Soul and Blade

by Tara Brown

  I’m falling, just for a second. It isn’t like landing in the mind of a person who doesn’t expect me; it’s much more turbulent this time, like an invasion.

  Walking down the torchlit hallway the new bot is programed for me to see is not something I’m excited about. It’s dank and it smells. It’s always dank here. His world stinks.

  I walk to a door with a light making an outline around it, like the other side of the hallway is bright, compared with this place. I press against the door, pushing it open slowly and peeking around the edge. I’m exactly where I expected to be.

  The photos Angie showed me have made a perfect picture and hopefully he doesn’t know I’m here.

  I slink past the door, stepping into the light of day in a slum-like place. It’s something I haven’t seen in a long time. I glance at the street, wondering where to start, if he has seen me yet. Or sensed the game is afoot.

  This isn’t a regular mind run. I’m alert and aware of who I am, not trying to convince Rory I’m him or to persuade him to let me into his world or share memories with him. This is all meant to trick him with an interactive bot that will change the scene we are in, in response to Rory’s memories so he will take me to the brothel in the mountains.

  I creep from the shadows and down the road. His house should be here, on the right. He showed it to her once, Angie. He took her here and let her see his house, above the cleaners on Clowney Street.

  The name makes me think of pedophiles picking up kids.

  The houses are rather small—row houses, with one window on the main floor and one window up top. They have small doors and tiny gates. The alleys have barred doors on them and everything is so little I feel a bit lost.

  Northern Ireland was not peaceful when I became a spy, but it was peaceful enough that I didn’t ever spend much time here.

  Clowney Street shows the parts that weren’t quite peaceful enough in murals and graffiti on the brick walls. The hunger strike of ’81 is depicted in a mural and the riots of ’69. There is an old mural with something about 350 years of occupation and 350 years of resistance. It’s about the strangest thing I have ever seen.

  I hurry along the concrete of the narrow street, passing the UPS storefront and another before stopping at the cleaners.

  It’s at the end, the shitty end.

  But the door is locked.

  I stand there, waiting for a moment, before a small boy appears. He’s skipping and licking a lolly. He stops when he sees me, looks back behind him, and then at me. “Who are ya?” His accent is thick, but I would recognize those dark-blue eyes anywhere.

  “I’m a friend of yer ma’s.” My accent is not so amazing. I can speak many languages, but mimicking the Irish accent always turns to Scottish for me.

  He cocks an eyebrow. His little face is dirty and sticky. He hasn’t changed much, apart from the fact he’s a boy and still innocent of the evil I know him to have. “My ma died.” He says it matter-of-factly.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He is dubious. “Ya know the sisters then?” He turns and points at a church. “My ma always loved the sisters—maybe not these ones, though.” The second part is whispered.

  I close my eyes a second and instantly I am a sister. My costume is a nun’s habit, but one of the ones for younger women with the shorter skirt and all-white headdress. “I am one of them, Rory. I came to take ya back home. To the better sisters.”

  He lifts his hand, trusting me straightaway.

  That frightens me a bit. No child should take the hand of a stranger. I take his small, sticky hand in mine and squeeze gently. “Ya must be getting hungry. I’m fairly glad it was ya I found.”

  He scowls. “Who the heck did ya think ya might find?”

  “The other you. The one who scares me,” I whisper, hoping my nun costume is putting him at ease and not triggering a ripple so grown-up Rory senses anything. “I was hoping I would just find you. So I could ask you some questions.”

  “After we eat?” he asks, like every street urchin might.

  “After we eat,” I confirm and lead him to the convent. I imagine it’s filled with nuns, all kind and sweet, but I don’t control the memories here. I control me. It’s a different sort of run. “Where is the other Rory? The older one?”

  He turns his little face up to mine and he shakes his head. “He never comes here.” I open the door and find that inside is what I feared it might be. It’s not nice or homey. It is most definitely not the place I grew up, with people loving you and caring for you. It’s gray—like everything, including the furnishings, is indifferent to you.

  This is a special place for children no one wants in the land of no birth control or abortions, but heaps of judgment. Add to that the fact Belfast is incredibly impoverished, and you have a perfect storm. Too many children no one wants and no money to feed them.

  A red-faced woman storms to him, taking his ear in her hand. “Where did ya steal that lolly from, ya little brat?” She tosses him aside, making him drop the lolly. She kicks it to the corner, shouting at him and whacking him in the side of the head. “God is watching you, Rory. And he will never forgive the sins you have committed.”

  I want to defend him but that might make a ripple.

  So I stand there, watching her hurt him.

  “God doesn’t love boys who don’t live his word.”

  Rory sobs and stares at his broken lolly lying on the dirty wooden floor. “I got it from the lady at the cleaners. I swear to ya. I never stole it.”

  He has just finished the sentence when the lady hits him again. “Yer mother was a sinner and yer father was a sinner and you won’t ever be anything but a sinner.” She hits him until he’s sobbing and then storms off to “deal” with another kid.

  I cannot believe the difference between this and the life I lived.

