by Molly Flatt
This time, when it cuffed her, she tried to focus on nothing but the sensations: the tingle, the energy, the warmth. Carefully, she bunched her hands into fists. The current held. She felt a rush of victory, then immediately felt the energy flicker and ebb.
No, wait . . . No. Don’t panic. Don’t think.
She latched back onto the familiar cycle of her breath.
Don’t think. Don’t reach. Just let go.
Her pride dissolved. The wind picked up, eddying around her ears, lifting her fringe. Slowly, Alex uncurled her right hand and twitched her forefinger towards the current. She felt an electric nip on the fleshy pad and then – Ohhh.
She was twenty-three, having lunch with her mother in John Lewis on Oxford Street. Alex was staring at a Caesar salad while her mother ranted about a family friend, who had recently caught her husband cheating for the second time. ‘The thing is, darling,’ her mother was saying, ‘love is as much about what you don’t as what you do. It’s about the impulses you resist far more than the grand gestures you make. Your father might not buy me flowers; in fact he often neglects to say a single word from breakfast until dinnertime. But I know he would never purposefully do anything to hurt me, and that’s everything, Alex. Everything.’
Back on the platform, Alex’s stomach lurched. There was something wrong. The details drawn out of her Memory were as vivid as the crispest HD – she could see the brown edges on the iceberg leaves, taste the salty cream of the dressing, feel the hard seat of the chair. But it all somehow felt empty. Fake.
Even if she hadn’t experienced the rich, fatty savour of Ismaili’s Memories, she would have known, with some visceral instinct, that hers were deeply flawed. Reading them was like encountering something both hers and not-hers, like scratching at her own dead leg. Alex felt a spasm of revulsion. But now that the Storyline had locked on, it had its own momentum and, before she could pull away, the next Memory was there.
She was in the maternity ward of West Middlesex University Hospital, staring down at Mae. Her friend was propped up in bed, pale from blood loss, cradling a mole-rat swaddled in a pale-blue beanie and a bear-print onesie. Mae was pulling off the beanie to show off Bo’s thick black cap of hair. Alex was reaching out a finger to touch the baby’s scurfy cheek.
Again, every Memory was as smooth and shallow as plastic. Again, Alex tried to wrench her wrists apart, but the hold of the trance was too strong. She simply had to stand there and take it, as the Storyline jerked on in a unchronological tumble: watching Lady Chatterley’s Lover at a teenage sleepover; walking down the aisle as a bridesmaid at her cousin’s wedding; hearing Harry propose on New Year’s Day; listening repeatedly to a Bryan Adams song in her bedroom; kissing Joe Vickers at Fring youth club. And although the Memories were as vivid and detailed as real, in-the-moment experience – she could see the exact blue of her childhood sleeping bag, feel the itchy fabric of the bridesmaid’s dress, smell the bergamot musk of Joe Vickers’s CK One – not a single one of them inspired a single tweak of emotion, good or bad.
Yet still the Storyline lurched forward, Memory by Memory. She was watching her guinea pig die; masturbating to online porn in the attic; finding herself sitting beside a gorgeous man in a bus stop, the day she first moved to London. Alex had no idea how many Memories had passed through her when, without warning, she suddenly felt the current snag. Here it was: the root Memory that had first formed the Storyline. As MacBrian had instructed, Alex tried to stay centred and focus on her breath. After a few moments she felt it bulge, then give.
She found herself aged seven, sitting alone with her paternal grandmother in the living room of her grandparents’ New Jersey house. She was blinking at the acrid cigarette smoke and listening to Gramma explain how the only man she had ever really loved had married someone else.
For all its sensory detail, the root Memory was as emotionally bland as the rest: a dull plastic bead in place of Ismaili’s richly lacquered jewel. Nevertheless, as the image faded and the Storyline stalled, Alex felt a swell of hope. This was the moment when the Storyline’s meaning was supposed to emerge. But what came out, with a retching heave, was not a profound personal truth, but a sickening, sliding afterbirth of almost-meanings and half-words.
Quite simply, her Storyline didn’t make any sense.
