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Tried . . .

 . . .and failed.

Pain exploded all around her. She felt like a sponge, picked up and squeezed dry. She couldn't move, she couldn't think, she couldn't cry out. All feelings of resistance broken and destroyed. The pain unbearable. Consciousness clouding. The dark returning.

Louise drifted in and out of consciousness. Memories played on the edge of her perception, memories of flight and capture, pain and helplessness. Sometimes she thought she heard Nick's voice, sometimes she heard herself reply. But whether it was real, a dream or implanted, she neither knew nor cared. She was somewhere else. Disembodied and separate from all that was going on around her.

Time passed. She woke, she slept. Remembering more and hurting less with each awakening. All around her were pale, translucent walls—most times creamy but occasionally suffused with rippling colour. Was she inside the creature? Had it swallowed her up?

She tried to move. Nothing more than a stretch but the pain that hit her was excruciating. She felt squeezed. She could sense a hundred tiny fronds tightening around her. The pressure unbearable, her head about to explode . . .

She slept, she dreamed then awoke with a start. Colours! Everywhere. The creamy walls had gone but she was still moving, carried along on a current through what looked like a canal or a street between banks of intense colour. Had they arrived? Was this the new colony? The structure—from the little she could see—wasn't as imposing as the island city. The banks—or buildings or whatever they were—were lower and flatter and didn't change shape. But the colour . . . she'd never seen colours so intense. They had texture and depth. Yellows that oozed, reds that burned, blues so rich they made her feel sick, a green she could smell, a black so deep and cloying she knew that any hand that strayed too close would come away coated black to the elbow.

It was mesmerising. And confusing. Painful at times, as though her senses were being overloaded with information the human consciousness could barely process let alone comprehend. She felt blinded, dazzled and intoxicated.

She moved, inadvertently, and pain ran through her like a high voltage cable. She froze and the pain stopped. Wherever her captor was, it wasn't far.

"Nick?" She thought she saw him, a small blurred form bobbing along behind her. But either she was mistaken or he was asleep.

Then she was falling, the current—something—sucking her down, sending her swirling towards a bright light at the base of the canal. She braced herself, tumbled through, into the light and beyond.

Wait here, commanded a voice.

Wait where? The light was so intense it blinded her. She felt like she'd been dipped—encapsulated—inside a small star. Everything around her was bleached by light.

The interrogation started almost immediately. Just as before, she felt the wrench as her mind was pulled from her grasp and her memories flipped through—forwards, backwards, fast and slow. The same must have been happening to Nick—she caught occasional thoughts shouted across the ether. Lou? Are you there? Did you make it?

Yes, she was here. And she was at home, at school, riding on a bus. She was in a thousand places all at once, her life tumbling past her like pictures on a revolving drum.

What the hell did these people want? What more could they discover that they hadn't already sucked out of her brain?

And when it was over—silence. No apologies, no explanation, no soothing endorphin rush. She was trapped inside a gleaming prison—pinned by an invisible force that robbed her of all movement.

"Why don't you communicate with us?" she shouted. "We know you can."

Her words screamed across the chamber, challenging a reply that never came.

"It's no good, Lou," said Nick. "They're not listening."

"Why not!" she snapped, struggling against the invisible force that held her vice-like in position. She thought break, she thought snap, she thought let me go!

Frustration and anger. She felt so helpless! Her life had been one of order and self-sufficiency. She'd grown used to being in charge, never having her judgement challenged, and now this—tossed from one disaster to another, never knowing what was happening or how to make it stop.

"Why don't they communicate?" she yelled. "Why are they repeating everything that's already been done before?"

"Perhaps they don't trust the other colonists?"

"But why? They're all the same species, aren't they?"

"They are children!"

The thought boomed into her consciousness, echoing and rattling into every corner of her mind. Much louder, much more insistent than anything she'd experienced at the island city.

Louise shouted back. "What do you want with us?"

"Information."

"You've taken all the information we have! What more do you want?"

Louise was straining to make out some shape or substance she could yell at. Everything around her shone in such uniform brilliance. The disembodied voice held no clue. It appeared to originate from inside her head.

"We do not have all the information we require."

"But we don't have anything more to give!" She spat the words out in frustration. Were they deaf as well as invisible?

"Why don't you tell us what you're looking for," asked Nick. "Maybe we can help?"

Silence. Typical, thought Louise, run away as soon as it's your turn to answer anything.

"You still think they're an intelligent species, Nick?"

"They'll come round."

She bit her tongue. Given teeth she would have bitten a hell of a lot more. Why was he always defending the colonists? Couldn't he recognise them for what they were?

Aaaarrrggghh! She internalised her anger, not trusting herself to project any thoughts. Her brain felt like a ransacked bedroom. So many memories pulled out of their drawers and tossed on the floor. She could see her smallholding, her animals and wondered how they were doing. Who was looking after them? Had the spring arrived? Was the grass beginning to grow? Or had spring passed into distant memory?

And how long had they been gone? Days? Weeks? Months? Or only a few fleeting seconds. Time here was as indecipherable as their captors.

And then her mind was sucked forward again, plucked out and sent reeling into the now familiar exercise of sifting and straining. What were they looking for now? She barely had room to kindle the thought there were so many hands inside her head, pushing and prodding. Surely they'd only just finished, had time flashed by so soon?

Another voice, different this time—softer—washed over her as soon as the sifting stopped.

"Are you really as ignorant as you appear?"

Was this the merest flicker of a way out? Ignorance, their saviour? Too stupid to be of any use to the colonists? Nick grabbed the opportunity.

"Thick as two short planks, us," he said. "Best to let us go, don't you think?"

"You are strange creatures. Why do you insist we let you go when you do not even know where you are? You would not survive if we released you. You must know that to be true?"

