“Maybe so, but you can’t expect me just to accept it now that I have. I can’t, Dad. I just can’t.”
“But you don’t have a choice,” he said. Again they remained in silence, her staring at her feet and him staring at his hands. Lies were easier believed when they were told convincingly, she thought. She had read that somewhere. She always knew he was being truthful when he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye. When he couldn’t handle her judgement. “Regardless of how you feel, this whole charade of yours of going backwards and forwards to whichever tower it is,” he raised his finger again, “has to stop. If I find out who is helping you I’ll…..”
“You’ll what? Cut their oxygen rations?”
“I don’t know what you think you know about the other towers, Emily, but here in Omega Tower there are rules. We must abide by them. However you convinced one of the Coordinators to take you I’ll never know.”
“Guardians, Dad. They call them Guardians.”
“What if you are seen?”
“What if I am?” She considered the words already on her tongue, and before she could stop herself she was already saying, “Maybe I already have been.”
“What?” he screamed as he reached forward and took her chin in his hand. He gripped her so hard she bit the inside of her cheek and the metallic taste of blood streamed into her mouth. “We’ll talk about that in the morning. You won’t be going anywhere until then. Got it?” He released her from his grip, shoving her backwards and she ended up lying in a heap on her bed. She swallowed the blood in her mouth and suddenly felt hungry. It was hours since she had eaten. He snatched the control panel away from her bedside table. He was fast, and although she reached out to intercept him she missed, and instead slipped forward in time to see him holding it in his hands. “The first thing,” he said, pressing one of the glass icons. A sun. “This has to go. I can’t watch it, and I will not have you watch it either like some sort of prisoner.” Before she could say anything the room filled with sunlight, golden shards of it pouring through, refracting through the glass. It was close to sunset. She saw the greenery in the background, the oversized clouds which were made up of so many colours they hurt her eyes. “This is how your room will stay. Do not let me catch you with that old programme. I’m going to have it uninstalled.”
“Then I’ll never come home.”
“With that attitude, you’ll never go out. I’ll keep you locked here until you face up to it. Until you are begging for the opportunity that I have given you.”
“Like a prisoner,” she said, slumping down on her bed.
“You’re the one that always says you want to know how it must feel for them. I’ll teach you. See if you like their life any better than you do yours. I’m pretty sure you’ll soon know what’s for the best.” He slid the control panel into his suit pocket. He was one of the few people who still dressed like a person from the old world. He wore a suit each day. Today was a tweed jacket and casual trousers. His evening wear. He only wore Republic issued clothes during presidential engagements.
“I’m already a prisoner,” she spat, her lips stained red with blood. He noticed but ignored it, and pressed on regardless.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said as he tapped a series of icons on the control panel until music could be heard filtering through the walls. Music of nature, panpipe music with the occasional interjection of a bird singing. Something that would have once been played in a spa. “There, that’s better.”
“If it wasn’t for you I could have had a life. A real life.” She wiped her lip with the back of her hand, sweeping a streak of blood across her cheek.
“If it wasn’t for me you’d already be dead.”
“Like Grandpa, who you killed,” she shouted as he turned to leave the room. “And when Mum dies you will have killed her too.” He stopped, his hand gripping the door handle, his jaw bone clenched and his teeth set together. “You’re the reason the war started.”
“That’s very unfair, Emily,” he said, his words flat and emotionless, but he knew he was teetering on the brink of disaster. She could always do this to him. She could always break him. It was so easy for a daughter to slice you apart when you managed to be strong against the rest of the world. “The only reason anybody survived is because of what I did.”
He stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut. She jumped off the bed and tried the door handle. She was too slow. He had locked her in. She drummed her fists against the door and screamed, “No, Dad. You are the only reason that anybody died.” She slipped down the door, the earliest of tears forming in her eyes.
She didn’t know that her father was also on the floor, their heads pressed together, separated only by the door that he had trapped her behind. She didn’t know he was still listening as she said, “You’re the reason the war started, and you’re the reason why for everybody who survived, it will never end.”
Chapter Ten
Zack couldn’t concentrate for the next series of bells and alarms. On occasion he would realise that he was still working even when the next shift had begun, and then later in his room he would find himself still lying on his bed staring at the sky when the bell had sounded for him to be back at the water treatment plant. The Tenth Creed: Every Citizen of New Omega shall work for a better future without complaint or malaise. Since he met Emily, the rules had started to feel breakable.
There were two main problems on his mind that he couldn’t, no matter what he tried, shift from his conscious thought. The first was how Emily had slipped into Delta, at least the sublevels, and then mysteriously slipped away again, even though everywhere was either boarded up or tightly controlled by Guardians. But the second was altogether more troubling. Why the hell would she be here?
Everybody in Delta wanted to escape. Everybody wanted out. There were those on the highest levels who were doing it with drugs. There were those who spent all their credits on lottery numbers, desperately hoping to be selected for redistribution into Omega. There were those who did it in the sublevels with beakers of Moonshine and in the embrace of a woman like Roxanna. And then there were those who did it through denial, by keeping their head down, doing what they could to survive. But all of them wanted the same thing. They all wanted out. People from Omega just didn’t come to a place like Delta Tower. The towers were there to serve, to provide, to be regulated and controlled. Delta Tower didn’t offer anything that Omega Tower didn’t already have.
The oxygen was produced by Alpha Tower. This is what made Alpha Citizens so precious. The delivery of oxygen to Delta Tower came every sixth shift, the gas pumped through giant pipes that cut through the sky, just as it was to each tower. The previous lotteries, with the only exception the first ever draw, had all been won by Alpha residents. Alpha was rumoured to be almost as good as Omega inside, with Community Levels rather than Mess Rooms, shops spend credits, and food so good that nobody ever went hungry. He had heard they only worked one shift a day. Zack wasn’t sure he believed it, though.
Delta was the water tower, and it too had its delivery quotas to meet. It was from these delivery quotas that people had started to estimate the size of the other towers. If you knew how much water they used it was easy to guess which of the towers must contain the most citizens. Epsilon was the largest, save Omega Tower. These guesses were was also where the rumours about the deaths in Gamma Tower had originated. Their water supply had been suspended for a while, but then after six missed deliveries they had been instructed to resume water transportation. The delivery quantities had been halved. The previous residents couldn’t have survived on half a water supply. Not unless there were half the number of citizens. The supply to Omega was over ten times the size of Epsilon.