Stray (23 page)

A sob swells and breaks from my lips.

“You are not the first to be deceived by unnatural compassion, to hold a conviction based on false hope.”

“Hope?”

“There is no cure for the Stray mutation.”

I get that disoriented feeling like I’ve walked into a room and forgotten why I came in, forgotten what I was looking for. Something I’ve misplaced.

“We are here to help you, Evangeline, to lead you to the truth, to bring you back to us. You have so much potential. You are an Asset. We want you to belong, to rebuild trust.”

Warmth fills my chest. “How?”

“By doing the right thing for you and everyone. Tell me where Aiden is.”

Again that feeling there’s something I need to explain. What is it? “But I don’t know where he is.”

“Perhaps you’ve just forgotten.”

Have I?

“We can help you remember. Would that be easier?”

“I don’t know.”

“Close your eyes. Relax. You’ll feel so much better when the truth comes out.”

The bandwidth is soft and deep and wide. I fall back into it, a fuzzy plummet. My brother’s face foremost in my mind. I see us in the alcove of the detention centre, Kitty pale but determined, Aiden terrified. I feel like we’re nearing the point I’ve been missing when their fingers touch on the coffee table but the scene skips abruptly ahead. I’m leaping the wire fence, kicking the window of the recreation room, grabbing a terrified guard. Another skip. I’m wrestling Aiden in the bathroom of the motel. Kitty’s there in that ridiculous T-shirt from school, Aiden’s cold and unresponsive. I’m lying in the narrow bed pressed against my brother, punching Kitty’s arm where she lies on the other side of him. Then comes a blur, a smudge of images, like trying to see through foggy glass. Instinct tells me it’s important and I focus hard but I can feel the memory wanting to skip ahead. I try to stay on the smudge. I lean towards it, like I’m pressing against an invisible force field, then I’m shoved back and the memory flicks ahead. Pain in my neck. I’m slumped over the vanity. Kitty’s cutting my tracker out. She shows me the tiny silver sphere coated in blood–

Blood.

I jolt like I’ve been poked with a stick and my eyes spring open. On all three screens there is a close-up of the dirty sink hole, the broken tracker pieces swirling in pink bile as they slip down the drain. The image is luridly bright, razor focused in the centre but blurry on the edges, my memories on-screen, like a foreign film with no subtitles or soundtrack.

“Blood.” My throat sticks, a dry croak.

“Evangeline,” Knox says. “You mustn’t resist the Symbiosis - you could hurt yourself. You’re doing so well. This already shows us a great deal. I believe we’re nearly there. You just need to yield.”

I pant through my nose and shake my head, already feeling the important detail slipping from my grasp. “Blood,” I say again. “Blood is the thing.”

“Don’t worry about blood. Relax.”

I throw myself at the detail, a desperate leap into the bandwidth. I not only picture it in my mind but see it on-screen. Aiden on the motel bed, I’m leaning over his arm, a syringe in my hand, drawing his blood into the barrel. That’s it. “He’s deactivated! He’s deactivated! I – I took his blood so we could prove it. He’s not a Stray any more. You can’t kill him. Please. It’s in my pack. Check my pack.”

“You’re wasting time, Evangeline,” he says, impatience creeping into his voice. “You need to relax and let the Harvest run its course.”

“Listen to me!” I strain against the straps and they cut into my wrists and my chest. The pain clears my head and the glowing arm and headrests dim. All the things I wanted to explain right from the beginning surge to the surface. “Check the blood, please. It’s right there. You’ll see he’s cured. I can show you exactly how and when it happened. Harvest my memory from the night of the last attack or – or I can Transfer it, whatever way you like. We – we went to hospital, Aiden was shot, he nearly died but they used my blood in a transfusion. I Transferred my Spark memory; it hit his system all at once. He had a seizure and the tether broke. I’m telling you there was no more threat after that. I promise. Please, let me just show you.”

“Calm down,” Knox says, his voice now hard.

The chair begins to glow again and calm rises over me, but I can’t bear to lose my clarity. “No!” I jerk against the restraints, firing pain through my spine, gouging my wrists and ankles on the biting edges of the bindings. “I don’t want to be calm, I can’t think straight when you do that. Please! You have to listen to me.”

“You will calm down or I will pacify you.”

