‘Shining,’ hissed a voice behind her and her legs were cut out from beneath her by a kick. She toppled to the ground with a pained cry. Those old bones didn’t fall as easily as they once had. In her hand she was gripping her keys and she folded them between her fingers as the jogger leaned down over her. There was no sign of the gun as he pushed his face towards hers. ‘You’re his sister, yes?’
‘The fighter in the family,’ she told him, punching him as hard as she could with the keys jutting out from her fist. They cut parallel lines across his cheek and he spun away, blood and spittle spraying from his mouth. She tried to press the slender advantage. Her hips were agony, hurt from her fall, and her back joined in as she pushed herself forward, punching again and again. She felt the keys cut into her own, thin fingers. As they connected with his cheekbone, the impact knocked them from her hand. She screamed in anger, punching him with both hands, blind in rage and fear and determination that no man would ever get the better of April Shining.
She suddenly thought of his gun. Was it still in his pocket? Could she snatch it?
She stopped punching him and tore at his hoodie.
She could feel the weight of it in the pouch, scrabbling at the openings to get her hands inside.
‘You want my gun?’ he asked, laughing. He gave he an open-handed slap across the face and shoved her backwards.
Lying back, staring up at the man that would certainly kill her, April was so angry she felt as if she could tear the world apart. He had just been playing with her! Patronising bastard! She’d never really had the upper hand.
‘I like you,’ he said, pulling the gun from his pocket and looking around. There was nobody within sight, they were all alone, free to let this play out however the killer wished. ‘In fact,’ he continued, ‘I like you so much that maybe I should just be you.’
He turned the gun in his hands, offering it to her by the grip.
For a moment she was so determined not to be played for a fool again she just stared at it. Then, accepting that she would take any chance rather than go down without a fight, she reached for it. Her hand closed around the grip and he let it go, her finger curling around the trigger.
‘Hang on,’ he said, his face suddenly confused and panicked, ‘what’s going on? Who are you anyway?’
And that was all he said because then the woman that was no longer completely April Shining shot him in the head.
She got to her feet, picked up her handbag and dropped the gun into it.
She looked around, the coast was still clear.
She pulled a compact mirror out of the bag and checked her face, wiping away the blood on her face with her scarf and rearranging her hair a little so that she wouldn’t draw attention. Her hand was bleeding from where the keys had cut into her fingers so she wrapped the scarf neatly around it. Nobody would look twice, she felt sure. People moved through this city with their eyes closed, lost in their own, tiny little heads.
She walked past the dead jogger, now nothing but empty waste and headed back towards the path that led out of the park. On the way she picked up the discarded pizza slices. They were covered in bits of grass and dead leaves but she ate them anyway.
Shining left the bathroom and decided he’d risk a wander. Stepping into the kitchen, he found Jennings removing the packaging from some ready meals.
‘You’re not vegetarian or anything?’ he asked, noticing Shining behind him.
‘No.’
‘Not that it probably matters,’ Jennings said looking at the packaging. ‘“Premium lasagne”,’ he quoted. ‘I somehow doubt that’s true. I hate eating this sort of rubbish. Fresh food, fresh ingredients, that’s the way. People are so lazy these days.’ He looked around. ‘Not that we have any choice. This is all we have stocked – a freezer full of ancient crap.’
‘You do this sort of thing a lot?’ Shining asked. ‘By which I mean interrogations, not food preparation.’
Jennings shrugged. ‘A few. They always like a few forces boys around. You’re a bit different. Usually it’s terror suspects, you know the sort of thing, mouthy bloggers pretending they can build bombs in their bedroom.’
‘I’m glad to be able to break the monotony.’
Jennings turned on the oven. ‘It’s a job. Someone has to do it. Doesn’t sound as interesting as yours.’
‘I’ve had my moments.’
‘All that stuff true? The things you were saying in there?’
‘Well, that’s the most casual interrogation technique I’ve ever heard.’
‘I’m not paid to do the talking, that’s her job. Me and the boys are just security.’
‘And where are they?’
‘Outside,’ Jennings looked at him, ‘why? You’re not going to try and run are, you?’
