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  About the Book

  I am a Lotto Girl. I should not be here. Why haven’t they come for me?

  Fern Marlow is alone, datawiped and in hiding. Her mobie says she’s Delia Greene, a ReCorp refuse sorter. Every day she queues for work, to earn just enough to stay alive. Every night she dreams of the past and the life she’s meant to be living, back at Halston, an exclusive school for those wealthy enough – or lucky enough – to be genetically designed.

  Her rescuers said her former life was a lie, that she can trust no one. They also said they’d come back for her, and they haven’t.

  Fern doesn’t know who to believe. To uncover the truth, and save herself, Fern must answer the one question she can’t face. Is she special?

  ‘Terrifying, prophetic and beautiful’ – James Bradley, author of Clade

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Georgia Blain

  Copyright Notice

  I thought I saw Lark tonight. I stood transfixed, staring up at the night sky, as she shimmered, translucent, ghost-like, a small child emerging from the river and singing, her throat white in the moonlight, her voice golden like honey.

  I almost called her name. I almost reached for her, but it wasn’t real. It wasn’t Lark. It was a mediastream I’d created long ago. It pulsed and glowed against all the others that light up the evening, and then it was gone.

  I closed my eyes, wanting to imprint the image on my mind. Her face floated in front of me, so hard to remember clearly. Details, I told myself, using them to build the whole. But even they were hard to grasp. We used to joke about the slight squint in her right eye, just as we joked about my unruly hair and Ivy’s knock-knees and Wren’s large feet. We wondered whether these small imperfections had actually been kept on purpose. Our parents might have wanted us to be interesting, we told ourselves, although we knew their choices were limited. Still, it was becoming far more fashionable – a flash of the unusual providing just the right balance to the perfection, so we tried to take pride in our quirks and pretend that they, too, were special.

  Around me the roads were busy. People pushing carts, families crowded onto mopeds, vendors selling misshapen food items – the rejects from BioPerfect’s labs that had made their way to this outer precinct.

  Breath held tight in my chest, hands clenched, I waited, wanting to keep that image of her. Dust choked the darkness, swirls of grit and dirt and sweat illuminated by the constant sweep of mediastreams. Newsflashes and announcements of the Parents’ successes interspersed with attempts to keep us entertained – comedies, dramas, music – all beamed into the thick filth of the sky; hazy and insubstantial as they competed for attention, trying to entice us to select them on our mobies, to view now or later. You know what they are, but they still drive you crazy.

  I waited for her to reappear until it became too hard to resist the press of the crowd. I gave up and walked back to the compound, wondering whether it had actually been that image of her or whether I had simply seen what I wanted to see.

  When I enter the courtyard it is crowded; families cooking in shared woks, animals lurking in alleyways, young children playing games. Those like myself, who in the old world would be too young to vote or have sex or drink, are clustered together, gossiping.

  ‘Hey,’ Chimo calls out, a hand raised in greeting, a brilliant smile revealing white, even teeth that look like they belong to a child of Halston and not a ReCorp trash sifter. ‘Come and sit with us, oh laydee one.’ He pats the upturned tin next to him, chewing on a BeefHide square. He winks slowly, before standing and bowing, the dark gold of his skin glistening in the heat.

  I usually ignore Chimo – I ignore all of them – and go straight to my room to eat, unwilling to make friends in a place I don’t belong.

  Chimo knows what my response will be. ‘It’s not good for you to be alone,’ he continues. He waves a hand around the compound. ‘See – we all need each other.’

  I’m about to shake my head and keep walking, but my increasing desire for company tugs at me, and beneath that there is a fear. There is always a fear.

  Chimo helped me when I first arrived. I had nothing but my mobie to tell me who and where I was:

  Name: Delia Greene

  Age: 17

  Occupation: Refuse sorter

  Location: ReCorp Compound 978, Room 4001

  Credit and debt details were attached along with a summary of data available, as were medical records, education and an entire history of data mining that had been fabricated to map out this person I did not know: Delia Greene.

  There are many like me – people who have been datawiped, re-emerging with a completely new identity in an overcrowded compound where we all queue for work each day, crushed by the endless piles of the lost, the discarded, the used and the useless; rubbish to be sorted.

  ‘Follow me,’ Chimo had hissed in my ear that first morning. He’d reached for my mobie and I’d given it to him without thinking. ‘You’re in my unit,’ he’d said, looking back at me. ‘Datawiped?’

  I shook my head. I had been told to trust no one. ‘My compound collapsed.’

  His gaze didn’t shift. Reaching into his bag, he handed me a WheatRound. I accepted it gratefully, and the warmth of his hand on mine made me want to trust him. ‘So you were relocated?’

  I nodded.

