Movers

by Meaghan McIsaac

  Rani keeps focused on the light above her so that her eyes sparkle with that forebrawler fire while the doctor flicks a big syringe filled with a liquid the colour of blue-raspberry punch. I see spots and I feel so dizzy I have to lean on the seat in front of me. This is the last needle.

  Rani doesn’t take her eyes off the light and all I want to do is rush down there, break the window and tell her to run.

  ‘It was like a thousand years ago!’ I shout. ‘She didn’t hurt anyone!’

  ‘She’s hurting everyone,’ says Hartman, the same way Mom talks to Maggie when she’s having a temper tantrum. ‘This world is for the people who live here now, not the ones who don’t like the time they come from. When Rani Nair let someone come back here who wasn’t supposed to be here – every time her Shadow eats, every time he drinks, every time he finds a corner of the planet to call his home – her Shadow takes something away from the rest of us. She did this to herself, Mr Mermick.’

  ‘No, you’re doing this. You’re doing this to her!’

  The doctor brushes wisps of Rani’s dark hair aside, and I can’t even feel my own body any more but that doesn’t stop me. I have to get to her. I clamber over the row of chairs in front of me, then the next, and the next, until I’m pressed against the window and banging as hard as I can. ‘Stop it!’ I scream. ‘Let her go!’

  ‘Step away from the window, Mr Mermick,’ orders Hartman.

  I don’t. ‘Run,’ I beg Rani, even though I know she can’t hear me. ‘Please, run.’

  Her face hardens as if she’s telling me to keep quiet. I can’t stop this; she knows I can’t. And then she looks back at the bright light above her as the doctor pushes the needle into her temple.

  Rani closes her eyes and so do I, my heart stinging in my chest like it’s barely holding together. Rani is sleeping. Sleeping because of me.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I’m sitting by myself in the theatre. Hartman left me alone, but not before posting two officers at each exit. She wanted me to think about what just happened. The operating table is empty now. They took Rani to the Shelves, leaving me with the memory blistered into my brain.

  My temples feel warm, my Shadow quietly trying to get my attention. I’m fine, I lie. What’s the point of telling him the truth? Cos the truth is I’m not fine. Rani has been Shelved and it’s all cos of me. I brought this trouble on her. I brought Maggie and Gabby and BMAC into her life, and she tried to help me. She didn’t have to, she didn’t even know me, but she did. And now she’s sleeping. Special Agent Hartman didn’t do this. I did.

  My eyes are puffy and stinging from all the tears. Who else will sleep cos of me? Special Agent Hartman will do anything to get her hands on Gabby. She’s proven that.

  But I don’t know where Gabby is. I breathe in the cold air and lean back in my seat, grateful that we got separated when we did. Even if Hartman manages to convince me to help her find Gabby, there’s no way I can. I don’t have the first clue where Leonard’s taken her. So what happens to me when Hartman figures that out?

  I start to shake, trying not to think about that blue syringe coming for my head.

  There’s a bang as Hartman bursts back into the amphitheatre and slams the door behind her. Her heels click on the tile as she strides confidently to where I’m sitting and she collapses in the seat beside me, her arm draped over the back of mine as if we’re old friends.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘that wasn’t much fun, was it?’

  I keep my eyes on the empty silver table.

  ‘How about it, Mr Mermick?’ she says. ‘How about you tell me what it is I need to know, and we get you and your mom home? Get your sister home too. Wouldn’t that be good?’

  I study her face, not sure if she means it or if I just want her to. ‘You’d let my mom go?’

  ‘If you tell me where to find the girl, sure.’

  The girl. The unlucky Mover who got stuck with a nasty Shadow. ‘Gabby didn’t do anything wrong.’

  Hartman sighs and takes her arm back. ‘She did, son. And you know she did. The point is, I need to find her, and you know where she is. So all this back and forth, who did what is irrelevant.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ I tell her.

  ‘Don’t test me, boy,’ she says, and the friendly veil all at once disappears. ‘I’m a pretty patient person, but I have my limits.’

