Hunting Lila

by Sarah Alderson

  A sudden noise made me turn my head. Demos was standing right next to me, a knife in his hand. Behind him were three other men, the men whose photos I’d seen in the file. One flicked his cigarette butt towards me, smiling. Suki was a blur behind them, skipping in a puddle of blood. I started to scream and tried to lunge towards Demos to knock the knife from his hand, but my arms wouldn’t move, they were held so tightly.

  ‘Shhhh, shhhh, it’s OK.’

  I was pulling and pulling, trying to get free.

  ‘Lila, it’s OK. Calm down.’

  My eyes snapped open at the voice. Alex was sitting on the edge of the bed holding my wrists in his hands. I was reaching towards him as though I was trying to strangle him. I stopped fighting and let my arms go limp. Then, without thinking, I fell forward towards him. There was no movement on his part to catch me and I remembered too late, as my head collided with his chest, that Alex didn’t think of me as Lila anymore, that he was repulsed by me. I started to pull myself up and roll away when I felt his arms suddenly wrap around me and his hands in my hair, stroking it back. The feeling was so electric that I wondered if I was still dreaming. It was like a cotton reel inside me was being unspooled. Everything, all the dread and the fear and the humiliation was spinning away, leaving me feeling like I’d just inhaled a tank of gas and air.

  ‘It’s OK.’ He was saying it over and over again and I started to believe him, to calm down and let his touch sedate me. Then I remembered the dream and the fear rolled back in, waves and waves of it, drowning me.

  I started crying hard into his shoulder, shaking my head. ‘No, it’s not OK, it’s not OK. They’re going to find me.’ How could they not? There were two of us and lots of them, with abilities far beyond mine and weapons far beyond Alex’s.

  Alex’s arms tightened around me and I shrank into him, trying to limpet myself onto him, terrified he’d let me go. I couldn’t believe he was this close to me, let alone pulling me closer. What had changed while I’d been sleeping? Since last night, when he’d come towards me in the backyard looking like he wanted to kill me?

  ‘I’ll get you away . . .’ He was murmuring the words and where his lips brushed my hair my scalp was left tingling. ‘I’ll get you somewhere safe, I promise. Then we’ll stop them.’ His voice was calm and the warmth in it was such a contrast to the cold front of the anger I’d been dealing with until now, that it started me crying again.

  I wished I could believe him. It would be so easy to let him hypnotise me with his words but I pushed away slightly so I could look him in the face. ‘What’s a psychokenosist?’

  His hands tightened on my arms. ‘How do you—’ Then he stopped and disentangled himself, stood up and walked away.

  My whole body went cold and started to shake, like shock was setting in. Delayed shock, from all the way back to the mugging, like it had been storing itself up for the last week. I hugged my arms around myself, trying to get warm and to stop my teeth chattering.

  ‘It derives from the Greek. Psyche meaning “mind”, and Kenosis, meaning “to empty”.’ Alex waited to gauge my reaction.

  ‘Mind empty?’

  ‘Yes. Demos’s power is unique. He can literally empty your mind of every thought and every feeling you possess. He can effectively stop anyone from doing anything.’ He paused to see that I had understood. ‘Demos is the most powerful one of your kind that we know of.’

  My kind? So that was how he saw me.

  ‘How many do you know of?’ I asked in a whisper.

  ‘Nine. Well, twelve now if I count you and Key and his son. But the Unit doesn’t know about you three. Yet.’ He was pacing the small square of area between the bed and the bathroom door.

  Yet? Was he planning on telling them? How else would they find out?

  ‘Just nine? How many more do you think there are?’

  ‘Conservative estimate? We think there are probably two hundred or so in the United States. Based on the numbers so far. But maybe it’s higher.’

  Two hundred? Two hundred people like me. What were the odds, then? It wasn’t many. But it was actually quite a lot of people, if you put them all together in one place.

  I was still shaking. ‘How long has the Unit been hunting them – I mean us?’

