Free Alias by Tracy Alexander Page A

thousands selling phone credit using Dan’s hack – whichsadly didn’t work any more. Some cyber detective must have found the glitch.
    The idea of hiding out in the holiday cottage we’d stayed at in Norfolk popped into my head with no warning – it was the perfect place. The lady who’d let us in when we arrived was a chatterbox, so I knew all about the ‘foreign’ owners. They’d bought it, done it up, and then decided it was too quiet and a nightmare to get to. That’s Norfolk for you – stuck on the side. The property was advertised on Luxury Holiday Cottages Direct, so all I had to do was check the bookings page. Empty until May half-term. Couldn’t be better.
    Everything was falling into place. All that was left for me to decide was when I was leaving Buckingham. But that was the hardest thing of all. I was scared – something I found it hard to admit. So far, all I’d done was plot. If I took the next step, there’d be no going back.
    Did I really want to be a fugitive for the rest of my life?
    No, I didn’t. But maybe it wouldn’t turn out that way. Nelson Mandela, ‘the black terrorist’, ended up President of South Africa. Gerry Adams, who denied being an IRA operative, was photographed shaking hands with Tony Blair on the steps of Downing Street. Menachem Begin, aka Israel’s former Prime Minister, blew up a hotel in Jerusalem, killing ninety-one people.
    The path to political leadership wasn’t necessarily Eton, then Oxford. The bomb-making route seemed just as effective.
    Nothing to stop me being head of Liberty, having proved my dedication to human rights …
     
    Fate decided me, like it did everything else.
    I was in the library last period, four days after Dan sent me the code, when Hugo and Lucy turned up. Only she came over.
    ‘You look busy,’ she said.
    I wanted to ask her why she was with Hugo, but I already knew the answer.
    ‘English,’ I said, with my arm over the book – the American civil rights movement wasn’t on the syllabus.
    ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ she said. ‘See you later.’
    The two of them sat a few tables away and talked quietly.
    I went back to staring at Malcolm X quotes.
    ‘Usually when someone is sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.’
    Critics of the black human rights activist said that the discriminatory laws would have been overturned without violence, but they didn’t say when. And that’s the critical bit – violent protest accelerates change. Throughout history, it’s there again and again. You either wait for reformers to slowly change opinion,like the crawl towards women bishops, or you demand it.
    The librarian didn’t seem to be annoyed by Hugo and Lucy’s whispering, but I was. It hurt to see their heads so close together, my only friend and my arch-enemy.
    I turned the page.
    ‘By any means necessary,’ was Malcolm X’s mantra. When white Americans accused him of condoning violence, he reminded them that his ancestors were brought to America in chains, kept in line by whipping, beaten to death for disobedience and torn apart by dogs for fun …
    The side with the power can terrorise all they like, but only those who rise up against that power are called terrorists. White state troopers terrorised the black people who marched in Alabama asking for the vote. Drone pilots terrorise whole communities —
    ‘Hi, Samiya.’
    What the hell!
    Hugo was standing right in front of me in his sharp suit. Lucy had disappeared.
    ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’
    He pulled out a chair and sat opposite me. Still beautiful.
    ‘Lucy’s idea,’ he said. ‘She thinks it’s time we made up.’
    I closed the book, collected my stuff together and stood up.
    ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. You know me, like to play to the audience.’
    He followed me along the corridor, speaking to my back.
    ‘So did you ever get anywhere with all those letters to your