Cautiously I stepped out of the car onto the kerb and closed the door behind me, surprised when the black Jeep simply drove off, leaving me there. Alone. Outside. In the light.
And that wasn’t even the best part.
Convinced I must be dreaming, I refused to turn around, choosing instead to watch the Jeep as it travelled to the end of the road and slowly took the corner. Once it was out of sight, I finally braced myself and turned, falling to my knees instantly. My fingers sank into the damp grass and I wept uncontrollably as I looked up towards my garage.
They’d driven me home.
Two
They had held me prisoner for just over four weeks. The date was the first thing I checked on my newly reactivated M-Band.
The knowledge of how much time had passed was both a relief and disorienting. I could’ve sworn they had kept me locked in the dark for months.
Somehow I picked myself up off the damp grass and started moving. Only two things dominated my thoughts. One, get out of the open. Two, find food.
Everything else could wait.
I made it into my room above the garage and double-checked the time and day, not fully trusting my M-Band. It was 6 a.m. on Thursday. Mom should be home from the night shift at the hospital and passed out in bed by now.
I hurried to my desk and opened a drawer, crying out with relief when I found an old box of chocolate-chip cookies. I usually kept a stash of food in my room, but I had never been so grateful to find an unopened box. I tore the top off, causing half of the cookies to fall onto the ground. I stuffed one in my mouth before getting down on my hands and knees to collect them, shoving another in my mouth before I’d finished the first.
Once I had recovered every last broken piece of cookie and had the box tucked tightly to my chest, my breathing began to slow. I savoured the third cookie, each mouthful sinfully perfect, then I packed the box away for later.
I stumbled towards the bathroom and stuck my head under the faucet, taking several gulps of cold water into my mouth. It was heavenly. I stared at the running water – just hours ago I would’ve done anything for a tap with running water.
Now that I had food and water – not enough, but then, I wasn’t sure I would ever have enough again – and was in my garage, I knew I needed to start thinking beyond the necessities. I kept the light off and closed the blind, leaving just a small crack of daylight filtering in. I turned to face myself in the mirror, carefully removing my glasses. I stared at my reflection, my eyes brimming with tears at the shadowed sight of me.
‘Bastards,’ I croaked, sucking in a broken breath.
I was covered in dirt and shockingly gaunt. The small amount of skin that was visible beneath the grime was sallow, my hair matted with what I knew was a cocktail of dried blood, sweat, vomit and worse. My dull eyes took all of this in, while I smelled the overall feral stench that seemed to be coming off me in waves. Ignoring the random tear that slipped down my face, I turned on the shower and began to strip off my tattered pieces of clothing, throwing them straight into the bin bag in the corner. I’d think while getting clean.
I shook with desperate relief when I stepped into the warm water. Strange how such simple things now felt entirely surreal. I hung my head, letting the water pound my weary body, and watched the stubborn stains gradually relinquish their hold and swirl down the drain.
I wanted to cry. To scream and let it all out. I wanted to throw things and crumple into a heap on the floor. But I knew if I started …
And I had to think.
Why had they just let me go? It made no sense.
What did they expect me to do? Want me to do?
It was a trap. I wasn’t a complete fool. I just had no idea what game I was playing. Only that the teams were not evenly matched.
I reached for the soap and loofah and scrubbed hard, ignoring my quivering body. They’d just left me there. In the dark. For weeks and weeks. Now I was out, but that did not make me free. I was still there in my mind. Still locked away. At least I was sane enough to know what the real question was at this point – just how broken was I?
When no response came to mind, I slumped down to the shower floor and turned my attention to washing my hair.
Sitting helped.
‘Think, Maggie,’ I ordered, clutching my hair. ‘Cry later. Think now.’
The smart move was to run. Fast. Far.
I could ditch my M-Band and use my black-market one until I had enough money to get the microchip that was implanted near the top of my spine removed. It would mean living off the grid for the rest of my life – there were no replacement chips, and no counterfeit ones had ever been successful. Not to mention the removal operation was incredibly risky. The chips were embedded near the spine for a reason – an inexperienced surgeon digging around so close to the spinal cord could easily leave you a quadriplegic. But with the right money and contacts …
Then I remembered: I didn’t have any contacts.
