Shield

by Rachael Craw

  The bathroom encounter drove Helena from my thoughts. I was so worried about running into Stephanie and Razor-bob I left myself wide open for something worse. I field my fork onto the side of my plate. It clatters. Her head turns towards me. I look in the opposite direction as though the blank back wall is a window and the view vast. I can’t regulate my breathing or calm the ringing in my head. My glass is full of orange juice – if it blows it will make a huge sticky mess.

  “Have they dunked her yet?” the Southern girl asks.

  Helena makes a sound in the back of her throat. “It’s a harrowing procedure, Claire.”

  “Look,” the girl – Claire – says, shifting on the bench. “I know. I get it. I’m just trying to take the edge off.”

  There’s a pause and Helena says, “You should not joke.”

  I shiver at the thought of the Proxy. I think of Felicity and her pale hand. I wonder if Helena knows how the last Caretaker died. She must. Ethan must have told her. My thoughts crackle with multiple incomplete threads of memory. Felicity. The Proxy. Helena. A blue blouse. Jamie’s hands dislodging her buttons, slipping the shirt from her shoulders. The photograph Barb showed me, Jamie and Helena cheek to cheek, snow goggles and pink nose tips, smiling eyes and her rosebud mouth. She must have five or six years on me, a proper woman.

  Cutlery chimes. Glasses clatter. The abrasive static of multiple overlapping signals. I get to my feet – whoosh – dizziness dive-bombs my head. I balance my fingertips on the table to keep myself from pitching sideways.

  Oh God.

  Helena looks up from her plate.

  “That’s a waste.” Claire points her fork at my half-eaten food.

  “Go nuts.” I nudge my tray at her and step away, loose-kneed on the uncertain floor. From the far row, women rise in my peripheral vision, keeping pace with me as I head towards the door. No. I know without looking that there’s no way out of the room except the door we came in.

  Externally there’s a dip in volume – the drop in conversation as Shields sense tension. My focus zeroes in like a zoom lens. My brain responds, adrenaline in an electric download. Glasses, plates, utensils begin to rattle on tables in a mild Mexican wave as I reach the end, murmurs of confused shock rise. Don’t blow. Don’t blow. Hold it in.

  Four women block my path to the exit. Razor-bob in back. Stephanie must still be seated at the table. I don’t look. All my defensive instinct narrows to a point, strategy scrolling in my mind. Their signals are loud and distinct; their intent rolls in the bandwidth. One pictures bringing her knee to my stomach. Another sees her fist in my jaw. Still another thinks she could flip me on my back and pin me. It’s precognition like nothing I’ve ever known. Booming precognition. My instinct supplies: block the knee, duck the fist, dislocate the back-flipper’s arm. That’s how it will go – in theory – but no one moves.

  “Do you know what you are?” The one in front, angular, medium height, brown-eyed, hungry.

  “Let me pass.”

  “Do you know what you are?”

  My ears throb with the watchful silence. “I’d like to get past.”

  “Answer the question.” Razor-bob.

  “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  The bandwidth crackles. The woman in front cocks her head. “You already have because you don’t know what you are.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Has it become protocol here to bully new Assets?” A voice drawing close behind me, accented, controlled. I don’t turn. This is officially my worst-case scenario.

  “Stay out of this, Helena.” Amazon Curls approaches from the far table, her eyes hard. “You don’t know what she’s done.”

  Helena steps beside me. “Nothing that justifies this, Stephanie.”

  “More than this,” says the woman in front. “She should be put down.”

  Soft gasps from the women still seated. Even the glassware stops dancing. For me it’s a release, tipping me from sensible caution into reckless disregard for consequences – a flicked switch that cuts off fear. My body prepares: I relax my knuckles, unlock my knees, bring my right foot back for better distribution of weight. They could rip me apart. I want them to try.

  Stephanie eyes me with blatant loathing. “She abandoned her Spark to save a Stray.”

  I don’t flinch. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re not a Shield,” says the brown-eyed woman in front. “That’s for sure.”

