The Mouse

by Lauretta Hignett

  The girls’ sobs quietened, and she looked at Sunny first in confusion, then in horror. “Mi dios, estoy siendo rescatado por un idiota de mierda,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

  Sunny quickly broke the link of the handcuffs with her bolt cutters, and took the girl’s hand.

  The girl looked at her with big swimming eyes. “Quiero a mi mama.”

  “It’s okay; we’ll get you out of here.”

  Sunny prayed that the tigers were enough of a distraction for the rest of the guards, and she tore out of the room with the little girl. They headed out towards the terrace and she lifted the girl down to the ground. The shouts of the guards beyond the house reached her ears. It made her heart race faster than her legs. Together, they sped off past the tennis courts, keeping to the dense bush all around, staying out of plain sight. They reached a fence at the edge of the property, and Sunny quickly worked the wire with the bolt cutters until they could wrench a small section of the fencing aside to crawl through.

  Holding hands, they ran down a beautiful tree-lined street, and Sunny looked frantically around for someone to help. Terrifying scenarios ran through her head. How was she to know who to trust? The girl might end up in similar hands that she’d just escaped from. Or worse.

  They ran for a while, until they were well out of sight of the mansion and in a more suburban area. Sunny spotted a small playground and saw a chance for respite. She pulled the little girl that way, and they hid in a red plastic tunnel that led to a tiny slide. Panting, they looked at each other.

  “A dónde vamos?”

  “It’s ok. I’m trying to figure out what to do. Um, you see, I didn’t plan this. I just saw you in there, and I had to get you out, I’m sorry…” The reality of her situation was starting to hit Sunny. She could have easily gotten the girl killed.

  The girl stared. “No tienes idea de qué hacer, cierto? Es esto una maldita broma?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I don’t really know what I’m doing, you see.”

  The girl seemed to realize she needed to take charge. “Necesitamos conseguir un teléfono.”

  “Telephone! Yep, I got that one. Great idea. Yes, we can do that. Wait here.”

  Sunny entered the Alternate, flew off to a nearby house and found a cordless phone in the kitchen. She threw it out the window into some bushes at the edge of the playground and floated back to the little girl. They crept over to the phone, Sunny picked it up and handed it to the girl, who turned it on and dialled quickly.

  “Mamá? Hay Dios, si ma, soy yo! Por favour ven por mi… Estoy en un parquet de juegos en la esquina de la calle Mercy… Si, una mujer inglesa muy extraña me rescató! Nos estamos encondiendo aqui, apúrate por favour!”

  She switched off the phone and looked at Sunny.

  “Ahora sólo nos queda esperar.”

  “Uh, ok. I’m guessing you got through to your mum. I hope she’s on the way”.

  They slumped in the red tunnel for twenty minutes until they finally heard engines coming towards them. Sunny held the girl back and peeked out. A black limousine was coming this way, with flags on the bonnet, flanked by two police motorbikes. The girl pushed past Sunny to look out.

  “No, don’t, it’s some kind of politician or something.” Sunny tried to push her back to the safety of the tunnel.

  “Mamá! Papá!” The girl pushed past Sunny and scrambled down towards the limo. The doors opened, and a well-dressed couple rushed out, the man tall and stately, with tears streaming down to his impressive moustache. The woman, expensively dressed, her hair in a bun, was sobbing openly.

  They all met at the corner of the playground and fell into each other’s arms.

  Well, I guess I’ll be headed home then, thought Sunny hazily.

  Chapter 6

  “Desdemona? Desdemona? Are you fucking kidding me?” Annabel’s voice was as shrill as a ringing bell. “I can’t believe he would do that. To not only not give you the role that you were made for, but to give you the insipid drippy girl part instead.”

  Sunny, Annabel and Simon were in the hallway at school, looking up at the noticeboard at the castings in disbelief. Simon’s mouth hung open, and a little bit of drool escaped.

  “Probably just getting back at me for making a mockery of his auditions. If anyone should have gotten Iago, it should have been him.” Sunny tried to match Annabel’s outrage, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  She had an emotional hangover from a week ago, and she was still exhausted.

