by Karen Healey
“I’ll keep you safe, Tegan,” Lat said. “I promise.” He reached out to touch her hand.
And his head blew apart in a mess of blood and bone and thick, wet chunks of brain.
Diane stepped into the ambulance, her bolt-gun steady in her hands. She was smiling at the ruin of Lat’s face as his body folded onto Tegan’s bed. Her eyes were bright and sharp; her smile glittered like broken glass.
“Hello, Abdi,” she said. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tenuto
I was too scared to move.
I wanted to. If I could have run, at that moment, I would have. I would have left Tegan there, left Zaneisha and Marie, left my self-respect and good intentions and everything else behind, if only I could have run away from Diane, too.
But I couldn’t run, and it was Diane; I was far too frightened to fight her.
That was bad. I’d be punished.
“Leave us alone,” I croaked, and even that was almost too much effort. My vision was swimming. I was afraid I was going to pass out. But if I passed out, she’d take me. I couldn’t let that happen. With a massive effort of will, I managed to take a step back. I was standing in Lat’s blood, pieces of his head squelching under my flimsy shoes.
She laughed. “Don’t be silly. Now be a good boy and come with me.”
“Tegan—”
Diane shot her a single, dismissive glance. “Tegan’s dead meat. I’ve put a lot of effort into retrieving you, Abdi. I found Lat and waited for him to lead me here.” She glanced at Tegan again. “I didn’t expect this. But it’s all the better, for my purposes. Where’s Dr. Carmen?”
I managed another step backward, nearly enough to get me to the driver’s section. “Go away.”
“I want Dr. Carmen, Abdi. My reputation is in tatters.”
“Good!”
She came forward, picking her way daintily through the carnage. “Abdi, you’ve fallen in with bad company. I can see it’s going to take a long time to rectify your behavior. But it’s all right. I’ll help you.”
“Help me?” I repeated.
The worst thing was, part of me wanted to believe her. Part of me wanted to be punished for being so bad, to go back to a place where I didn’t have to make decisions or choose my own actions. Part of me wanted to please Diane. Then I wouldn’t be hurt. Then everything would be all right, for always.
But the rest of me remembered what it had been like to be under Diane’s control.
Tegan was unconscious; Zaneisha and Hanad were too far away. I had to do this myself. I had to face what she’d done, so that I could fight her.
“Help me?” I said, my voice gaining strength. “Diane, you raped me.”
I’d hoped that saying it might discomfort her. I wanted that naming what she’d done to me would make her hesitate long enough for me to make my move.
But Diane didn’t flinch. “I raped you?” she said, tilting her head. “We had sex. You seemed to enjoy it.”
Be a good boy, Abdi.
“You made me.”
Don’t make me hurt you.
“How? I didn’t hold you down. I didn’t drug you. You didn’t exactly fight me.”
And that was true. I hadn’t pushed her away. I hadn’t tried to fight. How could I, with an implant in my neck that she controlled? In the end, I’d been almost grateful that at least what she done that night hadn’t been painful. Her hands, her body; she’d made it feel good. She’d made me ashamed of myself for what she’d done to me.
“I was your prisoner. I wasn’t able to say no,” I said.
“You’re confused,” she said gently.
“You can’t lie to me, Diane. I know what you did. You raped me.” It was easier to say, that second time, and I gathered my strength. “I won’t go back. You’ll have to kill me.”
Diane’s mouth abandoned that sweet smile. “The crap I don’t have time for,” she muttered, and pointed her gun at Tegan. “You’re going to come with me, or I’ll do her like I did Lat.” Her eyes glinted. “I might kill her anyway. We’ll have so much more fun without your little girlfriend.”
She was expecting me to come at her—I could see it in the set of her shoulders, the way she held the gun at Tegan’s head, but looked a challenge at me. She didn’t just want me captured; she wanted me humiliated.
Broken. Controlled.
But I’d learned better than to throw myself headfirst at obstacles, and either batter them down or fall trying. That was Tegan’s way, and it was all right for her, because she was good at it. My way was to think around the problem. And while she’d argued with me, I’d been thinking.
