Free Stray by Rachael Craw Page A
Authors: Rachael Craw
Inside are four coin-sized pads of gauze. Each one blinks red with what appears to be a tiny computer chip embedded in the fabric. He takes one, peels off an adhesive seal and presses the pad to Felicity’s left temple. He takes another and sticks it to the inside of her right wrist.
When he turns to me, Miriam releases my arm and sits back. “Everything will be okay,” she says. “Don’t fight it.”
I can’t hear her breathe.
Tesla’s movements are fluid, his touch firm but gentle. Right temple. Left wrist. At this proximity I catch the subtle scent of his skin, a woodsy, mountain air smell mixed with something warm and oddly familiar.
My eyes roam to Jamie, who won’t look at me.
Just because the guy smells nice doesn’t mean he’s on my side, or that I can trust him. He didn’t hesitate to use the baton on me. If he got a whiff of my secrets, he’d be dragging me out to the van by my hair.
“Try to relax.” He steps back. “It will be easier if you can relax.”
The muscles in Felicity’s neck strain and the worry lines around her eyes tighten.
I don’t relax. I grip the edge of the table, waiting for her signal to hit me.
When Felicity extends her right hand, I don’t expect it. I thought she’d Harvest without touch. She has short, tidy nails and prominent veins tunnel her freckled skin from knuckle to wrist but her right hand is starkly pale compared to the left. I’m being rude, staring, and I force myself to look up and take her hand. If only I could stop trembling.
She presses her forefinger over the sensor on my wrist, nodding for me to do the same to hers. It feels too awkward, too intimate to sit like this, holding a stranger. I want to pull away but she brings our hands to rest on the tabletop and her cool clasp hardens. Tesla taps his phone, activating a new app. The lights in the sensor pads change to green. With a low moan, Felicity closes her eyes.
I dart panicked glances at Jamie and Miriam but rushing colour swallows the room and I plunge into a vision. Images overlap. Split-second images, painfully bright, dazzling, too quick to register, crashing in on each other, faces, feelings, moments in time fanning open like an endless deck of cards. Pressure builds in my head, shoulders, chest, pressure in the pit of my stomach, like I’m being forced through a tube.
She pushes her way into my mind, a confident, practised reach that quickly overpowers me. I can’t stop her. I can’t resist. Going deeper and deeper, her search has an almost clinical quality, like a medical exam by a reluctant doctor who just wants to get the job done and get out. It doesn’t defuse my sense of violation. The trespass taps a consuming need in me to fight back but it
is
like I’ve been force-fed a muscle relaxant. I have no strength to form a fist for defence. If I could, I would scream in frustration.
The vision sucks me deeper and the images slow. She zeroes in on something and a distinct kinetic memory blooms. I feel jarring in my legs, uneven ground beneath my feet, freezing air stings my cheeks, as real as if I were experiencing the event rather than remembering it. I slip and slide over damp leaves and the speed, the speed is everything. Miriam’s laugh comes through the trees as she paces me. It’s a memory from my early training.
Felicity doesn’t linger and the vision shifts. I catch my breath at the smack of bone against bone in the next memory. Foot against chest, knee against stomach, I’m sparring with Jamie in Miriam’s underground training room, spiralling over him, landing with ease. Dripping sweat, I pant and laugh, desire stirring inside me as we stalk each other on the blue mat.
No. I resist the memory, ducking away from it like dodging a blow.
Before I can triumph, night air chills my lungs in a new memory. Beneath a black sky, I chase a blur past the slate wall of the Gallaghers’ pool house. The gravel of the stable yard, the dew-damp lawn. Then comes the slap of
When he turns to me, Miriam releases my arm and sits back. “Everything will be okay,” she says. “Don’t fight it.”
I can’t hear her breathe.
Tesla’s movements are fluid, his touch firm but gentle. Right temple. Left wrist. At this proximity I catch the subtle scent of his skin, a woodsy, mountain air smell mixed with something warm and oddly familiar.
My eyes roam to Jamie, who won’t look at me.
Just because the guy smells nice doesn’t mean he’s on my side, or that I can trust him. He didn’t hesitate to use the baton on me. If he got a whiff of my secrets, he’d be dragging me out to the van by my hair.
“Try to relax.” He steps back. “It will be easier if you can relax.”
The muscles in Felicity’s neck strain and the worry lines around her eyes tighten.
I don’t relax. I grip the edge of the table, waiting for her signal to hit me.
When Felicity extends her right hand, I don’t expect it. I thought she’d Harvest without touch. She has short, tidy nails and prominent veins tunnel her freckled skin from knuckle to wrist but her right hand is starkly pale compared to the left. I’m being rude, staring, and I force myself to look up and take her hand. If only I could stop trembling.
She presses her forefinger over the sensor on my wrist, nodding for me to do the same to hers. It feels too awkward, too intimate to sit like this, holding a stranger. I want to pull away but she brings our hands to rest on the tabletop and her cool clasp hardens. Tesla taps his phone, activating a new app. The lights in the sensor pads change to green. With a low moan, Felicity closes her eyes.
I dart panicked glances at Jamie and Miriam but rushing colour swallows the room and I plunge into a vision. Images overlap. Split-second images, painfully bright, dazzling, too quick to register, crashing in on each other, faces, feelings, moments in time fanning open like an endless deck of cards. Pressure builds in my head, shoulders, chest, pressure in the pit of my stomach, like I’m being forced through a tube.
She pushes her way into my mind, a confident, practised reach that quickly overpowers me. I can’t stop her. I can’t resist. Going deeper and deeper, her search has an almost clinical quality, like a medical exam by a reluctant doctor who just wants to get the job done and get out. It doesn’t defuse my sense of violation. The trespass taps a consuming need in me to fight back but it
is
like I’ve been force-fed a muscle relaxant. I have no strength to form a fist for defence. If I could, I would scream in frustration.
The vision sucks me deeper and the images slow. She zeroes in on something and a distinct kinetic memory blooms. I feel jarring in my legs, uneven ground beneath my feet, freezing air stings my cheeks, as real as if I were experiencing the event rather than remembering it. I slip and slide over damp leaves and the speed, the speed is everything. Miriam’s laugh comes through the trees as she paces me. It’s a memory from my early training.
Felicity doesn’t linger and the vision shifts. I catch my breath at the smack of bone against bone in the next memory. Foot against chest, knee against stomach, I’m sparring with Jamie in Miriam’s underground training room, spiralling over him, landing with ease. Dripping sweat, I pant and laugh, desire stirring inside me as we stalk each other on the blue mat.
No. I resist the memory, ducking away from it like dodging a blow.
Before I can triumph, night air chills my lungs in a new memory. Beneath a black sky, I chase a blur past the slate wall of the Gallaghers’ pool house. The gravel of the stable yard, the dew-damp lawn. Then comes the slap of