Stray (20 page)

My stomach aches, the lining rubbing together, I’m sure. I take two breakfast burritos to the doorless microwave and lay napkins on the turntable. The remains of exploded burritos cake the inner walls.

Sense or superstition makes me stand away from the oven as it chugs on high and I wait, gingerly pressing the tender skin at the base of my skull. Perhaps that’s superstition too. Fine hairs rise at my nape, goosebumps rippling up my forearms. Even my pins and needles increase and I shake myself, like I can shake it off.

The sliding doors open behind me, the security sensor buzzing for an early morning customer. Chilly air sweeps in through the gap and I hunch away from it by reflex, counting down with the red blinking timer on the microwave. A strange clenching in my chest, I’m impatient for the five beeps to end it so I can take my breakfast and get out, get Kitty, get back on the road, get Aiden’s blood to Doctor Sullivan. A dark form rising in my periphery makes me turn my head.

Benjamin stands by the Coke fridge, black pants, black hoodie with a silver zip cutting a straight path up his body, the head of it gleaming like a pendant beneath his chin. His hands rest in his pockets, his shoulders relaxed. Light gleams on the high ridges of his dark cheekbones and his almond eyes arrest me.

My shock arrives late, so does my sick swooping terror.

“Where’s your friend?” He nods at the twin burritos.

“She’s not – I’m just hungry.” It comes out hoarse, moisture evaporating from my mouth.
Please God, don’t let her walk out. Let her stay in the rest room
. “I left Kitty in Roxborough. She should be home by now.”

“Strange, she left her phone at the motel.” He pulls it from his left pocket, mine from his right. He runs his thumb over the screen, bringing Jamie and me to life. “You’ve got a lot of messages.”

My scalp prickles all over. I don’t say anything. All I can think about is my pack sitting on the back seat of Kitty’s car and the plastic baggie carrying all our hope.

“I’ll need your keys.”

“They’re in the ignition.”
Please let them be in the ignition
. “How did you find me?”

“Jamie supplied us with a description of his sister’s car. We found you on CCTV.”

“Right.”

“Where’s your brother?”

Brother
. Hearing him say it freezes me inside. “I don’t know.”

Benjamin’s eyebrows notch upwards. “It will save you pain and us time if you tell me now.”

“I’m not–” My voice catches. “I’m not lying. I don’t know.”

“Then that’s unfortunate for us both.”

My stomach growls, a loud, ludicrous gurgle, drawing Benjamin’s gaze from my face to my midsection.

“You want to eat before we put you under?”

We?

I look behind me. Davis stands by the black van out in the parking lot, a humourless smirk on his face, his head cocked. He holds my pack in one hand and the keys to Kitty’s car in the other.

“I’ll pass.”

A flash of honey-blonde hair catches my attention at the back of the store by the rest room. I force myself not to look as Benjamin turns me towards the exit.
Run, Kit – hide
.

Out in the lot, Davis slides the van door open. He holds it while I clamber in, his expression etched in disgust. “Tesla’s pissed. Hope it was worth it because you are royally screwed.”

“Put her out,” Benjamin says. “I’ll look for Jamie’s sister.”

“I told you Kitty’s not here.”

Their eyes turn to me, blue and brown and full of judgement. “Shut the hell up and lie down, I’ll deal with you in a minute,” Davis says, his lips curled back, sliding the door closed with a vicious clang. His voice carries through the wall of the van. He swears and spits the word “Stray”, calls me “sick” and “bitch” and hopes I “get what’s coming” to me.

I scoot to the end of the van and press my nose to the tinted window. There at the back corner of the building, out of sight from Benjamin and Davis, a girl running. Honey-blonde bob, blue puffer jacket, pounding feet. She reaches a gate in a corrugated iron fence bordering the property and squeezes through the gap, disappearing from view. I press my sweating fingers to the glass and whisper, “Run.”

A tremendous weight presses into my back, a repetitive pressing in the middle of my spine, so hard it forces air from me in gusts. The room isn’t cold but the hard metal surface I’m lying on chills like a freezer panel, my breath condensing around my face.

