The purpose of the fade was to allow somebody to choose a Cradle, a host person to reside in before their own body ceased to exist. That’s what the Lonely People had told him. Wesley grabbed Lukundo’s broad shoulders and peered into his eyes, trying to see if anybody else lurked behind them.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, as the others leaned closer and gaped.
‘Can you speak to him?’ asked Robbie eagerly. ‘Can he hear us?’
Lukundo shook himself free and held up his hands. ‘You don’t understand. It was only for a moment.’
The Lonely People looked at each other, shell-shocked, as they struggled to realise what this might mean.
‘I’m sorry if this is a surprise,’ said Lukundo. ‘I remember feeling strange, and I think by the time I knew what had happened he was already gone. It was like he was inside my mind, trying to talk to me. Asking for help. It felt . . . like he needed to cling onto something. He wanted something to live for.’
Wesley laughed before he could help it. ‘Try before you buy.’ It made sense, inasmuch as any of this did. If the fade offered the power to slip inside the bodies of others, why shouldn’t it allow them to do it temporarily before they had to make a choice that would decide the rest of their life?
‘We had no idea,’ said Aoife.
It wasn’t like anybody who faded was ever able to report back.
‘When I realised he wasn’t dead, I kept it to myself. I suppose I stopped thinking about it. It didn’t seem so strange until now.’ Lukundo smiled uncertainly. ‘You believe me?’
‘It’s a bit mind-blowing,’ said Jae.
‘But we believe you,’ finished Wesley.
A jolt, the sensation of being dragged across a great distance. Kat buckled with something like vertigo. She had split in half: one seeing the ongoing march through eyes not her own, moving with feet not her own, participating at a remove in the world as she knew it.
The other was pushing through a rainforest, skin slick in the humid air, nudging aside the rope-like vines that hung from trees filled with flowers of red and yellow and blue. Birds whistled from branches. Unseen creatures stirred amongst the leaves.
When she lifted a hand to clear her path she found her flesh stubbornly whole, the fade repealed. It was a shock, like finding an extra limb.
The forest was inside the boy . . . no, it was the boy, comprised of everything he felt: happiness at being surrounded by people just like him, pride at joining their number, lending him the confidence to strut between them and ask for their photos. She even heard the swirl of his thoughts, most of them centred on a boy he would meet later that day for a second date, who had sent him a gift basket of jams after a shared joke. Whose voice made his heart pirouette and his knees tremble.
Invisible antibodies, a familiar barrier force, were trying to push her out, but she had grip enough to push against it and walk further into the trees. Underneath this lushness, other feelings vied for attention. Whenever she tried to read them the colours of the canopy flashed brighter in distraction.
It made her feel dizzy. She had never felt anything so strongly as this, had never come close to being so happy or confident. Surely she never would.
The repelling force grew stronger, and in moments every step seemed like fighting hurricane winds. Those other feelings were so close. They hid in the underbrush ahead, just out of reach.
There. A box, sealed tight amid the decay of fallen leaves. It leaked, but just what was escaping she couldn’t identify, never mind how familiar it felt.
All at once the pressure became too much. It ripped her backwards, both the view through his eyes and the forest diminishing as the boy’s body rejected the invasion.
The world lurched and she landed hard on her back. The march’s cacophony battered her senses. Blinking, she found Safa crouched over her.
‘You’re back,’ she whispered, eyes brimming with tears. ‘How did you do that?’
Kat picked herself up and scrambled to the edge of the crowd, like they might realise what she’d done and turn against her. Looking back, she saw the boy had already slipped out of sight.
She lifted a hand, and found she could see through it again. Safa gripped her shoulder tight, as if scared she might try and escape with the secret. ‘Tell me.’
‘I just . . .’ There were hardly words. She felt drunk, the boy’s emotions still filling her up, swimming inside her skull. These feelings were everything she had ever wanted, but they didn’t belong to her. Soon they would ebb away and leave her, and then . . .
‘I thought of everything that’s gone wrong, and I reached for something that might fix it.’
Safa nodded as if she had never heard more perfect sense, and pulled away to delve back into the crowd. She stopped in the path of an older woman in a bright blue wig blowing a whistle and swinging a jumper around her head. The woman didn’t steer to avoid her. Safa closed her eyes in concentration, no doubt summoning all the things she kept private, all the real things Kat longed for her to share. When the woman almost blundered into her, Safa reached.
It was like a magic trick. The air blurred, and Safa was gone. The woman stopped and blinked, belched wetly, and then resumed her tuneless whistle work.
Kat ran to her. ‘Safa?’
