Stray (6 page)

I knot my damp hair at the base of my neck and tuck the towel tight around my chest, determined to be calm, rational. I’ll dress, go down to the kitchen and I won’t shout.

I pause at the sound of Miriam’s voice rising in question, alarm in Jamie’s response followed by the sudden scrape of chairs and the scuff of heavy feet coming up the back steps. I strain to hear. The back door clacks, a deep voice, recognition, surprise and demand. Miriam argues. Jamie challenges. I yank the bathroom door – my third crushed handle in less than twenty-four hours – and skid out onto the landing with slippery feet. A surge in static erupts in the bandwidth. I stumble back, stunned by the confusion of noise in my head, like a loud, badly tuned radio or a packed room where everyone shouts at once. It’s nothing like sensing a Stray and nothing like the annoying but normal static I pick up in a crowd of civilians. I usually feel Jamie’s signal like a resonant note and Miriam’s is as familiar as my own heartbeat, but this, this is something else, something foreign, something bad.

I stagger towards the stairs and grip the banister, trying to differentiate between the shouts in my head and the ones that rise from the kitchen. Buffy comes bounding up the stairs, growling, fur sticking up, tail flicking in agitation, darting past me to the bedroom, disappearing beneath my bed. Adrenaline floods through me. Pins and needles stabbing up my spine. Fight and flight war in my synapses and my muscles cramp. It can only be the Affinity Project. Who else – what else – could produce multiple competing signals or any goddamn signals at all? This is it: my time is up. It’s over, over for me and Jamie, over for Aiden. They’ll take me in now, they’ll Harvest my secrets, go after my brother and kill him and that’s it. I have done nothing to save him.

“I’m telling you,” Miriam’s voice cuts in. “This is completely unnecessary!”

Two men, dressed in black, carrying what look like batons, enter the hall and stare up at me. I back against the wall as their signals pulse in waves and I shake my head, trying to clear it.

“I told you,” says the tall dark-skinned man, his large almond eyes fixed on me. “This is the Asset.”

“Relax.” Jamie strides in behind them. “She won’t fight, Benjamin. She knows what she is. She knows everything.”

“Stay out of it, Jamie.” He points his baton at Jamie’s chest. They are equally matched, size and proportion, squaring off in the narrow space. “This is not your business.”

“They always fight – or run,” the other man says, steel-blue eyes in a tanned face, stubble on a square jaw. He twists the baton in his hands, a band of orange lights up near the tip. “She won’t get far.”

“Don’t be an arse, Davis. Put that bloody thing away.” Jamie shoves past them and positions himself at the bottom of the stairs. “Benjamin, think, for God’s sake. I’m here, aren’t I? The Asset knows what I am, what her aunt is. The Affinity Project. Everything. This is not an Extraction Protocol, Ethan said so. Besides, she won’t run. She won’t fight. She’s expecting you.”

Benjamin’s face hardens. “I don’t understand.”

“What? You’re in breach, Gallagher?” Davis scowls and looks to Benjamin. “Nelson, this son of a bitch is in breach!”

“Mr Nelson, Mr Davis, stand down.” It’s another man’s voice, strident, accented. It comes from the kitchen. “I said, stand down. This is not an Extraction.”

German?

The back door opens and closes again, a woman murmurs and Miriam replies. Davis stares open-mouthed up the hall. Benjamin lowers his baton, his full lips tightly pursed, his eyes flicking from me to Jamie and back. “Don’t try to run.”

“I won’t.” My voice sounds steadier than I feel as I grip my towel against my body.

The third man steps into the hall and his eyes find me on the stairs, bringing him to an abrupt halt. His frowning intensity makes me more anxious than the two men with batons. While not outright hostile, his appraisal is searching and stern. He doesn’t speak at first, though his lips part. “Get dressed, Evangeline,” he finally says, clipped, cool. “We will wait for you in the kitchen.”

I nod, almost stumbling with a backwards step up the stairs before turning and hurrying to my room. In my panic I know one thing for certain: I can’t let them take me in. I have to run.

I fight my legs through the holes of my jeans, a bra onto my damp body, a sweatshirt over my spinning head, my mind shrieks warnings and recriminations.
You need supplies. You’re not ready. Where will you go? They’ll catch you and they’ll know you have something to hide. It’ll make everything worse. You should have done something for Aiden weeks ago. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself. You left it too late. You’re a coward. He’ll die because you’re a coward. You wanted Jamie’s kisses more than you wanted your brother to live. You’re disgusting. You knew this was coming. You knew and you did nothing
.

