by William Hill
Beep.
The three men looked at the words that had appeared on the console’s screen. NO RESULTS FOUND.
“There you go,” said Morris. “No one’s accessed the frequency database in the last forty-eight hours. Can I go back to bed now?”
Frankenstein stared at the screen, then looked at Morris. “Yes,” he said, his voice low. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“It’s all right,” said Morris, a weary smile on his face. “Good night, gentlemen.”
“Good night, Tom,” said Jamie.
Morris closed the office door behind him, leaving Jamie and Frankenstein alone again.
“So,” said Jamie, in a tired voice. “I think you’re going to struggle to blame my dad for this, don’t you?”
“Jamie-” Frankenstein began, but the teenager cut him off.
“Not now. I can’t even think about who gave Alexandru the frequency now. We have to find him, and we have to do it before he hurts anyone else. I’m going to get some sleep, and then I’m going down to the cellblock, and we’re going to do whatever she says we should do.”
Jamie walked toward the door and was about to turn the handle when the monster called to him.
“Do you really think you can trust her?”
He turned, and looked at Frankenstein with sadness in his eyes. “As much as I can anyone else around here,” he replied.
Jamie had lied to the monster.
He was tired, that was certainly true, but he wasn’t going straight to the dormitory. Instead he pushed open the door to the infirmary, walked quickly across the white floor and into the room marked THEATER.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, flopping gracelessly into the chair beside Matt’s bed. The teenage boy was still as pale as a ghost, and the rhythmic beeping of the machines still filled the room.
“I don’t know what to believe, or who to believe, or anything. I feel like I’m completely lost.”
Jamie looked at the peaceful expression on Matt’s face, and found himself envying it. He didn’t know what he was doing in the infirmary, but he had been filled with a powerful compulsion to see the injured teenager. He wondered if it was because this boy was the one person in the Loop who would not tell him something new, who didn’t know who he was or what his father had done, and who he could talk to without worrying how he sounded.
“Frankenstein was my dad’s closest friend, and even he thinks he betrayed the Department. And if he thinks it’s true, then it probably is. But then who gave Alexandru the operational frequency so he could call me on it? It’s been changed a thousand times since Dad died. Larissa knows more than she’s telling me, and the Chemist definitely did, and I’m pretty sure Frankenstein does as well. Why doesn’t anyone want me to know the truth about anything? It’s like no one cares if I find Mom or not.”
His hand went involuntarily to his neck, and he felt the wad of bandages that had been stuck to his skin. “I got hurt today. Not as badly as you, I know, but I got burned. And it made me realize something, you know? It made me realize that this isn’t a game, or a film, where the good guys win in the end and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. It’s real life, and it’s messy, and it’s complicated, and I’m scared, and I just don’t know what to-”
Jamie lowered his head into his hands and wept. The machines beeped steadily, and Matt’s eyes remained closed.
Jamie didn’t think he would be able to sleep when he lay down on his dormitory bed fifteen minutes later, but he was out as soon as his head touched the pillow. His sleep was long and dreamless, and when he awoke, his body feeling rested but his mind racing with the enormity of the task before him, he saw that it was past three in the afternoon.
He showered, dressed quickly, made his way back down to the detention level, and walked quickly down the long block. When he reached her cell, he looked into the square room, and found Larissa standing in her underwear, pulling on her jeans. She was facing away from him, and he hurried back along the corridor, flushing a fiery red.
“I can hear you,” she said conversationally, and he closed his eyes and groaned. “You might as well come out.”
He stepped back in front of her cell and looked at her. She was now fully dressed, standing easily in the middle of her cell, looking at him with her head tilted slightly to the left.
“Your heart’s pounding,” she said. “I can hear it. Is that embarrassment or excitement?”
“Embarrassment,” said Jamie. “Definitely embarrassment.”
“Pity,” she said, and flashed him a wicked smile. He blushed again, his face now feeling as though it must erupt, it was so hot, and then a thought occurred to him.
If she can hear my heartbeat, she must be able to hear my footsteps like an elephant’s. Why didn’t she hurry up and get dressed when she heard me coming down the block?
“Because it’s fun to tease you,” she said, and Jamie took a shocked step backward.
“How did you know-”
“You’re a smart boy,” she said, smiling again.
She floated across the cell and spun elegantly onto her bed. She laced her hands behind her head and looked at him. “Did you talk to the monster?” she asked.
“I did.”
“And?”
“I wish I hadn’t. But I’m glad I did. Does that make sense?” She smiled at him, and Jamie’s heart leapt in his chest.
“I know exactly what you mean,” she said.
Jamie composed himself. “I want to take you up on your offer,” he said. “I don’t have permission to take you off the base, but I’ll do it if you to take me to the person you think can help me.”
Larissa untangled her fingers and pushed herself up on her elbows. “Are you serious?” she asked. “This isn’t you getting back at me?”
“I’m serious.”
“What brought on the change of heart?”
