Spark

by Rachael Craw

  Protecting? Suppressing?

  A thought balloons in the weirdness, big and red. “Kitty.” I pull numbly at my bonds, making the chair creak. “Is she here? Where is she?”

  “Kitty’s in hospital. You were right.”

  My bubble-wrapped panic strains for release. I want to fight and scream but all I can do is groan and close my eyes, making the dizziness worse. “She’s hurt? Someone hurt her?”

  “She came and found me after you fainted.” Miriam rubs her face. “She followed Jamie and me when he carried you upstairs. I convinced them to go back to the party, said you would be embarrassed, that it would be better if they went. She wouldn’t leave unless I promised to text her as soon as you came around. Apparently, she couldn’t find her phone and went to look for it in the car. She was attacked. The police think someone was after the necklace.”

  I sway in my seat.

  “A service van pulled in. The driver saw the attacker drop Kitty, and vault the wall into the grounds. The necklace was in pieces beside her.”

  “How bad – how bad is she hurt?”

  “Ligament damage to the neck. Dislocated elbow. Bruising to the face.”

  Dismay thickens my throat. “If you’d let me–”

  “What?” She raises her eyebrows. “You could barely walk straight. Your hands were so weak you couldn’t get the key in the lock.”

  Tears prick my eyes. “You don’t understand.”

  “I wish I didn’t.” She draws a long breath. “I really wish we were all just losing our minds.”

  “Tell me they got the guy.”

  “I highly doubt it. I got you out of there as soon as the cry went up.”

  I twist weakly in my seat. “Untie me–”

  “You’d only fall over and hurt yourself. Listen, I’m going to tell you some things now that aren’t going to make sense. You won’t want to believe me, but if you listen to your body, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

  The words are too strange. “I don’t–”

  She touches the back of her neck and grimaces. “I will tell you as much as I can before they come. I have some time, I think.”

  “What?” I choke. “Who’s coming?”

  She ignores me and ploughs on, “You’re worried about Kitty because she’s in danger and you feel you need to protect her. Your body’s been changing, preparing to,” she pauses, touches the back of her neck again, and lowers her voice, “Spark.” She gives the word as little weight as possible as though stress or inflection might set it off like a landmine. “Priming,” volume dips for this word, too, before she continues in her normal voice, “Priming is the technical term. That’s what all the pins and needles have been about. The growth spurt, breaking things, I’m guessing the hole in the laundry wall and your reaction to Kitty at the cafe.”

  It’s like watching a badly dubbed movie with the wrong audio track laid over the picture. I stare at her, confounded, but I can’t deny the fear that floods me, the crash and roar of it in my head.

  “Bursts of adrenaline, heart palpitations.”

  “I never said I had palpitations.” Like it matters, like it proves something.

  “Priming prepares your body to respond to a Spark.”

  Aggravated by the soft landing of her first and last words, I screw my lips up. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Kitty is the Spark for the synthetic gene in your DNA. You’ve transitioned.” Her brow furrows. “It’s what you were made for – you’re a Shield, Evangeline. Shields are defenders, protectors. Turns out you were made to protect Kitty.” Shield gets the soft touch with the other landmine words, but I lock on the only thing that makes sense: protect. One true word in the jumble of crazy and I cling to it like it’s solid rock. It names the tension in me. But the rest of it: synthetic gene, DNA? “You’re making fun of me, all this whispering bullshit.”

  “Drugging you and tying you to a chair is a little extreme for a joke.”

  “Then, what? You’re trying to teach me some insane lesson about post-traumatic stress? That I’m deluded? That what I’m feeling isn’t – that Kitty’s not my–”

  “What you’re feeling is real and Kitty is your responsibility. You’re bound.”

  Bound.

  I pant, floundering again for a secure hold, but she just sits there, watching, waiting for me to concede. Disdain makes my voice low and rough. “So? I’m a lunatic with a saviour complex?”

  “Same as me.”

  A vivid scene flashes to the foreground of my mind, a waking vision, like I’ve hit replay: Miriam in the bathroom, the faucets roaring over the tub, the gash on her thigh. I shake my heavy head and I’m back in the kitchen, disorientated.

