Shattered

by Teri Terry

  It’s inky black now, and despite the freezing rain, I slow to a walk to find the path at my feet. Tonight the dark is unnerving, not comforting as it usually is, and without thinking about it I switch to moving silently, every step taken with care.

  Another blinding flash, and everything is lit up – a split second only – there! By the house, near the back door. Two figures in black?

  Fear whips through me as all is plunged into darkness again. Lorders!

  Did they see me?

  Panic finds my feet, and I run blind, no longer silent, headlong back the way I came. Cries sound behind: spotted or heard, either way, they’re on to me. When the path branches, I go the other way, away from Mac and Aiden. I can’t lead Lorders there; anything but that. I should be able to lose them. I can run faster than almost anybody I’ve come across.

  But I’m not pulling away. I can hear pursuit keeping pace behind. Now it sounds like just one runner, a long, loping gait. A familiar gait, and when there’s another blinding flash I can’t stop myself glancing back.

  Ben.

  My feet falter, then I push on; gathering speed again, but it’s no good. Bit by bit he gains. I can hear him getting closer, and knowing it is Ben has confused my feet.

  Then all at once he’s flying through the air and I’m knocked to the ground. Winded, under him, and I struggle to breathe. He holds my hands with one of his and gropes at my pockets. No! I twist, but he’s got it. My camera.

  He pulls me to my feet, presses something cold and hard against my back. ‘Walk!’

  ‘No. Just shoot me already, if that’s what you want to do. I don’t care any more.’

  He twists my arm behind my back, and pushes; I stumble forwards. What is the time? I have to delay them. I have to stop them from finding Mac and Aiden, from stopping the transmission at six.

  I trip, and sprawl forwards. With an exclamation of annoyance Ben scoops me up and carries me, my arm still twisted. A gun pressed into my stomach so hard it hurts.

  ‘How could you do it?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Everyone, all those students, just shot against the wall. Dead.’

  ‘They were traitors. They deserved what they got. As will you.’

  ‘You’re the traitor, you betrayed me. You used to love me, you acted like you still did. How could you do it?’ My voice is too soft, plaintive, and I hate myself for it.

  ‘Ah, sorry about that. Seducing you was difficult. But I had to get you to fall asleep somehow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Scanned you while you slept. How do you think we found you? Somehow your records were wrong, we needed the scan to track you by your brain chip.’

  No. Dr Lysander had changed the number; Lorders worked out they couldn’t track me, so got Ben to take care of it.

  Now I’m full of rage, and struggle, but despite a few AGT tricks I know the Lorders must have taught him how to hold someone. Or maybe the pain inside is making me too weak to fight back.

  When it hits me, I almost sag. He let me go so he could track me here. And I’d thought some part of him couldn’t bring himself to hurt me, but I was wrong. ‘You’re evil.’

  ‘Sticks and stones.’

  ‘And that little girl: how could you?’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Edie! You knew their address. I ran there, and they were gone.’

  His shoulders move slightly: a shrug? ‘No idea. I didn’t tell them her address.’ His voice is uncomfortable; he should have told the Lorders he works for everything, even that, and he knows it. Is there some part of the Ben I knew inside him, still? Can he be reached?

  We’re at the door to Mac’s house now; the lights are back on, and the door is held open. Ben pushes through and drops me on the kitchen floor. At Tori’s feet.

  A golden streak rushes past: Skye. She jumps up on Ben in excitement, licking his face. He tries to push her off but she’s not having it.

  ‘That’s Skye. Your dog,’ I say.

  ‘My dog?’

  Skye barks as if to say yes.

  ‘Your mum and dad gave her to you when she was a puppy. Look, Ben: your mum was an artist; she made that owl sculpture. Made it for me.’

  His eyes start to follow my gesture to the owl on the fridge, but then Tori pulls me up by the hair and starts dragging me across the floor into the front room. I scream and Skye flips round, growling, starts to leap at Tori, but Ben grabs her collar. ‘Down,’ he says sharply, and she’s confused.

