GLAZE

by Kim Curran

  With each step closer to the double doors I start to feel lighter. We’re going to do it. We’re going to walk straight out of here.

  A security guard even opens the doors for us. I smile at him, trying not to giggle. Ethan and I grin at each other as we wind down the ramp and onto the nearly empty street.

  A hand lands on my shoulder. Catherine stands behind me, her head tilted, a smile cutting across her face. ‘Oh, Petri, did you think it would be that easy?’

  Her fingers tighten on my shoulder, her long nails cutting into my flesh.

  ‘Run,’ I shout at Ethan. ‘Run.’

  I try to step away, but Catherine’s hold is too tight. She grabs my wrist with her other hand, her fingers digging into my flesh.

  ‘You little bitch,’ Catherine hisses at me. ‘You’re coming back with us.’

  ‘No, leave me alone.’ I try to shake her off, but she’s too strong.

  Ethan pulls Catherine away with such force that she falls to the floor, hitting her head against the curb. It’s a moment of such total relief that I laugh out loud, despite the ugly cut on her temple.

  My laugh is silenced as Ethan turns to me, his head swivelling slowly, followed by his shoulders, body and, finally, his feet grinding against the concrete.

  ‘No one is running anywhere,’ he says, softly.

  He reaches for my throat with one hand and strokes my windpipe with his callused thumb. He pulls me towards him. I think, I hope, he’s going to kiss me.

  He starts to squeeze.

  28

  ‘THERE’S NO ESCAPE,’ he says, wrapping his other hand around my neck.

  I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. His grip gets tighter and tighter. Lights dance around the edge of my vision, which is getting darker with every second.

  I stare, unbelieving, into Ethan’s eyes. They’re glassy, like someone accessing Glaze.

  ‘Please,’ I try to say, my lips forming the words but no sound coming out. ‘Please.’

  He squeezes even tighter, his lips curled back in rage.

  Panic takes over. I lift my knee up as swiftly as I can, aiming between his legs. He grunts and his grip loosens enough for me to stagger away. I clutch at my throat, gasping for air. Ethan is bent over, one hand on his knee. I’m hit with guilt over the pain I have caused him.

  Then his head snaps up and he stares at me again. Those aren’t his eyes. They’re dark and filled with menace. He means to kill me. Another step back and I trip over Catherine’s outstretched leg and land on the pavement, hard. Ethan is coming for me again, slowly, unstoppably. I scrabble around on the floor behind me, looking for something, anything to defend myself with. My fingers close over a stone. I tighten my hand around it and look from it to Ethan.

  He’s nearly on me now. I close my eyes and throw the stone at him with all my strength. Maybe it will buy me enough time to escape.

  The stone bounces off his chest. He looks down at it, distracted for a moment, then back to me. He smiles, a crooked, broken smile that I don’t recognise.

  And he jumps.

  His weight presses down on me, knocking what little air I had left out of my lungs. He hisses in my face; more creature than man. His hands feel for my cheeks, and his thumbs find my eyes. I thrash, kick, bite, do whatever I can. But I can’t move his weight. I feel pressure on my eyelids and kaleidoscope colours appear beneath the thin skin. This is it. This is how I’m going to die. Killed by the boy I thought was going to save me. By the boy I thought I loved.

  Ethan howls in pain and I hope that my flailing limbs have finally connected. He goes limp and I roll him off me, finally opening my aching eyes. He’s lying on the floor, thrashing, his body jerking in wild spasms. Pinkish foam bubbles at his mouth and his eyes have rolled back showing only white.

  I want to help him. I want him to die.

  It’s only then that I see the girl standing over us both. She’s dressed entirely in black, so she looks like a shadow against the low, winter sun. A silver stud glints above her smile.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Petra,’ Corina says.

  ‘Petri,’ I choke back.

  ‘Whatever,’ she says. ‘Well, don’t sit there all day.’ She reaches out her hand and yanks me to my feet, more impatient than kind. ‘We need to get you off the street.’ Her head jerks left and right, eyeing up the flow of traffic and the few pedestrians approaching. They look curious about why there are two people lying on the ground and a woman in a wheelchair.

