Read The Disappeared for Free Online Page B

into him.
    ‘Watch i—’ one of them starts to say, then he raises his head and sees who he is speaking to. He shrinks backwards. ‘I didn’t see you, Rex.’
    But Rex is not looking at him. He’s looking at me.
    ‘What the efwurd are you saying?’ He says to me. ‘Why are you talking to me, you filthy little no-ranker?’ He looks at me – at me , with my AEP score of 98.5 – like I’m something that has dropped out of his nose. What is wrong with these idiots?
    The corridor around us has frozen. They’re all staring at me.
    ‘Get an enforcer,’ I say to the girl next to me in a low voice.
    Everyone bursts out laughing.
    They’re gawping at me and howling. The girl beside me is bent double and Rex’s shoulders are heaving.
    ‘Get an enforcer!’ he squeaks in a high-pitched voice. ‘I’m too little to fight! I want an enforcer to fight for me!’
    He’s mocking me. The rest of the apes fall about laughing. How dare they? Everything I’ve heard about Academy kids is right. They’re savages. I draw myself up.
    ‘I can’t imagine what’s so funny,’ I say.
    That makes them laugh even harder. I walk away, weaving my way between their stinking bodies.

I follow the flow of students to the dining room. Except it isn’t a room. It’s more like a vast warehouse. Beneath the high ceiling are row upon row of yet more cubicle type things. These are like narrow metal boxes with open fronts. They’re hardly big enough to stand in, but that’s what the other students are doing. The students seem eager to get to their lunch. One boy is actually running; when he gets into a cubicle he taps his fingers in agitation on the metal mesh wall.
    I follow the girl in front of me down a narrow aisle. She enters one of the compartments and I step into the one next to her. It’s like standing in a locker. On three sides there are walls of metal lattice, to the left I can see the outline of the girl next to me. On the wall in front there are three metal nozzles. One of them has a brown crust. It doesn’t look very hygienic.
    ‘Hey!’
    A hand grabs the back of my belt and I’m yanked out into the narrow alley.
    ‘Get out of my pod!’
    I twist round to see a boy with matted hair and raised fists.
    ‘There’s no need to be aggressive,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know it was yours, I didn’t know they belonged to people.’
    But he’s not even listening; he’s already stepped into his ‘pod’ and forgotten me.
    I look up and down the aisle. Everyone is hurrying into position. Where’s my pod? I’m so hungry and I don’t know where to go. I feel like a forgotten child.
    The girl I followed is staring at me. She raises her eyebrows and says, ‘What’s your number?’
    ‘My name’s—’
    ‘Not name, number ,’ she says.
    ‘I’m not going to answer to a number. It’s dehumanising and—’
    ‘Where your number is. That is where you eat.’ She turns away, shaking her head.
    I do remember the number the receptionist gave me. 1247. I would have remembered it even if it had been three times as long. Clearly no one in here is going to be impressed by my feats of memory, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work this out. I’m smart. I don’t need their help.
    I look around. As far as I can tell, the pods aren’t numbered. I retrace my steps down the aisle and back to the door; I have to duck between the students streaming in. They take no notice of me. They’re moving with urgency, as if they’re rushing to an important event. The atmosphere is strangely charged.
    Presumably the first pod in the row closest to the door is pod number one. I slip halfway down the first row, I count fifty pods, that means my pod must be in row twenty-five. I walk along the bottom of the rows. Almost all the pods are full now and I feel foolish and late, but I’m not going to run. Actually, no one is looking at me; their attention is fixed on the back of their pods. Some of them are fidgeting, twitching fingers or tapping feet.