All That She Can See(56)

Grey clouds were hanging overhead and a thick drop tumbled from the sky here and there as Cherry ran to the water’s edge. She was rarely fond of her abilities but at that moment, she knew they would be the key to finding Chase. She turned back towards the town and, against the grey sky, she saw a stream of black smoke pouring upwards into the clouds. Without hesitation, Cherry ran towards it.





The Lovers





‘If no one loved, the sun would go out.’

Victor Hugo





19





Shura





When you’ve come to call four white walls home, anything different, anything beyond, holds a beauty all of its own. Green floors become lush grass and blue-tinged fluorescent lights become clear skies but Peter wasn’t a fool. Peter couldn’t be tricked into feeling grateful to be let out of his white cell for a change of scenery when he’d seen real grass and he’d seen the sky in his lifetime. He knew what real beauty was and would accept no substitutes, which is why when he saw Shura within the confines of the Guild for the first time, he thought she must be a hallucination brought on from too much time alone.

‘Fourteen?’

The blue suits came for him every time he acted out. This time he had bitten a white coat during a dental examination. He’d wanted to see if he could make the white coat feel something, anything, but all Peter had done was make him bleed and the white coat’s expression had remained vacant. The blue suits escorted him to an examination room. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been inside one of these rooms. Once upon a time he used to keep track but when he realised the visits would never stop he gave up keeping count. He hadn’t seen the point in carrying on. Now, the two blue suits forced him into the familiar green leather chair and they tightened the straps around his ankles and wrists. They pulled them tighter than necessary and they pinched and caught at the hairs on his skin.

‘That’ll do,’ the nurse said and she shooed the blue suits away. Once they were gone, she turned to Peter and he saw her face for the first time. She looked at him from under the dark tendrils that had come loose from the bun on the back of her head and all of Peter’s anger melted away in a moment. The door slid closed and once the nurse had heard the thud of its automatic lock clicking into place she started unfastening the straps.

‘Peter Fenwick, I assume?’ she said. Her voice sounded like velvet.

‘Um… experiment fourteen,’ he corrected. She wandered around him and he felt suddenly hot and exposed in his green gown.

‘I think Peter will do just nicely. As long as you don’t mind?’ Her brown eyes shone when she spoke. ‘I’m Shura.’

‘You don’t seem qualified to be a doctor,’ Peter said. The thought had fallen out of his brain, through his mouth and onto the floor before he’d had a moment to process it.

‘I’m a nurse,’ she said. ‘And I’m perfectly qualified to carry out what we’re here for today.’

‘What I mean is, you don’t seem qualified to work… at the Guild. You’re not… brain dead,’ Peter said in a rush, keen to explain his clumsy comment.

‘No, I’m not brain dead.’ And then she smiled, as if to prove it.

It was the first real smile Peter had seen since arriving at the Guild all those years ago, when he was just a child, and he couldn’t look directly at her for too long for fear of crying. The way her thin but perfectly rounded lips curved, the right side a little more than the left… how the sides of her eyes creased… the slight breathy laugh that escaped when she flashed her crooked front teeth at him. There was so much beauty in that smile that Peter couldn’t help but grin himself.

‘And neither are you, it seems!’ She laughed but then quickly put a finger to her lips. She pulled the last buckle loose on Peter’s right ankle, ran to the door with a skip and pressed her ear up against it. ‘I don’t think they’ll hear us if we talk quietly.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Peter whispered.

‘What? Being a decent human being?’ She raised her eyebrows. When Peter nodded, she simply said, ‘It costs nothing to be kind.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Peter said. ‘In this place, it seems to cost the earth. Why are you even working for the Guild?’

‘Family tradition. My mum worked here before me. Although things were different when she was here. It wasn’t as cruel back then and I didn’t want to follow in her footsteps but you know what the Guild are like. They can be… persuasive.’

‘I know that only too well,’ he said waving the hem of his hideous gown. ‘I don’t wear this as a fashion statement. But why aren’t you all… zombified like the rest of them?’

‘You’d be surprised at how many of the white coats here aren’t. Some of us here just want to help people. It’s just the Feelers who need to be… well, zombified, I guess. And it doesn’t hurt if you have acting skills when it’s called for.’ Shura straightened out her face and blinked mechanically.

‘That’s even more depressing. How many white coats who still have their feelings still carried out the tests on me? Because this is definitely the first time anyone has spoken to me like a human being.’