Shield

by Rachael Craw

  After the first twenty minutes of shallow-breathed watching, I survive Ethan shaking hands with the few adults hanging back, introducing himself. There are expressions of vague surprise at his accent. Thankfully no one has even heard of the chapel. One of the women comments that Ethan might find more young people in his services than usual after tonight. The tone is flirtatious but Ethan isn’t facing her directly so I can’t make out her face. Helena and I exchange frowns – subtle move, lady.

  I settle into a rhythm of scanning each viewing block, letting my eyes rest on each screen. The team has dispersed through the thick crowd, mingling, moving in slow sweeps around the room. Helena leans on her arm, her fingers moving the cursor over each dark-skinned male face, activating facial recognition software. An alert chimes, making us both startle. The top right.

  Helena presses a key and speaks with impressive calm. “Ethan. Jessop is on the opposite side of the room.”

  “Excuse me,” Ethan says in my earpiece. “I think I see someone I know.”

  My spine is a beehive and my legs start to cramp.

  We watch the crowd part as he makes his way across towards the Spark. The readout of Ethan’s vitals begins to spike on the monitor. His heart rate accelerates, temperature rises, ETR amplifies. Without thinking, I reach into the bandwidth. It roars back at me, a storm of static but I ignore the white noise and press deeper searching for the living threads. I focus on Ethan and despite the static, the distance and my own pounding heart, I find him. The interference dies as soon as I have a place to focus and I know instantly. “It’s not him.”

  “What?” Helena looks up.

  “It’s not Ethan. He’s not Michael Jessop’s Shield.” Saying it aloud makes me even more certain. Ethan’s signal is full of natural anxiety but it’s not charged in the way I remember before I touched Kitty and the world exploded. “He’s not the Shield.” I reach past Helena and tap the comms key. “Ethan, it’s not you. You’re not the Shield.”

  “I am about to make contact.” His voice crackles in my ear.

  Helena stares at me, her lips parted. “How can you – you can discern his signal? At this distance?”

  I nod and hug my waist, rattled by the power of my reach, frightened by my own certainty.

  It’s Jessop I should focus on. I watch his face in Ethan’s screen. He’s of a medium build and his hair is clipped close to his scalp. He’s holding a cup. He’s laughing, light reflecting off his glasses. My heart slowly contracts in my chest, a gradual squeezing, and my spine is an electric lightshow, flashing with bright bursts of pain. Lights pop behind my eyes. I watch Jessop’s face and listen to Ethan’s breathing get sharp and shallow.

  He reaches Jessop’s side and touches his arm, his voice impressively calm. “Excuse me. Sorry, are you–” He cuts off and Jessop smiles at Ethan curiously, pleased and almost alarmed to be spoken to.

  “You’re looking for someone?”

  “I am very sorry. Wrong person.” Ethan moves away, his heart rate sky-high. “You were correct. It is not me. Davis.”

  But I’ve already found Davis, his forceful and familiar signal. “It’s not Davis,” I mutter and look at Helena. “It’s not Davis.”

  I probe his signal in the bandwidth but it’s just like Ethan’s, all noisy with natural anxiety. He’s moving towards Jessop from across the room but I can tell already – I know it’s not him and I shake my head. In response to the static-charged bandwidth my anxiety is ascending rapidly and I realise now how much I have been counting on this first attempt being successful. Even though Ethan warned us it could be like this – that we have to be patient. Deep down I’ve been willing it to be first off – one in the bag to bring home like a trophy – a validation to rub in the faces of Knox and the trainers from the women’s mess hall. A tangible outcome before they take me in – make my losses meaningful. And I can feel it in the bandwidth, a crushing defeat.

  It’s like a cloud descending on my head, frustration and … fear. I can’t stand to wait and have it be for nothing. My spine fires and a painful current shoots through my arms and legs making me grunt and grimace.

  I don’t need to hear Davis’s exhalation of relief to know I’m right. I watch through distorted vision as he brushes past Jessop, apologising for bumping him. It’s like the screen is vibrating on high frequency and I look at Helena to see if she notices the distortion. Her eyes snap back and forth from the screens to me.

  “I’m clear,” Davis says in my headset.

  “I’ll go,” Lane says.