  A scowl made its way onto Alex’s face. The anger was back and I instinctively flinched away, edging into the headboard. He must have seen my expression, because his scowl disappeared. He yanked the cover off the other bed and sat down on the edge of mine, wrapping it around my shoulders.

  ‘About five years.’ It was said through gritted teeth.

  Five years was how long it had been since my mother died. ‘And you’ve only found nine?’

  ‘You’re good at keeping what you can do below the radar.’

  I couldn’t interpret the look on his face. Rancour, impatience, maybe. He carried on. ‘Our focus is on Demos. And his people.’ The scowl was easier to interpret, and this time I recognised it wasn’t about me.

  ‘Why? Why the focus on him? You said that the Unit’s mission wasn’t to find my mum’s killers.’

  ‘It isn’t. I didn’t lie. The mission is to stop them, yes, but it’s not about solving a homicide.’

  I frowned at his casual use of the word homicide. This was my mum’s murder he was talking about.

  He hurried on, as though wanting to explain. ‘When we joined the Unit all we cared about was getting justice for what he did to your mum. But after a while it became more than that. When we saw what he was capable of, and what he was planning, it stopped being all about our vendetta and became more about stopping him before he could do far worse.’

  I swallowed. What could be worse than murder? ‘This thing that he’s planning, could it have something to do with why he killed my mum? Because she found out about it? Is that why he killed the senator too?’

  Alex looked at me in shock. ‘You know about him?’

  ‘Yes.’ I ignored the questions in his eyes, forming on his lip. ‘Why did he kill her? Them, I mean. What’s he planning?’ I needed to know what worse could look like. I might be on the receiving end of it.

  Alex bit his lip and paused, then shook his head slowly, looking at me with an odd expression on his face. ‘You know what? I thought I knew. I was so sure – we were all so sure. Jack too. But now I don’t know if everything the Unit has been telling me is the truth or a lie.’

  I stared at him, stunned. After a minute or so I broke the silence. ‘What were you told?’

  ‘Lila, it’s going to sound so crazy.’

  ‘Yes, because my life is so completely sane right now. Tell me.’

  ‘OK, well, the Unit – our whole mission – is basically counter-terrorism. With a twist.’

  ‘Terrorism?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That Demos is a terrorist? I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.’

  ‘Listen, when the Unit found out about Demos it was because he had been using one of his associates, a telepath, to access information from a senator working on nuclear defence. This was during the Bush administration. Remember those rumours about the design of new nuclear weapons after 9/11?’

  I looked at him blankly.

  ‘Maybe you were too young. Well, it wasn’t a rumour. It was the truth. The project was so secret that only a few people were involved in the initial research. A small team within the Department for Homeland Security.’

  ‘My mother—’

  ‘No. Not at this stage. Your mum had nothing to do with the initial research and development. The rumours that weapons were being built kept circulating around Washington and further afield. It’s difficult to keep something that huge a secret. In 2004 your mother was asked to sit on a secret committee that was looking at the issue of weapon stockpiling.’

  ‘She was? But I don’t get it—’

  ‘This is where the information starts to become more vague. Somehow in that process she discovered what Demos was doing. That he was using his
telepathy to gain access to information about the stockpiles.’

  ‘Please tell me why he would want information on nuclear stockpiles.’

  ‘Why does anyone want a nuclear weapon? For control, for power. With a threat like that at his fingertips he could create chaos.’

  ‘You know what? You’re right, this does sound crazy. Why? Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘Money probably, power definitely.’

  ‘But you can’t just waltz off with a nuclear weapon and take over the world. What can you do with a nuclear weapon, anyway? Load it into a catapult and fire? Fire it where?’

  A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and suddenly I didn’t want to talk anymore. I just wanted to watch him. He was smiling at me. First hugs, now smiles. Maybe he really didn’t hate me. Maybe I could convince him that I wasn’t subhuman or whatever he thought about me exactly; that I was still Lila.

