Free Cracks by Caroline Green

‘It’s such a lot to absorb, but the important thing right now is to get you to safety. There was a brief
window of opportunity to get you out of there when you woke. We have been looking for signs that you might have been emerging from the coma, and waiting for an opportunity to get you
out.’
    I stare silently at the table for several minutes. Everyone’s watching me. I wish they’d stop. A picture comes into my head of a lab rat in a cage and I try to shake it away.
That’s all I was. An experiment.
    ‘But what did they want ?’ I say finally. I know I sound whiney but I don’t much care. ‘I still don’t understand why. Why do all that?’
    Helen sighs. ‘It’s all about quashing any resistance. The Securitat – that’s the people in charge – are a ragtag collection of businessmen and army generals. They
believe in stamping down on any opposition to their regime. They wanted to perfect the technology and then planned to roll it out first to all prisoners, to monitor their thoughts and behaviour.
But we believe ultimately they want to chip the entire population. If people’s thoughts are no longer private, the authorities can root out dissenters and frighten the rest into submission.
They’ll stop at nothing to control people.’
    ‘Can you get it out? The thing in my brain?’ I scratch my head like I can scratch it all away. I have to force myself to stop because I know it looks mad.
    Helen speaks gently. ‘No. I’m afraid not. But they can only access it when you’re at the Facility. The important thing now is keeping you away from them and keeping you
safe.’
    The other nurse I recognise from the Facility comes back into the room. He has some blood on his shirt so I’m guessing he’s been sorting Beardy out. I feel a bit bad for smashing his
face in, but what did he expect?
    ‘We’ve been working on getting you out for a while, Cal,’ he says. ‘I’ve been turning up the resistance pressure inside the pod so it would strengthen your muscles
and get you fit.’
    ‘Track training,’ I whisper and they all just stare at me with sympathetic expressions. ‘I thought I was track training.’
    I want to punch the walls until my knuckles split. And then the feeling drains away and I slide back into a chair and put my face in my hands. I wish I could stop thinking as easily as stopping
those images on the paper screen. The idea that people have been watching me, watching every private thought I’ve had up there in widescreen feels like I’ve been burned all over. My
face actually throbs from the blazing blush I can’t seem to stop. Every time I think about them watching me, watching my thoughts about Miss Lovett . . . All my dreams and fears . . .
    I look up.
    ‘They knew I was waking up, then? If they could see everything?’
    ‘No, they didn’t watch you all the time,’ says the nurse. ‘I think there were signs and they gave you more drugs, but it definitely came as a surprise to them. But they
were up to something new, Cal. We don’t know what, but they had some sort of bigger plan.’
    ‘Like what?’ I say.
    ‘We don’t know,’ says Helen, shaking her head, ‘but we don’t believe they would ever have let you go. You were no good to them awake. They may well have been
planning to keep you in that coma for, well . . . the rest of your natural life.’
    I shake so violently then I have to press down on my knees with my hands.
    Helen clears her throat. ‘There’s something else, Cal. We’re about twenty miles away from the Facility but when they discover you’re gone, they’ll easily be able to
track you down. They can’t do that via the Revealer Chip – it wasn’t designed for that. But there’s another way they can trace you . . . and we need to remove that
possibility.’
    She reaches across the table and takes hold of my hand. I’m too bone tired from trying to take everything in to resist. Her hand is warm and soft. She turns mine over so my