A Girl From Forever (The Forever Institute series Book 1) Read online

  I’ve learned to hate my best friend, and I don’t like myself anymore.

  I’m jolted out of my dream as the vehicle turns a corner, too fast. I slide across the floor, cans rolling around me, headlights flashing underneath the door. There’s nothing to hold on to as the van twists and turns, so I pull the blanket over my head, curl into a ball, and bounce with the vehicle. My breath comes fast, faster, out of control. A can hits my head, and I discover that I was right: they’re not dangerous, but they are annoying.

  Vehicles looked fun on TV. This is not fun.

  I’m gasping huge gulps. They don’t seem to help me breathe but I can’t stop. Maybe there isn’t enough oxygen in here. Maybe they’re planning to suffocate me. Maybe they’ve forgotten me. Maybe this horrible vehicle is the last place I’ll ever see.

  Forever said that their genetic engineering had extended our lifespans. Self-renewing cells, they said. Indefinite lifespans. Practically immortal.

  Now I’m in a cell, indefinitely.

  It’s not fair. Seventeen years. I’d barely started.

  Bright yellow spots appear everywhere, it’s like someone’s drawn on my eyeballs with a highlighter. Then, either the world fades away, or I do.

  Back to the day when Rehan...

  Self-defence class again, three weeks ago, a blur of blows I’m too slow to avoid, each of my kicks connecting with air as Katrina skips out of reach. I listen again to the footsteps as Geraldine approaches, see again the disappointed shake of her head as she tells me that I’ll never take anyone down. As Geraldine walks away, Katrina whispers that I’ll find it all easier once I get a talent, that she’ll help me in the meantime. I tell her not to, but she doesn’t listen. Of us all, her talent is the best, and she knows it. In her head, she’s the leader now, and I am someone to be helped and protected.

  Katrina fakes a dramatic fall, staggering as if I’d knocked the breath out of her. Geraldine sighs. Then Katrina freezes, we all do, because there’s movement on the huge screen that takes up most of the wall above us. An image of John appears, and we rush to line up: today is an update, not merely another pep talk.

  Sweat chills on my forehead as John watches us. We owe him everything, even our existence. I wish I could like him.

  John is silver-haired, slim and small. He has scientist’s eyes, the blue gleam seeing too much and too little – he knows everything there is to know about us, and sees us not at all. We are data. Ten lab rats, running in circles though his experiment. Seventeen years of running, one year left to run. Then…

  Graduation. The world outside Forever’s walls. Everything.

  John speaks so softly that I have to strain to hear him. “I see that you’re all hard at work today,” he says. “Never forget how to work hard. Your genes set you apart, your training gives you the best possible start in life, but discipline is what will take you on – forever.” He smiles benevolently. “Discipline and obedience.”

  “Discipline and obedience,” we answer automatically.

  “Now,” John continues, “to update you on the litigation. Our lawyers are still working to have the ban on serum manufacture lifted,” his eyes glint with annoyance, “and the status of those such as myself, who took it before the press release, will be decided by the High Court in March. It will all resolve itself in due course. In the meantime, there is no question as to your status, remember that.” He smiles. “Your genes are perfect. You, are perfect. I am so proud of you all. Even an exception can prove a rule.”

  Heat rushes to my cheeks. He’s talking about me, though his eyes stare straight ahead, above us all.

  If the government permanently bans serum manufacture, what does that mean for those who’re already effectively immortal? Katrina asked Geraldine, but got told to concentrate on studying.

  Following John’s update, the day was unremarkable, until Rehan. History. Weapons training and first aid. Maths.

  After lessons, food, and rec room, we had thirty minutes of free time in our rooms, before lights out at nine thirty.

  I sat by the window, checking on my secret plant. I’d found a seed in the exercise yard a couple of weeks before, and put it on the windowsill, tucked just behind the curtain, on a piece of damp tissue. The cleaners hadn’t found it yet, and a small green shoot had begun to uncurl from the pod. I was fascinated by it. Each day it twisted a little more towards the window.

  It was my science experiment.

