by Rachael Craw
“You – you read his signal?”
I grit my teeth. “I reacted to him. I don’t know if it was a signal. But it’s worth testing, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” she says. “Yes, of course it is. Why didn’t you say?”
“It was a little difficult to get a word in.”
“Evie, I–”
A pulse in the bandwidth rocks through me, loud in my ears, painful in my head, blurring my vision. I give a small cry and swing around, grabbing the counter behind me. Miriam buckles forwards, bringing her hand to her head. “No,” she whispers.
“What the hell was that?”
“You felt it?” Her lips pale. “The Warden’s coming.”
“Now? Here?” Terror like a siren fills my head. They’re coming for me. It’s over. Kitty! “I won’t go, Miriam. I’ll fight. They’ll have to drag me out.”
“Let me think, damn it!” Miriam’s eyes dart from side to side as though she’s calculating frenetic equations at high speed.
The kitchen door bursts open. Jamie skids into the room. “The Warden–”
“We felt it,” I say, dizzy with the let-down of adrenaline.
“You did?” Jamie says. “You couldn’t possibly–”
“Shut up!” Miriam grabs her head, turning in a slow circle, muttering.
“You have to go, Everton.” Jamie pats his pockets for keys. “Take Kitty, take my car and go now.”
“It’s too late.” Miriam straightens. “They will have registered our signals.”
“But they can’t track Everton. She hasn’t been marked.”
“They’d catch her eventually, Jamie. She could only ever stay a day ahead of them at the most. But,” she fixes him with a piercing look, “if we could mask her signal she wouldn’t have to run and she’d be clear until the next sweep.”
“Mask it?” Jamie says, the tangle of his thoughts catching behind his eyes until his frown unknots. “Miriam, we haven’t even been together for twenty-four hours.”
Leonard, Barb and Kitty come through the door. “Jamie?” Leonard says, taking in the spectacle of the three of us panicking. “What on earth?”
Miriam ignores him, her eyes on Jamie. “You’ve been living in the same house for days. Your signals will have started to sync whether you’re conscious of it or not. If we hide Evie somewhere close to you, while they’re here – if you can stay connected – using KMH, KMT, whatever you can manage – it could blur the reading enough to appear like one signal.”
My mind scrambles to keep up with Miriam’s plan. “Hide me? I don’t understand. How does it work? Will they come in the house?”
“I’m the only registered Shield in the district. They’ll expect me and therefore they will expect to come in the house.”
“Demerits,” Jamie warns.
“Screw demerits,” she says. “They’re on their way anyway.”
“What if they thermal scan?” Jamie says, his expression clouding.
“It’s not an extraction,” Miriam says. “They’d only call in an extraction team if they identified a newly transitioned Shield. It’ll just be the Warden and one other agent. Is your tracker up to date?”
“No.” He reaches his hand to the back of his neck. “It’s almost dissolved.”
Miriam nods. “Good.”
“What’s happening, Miriam?” Leonard demands.
She looks Leonard up and down, a measuring appraisal. “Barb,” she says. “You have to leave.”
Barb clings to Leonard’s arm with her diamond-dressed fingers to her mouth. “Leave? Why?”
Miriam squares her shoulders. “Because I will be posing as Leonard’s girlfriend and it’s probably better if his wife isn’t still in the house. We’ll call you as soon as they’ve gone.”
Barb blinks like she’s been poked in the eye and Leonard opens his mouth but nothing comes out.
Another pulse in the bandwidth sweeps in. I groan and sway and Jamie steadies me. Miriam holds her head. “We are running out of time!” She slices her hand through the air. “This is what’s going to happen. Kitty, you’ll wait in the panic room because Evie won’t be able to guard you while they’re here. Leonard, you will answer the door. They will ask for me and you’ll bring them into the living room and then go and wait in the study. I will present myself as Kitty’s Shield.”
“They won’t believe you’ve Sparked so soon,” I say, seeing holes in everything.
“It can happen. Anyway, there are ways I can increase my signal before they get here.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense if Jamie–” I begin.
