Losing Lila (20 page)

I heard the handle to the bathroom being turned and spun round, hurling the vase from the table towards the door just as it flew open. I started, only just managing to catch the vase before it smashed down onto Jack’s head. He ducked anyway, and looked up at the floating crystal shape filled with blooms and then over to me. He raised an eyebrow as if to say
are you trying to kill me?

I stared at him. He was standing upright, unaided, in his boxer shorts, looking like he’d just spent ten days in a spa, not in a coma. How was that possible? The doctor had mentioned paralysis, wheelchairs, physio, and here he was walking around as if he was warming up for a marathon. My gaze fell to his chest, to the place where he’d been shot.

There was no gauze. No wound. Nothing. Just clean, bare, unblemished skin.

I lost my grip. The vase shot towards the floor. Jack reacted before I could blink, diving to catch it before it crashed into a million shards. He straightened up, throwing me a glare, and nodding his head at the door and the hulking shadow looming behind it.

I didn’t follow his gaze. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his chest. From the place where there should have been a great big hole, or at the very least the bloody, puckered remains of a scar, and instead all there was to see was perfect eggshell skin.

I found my voice. ‘What the—’

Before I could say
hell
, Jack lifted a finger to his lips, returning me to my stunned silence. ‘Bugs,’ he mouthed. ‘Guard.’ He put the vase back on the windowsill.

‘You were shot!’ I mouthed back, enunciating each word into a silent vacuum. ‘Jack. You were shot. Where’s the hole?’ I pointed to his stomach for further emphasis, drawing a circle in the air to indicate a giant hole. I had seen the bullet hit him, had heard it smack into him. I had seen with my own eyes the blood gushing out and Jack falling to his knees in the dirt. I had not imagined it. So, where in hell’s name was the bullet hole?

Jack bent his head to look and placed his hands over his stomach at the point the bullet had gone in. Then he looked back up at me and shook his head. He looked as confused as I was. He reached out and took hold of my hand and pulled me into the bathroom, closing the door behind us. He turned both taps on full. I had already disposed of the bug that had reappeared in my jeans – wedging it down the back of the seat in one of the Unit’s cars. Hopefully, they would think it had just fallen out. I sat down on the edge of the toilet seat. Jack knelt in front of me.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he said.

‘I was going to ask you that same question. You were shot. How are you walking around?’ I couldn’t take my eyes off his stomach.

‘What are you doing here? Where’s Alex?’ Jack asked. ‘I thought you guys made it out of there?’

‘We did. We came back. Alex is nearby. He couldn’t come back onto the base. The Unit are after him. You guys are in trouble.’

Jack scowled at the ground then his eyes flew back to me. ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

‘About two weeks.’

He frowned once more, his hands moving to his stomach. ‘Just two weeks?’ he asked in amazement. Then he seemed to register something. ‘Why’d you come back?’ he demanded. His tone was accusatory and I felt my temper flare in response.

‘For you, you idiot. And for Mum.’

Jack’s eyes darkened. ‘Alex should have got you away from here. What was he doing bringing you back?’

‘Excuse me for having free will! It’s not up to Alex. Or you. It was my decision to come back. The others are coming too.’

‘The others?’

‘Yes, the others – Demos and the others. We all came back to rescue you and Mum.’

I noted the familiar grinding of his jaw, though I couldn’t tell whether it was the memory of Mum or Demos’s name causing it. He hadn’t exactly had long to process the news about Mum or about Demos before he was lying in the dirt with a bullet in his gut.

‘The others are in Washington,’ I said. ‘We have a plan. It’s complicated and I don’t have time to explain. The doctor’s coming to check on you in ten minutes . . .’ My gaze dropped to his chest again. I reached a finger and prodded him where the bullet had gone in. ‘This is weird.’

‘Coming from you . . .’ He looked at me, arching his eyebrows.

Oh my God. My jaw unhinged itself. What was he saying? My mind had automatically been looking for a medical reason for the lack of scar or paralysis – a wonder cure or miracle drug, stitches that were invisible, some skin grown in a Petri dish that they’d grafted over the hole. But what if it was, in fact, none of the above? What if Jack had an ability too? What if he could heal himself?

My eyes flew to his hand, the hand he’d used to punch a tree. It too showed no signs of bruising. His knuckles had been as swollen as balloons just two weeks ago and now they looked totally normal, not a scratch on them.

