Justice (Chapter Two)

Chapter Two
The two women across from me were fully aware that I’d hardly slept in the last forty-eight hours and that the cuts on my face had received no medical attention. They were fully aware of all of that because they were Orange-Coats and Orange-Coats make it their business to know such things. I’d assumed I’d get Reds given the high numbers in the compounds, but maybe there were more Oranges than most people thought; it wasn’t like you could just Google those kinds of figures, not since Sense came to power anyway.
The smaller one looked like she was somewhere in her late thirties, but she had the type of bland face that made it impossible to tell for sure. A dark brown bob and strikingly severe fringe, along with an odd way of pouting her lips forwards in disapproval, were her defining characteristics. I tried to memorise her face; I knew it was unlikely that I’d ever learn her real name and I intended to contact Libertarious via Maggie with a description of her as soon as I was out of here. In all honesty, part of me wished that it was Maggie sitting here in my place; she would know exactly what to do, exactly what her rights were. But Maggie was in Sweden.
I looked on as The Fringe’s plump fingers padded their way through my electronic file. I rubbed my hands against the scratchy white overalls I’d been assigned. Whatever The Fringe was reading was bound to be related to the events of the last few months and, no doubt, to Dad.
The other one, over six foot and angular, didn’t seem at all interested in my details. Instead, she traced swirling shapes with the tip of her forefinger on the plastic-coated, red desk, never allowing her gaze to fall from my face. No matter how hard I tried to resist, my eyes were drawn to that finger and its hypnotic journeys. It was a poorly made prosthetic - the scarlet painted nail glued down and the skin an unconvincing shade of nude – the same colour as a plastic children’s doll. She moved it as if it were a pen rather than a part of her hand, some form of implement or tool. I could assume that staring at it would hardly get me on her good side, but the urge to follow those patterns was too strong. I doubted if Libertarious would have any difficulty in identifying someone like her; she was unique. The silence joined with those rhythmic loops. I wondered how she’d lost that finger –some weird initiation into the world of Orange-Coats, or perhaps a challenging Parasite interview? I constructed dramatic and improbable scenarios, anything to keep my mind off the situation and the layer of sweat rampantly breeding against my back. My fingers felt for the ring on my little finger. Round and round it went, skin wrenching against the metal. Unwittingly, we fell into a rhythm - her looping finger motions and my ring-twisting. The faintest of smiles encroached on the corners of her white, slug-like lips. I wedged both of my hands underneath my thighs and firmly planted my eyes on the floor. I could tell without looking that her red painted nail dance continued.
Last night, it had taken us five long hours in the van to arrive at this compound - five long hours of breathing the moisture of twenty strangers and listening to Shannon sobbing like a four year old in the corner.
I had a good idea of when we’d left London as the smell of burning had dissipated, but where we were after that, I had no idea. When they’d dragged us from the van, the freezing air became a jagged razor to my cut face. I pictured myself as looking like a refugee - my hair erupting in a tumble-weed of sweat and knots.
All around us square, grey buildings stood alert, like dormant pieces on a Chess board. A monolithic statue dominated the centre of the desolate forecourt- a cumbersome, tightened, concrete fist powering up into the grey winter’s morning. I took in my surroundings: about 30 visible Reds carrying tasers and guns; electric fences over twenty feet high; armoured vans rows deep, gates with jagged spikes seeping red paint and the distant, circling woods- a brown, uninviting stain on the horizon. I was trapped somewhere between a military barracks and a concentration camp.
The waiting Reds herded us into a line facing the colossal fist. They paced up and down, their voices hushed as they swapped shivering sheets of crisp white paper splattered with red lettering. Shannon’s breathless sobs crank up a gear. Perhaps one of the Reds would gag her? Furtively, I allowed my eyes to steal a glance along the line of Parasites and, for the first time, it truly struck me that I was a Parasite too – now classed as one of the morally corrupt of our country.
Apart from Shannon and I, there was only one other person who looked under eighteen, the rest were mostly older men in torn hoodies and a few women, one heavily pregnant. Up close, they seemed pretty pathetic. The guy who looked to be only a few years older than us was at the end of the line. He seemed oddly familiar. His skin was light brown, his hair shaved so short it was nothing more than a film against his scalp; the muscles in his forearms twitched with tension and annoyance. His eyebrow was pierced with a thick metal bar that somehow accentuated his angular facial features. I concluded that, for his type, he was probably considered attractive.
With little warning, the Reds ordered us to move. The young man kept his eyes down and his fists clenched as we were directed into the main building, through countless security points, eventually arriving in a stark, sterile processing area. He never looked at me, seemingly oblivious to my casual study, but then I wasn’t the type of girl that older guys tended to notice. Short, mousey and covered in moles. Anyway, in here I had more important things to worry about.
