The footage has been streamed around the world, of course.
That’s just what technology does these days. He’ll be fine, of course. He’s on a plane to Monaco tomorrow and has more than enough assets to recoup any losses. It’s just a question of how the Company views these things, the board as a whole. When Philip became a liability they had to get rid of Philip and now Simon is…
He’s fine.
He’ll be fine.
He’s fine.
His secretary phones, and asks if he wants to take the helicopter to the airport. He instinctively opens his mouth to say yes, then changes his mind and says he might drive instead.
They claim asylum at the Scottish border, and are put into a transit house just north of Kirtlebridge.
They sign the paperwork as father, mother and daughter, only because it’ll make it easier for the officials to…
only because of that.
Lucy rereads Theo’s letter a couple of times when she thinks he isn’t looking.
They have bread and jam for supper, and he sleeps in the men’s wing, and Heidi asks if she can pay for a hotel, and Lucy’s given her own private room for kids, which has pictures of steam trains and dinosaurs on the wall, which she finds patronising but gets over quickly enough because actually it’s sorta…
Three days later, as they sit on the coach to Glasgow, she says:
“If I wanted to do a DNA thing, like, to test for—could I do that?”
“Yes.”
“And if you weren’t then…”
“I’ll help you find your dad, whoever he is. There’s a man in Shawford, he’s—but it’s your call, I mean, whenever you’re…”
“Cool. Good. And it’s not weird I mean it’s not like…”
“This is your world. There’s a whole time, there was this time before and there is this time now and the future sometimes it seems that these things only exist now, as we remember and imagine, it is only now that we experience all of these things not then and not the yet to come, but the future—it’s yours, the future is yours to choose and make and build and it shall be a future of your living and it is…”
At the beginning and ending of all things.
Later, it started to snow.
EXTRAS
Meet the Author
CLAIRE NORTH is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb, a Carnegie Medal–nominated author whose first book was written when she was just fourteen years old. She went on to write several other novels in various genres, before publishing her first major work as Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, in 2014. It was a critically acclaimed success, receiving rave reviews and an Audie nomination, and was one of the Washington Post’s Best Books of the Year. In 2017, she won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for The Sudden Appearance of Hope. Catherine currently works as a theatre lighting designer and is a fan of big cities, urban magic, Thai food and graffiti-spotting.
A Preview of One of Us
They call him Dog.
Enoch is a teenage boy growing up in a rundown orphanage in Georgia during the 1980s. Abandoned from the moment they were born, Enoch and his friends are different. People in the nearby town whisper that the children from the orphanage are monsters.
The orphanage is not a happy home. Brutal teachers, farm labor, and communal living in a crumbling plantation house are Enoch’s standard day to day. But he dreams of growing up to live among the normals as a respected man. He believes in a world less cruel, one where he can be loved.
One night, Enoch and his friends share a campfire with a group of normal kids. As mutual fears subside, friendships form, and living together doesn’t seem so out of reach.
But then a body is found, and it may be the spark that ignites revolution.
On the principal’s desk, a copy of Time. A fourteen-year-old girl smiling on the cover. Pigtails tied in blue ribbon. Freckles and big white teeth. Rubbery, barbed appendages extended from her eye sockets.
Under that, a single word: WHY?
Why did this happen?
Or, maybe, why did the world allow a child like this to live?
What Dog wanted to know was why she smiled.
Maybe it was just reflex, seeing somebody pointing a camera at her. Maybe she liked the attention, even if it wasn’t the nice kind.
Maybe, even if just for a few seconds, she felt special.
The Georgia sun glared through filmy barred windows. A steel fan whirred in the corner, barely moving the warm, thick air. Out the window, Dog spied the old rusted pickup sunk in a riot of wildflowers. Somebody loved it once then parked it here and left it to die. If Dog owned it, he would have kept driving and never stopped.
The door opened. The government man came in wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a blue-and-yellow tie. Hair slicked back with gel. His shiny shoes clicked across the grimy floor. He sat in Principal Willard’s creaking chair and lit a cigarette. Dropped a file folder on the desk and studied Dog through a blue haze.
“They call you Dog,” he said.
“Yes, sir, they do. The other kids, I mean.”
Dog growled when he talked but took care to form each word right. The teachers made sure he spoke good and proper. Brain once told him these signs of humanity were the only thing keeping the children alive.
“Your Christian name is Enoch. Enoch Davis Bryant.”
“Yes, sir.”
Enoch was the name the teachers at the Home used. Brain said it was his slave name. Dog liked hearing it, though. He felt lucky to have one. His mama had loved him enough to at least do that for him. Many parents had named their kids XYZ before abandoning them to the Homes.
“I’m Agent Shackleton,” the government man said through another cloud of smoke. “Bureau of Teratological Affairs. You know the drill, don’t you, by now?”
Every year, the government sent somebody to ask the kids questions. Trying to find out if they were still human. Did they want to hurt people, ever have carnal thoughts about normal girls and boys, that sort of thing.
“I know the drill,” Dog said.
“Not this year,” the man told him. “This year is different. I’m here to find out if you’re special.”
“I don’t quite follow, sir.”
Agent Shackleton planted his elbows on the desk. “You’re a ward of the state. More than a million of you. Living high on the hog for the past fourteen years in the Homes. Some of you are beginning to show certain capabilities.”
“Like what kind?”
“I saw a kid once who had gills and could breathe underwater. Another who could hear somebody talking a mile away.”
“No kidding,” Dog said.
“That’s right.”
“You mean like a superhero.”
“Yeah. Like Spider-Man, if Spider-Man half looked like a real spider.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” Dog said.
“If you, Enoch, have capabilities, you could prove you’re worth the food you eat. This is your opportunity to pay it back. Do you follow me?”