First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

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Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2017

All rights reserved.

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008125134

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008125141

Version: 2017-02-20

For Yvonne Connolly, the perfect friend

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part Two

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Part Three

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Keep Reading …

Books by Cecelia Ahern

About the Publisher

PERFECT: ideal, model, faultless, flawless, consummate, quintessential, exemplary, best, ultimate; (of a person) having all the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.

PART ONE

There’s the person you think you should be and there’s the person you really are. I’ve lost a sense of both.

A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place.

They’re not my words, they’re my granddad’s.

He sees the beauty in everything, or perhaps it’s more that he thinks things that are unconventional and out of place are more beautiful than anything else. I see this trait in him every day: favouring the old farmhouse instead of the modernised gatehouse, brewing coffee in the ancient cast-iron pot over the open flames of the Aga instead of using the gleaming new espresso machine Mum bought him three birthdays ago that sits untouched, gathering dust, on the countertop. It’s not that he’s afraid of progress – in fact he is the first person to fight for change – but he likes authenticity, everything in its truest form. Including weeds: he admires their audacity, growing in places they haven’t been planted. It is this trait of his that has drawn me to him in my time of need and why he is putting his own safety on the line to harbour me.

Harbour.

That’s the word the Guild has used: Anybody who is aiding or harbouring Celestine North will face severe punishment. They don’t state the punishment, but the Guild’s reputation allows us to imagine. The danger of keeping me on his land doesn’t appear to scare Granddad; it makes him even more convinced of his duty to protect me.

“A weed is simply a plant that wants to grow where people want something else,” he adds now, stooping low to pluck the intruder from the soil with his thick, strong hands.

He has fighting hands, big and thick like shovels, but then in contradiction to that, they’re nurturing hands too. They’ve sown and grown, from his own land, and held and protected his own daughter and grandchildren. These hands that could choke a man are the same hands that reared a woman, that have cultivated the land. Maybe the strongest fighters are the nurturers because they’re connected to something deep in their core, they’ve got something to fight for, they’ve got something worth saving.

Granddad owns one hundred acres, not all strawberry fields like the one we’re in now, but he opens this part of the land up to the public in the summer months. Families pay to pick their own strawberries; he says the income helps him to keep things ticking over. He can’t stop it this year, not just for monetary reasons but because the Guild will know he’s hiding me. They’re watching him. He must keep going as he does every year, and I try not to think how it will feel to hear the sounds of children happily plucking and playing, or how much more dangerous it will be with strangers on the land who might unearth me in the process.

I used to love coming here as a child with my sister, Juniper, in the strawberry-picking season. At the end of a long day we would have more berries in our bellies than in our baskets, but it doesn’t feel like the same magical place any more. Now I’m de-weeding the soil where I once played make-believe.

I know that when Granddad talks about plants growing where they’re not wanted, he’s talking about me, like he’s invented his own unique brand of farmer therapy, but though he means well, it just succeeds in highlighting the facts to me.

I’m the weed.

Branded Flawed in five areas on my body and a secret sixth for good measure, for aiding a Flawed and lying to the Guild, I was given a clear message: society didn’t want me. They tore me from my terra firma, dangled me by my roots, shook me around, and tossed me aside.

“But who called these weeds?” Granddad continues, as we work our way through the beds. “Not nature. It’s people who did that. Nature allows them to grow. Nature gives them their place. It is people who brand them and toss them aside.”

“But this one is strangling the flowers,” I finally say, looking up from my work, back sore, nails filthy with soil.

Granddad fixes me with a look, tweed cap low over his bright blue eyes, always alert, always on the lookout, like a hawk. “They’re survivors, that’s why. They’re fighting for their place.”

I swallow my sadness and look away.

I’m a weed. I’m a survivor. I’m Flawed.

I’m eighteen years old today.

The person I think I should be: Celestine North, daughter of Summer and Cutter, sister of Juniper and Ewan, girlfriend of Art. I should have recently finished my final exams, be preparing for university, where I’d study mathematics.

Today is my eighteenth birthday.

Today I should be celebrating on Art’s father’s yacht with twenty of my closest friends and family, maybe even a fireworks display. Bosco Crevan promised to loan me the yacht for my big day as a personal gift. A gushing chocolate fountain on board for people to dip their marshmallows and strawberries. I imagine my friend Marlena with a chocolate moustache and a serious expression; I hear her boyfriend, as crass as usual, threatening to stick parts of himself in. Marlena rolling her eyes. Me laughing. A pretend fight, they always do that, enjoy the drama, just so they can make up.

Dad should be trying to be a show-off in front of my friends on the dance floor, with his body-popping and Michael Jackson impressions. I see my model mum standing out on deck in a loose floral summer dress, her long blonde hair blowing in the breeze like there’s a perfectly positioned wind machine. She’d be calm on the surface but all the time her mind racing, considering what is going on around her, what needs to be better, whose drink needs topping up, who appears left out of a conversation, and with a click of her fingers she’d float along in her dress and fix it.

My brother, Ewan, should be overdosing on marshmallows and chocolate, running around with his best friend, Mike, red-faced and sweating, finishing ends of beer bottles, needing to go home early with a stomach ache. I see my sister, Juniper, in the corner with a friend, her eye on it all, always in the corner, analysing everything with a content, quiet smile, always watching and understanding everything better than anyone else.

I see me. I should be dancing with Art. I should be happy. But it doesn’t feel right. I look up at him and he’s not the same. He’s thinner; he looks older, tired, unwashed and scruffy. He’s looking at me, eyes on me but his head is somewhere else. His touch is limp – a whisper of a touch – and his hands are clammy. It feels like the last time I saw him. It’s not how it’s supposed to be, not how it ever was, which was perfect, but I can’t even summon up those old feelings in my daydreams any more. That time of my life feels so far away from now. I left perfection behind a long time ago.

I open my eyes and I’m back in Granddad’s house. There’s a shop-bought cold apple tart in a foil tin sitting before me with a single candle in it. There’s the person I think I should be, though I can’t even dream about it properly without reality’s interruptions, and there’s the person I really am now.

This girl, on the run but frozen still, staring at the cold apple tart. Neither Granddad nor I are pretending things can continue like this. Granddad’s real; there’s no smoke and mirrors with him. He’s looking at me, sadly. He knows not to avoid the subject. Things are too serious for that now. We talk daily of a plan, and that plan changes daily. I have escaped my home; escaped my Whistleblower Mary May, a guard of the Guild, whose job it is to monitor my every move and assure that I’m complying with Flawed rules; and I’m now off the radar. I’m officially an ‘evader’. But the longer I stay here, the higher the chance I will eventually be found.

My mum told me to run away two weeks ago, an urgent whispered command in my ear that still gives me goose bumps when I recall it. The head of the Guild, Bosco Crevan, was sitting in our home, demanding my parents hand me over. Bosco is my ex-boyfriend’s dad, and we have been neighbours for a decade. Only a few weeks previously we’d been enjoying dinner together in our home. Now my mum would rather I disappear than be in his care again.

It can take a lifetime to build up a friendship – it can take a second to make an enemy.

There was only one important item that I needed with me when I ran: a note that had been given to my sister, Juniper, for me. The note was from Carrick. Carrick had been my holding-cell neighbour at Highland Castle, the home of the Guild. He watched my trial while he awaited his; he witnessed my brandings. All of my brandings, including the secret sixth on my spine. He is the only person who can possibly understand how I feel right now, because he’s going through the same thing.

My desire to find Carrick is immense, but it has been difficult. He managed to evade his Whistleblower as soon as he was released from the castle, and I’m guessing my profile didn’t make it easy for him to seek me out, either. Just before I ran away, he found me, rescued me from a riot in a supermarket. He brought me home – I was out cold at the time, our long-wished-for reunion not exactly what I’d imagined. He left me the note and vanished.

But I couldn’t get to him. Afraid of being recognised, I’d no way of finding my way around the city. So I called Granddad. I knew that his farm would be the Guild’s first port of call in finding me. I should be hiding somewhere else, somewhere safer, but on this land Granddad has the upper hand.

At least, that was the theory. I don’t think either of us thought that the Whistleblowers would be so relentless in their search for me. Since I arrived at the farm, there have been countless searches. So far they’ve failed to uncover my hiding place, but they come again and again, and I know my luck will eventually run out.

Each time, the Whistleblowers come so close to my hiding place I can barely breathe. I hear their footsteps, sometimes their breaths, as I’m crammed, jammed, into spaces, above and below, sometimes in places so obvious they don’t even look, sometimes so dangerous they wouldn’t dare to look.

I blink away my thoughts of them.

I look at the single flame flickering in the cold apple tart.

“Make a wish,” Granddad says.

I close my eyes and think hard. I have too many wishes and feel that none of them are within my reach. But I also believe that the moment we’re beyond making wishes is either the moment we’re truly happy, or the moment to give up.

Well, I’m not happy. But I’m not about to give up.

I don’t believe in magic, yet I see making wishes as a nod to hope, an acknowledgement of the power of will, the recognition of a goal. Maybe saying what you want to yourself makes it real, gives you a target to aim for, can help you make it happen. Channel your positive thoughts: think it, wish it, then make it happen.

I blow out the flame.

I’ve barely opened my eyes when we hear footsteps in the hallway.

Dahy, Granddad’s trusted farm manager, appears in the kitchen.

“Whistleblowers are here. Move.”

Granddad jumps up from the table so fast his chair falls backwards to the stone floor. Nobody picks it up. We’re not ready for this visit. Just yesterday the Whistleblowers searched the farm from top to bottom; we thought we’d be safe at least for today. Where is the siren that usually calls out in warning? The sound that freezes every soul in every home until the vehicles have passed by, leaving the lucky ones drenched with relief.

There is no discussion. The three of us hurry from the house. We instinctively know we have run out of luck with hiding me inside. We turn right, away from the drive lined with cherry blossom trees. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s away, as far from the entrance as possible.

Dahy talks as we run. “Arlene saw them from the tower. She called me. No sirens. Element of surprise.”

There’s a ruined Norman tower on the land, which serves Granddad well as a lookout tower for Whistleblowers. Ever since I’ve arrived he’s had somebody on duty day and night, each of the farmworkers taking shifts.

“And they’re definitely coming here?” Granddad asks, looking around fast, thinking hard. Plotting, planning. And I regret to admit I detect panic in his movements. I’ve never seen it in Granddad before.

Dahy nods.

I increase my pace to keep up with them. “Where are we going?”

They’re silent. Granddad is still looking around as he strides through his land. Dahy watches Granddad, trying to read him. Their expressions make me panic. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, the alarming rate of my heartbeat. We’re moving at top speed to the farthest point of Granddad’s land, not because he has a plan but because he doesn’t. He needs time to think of one.

We rush through the fields, through the strawberry beds that we were working in only hours ago.

We hear the Whistleblowers approach. For previous searches there has been only one vehicle, but now I think I hear more. Louder engines than usual, perhaps vans instead of cars. There are usually two Whistleblowers to a car, four to a van. Do I hear three vans? Twelve possible Whistleblowers.

I start to tremble: this is a full-scale search. They’ve found me; I’m caught. I breathe in the fresh air, feeling my freedom slipping away from me. I don’t know what they will do to me, but under their care last month I received painful brands on my skin, the red letter F seared on six parts of my body. I don’t want to stick around to discover what else they’re capable of.

Dahy looks at Granddad. “The barn.”

“They’re on to that.”

They look far out to the land as if the soil will provide an answer. The soil.

“The pit,” I say suddenly.

Dahy looks uncertain. “I don’t think that’s a—”

“It’ll do,” Granddad says with an air of finality and charges off in the direction of the pit.

It was my idea, but the thought of it makes me want to cry. I feel dizzy at the prospect of hiding there. Dahy holds out his arm to allow me to walk ahead of him, and I see sympathy and sadness in his eyes.

