Fragments

by Caroline Green

  ‘How do you know?’ I ask. ‘It’s not like they care about us, is it?’ I regret it immediately. Words can be dangerous when Skye is around. I think about the boy who was shot.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ she says, in a patronising way. ‘They’re not going to let their valuable building get destroyed every time they do a training exercise are they?’

  She’s right. Of course she’s right. Anger boils up at them for letting us believe we were about to die.

  ‘You’ve got to admit it was effective,’ she says. ‘There had to be something at stake or it wouldn’t have meant anything, would it?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I hiss, and her eyes widen.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Do you think this is all some sort of game?’

  Skye takes a step back. ‘Kyla, I’m sure you can’t mean that,’ she says loudly. ‘You’d really rather have gone to prison than be here?’

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘That’s not what I . . .’

  It’s only then that I notice Harris has come out of one of the doors and is watching us with interest. Skye turns and flicks her hair away from her neck.

  I think it’s only me who sees the small smile on her lips.

  What the hell is she up to? Why did she say that?

  INTERNAL EMAIL: STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

  From: jsheehy@61.gov.uk

  To: aosborne@CATSHQ.gov.uk

  Subject: Re: Kyla Baptiste

  Dear Alexander,

  Following our earlier discussions, I have some further information. In the light of the subject’s previous Torch connections, Skye Rafferty was assigned to keep an eye on her behaviour and commitment. I had thought the subject was making good progress and am therefore disappointed to learn that she has been quietly stirring up trouble and saying she is not fully accepting our work here. Ms Rafferty suggested that Baptiste may actually still harbour Torch sympathies, but confirms she is unaware of Conway’s location.

  I am unwilling to throw away the clear potential this girl has so suggest that she undergoes a second commitment-training period. I appreciate this isn’t often attempted and that there are risks attached. But I think in the circumstances it is warranted. If she subsequently remains mentally intact, she could be a useful recruit in the field. And there has to be a chance that she might ultimately lead us to the boy.

  I await your quick response in this matter.

  Regards,

  Jennifer Sheehy

  INTERNAL EMAIL: STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

  From: aosborne@CATSHQ.gov.uk

  To: jsheehy@61.gov.uk

  Subject: Re: Kyla Baptiste

  Dear Jennifer,

  I agree with your stated course of action. But rather than merely repeating the procedure, I think that in this instance we should move up to level three and employ all techniques available (full sensory deprivation, use of pharmaceutical enhancers and increased image bombardment, etc). We know the effects typically only last six months at most, and usually wear off quite suddenly, but she does appear to be a particularly stubborn candidate. I will respect your opinion as to potential further use.

  Having lost two candidates already in this cycle, though, please try to ensure the girl survives the treatment, as questions may be asked about use of resources.

  Warm wishes,

  Alexander

  CHAPTER 15

  nothing to worry about, Kyla

  I can’t sleep.

  Every time I’m close to dropping off I see the numbers of that clock projection going down, down, down . . . The bedclothes are damp with sweat. All I can do is toss and turn and wait for morning to come.

  It feels like days pass before pale grey light begins to bleed through the tiny window above Skye’s bed.

  Her hair is spilled in pale strands across her pillow. I still can’t believe what she said to me last night.

  I’d gone out for a run after the horrible Explosives practical, hoping I could get my head together. The damp, clean air felt good after being in that claustrophobic room and I came back feeling more clear-headed, but ready to find out what Skye thought she was doing outside the room, when she made it sound as though I had been slagging off the course.

  But she managed to avoid me for the whole afternoon and most of the evening, too. I’d showered, eaten, watched telly and caught up on a bit of written work Mrs Sheehy wanted without seeing her at all. I didn’t know where she’d been when she finally came into the room, but her cheeks were flushed and she wouldn’t meet my eye.

  As she went to get her towel for a shower, I jumped to my feet and blocked the entrance to the bathroom. Her eyes widened and then went cold and flat again.

