Fractured (23 page)

Ben can run. Can he ever. I push the speed more and more. He must hear something, turns his head slightly to see who is behind; then turns forward and keeps going.

Perhaps he can’t tell it is me in this light. I push faster. ‘Wait up,’ I call softly. ‘Ben, wait.’

His pace slows, then becomes a walk.

I reach him.

‘Yes?’ he says.

I smile widely into his eyes, brown with golden glints. I grab his hand. He looks down at our hands. Half smiles.

The details start to penetrate. Something isn’t right.

‘Ben?’

‘Sorry. You’ve confused me with somebody else.’

‘No I haven’t.’ And I cling to his hand.

He shakes his head, pulls his hand away. ‘Sorry, I’m not Ben. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve only got a short time to finish my run.’ And he takes off. Runs away. Leaves me standing, watching him go, watching him run, and every movement he makes is
my Ben.
Tears begin to leak out of my eyes.

He doesn’t know who I am.

He doesn’t remember anything.

My stomach twists. He’s been re-Slated. It is the only answer. But he is seventeen. They’re not supposed to do that unless you are under sixteen. Why would they break their own rule for Ben?

He doesn’t know who I am
.

I’m shaking, still standing on the path. Ben may turn and come back this way. With that thought, I stumble into the trees, and wait. Soon he appears in the distance. I watch as he runs closer, his usual graceful gait, then past in a blur back up the hill.

There are sounds in the woods behind me, but I stand still, watch Ben disappear into the light of the sunrise above.

‘Rain?’ A low voice: Katran.

I don’t turn, unwilling for him to see the tears on my face, unable to stop them. A warm hand touches my arm, pulls me around.

‘What is it?’

I shake my head, unable to speak. He hesitates, reaches a hand for my shoulder. He pulls me closer, his arms stiff at first then softening. And I sob, tell him that Ben doesn’t know who I am any more.

Finally he pushes me away, and looks in my eyes. ‘You’ve got to pull yourself together, and do it now. We’ve got to get out of here. It is getting too light; more people may come.’

He pulls me back through the woods to our bikes, and we head down the canal path. The cold air on my face stings my eyes, making it hard to see, while three words go over and over in my mind. They still don’t feel any more real.

Ben is gone.

Even though I was Slated, I got some of my memories back, because of what Nico did. But Ben won’t. It doesn’t work that way. It is like I never existed to him. Nothing that happened between us ever happened to him. He doesn’t know any of it.

Ben is gone
.

My tears have stopped; all I am, is empty. There is nothing. No hope. No way out.

We get to the hide and I just stand there while Katran stuffs my bike in.

‘What were you thinking, going there?’ He is shaking his head: the usual Katran is back.

I stay silent. He pushes my shoulder, a challenge.

‘You tell Nico and the rest of us that you support Free UK, then you do something like this. Risky, Rain. What if I hadn’t been there to drag you away, and you got caught? They’d get things out of you. They have ways. You’d have them come down on all of us.’

Something twists and hardens, inside. ‘The Lorders took Ben from me once. Now they’ve done it again. He’s gone. That’s it. I’m done now. I’ll do anything to get back at them.’

‘You look like you mean it. Is this your one thing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The thing that finally pushes you over the edge. So you truly
are
capable of anything.’

I shrug, but everything inside is shifting, realigning. Emily’s ring, now hiding up an unmarked tree, was enough. And Ben, too:
Yes
. I’m so far over the edge, there is no way back. ‘What was your one thing?’

He grabs my hand, touches it to his cheek – the scar on it – then pushes me away.

‘Don’t you remember? This. When I was ten, my older sister was missing. Hiding. She’d got in some trouble, nothing too serious but you know what Lorders are like.’

He suddenly twists round, pulls me with my back against him, an arm around my neck. ‘One held me like this,’ he whispers. He raises his other hand to my cheek, just under my eye. ‘We were by our boathouse. He took my dad’s diving knife, and he dug the point in, here.’ He traces his finger down my cheek, the path of his scar. ‘By the time he got to here, I told them where she was. We never saw her again.’

