But now they know she didn’t just wander away and get lost. Now the police have to try to find her again. This is his new hope.
CHAPTER 19
CALLIE
SHETLAND INSTITUTE, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 14 hours
BORED WITH WATCHING EVERYONE EAT FOOD I CAN’T HAVE, I follow some other people through a door when they leave, and explore. There’s a library and a movie theater. Individual rooms, like hotel rooms but more lived-in looking. Again, there are no windows, no clue if it is day or night. And there is no guessing by what people are doing: some are settling down to sleep, some are just getting up, others are arriving.
I’m wandering down another corridor when I hear someone singing—a voice I recognize.
The sound is faint; I home in on it, follow it. It comes from behind a closed door, but this is an ordinary one with a crack along the bottom. I flow under the door to the other side.
She’s still singing. That’s how I recognized her: Nurse 11. I wouldn’t have been able to from her face because there was never much of her that I could see in her suit. Now she’s in a nightgown, brushing her hair, singing along to quiet music.
She was nicer than some of the nurses and doctors. She was the one who sang to me when the pain was so bad. And the one who wouldn’t go with the doctors when they took me for their cure.
I stand there and watch her. Her face looks kind.
She turns off the music and gets into bed. There’s a book beside her, and she picks it up and starts to read.
There are pictures on her wall: children. Most are teenagers, older than me, but there is one girl who is younger than the others, probably about my age, twelve or thirteen. I stare at the photograph. Nurse 11 is smiling in this one, her arm half around this thin, pale girl who stares at the camera.
How could she work here and let them do things to me that she’d never let anyone do to this girl?
Anger twists inside me. She couldn’t go with the doctors to my cure because she didn’t want to think about what they were doing to me. That’s it, isn’t it?
There is a beep-beep through a speaker on the walls. She puts her book down and listens.
“Attention, please. This is not a drill. Go to your meeting points immediately and follow decontamination procedure one. Do not leave them unless told to do so.”
CHAPTER 20
SHAY
KILLIN, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 13 hours
WE’RE ON THE UNMARKED PATH NOW, and it gradually gets steeper. I’m used to it, and Kai isn’t breathing any harder than I am.
Like he feels my eyes on him, he turns his head and smiles. “You go up this on a bicycle?”
“Yes.”
“Do you walk parts of it?”
“I used to. Not anymore.” I grin.
“Why?”
I hesitate, then answer truthfully—surprised that I do. “It’s not like there’s much else to do around here, but that isn’t the reason. Pushing myself makes the world go away.”
He nods as if that makes perfect sense.
We keep going. The sun climbs higher in the sky as we zigzag up the slope. Light dapples through leaves above to make moving patterns on us, on the path. Then there’s a stretch where the sun breaks through and is warm on our faces.
I pause. “I think this is about where she was when I first spotted her. I was a bit farther up, and I saw something red moving below me through the trees. It was unusual to see anyone here; it’s not a marked trail. So I kept watching and wondered who it was.”
We walk on until we get to my place.
“This is where I was when I saw her. I always stop and lean against the bent tree there.” I point.
“Could you pretend to be her? Go where she was when you saw her, and I’ll stay here and be you?” he says. I hesitate. “Please.”
“All right.”
Kai settles himself against my tree. I walk back to where Calista would have been when I first saw her.
And I’m Calista. I remember how she moved, and I walk back up the path like her. Kai remembers what I told him I had said, and he says the same words. I jump and turn at the sound of his voice like she did; calm when I see him as me. Keep going. Say “no” when he asks again if I’m lost.
I walk up the path, and he follows behind. He catches up when I reach the road.
“There is something about you; some way of moving, the dark hair, I don’t know. For a moment I could imagine you were my sister.” The closed look he had before is replaced by pain, so stark and real that to see it makes me flinch.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop her, didn’t make her talk to me. If she’d gotten away from somebody, why wouldn’t she talk to me? I don’t understand. But I should have done something more. And if only we hadn’t gone away the next morning—I’d have heard she was missing and gone straight to the police.”
“Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one that should have been there. I should have been with them. Mum wanted me to go, but I was too busy with my friends,” Kai says, the torture inside him plain on his face. He blames himself, just like I have been. But neither of us is to blame, are we?
We weren’t driving the car that took her away.
CHAPTER 21
CALLIE
SHETLAND INSTITUTE, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 12 hours
THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Everywhere there are scared faces. Hurrying feet. The click of locking doors.
And then there is a new sound: many voices, high-pitched and panicked.
I follow the sound. It seems to be coming from the movie theater.
The lights are on; the movie is still running on the screen, ignored.
The woman who fell in the cafeteria is lying on the floor by the back row. Trembling, moaning. Suited people are by the doors and won’t let anybody out. There are angry faces, terrified faces, and people pulling away as far as they can and piling into the front of the theater. The two nurses I’d followed earlier are here. One of them is crying. The other has beads of sweat on her brow.