  Then I scrambled into bed to read the latest book I’d ‘borrowed’ from the hidden shelf under Geraldine’s desk. She has so many, it’s not like she’ll ever notice and, while I’m not supposed to have it, neither is she. That night, I began reading The Duke’s Dangerous Desire. It raised a lot of questions, but not ones I could ask anyone.

  My room darkened, and I put the book aside. I thought about Katrina’s spinning pen, and the telepaths’ silent smiles. I thought about what John had said. Over and over again, I wondered what was different about my genes. Why hadn’t a talent manifested yet, like it had with everyone else? Was I doing something wrong? Had Forever’s scientists made a mistake with my DNA? If so, all of the effort that the Institute had poured into me had been wasted. All of the money, time, training. Seventeen years spent trying to make me something I’m not.

  I can’t ignore it anymore. I’m too old now to develop a talent, surely.

  Maybe there were germs in my petri dish.

  The Institute gave me more training, less training, drugs – that term sucked. Even meditation lessons. It was now clear from John’s words: the Institute had given up on me. Even the exception can prove a rule… John basically said that I’m the exception to the talent his serum gave to my classmates. He invented all this. He should know.

  “Hello?” The voice sounded inside my head, and my heart stopped. For a moment hot triumph flashed through me. This was it. My talent, finally manifesting.

  Then I remembered… Anyone can receive thoughts, if a ’path sends them. No-one is allowed to ’path except during lessons, and not being a ’path, I’d never had such a lesson, never heard a voice inside my head before. Still, even I knew that everyone can receive, but only ’paths can send.

  Still a no-talent. Something inside me crashed back down to the ground.

  Also… Even I knew that an unexpected telepathic message was a serious breach of regulations. To be reported instantly...

  “Hello?” The voice spoke again, and I realised that it wasn’t one of my classmates.

  My classmates and I were the first humans in the world to be treated with John’s serum in utero, to prove John’s theory that the serum can do more than renew cells indefinitely. Given in utero, it can wake up parts of the brain normally left unused, parts that develop in adolescence… Into psychic talent.

  Other than my classmates, there are no ’paths in the world, except… Vol.

  My eyes flashed to the alarm button over my head, and my heart rate doubled.

  “I’m sorry,” continued the voice, “I know that this is unexpected, I don’t mean to be impolite, or to make you uncomfortable in any way. I’m just… It’s been a bad year, a really bad year, and I’m feeling very alone right now, and then I sensed you. I haven’t talked to anyone in a long time, not like this. You’re like me, I can feel it. Different. Special.”

  Something twisted in my chest.

  The voice continued. “Would you… Would you at least tell me your name?”

  I knew that I shouldn’t. Of course. I knew that.

  My hand reached for the alarm button. My fingertips brushed the warm plastic. I yanked them back.

  I shouldn’t.

  “I’m Fern,” I whispered to the stranger in my head.

  Chapter Three

  For the first hour of our conversation, my hand hovered over the alarm button so much that my bicep ached. I was talking to a Vol.

  Vol abilities come from genetic error, not engineering, the Institute had explained to us. They’re unpredictable, violent. Psychopathic,
even, but fortunately incredibly rare in the general population. It was implied that they normally die very young, as a consequence of their own actions.

  Yet… What harm could be done to me by a telepathic voice? I could always raise the alarm later. If I didn’t, no-one would ever know.

  Rehan told me about outside. All of the things that I’d never been able to ask anyone, I asked him, thrilled that he could lift my questions from my mind without my needing to be a ’path. But his answers gave me more questions, and the conversation unfurled in every direction. What is a tugboat? What is the internet? What is a Land Rover? Sometimes he hesitated, as if surprised, but always he answered.

  I asked him why he couldn’t find someone to ’path with outside. Why Forever? Why me?

  “I wanted to talk to someone with talent,” Rehan said.

  “I don’t have a talent.”

  “Sure you do, your mind’s glowing with it. It doesn’t feel like telepathy, but it’s there, the strongest in the Institute. Feels like healing, my aunt’s mind had a similar glow, and that was her thing.”

