by Kim Curran
The two boys turned to face us and I had to hold onto the doorframe to stop myself from falling over. It looked as if a large part of both their foreheads had been crushed. I heard Aubrey let out a tiny gasp next to me and was glad I wasn’t the only one shocked.
Frankie picked up a fallen card from the floor and placed it back on the table. “This is Hamid and Hazid,” she said pointing from the boy on the right to the boy on the left. “They were born joined at the head.”
“Siamese twins?” Aubrey said, finding her voice.
“Actually, we prefer the term conjoined twins. Siam, after all, no longer exists. I found them in a souk freak show in Marrakech three years ago. Half-starved, they were forced to beg tourists for food. Shocking, just shocking. Luckily, I was able to bring them here and after a great deal of medical consultation, they had the separating operation a year ago and seem to be doing fine.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Aubrey said, shaking their hands. “I’m Aubrey and my silent friend over there is Scott.”
I managed to let go of the doorframe and waved.
“You’re both Shifters?” Hamid asked, his English perfect despite a strong accent.
“Yes, we work for ARES.”
“Can you do this?” Hazid asked. He turned and focused on his brother who was wearing a blue top.
Hamid sighed. “Stop showing…”
But before he had a chance to finish he was suddenly wearing a red top. Hamid shook his head and scowled at his brother who was now laughing. Hamid in turn squinted his eyes and suddenly Hazid was wearing a baseball cap.
“Boys, stop it. You’ll only end up fighting again.”
“What’s going on?” Aubrey asked.
“When they Shift, they change each other’s decisions,” Frankie said, filling up a large kettle under a tap. “A side effect of the separation.”
“But… that’s incredible,” Aubrey said.
“Yes, the power to change what other people do. Quite incredible.”
Aubrey threw me a quick look before Frankie turned around. “Unfortunately, all Hazid and Hamid use it for is to annoy each other. Isn’t that right, boys?”
The two boys were now smacking each other around the head.
“I give up!”
Frankie walked over to them and pulled them apart. “You two. Rooms now. And I want you on your separate sides as we discussed.”
Hamid and Hazid sloped away, nudging each other as they did. I didn’t speak a word of Arabic, but I spoke sibling well enough to understand what they were saying.
“So, how do you take your tea?”
“White and one sugar for me please,” Aubrey said, watching Frankie through tight eyes. It was clear she didn’t trust her one bit.
“Oh, just white for me. I’m sweet enough already,” I said automatically.
Frankie smiled kindly and finished making the tea. Aubrey just shook her head.
“So, you haven’t just come here to visit the charity, that much is clear,” Frankie said handing us our mugs.
“It’s about Project Ganymede,” Aubrey said.
Aubrey and I both watched Frankie, looking for anything. A flinch, a twitch, a grimace that might give her away. There were two usual responses when we confronted the members of the project: tears and screaming.
“Oh, I’ve not heard that name in a long time,” Frankie said casually, readjusting her scarf. “What about it?”
Aubrey blinked, looking surprised. “So you were a part of it?”
“Yes. I was one of the first candidates.” There wasn’t a hint of embarrassment. Clearly Frankie hadn’t known what the project really involved. At least if she was in the first phase of the project we didn’t need to worry about the cortex bomb. Dr Lawrence had only put that little back-up device into his later subjects.
“And so you’re a Shifter?” I said.
“Well, yes. I can Shift. But I tend not to. I find that it leads to unhappiness – never settled with your decisions. Never happy with your lot. I reserve the power for life and death situations only. And I don’t face too many of them around here.” She smiled and it was infectious.
“What exactly do you do around here?” I said.
“Oh, that’s simple. I find abandoned and endangered Shifters and bring them here. I have a leaflet around somewhere.” She started digging around in a pile of papers on the dresser behind her and pulled out a slim, folded flyer. “For fundraising purposes. No mention of the Shifting power in there, obviously. I just talk about the street children and the child soldiers desperate for a home. I set up Pandora after my second husband died, leaving me all alone in this place.” She indicated the old building. “I think without the project to keep me going after he’d passed, I’d have just given up and died myself. Hope, you see. That’s why I called the charity Pandora. The last thing left in Pandora’s box of evils? Hope. It’s what this place has given me. And what I hope it gives the children.”
“How many kids do you have here?” Aubrey asked.
“Twenty-eight at the moment. But sometimes, it’s as many as fifty. I’ve had nearly two hundred children pass through here, all needing some kind of special help. It’s terrifying what some people will do to children. But we do what we can to help them recover and go on to lead productive, valuable lives. No one is forced to do anything against their wills here. That’s one of our most important rules. Everything has to be their choice. How else can they really come to grips with their powers otherwise?”
“Are you able to help everyone?” I asked. “I mean, all the children here.”
“We try. But sometimes, the children just have to learn to live with what has happened to them. Even with their powers, they’re just children after all.” Frankie looked me with kind, sympathetic eyes. And I felt like I wanted to tell her everything. Not just about Ganymede, but about me and what I’d done.
“Do any of the children from here go on to join ARES?” Aubrey asked.