A hunched, grey haired Red at the desk took our names and details and, thankfully, Shannon stopped crying long enough to mutter the necessary. I missed his name, but it was when Clenched Fists gave his date of birth, and I worked out his age as seventeen, that I had a bolt of recognition. Was he part of Libertarious? Was he one of the members I’d liaised with on SKYPE? I clawed through my brain in frustration, but the connections in my memory refused to knit together.
My turn came and I pounded out my name, “Clara Knight.” I could have added, “Daughter of Simon Knight, the man you ruined,” but there seemed very little point.
Swiftly, the three of us were removed from the main group and shunted into a much smaller room by a pale-faced Red. Bright scarlet paint smothered the walls and shiny white tiles covered the floor –I almost laughed, even in a place like this, Sense was consistent with its colour scheme of choice. Without a brand you’re nothing – right? But, the laugh never materialised. I watched the Red pull a knife from his pocket and spring open the blade.
Shannon turned to me. I wondered what she expected me to do – tackle the knife from him with my bare hands? Her eyes were wide. Her stare held an accusation. I was the monster who’d gotten her mixed up in all of this. It struck me. Shannon belonged in a shopping centre trying out shades of lip gloss. She did not belong in a compound. Clenched Fists, on the other hand, somehow managed to adopt the laugh that had so rapidly left my own throat. His shoulders heaved with amusement as he made half-hearted attempts to stifle his contempt for what he seemed to regard as a knife failing to qualify as a serious weapon.
The combination of the blade, the white tiled floor and red walls brought to mind a nineteenth century operating theatre.
In one stride, the Red moved to the corner of the room, picked up a cardboard box and sliced the knife forcefully down one side. He wrenched it open. From inside the box, he handed each of us a set of white overalls wrapped in a thin, tacky plastic. He removed our cuffs. I felt a spasm of relief until he said,
“Strip and put these on. And you, I want that bag off your back.”
He left the room, locking the door behind him.
I held the overalls limply in my hand, turning to see how Clenched Fists was going to play this. He raised his pierced eyebrow, walked into the far corner, faced the wall and pulled his well-fitted T-shirt off. A huge black panther pounced from under the cloth, rippling from his shoulder blade down to the base of his spine, its tail twitching as his shoulder muscles moved. Its amber eyes met mine in an arrogant challenge and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the skill of the art work. However, my indulgence in urban body art appreciation halted when, with no hesitation, his hands moved down to his trousers and he unbuckled his belt.
“Shannon, get in that other corner and get changed. Quickly.”
She nodded and we both started to pull off our clothes –he seemed happy to play the gentleman for the moment, to keep his eyes on the wall in front of him, but I didn’t want to bet on how long that gallantry might last. I kept my eyes firmly on the dark red space in front of me. The chill in the room commanded speed; I didn’t allow myself to think about what he was doing behind me.
The Red returned, cuffed us and stuffed our clothes, and my rucksack, into a black bin bag.
“Follow me. You kiddies are in the five star pens.”
I’d thought they’d have to treat us differently, or at least humanely – I was just sixteen, but Shannon was still only fifteen. They’d have to be softer with us or they’d have to deal with Libertarious and there would be even more trouble on the streets. That is, if more trouble was even possible - the words ‘civil war’ had been bouncing around the internet for months now. The whole country was a war zone.
As we were leaving the room, Clenched Fists turned towards me and curled his lip, as if he were ashamed to be in the same category as two little white girls like us. Well, he might have thought he was some tough warrior, some Parasite leader, but he certainly wasn’t being treated like one; he was being taken to the five star kiddie pens just like us. He strutted out in front of me and, before I’d even fully processed the thought, my foot shot out and caught the back of his heel. I hardly realised I’d committed the act, until I saw him fall.
Clenched Fist’s body deflected off the Red’s back and he fell, face forwards, to the ground. I winced at the crack his head made as it hit the immaculate, white tiled floor. I’d forgotten he’d been cuffed. Unable to put out his hands to break his fall, he’d fallen like a padded carcass.
The Red yanked him up by his overalls and sneered against his face,
“Is that your idea of an escape? Moron.”
Clenched Fists drew himself up to his full height, shook his head and grinned,
“No. But this is.”
And his head connected with the Red’s pallid face in an almighty clout.
It happened quickly. A heave of blood ruptured from the Red’s nose. Clenched Fists sprinted towards the door at the end of the corridor. Shannon’s whine of terror slapped against my ears.
For someone with probable concussion, he moved with incredible athleticism. But, before he even got close, the door that was his escape route opened and a swarm of Reds stormed in, plugging their tasers into his skin and bringing him down in a convulsing heap. He twitched again and again. The black panther writhed faintly beneath his thin overalls. He didn’t make a sound. I turned my head away. As the Reds dragged him towards the door, I heard one of them state in a clipped, self-righteous voice,
“He deserves where he’s going.”