  My hand fell away from the alarm button.

  We talked for hours, and he told me all about his life. He’d had a terrible year, lost family and friends, even his job, but he was determined not to let it change him, he was so optimistic about the future. Nineteen, just two years older than me, but a world more experienced. So sweet, so funny. His entire world revolved around his sister.

  When the sun rose, I was in love.

  My face hurts and I open my eyes to find that the wall of the van is pressed against my cheek. The metal is so cold it feels like burning, and it smells of iron – rust, I hope. I sit up.

  I feel sick. I think I might actually be sick. Then my stomach lurches and I bump across the floor as the van zooms downwards. The small amount of light from under the door disappears, plunging me into total dark. A tunnel?

  The vehicle slams on the brake and I’m flung towards the doors, trying to stand yet forgetting the blanket wrapped around me, somehow ending up on my hands and knees as the doors are yanked open and I blink, trying to see past the torch shining at my face. My eyes hurt from the light. I struggle to disentangle myself from the blanket.

  Someone grabs my ankle and pulls me towards them. I don’t bother to fight. I want to be out of the van.

  A vague impression of men around me in the dark, of tunnel walls, of Rehan’s eyes gleaming briefly in the torchlight, his mouth a thin, hard line. Is that blood on his hands? Rehan’s companion yanks me forward roughly and shoves the bag back over my head. No-one says anything as we change vehicles.

  This time I’m pushed into a car seat, which is a massive improvement over the van. I don’t resist, it doesn’t occur to me. I’m grateful for the car’s warmth, for its softness, even grateful for the gentleness with which my hands are tied together with a hard, plastic thing.

  “Why am I here?” No-one answers me. I don’t ask again.

  The seat dips as someone sits next to me, and leans close to clip the seatbelt shut around me, body heat temporarily surrounding me in a way that should feel threatening, but doesn’t. His thigh brushes mine, then moves back. I think it’s Rehan, I don’t know why.

  I hate him.

  “Do you even have a little sister?” I ask, the bag’s fabric rough against my lips as I speak.

  “No,” he answers quietly, inside my skull where only I can hear, and I hate it that he’s there. I used to love so much the way it felt, within. Now, it’s a violation.

  “Never speak to me like that again,” I hiss through the sackcloth.

  Then I hear Rehan’s real voice for the first time, and it’s as warm and deep as I imagined it would be. “Fine.”

  A moment passes. Then “Do we really need this stupid bag?” he snaps to someone.

  A pause, long enough for someone to nod. Rehan huffs. “It’s dark out anyway and it’s not like she’s going to recognise anything.”

  “Wait until the boat,” an older man grunts.

  Boat? I’ve never been on a boat. Forever sits right on the Thames, but they never took us out, no matter how much we asked when we were younger.

  Inappropriately, stupidly, a little nudge of excitement flutters within me.

  After a while, the car pulls over and I’m tugged out, bag still over my head. I don’t need to see, to know that I’m near water. The air smells green and wet, and I hear waves splashing against something. My shoes struggle for grip as the men lead me down a slope, onto a rocking platform. I clench my stomach and widen my stance slightly. I won’t fall over again. Not in front of my captors.

  The wind picks up as an engine roars, my only warning before the boat jolts forward. I rock backwards. Hands catch my elbows, steadying me. The world rocks up and down as they guide me down a narrow flight of stairs. I’m tugged a few metres forward, pushed through another door. The hand on my elbow lets go.

  A door clicks closed behind me as I lift the bag off my head, wrists still clipped together with a white plastic thing.

  I’m standing in front of a toilet. To my right is a tiny sink, a mirror above it, to my left, a wall. I wouldn’t call this a room. I rest my bound wrists on the edge of the sink, staring at the pale face in the mirror. There’s a smudge on my cheek, my hair’s a dark cloud of tangle, and there’s an expression in my eyes that I’ve never seen before. I don’t have a name for it. It’s – wilder than me.

