by A. A. Bell
Fisting both hands into her hair, Sanchez submerged herself under the suds, but came up still tense and worried about Mira. She turned her mind to a problem that she could do something about in the meantime: the challenge of getting into Freddie Kitching’s head. So far, only two out of at least seven personas had consistently presented themselves to her: Freddie Leopard and Fredarick, the sage. To her left, on a rickety bathside table, sat a beer mug full of cheap port and the top five pages from the ream of Braille that she hoped would provide her with some insights into the others.
According to his file, Freddie had never learned Braille. And while Fredarick had produced so much ofit, the persona known as Freddie Leopard had openly opposed its use, accusing its teachers of being Nietzschean subjugators — who, according to Freddie, were invisible followers of the philosopher Nietzsche and hell-bent on decrying religion in favour of evolution from human to super-human. Also dedicated to monitoring the thoughts of their minions, the Nietzscheans, he feared, had already accumulated a great cyber-vault of knowledge and were using it to funnel world power into the hands of the select few who deemed themselves to be sufficiently evolved. Freddie’s regular rampages to ‘empower the meek against the strong’ often included sabotage of the Braille keyboards by swapping their keys and other such practical jokes — usually counterproductive to his goals. However, this mindset against ‘tools for Nietzschean domination’ was one of the few things — aside from wearing headphones to feel the vibrations of loud music — in which his other minor personas wholeheartedly supported him. Yet Freddie knew about the play. Did he know Fredarick was writing it in Braille?
Sanchez wiped one hand dry on a nearby towel, hoping the testimonies, as he’d called them, would answer those questions and more. She peeled up the top page, and holding it up to the light, she read a title that she hadn’t noticed earlier: The Butcher’s Surgery.
And soon after, she spotted Mira’s name:
For longer than she cared to remember, Mira Chambers had suffered her worst days after hearing one of three questions whispered on the far side of doors and observation windows.
‘Why bother blindfolding a blind woman?’
‘Why restrain her?’
Or: ‘How much trouble could she be'?’
This morning, though, she had heard all three, and all from the same newcomer.
Sanchez shivered despite the heat of her bathwater. She sat bolt upright, flipped through the next four pages and discovered the rest of an account of Ben and Mira’s first morning together — word for word and action for action — as described in various staff reports that remained confidential. None of them were filed in her office where she’d found Fredarick, but if he could break in there, could he also get into the filing room?
She gulped down a mouthful of port, scrambled to her feet and grabbed the Braille pages. Fumbling to wrap herself in a towel, she hurried downstairs to her office, where she’d left the rest of his testimonies.
There she found a page of his thoughts from his time in the padded room, and more that were dotted with her own name;
Entering the rubber room, Madonna Sanchez took care as she stepped up onto the soft floor, since the heel of her right shoe was four inches taller to compensate for a lack of length in one leg. An elastic knee support also helped, but she gave no greater thought to her own aids, nor to the weakness of her shrivelled left arm which could barely open the door without an extra nudge from her healthy hand. As matron and psychologist, her thoughts were already firmly focused on the client ahead of her.
She chose to leave the door open …
How could he guess all her thoughts so perfectly?
She skipped ahead to the next chapter and found the doctors arriving; skipped ahead again and founda section called The Prophesies of Freddie Leopard. Spotting her name, she also found the mention of a smile that no other person, living or dead, had ever seen, when she played with the whip Neville had given her.
With a trembling hand, she thumbed through the pages, trying to find out what Fredarick knew about Ben and Mira’s disappearance — but found herself in her bath again, hoping her stress would soak away with the dye from her skin.
Panicking now, she flipped through a few more chapters, and found a scene which mentioned a murder. Pages quivered in her hands; torn between flipping forwards or backwards in his timeline for an answer.
PART TEN
Sacrificed for Silence
Better a diamond with a flaw
than a pebble without
Confucius
FORTY
Mira woke in a dry creek bed under a smiling moon. Blue trees towered overhead, but the stony ground felt smooth, like concrete.
Groggy, she touched her face and panicked to realise that she’d lost her sunglasses. Gone was the purple fog of yester-week. She clamped her eyes shut, better able to explore her new surroundings without the confusing distraction of what the place had looked like a hundred years ago.
Fumbling blindly, she found her boundaries: three concrete walls and one of bars. No windows as high as she could reach, but she did find a low ceiling on one side — at the back, she guessed, since that wall was opposite to the one made of vertical bars.
Water pooled in several places across the floor. Exploring the extent of it with her hands in search of a drain, she found a short thick chain attached to the floor by a pair of loose bolts. She followed the chain a short distance to its end and found a foot — a foot with cold toes below a trousered leg. She recoiled and shuffled backwards into a corner.
Laughter cackled at her from the other side of the bars, then two sets of footsteps took her spectatorsaway. She heard a door open and close at the end of an echoing corridor, then silence fell again on her invisible jail cell.
Her head cleared a little more. She rubbed the pain away from her temples and recognised the soft sounds of someone else breathing.
‘Ben?’
