This Is Our Undoing

by Lorraine Wilson

  She watched the photos load and vanish, load and vanish, aware that she was cold despite the day’s heat pressing through the open door like the edge of a wave, aware that there were a dozen things she ought to be thinking about but, for the moment, could not.

  Xander, she thought. The tablet pulled up a photo of a bear, a large male, raised up on his hind legs to drag his massive claws down a tree, shedding bark like confetti. Another of him doing the same, then a third at the next camera, head low to some bushes. Sloes, Lina thought. Early, but perhaps the bear did not mind.

  Xander turning over the earth of her secrets. Her father meeting James. ESF weighing the risk of him as political friction, as a hostage. London knowing they had both known James, but not knowing how deeply, not yet. And certainly not knowing what other secrets Lina and her father were hiding.

  ESF had promised to protect her from her own past, but her mother’s... Thiago had put it more bluntly than she would dare. If a State were determined enough, there’s always someone who’ll take the job. This place was safe as long as that oldest, deepest secret stayed hidden, the one James had not betrayed, although she would have forgiven him a thousand times over if he had. But he had not, and London did not know, and so there was hope.

  Why had he been with her father though?

  ‘Jeric… Genni,’ she said, jerking into movement.

  Genni was listening to music, head moving, and did not look up when Lina opened the door.

  ‘You got a call through with Dad?’

  Lina took a breath and came into the room, lowered herself to sitting on the floor by the bed. ‘Not yet.’ She would have to tell her at some point. But not yet. Genni narrowed her eyes and moved to turn her music up, but Lina touched her hand, stopping her. ‘I need to ask you something.’

  Genni pulled away, her dark eyes wary suddenly. Too quick, Lina thought. Still too quick to fear. And bloodstained messages left for her to find were not helping.

  ‘Can you remember Dad meeting a man called James? He was…’ she stopped, pressing a hand into her solar plexus. ‘He was taller than Dad, black, a little darker than you. Shaved head, my age, he had...’ The room fractured at the edges. ‘He had a soft voice, a Bristol accent. He–’ But she couldn’t. His hand touching the nape of her neck, the way he would smile before opening his eyes in the morning. She couldn’t. She lifted her chin and blinked desperately up at the wall above the window where ladybirds were gathered in a small, vermilion cluster.

  ‘Yeah,’ Genni said when Lina had almost forgotten what she had been asking. ‘He came to the house one night. They talked. I didn’t hear what about.’

  Lina nodded, still avoiding Genni’s eyes.

  ‘Lina,’ Genni did not sound angry anymore, more timorous, which was almost worse. ‘Why? Does it matter? It was only that one time.’

  She blinked and forced herself to look at her sister, who had come so far, and half of it alone. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t change anything, but you’re sure you didn’t hear anything they said?’

  ‘Was he your friend? Is he the reason we–’ Genni stopped, her small face showing that anger again, concern, anger.

  No, Lina wanted to say. I am the reason. Whatever had taken James to her father’s door, he would never have been there if he and Lina had not known one another, loved one another. ‘Maybe,’ she said weakly. ‘I think it’s why London was bothered about you guys getting away.’

  ‘So it was about you.’

  Genni’s breath hitched and she began to bite her fingernails; there was blood in the corner of one as if she had bitten into the skin. Lina reached up and pulled her hand away.

  ‘You’ll hurt yourself,’ she said quietly. ‘No. He would never have gone to Dad unless it was important, and I ... I am not important anymore.’ Her voice and the words were far more forlorn than she had intended.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Genni said, and Lina pulled away, shocked. ‘You’re all he ever talks about. Lina this and Lina that. So brave and clever and good.’ She scooted back on the bed. ‘But you ran away didn’t you, so you’re not that brave. And when you and ... James made trouble, you didn’t come and get us, did you? You sat here and made us go through... There were dogs, and the boat was ... the waves, it was so dark, and then Dad, I saw the man knock into him and I didn’t know, I thought he just stumbled but he didn’t, and he didn’t say anything till we were at the house then he collapsed and there was blood all over him, and you weren’t there cos you were hiding here. So you aren’t good or brave, are you? And it’s your fault, Lina. It’s yours.’ She stopped, hauled in a breath that was as jagged as a wound and Lina fell into the silence with her whole heart.