  Helena raises her pale hand – a tremor in it. “Stand down, agents. She wouldn’t be here without the consent of the Executive. This is a violation of protocol and the covenants of the Reform.”

  “Don’t give me Reform,” Stephanie says. “No one will train her. None of us will agree to train her.”

  “Provision can be made–”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m going.” I take a single incendiary step. The woman in front lunges for me. Shrill ringing splits my skull, the air shimmers and ripples around me and glass explodes on the tables. Shouts of surprise. Screams of pain.

  It’s all on.

  A knee aimed at my stomach, a fist flying for my jaw, a hand grabbing my arm. I block-duck-twist – sloppy but effective. The raw energy behind each strike warns me, they seriously want to hurt me though it’s effort unsatisfied and wasted in air. It rolls into the next round – a chaotic tumble of intent but loud and immediate enough to allow me a response. I catch one woman’s face with the side of my hand and my little finger snaps. I don’t feel the break. Intercepting someone’s foot on trajectory to my throat, I heave upwards, taking my attacker off her feet.

  I become conscious of Helena beside me, arms and legs in motion. There’s such a frenzied mass of limbs, I can’t tell if it’s just the trainers attacking us. Maybe some of the women from the centre table have joined in. There’s a lot of crashing dishes, benches tipping, grunts and cries of effort and frustration.

  Helena makes a pained sound. It takes me out of the bandwidth for just a second as her head rocks back – a fist-bloodied mouth. Red spray. It’s just enough time for someone to drive their knuckles into my eye socket. Fireworks, whiplash, the crunch of my nose.

  Then there’s a surge in the bandwidth accompanied by a blinding bolt of pain through the back of my head. I collapse limp to the floor. Helena lands on my legs. All around us bodies fall. The pain crests and a groan goes up from the group, a chorus of pain.

  The sliding doors stand open. Two women. One with long chestnut hair, the length of her ponytail draped over her shoulder. Juno Thurston. Beside her, hair pulled back into a high bun, her identical twin sister, Alexis. Juno Thurston holds a small silver disc in her hand. She surveys the carnage, a twitch at the corner of her lip before her fierce gaze falls on me. “What the hell is going on here?”

  GIRLFRIEND

  Counsellor Thurston marches ahead of us, her edges blurring through my swollen eye, her signal a steady unreadable pulse. Is she furious? Disgusted? Helena keeps pace on my right. She dabs at her cut mouth, her ETR like an erratic line, all sudden dips and peaks. I swallow coppery blood in the back of my throat, cupping my nose to catch the drips, my broken pinky at a jaunty angle like I’m fancy, sipping tea.

  All my adrenaline-induced bravado is gone. I’m back to watery knees. A choking, almost claustrophobic feeling presses down on me, trapped like a rat in a concrete maze. I want to run. Only my fear for how it would affect Ethan keeps me in place – that and the knowledge I have nowhere to hide, no means of escape and a tracking implant in the base of my skull. I remember then I’m overdue to take my anxiety meds. No wonder I’m fraying.

  I recognise the next turn and sure enough ahead on the left is a door with a yellow stripe. Ethan’s lab. Relief and curdling shame – I’ve been here five minutes and I’m already in trouble. Kitty was right. Worse still, the one person I wanted to avoid has stepped right into the middle of my mess.

  Helena hasn’t opened her mouth since Juno Thurston ordered us to follow
her. The Counsellor had pocketed the tracker-paralysing silver disc, asked no questions, offered no reprimands, assessed the scene with a steely glance and pointed her finger. “You two come with me.” Alexis had taken Team Amazon Curls in the opposite direction.

  I don’t know what to think about Helena’s intervention. Did she suspect who I was? She must have known for sure when they called me out. She didn’t have to get involved. I wish she hadn’t – I wish it with gnawing intensity. Was it pity that made her step in? Was she trying to prove something? Was it a tactic? Like if she defends me I won’t mind so much about her staking her claim with Jamie?

  An icy whisper in the back of my mind says, maybe she’s just a decent person. And anyway, you want Jamie to deactivate.