  Mirror. I peer at the edge of the glass. It seems to be screwed on to the wall, not glued. I might get a few decent sized shards, were I to smash it. Knife-sized, maybe. It’s the sort of thing I’ve been taught to do.

  I’d have to strike first, to have any chance at all against several bigger opponents. Could I really rush to cut someone when the door opens, stab again as they fall? I’m not sure that I can do that, be that.

  Voices, outside.

  “What did you do that for?” Rehan. So strange, hearing the deeper, more solid version of the voice I’ve heard in my head so many times. My stomach feels funny.

  “Saw an opportunity, took it.” The voice is sulky.

  “Well, the evening hasn’t exactly gone to plan, has it?” A new voice, older, tired. “Has anyone heard from Kurt’s team?” Silence. Are heads nodding or shaking? Who is Kurt? Come to that, who is Rehan? Was anything he said to me true? He doesn’t seem much like a teenage market trader. No little sister. He’s a total stranger, and my friend – my boyfriend – was imaginary. Still, I ache to see his face.

  I search the door for a crack to see out. Nothing. In the corner of my eye, my reflection paws frantically at a door. She looks demented.

  “Two thirds of us are unaccounted for,” says tired voice. “Did anyone get any data?”

  “You mean apart from the freak shut in the toilet?” A new voice, thin and sharp. “The walking, talking chunk of data? No.”

  Massive sighs all round.

  “So basically it was all for nothing,” concludes tired voice.

  Rehan says nothing.

  “I got data, even if it is a freak,” says sulky voice. “You should have got her to bring stuff out.”

  Freak?

  “And that wouldn’t have looked weird?” asks Rehan. “Besides, I didn’t think she’d actually leave the Institute once it all kicked off.”

  “That’s girls for you. Contrary,” someone says, and they laugh. They’re laughing at me. I hate them so much it feels physical, a burning acid oozing out of my pores. I feel like I could melt the door with a touch. I even try, nails curling slowly against the door in frustrated rage, always searching for a talent, just in case. Of course, nothing happens. I’m completely helpless.

  I sit on the toilet lid, resting my tied hands on my lap. The other room quietens, I think they’ve gone above deck.

  Time passes, the boat sways, and I become seriously bored. The voices outside moved away a long time ago. Much later than I should have done, I look up to the ceiling. There’s a port-hole above me, if it hadn�
��t been dark outside, I would have noticed it earlier. It isn’t big enough for my shoulders, but it is big enough for my head.

  I stand on the toilet and grope at the catch. It’s not easy with my wrists bound, but I use one hand to grip the window’s frame, while the fingers of the other work at the catch. It’s grimy and stiff, but not locked.

  I shove at the glass. It doesn’t want to open more than an inch, but I push until something in the hinge crunches, and it flips completely open. I stick my head through the hole.

  A blast of wet wind hits my face, so cold it’s almost painful on my skin. After being shut inside a succession of moving vehicles, it’s wonderful. Hair whips my face as I look around. We’re in the middle of a river, speeding past dark fields. In the distance, lights twinkle from tiny windows, but everything near the river is dark. I don’t know much geography, but I don’t think we’re in London anymore.

  I’m outside Forever. For a moment, despite the terror of my situation, I smile.

  Whoever they are, they don’t want me dead. They haven’t hurt me. They can’t keep me prisoner forever. I’ll look back on this and laugh, centuries after these people, after Rehan, are dust. Thanks to John’s work on my genes, my cells will renew indefinitely, while my kidnappers are merely Vol: psychic abilities some of them may have, but no extended lifespans.

  Psychic abilities… I hope that Vol telepathy is the same as that of my classmates, able to hear projected thoughts, but not dig deeper. It must work in the same way. Surely. Nonetheless, I try to keep my mind carefully blank.

  I take a deep breath. It smells different to the air of the Institute yard, less car exhaust, more damp, colder, sharper, in my lungs. I turn around, and start as I see Rehan sitting on deck, a few yards away. He’s sitting in the shadows, leaning against the cabin wall, arms resting on his knees. Looking straight at me. I stare back.