The Girl in the Machine (Leah King Book 3)

by Philip Harris

  They ran after Morgan, crouched low and checking around them for signs of Transport. Hobbs was ahead. He swept his gun right, toward the burning wreckage, but didn’t fire.

  Leah caught movement off to her left. Forty feet away, partially obscured by the smoke, a Jeep bounced over the hill. It had a machine gun mounted on the back, and there was a man standing behind it. He’d seen them, and he shouted something to the Jeep’s driver. It accelerated toward them.

  “Go, go!” said Alice.

  Hobbs took off toward the trees. Morgan had already reached cover. He began firing at the Jeep, bullets clanging off the metal plate in front of the machine gun. One of them hit the windshield, near the driver. The glass fractured, and the Jeep dodged right.

  Leah wasn’t looking where she was going, and she caught her foot on a half-buried rock. She stumbled but managed to avoid twisting her ankle. It still slowed her down. Gunfire rang out from behind Leah as Alice shot at the Jeep. Hobbs was almost at the trees.

  Alice slammed into Leah’s back. “Get down!”

  They fell forward as a stream of bullets ripped through the air where they’d just been standing.

  Morgan and Hobbs continued shooting. The Jeep was still coming toward them. Leah could see the driver crouched low behind the shattered windshield. The machine gunner had stopped firing for the moment, but they were still too far from the trees. They’d never make it before the Jeep got to them.

  “Go!” shouted Alice, waving at Hobbs.

  Hobbs shook his head.

  “Now!”

  Morgan stared at Alice for a moment then grabbed Hobbs by the shoulder and pulled him deeper into the trees. He resisted for a moment then snarled and turned away.

  “Put your hands on your head,” said Alice.

  Alice threw her gun toward the forest, placed her hands on her head, and then slowly got to her knees. Leah followed suit.

  The machine gunner leveled his weapon at them. Leah’s heart was trying to crawl out her throat. Obviously, the man would shoot them; why wouldn’t he?

  The Jeep rolled to a stop. The machine gunner was still aiming at them. Leah could see his fingers wrapped around the trigger.

  The driver climbed out of the Jeep and drew his gun. “Stand up, and turn around.”

  They did as they were told. Leah sensed movement behind them and had to force herself not to turn around.

  “You on the right, put your hands behind your back.”

  Alice slowly lowered her hands. There was a click of a metal ratchet.

  Something hard and cold pressed against the back of Leah’s head. A gun.

  “Your turn,” said the man.

  Leah’s hands shook as she lowered them. The man pulled them behind her back. He fumbled for a moment, then she felt the cold embrace of a pair of handcuffs. They cut into her wrists, but at least she was alive.

  The man shoved them both forward. “Get in the Jeep.”

  As they got close to the vehicle, the machine gunner climbed down and trained his own pistol on them. The driver directed them into the backseats and then attached their handcuffs to the metal roll cage.

  The Transport soldiers climbed into the front. The machine gunner turned in his seat and trained his pistol on Alice. There was a cold intensity in his eyes that only exacerbated Leah’s fear.

  The driver unclipped a mic and spoke into it. “Control, this is Alpha One. We’ve got two TRACE soldiers here. Both female.”

  A woman’s voice crackled over the radio. “Good. Bring them in. Alpha Three has the other targets in view.”

  The driver replaced the mic and pulled away. The Jeep bounced and rocked as they drove over the hills, away from the train and the burning hulk of the helicopter.

  21

  The roll cage was too high for Leah to be able to sit while her hands were cuffed to it. Even when the Jeep reached the road and stopped bouncing, the strain on her arms left them numb and her shoulders aching.

  Alice seemed to fare slightly better. Leah had seen her eyes taking in the machine gun and the soldiers and could almost hear the gears in her head whirring as she tried to come up with a way to get them out of this mess. But even if they’d somehow managed to free their hands, the machine gunner had watched them closely. Leah had no doubt that he’d leap at the chance to shoot them if they tried to escape.

