‘Glasses? I don’t need glasses.’
‘Trust me. Put them on,’ he says. I do, and look in the mirror. Startled, I gasp, look back at him, then again to the mirror.
The frames are a delicate silvery-grey metal, and suit my face as if made for it, but that isn’t what made me gasp: it’s my eyes. The lenses are completely clear, yet somehow I am changed. My eyes aren’t green any more. More a blue-grey. I turn my head side to side, take the glasses off, put them back on again. Study myself like looking at a stranger. This dark-haired girl is other. She looks older, too. No one would recognise her. Not just Ben; I could walk past Mum and Amy in the street, and they’d be none the wiser.
‘That’s amazing. You’re amazing.’
‘Why, yes: I am.’ He smiles. ‘And this technology—’ he touches the glasses ‘—isn’t known in the UK, at least not yet. So wearing them shouldn’t arouse any suspicions.’
He spins my chair around so we are facing each other again. ‘So. The green-eyed blond girl is gone, replaced by a more sophisticated version, one who can pass for the eighteen you need for ID and travel if necessary. What is next for you?’ I hesitate, and he laughs. ‘Keep your secrets. I hope – no, I am sure – we will cross paths again.’
‘Thanks for everything.’
He tilts his head, something in his eyes still measuring, assessing.
‘What is it?’
He shakes his head. ‘Nothing, and everything. Time for you to go.’ He holds the door open. As I step through it, he adds, ‘Tell Aiden I need to see him.’
Later that day I’m in a small room hidden in the back of a factory. A dark room where new identities are forged. New lives begin.
‘Name?’ an unidentified man asks.
This is the moment. I’m not Lucy, the name given when I was born. I’m not Rain, the name I eventually chose for myself after I was taken by Nico and his Anti Government Terrorists – Free UK, as he called them – and shaped to be their weapon against the Lorders. I’m not Kyla, the name picked for me at hospital after I was caught and Slated for being an AGT terrorist.
I am who I choose to be.
‘Name?’ the question is repeated.
I am none of them. I am all of them.
‘Riley. Riley Kain,’ I answer: one name that combines them all.
Soon I clutch a forged ID card in my hand, a dark-haired, grey-eyed eighteen-year-old cleared to travel and live her own life: Riley Kain.
What life do I choose to live?
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
The bus rattles down city roads, then country: no more hiding needed with my new ID and new look, and I’d insisted on travelling back from London by myself. But who could have known an AGT bomb would be found on one of the London trains today, the entire network shut down while they were all checked? So the bus was the only option. Every jar of the road reverberates through my sore head, and I have to hold my hands together to stop them from gathering my new hair up to support its weight.
Fields, farms and villages rush past, become familiar. We’re nearing the village I lived in with Mum and Amy: I left the day Nico and his remote-detonated AGT bomb nearly killed me. I ran away, ran to hide at Mac’s. Mac is a friend, yes, and one I trust, but he hasn’t known me for long to take such a risk. He is the cousin of Amy’s boyfriend, and somehow involved with Aiden and MIA. Without knowing or insisting on knowing all that happened – what I’ve done, or why – he and Aiden were there, offering help. A safe place to hide. A chance at a new life. The old one with Mum and Amy ended just a short time ago, but already it feels distant, another life slipping away.
A long black car approaches the other way, coffin in the back, and traffic slows to a crawl on both sides. A black car follows the hearse. It has two occupants, arms linked: one young, with thick dark hair and skin; one older, and pale. In a flash they are gone. My eyes widen.
That was Mum and Amy.
The bus stops near the end of Mac’s long lane, and I rush up it on foot. Most of me is grappling with what I saw: whose funeral were they attending? A deep feeling of dread settles inside, while some other part of my mind is distracted, processing that the air and sky have that heavy chill about them that say snow, but I’ve never seen snow, and wonder why I feel this sense of expectation. While there must have been snow when I was Lucy, a child growing up in the Lake District, her memories were Slated away.
Another bend and Mac’s house appears: a lone building on a lonely lane. From this vantage a small sliver of white over the high back gate says a van is there: Aiden’s?
I’m expected. A curtain moves, and the door opens as I reach it: Mac.
‘Wow. Is that really you, Kyla?’
‘It’s Riley now,’ I say, going in and wincing as I take off my hat and scarf and chuck them on a chair.
Aiden is there now and sees my face. ‘I told you I could have picked you up. Are you all right?’
I shrug and go past them to the computer down the hall. Skye, Ben’s dog, tries to jump up and lick my face, but I give her a quick pat and push her back. Mac’s computer is an illegal; it isn’t government monitored. I meant to do a general search for local news on the off-chance that funeral was picked up, but something makes me go to MIA’s website first.
Lucy Connor, missing from her home in Keswick since age ten. Recently reported found – I had pushed the button on the screen myself, hoping to find a way back to who I was all those years ago, through whoever reported me missing.
Now clearly marked as ‘deceased’. I stare at the screen, unable to process the word.
A hand touches my shoulder. ‘You’re looking well for a dead person. I like the new hair,’ Mac says.
I turn; Aiden has followed and stands next to him. There is something in his face. ‘You knew,’ I hiss.
He says nothing, and that says it all.
‘Why deceased?’