I also see ‘Goodbye.’

We follow Granddad to the clearing near the black forest that meets his land. He and Dahy spent this morning digging a hole in the ground, while I lay on the soil beside them, lazily twirling a dandelion clock between my fingers and watching it slowly dismantle in the breeze.

“You’re like gravediggers,” I’d said sarcastically.

Little did I know how true my words would become.

The cooking pit, according to Granddad, is the simplest and most ancient cooking structure. Also called an earth oven, it’s a hole in the ground used to trap heat to bake, smoke, or steam food.

To bake the food, the fire is allowed to burn to a smoulder. The food is placed in the pit and covered. The earth is filled back over everything – potatoes, pumpkins, meat, anything you want – and the food is left for a full day to cook. Granddad carries out this tradition every year with the workers on his farm, but usually at harvest time, not in May. He’d decided to do it now for “team building”, he called it, at a time when we all needed reinforcement, to come together. All of Granddad’s farmworkers are Flawed, and after facing the relentless searches from Whistleblowers and with each of his workers under the eye of the Guild more than ever, he felt everybody needed a morale boost.

I never knew Granddad employed Flawed, not until I got here two weeks ago. I don’t remember seeing his farmworkers when we visited the farm and Mum and Dad never mentioned them. Perhaps they’d been asked to stay out of our view; perhaps they were always there and, like most Flawed to me before I became one, seemed invisible.

I understand now that this helped drive a wedge between Granddad and Mum, her disapproving of his criticism of the Guild, the government-supported tribunal that puts people on trial for their unethical, immoral acts. We thought his rants were nothing but conspiracy theories, bitter about how his taxpayer’s money was being spent. Turns out he was right. I also see now that Granddad was like Mum’s dirty little secret. As a high-profile model, she represented perfection, on the outside at least, and while she was hugely successful around the world, she couldn’t let her reputation in Humming be damaged. Having such an outspoken father who was on the Flawed side was a threat to her image. I understand that now.

There are some employers who treat Flawed like slaves. Long hours and on the minimum wage, if they’re lucky. Many Flawed are just happy to be employed and work for accommodation and food. The majority of Flawed are educated, upstanding citizens. They aren’t criminals; they haven’t carried out any illegal acts. They made moral or ethical decisions that were frowned upon by society and they were branded for it. An organised public shaming, I suppose. The judges of the Guild like to call themselves the “Purveyors of Perfection”.

Dahy was a teacher. He was caught on security cameras in school grabbing a child roughly.

I’ve also learned that reporting people as Flawed to the Guild is a weapon that people use against each other. They wipe out the competition, leaving a space for themselves to step into, or they use it as a form of revenge. People abuse the system. The Guild is one gaping loophole for opportunists and hunters.

I broke a fundamental rule: do not aid the Flawed. This act actually carries a prison sentence, but I was found Flawed instead. Before my trial, Crevan was trying to find a way to help me. The plan was that I was supposed to lie and say that I didn’t help the old man. But I couldn’t lie; I admitted the truth. I told them all that the Flawed man was a human being who needed and deserved to be helped. I humiliated Crevan, made a mockery of his court, or that’s how he saw it anyway.

As a result, I was seen to have lied to the Guild. I brought them on a journey of deceit, grabbed people’s attention, and then admitted the truth publicly. They had to make an example of me. I understand now that my brandings were really for misleading the Guild, for embarrassing them and causing people to question their validity.

One of the strengths of the Guild is that they feed the media. They work alongside each other, feeding each other, and the media feeds the people. We are told that the judges are right, the branded are wrong. The story is obscured, never fully heard, the voice of reason lost through the foghorn of a Whistleblower siren.

Among the long list of anti-Flawed decrees, Flawed are not allowed to have positions of power in the workplace, such as managerial roles or any functions where they have influence over people’s thinking. In theory, non-management jobs are open to the Flawed but, despite that, most Flawed are discriminated against in the workplace. Granddad isn’t one of those employers. He goes out of his way to find Flawed workers, to treat them exactly as he’d treat anyone else.

Dahy is his longest-standing employee. With Granddad for thirty years, he has an ugly scar on his temple for his bad decision to grab the child. His brand was seared before the Guild managed to finesse the Branding Chamber and its tools. Still, it is nothing in comparison to the sixth brand on my spine, the secret one that Judge Crevan gave me. That’s a personal message, and it was done in anger, without practice and without anaesthetic. It’s a raw, shocking scar.

Dahy is making another bad decision right now, colluding with Granddad in hiding me. Granddad could get a minimum of six months’ prison time for aiding a Flawed, but as a Flawed man, helping another Flawed, I dread to think of what Dahy’s punishment could be. As a Flawed person you think life couldn’t be any worse for you until the Guild turns on your family and uses them to inflict further punishment and pain.

The three of us stare down into the rectangular pit in the ground. I hear doors slam – multiple doors – and I imagine a Whistleblower army in their red combat gear and black boots. They will be with us in a matter of minutes. I lower myself into the pit and lie down.

“Cover me,” I say.

Granddad pauses, but Dahy tugs at the sheet and gets it in motion. Granddad’s hesitancy could cost me.

Once the sheet is over me, they start adding the wood and moss that I gathered from the forest that morning. Never mind digging my own grave: I’d prepared the coffin too.

The footsteps draw near.

“We need to get to Carrick immediately,” Granddad says quietly, and I agree silently.

I hear the crunching of boots on soil.

“Cornelius,” Mary May says suddenly, and my heart pounds. Everything about her terrifies me, a woman so heartless she reported her entire family to the Guild for immoral practices in their family business, in retaliation for her sister stealing her boyfriend. She has always been present for the searches of the farmhouse, but now it seems she has returned with an army. Or at least twelve others.

“Mary May,” Granddad says gruffly. “Siren run out of batteries today?”

Another stick lands on top of me, hard. Thrown into the pit casually to throw her off the scent, no doubt. It lands right on my stomach and I fight the urge to groan and move.

Mary May doesn’t do banter, or humour, or conversation. What she says goes. “What’s that?”

“A food pit,” Granddad says.

The two of them are standing over me, on my left-hand side. I feel logs land on me from the other side, which means Dahy is still here.

“Which is?”

“Have you never heard of a food pit? I thought a country girl from the yellow meadows like you would know all about it.”

“No. I don’t.” Her words are clipped. She doesn’t like that he knows where she’s from. Granddad enjoys doing that, putting her off, showing her he knows things about her. It’s subtle, and it’s jolly in tone, but the undertones are threatening.

“Well, I dig a hole, put a sheet on the base. Cover it with logs. Light them. Then when it’s smouldering, I add the food and cover it with soil. Twenty-four hours later the food is cooked in the ground it grew from. Absolutely delicious. No food like it. Learned it from my pops, who learned it from his.”

“That’s a coincidence,” Mary May says. “Digging a hole just before we arrive. You wouldn’t be hiding anything in there, would you?”

“No coincidence when I wasn’t expecting you today. And it’s an annual ritual – ask anyone on the farm. Isn’t that right, Dahy?” Another bunch of logs and moss land on my body.

Ow.

“That’s right, boss,” Dahy says.

“You expect me to believe a Flawed?” The disgust at even being spoken to by one is clear in her voice.

There’s a long silence. I concentrate on my breathing. The sheet hasn’t been flattened on all sides, air creeps in, but not enough. This hiding place was a ridiculous idea, but it was my ridiculous idea. I’m regretting it now. I could have taken my chances hiding in the forest – maybe Mary May could have got lost in there forever too, the two of us hunting and hiding from each other for the rest of our lives.

I hear Mary May slowly walking round the pit, perhaps she can see my body shape, perhaps not. Perhaps she is about to pull it all off me and reveal me right now. I concentrate on my breathing, everything is too heavy on me, I wish they’d stop piling on the wood.

“That wood’s for burning, then?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Granddad.

“So set it on fire,” she says.

“What?” says Granddad.

“You heard me.”

On top of me is the white sheet. Above it, firewood and moss. Suddenly, something shifts and the sheet that has been rucked up, giving me space to breathe, collapses to my skin. I try to blow it away but I can’t move it. And now Mary May wants to set me on fire. She knows I’m here. I’m the mouse caught in the trap.

Granddad tries to talk her out of it. He wasn’t intending on lighting it quite yet. The food isn’t ready; it needs to be wrapped up. It will all take time. She tells him she has time. She tells Dahy to prepare the food, but she doesn’t care about the food: she is more intent on setting me alight. She tells Granddad to concentrate on the fire. She’s not asking him – she’s telling him. She knows there’s nobody on this farm to share the food other than a bunch of Flawed, and she has no respect for their plans.

It’s happening now.

I feel another bundle land on my legs. Granddad is taking his time, chatting, dilly-dallying, doing his old-man-persona trick.

“Put one there,” she says.

It lands on my chest.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I close my eyes, try to return to the yacht. My eighteenth birthday, the chocolate fondue, the music, the breeze, the person I should be, not the person I am. I try to go far away, but I can’t disappear. I’m here and now. The logs are heavy on my body; the air is close.

Mary May wants him to hurry. If I’m discovered, then Granddad will be punished too. I take deep breaths, not wanting my chest to visibly rise and fall beneath the sheet and logs.

“I have a lighter,” Mary May says.

Granddad laughs at that. A big hearty boom. “Well, that won’t do. My tools are in the barn. You stay here with Dahy, watch how he prepares the food. I’ll be back.”

It’s the way he says it. So untrustworthy, it’s obvious that he’s lying. He’s so clever. She thinks he’s trying to get away from her, that there’s something or someone in the barn that he needs to hide from her. He’s so insistent on her staying here with Dahy that, of course, her attention leaves the pit and she insists on going to the barn with him. Dahy can help me out of here, lift some of the wood off.

But of course she then contacts her fellow Whistleblowers and tells them to accompany Dahy, to help him gather all the Flawed workers and line them up at the cooking pit.

She’s going to burn me out for everyone to see.

As soon as I hear their footsteps die away and their voices fade, I try to come up for air. Terrified it’s a trick and that Mary May will be standing beside me with a swarm of Whistleblowers, I fight my way out from under the sheet and timber. It’s more difficult than I thought; it’s heavy – Granddad has really piled on the wood.

No longer concerned about the possible trap, I don’t want to suffocate, and so I use both legs to kick up. The timber goes flying. I do the same with my arms, pushing the wood up and out. Some of it lands on my legs and shins, and I gasp with pain. I pull the sheet away and feel the air on my face. I gulp it in hungrily. I climb out of my grave and run towards the woods. As soon as I’m at the edge of the farm that leads into blackness, and safety, I look back. The pit is a mess. If I leave it like that it will be obvious that Granddad hid me and led Mary May away for my escape. He will suffer for my carelessness. They’ll know I’m here and they’ll find me in seconds. I will have no hope escaping from so many Whistleblowers in this wood.

I hear Granddad’s and Mary May’s voices in the distance as they return from the barn. Granddad is speaking loudly, perhaps deliberately, to warn me.

I look to the pit and back to the woods to possible freedom. I have no choice.

I sprint back to the pit, fix the sheet and the strewn timber and moss as quickly and neatly as I can, hearing their footsteps, so close now. My heart thumps wildly; I feel the throbbing in my neck and head. It’s as though I’m moving in slow motion, like this is a nightmare that I can only hope to wake from. But it’s not. It’s happening for real. I see the flash of red of Mary May’s uniform, then I run again. I’ve barely entered the woods and hidden behind the first tree when they come fully into sight. I’m sure they’ve seen me. Terrified, I push my back flat against the trunk, heart pounding, chest heaving.

“I don’t see why you couldn’t just use my lighter,” Mary May says, irritated. She’s annoyed she didn’t find me in the barn.

