The applause stopped and Mariette blinked in the strong lights. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what to say, except that I am glad to be back among friends…

The Chosen
By


Susan Brown

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Chapter 13

Previously…

‘I am pleased to be able to announce that one of our agents has returned safely to us from one of the target schools and has kindly agreed to give us some useful inside information concerning the current state of affairs. Please welcome, Sophia Thompson.’

A girl came out of the shadow and advanced to the podium. She was smiling widely and everyone was clapping loudly except me and Bethany. She went to Mariah Hepstone and shook her hand. Bethany held my arm in a vice-like grip and I turned to her, appalled to catch sight of the person standing in the spotlight and beaming at everyone–Mariette––!

And now the story continues…

‘It CAN’T be!’ Bethany whispered.

‘It flaming well is!’ I hissed.

The applause stopped and Mariette blinked in the strong lights. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what to say, except that I am glad to be back among friends. I know a couple of you here have a lot of questions and I’ll speak to you both a little later. I’ll tell you all how I managed to get out of the school some other time. What you all want to hear is how things are out there.

‘The school was one of a number picked because of their location–they had to be well away from more populated areas and have what they considered to be the right type of pupil. The state wanted to use only the best children, bright, healthy, strong and potential leaders. Yes they were going to be baby factories, but it was important to the state that the selected girls would pass on the correct genes to future generations. The ideal scenario was that baby girls would be born at some stage. They cracked the problem only recently and I think you all know who the person is who is carrying a baby that is probably going to be a girl.’

I sort of sunk down I my seat, not wanting to draw attention to myself but now knowing that my pregnancy, far from being a private affair, was know by everyone else too!

‘Now they’ve worked out the right medical procedures, they’re almost at the stage to roll out the treatment to all the girls. The problem for them is that they still needed to do further tests on the impregnated girl to make sure that the foetus was indeed female and that the child would be healthy.

‘The breakout during which the girl escaped caused an immediate pandemonium. Even now, the entire British mainland is being scoured to find her. As far as the rest of the children in the school are concerned, it’s business as usual. They have not been told of any trouble and are being closely watched and monitored constantly. The explosions–when the girl and others escaped–has been put down to a gas explosion in the kitchens. Naturally, the kids all believe that, because they are in a situation where they have had their minds continually manipulated. None of them, even four and five petal students, are allowed out of the school grounds any more and there’s a total information blackout. I can tell you that a number of children are now being given the same treatment as the successful–if that’s the right word–girl in the hope that they will be able to replicate their apparent success at a critical stage, making her escape, less significant.

‘That’s all I’m going to say at present because I’m going to be debriefed tomorrow morning after I have had a rest and then I will be available to see the relevant people and departments if they want me.’

With that Mariette–or Sophia–nodded and left the dais and her place was taken by Mariah Hepstone. ‘That’s all for the time being, everyone. We will let you know as much as we can by means of your uPads and we will meet here again tomorrow at the same time to give more updates if possible.’

Then she left and the lights came up. Bethany and I exchanged glances.

‘Blimey, that was a surprise,’ Bethany exclaimed.

‘D’you think she’s genuine or some sort of double agent,’ I speculated out loud.

‘Well, she’d be a triple agent, wouldn’t she?’

‘I don’t know. It’s all getting very confusing.’

~ §~

After saying goodbye to Bethany, who wanted to go and do some emergency repairs on a nail that had the temerity to break, I managed to find my way to Doctor Eccles office, after asking directions from several people. I knocked on her door.

‘Come in.’ I heard faintly.

Opening the door, I went in and found myself in a typical doctor’s consulting room, with lots of medical type equipment, a large desk and behind it, Doctor Eccles.

‘Sorry I’m late, Doctor, I got a bit lost,’ I confessed.

‘No problem, Rebecca, I’ve only just got here myself. Could you go behind the screens and take all your clothes off–even your undies–then slip on the gown that’s hanging on the peg?’

I went behind the screen and was soon out my clothes and in the rather draughty white examination gown. When I came out a slight draught made me conscious that my rear end was open to the elements.

‘Ah, there you are, Rebecca. Okay, hop up on the examination table and I’ll have a look at you.’

I won’t go into details of what a gynae examination involves–except to say that dignified it’s not–if you’ve had one, you’ll know all about it; if you haven’t, count yourself lucky! About an armful of blood was taken and I had to supply some pee–which took forever to produce because I was nervous and it was all a leeetle bit messy. Dr. Eccles did some other tests that required me to have wires, cables, pads and other bits and pieces on my tummy and other part of my anatomy. Then she did some sort of scan with the help of a nurse where I had to go into a side room, lie down on a padded table and be inserted into some sort of tube thingie and was told to hold my breath several times.

