I felt so stupid and helpless being stuck in the GEM a the enemy a with these strange feelings of euphoria clouding my every thought. I gripped the side of the sink, noticing a slight tremble in my fingertips; wishing for Daniel. If only I could remember my dream, or why I ended up in the car with Mum in the first place. Everything felt so disjointed and mixed up. I sighed and dried my face before climbing back into bed.

The next morning those worries faded away after breakfast. It was just the flu I'd caught in the Compound, and Mum's tea helped me get better. She hummed to herself in the kitchen, and little flashbacks from my childhood popped into my mind a mum's smiling face, a song on the radio, white walls and a clean tiled floor a they came and went in a blur. While I ate she sat and wrote in a small leather bound notebook for a while.

"Are you ready sweetheart?" she said, putting down her pen and replacing the book in her jacket pocket. She picked up her plates and took them into the kitchen.

I drained the dregs of my tea and stood. "Yes, I'm ready."

She bustled back into the lounge, and came close enough to move a stray hair from my face. "I can't wait until your hair grows longer. You'll be the prettiest girl in the world."

It was like she lit me with a beacon. Her words made me feel so good about myself. But also kind of weird. I'd not realised my hair was too short. I loved it long before Mrs Murgatroyd... no, I wouldn't think about it. That time of humiliation was over. I'd never let anyone do that to me again.

"Are you okay?" Mum asked.

I thought about the glimpse of red hair at the door. It couldn't be her, I was just being silly. "I'm fine."

Mum's eyes narrowed in concern. "Well, if you're sure. Come on, I want to show you the labs."

We moved out into the corridor and I shoved my hands in my pockets as I followed her along. Mum frowned at my posture, so I removed my hands and stood up straight.

"This is the staff quarters," she said. "Some executives get apartments here so they can work all hours. It helps with the more intensive projects."

"What kind of projects?" I asked.

"You'll see soon enough," she replied. She pushed the button for the lift. "Let me show you the building first. One step at a time, Mina."

We travelled down a few levels and stepped out into a light, airy hallway with pale linoleum floors. I let my fingers trail the smooth white-washed walls. Mum's shoes tapped against the hard surface as she hurried us along. I saw the sign on the wall saying "Floor Eight" in green. To the right, I peered through the window to see a room with lots of long tables, computers and strange machines that reminded me of the printers at school, except they had little trays and a touch screen. I followed Mum into the room. It was empty apart from the equipment.

"This is one of my old offices," she said. "And this is a DNA Sequencer." She trailed her hand over the machine that resembled a printer. "We make the genes for the babies here." She lifted a flap and pointed to a small crevice inside. "We put a sample here and programme the machine to sequence the DNA from the sample." She moved her hand across to the computer next to it on the table. "And then we change the DNA in the computer. We make the genes better a stronger, more athletic, more beautiful a and then we create the egg. We create life."

"This is where you make the GEMs?" I asked. I didn't know what to make of the little machine and the computer. I'd never thought about the origins of the GEMs before. I'd certainly never imagined them made from something so simple. This all seemed so banal; almost dull.

"Yes."

All the time I'd imagined something monstrous. I'd imagined evil doctors taking scalpels to babies a cutting them up to make perfection a and yet it was nothing more than a little grey box.

"It's not as bad as I thought," I said. "I thought it was going to be... I don't know."

"Gruesome?" she asked. She raised an eyebrow in amusement.

"Yeah, I guess so." I laughed.

"Mina, you've been expecting pure evil where there is nothing but human nature. You imagined Frankenstein's monster and instead you have a new form of normality. Did your dad ever tell you that designer babies existed for decades before the Fracture?"

I shook my head.

"No, I'm sure that wasn't on his agenda," she muttered. "The truth is that geneticists have been helping families conceive for years, only back then we didn't have artificial wombs, and we didn't improve genes. Parents weren't given as many options. The Ministry wanted little more then to empower parents. To ensure they brought the life they really wanted into this world."

"But what if they just want to have a normal baby?"