  “I saw that,” Miriam gasps.

  “Saw?” The word doesn’t fit. “Saw what?”

  “Your memory of me in the bathroom.” Her eyelids flutter. “Like – like a movie clip. Even fully matured – I mean, not all of us can do that.”

  All of us?

  I feel myself recoiling and tighten my grip on the arms of the chair, needing the sting in my cut thumb. “You think you saw what I was just thinking?”

  “Kinetic Memory Transference. You recalled a memory and projected it.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “Without even touching. Normally, KMT requires touch.”

  “Miriam.” I shake my head. “You’re not – that doesn’t make any sense. You have to untie me–” She cuts me off, putting her hand on my shoulder and closing her eyes. Instantly, I see myself from Miriam’s point of view, sitting across from Kitty at the cafe, my hand darting to catch the bottom of her coffee mug. I flinch and the vision ends.

  She sits back. “You saw that.”

  “Hallucinations.”

  “You’ve had them before? But I’ve never Transferred anything to you.” Her mouth opens and closes. “You can Harvest?”

  “What?”

  “KMT is what you project for someone to see, but KMH is when you access someone’s memory, whether they like it or not, and experience it as they experienced it. Like being in their movie clip as them. It should be impossible for you.”

  I want to deny all of it, but the evidence piles up against me: when she hugged me in the bathroom the night she got home; when she pushed past me in the darkroom to lock the utility cupboard; when Jamie lifted me in his arms on the patio before I cut my hand and passed out. Each time a vivid hallucination reliving a memory that wasn’t my own. My eyes sting with tears. “This is crazy. I don’t understand.”

  She leans towards me. “You’re not listening to your body.”

  My fear for Kitty is a physical ache. “We’re wasting time. I don’t know what any of this means and right now I don’t care. I just have to see her. Untie me.”

  She looks at her hands, clasping them together as though she’s about to chair a meeting. “I can’t do that. You’re in no state–”

  “Because you knocked me out and pumped me with drugs!” It’s as close as I can get to a proper shout.

  “You can scan for a threat.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s what it’s all about, kid, what you have to protect her from. The Stray.” Again the drop in volume. “Not a vague threat or a clumsy thief. Like you were made to keep Kitty safe, the Stray was made to kill her.”

  My head spins and I don’t know what infuriates me more, the ridiculous whispered terminology or Miriam’s determination to keep up her rambling. “You think,” I finally say, “that someone actually wants to kill her?”

  “That is what every cell in your body is telling you. But for now she’s safe. He won’t try again straight off. He’ll need to recover from exposing himself. Strays are all about dark corners, lonely places and self-preservation. They would never attempt anything in a crowd.”

  “It was the Governor’s Ball.” I grasp at something to argue against. “Hundreds of people.”

  “She was well past the service area. It would only
have taken a moment to subdue her and drag her off.”

  The idea makes me shake. Other bubble-wrapped feelings strain inside me, darker than anger. I want to run, screaming or throw up on my feet.

  “She’s in hospital,” Miriam says. “There are people everywhere and more importantly her family is with her. But you can scan for a threat, right now, for the sake of peace of mind. We’re not going to make any progress until you can relax.”

  “Relax?” I choke. “Is that a joke?”

  “Close your eyes. Bring Kitty into focus.”

  At first, I scowl, but the need to do something makes me compliant. I close my eyes. Kitty arrives in vivid detail. I stop breathing.

  “Can you feel anything?”

  I can’t express what I feel. My body vibrates as the panic comes loose of its bubble wrap and I groan.

  “Let the fear pass. See if the shadow rises.”

  I grip the chair at the painful peak of emotion, then gradually the tide ebbs. The shadow doesn’t come. I slump back and open my eyes. The drug fog has lifted. Though I can finally see clearly, it’s as if I’ve been sucked through a wormhole and everything is upside down. “I don’t understand. This isn’t real. I’m going to wake up and this will–”

  “Still be happening to you.”

  I close my eyes. “Please, untie me. I’m not going to do anything stupid. My cut hurts.”