  So they traveled in silence until they reached a low-slung cluster of buildings nestled between two hills. The facility’s steel gates swung open as they approached. The Jeep raced through without stopping. It rolled around to the side of the building and pulled up beside a set of wide double doors. Momentum carried Leah forward, and her shoulder joint made a sharp cracking sound. Blood was smeared around her wrists where the cuffs had scraped away the skin.

  The Transport soldiers moved around the Jeep, released them from the roll cage, and cuffed their hands behind their backs again. The muscles in Leah’s arms cramped as she tried to climb out of the vehicle. She grunted and fell sideways, almost catching her face on the side of the Jeep. She managed to turn at the last moment and landed on her shoulder instead. Pain speared down her arm. The machine gunner laughed and pulled her roughly out of the vehicle.

  They were at the rear of the facility, near a broad patch of open grass. Just beyond the building was the perimeter fence. It was close enough that they could get to it in a few seconds if they ran. There was no sign of any other Transport guards. If they were going to escape, or die trying, now was their chance.

  Leah prepared to strike as soon as Alice made her move. But Alice didn’t resist as the Transport soldiers herded them toward the door. She walked with her head bowed, staring at the ground. Leah felt a mix of confusion and anger at Alice’s utter compliance.

  The door opened, and another soldier appeared, carrying an automatic rifle. He wasn’t paying attention to them, and Leah was convinced Alice would take advantage of his carelessness as she passed. Somehow, she’d free herself and would strike, grabbing the man’s gun and turning it on the Transport soldiers. Instead, she kept looking at the ground and walked past the man.

  Leah almost tried to do something herself, but her hands were locked tight behind her back. She slowed as she reached the man and looked for some sort of opening.

  The machine gunner jabbed her in the back. “Keep going.”

  Reluctantly, she let the Transport soldiers lead them through the door and into the heart of the building.

  The door opened up onto a narrow passageway that in turn led them through to a wider main corridor. The soldiers directed them right, past half a dozen nondescript doors, until they reached their destination—another identical door.

  The brightly lit room beyond was dominated by two padded operating chairs, similar to the ones in a dentist’s office. Beside each one was a cart holding the black metal cube of a computer and one of Transport’s sleek virtual reality interfaces. Dozens of black cables snaked between the cubes and a bank of computers that lined one wall of the room.

  There was a nurse waiting for them inside, a nervous, almost mouse-like woman. She darted around them, directing the soldiers to take Alice to one of the padded chairs and Leah to the other.

  Leah struggled halfheartedly as the machine gunner shoved her across the room. The air smelled of disinfectant, and the gray tiled floor squeaked beneath her feet. The left-hand wall was dominated by a long window with a door beside it. The area beyond was shrouded in shadow, but she could see the outline of someone inside.

  The soldier removed her cuffs then pushed her onto the chair. She considered fighting back, but Alice was already lying down. Her hands had been strapped to the arms of the chair. There was a look in her eyes that Leah had never seen there before—defeat—and it dragged Leah’s spirits down with it.

  As the soldier tightened the straps around Leah’s wrists, the nurse pushed a metal cart alongside the chair. Four syringes filled with white liquid, some swabs, and a length of rubber sat on a padded liner on top of the cart
.

  The nurse rolled up Leah’s sleeve and tied the strip of rubber around her arm.

  “Make a fist.”

  Leah let her arm go limp. The soldier raised his hand as though he was going to hit her. She pulled her head away, but the blow didn’t come.

  “Do as she says,” said the man.

  Leah kept her hand loose for a few more seconds in one final act of petty rebellion. Then she clenched her fist.

  The nurse swabbed the crook of Leah’s arm and then looked toward the window.

  A woman’s voice came over a speaker set into the corner of the room. “Go ahead.”

  The voice was familiar somehow. Leah tried to place it but couldn’t.

  The nurse removed one of the needles from the cart and pressed her fingertips against Leah’s arm. She tried to squirm out of the way as the nurse lowered the needle.

