by Marita Smith
“Thank you.” His shirt looked crumpled, as if he’d slept in it. Not that she could talk.
Fletcher sipped his tea. “So, I assume there’s a reason for your visit?”
“I’m a researcher. Evolutionary genetics.” He looks so normal, Robyn thought.
“Okay.” Fletcher put his mug down on the coffee table. “My parents aren’t here, if you’re looking for Rob or Denise. They’ll be back soon.”
“I’m not here to talk to your parents. I’m here to talk to you.”
“Me?” There was real fear in Fletcher’s eyes. He sent a glance back toward the kitchen.
Crap. Coming on too strong. Less psycho killer, more likeable scientist.
“Do you know about prokaryotes and eukaryotes?”
Confusion clouded Fletcher’s face. “Yeah, I guess. Different DNA. You and I are eukaryotes, bacteria and stuff are prokaryotes.”
“And eukaryotes have mitochondria. Organelles that produce our cellular energy,” Robyn continued.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s Sunday, and I don’t feel like a science lesson.” Fletcher rubbed his eyes as a wet, heavy sneeze issued from somewhere behind him.
Robyn started. “What was that?”
The draining rack clattered onto the floor, pans bouncing. Robyn jumped to her feet as Fletcher crossed the room and glared at something behind the counter.
“Nothing, just a breeze.”
Robyn frowned. “That was a sneeze.”
Fletcher shrugged. “The neighbour’s cat, maybe.”
Pans skidded across the floor, the sound brash and jolting, followed by a heavy thump.
Robyn’s throat went dry. Not a cat. “Fletcher?”
Fletcher stepped backward, his arms wide. “She says she wants to meet you.”
Robyn backed into the coffee table, sending her tea sloshing out. “Who? What wants to meet me?” Her heart pounded in her chest. “I thought no-one else was here?”
Robyn heard loud breathing and something heavy scraping across the floorboards. “Fletcher?”
“Robyn, meet Eva.”
A bear stumbled out from behind the counter. A goddamn bear.
Robyn felt the coffee table connect with her skull, then darkness.
Something damp snuffled her ear, tickling the hair plastered to her scalp. Coming to with a gasp, Robyn shrieked at the mass of brown fur looming in front of her. The fur shifted, revealing a huge green eye with a dark pupil like a black hole. It hovered for a second then disappeared. Robyn blinked at the empty space before it filled with Fletcher. He scrutinised her.
“A … a bear,” she managed. There was a bear in this boy’s living room.
Fletcher flicked a wary glance over his shoulder. “Eva. I’m still getting used to the whole thing myself.”
The bear loitered near the dining table, snuffling into the rug. Robyn stared as Fletcher propped an arm under Robyn’s armpit and half-dragged her to her feet. Robyn had been upright for all of two seconds before she collapsed into the embrace of a faded recliner. The bear shuffled toward Fletcher and stopped a few paces away, as if sensing her unease. Robyn blinked, assessing the green haze surrounding them. It was how she’d imagined the northern lights would look, a swirling spectrum of light. It wasn’t a colour you could find at a paint store; it was almost … ethereal.
Fletcher and Eva shared a glance. Fletcher seemed uneasy, staring at the bear with almost the same intensity as Robyn.
It’s real. They’re communicating. Robyn dug her fingers into the sides of the couch. “How long have you been joined? Connected?”
“I’ve been dreaming about her for weeks, but this –” Fletcher waved a hand between himself and the bear, “just happened.” He shuffled his feet.
Robyn ran an eye over the enormous animal. A brown bear, the largest terrestrial carnivore in the world. Robyn inhaled at the intelligence she saw behind those forest green eyes. Green. The green light, she couldn’t explain. A mutation couldn’t explain that. What the hell was going on?
“Eva says we can trust you, that you’re going to help us.” Fletcher sighed. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Robyn licked her lips. I can’t just take blood samples and leave. Eva’s silent stare was starting to unnerve her. This bond was beyond anything she’d imagined.
