Ben. And Tori.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
* * *
My arms finally drop; the camera is a weight. This can’t be happening. Aiden is silent, his face a mirror of mine: shock. And agony.
Florence.
Wendy.
A whole college of nameless fellows and students who voted to help us: dead.
I stare at the camera in my hands, full of witnesses. Recordings of pain. Ben? No. I can’t – he couldn’t have—
But Ben was standing there, part of this massacre. I can’t deny what my own eyes have seen, even as everything inside screams they must be wrong.
I’m a witness like all the others hiding in this camera. The only recording left of them now.
Edie is one of the witnesses: Ben went there with me. He knows where she lives.
Run!
The thought is barely in my mind when my feet are running down the spiral steps.
Aiden clatters behind, calls out to be careful, to wait, but he drops behind. Out in the air and sunshine – how can the sun shine on today? – I run, and Aiden can’t keep up, he is gone behind me. No one is in sight at St Mary’s Church or any of the other colleges: everyone is hiding under their beds.
I run the fastest I have ever run. My feet feel like they’re not touching the earth: I’m flying, skimming the surface of a world I don’t want to be in any more. But for one child. If I can save one child, somehow I can – no. I can’t think of an after, or a before. Just now, only now. Or I’ll stop, won’t be able to take another step.
I’m still flying when miles later I reach Edie’s street. Then her front door.
Her open front door?
I step through it, gasping for air.
‘Hello,’ I call out, voice ragged. ‘Edie?’
The lights are on. There are half-eaten plates of food on the table. No, no, no…
I run from one room to another, all through the house. It is empty. The house is empty.
Except for Murray. He’s on the floor in the kitchen. I pick him up, stare at his smiling teddy bear face, dazed. Disbelieving.
No. This is a nightmare. This whole day. Nothing is real. It can’t be real. I’ll wake up in a minute.
I take a swing at the wall as hard as I can. My knuckles crunch into plaster, cracks form from the spot. Pain. Blood.
But I don’t wake up.
I’m not asleep.
I clutch Murray tight in my arms, fall to the floor, curl up in a tight ball. The tears finally come. Wave after wave of agony claws through and shreds everything I am inside until there is nothing left.
Later, I don’t know how much later, there are footsteps. My eyes are still clenched shut tight like the rest of me, rigid.
‘I thought I might find you here.’
Some part of my brain registers: Aiden’s voice. Aiden is here. Why? It’s all my fault. Why would he come?
There is movement close by, something warm touches my hair, strokes it.
‘We’ve got to get you away from here.’ There is another murmured voice. Then arms slip around me, lift me up.
I can’t move, can’t speak. But if I could, what is there to say?
I’m carried; there are car door sounds. Placed lying down on a seat. Something warm tucked around me.
Low voices and the car engine starts, it pulls away.
Everything goes black.
I lie still, as a statue on a grave. Unfeeling and cold. Eyes shut.
For a long time all around me is quiet, the absolute silence of the dead. Why aren’t I one of them? I long to be. The bullets missed even as I tried to jump in front of them, to stop them from hurting anyone else. I failed.
Then there are footsteps. Faint at first, then closer.
‘She must be here someplace,’ a voice says. Ben. I stay still as death, face down on cold earth. There is movement, another voice.
Then someone grabs my hair, yanks. Turns me over.
I open my eyes.
Tori smiles, and holds out a knife.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
* * *
‘She’s suffering from shock perhaps. As are we all to some extent. All the evidence stored at the college is gone?’
‘Yes.’
Words penetrate, and the meaning drifts around, looking for explanation, while other details start to come through. Not in a car any more. On a sofa? Evidence: what evidence?
It all floods back, pain like being kicked in the stomach. I groan and open my eyes.
Aiden is across the room; he comes over. ‘Heh. You’re awake?’
‘I guess,’ I whisper.
I sit up. The lights are down, but I know this place: Mac’s house. Skye is pressed against the sofa next to me, looking up, tail wagging softly, but like she knows things aren’t right, doesn’t jump up like she usually does.
My hand hurts and I hold it out, check it like it belongs to somebody else. Nothing broken; just bruises, a few split knuckles.
‘What happened to it?’ Mac asks.
‘I kind of punched a wall.’
He hands me a glass of water, tablets. ‘Painkillers: the ones you left here after your IMET.’
I take two, and shake the container: a few rattle inside. ‘There’s not enough.’
‘Enough for what?’
‘There’s too much pain. No, not my hand. Is it all real, did it really happen? At the college. And it was Ben?’
They exchange a glance. Aiden pushes Skye out of the way, sits next to me.
‘It looks that way.’
‘I don’t understand. Why did Ben leave that note, get me out of there?’
‘Maybe he didn’t want you hurt.’
‘Funny way to show it. Does Ben know this place?’ I panic, looking at Mac. No more. No more friends dying.
‘He did before his memories were erased, not since,’ Aiden says. ‘It should be okay for a while.’
‘Should be isn’t good enough. We need to get out of here before they find us.’
‘We will. Soon,’ Aiden says. ‘It’s all over.’
