Disrupted (8 page)

“Stay out of this, Willow.”

“But you can’t—”

“He’s right,” said Gale, “you can’t do anything about it now. I told you not to draw attention.”

“I didn’t.” But a horrible feeling bubbled in my tummy. This was so familiar. Too familiar.

Oh, God. Somehow I’d started two fights in one day, and both had freakishly escalated to some weird place where it no longer had anything to do with me.

Joe slowly unfolded his arms. “”We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“The easy way,” I said quickly, before Chris’s stubborn pride got him dead. Again.

“Willow!”

I ignored Chris.

Joe nudged his chin toward the bar counter and told Chris, “Come.”

Joe swaggered off, and Chris followed.

I half stood, trying to see, but they were swallowed up by the small crowd gathered around us to watch. When had that happened?

Some had pulled up chairs, straddling them back to front. Others propped themselves against nearby tables, arms folded, spurred ankles crossed, looking on with bemused smirks. And everyone seemed to have a loud opinion. A hundred hushed conversations suddenly turned public.

“I saw it all. Joey was doing nothing but minding his own business.”

“And ain’t Joey’s business always another man’s lady?”

“Can’t blame a man for looking out for his own.”

“—insulted the lady.”

“—called him an old geezer.”

“Hey, who you’re calling an old geezer?”

“Shut your fly trap, Billy.”

“—blind and deaf, now?”

The snippets of conversation became an argumentative blur. All at once, there was shoving and elbowing. A punch was thrown, then another, and, while I stared, mini brawls broke out all over the place.

Gale yanked me down into my chair. “Don’t interfere.”

I shook my head. Blocked out the mayhem. And glared at Gale. “Where did they go? Where did he take Chris?” 

“They’ll be back.”

“Bruised and bloody!”

“No, that would be the hard option.”

“This is ridiculous. We have to stop it.”

“The more fuss you make,” she said, “the more they’ll think you want to play. Let them just get on with it.”

“Are you mad?” I glared at her. “I thought you liked Chris. Why did you bring us here anyway?”

“Why can’t you ever just do as you’re told?” she countered. “I warned you to keep your head down. But no, we’re not here ten minutes, and you’ve enticed some guy over. Have you not noticed we’re in the middle of a crisis?”

“News flash,” I hissed. “Not everything is my fault. You might have mentioned that you’d brought us into a den of thugs.”

“News flash,” mimicked Gale. “Everything’s your fault. You are nothing but trouble.”

“Ooh…” I started out of my seat, and this time Gale’s tug didn’t pull me down. She came up with me instead, dangling on my arm. I tried to shake her off without success; she’d wrapped herself around my wrist like a handcuff. “Someone needs to turn you off and throw away the switch,” I said crossly.

Gale blubbered something, but I was done listening. I needed to push a path through the chaos and find Chris. I didn’t get past my first step. I looked back at Gale, surprised at her strength, then saw she’d wound her other arm around the base of our table to anchor us in place.

“Let go now,” I demanded.

“Or what?”

I was about to list a rather long list of profane ‘whats’, but the change of mood in the room distracted me. Booing and cheering made its way into the flow of random insults being tossed about with the punches and head cracking. I glanced up and gave a small cry when I spotted Chris on the far side of the room. A space opened up around him as he walked, giving me a better view. And that’s when I saw what was in his hand.

A silver barrelled six-shooter.

Now, I know it’s not physically possible for a heart to jump into a throat, but that’s exactly what mine did. For an endless moment, all I could do was stand there like a dummy and stare. At Joe emerging from the other end of the crowd. At Chris watching him intently. At the two of them coming to a halt at roughly the same time, facing each other off from a distance of about fifteen feet.

Joe slid his hands up his thighs, slow and steady, displacing his coat as he did so. When he stopped, each hand was poised above the barrel of a gun tucked into the double holster strapped at his hips.

“No!” I shouted. “Chris, no!”

But my voice was too hoarse. There were too many people and too much noise between us. Wasn’t there supposed to be a hushed silence just before a shoot out?

A shoot out? Had the world gone totally mad?