  “You’ll only make it hurt,” said the nurse.

  Leah stopped moving and held her breath. There was a slight pinch, and the needle slipped beneath her skin. The sight of it made her feel odd, and she looked away.

  Pressure increased where the needle entered. It spread along her arm, and as it did, her skin seemed to tighten. When she looked down, she expected to see her arm blowing up like a balloon, but it appeared normal.

  The nurse removed the needle and stuck a small cotton ball over the injection site with a piece of tape. She put the needle and the rubber strip on the cart and rolled it around to Alice.

  Puzzled, Leah watched the nurse. Surely, they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to execute them. The soldiers could have shot them by the train. Maybe it was truth serum and the woman behind the mirror would come out and interrogate them both.

  The nurse began tying the rubber strip around Alice’s arm. Leah tried to focus on the woman’s hands, but they moved in a blur. It was as though her hands, and just her hands, were playing on fast forward. Faint blue and yellow trails followed their motion, drifting through the air like localized rainbows.

  Leah squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the trails had spread. Now everything in the room was surrounded by a multicolored halo. Her head suddenly felt heavy. She let it fall back. It hit the padded chair with a soft thud, but the sound seemed to reverberate through Leah’s skull. It bounced around, growing in volume until all she could hear was a low-pitched drone.

  Her eyes flickered shut. It took all her effort to open them again. When she did, the nurse was back at her side. Her face was a streak of orange and red. She said something to Leah, but the words turned to light—a stream of blue flowing from the woman’s mouth like a waterfall.

  Leah closed her eyes and let the waterfall overwhelm her.

  22

  Leah woke lying on her bed in her room in Columbia. During the night, she’d kicked the covers off one of her legs, and it was sticking out into the cool room. She pulled it back in. Her head was fuzzy. She’d had a nightmare. It had been violent, frightening, but the images from it were already fading away.

  A few thoughts clung to her mind like sticky cobwebs. There’d been an explosion, a big one, but instead of being yellow, this one had been blue. And there was an old building with a lot of machinery in it.

  A woman’s face suddenly filled her thoughts. She had enough time to see there was a scar running down it before the face broke apart. It was replaced by another—olive skinned with high cheekbones. This one seemed more familiar. And friendly. It was someone Leah trusted.

  The second face faded away before Leah could remember the woman’s name. She tried to bring it back but instead got flashes of a train, a helicopter, and a young boy running across a hill. She didn’t recognize the boy. In her mind’s eye, he tripped and fell. Then the memory was gone.

  She shook her head as though that might dislodge the memories. Her stomach felt uneasy. The images in her head felt oddly real, but she knew they couldn’t be. They were fading too quickly to be actual experiences, and they had the insubstantial feel of dreams.

  Without knowing why, Leah reached around the back of her head and ran the tips of her fingers over the smooth skin of her neck. Unexpected relief welled inside her. She chased the memories of the nightmare in an attempt to work out why touching her neck was reassuring, but the dream’s fragments danced out of her grip before she could focus on them.

  Voices echoed up to her from downstairs. It was her father and someone else, a woman. The words were too muffled for Leah to make out, but they sounded happy and relaxed.

  Leah swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood up. Her dollhouse was in the corner of the room. The summer sun was cutting through a gap in the drapes, and the resultant beam lit the red door like a spotlight following the lead in a play.

  Another fragment of the dreams hit her. She was standing inside the library in her dollhouse. The big wooden desk at the far end of the room was lit by the soft glow of a lamp, and there was a file on top of it. Leah tried to remember what was in the file but couldn’t quite manage it.

  She pulled on her jeans and went out onto the landing. The voices were clearer here. Her father was talking about the weather and his upcoming trip to the market to trade with his friend Derricks. The woman asked him to pick up some new books for her to read, gently reminding him that he’d forgotten last time. The woman’s voice sounded familiar. Leah walked down the stairs, trying to place it. She still hadn’t managed to when she walked into the kitchen.

