by Andy Graham
The president pulled her chair closer and clasped his free hand in hers. “David used to joke about child years; for every year a child aged, the parent would age twice that amount. Something died in him the day he agreed to give you up, but he said that at least he wouldn’t get old and die. Maybe things would’ve been better if he had stayed out of politics, stayed with his family, but I insisted he take on the role of Spokesperson. We needed balance. The public needed an outlet.
“I convinced him that Ailan needed him like it needed me. That he would be more use to you in government than at your side. I told him an adoptive family would give you the home and stability he never could, that he didn’t need to do the honourable thing by marrying your real mother, that it was a male knee-jerk response belonging to another age. He didn’t need to go through the sham of doing something just for tradition’s sake. Why? Just so other people would feel more comfortable about letting themselves be pushed into that pigeonhole themselves?”
“You’re saying running away is more honourable than standing by your actions?”
“If it tips the see-saw away from chaos, yes. Why should he be part of yet another dysfunctional family? Why be one of those people that limp along under the public illusion of a happy marriage, maintaining their masquerade with the show reel they post on the internet?”
“So I wouldn’t spend my life hating both my adoptive father and my real father? So I had a chance of a real family?” There were deep gouges in the palms of his hands. Skin under his nails.
“Does a real family depend on blood ties or emotional ties? Does a genetic connection always mean a better connection? I had a real family and I still hate my mother. David and I thought the family we chose for you was a good one. A better one. More stable. We got it half right.”
The VP heard every word like a full-bodied slap. He lurched to his feet, still clutching her knife. Stumbling over to the parapet, he looked down to the buildings below, drinking in the images of a life that was now not his.
Curfew had hit. The street lights had dimmed. Small headlights ran through the streets, eager to get home before being caught. Officially, the thirty-minute grace period was extended to an hour at this time of year. Unofficially, it depended on who you were stopped by and whether the police body cameras were working or not. Giant projected images of the Midwinter Maiden in her jade dress danced on the buildings around the city, despite the power shortages. She looked over her shoulder, blew a kiss and slapped her behind.
When did she start doing that? She curtseyed when I was younger.
Her dress appeared to have been shortened again. It hugged her thighs way above her knees. He could remember a time when the dress had dragged around the Midwinter Maiden’s ankles, complete with a long train. Before long, the Maiden would hand the seasonal baton over to the Spring Herald. Their provocative costumes had inspired the barely-tolerated Veiled Carnival, a one-day indulgence of masks and alcohol and near-nudity to welcome the warmer weather. It had always been one of his favourite festivals. The freedom that hiding behind a mask had given him had been liberating. It had allowed him to pretend to be something he wasn’t, just like David Prothero had done for the VP’s entire life.
His mouth filled with sour spit. The intelligent glass that clad his own tower not so far away was playing a short film of Captain Electric. He was dressed in matching colours to the Maiden. The light from the figures on the buildings gave the impression that the streets had been washed in the viridescent river water. The VP pulled away from the grin of the giant soldier that now seemed aimed at him.
“If Prothero is your father,” the electronic image appeared to say, “then what does that make Joanna Miescher? Remember her? Prothero’s daughter. The nubile young woman who ‘thinks she’s a scientist.’ You made an exception for her and took her on a tour of the Palaces not just once, but twice.”
His knees hit the floor as he emptied his guts. The spiced wine flooded through his mouth and nose, choking and burning. It pooled in front of him. The president plucked the knife out of his limp fingers, waiting for him to stop convulsing. He staggered to his feet, stomach feeling like it was full of congealing, hissing snakes.
“David came back out of the shadows,” Bethina said as she pocketed the blade, “and that’s when things went awry. A politician is expected to be married, so a more suitable bride was found. Then his problems with politics spilt over into his private life and he got divorced. The rest you know.”
“And my real mother gave me up just like that?” he said, wiping his chin clean.
