Shift (3 page)

Aubrey leant close into the speaker. I could have sworn I heard her say “Swordfish”: I heard the sibilant echo of the word in my mind. But the word that actually came out of her mouth was “Sturgeon.” The two words rang in my head, making me feel dizzy and confused, like a weird kind of déjà vu. I shook my head to try and clear it of the eerie feeling.

Three heavy clunks and the door opened. I waved at the camera in a lame greeting, wondering what the fascination with fish was all about, and followed Aubrey over the threshold.

The hallway smelt of leather and cigar smoke. Large, faded playing cards lined the walls and the Victorian kings and queens seemed to watch me as I passed. They didn’t look impressed. Aubrey pushed open the greenleather doors at the end, and the sounds of laughter and rattling dice filled the hallway.

Beyond was a domed room, filled with green card tables and spinning roulette wheels. Men dressed in suits and women in cocktail dresses were huddled over the games, their eyes glinting with greed. Aubrey’s face lit too.

I took a step forward, but my way was barred by a man so big he blocked out the light.

“Ms Jones. I wasn’t expecting anyone from ARES tonight.” He was dressed in a sharp tuxedo, which barely contained his muscles. His square jaw tightened, as Aubrey glanced away to watch a screaming woman scoop her winnings into a very low-cut cleavage. “As I’m sure you know, our licenses are fully up-to-date. I had an inspection only last week,” he said, with a touch of bitterness.

“Relax, Shipley. I’m off duty,” Aubrey said, patting his massive arm.

“In that case, we have a game of poker about to start. In the back.” The man mountain stepped aside and gestured with a dismissive jerk of this thumb towards a bookshelf on the far side of the room. Whatever was going on here, we weren’t welcome.

“Thanks, but we’re here to drink. Not to play. More’s the pity… But you know ARES.”

“Only too well,” he said, watching us walk away.

I followed Aubrey through the room, staring up at the gold-painted arches and glinting chandeliers. I hadn’t felt so uncomfortable in a place since my father dragged us to a golf club he was hoping to join last year. Although at least then I was wearing an M&S suit, rather than my tatty jeans and Atomic Rooster T-shirt. Even if it was vintage.

A few of the gamblers gave us a confused look, probably wondering what a couple of kids were doing in a casino, then turned back to their games.

A croupier raised her head as we passed her table. She had long, dark hair and coffee-coloured skin that shone in the golden light. Without taking her eyes off us, she shuffled a deck of cards at high speed, her hands a blur. She dealt the cards, flicking them across the table. They seemed to switch places midair. Watching her dealing was like watching someone moving under a strobe light. Unsettling, but utterly irresistible. She winked at me.

I banged into Aubrey who had reached the bookshelf. I could see now that one section of the shelves was set back further than the others, creating a hidden space. Unless you got up close, it looked like one whole wall of books but it was three walls positioned perfectly. I swayed to the left and the right, admiring how the optical illusion had been set up. One book out of place and it wouldn’t have worked. Aubrey sighed and pulled me to the right. To the rest of the room it must have looked as if we disappeared.

Hidden from the rest of the gamers, Aubrey pulled a thick, blue volume named The Theory of Games from another wall of books. The bookshelf slid across, revealing a room on the other side. It was smaller than the last, darker and less ornate. The card tables looked like rejects – the baize faded and torn – and the furniture was mismatched and chipped. Instead of Regency wallpaper and gilt-framed pictures, the walls were covered with shards of mirror, so you could only see tiny fragments of yourself, broken and shattered, as if Picasso had got hold of your reflection.

Games were still taking place, but instead of suits and cocktail dresses, everyone here was in jeans and trainers. Although designer jeans and limited edition trainers, by my reckoning. I felt even more out of place in here as if I’d not only stepped into another room, but another world. There was something weird about the place and the people in it. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe it was just me and I was suffering from shock, but everything felt somehow fluid. As if I was looking at it all through thick glass.

On the left, three young men wearing mic headsets sat facing a bank of TV monitors. The screens showed close-up images of what was happening on the other side of the wall.

“Play the queen,” I heard one say.

They paused to stare at Aubrey, looking as if they’d been caught out.

