by Paula Weston
‘We’ve got company.’
‘How far back?’
‘Not following us. There’s a woman here in the front with me, sir, with a gun in my face.’
19
‘Angela, Julianne, are you okay?’
Angie lunges at the window, beating the Major to it. ‘Khan?’ She presses her face to the opening and grimaces at the sharp reminder of her bullet wound. In the orange dash light she sees the federal agent has a gun trained on the girl behind the wheel. The soldier glowers at the road, short dark hair feathered around an angular face. She’s no older than Ryan or Waylon, wiry and wound tight.
‘Out of the way.’ The Major is at Angie’s shoulder, trying to move her aside.
‘Khan’s a federal cop.’
‘Let me talk to her.’
‘Not while you’re holding a gun.’ Angie knocks his hand from her uninjured arm and braces for him to push her aside. He doesn’t. Maybe the fact she’s shot and bleeding earns her a few seconds of grace.
‘Angela. Are you all right? What happened?’
Angie forces bleary eyes to focus. What did Khan see before she hijacked the van?
‘A stun grenade came through my front window and a meat-head shot me.’ Angie wipes her nose on her shoulder. Her throat feels like she’s swallowed a sparkler—when will the god-awful burning stop?
‘How badly are you injured?’
‘It hurts like hell, but I think the bullet only nicked my arm.’
Khan lifts the gun barrel to the driver’s temple. ‘Is this lot responsible?’
‘No, they were already inside, and they knocked first.’ Angie can’t see how close Khan’s finger is to the trigger. She hopes the safety’s on. ‘They’re army, apparently.’
‘Do you believe that?’
Angie glances at the Major. He’s crouched beside her, seriously pissed off. ‘They brought Jules home on Wednesday,’ she says. ‘So, yeah.’
Khan lowers her gun and the girl behind the wheel blows out her breath.
‘The weapon’s down, sir.’
The Major waits a beat and then makes a show of handing his handgun to Ryan. Angie stays where she is for a few more seconds—she needs a feel for how far she can push him—and shuffles sideways so he can see into the cab. The wipers flick backwards and forwards in a frantic dance.
‘Khan, is it?’ the Major says.
‘Federal agent Khan. And you are?’
‘Major Luka Voss. SECDET Q18.’
She tilts her head as if to reappraise him. ‘What’s your interest in Angela and Julianne?’
The Major barks a short laugh. ‘Pointing a Glock at one of my soldiers doesn’t put you in charge, agent. If you have questions for me, you go through the usual channels.’
‘Major, you were just involved in a non-sanctioned tactical raid in a suburban house during which shots were fired, and now you’re fleeing a crime scene with hostages—’
‘No, you’ve stumbled into the middle of a military operation.’
‘Military operation? Aren’t your guys guns for hire? The latest revenue-raising experiment from Treasury?’
‘You might want to investigate who’s funding your department before you crawl too far up your own—’
Angie bangs her palm on the wall separating the pair. ‘Get over your turf pissing. Men with guns stormed my house tonight and tried to take Jules. Do either of you care about that?’
They pass an exit and Khan’s face is momentarily lit up. ‘They came for Julianne? Why?’
‘I don’t know, but that’s twice in one week.’
‘And his unit was there on both occasions. What’s the story, Major?’
‘That’s classified—’
‘He says he wants my help,’ Angie says before he can finish. Her palm is again clamped over the gunshot wound. It’s seeping blood and her whole arm throbs. ‘I’m deciding if I believe him.’
The Major gives a low growl.
‘Angie’—Khan turns sideways in the front seat—‘why would anyone come after Julianne?’
Angie rubs her eyes—bad move, it’s like dragging sandpaper over her eyeballs. ‘Long story.’
‘I need to hear it.’
The Major shakes his head. He wants answers himself, but not so badly that he’ll take them with an audience. Angie wipes her bloodied hand on her trackpants and returns pressure to her arm.
‘Jules,’ Angie says. ‘What do you want to do?’
Jules opens her mouth and her first word catches on a hacking cough. Ryan leans in as if to help but stops himself. He hovers in a half-crouch while she recovers and then settles back beside Waylon.
