by Rachael Craw
“You’ve been through hell, Everton. It’s completely understandable.” He leans forwards and digs his fingers into his scalp. “I just thought you might have seen something. Or maybe Miriam might have seen something?”
“I’ll ask her.” I watch him with his head bowed, exhaustion and worry heavy about his shoulders. It’s difficult to remember the old Jamie in the face of the new. It’s not only the trauma of what happened to his sister. I felt it when we met on the patio, a new air of sincerity, compassion, maturity? Something.
“The police want to make out it was attempted robbery.” He looks up, his expression etched in disgust. “That’s the governor in damage control, trying to keep his son out of the papers.”
I stare, a prickling sensation at the back of my neck. “Richard?”
“You know him?”
“I met him at the party.”
Jamie glowers. “He’s a complete bastard.”
“Do you think Richard had something to do with the attack on Kitty?” The prospect of a suspect almost makes me giddy.
“I don’t know. We’ve got DNA, at least, skin under Kitty’s nails.”
I fight to hide the trembling that rocks through me at the thought of her fighting the Stray.
“We’ll get a look at the security footage this afternoon, but I don’t know what to think about Richard.” He links his fingers and his knuckles whiten. “He hurt Kaylee last night.”
I draw a blank. “Who? What happened?”
“She’s a friend of Kitty’s – of ours. She’s been dating Richard – why, I’ll never know. ‘Someone’ sexually assaulted her out in the grounds. It all seems to have gone down around the same time as the attack on Kitty. Apparently, Kaylee was pretty wasted.”
I feel like I’ve just walked into a door. The beautiful girl with the sleek hair. “I saw them at the party, before I saw you. She was upset. Drinking. Richard was handing her champagne.”
“She’s not talking.” Jamie’s lips contract. “You don’t want to know the rumours about Richard. Girls being paid to keep their mouths shut.”
My skin crawls. “How did you find out?”
“Lila and Imogen, the girls from the patio, they were with Kaylee afterwards. She was a bit of mess. They told me what had happened. I spoke to the bloke who stopped the assault and carried her back to the house. Aiden someone. Says the guy got away.”
Smack. Another door. I can’t keep up with the sudden turns, and speak almost to myself. “Aiden doesn’t like Richard.”
“Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t lie to protect his boss,” Jamie mutters, pauses and looks at me. “You know him?”
“He helped me shift Miriam’s gear.”
Jamie nods and frowns. “Apparently he’s a stand-up guy. I’d like to believe it, but he’s on Charles Dean’s payroll and he won the governor’s scholarship for Gainsborough. He’s hardly going to bite the hand that feeds him, yeah?”
“And if Richard hurt Kaylee, you think he might have hurt Kitty?”
He growls. “I don’t know, but it’s all a bit of a bloody coincidence, isn’t it?”
Jamie’s suspicion slips seamlessly into mine. He’s right. As innocuous as Aiden seemed on first impression he’s now tainted by association, and the things Jamie said about Richard … I take the effortless step from imagining him as a regular son of a bitch to picturing him as a genetically modified one.
“Let me visit. Let me be here for her. I promise I won’t get in the way.”
He gives me a hard, searching look.
I put my hand on his, surprising myself with my boldness, impressed again by the immediate increase in electricity. I hold his gaze and project all my longing into the universe, willing him to relent. “Jamie, please.”
Doubt troubles his eyes, worry and behind that … fear? I brace for “no”, but then he swallows and sighs. “Fine.”
I squeeze his hand once, let go and sit back. He frowns, flexing his fingers where I touched him, looking much older than his eighteen years. I chew my thumbnail, consumed by the new puzzle pieces, determined to form a suspect list.
Jamie looks at me. “Have you really forgiven me, then?”
Heat creeps up my face. “I’m sorry?”
“Everton.” He draws my name out and arches his eyebrow. “The unmentionable incident? Mistakes were made?”
I didn’t have the energy to fake it. Instead, I roll my eyes and shrug. “I guess you were young and needed the money.”
