BY THE TIME I stand stiffly and crick my neck, sunlight is shining on the bare patch of ground beside the shed.
My wrist throbs from pressing so hard with the heel of my hand, but that’s nothing compared to the way it pools blood when I remove the pressure. Each thought is a drifting balloon, and I concentrate on holding tight. Can’t let myself pass out. I need to stop the flow, but that’s easier said than done. I’m wet, sticky red all over. Blood splattered so far while I ran that it looks like I’m bleeding from every part of my body. A wide smudge on my stomach has dried to a cracked dark red.
Nice. If anyone sees me they’re going to run the other way and call the police. Though perhaps not in that order.
I’ll be able to clean up using the underground spring in the cave, but to get there I have to cross Ballarat Road.
It would be easy if I still had the chip in my wrist. Or access to a compad. But without either of those I need to blend in enough to follow someone across the road. Not easy when I’m bloody and naked.
Okay.
It’s still morning, maybe eight. Voices trickle down from some of the flats but not many people are in the street. I stay low and keep to the back lanes in case the Feds are waiting around. It doesn’t take long to make it to the end of the street, and Kessa’s house.
Or where she used to live. She might have moved long ago, but I know the layout well from all the hours I spent watching her family on the grid, daydreaming about how it might feel to be a citizen with two parents, a sister. And a chip. Someone with a normal life. The person I always dreamed of being.
The communal kitchen is at the front of the house, I’m pretty sure, and Kessa used to share a tiny bedroom at the back with her twin, Malena.
I take a couple of seconds to check for sounds from inside the house, then make my way up to the back door: the sooner I get in, the sooner I’ll be out.
First up, I disable the speaker on the entrypad so it doesn’t beep and attract attention. Then I start a manual override. Simple.
At least, it should be. But as soon as I punch the keys, the pad goes into alert mode: lights flashing and the words ‘access denied’. I end up ramming the cancel request fifty billion times, heart thudding in my throat, before it stops going crazy. Thank cripes the sound’s disabled.
Holding my breath, I strain to hear in case it triggered a partner alarm inside the house.
I’m met with only silence.
It’s a newer system than I’m used to. No surprise. Maybe there are more illegals these days looking to break in, or perhaps more crims. Same thing, I guess. But the coding on the pad is not exactly brain surgery either, and they’d still need a manual override option in case of a blackout. They’d have to.
That gives me an idea.
I could pull out wires to fake a blackout, but that might trigger another alarm. Instead I try a digital block of the electricity; trick the system into behaving as if there’s a real blackout.
It’s not easy standing out here, naked and blood-spattered with a throbbing wrist. I force myself to focus. When I trigger the bot, the whole system freezes and goes blank. I let out a groan.
Then again, it’s worth a try. Again, I punch in a manual override and the door disengages with a pfft. It worked enough for me to slide the door open further and shuffle through the gap. I’m in.
I can hear voices at the front of the house, but back here it’s quiet.
There’s just a swipepad to get into the rear bedroom, no lock, so the manual override works first try. It opens with another pfft and I cringe at the sound, stepping out of sight with my back flat against the wall in case anyone is inside.
I wait, listening, but nothing reaches me, not even the rustle of bedclothes.
Okay. Let’s get this done.
There’s barely space in here for the two beds. One doona is neatly pulled up and the other is half on the floor. Both empty.
Already I’m at the drawers set into the wall, grabbing a pair of tights from the top one and wrapping it tightly around my wrist, tucking in the end. My hands land on undies, a bra …
Jackpot. They’re a little baggy but I reckon I guessed right. These are the clothes of a teenager or twenty-something …
There’s not much stuff in the drawers and no time to check what I’ve found, but I aim for stuff at the bottom of the piles. Less chance they’ll notice anything missing. And their favourite things are most likely at the top, right?
It feels like longer but I estimate it’s been around a minute since I snuck in. I throw on a worn long-sleeved T-shirt and some faded jeans. Last of all I grab a pair of old runners from under a bed.
Then I’m into the hall and shuffling through the gap in the back door. I can hear traffic noises as I make it outside; the sun is harsher and higher. I can almost feel the movement of people in flats and rooms all around. Just another day.
Outside at the entrypad, I hesitate. Now that I have the clothes I’m tempted to bolt, but I have to be smarter than that. Use my head. Just one more minute to clean off any trace that I’ve been here.
My fingers move fast as I trigger a reboot and clean up my dodgy coding. Not my best work. A final restart takes it back exactly the way I found it and the back door clicks shut.
Keeping low, I sneak to the side shed before cutting across to a gate at the back fence. My hands are on the top rail when I hear movement behind me.
The pfft of the door.
I don’t turn around. I’m hooking one leg over the gate when someone calls: ‘Scout?’