“Your real mother didn’t have a choice. You were taken from her as an insurance policy to guarantee her good behaviour. That also didn’t work out quite as we expected. I’m not sure it will be a consolation to know that she’s still alive. So is your half-brother.”
“My real mother and my half-brother,” he repeated. Three children. Bethina had said Rose had three children just before Chester arrived. He’d heard it but it hadn’t registered. A chill deeper than that of the winter air cut through his shirt. “No. Please, no. Not that. This can’t be true. Not her. Not him.”
He reached out, fingers spread. He could see the president’s neck between his hands, feel the warmth of her skin as she struggled in his grip. One of the dogs growled. The other one stalked to her side. “You created this mess,” he said through gritted teeth. “You and your plans for the little people you think you know better than. Now I’m supposed to just accept it? To embrace the people I despise?”
“It would make things easier but no, you are unlikely to change. I fear your hate for your real family is one of the fundamental elements that make you what you are.”
Images flashed through his mind. The drums under a church. Hazel-eyed Dr Swann. Red hair and a fisher gull tattoo. The Famulus and her melodramatic ceremonies, venerating her elements. The slim assistant that had always stood silently behind the altar, always hooded, never seen outside the chamber. Bethina. “The Ward,” he whispered. “You’re part of that, too. You’re everywhere. Like cancer.”
“Or hope,” she replied quietly.
Then the question that had been lurking at the back of his mind finally surfaced, the words stinging as he spoke them. “What’s my name?”
56
Finding Rhys
A pipe clattered to the floor, missing Ray’s head by a hair. A succession of explosions grew closer. Clouds of flames surged through the intersection. He shouldered a guard out of the way and plunged through the tail end of the fire.
He spotted the last of the markings he’d made, low, near the ground, and sped down the short corridor Miescher had left him in. The shouts and screams faded behind him. His heart sank. The doors were still closed. Avery had been right — not all the doors would open. Ray raced past the faint hammering coming from the White Room and skidded to a halt in front of the last door.
It wouldn’t move. Lifting the heavy metal bar off the door made no difference; the electronic locks were still sealed. Kicking it until his foot hurt didn’t help either. “I will get you out!” he yelled through the small window.
Think. Focus. What would Aalok do?
He hunted for something to use as a lever, a weapon, anything. The corridor pulsed red in the emergency lighting. He could see Shaw opening the heavy door out of the cavern with ease. Ray screwed his eyes shut, squeezing the images out of his brain. The Monster-under-the-Mountain was gone.
There was a beep. A hiss of escaping air. A series of lights ran along the two swipe locks on either side of the door, flashing from red through to green. The door crashed open and he tumbled into the cell.
The room was almost empty. The only furnishings were a cot bed, sink and small toilet. They were part of the walls, shiny metallic growths that leaked from the surfaces into a new shape and back again. A small window near the ceiling let in a shaft of real light across the floor. Dust motes danced around the two people on the bed, framing their embrace.
“I’m
OK, I’m OK. Enough now, let me go, you lump. I can’t breathe.” Lenka’s breath came in rattling gasps.
Drak limped towards them, laying his head on her feet. Ray released his grip. “We have to get out,” he said. “The whole place is going to be around our ankles in minutes.”
Lenka stroked his cheek with an emaciated hand. “No. You can’t run with me and Drak, and I’m not going without him.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“My time is up, Ray. I would like to have seen the moons once more before I go, but seeing you again means so much more than you’ll ever know.”
Ray fought back the tears that clawed their way down his face. This was not how it was supposed to happen. The hacking cough that bent Lenka double seemed to last an age. He ripped a piece off the thin blanket so she could wipe the bloody spittle off her mouth.
“Put the cloth in the bin, would you? There’s a good lad.”
There was no bin. He settled for rinsing it in the sink. A bulb burst in the corridor. Glass shattered across the floor sending fragments of light dancing across the walls.
