Paradigm (9781909490406) (3 page)

‘What's going on?' said Alice, as shapes danced across the wall. She tried to lift her hand up to point at the wall, but it continued to hang limply by her side.

‘It's the rain,' said her mother. ‘It's making people crazy.'

W
hen Alice awoke
, the sky was dark and the banging of the rain had eased into a soft patter against the window. She propped herself up against the pillows and stretched her legs out flat. They ached and her head was sore, but she didn't feel sick any longer. As she blinked her eyes open, her mother was standing above her with a cup of tea. The steam twisted in circles dizzying upwards towards the ceiling.

‘How are you feeling?' she said and crouched down next to Alice.

‘Tired—how long did I sleep for?' Her voice came out as a whisper, raspy and hoarse.

‘It's five o'clock in the evening. I think you had a fever.'

Alice looked out at the thick black clouds in the sky, drowned of stars.

‘It's so dark,' she said.

Her mother gently brushed her fringe away from her eyes. The bruise was a deep violet.

‘Yes, it's very dark. Most of the street lights are out.'

‘But you're not going out are you? Please?'

Alice's mother looked out of the window at the driving rain. ‘It still hasn't stopped,' she said. ‘We have electricity on and off, but the phone line isn't working. I have to go out tonight, Alice. People need someone like me…' Her voice disappeared into the pitter-patter of the rain.

‘Can't you stay home?' pleaded Alice. ‘Please?'

Her mother looked at Alice and then back out of the window. She hesitated for a while and Alice felt her lip quivering; she could see her mother's hands were shaking as she combed her hair over the blue-black flower that was spreading down her face: the bruise that was as almost as dark as the sky.

‘I have to, Alice. I'm sorry. The punters won't wait because of the rain. The rain makes them impatient. And now there's less chance of police out there.' She handed Alice the tea and turned to leave, in a veil of perfume and a smudge of lipstick. She checked herself in a compact.

‘I'm scared,' said Alice, but it came out in a whisper.

‘Don't answer the door to anyone,' called her mother, ‘and keep the windows shut.' Then she slammed the door hard and left the echo reverberating through the room.

A
s the evening
turned into night, Alice burrowed herself deeper into the sofa, unable to steal enough strength to get her aching limbs up the stairs. She crawled into the kitchen to get a drink and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning and her mother still wasn't home—but that wasn't too unusual. The luminous green second hand scratched around with the rhythm of the rain and Alice gulped down two more glasses of water. She picked up the phone receiver but there was no sound.

Outside in the street there was the noise of car alarms and shouting. There were two gunshots and then a loud explosion followed by the shattering of glass. Step by step, she felt her way back to the sofa and laid her head back down on the pillow. Although the pounding heaviness in her limbs was still there, it was noticeably less than before—but something inside her still felt wrong. Very wrong.

A
lice slept intermittently
for hours and when she fully woke, it was way past the time when the sun would usually clamber its ways over spires of the city and hang nervously in the folds of the sky. The night was fractured by frightening noises—sometimes she woke to hear the tick-tick-tick of hail against the window and other times to heavy feet outside and the banging of a fist on her front door.

‘Is there anyone in there? Come on, get out here, we're leaving!'

The shouting was frightening, desperate and not the voice of her mother. Alice wrapped herself tighter in the blankets and pulled the pillow over her head. She heard the same voices calling along the corridor, banging on each of the doors in turn. Even if she had wanted to, Alice couldn't move. Her legs felt glued together and full of cement.

‘I'm fine,' she said in a voice so timid that she wasn't sure that she could even hear herself. ‘I'm fine.' The sound of banging quietened into a dull thud and then into nothing, and all she could hear was the dripping of the rain.

O
n the third
day after the Storms started, her mother still wasn't home. When Alice got up to refill her water jug, there was a hammering coming from somewhere in the building but she couldn't be sure where. Moments later she saw a white blaze that came from outside the window and lit up the whole of the sky with an iridescent flash, like slow-motion sheet lightening. She drank down the water quickly then ate some biscuits and mummified her body back inside the folds of the blankets. There was no sign that her mother had been back at all. Her eyes felt hot and fiery. All night she dreamed of explosions and furnaces and shooting flames that licked the inside of her brain until all her memories were burned and blackened.

