22

We were at the base of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, near to the ticket booth. I looked up at the mountain rising out of the desert like a giant’s table. The cable car looked flimsy, like a child’s toy, next to it.

I glanced at Alex. ‘We’re going on that thing?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Cool,’ and then, after a moment’s pause, ‘Will there be lots of people at the top?’

‘No. That’s the point.’

‘I think people around us would be good.’

‘Oh really? You want to demonstrate your ability to an audience?’

‘What do you mean, demonstrate my ability?’

‘Lila, you’re going to need to show Jack. He’s not going to believe us unless you do.’

‘No way.’

‘It’s the only way. Do you want to get out of the country? Do you want to be safe from Demos?’

I sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then, come on. Let’s go.’

Alex nudged me into the ticket booth. I stood there, staring up at the top of the mountain and then at the flat of the desert, wondering how this would play out. It was an awfully long drop. We had driven into Palm Springs, stopping for some breakfast at a roadside diner. Then Alex had called Jack from a payphone and arranged to meet him here. Or rather at the top of the cable car ride in the San Jacinto State Park, to be exact.

When he had the tickets, Alex walked back towards the car.

I followed after him. ‘Where are you going? Aren’t we going up? Did you change your mind?’ I was hopeful.

‘We’re waiting,’ he said to me over his shoulder.

I glanced back towards the cable car entrance. ‘What for? There’s no queue.’

‘For Jack – I want to see he’s alone first. We’ll let him head on up first and then we’ll follow him.’

We got in the car and I felt the first spirals of angst start to wind their way up my body. My feet started to tap the floor, my fingers playing a melody on the window ledge. Alex glanced over at me a few times and I gave him fleeting smiles that didn’t kid him for a second.

‘It’ll be OK,’ he said.

I just nodded and kept on tapping.

At midday we saw a red blur on the horizon. It looked familiar.

Alex sat up in his seat slightly and I kept following the blur as it became clearer. It was Alex’s bike. Jack was riding it. I hoped he’d give Alex the keys to it before he asked about the Audi. I sank down in my seat, hiding behind the dash.

We waited while he parked up and my heart started to gallop. Jack pulled off his helmet and looked up, scanning the car park. No doubt looking for the Audi. Finally, he gave up the search and stalked over to the ticket booth and we watched him disappear inside.

I looked over at Alex. ‘So, he’s alone – are we going?’

‘No, we’ll follow him up.’

Fifteen minutes later we got out of the car. Jack was already dangling some two hundred or so metres above us in one of the cable cars. I wondered if he’d spotted us down below.

Waving in the breeze, two hundred metres up, suspended on a wire in a little glass and metal box, I felt dangerously close to the edge of something – not the top of the mountain, something more like hysteria. My brother was waiting at the summit and I could feel the anxiety building with every metre we got closer to him.

‘Lila.’

I looked up. Alex was standing over in one corner. I lurched over to him, feeling the car rock beneath me. When I got to him he stepped closer, so we were brushing arms. I didn’t know what he was doing at first, not until he’d wrapped something around my wrist. Then he moved his hand away and I saw it was the strand of leather I’d given to him for his birthday.

I looked up at his face and felt the blood rush from my cheeks to my head. I’d never tire of looking at him and for a few seconds my mind went completely blank with amazement that someone so beautiful liked me right back. He finished tying the knot and looked me in the face and I felt my gaze fall from his eyes to his lips and back again.

‘Why are you giving it back to me?’ I asked.

He pressed his thumb to my bottom lip and I heard an intake of air. That was me, I thought, before my head started to spin. Then he bent his head and kissed me. Just lightly, for a short few seconds, before drawing away again. My bottom lip began to throb where the pressure of his thumb and lips had been. I looked down, only to catch sight of the ground about three hundred metres below, and felt myself start to sway. Alex caught me around the waist, holding me firm. I leant into him, pressing my forehead against his chest. What was going on? Not two hours ago he’d claimed this was wrong and told me he wasn’t going to take advantage – and now here he was happily taking it. I didn’t want to do anything that might make him reconsider, though, so I stayed perfectly still, breathing in his now familiar smell.

The car jolted into the landing station at the top of the mountain and Alex took hold of my hand, giving it a squeeze.

