The Catalyst

by Helena Coggan

  “What on earth —? Give me that!”

  Terrian went for the note in David’s hand, and David darted backward, agility returning to him at exactly the wrong moment. Nate, though, who was standing behind him, wrenched the note from his hand.

  David almost — almost — attacked; Rose could see the possibility of violence spark in his green eyes. He and Nate stared each other down for a long moment, Nate half incredulous but secure in his possession of the moral high ground. A second of stillness. Then Nate walked away, and handed the note to his father.

  Terrian read it out to the silent office.

  “Behold the Interregnum.”

  They looked at David. He was slumped against the computer, eyes half closed. Rose, finally, went to him and grasped his hands.

  “Dad,” she said, and the tone of her voice was a plea, and clear to the whole office: You can’t lie to me, surely; you wouldn’t lie to me. “How on earth did you get the bomb attack and the postcode from that?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, and for one tentative moment she thought she might actually get a response; and then the note in Terrian’s hand caught fire.

  Terrian yelled and dropped it, and David turned and watched the flames, raising them with his eyes, and the fire was white-hot. They twisted into smoke and were gone as soon as the paper was ash, leaving only a black scorch mark on the carpet.

  David looked around the office, the fire bright in his eyes.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know what you must think of these people. I know what they’ve done. But listen — listen. You don’t understand what we’re dealing with here. We have to just forget about this. We have to pretend that didn’t happen. If we try to attack them, if we provoke them —” He stopped. No one understood, and he knew that, Rose could see it. “You can’t imagine the battles you’ll start and the ghosts you’ll raise if you try to go after them. Just . . . forget about it.”

  There was silence, and he roared at the office again: “Forget!” and no one responded, not a single word.

  There was a discreet camera placed in the top right corner of the second, smaller metal room in the basement of 57 Armitage Crescent. Outside of a prison, this room was one of the most secure in the country; its only serious rival for the position was the one next to it. The walls had built-in metal bars and concrete solid enough to discourage a rhino. There were no windows. The door had been reinforced to within an inch of its life. It fit exactly into its frame, blocking out any light from outside and ensuring that no sound escaped. To make sure of this, it was made almost entirely of industrial-strength steel.

  The camera could not see all of this, but it could see what the prison was built to hold. The recording for the twenty-first of February showed Rose kissing her father on the cheek, and then settling down in the corner to wait. He wished her good luck — and it would have taken a good lip-reader to know this, as the camera could not record sound — and left. Rose’s eyes followed him to the door. She could hear, although the camera could not, the key turning in the lock. She was locked in until morning; her father had the only key, and this would be placed in the small box in the opposite room, the locking mechanism to which could only be disabled by a human handprint. This kind of caution verged on paranoia, and perhaps it was unnecessary, but it couldn’t hurt. That was David Elmsworth’s mind-set, anyway.

  A new camera was installed before every transformation. This was an old tradition, dating back to Rose’s fourth birthday, when David’s life was finally stable and safe enough that he could begin trying to research a cure for their condition. The camera had been their first data set. It was always destroyed, but it had become something of a reassurance for the Elmsworths to know that it was there.

  There were two other battery-powered devices in the room. One was the torch in the ceiling that provided scant, ghostly light; the other, resting in the corner, looked like a blood-pressure reader crossed with a defibrillator, and this more or less corresponded to its function.

  After her father had gone, Rose turned her gaze toward it. She got up and walked across to it. She fit the cuff round her left wrist and pressed a couple of buttons. A glint from the screen showed that the device was firing up.

  Rose looked at it bleakly for a few seconds, then pressed her forehead against it. She said something to herself, and it was possible to lip-read this one: Three. Two. One.

  With her eyes closed, Rose pressed the button with both thumbs. Immediately she cried out, her head jerked back and she stumbled; she was breathing hard, her teeth gritted. After a few seconds she seemed to tense slightly; she clutched her wrist with her right hand and rocked herself tightly, fearing, apparently, that she would have to electrocute herself again.

  Rose could not see it herself, but as the camera scrutinized her, her eyeballs turned white, leaking through the dark green irises and obliterating the pupils.

  And then something snapped through her and she fell to her knees.

  She lifted her hands to her face. These were the first things that showed: a sleek, drifting kind of darkness, like a deep black gas, that seeped slowly from under her bitten fingernails. Her dark hair, grown past her shoulders, seemed to harden and solidify into a mass that then began to separate itself into spikes.

  Rose’s last words before the ability to speak was lost to her were — grimly — Here we go.

  Then she collapsed to all fours. Her torso lengthened, so that the sharp black mass of what had been her hair retreated into her head; so that her spine poked, darkening, through her skin into spikes protruding from her back. Her clothes smoldered and caught fire, and tore, crumbling, from her skin; this itself was changing, spreading, blackening, splitting into cracks like the landscape of an ash-covered, wasted desert. Her hands were still visible; these were growing, the palms shrinking, the fingers stretching and lengthening to claws, to talons. The last image the camera captured before the massive blast of energy from the newly transformed monster shorted it out permanently was of the creature rising to its feet. As it did so its legs lengthened, but this was nothing compared to the face. There was still a little of the girl left in it; the skin was still slightly paler than the deep-black, smoking wasteland of the rest, but the humanity was leaving it fast. Those white, animal eyes were still there, but something of the girl’s fear still haunted her mouth as the teeth expanded and sharpened to fangs. The creature, or the girl, screamed; it was this roar of triumph and terror that smashed the glass of the camera before it shorted out.

