Never in my life had time felt so slow. Memories of us flashed through my mind as though I was dying and replaying my life: Angela drying my headscarf at school; us walking through the town with her chatting away; telling her about meeting Sebastian; the moment she confessed how ill her mother was. It was then, sat by her side in the hospital, that I realised just how much I missed her friendship and I made a pact with myself that when she woke, because she would wake up, I was going to do everything I could to stop this stupid feud. I didn’t care how mean she had been during our time at the Compound –
I
was going to sort it all out, because it was all just stupid. I loved her, and it was stupid that we were fighting.
“Yes it is.”
I jumped and spun around on my chair. Hiro was standing behind me and probably had been for some time. He held out a mug with something steaming and sweet inside.
“Jasmine tea,” he said. He handed it to me, and the warmth of the mug felt comforting against my palms. “My parents always gave me jasmine tea when I was upset.”
“Thank you,” I said and really meant it. “Do you want to sit with me for a while? Daniel has gone home to sleep, Cam is on guard and Dad has gone to pick up some of Angela’s clothes.”
Hiro sat in the empty chair. The furniture in the medical centre was plain, and seemed to be relics taken from other places. Some chairs looked like the kind you’d expect on the patio of a GEM house, or behind a desk in a school. The beds were all standard hospital beds with retractable cot-sides.
“Is she thinking anything?” I asked Hiro. He paused and I took a sip of the tea he’d brought me, enjoying the subtle floral taste and the way my chest warmed as I swallowed.
“She’s dreaming,” he answered. “There’s lots of different images all jumbled up. The farm, grass, animals and the people working. Cam holding her hand and… kissing. You and your dad in a house with a yellow door.”
“That was our house in Area 14.” I’d never wanted to be at home more than that moment. My eyes became wet with tears and I sipped on the tea, trying to ignore them. “Are there any images about… what happened that night? Does it show who did this to her?”
“No,” he said. “I think her brain needs to heal. It’s sending her happy thoughts to fix her.”
I shook my head with a smile and again marvelled at how mature Hiro was. I was proud to call him my brother.
“Oh,” he said, as a cute pink blush spread to his cheeks, “thanks.”
“How has training been going?” I’d been by Angela’s bedside for two full days and one night while the world kept turning without me.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m getting the hang of reading thoughts selectively,” he grinned, “you know – how your dad calls it.”
“Yeah, he loves the word selective. Selective focus, selective meditation…” I rolled my eyes. I drank the rest of my tea and set the mug down, all the time my eyes on Angela’s form, on her wiry hair spread messily on the pillow – I’d tried to tame it for her but didn’t have her knack for untangling knots – her broad shoulders and very still lips, her strong fingers that had always gripped my own like a big sister would. I kept staring at those fingers, thinking how we’d never argue or ignore each other or put boys ahead of each other every again. And then something amazing happened – they twitched.
“Did you see that?” I exclaimed to Hiro. “Nurse! Nurse! I think she’s waking up.”
“Her thoughts…” Hiro said. “I think she can hear what we’re saying!”
“Angela.” I took her twitching fingers in mine and rubbed them. “Angela if you can hear me please wake up. It’s me, Mina.” Her fingers moved again, this time as though trying to push their way into mine and then her head flopped to one side and her eyelids fluttered.
“Mina?” she croaked.
Before I could answer, three nurses shoved their way around me and began checking Angela’s temperature, pulse and shining lights in her eyes. Angela moaned, her throat sounding raw, and then her body started to shake.
“She’s fitting,” one of the nurses said. All three of them grabbed hold of Angela’s body and held her down. I stood up and stepped back, horrified at the way her eyes rolled back into her head. My hand went to my mouth and I held Hiro close to me.
“What’s happening?” I yelled at the nurses, tears welling up in my eyes as I grabbed onto Hiro as much for my comfort as his. The bed shook underneath Angela’s flailing body, bed-sheets tangling around her limbs.
“Move back,” one of the nurses said.
“What’s happening?”
I turned round to see a panicked Cam running up the ward, almost running straight into three or four cot beds. Behind him Dr Woods hurried, his eyes focussed on Angela.
I grabbed hold of Cam as he went to run straight at the bed. “No, Cam. Give them room.” As gently as I could I pulled him towards myself and Hiro.
“Why is she doing that?” His face was contorted in pain as we watched Angela continue to jerk and twist in her bed, being held down by three strong-looking women.
“I don’t know,” I said
Dr Woods filled a syringe with a clear fluid and squirted the excess from the needle. “I’m going to give her an injection. Nurses I need you to hold her as still as you can.” The nurses doubled their efforts, sitting almost completely on her body and I couldn’t help think about the bruises she would have and how she wouldn’t even know how she got them. Dr Woods plunged the needle into her skin and I winced, turning my head towards Cam’s chest. Tears were flowing freely down my face now, and I didn’t even have the energy to wipe them away.
“Ah’m going te kill that Clone fer this.”
