Hindsight

by AA Bell

  ‘They can’t help with this.’ She squeezed her frustration down into a fist and punched the pile of clothes, annoyed by her weakness. It didn’t make sense. She desperately wanted to help Ben and find the joey, and yet she was paralysed by the thought of reinstitutionalising herself with an army uniform in order to do it.

  A sob escaped her, and she pressed her fist against her mouth, determined not to cry. Aside from the pain of losing Ben, the agony of glimpsing the future through tears would be too much for her to bear.

  ‘Hey, there,’ Lockman said, rubbing her shoulder tentatively. ‘We’ll get him back. It’s only Greppia’s goons against the whole homeland defence force.’

  Mira bristled and straightened her shoulders. ‘It’s not that … exactly. It’s the uniform. It sounds silly, I know but …’ She could feel it, almost throbbing there in its heap like an invisible beast. ‘It’s going to eat me — not just devour, but digest me into something else.’

  ‘I think that’s the idea. That guy with the guitar and the marshmallows last night, that’s me; but this guy in here,’ he said, bringing her hand to his chest, ‘is who I want to be.’ She flinched, feeling a sting of attraction, but he didn’t protest when she pulled her hand away. ‘When you wear the khaki,’ he explained, ‘you know you’re part of something big, something worthwhile. But we salute the rank, regardless of the dweeb who’s wearing it.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ She couldn’t imagine him as a dweeb anyway. ‘Neither do I, apparently. I can’t fathom how you could willingly allow yourself to become so invisible as a free individual. I mean, I spent the past decade trying to escape rules and regulations. Why do you do it? I need to know. Aren’t you afraid of losing who you are?’

  He chuckled and drew her hand back to cup his face. ‘Do I feel worried?’

  Her skin electrified with the warmth from his cheek — prickly! Not like Ben’s smooth face at all.

  She recoiled from the intimacy, but Lockman caught her by the waist.

  ‘Hey, sorry for the five o’clock shadow,’ he said, pulling her back to him. ‘Don’t be frightened. I’m only rough on the surface, and I do pack a razor in my kit with my hand grenades …’ He chuckled as if that was meant to be funny. ‘I just haven’t had a chance to use it.’

  ‘Five o’clock?’ she asked, confused. ‘Is it that late now?’ She glanced to the window, then the clock, hating that it was taking her so long to get away, but yesterday’s purple moonrise only confused the matter further, since it seemed to support the ghostly digital clock on the wall which reported the time as 2:07am.

  ‘It’s sixteen hundred,’ Lockman said. ‘That’s four in the afternoon, but I only meant that I shaved earlier than usual this morning.’

  ‘You should have tried sleeping.’

  ‘I power-napped. I’m fine.’

  ‘Standing up? I mean, I understand the benefits of power-napping, Lieutenant. I’ve done it a lot myself. Great for giving the appearance of being weary while staying alert for the next escape opportunity. Somehow, it also taught me to stay alert enough while sedated. But it takes a cruel environment to compel that kind of need. How much crueler can the army be compared to a psychiatric hospital?’ She expected there to be only one reason for a soldier. ‘Have you spent a lot of time in a war zone?’

  He hesitated, and she could almost hear the memory surfacing until he shifted his feet and the thought vanished. ‘Not in this life, ma’am. You’ve got your own war zone to contend with. I know it’s hard after everything you’ve been through. Depression can knock you pretty hard the first time you dodge a bullet. The shakes can hit you unexpectedly too. Just stay focused on your goal, not the pitfalls around you. If you want your friend back safely, keep that happy picture in your head and you’ll either achieve it or die trying. No shame in that. No reason to fear death either. It’s happening anyway, so you might as well make peace with the idea.’

  ‘Actually, the real me died a decade ago when I lost my sight. You’re dodging the point.’

  ‘Am I?’ He walked away from her briefly, but the room seemed so electrified by his presence she could still feel him as if he hadn’t let her go. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, gravitating back to her, ‘you’ve been reborn. You burn more passionately for your independence than anyone I’ve ever known. To see you … to watch you … well, it’s hard not to be inspired by you.’

