The Declaration

knew she’d only get worse bother if she didn’t stand her ground now.
    ‘Seems there was a hole in the wall what we didn’t know about,’ she said, eyes lowered. Like a blimmin’ Surplus , she thought crossly. Mrs Pincent oughtn’t to talk to me like that, not really . ‘I saw it, see, when I went to check on them at about quarter to four this morning, you know, just to check they was behaving themselves. But I couldn’t see them anywhere. And then I saw the hole in the wall. And I thought to myself, well, that’s where they must’ve gone, then . . .’
    Maisie’s voice trailed off, and Mrs Pincent tightened her grip on her shoulders.
    ‘This was quarter to four?’ she asked, her voice sounding strangled.
    Maisie nodded meekly.
    ‘And it is now quarter past four.’
    Again, Maisie nodded.
    ‘And why exactly did you wait so long to tell me?’
    ’Cause I knew you’d react like this , Maisie thought to herself defensively, but said nothing.
    Mrs Pincent’s face was now white, Maisie noticed, and the man was standing up, looking like he couldn’t get out of there quick enough.
    To Maisie’s relief, Mrs Pincent let go then and grabbed the phone off her desk, dialling a number from memory.
    ‘It’s Margaret Pincent,’ she barked down the phone. ‘I need you here, now. No, immediately. We’ve had a breakout. They can’t have got far. They must be caught immediately.’
    Then she turned back to Maisie.
    ‘Get out of here, you useless girl,’ she spat. ‘Get out of here now. Tell Mr Sargent to meet me in Solitary, and tell Mrs Larson to wait in reception for the Catchers. And you can tell the Surpluses that breakfast is cancelled today.’
    With that, she pushed Maisie aside and, signalling to the man that he was free to leave, stormed off down the corridor.
    Julia Sharpe stared at her reflection in the mirror listlessly. Her lines were definitely getting deeper, she realised. All that sunbathing was taking its toll on her complexion and if she wasn’t careful she was going to look like one of those women who people stared at in the street. The walking dead, they called them. People who were already old when Longevity was discovered. They may be cured of dying, but they’d already hit old age; now they had an eternity of it.
    Julia herself had a static age of fifty. It wasn’t a bad age to stick at, really. Of course, she hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Naturally, it would be a lot nicer to have an unlined face, but everyone had the same problem – even people who’d been taking Longevity from the age of sixteen still got wrinkles, even if they used the most expensive moisturisers. Longevity kept you young on the inside, but only regular facelifts could keep you truly young on the outside. And surgeons scared Julia rigid.
    She sighed, and opened the bottle in front of her, taking out two capsules and swallowing them with a gulp of water.
    Two little capsules, once a day, keeps the big bad wolf away , she thought with a little smile. But was keeping the big bad wolf away enough any more, she wondered. People said that the new Longevity drugs could do so much more. There was nothing you couldn’t cure with the right stem cells, they said – and whilst state-approved drugs might give you the bare minimum, the new drugs gave you the whole works – self-renewing skin, lower fat levels and more. But that meant the black market, Julia thought with a sigh. And once you started down that path, you had no idea where it might lead you.
    Julia didn’t really understand the science of Longevity – it wasn’t something she’d felt the need to know about; after all, what was important was whether it worked, not how . But her friends at the bridge club were adamant that their fresh complexions and firm figures were down to Longevity+. Apparently it was already available from select clinics in the USA, China and Japan, and was used widely by celebrities; the UK was only holding back because of the cost. But was any of that really true, she wondered? People did like to make up the most outrageous things. And then there was the question of where the stem cells came from. Traditional drugs used frozen umbilical cords, but rumour had it that Longevity+ required fresh, young stem cells. And where would such cells come from, she thought to herself, other than through very dubious means?
    But maybe she was being too cynical. Just the night before, she’d been playing bridge with Barbara, Cindy and