He pushes me away. The diving knife: a katran. The name he chose so he can never forget. The knife he still carries, now.
I remember.

I hold my cheek. He’d not hurt me, but I can still feel his finger on my skin, tracing the path of a knife. I stare at him in horror. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were a child!’

‘Maybe so. But that is why I would die before I’d ever betray anyone again. I won’t tell Nico what you did today. And I won’t tell Tori about Ben, either. Now go. Get back home before you are missed.’

‘Katran?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thanks.’

He stares back. ‘I accept you want to be with us. But you have to know your limitations.’

‘What do you mean?’

He shakes his head. ‘Another time.’ He hesitates, then touches his hand to my cheek. ‘I’m sorry about Ben.’

It is nearly getting ready for school time when I jog up our street, too late to sneak in the back way, thankful I’d left a just-in-case note. One that said ‘out for a run’.

No point in being quiet this time.

I open the front door. ‘Hello, I’m back,’ I yell.

Mum peeks out from the kitchen as I bend to unlace my shoes.

‘Wasn’t it too cold for that this morning?’

‘Cold is good for running!’ I say, trying to force my voice to be light. Failing.

She walks out into the hall as I chuck my shoes in the wardrobe.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, and her eyes look like they have concern, real and genuine. I’d so like to believe it is true. To fall into her arms, and tell her about Ben. But I can’t. Neither can I deny what she can so obviously see on my face. My red eyes.

‘Just thinking of Ben. I couldn’t sleep, so I went running.’

She puts a hand on my shoulder, gives it a squeeze. Pushes me to the stairs. ‘Go. Have a shower, and warm up. I think a cooked breakfast this morning after all that.’

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Since yesterday morning, it is as if the world in sympathy has been dipped into a deep chill: the temperature staying near zero all day, and much lower at night. That and Ben have kept me numb, going through the motions of school, home and in between, almost without awareness. Minutes ticking past in a strange way where I can stare out the window, blank, and look up a moment later to find hours have passed. I even did my Shakespeare homework for English to have something, anything, to occupy my mind. A poor effort, but that is one less thing to get in trouble over. At least until they read it, because it is pretty bad. Though Nico or Coulson may have made my English homework irrelevant by then.

And tonight, it is Group.

Running usually makes me feel better, more myself. Whoever that is. But as my feet thud up the road, I’m not sure this was a good idea. All it does is make me remember running to Group with Ben.

We used to run to overcome our Levos. All those happy brain chemicals from excessive exercising – endorphins – made it possible to think, to talk about unpleasant things without our levels dropping. But it was so much more than that: Ben loved to run. Even more than I did. It was part of who he was.

My feet falter, I almost stumble: running is
still
part of who Ben is.

I slow to a walk. What does this mean? Something has been niggling away at me behind the grief, and that is it. I’d guessed Ben would run in that place in the morning because I know him so well. He did. That means part of him is still there.

I force myself to remember every moment of yesterday morning, examine it. Something I’d been trying to avoid. He didn’t know who I was, so I’d assumed he’d been re-Slated. There wasn’t a new Levo in sight, but his sleeves were too long to tell. They would have hidden it.

But something isn’t right. If he had been redone, he’d have been like a new Slated, wouldn’t he? All joy and big dopey grins. It hasn’t been that long. And he wasn’t like that, at all: if anything, he was less that way than he used to be. Whatever has happened to him, it isn’t that. This is something else.

I walk along the icy road, deep in thought, barely noticing the grip of the cold now I’ve stopped running. Now and then lights come up bright behind me then are gone, as cars, then a van, sweep past.

As I round a corner the van is pulled in at the side of the road.

Some part of my brain notes: a white van.

‘Best Builders’ painted down the side.

Run!

The thought barely forms when hands reach out from shadows at the side of the road and grab my arm.

My instant reaction is to spin and kick, but car lights come the other way. He lets go of me as light sweeps over us, and confirm the only conclusion: it is Wayne.

Wayne, but he has changed. His face, never a picture, is worse: an angry scar runs from his eye and into his scalp, hair missing around it that isn’t growing back.

