‘Just relax,’ she says gently. ‘You’ll feel a cold sensation at the back of your neck.’ She reaches towards me with an antiseptic swab.
I shrink back, pulling up the sheet as a protector. ‘What is that?’ I need to know how it works, but there’s no way I want that in my neck. Will I collapse the way Mason did?
Will it send me tumbling deep again?
Will it send me back there?
Her arm hovers, she’s still holding the unused swab. ‘It’s called Zygoral,’ she says in a low voice. ‘At least, that’s what’s on the patent application.’
‘What does it do?’
‘Just relax.’ She speaks softly, her voice rolling, a keeper soothing a wild animal as she swipes the antiseptic swab along the back of my neck.
Everything I know is telling me to fight this, to push her away. Don’t let that gloop anywhere near me. But this might be my only way to help Mason. And I know there’s no way the professor will let me go while they still have tests to complete. The only way through this is to let them do what they’re going to do.
‘Just a half-dose?’ I whisper, pleading. My throat is dry. ‘Up the dose later if you need.’
Nurse Warrah glances back towards the camera positioned in the corner of the room. I can see she’s considering it. As she turns back, I mouth a single word: please.
A brief nod.
I lie on my side and shut my eyes. I’m scared to go through this, but more scared of what they’ll do if I don’t. I don’t want to go through a full dose.
A sting at the base of my neck is followed by spreading cool. ‘Now, try to time travel.’ It’s as if she’s speaking from behind glass.
The fug grows thick. I fight to hold onto who I am, what I have to do. With all that I have, I focus each thought, tearing my mind out of now.
The release comes and I drop deep.
One minute later, I’m back. A light blinks standby in front of me. I pull the sheet around my shoulders, waiting for the world to tilt, the need to throw up. The clashing memories.
All I get is the usual tingle and rush. It’s dampened by the drug but otherwise it’s no different from normal. I rub one eye with the heel of one palm, roll over and find Warrah biting her lip. Her forehead is creased with worry.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
She shakes head, and turns to the camera.
Professor W’s voice comes over the speaker. ‘We could see clear resistance on the brain scans. But tests indicate that was only a part dose. Confirm?’
‘Yes, she …’ Warrah drops her chin. ‘She disappeared before I’d administered the full dose.’
‘Proceed with the remaining dose now then, please, nurse. And be ready to double it if we have to.’
It’s a full second before Warrah turns back. Her gaze meets mine, and again her forehead creases. Her whole face is tight.
‘What is it?’ I whisper.
Warrah glances behind her, then shifts sideways a half step, blocking the camera with her back as she turns to me again.
‘Don’t worry, Carolyn. It’ll be okay,’ she says clearly, and then, mouthing the words: ‘Don’t. Disappear.’
Don’t disappear. The same words she whispered after I was caught outside Sunshine Hospital. She’s staring intently at me, watching for recognition. One eyebrow lifts and she mouths the words: ‘Never again. Understand?’
My lips part as her meaning locks into place. I thought then that she was telling me to stop jumping, to not disappear so they could inject the drug. But now I see. She was explaining the purpose of the drug.
Zygoral is meant to block my ability to skip.
They’re not just trying to understand how it works, they’re developing a way to stop us from skipping.
At least now I know what’s going on. Although, part of me wishes I didn’t. What if the drug actually works?
Just slightly, I drop my chin as she presses the needle to the back of my neck again. Again, the pressure, the spreading cool.
I let myself drift towards the peace of the tunnel, but I don’t drop in. I know that Professor W is monitoring my brain activity right now. He’ll be watching every synapse, every spark in my mind, comparing them with the records they have of all the other times they’ve mapped my brain process as I enter a skip.
This one has to be close enough to the others to make them believe that I tried to skip, but failed. I need to convince them that Zygoral stopped me from skipping. While also praying that it doesn’t.
Like so many times meditating with Mum, I rest right at the edge of the tunnel. It’s such a familiar place to be. Infinity waits with only the slightest of slips. But instead of dropping in, I act as if I’m straining in my mind, fighting for release.
