Fractured

by Teri Terry

  ‘What a good idea,’ she says, and manages to slot herself in by my other side. A tight squeeze.

  I must drift to sleep. Hours later when I wake, the room is dark, and the only one still with me is the cat.

  The numb blankness is seeping away, leaving nothing but pain behind. I cry for the little girl I was, who I can’t even remember apart from the fact that she loved her dad. I cry for him, and all he did to try to rescue her, no matter how she ended up there in the first place. I cry that I failed him, utterly: never forget who you are, he said, and I did. I cry for Katran, whose flaws were obvious, but whose caring was not. When he could have run, got away like Nico, he came back for me. Trying to save me led to his death.

  And I cry for myself, who I am now. Where is my place in this world?

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  * * *

  A Lorder comes for me days later. Another black van out front early morning, and I suppress the urge to run, to hide. Where am I going to go? And I wonder if it is the back or the front of the van for me today. Have they worked out it was because of me that Dr Lysander was a prisoner in the first place?

  But the Lorder gets out and opens the passenger side door, and off we go. Take me to your leader – a random thought I almost say out loud, and have to clamp down a hysterical giggle that works its way up my throat.

  We drive on a while. ‘Where are we going?’ I try, but the driver stays silent.

  In the outskirts of London we go through a secure, guarded gate, into an ugly concrete building with thick walls. Looks like it is meant to withstand angry citizens.

  I follow him out of the van to an office door. He gestures, and I go in. I hear the click of a lock behind me.

  There is a huge wooden desk, plush chairs. I stand, uncertain, then think oh what the hell, and give in to the urge to sit on the massive desk chair. It reclines and spins, and I’m giving it an experimental twirl around when the door opens.

  Coulson.

  Katran’s killer. He stares at me and I stare back, unflinching on the outside, unwilling to let him see the pain, the fear. Inside all I see is his hands, the gun in them, Katran, and—

  He narrows his eyes, and I spring out of the chair.

  ‘Lucky for you I’m in a good mood today,’ he says, though his words and the fact that I’m still alive are all there are to show for it. His features are as expressionless and cold as always. ‘Sit, there,’ he barks, pointing at a chair opposite his desk, and I scramble to obey.

  ‘We had an arrangement,’ he says. ‘You haven’t done things in exactly the way I would have preferred, yet the result is satisfactory. Shortly we’ll be transporting you to the hospital to have your Levo removed.’

  I look at the useless thing on my wrist. Wow. What a great prize. Of course, he doesn’t know that my Levo is useless. He must think I’ve been on Happy Pills all this time to stop from going under.

  ‘But there is one other thing you must do for us.’

  Everything twists and tumbles inside. ‘What is that?’

  ‘If you see or hear anything of Nico, let us know.’

  If there is anyone I’d enjoy turning in to the Lorders, it is Nico, yet I’m filled with disbelief. ‘He’s not been captured?’

  A quirk of annoyance crosses his face. ‘No. But we have dismantled most of his evil little plans.’ His lips curl up in grim satisfaction. ‘Much of that down to you.’

  And I flinch, inside. Once I saw things clearly, I didn’t want to be part of Free UK, part of their explosions and death. But dismantled Free UK plans means captures, arrests. Slatings and death sentences. Because of me, the Lorder grip is stronger than ever.

  My fault. And Nico, still on the loose, his plans in disarray, will blame me. ‘He’ll come after me,’ I say, in a small voice, hating myself for saying it, and like that: an unspoken protect me behind it. I don’t want help from Lorders.

  ‘We’ll be keeping an eye on things.’

  But why haven’t they always kept an eye on things? ‘There is something I don’t understand,’ I start to say, then pause. He says nothing; permission to continue? ‘If you were watching me, why not on Armstrong Memorial Day? Why’d I just get in. No questions, no checks. Nothing.’