I lunged forward, one mighty effort for each step as I dragged both a resisting Gale and the sturdy table with me. “How can you let this happen?” I yelled at her. “He’s got a gun. Did you know he has a gun? Why aren’t you helping?”

“You’re the one who chose the easy way,” Gale answered with an extra heave to pull me back one of the precious steps I’d taken. “Don’t you ever know when to just stop interfering?”

Gale’s attitude frightened me almost as much as everything else. I knew I was missing something, a vital piece of information that would explain this craziness. But I couldn’t think, couldn’t grasp that key that would crack the code and make sense of the jumble in my head.

“Chris could die,” I shouted at her.

“And you’ll have to live with that,” she said back.

“What is the matter with you?” And then I knew. I had my key, in the shape of a big nasty ‘T’ for Traitor. I stopped the struggle, but I couldn’t turn to look at her. All was lost. This was it. This was how it ended. “You’re one of them. You’re with the people who want Chris dead. This is a trap. You led us into a stinking trap.”

The blue flashes exploded without a sound.

I felt as if those flashes had exploded inside my head and melted my brain. I couldn’t seem to do anything, say anything, think anything.

All I could do was watch numbly as the aftermath unfolded.

Joe had barely twitched. His hands were still poised above the holsters either side of his hips, except now the holsters were empty and in each hand was a smoking gun.

The force of impact flung Chris up into the air and backward. He came down into a crumpled position without so much as a whimper.

He didn’t get up. He wasn’t squirming on the floor in agony. He just lay there, lifeless and alone. It was over. I wanted to reach out for him. Tell him how sorry I was. My legs were thick and heavy like two tree trunks, my feet rooting me to the ground. I didn’t think I was dying as well, but still a life’s worth of mistakes swam before my eyes.

It didn’t matter that some mental murderers from the future had travelled back in time to mastermind a diabolical assassination. It didn’t matter that Gale had fooled us all. It didn’t matter that Joe had fired the gun, that Jack had plunged the knife. I was the fool, I was the trigger, and I was the blade.

I had killed Chris. The moment I’d decided enough was enough and chased after Chris into those woods, I’d sealed his fated death. I couldn’t even remember anymore what had been so urgent. What couldn’t have waited for class the next morning. It was a Litter Bug Drive, for God’s sake. How important could it possibly have been?

The world was spinning away from me, or maybe the world stood still and I was the one spinning away.

I felt the edges of my world unravel around me as Chris’s life came undone there on the floor, faster and faster, shooting me into the blackness like a spinning top at the end of its thread. Into a dark abyss that was two parts guilt and one part remorse. I couldn’t bear this. I wasn’t this strong.

I could not be responsible for someone else’s death. Dear God above, please... no... The air turned to thick sludge, slurring my mind and body with each breath until only blackness loomed and I welcomed it.

Chapter 9

I
don’t know why I was so surprised to see the timbered ceiling of ‘Ye Olde Cactus’ when I opened my eyes. After all, I clearly remembered walking in here with Gale and Chris... Chris! Cold dread gripped my bones as the memory washed over me.

“Willow?” A voice, so far off at first, came closer. “What happened?

And closer. “Why’s Willow on the floor?”

My gaze froze on the ceiling.

It sounded just like Chris.

But it wasn’t him.

How could it be him?

“She passed out,” answered Gale. The traitorous traitor who’d sold us out. “Give her a minute and she’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about.”

A shadow fell over me, and then I was looking up into frowning grey eyes. My heart started thumping, loud and uncertain.

“Are you okay?” Standing over me, Chris reached down to grab my arms, pulling me up until I was sitting. When he realised that was the best he’d be getting out of me, he came down beside me.

“You’re hurt,” I blurted, as the impossible turned to possible.

Chris was alive. He’d survived. And I was such a wimp. Crashing at the first hurdle when I should have been there to check on him, do mouth to mouth, call 911. To save him.

I stared at him, confused, happy, somewhat uneasy. I was looking at the front of his unstained shirt, frowning, and then I knew what was wrong. There was no blood. And I didn’t trust my eyes.

