Lila Shortcuts (6 page)

We were through that door and into the control room in ten seconds flat. I took over – freezing the five guards manning the console before they could even swivel in their seats or raise their guns. Bill, using a length of fishing wire, tied all five guards to their seats and removed their weapons, piling them into a duffel bag he’d brought along especially which already contained several guns we’d stolen from a gun show a week before. Always be prepared was my motto. Not that I was pro-guns. The guns were for show only. It wasn’t like we needed them.

Amber locked the door behind us. We were smooth, practiced even, as though we’d been breaking into prisons together all our lives, and I got a familiar high from experiencing a job in flow, panning out as though it had been programmed. But then an alarm sounded, so loud it made us all duck and cover our heads.

‘Damn,’ I cursed, crossing to the console, wondering who had set off the alarm. Had we missed a guard? I located the cell that Harvey was in and hit the door release button on the console – admiring the beauty of modern jails and remote electronic locking systems. On the boxy CCTV screen we watched the bars of a cell on the top floor of a three-storey block roll back. I tuned back to the flashing console. The alarm had triggered a lockdown of the wing we were in. I found myself smiling as I watched an army of guards carrying riot shields and guns storm down a corridor on another screen. The others seemed a little nervous at the sight, but I always liked a challenge.

‘Come on,’ I shouted to the others, marching towards the door that led out into the adjustment wing. The four of us walked onto the cell block floor, where the alarm blasted even louder, drowning out the noise of our feet rattling the metal walkways. From inside the cells came catcalls, the sounds of furniture being thrown and metal clanging against metal. The shriek of the alarm was acting on the prisoners like one of those high-pitched dog sirens – sending them into a frenzy. We bounded up the steps to Harvey’s cell.

He didn’t even glance up when I stepped inside. He was bent over his bed piling his belongings neatly on top of a blanket.

‘Nice place,’ I said, glancing around. He shared it with another prisoner – a huge Latino guy with tattoos and a gut that wouldn’t have been out of place on a delivery ward. I nodded at him. He squeezed his bulk back into the corner of the cell between the concrete toilet and the concrete desk, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture.

‘You took your time,’ Harvey muttered straightening up and hefting the blanket with his belongings – books, cigarettes, a couple of photographs – onto his shoulder.

‘Well, better late than never,’ I grinned, slapping him on the back.

I introduced him to the others as we jogged back down the steps, having to shout to be heard over the noise of the alarm and the prisoners tearing apart their cells. Amber was covering her head with her hands, Ryder had his arm about her shoulders, even Bill had started to look nervous.

‘I take it you have a plan for getting us out?’ Harvey asked, stopping halfway down the stairs to light a cigarette. He blew a cloud of smoke in my face.

‘Sure I do,’ I said, glancing through the thick, scarred plexiglass into the control room where the guards sat struggling against their binds.

The press went wild. You might remember it? It was big news at the time. A prison riot during which a prisoner (prisoner 18974), escaped custody.

Once we had Harvey it felt like we were finally becoming a force to be reckoned with. What had started as revenge quickly became an offensive on my part – a co-ordinated attack to bring Stirling to its knees and destroy its research programme. We recruited more members – you have all their names – Suki, Nate, Alicia – but the Unit recruited even more. They recruited soldiers, trained killers, and they became relentless in their hunt for us. We were no longer on the offensive but on the defensive, always on the run. Even so we might still have managed to destroy them, to fight back. I think they knew this.

That’s why they recruited you.

The first time I saw you, Jack, I realised it straight away. You were walking across the quad, a freshman at Washington State. It was Fall, the leaves tumbling from the trees in confetti gusts. You were walking with another boy – I now know it was Alex. The two of you were with a group of girls. You had your arm around one, were making her laugh. I watched you and the pieces fell into place like fruit on a slot machine. Three in a row. The thunder of coins cascading.

You were eighteen. I did the math. But even if I hadn’t it would have been obvious if you’ve ever seen photographs of me. I wonder whether you’ve ever noticed it yourself; the dark hair, the olive skin. You have your mother’s eyes but you are very definitely your father’s son.

