19

From the signs on the interstate, we were headed north towards Palm Springs. Alex had, at some point in the night, doubled back and headed north-east.

‘What are we doing?’ I asked. ‘What’s the plan?’ I hoped that he had one, and that it was a good one – and that it involved him coming with me all the way, not just to drop me off at an airport. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a passport. Alex might have a whole bag stuffed full of useful toys, gadgets and fake IDs but he didn’t have a passport for me. So I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

‘We’re going to find a motel and get some sleep.’

Apart from a motel. ‘OK . . . and after?’ I asked.

‘One thing at a time.’ He glanced at me and I felt my heart skip a beat. I wished he’d tell me what was going on and what he was thinking.

He kept his speed down in this car, brushing the limit. An hour later, on the road into Palm Springs, he pulled up at a motel, one of several lining the road. It had palm trees out the front and a square pool with railings around it. The rooms were laid out in an L shape over two floors. He drove in and pulled up next to a car with a trailer, well hidden from the road.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, turning off the engine.

He paid for a twin room on the ground floor. Alex unlocked the door, letting me in first. I hovered in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. He came and piled the bags onto the chair by the door.

‘Why don’t you take a shower? Here.’ Alex handed me the bags with my clothes in.

I took them and closed the bathroom door behind me. The mirror was not kind. I looked awful. I eased off Alex’s shirt and my dress, catching sight of the fading, green-tinted bruise on my thigh. For a few seconds I stood there experiencing déjà vu, reliving the exact moment that had set in motion this whole chain of events. I’d been standing in a bathroom then too, in a pretty similar state. Though in retrospect that situation was a kids’ ride compared to the roller coaster I was now on.

It was a quick shower – I felt too scared to stay in it long, conscious that if Demos chose to find me now, I didn’t want to have to put up a fight while naked.

When I was done, I towelled off quickly and threw on a vest and the jeans that Alex had picked out. They fitted perfectly. He had chosen my exact size.

Alex was standing by the window looking out through a crack in the curtain when I came out. He looked round at me and said, ‘Come here.’

I came towards him slowly. His face was hard again and I was scared suddenly. He looked like he was going to interrogate me.

When I was standing in front of him he reached behind and my stomach dropped – he was going for his gun. He didn’t need a gun, I would tell him whatever he wanted to know. He took it out, keeping the barrel pointed down.

And then he handed it to me. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

I shook my head.

‘Here.’ He pressed my hands around the grip. The gun was heavier than I expected and warmer, from where it had been pressed against his back. ‘This is the safety catch. It’s on now, click it down to release it.’ He pushed the catch with his thumb over mine and, standing behind me with his arm over my shoulder, he pulled the gun up so it was pointing at a painting on the opposite wall. ‘Point and fire.’

He clicked the safety back on and took his hand off mine. The weight of the gun dropped my hand a few inches; he lifted it back up to chest height. ‘Aim high, but for the chest. I guess you don’t need much help in the way of weapons, but just in case.’

I felt my cheeks start to burn but chose to ignore the comment. ‘Just in case what?’

‘I’d just feel better knowing you know how to shoot. Just don’t shoot me while I’m in the shower.’ I didn’t know how he could joke. Or was he joking? Did he think I would do that? If he did he wouldn’t give me his gun, surely?

Alex walked into the bathroom but kept the door cracked open. I stood by the window, looking out, the gun hanging in my hand, pointing at the floor. I wanted to put it down but I also felt oddly comforted holding it.

The shower started to run. I turned from the window just as Alex walked back into the room. He was wearing a towel around his waist and had his clothes in his hands. He dropped them onto the bed and took a few new clothes out of one of the bags. Then he walked back into the bathroom without a second glance at me. I commanded myself to breathe.

I heard Alex get into the shower and I walked over to the window, looking out across the parking lot to the empty, leaf-strewn pool. There was no sign of the police, no sirens, no black SUVs screeching up the road. I rested my head against the glass. When would this chase ever stop? And who was going to win?

A hand closed over mine and I almost jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t heard him even come out of the bathroom.

Alex prised the gun out of my hand. ‘Lila, I give you a gun and you don’t even hear me coming.’

