Falling (15 page)

Teenage daughter, this time, with a semi-automatic. Very odd, because car-jackers wouldn't be firing in the direction of the car if they could help it. The tank might be empty, but there'd still be enough petrol in the system for a big loud bang if a bullet penetrated the wrong area – and all the valuable Ulti-Mall goodies were still inside.

Looked like someone was paying the ladies and gentlemen of the road to move into what were now delicately referred to as ‘final visitations'.

When GenoBond had told her that stopping assassinations was part of the job, this wasn't what she'd had in mind.

Somehow, the young man had made it to the barrier unharmed. Now he was worming his way underneath, into the litter and the briars, making the most of what cover he could find.

And look, there goes Daddy. Trying to circle the car and cross the road unnoticed while his target has his head down.

Telling herself it was easy, this sharp shooting business, Jude aimed the stunner at the girl in the undergrowth and squeezed the grip.

Lightening arced behind her closed eyelids. When she managed to open them again, she could hardly see, and she was getting cramp in her fingers, but there were no more gunshots.

In the ditch, the young man was squinting up the embankment in search of his guardian angel. A little reflected light played across his face, picking out sharp cheekbones, a small, firm mouth.

He was hauntingly familiar.

Daddy car-jacker had come to a halt in the tall, straggly weeds near the opposite kerb, unsure whether to continue the hunt or turn back and minister to the casualties.

Jude rolled sideways, supporting herself on her free arm, and gave him three flashes from the stunner.

He landed face down on the tarmac, his makeshift weapon rolling away into the clogged gutter.

She could slip away now. Leave the young man to explain himself to the security patrol, doubtless already on its way. Make the news, not that she'd ever see it. Mysterious superhero strikes on Ulti-Mall approach road, wielding a flash stunner and wearing badly cut jeans…

‘Hello?' the young man called, shielding his eyes against the false-dawn glow from behind the embankment.

Hello yourself.

Maybe I should say something. Do something. Maybe he can't trust the police either, maybe I've come here to do the traditional thing – snatch him from danger, go on the run together, bond, save one another's lives, even get smoochy?

No, thanks, big guy. Mind you, you do look so familiar. There was that boy at school; what was I, eleven? Had to have a boyfriend. Everyone else did. He didn't mind walking me home, sharing my lunch table; he had his eye on the football captain. Boy's team, that is. What was his name, anyway?

The young man cleared his throat. ‘We don't have all night. What are you waiting for, a password?'

She tried to smother her laughter, but it didn't work. He heard her and stood up, smoothing his shirt-tails in a gesture she recognised at once, as he yelled, ‘What the hell is your problem?'

‘Fitch?'

He turned towards her, head cocked, trying to locate her from that half-formed whisper in the dark.

Behind him, Mummy car-jacker raised her head from behind the thorns and levelled the revolver at his back.

Jude brought the stunner up level and squeezed, but she knew it was far too late. The shot was already ringing in her ears, the frail-faced man in the nice suit was staggering, falling, and there was nothing she could do.

Instead, she ran.

Down the slope, finding footholds among the broken glass and discarded numberplates without conscious thought. Light reflected from the palm of his hand, upturned to the sky. Her knees buckled and she was kneeling at his side, her hands stroking hair from his eyes and knowing the feel of it, the smell of familiar shampoo even, and tears welled faster than she could blink them away.

He coughed. Very carefully, as if he feared to disturb something. Jude struggled to recall some scrap of first aid, some clue gleaned from one of the many fatalities she'd witnessed and then reversed. Nothing came.

‘There was a girl,' the young man wheezed, ‘used to call me that.'

‘I know,' Jude managed. She took his hand in hers, found it sticky with blood. Gluing them together.

‘Stop the bleeding,' he wheezed. ‘Medical kit. In the car. Got to get the message. To Judith.'

Judith? No one calls me…

‘Tell her they're coming.'

‘Who's coming?'

He coughed again, spraying a fine mist of blood onto her sleeve. ‘She knows. Believe me, she knows.'

‘All right. When are they coming?'

The young man's face crumpled into silent laughter. ‘She's – ReTracer. What does “when” matter?'

‘I'll give her your message. If you tell it to me, clearly –'

The non-stranger turned his head so his cheek rested against her hand. 'Schrader.'

‘Oh, not him again. And?'

The young man's eyes fluttered closed.

‘Not yet. The message.' His breathing sounded wet, spluttery, and she knew that wasn't good. ‘Fitch. The message. For Judith.'

‘Year Zero. Stop them. Before they catch her. Schrader. Only ally. Warner.'

‘Schrader is her only ally? Or Warner?'

Another breath, in hissing slow motion.

‘Come on, Fitch!'

Another.

‘Fitch. Whatever your damn name is. Come on. I need to know.'

Silence.

‘Bastard.' Jude moved to rub her eyes, found her hands inexplicably flecked with blood. ‘I needed that. I came halfway through my own life for that. But no. Your timing always was appalling.' Her throat was tight with the grief of old mistakes, mistakes that had never even occurred in this reality, but she had to keep forcing the words out. ‘Can't even die on cue, can you? Oh, Fitch.'

And the future flew up to meet her, and she fell.

It's a dangerous thing, to be in the midst of a deep and powerful emotion at the moment you ReTrace. A very dangerous thing.

It's so easy, you see. To be pulled off course, to go seeking the emotion and not the time-and-place. To lose your way.

