Carrick is eighteen years old and a giant of a man; his only flaw was to want to find his parents. He walks me around the compound explaining, using a key card to access the doors.
There are a dozen metal containers that look like shuttles side by side, the kind of thing you’d see at a brewery plant, or at a NASA facility, looking like they’re about to lift off.
“As you know, the earth produces more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed. Carbon points have risen to the highest levels for eight hundred thousand years. Most of it comes from oil or coal, fossil fuels buried underground for millions of years. It’s a polluting waste product, so this CCU facility harnesses it and puts it to better use as a resource. Reusing the carbon to create new products.”
“How does it do that?”
“It captures the carbon dioxide from power plants, steel and cement works, or collects it from the air. It extracts the carbon, which provides the raw material for new products like green fuels, methanol, plastics, pharmaceuticals, building materials.”
“This is government-owned?” I ask, wondering why on earth he’s brought us here. How can we be safe in a state-owned factory when they’re the very people we’re running from?
“It’s private. This is a pilot plant, everything here is research, just testing, nothing is on the market yet. Whistleblowers can’t carry out surprise searches for Flawed without prior warning, which is, at minimum, usually twenty-four hours’ notice.”
“That’s why you chose here?”
“I didn’t choose it. I followed the others.”
“The others?”
“I’ll introduce you later. First, I’ll give you the tour. There are four units. This is the capture regeneration section.” He swipes his card and the red light on the security panel turns to green. He pulls the door open and lets me walk in first. Once inside, I see that the enormous plant is like an airport hangar, with more containers and pipes stretching in every direction, ladders climbing up the walls and ceilings to access them. Carrick hands me a high-visibility jacket and hard hat.
“This is where I work. Don’t worry, I don’t do anything important, just drive the forklift, so you’re going to get this in layman’s terms.”
“I won’t notice the difference,” I say, looking around, completely overwhelmed by the futuristic metal facility.
“This container here is where the flue gas is routed to a pretreatment section. It cools, then the flue gas is sent to the absorber column, to remove the carbon dioxide. The flue gas enters the bottom of the absorber and flows upwards.” He walks as he talks, pointing at the equipment, and I follow. “It reacts with the solvent solution, where a bunch of stuff happens.”
I smile.
“The treated flue gas is sent here to what’s called the stack so it can be released to the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide liquid leaves the absorber and is pumped to the regeneration section where the CO2 chemical absorption process is reversed. The CO2 liquid leaves the bottom of the absorber and is sent to heat exchangers where the temperature rises. More stuff happens. Then the carbon dioxide vapour is sent to the carbon dioxide product compressor. Which is over here.” We stop at the product compressor. “And there it is. Want to know anything else?”
“Yes. Who are the others you followed here?”
He nods. “We’re getting to that.”
We leave the factory behind us and take quite a walk in the enormous compound to a less futuristic side of the facility. This new section feels more residential, contains rows and rows of white Portakabins, all layered on top of one another, five levels high, ten boxes across, steel balconies and staircases connecting them. We enter a simple one-story concrete building with a reception area, with a desk that’s empty at this late hour, a few chairs, and technological and scientific magazines scattered on the coffee table. A beefy security guard is asleep in an armchair in the corner.
“One hundred employees live on-site,” Carrick explains. “This place is out of the way – the closest village or town is too far for a daily commute – so the owners thought it best to house them here.”
“Owners?”
“Private company, Vigor.” He shrugs. “I’ve been here only two weeks, but I haven’t seen them around. Whoever they are, they’re sympathetic to the Flawed. They’ve allowed a gang of evaders to work and live here. He’s one of them.” He nods at the security guard who’s snoring quietly.
He points at the poster on the wall behind the reception desk and I see the same red V logo I’ve been seeing all around the plant. The V in ‘Vigor’ is designed as a mathematical square-root sign and I’ve seen it before somewhere, though I can’t place it.
√igor. turning a problem into a solution.
“There are four different recreational areas, depending on which unit you’re in. Flawed are all employed in the same unit; it’s this way.”
He pushes open a door and we’re back in the night air and walking across to a collection of Portakabins. Despite the late hour I can hear voices and activity coming from one of them and I know that our time alone is running out for now. There’s something important on my mind that I need to discuss first.
“Carrick, I need to know something.” I swallow. “Have you told anybody about …” I indicate my back.
“No one.”
I feel relieved, but awkward for bringing up the sixth brand. Things had been easy between us, but thinking about the Branding Chamber has caused me to tense up again.
“Apart from the guards and Crevan, Mr Berry and I are the only two who know,” Carrick assures me. “I’ve been trying to contact Mr Berry, but I haven’t had any luck so far,” he explains. “It’s been hard, trying to do things while I’m off the grid.”
“The guards are all missing, Carrick,” I say urgently. “Mr Berry is missing. I was afraid Crevan had got to you too. We have so much to talk about.”
“What?” His eyes widen.
At the end of the corridor, the door opens and I hear voices, laughter, a gang of people. I’m not ready to meet them yet; I need to talk to Carrick first. I speak quickly. “I told Pia Wang about my sixth brand.”
He raises his eyebrows, surprised that I would share this information with a Flawed TV and Crevan Media journalist. It had been Pia’s duty to tell my story, and after the trial she had set out to destroy my character, as was the norm with all her Flawed interviewees, but something happened with me. She believed me. She doubted my trial from the beginning and she couldn’t justify her one-sided reporting any longer. She sensed something was amiss.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but we can trust her. She was doing all she could to gather information to write a revealing story about Crevan. I haven’t heard from her in over two weeks. It’s not just our communication that has been broken: I’ve been checking online and she hasn’t written an article under Pia Wang … or under her pseudonym.”
“Her pseudonym?”
“Lisa Life.”
Carrick whistles. “Wow. She’s Lisa Life? Okay. Now I get why you told her.”
Lisa