The Mouse

by Lauretta Hignett

  Sunny wished she had the energy to get up and leave. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, and the warm heavy comfort of the blanket was making it hard to focus, she was so weary. She felt like she’d inherited some of the pale prisoner’s tiredness, and for his sake, she hoped she had. Hunter, obviously intent on boring her to death, had put on a documentary about Rugby players in the nineteen-forties, and Sunny felt her eyes rolling back in her skull every time she looked at the TV screen. She quickly grabbed her phone from her overnight bag, and sent a quick text to Annabel:

  If anyone asks, I’m at your house tonight.

  Her phone buzzed back immediately. Use a condom.

  Sunny’s last thought before she drifted off to sleep was: Ha ha. I wish.

  Chapter 23

  Crocodiles and cages whirled through the air, snapping and catching her and suddenly she was pale and tired and being forced to ferry identical blonde children to their prep school and back with chains around her neck, but something warm and comforting was stroking her hair, and she slowly woke up and the nightmare receded gradually until the memory of it had disappeared, and only the empty, sad, lonely feeling remained.

  She was snuggled into the sofa, wrapped up in the blanket like a cocoon. Hunter knelt beside her, withdrawing his hand as soon as he realized she was awake.

  They stared at each other in silence for a long moment.

  “He’s not going home, is he?” Sunny finally whispered.

  Hunter frowned, understanding immediately. “No. He can’t, Sunny; you have to understand. He’s been found once, and they’ll find him again.”

  She struggled to sit upright. “What are you going to do with him?”

  “Well, you’ll be pleased to know he’s still asleep.” Hunter gave her a small smile and waited until one side of her mouth curled up slightly. “I talked to a company guy in Sweden. They found him straight away – they let him sleep, and they gave him something to make sure he stays asleep while he’s transported. They’re taking him to a facility up north, nice and remote, so they can debrief him and help get him healthy again.” Hunter heaved himself up on the couch next to her, sitting close, comforting her with his wide shoulders.

  “So he’ll be ok,” Sunny said, mostly to herself. “But he won’t be free anymore.”

  “He’ll be a lot better off,” Hunter sighed, sounding resigned. “In time, maybe he’ll get a sense of his freedom back. A cover identity, merged back into society, that sort of thing.” He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  The TV was mercifully switched off, and the silence - instead of being oppressive and threatening like it was in that awful building in Korea - was comforting and peaceful.

  “So, who took him?” Sunny asked out loud. Hunter sighed again.

  “I was just thinking about that. Once again, this is all classified at the highest level, and I should probably kill you rather than tell you.” He looked down at her, nestled by his side, and in a perfectly natural action he lifted one arm and draped it over her shoulders, drawing her in closer. She was too heartsick to be excited, but she relished the comfort it gave her. “We don’t know enough about them, but it’s an organization called Hellix.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “And we don’t know if it’s a group of people, or if there’s one charismatic leader. All we know is that in the last thirty years, people who have had gifts have disappeared, either from their own homes or from our custody. We’ve managed to monitor chatter regarding the abductions, and all we’ve got so far is the name. We’ve even managed to catch some of their henchmen over the years, but before they’ve been interrogated, they have terminated themselves.”

  Sunny was shocked. “Terminated themselves? You mean, suicide?”

  “Cyanide pills. Capped into their back teeth. So absolutely no one talks,” Hunter said grimly.

  “Whoa.”

  “Occasionally, someone that might have a power disappears too.” Hunter looked even grimmer when he said this, and looked down again at Sunny. “People who have been exposed to weird stuff, and survived. Like radiation, or suspected Alien abduction. People who have been electrocuted and survived, like your Swedish man.”

  “Is that what happened to him?”

  “When he was a boy. They don’t know if he survived because of his gift, or he got his gift when he survived.”

  Sunny was thoughtful. “This Hellix group… they steal people with powers, and make them work for them? That would mean that the North Korean leader is one of them, yeah?”

