The Catalyst

by Helena Coggan

  She did not get a lot of sleep these days.

  Loren himself, when she had told him about the public appeal, had not seemed particularly anxious about it. She suspected that was only because they both knew it would serve no purpose at all to panic.

  So here she was in the middle of an Art lesson with Maria, trying to work with smoke. Miss Edgware had apparently decided that the best way to do this was to fill a room with smoke and let them work with it in oxygen masks and goggles. Right now, they were trying to create models of themselves. Rose was failing.

  “Come on, now, Rosalyn!” enthused Miss Edgware from over her shoulder, making Rose jump. She had tried umpteen times to tell her teacher that no one called her that, but somehow she didn’t get it. She had eventually given up. “Try harder!”

  Rose resisted the urge to roll her eyes and concentrated. With remarkably little effort, now that she was focused, the figure of a man emerged from the smoke. Rose scrutinized it and found unsurprisingly that the build and contours resembled those of her father. Amazing what the subconscious could do when called on.

  I’m the form your subconscious takes to talk to you, he had said in her Test.

  Yes, she thought irritably, but do you shut up, though?

  “Well done!” Miss Edgware said. “Now, I want you all to try something. Raise the hand of your statue.”

  The figures raised their right hands. The excess smoke was beginning to clear now; Rose could see Maria’s outline through the bleary cloud.

  “And now, move the hand down again.”

  They did.

  “Now, can you make your figure sit down?”

  They could. Rose, vaguely identifying a chair through the smoke, guided her figure gently onto that.

  “And now —”

  It happened then. One of the other pupils slipped for a second; the figure exploded with a bang like a gunshot. So like a gunshot that Rose jumped for the first time she could remember, and suddenly the room around her was tiny and metal and her thoughts were disappearing and the pain was rearing, coming for her again —

  “Rose!”

  Her head jerked up. She had bitten her tongue; she tasted blood in her mouth. Across from her, the smoke figure had assumed color. But it didn’t look like David anymore. Its eyes were now a deep, bleak white, and its hands had expanded to claws. It was beginning to sink to the floor and fold onto itself: in a moment it would rear, screaming, its skin would crack and darken, its limbs lengthen to those of an animal, its face —

  Rose breathed in, and out, trying to calm herself. Slowly, the figure drifted apart. The eyes were the last to go; they stared at Rose unblinkingly, coldly, until their whiteness was merely the residue of an imprint.

  The whole class was staring at her.

  “I was . . . experimenting,” Rose said. “On what I could do with it.”

  She was lucky, very lucky, that no one there had ever seen a Hybrid transform, or the game would have been up there and then. They stared at her for a minute more without saying anything. Then someone from the back of the class shouted, “How did you do that?”

  The tension broke. A ripple of calm rolled over the class. Even the teacher was watching Rose in astonishment.

  “I just . . . concentrated,” she said. “Look.”

  She focused again, and those eyes re-formed from the smoke. She would not have called them back, but it would look suspicious if she was reluctant to re-create what she had unwittingly called into physical form.

  Miss Edgware suggested they all try coloring the smoke figures — which, she asserted, was part of the lesson plan — and within a few minutes all the figures were wearing brightly colored clothes and, thankfully, all had normal eyes. At the end of the lesson Miss Edgware transmogrified the smoke figures into plastic and placed them in the corner of the room.

  After they were dismissed, Rose hurried out of the classroom and leaned against the wall, trying to control her breathing. That had been dangerous — unbelievably, unspeakably dangerous. And it was her fault.

  No point worrying about it. Put it behind you, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

  She was fine. She was a liar. She could lie about this.

  She got up and started walking to Combat.

  They were waiting outside the Department building again that evening. There were twice as many Gospel members tonight, and their average age had lowered considerably, as well: Rose would have put most of them in their mid-twenties. Presumably someone in the group had realized that nobody was listening to them on the cemetery front, so they had adopted a new grievance. Not to mention a new chant. This one was very simple, so much so that they hadn’t even bothered to make it rhyme.

  “Ashkind off our streets!”

  Rose recognized Stephen Greenlow’s voice. She could find traces of Tristan and Aaron in there as well, if she tried; and then, suddenly, she realized why.

  They were there.

  They were there, outside the Department — her Department — standing smiling on that stage with their father, and chanting stupid bloody slogans and waving stupid bloody banners with that stupid bloody winged door on them. But they hadn’t seen her, not yet. She had the element of surprise; she could wipe their stupid bloody smiles off their stupid bastard faces —

  “Is that him?” came a quiet voice from behind her. She turned. James leaned against the wall, eyes on Aaron, hand on the handle of his gun. “Can I kill him for you?”

  “I don’t think that will do your career any favors.”

  “I don’t care about my career. I care about —” He stopped, and swallowed. “I care about law and order.”

  “What do they want this time?”

  He shrugged. “Who cares?” He paused, staring at them, and then suddenly pulled her behind the wall. Something glittered in his eyes. His expression bore a remarkable resemblance to the one David wore just before things went wrong and people died.