I bruise my knuckles on the edge of the wardrobe door scrabbling for sneakers, landing with a thump on my backside as I fumble them onto my feet. I pray no one comes upstairs to check on the noise. The laces are a tangled spaghetti nightmare, my fingers slow and thick. Frenzied with adrenaline, I lock on one idea – cross the Border River and run. I definitely heard another woman’s voice in the kitchen; if she’s the Warden who came to the Gallaghers’ a couple of months ago, it’s my only hope of hiding my signal from her. There’s no way I can be sure what kind of sensitivity the others have – I’ll have to be quick, quiet, lucky.

Springing to my feet, I scan the room for anything I can take with me that might be valuable later. My parka hangs by the back door downstairs. Knives and guns sit locked in Miriam’s hidden training room. Even my phone lies useless on the kitchen counter. I shake my head and snatch my backpack from the bottom of the wardrobe, a numb-fingered rummage for my wallet, a small burst of relief when I find it. On tiptoes, to lessen the sound of urgency in my steps, I hurry to the dresser and jam clean underwear and clothes into the guts of my bag. I wrench the zip and sling it on my back.

Coming to the window, I cringe at the geriatric latch and swollen wooden frame that sticks fast in the damp. I anticipate the painful screech that will follow when I open it.
So much for quiet
. The garden spreads out three storeys below me thanks to the sloping yard and basement. I could break up the distance by landing on the back steps to the kitchen. Perhaps I could offer the shocked Affinity agents a friendly wave before bolting. They’ll hear the window and know instantly I’m trying to get away. Whatever happens, it will be a chase. My best bet is to clear the steps and land, a crunch of bones, in the yard and not look back.

With sick churning in my gut, I slip my fingers beneath the latch, count to three as a final stall, then haul upwards. The screech, the slam of the lower sash crashing into the frame above, a shower of paint chips. I clamber, leg, shoulder, head, leg. A shout echoes from the kitchen. I jump. A blast of freezing air. Hungry gravity. A stone-hard landing that rattles my teeth, my skull. Fire in my joints. I’m up and running. I hear the kitchen door slam open and a male voice booms, “Evangeline!”

The slippery mat of dead leaves makes it hard to gain good footing but the slope gives me momentum. Miriam’s leafy backyard blends with the fenceless wild. I skid my way into the Border River Reserve, swatting bracken and hurdling fallen branches, my pack slapping my back with each stride. Go, go, go! It’s a few hundred yards to the river, the icy breath of it chilling my lungs. The roar of fast water grows louder as I tear through the wood. Moss, mud and pungent rot, wet air, a heavy sky. Electrified by adrenaline, my senses adjust as I move faster and faster, reflexes, vision, judging distance, rapid-fire calculations for the placement of my feet, a jump, a duck, a lunge left, then right and on.

I sense them in the bandwidth, two then three. I picture the man with steel-blue eyes, the hostile twist of his mouth, the cool fierce gaze of the agent Jamie had called Benjamin and then the older guy with the accent whose look had withered me on the stairs. All of them powerfully built, experienced, trained, armed and coming for me. The sound of heavy footfalls grows behind me. My heart rides at the top of my throat. The ground slips steeply down towards gravelly banks. I know the terrain. I know this isn’t the narrowest part of the river. I’ve tried jumping it before and fallen short, dragged into the ferocious current and swept downstream. I break from the trees and to my left the blue-eyed agent bursts out onto the bank. I charge towards the river edge, visualising the leap skywards.

The clatter of boots.

“Wait!”

With a grunt, I vault upwards, higher and farther than any previous attempt, propelled by fear and my cartwheeling arms.

Behind me a gusty, “No shit!”

And a muttered, “Great.”

I land in the shallow water that sweeps the opposite bank. Somehow I stay upright, soaked to my thighs, and clamber up the slope, waterlogged sneakers filling with stones as the bank gives way beneath my feet. But I have new drive, a signal-free bandwidth, the large body of moving water blanking the Affinity agents from my radar. They haven’t crossed over yet. If I can make it into the trees, get beyond their sight, I have a chance … a small chance.

Using my hands to help me onto firm ground, I scramble up and away, barely making the forest before the crash of boots on rocks and a blast in the bandwidth tells me one of them has crossed over.