‘Tell them the truth,’ Jules says when she’s regained her voice.
‘Who?’ Angie prompts.
‘Both of them. Khan should come to the base with us.’
‘Seriously?’
‘You asked.’
Angie blows out her breath. If she could fix this on her own, she would; but she can’t. They have to take the risk.
Nothing but shitty choices, as always.
‘Can you live with that, Voss?’ Angie asks.
The Major’s nostrils flare. ‘If Khan holsters that weapon and it doesn’t make another appearance in the vicinity of my soldiers. And I want to see credentials.’
‘Likewise.’ Khan holsters her handgun and says something in Arabic to the driver. The girl’s stranglehold on the steering wheel eases.
Angie rests her head against the side of the van, aching and dead tired. She’s shielded Jules for eighteen years, helped her stay under the radar even without Mike. And now gunmen are storming her home, soldiers have seen Jules offload an electrical charge into a lump of a man, and she and Jules are going to share their dangerous truth with a privatised army unit and the federal police.
What little control Angie had left over their lives is about to be totally stripped away.
20
Jules knows what Ryan is thinking. Even when she couldn’t see him clearly—her sight is only properly returning now—she could feel it radiating from him.
What are you?
He hasn’t used those words; he doesn’t need to. It’s the obvious question once you’ve seen what she can do.
They’re in the common area of the SECDET Q18 barracks. Jules is wedged into the corner of a tartan couch, picking at pilled fabric on the armrest with her feet tucked beneath her. The rain has eased to a drizzle, bringing a drop in temperature. Her hair is wet from the dash to the van and damp cotton clings to her skin. She repositions the blanket around her shoulders, avoids eye contact with Ryan. He’s sitting on the floor, leaning against a bookcase filled with manuals and tapping his thumbs on his thighs. Waylon and the girl who was driving—the Major introduced her as Private Lena French—are in the communal kitchen making tea. The TV is on, volume down, and the barracks smells of socks, liniment and burnt bacon.
‘You’re rejoining the Agitators?’ Khan says, incredulous.
‘I haven’t said yes or no, I’m telling you the offer.’
Angie’s perched on the edge of the pool table, fidgeting with a fresh bandage. The Major cleaned and dressed her bullet-grazed arm without a word. Jules tries to swallow but her heart is taking up too much space.
‘Peta Paxton is happy with you making that offer?’ Khan asks the Major.
He steps away from Angie. ‘It’s an operational matter. It’s not her concern. Or yours.’
To Angie: ‘And you think Wednesday’s attack and tonight’s home invasion are connected, and that Julianne is the common denominator.’
Angie lifts her eyebrows at Jules. ‘Do you want to explain?’
Jules shakes her head. She really doesn’t. Her mouth is a wad of cotton and her right arm tingles with pins and needles. Khan looks from Angie to Jules to the Major, the moment stretching out until Ryan’s tapping thumbs fall still.
‘You said that wasn’t the first time.’ He lifts his chin at Jules. ‘In the lift, you said it had happ
ened before. Did you mean someone coming after you?’
Jules glances at Khan, uneasy.
‘When was the other time?’ Ryan presses.
Angie pushes off from the pool table. ‘Tell them.’
Jules wets her lips, tries to work out what her mother wants from her.
‘The rules have changed, Jules,’ Angie says.
Jules feels her pulse in her throat. ‘Yeah, but—’
‘They saw, Jules.’
‘Saw what?’ Khan asks, exasperated.
Jules ignores the agent, focuses on Ryan. He raises his eyebrows, expectant.
‘It was two years ago,’ she says. ‘At school.’
‘The science lab?’
Jules hesitates. Does Angie really want her to tug on this thread and unravel their lives?
‘Julianne.’ Khan’s tone is razor sharp. ‘What happened at school?’
Jules takes a breath and lets it out in a noisy rush. There’s no going back now.
