by Karen Healey
“Abdi!” she called, raising her hand. “Sit here!”
I turned abruptly and sat at the nearest table. Joph eyed me uncertainly. Then she sighed and put her tray down beside me. Tegan’s face dropped. I ignored the stab of guilt her hurt look gave me and started chewing. Somehow, the curry didn’t taste as good as it had before.
“Are you sure about this?” Joph asked quietly.
“I’m not sharing a meal with that man,” I said, viciously tearing at a hunk of bread with my teeth.
She dipped her own bread in the curry. “You called him a torturer, before.”
“He is,” I said. “He and Diane—my handler. They tortured us both.”
It felt good to say it. The immense pressure inside my skull eased a little. Joph had stopped eating.
“You didn’t know?” I asked. She’d taken the implant out; surely she’d known what it could do.
“I knew. I just hoped…” She shook her head. “I hoped Lat had protected you a little, that’s all.”
“Hah. No. Not him. He might have protected Tegan. He gave her hope. Not me.” I hadn’t known I was this bitter. “I know she couldn’t tell me about the escape,” I amended. “I would have told Diane anything if I thought it would make the pain stop. Every time, I promised her all sorts of things, if she would just stop hurting me.”
Joph swallowed hard.
“Sorry,” I said, abashed.
“No,” she said, her voice soft, but certain. “I’m listening. If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
“Diane—” I began, and then stopped. There were some things I couldn’t tell even Joph. But I could tell her a lot of it. “The first five days, Diane wouldn’t let me sleep,” I said. “That doesn’t sound so bad, but by the second day I was seeing flashing lights out of the corner of my eyes. By the third, I was exhausted. It felt like there was sand in my brain, like heavy stones were weighing down my body. I craved sleep more than anything. Then Diane told me she’d let me sleep if I apologized to her for telling lies about the government.” I shuddered, hard, and couldn’t stop. Joph carefully laid her hands over mine, a warm pressure that took some of the chill out of my body.
“I thought, I’m going to break eventually, so why not get it out of the way? I told her I was sorry. She said she didn’t believe me. I apologized over and over again, until I began to mean it, until I really was sorry. Then she patted my head and told me that she believed me now, but unfortunately Tegan hadn’t apologized yet. I could sleep when she did. Tegan didn’t give in until the fifth day. Forty-two hours after I did. I know that, because Diane told me.”
Joph’s eyes were wet, but they were steady on mine. And I didn’t think I could stop now, not unless she begged me to.
“I was so ashamed,” I told her. “Tegan had lasted so much longer before she broke, because she’s stronger than me. But at the same time, I was so angry with her. Why couldn’t she just let us sleep? She’d have to give in at some point, so why didn’t she; why did she have to be so stubborn; why was she torturing me like this?”
“It was Diane who was torturing you,” Joph said.
“I know. I know that. But when you’re in it, you can’t think like that; you can’t be fair. All you know is that your whole body is screaming for sleep and the one person who you thought was on your side is the person who’s keeping the torture going.” I let out a long breath. “But she gave in. And we slept. And when we woke up, they’d inserted the implants.”
My hand went to the hole at the back of my neck. It hurt, but it was a pain I welcomed, a signal that the real agony was finally over. “It got worse then,” I said, and felt a pang of guilt at Joph’s flinch. “I can stop; you don’t have to hear all this.”
Joph shook her head. “Tell me.”
I did. She sat there, while the others left, while Tegan followed Lat out without looking at me, and she listened the whole time.
“I’m sorry they did that to you,” she said when I was done. “You’re a good person, and none of it was your fault.”
I nearly burst into tears. I gripped her hands instead, trying to tell her with that hold how much I liked her. Joph squeezed back. “I’m always on your side,” she told me. “And Tegan’s and Bethari’s. We’re a team.”
“Us against the world, is it?” I said.
“Us against anyone who gets in our way,” she said, more fiercely than I thought Joph could say anything. “Lat and Carl Hurfest included.” She stood up. “Come on, you need to get that dressing on your neck changed. Let’s go to the infirmary.”
