Shield

by Rachael Craw

  I’m running through the forest at night, air like warm water, lapping my skin, warming my lungs. Above me a canopy of branches filters the moonlight in black and white – a strobe effect exaggerating the feel of speed, the pumping of my arms and legs. I am strong. Powerful. Fearless.

  I move instinctively through the unpredictable space, sure-footed and skimming the undergrowth, the darkness an envelope around me. To the right, the crash of the river echoes off carved banks of rock. Though I can’t see the gorge through the trees, I know the tight bends and sheer faces that churn the water before it opens out wide and deep from the last jagged mouth at the foot of the mountain. Then the urgency that drives me becomes panic and I remember why I’m running. Someone is out here in the dark and they’re in terrible danger. The realisation coincides with a faint whimper on the wind and that whimper becomes weeping and the weeping becomes a cry that rends the air and it’s me, howling.

  “Hold her.”

  “What a mess.”

  “Two thousand milligrams … and the anaesthetic.”

  “Okay … okay, and turn her.”

  “You see these scars?”

  “Knox.”

  The sound of a heavy door swishing open. Air moving through the room. The waft of antiseptic, latex and disinfectant. A new voice. “We need her in here, now.”

  “We’re going as fast as we can.”

  “It’s now or not at all. The boy’s out of time.”

  “The bullet’s wedged in her shoulderblade.”

  “Now!”

  I skid to a halt, almost slipping on the thick blanket of leaves. Peering through the heavy dark of the forest, I let my vision adjust. I catch the faint form of someone just beyond me, moving through the trees. I take cautious steps, afraid to startle him or scare him off. My heart pounds careful, careful in my chest. Don’t ruin it.

  “Slowly. Her wounds haven’t closed.”

  “There’s not a lot of room for both of them.”

  “Put the side rail up. She won’t fall.”

  “What about her circulation?”

  “We’ll shift her on the hour.”

  “Skin to skin. Keep them skin to skin.”

  He’s standing in the clearing, moonlight filling the little glade like a silver pool. I can’t tell if I’m panting from relief or the exertion of running. I hesitate, my hand pressed to the rough bark of the tree where I watch half hidden. My pulse flutters in my throat. Why am I nervous?

  “You make a hell of a lot of noise,” Jamie says, turning towards me, a knowing smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He’s dressed in Affinity standard issue, and his face is unbruised, only light and shadow marking his skin. His eyes gleam, taking in what he can see of my injury-free details and black uniform.

  My stomach performs a ludicrous flip-flop and I step into the silvery glade. “I was afraid I wouldn’t find you.”

  “Even with your GPS?”

  A heavy feeling settles in my chest. “I wasn’t sure.”

  He tilts his head at the forest, a teasing grin. “This is very … brooding.”

  “I didn’t pick it.”

  He raises an eyebrow, ambling towards me. “Is it me then, I’m creating this?”

  “I don’t know. It started out like my old Priming dream – then it changed.”

  “So it’s a dream?”

  “A shared hallucination. A telepathic link.”

  “We’re not dead?”

  “No.” It comes out fierce, the muscles in my arms and legs bunching. My whole body trembles.

  He closes the distance between us in three strides, cupping my shoulders. “It’s all right, love. It’s brilliant – warm and … outdoorsy … but let’s face it, if I were in control of this whole mind-meld you’d probably be wearing that Tomb Raider outfit from Halloween.”

  I can’t bring myself to laugh or let him defuse the tension. Though I want nothing more than to lean into him and lose myself in his touch … but he doesn’t know and I have to tell him. I lower my head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I … did something.”

  There’s a pause. I debate bolting from the glade, back through the forest like the coward I am. Jamie waits. I wish I could bury myself in the leaf mould.

  “You killed the kid?”

  My head snaps up. “What?”

  “I felt the tether go. Don’t feel bad. It was a hell of a situation.”

  “No, I didn’t kill him. He deactivated. I felt it too.”

  “Oh … so …?”

  I draw a shallow breath and say it fast. “I-forced-your-signal.”

