“Tuesday!” I’d been snatched on Friday evening. I’d figured I might have lost a day since my rescue, but not two.

Her eyes darted to my hands, then jerked back to my face. “You were in a bad way from shock and that nasty serum when you arrived here. Despite the need to get you to surgery as soon as possible, they had to wait almost twenty-four hours before they could get you sufficiently stabilised. You slept a lot after the general anaesthetic, never waking properly. Some reaction with the serum? They finally got it all out of your system—or passing time did—and here you are, awake again.” She smiled—but her lips trembled.

I looked down towards my hidden toes again, tried to wiggle them. Tried to…count. No good. Too much morphine. “How many big toes do I have, Margo?”

Margo’s eyes were round and worried. “One. I’m sorry, Kyle…”

“It’s not your fault. They put my skin back on, I imagine? But what’s the situation with my knee?”

Margo’s face grew pale and even unhappier. Oh dear, maybe I shouldn’t have made it so clear I remembered everything.

“Yes, they were able to put your own skin back on—which was really lucky, because donors for white skin of your type wouldn’t be too easy to find around here. The knee… Well, it’s…the surgeon put the muscles back in as well as she possibly could. And she says if you don’t move it while it’s healing, then there’s a good chance you’ll be able to bend it again, walk on it again. But…oh, Kyle, I’m so sorry, she says you’ll never run again. No chance at all. I’m so sorry…”

“Why are you apologising, Margo?” I kept my voice calm and firm, though her words felt like a dull blow administered to my sternum, and a choking heaviness settled over me.

I would never run again. Never play football again. Probably never cycle from village to village again. Not that that would matter. Since I couldn’t say Mass any more, I was finished as a parish priest.

I struggled to push the feeling of dullness away. It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. The Lord was the only thing that mattered. Oh, that closeness I had felt… I still felt it, but nothing, nothing like as much. Was I already ceasing to surrender? Was my grief for my lost hobby a symptom of that? Finding myself alive, were those earthly bonds already knotting back into place, those doors closing inside me? How did one live in the world and yet keep everything open to Him? So easy when you were about to die, but when you had to live?

“The Lord is in charge, Margo,” I told her, since she still stared at me in mute misery. “All will be well.”

Another snort from Hill. Yes, Hill. My attention sharpened. Why was I lying around moping about football when I had precious work to do? Hill’s soul needed saving. What could I do, right now? What could even I offer, now?

Hmm.

I eyed the morphine machine. Flexed the three fingers on my right hand. Could I lift my arm? It weighed an awful lot, missing digits or not, but yes. I fumbled, trying to position my middle fingertip on the button, though my brain tried to send my hand too far to the right, to position my absent forefinger there instead…

“Kyle, what are you doing? Are you in pain?”

“Oh…no. No, the opposite, really. I think this thing’s turned up too high.”

“Too high? The head doctor set that up herself. You should probably leave it alone.”

“I’ll only drop it a fraction.” While you’re sitting right there, anyway.

I didn’t need to look at my sister to sense her scowl, but I lowered the dose by a modest three bars, then took my half-hand away and tried to look as though I had no further interest in it. Margo would pop out to the loo eventually.

Now, Hill. What to do with Hill?

“Can we take Hill off to his own room now?” My sister’s thoughts were running along slightly similar lines.

“No!”

She stared at me. “Why not? Unicorn has been over the pair of you—medically, chemically, physically, you name it—and he’s quite certain that there is no booby trap that will operate if you are separated.”

“Uh…I never mentioned any booby trap.”

“No, Bane said you were pretty evasive, but with you being addled with pain, Unicorn had it checked anyway. So can’t we take him away?”

“You don’t like having him around?”

“Kyle! Of course not.”

“I thought you forgave him?”

“I’ve forgiven him for the old stuff. The latest stuff is a work-in-progress. Anyway, forgiven, yes, doesn’t mean I like him. He’s a horrible man.”

“Liking him isn’t necessary. Just loving him.”

My sister glared. “Kyle, couldn’t you at least wait until you get the bandages off before insisting I love that man?”

“But what if you drop dead before I get the bandages off?”

“Patience, Kyle,” she muttered. “I’ll get to it. Just give me time, okay?”

“It’s not healthy, Margo,” I persisted. “To wait, I mean. Can’t you love him now?”

“Can you?” Margo’s fists were clenched.

“Well…yes.”

Margo drew in a long, deep breath that quivered slightly. “Kyle…” Abruptly she rose, bent over and kissed my cheek. “Kyle, I love you, but I’m going to the canteen for a cup of coffee. Back soon.”

“Margo…” But she rushed from the room, taking Georg Friedrich into orbit at the doorway like a nucleus collecting a missing electron. A couple of guards I didn’t recognise remained—to protect me from Hill, no doubt.

I stared after her, my head spinning with confusion and a vague guilt twisting my insides. What did I do, Lord?

…gently, Kyle. Gently…

Did I push her too hard? Was I insensitive? Maybe she was finding it very, very hard to forgive this time. Well…had she ever found it easy? Had I? It just seemed different, now.

Now, okay, I loved Hill too much to even feel any need to forgive him, but before? Say, with Joe? With Snakey? With Bane? Oh, how I had struggled to forgive the EuroGov. To forgive Friedrich. To forgive my own brother-in-law. I’d almost lost my vocation over it. I’d got myself straightened out in the end, with plenty of help from other people, but it had been so hard. At times it had felt impossible.

If Margo was struggling like that now, with Hill, no wonder she was peeved with me. Or maybe I’d made her feel guilty, like she was failing… Oh, no, no, no, I didn’t want to make her feel like that. She already kept apologising, and I wasn’t sure if it was the usual ‘sorry’ people give with bad news or if it was what I dreaded, that she felt some deeper responsibility for all this…

“I hoped she might slap your smug face.” Hill’s voice broke in on my thoughts, speaking English, his native tongue. “Shame. Would have been entertaining.”

Oh help. Even Reginald Hill could see I’d planted my big toeless foot in it. Sorry, Lord. Sorry, Margo.

All the same, while Margo was out of the way… I raised my leaden hand again and knocked another five bars off the morphine dosage, since I could hardly feel the previous reduction, then turned my attention to Hill. The foot of his bed lay only a couple of metres from the foot of my own, yet a vast expanse of clean blue linoleum loomed between us, like an unbridgeable sea.

How do I get through to you, Mr Hill? How do I pry open that little chink in your armour—armour un-breached all the long years of your life—and allow the Holy Spirit to slip in?

No one else had ever managed it, evidently. Was it pure arrogance to think I could? No. Just pure necessity. I was here, I was the only one here who cared and Hill was running out of time. I might be Hill’s last chance and that was simple truth.

Problem was, I knew an awful lot about Reginald Hill, but I really didn’t know the man at all. So that was probably the first thing to change.

“Would you like your family to visit you, Mr Hill?” I asked him, shifting my head on the pillows so I could see him better. I used English, since it was my (earthly) native tongue as well—though more as a courtesy than anything. Hill might rarely have cause to speak Latin, but he understood it fluently. “I’m sure that could be arranged. Your wife is still alive, I believe? And you have three children?”

For men as powerful as Hill, a third child was the ultimate status symbol. Look how rich I am, I can afford the Third Child Permittance.

Hill snorted perfectly audibly this time and looked at me in exasperation. “You think my family are going to visit me? They can’t wait for me to fall off my perch. But I make it my business to disappoint them. Don’t be fooled by my wheelchair.”

He nodded to where it had been parked out of the way in the window bay—well out of his reach. “I just don’t have the energy to get around under my own steam, what with my heart and everything. But a little recuperation and I’ll be up and about again, and they’ll just have to go on waiting. I bet they wrote the eulogy years ago. Too bad.” He snorted again, very derisively.

The fact that he still had time eased a tight ball of anxiety inside me, but…what he said about his family, was it true? All priests had heard those dark thoughts reported in confession—in situations where family relationships had gone very wrong indeed or financial troubles were becoming overwhelming—but those were just unbidden thoughts that flitted through people’s minds, causing them to recoil in horror—and take it to confession. I’d only met a handful of people who hated a parent enough to truly wish their death and some great horror had been behind the sentiment in every case.

But then…how many people had a parent like Reginald Hill? Yet his children were no paragons of virtue. They’d shown little interest in politics, but their lifestyles were toxic and selfish. From what I’d read in the press—who knew if it was true?

“What about your grandchildren? You have several, don’t you?”

“You’re behind the times, Kyle. Like my children in their day, my grandchildren made great props in photographs—a role my great-grandchildren now fill—but were otherwise of little interest to me.”

“Do you not…love them? At all?”

Another snort. “I felt some wisp of emotion when my children were born, I suppose. But they wore it out years ago. I mean, first they drool and throw up, but that at least is the nanny’s problem. Then they start talking and they whine and follow you around asking stupid questions. Then they get sullen and rebellious. Then they go out with unsuitable partners and misbehave and get incriminating photos plastered over the media. Then they start popping out more drooling specimens of humanity.”

Hill glanced at the window as a large African songbird flitted past. “No, I do not love them anymore, whatever that word really means. So long as they behave themselves sufficiently and smile in photographs at important occasions—and above all, pose no threat to me—then I will favour my family above other human beings and see to their comfort and advancement, since I wish the continuation of my own genes—for what that’s worth. I have long since concluded that there really is no other purpose behind registering and breeding, whatever all that foolish talk of love.”

A cold, quiet horror gripped me at his loveless words. If he was unable to love even his own family, his situation was even graver than I’d realised.

My legs and stomach were aching much more fiercely. Okay, I was feeling the drop in morphine, this time. No matter. I must concentrate on Hill. “No threat to you? Is that why none of them followed your footsteps into politics? Did you actually discourage them?”

“Of course.” Hill’s flat stare suggested that I asked childishly stupid questions. “They carry my genes, and naturally I chose a registered partner with top genes as well—including intelligence. It would be highly imprudent to allow them to compete with me. How many kings throughout history have been toppled by their own sons?”

“Or daughters,” I murmured, since Hill had two.

“Historically, usually sons. Granted, my daughters are the more likely threat in my case. My son is an imbecile. Or acts like one. But then, perhaps he just likes being alive.”

I frowned. “I don’t see the connection.”

Hill stared at me. “Are you serious?”

I stared back, equally puzzled. “Yes.”

Hill’s brow crinkled. “I’ve seen your IQ scores, so it can’t be stupidity,” he muttered at last.

“What can’t?”

“Anyone”—Hill’s voice grew very harsh—“anyone who threatens me—or disobeys me—I eliminate. Do I need to make the connection any plainer?”

Cold goose bumps broke out up my arms. “You would kill your own child?”

“If necessary, yes.”

“Could you truly do such a thing? Do you feel nothing for them?”

“They are my children, Kyle. Mine. I had to dispose of two previously—one before birth, a contraception failure—the other just after, for imperfection. If I had to dispose of another now, tell me: exactly what is the difference?”

I closed my eyes and huddled close to the Lord, so distressed that nausea actually built in my stomach. What was wrong with me? His words seemed to sear my soul…yet I’d heard similar crimes confessed before. But…never from someone I truly loved…

Lord… Lord…please reach him. Please break in. Please…

When I thought I could open my eyes and move again without retching, I reached out an aching hand and knocked another five bars off the morphine.

Hill’s needs far exceeded mine.

 

 

MARGO

Wrapping my hands around the fat earthenware mug, I breathed in the nice coffee steam, trying to settle my surging emotions. The bright geometric pattern painted on the mug was cheerful but hardly matched how I felt. If only Bane was here. Or that Georg could sit down and chat for a few minutes. No chance of that. He never let his guard down when on duty. One reason Eduardo sent him, no doubt. That and his undimmed eagerness to throw himself between me and any deadly threat.

But Unicorn was busy with security and my other bodyguard—currently off-duty—was a younger woman not in my circle of close friends, so I would have to sit here and stew by myself.

How could Kyle just lie there looking at me with his placid green eyes and insist I forgive Hill instantly, completely, like it was the easiest thing in the world? I knew what Hill had done to him.

And it wasn’t just the physical suffering. Hill had been out to damn Kyle, not just kill him. The emotional-spiritual-psychological anguish Kyle must’ve gone through! The terror he must’ve felt, at the thought of falling. Hard to even imagine how deeply my devoted brother must have suffered.

Yet… I frowned at the wall, which I’d automatically sat facing so I could at least pretend no one was staring at me. Yet the accomplices had also sworn blind that the whole torture-murder had, by the time of Bane’s arrival, descended into pure farce, with Kyle singing, laughing, humming and assuring them how much God—and he—loved them. No wonder the hospital staff hovered over Kyle as breathless as though caring for the incorrupt body of a saint.

