The Breach

by M. T Hill

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ she tells herself.

  But so is all of this. And even if denial has displaced Freya’s anxiety – surely those workers weren’t dancing under the tower; surely the PR was simply overtired when she did her lipstick; surely the photographer was mistaken about a worker falling from the tower – then Freya’s rational mind is fraught. The alternative – that all of these things happened, and are true, have been caused – is too much.

  She puts her head in her hands. She should sleep. Faint buoy bells on the water. She slaps the cabin wall, surprised to hear it echo around her. She does it again. The sting is satisfying, the sound rich, like being in an empty room. She raises her hand, taken with it. Her fingers are hot. She swings, but there’s no echo. Instead, the whole cabin starts to rattle. Her heart skips. She touches the cabin wall, horrified. The wood is humming. The window darkens with a presence. ‘Hello?’ she tries, frozen on the bed. It catches in her throat. She pulls her hand away. The rattling gives way to a keening, then there’s a wave of pressure that makes her ears pop. The cabin flexes. A force tugs on her. She turns her head to find the door resting on its corner, top hinge popped. She gets off the bunk. There’s a triangle of dirty ice in the gap. She pushes on the door, which falls open. A snapped chain and broken padlock lie in the dust.

  A thought of Oriol in his ice bath crosses her mind. A whisper of cool breath across her skin. The air is cooler, a gibbous moon hanging low. This must be what they want. But how would the explorers do this? Stephen, Shep – Alba with Oriol in her belly? They’d move close to the ground, as Freya does now. They’d move furtively, as Freya tries to. And next thing, she’s beyond the cabin block and in the open. The tower, silvered and creaking, work lights flaring in the dusk, dew rising. Her skin charged and hot.

  As Freya picks her way towards the canteen and infirmary block, a low siren begins to wail across the island. From cover – a driverless forklift left in the open – she watches a huge warehouse door sliding open. Out comes a group of armed figures wearing rubber suits and masks, guns raised, torches on. They take positions on the warehouse perimeter. They pace. They go back inside and start again, as if they’re drilling the movement. She can make out the nose and fuselage of an aircraft just inside the warehouse, its black carapace glistening. Another gang of people attend to it. A visible crate reads US NAVY.

  When a masked guard swings a torch in her general direction, Freya dives low. If this were a film, she might expect gunshots, shouts. In real life there’s nothing. They haven’t seen her. They weren’t looking to start with. They’re on with something else.

  Tall fencing conceals the rest of her route to the canteen. She sneaks through the main hall, echoless, a smell of eggs. The chairs are stacked on the tables. The breakfast bar empty save for a single deflated croissant. She leaves through a fire exit, across the lawns that connect the canteen and the kitchen. There’s nobody outside and the kitchen door is locked. She tabs the wall around the side until she’s sure she’s next to the infirmary. Several windows have been left ajar, so Freya jimmies a frame until she can slide her head and torso into the gap, then heaves outwards so the latch breaks and the adjuster slips out. She scrambles inside.

  Freya finds herself in a store cupboard full of medical collateral. Bedclothes luminous in the moonlight. She opens the door in time to hear soft footsteps – perhaps a staffer on their rounds.

  Freya ducks back into the cupboard. The window mechanism breaking must have alerted someone. ‘Shit,’ she breathes. There’s no explaining it. Try to use your fear.

  The footsteps are close. A squeak of plimsolls on laminate. Was that a tut? The storeroom door stays closed.

  Freya waits for another minute, then checks. A glimpse of a nurse’s coat flashing round a corner. Freya moves on. At the opposite wall she fights for breath, tries to moisten her lips. She leans round the corridor.

  The ward.

  Freya sprints for the bed, head pounding. Shep is there, sleeping. His peace catches her off guard. Like it’s difficult to accept her restlessness as one-sided. She could slap him, kiss him, scream in his face – any of those things – and he might never know she came here. She wants him to be awake, to understand right now what he’s put her through… but he’s a wreck.

  She slumps in the chair by the window. Cheap leatherette, a recliner. Her face sits level with his. It’s all so wretched; the way his throat rattles when he inhales. He hardly looks like Shep at all.