Granddad laughs, mockingly, which I know will anger her further. “No, no. You’ve got to be authentic. This tradition is thousands of years old. It’s one thing you forcing me to do this before I’d intended to, but if I’m lighting it, I’m lighting it my way.”

He sounds adamant and I know none of it is for real. Though he does like authenticity, he isn’t adverse to matchsticks or lighters; he simply went to the barn to give me a chance to escape.

He starts to light a fire using flint and his penknife. I’ve seen Granddad do this numerous times; he can light a fire in a matter of seconds but he messes around now, playing the part of a confused old man. He’s buying time, either because he knows I’ve escaped and is giving me time to hide or because he’s afraid I’m still under the pile of stones and he doesn’t want to set me on fire. I want to shout to him that it’s okay, that I’m not in the pit, but I can’t, so instead I listen to his agonising wait and steal a glimpse of his face. He’s not so confident now.

“What’s wrong, Cornelius?” Mary May asks slyly. “Afraid to set it on fire?”

Granddad looks lost. Torn. Tortured.

Dahy arrives with more Whistleblowers, not the huge army I’d expected. Two men and one woman, and a line of the eight Flawed farmworkers. They look haggard, as though Dahy has told them what’s about to happen.

“His papers and all the others are in order,” a female Whistleblower says to Mary May.

“Still in order since you checked them yesterday,” Granddad says. “And two days before that, and two days before that, and the three days before that. You know I might report you to the police for intimidation.”

“And we might take you in for aiding a Flawed,” the Whistleblower replies.

“On what grounds?” Granddad demands.

“On the grounds that the only people you seem to hire are Flawed workers, and you house them right here on your land.”

“I’m only doing what’s legal.”

“You’re going beyond what’s legal. Most Flawed get minimum wage. All your workers are on more. They get paid more than some Whistleblowers.”

“What do you think, Flawed?” A male Whistleblower takes over, while Mary May is silent. “Is the old man giving you special treatment? Think you’re able to escape us here?”

Dahy is wise enough to not say anything.

“I don’t let anything get past me here,” says Dan, the Whistleblower in charge of the Flawed farmworkers. This is his patch, his colleague’s suggestions that he lets them have free roam is an insult.

“Light the fire,” Mary May says, ending the feud.

Finally the fire sparks. There are so many Whistleblowers I’m afraid to move in case they hear me. The forest floor is covered in branches, twigs, leaves, everything that can give me away in seconds.

Granddad takes the flame to the moss and I’m afraid that he won’t do it, that he’ll give the game away, that they’ll find me. Have faith in me, Granddad. I’m your flesh and blood; have faith that I got away.

“What are you hiding, old man? Celestine? Is she under there? If she is, don’t you worry, we’ll smoke her out,” Mary May says.

“I told you she’s not here,” Granddad says suddenly, and he throws the flame on to the pit. The moss lights quickly and spreads to the twigs and logs. Dahy looks at Granddad, head hanging weakly; Granddad and the Whistleblowers watch the fire spread, waiting for the sounds of my screams. I watch them thinking that I’m under there, the smugness and satisfaction on the Whistleblowers’ faces. This fills me with so much anger and hatred for them that any thoughts I had of giving myself in, of giving up on my freedom, dissolve immediately. I will not give up; I can’t let them win.

“So what now?” a male Whistleblower asks, disappointed that the show hasn’t delivered.

“Well.” Granddad clears his throat, trying to keep his cool, but I know that he’s rattled. He has either set fire to his granddaughter, or he hasn’t. I could have passed out from lack of air; I could still be under there. The fire is spreading.

“We let it burn until it smoulders, then we pile the food in and cover it with soil.”

“Do it.”

Granddad looks at Mary May, lost, old, hope seeming to be gone. But the hate in him is clearly greater than ever. “Waiting for it to burn to a smoulder will take hours.”

“We have time,” she says.

They stay there for three hours.

My muscles burn, my feet ache, but I’m afraid to move.

When the fire has reduced to a smoulder, Granddad and Dahy are ordered to place the bundles of food on to the coals. The farmworkers watch from their orderly line, their F brand armbands all visible on their right arms, just above their elbow.

This was supposed to be a celebration, a coming-together to show that the Guild couldn’t beat them down. Now the Whistleblowers themselves are here. Hiding behind the tree, huddled on the ground, hugging my legs, shivering from the damp forest, I can’t say that I feel empowered. This feels like a defeat.

Granddad and Dahy cover the food with the soil so it will cook under the ground in the heat. Granddad looks at the ground, his work finished, as though he’s buried me alive. Again I want to call out to him that I’m okay, I made it out, but I can’t.

A phone rings and the female Whistleblower takes it. She steps aside, walks away from the others, so she can talk in private. She moves closer to me in the woods. I tense up again.

“Judge Crevan, hello. It’s Kate. No, Judge, Celestine isn’t here. We’ve checked everywhere.”

Silence as she listens and I hear Crevan’s voice from where I stand. Kate walks further and stops by my tree.

I press my back to the tree, squeeze my eyes shut, and hold my breath.

“With all due respect, Judge, this is the Guild’s sixth visit to the property and I believe Mary May was meticulous in her search. We’ve checked everywhere you can imagine. I don’t believe she’s here. I think the grandfather is telling the truth.”

I can hear the frustration in her voice. They’re all under pressure to find me, pressure placed on them by Judge Crevan. Kate takes a few more steps, right into my eyeline.

She slowly scans the forest, her eyes searching the distance.

Then she looks right at me.

I expect her to tell Crevan that she’s found me, hang up, call to the others, blow the large red whistle that hangs on a gold chain round her neck, but she stays calm, her voice not changing. She is looking right through me as though she can’t see me at all. Has it come to this? Have I been hiding so long that I’m no longer visible? I actually look down at my hands to make sure I can see myself.

“You’d like us to take the grandfather to Highland Castle,” Kate says, looking me up and down, continuing the conversation as if I’m not there.

Why isn’t she telling him I’m here?

The news that they’re going to take Granddad to Highland Castle, to Judge Crevan, the man who personally branded me and destroyed my life, causes the panic to well in my chest. It’s quickly followed by a large wave of anger. They can’t take my granddad.

“We’ll bring him in now,” she says, eyes still on me, and I’m waiting for the bombshell, for the moment she tells Mary May and Judge Crevan that I’m right here, beside her. “We’ll be with you in two hours.”

I’m about to scream at her, punch her, kick her, yell that she cannot take me and my granddad, but I stop myself. There is something peculiar about the way she is looking at me.

She puts the phone in her pocket, fixes me with a long stare as if she’s trying to think of something to say, then decides against it, and turns and leaves.

“Right, old man,” she calls to Granddad. “We’re taking you in. Judge Crevan needs words with you.”

Even after I hear the vehicles drive away, I stay where I am. I sit in the cramped and damp conditions of a hollowed-out tree, trying to understand what exactly has happened.

Why didn’t she take me?

It’s been one hour since Mary May left with my beloved granddad in tow, carting him off as if he’s some kind of criminal. I’m still huddling behind the tree, exhausted, hungry, cold, and very afraid. I can smell the smoke from the pit, smouldering under the earth, cooking the food that probably no one will eat now that Granddad is gone. I feel an overwhelming guilt at his being in this position, and I’m scared of what they’ll do to him in Highland Castle.

I’m scared, too, of what he might be thinking. Does he fear he burned me alive? I wish there was a way to tell him I wasn’t there, in the pit.

When all the vehicles left, initially I was afraid to move, thinking it was a test or a tease, that as soon as I came out of the woodwork they’d grab me. Then I waited, thinking perhaps the farmworkers would come for me, but they didn’t, in lockdown at this hour by their Whistleblower, Dan.

It’s after the 11:00 PM curfew, the time when checkpoints and searches on individuals increase. It’s not a good time to be roaming alone, though at least I can move around under the cover of darkness. I’ve decided that going back to the farmhouse is out of the question, despite its warmth and the welcoming light on the porch.

Perhaps I can make it to Granddad’s nearest neighbour. Can I trust them for help?

But then what did Granddad tell me? Rule number one: Don’t trust anybody.

Suddenly I hear a vehicle return. A door slams. Followed by two more. They’re back. I feel so stupid now. Why didn’t I run? Why did I allow them to return to get me?

I hear footsteps nearby. Male voices I don’t recognise, and then one that I do, clear as anything.

“Here’s the pit,” Dahy says. “She was in here.”

Can I trust Dahy? Or is he the one who called the Whistleblowers in the first place? Has he sold me out, or has he been forced to help another Whistleblower team to find me? I don’t know who to believe. I’m cold; I’m scared; I could either jump up and yell “Save me!” and ruin everything I’ve done to get to this point, or I could sit tight. Sit tight. Sit tight.

“She must have gone into the forest,” another man says.

I see the light from a torch stretch in front of me, illuminating the black forest for what seems like hundreds of miles. Tall, thick tree trunks for as far as the eye can see. Even if I run that way and the Whistleblowers don’t see me, I’ll be lost in no time.

It’s over, Celestine; it’s over.

But even though I tell myself that, I’ll never give up. I think of Crevan’s face as he hissed at me in the Branding Chamber asking me to repent; I think of Carrick’s hand pressed up against the glass as he watched it all unfold, the offer of friendship. The anger burns through me; I hear the footsteps near my tree and I unfold myself from my cramped position. I stretch my arms and legs, and on one, two … I fire myself out of the hole, catapulting into the woods, startling whatever is living nearby and I sprint with stiff legs.

The men jump into action straight away.

“There!”

The torch moves to find me; I dodge its line of fire and instead use it to see what’s in front of me. I dodge trees’ long, thin pine needles; duck and dive; and hear them closing in fast behind me.

“Celestine,” a voice hisses angrily, coming close. I keep running, I smack my head against a low branch and feel momentarily dizzy, but I don’t have time to stop and centre myself. They’re closing in on me, three of them. Three frenzied torch beams as they run.

“Celestine!” A voice calls louder, and another hushes him.

Why are they hushing? I’m dizzy, I think I’ve cut my head, all I know is that I need to keep running; it’s what my mum told me to do. Granddad said don’t trust anyone. Dad said to trust Granddad. I need to keep moving.

The torches suddenly go off and I’m running in pitch blackness. I stop still, my breathing all I can hear. I don’t know which way is forward or which is back the way I came; I am utterly disorientated in the dense forest. Panic descends again, then I take control. I close my eyes, allowing calm to encapsulate me. I can do this. I turn round, trying to see light from the farmhouse in the distance, or any clues. As I move, twigs snap between my feet.

Then I feel strong arms round my waist, a smell of sweat.

“Got her,” he says.

I fight against his grip, but it’s no use: there’s no room to move. I keep trying anyway, wriggling with all my energy to hopefully exhaust him, hit him, scratch him, kick him.

A torch goes on, someone is shining it in my face. Both my captor and I look away from the harsh light.

“Let her go, Lennox,” says the man holding the torch, and I stop wriggling immediately.

The arms release me, and the torch is passed to Dahy, who holds it so that the speaker is illuminated.

The man is amused.

The man is Carrick.

I’m buzzing as I follow Dahy back to the farmhouse. Carrick and his friend Lennox are behind me. I want to keep turning round to get a look at Carrick, but with Lennox there I can’t. I’ve done it twice already, and Lennox caught me both times. I feel nervous, happy, surprisingly giddy at being reunited with Carrick. Finally something is going my way. My birthday wish came true. I bite my lip to hide my smile as we walk single file back to the farmhouse; now is not a time for smiling, though they couldn’t possibly understand my relief.

“Any word from Granddad?” I ask Dahy quietly.

“No,” he says, turning round briefly so I can catch the worried look on his face. “But Dan is doing everything he can to find out.”

I’m cynical of trusting Dan, who is the farmworkers’ Whistleblower. His arrangement with Granddad to loosen the reins on the Flawed workers was more based on feeding his alcohol addiction through gifts from Granddad’s home whiskey distillery rather than common decency.

