by Rachael Craw
“The tracker relays my signal to their database. It tells them where I am, if I’ve bonded with a Spark, deactivated a Stray, or if I’m injured and in need of medical attention. It also picks up on illegal terminology. Red flags. You hit enough demerits you’ll get a call from your Watcher. Hence the whispering, not that volume probably makes much difference. If my tracker were at full strength, I could scramble the speech receptor with a magnet.” She makes an impatient noise in her throat and rubs her face again. “Screw it. There’s too much to explain. If they call, I’ll say I was deliberately using illegal terms to get their attention.”
I barely notice Miriam’s sudden resolve. My head feels cavernous, vaulted ceilings of echoing space. You’d think with all that ballooning room the important questions could form a civilised line, biggest to smallest, from Why God, why? to Do we get uniforms? Instead, I blurt, “It’s in your neck?”
“Base of my skull. When it’s at full strength it feels like a small pea-sized lump beneath the skin.”
I feel squeamish and she says something about nano-tech and dissolving amino-acids and the stars turn supernova around me.
“Put your head between your knees.” She catches me by the shoulders. I was slumping sideways? Next I’m bent double, drooling on my charcoal silk, eyes watering at grooves in the floorboards and the scarlet enamel on my naked toes. Blood rushes in my ears. “I’m sorry.”
She rubs gentle maternal circles on my back. “I know. It’s a lot to take in.”
The clatter of the cat door, paws padding the floor, then the nudge of a soft furry skull. Buffy purrs in my ear, rubbing her whiskers against me. I want to bury my face in her fur and sob. Pressure swells my lips and face. I mumble, “Who are they, though? What do they want?”
“They were a paramilitary operation that specialised in biotechnology, genetic engineering, private security. Things got messy and then there was a change in management. Now they want to right their experimental wrongs.”
I leap at the hint of blame. “So, it’s their fault I’m like this and Kitty’s in danger? Affinity made the Stray?”
“They weren’t always the Stray. They were Strikers. Optimal amplifies the natural affinity of those with Active Frequency Sensitivity for defence or attack. The Stray are a result of a mutation in those with the attack affinity.”
I groan, no better for asking. Probably worse. Overwhelmed, my mind goes blank again. I flap my hand, bonelessly weak. “I’m bleeding.” The stain has seeped right through the bandage across my palm.
“Damn. Hold on.” She rises from the table and I tilt my head a little, catching a blur of staggering speed as she disappears up the hall, scaring Buffy who darts away to hide in the living room. Goosebumps prickle my arms and legs. A cupboard hinge squeaks through the ceiling, heavy things shift and shush over the wood floor, a pause then the whisper of movement in the hall. She’s back in the kitchen with a brown leather case and I’ve had no time to gather a coherent thought. “Keep your head down.”
“You’re so fast,” I whisper.
“Yes.” She moves above me, unzipping the case on the table. The rustle of plastic packaging, the clink of glass and metal. “We have speed, heightened senses, reflexes, strength, precognition, increased pain threshold; there’s a bunch of stuff. Oh, and your fingerprints will fade, helps make us untraceable.”
“Miriam,” I whimper, unable to take it all in. “I don’t understand. How can this be happening to me?”
The rummaging stops. “Fate? Natural selection? No good reason, kid. You inherited the Optimal gene from your grandmother, Kitty inherited the trigger gene from someone in her family, the two of you came together and bam.”
I jerk up, nearly cross-eyed with the rush. “Nan was like this? Not Mom, too?”
“Careful,” she steadies me. “No, Nan wasn’t genetically engineered, just a carrier like your mom.”
“Mom was normal?”
“Completely.”
The relief is intense but momentary. “What on earth was Nan into?”
“Nothing. She took pregnancy supplements. She had no clue they were laced with Optimal.” She releases my shoulders, watching to see if I’ll keel over. “That was the second generation trial.”
“They put it in pregnancy vitamins?” Stunned, I prop myself against the table, leaning heavily on my elbow like a drunk. “This is too huge.”