“I don’t feel very well,” she says.
She collapses, and her friend screams.
CHAPTER 22
SHAY
KILLIN, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 11 hours
THE RAW EMOTION that Kai’s eyes held before is gone. His jaw is clenched, like hiding it costs him effort.
“It’s not your fault, any more than it is mine.” I say the words because they have to be said. He nods, but I can see he doesn’t believe me. With his shields up again I’m not sure the meaning of the words even gets through to Kai.
We walk down the hill back to Killin in silence.
CHAPTER 23
CALLIE
SHETLAND INSTITUTE, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 10 hours
SOMEONE HAS FOUND THE SWITCH and turned off the movie that had been running on the cinema screen. No one was watching it anymore, but now their fear is louder.
Now they can hear the woman in the back row screaming in pain.
Suited figures collect the nurse who collapsed next to her friend at the front of the cinema and put her near the other sick woman at the back. Her friend doesn’t go with her.
Soon she’ll be screaming too. They both will.
CHAPTER 24
SHAY
KILLIN, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 9 hours
KAI GETS UP FROM OUR TABLE when he sees the policeman we are waiting for nearing the café. They shake hands, say a few words, and walk back over to me.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Dougal. Shay, is it?” He is dressed in ordinary clothes. He holds out a hand, shakes mine, and then sits in the empty seat opposite, next to Kai’s.
“Yes. I’m Shay.”
“Now, I hear from Kai that you think you saw his sister the day she went missing.”
“I don’t think I saw her; I saw her.”
“And that you didn’t come forward before because you wen
t away the next day and didn’t know she was missing.”
He smiles and his demeanor is friendly, but there is something about him I don’t like.
“That’s right.” I exchange a glance with Kai. Dougal sits down, orders a coffee. The waitress comes back to clear the remains of our late lunch from around us; I push my phone out of the way to the corner of the table.
Dougal takes out a little recorder thing and holds it up. “Is it okay with you if I use this?”
I shrug. “Fine.”
He turns it on and says his name, where we are, and the date and time. He looks at me. “Please state your full name.”
I glance at Kai and sigh. “Sharona Addy McAllister. Known as Shay.”
“All right then, Shay. Tell me what you saw on the twenty-ninth of June last year.”
So I tell him the whole story, with every little thing I can remember—especially about the man I saw and the car. Which, since I relived my memory over and over again late last night, is a lot. I even draw the top of the license plate of the black Mercedes on a napkin, though I’m not convinced they’ll be able to work it out from so little.
When I’m finally done, Dougal stops the recorder. He’s looking at me strangely. Kai is staring a little as well, and I realize I hadn’t told him all the extra things I remembered last night.
“That’s a lot of detail,” Dougal says finally.
“It’s all true.”
“Is it?” He’s skeptical. Even Kai is looking at me like he’s starting to wonder.
“I have a type of photographic memory. It’s a bit selective, so I don’t remember everything.” I pick up the menu and hold it up. “Like I don’t remember this word for word, because I wasn’t paying that much attention to it.”
“Yet you remember all that from almost a year ago.” He doesn’t believe me. I can tell he doesn’t.
“Fine. Let me show you.”
I look around us. The rest of the tables are empty now; the waitress is pretending to read a novel. She’s sitting close enough to us to listen, and she hasn’t turned a page anytime recently.
“Excuse me. Can I borrow your book for a sec?” I ask her.
She hands it over, and I look down and groan. Fifty Shades of Grey. That figures, doesn’t it?
“Pick a page, any page, then show it to me,” I say to Dougal.
He shrugs, flips it open, and hands me the book.
I glance at it for a split second—paying the right sort of attention. Then I give it back to him, still open, and point to the top of the page. Holding the image of the page in my mind, I start to read. Word for word. When I get to the third paragraph, things are starting to go very Fifty Shades, and thankfully he holds up a hand to tell me to stop. Color is rising in my cheeks.
I hand the book back to the waitress. Her mouth is hanging open. That’ll be all over town today and school by Monday. I sigh.
Dougal is tapping the table with a pen. “Right. Okay then, we’ll look into this. See if anyone can make sense of the license plate also.” He takes my napkin drawing. “If we find out anything, we’ll be in touch with you and your mother, Kai,” he says, and shakes Kai’s hand, then mine. He heads for the gate.
Kai is looking at me, eyes a little wide.
I sigh. “Okay, so now you know I’m a freak.”
“No. I think you are clever, amazing, and wonderful!” Kai grabs my hand, pulls me out of my seat, and hugs me.
His T-shirt is warm and soft against my cheek, the th-thump of his heart beating under it. I breathe him in and pay attention to every sensation: this, I will remember.
He lets go, and I pull away, standing there awkwardly.
“I hope you find her,” I say. “I hope she’s okay. Will you let me know?”
“Thank you. And of course I will, Sharona.”
