by Kim Curran
I took a left, sliding over the bonnet of a car that blocked my way. It blasted its horn. I started to recognise roads, and knew home wasn’t far away, which always made it harder to stay in the moment.
I turned right, into the alleyway that would lead to my road, and slammed into a man who I knew hadn’t been standing there a second before.
CHAPTER NINE
I staggered back, my fists raised instinctively, and glared at the stranger.
He had badly cut dark hair and looked like he’d shaved with a knife. His grey eyes bored into mine.
“You,” I said, recognising him now, both from outside the Pyramid earlier and from the club a few days ago. “You’re a Shifter.”
It wasn’t a question. I was sure I’d sensed a Shift when he’d appeared at the top of the alley. An adult Shifter. Was it possible that the man we’d been hunting for had come for me?
“Anderson?”
The man flinched at the name and batted his hands in front of his face, as if trying to ward off invisible attackers.
“Are you Frank Anderson?” I said.
“No!” he roared. “Never. Never. Killer.”
He was clearly unhinged. Late stages of psychosis most likely. I’d have to get him back to ARES for an eval. “It’s OK,” I said, sliding off my backpack. “I’m going to get you help.”
I looked down to find my phone and suddenly my bag was wrenched out of my hand and thrown away.
“I don’t need help. I’m here to help you. Help you help her,” he said, his face an inch away from mine. His breath stank.
I stepped away, looking to my bag behind him. I could easily overpower him and get it back. But I wanted to take this one nice and slowly.
“It’s OK, Anderson.”
“Stop. Stop saying that name. I’m not Anderson!” He flinched again, holding his hand to his head. As he brushed the shaggy strands of hair away from his forehead I couldn’t see any scar. But it had to be Anderson.
“Sure,” I said softly, as if trying not to spook an animal. “What shall I call you then?”
“Jones. My name is Jones. Captain Thomas Aubrey Jones.”
I let what he’d just said sink in. Then snorted. “Aubrey Jones? Yeah right.” How he knew Aubrey’s name I didn’t know. Or where I lived, for that matter. But I was sure he was the man we’d been hunting for and I was going to bring him in. I laid a hand on his arm, in preparation to cuff him. I just had to get to my bag. He was faster than me. He twisted out of my grip, grabbed hold of my hoodie, and pushed me up against the alley wall.
“She’s dead. She killed her,” he said, stinking spittle covering my face.
“Who’s dead?” I said, still shocked from how quickly he had moved. I had to focus harder, to find a Shift that would get me out of this situation.
“She died in my arms. Only a child. So tiny. So perfect.” He let go of me and looked down at his empty hands.
“Who?” I said, readjusting my hoodie and slowly sliding away.
He looked up at me, tears filling his eyes. “Aubrey. Aubrey is dead.”
My mouth was suddenly dry. “She… she can’t be. I just left her.”
“Because the witch brought her back. Killed her, then brought her back. Wicked witch. Wicked. She made me her flying monkey.” He flapped his arms up and down, mimicking a flying thing. “She took my hope. My hope and my heart. Opened up the box and it flew up and away. Like Pandora. Like a monkey. Pandora, the witch.”
The fact he was clearly insane made up for the terror that had gripped my heart when he said Aubrey’s name. I took another step towards my bag.
“You have to stop her,” he said. “Not me. Not me. I have to stay away. To protect her. She’d take my baby away if I so much as tried. But you…” I froze in reaching for my bag as he looked at me again. Grey eyes the colour of a stormy sea. He reached out a gnarled finger. “You can stop her.”
“Stop who?” I said, hoping to placate him just long enough for me to call in back-up.
“The witch. The witch that killed my Aubrey. My daughter.”
“Your Aubrey? Are you… are you saying you’re Aubrey’s father?”
