Morgan’s chair screeched across the floor as he dragged it opposite me. He spun it around so the back was facing the table and sat astride it. Only he couldn’t get his leg through the gap between the armrest and back. After a few seconds of struggling to pull his leg free, he turned it the right way and sat down.
He smoothed back his slick hair, which had been ruffled in his fight with the chair, and steepled his fingers under his chin
“So, shall we start with you telling me your name?” His voice was icy, as if he was preparing himself to break some hardened criminal. Well, I was about to spoil his fun. I was going to spill my guts.
I started with my name and then told him everything. Everything I could remember, that is. I told him about Hugo and the Pylon, about wanting to do kick boxing. Finally I told him about the moped and how I’d got my sister killed. I kept Aubrey out of it as much as possible and invented some guy who’d given me Aubrey’s address telling me she might be able to help. When I was finished, there were tears flowing down my face, and Morgan seemed disappointed.
“So you didn’t know you were a Shifter?”
“Not until last night, I didn’t have a clue. I still don’t know what’s going on. It’s as if I’ve got memories in my head that don’t fit any more. And the more I try to make sense of them, the less I understand.”
“Oh, Scott. Silly, silly Scott,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You are having what we call a reality attack. It’s a sort of psychosis when you find yourself in a new and disturbing reality, because you didn’t carefully plot out the consequences of your Shift.” He shook his head and sighed dramatically. “It’s a rookie mistake, really.”
I ignored the fact he was talking to me like a six yearold. “You’ve got to help me. I don’t know how to control any of this.”
“It’s unusual that your Shifting capabilities are only emerging now,” he said, squinting at me so hard I could hardly see his eyes. ‘Normally they present themselves at a much younger age. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Shifter coming to light at such a late age. Most Shifters begin their training at eight, ten at the latest. I’m not sure there is anything we can do for you. Apart from processing.”
Processing. He meant torture, I was sure of it.
“Why don’t you let me see about that, Commandant?”
Another man had entered the room, so quietly I hadn’t even heard the door open. I turned my head to face him. He wore a grey uniform like Morgan’s, but it appeared faded with age. The jacket was slightly too tight for him and there were five darker lines on his arm, the shadows of where golden stripes might once have been. He had slightly greying hair, large black eyes, and his dark skin was lined with deep wrinkles.
Morgan shot to his feet and started to protest about how a Shifter had to lead any interrogation. The man ignored him, his kind eyes fixed on me.
“My name is Mr Abbott, I head up the Regulators.” His voice was deep and soft. “It’s good to meet you, Mr Tyler.”
“I’d shake your hand, but, you know…” I shrugged, indicating my bound hands.
“Hmm, yes. I think we can do without the cuffs, don’t you?”
Morgan hesitated. “But he might Shift.” He sounded like a kid being told it was past his bedtime.
Abbott’s expression didn’t change. “Oh, I don’t think Mr Tyler is going to give us any trouble.”
Morgan shuffled behind me. My cuffs snapped open and my hands were free. I rubbed at my wrists, thinking I would never take my hands for granted again.
“Why don’t you let me take over? I’m sure you have much more important things to be doing,” Abbott said taking Morgan’s seat in front of me. “Sir,” he added, smiling.
Morgan scowled. “Yes, you are right. I do have some pressing matters that require my attention. I expect a full report at the end of the day, Mr Abbott.” He put unnecessary stress on the word “Mr” and then slammed the door behind him.
“Commandant Morgan is very thorough,” Abbott said, “but slightly overeager. He sees master criminals everywhere.”
“I’m just a normal kid,” I said.
“But you are anything but normal, Mr Tyler. You are, as I am sure you are coming to realise, very special.”
“But I don’t want to be special. I just want everything to go back to how it was. I just want my sister…” My voice trailed off.
“Ah, yes… your sister.” He laid a brown folder on the table and opened it. “You said your last Shift led to her death?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t. Let us see what we can do to put that right.”
A wave of hope and gratitude passed through me. “Can you? Can you help?”
