Silver, p.26
Silver, page 26
‘Silver’s right, love,’ Stella says. ‘You’ve got your spelling homework, remember?’
‘Hate homework. Hate spellings,’ grumbles Doodles.
‘Another time, then.’ Nat smiles.
She gets up and empties her crusts into the pedal bin, stacks her plate in the dishwasher. She stoops to tickle Pepper under the chin, and Pepper low-growls.
Nat laughs. ‘Silly dog. It’s not much of a life, is it, sleeping, eating and walking?’ She speaks low, and it is only to me. ‘Makes you wonder why they keep them.’
Today is the day. Over and over I have tried to plan, and still I do not know what to do. All the options sprawl before me.
I must protect the family. Must keep my focus. If I hold back when they Shield me, they will not be able to sweep for final data. But they will know and then they will kill me, peel me of my skin.
You could do what she says, give yourself up.
That way, Finch and his family would be safe at least. They will live as they are, steering their own bodies, unharmed, unaffected. But everyone they know will be changed. It will be a nightmare world: Betty, Three Fingers, their friends and acquaintances and teachers, all will be inhabited. A world of horror, at once changed and unchanged. A world of squatting imposters. The Founders, greedy for land, for light and air and space, will grasp and not stop grasping.
You would see Finch, though. He would be unchanged, unharmed.
But this is a lie. He would not look at me, after. Could never see me in the same way. I would have destroyed his world, invaded his family. I would be unspeakable.
I cannot do it. Cannot live in this world and watch and see and be held up as the forerunner.
So I could warn Finch. Tell him to take his family and run. I could run away too, far, far from here. Live as a human off-grid, just like those rogue scouts before me.
Would Charybdis still go ahead without their final data? I do not know, have no way of knowing. It is a risk too great for taking. Through my skin they already have so much definitive data on the human lives they wish to take for their own: habits, impulses, desires, dreams. They have absorbed and assessed. They have seen the world and it is good. They will not give up so easily.
And Nat wants to shine. She is toying with me, making the most of her time here, wanting to prove her aptitude as a pioneer. I remember the hunger in her eyes as she told me of Charybdis’s plans. She will not give up either.
I have enabled this. I have put the family in danger.
You thought you could be like them. Thought you could kiss and touch and play at being human.
Of course that is why Charybdis wants me so much. I am the only residual. As well as my data on humans, I alone have the true powers of the original Charybdians. All along I have been the pawn in their game of chess. All a carefully planned endgame. Nat is the true First Pioneer. She is the ruthless one, fearless, single-minded to their cause. She always was. I wonder if, even in our childhood games, Cadet 10 was being controlled by the Founders. Studying how far they could push me, the lengths I would go to. Observing my weaknesses: reaching for the baby; my horror at the pile of inhabitation dust left behind.
I cannot run and hide. I cannot underestimate them again.
But apart from protecting the humans, I do not know what to do.
The sun is sinking now. By the end of the day I must give Nat my decision.
Nat is waiting for me on the roof. It is raining.
She is dressed in her running outfit, and her hair is wet. ‘Have you made your decision? Which is it to be?’ she asks.
She does not seem to notice that I do not answer. Leans forward, over the edge of the roof, surveys the town, the fields, the distant hills. She cannot stop gazing at the tiny glints of cars, the sliding train, the sodium haze of lights. Her eyes are hungry for this new world. Charybdis will reward her well, this bold pioneer.
She turns to face me, her eyes bright with silver fire. ‘I felt it as soon as they landed me. Such strength spread through my skin, this body. And the air here, so pure, so real. You never told, Cadet 39. You kept all this to yourself. All this light, this world.’ She breathes deeply. ‘Come, I can feel Charybdis close. Let us Shield together.’
I still do not know what to do. I feel so torn.
I managed to stop them before. Our intimate memories: lying on his bed in his room, the time we lay beneath the stones, kissing in the park, in the gallery, seizing each other in doorways, on the landing, falling onto each other in the rain, these are still mine and Finch’s.
If I did it once, I could reverse the Shield again.
