Johnny led me upstairs: there were no carpets and our footsteps seemed too loud.
“He sounds nice. What happened to him?”
“Dunno. One day he just disappeared and I never saw him again. I looked for him at his usual haunts, but I never found him. Maybe he was picked up by the Gene Police and sent to the CGR just for the hell of it.”
Suddenly he froze. He signalled me to be silent. I could see daylight coming in from a bedroom. We continued slowly, treading on smashed glass. Johnny rushed into the back bedroom and I followed.
The room had been ransacked. I pinched my nose at the smell and saw excrement was smeared on the furniture. Graffiti on the walls shouted “Bye bye freaks”; “We’ll get you next time”; “Hybrid control—mission accomplished”. I saw Johnny stagger and rushed to support him, easing him on to a chair.
“My computers…back-ups…all gone…” he said. Equipment lay smashed on the floor. Papers were everywhere.
“What a mess,” I said. “Do you know who did it?”
He looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there.
“What does it matter?”
“Did they take much?”
“All my files—writing. My databases, programs, all my hardware…No, not much.”
“Haven’t you got it backed up somewhere?”
“Well, yes and no. Some of it, almost, a bit.” On his screen a picture of an underground cave system momentarily replaced his standard screensaver of a stoned smiley face.
I began to poke around in the mess. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, no?”
“Yeah, but it was my rubbish.”
“At least you weren’t here when it happened.”
“I can look after myself.”
“I don’t think so. Come on.” I took a last look round, picked up a few papers and marched out of the bedroom. This time, he followed.
It was when we got into the front yard that they pounced. I think there were three of them. They must have only just left the house when we arrived, and had seen us, returning for an ambush. Screaming, they charged at us from the side passage, waving baseball bats and a crowbar.
I let out a shriek, grabbing Johnny’s hand instinctively. We ran towards the gate, hotly pursued just a few metres behind.
But Dominic had seen what was happening and had coasted the car up to the house. The 4x4’s brilliant lights flashed on and with a scream of tyres he swerved it across the road on to the pavement to illuminate fully the front garden.
Startled, our attackers paused, shielding their eyes against the glare. Dominic leant on the horn. We didn’t need a second summons. Racing through the gate, we jumped into the open door and Dominic crashed the gears into reverse, lurched back into the road, and then, with another squeal of tyres, sped off down the street, leaving the vigilantes staring at our tail lights.
The thought briefly occurred to me that she’d set this up on purpose just to make me homeless so I’d do whatever she wanted. Girls, I’d heard, can be devious like that.
I don’t believe in luck, fate or destiny; they’re all comfort words that humans have. It’s just you, what you’re like, that makes certain kinds of events happen to you rather than others. Me, I attract trouble cos I’m a hybrid. People like me give a new meaning to the word ‘dysfunctional’.
This time, as Dominic drove, Kestrella told me more about herself. She was different from anyone I’d met before. She’d seen the world, met all kinds—except dregs like me—and grown up in the type of universe where people fly their own jet to their own private island in the sun for a four-day party attended by tycoons, politicians and actors. In such a world, nobody asks too many questions and everyone feels safe. She said even I would fit in—with the right clothes.
“A hybrid?” I said. “Aren’t they afraid they might catch Something Nasty?”
She shook her head causing tangled black curls to wave around her face, and I began to think how beautiful it might be to run my hand through them. But that was a stupid thought.
“They think their wealth makes them immune from anything,” she said.
“Didn’t help you, did it? How come you’re part of that set?”
“Maman. She used to be a top model. She is still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” Kestrella went silent for a moment and her lips curled inwards as if she was swallowing something that she didn’t want to let free. “She was on the covers of glossy magazines and in the gossip columns.”
I was wondering what to say when her phone rang. It was a slender model in the style popular a couple of years ago. The keypad was where her palm might have been and the screen was in place of her fingers. It was one of the most common types of rewrite. I filed a picture of it alongside the dozens of others I kept in a database.
I’d already sensed that the vehicle we were in had a built-in wireless satellite system, probably for her father’s work given the nature of the passwords I’d picked my way through, and I uploaded the database on to a remote server. I’d actually not lost much except hardware from the attack on my place. I was always careful to copy my files on to several servers, sometimes splitting them up and distributing the pieces on servers across the world so that nobody picking up one of them would ever be able to tell what it was.
I’m not paranoid, just realistic, OK?
The 4x4 was passing through an area of old office blocks. A long section of hoarding was plastered with competing posters from different political parties for a public demonstration and counter-demonstration. Some read COMPULSORY QUARANTINE NOW! Others read PROTECTION NOT PERSECUTION.
At the next intersection, the car slowed down as it passed a Gene Police van and two patrol cars, recognisable from the logo on their sides: a DNA double helix snaking round a flaming torch. They had spilled out a dozen foot soldiers in their white, hermetically sealed suits, who were surrounding a scooter that had smashed into a lamp post. Only it wasn’t just a scooter.
I could see a human face contorted in agony, and I’m sure that the driver’s right hand somehow merged with the handlebars…I cringed inside: nothing could be done. The GP had probably spotted and given chase to their quarry, pushing him harder and harder through the city’s back streets until he’d crashed.
Kestrella was talking in her light French accent to someone about being somewhere. She finished and turned to me with a fierce Gallic look in her eye. “This time you’re not to argue. We’re going back to Salvation House and you’re going to meet my aunt Cheri, OK? Dominic?”
The red light flashing angrily on my screen bounced off the slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead. “You’re not going to register me. I don’t want to become a Blue like you. I’m a Grey and I intend to stay that way, got it?”
She smiled wryly. “You know something? I’m beginning to think you are your own worst enemy.”
A statement like that left me cold. After all I had that block of ice to keep from melting. “I’d rather be free, don’t you see?” I said defiantly. “I need to be free.”
She laughed. “What good is freedom if your life is in danger, if you’re in hiding and can’t function properly?”
“You, you may be free to jet to your own island in the sun whenever you like,” I threw back, “but you don’t understand what freedom