I lunged, but backward not forward, into the space between the driver and passenger seats. Diane’s gun swung up to point at me as my left hand found the ignition button. My right hand slammed the accelerator, and then, as the ambulance surged forward, the brake.
Tegan was strapped in. I was lying in the footwell, bracing myself.
Diane was standing in the aisle, both hands on her gun. She fell, in an ungainly tangle of limbs—the first time I’d ever seen her do anything less than strong and graceful. I didn’t have time to relish the moment; I was up the second she went down, scrambling through the gap on my hands and knees, reaching desperately for the gun she was still gripping in one hand.
She smacked me across the face with it. Pain exploded through my skull, but she’d gotten me used to pain. Instead of falling back, I kneed her in the gut and hooked my fingers, clawing for her eyes. We scrabbled for dominance on the wet ambulance floor, hitting whatever soft targets we could reach. I was stronger than I’d ever been, and in the midst of my fury I felt a wild triumph that I’d finally managed to hurt her. For a moment, I dared to hope that I might win.
But she was trained and experienced, and I had only rage to back me up. Lat had been relatively gentle with me. Diane had no such restraint. She got an elbow into my solar plexus, knocking out my air, and then flipped me facedown, forcing my cheek against the floor.
I tried to throw her off, but she pressed her full weight against my back.
“Nice try,” she hissed, and ground her gun muzzle into the implant wound.
I didn’t have the breath to scream. A strained, mewling sound escaped, as the agony washed through me, every little wire reacting to the jabbing pressure. Even when she took the gun away, I was sick with the sensation, unable to move. Crouching, she dragged my head up with her dirty collar and pointed at Tegan with her gun.
“You lose,” she said, her voice rich with satisfaction. “Now watch this.”
One last spasm of fear and hate shoved me sideways, dragging at her gun arm. Diane cursed, wrapped her arm around my neck, and yanked back.
“I said watch!” she said, and kneed my side. “Oh yes, Abdi, I want you to see this. See what happens when you’re bad.”
I screwed my eyes shut. I had just enough defiance left to know that I wouldn’t comply.
She could kill Tegan, and I couldn’t stop her.
But she couldn’t make me watch.
“Let him go,” Hanad’s voice suggested, and Diane moved so fast I couldn’t even follow what happened. One second I was being choked on a filthy ambulance floor, and the next I was some form of upright, a gun muzzle digging into the side of my head. My eyes popped open involuntarily. Marie was clutching containers in her lap, almost invisible behind Ashenafi’s bulk. Zaneisha and Hanad were standing with their guns aimed at Diane.
“Put your weapons down, or I’ll kill him,” Diane said, adding, in the same calm voice, “Washington, you traitor, I’m going to testify at your posthumous court-martial with the greatest of pleasure.”
“Let him go, or I’ll kill you,” Hanad said, just as pleasantly. Zaneisha didn’t even bother to speak, her gun tracking Diane as she forced me out of the ambulance. I stumbled, nearly dropping on the jump down, but she pulled me up again and backed us toward the alley entrance.
It was raining, har
d, heavy drops that struck at my bare arms. My mind was clearing again, a sharp, bright feeling that I knew wouldn’t last. There were lots of ways for Diane to win this, but not many for us; the longer she managed to delay, the better the chances that we’d get caught. I couldn’t allow her to take me back, but I could make her think that I would to save the others.
A plan of action suggested itself and I took it up before my brain had time to gray out again. When she headed for the exit to the alley, Hanad and Zaneisha following, I walked with her, as easily as I could with my head throbbing and an arm around my neck.
Diane felt the change in my gait. “Good boy,” she murmured. “I knew you’d come back to me.”
Two steps from the corner. One step.
“I’d rather die,” I said, and dropped all my weight at once.
She was much more skilled than me, but I was heavier; the sudden shift dragged at her arm and removed my usefulness as a human shield. I heard a couple of shots stifled by silencers—quiet, deadly puffs of air—and then I was lying on the cobblestones, Diane yelling an alarm as she ran down the street.
