Hunting Lila

by Sarah Alderson

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud.

  Demos considered the news for a minute. ‘Nate, can you go back?’

  Nate’s shoulders sagged. ‘I’m not sure. I’m really tired.’

  Demos appraised him for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘OK, I understand.’ He put one hand on Nate’s shoulder. ‘You did well.’

  ‘Maybe I can try again in a little while?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Demos nodded again, then marched off, pulling a mobile out of his pocket and dialling.

  I wondered if he was calling Alex and if he’d let me speak to him but he was already out of earshot. I hung back with Nate and Suki.

  ‘Is it the projecting that makes you tired?’ I asked.

  Nate looked at me and nodded. ‘It’s like running at warp speed. Mega fun but mega exhausting.’

  We made it to the cable car just as they were closing it for the last ride down. That was good timing on Nate’s part.

  Once we were all inside, I inched away as casually as I could from the others and went and stood in the exact place where Alex had kissed me. I closed my eyes and tried to relive the moment, the way his thumb had touched my bottom lip. The way his lips had felt when he’d pressed them against mine, the way he’d looked at me with those velvet blue eyes. I took a deep breath and noticed the ache in my ribcage was better.

  Like a bomb blast it hit me. Alex loves me. I felt the smile splitting my face in two.

  It vanished when I remembered that before Demos showed up Alex had been going to leave me. In fact had actually left me. His last words had been something about being the moment. That was it: ‘When you fell down the stairs,’ he’d said, ‘that was the moment.’ The moment what?

  ‘The moment he fell in love with you. Durr. For goodness sake, Lila. It doesn’t take a mind-reader to work that out.’

  I sunk down onto the bench in the middle of the car. So Alex had loved me the whole time, from the moment we’d seen each other again? All that time I’d been freaking out about Rachel? All that time I’d spent inches away from him, sleeping in his bed by myself; sitting opposite him at dinner, smashing plates; clinging to him on the back of his bike; sneaking peeks at him through a half-ajar bathroom door – and all the time he’d been in love with me? We’d wasted all that time when we could have been kissing? And he’d had to wait until two seconds before leaving me until he told me? If the Unit didn’t kill him, I was going to.

  The smile was back, though, pulling my face into a rictus grin. If I wasn’t so ecstatically, crazily happy right now, I would most definitely kill him. Then I had another sudden realisation. Alex most definitely wouldn’t be able to go back to the Unit now. He’d have to come with us. Woo-hoo.

  ‘Are you OK, Lila?’ It was Nate.

  I looked over at him, startled. ‘Um, yes, why?’

  ‘Well, you were just hyperventilating, clapping and grinning like a toddler on speed.’

  ‘She’s just happy.’

  I looked over at Amber. ‘Keep it up. It’s a pleasant relief,’ she said.

  Ryder wrapped his arms around her from behind and winked at me. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning back. I wanted to go over and hug them both. They were in love. I loved them for being in love. The world was beautiful and Rachel was tied up in a boot and Alex was coming back to me and he loved me.

  ‘OK, Demos, I think I need you.’ Suki was calling out to Demos over her shoulder while still looking at me.

  I pulled a face at her.

  ‘Lila, please turn it down a fraction. I can’t hear myself or anyone else think. He loves you. You love him. Now before you start singing about apple trees and honey bees, let’s please try to think about other things.’

  ‘How about Jack? Think about Jack.’ Nate grinned wickedly at me.

  I didn’t want to think about Jack. I was really happy he was safe too, but when I imagined me and Alex being reunited, Jack wasn’t in the picture. He was safely off to the side, with his back turned.

  ‘Yes. Jack isn’t going to want to see that.’

  My attention flew straight back to Suki. ‘What?’

  ‘Jack. You’re right to worry. He was pretty annoyed with Alex earlier. I heard him. In amongst all the rage against us, there was quite a bit of anger aimed at his best friend.’

  Oh dear. ‘What was he thinking?’

  ‘Ooh, thinking? Girl, I know what he was saying.’

