Things I Learned While I Was Dead (eBook)

Kathryn Clark (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
400 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-38587-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Asha is dead. Years of medical treatment were not enough to heal her. The only way 17-year-old Calico can save her younger sister now is by joining her in death - at least until modern medicine can bring them both back to healthy life. Cryogenics is the answer: Scientific. Legal. Safe. Or so Dr Fates would have her believe. He plans to preserve the sisters' bodies until his biotechnology research finds a cure for Asha. But when Calico is brought back to life, she's in a low-tech, sub-fertile future, trapped in a research facility. She's at risk of being sold off to a sinister enforced breeding programme. And worst of all - Asha is missing. Calico must find a way to save her sister, herself, and the new friends she's made among the other test subjects. But first she has to unravel the secrets the facility is hiding and reveal the lies she has been part of. In this striking debut, Kathryn Clark raises poignant questions about the ethics of medical science, humans playing god, the consequences of our choices, and the place of consent in healthcare.

Kathryn is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People. Things I Learned While I was Dead came second in the Faber Imagined Futures Prize. Her work has been long/shortlisted in awards including Times/Chicken House, Mslexia Children's Novel, Bath Children's Novel, and Searchlight Novel Opening. She was runner up in the Book Pipeline Novel Contest, and winner of the Arvon Novel Opening Competition. Kathryn works as a freelance writing mentor. She lives in Gloucestershire with her family and two dogs.

Textauszug

2.

Calico

I dream of Asha.

Asha. Asha. Her name is like breathing.

I am breathing. The taste of the air – stagnant – is in my mouth and nose. The world is hazy, like I’m inside a cloud.

I push up to sitting. My muscles and joints work smooth and sure, like they did before. I blink away the haze.

Where am I?

There’s no one else here. The room is stark and cold, bare concrete walls, two brown doors, no windows.

Is this the facility in America?

It’s nothing like the website pictures – all high-shine white and metal. Unease squirms inside me, but I push it away. Doesn’t matter what it’s like, I’m here now. And so is Asha. That recruiter, that doctor – Lucas – said we’d be transported to the US. Impossible to get anyone into the country alive, he’d said. But dead, you’re not a person any more, you’re research materials. And he’d told me again how I’d saved Asha. How the two years of research I’d signed up for would help them cure her. How the scientists at the facility would bring us both back to life.

An icy shiver runs down my neck. They did it. I’m awake. Alive. I can feel air moving in my windpipe. My lungs expand, contract. I can feel the rhythm of my heart, the music of being, my body singing. I never took much notice of it before. Asha’s body, falling apart, got all the attention. Mine just did what it was supposed to.

Asha.

Where is she?

I have to find her.

I push away the grey sheet and blanket, swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The cement floor is rough beneath my feet. There’s a scuffed wooden desk and chair to my left. Above, a shelf holds piles of folded clothes. I pick out a black cotton vest top and shorts. Loose trousers, faded to grey. Old, worn soft, they smell of faded rosemary and eucalyptus. I put them on and pull a baggy jumper over the top. Chunky hand-knitted socks. There aren’t any shoes.

The first door I try slides open at the touch of my hand. The bathroom. There are mouldy spatters on the once-white walls. No mirror. I splash tepid water over my face. The towel is coarse against my newborn skin.

The other door must be my way out of here. I stand in front of it and take a deep breath, fill my lungs with air and hope. Asha is on the other side. She has to be.

I press my palm against the door. It doesn’t move.

The website didn’t say anything about being locked in.

I need to get out of here. I have to find Asha. To explain.

I bang and shout till my hands sting and my voice gives out. But no one comes.

It’s so quiet. I can’t hear another living thing.

I slump on to the floor. The concrete’s chill seeps into my bones. Or perhaps it was already there, left over from the freezing.

The door suddenly slides open, startles me to standing. A bear of a man, wearing hospital scrubs, looms. Thick neck, shaved head, grey stubble on a craggy face. His massive tattooed arms are folded across a barrel chest. Tattoos of clocks without hands and a crucifix that trails into a dagger dripping blood.

I back away towards the bed, my heart hammering.

