F
or longer than she cared to remember, Mira Chambers had suffered her worst days after hearing one of three questions whispered on the far side of doors and observation windows.

‘Why bother blindfolding a blind woman?’

‘Why restrain her?’

Or: ‘How much trouble could she be?’

This morning, though, she had heard all three, and all from the same newcomer. The musk of his aftershave lingered, even though he’d only come in long enough to clear away her breakfast scraps.

She couldn’t be sure how much time she had left before he returned to begin a long day of torturous routines, so she tested the strength of the restraints that bound her wrists and ankles to the wheelchair. Only small movements at first, since struggling often caused them to tighten — as they did now.

Wriggling caused the chair to bump against her steel bunk and its thin mattress, despite the wheel locks, and she grunted, trying to jump the whole thing closer to her door. Too heavy. She gritted her teeth and strained anyway, frustrated even further by the electronic purr of the overhead surveillance camerathat had been installed since her last escape attempt. Was that yesterday or the day before?

She couldn’t be sure of that either, since regular sedation and the lack of sensory contact with the outside world made it difficult to keep track of time. But she remembered waking to an argument between two gruff female staff as to whether a second surveillance unit should be fitted in the adjoining storeroom, which, at the time, had been undergoing renovation to provide her with a shower and toilet. She could still smell the fresh paint.

The newcomer’s rubber-soled shoes squeaked outside in the hall.

Her stomach tightened.

The door creaked, spilling a gust of warmth onto her face, until the hiss of a piston drew it closed behind him. The lock clicked heavily.

‘Sorry, Mira,’ he said as his soft soles squeaked around behind her. ‘It’s a madhouse out there.’

He chuckled, as if the idea amused him.

His large callused hand touched her shoulder and she tensed, inadvertently making the straps around her wrists bite harder into her skin. Everyone else had soft hands.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to take this off today?’ He tapped twice gently on the side of the bandages that covered her damaged eyes.

From somewhere else in the building she heard the echo of an older woman screaming.

Trembling, she shook her head and tried not to cringe away from him. Of the many male voices she’d encountered so far in this new facility, his was the gentlest. A pity that would change soon.

‘It doesn’t look good for me, you know.’ He touched the buckle of her wrist restraint, making her flinch. ‘Makes it look as if you’re feral. Not a good start for our first day together, is it?’

She shook her head again, trying to guess the responses that would placate him or at least prevent him from calling for help from the man who always smelled of oily leather and stale cigars — or worse, the woman with the Taser.

‘I’ll make a deal with you.’ His crisp cotton clothes rustled as he shifted around in front of her. ‘I’ll let you keep the bandage on. It must look better than those stitches in your eyes at the moment. But you have to promise first that you’ll let me roll you out of here today without misbehaving.’

She nodded.

‘Okay, so we’re not going to need these nasty old straps to hold you down, are we?’

She nodded again and he gently eased open the buckles beside her ankles, then worked both leg restraints off at the same time in a daring show of trust. Or was it control over her? She wondered what trick he might be trying to play.

‘You remember what happened yesterday?’ he asked.

She turned her head away, suppressing a small smile. The man who smelled of oily leather and cigars was probably still picking fragments of her dinner plate out of his groin; her pain, in comparison, had faded swiftly at the tip of a cold needle.

‘That’s not going to happen with me, I hope?’

She turned her head in small movements from side to side.

‘Let me hear that sweet voice of yours so I know you mean it.’

‘I’ll be good,’ she whispered.

Outside in the hall, she heard the soft shuffling sounds of more rubber-soled shoes approaching; almost silent, with a subtle but regular scuff of one heel that sent a cold shiver down her spine. Her nostrils flared, expecting to smell leather soon and the stale breath that always accompanied those shoes.

‘Promise?’

She chewed on her lip, considering her alternatives, then nodded twice and hoped it looked convincing.

‘Good girl.’ He released both restraints from her wrists. ‘Now we can relax and enjoy each other’s company. Okay?’ He kicked off the brakes to her wheelchair. ‘We’re going to have lots of fun today.’

A knock at the door attracted his squeaky shoes away from her.

No brakes,
she thought.
Is he testing me?

