The Declaration

Ben from crying, but now they were rooted to the spot, too scared to move.
    Escape was now impossible. Getting out involved crawling out of a hole in the street, where they would be seen, heard. Staying here, silent, was their only option. Staying here, silent, and waiting for their eventual capture.
    Anna held Ben to her and rocked him gently. ‘You are not Surplus,’ she whispered to him, stroking his head gently and kissing him on the forehead. ‘You will never be Surplus. Never.’
    Gingerly, she and Peter sat down on the sofa, where they’d been a few minutes before until they had jumped up at the crash at the door.
    ‘Are you scared?’ Peter asked quietly, his face tense. Anna shook her head, unable to trust herself to speak.
    ‘We’ll escape again, if they catch us,’ he whispered, clutching her hand in his so tightly she almost cried out from the pain.
    ‘Of course we will,’ she whispered back, trying her best to smile confidently. ‘We’ll run away with Ben and we’ll find my parents and we’ll all go to the country. And then we’ll go to the desert, and it will be warm and sunny and we’ll have a lovely big house with a big garden.’
    ‘Of sand?’ Peter asked, smiling now in spite of the fear in his eyes.
    ‘Yes, of sand,’ Anna whispered firmly. ‘And there we won’t be Surpluses, we’ll just be people, and we’ll be so happy.’
    ‘And there’ll be flowers,’ Peter agreed. ‘Lots of flowers, and books. And no Catchers.’
    ‘No, definitely no Catchers,’ Anna said softly.
    She looked down at Ben and felt a rush of gratitude that he didn’t know what was happening upstairs.
    Please let him never know , she begged silently. Please let him never need to know .
    As she stared at him, he opened his eyes and smiled, his perfect, angelic face breaking out into a toothless grin.
    And then, with no warning at all, he started to cry. Not a timid, uncertain cry, but a loud howling, his mouth open wide and his previously cherubic features contorted into a bright red mass of distress.
    Anna and Peter looked at each other in alarm. This was it. They were going to be discovered. They were not going to be saved.
    Desperately, Anna tried to soothe him and coax him, putting the side of her finger to his mouth for him to chew on. But Ben spat it out in disgust and continued to howl. Peter put his arm around her. And then things seemed to go into slow motion. Anna could hear the table being moved upstairs, the trapdoor being opened. A Catcher’s face appeared at the top and her parents were pushed down the ladder at knifepoint.
    Then one of the Catchers held out his hands for Ben, and Anna screamed, ‘No!’ and the Catcher held out the knife and said he could do this the easy way or the hard way. Anna screamed that he would do it no way at all, that he would never take Ben away from his home. And then, suddenly, her father shouted, ‘Now,’ and Anna frowned, because she didn’t know what he meant. Both her parents put their hands to their mouths, and looked like they were eating something, and then her mother smiled, like she was laughing, like she’d just been given something she’d wanted all her life.
    And she turned to the Catcher, and she said, ‘You can’t touch them now,’ and he frowned, and then her mother stumbled slightly, and she fell to the ground, followed by Anna’s father. But they were both smiling, and their hands found each other.
    ‘Anna,’ her father said. ‘Anna, you’re free. You and Ben are free. A life for a life. It’s in the Declaration. We’ve been waiting for this moment. Wanting it to come. Waiting to give you life again. A real life. A real future. We’re so sorry, Anna. So sorry . . .’
    He looked back at her mother, and Anna saw him holding her hand tightly, so tightly that it was going white. There were tears in her mother’s eyes, and she mouthed, ‘I love you,’ to him. And then she looked back at Anna, and she smiled sadly, and she said, ‘My Anna. My little Anna . . .’
    Anna stared at her mother, and at her father, and as she watched them, she realised that she could see the life drifting out of them, each breath taking them further and further away. The Catchers were looking angry and confused, as if they weren’t sure what to do. And then she saw her father looking at Peter and he looked distraught, and was shaking his head, and she didn’t know why, and then she suddenly realised. Because if it was a life for a life, she