This Is Our Undoing

by Lorraine Wilson

  ‘I can send you a programme that would wipe everything,’ the man said. ‘But it would have to be uploaded directly. I imagine his firewalls are insurmountable at short notice.’

  Genni, Lina thought, appalled at the thought even as it formed. ‘Yes,’ she said anyway, ‘Please–’

  ‘It’s only a short-term solution of course. A delay.’

  ‘Yes, I–’

  ‘And they will be leaving this evening I imagine.’

  Dear god, she thought. How did you become someone for whom death was such an unremarkable option? But she knew how, and while she understood and forgave it in Thiago, that same reduction of life to weights on a scale was everything she hated about the States and Christopher Wiley and Silene. She would not let herself become them.

  ‘Can you send me the programme?’ she said. The bathroom door upstairs opened and closed.

  ‘Of course,’ the man said, smiling, knowing what she was thinking. Where Thiago would not have judged her, she thought this man saw weakness. ‘Ah,’ he added, ‘The trucks are due ten pm your time. Which gives you eight hours, I believe.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lina said. Footsteps on the stairs and Genni coming into the room. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Good luck, Dr Stephenson.’ He cut the connection before she could and, although she had not seen him typing, an email from an unlabelled internal address arrived almost immediately, an .exe file attached.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Lina and Genni went up to the lounge, Lina needing coffee and with the programme saved onto a mini USB drive lying in her pocket like a prayer. They were all up, even Silene, her eyes flitting from Dev to Xander to the balcony and her whole body poised for flight. So whatever she had been given to get her on the helicopter had worn off then, Lina thought, and met Dev’s gaze with that in the forefront of her mind like a shield.

  ‘You’ve heard about the trucks,’ she said to him. Xander was sitting at the table with Dev but after one quick glance at her had tucked his head down and lifted headphones over his ears. No more accusations then, not that they needed repeating. Genni went out onto the balcony, leaning out to search worriedly for tornadoes. Lina felt sick.

  ‘In the dark,’ Silene said. ‘We can’t leave in the dark.’

  Lina turned away from all of them to put the kettle on, making work of setting things out so she did not have to answer. Eight hours and then they would be beyond her reach. Which she had wished for this morning, before Xander had revealed how much he knew.

  ‘If Lina says it is safe, then I’m sure that’s true,’ Dev said, sounding, unbelievably, amused.

  ‘I do,’ she said, far more sharply than was wise. ‘And it is.’

  ‘There we are then,’ he said, turning his hands up on the table, palms flashing pale. ‘But what should we call you, instead of Lina? Xander hasn’t said.’

  The kettle reached boiling point beside her, steam occluding her view of Silene. She had not really expected them to say nothing, but his words still hit her like a fist, her breath becoming drowning. And yet, she realised, unless this was a feint, he did not know her old name, and so ... and so Xander had not told him everything. Why? Why not?

  She did not answer, only held his gaze and waited, carbon dioxide burning her lungs. He tipped his head and gave her a feline smile but there was a softness to it that she had not seen before, or not aimed at her.

  ‘Very few people have his skill, or his determination,’ he said eventually, nodding at Xander’s studiously unresponsive form.

  What was she meant to take from that? Comfort, that no-one else might uncover her secret? She still could not speak, thinking of her unanswered messages to Kolya, hearing Genni say something about the smoke. Silene rose jerkily to her feet and came to Dev, laying an unsteady hand on his shoulder, and Lina saw his muscles twitch at her touch, as if he had begun to shrug her off but stopped himself.

  ‘What is it, Dev darling?’ Silene said. ‘What has she done?’

  ‘It is more what she hasn’t,’ he said slowly, his eyes not leaving Lina’s face. ‘Or what she wouldn’t, perhaps.’

  ‘Wouldn’t? What ... what is she going to ... I don’t understand.’ Silene was looking fixedly at Dev, ignoring Lina as completely as her son was. Lina found her voice.

  ‘There are many things I would not do,’ she said more certainly than she felt. ‘And many things I have never done. Which is more than can be said for State, or for you, I imagine.’