  Patient? What patience? Was that patience when she told her officers to take Rani right to the Movers’ Prison? Every second I don’t respond makes the creases in her forehead get a little deeper, and I want to do everything I can to make those creases worse.

  ‘So what?’ I say, glad to see I’ve pissed her off. ‘You can’t do anything to me.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that,’ she says, and I know from the hoarseness of her voice that she means it. ‘Where. Is. Gabriela. Vargas?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘This is the last time I ask nicely, son,’ she says. ‘Where is the Vargas girl?’

  Her nose is practically touching mine and it’s right there in the downturned corners of her mouth that she’s not going to let me, or Mom, or anybody involved in this out of here so easily. And I hate her for it. Now I want to make her hate me as much as I hate her, and I know exactly how to do it.

  I take my fist and bump my forehead.

  Hartman’s skin drains of colour and she gets to her feet. ‘Get up,’ she says. ‘Get up, right now.’

  I don’t really have a choice and she makes me follow her out of the amphitheatre, up a tight, winding metal staircase, stopping at a small door that looks more like a hatch on a submarine. Another finger scanner here, and Hartman gives it a quick swipe, the hatch hissing open. An icy wind whooshes in, freezing the sweat on my forehead, and she climbs through the door.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she snaps.

  I duck through the hatch and my feet make a clanging sound as we step out onto a grated pathway. It’s freezing in here, like a giant refrigerator.

  ‘Look around you,’ she says, but I’m ahead of her. There are feet, everywhere, lined up around the circular walls, rising up level upon level all the way to the top of the chamber. It’s like a giant silo of human feet, resting on what can only be described as shelves. The Shelves. Every pair of feet is attached to a sleeping Mover. My stomach lights up like a furnace and I feel as if I’m going to throw up over the guardrail. Below are more shelves, more feet than I can count, all of them sleeping.

  ‘This way,’ she says, but I can barely move. This is just one chamber. I know from the pictures that the Movers’ Prison is made of six different silos. And there are more being built. Does each one house this many Movers?

  Hartman grabs me by the scruff of the neck and shoves me forward, climbing the gangway, more metal stairs that shake and clang as we stomp along. I feel as if I’m disturbing them, as if the noise will interrupt their slumber, and suddenly I’m stomping harder, hoping to wake them all up. After what must be the fifth staircase, she marches me to the end of another grated pathway and stops in front of a pair of big pale feet. They’re veiny and knobby, the skin so white it’s nearly see-through. Every pair seems to have a glowing plate beneath it and this one is just the same. I squint to read it.

  M. Mermick.

  Dad.

  Suddenly I can’t remember how to do anything. How to stand. How to breathe. He’s here, right in front of me. All I can think is that he’s in there, that face I haven’t seen for six years, sleeping.

  ‘There’s plenty of room,’ says Hartman behind me. My fingers reach out and trace the digital letters, making sure I’m reading it right. ‘Lots of spots in Silo 3 that would fit you perfectly.’

  His blood pressure reads 90/50. Is that good? Is he healthy?

  ‘Shelving one more Mermick is no skin off my nose.’

  02 Sats: 100%. Metabolic Ratio Rate, 2:1. What does this mean? Is he all right in there? My hand hovers just above the nameplate and part of me wants to touch his frozen-looking to
e. Does he know I’m here? Can he feel me, sort of like I feel my Shadow?

  Hartman leans in, her warm breath on my ear. ‘Or three.’

  Mom. Maggie.

  My hand drops and my heart seizes up. Hartman doesn’t miss it.

  ‘You can’t Shelve us,’ I whisper, forcing myself to believe it, but she can hear the tremble of doubt in my voice.

  ‘Try me.’

  My heartbeat kicks alive again, thudding like a thousand terrified crows, and I don’t know what to do. Part of me wants to tell her something – Pondu Terminal at Killberry Beach, anything – just give her Gabby so she’ll leave Mom and Maggie alone. But I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to see Gabby on that table.

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ I say, the tremor in my body so bad I’m worried I’ll fall over.