Where Tegan was likely sitting with her foster mother. If she wasn’t hanging out somewhere with Lat.
I made a face. But Joph was standing up, and when she left, I went with her.
Lat wasn’t there, but Tegan was, sitting beside the bed in which the silent, shrunken figure of Dr Carmen was sleeping. Tegan didn’t say anything to me, but her eyes were red around the edges, and I was immediately sorry for my previous ill-humor. I hoped Joph wouldn’t repeat anything I’d said; I was almost positive she wouldn’t, but I should have extracted a promise.
The infirmary physician was a tall, efficient man with a shock of blond hair he kept tied back in a long ponytail. “This is going to sting a bit,” he warned, so I had time to grit my teeth before the dressing came off.
He hadn’t lied. When he pulled out the padding packed in the hole, it caught on some of the microwires still in my system. I expressed my feelings about this in a few short French phrases.
“Sorry,” he said, and finished securing the new dressing. He dropped the old one in a biobin and headed for a little set of drawers. “Let me get you something for that.”
Beside me, Joph stiffened, and I remembered the painkillers she’d stashed in her red bag. When the physician turned around, he was frowning. “I’m running low on Guthritenax. Do you have any, Ms. Montgomery?”
Joph hesitated.
“Is that anything like Lebeaumitol?” I asked. “Joph’s got plenty of that. It worked great on me before.”
“I’d prefer… oh, well, that should be fine. A half dose only.” He turned back to his drawer, rearranging the contents. “I wish people wouldn’t come in and take whatever they wanted,” he muttered. “It’s so hard to keep an accurate count.”
I risked a glance at Joph. She looked hideously, obviously guilty, a red flush spreading over her face. The instant he turned around, he’d know where those missing supplies had gone, and after that it was anyone’s guess as to whether he blew it off as Joph being weird or mentioned it to Hurfest or Lat and stopped our escape before it began.
I shot a look across the room to Tegan, and she picked up the hint without a pause. “Dr. Beaumont,” she said, lurching to her feet. “Marie just moved! I think she’s waking up!”
The physician immediately refocused on his patient, and in the intervening moments, I pointed Joph to the door. She escaped into the hall, where her blushes would lack context and so look much less suspicious.
I should have followed her. But I’d liked it, that moment where Tegan and I had been working as a team, where we’d clicked back into being able to tell each other’s intentions and needs without words. I hovered by the door instead.
Dr. Beaumont explained patiently and sympathetically that Marie wasn’t waking up yet, that Tegan must have just noticed an involuntary muscular twitch. She looked convincingly sad about that. “Have you had lunch yet?” she asked him. “There’s curry in the kitchen. It’s good.”
It wasn’t a very subtle hint. The doctor gave both of us an amused, tolerant look that itched under my skin. I could have slapped him; did he think we were going to canoodle in the infirmary? In front of a sick woman?
But he left, warning Tegan to fetch him if Marie actually did wake, and Tegan got to her feet.
“So,” she started, her voice low and dangerous. “What was that about?”
I didn’t pretend I didn’t know what she meant. I hit back. “I didn’t
want to interrupt. You seemed to be having so much fun with Lat.”
She flushed. “He helped us,” she said hotly. “Without him, we’d both still be there. Did you and Joph have a nice chat?”
“Not really,” I snapped. “Mostly I was talking about how I’d been tortured, with the collusion of your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my… why can’t you talk to me about that stuff? We both went through it, Abdi! You want me to move to another country with you, but you don’t want to have a conversation about the horrible experiences we shared?”
“We didn’t share all of it!” I shouted. It nearly came out then, the thing I’d managed to hide even from Joph, but I reined my temper back. “I mean… you knew we were going to be rescued! You knew there was an exit clause, but I didn’t. I have never been so alone, and I thought it would never end. Unless I ended it myself, and I nearly did.”