Trance broken, Alex let her hands fall down by her sides. When she opened her eyes, the shattered loop was already beginning to re-form, far above her head. She felt weariness wash through her, lapping up around the edges of the calm. She realized that she was panting, her jumper soaked with sweat. Distantly, she became aware of a faint throb in her shoulders, her arms, her abs, her knees.
What the fuck? What the actual fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen. According to Taran, the problem lay in her recall, not in the Memories themselves. Memories were supposed to be perfect, inviolable storage units of consciousness. The whole premise of the back-up plan was based on the fact that Reading her Memories, from inside her Story, should have allowed her to bypass whatever was blocking her recall. But from what Alex had just experienced, it was clear that her Memories weren’t being blocked.
They were damaged. Rotten, from within.
The issue wasn’t that Alex’s mental search engine was faulty. The very files she was trying to retrieve were corrupted.
Fingers shaking, she pulled out the flask. As she took a long drink, she noticed that there was a thin blue leather thong knotted around her wrist.
‘There is a danger,’ MacBrian had said on the edge of the shaft, briskly tying the knot, ‘a real danger that you won’t come out. Reading your own Story is highly addictive, and the energy inside the Library masks the physical toll it takes. Let this bracelet be a reminder to you. You have to stay focused. You do one trial run. Then you Read that mutated Storyline. You find its root Memory, the one that surged at Egan. Then you get out.’
But MacBrian hadn’t discussed what to do if the Memories themselves were screwed. Although she had been right about the addictiveness. Despite the nauseating wrongness of what she had just experienced, Alex could feel a deep, muscular craving for another Read already tugging away inside. Horror fought with hunger, and it took less than ten seconds for the hunger to win.
There was a purple figure-of-eight circling vigorously overhead. Alex settled back into the posture and breathed in calm until her mind grew still. She felt her whole body sigh as it found its level. Then she shut her eyes, let the image cohere and hungrily raised her wrists.
Nothing happened. She opened one eye. The Storyline was still there, orbiting fifty feet above, but it showed no sign of coming to her call. She closed her eye again. She mentally traced its amethyst curve and reached higher, demanding it lock on. Nothing.
She felt a stab of impatience. The tension in the air slackened. She opened both eyes, only to see that the Storyline had disappeared, replaced by the silky grey-blue lasso she had seen before. She gave a little groan, feeling the craving tweak at her guts, and realized that she was wanting rather than waiting. Trying to pull the Storyline in, rather than letting it dictate the pace.
Don’t reach, MacBrian said. Just let go.
Alex redistributed her weight, shrugged her shoulders up to her ears and dropped them back down. She studied the Storyline. She closed her eyes. She raised her wrists.
She breathed into the words. Let go. Let go. Let go.
It locked on. As she closed her fists, she felt a pang of mingled anticipation and dread. The current wavered. She exhaled and let the moment of emotion fade. The current held. Slowly, she uncurled her right fist and dipped her forefinger down.
She was walking across the airfield with MacBrian, feeling the rain prick her scalp and sensing her hair start to frizz; she was fidgeting in the wings before going on stage at a conference two years before, tying and retying her ponytail; she was fourteen, hacking at a tangle with a pair of scissors; she was walking out of the salon in March, feeling the lightness of her new haircut; she was staring
at a Pre-Raphaelite painting on a school trip; she was scrolling past an online image of unruly seventies pubes; she was pausing on a black-and-white movie still of Jean Seberg.
Empty, all empty. Memory after Memory was slippery, glassy, bleached. Even the last, tough root Memory at the heart of the Storyline – a sleepover with a girl she had known at primary school, with beautiful auburn curls – prompted no emotion at all. And when, eventually, the moment of suspension came, the meaning that slithered out was another dismembered, nonsensical mess.
Alex found herself back on the platform. Her toes and fingers were cramping, her legs wobbling dangerously. But it was only a few seconds before the calm rolled back in. Before she could question what she was doing, she had looked up for the next Storyline and closed her eyes.
The more she Read, the stranger she felt – both sick and excited, as if she had binged on too much greasy junk food. Every Memory was slick and hollow; every Storyline ended with an abortive jumble of nonsense and a horrible comedown. And yet Alex still felt a twisted compulsion to keep Reading. She held up her wrists again and again, like a child poking its tongue into a toothless gum.
