Fractured A Slated Novel

Chapter THIRTEEN



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‘I’ll let you in on a secret.’ Jazz is smiling so I’m guessing this isn’t bad news.

‘What?’

‘Before you asked this morning, I was planning on us going to Mac’s today, anyhow. He’s got a surprise for you.’

My stomach jumps. Jazz is still smiling, he must know what it is, and it must be good.

‘It’s not Ben, is it?’ I whisper, quietly. Knowing it won’t be, it can’t be, but unable to stop myself from asking the question.

Jazz’s smile falls away. ‘I’m sorry, Kyla. If I find out anything about him, you’ll be the first to know.’

I lean back against his car, unable to stop the wave of disappointment, however unreasonable. Aiden promised he’d send news through Mac if he found out anything about Ben – so my brain instantly flipped to that. Wrong.

Amy appears across the car park. She walks to us, and slips her arms around Jazz. He turns and kisses her and I try not to watch.

‘Are you all right?’ she asks me.

‘Fine.’

‘A friend of mine saw you running to the loo, looking sick.’

‘Oh. I just had a tummy upset, no big deal. I’m fine now.’

‘Sure you don’t want to go straight home?’

‘I’m sure!’

‘Don’t look so fierce! We’re going already.’

‘In you get, ladies,’ Jazz says, holding the car door open.

We drive down back country lanes, through stubbled fields. Past farms and woodland, to Mac’s place. It is down a narrow lane, isolated. His huge back garden is full of bits of cars that he scavenges and salvages for parts, to build into new cars. Like the one he made for Jazz. But he isn’t just a mechanic.

What could the surprise be?

It knocks me over when we go through Mac’s front door.

Skye! Ben’s dog, a gorgeous golden retriever, jumps up and covers my face excitedly with great sloppy dog kisses. I drop to my knees and wrap my arms around her, sink my face into her fur. Fur that smells smoky.

Jazz takes Amy for a walk to get her alone as usual. Mac watches me and Skye, her tail thumping on the ground, sprawled half on my lap. Something is hiding behind the careful look on his face.

‘How?’ I ask him. A one-word question that covers so much. How did she survive? How is Ben’s dog at Mac’s?

Mac sits next to us on the floor. He rubs Skye’s ears and she flops down between us, her head on my knee. ‘That’s the happiest I’ve seen this dog look since she got here last night.’

‘Do you know what happened?’

‘Some. The rest I can fill in. What I can’t figure out is how come you don’t look surprised to see her here, and why you are the one asking me if I know what happened.’

‘I heard something,’ I say, guardedly.

Mac puts up one hand. ‘You don’t have to tell me how you know about Ben’s parents. You do know, don’t you.’

I nod, slump into Skye once again.

‘Skye here is a lucky dog.’

‘Yeah. First the boy she loves then the rest of her family are gone: very lucky.’

‘She’s a survivor. Not sure if she was out, or got out, or what. But Jazz’s mate found her the next day. Jazz brought her round here. None of the neighbours wanted to be seen to keep her in case anyone official got offended she escaped.’ The way he says the words I can tell he thinks about as much of that as I do.

‘Stay there,’ he says, and gets up, goes into the kitchen. Comes back a moment later with a bowl in his hand. ‘See if you can get her to eat.’

And so I sit on the floor with Skye half on my lap, feeding her bits of meat. She eats some, then closes her eyes and goes to sleep.

Her solid warmth and doggy smell, even with smoky undertones, feel good, real, and I don’t want to move. But I have other business with Mac. I ease her off my legs, and find him in the kitchen.

My breath catches when I see the owl on top of a cabinet: the metal sculpture Ben’s mum made from a drawing I did once, then gave to me. So beautiful, and deadly. So much talent she had, and this is all that is left of it now. I run fingertips across its feathers; inside, pain is welling up, wanting out.

I fight to contain it, hold it inside. I’m here for a reason.

‘Can I look at MIA?’ I ask.

Mac stares levelly back at me, then nods. I follow him to the back room and he uncovers his highly illegal, not government-issue computer. It doesn’t block websites Lorders don’t want seen, like legal computers do. Soon the MIA website fills the screen: Missing in Action. Full of missing children.

It was me asking Mac about Robert that made him show me this computer the first time. Mum’s son Robert is on the memorial at school as having been killed on a bus with thirty other students when they got in the way of an AGT attack. But Mac was there, too. He knew Robert didn’t die on the bus, and thought he was probably Slated. It was when he was showing me on MIA how many children go missing in this country without explanation that we first stumbled on Lucy. Me.

Somehow I have to do it, to check again. I enter into the search box: girl, blond, green eyes, seventeen. Hit the search button.

Pages of hits come up but it isn’t long before I spot her, and click on her image to enlarge the listing.

