Movers

by Meaghan McIsaac

  ‘How do you know about that?’ I ask.

  ‘People in the Hall have been talking about it all day. Supposed to have been a big one. Do you know something about it?’

  Me and Gabby stay quiet, squinting into the torchlight. Be straight. I’m afraid to. Afraid to confess to what Gabby’s done. Afraid Rani is going to panic and bail on us, leaving us stranded in the bowels of Hexall Hall. But she saved us. She deserves an answer. And once we find Leonard and start sorting out what to do, she’s going to find out what happened anyway.

  It’s best to answer.

  ‘Yes,’ I admit.

  I see Gabby out of the corner of my eye, surprise and horror on her face.

  Rani clucks her tongue once. Then, ‘Your Move?’ she asks.

  I shake my head.

  Gabby shifts on her feet and Rani watches her squirm in the light of the torch.

  ‘Right,’ says Rani, rubbing the back of her neck. She drops the light at her hip and I can hear her groan.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ I tell her.

  ‘Always is,’ she says. She holds out her hand to Gabby. ‘Where are your parents? They must be worried sick, if BMAC’s—’

  ‘They don’t care,’ mumbles Gabby.

  But Rani isn’t convinced. ‘Because if they’re out looking for you, they probably won’t be too happy to find you down here with someone like me. And I don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘Trust me,’ says Gabby, her eyes meeting Rani’s. She swallows and I can see she’s grinding her teeth. ‘They don’t care.’

  That’s the third time I’ve heard Gabby mention her parents. And the third time they haven’t sounded great. How can they not care?

  Rani’s glare softens and she watches Gabby for a moment. ‘WAN brat, huh?’ she says finally.

  Gabby nods.

  So does Rani. ‘Takes one to know one, I guess.’

  I have no idea what they are talking about. But it seems to put an end to Rani’s interrogation because she holds her light out ahead, into the blackness of the tunnel. ‘Well, let’s get moving then. Faster we get to Leonard, the better.’

  Gabby moves to follow but I stop her. ‘What’s a WAN brat?’ I whisper.

  She chews her cheek a moment and watches after Rani. ‘A Mover with WANs for parents, obviously.’

  I still don’t understand.

  ‘WAN,’ she says again. ‘We Are Now.’

  I nearly choke on my own spit. ‘Your parents are We Are Now?!’ My voice gets away from me, echoing through the dark.

  Gabby scowls and storms away as Rani shines her light in my eyes.

  ‘Believe it or not, Patrick,’ she says, ‘not everyone is as lucky as you in the parental draw of life.’

  FIFTEEN

  We march our way through what look like abandoned subway tunnels, dark and leaking with the smell of sewer water. Everyone’s quiet, except Maggie. Talking about crows.

  ‘What makes them attracted to Movers?’

  She hasn’t been able to drop this subject the entire time we’ve been walking. Rani’s answered mostly with grunts, focused more on finding our way through the twists and turns in the dark.

  ‘Dunno,’ she says, annoyed. ‘Something to do with radiation, so I’m told.’

  ‘Radiation?’

  Rani grunts again and waves a hand above her head. ‘From the Movement activity, you know, through time. It’s like the Eventualies and the storm clouds. Movers just sort of pull them in.’

  I think about Gabby’s Shadow – the way he stood on the stairs, the flocks of crows swirling around his head. A fresh Move. They swarmed him. They sense it. The idea gives me the creeps and I can tell Maggie’s not feeling good about it either because she swats Beauty away – I’ve never seen her do that. Is that why Beauty hangs around our apartment? Is there some remnant of Dad’s Move, even after all this time? A part of me hopes so. Even though it was the worst day of our lives … it means some piece of him is always around, doesn’t it?

  The bird squawks – offended, I bet – and flies ahead through the dark, the other three following after her.

  Maggie moves in closer to Rani and for a second I think she’s going to grab the forebrawler’s hand, but she stops herself. ‘Is that how come they like it in Hexall Hall so much?’

  I decide to let Maggie badger Rani for a little longer and drop back a bit. Gabby’s fallen behind, dragging her feet from exhaustion. The light from Rani’s torch barely reaches this far back so I can only really make out Gabby’s outline.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, ‘for how I reacted.’

