He stroked my forehead, like he was soothing me back to sleep after a nightmare. “I decided to forego having the treatment myself, so that I can remain impartial in these investigations. And, as you have seen, there are some unfortunate side effects. Paranoia, delusions of grandeur, even psychopathic tendencies. But we have learned how to take care of those as well, although the idea of placing the cortex bomb only came to Dr Lawrence in phase two of the project. So there are some of our Shifters that we had to take care of… personally. Such as Mr Heritage. Such a shame, he was a good analyst but it was in his nature to ask questions.” Abbott looked so pleased with himself. “So you see, we are so close to mastering the power completely. And once we do, we will go public and the whole world will finally know who is truly in control.”
“You’re mad, you know that? You think this is going to make you famous or something? It will bring the world down on top of Shifters. You said yourself that the world wasn’t ready to know about us. It never will be.”
He ignored me and checked the straps holding me were tight. “However there is one element that we have yet to fully understand. And that has been the primary focus of my investigation.” He walked behind me and I heard the rattling of metal. I twisted my head around to try and see what he was doing. “Have you heard of the hypnic jerk?” he asked.
“The only jerk I know of is you!”
He chuckled and continued. “The hypnic jerk is the twitch you get sometimes just as you’re falling asleep. It’s the brain’s response when it perceives the body to be dying. The twitch is a reflex used to keep the body functioning. To make sure you’re not dead. Shifters have their own version of this feedback system. If the brain senses it is dying, it sends a desperate signal to Shift. A survival mechanism. It is so powerful that our clever cuffs can’t override it. Not even a more powerful Shifter can stop it.”
“Are you saying you can’t kill me?” I said, hopefully.
“It’s not easy, but there are ways. Instant explosion of the brain is particularly effective. Removing the frontal lobe while the subject is still alive works also. But I want to try another, more artful approach.” He walked back into view pulling a machine behind him.
I didn’t like the sound of this. I looked up and saw Benjo pull off the green cloth to reveal a row of surgical tools lined up on a tray – the same ones I’d seen in his cabinet. He stroked them with his fat hands, as if they were a collection of dolls. He picked up a scalpel and licked the edge of the blade. It left a red mark on his tongue.
“I want it to be the Shifter’s choice to die,” Abbott said, from behind me.
I laughed and dropped my head back down onto the table. “You want me to choose to die? No way.”
The machine Abbott was fiddling with had wires curling out of it. He untangled three of the wires and held them up to me. They each ended in a white disk. Like a stripped back skullcap. “Have you used a stimulator yet, Scott? ‘Live out your fantasies, consequence free,’ isn’t that what they say? Well, I’ve made a few modifications.” He started placing the receptors onto my head, the way I’d seen Zac do to that girl in the club what seemed like a lifetime ago. “With my machine, you won’t live out your best realities. You will experience your worst possible realities. And it will send you quite mad. I give you five minutes before you’re begging to die.”
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the electrodes. I saw Abbott reach a hand up to the machine. He paused, his wrinkled face taking on a look of pained concern, then flicked a switch. The world Shifted.
Images, no they were memories, raced through my mind. Me as a child in the playground, at home with my parents, playing and laughing with my friends, at kick boxing with Katie, at school trying to pay attention. But each memory was somehow distorted. Crooked and broken. The machine was taking each moment in my life and unravelling it, and tearing me apart in the process.
I clenched my teeth so hard I felt my teeth crack. But still the memories came. Every terrible thought I’d ever had, became solid. The thoughts you bury deep because you feel so guilty that they even flicker across your mind floated up and started to morph into reality. Each time I’d idly ever wondered if stabbing someone in the hand with a pen would stop them humming happened. Every time I thought about pushing a friend off the edge of a bridge, I did it. Over and over. I did unspeakable things to my family. I killed Katie a hundred times in ever more horrible ways and laughed at my parents’ agony. Then I killed them. Stabbed Mum in the eye with her stupid stiletto heels, strangled Dad with his tie. And these weren’t fantasies. They were real.