I thrash harder, my skin red raw beneath the bonds. “Please. Counsellor Tesla, listen to me. Check my pack. I’m not making it up. The blood is there!”

“There is no blood.” Tesla, his voice, accent, certainty.

I stop thrashing and pant at the black swirling screen, the details of the motel vision now faded. “What? It’s there. Davis had my pack. It was in the van.”

“We have your pack,” Tesla says. “There was no blood in it.”

“Where is it?” I ball my hands into fists and press back into the seat, a high-pitched ringing in my ears. “Davis. Ask Davis! Make him come in here and explain where he put it.”

“The contents of your pack were inventoried on arrival,” Tesla says. “There was no blood.”

I shake my head, rocking against the restraints. “He did something with it! That son of a … It was there. It was in the inside pocket. He took it – he hates me! Please, you saw the memory. I’m not lying!”

“That’s enough,” Knox says. A metal clamp snaps closed around my right arm, tight over my bicep. I didn’t see it rise from the side of the chair and I cry out in fright. Beneath my arm comes a piercing needle.

“No!” I try and fail to pull away; it only creates more pain in my arm. “No! Listen, please!” The tide rises quickly in my bloodstream, a doping flood, dragging me down into nothingness.

I’m awake when they take me back to recovery. Awake as they park me in the empty bed space and plug me back into the monitor. I smell Felicity’s talcum powder and peppermint scent as she reattaches the IV and sensor pads. I keep my eyes closed and my breathing even. Inside, I’m raging, pins and needles burning up my spine and a high-pitched ringing in my ears that warns I’m about ready to blow things up.

Davis’s signal throbs in the bandwidth, aggressive but steady. He doesn’t know that I’ve figured out what he’s done – or he doesn’t care. The temptation to spring up from the bed and launch myself at him is only tempered by the knowledge that I’m too weak to do any permanent damage. I want to scream and rail and break things. It
can’t
be all for nothing. The sample destroyed, my solid evidence – my one real chance at convincing them Aiden has changed.

“One-hour recess,” Benjamin says, his voice a low murmur. “Then she’s back in the chair.”

I listen as heavy boots walk away. Felicity stays, bandages my wrists and ankles where the skin has been broken by the restraints. She has a sure, no-nonsense touch and mutters as she works.

I have to talk to Kitty, tell her to send a message to my grandparents’ holiday home, warning Aiden about the blood sample, telling him to stay on the run. She doesn’t have her phone so I’ll have to suck it up and call her at home. The thought of Barb or Leonard answering my call is only slightly less terrifying than the prospect of going back to ReProg. How long before the Executive finds out where I sent Aiden? I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Even if they Harvest the location in the next round of ReProg, he’ll have Pop’s jeep by now and he won’t check the house for two weeks. I might be able to keep the fine print to myself. If Miriam can resist the Symbiosis, why can’t I?

Fear for Miriam cuts through me. Where is she? Is she in pain? I can’t stand not knowing. It makes me crazy. Let them fry my brain; I won’t give Aiden up. The residue of all those compliant feelings nauseates me. I
wanted
to please Knox with the truth – or his version of the truth. There was definitely something off about the Harvest – the smudging of details. They want me to forget I had a reason for what I did and shame me into yielding.

Felicity finishes her work and I listen to her walk to the medic’s station at the back of the room, cracking my eyelids open to watch as she steps through the door. She appears in the window, her back to the ward.

I have a moment of disturbing awareness when I notice all the beds are empty. The Wardens are gone. It’s too creepy, picturing them out in the world with their throbbing cerebellums, tracking down Sparks and Shields. How many lives will they turn upside down in this sweep? I don’t want to know.

I struggle upright in the bed. My back aches like I’ve been beaten with a bat. If Felicity tries to stop me, I’m pretty sure I can take her out – unless she uses the paralysing disc thing. Best I play it careful and quiet. I glance again and she’s sitting now with her back to the window, watching a computer monitor. I debate whether to pull the sticky pads from my temples, wrists and chest, but I’m afraid it will send out an alert and draw her attention. Instead, I rip the tape off the IV. Withdrawing the shaft gives my stomach a sick twist and I stick the tape back down over the bubble of blood, leaving the needle and tube on the bed.

I’m slow and unsteady on my feet, making a shuffling path to the sliding door. I have a moment of panic it might not open for me, but the sensor panel blinks and with one parting glimpse of Felicity’s back I slip out into the empty corridor.

