Agent mother other, p.1
Agent. Mother. Other., page 1
First published by Invoke Creations, Canberra.
Agent. Mother. Other. Book 1 of the Tir-na Series.
Copyright © 2023 by Sharn Lee
First edition.
ISBN: 978-0-6456585-3-8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, character and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Sharn Lee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Requests to publish work from this book should be sent to:
info@invokecreations.com
Visit the author’s website at www.invokecreations.com
Cover art by Nikki Jane Design.
Edited by Teaspoon Consulting.
Typeset using Atticus.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
1. Birthday
2. Belly of the Beast
3. Betrayal
4. Trapped
5. Safehouse
6. The Den
7. Encryption
8. Networking
9. Client Management
10. The Trip
11. The Grove
12. Vantage Point
13. Flight and Flame
14. The Palace
15. Family Reunion
16. A Decision
17. The Unknown
18. Mud and Rock
19. Base
20. Confrontation
21. Lab Rats
22. Escape
23. Hidden Truths
24. Fix-it
25. The Road Home
26. Into the Palace
27. Takedown
28. Plans
29. Farewells
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also By
To my younger self who once dreamed of writing a book.
Prologue
Mother
187 AC (After Colonisation)
My hands strangled the cold steel railing as I surrendered my body to another surge of crippling pain. The constant prickling of shower water hitting my skin numbed my senses. But not enough. I knew it was supposed to hurt, but I wasn’t ready for the unrelenting intensity of the task. As a painful wave subsided, my head flopped on my arms, and every muscle cried out in exhaustion.
My mind slipped down a negative spiral of thoughts. How much longer will this take? I can’t do this. I want it to end! Just as I felt my flimsy control slipping, there he was beside me, wiping my brow with a wet washcloth and rubbing my back.
‘You can do this, Rach. You’re doing so well. You’ve got this.’ It was exactly what I needed to hear, and he was right. Every female in my family before me had birthed successfully, and I wouldn’t let them down. I could do it. After a deep breath, I focused my way through another powerful surge.
My labour had gone for nine hours at that point, but from my perspective, it could have been three hours, or three days. Time had evaporated for me. It became a non-entity, a nebulous concept that had no meaning. All that existed was me, my mind and the rolling waves of contractions and releases. My midwife Anna pottered around, coming over now and then to poke and prod, giving a token comment of encouragement in passing. But the constant presence of Miles was my rock.
In that moment, I both loved him and hated him with all my heart. He was the reason I was in this situation. If we had been more careful, my body wouldn’t be trying to rip itself open so a baby could escape from inside me. But I knew that if he left my side, everything would fall apart. His warm and steady presence made me feel safe and free to give myself over to this incredible and challenging experience.
As my world settled once more between surges, I looked out the bathroom window and noticed Marher, the larger of Tir-na’s two moons, tinted by orange and gold streaks of light that coloured the sky over the sprawling, plant-covered city of Crayn. It was beautiful, but the sight of the setting sun made me internally groan. It meant I had been in labour all day.
The doorbell of our apartment rang, snapping me out of my internal world. Who the hell would visit at a time like this? I thought. The muffled voice of Anna echoed down the hallway as she answered the door, and after a few indecipherable exchanges, her tone of voice became louder and more animated.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked through gritted teeth as another contraction wracked my body.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Miles. He stayed by my side throughout the contraction, holding my hand and rubbing my back. Once the worst had passed and I slipped down from the peak of pain, he loosened his grip. He ushered me out of my safe place in the shower and kissed my forehead. ‘I better go check things are okay.’
As the contraction subsided further and my senses returned, I realised I could hear Anna shouting at the unknown visitor.
‘I’ll see what’s happening,’ said Miles, as he wrapped a large towel around me.
‘Just hurry back.’ My words came out in an exhausted, nervous breath.
A loud crack echoed from the hallway, followed by the hollow thud of a body falling.
‘Hide, Rach!’ Miles ran out of the bathroom and down the hallway towards the front door.
Naked and wet, I tied the towel around me and shuffled to the bathroom door to follow, but found myself frozen to the spot as another contraction surged through my body. I gripped onto the doorframe to weather the storm and watched Miles turn into the smaller hallway leading to the front door. A heartbeat later, I heard a loud crack. Miles fell backwards and crumpled to the floor as a red liquid splattered across the white walls. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, but then blood started flowing from beneath him and I had a horrible realisation. Miles was dead.
My nails dug into the doorframe as I breathed through the peak of the contraction. The pain slipped away again, and I used it as a chance to figure out what to do. If my training was ever going to serve me, it needed to be now.
