The worst thing to come directly from Omega was the live stream. The lobby was brilliant white, interrupted only by the green trees and ice blue water of the pool. There was a fountain that trickled water over a series of rocks, cascading across a manmade waterfall. There were children playing, their clothes clean and bright, A-line dresses for the girls, red and blue and yellow like a spilt tube of sugary sweets. Smart shorts for the boys, long trousers in the winter, white shirts and jumpers. The adults all wore the same. White A-line dresses for the women, similar to the girls’ dresses but sleeker in design, and for the men, outfits that looked like white hospital scrubs. Omega Tower was white because it was clean. They introduced the uniform, the regulation dress, within what Zack imagined to be the first year. The clothes were distributed and cleaned centrally, another perk of Omega life. They had been promised in all towers, but Delta hadn’t got them yet. It was designed so that nobody felt different or excluded. The Eighth Creed: No citizen of New Omega shall feel inferior to another. What a joke, Zack thought. There had been talk about Alpha having the uniforms but nobody could be sure. Nobody had them in Delta. That was what was important. Nobody could be sure about the other towers because there was no way of communicating with them. At least until now.
Leonard had seen the lights again, but Zack hadn’t got there in time. They had developed a signal that when the lights appeared Leonard would pummel his fists against the dividing wall six times. The first time Zack hadn’t heard the knocking because he had got lost in the iPod. In the period after the triple bell Zack had listened to it so much that by the time the next shift had started the battery was already flat. The next time when Leonard knocked the wall, Zack had been asleep. The third time Zack was ready, sitting coiled like a spring waiting, but he scanned the sky with the same attention that a hawk would scan a cornfield and he saw nothing. Leonard came blustering in after that time, didn’t even knock.
“How can you not see it?” Leonard asked, his hands working up and down his side, scratching through his clothes. “It was right around here,” he said as he pointed at a particularly dark section of cloud. “It’s gone now, but I promise you I just saw it.” Zack’s belief in the lights had been fading with the same certainty that light would disappear at the end of a sunset in the old world. But he didn’t want to be honest with Leonard, he didn’t want to shatter his dreams or extinguish that flicker of hope that he carried within him. Plus, he realised that he was also asking Leonard to believe in something both impossible and dangerous, and yet Zack had no doubts about what he had seen. He hadn’t been back to NAVIMEG since he had seen the Omega tattoo on Emily’s wrist.
“I don’t know, Leonard.” Zack sat up and swung his feet off the edge of the bed. The third double bell rang, signalling that it was time to go back to work. Zack worked his feet into the old trainers that he had been wearing every day since his Delta incarceration began. He reached down, his head dizzy with hunger, nausea creeping over him from the emptiness of his stomach. He swallowed hard and tied up the laces. “But if you say it’s there, I’ll take your word for it.” Zack stood up and picked up his water container, and pulled his ration card out of the wall-mounted card reader box. There was about an inch of water left. It would be enough to see him through the shift. The Guardians were rigorous in checking the water supplies of those who worked in the Water Distribution Centre. Trades were allowed. Stealing was punishable by denunciation under the rule of the First Creed: No citizen of New Omega shall steal from another. Nobody really knew what denunciation meant, but when it was threatened by the hyped-up Guardians, it never sounded like something anybody wanted to experience. “Anyway, what’s with the scratching?”
“You’re only saying you believe me, because you want me to believe your crazy stories,” Leonard said as he continued to grate his fingernails over his ribcage. “I think I’ve only gone and got the damn scabies.” Zack was sniggering, but Leonard didn’t see the funny side. Leonard broke the scratching for a second and reached down to pick up the small bag that Zack had taken to carrying with him over the last few days. “You want this?”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said taking the satchel and throwing it over his shoulder.
“I don’t understand why you have started carrying that with you. It’ll make the Guardians suspicious. What do you need so much that you’ll lug it around all day?” Zack was cautious, eyeing his open door. He walked towards it and pushed it shut.
“Listen,” he said, hoisting the bag onto a propped up knee. “I’m searching. I have been down to the basement every day since. I have been looking at each floor, trying to see where she could have exited from.” He opened the bag and offered it up for Leonard to rummage inside; the iPod, an old magazine, a book called Super Structures, and one ration of water that he had risked denunciation for.
“But why are you carrying these things with you?” Leonard asked, pointing at the bag.
“If I find out how she got in,” Zack said, shaking the items back down into the dirty satchel, “then I can get out that way too.” Leonard was shaking his head, unimpressed by the plan. He looked back at the windows to made one final check for sunlight. There was none.
“I think you’re mad,” he whispered as they closed the door behind them, their conversation concealed by the sounds of New Omega Television. “I’ve said before that to go out in that is suicide. Dawn is coming, but it’s a slow process, Zachary. Omega will tell us when it is safe.”
“But you believe that the clouds are breaking enough for sunlight to come through. The atmosphere might have changed. It must have changed.” They stopped talking as they arrived at the entrance to the lift, several other men and women, a small crowd of familiar faces all waiting for it to arrive. Two Guardians were standing at the side, both with their hands on their Assisters. Zack leant into Leonard’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “She got in somehow.”
Leonard exited the lift on level twenty one and walked towards the laundry where he worked. Zack saw him punch his card into the check-in slot, and before the lift doors closed Leonard turned around and flashed Zack a wink. He also shook his head left to right with a smile, demonstrating the freedom of movement. The pillow really had helped him. He never complained anymore. It made Zack feel good.
That shift for Zack, just like the rest of his shifts since he had seen Emily’s tattoo, passed by in a daze. He was unfocussed and distracted, and desperate for the bell so that he could just get out, eat, and get himself down to the basement to continue his search. There was no way that she had made it up to the lobby and got out that way. It had to be the basement. He had searched level one, and two. Tonight was level three.
As soon as the triple bell sounded he was out of the water treatment plant. He waited for the lift, and as expected, Leonard joined him on level twenty one. They rode in the claustrophobic space packed with people, several of which Zack noticed to be preoccupied by scratching their limbs and fingers. They queued for their long-term antibiotics and continued into the Food Hall.