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14:32 Tuesday 29 October 2069
All over the country rumours were gathering pace about what was happening at the nation’s schools. A media blackout had been put in place by the government, but nothing can effectively stop communication by word of mouth. Tales of children being tested to find out whether or not they were Recarns, and subsequently executed, were being passed from neighbour to neighbour, from family to family and being met with incredulity and horror. Surely there must be some kind of mistake? What government would start killing children in such a way?
At 2.30pm an ONP staff car turned into Wilberforce Way and stopped by number ten. An administrator checked the details on his smartphone which had a database of children between the ages of eight and twelve who were absent from school earlier that morning when the purge of Recarn children had started. The passenger looked at his partner, alongside him in the back seat of the car.
“This is the house. Number ten Wilberforce Way. Mr David and Mrs Rachel Williams. Three children; Jonas aged three years, Natalie aged nine years, and Robert aged ten. Natalie was absent from school today. Robert was found not to be a Recarn and exonerated. We need to check Natalie Williams.”
The two Administrators and their Defender driver got out of the car and walked up the garden path. There was a biting wind but it didn’t bother them at all; their uniforms were controlled by micro-thermostats and their bodies were kept at the optimum temperature for efficiency. The driver knocked hard on the door.
“ONP Defender. Open the door.”
There was no response although there had definitely been the sound of music coming from inside the house when they approached the door; now there was silence.
“ONP Defender. Open the door or I will destroy the residence with you in it.”
The Williams family had heard the stories about what had happened at the nation’s schools and opened the door. They didn’t doubt that the Defender would destroy the house. The administrators and the trooper didn’t wait to be invited in, pushing past Rachel Williams and heading directly for the kitchen. One of the administrators sat down at the kitchen table and set up his RIA, his Recarn Identification Apparatus. The other Administrator confronted the parents.
“Where are your children?”
David Williams stood in front of his wife.
“Our children? We only have one child, Jonas here. We don’t have any others.”
“You have two others, Natalie and Robert. Don’t try to deny this. It’ll make things worse.”
The ONP officials knew that they had three children. There was no point in denying it.
“They’re at school.”
“Robert is at school, yes, but Natalie Williams was recorded as absent by her teacher.
David put his arm around his wife’s waist, squeezing it tightly.
“Is Robert alright?”
“Robert has been exonerated. We need to confirm Natalie’s status.”
Rachel bit her lip. The Defender pointed his weapon at three year old Jonas.
“I strongly advise you to tell us. We need to confirm your daughter’s status. If you do not tell us what we want to know, I will shoot the child.”
From what they had heard about the morning’s events, neither David nor Rachel believed that it was an idle threat. But the dilemma that faced them was unsurmountable. They loved all their children equally; they couldn’t be expected to choose between two of them. Of course, they knew that if one of the children were to die, the child would be reincarnated, and the child’s soul would continue to exist, but they would still lose a child, a child never to be held, kissed, and loved again.
The Defender repeated his threat.
How can a parent be expected to choose between his or her own children? They had created both Jonas and Natalie. They had nurtured both children, they had seen their first steps, and they had witnessed their first words. They had seen Natalie develop into a wonderful and caring young girl and they were now starting to witness the emergence of Jonas’s personality.
The Defender counted.
“Three, two, one...”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t shoot him. Natalie is in the attic, inside a wooden crate. Covered with old books.”
The administrator glanced at the Defender, who duly went upstairs to search for the couple’s daughter. He returned a couple of minutes later, gripping the arm of a freckle-faced red-haired girl, whom he forced onto a chair opposite the second administrator who was ready with his Recarn Identification Apparatus.
“Natalie Williams. I want you to look into the eye pieces of this machine.”
“Will it hurt? I don’t want to do it if it hurts.”
“No. It doesn’t hurt. A coloured beam of light will enter your eye and rebound out again off your retina. You won’t feel a thing.”
Natalie did as she was told. The beam of light rebounded red. Natalie’s mother sensed that this was bad. When Natalie was seven years old, she had told Rachel about the headaches and the sensation that she had lived before.
The first administrator pulled Natalie roughly from her chair.
David moved to stop him but was hit on the forehead with the butt of the defender’s rifle and collapsed unconscious on the floor, a large bruise already beginning to form where he had been struck.
Rachel ran forward prostrating herself at the administrator’s feet, begging for him to save her little girl’s life.
“Nobody needs to know. We’ll go away. Far away. We’ll go abroad. Nobody needs to know that you let her go. Please don’t kill my baby.”
“She needs to die.”
“If you must kill somebody, kill me. Please, kill me. But let her go.”
“Killing you will serve no purpose. If I kill you and let the girl live, who will look after your two remaining children? They’ll be a burden on the state. The girl must die.”
“But why? Why must she die?”
The two administrators didn’t know why she should die. They didn’t know why any of the thousands of children who had been killed that day had to die. They were just following orders. They didn’t know that this was an act of unbalanced rage and revenge on the part of the Pindar. They didn’t know that a group of Recarn children had stolen something from him, something that had the potential to remove his power and position in the Illuminati. They weren’t even Recarns themselves, they had been seduced by a good salary and an improvement in their quality of life. They had been recruited for their administrative skills and the fact that they would do whatever they were asked, without asking any questions. They had been unemployed with no prospects and had families to house, clothe and feed. This was just a job and a very financially rewarding one at that.
