Megacity: Operation Galton Book 3 Read online

As soon as Sean, Declan and Jamal saw him, they jeered and whooped, and Declan shouted out that his ma must have been shagged by a hippopotamus. He turned his back on them, gripping the side of his tray as he moved it along the shelf towards the drinks machine. His heart thumped, and he longed to charge over to them, slam the tray over Declan's head. So what if he did? What would he get? Another couple of days in time-out? Cool. Better to be bored and lonely than have to deal with this shite.

  He turned around, tray in hand.

  "Don't do it," said a voice behind him. He looked round. Lee Manning and Jayden Ross stood there.

  "Why not?"

  "'Cause you can't get 'em on yer own," said Lee. "Y' need numbers."

  "There's seven of us now," Jayden said. "That new lot, they was full of it last night. Think they're goin' to take over."

  Lee held up his hand. "You in then, or what?"

  Radar felt a glimmer of optimism, for the first time since Tara left.

  Fuck yes, he was in.

  Half an hour after lights out that night, Radar's phone vibrated. The text he'd been waiting for. Carefully, slowly, he eased his way out of his bottom bunk, and put on his trainers. Three minutes, Lee said. They'd make their way to the middle of the dormitory, where the newcomers' bunks were situated. The lad who slept below Jamal had been warned earlier to get out of the way.

  Radar stood. Through the darkness he saw the seven other boys, and sought out Lee.

  "Declan's mine," he whispered.

  Lee nodded. "He's a quick little fucker. I'll go for his legs if he tries to make a run for it."

  Radar felt good. This was the way to be. A part of something, with mates who watched your back.

  Jayden and his mates began the assault, laying into Sean and Jamal; Lee gave Radar the nod, and the two of them dragged Declan off his top bunk.

  "The fuck―ow, fuck! What the fuck you doing?"

  He was on the floor, yelling 'cause he'd fallen on his shoulder. Almost crying, the big nancy. Radar placed the first kick, in his side; Declan yelled out in pain, and Radar knelt down, looming over him.

  "Can't duck out the way now, can you?"

  He punched him on the face, felt his knuckles connect with the sharp cheekbone. Again, again; a crack told him that he'd broken the boy's nose, and he leant in close to look at Declan's frightened eyes in the dark.

  Twat was terrified.

  Radar felt a surge of energy through his whole body, like he'd been released from a straitjacket. Declan was his dad, the social workers, the doctor who couldn't save his gran, the rich wankers who took Tara away, the red caps who called him 'mate', the whole fucking lot of them, and it felt so, so good. Even as he heard the alarm bell, as the lights went on and several red caps rushed into the room, he didn't stop. He couldn't. They told him he'd be in time-out for at least a week, and he didn't care. One look at Declan's bloody face told him he'd won. The other kids cheered him as he was dragged off; Lee Manning punched the air and started the chant, "Ra-DAR! Ra-DAR!" and he knew this was the way forward. Hit 'em, and hit 'em good. Be the one to fear.

  They all but threw him into time-out, but he didn't mind. He was on fire.

  That night, he dreamed of Tara.

  She was crying, and didn't want to be friends with him any more.

  Chapter 3

  Tara

  2047

  Being a Bettencourt in MC5 kicked serious ass; I found out exactly how much as I entered my teens. I was the cool kid, not just because my name made me megacity royalty, but because I'd seen something of the world outside the gated community and our school. Marilee took me to a hair salon where the stylists would understand the look I wanted (her words; she actually meant they were people of colour) and I came out with my hair in hundreds of shoulder-length braids, a few with wisps of coloured thread and tiny beads plaited in. Clinton whistled, and said I looked like 'the young Zoë Kravitz'. I'd never heard of her so I looked her up, and there was no way on earth I was as gorgeous as she'd been when she was young, but I was pleased with the compliment, and even more pleased with my hair. I looked two years older and my new BF Tallulah was so jealous!