I don’t know if I was screaming or laughing. Anger and anguish coursed through me. And hate consumed me. Everything I’d once loved I now despised. My parents were weaklings, my sister a freak, my friends were parasites.
And Aubrey. My mind turned to her. I should hate her. I’d come to try to save her and she had laughed in my face. I should punch her and punch her and see how hard she laughed then.
But I couldn’t. Not Aubrey. I wouldn’t.
I heard Abbott’s voice as if coming from another room. “Ten minutes, surprising. Normally they can’t take more than five.”
I’d lost all sense of who I was. My parents meant nothing to me. No family or friends had ever mattered. Except her. I knew that a minute more and they would strip that from me too. Make me hurt her. I would rather die than that. In the dark storm that my life had become, Aubrey was my anchor and if I lost her, I would lose everything.
“Do it!” I screamed through cracked teeth.
Benjo leaned over me, his knife glinting. And I died.
The darkness came quickly and the pain stopped. In the last fleeting moments I was myself again. All the fragments of my life had been put back into place and I had the strongest sense of relief. My parents and Katie were safe and all my friends unharmed. I knew that everything would be all right now that I was dead.
I’m sorry to say that there wasn’t a tunnel of light. I didn’t float out of my body and see myself below. No grandparents or old pets came to greet me. Just darkness and peace. Like falling asleep after a really long day. And that was it.
OK, I know what you’re thinking: he can’t be dead. How could he have written this whole account if he were dead? But I was. Dead. Deceased. Gone.
For a full ninety seconds.
Then it happened. It was like a light going on, on an old fashioned TV set. A flicker and then bam! Everything came on, sound, light, smell. All my senses kicked back in as if someone had jolted me with one of those defibrillator things. A whole body reboot.
I was still strapped to the table and wired up to the machine. The light overhead burned into my eyes and I blinked trying to understand what the hell was going on. I heard Abbott speaking, “Eleven minutes. Very impressive.”
I sensed the prickling of electricity on my skull, sending tendrils of power through into my brain. But the machine wasn’t working. The scenarios had stopped playing out and I was myself again. But only more so. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Well I was strong. Impossibly so. I knew I was the one in charge now.
“I’d like to get out now,” I said softly.
The men paused to look at each other and then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, Abbott reached over and unbuckled the straps holding me down. I reached my hand up and pulled the electrodes off my head. I sat up like Frankenstein’s monster awakening on the slab.
There was a metallic clang as Benjo dropped his scalpel. Abbott was staring at his hands as if he didn’t recognise them.
I placed my bare feet on the cold floor and wriggled my toes. My trainers appeared back on my feet. I looked at the surgery gown I was wearing. That won’t do, I thought. I closed my eyes and I was wearing my clothes again. In this new reality that I’d brought into existence, Abbott simply hadn’t bothered undressing me. That is what had happened, because that’s how I wanted it to have happened.
The two men backed away from me, their eyes wide in shock. I turned first to the fat one. His rubbery lips flapped about as he struggled to speak.
“You look hungry, Benjo,” I said. “And those tools look so tasty, don’t they? Why don’t you tuck in?”
Benjo reached for the tray with a shaking hand, his black eyes darting around trying to find a way to stop himself. But he couldn’t resist my command. Not only was I back in control of my decisions, I could control his too. I turned my back to him as I heard the first wet, crunch of him biting into the blade.
“Mr Abbott,” I said, smiling at the man I had once thought was my friend, my teacher. The man who had destroyed the lives of the children in the ward, those men in the armchairs staring at a boat that would never come in, and I didn’t know how many others. “I think it’s time you tried out your little invention for yourself. That’s right, put the electrodes on.”
Abbott climbed up onto the table and obediently placed the electrodes on his head. Only his eyes betrayed that he was fighting a battle to regain control over his mind.
And that’s what this had all been about. Control. Over us kids with the power. Over the world. Well, I was the one in charge now. I reached the machine and flicked the switch. I didn’t know how the stimulator would work on non-Shifters. All I knew was that after two minutes he was screaming and sobbing. I left him to it.
The guards outside fell asleep with a single look from me. Energy radiated out of me like I was the bloody Ready Brek kid. I saw the ripples of reality pulsate out of me and they were only going one way. My way.