Clumping boots sounded from the hallway, moving closer. A black-gloved arm reached towards Miles with a handgun and loosed another round into his head. An insurance kill shot. The figure then started rummaging through Miles’s clothes, as though looking for something. I bottled up the torrent of feelings coursing through me and grabbed my wrist-comm as I crept back towards the bathroom window. Just as I laid a hand on the window to prise it open, another contraction overtook me. I clamped down on my vocal cord and breathed as quietly as possible. Surging waves crippled my body, but my brain knew I didn’t have time to deal with the contraction. I needed to get out. Through the fog of pain, I forced my shaky limbs to react to my command and opened the window.
The cold air hit me in the face, and I sucked it in, trying to take as much energy from it as I could. Through pure willpower, I lifted my pregnant body onto the windowsill and heaved myself out. My legs shook as I landed on the grass below and I was so grateful we lived on the ground floor of the apartment block.
Naked, wet and in the middle of a contraction, I couldn’t have been a more vulnerable target, so I needed to move. As the contraction eased, I sucked in a breath and demanded my body obey me. I needed to get somewhere to have this baby. I pushed myself forwards and hurried towards the storage area access door at the rear of the apartment building. The door opened with a shove, and I quickly closed it behind me. There were storage containers for each apartment underground, and I hoped they would provide enough protection to get me through.
Gripping the handrail, I manoeuvred myself down the darkened stairs, terrified to pause even for a moment. My foot slipped on the edge of a step as my abdomen started twinging. Pain and fear flooded my system as I caught the handrail and righted myself. I couldn’t stop. My legs threatened to buckle out from under me when I reached the bottom, but I pushed forward.
As the contraction subsided, I staggered through the darkened hallway as I typed an emergency code into my wrist-comm. The numbers of different apartments stamped on the storage containers flashed past me until I finally reached ours. I looked at it for a moment, then took a sharp left and beelined to my neighbour’s container.
I rushed in and closed the door quietly behind me. Another contraction folded my body in half, causing me to collapse to the floor. This one differed from the others. There was a sudden pressure that needed to escape, and I instinctively knew I needed to push. My body seemed to know what it was doing, so I gave myself over to it, and on all fours, on the cold cement ground in the dark, I started pushing.
I don’t know how long I was there, but the pain was nothing compared to the moments of silence after the contractions, as that’s when I remembered what happened. Miles should have been there with me, but he was dead. He had been my entire world, but he was just gone. Back-wrenching sobs overcame me, but each time I was about to give myself to the darkness, another contraction would start and force me to focus. An involuntary scream left me and blue sparks filled my vision as the baby crowned, ripping open my body. The contraction halted, leaving me shaking like an injured animal in the dark. I was close, and I wanted this baby out. Another contraction rose within me, and I screamed in my mind, GET OUT! With all my strength, I
I turned and frantically searched for the baby until my hand touched something warm, slimy and unmoving. My heart spluttered as I grabbed the baby and shoved it on my chest, wrapping the two of us in the towel. The silence of that moment still haunts me. There should have been the sound of a baby crying, but all I could hear was my breath in the dark. As I started rubbing the baby’s back, panic and dread clawed at my heart. I couldn’t handle losing the baby and Miles on the same day. In that moment, I was on the edge of a cliff, and if I fell over the edge and into the bottomless dark, there would be no way back.
A cough sounded from the small bundle in my arms as it wriggled. I let out a huge breath I didn’t even realise I was holding. The baby was alive. I was alive. But Miles was dead. I held the baby tighter to my body and, to my relief, it suckled all on its own in the dark. My tears flowed harder in that moment as waves of emotions wracked over me.
‘It’s okay. Mumma’s here,’ I whispered through trembling lips. ‘I’m going to love you enough for both of us.’ My fingers started tracing the delicate outline of the tiny face and the tufts of stringy sparse hair plastered on its head. ‘We even already have names picked out for you. Sam for a boy and Skye for a girl. When we get out of here and get some light, I’ll let you know which one it is.’ I pulled the large towel around us a little tighter, then closed my eyes and gave myself to the building, horrendous sadness inside me. Tears erupted from me as a burst dam, leaving everything destroyed in its wake.
I sat there for an indefinite time, crying myself dry, until I felt like a hollow husk. An echoing thud rang out through the concrete cavern, ripping me back to my senses. Footsteps were moving through the storage area. They paused close to where I was and ripped open what I guessed was our apartment’s container. The footsteps shuffled around for a while in there, then moved back into the hall and paused. I held my breath. The sound of another container being flung open broke the silence and sent a shock of adrenaline through me. They were searching the containers. I stood up and grabbed the nearest thing I could find in the dark to use as a weapon. From my reckoning, I had grabbed a table lamp from the way its weight fell to one end. Curling the now towel-cocooned baby into the crook of one arm, I scooted behind the door and held myself ready to strike. It wasn’t just my life I was now fighting for. This baby was the last part of Miles I still had, and no one would take that from me.
