Shattered (23 page)

‘There was a friend of yours at school, another Slated: Tori. Her mother got tired of her taking attention, and had her returned to the Lorders. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was taken to that termination centre I mentioned, and saw with her own eyes other…’ My words trail away. ‘What is it? Do you remember Tori?’ I’m stung: he doesn’t remember
me
, but something crossed his face with the mention of Tori’s name. He’d always said she wasn’t ever his girlfriend, but she loved him, and she was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. It was hard to believe.

‘Of course I don’t remember her,’ he says, but his face is guarded, uncertain. ‘It’s just…hard to hear all these sad tales. Tell me what happened to Tori.’

‘She saw other Slateds killed by injection, dumped in the ground. And then…’ I trail off. Ben’s look of confusion is gone; is there a flash of something
else
? What is it? ‘Look: these are all things I saw. Some of them you did, too. Don’t you believe me?’

‘I just…’ And then as if a switch is flipped inside, he smiles and takes my hand. ‘Of course I do.’

‘One day I’ll show you Emily’s ring; I hid it in a tree a few miles from home. It’s real. Don’t you see, Ben: it is all their stories that make what we are doing with MIA so important. They are worth risking everything: to make them heard. To make it stop.’

He hesitates, slips his arm across my shoulders and I lean against him, so aware of
him
, his warmth and closeness, that it is hard to continue to think straight.

Ben points out a tower visible over the roofs of All Souls. ‘See, up there? That is one of the tallest buildings in Oxford. St Mary’s Church Tower. The views are meant to be amazing. I want to go up there with you.’

‘Okay; I’ll ask if we—’

‘No. Keep it as our secret; our special place. Leave it until I’m allowed out without a tail.’

Later, I mull over our conversation, what Ben said, the things he didn’t say flitting behind his eyes. I wonder if this is the kind of stuff Florence meant I should tell them. But that isn’t fair. He’s had his memory taken away; he’s figuring out the world, how it works, what happens in it. He has to ask questions to do that, doesn’t he?

But one point of discomfort niggles inside: he reacted to Tori’s name, I’m sure he did. Of course I never told him the
rest
of her story. That I was in the AGT as Rain; that Tori escaped from the Lorders, and joined too. And then there was the day that I was followed by Lorders, and Tori captured.

I shudder. I’ll never forget the pure hatred on her face, and it wasn’t just because she thought I betrayed the AGT: she’d found out from Nico I knew Ben was alive, and didn’t tell her. The venom in the words she screamed before being thrown in the back of a Lorder van rings in my ears even now:
Traitor! Kyla, or Rain, or whoever you are, I’ll get you. I’ll hunt you down and gut you with my knife
.

There is part of me that is relieved the Lorders caught her, that she’ll never get a chance for her revenge. There is another part that is ashamed for thinking so.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

‘Fancy a road trip?’ Aiden says, grinning, the next morning. ‘No need for crouching in the back of a telephone van this time; I’ve borrowed a rather impressive car.’

‘Sure! Where to?’

‘It’s a surprise. But it’ll be just us and Florence today,’ he says, and I bite back my disappointment: no Ben. Now that the sun is up, last night’s worries seem foolish. Ben couldn’t remember Tori; it doesn’t make sense. I must have been projecting my jealousy, and imagined his reaction. That is all.

The car is plush and powerful, borrowed from an unnamed fellow at the college. An hour later we’re past Oxford and driving through country fields, then pulling down a long lane to a farm.

‘Are we here to see another witness?’ I ask as we get out of the car.

‘Not today,’ Florence says. ‘Come on.’

She knocks once on the door, pulls a key out of her pocket and opens it. She walks in, Aiden and me behind her, and calls out, ‘Hello?’

‘Ah, there you are at last.’ In a doorway to the kitchen stands a man I’m very surprised to see: what is he doing here? I know the face, but the rest has changed.

‘DJ?’

‘Yes, ’tis I.’ He grins. ‘And there you are, Kyla: your hair is some of my best work.’

‘You’ve changed. No more purple?’

‘That is
so
last week.’ Today the IMET doctor looks more tiger stripes, both hair and eyes. ‘Did you forget your glasses?’

‘I kind of lost them; sorry.’