  He smiled then, my first glimpse of those beautiful white teeth and the sparkle in his eyes as he joked, which he likes to do. ‘You’re one hell of a fancy for a ReCorp citizen. Our only laydee.’ He drew out that last word, and I found myself smiling back at him. ‘You must have been bad to end up here.’ He tut-tutted, his face suddenly serious. ‘It can be a tough landing. If you need anything, ask.’

  I met his eyes for a brief instant and then looked away.

  Chimo’s friends regard me with the same wary look most mornings and evenings. Sala is by his side. Her short hair gives her a boyish appearance, but her long dark eyelashes and small waist are disconcertingly feminine. She turns from me to Chimo and back again, her hand on his knee.

  ‘Join us?’ Chimo asks again, making room for me on the bench.

  The night is hot. Heavy, choking air hangs low, still and oppressive. Upstairs my room has one window, smaller than the pillow I had at Halston. I opened it on my first night, all two inches, the metal frame grating as I tried to shift it further, concrete crumbling. I haven’t been able to close it since. In the corner there’s a single gas burner, a tin plate, knife and fork, cup and saucepan. Next to that is my water allowance, and on the other side, a chair. The previous occupant had sewn small patches of cloth onto it – each one a scrap of beauty smuggled back from the sorting facility; dusty roses on cornflower-bl
ue, a hibiscus petal, a sliver of peacock-green velvet and, most precious of all, a strip of blue satin running around the skirt. That chair is the only joy in the bleak room, and I have tried once or twice to sleep in it, only to give up and roll out my thin rubber mattress.

  I could go up to that room and cook the reject ShrimpRice, the smell filling the room, the heat rising, until I am forced to turn it off before it’s ready. I could eat with the image of Lark floating before me, as flimsy as a projection on gauze, her face merging with Wren’s and Ivy’s; all four of us together again at Halston. I could lie in the dark, my head light and fast as it tries to bring the pieces together and lay them out, neat, orderly; a progression that will soon take me back to where I used to belong.

  I’m angry. She told us to wait. She said they would come back for us, but it’s been almost a year now, with not even a whisper of comfort. I don’t want to walk up and down that single room, looking out at the lights of the streets below until the midnight shutdown brings the welcome relief of black. I don’t want to keep pacing until power is restored, the grind and hum as electricity throbs through the veins of these old buildings, and those of us who try for the morning shift at ReCorp wake, ready to queue.

  I don’t want to be alone.

  I turn to Chimo for the first time and say thank you, I’d like to join them.

  He is still for a moment, before stepping backwards in exaggerated surprise. ‘At last.’ He grins, eyes black as the silt of a coal slack. ‘Our food is your food.’ He reaches for a tin plate, rinsing it in their bucket of water and flicking it dry before handing it to Sala, who takes it reluctantly.

  ‘You’ll contribute tomorrow night?’ she asks, though I know it’s not a question.

  It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice, velvet-soft and deep.

  ‘Of course she will,’ Chimo says. ‘Delia is one of us now.’

  I stay with them, out in the courtyard, eating hungrily with my fingers, listening to their talk, grateful for this reprieve from my solitude.

  ‘Sleep down here,’ Chimo offers when I thank them for feeding me. He touches my leg briefly, his fingers tracing a fine line across my skin.

  I shake my head and go. I have to return to my room before I speak words I will regret.

  I am not Delia Greene. I should not be here. Why haven’t they come for me?

  Upstairs I close my door and sink to the floor, knees to chest. I open my mouth, wanting to shout out my despair.

  Instead, I log onto the Wastelands – the data dump where the sheer volume of content guarantees anonymity, where people go to talk, to throw their hopes and dreams, their despair, their pain, their loneliness, a great tangle and mess of words that cannot be unravelled – and I start to tell this story. The names are changed. So are the locations. As for the rest? It’s up to you to decide what to believe.

  We were only five when we were sent to Halston, the youngest that you were allowed to be. We were the Lotto Girls, lucky winners chosen every seven years.

  My parents, like millions of others, had bought tickets in the hope of winning the chance to genetically design a gifted child through BioPerfect – a privilege usually reserved for the extremely wealthy. Such a child would be given the very best education. His or her future was as assured as could be: a Lotto child would find well-paid work, would live in a comfortable home, would be able to look after their family. They would also possess the best genetic material to pass onto children of their own, should they be unable to afford a design.

  Unbelievably, my parents won. The announcement and their delight is documented in a mediastream, as is my birth, my first birthday and my first day at Halston.

  I grew up seeing the images of me, Lark, Wren and Ivy standing at the entrance, stiff in our new uniforms, the sun in our eyes. (The theme for our year was clearly flora and fauna – a BioPerfect ploy to make our stories even more sellable.) Each of us was overwhelmed by the dazzling sweep of the river, the rolling lawns, the trees that seemed to reach into new worlds, their trunks smooth and pale, their leaves rustling like tissue against a clear sky unlike any other we had seen.

  I was standing next to Ivy. The images show her clutching my sleeve, her knuckles white on the starched navy blazer.