The tests seemed to go on and on and I felt decidedly exhausted by the time they had finished. After re-dressing, I sat down at the desk as the doctor read some notes on her vidi screen.

‘Good,’ she said after a moment, turning to me and giving me a big smile, ‘the wound on the back of your head is healing splendidly, you’re in quite good health considering the cocktail of somewhat toxic drugs you’ve been given over an extended period. We will give you course of detox pressure injections that should counteract those. All in all you are lucky. A number of the girls who have been rescued have had a lot more wrong with them.’

‘How is the baby?’ I asked.

‘Doing fine as far as we can tell. Baby is only about the size of a poppy seed at the moment. Have you felt sick much?’

‘Yes; I stopped feeling sick for a bit, but it’s come back again.’

‘I’ll give you something for that. How do you feel apart from that?’

‘A bit tired, washed out, stressed, not knowing whether I am coming or going, scared about having the baby, scared about not having the baby; worried about just about everything, tearful and very emotional. Apart than that, I’m fine.’

She smiled.

‘Welcome, Rebecca, to the world of motherhood in these troubled times. I could give you pills that would make you smile while someone saws off your leg, but I don’t think pills are the answer. You could have counselling, but judging by your recent experiences with counsellors, we’ll leave that as a possible option. I think the best thing to do is talk to your loved ones and open up to them–having a chat from time to time helps. If it all gets too heavy, come and see me, okay?’

I nodded.

‘Right, off you pop. I need to treat some really sick people and you aren’t that by any means!’

~ §~

I found Bethany waiting for me outside.

‘How did it go? Was it like–torture?’

‘No, it wasn’t too bad, although I didn’t like my blood being taken or my private bits being stretched––’

‘–Ooh, don’t,’ squealed Beth, ‘it sounds like, excruciating.’

I explained the less sickly bits as we meandered down the hall to the large rest area over at the back of the house. Just as we were entering, both our uPads chimed simultaneously.

Fishing mine out of my bag, I saw that it was from Dada.

Come to the office (room 22), asap.

Bethany was looking at hers.

‘Unc wants to see me.’

‘Me too,’ I said. We looked at each other, shrugged and then arm in arm walked through several corridors and after asking directions, found ourselves at the office.

Beth knocked and entered, with me hard on her heels. I was somewhat surprised as I had expected a small office similar to the one where I first saw Daddy, but this was a huge area with numerous desks, comps, large vids on the walls and lots of people. The place was abuzz and seemed to be the nerve centre for the entire operation. There were several glass-walled offices leading off the central area and to be honest we had no idea where to go.

After looking helpless for a few moments, a man in a t-shirt and jeans approached us.

‘Bethany and Rebecca?’ he asked. ‘You’re expected; please come this way.’

He was rather a nice looking man–a bit old for me but as I was only twelve, that wasn’t surprising. Recently, I had found myself being quite attracted to men and that my mind had been messed with in that respect. At some stage I was going to need some heavy duty psych’ help, as I really didn’t know who the real me was any more.

I shook my head to clear it, tried to ignore the attractive shape of his bottom, put on my happy face and followed him.

My face wasn’t so happy when we were shown into a side room and there was Marriette, with Dada, Mummy, a few others and the commanding presence of Mariah Hepstone, who looked up from what she was reading as we entered.

‘Ah, girls, thanks for coming. Shall we all sit down and we can talk. Would you like something to drink?’

‘Zinga, please.’ I replied, and Bethany asked for the same.

I was unable to take my eyes off Mariette. She looked cool, sophisticated and very pretty in a cream dress suit and white satin blouse. She was looking at us, a small smile on her full red lips.

I didn’t smile back, and just looked at the large vid on the wall that was showing the news. I was sure it was Australia, for although the sound was turned down I could see that it was an overview of Sydney from the harbour and there were several places where fires were blazing–including the opera house.

‘Good,’ said Mariah, ‘I thought that it would be a good idea to get you all together––’

The door opened and Auntie slipped in. she gave a whispered apology and sat next to Bethany, who squealed slightly, looked guilty and then just held her mum’s hand.

‘As I was saying, I thought that it would save a lot of time, trouble and questions if we all had a meeting to clear the air, so to speak.’ She then gazed straight at me.

‘You have a right to know what’s been going on while you have been at the school and the things we did to protect you and the others there who were vulnerable. I regret that we were unable to help everyone and some children were killed in the experiments that they used to acquire the perfect treatment.

‘What I said earlier was true: you were all guinea pigs. They wanted to make the perfect girl. As far as I’m concerned, they’re no better than Hitler’s Nazi régime and the attempts they made, to the cost of many others, to ensure and perpetuate the myth of Aryan supremacy. Our so-called elected government want female babies to be born, free of genetic and inherited problems. That was fair enough, but not at the cost that they are prepared to pay and the lives they are prepared to sacrifice in their quest for the prefect female child.

