Shield

by Rachael Craw

  I try to pull back from Benjamin’s choking fear, his powerlessness and hate. The sense of violation in the Proxy’s hold on his will, riding him, driving him, stoking his aversion for what Aiden represents. And then I feel his shame and guilt, a winding despair. The war inside him. He could never win. The sick loathing that insulates the memory, the refusal to forgive himself – for letting himself be used, for carrying his prejudice so close that he could be used. It shakes me.

  It’s not his fault … I know it. I do. Even if I let him see that I know it, he won’t forgive himself and there’s a toxic part of me that has fed on the thought of him carrying the burden of guilt for weeks. The same part of me that’s so reluctant to give up my position as the aggrieved and my instinctual rights to some kind of vengeance. A hollow vengeance, because if I follow the thought to its festering root I come against my own guilt, my own dreadful knowing. The Proxy could never have manipulated Benjamin without harnessing my signal – could never have paralysed a whole house full of Shields without tapping into my undisciplined telepathic power. And if I forgive Benjamin, I have to forgive myself – and that is the stumbling block.

  A hammering sound breaks through my consciousness, bringing me back to the gym. Ethan shouting, pleading through the steel door. Benjamin and Helena clutch their heads, victims of my amplified Kinetic Memory Harvest. I stumble back and catch my breath and feel anew the agony in my side. Benjamin can’t bring himself to look at me, shaking his head, his lips moving soundlessly, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  I grab his arm and force him to meet my gaze. “I know. Benjamin, I know. She used you like she used me. It’s done. I need you now. Help me save my mother.”

  “Help you how?”

  “We’ll explain on the way but you can’t let Ethan out. He’ll try to stop me. This won’t interfere with his research. We’ll be back here before the Spark arrives, I promise.”

  “No, Benjamin!” Ethan shouts. “I am ordering you to open this door!”

  Benjamin frowns at the hammering. “Your father will kill me.”

  “Counsellor Thurston has given me her clearance codes,” Helena says, rushing to the control panel for the open service elevator that will carry Miriam’s gurney to the viewing platform of the lower barracks. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let us go.”

  He looks from her to me, searching my face, his expression pained. “No. I’ll go with you.”

  Silence beyond the steel door then one final slam, so loud the echo rolls through me – tolling doom.

  TANK

  The bathroom at the end of the lower barracks dorm reeks of bile. I slump, forearms on the vanity – my head nodding above the running faucet. Deja vu and a wave of longing for Kitty. I tried not to throw up but I was already weak with pain from my ribs, the scalpel was too much – digging in the back of my neck, that sickening pop of the tracker. I splash cold water into my mouth, rinse, spit and repeat, the bandaid pulling on my hair at the base of my skull. Four trackers gleam on the edge of the sink. Benjamin and Helena took it in turns. I couldn’t watch Helena take Miriam’s.

  “Lift your foot,” Helena says, removing my shoes and pants, more panic than exertion behind her quick breaths. “Quickly.”

  I’m too slow and Benjamin lifts it for me, hooking his hand behind one knee then the other. Either side of me they pull the skin-coloured bio-film, like a swimsuit, up over my naked hips. No synthetic materials allowed in the Isolation Tank.

  I can’t straighten up; instead I stretch my arms over the sink and lower my head so they can haul my shirt off. I feel them both freeze, and I know they’re looking at the scars on my lower back.

  “Oh, Evie,” Helena murmurs.

  I close my eyes so I won’t see their pity in the mirror. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Benjamin says nothing.

  Helena unbinds my ribs, unfastens my bra and I don’t even try to cover myself. I’m beyond caring. I let them slip the arms of the bio-film up over my chest and shoulders. The film pinches, intended for a much smaller body, and I swear as it compresses over my tender ribs. I remember the Proxy wearing the same thing in the memory I took from her keeper. She was only a child and I thought it was a swimsuit. Now the clammy film makes my skin pucker with goosebumps.

  I listen numbly as Helena explains that the bio-film draws the nano-tech in the saline to the torso, optimising permeability, ensuring the major organs are “supported” through the “submergence”. I shut that thought off. For now all I can think about is making it through the upper levels without being caught.