After a while I open my eyes, panting. A couple of coughs for effect. ‘What’s in that stuff?’ I say, pretend groggy. ‘It stopped me from jumping.’
‘Never you mind,’ snaps Warrah. But her mouth lifts in the briefest of smiles: well done.
On the day I’m due for release, Professor Wahlman waits beside the bed while an orderly collects the breakfast tray. The past eight days have been like dragging my mind through quicksand, partly because I’ve had to live through them in real time.
Try to skip now. What about now? Can you skip when you’re zapped with caffeine? Each time, I make an act of trying, frowning hard. Sometimes adding a pant. But each time I give up. Act frustrated. What have you done? I can’t skip anymore. They keep taking blood tests, checking how much of the Zygoral is in my system. But for five days there has been no trace of the drug. And still, I can’t skip.
At least that’s what they think.
Now I wait, polite, perched on the edge of the bed. Ready to go.
Professor W drags a chair near the bed and sits. ‘I’m going to ask you a question, Carolyn,’ he says evenly. ‘And I want you to tell me the truth. Nothing is going to happen whatever you answer. All I want is the truth.’
My head dips. ‘Okay.’
‘Is there anything you haven’t told us?’ he asks.
I meet him face on. ‘No, of course not.’
Other than the fact that I grew up in the city with a mum who broke the law to keep me.
Other than stealing a chip from a dead woman so that I’d have access to rations and a chance to go to school.
Other than letting him think his Zygoral stopped me from time skipping …
‘Why do you ask?’ I keep my tone light, curious.
He glances down at his comscreen, narrows his eyes and then lifts them again. ‘I need you to tell me the truth. Will you promise me that?’
‘Sure.’
A pause.
‘You’re aware of the sense of deja vu, yes?’ he asks. ‘Would you say that you get it a lot?’
The question comes so out of the blue that I let out a half laugh, but then I clamp it back. ‘Not really. Just … like normal, I guess.’ Whatever that is.
‘Are you sure?’ He’s leaning close, trying to examine my expression, determine if I’m telling the truth or not.
I look him squarely in the face, willing him to believe I’m telling the truth.
‘Yes, I’m certain. Absolutely.’
‘What about double vision? Do you ever get that?’
Head shaking. ‘Nope.’
Professor W glances away thoughtfully. I’m pretty sure that he believes me. But I’m not sure whether he’s pleased by the answer or not.
‘Why?’ I ask after a long silence.
‘It’s just …’ He frowns again at a brain scanner on the other side of the bed, and then back to me. ‘We’ve been studying the synapses in your brain as one component of the tests. I’ve been analysing the neurone activity just prior to each trip, and then again for each return. And it’s the strangest thing …’
‘What?’ He’s making me curious.
‘There’s a function in your neurone activity that doesn’t seem to be involved in a time skip. It goes into overdrive while y
ou’re asleep. But, I can’t find anything similar in the control subjects. It’s almost as if there’s a double-up of the synapses in your brain. Sometimes, when a neuron sparks, we see a second flash, except faded, like a shadow.’ He tilts his head, watching me out of the corner of his eye. ‘Do you have any idea why that could be? I can’t find it replicated in other brain scans.’
‘Maybe time skipping mushed my brain,’ I mumble.
‘No, it’s definitely more than that. I want to run a new series of functional MRIs.’ He’s talking low, as if to himself. ‘Then we can trial some new techniques to see if you have any conscious control. Hypnotherapy, perhaps …’
No. No. He can’t be serious.
When I drop my hands he’s on the other side of the room. ‘But … I’ve been here for the time we agreed.’ I try to keep my voice even, reasonable. ‘Even if you take away all the time I skipped, you’re still left with a full two weeks’ worth of tests.’
I’ve barely begun speaking when he shakes his head.
‘But that was the agreement. You promised!’ My voice rises into a howl.