  ‘Ha! What good does it do me? I can’t even think of being reinstitutionalised without being struck numb with depression. Yet you choose this life, voluntarily?’

  ‘Maybe I like the MREs.’ He laughed, sounding a little nervous. ‘That’s Meals Ready to Eat. Are you hungry?’

  Mira’s stomach rumbled at the reminder that she’d missed lunch. A certain sore spot in her throat also warned that she’d been forced to swallow a tube to have her stomach pumped while unconscious — not an uncommon experience for her either, considering how many times she’d tried to escape institutions by dying and if staff had ever needed to clear her system to reduce the risk of mixing too many medications, it was the first thing they did. Her belly couldn’t be any emptier, yet her nerves kept her too upset to keep food down. ‘Not until I’m away from here.’

  ‘Let’s do it then.’ He leaned away from her briefly, as if reaching for the pile of clothes, but she trembled and froze again.

  ‘Would it help,’ he asked, ‘if I could prove that it won’t change who you really are?’

  Curiosity raised her brow. ‘How exactly?’

  Clasping her hand, he drew her fingers back to his cheek, but encouraged her to explore further down his neck this time, and around his throat and Adam’s apple as far as his collarbone. There she found a soft pad of hair in the vee of his top three open buttons.

  ‘See?’ he said, sounding amused. ‘It’s still all me underneath.’

  Embarrassed but also intrigued, her hand trembled, at first wanting to pull away, yet she didn’t really care if she embarrassed herself with him — not nearly so much as she cared about impressing Ben. Lockman was just a soldier — a uniform — and she needed to know as much as she could about him if she was ever going to escape him and his kind eventually. He might even be the one with a weakness that she could exploit.

  She explored further down his shirt, lightly trying to feel through the material to judge if his chest grew hairier or perhaps cleaner like Ben’s as the vee of his torso narrowed towards his belt.

  Just as she began to form the image of a lightly haired chest and well-muscled stomach in her mind, her fingers found his belt and he leaned away.

  ‘Woah,’ he said, gathering her fingers and drawing them level again with his chest. ‘You’d better keep those magic hands up here, I think.’ His tone suggested she’d taken him off guard somehow.

  He leaned again and took the shirt from the pile, flapping it open with a snap that made a breeze beside her. ‘Here, put this on,’ he said, wrapping it about her shoulders. ‘Your blouse and skirt are skimpy enough to keep on underneath.’ He pulled her closer to assist her arms into it. ‘How’s that?’ he asked, doing up only one button before hesitating awkwardly, then standing back to let her attend to the ones over her breasts.

  ‘Stiff,’ she said of the heavy cotton.

  ‘Yeah, I just had the same problem. You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘I certainly hope not!’

  Rustling more plastic as he opened the next packet, Lockman then snapped the air with her trousers, but instead of helping her to put them on, he handed them to her and moved away. ‘Your skirt should bunch up okay.’

  Part of her was grateful. It seemed as if he could already appreciate how much she naturally resented too much help from anyone. She slipped off her sandals first; however, pulling up the trousers, she felt her short skirt riding up her thighs.

  ‘I’m not looking,’ Lockman said. His boots shuffled as if he did turn away, but Mira had no way of knowing if he’d lied.

  She decided it didn’t matter in his case.
After ten years of round-the-clock nursing, she couldn’t resent the loss of her personal freedoms any more than she already did — and unlike the hopes she’d held for Ben, she held none for Lockman. He was just a uniform, she told herself again, and she’d expected him to lie to her sooner or later.

  She did need his help, though, to lace up the boots. She’d never worn anything like them before.

  ‘The smallest on base,’ he said, sounding amused as he crouched at her feet, ‘and still a little too big.’

  Mira sighed. ‘They feel like concrete.’ After a life mostly barefoot or in light slip-on shoes, she felt awkward and clumsy. He slid her soft-soled sandals into deep pockets below her knees, and when she teetered despite the evenly distributed weight, he set her steady on her feet; her whole balance thrown out by strapping such weighty boots around her fine-boned ankles. No doubt it looked silly to him as a sighted person, she thought, but since she relied so heavily on balance to function with an invisible body, the boots instantly became the worst part of the uniform. She stumbled on her first step.

