The Resistance

ensure that nothing goes wrong. Absolutely nothing. To which end, I’m keeping you locked up until it’s over, until I know you can’t do any damage.’
    ‘Locked up?’ Jude looked at him incredulously. ‘You can’t lock me up.’
    ‘Oh, but I can,’ Samuels said. ‘What you need to understand, Jude, is that I can do anything I like.’
    The guard looked around him uncomfortably, before tentatively knocking on the blue door in front of him. He wasn’t used to being in the ReTraining area of Pincent Pharma and felt out of place.
    Cautiously, he listened for a response, but there was none. He knocked again, this time louder.
    ‘Is that the door?’ he heard a voice say. ‘Hello? Is there someone there? Come in, please.’
    Emboldened, he pushed the door open. Sure enough, as he’d been told, there were two people in the large white room: Dr Edwards, the one who worked all hours, never seemed to go home, and the boy. The Pincent boy.
    ‘I’ve . . . well, I’ve got a delivery. For the boy,’ he said, stumbling over his script.
    ‘The boy?’ Dr Edwards asked. ‘You mean Peter?’
    ‘That’s right,’ the guard said. ‘For Peter. Peter Pincent.’
    ‘Do you usually deliver mail?’ Dr Edwards asked curiously. ‘I thought you were security.’
    ‘I am,’ the guard said, reddening slightly, trying to remember exactly what he’d been told to say. ‘Only this is valuable. It was hand delivered. By a young lady. Wanted to make sure it got to him safely. Peter Pincent, I mean. I just happened to be there.’
    ‘Then shouldn’t you perhaps be directing this at him?’ Dr Edwards asked, his mouth curving up into a slight smile. The guard nodded curtly.
    ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting out the envelope in Peter’s direction. Peter looked at it curiously.
    ‘For me?’ he asked.
    The guard nodded. ‘That’s right.’
    ‘And it’s from who?’
    ‘Young lady. The Surp— the one what you got out of Grange Hall with,’ the guard said nervously. ‘By the looks of her, at least. Same age as you, I’d have guessed.’
    Peter looked shaken. ‘When was she here? Can I still catch her?’
    ‘I’m afraid I had some important business to attend to primarily.’ The guard’s eyes followed the envelope. ‘She was here, what, forty minutes or so ago. Didn’t want to stop, she said.’
    ‘Is that all she said?’
    The guard shook his head.
    ‘What, then? What did she say?’ Peter demanded.
    ‘She said to tell you,’ the guard said slowly, ‘that you was right. That she was sorry. And that she’d see you later.’
    ‘That I was right? She really said that?’
    ‘And that she was sorry,’ the guard confirmed. ‘Now, if it’s all right with you, I’d better be getting back to my post.’
    ‘Of course,’ Peter said, turning the envelope over in his hands. ‘And thank you.’
    ‘You’re welcome,’ the guard said, his hand caressing the hefty tip sitting in his trouser pocket. ‘Just doing my job.’
    Jude found himself in a small room, more like a cupboard. The walls were thick, the door solid and there were no windows; only an air vent in the ceiling provided the space with oxygen.
    ‘You’ll stay here,’ Derek Samuels said. ‘Not that you have a choice. You won’t be going anywhere until I allow you to.’
    ‘You think you’re so clever,’ Jude muttered under his breath.
    ‘Borne out by experience,’ Mr Samuels said smugly. He pulled out a walkie-talkie from his pocket. ‘I need a guard. Room 25 on the ground floor.’ Then he looked back at Jude. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything to upset him.’ And then, shooting Jude one last, triumphant look, he opened the door with his identi-card and left, locking it behind him.
    Angrily, Jude leant against the wall and allowed himself to slide down to the ground. Somewhere in the building, the red-haired girl was lying, like a princess in a twisted fairytale, unobtainable. Somewhere else in the building, Peter Pincent was working. Jude, meanwhile, was stuck in a cupboard, trapped and impotent. Angrily he let out a sigh, then stood up again and kicked the wall with his foot. He’d thought he was so smart; had thought he knew it all.
    And then he frowned. Maybe he did know it all. Well not all, perhaps, but enough. Derek Samuels hadn’t searched him, after all. He still had his handheld device. He cast his mind back to when he’d been sitting in his bedroom surveying Pincent Pharma through its security system. He’d had