‘It’s another projection.’ Far away. ‘I don’t even know if I want to watch it.’
Her body bucks again, as if it’s being electrocuted.
The voice is closer now. ‘What’s happening to her? Do something!’
‘The memory feed . . .’ The voice is far away. ‘It’s Brenda.’
Her body stops twitching, and for a moment everything feels OK. She opens her eyes, squints across the room. Amelia is holding her wrist-device, aiming it at the far wall of the cave.
‘This one is projecting from mine,’ she says. ‘This happened earlier, with Lucy. We’re all linked together, somehow . . . Can you guys see it here with me, or is it coming through all the trackers?’
Brenda can see herself via her own private screening, but she doesn’t bother to respond. She’s sitting at her dressing table, gazing into a vanity mirror. A younger version of herself, with bouncy, glossy blonde hair. Bright red lips, cold hard eyes.
Behind her, reflected in the mirror, there’s another woman on-screen, dark-haired, worry etched on her face.
As Brenda stares at the screen she puts her fingers to her left ear, finding the tracker. Her hand shakes. In her periphery she sees Amelia glance at her, her mouth falling open at Brenda’s sudden moment of lucidity. But Brenda ignores her, pulls gently on her tracker, testing to see how firmly fixed it really is.
The dark-haired woman on-screen is holding hands with a young girl. Her blonde hair is tied in bunches, and she’s holding a small stuffed monkey under one arm. The dark-haired woman is trying to coax her away from the younger Brenda, but the girl cottons on and her mouth opens wide in a scream. ‘No.’ She throws the monkey on the ground. ‘No! I want to stay here! I want to stay here with Mummy!’
‘Take her,’ the younger Brenda says. ‘We all know she’ll be better off with you.’
Brenda yanks the tracker out. The pain is excruciating. A jet of blood arcs up and over, travelling far enough to spatter across Amelia’s arm. Brenda howls, and the projection stops.
The tracker has landed in Amelia’s lap, she picks it up and turns to Brenda, who only manages to blink then open her mouth to speak before pains shoot through her body once more and she collapses back onto the ground.
‘Brenda? Oh God.’ Amelia grips her shoulders. ‘Brenda?’ Her voice shrinks away. ‘Can I get some help here?’
There’s the sound of footsteps, muffled voices. She feels other hands on her, touching her face, her shoulders. She just wants them to stop now, but she can’t seem to find the words, and she can’t move her arms to bat them all away from her. She can’t move anything now. She tries to speak but it comes out as a groan.
‘They’ve said they’ll send help,’ someone says, ‘but it’s difficult with the buggies when there’s an electrical storm.’
Her body judders once more and the voices slip away. Pain shoots across her body – as if she’s been struck hard in the chest – and then the dull light that she can still make out through her closed eyelids fades slowly to black.
Amelia
It’s fully dark now. Amelia watches James run after the buggy as it pulls away at speed, carrying Brenda. After a moment he gives up, walks back to the cave. He’s shaking his head, sending droplets of rain spraying around him.
‘I just can’t believe this. That they’d leave us here.’
Amelia hands him one of the blankets they’ve been using as a towel. He’s drenched again from being out in that crazy rain.
‘This is insane,’ Scott says. ‘I say we brave the weather and get out of here.’
‘And go where, genius?’ Lucy says. ‘It’s pitch-dark.’ She gets up from where she’s been sitting since she arrived at the cave. She seems to have recovered from her earlier distress after her projection – but then, is it really so surprising? If you keep a secret like that locked away for years, you have to find coping mechanisms. Amelia knows that from personal experience. The deeper you bury something, the harder it is to find.
‘The rain has to stop at some point,’ Amelia says. ‘We’re warm and dry. We just need to wait it out for a bit.’
Lucy turns to her. ‘How come you’re so calm all the time, Amelia? Everyone else has had something horrible happen to them today, except you. What’s that all about?’
Amelia tries to keep her voice neutral. ‘I told you at the start. I’m used to extreme situations.’
Lucy puffs out air. ‘Right. But this one is not entirely normal, is it?’ She cocks her head. ‘It’s almost as if you know exactly how to deal with it all. As if you’re expecting it, even. That whole thing with your tracker . . .’ She lurches forward and grabs Amelia by the wrist. ‘How come you got this one? How come you aren’t asking it to help us out of here?’ She grips harder.
Amelia yanks her arm away, catching Lucy on the shoulder and sending her spinning backwards. ‘Hey—’ she starts, but Amelia is having none of it.
She surges forward, thrusts her face close to Lucy, who backs off further. ‘We know what you did. And we know what you do now, destroying people’s lives with your gossip and lies.’
‘Hang on. Have a word with your boyfriend about that.’ She nods at James. ‘He takes the photos. That’s just as bad, is it not?’
‘Oh, come on,’ James says, crossing his arms. ‘It’s not like that . . .’
‘Thought you were a paparazzo?’ Scott chimes in, amusement on his face. ‘Long lens privacy destruction, right?’
James shakes his head. ‘No. Not like that. I go to things that the press is invited to. I don’t stalk people as they go about their lives.’
‘You sell the photos though.’ Scott raises an eyebrow.
‘Of course I do – it’s my job. But I mean, I go to a prearranged event and I hustle for the best position, and I try to get the best, most flattering shot. I’m not hiding in the bushes trying to take photos of royalty in their underwear.’
‘So you say,’ Lucy scoffs.
Amelia is still in her face. ‘Shut up. Just shut up. You’re the one writing the lies, bending the truth, putting stuff out there that can never disappear, even if they retract it all. It’s even worse now with social media; people can screen-grab things before anyone else has even noticed – sell that to the highest bidder. You people make me sick.’
Lucy laughs. ‘Oh, Saint Amelia! You do have a feisty belly on you after all. Glad to have awakened it.’
‘Screw you,’ Amelia says, then shoves Lucy in the chest. She doesn’t think it was hard, and Lucy is no doubt milking it for all she’s worth, but she slips back and crashes into the wall of the cave.
‘You little—’ She struggles to get to her feet, getting tangled in the blankets and sliding around on the floor. She falls back again and the wall judders. She stops moving, her mouth dropping wide open in shock as she slowly starts to fall backwards through the moving wall. ‘What the . . .’
Amelia takes a step back. Scott and James appear on either side of her, all three of them watching now as Lucy falls back further until she’s flat on the ground, and what they’d thought was the wall of the cave is now flipped up towards the roof, like a garage door.