Stray (8 page)

The bandwidth throbs with a mournful note that moves right through me. I can’t tell if I’m producing it or if it’s Miriam, pale and still beside me. It fills me with an inexplicable longing and grief, Jamie pulsing at the centre. He still won’t meet my gaze.
I will not cry
.

No one speaks.

Finally Tesla turns. “Your aunt and your friend have violated directive to assist you, Evangeline.”

Violated
.

The word makes me light-headed. “They were just trying to help.”

“While it benefits our current course to have you pre-informed about the organisation, it does not outweigh the seriousness of such a breach in protocol. Whatever their reasons, they will face consequences for their actions.”

“That’s not fair.” It’s barely a whisper, and they’re the lamest words in existence. I want to curl into a ball.

Tesla draws near the table. “We understand the temptation for active relatives who recognise the symptoms of Priming in a loved one. But interference is mostly misguided and often dangerous. Assets can find themselves in a disturbed state of mind post-Spark, a hazard to themselves and others. If they have not been killed by the Stray, we tend to collect new Shields from jail cells, hospitals or hiding places – that is if they have not taken their own life.”

“Suicide?” The idea winds me. As traumatising as it’s been, transitioning and enduring Kitty’s experience, the thought of taking my own life has never once entered my head. I look at Miriam but she frowns at the tabletop. Jamie keeps his unreadable eyes on Tesla. Have they felt like this, alone in their terror, desperate and despairing to the point of considering ending their lives?

“It happens,” Tesla says, leaning on the back of his chair. “After the loss of the first Spark, new Assets will often become very depressed, especially in the case of accidental death.”

“Accidental death?”

It’s Felicity, her expression full of warning, who answers. “When a Shield kills their Spark by mistake.”

I cover my open mouth.

“It is one of the main reasons we bring the Asset in on immediate detection,” she says.

I had always despised the Affinity Project’s policy of taking Shields regardless of whether they have an active Spark but now I’m not sure. Obviously, Felicity thinks it’s too risky, me staying and delaying Orientation.

“An Extraction would protect you and those around you,” she says and Tesla starts pacing again. Pretending not to notice, Felicity presses on, “Hence, Mr Davis’s consternation regarding the change in protocol.”

“It is your choice to make,” Tesla turns to face me. “But you must make it now.”

Choice. Not a word I associate with Affinity.

I hope my decision will be read as self-sacrifice as opposed to me dodging Orientation. “I guess, if it’s for the greater good and all.”

“I need a clear yes,” Tesla says.

“Okay, yes.”

Tesla remains cool but there’s a hint of triumph or relief in his posture and he unclasps his hands. “I realise the conditions are not the best, but a Harvest is required at this stage. Felicity is a Conductor. She will be able to give us a clearer indication of your signal strength. The reading we take now will help us interpret your data over the coming weeks.”

Felicity draws herself up, as though steeling herself.

Conductor
.

Terror dries my mouth. The hope I felt in the gift of unexpected time evaporates. How can I protect my secrets? Miriam warned me about the Project’s team of Harvesters and the danger of trying to conceal the truth.

Tesla pulls out his chair for Felicity so that she can sit closer to me. I shoot a desperate look at Miriam. Her deep brown eyes drill mine, but I’m too anxious to sense if she’s trying to reassure or warn me. What can I do? Refuse? A sure-fire red flag I’ve got something to hide.

Tesla produces a small metal container from his satchel. Inside are four coin-sized pads of gauze. Each one blinks red with what appears to be a tiny computer chip embedded in the fabric. He takes one, peels off an adhesive seal and presses the pad to Felicity’s left temple. He takes another and sticks it to the inside of her right wrist.

When he turns to me, Miriam releases my arm and sits back. “Everything will be okay,” she says. “Don’t fight it.”

I can’t hear her breathe.

Tesla’s movements are fluid, his touch firm but gentle. Right temple. Left wrist. At this proximity I catch the subtle scent of his skin, a woodsy, mountain air smell mixed with something warm and oddly familiar.

My eyes roam to Jamie, who won’t look at me.

Just because the guy smells nice doesn’t mean he’s on my side, or that I can trust him. He didn’t hesitate to use the baton on me. If he got a whiff of my secrets, he’d be dragging me out to the van by my hair.

“Try to relax.” He steps back. “It will be easier if you can relax.”

