Pincent Pharma seemed bigger on the inside than it did on the outside. It was whiter, brighter, lighter than anywhere Jude had been in his life. Too light, Jude decided, squinting as he followed Derek Samuels past the escalator. He didn’t like the place; preferred the darkness of his bedroom.
Derek Samuels was a thin-faced, wiry man with narrow shoulders and high eyebrows that turned everything he said into a question. He led Jude down a long white corridor, through some double doors and into another, narrower corridor. Eventually, he was shown into a small room with a table in it.
‘Now,’ Derek Samuels said, smiling thinly, ‘would you like to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here?’
Jude looked at him, an expression of boredom on his face. ‘Like I said in my message, I’m offering to fix your security. I thought that’s why you replied.’
Mr Samuels said nothing; he stood up.
‘To fix our security,’ he repeated, icily, then folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. ‘As it happens, I have checked your references,’ he said levelly. ‘I know who you are, know who your father was, know what you’ve been doing for a living. What I want to know, though, is why you are here. And how you managed to hack into our systems. Who put you up to it? And what did they ask you to do?’
His voice was silky, but Jude could hear the threat behind it.
‘No one put me up to it,’ he said with a bored sigh. ‘Hacking into systems is what I do. I managed to hack in because your systems need updating. Because they’re old. Probably the people who developed them are old too. Where’s Mr Pincent, anyway?’
‘Old.’ Mr Samuels moved closer. ‘That’s interesting.’ He moved closer still, so that his face was only inches from Jude’s. ‘You know,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper, ‘what the best thing about Longevity is?’
Jude shook his head, felt his hands going clammy, tried to look anywhere but into Mr Samuels’ eyes.
‘It’s that there aren’t any young people cluttering up the world,’ Mr Samuels continued. ‘Thinking they know it all.’ His face was expressionless, but Jude could hear the anger simmering in his voice, and suddenly found himself suppressing a little smile. Underneath that hard-man exterior, Mr Samuels was unsettled, he realised. Threatened by youth.
‘Thinking?’ Jude said levelly, his confidence returning. ‘Well, in this case, I do know it all. All there is to know about security systems, anyway. Which you know, because otherwise you wouldn’t have invited me in. So do you want me to get to work, or shall I go?’
Mr Samuels’ eyes narrowed. ‘How’s your mother?’ he asked, his eyes glinting slightly.
Jude stared back at him silently.
‘Oh, that’s right,’ Mr Samuels continued. ‘She left, didn’t she? Went to . . . South America, was it? With her new husband? She left you all alone, didn’t she? Probably couldn’t wait to get away from you.’
Jude felt his heart quicken in surprise and anger; it took him a second to regain his composure. ‘Leave my mother out of this.’
‘And what about that Surplus brother of yours?’ Mr Samuels smiled icily. ‘Where does that leave you?’
Jude stared at him stonily. ‘It doesn’t leave me anywhere. It’s no big deal.’
‘No big deal?’ Mr Samuels laughed, then his face contorted into a sneer. ‘A few weeks, and you could have been the Surplus.’
Jude’s face was angry, hot, red and it was all he could do to look straight ahead, to pretend that the very same thought hadn’t dogged him for months. Ever since Peter’s existence became national news. Ever since he escaped; ever since Jude’s father was murdered by his former wife, Mrs Pincent, Peter’s mother.
‘Look, what’s this about?’ Jude said evenly, forcing himself to keep control. ‘If you don’t want me to look at your system, I think I’ll be going now.’
‘Oh, you’re not going,’ Derek Samuels said, blocking his path. ‘You’re not going anywhere. The reason I got you in here today is that we’re holding a rather important press conference. We’ve got a visit from the Authorities. And it is my job to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Absolutely nothing. To which end, I’m keeping you locked up until it’s over, until I know you can’t do any damage.’
‘Locked up?’ Jude looked at him incredulously. ‘You can’t lock me up.’
‘Oh, but I can,’ Samuels said. ‘What
you need to understand, Jude, is that I can do anything I
like.’
The guard looked around him uncomfortably, before tentatively knocking on the blue door in front of him. He wasn’t used to being in the ReTraining area of Pincent Pharma and felt out of place.