  Is there a flash of anger in his eyes? It is gone so quickly I can’t be sure. ‘That is not your concern.’ There is a knock at the door. ‘Time for you to go to hospital,’ he says.

  ‘One more thing,’ I dare to say as I stand. ‘You said you’d tell me what happened to my friend. Ben Nix.’

  He looks up. ‘Oh, yes. Ben. Unfortunately, he died,’ he says but there is nothing on his face that takes in ‘unfortunate’. At best, disinterest, distaste.

  The ground feels unstable under me, my knees wobbling. No. It can’t be. Can it?

  I pause at the door, look back. ‘What happened?’ I choke out.

  ‘Seizures when his Levo was cut. Don’t worry, that can’t happen to you today, not at the hospital.’

  I stumble out after the Lorder driver, relief almost tripping me up. For one horrible moment, I thought something had happened to Ben in these last days since I saw him running at that school. But no, he said it happened when his Levo was cut off. He’s lying.

  Soon I’m in Dr Lysander’s office at New London Hospital.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I start, but she raises her hand, wraps it around her ear, mouths ‘later’. She must have found out her room is bugged.

  ‘Today we are removing your Levo. There are no significant risks having this done in hospital.’ She drones on about this, that and the other, while my mind wanders.

  I grip my Levo at my wrist. It has been there a long time. Ruled my life when I first had it: too much misery or anger, and it caused painful blackouts; more, and it could have killed me.

  Yet…some part of me still misses that control. It made it impossible to really feel pain past a certain level. And when it is gone, what then? Realisation floods in all at once.

  ‘Come along now, Kyla,’ Dr Lysander says, standing by the door.

  We leave her office.

  ‘I don’t want it to come off. Does it have to?’

  ‘No. At least, I don’t think so; I could check how prescriptive is this Lorder request. But why keep it?’

  ‘Everyone will know. I can never be the person I was.’

  ‘After everything that has happened, could you go back to being her, in any event?’ she asks, gently. We get to the lift, and again she cups a hand about her ear, shakes her head. The lift is bugged, too?

  We go down several flights to a treatment floor. Nurses bustle about, with patients in wheelchairs, or unconscious on gurneys.

  She beckons me into a small office. A man typing on a screen looks up; she gestures, and he leaves.

  ‘Now we can talk properly,’ she says, and sits down. ‘What worries you about the Levo going?’

  ‘The only way I could get rid of it and not be taken by Lorders is if they did it. Everyone will know. They’ll think I’m some sort of Lorder spy.’

  ‘This is probably true. Yet do you think they won’t suspect that, anyhow?’

  And I think of the Lorder vans coming and going at our house, and all the missing people linked to me, however unfairly. Watchful eyes and voices that whisper will put things together. I sigh. ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘There is another consideration,’ she says.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Nico. Sources tell me he hasn’t been captured. As long as you have that Levo, you are a visible Slated. He could revive his plan to use you in an attack, to show the world a Slated can be violent. Without it, he cannot.’

  ‘No. I’d never do it. He can only use me if I forget what happened, and I’m holding onto every detail.’ Years ago I was forced to forget the pain of my fathe
r’s death at Nico’s hands: think how different things would have been if I’d remembered? I would never have fallen under his spell.

  ‘Shall we get on with this, then?’ she says.

  ‘First, I have a question.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I have some fragments of memories from before I was taken by the AGT. But I don’t remember anything of my home before, my mother: nothing. Can I get these memories back?’

  ‘There are a few possibilities. Memories you have consciously suppressed as part of Rain’s life may be accessible: but to find them, you need the right triggers. This personality fracture they induced? I don’t know how deep, how far it went. If the other half was Slated, it should be gone, yet…’ And her voice trails off, her eyes inward looking, thinking, and I force myself to stay quiet, not interrupt.

  ‘There may be a way to get those back also,’ she says, finally. ‘Surgically reconnect the severed paths to make them accessible once again. It is theoretically possible, but has never been attempted to my knowledge.’