  Now my attention was fully on Nate. He had one hand on his hip and the other looped over Suki’s shoulder.

  ‘When? Oh God, what happened?’ I stared up at them.

  ‘They had big-time words about you.’

  ‘About me?’

  He giggled. ‘Yeah, it was hardcore.’

  ‘What did Jack say?’

  ‘He was like, “Dude, what the hell with my sister?” And Alex was all “I love her”, and Jack was “No way, man,” and Alex just turned round and said “That’s the way it is. Deal,” and that was sort of the end of it. You know, I totally get why you’re in love with him by the way. He’s totally gorgeous.’ He rolled his eyes as though he’d just licked his favourite flavour ice cream.

  ‘Er, OK, thanks. I think.’

  ‘Nate – you are unbelievable.’ Suki poked him with her spear-like elbow, then turned to me. ‘I swear he spends more time following the hot guys from the Unit than the useful ones.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Do too.’

  They were like two bickering kids.

  ‘I am not.’ Suki pouted at me. ‘He is.’

  ‘Lila . . .’ I looked at Nate. His big brown eyes had gone liquid all of a sudden. ‘Did you see my dad? Is he OK?’

  I looked at Suki and hoped she wouldn’t give me away. ‘Yeah, he’s fine.’ I thought back to his blood-spattered face. ‘Well, I mean, he’s really worried about you.’ I remembered the promise Alex had made to Key about protecting Nate from the Unit and getting him away from Demos. It didn’t look like that was a promise Alex was going to be able to keep. It didn’t look like Nate wanted to go anywhere. I lowered my voice. ‘Why’d you run away in the first place?’

  ‘I didn’t run away. I’m free to make my own choices about how I live my life.’

  OK, that I understood only too well. Who was I to accuse anyone of running away?

  ‘And anyway,’ he continued, ‘what I’m doing now is way better than school. I get to do cool, real-life beating bad guys stuff. . .’

  Didn’t he think they were using him? He was just a kid.

  ‘We’re not, Lila.’ Suki was frowning at me. ‘And he’s not a kid. He’s the same age as us. We’re making our own choices, aren’t we? Wouldn’t you fight for what you believed in?’

  I’d fight for Alex. That much I knew. And for Jack.

  ‘There you go then,’ Suki said.

  ‘But that’s different. They’re my family. This isn’t personal for you.’

  ‘How could it get any more personal, Lila? They’re coming after people like us, containing us and even murdering us. Demos is doing this because of your mother. And we’re fighting with him because we believe in him. If the Unit caught you, wouldn’t you want to know that we were out there fighting for you and trying to get you back?’

  I didn’t have time to answer. The cable car ground to a halt and I looked around, startled. We were back in the real world. The eight of us exited the car and followed Demos across the car park. It was dark now, the lights from Palm Springs glowing like phosphorescence in the distance.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the Batmobile,’ laughed Suki.

  26

  We stopped by a huge RV bus with West Virginia plates. Harvey went to unlock the door. This was the Batmobile? I took another look. It was vast and cruddy-looking. There was a sticker across the bumper saying, Honk if you love Jesus! and a Children on board warning sign with a smiley face leered out at us from a side window.

  ‘Good getaway car, huh?’ said Demos in my ear.

&n
bsp; ‘Er, yeah,’ I mumbled, as he pulled me up into the back.

  Inside was a whole other story. It looked like there was room to sleep a small army, with space for a ballroom at the back just in case they got bored with the flat-screen surround-sound home cinema system. Cream leather sofas lined two sides, and at the back was a darkened corridor that appeared to have several doors leading off it. This must be what if feels like to be a groupie on a tour bus, I mused as I stood there gawping, while the others started to move around and make themselves at home.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Amber asked Demos as she curled up on one of the seats.

  ‘To Joshua Tree.’

  ‘Cool,’ squealed Nate. ‘I love U2.’

  Suki raised her perfect eyebrows at him and shook her head. His face fell momentarily, then he punched her lightly on the arm and they fell onto the seats and started to giggle together.

