Shield

by Rachael Craw

  This is happening.

  The saline is more resistant than water, lukewarm, slimy in texture as it slips over my thighs, hips, waist. Benjamin adjusts his hold, pressure on my armpits where he grips me. Chest, shoulder, neck, the rising tide chases my pulse up into my mouth then the brief sound of a splash as the displaced liquid spills over the edge of the tank, splattering onto the floor below. I must be a lot bigger than the current Proxy – a snatch of random thought before my ears fill with bubbling liquid. Benjamin releases me and the saline swims in over my face and into my slack mouth. Teeth, tongue, unplugged throat.

  The flood is fast. Nose, ears, eyes. All the unseen tracts cut off by the rush of fluid, setting off tripwires, sirens, alarms, the guard dogs of panic as it plunges through me. Everything is wrong. Instinct hamstrung by paralysis. Hysteria needs an outlet – needs to thrash its limbs against the close glass walls of a drowning chamber. It needs to flail and bruise its way up to the surface, battling against suffocation. I can’t even hold my breath. I can’t choke or swallow … and it hurts. God, it hurts. My muscles. My lungs. My head. Everything. No air, no oxygen, no hope. Drowning burns me from the inside out. Multiple sulphurous fuses screaming from brain to bone as my organs begin to shut down.

  I’m dying. It’s my last coherent thought as I stare through the filmy liquid. The burn in my body builds and my vision grows dark, a creeping blackness at the periphery, contracting like an iris until there is only a tunnel with a dot of light and colour at the end. When the light goes the pain reaches its peak, obliterating … then slowly it begins to lift … until I know nothing … feel nothing … am nothing.

  SYMBIOSIS

  Nothing … Then the charge. Awareness rippling outwards, expanding and expanding. I become conscious of my body, the tank, the room. It doesn’t stop. I’m above Benjamin and Helena. Above myself, looking down at the top of my head, hair fanning in shimmering ribbons, a dark corona beneath the surface. My awareness rises and rises like I could float right out of the room, up through the layers of concrete and the miles of earth, but the ReProg room is what anchors me – magnetises me – drawing all my attention to a focal point, a jet stream rush. The Symbiosis. Miriam.

  Instantly, I see her close-up – like I’m hovering just above her face – the fading spray of freckles on her pale cheeks. It’s been weeks since she felt the sun. Her dark lashes dust smooth skin – no worry lines in sleep. The contrast of her living, breathing body against the absence of her signal makes my heart squeeze. I want to touch her face and I reach for her without thinking … and … there’s my hand.

  Multiple realisations hit me at once. My skin is dry. This is a hallucination. I’m standing, not hovering, and my bare feet are cold on the sloping concrete floor. I’m in a tank in another room. I’m dressed in a paper hospital gown like Miriam’s. It’s not real. Cool air and the rough brush of the gown against me makes my skin prickle. This is the Symbiosis. I turn my head knowing there will be no reflection and see what I expect – nothing but the room and Miriam in the chair. We’re vampires. That’s what the Proxy said.

  I could freak out. I want to … but I don’t.

  Gently, I touch her cheek. “Miriam.”

  She doesn’t stir and I feel no sign of her ETR. I close my eyes and press into the bandwidth; it’s like diving into a crystal-clear ocean, wide, deep, huge. Unbelievably huge. I’m a whale – or something with cosmic sonar. I can hear the earth breathing beyond the concrete walls, the sky sighing high above the compound and I’m in space. I’m an astronaut sending out a signal to galaxies far, far away. Miriam. Come on. Miriam, where are you? I need you. Come back to me …

  Miriam.

  I need a strong memory. An anchor.

  It comes as easily as want: the moment I embraced Miriam in her hidden training room – the day I apologised for my terrible attitude after letting the Fixation Effect mark her as a threat to Kitty’s wellbeing. Miriam had saved me from the Warden’s sweep and ensured Kitty wasn’t left without her Shield. Her quick thinking, her unflinching courage, had saved Kitty and me from a devastating separation. I cried and she forgave me and wrapped her arms around me.

