Hunting Lila (21 page)

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.’

I held Alex’s gaze, my breathing running rapid. ‘Lie about me? What do you mean?’ I stuttered.

Alex shook his head. ‘The things we’ve been made to believe about people like you – it – it just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I look at you and I start questioning everything I’ve been told.’

Once more he’d stunned me into silence. Clearly the picture they’d painted of us was not that warm and fuzzy. They really believed they were hunting monsters. And in Demos’s case, they obviously were.

‘But you believed them before yesterday – why?’

He looked away again and I could see the frustration etched on his face. ‘Because, when Jack and I were recruited at Washington State, they offered us the chance for revenge. And we believed them because we wanted to.’

‘What did they tell you? How did they recruit you?’

‘Two men showed up on campus one day. They wouldn’t tell us who they were working for. At first we assumed CIA but I don’t think they were. They showed us the information they had on Melissa’s – sorry – on your mother’s murder. They showed us everything they had on Demos: photographs, crime reports, trials in absentia, a whole raft of reports and evidence on other psys. At first we thought they were making it up. You have to understand, for us, it was like discovering aliens existed and were living among us. We didn’t believe it. So they took us to Pendleton, to the Unit, and showed us. They had one, someone they’d captured. We saw it with our own eyes. He could do what Key can do. We started to believe them, to ask questions. They told us that the Unit’s mission was to catch people like your mother’s killers. We didn’t need any other incentive. We signed the papers right there and then. It seems crazy now, but at the time there was no other option for either of us. We had to do it.’

It didn’t seem crazy at all. I loved them both for it. I just wished I hadn’t ended up being on their hit list.

‘Can I ask you a question now?’ Alex was looking at me, his blue eyes piercing right through me. I readied myself. ‘How did it happen?’

I leaned back against the headboard and hugged my knees tighter. ‘I don’t know. I thought you might be able to tell me that.’

He thought about it for a moment. ‘We don’t know. All we’ve managed to do is isolate the gene. We’re not sure what triggers it, though. Some people have the gene but it just lies dormant.’

It was genetic? Wow. Why wasn’t Jack like me, then?

‘When did it start?’ Alex suddenly asked.

It felt so strange to be admitting any of this, to be talking about it so openly. But at the same time, if there was anyone on the planet I wanted to tell, it was Alex. Just not under these circumstances.

I took a few breaths then started. ‘Three years ago. Well, actually there was one incident before then but I didn’t realise it was me . . .’

Alex waited for me to continue.

‘When I came to London it was really difficult. In my first week at school I got mad with a teacher. She, um, she . . .’ I looked down at the sheet, stroking the hem with my finger. ‘She asked me to take off the bracelet you’d given me. You remember it?’ I glanced up and met Alex’s eyes but he showed no flicker of recognition. Maybe he hadn’t opened my present.

I carried on. ‘I said no. She told me again to take it off or she’d cut it off and I said no. So she came towards me with these scissors . . . and I don’t know what happened. One minute the scissors were in her hand and the next they’d flown halfway across the room and were sticking out of the blackboard.’

I looked back up at Alex. He was pressing his lips together, reining in whatever he wanted to say. It was actually quite funny that my ability had, in a way, been triggered by his present to me.

I hurried on. ‘I had no idea I had made it happen. People looked at me weirdly but I honestly didn’t have a clue it was me.’

‘And then?’

I realised I’d stopped talking. I’d been thinking back to that moment and the teacher’s face as the scissors flew out of her hand. I frowned as I fast-forwarded to the first proper time I’d been conscious of.

‘Well, the next time it really happened was a year or so later. At school, in the dining room someone made a comment about my mum and I just lost it.’

I bit my lip. I didn’t need him thinking I was unstable or unable to control my ability. Which would be correct, but he didn’t need to know that.

‘I didn’t usually mind the comments – I mean, I guess I was a little weird; a little distant, uninterested – but it wasn’t a good time. I was missing my mum so much. I was missing you and Jack.’ I felt my stomach tighten. ‘So this girl said something and I threw a jam roly-poly at her head.’ There was a silence, so I added, ‘Not using my hands, obviously.’

‘You did what?’ He burst out laughing. It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. I started laughing too.

‘Yeah, it was pretty stupid. But she deserved it. Anyway, after that, everyone pretty much avoided me. They thought I’d actually chucked it, that it had been in my hand. You would, right? I got into trouble. But I didn’t care – I was just utterly amazed that I could do this, this thing. So I started to practise. You know, with pencils and books and small things. It took ages to get a grip on it. I thought maybe it was all in my mind at first, that I was imagining it, and then, it was a bit like riding a bike, I just got it one day. Moving things without, um, actually touching them, was like the most natural thing in the world.’

I didn’t mention that it was a bit like riding a bike with no brakes, down a very steep hill.

‘And does it have anything to do with why you came here? Did you really get mugged?’

‘Yes. That was the truth. I just didn’t tell you the whole story.’ I paused; Alex was looking at me with a face like thunder. ‘I – I didn’t hurt them.’

‘What did they do to you?’

I realised he wasn’t angry with me, he was angry with them. This was good – anywhere his anger could be directed other than at me was good.

‘Nothing. Well, I mean, they were just trying to take my bag. But they held a knife to me and, I don’t know what happened, but the next second I was holding the knife. Well, not holding it exactly. It was—’ I couldn’t accurately describe it, so I stopped.