Twice she woke up screaming empty words that didn't even make it out of her mouth. There was screaming and silence and, through her dreams, Alice remembered being frightened. It was a cool, quiet type of frightened that didn't come from watching a scary movie or the barking of an angry dog. It was the type of terrified that bled out of the clouds slowly, dripping down onto the balcony where paint had been blistered by the sun and eked into the tenth-floor flat over several hours. It was the type of scared that came at the start of things, rather than at the end.

F
inally
, several mornings after the Storms had started, Alice awoke feeling almost normal—although she wasn't really sure what that felt like anymore. She tested out her legs slowly on the carpet and tenderly limped into the kitchen. Each morning she checked the rooms carefully, peering in every corner for any trace that her mother had returned. But she hadn't. The green hands of the clock read ten minutes past ten. When she turned on the cold tap, a slushy grey-brown liquid dripped out, slumped into the sink and dried up into a pile of rusty sediment. The hot tap did exactly the same.

In the dim light that filtered in through the curtains, Alice could see that most of the shopping she had bought was still on the counter, including cartons of juice and crisps as well as biscuits, tins of soup and fruit. She pulled together a crisp sandwich breakfast, followed up with chocolate and washed down with apple juice. She wiggled her toes and flexed her legs, feeling a spurt of life force coursing through her bloodstream.

‘Ma,' she called, as she did every morning, but there was nothing. Then Alice stretched her arms and her neck and shook herself all over. She took a deep breath and opened the curtains—but what she saw immediately terrified her.

Instead of the usual view of the diagonal cranes and London Eye in the distance, the city below her was all but unrecognisable, coated in a thin film of water. Fires burned in the windows of the houses of the street opposite. A man stood on the roof of his car as a swan sailed past him. A strong gust of wind blew him clean into the water and as he flailed around, the swan took off into the air. In the flat, the balcony doors banged against their hinges and from upstairs there was a thump and then the crash of glass. Alice shook in fear, her heart beating fast inside her ribcage. She held her breath. There was silence, except for the pattering of rain on the window. A soft, regular pattering.

‘Ma?' Alice's voice was tentative and quiet. From upstairs, Alice thought she could hear something, a soft, fluttering noise, the same kind that her mother made when she was brushing her hair, getting ready for work. She put one foot on the first of the creaky stairs. The countries of the crinkled map looked back at her.

‘Ma?' she said again. ‘Are you home? I can help you again. Look, I'm not sick.'

Alice stopped still and listened, but there was no sound coming from the bedroom anymore. Her throat felt raspy again from tiny pieces of crisp lodged in her throat. She took the stairs slowly, one at a time, her heart skipping a beat every time the creaks got louder. An icy draught gusted downwards from the landing and around the staircase. The sound of flapping started again.

‘Ma?' Alice's voice was almost a whisper. As she got to the top of the stairs, she could see that the door to the spare bedroom was open, swishing back and forwards. She took one step closer.

The spare bedroom.

Alice could feel her entire body begin to shake. All the hairs on her body were upright, alert, terrified. The door banged shut and then yanked itself open again in the wind. She didn't care that her mother would shout at her for going in there.

‘Ma?' she croaked. ‘Did you come back for me?'

Alice picked her fingers over the peeling wallpaper of the landing: horrible brown flock wallpaper. Her mother had said they could change it when they had some money. Her mother had said a lot of things. Alice swallowed deeply and stepped into the spare bedroom, steeling herself tall and strong for whatever was inside.

The room was painted red, pristine and clean with a cream-coloured border three quarters of the way up the wall. There were fresh flowers, now dead, in a vase on the bedside table. Apart from the bed, the table was the only furniture in the room and on it stood two unopened bottles of vodka. A freezing draught of ice-cold wind blew in through a partially smashed window and rain had already begun to seep down the walls forming small pools on the floor at the bottom of the soaked curtains. There were pictures of naked women on the walls, twisting over motorbikes.

