Fractured A Slated Novel

Chapter TWO



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A distant rrrring calls into deep nothingness. It pulls me to a moment of regret, half awake, half confusion, then a slow drift back to dreams.

The rrrring sounds again.

Wrongness!

Awake in an instant, I spring up, but something holds me and I almost scream, wrestle and throw it to the ground and crouch in a fighting stance. Ready for attack. Ready for anything…

But not this. Alien, threatening shapes blur and change, become ordinary things. A bed. An alarm clock, still ringing, on top of a dresser. My restraints, blankets: most on the floor now. Carpet under bare feet. Dim light through an open window. And a grumpy, sleepy cat, meowing protests and caught up in blankets on the floor.

Get a grip.

I hit the stop button on the alarm. Force my breathing to slow – in, out, in, out – try to calm my pounding heart, but still my nerves scream.

Sebastian stares from the floor, fur bristling.

‘Do you still know me, cat?’ I whisper, reach a hand for him to sniff, then stroke his fur, as much to soothe myself as him. I pull the blankets back into order on the bed and he jumps up, eventually flops down, but keeps his eyes half open. Watching.

When I woke, I thought I was there. Half asleep I knew every detail. Makeshift shelters, tents. Damp and cold, wood smoke, the rustle of trees, predawn birds. Quiet voices. But the more awake I become, the more it is gone. Details fall away. A dream, or a real place?

My Levo says mid-happy at 5.8, yet my heart still beats fast. After what just happened my levels should have plummeted. I twist my Levo on my wrist, hard: nothing. It should at least cause pain. Slated criminals can’t do violence to self or others, not while a Levo keeps guard of every feeling. Not while it causes blackouts or death if the wearer gets too upset or angry. With what I did yesterday, I should be dead: zapped by the chip they put in my brain when I was Slated.

Echoes of last night’s nightmare fill my mind: I can never get away. He will always find me…

Nico! That is his name. He is not an insubstantial dream. He is real. Pale blue eyes gleam in my mind, eyes that can glint cold or hot in an instant. He’ll know what all this means. A living, breathing part of my past that has somehow appeared in this life: as my biology teacher, of all things. A strange transformation from…from…what? Slippery memory falls away. My fists clench in frustration. I’d had him there, clear, who and what he was; and then, nothing.

Nico will know. But should I ask? Whatever he was, or is now, one thing I do know: he is dangerous. Just thinking his name makes my stomach clench, both with fear, and with longing. To be close to him no matter the cost.

He will always find me.

A knock on the door. ‘Kyla, are you up? You’re going to be late for school.’

‘Your chariot, ladies,’ Jazz says and bows. He puts one foot up on the side of the car to yank the door open. I clamber into the back seat, Amy in the front. And though it has a feeling of ritual about it, every morning the same, it is so alien. A safe sameness that rankles.

I stare out the window on the way: farms. Stubbled fields. Cows and sheep stare, chewing and placid as we go past. Herded to school, not questioning the forces that channel us into our prescribed lives. What is the difference?

‘Kyla? Earth to Kyla.’

Amy has turned in her seat.

‘Sorry. Did you say something?’

‘I was just asking if you mind if I work after school? It’s four days a week, Monday to Thursday. Mum isn’t sure you should be alone so much. She said to talk to you about it.’

‘Truly, it’s fine. I don’t mind. When do you start?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she says, with a guilty look.

‘You already told them you could, didn’t you,’ I say.

‘Busted!’ Jazz says. ‘But what about me? What about spending time with me?’ And they pretend-argue the rest of the way.

The morning is a fog. Scanning my ID into each lesson, sitting down, pretending to listen. Trying to channel my face into attentive and eager to learn, so no one will have reason to focus any closer. Scanning out again. Lunch, alone: being ignored, as usual, by most of the other students who keep clear of Slateds. Though they mostly liked Ben, me, not so much. Especially now he has vanished.

Ben, where are you? His smile, the warm certain feel of his hand in mine, the way his eyes light up from inside. It all twists like a knife in my gut, the pain so real I have to wrap my arms tight around myself to try to hold it in.

Some part of me is aware that I can’t contain this much longer. It has to come out.

Not here. Not now.

Then, finally, it is time for biology. A queasy unease grows in my stomach on the way to the lab. What if I’ve gone mental, and it isn’t Nico at all? Does he even exist?

What if it is him? Then what?