  ‘Ah, but I am not State,’ Dev said with the gentleness that was likely meant to unbalance her, and was working. Again she did not answer, but this time because the fallacy did not warrant one given the woman clutching his shoulder with cracked, bitten fingers.

  ‘She’s State,’ Silene whispered. ‘They’ve got her father, so she’ll do anything they say, Dev. You have to stop her. You have to stop her before we leave.’

  ‘Mum,’ Xander said without warning. Lina had assumed his music was loud enough to deafen him. ‘It’s over, alright? Just shut up. That’s all you have to do now.’

  He thought he had won, Lina thought.

  He knew she could say nothing without condemning her father and herself and Genni to death and if not now, for her and Genni, then inevitably, eventually. And yet why then the hunched shoulders, the fixed set of his averted face? As if aware of her gaze, his own shifted to Dev then away, and was that it, she thought, doubting. Had Dev not wanted to know Lina’s secret, and was he holding Xander silent?

  ‘Mutually assured destruction,’ she said quietly, repeating Isla’s unshakable assistant, wondering if it was possible that Isla’s assistant could still be wrong and Thiago could be wrong and perhaps it would all simply end here with a teenager’s dampened anger and the unreadable gaze of a deceptive man.

  ‘Hmm,’ Dev said.

  ‘Dev?’ Silene said, her hand crawling from his shoulder to her neck, her cheek. ‘Dev?’

  ‘Go and have a lie down, Silene,’ he said, twisting to look at her for the first time. ‘Xander, can you take your mum to her room, make sure she’s comfortable?’

  They both obeyed him without hesitation. What had he been in their lives before Christopher Wiley died? And what was he thinking? Dear god, what was he thinking?

  She checked on Genni, sitting on the balcony now, tablet and headphones in place, her feet raised against the railing. Kai was outside, Lina realised. On the track leading away into the forest, his hair spindrift in the wind and something hanging from a raised hand, dancing. Something small and red as blood. Lina took two steps forward to be sure, aware of her ankle abruptly. Dev’s voice was soft behind her, but relentless.

  ‘Would you sit, Lina?’

  But then the truck threw itself out from beneath the trees into the sun, Kai slipping into the grass as it passed, and Lina wondered whether he needed to. What would have happened if he had not moved? He watched the truck pull to a stop in the courtyard, closing his still-raised fist around the doll.

  ‘I need to speak to Thiago,’ Lina said, turning to Dev and hesitating. Wanting to ask but full of dread.

  ‘Of course,’ Dev nodded. ‘Does he know your name? I’m sure you told ESF when you joined them, but does he know?’

  It was too late for regrets, but god, if only she had told Thiago. ‘I imagine that is irrelevant to you,’ she said. ‘Do you know it?’

  He smiled less gently. ‘I doubt anything concerning Thiago is irrelevant to you, however.’ Leaning back, lifting a mug. ‘I wish you no harm.’

  She laughed. Three swifts screamed, knifing past the balcony. Genni flinched but Dev did not. He had not answered. ‘And yet,’ Lina said, ‘you threaten it.’

  ‘No,’ he said, as if he believed it, as if it mattered to him that she did too. ‘No, I am trying to understand you.’

  The front door opened below them. Lina’s heart rose and fell within her. ‘Wha
tever for? When you have what you need?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Did you love him? James Hanslow.’

  Thiago’s two-tone footsteps were on the stairs, blade and boot, blade and boot. How could she want him here and yet be wishing him slower? It made no sense. This man made no sense. ‘Yes,’ she said helplessly. ‘I did. Do you have children, Dev?’ Perhaps hoping to unbalance him in turn but failing.

  Thiago reached the last flight of stairs and paused momentarily when he saw her, but then came on up faster.

  ‘I don’t,’ Dev said, and Thiago faltered again, minutely. ‘Because I will not bring children into this world.’ He glanced at Genni out on the balcony and Lina hated him then, for being able to read her, for being friends with the very man whose acts he now judged wrong.

  ‘Lina,’ Thiago said, reaching her side. ‘Kapoor. Lina, alright?’

