by Glover, Nhys
She found that she was heading for home. When the fog in her brain cleared, she saw she was making her way down the corridor toward Maggie’s studio. Her mind wouldn’t explain her choices. Why here and not somewhere else? Why Maggie?
Because she was the closest thing to a friend she had in this world, beside Julio. And she needed a friend desperately. As she walked into the Studio, Maggie looked up from her work. Her face became a study of concern.
‘Is Julio all right?’ Maggie hurried to her side, and took her hands.
‘Yes. He and Alice came back with the little boy.’
‘Then what? You look like your heart is breaking!’
‘I… I don’t know. He came back through, and he didn’t even look at me. Walked right past me, as if I wasn’t there. Something bad happened. It was in the air between Alice and him. But I don’t know what.’
Maggie placed a comforting hand on her trembling shoulder. When had she started to shake?
‘Don’t jump to any conclusions. You know he was worried about this Jump. And it is emotionally intense. I imagine it’s easy to close down to everything but what is happening in the moment. When everyone has had a chance to calm down, you’ll find out for sure what is happening with Julio. Until then, just be available.’
Maggie’s advice was sound, she knew. And it was what she would attempt to do. But she wasn’t sure she’d be able to follow through with it. Her heart ached too much. Her fear that she had lost him was too great.
‘Let’s have a cuppa, huh?’ Maggie suggested as she slid her arm around Jane’s waist and guided her toward the door.
Jane could only nod.
She waited for him to come to her all day. And when he hadn’t appeared by nightfall, she made up her mind. One way or the other, she deserved to know what was going on with Julio. One way or the other, she needed to know.
As she jogged along the moving pathway toward the centre of the city, she marvelled at her response. Old Jane would have hid away in the corner, waiting to see what events would occur. Waiting to decide how she could fit in, stay safe from whatever action was occurring. This New Jane was not willing to do that. She deserved more than that. It was as if a part of her that she had been buried for so long was reasserting itself, and she couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad thing.
It just was.
Breathless, she reached the dormitory precinct, and made her way to Julio’s apartment. There was a chance that he wouldn’t be there. It would probably have been wiser to use her Tablet to link to his and check. But the fear that he would tell her not to come had been greater than her fear of coming. If he didn’t want to see her, she would have that news, face to face, so she could read his feelings from his expression.
At his door, she rang the silent bell. All noise was kept to a minimum in the communal areas. Even the doors slid open and shut soundlessly. No one else’s noise was allowed to intrude on others.
After a moment, the door opened, and she found herself looking into her prince’s stark face. Her heart, which only moments before had been in her throat, suddenly dropped into the pit of her stomach. There was no welcome in his eyes. No sign that he even knew her.
‘Can we talk?’ Her voice was stronger than she expected.
He nodded, and moved out of her way so she could enter. Then he followed her into the large living room. The lights glowed warmly, but the room felt as cold as a tomb. No music played softly in the background. No smells of cooking food covered the anonymity of the space. It was as if he was there, but not there.
She sat down on the two seater sofa, and watched in dread as he took the single chair on the other side of the coffee table. Julio didn’t look at her. He just leaned over, and watched his hands, as they gripped tightly together in front of him.
‘Please tell me what happened.’ It surprised her that there was no pleading in her voice. She felt like pleading, on her hands and knees, for him to talk to her, to tell her what she needed to know.
‘Why? So you can get on my case, too?’ The anger raged just beneath the surface, and she felt a surge of fear.
‘When have I ever got on your case?’ It was a challenge, and she knew her chin was jutting out.
He shot her a quick glance, before returning to study his hands.
‘Fine. You may as well know what you got involved with.’
That he said ‘what’ rather than ‘who’ was intensely worrying. What had that Jump done to him?
‘Do you want the full story or the abridged?’
‘Full story.’ How could she sound so calm, when inside she was screaming?
‘We arrived a week before D Day and everything went as planned. Alice made contact with the mother, but wasn’t able to infiltrate the house. I met up with the father at the pub, and the brother at the basketball court after school.
‘It became clear pretty quickly that the father was just an average guy, weighed down by family debt, and largely uninvolved with his sons. He felt no anger directed at his family, or more specifically, at the youngest son, for the weight he carried.
‘The brother was another story. I watched him bullying smaller kids at the playing field. He was fourteen, and his testosterone was pumping. It was easy to play to his ego – an older male, wanting to befriend him, admiring his tough guy antics. I got him to tell me about his brother by making up one of my own that I couldn’t stand. It was so easy.
‘He was sexually abusing the kid. And he was proud of it. But it hadn’t been going on long, and was tied in with jealousy over not being the centre of attention anymore. Jealousy and puberty, what a combination!’ He stopped for a moment, wiping his face with his hands, as if he was trying to wipe something away she couldn’t see. When he went on, his voice was harder. She had never heard him sound like this.
‘So, I remembered what you said about taking my hints and going to the beach. I dropped hints that he should get rid of the kid. Subtle, I had to be subtle. I told him what I’d wanted to do to my little brother. Really laid it on thick. I felt sick just saying those things. I don’t even know how I didn’t just vomit, there and then. But I didn’t.