Aubrey was gowned-up and already unconscious when I found her in the operating room on the first floor, her pale arms dangling over the edge of the metal table, her sleeping face soft and empty of any expression. But that’s not how I wanted it. The merest blink of a thought and she was awake and struggling with the anaesthesiologist. I grinned as Aubrey kicked the man in the balls and sent him flying. I didn’t want to make this too easy for her, after all. The rest of the medical staff stood around looking confused.
I raised my hands. “It’s OK everyone. You all just need to have a nice nap.” One by one, they stretched out their arms and yawned, lay down on the floor and started to snore.
“Scott,” Aubrey said, running to me and wrapping her arms around my neck. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I breathed in the scent of vanilla. “For a while there, you did,” I said. “But I found my way back.”
She looked up at me through eyes blackened with smudged mascara. I brushed a strand of hair away from her face. I could have anything I wanted now. I could bend everything and everyone to my will without them ever knowing. I looked at Aubrey, her lips parted and her eyelids already closing.
“Stop,” I said. She blinked and pulled away. “Not like this.”
I sighed. I was passing up on the chance to do what I’d wanted to do from the very first moment I’d laid eyes on Aubrey Jones. The very thing I laid awake at nights thinking about. But some stupid moral code was stopping me. I know, you don’t need to tell me. I’m an idiot.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, letting go of her.
“What about Abbott and Benjo?” she said.
“They’ve been taken care of. Let’s find Rosalie and the others, get the kids out of here and then,” I paused and took her hand. “We’re going to blow this place to fuck.”
By the time we’d found Rosalie, Zac and the others, locked up in a cell in the basement, I felt the power draining out of me. It was like after going for a really long run, when your body starts to give up and it’s only your mind that keeps you going. My hands were trembling and my head span. I steadied myself on a wall as Aubrey started to work at the lock.
“You OK?” she said, looking worried.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, shaking off the fatigue.
“Of course, he’s fine. We’re the ones locked up,” Zac said, yanking at the bars.
“Do we have to let him out?” I asked.
The lock opened with a heavy clunk. “Afraid so,” Aubrey said, stepping aside.
Zac charged out, followed by Sean and the rest of the gang. Rosalie came out last. She looked tired and pale, but she smiled as she saw us. “Is Jake OK?”
“He’s fine. He’s outside.”
She squeezed my arm as she passed.
“Right, let’s bail,” Zac said, looking around frantically. Despite all his big man talk, it was easy to see he was terrified.
“Hang on. There’s a bunch of kids who need your help first. And you, Sean, you need to get your explosives.”
He looked from me to Zac. “I would, if I knew where they’d put them.”
“You’ll find them in the Guard’s Office on the first floor,” I said, not bothering to explain how I suddenly knew. Even if I could explain it.
Sean ran off and the rest of us headed back up to the wards. We wheeled all the kids and the men from the lounge out onto the front lawn. The medical staff and guards I’d passed were still sleeping, curled up on the floor. Zac was all for leaving them here after what they’d done. But I’d seen enough death for one day. I shook them awake and without any protest they slumped down the stairs.
Cain’s body still lay on the floor of the children’s ward, lying face down in a pool of congealing blood.
“What shall we do with him?” Aubrey asked.
I turned him over, so he lay face up. His eyes were closed and if it wasn’t for the hole in his head, you might think he was sleeping. I wondered if he was at peace now, free from all the horrors he’d seen. I guess I’d never know.
“He had a daughter, you know? He didn’t even get to say goodbye,” I said. I crossed his hands over his chest, not really sure why, but it seemed the right thing to do.
Aubrey laid a hand on my shoulder. “She would be proud of him.”
I stood up and my knees gave way, I hardly had the strength to stand any more. Aubrey pulled my arm over her shoulder and led me outside. With every heavy step the power faded more. I paused in front of a huddle of wide-eyed nurses. “Look after the kids,” I said to the two women.
The buzzing energy was fading fast and don’t know if I’d made them do it, or if their caring instincts simply took over, but they quietly walked over to check on the lost children.