Stray (27 page)

“You’re disgusting.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, I know you want to be with him.” She smirks. “It won’t be long. Your body is already adjusting, your nervous system catching up to your signal. Soon you won’t faint any more. I suppose if you’re desperate you could sleep with a regular boy. It’s just, ugh, why would you want some No-Signal-Civ?”

“Let me go.”

“Do you want me to tell you if he slept with her? I know you were thinking about it.”

I jerk my arm. “Go to hell.”

“I could show you.”

I squeeze her hand hard to hurt her, but my strength evaporates and my arm turns limp.

“Don’t,” she says, the humour gone from her face.

“Then what do you want?” I jerk my head at the screen, where the scene has skipped to the morning after the gunshot, my body entwined with Jamie’s on the recliner, mouths and hands roaming. “To humiliate me, torture me, make me piss myself, threaten me with brain damage? To get your perverted kicks? What else?”

“Not much,” she says, keeping her expression even. “Maybe a little sunshine. Fresh air.”

Like I’ve walked into a pole, I blink, dazed and slow to understand. “Sunshine?” Then comes an icy sliver of realisation.

She’s a prisoner.

“Slave.” Her eyes flit over my face, a slight tremor in her lips.

I feel it then, in the bandwidth. Like a giant wave stopped mid-peak, its shadow stretches out across my mind. Rage, hopelessness, desperation. She’s holding it back but I can sense the weight behind it. She could crush me, drown me in a static super-storm, leave me dribbling and incoherent, lost in my own mind. It’s frightening, her power and despair. Then my tears aren’t for me. Though I don’t invite them, they come. “Stop.”

“Not very nice, is it? Being forced to feel? You get to choose when you Transfer or Harvest. I’ve never had a choice.”

I swipe the moisture from my face, shaky in the aftermath.

“Don’t get me wrong; there are okay bits like love and sex, if it’s not gross stuff, but mostly it’s dire. That’s a good word isn’t it?” Her eyes move towards the door. “Felicity says it a lot.”

There’s warmth in her voice for the older woman. She likes her.

“Mostly.”

I wonder if she’s her mother, but I think Felicity’s too old.

“Close as I’ll get to one,” the Proxy says. “Felicity’s more like a keeper, but I’m not supposed to call her that. It upsets her. She can be kind and she likes to look after me. I guess I’m as close as she’ll get to a daughter.”

I don’t want to feel sympathy for the Proxy. Everything about her repels me, her creepy irises, her corpse skin, the off way she smirks and laughs, the cruelty in her mouth, but the idea of being kept by Affinity, used over and over to dredge the crap from people’s memories, submerged in a tank for hours at a time … It’s unthinkable.

“Your mother did the right thing, keeping you a secret. Mine, whoever she was, wasn’t as well connected. Though it might have been nice to have another playmate. You’re strong. I can tell you would have survived. Or maybe I could have had more fun with your brother.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Synergist offspring, we make the strongest telepaths. That’s why they claim us from birth. But the survival rate is low. Often our bodies are too immature to cope with having our ETR artificially triggered. I was strong. They triggered me when I was five. I did my first Harvest when I was seven. By ten I could do it without killing the subject.”

“Your parents … they were Synergists.”

“Like yours. I’ll keep your secret if you help me.”

My head rings, hollow as a shell, and I stare at her in uncomprehending silence. A weight slides into my belly. I want to sit down. Lie down. Curl up. I can’t think straight. This is what Miriam has worked so hard to keep from Affinity … that Aiden and I are the children of her Synergist relationship. I picture my skin and hair bleached of colour, my eyes pale, sunless hours, claustrophobia in a tank. I don’t even wonder why Miriam didn’t tell me. Like Tesla said before, she wouldn’t want the knowledge in my head for them to Harvest and use against me. “You – you think I can bust you out of Affinity?”

“It won’t be a prison break. They’ll let me go with you.”

“
With
me?”

“I’ll tell them that I felt the Deactivation. Tesla will convince the Executive to test Aiden. A research opportunity. Robert will be against it but the Executive will overrule him. I know these people. I know how it will play out. They’ll give you forty-eight hours to locate your brother and bring him in. I know you don’t know where he is, but you know where you sent him and you can track signals.”

“Not at that distance!”