  ‘I know,’ she said, her hands on the bed inches from Genni’s drawn-up feet, Genni’s breathing almost frantic. ‘I know it’s my fault, and you’re right, I’m not brave, and I am hiding here, but I can’t leave because that would just make everything worse.’

  ‘How?’

  Lina shook her head, tears finally escaping. ‘I can’t explain,’ Genni reared back and Lina couldn’t blame her. ‘It’s to keep you safe, Genni. I know you don’t believe me, but everything I’ve done has been to try to keep you safe.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ She was shutting down, the anger being pulled behind some terrible wall, and Lina had no idea how to stop it.

  ‘I know,’ she said. But if she told Genni who Xander and Silene were and how Xander was probing and probing, how their father was waiting in a Slovak jail to see which way the chips would fall, then would Genni be able to say nothing? Show nothing? Xander was both a hacker and State, and perhaps greatest of all he was a son in need of revenge. Silene was State, and ... more than a little odd, and Lina was frightened by her unpredictability, the harm an irrational act could inflict.

  ‘When Dad is here, I’ll be able to explain everything because we’ll all be safe. But until then, you have to trust me.’

  ‘Get out,’ Genni spat the words, raising her voice raggedly. ‘Get out!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thiago got back before the software had finished filtering camera images. Lina only realised he was there when he laid a warm hand on her shoulder, and when she flinched he held himself still until she relaxed again. Just that warm touch and his unshakable presence. She wanted to lean into him but dared not.

  ‘No luck?’ he said, watching the images on one screen as she opened up a map window on another.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But look.’

  She had taken the map layer of camera locations and run them by motion capture and by time. The time lapse played once, then again.

  ‘The shadow.’ Thiago removed his hand and Lina fought the urge to pull it back. He dragged up a stool next to hers and scrubbed a hand roughly over his face and scalp. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I’m just checking the beginning and end of its track,’ she said. It had not been present long, nor travelled far. She returned to a file window, searching for camera ID and timestamp.

  ‘Lina,’ Thiago said.

  His voice had changed and she spoke to stop him speaking. ‘I thought it had stopped, but now with this guy vanishing and the shadow ... what if it was him all along? Hiding? They said he was ex-military, and he’s Drowned State – what if it’s some tech? It could–’

  ‘You’ve been crying.’

  ‘–be electromagnetic. That would–’

  ‘Lina.’

  She stopped talking, stopped scrolling blindly through filenames.

  ‘Lina,’ he repeated very gently.

  Staring at her screen because she couldn’t look at him, she whispered, ‘Slovak State have Dad. And James is dead.’ And if Xander unearthed her secrets then her father was as good as dead and so was she. ‘Genni blames me, and she’s right.’ She was not crying now, although it felt like she was. Thiago’s gaze was on her as warm and stead
y as his hand had been.

  ‘Slovak State aren’t like London. He’ll be okay,’ he said finally.

  It was what she had been telling herself, but only with Thiago saying so did she believe it. ‘He’s hurt,’ she said.

  ‘They’ll take care of him,’ he paused. ‘I’m sorry about James.’

  She turned to look at him finally and his eyes were softer than they’d ever been, reflecting heartbreak. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘T, I can’t–’ Believe it, grieve him, forgive myself for leaving him…

  ‘I know,’ Thiago said. Then, ‘Let me deal with this.’ Thiago nodded his head at the tablets. ‘You spend some time with Genni. She’ll come around. She loves you.’

  Lina shook her head. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  Pulling the screens towards himself, Thiago shot her a half-smile, leavened. ‘I am.’ Then he looked at the screens and paused, one hand raised.