  ‘Let Kyla go,’ he says to Tori, and she pauses, surprise in her face. ‘Until I get rid of the dog.’

  Tori lets go of my hair, and my head thuds painfully on the floor. She smiles, but her eyes are full of twisted hate. I was right, wasn’t I? She remembers me. Did the Lorders think she was of more use with revenge to drive her?

  Ben pushes Skye into the hall, shuts the door. She starts whining mournfully on the other side to get back to him.

  ‘Aren’t they here yet?’ Ben says to Tori.

  ‘No. Not yet,’ Tori says, and something hides behind the glee in her eyes: some lie. She wants to deal with me all by herself.

  ‘Are you waiting for reinforcements?’ I say. ‘She hasn’t called anyone in. They’re not coming.’

  Ben frowns, looks at Tori.

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ she says, and slaps me so hard on the side of the face that tears come to my eyes. I blink furiously.

  ‘You remember me, don’t you Tori? You want to hurt me, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t just want to, I’m going to.’ She pulls a knife out of her pocket. ‘You know I’m good with knives.’

  ‘You killed a Lorder with a knife once. I can’t believe you could go from that, to this. Don’t you remember that day we attacked the termination centre, and Emily, the Slated who died?’ I slip the ring off my finger, throw it at Ben. He catches it. ‘That’s Emily’s ring, the pregnant girl I told you about at the college. Everything I told you that day is true, Ben, and Tori knows it. She was there.’

  Tori looks at Ben as he reads the inscription on the ring. ‘She’s lying. She could have got that ring anywhere.’

  ‘You hate the Lorders, don’t you, Tori? For what they did to you: Slating you, then taking you to a Termination Centre. The Lorder who pretended to rescue you: do you remember him, what he did to you? Is working for them worth it, just to get back at me? Or is it to be with Ben: that’s it, isn’t it. You always wanted what you couldn’t have. You’re just a jealous little girl.’

  Tori starts to advance on me with her knife; I shrink into the wall. Too much?

  ‘Tori, wait,’ Ben says. ‘Leave her be a minute.’

  ‘What?’ She scowls, turns to him.

  ‘You do remember her, from before.’ A statement not a question. ‘Explain.’

  She looks between us – wary. Trapped.

  Is it working? My eyes find the clock on the mantel: 6:02 pm. The transmission has started! Delay and distract. I’ve no doubt she’ll kill me, or, if she doesn’t, eventually they’ll make the call and more Lorders will come and they will. I’m detached from it. I don’t care. What is there to live for? If the transmission is made, I’ll welcome death.

  ‘I don’t know what they’ve told you, Ben. But Tori is here for revenge: nothing else. Because Lorders followed me to her, arrested her, hauled her away.’

  ‘And you never told me!’ she says, and hits me hard again across the face, this time with the flat side of the knife in her hand, and the cutting edge bites in and cuts my cheek. Tears spring to my eyes.

  ‘Oh, is that why you’re so miffed? Because I never told you Ben was alive?’

  ‘Tori, is this true?’ he asks.

  ‘Ben, I—’

  ‘Why haven’t you told me this befo
re?’

  ‘Ben, think for yourself,’ I say. ‘It’s lies, all of it. The Lorders and Tori have been filling you up with lies, to make you do what they want. All those people dead: all because of you.’

  ‘No,’ Ben says. ‘You’re the traitor! It’s because of you and Aiden they died: you twisted and turned them. We had no choice.’

  There is thumping behind – Skye is throwing herself at the hall door.

  ‘Not even Tori believes that; she just doesn’t care.’

  He looks at her.

  ‘Shut up,’ she shouts, and the knife is in her hand. She lunges and I’m on the floor, up against the wall, weaponless. Limp and lifeless already: where has my fight gone? This is it. This is really it.

  A foot swings out: the knife flies through the air. Ben. He’s kicked the knife out of her hand.

  ‘What have you made me do?’ he screams, and I don’t know if he means stopping Tori from killing me, or Tori’s lies and what they led to. Or if he even knows.

