Tag by Simon Royle

Author:Simon Royle [Royle, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Technothrillers, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Thrillers, Science Fiction, conspiracy, Technothriller, Thriller, Near future thriller
ISBN: 9786169076902
Google: vr8Wu9c-8YIC
Amazon: B004EYUELS
Publisher: I & I Press
Published: 2013-03-14T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

A New Beginning

SingCom Residence, North Palm Beach, Sentosa Island, New Singapore

Wednesday 1 January 2110, 6:50am +8 UTC

Cochran woke but didn’t open her eyes or move. It was a trained habit of hers, the chance to observe through sound what was happening around her without changing what was happening around her. Once, when she was still a little girl, she had fallen ill with a high fever and had spent a few days in the infirmary at the Dorm where she and other gifted orphans were housed when not engaged with the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

Two other girls had visited her. She could see the outline of their bodies through the transparent plastic oxygenated tent that she was kept in, but could not make out who they were. She was drugged and hallucinatory from the drugs and fever, but while she could not see clearly out, neither could the two girls see clearly in. Although they had told the matron that they were her friends and the matron had believed them, she did not have any friends and the two girls, in the manner of little girls, who can be extremely cruel, had come to be mean to her in her moment of weakness.

She hadn’t moved, and had listened. The plastic tent muffled the sound of their voices at first, but she could gradually make out that they were gloating at her, joking about pulling out the oxygen tube to the tent. She was not concerned about that. If they did pull the tube out she was sure an alarm would go off. What she was concerned with was finding out who these two were. She had strained and focused her hearing, as she had been taught, and narrowed down the choices by process of elimination. First there were the visual clues, height and size. She dismissed more than half of her class. Hair color eliminated half again and then she had heard the name, Sally, and confirmed one of her choices. Knowing who Sally’s friends were narrowed down the remaining teaser to one of two choices. The teasing girls finally left, bored with being mean, when the recipient didn’t respond. As their heels had clacked across the floor of the infirmary, Cochran had opened her eyes. The girls left without ever being aware that she had in fact heard, and been hurt by, everything they had said, although she would have denied both vehemently.

She occupied the rest of her time in the infirmary planning how to exact revenge on the three girls. The fact that one of the three was innocent of doing her wrong didn’t factor in. By the end of the year all three had gone. Two for cheating in knowledge retention tests, despite swearing their innocence, and the third paralyzed from the neck down and destined to spend a year in regen, when the uneven bars that she practiced on for hours in the gym alone strangely collapsed as she performed a Korbut flip.

This morning,

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