Fractured

by Teri Terry

  My stomach twists. ‘Assassinations?’

  ‘Don’t be squeamish.’ His voice is cold. ‘You know what this government has done, is doing, to people like you. To Tori. Think of what happened to her. There will be kidnappings as well, high-profile, in a variety of sectors at once. We’ll get some attention in the right places.’

  ‘What about the hospital attack? It is heavily protected and guarded. It would take resources, and…’ I stop, realisation sinking in. ‘A diversion?’

  ‘Just so. We’ll leak plans of a proposed attack at the hospital, but this time, when they are ready for us there, we will be elsewhere.’

  Elsewhere…elsewhen. ‘Armstrong Memorial Day.’ I say it as a statement, not a question. ‘At Chequers. That is the place and the day things will start, isn’t it?’

  He stays silent.

  ‘My family will be there.’

  ‘We are your family.’ A mild reproach. I flush.

  ‘Nico, you don’t understand. Mum isn’t pro-Lorder; at least, not any more.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! They Slated her son.’ And I tell Nico about Robert, with guilt at confidences broken, but I have to make him see. ‘She tried to find out what happened to him; she’s not one of them.’

  ‘Yet if she doesn’t support us, her feelings about the Lorders are not relevant. She can be a martyr for our cause.’ He puts a hand on my chin, tilts my face up. The horror must be in my eyes. ‘Rain, I know this is hard. But you must be strong. We have to strike at the Lorders where it hurts the most. She is a symbol for their cause – she allows this. No matter her feelings on it, she is a Lorder tool.’

  I clench Emily’s ring in my pocket.

  I must be strong.

  He kisses my forehead. ‘That is enough for your curiosity. Time for you to get back home before you are missed.’

  ‘Why can’t I stay here?’ I say, without planning to say it, but yes, why? Because when I am here, with Nico, and even Katran, I belong. I believe in their plans: our plans.

  He puts a warm hand on each of my shoulders. ‘Stay strong a little longer, all right? We need you on the inside. You can’t disappear from that life, not yet. Go on, Rain,’ he says, gives me a little push towards the door. I walk through it. Leaving Nico’s presence it feels as if the temperature drops.

  Tori isn’t in sight, but Katran is back. He follows me as I head through the trees.

  ‘I don’t need an escort, you know. I remember how to get there.’

  Katran ignores my words, continues to follow.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ I turn and face him at the bikes.

  He smirks. ‘I did, oh special girl, but this is an order from above. To see you safely home.’

  ‘I won’t tell. Go slink behind some rocks and take a nap, instead.’

  He ignores me and extracts our bikes from their hiding place, and we set off, Katran in front. Going much too fast for the need for quiet, but that was always him, wasn’t it? More guts than sense, Nico used to say in the early days, but eased off when he saw Katran was always just within an edge of control. Close to the precipice, never going over. But soon I am exhilarated by speed, by remembering past times and using it to not remember all that happened today, and I don’t care about the risk.

  It takes me back to other days. With an edge of danger. Slips of memory come and go, make me feel alive; tantalise, then are gone.

  And I don’t understand. I study Katran, ahead: who is he, really? Who was he to me all those years ago? Questions burn and tumble inside.

  The hide a few miles from home appears in the distance. Katran slows, stops, turns his bike on the path to take off back the other way.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I say, then hesitate. ‘I want to ask you something.’

  ‘What: can’t find your way home after all?’

  I scowl, clench my fists; why even bother. ‘Why are you such a jerk sometimes?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ There’s anger behind his question.

  I turn away, yank my bike through the trees to the hide and conceal it. Katran stays, watches: probably checking I do it right. I pull the tarp and camo over and start marching up the path.

  ‘Come back. I’m sorry,’ he says.

  Katran, apologising? I’m so stunned I stop, turn back. He’s off his bike now, and I walk up to him. Challenge is in his eyes and I face him, unflinching. But with his dark eyes staring into mine, the words are gone.

  ‘Well?’ he says, finally.

  I swallow. ‘My memories are a little…messed up. Can I ask you about something? From years ago.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  I cross my arms. ‘I had these really bad dreams. Nightmares. I still get them.’ I sigh, stare at the ground. Not wanting to say it out loud, but needing to find out what he knows at the same time. ‘Being chased. Running, on sand, absolutely terrified. And…’ I look up. ‘You used to wake me, hold me when I was scared.’ I say it, don’t ask it, because somehow I know it is true.

  And there, in his eyes: confirmation. He turns, the angry red of the jagged scar on his right cheek hidden. Sometimes, like now, when he isn’t angry to match the scar, you can see a different person. The one who had an arm around Holly’s brother.

  The one who held me at night, years ago.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘It’s okay.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘We used to be friends, you and I. Things…changed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You changed.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t really understand, myself.’ He sighs. ‘When you first came to train with us, you were different. You were scared, cried a lot. You didn’t want to be there, not like the rest of us. But every now and then, you changed. Into this angry, crazy girl: Nico’s puppet, dancing on his strings. And it was something to do with Nico and this doctor who took you away, sometimes for days. Each time you came back you changed more often, until the girl I first knew almost never appeared.’

