The Catalyst

by Helena Coggan

  Loren smiled grimly.

  “Oh no,” he said, “this wasn’t a terrorist attack. This was a declaration of war.”

  Rose was allowed to go home with David that night. They took the District line from Westminster in wary, uncertain silence. Each had been through so much in the past two weeks that they were no longer sure how the other would react. The rattling of the Tube echoed strangely in Rose’s ears.

  They got home safely. Rose was almost surprised. David locked the door and collapsed onto the sofa. Rose resisted the temptation to go straight to her room to think, and to check it was still there, if only because she knew it would offend her father.

  “So.”

  Rose looked at him.

  “I assume you have questions,” he said. “The girl. I’m sorry about that.”

  Rose stared at him.

  “A couple of Angel Parliamentarians contacted me six months ago,” he said. “Promised me a pay raise if I act as psychotherapist to Tabitha Arkwood. Of course, I knew who she was. I hoped the name was just a coincidence at first, but no . . . They told me she was a magical Demon. An impossible case. They come along more often than you’d think. They wanted her . . . investigated.”

  His eyes were closed, and he spoke as if from memory.

  “So I did it, of course. I felt I owed it to Rayna to try to protect her. They told me they needed the most trustworthy person they had to keep this secret — it is always so amusing when that happens. They asked me to keep it from you. I agreed.

  “After six weeks, the girl still wasn’t talking, and they wanted to use ECT on her — I don’t know what they hoped to achieve, perhaps shock the magic out of her. I stood in the way. Tabitha trusted me by then, and they knew that if they took me away that would set them back months. So they kept me on. When they realized she wasn’t dangerous, they lost interest. They stopped running the tests on her, and just kept her there, in custody. I was waiting for an opportunity to quietly release the two of them, but of course, then Arkwood escaped, started killing people . . . came after you . . .”

  He sounded almost cold now.

  “I won’t pretend I didn’t suspect something. Not anything as serious as what you were up to, but still, I knew something was wrong. I thought it was just normal teenage problems. Hormones, et cetera.” He opened his eyes. They were fixed on her. “And I thought myself a detective.”

  Rose couldn’t speak for a moment; when speech returned to her, it was very small.

  “Are you angry with me?”

  He took a moment to consider.

  “No.” His eyes flickered to the door of the cupboard under the stairs. “After all, there are worse secrets to keep, aren’t there?”

  She hesitated.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Regency?”

  He sighed. Then he moved to her sofa and sat down beside her.

  “Rose,” he said. “I lived through the War, and surviving that meant I had to do terrible things. Regret has a tipping point like anything else. If you let it build up, it will crush you, so you have to start running eventually.”

  She looked into his eyes, and found no trace of a lie within them.

  “I’m running from a lot of things, Rose, and I can’t tell you about all of them, but you have to trust me that I mean the best for you.”

  She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.

  “No. Rose, no. Please. Not now. I promise you, on my life, that after this is over I’ll tell you and I’ll answer all your questions. But not now. Let me have my secrets until the bastards are gone, and then I will tell you everything.”

  She waited uncertainly for a moment. The tremor in his left hand was back again: Rose could see him gripping it with unnecessary force with his right.

  “You probably need some sleep,” he said. “In your own bed for a change. Go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  They both smiled grimly at the suggestion of getting a sound night’s sleep. Still, Rose stood and began to make her way up the stairs. He was right: it would be good to sleep in her own bed, in her own room, with no one coming after her, and no soft murmurs of passersby jerking her into terrified wakefulness every few hours.

  “Oh, and Rose?”

  She looked back at him.

  “I love you, you know.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  They found her in the road beside the back entrance of the Department the next morning.

  David stopped dead in the street and put out a hand to hold Rose back. She ignored him and dodged round before he could stop her, but when she saw the corpse she took several steps backward very quickly.

  It was Laura.

  Oh, Angels.