‘Then the night of D Day, I waited at the front door, putting Alice on the window. Because I’d even laid down that part of the plan. I suggested he wake his brother up, whisper that he had something to show him, but that they’d get in trouble if their parents heard them. They’d then sneak out the front door, leaving it on the latch.’ The disgust in his voice was like acid, and she cringed away from it.
‘I followed him to the Reserve. My plan was to immobilise the brother and grab the kid. By the time I let Alice know what was happening, I’d have the boy and be able to say I found him wandering alone in the Reserve. Best laid plans of mice and men…’ Again the disgust ate through his words, making them painful to hear.
‘But Alice is no fool. She knew something was up. I followed the brother and grabbed him, just as he was going to hit the kid with a rock. I clamped him around the neck, and he writhed like a fish on a hook, until I cut off his air and started to lose consciousness.
‘Then I told him what I thought of him. I said he didn’t deserve to have a brother, and that I was taking him. I told him I would be watching him from now on, and if he ever abused another kid, I’d come back for him. And he really wouldn’t like what I did to him, if I came back for him. Then he lost consciousness.
‘Alice arrived just as he dropped. She took in the scene, and her angry look told me all I needed to know. I grabbed the kid, who didn’t have a clue what was happening, and we set off for the Exit Point we’d established not far away.’
The silence in the room was heavy, once he’d finished talking. Jane played over in her mind all the possible things she could say to him. Each one seemed inappropriate, insincere or stupid. In the end she asked a question.
‘How did Cara and Jac take it?’
‘Not well. I’ve blatantly gone against Protocol, in the worse way possible. The ramification of my
actions are huge. But you know what?‘ He looked up at her, fire blazing in his eyes. ‘I don’t give a damn! That creep needed to be stopped. I stopped him without making irreversible changes to the time-line. The brother was never seen to bully or abuse another child again. No mention was ever made of someone stealing the boy. Nothing changed.’
‘That we know of.’ She couldn’t help adding.
‘Yeah, that we know of. The world is still here. It looks the same to me. I remember reading the data on his brother’s history, and my memory seems the same. The events all fit with what happened. Just like I changed your destiny, Jane, I changed Jeremy’s. That kid would have lived a hellacious childhood. And now he won’t!’
‘He lost his parents.’
‘Who didn’t know enough to protect him! And it wasn’t as if we could tell the parents, and then leave well enough alone. Jeremy disappeared in 1991! He had to leave that time-line, one way or the other, that night. It was fated to happen.’
Jane shut her mouth tightly, sat back, and waited to cool down. She was so mixed up. In one sense, his actions could be applauded, but in another, he had played God in the worst possible way. That kind of manipulation was not right.
‘Why did you do it?’
He sighed heavily, and leaned back in his chair. Still studiously avoiding looking at her, he stared up at the ceiling.
‘When I was six I was a starving rat on the streets. My mother was always out of it, drugged on one cheap chemical or other. That was the thing about the Second Dark Age, no matter how bad things got, the drugs were there to make it all go away, for a while. Until they killed you.
‘One day, this bigger kid caught me and raped me. I’d seen far worse. I’d seen it happen to my older sister. Then the guy told me that he’d feed me if I came back for more…’ He swallowed and turned his hollow gaze down to meet hers. His next words as awful as anything she had ever heard. ‘And I was hungry enough to come back. Many times.’ The emotion caught in his throat and he couldn’t speak for a few moments while he tried desperately to pull himself together. When he went on, it was as if he was choking on every word.
‘So that is the why. I could not stop that bastard from abusing me back then, but I sure as hell could stop him abusing Jeremy, over and over again. So I did. I knew it might come to that. I felt it in my bones, right from the first moment I heard his story.’ He paused and looked into her eyes, the utter self-loathing she saw there was like a kick in the gut. ‘There was no way I was going to let that little kid grow up feeling like gutter slime.’
Jane didn’t need to hear him add ‘like I did’. It was so clearly the case. How had he managed to stay sane and normal after all he had experienced in those first years? The Last Great Plague now seemed to be just acid icing on the toxic cake that was his early life. Those new parents must have done so much to repair the damage done. If they hadn’t, he would have Crashed and Burned on integration with his new clone, his death wish would have been so intense.
It was strange how the façade could be so deceptive. She had seen Julio as a mysterious, sexy prince, so far out of her league it was ridiculous. But underneath, he was really a tortured child, living with guilt that was emotionally crippling him.
‘I always wondered why I’d been the one to survive. Out of a thousand people, I was the one to survive that plague. I thought it was punishment, especially in the time before I got my clone. But then, when I heard they were going to Retrieve kids, I realised why I’d survived. So I could do this work. So I could make up for…’ His voice petered out into anguished silence.
Chapter Fourteen
‘You have nothing to make up for, Julio!’ Jane was on her knees in front of him, trying to get him to look at her. ‘Look at me! You have nothing to make up for!’
