There was annoyance in Jack’s voice, which he was trying but failing to hide. Kate understood why. He must have wanted to see the inside of the school that had saved him from suicide in his worst years. But Jack of all people knew the importance of duty and following commands, even if it hurt him.
‘Right,’ muttered Ewan, ‘thanks Jack.’
‘Oh, and if they’ve got electricity, they might have set the alarms. Be careful, and remember the code’s 1989.’
‘How the hell do you kn—’
‘Because I spent years looking at the faded one, eight and nine digits every time I walked past the alarm. And the school was founded in 1989, so it doesn’t take a genius.’
Kate looked back at Ewan’s hands. Even in the dark, she could see their tightening, determined grip.
‘I hope the alarm is set,’ he said. ‘It’d mean there’s no clones inside. Kate, open the door.’
It was harder than Kate had thought. The inside of Oakenfold would be where her ugly past met her ugly present. It had been the place where she’d tried to recover from her years of bullying – and only partially succeeded. Now, the best school on Earth would showcase the horrors of a post-Takeover Britain.
She pulled the door open, and the last free students of Oakenfold Special School crept back into the building they had escaped from together. After almost a whole year, it could perhaps have been a sentimental moment. But Nicholas Grant was days away from launching an invincible protective shield that might have been perfected in that same building, so it hardly felt magical.
The alarm didn’t sound. Ewan looked disappointed, as far as Kate could tell. It wasn’t proof that clones were in the building, but it kept the possibility open.
‘Nothing above a whisper,’ Ewan said, following his own instruction. Before splitting up, the group of six stood together for a brief moment of shared empathy. Raj said it first.
‘United by our differences, guys.’
‘United,’ whispered everyone else.
Ewan wasted no time in heading for the classroom nearest to the entrance – the one for the profoundly disabled students, who had needed rolling in and out of school in specialised wheelchairs. Simon followed him with a nervous huff.
Raj and Gracie headed straight for the sensory room, already resigned to not finding anything interesting.
‘Shall we?’ asked Mark.
‘Yeah, sure,’ replied Kate.
‘This way first. Head teacher’s office.’
The reception was right next to them, but Mark had made his decision to inspect the most important room first. Kate started to follow him as he set off, but a thought struck her.
‘Wait… isn’t this the long way round?’
‘Yeah. There’s something I need to grab from my locker. Assuming they haven’t raided it.’
I was at my locker when it started…
Kate’s brain faded into autopilot as she followed Mark, her eyes fixed on his feet as they trod before her. It was the least appropriate time to retrace the past, but perhaps Nicholas Grant had chosen the school for that exact reason.
And to be fair, it was working.
It had been between English and maths, and she had been exchanging her exercise books in her locker. Chloe and Sally had complained about not getting a signal on their phones. In the background, Charlie was shouting about his human rights being taken away because he couldn’t access social media.
The staff had looked worried, but said nothing. Rule number one in times of crisis – hide everything from the students, even news that might help them.
With Chloe and Sally equally clueless, Kate had walked down the corridor and noticed Raj talking to his friend Callum.
‘I overheard two of them,’ said the dyslexic kid who would one day become her boyfriend, ‘saying something about a fire in town. But not just one. Loads of buildings are on fire. There were gunshots too. Maybe it’s a riot.’
Kate had not believed the bit about gunshots. She had learned a lot from the false rumours people had spread about her in mainstream. Exaggerations and blatant lies were unquestioningly believed in schools, while the truth was ignored for not being entertaining enough. But something was worrying their teachers…
‘OK,’ said Mark, returning Kate to the present. ‘Here we are.’
Kate realised how lucky she was that some sneaky clone hadn’t opened fire from around a corridor corner while she had been daydreaming. She’d have been dead before noticing any attackers. Of course, Ewan would have called it lack of due care and attention on Kate’s part, rather than luck.
Mark opened his locker in near-total silence, the clicks of his combination lock the loudest noise in the corridor except for Kate’s erratic breathing.
‘Can’t even see the numbers,’ Mark muttered. ‘I just know I put them to triple-zero whenever I locked it, so I know how many… here we go.’
The pained scrape of the metal locker sounded deafening to Kate’s sensitive ears. But the faint expression on Mark’s face showed his indifference to it.
‘Single malt,’ he said. ‘Scottish, twelve years old. Well, thirteen now.’
‘Malt?’ whispered Kate. ‘Isn’t that vinegar?’
‘Whisky.’
‘You brought alcohol into school?!’
‘Kate, I spent a year away from lessons after stabbing my dad in the leg. I was already set up to fail my exams, and my adulthood was screwed before it had even begun. When Grant took over I was about a month from leaving this graveyard. Thought I’d do some celebrating on my last day, in front of as many people as possible. What were they going to do, expel me?’
Kate could barely contain her disbelief. She looked at the walls, if only to make her face less visible to Mark. She could have sworn one of the pieces of artwork on the corridor wall was Simon’s, since it was as bright and vivid as his personality had been back then.
It was odd how the little things stuck in her head. Kate had also been looking at Simon’s artwork when the rumoured gunfire had reached Oakenfold Special School. Everyone was late for maths but none of the staff cared. They were all too busy with this mystery crisis that the students must not know about.
Until Judit Ciskal, one of the reception staff, broke the news. She was wounded, bleeding from her shoulder, and running full pelt down the corridor yelling at the students to hide. There had been screams and meltdowns and panic attacks at the sight of real blood and the promise of something dangerous in the school.
Kate remembered the sight of her first clone: the tall bald model, which she had seen a hundred times since in a hundred other clone soldiers. She had believed him to be a real human at the time. He had run around the distant corner in navy blue uniform, with an actual assault rifle in his hands. It had been a sight Kate had never seen before, and would never have expected in a school.
And wow, this clone had been angry. The type of angry she would later learn was built into their neurology, as Nathaniel Pearce had built his soldiers with ‘peace’ and ‘war’ settings. She had seen angry people before, but nobody with that kind of face…
Judit had stopped to bend over and help a frozen student to his feet. When the clone had got too close, she drew out a cutlery knife and went for him. And that was when the clone had shot her to death.