by A. A. Bell
She shrugged again. ‘Up to a point I do.’
‘Don’t listen to her!’ insisted Mellow. ‘Remember where she lives!’
‘I’d rather stay focused on who she is and why we trust each other,’ Ben said.
‘You can’t do that,’ Mira argued. ‘Your mum loves you, I can hear that much. You should trust her more than me.’
‘Trust me,’ Mellow pleaded.
‘This affects her too, though, Ma.’ Ben clutched Mira’s hands together in his. ‘Maybe I could borrow against the house again to hire a lawyer? A better one than last time. Or blow the whistle to someone high up in the military police?’
‘Either way,’ Mellow argued, ‘there’ll come a time when you have to trust somebody.’
‘Blind faith?’ Mira said. ‘At Serenity, Ben, you convinced me to fight my demons sooner rather than later. Now your mum’s trying to convince you to do the same thing.’
He sighed heavily, then patted Mira’s hand, but she withdrew it from him and caressed his cheek.
‘All right, Ma,’ he said finally. ‘If you really trust your friend with my life, then call him.’
THIRTY-NINE
General Garland hurried into the windowless room where Doctors Zhou and Van Danik were waiting. She dismissed the four guards and a nurse, leaving her alone with the two men.
‘Are we prisoners?’ asked Zhou.
‘On the contrary.’ Garland inspected the bandage helping to immobilise Van Danik’s freshly stitched forehead. ‘I’ve come to make you an offer.’
Van Danik frowned and pulled away from her. ‘Does it involve a firing squad or a jail term if we decline?’
‘Hardly. I need you to come with me. Are you both fit enough to fly?’
‘That depends.’ Zhou glanced towards the guards posted outside the door. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the labs at Sandy Creek. If Kitching’s got the girl, I suspect that’s where he’s headed.’
‘If he doesn’t shoot her first!’
‘Dr Zhou, I can assure you that I’m fully informed of the situation. If you’re right about her, he can’t afford to hurt her — not yet. He needs access to proper medical facilities first.’
Van Danik laughed. ‘No offence, General, but why would he be so stupid as to go to the lab when he knows we’re on the loose and ready to blab on him the first chance we get?’
‘He doesn’t know you’re on the loose. The two men he assigned to find you were actually my men. As far as Kitching knows, you’ve been caught and they’re bringing you to him.’
‘How’s that supposed to reassure us?’ asked Zhou. ‘You could be about to deliver us right to him.’
‘And why didn’t your men try to stop him earlier if they were working undercover for you?’ Van Danik added.
‘Undercover is undercover,’ Garland said with a frown. ‘Do you want to help save Miss Chambers or not?’
‘Of course,’ Zhou said. ‘But she’s safely stashed away now. How can he get to her?’
‘Time is short. If you want to play twenty questions, we’ll have to do it in the air. This way, gentlemen. My pilot is waiting.’
‘Let him wait,’ Zhou said. ‘We won’t tell you where she is.’
‘You don’t need to. I can tell you where she isn’t. She isn’t at Serenity — I’ve just been there — and until she is, she’s fair game for Kitching.’
Zhou and Van Danik exchanged panicked glances.
‘If you’re suggesting this is a rescue mission,’ Zhou said cautiously, ‘what’s the catch? The military doesn’t throw money, time or assets at anything without expecting something in return.’
‘Kitching is my mistake and my responsibility,’ Garland confessed. ‘I need to catch him — preferably in the act of selling military secrets.’
‘Mira isn’t a military secret,’ Van Danik argued. ‘She’s a civilian, and a remarkable one at that.’
‘Kitching also has your data and equipment,’ Garland countered. ‘Is Miss Chambers really so remarkable that you’d forgo retrieving all that?’
Zhou exchanged another look with Van Danik.
‘Yes,’ they replied as one voice. ‘She is.’
Waves clapped the beach, the dog barked and seagulls squawked along the shoreline. In the midst of it, Mira could hear Ben’s mother inside the house, muttering about the phone call and how long she’d been waiting on hold.
‘Do you think she’s still mad at me?’ Mira asked.