‘No, no. That won’t be possible now.’ He lifts his hands as if he’s the one who’s helpless, not me. ‘This is a major breakthrough, Carolyn. We’re only just beginning. This work could well change the future of the human race. We need to fully understand what’s going on …’
… so we can control it, I finish silently.
He doesn’t care that time skipping might save citizen lives, he only cares about losing control of citizens, about holding onto power.
Professor W keeps talking but I’m barely listening. I can’t believe I agreed to these tests. It doesn’t matter what I do, whether I follow their rules or not. I’m nothing to them.
My eyes travel towards the swiper beside the doorway as I shift sideways on the bed. It’s always locked when I’m here by myself, but when someone else is here I could try a manual override. Maybe if they were passed out from one of those poison drugs …
Professor W leans close to a comscreen. ‘Ang, could we have a guard in here, please?’ His expression barely shifts. ‘Yes, right away. Thank you.’
He swipes something on the screen and turns to me. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
I stop agreeing to their tests. I don’t eat. Days turn into weeks, then months. On the day that’s meant to be my first day of school, I get held down by three orderlies while they ram an IV drip into my arm.
On the morning of my fifteenth birthday I wake up, gasping from a nightmare where I was stuck in a fire, watching people around me scream, while I was trapped, unable to help.
From snatches of comments I’ve overheard, it seems like Alistair and Mason are still fighting to have me released. But the appeal hearing has been delayed so many times that I gave up weeks ago. Mason checked everything with his lawyer before the application hearing so I’m pretty sure they have no legal basis to keep me here. They haven’t charged me with anything, but it doesn’t seem to matter what the law says. They simply keep delaying, and I stay locked away.
I think about jumping ahead a whole heap of years, enough to really screw with the professor and his tests. He still believes I can’t skip anymore so it would be the best kind of take that. But I don’t want to leave everyone behind, when they’ve fought so hard for me. And I know that if I disappear in a long skip, I might miss a chance to escape here. A nurse who dozes off. A forgotten lock. Something.
It must be about two months into the school year when I start feeling sick. The back of my throat is scratchy and raw. Dry eyes. My taste seems to go off, too. One of the nurses keeps coughing; there must be something going round.
Over the following day the symptoms grow worse, but the actual cold still doesn’t break through.
As I wake up on the third morning, I slowly register the rawness in my throat and a strange thickness in my nose. My tongue tastes wrong, charry somehow …
I sit up, alone in the room, as my heart shoots into panic. It’s not a virus that’s making me feel this way. A low mist slips silently under the door and spreads though the room.
Smoke.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I CAN HEAR RUNNING footsteps in the hallway. The smoke is thick by now. My head aches from it. Or maybe that’s my brain going into overdrive. The idea of being stuck in this room while a fire sweeps through the building is about the worst kind of horror I can imagine.
I could skip to escape, of course, but we’re not on the ground floor, and I can’t trust what state the building might be in when I return. The door slides open and Nurse Warrah bursts in. She stops and blinks as if her thoughts are churning too fast for her to speak. ‘Get dressed.’
I’m out of the bed already. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Just …’ She waves a hand in my direction, already firing up the comscreen. ‘Just do as I say, okay?’
I run to the bathroom where my clothes are, keenly aware how much I don’t want to be left behind. I’m an illegal, after all. Why would they bother to save me? I pull on a shirt with long sleeves and jeans: scant protection from radiant heat, but better than nothing.
Warrah is frowning at the comscreen when I come out. I stand where I can see over one shoulder.
On the screen is a satellite view of the city in real time. The outer sections of the northern suburbs are obscured by smoke, so it’s hard to see what’s going on. She clicks on an overlay map that shows the streets and suburbs and I get the first view of where I’ve been held these past months: right on the fringe of the city limits, northeast of the CBD.
She clicks one more time and a shaded overlay appears: the extent of the fire.
My jaw drops. ‘Man …’ It’s massive. And coming this way.
‘That’s out of date.’ With quick taps of her fingernail, she points to a spot on the screen. ‘It’s closer than that. That ag farm is already gone.’
