The Beneath (22 page)

“Have you got it?” His voice was low as he threw open the door.

“Of course I do! But we’re wasting time…”

I had to pause to suck some more air into my protesting lungs. All I wanted was to slide down to the floor and collapse in a small heap, but there was no time. I pushed past him.

“Come on then, let’s go and get these drugs to him,” I gasped, racing across the warehouse towards the lift, which stood open.

Dane turned to bolt the door. He hesitated.

“Are you sure, Lily? If you go down and Will dies, you might never come back. Give me the medicine and run while you can.”

“My deal with the Farmer was that if I saved Will and brought medicines and instructions on how to use them we could all go free.”

“Exactly, so stay here and I’ll send him back to you – if he lives. You have nothing to lose.” The lift machinery started to clank into life. “But if you come down and the drugs don’t work, then what’s to stop the Farmer going back to the original plan?”

I didn’t trust the Farmer for a minute to send Will up. Why would he? But if I returned and joined my friends, then I had to deal with the consequences of whatever happened.

“I’m not abandoning my friends. They wouldn’t
abandon me so I’m coming back down. Let’s go.”

I stepped into the lift and started pulling across the outer gate.

Dane flicked out the lights in the warehouse and jumped into the lift as it started to move. He finished shutting the outer gate and I heard him haul the inner one into position. Everything was completely dark.

“Are you sure you have exactly what we need?” he asked.

“Yes. There’s more too, other drugs that will help quickly.”

“That’s OK then. And it’s good you know how to use them. You can teach the others.”

My heart sank as I realised what that meant. I had automatically assumed that, as they knew which drug they wanted, at least one of them would know how to use it. If they didn’t, what was I going to do – guess? Why hadn’t I asked Nan?

It was a stupid, stupid mistake. I turned to face the wall, slapping it in frustration. Not enough of the drug and the children would die. Too much and they could also die. The babies were also far too little to take a tablet, and I prayed that whatever Nan had put in the carrier bag it had included some instructions.

“You OK?” asked Dane, surprised.

“Just nerves I guess.”

“Remember to keep quiet this time and they’ll ignore
you, OK?”

I was about to ask him what on earth he was talking about when I remembered the Crop. He must have thought I was nervous because of them.

“Why are you doing all this, Dane? What’s in it for you? If you wanted girls from Above to become Breeders, why not just grab one outside the warehouse?”

He gave a tired laugh.

“This wasn’t actually the plan, you know. I had something rather more subtle in mind, but you girls really made life complicated.”

“Aria mentioned a plan. She was really upset that she had failed you.”

“Did she tell you what it was?”

“That you needed someone special from the Tube platform and were going to take them down to the Community using the old crop tunnels.”

There was silence, and in the darkness I couldn’t see if he was surprised that I knew so much.

“Did she tell you who we wanted?” he asked eventually. “Do you know what her mission was really about?”

Something about his tone chilled me, and I took half a step backwards.

“We were planning on bringing you down the secret back route through the Crop levels,” he said. “But it had to be done quickly, while they were still feeding, and Aria didn’t make it back in time. Instead she went Above with you.”

“Me? You wanted me?”

“It had to be you. No one else could do what you can do.”

“What are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and I thought maybe he wasn’t going to, but then I caught the musty dead smell again. We were passing the Crop. I stayed silent, the questions backing up in my brain. What could they possibly want with me?

“On the way up I told you about the baby who had been taken Above,” he said eventually. “The one who didn’t come back, remember?”

I nodded, confused. “Yes, what about it?”

“She was the Farmer’s child. All the other children he’s had have died of the infection. Every single one apart from her. He has no one else to take over from him. No one except for that baby. No one but you, Lily.”

His meaning was clear.

“Me?” I asked with an indignant squeak. “You think the Farmer is my father? That’s rubbish!”

“It is you. Why do you think that you got past the Crop? They know you have the Affinity. With you we can overthrow the Farmer, get rid of the Crop and rebuild a proper community.”