‘It wasn’t only money–although that was a strong consideration as the country is nearly bankrupt–it was a power thing too: they were determined to be the first to perfect the treatment of children to produce female offspring and then use the immense power that that knowledge would give them to influence the world and perhaps mould the ideology they were peddling.

‘They had to acquire boys to metamorphose, or transmute so they searched for carefully selected kids of a certain age, to put through vigorous testing procedures to weed out any undesirables and–to them–genetically flawed candidates. Even then, a certain number of boys got through the testing stage – and because they knew too much or the treatment went wrong–they were eliminated. According to the old adage, dead men tell no tales. So these children were–according to the official propaganda–‘moved’ to other schools, but of course the truth was considerably more sinister.

‘For some time now, we have had a number of people at selected schools that have been our eyes and ears as to what has been going on. I cannot go into details as to the methods used as, what you don’t know, you cannot pass on.’

She looked directly at me and Bethany and smiled.

‘Let me assure you, that the girl you know as Marriette and I know as Sophia, is in fact one of us and always has been. How do I know? Well I put her in your school or shall I say, I used some hidden influences to have her placed there and she was trained by our best people, implanted with state of the art drugs that counteracted the mind-bending drugs to which you two have been subjected. In addition to this and if any further assurances are required, her surname is not Thompson, it’s Hepstone. She is my daughter.

~ §~

You could have knocked me down with a feather. It was another shock to add to all the others I had had lately. Mariette’s mum was Mariah! Mind you, I had to stop thinking of her as Marriette now–she was Sophia.

A few minutes later the meeting had to break up as there was a bit of a crisis–this wasn’t unusual, it was the norm here. Bethany went off with Auntie and that just left Sophia and me in the room.

We were silent for a few minutes and then both tried to speak at once.

‘Rebecca.’

‘Sophia.’

We both laughed.

‘You first,’ she said slipping off her heels and crossing her long shapely legs at the ankles.

‘I thought you were one of them.’

‘I know, but I wasn’t–though they did think that I was one of them. My cover was the best available. They had absolutely no idea that mum was Mariah Hepstone.’

‘And I told Helena that you had tried to, to––’

‘Turn you into a rebel? It was all part of the school’s plans to find out if you were a plant and had sympathies with the other side. I was playing a more or less double, or I suppose triple agent role.’

‘Bethany said that–triple agent, I mean.’

‘Yes, confusing isn’t it? Anyway, I was made aware of your conversation with Helena and how shocked that you apparently were for suggesting that you were not loyal to the cause. That was good, because it achieved two things: first, make them believe that you were a good little girl and second, that I was loyal to the state. What Mum calls a win-win situation. For all their apparent cleverness, the authorities have made a lot of mistakes and assumptions along the way that we have been able to capitalise on.

‘For example they are unaware that we have personnel in key positions including communications who can alter records or change things to our advantage. The government has been in power for a long time and became rotten to the core years ago. Now things are worse for them. All their brainy people have been disposed of because they were a threat to them, and now all that’s left are a hard core of nutters headed by that bitch Alysia Wellgood. Nobody trusts anyone else and they run scared of a knock on the door at the dead of night and a sudden disappearance to God knows where.

‘I didn’t know any of this, why didn’t my parents––’

‘–tell you? Because such knowledge could have had you killed. They knew that they had to appear as normal, good, party people: even so they managed to blot their copy books and got sent to places where the life expectancy was little above zero. India is a bad place to be and if you are a foreigner–particularly from the UK, the country that had ceased trading with them and had called in debts–you have no real need to look to the future because you don’t have one. The Indian embassy was bombed and flattened five hours after the personnel escaped through a sewage tunnel. It was believed that everyone was killed when the mini nuke bomb went off, but luckily, everyone got out.

‘Why would India do that? The people in the embassy were innocent?’

She gazed at me and thought for a moment.

‘Our people think that the UK nuked the embassy. They had a lot of people whom they termed undesirables in there so, from their point of view, it was a neat trick to explode the bomb. Apparently loyal personnel left the embassy the previous day somehow, leaving the others–including your parents–to their fate. It would kill more than two birds with one stone, as they say, to use a bomb on the place. They would be able to blame Indo-China for the atrocity and get rid of a number of problem individuals.’

‘How d’you know that India didn’t do it?’

‘Because India and the greater state of Indo-China does not have the technology. Oh, they have conventional nuclear weapons, but not the mini-nuke. It was only because of the intervention of several neutral countries that the orbit defences didn’t launch reprisal strikes against Indo-china. We added our voice too, explaining that there were other factors involved.’