It felt like I had sea legs – they were wobbly and unsteady on the metal walkway that took us into the building and then out onto the mountain top. The air was cool, much cooler than down on the desert floor. Like being in the Alps. It was fresh and stinging and thin. I pulled on my sweater. Had Alex known back at the mall that we’d end up here? What else had he planned?

We were standing amidst pine trees that were stretching up into the blue and all around was such quietness that it seemed to sing. It would have been somewhere mystical or other-worldly if it hadn’t been for the odd tourist milling about and a couple eating their lunch at one of the picnic tables.

And Jack. Standing there in front of me. It was a shock, despite knowing he would be waiting for us. He grabbed me in a massive bear hug, lifting me off the ground. I went tense in his arms, wanting to hug him back but too frozen with fear to do anything. Even to blink.

He let me go suddenly and turned to Alex, stepped slightly in front of me, putting himself between me and his best friend.

‘So, what the hell?’ he asked.

I felt my stomach begin to clench at the imminent confrontation, all the muscles going hard across my abdomen.

‘We had to get away, Jack. They came to the house.’ Alex gave a faint sigh.

‘But why didn’t you bring her back to the base where we could keep her safe? You’re just one guy against a whole load of them. If anything had happened to her, I swear to God I’d—’

‘She’s fine, Jack. No harm. I couldn’t take her to the base. Come on – I’ll explain.’

Alex strode off down one of the trails into the woods. I watched him go and felt a tug of pain between my ribs, like my muscles were being stretched on a rack.

I started off after him, Jack following behind me.

‘Where’s my car?’ he said to my back.

Why’d he have to ask me that? I so wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. ‘It’s somewhere safe,’ I stuttered. ‘It was kind of conspicuous so we left it somewhere.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie.

‘He didn’t crash it, did he?’

‘No. He didn’t crash it.’

He sold it but he didn’t crash it.

We followed Alex for a few minutes until we were in a clearing of pine trees. It was so silent and still that I could hear the crunch of pine needles under our feet, but not a whisper of wind or a leaf stirring.

Alex looked over at me and gave me a reassuring smile. I couldn’t respond. I wanted really badly to cross the small space between us and take his hand again. But Jack’s stance towards Alex was telling me not to – he was simmering. Giving him any more ammunition right now would be like adding a grenade to a bonfire. I wondered again at the wisdom of unveiling my freakish ability to him. He’d probably try to taser me or something.

‘Did you bring Lila’s passport?’ Alex asked.

‘Yes, it’s here.’ Jack indicated the bag at his feet.

‘I’ve got your IDs here,’ Alex said, tapping the black holdall with his foot.

I frowned – something wasn’t right.

Jack nodded. ‘But why do I need them? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

I edged backwards towards the tree line, in case Alex was wrong and I needed to run fast.

Alex took a deep breath. ‘There’s a reason we didn’t go to the base, Jack. It’s why I asked you to come on your own. You need to be quiet and listen to everything I’m about to tell you before you make any judgements.’

Jack didn’t hear him. Or chose not to. ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted. ‘Why didn’t you call me sooner? I was worried sick. The whole Unit’s been on the case. Have you any idea what kind of a manhunt you’ve kick-started?’

I looked around me and up at the sky, half expecting to see helicopters buzzing overhead and men in black rappelling down amidst the trees.

‘You didn’t tell them you were meeting us, did you?’ Alex took the words out of my mouth.

Jack’s eyes flashed anger. ‘No. I promised you I wouldn’t. But I want answers. I had to lie to Sara and to Rachel. Why didn’t you come back to the base? Where have you been?’ I could have sworn he looked between us then with a glimmer of suspicion in his eyes. ‘What the hell are you doing up a mountain in the desert with my sister?’

‘We had to get away fast from Demos. And I told you on the phone, the base wasn’t an option. We needed to steer clear of the Unit.’

I saw Jack trying to compute Alex’s words. He shook his head, his brows pulled together into a frown. ‘Steer clear of the Unit? Why?’

‘Lila’s one of them, Jack.’

My eyes flew to Alex’s face. That was how he planned on easing Jack into the secret? His eyes met mine and I saw the instant apology in them, for the way he’d referred to me as one of them.

‘What are you talking about?’