‘Actually, I think you won her over as soon as you sided with her.’
‘But you didn’t tell her everything about me.’
‘She’s not ready. One tidal wave at a time is hard enough surfing.’
‘Oh …’ Mira’s heart sank. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I am really just a wave that crashed on you.’
‘Hell, no!’ He hurried to her side, careful not to touch or startle her. ‘You’re very special to me, Mira — just as your poet trees are to you.’ He took her hands in such a delicate manner that she barely flinched. ‘Even more, I hope.’
A warmth spread through his hands to hers, filling her with an emotion that she couldn’t describe.
Tugging her gently to her feet, he pulled her a little closer and her inner warmth swelled to a glow.
‘I have some news, though, and this is going to be very difficult … for both of us.’
‘More difficult than having Colonel Kitching try to kill us?’
He didn’t chuckle as she’d hoped he would, and her glow turned to worry.
‘There’s no easy way to say this. I’ll have to show you.’ He led her around the table to the railing, wherethe breeze played with her hair and the knee-length skirt of her dress.
‘I went home again — to your home,’ he explained.
‘Without me?’
‘Yes, this morning,’ he confessed. ‘Your operation is scheduled for Monday, and I thought the docs would need you all weekend, so I didn’t know when you’d get a chance to go back. I wanted to find a keepsake for you … help keep your goal feeling close and alive.’
‘Oh, Ben! That’s so sweet, but there was really no need. I’ve already learned how to carry my home in my heart. It’s how I’ve survived all these years.’
‘That’s good, Mira. That’s very good.’ He patted her hand. ‘I need you to hold onto that because I … I … found this.’
He leaned away momentarily and she heard something move from the table, then he placed a cold familiar shape into her hands — so very tenderly, as if it were made of the most delicate glass. She explored it for a moment with her fingers until she found the thumbtack Braille. ‘"To see a world …"’ Her expression darkened. ‘You broke this? You didn’t remember it was from my favourite tree?’
‘I broke nothing, Mira. I fell in love with that place too, I swear. I … I found that on the ground. I’m so sorry, Mira; so very, very sorry.’
‘Hey, don’t be.’ She cupped his cheek and smiled. ‘Those trees throw down branches sometimes after rain or high winds. It’s sad but inevitable.’
‘I wish that was true this time, but there’s nothing natural about …’ She heard anger flare in his voice so sharply she could almost smell it, ‘… this atrocity!’
Her heart raced. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry, I … I don’t know how to say it. I’ve never been so angry in all my life. Do you remember that sound you heard as we were leaving? The one I couldn’t —’
‘Oh no!’ She slumped against the rail, imagining her naked trees stripped of their leaves and branches. ‘What have they done?’ She remembered the lie she’d heard in Matron Sanchez’s voice, and the way Ben had smuggled her out of Serenity to go back to her home. Mira clutched the rail, wishing it was the matron’s neck. ‘I told you the matron hates me! She wants to keep me in her jail forever!’
‘No, no. She tried to stop it, Mira, you have to believe me! The land was already sold. There was nothing she could do. I know she tried to buy back the ar
ea with your trees, if nothing else, before they’d finished clearing.’
‘They cleared it? You mean they bulldozed my home? Or the whole place?’
‘And burned it. I’m so sorry, Mira. I’m furious all over again just thinking about it.’
Mira’s head reeled with turmoil. ‘What do I do now? I have no … nowhere to go!’
Her fingers found the Braille on the other side of the branch, Tomorrow starts toda, but her tomorrow dissolved in her mind like a fragile scent on a wild wind. She was homeless now, with no quiet corner to hide, except that small cell at Serenity. She poked a tear out from under her sunglasses and another welled to take its place. The purple fog turned gold and pain pierced her head like a needle.
Kitching appeared in the garden, pointing his handgun at Ben.
‘He’s here!’ she screamed, dropping the branch with a clatter. She tried to shove Ben to safety, but, like a tree trunk, he bent only slightly under her small hands.
‘Where? I can’t see him.’
She pointed, but the colonel disappeared. Gold fog turned purple again and the pain throbbed away like an echo across her temple.
