Slated Read online

  She sits back in her chair, an amused half smile on her face. ‘Well, if one believes in the existence of souls, I cannot see any relevance of the Slating procedure to the presence or absence of one.’

  ‘Do you believe in them?’

  She half shakes her head. ‘You forget who asks the questions here, Kyla. Answer mine,’ she says with a warning note in her voice.

  So I try to come up with something I can say about Gianelli that isn’t dangerous, but then think: no. He deserves better. He deserves the truth.

  ‘He was a good person. He cared about us, and now he’s gone. How do you think I feel?’

  She frowns. ‘Answering a question with a question? You know better than—’

  BANG!

  A wave of sound ripples through the office. The building shakes, a shudder rumbles through the floor under my feet as fear rips through my body. Screams, distant and faint but not distant enough.

  Terrorists?

  The door springs open behind me, and I spin round in my chair: the Lorders from the hall. For the first time I am happy to see them. One talks into a headphone linked to his ear. ‘Come with us, now,’ the other says, looking at Dr Lysander, but she doesn’t move, seems frozen, face blank, behind her desk. ‘Now!’ he yells, and she starts, gets up and they flank her, start marching her to the door. Do I follow?

  She half turns. ‘Kyla, go to the nurses’ station. Don’t worry, you’ll be—’

  Then the Lorder grabs her shoulder and pushes her through the door.

  The look of shock returns. She can’t make them disappear any more.

  There are distant bangs, screams, rat-a-tat-tat noises like guns in old movies. Guns: where? I tilt my head: somewhere below, or outside. I cross Dr Lysander’s office to the window.

  It doesn’t have bars; it overlooks an internal courtyard, several floors down. With plants and trees, benches. There are nurses huddled there; no signs of guns or who may be wielding them.

  Dr Lysander said go to the nurses’ station. I start for the door, then stop. Her computer is on her desk. Still open.

  BANG!

  The whole building shakes; that was closer, this time.

  I pause: panic says run but is doing battle with curiosity: when will you get another chance like this?

  And I’m trembling, my stomach twists like breakfast might be on its way up. What do I do? I stare at the door, my feet take one step towards it, one back again. Who says it is any safer out there than it is in here?

  I drop into her chair.

  My photo is to the right of the screen: Kyla 19418. That is the number on my Levo. Left of the photograph are Dr Lysander’s notes: a very brief account of today’s interrupted conversation, though no mention of Gianelli. A list of dates runs down the side: last week is at the top. I hesitate, than click on it. And there it is: all we discussed that day. Her observations.

  There is a menu bar across the top under my name, with headings: Admission; Surgical; Follow up; Recommendations.

  I click on Admission. And there I am, in full colour. Me, but not me. On a hospital bed but it is different, there are straps on the sides of it. My hands are tied, my feet. My hair is longer, a tangled mess. I’m thinner than I am now. My face is blank, my eyes, vacant: not windows to my soul or to anything else.

  And while I stare at the computer screen, some part of me still hears: shouts, gunshots; a scream that chokes off. But I am mesmerised. I scan quickly through my admission and surgical notes. Searching for any clue as to why I am here, but find nothing. Just mumbo jumbo about scans, complete with visuals of my brain.

  Footsteps, shouts. They are closer now.

  But what is this? I clink on the link marked Recommendations.

  And louder. I look up at the door.

  Move, hide, now! A voice in my head again. Where? I look around the room, glance down at the computer to close the windows I opened, but then the last link I clicked comes up on the screen: Recommendations. A table with actions and dates.

  Board recommends termination. Dr Lysander overrules. Re-treatment undertaken. Monitor for signs of regression after re-treatment. Extra Watchers recommended. Board recommends termination if recur. The last is dated the week before I left the hospital.

  Move, hide, now!

  The door springs open.

  Too late.

  A man stares at me. He isn’t a Lorder: his hair is straggly, his eyes wild and his black clothes are meant to look like their operations gear, perhaps, but fall short close up. Some part of me still gathers these details while the rest focuses clearly on just one thing. A gun, in his hand, which he raises and points at me.