  “It makes sense. The Swedish guy is the only one we’ve ever recovered.”

  “Oh, God!” So many people, abducted from their happy lives and forced perform for their captors, never to return. The idea was sickening. “That could be me one day,” she whispered.

  Hunter involuntarily squeezed her tightly. “I told you, I’d never let that happen.” He muttered. He seemed to instantly regret being unprofessional and hugging her so tight, so he coughed and chuckled a bit before he went on. “I’ll get a cyanide tooth cap made for you.” He withdrew his arm and straightened up a bit.

  “Make it a grill. I’ve always wanted one,” Sunny told him, wondering why she was helping him cover up his unintended affectionate gesture. “Anyways, I guess you should get me some more mushrooms.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can go and get the other prisoners in the compound,” Sunny replied. “Obviously.”

  “No! You can’t. It’s far too dangerous – you don’t know if they’ll see you, and you could accidentally pop into a plane of existence where the enemy could see you and kill you. It could have happened so easily when you got the Swedish guy. You’re not going,” he said firmly.

  “But I can help! I can rescue them.”

  “It won’t matter. We’re going in there in about five hours anyway. Just before dawn.” He looked down at her, eyes blazing. “We’ll get them, Mouse. You don’t have to worry. You’ve done enough.”

  She took a deep breath and tried to resign herself to doing nothing – it didn’t sit well with her. Then, suddenly –

  “Does that mean it’s one o’clock in the morning? Oh, I am dead….”

  “Uh, it’s 3 am. Korea is two hours behind, remember.”

  Sunny huffed out a breath and got to her feet. “I gotta go. Don’t worry,” she tried to placate him as she hustled to get her bag and phone together, “I don’t think I’m going to get in trouble. Annabel’s covering for me, but I was supposed to be going home tonight.”

  Hunter watched her from the couch, an odd bereft look on his face. “Will you be ok to go? Remember, be careful. Make sure you scout out any location thoroughly before you reappear there, alright?” He got to his feet and helped her with her bag, and cleared his throat noisily. “I, uh, I think I should give you a bit of training on the reconnaissance stuff. How to recognize electronic surveillance equipment, how to spot a tail, that sort of thing.”

  “Right” she smoothed her hair back and wrapped the band around it, creating a messy knot on her neck. “Tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Ok.” She drifted to the door.

  “And Mouse?” He called after her.

  “Yeah?”

  “You did a great job,” he said formally.

  She could barely manage a smile.

  Chapter 24

  The sunlight shot through the bedroom window and fell directly on Sunny’s face. It almost burned her like a laser. She shrugged the duvet over her head and then remembered that she’d left her curtains open for that very purpose; she’d wanted to get up early and go for a surf.

  Last night she’d flown home and, having flown through the house and made sure everyone was sound asleep, had rematerialized directly into her bedroom, on her bed. She’d drifted off into a troubled sleep, punctuated by nightmares of angry soldiers with giant hands and soup bowls for heads.

  She was itching to wash away the melancholy of last night, to be cleansed in a whirlpool of salty water.
The thought of it was incentive enough to shake off the last of her slumber, and she shrugged on her bikini and some boardies, slung her wetsuit over her arm and headed downstairs for a bite to eat before she hit the waves.

  She was surprised to find Steph in the kitchen, wrapped in a terry-toweling robe, nursing a cup of herbal tea.

  “Sunny!” She breathed, not wanting to wake anyone else. “I didn’t know you were home, honey.”

  “Yeah, I got Annabel to drop me off late last night. She’s better, and her house was creeping me out a bit.” She lied easily, grabbing a made-up chia pudding from out of the fridge, and pouring herself a quick herbal tea.

  “It’s good to see you. You look tired, though, you’re not getting enough sleep?”

  “Bad dreams,” Sunny said shortly.

  “What about?” Steph asked casually, clearly dying to know.

