The Mouse

by Lauretta Hignett

  “Fine,” she said, standing. “I’ll go now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. I got a couple more hours before I gotta be home to babysit… I mean… oh, shoot.”

  “Mouse, relax. I’m not going to use anything against you. You can drop small nuggets of information about yourself; I won’t use it, and I promise I won’t ask you anything that could give you away.”

  “Huh. I guess I’m pretty useful to you then, hey?”

  “I just wish I could go.” He was suddenly grim.

  The thought of him in that hellhole gave her the creeps, no matter how badass secret agent he was. She stood up. “No, I got this.”

  “Ok. Just grab whatever you can that you think looks useful and come back here. I’ve got a Korean for Beginners book for you to take home and study later.” He smiled quickly and became serious again. “And Mouse…”

  “Yeah?” She was suddenly in a hurry to go so that she could come back sooner.

  “Whatever you do, don’t become visible. Not even for a second. Promise me.” His eyes bored deep into hers.

  “I promise,” she said, and disappeared. As she flew up in the air, she heard Hunter sigh –

  “Use the door…”

  Chapter 12

  It was early afternoon over Korea, and the sun blazed high in the sky. The landscape looked very different in the sunshine – the cities were orderly and oddly clean, with some quite bizarre architecture. She soared through beautiful rolling hills and mountains and passed lots of scrub land and rambling farms.

  She passed the creeping border between South and North Korea. The fighting had cut a deep swathe in the land. Because no electrical devices were working within range of the Republic’s new territory, the battle was reduced to pre-WW1 weapons – lots of heavy artillery but no means of projecting anything too far, so no massive bombs had gone off.

  Not yet, anyway, Sunny thought grimly.

  She’d been following the situation in the news – or what little information they could get to report. The whole of North Korea was a black zone; even satellite imagery was coming through blurred and incomprehensible. The reports were reduced to what was happening just behind the front lines where the Allied soldiers were occupied trying to push back the North Korean army. The invaders had captured lots of territory in South Korea, and the country was rapidly disappearing.

  So far the Allied troops - Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and a few other countries - were openly opposing North Korea and had sent troops to help South Korea in the fighting. All the other typically communist countries that would ordinarily support North Korea against the Allies – Russia, China, and Italy – were distancing themselves from the conflict as much as they could. It seemed that Kim Min-Jun had crossed some kind of insane-dictator line, and it had freaked all the other insane dictators out.

  It was the secrecy, Sunny decided. No one in the world knew what Kim Min-Jun was doing, what weaponry he had, and what his ultimate plans were. His ability to knock out all electrical machinery in a huge radius around the front lines was unheard of. He was making the whole world uncomfortable.

  She might be the only person in the world that could find out how they were doing it.

  First, her mission. She found the compound after a quick search and went down. She landed softly in the middle of the parade ground. It seemed quieter in the early afternoon – maybe all the soldiers were having a tea break or something, she thought, looking around. She went over to the big grey double doors to the administration building and flew straight through.

  She drifted down the hallway on the first floor and glanced into each office. They were all crammed with soldiers in beige uniforms banging away on typewriters and reading notes. Filing cabinets lined the walls. Drifting further, she found a big war-room at the end of the hall. There were more officers in dark blue uniforms here than anywhere else, so it seemed like the best place to be to grab some documents.

  She followed one particular puffed-chest general as he moved tiny figurines around a huge scale model on a table. He barked orders at his secretary, who frantically jotted down notes in a notebook. The general paused, surveying the table with narrowed eyes, and the secretary placed the notebook on the table to pass him another figurine. Sunny saw her chance and grabbed the book, and stuffed it down her top.

  She was unprepared for what happened when the secretary realized the book was gone. He looked around, under the table, on the floor, eyes getting wider and wider with horror. The general in the blue uniform, realizing he was no longer being listened to, forcefully turned the secretary towards him and shouted a question at him, spraying spittle right into his face.

  The poor man whispered a response. The general’s eyes narrowed in anger. Sunny was already regretting her hasty actions when the general stepped back, drew a handgun from the belt on his waist, put it to the secretary’s forehead and fired.

  The man dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Sunny screamed.

  Every man in the office floor froze for just a second, and then carried on with whatever they were doing with careful attentiveness. The collective fear in the room was so palpable you could almost touch it. Two guards standing beside the double doors marched over, picked up the dead man and dragged him from the room.

  Sunny fled the room, horrified. What the hell was she doing, not thinking about the consequences of her actions? She whirled through the building, drifting aimlessly, trying to shake off the dreadfulness of what had just happened, and the feeling that it was all her fault. That man on the floor, brains spilling out of the back of his head… She couldn’t think straight, she wasn’t observing properly, she wasn’t taking anything in… She passed more offices, some kitchens, some very sparse sleeping quarters… and suddenly she was in a very dark stone room.

  There were no lights here, and bars ran along one side of the wall, leaving a narrow corridor. It was cold and dank; she could hear a slow drip of water somewhere. She realized she was looking at a row of cells. She was already in a nightmare; Sunny couldn’t help but go and look.