‘No, that would hardly solve anything, would it? I’ll let this play out for as long as it lasts. I’ve nothing to hide.’
Jennings nodded. ‘So is it?’
‘Is it what? Oh… is it true? Yes. And believe me, it barely registers as weird on the scale of my usual investigations. My life has been a very interesting one.’
‘I can believe it.’
‘Well, as long as your colleague also can, this should be a walk in the park.’
‘She’s all right,’ said Jennings, unpacking another meal and racking it up on the baking tray next to the lasagne. ‘She tries too hard but you know what it’s like. Even now, being a woman in the security service can be hard work. They preach equality but there’ll always be some arseholes that make it difficult for ’em.’
‘True enough,’ Shining admitted.
‘So she plays at being the hardest bastard of them all because that’s the only way she’s got anywhere.’
‘Maybe.’
Jennings smiled. ‘Yeah… maybe. Either that or she really is just a pain in the arse. You’d better get back in there and find out.’
‘I suppose I should.’
‘I’ll bring some coffee in in a bit. No booze, I’m afraid. Standing orders.’
‘Security and catering?’
Jennings put the food in the oven. ‘Yeah, well, I’d rather keep busy, boring otherwise. And you’re not trouble. You get to spot that in my job. You can tell the ones that are going to kick off. You’re just doing your job, same as the rest of us.’
‘I wish you were handling my interrogation, we could all have gone home hours ago.’
‘Don’t you believe it, if I was in her seat it would have been my job to be the arsehole, wouldn’t it? We all play our roles.’
Shining nodded and returned to the dining room and Ryska.
Ryska was stood in front of the covered window, staring at it as if she could see through the cloth and out into the evening beyond.
‘I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,’ said Shining. ‘I was giving my compliments to the chef.’
She didn’t turn around so he sat down at the table, unwilling to encourage her games of one-upmanship.
‘The food won’t be long, apparently,’ he told her, ‘but I’m happy to carry on for a little bit if you are?’
She turned around and inclined her head. It took Shining a second to realise he was no longer looking at his interrogator but rather at something that, for now, was wearing its body. He found he wasn’t surprised. After all, hadn’t he been thinking about this force, this ‘higher power’ all day?
‘How long have you been there?’ he asked. ‘Looking out through your stolen damned eyes.’
‘I am not who you think,’ Ryska replied and her voice was slightly different. Strangely, it was more natural, featuring traces of the Eastern European accent she’d worked hard to eradicate when at school. Gone also were her attempts to inject every syllable with cold professionalism. Shining only really noticed how much the officer had affected her abrasive personality now that it was gone. Her natural tone was lighter, it had a gentility to it. It was a voice that could offer kindness.
‘I know exactly who you are,’ Shining replied. ‘Let’s not play games, I’ve had quite enough of that.’
‘I’m not who you think,’ she said again. ‘Is this the now? Is this right?’
Her face contorted. At first, Shining thought she was in pain, the essence of Ryska fighting back, perhaps. Then her expression continued to change, lips stretching, receding from her teeth and them pushing forward as if in a kiss. Ryska put her hands to her face and began to knead at the flesh there, moving her cheeks over the bone, pressing the tips of her fingers into every line and crease. ‘This is… unusual.’
‘I’d have thought you’d have got used to invading people by now,’ said Shining. ‘You have made something of a career of it.’
Ryska nodded, then, shook her head. ‘Which is it?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Which means no?’
Shining sighed. ‘I mean it, my patience is thin. I have spent the last few hours being treated like a traitor. All the while being reminded, were it necessary – and it really, really wasn’t – why I have reason to consider you the most insidious, vile and corrupt…’ He sighed. ‘I don’t have the vocabulary. What are you? An entity? A consciousness? A thing? Whatever label I should choose. I don’t suppose it matters. But let me be clear. I have lived a long life and I have managed to conduct myself through most of it with constraint, humanity and understanding. I have exercised grace, compassion and tolerance. I have, at all times, worked hard to avoid the pitfalls of narrow emotions. In particular, I have fought against the lazy, destructive emotion of hate. Everywhere you look in this world you see hate expressed, hate for another’s politics, religion, sexuality or gender. Hate is terrible, it is weakness, it is failure. But when I look at you, whatever body you wear, whatever voice you use, all of that restraint counts for nothing. You are the one thing I cannot help but hate. You’ve ruined the lives of so many, including, were I to allow you the satisfaction, my own. So… I say again. No more games. What do you want?’