  Sunny instantly regretted the throwaway line, as she could only think about the guard in that horrible tower, and the poor, tired Swedish man.

  “Uh, I don’t know, just that guy from school. Jake,” she added, abstractly. “He’s… uh, creepy.”

  Steph became instantly sympathetic. “Darling, if he’s bothering you that much that he’s making an appearance in your nightmares, we should do something about him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can I have a word to his parents?”

  Sunny thought about it, seriously. He wasn’t her biggest problem, but he was still one to be solved. Her main problem – problems - were slumped, bruised and broken in concrete cells in North Korea. Her other problem was of an army trying to liberate them, fighting a bloody battle which she couldn’t help at all.

  “No, I don’t think it would help.” She spoke out loud finally. “His dad is an asshole too, by all accounts.”

  “What about his mother?”

  Sunny sighed, and took a big gulp of tea, scalding her throat. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Steph walked around the counter and sat next to her, giving her the benefit of her laser beam stare.

  “If he’s still being inappropriate, and making you uncomfortable, we should do something. It’s not fair on you. We’ll use everything in our arsenal to get him to change his behaviour,” she said sanctimoniously.

  Arsenal.

  Arsenal. The word stuck in Sunny’s head.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she repeated vaguely. “Look, I gotta go. I want to hit the waves early…” She stumbled off her seat and ran towards the garage, got out her board and started running up the hill towards One Mile.

  Her brain wasn’t working properly. Arsenal. Everything in our arsenal. She repeated the words back, trying to catch the thought that had flitted, unbidden into her head. Something that she could do…

  She rounded the hill and saw One Mile beach sprawled below her, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

  The idea came to her as soon as the fresh salty morning air hit her full in the face.

  North Korea had an arsenal. Guns, bombs. Ones that were about to be used in the battle that was coming up in a couple of hours’ time. Terrible weapons that they were about to unleash on the Allied Army, who were desperate to get in there and rescue their soldiers, and to liberate the taken South Korean territory.

  Weapons. Guns, bombs, trucks. They were all inanimate objects.

  And she could take inanimate objects with her.

  She looked around frantically, the beach was deserted, but she could be observed by anyone that lived in on the hills with a pair of binoculars. She did an about-face and hurriedly headed for home. She raced down the hill to her cul-de-sac, and snuck unobserved into the garage, where she stashed her surfboard under a tarp, and immediately took off into the sky.

  She wouldn’t have long. Hunter had told her that the battle would begin just before dawn in North Korea, and the sun had just come up here. She flew towards the North, trying to catch the darkness before it crept away.

  The night sucked her back in welcomingly, and she quickly located the army compound in the wan light of the moon. The activity there was frantic – it seemed like no one was sleeping, the parade ground was full of soldiers, with wire and drills everywhere.

  It seemed that they’d gotten word of the EMP’s disappearance, and they were electronically reinforcing themselves.

  She headed back to the east end of the building, where she remembered seeing the Armory - a huge hall full of stacked crates, each one holding submachine guns and bombs and weapons of all kinds. Once she got there, she found two soldiers in dun-coloured uniforms, sweat beading on their foreheads and dripping greasily through their hair as they worked desperately, trying to hook up a camera system on the wall. Slipping past them, she went to the far end of the hall where they couldn’t see. She placed a hand on a huge crate and picked it up in the Alternate with her.

  Praying that no one had noticed the crate disappear, she lifted it high above the compound and quickly zoomed over to the ocean where she let it go. It made a huge splash as it hit the water, and sunk beneath the waves. She looked to the horizon and saw a lightening in the sky and panicked. She realized she was running out of time.