  Laura — who had looked after Rose when she was a baby, witness to her first steps; who had been kind and sympathetic to even the most heinous of criminals; brilliant, ingenious, sweet, strict, forgiving Laura, who had not said a word about Rose’s betrayal, who had smiled at her nonetheless . . .

  She was unquestionably dead.

  David was white-faced. “Rose, get Connor and James.”

  Rose ran past Emily, ignoring her protestations, and took the stairs two at a time. She burst into the Department office. All heads turned to look at her. Terrian’s was not among them, but James’s was. He saw her expression and was on his feet immediately.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  She could not speak, but gestured for him to follow her. They were halfway down the first flight of stairs when a scream, a girl’s scream, reached them from outside. They broke into a sprint, and found David, Nate and Maria in the street, staring at the body. Maria had her hands over her mouth.

  The two girls looked at each other. Maria’s jaw dropped even further. Nate looked between them uneasily. “Okay,” he said. “I can explain —”

  “What are you doing here?” Rose said, aghast. She looked at Nate accusingly. “Just because she’s your girlfriend doesn’t mean you can come round here showing a law-enforcement agency off like it’s your house.”

  “It’s not like that!” Nate said heatedly. “I just thought . . . it would be nice . . .”

  “Shut up, both of you,” David said suddenly. They fell silent immediately. “We don’t have time for this. Nathaniel, where’s your father?”

  “Flu. He’s at home.”

  “We need him here. James, get him in here. Tell him Regency have . . .” He swallowed. “Struck again. Maria, this is no time or place for a non-staff member to be. Go home.”

  Maria managed to lower her hands from her mouth as James ran inside. She looked between the body — the slashes, tears and missing parts that marked it unmistakably as a Hybrid killing — and Rose’s face, as if she could not believe what she was seeing.

  “Rose,” she said in a hushed voice. “I thought you were dead.”

  It took a moment for Rose to answer. She, too, was staring at the body. She had not seen a Hybrid kill for a long time, and her instincts marked it out as her own expertise. She remembered how it felt to carve those wounds in metal. She remembered the desire to carve them in flesh.

  She checked her own rising horror, and forced herself to be human again.

  “So did I, for a while. Look, I’m sorry, there’ll be time for explanations later. Right now I need to get you home. Nate, please . . .”

  “No,” he said. He flushed. “We — we bunked off school, okay? We can’t go back now.”

  “Go inside, at the very least,” said David, not taking his eyes off the corpse, as if he feared it would crawl away. “Rose, you too. This is no sight for a fifteen-year-old.”

  “Dad, I’m a member of staff —”

  She did not mean member of staff. She meant Hybrid, and for the first time in her life she was angry that he seemed to have forgotten this — as if this internal, conflicting, grim monsterhood were a club to which only he and Felix belonged.

  “Go inside,” he repeated. His tone brooked no argument.

  Rose took one las
t, repulsed look at Laura’s body and turned away. She helped Nate guide Maria through the lobby and into the lift, despite Emily’s reproaches. Nate pressed the button for the roof level.

  It was the longest and most awkward silence of Rose’s life.

  The lift ground to a halt and the doors slid open. It was a sunny day; the roof gave an excellent view of the Houses of Parliament and the Thames. Rose helped Maria to a chair, sat down opposite her and tried to force the images of the mutilated body out of her own mind, with little success.

  “Okay,” she said. “Fire away.”

  Maria seemed unable to speak for several minutes. Rose doubted that this was due to any actual inhibition of speech, and more to do with an inability to decide which question to ask first. She waited.

  “Who was that woman?” Maria whispered finally.

  “Her name was Laura,” Nate said. He was standing by the railing, staring out over London. “She was . . . the closest thing we had to a doctor. Now she’s dead.” He turned to Rose. “Do you have any idea who killed her?”

  Rose nodded grimly.

  “Who?”

  “What is the better question.”