  Nate was waiting outside West London Higher Training when Rose arrived. Her father would have loved to drop her off — first day of school, and all of that — but he was in the Department, working on the Argent case. Around the office, the name was increasingly being paired with the word “accident.” Rose had to remind herself repeatedly that this was what she was working toward. This did not stop the phrase paining her whenever she heard it.

  Nate was muttering under his breath as Rose approached. Every few seconds, his eyes flashed and a light or a sputter of flame leaped from his fingertips. The words, Rose knew, were meaningless, but they helped to focus the mind.

  “It’s okay,” Rose told him, half amused when he jumped. “You’ve passed the Test.”

  “Not well, though.”

  “Irrelevant. That you passed is all that matters.”

  Nate looked at her sourly. “Easy for you to say.”

  “You don’t even know how I passed.”

  “I don’t need to. It’s obvious. You’re Rose Elmsworth, aren’t you? Your dad trained you.”

  “Dad trained you, too.”

  “Yeah, but he only taught me how to shoot. He’s been teaching you how to fight since you could walk. That’s what my dad says, anyway.” Nate hissed as the spark on his fingertips skimmed the patches he hadn’t numbed beforehand.

  “I wish my dad had trained me,” he added grumpily.

  “Your dad was a medic,” Rose said, in a voice she hoped was reassuring
. “Mine was a soldier before they promoted him. Your dad probably couldn’t have taught you much.”

  Nate gave Rose a look that told her quite clearly that she was being insensitive.

  “I mean, I’m sure he could have,” she said hastily. That look again. She gave up. “Should we rewind this conversation?”

  “Maybe,” said Nate, examining his fingers again, this time to hide a slow darkening spreading over his cheeks, “but I don’t reckon we’ll get the chance.”

  Rose looked over her shoulder and saw Maria running toward them. Before she threw herself into Rose’s arms and hugged her, Rose just had time to register how strained and tired she looked, how dull her eyes were. As if she had spent a few sleepless nights worrying.

  Well, she wasn’t alone in that respect.

  “Rose!” Maria squealed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nate slink away.

  Rose half laughed. “Breathe, Maria, breathe.”

  “I was so worried!” Maria said breathlessly. “I didn’t see you at the reunion, and I was up all night thinking. I didn’t know whether you’d passed, you see . . .”

  “Well, I did, it’s okay. How was it for you?”

  Rose didn’t really listen while Maria talked and the two of them walked up the steps into the building. She had always found Maria’s worries difficult to listen to: they never involved anyone’s life being on the line, any real danger or secrecy or stakes. In short, they were trivial, and Rose never had time for trivialities.

  Not now that her own worries had become so pressing, anyway.

  She tried to find Nate again among the small crowd, but he was nowhere to be seen. She did, however, spot Tristan and his friend Luke Raleigh talking as they slipped through the doors. Rose tried to crouch lower. Tristan was perhaps the last thing she needed right now.

  The hall was crowded with old students as well as new. Some of them Rose remembered by name: Samantha Naismith, Marion Weller. Some faces she recognized. Some she —

  Oh, no.

  “Rose!” Maria whispered to her. There was a half-giggly aspect to her voice that Rose knew all too well. “Look — it’s Aaron!”

  It was indeed Aaron Greenlow. Rose generally tried to avoid the “conundrums of adolescence,” as David put it, but even she was prey to the whims of hormones, and as a result she had had a crush on Aaron since she was thirteen. Rose wished it would go away; it was usually she who did the teasing about Maria’s many crushes, and having the tables turned on her was a rather uncomfortable feeling, especially as Maria never hesitated to take advantage of it.

  “Do you still like him?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Do you, though?”

  Aaron — who was tall, emerald-eyed, dark-haired and very good-looking — caught sight of them and smiled amiably. Rose ducked her head, blushing. Maria giggled rather triumphantly.

  “He’s only a year older than us, you know,” she said as he turned the corner into the Chemistry corridor. “You could ask him out. He might —”

  “No, Maria. Will you stop trying to set us up, okay?”

  Rose may have said it with slightly more vehemence than absolutely necessary, for Maria seemed affronted.

  “Well, all right then,” she said huffily. “You need to let yourself go a bit, Rose.”

  “I need to do no such thing,” Rose said through gritted teeth, and stalked away through the crowd toward the opposite side of the hall.

  They called people up in alphabetical order to talk to the administrators. When the Es came up, Rose remembered Serena Mitchell, and slipped over to someone who looked vaguely responsible to ask for her. She was directed through a slim door behind the stage to a long corridor with mahogany doors, white nameplates hammered to them. Rose found Mitchell’s and knocked tentatively on it.

  There was a curt “Come in.”

  Rose opened the door and stepped inside. It looked to be some sort of classroom, but with only two desks and two chairs — one for the teacher and one for the pupil. One-on-one teaching.