  I don’t wait to hear or see anything. I close my eyes this time and launch into the bandwidth. It almost screams in my head but I go deep and hard, casting wide, not even certain what I’m trying to accomplish – just going on instinct. I find them all. Jamie, Ethan, Davis, Lane in descending order of strength – or, more specifically, in descending order of my personal sensitivity to them. Each signal is polluted by anxiety, a scratchy smudging in the clarity of their individual signatures. Jamie’s is loudest and most demanding. It makes my chest constrict. I think it’s him.

  “Jamie. It’s Jamie.”

  I open my eyes and Helena is sheet white; she stabs the key and her voice warbles. “Evangeline believes it’s Jamie who will trigger.”

  “Evangeline?” Ethan says. “She’s reading the bandwidth?”

  “I’ll go,” Jamie says.

  I fix my eyes on the screen. Abandoning all the other signals except Jamie’s, I stare at his video feed and pour myself into the bandwidth. “Jamie,” I say, but the speaker isn’t on.

  “Everton,” Jamie says, through my headset, as though he heard me, “stay with me.”

  I whimper and close my eyes again as I pour myself into Jamie’s signal, losing all sense of my body. It’s just like the night the Proxy overtook my system. I could see through the eyes of others and feel the terror in their skin. Now, I see everything from Jamie’s perspective – like a Kinetic Memory Harvest but live streaming. His galloping pulse is mine, his shallow breaths are mine, his cramping muscles are mine. Oh God, it’s now, it’s happening now.

  Jamie walks through the crowd, unfaltering. He sees Jessop by the bookcase, his head tilted towards a short girl, nodding earnestly as she talks.

  Stay with me. The words fill my head but I can’t tell if it’s Jamie who said it or me, whether it’s in my mind or my earphones, more powerful than a plea, a prayer, or incantation.

  Stay with me.

  FIXATION

  Jamie presents himself – casual and easy. It’s nothing more than a passing gesture, his hand outstretched. “Hey, Michael. Good to see you.” Jessop looks at Jamie with an expression of dazed confusion, trying to place him. Time fissures in the slipstream, where the microseconds are stretched and infinite. Jamie’s hand makes contact with Jessop’s shoulder, the magnetic clamping of gear and shaft locking together – a circuit made complete. Jessop’s signal erupts in the bandwidth eclipsing everything, erasing Jamie, erasing me. His signature burns through my synapses – forked lightning that throws me from my stool. A concrete compression over my heart. It stops beating. My lungs find no oxygen. My spine is an electric eel.

  I’m distantly aware of Helena’s cry and the clatter and crash of equipment. The seizing is fierce, every joint contracting like a monster yanking fistfuls of ligaments. Then behind my navel the hook. A pulsing umbilical cord, feeding me Jessop’s signal in excruciating bursts.

  The screaming static in my head dims, pain slips into the background, the bandwidth is a vast open space. Jamie, Ethan, Davis, Lane and Helena appear like pinpricks of light in my mind, insignificant constellations on the periphery of the burning centre of my universe. Michael Jessop.

  My awareness orbits his signal, pulses with it but there’s a tremor on the edges of the bandwidth, a clouding, an encroaching darkness. Faint at first, the shadow amasses at the horizon of my awareness then thunders in towards me – a thick and terrifying darkness filled with threat.

  Consciousnes
s hits me like a fist and I wake with a heaving gasp, back arched from the van floor. A shower of electronic equipment hovers momentarily above me as though frozen in space. My exhale releases the floating objects from stasis and they clatter around me. Helena cries out, her arms over her head where she kneels beside me. Then I’m scrambling up.

  “Evie!” Helena cries. “My God! What’s happening?”

  “He’s here.” It comes out in a hiss. My foot is caught beneath the stool and I kick it away, sending it slamming into the back of the driver’s seat.

  “The Stray? You sense the Stray? Evie, you can’t be the Shield. It’s not possible! Not without touch! And the Executive – they won’t allow it!”

  I turn my back on her and lurch towards the door though my legs still seem to be spasming.

  “No! Evie, wait. You haven’t been given the blocker.” She lunges and grabs my arm, surprising me with the strength of her hold.