Gus?
I whimpered.
Could I try to contact him?
There were a few people I could think of who might agree to try to get a message to him. But even doing that was a risk. My father’s words, if nothing else, had stuck. Even now, I could feel his laugh crawl over my skin as he gloated that all of my contacts were loyal to him first. I gritted my teeth and went back to rinsing the grunge out of my hair.
I shampooed my hair three times and even after dousing it in conditioner, I still couldn’t get a brush through it.
After I towelled off, I cut off half the length of my hair until the worst of the matted clumps were gone and I could drag a brush through the rest. It was a nasty hack job, but I threw it into a ponytail and moved on.
I sat on the edge of my bed, intermittently glancing at my calendar on the wall, pretending I hadn’t already made up my mind.
I couldn’t go to Gus. The fact was, I already knew Gus was long gone.
I should run. Leave a note for my family and disappear.
Instead, I dressed in a pair of jeans that were once skin tight and now hung loosely from my hips and a black tank top. I’d thrown my boots out with the rest of my other clothes so I shoved on an old pair of navy Converse, before collapsing back on my bed.
Four weeks locked up on the brink of starvation really takes a toll.
I wanted to sleep, and yet knew I couldn’t. After a few minutes, I forced myself upright. I looked in my cupboard for my black-market M-Band, but after turning the cupboard inside out, I sat back on my heels. It was gone.
After a moment, I fisted my hands. Feeling powerless wasn’t going to help me do what I had to do, so I got up, grabbed my backpack – pausing to stuff in the box of chocolate-chip cookies – and headed to the house.
I was in danger and my family would be safer without me. But I had to be sure that Mom and Sam were okay first.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. If Mom had picked up an extra shift, she might not even be there. And if Samuel worked at Burn last night, there was a good chance he’d never even made it home. Either way, I certainly wasn’t expecting to walk down the hall to the sound of voices and peer around the corner to see both of them up, dressed and sitting at the kitchen table. Between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs they appeared to be discussing a pile of papers in front of them.
The smell of the food attacked my senses.
‘Uncle Liam said he had an old college friend he might’ve kept in touch with. We should try that,’ Sam said.
Mom shook her head. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times. He didn’t keep any of his friends. He was too smart for that. We won’t find him, Sam.’
He slammed his hand down on the stack of papers. ‘Damn it, Mom! Then what are we going to do? I’ve run out of people to ask and every day that goes by … I don’t know what to do! We can’t just give up on her!’
They were talking about me. A pain shot through my chest. They were looking for me, just like I had for Dad.
‘We’re not giv
ing up!’ Mom snapped back vehemently. ‘We just need a new plan.’ Her shoulders slumped and she put a hand over her face. ‘It’s all my fault, Sam.’
Sam leaned forwards and put a hand on her back. ‘Not all yours. Mine too. We made this choice together. We couldn’t have known she’d do this. Jesus, Mom, we still don’t even know where she went.’
Mom whimpered and I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. ‘She’s like him, Sam. Smart. And too determined for her own good. If anyone was going to do this, she was. I should’ve known.’
I took a step into the kitchen, grabbing the countertop to help me keep my balance. Sam and Mom both looked up and gasped in unison.
I smiled pathetically, knowing I pretty much looked like Death’s cousin. ‘I promise you, Mom, I’m nothing like him.’ I gripped the straps of my backpack tightly and couldn’t stop my eyes from darting to their food. I had to force myself not to launch towards it.
Mom’s face scrunched up tight, but she couldn’t hold in the wail as she leaped from her chair and crushed me to her. She kept trying to talk, but her racking sobs choked her words every time.
I looked over to Sam and caught him wiping away his own tears.
He cleared his throat. ‘’Bout time you got home, Mags. Mom’s been a total mess.’ He coughed again and turned towards the sink, busying himself with the dishes.