‘That was quick,’ he said, as the door creaked open. ‘Thanks, Neville. If there’s one thing that bugs me about starting as a temp again, it’s all this extra red tape.’

Mira heard paper shuffling as someone thumbed through a thick file. She tensed at the scent of oiled leather drifting in on the air conditioning.

‘Prep her for me,’ Neville said, his voice sounding as slimy as his skin. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour.’

‘No!’ Mira slammed her fist down on the arm of her wheelchair. ‘Stay away from me!’ Her leg flailed out, threatening to kick anyone who came within reach.

Neville laughed. ‘I see her seds have worn off. Has she started rantin’ about her poetry yet?’

‘Not poetry,
poet trees!’

‘Yeah, yeah. There’s a whole book of ‘em on the floor where you threw it yesterday.’

‘Poet
trees,
you pig! Poet
treeeees!’

‘I don’t think she likes you,’ chuckled Mr Squeaky-shoes.

‘She hates everybody.’

‘I do not! I promised him I’d be good today!’

‘Calm down,’ crooned Mr Squeaky-shoes. ‘I’ll take you anywhere you need to go, Mira, if that’s what you prefer. But first we have to make you look presentable, okay?’

‘Good luck,’ Neville grunted. ‘You’ll need it if you’re dumb enough to let her loose like that an’ turn your back. Just remember she has to stay barefoot. No bra for the same reason. She used the last one as a garrotte on Ged Stevens — the guy you’re replacin'.’

‘She killed him?’

‘Damn near. He’s over in Q-block now with the quadriplegics.’

‘You’re pulling my leg, right? New kid on the block?’

Two voices laughed at him from the hall. The woman with the Taser had managed to creep close to Mira’s room again without making any sound.

‘A little tug never hurt nobody,’ Neville said. ‘Ged’s working over there. Light duties only.’

‘His confidence is shot for good,’ the Taser woman added.

‘And he’s not her first victim,’ Neville warned. ‘She goes off with the fairies, she does; big, hairy, nasty buggers who drive her crazy.’

‘But how can she hallucinate if she can’t see anything?’ the newcomer asked. ‘She was blind even before that butcher got to her, wasn’t she?’

‘You’re forgetting why you’re here, Benny,’ Neville said. ‘If she was just blind, we wouldn’t need your particular talents. But Freddie can’t have butchered her in a random attack. No anaesthetic? She must have been in on it. She’s a queer one, I’m telling you, so if you’re not up to the job, you’d better say so now, while you’re still fully capable of walking out of here.’

‘And if you still think we’re joking,’ said the Taser woman with a chuckle, ‘try convincing her she’ll still be as blind as a batfish after those stitches come out.’

‘No!’ Mira screamed.

Neville laughed again. He muttered something to the Taser woman and they left, still chuckling all the way down the hall. The door clicked shut, sealing Mr Squeaky-shoes in with her.

‘Never mind them,’ he said. ‘It’s me they’re poking fun at. I used to work in a children’s ward on the mainland, but... Well, let’s just say I had to take a break for a few years and now they’re rubbing me the wrong way.’

Who cares about you?

He crossed the floor to her side, papers shuffling most of the way until she heard him set them down on the small round table where three bland meals were ritually served to her every day. Although she’d never actually seen anything in this latest cell, she knew every corner of the windowless room by touch and smell. Perhaps even better than he did, rusty and inexperienced as he claimed to be. Strange that they let him near her at all, considering how careful they’d always been in keeping everyone but the highest-trained staff away from her — especially since Ged Stevens. If that was the new matron’s mistake, let them live with it!

Soon,
she decided. Instructed by them, he’d soon become like them, just as his first awkward steps at the morning ritual seemed to suggest. Probably working off a list, like the last six.

He lifted something from the top of a wide chest of drawers where they stored clothes that someone else purchased and regularly laundered for her — a hairbrush, she guessed, or maybe make-up; always one and then the other.

‘Do you want me to brush your hair, or can I trust you?’

Mira uncurled her right hand, hoping he’d place the potential weapon into it.

‘Ask nicely, Mira. I want us to be friends, remember?’

‘Please,’ she whispered.

‘Please, Ben,’ he persisted. ‘Friends talk to each other calmly, using their first names.’

BOOK: Diamond Eyes

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