The truth is so murky it’s nearly impossible to stare in the eye. I thought I knew her. No matter how much Seneval admired Monroe, I was sure she’d have stood against his plan.
“Stop!” she commands. “Put it down.” In the same moment that I see the gun in her hand, my mind ferrets out the truth. Her face and the timbre of her voice are almost Seneval’s, but not quite. This girl’s forehead is higher, her cheeks rounder. She’s like an echo of Seneval instead of the real thing.
Seneval wouldn’t point a gun at me or hand sixty percent of the population a death sentence. This isn’t the girl who told me not to be a hero because she’d feel bad if something happened to me. This is a stranger, and she’ll kill me if I don’t comply.
It’s too late to replay the scene and do things differently. There wouldn’t have been enough time for Freya and I to do this right anyway. Not with what we’ve been through.
I hear the gun go off.
My left leg jerks out from under me.
I collapse, my right hand still gripping the knapsack and my crippled left wrist smashing on the gravel. Tears spring to my eyes. Pain empties my mind, everything disappearing except the idea that I can’t let go of the bag. The woman with the eerie resemblance to Seneval strides closer, standing over me with the gun. “You don’t understand what you’re trying to get in the way of,” she says adamantly. “Let it go and I’ll let you live.”
“Until the virus kills me,” I rasp, pain chipping into my voice. “Things are already changing. You don’t have to do this. It will be different this time.”
“You can’t promise that.”
When it comes to the future, no one can make any promises. We all know that.
“Seneval.” The impulse to raise her name from the dead lies beyond rational thought. I don’t know where I think it will get me.
The woman flinches. “You knew my sister?”
As soon as she says it, I realize I’d already guessed who she was. Who else but Seneval’s sister would look and sound so much like her. “She was a friend,” I spit out. “She told me about your parents going missing while salvaging and your time in the camps together.” Explaining my admiration for her sister would only sound like a ploy. I can’t think anyway. I’m barely holding on.
“If she truly was a friend you should understand,” the woman says. “This is bigger than us.”
The woman shifts her aim to behind me. I don’t know what’s happening around us. I can’t see anything but her and Isaac, him laid out unconscious in my peripheral vision and Seneval’s sister towered over by wooden carvings exploding with colour. “Stay back!” she yells at someone I can’t see. “I’ll shoot whoever I have to.”
Her gun swings back to my face. I reach up for it with my good hand, ignoring the pain in my left leg as pulsing black spots begin to crowd out my vision. Somebody screams, a high-pitched noise like a squealing train. There are other noises too, indistinct and hazy. Onlookers reacting in ways my overworked senses don’t have a chance to process.
Panic and agonizing hurt are all I can feel now, and neither of them matters. The only thing that counts is that she can’t win.
The guns fires in both our hands. A white raven with red and blue wings breaks free from its crowning place atop one of the totem poles and soars into the sky. Even as I see it I know I must be hallucinating. It’s my right shoulder the bullet hit this time and it feels like fine china shattering underneath a thin covering of skin. My ears are buzzing as the raven makes circles in the sky, leaving contrails in its wake like a jet plane.
This isn’t death. The gunshots I’ve taken wouldn’t achieve that right away, even without a functional Bio-net. But Seneval’s sister will fire another bullet any second now. She’ll have to, because I still won’t let go. And when she does, the white raven will settle back on top of its totem pole and my mind will switch off for good. Or maybe it won’t. Not even the future knows whether there’s life after death.
Another flash of blue yanks my gaze down to earth again—a flurry of movement behind Seneval’s sister. She keels face-down next to me, Freya standing in her former place with the gun in her hand. My eyes burn with wonder. I should’ve known she’d come in time. She always does.
Chest heaving, Freya stares at me, her eyes glinting in the sunlight and her mouth moving frantically. I don’t know what she’s saying; I can’t hear over the buzzing. But I can still see, and there’s only gravel where Isaac’s body should be. I watch him launch himself at Freya, and I howl at the air, unable to hear myself do it. Freya spins to face him, training the gun at his head.
