Maisie Wingfield didn’t know what to do with herself. It had been her own stupid fault for going to check on the miserable little blighters, she realised, but how was she to have known what she’d find? Seeing as she was on night duty, she’d decided to give that Surplus a little warning before Mrs Pincent got back, a word in her ear that she better not let on about their run-in, else there’d be more trouble.
And now . . . well, now she was going to have to tell Mrs Pincent. Tell her that the horrors had got out. They were demons, that’s what they were, Maisie thought to herself fretfully. Pulling themselves up the wall and into that little hole. Those Surpluses had no business existing, let alone running away like that.
‘They never got out, did they?’ Susan, another Domestic and Maisie’s confidante, stared at her with her mouth open. ‘You tellin’ me that they’ve escaped?’
Maisie looked at her uncomfortably.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said firmly. ‘Wasn’t me what put them in Solitary. An’ Surpluses ain’t got no business being on the Smalls’ floor either. Mrs Pincent’s idea, that was. So it’s her fault, really.’
Susan looked at her dubiously, and Maisie continued defiantly, ‘Hasn’t Mrs P always said that Surpluses isn’t to go on Floor 3 on account of them getting a soft spot for the Smalls or worrying about them when they oughtn’t to be worrying ’bout anything except doing what they’s been told to do and feeling bad about even existing? That little cow Anna should’ve been given the belt, not put up there. That’s what should’ve happened.’
‘You goin’ to tell her that?’ Susan asked.
Maisie shivered. She’d thought Mrs Pincent was still away. She’d been going to leave her a note, just slip it under her door or something. But then she’d been on her way to do it, and Mrs Pincent had come in through the back door with a gentleman. They’d swept into her office, like it was the middle of the day not four o’clock in the morning, and Maisie had run back down the corridor towards the kitchen, which was where she was now.
‘I’m goin’ to go now,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Unless you want to tell her? Since you’re on duty an’ all?’
Susan shook her head incredulously. ‘You can forget that idea right away,’ she said immediately. ‘I’ve got breakfasts to make, thank you very much. You just go and get it over and done with. And I’ll make you a cup of tea for after.’
Maisie stood up.
‘Right you are,’ she said, trembling slightly. ‘They should put them Surpluses down,’ she muttered to herself angrily. As she left the kitchen, she shot a last, panicky look at Susan, then made her way towards Mrs Pincent’s office. ‘Stop them getting Legal people like me into bother like this. It isn’t right. It isn’t right at all.’
She hesitated before approaching the door. Maisie didn’t like trouble. Never had. As far as she was concerned, you did your job, you kept your head down and made sure you got paid, end of every week. So long as that pay cheque kept topping up her bank account, giving her enough funds to buy cream cakes, pints of cider at the local pub and comfortable shoes for her aching feet, she was happy. Grange Hall gave her all those things and a roof over her head to boot, and if that meant having to put up with those horrible screaming Surplus Smalls, well, that was a price she was willing to pay. She’d never asked for anything, never wanted more than she could provide for herself. She wasn’t interested in promotion, or anything like that.
No, she was a simple sort of a person, really. Just a hard-working Legal, trying to make something of her life. And for a Surplus to get her into trouble – particularly a Surplus who spoke to her like she did, like she was the Legal, like she was better than her (Maisie grimaced at the thought) – well, she would have to make it clear to Mrs Pincent that she just wouldn’t stand for it. Yes, she was going to speak her mind, tell her that it wasn’t her fault Mrs Pincent couldn’t keep them under control.
Arriving at the door, Maisie took a deep breath, knocked loudly and waited.
‘Come in.’
Maisie tentatively opened the door and stepped into Mrs Pincent’s office. It was a horrid, cold room, she thought to herself. The kind of room that sucked the soul out of you. Must’ve sucked the soul out of Mrs Pincent, that’s for sure, because the woman didn’t have one scrap of soul left. You could tell by looking at her eyes, if you ever dared, that was. They were black, beady, and lifeless. One peek was enough – you didn’t want to go looking into eyes like that for too long.
Right now, they were worse than normal, she noticed apprehensively. They looked outraged and angry. Maisie supposed that whatever it was that Mrs Pincent had been doing at this time of night probably wasn’t something she wanted people knowing about.
‘What is it, Maisie?’