  But he’s still alive, she tells herself. He, like Alba, has survived what Stephen did not.

  * * *

  As night crawls towards morning, Freya whispers into her Dictaphone a single meandering paragraph that describes the empty ward. Every hollow follicle of Shep’s head; every thread of the bay’s curtains; every last beam of metal she can see of the tower, the silent sentinel waiting outside.

  The Steeplejack

  Shep opens his eyes to find his two lives – the working and the hidden – have merged. Freya Medlock asleep in his bedside chair, a personal recorder teetering on her knee. She’s a different colour to the wall, patterns against grey. Outline soft. Traces of perfume, a more caustic scent: hairspray or sweat. She has her thumb on the red dot of the recorder.

  It takes a lot to touch her. His hand looks like a burnt glove on a stick. She comes to with eyes bulging.

  She searches his face. ‘I’m too late, aren’t I?’ she asks.

  Shep shuffles in his bed, trying to get up on his elbows. The bivouac wrinkles and traps him, causing an alarm to sound.

  Almost immediately, a nurse appears at the ward entrance. ‘Morning,’ she says, before her expression turns stoic as she swings full-stare to Freya. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘She’s visiting,’ Shep croaks. ‘Navy attachment.’

  The nurse comes closer. A clipboard and a handful of drip bags. She looks dishevelled, like she hasn’t washed or slept properly. ‘We don’t do visiting hours,’ the nurse says, frowning as she works to deactivate the alarm. ‘All visits are suspended while the navy are on operations.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Shep tells her.

  ‘I don’t care!’ the nurse barks. ‘I’ll ask you one more time before I call security: what are you doing here?’

  Freya clears her throat. ‘I’m a liaison officer,’ she says. ‘Just making sure everyone’s accounted for.’

  ‘She’s grand,’ Shep adds. ‘Honestly.’

  The nurse thinks about this, then appears to accept it. ‘Right. I was told not to… it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Freya asks.

  ‘He’s meant to be resting,’ the nurse says, ignoring her. She gestures to the machines near Shep’s bed and taps her watch. ‘You’ve got another sleep due soon. And a scan in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Scan?’ Freya repeats.

  ‘Fifteen minutes before your next shot,’ she says, wiping her forehead. ‘Ideally you’ll be alone by then.’ And she leaves the ward.

  Shep turns to Freya. Her eyes on the wires running into him.

  ‘Good at lying, aren’t you?’ he says.

  ‘Don’t start. She looked awful.’

  Shep raises an eyebrow. ‘Local rag really paid you to be here?’

  ‘No,’ Freya says. ‘I’m writing about the island.’

  ‘I bet you are.’ He puts his head back on the pillow.

  Freya sighs. She’s trying to look stern. Trying to hide herself from him. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she says. ‘To ask some questions.’

  ‘About what? My accident?’

  ‘Is that what this was?’

  Shep taps his bloated temple. ‘If you want. Nice here, though, isn’t it? What’s that word? You’d know. Plush.’

  ‘It’s not plush,’ Freya says.

  ‘Plush. P-l-ush.’

  ‘Shep.’

  ‘I thought you were interviewing me.’

  ‘I said I wanted to.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ He tilts his
head towards the window. ‘I see flowers. The beta changes colour when I look at it. Everybody’s losing their minds – haven’t you noticed?’

  Freya swallows. ‘You know there are no flowers, Shep. There’s nothing.’

  ‘The sun’s up.’

  She glances out of the window. ‘It’s overcast.’

  ‘You aren’t looking hard enough.’ He yawns. ‘What are you milking me for?’

  ‘You know that’s not what I’m doing.’

  She’s tired. She’s pretending to be detached. He could just stop talking and return to oblivion in ten minutes.

  ‘The bunker,’ he says.

  She shakes her head. ‘Not yet. Tell me about your accident.’

  ‘I was stranded.’

  ‘Stranded.’

  He glances at his cannula. The window.

  ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ she says.

  Shep tilts his head. ‘It’s keeping me busy.’

  ‘Okay. What if I tell you something?’