The muscles in Felicity’s neck strain and the worry lines around her eyes tighten.

I don’t relax. I grip the edge of the table, waiting for her signal to hit me.

When Felicity extends her right hand, I don’t expect it. I thought she’d Harvest without touch. She has short, tidy nails and prominent veins tunnel her freckled skin from knuckle to wrist but her right hand is starkly pale compared to the left. I’m being rude, staring, and I force myself to look up and take her hand. If only I could stop trembling.

She presses her forefinger over the sensor on my wrist, nodding for me to do the same to hers. It feels too awkward, too intimate to sit like this, holding a stranger. I want to pull away but she brings our hands to rest on the tabletop and her cool clasp hardens. Tesla taps his phone, activating a new app. The lights in the sensor pads change to green. With a low moan, Felicity closes her eyes.

I dart panicked glances at Jamie and Miriam but rushing colour swallows the room and I plunge into a vision. Images overlap. Split-second images, painfully bright, dazzling, too quick to register, crashing in on each other, faces, feelings, moments in time fanning open like an endless deck of cards. Pressure builds in my head, shoulders, chest, pressure in the pit of my stomach, like I’m being forced through a tube.

She pushes her way into my mind, a confident, practised reach that quickly overpowers me. I can’t stop her. I can’t resist. Going deeper and deeper, her search has an almost clinical quality, like a medical exam by a reluctant doctor who just wants to get the job done and get out. It doesn’t defuse my sense of violation. The trespass taps a consuming need in me to fight back but it
is
like I’ve been force-fed a muscle relaxant. I have no strength to form a fist for defence. If I could, I would scream in frustration.

The vision sucks me deeper and the images slow. She zeroes in on something and a distinct kinetic memory blooms. I feel jarring in my legs, uneven ground beneath my feet, freezing air stings my cheeks, as real as if I were experiencing the event rather than remembering it. I slip and slide over damp leaves and the speed, the speed is everything. Miriam’s laugh comes through the trees as she paces me. It’s a memory from my early training.

Felicity doesn’t linger and the vision shifts. I catch my breath at the smack of bone against bone in the next memory. Foot against chest, knee against stomach, I’m sparring with Jamie in Miriam’s underground training room, spiralling over him, landing with ease. Dripping sweat, I pant and laugh, desire stirring inside me as we stalk each other on the blue mat.

No. I resist the memory, ducking away from it like dodging a blow.

Before I can triumph, night air chills my lungs in a new memory. Beneath a black sky, I chase a blur past the slate wall of the Gallaghers’ pool house. The gravel of the stable yard, the dew-damp lawn. Then comes the slap of tree branches, the pounding in my chest as I close in on the Stray, Kitty ahead, her scream …
No. No! Not this. Not yet
.

I throw myself against the image like throwing myself in front of a train, hopeless but desperate. What shocks me is the immediate sense of strength that fills me. Felicity’s grip on my mind weakens. The vision grows dark, a grey fog pearling around it like smoke until the image disappears. Instinct keeps me pushing against her presence in my mind. Soon I feel her retreat and come against a blank wall.

I could stop right there. She has backed off. She was only doing her job, after all, but satisfaction in forcing her out isn’t enough. The involuntary urge to retaliate seized me at the start: to lash out at her and what she represents, the Affinity Project and its claim on my life. The frustration I’ve repressed for months, not letting myself wallow in the “it’s not fair”, the “I didn’t choose this”, the “they don’t own me”, all boils up. I want to make her feel weak. I want to trample
her
private thoughts whether she deserves it or not. So I tighten my hold on her hand and push against the blank wall in my head and keep on pushing. I know to lean against it, like I did with Aiden in the emergency room, to keep up a continuous pressure, searching for a split seam.

Something gives.

I slip through a gap, falling headlong, deep and dizzying, into a flood of images that aren’t mine. In the vision, I become aware of my body, my skin. It’s Felicity’s – I’m Harvesting her kinetic memory. The distant sound of moaning intensifies but I ignore it and the cry of voices beyond it. I want a fight but there is none; she seems as powerless as I was.

