Dragonsapien (2 page)

‘We’ll have to
hope you’re right, Celly,’ Celly’s mum sighed resignedly, ‘that
Sarah seemed confused enough to believe your story! It may be an
awful thing to wish, I know, but we’ll just have to hope that that
poor woman is filed away as a missing person rather
tha–’

The bell to the
apartment door rang.

Celly and her
mum swapped anxious glances.

‘The police?’
Celly said worriedly.

Her mum shook
her head but frowned uncertainly.

‘I wouldn’t
think they’d had time…’

They both
cringed as they heard their housekeeper Mary answer the
door.

‘Hello Jake!’
they heard Mary trill happily. ‘Celly’s in the main room; go right
through, she’s expecting you.’

Celly and her
mother smiled at each other.

Perhaps
everything would turn out all right for the Volances after
all.

‘It’s Jake,’
Celly repeated excitedly, unnecessarily

She
turned.

She ran to meet
Jake.

Her instinct,
she realised, allowed her to once again place the horror of the
last few hours to the back of her mind.

Then again, it
had been her instinct for survival that had caused her to kill the
poor woman in the first place.

*

After all that
had happened, Celly didn’t feel like showing Jake the green dress,
let alone wearing it to see if he thought it suited her.

Jake was just a
few years older than her, the son of neighbours living in the
apartment just below the Volances.

Celly felt
almost
sure that Jake was attracted to her. But was she just
confusing the fact that
she
was attracted to
him
, and
was hoping that he felt the same way about her?

It was all so
bewildering, the way that humans could hide whether they were
attracted to you or not!

‘How’s it all
going, Celly?’ he asked with his familiar, welcoming
grin.

‘Fine, fine; and
you?’ Fine apart from the fact that I’ve just mistakenly killed a
woman, she thought. ‘How’d it go with the tests?’

Jake had been
running a few tests on his computer to check if the adaptions he’d
made to a computer game would allow him to alter the way it worked,
in particular allowing him to play from the vantage point of at
least one of the villains rather than the heroes.

He shook his
head sadly.

‘Uh uh; more
locks on the game than I’d anticipated. More limitations, too, so
it doesn’t really make it worth playing that role. I’d hoped I’d be
able to combine some of the attributes of the good guys; you know,
use their abilities, their capabilities.’

Celly wasn’t
really interested in computer games. But as Jake couldn’t seem to
get enough of them, she pretended to enjoy them too.

‘Did you want to
finish playing that game we were playing yesterday?’ she asked,
secretly hoping he’d say, No, let’s go out somewhere.

‘Sure,’ he
said.

*

Just as Jake was
good at manipulating and even building basic versions of the
technology underlying computer games, he was also good at playing
them.

There was no
point in Celly taking on an opposing role; she would only last a
few seconds before Jake obliterated either her or her virtual team.
So she always took on a supporting role, backing Jake’s swift
advance through the landscapes as best as she could.

‘It’s a joke, of
course,’ Jake said distractedly as, with a rapid tweak of his
handheld control, he narrowly avoided being sent to oblivion by a
group of oncoming androids, ‘this idea that computers and robots
could take over the world.’

‘Really? I’d
thought you’d be the one most likely to believe in it, the way
you’re always tinkering with all that software you’re constantly
loading up.’

‘Yeah, including
tinkering for hours with my laptop after an automatic update has
just about destroyed its registry. So with these robots, right, I
reckon they’d all come to a grinding halt after a clash of updates
from Microsoft and Epsom.’

Jake was
surprisingly callous when it came to wiping out the enemies they
faced. Efficient. Brutal. Even faintly sadistic, the way he laughed
as yet another opponent plummeted off a cliff, was consumed by
fire, or exploded in a shower of blood and shrapnel.

‘We’re saving
ourselves/ the Kingdom/ the Earth/ the Gurdian Race,’ Jake would
always nonchalantly reply whenever Celly pointed this
out.

There was a
knock on the room’s door.

It opened,
Celly’s mum entering with Dr Frobisher.

‘Sorry to
interrupt Celly,’ her mum said, ‘But Dr Frobisher came straight
round when I called, asking him to, er, you know; for your regular
check-up?’

‘Regular
check-up?’ Jake whispered curiously, turning to face Celly. ‘Since
when do you call a doctor to come out for a regular check-up? You
okay, Celly?’

Celly sighed
inwardly.

Trust Jake to
notice mum’s poor choice of words!

Obviously, she
didn’t want Jake to know the real reason for Dr Frobisher’s visit;
he’d want to run a few checks to ensure the recent traumatic events
hadn’t caused her any unseen damage.

An uncontrolled,
sudden increase in her blood pressure could have caused an unwanted
tautening, a permanent tensioning, in certain areas of her skin’s
innumerable capillaries. Even a brief yet now forgotten spell of
hyperventilation could have resulted in any number of complications
in her complex system of lungs that – due to the way they were
effectively linked to just about every part of her sophisticated
structure – might in turn lead to problems with the rigidity of her
wings, the lightening of her body as she prepared to
fly.

‘Yes, Celly’s
fine thank you, Jake,’ Dr Frobisher said, having heard the boy’s
concern. ‘Perisa – Celly’s mother – simply meant she called asking
me to make a house visit for the check-up.’

‘Yes, yes,’
Celly’s mum agreed, now realising the mistake she’d made, ‘Celly’s
just being feeling a little off lately.’

Celly sighed
inwardly again.

Mum!
Couldn’t you have just left it with Dr Frobisher’s
explanation?

‘Off?’ Jake
said, his curiosity piqued again. ‘Really? Celly, you didn’t say
you weren’t feeling too good?’

