Shield

by Rachael Craw

  To my right sits a gate to an attached open elevator. It leads from the platform to the floor of the gym and seems an odd addition. It’s just a gym. It doesn’t appear to lead anywhere else. What would they have needed to transport that men with genetically enhanced strength couldn’t carry? I take the metal stairs on the left, keeping my hand on the rail as I make my way down. There are leather punching bags, old-style rowing machines with wooden handles and seats. The wall to the left is tiered with wide wooden steps – a place to sit and watch each other work-out? The wall opposite the platform is arrayed with shelves of different-sized balls, then more traditional martial arts weapons and a row of targets. When I reach the floor I stop, look up and try my voice again. “Hello.” The echo is eerie and I begin to imagine the noise of the place with people using the exercise equipment.

  There are more doors set in the wall beneath the viewing platform. A long metal sliding door sits partially open, lights flickering within. I catch a brief eyeful of white bars and my heart does a sort of skid, stop, start. I strain for the sound of … what? Prisoners? The idea is ridiculous. All my senses tell me the place has been empty – abandoned – for a long time. Still, I can’t shake off the creeping feeling up my spine and my imagination jumps at uses for the elevator.

  I sidle through the gap, stopping just inside the door and my mouth dries. To the left there’s a row of cells. White-painted cells, concrete and steel – six of them. Rust-coloured smears on the walls. Gouges. Chains bolted to the floor with cuffs in tan leather. A drain sits in one corner, the surrounding surface badly stained. A concrete step juts out at knee-height, wide enough for someone to lie on. Check, toilet and bed.

  I’m not sure why I don’t bolt back upstairs. In fairness to the quality of horror the scene evokes, I should run screaming. I can’t ignore my watery knees or the plunging revulsion making my skin rise in goosebumps, my imagination filling the cells with men who need caging and chains. This is the Affinity Project – where free will is turned to ash. Knox’s memory flashes in my mind, his brother dead in the suspended chair. Goddamn waste of a life, he’d said. And I know with absolute certainty it’s not the system he blames but his brother for not complying. I can’t get my head around his ruthlessness … the ruthlessness that makes a place like this …

  Opposite the cells is a room – a lab, judging by the equipment – with windows to the prisoner accommodation. Through the glass I see another door that opens on what looks like a surgery. The brief glimpse gives my stomach a nasty twist. Both of these rooms have a ransacked look of interrupted activity and abandonment.

  It’s a violation of instinct to go into the lab, to turn my back to the cells, to step into what feels like an acutely hostile environment with only one escape route into the open gym. I know what this room is. I know what the cells are for – the restraints. This is where they managed the results of genetic manipulation. This is where they dealt with the fallout during early testing. The lab equipment looks old school. The computers are big and boxy with tiny screens. There are filing cabinets hanging open, empty – emptied – a few torn pages littering the ground. They tell me nothing.

  I walk around the work benches, nosing in desk drawers, when I hear movement out in the gym. I tense at first, as though I’ve been caught breaking into the principal’s office. But Ethan sent me down here. I’m allowed to be here … or at least he can’t claim to be surprised by my poking around.

  There’s a terrific wrenching noise, the door to the cell block is shoved all the way back then Ethan appears beyond the lab windows. Time warps. The slow discharge of synapses makes me mute, my brain a hollow-sounding gong. He holds Miriam in his arms, her head lolling against his chest, the breathing tube still hooked over her mouth, the hose hanging loose, an IV line trailing from her elbow. He rushes through the door to the lab, careful to avoid catching the tube on the frame or banging Miriam’s head. I can’t speak.

  “Help me.” He uses his back to barge through the door to the surgery.

  “What happened?” I stumble after him, fear spilling through me like an oil slick. “Is she hurt? Did Knox hurt her?”

  The room is as large as the lab, tiled floor with standing lights and cabinets lining the walls. There are two gurneys in the centre, one a steel operating table, the other with a hard industrial mattress. He shunts the steel one out of the way and lowers Miriam onto the remaining bed. The muscles in his arms and neck strain with the carefulness of his movements. He murmurs incomprehensible German, gently supporting her neck and shoulders. “She is not hurt. Hold her head.”

