Spark (8 page)

“You’ll learn what you need to know. It’s different for all of us, but the ability is in your DNA. The fact that you can Transfer and Harvest is a sign that you’ll be a fast learner. They’re usually the last of our gifts to develop.” She nods at my hand. “This is going to need stitching.”

“Hospital?” The thought of having to leave the house and function around normal people renews my panic.

Miriam lifts latex gloves from her case and a packet of blue sutures. “I’ll do it.”

“You will?”

But she’s already pulling the gloves on, snapping them over her wrists. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a lot – though that might not be so comforting. At least you’ll heal quickly.”

“What? Why?”

“Rapid regeneration is one of the perks of the synthetic gene. Here, lift my hem.”

I frown.

“My thigh. There’s barely a mark.”

Hesitant, I take the hem and slide the black silk up to her hip, expecting a sturdy bandage to unwind. There is no bandage. Just clear skin with nothing more than a faint pink line where the gash used to be. I drop the hem and slump back, my breath coming quick and shallow.

Miriam nods. “I know, right?” She splashes a cotton swab with antiseptic and sits to dab carefully at the mess on my thumb. “You won’t heal that fast. Your frequency sensitivity will need to mature, but it’ll come.”

“What sensitivity?”

“When Optimal bonds with our DNA, when it’s activated, it creates Electro-Telepathic Radiation. We generate a signal and develop a sensitivity to the ETR of others. It’s called AFS, Active Frequency Sensitivity. It’s what enables us to recognise our Spark and sense the threat of the Stray. It also creates telepathic receptors that trigger precognition. KMT and KMH were simply side effects, not intentional design elements, but they provide a pretty good indication of the strength of our signal and sensitivity.” She wads the blood-soaked cotton swab into a ball and tosses it into the sink.

“Telepathy?” I choke. An uncontrollable urge to laugh rises inside me and quickly drops away with a memory. “I could see what he was going to do, the blond guy in the alley. Is that telepathy?”

“Precognition.” Miriam opens another packet with her teeth and removes a syringe. Inserting the needle through the rubber head of the vial, she draws the plunger and gives me an assessing look, like she’s wondering how much more I can take. “Kind of hard to explain. Shields, with mature AFS, can read an opponent’s intent as they project it. But in the alley memory you experienced my precognition. I doubt you’d be able to do that yet yourself.” She holds the syringe to the light, taps the barrel, compresses the plunger and discharges a teardrop of anaesthetic, speaking almost to herself. “But then you shouldn’t be able to Transfer or Harvest at all – you don’t exactly fit the mould. You didn’t throw up when you transitioned and it wasn’t even like you had a seizure. You simply fainted.”

It had felt like an apocalyptic storm to me. “Throw up?”

“It’s a fairly common reaction to all the upheaval.”

I can imagine.

“Relax.”

I can’t.

She takes my hand and inserts the needle beneath the wound. The icy sting makes me wince, but Miriam is careful as she discharges the anaesthetic and withdraws the shaft, pressing a cotton ball in its place. “Hold that.”

Numbness spreads like cold water through my palm. “What about making things explode?”

Frowning, she rips another packet open to reveal a tiny curved needle, like a cat claw. She lifts it with a pair of tweezers, the blue suture uncurling. “What do you mean?”

“Wineglasses. Light bulbs.”

“You can do that?”

“Not on purpose. Just seems to happen when I’m worked up.”

She taps the end of my thumb. “How does it feel?”

I tremble with cowardice or horror. Probably both but I can’t feel anything. I nod and grit my teeth as she bends over the wound and inserts the needle in a deft dig.

“I’ve never heard of it.” She catches the tip and draws it through, glancing up as she tugs my senseless flesh. “Maybe it’s a third-generation anomaly. I don’t know a lot about third-generation distinctions.” She knots the thread and snips at the base.

“Third generation? You said second generation before.” I feel suddenly present, no longer hovering outside myself, and the questions I haven’t been able to form in my dazed state all press forwards. “What’s the point of all this? Affinity? What on earth were they hoping to achieve?”