“Well, not many of the children I look after are really suited to the agency life. They’ve not had any real structure and so the limitations placed on them during training can be unsettling. Besides, given what most of them have been through they’re not all entirely, how should I say, stable. Their powers often manifest in rather unusual ways.”
“Like Hamid and Hazid?” I said.
“Exactly. And I’ve had other children through here who’ve had other unusual skills. I help them come to terms with their power until entropy takes it away, and then I help them integrate back into real life.”
“Here in the UK?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I try and take them home.”
“When there’s a home for us to return to.” A skinny girl with dry, frizzy hair in a long plait and dark, deep-set eyes walked slowly into the room. She was so pale I could make out the veins in her thin arms and it looked as if she hadn’t eaten properly in months.
“Ah, this is Ella,” Frankie said, reaching up and taking the girl’s bony hand. “She’s been with me the longest. How old were you when I found you?”
“Six.”
“Yes, six. Drug lords in Guatemala had massacred all of her family. And she was crying over the body of her mother. And even at that age I could sense she had the power to Shift.”
“You’re a Spotter?” Aubrey said.
“Oh, a little, I suppose. Although at ARES my official title was Mapper, Fifth Class.”
Fifth Class. Just like Aubrey’s dad, I thought. Had they known each other? And what had happened to make him hate Frankie so much? I couldn’t imagine this woman ever doing anything bad.
“Although after Project Ganymede those boundaries seemed to blur somewhat,” Frankie said with a wave of her hand.
“Speaking of the project, there are some questions we have. Although I think we should probably talk in private.” Aubrey looked at Ella.
“Anything you can say to me you can say to Ella.” Frankie let go of Ella’s hand.
There was so
mething about the girl I couldn’t put my finger on. It was as if I’d seen her somewhere before. “Well, the men,” I said. “I mean the other people who were a part of the project have been experiencing some side effects. Mental issues.”
“The psychosis? Yes, I saw some of that when I was on active duty with men. Some of them didn’t take to the programme as well as the others. But what has that got to do with me?”
“We wanted to check that you’d not been experiencing anything like that and…” I looked to Aubrey, uncertain how to continue.
“We need carry out an evaluation. ARES feels it’s not safe to have adult Shifters.”
Frankie laughed. “Sir Richard is happy to trust children with this power and not adults? Come now, that seems rather silly.”
I saw Aubrey’s jaw tighten. “It’s more to do with how the power was obtained.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How much do you know about the project? About the operation you had?” I said quickly, sensing Aubrey’s increasing tension.
“Not a huge amount. I was told that they were able to stimulate the part of the brain that controlled Shifting. I assumed it worked like a pacemaker.”
I took a deep breath. “There’s no easy way of saying this, and believe me, I’ve tried lots of different ways, but I’m just going to come out and say it. You’ve had part of a child’s brain placed in yours. They cut out the bit of the brain that controls Shifting and gave it to you.”
“What happened to the child?” Frankie said, her voice suddenly dry.
“Brain dead,” Aubrey said.
Frankie’s eyes darted from my face to Aubrey’s. “I don’t believe it. Dr Lawrence. He wouldn’t.”
“He did. The files are all here.” Aubrey pulled out a brown file from her bag and passed it over. “Besides, we saw the evidence with our own eyes.”
“Did you ever meet Mr Abbott?” I asked.
“The head of the Regulators?” Frankie said distracted by the paperwork she was flicking through. Her face became paler with each page.
“Yes, he recently decided to start the programme back up again. He’d carried out the procedure on three of his men and had planned to carry it out on many more.”
Frankie pushed the folder away as if it disgusted her and placed her hand over her mouth.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea. But I don’t know what I can do about it now.” She sat up straight and fiddled with her mug, spinning it around on the table. “However I gained this power, I have used it for good. Isn’t that what matters? In the long run?”
“Maybe so, but we need to carry out a psychiatric evaluation, to make sure that you’re not suffering from the same symptoms as the others,” Aubrey said.
“Yes, I understand. But is there any way this evaluation can be done in the morning? I have a very important event to be at tonight and I have to get ready. A huge amount hangs on me being there. For the future of the charity and, well, you understand?” She smiled at me and I wondered if it was the tea causing my stomach to heat up all of a sudden.
It was a struggle to take my eyes off her. The other Ganymede men we’d interviewed had all talked about Frank Anderson like some kind of hero. A saviour. Back when we’d thought Anderson had been a man, I’d imagined some muscle-bound superhero. Frankie was slim and delicate and yet there was still something of the comic-book heroine about her. I had to try really hard not to imagine her in skin-tight Lycra.
“I don’t think…” I started to say when Aubrey cut me off.
“Sure. Tomorrow would be fine.”
I looked at Aubrey, wondering what was happening. I didn’t want to have to drive all the way back only to return in the morning.
“Marvellous,” Frankie said, standing up. “Why don’t you stay here for the night, there’s plenty of room. It will give you a chance to meet all the children.”
Aubrey stood up too. “Sounds like a plan.”
I stayed sitting and looked from Aubrey to Frankie, there was definitely something going on here and I was missing it all.