  It’s the worst thing she can do. The sense of violation is instant. Her attempt to hold me back is a threat to the safety of my Spark and cannot be tolerated. A feral growl burns my throat and I wrench free of her hold and drag the door open. The blast of cold air wakes me all the way up. I see Helena launching at me in my mind’s eye – high-definition precognition. I’m not only ready but waiting as my feet hit the ground. I spin and catch her in the chest with my foot and send her crashing against the console of monitors.

  I don’t give her a second look and bolt across the car park, the tether reeling me in like a fishing line. My speed in a lit public place must be a breach in protocol but I’m too wired to care about anything other than the threat of losing Michael Jessop’s signal.

  Think. He’s alive. He’s in a crowded room. Strays won’t act in public. Their instincts for self-preservation drive them into hiding. Besides, there are four experienced Shields in the building – Michael couldn’t be safer. This is the best-case scenario.

  I have no space in my brain to consider the ramifications of what’s happening to my body in terms of historical Affinity Project precedents. Helena’s reaction made it pretty clear that she thought it was impossible for me to Spark remotely. Everything Miriam has ever told me about the Sparking process revolved around physical touch to ignite the synthetic gene. My body, right now as it darts up the embankment with lightning urgency, tells me Affinity can take their facts and jam them up their asses. I’ve never needed physical touch to Transfer or Harvest and since the Proxy turbo-blasted my signal everything has changed. The tug behind my navel is the proof and the only truth that matters. This is happening and it’s happening now.

  I come out of stride beneath a street lamp and look up at the lit windows of the JHTC Freshman Commons building. The desire to go to my Spark is intense as though his heartbeat pulses at me in the tether, Michael Jessop, Michael Jessop, Michael Jessop, but I force myself to stand still. I open my senses and wait, listen, feel. Across the road a couple of guys call out to me from the steps of the building. Nothing crude, an invitation, something like, “Come and join the party.” I ignore them and their laughter. The shadow rises – a heavy cloak of threat thrown over my head. Instinct turns me to the left where lamplight makes bright pools on the dark pavement. I’m about to bolt when a shout rises from the steps.

  “Evie!” Lane bursts from the doors of the building, almost knocking the guys out of the way. Cupping one hand to his earpiece, confusion and alarm contort his expression. “What’s going on?” he calls, taking the steps two at a time.

  “Stay with him! Stay there!” I run but hold myself back from a full sprint; there’s too much light and people are heading to the party. A heavy, black static dominates the bandwidth making me hunch as though I could duck and escape it. Worse still is the sense of the tether stretching behind me as I get further from the Freshman Commons. Not fading – not yet – but pressure straining the connection, Michael Jessop, Michael Jessop. If I don’t find the Stray before the tether fades, I won’t be able to sense him at all.

  I stop beneath an overhanging tree. Ahead of me the road divides. It’s all too well-lit for a lurking psychopath, though it’s not busy – only one or two people that I can see, civilian static lost in the greater static roaring in my ears. I close my eyes and breathe the frosty air into my lungs, feeling the tug of the tether, Michael Jessop, letting it fill me.

  Knowing hits me like hot hands pressed to my forehead. I stare across the road where tall buildings nudge together, overlooking an open quad. Deep in the shadows between them my anxiety finds a place to land. Fear slips from me, an irrelevant, ill-fitting shell, and I jog across the road, weightless with certainty. The hard edges of monochromatic light and dark shimmer before my eyes. I don’t need to race; the Stray isn’t moving. He’s just standing there, waiting, biding his time.

  I slip soundlessly into the ink-dark walkway, every cell in my body wide awake. Here’s the threat. Here’s the threat and I’m here. I’m ready. A flicker in the back of my mind stalls me. A doubt? A question? A sense that I may be forgetting something … Feet pounding out on the street bring me to a tipping point. I can’t waste time.

  He leans against the wall, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched as though resisting the cold. His head is slightly lowered, a posture that says don’t bother me, don’t speak to me, walk on. I’m only four steps away from him and my brain makes quickfire calculations. He’s aware of me though doesn’t suspect me. He’s roughly my height, slender but with a solid squareness to the set of his shoulders. There’s a fire-escape on the wall opposite and a dumpster to the right of him. Windowsills a foot above his head, four of them, deep-set and useful for leverage if necessary. The fire-escape and dumpster throb with potential. If he doesn’t run and I can smash his face into–

  “Evie!” It’s Lane, from across the quad.