The woman turned, almost as if she would answer to the name, and then Safa was beside her again. In that moment the woman saw her and glared, furious at the violation committed. And then forgot her again. Wandered away with the flow of the crowd.
‘I did it,’ said Safa dreamily.
The march carried them along. Kat felt lighter, as if only the weight of her shoes kept her on the ground.
‘I had no idea we could do it before the end!’ said Safa, waking from her reverie. ‘I was actually her, just for a second. I felt everything – she was so happy to be here, and she wished her dead husband could see it, and she had this bad taste in her mouth . . .’
‘Was there something else?’ asked Kat. ‘Something underneath it all?’
‘A meadow! Grass swaying in the breeze as far as I could see. Every blade of grass was important, like they made up my soul.’
The box hidden under the trees had felt so familiar, but the feelings were blurring together now as they withdrew, making her hands shake.
They had long been teetering on the brink of something dangerous, and this might finally push them over the edge. If they backed away now, tried to pretend it had never happened, they might still go back to normal. There was a still a chance they could be saved.
‘I couldn’t hold on for long,’ Safa was saying. ‘It was like matching poles of magnets pushing each other apart.’
‘What did you think about?’ said Kat. ‘To make it happen?’
Safa’s smile faded. ‘I thought about all the times in my life I’ve woken up and felt disappointed to still be me.’
And then she threw up her hands and danced away into the crowd.
Something to live for.
That’s what Aaron had been searching for while the fade took hold, and he had come to his old friend to try to find it. Was Kat out there right now looking for the same thing? If he could help her find it, perhaps he could draw her back into the world. It could be his chance to save her.
He realised Robbie was talking again. ‘You didn’t answer the first question. If you knew Aaron was gone, why did you go to his house?’
‘I had to,’ said Lukundo. ‘For a whole day I missed him more than I have ever missed anything, like he had taken a piece of me and I needed it back to be complete. For a whole day, I couldn’t resist it. I kept trying to speak to his brother, but he kept sending me away.’
‘Yeah, we know that feeling,’ said Jae.
‘Did you see anybody else there?’ asked Wesley, remembering what Aaron’s brother had said. ‘Anybody else hanging around like you.’
Lukundo thought for a moment, nodded. ‘A girl. I didn’t recognise her.’
If being inhabited made the host go to Aaron’s house in search of him, it may have happened to this girl too. She might know more about what had really happened to him.
‘Any idea who she could be?’ he asked the group. They each shook their heads.
‘I have to go, we have practice,’ said Lukundo, pointing to the front of the church where the choir was gathering again. ‘Thank you for helping me to remember my friend. If you find him, tell him I miss him.’
The organ boomed up behind them, echoed in their chests. He missed him now, but it wouldn’t be long before he forgot.
Kat chased, her reinstated invisible charge forcing people aside, and grabbed Safa back by the arm.
‘We can’t do that again.’
Safa arched an eyebrow. ‘Why the hell not? It was brilliant.’
‘I don’t know . . . something about it isn’t right.’
‘It was everything I’ve ever wanted!’ said Safa. ‘And I bet it was for you, too.’
It made a sick kind of sense; she had spent years operating through a proxy online, and now the fade allowed her to do the same in real life. She couldn’t deny the exhilaration it made her feel.
Up ahead, the march turned at a corner, a blocked-off adjoining road narrowing the space. They heard shouting, a few people jostling.
‘Promise me you won’t do it again,’ said Kat. ‘Not until I’ve worked out what I felt in there.’
‘I don’t see why I should—’
The raised voices ahead broke into screams, and a glass bottle shattered on the road. The crowd parted. Men dressed in black with their faces covered were jumping the metal barrier. They swung boards at marchers as they tried to run. There were more behind, hurling bottles and stones.
Half the crowd surged away round the corner, while the rest turned and ran back, panicking, dropping their signs and knocking into others.
‘We need to go,’ said Kat, panic stirring in her chest to strangle her voice.
A few marchers went to meet the attackers, swinging their placards as improvised weapons, ducking the flying bottles. A man in black connected with a punch and sent another man sprawling, before a woman barrelled into his side and wrestled him to the ground.
There was a stampede now, those seeking escape falling, being trampled underfoot. Kat reached for Safa, but somebody staggered into her first. The forcefield fired them apart and sent Kat tumbling onto the pavement.
‘Hey!’ Safa’s voice.
Kat looked up in time to see her striding towards the nearest attacker, a man twice her size, fist cocked to throw a punch.
‘Safa!’
She swung, but instead of landing on his jaw her arm bounced away from the air around him, knocking her off balance. Another marcher kicked him to the ground as sirens spiralled up nearby. Horses’ hooves clattered on the road.
Safa grinned as she came back to pull Kat to her feet, and when they set off running she laughed until she ran out of breath.