  He makes room for me, draws me close, guides my hands to either side of Miriam’s head. His signal, scent and pulse storm at me, the bandwidth alive with static. I’m tempted to read him but hold myself back from the torrent, afraid of what I might tap. He bends close, his hands covering mine and we cradle her together. Out in the gym comes the echo of heavy boots on metal steps, voices sharp and gruff. I startle but Ethan shakes his head. We’re safe.

  Drops fall on Miriam’s unresponsive face. My tears. “Tell me.”

  “This is not your fault.”

  “Knox took my blood.”

  “He suspected. He investigated. It is not your fault.”

  “So he threatened her?”

  “I did not wait to give him the chance.”

  My relief barely forms. “If I’d kept my head down – stayed out of trouble …”

  “No.” Ethan exhales. “It was inevitable.”

  “He suspected?”

  “He suspects anyone or anything I give my time and attention to. But your connection with Jamie … someone tipped him off.”

  I stare at him open-mouthed. “How do you know?”

  “He told Juno.”

  “Who would do that? Who even knows?”

  Behind us Davis, Lane and Jamie, their signals coming through the lab. I don’t turn. I don’t look up.

  “Hold her, just until we are set up.” Ethan goes to meet them.

  I keep my eyes on Miriam, dreamless, absent. Her heartbeat too slow. Her breathing shallow. A tinge of blue in her lips around the tube. I try not to look into her mouth or think about her dry tongue or the hard plastic in her throat. I fight the pull of memory. April, her sister’s mirror and mother of my heart, pale, fading then gone. The same creeping fear, that same inexorable vice squeezing, squeezing. No. I remember my internal shutters. Not now. Ethan is here. Miriam is safe.

  As the men work around me, I realise they’ve brought equipment from the ICU. Furniture is dragged into place for the monitor, a trolley for the bellows. Lane sets up a stand for the drip. I feel his eyes on me, all of their eyes, silent, watchful, as they follow Ethan’s commands. Jamie, most of all, his signal reaching for mine but I can’t bring myself to look at him.

  After a few minutes, Ethan has everything where he wants it. The monitors blip, the drip runs, the bellows push air through Miriam’s reattached tube. “She’s cold,” I say, my voice a small croak.

  There’s a flurry of movement. Ethan lays a jacket across Miriam’s chest. The scent belongs to Davis. Another jacket across her legs. Lane.

  Ethan pulls his shirt off over his head, bunching the fabric. “This will help take the pressure off her neck.”

  “Is there anything else we can do?” Jamie asks.

  Ethan’s mouth hardens. “Wait for me in the barracks. Get the vents on. Fix the damned lights. It is cold and dark as a tomb up there. And no one returns to the upper levels until I say.”

  They file out. I catch a glimpse of Jamie’s hollowed eyes, Davis’s worried scowl, Lane’s uncertainty. I want to call after Jamie, apologise or something, but not in front of the others and certainly not in front of Ethan who looks like he’d love another excuse to slam Jamie into the concrete floor after finding us in the honeymoon suite.

  Ethan leans on the side of Miriam’s bed, hanging his head. His back expands and retracts with the deep pull of his breath, thick ropes of muscle shifting beneath
his tanned skin. Ink too. Not just the bands on his biceps. From what I can make out it looks like some kind of Celtic knot covering most of his back and wrapping the edges of his torso. It’s hard not to stare. Ethan’s a big guy, easily as big as Jamie, broader and heavily muscled with the weathered look of a man who’s lived a hazardous life. Plenty of scars. I know the ones I can see must have been from his early years as a Shield before his body’s ability to regenerate had fully matured. I wonder how many other wounds he’s suffered that his enhanced DNA has erased.

  He lifts his head to meet my gaze, studying my face so intently I almost look away. I don’t. So desperate I can’t bear for it to end. So I keep my eyes on his and listen to our hearts beat. Hers. Mine. His. And I ache for my twin, the missing heartbeat to complete the set but I let it pass before my grief ruins the moment. I think to myself, whatever comes next, remember this: he sees me.