“Captain Thomas Aubrey Jones, Mapper, Fifth Class, reporting for duty.” He stamped to attention and pulled a salute that Sergeant Cain would have been impressed by.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re playing at. But Aubrey’s father wasn’t a Shifter. He was a waster who walked out on her when she was four. Now, I’m going to reach into my bag here and–”
He squatted down so his face was level with mine. “I had to leave her. It broke my heart. But the witch made me. She took my child. She took all the children. Now you have to stop her.”
“OK, sure,” I said appeasing him. “I’ll stop her. Where can I find this witch of yours?” I was scrabbling around in my bag, trying to find either my phone or my cuffs.
“Over the rainbow. Red and yellow and blue and green. Green. You have to find green.” He was staring ahead, gazing into whatever madness he was seeing.
“I have to find green. OK,” I said, nodding. My fingers were just on my phone. I looked down to grab it.
“Don’t forget green,” I heard him say.
When I looked back up, I was alone in the alley.
I ran to the end of it and looked left and right. Nothing but empty streets.
He’d vanished.
“Damn it!” I said, kicking the wall.
I called ARES anyway.
“Good evening, the Academy for Revolutionary Engineering Sciences?” the voice on the other end answered.
“Scott Tyler, Fixer, Third Class. Put me through to the Regulators.”
A few beeps later and a female voice answered the phone. “Speak.”
I rolled my eyes when I recognised the voice. “Lane,” I said. “It’s me, Scott.”
I heard her grunt from the other end. “What is it now, Tyler?”
“I need you to run a cross check on a location for an unlicensed Shift.”
“As if I didn’t have enough to do.”
“What is it?” I heard Lottie’s voice in the distance.
“It’s Tyler. Got himself in trouble again,” Lane said, not even bothering to cover the mouthpiece. “Go on then, Tyler.”
I checked my phone and read out the GPS coordinates of my location. I heard the rattle of keys from the other end of the phone.
After a minute, Lane sighed. “Nope. Nothing registering in that location. Is that all?”
I hung up without giving an answer.
No Shifts registered. How was that even possible? I’d sensed the Shift myself. Whoever he was, I’d just let him slip through my fingers.
I picked up my bag, threw it over my shoulder and headed for home. At least I knew what he looked like, that was one thing. But what all of that crap about Aubrey had been I didn’t know.
I kicked at the ground, so annoyed with myself. I couldn’t even think of a Shift I could make that would allow me to get the upper hand on him as I’d spent the last hour consciously not making any choices. I’d screwed up big time.
I crossed the road and looked at my house and the houses next to it. It filled me with a mild sense of relief. Whatever else happened to me this place stayed unchanged. The same mid-range cars parked in the driveways. The same doors painted a series of safe yet stylish colours picked straight out of catalogues. The same middle-class families going about their business behind those doors. Funny, how I used to hate this place, how turning into the top of my road used to make me feel sad and pathetic and like my life wasn’t going to go anywhere. Now, I embraced the boredom.
“I’m home,” I said, as I let myself in.
There was no response. Mum and Dad were shouting at each other from the kitchen. I really needed a glass of water, but I just couldn’t face them, not tonight.
I walked upstairs, my legs like jelly, to the top of the landing. As I walked past Katie’s room I heard a soft sobbing from inside.
I hesitated for a minute outside, letting my breathing calm down. She probably didn’t want me bothering her. She probably just wanted to get on with feeling miserable for herself. I know I would. But she was my little sister and I couldn’t just let her be alone.
I knocked softly.
“What?” Katie shouted.
I opened the door slightly and pushed my head in. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said in return.
There was no point in asking whether she was OK. Or if Mum and Dad were driving her mad. Of course she wasn’t. And of course they were.
“How was school?” I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
“Sucky.”
“What happened?” I sat on the side of her bed and picked up one of her teddy bears and stroked its ears.
“I got into St Francis.”
“What? I didn’t know you were applying.”
“Yeah, Mum made me. Went on and on about my future. So I sat the exam last week and got in.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Only they’re not giving full scholarships. Which means Mum and Dad will have to pay. Which is why they’re screaming at each other again.”