  I watched as Harvey climbed into the driver’s seat up front, with Bill in the passenger seat next to him. They started messing around with a sat nav screen that emerged at the press of a button from a dash lit up like the flight deck of a plane.

  Demos disappeared down the corridor and into one of the rooms at the back of the bus and I looked around for somewhere to sit. Amber and Ryder were lounging on one of the sofas opposite Nate and Suki. I edged towards them. I’d take the loved-up couple over the hyped-up, mind-reading, U2-loving duo.

  ‘Hi,’ I said as I sat down. This was slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘Hi,’ they said back, smiling at me.

  They were waiting for me to say something. My mind went completely blank.

  ‘So – what’s a sifter?’ I blurted out.

  Ryder threw his head back and laughed. ‘Straight to the point. I like it.’

  Amber leant her head back against his shoulder and kissed the underside of his jaw. I waited for the searing stab of envy. But it didn’t come.

  Amber started to laugh and shake her head, her curtain of flame-coloured hair undulating around her, if that was physically possible. ‘You are so funny.’

  ‘Huh?’ I stared at her, confused.

  ‘I get these waves and waves of emotion off you. It’s never still, never one colour. It’s like tuning into a rainbow. It’s beautiful.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never been called a rainbow before.

  ‘Young love.’ Ryder laughed and kissed Amber on the top of her head.

  Young? I’d been in love with Alex for seventeen years, give or take a few. It wasn’t young love.

  I turned to Amber. ‘So, you can see emotions like colours?’

  ‘Mmm, colours. If I try, I can change the colours, make feelings go away. With your brother earlier, that was horrible. But with you and Alex, it’s . . .’ she laughed to herself, ‘. . . it’s so . . .’ She shook her head, trying to find the word. I waited with bated breath. So what? ‘. . . So extraordinarily lovely. You have to understand, I’m mostly around worry and fear, so it’s nice to be around happiness once in a while.’

  I looked at Ryder. It looked like she was around happiness more than just once in a while. He was good-looking. Very good-looking. And very adoring. I grinned at him some more. He wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as Alex, though.

  He noticed me looking at him and a slow, easy smile crossed his face. ‘So, Lila, Demos got you onside, then?’

  The question surprised me. ‘Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. So much to get my head around. But I guess so. I mean – the photo of him and my mum. And what he said about the Unit. And all of you . . .’

  What I meant, was that just these few hours with them had dispelled so many fears. None of them were in any way intimidating. They were all lovely. OK, I still didn’t get my mother’s thing with Demos, but everyone else was so kind.

  ‘We’re not too bad,’ he said, cocking a smile at me.

  I was suddenly reminded of the photograph I’d seen of Ryder on Jack’s computer and the list of crimes beneath it. Were any of them true?

  Ryder noticed my change of mood. ‘So what did Alex and Jack tell you about us?’

  ‘Ryder!’ Amber poked him in the ribs.

  I blanched. ‘Er, they didn’t tell me much. What I know I heard from Key and from the files I found on the computer.’ I couldn’t catch his eye. ‘It wasn’t exactly flattering.’ I looked up and saw he was looking at me quizzically. ‘I thought Demos killed my mum. That’s what Jack thinks too.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘Yes. I know that now. But all the newspaper reports, what the police told us about how she was murdered . . .’ I shuddered, recalling the nightmare I always had.

  ‘Do you want me to take that away?’

  I looked at Ryder, confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The image you have in your head. Do you want me to take it away?’

  ‘That’s what you do?’

  ‘Yes. Sparingly.’

  Did I want to not have the image of my mum lying dead in a pool of blood in my head?

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded.

  Amber adjusted herself, moving along the seat to give him space. Ryder sat forward and placed one hand on the side of my head, his index and middle fingers on my temple. He stared at me and I noticed his eyes were grey. A really unusual colour, like a pebble thrown up by the waves on a stormy beach.

  ‘OK, it’s gone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about your mum.’