“I’ve got no choice,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do. I get why Alexandru wants to hurt me now. I know about what my father did. You were right; it all started with him.”
She looked at him with kindness in her face. “I bet that hurt to say,” she said.
“A little bit, yeah.”
Larissa flipped up off the bed, soared slowly through the air, and landed silently in front of him, a look of excitement on her face.
“Let’s do it,” she said, eagerly.
“You’ll need to wear an explosive belt.”
“Fine.”
“You can’t leave my sight.”
She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Why would I want to?” she purred.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“You take us to this person who can help, we get the information from them, and then you come back here. Quietly and peacefully.”
“Of course. Let’s go, let’s go.”
Larissa was hopping gently from one foot to the other, such was her excitement at the prospect at being allowed to leave her cell, to stand under the open sky again, to feel the night air in her hair.
“Not just yet,” said Jamie, and smiled at her.
She stopped still and looked at him.
I don’t like that smile, she thought. I don’t like it at all.
“Why?” she asked, cautiously.
“You’re going to tell me something first. And you’re going to tell me the truth.”
28
ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR
Reading, England
July 24, 2004
Larissa Kinley knew it was early before she opened her eyes; it was too dark in her bedroom, too quiet. She forced her gummy eyelids open and saw that she was right. The digital alarm clock on her bedside table read 5:06 in glowing green numbers. She sat up in bed and stretched her arms above her head, yawning widely. It was the eighth night in a row that she had found herself awake when she should be asleep, watching the green numbers tick over until she could legitimately get up and go in the shower. She hadn’t told her
parents about what she was beginning to think qualified as insomnia; she knew that they would nod, halfheartedly sympathize, and then go back to whatever they were doing.
Larissa rolled out of bed and walked over to her bedroom window. She was about to open it, to let some fresh air into the room in the hope that it would tire her out, when she looked down into the small garden at the back of their little semidetached house and clapped her hand over her mouth so she didn’t scream.
The old man was standing in her garden, looking up at her with a gentle smile on his face, his gray overcoat wrapped around him, his hands casually in his pockets. His eyes were bright in the soft orange light of the streetlight that stood beyond the garden fence-and horribly, revoltingly friendly.
She took a step backward and tripped over one of the leather boots she had dropped at the end of her bed the night before. Her arms wheeled as she tried to keep her balance, but it was futile. She fell to the floor, hard, her teeth clicking shut on her tongue and sending a dagger of agony through her head. Tasting blood in her mouth, she scrambled to her knees and crawled back to the window. She inched her head above the windowsill and looked down into the garden.
The man was gone.
There was no more sleep for Larissa that night. She lay on her bed, playing the events of the previous two days over and over in her head, looking for a way to put the pieces together. She was still trying when she heard her brother’s bedroom door thump open, and she got up and raced across the landing, shoving him out of the way and closing the bathroom door behind her. Liam hammered halfheartedly on the door, but they both knew how this game went, and he quickly gave up and went back to his room.
Standing in front of the mirror, Larissa poked her tongue out and looked at the tiny cut her teeth had made. She sucked the blood away, watched it instantly well up again, then brushed her teeth, carefully, and stepped into the shower. She emerged twenty minutes later with her mind no clearer. Every time she managed to push the old man out of her head and think about something else-her coursework, the fair she and her friends were going to that evening-he would suddenly appear, smiling his soft smile, staring at her with those wide, friendly eyes.
Her parents already sat at the table when she made her way downstairs to breakfast, her wet hair wrapped in a towel and piled on her head. Her dad was reading the business section of The Times and slowly demolishing half a grapefruit, while her mother nibbled unconvincingly at a piece of toast and stared into thin air. Neither of them said anything as she sat down and poured herself a bowl of cornflakes and a glass of orange juice. She again considered telling them about the old man but decided against it.
No point in talking to them at all these days.
She knew Liam felt it, too, although he refused to talk about it with her. Their father had stopped going to Liam’s soccer matches at the start of the summer, without ever offering an explanation or an apology, as though he had simply forgotten that it was something he used to do. Larissa knew it had hurt her brother more deeply than he would ever admit, particularly to his big sister, but he had never questioned his dad about it. It was obvious that something bigger than football was going on: A thick cloud of disinterest had settled over their parents at the start of the year and showed no signs of lifting. She was sure that telling them about the old man would bring nothing more than tired suggestions that she had had a nightmare, that there was nothing to worry about.
Even if she told them it was the third day in a row she had seen him.
Larissa ate her cereal in silence, said good-bye to her parents as they left for work, then went upstairs. As she passed her brother’s room, she saw him sitting at his desk instant messaging with someone, probably one of the large number of seemingly identical adolescent boys who were his friends. They were polite and more than a little shy when she answered their knocks at the door in the evenings, but she nearly always caught their eyes crawling over her chest, and it made her shudder.
“Morning, Liam,” she said.
He grunted, which Larissa knew was the best she was likely to get from him.
