The Legacy

arrived two years before had she learnt that she wasn’t evil, wasn’t a Burden on Mother Nature, that it was wrong to make her work tirelessly to pay for the sins of her parents. Now she was Legal, but even that didn’t offer much protection, not when her very existence was such a threat to the Authorities, not when Richard Pincent wanted her and Peter dead, out of the picture.
    But the Underground were keeping them safe. She knew that. During the day, she reminded herself regularly, there was nothing to worry about. As Peter said all the time, they were going to be fine. The Underground had found them somewhere to live, somewhere no one could find them. They were self-sufficient, more or less; they were protected. Everything was fine. At last, everything in Anna’s life was OK.
    Quietly, Anna padded over to the chest of drawers where a pile of Molly’s ironed clothes lay. She picked them up and, one by one, put them away. Order reassured her – she’d spent most of her life trying to achieve it.
    But at night the demons came – the terrible monsters who wanted to steal her children away, wanted to imprison them as she had been imprisoned, wanted them to hate her, wanted them to know a life without love, without laughter, without her.
    Anna had spent her childhood in Grange Hall. A Surplus Hall, it was a prison for children born illegally to parents who had signed the Declaration – a piece of paper that most signed too young to understand that in return for eternal life they would never bear children. Peter had been a Surplus too, but he hadn’t been discovered by the Catchers; instead he had been passed around Underground supporters for most of his life, hidden in attics, never knowing whether he’d be in the same place the next day or whether he’d be moved again. It was only when he was taken in by Anna’s real parents that he’d seen what family was all about and it was their love that had driven him to hand himself in to the Catchers and get himself sent to Grange Hall so that he could help her to escape.
    And now he knew no fear. Anna loved that and feared it in equal measure; loved his strength, his courage, his ability to laugh when she expressed her worries to him in a way that didn’t belittle them but made them obsolete. I am here , he would say to her. No one will ever hurt you again . But she even saw his fearlessness as a threat; she worried about his restlessness, his need to be fighting someone, something. Feared that the strength within him would eventually take him from her. From the children.
    The clothes folded away, Anna sat down next to the cot and listened to Molly’s rhythmic breathing. All was quiet. Her loved ones were near her, were sleeping, were going nowhere.
    ‘Anna?’ She looked up with a start to see Peter standing in the doorway, looking at her quizzically. ‘What are you doing?’
    She blushed. ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You’re watching her sleep again, aren’t you?’
    Anna bit her lip. ‘I just . . .’ She sighed. ‘I had another nightmare.’
    ‘Don’t tell me,’ Peter whispered. ‘Catchers?’
    She met his eyes – they were twinkling kindly.
    ‘Not Catchers this time,’ she said, slowly standing up and moving towards him. ‘I dreamt about Sheila.’
    ‘Sheila?’ Peter frowned. ‘What did you dream?’
    Anna closed her eyes for a moment. Sheila, her friend from Grange Hall. Was friend the right word? Sheila had been her shadow. Younger than Anna, she had turned to her for protection which Anna had reluctantly given. Sheila wasn’t strong like Anna; she had got into trouble with the other girls, with the House Matron Mrs Pincent, with everyone. Like a ghost with her pale, translucent skin and pale orange hair, Sheila had been so fragile, and yet there had been a steely quality to her, a refusal to accept her Surplus status, a determination that her parents had wanted her, that she didn’t belong in Grange Hall. And it had turned out that she was right. They’d only found that out later, after Anna had escaped with Peter, leaving Sheila behind. After Sheila had been taken to Pincent Pharma, experimented on, used . . .
    Anna shuddered at the memory. ‘I dreamt . . .’ She exhaled slowly, her breath visible in the cold night air. ‘I dreamt that she was angry with me. Because I hadn’t believed her. Because I’d told her she was a Surplus. I dreamt that she took Molly away to serve me right, to show me what it was like.’ Tears started to