‘Upsie,’ yelled the girl, as they hurtled down what looked like a dead end. She threw herself at the wall at the far end, her fingers finding handholds too small for Luke to see. He resorted to a running jump, nearly smacked his face against the brick, felt his toes scrabble and reached desperately for the top, hauling himself over.
The girl was waiting on the other side, hands on her hips, narrow chest barely rising and falling despite the exertion.
‘Easy, tiger,’ she said. ‘We lost ’em about seven streets ago.’
‘Who the hell were they?’ Luke asked, panting, with his shoulders slumped. ‘What did they want from you? Well, I heard that bit. Morphine. But you’re how old – eleven? Twelve? What are you doing with morphine?’
The girl snorted derisively.
‘Thirteen, actually. And it’s none of your business. Though there’s a woman in that block who’s gonna have a rough few days now until I can get the Doc to her.’
‘The Doc?’
‘I woulda got out of there just fine, but thanks for trying. It’s not everyone would risk making an enemy of those two, so you’re either very brave or very stupid. Which is it?’
Her muddy brown eyes assessed him.
‘Ach, it’s neither. You’re just very new.’ She let out a throaty cackle, sounding older than her years. ‘Welcome to Millmoor. What’s your name?’
‘Hadley E-1031. And I arrived today. How did you know that?’
‘Got the Skill, ain’t I?’ the girl said, pointing two fingers at her forehead and waggling them mysteriously. ‘Nah, nah, I’m joking. Your bandage. You just been chipped. And none of those numbers – what’s your name, really?’
‘Luke.’ He held out a hand in his best nice-to-meet-you fashion. Mum would be so proud.
‘Renie,’ the girl said, with an amused look at his outstretched hand. Luke withdrew it. Millmoor probably wasn’t big on manners. ‘Rhymes with “genie”. Grants wishes and that. Well, you look after yourself, Luke Hadley. Have a quick ten years.’
‘Wait. Wait!’ he called out, as she turned. ‘I was trying to get somewhere: Machine Park Zone D, the components shed. It’s my workplace. Do you know where it is?’
‘Zone D? You poor bastard.’ Renie’s pinched features softened momentarily. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Kinda hard to miss.’
She pointed away over the accommodation block roofs to an immense scaffold-framed building. It seemed to house nothing but fire that clawed at every window to get out. All around, like stakes penning a monster, tall chimneys vented dense black smoke. It was, Luke realized with horror, the source of the roar and clangour that was audible even here, several streets away.
‘Good luck. You’ll need it in there.’
Renie-Rhymes-With-Genie tipped her chin in a small salute, and trotted off. The gloom that pooled at street level in Millmoor swallowed her up.
It turned out that a bus ran from the West dorms over to the Machine Park, so the following morning, dressed in the boilersuit and boots he’d found by his bed, Luke was at the gate to Zone D in good time.
Abi had once shown him an illustration of the Kyneston gate – just a sketch, as there were no photographs. It was a twirly wrought-iron monstrosity. His family would be on the other side of it now. Luke had lain awake for hours thinking about them, hoping his parents weren’t eating themselves up with guilt and worry. Hoping Abi was working on a plan to get him back. Hoping that whatever use the Jardines had for Daisy was something decent and not degrading. (They couldn’t make little kids sweep chimneys nowadays, could they?)
Zone D’s gate was different: a steel arch inset with a scanning strip that registered the chips of each slave passing through. He took a deep breath and stepped forward. As his ID tag flashed along the gate’s display, a strong-built man with a weak-jawed face introduced himself as Williams L-4770, Luke’s co-worker.
‘What’s your real name?’ Luke asked.
Williams bared his protruding teeth in what looked like fear and said nothing. He led Luke deep into the industrial zone. They passed through one cavernous brick building after another, crossed massive loading bays and skirted the fiery heart of the foundry. The noise grew worse the deeper they went, as if everything that was loudest in the world had been gathered together under one roof. From the building ahead came a din that was as much sensation as sound, the earth-shaking stamping of a violent giant.
‘Components shed,’ Williams L-4770 mouthed.
And wasn’t it the final humiliation, Luke thought, that cleaning Kyneston’s toilets suddenly seemed like the cushiest life imaginable?
Their workstation was a complex array of hoists suspended from a gantry that transferred newly cast components from the heavy press (the source of the thumping) into and then out of the preliminary finishing machine. Williams’s briefing was thorough and entirely mimed. His enactment of the fate of his previous partner – spine crushed when a slipped chain block swung a turbine into him like a giant wrecking ball – struck Luke as excessively realistic. Their boilersuits and chafing work boots offered no protection at all.
It wasn’t only the noise that made them communicate silently. The work was so arduous that every breath Luke took was used up powering his muscles. When the call came from Kyneston, he’d walk out of Millmoor with the physique of a superhero from those banned Union American movies. Assuming he didn’t fall foul of the machinery, in which case he wouldn’t be walking at all.