Cracks by Caroline Green

it!’
    ‘I’m not going to hurt it,’ says Helen patiently. ‘It’s just going to help put them off the scent for a while, that’s all.’ She pulls a small collar
with a tiny leather compartment sewn into the side of it out of her pocket and picks up the tracking device from the table, which has been washed free of my blood. It only just fits into the
compartment and she has difficulty closing the top.
    The cat hisses and tries to struggle free but Helen quickly puts on the collar around its neck.
    ‘Almost got it, almost . . . there.’ The cat jumps out of her arms and pads to a corner of the room where it watches us resentfully.
    ‘How long before they find out they’re not tracking Cal?’ says Julia.
    Helen frowns. ‘Not long enough. You three need to get going. The rest of us will go the other way and take the cat to the moors. It will buy some time, but they’ll be employing all
their resources to find Cal. They won’t want to lose their precious research.’
    I take a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes flick back to me and soften.
    ‘I’m sorry, but that’s what you are to them. That’s why we had to get you out.’ She claps her hands. ‘Let’s go, everyone. Now, please.’
    Beardy – Nathan – whatever he’s really called, eyes me again. I’m guessing I’m not his favourite person in the world right now.
    But he’s only got a busted nose. My whole world has been destroyed.

 

    T here’s lots of movement and conversation as they prepare to go. Helen’s speaking to me. I think she’s going on about the
antibiotics again. But there’s a weird buzzing in my brain and I can only see her mouth moving.
    I grunt and turn away.
    They all go outside for a minute, leaving me alone in the kitchen. I rub my one free palm on my trousers, because it’s sweaty. I can’t stop shaking all over. I look around the huge
kitchen to try to distract myself from all the feelings that are crowding in on me. Fear. Sadness. Anger. There’s plenty of anger. I clench my one good fist and bang it on the table.
    I sweep my eyes broodily around the kitchen and something snags my attention. There’s a wooden dish rack attached to the wall and next to it a shelf holding neat rows of colourful spices
in small glass jars. A feeling from my old life tugs at me, like an itch I can’t reach. I frown, trying to understand it.
    And then it comes.
    Amil’s kitchen. His mum has those same bottles, except hers are all jumbled messily along the back of the kitchen counter. A powerful memory of being warm and safe floods through me. I can
almost smell yummy chicken curry and hear the chatter and telly sounds from next door. Then reality hits with the force of a punch and the room lurches sideways.
    I’ve never really been in that kitchen.
    Amil was someone else’s best friend.
    These are someone else’s memories.
    But it felt so real.
    The whole thing is sick. I’m breathing hard like I’ve been running. A headache throbs with a regular beat over one eye. I touch my forehead. How did they do it? Get into my brain, I
mean? I gently feel about in my hair to see if there is a scar but can’t feel anything at all. I get a sudden image of Cavendish holding a rusty old saw from Des’s shed and looming over
me in a bloodstained apron.
    My stomach flips over and the room spins sickeningly fast. I grip the table, hard, like I’m going to pitch forward into some sort of black hole otherwise. I touch my scalp again with the
other hand. My head feels vulnerable, my skull eggshell-thin, like it could crack open and everything inside could spill out.
    I’m not even sure what’s real any more. Maybe I’m going to wake up again and find all this was some sort of horrible nightmare and I’m back in my old bedroom. Or maybe
I’m still suspended in that pod, while people prod and probe . . .
    Something is squeezing my chest like a vice and the walls pulse and shrink. I can’t remember how to breathe normally. Little