Free Guardian by Jo Anderton Page A

drawing on everything I could. The Flare inside me brightened, a rush of particles whispered deeper than my bones. “What are you doing?” My voice was barely audible.
    I caught glimpses of Aladio in the edges of my vision. “You’re too much of a risk,” he said, after a long hesitation. “We need to protect the balance between two worlds. That’s what programmers have always done. Even…even if it means locking you in silex for eternity.”
    Fear sent sharp pulses of light out through my silex to cast hard patterns on the ceiling. “No—” I gasped. “Don’t—”
    “ Shut up, both of you,” said the programmer carrying my feet. “Or we’re going to miss them reprogram the child!”
    “ Child—?” But all I could do was whisper, I couldn’t even move.
    Finally, the programmers halted. They lowered me to the ground gently, but I landed with an odd-sounding clunk. Something loosened around me, and I could feel my fingers, even move my head. Only then did I realise why I felt so heavy and numb: I was wrapped in a thick layer of hard silex, arms pinned to my sides, legs together, back straight.
    They propped me up against a pillar in the centre of a great, hexagonal room. More threads of piercing gold snaked out of the pillar and floor to drill into me. A whirring sound echoed up from a spider web of lines in the polished, chrome floor.
    “ Hurry.” The three programmers left, leaving only Aladio beside me. “We need to get this done.”
    Dozens of small, circular doors opened in the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the gaping ends of pipes extended into the room.
    “Don’t be afraid,” Aladio said, but his voice was unsteady. “It won’t hurt, you won’t feel a thing. It’s just like sleeping.”
    “ What—” I coughed, tried again. “What are they going to do to my child?”
    He shook his head. “Don’t worry about that now.”
    “ What about the puppet men? The doors? My world? I came to you for help, Lad! Don’t let them do this!”
    “ Aladio!” came a crackling voice from somewhere far above us. “Get out of there. There’s traffic building on her Flare. We have to shut her down, now.”
    “ I’m sorry,” Aladio whispered, and leaned close. “I can’t help you. I’m not who you think I am. So please, just take the peace we give you. Forget those nightmares, forget your child, and just sleep.”
    “ I can’t.” I called to the particles travelling through me, to the pions in my Flare. My light built. Set me free , I whispered to them, if you really are pions then please, rework this stuff into water and let me go! But for all my light and all my pleading all I managed to do was move my fingers, just a little bit more.
    “ You have no choice.” Aladio met my eyes with a look of such sadness, mingling with a kind of relief that hurt so much to see. He pulled the white gloves from his hands and gently, shaking ever so slightly, he touched my cheek.
    And the Flare inside me surged. The whispers and rushing at the edges of my hearing became shouting, screaming, and a roar.
    Great cracks ran the length of my silex prison, from neck to wrist, waist to ankles, enough to allow me to draw a deep, full breath. Lad’s hand was warm against my face, and that warmth followed the cracks, filling me.
    The warmth brought memories. Lad, sitting in front of the fire he and his brother had make, spooning kasha into his mouth; Lad, leaning on the ferry, laughing as I tried to coax him down; rosemary on his mother ’s grave; the firm set of his mouth, his first resolute ‘No!’; Aleksey’s blades, plunging into his back. His voice, inside my mind, loosening the control of the puppet men so I could save his brother.
    But above all of them, his hand in mine. Solid, warm. Comforting, giving strength.
    The light died, as suddenly as it had sprung up. Tinny voices shouted from outside the room. The programmers.
    “ —out of there, now, she needs isolation—”
    “ —Flare just dumped a