‘He was right there, in the garden — Colonel Kitching! I saw him!’
She lifted her glasses, braving the pain, trying to see him again. ‘I don’t understand; he was right there, aiming his gun at you.’
Ben hugged her to his chest. ‘He’s not here, Mira. Listen, what do you hear?’
Waves … barking, seagulls … and inside his mother hanging up and redialling the phone.
‘Nothing, I guess.’
‘That’s right. If Kitching was here, Killer would be doing his nut by now, wouldn’t he?’
‘I don’t know. Would he hear anything over the waves? He sounds so distracted, and so far away.’
‘Don’t let that fool you. Look, you’ve just received bad news on a day that’s already broken the scale for traumatic, so it’s not surprising your mind’s started to rebel. That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you about your home right now.’
She trembled like a daisy pelted by rain. ‘He looked so real, Ben — as real as the first time I saw you.’
‘Calm down and think. You see backwards in time, right? So you couldn’t have seen him because he’s never been here.’
She nodded, but remembered seeing strange things in a golden light before, back at Serenity.
‘Remember the soldiers?’ he went on. ‘In particular, the one with the snake in his belly?’
Mira rubbed her forehead, wishing he hadn’t mentioned that part. ‘I haven’t seen them since … since I learned they were only memories of a TV show.’ She brightened. ‘Hey, I think that knowledge cured me.’
‘Good! That’s good, Mira. But Dr Zhou did warn you that some of your visions might still be combinations of memory and imagination.’
‘Which get confused and misfiled when I’m frightened, right?’
‘Right.’ His hand rubbed her arm reassuringly. ‘That doesn’t mean you’re crazy. I’ve imagined Kitching in the shadows a few times myself in the last hour.’
‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’
He chuckled and hugged her more snugly. ‘If it gives me an excuse to keep you in my arms, it can’t be all bad. You’re not alone, Mira. We’ll find a new home for you together, and in the meantime, if you like, you can come here using your day passes.’
She looked up, touching his face again and wishing she could see him now, read his expression like Braille and know if he was serious or only teasing. In that moment, in his arms, she felt like she was home already. Only then did she notice that she’d discarded the branch in favour of him.
‘You didn’t answer me earlier,’ he said. ‘About your first kiss.’
She tensed, feeling the renewed warmth of his skin as his face drew even closer to hers.
‘Mira, may I …?’
His lips brushed hers and she flinched, her heart pounding with a new intensity.
‘Oh! I … I think that was it.’
‘That was only a peck. This is a kiss.’
His lips found hers again, this time with increasing purpose and passion, his arms lifting her gently against him. Instinctively, she opened her mouth to him, breathless, and closed her eyes, better able to imagine him solid and real that way than with her eyes open, kissing invisible air.
Then she heard that rustle again, a short distance away in the wild garden. Something went puh! and Ben stiffened. He slumped against her, his mouth and arms falling limply away from her.
‘Run,’ he gasped, as if winded.
‘Ben?’
She went down with him, smelling blood. His head hit the deck with a heavy crack, but her fingers found the blood spreading in a broad sticky stain across his chest, as if kissing her had made his heart burst.
‘Ben!’ She fumbled over him with hysterical hands, but got no response.
She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand grabbed her from behind, silencing her. A body slid over the rail to trap her into a much harsher embrace. ‘Not a sound,’ Kitching warned. ‘You’re coming with me.’
He tried to lift her away, but she gripped onto Ben’s shirt, struggling to stay.
‘Let go, girl,’ he ordered. ‘Cooperate and the woman inside might find him in time to read him the last rites. Call her out here and she’s dead too. Understand?’
Mira trembled, unable to speak, barely able to breathe under his grip. Inside, she could hear Ben’s mother talking on the phone — asking her friend to come over as soon as he could get away. She released Ben’s shirt, tears welling thickly in her eyes. Through the piercing pain of the golden fog, she glimpsed Ben’s mother slumped over his body, weeping. Mira clamped her eyes shut, unable to bear it.