  She doesn’t say anything.

  ‘About your parents, I mean.’ As if I needed to clarify. I can tell I offended her and I didn’t mean to. I was just so surprised to find out Gabby’s parents are We Are Now.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No, I am,’ I say. ‘I just …’ Just what? I breathe in a big nose full of sewer stink, trying to get a handle on what I want to say. We Are Now. Gabby’s parents are part of the Anti-Movers cause. They don’t teach much about it in school, but Mom’s told me plenty and I’ve seen the odd documentary to know how twisted they are. When BMAC implemented phase testing thirty years ago, people started singling out identified Movers. And attacking them … sometimes killing them. The We Are Now vigilantes targeted Movers’ homes and places of business, setting fires and small bombs in the name of ‘protecting’ the present. They hate Movers. They blame us for everything bad in the world, even the bad in their own lives. For them, Movers are the enemy.

  That means for Gabby’s parents – Gabby is the enemy.

  I think about what Gabby told Maggie, about her parents teaching her that all Movers are dangerous. What other horrible things would a couple of We Are Now fanatics tell their Mover daughter?

  ‘I mean, what would that even be like?’ My teeth clack as I slam my jaw shut – did I say that out loud?

  ‘What do you think it’s like?’ There’s an edge to Gabby’s voice, and I hate myself for not keeping quiet.

  I can feel her waiting for me to say something, and I can’t think of anything better than the truth. ‘Scary?’ I say quietly.

  ‘I’m not scared of them.’

  The way she says them makes me stop. ‘What are you scared of?’

  Gabby’s quiet, but I can feel the answer crawling up my spine. Her Shadow.

  I hear the scrape of nails on scabby skin and I know Gabby’s scratching her finger again. I’ve been around her enough now to know she does it when she’s nervous.

  ‘You feel him still, don’t you?’ I say.

  She nods. ‘Like a fist …’ Her voice is raspy, strangled by what sounds like the tears she’s trying to hold back. ‘His fist. Wrapped around my brain, all the time. And he just squeezes, tighter and tighter until I can’t …’

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘Until I can’t tell the difference between his anger and mine.’

  ‘Your anger?’

  ‘Yes, mine,’ she says. ‘I’ve had to put up with the Gooba name most of my life. I have to sit through classes with teachers like Mrs Dibbs. My parents are—’ She stops, and I can see her throat throb as she swallows.

  ‘Aren’t you angry?’ she asks quietly.

  I don’t answer that. I guess so. Phase forms, BMAC … Dad. I’ve never really thought about being angry about it. Never let myself, I guess.

  Gabby doesn’t need my answer. ‘It’s the same with my Shadow,’ she says. ‘But … bigger. His anger, I mean.’

  I nod, thinking of the screams of the BMAC agents he blew away. So much bigger.

  ‘He’s always been that way.’

  ‘It’s not like he’s not a morning person, Gabby,’ I say. ‘He killed two people. No one’s just that way.’

  The light on Gabby’s face grows dim, and a squawk from Beauty echoes its way down the tunnel to us. We’re too far behind, and Gabby speeds up. We walk together, neither of us saying anything, both of us trying to think
of what there is to say.

  ‘He hates anyone who’s not a Mover,’ she says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s bad in the future, from what I can tell. Between Movers and Non-Movers. Much worse than now.’

  ‘Worse how?’

  ‘It’s bigger,’ she says. ‘The tension between Movers and Non-Movers must snap eventually. Because from what I can tell, they’re at war with each other.’

  War. The word steals the breath from my lungs. I’m surprised, and not at all, at the same time. I’m surprised to realise that some part of me always guessed it would come to that. War. What happens between Movers and Nowbies that brings us to that?

  ‘My Shadow said we could keep each other safe,’ she says. ‘Said that together we were stronger. It’s the way nature wanted it. Why else would it go to so much trouble to connect us through space and time if we weren’t supposed to be together?’

