by Patrick Ness
‘Have you seen this?’ Charlie is waving an iPad at her. Naturally her first instinct is to take it off him and slap him silly with it, but that’s not allowed. The creature in her brain wasn’t put there specifically to stop her hitting people with iPads, but she has no doubt it features on the long list of ‘No, You Can’t Do That’.
She walks past him, ignoring the question and heads straight into the kitchen. Maybe she can just crawl into one of the kitchen cupboards with her bag of shopping, spend a quiet evening in with a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka. Never let it be said she has no class; she’ll even use a saucepan to drink out of rather than just neck it straight from the bottle.
‘I said, Have you seen this?’ Charlie has followed her. Of course he has. She glances at the iPad and sees a news item about some girl who has stolen a car and driven it into a shop window.
‘No, should I have?’ She starts unpacking the shopping, anything to distract her from his silly, open, naive little face.
‘It’s very strange.’
‘So are skinny jeans; doesn’t mean I want to spend my time thinking about them.’
‘She stole a car.’
‘I can see that, so what?’
‘It just wasn’t like her. Then she drove it into a shop.’ Quill wishes she’d bought more things; she’s now trapped in a dull conversation with nothing to save her but an empty carrier bag. Maybe she’ll put it over her head after all, hide away in a cosy blue-and-white hood until everyone has gone away.
‘You knew her?’ she asks.
‘No, but April did. She said she was nice.’
‘April says everyone’s nice. It’s her disease.’
‘Fine.’ Charlie knows better than to keep trying. ‘Matteusz is staying.’
‘Of course he is, good job I bought two tins of beautiful, luxurious baked beans, then.’
‘Is that all we’ve got?’
‘The shop is just down the road, feel free to use it.’
Charlie sighs and walks back into the other room.
Quill relaxes a little. No doubt he and Matteusz will now be sharing looks of teenage suffering with each other. It could be worse, at least they do that quietly.
What does it matter that some girl has stolen a car and lost control of it? Is it any wonder in this crushing, stupid, insipid little world? The girl probably looked out of her window one morning and felt the horrid banality of it all, decided to do something—anything—to escape it.
Suicide? says a little voice in her head. You think that’s a worthy way out of a life that’s suffocating you? No. She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. That’s why she’s still here, living in a hell ruled by an irritating man-child. Death isn’t a problem, she’s chased that often enough, but it’s a gift you’re given by other people.
She looks at her watch. It’s six o’clock. How is she supposed to fill the hours between now and unconsciousness? She picks up one of the tins. With beans? Will they make existence better? Probably not.
In the other room she can hear her jailer and Matteusz talking. It’s alright for him, isn’t it? He gathers people to him like flies. Their whole world is gone, leaving them trapped in a universe that may as well be empty. But not for him. He has new people. He’s made friends. She has nothing, her closest companion is the thing in her brain that is invisible right up until the point it kills her. What a lucky woman she is. To have fought her whole life for this. It wasn’t the deal. She gave her life to the cause; she would either win justice for her people or she would die trying. This? Who said this was something she should have to bear?
She toasts some bread, pours beans on them—cold, because she’s now so desperate to get away from the noise of Charlie and Matteusz next door that the idea of waiting even a few minutes longer is unbearable—and takes them upstairs to her room.
As she walks past, they go silent for a moment. They’ve been talking about her. Great. Whatever. Miserable Quill. Unreasonable Quill. Angry Quill. All true. Deal with it.
She eats her cold beans as if they’ve done something to offend her.
A few hours pass and the evening refuses to just end. She sits in her room and stares at the wall. She tried watching TV for a bit, but it angered her more than the silence. What were soaps for? Were these humans’ lives so empty of incident they had to absorb fictional ones? Someone had been shouting about a baby. Someone else had been having an affair. A third person was stealing money from the company at which he worked. All of it delivered with the sort of screaming banality that humans liked to think made something seem real. At no point did anyone shoot anyone else. The angry young woman working behind the bar in the local pub didn’t take the small knife she used for cutting slices of lemon and plunge it into the eye of the loud idiot who was sexually harassing her. Quill wonders how this species has ever got anything done. How are they still alive? How dare they be still alive? It isn’t fair. Absolutely nothing is even slightly fair.