  ‘Damn, they’ve spotted us. We have to move. Now.’ She yanks my arm.

  ‘I can’t leave him,’ I say, looking down at Ethan. He’s stopped fitting now and is lying unconscious, spit trailing out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘He would have killed you if I hadn’t stopped him.’ She holds up what I take to be a homemade taser. The end glows with a bright blue light.

  ‘That wasn’t him.’ Do I know this, or do I want it to be true so badly I’m making myself believe it? There’s an idea, a terrible idea, scratching away at the corner of my mind, but I refuse to let it in. No, I’m not going to believe I’ve lost Ethan. He was taken away from me once already. I’m not going to let him go again.

  ‘It sure looked like him. We have to leave. Come on.’ Corina pulls at my arm again, not taking her eyes off the people who are coming closer. Catherine moans and rocks her head back and forth.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without him.’ I shake off her arm.

  I hear the rumble of the engine first; a low purr, like a caged animal. Then a bright yellow MPV rolls around the corner and pulls up next to us.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Corina shouts, yanking open the passenger door.

  ‘You told me to jack some wheels. These are wheels,’ the driver replies. It’s Shank. The boy with the dark eyes and the shark smile.

  Corina mutters swear words under her breath as she races around to his door and pulls it open. ‘Slide over,’ she says.

  There’s a muffled complaint from Shank as he clambers over the gear stick and into the passenger seat.

  ‘Are you getting in?’ Corina says, leaning across him.

  The people are a less than a hundred yards away. Catherine’s starting to wake up.

  ‘Not without Ethan,’ I say.

  Corina sighs, loud and impatient. ‘OK, get him in. But fast.’

  She shoves Shank out. Grumbling, he slides open the door and helps me bundle Ethan inside. I then turn to Zizi who’s been sitting silently all this time.

  ‘No freaking way,’ Corina shouts. ‘We’re not taking her.’

  ‘But she’s my mother.’

  ‘No adults,’ Corina answers, revving the engine.

  ‘Believe me, if you knew her, you’d know she was no adult.’

  The crowd are nearly on us. They’re shouting, asking what we’re doing. Catherine is struggling to get up, but she’s still dizzy from the blow.

  Corina swears. But I take it as agreement and drag Zizi out of the wheelchair. She’s so light I hardly need the help of the boy. Together, we lay her on the back seat of the van and I pull the wheelchair in after me. Catherine pulls herself to her knees and lunges for me. Her long nails scrape across my leg as Corina releases the brake and we screech away.

  ‘Stop them,’ Catherine shouts, sprawled on the floor. ‘They’re stealing a patient.’

  I slide the door shut as we fly past the crowd of people. They thump their fists against the van and the noise of things being thrown against the back window rings loudly. I look through the back window as they shout and rage after us. Catherine is helped to her feet and stands at the centre of them, her eyes staring after me, black and dark.

  I try to fasten my seat belt on as we take a tight turn, but my hands are shaking too much, so I let it go. It clatters as it retracts back into the holder. Ethan slides across the seat and hits his head against the wall with a thunk. I should secure him, but I’m too frightened to touch him.

  Corina lets the steering wheel spin through her
hands as the van swerves across two lanes of traffic. It’s been years since I’ve been in a vehicle with someone actually driving and I wonder why anyone ever did it. It seems too hectic. So completely out of control. The black box that usually connects the van’s controls to Glaze has been wrenched free of the steering column. Blue and red wires spill out like guts.

  ‘Zip him,’ Corina says, taking her hand off the wheel to reach inside her jacket. She throws a handful of long black wire ties over her shoulder.

  I scrabble to pick them up and then look down at Ethan. In sleep, his face is soft and peaceful, all his usual anger gone. He looks so young.

  I wrap a tie around his wrists. It makes a buzzing sound as I pull it tight. I do the same with his ankles, then sit back in the soft leather seat.

  ‘And bag her,’ Corina shouts over her shoulder.

  ‘What her?’

  ‘Cover her eyes with something. She’s chipped, right?’ Corina looks back at me in the rear view mirror. I nod. ‘Then she’s broadcasting.’

