Fragments (10 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Who do you hate?’

I shake my head because I suddenly don’t want to answer.

Pain shoots up my arms.

‘Torch,’ I whisper, letting it all go again. And the hatred heals all my sore places.

A hand touches my shoulder. ‘Good girl. Now, why don’t you sleep?’

I don’t know what is real and what is inside my head any more. It’s so dark it doesn’t make any difference if my eyes are open or closed. I feel like a leaf tumbling in a breeze from the tallest tree. When I cry, which I do a lot, my eyes don’t make any water. Sometimes I hear whispered voices and I feel water running over my lips. There are sharp pricks into my arms and then I’m floating again, floating . . .

P
ART
II

A
REA
6
S
COTTISH
H
IGHLANDS

INTERNAL EMAIL: STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Subject: Kyla Baptiste

Dear Alexander,

Having witnessed the full process with this subject I am confident that she is unaware of the whereabouts of Callum Conway. I suggest continuing with training as with genuine recruits. Subject appears to have successfully attained required levels of commitment to work.

We can assess her potential usefulness in the field over the course of the next weeks. I suggest we assign another, more amenable, candidate to monitor behaviour over her time here.

Best regards,
Jennifer Sheehy

C
HAPTER
10

stag

I
may not ‘do’ countryside but something about this view really gets to me.

I’ve run up to my usual spot, behind the camp.

They warn us not to go too far. There’s a perimeter fence somewhere nearby. I’ve been fitted with a tiny, temporary tracker too. But up here I can almost pretend I’m free. I like to stand on this massive hill and just look.

The sky changes so much here. One minute there are bright blue patches and clouds so puffy and perfect they look like the sort in a kid’s painting. Then the clouds rumple and thicken, hanging so low you feel like you could put your hand in up to the wrist. I wonder what it would feel like. I know clouds are only water, but I imagine they’d taste like icing sugar if I licked my fingers. Daft. But something about being up here does that to me.

The hills roll out in front of me in a patchwork of purple heather, bright green grass and rich brown earth. Today the sky looks like a churning grey sea that rolls and turns above me.

My skin tingles with the power in the air. I figure a storm’s coming. I don’t want to get caught in it. But I sort of do, at the same time. It would make me
feel
.

I’m doing OK. Physically, I’m getting stronger and fitter all the time. Even my asthma is better here. But I feel kind of blurry most of the time. Almost like a small part of me is outside, looking down at myself – when I’m getting a tray of food, or learning about the different ways terrorist organisations are put together. But when I get out here, I remember those other bits of myself. I’m me, Kyla, the girl who once liked dancing with her mum in the kitchen. The one who laughed so hard with Jax one day that she peed herself a tiny bit.

The one who kissed a boy, took his picture and then watched him die.

OK, there’s plenty of stuff I don’t want to feel. Maybe things are better the way they are. Maybe I
am
hard inside now.

I’ve been at this place they call Area 6 for about two months now. I don’t remember much about the time after I first got here. They told me I got sick for a week or so. All I remember is waking up with a throbbing headache in a crisp, clean bed and being told it was time to get up and be useful.

I had some crazy dreams for a while. Dreams so realistic that I started to wonder whether they’d put some kind of chip inside my head, like they did with Cal. And it wasn’t just at night. I’d sometimes get these . . .
pictures
when I was awake. I’d be brushing my teeth or something and then out of nowhere I’d get a mental flash of Tom shooting Jax. I don’t think that really happened. But I’m not completely sure any more. Things have got muddled up in my mind, like I’m watching screens that have been smashed into tiny fragments and then put back together all wrong.

I try not to think about it too much because it makes me feel weird and a bit dizzy.

I don’t know what I expected exactly about this place but I’m definitely not training to be some cool ninja spy. I’m learning to be a snitch. It’s not exactly the glamorous job I was hoping for, although they tell us it’s important work all the same.