The Defender knew why the child Recarns had to die. He had volunteered to be a Defender. He liked the life of a Defender. He had fought many battles in his previous lives - some he had survived some he had not. But each life had been an adventure. He considered the life of a Defender as a great adventure. He didn’t consider that he was murdering children. He just considered it as accelerating their progress to their next life. He had sworn an oath to defend the Illuminati from all threats, and if these children were a threat, then he felt no remorse for his actions.
The administrator kicked Rachel away and bent Natalie over the kitchen table, holding her hands tightly behind her back. Defender serial number 4238/5 removed his sidearm from its holster, placed the nozzle of the pulse pistol against the back of Natalie’s neck, checked that the weapon was set to kill, and pulled the trigger.
As the three ONP officers returned to the car they didn’t look back once to see what they were leaving behind, oblivious to the wailing of a bereaved mother grieving over her dead daughter’s silent body.
Rose Cottage, in Cookham, was a quaint old building in a picturesque setting by the River Thames. Birds could be heard singing in the back garden of the house, and an early robin was standing on the garden fence, scanning the garden for any sign of life that might make a tasty snack. The three figures that approached the front door looked out of place against such an idyllic setting. It was 3.20pm as one of the dark suited ONP officials rang the doorbell.
The robin flew away.
The varnished wooden door creaked open and a cheery looking woman poked her head through a small gap between the doorframe and the door.
“Good afternoon gentlemen. Can I help you?”
“Mrs Potter? Mrs Ivy Potter?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“We’re from National Security.”
“Ooh. Is there a problem?”
“May we come in?”
Ivy had a feeling that this wasn’t really a request but that they would enter the house whether invited or not. There was no point in trying to refuse them entry. News of the morning’s massacres hadn’t reached Rose Cottage yet.
“Come on in then. Excuse the mess. Could I ask that the gentleman with the gun wipe his feet, please? His boots look like they might be muddy.”
The cottage was perfectly tidy but during her sixty-eight years saying ‘excuse the mess’ had become a habit. The two Administrators and the Defender entered the house, all three of them wiping their feet on the hard bristle doormat. The man who appeared to be in charge spoke.
“Mrs Potter. You have an eleven year old granddaughter who lives with you.”
“Yes. Her name is Clara.”
“She wasn’t at school today.”
“No. She has a cold, so I kept her off school today to see if she could shake it off.”
“May we see her?”
“I suppose so. Is there something wrong?”
“We just need to do a quick test. A kind of medical test. There’s a bit of an epidemic going round and we need to check that children aren’t suffering from the disease.”
“Ok. I’ll get her to come down.”
The second Administrator moved towards the kitchen.
“May I set up our equipment on the kitchen table?”
“By all means. I’ll go and fetch her.”
Ivy went upstairs and returned with her granddaughter, a slim, strawberry blonde girl who was obviously suffering from the effects of a cold. The second Administrator beckoned for Clara to sit at the table opposite him, which she did.
“This machine is called an RIA. It doesn’t really matter what it stands for. All you need to know is that it is able to identify something that we’re looking for.”
Ivy wasn’t sure if she should trust these men – after all, one of them looked quite menacing, in his grey uniform, helmet and gas mask. She’d be a lot happier if she could have seen his eyes behind those dark goggles.
“Clara. I want you to look into the eye pieces of this machine.”
Clara glanced at her grandmother who nodded that she should do as she was asked. The girl placed her eyes so that she was looking directly into the machine. A beam of purple light shot into her eyes and rebounded back into the bowels of the apparatus. The Administrator sat back in his chair.
“Positive result. She’s a Recarn.”
Ivy looked at him, confused.
“What does that mean?”
The senior Administrator grabbed the girl by the wrists.
“What it means, Mrs Potter, is that your granddaughter is a Recarn. She is an eleven year old Recarn and we have orders to kill her.”
Ivy couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I let you in my house in good faith. You said it was just a medical test.”
“It was. We have the results. Clara must be killed.”
He forced the frightened girl to bend over the table and beckoned over the Defender. The Defender unholstered his pulse-pistol, made sure that it was set to kill and walked over to where the girl was being pinned down by the stronger Administrator. He raised the pistol towards the girl’s neck and suddenly swung round, shooting the Administrator in the face, killing him instantly. Before the second Administrator had had a chance to react he too was shot by the rogue Defender. The soldier took off his goggles so that his deep blue eyes could be seen.
“I didn’t join up to kill children, Recarns or otherwise. Come on, we have to get out of here. Their car is outside; we can use it to get far away from here, to get somewhere safe. Did you know that Clara is a Recarn?”
“Of course I did. So am I. What’s your name, young man?”
“Daniel. Major Daniel Driver. But most people call me Danny.”
“Well, thanks for saving my granddaughter’s life, Danny. How can we repay you?”
“Just come with me and stay safe. That’ll do for me.”
As they ran back outside and got in the car, the second Administrator opened his eyes and dragged his fatally wounded body to the door, just in time to see his car disappearing into the distance.