And he didn't even want to look at that social networking thing. He knew what it was from Gran's list of things to avoid, but were these guys insane? Why would anyone want to tell strangers that much about themselves? Ian just didn't get it. He imagined what his life would have been like if he'd done that, and it terrified him.
His computer was just a library and a typewriter. That was all he wanted from it, no matter how riveting the idea of porn seemed and how hard it was to keep his mind off girls. He was looking for information on cephalopods. It was a topic he'd been avoiding in case it freaked him out, but he could face it now, and there was no harm in searching online with keywords like octopus. It was high school biology, stuff that a million kids would access. Livvie assured him the VPN gateway would stop nosey assholes tracking it to his computer anyway.
It certainly beat books. Once Ian found the general sites about marine biology, he was drawn into the video clips. Reading what these creatures could do with lights, colour, and shape was one thing. Seeing it happen was something else entirely.
Part of him had wished Kinnery had based his experiments on more glamorous animals, but now he was mesmerized. A little mimic octopus not only changed colour and shape, but also acted like other things. One moment it disguised itself as drifting weed, then a sea snake, a sole, and even a scorpion fish. A regular octopus, the kind he'd seen in movies, settled on a rock and changed colour and texture to merge perfectly with the algae on it. It became invisible. Ian paused the video and just couldn't see where the octopus ended and the rock began.
It was the most astonishing thing he'd seen. He made a note of the URL so he could show Mike. Eventually he moved on to clips of squid, who were anything but invisible, communicating with each other in lights and colours like some incredibly complex, multi-level Morse code.
Now that's cool. Seriously cool.
Yes, he was okay with having something in common with these creatures. They weren't gross. They were smart and oddly beautiful. Octopuses could even work out how to remove childproof caps on bottles. But the most important thing was that they could work out how to hide. They had to. They didn't have claws or armour to defend themselves.
Ian had never eaten one, and now he never would.
He took stock for a moment. He checked himself in the full length mirror, using his learner's driving permit and passport as a reference. This was definitely him. This was the self he'd always see in his mind's eye and that he had to be able to get back to without needing a mirror.
Maybe he should have told Mike that he now practised making himself morph just to make sure he could get back to this face if something went wrong. He just didn't want to worry him.
And the whole thing was kind of personal. Rob had pointed out that morphing while he was fooling around with a girl would be a catastrophe. The only way that Ian had found to test if he could keep from morphing in that kind of situation was way too embarrassing to discuss with anyone, even Rob. But now he could do it.
As long as Ian had an image in his mind, he could make himself change. And he was getting better at resembling whatever picture he chose. He still had no idea where the previous faces had come from, but he'd probably seen them and forgotten, like he hadn't realised how often he'd looked at that photo of David Dunlop. He could have chosen to look any way he wanted, but that was too much pointless choice. Something in him knew that he needed to resemble the man he'd cherished as the great-grandfather he'd never known.
Besides, Livvie had told him this was how he was meant to look.
What could he try next? If he could polish this and mimic a few more faces really well, he'd be ready to handle anything. He'd have complete control of it. It would never catch him out. He'd always be able to vanish, and he'd always be able to cope with a girl.
Sorted.
Ian studied the images on his tablet, mostly pictures that Rob had shared from his own album. He wasn't comfortable using those for practice. They were real people who Rob knew and cared about.
But whose face do I know?
He'd seen a lot of pictures of Tom, even live video. The guy was pretty much the same age as him, too. For a moment, Ian couldn't resist the challenge. He visualized Tom's face and felt the familiar windburn sweep across his skin. Then he looked in the mirror.
No. Stop it.
The resemblance was very, very close. For a couple of seconds, it disoriented him. A stranger's face was fine, but this felt creepy and disloyal. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He snapped himself back to normal, switched on the TV, and tried focusing on anonymous guys in adverts instead.