Or for a living saint.

I rubbed my wrinkled brow. Was my big brother now…a saint? Bane had said Kyle seemed in a pretty strange state of mind when he’d arrived. Calm and joyful, those were the words he’d used. Vibrating on a higher plane—you know I always make that joke. Well, it’s no joke now. Just overflowing with love.

Was Kyle still overflowing with love to such a degree that even Reginald Hill got the benefit of it?

- Can you love Hill right now?

- Yes.

Well, I can’t, Kyle. I know I should forgive immediately, and I suppose I do want to. So the intent to forgive is there. But I can’t love him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I just can’t.

The very thought of what he’d done…it made me cold all over. Oh, Hill didn’t believe in actual damnation, but he knew Kyle did. It wasn’t the action of a bad man or a nasty man, it was pure evil. How could I love pure evil? How could Kyle? Like loving the devil.

But…did God love the devil? Strange thought. He must do. God loved everyone and everything. Kyle was only doing as He did.

To truly forgive, one had to love. Had I ever forgiven Hill, really? Had I patted myself on the back for forgiving Lucas so fully, felt that I’d got this forgiveness thing sorted, and simply mouthed the words about Hill? Maybe one never had forgiveness sorted; maybe each time was just as hard and gruelling as the first time. But I hadn’t worked at it. Not with Hill.

So how had Kyle, once almost torn apart by his inability to forgive, managed it so effortlessly? A shiver of awe ran down my spine.

Exactly what had happened to my brother on that gurney?

 

 

KYLE

“Kyle? Are you awake?”

I opened sleepy eyes. Margo and a vaguely familiar-looking Sister sat beside the bed. Doctor Fathiya, read her name tag, her white teeth matching her white habit and contrasting with her dark skin as she smiled at me. Probably in her early sixties, her air of calm competence might have reminded me of Croft—but for the kindness in her eyes.

I smiled back, then directed a look around the room. The sun struck effortlessly through the thick red curtains—now closed for shade—casting a half-circle of intense brightness that extended from the window bay, but reached neither bed. Even with the drapes, it threw the rest of the room into shadow, relieved by the electric lights. I’d been asleep for several hours. Hill still lay opposite, sleeping or ignoring everyone. Someone had turned the morphine back up. Bother.

Wait until they’d gone? But I couldn’t shake a feeling of…of urgency. I had to get it down at least a bit. I raised a hand and lowered it five notches.

“Father Kyle, please don’t touch that…” Doctor Fathiya reached towards it.

I fended her awkwardly away with my three-fingered hand. “Please, Doctor, it really is set too high, I assure you.”

She studied me thoughtfully, but, thank God, withdrew her hand. “Perhaps you have a very high sensitivity. But if you are in pain you must raise it again. Or click this and it will deliver a top-up dose if it is safe.”

I smiled meekly, and she seemed satisfied.

“Now, Father Kyle, how do you feel? Your sister tells me you were awake earlier and very with it.”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t honestly say I’m at my sharpest, but I feel fine. Things ache a little, nothing more. Thank you for putting me back together.”

She waved my thanks away. “You’ve our head surgeon to thank for the knee operation. We’ve fitted a good knee brace around your joint, which should allow your torso the sort of movement needed to prevent bed sores, but it’s still very important that you don’t move the leg around at all. The skin was straightforward. The hands…”

She drew rather a deep breath, her fingers checking the fastening of the upside down lapel watch she wore pinned to her habit in an automatic gesture. Clearly she was here to talk about my hands. “Well, we did what we could for them, closing up the wounds as neatly as possible. But I expect you’re wondering why we weren’t able to replace the missing digits?”

I blinked. “Actually…I just…assumed they were gone and that was that.”

Doctor Fathiya winced. “Well…unfortunately that does seem to be the case. I believe you’ve been on this continent long enough to know that the window for preserving transplant-compatibility in nerves is considerably shorter than in the cold climate of Europe?”

I saw Margo’s lip quirk involuntarily at that—she found the summer heat of Rome oppressive, especially when pregnant—but I nodded.

The doctor hardly needed to expand, but she did anyway. “Well, when you reached the hospital, the nerve damage was already extremely severe.”

“They brought you absolutely as fast as they could,” Margo put in. “Eduardo did look for a helicopter, but they’re just too expensive and rare. By the time the closest one had reached you, stopping to refuel en route, Bane could have driven you to the hospital twice over! So they simply put their foot down. But…it wasn’t quite enough.”

Doctor Fathiya nodded. “When you arrived, an immediate attempt might actually have been possible, if the donor material had been to hand and the patient fit to undergo immediate surgery. Alas, neither was the case. Once it was safe to operate on you, even with our efforts to retard the decay, the nerves had gone completely past viability. I’m so very, very sorry, Father Kyle.”

“Why are you apologising?” I tried to keep the exasperation from my voice. “You did everything you could, I’m certain.”

“Yes… I’m just…sure you must be so very disappointed.”

“Oh, I’m content to keep the hand I was dealt.”

Margo winced, clearly too emotional to cope with such humour, but the doctor’s lip twitched. Hill, just sipping from a glass of water, choked and began to cough and laugh alternately.

“Are you alright, Mr Hill?” I asked, when the choking threatened to outweigh the laughing.

Lips thin with disapproval, Doctor Fathiya whisked over to his bed, sat him up and had him merely laughing again in no time.

“You are quite insane; you know that, Kyle Verrall?” For all his chuckles, Hill’s eyes were narrowed; malicious.

There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I simply shrugged. Sleep dragged at my eyelids, for all I’d not been awake long. Doctor Fathiya noticed, and brisk fingers checked my readings and tucked me firmly in. Obediently, I closed my eyes…

 

Beeping. Aches and pains. Rather more pronounced. Had they left the morphine alone? Good. Even if it didn’t feel good.

From the waist down, I was one big ache. My chest twinged. My hands throbbed. I’d only knocked five bars off, though.

I opened my eyes. The sunlight caressed Hill’s bed now, soft and golden-red, but still glinting off the tubular metal frame. Evening. No Margo. Dinner time, no doubt. No nurses in sight either. Just guards in the doorway, and Hill. I quickly lowered the machine five more bars. How often did they check it? Ah well. I was doing what I could.

Hill gazed grimly out the window—the heavy red curtains had been drawn aside again. They framed the crucifix hanging above the window bay very nicely, in fact.

I opened my mouth…then shut it again.

Oops. I’d almost asked if he’d learned whether he had any chance of getting a transplant here—but I knew the answer to that. Children and mothers were top of the transplant list, older individuals last and strictly in order of health—and thus likely transplant success. Hill had a weak heart, making him a poor candidate of his age for transplant—even leaving aside the minor issue of him being a mass murderer/torturer/minion of the devil. No, Hill would’ve had little chance of qualifying for an organ even if he’d had the good fortune to be of a tissue type common in Africa. To even mention the subject would be cruel.

“I hope you are being looked after, Mr Hill.”

He turned a disapproving look on me. “I can’t say that I’ve ever been all that enamoured of African cuisine.” But after a moment, he shrugged. “All things considered, I can’t complain.”

“I should think not,” I couldn’t help muttering.

He just smirked—rather wearily.

“I can’t help wondering, Mr Hill, why you’re so happy to remain here.”

“Did I say I was happy?”

“Well, you’re not asking to be released.”

“I’ve always had an aversion to wasting my breath.”

“Then don’t you think you’d better let them treat you?”

“I don’t need anything other than a bed and some R and R. I dare say everything will resolve itself soon enough.”

Resolve itself… Belatedly, the cent dropped. Or a cent. Of course Hill didn’t want to be released. What had Margo said, that the EuroGov would only want him back so they could stage a nice, showy, face-saving execution? Hill must be downright desperate not to be released! Just playing it cool.

“You can relax, Mr Hill. The Underground has a long-standing policy of not releasing prisoners back to blocs that may use capital punishment on them. As you should be perfectly well aware.”

Hill’s lip curled. “I will admit to a certain curiosity as to whether you sanctimonious prigs decide to make an exception in my case.”

“I’m quite certain that no exception will be on the table. If it were, I would oppose it.” As the injured party, my plea would carry considerable weight, not that the issue would arise. But to reassure Hill further, I added, “And—of even more weight in any such discussion—so would my sister.”

Hill’s eyebrow rose. “Would she?”

“Yes,” I said very firmly. “Without question.”

“Your faith in her is touching. And from the looks she’s been directing my way, possibly misplaced.”

Had Margo been glowering at him? My heart sank. But how could I possibly raise the subject with her again after being so big-footed before? “Doing the right thing has more to do with will than emotions. Or it should do.”

Hill gave a faint snort. “Strange to say, I would agree with that. Emotion should not enter into any important decision-making process. Only reason.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “though one can take that to extremes, you know. You do.”

Hill raised an eyebrow again. “A tad judgmental there, aren’t we, Father Verrall?”

I thought about everything he’d told me so far. “Just factual, Mr Hill.”

Hill…cackled. “Your sister’s behaviour is perfectly explicable. You, however, make conversation with me—admittedly, conversation varying from moronic to rude—as though I am a newly discovered uncle. I cannot make you out.”

I nodded. “Umm. Newly discovered uncle. That’s much how it feels.”

Hill frowned, his whole face crinkling up. “Aren’t you…the slightest bit cross with me?”

“I’m far, far too worried about you, dear uncle, to be cross.”

Hill swore in disgust and turned his face away.

“Which do you object to, the ‘dear’ or the ‘uncle’?”

He glanced at me, brow creasing as though startled I’d not taken the hint and abandoned the conversation. “Both give me rather high temperature feelings, but not of the warm, fuzzy kind. I am not your ‘dear’ anything, and as you pointed out yourself, we are not even remotely related.”

“But you are dear to me, Mr Hill, and you have only yourself to blame for that.”

“What?”

“If you didn’t want me to care, you shouldn’t have forced me to spend so much time with you. And in the Vatican, any older individual one cares about becomes an honorary ‘uncle’. As you must know, having spent your life studying us, the better to train your spies and anticipate our every move.”

“I’m not having much luck anticipating you,” was Hill’s frank retort. “But then, I’m coming to the conclusion that you’re insane. Or it’s the fastest case of Stockholm Syndrome in the history of the human race. No, the torture clearly addled your mind. That happens, sometimes.”

“It merely focussed my mind, Mr Hill. You have no idea how much it focussed it and how grateful I am for that.”

“I give up on this conversation.” Hill turned his head away again. “You don’t make any sense, Kyle Verrall.”

Obligingly, I stayed silent for a few minutes, passing the time comfortably by saying my confraternity prayers and then resting a while in that still discernible sense of the Lord’s presence. Please stay with me, Lord. Give me the right words to open a path for you.

Okay, Hill was probably getting bored by now. Time to try again.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Mr Hill, I’m very curious about what motivates you.”

Hill gave a long, put upon sigh, but turned his head to look at me. “Motivates me?”

“Yes. You’ve spent your whole life fighting to get to the top and then stay there. Why? What could be worth that constant, brutal, all-consuming struggle?”

Hill once again eyed me as though he couldn’t figure out what made me tick. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“Power, Kyle. Power. And money, but only because money is power.”

“Umm.” I tilted my head in acknowledgement. “I thought you’d say something like that. But why?”

“Why?”

“Why is power worth all that work?”

“Why? Because the only security in life is through power. The only satisfaction. The only freedom.”

I thought about that list. Security. Satisfaction. Freedom.

“Power makes you secure?”

“Of course.”

“Most people have no power beyond that of their vote, yet they sleep peacefully in their beds. You, with all your power? Do you really sleep secure? I’m quite sure the thought of being attacked, politically or even physically, and pulled from your position—or your very life—is a constant worry, sapping all peace from your life. How are you better off than the almost powerless citizen?”

Hill jerked his head impatiently. “If I am threatened, I have the power to defend myself. When peril comes to the ordinary man, it simply leaves him crushed in its wake.”

“But your power makes you a target. Without your power, the chances of that peril coming your way would be so vastly reduced as to be scarcely worth worrying about. You cannot claim that power is security.”

“It is to me.”

“Well…look at me. I’ve lived safe and secure for years with ever so little in the way of worldly power.”

Hill gave a huge snort. “You? Safe and secure? Have you looked at your hands recently?”

“Ah, yes.” I lifted one and waved it at him. “But that just proves my point. Trouble came my way because of my sister’s power, not because of my powerlessness. Power draws more trouble than it wards off, that is my point.”