  Tori screams in fury. She reaches behind, to a holster. A gun is in her hand. She raises it at Ben.

  A crash: the thin hall door has given way.

  A flash of fur – Skye – jumps between them.

  The gun goes off and Skye yelps, falls, red in her golden fur. Tori stares, disbelieving.

  My fight is back. I’m on my feet, and I take the biggest swing I’ve ever taken to punch Tori full on in the face. She drops the gun, falls to the ground. Unconscious. And then the gun is in my hand and pointed at Ben.

  Who am I kidding? I put it down.

  Ben is holding Skye, pushing at the red spreading in her fur. It’s her shoulder? I grab a curtain tie off the wall, tie it tight around and around to try to stop the bleeding, and she’s whimpering, but still licking Ben’s face. He’s shaking.

  ‘Ben? Do you remember Skye? Remember!’ And then he’s crying, convulsing, and I’m holding both of them.

  That’s when the front door is kicked down. A man steps through.

  Nico?

  CHAPTER FORTY

  * * *

  I twist, dive for Tori’s gun, but then there is pain: a sudden explosion of agony in my head so severe I drop and curl into a ball.

  ‘This is why we track the trackers,’ a woman’s voice says. ‘They really can’t be trusted to get anything right. Young people today have no sense of focus or purpose.’

  Footsteps approach. They stop; a hand strokes my hair. The pain is so intense it is all I can do to open my eyes and look up at the ones staring into mine: pale blue irises. Nico’s eyes used to mesmerise me, hold power. Not any longer.

  ‘Poor child. You see, over there?’ He gestures to the front door, and my eyes follow. It’s Astrid, and in her hands is a device. ‘Once a Slated, always a Slated. Just key in the brain chip number, hit a button, and bingo: pain. Or even death.’

  Tori is stirring on the floor. ‘Allow me a small demonstration,’ Astrid says, and taps at the machine. Tori screams, convulses, then lies still.

  As if to emphasise the point, Astrid taps again; a new spike of pain explodes in my head. My vision goes fuzzy. All the Lorder talk of second chances for Slateds: all lies. We’re still in a prison. They can strike us down whenever they want to.

  ‘Enough for now,’ Nico says. ‘She’ll pass out.’ He lifts me up onto the sofa. Ben is held between two Lorders, and Tori and Skye are unmoving on the floor.

  The pain subsides a little, enough that I can turn my head, fix Nico once again with my eyes. I swallow, try to speak with a mouth that is thick and dry. ‘Why are you here? You hate Lorders.’

  ‘Ah, my dear, love and hate have nothing to do with winning. I was always with Astrid. The side of strength.’ He leans over me, close, and I try to pull away but can’t convince muscles to respond. He kisses my cheek.

  I fight to think through the pain. Is Nico in some sort of self-serving alliance with Astrid, or was he actually a Lorder all the time? But Nico ran from Coulson’s Lorders when they tracked me and attacked the AGT; Coulson was hunting Nico. Or was that just an act? If Nico really is a Lorder, that may explain why all the attacks Nico and Katran planned just fizzled out: sabotage.

  The clock over the mantel says 6:08 pm. The transmission is well under way! I have to keep them talking, keep them from stopping it.

  With great concentration I manage to turn my head to Astrid. ‘It was you who set up them taking me when I was ten. Wasn’t it.’

  She smiles, and it is a grandmotherly, gentle smile. Shivers run up my back. ‘Of course it was, my dear. You had a glorious purpose on Armstrong Memorial Day. Shame you didn’t fulfil it.’

  A glorious purpose? That of suicide bomber. Concentrate; delay her. ‘It was no accident I was assigned to that family, that I was there that day.’

  ‘Of course not. It just took a little meddling to sort it.’

  ‘How could you do that to Stella? Take me away from her?’

  Her face goes hard. ‘My daughter dared to hold information over me, threatened to tell: she had to learn. And then having you back with her in Keswick, without telling me?’ She shakes her head in disgust.

  ‘So you really did have the Prime Minister and his wife killed, all those years ago.’

  She smiles. ‘First rule of politics: eliminate the opposition.’

