You have five hundred dollars. You might even be able to bargain Piggy down a bit, so you can still buy the medicine for Jamilah.
Italy … You know even less about that country than you do about Australia. But it would be a safe place – you just saw the news segment about refugees being saved from the sea and cared for there. You’re certain that Zayd is there. Is it possible that Rahama’s there too?
Will you risk everything to find out?
If you offer Piggy your money to send you to Italy, go to scene 31
If you stick with the plan to go to Australia, turn to scene 30.
You keep gazing at the pen, and the longer you look at it, the more you see that it has become the source of all your misfortune. It’s the reason your aunty’s dead; the reason you’ve never been safe since, not in any of the places you’ve tried to make home. Why haven’t you considered getting rid of it before now?
‘If you’re going to give them the pen,’ says Abshir, ‘I think we should copy the information on it first. We can email it to Aadan. I should have done it as soon as you got here, I was just so busy looking after you—’
‘Can you do that?’ you splutter.
‘Of course, walaal! You don’t know much about computers, do you?’
‘So, I can give them the pen – they’ll leave me alone – but we don’t have to lose Aunty Rahama’s story?’
‘Exactly.’
It’s the perfect solution – so long as the al-Shabaab terrorists believe you really have handed over the last copy in existence. You cling to the belief that it’s possible.
You pause, then ask Abshir: ‘But how will we get the pen to them?’
‘I think,’ replies Abshir, ‘we just need to wait here.’
He takes the pen from you, and unlocks the drawer where, thankfully, his laptop lies untouched.
ABSHIR HAS SENT the email, and the three of you have cleared up the worst of the damage and are taking turns trying to sleep on the couch, when at two o’clock in the morning you hear a group of people coming up the stairwell.
The three of you hold hands tightly and wait. You’re unarmed and unprotected, because you don’t want to give them any reason to start a fight. You couldn’t close the busted door even if you wanted to.
Fear rises in your stomach like a cold flood.
Take the pen and go, you think in a fast-repeating loop, take the pen and go.
Your palms are damp with sweat. One hand holds Jamilah’s, the other holds the pen.
Five men walk into the apartment. You recognise the driver from the ute in the desert. There are three more heavily muscled men and, lastly, looking at his feet …
‘Hassan?’ you gasp. So it was them! you think.
Hassan can’t look at you. The ute-driver glares at him. You can see from Hassan’s body language that he doesn’t want to be here but has no choice.
You walk over to Hassan and put the pen in his hand.
‘Take it,’ you say. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you guys. Just take it and leave us in peace.’
Hassan takes the pen, but he still won’t meet your eye. You don’t know why the men don’t seem more pleased to have got what they wanted. Then you hear a squeal from behind you, and a shout from Abshir.
You whirl around. The ute-driver is holding Jamilah by the neck. Two of the muscled men push Abshir against a wall and pin him there.
‘Let her go!’ you shout, springing towards Jamilah, but the third muscled man grabs you too.
‘She hasn’t done anything wrong. She has nothing to do with this,’ chokes Abshir.
‘Oh, we know she doesn’t,’ replies the ute-driver in his gravelly voice. Is that the gun you gave him in the desert that’s slung over his side? ‘But she’s valuable to us nonetheless. You see,’ he goes on, ‘it’s nice of you to give us the pen, but how do we know you haven’t copied the information?’
Your panic mounts.
‘We haven’t!’ protests Abshir, but they seem to know he’s lying. ‘Check my computer!’ he begs.
Tears are running down Jamilah’s face and onto the ute-driver’s arm. She is squirming futilely. Please, say her eyes. Please.
Your heart is jumping wildly, like it wants to break out of your ribcage. You fight against the muscled guy holding you, but he’s too strong.
‘No,’ says the driver, ‘we’ll take this girl. We’ll keep her with us. In a couple of years, she’ll make a lovely wife. And if you ever, ever make the information on that pen public – if anyone at all comes sniffing around Bright Dream ever again – we will kill her.’
Jamilah lets out a loud sob of terror.
A volcano of rage explodes inside you, so powerful that your whole body is possessed with violent, superhuman energy. You thrash and twist like a blade of grass in a storm, and suddenly you’re free of the muscly man holding you. You fling yourself at Jamilah as the driver drags her backwards out of the door.
Abshir is shouting, ‘Stop! No! Take me instead!’ and trying to punch the two men who are still pinning him to the wall. Hassan is shuffling towards the door.
‘Hassan!’ you scream, knowing he’s your last hope, the weak link in the chain. ‘Save her! Hassan!’
Hassan finally meets your eye, and you see something awful there. First, a little boy looks out from his face – a little boy who tried so hard to be the good boy his parents believed he could be, before they were killed by the war and he lost everything. Then Hassan’s face seems to close over. The little boy vanishes. His eyes go dead and narrow, his mouth pulls tight. He raises a gun at you,
