Deception

by Teri Terry

  But it’s all just too much—way too much—after everything else that has happened in this day that is now night.

  I sigh, settle back against the seat, eyes closed. Chamberlain is crashed out now, half on my lap and half on the seat by the door, and his rumbling purr is reminding me how tired I am too.

  Kai?

  Yes?

  There’s a lot to talk about, I know there is, but I just can’t right now. Can we just be, as we are? You and me. Together.

  His arm slips around my shoulder a moment later. His hand strokes my hair, and my thoughts are jumping even though my exhaustion is complete—distressing visions and flashes of the day flit through my mind in random order until finally I slip into an uneasy sleep.

  * * *

  When I wake with a start, it’s pouring, and there is a crash of thunder—it was probably the storm that woke me. We’re still driving in the dark, still playing follow-the-leader with other cars that I can barely see through the driving rain.

  It looks like Chamberlain has forgiven Aristotle; he’s asleep on the front passenger seat now. Or maybe he just wanted space to stretch out.

  The more I wake up, the more the pain from yesterday comes back, throwing up images and emotions too strong to handle, one after another.

  Spike saved me. Callie—Jenna—did too. Who was she? It’s too late to ask her now. They’re both gone. And Spike and his steady friendship meant more to me than I even realized; his loss has left me twisted up in knots of pain.

  And although Kai is next to me, here, right now, where I’ve longed for him to be for so long, I can’t believe it.

  What is real, what isn’t?

  Callie isn’t—wasn’t—Callie: she wasn’t Kai’s sister. She was someone named Jenna, she said. She knew she was the one spreading the epidemic.

  And she said that Alex—my father—is Dr. 1: the person behind everything on Shetland and Jenna’s death too; the first time, when she was “cured” in fire.

  Can this be true? I know Mum and Kai never trusted him. I know he hides things sometimes. But can this person that I know—one who saved my life, several times, and the lives of others—really be capable of such a thing?

  My blood quickens when an implication hits me that hadn’t really sunk in before: what about the real Callie? Where is Kai’s sister? If Jenna took her identity, she must have known her—was the real Callie experimented on at Shetland too? By her own father?

  But in the midst of all these questions that have no answers, there is one thing that must be real, and true, and now. I lean across and gently kiss Kai.

  He stirs. Sleepy eyes open and hold mine.

  There is much to say, but there is one way to say the most important thing of all—the best way.

  I kiss him again and again, hoping Aristotle’s eyes are firmly on the road ahead.

  There is just Kai and me and now.

  CHAPTER 29

  KAI

  THERE’S A THROAT-CLEARING SOUND in front of us and we spring apart.

  “We’ll be there soon,” Aristotle says.

  Shay’s cheeks are flushed. I stare at her, drink her in, wonder that she is here, alive and warm at my side. I take her hand.

  With all that has happened, all that I can’t unsee and the things I need to know, how it feels to kiss her and then to hold her hand like I am, right at this moment, are the truths that matter the most. Yet there is one thing I must say now, before being close to her makes me forget it.

  We need to talk, I say.

  Yes, she says, but instead she kisses me again.

  I kiss her back quickly, and then firmly hold her away. That’s not how you talk.

  It’s one way. She smiles, and her eyes are on me like there is nothing else in the world to see.

  You have to stop looking at me like that and just listen. This is serious.

  Okay.

  I was really angry with you when you left me at Shetland. I trusted you, and you put me to sleep, and when I woke up you were gone.

  But do you understand why I did it?

  I know you thought you were doing the right thing. But survivors aren’t carriers—you were wrong.

  I know that now. But at the time I thought I was a carrier; that it was my fault many people had died. I may have been wrong, but I truly thought I was spreading the disease—that I had to turn myself in. What good would it have done for both of us to have gone?

  I don’t want to argue with you about something that has already happened. But there is something you have to promise me.

  What’s that?

  That you will never, ever disappear on me like that again—with no goodbye, no chance to discuss things. If you think you have to leave, you have to tell me to my face and explain why: there can be no more secrets between us.

  You’re right. I’m sorry. And I promise—no more secrets. And I won’t pull a disappearing act again either. Tears are slipping out of her eyes and I want to kiss them from her face, but when I try to pull her close she holds her hands against me. There are things I have to tell you too.

  Go on.

  I tried to tell you before, but with everything that was happening after the bomb I’m not sure you took it in. It wasn’t Callie who saved me from the blast. It wasn’t her that was destroyed. The one we knew as Callie was never actually her from the beginning. It was a girl named Jenna. She took on Callie’s identity.

  I frown. That’s not possible. She knew all that stuff about me and home—stuff only Callie could know. And there’s stuff I haven’t told you about her that may explain this.

  What’s that?

  She had imaginary friends when she was younger and sometimes pretended to be one of them. I think with everything she’s been through that she must have regressed back to that.

  And Shay is thinking, considering what I said; but then she shakes her head. I was completely joined with her, and I’m certain: it wasn’t Callie. But there’s more I have to tell you. She was the carrier.

  What? Are you serious?