  After she saw the little Colombian girl reunited with her parents, she’d gone home – or rather, she tried to. Turns out, navigating is harder when you actually have a destination in mind, rather than just randomly gliding around the world. She’d come down in several African countries, twice in Indonesia and had bunny-hopped all over the east coast of Australia before she’d finally found Forster. She came down in her bedroom and back to Reality, and slumped on her bed, shaking.

  The enormity of the situation sunk in. It had been easy to ignore while Sunny was happily testing out her powers – the Alternate had a dream-like quality, and it was simple to forget that this was real life and not just a fantasy.

  But the truth was; she could have easily gotten that little girl killed, she could have been beaten to death, or trapped there forever. She didn’t know who was on the right side and who was on the wrong side. Her powers were iffy too – navigation was difficult, she didn’t speak any other languages.

  And she was probably responsible for a couple of guards getting eaten by an angry tiger.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t get more scared, another frightening idea occurred to her: What would happen if someone found out about her power? She’d be in danger, of course. Someone would want to use her for their own ends. Sunny had watched enough crappy blockbusters to know that someone with a power was usually either blackmailed into doing something dodgy, or targeted for death by a jealous supervillain.

  She was still sitting on her bed freaking out when her dad came home. She’d shot downstairs and into his arms, sobbing. He settled on the couch, hugging her while she cried and got snot all over his nice Ralph Lauren shirt. He didn’t say a word, no doubt clued in by Steph on her menstrual state.

  For once she appreciated Steph’s meddling.

  She had been too scared to try anything else. She stayed nice and solid all weekend and avoided all situations where she became happy and relaxed.

  By Monday she was sick of it. She’d been given a gift and she was going to use it. There was so much she could do! Scout out enemy strongholds, spy on criminals, provide information so that they could be taken down. The civil war in Korea was a big one – there were so many mysteries that she could help solve. Where were the Allied soldiers taken? Where was the Republic army going to move to next? And just how were they managing to short out all the electrical objects in the country?

  Sunny had beat herself up about being a coward enough, and her courage was starting to creep back. She experimented with her gift, sticking strictly to home ground, drifting through the streets and beachside, over the lakes and forests of Forster. She also studied her globe a bit more, getting familiar with the shapes of all the continents and countries, their mountains and lakes, and she memorised major landmarks to help her navigation skills.

  She thought, a lot. About what she could do, how she could help people, and how she was going to find them so that she could help them.

  And now, in the hallways at Forster High, she was still thinking.

  And getting nowhere fast. Simon, misreading her depression as being upset about the play, gave her an awkward hug. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’d be good as Desdemona too. “

  “That would be a comfort, Si, but I see that Jake Henderson is playing Othello. Which means he gets to strangle me, on the night of the play, and every rehearsal. Twice a week for six weeks, then two shows and a matinee. I’m sure he’s creaming in his pants.”

  Annabel snorted. “Can�
��t you complain? That guy is such an asshole. You don’t want his hands anywhere near you, let alone choking you. That dickhead Cresants has given Jake his best fantasy on a plate!” She stopped and did her best voice-over impression. “Mr Cresants. Putting the ‘dick’ in ‘vindictive’ since 1958.”

  Sunny sighed. “Yeah. I’ll handle it. I want to do the play – I think I need the distraction right now. Some stability, you know?”

  “I think you’re right.” Annabel perked up. “We’ll volunteer as extras, crew and stuff to keep you company and give you some back-up. Simon, you could play a tree. You’d make a great tree.”

  They picked up their sushi from the canteen and headed to their usual lunch table outside, passing Jake and his goons on the way. Jake was in the middle of a loud dramatic story that involved him waving his arms around a lot, but he paused when he spotted Sunny.

  “Hey Sunshine, did you hear the good news?” He yelled across to her. “I get to do you like a black guy!” He leered and did a couple of pelvic thrusts in her direction.