  A doctor? A flash in my mind: a special sort of doctor, not the kind who mends bones or cures illness. I was afraid of him, so afraid. I try to push it away; his face and then his name swing into view. Dr Craig. In that dream I had, the doctor who said I would be sick.

  ‘And Nico told us when you were this changed person to treat you like one of us, and to ignore you when you were the other one. Bit by bit the other went, until the only time she came back was when you had nightmares.’

  My head aches, pounds. Two people, like Nico said. Lucy, and Rain. They split me into two people…that doctor? I feel sick inside. I turn away but Katran follows. Turns me and holds my shoulders in his hands so I can’t look away.

  ‘Listen to me. Nico is up to something with you, and it started years ago. I don’t get it and I don’t like it. Don’t let him use you. You don’t belong with us; you never did. Run while you still have the chance.’

  I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say, faint, then: ‘No.’ Stronger. ‘You just want me out of the way. You’re jealous of me and Nico. Of how important I am to him and the cause.’

  He laughs, anger behind it. ‘Yeah, sure: that’s it.’ He turns away, gets on his bike.

  I start to walk off.

  ‘Wait,’ he says, and I pause. ‘Listen to me, Rain. I believe in what we are doing. That ours is the way, the only way, to get rid of the Lorders, to free ourselves. Make our lives better. But it doesn’t have to be your fight. Not when you don’t even know who you are: how can you make a choice? Try to get your memories back where they should be. Don’t block them out.’

  I watch him disappear up the path, shaking with confusion. Anger, and fear. Memories lurk at the edges, threaten to overwhelm, but I don’t want them. I push them away.

  Somehow I stumble back to the house, le
t myself in and slip upstairs in silence. Curl up on my bed.

  It is late afternoon; no one will be home for an hour. I need to shower, change, look ordinary by the time anyone gets in, but my thoughts are in turmoil.

  Try to remember?

  But of what Katran said, about how I was those years ago, there is little trace. It is like a song I half recognise, can whistle along to the tune but don’t know the words.

  I thought my confusion, and how my memories come and go, was because I was Slated. But according to Katran it started long before the Lorders got their hands on me.

  I try to concentrate. Nico said he protected me from Slating, that I was split into two people: but how did he do that? I know he made Lucy be right-handed, and that Rain hid inside when the Lorders got me. They Slated me as if I was right-handed. Lucy is gone, and the memories that were Rain remained after I was Slated, hidden inside, waiting for the right trigger to let them out.

  That is what Nico wanted to happen. But that isn’t the whole story. Some wisps of Lucy and her memories – her dreams, fears – still remain. Buried deep. A squirm in my guts says Nico wouldn’t be happy if he knew it. He was wary when I mentioned Lucy, surprised I even knew who she was.

  And then I’m angry, so angry, at Katran. I’d been sure earlier of being in Free UK, and part of it all: of belonging to them. So that I belonged somewhere, and knew who I was. Katran spoiled everything.

  Now all that is left is confusion.

  That there is something wrong with my memory is an understatement.

  Is it just down to choice? Forget Kyla and her life, and be with Free UK. Do it completely, not holding anything back. I grip Emily’s ring so tight in my hand that it forms a circle in my skin.

  But I don’t want to forget Ben. I focus on his face, on holding it clear in my mind, but it is not enough. Never enough. I get out my sketch pad, pencil, and draw him over and over. Concentrate. I hold onto the look in his eyes, the way he stands. The way he runs. Katran defies the natural world as he moves through it. Ben is part of it.

  Ben is part of me.

  I long to see him, to touch him. When I was with him, I always knew who I was. Together, we can work out what to do.

  Aiden said he would get in touch once he found a way to get to Ben that was safe, but it can’t wait.

  I can’t wait.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  * * *

  Heavy frost glistens on grass in the moonlight. I shiver in equal parts with cold and excitement as I slip quietly through our sleeping village to the footpath. I hope I am right; that Ben will be there. Maybe it is too cold, too dark this time of year for an early morning run?

  Once I get to the trail bike, I wish I’d thought to wear gloves. The cold makes my hands numb and clumsy as I work out how to get into the hide in the dark. I finally pull the bike out, and start up the canal path.

  Once past familiar territory, I struggle to pay attention, to find my way from the map I’d memorised, when all inside is Ben. Now and then I have to put my torch on when the way is unclear, worried I’ll go wrong in the dark.

  At one point miles from home, I stop and take Emily’s ring from my pocket. I can’t keep it: it is too dangerous. What if someone sees it? I kiss it, and try to throw it into a deep part of the canal. To let it disappear into the muddy bottom. But I just can’t bring myself to let it go. I climb a tree, instead. Slip it round a twig not visible from below. My eyes note the place, the bend in the canal. One day, I’ll come back for it.

  Miles on again, something niggles, pulls me out of my concentration. Something not right. Faint, distant behind me, too far away to be certain; whispers of sound. Very like another bike.

  I stop, pull mine into the trees and creep back the way I came; slow, quiet, stealth. Shadowing the path rather than on it, and—

  There.