  At school, I played up my background―my life with drug dealer parents. Or maybe I didn't play it up, maybe I played it down. I never told them what it was like to live with a mother who was always drunk, or to feel sick with fear every time you heard footsteps outside the front door; I concentrated on Shane being a CI, and running away, all by myself. They all loved the tale about the guy with the kind eyes who saved my life. They said it was like something in a movie.

  "Maybe you'll find out he was your real dad!" said Seraphina. They all had names like that, nothing normal like Tara.

  "In my dreams," I said, but I let them discuss the possibility. Mostly, I gave them hints and let them imagine the rest.

  As I settled into my teens I got into partying. I was always out. House parties, shopping trips, adventure parks. Some of the kids were right privileged douchebags, but if I heard them dragging the rats in the wasteland, or the Hope Villagers, I gave 'em what for. Just because they were born lucky, it didn't mean they were any better than anyone else. One time, at a party, I heard this snotty bitch called Ophelia saying that someone 'smelled like Hope Village scum'. I marched up to her, grabbed her by the hair extensions, and told her that I lived in a Hope Village for two years, so if she'd got a problem with my fucking smell, I'd like to hear about it.

  I said, "It's not like you're rich 'cause of your own hard work and talent, is it?"

  I got a lot of respect for that. Then I got too big for my boots and boasted that I could get some blitz, the latest party drug, that my friends and I had been wanting to try for ages―I knew it wasn't like the serious stuff that Mum and Shane sold, a boy called Seb told me it was more like speed. I decided not to say that I didn't know what speed was like because I'd never had it. I suspected he hadn't, either, but he was one of those lads who thought I was super-cool so was always trying to get in with me.

  I reckoned I'd be able to get blitz from this rogue Bettencourt called Ignace who, Marilee had told me, was the black sheep of the clan because he'd gotten in trouble for dealing at school. I finally got to meet him at some big family party at Caleb's house. Caleb was King Bettencourt, the boss man of Nutricorp UK; his wife, the MP Freya Wilson, would later become Prime Minister.

  Ignace was four years older than me so he'd finished school, but he refused to go to college, and hung out with a crowd from the stacks who wanted to go back to pre-megacity days. Marilee pointed him out to me. She said, "That's Ignace, over there. The one with the long, scruffy hair. You keep away from him, won't you?"

  Red rag to a bull.

  I waited until Clinton was busy leching round a waitress and Marilee was on her third dirty martini, and made a beeline for the black sheep.

  He didn't look like the other Bettencourts. More like how I imagined a wastelander. Faded t-shirt and jeans, biker boots. Everything about his face and his demeanour reeked of 'I don't want to be here, and won't be for very long'.

  After I'd introduced myself—"Hi, I'm Tara; Marilee and Clinton rescued me from a Hope Village. Just thought I'd come and say hello"—he looked at me with a wary eye and nodded. Like, didn't say anything. So, being fourteen and a half as I was, I plunged in.

  "Marilee told me you deal. Can you get me any blitz?"

  He muttered, "Jesus Christ," like he was talking to himself, not me.

  I said, "Is that a yes?"

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and said, "No. It's a no. You're a kid―you need to stay away from that shit. All of it." And then he walked off, and that was the last I saw of him for many, many years.

  Months later, I heard he'd disappeared into the wasteland, cutting all contact with his family. Like Susu about whom we could not speak.

  So my cred took a knock on that one, though a year later one of my friends found a source, and blitzkriegs were the order of the weekends—and yes, we got away with it. One n
ight, Tallulah and I were with two seventeen-year-old guys, one of whom had borrowed his dad's car. We were stopped because Logan had taken the car into the restricted zone, i.e. the stacks, where only certain vehicles are allowed. And of course we had blitz on us, but we just got a ticking off from our parents (guardians, in my case). Tallulah said her hairdresser's sister, in the stacks, got community service and a fine for a similar offence.

  I got a rocket from Clinton, who stressed how much better behaved Zia was (like he always did), and Marilee went to 'have a lie down' (no doubt asking Delia to fix her a martini on the way). After she left, Clinton's expression changed, and he said he understood what it was like to be young, so I mentioned to him what Tallulah had said.

  He laughed. "Honey, the rich are different. Haven't you learnt that yet?"