That was better. It felt scientific and impersonal. He sat back in the armchair with a pocket mirror and checked how well he'd done each time he morphed. Yes, he was getting results; not right every time, but often enough, and not perfect, but good enough to pass for the original on a cursory glance. And he could snap back to being himself with minimal effort. The more he did it, the easier it got. He studied his own face in the mirror again.
And to think this used to terrify me.
The only thing that scared Ian now was being alone and not part of this group of family and friends. He was happy here. He belonged.
For a moment, he thought of the octopus blending seamlessly with the rock. Maybe it was time to try breaking down his changes into separate components, into pigment and texture and shape, to see what was possible. Why not? He needed to know as much as possible. He could always get back to being himself again now.
His old work jacket was an Army surplus parka in a camouflage pattern that he was sure they didn't use these days. He put his hand on it and tried to visualize the pattern continuing across the skin. For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then his skin began to look blotchy and uneven, like a few old bruises fading through to yellows and greens.
Ian concentrated as hard as he could. The colours moved slightly, then darkened. He shut his eyes to block out distractions for a moment, saw the DPM fabric in his mind, and opened his eyes again.
It wasn't even close to the perfect, seamless match that the octopus had managed, but the skin on the back of his hand was now patterned like the jacket, except the greens were more an olive-brown and the darkest brown was a little lighter. It was like finally forcing open one door and seeing the rest all burst open at the same time. Whatever he'd activated or learned to use in his nervous system was suddenly doing much more than he'd imagined it could.
Ian visualized a cloth wiping across the back of his hand. The skin snapped back to the light olive tan he now regarded as normal. Just to make sure that he hadn't triggered unexpected changes elsewhere, he opened the desk drawer and took out an ink pad to make another record of his fingerprints. From what he could see of his thumbprint with a magnifying glass, the pattern of swirls hadn't changed since he'd started taking prints. Everything was under control.
You were right not to tell me what I was, Gran.
If he'd known what he could do when he was a child, he'd have treated it as a game, someone would have caught him, and he would have been locked up in a lab for the rest of his life. It was far better to find out after he'd learned to take care of himself, and when he understood what the stakes were. Gran got it right. The lie had hurt, but the truth would have been disastrous.
When Ian headed downstairs, the only sign of life was Rob's cell phone on the kitchen table. Even Oatie was absent. A quick check on the garage and the security camera feeds showed that the Mercedes was gone, too. As Ian filled the coffee maker, he heard water running in the pipes and guessed Rob was in one of the downstairs bathrooms.
Then the phone rang. Ian glanced at the screen and saw the incoming call icon, Tom's picture. They'd spoken a few times, but never via a video call.
Ian wasn't afraid of morphing at the wrong moment any more. He picked up the phone.
"Hi Tom." There. It was that easy. "I think your dad's in the john. I'll go get him."
"Ian? Hi." Tom obviously knew the voice if not the face. "He's let
you escape from the gym, then."
Ian heard the rush of water. "I think he's on his way. How's college?"
"I'm working up my special excuses to get time off during term. It's going to be great to see everyone."
Rob walked up behind Ian and peered over his shoulder to take over the conversation. "Sorry, kiddo, I was in the loo," he said to Tom. "So, you're definitely coming over next month, yeah?"
It was Ian's cue to hand over the phone and wander off to the living room with his coffee. Rob came to find him about fifteen minutes later, looking pleased in the way he always did when he'd spoken with Tom.
He patted Ian on the shoulder. "I take it you're feeling confident now."
"Yeah. I can maintain this."
"Well, that opens a lot more doors."
Ian wanted to show Rob what he could do, but it didn't seem like the right moment. "Where's Mike and Livvie?"
"Gone out to buy some airsoft kit."
"Couldn't he order it and get it delivered?"
"Come on, you know Mike. He sees every delivery he doesn't need to have as some potential security breach. And he needs to do everything himself. Y'know, he'd have been really unhappy if he'd ended up in the Army full-time. He'd be a colonel by now. All meetings and memos."
