Free Stray by Rachael Craw Page B

tree branches, the pounding in my chest as I close in on the Stray, Kitty ahead, her scream …
No. No! Not this. Not yet
.
    I throw myself against the image like throwing myself in front of a train, hopeless but desperate. What shocks me is the immediate sense of strength that fills me. Felicity’s grip on my mind weakens. The vision grows dark, a grey fog pearling around it like smoke until the image disappears. Instinct keeps me pushing against her presence in my mind. Soon I feel her retreat and come against a blank wall.
    I could stop right there. She has backed off. She was only doing her job, after all, but satisfaction in forcing her out isn’t enough. The involuntary urge to retaliate seized me at the start: to lash out at her and what she represents, the Affinity Project and its claim on my life. The frustration I’ve repressed for months, not letting myself wallow in the “it’s not fair”, the “I didn’t choose this”, the “they don’t own me”, all boils up. I want to make her feel weak. I want to trample
her
private thoughts whether she deserves it or not. So I tighten my hold on her hand and push against the blank wall in my head and keep on pushing. I know to lean against it, like I did with Aiden in the emergency room, to keep up a continuous pressure, searching for a split seam.
    Something gives.
    I slip through a gap, falling headlong, deep and dizzying, into a flood of images that aren’t mine. In the vision, I become aware of my body, my skin. It’s Felicity’s – I’m Harvesting her kinetic memory. The distant sound of moaning intensifies but I ignore it and the cry of voices beyond it. I want a fight but there is none; she seems as powerless as I was.
    A memory lodges in the foreground. I’m standing on a raised metal platform above a large cylindrical tank. Its thick glass walls glow golden in the lights set in its base, liquid filling it quickly to the open brim. Saline, I think, and I realise this is Felicity’s knowledge, not mine. My arms ache. I’m holding a child. She wears a flesh-coloured swimsuit and lies limp and heavy, her head lolling on my shoulder. Immobilised but conscious. She looks maybe six or seven years old. Blonde hair, blue eyes, peachy skin. She stares blankly. Sensor pads blink at her temples and wrists, another blinks through her swimsuit, over her heart.
    “We’re ready for the Proxy,” a man says behind me but I don’t turn, or Felicity doesn’t turn. I carry the child to the edge of the tank, swinging her legs carefully over the lip. I’ll need help when she gets bigger, but for now I can manage the girl’s weight. The saline is lukewarm and comes up to my elbows as I lower her in. Her hair billows out around her face as she drops beneath the surface. My lower back aches already as I sit by the edge, my arm in the tank, but I hold her hand because I am supposed to and because it seems right. I’ll stay here till the link is confirmed. This way the child will know she’s not alone. Her head floats back, her blank eyes, her slack mouth. I try not to think about the fluid pouring into her body. She will survive it; they designed it that way.
    There’s a sharp tug on my wrist. Felicity trying to break my hold? I don’t let go but the girl and the tank disappear. Images tumble around me, an avalanche of memories. I use all my concentration to slow the onslaught and find a point of focus. A painfully bright room opens up in my mind, walls of black glass on three sides. The fourth is concrete with a steel sliding door. The floor slopes towards a grated drain in the middle of the room. Suspended from the ceiling on a retractable neck hangs something that looks like a dental chair, but with multiple wires and tubes attached. A young man sits strapped to the reclining seat. He wears blue scrubs from the waist down and sweat beads his naked chest. Wide-eyed, with sensors blinking at his temples and wrists, he takes short, shallow breaths and his body