Maisie opened her mouth to speak, still trying to find the right words. The gentleman was staring at her too, like she’d caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to. Maybe it was Mrs Pincent’s husband, Maisie thought. People said she didn’t have one any more, but maybe she did after all. Or maybe it wasn’t her husband – maybe that’s why they looked so uncomfortable.
She looked furtively at him to see what he was like. Short and bald. As Maisie flicked her eyes back towards Mrs Pincent, she started slightly. He was putting something in a box, and if she wasn’t mistaken it looked like a syringe. She looked away quickly. If Maisie had learnt one thing in her life, it was that the less you knew, the less bother you got. She wanted to get out of that room just as soon as she could, and that’s exactly what she was going to do.
‘Well,’ she began, searching for the right words. You had to say something like this quite delicately, she thought to herself. You couldn’t just go announcing that two Surpluses had got out like you were announcing teatime, could you?
‘It’s about them Surpluses,’ she said eventually. ‘Them ones in Solitary.’
She saw Mrs Pincent’s eyes narrow and dart over to the man, who was frowning. Maisie shrank back slightly.
‘That Surplus,’ Mrs Pincent corrected her, her voice agitated. ‘There is only one Surplus in Solitary. What about him?’
Maisie took a deep breath. ‘Them Surpluses,’ she continued, her forehead beginning to emit little beads of sweat, ‘on account of there being two of them. Y’see, yesterday, while you was away, that other little tyke – I mean, Surplus, well, she was bothering us. Me and Mrs Larson, see. And it was her what said she should go to Solitary. Said she had it coming to her, what with her rudeness . . .’
Maisie couldn’t help noticing that Mrs Pincent’s mood was blackening. Maisie’s heart started to pound in her chest. She knew she was babbling, but there was nothing she could do about it; she felt barely able to string a proper sentence together. And the worst thing was she hadn’t even got to the bad news yet.
‘And anyway, the thing is Mrs Pincent, and I don’t know how it happened, and I didn’t even know there was a hole in the wall or nothing, but I went down there just now, and they ain’t there any more, see? They’ve . . . they’ve gone, Mrs Pincent.’
She looked up imploringly and winced as the full power of Mrs Pincent’s gaze fixed upon her.
‘What do you mean, they’ve gone?’ Mrs Pincent asked, her voice quiet, and her face thunderous.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Maisie said immediately. ‘I wasn’t to know. You want to keep them Surpluses better behaved, that’s what you want to do. How was I meant to know they’d escape? I thought it was impossible to get out. I thought —’
‘Enough!’
Mrs Pincent stepped forward and grabbed Maisie fiercely by the shoulders.
‘Now what exactly are you talking about?’ she asked menacingly, and Maisie shuddered. Mrs Pincent’s eyes were boring into her, and her nails were digging into her ample flesh. ‘And who are they?’
‘The boy and the girl,’ Maisie whimpered. ‘Anna and that boy what was down there already. The new Pending. They’ve escaped, see. Last night, so far as I can tell.’
‘Impossible,’ Mrs Pincent said angrily. ‘There is no way of escaping from Grange Hall. You must be mistaken.’
Maisie was tempted to agree with Mrs Pincent and leave, but she knew she’d only get worse bother if she didn’t stand her ground now.
‘Seems there was a hole in the wall what we didn’t know about,’ she said, eyes lowered. Like a blimmin’ Surplus, she thought crossly. Mrs Pincent oughtn’t to talk to me like that, not really. ‘I saw it, see, when I went to check on them at about quarter to four this morning, you know, just to check they was behaving themselves. But I couldn’t see them anywhere. And then I saw the hole in the wall. And I thought to myself, well, that’s where they must’ve gone, then . . .’
Maisie’s voice trailed off, and Mrs Pincent tightened her grip on her shoulders.
‘This was quarter to four?’ she asked, her voice sounding strangled.
Maisie nodded meekly.
‘And it is now quarter past four.’
Again, Maisie nodded.
‘And why exactly did you wait so long to tell me?’
’Cause I knew you’d react like this, Maisie thought to herself defensively, but said nothing.
Mrs Pincent’s face was now white, Maisie noticed, and the man was standing up, looking like he couldn’t get out of there quick enough.
To Maisie’s relief, Mrs Pincent let go then and grabbed the phone off her desk, dialling a number from memory.