I think of the pain as my skin was burned. It is healed now but the memory stings. It will be worth it to buy more time.
There is also the fact that they do not know that I have access to their hive mind, so maybe I can do something with that … I could go back inside and plant false data.
What would turn FOUNDR-12 away from this planet and its inhabitants? If they believed that humans are too weak, not viable. That they drain our powers, are too difficult to inhabit. Would they believe this now that Nat has inhabited humans too? Could I make them believe that Earth is not the Found Land after all?
Nat turns back to me then. Must see the indecision on my face.
‘I knew you would not come quietly.’ She smiles, hard and bright. ‘So I have something to incentivise you.’
She jerks her head to the tree, and I follow her gaze.
Near the budding branches, something is shining. It is Finch. He hovers in mid-air. As I watch, he jerks upwards and bounces down hard, so that his feet hit the branch below. His clothes are rain-sodden. He is washed in a silver beam of light.
I cry out, run to the edge of the roof. My heart trips fear. But he seems to be sleeping. His eyes are closed.
‘What have you done to him?’ I turn, and there is Nat, sitting cross-legged on the roof. The glow from her skin glances the rain away. One arm is raised, aiming the silver beam at Finch.
‘I gave them all sleeping pills, used by the mother,’ she says. ‘Foolish creature, to leave them in the kitchen drawer.’
She makes Finch twitch. His sleeping body lifts and falls, lifts and falls. Then he is dropped, swift and sudden, and I cry out again in fear.
Nat stops him a hair’s width from the ground. ‘Higher or lower?’ she asks, and her voice is sweet.
She flicks her wrist and Finch jerks, is tugged up hard and high.
‘Put him down!’
Nat stays him just as his feet touch the grass.
‘You really do care for these humans,’ she says, with wonder. ‘Does the Mantra mean nothing to you?’ She arcs her finger like she is conducting an orchestra and tilts her head, considering. ‘It is so easy to step inside one. To use them. Look how they dance to our tune.’
Finch jerks and twitches in the rain like a marionette. His head lolls in sleep.
Maybe if I was still inhabiting Sylwia, I would be able to save him. But morphing for so long has weakened me. Even though I now know that Shielding is all a lie, I used to believe it gave me strength. Once, that belief would have enabled me to squirrel along a branch and carry Finch safely to the ground. I could have folded him in my arms and held him tight and guided him back to bed. Instead, I can only watch.
Nat laughs. ‘What will you do to save him, Cadet 39? You are as weak as he is. You scorn the Founders’ protection. You are not Shielded. You do not shine.’
Finch dances as the rain continues to fall.
I raise my head. ‘They are liars,’ I say. ‘They only use Shielding to control us.’
She ignores me and slowly raises Finch’s sleeping form until he is level with the highest branch. The tree bumps and scrapes at him, but still he does not wake. Nat hooks him by his T-shirt.
‘There,’ she says. ‘There’s your human boy. A prize for you if you Shield.’
She is enjoying this, I think. If she had a tail, it would twitch.
‘Bring him down.’ I cannot take my eyes from the place where Finch dangles in the tree. If I do, he will be yanked high and will fall. My veins run with fear. I know the taste of it, its metallic pain.
‘Oh no, Cadet 39, that is not how this works.’ Nat is watching me now, eyes bright and steady.
I can reach him, I think. It is not far. But even as I move towards the edge of the roof, I falter. The ground swims. The nearest branch feels light years away.
Nat laughs. She swings her legs, silvered against the rain. ‘Take care you do not fall, Cadet 39,’ she calls. ‘You will break like the humans now that you have scorned Charybdis’s protection.’
My head dizzies, and it is not just the rain that makes everything wobble. I fix my gaze upon Finch. Nat’s eyes gleam as I grip the roof edge, lower myself over.
I must reach him. Make him safe.
I take a deep breath and drop.
It is Nat who saves me.
‘Fool,’ she hisses, but her eyes fear.
Despite her threats, she needs to bring me back undamaged, I realise. They are not done with me yet. They need me still.