“Let me look at your wound.” Gently, she untucks the sopping bandage and begins to unloop it while I stare blankly into middle distance.
My brain is so murky, my thoughts break the surface half-seen. Trance-like, I begin, “How can you be sure I’m one of these protectors? A Shield? I can’t move like you or fight or anything. How can you be sure it wasn’t just a guy after Kitty’s necklace?”
She pauses mid-loop. “If he were a civ – sorry, a civilian – you wouldn’t have reacted the way you did. As to your abilities, they’ll come quickly and you’ll be trained. But it’s the tether that’s your proof, that tug behind your bellybutton. You had your hand over your stomach when you came round at the governor’s.”
I knew what she meant. It was what frightened me the most, in Miriam’s alley memory, that primal tug, more than the impossible feats of speed and strength. “I don’t feel it now.”
“You will, as soon as you get near her again. It’s the true sign of your bond.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone want to hurt her? What did Phil do to that guy in the alley?”
“Phil didn’t do anything and neither did Kitty.” The bandage comes loose, Miriam sets it aside and we stare at the deep cut in the base of my thumb. She angles my wrist to examine it in the light. The cut glistens like a faceted ruby, glinting and hypnotic. “It’s called the Fixation Effect.” It’s what you experience when you think of Kitty, when you see her, what you feel, that sense of being drawn to her. For a Shield, it’s what compels us to protect our Spark. But for the Stray, you take everything you feel about Kitty and twist it so she no longer looks like the victim who needs your help but the virus destroying your sanity and threatening your life.”
“That’s impossible.”
She lowers my hand to the table and turns to her case. “Things are blurred for you because you already have a relationship with your Spark. You already care about her. Phil,” she rocks her head back to indicate the memory I’ve seen, “is a total bastard, who beats his wife and cheats at cards. You saw him. He’s not much different sober. Beyond a basic human decency, I have no reason to care about what happens to him, but you saw how I was, felt what I felt. I had to protect him.”
“You didn’t even know him?”
She arranges supplies on the table, scissors and gauze and tape. “I shook his hand at the office where I dropped off proofs after the shoot. That was it.”
I feel like I’m being pulled backwards, dragged by an undertow into rough waters. “Your whole Phil situation happened in the space of a week? A week!” My mouth snaps open and closed with the impossibility of it all. Me, facing off with some genetically engineered psychopath? I have never been in a fight in my life. If someone hit me, I’d probably burst into tears. “I can’t learn karate or whatever that was in week! How on earth will I protect her?”
“Your guy’s an amateur. If he were experienced, Kitty’d be dead. I’d say he’s only been active a few months, at most. I’ve seen this before. I’ve been here before. Trust me.”
The casual use of “dead” and “Kitty” in the same sentence stirs something darkly territorial inside me. I remember what it felt like in Miriam’s alley memory, what I felt at the governor’s when I knew Kitty was in trouble and I couldn’t get to her. Perhaps I could fight.
“You’ll learn what you need to know. It’s different for all of us, but the ability is in your DNA. The fact that you can Transfer and Harvest is a sign that you’ll be a fast learner. They’re usually the last of our gifts to develop.” She nods at my hand. “This is going to need stitching.”
“Hospital?” The thought of having to leave the house and function around normal people renews my panic.
Miriam lifts latex gloves from her case and a packet of blue sutures. “I’ll do it.”
“You will?”
But she’s already pulling the gloves on, snapping them over her wrists. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a lot – though that might not be so comforting. At least you’ll heal quickly.”
“What? Why?”
“Rapid regeneration is one of the perks of the synthetic gene. Here, lift my hem.”
I frown.
“My thigh. There’s barely a mark.”
Hesitant, I take the hem and slide the black silk up to her hip, expecting a sturdy bandage to unwind. There is no bandage. Just clear skin with nothing more than a faint pink line where the gash used to be. I drop the hem and slump back, my breath coming quick and shallow.
Miriam nods. “I know, right?” She splashes a cotton swab with antiseptic and sits to dab carefully at the mess on my thumb. “You won’t heal that fast. Your frequency sensitivity will need to mature, but it’ll come.”