There was no doubting the excitement in his voice. He truly believed what he had just told me.

“You’ve got everything wrong. I’ve got parents, they’ve just moved away, that’s all.”

“You’ve been lied to, Lily. There’s no doubt it’s you. It’s going to be great!”

I stopped listening to him, appalled. It couldn’t possibly be true. He and Aria had to have made a mistake. There must have been another girl on the Tube platform. They just got the wrong one, that’s all. It was all just a horrible coincidence.

Dane was still talking. “It’s the Crop that’s the key. It’s how he controls everything – he breeds it, he nurtures it and he feeds it, and he is the only one who can do it. If anyone else were to get into this lift without the protection of the gate, they’d be dead in minutes. And building up the levels to use it as a weapon – that was the final straw.”

He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was softer.

“But you’ll be able to take over, Lily. We can overpower the Farmer and then you can control the Crop for us. We need them as protection, that’s all. Not as a weapon.”

I shook my head, forgetting that he couldn’t see me in the dark.

“You’re wrong, Dane. It can’t possibly be me.”

“It’s OK, I understand that it’ll take a bit of getting used to, but now we have an excuse for you to be down here, so we’ll have plenty of time.”

He really believed it; that was clear from his voice. How was I going to convince him before he took me up to the Crop for a test? That was never going to go well.

Before I could speak again his hand found my arm and he squeezed it. “Not a word to anyone, all right? If he hears about this we’re all dead.”

I was about to reply when the greasy smell of fried food hit me, adding to my general feeling of nausea. We were nearly at the bottom. As the lift shuddered to a halt, the dim light from the corridor reached us. Dane peered at me.

“You don’t look well,” he said. “I hope that I’ve not upset you too much?”

“Why would I be upset? He’s obviously not my father – it’s a ridiculous suggestion. Come on, I want to get back to Will.”

“OK, OK, just let me get this – mind your fingers.”

He unlatched the gate and it sprang back, closing tightly into a recess in the lift wall.

There were no guards this time, and Dane set off down the corridor with me right behind. He knew that I wasn’t going to try to escape. I jogged alongside him.

“We need to run faster, Dane. Get a shift on.”

It’s too late. Will is lost, his body limp. I can’t let his passing go unrecorded so I’ll make the mark for him as he joins our others, the long, long list of children who never really were. Before he is taken away I will cut my own thumb, and cover his hand in my blood. His handprint will be left on the wall alongside Carita’s lost children, their cousins and the other children
who would have been their friends if things had been different. It will be all that is left to show that he was ever here at all.

The race through the tunnels seemed endless, but finally we made it back to the miserable room where Will was being kept. There was no sign of Lance or any other guard. I threw aside the thick curtain and burst through the entrance, desperate to get the medicine into Will as quickly as possible. Aria was sitting on the floor leaning back against the opposite wall, her eyes closed, cradling Will’s head on her lap. Carita was also there. She looked exhausted.

“OK, I’ve got the drugs. Let’s get them in him!” I said as I dropped to the floor next to Aria.

She opened her eyes slowly and looked at me. I remembered reading a book once where someone was said to have “dead eyes” and never really understanding what they meant, but looking at Aria’s face it became clear. All the life, the emotion, the fight – everything was gone.

I rocked back on my heels.

“Are we too late?” I whispered.

She just turned her head away. I looked down at my friend and reached over to touch his head, to say goodbye, to wish I had been quicker. I was expecting him to be cold, but he was very, very hot. I grabbed his hand and found a weak pulse.

“He’s not dead! Come on, we can still help him!”

“It’s no use. Once they get to this stage they always die.”

Aria’s voice was flat, beaten. I tapped Will on the cheek to try and get a response.

“That might have been the case before, but it isn’t now. Come on, I need your help. COME ON!”

Finally Aria seemed to snap out of her trance-like state. Carita hovered around, nervously watching everything. I looked around. The tin mug that Lance had brought earlier was nowhere to be seen.

“I need water – some in a cup for drinking, some for more sponging. Is Dane still outside? Can he get something quickly?”