There were strong hands on my arms, and I hit out for a moment, panicking at the touch, until I realized that Zaneisha was just trying to get me up. I stumbled back to the ambulance on feet that felt as heavy and dead as lumps of frozen meat.
Someone had dumped Lat’s body outside. I got one last look at him, the stump of his neck horrifying and almost pathetic, before Zaneisha boosted me wholesale into the ambulance.
Inside, everything seemed etched in an unnatural light, and small motions were magnified. The vibration of the engine as Ashenafi peeled out of the alley was like hammers pounding at my bones. The blood was so many beautiful shades of red—crimson for the most part, shading into a red so dark it was almost black for the thicker globs. On the walls, smears had already dried to a clear ruby, a wash of almost transparent color over the sterile white. My pale brown pants were drenched with wet brick red.
I’d escaped again.
But I’d never be free of what she’d done.
I lost some time, I think, because the next thing I knew Zaneisha was kneeling beside me, heedless of the blood seeping into her pants, and draping a blanket around my shoulders. Marie was straddling Tegan’s back and working on her wound with Hanad’s assistance, swearing viciously.
“Is Tegan all right?” I said through my chattering teeth.
“She’ll be fine,” Zaneisha said.
“I hate her,” I said. “Diane, not Tegan. I love Tegan, maybe. But Diane I hate.” I could hear my voice rise up the scale as if I were listening to someone else practicing vocalizations. “Diane I hate,” I sang, putting my voice into it properly and trying the phrase again, an octave lower.
“Let’s get up,” Zaneisha suggested, and lifted me onto the other bed. “Doctor, I need you.”
Marie’s face hovered over my own, then cool fingers pressed against my throat and withdrew, before I could slap her away. “Shock,” she said, her voice detached. “Give him a sedative; keep him warm.”
She was gone again, and Zaneisha’s face replaced hers, warm with concern. She flung a reflective blanket over my shoulders, and I huddled into it. I was shivering, my voice thin and tremulous as I whisper-sang my hate for Diane, over and over. “I’m going to give you a shot so that you can sleep,” Zaneisha said, and paused. “Abdi? Is that okay?”
I think she was waiting for me to protest, but I was tired of resistance. I nodded. When the hypospray hit my arm and I slid toward sleep, I found myself hoping I wouldn’t have to wake up.
I was fishing for Lat’s head in a pool of pink water.
“Hurry up,” Diane said. Her eyes were laser sights, too bright to look at.
“I’m trying,” I said, and dipped my hands into the pool again. I knew the head was in there; I just had to reach deeper. But the water was to my elbows, then my biceps, and I still couldn’t find it.
“It’s there,” I said.
“It’s there,” Diane repeated, mocking, and my mother wore a beautiful dress and gave me new clothes for my birthday.
“We’re going to a party,” she said. “All you have to do is listen.”
“Listen and remember,” I said. This wasn’t right. I was too tall for these clothes, too tall for this day.
“I’m so proud of you,” Hooyo said, and hugged me, heedless of her carefully arranged braids. I could smell expensive perfume on her warm skin. “My brave Abdullah. My smart, careful boy. Seven years old, and already a man.”
“I’m seventeen,” I said. “I’m Abdi, Hooyo.” I was wearing my old clothes anyway, awkward and uncomfortable, the shoes too tight on my feet. But everyone thought I was seven. Maybe I was. They were all tall, much taller than me. I saw the man my mother had asked me to watch for and took my computer near him to play my game.
Really, I was listening. His name was Abdullah Haid, and he was very important, and I had to tell Hooyo everything he said. If I remembered it all, I would get a sweet and a new game for my computer.
“Hello, boy,” he said, and he was Diane. “Don’t be bad. You’ll have to be punished.”
I was running, running, with something behind me that I couldn’t see. My brother, Halim, ran with me. “You should know how to shoot,” he said, stronger and older from his time at college. “Every man should know how to shoot.”