  I look around for something to blindfold my mother with. Then remember what Catherine said. She can’t even blink. I reach over the back seat and place my thumbs over her eyelids and gently guide them closed. The action reminds me of Ethan’s attack and makes me shiver.

  ‘What happened to him,’ Shank says, twisting around in his seat to look at us.

  ‘Looks like he went Metro,’ Corina says.

  ‘Metro?’ I say, and the origin of that word comes back to me. ‘You mean what happened to those people at Baker Street station? They said it was toxic gas.’

  ‘You didn’t buy that cover-up bull did you?’ Shank throws his arm over the back of the seat. ‘Geez, you’s dumb.’

  ‘All right, smart arse,’ I say, the insult stinging. ‘Who was it then? A gang of terrorists?’

  ‘It was one girl,’ he says, holding up a gloved finger. ‘Thirteen, maybe fourteen. And one day, on her way to school, she brought a gun on to the underground and in the middle of a packed train: brap, brap, brap.’ He mimes pulling a trigger with his finger, shooting it over and over, finishing by turning around in his seat and pointing it at my head. He blows imaginary smoke off the top of his finger. ‘No one got out alive.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I saw it all when I hacked the transport authority account,’ Corina says. It appears she found a little more than just how to change the display times.

  ‘But the news said terrorists released a gas that sent everyone mad.’

  It had the only thing the channels had reported for weeks. Broadcasting images of emergency personnel in bright orange hazmat suits bringing out body bag after body bag. I’d had nightmares for weeks and had refused to take the Underground for months. There was a reason ‘going totally Metro’ was a phrase. We had to joke about it to make it bearable.

  ‘That’s because he owns the media,’ Corina says, pointing up at the roof emphasising the word he, like she’s pointing to God. ‘Couldn’t have the truth being reported, now could he? That the chip can send you crazy.’

  ‘The chip?’

  Corina shakes her head. ‘Wow, are you really this naïve? Of course the chip. What do you think sent Ethan mental? And he said you were bright. This is what it does to people who resist it. Who don’t comply!’

  I remember what Max had said to me, about what happened when the chip was used on under-age kids. Shocking side effects he’d said. He hadn’t even bothered lying. And I can guess who would have been responsible for coming up with the terrorist story to feed to the press. My mother. The PR queen.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

  ‘Well, you know one thing,’ she says, guiding the car to a halt and killing the engine. ‘You just don’t know you know it. And that’s the only reason you’re here.’ She taps at her head.

  We stare at each other. Me, trying to find the words to explain that there’s no way to get back Logan’s message. That my chip is gone and with it any hope I had of picking up his slide. Her, like I’m a puzzle to solve. Not a person. Not an actual human sitting in a stolen car, with her mother and boyfriend unconscious beside her.

  Although he’s not unconscious any longer. He’s stirring.

  I slide away from him, pushing my back further against the window of the car, acutely aware of how small it is in here.

  He coughs, blinks his eyes open. He looks around the van, his brow creased in confusion. Then he sees me.

  The worry vanishes from his face and is replaced with a smile. ‘Petri.’

  I don’t move. Not yet. I’m still not sure who he is.

  ‘Petri, you’re here. How are...’ He shifts awkwardly and then looks down at his bound hands and feet. ‘What’s going on? And… my feed.’ His expression is puzzled: his eyebrows drawn together. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘I fried your chip when I zapped you,’ Corina says.

  ‘When you what’ed me?’

  ‘Zapped you. You tried to kill Little Miss Know-Nothing there and I had to stop you.’

  ‘I what? I would never, I couldn’t.’ He reaches out to me and I flinch, my hand instinctively going to my bruised throat.

  He withdraws his bound hands and looks at them like they don’t belong to him.

  ‘I don’t think being on Glaze agreed with you.’

  His cheeks have lost their usual red tinge and he looks like he might be sick. ‘Maybe. But do we really need this?’ He raises his hands, straining at the plastic ties. ‘It’s me.’

  Corina looks to me for a decision. Ethan’s eyes are clear again. Whatever darkness had possessed him is gone. I nod.