A weary smile tugs at his lips. “I won’t offend your intelligence going back over the details of my part as the innocent pawn, however accurate and truthful that may be.” He sits back, resting his head on the wall and closes his eyes. “No excuses.”
I definitely don’t recognise this Jamie; it’s like being in a body-snatcher movie. “Terrible apology.”
He smirks, cracks one eye open. “That’s three years of rehearsal for you.”
In a small compartment of my brain – the compartment in denial about the nightmare of my new life – the urge to laugh is almost irresistible. “Who are you?”
“People change, yeah?” He keeps his eyes closed. “You’ve changed, Everton. So have I.”
I cringe inwardly at the thought of my new boobs and I’m glad he can’t hear the frenetic thump of my pulse. I wonder how different I seem. He’s right though. I’m not the girl I was at fourteen. Without question the last six months have altered me at a foundational level. The last twelve hours have apparently altered me at a DNA level, which seems to alter every damn thing altogether. I stare at the clock on the wall. It’s only seven-thirty and I want to lie down.
At the end of the corridor the elevator chimes, the doors open and Miriam steps out in her running gear, hair pulled back in a ponytail, face flush with colour and war in her eyes.
HISTORY
I lean my face into my hands. I’m only dimly aware of the traffic backing up on the road, too consumed by the physiological shock of walking out of the hospital. After no sleep and the trauma of the night, feeling the tether thin and finally evaporate has unhinged me. In the car, Miriam’s reprimands for not waiting at home set me swearing and ranting that she was deliberately keeping me from Kitty! I have calmed down a little since then, though I still tremble and pant through my nose.
“I’m sorry I was away so long.” Her tone is careful, not wanting to set off another avalanche, and I look up. One hand on the steering wheel, she digs in her pocket, retrieving a small roll of electrical tape and a smooth round disc. A magnet. “Here, rip some tape. Stick the magnet in the middle.”
Initially blindsided, I remember something she said about scrambling receptors. I take the tape and the disc, my heart racing, like the Affinity Project is watching me break protocol. I fumble through it with shaking hands then pass her a small loaded strip. It’s creepily fascinating to watch as she fastens it at the base of her skull, securing the edges along her hairline. “They upgraded my tracker. This will let me talk freely for short intervals.”
I just stare.
“Carolyn was concerned about my signal being so high. There’s normally a cool-down period to regenerate before you become susceptible to a new Spark. It’s protocol to run tests when they find anomalies. I guess she picked up on the influence of your signal.”
“She didn’t suspect me?”
“I told her you had shown no signs of priming, but I think we have to accept that sooner or later they’ll send a Warden to confirm that.”
I’m relieved she’s not whispering, but the jargon still makes me impatient. “I thought Carolyn was the Warden?”
“She’s my Watcher, like a handler dealing with a field agent. I report to her. She uses a device called a grader to read my signal. Wardens monitor territories for … ‘disturbances in the force’ and they don’t need a grader, they sense you because their own signals are amplified and their sensitivity is highly developed.”
I know she’s referring to the acronyms my head can’t hold, ETR,
Electro-telepathic something-or-other and AFS, the Frequency Sensitivity thing. I visualise blank-eyed psychics with glowing temporal lobes lurking at the city limits, poised to move in. I shudder. “What are they, though – Shields, like us?”
“Mostly they’re the surviving operatives of the first generation trial.”
Goosebumps prickle my skin. “Survivors?”
The morning commuter traffic inches forwards and she keeps her eyes on the road. “In the first generation trial, adult soldiers – who thought they were being ‘screened’ for special ops training – were given a ‘vaccine’. Well that’s what they told them, but it was Optimal. Only one in a hundred responded to the treatment. Those that didn’t were sent back to the ranks, thinking they’d missed a career opportunity. Those that showed signs of sensitivity became the first generation of agents. Seventy or eighty of them, I think. Not like now. The number has increased exponentially with each successive generation.”
