The storage unit’s concrete walls reverberated with Tinker’s rasping screams as she was dragged from the back of the car. One of her attackers clamped her legs, while another struggled to hook her flailing arms. A thick metal door had been closed behind them, and the unit was essentially a concrete box, so no sound would escape. They wrestled her to a metal-framed chair at the back of the space, where a couple of cardboard boxes were stacked. It took two of them to pin her down long enough to get handcuffs onto her wrists and wrap bike chains around her arms and legs.
Kat crouched behind the chair and tried to work out what to do next. The journey here had drained her to almost nothing. It had been so easy to stay inside Tinker and her internal landscape of a lush oasis at the heart of a sprawling desert. Even as terror whipped up stinging gusts of sand and jostled the box sunk deep in the clear water of the spring, shadows bubbling from under its lid, Kat had considered making the girl her Cradle. If she couldn’t stop what was going to happen to Tinker, she could at least endure it with her.
There had to be a way. She couldn’t give up.
‘Gag her, for Christ’s sake,’ said TrumourPixel, approaching calmly like a factory supervisor.
One of them found a leather strap and levered it between her teeth, pulling it tight behind her head and tying it off.
‘News is already spreading,’ said Tru. In the car, they had taken Tinker’s phone, and he was using it now to check her social media feeds. ‘Told you we’d get an audience.’
The other two took off their masks. Luke and Justin, both smiling, sweating, jittering with nervous energy.
‘Get them ready to tune in,’ said Luke.
‘I’m doing it,’ said Tru through gritted teeth. ‘She’s logged in to every social media account, I can send a message from all of them.’ He wagged a finger at Tinker. ‘You should really do something about your security.’
While they were distracted, Kat crept behind the chair and reached for the keys that had been left on a shelf. Her fingers passed right through without even making them move. In the gloom of the unit, she could barely see her own hand.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered in Tinker’s ear. The lie didn’t matter if it couldn’t be heard.
The three attackers moved clear of the area around Tinker, leaving her to tug at her bonds. Tears ran in dark tracks down her face and her pink hair stuck to the wet. Luke took her phone and pointed it at the scene.
‘Ready?’
Tru, face still covered, nodded.
They were going to stream it all, Kat realised in horror. It would be broadcast to all of Tinker’s subscribers and anybody else who visited her channel.
The livestream began, the phone aimed close at Tinker as she cried for help around her gag. Tru moved to stand over her, Luke stepping back to get them both in the frame.
‘Welcome,’ he said. For some reason it made Luke laugh. ‘We promised we would retaliate if you continued to attack us. You didn’t take us seriously.’
What enemy was he speaking to? Whatever enemy he had invented in his mind to justify his hatred, to turn it back on the world.
‘You bitches, who spout your anti-male propaganda, need to learn that there are consequences,’ he said, walking around the back of the chair, within inches of where Kat was helplessly crouched.
Tinker was trying to talk through the gag, a single repeated word that sounded like please.
‘You try to emasculate us. You want to tear us down from our rightful place in the world and make us your slaves. Most of the world might be fooled, and that is why we who see the truth must fight back to realise our potential. We’re going to send a message. And you can help us decide what it’ll be.’
Again, Kat reached for the keys, willing her fingers to find a grip on reality. She managed to knock them to the floor, but from there no amount of concentration allowed her to pick them up. The chains, holding Tinker tight even as she struggled, passed clean through Kat’s hands. She began to cry, roaring in frustration at her futility.
‘There’s a lot of people threatening us or telling us to stop,’ said Justin, reading the livestream chat on his own phone. ‘But there’s a few actual ideas coming in.’
Holding the screen for Tru to see, Justin looked so relieved that it was working, that he had something to contribute.
‘These are all great suggestions,’ Tru said.
Kat fought the urge to be sick. People watching this live were actually egging them on. They had to think it was all a joke, a publicity stunt. Surely those people didn’t believe it was real, didn’t want to play any part in causing pain.
‘Let’s start with something simple.’ Tru walked across to the cardboard boxes, and he leaned down to tear the tape from the top box. From inside he produced a pair of hair clippers. ‘We’ll get rid of this slut’s pretty hair.’
He wielded the clippers like a pistol, laughing as he set them buzzing. Behind the camera Luke laughed too, wide-eyed as if he had never been so entertained, while Justin wiped sweat from his forehead. Tinker whined and gnashed, thrashing her shoulders uselessly against the chains.
From the floor, Kat watched in despair. She had let fear of being alive get the better of her, let herself fade away almost to nothing, and now it had stopped her from saving Tinker, of doing any good in the world. Kat squeezed her eyes shut in revulsion and shame.
A metallic bang rattled around the unit. The clippers ceased buzzing as they all turned to see the shutter behind them ripple slightly.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Luke, but the shake in his voice betrayed him.
Another blow against the shutter, harder this time, followed by another and another. The plates of the metal clanked and roiled in angry waves.
‘What the hell is that?’ said Tru, pulling away from his captive.
Kat stood, a smile of hope breaking across her face at the sight of the bucking shutter. Somebody had come to help.