  I focus now on the faint butter-sugar smell of her skin, her warmth, the strength of her embrace and wait for the flash of another memory hidden inside this one – the one I accidentally Harvested from Miriam’s secret past. Her, heavily pregnant with me and Aiden – though at the time I thought it was just me. In the KMT she was hugging April and I felt the kick in her womb – felt it in my own skin – interpreted it all wrong but right now as I reach for her it’s so vivid, so strong, and there in the heart of the memory of that kick I find a faint, familiar pulse. Like the ghost of an old song, a fragment of forgotten melody.

  Hope like a power surge lights me up; my heart fills with it – wonderful and painful and fierce. I seize the memory in that moment, the full force of my intent landing on that freeze-frame – that embrace, her memory loaded inside mine, like Russian dolls. That kick in my belly, me in her belly, that kick, my kick, mother and child as one, when her signal wrapped me in the womb … and there … there she is … Miriam – a frail, splintered note in the bandwidth. I pour myself into that note, bridging the gaps, willing strength into it, looping it over and over, calling it to life.

  Miriam … Miriam.

  A flash of recognition – life in the note, her signal responding to mine.

  Mom.

  A jolt of energy contracts my muscles and the memory of Miriam in my arms becomes solid again. I open my eyes on the brick back wall of Miriam’s training room, the earthy basement smell, the rubber gym mats, the barky whiff of climbing ropes, the polished wood scent of the sparring dummy. Homesickness plunges through me. Miriam grunts, hot and clammy with work-out sweat, her strong arms tight around me. My face is wet with tears old and new and her breath is hot through my sweater, steaming my shoulder. “Evie?” she says, muffled and strained. I’m holding her too tight. A sob cracks my throat and I let her go.

  She stumbles back, her eyes wide and flicking around the large open room, taking in the high ceiling, the metal stairs up to her studio. She turns her head to the bank of mirrors on the side wall but I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s so solid and real and beautiful, even red and splotchy from exertion and emotion, and her ponytail swings past her shoulder … and there’s the ache. Her hair was cut by Knox. This is a hallucination.

  She grows eerily still, staring at the blank mirrors. I don’t need to look to know we’re not reflected there.

  “Evie?” She turns, fear in her eyes. “What is this?”

  “You’re unconscious at the Affinity compound. I reached you through an old memory.” I gesture at the cruelly real-looking training room. “This is the Symbiosis.”

  “The Symbiosis?” Her eyes flick back and forth searching my face, her expression mapping an uncertain path to comprehension. She doesn’t like what she arrives at and her voice crackles, “Knox tortured me.”

  I nod, not trusting myself to speak without bursting into tears.

  “Did I tell him?” She covers her mouth, the weight of her secrets swamping in. “Does he know?”

  “You didn’t tell him. He figured it out.”

  Her throat moves and the hallucinatory post-work-out-redness drains from her face with a flash of understanding. She opens her mouth behind her fingers but nothing comes out.

  “Ethan’s been looking out for me …” I stop, swallow and try again. “He’s a … good guy.”

  Her eyes well and she presses her hand harder against her mouth. She struggles for composure while I fight the rising dread of all the things she doesn’t know. How can I tell her Aiden’s dead? How can I tell her everything she’s suffered was for nothing and that it’s all my fault?

  “I’m sorry–” We both say it and shake our heads at each other.

  She scrapes her knuckles beneath her eyes. “I couldn’t tell you about him.”

  “I know,” I say, to head her
off. “I know. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I got you in this mess. I was an idiot rushing into things. If I had listened – waited – Knox wouldn’t have hurt you.”

  “Of course he would.”

  I give her a doubtful look.

  “He’s a bastard with too much power,” she says. “There was no way I was going to avoid ReProg after all the protocol I’ve breached and the Proxy would have picked up on my holding back anyway. He would have never let my resistance slide even if you’d stayed safe at home.”

  It’s what I’ve dreamed of for weeks, her absolving me of guilt, but it does nothing to lift the cold weight from my stomach. She can’t absolve me. She doesn’t have all the facts. If she knew about Aiden …

  “What happened?” She steps close, grasping my arms, gently, imploring – her dark eyes searching mine. “When you didn’t come home last night I was beside myself with panic. I didn’t know what to do and Jamie – when he came looking for Kitty, he was so angry I thought he was going to punch a hole in the wall. He …”

  Last night. She has no idea how long she’s been out.