Meanwhile, Seneval’s sister rolls over, pushing herself upwards. It happens slowly, yet in a heartbeat. Maybe she has another weapon with her and thinks she can help take down Freya…I don’t know. The raven’s still looping overhead, its wings casting monstrous, dancing shadows on the ground. The park is darker by the second. Like night falling in mid-afternoon.
But we’re not there yet. Maybe everyone has his or her day, but ours isn’t finished.
I thrust my back off the ground and lunge for the woman’s knees, bringing her crashing down to the earth with me. Agony convulses through my body, midnight fast closing in. I can’t hear the gunshot—I can’t hear a thing except that unending buzz—but there must be one because Isaac drops into the gravel with a hole in his head.
It’s the final thing I see before the raven’s shadow blocks out the sun.
Twenty-One: 1986
The first time I wake up I think I see the director. The one who questioned me at the house out in Surrey or Delta. She’s wearing a long white coat and looking over a chart, so absorbed in it that she either doesn’t know I can see her or doesn’t care.
I don’t know where I am. I’m not awake for long enough to figure it out.
The second time I open my eyes I’m in a hospital bed, a nurse fiddling with my IV and a doctor in scrubs standing over me. It’s so quiet, I wonder if my ears haven’t started working again. Then I begin hearing electronic whirring noises and the quiet tread of the nurse’s shoes across the floor.
The third time I wake up, Freya’s sitting in a chair beside my bed and Dennis is standing by the window, flipping through a magazine. Freya hops up when she sees my eyelashes flutter. At a glance I can see she’s fine and a sense of peace ripples through me. “He’s awake,” she says, leaning carefully over me. My body feels like an action figure that’s had its limbs pulled off and then jammed back into the wrong slots. I’m broken several times over and my brain attempts to register my condition—limbs propped up on pillows, lacerations, breakages, bandages, tubes—before giving up and realizing the physical damage doesn’t matter now.
“What happened?” My vocal chords spit out the words like a rusty nail. “Where are they?”
Freya’s eyes dart to Dennis at the window.
“I’ll be outside with Scott if you need me,” he tells her, his gaze shifting to me as he shuffles towards the door. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before, Garren.” There’s so much regret in his face that I almost feel sorry for him. “I don’t know what to say. We let you down.”
As soon as the door has shut behind him, Freya says, “They’re both riddled with guilt. I don’t even know them—well, I don’t remember that I know them—and they’ve been so nice. They want me to stay at their house until this is over.” She might not remember them with her mind but she’s drawn to them all over again. The uncles she never had. They were there when it counted after all.
I’m too tired to explain any of that or repeat my question; I just wait for Freya to explain what’s going on. “Someone called for help,” she says. “We could hear the sirens getting closer. But before the police or ambulance arrived the U.N.A. snatched Isaac and the woman with him. Them and the backpack.”
But not us. Does that mean what I think it means? And are we safe from the virus?
“Scott said they must have been monitoring police radio,” Freya continues.
“Did they talk to you?” I mumble.
“Not the U.N.A. personnel but the police did. They’re going to want to speak to you too. Dennis and Scott had to help me with them. They told the police I’d been in the hospital with a concussion recently and was having a lot of trouble remembering regular things. Just before the police reached the totem poles, the three of us agreed you should say Isaac and the woman stole your backpack when we were walking in the park. You chased after them and the woman pulled a gun on you when you tried to take it back.”
It sounds suspicious. What was in this backpack that they could want so badly that they’d pull a gun on me in the middle of a tourist-heavy section of Stanley Park? The cops might think I’m dealing drugs. They won’t be able to prove it but if they start digging around in our identities things could get messy. We must be on the missing persons list on the other side of the country.
Nothing I can do about that. Nothing I can do about anything, really. I can’t even move.