  Something odd took place about a month after that party where I first met Ignace. Something I didn't understand until later, and by the time I did, I longed to be back in a state of blissful ignorance.

  I was fourteen and a half and Zia was sixteen; her birthday was on the 18th of July, while we were away on holiday on the Greek Island of Icaria with Marilee and Clinton, and also Clinton's great friend Jeff Blythe―another big shot VP at Nutricorp―and his snobby wife, Livia.

  The holiday meant a fortnight of glorious beaches and blue skies, fabulous food and everything that a kid growing up in a Hope Village would never expect to experience, but although I enjoyed it, I wished Tallulah was with me. Jeff and Livia didn't have kids, and the two of them and my Bettencourt guardians spent most of the time drinking cocktails around pools.

  I thought that Zia and I would have a total blast, but she went all weird on me.

  Her birthday was the day after we got there, and she was okay that day―though not really herself―but afterwards she went quiet and kept wandering off on her own. One day she set off mid-afternoon and it got to nine p.m. and she still hadn't returned. I went out to the pool where the grown-ups were drinking, and said we ought to get the police. But Clinton and Marilee said they didn't want a big fuss, not just yet.

  "We're only on amber alert at the moment," said Jeff Blythe, his cocktail-red nose shiny in the lamplight.

  "Probably met some other kids and gone partying!" said Clinton, but Zia wasn't like me; she was a one-to-one person and would never get chatting to a group of strangers. She'd left her com behind, too. Like Susu did.

  Marilee and Livia both took my side, thank goodness, so Jeff and Clinton went out in their cars, and Jeff found her sitting on a rock, miles away, all by herself.

  They weren't cross with her at all; I couldn't help thinking that I would have got into a lot more trouble. Mind you, if I'd gone missing they'd have found me in a bar, not sitting by myself on a rock.

  I went into her room to see if she was alright, but she told me to go away, and she stayed in that mood for pretty much the whole holiday. And when we got back I asked Marilee if she knew what was wrong with her, and she put it down to adolescent moods.

  "That, or it's some boy!"

  But Zia hadn't had a boyfriend for a while, to my knowledge. We used to giggle about the boys we fancied in the way that teenage girls do, looking up their profiles on Heart, but after the holiday all that stopped.

  She said she didn't want to be an actress any more, and Marilee had to get in touch with the school to change her HCE subjects to those suitable for a degree in journalism; she wanted to go to the journo college way up in MC9 in Northumberland, instead of staying in MC5.

  Tallulah said that perhaps she'd got pregnant, and Marilee and Clinton had made her have an abortion.

  "And the guy dumped her, so she wants to run away!"

  This was feasible. The more we talked about it, the more likely it seemed.

  Before that holiday, Zia had felt like my sister. Afterwards, we were never close again.

  Chapter 4

  Radar

  2047

  Four years on, little remained of Tara's childhood friend.

  At the age of fifteen, Benjamin 'Radar' Bundock was five feet nine inches tall, and Lee Manning's right-hand man in the hell-hole that Hope Village 44 had become. Having lost his excess weight, he worked hard in the gym to build his strength. His hair was no longer jet black―if anyone had a problem with him being a 'ginge', they knew better than to mention it within earshot.

  Two years before, Hope 44 had gained a new warden. He considered himself overworked and underpaid; as long as the residents didn't actually kill each other he let them do as they liked, and delegated the problem of maintaining order to his much more overworked and definitely underpaid staff. Some red caps found their work rewarding, and tried to make Hope as much like a home as possible. Others, like the warden, turned up only for the numbers on their bank account balance at the end of every month.

  A few actively despised the residents. This sadistic hardcore referred to them as 'inmates' and branded them all 'scum', even though most obeyed the rules. Radar fought with them, but they had tasers, and the 'blink'―a button on their badge. One press, and any nearby staff came rushing to their aid.

  Radar was a frequent visitor to the box. Solitary confinement, for those aged fourteen and older. Same padded walls, same sleeping bag on the floor, but in adult time-out there was no screen showing idyllic scenes from nature. Just the sound of one's own thoughts.

