Free Acid by Emma Pass Page A

tiles that I creep across in total silence.
    I don’t know why I’m being so quiet, but a little voice in my head is telling me that something’s wrong, that I mustn’t let anyone know I’m here. My heart’s pounding and my palms are damp, my stomach churning with apprehension.
    The living-room door is open, and I can hear my parents’ voices. They’re pleading with someone.
We’ll do whatever you want – pay a fine, go to jail, even. But please, not that – we have a daughter!
    I peer round the door frame. Facing away from me is an ACID agent, wearing a helmet so that I can’t tell if they’re male or female. My mother and father – who, when I went upstairs to do my homework an hour ago, were sitting in their armchairs, watching the news screen and relaxing after a long day at work – are backed up against the fireplace, their faces masks of terror.
    Then I see the agent has a gun, and is pointing it straight at my parents.
    The agent eases back the gun’s charge switch. It fires up with a faint whine. I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. I can’t move. I can’t do anything.
    I have my orders
, the agent says in a gravelly, mechanical-sounding voice – it’s been disguised.
    They pull the trigger.
    BANG!
    I jerk awake, gasping, for a moment unable to work out why I’m sitting in a chair instead of lying in my bed, or what that thrashing shape on the sofa is. Then I remember. I get up and hurry over to Max. At first, I think he’s having a fit, but it’s just a nightmare, like mine; the bang I heard was his flailing feet knocking over the table by the sofa. He quickly calms down, turning his face against the sofa back and sighing as he falls more deeply asleep.
    I pick up the table, my heart hammering, then sit back down. The dream hangs in the air around me like smoke. What was
that
about? It wasn’t an ACID agent who shot my parents. It was me. And it wasn’t deliberate. It was an accident. All I meant to do with the gun was frighten Dad. If my mother hadn’t thrown herself at me to try and get it off me, it wouldn’t have gone off.
    And if my father hadn’t grabbed her as the charge went through her, and it hadn’t arced across to him . . .
    I grind my knuckles into my eyes.
Stop thinking about this stuff. Stopstopstop
. I need to decide what I’m going to do with Max, and quickly.
    You could take him to Mel and Jon when they get back
, I think.
They’d help him, wouldn’t they? After all, he is Alex’s son
.
    I mull it over. It
could
work . . . In Zone O there’s a free medicentre for Outer’s poorest residents, where Mel and Jon both volunteer: Jon as a doctor, Mel as a receptionist. We usually meet there once a fortnight so they can check how everything’s going, and to explain me going there so regularly, I’ve got documents on my komm saying I require ongoing treatment for a blood disorder. But of course, I can’t do that yet, not while Mel and Jon are away. And in the meantime, somehow, I need to keep Max away from Mrs Holloway.
    Despair crashes over me.
    Face it
, Jenna, I think.
You’re screwed
.

CHAPTER 12
    I SPEND THE rest of that night constantly checking on Max to make sure he’s breathing. By morning, he’s running a temperature. There isn’t much I can do except stick a medpatch on his neck and hope it helps. I change his filthy jeans and T-shirt for a sleeveless vest and some slightly-too-large jogging bottoms Cade left behind, and take the dirty clothes to the kitchen to chuck them in the washer. Just before I switch it on, I remember to check through the pockets of the jeans. All I find is a battered leather wallet. I’m about to look through it when I glance at the clock and realize, shock penetrating sharply through the thick fog of tiredness wrapped around me, that it’s almost time to go to work.
    I have to go – I can’t call in sick without a doctor’s pass. But it means leaving Max here all day on his own. What if he makes a noise?