“Dennis and Scott?” I prompt, hoping Freya understands what I’m asking without me having to elaborate.
“I told them I was sorry I couldn’t really explain things. They already seemed to understand that from whatever you said to them when I was taken. Some of their friends were visiting from out of town—the ones with them in the park—and Dennis and Scott kept them away from me so they wouldn’t bother me with questions either.” Freya looks at me like she can read my mind. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“You saved my life again,” I whisper, my eyes aching along with the rest of me.
“You saved everyone’s lives, Garren.” No, we both did that, only I’m too exhausted to say anything more. Freya’s face dips in close to me, her blue eyes blurring. She presses the gentlest of kisses into my forehead. It’s the only thing I can feel that doesn’t hurt.
***
For a while I’m not sure when days begin and end. Sometime later the doctor itemizes my injuries, explaining I was lucky the bullet to my leg missed the femoral artery. The other bullet hit my clavicle and fragmented, shattering the bone. During surgery they had to leave some pieces of the bullet in the bone because it would’ve caused more damage to dig them out. My wrist was fractured in three places and had to be realigned in surgery. The bottom line is that I’m going to be in pain for a long time and the recovery process will be slow.
Then the police come, like Freya told me they would. I say the things I’m supposed to say and they stare at me warily, jot down my answers, tell me they’ll be back another day, and then go.
I’m not surprised when the director returns. This time she’s wearing cords and a plaid shirt, like a normal person, and she sits in the chair beside my bed, tugging it closer to me like a concerned relative. “Don’t get up,” she says with a sly smile.
I don’t have the energy to be afraid of her for myself—too much has happened since I last saw her for that. “Did you get it all?” I ask. “Or is there more of the virus out there?”
“We got it. Thanks to you and Freya.” Her brown eyes drill into me. “Both of you should really think about coming to work for us. Freya could be a particularly big help.”
I grunt, my anger at the suggestion fermenting in the back of my throat. “You seem like you’re doing pretty well on your own. I heard the news about President Nelson and the task force.”
The director nods coolly. “It’s a start. We’ve been buying up some crucial multinational corporations too. It’s going to take more than the U.S. government to provoke the sea change we need. But you and Freya—we might not have found Monroe without you.”
“You owe us. You need to leave Freya alone.” My voice is as hot as an Australian bushfire but we both know I can’t make good on any threats. “We still haven’t told anyone,” I add brusquely. “Our friends from the park don’t know a thing. They think all this has some organized crime angle.”
“Good. You might like to know I had your missing persons bulletins erased. Your Ontario past won’t catch up with you. That would’ve been awkward for all of us. In fact, if you don’t want to work for us I’m going to make a suggestion you would be wise to follow.” The director sits forwards in her chair, her hands folded in her lap. “Go get lost in the world. Tuck yourself into some far-flung corner of the globe and let us forget about you and concentrate on our jobs.”
This is everything I hoped the U.N.A. would say. We’ve earned the right to be left alone. But there’s one small problem. “I’d love to. But it looks like it could be awhile before I can go anywhere.” I shift my head to indicate my left wrist and leg, each of them elevated on pillows, safely immobilized so I can’t do any further damage to them. Even when the hospital lets me out there will be months of rehab therapy.
“We know that,” the director says, “and we’re not unsympathetic. But once you can go, you must. The two of you.” The director’s chair scrapes as she rises, pushing it back behind her. “Get well soon, Garren. And thank you. We’re truly grateful to you and Freya. In fact, we’ve put together a little get well fund for you. It should arrive at your friends’ house within the next few days.”
“Wait,” I tell her. The director humours me and stands by my bed as I ask, “How do you know it’s really over? And even if it is, this time, how do you know more of them won’t come through the chute and try again?”
I hate that the director reminds me of Bening, even remotely. But if this is the last time I’m going to see her—and I hope it is—I need reassurance.