‘No, but it’s okay, ma’am. You know me.’ The strained whisper, a male voice, came from the centre of her cell. ‘We met at Serenity while I was assigned to work with Sergeant Hawthorn.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘I’m painfully aware of that.’
Mira rubbed her temple again, barely able to recognise the voice. A vision of his ghost came to her and she matched it with the memory of a young man who’d been polite to her at Serenity. ‘Mr Lockman?’
‘Adam.’ He coughed, as if having trouble clearing his throat.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I’m chained to the floor and ceiling.’ He rocked a little so she could hear the creak of leather cuffs and the chinking of metal. ‘Sorry I couldn’t say anything while Colonel Kitching was here. I needed him to think I was still unconscious. I’ve begun to work these bolts loose.’
‘He hurt you too?’
‘Indirectly.’ He coughed again, but this time it sounded forced, and she noticed a similarity with the strained tone underlying his voice. ‘He ordered someone else to do it.’
‘Who?’
‘Just a soldier. None of that’s important right now. What’s important is cooperation. I’m going to get you out of here, Miss Chambers, so when the time comes, you’ll need to trust me and do exactly as I say. Is that clear?’
Mira frowned and kept her distance.
‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.
‘I’d rather not.’ She edged around the room, listening to him to determine which way he was facing.
‘Rather not say, or rather not cooperate?’
‘Rather not trust you.’
‘You must! Kitching’s coming back soon with some guy who trades organs on the black market — I heard him tell the guard when they put you in here. If we don’t have our act together by then, we could both end up in a chop shop for donor body parts!’
‘Not me.’ She shifted a little more to her left to ensure she was behind him.
‘You have to believe me!’
Not on my l
ife, she thought. She removed the thin sheet of painkillers from her cleavage and set them aside in a corner where she’d be able to find them again. Then she reached down the back of her dress and unfastened the clasp of her bra.
‘What are you doing back there?’
She heard his chains clink as if he was trying to turn to see her.
Sliding her bra-straps down her arms without removing her dress, she managed to get it loose. She hurried over to him and, finding him shirtless, fumbled awkwardly to find his neck.
‘What’s going on?’
She wrapped her bra around his throat, swiftly twisting it to cut off his air supply. ‘My file isn’t marked “Dangerous” for nothing, so don’t try to get free or I’ll break your lying neck.’
‘I can’t …’ he choked.
‘Liar. You can breathe well enough — for now. You can also drop the agony act. I know agony and you’re not it.’
‘I can’t … breathe.’
She tightened her grip to make sure of it. ‘Newsflash, Mr Lockman: I can hear when people are lying to me — or, in your case, not telling the whole truth. So when I release this again, you’d better start singing like poet trees in a breeze, or Colonel Kitching and his soldiers will be the least of your worries.’
He nodded and she gave him the promised slack.
He coughed, and this time it sounded genuine. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Where are we?’
‘The laboratory at Sandy Creek.’ He turned his neck a little to the left to get extra breathing space. ‘Inland, a little over an hour’s flight from Likiba.’
‘Feels more like a dungeon.’
‘This is a coldroom where they keep experimental drugs and medications.’
‘With bars?’ She tightened her grip a little again as a warning.
‘Not for prisoners — not usually. Kitching can’t jail us officially because of all the paperwork that goes with it. So he’s stashed us here. The bars are to keep unauthorised personnel out, which is also why they’ve had to restrain me like this. The hinges on the door can be levered open from the inside.’
‘You’ve already tried to escape?’
He nodded. ‘The hard part was getting back in.’
‘What? Why would you do that?’
‘Long story. Kitching sent me here for interrogation, and I’m not lying when I say it wasn’t pleasant, but —’
‘Sounds like a half-truth.’
‘Bet your ass, ma’am. That’s an understatement. The colonel authorised the use of drugs on me, as well as a few other nasty techniques that I won’t discuss with a lady. They were trying to force a confession out of me for killing the sarge, but I caught a lucky break and escaped. I contacted General Garland — that’s Kitching’s commanding officer — and she told me to get back here. So now I’m the spider in the web, laying a trap for him. You can either believe me or not, but that’s the way it is.’
Suspiciously, Mira mulled over his explanation for any further hint of a lie or half-truth. ‘Now explain why the floor’s wet,’ she said.
‘Kitching threw a bucket of water over me to test if I was conscious before they put you in here. Can’t say which was the bigger surprise, though — you or the water.’
Mira slid the makeshift garrotte from his neck and patted his shoulder. ‘I’m not especially pleased to be here either.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Greed, I think.’
She slumped into the corner and buried her face in her hands, knowing she was guilty of that sin too. Greed for freedom had boiled within her for so long it had become a poison.
‘Ben,’ she said, aching for him, ‘is dead because of me.’
Sanchez snatched up her phone and dialled Ben’s home. She had to know if what she was reading in Fredarick’s manuscript was true or not. Had Ben really been shot? Was Mira now in a cell on the Sandy Creek military base?
Ben’s home phone didn’t answer, and neither did the line for Kitching’s secretary. A glance to her clock revealed a possible reason: it was nearly midnight. She clicked off the receiver and dialled again, this time internally.
‘K-ward,’ answered Steffi Nagle, sounding flustered.