“You’ll let me know when you hear something?” I ask Dahy.

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“You’ll make sure Granddad knows that I’m safe?”

Dan never knew I was here at the farmhouse – their arrangement was never that sweet – and so he can’t possibly relay the message to Granddad that I’m alive. Maybe the Whistleblower Kate told Granddad, but placing my faith in any Whistleblower is the last possible move, regardless of whether she let me go or not. I reach out to grab Dahy’s arm so that he stops walking, my hand grips his Flawed armband. Lennox and Carrick stall behind me.

“Dahy, can you contact my family? Tell them Granddad’s at the castle? Tell my parents that I’m okay?”

“They already know he’s at the castle, but it’s too risky to tell them about you over the phone, Celestine. You know the Guild is probably listening in on the phone lines.”

Members of the Guild aren’t super spies, but if Juniper and I figured out a way to overhear our neighbours’ phone conversations through Ewan’s baby monitor years ago, and a journalist can find a way to tap phones, then the Guild certainly can.

“You have to find a way to tell them. And you have to tell him I’m okay.”

“Celestine—”

“No, Dahy, listen.” I raise my voice and I hear the tremor in it. “I cannot have Granddad sitting in a cell, or wherever they’ve put him, thinking that he has just burned his granddaughter alive.” My voice cracks. “You need to get word to him.”

Dahy finally understands. He softens. “Of course. I’ll find a way to tell him.”

I let go of his arm.

“He’ll be okay, Celestine; you know he’s made of tough stuff.” Dahy adds, “If anything, they’ll want to let him go quickly, before he conspiracy-theories them to death.”

I smile weakly at his attempt at humour and nod my thanks. I try to ignore the tears that are welling, try not to picture the terrible scenarios for Granddad that my mind keeps wanting to create. Granddad being booed and heckled as he walks across the cobblestoned courtyard of Highland Castle. People looking at him and shouting at him like he’s scum, throwing and spitting while he tries to keep his chin up. Granddad locked in a cell. Granddad having to answer to Crevan in the Guild court. Granddad in the Branding Chamber. Granddad being put through all the things that happened to me. When it’s yourself, you can take it; when it’s happening to the people you love, it can break you.

What Crevan did to me was rare, at least I think it was; it was a moment of stress, of his utter loss of control. All I can do is hope that he won’t treat Granddad as he’s treated me.

We walk back to the Jeep they parked at the farmhouse. There is no time for catching up on old times; I sense that the three of them are all anxious to get back to safety. It’s after 11:00 PM, we’re all Flawed and should be indoors. Three of us are ‘evaders’ who have disobeyed the Guild.

I have time to very quickly gather some of my things from the house: the small amount of clothes Granddad managed to successfully retrieve from Mum on a recent visit to her, the longest day of my life when he left me at the farm alone. It’s not much, a small backpack, and I suppose it’s all I need, but I think of all my clothes in my wardrobe at home, each item that meant so much to me, every one a part of me, a way of expressing who I was. I’m stripped of those now, realise I have nothing but my own words and actions to truly show who I am.

We say goodbye to Dahy, he wishes us luck and I beg him again to get word to me about Granddad as quickly as possible, and vice versa.

Carrick holds the door open for me. Our eyes meet and my heart pounds.

“We need to see to that cut,” he says, focusing on my forehead, the small wound from where I slammed into a branch moments ago. With the surge of adrenaline I didn’t feel the pain, but now I feel it sting in the breeze. As Carrick studies my forehead, I’m able to take in his face. This is the closest I’ve ever been to him, in the flesh – every other time was behind glass, or comatose after the supermarket riot. It’s like I know him so well, and yet we’re perfect strangers at the same time.

Feeling flustered, I step into the Jeep and bang the top of my head on the doorframe.

“I’m okay,” I mumble, hiding my flushed face in the darkness of the Jeep.

Carrick drives and I sit behind him, our eyes meeting often in the rear-view mirror. Lennox sits beside him in the passenger seat, equally large in stature. Both of them looking like soldiers.

“Where are we going?” I finally ask.

Carrick’s eyes meet mine in the mirror and my stomach flips. “Home.”

“Home” takes us through back roads and trails, away from towns and main roads. Every lamp-post and billboard is covered in election campaign posters. I see Enya Sleepwell from the Vital Party, a politician who attended my trial. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was there to support me. I didn’t even know who she was, until journalist Pia Wang questioned me about her. Enya Sleepwell recently became leader of the Vital Party and one of the main items on her campaign agenda is to discuss rights for the Flawed. It’s a risky topic for a politician: the Guild and the government go hand in hand. But despite her choice of issues, her popularity is growing week by week.

On the poster, her cropped hair and reassuring smile stand above the slogan COMPASSION AND LOGIC. These are my words from the trial, when explaining why I aided the old Flawed man on the bus.

Why did I help him? All the confused faces kept asking me during the trial. It was beyond belief, incomprehensible, that anyone would want to aid a Flawed, a second-class citizen.

I helped him because I had compassion and logic. I felt for him, and helping him made sense. They were the first words that came to me in the court, I hadn’t planned them. The only story that had been planned was the lie that Crevan had wanted me to tell. It feels so peculiar to me to see those words in big, bold writing on posters, like they’ve been stolen from me, and have been bent to someone else’s purpose.

I want to ask Carrick and Lennox a million questions, but I know not to ask anything. The atmosphere is tense in the car, even between Carrick and Lennox as they decide which way to traverse.

The Guild has increased the number of Whistleblowers on the ground. Judge Crevan is in a panic trying to find me; the most Flawed person in the history of the Guild is not allowed to just disappear. Crevan has widened searches to all public and private properties, the hope being that there will be less support for me when members of the public are made to look like Flawed aiders in front of their neighbours.

Crevan has even started delaying the Flawed curfew buses. Designed to bring the Flawed population home in time for their 11:00 PM curfew, people are now missing their curfews at the hands of the Guild and they’re being punished. This is all in my name. Crevan is playing a game with me. I will continue to punish the innocent until you come out of your hiding place.

Riots have begun to break out in the city. The Guild is characterising them as random outbursts from Flawed groups, but Granddad believes it’s not just Flawed who are feeling angry about the Guild. He believes regular people are uncomfortable about Flawed rules too, and that they’re starting to speak out. I know now that there is sense in what I once considered Granddad’s nonsensical rants. Whatever excuses the Guild gave to the public, I know that Crevan’s real reason for this surge in Whistleblower activity is to find me.

There are times when I’ve wanted to give myself up, for the sake of others, but Granddad always stops me. He tells me that I can do more for people over time and they will appreciate it then. It just takes patience.

We see a Whistleblowers’ checkpoint up ahead, and take a sharp left down the back of a cluster of shops, an alley so narrow we have to squeeze by the skips. Carrick stops the car and they pore over the map some more in search of a new route. This happens a few times. The relief that I experienced on seeing Carrick has now dissipated as I realise I’m still not safe. I yearn for that feeling of not having to constantly look over my shoulder.

Beads of sweat glisten on Carrick’s brow. I take the opportunity of sitting behind him to study him. His black hair is closely shaven; his neck, shoulders, everything wide, muscular and strong. Soldier is what I named him in the castle cells before I knew his real name. His cheekbones and jaw are perfectly defined, all hard edges. His eyes, a colour I’ve never been able to work out, still look black in the rear-view mirror. I study them: hard, intense, quick, always analysing, looking for new angles. He catches my stare and, embarrassed, I quickly avert my eyes. When I finally glimpse back I catch him looking at me.

“Home, sweet home,” Lennox says, and I can see them both visibly relax. But I look out the window at our destination and I tense even more. This is not the ‘home’ I was expecting. Or hoping for.

We drive towards a compound surrounded by twenty-feet-high fences with rows of barbed wire. It looks like a prison. Carrick looks back at me again, to garner my reaction, his black eyes fixed on me.

I have broken the most basic rule that Granddad taught me. Don’t trust anyone.

And for the first time ever, I doubt Carrick.

Floodlights light the sky, I can barely see past the front window they’re so bright, and a man with a machine gun charges angrily to the door of the car.

“Uh-oh,” Lennox says. He throws a blanket at me and tells me to cover up and lie down. I do it immediately.

Carrick lowers the window. “Good evening, boss.”

“Good evening?” he splutters. “It’s midnight. What the hell are you thinking? The city is crawling with Whistleblowers, and my guys here are loyal but they’ll start to ask questions if we have too many comings and goings between shift hours. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have caused being out here at this hour?”

“Could have, but didn’t,” Lennox says.

“Sorry, Eddie. You know we wouldn’t have been out unless it was extremely important.”

He curses under his breath. “You’re good workers but not that good. I could find replacements for you at a moment’s notice.”

“Yes, us Flawed should always be grateful for every opportunity,” Lennox says sarcastically.

“Len.” Carrick silences him.

“It won’t happen again,” Carrick says. “And you know that if anything did happen out there we would never be linked back to here. You have both our words.”

“Scout’s honour,” Lennox adds. “How about you let us in now? I don’t know if you heard but it’s dangerous out here with Whistleblowers sniffing around the place.”

There’s a long silence as Eddie thinks it over and I feel the tension again. If he cuts us loose, we won’t survive one night out here, off the radar, three Flawed. No more than two Flawed are allowed to travel or be together, and it’s after curfew, and we’re evaders.

“Okay. Don’t think I can’t see a body under the blanket. I just hope it’s alive. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not running a refugee camp here; he just better be a good worker.”

“The best,” Carrick says, and I smile under the blanket.

“What is this place?” I ask, after we’ve driven through the front gates and they tell me it’s safe to remove the blanket. I look out the window and strain my neck to take in the height of what looks like a nuclear plant.

“This is a CCU plant. Next door is a CDU plant. They’re sister companies.”

“What do they do?” I ask as Lennox jumps out of the Jeep before it stops and disappears into the shadows. Carrick parks the Jeep.

“Carbon capture utilisation and carbon dioxide utilisation,” he replies.

I look at him with even more confusion.

“I thought you were the whizz-kid.”

“In maths, not in whatever this is.”

“Come on, I’ll give you a tour.”

Carrick holds the car door open for me and his manners remind me of how he was raised in a Flawed At Birth institution. F.A.B. institutions are for children of Flawed parentage. The Guild’s reasoning for taking these children is to dilute the Flawed gene pool, and these special schools retrain their Flawed brains. Carrick was taken from his Flawed parents at the age of five and was raised in a state school boasting the best facilities, education and standards. The Guild, the state, raised him to be strong, to be one of them, to be perfect, but when he graduated, he turned on them by doing the one thing F.A.B. children are told not to do: he sought out his parents. He was branded on his chest for disloyalty to society.

Carrick is eighteen years old and a giant of a man; his only flaw was to want to find his parents. He walks me around the compound explaining, using a key card to access the doors.

There are a dozen metal containers that look like shuttles side by side, the kind of thing you’d see at a brewery plant, or at a NASA facility, looking like they’re about to lift off.

“As you know, the earth produces more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed. Carbon points have risen to the highest levels for eight hundred thousand years. Most of it comes from oil or coal, fossil fuels buried underground for millions of years. It’s a polluting waste product, so this CCU facility harnesses it and puts it to better use as a resource. Reusing the carbon to create new products.”

“How does it do that?”

“It captures the carbon dioxide from power plants, steel and cement works, or collects it from the air. It extracts the carbon, which provides the raw material for new products like green fuels, methanol, plastics, pharmaceuticals, building materials.”

“This is government-owned?” I ask, wondering why on earth he’s brought us here. How can we be safe in a state-owned factory when they’re the very people we’re running from?

“It’s private. This is a pilot plant, everything here is research, just testing, nothing is on the market yet. Whistleblowers can’t carry out surprise searches for Flawed without prior warning, which is, at minimum, usually twenty-four hours’ notice.”