  He frowns like he’s eyeing up a trick equation. “To do … what?”

  “To bind. With mine. I could feel you slipping away. I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only thing I could think of to keep you here. I didn’t know if it would even work. I just blasted your signal with everything I had and … bound you to me …”

  There’s a pause. He drops his hands from my shoulders but he doesn’t shift away. I can’t read the atmosphere to tell if he’s shocked or angry or anything.

  “Bound me? To you?”

  “The accord. The signal binding. Making them–” I lock my fingers together, demonstrating, “making them one.”

  “Right … er … I don’t mean to be indelicate but wouldn’t I have to be conscious for …” He locks his fingers together mimicking my move.

  I give him a narrow look. “I’m not joking, Jamie. I forced your will.”

  “You can’t force something that’s already given.”

  “You can’t say–” I flush with heat. “You’re missing the point. It means, I pushed your signal over the threshold. It means, you’ll never deactivate. It means, Helena will never deactivate.” Helena. Just thinking about the risk she took to help me reach Miriam makes me sink inside. She’ll never forgive me.

  His chest fills with a deep inwards breath. “You’re apologising for saving my life?”

  “Well, I don’t really know if I have yet,” my voice goes high, and I gesture at the ridiculous romance-novel glade and forest-filtered moonlight. “But if I have … it’s not without a price, is it?” I drop my face into my hands, dig my fingers into my hair. “I’ve robbed you, Jamie. Ruined everything for Helena. Broken my promise to her.”

  “What exactly did you promise?”

  The note of amusement in his voice doesn’t strike me as appropriate. Doesn’t he get it? “She helped me save Miriam and I promised you’d be with her, that I’d talk you round.”

  He narrows his eyes. “I’m not a trading card.”

  “I’m not saying that … I didn’t mean that–”

  “Did you reach Miriam?”

  My chest gets tight and I nod.

  “Is she okay?”

  “I think so.” It comes out broken and he reaches for me but I pull back, afraid I’ll fall to pieces. My mind performs an emergency shutdown on all parental issues. “Don’t make me talk about it in here. It’s too hard. I don’t want to lose our connection.”

  “All right.”

  I force myself to look at him, his dark eyes, the strong lines of his face, the easy strength of his body. I have to hold myself in place. “Jamie … I need you to forgive me.”

  “Done.”

  “I’m serious. I need you to–”

  “I forgive you.”

  “I robbed you of your choice.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “You won’t deactivate.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You are deliberately being obtuse.”

  “You are deliberately being an ass.” His teeth gleam, his full leonine grin making it impossible to think straight. The echo of an old conversation twinkles in his eyes.

  “No, you don’t – you don’t get to use my words against me.”

  “Isn’t the offended party the one who decides whether an act is forgivable or not? Having my signal forcibly bound to yours in a desperate bid to s
ave me from death has not offended me.” He waves his fingers. “I release you from your unnecessary burden.”

  “You’re a jackass.”

  He shrugs then gives me a piercing look. “You’re not completely off the hook. I do have one complaint. We’ve missed the most important part of sealing the accord.”

  An exquisite burst of tingling erupts low in my belly and it suddenly gets difficult to draw a full breath. I remember him telling me about the sanction and how the accord is sealed with “ceremonial acts”. I shiver, thinking of the Affinity Project “honeymoon” suite. I’m staring too intently at Jamie’s mouth. “I … um …”

  “The words,” Jamie says, his innocent expression undermined by the slightest twitch in his lips. “We didn’t get to say the words of the sanction.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek, blushing hotly. “Right. The words.”

  He grins and lifts his chin. “If I’m bound to be your love slave for all eternity, I want the words. All of it.”

  “Jamie, you’re not – that’s not–” my voice cuts out. “They’ll just take our DNA; they won’t actually let us be together.”

  He opens his hands, gesturing towards the forest. “I don’t see anyone here to stop us.”

  It derails my train of thought completely. All my speech-making and fear about the things I’ve done and haven’t done … the burden of the unknown, what we’ll find when we wake – if we wake – the consequences we’ll have to live with, the lives that have been affected … our lives, our fates … the end of things.