  “Du bist genau wie deine Mutter.”

  You’re just like your mother. I remember these words and I stare at him. I thought we’d get straight to Knox. Outrage, explanations, apologies and promises then plans, strategies, stirring words about not giving up hope. I want that – the plans, all of it – but I need this. So, I keep my voice soft, afraid to scare him off the subject. “Am I?”

  Lines gather at the corners of his eyes. “You look just like her, when we met.”

  A pause.

  Say something.

  “She was older. Twenty?”

  “Late to Spark, even by second-generation standards.” A shadow of a smile touches his mouth. “She was fierce.”

  Nodding slowly, I bite my lips.

  He hooks his finger in the corner of his mouth, pulling down to show me a silver molar. “She knocked it right out of my head.”

  His flickering grin makes me smile too. Don’t cry. “How?”

  “The usual way – she punched me. In lockdown. Refused to believe where she was, what she was.”

  I remember waking in Miriam’s kitchen tied to a dining chair after the attack on Kitty at the Governor’s ball. I don’t blame her for punching him; I would have punched Miriam if she hadn’t sedated me. “How’d you convince her?”

  “How did she convince you?”

  “KMT. Her last Spark.”

  “Kinetic Memory Transfer is always the first step.”

  I want to ask what memory he showed her but he drops his gaze, slips his hand beneath Miriam’s and brings her fingers to his lips. He closes his eyes, breathing in the scent of her skin. My brain etches it straight into the archives, a treasure I know I’ll replay and replay. The bandwidth fills with that aching minor note.

  “I knew.” He stares at her hand, pale and slender in his. “The moment I touched her, the moment I felt her signal – a lightning strike. It was before the affiliation rules became so strict, but still I should have asked for a new assignment. I thought I was strong, that I could resist my feelings. I told myself I could train her and be professional … honourable.” He runs his thumb over the back of her hand. “But I was with her for hours every day and she would get annoyed by my silence and my …” He gestures at his face like he can’t find the word. “She used to call me the Grim Reaper.”

  I give a half-choked laugh. He narrows his eyes but his lips stretch, a brief smile that transforms his face – a snapshot of a different man – then it’s gone.

  “She would mock me, make fun of my accent, trying to get me to react, to loosen up. Until one day – maybe three weeks into Orientation – she was so–” he cuts off.

  I hear it too, footsteps echoing on the metal stairs.

  No. Not yet. Let me have this.

  Ethan frowns – at being interrupted or for letting himself remember. He gently rests Miriam’s hand on her stomach and steps away.

  I read the incoming signal and mutter, “Counsellor Thurston.”

  Sighing, he straightens up, crossing his arms over his naked chest.

  Juno knocks on the glass panel of the door before letting herself in. She takes in Miriam on the gurney, the hastily arranged equipment and her eyes skate over Ethan’s body. Her throat works and she wets her lips. “Davis found this in the store cupboard. It’s a little musty.” She tosses some black fabric at Ethan. He holds it out in front of him. A ribbed turtleneck.

  Ethan grunts and fights the shirt on over his head. I catch Juno trying not to look at my father’s chest hair and rippling abs. She isn’t successful. I want to shout, hey lady, the woman he loves is lying right here in the room! Show some respect! But I guess for an old guy Ethan’s got the goods. The turtleneck makes him look mysterious and secret agenty – more secret agenty – and the clinging fabric only emphasises his size.

  “Knox is making accusations,” she says. “That you have lied to the Executive, that you have tampered with the archives.”

  He scrubs the flat of his hand along his jaw, rasping his beard. “You will not be implicated.”

  “Don’t be a child,” she snaps. “If it comes out it all comes out.”

  “Things are changing,” Ethan says. “The World Council wants change.”

  “They want Proxies more.” Her eyes hit me, a hard glint.

  She knows.

  Ethan’s resigned expression confirms it.

  I consider throwing up.

  “Don’t worry.” She sighs. “Knox can’t claim your reproductive rights without claiming Jamie’s first and if he remains in the Deactivation Program the Reform protects him.”