  When he was not in the box, Radar accompanied Lee Manning and Jayden Ross as they strolled around Hope Village, from community lounge to canteen to education zone, where they learned nothing. They enjoyed their freedom, knowing that when they reached the age of seventeen they would be given jobs. The admin clerk who matched resident to job already knew that the Manning gang were to be given cushy numbers; food prep, wardrobe, library, teaching assistant. As Lee said to her, "You put any of us on laundry, toilets or infirmary, you're going to wish you hadn't been born."

  The Manning gang didn't clean up anyone's shit, piss or puke.

  As for Sean, Declan and Jamal, they'd bent the knee. Sean and Jamal became Radar's sidekicks. The three of them patrolled, taking what they wanted from anyone who needed their protection. Enlightening anyone who thought they didn't.

  Sometimes, in the silence of the box, pictures would float into Radar's mind.

  Watching TV with his gran, eating the cakes she made for him. A bedtime story; the love and sadness in her eyes when she kissed him goodnight. If there was any bad in her, any at all, Radar had never seen it.

  Other pictures, too—sitting in the sunshine with Tara, telling each other stuff they'd never told anyone else, that warm feeling of knowing there was one person in this whole wide world who understood and gave a crap about him. Those big eyes and pale brown, lightly freckled skin, the mass of frizzy black hair that she tried to tame with cheap products from the canteen shop. Her sweet mouth, smiling at him.

  Unable to deal with the gut-wrenching loss and sadness these memories evoked, he would punch and kick the walls, shouting, to make them go away.

  How come his lovely gran got cancer, when fuckers like his dad stayed alive?

  And Tara. She hadn't kept her promise. She'd never come to visit him, never found a way of keeping in touch. Fuck her. Wherever she was now, she sure as hell wasn't thinking about him, so why should he think about her?

  Chapter 5

  Aileen

  2042 ~ 2048

  Eric and I were among the last to leave.

  With our friends we drank wine late into the night, each one of us vowing not to submit to the Great Shift, determined we would never leave our village in south Derbyshire, never be shunted into those awful, soulless megacities, where you weren't allowed to own the roof over your head or drive your own car.

  We hashtagged #NeverSurrender on Twitter and LifeShare. We tweeted about freedom. Yet one by one our friends succumbed, once they discovered that #NeverSurrender was all very well, but Jamie's firm had moved to MC13 and he didn't fancy an hour's drive every day before taking the ziprail out t
o Tech Village. Imogen was 'pressured' into going on a megacity tour, and found it all 'rather amazing, actually', while Josh and Ruth said the offer of cheap medical insurance was too good to turn down, what with his diabetes and her asthma. They would explain their reasons almost apologetically, then scurry off to their boxes in the stacks, never to contact us again.

  Not us, though. We were made of stronger stuff, we would overcome difficulties as they arose.

  First, the NuMart megastore shut down. The only one for miles. That was okay, I could still order from NuMart Online. But then our GP relocated to MC12, followed by the dentist, the hospital, our solicitors.

  At first we adapted, as did other proud resisters, congratulating ourselves on not caving at the first inconvenience. We drove to MC12, parked up and took the ziprail to wherever we needed to go. We worked from home; Eric was a freelance psychometric statistician who worked on contracts for Nutricorp and the government. I was a content creator for the marketing department at NuHome―everything house and garden―so we thought we could stand our ground. But we were young, and all our friends had gone. The local pub closed down. Neither of us had family close by. We'd moved from our native Sussex up to Derbyshire because Eric inherited his grandmother's cottage when she died; this caused much friction, and Eric was more or less estranged from his family. I'd never known my father, and my mother lived in Dublin with her new partner and their children.

  Eric and I met at a party, in 2036. He was nine years older than me, twenty-eight to my nineteen. We wanted a family. Three children, starting as soon as possible, so we'd be young enough to enjoy our grandchildren. It didn't happen, though. It was me, not him; primary ovarian insufficiency meant that my ovaries didn't release much in the way of eggs. We were constantly assured that we should keep trying.