Mom finally loosened her grip and got her breathing under control. She stepped back and took a better look at me. She gasped again.
‘Oh God, Maggie. What did he do to you?’ she cried, leading me to a chair. ‘Why are you wearing sunglasses?’ she asked hesitantly.
I swallowed, embarrassed. ‘It’s bright for me at the moment. They help.’
Her brows pulled together and I knew she was fighting for control. ‘Here, let me take your bag,’ she said, reaching for the straps on my shoulders.
No! My food was in there!
Mom saw my reluctance and, after glancing towards Sam, dropped her hands, leaving me with my bag.
‘Did you know he was never really a neg?’ I asked quietly.
Mom’s quiet sob was answer enough.
Samuel placed a glass of water and a plate in front of me. Two slices of plain toast with butter – as if he knew I would struggle to stomach anything more.
‘Thanks,’ I said, watching as he sat opposite me.
He met my eyes and spoke softly. ‘No one will take your things, Maggie. You can keep your bag if you want, or put it down by the chair. Either way is fine. You’re safe here with us.’
I swallowed nervously, slowly releasing my hands from my bag so that I could eat my toast. It seemed to be enough and Sam said no more even though I didn’t – couldn’t – remove it from my back.
I looked at the papers spread out on the table: old business documents. And some photographs I didn’t realise Mom had managed to keep. When Dad was first arrested, M-Corp security had done a sweep of the house and his offices. Unapologetically they took everything that related to him, explaining it was standard procedure. I had managed to save one photo, but everything digital had been wiped and the rest they confiscated.
I tilted my head to look at one of the photos of Dad on the kitchen table. He was smiling and shaking hands with a man wearing a lab coat. The man looked about the same age as Dad and I vaguely remembered seeing him once or twice when I was a kid.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, shifting the picture towards Mom.
‘Mike Peterson. He worked with your father for a few years before he got offered some big job in Chicago. Your father was furious. He thought the job should’ve been his.’ She frowned. ‘In some ways he was never the same after that.’
We were all silent and I concentrated on eating. My throat was raw from swallowing the cookies, but I didn’t care. The sensation of eating my first warm food in over a month was indescribable.
‘Did you know, Sam?’ I asked him, after finishing the first piece of toast.
‘We both knew, Mags. We’d seen his experiments, figured out what he was doing. Mom tried to talk to him, tried to get him to stop, but he was … obsessed, and eventually he just stopped talking to us.’
‘How could I not have known?’
Sam shrugged. ‘You were busy with school and Dad used to take you out to those dinners at the diner once a week and that seemed to be all you needed. You thought the sun shone from him and we didn’t want to take that away from you.’
‘Once the world believed he was a neg, we didn’t want to make it harder by telling you that it was even worse than that. As far as you were concerned, he never left us, but was taken, and we thought that was best for you,’ Mom finished.
My eyes pricked with fresh tears. ‘And you did that, knowing that it made me think the worst of you two.’ I’d thought Mom had given up on him too soon and that Sam had turned his back on the family. That he should have fought alongside me.
‘We all handled things after Dad in the only way we knew how. We hoped you’d think he’d been sent to a rehabilitation farm and that eventually he’d be reintegrated into society somewhere,’ Sam explained.
‘Oh, wow,’ I said, ‘we’ve really been running circles around each other.’ They had no idea I’d put any hopes of that theory to rest a long time ago. How could they? I knew things about M-Corp that no one else knew. That was why they’d asked what he had done to me, and not what the Mercer Corporation had done.
And if I told them everything, I’d be putting them in danger too. Hadn’t I dragged enough people down with me? Lost in thought, I realised I was staring at my empty plate. Mom stood up and put a banana in front of me.
‘You’ll need to take things slowly, Mags. I don’t know the whole story, but I’d say it’s safe to guess you haven’t eaten much for the past month, would that be right?’
I nodded, pressing my quivering lips together.