We’re known as CATS’ Eyes. They want us fit, able to fight. Able to run when we need to. Our job is to watch people and report on them. Like, anyone who’s thinking about joining Torch. Anyone who’s offering a room or making donations. We’ll help to flush them out. But most of all they want us to hate. To hate terrorists, of course, but to hate Torch most of all. And we do. Even hearing that name makes my palms prickle. Surely being a snitch is justified if it stops scum like them? I think about those days at the farmhouse, with Sam being so kind to me, Julia too. That Nathan guy was sort of grumpy but he still seemed quite decent. Cal didn’t know what they were really about. Like me, he’d been fooled into thinking they were the good guys. It makes me want to throw up now.

So I’m getting on with things here. For now, I just want to keep my head down and do what I’m told. I’ve had enough fighting to last me a lifetime. I’ll worry about what comes next when the time comes.

Not that it’s an easy ride here. The lessons are a weird mixture of school and army boot camp, with the odd bit of extreme cruelty thrown in to remind us ‘this is no holiday’.

For example, let me tell you what happened in one of our Fitness Training sessions.

These lessons take place in a modern building across the courtyard from the main centre, which is all whitewashed walls and sweat smells. There are mats all over the floor and every kind of fancy work-out equipment around the edges of the room.

I’d looked around at the other people in my programme.

I don’t exactly have any friends.

The blond girl from the journey here is called Skye and even though we share a bare, cold room (more like a cell) she keeps to herself. There’s a lad called Christian, who was the dark-haired, praying one on the journey. He seems OK but spends a lot of time reading and doesn’t seem that inclined to hang out. Not that there is anything to do here. We have one very basic recreational room, with a few lumpy chairs they obviously don’t want anywhere else. In one corner there’s a tiny, old-fashioned television with limited channels that doesn’t even do 3D. In the other is the world’s oldest PlayStation, which has no 3D either and a controller that looks positively prehistoric. Doesn’t work that well but a real loudmouth called Reo and a couple of others spend the whole evening on it.

The trainer is called Lewis, a slim, muscled bloke with short black hair. Not that tall, but he looks fast and strong. Good-looking and knows it.

He told us we’d be working on stealth and said, ‘You can be built like a brick shithouse but if you’re not capable of moving silently and with grace, then you’re basically useless. Like I always say, real life is nothing like the movies. The bad guys don’t queue up politely, waiting to be hit.’ A low ripple of laughter filled the room then. Jokes are good. We don’t get many, let me tell you.

‘If you get found out, you’re going to be in danger.’ His tone was sober now. ‘You need to know how to look after yourselves. So . . .’

He went to the back of the room and dragged over a large square container made of thin plastic. A smaller box with slots in it was left at the back of the gym.

‘Come and take a scarf and then get into pairs.’

I walked over to the container. Thin scarves in a silky black material were jumbled inside. I pulled one out and twisted it around my hands. It was so light I could hardly feel its silky coolness.

Back at my mat I glanced about to see who I could pair up with. Skye was with Reo. Lucky her. I caught eyes with a woman in her twenties called Zoe and she came over to my mat.

‘OK,’ shouted Lewis. ‘I want one of you to blindfold the other with the scarf. You’ll both get a go so it doesn’t matter who goes first. Then I want you to take the other scarf and lay it across the other person’s shoulder. The person who can see has the job of taking the scarf, unnoticed. If the taker succeeds, place a hand on the blindfolded person’s shoulder to alert them they have lost. But . . .’ he paused, ‘if they catch you, they should immobilise you on the mat. Everyone got it?’ There was a low ripple of agreement. ‘Right,’ said Lewis with a nod. ‘Each person take ten turns and then you need to swap. When you’ve both had a go, sit on the mats to show me you’re finished.’

He walked over to a panel on the wall. ‘And just in case anyone thinks this is too easy for the blindfolded person, you can’t rely on your hearing either.’ He wafted his hand at the panel and rock music blasted out of hidden speakers, so earsplitting and sudden everyone in the room seemed to jump a few centimetres off the ground at once.

I turned to Zoe and we managed to communicate through exaggerated hand movements that I would be blindfolded first. Better to get it out of the way, I thought, hoping she wouldn’t take the ‘immobilisation’ thing too seriously.

She tied the scarf gently around my head, which was a good start. It felt feather light but still turned the world to a dense blackness. It felt familiar . . . the darkness. It’s what I imagine death feels like. I was so distracted by this horrible thought I didn’t realise we’d started until I felt the pressure of a hand on my shoulder.