“That is your opinion.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that is a fact, actually. Any statistics would surely—” A movement from the doorway drew my eye—just in time to see the hem of a skirt disappearing from sight behind a guard’s knee. Margo? Margo! Oh, no, no, no!

“Margo?” I called frantically. “Hey, little sis, aren’t you coming in to visit me?”

The faint footsteps paused. After a moment, Margo appeared in-between the two guards, a strained smile on her face. She’d heard me. She had. Oh rats. I didn’t mean it like…like that…not blaming her.

“Have you been at dinner, Margo?” My voice sounded too bright, too cheerful. “Was it something nice?”

“The Sisters kindly invited me to eat with them, and the food was certainly different.” She approached the bed, still smiling in that horrible, fixed way. “Have you had anything?”

“No. Maybe they came while I was asleep. They’ll be back. Mr Hill, have you eaten yet?”

Hill eyed me, then Margo. “No. I imagine they will only feed me when they feed you. So we can carry on discussing how your sister is responsible for everything that’s happened to you for a bit longer.”

Margo’s lips compressed; her face twisted. She was trying not to cry. Oh Lord, help me… Help us…

“Margo, ignore him. Mr Hill is tired and hungry and…well, mean. He’s talking nonsense.”

“Nonsense?” Hill’s eyebrow rose. “I’m merely repeating what you just said, Kyle, am I not?”

“You are twisting what I said.”

“No, I’m really not.”

I shot another look at Margo. “Would you please be quiet?”

“But you keep engaging me in conversation, Father Kyle. I am merely obliging you. So do tell me more about how your sister caused the loss of so many of your body parts…”

“Shut up,” snapped Margo.

“Just ignore him, Margo. He’s old and sour and…well, let’s face it, rather evil…”

“Rather hungry, too. If you really don’t want to discuss what Margaret’s policies have done to your strong young body, then perhaps you would press your call button and get us some food? There’s a good boy. We can continue our conversation later, since you clearly don’t want to discuss how you feel about your sister’s part in all this while she’s here.”

Margo whirled towards him. “Just shut up you evil, lying—”

“Temper, temper, little girl,” tutted Hill.

Margo grabbed an empty bedpan from the bedside unit and hurled it at Hill. Fortunately, it was only cardboard, but it made him jerk in momentary, startled fright. When it bounced harmlessly off his chest, he relaxed, giving vent to such a mocking laugh that Margo’s hand slipped inside her waistband…

“Margo, no!”

Hill stopped laughing so abruptly he clearly knew what she reached for. But her hand had paused, the nonLee undrawn.

Friedrich appeared at her shoulder, quivering with eagerness. “Would you like me to shoot him for you? How many times?”

Margo took several deep breaths. Then took her hand away from her gun. “No, thank you, Georg. He’s just a nasty, mean-spirited, evil old man who’s going to hell. Nothing we can do to him can match the fate he’s choosing for himself. I’m a fool to let him get to me.” She waved Friedrich back to the doorway, turned the chair beside the bed so the back pointed towards Hill and sat in it, then reached out briskly and pressed my call button. “Let’s get you some dinner, Kyle.”

My stomach was rumbling a little, though her words had brought that deep anxiety about Hill—and her—boiling up more fiercely than ever. “That would be nice. Would you… er…do something for me?”

She eyed me warily. “What?”

“Pray a rosary while I eat.”

“For what?”

“Well…if you think through what you just said, you may see a really serious need somewhere. Right?”

Margo’s lips thinned. But eventually her nostrils flared and she nodded. And sure enough, when some kind nurses had brought my dinner—soup and bread—she took out her rosary and set to work, breaking off only occasionally to field escaping bread or help me recapture the fat straw they’d provided for the soup. These half-hands were going to take some getting used to. Opposable thumbs were highly under-appreciated things. Still, at least with this meal, I could feed myself. More or less.

Despite the earlier gurgles from my stomach, I couldn’t finish it all. Tiredness hung over me, weighting my eyelids and slowing my thoughts. And I’d been asleep almost all day! Margo and I made slightly forced conversation about the children for a while—Hill, thank the Lord, had gone back to ignoring us—then Margo excused herself under what was probably, alas, the mere pretext of needing to call Bane. Lord grant she wasn’t just going off to cry her eyes out. Or maybe she needed to cry down the phone to him.

All these years of marriage and they were still best friends. Not that they didn’t have some rotten arguments sometimes—two very strong wills in one relationship—but they were good at forgiving and making up. I knew about that more from Bane than from Margo, loyal as ever to her spouse. But Bane made a point of confessing to me when I visited, claiming that knowing he would have to bare his soul to his wife’s brother helped him to be a better husband.

I wanted to ask her if she’d at least heard enough context to understand what I’d really meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to raise the subject. Hill might start at her again, despite his earlier near miss with her nonLee. But the mere fact she’d almost drawn on him told me how deeply he’d—or I’d?—touched a nerve.

I stared at Hill. How far would he go for revenge? If he could provoke Margo into shooting him with her nonLee, triggering a fatal heart attack, it would utterly destroy her reputation. Little Miss Forgiveness, as some tabloids still referred to her, killing her oldest, most loudly-forgiven enemy. Her influence on the world stage would be catastrophically reduced.

But to achieve it, he would have to sacrifice however many months—or even years—remained of his life. From the speed with which he’d shut up, he wasn’t ready to make that trade. He wanted to be alive when things ‘resolved themselves’ in the hope of somehow gaining his liberty and being able to buy a new liver on the black market. Then he could live for decades. No, Hill would not die for revenge. He was far, far too cold and calculating. And, I was beginning to suspect, far too afraid of death.

Despite sleeping most of the day, I possibly felt more tired now than when I’d first woken. Ridiculous. It must be shock or the delayed result of all my accumulated injuries. Everything hurt. Really hurt, since taking off the extra five bars, my chest not least of all, though why that should hurt was beyond me.

Still, despite that crushing tiredness, I really didn’t want to sleep again yet. I knocked a couple more bars off the morphine. Maybe the pain would keep me awake, while also helping Hill.

Hill, who’d gone back to staring out of the window.

“You’re really not a nice person, are you?” I couldn’t keep the sadness out of my voice. Considering he’d done all this to get at Margo, the way he’d treated her shouldn’t surprise me, but it still did. When had I last met someone who’d acted so cruelly?

Indeed, he looked at me in disgust—and derision—and spoke mockingly. “Stop press, Reginald Hill is not a nice person! Stop the presses!” He—surprise, surprise—snorted. “Nice? What value is there in nice? Nice just gets you…lying in a hospital bed with only six digits waiting to… And moping over a busted knee. Should I break my heart over not being nice?”

“If you hadn’t informed me of your need for a new one, I might wonder if you have a heart at all, Mr Hill.”

“Boo-hoo.”

“I know; you don’t care. Well, we established that power doesn’t really bring security, so what about satisfaction?”

“You established.”

“Whichever. Satisfaction. How do you even measure that? And mere ‘satisfaction’? Pretty feeble compared to ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’, let alone ‘beatific vision’. Well, I imagine you did feel satisfaction when you finally clawed your way onto the High Committee itself. Or back on, after one of your little eclipses. But did it last?”

“Every time I reflect on the fact that I am one of the most powerful men in the world, I can assure you I feel immense satisfaction.” Hill was terse.

“But you’re not, now. You are more thoroughly in the dog house than my sister has ever managed to send you and you put yourself there. If you go back, they’ll execute you. Your power has evaporated like a morning mist.”

To my surprise, Hill smiled. A slow, cold, bleak smile, but a smile nonetheless. “You think I didn’t know it could end like this? An unofficial mission with unreliable muscle? How stupid do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid at all, though the reasoning behind some of your recent decisions still eludes me. Like why you didn’t just buy an organ on the black market, rather than throwing everything away like this.”

“No one in their right mind would think I could have got to the top of a transplant list legitimately, what with my heart, and the public don’t stand for that sort of thing anymore, thanks to your sister. I’d have been finished.”

“So you could have bought the organ and retired quietly. To another bloc if necessary. Whereas now… Well, you know once they’ve got you back on your feet—or at least into your wheelchair—you’ll be off to the rehabilitation farm, right? Light duties only, I’m sure, but that’s where you’re going, and no chance of a transplant.”

Hill smiled sourly. “Perhaps I figured if it was retirement either way, I’d rather hit Margaret where it hurts—while I still had the power to do so.”

I stared at him. Something still didn’t add up. I just couldn’t believe that this cold, rational man had really chosen to swap a long, comfortable, luxurious retirement in a location of his choice for a short, tedious one peeling potatoes in a convict kitchen, attending endless catechesis lessons and psychological examinations.

There was definitely a missing piece here somewhere. But exhaustion fogged my mind. I would have to sleep soon.

“Freedom… Yes, that leads rather nicely into the subject of freedom,” I managed. “At the absolute height of your power, Mr Hill, can you honestly tell me you were free?”

“Of course I was.” Hill’s irritated tone made it clear he was fed up with the conversation, but I ploughed on anyway.

“But the requirements of keeping your power—let alone the responsibilities of your job—were a prison around you. The workload. The constant machinations. You were never truly free to go where you wanted and do what you wanted and say what you wanted. Your position imprisoned you just as surely as poverty or ill health or prison bars imprison the most powerless person in the world.

“Now your bad health and your crimes are imprisoning you as well. But like every man, woman, and child on this planet, you have always been in prison, you just subscribed to the common illusion that you were free because—at least up until now—no physical walls actually held you in. But true freedom exists only in choosing to follow God’s will. In following the path of selfless love, not selfishness. Only in that.”

Hill yawned widely. “Goodnight, crazy boy. Have a nice sleep. I’m sure you need it by now.” With that, he turned stiffly onto his side and pulled a sheet almost up over his head.

I wasn’t getting any further with him tonight, clearly. I turned my weary head and eyed the bedside unit, but no Office book presented itself to my gaze. Bother. Should I press the call button and ask for one?

But why trouble them? A nurse would bustle back in here soon enough. I could simply wait a few minutes and…and…

 

 

MARGO

“He said it, Bane. He said it was my fault.” My voice almost choked off and I hugged the phone to my ear, curling up still more tightly in the guest room’s armchair. I’d barely managed to get myself sufficiently under control to phone Bane at all.

“Margo, I really do find that very hard to believe. Kyle wouldn’t think like—”

“I heard him! He said ‘Trouble came my way because of my sister’s power’.” Those words…it felt like a knife had sliced open my chest and yanked my heart out.

“Well, that’s not the same as, ‘Margo, this was your fault,’ is it? Trouble did come his way because of your power. But it was Reginald Hill’s decision to attack you on those grounds, so it’s Hill’s fault. Not yours. And I’ve absolutely no doubt Kyle thinks so.”

I knew that, of course. In my head. But I needed to hear Bane say it. Because a nasty sly voice kept whispering that this was all my fault. And however many times I slapped it away, called it a lying demon, it kept coming back.

“Why did he even say that to you?” demanded Bane.

“Well, he didn’t say it to me. He was talking to Hill. I overheard.”

“There we are, then! I’m quite sure he didn’t mean that he blamed you. And if you insist on doubting that, then for pity’s sake just go and ask him straight out!”

“I can’t. I can’t even talk about it. I get so upset. And not with Hill there! I get so angry! I almost drew my nonLee and shot him, Bane. I was this close!”

Bane helpfully proceeded to laugh his head off.

“Bane! It’s not funny! Not with his weak heart. I haven’t got that angry with anyone since…since…well, since I pointed the thing at Kyle all those years ago.”

The reference to that brought Bane’s laughter to such an instantaneous end I wished I hadn’t mentioned it.

“Well, you didn’t shoot him, right?” Bane’s voice was utterly sober.

“No, I never actually even drew it.”

“Well, then. No harm done.”

“I’m not so sure. I wanted to kill him. I feel…filthy just having the residue of that anger on my soul. I think I should go to confession.”

“I’m sure Kyle will oblige.”

“You know I never confess to my brother, Bane. It just feels too weird, to me.”

“Sounds like your big bad sin wouldn’t exactly be news. And if he’s still vibrating on a higher plane the way he was last time I saw him, it could be a pretty awesome experience. But anyway. You’re in an Underground-run hospital in an Underground-governed Free Town. Somehow I don’t think it will be too hard to find another priest.”

“I know, I know. Well…you’re sure the children are okay?”

“Absolutely fine, Margo. Joey’s asleep in my lap, the others are round at U’s and Jane’s, playing.”

“Okay, I’d better go. I really miss you all.”

“I miss you even more.” He sighed wistfully—then it sounded like he smiled. “I wonder if Unicorn can pull up a security photo of Hill’s face when you reached for your weapon.”