“That’s why you’ll need me to go with you, to boost your telepathic reach.”

“I won’t give him up. They don’t give a damn if he’s deactivated. They’ll kill him.”

“Ethan won’t let them.”

I shake my head. “Tesla’s one of them.”

“He’ll protect Aiden. He’ll protect you. You know why.”

I blink. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Close your eyes. I won’t put it on the screen.”

“What?” But my eyes grow heavy.

“
Du bist genau wie deine Mutter
,” she chuckles. “Isn’t that what he said? You’re just like your mother.”

I’m in the bandwidth and the burst of colour is immediate and the perspective disorienting, like it was in the memory of Jamie and me, seen from the point of view of an outsider rather than one of the participants. Long dark hair spills down a slender, pale back, strong tanned arms surround her. They are young and naked to the waist, fused at the mouth, chest, hip. Miriam and Tesla.

I jolt on my side in the dim light, a sharp crack then fire in the back of my skull. A cry of pain behind me. A muttered curse above me. I sit up, gasping. Instantly awake, eyes watering from the pain of whatever I smacked my head on.

Tesla swears again, hovering by the surgical bed. He drops an empty syringe into a kidney-shaped bowl and presses a cotton swab to my bicep. “Adrenaline,” he says, his eyes gouged by dark shadows. “I gave you as long as I could but we are out of time. You told them nothing about where Aiden is, but the Proxy confirmed she felt the Deactivation and that you know Aiden’s first stop. They will let me test him but we must hurry.”

Behind me, a groan and the shifting weight of a heavy body makes the narrow bed wobble. I look back at the same time as I become conscious of Jamie’s signal, shocked to find him so near and shirtless. Propped on his elbow, one hand pressed to a rising welt on his cheekbone, the other gripping his forehead as though resisting a migraine, he peers through his fingers and rasps, “What the hell?”

A split-second image flashes in my mind. Jamie and I curled on the tiny mattress, the back of my gown laid open, my bandaged spine pressed to his warm chest, his arm around my waist, hidden beneath the front of my gown, his hand limp in sleep sandwiched between my breast and the bed, his legs tucked up beneath mine. The flash goes, but the remembered heat of his body tingles through me and the air on my exposed back tells me the memory is real.

I stagger to my feet, almost toppling into Tesla, who steadies me. Twisting away, I reach to close the back of my gown from Jamie’s sight. Shame, more for my wounds than my nakedness, like I can’t bear for him to know about my scars. “What is this?”

“Expedience.” Tesla rubs his face. “Your Synergist link accelerates healing and we are on a tight schedule. Thank you, Jamie. At least she did not break your nose. You can get dressed.”

Jamie rises gingerly, finding his balance. The skin has split over the welt beneath his eye. It adds to the brutality of his appearance – shorn head and stubble shading his jaw. I don’t look at his chest, or the slope of his stomach or the sharp V of pelvic muscle plunging into the waistband of his scrubs. Heat flames in my cheeks, awareness of my body, of Jamie, of Tesla next to me, watching my face burn and probably knowing precisely why it burns.

The benefits of Synergist Coding can’t be denied. My pain is greatly reduced; I have more freedom of movement, strength in my joints. Pity it does nothing for my internal bleeding. The image of Helena’s upturned face, Jamie touching her neck, the murmur of the Proxy, the words of the sanction – bruises for a lifetime.

“It wasn’t my idea.” He stops by the end of the bed, a hard line drawn between his eyebrows, his dark eyes indicating me and the bed. There’s no malice in it, no bitter inflection, but all my heat goes. We may have slept in each other’s arms, signals resonating, but the distance between us is a chasm wide with betrayal and blame and things that cannot be unspoken or unseen. He steps past me, not meeting my gaze, making his way to the room in the back where he closes the door, leaving Tesla and me alone.

There’s a moment where we’re both just staring at the closed door then finally Tesla moves. He reaches for a brown paper bag and tips my clothes, freshly laundered, onto the bed. “Get dressed.”

I’m sweating by the time I get my jeans on, the effort of bending, the stiffness in my muscles from hours of ReProg followed by hours of lying on my side. The insistence of pins and needles in my spine tells me I am long overdue for a run. Beyond the curtain, Tesla clatters through the lab, riffling through cupboard doors.