  Yes. I thought it was me, but she was there with us all along. And she was also in Shetland and Aberdeen. I worked it out a while ago, and she confirmed it; she admitted that she knew.

  I stare back at Shay. All of this is too much—way too much—to take in.

  To believe.

  But the car is starting to slow, we must be nearly there, and there is something else I have to tell her that can’t wait. I push all that aside to work out later.

  Listen, there is one more thing I have to tell you: I’m sorry.

  What for?

  This—how we are talking together now, with your mind touching mine—I’m sorry I resisted it for so long. But now I understand why it upset me so much. It was because of Alex.

  She half frowns, puzzlement in her thoughts. Alex? I don’t understand. What do you mean?

  I’m sure I told you how manipulative he was with us, but I didn’t understand how or why, and why he always made me so angry. It’s because he was like you—could do the things you can do, but didn’t ask permission. He’d just dive into my head and tell me what to do, and back then I couldn’t do anything but obey. I hated him.

  She shakes her head. Are you saying he was a survivor—years ago?

  Yes. Since I first knew him—before he married my mother, before Callie was born.

  And it is clear and loud in her thoughts: she doesn’t believe me.

  It’s not possible, Kai. Until it escaped from Shetland—just a few months ago—this disease didn’t exist outside of a lab. You know that.

  I know what I know: he was one of you, and he has been for years.

  Kai, you’re wrong. Maybe he was just really good at the usual psychological sort of manipulation?

  Just because I’m not one of you doesn’t mean I can’t recognize the games yo
u can play in people’s minds. I know what I know. And between this and all the unbelievable things Shay has told me and expects me to accept without question, now I’m angry and getting angrier.

  I push her out of my mind.

  CHAPTER 30

  SHAY

  KAI? KAI! I TRY AGAIN, but he’s still ignoring me.

  I fight back tears and peer out of the window. The last part of that conversation would have gone better out loud: when Kai is in my mind it’s impossible to be tactful—he knew I didn’t believe him.

  Just like I knew he didn’t believe me about Jenna.

  But Kai must be mistaken. What he said is completely crazy. Isn’t it? I frown, thinking. Even if Alex infected himself in his lab in Shetland and survived, it couldn’t have been that many years ago. The technology used was developed at CERN; it didn’t exist back then.

  The car stops. It’s still dark and hard to see anything in this heavy rain, but it looks like we’re here.

  Wherever here is.

  Aristotle is gathering up Chamberlain, who is back to hissing.

  “It’s a short dash to the hangar, follow me!” he says, and opens his door and bolts.

  I hurry after him, glad of the cold shock of the rain pelting down. I sense that Kai hesitates, then follows behind us.

  We step through an open door just yards away, but I’m already soaked. The door catches in the wind and bangs loudly on the metal wall until somebody grabs hold of it again. Alex and Freja and some of the others are here already, and more come in behind us.

  “This weather is bad news,” Alex says. “We won’t be able to take off until the wind dies down. But at least they won’t be sending anyone after us by air either.” He looks over at Kai, then at me. “Now it’s time for us to talk.”

  He gestures us, Freja, Elena, and Beatriz to chairs and a table along a wall, kind of an open office. Alex is asking for tea and sandwiches to be brought. We’re walking across to the chairs as a group, and I’m panicking inside.

  This isn’t the way to do this; I need to talk to Kai alone first. I try to hail him silently, but still he resists.

  “Kai,” I say, out loud now, voice low. “There are things we need to talk about, that I haven’t had a chance to tell you.” I hear the lie myself: isn’t it more that I haven’t been able to make myself? “I’m sorry.”

  Alex has reached us now. “Come; sit. We’ve got things to discuss.”

  CHAPTER 31

  KAI

  FREJA AND THE OTHER TWO SURVIVORS—Elena and Beatriz—sit down where Alex said.

  “I’d rather stand,” I say.

  “As you will,” Alex says.

  Shay stays upright next to me, that cat by her feet. There are things she hasn’t had a chance to tell me, she says; what more could there be?

  “Alex—or should I say Xander?” Shay says. “Who are these people with you?”

  “We are members of a group called Multiverse. I’m the leader.”

  Multiverse? I glance at Shay and can see the name means something to her.

  “That’s a commune, right?” Shay says. “With chapters all over the world? Something to do with worshipping truth.”

  His eyes are surprised. “Very good, and mostly true—not so much the worshipping part, but we are dedicated to the pursuit of true knowledge.”

  “Is that what you were doing on Shetland—pursuing knowledge?”

  I frown. On Shetland? They were on Shetland?

  “The girl we knew as Callie—though that isn’t who she was really, is it, Alex?—she told me that you were the one behind it all. That you’re Dr. 1: that it was you who created antimatter in an underground Shetland lab and caused the epidemic.”

  The others are exchanging glances, waves of shock across their faces. Did she really just say that Alex is Dr. 1?

  No matter how I’ve always despised him, I’m still struggling with this—could he be the one who is responsible for so much death and misery? My sister’s father, a man we lived with, who was married to my mother all those years?

  And then I realize: he’s not denying anything.