With a sudden crack, the door swung open. A dark figure stepped into the room, shining a torch light through the space. I took this distracted moment to strike. The blow sent the figure staggering into the centre of the dark space, then their weight shifted as they fell forward and smashed their head into a set of drawers at the back of the container, causing their neck to crack unnaturally sideways. It was confusing; I hadn’t hit them hard, but then I remembered the placenta was still on the ground where they had stepped. I gripped the table lamp tighter and prepared to attack again, but they didn’t move.
Peeking around the corner of the container’s door, I saw there wasn’t anyone else in the immediate surroundings, so I ran. Naked and with just a towel around my baby, I hustled around the corner, trying to ignore the tearing pain between my legs that made me run with an awkward, wide-legged gallop. I headed back towards the exit, but then noticed lights flickering across the stairs. I pivoted and ran back. At the end of the storage containers, I hurried around the corner and took a moment to gather my breath and thoughts.
‘Rachel?’ said an all-too-familiar, sickly-sweet voice from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Vivian?’ I sighed in relief. My emergency code had worked. Even though Vivian wasn’t my favourite person, she was better than whoever was trying to kill me, and seeing her meant backup was here.
‘It’s just us. You can come out.’
My brain whirled. Was I safe? I couldn’t believe that whoever attacked would just disappear. And why were they after Miles? Usually, these types of people were after me. Nothing made sense, but I knew I needed to get out, get my baby dry and warm, and get the tearing between my legs, which seared every time I moved, stitched up. But most of all, I needed to confirm if I had just dreamed Miles was dead. It couldn’t possibly be true. Could it?
Taking a deep breath, I stepped around the corner. The first thing I saw was Vivian standing at the bottom of the stairs as her calculating eyes widened at the sight of me. I didn’t care that I was completely naked and covered in bloody goo. At that point, I would have walked down the main street of the city and not cared. All I could think about was getting my baby safely out of there and checking on Miles. Nothing else mattered.
As I moved towards the stairs, a single figure came forward. They wrapped me in an oversized coat and ushered me past Vivian’s judgemental gaze and out of the stairwell.
‘Shit, Rach, you look worse than that time in Aeir.’ It was Peter. My work partner-in-crime. We’d been through a lot, and I knew he always had my back. I gave a slight nod in response, then fixed my eyes on the stairs as we walked out. I was aware of other people there, but truthfully, it was all a blur, except for the dust. The dust in the stairwell glittered in the artificial lights the group had brought with them. It seemed to dance in the air, weighed down by nothing as it swirled in hypnotic patterns. That image of the dancing dust has stayed with me forever.
The next few hours disappeared. I remember being looked over by a medical team and awkwardly stitched up, then the same team checking over my baby—that caused an anxious twist in my stomach until they confirmed he was a healthy boy and returned him to me. I remember insisting on seeing Miles, which part of me regrets to this day. But mostly, I remember sitting in the back of an e-vehic feeding my healthy baby while my head lolled against the cool glass. There was only Marher in the sky that night, and the surrounding trees cast long sorrowful shadows across the ground. They taunted me. Beckoning me to join them in their dark, depressing depths. It would be so easy to give in to the heavy grief that racked my body. But instead of succumbing, I killed off the part of me that wanted to wallow in the sadness. I had bigger responsibilities now. It was just the two of us, and I would make sure that was enough. I was a mother, and my son needed me.
1
Birthday
207 AC (After Colonisation)
Mirrors. Do they give you an actual reflection of what you look like? Or do they just reflect your own perception? I certainly hoped it was the latter as I stood gazing at the ever-deepening smile and worry lines framing my face. I was proud of the wrinkles, though, as each one meant I had lived. The smile lines showed I had enjoyed my life, and the worry lines showed I had a twenty-year-old son. The teenage years hadn’t been too stressful, especially compared to the experience of other parents I knew, but the inherent mother worry had done nothing for the elasticity of my skin.
With a sigh, I turned away from the mirror and headed down the stairs of our modest dome house and started making my favourite breakfast, eggy toast. Bio-eggs were a true treat, so they always helped start a special day the right way, and if you can’t indulge on your forty-ninth birthday, then when could you?
I smiled as I heard Sam’s rushing footsteps charge down the stairs. Late again. As always. I closed my eyes and inhaled the intoxicating cooked egg and toast smell. My mouth watered with anticipation. Popping our meals onto plates, I turned to welcome Sam with a beaming smile.
‘Hi Mum. Bye Mum,’ he said as he rushed past the kitchen.
‘But I—’ The door slammed shut behind him as he rushed off to university.
I tried not to feel completely dejected as I put the plates on the kitchen bench and instead reached up into my carefully curated hodgepodge mug collection to retrieve my favourite grey mug—the one covered in an intricate white lace pattern that sat in my hands just right. I filled it with hot caffeinated goodness, then leaned back against the kitchen bench, the mug feeling warm and comforting in my hands.
