Fractured A Slated Novel

Chapter FORTY FOUR



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Instead of being thrown back, pinned by a bullet to a swift death; instead of this, there is a thud and cry behind. I spin around.

‘Katran?’

His hands are clutching his chest. Red red red spreading out as he falls to the ground, and inside I’m spinning, everything going grey, about to disappear and take me from this new horror, and—

No. I fight inside as much, as strong, as I can. NO. I crawl to him, take his hand, wrap my arms around him. His body shudders, and red red red…

‘Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I’m saying over and over, and his eyes are mirrors of the shock in mine. Katran is invincible; we can’t believe this. Then – a slight shake to his head, his eyes change, he tries to speak but coughs, and there is more blood, more seeping red. The words won’t come, but his eyes speak. Love’s eyes. ‘No, Katran, no. Don’t go!’ I say, shocked but knowing the truth of how he feels at the same time. How he has always felt, and the anger he hid his feelings behind. The anger that tried to push me away, away from Nico and Free UK. To keep me safe.

His eyes go blank, his body stops shuddering.

No.

NO NO NO and I’m screaming inside and outside, and then, all at once, I am remembering. Another place and time, too like this to hide from any longer. One I never want to go, but get dragged back to, again and again.





THEN

I didn’t know him, at first. Not with my eyes.

The changes were marked, his face so forgotten. Consciously, at least. Yet something almost chimed, inside: a confusion of terror and longing, tangled together. I didn’t understand, but stared whenever I could.

He was there, at that place, delivering food and other supplies. But not just a delivery person; he was one of them, that was plain. I saw him through the bars at my window, talking with the guards. From the room that was mine and had been for two years now.

Once a week he’d come, stay one night in the building next door, and then be gone. One day, he saw me looking out the window, and something crossed his face. Some marked desperation, in a flash replaced by a gentleness that didn’t belong. I dived back in my room, shaken and confused.

Every week he came he’d have a special look for me if he found my eyes. A kind look in a place without them.

He started bringing a bottle and other things for the guards, slipping them out of his coat and into theirs. Then one week, most of the guards got very ill. Food poisoning; but no one else got sick. And he stayed the week, filling in, and I saw him more, not just through my window. He was there when I was coming and going to sessions with Doctor Craig; to weapons training under watch of the cold one with the strange eyes who led the guards.

Then one day he slipped something in my hand. I almost cried out: a slip of paper. A note. I tucked it away, read it later. Lucy, I know I look different: I’m in disguise. But it is me: it’s Daddy. We’ll get you out of here and I’ll take you home as soon as I can work out how. I love you.

And I tore it up into as many little pieces as made it dust. I don’t have a family any more. Doctor Craig has said so, over and over. And even if he is my dad – and my thoughts tripped over themselves to even think the label – he gave me away. He didn’t want me.

I didn’t believe in him in my mind, but some other part of me did, and I’d catch myself: hoping, feeling. Things Doctor Craig didn’t like, like remembering things I must forget.

Then one night I was asleep, and then, somehow, the one who gave me the note was in my room. Talking in a low voice with such sadness of other times, other places. And it made me want to cry out, to scream. Get the guards and make his voice stop and go away and never be heard again. But I didn’t.

He was making plans. We’d go next week. But I shook my head no; scared of what, I don’t know. Of leaving a place I hated? Confusion and longing mixed in together. Then he held out his hand. In it, a small bit of carved wood, like a castle.

When I tucked it into my left hand, there was something, some memory. And all at once others tumbled inside.

‘Daddy?’ I whispered, and he smiled, with such joy.

He took the rook back. ‘I better keep this safe for now, so no one sees it. But if you find it tucked hidden on your window ledge, that is the night we go. Be ready.’

And every night, I checked. Then finally it was there: hidden against the side and a bar where it could not be seen, only felt and rescued by small fingers.

That night the house was quiet when he unlocked my door and took my hand. ‘Quiet,’ he breathed, and we slunk down the hall and out the door. But what of the guards? None were there, but as we crept down the side of the house I saw feet sticking out behind a hedge.

He whispered in my ear of a boat waiting at the beach, that we had to be quick to get the tide. We crept through the outer dunes that led to the sea when it happened. A distant noise. Voices.

‘Time to run, Lucy.’

And we ran. He held my hand and we ran and ran. There were voices, sounds behind us, getting closer. ‘Faster!’ he said, and we ran.

Over and over my feet pounded on sand that slipped and gave way.

Then I tripped, fell. He tried to pull me to my feet but exhaustion, terror fixed me to the spot. ‘I can’t,’ I cried.

‘Never forget,’ he said. ‘Never forget who you are!’

And they are on us. I’m grabbed, pulled away. Daddy is pushed back down on the sand.

The cold one smiles, raises a gun.

‘Lucy, close your eyes,’ Daddy says. ‘Don’t look.’ His voice calm, reassuring.

I stare at the gun. No. He is just scaring him like he does me all the time. He won’t do it, he won’t.

Will he?

‘Look away, Lucy,’ Daddy says, but my eyes are open wide, and as if something controls them other than me, they are caught, trembling, unable to look away or do anything else.

Moments combine and spread out, a flash in succession and all at once. The deafening noise. The rook clenched tight in my hand. The red that spreads out from one place until there is more and more of it, and still I can’t look away. The hands that hold me back let go, and I run to him just in time for his eyes to hold mine before they close forever.





Seeing what scares you for what it is does not lessen the terror. It still has the power to break your heart, over and over again.