Control (Shift) (15 page)

I shook my head. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. A tear of frustration rolled down my cheek.

Suddenly Aubrey changed. Her confident stance was gone and her eyes widened in fear. She looked from me to Sir Richard, her head shaking. “No, no.”

I didn’t know if that was directed at me or at him. Why didn’t she just Shift?

“Well, Tyler. Seems as if you need a little more motivating.”

His finger twitched and I reached out, trying to stop him, putting everything I had into a single thought. My blood was thudding in my ears and I felt my heart tighten as if it might never beat again.

I roared it as well as thinking it. “Stop!”

Click
.
 

The hammer connected. But the gun didn’t fire.

None of us moved for a minute. Sir Richard still had the gun pointed at Aubrey’s head, my hand was still reaching out to him, while Aubrey shook, tears rolling down her face.

Eventually, Sir Richard lowered the gun and laid it on the table. He placed a single brass bullet next to it. He’d never even loaded the gun.

“You may go,” he said, as if nothing more had happened than a usual status report.

Aubrey didn’t wait to be told twice. She spun around and charged out of the room. I couldn’t make my legs work. My hands were shaking and I was having trouble breathing.

“Oh and Tyler. I want you to make the attack on the President your top priority. The file on Project Ganymede is shut, do you understand?”

He didn’t even bother to look up at me. He just sat back in his chair and started scribbling notes with his gold pen. I wanted to grab it off him and stab him in the throat with it.

When I finally made it out into the corridor Aubrey was nowhere to be seen. But her jacket, her Bluecoat, was lying on the floor in an abandoned heap.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

I let myself into Aubrey’s flat with the key I knew she hid over the mantel of the door. Getting in downstairs had been easier still. I just pushed all the entrance buttons and waited till an annoyed, half-asleep voice swore at me and buzzed the door open.

I flicked on the lights in her hallway and walked down into the kitchen. I’d persuaded her to pay the electricity bills just so I could come around with my projector to show her some classic monster films. We’d turned her living room wall into a cinema screen and we’d watched movies all night long.

The clock in the kitchen hadn’t told the right time in weeks, but it was still feebly trying to tick away. Maybe Aubrey had gone for a walk? Or gone to Bailey’s to try and relax? She wouldn’t be too long, I was sure of it. I checked my watch. Nearly 3am. She’d be back any minute. The look on her face right before she ran out had been really scary though. Filled with fear and disappointment and it all seemed directed at me. I tried to tell myself I was being paranoid. That of course it was Sir Richard she was furious with for pulling that stupid stunt with the gun. She probably just needed a rant and a hug and she’d be OK.

I placed her Bluecoat over the back of the single chair in the tiny kitchen and sat down to wait. As the minutes ticked past, I pulled the jacket sleeves around me.

What had Sir Richard been up to, I wondered. Now that I’d failed his stupid test would he forget about what Benjo and the guards at Greyfield’s had said and just leave me alone? Or would tonight be the first of many attempts to try to make me reveal my power? Whatever he wanted, it hadn’t worked.

But why hadn’t it worked?

I’d always thought that it would be there when I needed it again. Just waiting to be called upon, like some comic book super hero. “If you need me, you know where to find me.”
But tonight, I’d really, really needed it. And nothing. I wasn’t sure which was worse. The nightmares I was having about what I’d made those men do, or the realisation that I’d never have that control again.

I heard a rattling at the door and jumped out of the chair.

“Where have you been?” I asked, and instantly regretted sounding like a nagging spouse.

“What are you doing here?” Aubrey said, as she let herself in.

“I was worried about you.”

“Yeah, well you needn’t be.” She kicked off her boots, threw her keys on the floor and went into the lounge. I ran back into the kitchen, grabbed her jacket off the chair and followed her into the front room.

“You forgot your jacket.”

“I didn’t forget it, Scott. I quit. I don’t want anything to do with that place or that man again. Can you believe him? What an arrogant arse. I didn’t think anyone could be worse than his son. But apparently I was wrong.” She wasn’t meeting my eyes.

“Aubrey, it’s OK. Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I will not calm down.”

“So stay pissed off. Just tell me this: why didn’t you Shift?”

She spun around and glared at me. “Why didn’t I…”

I sensed I’d said something really stupid, but I didn’t know what. “Yeah, why didn’t you just Shift when Sir Richard pulled the gun?”

She ran her fingers through her shaggy hair and her fringe remained standing upright, revealing the thin red scar that ran from temple to temple. “You just have no idea, do you?” she said, shaking her head.

“So tell me.” I held her wrist and pulled her close to me.

“You’re an idiot, Scott Tyler, do you know that?”

“Yes, you tell me all the time.”

“I didn’t Shift because I couldn’t. Because when they called and said you were in trouble I thought you were… I don’t know. Hurt? Dead? So, I didn’t stop to think. OK?”

She sounded as annoyed with herself as me. Annoyed that she’d been stupid enough to race into a situation without planning her options and all because she thought I might be hurt. I fought back a grin.

“It was like when I heard about Mum all over again,” she said, turning away from me. My smile froze on my lips. “I remember when Abbott called me back to HQ because he had to tell me something about my mother, and I just knew. I knew she was dead. So when I got that call tonight…” She chewed at the edge of her thumbnail. “God, I need a cigarette.”

“It’s OK. I’m OK.”

“Yeah? Well you’re not the one who had a gun pointed to your head. You’re not the one who thought you were going to die. You’re not the one who was…” She looked at me, eyes brimming with tears.

“Who was what?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Nothing. Forget it.” She wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.

I tried to wrap my arms around her but she shrugged me off. “Aubrey, look at me. I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault he’s an evil git.”

“I don’t mean I’m sorry about him. I mean I’m sorry about me. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”

She fiddled with a book on her shelves, trying to fit it in the row of other books packed tight between the two ends. It wouldn’t go.

