Hardware Issues

9

She yelped and he stopped. She picked up her foot and rubbed at her toes.

‘Stone,’ she said.

‘Why are you here?’ He spoke louder now they were out of earshot of the others.

‘Because of you,’ she said, as though the answer were obvious. And even from beneath the hood he could feel her eyes on him, pleading again.

‘Put your shoes on.’

As soon as she had he pulled her by the arm again, down the lane behind the courtyard and outbuildings, across the road and undercover where no one would see them.

The smell of urine was unapologetic in the dim, dank underpass. The place was empty bar for one long-abandoned armchair, a small pile of rusting beer cans and the spray-decorated walls, which at least added a bit of color to the otherwise lifeless concrete hole in the wall. He let go of her and paced. The sound of her panting breath was distracting. He could still hear the hint of a quiver in those gasps and it was unnerving.

‘You can’t be here.’ He turned and looked at her as directly as he could through the hood.

‘Okay. I understand.’

He pointed out into the open. ‘Turn left out of here, then left again. It will take you back to the city.’

‘Yes, okay, I—’

‘Good.’ He tugged at his hood and marched from the underpass, cursing under his breath when he heard her footsteps trotting after him.

‘But wait—’

He spun round. She was closer than he thought and she almost collided with him. ‘What do you want from me?’ he snapped.

‘I...’ She hesitated, and he hoped she’d give up now, turn around, go home. So he had frightened her, so what? If that was the only way to get rid of her. Except she still wasn’t leaving, frightened or not. ‘I just want to thank you. For what you did.’

‘You’ve done that now.’ He turned as if to leave again but she stepped in front of him. Jesus! He felt the tremble in his hands and was grateful it was too dark for her to notice.

‘You could have just left me.’

‘I should have,’ was the first thing that came to mind and out of his mouth at the same time. But even blatant, brutal honesty didn’t seem to deter her.

‘Why didn’t you?’

No ready answer came to mind, and the memory of that afternoon had

disrupted him enough already without examining it in closer detail. At least today it wasn’t white she wore. Would this now be in his nightmares tonight? Her returning like this? He looked to the floor, wanting to record as little detail about this scenario as possible. Without detail, it couldn’t haunt him. ‘I have to get back. They’ll wonder where I am.’

‘Of course,’ she said, but made no move to leave herself.

‘You can’t stay here. You’ll get me into trouble.’

‘I understand. I know all about trouble.’ She laughed, a half-laugh; half amused, half nervous. He walked around her but she called out, ‘Can I meet you? Another day?’

‘No.’

‘Please.’

He stopped, his heart jumping in his chest, his eyelids suddenly heavy, unbearably so. In his pocket, his fingernails dug into his palm. ‘Why?’

‘To talk.’

‘I don’t talk.’

That half-laugh again. ‘I can see that.’

He started walking but there was something very wrong with this. Not just her being here and him talking to her (Christ, when did he even last have a conversation with a woman?). But something else wasn’t right. He knew deep inside it hadn’t been right since the moment she’d gripped his arms and begged for her life. He may have brushed those nightmares off in front of Rafe, but they were signaling to him, linking him to his past, dredging something up he didn’t want or need to know about.

He slowed to a stop, glanced back. She was still there, waiting, and his hands wouldn’t stop trembling even when he clenched them deep in his pockets. What if she grabbed him again? What if she turned up unannounced at the warehouse? It wouldn’t take much for Rafe to have him thrown back onto the streets. He couldn’t live without the Tribe, couldn’t even consider it, not now. The Tribe had saved him.

Michael had saved him. Michael, his father figure... What would he do if he saw him now? What would he expect him to do? He wanted him to be leader one day, to replace him. How wrong about that he was.

He hung his head and sighed, his breath shaking. There was only one way to get her to leave. Perhaps too, he convinced himself, there was a chance it would settle the unrest that their regrettable encounter had stirred in him.

‘Just once,’ he relented.

Even without looking at her, he knew she was smiling as she said, ‘Great. Wait,

let me just get your number.’

‘No phones.’

‘Really? Why not?’

‘Tomorrow night. There’—he indicated back to the underpass with a slight nod of his head—‘nine o’clock.’ And when he walked on this time she didn’t follow.

He might have expected to feel relief that he’d shaken her off. But although he sensed an overwhelming torrent of emotions heading in his direction, relief was not one of them.

*

He didn’t rush back to the warehouse. Not when he couldn’t be certain his actions and inner turmoil weren’t visible for all to see, tattooed along the lines of his forehead or radiating out from the quake of his fingers. He wished now he’d just left her, the Outsider. After all, what was one more dead body round this way? One more victim, one more statistic. One less to worry about.

As he rounded the corner of the warehouse, he still shook all over. He walked past the thin yellow glow from the windows which cast his shadow as an ominous companion, and on to the next empty unit. It was a place he’d come to many times in the early years to be by himself, though it had been some time now since he’d last felt the need to return.

The heavy wooden door was seized half shut. He squeezed round it, just managing to push himself inside. In the darkness he edged forward across shattered glass and debris to where he knew the stairs would be, and treading carefully on the worn and fragile boards, he felt his way up three flights of stairs to the large expanse of the empty room at the top.

His feet skimmed over disintegrated plaster littering the floor as he made his way to the spot by the window he both loved and hated in equal measure and for different reasons.

Wrapping the cloak tight around himself, he perched on the edge of the frame.

The wide, paned window, barely holding on before, was now completely gone and from up here the chill on the breeze was biting.

He looked down to the empty roads below, the landscape of redundant factories, warehouses and offices, and then beyond to where the tallest buildings blocked out the light and activity at the heart of Brumont, a glass and steel wall separating one part of the city from another.

She was out there somewhere. Finding her way back home through this unwanted part of town where all the desperate and sometimes dangerous people

hid, one of whom she’d already met with not so very long ago. What would make her return just weeks later, and in the middle of the night, to the place where she’d almost been killed?

Bravery or stupidity were the only answers he could come up with, neither of which did much to settle his concerns. If she were either of those things, what else might she be capable of ?

Leaning back against the window frame, he lifted his heavy boots to rest upon the ledge. He lowered his hood to feel the bitter breeze wash over him, maybe clear his head, make his route clear again. By rights, he shouldn’t be having these thoughts, shouldn’t need to be contemplating anything. His place in the Tribe had been so assured, a way of life. Was all that threatened now? Was that why he was so unnerved?

Michael’s doctrine was certainly truer than Jacob had thought – there was one root cause of imbalance in the human psyche and that was other people. But the Tribe had been established to accept everyone in its midst as equal. It refused to judge, to question, assume or influence. All those things that shaved away at a person until they became only a two-dimensional copy of somebody else; until they forgot entirely who they might’ve been.

Now with only one action, one stupid spur-of-the-moment reaction, he had already let in thoughts he didn’t want to have. If he’d known what would be set in motion by acting on instinct alone, he’d have walked away from her that day instead.

Yet what choice did he have than to see her again now? Even when what he really wished was to be left alone to carry on his duties for the Tribe as he’d become used to.

There was one consolation in all of this at least, one glimmer of hope that despite this lapse in his focus all would soon return to normal. She might know where they lived now but they wouldn’t be there for much longer. The factory was more than two miles away and she’d be unlikely to find him again once they’d left.

As he raised his hood again, feeling comforted by its warmth around his ears, he only hoped he would be able to keep it together until then.

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