  He looked at her blankly. She shook her head.

  “Not now,” she said quietly.

  Maria looked from Rose to Nate and back to Rose in obvious confusion.

  “What . . . what happened to you?”

  Rose laughed. It felt very unnatural.

  “If I could explain it to you in a sentence, Maria, I would.”

  “But you work for the Department now?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I was conscripted. I’m sorry, Maria, but I won’t be coming back to school. I don’t think Nate will, either.”

  Nate blinked. “Me? Why not me?”

  “I think they’ll want as many people on staff as possible now that we’re one down.”

  Maria said tearfully, “But what am I going to —?” and stopped, swallowed, and said more evenly, “Don’t you get a choice about whether to finish school?”

  “Nope,” Rose said. “I’m afraid that’s kind of what conscription is.”

  The grinding of metal on metal announced the lift doors opening. All three of them turned to see Loren step out, blinking in the sudden sunlight. Maria screamed and stumbled backward.

  “Oh my God!” she shrieked, pointing at him. “It’s Loren Arkwood!”

  Loren raised his eyebrows.

  “Quite the budding Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?” he said. “Who’s this, Rose?”

  Maria stared between Loren and Rose as if unsure who to be more afraid of.

  “Her name’s Maria,” Rose told him wearily. “She’s — Never mind. Where’s Tabitha? Have you seen . . .”

  His expression told her enough.

  “Did you know her?”

  “We both did,” Nate replied. Rose regarded him curiously. She had never seen him react to a murder before. A sort of galvanizing, determined fury had gripped him: neither the lethargic, broken helplessness of his father after Malia’s death all those years ago, nor David’s cold, reasoned calm. Perhaps he would make a better detective than Rose had given him credit for. “Do you have any idea who killed her?”

  “Well, I would have thought it was obvious,” Loren said. “That’s a Hybrid murder.”

  “What, you mean the Regency leader? Felix? But why would he want to kill Laura?”

  “I don’t think he did,” Loren said grimly. “Come on. There’s a meeting on the fifth floor. Umm . . . girl. Maria. You’re going to need to calm down. I’m not going to kill anyone, okay?”

  Maria looked between the three of them. One would have thought she had just caught Rose killing someone herself. Rose sighed.

  “You may as well get the full tour now that you’re here.”

  Rose noticed, as they hurried through the corridors, that David had managed to persuade Emergency Response not to sound the alarms. Good. They didn’t want a panic.

  The rest of the Department and Tabitha were gathered round the table. Terrian had arrived: he looked frail and shivery, which Rose doubted had much to do with flu. Everyone was avoiding Laura’s conspicuously empty chair.

  Terrian looked between Nate and Maria. “Nate, who’s this? You know non-staff members aren’t allowed into meetings.”

  “I’m a non-staff member,” Nate pointed out.

  Terrian started to tell him off, but David said wearily, “Just let her stay, Connor. It will be more hassle to take her home, and she’ll hear about it anyway. Maria: this is technically all classified, so I’d keep your mouth shut about it. Starting now,” he added, as she opened her mouth to give her assent. She closed it again, looking affronted.

  “All right,” Terrian said. “I’m sure you all know what’s happened. Umm . . .” He swallowed, apparently unable to think of anything that encapsulated the situation better than what he had just said, or else simply overwhelmed. “Uh, Elmsworth, Arkwood, you’ll probably know more about this than I do.”

  David and Rose raised their eyebrows at each other. This was the first time they had ever heard Terrian make this kind of admission.

  “We probably would, yes,” said Loren, getting to his feet. “Laura was killed by a Hybrid. I could list all the evidence, but . . . I don’t think anyone needs to hear it. How good is your surveillance range?”

  “Not good enough to catch it on film,” Terrian said. His voice was not entirely steady: he had been here since his wife was Head of the Department, and would have known Laura longer than almost any of them. He kept his grief quiet, though. “Why?”

