City of the Falling Sky (12 page)

“
What on earth is going on
out there?” shouted their mum from the bathroom. They heard the
shower stop and some ruffling of towels before Coralle opened the
door in her bath robe and saw the three of them.

“
Well, who do we have here?”
She said quietly, and she looked to Seckry for answers.

“
Uh . . . she’s . . .”
Seckry didn’t know what to say. The girl didn’t even know her own
name. “She’s lost,” Seckry eventually said. “I left the house late
last night to do something and I found her. She was lost and alone.
I said she could sleep here, she had nowhere to go. It’s a long
story.”

“
Oh, my dear,” Coralle
sighed, and she took hold of the girl’s hand. “Of course, of
course. You’re more than welcome.”

Coralle flashed Seckry a look that said,
‘What were you doing out at night?’ and then returned to the
girl.

“
Where do you live?” she
asked.

The girl opened her mouth half way as though
she were about to speak, but she closed it again, and her eyes
turned downwards.

“
She’s having a little
trouble with her memory,” Seckry explained.

“
Oh, you poor soul. It’s
okay, my darling, You stay here as long as you need.”

“
Thank you,” the girl said,
with a grateful smile.

Leena’s rage eventually calmed after that,
and she left for work in silence. Coralle made a fuss of getting
the girl some decent breakfast and insisting that a nice cup of tea
would probably bring her memory jogging back.

When Coralle was about to leave, she called
Seckry aside.

“
I have to go to work now,
but will you be explaining all of this to me later?”

“
Yeah . . .” Seckry said
guiltily. “I’ll explain everything later.”

Seckry was left alone with the girl in the
kitchen.

“
I’m sorry for this,” she
said, shaking her head. “I won’t be here when your mum and sister
get back. I’ll leave in a moment.”

“
No,” Seckry said quickly.
“You don’t have to leave. My mum really doesn’t mind you being
here. She’s always genuine when she says things like that. She
loves looking after people.”

The girl smiled.

“
You can stay here at least
until you start remembering. Otherwise, where will you
go?”

The girl laughed briefly. “I don’t know.”

They sat in silence for a while, and Seckry
decided to make himself busy so that he wouldn’t keep staring at
her large, watery eyes again.

While Seckry was plonking plates into a sink
full of bubbles, the girl said, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever
remember.”

Seckry stopped and turned around.

“
It just . . . It just seems
like there’s a complete void.”

“
I’m sure it’ll come back to
you eventually,” Seckry reassured her, but he had no idea if this
was true or not in all honesty. He had found her naked on a patch
of mud in the Endrin complex. What in Gedin’s name had happened to
her there? Why was she even there in the first place?

They spent the rest of the morning watching
cartoons on the television. They sat in silence, although the girl
giggled during an episode of Tommie Tiger. When the midday news
came on Seckry made them both a salad sandwich and they sat on the
sofa, eating.

Leena’s clothes were too big on her and she
looked lost in a pile of fabric.

“
The place where you found
me,” the girl said quietly. “What is it? Where was I?”

Seckry put down his sandwich. Her face was
becoming less fatigued now, and she had keen curiosity in her
expression.

“
It was in the very centre
of the city, in the private grounds of a science research
organisation named Endrin.”

“
Oh . . .” the girl said.
“What were you doing there? It looked like you were digging
something up.”

“
I was . . . uh. Well I
wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d broken in to get some worms for
someone. They said they’d pay me a lot of money if I did it.” He
shook his head. Seckry was about to say how much he now regretted
breaking in at all, but he stopped himself as he realised she might
still have been cowering naked in the mud if he hadn’t helped her
get away.

“
The earliest thing I can
remember,” said the girl, “is the smell of soil. And then opening
my eyes and seeing you.”

Seckry felt his face go red as he recalled
her naked form again. She must have been embarrassed too because
she turned her head down and avoided his gaze.

“
Thank you for getting me
out of there,” she said eventually.

Seckry decided to pass some time by showing
her some video games. They lay on separate beds and took it in
turns to beat arcade mode on a couple of beat ‘em ups.

“
Whoever you are,” Seckry
said, “you must be a pretty good gamer. You’re amazing at
this.”

“
It does feel familiar,” the
girl said ponderingly, as she defeated the final boss for the
second time. “Oh, look! I’ve made the leader boards.”

Seckry smiled but immediately felt awkward.
The leader board was asking her to type in a name for the records,
and she was just staring at the screen, lost in her own
thoughts.

“
I really have no idea who I
am,” she said.

After a moment, Seckry thought of an
idea.

“
Would you like to have a
temporary name? Just for now, you know? Until your real name comes
back to you.”

The girl looked at him, and he saw sadness in
her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Seckry said straight away. “That’s a really
bad idea.”

“
No, it’s not,” the girl
replied, and she smiled. “I think I’d like a temporary name. What
do you think would suit me?”

“
Hmm . . .” Seckry thought.
“I think it should be a name that means something to you. Can you
remember anything that you like? Anything at all?”

“
It’s really strange. I
remember smells and tastes. I can picture things and places. But .
. . nothing links to anything else.” The girl thought for a while.
“Is there such a thing as an ‘eiya’ flower? I don’t know where or
when I ever came across it, but there’s a flower I can see in my
mind, a little white one with a lovely smell.”

“
Yes,” Seckry said. “Yes
there is.” He knew the flower. Of course he did. He walked past a
garden full of them every morning on the way to school back in
Marne, and every day he’d get a waft of beautiful aroma in the
gentle morning breeze.

“
I remember that flower,”
the girl said. “It’s my favourite one.”

“
Well then,” Seckry said
dramatically. “It’s nice to meet you, Eiya.” He held out his hand
and she shook it with a giggle.