  Lockman caught her and stifled a chuckle. ‘Perhaps you’d better practise a minute, before we leave. You look like I did when I got my first pair as a kid.’

  ‘Oh, and how old was that?’ she sneered, trying to hate him for laughing at her. ‘Same time you were learning to walk?’

  ‘Ten actually. When I hit double figures my grandmother decided it was time I stopped running around the bush barefoot. First day I wore trousers too, come to think of it, but she had to knock me out first with a belly full of her famous birthday cake, or else she never could have caught me. Come on,’ he added, taking hold of Mira’s elbow so gently that he reminded her unexpectedly of Ben. ‘First turn is the hardest.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Mira sat in the deepest corner of the refrigerated delivery truck with her eyes closed.

  Lockman had supplied her with an arctic jacket to keep out the cold, but as a small team of canteen staff loaded light crates of cold goods and empty cardboard boxes around her, the bulky warmth provided no comfort. She couldn’t stop thinking about Ben and his mother, who must surely dread the slightest thought of her by now.

  Mira rubbed her temples, feeling another headache coming on. Perhaps if she could explain to Mel about how much effort was being put into getting Ben back safely? Or could apologise and explain how it wasn’t entirely her fault? Events had been in motion for years before Mira had even met him.

  A detour to the hospital was impossible, she’d been told, since Mel could be cheese in a trap as a test to see if Mira was really ‘dead’. So for Ben’s sake, she needed to stay well away from all the places that Greppia might expect her to be. In that respect, leaving the airbase at all was a risk, but Mira felt a certain degree of safety in seeking out the heart of the problem while the Greppias would be avoiding certain hotspots themselves. For her, it was much like a tactic she’d often employed at Serenity with staff while attempting to escape — attack when and where they’d least expected it.

  The purr and chilly breath of refrigeration made her shiver. Then she remembered the secure phone that Lockman had loaned her, which was still in her shirt pocket, inside the uniform. She wondered why he hadn’t retrieved it. He must have seen it.

  Outside, she heard him coordinating a rendezvous with another vehicle in a way that, to any goons with the benefit of a long-distance eavesdropper, would have sounded like arrangements to meet a mate and go fishing — just as soon as he was finished escorting MPs back to the scene of the ambush. That gave her a few more minutes alone before he assigned someone to ride in the back of the truck with her.

  Calling the hospital to check on Mel was impossible, however, since she couldn’t figure out how to navigate the screen menu. She needed a phone with braille keypads. Hearing Pobody and Patterson climb into the truck with her, she stashed it back inside the uniform.

  ‘I thought you guys were on a break?’ she asked.

  ‘Break’s over,’ Patterson replied. ‘Time to make money.’ He snapped a clip on his weapon, which Mira pictured to be the size of a cannon, but as he slumped against the wall beside her, she realised it must have been much smaller.

  ‘Is that your Desert Eagle?’ she asked, trying to determine how he felt about taking orders from Lockman after being so deftly disarmed by him.

  ‘Don’t remind him.’ Pobody chuckled. ‘It was under his arse the whole time. Bloody idiot.’

  ‘That’s Staff Sergeant Bloody Idiot to you, Sergeant Nobody. Don’t think marrying my sister-in-law gives you any privileges.’

  ‘Yeah, well you should have known you can’t sell a weapon over the net without licensing delays and proof of purchase.’

  Mira frowned, realising they were talking about the internet — a technology which remained as alien to her as mobile phones and TV.

  ‘You try arguing with a Glock up your nose!’ Patterson punched the side wall of the truck to end the argument.

  Roller doors rattled as the back closed up and the engine jolted to life.

  ‘Do you still have the taser?’ Mira asked. ‘You should sit on it. Take turns, and consider it penance.’

  ‘Lockman did that already,’ Patterson complained. ‘Last thing before he took off with you. My balls are still blue.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Pobody said. ‘No hard feelings for a while, that’s for sure.’

  Mira grinned, but as the invisible truck jarred through gears and she hovered towards the main security checkpoint, she wondered why they’d come back for more. ‘Why volunteer to work with me then? Surely Garland would have kept you on the case at a distance anyway?’