  “Not only an asshole, but a racist asshole,” Annabel threw at him as they passed.

  “You forgot sexist,” Sunny deadpanned.

  “Oh yeah, sexist, racist asshole. Sexist, racist, dickhead ugly asshole. Sorry.”

  They lounged around the lunch table, morosely shovelling sushi into their mouths. Simon and Annabel bickered about the right way to hold chopsticks. Annabel was for the traditional hold, delicately balancing each pink piece of pickled ginger onto her inari and nigari. Simon preferred to use one stick as a spear to skewer each little piece before shoving it into his mouth. And only because they didn’t have California rolls, which he could just hold with both hands and eat, and dispense with the chopsticks altogether.

  “You know, I’m surprised that there’s any sushi left in the ocean,” Simon said.

  Annabel and Sunny exchanged a look.

  “Why’s that, Si?”

  “Because the Japanese eat so much of it. Hell, we eat lots of it. There can’t be much sushi left in the sea, what with everyone wrapping it in rice and seaweed and serving it up. They should probably start eating sardines or some other type of fish instead, and let the sushi breed up their numbers again.”

  The girls just looked at him.

  “I saw a documentary about fish sustainability the other day,” Simon said defensively. “I just think that they should try and use some other type of fish for a change, instead of sushi. We eat too much of it.”

  “…Uh, Si, sushi is not a type of fish. It’s a food with fish in it.” Annabel explained.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s from the same fish though. Like bacon and ham and pork all come from pigs.”

  “Um, Simon, honey, no….” Annabel started to patiently explain the concept of sushi to him.

  Sunny tuned out. She was still deep in thought. Rescuing that little Columbian girl was amazing – even though she was shit-scared of getting her killed, it was the one really good thing that she’d done, super or otherwise. And it had been pure coincidence that she’d stumbled on her, so how was she going to find the people who needed help? Sunny absentmindedly waved her fingers through her sushi a few times before she picked up a piece in her hand.

  Suddenly, she realized what she had done, and she froze. Her skin prickled - she looked up to see Simon staring at her.

  “Oh shit, really?” Simon stared at her, shocked.

  “Ah, Simon, I…” Sunny stuttered.

  “We are allowed to use our fingers?” He threw his chopsticks as hard as he could across the quad, narrowly missing two boys with heavy black eye-makeup and white-out skin. They wearily and malevolently dragged their eyes to the source of the chopsticks and glared at Simon.

  “Sorry!” Annabel called over.

  “You could have aimed for the femoral artery,” one of them muttered miserably. His sad, dead eyes recommenced staring at the ground.

  Sunny was keen to change the subject. “Where is the femoral artery, anyway?”

  “In your groin,” Simon said with his mouth stuffed full of sushi.

  “Really? Gross.” Sunny glanced at Simon again, and an idea came to her.

  Simon had an uncle in the army. Military Intelligence. She could go to him, spy on him for a while, find out who needed help, and give it to them... Sunny squared her shoulders and tried to act casual.

  “How did you know that, Si? Was it something your Army Uncle taught you?” That should be a nice subtle lead-in.

  “Actually, yeah. He’s pretty fascinated with pressure points and kill zones, as he calls them.”

  Sunny looked down at her sushi. “So, have you been to his work with him before? Where does he work, anyway? At an army base somewhere?”

  “Naw, he mostly works in Sydney. Right in the city, actually.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  “In an office building just off Martin Place. There’s a Krispy Creme right downstairs.”

  Well, that was handy. For the first time, she knew exactly where to go.

  Later that afternoon after a mind-numbing calculus session and two furious games of netball in P.E, Sunny made her excuses and had taken off right from school. She figured she had at least three hours of reconnaissance before she was missed at home. She walked to the school gates and took a sharp left, right into the dense bushes on the school’s perimeter, where students often went to ditch class or smoke and for cheeky pash sessions. She stashed her schoolbag behind a huge oak tree and went into the Alternate.

