What happened to her the four years between to take her to that place?
Amy and Jazz get back from their walk. As we leave, I touch the owl Ben’s mother made for me. It holds a secret inside. A note from Ben, still hidden. Knowing where to look I can see the tiny white speck, the corner of paper that, if pulled, reveals itself as his last words to me. But I can’t bear to look at it, not today.
Mac holds Skye when she tries to follow us. I twist behind. Her mournful eyes follow us until she is gone from sight.
Green trees blue sky white clouds, green trees blue sky white clouds…
But different.
Fields of long grass. Daisies. Alive with detail, movement and sound, like never before. Trees, but not from underneath: top branches rush past as I dive. There is a rustle that says mouse, but when I get there, it is gone.
No matter.
I beat my wings and climb up again, the sun warm on my feathers. I should hide, wait for dark and better hunting.
But I want to fly to the sun. Leave this earth behind. How high can I go? I face the open sky: glide on a warm updraught, then beat my wings to reach the next one. Almost effortless, higher and higher. I can fly forever.
Trees are merging into field, a uniform green far below, when it happens. First a gradual sense of stiffness, making my wings have to work harder to beat at all. Then, a trap. As if my flesh is inside an owl-shaped box that gradually compresses and grows smaller, tighter and heavier, no matter how I struggle. Until it isn’t flesh and feathers inside a trap, but sinew and blood and muscle all thickening, slowing, stiffening. Becoming metal. The trap isn’t around me. It is me.
The sky is not my friend any more. Air whistles past, and trees rush closer. Plummeting down, down, down….
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
* * *
The next morning Mum is driving us through London streets that I now see with different eyes.
I see the menace. This close to the hospital, there are Lorders in black operations gear at every corner. They stand in twos and threes: more of them than the last time we came this way. With machine guns. I see the signs of conflict: boarded windows, damaged and abandoned buildings spaced between ones full of life. And most of all I see the real damage, the eyes of a beaten people. In the way they hold themselves, where they look, where they don’t. It is much worse in London than in the country.
‘All right?’ Mum asks, and I nod. ‘Your dad will be home when we get back; he called earlier.’ She says the words casually, almost too casual to be anything but contrived.
‘Is something wrong?’ I ask, the words out before I can censor them.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘You seem funny when you mention him, that’s all.’ And I remember how she changed the subject the last time his name came up.
She doesn’t answer, eyes straight ahead on traffic, until I think she isn’t going to.
She sighs. ‘Grown-up stuff. It’s complicated, Kyla,’ is all she says.
We continue in silence until the hospital rears up, a great ugly sore on the landscape amongst old buildings and twisty streets: a modern monstrosity. This hospital is a Lorder symbol of power: it is an obvious target, where Slating takes place.
I study the number and positions of towers on the perimeter. I promised Nico accurate maps, outside and in. I am going to deliver. Anyone could note this, and I’m sure they already have. The inside arrangements, likewise. Someone in the multitude of medical and other staff could be bought. Nico must want confirmation from eyes he has trained; eyes he trusts. Mine.
We continue to the main entrance, and get in the queue. Lorders at the gates are searching cars. Visitors must get out and go through a metal detector on foot, before getting back in their car and driving it below to park.
Unease twists my stomach. What if Nico is wrong, and the com on the underside of my Levo isn’t undetectable? Maybe I should have taken it off before I came. Can I even get it off? I haven’t tried.
We inch forwards. Finally, it is our turn; the Lorder on this side of the gate puts up his hand to stop us. He makes a deferential gesture to Mum, as daughter of the Lorder hero: hand touching heart, then held out. An apology on his face that this time we must comply like everyone else.
We get out of the car and my feet are like lead as I walk to the metal detector. An alarm goes off as I step through, and I almost panic, until I realise it is my Levo. A Lorder with a handheld scanner gets me to hold out my arms and runs it across my body. It beeps again at my Levo and he nods for me to go through.
That was it? Inside, I snort. How obvious is it that the one place to hide metal on a Slated is on or in their Levo? What if it was an explosive?
Though the com is well disguised. If I didn’t know it was there, I couldn’t even find it by touch. And I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to have something like this on most Slateds. If their Levo is working properly, putting it on would cause pain and levels to fall.
We get back in the car and spiral underneath the hospital to park. Nerves are twisting in my stomach: can I pass muster in Dr Lysander’s eyes? Every Saturday I see her; she digs and pokes around in my mind. Checks up on me, looks for cracks. Places where I am different to other Slateds.
I am so different now. How will I get through this?
She is smart, the brainiest person I’ve ever known. She sees what you try to hide.
Easy. Don’t hide anything. Tell her about your inner terrorist.
Yeah, right.
I must be Kyla, the girl she knows, and only her. Nobody else. I focus, concentrate, think of Kyla.
‘Kyla?’ Dr Lysander stands at the door to her office. ‘Come in.’
I sit on the chair opposite her desk, glad of the door closed behind me: there is a Lorder guard in the waiting area once again. They must be on alert for another attack.
When the last one happened – several weeks ago today – Dr Lysander was whisked away at the first sign of trouble. She vanished before the terrorists came on their killing spree. One pointed a gun at me before his mate told him not to waste a bullet on a Slated. Where did they take her, to get her hidden away so fast?