‘I haven’t done three years of Marine training, I don’t have special . . .’ I trailed off. I had been going to say ‘skills’. Alex was cocking an eyebrow at me.

I sank down onto the bed. He stayed standing, watching me carefully. He looked like he was about to ask me something and I readied myself for the question about to come.

‘You should sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

I looked up at him confused. ‘No, you need to sleep. You’re exhausted.’ He looked so tired, the circles under his eyes darkening, a day’s worth of stubble giving his face a golden glow.

‘It’s OK. You go first. I’ll wake you in a few hours,’ he said, already turning away.

I lay down on the bed – I didn’t have the energy to argue. Alex shifted the chair nearer the window and sat down in it, the gun in his hand pointed at the door. I rolled over so my back was turned and stared at the other wall, trying not to think about anything, trying to breathe through my fear. I had given up trying to figure out what Alex was thinking or feeling.

This time, the men in my nightmare had faces.

As I followed the path of blood I noticed the smashed vase on the floor by the front door and the table overturned in the living room. My mum lay on the stairs like a broken doll, blood pumping from her chest, and I dropped to my knees, my hands turning red as I tried to scoop her life-blood up and push it back.

A sudden noise made me turn my head. Demos was standing right next to me, a knife in his hand. Behind him were three other men, the men whose photos I’d seen in the file. One flicked his cigarette butt towards me, smiling. Suki was a blur behind them, skipping in a puddle of blood. I started to scream and tried to lunge towards Demos to knock the knife from his hand, but my arms wouldn’t move, they were held so tightly.

‘Shhhh, shhhh, it’s OK.’

I was pulling and pulling, trying to get free.

‘Lila, it’s OK. Calm down.’

My eyes snapped open at the voice. Alex was sitting on the edge of the bed holding my wrists in his hands. I was reaching towards him as though I was trying to strangle him. I stopped fighting and let my arms go limp. Then, without thinking, I fell forward towards him. There was no movement on his part to catch me and I remembered too late, as my head collided with his chest, that Alex didn’t think of me as Lila anymore, that he was repulsed by me. I started to pull myself up and roll away when I felt his arms suddenly wrap around me and his hands in my hair, stroking it back. The feeling was so electric that I wondered if I was still dreaming. It was like a cotton reel inside me was being unspooled. Everything, all the dread and the fear and the humiliation was spinning away, leaving me feeling like I’d just inhaled a tank of gas and air.

‘It’s OK.’ He was saying it over and over again and I started to believe him, to calm down and let his touch sedate me. Then I remembered the dream and the fear rolled back in, waves and waves of it, drowning me.

I started crying hard into his shoulder, shaking my head. ‘No, it’s not OK, it’s not OK. They’re going to find me.’ How could they not? There were two of us and lots of them, with abilities far beyond mine and weapons far beyond Alex’s.

Alex’s arms tightened around me and I shrank into him, trying to limpet myself onto him, terrified he’d let me go. I couldn’t believe he was this close to me, let alone pulling me closer. What had changed while I’d been sleeping? Since last night, when he’d come towards me in the backyard looking like he wanted to kill me?

‘I’ll get you away . . .’ He was murmuring the words and where his lips brushed my hair my scalp was left tingling. ‘I’ll get you somewhere safe, I promise. Then we’ll stop them.’ His voice was calm and the warmth in it was such a contrast to the cold front of the anger I’d been dealing with until now, that it started me crying again.

I wished I could believe him. It would be so easy to let him hypnotise me with his words but I pushed away slightly so I could look him in the face. ‘What’s a psychokenosist?’

His hands tightened on my arms. ‘How do you—’ Then he stopped and disentangled himself, stood up and walked away.

My whole body went cold and started to shake, like shock was setting in. Delayed shock, from all the way back to the mugging, like it had been storing itself up for the last week. I hugged my arms around myself, trying to get warm and to stop my teeth chattering.

‘It derives from the Greek. Psyche meaning “mind”, and Kenosis, meaning “to empty”.’ Alex waited to gauge my reaction.

‘Mind empty?’

