The Disappeared by C.J. Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

but the girl doesn’t even gasp, just purses her lips.
    ‘You messed your feeding pod,’ he says, looking at the floor of her pod, which is also covered in muck where it has dribbled through the grille from my pod. ‘It must be cleaned.’ He walks away to join a pack of other yellow-badged impeccables.
    I’m so hungry.
    The girl wheels over a cleaning trolley. She isn’t very pretty, but her hair is striking – so blonde it’s almost white. She slams the trolley into my foot, picks up a sponge and starts cleaning her pod. She isn’t glassy-eyed like the other students, who are drifting out of the dining room.
    ‘I was late,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know where my pod was.’
    She gives me a hard stare.
    ‘It would be better if they numbered them,’ I say.
    She wipes away a brown streak and gestures to the floor. 1248 is marked in large numbers on the base of her pod.
    ‘Oh. Well, maybe they should think about something to catch the mess under the nozzles.’
    She reaches up and yanks out a sliding drainage tray.
    I tap at the wheel of the trolley with my toe. This is one of the first conversations I’ve had with a girl that isn’t about school work. I don’t think I’m impressing her. ‘We don’t have to do this, you know. We’re not cleaners.’ I say.
    She doesn’t reply.
    ‘It’s not like I did it on purpose. I’m sure if we explained—’
    She springs to her feet, grabs me by the collar and slams the side of my face against the metal grille of the pod. It rubs against my swollen face like a cheese grater. She’s tiny, but I can’t twist out of her grip.
    ‘Don’t say we ,’ she spits. She shoves me away from her. ‘You talk all big words, but no things you say are good. The only right thing you say is that I don’t have to do this.’ She throws the stinking sponge at my head. ‘You do it.’ And she walks off.
    What a bad-tempered girl. I dab a bit at the gunge. I can’t believe they expect me to do this. I’m not trained to. I see a shaggy figure at the end of my aisle.
    ‘Ilex!’
    He walks over.
    ‘Do you realise that rancid muck coming out of the taps is drugged?’
    Ilex screws up his face. ‘I don’t know your words,’ he says.
    ‘The food,’ I say pointing to the nozzles behind me. ‘It’s . . .’ I make my eyes go spacey and sway my head.
    ‘Oh. We say softener. There’s softener in this one.’ He points to the first nozzle. ‘It comes morning and lunch-time, not dinner.’
    ‘Why just the morning and lunchtime?’
    He shrugs. ‘They want to make us not fighting in the grid.’
    ‘Don’t they mind if you’re fighting after dinner?’
    ‘After dinner fighting is okay. The enforcers are thinking when the Specials are fighting after dinner then they don’t get fighting in the grid.’
    So they’re drugged to keep them quiet in lessons. I try to take it in. ‘What’s a Special?’ I say.
    Ilex breaks into a smile. ‘All Academy kids are Specials.’ He nods to a boy walking slowly down the aisle. ‘He’s a Special,’ he says. ‘I’m a Special and . . .’ He points a finger at me. ‘You’re a Special.’
    I look down at my slop-splattered grey uniform. I certainly look the part. But I’m not a Special.
    I’m me.
    Whoever that is.

Ilex helps me to clean up the pods. I think we should just leave it, but he says you’ve got to do what the enforcers and the impeccables say or you get punished. I tell him no one is going to be giving me an electric shock, but I finish cleaning up anyway. Then we go back to the classroom, or the grid, as Ilex keeps calling it. I want to say I won’t go, but I realise that I don’t have any choice.
    The afternoon drags. We’re all locked back into our little compartments and have to use our computers to simulate assembling a motor. I use the time to have a look around their computer system. There isn’t much to see. A lot of programmes about parts-assembly and electronics. There’s also a communications system, but