right now.’ Raffy turned angrily, opened his mouth, then closed it again. Would Benjamin be proud? Maybe. Or maybe he’d look at Raffy with those piercing eyes, see inside his brain and shake his head wearily.

Evie was gone. Completely. Forever.

‘You think there’s hope for someone like me?’ he asked, his voice strangled by the large lump in his throat.

‘If there’s hope for a loner like me,’ Linus grinned. Then he leant over. ‘Raffy, you made this happen. All of it. So maybe allow yourself a bit of happiness, huh? Maybe let the past go. Just turn it off. Move on.’

Raffy watched as Linus went to turn off the images in front of them both. He was right, as always. Although knowing it was time to let go and actually being able to do it were two very different things. Raffy gazed back at the screen, trying to picture a life without Evie in it, without thoughts of her consuming him from morning until night, and then he felt his chest clench because he could see something in the distance, something that made his heart stand still. ‘No,’ he said urgently. ‘No, Linus. What’s that?’

Frankie sniffed, her eyes still on Evie and Lucas; she was all choked up, from happiness, sadness, a bit of envy. And then she frowned, looked up; she could hear something. A plane. She looked over at Evie, who was looking up too. Lucas was shaking his head uncertainly.

‘Is this you, Raffy?’ Frankie asked, but there was no reply. She looked back up at the sky; she could see more clearly what was up there now, and she started to shake.

They were drones; Frankie recognised them from history programmes. Drones usually dropped bombs.

The bastards.

She looked at Evie and Lucas, so happy, so utterly transfixed, oblivious to everything around them. And suddenly she realised she wasn’t ready to let Milo win. Not yet. Not ever.

‘Run!’ she screamed. ‘We need to get under cover. They’re going to blow us up.’

Lucas’s head swung round to Frankie; then he looked up at the sky. ‘This way,’ he shouted, then called over two men; moments later, a siren started to sound. ‘Underground,’ he called out to Frankie, his eyes serious, his arm protectively around Evie. ‘This way.’

‘Wait,’ Frankie shook her head. ‘You run. I’m filming. The world has to see this. Before it’s too late, the world has to see …’

Milo heard a door bang as more Inforcers stormed towards the room he was in; he was still transfixed by the screen in front of him, by Frankie’s face. She was running, talking into the camera as she moved, then pointing the lens up at the sky, where the drones were nearly over the City. And she didn’t even look scared; she looked defiant, angry.

She looked utterly beautiful. More beautiful, even, than she’d looked when she’d first marched into his office, so cocky and insouciant and utterly, utterly mesmerising. He had made her into something she wasn’t; he had tried to control her. But now, looking at her, he realised he’d failed. And he was glad to have failed. Because she had shown him what Thomas really was. She had made him realise that he had loyalties that went beyond Infotec.

‘Is it bombs they’re dropping?’ Linus asked tightly. Milo met his eyes; he looked older suddenly, his usual defiance missing somehow. ‘Is that what’s in the drones?’

Raffy was staring at the screen in disbelief, muttering ‘no’ over and over. Milo shook his head as he turned back to the screen, watching people running, screaming, flocking into tunnels that he knew would offer them no protection. At least wouldn’t have done.

‘He ordered a long-lasting anthrax,’ Milo said quietly. ‘He wanted everyone dead, and anyone subsequently investigating to die, too. He wanted the problem to go away.’

Linus nodded slowly; then he frowned. ‘He wanted?’ he asked.

Milo let out a long breath. ‘Unfortunately for Thomas there was a bit of a mix-up,’ he said, raising one eyebrow, thinking of Frankie as he did it.

‘A mix-up?’ Linus asked, leaning forwards.

‘Turns out someone ordered the anthrax to be replaced by fertiliser,’ Milo said, raising his shoulders and pulling a face. Then he looked at Linus carefully. ‘I’m not a good person, Linus, but she didn’t deserve to die. Frankie was in the UK. His plans … he doesn’t care about people. He calls them technology vessels. But Frankie … She isn’t a vessel. She was never a vessel.’

He looked away, sucked in his lips. ‘It was Thomas’s idea to … teach her a lesson. Replace her. He told me it would do her good. Said the replacement would just buy us some time, allow Frankie to come to her senses. Then they’d be switched again. But he was never planning to switch them back. He killed the replacement. Would have killed Frankie if she’d let him. And then, with his drones, it looked like he was really going to do it, I couldn’t let him do it.

Linus nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see.’

‘He was planning to kill both of you, too. And everyone in the UK. All those people he’d categorically promised me didn’t exist. I believed him. Just like everyone else did. I suspect he’s working out how to have me killed right now.’

‘He’s a psychopath,’ Linus said, looking at him intently now. ‘He’s a very dangerous man.’

They both turned to watch the screen as the drones flew on, as people dropped to the floor, clutching children to them, bracing themselves, screaming in fear, then, slowly, looking around, pulling themselves up, staring at the sky in incomprehension, watching the drones disappear, then jumping up, embracing one another, shouting out in relief.