OK, so one to her. The music was starting to make my head ache but I concentrated this time, straining to make out movement behind me. Zoe’s hand fell on my shoulder again.

This happened another five times and I was starting to feel humiliated. On the seventh attempt I concentrated on the movement of air around me. Thinking I could feel something, I clutched at thin air. Then I felt the hand on my shoulder again. It was starting to feel like that hand was laughing at me.

Come on
, I told myself.
Feel it . . . feel her presence. Smell her . . 
.

I tried to pretend there was no deafening music blasting my eardrums. There was just me, and her. The world shrunk around me and that’s when I sensed the faintest vibration in the floor beneath my feet. A waft of soap, so slight it was barely there, had me twisting and pushing against the warm, dense body behind me, knocking her to the mat. I couldn’t see her but quickly had her on her back, straddling her with my knees. I laughed in delight, relieved I was finally getting it.

On the next two goes, I sensed her each time.

Reaching ten, I snatched the scarf away from my face, blinking in the harsh lights of the gym. Zoe frowned at me and rubbed the back of her head in an exaggerated way. I mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ and she managed a thin smile. Her turn now.

I blindfolded her and placed the scarf gently on her shoulder.

Looking around the room I noticed everyone was wearing trainers. Almost without thinking, I whipped off my trainers and socks, flexing my toes. It seemed so obvious, I couldn’t understand why no one else had thought of it. Moving on the balls of my feet, it was easy to get the scarf two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times. I was starting to enjoy myself so maybe I got cocky on the tenth attempt. Before I knew what was happening, the world had tipped sideways and my back slammed against the mat. All the air jolted out of me and for a second I couldn’t get my breath. I looked up into Zoe’s face. She mouthed, ‘You OK?’ and I nodded as she slid off me.

I was more embarrassed than hurt. Breathing heavily, I wiped the sweat prickling my face with the scarf and sat down on the mat. Almost everyone else had finished, apart from Christian and his partner. Christian turned out to be really good at this too.

We had a knockout contest then and soon it was just Christian and me left.

We exchanged grins and high-fived. This was actually fun!

Lewis regarded us both coolly and then said, ‘Kyla and Christian, you’ve really nailed this task. Well done. Seems you’ve shown everyone else here up. Come to the front, please.’

I couldn’t help feeling chuffed with myself. I wondered why he wanted us to come up to the front. For a mad moment I wondered if I’d get a prize.

Christian was flushed and looked like he was holding back a grin too, but he avoided my eye. He doesn’t give much away, Christian.

‘Right,’ said Lewis. ‘Time for a play-off. We’re going to do it a little differently this time. You’ll be seated. You don’t have to disarm your opponent, just catch them in any way you see fit.’

This time he tied the scarf around my eyes himself and guided me so I was sitting on the mat with my feet poking out in front of me. I felt a bit stupid and exposed. He must have turned on some kind of noise-cancelling thing this time because it went so quiet, the silence seemed to press in on my eardrums. I couldn’t hear the other people in the room. All I could make out was my own heartbeat.

I tried to tune in to the vibrations in the room. It was weird, though, because I couldn’t pick out anything at all. I started to get a cramp in my leg and moved it, ever so slightly. And at that exact moment, I felt a burning agony in my wrist, making me cry out.

I screamed and moved my arm. And that’s when I realised something was attached to my wrist. My other hand closed around something warm, muscular, alive . . .

. . . and scaly.

Scaly?

Wrenching off the blindfold, I cried out again, looking down at the thick, green snake clamped around my wrist by its jaws. I fell onto my knees and smashed it repeatedly against the ground, over and over. It didn’t loosen its grip and then suddenly it went limp and stopped thrashing.

Sobbing, shaking, I wrenched it off my wrist, shuddering at the curved, needle teeth that had been buried into my flesh. Dropping the filthy thing I looked up, eyes blurry with tears. A glass panel had silently divided the room. Horrified faces gazed at me from the other side. Skye had her hands pressed against the glass, her mouth hanging open in horror. I looked to my right and saw another panel separating me from Christian.