  ‘Why?’ Shep says. ‘You saw it all. What’s done is done.’ He folds his arms. Covers his wounds. Freya’s recorder makes a grinding noise.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she asks.

  ‘Not any more.’ He smiles. It’s all so formal and stilted, and her face is thinner than he remembers. A slender necklace. A nose smaller from the front than it is from the side.

  ‘Go on,’ he says. ‘What else?’

  She looks away. ‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘I don’t have many questions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You conned me,’ she says quickly. ‘You used me.’

  He takes a breath. ‘Ask me about the island.’

  ‘But Shep… you have to understand—’

  ‘Ask me. Ask me – what it looks like from the top.’

  ‘You climbed it?’

  ‘Or… what it smells like up there? When did you know you had to do it?’

  ‘Shep, I—’

  ‘They’re good questions. I’m not answering stupid ones. Make yours good. Then get yourself off this island. Go home.’

  ‘I’m trying to think,’ Freya says.

  ‘You asked why I’m in this bed.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But you know why. Look at me.’

  She nods. ‘And I feel responsible. For not stopping it.’

  Shep laughs. It hurts his stomach, his face, but he can’t help it. ‘You missed me, didn’t you?’

  Anger flashes across Freya’s face. ‘I resent you.’

  ‘If that’s meant to be a professional response…’

  ‘No,’ Freya says. ‘I didn’t miss you.’

  ‘So, you’re not just a liar. You’re a bad liar.’

  Freya stands up and leans on the windowsill. Head haloed in the light. ‘That’s not what you said five minutes ago.’

  ‘Then I’m a better liar than you.’

  Silence.

  ‘I’ve got another one,’ Freya says. ‘A bigger one.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You know how dogs can hear things we can’t?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘What if there are things we can’t see or feel that, I don’t know, put a kind of pressure on us?’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘Like pheromones,’ Freya adds.

  ‘I don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I mean, what if something got inside you, made you do something. Against your will. But it also made you enjoy it.’

  Her tone is direct. It isn’t even a question – not the way she puts it.

  ‘They’re here, aren’t they?’ Freya adds.

  The ceiling tiles. The ward’s white walls. The bay curtain.

  ‘I met Alba,’ Freya says. ‘Alba and her son by Stephen – Oriol. I went to Iceland. She called them her guardians. Can you see them, Shep? Are they here, now?’

  Shep inhales, holds it down.

  ‘I tried to help,’ she tells him.

  Shep shakes his head.

  ‘And yeah, I admit it. I wanted to know. Why you did what you did to me. We didn’t speak afterwards.’

  Shep chews his lip. How to explain what he lacks the words for? What he saw at the top of the scaffold?

  ‘You took stuff from the nest,’ Freya says.

  ‘Now you’re skipping ahead,’ Shep says back.

  ‘No. It’s important. You did. After I ran. You stayed.’

  Shep cocks his head. ‘So?’

  Freya makes a point of stopping the recorder. He realises that whatever she’s discovered since they explored the bunker, the full truth is just out of her reach. She’s collected scraps, glimpses, hinted-at fragments – but he’s been all the way. Which means only living it will explain it to her now. Stay here on Vertex, and she’ll get her answers. And so Shep pities Freya. They’re both to blame. He opened his secrets to her, brought her in. She came happily. But that was then. Nobody can ever understand his landscape: the spires and light arrays, harnesses and lines, his chimneys and roofs. The places they can take you. The purity of a parallel world. It was always a mistake to believe otherwise.

  Freya looks out of the window, at the scaffold. ‘You’re happy like this, aren’t you?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve never been happier,’ he says.

  The Journalist

  The new Shep is a mess. His hands say it all – there’ll be no climbing or working or exploring for a while, if ever again. As she speaks, Freya is conscious of the walls between them. There’s self-preservation, too – the same face new reporters are trained to pull when they ask bereaved parents if they’ll sell anecdotes from their dead child’s life.

  Or is that wishful thinking?

  When Shep coughs, his ribcage clatters. Polluted blood moves visibly, slowly through his temples. She’s haunted by the possibility of being watched, observed, by the same unseen monitors that had followed Alba and her to the park in Reykjavik.