The knowledge that your mother had lied to me for all those years was nothing compared to the joy I felt at seeing you and at realising I had a son.

I wasn’t angry. I understood why Melissa had left, why she had never told me about you. I would not have made a good father. Or perhaps I would. Perhaps knowing I had a child, that I was responsible for another human being, would have been my incentive to change, to be the person that Melissa hoped once I would be. Perhaps that would have redeemed me. But I can’t blame Melissa for not wanting to put that to the test. Michael, the man you grew up knowing as your father, was . . .
is
a good man. He did a good job raising you.

I imagine the two men from Stirling Enterprises who visited you that bright fall day wearing dark suits and wraparound sunglasses spun you a story of national security but also tugged sharply at those filial bonds. Did they dangle me before you like a carrot?
See who you can help us catch if you join the Unit? The man who murdered your mother in cold blood. The man who would destroy the world.

How can the truth compete with a story like that?

For two years I’ve kept my silence. I thought it was safer than having you know the truth. If you had known the truth then what might you have done? Gone after Stirling? After Burns? I think you might have. If you are anything like me, which I think you are, then yes, I’m fairly sure this is what you would have done. And I had already handled that and was handling Stirling. I didn’t need you getting involved, endangering yourself for nothing. You’d go from being the hunter to being the hunted. They would try to kill you just as they did your mother.

My last promise to Melissa was that I would protect you and your sister, that I would keep you both safe.

So forgive me. I am a man. I am a father protecting his son.

I’ll leave you with one last gift. An image I hold in my heart, a memory I take out and study every day, turning it over in my mind like a piece of sea glass that becomes smoother and more polished with every turn.

Your mother. She’s nineteen, the age you are now. She’s walking away from me, looking back over her shoulder, her eyes bright, burning with conviction and yet her smile is a gossamer shield to her sadness. She’s wearing a scarf, a coat, her cheeks are red with the cold. She’s clutching books to her chest with one hand and the other hand is pressed to her stomach, a gesture I didn’t recognise the significance of until much later.

She was walking away from me, leaving me in order to save you.

As your father, now it’s my turn to do the same.

CATCHING SUKI

Demos is standing by the side of the bus tapping his finger on his watch as I make my approach. I am walking as fast as I can but the grass is slowing me down because Mr Blahnik designed these shoes with red carpets in mind, not fields. But nobody seems to realise this apart from me, because we keep parking in fields by the side of freeways and never on Rodeo Drive.

‘Suki,’ Demos says, before I can put one toe on the step, ‘I swear to God if you buy one more pair of shoes I’m going to have Ryder sift every goddamn thought of fashion out of your head. You’ll be wearing overalls and plastic clogs from Walmart for the rest of your days.’

I stagger back against the side of the RV.

I knew I should have snuck in later with Nate’s help. The problem with living on this stupid bus with a million other people, one of them another mind-reader, is that there’s no privacy. And that’s not the only problem. There’s no closet space, either.

‘You wouldn’t sift me,’ I say to Demos, tipping up my chin, ‘because you need me. And I need shoes.
Ergo,’
I use this word I just learnt from Nate,
‘Ergo,
you need my shoes.’

‘You’re not the only mind-reader, Suki, we’d manage without you,’ Demos warns, but he’s smiling as he says it. ‘We’re going to need a container ship to carry all your shoes if this keeps on.’

He is
always
grumbling:
ooh the baddies, ooh we have to run, oooh too many shoes . . .
I roll my eyes and move past him to climb up into the bus.

‘How do you even pay for all this stuff?’ he asks.

I turn on the step and raise an eyebrow in a perfect arch and give him a look I learnt from watching Judge Judy, though my way is far more attractive.
‘You
are asking
me
that question?’

I see the smile twitch at the corner of his mouth. He looks less serious and less like a brain freezer when he smiles, which is about a once a month occurrence. I wondered at first what made Alicia go all Bella Swan over him because Alicia is as hot as any supermodel and Demos is no Edward Cullen but then I read her mind one day, totally by accident of course, and I saw just exactly why, and now it’s hard to look Demos in the eye properly, and when I’m around Alicia – who is also a mind-reader – I have to do a lot of
la-la la-ing.