“My research looks at mitochondrial mutations, mutations that might enable humans and animals to communicate.”
Fletcher brightened. “So you know all about this.”
Robyn dug her nails further into the couch. Not exactly. “I can help. I –”
Eva wailed, a long otherworldly screeching sound. Robyn shivered. The bear tensed, bobbing her head and huffing into the air. This is a wild animal, Robyn reminded herself, sinking further into the couch, an unpredictable wild animal.
“She can smell people outside.” Fletcher grabbed Robyn’s hand, his face pale. “We have to go. Right now.”
Robyn struggled to her feet, feeling woozy as if drugged. People? It didn’t make any sense. The edge of her backpack peeked around the couch. Robyn hooked an arm under the strap and followed Fletcher across the room.
Fletcher froze, his bare feet twisting in the rug, and Robyn slammed into his back.
Robyn heard the screech of tyres. Yelling voices. A popping sound.
And again.
The door banged closed as Fletcher disappeared outside, Eva on his heels. Gunfire erupted in earnest.
In the driveway, his Mom’s car idled, two figures slumped over the dashboard. Fletcher didn’t want to look at the car, but his gaze fell on the familiar blue sedan as if it were magnetised. The shattered windows didn’t hide anything. His Mom’s blonde hair covered her face, but his Dad stared forward, unseeing. Fletcher smelled the iron wafting from the dark stains. Blood. So much blood.
No! Everything shuddered to a stop. Fletcher closed his eyes as a weird pressure built behind his eyelids. When he opened them, bright light bathed the surroundings, illuminating the forest. Picking their way through the long grass were dark-clad men with rifles at their shoulders. They seemed to move in slow motion. This isn’t happening. The air hung heavy, sweat mingling with the harsh, acrid, metallic scent of gunpowder.
Eva materialised by his side, green energy fizzling around her.
Twenty men. Eva’s voice, somehow calm, anchored him.
Fletcher heard the swing of the rifles then bullets biting into the gravel. He ducked, hands over his head. His skin crawled with green light.
His mind flooded with the multitude of information pouring in via his senses.
Eva?
Ceasing fire, the line of men advanced. Fletcher curled his fists by his side, heart beating erratically in his chest. They only had the one car, so driving out of here wasn’t an option. If they ran, they wouldn’t stand a chance of outrunning guns. Think. There must be something. His phone was back in the house by his bed, useless. Anyway, the police would never make it in time.
Eva began humming, the song forming a veil around them both. The green light from his skin arced to hers, enveloping them in a green sphere of light. It slowed the mass of input into his brain.
Fletcher extended an arm. The sphere moved with him. The humming intensified as if hundreds of voices had erupted in his head. Swaying, he nearly fell, but Eva nudged him, and the voices quietened as if waiting for him.
Good. You learn quickly. You must be aware of the others, but not let them overwhelm you. Eva watched the line of men.
Others? Fletcher frowned. The voices jumped up a notch in volume.
Who dares threaten the earth walker? said a foreign voice, sharp as flint.
Who dares? hissing voices chorused.
Fletcher swallowed, the green light holding as Eva hummed.
Stop them, he projected, feeling the call reach hundreds of minds.
Stop them. Stop them. Stop them.
The scene in the clearing accelerated back to full speed in a rush. A howl cleaved the air, then another. A sickening, terrified sound. Men disappeared in the long grass one by one. There one second, gone the next. One of the men pivoted like a ballerina, sending a circular burst of gunfire into the field.
Fletcher closed his eyes but could still see everything. Saliva filled the back of his throat as he leapt out of the grass, raking his claws across the man’s throat, slashing at his chest. Thick warm blood coated his jaws. Three bobcats darted in and out of his vision, felling the line of men.
Stop them.
Fletcher blinked and returned to his body. His claws were now fists, yet the metallic taste of blood lingered in his throat. He ached to conquer, destroy, reclaim. He was hungry for it.