She turns off the lights in her room, making do with the secondhand glow of the streetlights outside. She remembers another world, a world of violent skies and hot sands. A world she had thrived in, right up until it had burned.
Eventually she falls asleep and dreams of being someone else.
THREE
‘BE READY FOR THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE’
‘It’s a thrill, yeah?’
‘Of course it is. The biggest. The best.’
‘Should be, the amount I’m paying.’
‘It’s worth every penny.’
‘And safe? You sure it’s safe?’
‘I wouldn’t be selling it otherwise, I’d hardly stay in business without repeat custom. This isn’t something I advertise, remember?’
‘No, suppose not.’
‘This isn’t something you run an advert for in the paper. A glossy flyer through a letter box. All of my clients come to me via the recommendation of someone on my current list. No strangers. You’re all vetted. I don’t believe in unnecessary risks.’
‘Vetted?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you’ve looked into me, yeah?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what did you find about me?’
‘Everything. But most importantly the two things that I really needed to know.’
‘Which were?’
‘You’ve got money and you keep your mouth shut.’
‘Ha! Yeah, that’s fair enough.’
‘Because you know the penalty, don’t you?’
‘Penalty?’
‘For talking about this. This isn’t something you share with your mates down the pub, or in the office come the morning. This isn’t something you brag about.’
‘I know that. Like you said, I can keep my mouth shut.’
‘Good, because if you don’t—and don’t give me that look, I say this to everybody, seriously, absolutely everybody—someone will find you.’
‘Ha!’
‘No, don’t laugh, I mean it. Someone will find you and you won’t see it coming. You won’t recognise them, you won’t know them. But they will know you. And they’ll kill you.’
‘Look . . . I’m not paying all this money to be threatened, yeah?’
‘No, you’re paying all this money to have the most amazing experience you can dream of. You’re paying this money for something incredible. For an experience unlike anything else. And you know what else?’
‘What?’
‘After tonight you’ll be begging me to take your money all over again. You won’t be able to wait. So, you’re ready?’
‘Course I am!’
‘Then lie back, relax, and be ready for the time of your life.’
FOUR
SOMETIMES A BED CAN BECOME EMPTY (EVEN WHEN THERE’S SOMEONE IN IT)
Sex changes a bed. Before it happens it’s a place of potential; afterwards it can be a number of things. Sometimes it’s warm, comforting, the best place in the world. Sometimes it’s cold, awkward, a place you’re wa
iting to leap out of, desperate for the moment that doing so won’t make you seem awful. Sometimes, thinks Matteusz, it becomes empty, even when there’s still a Charlie in it.
Charlie’s staring up at the ceiling but his eyes are working in reverse. He’s looking inside, he’s lost in his own head. This is not the first time. Matteusz is used to self-absorbed. He’s known a lot of self-absorbed. Charlie is different. Matteusz sometimes thinks Charlie’s head contains more than he’ll ever be able to imagine.
‘You are thinking about the girl,’ Matteusz says. ‘The dead one.’
It takes a minute for Charlie to come back into the room, to hear the words and answer. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Charlie turns to look at him. ‘Why?’
‘Yes. I have to ask that now. Our lives are not the same anymore. A few weeks ago we would hear about something awful, something strange, and we would think about it as . . .’ Matteusz thinks about this, about how to express it. ‘As something far away. Sad but not part of our life. We’d feel bad about it. Talk about it. Maybe even donate money to someone on JustGiving to help make an awful thing seem better. Now everything horrible seems to be part of our lives. Something that we will end up living. Are you thinking about the girl as a sad thing that is far away or are you wondering if it is part of our lives?’