But he smiles kindly as he steps inside the room. ‘Well, look at you, kid.’ The gnarly American voice from when I first woke up. ‘Got yourself out of bed and dressed, so soon after reanimation. That’s quite something. Take a seat.’ He gestures to the bed and I sit. ‘I’m Earl, head nurse here at the Fates Family Facility.’

‘Where’s Asha?’ My voice creaks. ‘We came in together. She’s my sister. I need to know she’s all right.’

‘Sorry, kid. I don’t know anything about her.’

It’s like he’s punched me. I’m winded. The air disappears.

‘Hey, don’t stress,’ he says. ‘I don’t know nothing about you, or anyone else here either. It ain’t allowed.’

‘But she’s my sister—’

‘Look, kid. Folk end up here for a lot of different reasons. Best we don’t know how they lived. Or how they died. Got to be sure we treat everyone the same. No judgement. No discrimination.’ He rubs a hand over his tattooed forearm.

I take a gulp of air.

This doesn’t mean something bad has happened to Asha. Plus, if Earl doesn’t know anything about us, he doesn’t know how we ended up here. What happened that night I left Asha alone.

‘Sorry, kid. I get it’s tough,’ Earl says. ‘But you’re doing amazing. How ’bout I get you something to eat and drink.’

The door closes behind him.

I rest my head on the pillow.

Inside, I’m hollow. Empty.

Did they take something from me while I was asleep?

Not asleep.

Dead.

I was dead.

And so was Asha.

All those years of sickness, of fighting to get Asha help, and then I didn’t have a chance to tell her I’d found a way to save her, that everything would be okay.

Little seeds of sadness and doubt drip into the hollow.

What if I haven’t done enough?

What if it hasn’t worked?

*

Earl bustles back in. ‘Cry it out, kid.’

Sniff away the tears. I’m not a girl who cries.

I sit up with my back against the wall, push away the sadness, push away the doubts.

Earl puts a tray of food and a cardboard folder on the desk. He sits facing me, too big for the chair. I can’t take my eyes off the dagger tattoo.

‘Losing it’s kind of normal after what you been through,’ he says. ‘Enough to bake anyone’s noodle.’ He’s so calm, solid. Like an ancient rock letting the sea wash over him. Like he’s been here before, seen a thousand, thousand people rise from the dead, and it’s no big deal. ‘Okay?’ he asks.

I nod. But the hollow inside is still there.

‘You want a drink?’ He passes me a glass of water.

I take a sip. It runs cold through my body.

‘Here.’ He hands me a bowl of murky-pond-looking stuff. It smells of mushrooms and something sour.

I feel sick. ‘Err, no thanks.’

‘You got to eat, kid.’

‘Not this though.’

‘Yes, this.’ He shakes his head. ‘Okay. I’ll leave it here. Have some later. We’ll take a look at the paperwork instead.’

He removes a tatty sheet of paper from the folder and hands it to me.

The Fates Family Foundation – HEALE Programme

Human Enhancement and Life Extension –
Cryogenics, Nano and Bio Research

Mission statement:
To enhance and extend life through the
development of cryogenic suspension,
reanimation, and nano-biotechnologies.
‘Do no harm’

Study subjects will:

• be monitored physically and mentally.
• participate in nano-biomedical trials as required.
• contribute to research modules: Rehabilitation, Resocialisation, Remembering.

Facility rules

1. Respectful behaviour is expected at all times.
2. Intimate contact between participants is forbidden.
3. Interaction with anyone outside the facility is not permitted.

‘I can’t even talk to my mum?’

Earl shakes his head.

My heart patters too fast. What exactly have I signed up for? That Lucas – he didn’t tell me about any of this. But then there wasn’t time. We had to move so quickly.

‘Any more questions?’ Earl asks.

‘No.’ I push away the doubt. None of it matters to me. Only one reason I signed up. To save Asha. I’ll do whatever I have to, like I promised I would.

‘You sure, kid?’

‘Okay, I have one question. When do I start?’

Earl laughs, a great rumble. ‘I like your attitude. How ’bout right now?’ He takes a notebook and pencil from the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-10: 0-571-38587-7 / 0571385877
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-38587-4 / 9780571385874