  Stop. And I do – right there in the middle of all those impossible too-heavy things. I stop and look at the boy I’ve loved since I was ten years old – the young man who interrupted my life and gave me his friendship and his family and his heart – and I make a choice.

  “I love you.” My voice is steadier than I expect. Saying it releases something knotted in my chest. Truth like a star burst to life, a small sun to warm me from the inside.

  Then I see it in his eyes, the Big Bang and his smile makes me useless. “I love you, Everton.”

  It’s one small step into his gravitational field. I press my hand over his heart and focus on the strong thump beneath my palm, the solid realness of his chest, the heat of his skin through his shirt. I don’t tell myself, it’s all in your head. So what? He’s in here with me, fully three-dimensional and intoxicating – body, scent, signal, breath. He covers my hand with his own. I take his free hand and press it to my heart. Tingling fans out through my chest, the sweet hum of our ETR blended into a single rich and resonant chord.

  “So … I think I remember.” Of course I remember. I’ve played it a thousand times in my head. “I see you … I know you … I choose you …”

  He lowers his head, his smile broad and wonderful before looking at me again, his dark eyes pouring into mine.

  I swallow and steady myself for the next line. “As you choose me and know me and see me as I am …”

  A sudden, soft moan and he breaks my concentration with a kiss. For a moment my brain is wiped clean and the sensation of his mouth obliterates my senses, his tongue moving with mine in a way that makes me forget my own name. We free our hands and mould together, his fingers in my hair, my arms around his waist. A tremor runs through us and we both have to stop to draw breath.

  “Sorry.” He grins against me, panting and wicked.

  I laugh softly, half-drunk with his scent. “I … um … I bind myself to you in trust … This is what I believe. It is the truth that I choose as you choose – mmm …”

  He dips his head, taking my mouth again, each kiss sweeter and deeper. I press against him hungry for more, my hands taking inventory, the hard swell of his biceps, his muscular shoulders and the scars on his back. The heady taste of him, the physical intensity of his body, is almost too much and though I’m giddy I know I won’t faint – a delicious knowing.

  He cups my head and charts a course along my jaw, bringing his lips to my ear where he begins to murmur the words of the sanction. “This is what I believe … It is the truth that I choose as you choose me.”

  They’re all the words we can manage.

  From here we make a new language, slowly at first, with our mouths and hands, lips and fingertips. We stake our claim on a warm, dry mound of hallucinated grass, beneath a fictional moon, surrounded by a forest formed by the combined imagination of our linked minds. Like hypnotised explorers, we uncover layers, fumbling shoelaces, buckles, zips, cotton and elastic, until there is nothing but moonlight and skin. We look and look and marvel. We map the borders of our territory in slow, silky sweeps. We note the landmarks, scars and ink, and kiss their tracks. We fit ourselves together. Careful then urgent. We melt each other down to raw materials, clumsy, hapless, gleeful.

  HOME

  “You’ve lost weight,” Kitty says, sitting up against the head of my bed, Buffy curled in her lap, purring, eyelids lowered to slits. “You should eat.”

  “I eat.” I turn so she can’t see my back and haul my old shirt up, tossing it onto the end of my bed.

  “I see ribs.”

  “You do not.” I peer down at my torso. I haven’t had much of an appetite since I came to, glued to Jamie in the recovery ward. It’s been five weeks since Knox’s sabotage unravelled the whole world – three weeks since the preliminary hearing. Too many weeks of anxiety, waiting for the World Council to deliberate. It’s a wonder they let us come home at all.

  “I have seen your scars, remember.” She tucks her hair behind her ears; she looks pretty and put together, though there are shadows beneath her eyes. “You don’t need to hide them from me.”

  “I’m not.” I touch my finger to the pink scar in my shoulder socket, only inches above the older scar of Jamie’s bullet from the night he tried to kill Aiden. The scar Stephanie’s bullet left is small and neat. It won’t take long to fade like the other marks on my body.

  “If I show you something do you promise not to tell anyone?”