“Well, make yourself at home. Ella,” she turned to the pale girl. “Show Scott and Aubrey around, will you.”
It wasn’t really a question. I saw a look flit across Ella’s face. Uncertainty? Annoyance? Whatever it was, it was just the tiniest flicker and then her still expression was back.
Frankie readjusted the scarf around her neck and smiled at us. I could see how that smile could win over politicians and warlords alike. She turned and walked back up the stairs, her bare feet padding on the slate floor.
“We just have to get something from the van. Scott?”
Aubrey grabbed the back of my jacket and tugged at it. The bench scraped on the floor as I pushed it back to stand up.
“Yes, something from the van…” I said, as Aubrey half dragged me out of the door. “What’s going on?” I hissed as we were clear of the kitchen. “I’d thought you’d want to be well clear of this place. I know I am.”
“And miss a chance to have a snoop around? No chance.” Aubrey tested door handles as we walked back the way we’d come. Each door opened up, revealing another ornate room. Apart from one. “And what do we think is behind here?” Aubrey said, grinning as the door refused to open.
“Oh, I don’t know? A cellar where they keep all the kids who stick their noses in,” I said, looking around to make sure we weren’t being watched.
Aubrey reached into her jacket and pulled out a slim leather pouch. Inside it was a set of thin tools, the kind of things a dentist would use to inflict the most pain possible. She selected two and set to work on the door. I was too busy watching her at work, so I didn’t hear the soft footsteps behind us.
“You’re not allowed in there.”
We both jerked around, Aubrey hiding the lock-picking set behind her back. “Oh, we were just trying to find the bathroom.”
“Both of you?” Ella said, tilting her head like a bird.
“I was helping,” I said, stupidly.
“Well, the bathroom is second on the left up there.” Ella pointed a long thing finger up the corridor. “That room that you’re trying to get into is a broom closet. Maria our housekeeper keeps all her cleaning stuff in there. That’s why it’s locked up.”
If Ella thought we were up to anything strange, her face didn’t show it. It didn’t show anything.
“Right, second on the left,” Aubrey said and headed off in that direction.
Ella and I stood, waiting. I hummed uncomfortably, while she just stared at me. There really was something niggling me about her.
“Have you ever been to ARES?”
“No,” Ella said. “I received all my training here.”
“Oh, it’s just, I thought…” I thought I recognised her, but it must have been someone else. Besides, with my ability to remember past Shifts when no one else could, I was constantly finding myself thinking people were familiar when in reality, in the new reality, we’d never actually met. “Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”
It was quite a relief when Aubrey returned from the bathroom, picks safely tucked away once more.
There was something creepy about this girl. About this place. The sooner we could get this evaluation done with and I could go back to focusing on the President, the better.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The house was enormous. Every time I thought we’d got to the end of it, another room appeared, as if had been tagged on to the one before like an afterthought. Long, thin corridors lined with flaking wood panelling led from one huge room to the next and children seemed to be hiding in every nook and cranny.
I waved at a boy who peered out from behind a green-leather sofa. He let out a squeak and scuttled away.
“Is Frankie the only adult here?” Aubrey said, watching the boy disappear through a doorway.
“There’s Maria, the cook and housekeeper,” Ella replied.
“No men?”
“Not since Mr Goodwin died, no.”
> “Oh.” Aubrey sounded disappointed. And I understood why. She’d been hoping that her dad would be here. This wasn’t about tracking down the last member of Ganymede for her anymore. She was on a new mission.
Me, I just wanted to get the job done so I could start hunting for the President’s killer. Aubrey’s dad had been wrong. Frankie was the least wicked person I’d ever met.
There was another thing that still kept niggling at me. I was sure I’d seen Ella somewhere before.
“Have you lived here ever since you came to this country?” I asked her.
“Since Frankie found me, yes,” Ella said.
“And do you like it here, out in the middle of nowhere?” Aubrey said. “With nothing to do?” Aubrey wasn’t the biggest fan of the countryside.
The girl stopped and gazed up at the arched ceilings as if it was the first time she’d really looked at them. She tucked a curl of hair behind her ear that had escaped her Alice band.
“I don’t know anything else,” she eventually said, then set off again, pointing out paintings and statues on the way. We passed one wall lined with maybe a hundred frames containing butterflies of every colour. They looked as if they might fly away, if not for the brass tacks stuck through their bodies, pinning them in place. They gave me the creeps too.
It was a relief to get out to the gardens.
A bunch of kids of all ages were kicking a football around the large lawn. They were good, too, better than I’d ever been at football. Although it was clear a few of them were cheating by Shifting. One of them kicked the ball from the middle of the pitch. It went soaring over the heads of the other children and straight into the back of the goal.
“That’s Prestige,” Ella said, pointing at the goal scorer. “Our newest guest.”
Prestige had dark skin that glowed golden in the low sunlight and a delicate face, which seemed at odds with his broad and muscular frame.
“He was conscripted to a children’s army in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Ella explained. “He’d been about to kill the warlord who killed his family and kidnapped him when Frankie arrived and stopped him.”
“And killing the warlord would have been a bad thing how?” Aubrey asked.