  “I know.” I can’t go down this track with her now. I can’t risk the shock of the truth hijacking her recovery. “We don’t have time to go over everything. I have to get back before they find out I’m missing. Helena said we only have fifteen minutes and it feels like a half-hour already.”

  “Helena?” Miriam’s hands tighten around my biceps, her head pulling back. “Helena is here?”

  I groan, my brain scattering with all the things I need to dodge. “She’s – she’s helping me. We had to sneak in. We don’t have time.”

  “Sneak in …?” Her confusion crumples beneath an avalanche of realisation. “If this is the Symbiosis …” She releases her hold on me and takes two steps back, her head tilting up as she takes in the space. Her eyes narrow, quick with suspicion. “You’re in my head … you’re … not Evie. This is ReProg. This is a trick.”

  A shudder ripples through my head and my vision blurs. I stumble off balance. I feel the strain on our connection, Miriam pulling back, her doubt and fear multiplying.

  “No!” I move towards her. “Miriam, it’s me! I swear it’s me. It’s not a trick. Knox doesn’t know I’m here – neither does Ethan. No one knows except Helena and Benjamin.”

  Her face screws up. “Benjamin?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “You’re lying. You’re trying to trick me.”

  “No!” I scramble to think of some proof I can give her.

  “Please, don’t hurt them.” She grips her head. “Not Aiden and Evie. It’s not their fault, don’t tell Knox. He’ll take them. He’ll use them …”

  “Miriam!” I grab her arms and she fights to pull away but I feel my power in the Symbiosis overriding hers and her strength gives. A sick lurch in my stomach at the sense of violation; I’m no different from the Proxy. Miriam cringes and moans at her weakness. I shake her. “It’s me! The Proxy is dead. It’s me; I’m in the tank. Me! You’ve been unconscious for weeks, in stasis or whatever the hell it is. Ethan found a cure for Strays using Aiden’s DNA. We’ve got a guy down in the lower barracks right now and it’s this whole crazy situation. Jamie and I are … Ugh. We don’t have time but this is my one chance to reach you, Miriam. I need you to wake up. Okay? I need you to come back. If you don’t come out of this now, you won’t come out at all. Please.”

  Her uncertainty is painful to watch. She wants to believe me but there’s eighteen years of instinct telling her not to trust these people. I can see her calculating how much damage this conversation has done, weighing it against the unbearable hope I’m offering her. Finally, she says, “Aiden’s DNA?”

  “Yes … we found him.” Careful. “Ethan tested him. No sign of the Stray mutation.”

  Her mouth opens and she releases a sharp gust of air. “They accept he’s – they accept it? Knox?”

  I swallow hard. “Yes.”

  “Aiden’s clear,” she says it to herself and it’s a statement of wonder, not an outright question, so I keep my mouth shut and my face even. Her brown eyes drill mine again and I bite hard inside my mouth. “And … you’re in the tank?”

  I nod.

  Her delight for Aiden evaporates and tears rise to brim at her lashes. “How did your father let this happen?”

  “He didn’t.” I grimace. “I locked him in his lab.”

  She screws her eyes closed and sobs, her shoulders quaking. “I’m going to kill you when we get out of here.”

  “You believe me?”

  She makes a strangled sound. “I believe you’d do something that damn reckless.”

  Now it’s my turn for tears. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “You’re grounded forever.” She opens her arms, and I step into them, a bruising, possessive hug but I resist the urge to completely fall to pieces. There’s still so much stacked against us and no promise of things getting better. But just to know she’ll come through this, become conscious, survive – right now that’s enough.

  A tremor in the bandwidth.

  I open my eyes on a jarring change in scene and my arms are empty. Miriam is gone – or at least no longer standing and talking and hugging. I’m back in the ReProg room and Miriam – short-haired Miriam – is in the chair. Panic doesn’t quite set in because her ETR is right there, a quiet but clear signal, familiar as my own heartbeat. I only get halfway through an outwards breath before another tremor hits.