Shannon’s sunken eyes caught mine. She was clutching at her dyed blonde hair, tugging at the strands. If we made it through this, she was going to need more than one therapist to sort her out. I hoped her parents had medical cover.
“What will they do to him?” she said.
I ground my teeth, spitting the words in her direction,
“I don’t know. What’s it to you? I’ve got enough to deal with right now without worrying about the future of some panther-boy who thinks he’s hard enough to take on a whole compound.”
“But he didn’t think he was hard enough, you…”
The look stopped her from going any further – the look I’d perfected since the day we first met at The Manor. Some relationships never change. Shannon and I didn’t change. Her mouth, sensibly, closed.
Entering the pen was not a defining moment for me; it was as I’d expected. We’d all seen Sense’s television broadcasts, so when I walked into a small, square room with red walls, white tiles on the floor and nothing else, I wasn’t shocked. On the wall opposite the door, a black fist had been crudely painted onto the crimson backdrop – the ‘brand aware’ crew had clearly made their way in here too. The red paint smelled fresh and the tiles were newly laid: demand was high. Bare was an understatement. There were no seats, no blankets, no windows and no toilet. It was lucky I didn’t need to go. If this was a five star pen, I shuddered at the thought of the bargain varieties.
I put my hand up to touch my crystallising face, splinters of glass sticking to the blood, and wondered how bad the scar would be. When I’d asked the Red if I could see a doctor, he’d informed me that my right to medical care had ended when I had broken the law. From the look on his face, I thought better than to point out that I hadn’t been found guilty of anything - yet. Well, it wasn’t like I’d ever looked like a catwalk model. Maybe a scar would be character building. Yet, having said that, I didn’t particularly relish the idea of being called ‘Scarface’ for the rest of my life. I remembered reading somewhere that spit had antiseptic qualities, so I massaged up a globule in my mouth, spat it out into my hand and slowly patted it into the grainy cuts on my face.
Sat there for hour after hour, like a fly trapped in some enlarged barber shop sign, I almost felt at home. Over the last few months, I’d spent so much time thinking about Dad being held in some place like this that now I was here, I felt closer to him.
I sat on the tiles and wondered if it would be possible to transmit the agreed version of our story to Shannon via telepathy. Knowing her, she would confess to things she hadn’t even done if she thought it would make them leave her alone. I just had to pray that if we were both saying the same things, we’d get off lightly. But, most of all, I had to pray that the rucksack and its contents were in the process of being incinerated along with my clothes.
I was reasonably optimistic in some respects. Reds weren’t famous for being the brightest group of people. If all went well, we’d end up with something on our records, but we’d be able to get on with life as normal once all the drama had died down. I’d wait for calm and then I’d find another way. I wondered whether Mum knew where I was yet and if she’d dragged Greg in to this mess. But I didn’t want to think about that, especially not about Greg, not now.
Two plastic cups of water and two slices of bread were provided. I stuffed down the bread but tried to go without the water. Eventually, I drank both cups. It tasted of swimming pool chemicals and stale toothpaste. An hour later I had to squat down over the drain.
They left me in the pen until the next day, far longer than I’d anticipated. Then the pale-faced Red, his nose swollen from the previous day’s encounter with Clenched Fists, arrived to take me to the interview room. I’d been so bored in the pen, I’d almost relished the thought of being interviewed – at least I would be one step closer to getting out. Yet, when I walked in and saw those tangerine jackets, I’d realised that something was deeply wrong. Orange-Coats didn’t bother themselves with teenage girls; they had links to intelligence and, some said, were in direct contact with the Grey-Coats.
At the threshold of the room, I’d wanted to turn and run. Instead, I made my way over to the shiny, cherry-red stool and sat down opposite the two women. I wondered if Shannon was being interviewed by Oranges too, or if this was because they’d made all the connections that I’d prayed they wouldn’t.
Finally, the Orange with the ruler-straight fringe placed her tablet deliberately to one side and pushed her pouty little lips forwards.
“Well Clara, I’ve read your file with great interest. Please enlighten me as to how you come to be in this situation.”
I was ready. I knew the story.
“I just got caught up in it. It’s all a misunderstanding, you see. Is Mum here yet? Shouldn’t she be here before you start the questions?”
“Yes dear, before Sense we did need to wait for a parent or guardian, but not anymore. I’m sure that you can see the benefit of the new 12.32 rule – it means that we don’t have to waste time waiting for parents and guardians to put their, shall we say ‘versions’, into the heads of their little charges. You’ll find the system is much faster and better equipped to deal with these situations now. So, please explain to my colleague and myself, how exactly you became involved in the rebellion of last night.”