“I threw a bedpan at him first,” I admitted, mostly to make up for my thoughtless remark before. “Hit him, too. It was empty, though.”

Bane laughed so hard this time that Joey gave a sleepy gurgle. “I’ll definitely get onto U about a photo!”

“Good night, Bane. I love you.”

“Love you too. Oh, I’m so calling U!”

I sighed and was about to hang up when the dim pounding of feet entered my ear from the receiver along with an urgent, “Wait, Daddy!”

“Is that Luc?”

“Yeah… Yes, yes, you can speak to Mummy. Here…”

The phone clearly changed hands. “Mummy?”

“Hi, Luc. I thought you were at Aunty Jane’s?”

“Aunty Jane told me you were on the phone, so I ran all the way home!”

“Well, I’m very glad you did. Not that your Aunty Jane’s setting a very good example of switchboard confidentiality, there.”

“You don’t really mind, do you?”

“No, Luc. Just saying. Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine. Are you coming home?”

“Not yet, Luc. Uncle Kyle’s still quite poorly, though the doctor says he should be well on the mend soon.”

“Oww.” A tragic sigh. “Well, I s’pose if Uncle Kyle needs you.”

“He does, Luc. I’d be home at once if he didn’t.”

“I know.” Luc still sounded gloomy. He needed something to do, knowing him.

Hmm. Maybe… “Luc? Do you think you could pray for Mr Hill? Reginald Hill?”

A short pause. “Isn’t he the man who hurt Uncle Kyle?”

“Yes, he is. He needs a lot of prayers. He’s not in great health, either. It would make Uncle Kyle very happy if you would pray for him.”

“Okay, Mummy.” No more hesitation. Was my son as special as I often felt, or was I just a jaded, unforgiving grown-up? That bright, precious young voice rushed on, “He must be a horrible man if he could hurt Uncle Kyle, but it would be awful if he went to hell, wouldn’t it? I’ll make sure we all pray for him. In fact, I’ll get everyone together tonight to do a rosary.”

Oh, Bane was going to love that. “Thanks, Luc. You’re such a good boy.”

“You can’t call me a good boy just for saying I’ll pray for someone. It’s not like I just saved a toddler from falling off the Vatican wall!”

“You are a good boy, but you don’t know how to take a compliment,” I teased.

“Huh.”

“Well, I’d better go. Or are the others there, now?”

“No, they were busy dressing Javi up as a warrior angel and s’pose they weren’t paying attention to Aunty Jane.”

“Okay, well, give them a kiss from me.”

“Polly won’t let me kiss her, mum! Ew!”

“A mutual disinclination, clearly. Just give her my love, then. Daddy can kiss her.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“Bye, Luc. Love you.”

“Love you, Mummy.”

Putting the phone down felt physically painful, as though the action yanked on my heart strings. I sighed. There were reasons why I’d enjoyed travel a lot less since becoming a mother.

Although it was several hours earlier back home, I felt ready for bed. But first I really did want to find a priest. Humiliating that my eleven-year-old was more willing to forgive Hill than I was!

 

 

 

KYLE

Cheeping birds. Beeping monitors. Gentle morning rays. A breeze played on my cheeks and I drew in a deep breath, hoping to savour the cool dawn air.

Ow.

My chest really hurt this morning. Especially when I breathed in. The aches and pains in the rest of my body…were less. Was I healing or…I opened my eyes and peeked at the morphine machine. Yes, someone had put it back up to the dosage I’d agreed with the head doctor. After a quick look around—no Margo, no nurses—I knocked it down by another ten bars. I’d been managing with it eight bars lower yesterday, after all. Hopefully Doctor Fathiya wouldn’t find out immediately.

But if the morphine had been turned up and my chest still hurt this much… What was going on with that? Hill hadn’t even touched my chest. It must be some side-effect of the serum.

I looked across at Hill, but he still slept. Obvious enough why he didn’t want to be released—though it’d taken me long enough to work it out, in my less than A-one condition—but why was he so happy to stay in a room with me? My attempts at conversation usually seemed to exasperate him. Maybe he just enjoyed watching Margo hovering all sad and strained over my battered body. Likely and logical enough.

So why did I still feel like I was missing something?

The arrival of the hospital chaplain, Father Omwancha, middle-aged and solid—in every respect—to feed me Holy Communion in bed, put such thoughts from my mind. Followed, at an appropriate interval, by breakfast—and that barely cleared away when a whole bunch of my parishioners were crowding around, talking nineteen to the dozen and pressing a variety of bundles on me, containing everything from carrots and fresh-laid eggs to—oh so happily!—my Office book and Bible.

I couldn’t get much of a word in edgeways but was far too tired to mind. When the nurse at last came to chase them away, I thanked them with deep and genuine gratitude, touched not only by the provision of my books, but also that they’d bothered to make a twelve-hour journey to visit me. They just laughed, assured me the distance was nothing, a mere day trip—true enough, in this vast continent, but still hard for me to grasp even after all these years—and set off home again.

With a happy sigh, I opened my Office book, laboriously working my way past the lost days to find my place.

I kept dozing off, but at long last I closed the book and tried to move it to the bedside unit—an attempt I quickly abandoned when it became clear that both my strength and my painful half-hands were insufficient for the task. Well, it wasn’t doing any harm on the bed.

Right. Now I could give Hill my attention. Other than a mere, “Good morning, Uncle Reginald,”—which had provoked nothing but an explosive snort—and a few words of explanation about our breakfast dish, we’d not interacted much today.

I looked across to find him watching me. He’d been watching me all morning. Like I was…a play that wasn’t finished yet. Or maybe he was just bored stiff.

“And how are you feeling this morning, Uncle Reginald? I trust you are recovering after your eventful weekend.”

Hill smiled coldly. He’d clearly decided to ignore his new title. “Oh, no need to fret your crazy young head about me, Kyle. Rather more to the point, how are you feeling this morning?”

Since when did he care about that? I eyed him, puzzled, but simply said, “I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

Hill…smirked. “Got some more insane questions for me, no doubt?”

Yes, he really was bored, wasn’t he? The Religious Sisters who ran the hospital had shown no inclination to give him books or other forms of entertainment, clearly feeling he should be left free to contemplate his misdeeds without distraction. Even annoying conversations with me began to seem preferable to more hours lying staring out at not a lot. The gap between the beds and the window ensured that such of the sleepy town’s outskirts as we could glimpse were too distant for much detail to be made out. The savannah beyond lay even further away.

“Well, something else I am curious about. What, in your view, is the point of life?”

Hill snorted. “Quite frankly, I’m far from convinced there is one. I suspect everything may just be one great cosmic accident. You, me, humanity, the planet, the universe. Pure, blind chance. We humans were simply unlucky enough to evolve to a level at which we could grasp that awful truth. Well, those of us who don’t prefer to believe in fairy tales.”

“I’ve felt God, Uncle Reginald. He’s filled me, consumed me, overwhelmed me. For most of the billions of years of life on earth, His existence has been an accepted fact. It is you who believe the fairy tale—one of very recent invention indeed, conceived by those so obsessed with their own self-determination that they simply cannot stand the thought that the only path to true freedom is total surrender.”

“Total surrender gets you where you are. Lying in a hospital bed.” Hill bit off further words and smiled smugly.

“Yet here you are, lying in a hospital bed just the same as me.”

Hill’s smile soured slightly. “I’ve had considerably more of life than you, foolish boy. And I haven’t wasted my life on the promise of another one. One life is all we get and it’s worth fighting for. Perhaps I wasn’t quite honest with you yesterday—I do still feel something for my children, not much, but something—but if it was them or me, I’d choose me. Every time. Because my life is the only thing of true value I have. And I will do anything, kill anyone, to keep it. There, are you going to cry again?”

I gave him a reproving look. “I didn’t cry.”

“Looked like you wanted to.”

“Well, I did—want to. I do. What you just said is ghastly. What you did is awful. Everything about it is unspeakably tragic. Everything about you is unspeakably tragic.” My throat burned, just thinking about it. The things he’d done. The things he believed…

He understood that life was precious, yet he was happy to take the lives of others. Over and over, for years. To torture and kill. His own children, his political opponents, thousands of priests, sisters, laypeople, reAssignees, not even to mention Resistance fighters and other criminals. His selfishness was of catastrophic proportions. And surely culpable? He understood the incredible value of life yet chose to kill. Not in self-defence, but merely for gain. For advantage, to gain power and comfort in life. Oh, surely, he was culpable?

And if he carried on shutting God out, I knew exactly what would become of him. I swallowed and cleared my throat, but to no avail. I had to brush a tear from the corner of my eye.

“Oh, you have got to be joking.”

I stared at the blankets, trying to get a grip on myself, but the dual pains—emotional and physical—had combined to overwhelm me. Scrabbling my rosary from the bedside unit, I tried to pray, but it was so hard to ‘thumb’ the beads…

“Kyle?”

My sister’s concerned voice broke in on my limping prayers and I glanced up, startled, my damp cheeks heating.

“Kyle, are you okay? What’s the matter?” She bent over the bed, staring at my wet face, gripping my wrists anxiously, either out of reluctance to touch my maimed hands or fear of hurting me by doing so.

“I’m fine.” I freed an arm and struggled to grip the taut, too well tucked-in sheet, to press it into service as a hanky, but to no avail. I made do with wiping my cheeks on the bandages that covered what was left of my hand, instead.

“This is way lower than yesterday.” Margo looked up from peering at the morphine machine. “No wonder you’re—”

I caught her reaching hand. “No, no. It’s not that, Margo. Mr Hill was simply… Well, our conversation took a distressing turn, nothing more. I’m…I’m clearly feeling rather…fragile after…after everything.” Oh no, I shouldn’t have said that.

Yep, from the glare she turned on Hill, she now blamed him. “What on earth did you say to him, you evil old—”

“Margo. Please. He was honest, that’s no bad thing.” Okay, so I was pretty sure he’d brought things back onto the subject of his children, living and dead, in a deliberate attempt to hurt me, but still. Margo didn’t need more reasons to hate him.

Hill eyed her coldly, no doubt trying to decide whether he could safely needle her today.

“Don’t start on her!” I said hastily. “Or…or I won’t speak to you again for ages.”

“That’s your notion of a threat?” But Hill gave a couple of almost convincing yawns and shut his eyes.

Smothering a sigh of relief, I took a deep breath and tried to raise myself slightly with my hands, tired of looking up Margo’s nose—but the wave of pain from my chest so swamped the ache from my hands and elsewhere that I abandoned the effort at once and flopped against the pillows, breathing in cautious, shallow gasps.

“Kyle!” Margo scolded. “Don’t try to move. You’re not allowed! You’ll hurt your knee! You’ll hurt everything.”

“I’m alright,” I managed.

“How are you this morning?” She carefully turned the chair around to put the back to Hill and seated herself, then turned a bright, hopeful look on me. “Doctor Fathiya thought you should be starting to feel much better. Was she right?”

For some reason, I couldn’t help glancing at Hill—yep, watching me again. Our eyes met before he looked away quickly. “I’m, uh…still rather tired, to be honest.”

“Aw, of course you are.” Margo fussed ineffectually with the sheet and blanket—which needed nothing doing to them—then sat back again, her nurturing energies apparently satisfied by that meagre outlet.

I’m fine.

I’m alright.

I’m rather tired.

Did I need to go to confession? I didn’t feel fine or all right. I wasn’t rather tired, I was exhausted. I felt like Saint Margaret Clitherow being crushed under her martyring load of rocks.

I drew a cautious, deeper breath. Ow.

Why was my chest hurting like that?

“U’s got a team trying to isolate the serum from your blood and analyse it,” Margo was telling me cheerfully. “More as a general information gathering exercise than anything—the hospital is satisfied its effects have worn off now. But they’re making slow work of it, apparently.”

I tried to attend to what she was saying. “Why don’t they just analyse the residue from the syringe?”

“They couldn’t find one. There was an incinerator in one of the basement rooms; they eventually concluded the syringe was thrown in there in an attempt to keep the formula secret in the event of…well, this.”

Did I have a vague memory of hearing the room door opening and shutting, shortly after I’d been injected? Probably. Hill was clever enough to know that recreating something from a blood sample was far more difficult than analysing the original. One of the minions must have taken the syringe out.

No, the syringes.

I stared at Hill. He stared back, still that smug smirk on his cruel face.

My little insurance policy.

Yes, and what had he said yesterday? Do you think I didn’t know how this could end?