“Mum and Dad are screaming at each other because of Mum and Dad. They’d be screaming if you didn’t get in as well. I guess they just like to scream.” I took hold of her teddy’s arms and used it as a puppet version of Mum and Dad freaking out.
She laughed a little. “I don’t even want to go to that stupid school. Only weirdoes go there.”
“Hugo goes there,” I said.
“And?”
She had a point. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, you know?”
“Are you kidding me? They’ll make me. I’ll get the talk about not wasting my life like Dad from Mum and the one about not squandering my potential from Dad. I wish I’d never sat the stupid exam.” Katie scrunched up her eyes and clenched her fists hard. Like she was willing herself to undo the exam. Suddenly everything went quiet downstairs.
I felt a flutter in my stomach and looked at my little sister.
“Katie, did you just…”
It couldn’t be. Had my sister just Shifted?
“Did I just what?” she said, her big blue eyes clouded with tears.
I heard a thumping and Mum started yelling at Dad again.
“Nothing. Don’t worry.” My ability to sense Shifts was way off. Lucky I was a Fixer rather than a Spotter. I ruffled Katie’s hair and stood up. “I need a shower.”
“You’re telling me!”
I threw the teddy at her head. She caught it and squidged him under her chin. It reminded me of the yellow bunny from earlier. I wondered if the girl with the bunny mask still had it out there, somewhere.
“You can’t change it, you know?” I said.
“Change what?”
“Mum and Dad.”
Her forehead wrinkled and she scrunched up her little nose. “You’re so weird, Scott.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said as I closed her door behind me.
Back in my room, the buzzing in my head was louder than ever. How and why had Anderson tracked me down? What did he want, apart from spewing crazy stuff about witches and rainbows? And what did he want with Aubrey?
I kept hearing the name “Thomas Aubrey Jones” echoing in my head. What if… what if he hadn’t been lying?
I pushed a pile of folded clothes Mum must have left on my desk onto the floor, pulled my laptop out of my rucksack and ran a search for Thomas Aubrey Jones.
A file came up, with a picture of a young man wearing an ARES uniform. The picture must have been taken decades ago judging by the uniform and haircut. I looked at his dark hair, slicked over his forehead, his grey eyes, and imagined the face older, scarred and covered in dirt. It was just possible it was the man I’d met.
I slumped back in my chair. Had Aubrey’s dad really been a Shifter? It did run in families, I knew that much. Like Jake and Rosalie.
All of the information on Thomas Jones was redacted. Blacked out with a thick pen so all I could read was his name and rank: Mapper, Fifth Class. That was high ranking. I didn’t know anyone in ARES higher than Fourth.
“No,” I said out loud, shutting down the file. It couldn’t have been. The name Thomas Jones hadn’t been on the list of candidates for Project Ganymede. And I was almost certain I’d sensed the man in the alley Shift. Almost certain.
But maybe I’d been wrong. There’d been no register of the Shift. Maybe he’d just been able to move that fast naturally.
I dropped my head into my hands. Nothing was making any sense. On top of the mess in my head over the man in the alleyway, the memories of Vine as Prime Minister and the attack on the President were eating away like at me like a maggot.
To distract myself from stressing over Captain Thomas Jones, or whoever he really was, I pulled up another search: Benjamin Vine.
The files Aubrey and I had been looking at earlier appeared again. I enlarged a photo of Vine at a village fête, mentally layering the old image I had of him over the one on screen. The memory I had of him was of a stern man. Tired and worn out and always sad. But in this picture, as he held up what looked to be a Victoria sponge, he looked so happy.
I launched the file of Charlotte Vine and stared at the image of her on the edge of a cliff till I could see it when I closed my eyes.