“
It’s only four letters
too,” she said. “Which means it fits into the leader boards
perfectly.”

After a few more games, Seckry realised it
was half past three and school would just be finishing.

There was one thing he had been waiting all
day to do. He had to speak to Mr Vance and tell him about the
girl.

“
I’ve just got to make a
phone call, okay?” he said, and he slipped into the living
area.

He didn’t have the number for the school
stored in his address book but his mum had written a list of
important phone numbers and tacked them to the notice board above
the toaster.

He whipped out his mobile, dialled and waited
for an answer.

“
Estergate Institute
reception, Claura speaking, how may I help?”

“
Uh . . . hi, can I speak to
Mr Jonn Vance please?”

“
Mr Vance? Can I ask who’s
calling?”

“
Tell him it’s Seckry
Sevenstars.”

Would Mr Vance remember the name?

“
Tell him it’s the boy from
the alley,” Seckry added.

“
Uh . . . sure. One
moment.”

Seckry was put on hold. After a couple of
minutes of classical music the speaker went silent again.

“
Hello?”

“
Mr Vance . . . I’m really
sorry to disturb you,”

“
It’s quite alright, Seckry,
it’s quite alright. Is everything okay?”

“
There’s something I need to
talk to you about. It’s to do with Endrin.”

“
Endrin? Go ahead,
Seckry.”

“
I . . . found a girl inside
the complex,” Seckry explained, “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I .
. . snuck in.”

Mr Vance was silent for a moment. Seckry
didn’t know if the man was going to scold him or not. Either way,
he knew he had to tell him. Mr Vance would probably be the only one
who could shine a light on who the girl was.

Eventually Vance spoke.

“
Dear Gedin, Seckry, I don’t
know why you would break in to the Endrin complex but you are now
in very serious danger.” His tone was more concerned than it was
angry. “If you meet me tomorrow after school in my classroom we can
discuss the details of why and how, but for now, you say you found
a girl?”

“
Yes,” Seckry said shakily.
“She’s lost her memory. She can’t remember a thing. She was huddled
in a patch of mud and she doesn’t know how she got there or who she
is.”

Mr Vance was silent again for a while.

“
You did the right thing in
phoning me, Seckry. Is she with you now?”

“
Yeah, she’s here. She’s
gonna stay here with us until things start coming back to
her.”

“
That’s good. Make sure she
drinks plenty of water. Does she have any injuries, was she
hurt?”

“
No, it doesn’t seem like
it,” Seckry said.

“
Good. Seckry, this is very
interesting indeed. Especially after the discoveries I’ve made
today.”

“
Discoveries?” Seckry
asked.

Mr Vance sighed, and his voice trembled a
little.

“
The white chip. I’ve been
running tests through it for the past two days. I had hit a block
yesterday evening, and I thought I’d never know what the purpose of
that phantom node was. But I was taking the wrong approach. It
wasn’t emitting anything, no power, no information, nothing. I
almost thought, for a moment, that it was dud, that maybe I had
been paranoid about Endrin and this node had really been a
manufacturing mistake. But, Seckry, this node isn’t emitting
anything for a reason. It’s a negative. It’s not giving, it’s
receiving. It’s reading. It’s gathering.”

“
What do you mean?” Seckry
asked.

“
Endrin are searching for
something. It’s quite complicated, and I wouldn’t even teach my
sixth formers this stuff, but, if the white chip picks up a certain
element then a signal is sent to the wireless emitter. That signal
goes straight to Endrin HQ. They’re waiting for the node to detect
that element in the air.”

“
What element is
it?”

Mr Vance breathed out slowly.

“
That’s where things become
very strange indeed. It’s not an element listed in the official
tables. Its properties don’t make sense, it’s an element that
doesn’t exist.”

“
Why would they be searching
for something that doesn’t exist?” Seckry asked.

“
Seckry, every academic bone
in my body is telling me that this is impossible and if I ever
tried to prove this to the fellows of the Science Committee I’d
lose my job, but I think I have an idea of what Endrin are looking
for.”

“
What is it?”

Seckry heard Mr Vance shuffling around on the
end of the line.

“
It’s not something I even
want to talk about over the phone. Can you meet me tomorrow at
lunch time? I’ll be in my office, at the end of T corridor on the
second floor.”

“
Yeah sure,” Seckry
answered.

“
And Seckry,” Mr Vance said
urgently. “Do you have a white chip on your arm at the
moment?”

“
Yes,” Seckry said, rolling
up his sleeve.

“
Take it off, wrap it in a
lot of tin foil, and put it away.”

“
What?” Seckry said, aghast.
“Even if they’re trying to detect elements in the air, aren’t they
still the only thing that’s protecting us from the leaked
toxins?”

“
Seckry,” Vance said
gravely. “There are no leaked toxins.”

With the whole situation of finding the girl,
Seckry had almost forgotten that he had to put the container of
worms on the 7.45 train, but luckily he just about caught it. He
received a few curious glances from the other passengers, but he
disappeared before anyone could comment.

That evening, when his mum arrived home from
work, she sat with Seckry and allowed him to talk.

He told her about Snibble melting the
Friction gift card and about the email and him sneaking out in the
night, and he watched her expression of disappointment with a
horrible feeling in his stomach.

“
Who on earth is the person
on the other side of that email address?” Coralle asked
rhetorically. “I mean, what kind of person are you involved with
now?” She cupped her head in her hands and shrugged her shoulders.
“I always thought it’d be Leena that’d be the troublesome one, not
you, Seck.”

She didn’t say much to him for a long time
after that, and Seckry knew she’d need time to forgive him.