  She starts where Shep wants her to start. She tells him about Alba’s recurring dreams of a glacier. How it calmed her. That without her dreams, Alba wouldn’t have been in Iceland at all.

  Shep’s chin touches his neck and rises again.

  She tells him Alba was still pregnant when she got the call about Stephen. She asks him to imagine being convinced you’ll lose your baby to the stress of it. She says, ‘Could you live like that?’

  She tells him that Alba’s dreams inspired her to move somewhere cold. Shep blinks and smiles at this, and Freya sees through the smile for its knowingness, for what he’s hiding. Clearly a similar impulse had gripped him. It must have.

  ‘She was a remarkable woman,’ Freya says. ‘I turned up out of nowhere. She invited me in. She didn’t care. No defensiveness. Their baby, Oriol – he’s so lovely. And he’s infected too.’

  Freya pushes wet hair away from her forehead. The chair squeaks. Her shadow shrinks on the far wall.

  ‘Remember,’ Freya says, ‘when we were by the nest, and I told you Stephen had been there before you? That he’d been arrested?’

  ‘No,’ Shep says, yet she can see he does.

  ‘A drone operator tipped them off,’ Freya says.

  Shep smirks. ‘Course,’ he says. ‘Course he did.’

  ‘Alba told me Stephen was giddy in the weeks after they’d been down. Took more risks, behaved arrogantly. She called it a manic state.’

  ‘Yes,’ Shep says.

  ‘Did you notice any effect?’

  ‘No.’

  She looks at his head. His hair. His arms. ‘No?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Migraines or sickness. Impulsiveness.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Freya rolls her eyes. ‘And deciding to climb a kilometre-tall scaffolding tower was…’

  Shep starts laughing.

  That the nest effects biological change is clear. But Shep doesn’t seem to consider himself different, other than being, what, reduced somehow? Maybe he doesn’t care what Freya makes of him. But surely here, a
fter whatever had happened on the tower, he’s also in a kind of remission.

  ‘Alba’s forearms had healed a bit,’ Freya tells him. ‘They looked less like yours. There was a presence. I think – I think it might’ve opened my cabin. Tonight.’

  Shep exhales through his nose. ‘They’re everywhere,’ he says.

  Freya gives a short nod. ‘And you can see them?’

  Shep shrugs. ‘You ever notice a light flicker and wonder if it was really the light, or if you’d just blinked?’

  Freya remembers how Alba reacted when the lights snapped off in the cafe. The way Oriol wailed. ‘Do they frighten you?’

  ‘Why, do you want to rescue me?’ he asks. ‘Will that be a happy ending for your story? Will it make you famous?’

  ‘Shep.’

  ‘You said you wanted to help me. I think you wanted to see how I’d cop for it. Like Ste. And here I was thinking we got along.’

  ‘We did,’ Freya says, ‘until you took me to that bunker. But I still have to know.’ She takes a breath. ‘And if you say, “What next, Freya?” I’ll say I’m going home. Today, tomorrow. Maybe I’ll go climbing more regularly. Try and figure out the rest for myself.’

  Shep doesn’t reply.

  ‘I realise now that I should’ve stolen from the nest as well,’ she adds.

  ‘You came all this way to work that out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t help me.’

  Freya stands up. Sighs. ‘Do you reckon they might be…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s a kind of parasite. A kind of virus. It gets right down inside you.’

  Shep shrugs again. ‘I think they turned up here, and now they just are.’

  ‘Just are,’ Freya repeats.

  His half-nod. ‘Like me and you.’

  ‘If that’s true…’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s true or not. Who’ll believe us anyway? Tell me how to explain all this to my landlord when I don’t make rent. The rest of Mallory…’

  He’s right, of course, and the fact of it stings her. She can’t submit proof with her Dalle piece, and not just because the story is already beyond her, bigger than her. The facts are right here, and they’re horrifying. All she can do to stay calm is deny the scale, evoke her editor, tell herself it’s conversations like this – the human angle – that will help her to share what’s happened on Vertex. Colour. The relatable stuff that stands up against speculation.