Keeping close to the concrete wall, I walk as fast as my shaking legs can manage, turning right at the first corridor and left again after that. My neck prickles in anticipation of a shout, or footsteps behind me, but no one comes. The corridors are uniformly blank and unlabelled. I don’t go near any sliding doors, just keep moving, eyes forwards, my hand skimming the wall.

Sweating, dizzy, frustrated by my weakness, I lose track of the turns and corridors and stop to listen for a threat. I dab at my dripping face, afraid the sensor pads might come loose. A brief hysterical urge takes hold of me, to forget looking for a phone and try for an all-out escape.

The idea is insane. I have no clue where I am, or where the exits are. There’s sure to be security, gates, codes, passes I don’t have. Do I think I can fight my way out? Besides, I have no idea where in the country I am. Miriam had thought there might be flights to get here. It’s more than nuts – I have a goddamn tracker in my neck. I could cut it out again. The memory of Kitty digging in the back of my neck with the scalpel gives my stomach an unpleasant turn. Could I risk trying to find my way back to the recovery ward? My thoughts are interrupted by a noise at the end of the corridor and I freeze.

A sliding door opens and two men in black tracksuits step into the passage. I press myself against the wall, though I’m sure the whiteness of my paper gown must glow in the shadows. They turn the other way and disappear around a corner. The door they came from remains open and desperation sets my feet moving towards it. Nearing the doorway, I slow and listen for sounds within, but there’s nothing. I nip inside, flinching against bright light. It’s a locker room. The door slides closed behind me and I jump. Motion sensor, I tell myself – I
can
get out. The room smells like men but not gross sweaty men. It’s a clean smell, men who’ve showered, put on deodorant and laundered clothes. Weirdly comforting. Which is crazy, given anyone could walk in at any moment and how would I explain myself?

It’s an L-shaped room, tiled floor and walls lined with pale grey lockers, numbered, no keypads or padlocks. I try the first and find a neatly folded uniform of black pants and jacket with epaulets, buckles and zippers. I think of Benjamin and Davis and shiver. I make a quick search for a cell phone. Nothing. Several more lockers are empty. I turn the corner to try another bank and stifle a scream. But it’s only a mirror and only me staring back. Like a badly drawn stick figure, I’m all legs and arms and head. My eyes, huge dark smudges over a smear of red mouth. My torso, an irregular paper triangle, my hair like a scribble with a blunt black crayon.

My morbid stocktake cuts short when the swish of doors precedes boots from the corridor. I stumble back, afraid they’ll turn the corner. The blank wall disappears behind me, not a wall – another sliding door. It opens on a storm.

I spin to face a squall of static, the roar of signals so bewilderingly loud it’s hard to stay upright. A mess hall. Rows of metal tables and bench seats. On the right, a large window looks out on a vast gymnasium, where others are training, sparring, working out. On the left, a kitchen with a steaming array of meat and vegetables and gravy and fresh baked bread. Maybe twenty or thirty men are sitting, eating, talking, laughing, waiting in line to be served. From teenagers to men in their middle twenties, all of them dressed in black pants and black shirts; some wear the jacket with buckles, others wear the hoodies with the silver zip, others still wear plain black singlets. All of them, chiselled and beautiful like they were hand-picked from a catalogue.

With monumental effort I draw myself back from the signal surge, imagining in my mind a wall to block the torrent, to keep from drowning. The signals lose their roar, the static dims and I become aware that the whole room has grown silent and every face has turned towards me, several with forks halfway to mouths. Even the men in the kitchen have frozen, ladles in hand. I am then profoundly aware of being naked beneath a flimsy paper gown that finishes above my knees and ties insufficiently behind my right shoulder, with a second tie at my waist, a third at my hip and breezy gaps between.

“Well, hello,” a deep voice rumbles from the table directly before me, a white smile spreading out in a dark face. A few chuckles rise around him but mostly the men stare at me in disbelief.

Clutching the edges of my gown together, I bring a shaking hand to my hair as though I might smooth it down. I focus on the smiling man and say, “Um, you wouldn’t happen to have a phone on you?”

His eyebrows rise, crinkling his smooth brow and his smile makes dark rose apples in his cheeks. “A phone? Honey, there’s no coverage in here.”