‘There may be something else you forgot.’

I look guiltily between DJ and Aiden. ‘Oh, no. I was supposed to tell Aiden you wanted to see him! I’m sorry. Was it a problem?’

‘Nice to see how reliable you are,’ Florence snipes.

‘No dramas,’ DJ says. ‘It gave me some time to look into things a bit more before we talked about it. To look into
you
a bit more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You, my dear, are getting curiouser and curiouser. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, nothing is as appears.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When we were mucking with your hair genes we had to do a certain amount of looking at your DNA. I’m connected into Lorder systems as much as is necessary, to sort out if people are who they say they are: it is a safety precaution as much as anything else.’

‘And?’

‘At lower system levels, your DNA is marked as unknown. At upper levels it gets more interesting: it is listed as
classified
.’

‘What does that mean?’ I ask.

‘Not a clue, but I love a good mystery. And that isn’t all. There is coded protection on files relating to it, and not just any codes: so high up I haven’t been able to bribe anyone to crack them.’

All three of them are looking at me, and I cross my arms. ‘You don’t think I know anything about it.’

‘Of course not. But you know something, don’t you?’ DJ’s eyes are so weird: brown and amber stripes on orange. I can’t look away.

‘Why does this matter, anyhow?’

DJ shrugs. ‘To be honest? It may not matter. But – and it is a big one – it has been my experience that when Lorders try very hard to hide something, it is important to find it. Anything they don’t want known, I want to know.’

Aiden comes to sit next to me, slips my hand in his. ‘Kyla? Do you know anything that might help?’

‘I might.’

‘It’s okay to say anything in front of DJ. He’s one of us.’

I sigh. ‘Look. The main thing I know is that I don’t have a clue who I am. Happy?’

‘Hang on,’ Aiden says. ‘I’m not understanding this. Didn’t you just meet your mother in Keswick? Actually, wouldn’t her DNA be classified then, too – whatever that means?’

‘Aiden, I was going to tell you about this, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to you properly. She’s not my mother.’

‘What? She reported you missing on MIA. All the records show her as your mother.’

I shake my head. ‘Her baby died; I was given to her as a replacement. She doesn’t know where I came from.’

‘Given by who?’ DJ asks.

I swallow. ‘Her mother. Astrid Connor. She’s the JCO for all of England. Stella – that’s my adopted mother,’ I say for the benefit of Florence and DJ, ‘thinks Astrid might have got me from the orphanage there, but doesn’t know for sure.’

‘So that’s why you were nosing about the orphanage,’ Florence says.

I nod.

‘And so the curiosity continues,’ DJ says. ‘If that is true, why would an orphaned baby have classified DNA? And you would have been tested at school, at your medical centre: why didn’t it get registered then?’

‘You tell me.’ I shrug.

‘What
else
haven’t you told us?’ Florence demands.

‘Sorry I wasn’t bragging about not knowing who my parents are: is that okay? For all I know, I could have been abandoned, unwanted. I couldn’t see how it was important to anybody but me.’

Aiden raises a hand. ‘She’s right, Flo. This is personal stuff. Kyla didn’t have to tell us; it’s her choice.’

Not that I was given much choice today. ‘What do you think it means?’ I ask DJ, who has been very quiet, little wheels of thought spinning behind his eyes. Or is that just the tiger stripes?

‘I don’t know. But something tells me we had better find out.’

I drop my head in my hands. Stella hadn’t sworn me to secrecy about where I came from, but sometimes you don’t have to have said the words ‘I promise’ to know that you’ve broken one. But what about the rest of her secrets? I
definitely
promised Stella I wouldn’t tell anyone about Astrid being behind the assassinations; without evidence, what use would the information be to MIA, anyhow?

‘Kyla?’ Aiden’s hand is on my shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

‘There’s more she’s not telling us,’ Florence snaps. ‘What is it?’

Aiden asks the others to leave us alone.

‘What is it, Kyla?’ he asks, once they are gone and the door is shut.

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘I can’t help you if you don’t tell me more than that.’

‘It’s Stella. There is something else she told me – it’s not about who I am, or anything like that, but it’s important. And I promised not to tell.’