‘It’s Margaret Pincent,’ she barked down the phone. ‘I need you here, now. No, immediately. We’ve had a breakout. They can’t have got far. They must be caught immediately.’
Then she turned back to Maisie.
‘Get out of here, you useless girl,’ she spat. ‘Get out of here now. Tell Mr Sargent to meet me in Solitary, and tell Mrs Larson to wait in reception for the Catchers. And you can tell the Surpluses that breakfast is cancelled today.’
With that, she pushed Maisie aside and, signalling to the man that he was free to leave, stormed off down the corridor.
Julia Sharpe stared at her reflection in the mirror listlessly. Her lines were definitely getting deeper, she realised. All that sunbathing was taking its toll on her complexion and if she wasn’t careful she was going to look like one of those women who people stared at in the street. The walking dead, they called them. People who were already old when Longevity was discovered. They may be cured of dying, but they’d already hit old age; now they had an eternity of it.
Julia herself had a static age of fifty. It wasn’t a bad age to stick at, really. Of course, she hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Naturally, it would be a lot nicer to have an unlined face, but everyone had the same problem – even people who’d been taking Longevity from the age of sixteen still got wrinkles, even if they used the most expensive moisturisers. Longevity kept you young on the inside, but only regular facelifts could keep you truly young on the outside. And surgeons scared Julia rigid.
She sighed, and opened the bottle in front of her, taking out two capsules and swallowing them with a gulp of water.
Two little capsules, once a day, keeps the big bad wolf away, she thought with a little smile. But was keeping the big bad wolf away enough any more, she wondered. People said that the new Longevity drugs could do so much more. There was nothing you couldn’t cure with the right stem cells, they said – and whilst state-approved drugs might give you the bare minimum, the new drugs gave you the whole works – self-renewing skin, lower fat levels and more. But that meant the black market, Julia thought with a sigh. And once you started down that path, you had no idea where it might lead you.
Julia didn’t really understand the science of Longevity – it wasn’t something she’d felt the need to know about; after all, what was important was whether it worked, not how. But her friends at the bridge club were adamant that their fresh complexions and firm figures were down to Longevity+. Apparently it was already available from select clinics in the USA, China and Japan, and was used widely by celebrities; the UK was only holding back because of the cost. But was any of that really true, she wondered? People did like to make up the most outrageous things. And then there was the question of where the stem cells came from. Traditional drugs used frozen umbilical cords, but rumour had it that Longevity+ required fresh, young stem cells. And where would such cells come from, she thought to herself, other than through very dubious means?
But maybe she was being too cynical. Just the night before, she’d been playing bridge with Barbara, Cindy and Claire, and she couldn’t help noticing that Barbara’s skin was looking rather . . . dewy. Yes, that was the word. Youthful.
She sighed and decided she would investigate further. You just never knew what they put in those bottles exchanged in dark alleyways for large sums of money. Never knew where they came from. But if they would cure her sagging jowls and lift the wrinkles around her eyes, maybe it would be worth it.
She was interrupted from her reverie by a loud knock at the door, and she looked up curiously. It was only seven o’clock in the morning. Who on earth could be calling at this time?
Wrapping her robe around her, she closed the bathroom cabinet and waited for her housekeeper to open the door. Then she heard another knock, and remembered that she’d lent her housekeeper to Cindy for the day to help her move house. Sighing with irritation, she made her way on to the landing, then down the stairs. Through the spyhole on her front door she could see uniforms, and it startled her slightly. Had there been a break-in on her street? Something worse? She shuddered at the thought. Crime was so rare nowadays that even the smallest transgression was infrequent. Julia had often wondered whether crime had gone down now they had Longevity because people were satisfied with their lot and less interested in short-term gain – particularly when short-term was so very short-term. Or perhaps it was that crime was actually the domain of the young and that eradicating the youth was responsible for their safe streets. Her husband subscribed to the latter view, citing the Declaration as the panacea for all the world’s ills, but Julia wasn’t so sure. She rather suspected that everyone was simply too long in the tooth nowadays. No one had the imagination or energy to bother with crime any more.
She opened the door slightly, then frowned when she realised what the uniforms were. One of the men was in a police uniform, but the other two, if she wasn’t very much mistaken, were Catchers.
Raising her eyebrows in curiosity, she allowed the men in.