No. No way. As if. Jack – one of us? A psy? It wasn’t possible. It would be the most ironic joke the universe had ever played.

Why no way, though? I’d seen stranger things. I’d witnessed people astrally projecting to the other side of the world while their bodies flopped in front of me. I’d seen church-going, Oprah-worshipping ladies removing memories from drug lords, and I’d suffered a tiny Japanese girl spying on my most intimate, graphic thoughts. For crying out loud, I had personally made water fly against the laws of gravity. Why was I, of all people, having an issue over the reality of my brother being able to heal himself?

Maybe it was because this was the same person who had spent five years trying to hunt people like us down, the guy who had been so mad when he found out what I could do that Alex had had to form a human barricade between us so he didn’t kill me. The person who’d used a pine tree as a punchbag to take out his frustration. I didn’t see him punching any trees now, though. On the contrary, he looked as though he’d won the lottery and the size of the cheque was just starting to sink in.

Jack stood up, leaving me staring at him like a sea bass from the toilet seat. ‘OK, let’s get out of here.’ He reached out a hand to grab me.

‘No!’ I yelled, throwing his arm backwards with a glance. I basked in the surprise that lit his face. ‘You can’t go!’ I blurted. ‘We have to wait. The Unit’s guarding you. And they know all about me. Richard Stirling threatened me. And Dad. We can’t go without Dad.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘What are you talking about?

‘Dad. He’s here. He’s working for them. I told you all this.’

‘Unless it escaped your attention, I’ve been in a coma, Lila.’

I flushed the loo again with a blink of my eyes so the water gurgle would cover Jack’s shouting. ‘Dad’s been here the whole time. He came as soon as he heard something had happened to you.’

Jack hung his head. ‘I heard him talking to me. I just thought . . . I thought I was dreaming.’

‘No, not dreaming. It was real. He’s working for them . . .’ I paused, trying to look innocent. ‘Did you have any other dreams?’

Jack was staring at the floor, but now he glared up at me through his lashes. That was a scowl. Definitely a scowl.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said. That was anger. Definitely anger.

‘When I’m done sorting out the Unit, Alex and I are going to have a little chat.’

‘Over my dead body.’

‘I’m thinking more over his dead body.’ He glowered at me some more then held up a hand to stop me in my tracks. I thought about making him slap himself. It wasn’t like it would cause any damage. Tempting.

‘Look, hold up,’ Jack whispered. ‘Did you just say Dad’s working for the Unit? What are you talking about?’ He took hold of my shoulders.

‘It’s not what you think, Jack. Dad’s been trying to find a way of stopping Demos this whole time. He doesn’t know about Mum being alive. He has no idea what the Unit are really doing.’

His eyes popped. ‘Well, why the hell didn’t you tell him? How could you let him work for them?’

‘Because Alex said he could be an asset. He thought it would give us a way into the headquarters.’

Jack ran a hand through his hair and started pacing the tiny bathroom. ‘OK, we can discuss this later,’ he finally said, turning to me. ‘Let’s just get out of here first.’

I jumped in front of the door, barring it with my body. ‘We can’t just waltz out of here,’ I said, frustration mounting on top of my irritation. ‘We’ll never get off the base – half the Unit are waiting for me outside. With guns. We’ll get caught and then what?’ Jack looked like he was about to open his mouth and argue back. ‘It’s OK,’ I hurried on, ‘I’m meeting Alex in a few hours and he’ll have figured something out. A plan. He said he was working on a plan. We need to trust him.’

Jack narrowed his eyes at me while simultaneously cocking an eyebrow. He shook his head finally. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t want to wait till the morning for Alex to come up with a plan. I say we leave now, you get off the base and I’ll head straight to the Unit and break Mum out.’

I rolled my eyes at him. ‘For one – you’re not doing anything without me. And for two – are you insane? You and whose army? You think you can just walk right in there and they’ll hand her over? You – we – can’t go now. Besides, you’ll set off the alarm. If we wait for Demos and the others then we’re more evenly matched. And those guys are in Washington right now. Demos is setting something up there with Stirling Enterprises. It all needs to coincide or it won’t work.’

‘What won’t work? What’s Demos setting up in Washington? What are you talking about?’