Fake Finger carried on staring, gently tracing her mystery patterns, her pasty face tinged gut-pink by the glowing walls. I kept my focus on The Fringe.
“I was in London with a friend, Shannon – you’ve got her here somewhere. We were looking for a party – a big house party. The whole thing was ridiculous; we shouldn’t have been there, that was stupid of us. I admit it. We should have obeyed the TV announcements. We were looking for the party and the next thing we knew, there were police everywhere, fires going off and crazy people running down the streets, smashing windows. So, we tried to hide behind some boxes. We were frightened, really frightened, so we ran. And I think the police thought we were part of the Parasite trouble so they arrested us by mistake, shoved us in a van and brought us here and that’s it.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, that’s it. I could have told all of this to someone yesterday and I would be home by now. I shouldn’t be here and neither should Shannon. We just got caught up being in the wrong place at the wrong time, do you see? We’re just wasting everyone’s time.”
“I think I’ll decide if that’s the case. Well, thank you Clara. That’s very helpful and very concise– wouldn’t you say so Orange 243?”
Fake Finger nodded very slowly, her black hair pulled so tightly against her scalp that the motion seemed to tug her skin in to a taut mask. I tried not to look at her and returned to The Fringe.
I made my eyes as wide-eyed and innocent as the biology of my body would allow. I probably wasn’t fooling anyway, but it was worth a shot.
“When did you say Mum was getting here?”
“I didn’t. I’m not sure your Mother will arrive before we finish our conversation. We have informed her of the recent events though. Now, would you like to tell me about the rucksack that was found in your possession?”
Oh great.
“I found that bag when we were hiding, I mean, when we were taking cover, and I just picked it up when we thought we were being attacked. I have no idea what’s in it. I just picked it up as some kind of reflex reaction. Did it have anything significant in it?”
The fringe burst into sarcasm.
“How illuminating Clara. Are you claiming that you are unaware as to the contents of the rucksack? A rucksack that contained files on discs that could, if misinterpreted, cause some difficulty in relation to your late father, Simon Knight? Are you denying all knowledge?”
“Look, I didn’t know anything about them – honestly. What was this information about Dad? Anything I should know about?”
We both knew I was lying but ‘circumstantial’ is such a beautiful word. The Fringe’s lips pulled together. Her voice dropped.
“Anything you should know about? Well, that rather depends. You know that your father was an enemy to Sense and to this country? That can’t have escaped you. You are aware, I suppose, that someone had entered a government building and had stolen the discs on the night that you were arrested?”
“No. I had no idea. That’s a strange co-incidence; they must have thrown the bag right where Shannon and I were taking shelter.”
“Really? Are you quite sure about that?”
I kept my eyes down and I nodded. My options were somewhat limited. I added a gentle Shannon-esque sob for good measure.
“Honestly, this is all a terrible mistake.”
“Well, thank you for your version of events Clara.”
She slipped her tablet into its case. Were they stopping? Was I getting out of here even though they’d been through the discs and it was obvious I was lying through my teeth?
“I’m always glad to be of service, to help Sense in any way that I can. Am I going home? Can I go and wait for Mum now? Can I see Shannon?”
“I’m sure that something can be arranged. But, you are quite sure that you have told us the complete truth about your experience in London, aren’t you? It would be awkward for us to have to rewrite our reports if it were later discovered that you had omitted, shall we say, some details. All of our reports go up to Grey-Coat level and we wouldn’t want to waste their time – I doubt if they would appreciate it.”
I sighed, pretending to feel exasperated by the whole process. What would Maggie say?
“Yep, I’m sure. We tried to go to a party. We got lost. We hid when the riots, I mean Parasite-trouble, started and I found a bag. We only ran because we were frightened. I’m 16 and I’m innocent of whatever it is you’re accusing me of and I would like a doctor to look at my face. This is ridiculous and I am quite certain that you are in breach of my human rights.”
The Fringe pouted her lips and flicked up a pencil thin eye-brow,
“Well, Clara, I will note your comments and you must excuse us if we ask you to wait back in your pen for the meantime; we are rather busy at the moment – the trouble of last night has been suppressed, but only at a cost to compound space. Sense appreciates your co-operation.”
As if on some unseen cue, Fake Finger stopped her swirling dance and tapped her false nail against the table once. Her chair shot backwards and her full height became apparent. She was monstrously tall. She walked towards the door, opened it and stood aside, an ice sculpture in waiting. I edged around her, my eye-line up against the black fist of Sense on her uniform, and followed the waiting Red back to my pen. Had it really that easy?
As the door to the pen opened, I could see I had a visitor.