Stray (34 page)

She brings her cheek to his, her mouth by his ear, but I don’t hear her voice, or Jamie doesn’t. Then her mouth is on his, tentative, searching, her brow furrowed like she’s in pain. Jamie lies immobile, his revulsion and fear polluting his signal. He tastes her blood. Her mouth is cold. Her kisses grow more demanding and her face screws up in frustration and she digs her fingers up into his bristling hair. Then she reaches for his limp hand and lifts it from the floor, bringing it to the side of her face, stroking her cheek. She sits back and trails his hand down her neck, over her collarbone. She cups his fingers over her breast. Tears slip down her face and she drops his hand. It falls heavily to the floor.

We watch as she rises and walks out of his line of sight and I find her again with my own eyes, making her way back through the lounge. She gives me a sad look and says, “Don’t be mad.” And she disappears up the hall.

* * *

My vision crackles with a new scene. Again, I see things from the floor. This time I see the hallway, the ceiling trap to the attic. It’s Felicity’s point of view: she’s the only one not accounted for. The Proxy comes into her line of sight and bends down to touch her face. She moves behind her and lifts her under the arms. Felicity’s chin tips forwards and as the Proxy drags her backwards I see sturdy shoes and stockings. The bathroom door bangs open and the Proxy grunts and strains to lift her into the tub. She hurts Felicity’s back on the edge, bangs her head against the porcelain rim, letting her fall in on an awkward angle, one leg still hanging over the edge.

The Proxy straightens up and stretches her back then reaches for the plug, settling it in place. Felicity’s pulse can’t even increase its speed to match her terror. When the faucet opens, the gush of icy water soaks quickly through the back of Felicity’s skirt and blouse. The Proxy sits on the side of the tub and takes her keeper’s pale hand, clasping it between her own as she waits. The water roars and echoes off the bathroom walls, warmer now, rising over Felicity’s shoulders where she lies low in the bath. It floods in around her neck and quickly fills her ears. The Proxy doesn’t move, her eyes on Felicity, unwavering, a slow slip of tears over the girl’s cheeks. When the water swims over Felicity’s lips and nose, the end does not come quickly. It fills her mouth and cuts off air and floods her lungs. It does not stop hurting. It hurts and hurts until her vision goes. Everything is black but Felicity keeps hurting. She feels the gentle pressure of the Proxy’s fingers stroking until finally, finally she feels nothing.

I blink and I’m back in my body. I can see my brother lying in his blood, Kitty lying facing him and beyond them, Benjamin and Davis. Finally the padding tread of the Proxy’s feet. She comes into view, drying her hands on a towel, a watermark on the hems of her jeans, her feet leaving damp pink prints on the floor as she walks back across the room to Benjamin.

She takes his gun and returns to sit heavily beside me. Her sigh is deep with exhaustion. Slipping her fingers through mine, she squeezes softly. “I held her hand. She wasn’t alone.” The low minor note rises from her. “I want you to know, I regret Miriam. I do. It’s a hard thing and I’m sorry for it. But this is what I believe, Evie: you can save her too. Ethan will help you.”

A low rumbling thrum builds in the distance. At first I think it’s the sound of the ocean no longer masked by heavy rain, but the rhythmic
whomp
,
whomp
builds until it’s almost deafening overhead. The windows rattle and the roof creaks. Torchlight flashes beyond the curtains.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, lifting her voice. “It won’t feel like it at first. Not at first but you’ll make it. I promise. You’ll remember what I’ve showed you and you’ll know.”

She shifts her weight, kisses my cheek, then gently, trembling, she turns my face away.

Random images flood my mind and I know they are hers. I see Felicity. Ethan. Jamie. Aiden. Kitty. Me. I see the rain-streaked sky. I remember the feel of water pattering my upturned face.

A clap of sound – the shot so loud it renders me senseless, the jarring of her body beside me, her hand clenching mine in final reflex, the smell of hot metal, the clatter of the gun on the floor, the release of the clamp from the base of my skull and the air splits with Kitty’s scream.

I come to on the floor of the Affinity Project transport van. I wonder how many times I’ve been sedated since I first came into contact with the organisation almost five weeks ago – less than five since Aiden died. I’ve lost count. I hate the gluey feeling in my mouth post-sedation. Even when I’m rising from oblivion, I’m already thinking about water and getting the taste out of my mouth. I work my lips and tongue. The van’s engine purrs beneath my head. They’ve got the heaters on but the chill seeps up through the floor and I wonder if it’s been snowing. I crack my eyes open and squint against bright shafts of light moving over the ceiling.