A Mexican drug lord
, I thought,
millions of dollars of stolen cocaine and drug money. A big-time set-up operation. You know, that sort of thing
.

‘I don’t have time to go into it,’ I gabbled. ‘You need to get back into bed and fake like you’re still asleep or something.’

‘I don’t like this plan,’ Jack muttered, squaring his shoulders.

‘Well, tough,’ I said. ‘You’ve been sleeping. I’ve been having to work things out. I’ll come back first thing in the morning. I promise.’

‘What about Sara?’ Jack interrupted. ‘Where is she?’

I got ready to restrain Jack, dropping my gaze to his hands. ‘I don’t know if we can trust her.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jack’s eyes flared wildly. ‘Of course we can trust her. Why haven’t you told her already? She’ll help us.’

‘No, Jack! You can’t go telling her anything. We don’t know if she’s part of this or not. She might be . . . she interrogated me when I got back. She acts like she doesn’t know, but how can she not?’

‘Are you crazy? I worked for the Unit and I had no clue. This is Sara we’re talking about.’ He tried to grab the door handle. ‘I’ve got to see her.’

‘No, Jack.’ I dodged sideways, blocking him, locking the door with a silent click. ‘It’s just too dangerous.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t say anything to Sara. Promise me.’

He scowled some more at me, his mouth twisting into a grimace. But he didn’t argue, which was the closest Jack ever came to acquiescing.

‘Look, I’ll tell you everything tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Just right now get back into bed. Please. Before the doctor comes around. You have to fake it. If he sees you, he’ll freak.’

‘You think it is me, then? That I did this?’ Jack asked, his eyes huge, his hand stroking his stomach like it was a newborn baby. He looked up at me suddenly. ‘Do you think I really am like you?’

I raised an eyebrow. What other explanation was there?

‘I mean,’ Jack went on, shaking his head, ‘it’s weird. I can sort of feel it happening . . . inside . . . but it’s just crazy. I mean . . . how? I wasn’t like this before.’

I shot him a death stare. Not two weeks ago he’d thought that people like me were sociopathic nutjobs who needed to be contained, but now
he
could do something cool it was a totally different story. It made me want to scream.

‘It’s genetic,’ I said. ‘You knew that. It can be triggered by traumatic events, I think. Look, I’ll explain later.’ I unlocked the door. Yeah, I’d explain all about that, and about Mum too. Happy mutant families.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘whatever you do, don’t let them take you to prisoner holding. The doctor said the Unit wanted to transfer you, but if they take you there then they’ll find out about you and they’ll probably start cutting you open to find out what exactly you can heal from.’

Jack started to frown as the reality of the situation dawned.

‘You need to pretend like you’re dying – make your stats keep bouncing. The doctor said if they kept spiking, he’d have to keep you here. Can you manage that? Do some sit-ups or something when no one’s looking. And whatever you do, don’t talk to Sara. I mean it. Not until we know for sure we can trust her.’

He opened the door and took a step towards the bed, then he turned and darted back towards me. In silence he grabbed me into a bear hug, then he dropped me just as suddenly and dived onto the bed.

The door to the corridor started to open. I glanced back at the bed and the sheet pulled itself over Jack’s inert body and the IV reattached itself to the plaster on his arm. The pads and wires suckered back onto his chest in a polka-dot formation that didn’t alter the flatline read-out one bit.

‘How’s things going in here? All quiet?’ Dr Roberts asked, closing the door behind him.

‘Mmmm, all quiet. Nothing to report,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’s waking up any time soon.’

The doctor smiled at me and walked over to the bed. He paused a second, staring at the horizontal line on the monitor and then at the randomly suckered wires.

‘Why are his wires all over the place?’ he asked, looking at me. ‘Have you moved them?’

I chewed the inside of my cheek. ‘Um, I was just trying to figure out how they worked.’

‘Want to be a doctor one day, huh?’ he said, unsuckering them one by one and placing them in the right positions. The machine started up its rhythmic beat.

‘Er, yeah, maybe. I’m not very good at science, though. And besides,’ I said, looking at Jack’s faking-it coma face, ‘I think Jack’s the healer in the family.’

Dr Roberts looked up at me and smiled, but then the smile faded away. ‘Lila, someone from the Unit just called.’ He paused. ‘They’re moving Jack tomorrow.’