"A normal baby," she said with a thin smile. "Yes, it's easy to label natural conception with the normal label and think everything else freakish. Isn't that how people treat your powers?"

I blushed with shame.

"Come on," she said, slipping an arm over my shoulders. "We'll go to the artificial wombs. They are very beautiful... if a little shocking at first."

She led the way to a set of stairs and we climbed one storey. At the doors to the lab Mum took some items from a supply cupboard and handed them to me. The unopened plastic crinkled in my hands.

"Put these on," she said. "It's a sterile environment."

I opened the plastic cases to find latex gloves, horrible little latex hats, and booties; all in an unflattering shade of bright blue. I followed Mum's directions and pulled on the booties over my shoes. She tucked escaping hairs under the elastic of my hat.

"That's better. Come on!" She stepped forward and opened the wide doors with aplomb a waving me through like a tour guide.

I took my tentative first steps into the lab and had my breath taken from me. It was less of a room and more like a huge factory floor. People busied around with clipboards, as they chatted and leaned over small incubators lining the floor like hospital beds. An orange glow emanated from them a reminding me of sunlight.

"This way," Mum instructed. She strutted off to the nearest incubator. "Here you can see the foetus growing in the artificial womb."

The blood froze in my body. The skin of the yellow womb a shaped into an oval pod a had a transparent quality and pulsated in a rhythmic heartbeat. It lay like a severed stomach on a white tray with wires and veins crossing the skin of the womb. The wires ran to a socket. The wombs were plugged in like electric fans.

"Does it run on electricity?" I asked. "If you pull the plug does the foetus die?" I leaned over them, trying to see through the skin to see the half-formed baby inside. All I made out was a slightly pink lump.

"We have back-up generators, so that wouldn't happen," Mum answered. A dark expression passed over her face as though the question troubled her.

I spotted a chart hanging from the white tray. It said a Smith. The parents. It felt so strange to think the baby had an owner. Like a reserved puppy in a pet shop.

We continued through the long lines of artificial wombs, and I realised that I wasn't horrified. I'd never thought of the Children of the GEM as monstrous or strange. They'd never been the point of fighting against the Ministry. It wasn't the fact they changed people through science, it was the fact that they didn't give people the choice. It was their way or no way. They started the Operation. They called us Blemished. I had to remember that. I had to keep hold of that thought and not let the fog take it away.

"What's with the empty spaces?" I gestured to the many empty trays and large containers in the lab. "Are you moving the wombs?"

"It's nothing to worry about. We're creating more space and shipping the wombs to a factory outside London. The containers are specially designed to keep the baby healthy on the journey."

"Okay," I said.

"And through here we have a small developmental centre. Not much of this is done at the GEM; we have womb factories around the country. Before the baby is delivered to the parents, it spends three years in our top of the range development and attachment centres. Here the child is exposed to images, and the scent of the parents. We use our own developmental programme to engage the brain, so that synapses increase at the optimum rate. The brain is like plastic. It needs to be moulded."

As we moved through more swinging doors, I saw what was more like a huge creche a just like at the Compound a but instead of the children running wild, they sat quietly and absorbed their surroundings. Each child had a partitioned "play area" to themselves. Inside the partitions, there was a cot or bed a depending on the age of the child a a television screen, various building blocks and stuffed toys, and what I could only assume was a baby gym. This consisted of strange little machines like treadmills. I wandered towards the play area, taking in all of the surroundings. A scientist sat with a toddler on her knee, praising the child as he or she built up their building blocks.

"As you can see we have Crawl-2-Runs for every child. They help the child progress from crawling to walking using the treadmill and harness. Each child has their own Substitute a a scientist who takes on the scent of the parents while they teach them brain optimising games. Later we use masks to imitate the parent's face," Mum said.

"Why don't they just learn all this stuff with their real parents? It must be confusing for them," I said, watching the young scientist clap her hands along with the toddler. I had to admit that the small child did seem far more advanced than the screaming little things in the Compound.