She was about to launch into her fifteenth – fiftieth? – Storyline when her legs gave way. Her left hip hit the platform, hard, and her head banged down against bone. She lay on her side for a few shocked moments, then dragged herself up to sitting. With detached surprise, Alex observed that her body was shuddering, her skin drenched, her throat parched. When she reached for the flask, her hands shook so badly that it took her several tries to pull it out of her pocket. And it was only when she tilted her wrist to drink that she noticed the strip of blue leather tied around her wrist.
The what?
Alex stumbled to her feet. The calm was already obliterating the pain, and the craving for the next Read had started up more sharply than ever before. Yet MacBrian’s low-tech safety mechanism had broken the spell.
God knew how long she’d been down here. And however badly she wanted to stay in the warm, radiant dark of her Story, Reading every Storyline, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was too weak to climb back out.
She couldn’t avoid it any longer. She had to progress to Level Two: Bad Storyline time.
It took Alex far too long to get into the zone. Time after time, she managed to breathe herself down. But as soon as that murky snake re-formed in the glittering air, a spike of fear would rupture her composure and she’d have to start all over again. Eventually, by the tenth or fifteenth time the bad Storyline reappeared, she found she was too tired even to be afraid. And at that moment – the very moment when she’d lost all hope – the calm simply scooped her up and buoyed her back into that clear pool.
Alex shut her eyes and raised her arms.
13
‘Yes?’
Alex stared at her newly purchased replacement phone, which was flashing manically as a backlog of messages downloaded from the cloud, and found herself suddenly incapable of saying a word.
‘Hello?’
Alex gazed around the cafe. There were so many people, slamming and shoving and slapping things around. The tinny blare of muzak collided with dozens of ringtones. The air stank of coffee, cinnamon, body spray. She ran a finger under the filthy blue strap around her wrist. Surely, if anyone would believe her, it would be him.
‘Hello?’
Her father would be standing at the hall table in his slippers with a mug of black coffee, the landline handset wedged beneath his chin. Her lifelong safety net. Her staunchest ally. Her rock. But that was the problem. He loved her too much. If he found out what she really was . . . Alex swallowed the lump.
‘Dad,’ she said as brightly as she could. ‘It’s me.’
‘Well, well. Hello there, Kansas. How’s life in the fast lane?’
‘I’ve – I’ve been away.’
‘Your mother told me. Some college in Scotland?’
‘Orkney.’
‘Ah. Hobnobbing with the Vikings.’
Alex looked at the fingers curled around her cardboard cup of cooling cappuccino. The same fingers that had traced the walls of the tunnel. The same fingers that had Read – whatever it was she had Read. ‘To be honest, Dad,’ she whispered, ‘it was all a bit odd.’
‘That’s academics for you.’
Alex put down the coffee and fiddled with a napkin on which she’d written Dad/Mum. Dom. Chloe. Mae. Harry, with the waitress’s pen. ‘Do you guys have plans over the next couple of days?’
‘Why? Could Ms Founder-CEO be thinking of visiting Fring?’
‘Yes, yes, I need to – talk to you both. There are some things I need to . . . that I’m trying to remember for this research project.’
‘That sounds mysterious. Well, if your mother has made plans, I’ll cancel them.’
She blinked. She swallowed. She drew on the napkin, beside the list, a wobbly figure-of-eight. ‘Dad?’
‘Mmm?’
‘What would you say drives me, as a person? Like, which one narrative would you say has most shaped my life?’
A pause. ‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘Just humour me. What would you say?’
A long pause. ‘Kansas . . .’
‘Fear of failure? Commitment phobia? If I was a novel, what would the blurb say?’
‘Alex. What are you asking me?’
‘Or say I was a film. How would the voiceover start? “Alex Moore had spent her entire life believing . . .” What?’
‘Sweetheart—’
‘Dad, do you think I’m a bad person?’
Another long pause. ‘I don’t think there are good people and bad people, Alex,’ her father said slowly. ‘I think there are just things we do. And I also think that all of us make mistakes.’