Grit makes it painful to open my eyes and at a glimpse there’s too much white. White light and the bright silver table beneath me. Blinding. The weight comes again, this time a sickly piercing at the centre of it that makes me cry out and though the weight eases the terrible pain remains, like I’ve been skewered. Shuddering and senseless, I jerk upwards but something constrains the motion. I’m strapped down. There’s no filter for my instinctual panic. A quicksilver rush of it makes me thrash against the restraints. An animalistic scream fills the air.

It’s me.

Screaming.

Muffled yells and hands bearing down on me. It only makes me thrash harder. Finding purchase on the sides of the table, I press up in a wild arch, tearing the restraints over my shoulders. The yelling amplifies. Hands grab for me. Voices. Feminine voices, barking instructions, calling for help.

It’s a medical room. There’s bewildering equipment, the women wear white scrubs and white masks cover their mouths. I continue to flail, unable to break away from the restraints over the back of my hips and legs. I reach for the top of the table and haul myself forwards, slipping out from under the bindings, creating a dazing peak of pain in my back. Somehow I manage to get my knees under me and, whipping upright, I knock back several of the people trying to hold me in place. I see my reflection in a tinted window. I’m naked except for some kind of white tape wrapped around my chests and hips, my skin so pale I seem to glow in the blinding light. Around me everything moves in slow motion. Arms wave at the window, hands cover masked mouths, eyes roll round and wild. A metal tube with a long rectangular head protrudes from my back, three prongs buried in my spine, a cord hanging from it – like I’m plugged in.

But the thing that strikes me in the midst of all this is my head. Staring, I sit back on my heels and reach up, feeling the blunt edges where my hair’s been hacked away so that it sticks out in ragged clumps. “Son of a bitch!”

The metal slider in the concrete wall opens and a familiar signal fills the bandwidth. Ethan Tesla strides in, dark eyes flashing. No scrubs, no mask. He glances at the trolley of equipment and knocks instruments to the floor, snatching up a small silver disc. He points it at me and white pain explodes in the back of my skull. Starlight spangles my vision and my limbs go limp.

“Catch her!” Tesla’s voice fills the room.

They scrabble but can’t get a proper hold of me as I slip off the edge of the gurney. I can’t even open my mouth to produce the scream that should accompany the extraction of the metal tube as it’s ripped from my back by the momentum of the fall.

“Get out of my way!” he shouts.

I hit the ground with the side of my face and crumple on my left shoulder. I’m horribly conscious, my body caught in an agonising arch, my legs tangled in countless wires. Up close, I see the concrete floor slopes gradually down towards a grated drain in the middle of the room. Eerily familiar. I can’t look away from the hole and goosebumps rise on my skin. My face gets wet with tears. A split lip, the copper tang in my mouth. I want to wipe it all away, keep my blood and water from the sloping floor, the grated drain.

Tesla fights through the press of bodies and bends over me. The scent of soap and warm skin. That woodsy, mountain air smell that makes me think of Jamie.

“
Scheiße
,” he says, muttering. “Give me that.”

There’s a prick in my arm that means nothing against the collateral agony of my body, then the creeping relief of morphine smudging pain’s sharp edges. His hand smoothes up and over my brow and the rough terrain of my hair. The comfort in it makes me think of my mother. April – gone, her absence a bruise still tender in my chest, but this isn’t comfort. It’s analysis, inquiry, feeling for damage from my fall. “Brünnhilde,” he says and clicks his tongue. It sounds meaningful, but I can’t pick why. With surprising gentleness he hefts me up, forklifting his arms beneath my chest and hips.

“Move!” he says. The medics hovering behind him make way.

Someone loosens the tangle of cords from my legs, helping to lift me back onto the table. Thankfully the morphine hit is on an upwards trajectory, numbness like a rising tide. I watch Tesla in the black glass, bearing down on a short clipboard-hugging doctor.

“I did not authorise this procedure,” Tesla says. “This Asset is under my jurisdiction.”

“Sir,” the doctor says, through her mask. “The girl had no tracker and the new implant registered a discrepancy between the chronology of her activation and her vital readings. I’m afraid the dose of anaesthetic was too low.”

“This does not explain why you would attempt to take core samples from an immature Asset.”

“Her – her vital reading indicates imminent maturation and Counsellor Knox requested it.”

“This
child
has not been through Orientation,” he says, lowering his voice, his cool cultured accent more menacing than a shout. “The covenants of the reform make it illegal to sample from developing Assets. Why is that, doctor?”