  Another face appears over his shoulder.

  ‘Leave her! She’s got a Levo. She’s been Slated.’

  Still he points the gun at me. ‘It would be kinder, wouldn’t it,’ he says.

  I shake my head, backing up against the wall. Trying to speak, no, please no, but the words just form in my mind, get stuck in my throat and don’t come out.

  ‘Don’t waste the bullet!’ the other one yells, and yanks his arm. They take off down the hall.

  I slip to the floor, shaking violently. My Levo says 5.1. Explain that one.

  I can’t.

  Before long, self-preservation takes over, goads me to get up. I shut all the computer windows I opened; leave the computer on the desk as it was, and peer out the door. The hall is empty; there are screams to the right where those men ran. I run the other way.

  The lights flicker several times, then go out. It is pitch black. My eyes open wide and wider but can see nothing in the windowless hall. A scream starts trembling deep in my gut, trying to work its way out. Get a grip; you know the way: remember! I breathe in slow and deep, force the grid of the hospital into my mind. Eighth floor. Go to the nurses’ station, Dr Lysander had said.

  One hand on the wall, light on my feet, trembling but careful to make no sound I walk to the end of the hall. Double doors, turn left: you have reached your destination.

  All is silence. I walk forward, hands out to find the edge of the desk, but slip on something on the floor, and sprawl on the ground.

  The floor is wet. Sticky. There is a funny metallic smell that catches at the back of my throat, and makes me gag. Blood.

  I back up blindly, on hands and knees and smack into something – no, someone – on the floor: a hand, an arm. A whole person, a woman, in a nurse’s dress. No sound, no movement, a great sticky pool… I force myself to follow her arm up to her neck. She is still warm, just, but quite clearly dead. That last scream I heard, before those two men came. With the gun. They shot her; they must have.

  Dead.

  I scramble back to my feet and run blind, back down the dark hall.

  Stop; too much noise! Hide.

  Some instinct forces me to slow down, take careful steps. Quiet ones. I try to think if I noticed the nurse at the desk earlier, when I got off the lift. I walked right past her on my way in, but I can’t think what she looked like. If I knew her, I would have noticed, wouldn’t I? But I was distracted, saying goodbye to Mum, and then…

  Mum! She went to have tea with her friend like she always does. Where do they go? I don’t know! Mum, where are you?

  Take control. Calm down, NOW.

  I breathe in and out until my heart rate slows and the wave of panic is retreating, walled in. Contained. Stand still and listen. But I can’t hear anything, not a sound. The hospital is eerily quiet like it never has been before.

  Without consultation my feet take me to the emergency exit stairs, automatically heading for the place they know best: the tenth floor. My old room. Careful and quiet, one hand on the wall, I climb, one step at a time. Stopping to listen now and then but hearing nothing. Finally I reach for the door to the tenth, suddenly afraid it will be locked. It opens: perhaps because of the power failure? I step through the door and into the hall: there are dim emergency lights on this floor. Voices and people moving about; calm voices, no shouts or scre
ams. I step forward.

  Then a light shines in my face.

  ‘Is that Kyla? Oh, it is.’ The light is lowered, and it is Nurse Sally, one of the tenth floor nurses who was on my wing when I stayed here. I’m absurdly happy to see a face, a living face, one I know. I smile and she clasps my shoulder. ‘It is you. Oh darling, here for a check up, were you? Come on. We must all go to the cafeteria. Help us, will you, with some of the newbies. They’re confused.’

  And she has me take the hands of two Slateds. New ones. Unsteady on their feet, but smiling great beatific grins as if this is the most wonderful day of their lives.

  She pushes a wheelchair: a very new one. Not trusted to walk.

  Down the hall we go; soon it is crowded with nurses and patients.

  ‘Hurry!’ An impatient voice at the back. One of several Lorders, herding us along.