"It's not what the parent wants," Mum replied, her jaw clenched as though she was annoyed at my question. "They want to be able to work and get on with their lives. They want a child they can interact with and talk to. There are scheduled play sessions with the parents up to the age of three, and then the parents take them home. Many choose to take time from work to bond with their new child at this stage. It allows parents, and especially women, to have a career and a family life."

The question was on my lips, yet I didn't utter it: why force it? Why make people live this way?

The young woman became aware I was watching her with the child, and lifted her head. Bright blue eyes flashed and I gasped. She froze and I froze too. We stared at each other until Mum moved on to the next partition. The girl with the toddler put a finger to her lips in slow motion, and I moved away, my heart hammering against my chest. I'd just seen Elena Darcey.

18 * Angela *

Angela's wrists chaffed against the rope and the chains rubbed her ankles raw. Dry summer sun beat down on the nape of her neck as she shuffled through the dry grass, trying not to trip. They passed waist high and crumbling stone walls, rusting metal gates and fields full of alien shaped, white windmills, generating power for the capital. She tried not to stare at Cam a not wanting him to see her pain. After watching him lose his cool around the Moorlanders, she was frightened he would try something stupid. She glanced towards him; his hooded and dangerous eyes glowered at the ground. Above everything, she wanted to get to Area 14 unscathed with the group safe.

Harry stalked ahead of the others. Angela had presumed him to be old with his missing teeth and dirtied wrinkles, but he walked with the pace of a young man. He never tired. Even after walking for miles. Her muscles cried out with the pain, still aching from the previous day's walk. The Moorlanders stayed close and used themselves to separate the group. She knew Sebastian and Ginge walked behind her with a Moorlander watching their every move. They made her skin crawl, the way they stared at her with hungry eyes. She wasn't sure if they saw something to eat, or worse a something to entertain themselves with.

They were starving; there was no doubt about it. Perhaps there wasn't enough to hunt on the moors, and they'd failed to grow food. At one point in her life, she would have taken pity on anyone starving a just like her Mum had taken pity on Daniel as a boy. Not anymore. They lived in a harsh world. You fought battles and lost loved ones. You took care of each other and yourself. You didn't take prisoners to blackmail and sell as slaves. She shuddered at the thought.

As one of the Moorlanders moved away, Cam chanced a furtive glance. Angela managed to smile back, hoping it was reassuring. His jaw was strong and his mouth set. Angela's heart beat faster as she saw his determined expression. What was he going to do? She shook her head quickly. No, Cam. Leave it. Just let us get there. He swallowed and turned away, reading her expression.

Her toe caught a stone, and she stumbled forwards; unable to use her arms to balance. A Moorlander laughed loudly as she fell on her face and chest in the dry soil. The pebbles scraped her cheek a drawing blood a and her chest hit the ground so hard it was bruised and sore. She shuffled, trying to twist so she could get her balance and kneel before getting to her feet, when the Moorlander pushed her back down with his heavy boot.

"No!" Cam rushed towards her, his chains jangling. Angela saw him trip over an old piece of bark, landing with a thud. The Moorlanders guffawed like hyenas.

But she didn't care anymore, because she was so close to Cam she could get lost in his bright blue eyes. "Cam, be careful. Don't do anything," she whispered. "They have all those weapons. We just need to do what they say."

Cam's eyes filled with tears. He opened his mouth to speak and shook his head, turning away from them. She knew how deeply his pride hurt from the fall and the humiliation by the Moorlanders. He was such a good man that he wanted to keep her from harm, and she loved him for that. She couldn't let him get hurt.

"Aye," he said eventually, turning his head as a fat tear rolled from his cheek onto the soil. The Moorlander grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him up.

Angela's heart ached as she saw his defeated expression and the wet skin beneath his eyes. The Moorlander smirked.

"Little boy cry-cry," he said in a mocking baby voice. The rest of the group erupted in laughter.

Angela forced herself up and continued, hoping everyone would just begin walking and forget all about Cam's tears.