  Shank reaches into his jacket and pulls out a black handle. With a snick a blade flicks out. He leans over and slices through the bindings.

  Ethan rubs at his wrists and looks at me, a weak smile on his face. I force myself to return it.

  ‘OK, if you two lovebirds have made up, can we get back to the topic? That information. I need it.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For the cause.’

  ‘What cause?’ I say. ‘There’s no cause left. There’s nothing left worth fighting for. Don’t you see? It’s too late. Everyone is on Glaze and they’re happy.’ There was no point in fighting it.

  ‘They’re sheep.’

  ‘They’re wolves,’ I say. ‘Moving in packs. It took me a while to realise what was going on, but when I was chipped I saw it. How the cliques formed and grew, drawing people in and binding them together. Like with like.’

  ‘Keeping people who didn’t agree away from each other so there would be no conflict,’ says Ethan. ‘Like he did with T-Raz.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say.

  ‘From conflict comes change,’ Corina says, quoting her rebel manifesto. ‘The old order.’ She holds up one fist. ‘The opposing order.’ She holds up a second. ‘A new order.’ She brings her fists together in a clashing thud. ‘Conflict is life. Without it, everything stagnates and dies. And that’s what they want. To keep us happy and content and unquestioning.’ She spits the words like they offend her.

  ‘That’s all I wanted, too. To be happy and content. To be a part of it.’

  ‘And now?’ Ethan asks.

  ‘Now…’ Tears sting my eyes. ‘Now, I know too much.’

  ‘Knowledge is a curse, yo,’ Shank says with such a theatrical sigh that I find myself laughing through the tears.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Corina says, flicking Shank in the ear. ‘The information Logan sent you, what was it?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. My chip never worked so I never saw what it was.’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything?’

  ‘Not really. He was kind of distracted by the hole in his chest.’

  ‘Petri, try and think,’ Ethan says. ‘There has to be a way to find that message.’

  ‘Why? Why does there have to be a way? I used to think that, you know? That if you wanted something enough you could find a way to get it. But
life doesn’t always work out like that. Sometimes, it’s better to let things go.’

  A police car speeds past, its sirens wailing. Corina and Shank duck down in the front seat. We wait, listening to the Doppler effect taking place as the sound diminishes in the distance.

  ‘I don’t believe you for a second, Petri,’ Ethan says, quietly. ‘You’re the most tenacious person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘And look how that’s worked out. For me and anyone I’ve touched. Look at Zizi. And Logan. I did that,’ I say, between the gulping sobs. ‘I got him and his friends killed. I have their blood on my hands.’ I shake my hands at him, wanting him to somehow tear the flesh off them. To take all the pain away. Instead, he pulls me into a hug. ‘Even his stupid dog,’ I say, some of my anger seeping away from me and into Ethan’s embrace. ‘I even killed the dog.’ The image of Proxy, her skull crushed, flashes before my eyes with a tiny detail I never took in before. A tiny glint of metal amid the bone and blood. An idea comes to me.

  I push myself away from Ethan. ‘There might be a way,’ I say, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘But I need to get to Logan’s flat.’

  29

  CORINA STARTS UP THE VAN again and pulls out into the traffic, heading east. She didn’t ask why I needed to get to Logan’s. Maybe she’s already guessed my plan.

  Shank, however, is not so happy to trust me. ‘What you want at Logan’s, then?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’ I have no idea if my plan will work. I’m trying to sound confident rather than terrified.

  Shank kisses his teeth in response. ‘Be all mysterious then.’

  Ethan smiles, warm and encouraging. But I can tell he knows I haven’t a clue what I’m doing. I can’t remember the last time I did.

  A man in a sleek black sports car pulls up next to us, his hands stroking the faux-leather steering wheel, even though he’s not the one in control of the car. He turns and scowls through the window. Whether it’s at Corina, because she’s clearly too young to be driving, or Ethan in the back seat, his eye puffy and purple from where I hit him, I don’t know. His eyes meet mine through the tinted glass. I’ve never been looked at with so much hatred in my life.