‘Oh, it’s
nothing,’ Celly replied nonchalantly. ‘Just, you know, a
headache.’

‘A
headache?’

Now Celly’s
father Erdwin had appeared at the doorway. Placing an arm around
Celly’s mother, he gave her a kiss in greeting.

‘Well,’ he
continued, ‘we’ll have to get that looked at immediately, won’t we,
eh?’

If Jake thought
it odd that Celly’s dad had come home early from work, this time he
was polite enough to hang back from saying anything.

‘Hi Jake,’
Erdwin said brightly. ‘How’s things?’

‘Fine thanks, Mr
Volance.’

‘Now, if we
might just leave you on your own for a moment, please Jake?’
Celly’s mum held out a hand for Celly to take. ‘While we quickly
see what’s troubling Celly?’

‘Sure Mrs
Volance; I’m almost finished here anyway.’

Jake nodded back
towards the immense TV screen and it’s scenes of a devastated,
empty city.

The apartment’s
doorbell rang once more.

Celly’s mum
visibly tensed.

‘Who can that
be?’

She swapped
anxious glances with Erdwin and Dr Frobisher.

Celly saw that
Jake was too sharp not to notice this strange anxiety.

‘Come on Celly!’
Perisa held out her hand once more, this time shaking it as a sign
of her urgency.

Oh
mum! Celly thought. Can’t you see that Jake already realises
something’s not quite right? Without you making things worse by
treating me like a five-year-old?

But before they
left the room, Mary appeared at the door.

‘I’m sorry
ma’am,’ she said uneasily, ‘but they insisted on coming in; it’s
the police!’

*

Celly’s parents
and Dr Frobisher left the room, leaving her with Jake to finish
playing the game.

Jake wasn’t
playing so well anymore. His mind was obviously on other
things.

He frequently
frowned, and not just because his score was falling.

He kept glancing
Celly’s way, like he was waiting for her to say something. Like he
was upset because she was holding something back from
him.

This was just a
part of Jake’s character: the way that he could latch on to the
fact you were hiding something, realise you weren’t being quite
open with him; the way that he wouldn’t express his irritation but,
just like he felt you were holding in your secrets, hold in his
frustration, his growing anger.

Letting it build
and build inside him.

Simmering.
Silent. Sullen.

Yet, after all
that, he rarely let it all explode as uncontrollable
anger.

Rather, somehow,
Jake managed to contain it, let it all ease off inside
him.

Then, suddenly,
he would turn to you and breezily chat away as if the original
slight he’d sensed had never happened. As if, too, the last few
minutes (or hours) of silence had all been imagined by
you.

Today, Jake and
Celly never reached that point.

Perisa appeared
at the door.

‘Celly; the
detective would like a quick word with you, please.’

‘Detective?’
Jake was more concerned and curious than ever.

‘It’s nothing;
don’t worry.’ Celly gave Jake the best smile she could manage under
the circumstances.

‘Nothing? Like
the headaches are nothing, you mean?’

‘Jake, please,’
Perisa insisted. The urgently waving hand was once again urging
Celly to hurry.

‘How’d you know
it’s nothing?’ Jake persisted, leaping out of his chair, obviously
intending to accompany Celly. ‘You haven’t spoken with him yet.
What’s going on here Celly?’

‘No, Jake; you
have to stay here.’

Perisa now
swiftly held up her hand, indicating that Jake wasn’t to follow
them.

‘Please; finish
your game,’ she added firmly as she and Celly left the
room.

*

‘It’s about a
missing woman, Celly.’

Celly’s mum said
it to her as innocently as she could as they entered the main room
and approached the waiting detective.

The detective
frowned disapprovingly, but Perisa continued, giving Celly as much
information as she could without appearing overly
suspicious.

‘The detective
wants to know if you saw something when you visited L’Orange, as
that’s where he believes the poor woman was last seen before she
disappeared.’

L’Orange was the
shop. The police had obviously worked quickly in tracking the
woman’s whereabouts.

Celly struggled
to stay calm. Only the kicking-in of her protective instinct
prevented her from completely breaking down into a quivering,
apologetic shambles.

‘Missing woman?’
Celly said. ‘At the shop?’

She glanced
quickly about the room, taking in the situation.

There was
another policeman, this time a uniformed officer, standing closer
to the door. Like he’d been placed there to guard the only exit out
of the apartment.

The detective
was smartly if not elegantly dressed in a suit. He smiled, but it
was a forced smile, no doubt contrived to put everyone at their
ease and reveal more than they should.

He was tall, yet
was still naturally shorter than her gracefully slim parents. He
might have been a hand’s width taller than Dr Frobisher, but it was
hard to be sure as the latter was the only one in the room
seated.

‘If you don’t
mind, Mrs Volance?’ the detective said. ‘I really need to ask your
daughter these questions without any prompting from
yourself.’

‘Oh, I’m ever so
sorry officer; I was only trying to help.’

Perisa smiled.
Her
smile was charming, warming. Disarming.

It didn’t seem
to work on the detective. He returned the smile, but the rest of
his face was more scowl than enchantment.

He turned to
Celly, holding up a photograph of the ‘missing’ woman.

‘The assistant
at L’Orange says she’s sure she saw this woman going into a
changing cubicle, Celly – it’s okay to call you Celly, isn’t it? –
the changing cubicles where
you
were Celly.’

‘I’m not sure
that it’s right to ask Miss Volance such upsetting questions at
present, inspector.’ Dr Frobisher quickly came to Celly’s defence.
‘As I’ve already explained, the reason for my own presence here is
that she hasn’t been feeling well recently. She really can’t be
questioned over such matters just yet; maybe later,
yes?’