She is standing on the grass now, her hand splayed out towards the slippery ledge as she sparks me to shield my fall until I slide onto the muddy ground.
‘He cannot stay out here, in this storm,’ I tell her, getting to my feet unsteadily. ‘Unhook him. Let me take him back inside.’ I struggle up. ‘This is not his problem. It is between you and me.’
Nat laughs. It is cold and hard as stone, the laugh of Charybdis. I think of Stella’s, warm and rippling, the surprised snort of Finch, Doodles’s infectious giggles.
My insides twist. ‘Let him go,’ I say. ‘What will you prove by this?’
‘Prove? I am a Charybdian. We need prove nothing.’
Nat trains her eyes upon the tree. As I watch, she drills her gaze, focusing it on the point where Finch is hooked. Already the silver beam has lanced through the bark. Now it is slicing through wood, easy as butter.
She is cutting through the trunk –
I howl and stagger to the tree. I slip, often, am blinded by the rain, which is drumming down now. Must try to reach him, before –
‘Too late,’ calls Nat.
The tree falls.
The tree groans as it topples into the roof of the house, smashing down as tiles shatter and clatter and glass showers, falling like splintered rain.
I reach Finch just before he touches the ground; he lands on me, hard, heavy. We both crash onto the grass, but I catch him. I get there first. I am sheltering him as the tree’s huge branch crushes us. I put out both hands to protect Finch’s face and eyes. Clutch him tight, bury his head in my chest, kiss his hair.
The tree pins us, pressing down on my face, forcing the breath from me, its twig claws cutting into my cheek and shoulder. I think, This is how we die.
But something is happening to my skin.
Where I am touching Finch, it silvers. Through the leaves I watch as the silvering ripples along my fingers, my arms, across my shoulders. And now it is at my throat, inside my chest. Something unfurls inside me, a glow. A warmth that spreads over my whole body.
My hands clench and spark.
Never have I shone so brightly.
It is a kind of energy, both familiar and new.
A power.
And then with a shudder of leaves and groaning branches I heave the tree aside as if it weighs nothing at all.
‘Cadet 39?’ Nat stands watching. Her eyes are wide.
She fears.
‘Stay away from the boy,’ I say.
I lift Finch, light and warm in my arms.
She stares as I lay him gently out of danger.
My skin is strong. I shine again. I am not Shielded but I blaze.
I gaze at my hands. What is this new power that comes from deep within? I touch my skin, watching as it crackles.
I can hardly contain the energy. It is more, far greater than the strength they told me came with Shielding. Familiar and yet new.
And all at once I know.
It is an ancient thing, a gift from my ancestors. This, then, is my skin’s original purpose. This is the residual in action. Much stronger than that of the new batch. This power is all mine, fuelled only by the purity of love and touch and connection.
And I will not let Nat or the Founders take it from me. Instead, I will use it.
My first spark has power in it. I centre on her face, strike Nat full-hard between those gloating eyes. This feels good. She hurtles backwards through the night air, slamming against the wall.
My eyes re-silver. I turn to Finch and bathe him in their glow, shielding him from the rain.
Nat staggers to her feet, throws her hands up to her face. She hisses. There is a burn upon her forehead, a bright mark that flares before it heals. This hurts. I see that she fears. She looks at my hands.
She sparks at me. I glance it away, quick-flash.
I hold out my hands, and my veins glow silver; my skin burns bright.
This is not their power, it is my own.
I project a lance of silverlight and move it to her throat. Nat stills, watching me.
‘You have failed in your task,’ I say. ‘I will never come back.’ I picture drilling deep, removing for good her cat’s smile. But I falter. Even now I cannot take her life.
Nat laughs and her eyes flash.
I am thrown, hurled by her gaze, and all is rushing air, and I crash through the greenhouse like eggshell, glass shatters like spun sugar. Hairy stems snap like spines. Tomatoes smash seeds on me as I reel and try to breathe and refind balance.
I am alone, and sprawled among tools and trays of earth. The sound of gravelling rain, bursting loud.