In her room, Larissa apathetically flipped through Emma for the next couple of hours, her mind on anything but Jane Austen. She made herself some lunch, downloaded some music, lay on her bed, paced around her bedroom, and generally killed time until it was time to go to the fair. Her father was getting out of his car when she stepped out of the house, and he waved a halfhearted greeting at her. She returned it with an equal lack of enthusiasm, and he stopped her as she passed him.
“Are you OK?” he asked, peering at her from sleepy, hooded eyes.
“I’m fine, Dad,” she snapped. “What about you? Are you OK?”
Her father looked at her, then dropped his gaze.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, and walked down the driveway and out onto the street, the heels of her boots clicking furiously along the pavement.
The fair was an annual event, beloved by the town’s teenagers and children alike. The kids loved the bumper cars, the small roller coaster, the Barrel Roll, and the Chair-O-Planes; the teenagers loved the neon lights, the dark corners where they could kiss, the games and the arcades. It was, in truth, little more than a collection of sideshows with two or three half-decent rides, but the strips of lights mingled with the scents of cotton candy and roasting nuts and the tinny sound track to create something that was slightly magical.
All this was lost on Larissa’s friend Amber, who was enthusiastically kissing a boy from their history class, her back pressed against the wall of the coconut-shy booth, her hands holding his firmly at his sides so he didn’t get any ideas about putting them anywhere else. The rest of the girls had wandered off to smoke a spliff behind the bumper cars, and Larissa found herself alone. She waited a few minutes for Amber to disentangle herself from the boy, who had greasy hair and acne, but Amber seemed in no hurry to do so, even though he was the third boy she had kissed in the little over an hour they had been at the fair. Eventually Larissa wandered away.
She walked down the fair’s main street and out into the darkness of the park, following the fence that separated the fields from the main road. Cars sped past her, their headlights blazing, snatches of music floating from open windows, and she was overcome with a sense of sorrow and loss. Her hands shook as she dragged a pack of Marlboro Lights from her pocket, pulled one from the box, and applied the small yellow flame of her lighter to the tip.
“Those things will kill you.”
Larissa jumped, her heart lurching in her chest, at the sound of the old man’s voice. She knew it was him even as she was turning toward the source of the words; the voice was extraordinary, unlike any other she had ever heard. It rolled and swooned, as deep as a double bass and as smooth as honey, full of whispered promises and dark secrets. She turned to the fence and saw the old man on the other side of it, standing on the pavement with his hands in his pockets. For the first time since she had seen him two days ago, standing quietly on the corner of her road as she walked home from the library, he was not smiling. Instead he was looking at her with an expression of great sadness.
The fence between them was more than six feet high, green metal topped with wicked spikes, and it emboldened her. She took a step toward the old man.
“Why are you following me?” she asked, her voice sharp. “What the hell were you doing in my garden this morning?”
The old man’s smile returned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You look like someone I used to know.”
She opened her mouth to ask who, but before she could form the words, the old man moved. He stepped into the air, as casually as most people would climb a staircase, and floated up and over the fence. His coat billowed out behind him, the sleeves riding up, and Larissa caught sight of a narrow black V tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, before he landed gently in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he closed the distance between them impossibly quickly and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“I
’m sorry,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear. “I truly am.” Then he buried his face in her neck. She felt pain, so sharp it was almost sweet, and then she was gone.
It was still dark when Larissa awoke. She was lying on the grass beneath an oak tree, and she was cold and damp with dew. Her head felt heavy, and she struggled to her feet. She walked through the quiet stalls and rides of the fair, kicking through piles of litter and abandoned food, heading toward the park gates.
She remembered nothing about the previous night, nothing after she left her father standing in their driveway. Where were Amber and the rest of the girls? How could they just leave without her-hadn’t any of them bothered to look for her when they left? In the back of her head, a deep, gentle voice told her that everything was going to be all right, but she didn’t think it was.
She didn’t think that was even close to the truth.
The house was dark as she turned into the driveway, shivering, her arms wrapped tightly around her. She hoped that her parents were worried out of their minds, but she knew they would probably not have even noticed that she hadn’t come home.
She crept up the stairs, not because she cared if she woke anyone up, but because she didn’t want to be asked questions that she had no answers to. She would get some real sleep in a proper bed, then phone Amber and find out what had happened. Larissa undressed, lay down on her bed, pulling her duvet around her like a cocoon, and was asleep in less than a minute.
An hour later, she awoke and buried her face in her pillow so she didn’t scream. Her head was splitting in two, a huge thunderbolt of agony running through her forehead, as though someone had buried an axe in it. She rolled over, the pillow clamped to her face, her eyes wide with pain and terror, and then the hunger hit her, and she doubled up into a fetal ball. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, a pain so huge it felt as though it must have come from somewhere outside the universe, an enormous, howling emptiness that filled her entire body. She screamed into the pillow, her body convulsing, thrashing back and forth as though she was having a seizure. She screamed and screamed, and after what felt like an infinity of time, but was probably no more than a minute, the hunger subsided.