When he continued to stare up at the ceiling, his body as stiff as if he was being pulled tight on a torture rack, she moved up his body until she could place her hands gently on either side of his face. With tender but determined pressure, she drew his head down so his face was in line with hers. His gaze was trained on her forehead. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.
‘Look at me, please!’ she pleaded. And very slowly his gaze dropped to hers, and she stared into the twin pools of Hell with all the courage she could muster.
‘We do whatever we can to survive. You were weak and small and vulnerable. And you did what you had to, to stay alive. You did nothing wrong. Did you ever hurt anyone to get food?’
He shook his head. His eyes were still dead, but now they were trained obediently on hers.
‘There were so many worse things you could have done to survive. And if you’d done those, I would still have been okay with it. Because, unless you’re in a situation, you can’t know what you’d be willing to do.’
She closed her eyes, so she could garner her own strength before going on. When she opened them again, it was to see a gleam of hope in his.
‘My mum used to have men around. ‘Uncles’, I was supposed to call them. Some of them tried to do things to me, and for the most part I was able to get away. Then this one guy used to beat mum up, and he really scared me. I was eight or nine at the time. He would grab me and hold me against a wall and touch me… and enjoy my fear and disgust. It was a power trip more than any interest in me, sexually.
‘So one day, I put a little rat poison in his food. He got rushed to hospital, and nearly died. The police worked out it was me, but they didn’t charge me. It just sort of disappeared. And that guy never came back.
‘I nearly killed a man, Julio, to stop him scaring me. And I’d do it again. That you weren’t willing to go to my lengths, when it wasn’t just fear but survival driving you, says a lot for you.’
She had to look away. Having given her guilty secret away, she couldn’t bear to see him despise her.
‘The right thing would have been to kill him.,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I don’t know how I could have done it, because I was little and he was big. But the right thing would have been to try to kill him. But then my food supply would have been cut off.’ He was mumbling now, his voice filled with tears.
‘And if I had been hungry and dependant on that creep I poisoned, I probably wouldn’t have done it. It’s all about worst case scenario. For you, it was hunger and survival. For me it was fear. I could get rid of the fear by getting rid of him. But you could only get rid of the hunger by keeping your creep. Just choices.
‘I became so scared of the part of me that could kill, that I pushed her down. I became that mouse in the shadows you once described me as. I was so ashamed of what I did. But you know something?’ She paused and found the courage to look at him again. His eyes were filled with desperate hope, and all she wanted to do was cry for his pain. Instead, she went on, her voice gaining conviction as she went.
‘I had nothing to be ashamed of. Just like you don’t. It was those predators who should have been ashamed. We were little kids. Victims. I haven’t been able to see it that way until now. Knowing it was true for you, I have to admit it was true for me, too.’
She stared him in the eye, daring him to deny the truth of her words. His uneasy capitulation filled her with hope. While her courage held out, she moved so she could sit across his lap, and put her arms around his neck. After an endless moment, she felt him put his arms around her, tentatively at first, but then with more conviction.
They clung together like that for what felt like hours. Jane knew he was crying, as his chest heaved in silent sobs. And the tears poured down her own face, dampening the shoulder of his tunic.
Finally, Julio drew her gently back from him, so he could meet her eyes. Still red from the tears, they were now filled with adoration and hope.
‘I thought it was me saving you, Querida. But I think it’s the other way around. You’re an old soul, a wise old soul.’
Jane leaned in to kiss his lips tenderly, her heart so full of love she couldn’t hold it all. That she felt his love in his kiss only multiplied her own sense
of joy. They were two damaged survivors who had found each other at last. And together, they could heal their wounds and move on. She felt it now, deep in her bones.
When Julio took her to his bed, it was as if it were the first time for both of them. There was a depth and intensity to their love making that made every stroke and every kiss, one of acceptance, and of understanding. No longer strangers, they knew each other’s deepest, darkest places. And it was bearable. It was okay. They could move through it now, and move on.
‘What do we do?’ Cara asked her Bonded later that night, after they were replete from passion. She rested her fair head on his broad chest, listening to his heart beat slowing back to normal.
‘We’re building up enough anecdotal evidence that indicates these seeming intrusions into the time-line are, in fact, predestined. Or whatever word you’d like to use. If I can look at a crime scene pic of a card that I will later give you, then everything we currently concern ourselves with, may be a fallacy. Young Jeremy may always have been snatched from his abusive brother by Julio. There’s no way to tell, as the time line would shift to reflect any new changes we created. We would then not be aware of the way they might have been.
‘But the temporal paradox aside, Julio is a loose cannon, and will need to be removed from the program.’ Jac’s voice had become implacable
‘See, I knew you’d go there. But I see it a different way. He has been responsible for four successful Retrievals out of our thirteen, if we include Jane. He’s brought in twice as many targets as any other Retriever, with a 120% retrieval rate, if you consider Jane as the excess 20 %. And so far, he hasn’t made a mistake, even though he’s definitely stepped over the line. It’s like he weighs up the possibilities, considers the risks, and comes down in favour of taking the risk. And we reap the benefits. Look at Jane! My God, the thought that we might have missed that girl! It isn’t worth contemplating.’