Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  I waited for Sophie to start walking back down to the living room before I ran up the stairs two at a time. This definitely didn’t feel right. And when I saw Lily’s door was closed my heart started pounding. I was sure she had done something stupid. In fact, I was so sure that when I burst into her room, initially my mind saw exactly what it expected to see. The curtains were half drawn, so her room was gloomy in the fading light. But amongst the gloom I could see her in bed, on her side, her eyes closed. And I could see the packets of painkillers, all lined up on the chest of drawers beside her.

  I ran over and started shaking her.

  ‘Lily, wake up,’ I said desperately, ‘Lily!’

  She half-opened her eyes and then blinked in confusion.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked me, ‘what’s happening?’

  ‘Have you taken any?’ I asked.

  She wouldn’t answer me. In fact, as she began to understand, she smiled. It was this peculiarly unique, terrible smile, that seemed to say- I can do what I want, and you can’t stop me.

  ‘Lily!’ I said, ‘tell me! Have you taken any?’

  I started looking through the boxes, and saw quickly that all the pills were still inside.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said, ‘I haven’t taken any. I’m just looking at them.’

  She reached across to try and stop me messing up more of the boxes, and I noticed that there was a large bloodstain on the sleeve of her pyjama top.

  ‘What have you done?’ I asked her.

  She snatched her arm away, and I realised that whatever it was, she obviously thought it would shock me. She’d always said before that she was in control, that she wouldn’t ever self-harm too badly. This was obviously sufficiently bad that she thought I might stop trusting her.

  ‘Show me,’ I said softly, ‘please Lily.’

  She responded to my quiet tone, and slowly rolled up the sleeve of her top.

  ‘I didn’t realise it would bleed this much,’ she said, trying to defend her actions as the cuts became visible, ‘but it’s okay now,’ she continued, ‘I won’t do it like this again.’

  Chapter 45

  God knows what she’d used, but it had clearly been something pretty nasty. There were two long red slashes across the back of her arm, still seeping blood, but mostly it had dried to a dark burgundy.

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she said, ‘when I’d done it I was frightened. I thought it would never stop bleeding. It was horrible.’ She held her arm close to her and started speaking to it like it had its own feelings. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘When’s the last time you ate?’ I asked her. There was a bottle of water on the floor by her bed, but there were no mugs or plates around, and she can’t have been leaving her room much if she’d managed not to be spotted by Sophie. She certainly didn’t appear to have bothered having a shower or getting dressed, even though it was four in the afternoon.

  ‘Lily, when was the last time you ate?’ I repeated.

  She wouldn’t answer me. In fact, she didn’t want to have a conversation at all, and closed her eyes.

  ‘Have you eaten today?’ I asked her.

  ‘No,’ she said, eyes still closed, ‘I’ll eat when I’ve done some work.’

  I knelt down beside her bed. ‘You haven’t eaten anything today? What about yesterday?’

  ‘What’s the point?’ she said, ‘I don’t do anything, so I don’t deserve any food.’

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Lily, that’s not a very nice thing to do to your body, is it?’ I said, ‘you can’t expect to be able to work if you’re not giving yourself what you need to function.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Lily said, ‘even if I wanted to, I just can’t even make a meal. I don’t have the energy. I can barely keep it together long enough to be in the kitchen, especially with all the others in there.’

  ‘You have to eat,’ I said, ‘I’ve already noticed you’ve been losing weight, and I don’t like it. It’s not good for you.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Lily said, then she brought her arms up over her face, as though stopping herself from seeing me stopped all this from happening.

  I watched her there, huddled up in her bed, her room cold and dark, her interaction with the world so minimal her housemates actually thought she was out. Eventually she got curious about what I was doing, and peeked out from between her arms, fixing one of her haunted eyes on me.

  ‘Why am I like this?’ she asked me quietly, ‘what did I do that was so bad?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘you’ve done nothing at all.’

  Slowly, she rolled the sleeve of her pyjama top up again and looked at her injuries.

  ‘I’m hurt,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Lily, I know.’

  ‘I don’t want to be hurt.’

  I lifted her arm up and kissed it near to the cuts. ‘I’ll clean them for you if you want,’ I said.

  Lily nodded, so I went into the bathroom and found some cotton wool pads. I wasn’t sure what I could clean her with apart from water so I ran the pads under the tap and went back to her bedroom, where I sat down beside her and started cleaning away some of the dried blood.

  ‘Do you worry about me?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Yes. I worry about you every day.’

  ‘Do you worry that I’ll die?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How does it make you feel?’

  ‘Awful.’

  I carried on gently cleaning her arm and she watched me.

  ‘You see, you say it would make you feel awful, but I don’t believe it,’ she said, ‘I just don’t understand.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about it. All I want you to worry about is looking after yourself.’

  When I’d finished, Lily went back to looking at her arm as though it fascinated her, and I noticed that as well as her pyjama top she’d got blood on her sheets and her pillow.