‘You are. Officially,’ Aiden says. ‘According to government records, you died when a bomb exploded at your assigned home. Lorders have reported you as dead.’
‘But there was no body: Lorders wouldn’t be fooled. The bus went past a funeral procession on the way here; Mum and Amy were following the hearse. Was that my funeral?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was today.’
‘But you knew. That they think I’m dead.’ I’m angry, but I’m also confused. ‘Why would the Lorders say I died?’
‘Perhaps they don’t want to admit they don’t know what happened to you?’ Mac suggests.
‘I don’t understand why the Lorders would do that.’
Aiden tilts his head to one side. He’s not sure, either: the uncertainty is in his eyes. ‘Perhaps they don’t want to admit they failed,’ he says. Aiden had assumed the bomb at our house had been Lorder, as payback for my role in helping Ben cut off his Levo, and I never set him straight. He doesn’t know the double, dangerous game I’d played, for Lorders and Nico’s AGT. Guilt twists inside at secrets kept; for help repaid by silence. But he keeps his secrets, too.
My eyes fill with tears. ‘I can’t leave Mum and Amy thinking I died in that explosion. I can’t.’
Aiden sits next to me and takes my hands in his. ‘You have to. It’s better this way: they can’t be made to tell what they don’t know.’
I pull my hands away. ‘No. NO. I can’t leave it like this. I didn’t like it when I thought they thought I was missing, but this is far worse! I can’t leave with them thinking I’m dead.’
‘You can’t see them. They may be watched, in case you make contact. It’s too dangerous,’ Aiden says.
‘No one would recognise me any more.’
Aiden shakes his head. ‘Think this through. You’ve got another life waiting for you in Keswick. Don’t throw it away now.’
‘But Mum—’
‘She wouldn’t want you to take the risk,’ he says.
And I fall silent. I know he’s right. If I could take her aside and tell her the whole story and ask her what I should do, she’d say, stay safe. My head throbs and I twist my hair in my hands, flinch as it pulls, then hold it up. Who knew thick hair hurt so much? I ache to lie down, but all this needs dealing with now. Why did MIA put me as deceased because the Lorders said I’m dead?
‘Are you okay?’ Mac asks.
I shrug and flinch with that movement, also. ‘There’s some painkillers in my bag,’ I say, and Mac gets it for me, and a glass of water. I take one.
‘You should rest,’ Aiden says.
‘Not yet. You have to explain something to me first. Why did you put me as deceased on MIA? Do Lorders monitor it – did you do it for them?’
Aiden and Mac exchange a glance. Mac answers. ‘We don’t know they do; the links are hidden and changed frequently. But we can’t have it too hard to get to, or it wouldn’t be useful for those who need it. We assume Lorders monitor the website, and probably do so regularly.’
‘But what about when I reported myself found? Won’t they know?’
Aiden shakes his head. ‘That doesn’t appear anywhere on screen; it notifies MIA. And as I’ve told you before, at length, only the individuals involved in a particular missing person case know about it, and only when they need to know. Listings get taken down when we judge it is safe to do so for all involved.’
I’d quizzed Aiden on this relentlessly already, on who knows where I am now and where I’m going. And I believe him when he says it is all on a need-to-know basis only: he still hasn’t even told me who reported me missing. Though I guess it is my real mother, he won’t say until he judges I need to know. He must’ve thought I was extra paranoid; he didn’t know there was a reason for all my questions. He didn’t know about Nico’s plant in MIA – that I’d spotted one of MIA’s drivers at the terrorist camp. I had to be sure he wouldn’t know I’d reported myself found, and tell Nico. I should warn Aiden about him, but how can I without telling all the rest?
‘But what happens generally when someone is found?’ I ask. ‘If they’re kids like me, who were Slated, it’ll never be safe for them to go back to their original lives. It’s illegal.’
‘It doesn’t usually happen like that,’ Aiden admits. ‘Though sometimes people do get in touch secretly, but keep their separate lives.’
‘Sometimes. What happens most of the time when someone is found?’
Aiden and Mac exchange a glance. Aiden answers. ‘Usually when we find out what happened to somebody…it’s too late.’
‘They’re dead for real, you mean.’ He nods. ‘But I’m different.’ Always back to Kyla is different.
‘But you’re officially dead,’ Aiden says. ‘You can’t return to your life here. There are few choices: one is what you have chosen. To go back under a different identity; to find your past.’
‘I have to.’ I sigh. We’ve been over this before, but I never told Aiden the real reason. I never told him about my father’s death, about his last words to me. Never forget who you are! And I did forget. I have to find out who I was, for him.
‘What is your new name again?’ Mac asks. I fish my ID out of my pocket. Hand it to him. ‘Riley Kain,’ he says. ‘A little different, but I like it.’
Aiden frowns. ‘That sounds kind of close to Kyla, doesn’t it?’
‘Not that close,’ I say. I knew he’d think that. If he knew my name with the AGT was Rain, he’d be really annoyed, but not many living know me by that name any more. Just Nico, a voice whispers inside. I push it away; that’d only matter if he came across my new name, and how could that ever happen? I’m not going anywhere near the AGT. This name lets me hang on to all the parts of myself: if I let go of them, what is left?