by Kim Curran
She was right. Someone had told the Red Hand we were coming earlier, I was sure of it. “I don’t know. But we have to tell someone. Sergeant Cain?”
“No,” Aubrey said. “We need to take it higher than him. We need to take it to the Minister of Defence.”
CHAPTER TEN
We stood in front of an enormous metal door covered in bolts and dials. Aubrey hesitated next to me, as if waiting for me to do something. Then, with the tiniest of shakes of her head, stepped forward and pushed a button.
Machinery whirred in response.
“Identify,” a computerised voice snapped.
“Captain Jones and Commandant Tyler,” Aubrey said, with only the slightest of pauses. The door hissed and slid open.
The room inside looked exactly like I’d imagined the interior of Number Ten Downing Street to look. Dark wood panels, a large oak desk with green banker’s lamps. It looked like the Minister of Defence had made himself a home from home.
Two guards stood to attention, guns held to their chests. They didn’t even acknowledge our presence as we stepped into the room.
A slim, dark-haired man stood with his back to the door, bending down over something on the table. Somehow, I knew this was his way of proving he was unafraid. A paranoid man would always sit facing the door. A man with nothing to fear wouldn’t even look up when another person entered the room. Which made me wonder: what were all the bolts on the door and armed guards for?
This man was trying to manipulate appearances and hide the truth. Just like me.
He slowly straightened and turned around. I recognised Benjamin Vine, the Prime Minister from an old, old reality. In that reality, Vine’s daughter had been killed by Ella – one of Frankie’s puppets. Pushed off a cliff on a school holiday as Frankie put her pieces in place. That loss had driven him into politics and all the way to the top job. What had made him become a minister this time? Had his daughter died in the war?
He had always looked as if the responsibility of power weighed heavily on him. And now, it looked to be crushing him. His hair was greying at the temples, his skin pale and pasty, there were purple circles under his eyes. The eyes themselves, though, were sharp and bright. His suit had seen better days. Without even thinking, I scanned it and noticed the smudge of ink on his cuff, the faint patches of dust on his knees. Had he been praying?
The level of awareness I was experiencing ever since the battle was scaring me. It was as if my eyes didn’t belong to me anymore. More of the version of me from this reality overriding my conscious thoughts.
“Ah, Commandant Tyler,” Vine said, clicking the button on a silver pen and placing it carefully on the table so it lined up perfectly with the sheet of paper he’d been writing on. “Good of you to visit me. I hear you have been very busy.”
Vine’s eyes took in my bruises, passing over me and then looking to Aubrey.
“And you must be Captain Jones. Congratulations on the mission. Zero casualties. Impressive. We’re glad to have you on board.”
A strange stab of competitive jealousy jabbed at me. I’d failed where Aubrey had shone, and I didn’t like it. I pushed the alien feeling away.
“Thank you, sir,” Aubrey said. “Glad to be useful. Speaking of which, we gathered some intelligence from the man we took in tonight.”
He walked around his desk and lowered himself into his chair. “And you have brought this direct to me because…?”
“Because we think there might be a Red Hand spy in the division.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. I would be disappointed in our enemy if they didn’t have eyes on us at all times.”
Aubrey and I shared a look. Vine seemed to be taking the news that the S3 had been compromised very lightly.
“We think it’s Slate,” Aubrey said.
Vine’s demeanour changed. He lent back in his chair, placing both hands on his lap. “Slate? Here? Are you sure?”
“No,” Aubrey said. “But George told us that Slate is a Shifter, and Commandant Tyler…” Aubrey trailed off and looked to me.
“It’s Doctor Goodwin,” I said, utterly confident.
Vine leant forward again. “And what makes you believe this?”
“She’s a Shifter.”
“She was a Shifter.”
“I believe she still is. And more than that…” I hesitated.
Don’t tell them, that voice warned.
I ignored it. “She’s a Forcer.”