  “Wouldn’t it be terrible,” he whispered, “if the Gospel should become violent?”

  “It would,” Rose agreed, voice equally low, “but I don’t like your chances. They don’t want to get arrested.”

  “Well, that’s where they’re going to be out of luck, aren’t they?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  James peered round the corner. “That kid’s using magic.”

  “What, Tristan? No, he isn’t.”

  James gave her a my-God-you’re-slow-today look. “He absolutely, definitely is.”

  Rose nodded. “Oh, yes. Loads.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I swear Aaron’s got a short-action rifle.”

  “Yeah, I see it now.”

  James looked at her. She could see the beginnings of his smile. He took his walkie-talkie out of his bag and held down the button. “Laura?”

  “Yes?” came the crackly reply.

  “We need a squad team out here now, please.”

  The response was alarmed. “Are Greenlow’s lot causing trouble?”

  “Lots,” said James, and this time his grin showed through in his voice. There was a pause on the other end. Laura knew, Rose could tell she knew; but the Department had no love for the Gospel, and Laura certainly had no reason to want them out of harm’s way.

  “On their way,” she said finally, and disconnected.

  James glanced up at Rose. She smiled at him, pulse racing, and then they stepped out from behind the wall.

  “SHUT UP!” James roared. The chanting from the Gospel lowered to murmurs of discontent, and fell silent altogether as they turned to look at him. They’d seen him coming to work often enough, and, despite his age, they knew to be wary of angry Department members. Tristan and Aaron looked between Rose and James, uncomprehending and wary. Stephen Greenlow turned, surprised.

  “You’re James Andreas, aren’t you?” he said, ignoring his sons’ expressions of growing anxiety. Their eyes, with those of the rest of the Gospel congregation, were on James’s gun.

&
nbsp; “Yes.”

  “Tomas Andreas’s brother?”

  James’s face darkened; Rose made a mental note not to ask. “Yes.” They were all staring at him now. “I’m here to tell you to get lost.”

  Stephen’s eyebrows rose so high it was almost comical. “And why is that? We’re doing nothing wrong.”

  “You’re using magic illegally,” said James. “You’re under arrest. All of you.”

  “You’re going to arrest all of us? Just on your own? You’ll have a lot of work on your hands, my boy.”

  “There’s a Department squad team on its way.”

  “Well then,” Stephen said, as mutterings began to rise and Aaron and Tristan looked genuinely alarmed, “today will mark another lost battle in the fight for free speech.”

  “And a victory in the fight against idiotry,” said Rose before she could stop herself. The Greenlows switched their attention to her. She met their gazes unblinkingly.

  “You call us idiots?” yelled Tristan. He didn’t have the advantage of Stephen’s microphone, and his voice was thin on the May breeze.

  “I’m sorry, did you not hear me the first time?”

  The mutterings among the Gospel crowd were growing; they looked angry now, and Rose was abruptly aware of the fact that there were only two of her and James. He seemed to have had the same realization, and brought out his walkie-talkie again.

  “Laura, what’s their ETA?”

  A silence. Then, suddenly, a very different voice came onto the intercom.

  “What in hell do you think you are doing?”

  Rose and James glanced at each other in alarm.

  “They have weapons, sir,” James said hesitantly, but he did not sound at all convinced now. “They’re a danger to public order.”

  “The hell they are,” said Terrian angrily. “What is this? Revenge? A prank? What in Ichor’s name makes you think you have the right to use Department troops for your own purposes?”

  James was defensive now. “Nothing, Connor, we just —”

  “We?”

  James glanced at Rose, biting his lip. There was another, longer pause. Everyone in the Gospel had heard the reply. Greenlow looked amused. Tristan and Aaron, on their stupid bloody podium, started laughing.

  “So,” said Stephen, “we survive another day, do we?”

  The laughter grew steadily, monstrously, until the crowd was howling. It was like the most absurd nightmare; Tristan and Aaron were pointing at her, screaming with the hilarity of it.

  Nobody likes you.

  She walked away as quickly as she could, tears withheld but blushing, leaving James in front of the gathered Gospel.

  There were posters on the school walls a few days later. Not of Loren — those had been ripped or vandalized to the point of illegibility within a week. The face that now stared down from the walls was very different: younger, dark-haired, and bright-eyed. Even Rose couldn’t stop herself from sympathizing with the family when she saw the word MISSING written in stark black letters under his photo.

  It was Aaron Greenlow.

  Tristan had been crying. Of course, Rose couldn’t blame him for that, whatever else she wanted to blame him for. What worried her, though, was that Tristan broken-hearted, brotherless and unhappy was likely to be far more malicious than Tristan content. And he had been bad enough then.

  Aaron Greenlow. Missing.

  He had vanished the night after Rose’s confrontation with him and his father’s mob. But it couldn’t have anything to do with that. No.

  Aaron Greenlow. Missing.

  Presumed dead, Rose knew. Because Aaron was the son of an MoD official, the Department had bumped him up their list. They had him on file as a suicide victim — David had told her heavily that the case of the Mysterious Disappearing Teenage Boy was one they had encountered many, many times before — but they weren’t telling his mother that.