"But he hands stuff over to lawyers and accountants. He's got people for everything."
"Even his people have got people, mate. But there's some things he just won't delegate. Especially manual labour."
Rob wasn't joking. Mike treated making things like a religion. They walked out to the stables to check the progress of the kill house. Stacks of cut wood – planks, batten, sheets of plywood – stood in the covered yard awaiting construction. Inside, Mike had marked the floor and walls with lines of spray paint and stacked straw bales.
Ian walked up and down the flagstone passage that separated two facing rows of stalls, working out how the place would look when the wood was in position. It seemed a shame to spoil such nice stables, but Mike never had to worry about what someone else would think or if it would affect the value of the house. Ian sometimes caught glimpses of what Mike's wealth really meant, and they were never in the places he expected to see them.
"Are we going to build this?" Ian had helped build the log frames on the makeshift assault course in one of the paddocks. Mike was a competent workman. "What is it, partition walls with windows and swing doors?"
Rob studied something on his phone. "Yeah, Mike's trying to make the space a bit more complex. Otherwise it'd be like clearing a hall in a block of flats, although that's pretty bloody hairy too."
"Any tips?" Ian asked.
"Yeah, don't stand in front of a door to open it. That's where the buggers aim first. Having said that, I've kicked down doors a few times, so what do I know? But to be on the safe side, fire through interior walls before you get to the door. Or toss in a grenade. Preferably both." Rob paced out a line, imagining something. "Provided you're not worried about the paperwork or a court martial, that is. We'd all be speaking German now if we'd had bloody lawyers breathing down our necks in World War Two."
"Wouldn't they have shot all the lawyers, though?"
Rob winked at him. "You always look on the bright side, mate. I admire that."
Mike and Livvie returned with boxes of equipment – authentic-looking carbines, magazines, goggles, all kinds of kit – and laid it out in the stables. Ian sorted through the boxes, slightly baffled. It seemed to take more equipment to pretend to fight a battle than to engage in a real one. Mike picked up a carbine and demonstrated it to Ian.
"You can't exactly shoot locks out with this, but it feels the same weight and you can use proper optics," he said. "Everything fits on your webbing the same way, too, and it'll give you a sense of what it's like when someone shoots back. If it suits you and you want to progress, I'll get you some training at a proper shoot house."
Ian looked at the price tags. "Damn, Mike, some of this stuff costs as much as the real thing."
"You want to try it out, then?"
"Sure."
Rob started walking back towards the house with Livvie. "Call me if you need a target. I'm going to track down some of my old oppos and see where they're working now."
Mike loaded a pistol and squeezed off a few rounds at a bale of straw with a rapid putt-putt-putt-putt-putt. Ian decided to risk an opinion.
"Rob's still kind of lost, isn't he?"
"Yeah, he needs goals. But he's running out of them." Mike loaded a carbine and demonstrated the mechanism to Ian without saying a word to explain it. "He always wants to be pushed beyond his limits."
"How about an expedition somewhere remote?"
"No, he'd see that as self-inflicted. You know what he'd love? A post-apocalyptic wasteland. A zombie invasion. Anything where he's got no choice but to make the best of it."
"I thought you both liked challenges."
"Ah, but I can always deploy my rich guy's parachute if things go wrong, even if I don't plan to, so by definition I'm playing at it. I think it's not having a choice that hits the spot for Rob." Mike handed Ian the unloaded rifle and a magazine. "Come on. We're freezing our asses off here. Let's armour up and go shoot each other."
They dressed in the indoor range. There was a mirror in the small locker room, and it didn't bother Ian until he caught his reflection. He'd never worn full combat rig with helmet and goggles before. With the rifle, he looked like a real solider, and it was too much for him. He was an imposter. He was no better than those guys he saw on the Internet trying to come across as badasses when they were just paintballing, guys who'd never faced what Mike and Rob had. Or Great-Granddad. He turned away from the mirror, appalled at himself.