Throughout, Ryska had stared at Shining, her face showing none of the emotions felt by the consciousness inside her. After a moment, she replied. ‘To help. I am not who you think I am…’ She paused. ‘The other, the rebel, the one who has worked against you. The one to whom you have promised flesh. I am not who you think. I am sent to find the other, to help, to guide you.’
Shining leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his tired face. His skin was clammy. He wanted fresh air, sunlight and freedom. Most of all, he wanted to believe what he was being told. But how could he?
‘You expect me to believe you’re another of the higher powers?’
‘Higher powers?’
‘It’s what I call you. It.’
‘We are not higher. We are just different. Reality is much more complex than you give it credit. An infinite number of layers. All with their own distinct breed of life. You know this but cannot comprehend it so you try and express it in terms of gods, heaven…’
‘Hell?’
She nodded.
‘You’re learning,’ he said, ‘presuming you meant to agree?’ He had intended sarcasm, still far from convinced he could believe a word he was hearing. She gave no sign of understanding it as such.
‘The longer I inhabit this body the more its intelligence leeches into mine. The more I understand. You know that your world is not all there is. You know that there is more. You feel this. You sense it. So you try and map the infinite with religion, philosophy, science. We were no different once. Trying to understand thoughts that were too much for us.’
‘And did you?’
‘No. We realised wisdom, real wisdom, is to accept your own reality and live it to the full.’
Shining couldn’t help but scoff. ‘Your own reality? Says the creature inhabiting someone else’s body?’
‘This is not normal. This is not who we are. I find it distasteful but there is no other way for us to be having this conversation. Of course there is one of us who does not find it distasteful. It relishes it. That is who I am here to discuss.’
‘So discuss him.’
‘It is not a “him” in the way you understand it.’
‘He invades bodies without consent, causing destruction and misery wherever he goes. I can’t help but think of it as “he”. But arguing personal pronouns is a waste of time.’
Ryska nodded again. ‘Very well. He. He is a rebel. A criminal.
‘Your species dreams of the spirit, the soul, to be free from the flesh and to travel to other realities. To us that is normal. That is what we are. So some… he… dreams of the reverse. He wants flesh. The solid. The dirt.’
‘Now you’re being insulting.’
‘I do not mean to be, it’s just… to most of us his desires are abhorrent. He is unnatural.’
Shining was struggling. He had spent his entire life coming face to face with the abnormal, of doing what he had insisted Ryska should do earlier: accepting the evidence and rearranging his beliefs around it. But this? For some reason this felt it a step too far. He had known the higher power for thirty years and in that time it had moved in and out of his life, playing its games, vying for deals, making threats. He had grown to accept it. Why then was it so strange to imagine it wasn’t alone? That there were more of them? That he was talking to one of them right now?
‘You had, I think, almost become to believe that the rebel was a spirit?’ said Ryska. ‘A… devil? Because that made sense to you?’
Shining shook his head. He had always denied that, had insisted to Toby that it wasn’t the case, but maybe…
‘I don’t really know what I thought,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps I tried not to think about it at all.’
‘But it wants you, it is your enemy.’
‘Then it can join the queue. Besides, when I made our deal I was a young man. I’ve avoided it this long. I think… thought… that I would always stay one step ahead.’
‘You’re not. It’s a point of principle to him now. He will have his way. He will win. It’s important to him.’
‘Then I suppose he’s not so different to us, is he?’
Ryska nearly shrugged. It was slightly over the top, unnatural, but the emotion was conveyed. ‘He wants to be no different at all. He wants to be just like you. To be you.’
‘Which never did make any sense, to be so powerful, to possess the abilities he does and want to restrict himself. The things he can do! Flesh is just clay to him, he can heal mortal wounds, he can even duplicate it, and the consciousness inside it.’