The shock and disappointment was overwhelming. Alice took a deep intake of breath as a deft, quick movement caught her eye. Matching the border, the linen on the bed was cream and cool—except there was a deep crimson stain, bleeding out like a bruise with a dark grey creature moving at the centre of it. Alice exhaled and screamed all at once. The dove, partially decapitated, ruffled its wings when it saw Alice, and flapped its body back and forth on the bed.

She took another step towards the bird, its black bead of an eye following her movement. It raised a wing and let it fall.

‘I thought you were my mother,' she said.

A trail of blood dripped from the jagged hole in the window across the room and onto the bed where the bird shook the last coughs of life from its beak. Alice watched as it snapped its neck backwards and forwards until the jumpy twisting finally stopped and the only sound was that of the wind whistling past the serrated edges of the broken window pane and Alice's own heart beating.

‘I hate you!' she screamed and ran from the room.

C
arter was
the last to step out into the cool night air. He'd been stuck at the back, standing on the panel that housed the throbbing, driverless engine for the entire journey and it had made him feel sicker than ever. The noise humming through his feet and the constant chatter of the crowd he was packed in with grated through his skin and sank into his bones. When the vehicle stopped and everyone bled out into the night, Carter could taste his own relief. Those first few seconds of calm were delicious.

As he stepped down onto the earth, the damp air soothed his skin and the smell of the moonlit night washed away some of thick, cloying smell of the other passengers. There wasn't much at the stop; a small red-brick shelter with four backlit screens inside and, on the far edge where the dirt met the perimeter fence, a row of warning signs that rose like tombstones out of the dirt for as far as he could see. The signs were new.

A
slow
, thin mist floated over the hopscotch fence-work that loomed upwards like a range of glittering mountains, the mist shrouding the tops of the shredded metal. The barricades looked higher than Carter remembered. A clutch of scrawny birds hovered on the other side before vanishing into the whiteness. Then, with a sharp click that made his neck snap back to watch, the doors of the Transporter pulled shut and the empty carriages darted back along the invisible track towards the sealed underground tunnel.

‘They're a wonder, those things,' said a man who'd stepped off the Transporter just before him. He was older, somewhere near to twenty. He gestured towards the Transporter, the last of its carriages quickly being gobbled by the hole of the tunnel. It slipped into the darkness without a sound. The opening where the tunnel had been snapped shut.

‘They've come a long way since I was last on one,' he said. ‘They'd only just been invented then. Dirty, smelly things they were. Can you believe they can go above ground? And no drivers, it's all mechanical magnets. Isn't it amazing?'

Carter nodded and looked up at the sky without replying. The space where the tunnel had been was gone, replaced by a skein of black trophene that covered the hole in the bank on top of which was the Barricade and beyond it, out of sight, the Black River. The spitting rain pinpricked his face and, as he opened and closed his eyes, he could feel the coolness underneath his eyelids. The ground felt refreshingly soft. Gradually the majority of the crowd that had disembarked began to peel off into groups and walk the rest of the way, but the man was still there, limpet-like at his side.

‘My name is Osian,' he said. ‘Osian Woolcroft. I'm old Academy as you've probably guessed. There's a lot of us been brought back—did you notice? A lot of us from the Gilbert Pinkerton Era. Are you Pinkerton? No, you look a little later than that—I'll bet you don't even remember when Pinkerton was Controller General, do you?' Carter shook his head. Gilbert Pinkerton was his parents' era—a strong but fair, rule-driven Controller General who had given the Community some great stability. It had been expected that Professor Mendoza would have continued in Pinkerton's footsteps in the following election until she was beaten by Alderney in the final selections. Carter remembered his father's disappointment at the results announcement.

‘I guess they're preparing for the new Controller General,' said Carter, ‘bringing in a supportive crowd.'

‘I dare say,' said Osian, his eyes searching Carter's. ‘In fact, I think it's going to be a young woman I met earlier. Elizabet she said her name was. Very confident.'

‘Possibly,' said Carter. ‘I'm sure we'll find out in a few days' time.'