‘Oh, my sweetheart,’ Mom said. I could hear her voice thicken with emotion. ‘You’ll want to eat a lot of everything right away,’ she said, fighting to keep her voice level. ‘Your body will even accept quite a bit, but be careful. It will also reject the sudden return to a normal diet. Try to take it easy and stick to plain food for a few days.’
I nodded again, unable to admit I’d already been taught this lesson while imprisoned in the dark.
‘Maggie, what happened?’ Sam asked. I respected the fact that he just came out with it.
I took a small sip of water and measured my words carefully. ‘I found Dad. He put a gun to my head and told me the truth. That he’d been watching me all along while I’d been trying to find him and that he wished I’d never bothered looking.’
Mom covered her mouth with one hand and grabbed mine in her other. I squeezed it back before moving my hand away.
‘He locked me up and kept me prisoner. I think …’ I swallowed, seeing my cell around me again. ‘It was to scare me out of ever looking for him again.’
‘Half killing someone will do that,’ Sam said, taking a good look at me.
I nodded. ‘He’s a very bad person. He … The things he does. He sells his technology and a lot of people suffer because of him.’ I took another sip of water and let out a deep breath. ‘The best thing he ever did was leave us. I’m sorry I ever looked for him.’
‘How did you get away?’ Sam asked.
I shook my head, still wondering the same thing. ‘He just let me go,’ I said, avoiding any talk of M-Corp. ‘But not out of compassion. He’d kill me in a heartbeat.’ I looked up, meeting first Mom’s and then Sam’s eyes. ‘He’d kill any of us.’
I watched until I saw understanding settle on their faces.
My M-Band beeped with my programmed morning reminder. The bus. I looked back at Mom and Sam. ‘I had someone with me and I need to make sure he’s okay. But first, I need you both to do something for me and it’s big.’
‘What?’ Sam asked cautiously.
‘I need you to pack up and leave.’ I ignored their wide eyes. ‘Get out of the city
and use whatever money you have to buy GPS hazers so you can’t easily be tracked.’
‘And what about you?’ Sam asked.
I shook my head. ‘He’ll have someone tracking me. My M-Band’s already been hacked and I’m sure they won’t let me out of their sight. You’re safer without me and I have to make sure my friend is okay. Please. I’m begging you, Sam. Get Mom away from here. It isn’t safe. I’ll find you when I can.’ I held his eyes, letting all of the horror I’d been through flow from me to him.
When he shrunk back in his chair, his hand running quickly through his hair, I knew I’d made my point.
‘No, Maggie,’ Mom said, shaking her head. ‘We just got you back. We’re not leaving you now. And I have my job, we can’t just –’
Samuel cut her off. ‘We’re leaving, Mom. Go pack.’
‘What?’ Mom said. ‘Why?’
Sam was still staring at me and an understanding passed between us. He would do this for us. For our family. I just managed to withhold the strangled cry that threatened to escape from my lips. After all this, it would be Sam who held the family together. Not me. It was never me.
‘Look at her, Mom. Do you think he’d hesitate to do the same to you or me? Jesus, she was his favourite! We leave in an hour.’
‘But we can’t leave Maggie behind!’ she yelled.
Sam clenched his teeth. ‘Do you think I want to do that? But we have no choice. This is on us, Mom. We kept the truth from her. We didn’t trust her and she paid the price.’
‘Maybe I could talk to him.’
‘No, Mom,’ I said softly, but she already knew.
‘I’ve still got most of the money you gave me,’ Sam said.
I nodded. ‘Good. Those zips are untraceable, but try to save most of it. You’ll need a lot for the hazers. Do you know anyone who could help you get them on the black market?’
‘There’s someone. Maybe,’ Sam said.
With no other alternative, I’d have to trust Sam could work this out. I turned my attention to Mom. ‘I know it’s hard to leave. But trust me when I say that I’m stronger than you think. I’ve been doing things … things that I’m ashamed to admit, especially now I know I was doing them for such an evil man. But the point is, he’s not done with me yet and I can’t fight him the way I need to unless I know you’re safe.’