Diamond Eyes (52 page)

‘Sorry, I … I don’t know how to say it. I’ve never been so angry in all my life. Do you remember that sound you heard as we were leaving? The one I couldn’t —’

‘Oh no!’ She slumped against the rail, imagining her naked trees stripped of their leaves and branches. ‘What have they done?’ She remembered the lie she’d heard in Matron Sanchez’s voice, and the way Ben had smuggled her out of Serenity to go back to her home. Mira clutched the rail, wishing it was the matron’s neck. ‘I told you the matron hates me! She wants to keep me in her jail forever!’

‘No, no. She tried to stop it, Mira, you have to believe me! The land was already sold. There was nothing she could do. I know she tried to buy back the area with your trees, if nothing else, before they’d finished clearing.’

‘They cleared it? You mean they bulldozed my home? Or the whole place?’

‘And burned it. I’m so sorry, Mira. I’m furious all over again just thinking about it.’

Mira’s head reeled with turmoil. ‘What do I do now? I have no … nowhere to go!’

Her fingers found the Braille on the other side of the branch,
Tomorrow starts toda,
but her tomorrow dissolved in her mind like a fragile scent on a wild wind. She was homeless now, with no quiet corner to hide, except that small cell at Serenity. She poked a tear out from under her sunglasses and another welled to take its place. The purple fog turned gold and pain pierced her head like a needle.

Kitching appeared in the garden, pointing his handgun at Ben.

‘He’s here!’ she screamed, dropping the branch with a clatter. She tried to shove Ben to safety, but, like a tree trunk, he bent only slightly under her small hands.

‘Where? I can’t see him.’

She pointed, but the colonel disappeared. Gold fog turned purple again and the pain throbbed away like an echo across her temple.

‘He was right there, in the garden — Colonel Kitching! I saw him!’

She lifted her glasses, braving the pain, trying to see him again. ‘I don’t understand; he was right there, aiming his gun at you.’

Ben hugged her to his chest. ‘He’s not here, Mira. Listen, what do you hear?’

Waves … barking, seagulls … and inside his mother hanging up and redialling the phone.

‘Nothing, I guess.’

‘That’s right. If Kitching was here, Killer would be doing his nut by now, wouldn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. Would he hear anything over the waves? He sounds so distracted, and so far away.’

‘Don’t let that fool you. Look, you’ve just received bad news on a day that’s already broken the scale for traumatic, so it’s not surprising your mind’s started to rebel. That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you about your home right now.’

She trembled like a daisy pelted by rain. ‘He looked so real, Ben — as real as the first time I saw you.’

‘Calm down and think. You see
backwards
in time, right? So you couldn’t have seen him because he’s never been here.’

She nodded, but remembered seeing strange things in a golden light before, back at Serenity.

‘Remember the soldiers?’ he went on. ‘In particular, the one with the snake in his belly?’

Mira rubbed her forehead, wishing he hadn’t mentioned that part. ‘I haven’t seen them since … since I learned they were only memories of a TV show.’ She brightened. ‘Hey, I think that knowledge cured me.’

‘Good! That’s good, Mira. But Dr Zhou did warn you that some of your visions might still be combinations of memory and imagination.’

‘Which get confused and misfiled when I’m frightened, right?’

‘Right.’ His hand rubbed her arm reassuringly. ‘That doesn’t mean you’re crazy. I’ve imagined Kitching in the shadows a few times myself in the last hour.’

‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’

He chuckled and hugged her more snugly. ‘If it gives me an excuse to keep you in my arms, it can’t be all bad. You’re not alone, Mira. We’ll find a new home for you together, and in the meantime, if you like, you can come here using your day passes.’

She looked up, touching his face again and wishing she could see him now, read his expression like Braille and know if he was serious or only teasing. In that moment, in his arms, she felt like she was home already. Only then did she notice that she’d discarded the branch in favour of him.

‘You didn’t answer me earlier,’ he said. ‘About your first kiss.’

She tensed, feeling the renewed warmth of his skin as his face drew even closer to hers.