  Aaron Greenlow. Missing, presumed dead.

  And Rose wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. She still hadn’t got used to the idea of him as a bully in thrall to his younger brother. In some part of her mind, he was still the handsome boy she had not been able to stop thinking about for two years.

  And now he was gone. And she felt nothing. Nothing overwhelming, at least.

  The thing was — and she gave credence to this thought with great reluctance — Aaron didn’t act like a suicide victim. He had never acted like a suicide victim. He was doing well in school, and he was popular, and he was Gifted.

  And she’d seen him just a few days ago. He’d looked fine.

  There was no note. No previous behavioral indicators.

  So what had happened to Aaron?

  For the first time in weeks, Rose found herself thinking of poor, dead Sylvia Argent. Killed by Regency, for whatever reason. Poisoned while pregnant. Cold, now, and rotting with her brother in the earth. She had found Tom again, in the end, Rose thought with a dull smile. Perhaps she was happy there, with him.

  But she was still dead. And no one knew exactly why.

  Rose was not sufficiently lost in these musings, however, to ignore the expression on her teacher’s face when he walked into the Combat classroom that afternoon. He was grinning slightly too widely to be just generally happy. No: this was his sadistic face. It meant a fight.

  And Rose knew whom it would be between.

  “All right, settle down!”

  The class settled down. They always kept remarkably quiet in front of the teacher when, as now, he had a gun in his hand. Amazing what the presence of lethal weaponry could do for you.

  “You’ve been practicing magical combat techniques for the past three weeks,” he told them. They knew. Six burns, four cuts and a broken jawbone marked their progress. “Some of you aren’t even atrocious anymore. So you know what happens. I’ll pair you up. You come up to the front of the classroom and fight it out. First break in the shield wins.”

  Rose stayed in a corner and watched the fights before hers. She was too deep in thought to pay attention to any of them; they played out before her in an uneven blur of thuds and grunts. When it came to Nate and Maria’s, she blinked herself alert. This, she thought, would be a straightforward victory for Nate, but she had underestimated them both: Maria, who couldn’t fight anyway, didn’t even try to beat Nate. He stabbed at her shield, which she blocked, and then he blasted her into the concrete wall, trusting that her magical defenses would keep her from feeling any pain, and then twisted her shield apart.

  It was Maria’s grateful smile that gave it away. The teacher noticed it immediately: Rose, who had been watching him narrowly throughout the fight, knew that everything had been too expertly choreographed for the deception to pass unnoticed. He held up a hand to stop proceedings.

  “Well done,” he said. He clapped slowly. The sounds fell like blows over the class, who stayed utterly silent. Knowing their teacher, nothing good would be coming next.

  “You.” He nodded to Nate. “Stand beside me.”

  Nate did. If he was afraid, he didn’t show it.

  “Rose, come stand across from Maria.”

  Turning as one as if by a strong wind, the class swiveled round to look at her. They cleared a path for her as she walked through them; she did her best to ignore their whispers, their wide eyes. She took her place about ten feet away from Maria in a combat stance. She thought she might know what the teacher was doing. If she was right, he was both cleverer and more utterly vicious than Rose had thought.

  The teacher addressed the class now. “This is what happens if you voluntarily lose a fight. Rose will now proceed to fight Maria. Every blow Maria takes will also be felt by Nathaniel.”

  He was very perceptive; not many teachers would be able to sense an unspoken relationship between two pupils, let alone find a way to use it against them.

  She wondered whether he could feel the palpable hatred radiating from all three of them toward him.

  “Adopt combat stance.”

  Mar
ia did. She looked scared but determined.

  “Begin.”

  Maria struck faster than Rose had expected her to: a spike-strike straight to the stomach. Spike-strikes were ideal for taking people off-guard, because they were almost impossible to detect and didn’t use much energy. Rose, however, had guessed that this was what Maria would use and had a block ready. She responded with a hard rush of energy that pressed Maria to the floor.

  Somewhere to her left, she heard Nate grunt in pain.

  Rose, not wanting to draw this out by any means, slammed Maria one more time and then, at the flash of light that indicated a break in her shield, stepped back and nodded. She turned to the teacher, who seemed displeased.

  “You didn’t try,” he said.

  “I won in two blows. How is that not trying?”

  Nate got to his feet, wincing. He met Maria’s eyes and nodded in thanks. The teacher’s gaze flashed between them and back to Rose.

  “Fight again,” he said.

  Maria’s mouth dropped open in outrage. Nate made a small noise between a groan and a sigh.

  “No,” Rose said.

  Absolute silence. The class was riveted now.

  “I said,” the teacher repeated dangerously, “fight again.”

  “And I,” Rose told him calmly, “said no.”

  The teacher stared at her, and it was like trying to stare Loren down in Room Fourteen all those months ago, except the teacher didn’t know what Loren had known and so this situation was nowhere near as frightening.

  There was a very long pause. After about ten seconds, the class’s whispers rose to the level where the teacher’s control was being disputed and he told them, sharply, to shut up.