‘I’ll take you there,’ she whispered. ‘I remember the way.’
‘Lead on.’
Ana pushed back her thin covers, pulled up Clemence’s trousers over the shorts Lila had lent her to sleep in, and borrowed Lila’s hooded top. She slipped on her pumps and got up. At the door, Dombrant drew close beside her. An electric hum stirred the air. He’d switched on his Stinger. She’d seen the Psych Watch use similar metal poles to pick up someone in the City. The electric shock had felled a man and left him barely conscious. There was no arguing with a Stinger.
They crept past closed bamboo doors, the soft breathing of thirteen females faintly audible. Reaching the front door, Dombrant signalled for her to wait. As he checked outside, she silently hoped Cole wouldn’t show up. Dombrant was armed and prepared for anything whereas Cole would be caught off guard.
The Warden returned and without warning snatched her in an arm lock and proceeded to push her out of the longhouse at knifepoint. They crept between dark passages. Ana could barely see an arm’s length ahead, but Dombrant moved through the night like a cat.
Confidently, he manoeuvred her to the edge of the village. They were going uphill, towards the northern wall. She grew nervous, starting to fear this was a trick to return her to her father. What if there were more of her father’s men waiting in the woods, ready to take her back into the Community?
‘We have to go downhill,’ she hissed.
‘We’ll circle around.’
She nodded. Whether he was telling the truth or not, she didn’t have a choice.
They left behind the cover of the longhouse walkways and edged into the woods where Dombrant released her. Through the trees, beneath the soft glow of the moon, lay an ascending path. Ana knew from the map that there were only three paths out of the settlement and only the one she’d walked with Cole that evening sloped upwards, splitting near the barn.
Dombrant stopped to adjust his interface. The match-box sized projection unit was in a plain silver casing dangling on a chain around his neck. A pinprick of light glowed from the bottom showing it was on, but no computer information shafted from the prism. He popped a contact lens into his eye and a tiny grid of light shone in his iris.
Suddenly, he clasped a hand across her mouth. ‘Don’t move,’ he murmured. Squinting sideways, Ana strained to see what had caught his attention. A flashlight danced along the path. There came footsteps and humming. She recognised the music: it was one of Cole’s compositions, ‘Second Sight’. Dombrant’s hand across her mouth felt suffocating. If she bit him, if she elbowed him now and screamed, Cole would hear. But the Warden had a knife and a Stinger.
Wild with indecision, she blinked at the six-foot shadow, passing only metres away and vanishing down the path. In a couple of minutes Cole would find her bed empty. He would know something had happened, raise the alert and come looking for her.
Slowly, Dombrant released his hand from around her jaw. ‘Good decision,’ he said. As he stepped away, she saw the silver glint of a blade in his hand, at the ready. ‘I’m looking at an infrared heat sensor program,’ he said, tapping a finger next to his left eye, ‘in case you were wondering. I’ll know whenever anyone gets within two hundred metres of us and I’ll know where you are if you try to run off.’
‘Fabulous.’
He pinched her upper arm, catching the muscle in a way that as soon as he moved she had to move with him to ease the sharp pain. ‘So where’s this building?’
*
Cole jogged through the square and down a passage towards Lila’s longhouse. It had been dark for a couple of hours. Ana probably would have given up on him and fallen asleep. Maybe he wouldn’t disturb her. He could simply stay and keep watch . . . if Rachel didn’t report him.
Rachel had caught him leaving his post the first time he’d tried to get away that evening, and he’d had to return to his stretch of the wall and wait until he was sure she’d stopped watching for him on the hill back to the settlement.
The door to Lila’s room stood open. Cole peered inside. His sister was bundled up in a blanket with her face to the wall. The narrow mattress squashed beside her bed was empty.
Keep calm.
He looked around for signs of a scuffle. Nothing was out of place. And Lila was still snoring. Maybe Ana had gone to the toilet.
Cole began checking around the longhouse and the nearby toilet huts. After he’d searched the immediate vicinity, he stood listening to the night. An animal scurried through the undergrowth. Leaves rustled in the wind and fell quiet again. A cough carried through the wall of a longhouse. Ana wasn’t anywhere nearby.
He began running.