  “We know there was a Hybrid murder, but we don’t know which Hybrid,” Loren said. “Contextual evidence like Ariadne Stronach’s murder would suggest this was Felix’s own work, but it would be good to know whether Felix has any other Hybrids under his command.”

  “One would suspect not,” David said, “given the circumstances.”

  James looked at him in astonishment, as if infuriated by how unemotional David seemed. “How can you take this so calmly? Laura’s dead! If this Felix killed her, then what are we waiting for? Let’s go shoot the bastard out of existence!”

  “I am all in favor, and have been for a number of years, of shooting the bastard out of existence,” David said evenly, “and God knows I’m sorry about Laura, but don’t you understand? Felix only personally killed people, if you can apply that description to his methods, if there was a good chance that the target might survive other assassination attempts. Laura is —” He stopped for a moment. “Laura was,” he said slowly, “a doctor. She was a Pretender, as well, so she didn’t have a lot of magic. She was someone who could easily have been taken out with sniper fire from a rooftop.”

  “So what are you saying?” James said impatiently.

  “I am saying,” snapped David, his composure finally breaking, “that Laura was not Felix’s intended victim. Hybrids have no control over whom they kill. If he wanted to kill someone in that form, the most he could have done to ensure their death would be to have triggered his transformation a couple of streets away and trust that the right person would wander into his sights. And this time they didn’t.”

  “Then who do you think was the intended target?”

  David sighed.

  “Me, presumably,” he said. “Or Arkwood. Either way, he’s given us a lot of information about himself in trying: that he knows it’s us who are trying to find and destroy the perpetrators of the Westfield attack; that he knows . . .” A hesitation. “He knows that Loren and I aren’t coming back, and so he’s trying to kill off the two people who are most dangerous to him. Clearly he considers it likely that both of us could survive a non-magical attack. That’s a lot of useful evidence that he’s willing to give away, just to kill us.”

  “That’s all very interesting,” said James impatiently, “but we still don’t know how to kill him, or what his weak points are, or how many soldiers we’ll need to take him out, or
even where he is.”

  David ran a hand over his face. “I know. There are about twenty buildings he could be using as his base at the moment, and I reinforced and booby-trapped all of them. We can’t march the whole army through the city to twenty different locations.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  They turned to look at Maria. She was on her feet, looking pale but determined. They stared at her.

  “What do you mean?” Nate said.

  “I think I might know where he is,” Maria said. She took a deep, shaky breath. “But if I tell you, you’ll have to promise me something.”

  “We don’t accept conditions,” Terrian snapped.

  “Yes, we do,” David said. “Maria. Say that again. You know the location of Regency’s headquarters? How?”

  “My sister,” she said. Rose stared at her. She knew Amelia Rodriguez, of course; she and Aaron Greenlow had been inseparable until their Test year, when Amelia, who was Ashkind, had been sent to a non-magical school. Rose hadn’t seen her since. “She disappeared on my Test day. She left a note, saying she was okay, she didn’t want to leave us, but she didn’t have a choice. She said she was fighting for freedom for . . . her own kind.”

  Pause. Maria swallowed. Rose was recalling in astonishment the way she had looked on their first day of school: exhausted, red-eyed, anxious. Rose had attributed it to stress at the time. She had not thought — not even considered the possibility — that it might be something more than that.

  Rose had never had time for trivialities.

  “Yeah, I know,” Maria said hastily, as if forestalling criticisms that they were all too stunned to make, “they’re her beliefs, not mine, okay? But, anyway, she sends me e-mails every now and again, to let me know that she’s safe, and doing well, and not dead. I was thinking maybe if you traced the e-mails, you could find where they were sent from. But I’ll only show you them if you agree to something.”

  Terrian attempted to interject again, but all six of them stopped him this time. Even Tabitha — who up until this point had been sitting in a corner, reading a book and paying no attention to the conversation whatsoever — was watching Maria now.