  ‘What was that about earlier?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said and tried to push past me. I shouldn’t have done this, but I was raw and upset about the events of the day. My head felt like it would pop with the pressure. My arm shot out and slammed her backwards against the bathroom door. I pinned her there with both hands. I’m taller than her, so I forced her to look up into my face.

  ‘Get your filthy black hands off me,’ she said in a voice that was one low hiss of hatred.

  Shock hurtled through me and my arms fell to my sides. Skye quickly pushed her way into the bathroom and slammed the door. I sat down on the edge of my bed, shaking all over. She’s never said anything before to make me think she was racist. I couldn’t have felt more surprised and upset if she had spat in my face. What was that about?

  When my heartbeat eventually slowed down I thought about the things she’d done to people. Maybe I was lucky that a nasty insult was the worst she’d thrown at me.

  But I knew I couldn’t share a room any more. I decided there and then that I would ask if I could be moved in the morning. I’d say a breakdown in our friendship was making it hard to study or something. I didn’t want to have to share air space with someone like her. Skye was bad, through and through, and I had to stay out of her way.

  I must have dozed because the next thing I know, the morning alarm cuts viciously into a confused dream about running through bombed-out houses in Sheffield. My mouth feels dry and foul and the lack of sleep makes the light outside burn my aching eyes, which don’t seem to fit the sockets properly any more.

  Skye gets up and practically runs out of the room, without speaking at all. She doesn’t even bother to wash or brush her teeth, just pulls on clothes and hurries past me, a flush spreading across her cheeks as she deliberately avoids meeting my gaze.

  I’m slow this morning. Tired and feeling emotionally wrung out. I’m just trying to braid my hair in an attempt to stop it from looking like a bird’s nest, when there is a gentle knock at the door.

  ‘Just a minute!’ I call and walk over to open it.

  ‘Oh . . .’

  Outside there are two guards and a woman who at first I can’t place. Then I remember that I saw her the day we arrived. She has dark brown eyes behind her glasses and a pretty smile.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I say, nervously eyeing the guards, who stand with impassive expressions.

  Dread floods my stomach like cold water. I get a flash of something I can’t hold on to in my mind. Something bad. I step back, suddenly overcome with the need to get away from these people.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she says, still smiling. I jolt because it’s like she has read my thoughts. ‘You need to come with us for a little intensive therapy. It’s for your own good. And the good of the camp.’

  ‘What do you mean, intensive therapy?’ I can’t keep the wobble out of my voice. ‘Is this what you did to me before? Is it why I can’t remember a whole week?’

  I’m taking backwards steps the whole time, as if I could just melt through the walls and disappear. Get out of here. I have such a bad feeling now. I don’t want to be here any more. I don’t want to do this. Maybe they’ll let me go?

  The woman gives a tight smile. ‘We don’t always know what
is best for us, Kyla. There’s really no need to panic. No one is going to hurt you.’

  She does a weird slapping motion and I feel a sharp pain. There’s a tinkling sound as something falls to the floor. The plastic shell of a mini syringe lies at my feet. I look down at my hand. The outline of the tiny, dissolvable needle is already starting to fade as its contents seep into my bloodstream.

  ‘I’m not . . . Why are you . . . ? I don’t . . .’ I mumble, my tongue thick and hard to manoeuvre, before the world does a sickening three-sixty spin and I feel myself sliding towards the stone floor.

  Lights.

  Pain.

  Too many voices, shouting.

  Pictures.

  Bad pictures. Make them stop. Need some water. Why won’t anyone help?

  More pictures. People being hurt. Whose fault? WHOSE?

  Someone’s fault.

  I hate them.

  Hatred is pure and good. It will heal me. Just make the pain stop. Help me . . . ? Someone? Anyone?

  A dark room. Then lights that are too bright. Voices jabbing at me like needles.

  Over and over.

  So tired and hungry. Please let me die now?

  Please.