  Lina leaned forward slowly. ‘What’s that?’ she said, but it was obvious. Even with branches swaying and the night-vision image turning everything greyscale, the shape on the ground at the edge of the picture was perfectly clear.

  This was why neither the human filter nor the large mammal filter had picked him up.

  Thiago swore a low stream of impenetrable Spanish and Lina could not stop looking at the figure in the image. His pack was still on his back so he had fallen awkwardly, his face half in moonlight a theatre mask of high cheekbones and black hair. There was no-one else in the image, and no-one in the image before. Then the shadow, and the camera had only triggered again two hours later when a fox crossed the corner of the screen, tail held high.

  Thiago pushed to his feet, his blade scraping against the floor in protest. ‘I’m going out. Don’t tell the kid.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ She was standing too, for the moment feeling nothing but a strange buzzing tension. ‘I was going to go to Beli Iskar anyway, there was another–’

  ‘No!’ Thiago caught himself, consciously softened his voice. ‘Stay, Lina. It’ll be easier for me to do it alone.’

  ‘T, don’t be stupid.’

  He grinned at her, but there was a darkness behind it. ‘Stay with Genni. She needs you.’

  Watching him swing into the truck again, she tried to fathom why he had said it would be easier. Was it that they would talk to him more freely without her, or that he meant to threaten them and did not want her to watch him do so. From the way he had moved, the tension, she guessed the latter and wished she could tell him that the parts of himself that were capable of violence did not disgust her, nor frighten her. It would have been hypocrisy in a way; they were both only products of a world made by evil men.

  Xander pushed the door wide and came into the room breathing heavily. ‘Where’s he gone?’

  Lina closed the image on the tablet. ‘Gone to ask for help from the locals.’ She looked up at him and realised the time. How was it still early? She felt husked and a little beyond herself, like she might not be able to stop herself from saying unspeakable things simply because there were so many of them overspilling her mind.

  What are you looking for, she could say, when you search the net for me? And what will you do with what you find? Perhaps even, What will it take to make you stop?

  ‘It’s lunchtime,’ she said instead. ‘Shall we go up?’ When he didn’t move out of the doorway, she added, ‘He won’t be back for a while. You may as well eat.’

  Her sister was curled on the bed, headphones on and her fingers moving across her screen. Fear grabbed at Lina’s throat but she had to trust her, didn’t she? ‘Genni,’ she said, ‘coming for lunch?’

  ‘No.’

  Lina studied the floor at her feet, indecision and heartache vying for control. ‘I’ll bring some food back,’ she said eventually. ‘But you will come up for supper, okay?’

  No answer. Still typing.

  Better anger than mistakes, she thought, and straightened her shoulders. ‘You are being careful, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am. I’m not stupid.’

  Lina left her there. It should not hurt really, being the target of a child’s directionless anger, but it did.

  Silene was in the main room, staring red-eyed at nothing Lina could see. Xander was already loading his plate from the food waiting out, and Kai was sitting on the balcony again. He had fitted his thin limbs through the railing and was humming softly. She could not see his face or hands from where she watched him, but she thought he was holding something, studying it as his feet swung over the empty air. The sun was on his bare arms but he was still so very pale. ‘Be careful you don’t burn, won’t you?’ she said, and he turned his face enough to cast a glance at her, then at Silene.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t you come in and eat.’

  Silene was watching her, and her eyes were widening, a hand coming up to press over her mouth, painted nails digging into the cheek. ‘Stop it,’ she said, a whisper like a shout. ‘Stop it.’

  Lina looked at her; Kai and Xander both turning as well.

  ‘You have to ignore them,’ Silene said in that same brutal whisper and Lina could not help herself.

  ‘He’s a child, for Christ’s sake. He’s your child!’

