Peril

by Joss Stirling

  ‘Theo, please.’

  She could hear he was breathing heavily, trying to regain control of his temper. ‘OK, OK. Let’s deal with what you can tell me. I presume you rang for a purpose?’

  ‘I’ve had an idea. How about I slide into an eco-service programme. A girl here says the administration is hopeless. I can probably pretend they just lost my papers. They issue you with a new ration card, don’t they, when you join up?’

  ‘That’s right. You get extra travel credits as a perk, so you can go home to visit without spending your annual allowance. That’s not a bad idea.’

  ‘I’ve got to do it sometime, so I could just do it now. Pick up school in the new year, do online courses or something so I can still take some of my exams in the summer.’

  ‘And you’ll be more protected as part of a team, rather than just you and me. They’ll be looking for me too and I’m much harder to hide. Yes, yes, I like it.’

  ‘I’m going to ask one of the girls here if I can go with her. I think she’ll welcome the company.’

  ‘Just make sure you get registered so the time is racked up. You don’t want to have to do it all over again.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘What name do you want to use? Saddiq came through with a shady connection. They can make you an ID card.’

  ‘Emma,’ she looked around for inspiration. ‘Boot. Emma Boot. Only child. Orphan. Make me an IDP from the Fens. You took me there once, remember, that concert on Ely Island? Most of the guys here are idippies so I’ll blend.’

  ‘OK. They’ll get that to you tomorrow night. I’ve told Saddiq your address.’

  ‘What else did you tell him?’

  ‘The truth as I know it: that enemies of your parents are after you. He already knew there was something weird in our past so he took it in his stride. Valerie knows as well. They’re rooting for you.’ Theo cleared his throat. ‘And look, if anything happens to me, go to them, OK?’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, Theo. I won’t allow it.’

  ‘Love, you might not be able to stop it.’

  9

  A sleepless night did not improve Kel’s mood. His sheets looked like a war zone, twisted in the knots, pillows punched into submission. He finally ended up face down in exhaustion on top of the mess. He wasn’t surprised when the next person he saw early on Saturday morning was his father bearing a breakfast tray.

  ‘Hello, Kel.’ Rill put the tray down on the desk. ‘Got a hug for your old dad?’

  Kel got off bed and walked into the embrace, struck that he was now an inch taller than his father. So much was changing. ‘Good to see you, Dad. You’re here with Osun?’

  ‘Yes, the king’s here. He’s meeting with Ade to discuss the crisis.’

  ‘And you’ve been asked to come deal with the prisoner?’ Moving to the sink, Kel splashed water on his face. He could see in the reflection that his room was a mess, guitar half buried under sports gear, new marks on the wall where he had thrown a cricket ball at it last night, his Japanese art prints hanging at a precarious angle.

  ‘Something like that. Let’s eat first, OK? Tell me how you’ve been, aside from the obvious.’

  Kel cleared yesterday’s clothes off a chair for his father to sit down. ‘Not much to say.’

  ‘Ade said you flared out?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I’m a spiral.’ He rubbed at his arm. Most Perilous remembered their flare out as a great moment; he’d always associate his with Meri’s terror.

  ‘I’m proud of you. Your mother would’ve been so thrilled too. Come, eat something. They said you missed supper.’

  ‘You mean between tasering me and locking me in here? Funny that.’

  ‘Kel, please.’

  He picked up his guitar and tucked it back in its usual corner, then sat on the edge of the bed. ‘OK, let’s eat. Tell me the news from you and Jenny.’

  Grateful for the distraction, Kel listened with half an ear as his father gave the run down of the family news. The other half of his attention was on what exactly they could say to each other. Would his father back Kel through family loyalty, or go with his training and tradition?

  Finally, Rill kicked back his chair, cradling a mug of tea. He leafed through the history of art book Kel had left out on the desk. ‘So, Kel, do you want to tell me why you’re locked up here—why Ade doesn’t feel that he can trust you any more?’