Alex interrupted, ‘Jack, Lila’s a psy.’

Jack’s eyes tracked back to me and I gave him a nervous smile. My feet started to scuff the dirt but my calf muscles were locked and ready to sprint.

‘No way.’ The look on Jack’s face was dead calm. ‘Tell me he’s joking, Lila.’

I gulped, taking in the hardness that had settled on his face. ‘He isn’t joking, Jack.’

I saw the way his face started to unscroll. A muscle began to twitch beneath his eye and suddenly Alex was there, right there next to me, putting himself between us, one arm half raised and reaching behind and to the side as though to shield me.

‘I don’t believe it.’ Jack seemed to have steadied himself. His voice was calmer.

‘Lila, I think you’re going to have to show him,’ Alex said.

I hesitated for about ten seconds, weighing up the options. But it was too late for denial. So I looked around the shrubby landscape until I spied a chocolate wrapper lying on the ground and let it fly. It zoomed towards Jack, floated in front of him then came towards me. I held out my hand and let it settle on my palm, like catching a feather in the wind.

I looked up. Jack’s face was torn between shock and horror. On balance, it was more horror.

‘You – you . . .’ Jack couldn’t seem to articulate the sentence, for which I was glad.

He turned away and marched towards the nearest tree. I wondered what he was doing. Then he lifted his arm and threw a punch at the bark with all his strength. I flinched at the crack.

‘Jack, calm down.’ Alex took a step towards him, hesitated, seeming not to want to put too much distance between himself and me. ‘She’s your sister. She’s still Lila. Believe me, I was just as shocked as you – probably more so. When I found out, she was launching a table at my head.’

Jack was crouching down now at the base of the tree, his back turned away from us, cradling his fist.

Alex continued. ‘It’s Lila, Jack. Whatever we’ve been made to think about them, we’re wrong.’

Jack spun around and up, then marched towards us. I ducked closer towards Alex, sheltering behind the wall of his back. ‘How did it happen?’ he demanded.

He would have been in my face if Alex hadn’t have been there, a solid screen of muscle between us. I flinched back from the venom in his voice.

‘She doesn’t know,’ Alex answered for me. ‘The gene just triggered somehow. Look, Jack, we’re wrong. We must be wrong. What do we really know about all this? Just what we’ve been told. And we’ve believed it – believed everything. But what if it isn’t true?’

Jack’s face twisted with anger and he squared his shoulders. ‘Isn’t true? Are you telling me that what we know about Demos is a lie? Are you saying that he didn’t kill my mum?’ He was yelling now. ‘Are you telling me that every single one of the – Jesus – what are they even? They’re not human! You’re telling me that they’re . . . what? Misunderstood?’ Jack’s face was blazing. ‘You’ve seen the psych reports – they’re off the scale – they’re a whole new subcategory of sociopath.’ He looked at me then and his expression was pure, unadulterated hatred.

I felt my knees start to give. First I was a freak and now I was a sociopath? An off-the-scale sociopath. Oh God. Alex reached behind me and I felt his hand against my back. It was the only thing that stopped me crumpling to the ground.

Alex’s voice stayed calm. ‘Yes. I’ve seen what I’ve been shown. But that doesn’t make it real. It doesn’t add up.’

‘It doesn’t add up? All the work Sara’s been doing – have you even read it? What more proof do you need?’ Jack yelled.

I could see Alex’s jaw tensing. ‘Yes, I’ve read it. But since when do you believe everything you read? And now I’ve got evidence to the contrary.’ He nodded his head in my direction.

Jack rounded on him, practically spitting the words out. ‘So, what, Sara’s making this stuff up? You think her team are just sitting around fabricating entire reports?’ He let out a bitter laugh that shattered off the trees around us. ‘Suddenly you know better than the professionals? You always think you know best, Alex.’

I saw Alex wince, then his face smoothed out again, back in placatory mode. ‘I’m not saying I know best. And I have no idea why they might be lying to us. What the point would be or what Sara’s part in it is, I don’t know. I just know what my instinct is telling me about your sister.’

‘Oh right. You have an instinct about my sister now?’ Jack pressed his lips together but I could see the way his nostrils were flaring.