I stopped, appalled. Tegan looked equally shocked. She was so strong. She would never have thought about the escape route I’d contemplated. I backed away from her, terrified that I was going to cry. My mother would have been ashamed that I was so out of control.
“I really think we need to talk about this stuff,” she said. She didn’t sound angry anymore, but tentative, almost pitying.
I couldn’t look at her, only send glances around the room as if the answer was written on the walls or upon a shelf. “We do,” I said. “But it has to be later, Tegan. I can’t do this now; I need to concentrate on getting us out of here and finding somewhere safe. I don’t have time to fall apart.” My restless gaze landed on the face of Dr. Carmen.
Her eyes were open.
I didn’t know for how long she’d been watching. But her eyes were intelligent and thoughtful, and she looked at me as if she were measuring every grain of goodness in my soul—and found the weight lacking.
“Tegan,” I said, and pointed.
Tegan’s face transformed—joy and relief and guilt splashed across it, shining from her huge eyes. “Marie,” she said, gasping, and then wrapped her arms around her foster mother’s neck, embracing her as gently as a cobweb. I might as well have vanished.
“I’ll tell the doctor,” I said awkwardly, and got out of that room as fast as I could. There were too many feelings in there—hers and mine, too hot and twisted up. They pressed against the walls and couldn’t escape.
From the expression on Joph’s face as I walked into our bedroom, I must have looked fairly terrible. I braced myself for another heavy conversation, but she jumped off the bed and pulled her red bag out of one of the chests of drawers.
“Your neck must be really hurting!” she exclaimed, yanking the bag open.
“Yes,” I said, relieved. It was true, actually—the sting from the dressing change was definitely still there, and I was becoming more and more aware of the low throb of the cut itself. But if that pain could stand in to disguise my turbulent feelings about things I didn’t want to discuss, then so much the better.
Joph selected two bottles from the nine or ten in the bag, and shook out some pills, taking a couple of green ones for herself. “The white ones are immunoboosters—take them all. And the green ones will help with the pain.”
I swallowed them dry, without hesitation, and ten minutes later, was very pleased that I had. As well as numbing the pain, the green pills had done something wonderful to my brain chemistry. I didn’t really care about my neck or about anything else that was bothering me. It was the first time I’d been almost worry-free in what felt like years, and the freedom was incredible.
“When they caught us, I thought they were going to prosecute you,” I said sometime later, sprawling loose-limbed on the bed. “You made all that medicine for me.”
“They did. But I’m rich,” Joph said, and waved her hand around. “I got lots of lawyers. And they’d shot me, too. It’s hard to put a rich ween in jail when you’ve shattered her femur. My parents paid off the pharmaceutical company, the police broke down the lab, and I told them everything I knew about the smuggling operation. For my cooperation, I got a suspended sentence.”
“Everything you knew,” I said, and giggled. “You knew less than me!”
“That’s why it was such a great deal,” she said, lolling against my shoulder. “Then I promised to be good.”
“You liar.”
“You bet. But my parents preferred that to all the drama of a trial.”
“How are they going to feel about you helping us? Running off?”
Joph was quiet for a long time. I watched the dust mites drift through the warm air. “Annoyed, mostly,” she said. “Disappointed, maybe.”
I’d never met Joph’s parents. They were distant figures, proud of their daughter’s brilliance insofar as it reflected on them, but otherwise too busy with their own concerns to spare much interest for their daughter.
“You can come home with me,” I suggested. “My parents would like you.”
She yawned and curled up. “You’ve already got sisters.”
“I could have another.”
“That sounds nice,” she said sleepily, and I let my eyes drift closed. There was a scent of smoke in the air—those bushfires to the west Lat had talked about.
I wanted to dream of home. Instead, I dreamed of Diane and woke up fighting.
“You’re fine!” someone said. “Abdi. You’re here. You’re safe.”
It was Tegan. I was gripping her wrist, fingers digging in to the soft flesh. My hand sprang away. Beside me, Joph was sleeping, unmoved by Tegan’s presence.