  ‘We don’t agree about Meri: it’s as simple and as complicated as that.’ Kel reached for his cricket ball and began tossing it hand to hand.

  ‘The Tean girl. I must admit I never thought I’d see the day when my son would break ranks over one of them.’

  I mustn't lose my temper, Kel reminded himself, rubbing the ball on his thigh. ‘Have you ever met a Tean, Dad?’

  ‘Only when we fought them. I don’t have to remind you what happened then.’

  ‘Then you don’t understand.’ Kel tossed and caught the ball.

  Rill dropped down so all four legs of the chair were firmly planted on the carpet. ‘Put that damn ball down. It’s you who doesn’t understand, Kel. What you’re not getting is the bigger picture. This poor girl—and yes, I feel sorry for her: she can’t help being what she is—but she can’t be ignored or swept under the carpet. Left at large, she could potentially pass on her traits to her children. There’s something you have to get about Teans: they know who we are and we never suspect them, not unless something extraordinary happens like it did the day before yesterday, something which makes them drop their cover. Otherwise they can slide right in among us like sharks. None of us can live freely knowing there are people out there who can burn us from the inside out. I watched your mother die at the hands of a Tean. I don’t want my son to go the same way.’

  Kel gripped the ball tightly, not putting it down but no longer playing with it. ‘I get that, but I don’t get why we talk as if there’s only one solution. I can probably kill with my bare hands—I was trained to do so—but no one is talking about culling me because I’m dangerous.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘How old are you now, Kel? Eighteen-years-young. Can’t you trust that those of us who have gone round this course a few more times might have a better grasp of this situation? We might have weighed how you feel, balanced that against the very real risks, and decided that we can’t let her run?’

  Kel dragged the fingers of his free hand through his hair. ‘I can’t believe that you’re defending the idea of killing someone who’s never harmed a fly. I thought you were better than that.’

  Rill sat back. ‘Actually, I’m not in favour of killing her.’

  Finally someone talking some sense. ‘Well, good.’

  ‘I’m for neutralising. We catch her, contain her and make sure she lives happily somewhere, but so she can’t hurt us or pass on her abilities to another.’

  ‘That’s not a life. At least Ade is honest. You’re talking about condemning her to a kind of life sentence where we control her completely. She wouldn’t even be a slave like the Teans did to us, but a zoo animal.’

  ‘It might be the best offer on the table, Kel.’

  ‘Then we need another table.’ Kel threw the ball so it fell with a satisfying thud into the sports bag at the foot of the bed.

  Rill closed his eyes a moment and sighed. ‘This is a problem, isn’t it? I can tell you’re going to throw everything away on her. We Douglases do loyalty well, but this time you’re being loyal to the wrong person.’

  ‘You know nothing about her. You don’t know that she’s sweet and kind, talented, bitingly sarcastic at times, but under it all, quite shy. These facts don’t add up to a stone-cold killer.’

  ‘But any child she has in the future might turn out to be—or any other relative that she is hiding from us. It wouldn’t take more than one or two Teans to overthrow the peace we’ve forged for our people, start the whole cycle again.’

  ‘It’s a peace that I now see has been bu
ilt on the smoking corpses of a whole civilization.’

  ‘There was nothing civilized about the Teans.’

  ‘I’m not playing word games with you. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’ Rill scratched his chin. ‘Put it another way, if you thought she had an infectious killer disease, Ebola or Bird Flu, wouldn’t you quarantine her?’

  ‘Yes, but she doesn’t.’

  ‘That's how we see her.’

  ‘You see her wrong.’

  ‘What if the person she touched, the person she tortured was me or your sister?’

  ‘But she wouldn’t.’

  ‘People do all sort of terrible things when pushed.’

  ‘Then don’t push her.’ Kel’s headache was back, pulsing like a great red light in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘You’re looking at this from the perspective of one person; we have to look at it on behalf of all our people.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time we stopped thinking of ourselves as separate then and started thinking of us as sharing one race—the human race? What you’re advocating is nothing but genocide, a war crime that the Reformed United Nations would prosecute you for if they knew what you planned.’