Davis sits to the right, his head cocked, waiting for me.

I groan.

He snorts and holds out a bottle of water. “Nope. Doesn’t get easier.”

I take the bottle and haul myself up, leaning back against the seat. Unscrewing the cap, I drink with my eyes closed. “What time is it?” I ask, wiping my mouth on the back of my wrist.

“About four.” He lifts a small black pack and drops it on my knees. My backpack from the night of the breakout. “Think most of it’s there.”

I loop my hand through the strap and we sit in silence for a bit. I don’t try to look out the window. We won’t be far from home. They’re good with dosage and timing travel. I look to see who’s driving but I don’t recognise the guy. “Any news on Benjamin?”

Davis links his fingers together, his elbows on his knees. “Trial should be soon. Ethan says they take longer when they hand out reprieves, just to make you sweat.”

“Sounds right.”

The corner of his mouth goes up, not really a smile.

“It wasn’t his fault.” I say it easily enough. Admittedly it’s an expressionless line-up of words, but I’ve practised it a lot in the last few weeks and it’s true. I don’t look for Davis’s reaction. I don’t want to see pity, though under different circumstances, Davis exhibiting an emotion as complex as pity would be noteworthy.

“When are you back?” he asks.

I shrug. “Ethan doesn’t want me doing district sweeps.”

“Fair enough.”

I click my tongue. “He’s being over-protective.”

“They’ll manage.”

“Right. No Proxy. No Wardens. Why bother?”

He gives me a hard look. “You’ve only just been cleared by psych. You should be taking it easy. Besides, I thought you hated all that
company policy
stuff.”

I do. I hate that Affinity exists. I hate that it ruins people’s lives but I know there are innocent kids out in the world, like walking time bombs, with the synthetic gene in their DNA about to blow. When it does, someone has to help them. Knowing Ethan’s behind the scenes trying to make things better gives me a little hope. They’re not all like Counsellor Knox. “Four weeks in psych would make anyone crazy.”

“Quit your complaining. Benjamin’s still sitting in a cell. You get to go home and drink eggnog with Richie Rich.”

Jamie.

I only have patches of memory from after the paralysis. Kitty’s God-awful screaming. Jamie, his whole body shaking, lifting me out of my brother’s blood. Ethan descending like a deus ex machina to halt the invasion of Affinity agents pouring into the house. Then a big blank thanks to industrial-strength sedation. Apparently I went full apocalypse in medical. They had to get Ethan to talk me down from blowing the place up. After that they kept me in a no-glass zone.

I’ve had four weeks to think about Jamie, to imagine what he must be thinking, what his family must be thinking. At least he and Kitty were released the day after the “event” and their folks didn’t have to wait so long. Ethan says Jamie will have to go back for Benjamin’s trial but he’s in the clear with the Executive. I’m glad one of us is.

I feel bad for Ethan, “stepped down” from his position on the Executive because of me. Forced to spearhead a “negotiation” with the European division for a substitute Proxy. He put it off as long as he could but he finally left for the UK this morning and thinking about it gives me a sick, curdling feeling. For one thing it’s punishment, Robert making him participate in the thing that Ethan despises the most about Affinity’s perpetuating horrors. For another, I can’t stand the idea of him being so far away. I can’t stand the idea of Miriam alone at the compound with no one to visit her bedside, no one to scan the silence in the bandwidth for a glimpse of her signal. I shake my head, not wanting to picture her or the breathing tube.

Ethan. It frightens me, the sense of exposure and vulnerability I feel without him, after four weeks of seeing him every day, his constant presence like a comforting buffer.

I ask before I mean to, “You see Ethan before he went?”

Davis looks up. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“He made you come?”

“He asked.” Davis sits back, crossing his ankles.

“You didn’t have to.”

He lifts one eyebrow then drops it again and looks away. “I know.”

The swoop and plunge hits me, a minor grief wave triggered by Davis’s backhanded kindness, a compression in my head and chest that makes it hard to fill my lungs. I stare at my fingers, waiting for the tremor to lift. The psych team says it’s post-traumatic stress. They say the experience with the Proxy was like living through a natural disaster, a tsunami or city-levelling earthquake. Apparently we all live in this delusion of safety when really none of us is ever truly safe and we could all die at any given moment and the “Proxy event” shattered that delusion. I’m not sure I buy their theory. Don’t Shields already know there are no guarantees in life?