  ‘How did you know I was at Stella’s?’

  She shrugs. ‘It was obvious Stella was hiding something. A little information, and the conclusion was apparent.’

  ‘From Steph. My green eyes.’

  She raises an eyebrow. Amused. ‘Indeed. And it didn’t take long to work out it was also you and that Finley at the orphanage that day.’

  No. She knows about Finley? She must see the horror on my face. Her smile widens.

  I’m going cold inside: if she knows Finley was there, that he helped me, he’s dead. And all these things she is saying to me; I’m not leaving here alive, either. None of us are. Not with all the things we know.

  But there is still one thing I want to know more than anything.

  ‘Why me? Who am I? Why?’

  Astrid laughs. ‘That is quite enough family reunion time, dear. Now: tell me. Where is your camera?’

  ‘My camera?’ I frown. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘This is the price of failure to cooperate.’ Her fingers move to the device she holds, and I brace myself for a slam of pain that doesn’t come. But there is a cry to the side, and I turn.

  Ben is curled up in a ball on the ground.

  ‘Now answer my question.’

  I think fast. Does it matter? It’s just a backup copy. It is 6:12: the transmission should be nearly over.

  She raises her hand to the box again.

  ‘Wait. Ben took it from me; he must still have it.’

  She nods at one of the Lorders, who goes through Ben’s pockets, then holds up my camera.

  The back door opens; there are footsteps in the kitchen?

  ‘Ah, your other friends are arriving, at last,’ Nico says. The door from the kitchen opens. More Lorders, dragging two prisoners along with them. They throw them on the floor.

  Mac and Aiden. Both of them bloody and beaten, Aiden’s arm hanging at an angle that is wrong.

  ‘No!’ I sag back.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid we stopped them: no movie premiere for you tonight. And we’ll round up all the insurgents that appear on your little production as well. We’ve got some of them in custody already. But don’t worry, they won’t be in custody for long.’

  They’ll be dead.

  So will I.

  The Lorder with my camera takes it over to Astrid. She puts down the device she was holding, her box of pain, to look at the camera.

  It doesn’t matter any more, does it?

 
I fill myself with every bit of resolve I can find inside, every reserve of strength, every fragment of AGT training. One last flood of adrenalin before it all ends.

  Tori’s knife, the one Ben kicked out of her hand. It lies just out of sight, under the edge of a chair near Astrid.

  I dive for it and for her.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  * * *

  I hold the knife against Astrid’s neck, position her body between them and me. ‘Drop your weapons,’ I say to the Lorders. They look at her.

  ‘Do it,’ she hisses, and they hesitate, start to bend down, to put guns on the floor.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Nico says, walking slowly towards Astrid and me, his gun still in his hand and pointed at us.

  ‘Don’t take another step!’ I say.

  He stops. He smiles, amused. ‘Really? Don’t forget I know you, Kyla or Rain or Lucy or Riley or whoever the hell you want to be today. You can’t kill anybody. Can you?’

  The moment is stretching, each second a slow eternity. After everything, is it this moment, this one defining, ending moment of my life? If I kill her, I’ll die. If I don’t, I’ll die. She deserves it, she deserves it more than anyone I can imagine in this world, except maybe Nico: push the knife into her neck. Cut her throat. Watch blood spill down her body: revenge for so many.

  I can’t do it. I can’t be like them.

  And he knows it.

  The knife loosens in my hand. I swallow.

  Nico smiles and steps closer; he takes the knife.

  Astrid pushes away from me, her face twisted with fury; she reaches for her box of pain. ‘You never would do what I wanted you to, would you? No more.’

  ‘Let me take care of her outside,’ Nico says to her. ‘It’s about time.’

  She smiles, puts the box down again. ‘As you will. But make it quick. We’ve got to get out of here.’

  Nico slips an arm across my shoulders, gently pulls my hair back. Kisses my cheek. ‘We have unfinished business, you and I.’

  There is a scuffle behind Nico; Aiden cries out as a Lorder twists his injured arm behind him.