She taps at her screen a moment. Looks up. ‘You look very thoughtful. Perhaps we could begin today by you telling me what you are worrying about.’
The truth, but not too much of it; lie to Dr Lysander at your peril.
‘I was thinking about all the security we came through to get in today.’
‘Ah, I see. Does it worry you?’
It certainly did today. ‘Yes.’
‘Why is that, do you think?’
‘It makes me feel like they are going to haul me away and lock me up.’
‘Guilty conscience?’ Then she laughs; she thinks she is telling a joke. Slateds never do anything wrong. Almost never, that is: what about Ben? Anyhow, if being Slated means you can’t be a danger to self or others, then why are we all watched and monitored so carefully?
And I am different. More so now, but I always have been. Is this why she is my doctor? Dr Lysander is famous; the one who invented Slating in the first place. In all the times I’ve seen her, there has never been another patient in her waiting room. And without being able to define how I am different, she somehow knows something is wrong, and tries to find out how, and why. Yet even she has no grasp of the degree of difference, the implications. The ticking time bomb I was, and am.
A terrorist bomb, like the one that hit Robert’s bus.
My stomach twists.
‘What is it, Kyla? Tell me what is upsetting you,’ she says.
‘The terrorist attack here,’ I answer.
She tilts her head to one side, considering my words. ‘Still thinking of that day, are you? Don’t be frightened. You are quite safe here now, I promise you. Security has gone to new measures.’ The way she says it: she thinks they’re going too far, being too careful. She’s wrong.
Find out.
‘Do you mean the new security gates we had to walk through to get in?’
She nods. ‘That, and some other things. Technological things. The whole hospital is protected.’
How?
But I can’t ask. Excessive curiosity is not a Slated trait.
Then, I see. Her telephone and intercom on the desk have changed: they are not cordless any more, but hard-wired. Her computer, too: a snake of wires reach out from it, and run along the room to the corner and out through the wall. But isn’t that old technology?
She taps at her screen. Looks up.
‘I’ve got conflicting reports from your school.’
‘Oh?’
‘Apparently you’ve been both distant and miserable, and a happy bundle of energy, sometimes all on the same day.’ She half smiles. ‘Care to explain that?’
‘I’m not always the same person.’ The truest thing I’ve said so far today.
‘Being a teenager can be hard work sometimes. Still, I’d like to schedule some scans, see how things are. Perhaps next time.’
They might see the memory pathways have changed. Scans must be avoided!
But how?
Dr Lysander closes her computer, folds her hands and faces me. ‘Now, Kyla. Have you thought any more of what we were speaking about the last few visits?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, stalling.
An eyebrow goes up. ‘We were talking about difference. Deviation. What is happening with you inside that is outside of the usual. You said you would think about it, and speak to me.’
Give her something.
I swallow. ‘Sometimes…I think I remember things. That I shouldn’t.’
She considers. ‘That is not unusual with Slateds. It is human to abhor the void, the absence of accessible memory. To make things up to fill it. Yet…’
She pauses, thinking. ‘Tell me what you remember.’
Without meaning to, without thinking or choosing something either real or made up, I go straight for the one I want to hug to myself and not share. Dr Lysander has that effect.
‘Playing chess with my dad. My real dad. It was long ago, my hands were small. I was much younger.’
‘Tell me about it,’ she says, and I do. Everything. The feel of the rook in my hand. The sense of warmth and security when I woke.
‘Just a dream, most likely,’ she says.
‘Maybe. But it was so detailed. It felt real.’
‘Dreams can be like that sometimes. Anyhow, I’m glad you’ve left nightmares behind.’ She smiles, looks at the clock. ‘Nearly time,’ she says. ‘Is there anything else you would like to talk about?’
Keep her curious.
I hesitate. Then shake my head.
‘There is something: tell me.’
‘It’s just that before I had the dream, I was playing chess. And I kept picking the rook up in my hand, feeling it.’
She sits forward. ‘You felt drawn to touch and hold it?’ I nod. ‘That is interesting. Perhaps a physical memory lingers? Triggering the dream, which may be a subconscious fabrication, but still: very interesting.’
‘I don’t understand. If a memory is gone, it is gone. Isn’t it?’ And I know I should leave this alone, shouldn’t make her focus more closely on it, but can’t help myself. I want to know.
‘That is the popular understanding of what happens with Slating. It isn’t quite accurate.’ She sits back. ‘It is more like this, Kyla. Your conscious access is what is destroyed. The memories are still there, you just can’t find them.’
They are still there? Trapped like Rain was, behind a wall. Does that mean Lucy is somewhere inside me still, screaming to get out? I shudder. ‘Is that why things come out in dreams? My conscious mind can’t get at them, but when I’m asleep…’ I stop, not liking where this is going; not liking what she will think of it. Slateds don’t have memories, awake or asleep. Do they?
‘Rarely, this can happen. It is far more likely that your dreams are made up in that overactive imagination of yours.’ She taps her fingers on the desk a moment. ‘We’ll leave doing scans. For now. Away you go.’