  I fall into a dark place. There’s no time now. This is the end.

  But then I’m soaring through the sky to the mountain. Shadows wash the green with swathes of darkness. Everything speeded up, like a film running too fast.

  Sunlight breaks through and sparkles on the lake in the distance, diamond bright. Clouds race above me, scuttling across the surface of the sky like living things. They make me dizzy so I look away and concentrate on the purple heather and the clean, fresh air in my nose, filling my lungs with purity.

  I know they’re not real, but it doesn’t matter. I can stay here for ever, I hope. A noise startles me and I look down to see the stag below me, close by. It looks up directly into my eyes, which fill with tears. I suddenly love the stag. So much that it hurts. Glancing down at my feet, I see a gun with a thin, black barrel.

  Do it, Kyla . . . says a voice. It’s inside me and outside too.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’ But even as I’m saying this I’m reaching down for the gun. I can’t stop myself. I grit my teeth, trying with everything I have to resist the force inside me that’s making me pick up the weapon.

  The stag doesn’t move. Doesn’t sense the danger.

  It’s too pure to be kept alive. It has to die.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whisper, and I raise the gun. There’s an earsplitting crack. The stag totters and falls sideways to the ground. Its eyes are milky now, a messy wound spreading red between them.

  And I feel . . . nothing at all.

  PART III

  LONDON,

  FIVE MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER 16

  kizzy jones

  I stare up at the dirty, smeared window above me. Raindrops slide and chase each other down the brownish glass. I look around the room at the other sleepers, lumpy shapes that snore, twitch and give the odd groan. Smells creep up my nose. Unwashed bodies, tobacco and weed, farts, feet and breath. Disgusting here.

  But I’m hoping it won’t be for too much longer. The endgame is in sight.

  I sit up and a headache sears across my forehead. I get them a lot these days. I wince and rub my temples and the pain passes.

  ‘Hi,’ the husky voice comes from next to me and I glance down at Adem, his dark eyes sleepy and soft. I feel a flash of something tender and quickly dismiss it. But I smile and snuggle down next to him anyway, feeling his warm arm coming round to hold me close. Soon his breathing settles back into sleep and I wait a bit before carefully slipping free and gliding soundlessly to my feet.

  There are too many people crowded into this room, either in tatty sleeping bags or with worn rugs and old coats covering them. I step carefully over them and make my way to the bathroom where I wash my face and try to tidy my hair a little. I get my toothbrush from its hiding place behind the loose tile and brush the staleness away from my mouth, looking at my reflection in the brown-spotted mirror. You have to hide everything in this place or it becomes public property.

  My skin is a sort of greyish colour at the moment. I know it’s because I’ve been living in these slums for a couple of weeks, never going near a fresh vegetable and absorbing the dampness and dirt of the bare brick walls. My chest is tight and I can hear the wheeze starting to come back so, hiding the toothbrush again, I find the breather stick and soon feel the cool relief as my lungs relax.

  When I was at the camp, I didn’t have any problems with my asthma. It was the air there, I think. Pure and clean. Here in London it’s even worse than it was in Sheffield but if I was to wear the expensive miasma mask folded to nothing in my bag, it would give the game away. That I’m not really homeless Kizzy, on the run from her abusive stepdad, but Kyla, CATS’ Eye. The girl who, if things go as expected today, will never have to see any of these people again. For a second, a wave of doubt washes over me and I picture Adem’s expression earlier. Full of trust. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, looking inside myself to the place I know will ground me and show me the right way. I hear that lilting, soft voice saying, ‘You are fighting evil, Kyla. It’s war. You are light in the dark place.’

  Dark place . . .

  I was in a very dark place for a while at the camp. I only remember snatches. It feels a bit unreal now, like a film I once saw. Being alone inside the white room flashes into my head. I remember crying. Pain and then relief as the pain stopped. The room filling with images of terrorist victims. A young boy crying next to smoking rubble. An old woman being shot in the head. And worse. Sounds come back to me sometimes too, weird noises like cats fighting and high-pitched singing. But the weirdest one of all, which surely can’t be real, is hearing the theme tune from the kids’ programme Here’s Gomez! over and over and over again.