The director hesitates, her eyes searching my face. Then she says, “Monroe wasn’t quite dead when we took him. His mind broke when we tried to read him. The process finished him off. We had more luck mining Joelle.” I didn’t know Seneval’s sister’s name until now. Joelle. “It was Isaac who was supposed to be in possession of the virus. The rest of the group were meant to protect him, allowing him a chance to get to Sydney. They’d catch up with him there and he’d hand the virus off to several group members who would ready it for transmission in various countries. But our people in Lake Mackay put up a better fight than Monroe and his group counted on. In the heat of the moment he lost sight of his mission and tried to save his people. The virus ended up in Joelle’s hands instead. They hastily arranged to communicate via a newspaper and when Monroe didn’t show up quickly enough in Sydney, she kept running. Until she saw his ad. That was how she knew to meet him in the park. It wasn’t the first day Monroe had run it, but it was the first day they both made it to the park.”
“Why didn’t she just release the virus herself?” I ask.
“Her chief job was to deliver it. When she left Lake Mackay she wouldn’t have known there wouldn’t be any survivors except her and Monroe. She thought she’d be making more deliveries. But I’m sure Joelle would have released the virus herself in the end. If you and Freya hadn’t found her and Monroe when you did we’d have two sets of the virus to locate.” As the director blinks, her gaze momentarily floating to the window, I notice her eyes are bloodshot. Probably from lack of sleep. “As for the chute, there are so many SecRos on guard at Lake Nipigon now that it would make your head spin. They’ll be monitoring every journey back. Preventing any unauthorized ones. Nobody but our people will get through.”
She smiles at me in a way I almost believe. “Try not to think about it anymore. Live your life.”
Before I can ask whether Bening’s okay or if Monroe’s people left casualties on the Nipigon side of the chute too, the director turns on her heel, abruptly making for the door. I hear it click shut behind her, but it seems like a long time before I drift off to sleep again. I’m on a natural high. Things haven’t turned out how Freya and I planned—there’ll be no Puente Nuevo in our future and one of us has a defective memory while the other’s body is in pieces—but Freya was right. Everything really is going to be okay.
Twenty-Two: August, 1987
I have the same dream every couple of weeks. Freya and I are runni
ng through a strange city, a place I’ve never been. The streets are filled with orange smoke, buildings erupting in flames. The heat from the fires makes our faces sweat and when I wake up from the dream I’m soaked for real. But before I hit consciousness there’s always more. Freya runs so quickly that she becomes a speck in front of me, and when I lose sight of her entirely I know she’s gone for good. I call her name but no sound comes out of my mouth.
In real life I can’t run like I used to. I have a slight limp, even more than a year after the shooting. I probably always will. My right arm is weak and I can only really lift it about halfway, but I’m working on that.
In the dreams, though, I can run like a racehorse, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I can never catch up to Freya. It happens that same way tonight. She disappears off the face of the earth and I wake up in our bed in Cordoba in a pool of sweat, my T-shirt drenched. Sometimes after I’ve had the dream I go to the window and stare out at our street until I feel better. We live in the old part of town, full of narrow streets and stunning ancient buildings. It’s a feast for the eyes and the sight roots me in time and place.
Argentina doesn’t feel like home yet but it’s beautiful and warm like the Mediterranean. When our Spanish is strong enough Freya and I are both planning to attend the National University. There’s plenty of money for that. We could spend the next fifteen years sitting in cafés if we really wanted to.
But the dream…this time when I wake up from it I don’t get out of bed. I lie next to Freya, watching her breathe like I did that morning in the car with Elizabeth behind the wheel. Freya’s memories haven’t returned. The series of hypnotherapists we tried didn’t change that. By now I’ve gone into so many details about the lives we had before she was taken that I think Freya knows everything about us, even that I was pissed off with her for forgetting about the laundry and riding me about giving up cigarettes.
Tomorrow Page 24