The cracks echoed across the clearing. His mind flitted back to the field, and he drew long, ragged last breaths with the bobcats as their hearts stilled. A small knot of men stood in a bewildered huddle. Fletcher heard their screaming, but it was as if he no longer understood English. As the men turned toward the house, the voices clamoured again for space inside his head. Fletcher couldn’t stop them, felt his head droop. Eva bowed before him, scooping him onto her broad back.
He clung to her as the humming faded.
6
Rogue
Robyn shook for a long time, legs drawn up to her chest on the sandy floor of the cave. She’d seen the bodies in the car as she ran, holding Fletcher on Eva’s back. They had to be Fletcher’s parents. A fresh wave of nausea rose in her stomach.
Eva had disappeared over an hour ago, and Fletcher hadn’t moved at all. She’d remembered enough first aid to check his pulse and prop him in the recovery position. Wake up, damn it.
At least his green aura had faded. She thought she’d imagined it back at the house. Fletcher and the bear had been wreathed in it, bloody glowing. Somehow they’d slowed the men down, though she didn’t know how. The screams, she’d never forget the screams.
Robyn rubbed her eyes. God, she was so tired. Her legs ached from the long run beside the bear, but her mind would not rest. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had somehow led the men to Fletcher. That the death of Fletcher’s parents was somehow all her fault.
Kara. She would know what to do.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the return of Eva. The bear dumped two fish at her feet, their mouths puckering open and closed.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
Eva flared her nostrils, kicking a pile of rough wood in the corner.
“Oh.” Comprehension dawned. Robyn stacked wood and kindling and found a sharp stone. Her mind needed a task, any task, even one she was rubbish at.
Fletcher’s moan sent the rocks tumbling from her grasp after twenty minutes of useless striking. A spark skittered onto the dry wood. Robyn nearly screeched in triumph as a tentative flame rose then caught.
“Fletcher, are you all right?” Robyn sent him a glance, afraid to look away from the pile of wood. The boy sat upright, rubbing his left temple.
“Yeah, I think so.” He looked around the now-lit cave. Robyn preened inwardly at her success. Take that, Duke of Edinburgh.
Eva filled the cave entrance, dropping to her knees before Fletcher to nuzzle his chest. Robyn turned away, feeling like an outsider. Kara. She rummaged through her backpack and found her phone.
“Hey, Robyn! Kate told me she dropped you in the deep end.”
“It’s a bit deeper than I expected,” Robyn said. “Listen, I need your help. Or rather, Kate’s hacker friend’s help. Someone else knows about Fletcher.” Robyn took a deep breath as the fear rose again. I could have died today. Would have died a virgin with a shitty half-completed PhD project and only two real friends. “I don’t know what to do,” Robyn whispered, glancing up at Fletcher and Eva. “Fletcher thinks I’ve got this all worked out.” The boy was nodding at the bear, his face calm. Robyn swallowed the bile at the back of her throat.
“Okay, take it down a notch.” Kara’s voice cut through the rising terror in Robyn’s gut. “So you found Fletcher.”
“And his bear, Eva.”
“Wait, what?”
“My crazy theory was right, but other people know about Fletcher too. Men with guns, Kara. They shot Fletcher’s parents. Nearly killed us too.”
“Holy crap. Okay. Leave it with us, Robyn. Stay put; I’ll call you back in a couple of hours. Don’t go anywhere.”
Robyn stared at the phone for a long moment. It didn’t seem possible that Kara’s voice could sound the same when Robyn’s entire world had been upended.
The smell of roasting fish made her stomach rumble.
“Thanks,” Robyn mumbled as Fletcher passed her a skewer. Cracking noises reverberated against the walls as Eva munched on the second fish, raw and bloody. Robyn winced. No intact cartoon skeletons here. Fletcher seemed okay, not quite leaning against the bear’s flank, but close. She swallowed her mouthful and added to the pile of fine bones by her feet. His parents were dead. Robyn closed her eyes. The bloody clearing filled with the scattered bodies of men and bobcats was already permanently seared into her consciousness. She put the skewer down. Would she be able to help him when all she’d brought so far was death? She had to try.