  Here’s Gomez! Here’s Gomez! He’s got r-attitude!

  Here’s Gomez! Here’s Gomez! He’s got r-attitude!

  I shudder and pull my thin top over my fists as I remember, wrapping my arms around my middle. Then there was the soft voice again. The voice I came to love. I slept for a long time then and when I woke, Mrs Sheehy’s face was the first one that I saw, kindly smiling down and smoothing my hair away from my cheek.

  I asked her why I was there and she said I’d been ill but now I was safe. I couldn’t remember what happened just before I was in the hospital wing. Everything felt sort of hazy. Still does. But like I always say, I’m no hero. I’m just trying to stay alive. I reckon what I don’t know can’t hurt me. I’ve got this far, haven’t I? When I left the hospital wing, Christian was strange with me. Didn’t speak to me much any more. But luckily Skye soon helped me get back on my feet.

  All I wanted was to work hard, to make up for missing time I should have spent learning. Learning how to defeat our enemies and keep the world safe.

  To help destroy Torch.

  As always, a shiver of disgust goes through me at that name. And that makes the image of Adem’s smiling face dissolve in my mind. OK, so he’s cute and funny, with a quick mind that flits from one topic to another so fast I can’t keep up. And he might think he’s out to make the world better, but he’s got it so, so wrong. Because he’s one of them.

  It’s not my job to help him understand that. It’s only my job to help him and his kind get caught.

  I just need the name of the person he’s reporting to and I can make the call.

  A loud rap on the door makes me jump. The breather stick clatters onto the dirty, sticky floor.

  ‘Hurry up in there, yeah?’

  ‘Sorry!’ I call out, hurriedly putting the stick back behind the tile and securing it with the glue-tac balls that keep it in place.

  I open the door. Magda grins at me, revealing her missing tooth at the front. She’s forty-something and her head is a mass of twisty dreadlocks, threaded with jewel-coloured scarves. Her eyes twinkle even though they
’re redrimmed from partying the night before.

  ‘Have you finished with the Jacuzzi?’ she says. It’s a running joke between us, that really we live in a millionaire’s palace instead of a filthy squat, where damp and mould coat the walls and you have to watch where you tread or you could stand on a week-old pizza, a full ashtray or a sleeping person.

  ‘Yeah,’ I bat back, ‘I’m going to call for breakfast now and take it on the veranda. Hoping the buff butler brings it this morning.’

  ‘Well, watch out for the pigeon shit out there, eh?’ says Magda, collapsing into a cackle that quickly turns into a wet, smoker’s cough.

  I smile and step past her, disgust roiling inside.

  Do I feel guilty about what’s going to happen later? It’s a question I ask myself from time to time. I asked myself with the first job I did when I came to London, working in a nursery school and then reporting on the woman, Stevie, who ran it. It was hard leaving the little kids behind afterwards, and not easy watching Stevie being dragged away with a blackened eye and an arm that hung in a weird way. But it’s getting easier every time I do a job. And I haven’t killed anyone . . . not directly. That seems important. I just flush them out and what happens next isn’t my business or concern.

  It’s what I do now. And it’s for a good cause. I know I used to feel things too much. Inside I was a mass of softness. I’m not soft inside any more. I’m strong and I’m hard. And I only bruise on the outside.

  Adem’s up now and when the bathroom is free, he goes for a shower. Cold, which is the only sort of shower on offer here at the crumbling old building that is Hoxton Mansions, London. He grins at me, distractedly, as he emerges from the bathroom with black hair seal-wet against his head and a manky towel under one arm.

  I return his smile and then regard his retreating back. Something’s definitely up. I can feel it. There’s an electricity in the air; a sense of expectation. But why?