‘What for, specifically? Even if you leave Astrid out of things, it wasn’t her who had me Slated, beaten, and threatened. It wasn’t her who made kids disappear from my school for no reason. The list is long enough without her, but if you add her in and it gets a whole lot worse, who was in charge of her?’
He flinches. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t expect a hugs-and-flowers big family reunion. I don’t expect you to forgive and forget. But there is one thing I will do for you. For both of us.’
‘What is that?’ What can he possibly offer to do for me, now, that will mean anything?
‘I have a promise to make you. I’ll find my daughter, your mother. One way or the other, I’ll find her.’
He reaches out, grips my hand, and I don’t pull away. So many times I’ve thought, this is me, I know it all. And then there is another revelation. But Sam really is my mother – DNA doesn’t lie. Dr Lysander doesn’t, either. I fight the tears that threaten. Not here, not now.
‘Where is she?’
‘I’ll find her.’
When I get back to Mac’s house, Aiden waits out front. Alone.
‘Shouldn’t you be on your way to a hospital to get that arm seen to properly?’
‘Probably. I had to see you first.’ He reaches his good hand to my cheek, and I lean against him, into his warmth. So glad he is still alive, that we both are. And suddenly too full of everything that has happened to want to be anywhere else.
Aiden tightens his good arm around me, and murmurs into my hair. ‘I heard what you said before to Dr Lysander.’
‘About what?’
‘About Ben. About asking to see him.’
I pull away. ‘I have to.’
‘After everything he has done?’
‘It’s not him. They’ve made him like that. You don’t understand.’
‘Then make me.’
‘He’s fighting what they’ve done to him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He saved my life tonight: kicked a knife out of Tori’s hand.’
‘Then I’ll thank him for that. But does one good deed wipe out all the others?’
I stare back at Aiden, and I can’t answer. Does Gregory’s one good deed wipe out all his others? But it’s not the same thing. He had his free will; Ben didn’t.
‘Kyla, there is one more thing. The other day, when I said I loved you. I said how can you love somebody when you don’t know all of them? And you said, then how could someone who was Slated ever love or be loved.’
‘And?’
‘I do know all of you. And I don’t mean every memory you’ve lost: I know who you are, inside. Despite everything, how you could never deliberately hurt anybody. How brave you are, how fiercely loyal, and all the little insecurities, fears and stubborness as well, and I love all of you. Can you say the same about Ben?’
‘Yes,’ I say, but doubt gnaws inside, and Aiden knows it. ‘I don’t have any choice. I can’t abandon him; he hasn’t got anybody else. Not after everything we were to each other.’
His hand touches my shoulder.
‘Everything you were to each other. That is past tense. Let me know when you’re ready for the present, or maybe even the future.’
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
* * *
Everything happens very quickly after the broadcast.
Prime Minister Gregory makes his resignation official, as promised. Amid public outcry and international pressure, Parliament is dissolved, and elections called. And it is almost like Aiden always said it would be: once everyone really knew what went on, they said, no, no more. And the Lorders were no more.
Of course it wasn’t as easy as that. There were high costs on both sides – pitched battles in some places, like Cumbria, where Astrid’s followers refused to accept they weren’t in charge any more – but the cost wasn’t as high as living with constant fear under the Lorders. They did it: MIA really did it. DJ, Aiden and an international council have put a provisional government in place pending elections, and new political parties are forming, setting up candidates.
Gregory is still hunting for Sam, my mother, but now months have passed I’m starting to accept he may never find her. Mum and Amy are okay: they hadn’t been found by Astrid’s Lorders, and I’m staying with them for a while back in our newly repaired house. Skye survived and is here, being nursed back to health and spoiled by all three of us. Slating is banned, and Dr Lysander has been busy removing Levos and brain chips from Slateds, including mine.
But while part of me is rejoicing in the changes that have happened and are yet to come, more is in limbo. Licking my wounds and waiting for this one day.
Dr Lysander sits opposite Ben and me at her desk. ‘There are no guarantees: we don’t know who you were before you were Slated.’
‘I know, I know: Lorders destroyed my records, none have been found,’ Ben says. He holds my hand tight.
‘We don’t know who you were, but do we know enough?’ I say. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘I want to.’
Dr Lysander goes through her list of cautions, not for the first time. Results of memory adjustment are not predictable; he may recover memories he doesn’t want and not ones that he does; there is a risk of brain damage, seizures and death. While simple cases of readjustment have been successful, his case is unpredictable due to the multiple procedures to which he’d been subjected.
‘Is that everything?’ Ben asks.
‘Are you sure you wish to proceed?’ she asks.
‘Yes. Can Kyla come?’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it, but if she wishes to do so, it is your choice.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I say, unwilling to let go of his hand. Despite the things he has done, it was the Lorders – their procedures and manipulations – that led him to betray us. I can’t erase the things Ben did; I still wake screaming late at night, visions of Florence and the others dying at All Souls haunting my dreams. And I still can’t shake the if onlys from it all. If only Aiden hadn’t brought Ben there; if only I’d tried harder to get through to Ben. If only I’d recognised what was about to happen, and stopped him.
If only.