“Siblings can’t Spark each other!” Miriam snaps. “And even if they could, it wouldn’t explain my presence in the house. Shields are not permitted to fraternise. So, I’m either Leonard’s girlfriend or I’m breaking protocol by hanging out with Jamie.”
“They’ll buy the idea that you’re Leonard’s girlfriend? Wouldn’t they question …”
Miriam growls in exasperation. “Of course they’ll buy it, Evie. Relationship protocol is one of the most common tactics among Shields. We’re a whole damn secret society of home wreckers! Trust me.”
Barb makes a sound like she’s half-choked.
Jamie grimaces. “Miriam’s right, Evie. It happens all the time.”
“This doesn’t make sense!” Barb cries. “Why must Evie hide at all? Won’t these people help?”
Jamie, Miriam and I produce matching looks of incredulity. “No,” Miriam says. “They will order an extraction team and take her, and Kitty will be left without her protector. Do you understand? We’re going to try to buy Evie some time. If we can pull it off, we won’t have to worry about Affinity until this is all over.”
Barb’s eyes move to her daughter, to me and back to Miriam. “Do what you have to.” She kisses Leonard on the mouth, grabs keys from the counter and walks out the door.
“Jamie,” Miriam says. “Can you fetch me the first-aid kit?”
He nods and bolts into the butler’s pantry.
Miriam looks to Kitty, who raises her hands. “I know. Panic room.” She throws her arm around my neck, her foam support rubbing against my chin. “I bloody hate the panic room.”
“It’ll be okay.” I clasp her back, infusing my voice with more certainty than I feel. “Miriam knows what she’s doing.”
Kitty releases me, tears tracking her checks. Leonard squeezes her hand and she crosses to the butler’s pantry, stopping to make room for Jamie who comes out carrying a large red box.
“It’s going to work.” He kisses her cheek and she sniffs, stepping past him to punch the access code to the wine cellar. The door clicks and I have one final glimpse of her anxious face.
Jamie deposits the kit on the bench. Miriam strips her shirt off and stands there in her bra, digging through the medical supplies. Leonard swivels away and Jamie turns his back. I stare at my aunt in disbelief – she is so focused and unflinching, taking command of an impossible situation.
“Jamie,” she says. “Come here and take your shirt off.”
Jamie swallows but doesn’t hesitate, shucking his shirt over his head, revealing a white fitted singlet that amplifies his gold skin. He joins Miriam at the counter and her hand blurs. Jamie grunts and a vivid red slash opens on his bicep just beneath the band of his tattoo.
“Miriam!” I want to lunge at her. Leonard spins around, nearly losing his glasses.
“It’s okay.” Jamie grits his teeth. “It’ll spike my signal and help mask yours.”
Miriam presses a cloth to Jamie’s wound and hands him a bandage. “Go into the living room, close the curtains to the conservatory, find somewhere in there for Evie to hide.”
“I can do that,” Leonard says, moving towards the door.
“No, Leonard, I need you and Evie.”
Jamie rushes out, holding his bleeding arm. Miriam quickly sets about repeating the procedure. Leonard forgets to turn his back, watching as Miriam opens her bicep with the emergency kit sc
alpel. She hisses. Leonard and I wince at the welling of blood. She staunches the flow, unwinds a bandage one-handed and binds her arm with quick neat loops, reminding me it isn’t the first time she’s doctored her own wounds. In less than thirty seconds she’s back in her shirt. She rounds on Leonard and grimaces. “Try not to freak out but I need you to kiss me.”
“What?” He stares like she’s lost her mind and takes a step back.
“If we have any hope of pulling this off, I need to spike my frequency. Conflict or arousal is the fastest way to do it. So either punch me or kiss me!”
He gapes at her, more flustered than I’ve ever seen him, clearly as blindsided as I feel.
“I guess you’re going with option B.” She doesn’t hesitate but steps forwards and pulls him down to her lips. He freezes, eyes still open in shock. She tries to force a response from him but poor Leonard doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. She presses against him, kissing him with desperate fervour. “Come on.” She pounds her hand on his chest. “Work with me!”