‘But …’ I shake my head, panic rising. ‘We have to get out. Now.’
I dart to the entrypad, and start on a manual override. Who cares if she can see what I’m doing. There’s no way I want to be stuck in here when the fire hits. I need to be out and find somewhere I can skip safely. And I have to find Mum, make sure she’s okay. I need to be free …
‘Ang, talk to me,’ Warrah calls into the mic. ‘How long now?’
‘Nearly there. Just sit tight,’ comes the reply.
When I finish the manual override, the pad gives two short beeps: no go. Should have known.
‘We’re getting you out, Carolyn,’ says Warrah, still at the comscreen. ‘It’ll be okay.’
I let my hand drop. Can I trust her?
Warrah glances at the screen and then jerks her head my way, calling me back.
‘Three days ago, a lightning storm sparked fires in an arc across the north of the outer suburbs,’ she says. ‘The MFB got to some, but one took hold in the Toolangi Forest in the northeast and another destroyed farmland around Whittlesea and Kilmore up north.’
So the challenge wasn’t responding in time, it was dealing with the number of fires. Even if Mason and the others sounded the alarm in time, there must have been too many for the fire brigade to control.
Warrah leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. ‘We’ve been watching, of course,’ she continues. ‘The bulk of the city was out of the path, only affected by smoke. But when the cool change hit this morning, the wind changed direction and the two fires joined up …’
She turns back to the screen and shakes her head.
I try to swallow. My throat is so dry, it hurts. It’s the most enormous fire front I’ve ever seen. There’s no need to remember dream images anymore; I can see what’s going to happen from looking at the map right in front of me. Escaping isn’t my only worry. Most of the people I care about are out of the danger zone, but if the firestorm continues through here it’s headed for the northern suburbs.
Mum’s office building is in Mill Park, right in its path.
‘When did they send out the evac alert?’ I blurt. Maybe my warnings will be enough, and she’ll respond quicker this time.
‘They’re not sending one out,’ Warrah says. ‘At least that’s what the professor told me. It’s too late to get them out without causing mass panic.’
‘But surely some people would get out,’ I say, my voice rising. ‘It’s better than nothing …’
There must be something in my tone that makes Warrah turn. When she sees the expression on my face she rests a hand on my elbow.
‘Don’t worry. They’ll have alerted anyone on AA-level rations.’ She lifts a broad shoulder. ‘This is one of those times it really pays to be high level. The citizens who sponsored your application are on that list, I’m sure.’ She drops her hand and turns away. ‘Not that they’ve been all that helpful these past months, from what I hear.’
‘But I …’ I begin. ‘There’s … Can I use the comscreen?’
‘No.’ Again she turns to consider me, but this time her eyes narrow. ‘Why?’
What can I say? My hands clasp together as I push them against my mouth, holding back the secret that might save Mum. Or land her in jail. What if I give them Mum’s name and they work out who she is?
‘Okay, Nurse Warrah. It’s time,’ comes a voice from the comscreen. ‘ETA for the helejet is five minutes.’
Warrah pauses, still watching me, before turning to reply to the message: ‘Thanks, Ang, we’re on our way.’ She switches off the comscreen and swivels to face me again. ‘Ready?’
‘Sure,’ I mumble. But I don’t look at her as I say it. My mind has zeroed in on that one word: helejet.
An idea flares in my mind.
I stick close behind Warrah. If I lose her, I’ll have no idea which way to go. We duck low beneath the smoke as we run past three labs with vials and pipettes and other sciency stuff that I’ve never seen, then one room that looks like a lunch room. All empty.
We’re both breathing hard and coughing when we reach a fire escape at the end of the corridor. Warrah doesn’t hesitate, just turns and runs straight upstairs, each breath coming in wheezy pants. Before I follow her, I can’t help pausing to look down the stairwell, towards the ground floor. It feels safer down there, the promise of solid ground. But the fire is too close for me to escape if I go that way. I’d have no time to contact Mum before I jump, no matter how much I’d like to try.
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