  “Thank you.” I look up to the ceiling and smile. God and I have differing opinions on a few key items, but we both agree he took care of me. I believe in the part of the story where God carries you. And I believe the people who work here are Godless.

  I hurry to Rory’s side, taking his hand. “Let’s get ya cleaned up.” I turn and pull him to the bathroom, hoping he’s going to feel better with a wash and a kind word.

  He sniffs and shakes a little, but he isn’t scared of me. It’s weird. He should be. I’m one of them. But he isn’t. He wasn’t born an orphan like these kids. He had parents at one point, like I did.

  The bathroom is dirty, everything is gray. Ash and soot sort of gray. Like they burn coal right in the rooms to heat them all. I don’t know what to think. I never saw it this way. The place Angie told me about, Rory’s orphanage, was wonderful. The pictures were bright and cheery, not desperate and scary like this place. But he is a liar, so maybe his good childhood was also a lie.

  I grab a crisp paper towel and dampen it, softening it. I rub his face and wipe his tears, all the while looking in his eyes. “God loves you, Rory. He loves all children. The sins of the father are not the responsibility of the son.”

  “What about the sins of the mo—mother?” He sniffs.

  “No. That is all wrong. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I know God very well. My ma and pa died when I was yer age, and I lived with the nuns and the priests and they were kind to me. They treated me with love and respect and taught me that God loved me, and that even a silly little orphan catches the eye of God. Just like the sparrow.”

  “Ya believe that?” His eyes are still filled with tears, but there is hope behind it all.

  “I do.”

  He smiles and I can’t help but laugh at the goofy grin on his face. He is not a monster yet. He’s a baby still.

  We sit in the old decrepit bathroom, me hoping for a moment of lucidity from him. “Where is yer room?” I ask.

  He frowns and scoffs. “I sleep in the roo
m we all sleep in. It’s a bunk room.”

  “Do ya like it, being with all the other boys?”

  “Naw. They’re all mean. It’s not like home here. I miss my ma and pa. I miss every bit of our old house. It was over a couple streets, where I met ya. My ma had a little garden and there was grass in the backyard. I had my own grass and a fence.”

  “How old were ya when they died?”

  “It was last year. I was seven.”

  I know they died in an IRA-related incident so I don’t ask about it. “I’m very sorry, Rory.”

  He shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt me as much as it hurts him.” He nods at the wall. I turn back, scared Rory is there, but he’s not. No one is. “Who?” I ask.

  “The other me. He’s too sad to come here, ever.” His eyes darken almost as they widen. “Wanna know a secret?”

  I nod.

  “Promise not to tell anyone?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  He swallows and looks around. “He found something that makes the hurt go away. A bad man came and showed him how, and he never comes here now.”

  I was sort of expecting the bad man but still not liking that I have struck gold. “Where is the bad man?”

  He puts a finger to his lips. “We can’t talk about it. Ya can follow me tonight, when the sisters are sleeping. I’ll take ya.”

  I lift my pinky finger, and he wraps his tiny digit around mine. I shake and get up, creeping from the bathroom and back out onto the street, leaving him there until later. There are still no people milling about or even walking up the roads. As silent as a grave.

  10. BELLE OF BELFAST

  Walking around the streets, I get a bit turned around. Firstly, these memories are linked directly to Rory’s memory from when he was little, so they are old. And secondly, they are based on the mind of a child, so they repeat. His world used to be quite small.

  I pass the same chocolate shop three times before I even realize each shop looks more than just similar to the last one.

  He’s being led through a flash of his childhood that he once revealed while under hypnosis. Angie was the only person there, so she remembered it perfectly, and fortunately had a recording of it. Of course he spoke highly of it all.

  Either way, it works to our advantage. Angie believes that if I can persuade “Rory the little boy” to help me stop “Rory the monster,” then we might find out exactly what went wrong. Where he went astray in his life.

  She has created what she considers the most intense dreamscape ever. It leads from his childhood to his teenage years in the gangs of Belfast and eventually the IRA.

  She explained to me how his parents’ lives had changed everything for him. They had believed in the IRA’s cause, participating in the bombings in the ’80s, resulting in the deaths of many innocent people. They themselves died during their terrorist activities, leaving poor Rory an orphan.

  Rory himself had been part of the Manchester bombing in 1996. I vaguely recall the details of the day. I know more than two hundred people were injured, but luckily none died. When he got caught for being a terrorist, he became a narc for British intelligence at only sixteen. He ended up in the British military and then MI6, where I met him.

  Angie is hoping she can trigger the memories using subliminal messaging and repetition to change the scenery in his mind, giving me a couple of days in each part of his psyche.

  I am not so hopeful.

  I have a terrible feeling Rory was never much of a good guy except as a little boy, but Angie has to have hope. She spent a lot of years in love with him.

  The road ends and I turn around to go back, when something catches my eye. It’s a boxing ring. I walk to it, taking the side path to the dusty old windows. I peek inside, seeing boys boxing. None of the few rings is clean or nice. It’s part of the gray that is Belfast in Rory’s head.