"Why don't you take us back home then?" asked Louise.

A pause.

"You want us to do that?"

There was something strange about the way the colonist spoke. Surprise, almost. Which struck Nick as bizarre. Anyone reading their minds had to know how desperately they wanted to go home.

"Of course," said Louise. "It's the only thing we do want. You must have found that out with all the scanning you've done on us."

"But you want us to accompany you?"

"We don't want you to come with us. If you can give us directions—fine, we'll go alone. But we thought it would be easier if you showed us the way."

"So, you would prefer our company?"

What was this? A colonist in search of friendship. A promise to swap cards at Christmas and keep in touch?

"We would be honoured by your company," said Nick. "And it would be safer for us. Less chance of us getting lost again."

"Safer for you, you say. But would it be safer for us?"

This was becoming a very weird conversation.

"I don't understand?" he said. "Why shouldn't it be safe for you?"

"It could be a trap. Why should we believe you? A creature who feigns ignorance yet regards itself as intelligent, who has the ability of image communication yet refuses to use it, who is so frightened of truth it prefers to encrypt every thought before it can be communicated and, most damning of all, whose memories belong to a totally different organism. Why should we believe you?"

A totally different organism?

"What's he talking about, Nick?"

He wasn't sure . . . unless . . .

The separation! All their memories were physical. Human memories of their corporeal selves with arms, legs and feet.

"But it's all there!" he said. "In our minds. How we discovered the dual nature of our existence and how we separated from our corporeal form. Surely you can't have missed that?"

"If it's true. Isn't it just as likely you stole existing memories from one of those lesser species and grafted your transformation onto it? What better way to manufacture an identity if you knew your minds would be scanned?"

"Why would we want to do that?" he asked.

"That is what we are trying to find out."

"But wait," said Nick. "We didn't ask to be picked up. You came to us. So why would we even think of concealing our identity? It makes no sense."

"You wish this charade to continue? Very well, the reason you were picked up is a simple one. One of our number was murdered. You were found close to the body. In a sector of space that is a desert. And now you wish us to accompany you back to that desert. In your parlance, is that not like a murderer asking the victim's brother to accompany him to a dark and lonely alley?"

Louise couldn't believe it. "Why is it that wherever we go, someone accuses us of murder?" she said, exasperated.

"You've been accused of murder before?" asked the colonist.

Oh shit. Louise mentally cradled her head in her hands. When would she ever learn to keep her big thought-mouth shut?

"You already know we've been accused of murder," said Nick. "Our memories show that clearly and the reasons for the misunderstandings."

"Convenient misunderstandings," said the colonist.

"Which just goes to show how ridiculous your theory is about us grafting on someone else's memory. If we wanted to hide wouldn't we choose people with spotless pasts?"

"Not if the only beings you were in contact with were other fugitives."

Unbelievable, thought Louise quietly to herself, what's it going to take to convince these people?

Pain hit her as if in answer, hands inside her head delving and ripping, pulling out memories, searching and trashing. Migraine flashes, intense and prolonged. And after that, something new—a shooting, twisting pain like a team of dentists drilling her thoughts out one by one without an anaesthetic.

She hovered on the brink of consciousness. Perhaps the colonists were delving deeper and deeper into the fabric of her mind, perhaps they were killing her, perhaps . . .

It stopped. She hung there, bracing herself, waiting for it to start up again. "Come on!" she shouted. "Is that all you've got!"

"Don't antagonise them," said Nick.

It took a while for his words to register. And when they did she started to laugh. They were being tortured and he was worried about antagonising them.

She laughed uncontrollably—silently—her mind rocking with the absurdity, verging towards the hysterical. God, she was turning into that laughing sailor.

"They do not believe you," said a voice chiming inside her head, a pre-pubescent boy's voice, each word ringing with the clarity of a cathedral-trained choirboy.

And a form appeared, bleached by the dazzling brightness of the chamber but recognisable nonetheless. A boy, human, ten maybe twelve years-old dressed in . . . it was difficult to see what he was dressed in—a smock, a gown—everything was so white and every edge smeared into its surroundings. He looked like a ghost. A spectral choirboy floating in a fog of dazzling white.

Louise sobered up instantly.

"Do you believe us?" asked Nick.

The boy avoided the question. "This language of yours," he said. "Why is it so important to you?"

The boy's lips moved out of sync. The edges of his clothes, his form, rippled and flowed behind him as though blown by a spectral wind.

"It's our method of communication," said Nick.

"Incorrect. You have other—more efficient—ways. Why is your preference for language?"

"We weren't aware of any other means."

"And yet you store memory in image format."

"Do we?"

"You do. Could it be that you store other memories in language format—somewhere that we have yet to find?"

"You tell us."

"I am. You know that we have analysed your memories and learned the mechanics of your language. But is there another layer to your language that we have overlooked?"

"How do you mean?"

"Your language has far more words than are necessary. Some words have identical meanings. Why? Could it be because there are several layers of information stored within? A technique for hiding knowledge as well as communicating it? If so, would it not make sense to engage you in conversation in order to look beneath the words?"

"Not if your conjecture is total rubbish," said Louise, unable to contain herself any longer.

"We shall see," said the boy. "You would do well to trust me. I am not like the others. Perhaps we can help each other. You say you want to leave here. That is not unreasonable to me. I want information. Perhaps we can trade. You tell me what I want to know and I will help you escape."

Louise jumped at the opportunity. "What do you want to know?"

"No, wait Lou. We shouldn't rush into this. It could be a trap."

"But we've got nothing to hide!"

"I know that, but what if we get caught up in alien politics? We don't know anything about this . . . this new being."

"There is no trap," said the boy. "It is as dangerous for me to be here as it is for you."