  ‘Have it your way then,’ says Hartman, and she pulls out her droidlet. ‘Call control.’

  There’s a click and a beep from the droidlet’s centre.

  A man’s voice. ‘This is control.’

  ‘I want Dr Elgin back in prep,’ she barks. ‘And get me two officers to Silo 3.’ Her foot taps on the metal as she walks away from me, still giving orders, and each clang is like a hammer inside my head, visions of everyone I love blasting across my mind as they lie on that table, waiting for the needle. She can’t hurt them. I can’t let her hurt them.

  But I don’t know how. The only thing she wants from me is Gabby, and I won’t give her that. I struggle to think. There has to be something else – anything else – that will convince her to let us go.

  An idea shoots through the terrifying visions and I latch onto the lie before I even have the chance to really think it through.

  ‘Wait!’

  Hartman stops her conversation as my voice echoes through the silo. My heart is pounding so hard that the thump of my blood is getting in the way of whatever my Shadow’s sending. I push him back from me, as if somehow Hartman could get to him too if I let him get too close.

  Hartman faces me, her arms held patiently behind her back, waiting for me to speak. I have to speak.

  ‘I know the cure for Movers.’

  She scoffs at me and turns on her heel.

  ‘It’s true!’ I shout after her. ‘I know lots of things you don’t about Movers.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ she calls over her shoulder.

  ‘Pungits!’

  She stops and turns back to face me. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  She puts her hands on her hips. ‘What have you heard?’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ I say.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Get me Rani’s duffle bag and I’ll show you.’ Leonard’s pungit ray is in there. ‘And then I’ll tell you the cure.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Hartman’s eyebrows dip low as the black specks dance around my head in the beam of Leonard’s pungit ray. I’m surrounded by a bunch of BMAC agents, standing on crusty pink carpet between rows of cluttered cubicles.

  ‘Would you look at that?’ says a young guy who looks more like a wrestler than a BMAC officer. He’s squinting at the pungit ray in my hand. ‘You made that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ignoring the sweat in my palms.

  He laughs. ‘Well, that’s a lot easier than the massive machine we have. Stupid thing takes up an entire room.’

  ‘Who taught you how to make that?’ says Hartman.

  I have no interest in telling her that. She’s never mentioned Leonard, so I won’t be giving her any reason to look for him. ‘A friend.’

  ‘A Shadow?’ she says, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘A fugitive!’ barks a fat guy.

  ‘He’s from the 2300s, and they know lots about Movers there,’ I say defensively, wondering if somewhere Leonard’s cursing my name. I feel guilty, but I’m running out of cards to play – and I haven’t mentioned his name.

  What Leonard told me races through my head, again and again and again. About how BMAC wants as much information about the future as they can get. I swallow. I start to wonder if I’ve made the wrong decision. Because showing BMAC the pungit ray changes history, doesn’t it? How it will do that, I can’t know. But I know I’ve started something. I’ve kicked off a whole new timeline or parallel universe or something and I brace myself for the world to implode.

  It doesn’t.

  But it’s enough to make the sweat in my palms run hot like lava.

  ‘And you can make them go away?’ asks Hartman.

  I look at the pungit ray in my hands, trying to make it look like I’m struggling to decide whether telling her the cure for Movers is something I really want to do.

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly.

  ‘How?’

  I lift my eyes to Hartman’s. This is the most important part, the whole reason for the lie. ‘My mother.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She goes free. Then I tell you how.’

  Hartman shakes her head. ‘How about you just tell me?’

  ‘No.’ If I can’t save myself, at least this way I can save her.

  Hartman stares at me a long time and I stare right back, letting her know how serious I am about this part of the deal. The officers sitting around us are guffawing and murmuring to each other, half of them of the opinion I’m asking too much, the other half discussing the ray and how if someone’s shared enough knowledge about the science of pungits with me to make a machine that small, who’s to say I don’t know how to manipulate pungits somehow?