And if you happened to be thinking of a person…

EIGHT

Fitch's Place, a few weeks ago

‘I didn't tell you,' Fitch was yelling as she stormed into the bathroom, leaving a trail of talc on the carpet, ‘because to any normal person, it wouldn't matter. Why would it? Except to you, of course.'

Jude looked down at her hands, and found that they were shaking even more than they had been the first time round.

Just her luck. The one chance she had to go back and repair the worst mistake of her life, and she had to arrive five minutes too late to stop herself saying those stupid –

‘Morphophobe!' Fitch was screaming. She'd left the bathroom door open and Jude had to strain to pick out her voice among the hiss of running taps.

‘What?'

‘Morbid fear of shapechanging. You see, there's even a technical term for it.'

‘That makes me feel so much better.'

‘It's about time you face up to it, Jude. Get some help. Get with the real world, for God's sake! Just because you're stuck in the flesh you were born with doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.'

Jude looked round the sparse, dusty living room, taking it all in for what might be the last time. The threadbare velour sofa and mismatched chairs, the grubby rugs, the line of cheap candlesticks queuing along the mantelpiece. The bead curtain over the window, salvaged from a deserted pub off the Court Road. Stray items in a ragbag of memories, most of them faded beyond reliability by alcohol and early morning hazes and love. Her past/future, blurring together in the butter-coloured light of a city evening, begging her to remake them, and do a better job of it this time.

She cleared her throat, readying herself for lies, damned lies, and maybe even the truth. ‘Fitch. I'm sorry. Can we just forget that the last few minutes ever happened and start again?'

‘No, we can't.' The taps cut off abruptly. ‘I am never going to forget this conversation. Never.'

‘That's what I'm afraid of.'

A moment, then Fitch came to the doorway and stood there, in her underwear, with one hand on the doorframe and the other wrapped around herself as if holding something in. She looked like a photo-model, posing Shock and Disgust.

Jude looked at her and realised she'd run the taps to cover the fact that she'd been crying.

‘I'm sorry.'

Fitch's gaze moved around the room, as if she had a lot to do and couldn't decide where to start. But she didn't move. She just stared over Jude's head, waiting for her to say something that would undo the last few minutes – or alternatively, terminate the feelings they'd shared for the last few years.

If Jude knew how to achieve that first option, she would have done it by now. She was too scared of accidentally achieving the second to risk anything uncertain, and so they just stood there in the heat-hazed room as if the silence and the sun had turned them to stone.

Oh, it had started well enough. Warner had called her in at lunchtime for some dull assessment program, questions and stress level tests and round pegs in square holes. She was the only one being tested that day, and even the woman supervising looked bored. Another set of figures to be filed away, another space in another box of paperwork filled up.

No one had any idea how ReTracers did what they did. No one could isolate a single gene or bottle a single altered protein that would allow them to replicate the effect. But the tests went on.

Pretending a doctor's appointment, she'd slipped away early, bargained with a stallholder on a street corner for a rare bottle of Australian red, and walked up towards Politiville.

It had a real name, but no one used it; the area had been Politiville ever since it became the haunt of politicians, barristers and the other chattered-about classes, decades back. That continual influx of money had enabled it to preserve a fragile charm, founded around neatly fenced squares, Victorian lampposts and the few scrawny ducks in the canal.

After the Migration, this bastion of urban gentility had fallen to the tower block dwellers, red in tooth and claw. But it had worked its magic on some, and the rest had simply looted and moved on. Those who remained were optimists to a man, struggling to better themselves and their defiantly hostile neighbours through hard work, neighbourhood pride and flower beds.

At the turning to Fitch's street, Jude passed a gang of them, clad in cast-off pinstripes, hacking up the garden of a collapsed house with shovels and pick-axes.

‘Planting pears, don't you know,' one of them shouted, vaguely recognising her, or thinking he did. ‘Devon Farmhouse.'

She took a perfunctory look at the bundle of saplings waiting under the defunct traffic lights, just to be polite, then smiled and hurried on. If she expressed too much interest, they might ask her to join in.

Fitch's square had also fallen victim to their creative urges. The central lawn had become an allotment, and fruit trees had replaced the long-rotted oaks beside the stream, shedding unseasonal blossom into the road. As she picked her way to number 37, recognisable by the defiantly non-productive front garden, all dead leaves and wilting lupins, apple-blossom settled bridally on her shoulders.

Fitch was sitting on the doorstep, in something that might have passed for a bikini if it was a little larger, taking in the afternoon sun.

‘Someone will report you to the Good Neighbours Committee, y'know. Going out dressed like that.'

‘The Committee can go swivel,' Fitch yawned. ‘And I'm not out. This is my doorstep. I can do as I please.'

For a moment, she actually sounded angry, then she stood up, noticed the bottle under Jude's arm, and demanded, ‘Going somewhere?'

‘Only to regale the woman I love with alcohol, laughter and tenderness.'

‘Nice idea. If I hadn't agreed to work an extra shift tonight.'

Leaning in against the doorpost until they were face to face, close enough to smell Fitch's lavender perfume, she murmured, ‘Who said I meant you?'

Fitch tried to smile, to show that she knew it was a joke, but somehow the smile got twisted in the making, and she abandoned the effort and turned to go inside. ‘Come on in. I still have to get dressed.'

‘Really?' Jude muttered, trailing into the gloomy hallway. ‘And I thought you were going like that.'

‘Down Club Andro, I doubt they'd notice.'

Fitch stopped in the bedroom doorway, struggling with the catch on the bikini top, and turned back to her. With that definite ‘I've decided, I'm really going to say it' look that Jude had seen so many times from so many others, and she almost knew what was going to happen next.