‘It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?’
‘See? That’s what I mean. Our lives have changed. You can’t think that everything bad that happens is something to do with us. If you do you will be miserable forever.’
Charlie frowns. ‘But it is strange, isn’t it? It wasn’t like her. Why would she do it?’
‘You think someone made her?’ Matteusz sits up, pushing the pillows behind him.
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Or maybe she broke, something inside her just . . .’ Matteusz doesn’t finish, simply sighs. ‘You know what I think?’
Charlie rolls onto his front, looking up at Matteusz. ‘No, what?’
‘I think you are too used to being a prince.’
Charlie smiles. ‘I’ve never been anything else.’
‘And that is the problem. You are not a prince here, you are not responsible for all of your people. You are just Charlie.’
‘Just?’
Matteusz smiles. ‘OK, not “just” to me, but you know what I mean. You have a problem with responsibility.’
‘I don’t think I do. I’ve been responsible for people all of my life.’
‘That’s the problem you have. Now, here, people will do whatever they want and it’s nothing to do with you.’
‘I’m supposed to not care?’
‘Of course you care, only a horrible person does not care, but you’re not supposed to think it’s a problem you have to solve. We’re not all your subjects. We’re not all your responsibility.’
Charlie stares at him for a moment, then rolls onto his back. Why are they even having this conversation?
‘You think I don’t know that?’ he says. ‘I don’t have any subjects anymore, do I? I don’t have any people.’
‘No, you just have friends, and friends are better than subjects because subjects have no choice. They’re born to love you.’
Charlie opens his mouth to speak but, try as he might, he can’t untangle everything he’s feeling. It feels like he’s being caressed and slapped, all at the same time.
‘Nobody was born to love me. My world wasn’t about love. Not like that. Not in the way you mean. But it’s difficult, isn’t it? Ever since what happened . . . ever since . . .’
‘The prom.’ Just thinking about it makes Matteusz feel cold. He pulls the sheet up around him.
‘Yes. There always seems to be something waiting to hurt us. To attack us. Kill us.’
‘She stole a car and drove it into a shop,’ Matteusz says. ‘That’s not alien. There were no monsters, no weird’—he waves his hand in the air—‘monster things, space things, hole in the universe things . . . This was just a girl who did something terrible. It is not good. It is sad. But it isn’t something we have to feel the weight of.’
‘But how do we know that? He told us . . .’
‘The man from space, the man who saved you and Miss Quill?’
‘Yes.’
Matteusz can see that Charlie is thinking about the man. The impossible man. The Doctor.
‘He told us we would have to be careful. He told us we would have to help protect people, to fight. Talk about responsibility. It’s not about being a prince, it’s about him. It’s about what we promised.’
‘But that doesn’t mean that everything that happens is about that, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘I know.’ Charlie moves up the bed and slips under the sheet, lying back on Matteusz’s chest. ‘I just don’t know how you’re supposed to tell. There was a thing on the news the other day, a woman who ran through a supermarket naked, then dived into one of the freezers.’
‘Maybe she was excited by their special offers.’
Charlie smiles. ‘But I sat there wondering if she was possessed. Or running away from some kind of . . .’ His voice tapers off and Matteusz knows he is thinking of the Shadow Kin, of how they made Charlie run, run all the way to another world.
‘Evil alien?’
‘We’re all aliens somewhere,’ Charlie says.
His phone beeps with a message alert. Charlie reaches over to the bedside table, picks it up, and reads the message.
‘What is it?’ asks Matteusz.
‘Tanya,’ says Charlie, showing him the phone. ‘Something else has happened.’
FIVE
DESIGNED TO MAKE NORMAL HUMANS CRY
Thick jungle. Buzz of insects. In the distance a bird calls out before exploding up through the canopy and into the world of daylight outside. Keeping low, Tanya pushes through the foliage. She knows the rebels are here, knows it even before she hears them moving through their camp.