  We come to the door and Counsellor Thurston leans over the sensor. The door slides open. The room is crowded and I recoil at the blast of signals. Squinting makes my swollen eye run and I blink through the blur as we follow her in. There are several men arguing around Ethan’s desk.

  “No.”

  “It wouldn’t work.”

  “I don’t see the point.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “He means, it’s not natural.”

  “Killing people isn’t natural.”

  “It won’t work. We’ll lose agents.”

  “No one will volunteer for this.”

  “Bullshit.” Davis. “I volunteered.”

  “No one in their right mind.”

  The voices grow still as Counsellor Thurston approaches. Ethan rises from behind his desk, his eyes and mouth tightening as he takes in the state of Helena and me.

  “Davis,” Ethan says, his voice low and constrained. “Set up Lecture Theatre One. The rest of you wait for me there.”

  As they file past, I realise there are three other men besides Davis and Jamie. It only seemed like more because the room is narrow and the men are built to Ethan and Jamie’s scale. I’m not sure what to read into the number. Are they a sampling of the men Ethan believes he can convince to get onboard with the Initiative? Or the only men? Will he ask any women? My shower and breakfast experiences don’t give me much hope for recruits.

  I avoid meeting eyes. If any of them recognise me or look surprised by the blood and bruising, I don’t pick up on it and I’m careful to hold myself back from the bandwidth. Davis pauses in front of me, steel-blue eyes extra steely, taking in the damage to my face and finger. “Really?” He reaches past me for the box of medical tissue on a side cabinet, his chest bumping my arm. He shoves a fistload into my hand. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes?” Then he stalks out after the others, shaking his head.

  Jamie doesn’t move from his place beside Ethan. His eyebrows reach for his hair and his lips part. I can guess what he’s thinking. My own stupid words taunt me, “I hate Helena … I’m talking physical harm, hate her.” Of course, I didn’t mean it at the time – did I? That was Synergist jealousy … just a visceral reaction to seeing Jamie’s hands on her body in the memory transfer.

  Damn it. Now I’m picturing it.

  I give my head a little shake.

  But that’s what Jamie’s thinking, that I attacked her – that I took one look at her and went berserk.

  “These two are yours, Ethan,” Counsellor Thurston says.

  He comes out from behind his desk. “What happened?”

  Juno pins me with a look. “The girl cannot be left to herself.”

  It catches me like a barb and I flinch.

  “She didn’t start it,” Helena says. “She did nothing.”

  Jamie’s eyebrows plunge from their great height.

  Counsellor Thurston’s penetrating stare unnerves me, like she’s calculating the value of my parts. “Her presence is a provocation,” she says.

  “They attacked her,” Helena says.

  I hear the pull of Jamie’s breath and his quiet exhale. I read it as, thank God, Evie didn’t attack Helena after all not, oh God, Evie was attacked.

  I turn away because I don’t want to see his relief and because the blood pooling in my cupped palm is beginning to trickle down my wrist. I grab more tissue and ball it beneath my nose. I’m going to need to reset the cartilage before it gets too swollen, the finger too, but I’m not sure I can do it myself and I don’t want to try while the others are all watching in case I pass out.

  “You defended Evangeline?” Ethan asks.

  “Five adult women against a lone girl?” she says, like it’s simple as that.

  I don’t like the girl part.

  “Have these women been cited?”

  “I don’t see the point,” Counsellor Thurston says. “Four of them are trainers. We have the intake from last Orientation here for review and we can’t afford to bench anyone. A hearing would be a waste of time. Alexis will vote with me, Angela will see it the same way. Robert will demand ReProg but the new Proxy isn’t ready for interrogative Harvests and there’s no way you’d support that, anyway. Four against one. They walk.”

  “I want it on their records and I will see each of them.”

  “You can’t let her wander around by herself. She can’t eat in the mess hall. She can’t train with the others. It’s too dangerous.”

  Ethan’s jaw shifts forwards and he rubs his temples between thumb and forefinger.

  “A word in private?” she says.