My head snapped up and turned to Cam, horrified. His face was a mask of pain and anger. My stomach lurched and all the smells of the medical centre – bleach covering up sickness and blood – everything was too much, too vivid and too much to bear. I had to get out of there. Shoving Hiro and Cam aside I ran through the ward, blocking out the image of the old man with his crying family beside him and the girl on her knees groaning in agony, sweat pouring down her face. I needed to be away from it all. I needed fresh air and to be alone. Staggering and gasping for air I emerged from the medical centre and threw up Hiro’s Jasmine tea into a shallow bush and then sat down on the grass away from the sick.
With my head in my hands I wondered what the hell I was going to do. My best friend had been attacked by my other friend. Hearing the words in my mind seemed wrong and I took a moment to repeat them, to play them backwards and in slow motion. Did I believe them? Had I really lost all faith in Sebastian? Had I lost all faith in the boy who had saved my life?
It couldn’t have been him. I couldn’t let myself think it. But then the look in his eye. The blood on his shirt… How did I
know
? How could I be sure it was blood? It had been dark, I was scared. I pushed my head further into my hands, scraping back my hair, still sweaty after the effort of vomiting my tea. The thought of Sebastian attacking Angela made my stomach contract and I retched.
“Dr Woods,” I mumbled to myself. Somehow everything was his fault. He did something to Sebastian in the prison cell; I knew it in my bones. But what could I do about it? He was in there right now pretending everything was normal, saving my friend’s life and acting like some grand hero in a fairy-tale. I’d never felt more like a child in my life, so helpless, unable to fix anything. What good was my power now? What good would it do anyone against a man like Stephen Woods?
“Mina.” Hiro’s voice ripped me from my self-indulged melancholy. “Angela’s waking up.” I hesitated, unsure if my limbs could actually move. “Come on!”
I pulled my head out of my hands and blinked. Hiro grabbed hold of my wrist and pulled me to my feet as my mind raced. Angela was awake, that must mean she’s okay. Maybe Angela would remember everything about the attack. Maybe she would remember who did this to her. Maybe it wasn’t Sebastian. We weaved through doctors and nurses, beds and patients – a blur of whites, greys and blues. When we got to Angela she was smiling at Cam, her face a grey shade of its usual dark chocolate, and a fresh bandage had been applied to her head. I almost pushed Cam aside to wrap my arms around her.
“You’re okay!” I said into her wiry hair. She was stiff under my touch “I saw you… I mean. It… I…” I pulled away, remembering everything that had happened between us. I took two steps away from the bed wondering how she was going to react.
“What are you doing here?” Her eyes were wide with shock. I froze, expecting her to show disgust, appalled that someone like me had touched her. But then her face softened and tears started to roll down her cheeks. “After everything I’ve… I’m so sorry.” The words were barely out of her mouth before she was sobbing and I was crying too. I hugged her again, so tight that the nurse had to prise us apart to make sure Angela didn’t get hurt.
I wiped tears from my eyes. “I was so worried about you.”
“I just can’t believe you’re here,” Angela said. “After everything I did. It all seems so stupid now.”
I laughed. “I know what you mean.”
“Hey,” Cam said to me. “Shift outta the way so some o’ us can hug the girl, eh. Ach, hogging the lass like that.”
Angela beamed up at him and I saw that she had finally moved on from Daniel. Cam embraced her and she held him.
“It’s good to see you looking so well!”
At the sound of the bright, chirpy voice my skin bristled. Dr Woods had crept up behind us while we’d been too busy making up. Cam broke his hug from Angela and turned to face the doctor, his expression unreadable.
“I feel well,” Angela said. “My head hurts a little and my body aches but I feel all right.”
The doctor rubbed his glasses with the hem of his coat sleeve and I made a disgusted noise in my throat.
“Everything okay, Mina?” Dr Woods said to me in a voice so sickly it was dripping with sugar.
“Everything is just fine now that Angela is awake. So… is she okay now?”
“She’s just come out of a coma!” Cam squeezed Angela’s hand. “We have te take things one step at a time, eh.”
“No, no. It’s a very valid point and one we would be foolish to put off.” Dr Woods sighed. “The truth is that no one can know how well Angela is, at least not yet. I’m afraid time will tell. She has been through a terrible ordeal, so bad that her body needed to shut down to recuperate. Because Angela suffered a head injury there is no way to be able to tell for sure what kind of damage has been done.” He hesitated and shifted from one foot to the other. “Like I said. We just have to wait.”
“There’s something you aren’t telling us,” I said. “You’re holding back. Tell us what it is.” I clenched my fists at my side and Hiro squeezed his fingers out of my hand before I hurt him. I looked down guiltily; his hand was so small I’d forgotten all about it.
“Yes, well there is one thing.” The doctor looked down at his feet and cleared his throat. “Before Angela woke, there was an incident. Angela seemed to have some sort of fit…”
“I did?” she said, her mouth open in shock. “What kind of fit?”
“Well,” Dr Woods said. “Your body went into spasm and we had to hold you down. Now, there is a chance that this was a one off occurrence that happened while your body was recovering.”
“But…” I prompted.