  We shuffle to the tenth floor cafeteria – the only place big enough to get everyone in. They push the last of us in and barricade the door.

  There is natural light here from high barred windows, bright after the dim emergency lights, and I blink.

  ‘Kyla, you’re hurt! What happened?’ And Nurse Sally is pushing me into a chair, checking my arm, my shoulder.

  ‘Hurt? I’m not… Oh. I see. This isn’t my blood. I tripped on someone, who…’ And I can’t think about that, or even finish the sentence, so switch to another. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be fine.’

  ‘They’re shooting people; killing them. They’re not fine.’

  Her mouth drops open. She shakes her head. ‘I forgot how direct you can be. There was an AGT attack. It’s over. They’re just tracking the last few down, so they’re keeping everyone under wraps until they do.’

  ‘Are you okay, honey?’ Another nurse beams at me, with a handful of syringes of Happy Juice. Making the rounds of the room.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, and think of Sebastian. It must work – my poker face – she moves along. Sally goes with her; they start checking everyone as they go.

  I back up and sit on a chair at one of the tables. There is a girl strapped in a wheelchair next to me, brown hair cascading forwards over her face. Her Levo vibrates. I look about for a nurse, wave at Sally to come over but she doesn’t see. The girl is slumped down in her wheelchair, trying to reach for something…

  Ah. There, on the floor. I pick up the soft toy she must have dropped: a floppy eared bunny.

  ‘There you go,’ I say, and put it in her hands. She looks up, and smiles. A beautiful wide smile of perfect joy.

  I recoil. No; it can’t be. That smile doesn’t belong on that face. She is gorgeous with it, it suits her, but it is all wrong.

  ‘Phoebe?’ I whisper.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  * * *

  Something sharp jabs my shoulder.

  Warmth slides through my veins. Almost instant: my heart rate slows, my fists uncurl. Ah… Not just Happy Juice. Something stronger.

  I fade in and out.

  At some level I am aware, but not.

  The lights are back on. I’m in a wheelchair, going down a hall but I don’t know where; all I see is the floor. I can’t lift my head to look.

  There is the warmth of a shower. A nurse holds me upright while another scrubs my skin. Blood washes away so easily when it belongs to someone else. I watch as my skin is perfect and white again. Pretty.

  Fluffy towels, clean clothes.

  Hospital issue clothes. This is wrong. I fight to focus on why, but cannot.

  I’m tucked into a bed, but it isn’t my bed. The sheets are cool, my skin feels feverish against them. Not my bed? I try to keep my eyes open. They flutter, then shut.

  ‘Kyla, come on, now. Wake up. Kyla…’

  I’m warm, and happy; floating; unconnected to my body. I don’t want back. Leave me alone. I slip through layers of darkness, the voice fades away…

  Bricks are all around me. Above, too, as far as I can see. I scratch at the mortar. It is starting to crumble. Bit by bit. It won’t be long, now…

  Soon, I’ll be free.

  Another voice. ‘Come on, Kyla. It’s time to go home.’

  Mum?

  My eyes snap open.

  We spiral out of the hospital car park to the exit.

  Mum seems completely unruffled. She told me on the way to the car that she’d been in her friend’s office when the first blast hit. They locked themselves in and hid under a desk.

  When it was over, she couldn’t find me. No one knew where I was. The floor where I’d been, and the one below – doctor’s offices, meeting rooms – had been targeted. No key personnel were hurt, though. They were all whisked away like Dr Lysander. But when I pressed her she admitted that some nurses and a few Lorders died. And all the AGT.

  Eventually I was tracked down: away in la-la land by the time she found me. Delayed reaction and shock, they thought, had caused my levels to plunge. They just caught me with an injection before I blacked out. And since I’d been sedated, they didn’t want to release me without a full going over and scans.

  Mum said she pulled strings. Called a few friends in high places to get me out and take me home. Said everyone at the hospital was in so much of a tizzy that they went along with it to make her go away.

  Home.