‘When I went upstairs to get my cardigan from the lab, a guy came in behind me. He was in his twenties, maybe. I’d never seen him before. He had a gun.’ Jules remembers the demand of his energy, the calculation of his stare: she’d had no doubt he was capable of violence.
Khan’s mouth drops open in genuine shock—it’s not an expression Jules has seen on her before. ‘There was someone else in the lab? Why am I only hearing about this now?’
‘I tried to get around him but he kept blocking the door and forcing me back inside. He was asking me why Mum hated Pax Fed so much, what she had on them.’ Her skin crawls, remembering. ‘And then he opened up the gas line to a Bunsen burner…’
‘That’s how the fire started?’
‘I didn’t mean for it to happen—’
‘The bastard was wearing a camera,’ Angie says, matter-of-fact. ‘He filmed what happened and sent me the footage. Threatened to release it if I didn’t back away from the Agitators.’
‘Wait.’ Khan holds up a palm. ‘You were blackmailed into leaving the Agitators? Over what? Julianne confessed to lighting the fire.’
‘You didn’t use matches or a lighter, did you?’ the Major says to her. It’s not really a question.
Khan blinks, her forehead creasing. The Major waits to hear what he’s already figured out. The only sounds in the barracks are the light patter of rain on the roof and an electric kettle bubbling in the kitchen. On the muted TV, a celebrity chef cracks an egg into a bowl.
‘There was no taser in the laneway,’ Ryan says and Jules can’t tell if he’s afraid or intrigued or both. She can’t look at her mother and she especially can’t look at Khan.
Waylon appears in the doorway carrying a tray with six cups of steaming tea. Private French has a tin of biscuits. She gives Khan a wide berth. The tray and the tin go on the pool table and Waylon offers the first cup to Angie, teabag tag draped over the side. Angie waves it away.
‘Someone needs to spell this out for me,’ Khan says. ‘Exactly how did the fire start?’
Jules knows she agreed to tell them, but it’s so much harder than she expected. She looks to her mother.
‘Certain cells in Jules’ body create excess electricity,’ Angie says, taking over. She delivers the news as if Jules is lactose intolerant. ‘When the voltage gets too high she has to release the charge, and if it comes into contact with something flammable, like gas from a Bunsen burner—’ Her fingers bloom apart to demonstrate an explosion.
Khan runs her tongue across her teeth, her eyes narrowing. ‘You’re telling me Julianne didn’t destroy the lab as an act of vandalism on your behalf, it was to protect herself—and she did it using electricity from her own body?’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Jules says. ‘The charge is harder to hold when I’m scared or anxious. It was gone before I could stop it.’ She only got out alive because the major blast didn’t come until the fireball reached the gas main.
‘Julianne, do you honestly expect me to believe that?’
‘It’s true,’ Ryan says. ‘She gave me a jolt out the back of the Pax Fed building on Wednesday. I thought she had a stun gun.’
‘And we saw her drop a big bastard who put a gun to her head tonight,’ Waylon adds. ‘He barely had a pulse afterwards.’
Jules flashes hot and cold at the memory of the man on her kitchen floor.
‘Show me.’
Jules hugs her knees to her chest. ‘It’s not a party trick. I can’t always control it.’
‘Show me right now or I’m charging you with perjury.’
Jules closes her eyes, remembers all the times she’s failed to rein in the current: with her dad when she was trying to master it, with her friends when she couldn’t. A mishap in the haunted house at the Ekka…an unexplained fire in a friend’s backyard… the school explosion.
Can she do what Khan’s asking? The current is background fizz at the moment and she’s earthed out twice already tonight so maybe it won’t be too bad, even with the swell of anxiety. Either way she has to show Khan something because the federal agent won’t believe her unless she sees it. With Khan, it’s always about evidence.
Jules opens her eyes. ‘I’ll try.’
Waylon deliberately steps further away and Private French does the same, even if she’s not entirely sure why.
Jules holds up her right hand as if balancing an invisible plate. All she needs is to produce a spark or two. She relaxes her hold on the current for a millisecond, lets it find the path down her arm. Her fingers sting as the pressure builds and a burst of current breaks through, tiny flares of blue lightning zapping from her fingertips.