“I’ll get you out. Somehow. It must be possible.” The bed had no wheels. Could he drag Lenka and Drak out of the building? “Wheelchair.” He almost shouted the word. “There must be a wheelchair somewhere. I’ll go—”
“No, you won’t.” Lenka placed her finger on his lips. It was as cold as snow. “But you will listen to me. There are things you need to know before I die. I’m here because the scan your friend Stella did was picked up by the people in this place, ironic really.”
“What’s ironic about it? Why’s Drak here?”
“His nose. No one was aware the disease dog experiment had been successful. They’re talking of reviving the project.”
“The what-dog project?”
“Ask Stella,” she replied. “I don’t have many words left in me to waste on that.” Drak scrabbled to his feet, his long claws scratching on the metal floor, and placed one paw on her lap. “Drak bit one of the guards, so he was allowed to stay here with me. I think his whining was sending them spare and he’s no use to them drugged.” The dog barked at a crash in the corridor as the distant sound of people disappeared. “And how is Stella?”
Ray explained what had happened since they had last met: Shaw and the Donian Mountains, Brooke’s death, the hospital, Substation Two, his meeting with Stella. He ended by telling Lenka about Stella’s disappearance.
“What do you mean she disappeared?”
“She went to this Ward she goes to, to meet the VP. Said she’d be back in a couple of hours. Then two armed men appeared about thirty minutes before the time I was supposed to meet her. I was already waiting. They didn’t see me. Once I realised Stella wasn’t going to show, I jumped them.”
“I hope you didn’t hurt them too much?”
“Just enough to find out they were from the 13th Legion. All they’d been told was to bring in whoever turned up at that place at that time. Stella’s apartment was being watched, too. So I went for my second plan: David Prothero.” Lenka listened, her breath whistling in her throat. “I have no idea where Stella is,” Ray said. “Has the serial killer got her? Did she get picked up by the police? Another batch of Unsung? What about her family? I got her into this mess. I need—“
Lenka shushed him. “One thing at a time, Ray.”
There was a distant explosion and sparks sprayed out of the light sockets. “We have to go,” Ray said as glass crunched in the corridor.
“I told you, I’m not going. You need to find Stella, but first, listen.” Drak barked. They shushed him in unison. “You’re here for Rhys, aren’t you?”
Ray felt as if he’d been gut-punched. “You know about him, don’t you? Why did you never tell me I had a twin?”
“Your mother asked me not to. Rose wanted to protect you from your family’s past.”
“It’s too late. Rhys is dead. Lind told me, showed me the photos.” Through the tiny outside window, Ray saw helicopter searchlights circling the camp.
“Rhys isn’t dead.”
His pulse spiked. Lenka paused to let her cough die. When she spoke again, her voice was forced calmness. “Like all parents with twins, Rose had a choice — a choice she insisted on making on her own. On your first birthday, she was to give up one of the children. It’s a little known law that still exists but no one talks about for fear of reprisals. Up until that day, she wouldn’t let anyone else near either of you apart from a few weeks when she just disappeared. I never did find out where she went. When Rose returned, she told me she had nowhere to go with you and your brother. She fled into the Weeping Woods just before you both turned one. The police hunted her down, subdued her as only a bunch of violent, unsupervised men can, and made her choose. One child was brought here to the camp; the other lived on the outside.”
She held up a hand to still his question. Drak was growling. He tried to stand upright, his front legs splaying on the floor. Lenka pulled him up, muffling his snarls with her shawl. “One day in autumn, just under a year later, Rose was playing with the child by the river in Tear, like she had several times. She was always determined to do things her way, stubborn to a fault. She refused to be bound by tradition and myth.” Lenka paused to catch her breath. “How well do you know the tale of Greenfields and the river in Tear?”
“Well enough, it was the only story she ever told me,” he replied, thinking of his retelling around the fire in the Angel City.
“She told you others,” Lenka chided, “but she did have a soft spot for that one. Rose turned her back on the child while she dealt with one of the neighbours. It wasn’t much more than a couple of minutes.” Her grip tightened on Ray’s hand, tears rolling down her cheeks. “When she looked round, her toddler was dead. I helped pull his body out of the river. Rose couldn’t bear to be without either child. She had never forgiven herself for giving up the older twin, and this was too much for her. So I offered to help.”