Carita shook her head, biting her lip. “I’ll go. Dane will have gone to report back to the Farmer. I’ll be back in a minute,” she called as she turned and ran down the corridor.

The carrier bag I’d brought from home was beside me on the floor. I tipped everything out of it.

“Let’s get the temperature down,” I mumbled, wishing that Nan was with me.

He was unconscious so there was no point in giving him a tablet.

“What can I use?” I asked myself out loud.

I sifted through the packets, finally spotting something that looked like a fat pen. Nan must have added it to the bag. It was an emergency pre-filled syringe, the type that
you just had to press on to the skin and it delivered the jab. Without worrying about anything else I stripped off Will’s shirt. His skin was burning hot under my fingers as I found the right bit of his upper arm. As I was about to shoot the needle home I looked more closely at the writing on the side. Adrenaline.

“No!” I shouted, throwing it aside. That wasn’t what I needed. I picked up some more of the packets, thinking hard. There were capsules and chewable tablets, and bottles with powder in to mix up to give to children. There was nothing I could give him without water. I sat back.

“What’s wrong?” asked Aria. “Why are you waiting?”

“I need water, and I need it now! Tell Carita to hurry.”

Aria leapt up and ran to the doorway. I turned back to Will, frustrated that there was nothing that I could do. There was a damp cloth next to him, so I laid it on his chest, hoping that it would feel cool to him.

“Come on, Will,” I urged. “Hold on. I’ve got the medicine for you – just hang on while I work out how to get it in you.”

I wished that I could move him to somewhere more comfortable than the stone floor. The thin cloth he was lying on was next to useless. I knelt down next to his head and stroked the hair back from his face, then rolled his shirt up into a ball and put it under his head.

“Fight, Will, fight!” I whispered. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you. You mean too much to me.”

“I’m here! Where do you want this water?”

Carita was back with an old-fashioned glass bottle full of water, a small cup and a bowl, with Aria right behind her. She brought them over to me and I sat up quickly, reaching for the medicines. I found some capsules of the amoxycillin and dropped the powder from inside into the water, scanning the leaflet in the dim light to check the dosage information. I did the same with some paracetamol capsules too. I had no idea if I was supposed to mix them, but there was no time to waste. Then I stirred it all with my finger, trying to get as much as possible dissolved.

“Right, you two try and sit him up a bit,” I said, absently-mindedly licking my finger. “Yuk! That tastes vile. I guess the taste might bring him round if nothing else does.”

Between them, Aria and Carita hauled Will up into a sitting position. “What do you need us to do now?” asked Aria nervously.

“Just keep him steady while I try and get some of this medicine into him. Ready?”

As they lifted his head up, Will’s eyelids fluttered.

“Come on, Will,” I soothed. “Here, try this.”

I touched his lips with the cup and he opened his mouth. I carefully tipped in some of the mixture. He immediately jerked his head back and spat it out.

“Hey, Will, don’t do that. You need to drink this.”

I held it up again and he tried to move his mouth away.

“I mean it! You have to take it now.”

His eyes opened a tiny crack.

“Bossy,” he croaked, but opened his mouth and drank the rest of the medicine without complaint, only grimacing once it was all finished. He opened his eyes again and slowly focused on me. “You came back. Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, smiling. “Just keep taking the medicine and we’ll be out of here in no time, I promise you.”

There was a slight flicker at the corner of his mouth before his eyes closed and his head sank back down on to his chest. I motioned to the others to lie him back down again. Aria smoothed the hair off his forehead as she made him comfortable.

“Is that it? Does he get better now?”

“Not that quickly. He needs more water, so we have to keep getting that into him, and we have to keep him cool. If we’re in time his temperature will start to come down in the next few hours, so the only thing we can do is wait.”

“And all this stuff – where on earth did you get your hands on this?”

Something told me not to say anything, just in case someone was listening. If the Community knew that Nan had a stockpile of prescription medicines they might be ruthless in getting it off her.