All air leaves my lungs. I can’t risk this, but I have to see. Awkwardly, I turn at the top of the gate, a B-grade cat burglar who’s been caught in a bad escape.
Kessa’s frame is shadowed in the back doorway, but I know it’s her. An older version of her. She steps forward, squinting into the sunlight. ‘Scout! Is that really you?’
Her arms are out as if she’s expecting to hug me, clear recognition in her voice, but as she comes closer her expression shifts. A couple of metres from the gate she slows as her eyes track over my face.
It’s the strangest thing, this splice of realisation as we stare at each other, like examining old photos of someone from before you knew them: familiar but also distant.
Except for me it’s in reverse and I’m staring at a version of Kessa that should be from my future. Her fair hair is shorter, wispier, and her face thinner but the changes are deeper than that. There’s an air of confidence about her. She’s standing taller, in more ways than just height. And once again I’m struck with the impression I so often have around Kessa: I’m glimpsing a life that could have been mine if I’d been deemed worthy of a chip. Worthy of life.
‘Sorry …’ It’s me who breaks the silence. ‘I …’ I lift an arm and gesture to her clothes. Hers, or maybe her twin sister’s. ‘I … I can bring them back later?’ After I make it to the stash.
She ignores the question. ‘It really is you.’ Her voice is faint. ‘One day you were at school and the next day, you weren’t.’ And then clearer: ‘What happened, Scout? Your mum said you had to go away, but she wouldn’t say where.’
‘Yeah.’ Where did I go? Nowhere, exactly. Just on a shortcut to now. ‘It’s hard to explain.’ I’m tired of the lies, tired of saying words that keep her at such a distance from me.
Again, we stare in silence. But I let her look, I want her to see. Other than blood splatters and messy hair, I look the same as when she last saw me. Years ago. And yesterday.
‘So, what year is this?’ I come right out and ask.
‘What do you mean?’ She tries to say it with a laugh.
‘Sorry, I … I get confused.’
‘Scout. It’s 2089.’ It comes out gently, as if I’m brain-damaged or something.
So I only made it four years ahead. Four and a half, judging by the seasons. No wonder the Feds are still watching our room. ‘And you’re at uni?’ I ask, calculating. ‘What course?’
‘Emergency obstetrics.’
It’s the area she always wanted to work in, but with the emergency component added. A compromise, I guess. She’s following her dreams but also paying back to the system. Contributing, like any good citizen.
‘And you?’ Kessa asks.
And me. It’s a question that makes my heart slow. Right now, I’m empty inside, coming to understand how different my future will be from the one I’d hoped.
I had to jump. It was the only way to escape, but that long jump meant I lost my place in school that I fought so hard for. Now that I’m back I’ll have to face all the ways my lost past is going to feed into my future.
‘Listen, Scout.’ Kessa steps forward, close now, not wary anymore. ‘I can help. Whatever’s going on …’
Already, I’m pulling back, shaking my head. ‘No.’
‘Tell me. What do you need?’
But I can’t, the risk for her is massive; she’s the one who has so much to lose. And deep down, I know that’s not the only reason. I hate the idea of her seeing me differently once she realises I’m illegal. Leaving is easier than the thought of her thinking less of me.
I swing my leg over the gate, then step backwards onto the ground on the other side.
‘Wait, Scout.’ Kess comes right up to the gate, her hands on the rail where I was just sitting. ‘I wish you’d told me you were in trouble. Before you disappeared, I mean. When we were in high school. I could have helped.’
She doesn’t even know what she’s saying.
I should go, but I’m not ready yet. I stare at the ground, trying to form words for the question within me.
‘Will you tell me one thing?’ I ask. I lift my gaze and find her waiting.
She nods. ‘Anything.’
‘Are you … happy?’ Somehow, I need to know. It matters that she is.
‘Happy?’ Kessa’s nose scrunches at the question, and then her neck lengthens. ‘Well … I’m one of the lucky ones, aren’t I? A life on high-enough rations. A uni course to die for. A chance at my dream job.’ A pause. ‘Why wouldn’t I be happy?’
But she sort of spits it out and we’re left watching each other from either side of the gate, two souls from different worlds.
‘Okay.’ I glance down again, feeling lost, displaced, and my eyes fall on her old runners. She’s helped me more than she realises. ‘Better go.’ I offer her a smile. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘Scout, wait.’
But I don’t. Instead I turn and make my way along the back lane without looking at her again.
It was good to see her, but that also forced me to see how much I’ve lost, how different my future will be now that I’ve dug out the chip. My whole life has crumbled in a blink, a single time skip. But I’m not sure which is worse: the idea that Kessa has everything I’ll never have, or the fact that she didn’t answer my question with a yes.