  They’re quick about getting me into the surgical scrubs Helena pulls from her pouch. I only have to lunge for the sink once – though my heaving produces nothing. Benjamin holds me up as Helena slips my feet into rubber boots. Next is the surgical cap to hide my hair and then the face mask. Now I look like her, a Caretaker in training. I gaze at my anonymous reflection, my fingers digging into Benjamin’s thick bicep – he doesn’t wince or complain.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Helena exchanges a worried look with Benjamin and wets her lips. “We need to hurry.”

  By the time we make it to the elevator, I’m sweating and seeing double. As the doors close I strain to hear Ethan thundering on the steel slider, almost hoping for it, but there hasn’t been a whisper from the cell block since the final slam. I cringe to imagine what Ethan must be going through, with no way to communicate with the upper levels. It’s hard to know if he would’ve called security if he had access to a link. Which would be the greater threat to me, in his eyes? He didn’t even try to speak to us through the old intercom. Will he blame Jamie for not calling out sooner? I don’t want to picture him in his chains, the terror on his face. If you love me – at all – you won’t do this.

  Helena stands at the head of Miriam’s bed, her face set, her eyes fixed on the panel counting us up to level six. Is she replaying Jamie’s words too?

  I tug my mask down to speak. “He didn’t mean it.”

  Her haunted eyes fix on me. “He did.”

  “He was afraid and angry – people say terrible things when they’re afraid and angry.”

  She tugs her mask down and gives me that aggravating grown-up’s look. “I am about to drown the girl he loves.”

  Benjamin’s head snaps towards her.

  I freeze.

  She checks the bandaid on the back of her neck, wincing. “He probably thinks I just want to eliminate the competition.”

  Benjamin and I lock eyes.

  I swallow. “Um … Jamie knows it’s not like that.” Do I?

  “It doesn’t matter – that’s how he sees it.”

  I grab her arm and she gives a yelp. “Sorry. Adrenaline. Listen, you’re helping me. You’re a brave, smart …” I try not to choke on it, “beautiful woman … and you’re good, and he’s – he’s lucky that you’re his Cooler. I will survive this and I’ll make him understand.”

  She frowns and gives a clipped nod that reminds me intensely of Ethan. “That’s kind but irrelevant. Jamie doesn’t forgive. I know him.”

  “Well, who the hell does he think he is, dolling out judgement?” I give her a little shake. “He’s a – a self-righteous bastard and a control freak, handing out ultimatums.” I cast about for the right words and land on Kitty’s. “He needs to pull his bloody head in.”

  “We’re nearing level six,” Benjamin says.

  My pulse leaps.

  “Benjamin,” Helena says, “are you sure you want to do this? If we get caught … Evangeline is valuable to Knox. I’m Ethan’s …” she stumbles over daughter, “responsibility. But you, they’ll see as a traitor.”

  He looks her straight in the eye. “I know what I’m doing.”

  I look up at the ceiling and hiss, “We’ve got three active signals waiting for us. Aggressive ETR.”

  Helena mutters something vicious in German and pulls Miriam’s gurney as far back from the doors as possible, placing herself between her patient and t
he threat. Benjamin pushes me back against the wall. “Stay in the elevator until I give the all-clear.”

  “There are three of them.”

  He gives me a scowl that would make Davis proud. “I can take three.”

  The elevator chimes before I can argue. The doors open on nothing but Benjamin darts out into the corridor, a blur to the left. I press back against the wall waiting for someone to charge into the elevator and start yelling. There’s the sound of heavy scuffling, grunts and shouts. A thrum and crack followed by a thud. Then a second and third thrum, crack, thud. Benjamin appears through the doors with a freshly acquired baton in one hand and a crushed security camera in the other. “Move.”

  Shaking, I help Helena guide Miriam’s gurney out into the corridor past three sizeable bodies. “Are they dead?” I choke, but I can sense their signals.

  Benjamin rolls his eyes and hoists one of the fallen agents over his shoulder without even a grunt of effort. “Is it clear?”

