Long Division (16 page)

James shrugged his shoulders, doing his best to keep a wide berth of others. ‘Will you be busy these next few days?’

I ran my schedule through my head. Nothing more than work, of course, but I didn’t think I’d be able to take off any more days than I already had to run round the city with him. ‘Nothing more than the usual.’

‘Ah, well, good. I believe these next few weeks will prove interesting. I’ve made my first move against InVizion and I am anxious to see how they will retaliate. I would like for you to keep an eye open. I intend to conduct several experiments—’

James suddenly stopped dead. He did not simply pause in mid-thought as he sometimes did. He froze. His entire body went ridged, as if an electrical current had suddenly been fed through his limbs. My stomach dropped seeing his face; for his eyes were wide and vacant, his expression slack, completely void of all emotion.

‘James?’ I asked timidly. I’d never seen him like this before. A nervous tug started pulling at my gut.

He let out a tight breath through his nose. A noise I recognised. The sound of one in pain. Yet he didn’t blink, the only movement I could see was a slight tremor at the corner of his mouth.

‘James? What’s wrong? Hey…’

The constant flow of people was making way for us, like water flowing around a rock. People not wanting to get involved. Typical Londoners.

Since he wasn’t moving I grabbed his arm, trying to at least pull him to the side of the pavement. Out of the way, under the shelter of a building. His arm was ridged at his side, clamped against him as if magnetised. I couldn’t shift him. James was larger than I and the way he was standing now, he was making it clear he wasn’t budging any time soon.

‘James!’

I cast a glance over my shoulder, to see if there was something in the distance that had frozen him. Some strange sight that had set this off. Nothing. Nothing but buildings and busses and people.

I looked back to his face. His eyes were moving now. Back and forth, rapidly, like he was reading. With parted lips he formed silent words in growing speed.

What the hell was going on? I didn’t know what to do, how to snap him out of it. Slap him? I certainly didn’t want it to come to that. Not in this crowd. And who knew what that would do to him. It could trigger some violent reaction in him which I wasn’t sure I was prepared to handle. His head was beginning to twitch, back and forth, like his eyes, faster and faster till it hurt my head to watch.

‘JAMES STOP IT!’ I shouted.

‘He all right?’ A woman behind me had stopped and was staring at James in fascinated concern.

At this point, I was open to suggestions. ‘I don’t know. He just froze up like this like…God, I don’t know! Come on, James, snap out of it!’

The woman pushed forward through the crowd, heels clicking against the pavement. She pulled out her mobile. ‘He’s having some sort of fit. Has this happened before?’

James was still ridged, except for his head, which was going back and forth wildly. Saliva bubbled at the corners of his mouth.

‘Not that I’m aware of.’ I watched in apprehension as she started to raise her phone. ‘What are you doing?’ This did
not
need to end up on YouTube.

‘Calling an ambulance,’ she said, as if that were plain.

I grabbed James by the arms. People were staring. I fought back my growing fear of the situation, feeling a cold sweat sprouting all over. Couldn’t lose my head.

Suddenly James stumbled, broken from his trance. He fell forward into my arms and I tripped backwards, hardly able to support his weight. He gasped heavily, breathing into my shoulder.

‘James?’ I heard myself whimper into his shirt. ‘Are you okay?’

He sagged heavily against me for a moment. I could feel his breath coming in little puffs through my shirt. ‘James?’ I wrapped one of my arms round him and patted his back, not giving a damn how it looked to the bystanders.

He struggled and then pushed himself up weakly. He looked around, dazed, then glanced down to me. ‘Mark?’

I swallowed. ‘You just froze up in some sort of fit. You feeling all right?’

He frowned, shut his eyes tight and pressed a hand to his brow. ‘Got a pounding headache. I…I need to go home.’ His words came weakly. Broken, stumbling, pleadingly like a child’s. ‘I need to go home now.’

I nodded, suddenly feeling guilty for the whole evening. Taking him drinking, exposing him to all of this, is that what had set it off? It couldn’t possibly. Dread gnawed away at my gut. ‘Okay, I’ll take you home. We’re not far from the tube station—’

‘No,’ James stumbled away from me in an unsteady drunken march. ‘Cab.’

Right. Stupid of me. I wasn’t thinking. I turned back to the woman. ‘Thanks for your help. I think I can handle it from here.’

She scowled. ‘You sure?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah. Thanks…’ I hurried after James, able to grip him by the arm and haul him away from the street before some more serious accident could have occur.

By the time the cab dropped us off at James’s flat, he was in such a bad state he could hardly get from the street to his floor. As I paid for the ride, I hastily had to explain it off as too much to drink and pray the cabbie would think nothing of it.

James couldn’t stand straight. I hurried after him as he stumbled into his room, lurching from stable piece of furniture to stable piece of furniture as if the floor beneath him was tilting left and right.

‘James? What’s the matter? What the hell happened back there?’

He swayed against the edge of the battered sofa. His eyes lingered on the chalk writings on the wall before him. I watched his head list slightly, and then the rest of his body and before I could reach him James had pitched forward and crashed to the floor.

I swore and dove to his side, slipping on the ratty throw rug in the process. By then he had gone still. I fell to my knees hard and put my hands on the sides of his head. He looked up at me with blank, sad, green eyes that hurt me to look into. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

He blinked several times and then nodded slowly. I offered him my hand and helped him to a sitting position. He wavered slightly, eyes drifting towards some fixed point on the floor.

‘I’m calling an ambulance. You need to see a doctor.’ I dug for my mobile but his hand shot out and caught it.

‘Don’t,’ he ordered.

I frowned. ‘You’re ill!’

He shook his head, voice sounding a little drunken, though I didn’t think he was. ‘Just too much to drink…leave it.’