Then she gets what she wants. His eyes close and his hands come suddenly around her back, almost lifting her from the ground. Miriam clasps one arm around his neck and with the other she grips his bicep, digging her nails in. Leonard grunts, knotting his fingers in her hair and tips her head back, devouring her kiss.
It’s a paralysing sight, like watching a distortion of Jamie and me. My insides churn. I can’t fathom why Miriam needs me to stay.
“Miriam! They’ll be here any minute!”
It seems like a major effort for them to break apart, panting and wide-eyed. Leonard looks completely punch-drunk as he rights his glasses and Miriam’s face is flushed, her eyes bright. She almost staggers, turning to me. “Now, hit me.”
“What?”
“Not the face. Then go and find Jamie,” her expression hardens, clearly hating to have to say it, “and repeat what you’ve seen here.”
I’m too flabbergasted to move.
“Hit me, damn it!”
A terrible rush of adrenaline surges through me and I drive my fist into her stomach, lifting her from her feet, shunting her backwards. She folds, wheezing. Leonard catches her. “Good,” she says, a barely audible rasp, her face beet red. “Now, go.”
WARDEN
“Jamie?” I slip between the heavy curtains, from the living room into the conservatory. The French doors hang open and the cool damp smell of earth and orchid mingle with pungent fertiliser and the split wood scent of sap. Dark leafy shadows loom like malformed hands, reaching high over the mosaic floor, a spangled night above.
Jamie stands at a utility closet, yanking out shelves like he’s snapping twigs; nails whine then pop and the whole structure shakes. He’s hung his shirt on a potted rose and dust mottles the white cotton of his singlet, his chest and bandage glowing in the moonlight. He tosses the last shelf behind him and straightens up, brushing dirt from his hands. “There. It’ll be a squeeze, but you should fit.”
“Miriam says we should kiss,” I say, like I’m bringing a note from the teacher.
Jamie exhales, a sharp amused gust, regarding me with his hands on his hips. “I agree.” Then he comes for me, cups my head, tips my mouth, bringing his intoxicating scent of winter forest and warm skin, like he’s just come in from the cold, sat before a blazing fire, drunk eggnog and eaten cinnamon cookies right before kissing me.
My whole body hums, a bone-deep, homecoming hum.
Soon dizziness sweeps in, but I don’t pull back. Time line, end point, he’ll choose her. Jealousy, it rears in me, a red-hot blaze, vaporising my inhibition and inadequacy, and I dig my fingers in Jamie’s singlet, melding my hips to his, as though I’m bold and sexy and have a clue what I’m doing. He catches his breath and I relish the sound. I touch the ridges of his stomach, outline the hard muscle-wrapped cage of his ribs and trace the broad plains of his chest, mapping territory in a heedless rush to stake my claim before I pass out.
The foreign signal pulses, probing for me in the bandwidth. I wince and Jamie groans, squeezing his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt, not looking at him. “All that stuff I said. I know it’s only been a day. Obviously, I don’t expect – it’s not like I think we – what I’m trying to say is, I didn’t mean it to sound so creepy and intense. It’s Miriam, she does my head in. She wouldn’t shut up, and I swear, I didn’t know anything about, you know, the binding words, or whatever.”
He lifts my chin. “Wouldn’t hurt to let me believe you meant it, yeah?”
I don’t know how to respond, there’s no time. “Listen, if this doesn’t work and they take me–”
“It’ll work.”
“Fine, but we have Richard’s blood, if it’s him and I’m not here–”
He squeezes my waist. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you.” I pull away and cringe. “I forgot. I’m supposed to give you this.” I draw my arm back and ram my fist into his stomach.
Inside the utility closet, my back pressed against cold wood, shoulders hunched, head ducked, I shiver, not because of the temperature but the bat-shit crazy fear of my fight or flight instinct. I hate picturing Kitty, terrified in the panic room, waiting for fate, or filling the pages of her journal with abject horror. I wonder what time it is, whether I’ll get to kiss Jamie again, when I last ate, when my nightmare period will hit, what will happen if they try to take me or if I fight. Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.