  There’s a delay before I realise he’s asking me. “Oh …” I reach hastily into the bandwidth. There’s plenty of unnerving ETR but nothing actively heading towards us. “We’re good.”

  “Go. I’ll catch up.”

  “Evie,” Helena hisses. “Your mask.”

  I fumble it back into place and try to match Helena’s quick, confident stride. If only she didn’t have a throbbing black eye – if only my eyebrow didn’t have a raw cut – we might look like inoffensive medics. My joints are slippery and my heart is a kettledrum.

  “Relax your shoulders,” she says. “Slow your breathing. Stop looking behind you – you haven’t robbed a convenience store.”

  I recognise the next turn and the door ahead with the yellow stripe. Ethan’s lab. My stomach knots. I wonder again about the state of things in the cell block, in the surgery. Is phase two doing its work? How long will it take? Is Jamie’s signal enough? Am I ruining everything for Ethan’s research?

  A surge in Electro-Telepathic Radiation.

  “Incoming.”

  The slider to the lab opens and two women exit with large boxes, which they dump against the wall. A total disregard for the contents made evident by the scathing chuckle at the sound of glass objects breaking. I recognise Razor-bob, instantly, Stephanie’s bathroom companion. All my muscles clench and I nearly squeal with the shot of pain through my ribs. They go back into the lab with only a casual glance in our direction. I wait for the double take, the shout.

  Helena doesn’t hesitate or misstep. I do. She grabs my sleeve and hauls me beside her. I hold my breath as we draw parallel with the open doorway. One glimpse shows me four more agents and Ethan’s lab torn apart. No sign of Stephanie. In the thick of it, Alexis Thurston directs the carnage with the same cool poise I associate with her twin sister. “Yes, that too.” She points at a cabinet by the sink. “Take it all.”

  My fears rush at me. What if Juno’s lying? What if she’s working with her sister?

  “Keep moving.” Helena gives me a dark look above her mask.

  “They’re trashing everything.”

  “Keep moving.”

  Ethan’s lab. It’s like stumbling on a home invasion. I want to rush back there and scream and throw things at Alexis Thurston. I want to shout, “How dare you?”

  We make it to the next corridor and I’m dizzy with momentary relief or dizzy in general – torrents of energy zip-zapping in my spine. We reach the corner and step beyond sight but I expect, any second, for a cry to go up and boots to come pounding behind us.

  The route to the ReProg wing seems to have tripled in length. By the time we reach the menacing doors I feel like I’m ready to burst from my skin. I can’t stop looking over my shoulder.

  Helena pulls a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and taps an access panel. I’m struck again by her steady hand and decisiveness. There’s no hint of fragility, no erratic hitch in her ETR. The door opens and my stomach swoops with sense memory, the black glass walls watching us. The sloping floor. The reptilian chair on its retractable neck. The awful grated drain.

  I feel Benjamin in the bandwidth. He slips through the door but Helena isn’t surprised. “Quickly,” she says. He lifts Miriam out of her bed, with a gentleness that makes my throat catch. I support her head and manage the tubes and wires as he lowers her into the chair. Helena activates the straps to hold her in place. I cringe at the thought of the cold metal of the seat against Miriam’s skin.

  Helena draws the gurney close so the IV line and automatic bellows can still do their jobs. I scoop Miriam’s hand into mine, regretting my icy touch. She’s warm as blood and again I hate her absence in the bandwidth. I touch her face, and stroke her hair down behind her ears. “I’ll find you.”

  Benjamin swivels his head towards me, his expression grim, body tense. He glances around at the black glass with an air of superstition. Helena taps the side of the chair and the arms and headrests glow with white light that makes me shudder.

  “What if someone comes in while we’re …”

  “They cannot open the door while ReProg is in session. It stays locked until I release it in the Actuation Vault.”

  “I hate leaving her here.”

  “We need to hurry,” Helena says.