  She frowns, lips parting to argue.

  “Please, Miriam. I’ll listen.”

  She hesitates then rises from her seat to unknot the dishcloths. “I’m sorry I hit you.” Her hard mask falters. She looks devastated, as if her worst fears have been realised. “I had to get you home. I was afraid you’d hurt yourself trying to help her. You’re not ready. You’re too weak and there’s so much to explain, so much you need to understand first.”

  One arm comes free and the rush of circulation makes me wince. I flex my fingers, swivel my hand. She releases the knot on the other and I rub at the red marks. Blood has begun to seep through the bandage. She bends to untie my ankles and I wonder distantly what she’s done with my high heels. Miriam straightens up and hovers like she might throw herself on me if I make a false move.

  “Tell me just one thing that makes sense.”

  Miriam sits and frowns at the table. Her face assumes that look people get when they’re about to break terrible news. “I think I might be able to show you. If I can show you, it will make the explanation a lot easier to swallow.”

  “Show me what?”

  “KMT. To show you how I got hurt and what it is we do. But it would be more powerful if you could Harvest. You’d feel what I felt and in this case the feeling is more important than anything else.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  She reaches her hand out to me, palm up. “Concentrate. I’ll do my best to remember, but you’ll have to take hold of it and really look, okay?”

  Goosebumps flash across the back of my neck and the hair on my arms prickles. “I’ll see it?”

  She nods, swallows, spreads her hands and closes her eyes.

  I hold my breath and brace, but when I touch her I’m not ready for the immediate sensory plunge. “Oh. Oh God.”

  KMH

  It’s a night scene. A street scene. A park fenced by a low stone wall and pointed iron railings. Opposite, there are restaurants spliced with narrow alleys, black mouths open in the dark.

  I sit in a parked car. It smells of air freshener and Armor All. The dash is pristine and raindrops bead on smudge-free windows. This isn’t Miriam’s old VW. When my head moves, I catch my aunt’s reflection in the rearview, eyes black. My hands are her hands, gloved and gripping the steering wheel, waiting.

  One restaurant draws my eye; its lacquered door, hooded by a blood-red canopy, reflected in the wet road, vivid and almost vibrating in its significance for me. The longer I look, the stronger the pull grows. From somewhere behind my bellybutton, an invisible bungee stretches like a tether to someone in that restaurant. Stress discharges adrenaline through my body.

  The door opens and four men step out. Middle-aged men in suits. Two of them have bellies spilling over their belts as they pull on coats against the weather. One is thin and serious, hugging his jacket closed. The fourth is where the tether finds its connection. Squat, pug-faced and stumbling over his shoes. He turns to the thin man, mouth blistering with profanities. Though the window is up, I have no difficulty making out their voices.

  Pug-face is out of control.

  “You’re such a momma’s boy, Kelsy. Grow some balls,” he says, spraying spittle.

  The thin man draws his lips back. “You’ve had too much to drink, Phil.”

  Phil swears again. “Leave me alone, you weak son of a bitch.”

  The other two step between them. “That’s enough.” One puts his hand on Phil’s shoulder and the tension in me – in Miriam – stretches like a bowstring. “I’ll get you a cab and you can go home and sleep.”

  Phil shrugs him off and teeters towards the curb. The men try to catch him but Phil rights himself and ducks out of their reach, swaying as he stands to face them.

  “Go to hell, Michael,” he says. “You always side with that bastard.”

  The picture flickers, a lapse in time. I find myself outside the car now; warm, moist air touches my face. I run behind the fence line of the park and bound over the iron spikes, a lazy scissor leap, landing noiselessly on the pavement. The incredible sense of confidence in what my body can do holds me only for a moment, then I blur across the street into the shadows.

  Phil staggers a full block away and the static in my head grows. Fear for Phil evaporates. Certainty, like a compass alert, crackles in my head. He nears a yawning alley. I know the threat lurks there. I gain quickly and slip past him as he stumbles out of the streetlight into the dark. It’s wet, black and dank with dumpsters and yesterday’s food. Bent, heaving, Phil empties his stomach in an obscene splatter at the foot of the wall. I scan the lane and my eyes adjust in seconds; the details are as distinct as the danger pulsating from the shadows.

