Joe Craig - Jimmy Coates - Blackout

Eva froze in Miss Bennett’s glare.

“Er, no, Miss Bennett.”

“Then let’s get on with the day, shall we?”

Eva hurried after her boss, mentally kicking herself – until now she’d completely forgotten that the first item on her schedule for that day was accompanying Miss Bennett to Heathrow. She longed to run as far away from NJ7 as possible. Every hour now felt like the prelude to her execution.

“This is going to be very delicate,” Miss Bennett explained as they walked briskly through the NJ7 complex. “The United Nations inspection team hasn’t been making enough noise.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Eva asked, terrified that her tiredness and her fear would make her give something away. “Doesn’t it mean that they haven’t found anything illegal or unfair about the election campaign so far?”

“Of course, but what’s the point in me inviting the UN to send a team if they don’t make a big fuss about how fair we’re being? And are you going to ask stupid questions all day?”

“I will if you will,” quipped Eva before she could control her mouth. Miss Bennett glanced back, as shocked as Eva herself. Then, to Eva’s huge relief, Miss Bennett raised an eyebrow and smiled. She was impressed.

“So now…” Eva went on, eager to show that she wasn’t completely off the ball. She quickly flicked through her notebook, consulting her notes. “…now you’ve asked the head of the inspection team to come and oversee everything, and the Prime Minister is meeting him off the plane to introduce him to the press…” She flicked through another few pages, expertly keeping up with Miss Bennett’s rapid march while also reading her own ordered scribblings.

They hurried through a small metal door and the surroundings changed. The bare concrete was gone. Suddenly there was plush red carpet. The walls were covered in ornate golden wallpaper and there was natural daylight. But Eva was used to this. She didn’t even break stride. They’d passed through the secret entrance from NJ7 HQ into the back of Number 10 Downing Street.

“Everybody in the country…” Miss Bennett said, smoothly taking a cup of coffee from a waiting aide. “…everybody in the whole world, in fact – they’ll all know that today’s election is utterly fair. So when we win, our enemies will have no possible comeback.”

They swept through the building, their path lined with civil servants and government officials. Each of them handed Miss Bennett something she needed, or took something she was finished with. Eva noticed several of them couldn’t help bowing their heads.

“Once this election is over, it’s over,” announced Miss Bennett. “The last vestige of old-fashioned democracy dies today.”

Eva was taken aback by the certainty in Miss Bennett’s tone. Finally the front door was held open for them. The brightness of the morning made Eva blink hard, but within seconds another aide held open the back door of a waiting car and they slipped into the black leather interior.

“I’ve been waiting here for ten minutes.” Ian Coates was already in the back seat, but the Jaguar was easily roomy enough to accommodate the three of them.

“I hope you’ve used the time to memorise the speech I wrote for you,” replied Miss Bennett, giving the driver a nod.

“Watch how you talk to me, Miss Bennett,” spluttered Ian Coates, “I’m still Prime Minister. Technically, I still run the country.”

“Yes,” Miss Bennett purred, “but who’s running you?”

The Prime Minister had no response. Eva had seen these tiny battles a hundred times in the last few months, but the result was always the same. Ian Coates might have been Prime Minister, but he was nothing more than Miss Bennett’s puppet.

“Straighten your tie,” Miss Bennett ordered, as if she was talking to a teenager. Ian Coates did as he was told. “And when you get out of the car, remember to smile a little.”

Coates nervously stretched his lips into a hideous grin.

“Less than that,” Miss Bennett sighed, without even looking at him. “You’re British, remember.”

“So nobody knows how he can afford to rent this building?” asked Felix, twisting on the sofa until his knees hooked over the side.

“Get off me,” Jimmy insisted, shoving Felix’s head away from his leg.

“Get a room, lovebirds,” joked Georgie. “And keep quiet.” She pointed at the TV screen to indicate she was trying to listen. The sofa was the only place to sit to watch the TV, so the three of them were closely bunched up together. “Chris is meant to be making a speech. If we’re not allowed to be there ourselves then we can at least watch it on TV.”

Felix and Jimmy were silent for a few seconds before Felix deliberately nudged Jimmy’s thigh with the top of his head.

“That’s it!” Jimmy exclaimed with a laugh. He jumped up and landed with a bump right on Felix’s face. Felix made a big show of wriggling and twisting to escape.

“Aargh!” he cried when he’d finally pulled himself free. He clawed at his own face and staggered round the room. “It’s toxic, super-powered, genetically modified gas… Nooo!”

They all laughed, and Jimmy said, “I bet that’s the first thing you’d put into someone’s programming if you were designing them.”

“No,” Felix replied. “The first thing would be… never having to go to sleep!”

“Never sleeping?” Jimmy chuckled. “You’d be even more hyper than you are now!”

Soon they were distracted by images at the top of a news bulletin on TV. There were shots of a plane landing at Heathrow, then a tall, wiry man in a light-grey suit climbed down to the runway to shake hands with the Prime Minister.

Nobody said a word, but Jimmy could feel the joy draining from the room. He stared at the pictures of Ian Coates, the man he had thought of as his father for the first eleven and a half years of his life. On the screen, he was gripping the visitor’s hand and twisting his face into a horrible, false smile. For a second Jimmy remembered laughing with him, messing around with him – loving him.

He forced away the emotion. Instead, he shifted his attention to his sister next to him. The man on screen really was her father, as far as they knew. Jimmy knew her feelings were as painful and complicated as his own, and he wanted to say something. He opened his mouth, but nothing came to his lips and his tongue felt dry.

The TV report cut away from the Prime Minister and went back to the wiry man, showing snippets of his speech. The caption on the screen read ‘Dr Newton Longville – UN Election Inspector’. Beneath it was a scrolling message that announced, ‘Chief UN Inspector welcomed by PM to monitor today’s election.’

“My team will make sure there is no intimidation at the polls,” declared Dr Longville in a melodious American accent. In close-up he was much older than Jimmy had first thought. His nose was bony and crooked. “The ballot will be carried out under strict observation,” he went on, “using state-of-the-art technology known as HERMES – the Higher Echelon Remote Monitoring Election System.”

“HERMES?” said Felix. “Sounds like some kind of disease.”

The UN man’s grey eyes stared into the TV camera, not blinking. “The design, manufacture and testing of every component has been overseen by UN engineers in controlled conditions. I’m certain that every voter will enjoy using the secure touch-screen kiosks that are currently being installed at polling stations around the country. The votes will be sent digitally, but securely, to the central hub in a secure location near Milton Keynes, where they will be counted by the HERMES mainframe computer.”

“He looks like some kind of robot,” said Georgie.