‘I'm sure we will,' said Osian. ‘I'm sure we will.' A layer of mist floated over the top of the Barricade and dispersed amongst the metal. The silence was almost awkward.

‘Well, it was nice to meet you,' said Carter. ‘Have a great return.'

As he waited for Osian to leave, a light pattering of rain hit the leaves at the side of the trackway.

‘Let's go, let's go,' said Osian, looking up at the sky. ‘If we leave now, we'll make it before the downpour starts. Who knows, it might even be a big one?' The last of the stragglers swiped their cards at the FreeScreen terminals in the shelter and then started off down the track.

‘I'll wait for a while,' said Carter, watching them blend shapeless into the darkness. ‘I want to clear my head.'

‘You don't want to be alone on your first walk back,' said Osian. ‘You heard what they said about the dizziness and the blackouts. Come on, we'll all go together. Rules are rules.' He waved at the last group who were about to leave and gestured for them to wait. Carter shook his head. He'd had enough of their company already. From the direction of the group a buzz of whooping and general excitement leaked out into the night and, more than anything else, he just wanted to be alone and get himself together. He resisted the temptation to put the man directly in his place and gestured towards the shelter.

‘I'll be fine,' he said. ‘I'm going to wait for a while.' He pointed to the FreeScreen terminal. ‘I need to do some research—missed my chance while we were down there.'

The man opened his mouth to protest then closed it again. He looked at Carter carefully.

‘As you choose,' he shrugged and then nodded in an offhand manner, folding into the group that were beginning to leave. They half-skipped, half-ran together in the direction of the Community, whooping and cheering. From what Carter knew of where he was, the centre was about an hour's walk south.

He watched as the group split, joining together again in smaller clumps as their heads bobbed off into the distance. He could still hear their conversation, high spirited and punctuated with chirrups of excitement, but it wasn't long before the chattering dissipated to a whisper in the moonlight. Within five minutes they were completely out of sight and all he could hear was silence. His relief was palpable.

A
s the clouds cleared
, just for a moment, there was a moon. A papery globe that winked through the night air once before it disappeared again. In the darkness he didn't recognise the location of the drop-off point but it was just short of the central track—that much was obvious. The glow of the Community hummed gently to the south west, the edges of the barricade glinting with an edge of danger to the north.

The long single main road that bisected the community with its arterial spurs jutting sideways from the central track wound its way through to the Community like a ribbon. He checked through his pockets for his identity card and felt its pulse gently reverberating into life. It was slightly warm; hard plastic but warm. The light of an empty Transporter loomed in the distance. He checked the screen: one was due from the south to take any stragglers back with it into the safety of the Community and to their new homes.

His new home was probably less than a ten-minute walk from where he had lived before with his grandfather and fifteen minutes from the Community Academy. He wondered if his grandfather was still alive, still reachable. But more, he wondered about the hazy words his assistant had said. He had a recollection of something strange that had happened before he had left, but his mind felt gluey and unclear until a thick ball of ice from the sky caught the edge of his temple.

It was then that the rain really started—great, heavy curtains of water that cut through the night cloud. He darted the few steps towards the safety of the shelter as the ice fell around him. And then suddenly, before he could scan the screen, through the rain, there was something else. The snap of a twig, the rustle of a branch—something that caught his attention so acutely, he could feel it breathing. There was someone watching him. Through the falling darkness he craned his eyes until he could see it through the torrents: a figure somewhere in the clump of trees on the other side of the road. It was small—a girl. And she was waving to him.

‘Carter! Carter Warren! I need to talk to you.' He blinked through the rain and squinted; it was definitely a young girl, with long silver-blonde hair. She lifted her arms, wildly flailing in Carter's direction from the other side of the track.

‘Carter!'

‘How do you know I am here?' Carter whispered. With the rain and the voice came dizziness, and two chunky ice balls to the cheek knocked him to one side of the shelter, his legs sinking downwards before the light of the oncoming Transporter.

‘Carter!'