Her face – my face – fills the screen. Lucy Connor, ten years old, missing from school in Keswick. Seven years ago now, but you can still tell it is me. She looks absurdly happy, smiling at the camera holding a grey kitten.

A birthday present.

I gasp as the knowledge hits me. The kitten was her – my – tenth birthday present.

‘Are you all right, Kyla?’ Mac asks.

Tears are smarting my eyes. I’ve never had a memory like that, of Lucy’s life, just appear in my mind before. Ever. Only snippets in dreams. Mostly nightmares of horrible things, until the chess-playing dream the other night. But dreams access the unconscious. This time, I was awake. She should be gone, completely gone; Nico said so. What can it mean?

Mac puts a hand over mine. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s just that for a second there, I thought I could remember something. That kitten.’ I sigh. ‘I must be going mental.’

‘Have you changed your mind about MIA?’ he asks. He looks at the screen and I follow his eyes. There is a button, marked ‘found’. One click of the mouse and I could find out. Who reported Lucy missing? Maybe my dad. Maybe we could play chess again.

I shake my head. No. My life is enough of a mess, and apart from a few fragments of dreams, I don’t even know my real family. Anyhow, I can’t risk Free UK or Lorders following me to them: they are better off missing me.

Time to get to my reason for being here. ‘Are you involved with MIA?’

‘I’m more of a…relay, than anything else. Why?’

‘I was wondering something. Can you get Ben put on MIA?

Mac stares back. He knows Ben’s story, more or less. Even if he doesn’t know my role in it. That Ben was taken off by Lorders. He must think it will be a waste of time, that there is nothing left of Ben to be found. He’s probably right.

But he nods. ‘Of course. Have you got a photo?’

I shake my head. ‘No. But I’ve got this,’ I say, and pull my drawing of Ben out of my pocket. I’d spent hours on it, making it as lifelike as possible. ‘Is it good enough?’

He whistles. ‘It is more than good; it’s him. It’s perfect. But it’ll have to be scanned, and I haven’t got one here. I’ll get Aiden to do it. All right?’

I force reaction from my face, hide dismay. ‘Thanks,’ is all I say. Mac’s friend, Aiden was the one whose stories of Slateds cutting off their Levos gave Ben the idea to try it in the first place. It was Aiden’s Happy Pills that made the attempt possible. Aiden was also the one who wanted me to report myself found on MIA, such a breach of the rules Slateds must live by that it would be a certain death sentence if Lorders found out. He wasn’t a terrorist, he said, but an activist: trying to change things in other ways.

A no-hoper.

Maybe. But at least he doesn’t kill people. Thinking of Robert earlier reminded me of all those students who died. Killed by stray AGT bombs meant for Lorders. I’d had nightmares of that bus attack when I first learned of it, but I couldn’t have been there! I was only ten years old when it happened.

But Nico could have been.

No. Nico would never do that, not a busload of innocent school kids. He wouldn’t. His fight is against the Lorders. My fight.

I convince Mac that I’m all right, to leave me alone to compose myself, and stay looking at Lucy on the screen. What happened to her? I can’t work it out. One minute she is a happy kid with a kitten, a dad who lets her win at chess. The next? I shake my head. She disappears age ten, then somehow there is a huge jump, a gap in time. Rain’s memories don’t begin until about age fourteen, training with Nico and other teenagers, off in some boot camp in the woods. Learning how to shoot guns and blow things up.

What happened to her the four years between to take her to that place?

Amy and Jazz get back from their walk. As we leave, I touch the owl Ben’s mother made for me. It holds a secret inside. A note from Ben, still hidden. Knowing where to look I can see the tiny white speck, the corner of paper that, if pulled, reveals itself as his last words to me. But I can’t bear to look at it, not today.

Mac holds Skye when she tries to follow us. I twist behind. Her mournful eyes follow us until she is gone from sight.

Green trees blue sky white clouds, green trees blue sky white clouds…

But different.

Fields of long grass. Daisies. Alive with detail, movement and sound, like never before. Trees, but not from underneath: top branches rush past as I dive. There is a rustle that says mouse, but when I get there, it is gone.

No matter.

I beat my wings and climb up again, the sun warm on my feathers. I should hide, wait for dark and better hunting.

But I want to fly to the sun. Leave this earth behind. How high can I go? I face the open sky: glide on a warm updraught, then beat my wings to reach the next one. Almost effortless, higher and higher. I can fly forever.

Trees are merging into field, a uniform green far below, when it happens. First a gradual sense of stiffness, making my wings have to work harder to beat at all. Then, a trap. As if my flesh is inside an owl-shaped box that gradually compresses and grows smaller, tighter and heavier, no matter how I struggle. Until it isn’t flesh and feathers inside a trap, but sinew and blood and muscle all thickening, slowing, stiffening. Becoming metal. The trap isn’t around me. It is me.

The sky is not my friend any more. Air whistles past, and trees rush closer. Plummeting down, down, down….