  “Don’t go in there,” a voice whispers from behind me. I turn, expecting something scary like Rory as an adult, but I see it’s only little Rory. His eyes are wide. “That’s where the bad kids go to learn to fight. They train so they’re ready to fight the English for the next uprising.” He looks from side to side before he whispers again, “All the bad kids from the boys’ house go there.”

  I offer him a hand. “Then we won’t go inside.” I feel like a character from The Sound of Music. I even speak softly when I talk to him, like a Disney princess would.

  “We have to hurry. I saw some shadows, and that’s always a bad thing,” he says and runs down the road, dragging me with him. “The shadows are always watching me. They’re with him, the bad one. They peek around the corners and scare me.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. I haven’t seen anything.

  We hurry along the silent streets to an old burned-out building, looking more like a skeleton or a husk than something a little boy should play in. We run across rubble and old bricks until he gets to a sheet of plywood. It’s got some graffiti on it saying the rebellion is coming. He pulls it back for me and nods. “Inside with ya, then.”

  I hesitate, scared he’s actually scary Rory and this is where he traps me and hurts me until I’m crazy too. Or crazier.

  “Hurry,” he whispers and looks back. He looks too scared to be faking, so I climb through into the dark room. He comes in right behind me, bumping into me.

  “We have to go this way.” He wraps his tiny hand around my middle finger and pulls me down a dimly lit corridor—about the creepiest place I have ever been. The old paneling is coming loose; some of it is burned and the rest of it is flaking away from the wall. The lights don’t stay on. They flicker, making my insides tighten.

  The floors have holes and the wallpaper nearly touches them as it flakes off. It smells dank and horrid.

  When we get to the steps, he pauses. “The stairs always fall away when I try to climb them. I don’t think I’m supposed to come.”

  I look down on his little face and smile. “Ya have been so brave. Why don’t ya wait out front, and if I don’t come back right away, it doesn’t mean I won’t ever. I will. I’ll find ya again and I’ll take you to the good people. Deal?”

  He lifts his pinky and shakes mine. “There’s an elevator too. But I don’t think it works.” He turns and bolts, leaving me standing there in the condemned building.

  “Shit,” I mutter and walk around, looking for the elevator. If I know Rory, the stairs will be a trap. If he is aware of me, he will make the stairs something terrible.

  I have not been inside a person’s mind like this before, not completely. When we started out, we did mind runs with the engineers and doctors, letting them lead us and show us the clues we leave ourselves. Memories we install into the run to stop from getting lost or stuck. My run was with Dash—simple and straightforward, unlike our relationship.

  The minds are linked, so letting ourselves get lost can mean not finding our way back out, even after we are disconnected. It’s why the testing was so stringent, with only two people passing—Rory and me.

  But I haven’t been in a changing mind like this one, where I am not pretending in order to create comfort and stability. I am me, and he is aware of how mind runs work. Tricking him wouldn’t work: firstly, I’m a girl, so I can’t pretend to be him, and secondly, he’s a master at this. If the new bot doesn’t kill his old one, he will be in control when he finds me.

  The moment he becomes aware of me being here, he will control the game and I will end up in a cell again—or worse.

  I walk in circles, passing the same flaking wallpaper and broken doors until I see a hallway that’s new. I turn down it, listening for the sound of him.

  When I get halfway I see the glisten of two metal doors. My stomach does leaps and hops, warning me like that robot on that show with the Robinsons, begging me to turn around. But I don’t. I walk straight up to the rickety-looking piece of
junk and press the button. It creaks and groans, shaking the whole building.

  “Shit!” I whisper and look around.

  The doors open, no ding. Of course no ding. I sigh and step in, waiting for the bottom to fall out and for me to go sailing through the dark into whatever hell he has planned. But the doors creak and scrape, closing slowly. The jerking start of the machine makes me jump, and the pace feels like the cables are vibrating from corrosion, but the elevator goes up.

  It stops on the first floor, opening slowly. Opening onto a street. Clowney Street, cementing the idea that this is just a construct in Rory’s mind. A bunch of boys with rickety bikes ride hard. They are chasing a boy who is running for his life. I’d know his face anywhere. He screams until they land on him, diving from their bikes like uncoordinated ninjas. They scratch and hit and tug until they turn him over, and then the pummeling starts. He screams and I slam my back against the wall of the shitty elevator, pressing the button for the second floor. I don’t know if I love Angie’s method of getting me through the timeline of his life.

  The elevator creaks and groans in a plea to be put out of its misery, but when it stops on the second floor, I am stunned at the transformation in Rory. He’s in the boxing ring and maybe fourteen. He’s fighting with the agility and strength closer to that of the man I always knew.

  A man is screaming at the boys as they fight—creepy on a different level of creepy, but Rory is eating it up. He is fierce and focused.

  The doors close and I start to feel like Bill Murray in Scrooged.

  The third floor does not hold what I expect—it’s Rory tied to a chair and being lectured by an Irishman, surrounded by inspectors from Scotland Yard. The old man shouts, “You have a choice in life, Sonny. Be a loser like yer da was or man up and join a worthy cause. We found drugs on ya, we have enough to put ya away fer a long time. Ya need to think on that. Ya wanna be a washed-out drug junkie or a military man—something to be proud of?”