Tegan brushed my forehead with her warm fingertips. “Come with me,” she said. “The wind has changed.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Con Fuoco
When I staggered out into the hall, my head still fuzzy with the drug aftereffects, people were milling around in confusion. Some were fully dressed; others were in sleepwear, apparently unsure as to whether this was an emergency evacuation or just a notice to be extra alert. I wasn’t sure myself and followed Tegan as she darted into the bedroom she shared with Bethari.
“Wind’s changed,” she said.
Bethari sat up, registered there was a man in the room, and dove over the side of the bed, only to reappear with a scarf hastily tied around her hair. I didn’t think this was a time for modesty rules, but whatever. “The fires are heading this way?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Tegan said. “I think we should check. But if they are…”
Then there might be an opportunity for us to escape. Even an orderly evacuation would have a certain amount of chaos. I met Tegan’s eyes and nodded. “Can you girls get Dr. Carmen ready to go? I’ll check out what’s happening upstairs, then get Joph.”
Tegan rummaged under the bed and pulled out a black bag, presumably full of food. “No problem. Come on, Bethi.”
Bethari pulled on her shoes and hefted another bag over her shoulder.
“The EMP,” she said.
“Is it here?” I asked.
“Kept in one of the vehicles. Um, big blue one, six seater. I can get the control unit.”
“Then that’s our ride,” I said, and headed upstairs to scout out the landscape. There, air smelled of smoke. The closer I got to the trapdoor hatch, the stronger the stench became, until I had to fight the urge to cough just to get the stink out of my nostrils.
The central room was crowded with people tensely watching Hurfest and Lat discuss whether an evacuation was warranted. I could see no lights outside, and the full moon’s glow was sullen red, hazy behind the smoke. Lat slept in his underwear, I noted, sour at the gleam of red light on his muscled chest.
Both he and Hurfest seemed as if they were coming to an agreement to hide and wait out the fires when Washington brushed by me. She stood poised in the front door, looking at the sky and holding her hand up to test the wind. When she came back in, the red glow was behind her, her face in shadow. But her voice was clear, cutting through the murmurs of the men. “We have to go.”
“I’ve got people hiking up the hill to see if they can get a better view from the ridge,” Lat said.
Washington shook her head. “Call them back. This house is indefensible; there’s too much dry growth and no water. If the trapdoor caves, we might not even be safe underneath.”
“These walls won’t burn,” Lat protested.
“Oxygen will,” she told him. “And the smoke will get in. If we can’t breathe, we’re just as dead. We have to follow the plan and get to the evacuation sites. Reconvene at the northwest base.”
Hurfest grimaced. “Is this really necessary? Aren’t we being a bit alarmist?”
“You two aren’t from bushfire states,” she said, which was news to me. As far as I knew, the whole of Australia regularly burst into flame. She tilted her head at the man who’d tried to take over lunch preparation. He was looking even more harassed. “Ask Ewing.”
“It’s bad,” he confirmed. “Some of the communities to the west have been forcibly evacuated in convoys. They don’t bring in the army unless it’s serious.”
Washington suddenly cocked her head and lifted her hand. I wasn’t sure what we were listening for until I heard a dull roaring sound, like a car on a distant road. “We have to go, now,” she said.
Hurfest gave in. “Evacuate,” he said crisply, and the room exploded into tightly planned movement; most people headed down the stairs, giving up their personal computers for destruction before they went. Before I could duck down the stairs again, Hurfest spotted me at the back of the room and oiled through the crowd to get me. “Abdi, you and the girls are with Lat and me,” he said in a low voice. “We’re the Bendigo group. Go and fetch them. I’ll be preparing the vehicle.” That was both good and bad news—less chance of an immediate escape, but if he was keeping all his assets close by, the EMP would probably be going with us.
But—
“Tegan won’t leave without Dr. Carmen,” I said.
“She’ll be evacuated with the group going to Huntly.”
“Tegan will want her with us,” I said, and accompanied the statement with a conspiratorial roll of my eyes. Tegan, right? Such a pain. But what can you do?