“Help? How—” The noise outside the window abated. It felt as if the world was holding its breath as Ray joined the dots. “You used to work here, didn’t you? This is where you saw those restricted links?”
“Yes. A long time ago. I was a physical therapist dealing with people with White Plague. They called me the bone setter to my face, the druid bitch behind my back. I’d heard about some of the atrocities, the left-handed hell. We all had, but I’d seen no proof stronger than a rumour. So I went to see the great Wu-Brocker, who used to run this place, about it.” Lenka coughed, dabbing at her lips with a sleeve.
“Wu-Brocker was bright, no doubt, but there was something off about her. Perfectly presented, forever with a smile, disarmingly approachable, but always taking pictures of herself. Pouting, smiling, artful tilts of her head, hair strategically mussed up, an A to Z vanity portfolio of narcissism. She’d take pictures mid-conversation and put them up on a screen to examine. Any photo with so much as a shadow that looked like a blemish was deleted.”
“What’s that got to do with Rhys?”
“Patience,” she said, patting his knee. “You young people are in such a rush to get through life. When you get to my age, you learn to savour every second.” The building shuddered around them. Lenka waited until the reverberations died down before continuing. “Wu-Brocker listened politely to my concerns and I was fired soon after, put on three months’ notice. Given some of the rumours, I guess I should be thankful I was allowed to leave in my own skin.
“I went back to Tear the weekend I was handed my resignation, I’d managed to get myself a weekend off before starting my last three-month shift. That was when the toddler drowned in the river. That’s why Rose told the Greenfields story so much; she claimed even the myths were mocking her.”
A series of explosions rattled the window. “We haven’t time for this,” Ray said as a web of cracks spread through the glass.
“You need to hear this.” Lenka was wringing her hands together as she spoke. “Rose and I
came up with a plan. I approached a young scientist who had been supervising me. He was a handsome, athletic young man at odds with the lab-tanned cadavers that stalked this place back then, one of Wu-Brocker’s favourites.”
“Lind.”
Lenka was paler now, her breath gurgling in her throat. “Yes, James Lind. He’d already met Rose and me one time in the Gates by chance. He agreed to help switch the children in return for a night out with your mother. So we smuggled the dead boy in and the live boy out. It was relatively easy with identical twins, then more than now.”
Drak whined. Ray’s head was spinning as the implications of what Lenka was saying came together. A kaleidoscope of memories clashed with the images Lind had showed him earlier. Not this. Not now. Too much had happened over the last few months. “I’m not who I think I am, am I?”
“No,” Lenka replied, “Ray died, not Rhys.”
Drak barked, his claws scratching on the floor. A shoe squeaked. Ray hurled himself at the open door. He grabbed the figure hiding there and wrenched him off balance. Ray dumped the man to the floor, trapping one elbow under his own arm, knee on his ribs.
“How much did you hear?” he shouted. “How much do you know, Lind?”
One of Lind’s eyes was swollen shut. His shirt was ripped, revealing red welts on his skin. “I told you I knew more about you than you did.” Ray sank his weight lower, cranking on Lind’s arm as he did. Every twist he made ratcheted up the pressure. Lind turned puce. “OK, OK, OK!”
Ray eased up on the pressure. Lenka tried to quiet the barking dog.
“Help me get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything,” said Lind from between gritted teeth. “I can help you. Who do you think opened this door?” He pushed on Ray’s knee to give himself some more space. Ray squeezed down. A rib snapped and Lind howled.
“No more, please. Yes, I switched you. I had a bet riding on you,” Lind screamed. “I’d invested a lot of time in both of you, and when the real Ray, your brother, died I stood to lose all my effort and the bet. I thought you could be tamed. I should’ve known better. We had another test pair but we wanted you in a freer environment. The camp was too controlled; we wanted a real-life setting for someone with a consanguineous history of disobedience.”