A memory lodges in the foreground. I’m standing on a raised metal platform above a large cylindrical tank. Its thick glass walls glow golden in the lights set in its base, liquid filling it quickly to the open brim. Saline, I think, and I realise this is Felicity’s knowledge, not mine. My arms ache. I’m holding a child. She wears a flesh-coloured swimsuit and lies limp and heavy, her head lolling on my shoulder. Immobilised but conscious. She looks maybe six or seven years old. Blonde hair, blue eyes, peachy skin. She stares blankly. Sensor pads blink at her temples and wrists, another blinks through her swimsuit, over her heart.

“We’re ready for the Proxy,” a man says behind me but I don’t turn, or Felicity doesn’t turn. I carry the child to the edge of the tank, swinging her legs carefully over the lip. I’ll need help when she gets bigger, but for now I can manage the girl’s weight. The saline is lukewarm and comes up to my elbows as I lower her in. Her hair billows out around her face as she drops beneath the surface. My lower back aches already as I sit by the edge, my arm in the tank, but I hold her hand because I am supposed to and because it seems right. I’ll stay here till the link is confirmed. This way the child will know she’s not alone. Her head floats back, her blank eyes, her slack mouth. I try not to think about the fluid pouring into her body. She will survive it; they designed it that way.

There’s a sharp tug on my wrist. Felicity trying to break my hold? I don’t let go but the girl and the tank disappear. Images tumble around me, an avalanche of memories. I use all my concentration to slow the onslaught and find a point of focus. A painfully bright room opens up in my mind, walls of black glass on three sides. The fourth is concrete with a steel sliding door. The floor slopes towards a grated drain in the middle of the room. Suspended from the ceiling on a retractable neck hangs something that looks like a dental chair, but with multiple wires and tubes attached. A young man sits strapped to the reclining seat. He wears blue scrubs from the waist down and sweat beads his naked chest. Wide-eyed, with sensors blinking at his temples and wrists, he takes short, shallow breaths and his body strains beneath the bonds. Tubes from the back of the chair pump something into the veins of his forearms. Soon, his breathing slows, grows deeper, his eyelids droop and his whole body relaxes.

Nervous, I turn away from the young man to face the observation room. I can’t see them behind the black glass, but I know they’re waiting for me to begin. My reflection shows a much younger Felicity and I wipe my sweaty palms on my skirt. “Activate Symbiosis.”

The light dims, the walls of glass shimmer like they’re filled with liquid.

“Proxy?” I say with Felicity’s voice.

Nothing happens.

“Child?”

The black glass flickers then instantly all three walls transform. Each one displays a confusing mass of pearling shadow. Finally, an image erupts on the screens: a woman’s face, distorted, razor-edged in some places, bleeding colour in others.

There’s another sharp tug on my wrist. My eyes open on the warm light of Miriam’s kitchen. Ears ringing, dazed by the voices and jostling around me, I come to. It takes me a moment to figure out what’s going on. Miriam has hold of my wrist and Jamie restrains my shoulders. Tesla props Felicity up in her chair. Pale and sweating, her breathing ragged. Her wide black pupils retract, returning colour to her irises, but the look of shock remains. “She can Harvest.”

Miriam releases her grip and sits back. Jamie lets me go and returns to his chair. Everyone breathes heavily like there has been a brawl while I was under. My joints are jelly and I sway in my seat.

“You’re bleeding,” Miriam says.

I sniff to stop the warm ooze of blood, bringing my knuckle to my nose. Miriam grabs the tissue box from the windowsill. I press a handful of tissues to my nostril, tipping my head back.

Miriam fills a glass at the sink and brings it to me, closing my hand around it, then she sits and exhales through her lips. “Her abilities are very advanced,” she says.

Tesla looks at each of us, his frown still buckled tight, and I brace for a reprimand like he caught me fighting on school grounds, but he nods. “Not an exaggeration.”

I blink at the sharp definition of details. My pupils must have dilated with the let-down of adrenaline. I blink, trying to readjust.

Miriam pats my hand. “They’ll come right.”

I try to slow my breaths but I can still see the little girl floating in the tank and the young man strapped to the chair in the room of black glass, his terror. Nausea lingers with the image. I don’t want to look at Felicity or feel bad for invading her thoughts. I don’t care if she’s offended or if she feels judged. I don’t care what the Affinity Project thinks about me at all … or at least I don’t want to care. I force myself to meet her gaze but the accusation and hostility I expect doesn’t show in her face. She appears exhausted and lost, like she has no idea where to begin. My chest tightens. What has she read in my signal? Is it bad? Is there something wrong with me?