“Aubrey,” I said, resting my hand on her shoulder and turning her to face me. “I tried.”

Aubrey sighed and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I know you did.”

I rested my forehead against hers. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I couldn’t do it again.”

“Maybe whatever it was, was just a one-off thing. Maybe it only works if you’ve just come back from the dead. Who knows? I just hope we never have to find out,” she said.

“I’m so sorry he did that to you, because of me.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have expected anything of you.”

“I was so scared,” I said, lifting her chin to look at me.

“Me too,” she said.

We kissed, our mouths slotting together, comfortable and familiar. She tasted of mint and alcohol.

“You were at Bailey’s?” I said after we’d pulled apart.

“Rosalie says hello. And Jake wants to know how we’re getting on with Project Ganymede.” She still sounded annoyed, but her guard was back up, the emotion she’d revealed hidden away again.

I remembered my meeting with Benjo. “Actually,” I said. “I have a lead on that.”

“What?”

“Anderson is a she.”

“What?”

“Frank is short for Francesca. And Anderson is her married name so no wonder we couldn’t find her on the ARES database.”

Aubrey shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!”

“None of us did. But it’s OK, now we know we can track her down.”

“How did you find this out?” Aubrey said, still sounding annoyed with herself and a little annoyed at me for getting the first breakthrough.

“Um…” I started. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Aubrey about Benjo. Not after the day she’d had. But she’d find out soon enough. “You’re probably going to want to sit down,” I said, leading her towards the sofa.

“Scott?” she said, warily. “What have you done?”

“I’ve not done anything. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Only I found Benjo. He’s alive.”

She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

“But it’s OK,” I said. “He’s in an ARES’ cell now. I arrested him.”

“But he’s dead. You said he died in Greyfield’s. That you made him eat his tools.”

“He escaped.”

Her breathing was ragged, her pale face flushed with anger. “After what he did, to us, to those kids, to Heritage! He deserves to be punished,” she said standing up, fists curled into tight balls.

“He has been, Aubrey. He’s a broken man.”

“I’ll break him again,” she said.

She paced back and forth in front of her bookshelves. Suddenly, she stopped and looked at me. “How did you know?”

I stood up and joined her. “It’s a little complicated.”

“Well, I should say so. Someone we thought was dead is now alive. Did he come after you or something?”

It had just been a coincidence that the man from the alley, the man claiming to be Aubrey’s father, had said the word green. He couldn’t have meant Benjo Greene. It had just set off a chain of thoughts in my mind. I wasn’t going to tell Aubrey about the man. She’d had a crappy enough night.

Then a book on her shelf caught my eye. I reached out and pulled it out.

A hardback, golden-bound edition of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
.

“What’s this?” I said, opening it.

“What do you mean? It’s a book. Don’t change the subject.”

On the first page, underneath the title, there was a scribbled note.

 

“A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.”
 

To my heart, my hope, my Aubrey. Love always, Dad xxx
 

 

“Your father gave you this book?”

She grabbed it off me. “So what? It was the only thing he ever gave me.”

The wicked witch. The flying monkeys. It was all making a kind of weird sense.

“What’s this all got to do with Benjo?” she said.

“Your father, Aubrey. He led me to Benjo.”

There was a loud bang as the book fell to the floor. “You saw my dad?”

“I think so. Thomas Aubrey Jones?”

She gasped at the name.

“Captain Thomas Aubrey Jones, Mapper, Fifth Class?”

Aubrey’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “No, he was just a guy. Some loser guy who walked out on my mum. He wasn’t a Shifter.”

I looked at the book on the floor. “I’m not sure, Aubrey. I think he was. I did a search on him on ARES’ database…”

She ran back into the hallway and pulled her tablet out of her bag. Her hands were trembling still, but I didn’t think it was from anger now.

“I never thought…” she said as she turned the table on. “I mean, I Googled him, I just never.” Her words caught in her mouth as the picture of Captain Thomas Jones appeared on the screen.

She stared at him. And now I saw the resemblance was unmistakable. He can’t have been much older than her when the picture had been taken.

“No,” she said finally, and threw the tablet on to the sofa. It landed face up, Captain Jones still staring out at us. “No!” she said, louder this time. “Because, if he’d been a Shifter – a Mapper – he would have known.”

“Known what?”

“The consequences,” she said, her voice broken by emotion.

And I knew she meant her mother’s death. Her own burning guilt. The one thing she never talked about.

“He said he had to leave to protect you.”

“Protect me?” she said, a hopefulness creeping into her voice. “From what?”

“I don’t really know what he was saying, to be honest. He was a little…” How was I going to say this? “A little mad.”

She walked over and picked the book back up, brushing her hand over the embossing on the front. “I always wondered where he was,” she said, so quietly I could hardly hear her. “What he was doing. If he ever thought about me. Why he’d just left me alone. When I was little, I used to dream he’d come and find me and take me away. Like some knight in armour, you know? But when I got older, I decided Mum was right about him. He’d never wanted me or her. I hated him so much, I thought if I ever did see him, I’d…” She bit down on her bottom lip so hard I was worried she’d draw blood. “So why now?” she said. “Why you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. He was babbling all this weird stuff about a wicked witch having taken all the children and Pandora…”

“Pandora?” she said.

“Yes, but he wasn’t making much sense. He went on about a box of hope and how I had to find green. And, well, green made me think about Benjo and how we’d never found his–”

“I remember hearing something about Pandora,” Aubrey said, ignoring me and picking up her tablet. “A charity for Shifter kids. Lane told me about coming across it when she was in Africa. I remember because I asked her if it had anything to do with saving pandas and she laughed so hard I thought she was going to choke.”

I tried to hold back my own grin.