  I work hard not to look back as we exit the room, cringing at the sound of the door closing and the locking mechanism shifting inside the walls. My breathing gets shallow as we follow Helena further down the corridor. She accesses another blank door and we enter a long narrow passage that feeds into a large antechamber and beyond it, the Actuation Vault – a vast room glassed-in from floor to ceiling and divided into two levels. The Isolation Tank gleams in the low light of the Vault, a tall oval cylinder of thick glass set in a steel base on the lower level. The open mouth of the tank is set in the grated mezzanine floor above where a complicated computer panel controls the link to the Symbiosis. I follow Helena up the metal staircase to the mezzanine, Benjamin behind me, his anxiety crackling in the bandwidth. Another access code and we’re officially in the Vault. Juno made good.

  The control panel looks out on the observation room – which is really just a glassed-in walkway between the Vault and the ReProg Rooms. Three of them. I think of Knox and the Executive lined up there, overseeing the official business of ReProg, justifying torture – pushing the limits on the Reform to gain information and compliance. It’s no less creepy, seeing it all from behind the scenes. Helena doesn’t waste any time; she activates the control panel and the central ReProg room lights up. I stare down through the walls of glass, struck by Miriam’s smallness, how fragile and alone she looks in the chair.

  Helena quickly works the console and the monitors light up with readings. She doesn’t explain what they mean. I wonder if I might throw up or pee my pants. My head swims and my vision gets all razor sharp as though I’m about to start a fight.

  “Take your clothes off,” she says.

  Benjamin helps me with the rubber boots but I can manage everything else, still protected from pain by the adrenaline surging in my body. Soon I’m standing in the bio-film, facing the tank and trying not to think about what it will be like to drown. This is my last chance to save Miriam. I can’t fail.

  “I have to immobilise you,” Helena says. “We won’t waste time with the harness. Benjamin will lower you into the Isolation Tank. I’ll start the actuator and it will connect you to the Symbiosis.”

  “Okay.” I sound strangled.

  Her eyes move over my face. “It will be painful, Evie. I wish it wasn’t. I wish–” She draws a shaky breath and tries again. “I’ll keep you alive but we won’t have long. Counsellor Thurston’s access will only win us a narrow window of opportunity before someone notices the Actuation Vault is active. I’ll load a standard maintenance program but that only runs on a fifteen-minute cycle. If we exceed the cycle they will investigate and attempt to shut it down. They’ll have to send someone to perform a manual override.”

  “So I have fifteen minutes?”
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  “Before they deploy security.”

  “Then what?”

  “Benjamin will return you to your cell. I’ll take care of your mother and follow as soon as I can.”

  “She’ll wake.”

  Helena doesn’t agree or disagree. “She’ll need medical attention either way.”

  A jolt of panic fires through me. “This could hurt her?”

  “There is the risk of accelerated deterioration.”

  The lights flicker above me. We all look up. Am I doing that? “If I don’t bring her back now, they never will.”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  There is a moment of surreal awareness, where the three of us look at each other, the weight of what we’re about to attempt heavy in the atmosphere. “How many times have you done this?”

  She frowns and looks at her hands. “I have assisted in three boosts with the current Proxy but she’s too young for interrogative Harvests or restorative therapy.”

  Three.

  “Okay.”

  She produces a preloaded syringe. “Do you understand that it’s your whole body that produces ETR? Full immersion allows the nano-tech maximum permeability and maximum amplification of your signal and your cellular regeneration–”

  “Not helping.”

  “I just want you to be prepared.”

  I snort at the echo of Ethan’s words. “I trust you.”

  She blinks like I’ve scrambled her thoughts. “The tank produces a charge on shutdown that counters the paralysis.” She doesn’t wait, bringing the needle to the side of my neck. Benjamin moves to support me. It’s a quick prick and only two, three heartbeats before I slump into his arms. Fear roars through me, total cognitive and physical awareness and not a muscle to command.

  Benjamin hoists me into his arms, dark eyes on mine. He looks like he wants to say something but can’t find the words. He carries me to the lip of the tank and crouches, supporting my weight on his thigh. Feet, ankles, calves, knees, a shocking wet swallow moving up my body as he lowers me into the open top of the tank.