“Don’t mind me,” she said, heading for the bar. I shuffled after her, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible. Not easy when you’re six foot and have a picture of a huge cockerel emblazoned on your chest.

Aubrey raised two fingers to the stocky man serving drinks. He grunted and a minute later slammed two tall glasses in front of us. She gathered them up without paying.

She nodded for me to follow her towards a booth pressed up against one wall. It had two cracked green leather sofas either side of a dark wooden table, and was already filled with a group of kids who were laughing and playing cards. Aubrey smiled at the assembled group. They finished their drinks, threw down their cards, and cleared off. She hadn’t even said a word. Placing the drinks on the table, she sat down and I slid in opposite her, in small jerking movements, banging my knees on the table as I did.

She folded her hands under her chin and watched me. I tried to copy her, but my elbow slipped off the table and I jabbed myself in the leg. I leaned back in the leather seat, hoping she hadn’t noticed, and reached for the pale drink in front of me. I sniffed it. It smelt like paint stripper crossed with mint.

“Aubrey,” I said, coughing and putting the glass back down. “I should probably tell you, I’m only sixteen.”

“So what? I’m only fifteen,” she said. She laughed at my surprised face and smiled properly for the first time since we’d met. It was like a spotlight going on. “Scott, the rules that apply to normal people no longer apply to you. You’ve got a whole new set of rules to worry about.” She took a swig of her drink. “Besides, with what I’m about to tell you, you’re going to need it.”

The ice in her drink danced as she spun the glass in small circles. I watched the shattered light from the mirrors leave dappled trails on the pockmarked table. And waited.

Whatever she had to tell me, she didn’t want to and I was happy not to hear it. In my experience, if something makes a person that uncomfortable to say it out loud, it’s never good news. Like when Mum told me she was pregnant with Katie. Or Dad tried to give me The Talk.

I lifted my glass to my lips again, but still couldn’t bring myself to actually drink it. Aubrey had this cute wrinkle above her nose, in between her eyebrows, which I guessed meant she was thinking. Every now and then she’d open her mouth as if about to start speaking. Then stop. And return to spinning the glass.

I reached out and stopped it. “Look, you don’t have to tell me. I could just go home and we could pretend none of this…” I waved my arm around. “Whatever this is, ever happened. Because if I’m honest, I don’t really want to know.”

Aubrey’s confused expression vanished. Her brow was smooth once more and her eyebrow hitched upwards. My cowardice was clearly not inspiring confidence.

“You’re a Shifter, Scott. A person with what I guess you could call a special power.”

I snorted and leant back in the sofa. “So can I fly? Go invisible?”

“Don’t be stupid.” She rolled her eyes. “Shifters have the power to change reality. And by doing that, shape reality around them. We can change decisions we make, take paths we didn’t take, and change our present.”

She really had lost me. I stared blankly, wondering when anything she said was going to start making sense. I must have looked pretty dumb, because she shook her head and sighed. “I don’t usually have to explain any of this. I’m just a Spotter. I track Shifters down and the Regulators bring them in.”

“And you were tracking me?”

“No actually. I was following that kid, Lucas.”

“Lucas? Seb’s mental little brother? What did you want with him?”

“The guys at ARES had intel he might be a Shifter. But nope. Just another messed-up kid.” She sighed.

“And who or what is ARES? Because I’m guessing we’re not talking the god of war here?”

“The The Agency for the Regulation and Evaluation of Shifters. The government division set up to deal with all Shifting affairs. And they don’t take too kindly to people Shifting just to show off. Which is why you’re lucky I spotted you first.”

“But I don’t know what a Shifter is and I don’t know what I did wrong,” I said, desperately. “All I remember is climbing the Pylon and falling.”

Aubrey took a sip of her drink. “How much do you know about quantum physics?”

I laughed.

“What?’ she said. “You have a problem with quantum physics?”

“No, it’s just that you’re…”

“What? A girl? Is that what you’re saying? You think a girl can’t know about quantum physics?”

“No, of course not,” I stuttered. It was exactly what I’d been thinking. I coughed. “What about quantum physics?”