  I closed my eyes. There was my mum, laughing and trying to put hair clips in my hair before my first day at school. Then a memory of her carrying a cake with eight candles on it and singing me ‘Happy Birthday’. I started smiling as I recalled another memory of her lying curled up next to me reading Harry Potter.

  ‘What did you just do?’ I asked, looking at Ryder in wonder. I hadn’t remembered any of those things in so long.

  ‘Nothing.’ Ryder leaned back into the seat, stretching his arm out, and Amber fell into him, leaning her head against his chest. They were so adorable.

  Amber laughed again.

  A voice interrupted the laughter. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  I looked up. Demos was standing over us.

  ‘Not at all.’ Ryder moved his feet out of the way and Demos sat down next to him.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘I think so,’ I mumbled.

  He didn’t seem to hear me. ‘We’re going to be meeting them in an hour or so.’

  My heart started to skip a path through my ribcage.

  ‘I need your help.’

  I eyed him suspiciously. ‘With what?’

  Demos fixed me with one of his looks and I felt my muscles constrict. ‘We need to stop them, Lila.’

  No. I needed to be back with Alex and to go with him and Jack somewhere far away.

  Suki appeared and dropped to the floor by Demos’s feet.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked nervously, glancing at them both.

  ‘We need you to convince Jack and Alex to fight on our side,’ Demos said.

  I felt four sets of eyes on me, and I could have sworn Harvey threw an anxious glance at me too, via the rear-view mirror. ‘Fight?’ I said the word as though it was an unfamiliar concept.

  ‘Yes. Fight.’

  No. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. There was going to be no fighting happening.

  Demos looked over at Suki. She pressed her lips together until they went white and shook her head at him. He looked back at me.

  ‘Lila. Please.’

  I looked around me. Everyone was fixing me with pleading looks. ‘How are you going to fight them?’ I asked. ‘What can we do? Alex said the Unit operate under an even higher authority than the President.’

  A little smile started to lift the corner of Demos’s mouth. ‘If we have Rachel, we’ll have leverage.’

  ‘But Alex told me the Unit would never exchange or barter for anyone.’

  ‘They w
ill for her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Demos narrowed his eyes at me in surprise.

  ‘Don’t I know what?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t.’ Suki was shaking her head.

  ‘What?’ I asked again.

  ‘Rachel’s father owns Stirling Enterprises.’

  ‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. Surely my facility for surprise was totally neutralised by now. I leant back into my seat, suddenly relieved. ‘Well, in that case, you don’t need me. Or Jack or Alex. You have all the leverage you need. You just said so.’

  ‘No.’ Demos was shaking his head at me. ‘It’s not enough. We need people who know how the Unit operates, who can help us to stop them from the inside. We need Jack and Alex.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lila, I don’t think you have fully understood what your life will look like if you run from this. You will spend the rest of your days hunted. You will not be able to go home. You will not be able to see your father. You will not be able to settle in one place for longer than a few days, a week at the most. You will always be looking over your shoulder, wondering if they’ve caught up with you. They won’t leave you alone. You know too much and, genetically, you’re too valuable. They will find you. They will kill Alex and Jack, like they killed your mother, and they will contain you.’ He paused. ‘Am I making myself clear?’

  Crystal, I thought. I sat there, unable to move, my head whirring through the options. Could we run? Would we have a chance?

  ‘You can’t run, Lila,’ Suki said.

  I frowned at her. Why couldn’t I?

  ‘The Unit killed your mother, Lila,’ Demos said. ‘Don’t you want revenge? Isn’t that what Jack and Alex have been after all these years? Don’t you think they’ll want the chance to stop them?’

  My head snapped up and I glared at him. He knew he had me. In that one instant, I knew I would stay. I didn’t have any other option. And if Jack and Alex could be made to believe, I knew there was nothing on this earth that would stop them from going after revenge.

  Demos scented victory. ‘We need to fight back. And to do that we need Alex and Jack to join us.’

  I stared at him for a long while until Suki started to grin. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll help. What do you want me to do?’