  The room disappears.

  I’m back in the black space of my head. I brace for pain, for the shock of a body full of saline, the horror of coming out of the tank. Helena must be bringing me around.

  There’s no time to give thanks that I found Miriam before an electric surge bursts through my spine, savage pins and needles that would curl my toes if they weren’t paralysed. Then a hook catches behind my navel. The instantaneous sense of connection and awareness in the bandwidth is devastating.

  Michael Jessop.

  SABOTAGE

  All my focus rushes towards the signal that binds me. The Spark has arrived in the compound. If I can feel him it means Ethan hasn’t administered the third phase of the cure to the Stray – or worse, he has and the cure hasn’t worked. Or it hasn’t kicked in yet.

  The tether takes everything, overrides everything. Concern, fear, hope and need erased and rewritten with a new centre. Motive, instinct and priorities reset with certainty. I cannot be stuck in a tank while Michael Jessop is wheeled through the compound and taken to the lower barracks where a genetically engineered psychopath lies waiting in a medical room, restrained only by anaesthetic, a couple of Velcro straps and a single locked door.

  Ethan’s plan now screams its flaws in my head. This was never going to work. Never. The whole idea … so utterly pointless and dangerous and impossible in the face of the Fixation Effect and its relentless demands on my body and mind. The choice to risk time on reaching Miriam now strikes me as reckless in the worst possible way and I’m paying for it by finding myself unable to move a muscle while my Spark is being delivered like meat on a plate to the wolf den.

  I use the one thing I have, my chemically enhanced reach. I’m still tapped into the Symbiosis and the amplification hasn’t diminished. I let my awareness rise up and up again chasing after the signature of my Spark, like I can run along that invisible umbilical cord, shimmering like gossamer in my mind yet as strong as braided cable wire, racing towards the source.

  The Affinity compound comes alive to me – the rabbit warren levels, the endless corridors and the hundreds of signals humming through it. This is why they give the Proxy a suppressant before Actuation, to keep that power bound to the ReProg room. The thought of a Proxy loose like this in the bandwidth, the power to touch any mind …

  I arrive at the source more quickly than I could have imagined. A team surrounds Michael Jessop in one of the huge elevators, descending from the transport bay. He lies unconscious and strapped to a gurney.
There are four civs emitting bland static behind the comforting and familiar ETR of Davis, Lane and to a lesser extent Counsellor Juno Thurston.

  My focus hovers over Michael, feeling for signs of harm or distress in his system. The slightest bruise from the Extraction team and I’d be tempted to dive right into their collective consciousness and scramble their civilian brains till they’re nothing but drooling sacks of useless muscle on the floor of the elevator. Michael, however, seems intact; I can’t sense pain in his body.

  When the elevator chimes and rattles to a halt the doors open and my shock is instant. Knox, Stephanie and four other hostile signals.

  “Now, this is curious,” Knox says. His icy voice comes to me through Michael Jessop but I want to see him, read his face, his body language. I shift my focus to Davis, simple as a thought. His Cooler counter-signal isn’t a comfortable fit, but he’s an open channel. Nothing like the clarity I experienced when I piggybacked Jamie’s signal but at least I can see.

  Knox blocks the exit to the corridor, a thin stretch of pale lips beneath his taped nose and blackened eyes. “Counsellor Thurston, I have received a notification that indicates your personal clearance codes are in use in the Actuation Vault and yet your tracker directed me to these coordinates.”

  “Inventing reasons to get back at me strikes me as an unproductive use of your time, Robert.” Juno draws herself to her full height. “I didn’t demote you. It was the consensus of the Executive, so whatever this is you can dial it down.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I expect you to be a grown-up.”

  “Ethan will answer for his treason. Alexis stands with me. That’s two against two. Hardly a consensus.”

  “When an even number of Counsellors serve the Executive the senior member may vote twice. Angela stands with me. That’s three against two and you’re out of the Chair. Read the by-laws and get out of my way.”

  He doesn’t move. There’s an unhinged quality to the slow reveal of his teeth. “Finally showing your hand?”