  It feels shocking to step away from Phil even as he slumps in the mouth of the alley, oblivious as I ghost through the dark. The tether stretches behind me while all my senses focus forwards. Instinct prompts me to move into the middle of the path and make no pretence of my approach. After all, I could be a waitress on her way to a late shift. I pull my phone from my back pocket and let the screen light up, pretending to text.

  Oily water oozes in rivulets across the lane and I let my feet fall harder, splashing and scraping my shoes on the ground. I kick a soggy box so that it slaps against a rusted dumpster.

  The threat hides behind it. I can feel him. A chemical odour fills my nose. As I pass the edge, I stop, close my phone and turn.

  He stands ramrod straight. Dressed like me in black pants and jacket. He’s handsome. He’s young. Maybe nineteen or twenty. Blond, pale, taller than me. His pupils are so dilated, his eyes are black. Regret squeezes my chest for an instant, but the tug towards Phil extinguishes the feeling and anger burns in its place.

  “Don’t try to run,” I say, with Miriam’s voice.

  The night explodes in violence.

  He swings at me, but I duck the blow like it’s happening in slow motion. Before he throws himself forwards, I see it coming and stand up under him, flipping his legs towards the narrow stretch of night sky. I watch him spiral through the air, letting him land on his feet, amazed by my – Miriam’s – sense of control.

  He runs for it but I know I can take him. As I fly up behind the attacker, his intent flashes in my mind’s eye and I know he’ll reach for a battered metal canteen, jagged at the edge where it lies ripped open. He scoops it up and flings it at me and I arch to the side. It only scrapes my thigh; a lick of fire through the muscle. The flood of adrenaline propels me and I reach for him like it’s an embrace. His body is hard and strong as I pull him out of his stride, jerking his neck with the sudden stop.

&nb
sp; Time skips again.

  I shake my head as though I can shake the horror off, then notice the tether is gone. I can’t feel my feet moving across the ground, or my hands brushing against my legs. I bend over Phil, who squints up at me against the streetlight. Vomit pools on his wilted tie. A leer edges his lips. “Hello, beautiful.”

  “I’ll call you a cab, Phil.”

  Then the brightness of Miriam’s kitchen dazzles me. She sits back, looking pale, exhausted. Something like awe touches her expression as she stares at me. “You got all that?”

  I hug my stinging hand. “That’s what you were doing in New York?”

  She nods.

  I close my eyes and cry.

  DNA

  “I don’t even know where to start with all this.” Miriam rubs her face, fingers trembling. “I’m not sure how much time we have before they come – or if they’ll come.”

  There’s a hitch in my throat as I ask, “Who?”

  “Affinity.”

  Affinity sounds like a cosmetic brand or dating website, or maybe a pretentious marketing company. Though I might be thinking of Eternity or Infinity. But here, now, in this context with Miriam giving it the whisper treatment, I’ve never heard anything more creepy. My ears pop and my vision gets swimmy. A weird sense of dislocation makes me feel like I’m not all in my body and some essential part of me has come loose.

  “The Affinity Project is the organisation responsible for what we are and what we do. They created Optimal, the synthetic gene in our DNA that gives us our abilities and determines our path.”

  There’s irony in that last word, and trauma in the others, but I need to get things straight. “These people are coming for me?”

  “Not at first. But when they sense you’ve Sparked, yes. For now, they’ll come if they’ve registered my breach in protocol.” She touches the back of her neck. “My tracker is overdue for an upgrade, it’s almost completely dissolved. They didn’t respond after the alley so there’s a chance they might not register the breach.”

  Tiny white stars pop in my peripheral vision and I’m picturing a futuristic laboratory, bodies on slabs, scientists in white masks with lethal hypodermic needles. An alarm going off and heads turning to flashing red computer screens. A breach! Men in black with laser guns leaping into hover cars. Behind Miriam’s head the cupboard doors begin to pulsate.