Justice (Chapter Ten)

Chapter Ten
They didn’t waste much time commencing our re-education.
We filed outside, the wind attacking my exposed head and face as we moved across the expanse of gravel. Now, I looked just like the other Parasites: I was a refugee, a victim. I clutched at my hatred of Sense as gusts of icy air burnt my skin and barged deep into my brain.
Our line moved towards the outbuildings at the side of the cube. Inevitably, we moved towards the dogs.
Our scent, human flesh, a string of meat, awoke hundreds of years of breeding and many thousands more of instinct. Wire mesh bulged as hardened muscle and perfectly triangular teeth crushed against it again and again. Mouths foamed yellow slaver, blood-shot eyes writhed in passion for the kill and their damp, earthy smell, their urgency for blood, washed over me. I looked on as the predators tried to climb, clawing at the fence - a writhing cocktail of canine aggression. Isaac and the voices in the night had been right: to run would be pointless.
Their barking continued to resonate, tracking us right into the single storey wooden outbuilding – the one I’d noticed when we’d first arrived. In the high-tech world of Sense, this wasn’t what I’d had in mind as a training facility. And I was even more shocked by the interior.
Gone was the marble grandeur and seemingly infinite spaces. No crystal fists glimmering here. Instead, the room looked little more than a primitive Scout hut or a worn, local community hall. A thin, faded carpet attempted to cover the floor – the colour debatable. Tired wooden desks with lift-up lids were arranged in rows; the walls displayed tattered Sense posters, depicting images and slogans from the early days of their campaign. In fact, the only nod to the modern age was a projector hanging down from a thick metal bar embedded precariously in the plaster board ceiling.
We were released. The young female Red motioned for us to sit at a desk. We did so without a word. I was thankful that Imogen was seated to my right. I knew she couldn’t do much to protect me, but so far it seemed like she had my back. We seemed to have an ‘awareness’ of one another and I needed someone. On my left sat a sallow-faced freckly girl with dark circles under her eyes who must have been even younger than me. She hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands together in silent prayer. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she’d done to warrant Darkmoor, but perhaps I didn’t look much like a state terrorist to her either...
“Don’t touch me!”
Of course. I didn’t need to look up.
The boys had arrived and somehow Isaac was now at the front of the line, probably for causing trouble at some point.
“Watch where you’re walking.”
Yes. Isaac was beaten and looked exhausted. But not so exhausted that the willowy boy behind him could expect to be forgiven for treading on his heels. I wondered if all those head injuries had finally sent him beyond ‘angry young man’ and into fully fledged psychopath; his large brown eyes were smouldering with anger and his fists, although cuffed, were as clenched as ever.
“Shut up and sit down.” A male Red, somewhat embarrassed by his disorderly cargo, commanded.
The boys took the remaining desks and Isaac’s eyes found mine for a fraction of a second. I shrugged. What did he want, for me to blow him a kiss? Imogen seemed aware of the exchange and raised an eyebrow. What did she want, my life story?
Fake Finger and The Fringe entered the room, a pair of bright orange opposites, little and large. Fake Finger stood to one side, remaining close to the door, solemnly tapping her prosthetic against the wall. The Fringe moved to the centre of the room and began to address us, her jowls shuddering with each clipped phrase,
“To those newcomers, Sense welcomes you to the first day of your new lives. To the rest, you know why you are here. Once you have completed the training at Darkmoor, you will go on to be productive citizens in our society. You will go on to make a difference and you will contribute. Each one of you will CONTRIBUTE. Although all of you have to come to us via different paths, you will leave here united under Sense. You will leave as one.”
Wow. A day of this and I might just capitulate. The Fringe was not an able public speaker. Her undulating cheeks held my attention far more than the overused stock phrases of Sense.
“To start with, you will learn and continue to learn about Sense and what it has done for this country and for you. You are expected to absorb this information.”
Up until then, I hadn’t even noticed that Fake Finger had moved from the door.
She towered behind the willowy boy who had caught Isaac’s heels on the way in. His head was face down on the desk. Either he was asleep or he had collapsed.
A fraction of a second later, he was hitting the floor, writhing and smashing his head and body against the legs of the wooden desk. We sat and watched. Just as suddenly, he stopped twitching, threw up and curled, shaking, into a quivering ball.
“As I said, you WILL absorb this information.”
Fake Finger pulled him to his feet and sat him back, a limp carcass, behind his desk. Did she hit a pressure point? Had her prosthetic developed electrocuting qualities? Either way, the willowy boy was sickly white and his breath juddered out in shallow bursts. In another world I would have walked over to see if he was OK. Not here.
“Today’s session will involve you watching a film explaining what a terrible position this country was in before Sense came to power. It will also explain why it was necessary for us to eradicate the out-dated, liberal principles that were sending our great nation towards extinction. You will watch and you will learn.”
With that, the projector whirled to life and Fake finger used her perfect red-nail to flick off the light switch.
What followed made my stomach churn.
The film started with the appearance of the charcoal mouth. The dead lips began to move and for ten minutes the cold voice described our past.
“At the start, before Sense, our great country was in decline. The streets were filled with homeless scum, thieves and immigrants. Unemployment was high yet jobs remained unfilled. Teenage single mothers and benefit cheats defrauded our country while honest workers struggled to support their families. Homosexuality and mixed race relationships were tolerated. Christianity was pushed aside in favour of foreign teachings and cults…”
As the mouth droned on, the words were matched with film footage or ‘evidence’ to use Sense’s term. Littered streets with broken paving slabs supported mounds of blankets containing the shivering homeless; old ladies were attacked and burgled in their homes by non-white intruders wielding curved swords; seventeen year old girls stood in doorways, clutching their grubby brood towards their yet-again swollen bellies while cigarettes dangled from their slack mouths and gigantic satellite dishes clung to the sides of their ‘social housing’; people collected disability benefit and were seen holding their own in pub brawls and playing football; mixed race couples kissed; homosexuals were married and went on to abuse the children they had adopted and churches were burned by hooded creatures bent over with hatred and chanting in a foreign tongue. It went on and on…
Relentlessly, we saw everyone that Sense perceived to be a Parasite presented in the most brutal manifestation. If Maggie were here she would be ticking off each persecuted group on her fingers. The thought of her made me pray that Libertarious had started to accumulate some weapons. This was never going to be a war just about ideas.
The lights flicked up. The Fringe took the floor.
“So you see. You see how this could not go on. How our society was breaking under the strain of supporting worthless creatures. How Liberals and left-wing politicians refused to face the reality of the situation and instead pandered to the scum pulling us all down. You will be made to understand. But be aware, you have only been given this second chance because of your age. You’re young. You can be re-taught. You need to prove yourselves. Others have not been so fortunate.”
She paused and I looked to Isaac. From the grimace on his face, I suspected that the inside of his mouth was in shreds. I wondered who he had lost, who Sense had crushed from his life or whether his campaign had started when Sense started to ask where every non-white person ‘came from’? I pressed my fingers to my forehead and rubbed them back and forth; I needed to erase what they were telling me; I wanted the images out of my brain tissue. A second chance? They never gave one to my Dad.