  I hate that I see her Shadow’s point. That I feel it. And I notice my Shadow. He’s been hiding in the corners of my mind all day, monitoring how I’m feeling. And there’s a twitch, way down deep in my gut, like a muscle that wants to flex. The part that wants to Move. If the law didn’t tell me I couldn’t, if I didn’t work so hard to ignore him and stay Phase 1 … would I try to get stronger and Move my Shadow?

  ‘But …’ says Gabby, ‘because of how my parents are … well, you know – I just wanted him to leave me alone. So I kept telling him that. That’s when the thoughts started.’

  ‘Thoughts?’

  ‘I started thinking things.’ She glances sideways at me, embarrassed for some reason. ‘Angry, ugly things. I’d just be sitting in class, or having dinner with my parents, and then – I see them.’

  ‘See what?’

  She frowns, deciding if she should tell me. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to say. I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘No, no. I just …’ She sighs through her nose before she continues. ‘You know how Mrs Dibbs gets, at phase-form time?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Crabby. Nasty. Angry. Mean. Although really she’s always that way. It just gets worse then.

  ‘There was this one time,’ Gabby goes on, ‘last year. She’d said my name in that awful voice of hers. The class started to laugh. And those hideous eyebrows of hers dipped down so far between her eyes, like she was accusing me of something. And, I just hated her for it. When I didn’t answer her fast enough, she said, “Just like you Movers – holding up the world with your unnatural condition.” She used that word. Unnatural. And as soon as she said it, I saw her in my mind – her head in my hands, my fingers gripped in that silver frizzy ponytail, and I slammed her forehead down on the desk, so hard she just dropped.’

  I’m stunned. Who would have thought that quiet, loner, brainiac Gabby was so violent inside? It doesn’t fit; it’s so unlike her.

  She swallows again, and in the dim light I can see her eyes are getting wet. ‘Thoughts like that are in my head all the time. But they aren’t my thoughts.’

  ‘They’re his?’

  She nods.

  I’m quiet, trying to think of what that must be like for her. My Shadow and I, we aren’t like that. The connection’s too weak. I can feel him there, in my head. But he can’t do stuff like that. Can’t make me see things, think things I don’t want to. It sounds so … invasive.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, trying to sound brighter than we both feel, ‘now you know why I’m trying so hard to find pungits.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pungits,’ she says, searching my face for understanding. ‘The particle I’ve been talking about.’

  I stare at her blankly, feeling a bit embarrassed. ‘I told you, I have a hard time understanding—’

  ‘They’re what connect a Mover to their Shadow,’ she says.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘If I can find the pungits, find the connection,’ she says, her voice lower, ‘then I think I can get rid of him for good.’

  I stop walking. ‘Get rid of him?’

  She turns back to face me, and I see from the look in her eye that she’s serious.

  And then I understand Gabriela Vargas like I’ve never understood her before. ‘Gabby,’ I whisper, ‘is that what all those projects were about? You’re trying to cure yourself?!’

  She steps back from me and looks away.

  ‘Gabby, you can’t cure yourself from being a Mover. That’s impossible.’

  She nods, her eyes on the ground. ‘Maybe. But can you blame me for trying?’

  No. After everything she’s told me about her Shadow, and her parents, I can’t blame her at all. He scares me, this strange man that just appeared on the stairs at school. Without Gabby’s permission. Without her say. How can he be here without her permission? Phase 4. That’s what the news said. Whether she wanted to Move him or not, the fact remains: Gabby’s Shadow is here.

  And I remember something else. Something that makes me worried.

  I glance up at Rani. She’s so busy trying to ignore Maggie’s questions and lead the way through the tunnels, she hasn’t noticed we’re lagging behind.

  ‘Is the connection still messed up though?’ I whisper. ‘Cloudy, I mean.’

  Gabby shakes her head. ‘He doesn’t know where I am, I can tell. Just like I can’t tell where he is.’

  Good, I think, and release a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding.

  ‘But,’ she says, ‘he’s frustrated. I can feel it through all the … murkiness. It’s making him really upset.’

  That’s less good. And I start to worry about what happens if he ever does manage to find Gabby. Natural, he told Gabby, for them to be together. Maybe. But after what he did back at Romsey, someone like that, linked to someone like her – I can’t see anything natural about the two of them being paired up.