  I remember her crying, her face red and angry as she told Miss Margaret that she wanted to go home.

  ‘She’s highly strung,’ Ivy’s mother apologised, turning back one more time to kiss her daughter and hold her close. ‘I’ve heard intelligent children are. But you know this … Of course you know this. She feels too much. When it’s channelled it will be a gift. It is a gift.’

  Miss Margaret took Ivy’s hand in her own. She knelt down to look directly into her eyes. ‘How old are you, Ivy?’ she asked.

  Ivy held up one hand and then put her thumb in her mouth.

  ‘Do you know why you are here?’

  Ivy nodded.

  ‘You are special – very special – and we are going to take special care of you here, in this beautiful place. Isn’t it a beautiful place?’

  Wren, who was standing behind Ivy, started to cry then.

  ‘I know it feels strange,’ Miss Margaret told us, ‘but soon it will feel like home. Soon you’ll love Halston – all the girls do. And they will take care of you too, like big sisters. Like a family.’ She glanced up at our parents and beckoned them forward. ‘Now, my girls,’ she told us, her voice soothing, ‘I want each of you to say goodbye. When you are done, I have a special reward for you. Who likes ice-cream?’

  We looked at her. I was the first to put up my hand. My family had been sent BioPerfect treats on each of my birthdays, food unlike any that had ever reached our compound. In fact, all our meals had been supplied by BioPerfect – or, rather, my meals had been supplied. My parents had occasionally cut out small portions for my brother, Lewis. The one time I had dared to complain, the disappointment on my mother’s face had been enough to silence me. In my shame, I’d offered him my portion as well. He’d refused, never eating another BioPerfect meal again.

  ‘Who would like to design their own ice-cream flavour?’ Miss Margaret squeezed my hand. ‘How about the Fern rosecake?’ She turned to Lark. ‘Lark’s luscious licorice?’

  Ivy joined in then. ‘Ivy’s chocolate bomb!’

  Miss Margaret smoothed Ivy’s hair. ‘And Wren’s caramel candy.’

  Ivy began to jump up and down. ‘Can we eat as much as we like?’

  ‘As much as you like,’ Miss Margaret promised.

  I don’t remember saying goodbye to my parents, and there was nothing in the mediastream documenting the farewells. I know Ivy cried again, screaming as Miss Margaret extracted her from her mother’s legs. I was embarrassed. Lark and Wren also cried, but their distress was more restrained. I think I would have just kissed my parents dutifully, excited at the prospect of this new life I was embarking on, one that had been promised to me for as long as I could remember. I had always felt distant from my family, but this is probably not surprising. I had been told that I was destined for something better. I needed to live in a place where my gifts could truly flourish.

  Miss Margaret was our Halston mother and would remain so until the day we left. She told us this that first afternoon as we sat in the kitchens, eating our self-designed treats.

  ‘I’m here to look after you,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it can be difficult being away from home.’ She turned to Ivy. ‘It can take some adjustment.’ Miss Margaret bent down and kissed her on the cheek, Ivy blushing with pleasure as she did so. ‘You are each wonderful to me. I know you a little already from your datastreams, but I am so looking forward to really getting to know you.’ She tried our ice-creams, professing each one to be perfection. ‘What clever girls you are,’ she exclaimed, and we delighted in her praise.

  She was older than my mother but her skin was softer, less worn, and her eyes were clear and bright, grey in some lights, green in others, and constant in their kindness.

  When we’d finished
eating, it was time to show us our rooms.

  ‘See,’ Miss Margaret explained, ‘they form a circle around mine, along with the rooms where my older girls sleep.’

  ‘It isn’t really a circle,’ I whispered, desperate to show that I was worthy of such a place. ‘The walls would need to be curved.’

  ‘You’re quite right,’ she agreed, and she put her hand on my shoulder. ‘You girls are particularly special,’ she told us. ‘You are Lotto Girls and there is nothing to be ashamed of. If anything, you are more blessed than all the others here. Good fortune shone on you.’

  I loved her then. Her face seemed to be alive with a gentle warmth, like she was the sun and I was unfurling towards that radiance. She smelt like a freshly baked cake, I thought, and I wanted her to love me.

  On our first night, as Lark and I lay side by side under crisp cotton sheets, the windows open to a sweet clover-scented breeze, I didn’t feel homesick at all. Perhaps it was because I had always been told that this was where I belonged.

  ‘I like our room,’ I whispered to Lark.

  She looked across at me, her thumb in her mouth, a doll clutched under one arm, and I wondered whether she was crying.

  ‘Can we be friends?’ I asked.

  She nodded and then lifted her blanket. I got out of my own bed and crept into hers.

  ‘I miss my home,’ she told me. ‘I promised I would be brave but I’m not.’

  I asked her the name of her doll and she told me it was Treble Clef. I giggled and so did she.