  ‘Brownie points,’ Pobody replied. ‘Garland offered them to everybody.’

  ‘She bribed you?’

  ‘Bribes are illegal,’ Patterson said. ‘Nothing wrong with bonus pay, or cushier assignments after a dirty job, though.’

  After almost an hour, the truck pulled into a warehouse behind a ghostly convoy of other military supply trucks that were already loading for a long trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

  Lockman was there too, waiting for her, and explained the whole scene of his double-ruse to her as he retrieved her from the truck and led her to a smaller passenger vehicle.

  ‘It’s a khaki van with army plates,’ he explained as if that might make her feel safer.

  ‘What about Ben’s car? Where is it?’

  ‘Back at the base. Turns out there was a talking watch and walking stick in the trunk, both of which had GPS features that Patterson used to track you after your friend’s little switch-a-roo. Greppia might have a bead on them now too. In any case, it’s parked in the open as a kind of sign that nobody’s come to collect your body yet.’ He slapped a cap on her head and hurried her into the front passenger seat of the invisible van. ‘You’re now hiding in plain sight. There’s a clipboard in the pocket of your door, so you’ll have an excuse to keep your head down as if you’re reading or jotting crime-scene notes for the real investigators.’ He handed a pen to her too, but as he greeted Corporals Lyn Cinq and Davit Uno, she noticed the pen was much thicker and heavier than most.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, hearing Lockman still close outside her open window. ‘Has it got a GPS built in?’

  ‘Nah, that’s an inventory pen. Anything you write is digitised for transfer to PC, but today it’s just a prop for show with the clipboard. No need to get out of the car at all — at least until I meet you at the beach and give the all clear.’

  ‘You’re not coming with me?’

  ‘I’ll be right behind you in my truck with Pobody and Patterson.’

  Doors opened all around her and the van rocked as three more people climbed in and someone who smelled strongly of floral deodorant started the engine.

  Lockman’s footsteps led him away, sounding slow and reluctant.

  ‘Hey, Lieutenant!’ Mira called. ‘Don’t sound so worried. I dare say you’ll still earn your brownie points if you lose me.’


  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘Ask the sergeants,’ she scowled at him. ‘They’re the ones who explained it to me.’

  ‘Glad to see you’re okay,’ Uno said as the van pulled into traffic.

  It took a moment before Mira realised he was talking to her. He sounded genuine, and Cinq did too as she chimed in, yet Mira didn’t bother responding with anything more than a nod. She fully intended on keeping her mouth shut all the way to the beach.

  Not her eyes.

  She trusted Cinq and Uno least of all, since they’d already confessed to playing both sides of the surveillance game while assigned to Kitching’s team in order to watch him. They’d also expressed a keen interest in knowing more about her. Suspicious, she thought, since security teams, as best as she could guess, were supposed to be keener at keeping secrets than discarding them — unless they really were double agents, which didn’t do anything for bolstering her confidence. They might dart off with her as a gift for Greppia.

  Keeping her hand in her pocket on Lockman’s phone, she wished she could use it but also tried to tell herself not to be paranoid. She tried to focus on the motions of the truck travelling through traffic — stopping at lights while trucks and other vehicles burst through her. It wasn’t long before she began to dread the slowing down motion for any corner.

  She imagined the indicators ticking softly and counted every second at every intersection as far as the entrance to the beach car park, where she couldn’t get out swiftly enough. She ran to the nearest palm tree and threw up, while behind her, she heard Cinq and Uno stifling their laughter.

  Lockman came to her side within moments with a clean rag and patted her back. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded, still bent against a palm tree. ‘Just travel sick.’

  ‘They have to laugh,’ he whispered. ‘It’s what we’d do if you were really one of us.’

  She wiped her face and stood up, glad to hear they still thought of her as different, despite the uniform. Scratching her collar where it itched her skin, she retrieved the clipboard and pen from the van and binned the rag, hearing Cinq and Uno set about their own investigations amidst the other invisible MPs who were already on duty, hunting clues on the beach.