‘Yes.’ Alex chose to ignore Jack’s tone. ‘My instinct is telling me something’s not adding up. Maybe the Unit has it wrong. What if there isn’t a hard and fast rule? What if we’re making dangerous assumptions about them that need to be tested? The powers that be have done a damn good job of convincing us that we’re fighting something less than human, but take a look at what’s in front of you and make a judgement, Jack. It’s Lila – come on, Jack. She might be a little impulsive but that doesn’t make her a sociopath.’

I swivelled my gaze to Jack, trying my best not to look like a sociopath. Jack’s eyes were so narrowed I could barely see the irises. It didn’t look like there was any doubt in them, though.

Alex pulled me out from behind his back, holding me by the arm. ‘Lila’s your sister. Do you really think she’s one of them, that she’s honestly like that? Lila is not bad. Look at her. She’s incapable of doing anything remotely evil – she can’t even lie properly.’

I thought about the mugging and all the things I’d wanted to do to Rachel and wondered about that. Maybe Alex shouldn’t be so quick to make such statements. Maybe they should take me back to the Unit and start running some tests.

Alex continued. ‘It doesn’t make sense, Jack. And if they’re lying to us about this, what else are they lying to us about?’

Jack looked at me, our eyes caught like Velcro. He frowned slightly and I saw him processing everything he’d been told. His eyes dropped to my feet, where the chocolate wrapper was now lying, and when he looked up at me there was confusion in his eyes, like a kid who’s just found out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. His belief system was shattering like a sheet of glass in front of him, as though Alex had fired a bullet right through it. He rubbed a hand over his face and I saw the purple blue welt on his knuckles where he’d punched the tree.

Finally he opened his mouth. ‘OK, I’m not saying I believe everything you’re saying. There’s no way Sara’s made anything up, but you’re right about Lila. She’s a terrible liar.’

I grinned at him, feeling the first faint flutter of hope that everything might turn out all right. But Jack wouldn’t catch my eye and I felt my momentary blast of happiness dredge away.

‘So, what are you proposing?’ Jack asked.

Alex visibly relaxed, his shoulders dropping. He walked towards Jack and, taking him by the elbow, propelled him towards the tree line.

‘Stay here,’ Alex said, turning briefly towards me. His face was drawn and pale under the tan.

I recognised the stress etched into the lines around his mouth. I nodded silently, hoping he wouldn’t be going far. He gave me a smile that faded as soon as it appeared.

As they walked away, my stomach clutched with unease. They stopped about ten metres off and Alex turned his body so all I could see was his back, his arms gesticulating, and the side of Jack’s head silhouetted behind him.

I looked over my shoulder at the wide spaces between the pines circling us and then up at the blue arching sky wide above me. I thought about what Alex had said about the Unit and the research they were doing. That Sara was doing. What if it was actually true and I was bad? Maybe it was in me, hidden deep. Maybe every time I lost control and a bag or a knife or scissors went flying, that was me, the real me. The bad me, taking over. Maybe Sara and the Unit were right to be hunting us down after all.

After a few minutes I looked over and saw Jack looking straight at me. The razor’s edge of his gaze was blunted. His arms were crossed across his chest and he was nodding. He turned back to Alex and then glanced over at me once more. I saw him frown at something Alex was saying, then suddenly Jack’s voice was cracking like a bullet across the open space between us.

‘No way!’

The air reverberated with the noise and the eagle overhead shrieked in response. It left a vacuum of silence in the air when it died away. Had Alex just told him about the car? I edged closer towards them, feeling my unease deepen.

‘You have to, Jack. It’s the only way,’ Alex was saying. Then he handed the black holdall and the keys to our car to Jack.

I took several more steps towards them, trying not to crunch on the pine cones littering the ground. They were talking so loudly now they didn’t notice me coming closer. Alex was shaking his head, his voice low but determined. He wasn’t inviting debate on whatever they were talking about. Jack was staring back at him, his green eyes darkening, but I could see that whatever Alex was saying was starting to filter through, because he seemed somehow defeated.

Alex was still talking and I caught the urgency saturating his voice. ‘You need to go now. Take Lila and head for South America. Don’t tell me where. I don’t need to know.’

‘What?’ My voice was a broken whisper.