Tobias, Chief of Security, had a small cabin on the outskirts of the settlement. He’d built it himself, away from the other family huts arching around the bottom of the village. Light flickered in one of the windows where the shutter had been propped open with an old shoe. Soft voices drifted through the wattle and daub walls.
Cole knocked on the door, breathless. The voices fell silent. The door opened and Tobias stuck his head out of the crack.
‘Cole,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit late for a visit.’
The Chief’s casual posturing set alarm bells ringing. Tobias always knew which of his guards were on duty when. Ordinarily, he would have been furious with Cole for leaving his post. Especially after losing the representatives’ vote that afternoon.
Cole stepped back, trying to collect his unravelling thoughts.
Was the Chief capable of throwing Ana out of the Project himself?
‘What do you want?’ Tobias asked.
‘You’ve got guests?’
‘No, I was just up reading.’
‘I heard voices. Were you reading aloud?’
Tobias’ eyes hardened. ‘Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble for one day?’
‘Where’s Ana?’ Cole growled.
Tobias’ expression barely altered. He had an excellent poker face. It was part of what made him such an effective security Chief. Nothing rattled him.
Cole pushed his foot against the door to widen it. Tobias didn’t resist.
In the flicker of the room’s candles Ed and Sandra, the Chief’s second and third-in-command sat at the wooden table, looking guilty.
Cole’s eyes returned to the Chief. ‘It’s late for a security meeting.’
Tobias held his stare. But nothing would make Cole back down. Not when Ana was at stake. Nothing.
‘Ed,’ Tobias said finally, still glowering at Cole. ‘Wake Blaize, Dave and Phil. Tell them to arm-up and meet us on the lower-east path. Sandra, you wake up four of the boys – the fastest runners. Send them out to alert everyone on the wall. We may have intruders.’
Cole felt a cold sweat break across his body. ‘Send a second team up to the northern wood,’ he said, trying to keep the pleading from his voice.
Tobias shook his head. ‘You’ve come from there and you didn’t hear or see anything. No, if your girlfriend really has been snatched and hasn’t just gone wandering off, whoever’s taken her will be here for the minister’s recording. They’ll be using her to find it. I’ll take a team to the registry.’
Sandra and Ed pushed past Cole in the doorway and sprinted off into the night.
‘You’d be happy to see Ana and the disc disappear,’ Cole accused.
‘I can’t argue with that,’ Tobias said. ‘But right now, as a pledged member of the Project, she’s under my protection. And I will protect her. Come with us or don’t, it’s up to you.’
*
Drawing a wide circle around the Project settlement had lost Dombrant and Ana time, but not as much as she would have liked. The Warden pushed her hard, refusing to slow even where the undergrowth was dense and the moon obscured by a thick canopy of leaves and branches. And his sense of direction was excellent. They’d been running for ten minutes when they intersected the hilly footpath overlooking the ponds. The registration building lay beyond the final pond, only a short distance away.
Ana leaned over, hands pressed into her thighs, gasping for air.
Dombrant concentrated for a moment on the infrared heat readouts in his contact lens, then clicked on his Stinger. ‘Once we’re out on the open path,’ he said, ‘if I see you slowing down, I won’t hesitate to use this. Got it?’
She winced up at him through strands of wayward hair.
‘All that swimming every day at Jasper’s, you could run five times this, Ana.’
Frustration bit her. She should have known she couldn’t fool the Warden. Her father had probably supplied him with a total psychological report, as well as a breakdown of her physical strengths and weaknesses. She stood up.
‘Good,’ Dombrant said.
They ran past the three ponds which glittered in the moonlight like silver paw marks. The ground levelled out and the path split. Dombrant ducked into the shadows, pulling her with him.
‘Now where?’
She folded her arms over her chest, refusing to answer. A moment later, she heard the gentle buzz of his Stinger. ‘If you prod me with that I’ll scream and guards will come,’ she said.
‘You’re not familiar with these, are you? This is set to level 2.’ He tilted the handle around to show her, though she could barely see anything it was so dark. ‘If I hear you so much as take a deep breath, you’ll be convulsin’ on the floor before you’ve opened your mouth. Clear?’
She nodded.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
He hooked his arm under her shoulder, held the Stinger inches from her heart.