  The woman turned to face her. Leah recognized her immediately from the photo frame her father kept in his bedroom. It was her mother.

  “Mom!”

  Tears filled Leah’s eyes as she ran across the kitchen and threw her arms around her mother and squeezed as hard as she could.

  Leah choked back a sob. Her mother was alive. She pressed her face into her mother’s shoulder and took a deep breath. She smelled of freshly baked bread.

  “I-I thought you were dead!”

  Her mother’s grip tightened. “I know, honey. I’m sorry.”

  Honey. The word sounded odd to Leah, wrong. She’d never been called that. But then her mother had never had the chance to call her that. She’d died when Leah was two years old—or was it three?

  Except she hadn’t, and she was here now.

  Reluctantly, Leah loosened her grip on her mother and pulled back so that she could look into her face. “Where were you?”

  Her mother sighed. “I had to stay behind. I wanted to be with you, I really did, but I couldn’t.”

  It wasn’t an answer.

  Leah turned to her father. “You said she was dead.”

  A pained expression came over his face. “I had to keep your mother safe. Even I didn’t know where she was.”

  Confusion began seeping into Leah’s mind. Safe? Safe from what?

  As though sensing her question, Leah’s mother said, “Transport thinks I’m part of TRACE.”

  The words only deepened Leah’s confusion. “TRACE? But we’re not terrorists.”

  Something felt wrong about the words, even as she spoke them.

  Her mother smiled. “No, we’re not, but that doesn’t mean Transport will believe us when they get here. They think we know where the TRACE headquarters is. They think we’ve been there with a woman called Alice.”

  Alice. That had been the name of the woman with the olive skin. Now that she had a name, the image of her came back. She’d been Leah’s friend.

  “I do know someone called Alice.”

  Her mother looked puzzled. “How? Is she part of TRACE?”

  Leah dug around in her memory, sifting through the fragments of dream still floating around in her subconscious. She thought the answer was yes.

  She nodded.

  “Did she tell you about the TRACE headquarters?” said her father.

  Visions of the concrete building filled with machines appeared in Leah’s mind. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Where is it, Leah?” said her mother. “You need to tell us.”r />
  Her mother’s voice was urgent, insistent, but Leah was focused on something else—the woman with the scar.

  Another memory surfaced. Leah was standing inside a shed, watching the woman with the scar talk to a Transport soldier. Or maybe it was an officer.

  Her mother said something. Leah ignored her. The scarred woman’s name was there, just at the edge of her thoughts. Karen. No, Katherine. That was her name, Leah was sure of it.

  A flood of grief hit Leah as the broken memories came crashing back. Katherine had killed her father, shot him in the tunnels beneath Columbia.

  “What’s the matter?” said her father.

  Leah shook her head. “This can’t be real.”

  “What do you mean, honey? Of course it’s real,” said her mother.

  “You’re dead, both of you.”

  “Don’t be silly, of cour—”

  “No!” Leah backed away from her mother, pointing at her. “You died in an accident.” She whirled on her father. “And you were shot by a woman called Katherine. I tried to find her, but I—”

  Grief cut off Leah’s words and twisted her stomach into a knot. Tears filled her eyes.

  Her father reached out to touch her, but she slapped his hand away. “Get away!”

  Leah shuffled slowly backward until she felt the wall behind her. Then she slid to the floor. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.

  “Why couldn’t it be real?”

  She let out an anguished sob as the pain of the loss of both her mother and her father hit her as though for the first time. Her arms were shaking. She felt sick and squeezed her eyes closed, trying not to throw up. Tears ran down her cheeks and splashed against the linoleum floor.

  The light beyond Leah’s eyelids flickered and then went out. Leah sensed rather than felt the floor beneath her change. The cool linoleum was gone, replaced by something harder and faintly warm. And she’d moved. She was no longer pressed against the wall. She was sitting on something.

  Leah sniffed. The air had changed. The kitchen had smelled of fried bacon and her father’s aftershave. Now there were no smells at all. The air was just… air.