  Rill placed his mug on the tray, signalling the end of the debate. ‘I can see that we’re not going to agree. Get dressed, Kel. Osun wants to see you at the briefing.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Kel gave him an ironic salute. ‘I’ve resigned, did Ade tell you that?’

  ‘He said you wanted to.’

  ‘I’m out even if he doesn’t accept it.’

  ‘That means out of this house, out of our community.’

  ‘Out of my family too?’

  Rill put his hand on Kel’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘Kel, never that. But it’ll make things very difficult.’

  ‘And they’re not already?’

  The club room as the largest space in the house had been turned into a briefing room. When Kel entered, a couple of his friends said a guarded hello, but most pretended he wasn’t there. Feelings were running high on both sides so it was just as well. No one had thought to take down Meri’s picture. It remained on the wall—a threat curling over their heads or an image of what they were to the artist?

  ‘Kelvin, good to see you,’ said Osun in his deep tones. With skin like polished teak and dressed in a maroon suit, he made an impact on the room by his very presence. Add to that his air of command, and no one had any doubt who was in charge. Ade had by some family instinct dressed in a shirt of the same colour tucked into black jeans. King and Crown Prince. The future of their people right there.

  ‘Sir.’ Kel forced himself to give the king a respectful nod. Though his hopes were low, he might still find more mercy in Osun than anticipated. He didn’t want to start by pissing him off.

  ‘Sit by me. You know the Tean best. You might be able to predict what she’ll do next.’ Osun gestured to the chair beside his at the conference table.

  ‘Sir, did no one explain that I’m not happy about this process—that I’ve resigned as Ade’s bodyguard?’

  ‘They did. But you haven’t resigned as a Perilous, have you? Sit down and listen to the briefing. You might find things are a little less muddled when you are in possession of all the facts. You can start.’ Osun nodded to Rill.

  Kel’s father clicked a remote at the wall screen. Old images started to flicker across the surface and Kel felt a rising tide of horror in his chest.

  ‘These are the CCTV pictures of the last Tean attack,’ said Rill. ‘You can see that two adult members infiltrated our Washington base in the guise of tourists. We never identified them for reasons that will be made clear shortly. They brought with them a minor, age three or four.’ He froze the picture on the mother leaning down to wipe ice cream off the face of the child, highlighting a pony tail poking out through the back of the cap. ‘Odds are this is a female. Since Kel identified her yesterday, we think it might well be the young woman now known as Meredith Marlowe. The dates agree.’

  He pressed resume. ‘They made straight for the exhibit hall where Rayne Mortimer was employed as a talking guide. My wife and I happened to be visiting her that summer as part of our training. Rayne, as many of you know, was the investment manager for the North American branch and a lovely person. The Tean intelligence must have been good as they went right to the heart of our operation. Unfortunately there was no video inside the room and we don’t know exactly what transpired but their plan hit a snag and they tried to flee. All Perilous were called in to take up the pursuit. We tracked them across the site.’ He flicked through a series of grainy images, skipping quickly the parts that showed Kel’s mother die but even this brief glance of the material was enough to haunt Kel for the rest of his life.

  Kel’s knuckles were white where he gripped the arms of his chair. ‘Dad, do you have to?’

  ‘Sorry, Kel, but you have to see this. You won’t get it unless you see what these people can do.’

  Kel couldn’t understand how his father could sound so cool showing snatches of what had to be the worst day of his life. ‘It proves nothing about Meri.’

  ‘I beg to differ. Looking more closely at these last ones, it is now apparent that the Teans made a switch, dumping the girl and picking up a decoy. I don’t know how we missed that. They were cornered at the river and threw what we now know was not Meredith in the water before engaging with our defenders. Five Perilous were killed, including my wife, Kel’s mother, Marina, just before I got there with the other guard. The two Tean adults were shot four times, probably fatally. We don’t know for sure because they chose to jump into the water with their injuries rather than be captured. We thought they were going after the kid. With so many casualties the place was in chaos. A search was, of course, launched but none of the three were found. Until now.’