‘Pretty, ain’t I?’ he says, reading my face.

‘What do you want?’ I say, stalling. Reminding myself that he doesn’t remember: that is what Amy said was going round at the doctor’s surgery. He has traumatic amnesia. He doesn’t remember who beat him up. Unless seeing me brings it back?

Another car passes.

‘I think you know.’

Every instinct screams
run
, get away. ‘Tell me,’ I say.

He raises his eyebrows and one, trapped by the scar, looks like it splits in half. ‘Just this. Keep looking over your shoulder, honey, because one day, somewhere lonely, I’ll be there.’

He winks and I realise one eye is false; it looks the wrong way.

‘Later,’ he says. Walks back to his van. Gets in, starts the engine and drives up the road. Gives the horn a double tap ‘toot toot’ before he disappears from sight.

My knees are shaking so much I have to stop, and lean against a tree. I look at my hands: so much damage they caused. Nico’s training brought out in danger. It was self-defence, yes, but all I can see is the blood. His head soaked with blood. I breathe in and out, fight not to be sick.

And Wayne
remembers
. He knows it was me who did that to him, yet he hasn’t told the authorities. He wants to deal with me himself.

I shiver and start moving again, walking then running. Let’s face it: terrifying as he is, Wayne isn’t the worst bogeyman in my closet. There are so many threats to look for over my shoulder, I should install a wing mirror to keep them all in sight.

The bright lights and smiles of Group don’t lift the chill. I’m still shivering when Mum picks me up at the end.

‘See. I told you it was too cold to run. You should listen to your mother.’

Honk, honk! Car horns are loud in my ears. But the traffic is stopped. They’re not going anywhere, and I yell at the bus driver: move, do something! I know what is going to happen, but he can’t hear me.

There is a whistling noise, a flash, a BANG that rattles into my bones, sends me sprawling, but there is no way to get away. The side of the bus is splintered, folded in on itself.

There is screaming from inside; bloody hands beat on windows. Flames lick the back of the bus.

A pause. Another whistle, flash, explosion.

Opposite the bus a sign hangs on a pole, half dislodged – from some stray bit of shrapnel? The building behind is untouched.

The sign says London Lorder Offices.

Heart beating wildly, eyes finally open, I’m shaking: a blanket in my mouth to stop a scream.

A Free UK attack gone wrong. A face floats into view: Dr Craig. Why? What has he got to do with this?

Katran would do
anything
to strike at the Lorders. So would I! Determination clenches tight, inside.
But not that
. I couldn’t do that.

Something went wrong when that bus was hit – it was a mistake.

Was I there? Everything says yes – the details, the sounds, the smells – so real, so clear.

I’ve had this dream a few times before. In one version, Mum’s son Robert and his girlfriend were on the bus. But it happened over six years ago: I was ten years old! I couldn’t have been there; it doesn’t make sense. I wasn’t even with Katran and the Owls until I was fourteen.

Yet I must have done things like this in the past. That must be why the details are so real, so clear. Then, when I was one of the Owls, I would do
anything
to strike at the Lorders. I was strong.

I will be strong again.

I
can
do anything.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Nico draws me into his school office the next day at lunch. Locks the door behind us.

‘I have a job for you,’ he says, and holds up a small envelope. ‘Plant this someplace your mum will find it, where no one else will see. But not until tomorrow afternoon.’

I reach out my hand, grasp the envelope.

‘Aren’t you going to ask what it is?’

I hesitate, shake my head. ‘No. Because you were right.’

‘I’m always right, but about what in particular?’ His face quirks.

‘About Mum. She is a Lorder tool. No matter her private leanings, if she is a willing symbol for them, she is a target for us.’

Nico’s eyes glow warm. He smiles. ‘But you were also right.’

‘I was?’

‘In telling me about her son, Robert. There is a chance we can use this. If we can get her to come out publicly on our side – even better.’

I look down at the envelope in my hand. ‘And this?’

‘You could say it is an invitation.’

A sealed invitation, I notice as I hide it away in my bag for delivery tomorrow.