‘Mira, may I …?’

His lips brushed hers and she flinched, her heart pounding with a new intensity.

‘Oh! I … I think that was it.’

‘That was only a peck. This is a kiss.’

His lips found hers again, this time with increasing purpose and passion, his arms lifting her gently against him. Instinctively, she opened her mouth to him, breathless, and closed her eyes, better able to imagine him solid and real that way than with her eyes open, kissing invisible air.

Then she heard that rustle again, a short distance away in the wild garden. Something went
puh!
and Ben stiffened. He slumped against her, his mouth and arms falling limply away from her.

‘Run,’ he gasped, as if winded.

‘Ben?’

She went down with him, smelling blood. His head hit the deck with a heavy crack, but her fingers found the blood spreading in a broad sticky stain across his chest, as if kissing her had made his heart burst.

‘Ben!’ She fumbled over him with hysterical hands, but got no response.

She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand grabbed her from behind, silencing her. A body slid over the rail to trap her into a much harsher embrace. ‘Not a sound,’ Kitching warned. ‘You’re coming with me.’

He tried to lift her away, but she gripped onto Ben’s shirt, struggling to stay.

‘Let go, girl,’ he ordered. ‘Cooperate and the woman inside might find him in time to read him the last rites. Call her out here and she’s dead too. Understand?’

Mira trembled, unable to speak, barely able to breathe under his grip. Inside, she could hear Ben’s mother talking on the phone — asking her friend to come over as soon as he could get away. She released Ben’s shirt, tears welling thickly in her eyes. Through the piercing pain of the golden fog, she glimpsed Ben’s mother slumped over his body, weeping. Mira clamped her eyes shut, unable to bear it.

Kitching dragged her sideways to the rail. Behind him, the waves pounded the beach. The gulls had fallen silent, though, and Mira could hear the very faint sound of paws galloping clumsily, bringing Killer ever closer to the house. She wondered where her branch had fallen and if she could grab it as a weapon.

Kitching climbed the railing, still holding Mira close against his chest and drawing her with him. He lifted her and pulled.

Killer growled as he leapt. Kitching grunted and fell, taking Mira with him. Her knee scraped concrete, her cheek too as bodies and fur tumbled over her, a paw striking her chest. Kitching stifled a yelp and she smelled blood again, then heard that dreaded
puh!,
followed by a whimper and the hush of waves …

Mira was already scrambling up to run, but a heavy weight knocked her down again.

‘I only need your eyes,’ he warned, pressing a cold blade against her throat. ‘Cooperate until I can get them cleanly and I’ll be kind by arranging a sedative. Be a
very
good girl and I might even send you back to your nuthouse when we’re finished.’ His knee dug into her ribs, forcing the wind from her. ‘What’ll it be?’

Mira struggled for air, despairing only for Ben — dead now, along with his four-legged friend, because of her.

Inside, she heard the distinctive clunk of the phone hanging up. Ten minutes’ delay was all she needed until the cops arrived but Kitching made the decision for her, grabbing her by the hair and driving her forehead against the concrete, into blackness.

The chopper hit another pocket of turbulence and Dr Zhou gripped onto his seatbelt and helmet. To his left, Van Danik clung one-handed to an overhead luggage net, while to his right, a black-suited Corporal Cinq rode the lurching bench seat with greater confidence. General Garland was perched opposite, flanked by the two plain-clothed bodyguards who’d also taken orders from Kitching.

‘This is an isolated comms link,’ Garland said, tapping the headset on her helmet. She had her visor up so Zhou could see her eyes and expression.

He glanced at the pilot and co-pilot, both female and both sporting similar headsets.

‘They’re on a different frequency,’ Garland assured him. ‘I can guarantee this is just between us, and is not, at any stage, being recorded.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about then,’ Van Danik replied. Static distorted his voice but not his sarcasm.

Garland eyed him intently. ‘On the contrary, if Miss Chambers is truly the asset that you and my surveillance team suggest she may be, then you’d better pray that we intercept Kitching before he sells her off for dissection. My sources suggest he may already have potential buyers who deal in that sort of thing: human guinea pigs, organ theft and a range of other related nasties.’