Vine reached up slowly and stroked his chin. “A Forcer? As in, she is able to push her ideas on other people? Are you sure, Tyler?”
“Positive.”
Aubrey let out a small gasp. “I thought Forcers were a rumour. Something propaganda made up.”
“There are reports in ARES’ files about the existence of Forcers in the past,” Vine said, his stare burning my cheeks. “As well as experiments they conducted in trying to trigger the power. But all have been a failure.”
“Not all of them.”
“I have known Doctor Goodwin for nearly twenty years. Don’t you think I would have noticed if she was a Forcer?”
“That’s why she’s so clever. She manipulates people indirectly. So you never see her hand at work.”
He repositioned the pen, which had rolled slightly to the right of the pad. “You yourself have worked with her for two years and yet you’ve only come to this decision now?”
“I’ve had a change of… heart.”
He didn’t seem to be buying any of this. “There is a simple way for us to rebut this. Rhys, have Doctor Goodwin meet us in the simulator room, will you?”
The guard clicked his heels, spun around and opened the door. Vine stood up, carefully buttoning his jacket using both hands. His movements were almost infuriatingly controlled and slow, each action only as big as it needed to be. It was as if he was working through a mental checklist: stand, check; suit button, check.
Aubrey and I waited as he walked past us and out into the corridor. The second guard fell into place behind the Minister and we brought up the rear.
There was the slightest hint of a limp in how Vine walked: a small scuff of his left foot with each careful stride. I wondered if it was an old injury or a fresh one. How much was Vine hiding?
My hands shook by my sides. I wasn’t sure which I was more nervous about: confronting Frankie again or seeing the simulator room?
I lost track of how many lefts and rights we’d taken. I even stopped trying to keep hold of the options as I normally did when walking around strange places, so I could Shift if I’d hit a wrong turn. Instead, I focused on not losing sight of Vine in front of me and in hiding my shaking knees from Aubrey. All I could work out was that we were being led farther away from the Hub than I’d been yet. And, I was sensing, even deeper beneath the ground.
Vine finally halted in front of a door. It had a palm lock on it like all the doors here. Vine laid his hand on it, and it swung open. Inside was a small room, with a single white leather chair in the middle. It looked like something out of a dentist’s surgery. Or an execution chamber. Above it hung a large silver dome with a trail of clear wires hanging out of it, like tentacles on an octopus.
Frankie and the guard were already waiting inside.
“What is this about, Minister?” she said. “I have patients to attend to.”
“Just a routine procedure, Doctor. Would you please take a seat?”
He moved aside, gesturing to the simulator.
Frankie saw me. “Ah, Commandant. Am I to assume that you have something to do with this?” She turned to the Minister. “You are aware Mr Tyler is suffering from an extreme reality attack?”
Vine looked over to me, a curious look on his face. “I will deal with Tyler later. For now, would you please take a seat?” There was iron in his voice that suggested she should not make him ask again.
“This is ridiculous,” Frankie said, slipping into the simulator seat. “You know this machine only works on Shifters?”
“It w
ill only take a moment of your time.” Vine walked towards the machinery next to the chair and ran his hands across the control console. “Captain Jones, if you could assist me…”
Aubrey approached the machine and pulled the helmet down over Frankie’s head. She attached the electrodes to Frankie’s skin and strapped her legs and arms in place. Aubrey had done this before, it was clear. When she had finished, she stepped aside.
“Thank you,” Vine said. “And you are a Spotter, am I correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
A Spotter was a Shifter who had the ability to sense when someone was Shifting, without the need for technology. And Aubrey was one of the best.
“Good. I’d like a second opinion in case the machinery does not give us conclusive answers.” With that, he flicked a switch.
The machine whirred and hummed. Frankie’s hands clenched on the rests of the chair and her body went stiff.
“A Forcer, if such a thing exists,” Vine said, turning the dial up on the machine, “would be a Shifter of preternatural power. They would score a… what was the level of the Shift you performed yesterday, Commandant?”