Cautiously, he listened for a response, but there was none. He knocked again, this time louder.
‘Is that the door?’ he heard a voice say. ‘Hello? Is there someone there? Come in, please.’
Emboldened, he pushed the door open. Sure enough, as he’d been told, there were two people in the large white room: Dr Edwards, the one who worked all hours, never seemed to go home, and the boy. The Pincent boy.
‘I’ve . . . well, I’ve got a delivery. For the boy,’ he said, stumbling over his script.
‘The boy?’ Dr Edwards asked. ‘You mean Peter?’
‘That’s right,’ the guard said. ‘For Peter. Peter Pincent.’
‘Do you usually deliver mail?’ Dr Edwards asked curiously. ‘I thought you were security.’
‘I am,’ the guard said, reddening slightly, trying to remember exactly what he’d been told to say. ‘Only this is valuable. It was hand delivered. By a young lady. Wanted to make sure it got to him safely. Peter Pincent, I mean. I just happened to be there.’
‘Then shouldn’t you perhaps be directing this at him?’ Dr Edwards asked, his mouth curving up into a slight smile. The guard nodded curtly.
‘Here,’ he said, thrusting out the envelope in Peter’s direction. Peter looked at it curiously.
‘For me?’ he asked.
The guard nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘And it’s from who?’
‘Young lady. The Surp— the one what you got out of Grange Hall with,’ the guard said nervously. ‘By the looks of her, at least. Same age as you, I’d have guessed.’
Peter looked shaken. ‘When was she here? Can I still catch her?’
‘I’m afraid I had some important business to attend to primarily.’ The guard’s eyes followed the envelope. ‘She was here, what, forty minutes or so ago. Didn’t want to stop, she said.’
‘Is that all she said?’
The guard shook his head.
‘What, then? What did she say?’ Peter demanded.
‘She said to tell you,’ the guard said slowly, ‘that you was right. That she was sorry. And that she’d see you later.’
‘That I was right? She really said that?’
‘And that she was sorry,’ the guard confirmed. ‘Now, if it’s all right with you, I’d better be getting back to my post.’
‘Of course,’ Peter said, turning the envelope over in his hands. ‘And thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ the guard said,
his hand caressing the hefty tip sitting in his trouser pocket.
‘Just doing my job.’
Jude found himself in a small room, more like a cupboard. The walls were thick, the door solid and there were no windows; only an air vent in the ceiling provided the space with oxygen.
‘You’ll stay here,’ Derek Samuels said. ‘Not that you have a choice. You won’t be going anywhere until I allow you to.’
‘You think you’re so clever,’ Jude muttered under his breath.
‘Borne out by experience,’ Mr Samuels said smugly. He pulled out a walkie-talkie from his pocket. ‘I need a guard. Room 25 on the ground floor.’ Then he looked back at Jude. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything to upset him.’ And then, shooting Jude one last, triumphant look, he opened the door with his identi-card and left, locking it behind him.
Angrily, Jude leant against the wall and allowed himself to slide down to the ground. Somewhere in the building, the red-haired girl was lying, like a princess in a twisted fairytale, unobtainable. Somewhere else in the building, Peter Pincent was working. Jude, meanwhile, was stuck in a cupboard, trapped and impotent. Angrily he let out a sigh, then stood up again and kicked the wall with his foot. He’d thought he was so smart; had thought he knew it all.
And then he frowned. Maybe he did know it all. Well not all, perhaps, but enough. Derek Samuels hadn’t searched him, after all. He still had his handheld device. He cast his mind back to when he’d been sitting in his bedroom surveying Pincent Pharma through its security system. He’d had the blueprint of the building right in front of him. If he thought hard enough, he could probably remember how he’d got here from reception, then he could work out where he was. His brow furrowing, he found his eyes travelling up towards the air vent. It was small. Difficult to reach. And well sealed.
Jude scanned the room. And then his eyes lit up. In the corner, at the back of a shelf, a paint tin sat, discarded, and a painting tray with a scraping tool sitting in it, both caked in stark, white paint. One out of three problems solved. Listening out for the guard’s footsteps, Jude picked up the scraper and, putting his foot on the shelf, he lifted himself up towards the ceiling.