  A figure waits on the path. On a bike. There is the faint flash of a tracker on the handlebars: what he tracks is stationary. Indecision plays across his face: stay a safe distance, or go on to see why it has stopped?

  I step out in front of Katran.

  He jumps. Guilt crosses his face, then is gone.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘So, do you want to tell me, or should I guess?’ I say, and he shrugs, doesn’t answer. ‘There is a tracker on the bike. You’re following me, checking up on me.’

  Katran flushes enough that even in this light I can see.

  ‘There is a tracker on the bike, yes. But it isn’t like that. They all have trackers, for safety, yeah?’

  ‘But you were monitoring it.’

  ‘Nico told me to.’

  Nico: there is a flash of fear, inside. ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Not yet. Where are you going?’

  I stay silent.

  ‘Well, wherever it is, I’m coming with you.’

  I stalk back up the path. Maybe I can ditch the bike before we get too close, and slip away. Or maybe I can find the tracker and take it off.

  But Katran, busted now, is staying close.

  When we get to my bike, I turn to him. ‘Please don’t follow me. Wait here if you want to. I won’t be long, and we can go back together.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t need a babysitter!’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  I sigh, cornered; no choice but to tell him. ‘You know how you told me to remember who I am? Not to let go of things.’ He waits. ‘I’m going to see Ben.’

  ‘What? The one Tori keeps going on about?’

  ‘She hasn’t got things right. He and I were…close.’

  ‘But I thought he was dead.’

  I shake my head. ‘He’s alive, and I’m going to see him.’

  ‘He’s been in touch?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t know I’m coming. He may not even be there today; it’s just a hunch.’

  ‘But how—’

  ‘Don’t ask how I found him. I won’t tell you. But now you see why you can’t come with me?’

  Katran’s face has so much emotion – worry and hurt, warring with anger – that before I know I am even moving, I am right up to him, a hand on his arm. ‘Katran? Are you all right?’

  ‘No.’ He sighs, ruffles his hair back with one hand. ‘Look. I’ll follow behind, stay out of sight. I’ll have your back in case anything goes wrong. That is the best I can do. All right?’

  And it is so obviously against his better judgement, so much more than I could have expected of him, that I smile. ‘All right.’

  I get on my bike, take the next few turns, and my memory has served me correctly: it is the right way. The sky is still dark when we reach the stretch I’m sure Ben will go running near his school. We hide our bikes, and wait in the trees, watching.

  The darkness gives way to a dim lightening in the sky, bit by bit. No sign of him. My throat is tightening, and I’m just about to turn to Katran and say sorry, I must have got it wrong, when he grabs my arm.

  ‘Look,’ he breathes. Points up the hill from the path. A lone figure runs down it, the light behind him. I squint, unsure, and then – yes. It is him! The smile is wide on my face and my feet are scrabbling out of the woods and chasing down the path after his retreating figure.

  Ben can run. Can he ever. I push the speed more and more. He must hear something, turns his head slightly to see who is behind; then turns forward and keeps going.

  Perhaps he can’t tell it is me in this light. I push faster. ‘Wait up,’ I call softly. ‘Ben, wait.’

  His pace slows, then becomes a walk.

  I reach him.

  ‘Yes?’ he says.

  I smile widely into his eyes, brown with golden glints. I grab his hand. He looks down at our hands. Half smiles.

  The det
ails start to penetrate. Something isn’t right.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Sorry. You’ve confused me with somebody else.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’ And I cling to his hand.

  He shakes his head, pulls his hand away. ‘Sorry, I’m not Ben. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve only got a short time to finish my run.’ And he takes off. Runs away. Leaves me standing, watching him go, watching him run, and every movement he makes is my Ben. Tears begin to leak out of my eyes.

  He doesn’t know who I am.

  He doesn’t remember anything.

  My stomach twists. He’s been re-Slated. It is the only answer. But he is seventeen. They’re not supposed to do that unless you are under sixteen. Why would they break their own rule for Ben?

  He doesn’t know who I am.

  I’m shaking, still standing on the path. Ben may turn and come back this way. With that thought, I stumble into the trees, and wait. Soon he appears in the distance. I watch as he runs closer, his usual graceful gait, then past in a blur back up the hill.

  There are sounds in the woods behind me, but I stand still, watch Ben disappear into the light of the sunrise above.

  ‘Rain?’ A low voice: Katran.

  I don’t turn, unwilling for him to see the tears on my face, unable to stop them. A warm hand touches my arm, pulls me around.

  ‘What is it?’

  I shake my head, unable to speak. He hesitates, reaches a hand for my shoulder. He pulls me closer, his arms stiff at first then softening. And I sob, tell him that Ben doesn’t know who I am any more.

  Finally he pushes me away, and looks in my eyes. ‘You’ve got to pull yourself together, and do it now. We’ve got to get out of here. It is getting too light; more people may come.’

  He pulls me back through the woods to our bikes, and we head down the canal path. The cold air on my face stings my eyes, making it hard to see, while three words go over and over in my mind. They still don’t feel any more real.

  Ben is gone.