But it wasn’t Ben who betrayed us: it was the Lorders’ creature. After all that has happened to me, all the identities that have been forced or taken, I can understand that better than anyone. I can’t abandon him while there is any chance of calling him back, no matter how torn I feel. I won’t.
They get him ready. He’s on one of those beds that hugs you like when I had IMET; they’re checking things, monitors, wires, IV drugs, and a scanner all around his head. All the while he grips tight to my hand.
‘What if I sneeze?’ Ben jokes. He’d found it endlessly funny that the microsurgery goes through his nose.
‘You know you can’t; you’ll be immobilised. Almost paralysed except for speech.’
When the drugs take hold, his hand slackens. ‘I’m still holding it,’ I tell him; ‘everything is fine.’ But I’m afraid.
These months have been difficult. Once Ben really understood what had been done to him, how he’d been subjected to procedures and manipulated to be a Lorder agent, he’d been in a dark place. And both of us struggled to come to terms with Tori’s role – that she retained her memories, but still chose to act for the Lorders – and her death. Ben only started to come back to life with the hope of this: experimental microsurgery to give him back what was stolen.
Dr Lysander meets my eyes over a sea of equipment, nods once. ‘All right then, Ben. Shall we begin?’
‘No, I changed my mind. Just kidding! Go for it.’
‘All right. First I am removing your chip: this is routine.’ So no chance of anyone activating it to cause him pain, or kill him like Tori was, ever again; mine was taken out weeks ago.
Dr Lysander peers into control screens, remote operates using the scanner and microscopic robotic tools. Time passes slowly; seconds feel like minutes.
‘Your chip is removed,’ she finally says. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m fine, having fun. Carry on,’ Ben says.
‘Now tell me what you experience.’ She’d explained that different neuronal areas of the brain will be microstimulated as she navigates his memory storage areas, reattaches broken neural connections according to his responses.
‘Okay, here goes,’ Ben says. ‘Blue, the blue sea. Soft fur, a puppy! It’s Skye; I think it is. Fish: I smell fish and chips. A woman, I see a woman. My mother?’ he says, and starts describing her, but going by what he says it’s not his mum from when he was Slated. Then his voice changes – ‘Mummy? Mummy?’ – a high-pitched note of panic, a child’s voice.
‘You’re okay, Ben,’ I say. ‘I’m here.’
‘Who’s Ben? I’m Nate. Mummy?’ Then, ‘Kyla?’ he says, back to his voice again. ‘I remember my mother!’
‘One up on me there, then.’
‘This is good,’ Dr Lysander says. ‘Carry on describing.’
He is quiet.
‘Ben?’ she says.
‘I’m still here. Things are zipping through too fast to tell you, sometimes like I’m there, sometimes like I’m looking at a photograph.’
‘Memory can be like that. All right, I am reattaching the final deep links; this is the tricky bit.’
‘Great to know.’
‘Describe, Ben.’
Words are spilling out: people and places are garbled and quick, and then…
‘Kyla?’
‘Yes?’
‘At Group. I ran in late, you were sitting there. The new girl. I remember! The first time I saw you, beautiful, gorgeous girl.’
And I know he can’t feel it or squeeze back, but I’m holding his hand tighter, tears threatening: it’s working. He remembers me.
Then he gasps. ‘Pain, hot pain, in my side.’
‘Yes, you have a scar, an old knife wound,’ Dr Lysander says. ‘And what else? Ben? Answer me.’
‘No,’ he says, his voice changed, angry. ‘No!’
‘Ben?’
‘Ben?’ she says again.
He is silent.
‘Ben?’ I try. ‘Nate? Are you all right?’
‘Dandy. I’m dandy, thanks for asking.’ And with his words I can breathe again, but his accent – was it changed? Into something more London, less country.
‘We’re nearly done here,’ Dr Lysander says.
Before long, the scanner is pulled away, the microtools removed. One tiny drop of blood under his nose is wiped away; that is all.
His eyes are closed, sedation increased; he will sleep now.
‘Go home, Kyla,’ Dr Lysander says. ‘He goes into Recovery now for monitoring while he sleeps. It will be a day or two before we know how it went.’
But I stay. With Ben/Nate: whoever he is, he remembers me now.
EPILOGUE
* * *
It’s late summer. I insisted on coming alone, across the fells. Skye bounds along beside me, still with a limp but it doesn’t slow her down. And as I walk I think. So much of what has motivated me for so long has been trying to find out who I am, where I come from. Each new revelation knocked down walls in my mind, but came at a cost. Will today give any closure?
Everyone is searching for something, or somebody. The bit they haven’t got to complete them. Why should I be any different?
Mum’s son, Robert, hasn’t been found, but she is still looking, with the help of MIA – now a government-sanctioned agency, and Mac and Aiden’s full time mission.
Mum refused to run for Prime Minister, despite all who wanted her to. Gregory, who I see now and then – no matter what he was, he is my grandfather, and so much of how things turned out better than they might have in the end was down to him – said those suited for power don’t want it, and those who want it, aren’t. He didn’t say which category he was in. Anyhow, some new guy who wanted power is in charge, a whole new government has been voted in, and DJ and his friends are still here to keep an eye on things for a while.