  She drifted into one of the cells. The room was empty except for a grey bucket in the corner. There was a man slumped on the floor. She floated closer, looking carefully at the man.

  He was big and broad-shouldered, with his head shaved close. He wore a torn khaki shirt and trousers, both were filthy and covered in mud. Congealed blood was smeared around the top of his head. He was wounded. Her heart contracted painfully – he reminded her of Hunter. His shoulders were shaking strangely. There was a bang at the other end of the corridor, and the man lifted his head in fear. Tears ran down his face, cutting clean swathes through the dirt on his face.

  Sunny started crying too. She desperately wanted to help but knew that she’d just give him false hope if she appeared to him. She stayed for a moment, talking out loud to him but knowing that he couldn’t hear her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m here, I see you. I’m going to do my best to help you, I promise.” The tears gushed from her eyes; they shone silver as they dripped down her nose and disappeared as they fell from her face.

  She backed away from him reluctantly and passed through the grey stone wall of his cell. She found herself in another cell, with another prisoner.

  This man was older, with a greying beard and a mop of straggly salt-and-pepper hair. He looked like he’d been here for a long time. He was lying on the ground on his back with his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. He was dirty and his army fatigues were soaked with water and blood. His internal colours – a softly pulsing blue, were fading, then reappearing and fading again.

  He was dying.

  Sunny choked back a cry. The man opened his eyes and looked directly at her and smiled faintly.

  “Jasmine,” he sighed softly. “I knew you’d come for me.” His voice was no louder than a whisper.

  He could see her? Or was he hallucinating? He was looking right at her, his eyes milky, h
is pupils huge and black. His internal light faded again; he closed his eyes. Sunny started sobbing quietly.

  “Don’t cry,” he breathed, and he opened his eyes again and looked directly into hers. “Take me with you. Take me home.” He reached out a trembling hand to her.

  She reached out her hand, and their fingertips met. She didn’t even register that she could feel him, even though she hadn’t left the Alternate. She was almost completely overcome with emotion, not able to sustain a coherent chain of thought, let alone stop to analyse what she was doing.

  The soldier’s light pulsed brighter blue; she turned her palm and grasped his hand in hers. Not even thinking about what she was doing, she pushed her vibrations into him, enveloping him completely.

  He gave a weak happy sigh as she brought him into the Alternate with her, and the pain fell from his face - it was smoother, he looked younger. She floated up, holding on to his hands tightly, and he drifted up with her effortlessly. She flew up and over, far away from the prison in seconds, leading him towards home.

  She watched his face as they flew, terrified he would die on the journey; he had seemed so close to death in that stinking cell. The spark of life within him was still flickering precariously, but he looked around in wonder at the beauty of the soaring mountains and lush green valleys that passed beneath him with his Alternate eyes.

  Sunny was almost crippled with sadness at how much he had suffered, and she sobbed unashamedly as she led him towards Hunter’s apartment. She wasn’t thinking – she couldn’t think – she just wanted to get him to a safe place. The safest place she could think of was with Hunter.

  They came down right inside Hunter’s apartment, just in front of his kitchen bench. She let go of the man’s hand, and he slumped to the floor immediately with a painful groan. His eyes opened and whirled around in shock before they closed again.

  His light was fading again.

  She heard Hunter shout as the prisoner materialized on his kitchen floor. As he came running over, she pushed back the vibrations and reappeared to him.

  “What the hell have you done?”

  Being yelled at by Hunter made her cry even harder, and she slumped to the floor.

  She watched him working over the dying prisoner, checking his vitals and identifying his injuries, she was silent as tears ran down her face.

  He looked over at her. “Go wait in my bedroom,” he said tersely. “Stay there until I come get you.”

  She fled into his room and slammed the door behind her.

  Chapter 13

  It was over an hour later he knocked on his bedroom door and came in. Sunny lay curled up on top of his duvet, staring at his walls, all cried out. She’d had to flip his pillow twice, then swap them.

  It seemed she was in the habit of soaking his pillows in some fluid or another.

  Sunny didn’t turn as he walked up to the bed.

  “You can come out now,” he said. She didn’t stir. She felt him put his hand gently on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. It’s not every day I get barely-alive English Special Forces officers materializing on my kitchen floor.”

  She lifted her head. “He was English?”

  “He still is. He’s alive.”

  She lay her head back down on the pillow. “What did you do with him?”

  “Well, that’s why I was mad when you came in. How do you think I can explain him appearing in my apartment block in Coogee when he was in a prisoner of war camp in North Korea moments before? He’s been there a long time too, from the look of him.”

  “I didn’t think,” Sunny said dully. “He was in a cell. He looked like he was dying.” She shuddered, remembering the icy cold cell and the hopeless, oppressive atmosphere of death all around her. “And somehow, he saw me. He thought I was someone called Jasmine.”

  “Mouse,” Hunter said quietly, rubbing his warm hand on her arm, “that was very brave of you. Of course you had to try and save him. It’s a miracle that you could take him with you.”

  She sat up and finally looked at him. He stood there by the bed looking serious, with a steaming mug in his hand.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the mug. “Scoot over.”