  ‘What do you think when you look at where you’ve hurt yourself?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I feel bad for my arm, because it never really did anything to me. It’s just trying to do its best, and I’ve hurt it.’

  ‘Your arm is part of your body, though, isn’t it, Lily? You’re being unkind to all of your body. You’re not feeding it. You say nasty things about it, you’re not looking after yourself properly.’

  Lily held her arm out to me. ‘What do you think when you look at it?’ she asked.

  I thought for a long while, and I tried to think about some of the advice I’d read, though I didn’t really know how to apply any of it to her and my own hurt was so much that I didn’t know what I should do anymore. Beyond the fact it was obvious she couldn’t cope, I realised for the first time that I wasn’t sure I could cope. Not with things as they were.

  ‘I think you’re very unwell, aren’t you, Lily?’ I said, stroking her hair.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s all I’ve ever tried to tell you.’

  She looked up at me and she seemed almost relieved, like I’d validated something for her. But it’s not as though I hadn’t told her she was depressed before. Was she trying to tell me she wanted me to do something more drastic, to try to intervene?

  ‘Lily, I want to ask you a few things,’ I said, ‘and I want you to answer me honestly, without getting too upset. Can you do that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Okay. Do you really believe you can finish your degree?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked. Please, try to just answer what I asked.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So. Do you believe you can finish your degree?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want this degree?’

  I thought this question would be hard for her, but she seemed to get it.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Right now, do you want to be here at uni?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘
Do you wish you could be somewhere else?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where do you want to be?’

  Lily thought for a while. ‘I often imagine to myself that I’m pregnant,’ she said, ‘and that the baby is due before the end of my degree so I can’t finish it. Then nobody would hate me for not finishing because they’d understand I had a baby, and I wouldn’t care anyway because the baby would be my whole world. And I’d tell it how soon you’d be with us too, when you’d finished your master’s, and we’d be a family.’

  ‘So where would you be, then? Not with me?’

  ‘No, I’d go back to my parents’ and have the baby and you’d stay here until you graduated.’

  I struggled to get my head round it. Was she saying her parents would find it easier to take if she dropped out of university to have a baby than if she dropped out because her degree didn’t suit her and it was making her ill?

  ‘If I had a baby,’ Lily said, ‘then I’d have something to do. I’d love it so much. That would be my purpose.’

  ‘Lily, you’re not pregnant,’ I said, ‘this is all made up.’

  ‘I could be, though. I know it wouldn’t be born before the summer now, but I’m sure I’d be happy if I had part of you inside me all the time. Something wonderful to look forward to.’

  She put her hand on her stomach and I put my hand over the top of hers.

  ‘We’ll have a family in the future, when we’re settled,’ I said. ‘I think it would be better if you felt good in yourself before you started trying to look after somebody else as well, don’t you?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I think I do understand. You don’t want to be here but you don’t know what to do instead.’

  ‘I don’t want to do anything. I just want to rest.’

  ‘Would you like it if you were somewhere you could rest?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘Okay, then,’ I said.

  I stood up and she watched me with curiosity.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to get you out of this situation,’ I said, ‘I’m going to help you.’

  ‘How?’ Lily said, ‘nobody can help me. You’re the only one who can help me.’

  I took my phone out and started looking through my list of contacts, while Lily sat up in bed and tried to figure out what I was doing.

  ‘I am helping you,’ I said, ‘but I think you need more help than I can give you on my own.’

  Lily began to get scared. She reached out to me.

  ‘Nick,’ she said, ‘I’ll be alright. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lily,’ I said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked me, her voice panicky.

  ‘What I should have done a long time ago,’ I said, ‘I’m going to call your parents.’

  The second I said it, she was out of bed so fast I barely had time to get away from her, and I ended up having to run down the hall with her chasing me, her nails tearing at my arms as she desperately tried to stop me.

  ‘No!’ she cried, ‘not them. Please, Nick, not them! You don’t have to do this. I’ll sort it out myself, I promise. I’ll do anything you say-’

  I got into the bathroom and slammed the door in her face, although she hammered on it for ages, begging and screaming for me not to call them while in the background I could hear Last Christmas blaring out from downstairs.

  I totally ignored Lily’s protests. I didn’t want to hurt her, but she was clearly completely incapable of making any healthy or sensible decisions and I felt like I’d reached the limit of what I could realistically do. Of everybody in the world, surely her parents would be the ones who could really look after her. I might not really like them and they might not really like me, but it had to be the best place for her, and that was what was important. If she was staying with them she’d have people there who could keep a better eye on her. People who could make sure she ate, and maybe get her to see a doctor, and just generally take care of everything so she wouldn’t have to worry. Her housemates couldn’t do it, and I couldn’t do it, not really. She needed someone who could be there more reliably and I couldn’t do that, not unless I gave up doing my degree, but that was hardly a sensible or practical solution in the long run. Until I got a job I’d have no money for us to get a place of our own, and trying to sort something out at such short notice would stress us both out and make everything worse.