“What sensitivity?”
“When Optimal bonds with our DNA, when it’s activated, it creates Electro-Telepathic Radiation. We generate a signal and develop a sensitivity to the ETR of others. It’s called AFS, Active Frequency Sensitivity. It’s what enables us to recognise our Spark and sense the threat of the Stray. It also creates telepathic receptors that trigger precognition. KMT and KMH were simply side effects, not intentional design elements, but they provide a pretty good indication of the strength of our signal and sensitivity.” She wads the blood-soaked cotton swab into a ball and tosses it into the sink.
“Telepathy?” I choke. An uncontrollable urge to laugh rises inside me and quickly drops away with a memory. “I could see what he was going to do, the blond guy in the alley. Is that telepathy?”
“Precognition.” Miriam opens another packet with her teeth and removes a syringe. Inserting the needle through the rubber head of the vial, she draws the plunger and gives me an assessing look, like she’s wondering how much more I can take. “Kind of hard to explain. Shields, with mature AFS, can read an opponent’s intent as they project it. But in the alley memory you experienced my precognition. I doubt you’d be able to do that yet yourself.” She holds the syringe to the light, taps the barrel, compresses the plunger and discharges a teardrop of anaesthetic, speaking almost to herself. “But then you shouldn’t be able to Transfer or Harvest at all – you don’t exactly fit the mould. You didn’t throw up when you transitioned and it wasn’t even like you had a seizure. You simply fainted.”
It had felt like an apocalyptic storm to me. “Throw up?”
“It’s a fairly common reaction to all the upheaval.”
I can imagine.
“Relax.”
I can’t.
She takes my hand and inserts the needle beneath the wound. The icy sting makes me wince, but Miriam is careful as she discharges the anaesthetic and withdraws the shaft, pressing a cotton ball in its place. “Hold that.”
Numbness spreads like cold water through my palm. “What about making things explode?”
Frowning, she rips another packet open to reveal a tiny curved needle, like a cat claw. She lifts it with a pair of tweezers, the blue suture uncurling. “What do you mean?”
“Wineglasses. Light bulbs.”
“You can do that?”
“Not on purpose. Just seems to happen when I’m worked up.”
She taps the end of my thumb. “How does it feel?”
I tremble with cowardice or horror. Probably both but I can’t feel anything. I nod and grit my teeth as she bends over the wound and inserts the needle in a deft dig.
“I’ve never heard of it.” She catches the tip and draws it through, glancing up as she tugs my senseless flesh. “Maybe it’s a third-generation anomaly. I don’t know a lot about third-generation distinctions.” She knots the thread and snips at the base.
“Third generation? You said second generation before.” I feel suddenly present, no longer hovering outside myself, and the questions I haven’t been able to form in my dazed state all press forwards. “What’s the point of all this? Affinity? What on earth were they hoping to achieve?”
Bending back over the wound, she stabs the skin, making me wince though I feel nothing, explaining as she works. “Imagine the perfect soldier. One who doesn’t fear death, or pain, who never quits, never gets sick. A soldier stronger than ten men, fast as a horse and able to sense the approach of danger. Imagine a soldier untroubled by heat or cold, able to heal in a day from a bullet wound and who, in hand-to-hand combat, could anticipate the enemy’s every move and counter it.”
“We’re supposed to be soldiers?” I’m so breathless it comes out like a whisper.
“I guess that was the goal back then, in the early seventies. A human weapon, or whatever.”
“For what, an army?” Instead of a lab, I visualise a high-tech bunker with zombie-eyed rows of men and women dressed in black body armour, waiting to be deployed.
“For hire. Corporate, private, political or military application. Short- and long-term assignments. Defence, acquisition and protection were the services on offer.”
“Hired assassins?”
“Who can say where they would have drawn the line? Now it’s all about damage control.”
“Because of the Strays? Explain that again. They were a mutation?”
The crease in her brow sharpens as she cuts the thread. Her cell phone starts up on the counter and she swears. “It’s them.”