  I sleep some in the car, then pretend to sleep. The injection is wearing off. Things are starting to come back: in pieces, at first, then all in a rush.

  And I am unable to even believe that the terrorists got into the hospital, let alone what they did, the people they killed. Don’t waste the bullet. If they had more bullets, maybe I’d be dead now, too. All that blood; the nurse whose face I cannot remember…

  I force my mind away from her, and it slips back to Dr Lysander’s office. On her computer, it said Board recommends termination; Dr Lysander overrules. What does it mean?

  Strangest of all: somehow, through everything that happened, I’d stayed level, or near enough. It makes no sense.

  It was seeing Phoebe that finally pushed me over the edge.

  With some sort of serious delayed reaction of her own, Mum’s iron nerves wait until we get home and through the front door, then collapse. She rolls into a ball on the sofa and dissolves in tears.

  ‘What should we do?’ I say.

  ‘Call Dad,’ Amy suggests. Mum shakes her head no from the sofa.

  ‘How about Aunt Stacey?’ And she seems okay with that, so Amy calls her.

  Soon Amy is playing with baby Robert while telling me how to make dinner, and Stacey and Mum are well into a bottle of red wine.

  By now Amy has gleaned a little of the story: that terrorists attacked the hospital. I haven’t told her – or anyone – that I saw two of them in Dr Lysander’s office, or that one nearly shot me. Or about the nurse who died. Amy is fascinated and wants every detail, and that is enough to keep them to myself.

  On the news that night there is a five second mention: earlier today, armed AGT attempted to mount a vicious attack on dedicated medical staff at a major London hospital. They failed.

  Tell that to the nurse whose blood was all over the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  * * *

  ‘Quite an adventure you had yesterday,’ Dad says, one eye on me and one on the road.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  I look at him in surprise. ‘You’d have to be completely mad not to be scared,’ he says. He stops at a red light. ‘Did you sleep all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No nightmares?’

  ‘No.’ I’d been afraid to close my eyes, but if I dreamed, I remembered nothing.

  ‘Interesting. There you have something real to be scared of for a change, and you sleep like a baby.’ He looks quite fascinated, like I’m a puzzle he is trying to figure out. I get the feeling he doesn’t like not understanding things, people; anything.r />
  ‘Maybe the injection I had at the hospital hadn’t worn off yet,’ I suggest.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he says, but I get the feeling he knows they don’t last that long. ‘What did you think of the terrorists?’

  Does he somehow know that I saw two of them, face to face? No. How could he? His eyes are on the road now, as he navigates a twisty narrow stretch.

  ‘Well?’

  What do I think about the terrorists… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them. Blowing up bus loads of students, and killing nurses. ‘They’re evil,’ I say.

  ‘Some people think they have a point. That the Lorders go too far; that they are the evil ones. That what happens in that hospital and others like it is wrong.’

  My eyes widen, shocked he’d dare say that, even as something that some people – unidentified and faceless – may think. ‘But the AGT kill people, innocent people, who don’t have anything to do with anything. It doesn’t matter why, it is still wrong.’

  He tilts his head side to side, as if considering what I said. ‘So, it isn’t so much their point of view, as their methods, to which you take exception? Interesting.’

  He pulls into the school. I was going to ask him to wait a moment, unsure if Ferguson has been told by Mrs Ali to exclude me from Sunday training as well as keeping me off the track at lunchtimes. But suddenly I just want out of the car, away from Dad, his questions. His saying interesting in a way that says so much more is hidden in every word.

  And this time Ferguson is already here. He tilts his head in a hello as I get out of the car; doesn’t register surprise that I am there. Dad gives a half wave and pulls away.

  Mum had been adamant I should stay home today, but Dad said she couldn’t keep us under her eye all the time, and might as well let me go. She was back to being herself this morning; last night, too. By the time Aunt Stacey left and we had dinner, she was all contained. When Dad got in hours later, you wouldn’t have known she’d ever been upset.

  Dad certainly says the strangest things.

  ‘I know what happened to Phoebe.’