Chapter 3

"Martin, honey, please calm down," Trudy's voice shook as she pleaded with her husband.

"Calm down? CALM DOWN?" Martin shrieked, his face almost purple with fury, "I'm out there working myself into an early grave for you while you're back here carrying on with my brother and you want me to calm down? I manage to get away from work early for once, risking my job in the process, just so that I can spend some time with my daughter before she goes to bed, and I get home to find my wife in my brother's arms and all she can say is 'Honey, calm down'!"

Bray had left a little earlier, and Brady had been put to bed, but as soon as Martin had Trudy to himself, the rage that had been simmering under the surface had suddenly boiled over and he towered over his young wife as she cowered in a corner of the room, a nasty bruise beginning to well up on her left cheek.

"I have given up EVERYTHING for you! EVERYTHING! And yet all you do is moan and whine and run to my brother whenever possible!" Martin reached down and dragged Trudy to her feet by her hair, "Do you think I don't know you only slept with me to make him jealous? Do you really think I never noticed the looks you threw at him, that you still throw at him?" Trudy whimpered as her husband shook her roughly and continued with his tirade, "Have you any idea how humiliating it is to watch you fawn over him like a cheap whore? Not that I should be surprised: that's all you are!"

Flinging her back against the wall, Martin raised his fist and knocked the tearful Trudy down. Her head hit the wall on her right, hard, and as she sank, dazed, to the floor, she heard Martin's screams continue until they became no more than a distant muddle of noise ringing in her ears. Through hazy eyes she saw him storm out of the room then, as if the single light bulb that lit the room was fading, everything dimmed and went black.

XXXX

Jack was working late in the library, along with many other students. He'd skipped dinner and now was beginning to feel hungry. Heading down the corridor to the nearest snack room, one of the few places in the building where students were allowed to eat and drink and where vending machines were provided for this purpose, he stopped suddenly. Listening intently, he heard the sounds of voices coming from the other side of a bookcase. He was sure he recognised one of them. As he listened, he gradually managed to put a face to the voice: Ram!

"I don't want to hear 'getting there', Jay," Ram was saying, his cool tones slithering over the words as easily as a snake over sand, "I want to hear 'done'!"

"I'm not commanding an elite army, Ram," Jay replied, stonily, "I've only got a handful of recruits from the Sports Society and even fewer from the Debating Society, and most of them ask too many questions."

"That's what they do, Jay: they debate! That's why they're in the Debating Society. We knew we'd have a hard time with them, but if they accepted everything readily, they wouldn't be worth having. We just have to make sure we convince them to stay on our side. Put Mega in charge of winning them over: he could convince an astronaut that the earth was flat!"

"I don't know: I don't trust him."

"Nonsense. Mega is one of my most loyal comrades. He's been with me since the start of this project. He's a genius when it comes to telling computers what to believe and almost as good with people. Put him in charge of them."

Jack had been intrigued with the conversation up until this point, when he saw a young woman walk round the corner of a corridor opposite and into the snack room. She hadn't even glanced in his direction, engrossed instead in talking loudly to another, slightly older, girl who walked beside her with a long-suffering look imprinted on her face. The two girls looked so alike, they could have been, and very possibly were, sisters.

"I mean, who does she think she is, Siva?" the younger girl had asked her companion, "she just struts in there from that weird little hocus-pocus class that she does and totally takes over the discussion!"

"Natural remedies are not hocus-pocus, sis," the older girl replied, proving Jack's assumption of their acquaintance to be correct, "And from the sound of things, she didn't interrupt a discussion, she cooled down an argument! An argument you were having against the rest of the class! She even took your side: she did you a favour!"

"I do not need favours from the likes of Amber Jennings! Besides, she was just playing Devil's Advocate and you could totally tell! I would have been better off without that kind of help!"

As the two girls disappeared into the snack room and the door swung shut behind them, Jack started walking again, forgetting Jay and Ram, and followed the sisters into the small room.

XXXX

A young man with spiky hair kicked at a stone and gazed up at the building before him. It had been his home for most of his life, but now he was too old to remain there and the orphanage had sent him packing. He'd found himself a crummy little apartment, with paper peeling off the walls and no carpets, but if he didn't get a job soon, he wouldn't be able to keep it much longer. His rent would be due in a month and he barely had enough money left in the bank to feed himself until then.

XXXX

Alice looked in on her sister and shook her head. What had happened to her? She used to be such a sweet kid: helping out on the farm, playing with the new piglets when they arrived each spring, running away from the boys and young men who helped out both before and after their parents died. Now, it seemed, it was the boys who had better run away from her! She wasn't sure, but she thought she could recall Ellie mentioning some guy from her college course who was taking her out. Now there was this guy from the agricultural college. Soon there would be some other poor sucker from the polytechnic. She wondered if any of them ever found out about each other, or if Ellie ever paid for her own meals!

XXXX

Dal couldn't sleep. He had tried counting sheep, but that hadn't worked. He had tried pacing round the kitchen a few times, but Amber had just yelled at him to go to bed and stop making so much noise - his night vision wasn't the best in the world and a few chairs now lay on their sides. He had tried meditating, but he couldn't concentrate. He had even tried reading one of his textbooks, but his eyes were starting to sting and he couldn't focus properly. So now he just lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling and picturing her face. Ellie Carruthers: angel incarnate; his dream woman, if only he could fall asleep to dream about her! He sighed and picked up another textbook.

XXXX

Zandra Collins stood, wrapped in a night-dress and dressing gown, in the small room that had become her private study since her marriage to Ryan. Absent-mindedly, she let her hand glide over her swollen stomach as she reached down to a drawer and pulled out a battered photo frame. It had been hidden beneath numerous random items and anyone who found it might have thought that it had just been thrown in there long ago and forgotten, and that it held no specific importance or significance.

She turned it over to gaze at the photograph within. It portrayed two people, standing together happily. One was herself, wearing a light blue dress that she had chosen to set off her best features. Lifting the hand that had rested on her stomach, she traced the features of the young man in the picture. It had been taken three years ago and they had both changed so much since then, but in some ways they were still so much the same. She closed her eyes, remembering the feel of his muscular arms around her. Sighing, she replaced the photo in the drawer, closed the drawer and locked it. Turning, she picked up her glass of water and headed back up to her bedroom, where her husband slept peacefully. As she slipped into the bed beside him she reminded herself of words long since spoken:

"He must never know."