‘That’s a tough call. All I can really say is that you should do what you feel is right, in here.’ He pats his stomach. ‘Go with your guts.’ He hesitates. ‘Is not knowing going to hurt anyone?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s ancient history. Besides, there’s no way to back it up: it’s hearsay.’

‘What do you think you should do?’

‘I think I need to think about it some more. How did you get to be so understanding?’

‘It’s all part of being a superhero,’ he teases, and I remember I called him that, ages ago. When he found Ben hidden away at that Lorder place: Aiden the superhero, helping people find those they care about. Trying to set the world to rights.

I’d thought he was a no-hoper on the last one. But more and more I am
hoping
, clinging to strands of future possibility, that things might be fixed by MIA
without
using guns and bombs. That he and the others can really do it.

That
we
can do it.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For everything.’

His eyes hold mine, warm, and for a moment it is hard to breathe. Then he shakes his head, looks away, and calls the others back in.

‘Well?’ Florence demands.

‘That’s enough for today,’ Aiden says. Florence protests; Aiden replies. ‘We don’t work like that; we’re not Lorders. She can tell us when she’s ready,
if
she’s ready. I’m satisfied it’s not critical to us now.’

And I’m scouring my brain, looking for something, anything, that might help, and then I have it. ‘Wait a minute. There is somebody who might know something about my DNA.’

‘Who’s that?’ DJ asks.

‘I always thought there was something she wasn’t telling me, something she was hiding, but I don’t know. Maybe I imagined it.’

‘Who?’

‘My doctor at the hospital. Dr Lysander.’

Aiden’s eyes sharpen. ‘She was your doctor?’

‘Yes. She said it was on my records that I was a Jane Doe: that even though everyone is supposed to be DNA tested at birth, they didn’t know where I came from. She said that was all she knew about it, but there was something hiding behind her words. She never lied, exactly, but she hid things by twisting words around.’

‘
The
Dr Lysander – the very doctor who invented Slating – was your doctor?’ DJ says. ‘Interesting. I bet that wasn’t a coincidence. But why would she tell you anything about your records?’

‘We were sort of close. She told me loads of things she shouldn’t. Broke rules to help me.’

‘We need to talk to her.’

‘She’s always surrounded by guards, and the hospital is a fortress.’

‘If we can get you to her, will you do it? See if you can find out what she knows?’

‘Of course.’

Aiden protests: she is a Lorder doctor; however close I thought we were, it would be too dangerous.

I shake my head. ‘She wouldn’t turn me in. Never.’

In the car on the way back to Oxford I sit in the back, staring unseeing out the window. Pondering other
coincidences
.

What did seeing Astrid and Nico together really mean? How did I end up with the family of the assassinated Prime Minister after I was Slated? My two families – Mum and Amy, Stella and Astrid – somehow their history and what may yet come to be are entwined and twisted together, with me caught between. Yet neither of them is truly mine.

Everything is crowding in on me; there is only one solution.

I need to run
.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

‘Bet you can’t keep up,’ Ben says.

‘Oh yeah?’

Ben takes off up the path and I’m on his heels. It is too narrow to run side by side, but at last we are doing something that until recently I thought could never happen again: we are running together. It’s cold, dark enough that running full tilt on an unfamiliar path is a little dangerous, but he has set the pace. There is no way I’ll let him pull ahead.

It used to be we’d run to get our levels up: endorphins from running would have them high, even in the 8s. We could talk about anything, without risking a Levo zap from dropping levels sending us off to a blackout.

So much has changed since then. Neither of us has a Levo any more; we don’t need to run to stay level, but today, I needed it. Yet I was surprised that Aiden said all right, that he let us leave the college grounds together. Maybe he understands. Maybe he understands too much.

There is a sudden
thud
in front: a cry. Ben flies through the air, lands heavily, and I almost trip over him.

‘Ouch,’ he says.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so.’ He twists his foot side to side. ‘Yeah, it’s fine. Just caught it and fell over, not sprained.’

I give him a hand up and he brushes himself off. ‘Let’s walk a little,’ he says.

‘Sure you’re not hurt?’

‘I’m fine. Was it a tough day that made you want a run?’ Ben asks. He takes my hand in his as we walk up the path.