And then the door was flung open and six Inforcers trooped in. ‘At last!’ they heard Thomas call out as they unlocked his door and brought him out into the corridor. ‘I want these two prisoners to be executed for high treason. They are a danger to our security. And Milo is to be taken into custody until further notice.’

The Inforcers took out their guns. Then they pulled Thomas’s arms behind his back.

‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Take your hands off me. Kill these men or I will have you taken away. Do you understand?’

But the guards were looking at the screen, at Milo. ‘I don’t think so,’ they said. ‘We’ve been watching that Frankie.’ And then they stopped, looked at one another, and, in one seamless movement, ripped off the ‘I’ badges that adorned their uniforms and dropped them on the floor in disgust. Holding the screaming Thomas by his arms, they walked slowly back down the corridor.

Linus looked at Milo and Raffy thoughtfully. ‘Thomas once told me he had made me happy,’ he said. ‘And I told him he was wrong. But now … Now, in a roundabout sort of way, I think he finally has.’

‘
Encore
?’

Raffy realised that the waiter was looking at him expectantly and he shook his head. ‘No. I mean,
non
.
Merci
.’

He put his hand over his cup to emphasise the point but the waiter had already disappeared, off serving someone else, someone who wasn’t staring wide-eyed like a slightly crazy person. He did try to act cool; tried every day. But he couldn’t. Not when there was so much to see. Not when he could walk down the street, hail a cab, go anywhere, do anything. Not when just sitting here in a sidewalk café he could see the world go by, see thousands of people, talking, laughing, crying, shouting. Living. They were all living. And so was he.

It had taken a while. For a couple of days he’d refused to leave the apartment in spite of Linus’s best efforts, in spite of some of his former captors offering to go out with him, show him Paris, protect him from whatever he was afraid of. They treated him like some demigod, like some kind of saviour; there had been a stream of journalists wanting to talk to him, wanting to find out how he triumphed where no one else could, how he showed Thomas up for what he really was, how he changed history.

But Raffy wouldn’t see any of them. It was all bullshit; he hadn’t done anything but send a few messages, hack into a computer system. It was Evie who had jumped off a building thinking she was going to die. Frankie who had trekked through a tunnel under the sea. Glen who had risked his life to turn a switch. Linus who had been beaten. Benjamin who …

What would Benjamin have made of this place, Raffy found himself wondering. It was a café like any other, just a normal, unremarkable café. That’s what the former Inforcers had told him, the same ones who had finally, gently, ejected him from the Infotec building and found him an apartment in the 6th arrondissement instead. It was the café nearest to his new home; twenty paces away, in fact. But there was nothing unremarkable about it to Raffy. Nothing normal at all. There were people in it at all times, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. And he could sit, unnoticed, all day if he wanted. People smiled at him sometimes, but other than that they left him alone. No one knew who he was; the news reports had mentioned his name, but there were no pictures released, he’d made sure of that. He was just a person in a big city.

He was free.

And each day, he thought about Evie less. Each day, he realised a bit more that he was actually happy for her, happy that she had someone, that she was safe; realised that he couldn’t let his antagonism towards Lucas define him anymore. It was time to start again. Time to find a life of his own.

‘Your friend coming today?’ The waiter was back, putting a glass of water on his table. Raffy shook his head.

‘
Non
,’ he said, enjoying the sound on his tongue. Languages. The whole idea had kind of freaked him out at first: people all speaking different words, all around the world. But that was one of the first little acts of rebellion when Thomas was revealed as a tyrant, a liar, a war criminal. People started to speak their own language again. A lot of people had grown up only speaking English, but you wouldn’t have known it, the way they were confidently talking French like they’d never done differently. Signs were everywhere offering French tutoring and shop posters were all proclaiming their wares in la langue française. According to the news, the same was happening all over the world.

‘
Il est ou
?’

Raffy frowned. ‘Linus?’

The waiter nodded.

‘
En Angleterre
. He’s gone to England,’ he said. ‘In a bloody huge great Mercedes,’ he added silently, allowing himself a little chuckle. That had been the only thing Linus had been interested in when he was freed, hailed as a hero, offered anything he wanted.

The waiter’s eyes lit up. ‘I want to go there,’ he said. ‘I mean, can you imagine? A country where people have been living in tribes and stuff? It’s like so amazing. I am so totally going to go there this summer. You think by then they might have some hotels set up and stuff?’

Raffy wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Probably.’

‘Yeah,’ the waiter said dreamily. ‘It just shows, you never know, do you? I mean, you just never really know what’s going to happen. Or what’s happened. From now on I am so never going near a computer again, you know what I mean? I’m going to travel the world. See it for myself. It’s the only way, right?’

‘Right,’ Raffy said quietly. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘Although for now, I need some cash. So I better go and serve some other people,’ the waiter said, giving him a mock salute before wandering off.

Raffy picked up the newspaper in front of him, a new paper that had recently started to roll off the presses as chips were discarded and information had to be disseminated in new, or old, ways. And he was astonished at how many problems were already being worried about. Markets. Crime. Immigration. Bank failures, all apparently about to tip the world into anarchy because trust had broken down, because chips were no more, because the old order was being abandoned and the new one hadn’t been created yet.