Bending back over the wound, she stabs the skin, making me wince though I feel nothing, explaining as she works. “Imagine the perfect soldier. One who doesn’t fear death, or pain, who never quits, never gets sick. A soldier stronger than ten men, fast as a horse and able to sense the approach of danger. Imagine a soldier untroubled by heat or cold, able to heal in a day from a bullet wound and who, in hand-to-hand combat, could anticipate the enemy’s every move and counter it.”

“We’re supposed to be soldiers?” I’m so breathless it comes out like a whisper.

“I guess that was the goal back then, in the early seventies. A human weapon, or whatever.”

“For what, an army?” Instead of a lab, I visualise a high-tech bunker with zombie-eyed rows of men and women dressed in black body armour, waiting to be deployed.

“For hire. Corporate, private, political or military application. Short- and long-term assignments. Defence, acquisition and protection were the services on offer.”

“Hired assassins?”

“Who can say where they would have drawn the line? Now it’s all about damage control.”

“Because of the Strays? Explain that again. They were a mutation?”

The crease in her brow sharpens as she cuts the thread. Her cell phone starts up on the counter and she swears. “It’s them.”

I clamp my good hand to my mouth as though afraid I might scream.

She peels her gloves off, crosses to the counter and answers the call. “Carolyn?” She uses her business voice, assertive but polite, though she looks pale and presses her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Yes, I know, the alert didn’t seem to go through. I’ve been clocking up demerits in the hope you’d call … Last night. New York … It was clean. Ready for disposal.”

Disposal?
I shudder at the implications, picturing the blond boy and his wild black eyes, the feel of his breaking bones still fresh in my mind.

Carolyn talks. Miriam listens. Her eyes flick to me. “Of course. I’ll be expecting you.” There are no parting words. She turns her phone off. “You have to go upstairs.”

“What? Why? Shouldn’t I meet her?” The idea is terrifying but if it will help me save Kitty–

“No.” She makes a choking sound. “She may not be a Warden, but still, I don’t want her anywhere near you.”

“Why?” My voice flies high. “What’s a Warden?”

Coming to the table, she starts throwing medical supplies back into the leather case, jams the lid closed and holds it out to me. “She’ll be here any minute.”

Bewildered, I take it with my good arm. “You’re scaring me.”

“Go upstairs. Hide this. Get into bed and pretend to sleep.” She turns me around and unzips my dress.

I have to pin my elbows to my sides to keep it from falling to my feet. “Miriam! What the hell?”

“You wouldn’t be able to get it off one-handed. Now go and do as you’re told. Put your pyjamas on, just in case. Actually–” She opens the lid of the medical kit, pulls out a bandage and tucks it under my chin. “Bind your hand once you’re in bed. Lie facing away from the door. Breathe long and slow. Do not come out for any reason.”

“I don’t understand!” I feel myself skidding towards hysteria.

She flips the lid of the case again and digs out a preloaded syringe. She removes the sheath from the needle and jams the point in my shoulder.

I grunt, trying to jerk away but she grabs my elbow.

“I’m sorry. This will calm you down and dampen your signal. Carolyn is coming to debrief
me
. When she gets here, she’ll take a reading of my signal, but I have no idea if she will be able to detect yours. Pray she can’t, for Kitty’s sake.”

Fretizine. Without it my heart would gallop right out my chest and I would be found out. Not that I’m exactly sure how my pulse impacts the mysterious signal I apparently now emit.

As instructed, I lie on my side, away from the door, taking slow fake-sleep breaths. The only thing I grasp in the panicked minutes before Carolyn knocks on the door is the certainty that being found out would somehow be dangerous for Kitty. It’s all the threat I need to comply. Paralysed by fear and Fretizine, I strain to hear anything below.