  ‘He wouldn’t need to fire it – it’s just the threat of it – that would be enough.’

  ‘But we have a whole army – why just go after him with twenty-four men? Why not put the whole army on to him if he’s such a threat?’

  For a moment I thought whoever was in charge needed to be fired. They clearly weren’t a very good strategist.

  ‘None of this can be made public knowledge, Lila. Do you want the general public to know about what you can do? What do you think would happen if people thought that people like you existed? That there were people out there who could control their thoughts and their actions, who could read their minds, or rearrange their memories?’

  Was that what a sifter was? I wasn’t too sure what would happen if it became public knowledge – was he talking lynchings? Men in white coats carrying out vivisections on us? Other sorts of testing?

  From the look on Alex’s face he thought it would be bad. I thought about how I’d instinctively hidden my ability from everyone, even the people I loved. Something inside me had known, without needing to be told, that exposing it would be dangerous. But then again, keeping it hidden didn’t seem to be much safer. The Unit were after us like we were stray rodents and being contained didn’t sound like a much better option – in fact, it sounded worse.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said finally. ‘If the option is being hunted down by the Unit or having the public know about me – I think right now I’m going with the public vote.’

  Alex looked at me with an expression I could only place as anguish. ‘Well, you’ve no choice on that one. It’s coming down from the highest authority. It stays secret.’

  ‘What authority? Like the President?’

  ‘No. Higher.’

  There was a higher authority? Wasn’t that supposed to be God or someone?

  He saw my face, my glance up at the ceiling, and laughed at me. ‘No, not that kind of authority. You don’t honestly think that the President is in charge, do you?’

  ‘Er, isn’t he?’ If he wasn’t in charge, who the heck was?

  ‘Lila, we’re a black op. Even the President doesn’t know about black ops.’

  I stared at him with my eyebrows raised.

  ‘The only option we’ve been told is to keep going after them. Stop them. Anytime there’s any threat of public exposure it gets covered up fast. The same way other terrorist threats do. It’s all kept under the radar.’

  I stared at him open-mouthed, feeling my naïvety falling away from me like a layer of clothing.

  ‘We’re getting closer to them. The Unit have got three of them now. They’ll get Demos eventually. Then we’ll start focusing on the others – on getting them all.’

  He realised what he’d said and stopped abruptly, looking at me with a guilty expression. Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. I looked away from him and tried to swallow and breathe and not cry.

  ‘Lila, I don’t mean, I’m . . .’

  I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to hear it.

  I didn’t hear him move but I felt him put his hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. It was clear where he stood on the matter.

  ‘How will you stop Demos? You said he had a special power.’

  Alex hesitated before speaking. ‘He can only focus it on a few people at a time. Which is why he needs an army. With the abilities he’s collecting around him it’s getting harder to find him and harder still to fight him. Our weapons are limited – you’ve seen the extent of them.’

  Yes, big guns and loud alarms.

  ‘We can only use them in short bursts and his people are usually able to stop us before we can set it off. They see us coming – that girl Suki can hear us from a mile off. There are others who can pick up on the atmosphere, sense us when we get close, and now, I guess, with Key’s son, it explains how they’re able to predict our moves, stay one step ahead of us. He’s following us and letting them know what we’re planning. As fast as we take one of his people out, he recruits another.’ He looked at me with a little shrug.

  ‘And all of this, everything you’ve just told me about Demos and this so-called terrorist plot; you’re telling me that now you’re not actually sure it’s the truth?’ I shook my head at him, confused. ‘Why not?’

  Alex dropped his gaze to the floor, frowning, then looked up and met my eyes. ‘Because if they could lie to me about you, then they can lie about anything.’

  20

  I held Alex’s gaze, my breathing running rapid. ‘Lie about me? What do you mean?’ I stuttered.

  Alex shook his head. ‘The things we’ve been made to believe about people like you – it – it just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I look at you and I start questioning everything I’ve been told.’