  ‘What? I thought Slated means gone forever.’ My mind is spinning. ‘What about Ben? Could you reconnect stuff in his brain?’

  ‘Ben? I told you, Kyla, that we have no record of his location. As hard as it is to accept, even if he lives, he is lost to you.’

  Should I tell her? Even though so many in my life have proven they aren’t what they seem, after everything, and against all logic, she is one I trust.

  ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘He isn’t what?’

  ‘Dead, or lost. I know where he is.’

  Dr Lysander’s shock is strong when I explain Ben’s whereabouts, and how he is: no idea who I am, but not like a new Slated.

  ‘This is very disturbing,’ she finally says. ‘Anything they do there is unsanctioned by the Medical Council. Unethical.’

  ‘Slating is ethical?’

  She looks up, sharp. ‘It is,’ she says, but on her face are traces of doubt. ‘Would you rather have faced a death sentence? Like my friend, all those years ago.’

  ‘How can I know? I don’t remember!’ The words are bitter. But I’m fixed on what she said before. ‘So you could change Ben back.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t know what has been done to him. It would be far too risky to even consider.’

  ‘Risky, but possible?’

  ‘Theoretically, maybe. Now. We’ve been in here too long. Come along: let’s get that Levo off.’

  Minutes later, it is gone: my wrist an empty expanse of skin that is somehow wrong. Naked. Hospital removal was a simple matter of a machine, pushing some buttons and watching it spring apart, undone.

  I feel conspicuous, different.

  As if a big flashing sign floats over my head: see the Lorder spy!

  Back in her office, Dr Lysander opens her computer, motions me over to look, but keeps talking about nothing and everything at the same time.

  She goes into my records. My Levo number: 19418.

  She pauses, consults a list onscreen that says ‘inactive numbers’. Changes my number to 18736.

  I shake my head, not understanding.

  On a slip of paper she writes a single word: untraceable.

  It is only when I am halfway home in the Lorder van that I realise. If I’m untraceable now, that implies I was not, before. All she did was change my number on the computer, the same number that was on my Levo. How could I have been traceable with that number without my Levo?

  But there is something else. Something inside me: the chip in my brain that worked with my Levo. That is still there.

  I feel sick inside when it hits me: Coulson, tapping on his head when I asked how Cam tracked me. The chip in my head. Put in when I was Slated: they must be tracker chips. Like they use in dogs.

  Now that Dr Lysander has altered my records, changed my number, they can’t use mine to find me any more.

  Untraceable.

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  * * *

  ‘You can’t hide in the house forever,’ Mum says.

  ‘I know.’

  She kisses my forehead, then marches out into the drizzle and cold to her car for work. Amy has already left for school with Jazz, and Mum’s patience is wearing thin on my refusal to join them.

  I retreat back to bed with a cup of tea, a place I’ve been spending a lot of time lately. I know she’s right, but it is as if I’m in suspended animation. My stitches are out, wounds nearly healed, but inside, I’m processing things that happened; learning to live with loss, pain. Memories. A new experience for someone who was forced to forget.

  And questions are niggling away inside. I used to think getting caught when I was with Free UK, getting Slated, was just bad luck. I found I was wrong. Nico engineered it. I’ve lost the ability to accept coincidences; there are too many of them in my life. I just happened to be placed after Slating with Sandra Davis, the daughter of the Lorder hero? I just happened to be a Jane Doe, someone who miraculously has no DNA records that can be traced? They just happened to make a mistake on cell tests with my date of birth, so Slated me even though I was over sixteen? The Lorders never noticed a girl who looked just like me on the MIA website, and worked out who I was?

  And all that happened on Armstrong Memorial Day. It isn’t like Nico to have left so much to chance. And Coulson just overlooked having me monitored, searched, on that day of all days?

  Behind all my unanswered questions, vague ideas and plans are forming in the background, and one Ben-shaped necessity. But it is almost as if I am gathering my strength, waiting for something. For what, I don’t know.