“Originally no one knew what was going on with Shifters. They thought it was magic or whatever. But when they started unravelling the mysteries of quantum mechanics it all started to make sense. Schrödinger’s Cat. The Double Slit Experiment.”

I laughed again. “Sounds like an all-girl punk band.”

Aubrey gave me her look. I stopped laughing. “Yeah, Double Slit. Go on,” I said.

“You know light acts as a wave and a particle?”

I didn’t. “Sure,” I said, nodding.

“In the Double Slit Experiment they fire a light particle at a sheet with two slits in it. You’d expect particles to just go straight through one of the slits, right? Like a bullet being fired at a wall through a hole. But instead of behaving like a good little particle, it acts like a wave and goes through both slits at the same time. It’s as if it goes left and right at exactly the same time. Unless,” she said, taking another sip. “And this is where it gets really weird, unless which slit the particle travels through is being observed – then it starts to behave normally again. That’s called the collapse of the wave function. It’s as if the particle is aware it’s being watched.”

“How can something be in two places at once?” I said, lagging behind.

“It isn’t in two places so much as it exists in a state of probability. A state of two potential realities. One reality where it goes through the left slit. One where it goes through the right.”

“Hang on, are you talking parallel universes?” I’d watched my fair share of Star Trek.

“No, there is only ever one universe. One reality.” She held up a long finger tipped in chipped blue nail polish, illustrating her point. “But there are infinite potential realities.” She spread her fingers wide, as if revealing the end of a magic trick. But the only thing she’d managed to make vanish was my grasp on what the hell was going on. If I’d ever had a grip in the first place. “What quantum physics proved is what Shifters have known for millennia. That we can change the way reality behaves just by observing it.”

“My head hurts.”

I’d always considered myself a pretty bright guy, especially when it came to science and stuff. But this was confusing the hell out of me. Which must have been clear to Aubrey.

“OK,” she leant forward, trying a new approach. “The Pylon.”

I nodded.

“You say you remember climbing to the top?”

“Yeah, and then the strut snapped,” I said.

“Ah, that might explain it. So you were falling? And your mind was racing through all the choices you made, right?”

“Exactly. I was wishing I hadn’t even bothered.”

“Well, you got your wish. You undid your choice and that’s when the Shift happened.”

“And I ended up lying on my arse having never made it over the fence?”

“Precisely. You Shifted to another reality, making it the reality. And the previous reality–”

“The one where I fell,” I interrupted.

“Yes. That ceased to exist as soon as you made the Shift. It collapsed.”

The sounds of laughter filled the silence between us. I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that it was starting to make some kind of sense or that I was now officially a freak.

I reached for the drink and took a glug. It was hideous. “OK,” I said, coughing from the alcohol burning my throat. “Let’s say I believe you, and I’m not saying that I do, but let’s just say I did believe you that I had this power to move from one reality to another. So what?”

“So what?” She was stunned.

“Yes, I mean why would the government care what I get up to?”

“Do you really think that the government, any government, is happy with the idea of people going around and making their own realities, having choice over what they do?” She shook her head. “Government is about control. So it makes sure that it controls the Shifters. That’s what the agency was set up to do. Make sure that there’s no unlawful Shifting going on.”

“How do they stop it?”

“They find Shifters and train us up. Watch us, regulate us, and make sure we don’t go crazy. Like cheating at exams or winning the lottery. They also protect us and stop us being manipulated by the bad guys.”

“Like who?”

“The terrorists. The Americans. Whoever.”

“And you don’t go to school? At all!”

“What? And live a normal life? ARES couldn’t allow that!”

Aubrey sounded bitter, but I was really liking the sound of this. I still wasn’t convinced by any of what she was saying, but the idea of somehow being able to have total control over my life sounded pretty awesome. “Show me where to sign up!”

“I’m serious, Scott. It’s hard. Especially now I’m an official Spotter.” She tapped the golden S on the arm of her jacket. I’d assumed it was just a fashion accessory. “Most Shifters just go through the Programme and then head out to live normal, Shift-free lives. But if you’re really good you stay on and join ARES for proper.” There wasn’t a hint of embarrassment in referring to herself as really good. If anything, there was a sadness there. “There are perks of the job, though,” she continued, suddenly smiling. “No one gives you crap for a start.”