‘Go on, get inside,’ Demos says, whacking the bag I’m holding.

Demos has a history involving banks. And that history does not involve paying money into one, using an ATM, or working as a bank manager. I found this out by accident too, talking to Harvey one day. He is a mine of information.

Inside the bus, Nate is with Ryder and they are playing on his Wii and I don’t need to ask or look to know that Ryder is whipping Nate’s ass.

Nate leaps up when he sees me. ‘You went shopping without me?’ he squeals. ‘That’s so unfair. What did you buy? Let me see!’

He is like a puppy that needs a pee but I drop the bag on the sofa and take out the box containing my new shoes that feel like they’re made from baby bunnies but thankfully aren’t because that would be gross as well as making them exceedingly hard to clean.

‘You so promised you’d take me shopping next time,’ Nate says, pouting at me. ‘I’m totally telling your dad that you stole his credit card.’

‘I did not steal his credit card,’ I say, clutching the shoes to my chest.

‘You stole the PIN number from his head. Same difference,’ Nate says snatching for my shoes.

Not
the same difference and my father is rich – he won’t notice four hundred dollars.’

‘Four hundred today, maybe,’ Ryder pipes up from the sofa where he is still playing with his Wii. ‘But how much did you spend yesterday? And the day before that? Even the International Monetary Fund is going to start noticing his credit card bill soon.’

‘What is this International Money Fund?’ I ask in alarm. ‘Can you sift it?’

‘OK, people, listen up.’

It’s Demos. He’s standing in the doorway.

‘Are we leaving?’ I ask. I think it’s about time we checked into a hotel with a swimming pool and room service. It isn’t as if we don’t have the money. And even if we didn’t, and the International whatever Fund cut off my dad’s credit card, Demos could always pay a ‘trip’ to the bank. I keep making this argument but Demos just gives me this look, like he’s thinking about permanently freezing me into a statue. ‘Soon,’ he answers. ‘We’re going to head down to San Diego tomorrow.’

‘Oooh, are we going to spy on the Unit some more?’ Nate asks, shooting me a look, and I don’t need to be a mind-reader to appreciate exactly what he’s thinking.

He’s thinking hot men in uniform. Now I am too.

‘You two!’ Alicia suddenly says from behind me.

I whip around. I hadn’t heard her coming, probably because the images from Nate’s head were so overwhelming that everything else was blanked out.

‘Need we remind you that the Unit is the
enemy?’
she says. ‘Not some boy band for you to dribble over.’

‘I’m not dribbling!’ Nate protests.

He
is
dribbling. But anyone with eyes would understand and forgive him that. The Unit might be out to get us but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re also very buff and two of them in particular are beyond buff – indeed they occupy a whole new federation of hotness. They are almost as hot as me. Only in a man way.

‘Suki,’ Alicia says, rolling her eyes.

‘What?’
I protest. ‘They
are
cute.’

Demos makes a funny shape with his mouth as if he’s just eaten a truckload of wasabi.

‘Suki, these men would kill you as soon as look at you. Let’s see how cute you find them when they’re sticking a gun to your head and threatening to blow your brains out.’ He pauses, giving me his flat-eyed stare, ‘or worse.’

Even the images in Nate’s head detour at this point out of the bedroom and somewhere much more emo. The room falls silent. Ryder pauses the game and throws the controller onto the sofa. Amber has appeared from somewhere and she drops onto the sofa next to Ryder and rests her head on his shoulder. Normally listening in on those two is like listening to a Taylor Swift album playing on repeat, but now they’re both subdued. Right now they’re both thinking about the Unit.

I look at Demos and hear the anger crackling loud in his thoughts – images striking like lightning before vanishing almost instantly – mainly he’s thinking about that woman – the woman he often thinks of: the dead woman with the green eyes. And he’s also thinking about Jack Loveday, one of the leaders of the Unit.

Demos thinks about him and this woman a lot. But his thoughts and feelings are so tangled up – so shockingly violent and devastatingly sad – that it gives me a headache just to look at him. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t do some of his mind control on himself or get Ryder to sift those memories and remove them completely. I think I would. But I know Demos prefers to remember,
needs
to remember.