  A sunny day turned to bloody violence for Meri and Kel’s own father and mother had been part of it. Wasn’t that a kick in the head? Kel couldn’t bear to watch, to see his mother’s death played out before his eyes, then that of Meri’s parents. It was pure torture. He’d loved his mother with all his young heart. But he didn’t buy his father’s voiceover explanation. ‘How do you know the Marlowes were there to hit Rayne Mortimer, Dad? Would you take your child along with you if that was your plan?’

  Rill scrolled back to the initial shots. ‘How do you explain that they went right for Mrs Mortimer?’

  ‘Because they were visiting one of the premier historic attractions on the East Coast? Look at them in that queue: eating ice cream, chatting to the other visitors—do they look like they’ve got assassination on their minds?’

  ‘They’re Tean. That’s what they do,’ muttered Ade on Osun’s other side.

  ‘They’re people taking their kid to visit George Washington’s home like thousands of other parents. If the community over there wanted to hide why did they pick such an obvious place?’

  Osun held up a finger. ‘I’ll answer that. The first president was a good friend to the Perilous and sheltered us during a resurgence of the Tean threat at the end of the eighteenth century. We preserve his house as part of the valuing of our culture and in thanks to him.’

  ‘Good for George, but can’t you see that you are jumping to a conclusion that the Marlowes had hostile intentions when all the violence seems to start with us?’

  ‘Five people died, Kelvin. Your own mother.’

  He swallowed past the lump in his throat. ‘And Meri’s parents. Looks like self-defence to me and leaving a little girl orphaned.’

  Osun tapped his fingers together, evaluating Kel. ‘You know, you may be right. You’re looking at this from a fresh point of view when I’ve studied it so many times I see it with my eyes shut.’ He held up a hand to stop Ade interrupting. ‘Maybe Meredith Marlowe is the victim here today. She certainly was at four—none of us would argue she had any hostile intent at that age. So where does that leave us? One lone Tean, afraid, desperate. Can’t you agree she needs to be pulled back i
n, persuaded that there is no need to harm anyone?’

  ‘She has the right to live without having to fear for her life.’

  ‘And so do we.’

  ‘So does that mean that you’re not going to put a kill order out on her?’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m suggesting we retrieve her. Your father was quite persuasive when we debated this. He said you were a good judge of character and if you said she was basically a nonviolent girl, then we should not assume she was out for vengeance.’

  ‘Retrieve? What does that mean? The prison sentence Dad talked about?’

  ‘We would have to talk to her—see how her needs and ours can mesh.’

  ‘Uncle, when have Tean and Perilous requirements ever meshed?’ asked Ade.

  ‘There’s always a first time. So what do you say, Kel?’

  Kel studied his king’s face. He was used to trusting Osun, believing in Ade, but he was still too deeply shaken to drop his wariness. It could be a ruse to get him to cooperate. They’d see it as justified. ‘I’d say that was a good idea. You do that. You mesh.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Are you asking if my resignation stands?’ His eyes slid to Ade. ‘Yeah, it does. I don’t like how this community handles someone who disagrees so I’m out. I won’t betray you but I won’t stay with you.’

  ‘Kel—’ Ade raised a hand as if to grab him back.

  ‘No, sir, I can’t be your guard or your friend any longer so don’t ask me. I’ll pack and go this morning.’

  ‘That wasn’t an ironic “sir” was it?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ll see you around at school I suppose.’

  ‘Wait.’ Osun interrupted Kel’s attempt to exit. ‘I’m not stopping you leaving but I do want your best guess what Meredith will do now. You owe your fellow Perilous that much.’

  Kel shrugged. ‘I’ve only known her a couple of weeks really.’ It felt like a lifetime. ‘My guess is she will get as far away from me as she can, so look for her where I’m not. That’s the only tip I can give you.’