“That’s why you chose here?”

“I didn’t choose it. I followed the others.”

“The others?”

“I’ll introduce you later. First, I’ll give you the tour. There are four units. This is the capture regeneration section.” He swipes his card and the red light on the security panel turns to green. He pulls the door open and lets me walk in first. Once inside, I see that the enormous plant is like an airport hangar, with more containers and pipes stretching in every direction, ladders climbing up the walls and ceilings to access them. Carrick hands me a high-visibility jacket and hard hat.

“This is where I work. Don’t worry, I don’t do anything important, just drive the forklift, so you’re going to get this in layman’s terms.”

“I won’t notice the difference,” I say, looking around, completely overwhelmed by the futuristic metal facility.

“This container here is where the flue gas is routed to a pretreatment section. It cools, then the flue gas is sent to the absorber column, to remove the carbon dioxide. The flue gas enters the bottom of the absorber and flows upwards.” He walks as he talks, pointing at the equipment, and I follow. “It reacts with the solvent solution, where a bunch of stuff happens.”

I smile.

“The treated flue gas is sent here to what’s called the stack so it can be released to the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide liquid leaves the absorber and is pumped to the regeneration section where the CO₂ chemical absorption process is reversed. The CO₂ liquid leaves the bottom of the absorber and is sent to heat exchangers where the temperature rises. More stuff happens. Then the carbon dioxide vapour is sent to the carbon dioxide product compressor. Which is over here.” We stop at the product compressor. “And there it is. Want to know anything else?”

“Yes. Who are the others you followed here?”

He nods. “We’re getting to that.”

We leave the factory behind us and take quite a walk in the enormous compound to a less futuristic side of the facility. This new section feels more residential, contains rows and rows of white Portakabins, all layered on top of one another, five levels high, ten boxes across, steel balconies and staircases connecting them. We enter a simple one-story concrete building with a reception area, with a desk that’s empty at this late hour, a few chairs, and technological and scientific magazines scattered on the coffee table. A beefy security guard is asleep in an armchair in the corner.

“One hundred employees live on-site,” Carrick explains. “This place is out of the way – the closest village or town is too far for a daily commute – so the owners thought it best to house them here.”

“Owners?”

“Private company, Vigor.” He shrugs. “I’ve been here only two weeks, but I haven’t seen them around. Whoever they are, they’re sympathetic to the Flawed. They’ve allowed a gang of evaders to work and live here. He’s one of them.” He nods at the security guard who’s snoring quietly.

He points at the poster on the wall behind the reception desk and I see the same red V logo I’ve been seeing all around the plant. The V in ‘Vigor’ is designed as a mathematical square-root sign and I’ve seen it before somewhere, though I can’t place it.

√igor. turning a problem into a solution.

“There are four different recreational areas, depending on which unit you’re in. Flawed are all employed in the same unit; it’s this way.”

He pushes open a door and we’re back in the night air and walking across to a collection of Portakabins. Despite the late hour I can hear voices and activity coming from one of them and I know that our time alone is running out for now. There’s something important on my mind that I need to discuss first.

“Carrick, I need to know something.” I swallow. “Have you told anybody about …” I indicate my back.

“No one.”

I feel relieved, but awkward for bringing up the sixth brand. Things had been easy between us, but thinking about the Branding Chamber has caused me to tense up again.

“Apart from the guards and Crevan, Mr Berry and I are the only two who know,” Carrick assures me. “I’ve been trying to contact Mr Berry, but I haven’t had any luck so far,” he explains. “It’s been hard, trying to do things while I’m off the grid.”

“The guards are all missing, Carrick,” I say urgently. “Mr Berry is missing. I was afraid Crevan had got to you too. We have so much to talk about.”

“What?” His eyes widen.

At the end of the corridor, the door opens and I hear voices, laughter, a gang of people. I’m not ready to meet them yet; I need to talk to Carrick first. I speak quickly. “I told Pia Wang about my sixth brand.”

He raises his eyebrows, surprised that I would share this information with a Flawed TV and Crevan Media journalist. It had been Pia’s duty to tell my story, and after the trial she had set out to destroy my character, as was the norm with all her Flawed interviewees, but something happened with me. She believed me. She doubted my trial from the beginning and she couldn’t justify her one-sided reporting any longer. She sensed something was amiss.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but we can trust her. She was doing all she could to gather information to write a revealing story about Crevan. I haven’t heard from her in over two weeks. It’s not just our communication that has been broken: I’ve been checking online and she hasn’t written an article under Pia Wang … or under her pseudonym.”

“Her pseudonym?”

“Lisa Life.”

Carrick whistles. “Wow. She’s Lisa Life? Okay. Now I get why you told her.”

Lisa Life is a notorious blogger, writing stories critical of the Flawed system. The authorities have been trying to find her and shut her down for weeks, but she just keeps changing servers.

“You can’t tell anyone,” I say. “She swore me to secrecy.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Anyway,” I say. “She hasn’t posted anything for weeks. I hope she’s being quiet because she’s in the thick of writing her big, juicy Crevan reveal that will tear him apart,” I continue, “but … Pia isn’t the type of person to ever be quiet. The last I heard from her she was going to speak to the guards’ families.”

He frowns, still back at square one. “Have their families reported them? Are the police looking for them?”

“I think they’re afraid to. Mr Berry’s husband said he just disappeared. I was worried about you this whole time, afraid that Crevan would make you disappear too. Crevan has no idea that you were in the viewing room; he never saw you and I didn’t tell Pia about you, so I think you’re safe. Also Crevan had no idea that Mr Berry was filming the branding until he overheard a phone conversation between me and Mr Berry’s husband. He told me that I have the footage,” I whisper.

“So that’s why Crevan wants you so badly? He wants the Branding Chamber footage?”

I nod.

“He’s afraid you’ll reveal the video.”

“I think so.”

He looks at me with the utmost respect. “Then we’ve got him. I knew it, but I didn’t know why. He’s afraid of you, Celestine. We’ve got him.”

“You two have plenty of time to talk,” a woman calls suddenly, startling me. She’s standing at the open door of the cabin that the noise was flowing from. “Come join us, Celestine.” She has an enormous welcoming smile on her face.

I blink. Then I realise: my face has been in the news for weeks now; of course this stranger knows who I am.

“Um, thanks,” I say.

“Celestine North,” she says as I reach her. She opens her arms and embraces me. “It is an honour to meet you.” She wraps me up and I’m stiff at first but slowly relax into it. When is the last time I received a hug? I think of my mum and dad and fight the emotion that follows. “I’m Kelly – come inside and I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

I look back at Carrick for help, but Kelly takes me by the hand and brings me along with her. Once inside the cabin, I see a roomful of strangers staring at me. Carrick follows us into the room and disappears into a corner somewhere.

Kelly introduces me. “This is my husband, Adam.”

Adam hugs me warmly. “Welcome.”

“Come and meet Rogan,” Kelly says, dragging me away.

In a darkened corner, a younger teen lurks.

“Say hi to Celestine, Rogan,” Kelly coaxes him, as a parent would do with a much younger child.

He gives me a weak wave, like the effort to care is too great.

“Oh, come on,” Kelly says to him, and he slowly stands, shuffles over to me with feet too big for his body, trousers too big for his waist, and reaches out to shake my hand. It’s limp. It’s damp. He doesn’t look me in the eye and quickly scampers back to his bean bag. If I was on the outside I would say he was disgusted by a Flawed, but in here, in the company of so many Flawed and assuming he’s one of us himself, I put it down to shyness. Kelly talks a mile a minute, introducing me to the rest of the group.

There’s Cordelia and her little girl, six-year-old Evelyn, who shows me that her top teeth fell out, pushing her tongue through the holes. I’m surprised to recognise the two men I was standing beside at the cash register when the entire drama started at the supermarket riot two weeks ago. Now I know their names are Fergus and Lorcan. Fergus has stitches across his forehead, and Lorcan is covered in bruises. I meet Mona, a girl around my age, with a smile so bright, and sizzling energy that would light up the darkest day. I immediately like her. There’s an older man named Bahee, a chilled-out dude wearing circular blue-tinted glasses and a long grey ponytail, who’d look comfortable sitting round a camp fire and singing “Kumbaya”.

“And you already know our eldest son, Carrick.” Kelly smiles. Carrick comes a bit closer. “I’m so glad you were with him in the castle.” She takes my hands, her eyes filled with tears. “We know how horrific the experience is. I’m glad you were there with my boy.” She reaches out to him, but he recoils slightly. It’s as though his actions have surprised himself, but it’s too late—the damage is done. Kelly pulls her hand away from him, trying to hide her hurt expression.

“You found your parents?” I ask in surprise.

I look from Adam to Kate, finally and suddenly seeing a resemblance between Carrick and his dad. But he’s nothing like his mother – she’s tiny, birdlike. Carrick towers over her, though he does with most people. She’s more like Rogan, who would barely shake my hand. I look to Rogan then and realise that he’s her son.

“That means you two are …”

I wait for them to say something but nobody speaks. They don’t even look at one another. There’s such an awkward atmosphere, so much tension. But of course being reunited with loved ones after thirteen years was never going to be easy.

“They’re brothers!” Mona suddenly announces. “Yay! Do I get a point for that?” she asks sarcastically, punching the air. “It’s just one big happy family around here, isn’t it, guys?”

“Mona,” Adam says, annoyed, as Kelly turns away. It doesn’t seem to bother Mona in the slightest.

“You didn’t tell her you found us, Carrick?” Kelly asks, confused and hurt.

There’s a long silence as Carrick pulls at his earlobe self-consciously, trying to search for an answer that will help his situation.

“Hey, has Carrick shown you the sleepboxes yet?” Mona jumps in at just the right time.

While I deal with the shock of Carrick finding his parents, I’m dragged away by a chirping Mona, who talks so fast I can barely keep up.

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll show you. You can share with me.”

The accommodation is a series of Portakabins piled on top of one another, but not just regular cubic cabins with basic beds inside; these are modern, state-of-the-art. I steal a glimpse inside one of them as we pass and see an entire living space cleverly built in the pod. There’s a bunk bed – single on top and double beneath – built-in shelves, drawers beside the beds. There’s even a toilet and shower. Everything is glossy white.

“Each sleepbox has an en-suite bathroom, air-conditioning, a flat-screen TV and a personal safe,” Mona says in a funny accent, as though she’s my hotel guide. “The rooms all include a double bed and a single bunk bed.”

I laugh. “I’ve never seen anything like these before.”

“Nothing but the best for CCU workers.” She lowers her voice, though the section of non-Flawed living space is so far away nobody could possibly hear us. “The owner of Vigor is sympathetic to the Flawed. None of us have ever met him; he’s a secret shadowy figure,” she says sarcastically, eyes wide and fingers moving spookily.

“Is that Eddie?”

She laughs. “No. Eddie runs the place. I’m talking about the big boss: the owner, creator, inventor, whatever, of Vigor. Bahee claims to know him, but I’m not so sure. Bahee is a scientist; he can sometimes be a little bit …” She whistles to finish the sentence. “Anyway, Eddie knows about us. He keeps us living away from the others, manages shifts to keep us apart most of the time. Nobody but him and us knows that we’re Flawed, and it has to stay that way. Obviously here we’re all evaders.” She rolls her eyes at the term. “So you won’t see any armbands on us. If you have a brand on your hand, you get a job that requires gloves; if you have a brand on your temple, you get a job that requires a hard hat or you find a fancy way of keeping your hair down. Don’t trust make-up to cover it. It gets hot here; it can melt off your face faster than you know. If the brand is on your tongue, you don’t talk too much. Get it?”

I nod emphatically. I have a brand in every place she’s mentioned, and more.