“Margo— Oh, sorry!” I’d interrupted her, though I’d not taken in a word she’d been saying. “Oh, well…ah, I’d quite like a word with Unicorn, actually. Do you think he could…?”

“I’m sure he’ll come at once.” Margo smiled. “He’s been in, you know, quite a few times, but you’ve always been asleep.”

I smiled back, but unease curled in my belly. How much longer would my poor sister be smiling?

Agent Jack Willmott, more commonly known to his friends as Unicorn or simply ‘U’, stood beside my bed within five minutes, his incredibly blue eyes smiling at me along with his mouth. “How are you, Father Gecko?” He used my old code name from the Liberation missions, the way a lot of mates from that time did, his very upper-class British voice warm.

I elected to ignore the question this time. “U, I just wondered if you’d been able to work out what was in the blue syringe.”

Unicorn’s eyes narrowed. “The blue syringe? According to everything I’ve seen or heard, the serum was grey.”

“Yes, the serum was.” Everything he’d seen… Wait a moment, there was a video in existence of…of everything, wasn’t there? Margo mustn’t see it! Please, God, she hadn’t already! But…I couldn’t ask U to promise never to show it to her with her sitting right there. “Uh… Oh, yes, the first injection they gave me was blue. What was it?”

U’s face went very still. “What first injection? I was aware of only one.”

“Did you, uh…” I shot Margo a quick glance. “Did you watch the video?”

“Of course.” U’s mouth took on an even grimmer line.

“No, he didn’t let me watch it.” Margo spoke under her breath, clearly in reassurance to me and protest to U.

“And the video,” went on U, “only shows one injection.”

It did? I forced my mind back to that horrible time before Our Lord’s presence made everything wonderful. Oh. Was that when Jonas had started doing what I’d taken to be mere arty shots of the instruments, designed to torment the viewers?

“Before they gave me the serum, they injected me with something blue. I think they were videoing the instrument trays at the time. Hill told me it was his ‘little insurance policy’. I thought the soft-soft voice was for dramatic effect, but now I’m wondering…”

U’s lips went very tight indeed. So did his brow. I could see him adding it up in his mind. Four days, that blue stuff had been inside me, doing…who knew what. Four days in which they could have been searching for an antidote. But Hill had made jolly sure they didn’t even know about it. Had he even primed that supposedly-helpful minion—who’d clearly divulged nothing about this?

U stared at me, worry clear on his face, and spoke very softly himself. “How are you feeling, Kyle?”

“Not…great. Most of me feels…as one would expect, but… I’m getting more tired, not less, and I’ve got this nasty pain when I breathe.”

“I’m getting the medical team in here. Dash it all, if there are two concoctions in that blood, not one, no wonder…”

He hurried off, efficiency in motion, and I finally, reluctantly, looked at Margo. Yep, the bright hope was gone from her face, leaving it grey and strained.

I reached out and managed to curl my three fingers around her hand. “Everything will be alright, Margo.”

Hill…sniggered. Yes, definitely a snigger. I was doomed, wasn’t I?

“Everything will be fine, Margo,” I told her again. “Whatever happens.”

My heartbeat accelerated, a fey, tingling excitement creeping through my veins. Was I not doomed to a long lonely earth-bound exile after all? Lord, will I be with you soon?

Was I supposed to be sorry? I didn’t feel sorry. I felt…excited. Happy. Relieved. And…yes, sad. Sad for Margo and my family. My family…

“Where are Mum and Dad?” How hadn’t I thought about them before? I suppose between worrying about Hill and Margo and the pain…

Margo swallowed and when she spoke her voice sounded thick. She’d drawn the same conclusions from Hill’s snigger and it made her as miserable as it made me joyful. “We tried to contact them but they’re right under Storm Huraro at the moment. We haven’t managed to get a message through yet. U considered sending someone, but it didn’t seem worth the risk.”

The storm. Of course. It would be leaving a trail of disrupted communications and damaged transport networks behind it.

“We…we didn’t think it was so very, very urgent, of course.” Margo’s voice trembled. “But…well, maybe U will send someone, now.”

How long would it take someone to travel into the storm-hit Free State? And how long would it take my rather older parents to make it back out again and all the way to here—clear across the continent? How deadly the travelling conditions would be.

“No, he mustn’t. It’s too risky.” My other thought—that it would surely be too late—I kept to myself. I wasn’t a doctor, anyway. I might have longer than I thought. I’d already survived this stuff for four days.

“They would want to—”

“No. It’s too dangerous! You can keep trying to get through on the phone, right?”

Margo sighed, but Doctor Fathiya’s arrival stopped her replying. The religious sister seemed grimmer than before and trailed a whole array of competent and professional looking sisters behind her.

She no-nonsensely took the seat Margo vacated and leaned forward to stare at me. “So, your chest’s hurting?”

I nodded and she subjected me to a brisk barrage of medical questions, seeking to pinpoint exactly how I felt and when it hurt and where, then she had me wheeled off.

I spent the rest of the morning being put through scanners and poked and prodded and having my blood drawn. They even stuck a camera inside me, quite my least favourite bit of it all, but eventually I must’ve fallen asleep because I woke up back in my little quiet ward, with a tearfully smiley nurse-sister laying out a meal on the lap table in front of me. Lunch time.

“Good grief, that was exhausting,” I couldn’t help murmuring—once the nice sister had left. Had they…yes. I dropped the morphine ten bars.

“Utter waste of time as well.” Hill smiled smugly, lifted a spoonful of soup to his lips with one tremulous old hand and sipped. Pulled a face and turned to the bread instead.

I thought of Margo, presumably off forcing some food down her anxious throat. Hmm. I ought to try. “I don’t suppose you’d care to trade the antidote for…well, I’m sure we could think of something you’d like.”

Hill barked a laugh. “You’re well behind the times, Kyle. Your Agent Willmott has already offered me a comfortable, private retirement apartment—guarded, since apparently there is some moral objection to letting me go entirely—if I should hand over said item, or even the formula. Since, I quote, it’s not like you’ll be good for much at the farm anyway.”

“I’d have thought that would sound quite good to you, right now.”

“Indeed. But I’m not one to let my own weakness get in the way of completing something I’ve decided upon. Remember what we were saying about emotion and decision making?”

I frowned. “I would have thought, in your situation, such a trade would have been motivated by logic, not emotion.”

“It would be motivated by mere fear of discomfort, surely? Fear is emotion. I made very sure I could not succumb to it.”

When I still raised an eyebrow inquiringly, he added, “I’m saying, I chose a drug with no antidote, you silly boy.”

Finally, his circuitous words made sense.

No antidote.

I waited to feel fear or dismay…but still it didn’t come. If anything, the Lord’s presence grew stronger, enfolding me. Calling me…

I’m sorry, Margo. Mum, Dad… Everyone… This just sucks for you all, so badly.

To Hill, I said, “Care to tell me what the blue stuff does? Other than kill me, I mean?”

Hill smirked. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”

I shrugged. “Ah, well, then. Enjoy your meal, Uncle Reginald.” I bowed my head, said grace, and started sucking my soup through my straw.

Hill shook his head in disgust and peevishly went back to nibbling bread.

If he hoped to see me get all teary about this, he was out of luck. But…a sudden dread struck me, a previously unforeseen ramification unfolding itself before my horrified mind. If I was the only one who really cared if Hill made it to heaven, and I would soon be dead… Oh Lord, help me! Please help me to find the words! How long did I have? Reckoning on how long Hill might have, I’d figured I had months to work on him, maybe even a year or two. Now? Days? Mere hours? Oh Lord, what do I do?

Would Margo carry on trying? Especially if I asked her to? But she was struggling with this, and if ever anyone needed to feel real love, it was Hill. And…and somehow, it just felt like he was my responsibility. Like the Lord had given him to me—or me to him. But how? Now?

Panicking, I reached out and knocked five more bars off the morphine.

“Trust me,” Hill put down his half-eaten bread and shoved his plate away, “you really don’t need to worry about getting addicted to that stuff.”

“Nice to know.” My mind still raced, seeking a secret door, a pickaxe, a ladder, something that would enable me to break into his heart. Nothing. I couldn’t think of anything.

I pushed my own food away. Fear closed my throat, almost choking me. I couldn’t eat another bite.

Uncle Reginald, what will become of you?

“Kyle?”

Once again, my sister’s voice drew me from sleep. Pain struck like hammer blows from my legs, my knee, my hands—and my chest seared with each breath. Aaah, those five bars had made some difference, too right.

Good. That was…good. Struggling to keep my pain hidden, I opened my eyes. Margo. Sitting by my bed again, ashen-faced, her eyes pinched.

Doctor Fathiya sat beside her in a second chair, and U hovered behind them. Both equally grim-faced.

“I’m awake.” I smiled obligingly.

Their answering smiles were tense and short-lived.

“Did you find out what’s going on with me? Um…” Yes, I ought to make sure they knew. “Mr Hill…says that there’s no antidote, I’m afraid.”

“So he claimed.” Unicorn gave Hill a beady look from his blue eyes. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t take anything he says as Gospel truth. We’ll keep trying to find one, you can be sure. We almost have the two drugs sorted out now. Well, we think so. Knowing there are two, and what they each do, is a big help.”

“See, they’ll find something,” said Margo firmly. “So don’t you worry, Kyle.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

That won me a frustrated look from my sister, then her gaze shot sideways to Doctor Fathiya and her face tightened still more.

Ah… “So you do know what the stuff does?”

Doctor Fathiya nodded. “It’s a nasty little toxin that almost exclusively attacks the lungs.”

“Makes sense,” put in U. “He’d hardly inject you with something that would damage the organs he wanted to steal.”

Yes, that did make sense.

“It causes gradual cellular deterioration, with increasing pain and eventually loss of lung functionality. The process is slow to begin, but gathers momentum, the destruction proceeding faster and faster until it—well, one could call it a cascade. Blood vessels in the lungs will burst at an ever-escalating rate. Within half an hour of this cascade beginning…” She paused. Checked the fastening of her watch. Drew a breath. “Well, your lungs will fill up beyond the point of viability and…you’ll suffocate.”

I stared at the cross hanging over the window; at the limbs drawn in agony. Oh…they were all waiting for some response from me. “Well…at least it will be quick.”

Doctor Fathiya frowned, as though unsure if I was joking. But I meant it, all right. Compared to what Our Lord had suffered… And after those hours on that gurney…well, anything seemed quick, let alone a mere few minutes of suffocation.

U gave me a sad—and rather apologetic—smile. He’d a bad habit of blaming himself for anything that got past the VSS’s protective efforts. Margo put a hand to her mouth, trying to swallow a sob.

Doctor Fathiya continued uncertainly, “Fortunately, effective palliative care is easy enough. Once the cascade is imminent, you can, well, make your goodbyes—then we will place you under deep sedation. You won’t feel a thing.”

Margo smiled encouragingly in support of this, her eyes swimming. I looked across at Hill, who made no attempt to conceal his satisfaction as he watched my sister’s anguish. My eyes were drawn inexorably back to the cross. There were worse things than a little physical pain and my Uncle Reginald would suffer them all. Forever. Unless I succeeded as God’s cat burglar and allowed Him to break in.

“It’s good to know what’s what,” I told Doctor Fathiya. “But I don’t wish to be sedated.”

Her hand rose slightly towards her mouth. “You don’t… Perhaps I didn’t put it very clearly, Father Kyle. You will drown. In your own blood. It’s a slow, horrible way to die.”

I smiled at her. “Oh, it’s really not that slow or horrible. Please don’t trouble yourself about me. I shall be fine.”

Doctor Fathiya shot Margo a look of appeal. I met my sister’s eyes firmly.

Margo’s expression passed from dismay to despair, as though she recognised I’d made my mind up. “Kyle, surely it would be much better—”

“Margo, I don’t want it. Please don’t make a big thing about this. It’s really not that huge a deal.”

“Not that huge a deal? Kyle!”

“It’s not.”

“It is!”

Since we were clearly in danger of regressing to the youngest days of our childhood, I forbore to reply isn’t and just smiled. Margo huffed slightly—but then she got up and rushed out of the room. I’d made her cry. Again. Blast. Bane would be coming back over here to have words with me if this went on.

“I really hope you will reconsider, Father Kyle.” Doctor Fathiya sounded strained.

“I’ll be sure to let you know if I do. Thank you for looking after me so well, Doctor Fathiya.”

She got up and hurried out, unhappy lines still rucking up her brow.

That just left U, his brow deeply creased as well. “What are you doing, Father Gecko?”

“I’m within my rights to refuse the treatment option.”

“Of course you’re within your rights, but why? I mean, have you stopped to consider how ghastly this will be for Margo?”