  Then it happens.

  Bzzzz…bzzzz…

  A slight noise, more a vibration, and, without thought, I automatically reach for my wrist to where my Levo used to be.

  Bzzzz…bzzzz…

  My eyes fly open wide with shock. Nico’s com: it mimics the buzz of a Levo. I stashed it in my room, tossed it in a drawer before dashing off to rescue Dr Lysander. In case it was a tracker.

  Bzzzz…bzzzz…

  What do I do? I swallow. Better to know…

  I fish it out of the bottom of the drawer where it lay hidden and forgotten all this time, and push the button.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hello, Rain,’ a voice says, one I can never forget: Nico.

  ‘That isn’t my name. Not any more.’

  ‘A rose by any name would smell as sweet…’

  ‘Cut the bull. I remember you killed my father.’

  ‘Ah. Was that the reason for the treachery, Rain?’ His voice is cold. ‘No matter. We can begin again! All will be forgotten.’

  ‘Never. Anyhow, the Lorders had my Levo removed, so I’m of no use to you now, Nico. Come up with another plan.’

  I switch it off before he can reply, trembling. Will he accept my word, move on? Just let it go?

  Not the Nico I know and hate.

  And then I can’t stand having anything of him, here, in my room, in this house, for even a second longer. I rush to the open window and chuck the com out as far as I can. Once it leaves my hand I realise I’ll have to find and destroy it another time. Stupid. I watch as it glints in the early light, arcs partway across the lawn. Rests near the oak tree.

  I shut the window, turn back to bed, and—

  BANG!

  A wave of sound and something else pushes me across the room. I fall on the floor. Winded. Pain. I groan. Pull myself up, realise I’m covered in glass. Broken glass from the window. Stunned, confused. Smoke billows in, and I cough. What is happening?

  I stagger to the window. The tree is on fire. What is left of it.

  The same tree Nico’s com rested near seconds earlier.

  I stare, disbelieving. The com didn’t double as a tracker
, but as a bomb?

  The shock of realisation nearly knocks me from my feet. Nico insisting I couldn’t let him down, then his anger that I wasn’t at the second ceremony at Chequers. An outdoor ceremony, so no signal block like there would have been in the house. A ceremony where I would have been standing next to my family, and the current Lorder Prime Minister. The great and the good all around, as Cam called them. Nico didn’t just have a plan B; he had a plan C, too. Unknowingly, I was to be his suicide bomber. When they sifted through the rubble and found what was left of me to be the carrier of the bomb, with an AGT gun strapped to my arm, they’d have no doubt: a Slated who was beyond just violent. It would strike at all the Lorders do. Made all the Slateds a risk the Lorders couldn’t tolerate.

  Nico was going to kill all of us at that ceremony, but I ruined it by running off to rescue Dr Lysander. No wonder he was so angry!

  And now Nico has remote detonated it to kill me. Either he believed me when I said my Levo was gone, or he decided revenge was more use to him than anything else he could do with me.

  Or maybe he just called first, to make sure I had it on me.

  A giggle starts working its way up my throat.

  Settle!

  But I can’t help it, and soon I’m crouched on the floor, laughing, wincing at the pain the movement gives my cut back.

  Nico thinks I’m dead. And I laugh harder.

  And I’m untraceable by the Lorders. Thanks to Dr Lysander.

  Before the thought is fully formed I’m on my feet, stuffing a few things in a bag. Hastily checking my back in the mirror: just minor cuts. Some blood, but that has lost the power to unnerve me it used to hold. I throw clothes on and clench my teeth when pulling a jumper over my head. Physical pain I can ignore. Quick, now.

  Sebastian appears at the bedroom door, fur and tail completely fluffed out. That is one seriously freaked cat. There is a pang inside as I pick him up, give him a quick cuddle. ‘I wish I could take you with me, but I can’t. Look after Mum and Amy.’