The Resistance

regulations that are outdated, that belong to another time. This is progress. This is the future.’
    Hillary was silent for a few moments, then she looked back at the row of beds.
    ‘This girl here,’ she said, pointing to the girl clamped to the bed. ‘What’s happening to her?’
    ‘Ah, well, she’s at the most exciting stage of the process. Our first twelve, I believe. Twelve embryos, about two weeks old, are being extracted. Twelve embryos with enough stem cells to provide London and the Home Counties with Longevity+ for three months.’
    ‘You mean she’s pregnant?’
    ‘Pregnant as a sow,’ he confirmed. ‘Unfortunately we’ve yet to bypass the side effects of pregnancy.’ He grinned at Hillary. ‘Nothing like a ward full of girls feeling sick, tired, wailing and getting upset over nothing to get the nurses demanding pay rises. Still, we’re working on it. If it didn’t compromise the quality of the embryos, we’d keep them unconscious all the way through.’
    ‘And what will happen to her . . . afterwards?’
    ‘Afterwards?’ Richard looked at her uncertainly.
    ‘Will she blab? We can’t have the girls talking.’ Peter felt a chill inside him; even from where he was hiding he could see the steely glint in Hillary’s eye. Any hope that she might be outraged by what she was seeing was immediately dashed.
    ‘Oh, I see,’ Richard said, looking relieved. ‘No, she won’t be able to blab. To start with, each girl has a good fifteen years of production ahead of her, I’d say. After that, who knows.’
    ‘Who knows? Richard, don’t give me platitudes. What will happen to the girls when they are no longer Valuable? We can’t keep creating Surpluses if they’re going to become Burdens later on.’
    ‘Burdens? Oh, they won’t be Burdens,’ Richard said, smiling lightly. ‘They’ll just become Valuable in other ways. We need live bodies for experiments, to test our drugs, so that’s one possibility. Organs are still needed to hone our organ-growth techniques; blood is also an important resource. There are many wonderful things to be harvested from the human body, Hillary. The possibilities are endless.’
    ‘It’s incredible,’ Hillary breathed. ‘Who’d have thought Surpluses could be so useful?’
    Slowly, Peter allowed his eyes to travel to where the girl lay. He felt numb, felt like his skin was too tight on his body, too close. He’d actually thought that Longevity was beautiful. But there was nothing good about Pincent Pharma. It was evil. More evil than he’d ever imagined, and he felt sick at the thought that he’d come so close to signing up to its cause.
    He had to get out, he realised. He had to tell Pip, had to get help. Tentatively, he began to stand up, rubbing his legs, which felt stiff from crouching, and looking for his opportunity to run to the door, hoping that everyone’s attention would be on the girl at the end of the row, the girl who was being operated on. Aghast, he stared as a man in a lab coat thrust a metal implement inside her. The girl let out another blood-curdling scream, disturbing the man carrying out the operation.
    ‘I think we’ll have to sedate this one,’ the doctor said. ‘Inject her. Do it quickly.’
    The girl lifted her head and continued to scream, a sound that came from the depths of despair, a guttural cry for help. And then Peter realised she was looking over at him, and he frowned, because he knew her. It was Surplus Sheila, from Grange Hall, and she’d seen him.
    ‘Surplus Peter!’ she screamed, just before the nurse stuck a needle into her arm. ‘Peter. Help me. Please . . .’
    Peter ducked down, but it was too late. His grandfather swung round and scanned the room wildly.
    Hillary looked around anxiously. ‘Surplus Peter? Not Surplus P— Not your . . .’
    ‘Peter,’ said his grandfather slowly, ‘if you are in here, you are going to wish with all your heart that you were not.’ Then he took out his phone and dialled a number. ‘It’s me,’ he barked. ‘I need armed guards in Unit X. Right away.’

Chapter Twenty-Six
    Jude had lost Pip. He had passed straight by the Security Centre, through the door at the end of the corridor, and Jude hadn’t been able to find the relevant camera view. His breathing was returning to normal, though; at first, he’d found himself worrying that perhaps Pip had come for him, that his warning not to fly too close to the sun was a serious one. But then he’d kicked