I roll my eyes. “You’ve got both my secrets now.”
“If you’ve only got two, that’s not so bad. But I’ll tell you one of my secrets. It’s only fair.”
“What?”
He leans in closer. “My first name is really Geordie. You see why I go by my second name, Kai, now?”
I stifle a laugh. Geordie: a name used for people from Tyneside—the area around Newcastle—with that thick northern accent. “So you were Geordie the Geordie.”
“Five years ago, when we moved to Newcastle, you wouldn’t believe how many fights I got into because of having that name with the wrong accent. But I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine.”
“Deal. And now I’ve got to go. Mum’s waiting for me.”
“Goodbye, Shay. Thank you again.” His eyes are warm.
Somehow I pull mine away from his. Walk through the other tables and out the gate.
I glance at my watch. Mum had said to meet her at work and that she’d take me home. She might be wondering what’s happened to me by now, but I never said when I’d get there, so there’s no real rush. I want to be on my own for a while. Instead of going left up the road to her pub, I head right and for the park.
I glance back just before the café garden is out of sight. Kai is still standing by our table, watching. He holds up one hand. I wave in return, looking at him instead of where I’m going, and almost walk into one of the stone pillars at the park entrance. I hastily take a few more steps and look back again. He’s gone from sight.
Maybe he didn’t see that graceful moment.
Yeah, right.
I walk across the park, then hesitate by the wooden steps over the fence at the back. It leads to a hill path, one of my favorites on foot and steep enough to put most people off: somehow I don’t want to be around anyone right now. I climb the steps over the fence and cross the field beyond it to another fence, another set of steps, and enter the oak woodland. The path climbs steeply, but for once I’m not pushing myself; I walk slowly. I’m back in that moment when Kai hugged me.
Crazy, Shay. Our emotions were high because of Calista, and he was just thankful I gave him this hope to hang on to. That’s all it was.
But I’m holding the moment to myself; lost in it. A smile on my lips, remembering—
Hands grab my shoulders roughly from behind.
“Well, look who I’ve found, all alone. It’s just the two of us this time, my Sharona.”
CHAPTER 25
CALLIE
SHETLAND INSTITUTE, SCOTLAND
Time Zero: 8 hours
SOON IT’S NOT JUST IN THE MOVIE THEATER that people are screaming in pain. I wander down the corridors, into rooms, following the sounds of distress. People are sick everywhere.
They’re all going to die, and I’m glad. All these nurses, doctors, and techs, injecting people, watching and taking notes while they die; burning people to ash, vacuuming up what is left and hanging the bags in an endless room of death. They deserve it.
And the scientists and everyone down below us too. I don’t know how they’re involved in all this, but they must be. Some are quarantined in their control room—isn’t that what the nurse said? Though they did that too late: that woman who fell must have left before they stopped letting people out, and she was the first one here who was ill. She must have brought it along with her.
There is panic everywhere. There is lockdown between sections, people trying to contain what can’t be contained. Many who aren’t already sick are suited now, but there don’t seem to be enough suits to go around. They’re all scared, even the ones with suits; waiting to see if they got theirs on in time. If they will live or die.
They may deserve this, but who is it that made it all happen, from the very beginning? Who set this place up, decided they’d infect people like me with it, and watch them die?
It must be Dr. 1. He’s the one they all bow down to. Is he here? If he is, he’s the one who deserves this most of all. I want to watch him die. But where is he?
Who might know? There are a lot of people in the cafeteria, but no one is eating now. There is fear all over their faces, and none of them are wearing suits.
I drift around, listening. If he’s here I might not recognize him, as he’s always been in a suit; all I know for sure is that he’s tall. But I’d recognize his voice, for sure—like velvet.
Some are silent, sitting alone. Blank eyes staring straight ahead, like they’ve been switched off.
Some huddle together in twos and threes. Either crying and talking in low voices, or agitated and loud.
“I never told him, I should have told him. He won’t know what’s happened to me…”
“What’s going on? Why won’t they tell us what’s going on?”
“It’s my granddaughter’s twelfth birthday next week; I’ve got time off. We were going to go to Harry Potter world before her next round of chemo. I won’t see her again now, will I? I’ll never be able to tell her why I’ve been away and what we were doing here. We’ve failed. We haven’t found the cure.”
I stop, abruptly, at the last one. I recognize that voice and the rest of her too: it’s Nurse 11. Was her granddaughter the pale girl she was with in her photo?
“Her next round of chemo,” she said. Her granddaughter must have cancer, and she wants to cure her—is that what they are doing here? Experimenting on people to try to find a cure for cancer?
There’s a commotion by the door. Three more people are pushed into the room, and the doors shut behind them.
They turn and bang on the doors. “Let us out!”
A few others walk over to them. “What’s going on out there? Why aren’t they telling us?”
“The intercom has failed. They’re rounding up those who aren’t ill and bringing them here. The rest get hauled off somewhere else.”
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