“A sixteen, sir,” I said.
“A sixteen. Impressive. We would have to assume that a Forcer then would be at least able to reach those levels, yes.”
“I… I don’t know.” I was suddenly worried he would work out that I was a Forcer. For some reason, I knew I had to keep that secret. More than me not knowing what was going on. More than wanting to get out of here. No one could know about that side of my power.
Frankie was convulsing now, her limbs thrashing. If I was right, she was facing her very worst fears in there.
“The machine is registering a zero?” Vine said. “Do you concur?”
“She’s not Shifting, if that’s what you mean,” Aubrey said, clearly uncomfortable with what we were doing to Frankie.
“Let’s turn up the test, to make sure.” He twisted again.
Frankie’s scream was high and desperate. Whatever she was going through, it was terrifying.
“Stop it!” Aubrey shouted, moving towards Frankie.
Vine grabbed Aubrey by the arm, holding her back. “Still zero,” he said, reading from a screen on the simulator. “Let’s give her a few minutes more. So the Commandant can be convinced.” He didn’t take his eyes off me.
Frankie’s screams had turned to sobs. I knew what she was going though. I’d been there myself. She was begging for someone to kill her. For someone to end the pain. It was at this point when Abbott had subjected me to the simulators that the power to Force had awoken in me. With a word, I’d been able to make Abbott kill himself, Benjo Green munch down on a tray filled with surgical tools, and guards lie down and go to sleep.
I watched Frankie kicking and thrashing. Was she manipulating us even now? Was she managing to resist the desire to Shift herself out of the situation? All the time, the lights on the machine never moved.
She let out a cry of terror. I couldn’t watch any more.
“Stop it,” I said.
“I’m sorry, what was that, Commandant Tyler?” Vine said. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”
“I said ‘stop it’, OK?”
Vine hit the switches and Frankie went limp in the chair. Aubrey quickly pushed the helmet away from Frankie’s head and unfastened the straps. Frankie’s unconscious face was pale and streaked with tears. Vine laid a hand on her wrist, patting it like soothing an elderly relative.
He turned to me. “Satisfied, Commandant?”
I was satisfied that Frankie wasn’t a Shifter. But I wasn’t satisfied that she wasn’t this Slate George had been talking about. Maybe he’d been confused. Maybe he meant an ex-Shifter. I was going to keep watching her, no matter what.
“It’s a shame, really.” Vine pulled out a white handkerchief and wiped his hands on it. “To think of the possibilities, were we able to put a Forcer in the Igloo. As it is, we’re in desperate need of a new Fixer. And the only other one we have in the division is you, Commandant Tyler.” He pushed the white cloth back into the pocket of his jacket. “But of course, we’d have to be truly desperate to consider that.”
I didn’t know what this Igloo was or why Vine needed a Fixer for it. Something about the blank way he looked at me made me realise I couldn’t let him know that.
Luckily, it seemed Aubrey had never heard of it either. “What is the Igloo, sir?”
“The Igloo, Captain Jones, is the only thing standing between us and a nuclear strike.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The room was brilliantly white, even brighter than the infirmary, with a vast, domed ceiling and curved walls. I saw now why they called it the Igloo.
As my eyes adjusted to the glare, I made out hexagonal panels covering the walls and ceilings. It reminded me of an observatory. Or like being inside a huge satellite dish.
Frankie had reluctantly led us here. I could sense her anger towards me in every sharp glance and clipped word. She kept her distance, which was fine by me.
Vine walked into the centre of the room and stopped next to a large white box that looked like an oversized sarcophagus: wider at the top than at the bottom with a slight bulge at the top for a head.
“This” – he laid his hand on the coffin-like box – “is the heart of the Igloo – the Eskimo.”
The box had a glass window at the head. What I saw through it made my head spin.
I recognised that face: the dark eyes that stared out unseeing through the glass, those purple lips stretched across a too-wide face. His flesh gathered in pools around his jaw onto the silver pillow propping his head up.