‘So, what happens now?’ I asked.

‘We sit and wait.’

‘Like birds in the wilderness?’ I queried.

‘Yeah, if you like.’ She grinned. ‘There’s not much else we can do.’

Back in my room later in the day, I was writing my journal on my uPad. I had a lot to put in it and I wanted to get things down while they were fresh in my memory. I was still quite sore from my gynae examination and also felt slightly sick. So much for morning sickness, it seemed to be there at any time of day.

Before long it was dark outside; I didn’t realise how quickly time passed as I updated my journal. Checking the time, I realised that I only had fifty minutes until dinner. I had been told that tonight’s dinner was to be formal. I had a dress hanging up–borrowed from somewhere–that I was to wear. It was pretty and I couldn’t wait to try it on.

First thing first though. I took a couple of tablets that the doc had given me to counteract the sicky feelings.

After that, I went in the shower room, stripped off and entered the pod. I set the cycle on refresh and shuddered slightly as the water hit my sensitive bits. As the water and suds cascaded down my body, I felt my tummy: was it getting bigger? It shouldn’t if baby was so tiny, should it? Mind you, my breasts certainly felt bigger and more sensitive. I wondered once again if the baby was a girl or boy. One of the tests that the doctor carried out was a gender test and the results should be available the following day.

I knew how important the result of that test was. I had been told that it was highly likely that I was carrying a girl, but we wouldn’t be one hundred percent sure until the results came through.

After the drier had finished with me, I used the straighteners to erm, straighten my hair, and then the curling tongs to put a flick up look to the ends. I know it sounds daft, but I think it looked lovely.

While still in just my panties and bra, I applied some makeup. I hadn’t bothered for the last few days for obvious reasons. Light foundation and a touch of colour to my cheeks helped take away the rather pale and pasty look that I had had lately. Smoky eye shadow and black eye liner accentuated my eyes and made them look bigger. My lips, I lined with pink pencil and then filled them in with highly glossy pink lip gloss. As soon as I was happy with my face, I slid stockings up my legs and then carefully put on the dress.

Ah–the dress. As soon as I saw it, I had longed to jump into it, but being a strong-minded girl, I held back until I was ready for it. It was a gorgeous gold, pin-tuck, party confection–a sort of crushed silk look material that had a slight silvery shimmer when it moved. It had pin-tuck ruching on the bust with light boning to give it support. It was drop-dead gorgeous and I just adored the way it moved against my body and nylon-sheathed legs.

The final touches included diamond drop earrings with a matching necklace and pendant, and three-inch heeled gold strappy sandals. I spritzed the air and then walked through the mist. Gazing at my reflection when I had finished, I thought that I looked decidedly pretty. I didn’t have time to take in my reflection fully though, because there was a soft knock on the door.

‘Come in.’ I called.

The door opened and there was my Mummy. She was looking wonderful. She had never looked prettier, in a calf length black strappy frock that floated around her body. She had her hair up and it really suited her. I felt so proud of my Mummy that I could cry–only I didn’t as I didn’t want to ruin my makeup.

‘Oh, Rebecca, you look absolutely gorgeous, sweetheart.’

‘So do you, Mummy. I love your hair.’

‘Yours too… It looks pretty flicked up like that. You look a lot older than twelve dressed like that.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, love, you do.’

‘I—I don’t want to grow up yet–am I silly?’

‘No, sweetheart. You haven’t had much of a childhood, have you? Well, although you are going to be a mum soon, don’t forget to try and have a bit of fun too. You’re only young once.’

‘Not much chance of fun with all this hanging over us.’

‘I know, love, but we make the best of what we’ve got. This government is teetering on the edge and the end can’t be far away. Come on or we’ll be late and you know what your father is like about punctuality.’

‘I thought that it was normal for a girl to be late.’

‘Not as far as he’s concerned. Anyway, I’m starving, aren’t you?’

I thought for a moment. The pills had done the trick, I wasn’t feeling sick and my appetite had come back, so yes, I was hungry.

As we made our way downstairs, arm in arm, I still found it hard to believe that Mummy was next to me and I was about to see Dada, Bethany and Sophia again. I was aware of my silky dress swishing against my legs and my hair brushing gently against my bare shoulders. My lips felt sweet and slightly sticky because of the lip gloss. I had never felt more feminine before and I was really, really happy–happier than I had been for a long, long time. My family and friends were with me and I was relatively safe. How long would it last? I didn’t know, but for now, I would savour the moment and enjoy my young life to the full.

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To be continued…

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My thanks go to the brilliant and lovely Gabi for editing, help with the plot-lines and pulling the story into shape.