‘But some mistakes change everything.’ Her voice had grown dangerously high.
‘Alex—’
‘No, forget it. I’m being stupid. Sorry, Dad. We’ll talk when I see you. I’m tired.’
‘Alex—’
‘No. Please. Ignore me. Tell Mum I’ll let her know when I’ve booked the train. I—’ she squeezed her eyes shut. ‘I love you.’
Swiping at her eyes, she googled the offices of Bernam Keene Literary Agents and asked to be put through to Dom. He was delighted to hear from her and would put himself at her disposal all evening; the Crystal Pistol Crime Novel of the Year Awards could, apparently, go hang. Chloe didn’t pick up, so Alex sent a text asking if they could meet. Mae’s mobile was engaged. Finally she called Harry, who picked up at the first ring.
‘Alex! At last! Are you okay? I thought you were due back yesterday. What the hell happened out there?’
‘I . . . ’
‘Alex?’
‘I’m sorry. It’s . . . complicated. I got ill. I had to reschedule. I’ve just come off a flight.’
‘Are you okay?’
Alex stared bleakly at her coffee. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I must have left twenty, thirty messages. Texts, calls, emails.’
‘Yes. I saw.’
‘You warned me that the signal might be bad, but there’s no way they didn’t have wi-fi.’
‘I’m sorry. They—’
‘I know I suggested that you get some space, but I didn’t expect you to disappear entirely.’
‘I’m sorry. Really.’
A pause. ‘I didn’t mean we were over, Alex. I just wanted you to take stock, do some thinking. I didn’t want you to . . . I apologize if I gave you the impression—’
‘Please, Harry, it’s fine. It was me. My fault. I simply – couldn’t call.’
Another pause. ‘Alex. Tell me truthfully. Did you meet someone out there?’
‘What?’ Alex thought of Finn MacEgan close up against her in the archive room; his breath on her cheek, that sinewy arm locking her in place, the anguish radiating from his hot flesh. She wondered whether he was still locked up, or whether Taran had already persuaded them to let him out. She wondered if he still h
ated her as much as he had. ‘Oh no,’ she said miserably. ‘Quite the opposite.’
‘Really? Because it sounded like—’
‘Harry.’ She thought with exasperation back to herself, on the train three days ago, merrily laying the bait. So arrogant. So naive. ‘You’ve got nothing—’ Her voice broke, and she had to take a moment before she could speak again. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘I’m glad,’ Harry said eventually. ‘I’m more than glad. I was seriously worried, Alex. When I didn’t hear from you, and you didn’t come back, all these ideas came to mind, all these awful images and—’ He stopped. ‘Look, I do owe you an apology. In fact, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking myself. There are some important things I want to say. Will you come over this evening?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m seeing Dom tonight. But I need to speak to you, too. Ask you some questions for this thing I’m working on. Tomorrow?’
‘I want to see you tonight. I want to see you now. But if tomorrow is best for you, tomorrow it is.’ Another pause. ‘I can’t wait to see you. It’s felt like a very long time.’
Alex gulped. She tried to speak. Eventually she managed to whisper: ‘I know.’
She sat in a daze on the Heathrow Express, picking up voicemails while she watched the industrial parks whizz past. One of them was from Hackney police. She called the number they left and was transferred to Commander Holland of Special Operations, who explained that the tests on Alex’s shoe – her impromptu weapon – had, unfortunately, returned ‘corrupted DNA’. In fact, the lab technicians were very keen for Alex to come into the office and answer some more questions about her assailant. Alex explained that she was in the middle of a family emergency and promptly hung up.
On Paddington concourse she kept bumping into people, tripping over bags, letting chuggers thrust leaflets into her hands. As she passed through the barrier into the Underground, she saw a pale, dark-haired man all in black run towards her, and froze. But he was too old, he was Asian; he was swerving around her and smacking his Oyster onto the sensor next to hers. As she stood staring after him, the barrier snapped closed against her stomach, exploding into angry beeps. The TfL man, coming over to let her through, muttered, ‘Wake up, love.’