I clamp my good hand to my mouth as though afraid I might scream.
She peels her gloves off, crosses to the counter and answers the call. “Carolyn?” She uses her business voice, assertive but polite, though she looks pale and presses her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Yes, I know, the alert didn’t seem to go through. I’ve been clocking up demerits in the hope you’d call … Last night. New York … It was clean. Ready for disposal.”
Disposal? I shudder at the implications, picturing the blond boy and his wild black eyes, the feel of his breaking bones still fresh in my mind.
Carolyn talks. Miriam listens. Her eyes flick to me. “Of course. I’ll be expecting you.” There are no parting words. She turns her phone off. “You have to go upstairs.”
“What? Why? Shouldn’t I meet her?” The idea is terrifying but if it will help me save Kitty–
“No.” She makes a choking sound. “She may not be a Warden, but still, I don’t want her anywhere near you.”
“Why?” My voice flies high. “What’s a Warden?”
Coming to the table, she starts throwing medical supplies back into the leather case, jams the lid closed and holds it out to me. “She’ll be here any minute.”
Bewildered, I take it with my good arm. “You’re scaring me.”
“Go upstairs. Hide this. Get into bed and pretend to sleep.” She turns me around and unzips my dress.
I have to pin my elbows to my sides to keep it from falling to my feet. “Miriam! What the hell?”
“You wouldn’t be able to get it off one-handed. Now go and do as you’re told. Put your pyjamas on, just in case. Actually–” She opens the lid of the medical kit, pulls out a bandage and tucks it under my chin. “Bind your hand once you’re in bed. Lie facing away from the door. Breathe long and slow. Do not come out for any reason.”
“I don’t understand!” I feel myself skidding towards hysteria.
She flips the lid of the case again and digs out a preloaded syringe. She removes the sheath from the needle and jams the point in my shoulder.
I grunt, trying to jerk away but she grabs my elbow.
“I’m sorry. This will calm you down and dampen your signal. Carolyn is coming to debrief me. When she gets here, she’ll take a reading of my signal, but I have no idea if she will be able to detect yours. Pray she can’t, for Ki
tty’s sake.”
FRETIZINE
Fretizine. Without it my heart would gallop right out my chest and I would be found out. Not that I’m exactly sure how my pulse impacts the mysterious signal I apparently now emit.
As instructed, I lie on my side, away from the door, taking slow fake-sleep breaths. The only thing I grasp in the panicked minutes before Carolyn knocks on the door is the certainty that being found out would somehow be dangerous for Kitty. It’s all the threat I need to comply. Paralysed by fear and Fretizine, I strain to hear anything below.
I left the door ajar a couple of inches but all I catch after the initial knock and greeting in the hall is the scrape of chairs in the kitchen. It’s nearly one in the morning. Clearly, the Affinity Project isn’t concerned with business hours, or maybe that’s part of their MO, conducting affairs under cover of darkness. I wonder if Miriam has any intention of reporting what’s gone down at the Governor’s Ball. Perhaps they already know. They must monitor police bandwidths for signs of their clients. I shiver. It’s too easy to let my mind wander into dark places. Somewhere, out in the night, a lunatic twists inside with regret over a missed opportunity. He’d had Kitty right in his hands, had her by the neck. How easy would it have been for someone with the kind of strength and speed Miriam had described to snap her spinal cord? Rage makes me cold and I forget my measured breathing. Even through the drug fog I can feel my heart stamp.
Stop it.
I can’t jeopardise things by losing control. Where are my heightened senses? My Superman hearing? I strain to hear. Buffy pads through the door, jumps on the bed, kneads the quilt and purrs loudly. “Go away!” I hiss, dislodging her. She drops to the floor and stalks out, her tail flicking in agitation.
I try again to hear, my ears pop, roar then clear. The tap drips in the bathroom, wind keens beyond the window, boughs creak, and beyond that is the faint song of the river. I force myself to focus on the kitchen below, amazed to note a rising inflection, a foreign cadence, a pause, a question …