‘Yes. Demos’s power is unique. He can literally empty your mind of every thought and every feeling you possess. He can effectively stop anyone from doing anything.’ He paused to see that I had understood. ‘Demos is the most powerful one of your kind that we know of.’

My kind? So that was how he saw me.

‘How many do you know of?’ I asked in a whisper.

‘Nine. Well, twelve now if I count you and Key and his son. But the Unit doesn’t know about you three. Yet.’ He was pacing the small square of area between the bed and the bathroom door.

Yet? Was he planning on telling them? How else would they find out?

‘Just nine? How many more do you think there are?’

‘Conservative estimate? We think there are probably two hundred or so in the United States. Based on the numbers so far. But maybe it’s higher.’

Two hundred? Two hundred people like me. What were the odds, then? It wasn’t many. But it was actually quite a lot of people, if you put them all together in one place.

I was still shaking. ‘How long has the Unit been hunting them – I mean us?’

A scowl made its way onto Alex’s face. The anger was back and I instinctively flinched away, edging into the headboard. He must have seen my expression, because his scowl disappeared. He yanked the cover off the other bed and sat down on the edge of mine, wrapping it around my shoulders.

‘About five years.’ It was said through gritted teeth.

Five years was how long it had been since my mother died. ‘And you’ve only found nine?’

‘You’re good at keeping what you can do below the radar.’

I couldn’t interpret the look on his face. Rancour, impatience, maybe. He carried on. ‘Our focus is on Demos. And his people.’ The scowl was easier to interpret, and this time I recognised it wasn’t about me.

‘Why? Why the focus on him? You said that the Unit’s mission wasn’t to find my mum’s killers.’

‘It isn’t. I didn’t lie. The mission is to stop them, yes, but it’s not about solving a homicide.’

I frowned at his casual use of the word homicide. This was my mum’s murder he was talking about.

He hurried on, as though wanting to explain. ‘When we joined the Unit all we cared about was getting justice for what he did to your mum. But after a while it became more than that. When we saw what he was capable of, and what he was planning, it stopped being all about our vendetta and became more about stopping him before he could do far worse.’

I swallowed. What could be worse than murder? ‘This thing that he’s planning, could it have something to do with why he killed my mum? Because she found out about it? Is that why he killed the senator too?’

Alex looked at me in shock. ‘You know about him?’

‘Yes.’ I ignored the questions in his eyes, forming on his lip. ‘Why did he kill her? Them, I mean. What’s he planning?’ I needed to know what worse could look like. I might be on the receiving end of it.

Alex bit his lip and paused, then shook his head slowly, looking at me with an odd expression on his face. ‘You know what? I thought I knew. I was so sure – we were all so sure. Jack too. But now I don’t know if everything the Unit has been telling me is the truth or a lie.’

I stared at him, stunned. After a minute or so I broke the silence. ‘What were you told?’

‘Lila, it’s going to sound so crazy.’

‘Yes, because my life is so completely sane right now. Tell me.’

‘OK, well, the Unit – our whole mission – is basically counter-terrorism. With a twist.’

‘Terrorism?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what are you saying? That Demos is a terrorist? I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.’

‘Listen, when the Unit found out about Demos it was because he had been using one of his associates, a telepath, to access information from a senator working on nuclear defence. This was during the Bush administration. Remember those rumours about the design of new nuclear weapons after 9/11?’

I looked at him blankly.

‘Maybe you were too young. Well, it wasn’t a rumour. It was the truth. The project was so secret that only a few people were involved in the initial research. A small team within the Department for Homeland Security.’

‘My mother—’

‘No. Not at this stage. Your mum had nothing to do with the initial research and development. The rumours that weapons were being built kept circulating around Washington and further afield. It’s difficult to keep something that huge a secret. In 2004 your mother was asked to sit on a secret committee that was looking at the issue of weapon stockpiling.’

‘She was? But I don’t get it—’

‘This is where the information starts to become more vague. Somehow in that process she discovered what Demos was doing. That he was using his telepathy to gain access to information about the stockpiles.’

‘Please tell me why he would want information on nuclear stockpiles.’

‘Why does anyone want a nuclear weapon? For control, for power. With a threat like that at his fingertips he could create chaos.’