“But…” He turned and looked fiercely at me. I returned the same ferocity. “There is a chance that the damage to Angela’s mind has caused epilepsy.”
“So she could have more o’ those fits?” Cam asked.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Dr Woods held his hands up again as though to calm down a crowd. “But time will tell. And right now we should all be rejoicing in the fact that Angela is awake, lucid and completely herself. The damage could have been much worse and we need to remain grateful for that.”
“
Grateful
?” Cam whispered. “Ma girlfriend was left fer dead.”
Cam looked almost beaten and close to tears. Angela started weeping and my heart panged. I hated watching my friends go through this and wished that I could turn back time to somehow prevent it all from happening. For the first time I wished I’d never met Sebastian and that I’d stayed away from GEMs like I was supposed to. All of this was my fault because I didn’t do what I was told. Murder-Troll had been right all along. Next to me Hiro gasped and pulled me out of my own self-pity. For a moment Dr Woods looked almost frightened and he glanced from me to Hiro and back.
“Angela, I will be back to check on you later when there aren’t quite as many people around.” He glared at me again before turning to Cam. “I can assure you we’ll do everything we can to catch him.” With that he turned on his heel and rushed out of the room.
*
“What happened in there?” Hiro and I were walking back to the training ground. We’d stayed until Angela was settled but decided to give her and Cam the space they deserved. I wanted to tell her everything on my mind, how guilty I felt. And I think I wanted her to tell me that everything was all right and that it hadn’t been Sebastian that night. “You heard something in Dr Woods’s mind didn’t you?”
“Yes but it was vague and I don’t know what it means. He said ‘You
should
be grateful. Because I will both kill and save you.’” Hiro wrapped his arms around his body.
The words chilled me but they didn’t make sense. “Kill you and
save
you?” I said. “And he was talking to Cam?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, it was vague and almost said to all of us,” Hiro replied.
“Why would he kill us?”
Hiro shrugged. “I really don’t know. That’s what I was thinking about.”
“Well whatever it meant, Dr Woods is way more dangerous that we’d even imagined. And from now on, Hiro, you’re staying close to either me or Dad. He saw your reaction to his thoughts and he knows you’re on to whatever sick plan he’s got going on here. That means you could be in danger.” When I finished speaking I realised that I’d called my father “Dad” and not “my dad” as though Hiro was my real brother.
“You think he would kill children?” Hiro asked. He pulled his arms across his chest.
My eyes widened with my own surprise at what I was about to say, “I think he might try to kill us all.”
*
It turned out that whilst I’d been by Angela’s bedside more Nomads had arrived in dribs and drabs, prepared to stand up to Hamish and his army. There were rumours that many had personal vendettas against Hamish and others just wanted shelter for their family, afraid that Hamish would catch up with them outside the compound.
Much to Mary’s annoyance the Council had already started giving people jobs towards defending the Compound whilst we’d been collecting Nomads. Even more rumours were flying around about the impending invasion, and as I went to market to haggle I was greeted with the hollow stares of the afraid. The air had a suffocating thickness, like low fog.
Later that day, during training in our barn, an unfamiliar bell sounded through the compound. We peeked through the entrance of the barn to see people streaming through the Compound towards the castle. It was like the Pied Piper leading his rats. And just as I thought of Dr Woods his voice sounded from a loud speaker announcing a Compound meeting to take place outside the castle. Reluctantly, we all filtered out to join the crowd. Part of me wondered if I even needed to be there, considering I already knew of our impending doom, but at the same time I wanted to watch. I wanted to see just how much of a hold Dr Woods had on the town and what kind of decisions they made.
I walked with Hiro and Kitty, trying to ignore the noise of rowdy children and the worried stares of Compound people. Mothers ran around frantically, trying to keep their kids in order, wiping the drool from their faces and bouncing red-faced, crying babies on their hips. I shuddered and wondered if I would ever want to switch places. I decided that I’d rather be carrying a gun than a child and smirked to myself.
“What’s funny?” Kitty bumped my shoulder.
“I was just thinking how I’d rather be a fighter than a mother,” I said.
She pulled a face. “Ugh, me too. All that puke and drool.” She shuddered.
I watched as one of the girls stroked her baby’s head. “Do you think they enjoy it?”
“Not all of them,” she said without hesitation. “The ones that drag their kids around like rag dolls… it’s written all over their faces. They hate it.”
“It’s not their fault,” Hiro said. I reached down and took his hand, imagining what he must be hearing inside people’s minds.
Mike gestured for us to join him with Dad and Daniel. I hadn’t shaken the guilt of leaving everyone to worry about me when I left with the Scavengers. I moved closer to my boyfriend with a shy smile. We’d only really communicated about Angela in the last few days, and now she was better I didn’t know how to get things back to normal. What I did know was that just being close to him again made my heart beat faster. I felt my cheeks flush with excitement and that thread that seemed to hold us together tightened. He leaned in to me and it was as though he felt it too. He touched my forehead with his own and then kissed my hair. The bell rang whilst my heart soared.