Kitching dragged her sideways to the rail. Behind him, the waves pounded the beach. The gulls had fallen silent, though, and Mira could hear the very faint sound of paws galloping clumsily, bringing Killer ever closer to the house. She wondered where her branch had fallen and if she could grab it as a weapon.
Kitching climbed the railing, still holding Mira close against his chest and drawing her with him. He lifted her and pulled.
Killer growled as he leapt. Kitching grunted and fell, taking Mira with him. Her knee scraped concrete, her cheek too as bodies and fur tumbled over her, a paw striking her chest. Kitching stifled a yelp and she smelled blood again, then heard that dreaded puh!, followed by a whimper and the hush of waves …
Mira was already scrambling up to run, but a heavy weight knocked her down again.
‘I only need your eyes,’ he warned, pressing a cold blade against her throat. ‘Cooperate until I can get them cleanly and I’ll be kind by arranging a sedative. Be a very good girl and I might even send you back to your nuthouse when we’re finished.’ His knee dug into her ribs, forcing the wind from her. ‘What’ll it be?’
Mira struggled for air, despairing only for Ben — dead now, along with his four-legged friend, because of her.
Inside, she heard the distinctive clunk of the phone hanging up. Ten minutes’ delay was all she needed until the cops arrived but Kitching made the decision for her, grabbing her by the hair and driving her forehead against the concrete, into blackness.
The chopper hit another pocket of turbulence and Dr Zhou gripped onto his seatbelt and helmet. To his left, Van Danik clung one-handed to an overhead luggage net, while to his right, a black-suited Corporal Cinq rode the lurching bench seat with greater confidence. General Garland was perched opposite, flanked by the two plain-clothed bodyguards who’d also taken orders from Kitching.
‘This is an isolated comms link,’ Garland said, tapping the headset on her helmet. She had her visor up so Zhou could see her eyes and expression.
He glanced at the pilot and co-pilot, both female and both sporting similar headsets.
‘They’re on a different frequency,’ Garland assured him. ‘I can guarantee this is just between us, and is not, at any stage, bei
ng recorded.’
‘There’s nothing to worry about then,’ Van Danik replied. Static distorted his voice but not his sarcasm.
Garland eyed him intently. ‘On the contrary, if Miss Chambers is truly the asset that you and my surveillance team suggest she may be, then you’d better pray that we intercept Kitching before he sells her off for dissection. My sources suggest he may already have potential buyers who deal in that sort of thing: human guinea pigs, organ theft and a range of other related nasties.’
‘He can’t dissect her!’ Zhou protested. ‘Neither can you, if that’s what you’re thinking. She needs to be alive, cooperative and in one piece, to learn how her eyes work without wasting months or years on additional research.’
‘I have no intention of hurting her deliberately, Doctor. You can perform the procedure yourself, if you wish, but surely you must agree that the sooner this technology is removed from the civilian population the better, or else Miss Chambers will become the target of further abduction attempts. Much better to nip the problem in the bud, so to speak, than risk the ongoing health of the patient.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Zhou persisted. ‘We need her in one piece so we can read her subconscious and know what she’s seeing through different filters. Kill her or take out her eyes and you might as well try to reverse-engineer a TV without electricity or a screen.’
Garland was silent for a long moment, her expression brooding. ‘Does Colonel Kitching know this?’
‘He didn’t want to listen,’ Van Danik said. ‘Are you any different?’
The chopper dropped unexpectedly in altitude, causing both doctors to grip white-knuckled onto their seats.
‘We’re landing so soon?’ Zhou complained. ‘But there’s still surf below us!’
‘This is Chiron’s place,’ Garland replied. ‘It seemed the first logical place to check on the way.’
Matron Sanchez sank into a steaming tub of suds, hoping her stress might soak away with the dye from her skin. Her feet ached from a hectic day, but her head ached even more, with worry for the doctors as well as for Mira and Ben. General Garland had been so tight-lipped, Sanchez could only guess why Mira might have run amok and attacked them all. One thing was certain, though: if Ben ever showed up here again, the closest he’d ever be allowed to get to Mira would be through an observation window.