‘You know what? You’re right, this does sound crazy. Why? Why would he want to do that?’

‘Money probably, power definitely.’

‘But you can’t just waltz off with a nuclear weapon and take over the world. What can you do with a nuclear weapon, anyway? Load it into a catapult and fire? Fire it where?’

A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and suddenly I didn’t want to talk anymore. I just wanted to watch him. He was smiling at me. First hugs, now smiles. Maybe he really didn’t hate me. Maybe I could convince him that I wasn’t subhuman or whatever he thought about me exactly; that I was still Lila.

‘He wouldn’t need to fire it – it’s just the threat of it – that would be enough.’

‘But we have a whole army – why just go after him with twenty-four men? Why not put the whole army on to him if he’s such a threat?’

For a moment I thought whoever was in charge needed to be fired. They clearly weren’t a very good strategist.

‘None of this can be made public knowledge, Lila. Do you want the general public to know about what you can do? What do you think would happen if people thought that people like you existed? That there were people out there who could control their thoughts and their actions, who could read their minds, or rearrange their memories?’

Was that what a sifter was? I wasn’t too sure what would happen if it became public knowledge – was he talking lynchings? Men in white coats carrying out vivisections on us? Other sorts of testing?

From the look on Alex’s face he thought it would be bad. I thought about how I’d instinctively hidden my ability from everyone, even the people I loved. Something inside me had known, without needing to be told, that exposing it would be dangerous. But then again, keeping it hidden didn’t seem to be much safer. The Unit were after us like we were stray rodents and being contained didn’t sound like a much better option – in fact, it sounded worse.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said finally. ‘If the option is being hunted down by the Unit or having the public know about me – I think right now I’m going with the public vote.’

Alex looked at me with an expression I could only place as anguish. ‘Well, you’ve no choice on that one. It’s coming down from the highest authority. It stays secret.’

‘What authority? Like the President?’

‘No. Higher.’

There was a higher authority? Wasn’t that supposed to be God or someone?

He saw my face, my glance up at the ceiling, and laughed at me. ‘No, not that kind of authority. You don’t honestly think that the President is in charge, do you?’

‘Er, isn’t he?’ If he wasn’t in charge, who the heck was?

‘Lila, we’re a black op. Even the President doesn’t know about black ops.’

I stared at him with my eyebrows raised.

‘The only option we’ve been told is to keep going after them. Stop them. Anytime there’s any threat of public exposure it gets covered up fast. The same way other terrorist threats do. It’s all kept under the radar.’

I stared at him open-mouthed, feeling my naïvety falling away from me like a layer of clothing.

‘We’re getting closer to them. The Unit have got three of them now. They’ll get Demos eventually. Then we’ll start focusing on the others – on getting them all.’

He realised what he’d said and stopped abruptly, looking at me with a guilty expression. Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. I looked away from him and tried to swallow and breathe and not cry.

‘Lila, I don’t mean, I’m . . .’

I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to hear it.

I didn’t hear him move but I felt him put his hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. It was clear where he stood on the matter.

‘How will you stop Demos? You said he had a special power.’

Alex hesitated before speaking. ‘He can only focus it on a few people at a time. Which is why he needs an army. With the abilities he’s collecting around him it’s getting harder to find him and harder still to fight him. Our weapons are limited – you’ve seen the extent of them.’

Yes, big guns and loud alarms.

‘We can only use them in short bursts and his people are usually able to stop us before we can set it off. They see us coming – that girl Suki can hear us from a mile off. There are others who can pick up on the atmosphere, sense us when we get close, and now, I guess, with Key’s son, it explains how they’re able to predict our moves, stay one step ahead of us. He’s following us and letting them know what we’re planning. As fast as we take one of his people out, he recruits another.’ He looked at me with a little shrug.

‘And all of this, everything you’ve just told me about Demos and this so-called terrorist plot; you’re telling me that now you’re not actually sure it’s the truth?’ I shook my head at him, confused. ‘Why not?’

Alex dropped his gaze to the floor, frowning, then looked up and met my eyes. ‘Because if they could lie to me about you, then they can lie about anything.’