Alex put his head in his hands. I hadn’t thought it was that bad. Oh God, he did think I was a sociopath.

‘I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t hurt them. I know it was bad. I tried to stop. I did stop. I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. Then all this happened and . . .’ I ran out of steam.

He looked up at me with an expression I really couldn’t read. Like someone had told him his motorbike had been stolen.

‘Will you tell Jack?’ I asked.

His expression settled. ‘I think he needs to know.’

‘Why?’ I didn’t want to tell Jack. I knew he’d make Alex’s reaction look like a peace meditation.

‘Because, Lila, you’re his sister. And I have to get you out of the country and I need his help to do it.’

I threw off the blanket and stood up off the bed. ‘But he’ll hate me, he’ll look at me like you just did. Like I’m some kind of monster, something awful. Like the people who killed Mum.’

Suddenly he was on his feet. ‘Lila, that’s not what I think. I told you I don’t believe it. It’s not what Jack will think, either, once we explain.’

‘But you’re still not sure about me – I can see the doubt. And the way you’re looking at me now . . . it’s obvious.’

‘No – no, that’s not it. I’m angry now, for sure. But not with you. I’m furious with those kids for mugging you. I could kill them. You had far more self-control than Jack or I would have done.’

He sat back down on the bed, facing me. ‘I’m sorry about last night, and today. The way I’ve been treating you,’ he said. ‘It was a shock.’ He paused, trying to think what to say. ‘It’s what I was trying to tell you before. For the last three years I’ve been programmed to think of you, of people like you, rather, as something less than human. As all bad. It was as if the gene that triggers this was a rogue gene, like a cancer, wiping out all the good in people – and then I see you . . . It was, it was a bit like losing gravity.’ He ran his hands down his face, pressed his fingers into his temples. ‘Everything’s changed. I no longer know what to think or who to trust.’

I stared straight at him. Did he trust me? The silence started to thump like it had its own heartbeat. Neither of us moved or said anything for a long time. I was trying to reconstruct the whole night from this new perspective.

‘Is that why you almost killed Key too? Because you thought he was like me?’ Was their automatic reaction to try to exterminate us on sight?

‘What?’ His eyes flashed, his voice was low but angry. ‘I almost killed him because I saw him dragging you out of the house.’

‘Oh.’ I sank down onto the opposite bed.

‘I had no idea who he was – I just saw him with you and—’ He looked up at me apologetically and I felt my heart do a little jump. He’d been trying to save me. Put like that, it was swoonworthy stuff, though I doubted Key’s face agreed.

All of a sudden, none of it mattered anymore. The whole of last night could be rewritten in my head. He wasn’t angry with me. He didn’t hate me. Now all I needed was for him to tell me he was coming with me.

‘Where am I going to go?’

His eyes met mine. He really looked so tired. Like he didn’t have the energy to stand. He hadn’t slept yet. ‘I don’t know yet. I’m thinking about it.’

A thought bubbled to the surface. ‘What about my dad? What will we tell him if I just disappear?’

‘We’ll make something up. You can see him again when this is over. When it’s safe.’

‘You know he’s not going to be that happy about me missing my exams.’ It seemed ridiculous to be worrying about tests when I was potentially about to be killed, but I knew how my dad’s mind worked.

‘Yes, I realise that. I’m sorry. Maybe you can take them in a few months’ time.’

‘Hmmm. Maybe.’ I didn’t mind. Not taking exams and heading off into the sunset with Alex was a pretty amazing deal. I’d take it every time.

A thought was scuttling around my head, though, and I couldn’t shake it. I heard myself voice it quietly. ‘Are you coming with me?’

He took a while to answer, then he said, ‘You think I’d let you go alone?’ My heart leapt.

Alex stood up and came towards me and then knelt down in front of me. ‘Lila, when you asked me earlier why I was helping you and I told you I had no choice I meant I have no choice because you are—’

The trilling of a phone interrupted. I hung on to the last words, I am what? I am WHAT?

He was gone, though, over to the table, where his phone was vibrating.

‘Hello . . .? We’re good. Where are you? Did you find them?’

It had to be Key. There was a pause.

‘OK. OK. No, that’s good. Yes. I’ll call him later. We’re going to be gone in twenty-four hours. Is that long enough?’

‘Yes, I promise. Yes – I will be.’ A pause. ‘No. Not on her own.’ Another pause. ‘Yes. And Key – thank you.’

He hung up and turned towards me. I waited. He put the phone down on the table.

‘He’s followed them. They’re in San Diego. They’re trying to find us there. The Unit are closing in. They think we’re with them.’ He stopped and I caught the worry on his face. ‘I hope he doesn’t get caught. There’s not much I can do from here.’

I felt all the air come out of me. So we were safe for the moment. The fear wasn’t gone but it was muted. No one was about to come racing through the door. Apart from maybe the police but I was sure that Alex could handle them. He probably had some gadget in his bag that would persuade them to put their guns away and leave us in peace. For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, I felt myself relax, and my muscles started to scream as they uncramped.

‘I need to call Jack.’

My head jerked up. ‘Now?’

No, he couldn’t call Jack now. He needed to finish his sentence. I was what? He seemed to have forgotten our conversation, though. Instead, he crossed over to the chair where the holdall was still sitting and started rifling through it. He pulled out a small metallic-looking object and crossed to the phone that sat on the table between the two beds. He lifted the phone and attached the metal thing to the wires at the base. Then, glancing at me quickly, he dialled a number.