“This is it,” I whisper, reaching the factory door with Gran. She crouches down, peels off my PIE skin and hands it back to me. I hold out my arm to point at the wall and draw a wide circle in the air. The round panel pops out and rotates up, letting multi-coloured rays of apple and raspberry light beam through the gap.
“Who’s there?” calls a raspy male voice on the other side of the wall. “Present yourself!”
Gran presses a finger to her lips and waves me back. “Help,” she calls, whimpering as she sticks her head and arms through the opening.
“WB1? What in the name!”
“Help me, Travis, dear!”
“Ugh, how very dare you. I’m not that smug, stuck-up snitch.”
It sounds like Conqip Brix, with the sour face and repulsed stare.
“Biermont?” she says, meekly. “Is that you?”
An angry arm juts out of the hole, grabbing Gran and pulling her into the factory.
“How on Earth did you get here, woman?”
“The Pofs,” she answers. “One of my banoffee cravings, dear. They were in a hurry to get to the Awards, you see, so the little Mights just dropped me here.”
“Those dizzy Pofs! Heads all over the place. I suppose we could spare you a candy off-cut from the reject pile. This is absolutely the last time, mind. You’ve bitten off far more than you can chew, wouldn’t you say.”
What on Earth can he mean? She hasn’t bitten off or chewed anything.
“…Thank you,” answers Gran. “So kind, dear—”
“Just shut up and eat.”
“...Mmm, delicious.”
“Wait here, woman,” says Brix, “and don’t move an inch... Oh, right, you can’t,” he adds, snickering off into the distance and muttering to himself, “I ought to leave the greedy wench down here when the whole place goes poof…”
What does he mean, ‘goes poof’!?
The Conqip anthem blares from the loudspeaker and a door slams shut. “Zoe!” calls Gran. Zoe? Oh right, yes, that’s me. I leap in and dash straight past her, through a candyfloss mist, to make for the remaining Auticode strips piled up beside the humongous printer. I haul the entire bundle over to Gran, and help her back into my e-skin. She bolts up with a grin, scoops all the strips together to lay them across her shoulders, and bounds out like a Gajoom. I chase after her all the way back to the Ward.
“Only us,” says Gran, sneaking back into the barely-lit room. The other grans cheer from their beds.
“Bravo,” says Moojag, leaping out and kneeling beside the mound of sticky strips with his hands pressed together.
“Who are you?” Gran asks him. She’s already forgotten him again. “Get out of my room! HELP!”
“HELP!” screams Stella. “Stranger danger!”
Moojag jumps back into Gran’s bed and Sophia starts to cry. Only her knobbly, hooked fingers and a few auburn-silver curls peek out from her bed covers. The Conqip are bound to come running now.
“C’est moi—Moojag,” whispers my brother.
“We don’t care who you are,” shouts Stella, “get out, before I call the Resource Police!”
They must think it’s the Resource Wars. That was in the thirties, before the Surge. When pre-Surgers still lived in cement boxes they called ‘houses’. And only a few families still had natural sugar. People would beg for it. Sometimes they’d even break into our cement box to steal it! Dad said he ‘would’ve gladly given it, had they only asked’.
Moojag shakes his head and jumps back out of the bed; Gran climbs in; and I crawl under. He swipes all the strips, stashes them inside a white wardrobe in the corner of the room beside Stella’s bed, and climbs in on top of them before closing the door.
“What in heavens is going on, Wrinkly Bones?” calls Travis, striding in. He combs back his limp quiff. “Why aren’t you all sleeping, like good old wrinkly girls?”
“There’s a MAN in here,” calls Gran.
“Yes, ladies. I am,” he says, sticking his nose in the air, “a MAN.” He stands stiff and straight, feet together and hands firmly on his hips.
“Not you, Con Boy,” calls Stella, pointing down. “The one under there!”
Oh no. I shuffle back as an arm swings for me under the bed.
“Come out, come out… whoever you are!” The mingled scent of sweat and fishy breath bursts into my nostrils as his hand whacks my head and he drags me out by the neck. “What’s this?” he says, stringing me up like a prize-winning Frankenfish. “Have I caught myself a Real Worlder?” I choke as he lets go of my throat and grips my shoulder. I glance down at my body dressed in the strange pre-Surge dress. Gran’s still wearing PIE! I look back at her, but the hood’s pulled down and her blanket is covering the rest of her body. “Why are you wearing Wrinkly Bones One’s clothes?” he asks me.
Hmm, what do I say? I could be from somewhere else. I’ll tell him I’m not a Real Worlder. I’ll say... “I’m from Glasgow!” Glasgow?
“Are you quite all right, strange girl?” Not afraid of him. He’s just a selfish troll who can’t control his sugar intake. Not nearly as mean as Brix. “I think you’d better take an MP,” he says, rummaging inside his dinner jacket pocket and pulling out a little blue pill. “This might help you remember. Then we can send you back to your perfect little life, so you can do whatever it is you do, before you lose it, you filthy little dropout.” I try to wriggle free, but he’s stronger than I ever imagined and now I’m stuck. He cranks my jaws open with his fingers, shoves the pill inside my mouth, and muzzles me with his sticky hand. What did he mean, ‘before I lose it’? “Swallow!” I hold the pill on my tongue, breathing through the nose, but my mouth fills up with so much spit that I can’t help but gulp the pill down with it. Travis finally lets go and I gasp for air. The grans are quiet, eyes glazed over and staring into nothing; at nobody. Travis walks over to Stella’s bed, dragging me behind him by the wrist. “You lot can have your pills early today. Quite enough award time has been sacrificed as it is.” He hands out the pills and waits, arms crossed, for everyone to swallow, before ordering me into Gran’s bed with her. He marches out muttering something about us going ‘poof’! The door slams shut and, from the keyhole, a clink clunk.