  I clasp the counter behind me. “Um … reproductive what?”

  “Your eggs are no use to the Affinity Project without Jamie’s DNA, are they?” She juts her jaw, impatient with my gormlessness. “You’re safe … at least until Knox confirms this.” She nods at Miriam and Ethan.

  “You are frightening her.”

  “Well, she should be informed and she should be frightened. She needs to understand what’s at stake.”

  A murky memory of Knox’s droning voice slips through the chaos in my thoughts. I can’t speak. Knox wants to breed me, use me as a baby factory? I hug my waist, repulsed, humiliated … and yes, terrified.

  “What does he know for certain?” Ethan says.

  “He’s confirmed Evangeline and the boy share a Synergist connection. He knows you’ve tampered with her birth records and data. He’s doing the math.” She stabs her hand in Miriam’s direction. “This somewhat adds fuel to the fire.”

  “I could have moved the aunt to avoid Knox using her as leverage.”

  “The aunt is leverage already. He’ll simply deny Miriam restorative therapy. You know she won’t last six months without it.”

  Ethan jerks away from the counter with a hiss.

  Juno flinches.

  I stand like I’ve been skewered in place. “What?”

  She turns to me slowly.

  I blink at her. “Six months?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought–”

  “Six months?” My voice goes high while everything inside me shrivels to a hard nut. I round on Ethan, immediately crushed by the side-to-side flick of his eyes. He won’t look right at me. “You said there was time.”

  “She is not a civilian in a coma,” he explains to the floor. “She is a genetically altered human weapon whose operating system depends on an active signal. Without it her regenerative capabilities not only diminish – her deterioration accelerates.”

  “And you – you don’t tell me? You let me think–”

  “You have enough worry,” he says, his voice thick with frustration. “Besides, I have applied for Miriam to go to the UK compound. They have a mature Proxy.”

  Juno shakes her head. “Knox has blocked the application, pending investigation.”

  “I will take it to the World Council. They will overrule Knox.”

  “Not if–”

  “Enough, Juno! I will take care of it. Evangeline, I promise you she will be well. I will ensure it.”

  A muscle cramps in my jaw. “You can’t guarantee that.
She’s been out two months already. How long till you get a decision from the Council? And if Knox gets in the way, what then? It’s all wasting time when you’ve got me! I’m a goddamn telepath. A fricken superconductor, if the Proxy got it right. What are we waiting for? I’m strong enough. I can do it.”

  Ethan’s face grows dark. “I told you already, that will never happen.”

  “How is that your decision?”

  “It is not your burden to carry.”

  “Burden? She’s my mother!”

  “And you are my–” His voice rings off the ceiling before cutting short, his cheeks above his beard a mottled red. He breathes heavily through his nose and lowers his voice. “Responsibility … you are my responsibility … and I have not spent the last eighteen years of my life keeping you out of the Isolation Tank to let you climb in it and kill yourself.”

  Silence like a polar blast and razor deja vu. Responsibility. Miriam used the same term for me in an argument from another life. Isolation Tank. The little girl submerged in saline fills my thoughts. Why hadn’t I realised they’d use the tank? I assumed it would be like it was when the Proxy blasted me with her signal. Physical touch. Focus. Maybe some high-tech drug … but if they submerge Proxies for interrogation and boosting, it makes sense they’d use the Symbiosis for signal therapy too. Goosebumps stipple my arms and neck. Where’s my courage now?

  A crackling electronic alert buzzes from an old intercom by the surgery door. Ethan stalks across, frowns at the cracked plastic switches and jabs a green button. “This is Tesla.”

  “Sir,” Davis’s voice buzzes through the small speaker. “Helena is here with an update. She’s in a hurry and I wasn’t sure if I should send her down.”

  Ethan sighs and runs his hand up into his hair, leaving it there, resting his elbow on the wall. “Put her on.”

  “Forgive me for the interruption,” she says, her cultured voice buzzing softly. “There seems to be no reception in the lower barracks for sending notifications and you wanted to know when the Proxy has entered the Isolation Tank. The Wardens have arrived. Boosting begins in twenty minutes.”