Suddenly my trembling hands were all over him, feeling up and down his chest, tugging at the buttons on his shirt, searching for a gaping wound. “Where- where does it hurt?”

“Hey, okay.” Chris rocked away from my prowling hands with a gruff laugh. “I got the breath knocked out of me, but I’ll live.”

“You were shot,” I said desperately, knowing what I’d seen, reliving the terror of what I’d felt. “I saw you take a direct hit. You were thrown into the air. Joe shot you. You were dead. And not moving.”

“You didn’t tell her?” Chris slanted a scowl up at Gale.

I grabbed his arm urgently, pulling him closer. “We have to get away from her,” I whispered. “She’s one of them.”

“Who?” Chris blinked at me, then shook me off his arm and turned back to Gale. “You didn’t tell her about the entertainment holographs?”

“I was going to, Christian Wood.”

“When?” he snapped irritably.

“Chris.” I tugged at his arm again, keeping a wary eye on Gale. “We’re not safe here. This is a trap and Gale... she’s one of them.”

“Willow,” said Chris soothing, wiping my hand off his arm, again. “I think you’ve bumped your head. Maybe lie down another minute.”

“There isn’t time. They tried to kill you, and who knows—”

“No one tried to kill me, Willow. All these people in costume are holographs. Nothing is real. Make believe brawls and mock shoot outs is apparently all part of the fun.”

I heard the words, but they weren’t making any sense. I hadn’t imagined Chris being flung off his feet. I hadn’t made up Joe’s smoking guns. I hadn’t imagined Gale preventing me from going to help Chris. Poor Chris, he was no doubt delirious from blood loss.

“And I really thought,” went on Chris, scowling up at Gale, “that you might have mentioned something about that to Willow.”

“She had it coming,” said Gale. “Someone has to teach her the consequences of her silly actions. Next time it will be real and then what?”

Chris sighed at me. “Willow, I’m sorry you didn’t know. Joe did shoot me, but it was just a lights and dance show. He’s a holograph. Actually, the electrical jolt was a lot worse than I was expecting. It must have stunned me. I don’t know, maybe I was out for a few seconds.

“Billy told me to just go with it. Once you’ve engaged the holographs, they’re programmed to play it out to the end. You don’t get to just say no, you know? Well, you do, but they just think that’s part of the game. This is what people come to lob bars for. It’s like some kind of interactive action movie.”

I stared at Chris, and finally it was all making a little too much sense. And Gale, she’d let me go on, believing the worst, fearing the end.

When I realised exactly what Gale had done, I liked her even less than if she had been a traitor.

“You,” I bit out at Gale, “are such a cow. And you—” I said to Chris, “you knew it was a fake set-up all along?”

Chris shook his head. “When Joe showed me to the gun cabinet, I went at him. And went right through him. The bartender—Billy, he’s human—explained everything. He said it’s simpler to just play the scene out or they’ll chase after us into the streets. There was never any danger. It wasn’t real.”

But it was real. To me, it had been horrifically real. And it wasn’t going away.

The guilt I thought I’d have to live with.

The gurgling bubble of relief that Chris wasn’t dead, instantly popped by knowing now just how fragile that state really was.

The rude wake-up call that there’d been no adult in the wings this time to make everything all right.

And Gale. Well, that was probably the only good that had come out of this. How much frustrated energy had I wasted on a psycho scrap of tin? She didn’t have a heart. She didn’t have a brain. She didn’t have the basics of a conscience and what is and isn’t acceptable in the land of humans. She’d actually stood by and let me watch Chris die, and somehow thought that might be a handy lesson to take back with me.

I narrowed my eyes on her. She was a perfectly normal lime green. And why should she be a petrified orange or sickly yellow? Her world hadn’t very nearly folded in on her.

“I don’t care what you think,” she said to my scowl. “You need to know you can’t go around just doing whatever takes your fancy. People get hurt. People suffer. There are some things you can’t ever take back. It’s just cruel. You’re just cruel.”