He looked up into the light. And then he watched as the girl ran towards him into the shelter. She stood over Carter, who was crouched in a heap in on the floor, shivering. A scarf half-covered her face and she wore an old metal bucket on her head.

‘You're the one,' she said, breathing heavily. ‘I know who you are. You need to be the one whom people look to, the person who saves us all. Find her and go to the old Delaney House, near the Barricades in the south—you know where. We can't go together. I wanted us to, but we can't. You mustn't let them win this time. They're coming for me.
And they might be listening
.' The last part came out as a whisper. Carter looked at her, blinking in the light.

‘What the…?' he started.

‘Shh,' said the girl, ‘they're coming for me. Don't let them know that you saw me. Make sure that you go to the Barricades. She'll show you. When you find out the truth, you'll know why. I will be there waiting for you. It's your time.' She held out her palm then rubbed it against Carter's.

‘
Veritas liberabit vos
,' she said and there was silence for a second before she looked around and ran back out of the shelter and into the blinding lights of the oncoming Transporter as it careered towards her. There was a piercing scream and Carter closed his eyes tightly away from the glare. The driverless carriage stopped for a second, its motion camera flickering into the shelter, picking up everything except the curled-up Carter. After it sensed no passengers, it reversed back in the direction it had come from.

Carter kept his eyes closed tightly until there was silence. After a few minutes, even the pelting rain had stopped. When he opened his eyes again, it was like he had imagined everything. And there was more than silence—there was nothing. The air smelled dark and smoky, and both the mysterious girl and the Transporter had gone.

I
n the moonlight
, after the rain, there was a flavour to the air that felt different. A warm blush of lavender and bracken wafted over him for a second before it disappeared, taking with it the strange words of the girl and the scent of summer evaporating into the night. That night reminded him of something—something from his Academy days—but, however hard he tried, Carter couldn't quite remember what.

That worried him. His near-perfect, reproductive memory was one of his greatest talents, although not the only one. Before he'd gone into the Catacombs there was nothing he hadn't excelled at—in his Academy days he'd had an exemplary record in all subjects and had even been called to the Industry Headquarters on two occasions for work experience—an honour that was only afforded to the most diligent of students. The first time, when he was eleven, he'd developed a new set of flavours for the synthetic food team that won him a whole box of fauclate. Then, when he was just turning fourteen, he identified and fixed a glitch in the Model that almost sent half the population of the Community underground. Not one of the senior analysts had even realised there was an issue.

‘You've got the dynamics wrong,' Carter had said, switching seven different dials a fraction of a centimetre deftly while they watched in amazement.

‘You can't touch that, kid,' said the chief technician, pushing Carter away, but the others held him back.

‘He knows what he's doing,' said one of the analysts. ‘He can manage this thing with his eyes closed; he's a genius.'

After that, the Industry sometimes called on Carter to make the occasional repair or tweak to the Model, which he did for no reward other than to be in the central control tower. He loved the buzz and whirr of the machinery and the soft click of his fingers on the panel buttons that spat out directions of who was to be frozen and who was to be returned. The pure mathematics of it fascinated him. But more than his genius, it was his straw-blonde hair and pale blue, almost white eyes that captured everyone's attention whenever he entered a room. All that said, it would be his exemplary Academy record in Censomics and Synthetics plus an outstanding Contribution to the Community that would win the day. These things combined would most definitely make him the natural successor to the post of Controller General. The greatest gift that most people could expect to give to the Community was that of new life. Carter shuddered. He would choose the ultimate position of Controller General over fatherhood any day. Becoming Controller General was that single event that he had been groomed for his whole life—and he had no trouble remembering.

From his very first lesson on the subject, Carter had been fascinated by the completeness of Censomics. The study of population control and Community Management was so much more important than the mythical history lessons that described an old world he could not understand. It was a place that his grandfather had known something of, but only from the stories that had been handed down to him by his father. Family had been so intertwined with destiny back in those days. Luckily, Carter's fate was destined to be so much greater than that of his parents.

Nikolas and Jacinta Warren had been involved in a terrible accident whilst on a scouting mission outside the Barricades. The rumour was that it involved wolves.