  She sits forwards, eyes alight. “Yes.”

  Biting the inside of my lip, I turn my back.

  A small gasp. “Bloody hell … does Miriam know?”

  “Shhh!” I scowl over my shoulder.

  Kitty clamps her hand over her mouth then parts her fingers so she can speak. “It’s completely beautiful.”

  A pleasant heat warms my face. “It’s kind of over the top.”

  “It’s utterly gorgeous. The petals, the shading on the leaves … is that a bird?”

  I grin. The tattoo covers the length of my spine, a column of twisting vines and flowers from the back of my neck to my tailbone with little tendrils curling out either side. The artist gave special attention to disguising my scars in the foliage. It stung like hell and took three trips to the studio to complete the intricate colouring but it was totally worth it. I love it more than I thought was possible, for practical and symbolic reasons, like rewriting my story – I am more than my scars, more than my losses.

  “I bet Jamie’s eyes fell out of his head.”

  More heat in my cheeks.

  “Ugh.” She screws her nose up. “I do not want to know.”

  I dig a black turtleneck from my drawer and yank it on.

  She eyes my outfit, taking in the black jeans and black Chucks. “I guess once you go AP the dress code really gets in your system.”

  Wrinkling my nose, I grab a hairbrush, dragging it through the lengths until it crackles. It’s long enough for a small ponytail but I decide to leave it down in case I need something to hide behind.

  She sighs. “You wouldn’t consider a dress? I get your whole Amazon thing – with those legs and whatnot – but I’d love to see you in something floaty for a change.”

  “Are you on drugs?”

  “Yes.” She smiles at me. “I believe they’re the same as yours.” She nods at the anti-anxiety meds sitting half-empty on my bedside table.

  The vice tightens in my chest. “Okay. Bad choice of words but I’m not
wearing a dress to face the executioner.”

  Paling, she digs her hands beneath Buffy, who gives a warning meow. “Shall I take her downstairs?”

  “I didn’t mean–” But she’s already climbing from the bed, Buffy in her arms, the cat’s ears tipped down in agitation. “Kit. Whatever way it goes, I’ll be all right.”

  “Not if they make you permanent lab equipment.” She hunches her shoulders and I regret ever putting the idea in her head. “How long before your hair and skin turn white?”

  “My skin’s already white.”

  “It’s not fair.” Her lip quivers and she draws herself up straighter, working against the rising tide of emotion. “After everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve sacrificed …”

  I don’t know what to say. It’s not like I haven’t thought or said all of it myself and with far more bitter language than she’s used. Part of me wonders if I’ve lost my fight; I doubt I’ll have the energy to raise my voice if I’m sentenced to “forced labour”, AP-style. I wish that I could come up with a cavalier quip to lighten things. “It’ll be okay.”

  She kisses my cheek. “I hate it.” Buffy growls, not liking being sandwiched between us. “Give over, cat. You’ll see Dad downstairs – that’ll cheer you up.” Kitty manages a watery smile before she leaves the room. I take a moment to pull myself together, dig my sweatshirt from under the bed, shake it out and check for stains then reconsider. Kitty’s voice in my head, I open my drawer and find my green sweater. I swap the black turtleneck for colour. It hugs my body and makes my eyes pop and I feel like an idiot, fussing with how I look, but if it’s the last time I’m going to see Jamie … I grab some lip gloss too.

  I take a final look at my room and the forest beyond my window and walk slowly out to the hall. I pause on the landing to peer through Miriam’s partially open door. She sits on the end of the bed, a sweater in each hand, her face screwed up in concentration. I swallow the hard lump in my throat. “Ready?”

  “No.” She looks up. “Do I like red or blue?”

  “Both, I think, but I’d go with blue.”

  She rises, frowning like an A-grade student flunking an exam. “Okay, blue is good.”

  She pulls it on and smooths the fabric over her waist and hips, before fanning her fingers through her hair. She had it cut after she came through recovery and wears it tucked behind her ears, chic and cool like she makes everything look. “Explain to me again about the people downstairs?”