The thing behind me was a shark. I was in the pink water. Halim handed me his gun. “Two shots, center mass,” he said. “Then you’ll know it’s dead.”
There were no earbuds to deaden the sound. It should be quiet underwater, but I could hear every sound. The shark opened her mouth, wide and wider. I took aim.
Lat’s head was in her jaws, his eyes opening. “I have to save her,” he said.
“I’m dreaming,” I said, and tried to put the gun down.
“Have you found that head, yet?” Diane said, and I plunged my hands into the pink water, trying so hard to please her.
When I woke, I opened my eyes to the universe.
Hovering above me was a black sky, with tiny pinpricks to indicate stars. Our own sun dominated the middle of the scene, a roiling ball of liquid orange power, and Mercury zipped around it, a little gray dot almost too small and fast to see. Then came Venus, yellow with its sulfuric atmosphere, and Earth, its blues and greens overlaid with wisps of white cloud as it sparkled like a jewel, single moon curling around it as it circled the sun. Mars was a smaller dark red dot, with two tiny black moons. I passed backward through a ring of asteroids and debris so fast it made me start, and then came the gas giants—vast Jupiter, with its cloud of moons, then Saturn with its tilted rotation and its gorgeous rings. After that came the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, slowly inscribing their long years around the sun in cold solitude.
The sun seemed to shrink into the middle of the scene. I was falling faster and faster, through the Kuiper Belt of ice asteroids and dwarf planets, through the scattered disk of comets, and then speeding through blackness until the Oort cloud exploded around me, icy planets and comets whizzing in their eccentric orbits around the tiny pinprick of light that was the focus of all this motion, the source of all life on Earth.
My body thrumming with mingled terror and joy, I jerked away from the infinite night.
Birdsong sounded, and rosy golden light illuminated white walls.
I was lying, naked and covered in sweat, in a perfectly ordinary bed in a perfectly ordinary room, and I was almost disappointed when I realized what had happened. The spacescape had been projected on the walls and ceiling as a treat for a waking sleeper. It was an alarm clock, nothing more. It was only my disorientation from the nightmares that had made it seem so real.
I made a mental note to find out what Zaneisha had given me in the ambulance and to stay away from it from now on. My dreams were already bad enough—I didn’t need that particular sedative-induced hallucinogenic edge.
I hadn’t thought about my seventh birthday for a while. M
y first step into politics.
I lay there, trying to remember my mother’s exact expression, the warm glint in her eyes. Her face was slipping away from me, and that wasn’t right—the smooth portrait she’d presented to Diane wasn’t really her. My father was easier to remember—dark, clipped hair going gray, deep wrinkles around his eyes from decades of squinting through sunlight on water. I could remember Sahra easily, the energetic brat, and Ifrah’s forthright eyes, and Halim, tall and broad.
He’d taken me to the shooting range the French soldiers had left behind for a special treat, making up for missing my fifteenth birthday. But Hooyo had been furious when she’d found out after the fact.
“My sons are not going to use tools of violence!” she’d shouted. It was one of the few times I’d ever seen her lose her temper.
“It’s a useful skill, Hooyo,” Halim argued back. “Not everywhere is as safe as Djibouti.”
“Oh, he goes off to university and he comes home and thinks he can teach his mother right and wrong!”
“You have a driver who carries a gun,” Halim said, and I made a face at him. Couldn’t he see that the best thing was to let her shout out the anger, and then present his own arguments, quietly and rationally?
“But I don’t carry one myself,” Hooyo told him. “I don’t want you carrying one, either. The Prophet prohibits aggression.”
“ ‘Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you,’ ” Halim quoted.
“ ‘But be not aggressive,’ ” Hooyo said pointedly. “ ‘Surely Allah loves not the aggressors.’ Carrying a weapon is an act of aggression.”
Halim’s eyes fell on me. “What about the atheists?” he said, pointing. “Abdi isn’t a believer. He can carry a gun.”
Thank you, Halim, I thought. What an unsubtle attempt to shift the focus onto my own filial transgressions.