Albert barely heard—he didn’t want to hear—couldn’t the man just shut up? He gulped, again and again, looking down. Finally, the jangling in his head slowed down enough for a few words to come into focus. Slowly, haltingly, he got them out.

‘But—but—they couldn’t have made everyone just agree to—to give themselves and their children up like this! How could they?’

‘Of course they could. People will do almost anything to survive. And they did not have much choice in the matter, to begin with. None of them was made privy to the third resolution. In fact, until the relocation was complete, nobody except the family members knew of it. And don’t forget, those admitted in were always a very small fraction of the population. The future generations would be fed the lie from Day One, so it would never occur to them to question it at all. You, Albert, are from the first of those generations, the children born within the quarantine zone.’

‘I—’

Father went on as if he hadn’t heard him. ‘And for close to a quarter of a century, everything as happened exactly as Zacharias Bosquanet said it would. The City was built. All future generations, with the exception of the descendants of Board members, have been separated from their families and raised by the City to ensure all objectives are met. And so it will continue until he achieves his goal, or someone does it before him. Although, I am afraid, our last hope of that went with Robert.’

Father stopped, picked up the water cask and handed it to him. Albert sat there, his head reeling, shaking his head. He reached for the water and took a few deep draughts that made his pulse slow down somewhat, although he still felt his heart pounding away and a sick sensation in his stomach. So this was who he was—a specimen on a giant petri dish where thousands of people like him lay, waiting to be used like so much surplus stock. That was all his life was—an experiment, somebody else’s science project. It had neither meaning nor purpose, nothing at all—he was just a result waiting to be noted down before he could be rubbed out and they could move on to the next one. Everything he’d been told—every history, every sentence, every word—was a lie, all of it was a lie. His whole life was a lie! He felt a small, ever-growing white hot kernel in his stomach, resentment, more than resentment, anger—fury. And deep down somewhere, he vowed that he would make them pay for doing this to him—to everyone.

‘Albert, would you prefer I stop now?’ asked Father.

He looked Father in the eye, jaw setting defiantly. ‘No. You still haven’t told me about Theo, or the Code. And what was the last resolution? You said there were four.’