Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(59)

If anything went wrong at the club’s party, would he ever see his family again?

But no: if he thought like that, he’d never do anything. Never make a difference to all the other Daisys who didn’t have an Abi resourceful enough to get them out of Millmoor.

Back to the plans, Luke.

Renie had shown Jess how to mess with the power settings on Security’s stun guns and she’d be sneaking into their gear store to reset them. The Doc had several banners prepared for landmarks around the slavetown. But the headline act would be a mass rally at the MADhouse.

Security would be distracted by the lower-level stuff: calming things down at the shops, removing the banners, maybe rounding up Zone D’s workers and getting them to their stations. So hopefully they wouldn’t realize what was going on at the MADhouse until a huge crowd had assembled. What happened next would be up to the crowd itself.

‘You not gonna make a speech or nothing?’ Renie had asked the Doc.

‘Not me,’ he’d replied, to everyone’s surprise. ‘This has to be something that people themselves want; it’s not something we can make happen.’

‘Isn’t that what we’ve just spent these last weeks doing?’ said Tilda. ‘Making it happen?’

‘Not really.’ Jackson scratched his beard. ‘We’re giving people permission, if you like. Reducing the risk to any one individual by creating a mass they can lose themselves in. If anything more happens, it’ll be because the people of Millmoor want it.’

The people of Millmoor.

Luke was one of them now.

And something weird and terrifying had happened in the weeks between that first planning day and now: Luke had begun to think he should stay in the slavetown.

The idea had first popped into his head, fully formed, as he’d had one of those casual conversations with a workmate that seeded the shutdown. After what he was doing right now in Millmoor, could he really go back to being just his parents’ son and Abi’s little brother? A dogsbody on a great estate saying ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir’ all day long.

Once the idea had arrived, it was strangely reluctant to leave.

It ran through his head every day as he worked alongside Williams. He had no more luck dislodging it in the nonexistent privacy of his dorm room at night. He’d resorted to the little kid’s trick of pulling his blanket over his head. He tried to fool himself that if he couldn’t see his roommates, they couldn’t see him either, lying there sleepless.

In the darkness, all attempts at logic overheated his brain till he wanted to rip the blanket out of pure frustration. His family down south, and his friends here. The splendour of Kyneston, and the squalor of Millmoor. Slavery there, and slavery here. But here, there was a chance to do something. Change something.

Maybe even change everything.

No, that was ridiculous. He was only a teenage boy. He was doing well if he changed his worn underpants for clean ones, from one day to the next. His family wanted him at Kyneston. Even Jackson wanted him to go.

But if the Doc changed his mind, just said the word and asked Luke to stay . . . would he?

Luke woke on Thursday unrested, and stumbled his way through his shift no nearer to clarity. Anxiety and excitement about the next day’s events lodged nauseatingly in his stomach. Back at the dorm that evening he went to the kitchen to whip up his chef’s special of spaghetti sur toast. But he had no appetite and just stood there staring at the rusty cooker.

‘All right? Thought I might find you here.’

Luke turned. It was Ryan.

Sometimes the two of them met in the rec room on a Saturday night, or in the breakfast hall, and they’d natter. They didn’t really have much in common – especially not now that Ryan had decided on the military route and enlisted as a mauler. His conversation was full of his training sessions and his fellow cadets. But it was nice just to have someone to joke with about the improbable glow of nostalgia that surrounded their crummy old school, Henshall.

Luke hadn’t seen Ryan since Christmas. It was good timing that he’d popped down now. A bit of distraction from everything churning through Luke’s brain.

Ryan pulled out a chair at one of the kitchen tables and made himself comfortable. It looked like Luke would be playing host, so he topped up the kettle and switched it on, and plucked an extra teabag out of the dusty jar.

‘It’s a bit like being at uni, isn’t it?’ said Ryan, vaguely indicating the two mugs Luke had placed on the worktop. ‘My cousin was studying at Staffs and I went to stay with him one time. He was living in halls and they had kitchens like this.’

Luke stared at Ryan. Slavery was like uni? Because they had communal kitchens? Was he mad?

Or was this what Jackson had meant, when he’d said that the people of Millmoor had to want to rise up? Ryan was leaning back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. He looked as likely to rise as one of Daisy’s jaw-breaking cakes.

Luke made some tea and carried both mugs to the table. What he wouldn’t give right now for a biscuit.

Ryan seemed a bit tense, and Luke wondered what was on his mind. Maybe he’d met a girl? Some fit cadet. Lucky sod. Luke considered telling him about Angel, but knew he’d have to veil it in so many half-truths it wouldn’t be worth the effort. And he’d be so terrified of letting something slip it’d only be more stress, instead of a relief.