  Serena Mitchell was sitting at one of the desks, her maroon hair pulled back into a ponytail. She smiled thinly as Rose came in and gestured for her to sit.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your subject choices,” she said.

  Rose had only registered for her classes over the weekend, but she had known for years what her choices would be: Math, Physics, Combat, Healing, Art and Magical Skills offered the well-rounded CV needed for any chance of admission to the Department.

  “I am absolutely certain of them,” Rose told her. “I know what I want to study.”

  “Weaponry is a very popular subject. Everyone who takes it speaks of it very well. Are you sure —”

  “Very sure, Miss Mitchell.”

  “Serena, please.”

  Rose paused for a second, and then leaned back in her chair. For a split second, the person sitting in front of her had blond hair and cold yellow-green eyes and an Icarus in their back pocket. And then it was gone and Rose shook herself, told herself to focus. It did not quite work.

  “Serena,” she said, “I am not joining the army. Nor will I ever. And I already know how to fire a gun. You’ve seen that yourself.”

  “Yes,” Mitchell said, with equal firmness, “but you have great potential as a soldier, Rose.”

  Rose said nothing. She could cope with their trying to “keep her on the straight and narrow,” she could even cope with them monitoring her — she knew she could evade their surveillance, after all — but this was a choice she would not allow them to make.

  Mitchell said nothing more about it, but the set of her mouth made Rose suspect this would not be the end of the matter.

  “Why Art?” she asked. “I wouldn’t have thought you were the artistic type.”

  “Normally, no,” Rose said, “but I’d like to study how to use magic to make beautiful things. I thought that logically there should be a positive aspect to it.”

  Mitchell narrowed her eyes, but let it drop.

  “And Physics.”

  “Is that a questionable decision?”

  Mitchell didn’t say anything. Then: “Rosalyn”— Rose noted the slip back into her full name —“what do you want to be when you grow older?”

  Grow “older,” instead of “grow up.” They were trying very hard not to be patronizing. They didn’t quite pull it off, but Rose appreciated the effort.

  “I’m going to be a detective for the Department,” she said.

  Mitchell raised both eyebrows now.

  “The Department? You do realize how high their standards are, Rosalyn?”

  “I am aware of their standard of acceptance,” Rose said evenly. She didn’t like where this conversation was going, so before Mitchell could respond, she asked acidly, “What did you want to be, when you were my age?”

  Mitchell raised her eyebrows. “When I was your age,” she said, “it was a very different world.”

  Rose resisted the urge to say “so what?” but Mitchell could see the lack of interest in her face and seemed to snap. “As it happens,” she said, “in my early career, I worked for the ACC.”

  Rose’s blood went cold. The ACC were the Anti-Corruption Commission, known to the Department as the Supergrass: their objective was to make sure no Government department considered themselves above the law. Since the Department’s operations relied on their being above risk of prosecution, the two bureaus were natural and mortal enemies. If Mitchell had Supergrass history, she should never have been allowed to interact with Rose at all; that she had been allowed was telling — someone as high up as the Testing Administrator would only report directly to Parliament — and also meant that those reports would be anything but objective.

  Mitchell smiled at the look on Rose’s face.

  “Your first lesson is in Room Twenty-One,” she said. “Best of luck.”

  Room Twenty-One was in the Combat Area, a huge central building made of whitewashed brick built around a stone courtyar
d. There were sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds fighting with magic in the courtyard: advanced Combat students training for the army, no doubt. As Rose watched, one of them was thrown six feet backward into the air, stopped from hitting the stone wall only by her own quick thinking and what seemed to Rose to be a dangerous amount of luck. The stone floor was scored with black scorch marks, some of them inches deep, and ominous red-brown splatters here and there, like irregularly placed floor tiles.

  Room Twenty-One itself, however, looked friendlier. The walls were painted a clean, fresh white, and the floor was covered in crash mats. One area of it — a stage, no doubt — was raised slightly. The room was large enough for a class of about twenty to huddle in the corner, and so they did, looking slightly shell-shocked. Tristan and his friend Luke Raleigh were there, to Rose’s disappointment, but also Maria, and for some reason, Nate, who seemed more cheerful than he had outside. Perhaps this was because he was chatting to Maria. As Rose watched, she laughed at a joke Nate had told, making him smile so brightly that Rose almost thought his face would split.

  She tried to slink away and give them some privacy — this was a situation she had no idea how to navigate — but Maria called “Hey, Rose!” before she could get out of their sight. Reluctantly, Rose joined them. Nate grinned at her. He looked almost drunk. Rose had to try very hard to keep a straight face.

  “What subjects did you choose?” Maria asked her.

  In the ensuing conversation, it turned out that both Nate and Maria had chosen Healing; Rose knew that Maria had only ever wanted to be a doctor, and as for Nate, his father’s history as a medic meant that he knew almost as much about the subject as Rose did about Combat. Their choices meant that, because of the compulsories, Rose would probably have five classes with each of them, and four when all three of them would be together. The phrase “third wheel” kept popping up with unrelenting frequency in Rose’s mind. She dismissed it irritably before it could stick.