I’d rather not think about that. “Maybe we can contrive to ensure she’s not around when it happens.”

“Oh, so she can spend the rest of her life torturing herself with the thought of you going through that without her there to hold your…ah…hand? That’s another terrible idea and I’m not helping you with it. If you care about her feelings, just take the sedation. They won’t do it until the last minute.”

I shook my head.

“Well, I hope you think better of it, I really do.” U turned to go.

“Uh, U? I’d…really like to see Father Omwancha, or any priest, as soon as possible. If you could…”

U nodded silently and strode away, clearly no happier than anyone else.

I sighed, shifting cautiously in a doomed attempt to make myself comfortable. Pain flared in my chest. Ouch. That’d just made it worse. Well, back to work. I looked across at Hill.

His eyes examined me as though I was an insect pinned to a card, but he didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much today, Uncle Reginald. I’ve been having a lovely pre-mortis autopsy—or that’s what it felt like.”

Hill laughed and for once it sounded genuine. “Oh, hospital tests are such fun, aren’t they?”

Huh, something we agreed on. Pain and exhaustion sucked at me and I struggled to think of what I wanted to say to him. Bother, I’d never asked how long before this deadly cascade occurred. A day? A few hours? A week?

Well, not a few hours. Or Margo wouldn’t have rushed off, however upset she was.

“I should probably just subcontract out the task of upsetting Margaret to you. You’re doing an awfully good job of it, crazy boy.”

I sighed. “Unintended, I assure you. And it hurts me almost as much as it hurts her.”

“Hence why I feel so fortunate not to love anyone.” Hill at his smuggest.

Huh… “Okay, Uncle Reginald, tell me, what do you think love is?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What is it? It’s that warm fuzzy emotion that makes people do incredibly irrational and sometimes life-threatening things.”

“No, it’s not. That’s a good description of an emotion that is commonly referred to as love, but which could more accurately be termed passion. It exists in various kinds: erotic, familial, amiable, platonic, etc. But it’s not actually love, in the truest sense of the word.”

Hill raised his eyebrow again, a trace of genuine curiosity on his face. “And what do you say love really is, crazy boy?”

“Actual love is not an emotion at all, though it’s commonly accompanied by the emotion. Actual love is an act of the will, to will the good of the other, of the one loved, and yes, to will it up to the point of sacrificing everything, even life itself.”

Hill took a moment to think about this. He looked amused, but more engaged than I’d yet seen him. This really must be something new for him.

“So,” he said at last—yes, definitely amused, “when you protest so adamantly that you—and your invisible friend—love me, you’re merely saying you will my good? You don’t actually have any warm fuzzy feelings for me at all? It makes a little more sense how you do it, in that case.”

“Sorry to explode your new theory, but it so happens that I do have some very warm familial feelings for you, Uncle Reginald. But you are correct that I don’t need to have them, in order to love you. All I have to do is will your good. It’s just hard for human beings to genuinely will good towards someone for very long without becoming emotionally engaged as well.”

Hill remained silent, clearly turning this over in his mind.

“So,” I ventured, at last, “thinking that you do not love your family because you simply don’t feel an emotion is incorrect. If you do not love your family, it is because you choose not to.”

Hill shrugged. “Is that supposed to bother me? Because—especially in light of what you said about the icky, troublesome emotion close following the act of will—it really doesn’t.”

“I’m just pointing out that even a grumpy mean old man like you can love his family—you simply have to decide to do so.”

Hill snorted. “Well, I certainly choose not to.”

“Shame. You must be so lonely.”

“Lonely?” Hill threw a pointed look around the room and at me. “Right now, a chance of being lonely would be bliss!”

I smiled, not believing him. He’d be bored stiff in a room on his own, and we both knew it.

O Lord, protect me, my chest hurt. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to breathe shallowly. More shallowly. Exhaustion pressed on me. O Lord, stay close. But he was. Nothing like so strongly as when back on that gurney, but he cradled me, and it was impossible for anything to seem too bad, not even the pain or the horrible quick death that awaited me.

“Good grief, are you going to sleep again?”

I caught Hill’s grumble but couldn’t respond. Blackness sucked me down…

 

 

MARGO

“Bane?” My voice wobbled unstoppably. I clutched the phone as tightly as I wanted to clutch him. Tears swam in my eyes, blurring the little hospital guest room where I was staying.

“Margo? Are you alright? What’s wrong?”

“He’s dying, Bane!”

“What… Who?”

“Kyle.”

“Kyle…no! But they’d got him stabilised…he can’t be!”

“Hill gave him something else, some poison, to make sure he’d die even if rescued, and we never found out until this morning and it’s too late…” I bit off my words and swallowed hard, fighting for control. “No. No.” My voice sounded desperate, even to me. “It’s not. U’s team are looking for an antidote. They’ll find something. They will.”

“Is that what U says?” Bane sounded subdued.

“He…he says…” I couldn’t lie. “He says they’ll keep on trying, so long as…so long as…” so long as Kyle’s still alive.

“How’s poor Kyle?”

“How’s…” I choked off a sob. “How’s poor Kyle? He didn’t turn a hair when they told him, you’d think he hadn’t understood but he had! He’s fine. I’m the one who’s…who’s upset.”

“I’m coming over there!”

“Bane…”

“I’m coming and I’m bringing the kids. They should see their uncle if he’s…if he might not make it.”

“You’ll never get here in time, Bane. This thing’s galloping faster and faster—”

“I’m coming. I’ll call again as soon as I can. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He hung up. I swapped the knobbly handset for a cushion, hugging it close. The thought of him on his way—of them all on their way—soothed my aching heart slightly. But they would never be in time. Conceiving, arranging and executing a plan to safely—oh yes, above all, safely—smuggle five children across the EuroBloc onto a ship was a totally different kettle of fish than simply activating familiar deployment plans for an experienced strike team.

But that would never stop Bane trying.

And I didn’t really want it to.

 

 

KYLE

“You know, I want to ask you a question,” said Uncle Reginald at dinner time, after playing with his bread and ignoring another bowl of flavoursome African soup.

“Go ahead.” Any excuse to put aside my straw. I just had no appetite, and pain gnawed at my chest. Not that the sly note in his voice boded all that well for the coming query. “And yes, I am a virgin, if that’s the tired old question you have in mind.”

Hill sniggered. “Fascinating. But no. I already know you’re insane. I was thinking more about what you told me—so very confidently—about having felt your God. Tell me, has it seriously never occurred to you that these feelings are just the product of your human brain? Of your imagination and your subconscious?”

Snug in my Lord’s presence at that very moment and all squeaky clean spiritually after the chaplain’s visit—what did the pain matter in comparison?—I merely smiled at him. “I’m quite sure my sense of God does come to me at least partly through the activity of my brain. Is not the spiritual, by definition, intangible to physical beings? Of course there must be some earthly mediation between a spiritual experience and this physical human body through which I perceive the world while alive. But I do not accept that the experience originates in my brain, even if it is impossible—by definition—to track back to the intangible source through scientific means.”

“So you admit that you don’t have a scrap of scientific proof?”

“Hmm, not the kind you’re thinking of. But doesn’t one more commonly measure a thing by its effects?”

“You’re suggesting measuring God by the delusions of your crazy brain?”

“I’m suggesting measuring God by how much he changes us, changes us in ways that make no evolutionary sense, that make us, as you mentioned earlier, even do things that run counter to our survival instincts. That’s not what you’d expect from something with its source in the natural order, is it?” Agh, all this talking made my chest feel… Never mind. Ignore it, Kyle.

“That’s probably why it’s called insanity, you know.”

“You keep calling me insane, Uncle Reginald, but do you really believe that? I don’t think you do. Just because we don’t agree on everything doesn’t make me insane and you’re far too clever to think so.”

“Cheeky boy. What else am I supposed to consider someone who is prepared to die for an invisible friend and who claims to love his own murderer?”

“You accept that you are a murderer, then?”

“In this case? Yes. I don’t recall signing your death warrant. That would have been a bit difficult, what with us being in Africa.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“What, you really think every single person I’ve had killed in my lifetime was under legal sentence of death?”

I sighed—then winced. When the extra surge of pain eased, I said sadly, “No, I imagine that would be too much to hope for. Do you…not feel the slightest bit sorry about the things you’ve done?”

Hill snorted. “Sorry? Why should I? Survival of the fittest, boy, that’s what life’s about. Do you see a wolf wringing its paws after defeating its father and taking over leadership of the pack?”

“Human beings aren’t wolves.”

“Humans are animals. Do you dispute that?”

“Of course humans are animals, but we are far more than that. Human beings are the only animals with an immortal soul.”

Hill made a rude noise.

“Why does the idea of a soul scare you so much?”

“Scare me?” His brow darkened. “It doesn’t scare me, stupid boy! The whole concept is simply pure lunacy!”

“Really?” I said reflectively. “Well, I know precisely why it scares you so much. Because if you have a soul, I’m right and you’re wrong. And if I’m right and you’re wrong, you’re not some big alpha wolf, you’re just a cruel selfish murderer who’s going to hell. Yes, if I were you, I’d be pretty terrified of having a soul, too. With good reason.”

“Oh, are you ever going to shut up, you dribbling imbecile!” Hill grabbed a bedpan with one frail hand and hefted it in my direction. It fell short, so with a disgusted snort he turned on his side and fixed his eyes on the crimson curtains—drawn for the night—sending me to Coventry.

The two guards who’d bounded into the room, nonLees drawn, gave me inquiring looks. I shook my head at them, smiled and wiggled my fingers in the direction of the doorway. One smirking—no doubt at Hill’s pathetic throw—the other scowling—at the fact he’d tried it at all—they withdrew.

I eyed Uncle Reginald. No, I really had better give him some time to cool off. Still, his reaction took me aback.

Actually, his failure to simply laugh in my face…gave me just a tiny glimmer of hope. Because somewhere inside him, however deep down, however tiny, however close to going out, there must smoulder a tiny ember of doubt. Or he wouldn’t have got angry.

A fresh wave of determination swept me—closely followed by all too familiar worry.

How on earth could I fan that ember to a blaze? Especially in the time left to me?

Lord, please. Is there anything more I can do? Anything more I can offer?

I considered the morphine machine for a moment. But if I dropped it much more, would I be up to rational conversation at all? Or was that just the devil’s whisper? No harm in trying. My heart thumping in unenthusiastic anticipation, I knocked off five more bars. What was I, twenty bars under the agreed level, now; thirty under the original? As soon as they spotted it, they were going to put it back up, no question.

“Uncle Reginald?” I ventured.

He ignored me.

“Uncle Reginald, surely you don’t expect me to apologise for being honest?”

“I don’t care what you do, so long as I don’t have to listen to any more of your inane chatter.”

“I was only giving my opinion, was I not?”

“Oh, just hurry up and die!” And he refused to say another word.

Pain lay over my body like a heat haze. A whimper crawled up my throat, but just in time I choked it back. Clearly no one had spotted the morphine level yet. Opening my eyes, I looked around, trying to distract myself from the agony. Evening. No Margo. She must feel like every time she popped out to eat or use the loo I woke up, poor thing.

Uncle Reginald now lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Maybe a neutral question…

“Do you know what time it is?”

No answer.

Panic tightened my burning chest. How long would he keep this up? I had so little time.

Lord, please. What else can I do? Is there anything else I can give? I’m begging you, if there is, let me know.

…you won’t like it…

I don’t have to like it. Whatever it takes, Lord. Please?

So He told me. Showed me. Understanding entered my mind, anyway…

I recoiled mentally, my head pushing back into the pillows.

No! No, not that!

…you don’t have to. Never have to…

Please, there must be something else…

…what else is there left, dear child?…

His message was so clear it was almost words. I had my answer. There was one more thing I could give. It was not asked of me. It was not expected of me. But it was possible for me.

I looked across at my Uncle Reginald, who now lay staring out of the window with a petulant, angry frown creasing his brow. No, no, no, I can’t give this, I can’t!

But the memory of what awaited that precious soul filled my mind.

I shuddered.

I closed my eyes.

Yes, Lord. If it will help him, yes. Take it back. Take it all.

The sense of many words filled me…

…beloved…brave…child…loved…precious…beautiful…joy…

The sense of my Lord’s presence deepened, intensified, like…like a divine hug.

And faded.

And

was

gone.

Aaah, the aching emptiness He left behind. An agony far worse than anything my body threw at me. Tears spilled from my eyes as lonely anguish swallowed me. Four whole days—five days?—I’d nestled, snug and safe, in His presence. No longer. And even when I prayed, I would feel nothing. Not even that precious sense of cherishing I used to so often feel. Nothing.