  I’d always been sure he must have been involved in Callie’s disappearance; just when I finally decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, now this?

  Then I’m moving, flying to Alex, to hurt him like he hurt Callie. As if they were expecting this, some of this Multiverse crowd have leaped to grab me, hold me back, and there are three of them and it is all they can do to stop me.

  Alex shakes his head. “Kai, you’ve always been so quick to judge without having all the facts.”

  “The facts?” Shay says. “How about these ones: you experimented on people, killed them; you unleashed an epidemic that has killed millions, and will likely kill many more.”

  “We had no way of knowing that would happen and regret it very much,” Alex says. But does sorry mean anything when these are the consequences?

  “Were you working with SAR? Developing a weapon?” Shay says.

  “We had our own agenda, but yes: they thought we were working for them, at any rate. Now they’re trying to bury their role in what happened by burying all of us.”

  “What was your agenda?”

  “We were attempting to cure cancer—another killer of millions. Every single one of the subjects at Shetland had terminal cancer and had volunteered to take part. And it worked. We were so close to success when that accident happened.”

  “Callie was just a child!” I say. “Your child. She didn’t have cancer. How could you?” I’m struggling against the arms that hold me but can’t get away from them.

  “That ghost girl you knew wasn’t your sister, Kai. Hasn’t Shay explained it all to you? She was a cancer patient; consent was given by her family. She was our success—when she survived the antimatter injections, her cancer was completely gone.”

  “Stop lying; you know who she was. And you ‘cured’ her in fire! She was burned alive—you did that.”

  He frowns. “What has she told you?” He shakes his head. “Sadly, she was mentally ill—likely a result of secondary brain cancer that she had before the treatment. She didn’t even know who she was at the end. She died in the fires from the accident with the particle accelerator, the one that destroyed the facility and much of the island.”

  “I don’t believe you. She was Callie; I know my own sister. She knew things only Callie could know.”

  Alex shakes his head. “As usual, Kai, you refuse to see the truth. Enough of this pointless discussion; time is short.” His eyes lock on Shay, then on Freja, Beatriz, and Elena, in turn. “Join us. Join Multiverse. Together—as survivors—we have what it takes to find the answers that will save our planet.”

  They’re not actually buying into what he is saying?

  I struggle again. “Let me go!”

  “In a moment. Listen to me, Kai. You’ve been having problems, ah, adjusting to Shay’s abilities. You’re looking for a reason for your unreasonable reactions to her, and you’d like to blame me—another one with the same abilities.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not my fault you can’t handle Shay being different from you—being superior to you. It’s not her fault either.”

  He’s using that mild, reasonable tone—everything he says sounds so right when he says it, but I know he’s just trying to mess around in my mind in another way now.

  All I want to do is get away from him, from Shay; from all of them.

  Alex nods and they release me. I head for the door. I’m getting the hell out of here.

  CHAPTER 32

  SHAY

  I’M LOCKED IN XANDER’S GAZE: he is Xander now. Alex is someone I used to know, before all these other things about him came to light. Somehow it helps me to segment the two halves of him with his name.

  Is he telling the truth?

 
With an effort of will, I pull my eyes away from his. Kai: I haven’t lost you; I can’t. But Freja has already gone after him; the door shuts with a clang behind them.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex says. And he truly is, of this I’m sure. “I know how much it hurts to be different. I know how much it hurts to lose somebody because of it.” There are echoes of his own pain inside him and there is also something that tells me who he means—who he lost. I should run after Kai too, but I can’t leave this alone.

  “Who was it that you lost? Tell me about her.”

  He tilts his head to one side, considering my request—curious why I ask?—then nods to himself and answers. “She had long wavy dark hair; that glorious Scottish accent. Much younger than me.” He looks at me again and half frowns. Can he read the signs, see them in my face, my hair? “She lived with her aunt near my house in Killin—correction, the house that my ex, Kai’s mother, now owns.”

  “You’re from Killin, aren’t you, Shay?” Elena says.

  And I almost see the moment it happens, when the blocks spin into place in Xander’s mind: Killin. Mum. Me. And would he ever have made this leap if I hadn’t asked him about her? Perhaps, perhaps not, yet I did it anyway. Despite my resolution to never tell him, maybe there is something inside me that needed him to know.

  There is genuine shock in his eyes. “I could always tell there was something you were hiding when you considered me, but I couldn’t work out what it could possibly be. You’re Moyra’s daughter? And…mine?”

  Elena and Beatriz look between us, confused; realization coming slower.

  “One day Moyra left me. She just up and disappeared, and it broke my heart. But I didn’t know about you. I would have searched for her if I did.”

  “I know. She told me you never knew.” She also told me she left him because he had a wrongness inside: what did she sense all that time ago? Then it hits me, and I’m filled with shock that I’m careful to hide from my face and my aura. Kai was right, wasn’t he? Xander was a survivor even back then. How is that even possible? I don’t know, but from what Mum said, what she showed me in her thoughts and memories before she died, I’m both certain that it’s true and surprised I didn’t realize it before.