I climb out through the frame, feeling little teeth of glass in my feet.
Nat is waiting for me.
‘Is that all you have, half-girl?’ she mocks. ‘You are like them, those weaklings.’
‘Why?’ I ask her. ‘I thought we were once friends.’
She laughs. ‘You always were a fool, following me wherever I led you. Even as an infant, I knew you were different; that you would be my rival, the one to beat. Always you would spark and fizz; you never could hide your emotions. I could not understand why the Founders kept giving you chances. I wanted their attention too.’
So it was all jealousy. How very human, I think.
‘The easiest way was to keep you close,’ she continues. ‘So easy to make you believe that I liked you, that I wanted friendship. When you knew very well it is forbidden by the Mantra.’
‘I have learned that there are more important things than the Mantra,’ I say.
Images come: Doodles, squeezing my hand. Fingers, inter-weaving. Breath, mixing with mine.
I have felt his words in my hair.
Nat laughs. ‘When they told me that you were a residual, it all made sense. How good it made me feel. You were never special. Only a blight on our Ship. Something to be used and discarded. I am the trusted one. Everything is as planned. Only I know how it all ends.’ But her eyes flicker. ‘This power you have, it is an anomaly. I will get you to Shield,’ she pants. ‘I will bring you to order.’
She crouches on the lawn, shakes her head as she comes at me again. I focus hard, remember Finch’s thumb curling mine, the rough-soft of his lips, the wet sweetness as we kissed. I launch a spear of silverlight, striking her in the belly, a gut punch. Hurl the Charybdian over the skies, over the top of the greenhouse, hear the splash which tells me she is in Stella’s pond. The water fizzes.
Glitterwake. Then Nat rises, howling, her head and hair slimed.
And I want to laugh, because she looks maddened and writhing and Doodles would have giggled, and I think, Her eye-wings are not so perfect now, as I hit the ground. Pain hammers my head, arms, back, pelvis. And then a gut crunch as something lands on me hard. I open my eyes: Nat is sitting astride me, clamping her legs to pin me down.
Her hair drips. ‘You will not mock Charybdis,’ she says.
A sound, to the right.
Our eyes lock. Then hers swivel back to the house.
Finch.
I left him on the bench, shielded from the rain. Now he stands watching us, his eyes black holes.
Nat’s mouth twists. She clenches her hand. ‘You will not win,’ she pants. ‘This world and its people are mine.’ She lances silverlight at him, aiming for his throat.
With the last of my strength I cast an arc over Finch, shielding him with a force of my own, better, stronger. Nat’s lance glances off, falls into more harmless glitterwake.
I turn back to her. See a flicker across her forehead. A juddering. Something is happening to her face.
‘My human is failing,’ she whispers. She clutches at me. Her eyes unsilver.
‘Which human?’ I shake her. ‘Who did you inhabit?’
It is only now that I see. The girl whose body she inhabited was many lives away from Nat’s version of her. It is Tat’s face that looks back at me, briefly, before she flickers and fades. A rush of silver motes, leaving a pile of honey-gold clothes and a small heap of dust.
Nat, and the girl named Tat, are gone.
‘Silver? Oh my God!’
Stella’s voice is axed with fear. She stumbles out of the house, still in her bathrobe.
‘You need shoes,’ I tell her. ‘There’s glass on the ground.’
She rams wellies onto her feet, crunches through the glass to stare at the garden.
‘Nobody is harmed,’ I say. ‘The tree fell in the storm.’
We both look at the damage: the greenhouse, smashed panes, the ripped-out tree.
Stella’s mouth widens. ‘How did all of this happen? Finch – where’s Finch?’
‘Mum?’ Finch comes tottering up, his voice blurry.
Stella hugs him fiercely. ‘Thank God you’re safe.’ She stares wildly at the roof where his room is. ‘Oh my God – the roof – Doodles!’ She rushes back inside.
I stand unsteadily. The garden is bright with moonlight.
I turn to face Finch. He is sitting on the step watching me. When I move to sit beside him, he flinches away.