"Hark at this aun," said the same Moorlander. "She gets up on aer own an' starts walkin'." He rammed his elbow into Cam's side. "Not like this babby. Yer girlfriend's aarder than you are, mate." They laughed again.

"What's goin' on back there?" said Harry. "We need t'get there before nightfall an' yer just larkin' about like louts. Leave them kids alone an' walk before I aave yer balls fer earrings."

The laughter stopped, and the mocking Moorlander shoved Cam along. Angela almost tripped again. She wanted to say that everything would be okay, but he moved away from her and stumbled forward on unsure feet. She sighed, and carried on with a heavy ache in more than just her leg muscles. Even the sharp stinging pain of her cut cheek couldn't distract her from it. She'd lost part of Cam and it was all her fault.

The group pressed on through the day, stopping only for ten minutes to eat a handful of berries and drink a cup of water. Hard, cracking skin formed over her dry lips. It flaked painfully. Her breath came out in ragged gulps. She'd never been so tired in her entire life. She could fall asleep on her feet. Her mind blocked everything out except for one thought... left... right... left... right. She moved each foot as she thought it, otherwise she would stop and never start again.

On and on they went with little noise except the shuffling of feet. Even the Moorlanders stayed quiet. They must be feeling the pain now, Angela thought. They had to. Unless they weren't human. Every now and then she glanced over at Cam, but he kept his head down. She saw the red streaks of angry sunburn on the back of his neck. It made her flinch. She'd not seen Sebastian or Ginge for hours. They remained at the back of the group.

The sun set and they trudged on up a steep hill. The moors became grassy fields. Four times Angela struggled over a stile or a rusted gate that wouldn't budge. Her knees cramped from the effort. She stared at her feet a willing them onwards. Harry kept the pace, occasionally checking back to hurry them along. He reached the top of the hill first, just as the sky became dark. Angela struggled on, ignoring the hateful glances from the Moorlanders. Cam tripped over his feet yet never fell. She found herself counting her steps, telling herself, just one more... nearly there... a few more... until she reached the top of the hill, standing almost side by side with Harry. She gazed down at the landscape below and her heart soared. Lights twinkled in the dark valleys. Area 14 lay less than a mile away.

Harry led them into the night, and Angela found a new energy. She gulped in the cooler air and pushed on, smelling the earthy scent of night. Her feet carried her on. She was home. She thought of her mother and what she would say to her. But then fear took hold of her heart like a fist a what if she didn't remember her? She shook the thought away. It was no time to think of such things, she had to get to Area 14 first. They had to find Sebastian's father and get out of the ropes and chains. She wanted to reach out and hold Cam's hand, tell him that everything was going to be okay, that it didn't matter what the Moorlanders said, he was brave to her and always would be. Her feet stumbled on, quickly now, her guard had to rush to keep up.

The hill flattened out onto a straight road leading towards the Border patrol. Harry waved a torch to alert the Enforcers. It was a clear night with only a sliver of moon to light the way. Angela focussed on the torch light, following Harry's footsteps. She was glad not to see Cam's expression anymore, it had haunted her all day, and now all she wanted was to get to Area 14. The place she'd been so desperate to leave all those months ago.

"Hey!" Harry yelled out into the dark. "Heyy-OO! Moorlanders here. Got yer a little present." Angela felt the presence of his malicious grin in his words. "Come on then."

She heard the creak of the Enforcer uniforms as they approached. "State your names and intentions."

"State me name?" Harry said with a laugh. "Well, it's aArry, mate. An' me intention is t'hand over yer Commander's son, that's me intention."

"You have Commander Cole's son?" the Enforcer said with an incredulous tone to his voice.

One of the Moorlanders dragged Sebastian into the torchlight. He limped along with his mouth twisted in a grimace. The Enforcer shone a torch in his eyes and Sebastian squinted away from the bright light. They mumbled something to each other and one jogged in the opposite direction.

"Has he gone to get my father?" Sebastian blurted out with a raw voice. Angela saw him try to clear his throat and wince. They were all suffering from dehydration.

"What about the others?" asked the Enforcer.