I left the door ajar a couple of inches but all I catch after the initial knock and greeting in the hall is the scrape of chairs in the kitchen. It’s nearly one in the morning. Clearly, the Affinity Project isn’t concerned with business hours, or maybe that’s part of their MO, conducting affairs under cover of darkness. I wonder if Miriam has any intention of reporting what’s gone down at the Governor’s Ball. Perhaps they already know. They must monitor police bandwidths for signs of their clients. I shiver. It’s too easy to let my mind wander into dark places. Somewhere, out in the night, a lunatic twists inside with regret over a missed opportunity. He’d had Kitty right in his hands, had her by the neck. How easy would it have been for someone with the kind of strength and speed Miriam had described to snap her spinal cord? Rage makes me cold and I forget my measured breathing. Even through the drug fog I can feel my heart stamp.

Stop it
.

I can’t jeopardise things by losing control. Where are my heightened senses? My Superman hearing? I strain to hear. Buffy pads through the door, jumps on the bed, kneads the quilt and purrs loudly. “
Go away!
” I hiss, dislodging her. She drops to the floor and stalks out, her tail flicking in agitation.

I try again to hear, my ears pop, roar then clear. The tap drips in the bathroom, wind keens beyond the window, boughs creak, and beyond that is the faint song of the river. I force myself to focus on the kitchen below, amazed to note a rising inflection, a foreign cadence, a pause, a question …

“… coordinates for the car? … very good … you make my job easy, Miriam …”

“… cleaners will find him in the trunk.”

“Excellent.”

“He was young,” Miriam says. “I hate it when they’re young.”

“You can’t look at it like that …” Carolyn, brisk and schoolmarmish. “… mercy … kept him from a nightmare life … a monster. Think of the lives you’ve saved, the families you’ve kept from heartbreak.”

“I don’t know that Phil’s wife would thank me for saving him.”

“The next Spark might have been a good man, a good woman. Don’t regret your gift, Miriam. You save lives.”

“A hair’s breadth of a chromosome and you’d have needed someone to save the world from me.”

Sick realisation dawns on me. I recall Miriam’s fierce eyes when I came round in the bedroom at the governor’s, the way she questioned me. She’d been afraid I was a Stray.

“These are common feelings post-assignment,” Carolyn says. “They’ll pass.”

A chair creaks, fabric brushes, a plastic clipping sound.

“I’m overdue,” Miriam says, like she’s answered a question. “I can barely feel it.”

“Hence the delay in your signal registering. I should’ve checked on you sooner, Miriam, updated your tracker. I’m sorry to have put you at risk. If you wish to make a negligence complaint, that would be fair.”

“No. Of course not.”

“If you’re certain. Tip your head.” An electronic beep follows. “Something’s not right.”

I dig my nails into the back of my hand. My ears pop and I lose the conversation as fear floods in. She’s sensed me. She will be up the stairs any minute. I can’t hear past the static in my head. She has some kind of signal scanner and the reading is wrong because I’m up here confusing reception. Frozen, I wait for threatening footsteps on the stairs. They come into the hall. The jingle of keys. Miriam’s voice. A response. The front door opens then closes. Silence.

I sit up in bed, heavy in head and limb.

Car doors open and close.

Two slams.

The engine revs and the car pulls away.

Two slams?

Heaving the blankets off, I rise shakily to my feet and shuffle past my waiting-to-be-unpacked boxes. I pause at the door. “Miriam?” I take cautious steps out onto the landing and lean on the rail. “Miriam?” No reply. Afraid to fall, I strangle the banister, forcing my lead-heavy legs downstairs, but I can tell she’s gone. The house is empty. I’m alone.

At a total loss I stand in the hall, staring into space. I turn to the front door as though I expect it might open again and Miriam will appear and start explaining things. There on the wooden crossbeams hangs a yellow sticky note. She’s written only one word, “WAIT!” The capital letters and exclamation mark, full of promise and warning. She’ll return soon and I mustn’t do anything stupid.

I pull the piece of paper off the door and shuffle into the living room, flicking the lamp on, slumping in the old wingback. Buffy looks up from the couch, ready to forgive me for the sake of a warm lap. I let her come and jump onto my knee, stroking her with my good hand. I stare at the sticky note and Miriam’s familiar hand writing. I can do as I am told, can’t I?