  Once more he’d stunned me into silence. Clearly the picture they’d painted of us was not that warm and fuzzy. They really believed they were hunting monsters. And in Demos’s case, they obviously were.

  ‘But you believed them before yesterday – why?’

  He looked away again and I could see the frustration etched on his face. ‘Because, when Jack and I were recruited at Washington State, they offered us the chance for revenge. And we believed them because we wanted to.’

  ‘What did they tell you? How did they recruit you?’

  ‘Two men showed up on campus one day. They wouldn’t tell us who they were working for. At first we assumed CIA but I don’t think they were. They showed us the information they had on Melissa’s – sorry – on your mother’s murder. They showed us everything they had on Demos: photographs, crime reports, trials in absentia, a whole raft of reports and evidence on other psys. At first we thought they were making it up. You have to understand, for us, it was like discovering aliens existed and were living among us. We didn’t believe it. So they took us to Pendleton, to the Unit, and showed us. They had one, someone they’d captured. We saw it with our own eyes. He could do what Key can do. We started to believe them, to ask questions. They told us that the Unit’s mission was to catch people like your mother’s killers. We didn’t need any other incentive. We signed the papers right there and then. It seems crazy now, but at the time there was no other option for either of us. We had to do it.’

  It didn’t seem crazy at all. I loved them both for it. I just wished I hadn’t ended up being on their hit list.

  ‘Can I ask you a question now?’ Alex was looking at me, his blue eyes piercing right through me. I readied myself. ‘How did it happen?’

  I leaned back against the headboard and hugged my knees tighter. ‘I don’t know. I thought you might be able to tell me that.’

  He thought about it for a moment. ‘We don’t know. All we’ve managed to do is isolate the gene. We’re not sure what triggers it, though. Some people have the gene but it just lies dormant.’

  It was genetic? Wow. Why wasn’t Jack like me, then?

  ‘When did it start?’ Alex suddenly asked.

  It felt so strange to be admitting any of this, to be talking about it so openly. But at the same time, if there was anyone on the planet I wanted to tell, it was Alex
. Just not under these circumstances.

  I took a few breaths then started. ‘Three years ago. Well, actually there was one incident before then but I didn’t realise it was me . . .’

  Alex waited for me to continue.

  ‘When I came to London it was really difficult. In my first week at school I got mad with a teacher. She, um, she . . .’ I looked down at the sheet, stroking the hem with my finger. ‘She asked me to take off the bracelet you’d given me. You remember it?’ I glanced up and met Alex’s eyes but he showed no flicker of recognition. Maybe he hadn’t opened my present.

  I carried on. ‘I said no. She told me again to take it off or she’d cut it off and I said no. So she came towards me with these scissors . . . and I don’t know what happened. One minute the scissors were in her hand and the next they’d flown halfway across the room and were sticking out of the blackboard.’

  I looked back up at Alex. He was pressing his lips together, reining in whatever he wanted to say. It was actually quite funny that my ability had, in a way, been triggered by his present to me.

  I hurried on. ‘I had no idea I had made it happen. People looked at me weirdly but I honestly didn’t have a clue it was me.’

  ‘And then?’

  I realised I’d stopped talking. I’d been thinking back to that moment and the teacher’s face as the scissors flew out of her hand. I frowned as I fast-forwarded to the first proper time I’d been conscious of.

  ‘Well, the next time it really happened was a year or so later. At school, in the dining room someone made a comment about my mum and I just lost it.’

  I bit my lip. I didn’t need him thinking I was unstable or unable to control my ability. Which would be correct, but he didn’t need to know that.

  ‘I didn’t usually mind the comments – I mean, I guess I was a little weird; a little distant, uninterested – but it wasn’t a good time. I was missing my mum so much. I was missing you and Jack.’ I felt my stomach tighten. ‘So this girl said something and I threw a jam roly-poly at her head.’ There was a silence, so I added, ‘Not using my hands, obviously.’