Why wasn’t this enough for me? A good thing had happened and yet here I was picking at it like a scab. A dead girl had been brought back and was now living a life of meaning and value. A President had not been killed on foreign soil. Whoever had made the Shifts had brought about a better reality. Did I want to take that away just because I wanted things to stay as they were? Maybe Aubrey was right about Fixers being weird because we don’t like change.
She was right, I should just focus on the job at hand. Anderson. I should also tell Aubrey about how I’d met him. If that really was him.
I pulled out my phone, brought up her number, then stopped. What was I going to tell her? That a man claiming to be her father had turned up and told me she was dead.
If I called Aubrey at – I checked my watch – close on midnight, she’d freak. No, I’d have to wait. I’d tell her in the morning. I should just try to get some sleep and maybe everything would make sense tomorrow.
I closed down the computer, pulled off my clothes, and threw myself into bed.
“Green. Don’t forget green,” the man’s voice echoed around my head.
As I lay there, the memory of another “green” came into my mind. Benjo Greene. The cannibal who’d been Abbott’s henchman, doing his dirty work for him. The man who’d tied me and Aubrey up and threatened to eat our brains.
I’d had my revenge on him, just like I had Abbott.
Bile rose in my mouth as I remembered the report from Greyfield’s – the photo of a charred body found strapped to a metal gurney. Mr Abbott, the head of the Regulators. The man I had killed. There was a second picture in the file Sir Richard had made me read, scouring my face for the slightest twitch that would give me away. The second picture was of the body of Sergeant Cain, a man who had been my teacher and friend and who had died trying to protect me.
I’d spent the first few weeks after the fire trying to find a way I could bring him back. Aubrey and I had talked it over and over, trying to find a Shift to undo. But anything we could think of would either end up with Aubrey being operated on or us never uncovering what had been going on.
“Cain wouldn’t have wanted that,” Aubrey had said. “He’d rather have died than that.” And I agreed.
Only two bodies had been recovered. Greene’s body had never been found. We’d assumed that it was because it had been burned up. All that fat would have made him go up like a candle. He was dead, I was certain of it. Certain.
I threw my arm over my face and willed myself asleep. Maybe by tomorrow I’d have forgotten all about Vine and the attack. And as for the man in the
alley, well, I wouldn’t let him get away a second time.
I took a deep breath and tried to let it all go.
Half an hour later I was standing outside Benjo Greene’s building.
CHAPTER TEN
The building was covered with large stickers declaring it to be “dangerous” and “condemned”. I peered in through one of the broken windows and saw nothing but darkness inside. Nothing stirred. Not even a bird.
What had I been expecting, really? Benjo up on his sofa, tucking into a fresh brain dipped in mayonnaise? The man was dead. Coming here to an empty warehouse wasn’t going to make me any more sure of it. And yet, I’d had to come.
You’re an idiot, Tyler. What are you?
I leaned my head against the window and was about to Shift my decision to come here, when I heard a squeaking from inside the abandoned warehouse, the high-pitched sound carrying on the still night air. It had to be a mouse, or a rat. That place had to be filled with them. But if I just took a quick look inside…
I checked the street was empty and ducked under a strip of cordon tape, yanked aside a plank of wood covering over the doorway, and squeezed myself inside.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The only light in here was the shine of the moon breaking through from the gaps in the roof overhead. The old machinery and piles of rubbish I’d seen the last time I’d been here had been cleared. The warehouse was empty.
That was it. I was done. I closed my eyes and felt for the decision that led me here. With a thought I would be back in my bed and hopefully asleep.
“I wondered when you’d come looking for me.”
The shock of the voice made me jump so much, I almost fell over. I spun around to where the small, croaking whisper had come from. Out of the shadows stepped a man. At least, I thought it was a man.
He was a bag of flesh and bones. Even in the half-light I could see folds of skin hanging low on his cheeks. Only the black, button eyes looked familiar.
“Benjo?”
The last time I’d seen him he’d been munching his way through a table of surgical tools. It didn’t look as if the meal had agreed with him.