‘Sanchez here. Wake Freddie for me — I’m on my way over.’
‘Wish I could, Matron. He’s spanked the planks.’
‘He’s what?’
‘Done a runner. He’s not in his room. He was in there at lights out — I saw him snoring — but I checked on him again on the hour and he’s totally out of there. He’s made his bed, emptied his fridge and swiped his toilet roll. I’ve had teams searching every hall; I was just about to call you.’
‘Well, ping his GPS!’
‘We did. Phoebe has it in her room, so we pinged hers and found it with Joan, then Joan’s with Petal. This is obviously premeditated. But it’ll be impossible to sort out properly until we get everyone together in the hall at breakfast. Unless you want me to gather them sooner?’
‘Yes.’ Sanchez rubbed her forehead. ‘Wake everyone now, Steff, in every ward, unit and villa. Let me know if Freddie turns up in the shake-out.’
She hung up, pushed aside the woollen mat on the floor and opened the trapdoor. The cellar was lit by a single flame standing on top of a wine barrel, yet she knew from two of her other staff that Freddie hadn’t been there and all seven flames had been extinguished when she’d sent them to check the cellar after the matinee play.
‘Freddie?’ she called as she descended the ladder. ‘Fredarick? Is anyone down here?’
Nobody answered except the mesmerising flame, which continued to beckon her.
Under its bottle was a folded note in Braille. It was too dark to read visually in the poor light, so she used her fingertips.
No cheating, Miss Matron. Take the flame and go back until you know where to find me.
‘Fredarick?’
Her only answer was the soft whisper of her own echo.
* * *
‘Why would Kitching kill a civilian?’ asked Lockman.
‘Because I saw him kill Sergeant Hawthorn in the alley and Ben knew —’
‘Hold it!’ Lockman’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He’s coming. Stay behind me and keep your head down. No arguments, please. For this to work, I have to lure him close to me.’
Mira nodded but curled her bra close to her chest, forming her own plan.
She listened to the sound of three sets of boots approaching. Three sets; she re-counted to be sure, wondering if the newcomers would be blind to the loosened bolts and chains that were supposed to be holding Lockman.
The footsteps stopped near their cell.
‘Hello, Mira,’ Kitching called. ‘Guess who?’
His attitude triggered her belligerence. ‘Come closer. I’ll bite your head off.’
One of his companions chuckled, his laugh reminding her of a kookaburra.
‘I’d love to see you try,’ Kitching said. Keys clanked, the door creaked and her blood pulsed hotter in her veins. ‘Get up and come here,’ he said.
Mira shook her head and curled herself into a ball.
‘I said come here!’
Boots entered the cell. Two sets.
‘I warned you about not cooperating!’
Mira turned her face towards his voice and sneered. ‘Ben warned me too. He said my demons would follow me until I learned how to face them.’
‘Is that so?’
He stepped closer. Chains clanked, another man yelped, and Kitching grunted as he fell face-first against her chest. Air burst up from her lungs, and with it all the pain of losing Ben and her parents. She snapped her bra around Kitching’s throat then swiftly tightened it.
‘Mira, no!’ Lockman cried as Kitching struggled helplessly in her lap. Then he was scuffling and struggling with his own problem, the kookaburra, she hoped. He wasn’t laughing now; she heard boots running away.
Kitching scratched and clawed at Mira’s face, choking, gasping and growin
g swiftly more desperate, but Mira drew on a strength she hadn’t known she had. Her muscles grew so tense they became numb and she kept the pressure on until the numbness consumed every part of her.
‘Mira Chambers, stop!’ Lockman shouted. She heard more wild scuffling and a chain snapped. ‘Don’t become him!’
Never, she thought. I want him to become me. Her subconscious lifted free of her body and, as though in a dream, she saw herself looking down on the scene. She felt disjointed. Surreal. And totally liberated. In her hands she now held a life, but that life was her own. She no longer needed his.
She rejoined her body and leaned close to Kitching’s ear. ‘You want to know what I see, Colonel? Come into the dark with me.’
A body hit the ground beside her.
‘Mira, no!’ Lockman was there too, his voice desperate, his hands clawing at hers, trying to pull Kitching away from her. ‘You must let him go!’ She relaxed her grip and shoved Kitching’s head aside.
‘Death is too kind,’ she agreed. ‘He deserves to be locked up and remember what freedom used to be.’
Within moments the cell was full of invisibles — a medic and a team of military police who hustled her outside. For Mira and for the trio of blue kangaroos she could see camped nearby, it was dark. At the same time, she sensed the glare of floodlights and her head ached from their brightness. But she didn’t close her eyes to ease the pain. Those blue storm clouds were brewing beyond a long line of mountains that echoed with familiarity. She traced the jagged horizon with her finger and recognised it as the reverse image of the mountain range she had traced for Ben from the veranda of her favourite poet tree. She was deep inland now, on the range’s other side.
‘I’m a victim too!’ she heard Kitching complain a short distance away. ‘He blackmailed me! Threatened to hurt my brother! He’s the black marketeer! Lock down the base or he’ll get away!’