‘Holy shit,’ Private French whispers.
Jules brings up her other hand, tries to get the charge to curl into a ball between her palms but it’s stronger than she expects. She needs to draw it back in before—
A single arc of current leaves her hands and grounds itself in the TV on the wall. The screen pops and goes blank. Jules draws the rest of the charge back to her core and holds her breath for a good five seconds until it settles.
Khan’s gaze tracks to the smoking TV and back to Jules. ‘How…?’
‘I don’t know.’
It’s a few more seconds before the full weight of the truth hits the agent. ‘You’ve lied to me, both of you, for two years. Do you know how many times I’ve gone out on a limb for you? Defended you whenever a new accusation was thrown your way?’
‘Jules copped to the fire,’ Angie says. ‘What does it matter how it started?’
‘The truth matters, Angela.’
‘What would you have done with it?’
‘Used it to catch whoever was in that lab threatening your daughter, for a start.’
‘And then what? We don’t know who sent that guy or if he even knew what to expect when he cornered Jules.’
‘Did it occur to you that I might be able to find out?’
‘You work for a federal agency.’
‘So?’
‘Who do you think made her this way?’
Khan laughs, flinty. ‘Ah, the conspiracy theory: the government’s to blame.’
Unease ripples through Jules. Khan’s questioned them, kept them under surveillance and disagreed with Angie’s politics, but she’s never accused either of them of outright lying. Jules knows the agent’s anger is justified but it stings anyway.
‘Jules generates dangerous levels of electricity. That’s not a genetic anomaly, Khan, that’s engineered.’
‘Who would do that to her, Angela? Who?’
Angie draws a breath to reload and the dread rises again for Jules. That older, familiar unease of knowing she was made wrong.
‘The defence force.’
There’s a spark in the room’s energy. Jules can’t pinpoint who set it off, but it’s not Angie. She knows her mother’s spikes as well as her own.
‘Jules is different genetically,’ Angie continues. ‘Mike and I created her the old-fashioned way—so that means whatever gene m
akes her the way she is had to come from me or Mike. And nobody’s tampered with my DNA.’
‘You think the army did something to your husband?’
‘He was getting jabbed every week on that first tour in Afghanistan—’
‘The ebola vaccine,’ Khan says, impatient. ‘In the early days it had to be administered weekly.’
‘Anything could’ve been in those syringes.’
‘I’m no expert, Angie, but I don’t think genetic engineering works like that.’
Jules’ mum shakes her head. ‘Why is it so hard for you to believe our soldiers are being used as guinea pigs? What do you think this corporatised army is all about?’ She gestures to Ryan, Waylon and Private French. All three find somewhere else to look. The Major says nothing, gives nothing away. Jules glances at Ryan and is relieved to find him fixated on the carpet rather than her, thumbs again tapping.
‘Let’s work our way back to that issue, shall we?’ Khan rubs the corner of her eye with a finger, careful not to smudge her eyeliner. ‘The most pressing issue is identifying your intruders.’
‘Sir, permission to speak?’ It’s Waylon, slouched against the bookcase, cup of tea in hand. ‘Those guys tonight can’t have known what our girl here can do or they would’ve taken her down first.’ Waylon looks to Jules. She doesn’t answer but he’s right: there’s no way anyone who’s seen that video would get close to her.
‘Which means they’re guns for hire, not the main game.’
The Major nods. ‘Agreed.’
‘They could be connected to Xavier. Why else was he casing the house earlier today?’
‘Xavier?’ Khan asks.
‘An Agitator,’ Waylon says. ‘I saw him check out the De Marchi place today.’
‘What were you doing there?’
Waylon nods at Ryan. ‘Walsh had the guilts over Wednesday.’
Ryan looks over his shoulder. Jules can’t see his expression but whatever it is it gets a laugh out of Waylon. How are these guys even functioning after that stun grenade? Jules’ eyes are still burning and weeping even after repeated rinsing but these two—it’s as if they weren’t in the same room as her.
‘Do you have a full name for your Agitator?’ Khan asks.