“They’re coming,” Miriam says from the living room. She doesn’t have to raise her voice. I’m concentrating so hard it’s a wonder I haven’t burst a blood vessel. “Stay connected,” she says. Something about the direction of her voice makes me picture her standing by the double doors to the foyer.
“Everton.” Jamie. Close. Just through the wall.
“I’m ready.” They won’t take me. They won’t.
I close my eyes, visualise Jamie (as he was before I punched him and he collapsed on his knees, gasping for air), his lips pouty from kissing the life out of me, his eyes all smouldering. I reach into the slipstream of static, looking for his signal. “Ha.” He’s waiting for me. The familiar vibration, the resonant hum.
Images flicker in my mind, sensation charges my skin, a strange blending of Transfer and Harvest between us, the give and take of physical memory. Then a sound from outside reaches me, tyres crunch on gravel. My eyes pop open and through the closet slats headlights light up the conservatory. I hear wheels turning, slowing, braking then the car engine dies. Kitty! Blind panic takes me, that lost-in-the-dark terror of childhood, like waking from a nightmare caught beneath suffocating sheets. My arms fly out, banging the wooden boards that seem suddenly coffin-like in constriction. I heave for air.
“Everton,” Jamie whispers.
“No,” Miriam hisses. “Pull it together.”
I bite hard on the inside of my cheek. I’ve lost Jamie’s signal. I stop breathing as an image blooms brightly in my mind. Jamie’s KMT.
Long dark hair fanned across a pillow, a warm wet cloth mopping blood from milk-white skin …
The doorbell. Steps in the foyer. Leonard’s voice.
Things become murky. Cerebral images clash with voices from the other room, disorienting me, like trying to watch a television while listening to a radio at the same time.
A man, not Leonard, brief low words.
A woman, an octave higher.
Miriam, formal, welcoming.
Jamie … silent.
Footsteps. The doors to Leonard’s study closing. I picture him pacing as he waits.
Movement in the living room, bodies sitting and then finally the voice of the Affinity Project.
The woman: “Is this a secure arrangement?”
Miriam: “Of course. I’m experienced with Relationship Protocol. Irregular work hours are part of my cover. Leonard believes you are here to examine proofs for an installation.”
The woman: “I’m not concerned about the Ticket. Your profile is exempla
ry.”
Ticket?
Jamie’s jaw, his mouth, his breath …
Silence. Movement.
The woman: “The Gallagher girl is a Spark? Eighteen is late.”
Miriam: “Police filed her attack.”
The woman: “I see that here … Governor’s Ball. Unfortunately high profile … Attempted mugging? Optimistic.”
A pause.
The woman: “However, two Spark events so close together, Ms Everton?”
Miriam: “It is unusual.”
The woman: “Supply protection is always preferable, but I suppose in these cases, we should be grateful it is at least someone of your experience. The mess some make …”
Miriam: “Mmm.”
A feather-light touch, tracing an angel’s scars …
The woman: “Your Watcher. Carolyn, is it? We’ll have her contact you. Perhaps a full course of Fretizine would be best when you’re done here.”
Miriam: “I was thinking the same.”
The woman: “And I will arrange a Reprieve.”
Miriam: “Thank you, that – that would be wonderful.”
The woman: “Asset preservation is paramount.”
Silence.
An explosion of glass, Jamie murmuring my name …
The woman: “Your presence here is a concern, Mr Gallagher. Only Ms Everton’s spike in demerits in the last half hour indicated she might be entertaining a fellow agent.”
Jamie: “I haven’t interfered. Miriam will tell you.”
The woman: “I have met few active family members who don’t.”
Jamie: “Interference leads to mistakes. I would rather my sister live. I have full confidence in Miriam and no interest in getting in her way.”
The woman: “However, your presence infringes protocol.”
Miriam: “I’m old enough to be Jamie’s mother.”
Whoa.
A scalpel flashes, opening a fissure in golden skin beneath a line of black ink …
The woman: “Hardly a deterrent, but I’m referring to Mr Gallagher’s current status. It says here you have entered the Deactivation Program with–”
Jamie: “Only the Pre-lim.”
Miriam: “Deactivation?”