  …

  To say Lily reacted badly to me calling her parents would be the most incredible understatement. I had never in all my life seen anyone in such a hysterical state. When I came out of the bathroom and said they were coming, she just flew at me, hitting my arms and my chest repeatedly with her fists and screaming, ‘I hate you, I hate you.’

  I tried to get hold of her to stop her from hitting me and calm her down, but she broke away from me and ran down the stairs, straight past the entrance to the living room where her housemates were attaching a paper chain across the ceiling, and into the kitchen.

  By the time I caught up with her, she was pulling a large kitchen knife out of a drawer, and held it up to her own throat. I took a step towards her and she pointed the knife at me instead.

  ‘Stay away from me,’ she said, ‘just stay away from me.’

  I took another step towards her. ‘I know you’re angry,’ I said, ‘but I had to do something to help you.’

  ‘You didn’t help me!’ she said, ‘you’ve ruined my life. I’m going to kill myself now, you know that, don’t you? I’m going to kill myself and it’ll be your fault.’

  2013

  Chapter 46

  ‘Interface,’ I called out in my mind, ‘talk to me, please.’

  ‘I can take your pain away,’ he said inside my head, his voice surprising me with its suddenness, the way his clipped tones seemed to fill my brain and at the sound of his voice, his mention of my pain, I started to cry. Massive, jagged, broken sobs that actually hurt and made me feel pathetic.

  ‘I hate you,’ I said to Interface in my head, ‘I hate you so much.’

  The pot of cacti was still in my arms and I held them as if they were Lily. I even brushed my fingers over the one with the long golden spines, but my vision was so blurry with tears that I managed to prick my finger and a little blob of red started to swell.

  ‘I’m sorry for all this,’ Interface said, ‘I really am. Please, won’t you let me remove your pain?’

  I hated the fact that he was talking to me while I was kneeling on the floor, crying. I hated the fact he was seeing me so weak. But then a thought struck me. Maybe this was what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to see that he’d won.

  ‘That’s not what I want,’ Interface said.

  ‘Well, you’ve got it,’ I said. ‘You win. I can’t fight you. I give up. Just please, please don’t take Lily away from me. Or Dan. They’re everything to me.’

  I bowed my head and closed my eyes so I didn’t have to look at the cacti anymore. Suddenly they’d become inextricably linked to Lily, like the only piece of her I had left.

  ‘I’m begging you,’ I said, ‘please, please, please. Lily is my life.’

  ‘I am not taking Lily away from you. You are choosing to distance yourself from her.’

  ‘I’m choosing to distance myself from you.’

  ‘I understand. You cared for Lily when she was going through a difficult time in her life. You think I’m going to make her end her life, as you were so scared she would do back then.’

  ‘Well, are you?’

  ‘As I believe she’s already told you, none of the players are dead.’

  At this, I cried out in frustration and swiped randomly at all the broken stuff on the floor, sending a shard of glass flying into the wall, the sound of it shattering momentarily satisfying, almost exhilarating.

  ‘Does it help, what you are doing?’ Interface asked. ‘Breaking things will not change your situation.’

  ‘What will? What can I
do to get them back?’

  ‘It is not a case of getting them back. It is a case of joining them. They chose to embrace this process with me, with Affrayed, and they wish that you would do so as well. But since you will not, they had no choice but to leave, and before you ask, I will not tell you where they have gone.’

  ‘So there is nothing I can do to stop it,’ I said, ‘is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Essentially, yes. But you are making this far harder than it needs to be.’

  I started to cry again, and I hated myself for it. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t even begin to find a solution. All I could feel was despair, because they had gone, and they would die, and I would never see either of them again. So when Interface asked me for the third time if I would like him to suppress my pain, I agreed.

  But I didn’t like it. Because I still knew everything that had happened. I knew my wife and my best friend had gone, that I could do nothing to save them, but because Interface was doing something to me, I didn’t feel anything. I just felt numb and empty, and it seemed wrong on some deep, fundamental level. I found that I wanted the pain, and my mind turned to times in the past when I had thought about what would happen if Lily died- not necessarily by suicide, but maybe if one day there was some sort of accident- a car crash, or perhaps if she got ill. I remembered how I’d found it hard to decide what would be worse, a whole life spent in grief- my life stopped at the moment I found out she’d died, or a life where I moved on, where eventually perhaps I would begin to forget her, and maybe I’d even find somebody else, even love somebody else. I couldn’t feel it now with my emotions suppressed, but I could remember how it had made me feel before, how the first option was harrowing, but the second option seemed horrific. If I died, I’d want her to love somebody else one day, but if she died, I wasn’t sure I ever could or would ever even want to.

  I didn’t want to feel numb. I wanted to feel pain. If Lily was in danger I should feel pain. I should feel it every second until I’d saved her. And I didn’t care that Interface was telling me their journey was inevitable. It wasn’t inevitable. It hadn’t happened yet, and anything that hadn’t happened yet could be stopped.