“Cool.” She studies me to make sure she believes me and seems happy with what she finds. “Had a girl in here who fell in love with a scientist. Lizzie. She shared my room. She kept talking about telling him. Needing to share with him her true self because she was so in love.” She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, I had to hear this crap every night. Well, as you’ll see, that didn’t work out too well for her. She told him what she was, he was grossed out, and so she ran off. Could have got us into a whole lot of trouble,” she says angrily, unlocking the door to her cabin and pushing the door open.

It’s identical to the cabin I stole a glimpse of. The single bed above is clearly Mona’s, with posters and possessions, a teddy bear, on the bed. Beneath it is the double bed. It’s just a naked mattress, where Lizzie once slept, where she thought this place was her home, where she was in love with a scientist, and then abandoned it. How replaceable we all are.

I understand how this girl Lizzie must have felt when she wasn’t wanted by her boyfriend as soon as she revealed that she was Flawed. I recall the way Art looked at me in the school library after my brandings, how he couldn’t bring himself to kiss me. I suppose that is the point of a tongue branding. They say it’s the worst of them all. In fact, it turned out to be the second worst. Crevan himself held the hot weld to my spine to show that I was Flawed to my very backbone. But no one here will ever know about that, no one but Carrick, who witnessed it.

“When did Lizzie leave?” I ask, looking at her empty double bed.

“Two weeks ago. No goodbye,” she says angrily. “She left most of her stuff here too. You spend every day with someone and you think they’re your friend … Anyway—” She changes the subject, pretends not to care, though it’s clear she’s hurt. “So ground rules. You sleep here, wash there, and do your thing in there. Depending on your job, you can go to bed and get up whenever you want. There are night shifts and day shifts. You can help yourself to the food in the kitchen in our rec room. The plant has a better cafeteria – more options, tastier food – but it’s harder to avoid people getting too close there. Kelly and Adam work in the kitchen; Bahee is a scientist; Cordelia a computer whizz; I’m a cleaner. You can talk to the other staff, but don’t get too close. No one knows we’re Flawed, but some people ask too many questions, you know? Best thing is to keep to yourself, but not too much, or you’ll stand out. Whatever you do, stay away from Fergus and Lorcan; they’re only after one thing.” She looks at me knowingly.

“Oh, right, sex.”

“No.” She bursts out laughing. “I wish. No –” she turns serious – “revolution. I mean, Carrick probably is too; he hangs out with them, but he’s a quiet kind of a guy, you never know what he’s thinking.” She leaves a silence, while she studies me with a smile. “I see you’ve already caught his attention.” She raises her eyebrows.

“It’s not like that with me and Carrick,” I say, unable to explain how it really is.

Our connection goes deeper than that. We shared something that will link us forever, something I’ll never have with anybody else. Though I don’t know if it’s a good thing, to look at him and always remember that he was the person there in the Branding Chamber during the toughest moment of my life. It causes me to remember it, over and over again. Maybe being away from him would help me to forget.

Mona is looking at me for juicy details, but I’m uncomfortable. To tell her what bonded us would be to tell her what happened, and nobody can ever know what happened.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask, looking around.

“Oh, you’re as bad as Carrick, deflecting the questions. Whatever. Don’t tell me, but watch out, those institution boys are famous for only wanting one thing.” She steps on my double bed with her big black leather boot and climbs up to her bed. She sits on the edge, her legs dangling over my bed.

I think about it. “Revolution?”

She grins. “Nope. Mostly, they want sex.”

I have to laugh.

“I’ve been here one year. To answer your question.”

“You’ve been Flawed for one year?”

“Two years.” She looks away, reaches to a glossy cabinet on the wall with no handle, pushes it to pop it open. She takes bedsheets from the shelves and drops them on to my new bed. Then she stamps on my bed with her big leather boots again and jumps to the floor, where she busies herself with the sheets. I try to help her, but she waves me off, talking as she goes. I can sense it’s easier for her to be busy while telling me her story.

“My family threw me out of the house when I was branded Flawed. Dad said, ‘You’re no daughter of mine’.” She puts on a deep voice and pretends to make fun of the situation, but it’s no laughing matter. “He had my bags packed when I got home from school one day. He walked me out to the taxi while Mum watched from the window. He gave me enough cash for a week and that was it.” Her eyes are distant. “I lived on the street for one year as a fully fledged Flawed. Then I started to hear about these evaders, these magical people who were able to live without having to report to Whistleblowers, without the Guild breathing down their backs. I always thought it was a myth, that evaders were like fairies, but they turned out to be true. I came here finally. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

My eyes widen and I realise how lucky I am to have a family that supported me all the way through. And what my poor granddad is going through now to protect me.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I spent a year doing this and that, following the rules, doing what I was told by my Whistleblower, but then I got tired of that – it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get a job; I couldn’t get work, so I couldn’t pay rent. Moved around some homeless shelters. I can tell you it’s bad being Flawed with a roof over your head; you can imagine what it’s like without one.” Her eyes glisten. “So I made a decision and came here,” she replies, eyes back to me.

“What did you do to become Flawed?”

Her tears disappear immediately, her eyes darken, and I learn the first rule of being Flawed. Never ask a Flawed person how they became Flawed.

I wake up in the cabin to a nightmare, as usual. They haunt me. I’m always on the run from Crevan. Sprinting, leaping over walls, but I’m never fast enough – it’s like I’m on a treadmill, running and running but not getting anywhere. It’s exhausting and it continues all night, like it’s on a loop. The only difference between this nightmare and every other night is a new addition: my granddad being tortured in the Branding Chamber.

Sweating and panting in the early hours of the morning, I sit bolt upright. I need to speak to Dahy. Even more urgently, I need to call home; I need to know what’s going on.

Morning light streams in through the window of the cabin, and when I look up I see that Mona has left her bed. Probably gone to work. I check my watch and can’t believe that it’s midday.

There’s a knock on the door.

I wrap myself in the bedsheet, lifting it to cover the brand over my heart, and open the door.

“Hi,” Carrick says, swiftly looking me up and down, and his eyes on me send goose bumps rising on my skin. “Brought you this.” He hands me a steaming mug of coffee and a chocolate muffin. “I’m on a break from my shift.”

“I can’t believe I’ve slept this long.”

“You needed it.” He looks at me intensely. “You’ve had a tough time.”

I cup my hand round the mug and feel the warmth. “Thank you.”

“The others wanted me to tell you to come to the rec room when you’re ready. Most of them are on a lunch break; they want to show you something. Don’t look so worried.” He offers a rare smile.

“Okay, I’ll be there soon. Carrick … you found your parents!” I grin at him, in celebration.

“I know,” he says awkwardly, face scrunched up in thought. “It’s weird. It’s new. It’s been only a few weeks. I barely know them. But they know me – my mum, more so; it’s like she knows everything about me and I know nothing about her.”

“It’s bound to be weird. I was only in the castle for a few days, and when I went back home it felt different.”

It was odd with my sister, Juniper, the entire time; we didn’t get along at all and made up moments before I escaped from the house. She admitted to feeling guilty for not standing beside me on the bus, for not speaking out in court. Bizarrely she felt jealous because, despite my punishment, she felt I’d done the right thing and she hadn’t. I also discovered she was Art’s accomplice in helping him to hide, when I desperately wanted to see him more than anything in the world. So much of what happened between us during those weeks was all due to lack of communication.

“I think when things happen to you, it can … alienate you from people,” I say quietly. I think of my experience of going back to school and having no friends, being excluded from classes by teachers, being captured and locked in a shed by school kids, the end of my relationship with Art. Everything shifted; everything changed, nothing for the better.

He looks at me intensely. “But what happened to us didn’t alienate us from each other, did it?” he asks.

I don’t even need to think about it. “No.”

“It brought us together,” he says.

“Yes.” I smile shyly.

He nods. “See you in the rec room. Make sure you come the route Mona showed you; we don’t want anyone else seeing you here.”

I close the door, my body brimming with energy just from standing next to him, though a little shot down by his parting comment. I use the shower in the cabin and dress quickly, knowing everybody is waiting for me. As I open the door, I come face to face with a knuckle, which at first I think is aiming to punch me and so I squeal and duck.

When nothing happens and the feet haven’t kicked me or run away and are just shuffling in my eyeline, I uncover my head from my hands and slowly look up.

A young man stands there, his fist still in the air, and he’s looking at me, startled. “I was just about to knock on the door.”

“Oh! Oh. Right.” I clamber to my feet, feeling mortified.

“Sorry for scaring you,” he says, embarrassed, as his cheeks start to go the brightest red I’ve ever seen on a human being. “I’m Leonard,” he says, eyes on the floor, on the wall, on the door, flitting everywhere but not on me. “I work here.” He fumbles with the pass round his neck and offers it through the gap in the door. Leonard Ambrosio, Lab Technician. He looks like a choirboy.

“Hi, Leonard,” I say, widening the gap a bit.

I’m afraid he recognises me, but because he’s in this unit, does that mean he’s Flawed too? Can I trust him? Do his eyes narrow a little as he processes me? My name and face is all over the media. Is it the end for me?

“I’m sorry to disturb you; I know you’re new here. My girlfriend used to sleep in this room.” He looks around as though he’s more nervous to be here than me. “Her name is Lizzie.”

I tense up. This is the boyfriend who doesn’t like Flawed.

He looks at me expectantly.

“I just arrived, I don’t know anything about her,” I say defensively, thinking just because she’s Flawed, doesn’t mean that I am.

“No? Okay. Here’s a photo of her.” He studies my face as I take it, hoping a memory has stirred. “And here’s my number.” He hands me a piece of paper with his name and number. “If you hear anything about her, or if anyone else mentions her or where she might have gone, please call me. I really want to find her.”

“For what?” I say, my voice cold.

He seems taken aback by my tone. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you want to find her?” I’m not going to offer up her whereabouts just so he can call the Whistleblowers on her.

“Because I love her,” he says, eyes pleading. “I’m so worried about her.” He looks up and down the corridor before lowering his voice even more. “I know who she is … what she is … you know?” He looks at me intently. “I think she was afraid to tell me, but I wouldn’t have cared, I always knew and never cared. I mean, of course I cared, but it didn’t stop me from loving her – if anything, it made me love her more.” His cheeks pink at that again, as he becomes embarrassed. “I think it’s important that you know that I don’t have a problem with Flawed people …” His eyes dart around the place again. “But mostly I just need Lizzie to know that. Okay?”

“Okay.” I frown, thinking this is the complete opposite to what I’ve heard, but I don’t want to get lost in somebody else’s drama. And in the back of my mind I’m wondering, Is this a set-up? Use me to get her and she gets in trouble? “But I told you, I don’t know her.”

A door bangs shut round the corner. We both look nervously down the hall.

“Don’t, um, please don’t tell Mona, or anyone, that I was here. I shouldn’t be in this section. Lizzie gave me a key card so we could meet. This is just, um, between me and you,” he says.

He looks so earnest, so concerned, so nervous, that I almost believe him. I understand his words to mean: I tell nobody about him, he tells nobody about me. I close the door quickly, unsure whether I should tell Mona. His story clashes with hers, but I’ve just arrived – I really don’t want to be getting involved in a war of words with anyone, especially when it’s none of my business.

Finally, I shrug and make my way to the recreational room, deciding not to give it any more thought.

My first mistake.

“You took your time!” Mona says loudly when I enter the rec room. “Our lunch break is almost over.”

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just been a while since I showered without having to worry about a Whistleblower walking in on me.”

They laugh and welcome me into the room. There are more Flawed here who I didn’t meet last night, and they greet me. Evelyn wants to show me her cartwheels, which she does all around the room while her mother, Cordelia, tries to stop her.

“I’m sorry.” Cordelia sits beside me. “Evelyn’s been here since she was two years old. She’s always excited by new people. It’s a rare thing.”

“It’s okay. She’s sweet.” I smile, feeling sad for the little girl.

“Welcome.” Bahee takes my hands; his are warm. “I hope you slept well.”