‘What do you mean?’
He shakes his head, his head drops into his hands. ‘MIA, what we were trying to do. It’s over. Florence and the others – friends, every one of them – murdered. Our evidence destroyed, computer system compromised. We’re beat.’ His voice, so tired, so full of pain.
‘It’s all been for nothing?’ My voice is small. It’s my fault.
‘You and I must be high on the Lorders’ most wanted list. You’re getting out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Going to United Ireland. It’s being sorted.’
‘No! You’re telling me to run away. I’m done with running.’
‘We’ll try to rebuild. One day.’ He shakes his head. ‘I have to stay, to do what I can, but I can’t think straight if you’re not safe. You have to do this for me: go.’
‘Why? After everything that has happened. Ben betrayed me: I can’t run away from the mess I created.’ The words are dull, unreal. ‘He betrayed all of us. He wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me.’
‘But I’m the one who brought him there. Stupid! I was letting feelings cloud my judgement. It’s my fault.’
‘No, you’re both wrong,’ Mac says. ‘You were giving him a chance; that is what MIA is about, isn’t it? Trying to save lost souls from the Lorders’ clutches.’
Aiden shakes his head. ‘So many dead. Was it worth it?’
‘Wait a minute. I don’t understand what you said before. What do you mean: letting feelings cloud your judgement?’
‘Isn’t that obvious yet?’
Out of the corner of my eye I see Mac backing out the room, shutting the door.
Aiden sighs, leans back against the sofa, eyes half closed. He opens them again, turns to face me. He looks young, bewildered, almost – not himself. Aiden is always strong, certain of what he does and why he does it. This isn’t him. It feels like the only bit of solid ground under my feet is falling away.
I reach for his hand, take it in mine.
‘You can’t give up on MIA. You’re superhero Aiden.’
‘No. Just Aiden. Just a man, no superpowers. And I messed up. Royally and completely, and we’re finished. That’s it.’
‘How did this happen?’ I swallow. ‘How could Lorders do what they did? And how could they change Ben, make him betray us. Make him a killer.’
Aiden touches my cheek. ‘I’m sorry. No Lorder was holding a gun to Ben’s head. The things he did, he did. He made choices and took actions. It was in him to do what he did, no matter why he did it.’
‘No, I can’t believe that. Ben wasn’t like that: it was what they did to him.’ But even as I say the words, doubt creeps in. The AGT did everything they could to make me a terrorist, to make me a killer. But at the end of it all, I couldn’t do it. Even when I was sure I should, that it was the only way, something inside stopped me from taking that step. If Ben was the same, wouldn’t something in him have stopped him?
Aiden sighs. ‘It’s all my fault. And I’ve been such an idiot. If only I’d been honest with myself.’
‘No! You couldn’t have known Ben would—’
‘That’s not what I mean. I thought getting Ben back would make you happy. And that you being happy would make me happy. But I was wrong. Seeing the two of you together made me miserable.’
I stare back at Aiden. His words now and other things he has done and said are all starting to fall into place, but I can’t take it in.
‘Then every doubt I had about Ben I discounted. I thought it was because of how I felt about you that I questioned him, his motives. I argued with Florence when I should have listened. She was right about Ben all along.’
I shake my head. ‘Lorders did this: he’s not the Ben I knew. They changed him.’
‘But did you ever really know him?’ Aiden asks. ‘How can you love somebody without knowing all of them, everything they’ve stood for, what they’ve done and not done?’
I’m silent a moment. His words are sinking in, settling. ‘What you are saying, really, is that no one who was Slated – who has no known past – can ever love or be loved. I was Slated.’
‘Then why do I love you?’
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
* * *
I wake in the early morning; the house is silent. Aiden’s words are painkiller-fuzzy, but I remember enough. I passed out on him from the tablets almost as he said it.
I shake my head. He wasn’t himself. Everything that happened cut him wide open. He didn’t mean it.
Then I’m not sure which thing he said alarms me more: that he’s given up on MIA? That he is sending me away? That he loves me. It is all tinged in unreality like everything that happened yesterday. The pain at Ben’s betrayal, and what followed from it, threatens to overwhelm everything I am. But even more: without Aiden’s certainty to anchor to, I feel lost.
I get up, as if I can walk away from it, Skye at my feet. Wander into the kitchen. Catch my breath at the sight of the metal owl sculpture Ben’s mum made, up on top of the fridge. I can’t stop myself: I reach for it, pull it down. Run my fingers across the interlocking wings, the sharp beak and claws. Trap the square of paper, and pull it: Ben’s handwriting. His ‘love, Ben’ identical to the note he left to get me away from All Souls, safe up the church tower.
I don’t understand. Why’d he leave that note, to get me away? If he is this cold Lorder-created killer Aiden says he is, that I saw with my own eyes yesterday, why not have me shot along with everyone else? Would that have hurt any more than how I feel now?
Maybe somewhere inside him, despite everything he did, he cares. Just enough to save me. And I don’t know if clinging onto that makes me feel better, or worse. But if he cared, why send me to the one place in Oxford where I would have to watch it all?