  Hartman’s eyes dart around the room, from conversation to conversation, and I can tell by her scowl that she doesn’t like hearing her fellow officers’ views. She likes it even less that I wasn’t lying about knowing things she didn’t about Movers. The little pungit ray has taken her by complete surprise, and she’s mad at me for it.

  ‘Come with me,’ she says, grabbing me by the arm.

  She takes me out into the hall and throws me in Room B. ‘Sit down,’ she orders, slamming the door shut behind her.

  I do. ‘I’m not telling you anything else until my mother is released.’

  Hartman chews her bottom lip, hating this change in dynamic, hating that she’s given me enough of an edge to make demands. But she’s convinced I have something she wants, something all of BMAC wants. ‘Fine,’ she says quickly. ‘It’s done.’

  Lies.

  I shake my head, ‘Now. Release her now.’

  ‘It’s already noon,’ says Hartman. ‘It’s too late to do it today. She’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

  I shrug. ‘Then I guess you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

  Hartman slams her hand onto the table and glares at me, and I glare right back. If I don’t do this right, me, my family, Gabby – we’re all Shelf-Meat.

  ‘Fine,’ says Hartman. ‘I’ll release her tonight.’

  I lean back in the chair and cross my arms.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she says, a wild glint in her eye, and I try my best to keep confident, like Mom.

  ‘Waiting,’ I tell her. ‘Waiting until you let her go.’

  She shoves the table away from me with an angry grunt and storms back to the door.

  ‘And I want to see it,’ I say as she opens it to leave. ‘I want to see my mother released and I want a car waiting to take her home when she is.’

  She slams the door shut again. ‘I don’t have the authority to make that happen.’

  Her colour has changed from the orangey fake tan to red and her forehead is glistening with tiny beads of sweat. She wants this information. They all do. They’ll do whatever it takes in order to get it. And I need to know my mom is safe before they find out I’m lying about a cure. ‘Then you’d better find someone who does.’

  Hartman stands there, out of excuses or ideas, and the frustration twisting her face into a million lines is almost funny. Finally she flings open the door to leave.

  ‘And a meatball sub,’ I say. ‘For me. No onion.’r />
  She doesn’t turn back to me, but her shoulders tense up to her ears. She wrenches the door shut behind her, the deafening bang quickly swallowed up by the silence of my little cell. There’s nothing more I can do now but wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  Finally, after what must be hours, I’m woken up by a bit of commotion outside the door and I lift my head off the desk, waiting for Hartman to enter. But she doesn’t. When the door opens, there are two uniformed BMAC officers, stun staffs brandished across their chests. I shrink back a bit in my chair. They look so stern that I wonder if maybe Hartman’s superiors have called my bluff. The uniformed officers stand on either side of the door as four men walk in, wearing well-fitted suits and silver haircuts, their eyes laser-focused on me. Behind them I get a glimpse into the hallway as the door shuts. There are two more uniformed officers posted outside. I’m in trouble.

  ‘Mr Mermick,’ says one of the men. His black suit is the slickest-looking of the four, and his thick-rimmed glasses make him look like some sort of rocket scientist, with a round, bulbous nose for sniffing out liars. ‘I hear you have some information you are willing to share with us.’

  I swallow, trying to get some moisture into my suddenly dry throat.

  ‘I’m Bureau Minister Vaughan. Special Agent Hartman has been telling me that you are aware of the existence of pungits. Is that right?’

  I nod, my fingers fidgeting nervously on the table. Bureau Minister.

  ‘And that you have a special contraption that enables you to see them? One you can hold in your hand?’

  ‘It’s not possible!’ grumbles one of the men at his side. ‘The X-magnets alone don’t allow for anything smaller than the DEM we currently have.’

  ‘Yes, Mandel,’ says Vaughan, an annoyed edge to his voice, ‘you’ve voiced your protests already, thank you. Unfortunately the Direct Energy Machine currently in use by the Bureau is neither cost-efficient nor practical for use in incorporating pungits with the phase-testing program. So an opportunity to explore an alternative technology is more than welcome, wouldn’t you agree?’