I saw Alex’s back freeze. The muscles in his shoulders hardened to stone. He turned slowly to face me. I could see the effort he was making to keep his expression even but his eyes were giving him away. Normally so guarded, now they were telling a whole story and I didn’t want to hear it.

He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling, his eyes not leaving my face. He took a step forward, one hand reaching out towards me. I took a step back.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked quietly.

I saw Alex flinch slightly. His hand dropped. ‘Jack’s going to take you away, somewhere safe—’

‘No. No.’ My head was shaking, trying to shake the words out of my ears.

‘I can’t go with you, Lila.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Jack is your brother and you need to be together. You are each other’s only family. Other than your dad, you’re all you’ve both got.’

All? I had thought I had Alex too. Realising he didn’t see it like that made me turn away from him.

Alex caught me by my arm and spun me around to face him.

‘Lila, please don’t walk away. It isn’t that I don’t want to come with you.’

I stayed looking at the ground. ‘Then why aren’t you? You told me you would.’

‘I told you I wouldn’t let you go alone.’

I shook my head at him. It was a shallow deceit. He had known all along. He had planned everything, I realised, even this conversation, no doubt. It explained his comment last night about things ending badly. It was only prophetic because he’d already written the script. I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist. It explained why he’d given it back to me. It had been a goodbye present five years ago and so it was again. I bit my lip, cursing my stupidity, that I hadn’t seen it coming.

‘I’m sorry, Lila. One of us has to stay. One of us has to stop them.’

And he thought he could stop them on his own? It had taken five years and a whole unit and they’d still only managed to catch a few. Alex himself had admitted how impossible they were to hunt or to catch. He’d spend his life trying. And now I’d never see him again.

‘Lila,’ he carried on, ‘we need to find out what’s really going on with the Unit, find out the truth. And, more than that, we need to stop either them or Demos finding you.’ Alex was still talking, shaking my shoulders softly, ‘Which is why you need to go now.’

I felt myself stumble against him, trying to hold on to him.

He turned to Jack. ‘You need to get her out of here. Now. Far away, where the Unit and Demos can’t find her. Because you know what they’re capable of if they do.’

Shivers ran up my spine, like I was suffering a heavy bout of flu. Was he talking about Demos or the Unit? I looked over at Jack. A dark shadow rippled across his face. His whole body seemed to adjust in its wake. That’s when he looked at me and I saw the anxiety pass across his face. Alex had pressed him on his Achilles heel – his guilt over what had happened to our mum. Despite everything he might feel about what I was, he’d never let the people who did that to our mum have a chance to do the same to me. He hated them more than he hated me.

I looked back at Alex. ‘I won’t go. I won’t go without you.’

Jack fired a glance in my direction, his green eyes burning with suspicion. Then he looked at Alex, a scowl starting to form on his face.

‘Lila—’ Alex’s face was so torn that I knew if I pressed him I had a chance of keeping him here with me.

‘You don’t need to find out what’s going on at the Unit. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.’ Except us, I wanted to say, but Jack was right there and I couldn’t. ‘I don’t want you to leave me. Please.’

‘It does matter, Lila. If I don’t stay, if I come with you, we’ll spend our whole lives being hunted. If I stay I can make sure that doesn’t happen to Jack and you.’

‘How? You’re one person.’

‘I can do my best. At least I can cover for you two until you disappear. Try to keep the Unit from finding out about you. Listen to me, I promised you I’d keep you safe and this is the only way I know how to. Let me do it. One of us has to stay and it has to be me.

‘Jack, you need to go now.’ Alex said it while still looking at me.

Jack took a step towards us. He was pulling his rucksack onto his back.

‘No!’ I grabbed for Alex’s wrist.

I felt his other hand sear hot against my cheek. He bent his head, and in a voice that Jack couldn’t hear, said, ‘When you came down the stairs and fell into me, that was the moment.’ Then his lips pressed against mine.

I heard an intake of breath from Jack.

Alex stepped back, his eyes on me the whole time. ‘Take care of her,’ he said.

‘She’s my sister,’ Jack growled at him. His fists were curled tight at his side.

Alex glanced at Jack and nodded once. Then he turned around and started jogging back towards the park entrance.

My legs stumbled forward, automatically trying to follow him, and I felt Jack’s hand on my arm like a clamp.

‘No, Lila,’ he said.