Well, maybe not nothing at all. Some far more mundane, less supernatural sense of peace and calm, perhaps. Such as Margo might feel. Such as most people might feel.

Yes, Kyle. Most people never feel what you’ve felt, above once or twice in their life—if ever. So stop crying. Okay, you had to give it up. Just be grateful that you’ve been so exceptionally blessed for so long—and that you had something more to give.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop crying. I’d never felt so bereft, abandoned, alone, in my entire life. I knew I wasn’t alone. I was no more alone than I’d been a moment before. He was right there with me, I just couldn’t feel Him.

But the knowledge couldn’t change how I felt, nor could it stop the tears of desolation streaming down my face. This wouldn’t do. Uncle Reginald watched me now—covert and sidelong, so as not to invite conversation, but he watched. I picked up my Office book—fumbled and dropped it before I could open it and had to pick it up again. The effort made me pant and that made me hurt.

Finally, I had it open to evening prayer. Tuesday. Only one day out. Did I have the energy to change it?

Actually…my eyes fell on the first psalm. Well, if Uncle Reginald wouldn’t talk, he still couldn’t help listening. Latin, but he’d understand. I propped the book up as well as I could and began to read aloud. Raising my voice didn’t feel good, but my physical discomfort was the least of my worries.

“Hear this, all nations, pay attention all who live on earth, important people, ordinary people, rich and poor alike!”

Uncle Reginald groaned and turned on his side, doing his best to put his back to me. I kept going.

“…But man could never redeem himself or pay his ransom to God; it costs so much to redeem his life, it is beyond him; how then could he live on forever and never see the Pit—when all the time he sees that wise men die, that foolish and stupid perish both alike, and leave their fortunes to others.

“Their tombs are their eternal home, their lasting residence, though they owned estates that bore their names.

“Man when he prospers forfeits intelligence: he is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter.”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Are you speaking to me again, then?”

Uncle Reginald clamped his lips together.

I took up the psalm once more. “So on they go in their self-assurance, with men to run after them when they raise their voice.

“Like sheep to be penned in Sheol, Death will herd them to pasture and the upright will have the better of them.

“Dawn will come and then the show they made will disappear, Sheol the home for them! But God will redeem my life from the grasp of Sheol, and will receive me.”

“This surely counts as torture!”

“Clearly we have very different ideas about what that word means, Uncle Reginald.”

No response. Fine.

“…when he dies he can take nothing with him, his glory cannot follow him down…”

Tears still oozed onto my cheeks and the agony in my heart and soul dwarfed that of my failing body, but at least the words might help Uncle Reginald. When I’d finished the forty-ninth psalm, I flicked on, trusting in the Holy Spirit and reading whatever my eyes fell upon.

Uncle Reginald’s occasional protests dwindled into a sullen silence and eventually he turned onto his back once again and simply glowered up at the ceiling.

“Listen to this hymn, Uncle Reginald. It must be one of the most beautiful ever written:

“Alone with none but Thee, my God, I journey on my way; what need I fear, when Thou art near, O King of night and day? More safe am I within Thy hand, than if a host did round me stand.”

Oh, Margo had appeared by the bed…but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I’d start sobbing full out.

“My destined time is fixed by Thee, and Death doth know his hour. Did warriors strong around me throng, they could not stay his power; no walls of stone can man defend when Thou Thy messenger dost send.”

“Kyle?”

I tried to smile at her just as though there weren’t little streams running down my cheeks and hurried on. “My life I yield to Thy decree and bow to Thy control. In peaceful calm, for from Thine arm no power can wrest my soul. Could earthly omens e’er appal a man that heeds the heavenly call!”

“Kyle, are you alright?” Margo sat in the chair beside the bed and leant very close, peering at my face.

“Fine, Margo. Just reading to Uncle Reginald.” Quickly, I ploughed on, “The child of God can fear no ill, his chosen dread no foe; we leave our fate with Thee and wait Thy bidding when to go.”

“I hope you can stop him,” Uncle Reginald said over the top of me. “I can’t and he’s been going on like that for—well, it certainly feels like hours. The crying and the recitation.”

From the quirk of Margo’s lips, the fact that Hill wanted me silenced made her less keen to stop me, not more. She sat back in the chair with a bemused look. But I’d almost reached the end of the hymn.

“‘Tis not from chance our comfort springs, Thou art our trust, O King of kings. Beautiful, isn’t it, Uncle Reginald? Well, perhaps you don’t think so. Do you like that hymn, Margo? What’s next…” I tried to leaf forward. “Any suggestions, Margo?”

“Kyle, enough.” Margo drew the book from my very ungrippy hands and put it to one side. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

“I’m just tired and in pain. Pain makes one’s eyes run, you know. Seems I can’t do anything about it right now, but I really am quite alright.”

“Quite alright? Kyle!”

“I am! The Lord is with me. What could possibly be wrong?”

“Kyle!” Her anguish stabbed at my heart. “You don’t have to pretend—”

“I’m fine, Margo. I’m the one who should be feeling sorry for you, right? You have to stay here, while I get to go and be with Him. Just who is getting the better deal here?”

This won a tense smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“I really can’t help it that my eyes are leaking, Margo. I’m only sorry it’s upsetting you.”

“So long as you are…alright.”

“Never better would be physically inaccurate, but I am fine.” Not a lie, not really. I wasn’t suddenly feeling all scared and depressed about my impending end—just lonesome for God. If anything, I now longed to be in the Lord’s presence even more keenly than before. I would never feel Him again any other way.

Darkness reigned outside. How long had I been reading to Uncle Reginald? Okay, at him.

“What time is it, Margo?”

“It’s almost ten, Kyle. I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I was triaging my emails. I did it absolutely as fast as I could.”

“No need to apologise, Margo. The world doesn’t revolve around me and it certainly won’t be so helpful as to pause while I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Margo gave a pained grimace but didn’t argue with this irrefutable fact. She opened her mouth, then glanced across at Uncle Reginald—a rather measuring glance.

“Ah, yes, he does seem to have rather good ears, for someone his age,” I told her.

A scowl replaced the measuring look. “That’s because they’re not his. Twenty years ago he stole a set of lungs from some poor reAssignee and a year before the Abolition of Sorting he added the theft of a complete set of hearing organs.”

Right. So Uncle Reginald seemed to have the hearing of a far younger individual because…he did.

“Stole them, did I?” Uncle Reginald smirked across at Margo. “Well, I could say the same about what happened to my original lungs. Ruined by forced exposure to dodgy toxins when I was much lower down the pecking order.” His tone—though would-be light—sounded bitter to me. “Not that I worried about it much back then, when it promised such rapid advancement—after all, who could conceive of new organs not being freely available?”

He directed a black look at Margo, but then he smirked again. “Such a good thing I didn’t put off the auditory transplant any longer, now isn’t it?”

The self-congratulatory remark was clearly aimed to needle Margo, but thankfully she just shifted a little further around in her chair, ignoring him, and leant close to me.

“Bane and the children are on their way.” She spoke very softly.

Scarcely likely that Uncle Reginald could find someone here who would pass messages along for him and even less so, in his current state of disgrace, that they would be acted on, but I still understood why Margo kept this information from him.

I couldn’t help frowning, though. “How long do the doctors think I have, Margo? I forgot to ask.”

Margo swallowed. “A day. Or perhaps two. If you’re…very lucky or they manage to delay things a bit.”

Hardly surprising, but my heart sank. So little time to help Uncle Reginald. On the other hand, not long to lie around feeling miserably lonely, either. This empty feeling chilled me to the core—in fact, it rather freaked me out.

I spoke very softly. “They can’t possibly get here in time, can they?” Just maybe, with the longer estimate. No chance, with the shorter.

Margo grimaced. “They’re giving it their best shot, so you do your best too.”

Ah. She didn’t really think I would see them, she merely told me for…motivational purposes. My dear stubborn sister.

The tears had finally trailed off a bit, a black blanket of exhaustion replacing them. It would’ve been nice if it cloaked the other feelings, but instead it just seemed to combine badly with them. Bleakly. Maybe I would fall asleep soon.

Oh… “Margo, I haven’t actually done evening prayer yet, not properly. Could you read it to me?” My voice rasped, my chest burning worse than ever. I’d overdone the talking.

“Kyle, you’re not well. You don’t have to do it.”

“I want to. Please?”

Margo sighed and picked up the Office book from where she’d deposited it out of my reach.

“Oh no, here we go a-blooming-gain,” muttered Uncle Reginald. “I suppose there’s no chance of a pair of earplugs?”

“You suppose rightly.” Coolly, Margo opened the book, found the place and began to read, never looking at him—but she kept her voice loud enough to be clearly audible all over the room.

I tried to listen, to concentrate, to pray, but that exhaustion gnawed all around the edges of my consciousness and I just wasn’t sure how long I could stay…

I knelt in Saint Peter’s, trying to pray, trying desperately to pray. If only I could quiet my thoughts. They buzzed like wasps, loud and aggressive, drowning out everything.

Especially that still, small voice in my soul.

Okay, if I couldn’t pray, I would try and reason through everything. Surely this time it would help.

Bane… No. No, I couldn’t even start on that one. Just the thought of it and that angry buzzing in my head intensified, rage gripping my brain like a vice. If I so much as tried to think, ‘Bane’s been going through a tough time,’ something would explode. Probably my head.

Margo, then. My little sis. Who’d pointed a gun at me and thrown me out of her home. Told me she never wanted to see me, ever again.

Okay, so she’d taken that back, the other day up in the hospital.

And I, I’d said to her…I’d said some harsh things. Things I didn’t mean, things I shouldn’t have said… I should apologise. I should.

But…but she shouldn’t have done what she did. Risked all our lives, risked the future of every Believer and reAssignee in the whole Bloc. For a murderer. Snakey’s murderer.

Of course, forgiveness was important, but she could have just sat there and forgiven Georg Friedrich verbally. There was too much at stake to try to forgive so…so completely hands on, and for someone who didn’t even deserve it…

…oh? So you deserve it, do you, Kyle?…

I just about caught the soft whisper over that incessant buzz of anger and…hate?

So easy to pretend I hadn’t.

Someone had propped a photo of Snakey at the foot of the little side altar in front of which I was failing to pray. Hard to believe he wouldn’t push aside the curtain and walk in with a cheerful grin and a jest: “Praying again, Deacon Gecko? You are without doubt the most devout lizard I’ve ever met, si?”

I’d laugh and tease him back: “How many of your lizard-friends are in seminary, O slithery one?”

That would cause another grin. “Good point, Deacon Gecko, good point…”

The imagining faded. I was alone in the chapel and would remain alone in the chapel, because Snakey was dead, as dead as J…

I jerked my mind from my little brother, from that grief overload.

I did believe in forgiveness. I did! If Margo could have saved Georg Friedrich with no risk to anyone, then great. I’d have been behind her. I would. But how could she risk us all? Didn’t she care about us? Not even her own family?

…he who does the will of the one who sent me is my mother, and sister, and brother…

No! I pushed the words away as they tried to whisper through my mind. What about one’s duty to the innocent? The safety of the many had to come before the fate of one stray.

…what man who has a hundred sheep…

“It’s not the same!” Only when I heard my own tortured voice did I realise that I’d whispered it to the night silence.

I wasn’t getting anywhere. My mind ran in circles.

…that’s because you’re not listening…

I am listening, but none of it makes sense! I had, had, had to make sense of all this…

…why not just forgive?…

It’s not that simple!

…why isn’t it?…

I can’t…I can’t work out how I feel about any of this. I can’t make sense of any of it!

…does forgiveness have to make sense?…

Yes, it does! Everything has to make sense!

…does it?…

I could go to my sister and…and say sorry. Forgive what she’d said and done to me. But that…that would be like saying that what Georg Friedrich did to Snakey didn’t matter! Wouldn’t it? Which was like saying that what the EuroGov did to Joe didn’t matter! Like what Bane did didn’t…

The buzzing filled my head again, deafening me. I found myself on my feet. I wanted to punch Bane until his face turned purple and bled…

“God, help me…” I whispered.

But I could hear nothing but rage.

I wrapped my arms around my head, shaking. I wanted to let the hate go. Wanted it so much. It was like acid searing my soul. But if I let it go, there’d be nothing to mask the grief.

And that agony hurt even worse.

My eyes flew open and I tried to sit up. Bad mistake. Needles of pain impaled my legs, my stomach, my hands—and my chest outdid them all. Gingerly, I relaxed back against the pillows. My heart pounded like a herd of stampeding wildebeest and cold sweat coated my forehead. I gasped for breath, whether from the nightmarish memories of that time—more than a decade ago now—when Margo and I had been so horribly at odds over Bane’s behaviour and her risky rescue of Georg Friedrich or because of my dissolving lungs, I’d no idea.