  She was back in the Armory in a heartbeat, but quickly reevaluated her tactics as the trip to the ocean had cost her precious seconds. The next time she placed her hand on a crate, she experimented a little. She took it into the Alternate with her, and then down into the ground, where she let it go. Grab the crate, drag into the earth, repeat, she carried on like this until there were only four crates left – the ones that had been blocking the view of the disappearing crates from the two poor soldiers hooking up the camera system. They were still frantically trying to attach cables and drill holes into walls. They were so absorbed with their task that Sunny felt that she could risk turning her attention to the semi-automatic weapons that lay stacked in racks at the front of the hallway, ready to be picked up and used at a moment’s notice. She whizzed down the length of the rack, grabbing each rifle and whipping it beneath the stone floor, keeping one eye on the two soldiers while they had their backs to her, one supporting the other on a rickety ladder.

  In thirty seconds, she had gotten rid of almost one hundred semi-automatic rifles; they were now buried deep in the dirt beneath their feet. Finally, she eyed the remaining four crates, and within a couple of seconds time she had gathered up all the guns and bombs inside them and buried them deep in the earth without having to shift the crates themselves at all.

  Feeling almost guilty about having stripped the Armory under the noses of those two terrified soldiers, she reminded herself that if there were no weapons, they’d be no injuries. For either side. None of these soldiers looked like they wanted to be here. She had to make sure that no one got hurt. She turned her attention to the hundreds of trucks parked around the perimeter of the compound. She zipped into each one, placing her hand on what she hoped was an important part of the engine and whipped it quickly out, like a hummingbird stripping a flower of nectar, and rendered each vehicle immobile.

  There were shouts and a crackle of gunfire, at the far perimeter of the compound, outside of the enormous fence that encompassed it.

  The sky had begun to lighten. The assault started.

  Turning her eyes skywards, Sunny flew onto a corner of the rooftop where the machine guns stood, poised and aimed toward the approaching Allied army. The four soldiers on the roof were all facing outward, and she watched them carefully, looking for signs that they might turn. She put her hand on the long coil of ammunition that hung from the deadly machine, and winked it out of existence, shoving it into the stone ceiling beneath her feet where it rematerialized, wedged forever in a huge lump of rock.

  In another second she had done the same with the gun on the next parapet, but at the third, a furious hyperventilating captain was cradling the long belt of ammunition in his hand and shouting orders to the soldier manning the gun next to him. Over their shoulders, Sunny could see two Allied tanks leading the way. One blasted a huge hole in t
he side of the concrete fence around the compound, and the ground rocked beneath the soldier’s feet. The Allied moss-green army trucks came up the rear, getting ready to deposit their troops on the ground to take out all the remaining North Korean soldiers.

  She didn’t want to watch the fighting, she knew she didn’t have the stomach for it, but she was reluctant to leave when there was more she could do. The angry Korean commander was bellowing like a bull, shoving the gunner with his other hand, trying to get him to aim the gun on the first approaching truck.

  Not thinking, Sunny zipped both hands out of the Alternate and pushed him. He was taken completely off guard and sailed head first over the edge of the battlements and plunged the three stories to the ground, landing on a sickly-looking bush. Sunny joined the bewildered gunner in peering over the edge, to see the commander moaning and moving his arms.

  She was relieved he was alive.

  The gunner next to her was frightened. He gave a high-pitched shout he abandoned his post, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get down the trap door leading to the third floor of the compound.

  The crackle of gunfire came again, closer this time. The Allied soldiers were storming the huge gates leading into the middle of the compound. In an instant, she had disarmed the other two machine guns on the roof.

  She was too cowardly to watch the battle, but there was something else she could. Reluctantly, she turned to the prison wing and drifted off to the dungeons.

  At the entrance to the dark stone passageway that housed all the prisoners, two guards stood at attention with guns poised. Sunny crept up and placed her hand on the ammunition magazine of his gun, winking it out of existence and into the Alternate with her. The guards were none the wiser as she whipped out the magazine on the other gun too, and pushed them both into the stone floor beneath her. She zipped behind the guard and pinched out the iron key on his belt for good measure. Floating down the cold stone passage, she quickly unlocked each cell as she passed so that each prisoner could escape.