Ethan says no one knew what the Proxy could do or, more accurately, the magnitude of what she could do outside of the Symbiosis. Her reach and strength were always attributed to her compatibility with the chemical conductor, and in the constantly monitored environment of the compound even the slightest sign of anomaly would have been jumped on. She’d been careful to keep her trump cards hidden and bide her time.

Davis coughs, bringing me to the surface. “They must be pretty confident you’re … you know, okay. To let you out, I mean.”

I peer at him through my fingers. “Must be.”

“It’s just … I’ll be pissed if I’m back out here next week with a taser because you’ve gone postal at the mall.”

I roll my eyes. “Burton doesn’t have a mall.”

He scowls but I can see him trying not to smile.

The effort to joke leaves me hollow. My thoughts swing back to open wounds. The one I pick at the most, the one I camp around, build a shrine and light incense to, is my part in boosting the Proxy’s signal, allowing her to paralyse everyone in the house. I replay the moment of stepping into the lounge over and over, focusing specifically on my total failure to suspect or react. Sometimes, I re-imagine the moment with me on full alert, anticipating her presence, breaking her wrist or driving my fist into her face. That way Jamie isn’t paralysed and his foot shatters Benjamin’s hand and sends the gun careening across the room, the trigger intact. I picture Kitty stumbling into Aiden’s arms, whirling to see they’ve had a terrible near miss, clinging to his chest, his heart still beating beneath her hands. If I really go to town, I play out this whole touching scene where Jamie apologises to Aiden for being such a colossal ass. They shake hands or do that back-slapping man hug thing, though I can never get the dialogue right.

I’m not supposed to dwell on it or the fact that everything,
everything
is my fault and if I had only listened to Miriam and stayed out of it, Aiden would have lived.

The psych team has this thing about “identifying the lies we believe” and “replacing them with the truth”. Like me believing it’s all my fault and that there’s something essentially broken in me that allowed the Proxy to use me is “a lie”. That my carelessness and ineptitude, my pathetically weak mind and utter, utter uselessness is the reason my brother is dead, is also “a lie”. I’m not supposed to tell myself that Felicity’s death is my responsibility, nor should I think that Benjamin becoming a murdering puppet at the Proxy’s hands is my fault. Kitty nearly dying because of my cosmic selfishness and irresponsibility, exactly as Jamie feared, apparently not my fault either. Of course these “lies” are the truth I live and breathe but I learned quickly the right noises to make to keep the medication humming, the restraints unbuckled and the psych team happy.

“Here we are.” Davis taps my foot and chucks a duffel coat at me. “You’ll need this.”

Columbia Avenue is beautifully bald. Tree limbs naked, wet and black, glistening in the eerie afternoon light. A few of the houses twinkle with Christmas lights. I’m glad it’s Davis dropping me off because the sight of Miriam’s house makes me fluttery in my stomach. If it were Ethan, I might be tempted to cry, bury my face in his dad-shaped chest. I rummage in my pack but can’t find the house keys. “Um … no keys?”

He frowns and shakes his head, digging in his pocket for his pick wallet. We trudge up the snow-clogged path, careful on the slippery verandah. Davis flips the leather wallet open, selects a pick, springs the lock and steps back.

“I should get one of those,” I say, suddenly afraid. I picture flinging my arms around his neck and begging him not to leave me by myself. “Thanks for the jacket.”

He nods, watching me closely. The van rumbles on the street. “Okay. Well, try not to go nuts.”

My laugh is more like a choke.

He shoves the pick wallet in my hand and jogs down the path.

“Hey!” I call, holding it out.

“Forget about it. I got plenty.” He jumps in the van and it pulls away.

It’s freezing inside. I hate that it’s freezing. No Buffy to greet me. I hate that too. It all shouts, alone! Alone! Ethan said the Gallaghers took the cat; it must have been Kitty’s idea. I can’t imagine facing them to go and get her. I don’t look through the glass door to Miriam’s studio. I walk past the empty living room and stop by the thermostat and flick the heat but it will take ages to thaw. I stand and stare at the readout, unwilling to go into the kitchen; it’s even more Miriam’s space than the studio. I don’t look at the Virgin in her alcove shelf. I go upstairs.