Increased exponentially. In my mind the world is suddenly swollen with genetically engineered psychos. I wonder how many I have shared a bus with, waited in line next to, browsed beside in a bookshop, supermarket, clothing store …
“They kept the first generation of agents in observation clinics, waiting for the optimised ‘strengths and tendencies’ to arise. Two affinities emerged in the process: the defender/protectors and the attacker/pursuers. Shields and Strikers.”
I bite back the urge to say something snide about Affinity’s obsession with alliteration. I don’t want to interrupt.
“It was a bumpy start. Only a few matured. It wasn’t good enough for the suits – with their calculators and megalomania. They wanted a reliable trigger that would spur a stronger immediate response. The lab coats developed a catalyst enzyme, gathered control subjects and injected them with it.”
My mouth is dry, but I force myself to say it, “Sparks?”
She nods, changing gear as the traffic begins to gain speed. “No side effects. For the Sparks, I mean. None of the extraordinary frequency benefits found in Shields or Strikers. Those with the enzyme were only meant to emit a signal that draws those primed to trigger. They took the soldiers exhibiting signs of priming – groups of ten – and brought them into observation clinics with the Sparks.”
Repulsed by the wrongness of it all, I mutter, “Sparks were just what, walking lighter fluid?”
“Pretty much. During the clinics, Affinity learned that: physical touch was necessary to activate the primed; Sparks can only create a bonded triplicate – one Striker and one Shield per Spark at a time; Strikers always trigger first; and of course they discovered the Fixation Effect. Aggression levels went through the roof. Sparks died. Strikers became known as the Stray.”
“I’m not sure they needed a name change. Striker’s disturbing enough.” I want to scrub my brain out but I need to understand. “How do we get from soldiers killing each other in a secret compound to lunatics roaming the streets? Was it the pregnancy drugs?”
“Supplements, actually, designed for multiple-birth pregnancies – that was the second generation trial. It was supposed to be the cure-all. Breed out the Fixation Effect by starting inside the womb. Clueless doctors prescribed the vitamins to civilian women pregnant with twins. Each tablet laced with Optimal two-point-o and the newly purified Spark enzyme. They believed they could circumvent the Stray mutation, like a quasi-natural selection process where unborn babies, or ‘malleable untainted pre-forms’, would bond to the element that best complimented their DNA.”
“So the planet is crawling with mutant killers?”
“Not crawling, no. It was a limited production in select locations here and the UK, and like the adult test subjects, those that responded were rare.”
It’s not much of a relief and I stare at the busy road. “This is nuts.”
“Clearly. But they had a vision for high-profit private security. Strikers available for short-term contracts to retrieve, acquire and eliminate. Shields available for protection, containment and secure delivery of sensitive property and or persons. They had enough interest from their investors to finance it and they believed they had the right technology and the ability to monitor it. This second generation – my generation – wouldn’t surface until late adolescence. They spent a decade or so setting up compounds in strategic places for monitoring and orientation and appointed Wardens over districts to identify Sparks and those with AFS.”
“They expected you guys to just agree to work for them?”
“I never had to deal with that particular problem, but I believe they had a whole system of persuasion, coercion and rewards. Psychological and physical.”
It’s like a glimpse into an alternate version of my life, an unthinkably horrible version that arbitrary chance has kept me from. Like avoiding a car crash by leaving a minute too late or too soon. Of course the current reality is dire enough. I briefly fantasise about throwing the car door open and pitching myself headlong into the advancing traffic. The fantasy is immediately quashed by a confronting sense of violation. How could I abandon Kitty to her fate? The idea is unthinkable.
“Unfortunately, the Fixation Effect was worse and the Stray mutation made their signals undetectable. Only the Shield who completed the triplicate could sense the specific threat to their Spark. That’s when Affinity had a change in management.”
“So the whole thing – the whole thing – was a complete and utter waste of time that results in lives being destroyed for absolutely nothing?”
“About sums it up.”