“Due to their – their unstable regenerative capabilities in deep tissue trauma,” she says as though reciting from memory.

“Meaning?”

“She – she will be permanently scarred.”

“Which violates what?”

“The Protection of Asset Identity Act, where permanent marking of the body may give rise to questions that threaten the secrecy of the organisation.”

“So you are familiar with the covenants of the reform.”

“I – yes, sir. Counsellor Knox did not indicate the Asset would be underage.”

“And this lapse in communication explains the girl’s hair?”

“Counsellor Knox indicated the Asset was scheduled for discipline, sir.”

A strangled roar echoes around the room. “That man is a goddamn dinosaur!”

“Counsellor Knox–”

“
Robert
may be the Chair of the Executive, but he has no jurisdiction over the Assets in my care. You will remedy this godforsaken mess and dispatch her to recovery immediately.” He hurls the small round disc from his hand. It shatters on the floor and Tesla strides out; his signal disappears with him.

“Evangeline.” A male voice murmurs by my head, a foreign signal in the bandwidth, sharp and aggressive against mine. I’m lying on my stomach, my face to the side, but the surface is soft, crisp, clean linen. “Evangeline? Can you hear me?” Louder this time, a touch of impatience.

I fight to come up from the murk, my head anvil heavy, a deep ache in my spine.

“I’m Counsellor Knox. You’re in recovery. You can move if you want, but I think you’ll be more comfortable on your stomach for now. There was quite a bit of damage to the extraction site. Dreadful waste. Can you look at me?”

Knox. The name makes me shiver but I’m not sure why. Cracking an eyelid takes major effort but I manage to peer through the hazy light.

“Quite a pain threshold you’ve got.”

It doesn’t sound like praise.

I mash my lips together, looking for moisture.

“Thirsty?” He bends down, pale blue eyes, silvering brown hair, soft jaw, cleft chin. Blandly attractive, late forties, if you go for clefts and old age. He’s not wearing scrubs or a white coat, no sign of a stethoscope, but there’s definitely medical equipment beeping near my bed. Am I in hospital? My back throbs.

He lifts a glass from the trolley beside me and jabs the straw between my chapped lips, poking me in the gums. I sip carefully, not wanting to drool on the bedding, grateful for the cool wet relief on my parched tongue, but there’s an astringent smell to his fingers. I’m glad when I’ve drained the water and his hand moves away. He steps out of my line of sight. The sound of water being poured, refilling my glass.

I can’t lift my head but from this angle the room stretches away from me, concrete, cavernous. There are eight beds either side of the aisle in the direction I’m facing, each surrounded by wires and tubes, IVs and monitors. All of the beds are full. Each patient wears a headset like misplaced earphones, the pads over their temples. A tube runs from each headset to a monitor and each monitor has a pipe that reaches all the way up the walls to the ceiling, where they connect with a larger central pipe made of black glass. Strangely, I feel none of their signals in the bandwidth. They can’t all be civs, surely?

In the bed next to me lies a girl. I’ve never seen anyone so pale, her skin chalky, translucent, her hair – almost white – spread in a gauzy halo on her pillow. Like the others, she doesn’t move. If I couldn’t see her chest rising and falling beneath the sheet, I’d think she was a corpse.

Delayed comprehension hits me and I quail inside.

Counsellor Knox. My back. My hair.

I’m in the Affinity compound. Benjamin and Davis caught me. I woke during a medical procedure, metal probes in my spine. Agony. Terror. Confusion. Miriam and Jamie are here somewhere. I’m in terrible trouble. Everybody knows about Aiden. Everybody knows what I’ve done. They have my pack and the blood sample. Did they find Kitty? Did she make it home? I need to talk to Tesla.

Furious Tesla.

“I saw the footage from the Roxborough Detention Centre.” Knox comes back into view, placing the filled glass on the trolley with a clunk. He cocks his head. “Quite a show.”

“I can explain.” My voice sounds weak and rough.

“You will,” he says. “I’m sure it’s a fascinating story.”

I want to ask for my backpack, explain about the blood sample, beg for them to run tests, but instinct warns me against bringing it up with the man who had my spine skewered and my hair chopped off. “I need to talk to Tesla.”

“Ethan is prepping your aunt and your boyfriend for their hearings.
You
should call him by his proper title, Counsellor Tesla.”