“That’s what we do here, Scott.” I noticed the switch to my first name. “We help people and we will help you. After all, we have to take some responsibility. We should have spotted you earlier.” He turned over pages in the file. I caught glimpses of what I thought were my school reports, my birth certificate, even what looked like my library card. “We have systems in place to spot the signs and the signs were definitely there with you. Getting into fights. An inability to forge close friendships.” He didn’t sound as if he was judging me. Just saying it as it was.
He closed the file and looked up. “The truth is, Scott, that Commandant Morgan was wrong. There are cases when a Shifter’s ability only emerges at a later stage. And when it does happen, that Shifter invariably goes on to be very powerful.”
“I really don’t think that’s going to be the case with me,” I said with a small laugh. “I’m pretty useless at almost everything.”
“We’ll see.” He gazed at me, a half smile playing about his dark lips. “The thing that interests us about you, Scott is your ability to hold on to your past reality. It’s rather unusual. Most Shifters can hold onto the old reality for a few minutes, half an hour if it’s a particularly traumatic event. But it’s been,” he checked his watch, “nearly two hours since you made your Shift. It’s impressive.”
“Friends always told me I was no good at letting go of stuff.”
“Well, that could work to your advantage, Scott. It’s likely you’ll need specialist training. But first, we have the problem of your sister to clear up. I’d like to ask you something, Scott.”
“What? Anything.”
“If I help you, help you put things back in order as much as is possible, will you come back to ARES, under your own volition, and join the Programme?”
“I don’t understand. I’m here already.”
“Ah, but if I help you make this Shift then you might not be here. I don’t know what the consequences will be. If your sister doesn’t die, you will have no need to go running to Ms Jones’s house for help, and we may never track you down. As I am sure you’ve come to realise, this is the problem with Shifting. You never know where the ripples will take you. Even here, where we have the finest minds and some of the most advanced technology, most of which I don’t even begin to understand, we struggle to map it out.” He paused. “You need us, Scott. And we want to help you.”
I didn’t even have to think. If it would get my sister back, I’d sign over my life. “Yes, I’ll join.”
“Good. Now, you said your sister died in a crash when you were both on your moped. Yet, you also said in your alternate reality you didn’t have one.”
“Not that I can remember, no.”
“Well, that could be the key. You made a decision somewhere to get this moped. If you can find that point, you can Shift it. But there had to be a real choice.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose between my fingers and tried. “It was so I could get to the competitions,” I said, as the pieces slotted into place. “Mum didn’t want me to get one. She was convinced I’d kill myself.” I laughed bitterly at the irony. “She and Dad argued over it. He wanted to let me have the moped. He’d wanted one when he was a kid.” It was all coming back now. “But his Mum hadn’t let him. So I think he wanted to make up for it with me. He’d shouted that it was just another example of how Mum tried to control everyone. That she was stifling us all. In the end, he won.”
I dropped my hand from my face. Suddenly, I remembered the exact moment Mum gave in and Dad had turned to me and smiled. I’d never seen him look prouder. That moment hovered like a seesaw between two points, perfectly balanced. I focused on that moment. Mentally willing myself to listen to Mum. To ignore the desire to please my father.
I felt a flipping sensation in my chest, as if my internal organs had decided to rearrange themselves. My head pounded and I saw a flash of light. I looked up as Abbott’s smiling face started to flicker. Then everything went black.
When I dared to open my eyes I was lying on a tatty red couch, a purple throw pulled up to my chin. The room glowed in the pale morning light breaking through Aubrey’s curtains and traffic hummed on the road outside. I checked my watch. 8.15am – a full hour since I’d been dragged off to ARES. But in this new reality, I was still in Aubrey’s living room. I probed my memories. They were a mess. A flash of car crashes mixed in with the feeling of freewheeling down a long hill on a bicycle. There were no memories of mopeds.
I kicked off the blanket and checked my body. The muscles were still there, but the bruises were gone. I sprang off the couch.
“Aubrey!” I shouted. “Aubrey!”
“What?” came a muffled reply from the room I assumed was her bedroom. I skidded down the hallway and threw open the door.
“Get out!” She pulled her duvet up over her shoulders.
“You know me?”
“Yes, you idiot. Stop shouting and get out of my room. My head hurts.”
Mine felt spectacularly clear. “How did we meet?”