There’s a moment of time in which no amount of swearing will express my profound disgust. Finally, I mutter, “I’m not a twin.” It’s a little late for grasping at loopholes, but I can’t help it.
“No, but your mom and I were. Once Optimal is in the system it gets passed down the gene pool like blue eyes or curly hair. Sure, there are more twins in the game than most but it’s not a prerequisite. You’re a third-generation Shield which is more complicated and unpredictable than the generations before because you aren’t a drug baby, you’re the next step on the evolutionary ladder.”
I squeeze my temples and close my eyes but it’s better to have them open because my imagination isn’t a fun place to be.
“Each time, down the line, there’s no guarantee how a pre-form will respond. It’s rare to get any reaction at all. Usually, it’s just a normal kid that carries the gene like a time bomb for the next generation.”
“And what if I hadn’t come along?”
Her knuckles tighten briefly on the steering wheel and her shoulders sag with her sigh. “Many Sparks die without a Shield. Probably more than we know.”
I groan and shake my head like I can throw the thought off. “And what if you had responded to Kitty before me? Would you be her Shield?”
“There’s no guarantee I would have been a match. I wasn’t even drawn to her. If a Warden had come through and read Kitty’s signal, they would’ve sent contract agents to make contact in the hopes that one of them would respond to her, but she’s bonded to you now and you’re the only one who’ll be able to sense the threat.”
Again the enormity of it floods over me, a cold wash. The only one.
LAIR
“Lock the door.”
I slide the darkroom door closed behind me, set the latch and follow Miriam in, brushing through the gap in the rough blackout curtain. On the far wall, she taps the key code for the utility cupboard and opens it. She moves an old box of negatives and reaches in to the back of the shelf. At the muffled clunking sound of shifting metallic cogs, my stomach lurches and I grip the counter.
“Hence the out of bounds,” Miriam says. She pulls the shelf and it swings forwards, revealing a recess with a staircase leading not right to the basement but left beneath the front of the house where, as far as I know, there should be nothing. She steps down and a light flicks on. It shocks me to see the stairs go much lower than the basement. I follow after her, almost holding my breath on the st
eep metal stairs.
The room opens out into a wide, clinical space. The polished concrete floor has a large blue gym mat in the middle and a bank of mirrors lines the wall in front of it. It’s just as I saw in Miriam’s memory, when she growled at me for opening her darkroom cupboard. Four climbing ropes hang in a square formation from the high ceiling, their knots hooked against the wall. In one corner there’s a treadmill, rowing machine, weight lifting equipment and even a suspended punching bag. Beside the innocuous gym gear sits a wooden sparing dummy and objects that look like they’ve been lifted from the set of a martial arts movie. I glance at Miriam. Her brief smile is self-conscious.
“How long has this been here?”
“When I took the place I had it built. Home gym.”
My eyebrows lift. “Batcave, more like.”
A long desk sits against the far wall with a computer and LCD screen. Filing cabinets crowd underneath. A mobile corkboard backs the red brick wall, covered with newspaper clippings and photographs. But directly beneath the metal staircase lodges a glass-fronted cabinet. Guns and ammo. I clutch the cold stair rail. “I have to completely rethink my opinion of you.” The weirdness of having known Miriam my whole life and yet never really knowing her unnerves me. I can’t take my eyes off the artillery. “What are you doing with this stuff?”
“Come on, half of America has a gun cabinet.” She sees my scowl. “Don’t worry, they don’t get out much, but a good girl scout is always prepared.”
“How many girl scouts are packing heat?” I wrap my arms around my waist and walk slowly onto the mat. “Ninja zone?”
“Something like.” She watches my face in the mirror. “You’ll start with reflex training. Formal martial arts comes later.”
I can’t imagine it and I try not to look at our twin reflections; we’re too alike. It’s disturbing seeing my future watching me with worried eyes. “So?” I want everything, all the answers to my questions, even after the brain-clogging history lesson on the ride from the hospital.