“What exactly happened back there?” she asked after the knot in her stomach eased.
Fletcher looked over at Eva.
“The green light, the men. How did you stop them?”
“I– I channelled the voices. Eva showed me how.” Fletcher waved his fish skewer.
“The voices? Which voices?”
“The animals in the forest. I could hear them; they listened to me.”
Robyn swallowed. Had Fletcher controlled the bobcats? “How?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about now?” Robyn asked. Eva curled up and snorted, sending Robyn’s pile of bones skittering across the floor of the cave.
Fletcher twisted his skewer and closed his eyes. “There’s a buzzing in the back of my mind. You know, when you turn the volume down during the ads but yank it back up for the show? It feels like that.”
“How?” Robyn’s mind whirred with possibilities. Not a single animal, but many? A connection like that was way beyond the scope of her hypothesis.
“I have no idea. It’s all her.” Fletcher pointed to Eva with his fish skewer. The bear’s fur fuzzed with green light for a moment, then shifted back to caramel. “Look, I’m not saying it isn’t freaking me out.” He finished his fish and began drawing patterns with his stick in the sand. “But I know what I saw, what I felt. I … I killed people. Animals sacrificed themselves so that we could get away.”
“I’m … I’m sorry about your parents.” Robyn hated how useless the words sounded. “I didn’t know …” She didn’t know anything, wouldn’t have believed any of this if she hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen Fletcher and Eva. Robyn didn’t finish her sentence, just wrapped her arms around her knees.
Fletcher hunched over the sand. Droplets splattered onto the lines he’d drawn, a circle with a line through it.
“There was nothing you could have done. Absolutely nothing.” Robyn hoped she was getting through. She hated funerals, never knew what to say. Life just seemed to get snatched away when you weren’t expecting it. It was a shitty game with shitty rules.
“I know,” Fletcher said, his voice small.
Robyn desperately wished she could offer Fletcher some answers. “You’re special, unique.” The words slipped out as Robyn rummaged for her folder. She spread out the chromatograms on the sand and jabbed the peaks she’d circled in red pen. “I’ve studied over five hundred blood samples, and yours is the only one with these compounds.”
Fletcher stared at the two peaks, eyes red-rimmed. “What are they?”
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Robyn chewed the inside of her lip. “I have absolutely no idea.”
7
MRI
“Kate. Robyn’s in trouble.” Kara put her head down as she spoke into the phone, powering across the bridge. Morning classes be damned. Students strode past her in loose groups. She picked out a mob of first-year college students, huddled together like wary sheep.
“What, she get lost?” Kate said. “She’s a big girl. Robyn can handle herself.”
Kara hit the tree-lined central avenue, striding past the fancy new chemistry and biology buildings, a mess of hexagons that would make bees cry.
“Nuh uh. She’s got herself in the middle of something big. Where are you?”
“Economics common room. There’s cake.”
Kara shook her head. Of course there was. “Meet me at the ops room in ten minutes.”
Kate spluttered. “It’s bigger than free mud cake?”
“It’s big, Kate. What hacker friend did you invent the other day?”
Kate was silent for a moment. “I had to tell her something. I thought I was helping her.”
“Ops room. Now.”
The dorm basement had been sealed off for over a decade, hidden behind rogue bamboo that no-one could be assed to tame. Kara stepped under the heavy chain and padlock and the CCTV camera poised on the door frame whirred, tracking her. She waved, feeling for the panel inset into the metal door with her other hand. The screen backlit her face in neon blue as she plugged in the eight numbers. The phone number for Fat Tony’s. They did a great thin crust.
The door had barely sealed behind her when Kate accosted her. “What the hell is going on?”
Kara shoved past her sister and dumped her bag by the glowing central wall of monitors.
“You practically shoved her out the door!” Kara said. “Robyn’s not crazy, Kate. These children do exist. She freaking found one.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Kara sank into her chair and wheeled to her station. Screens flickered to life. “She just got caught in the middle of a shoot-out in suburban Durham because of a kid with a bear.”