  She glances at me again, that embarrassed look. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It’s just that I’ve never talked about this. About him. Not to anyone. Ever.’

  ‘Sure.’ I shrug, as if it’s no big deal. But the weight of what she’s just confessed starts to sink in. She’s never told anyone. And I can’t understand it. I can’t understand living with something so big, so frightening, all by yourself and not asking for help. I think of Mom and I know that even if I tried to hide something, she’d sniff it out and make me tell her what was wrong. And she’d move mountains to make it better.

  Like she’d do for Maggie.

  And a black hole of sadness opens up inside my heart as I watch Gabby, silhouetted by the flashlight. It’s a sadness for Mom. For what she did for Maggie with BMAC. And because I don’t know what they’ve done to her.

  And it’s also for Gabby.

  Who has no one to move mountains for her.

  SIXTEEN

  After what feels like hours of walking, I can see a light out in front of us that isn’t coming from Rani’s flashlight. There’s an opening in the darkness, an archway of dim fluorescence and the murmurings of people.

  Gabby and I step into the light and I can see we’re still walking on subway tracks, the platform raised high on our right, with people, Hexall Hall types, huddled in little pockets. It’s a subway station – ‘Dunedin’, according to the chipped faded mosaic decorating the wall to my left.

  ‘ “Dunedin”,’ reads Gabby. ‘Where’s that?’

  I shake my head. I’ve never heard of it. I can’t be sure what part of the city Rani has walked us to. Or if we’re even in the city any more.

  Rani hops onto an unsteady stack of trashcans and boxes in the middle of the tracks – some sort of makeshift staircase – not seeming to mind that the whole thing’s about to topple over as she skips her way up onto the platform. ‘It’s under what used to be the old Auto District,’ she says. And that’s no help because I’ve never heard of the old Auto District either.

  ‘What’s it under now?’ I ask.

  ‘Garbage,’ she says,
helping Maggie up the wobbly steps. ‘Same as everything else outside the city limits.’

  A dump site. I look at Gabby – she chews her lip. We’re definitely not in the city any more.

  I follow them up the precarious staircase. Each jumbling piece of junk teeters in a different direction, pulling my limbs in all kinds of ways I’d rather they didn’t go. When I finally manage to step up onto the platform there’s a whole tattered and lumpy neighbourhood nestled on the speckled station tile. The people of Dunedin Station sit in spaces they’ve claimed for themselves, marking their territory with turned-over shopping carts, old newspaper dispensers, garbage cans, soiled boxes and bottles. Some of them have even gotten a bit sophisticated, rigging up struggling garden lights and monitors with wavy screens.

  Who are all these people? Movers, I know. Most of them runaways, or kicked out by their families. But there are so many. Each one with their own reason for heading underground.

  Something clatters as Gabby loses her balance on the trash-stairs and I give her my arm for balance. She takes my hand and wobbles her way to the solid platform and I feel that hole opening up in my chest for her. Because a Mover on their own, a Mover like Gabby, is the kind of Mover that ends up here.

  Her sweaty palm releases my forearm and she readjusts her shirt, which has gotten twisted funny from the climb – Dad’s shirt. She notices me staring. ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ I repeat clumsily. ‘Nah, nothin’.’

  I hurry after Rani and Maggie, avoiding sleeping lumps and wires as best I can.

  Rani leads us to the far end of the platform, where someone’s strung up a couple of sheets as a screen. Beauty and her new companions land on the ropes and Rani throws back a corner. ‘Through here.’

  On the other side I see where the stairs up to street level would be if they hadn’t been boarded up. There’s a camp set up here too, though it looks more like a command centre. Dusty flickering monitors, some cracked, all of them so old Mrs Dibbs probably wouldn’t recognise them, sit on top of shopping carts and rusted public benches. Bottles, take-out wrappers, crow feathers and bones litter the ground.

  Sitting on a desk chair with a missing wheel is a guy in a raincoat, frantically tapping away at what I guess is a keyboard from a long time ago. I’ve never actually seen one.