  She was still overwhelmed by the beauty of this other, more vivid world. The trees were so alive, so green and shimmering beautiful. She floated up and up, looking down at the school. It seemed like a tiny toy model in seconds. Then she looked south and followed the coastline down to Sydney.

  Having lived in the city for most of her life, it wasn’t too hard to navigate to Martin Place, and she found the Krispy Kreme in no time at all. She had a tiny battle with herself - it smelt so good in there but there was nowhere she could hide to come into Reality and grab a donut. She had no money, anyway. Trying to banish the thought of stuffing an Original Glazed whole into her mouth, she floated up through the ceiling.

  First floor… nothing. Just a big open office space, not even any desks or phone lines around. The second floor was the same, on the third floor there was some office divisions, and a waiting room space. It looked like storage space, but near the elevator there was a desk with a nondescript man behind it staring intently at a computer screen. Behind him, there was a discrete sign with an insignia, and the words Australian Intelligence Corps.

  Bingo.

  She floated up again and found another office teeming with people. It was a huge open-plan space with lots of desks and computer screens, with some walled-off glass offices in the corners. There were screens dotted around the walls, displaying random pictures of map locations and statistics and various blurry faces of men and women.

  This looks like a good place to start, thought Sunny, and she drifted towards one of the offices.

  The first office held a big balding man, wearing a boxy uniform and shouting into his phone. His internal colours were red and sort of swirly-snarly, which seemed a good reflection of his highly strung bully-boy persona. Or was it the other way around? Sunny eavesdropped for a while and snooped around the office a bit. She got a look at one of his badges – Major-General Richard Stephenson. Simon’s uncle, Bingo! She was unashamedly smug at having found him so quickly.

  The more Sunny snooped and eavesdropped on Major-General Stephenson, the less she wanted to. He was brash and terribly rude and seemed quite racist at times. He was dealing with something to do with the situation in North Korea – trying to predict the Republic Army’s movements in an area where satellite and radio were useless. He was unconcerned with what he called ‘acceptable civilian loss’ when it came to his operations, which meant the death of innocent North Korean citizens - many who were victims themselves of an oppressive and all-pervading regime
. Sunny wasn’t sure she could help him, or if she even wanted to.

  Disheartened, she drifted out of his office and into another one. There, she found an older man behind his desk in a similar uniform; his salt and pepper hair and striking moustache seemed to be trimmed with the use of geometry tools. There was another man with very short dark hair in the chair in front of him; they appeared to be having a meeting about the missing Allied soldiers in the war zone. The older commander was brusque, stern even, but not nearly as rude as Simon’s uncle.

  The man he was talking to – sitting in the chair with his back to her – was a lot younger. He was obviously not a general or a commander or anything high-up like that. His voice was deep and smooth, so she let herself listen to him for just a moment.

  He was also business-like, but he seemed genuinely worried about the missing soldiers. She could see his colours glowing around the back of his chair, slowly swirling golden, the bright orange colour of the rising sun. It was hypnotising, and she let her eyes relax on his back for a while and listened to their conversation absently, drifting near the door of the office. On impulse, she decided to take a closer look at this soldier who cared about these men as humans, rather than assets in a chess game. She drifted towards the desk and -

  Wow.

  He was young, probably not much older than her, mid-to-late twenties perhaps. He was tall – lots taller than her, she guessed, but that wasn’t hard. Six one, maybe six two. His dark hair was shaved very short, but it looked so thick that it would soon get out of control if he let it grow. He had tan skin, and eyes so dark they flashed black and smouldered. His lips were full but were drawn in a hard line, and his square jaw had a hint of stubble – he was obviously the kind of guy who had to shave every day. There was a small scar through his right eyebrow.

  What was he doing here? It was strange to see a guy not much older than herself having a serious meeting with one of the head honchos of Military Intelligence. She focused on the conversation for a moment – he seemed to be giving logistical information to the older man, who interjected every now and then with some details of his own. The longer she listened, the more mature he appeared to her. He was focused, detailed, knowledgeable, and respectful of the general but very full of authority himself. Maybe he was a lot older than he seemed.