"I swear this isn't as dumb as it looks," Mike said. He'd picked up on Ian's reaction and seemed to think it was because they weren't using live rounds. "It's not so different to the simulated ammo we use in training, except that stuff fits regular weapons. The rounds still hurt like hell."
"Don't worry, I understand." Ian adjusted his helmet, trying to avoid the mirror. "Really."
Mike caught his arm and pulled him back in front of the mirror. "Gap," he said, tugging at Ian's body armour. He treated everything as if it was live fire anyway. "You need that tightened up. You'd be amazed where rounds can sneak in."
Ian couldn't avoid his reflection now. It was a whole different kind of recognition, nothing like seeing the core of himself in a changed face. This was a glimpse of a different state of being. He was confronting a fantasy. He hadn't felt this uncomfortable in a long time.
"Am I playing at it, Mike?"
"No more than anyone else in training. And I'm taking you seriously."
Ian didn't have to explain, then. Mike understood.
They stalked each other in the woods, sprinting from trunk to trunk so Ian could get a feel for snap shooting. But in a matter of minutes, it didn't feel like simulation at all. It became real. Mike stepped out of cover to fire and Ian froze mid-aim. His brain said he couldn't possibly shoot Mike. A round caught him in his left shoulder, but he still couldn't return fire.
Mike took a few more shots from the cover of the tree and Ian fired back seconds later, but that was way too slow. He couldn't steel himself to target Mike until the guy broke cover and closed the gap, firing as he moved. Ian forced himself as Mike came in close to fire at very close range. Yes, those rounds damn well hurt when they hit unprotected flesh.
"You okay?" Mike pushed his goggles up to the top of his helmet. "Problem?"
"It was really hard to shoot you."
"Psychologically, you mean."
"Yeah. I don't mean aim."
Mike gave him a slap on the back. "That's normal. Once you get hit and hurt enough times, you'll start shooting back for sure. Like when you were sparring with Rob. Want to try again?"
Ian indicated an empty magazine. "I'm out. Look, can I ask you some personal stuff? "
"Anything you like." Mike started walking back to the range. It wa
s getting dark. "Are you wondering if you'd be capable of killing someone?"
"Yes. Emotionally capable, I mean. Not skill."
"I think most people can kill. It's just depends on what presses their button and how hard it needs to be pressed. Coming under fire for the first time did the job just fine for me."
Ian knew the worst thing to ask a guy like Mike was how it felt to kill and how many times he'd done it. It even sounded creepy coming from an interviewer in a serious documentary. But Mike was the most patient guy Ian could imagine, and he wanted to understand how a capacity for violence could be part of that.
"Ever wished you hadn't killed someone?" he asked.
"Not yet. I know some people do when they get older."
"Ever get nightmares?"
"Not many, and not about taking a life."
"Am I prying?"
"No. Not at all. They're sensible questions. You're right to ask them."
They changed out of their kit and cleaned up. Ian sat on the bench next to Mike and polished his boots in silence.
"My sister doesn't understand how confusing combat is and what you don't notice or recall," Mike said suddenly, as if there'd been some argument about it in the past. "You know you're being shot at, so you open fire. No problem. Us or them. But you often can't tell if you fired the shot that killed someone. There's usually too much going on. I killed a guy trying to bundle me into a vehicle, and I still don't know if I remember it accurately. Has Rob told you the story?"
"Depends," Ian said. "I don't know if he thinks he remembers the same parts that you think you remember."
Mike nodded. "That sums it up."
"You would have ended up dead. Sooner or later."
"Probably. I didn't think that at the time, because American hostages are worth money. But the guy could have sold me to someone who would have beheaded me for the cameras. So I decided I'd rather die trying to escape than go missing for years or have Livvie see a video of me getting my head hacked off. I couldn't bear thinking what my family would go through. I know it sounds crazy, but if I fought back and got shot, at least they'd have closure and they'd know it was quick."