  He nods at the door to the corridor and waits for her to lead the way. My heart changes gear from chest to throat as they leave. Don’t leave me alone with these two!

  We all watch the slider close … then we stare at the blank door. None of us moves or speaks. Finally, Jamie swallows and turns. That’s what pulls me out of my stupor, that intake of breath, that millisecond of steeling himself – resolving to “handle” the situation. I don’t want to be “handled”.

  “Ice,” I say, barely a mutter to justify walking away, like I’m not escaping, deflecting or being a coward. Looking for ice is legitimate; I’ve been punched in the face. One eye is almost completely swollen closed. My nose is throbbing. I need ice. I make my way to the back cupboards, trying not to imagine the exchange of looks between Helena and Jamie, or hear sighs. Sighs would piss me right off.

  She helped you – don’t be a bitch.

  Ethan has a fridge built into the back cabinet. There is nothing in it that resembles food. Rows of medicine. Fretizine. Something called Preceptin. Another row of Cantoril and Aminotol. I mouth the names to make my brain think things other than Jamie, Helena, Jamie, Helena. There are trays of sopping bandages resting in a cloudy solution. Specimen jars with dicey-looking yellow fluid and vials of ruby blood. My eyes are too blurry to decipher the tiny handwritten scribbles on the samples. I spot some defrosted ice packs with the blue jelly inside – better than holding something hard on my tender face.

  Jamie’s low murmur reaches me. “What happened?”

  “They knew who she was.” Helena’s soft reply.

  I read Jamie’s pause as a question: you knew who Evie was?

  “They confronted her,” she says, her accent pronounced. “They would not let her pass. She tried to step around them to get to the door but–”

  I straighten up, head spinning. I feel them looking at me. I take the cold pack and head for the back room.

  “Wait.” Jamie steps towards me, his brow grooved, cataloguing the injuries he can see and guessing at those he can’t.

  “I’m good.” I pause and make myself look at Helena, the pink stain around her watery blue eyes, her cheek splotchy near the corner of her mouth, her lower lip swelling to a raw red pout. “Sorry – about your face.”

  Her eyes move from me to Jamie and back. She nods. I slip inside the back room, pushing the door closed with my hip. I yank the cord to drop the blinds over the observation window. The air is cooler in here and the room smells like clean linen and antiseptic. My dizziness hasn’t lifted and I tap the lever beneath the bed to raise the head of the mattress before lying down. Unfortunately there’s no
blind to close over the glass inset in the door. The narrow pane gives me a slice of Jamie’s back, his arm extended, his fingers gingerly probing Helena’s face. Touching her. He’s touching her. My muscles wince. My stomach swoops and shrivels. What the hell is he thinking? If I hadn’t smoked my adrenal fuses in the mess hall, I could shatter the glass in Ethan’s observation window on that one glimpse – Jamie’s hand on her cheek!

  I shift onto my side, a slow heave against aching ribs; I don’t remember the punch or kick that bruised them. I rest the pack on the side of my face, let the cold jelly mould the plastic to my eye socket. The weight of it makes my throbbing eyelid sting and my nose ache. I pretend that’s what makes my eyes run, not the clenching in my chest. I adjust the pack so it won’t slide off then cup my palm around my broken pinky.

  You should have thanked her.

  In my mind, I see the hate-filled faces of the women in the mess hall. Their contorted expressions and bared teeth. Actual bared teeth. I’m still shaking.

  I hum to block out the low murmur of Jamie and Helena’s voices, afraid more of picking up on any signs of intimacy than concern about the retelling of events. I wish Davis had stayed. His “I told you so” would be a distraction while I wait for Ethan to come back. I wonder what Counsellor Thurston is saying in the corridor. My trembling notches up and I can’t tell if it’s adrenaline comedown shakes, med withdrawal, a reaction to the cold pack, or grief. I tuck my knees up and hug my arms closer.

  When I hear the door and Ethan’s return, I stop humming. I sniff and wipe the unbeaten side of my face and struggle to flip the pillow to hide the damp patch from my tears.