She hangs back, watching for a moment, getting a read on how many people are there. One of them is gutting a pig while another prepares a fire on which to cook it. A few feet away, the leader and his lieutenant are squatting on the ground, conferring over a map. Their rifles are on the ground next to them, but that shouldn’t make her cocky; they’ll be aiming and firing in seconds if she lets them. A fifth man works on one of the tents, tugging at a canvas they’ve stretched between the low branches of the trees.
His rifle is on his back.
This is an opportunity. They’re relaxed, not expecting trouble.
She bursts through the tree line, automatic weapon bucking and coughing in her arms as she shoots. She takes the leader and his lieutenant first, map blown to confetti that showers over their flailing bodies. Then the man preparing the fire, then his butcher friend who ends up looking as much like dinner as the pig by the time she’s done. Finally, the man fixing the tent. He’s had the chance to pull the rifle from his back but not the time to aim it. Tanya takes him down with two bursts.
There is silence, then a crack of automatic pistol fire. She hears herself grunt as she’s hit. It’s only a flesh wound, she can deal with it. A man she hadn’t accounted for is running towards her through the trees. She drops to one knee and fires upward. His head opens like a blossoming jungle flower. A Jackson Pollock splatter on the tent behind him, then he hits the ground.
Tanya has taken the camp. She celebrates with a Mars Bar.
‘Damn, girl,’ says her brother Jarvis, ‘you scare me.’
Tanya hands him the controller. ‘You take over, I’ve got homework.’
‘Why bother? You were born to be a marine.’
‘Nah . . . the uniform’s too dull.’
She heads upstairs, the sound of the digital jungle returning then fading behind her as Jarvis continues the mission to rid the world of all evil pixels.
For a while she’s lost in the world of numbers, not only the work she has to do but—and she would never admit this to anyone at school because s
he struggles making friends as it is—a few bigger calculations that occur to her during her working. Sometimes it’s just nice to solve the puzzle. Numbers do as they’re told, they always make sense. They’ll always find order if you poke them the right way. Tanya sometimes wishes she could solve people so easily. People just never quite add up.
Then, because she’s on a roll, she pokes at her physics homework. Naturally, it’s designed to make normal humans cry, because Miss Quill set it. If Miss Quill were able to fold mousetraps or sprinkle anthrax bacteria into the pages of her student’s textbooks, Tanya thinks she’d probably do it, if only to break up a boring afternoon.
After half an hour or so of calculating centripetal force, she rewards herself by falling down the rabbit hole of the internet, strolling from one link to another.
She checks out Seraphin videos for a few minutes, then when she is bored of his hair (no, not bored, you could no more get bored of Seraphin’s hair than you could eating ice cream; she is simply, temporarily full) she moves on.
From there it’s a spiral of one BuzzFeed list after another: top ten cute goats, the fourteen best autocorrect mistakes, ‘You won’t believe what happens to this puppy, I laughed and cried!’
Finally, scrolling through her Facebook timeline, she sees the news that will ruin her night. Because there’s no way Max Collins could have done that, right? Not Max. Max was a nice guy. Max was together. Max was normal.
Tanya reads, feels her guts churn, then messages her friends.
SIX
MAX WAS A NICE GUY
Tommy Collins is used to hearing his big brother wandering around at night. Max always stays up late, playing his Xbox with his headphones on. Tommy hates it, not because it disturbs him but because Max gets away with it. Never are the nine years between them felt more keenly than in those faint creaks of the floorboards in the early hours of the morning. Sure, Max sometimes gets a vague word of warning from Mum or Dad, a little comment thrown away over the breakfast table with no more weight than the passing of marmalade. ‘Of course, if you didn’t stay up so late you wouldn’t be so tired,’ or ‘I suppose you were up to all hours again, you’ve got bags beneath your eyes the size of suitcases.’ That last one was always delivered with a chuckle, as if it were the funniest joke in the world.