The Eskimo – the man apparently responsible for the safety of the country – was Benjo Green. The man who had tried to eat me. Twice. The man I’d broken out of ARES to help me defeat Frankie. The man who had held on to his Shifter power by consuming the brains of other Shifters.
What little hair he’d had had been shaved off, and his head was covered in rows of silver electrodes. Only, they didn’t look as if they were stuck on. They looked as if they had been drilled into his skull.
“Is he conscious?” I asked.
“Of course,” Frankie snapped. “If he was unconscious, he’d hardly be able to Fix. We keep him pumped full of amphetamines to make sure of it. But all non-essential areas of his brain have been put into a comatose state. It’s a very delicate balance of chemicals.”
Chemicals. That seemed to be her answer for everything. I thought of the painkillers in my pocket; the ache in my leg was gnawing.
“How does it work?” Aubrey asked.
“The machine” – Vine looked up at the ceiling – “amplifies his brain waves, extending the focus and reach of his Fixing ability.”
Seeing Benjo like this – reduced to nothing more than a cog in a machine – made me realise how Vine and the rest of this reality truly saw Shifters. Not heroes as Zac had said, but tools to be used. Like me and my team. Expendable. And yet, as much as the uneasiness squirmed in my stomach like an eel, I respected it, too. I was as sickened with myself as I was Vine.
“What I am about to tell you is beyond classified.” Vine pulled at a thread on one of his buttons. “You may have heard rumours about a nuclear strike on this country?”
Aubrey and I exchanged looks and then nodded.
“It’s correct. The strike happened in September 2010. We understand,” Vine continued, “that it wiped out the whole of London, killing millions upon millions in minutes. We don’t know who was responsible. Our best bet is that it was an ex-Russian nuke auctioned off to the highest bidder. What we do know is that there was a Shift registered on that day. A Shift that was off the charts. Way, way above even your abilities, Commandant Tyler. From the information our scientists have been able to gather, we have been able to deduce that there was a Shifter on their side. Who, upon seeing the unparalleled death… well, we’re not entirely sure, but we presume they altered a choice that somehow led to the strike. What choice
they unmade, we will never know. But we do know that we can’t have them or any other Shifter on their side – on any side – altering the delicate confluence of choices that led to them standing down with the strike. So, Mr Green here stops that strike from happening and ensures that the overall reality in which this country endures stays firmly in place.”
I was unable to take my eyes off Benjo’s sunken face. The man who had been one of the biggest threats to Shifters was now our saviour. “How long has he been here?”
“Three years,” Vine said. “We arrested Mr Green for, well, you don’t need to know the details, other than to say he was given a choice: death by lethal injection or this. He made the right choice.”
I laid my hand on the glass. I hated Benjo. Yet I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He’d become the lab rat he’d always feared.
“And you don’t think he has long left?” Aubrey said, peering down on him, disgust curling her lips.
Frankie adjusted the controls on the machine. “We’ve been monitoring his brain activity, and we don’t think he can stand the strain for much longer.”
“And you want to do this to another Fixer?” Aubrey said.
“It’s not a matter of wanting, Captain Jones,” Vine said. “It’s a case of needing. Without this deterrent, we will be vulnerable.”
I stared at Benjo. His black, button eyes, which used to glint with a twisted, terrifying intelligence, were now dead and blank. How much, I wondered, was he aware of? Did he sense us here? Did he want to break free and punish everyone?
A shudder passed through me. I was a Fixer. Would they put me in there? Drain me till I was nothing more than a shell? Then any chance of undoing my decisions would be over for ever. No, there had to be another way to end the war.
“Perhaps we will find a Fixer in our new batch of recruits. Has your sister shown any potential in that regard?” Vine continued without looking at me.
“My sister? You mean Katie? What has she got to do with anything?” I said.
“Well, we had hoped she might turn out to be another Fixer. I’ll have a full report once the cadets have gone through the final stage of their training next week…”