  She shifted over, putting one of the soaked pillows behind her head and sipping at the hot chocolate he gave her. He settled on the bed next to her, getting comfortable.

  “I made sure he was stable,” he explained, “then I took him downstairs to the carpark and hid him in the backseat of my car. Then I dumped him outside the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick.” Hunter sighed heavily. “I don’t think I was seen. This is going to really shake up things at the agency. Mouse, I was only angry because you’re putting yourself in danger. I told you not to be seen by anyone.”

  “I wasn’t! He thought he was seeing his dead girlfriend or something,” Sunny muttered.

  “But you’ve got to be more careful. If anyone found out what you could do…”

  Sunny felt chills. “You mean, anyone, as in, even your department at ASIS? Or Military Intelligence? Would I be in danger? I thought you were supposed to be the good guys.”

  Hunter sighed again, looking down at his hands. “Sometimes, I don’t know. Some of the older commanders are a bit… well, I don’t trust them.” He looked back up at her. “I wouldn’t trust them with you.”

  Sunny’s heart, cooled by her run-in with the prison camp, started to thump again.

  Reluctantly she got to her feet. “I’ve got to go,” she said, pulling on her jacket. “Oh! I almost forgot.” She pulled out the notebook that killed the secretary and tossed it on the bed. “Please don’t ask me how I got that. I only hope it’s very very useful.”

  “I’m sure it will be. And here, take this.” He passed her a book. She looked at the cover.

  Korean for Dummies.

  Chapter 14

  She got home in time to babysit for her dad and stepmonster. It was hardly a chore – Archie was such a gorgeous boy, and she loved having him all to herself. Her dad and Steph were going on a date-night, seeing a movie in Taree, the next town over. Steph danced around the lounge room, fluffing her long hair out and adjusting her blouse over her tanned and taunt body. Sunny watched her from the sofa with narrowed eyes, Archie on her lap.

  “Be good,” she kissed Archie on the head and gave Sunny a big smile. Ben ruffled her hair and buzzed his son’s cheeks, and they went out the door.

  “Okay, Archie boy, what do you want to do first?” She snuggled into his cheek. He smelt like crème brulee; all vanilla pods, cream and toffee. He squealed with delight and bashed her in the face with his little fist.

  “Ooof!” She giggled, feigning injury. She bundled him off to the kitchen and put him in his high chair. “Dinner time for the thug baby, I think.”

  It was nice to do something normal. Sunny felt more stable than she had done in ages; it seemed that lately, she was lurching between bowel-clenching horror in foreign countries and abject lust in Hunter’s apartment. She got some frozen sweet potato and apple out of the freezer and popped it in a bowl in the microwave. While she was waiting, she got out some pieces of chopped watermelon from the fridge and put them on the tray in front of Archie. He studied them carefully, then picked one up and slowly and deliberately mashed it into his forehead. It took a few goes before he managed to get any into his mouth, and when he did, he was very surprised. He babbled with delight and clapped his watermelon-filled hands. The juice splashed everywhere.

  Sunny giggled and got the apple and sweet potato out from the microwave. She gave it a stir and blew on it, testing the temperature against her bottom lip to make sure Archie wasn’t burnt. As she sat down at the huge scrubbed wood kitchen table to feed him, she heard her mobile go.

  It was Annabel; she could hear the faint strains of Pussy Control. She shuffled around in her bag for a bit, drew out her phone, pushed the answer button and said casually, “Hey…”

  “Hey yourself,” said Annabel, “so you’ve finally decided to ta
ke my calls?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you’ve been calling. I’ve been busy”.

  “So I hear. Who is he?”

  “What?!”

  “You’ve been AWOL two afternoons in a row,” Annabel said. Sunny flinched at her use of military terminology. “You haven’t been with us, and you’re not with your family. And you’re definitely not hanging out with the drama nerds.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be mean to the drama nerds anymore? Just in case they get famous, remember?”

  “Yeah, nah, I’m not going to be mean to their faces, I meant.”

  “Right.”

  “So, who is he?”

  Annabel was like a dog with a bone sometimes. She wasn’t going to let this go. Sunny was going to have to come up with something, fast.

  “What makes you think I’ve been with a guy?” Sunny said, buying time.

  “Because you were acting like a lovesick puppy yesterday, probably. I’m right, aren’t I? Who is he?”

  “What are you, Sherlock Holmes or something?” She didn’t like being told that she was that transparent, but her body language had always been a loudspeaker for her emotions. She found it hard to hide anything for very long. She’d had to balance this by becoming a very good liar when she had to.

  Archie bought her some more time by yelping loudly for her to shove a spoonful of sweet potato in his mouth. “Hang on. I’m trying to feed Archie.” Sunny put the phone down and obliged him. It gave her breathing space to think.

  Could she confide in Annabel? Not the full story, of course, but she needed to talk to someone about Hunter. Everything she was feeling was new and strange. Sometimes she felt like golden butterflies were dancing in her stomach, other times she felt like there were rusty nails and barbed wire wrapped around her heart.

  She heard Annabel’s tinny voice scream at her through the phone on the counter, “Put me on speeeekkkaaaahhhh!”