Amelia clears her throat. ‘Brenda is going to be fine.’
It’s obviously a lie. Brenda’s leg is festering before their eyes, and her temperature is so high Lucy can feel the heat radiating from four feet away.
She wants to say that she doesn’t think Brenda is going to be fine, and that neither are the rest of them, but she decides to change tack. ‘You know, I’m thinking we all need to sue the organisers of this thing. Once we get out of here. The invite said “luxury”, and here we all are, huddled together in a cave. Sheltering from the rain while one of us battles a serious infection. Two of our party are gone and we don’t know where . . .’
‘I think Giles and Tiggy are being looked after,’ James says. ‘I want to believe that, at least.’
‘It didn’t work out so well for anyone who went to Fyre Festival though, did it? Thousands of dollars for supposed luxury, but they ended up with collapsing tents, their belongings looted, barely anything to eat . . .’
‘We didn’t pay for this though, did we?’ Amelia says. ‘We were all willing to come here and be pampered for free. We’ve all got our reasons for being here. We all hoped to get something out of it.’
‘Sure,’ Lucy says. ‘I tried to check them out, remember? I told you all this. There was nothing on their website. Nothing at all in any search engines. It’s like Timeo doesn’t even exist, or if it does, they’re keeping themselves way below the radar—’
‘You saw the presentation.’ James raises his palms. ‘That’s the whole point of them. They make stuff and sell the copyright. They don’t want people to know who they are. These tech companies with all their innovations need to sell the dream that they’ve invented their own products. They assign credit to the people they want to assign it to – the people that are the best “fronts” for the company. In fact’ – he pauses, takes a breath – ‘I’m pretty impressed. All the things that Timeo has come up with—’
‘But how do we even know it’s true?’ Lucy says. ‘How do we know anything is true? You know . . . Giles looked pretty dead to me, lying face down in that inlet.’ She nods at Amelia. ‘But you say they told you on the beach that he was going to be looked after?’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t trust a word they say. They’ve forbidden us from sharing things with each other, unless on their say so, and now they’re picking us off, one by one . . .’
Brenda’s eyes fly open and she cries out in pain. Then she murmurs something, too quiet and garbled for them to make sense of. Her eyes close again.
‘Brenda?’ Amelia crouches again and wipes the woman’s brow. ‘Stay with us. We’ll be home soon.’ She turns round to the others. ‘Did anyone ask for help yet?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Amelia,’ Lucy spits. ‘No one is going to help us.’
‘OK, OK, let’s calm down,’ Scott says, limping back to the group and lowering himself to the ground. ‘I asked already. Didn’t you hear me over by the entrance?’ He taps his tracker and yells at the roof of the cave. ‘OK, guys, the fun’s over. Maybe you didn’t much like me cursing at you before, and I am real sorry about that, OK? But Brenda really needs your help. In fact, I think we all do. Can someone come and get us now? Please?’
Another scream of pain from Brenda, and she sits bolt upright. ‘The island! I remember, I remember. No, no, no, no, no! Cornwall – I was there . . . so long ago. On the news . . . a man died . . . a child gone. All the stories . . . scared. Everyone scared . . .’ Then she closes her eyes and collapses back onto the floor.
Amelia leans down and grabs her by the shoulders. ‘Brenda? What are you talking about? Are you OK? Answer me! I want to help you—’
‘Of course she’s not OK,’ Lucy says. ‘She’s got a fever that will probably kill her, if the infection doesn’t shut down her organs first. She’s out of her mind. She doesn’t know who she is, never mind who you are. Or where we are. Cornwall? We’re not in bloody Cornwall.’
Amelia pulls away and sits down hard on the cave floor. She looks scared, and Lucy is intrigued. Something Brenda said has triggered something. She wonders what Amelia’s secret is, but without the embedded tracker there’s a good chance they’re not going to find out.
‘Wait a minute,’ Lucy says, ‘aren’t the Scilly Isles near Cornwall?’
‘Yes,’ James says. ‘Of course. Some of them are uninhabited too, I think. I mean, I don’t know, but I’m guessing this could be one of them. But I haven’t seen any boats nearby, and that island you can see from the lighthouse doesn’t look that far away . . . but’ – his face pulls into a frown – ‘wasn’t there something weird about one of the islands? One where they did some sort of chemical testing, or where they put people who had an infectious disease—’
‘You mean like a leper colony? Or one of those anthrax island places?’ Lucy remembers something about these from school, but she can’t remember where they were. But anyway, it was so long ago there wouldn’t be any risk of infection now. Would there? ‘Scott – be useful for once and help us out here? You know about medical stuff . . .’
‘Listen, lady – I don’t do historical disease outbreaks. As I already told you, I help stressed moms and hipster types with a bunch of vitamins they don’t really need. You know that no one with a balanced diet actually needs vitamin supplementation? For the majority of the world’s population, it’s an expensive racket. Those companies that send out brochures advertising all these wonder cures? Most of it is bullshit. Most of those supplements do nothing at all.’ He pauses, shakes his head. ‘You know, most of the people who think they benefit from my concoctions are really just benefitting from having some fluid pumped into them. Most people are chronically dehydrated . . . that’s the real problem we have. Fast food, unhealthy lifestyles—’
‘Yeah, OK, thanks, Scott,’ Lucy says. ‘We’re a bit more concerned about right here, right now, and what might be in the soil on this island. Or the air—’
‘Or this cave,’ James says, running a finger down the damp wall. ‘I think we should get out of here.’
‘But look at the rain.’ Amelia gestures to the opening, where the rain is still battering the earth, bouncing up off the hard-packed soil, spraying droplets towards them. It’s pitch-dark out there now.
Lucy is about to say something else when there’s a beep and the green holographic text that they haven’t seen for a while starts to scroll.
IT’S NOT SAFE OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW. PLEASE STAY WHERE YOU ARE.
ASSISTANCE WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY.
APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
‘What? Are they crazy?’ Lucy says. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘I think we’re going to have to.’ James sits down beside Brenda and Amelia. ‘How is she?’ he says, picking up one of Brenda’s hands. Lucy can see Brenda’s chest rising and falling, and occasionally she lets out a random stream of words.
‘What’s she saying?’ Amelia looks distracted. ‘Can you make it out?’