I scan my ID at the door, walk across to the back bench and sit down, all before I dare look: not trusting my feet to still work if my eyes see what they can’t stop imagining.

And there he is: Mr Hatten, biology teacher. I stare, but that is all right, all the girls do. It isn’t just that he is too young and good-looking for a teacher; there is something about him. And it’s not just those eyes, that wavy streaked blond hair, longer than you’d expect for a teacher, or that he is so tall and totally fit – it is more than that. Something about the way he holds himself: still, yet poised for attack. Like a cheetah waiting for the moment to pounce. Everything about him says danger.

Nico. It really is Nico; no question, no doubt. His eyes, unforgettable pale blue with darker rims, sweep across the room. They stop when they reach mine. As I stare back there is a warm touch inside, a recognition, an almost physical shock that makes it real. When he finally looks away it is like being dropped from an embrace.

Not my imagination. Right now, across the room, it is Nico. No matter that I knew it, from memories of then and now, compared and held up close together. Until I saw him, myself, with these eyes that are new with understanding behind them, I didn’t know it in my guts.

Then I remember that although the girls in his classes may stare, I don’t; at least, not so much.

So through the lesson, I try not to, but it is a losing battle. His eyes flick to mine now and then. Do they hold curiosity? Questions? There is some dance of amused interest when they lightly touch mine.

Take care. Until I can work out what he is and what he wants, don’t let him know anything has changed. I force my eyes down to the notebook in front of me; to the pen that skips across the page, leaving behind random blue swirls, half-formed sketches where notes should be. Hand on autopilot.

The pen; the hand…left hand. It is clasped, without thought, in my left hand.

But I am right-handed. Aren’t I?

I must be right-handed!

Breath catches in my throat, my guts fill with terror. I start to shake.

Everything goes black.

She holds out her hand. Her right hand. Tears trickle down her face. ‘Please help me…’

She is so young, a child. With such pleading and fear in her eyes, I would do anything to help her, but I can’t reach her. The closer I get, the harder I try, the more her hand isn’t where it appears. With some optical trick she is always turned to her right. It is always too far away to grasp.

‘Please help me…’

‘Give me your other hand!’ I say, and she shakes her head, eyes wide. But I repeat the demand, until finally she raises her left hand from where she held it beside her, out of sight.

The fingers are twisted, bloody. Broken. A sudden vision flashes in my mind: a brick. Fingers smashed with a brick. I gasp.

I can’t grasp her hand, not when it is like that.

Her hands drop. She shakes her head, fading. Shimmering until I can see through her like mist.

I lunge for her, but it is too late.

She is gone.

‘I’m all right now. I just didn’t get enough sleep last night, that’s all. I’m fine,’ I insist. ‘Can I go to my last class?’

The school nurse doesn’t smile. ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she says.

She scans my Levo, frowns. My stomach clenches, afraid what it will show. My levels should have dropped low after what happened: nightmares sometimes even made me black out when it was functioning as it is meant to. But who knows what it is doing now?

‘Looks like you just fainted; your levels have been fine. Good, even. Did you have any lunch?’

Give her a reason.

‘No. I wasn’t hungry,’ I lie.

She shakes her head. ‘Kyla, you need to eat.’ She lectures on blood sugar, feeds me tea and biscuits, and, before she disappears out the door, tells me to sit quietly in her office until the final bell.

Alone, I can’t stop my thoughts spinning around. The girl with the broken hand in my nightmare, or vision, or whatever it was…I know who she is. I recognise her as a younger version of myself: my eyes, bone structure, everything. Lucy Connor: vanished years ago from her school in Keswick, age ten, as reported on MIA. Missing In Action, the highly illegal website I saw just weeks ago at Jazz’s cousin’s place. She was part of me before I was Slated. Yet even with my new memories, I cannot remember being her, or anything about her life. I can’t even think of her as ‘I’ or ‘me’. She is different, other, separate.

How does Lucy fit in this mess in my brain? I kick the desk, frustrated. Things are there, half understood. I feel I know them, but when I focus on details they slip away. Indistinct and insubstantial.

And this was all brought on when I realised I was using my left hand. Did Nico see? If he saw I was writing with my left hand, he’ll know something has changed. I’m supposed to be right-handed, and it is important, so important…but when I try to focus on why I am meant to be right-handed, why I was before, why I don’t seem to be any more, I can’t work it out. The memory goes all distorted, like fingers smashed with a brick.