“Much better.” I smile. Despite the nightmares, it was an improvement on sleeping in the farmhouse where the fear and anxiety kept me awake most of the night. I feel guilty for sleeping when Granddad is being held in the castle because of me.

“Good. I’m sure you needed it after your recent journey. We’ve all been in your shoes, remember; we all understand how difficult the adjustment is. It takes time, but we’ll help you. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want,” he says, smiling warmly.

“Thank you,” I say.

Bahee claps his hands suddenly. “Okay, my friends. Thank you for gathering on your break, and to those of you who took unofficial breaks: Eddie will kill you, but don’t blame me.” He throws a warning look at Mona, who laughs in her cleaner’s uniform. “Let’s show Celestine North what we do here.”

The couches are moved to form a circle. I sit beside Mona. Carrick hangs back, standing outside the circle, arms folded, leaning against the wall, serious expression, always on alert.

Kelly sits beside me. “You and I need to have a chat,” she says excitedly with a wink. She holds my hand and squeezes it. I can understand Carrick’s discomfort with his mother wanting so much so soon. She is so eager to be back in his life she’s grabbing at everything that’s connected to him. Adam sits beside her and taps her thigh with a hand, a gesture that I read as an instruction to calm herself. She apologises to me and lets go of my hand.

Rogan stays in the same dark corner I met him in last night, on a bean bag, near the computer games. He comes closer to the edge, to see what’s happening, and he ends up glaring at Carrick for most of the time, studying his every move.

“Many people have come and gone from our tribe; all of them have been welcomed in with open arms and love,” Bahee begins. “Before I became Flawed, in my previous life as a scientist I went on many travels, had laboratories and factories all around the world, which took me far and wide,” he says, and it feels as though he’s talking directly at me, that this is all for me. “It’s what I miss most: stepping off a plane, breathing in and smelling the air of a new country, or feeling the heat of the hot African sun hit me.” He seems frozen in a memory momentarily and everyone waits patiently, possibly remembering those moments of freedom, before, when we took them for granted. “But I consider myself lucky to be able to share news of my travels with those who haven’t.” He directs this at Evelyn.

“On my travels I came across the Babemba tribe of Africa, who could teach this nation a thing or two. The tribe believes that each human being comes into the world as good, that each person only desires safety, love, peace and happiness. But sometimes in the pursuit of these things, people make mistakes. When a person makes a mistake, he or she is placed alone in the centre of the village. All work stops and everyone gathers around to take part in a beautiful ceremony where each person of the village shares all the good things that the individual ever did in his or her lifetime. Every positive story, their good deeds and strengths are recounted. At the end, a celebration takes place and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.”

“That’s beautiful,” I say dreamily. If only.

“These are my favourite days,” Mona says.

“So, Lennox, as a new arrival to our home. Stand up,” Bahee says, and Lorcan, Fergus and Carrick cheer him on. Lennox grins and sits in a chair in the centre of the room, acting as though he’s a rock star taking to the stage, waving as though there are thousands of us in his audience.

Evelyn jumps up and down with excitement, wanting to start it off.

“When Lennox first came here he was so nice to me. He used to carry me around on his back and pretend that he was the daddy monkey and I was the baby.” Lennox becomes embarrassed. “And he was the first person I ever heard burp the alphabet.”

Everyone laughs.

Evelyn continues. “Lennox is always happy and makes jokes and I love that about him because he makes everybody else happy. But then Lennox was sad one day. I found him crying in his room and asked him what was wrong. He was looking at photographs of him and his wife surfing. He said that he missed the sea. I told him that at least he’d seen the sea. I’ve never ever seen the sea. I’ve been here most of my life. The next time Lennox went out when he wasn’t supposed to, he came back with a shell for me. He told me to put it to my ear and whenever I wanted to hear the sound of the sea then all I had to do was listen. And always, when I feel a bit sad, I put the shell to my ear and I close my eyes and even though I’m just in my cabin with Mum, I imagine I’m on the beach, my toes in the sand, and the waves are crashing and I’m in my swimsuit and I’ve made dozens of castles and Lennox is surfing with his wife. So thank you, Lennox, for giving me the sea.”

Cordelia wipes her eyes, tears for her little girl, who has missed so many experiences while living here in the facility.

Kelly starts clapping and everybody else joins in.

Lennox clears his throat. “Man, this is going to be hard.”

And it is, but it is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed – a room of people heaping praise on somebody and through their stories I receive a huge insight into Lennox’s character. Sure he’s a wisecracking smart-arse, but he has a kind soul. It also teaches me more. Lennox is married, or was, so where is his wife? What happened? What did he do to become Flawed? I know now after Mona’s reaction last night not to ask that question so easily. Yet I can’t help but wonder what everybody did in here to become Flawed, especially Carrick’s parents.

Eventually everyone but Carrick and I have spoken about Lennox.

“That’s it,” Bahee says. “Celestine, you are new here – we don’t expect you to say anything about Lennox; you have yet to discover his charming ways.” Everyone laughs.

“Carrick never speaks,” Mona whispers to me, as though Carrick has been there for longer than his two weeks.

“Uh, wait,” Carrick speaks up, and everyone falls silent in surprise. He unfolds his arms and steps away from the wall, a rare glimpse of awkwardness from him as he fidgets and cracks his fingers.

“Nice,” Mona mutters.

He glares at her and shoves his hands into his pockets instead.

“Right, Lennox,” he says awkwardly, his voice deep and serious. “We met around two weeks ago and I didn’t know much about you. Still really don’t.”

“Well, this is moving,” Lennox says to chuckles.

“But I needed your help with something. And you were there. I got a call from Dahy, and we had to move fast. Because these two idiots’ faces are posted everywhere in the city –” he refers to Fergus and Lorcan – “I needed you. You rose to the occasion. You were there. You didn’t ask many questions. You helped me find someone –” he looks at me and my heart pounds and my stomach flutters – “who is incredibly important to …”

Thud, thud, thud.

“… the Flawed cause.”

Mona tuts.

“And I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that.”

While I melt under Carrick’s intense gaze, Lennox interrupts: “Cash will do just fine,” and everyone laughs.

“Let’s not get into a discussion about any ‘causes’,” Bahee interjects nervously. “The only cause we should be discussing is the cause for celebration yesterday that we only learned about today.”

Suddenly the lights dim and there’s an outbreak of ‘Happy Birthday’ and Kelly, who was beside me and disappeared without my noticing, is exiting the kitchen holding an enormous cake with eighteen candles in it. Evelyn skips alongside, excitedly singing and licking her lips. When the cake reaches me, Evelyn sits on my knee and helps me to blow out the candles.

I said I would never wish again, but twenty-four hours later, I do.

“Thank you so much, everybody,” I beam.

They give me a very generous portion, one that is far beyond what a Flawed is allowed to take in, with our rules on weekly luxury intakes.

“Do you like it?” Evelyn asks. “What’s your favourite part?”

I laugh to cover my awkwardness and look at the sponge cake, cream oozing from the layers.

“The vanilla,” I say easily, taking another bite.

Evelyn frowns. “But it’s lemon sponge.”

I feel my cheeks pink and I heap another spoon into my mouth to avoid having to say anything else. From the corner of my eye I feel Carrick watching me.

Kelly sits beside me, puts her arm round my shoulders, and speaks quietly into my ear. “Your taste will come back eventually. Trust me.”

As I swallow the next tasteless piece of cake, I can’t help but wonder what lie Carrick’s mother told.

At night, when everybody has finally gone to bed, or to work, Carrick comes for me in the cabin. Mona raises her eyebrows at me suggestively, and I laugh as I leave. It’s not what she thinks it is; Carrick and I desperately need to talk. Even though I understand why she’s doing it, Kelly constantly trying to be near Carrick and fussing around him has prevented us from being able to talk. And then I had to wait for him to finish his shift, and when he finally did there was a group dinner, where Kelly sat between us, thinking she was bringing us all together when, really, Carrick sat by stiffly, giving one-worded answers, and I was too tired to speak.

It’s been an exhausting two weeks, a terrifying twenty-four hours, and now that I have finally stopped, and the adrenaline has worn off, I am sore and stiff, my head aches, and I feel like I could sleep forever.

Carrick takes me to the kitchen, the furthest room from everybody’s sleeping quarters, and closes the door. We sit at the kitchen table.

“Did you hear anything from Dahy about my granddad?”

It is the tenth time, at least, that I’ve asked him and Lennox today, though at one point Lennox fixed me with a dangerous look and said, “North, I like you, but I will swat you like a fly.”

“Yes. Just a few minutes ago. Your parents went to see him today. He’s in a holding cell; they’re treating him well. They’re questioning him and holding him for another twenty-four hours on suspicion of aiding the Flawed. They’re trying to say he’s been giving his employees privileges.”

I’m both relieved and not, at the same time. He hasn’t been charged, or hurt. Yet.

“They have no proof against him, or they would have charged him by now. They’re just holding him to smoke you out.”

I wince.

“Sorry.” He backtracks. “I didn’t mean to use that expression. But on the positive side, the fact that they’re holding on to him means he knows you’re still alive.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain. He’s not stupid.”

I smile. “No, he’s not.”

“So … I’ve been formulating a plan to get us out of this mess.”

“What mess?”

He makes a general gesture, indicating the room around us, the factory.

“You want to leave Vigor?” I ask, surprised.

“You don’t?”

Would it be stupid to say that I like it here? That for the first time in weeks I feel safe? Surrounded by steel, metal, enormous structures, key cards to get through doors, heightened security, all to keep the outsiders from getting in. I don’t feel locked inside, I feel protected, as if for the first time it’s me who is being guarded.

“I feel safe here,” I admit. “And you’ve found your family, and your brother – did you even know you had a brother? Why would you want to give up being with them?”

“I understand, Celestine, I do. But this place isn’t real life. This isn’t freedom. Poor Evelyn is six years old and hasn’t been outside these walls since the day she arrived. She has no friends her age, probably has never met anyone her own age. Bahee doesn’t want us to fight for freedom. If he hears us speak about it, he tells us to stop, so nothing around here is ever going to change.”

“But I got ten hours of sleep last night,” I whine, and he laughs gently.

“I felt the same for about a day, but you’ve just arrived. You’ll see.”

“You sure you’re not just trying to run away?” I ask gently. “It’s going to take some time to get to know your family again, Carrick. It’s normal for it to be … awkward.”

“You noticed,” he says sarcastically. “When I left the institution, the worst thing I could have done to the Guild was to find my parents. I didn’t think the Guild would really be watching me. Of all the students, I was the person to least suspect, I thought I’d fooled them. I thought they trusted me. It just taught me that no matter how good a relationship I thought I’d built up with them, they didn’t trust me anyway. The dean came to see me at the castle.”

“I remember that.” I recall the well-dressed gentleman visiting his cell. He looked like a lawyer, but Carrick had chosen to represent himself.

“He said he’d never felt so betrayed by someone in all his life. He’d kind of taken me under his wing.” He shakes his head. “He’d watched me grow up, saw all my sports games, celebrated all my exam results. He has kids himself. And yet he still couldn’t understand my wanting to find my parents. And then I’m branded Flawed, and I’m allowed to search for my parents. There’s no rule to stop me now. It’s so twisted.”

“Illogical,” I agree. “How did you find your family?”

“I was tipped off that they were here. They moved here when I was brought to Highland Castle.”

“They’ve been here less than two months?” I ask, surprised.

“Seems longer, doesn’t it?” he asks. “That’s the weird thing about this place –” he looks around the walls – “it’s as though time doesn’t exist. People come here and they never leave. There’s more Flawed who you haven’t met yet – I dread to think of how long they’ve been here.”

“Apart from Lizzie,” I say.