Harry shrugged. "I'm sure the boy is valuable t'yer Commander but I couldn't give a rat's arse about the others. We can sell aem t'Dales folk."

"No," Ginge shouted from the back. "You cannae do that' ye saidaa"

"I said what?" Harry's eyes were terrifying in the low light; milky and bloodshot; wide and hard. "I said I'd get yer t'border an' I have."

"Yeah but aArry," the Moorlander nearest Angela spoke. "They've only just made it aere. Look at aem. They can aardly stand. If we try an' sell aem to the Dales folk they'll laugh in our faces."

"Then we'll eat aem," Harry said. He revealed his yellow teeth. Angela shuddered, imagining those teeth on her skin. "The black aun's fat enough fer us all."

"Or we could see aow much they're worth to these Area lot," said the Moorlander. Angela had hated him before, but she could kiss him now. "Trade fer proper food." He licked his lips. "I have a family, aArry. I need t'get them food that in't going t'go bad on the way back."

Harry hesitated. "All right. We'll see what they'll trade fer. Mark my words; if it's nowt... we're tekin' aem an' carvin' aem up."

Angela sucked in a long breath, trying not to cry. Sebastian stumbled forward with panic in his eyes. He had no idea what his father would do for them, Angela could see it written in his expression. Apart from Sebastian she was the only one of the group who'd met Vincent Cole, and she remembered his emotionless face with a shudder.

Two sets of footsteps approached, and she held her breath. Sebastian's father followed the Enforcer wearing a dark suit buttoned to the neck, almost making it appear that his head floated along disjointed from his body. His grey hair stood out like snow on tarmac. Did he have grey hair last time they met?

"What's going on? Where's my son?" he demanded.

"I'm here, father," Sebastian said, his nerves betrayed by the tremulous edge in his voice.

"You came," said Mr Cole. "Matthew gave you the message." He moved towards his son and stood a foot away. He didn't hug Sebastian, but he did sound pleased to see him. Angela couldn't tell if it was a bad sign, but she breathed out at last. "Who do you have with you?" He stepped around Sebastian to stare at the group. "I don't know either of you. I know you, though." He moved from Cam and Ginge to Angela. "Yes, I remember you." He glared at Angela, and she cowered under the ferocity of his dark eyes. "You've not brought Mina."

"N-no, sir," Sebastian said. "I thought you just wanted to see me." His voice was small and the darkness almost swallowed it up.

"As touchin' as this reunion is," said Harry in a sarcastic voice. "There's the matter of payment, Commander. Seein' as I just brought yer long lost son to yer."

"Quite right." Mr Cole directed his attention to Harry. "First I want my son and his people to cross the border onto our land."

"They can do that. We'll just stay right aere behind aem though," Harry replied.

"Fair enough," Mr Cole said. He motioned for them to approach.

Angela struggled with her aching legs as she shuffled closer to Cam. Ginge's legs shook so hard that Sebastian had to help her walk. They moved behind Mr Cole.

"Right then, we'll be aavin a cart of food t'take wi' us. Bread, wine, water, dried fruit, figs if yer've got aem..." as Harry continued his list Mr Cole nodded at an Enforcer, "tea bags, sugaraa"

Without any warning, the Enforcer shot Harry in the heart and blood sprayed out onto the road. Angela screamed as Harry crumpled to the floor like a punched paper bag. The Moorlanders stood in horror, staring down at their murdered leader. Mr Cole nodded once more and guns fired, short bursts of laser streams lit the darkness, and bullets flew. Most of the Moorlanders didn't even get a chance to shoot back. It was a blood bath.

After all of them hit the ground one of the Enforcers walked towards the bodies and calmly shot each of them in the head. Angela could no longer hold back her tears. She cried until her cheeks were soaking wet. Cam pulled her to him, his eyes white and stark in the dark night. His body trembled, and she'd never known Cam tremble ever before.

Mr Cole turned to leave. "Put my son and the others in a cell. We don't set deserters and Clan folk free in my town."