‘He can’t dissect her!’ Zhou protested. ‘Neither can you, if that’s what you’re thinking. She needs to be alive, cooperative and in one piece, to learn how her eyes work without wasting months or years on additional research.’

‘I have no intention of hurting her deliberately, Doctor. You can perform the procedure yourself, if you wish, but surely you must agree that the sooner this technology is removed from the civilian population the better, or else Miss Chambers will become the target of further abduction attempts. Much better to nip the problem in the bud, so to speak, than risk the ongoing health of the patient.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Zhou persisted. ‘We need her in one piece so we can read her subconscious and know what she’s seeing through different filters. Kill her or take out her eyes and you might as well try to reverse-engineer a TV without electricity or a screen.’

Garland was silent for a long moment, her expression brooding. ‘Does Colonel Kitching know this?’

‘He didn’t want to listen,’ Van Danik said. ‘Are you any different?’

The chopper dropped unexpectedly in altitude, causing both doctors to grip white-knuckled onto their seats.

‘We’re landing so soon?’ Zhou complained. ‘But there’s still surf below us!’

‘This is Chiron’s place,’ Garland replied. ‘It seemed the first logical place to check on the way.’

Matron Sanchez sank into a steaming tub of suds, hoping her stress might soak away with the dye from her skin. Her feet ached from a hectic day, but her head ached even more, with worry for the doctors as well as for Mira and Ben. General Garland had been so tight-lipped, Sanchez could only guess why Mira might have run amok and attacked them all. One thing was certain, though: if Ben ever showed up here again, the closest he’d ever be allowed to get to Mira would be through an observation window.

Fisting both hands into her hair, Sanchez submerged herself under the suds, but came up still tense and worried about Mira. She turned her mind to a problem that she could do something about in the meantime: the challenge of getting into Freddie Kitching’s head. So far, only two out of at least seven personas had consistently presented themselves to her: Freddie Leopard and Fredarick, the sage. To her left, on a rickety bathside table, sat a beer mug full of cheap port and the top five pages from the ream of Braille that she hoped would provide her with some insights into the others.

According to his file, Freddie had never learned Braille. And while Fredarick had produced so much ofit, the persona known as Freddie Leopard had openly opposed its use, accusing its teachers of being Nietzschean subjugators — who, according to Freddie, were invisible followers of the philosopher Nietzsche and hell-bent on decrying religion in favour of evolution from human to super-human. Also dedicated to monitoring the thoughts of their minions, the Nietzscheans, he feared, had already accumulated a great cyber-vault of knowledge and were using it to funnel world power into the hands of the select few who deemed themselves to be sufficiently evolved. Freddie’s regular rampages to ‘empower the meek against the strong’ often included sabotage of the Braille keyboards by swapping their keys and other such practical jokes — usually counterproductive to his goals. However, this mindset against ‘tools for Nietzschean domination’ was one of the few things — aside from wearing headphones to feel the vibrations of loud music — in which his other minor personas wholeheartedly supported him. Yet Freddie knew about the play. Did he know Fredarick was writing it in Braille?

Sanchez wiped one hand dry on a nearby towel, hoping the testimonies, as he’d called them, would answer those questions and more. She peeled up the top page, and holding it up to the light, she read a title that she hadn’t noticed earlier:
The Butcher’s Surgery.

And soon after, she spotted Mira’s name:

Sanchez shivered despite the heat of her bathwater. She sat bolt upright, flipped through the next four pages and discovered the rest of an account of Ben and Mira’s first morning together — word for word and action for action — as described in various staff reports that remained confidential. None of them were filed in her office where she’d found Fredarick, but if he could break in there, could he also get into the filing room?

She gulped down a mouthful of port, scrambled to her feet and grabbed the Braille pages. Fumbling to wrap herself in a towel, she hurried downstairs to her office, where she’d left the rest of his testimonies.

There she found a page of his thoughts from his time in the padded room, and more that were dotted with her own name;