I pressed a hand to my eyes, debating what to do. I didn’t want to drag him there, but he was clearly not well. Not taking him seemed a little irresponsible. What if he was having some sort of stroke or something and I was just sitting by and letting it happen out of ignorance, or, worse, fear of angering him?

‘Right,’ I stood, holding out my other hand to him. ‘Well, let’s get you up.’

As I hauled him to his feet, I couldn’t ignore the constant equations he’d begun to utter under his breath. Over and over. He was slipping away from me. I could tell, just by the look in his eyes. Dazed, confused, no longer in the same room as me.

As he stood, he let out a groan, breaking his chant, and gagged. I managed to get out of the way just in time as James was sick down his front. God, this was going from bad to worse. I closed my eyes and struggled to keep my head.

His eyes drifted down to his usually immaculate shirt and then he looked at me miserably. Well, he was somewhat conscious at least, conscious enough to feel unhappy about his situation.

I was out of my element. Taking care of someone wasn’t something I’d had much experience in, especially a male who was my age. What exactly was I supposed to do? He was
not
drunk, I knew that much.

I sighed. ‘Right, let’s get you cleaned up. Come on.’

It took some searching, but I managed to find the bathroom. I turned the shower on, keeping my eyes on James as steam started to precipitate in the air. He was still staring straight ahead, not moving, barely breathing. I wasn’t even sure if I’d seen him blink.

‘Come on, you get out of those and I’ll go and find some clean ones for you.’

He didn’t move. Show any sign he even knew I was there.

With a reluctant sigh, I helped him with his shirt, stinking with sick, pulling it up over his head. He moved like a small child, but in a daze, as he lifted his arms for me. I dropped his shirt to the floor, having the briefest of odd thoughts in my head about the action of undressing him. I shook that from my mind.

My eyes automatically raked over his bare chest, taking in the smooth, slight muscles. I felt a slight twinge in my stomach, one of revulsion, as I noticed, tracing down his chest, two parallel scars, pink and shiny, running from his pectorals down past his naval. Perfectly straight, oddly disturbing. I couldn’t tear my eyes from them. What could that possibly be from? Some accident as a child? Surgery? They looked…recent. I resisted the urge to touch them.

James swayed slightly on his feet and I grabbed his elbow, watching him carefully.

‘James?’

He lowered his eyes to the linoleum floor.

‘Come on, out of the trousers. James, come on.’

I hadn’t really wanted to be here for that but it was clear James wasn’t going to do it on his own. I was tempted to just have him take a shower with them on, but I wanted to see him do something to encourage me he wasn’t completely losing his mind. If he could do that and bathe himself, I thought I’d be able to relax a bit more. But so far, that wasn’t looking promising, and my heart began to sink.

I had to help him undress the rest of the way, leaving his pants on—there was only so far I was willing to go. He was so distant it didn’t feel that awkward, honestly; like undressing a doll. I took him by the elbow again and helped him into the stream. He blinked the water away from his eyes.

‘Don’t suppose you can wash up whilst I find you some clean things?’

He didn’t answer, and I thought leaving him probably wasn’t the best course of action. What if he slipped and cracked his head open or something? Then where would I be? I was still wrestling with the idea of calling for an ambulance. James’s behaviour was not normal and I was edging dangerously close to losing my calm.

The patter of water against my clothes was the only reminder that I’d stepped into the shower with him. Probably not the straightest thing I’d ever done, but what the hell, he wasn’t well. I couldn’t be concerned with things like that at the moment. James wasn’t in any state to question it, and from our discussion earlier, I wasn’t sure he’d even see anything odd in the action.

My clothes started to hang heavy with water.

I wracked my brain, trying to sort out what I was going to do.

And then a thought began to creep into my head, a thought so sinister and frightening I immediately tried to push it away, reject it.

What if InVizion was somehow behind this?

It wasn’t possible, of course it wasn’t.

I gazed back up into James’s distant eyes, watching the water trickle down the arch of his aquiline brow. He wasn’t all there. That much was obvious. I felt my stomach drop. Were they playing around in is head right now? Screwing with it?

James swayed and I thought he might fall again. I put a hand to his bare arm, eyes drifting automatically to his pale, almost translucent skin, the blue veins. The skin of someone who rarely saw the sun. So close to the skin of one who was near death.

I pushed the thoughts away.

I was uncomfortable and wet and James hadn’t moved at all. I leant around him and shut the water off.

‘Right, well, I’d think that’s enough of that.’

I gripped his arms and tugged him gently from the shower. My clothes dripped all over the floor, spreading pools, making the tile slick. At least James appeared to be waking up a bit. He was looking about now and as I handled a towel to him, he accepted it from me.

‘You feeling better?’

He didn’t answer, but he was weakly wiping himself off, which I decided to take as an encouraging sign. At least he was acting on his own now, and not just standing there like a sleepwalker. I looked him over. Perhaps he didn’t need my supervision any longer.

I shivered, my soaking clothes clinging to my skin uncomfortably. I struggled out of my shirt, grumbling. Riding the tube home in my current state was not sounding enjoyable. Perhaps I could nick some of James’s oversized clothing and make it home that way. Again, a bit embarrassing, but much better than freezing and soaked.

James let out an irritable sigh and looked down at his bare chest. My eyes followed his down, running over those two pink tracks once again. He put a hand to his skin and frowned.

‘Right. Wait here. I’ll get something for you to wear…’

Assuring myself that he wasn’t going to have any terrible accidents, I turned from the bathroom, found James’s tiny bedroom and dug through his wardrobe. I grabbed his pyjamas and hurried back into the bathroom. He was still standing, much in the same dazed state I’d left him. I thrust the clothing into his arms and James gave me a rather affronted look. At least he was feeling a little better.