‘I said I understood.’
‘Just a little reminder. So, which way?’
She pointed along the left fork, to a straight, flat path with trees on one side and field on the other. Somewhere behind those woods ran the wall. The building would be almost invisible until they stumbled into it.
‘You’re sure about this?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘The building backs onto the south-east wall. If we continue following the wall from here we can’t miss it.’
He gave her a curious look, then pushed her down the left fork, quickly venturing off track into the copse. They sidled along awkwardly, his arm around her neck, until the grey ten-foot wall appeared beyond the trees and he released his hold. At night, the wall’s presence in the woods was imposing. Industrial concrete bricks rose two stories above them, making it feel like a prison rather than a forest.
Concealed in the shadows near the registration building, Dombrant spent several minutes watching the infrared activity on his contact lens. Ana could see the little computer chip shining in his eye, the lights in different parts of the circuit blinking, intensifying, fading. She wondered if the readouts showed guards nearby. Cole must have raised the alarm by now. He would be searching for her.
A metal bar sealed the registration building door. Dombrant made a hand gesture over his interface which disconnected the contact lens. The light in his eye vanished, and he nodded at her to remove the bar. His Stinger remained switched on as they entered, Ana going first. Nerves started getting the better of her. If the guards didn’t find them before the Warden got the disc, would he really let her go? And if he returned the disc to her father, everything she’d risked to get it had been for nothing.
Dombrant closed the door and set his interface to ambient light. ‘Show me.’
She crossed to the desk where the boy had signed her in and taken Jasper’s star necklace. ‘He put it in a box and then put the box in here,’ she said, pointing to a door at the side of the passageway which she assumed cut through the wall onto a street in the City.
Dombrant checked down the passage.
‘So,’ she said, hoping to delay for even a few precious seconds. ‘How did you find me so fast? Was it the dressing gown? Did my father plant tracers in every single piece of clothing I own?’
He stepped back from the passage and rattled the padlock on the door. The lock was hooked through two metal loops. With the heel of his knife he pounded one of them. It began to bend, breaking away after the third hard blow.
‘Come on,’ he said, kicking open the door. With his Stinger, he coaxed her into the narrow storeroom.
Three rows of shelving became visible in the amber glow from his interface; a line against each wall and a third one down the centre, dividing the space into two aisles. Dozens of wooden boxes cluttered the shelves.
Dombrant swore under his breath. He lowered the Stinger, pulled out a random box and began rummaging through the contents – interface, set of keys, interface pad. ‘Is the disc loose or is it in something?’ he asked.
The Warden didn’t know the disc was in Jasper’s wooden star. It was her only advantage. ‘You’re never going to find it in time,’ she said.
‘In time for what?’
‘Before they come.’
‘Wishful thinkin’. Nobody knows I’m here. An injured howler monkey could get past those teenage guards undetected.’
‘But they do know.’
Dombrant stopped ransacking boxes and stared at her. ‘I’m not going to ask you three times. Is this disc loose or is it in somethin’?’
‘The guy who we saw coming down the path on our way out of the camp was Cole. He was coming to get me.’
Dombrant nimbly darted around to face her. Instinctively, she backed away. A wooden plank prodded into her spine.
‘And why would he do that?’
‘Because he knows what’s on the disc and was worried my father would send people for me.’ She smiled with mock sweetness. ‘And here you are. Just the one of you.’
He smiled back, with amusement and contempt. ‘Now don’t you worry about me. I’m worth at least ten Wardens and a score of poxy little Project guards.’
‘Perhaps you should put your infra-red heat-sensor thingy back in. Just check we haven’t been surrounded.’
Dombrant chuckled and seemed to relax. ‘Oh, you are your father’s daughter. However much you wish you weren’t.’
Ana writhed inwardly at that remark. Dombrant grinned as she struggled to keep her expression neutral.
‘Convince me you’re going to let me go,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll tell you what the disc is in.’
‘Ever seen what one of these does set on level 1?’ He clicked the Stinger onto its highest setting. The buzz grew as loud as a fly stuck inside a lampshade. ‘You’d be unconscious. Varies from person to person. Five, ten minutes. Total blackout. Imagine the pain that causes that?’