“You were lying on your back, having singularly failed to climb a pylon.”
“Yes!” I punched the air. It had worked. Things were back to how they had been. I launched myself on to Aubrey’s bed, threw my arms around her and hugged her.
She pushed me away. “Scott, what’s going on?”
“I Shifted. I think. And everything went to hell. But then…”
“You what?” She didn’t appear happy.
“I Shifted.”
“Here?” She threw her duvet away. She was only wearing a singlet and shorts. “You absolute moron. You have to get out. If you’ve been Shifting, ARES will be here any minute.”
“I, er…” I didn’t know why she was so upset. I’d just brought my sister back to life and I didn’t care what ARES would do to me. Besides, they had been the ones to help me. They’d been a little rough in getting there, sure, and given the choice it would be better if I didn’t have to be dragged out of Aubrey’s flat with a bag over my head. Then I realised, I did have the choice. If I left now, I could save myself the embarrassment and Aubrey the guilt of handing me over.
“Calm down. It’s OK. I’ll leave.”
Aubrey twitched her button nose. It was all I could do to stop myself from kissing it. She reached down to the opposite side of her bed and retrieved a notebook with a pen hanging from it. She scribbled down a number, tore the page out, and handed it to me.
“Call me. Leave it a couple of days, till things have calmed down. Then we’ll talk. Till then, try not to make any more Shifts.”
I pushed her number into the back pocket of my jeans. “Thank you,” I said. “You have no idea.”
She waved me away and lay back down on her pillow. “Just close the door on your way out.”
I left her sleeping and raced out of her front door, down the staircase and out onto the street. Where I ran straight into the arms of someone who wanted to kill me.
At first I thought it must have been a member of ARES who’d caught me after all. Running into him was like running into a soft rubber wall. To say he was fat was an understatement. He was enormous. Gargantuan. He was just a few all-you-can-eat buffets away from ending up on one of those freak documentaries where the guy ends up being winched out of his house by a crane or where they get dragged into hospital to have their TV remote surgically removed from a layer of flab. I was surprised he was able to stand under his own weight without a small, motorised vehicle to carry his stomach for him.
I bounced off him, muttered a hasty apology and tried to sidestep him. But there was too much of him to sidestep.
“Excuse me,” I said, staring at him. His eyes glinted like black buttons in a sagging sofa.
He didn’t move. “Excuse me,” I tried again.
He grinned, revealing a row of black, stained teeth, inside a mouth so red it was like looking into a raw wound. His breath stank and I had to turn my face away to avoid being sick all over him. “If you would just let me past…” I said, trying not to breathe in.
Instead of moving out of the way, he took a step forward, pinning me to the shut door with his wobbling stomachs. He licked his lips with an ulcerous purple tongue.
Heart pounding, I hesitantly pressed my hands against his shoulders and pushed. My palms started to disappear inside the folds of flesh and I pulled them back with a squeak of terror.
He still hadn’t said a word. “I don’t know what you want,” I stuttered. I knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to eat me. Clearly, there wasn’t enough food left on the earth for this guy and he’d moved on to human flesh. If I’d known how right I was at that moment, I think I would have fainted in fear.
“A fresh Shifter.” He breathed in, as if he were inhaling a delicious aroma. “I do love it when they’re fresh. So much sweeter.” He licked his lips again and I felt my stomach curdle.
“How… how do you know?” I gagged.
“Oh, you silly boy. I can smell you.” He sniffed my face like a dog.
“Please, please,” I begged. “I don’t know who you are. But I’d really like it if you let me go.”
He laughed, a snorting, wet laugh. “You should be thanking me. I’ve put ARES off your trail so I can have you all to myself. So, tell me this. Are you going to try and Shift your way out of this… tight… squeeze?” He wriggled his flesh tighter against me, pushing the air out of my lungs. My head went dizzy and white lights danced in front of my eyes. Any second now I was going to pass out.
I thought of Aubrey upstairs, safe under her duvet. Weird, wonderful, Aubrey. I’d only just met her, the girl of my dreams, and now I was going to die. Squashed to death by Jabba’s big brother. And I didn’t even know what I’d done to deserve this.