Say something. Confront him. Make him admit who he is. But it’s too huge to get my head around. Ethan Tesla, my father. That void in my history now filled with a name, a person, living, breathing, solid, separate from myself. Instead I say, “Forty-eight hours isn’t a lot of time.”

The rustling and banging stops. “They would not allow the Proxy to be away from the compound any longer than that.”

“She says you won’t let them kill Aiden. Or not till you’re sure.”

There’s a pause then he says, “That is correct.”

“I told her I would refuse to go after him.”

Another pause. “You will not.”

I pull my shirt over my head, a slow wrestle of cotton and reluctant muscle. The unsaid flutters in my chest. “I don’t care if she tells them what I am.”

Silence. “She told you.”

“She showed me.”

A long pause. “You should care.”

The tape on my spine pulls at my skin as I twist and tug the shirt into place. It almost chokes me to ask, “Would you get in trouble if they knew you were my–?”

A shadow falls across the curtain. Tesla sighs. “That is of little concern.”

“Would they hurt Miriam?”

“She is already hurt. It would serve no purpose to give up the truth about us.”

I yank the curtain back. “Miriam resisted the Symbiosis for nothing.”

Tesla holds a large leather carry bag, a jumble of equipment in it. He lowers it onto the counter and turns to face me. “I believe the Proxy pushed her further than necessary.”

“
What?
”

“It serves her purpose. She told them you cannot find your brother without her assistance. The Executive will not let her leave the compound without a guarantee that you will return her safely. She told them she could bring Miriam out of stasis and suggested it would be the best means of inspiring your compliance. You find your brother and return the Proxy without incident and you get your mother back.”

A high-pitched whine stabs through my inner ear. “She hurt Miriam so she could manipulate me into doing what she wants?” All around the room glass objects clatter and skip. “That little bitch. That sick little bitch. She’s not going to help Miriam. She wants to escape. Tell them! Tell the Executive they can’t trust her!”

Tesla looks pained. “The Executive are aware of her agenda. It is not the first time she has tried. She will not escape, but you can imagine her desperation.”

“You feel sorry for her?” My mouth twists. “She’s evil!”

“Because we have made her so.”

“You can’t
trust
her.”

“No, but we have an opportunity to save your brother and whether the Proxy follows through on her promise or not, your mother would want us to help him.”

“She’ll run.”

“Benjamin, Davis and Felicity will come with us. They will guard her. Jamie will join us also to find his sister.”

“You can’t trust
Benjamin
. You can’t trust any of them! They all want Aiden dead. I don’t care if she tells them who I am; I’m not giving him up.” My whole body shakes, my ears ring and pop, pressure building in my head. The rattling test tubes infuriate me – evidence of my lost control. With a cry of frustration I fling my arm out as though I can silence the glass with a gesture. What I don’t expect is the instant bolt of energy that flashes through me, the relief and release of it through my hand and the shock wave that hits the test tubes. It’s not loud, the explosion. A cloud of tiny glistening shards one moment, a pile on the counter the next.

The door opens at the back of the room. Jamie’s signal touches mine.

I don’t see him. Tesla has me by the arms. His eyes drill mine. “I am doing everything I can to keep the last eighteen years of our lives from counting for nothing.” His voice is rough, his accent broadened with feeling. “If you give the Proxy reason to betray your identity, then we–”

Jamie crosses the floor. “What do you mean, her identity?”

The sliding door opens and the three of us freeze. Benjamin strides in, Davis behind him. “It’s time.”

Run. That’s my instinct. The sheer intensity of my panic closes my throat. It makes the looming walls of the compound corridors seem to lean in above me, faceless concrete like a tomb. I resist the urge to gasp for air, to shove my way out from among the men who surround me. Benjamin and Davis in front, Jamie and Tesla in back. Where would I go that Affinity couldn’t find me?

We march through globes of artificial light towards a familiar wing.

I try to iron it out in my head, fasten down the edges. Whatever Tesla says, I don’t trust Affinity. They’ll kill Aiden. But if I say I won’t go, the Proxy will spill that I’m a Synergist kid and what, I become lab equipment? I don’t give a damn about that right now but if I go and the Proxy escapes, Miriam’s brain will be permanently fried. If by some miracle we find Aiden and they accept he’s deactivated, what then? I don’t believe for a second they’d let him walk.