Free The Memory Keepers by Natasha Ngan

him when he’d first joined his crew, with a false name, address and work details. It hadn’t ever failed him (yet). He slipped it back into his pocket.
    ‘You need to work on that, S,’ Carpenter said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Act suspiciously and they’ll think you’ve got something to hide.’
    Seven grinned shakily. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He pointed at himself. ‘I’m the
king
of not-suspicious. The
model
of calm.’
    ‘And the master of bullshit,’ Carpenter added.
    Seven laughed, but he didn’t relax until the London Guardmen left the pub a few minutes later, the noise and chatter rising up again. He waited a while longer to be sure the guards weren’t coming back before pulling out the DSC from its hiding place in his pants and handing it to Carpenter under the table.
    As it left his fingers, Seven hesitated. He felt a strange pang of unease, as though there was something terrible inside they should have left buried in the darkness of White’s memorium.
    ‘You know I keep my crew safe, S,’ Carpenter said, sitting back, the DSC already hidden somewhere on him.
    Seven nodded. ‘Yeah, I know.’
    And he did. He wasn’t lying about that. The trouble was, he also knew that nothing Carpenter did to look after the members of his thieving crew mattered if the London Guard found just the slightest break in their protection. They were criminals – the lowest even of those – and if Seven was caught, no amount of prayers to non-existent gods would save him.
    Almost every skid-thief he’d seen caught over the years had been convicted through fast trials. Fast trials were only used if the prosecution obtained memories explicitly showing the suspect as guilty. Half the time these skids were confessions, freely given by the suspects. Well, not freely given exactly. Seven didn’t want to know what prosecutors like White did to obtain them.
    There was only one outcome of fast trials: a guilty verdict. And there was only one outcome of a guilty verdict for a crime like skid-thieving.
    Execution.

14

ALBA
    Once again Dolly and Alba took the long way home from Knightsbridge Academy. Veering off the path to the house that led up through Hyde Park Estate, they wandered instead through fuzzy, sun-blushed fields towards the Serpentine, the lake at the heart of the estate. Long grass tickled their legs. High above, the sun was bright and hazy, washing the world in golden light.
    When they got to the sloping bank of the Serpentine, Dolly laid out a blanket under the shade of a mulberry tree. The lake spread before them in a vast pool of pure, crystalline blue, spotted in places by floating islands of algae. Insects buzzed, hidden in the green blades surrounding them. The low growl of a lawnmower sounded in the distance.
    Sitting down on the blanket and stretching out her legs, Alba gazed at the grounds of the estate. Everything was touched with a silvery fire from the sunshine. She wondered if it was moments like this that people kept in their memoriums; it’s what
she’d
choose to record. A never-ending supply of peaceful moments to dip into, when the world seemed to turn with such a simple, perfect elegance, everything calm and steady and right, and all the bad things slipped away, shadows melting under the sunlight.
    ‘Alba,’ Dolly said suddenly. ‘I need to tell you something.’
    And just like that, the shadows were back.
    Alba knew something was wrong from the tone of Dolly’s voice. Despite the heat, she felt as though she’d been dunked into ice water. Every muscle in her body went taut. She turned to Dolly and saw the sadness in her eyes.
    ‘It’s – it’s about you going to university.’ Dolly was speaking slowly, as though the words were sticking to her tongue.
    ‘Don’t,’ Alba whispered.
    ‘Your mother –’
    ‘
Don’t
. Please.’
    She knew immediately what Dolly was trying to tell her. She felt it like a stone dropped into her chest. It was something that had always