  Silene was shaking her head, her hand slipping from her face leaving red crescents in her cheek, touching her skirt pocket as if for reassurance and backing away. ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No, no, you don’t understand. He’s not–’

  ‘Mum, what the fuck?’ Xander cut her off and Lina wanted to kiss him for sparing Kai whatever their mother had been about to say. Wanted to weep, too, because this was not what mothers were meant to be, and was it not bitterly ironic that a mother who did not love her child got to live, yet a mother who did, died. Although...

  No. Lina stopped herself. It was unfair and a betrayal, and she had done exactly the same, so how could she fail to understand, to forgive.

  ‘Who are you?’ Silene said suddenly, her eyes on Lina almost feverish. ‘Who are you working for? Did they send you to watch me? Because I won’t let you. I’ll stop you; you know I will.’

  ‘Silene,’ Lina began.

  Silene threw herself towards Xander. ‘Darling, tell her it wasn’t my fault.’ Clutching at his arm. ‘It was him, I always said, didn’t I? I always said he would go too far one day but he didn’t listen, darling. You know. Tell her.’

  Who was she talking about? Lina thought. Kai had risen to his feet now, disentangled from the railings and distantly Lina realised what he was holding. A rib bone from something medium-sized. Badger, cat, fox. A boy clutching a bladed bone.

  ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Xander said, pulling away with a jerk that made his mother stumble. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Just go and lie down or something, you’re acting crazy.’

  The word hung in the silence and Silene’s face yellowed to parchment, old bones. She looked like she might faint, but instead breathed in sharply and somehow straightened. ‘Alexander Wiley!’ Xander folded his arms across his stomach but faced her without blinking. ‘Everything I have done has been to protect you. Your father did not understand. He put his career first and didn’t care if that put you at risk. He–’

  ‘What? How did he put me at risk?’

  ‘Oh darling.’ her anger was gone as quickly as it had come, her hand coming up as if she might stroke Xander’s face. ‘The things you do online. They would arrest you if they knew. And Christof ... not everyone liked what he was doing, you know, with the camps.’

  At the edge of Lina’s vision, Kai seemed to flicker as if the sun and his own past were trying to erase him. Silene saw her looking and stepped in front of Xander. ‘Leave us alone,’ she hissed, her gaze flicking from Lina to the balcony and back, strangely unfocused, one hand slipping into the pocket of her skirt, clutching at something. Tablets, Lina thought. Tablets. ‘Just le
ave us alone. It wasn’t us. It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Jesus, Mum!’ Xander was the one grabbing at her now, pulling her towards the stairs and for a blind moment it looked like he might push her down them, but he went with her, half-dragging. ‘Would you shut the fuck up?’ he was saying. ‘She knows it wasn’t you, okay? She knows that.’

  ‘Not her,’ Silene said. They were on the second floor now, their voices slowly muffling. ‘I didn’t mean her.’

  Xander replied, exasperation making his voice rise, but Lina didn’t catch the words because Kai had moved out of the sunlight into shade, still oddly ephemeral, which was no surprise really. None at all. He here with his lovelessness and Genni across the courtyard with her anger; Lina could hate the world so vastly at moments like these that it felt impossible to be so full of rage and still breathe.

  She set plates at the table for Kai and herself, unsure where Iva or Anais were but suspecting they were timing their work to avoid seeing anyone. Perhaps Lina could have done the same, but although at first she hadn’t done so because she needed to look unremarkable, now, she realised, she was here because of this child. His thin fingers toying with the bread and refracted sunlight making his eyes gold.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll find Dev,’ Kai said eventually, jolting Lina out of tangling thoughts of abandoned children and her father, blood on concrete and James’ face when they had said goodbye. Silene saying, Who are you? I’ll stop you.

  She looked at the child beside her and said carefully, ‘Have you met Dev? Do you like him?’

  Kai shrugged very slightly. ‘He came when Christopher Wiley died. Then he left again.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ she asked, tiptoeing around the minefield of this boy’s life.

  He shrugged again, scattered breadcrumbs over the table like seeds. ‘He catches pirates.’