“Awake, are you?” A cold voice penetrated my ears. “Finally. Perhaps you can stop all that moaning and let an old man get his sleep.”

With effort, I focussed my gaze on the person in the bed opposite. Wait, had someone…

Yes, the morphine machine showed the agreed level. The acute pain had only come from my foolhardy attempt at moving. I reached for the button but could barely lift my hand. So weak, now. I used my three fingers to walk my arm across the sheets, then managed to claw my way high enough to reach the button. Knocking a full twenty bars off, I let my hand flop back onto the bed and looked at Uncle Reginald again.

Somehow, I spoke composedly. “Have I been disturbing you, Uncle Reginald? I’m very sorry. I had something of a nightmare.”

“Oh?” Hill snorted. “Twenty eager naked young women chasing you, was it?”

I didn’t answer. My body shook, clammy and chill. Twenty naked women—or even a hundred—and I could’ve whispered a prayer of thanks to God for the beauty of his creation, a rather longer prayer for chastity, and gone back to sleep. This nightmare—this memory—left me flayed.

Yes, this explained why the feeling of God’s absence freaked me out so much. The last time I’d lost my sense of the Lord so completely…it had been the blackest time in my entire life. My fault, too. Like the psalm…

When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast toward you.

But what was the next verse?

Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.

Yes. I tried to drag my thoughts out of the dark past—all that was over, done, long resolved—but they stuck there, as though caught in quicksand. How had I made such a mess of things? Even as I’d been rampaging around, going from bad to worse, getting everything wrong, deep down I’d known what I needed to do. That one, single, simple thing.

Love.

Specifically: forgive. But I’d failed…no, I’d refused…for far too long. Shame enveloped me, just thinking about it. And sorrow. Had I ever really apologised properly to Margo? Was it even possible to apologise properly for something like that?

I groped feebly—but urgently—for the call button and pressed it. What if this poison took me before I could speak to her?

In bare moments an unfamiliar nurse stood beside the bed, looking down anxiously. “Father Kyle? Are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’d really like to speak to my sister.”

Relief covered the kind face under the veil—but still some surprise. “Of course. I will get someone to fetch her at once. Are you sure you don’t require any medical assistance, Father Kyle?”

“No, really, it’s just…just a personal matter.”

Only when she turned to go did the reason for her surprise occur to me.

“Wait! What time is it?”

“It’s ten past two, Father Kyle.”

My eyes went to the dark, curtained windows. Ten past two in the morning. Oops. “I’m sorry, Sister, I didn’t realise it was so late…early… Please don’t wake her. I can speak to her in the morning, Lord willing. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Father Kyle.” Smiling, she went on her way.

I lay still—not that I could do anything else—trying to slow my breathing and calm down. If only it wasn’t the middle of the night. My need to speak to Margo made my chest ache. An emotional pain to match the physical and spiritual ones. But I couldn’t wake her. Not when she’d believed me asleep for the night and gone to catch a few winks herself. She still got so tired after those complications following Georgie’s birth.

I tried to concentrate on how lovely it would be to see little Georgie again—to meet him properly—struggling to take my mind off my stomach-churning emotions.

Deep, steady almost-snores from opposite—Uncle Reginald had settled off again. He might grumble when I fell asleep on him, but he could nap for the EuroBloc himself.

However hard I tried to calm myself, my breathing remained rough and catchy. Hmm. Not the dream, then. The poison making itself felt. But Margo had said a day, minimum, so surely I’d still be around in the morning to speak to her?

I did so desperately want to speak to her. But I couldn’t bear to wake her. Not with everything she had to deal with at the moment, I just couldn’t…

“Kyle?”

I struggled free from the drowsy state of hag-ridden half-sleep into which I’d sunk, just in time to make a supreme effort and catch Margo’s hand as she reached for the morphine machine. Was it morning? A glance at the curtains showed otherwise. “Margo? What time is it?”

“Twenty past two.” With a sigh, she withdrew her hand. “Are you alright?”

“Twenty past…” She wore a dressing gown… “But I said not to wake you! I’m so sorry, Margo! I thought the nurse understood that I’d changed my mind.”

“She did. She guessed—correctly—that I’d like to be woken anyway. What’s wrong? Do you need Doctor Fathiya?”

Uncle Reginald slept on. Ten minutes’ silence had left him deeply enough asleep that our soft voices didn’t disturb him. No question all humans were hard-wired to react more to sounds of distress. Even Reginald Hill.

“No, I don’t need a doctor. I need to apologise. To you…” I managed to grip her hand again, tightly, irrationally afraid she might get away before I’d finished.

“To me? For what?”

“How I treated you. You and Bane and…and Georg. I totally failed you. I said such hateful things to you. I hated Georg. Wanted him dead. Wasn’t there for you, for Bane…”

Margo’s eyes widened, her lips parting. “Kyle—”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to tell you…”

“Kyle! You did tell me. We apologised to each other, remember? And we put it behind us and moved on. At least, I thought we did. It was so long ago, Kyle. I was pregnant with Luc. He’s eleven now. Where on earth has this come from?”

Her bemusement confused me, drying up my flow of words. My heart, barely slowed after the dream, pounded uncomfortably. I felt so…rattled. Sick at heart. Filled with horror at my past sins. With that Absence, everything felt so like then. “I…I dreamt…of that time…”

Margo ran a cloth over my damp forehead; her fingers brushed my hair into place. “Shhh, Kyle. Calm down. Everything’s fine between us. It’s been fine for a long, long time. And with Bane. And with Georg. You come to dinner along with Georg at least once every visit, right? We’re all great friends now.”

That…that was true. I relaxed against the pillows as she mopped the cold sweat from my neck. Had I got a touch…hysterical from the dream? I was on morphine, after all…

That time was past and gone. But its shadow loomed over me in the night darkness. “Will you stay?” I whispered. Immediately, guilt pricked me. “No, you should go back to bed. I’m perfectly alright. I think maybe the morphine scrambled me up a little.”

Margo snorted. “Well, maybe. Though goodness knows your dosage is low enough. I’m staying, anyway. If I’d known you’d wake up in the night, I wouldn’t have left.”

“You need to sleep, Margo.”

“I’m fine. Look, I’ll grab this extra pillow, put it like this, and sit up here—if it doesn’t hurt you. I can doze very comfortably like this.” Suiting action to word, Margo positioned an extra pillow against the headboard of my bed and squeezed herself into the space beside my pillows.

The slight movements of the mattress did hurt, but I offered it up with all my other pains and betrayed no sign of it. Fine once she was settled, anyway.

“Rest, Kyle.” She stroked my hair. “Get some rest.”

Uncle Reginald was out like a light; I might as well get some shut-eye too. Margo might sleep, then, as well…

 

 

MARGO

Kyle’s pain-tense face smoothed as sleep took him. As soon as he was well out of it, I slowly, carefully, leant forward and put the morphine back up to a sensible level. Why was he being so funny about it?

Impossible to be angry with him, at the moment.

Almost as impossible to believe that in less than a day, my kind, brave, infuriating big brother would be dead.

Except…remembering how weakly he’d gripped my hand just now, even when clinging as tight as he could, it wasn’t quite so impossible. He was weakening fast.

Lord, why do you have to take him? I stroked my brother’s sleeping head gently, tidying his short hair, so much darker brown than mine. Won’t you please let us keep him? Even just for a very little while longer? Please? Just a little while longer?

 

My neck ached fiercely. I opened my eyes, remembering just in time not to move and hurt Kyle. He still slept, his face relaxed and pain-free. I shot a glance over at Hill. Awake and watching me. I looked away quickly. If the Lord granted me life, Hill would get his forgiveness, but—God forgive me—I really could only cope with one emotionally excruciating business at a time.

Surely I hadn’t jolted the mattress at all? But Kyle was stirring, his face tightening, his eyelids fluttering for a few moments before opening all the way.

He promptly smiled at me, of course. “Good morning, Margo.” His voice was a feeble rasp.

Somehow, I managed to smile back. “Good morning, Kyle.”

His eyes moved across to Hill and, switching to English with scrupulous politeness, he struggled to raise his voice, a flicker of pain crossing his face. “Good morning, Uncle Reginald.”

I tried not to scowl at the affectionate title. Maybe Kyle really was a saint.

Reginald Hill gave a tiny nod. “Crazy boy.” But he spoke to Kyle more coldly than usual.

What was wrong with him? Why had Kyle been reading at him like that last night, anyway?

Hill’s cool response seemed to make Kyle awfully happy, though. His grin would’ve gone ear to ear, had he not tamped it down.

“Would you like me to read morning prayer, Kyle?” He’d try to do it himself, otherwise.

Kyle’s smile went up a notch again. “That would be lovely, Margo. Though, first…” He struggled to raise his hand, to reach that dratted morphine machine.

“Leave it, Kyle!”

He ignored me. Down went the level. Flop went his exhausted arm onto the bed. On came his smile. His tired smile, for all he’d just woken up. “Morning prayer?” he suggested brightly.

I complied.

Kyle dozed off briefly in the middle of one psalm but didn’t seem to realise, so I simply kept going. When I finished he stirred enough to smile and thank me. But once I’d put the book to one side, his eyes opened again and his hand twitched as though to detain me.

“Margo, I’ve been meaning to ask. Could you find me a new cord?”

“Cord?”

His fingers moved towards his waist.

“Oh, a confraternity cord? Did you lose yours?”

He nodded. “It’s not urgent, but…well, I did always expect to be buried in it, you see.”

I swallowed hard, my heart clenching, my eyes pricking. “I’ll get one for you, Kyle.” It wouldn’t be hard. Practically everyone I knew had one, including Bane and myself. If a new one wasn’t to be found, any guy with the right sized waist would be happy to donate theirs, no doubt.

“Thank you.” He spoke so weakly yet seemed so calm.

“Kyle…”

“Umm?”

The question forced its way out at last. “Are you…scared?”

He met my gaze, and for a moment I feared he would give the maddening big brotherly—or priestly?—response: Of what?

Instead, his eyes serene as a still pool, he just said, “No.”

With a lump in my throat, shame in my heart and awe in my mind, I looked away.

Hill still watched us.

 

 

KYLE

Uncle Reginald was speaking to me again. Probably just to avoid another Assault of the Psalms, but no matter why. It was a good morning.

My last morning?

Probably. That agonising rasp to my breathing was far more pronounced now. I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to reach that morphine button. I’d almost no strength left.

Lord, let me manage even one more conversation with him.

Could that be enough? How could that be enough? But what more could I do?

Father Omwancha brought me Holy Communion again, wonderful man, singing much of the brief bedside liturgy in his strong booming voice. After a time of thanksgiving—and an inadvertent nap—Margo helped me eat my breakfast. Okay, she fed me most of it. When she’d stuffed as much down me as I could bring myself to swallow—not a lot—she slipped off to dress and freshen up.

With some relief, I turned my attention to the other bed. I didn’t dare try to engage Uncle Reginald in conversation while she was there—he would have no thought of anything other than getting at her.

“I’ve got a question for you, Uncle Reginald.” Agh, raising my voice even a little was exhausting. Excruciatingly exhausting.

“Oh, what a surprise.” His tone remained cool and unencouraging.

“What do you really think love is?”

Uncle Reginald snorted. “I told you, the other day.”

“The warm woolly emotion? Alright, then. What makes a person worthy of being loved?”

“Worthy?” Uncle Reginald stayed silent for some time. At last he said, “I’m not sure anyone’s worthy of the sort of love you define.”

Interesting.

“Do you still think love is merely an emotion?” Because he’d just answered the question according to my definition, not his.

“I don’t know which definition is correct, boy, and I don’t particularly care. I want no part of either of them.”

“Again, I can only say, how utterly lonely.”

“I am perfectly happy with my life, boy.”

“No, you’re not. Happy people don’t seek revenge. Especially not at such a high cost to themselves. Such is the action of deeply unhappy people only.”

“You’re starting to irritate me again.” Hill’s voice was glacial, his tone one of warning.

I tried to think of a response, but all this speaking up was making my head swim. As though I couldn’t get enough air. Maybe I couldn’t. I closed my eyes and stayed quiet and still, hoping it would go off.

It did. A little. But my chest felt clogged. Bubbly. Was it blood? Well, I wouldn’t ring the call button. If the cascade was starting, maybe I could get it all done with before Margo came back…

 

 

MARGO