Free Spark by Rachael Craw Page A

Hide this. Get into bed and pretend to sleep.” She turns me around and unzips my dress.
    I have to pin my elbows to my sides to keep it from falling to my feet. “Miriam! What the hell?”
    “You wouldn’t be able to get it off one-handed. Now go and do as you’re told. Put your pyjamas on, just in case. Actually–” She opens the lid of the medical kit, pulls out a bandage and tucks it under my chin. “Bind your hand once you’re in bed. Lie facing away from the door. Breathe long and slow. Do not come out for any reason.”
    “I don’t understand!” I feel myself skidding towards hysteria.
    She flips the lid of the case again and digs out a preloaded syringe. She removes the sheath from the needle and jams the point in my shoulder.
    I grunt, trying to jerk away but she grabs my elbow.
    “I’m sorry. This will calm you down and dampen your signal. Carolyn is coming to debrief
me
. When she gets here, she’ll take a reading of my signal, but I have no idea if she will be able to detect yours. Pray she can’t, for Kitty’s sake.”

FRETIZINE
    Fretizine. Without it my heart would gallop right out my chest and I would be found out. Not that I’m exactly sure how my pulse impacts the mysterious signal I apparently now emit.
    As instructed, I lie on my side, away from the door, taking slow fake-sleep breaths. The only thing I grasp in the panicked minutes before Carolyn knocks on the door is the certainty that being found out would somehow be dangerous for Kitty. It’s all the threat I need to comply. Paralysed by fear and Fretizine, I strain to hear anything below.
    I left the door ajar a couple of inches but all I catch after the initial knock and greeting in the hall is the scrape of chairs in the kitchen. It’s nearly one in the morning. Clearly, the Affinity Project isn’t concerned with business hours, or maybe that’s part of their MO, conducting affairs under cover of darkness. I wonder if Miriam has any intention of reporting what’s gone down at the Governor’s Ball. Perhaps they already know. They must monitor police bandwidths for signs of their clients. I shiver. It’s too easy to let my mind wander into dark places. Somewhere, out in the night, a lunatic twists inside with regret over a missed opportunity. He’d had Kitty right in his hands, had her by the neck. How easy would it have been for someone with the kind of strength and speed Miriam had described to snap her spinal cord? Rage makes me cold and I forget my measured breathing. Even through the drug fog I can feel my heart stamp.
    Stop it
.
    I can’t jeopardise things by losing control. Where are my heightened senses? My Superman hearing? I strain to hear. Buffy pads through the door, jumps on the bed, kneads the quilt and purrs loudly. “
Go away!
” I hiss, dislodging her. She drops to the floor and stalks out, her tail flicking in agitation.
    I try again to hear, my ears pop, roar then clear. The tap drips in the bathroom, wind keens beyond the window, boughs creak, and beyond that is the faint song of the river. I force myself to focus on the kitchen below, amazed to note a rising inflection, a foreign cadence, a pause, a question …
    “… coordinates for the car? … very good … you make my job easy, Miriam …”
    “… cleaners will find him in the trunk.”
    “Excellent.”
    “He was young,” Miriam says. “I hate it when they’re young.”
    “You can’t look at it like that …” Carolyn, brisk and schoolmarmish. “… mercy … kept him from a nightmare life … a monster. Think of the lives you’ve saved, the families you’ve kept from heartbreak.”
    “I don’t know that Phil’s wife would thank me for saving him.”
    “The next Spark might have been a good man, a good woman. Don’t regret your gift, Miriam. You save lives.”
    “A hair’s breadth of a chromosome and you’d have needed someone to save the world from me.”
    Sick realisation dawns on me. I recall Miriam’s fierce eyes when I