  Lina nodded, but her thoughts were still full of Dev. ‘So why then?’ she said. Meaning why help the Wileys, why threaten her even if that was not what he was calling it?

  For the first time, Dev’s face showed something other than amusement and acuity. ‘Old loyalties,’ he said, looking away from her to study his hands, the heavy gold band on the wrong finger. ‘Curious how they tie us in knots, isn’t it?’

  Thiago shifted and Lina felt the pull of his tension win out. ‘What is it?’ she said quietly.

  ‘This is for you too, Kapoor,’ Thiago said and Dev’s face smoothed. ‘No trucks. There’s been a rockfall on the lower road. I can clear it but not till after the storm.’

  ‘What? Where? How did–’ Lina stopped. ‘The wreck?’

  Thiago’s blade was shifting against the floor in a small repetitive movement, only noticeable because she knew to look for it when he would not meet her eyes. ‘No, further down. The tornadoes, I think.’

  ‘So we’re staying after all.’

  Lina and Thiago both looked at Dev but this time Lina’s mind was still on the man beside her, the one she knew better perhaps than she knew herself.

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ Thiago did not sound particularly sorry and Dev clearly noticed, raising his eyebrows slowly.

  ‘We can’t hike down past it?’

  ‘T,’ Lina said, but Thiago ignored her.

  ‘You could. But the others?’

  Dev grimaced faintly and did not bother to answer, instead he pulled his tablet towards him as if to check the weather forecast again, or to let Xander know. ‘It seems everything must wait till after the storm,’ he said softly, not looking up.

  Lina stared at him but he only smiled faintly to himself and she turned away too fast. ‘T,’ she repeated. ‘Can we talk?’

  His foot moved again and he lifted a hand halfway to his face before dropping it. ‘Right,’ he said, and turned back to the stairs, watching her progress, more aware now of her injuries than she was.

  They stood in the lab facing one another, him leaning a hip against the workbench, her crossing her arms around herself. ‘What have you done?’ she said finally, more disbelieving than anything.

  He met her gaze, the lowering sun painting flames into his black eyes. ‘Lina,’ he said, but she did not let him finish. He was the only one who made her feel real, she thought. The person who was Lina and no-one else had only every really been present and whole here, with him.

  ‘You knew I would go.’

  He did not speak this time, but his shoulders shifted as if bracing.

  ‘You knew I would go to Dad, so you blocked the road.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, T. Don’t lie to me. Just ... don’t.’ She dropped her gaze, caught halfway between fury and tears.

  ‘Lina,’ moving quietly. ‘It was to stop them leaving.’

  She looked up. Because of Xander’s threat. He had thought that trapping him here in a storm that would cut them off was keeping her safer than letting Xander loose into the world. And he might be right, Dev had just now proffered an oblique postponement. Thiago’s eyes were bottomless and strained.

  ‘Not just that though,’ she said.

  He ran a hand over his face, his fingers muddy along the knuckles and under the nails. ‘It was suicide,’ He saw her stiffen and raised a hand. ‘It was pointless suicide, Lina. It would have saved no-one. You know that.’

  ‘I can’t just sit here,’ fighting back a scream. ‘I have to at least try. Jesus, Thiago. He’s my dad, and he saved me so many times.’

  Thiago’s voice was soft and certain. ‘And you saved me. So I get to fight for you, too.’

  ‘Don’t–’ she turned away, setting her palms on the desk, staring at them as the room spun and plummeted beneath her. ‘It’s not fighting for me, T. It’s taking away my choices.’

  ‘I won’t let you kill yourself.’

  She couldn’t look at him, because she had never once hated him, but she did now. A little, a lot. ‘I won’t let my dad die in my place.’ He did not speak, but nor did he move away, and she hissed out a breath and turned around. ‘Besides, aren’t you curious about who I really am? How do you know I’m worth saving, T? What if I’m as bad as them?’ Throwing a hand out towards the window, the courtyard beyond. ‘What if this makes me as bad as them? I won’t be worth saving then, will I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus, Thiago.’ She moved, needing the wild air and to be away from him and his terrible loyalty. If any of this led to Xander’s death, or even his becoming an orphan, then she would not want to be saved

  ‘Hello, Lina,’ Kai said from the doorway. She was sure she had closed the door but now it stood ajar and Kai was there shadowed by the sun’s westering light. She went to push the door wide, wind skittering in around her feet.