*
Before they made it through the cemetery, Robbie shoved away from them to move between the headstones. The others called after him and then followed to find him standing in front of a mossy cross-shaped monument.
Robbie kept his eyes on the grave. ‘Did you hear what he said?’ His voice wobbled on the edge of tears. ‘Aaron came looking for help.’
Wesley looked to the others, and found them both stony-faced. ‘Of course he did.’
‘Of course?’ Robbie whirled around, jaw jutting out hard. ‘If he wanted help, it means he achieved the fade – got exactly what he wanted – and regretted it.’
A hitch in his voice was the sound of faith being shaken. They had all convinced themselves that this was what they wanted, what they needed to make their lives right, and here was evidence that even this wouldn’t work.
‘Isn’t it better to know?’ said Wesley.
Robbie pushed past him, and when Wesley called after him Aoife shook her head.
‘Let him go.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset him.’
‘It’s difficult, seeing the reality,’ said Jae. ‘This morning before I met you guys, I realised I couldn’t remember Safa’s name. It took me ages to think of it.’
‘We knew so little about her. About Aaron,’ said Aoife. ‘Staying distant made sense at the time, but now I don’t know why.’ She met Wesley’s eye. ‘I’m glad we’re doing this.’
‘Me too,’ said Jae.
It was enough to make Wesley sure, for the first time in a long while, that he was doing the right thing.
They were almost back at the square, and leaned against traffic bollards to rest. People who had fled were everywhere, some bleeding from cuts hidden in their hair.
‘What the fuck just happened?’ said Kat.
Safa planted her hands on her hips and sucked in a deep breath. ‘That was nuts.’
‘I mean you.’ Kat shoved her, hard enough to make her stagger.
‘What did I do?’
‘You think it’s all a big joke, but it’s not! This hatred has been allowed to grow and grow, but because it was online everybody could ignore it, pretend it wasn’t serious. Now it’s legitimised. It’s here. It could have killed us. It wants to kill people like us.’
An ambulance pulled up to the square, injured people crossing to it as paramedics in high-vis jackets came out to meet them. More police were arriving too, cars edging through the throngs of people.
Safa raised her arms out in a martyr’s shrug. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t care. None of this is my problem any more.’
‘It’s everybody’s problem. They just don’t realise until it’s too late.’
‘I don’t need this,’ said Safa, oddly calm, as if she got caught in a street brawl every other weekend. ‘I’m just . . . killing time before I say goodbye to myself for ever.’
Kat stepped away as if she had been hit, feeling winded as a hole opened up inside her. Is that all she was to her? A pastime?
‘It looks to me like you’re having the time of your life,’ she said, fighting the wobble in her voice. ‘Why do you still want to go so much?’
When Safa stepped closer it felt aggressive, and Kat stepped away again.
‘I can only be like this because of the fade. Because nothing matters,’ said Safa. ‘This isn’t the real me.’
Kat wiped at her eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’
‘You remember “The Girl Cut Out of the World”?’
Kat nodded. It was the last episode of Doctor Backwash season two, where Zenon decides to punish Esme for rejecting him. He manages to rewrite reality so that she never existed, the entire world reshaping itself to gloss over her absence. Nobody else remembers Esme was ever there, not even her boyfriend Roland. The show went on hiatus after that, and two years had passed with no sign of season three. That meant Esme was lost – nobody ever remembered, or discovered what Zenon had done.
‘Don’t you feel like something is missing?’ quoted Kat, a line from the final scene of the episode. When she saw it for the first time she’d sat on the edge of her bed, tears streaming down her face, begging them to remember.
‘Yeah,’ said Safa, quoting Roland’s response. ‘There’s an emptiness inside, but who doesn’t have that?’
Quoting lines together – even the saddest in the show – reminded Kat just how good it felt to be with Safa.
‘Esme is just gone. And nobody notices,’ said Safa. ‘Not her family, not her friends, not even the guy who was going to propose to her that day. Now tell me . . . who has actually noticed that you’re gone?’
She didn’t know. She hadn’t let herself face it. Now there was no choice, she saw that nothing had changed. If her absence had left any blank spaces behind, the world had filled them so easily nobody could tell the difference. The only person who seemed to remember was the creep who had made all this happen in the first place. She hated that it made her need him.
‘So why not become somebody else?’ said Safa, seeing the answer written on Kat’s face. ‘Somebody who has scores of friends, who is loved? Who loves? Somebody the world would miss.’
Kat wanted every one of those things, and in the last few days she’d been stupid enough to think she might have found it, at last. Now she knew she had been wrong, and she ran, knowing Safa wouldn’t follow.