She was hovering a couple of feet away while she ranted, a safe distance from my fury. She needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t have been less interested in what she’d done or why she’d done it. I was even less interested in striking back at her. She was bits of metal and plastic and electrics and whatever else robots are made up of. I was done venting valuable resources (like breath and air and mental energy) on Gale.

Chris, astonishingly, took up my slack.

“The definition of cruel,” he hissed at Gale as he rose from his crouch beside me, “is what you just did to Willow. How could you let her think I was being shot for real?” He grabbed her by one arm and yanked her closer, all but pushing her into my face. “Apologise now.”

Gale glared at me up close.

“It doesn’t matter,” I assured Chris, lurching to my feet to get away from that glare.

My legs were still a little weak, and I collapsed gracelessly into a nearby chair.

Chris flung Gale around and onto the top of the table. “I mean it Gale. The least you can do is say sorry. Admit you were wrong.”

For once, Gale didn’t immediately cave in to his every whim. She slithered to the ground, feet stretched all the way first and then, pop, the rest of her. Still glaring at me, she gave her head a reckless toss (never a good idea when your neck is actually a pinnacle,) and stood there, wobbling a bit.

“I don’t need an apology,” I said firmly, to both of them. I really didn’t, and not just because Gale would clearly rust over before giving me one. “We should think about what we’re going to do.”

“Huh,” grunted Chris. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” He pointed a finger at Gale. “You’re going to go back to Drustan’s apartment and check if those Razoks are still there.”

“But what if—”

“Just do it. Stay low and no one will see you. We need to know if it’s safe to return.”

Gale started to wind her arms around her body, looking all nervous and pitiful. Chris just stared at her, long and hard, until she spun about in a tizz and flew out the door of Ye Olde Cactus.

Chris took the chair opposite from me. He folded his arms on the table and leaned across confidentially. But he didn’t say anything. Not at once, anyway. He smiled, a strange smile that reached his eyes and unmasked the strain lurking there. It must have been there all along, but he was only now letting me see it.

The intimacy bit like the hallucinogenic sedative of a vampire’s bite; I didn’t really want it, wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I didn’t want to let it go either.

“You’re seriously going to let Gale get off this easily?” murmured Chris.

I watched his lips move, heard the question, but I was caught up in a moment that I couldn’t quite define. His mouth looked both hard and soft at the same time. I felt myself leaning in. I don’t know whether I wanted to comfort him or kiss him, but it definitely involved throwing my arms around his neck.

Which was all very confusing.

Chris wasn’t a hottie, not exactly the kind of guy to cause a twitter of breathless giggles as he swaggered on by. And he’d spent most of our enforced acquaintance being really exasperating and, on the occasions I’d offered help, downright nasty.

Except, he hadn’t mocked when he’d found me crying over my sad and pathetic non-future. He also hadn’t yelled at me to butt of out things I knew nothing about when I’d accused him of having a fairytale childhood.

“Of course you’re not going to leave it,” concluded Chris, withdrawing to his side of the table.

Thankfully taking that weird moment with him. What was that anyway? This was Chris. We did not share moments. I did not want to throw my arms around his and test the hardness or softness of his lips. We had nothing in common, shark and shrimp nothing in common.

“So, what do you have in mind for Gale?” he went on. “Boiling tar? Welding her circuits into a knot?”

And he did so not know anything about me, about what I felt and what I would or would not do.

“Nothing, actually,” I told him smugly. “Gale is a machine. I didn’t hold a grudge against my laptop for mauling my hard drive the night before our Hamlet paper was due. The same goes for Gale.”

I had given my laptop a fierce kick, though.

And I’ve been known to smash the occasional alarm clock against the wall when I couldn’t find the snooze button quick enough.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t try to reason with my mobile when it lost signal in the middle of a crucial call. I didn’t accuse my ipod of hate crimes when the battery died on my way out the front door. I’d certainly never expected (or got) an apology from misbehaving gadgets and I’d rather not start with Gale.

I was no longer mixed up on the scale of human vs machine and I didn’t want to upset the status quo.

Gale was an appliance to be used as and when required. Actually, from now on, I’d think of her as little more than a glorified calculator, spitting our answers at our behest.