  ‘Let me carry it,’ Thiago said to her back. ‘I’ve done worse.’

  She halted, a hand on the doorframe and the other reaching blindly to touch Kai’s cool, satiny hair. He was holding the martenitsa, she realised, and Thiago had said that she had saved him.

  ‘Stop it, Thiago,’ she said without turning. ‘Christ, just stop it. I won’t let you.’

  She threw herself out into the restless, hot wind, letting Kai lead her beyond the shadow of the buildings and into the meadow. He took her across to the treeline, where the lowering sunlight fell into the forest beneath the trees, then turned and carefully hung the martenitsa on a low branch.

  ‘The monster is coming,’ he said. ‘You need to not let it get you.’

  ‘The monster?’ she said, fighting herself calm.

  ‘I don’t think it wants you, but you need to hide when it comes.’

  ‘You mean the storm? I will hide, I promise.’ She studied him, his skin too pale in the sun. ‘Will you hide too?’

  He smiled and bent, lifting the fox skull from the grass. ‘I’m going to watch it,’ he said, holding the skull against his face and talking through its bladed jaws like he had done before. ‘I want to know who it wants.’

  What would being out in the storm do to a child who did not exist? she wondered. Grief and fury were not so easily destructible, and yet she still said, ‘You must stay inside with us, sweetie. It’s going to be dangerous outside.’

  He smiled, the fox’s jaw opened, sharp-toothed. ‘I’m going to be dangerous.’ And then, slyly, ‘Silene is going to hurt you, so I’ll stop her.’

  ‘What? Kai, no, don’t–’ don’t what? And why should she stop him? If his presence drove Silene deeper into an irrationality that would undo anything she might say, then why on earth should Lina stop him? It would not leave Xander orphaned, and it would not be murder. She met Kai’s gilded eye through its bone socket and sighed. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ It was ridiculous, but she saw his fallen form made pixels every time she looked at him, and if protecting him now meant anything at all to the child he had been, then how could she not?

  ‘I
’m fierce,’ he said. ‘And then when the monsters are all gone, I can stay, can’t I? Even though you’ve got Genni?’

  ‘Yes, sweetie,’ she said, swimming through bewilderment and weariness and infinite tangled sorrows. ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, closing the fox’s jaws and patting her hand with his cool fingers. ‘Because she won’t fight the monsters, but I will. You’d better get ready. The monster’s coming.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When Lina reached the track, Iva was walking up through the trees into the sun. She was carrying a bag of food and gave a short nod to Lina as they met, but did not slow.

  ‘I’ve not seen you,’ Lina said, feeling the pace pull at her ankle. ‘Are you okay? Are you ready for the storm? You can stay with us, if you need to.’ Although the station may not be any safer really, exposed as it was.

  Iva threw her a sideways, shuttered look and said only, ‘I will stay with my family.’

  Lina had meant her family too, but she suspected Iva knew that. ‘If you don’t want to be here,’ she said slowly, ‘I can take that for you.’ Gesturing at the bag, but Iva only shook her head.

  ‘I have to talk to Mr Ferdinando.’

  So stubbornly formal, Lina thought, even now. ‘About the storm?’

  Iva’s stride faltered for the first time, but then sped up again. ‘No.’ She looked down and her face tensed, smoothed out again.

  Her ankle, Lina thought, she had been looking at the place where her skin was building scars that would never fade. She stopped, forcing Iva to stop as well. ‘It’s not about the BB? Iva? I thought that was all over.’ But she had just watched Kai hang a martenitsa into a fir tree and it had been fresh and soft and unstained.

  Iva stared at her unblinking, but then huffed out a breath and set her hands on her hips. ‘You ask Mr Ferdinando, yes? I think it is not at all over.’

  ‘But–’ But Thiago had shot someone and none of the BB’s reasons for anger had gone away. Even without the taskforce, the Wileys were still here and a travesty, the tagging programme only delayed.