She’s been playing on my mind. One of the reasons my friends considered me perfect before I became Flawed is because of my perfect grades, always A’s, particularly in mathematics. I just have the head for it. The theorems, equations – they always made sense to me. A problem that could easily be solved. If anything tested me, I’d stick with it until I got my solution. I feel the same way now. Something doesn’t feel right. There’s a problem. It’s lingering, like a ghost with unfinished business, waiting for somebody to figure it out. You’d think after what happened to me, I’d be able to change, but I can’t. When the Guild brands you, they can’t change the person, not really; they just change people’s perception of the person.

“Lizzie?” He seems confused by the change in direction.

“What do you know about her?”

“She was a Flawed girl who worked and lived here. She left a few days after I arrived. She shared a cabin with Mona – they were pretty close. I didn’t pay much attention. The rumour is she told her boyfriend that she was Flawed and he wasn’t interested any more, so she left. I didn’t bother with the gossip, that’s Mona’s territory. Why?”

“Do you know her boyfriend?”

“I know what he looks like. Kind of a nerdy computer guy. Why?”

“Is he trustworthy?”

“Celestine,” he warns. “Why?”

“Just wondering. Humour me: I’m worried about her; you said when people come in here they never leave. She left. She disappeared.”

“I don’t think her boyfriend chopped her up into little pieces, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he teases. “Don’t worry, people here are mostly good. I’m sure a few of them suspect us, might even have seen a brand or two, but they don’t say anything; they let us keep to ourselves.”

He stops talking, but he looks like he wants to say more.

“What?” I urge. “Tell me.”

“I can understand why you want to stay. There’s goodness in here, yes, but there’s something you need to think about. What exactly do you think you can do here?” he asks gently. “What’s your role?”

I had romantic visions of me making cakes with Adam and Kelly in the kitchen. Skating around suds-soaked floors on brush-skates with Mona, cleaning the floors at night while everyone sleeps, Pippi Longstocking-style. Teaching Evelyn maths. Becoming Bahee’s sidekick, donning a white lab coat and sensible glasses and studying things on petri dishes. Wearing night-vision goggles and sitting with the security team, scanning the horizon. For a few hours at least, this factory was my oyster.

Carrick goes on. “After Fergus and Lorcan escaped the supermarket riot, their faces were plastered all over the news. They’re on the Guild Wanted list. They have to work night duty from now on, so nobody recognises them by day and gives them up. Night duty falls to the Flawed mostly. You have one of the most recognised faces in the country right now; maybe that will calm down after a while, maybe not, and people here are good, but I’m sure they’re not that good. They won’t want their lives in danger, because if the Guild discovers that they were working with you day in and day out but never reported you, they’d all be in trouble. They wouldn’t take that risk. You’ll have to be kept away from everyone, for a while.”

The way he says while, he drags it out and makes it sound like a long time.

He shrugs. “For the record, my wanting to leave has nothing to do with how things are going with my family. It’s about me. I’m not settling for this life and neither should you.”

He leaves a silence, gives me time to think.

I want to see my family; my heart hurts when I think of them, of the home that I’ve left behind, of the life I’m missing, but I said goodbye to that life as soon as I was taken to Highland Castle. I’m dreaming of Mum, Dad, Juniper and Ewan visiting me here, transported through the gates hidden in the back of a food truck or something. Special Sundays where we hang around the rec room together, playing football or whatever Ewan wants to do outside. But I know this is ridiculous thinking. Bahee and the others would never allow it. Carrick is right: I’m tired, and feeling safe is a rarity, something so beautiful I should want to fight for it outside these walls.

“This life isn’t good enough for me, either,” I admit.

He grins. “Good. Because when I said I wanted us to get out of this mess I didn’t just mean leave the plant, I meant I wanted out of this entire Flawed life. I’ve got a plan.”

Carrick leans forward, brimming with excitement. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me last night. About Crevan, about his searching for the footage of the branding. Do you have any idea the power that it gives you?”

I ponder that. Mr Berry and Pia Wang knew about the footage and they’ve since disappeared. Crevan thinking that it’s in my possession fills me with fear; it puts me in a vulnerable situation, and I doubt that telling him I don’t have it will be believed. If anything, it makes me feel like the most hunted person in the universe.

Carrick can tell I’m not seeing this the same way he is. “Celestine, you can use that footage to reverse your branding. And not only that, if the public sees that Crevan has made a mistake with his rulings once, then who knows how many mistakes he’s made in the past? It calls the entire Guild system into question.”

My heart starts to pound. I think there’s something in what he’s saying. It’s the first light I’ve seen through all of this. It’s better than revenge: it’s a way out. He has convinced me, I do think it’s worth trying, but …

“What’s wrong, Celestine? You should use this. You should show the video to every single person you can.”

I don’t have the footage.

Tell him, Celestine. Tell him you don’t have it. Say it. I open my mouth. I think how to phrase it. It should be simple. I don’t have the footage. I don’t know where it is. Somebody just thinks that I have it. Because the person who apparently gave it to me told him so.

Carrick’s waiting. I close my mouth again. I can’t break his enthusiasm – he’s holding on to this plan like it’s his only chance to undo all of this. And who knows – I might have the footage. If I could gain access to my house, it could be there. My mind races. Can I get back to my house without the Whistleblowers seeing me? Can I contact my family and ask them to search for it instead? Can I really do this?

“It’s okay,” he says, like the wind has been taken out of him, backing down. “It’s a lot to ask of you, I understand. You’ve just arrived, you’re tired, I shouldn’t have … Anyway –” he perks up – “I brought you in here for a reason.” He stands up, opening the fridge, turning off the lights, and placing two cushions in front of the open fridge on the floor. “Take a seat, please.”

I look at him in utter confusion. The moment has passed. I’m relieved, but I don’t like that I’m keeping something from him. I should tell him.

“It’s okay, Celestine, really. It’s something for you to think about. For now, just sit, please.”

I sit down on a cushion on the floor, the light of the fridge the only thing illuminating the room.

He sits opposite me. “We’re going to have a lesson. Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes, Master Vane.”

He fights a smile, and I wonder what he’d look like if he let himself go, if those facial muscles untensed and a real smile took over; even better, a full-blown laugh, how it would transform him.

“Of all our senses, smell is one of the most important. Animals need a sense of smell to survive. A blind rat might survive, but a rat without a sense of smell can’t taste, therefore can’t mate or find food.”

I realise what this is about. “Your mum told you I couldn’t taste the birthday cake.”

“She may have said something,” he says softly.

“You’re comparing me to a rat.” I pout.

His mouth twitches as he tries to hide his smile. “Listen. You might have lost your sense of taste, but you haven’t lost your sense of smell. Seventy per cent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from scent.”

“I did not know that.”

I could barely eat in the weeks after my tongue branding, as my tongue swelled and scabbed from the sear. It’s been a month and everything tastes like nothing. I’m assuming I’ll never taste again for the rest of my life, which is fine, because the Flawed diet doesn’t allow for luxuries. I might be saved from tasting the endless grains and pulses we have to eat.

Carrick continues the lesson. “When you put food in your mouth, odour molecules from that food travel through the passage between your nose and mouth to olfactory receptor cells at the top of your nasal cavity, just beneath the brain and behind the bridge of the nose.”

I raise an eyebrow. “And when you swallowed the encyclopedia, what did it taste like?”

“This is my good schooling talking,” he says sarcastically. “You can’t taste but you can smell, and you can feel the texture and temperature of the food. You need to use all these things to your advantage.”

I nod along.

“In school we had to do a taste test. We had five items: a pine cone, a cinnamon stick, a lemon, baby powder on a cloth, and a mothball. We were told to sniff each one until a memory came to mind. Up to the age of eight, I hated my parents. The institution made me hate them. Between what we were told about Flawed, and the fact they never came to get me, never rescued me from that place, I hated them more than anyone. But then we did this test, and it brought back some memories I’d forgotten. Good memories, happy memories. It made me wonder about how bad my parents were after all. I wrote the memories down and then I couldn’t stop; as soon as I wrote one, it would lead to another, and then another. I was afraid if I didn’t write them down then I would forget everything forever, so every day, I wrote in my secret diary, all the things I remembered about my parents. I wouldn’t give my diary to anyone – I had to hide it in my room. They like to know everything you’re thinking in there.”

I think of catching Mary May reading my diary in my bedroom, of her wanting to be in my head.

“And everything changed for me after this test. I knew that everything they were telling me about my parents was a lie.”

I want to reach out to him, hug him, tell him I’m sorry he was taken away from his parents at such a young age, but there’s something about Carrick that stops me each time. He’s so contained. It’s like he has a force field round him, like the glass that was between us in the castle cells is still between us now. He’s there, but I can’t reach him.

He clears his throat. “You have nerve endings on the surface of your eyes, nose, mouth and throat. They detect the coolness of mint, the burning of chilli peppers. Use them. You’re not alone in this, you know.”

“Your mum had the same thing after her branding?” I guess. What was her lie? I want to ask.

“It’s not just Flawed people who experience this. Not being able to taste is called ageusia.”

“So it’s a thing?” I ask, surprised.

“It’s an actual thing.”

I feel happy about that.

“So here is a taste bag.” He places a bag down. “And here is a smell bag.”

I laugh.

“Let’s use –” he scans the shelves in the large fridge – “Bahee’s jelly beans.”

“Jelly beans?” I laugh. “In the fridge?”

“He’s an odd man. Consumes more sugar in one day than Evelyn does in a week, and he never shares, which is what makes this all the sweeter.” He takes the bag of sweets out, tells me to look away.

“What are you doing?”

“Crushing the jelly beans, so the odour is released in the smell bag. Now.” He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a bandana. “Close your eyes.”

He moves behind me and gently ties the bandana round my eyes, his fingers brushing against my skin at one point, and I feel my skin tingle and the hairs stand up on my arms. The last time I was blindfolded, it was by some kids from school, playing a cruel joke on me. They stripped me and examined my scars with ghoulish curiosity like I was some freak show at a circus. I felt terrified then, broken, had lost all faith in people and my new life. But now, I’m completely relaxed, excited even. Despite the terrifying feeling I had when we approached the gates of the plant, I realise I completely and utterly trust Carrick. He feels like my partner in all this. If my sixth brand is as powerful as Carrick says it is, he could have used his knowledge of it for his own purposes. He could have threatened Crevan himself, but he didn’t; in fact, he didn’t tell anybody. He wants to help me reverse my own branding.

“Okay.” He’s back in front of me. “Taste this.”

“You better not slip a chilli pepper in.” I laugh.

I open my mouth and feel him place a jelly bean on my tongue. I close my lips and self-consciously chew. I don’t taste anything, unsurprisingly. I feel the texture, though I don’t think I would have known it was a jelly bean had he not told me.

“Take a sip of water.”

I suck through a straw.

“So now, smell.” He holds the bag up to my nose and I breathe in the crushed jelly bean.

“Strawberry,” I say easily. Nothing wrong with my sense of smell at least.

“Now taste.” He places the jelly bean on my tongue.

I expect it to be strawberry again but I frown. “That’s not strawberry,” I say, confused. “I know it’s not strawberry but I don’t know what it is.”

“Aha,” he says happily. “Progress.”

“Yay,” I cheer myself.

“Smell.”

I sniff. “Orange.”

“Now taste.”

I feel his fingers brush my lips as I open my mouth. I’m so distracted by everything around the jelly bean, everything that’s happening, I can barely concentrate on what I’m doing. All of my other senses are on fire. I try to focus. I smell as I chew, waiting for my nerve endings to recognise whether it’s bitter, salty, sweet, or sour flavour. I recognise the taste as being the same as the previous taste. Bitter. “Orange.”

“Yes,” he says, pleased. “Now let’s go again.”

Carrick is nothing if not efficient, and persistent. Over and over again, we try the test until I think I get the hang of using my gift of smell. He’s practically emptied out the fridge of flavours. I have correctly identified most without needing to smell the bag first.

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