  The Stray lifts his head at the shout and straightens against the wall.

  I push Lane from my mind, the nudge in the back of my thoughts, and anchor my attention on the pulse of the tether, Michael Jessop, back in the Freshman Commons, his would-be killer here, now, in arms reach. I stalk straight up to the boy – that’s all he is. My age. Possibly younger. Dark hair and pale skin, a handsome face suddenly hostile at my approach. And then out of nowhere Aiden pops into my thoughts and with it a plunging sense of grief. I remember. What I’m doing. Why I’m here. What it means.

  “Yeah?” the boy says, menace in his voice.

  “Evie!” Lane calls, closer now.

  No. My understanding wavers on the brink of decision. My instinct teeters with it. If only Lane would stay back. “Everything … will be all right … if you don’t run.”

  “Run?” The boy sneers.

  “Oh. God …” A tremor sweeps through my muscles, reason losing its grip. “Please just … Don’t. Run.”

  “Get the hell away from me.” He goes to push past me then sees my eyes and jerks his head back.

  It’s decided in this exact moment, by the telltale flash of his pupils expanding and his lips pulling back, by the confronting whiff of his scent. Ammonia. Something chemical. A sensory bait for my hatred. With a grunt, he turns to run from me and my hesitation, my thread of reason, is obliterated by raw instinctual need.

  Kill him.

  He gets barely three paces from me and I catch the back of his jacket, yanking him out of his stride. Kill him. I don’t notice the strain in my arms and chest as I bear his weight, a swinging motion to give me momentum. Kill him. I hurl him through the air, ten, fifteen feet – face-first into the dumpster. Yes. The crash is a colossal ringing that echoes through the alley. Hurry, finish it. I launch myself after him but Lane comes in fast, his signal filled with intent, an irritation in the bandwidth.

  “Evie, wait!” He skids to a stop, slips a needle from his pocket.

  He shouldn’t have let me see it.

  I’m off the ground. Overarm strike. Palm thrust to his neck. Leg sweep to collect the ankle. Lane’s cry of pain. An explosion of agony in my chest
. I fly backwards from his kick, hit the fire-escape and my breath goes. Stars burst behind my eyes. I land, knees bent, bracing for his tackle. I throw him off. He rolls away. Precognition fires. I barely get my arm up for his attack. Strikes. Counterstrikes. Air leaving my body in sharp bursts as he pummels me. I react, full-frenzy. A spray of blood in my eyes. A shriek of pain and deep voices booming in the distance.

  Suddenly, the space around me is free of blurring limbs. I glimpse Lane on the ground, Ethan and Davis blurring towards me across the quad – Ethan drawing what looks like a taser. The whiff of ammonia sets me back in the direction of the Stray. He’s not lying crumpled by the dumpster. I rush in terror towards a green lawn at the end of the alley, reaching for the tether that binds me to Michael Jessop’s signal. The threat increases. I catch the blur of the Stray, disappearing through a door into a darkened building.

  I’m only faintly aware of rifts in my clothes, flapping icy gusts of night air against my body and a stinging in my arm as I bolt through the door. I follow dark static and crashing sounds ahead of me down a wide corridor. The boy seems to be running blind, limping but still so much faster than a civ. It’s the speed and resilience of altered DNA. As I round the next corridor the ammonia scent is worse. I catch a flash of the Stray lurching into the stairwell, his signal – a mass of angry static in the bandwidth.

  A crash echoes behind me, Ethan and Davis on my tail. I bare my teeth and run faster, ignoring the scratch in the back of my mind. The forgotten thing.

  I make the stairwell, launch myself up to the landing and there he is at the top of the next flight of stairs. The Stray, protecting a damaged shoulder, scrabbles to get back to his feet from where he’s slipped. He looks back at me with wild eyes, his breathing wet and ragged. The chemical reek tastes like fear. Light and shadow lattice the darkness through the stairwell window. Hate strobes in my head – instinct sharp as razors. I leap, smashing him back to the floor, halfway into the corridor, the crunch of bone confirmed by his hellish scream. He whips to throw me off. I tear his skin beneath my nails, trying to secure my hold on his head and neck.