I’m fast, even with stones in my shoes, but I don’t make it far. He flies up behind me, grabbing my pack, jerking me out of my stride. I wrench my shoulders free from the straps and spin to find the steel-blue eyes are black with adrenaline – black with the chase. He drops my pack and swings his baton up with a practised flourish, a ring of orange lighting up beneath the tip. “Knew you’d run. They always do.”

Precognition flashes in my mind: he’ll bring the baton to the right, aim for my ribs. He’s fast. I barely manage to feint left, a sloppy kick to his wrist that knocks the weapon from his hand. Annoyance hardens his mouth and he rams his shoulder into my chest, a winding, eye-watering wallop of bone and muscle that takes me off my feet, hurling me into the scrub.

I slam onto my backside, sliding in the mud. Before I stop he charges towards me, a brutal tackle that sends us tumbling, his weight bruising my spine, shoulders, head, grinding me into the dirt as we flip. I land on his chest, and his air expels in my face. We both groan.

“Davis, enough.”

“What?” the blue-eyed guy coughs beneath me. “She started it.”

A hand clamps my arm, hauling me to my feet. I flail and kick.

“She’s had
some
kind of training.”

“This is not an exercise.” Benjamin frowns at his colleague then at my thrashing. The back of my hand collects the edge of his jaw. His grip loosens just enough for me to thrust myself out of his hold. Davis, part way to his feet, has only a half-second glimpse of my knee before it collides with his face and I bolt sideways.

“Evie!” Jamie’s shout takes me off course and I collide with an unyielding body. The German guy, his expression bemused and exasperated. Something flies through the air; he catches it.

“Ethan, no!” Miriam cries.

She’s here too?

I see only a brief flash of orange before a bolt of electricity fires through my chest, obliterating my senses, seizing my muscles, and I hit the dirt.

The trip back to the house is grim and humiliating. I can’t walk. Jamie has to carry me. Jostled in his arms, my chest aches and my muscles cramp from the lingering aftershock of the baton, making it impossible for me to move my jaw to explain myself or ask questions. Jamie’s expression indicates silence is the way to go. Miriam walks beside us, white and wordless. The German guy says nothing, stalking ahead. Benjamin and Davis, both with cuts to their mouths, look annoyed in the extreme as they follow behind. When we reach the river we have to go upstream to find a spot narrow enough for Jamie to jump with me in his arms. It’s a good twenty minutes before we make it back to the yard.

At the kitchen door, I grunt for Jamie to put me down. My legs are stiff and shaky. Miriam loops her arm under mine and helps me walk. She pauses, surprised at first by a stack of towels on the dining table, but takes one for me and gestures for the men to help themselves. I don’t look at the woman standing at the kitchen counter. I don’t want to look at anyone. There’s nothing unusually strong about her signal in the bandwidth – maybe she isn’t the Warden. No one bothers to warn me not to run, though Davis follows us into the hall.

Upstairs, in my freezing room, Miriam shakes her head, warning me not to speak. Her eyes tell me that she can guess why I ran. She cups my cheek with her trembling hand and Aiden’s face blooms in my mind. Kinetic Memory Transfer. I blink and the image clears. Miriam’s pallor and desperate silence terrify me more than anything else. I’ve seen her under intense pressure before; she becomes ruthlessly cool and focused, not brittle like this. She forces the reluctant window shut and helps me into dry clothes. I want to beg her,
What should I do? What should I tell them?
But every time I open my mouth she gives a brisk shake of her head. Finally, when we’re ready to go downstairs, she mouths,
Tell the truth
.

My legs shake and I take my time, clasping the banister, afraid I might collapse and appear weak or scared, though I’m both. Jamie stands by the front door with the man named Benjamin. Benjamin is a confronting testament to the effects of Optimal on DNA, built like that, with a face like that. His signal rolls in the bandwidth next to Jamie’s. Now that I’m not in flight mode I have time to reflect on the strangeness of sensing someone else. I’m so used to how the bandwidth feels when Jamie and Miriam are around; it’s all I’ve known beyond Kitty and Aiden. Davis sits across the hall by the lounge window, slouching in Miriam’s wingback, scowling as I make my way down. His aggressive signal dominates the others while I focus on him then drops back when I look away.

Nobody else seems to react to the clash of signals. I want to hold my head or block my ears against the clamour, but I dare not close my eyes because there are images in the bandwidth that belong to these men, images backing up, dark, violent, painful, and I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know.