Fractured A Slated Novel - By Teri Terry Page 0,1

flashes in my mind, and I flinch: I did that? Somehow, a Slated – me – was violent. And it wasn’t just that: I could remember things, feelings and images from my past. From before I was Slated. Impossible!

Not impossible. It happened.

Now I’m not just Kyla, the name given to me at the hospital when I was Slated, less than a year ago. I am something – someone – else. And I’m not sure I like it.

Rat-a-tat-tat!

I half spin out of the bath, sloshing water on the floor.

‘Kyla, is everything all right?’

The door. Someone – Mum – just knocked on the door. That is all. I force my fists to relax.

Calm down.

‘Fine,’ I manage to say.

‘You’ll turn into a prune if you stay in there any longer. Dinner is ready.’

Downstairs, along with Mum are my sister, Amy, and her boyfriend, Jazz. Amy: Slated and assigned to this family like me, but different in so many ways. Always sunny, full of life and chatter, tall, her skin a warm chocolate where I am small, quiet, a pale shadow. And Jazz is a natural, not Slated. Quite sensible apart from when he stares at gorgeous Amy all moonily. That Dad is away is a relief. I can do without his careful eyes tonight, measuring, assessing, making sure no foot is put wrong.

Sunday roast.

Talk of Amy’s coursework, Jazz’s new camera. Amy babbles excitedly about getting asked to work after school at the local doctor’s surgery where she did work experience.

Mum glances at me. ‘We’ll see,’ she says. And I see something else: she doesn’t want me alone after school.

‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ I say, though unsure as I say it if it’s true.

Gradually the evening fades into night and I go upstairs. Brush my teeth and stare in the mirror. Green eyes stare back, wide and familiar, but seeing things they didn’t before.

Ordinary things, but nothing is ordinary.

Sharp pain in my ankle insists I stop running, demands it. Pursuit is faint in the distance but soon will be closer. He won’t rest.

Hide!

I dive through trees and splash along a freezing creek to cover my steps. Then crawl on my belly deep under brambles, ignoring pulls on my hair, clothes. Sudden pain as one catches my arm.

I must not be found. Not again.

I scrabble at the ground, pulling leaves, cold and rotting, from the forest floor over my arms and legs. Light sweeps through the trees above: I freeze. It drops, lower, right over my hiding place. I only start breathing again when it continues beyond without pause.

Footsteps now. They get closer, then carry on, faint and further away until they disappear from hearing.

Now, wait. I count out an hour; stiff, damp, cold. With every scurrying creature, every branch moving in the breeze, I start in fright. But the more minutes tick past, the more I start to believe. This time, I might succeed.

The sky is just brightening as I back out, inch by careful inch. Birds begin their morning songs and my spirits sing along with them as I emerge. Have I finally won at Nico’s own version of hide and seek? Could I be the first?

Light blinds my eyes.

‘There you are!’ Nico grabs my arm, yanks me to my feet and I cry out in pain at my ankle, but it doesn’t hurt as much as this disappointment, hot and bitter. I failed, again.

He brushes leaves from my clothes. Slips a warm arm around my waist to help me walk back to camp, and his closeness, his presence, resonate through my body despite the fear and pain.

‘You know you can never get away, don’t you?’ he says. He is exultant and disappointed in me, all at once. ‘I will always find you.’ Nico leans down and kisses my forehead. A rare gesture of affection that I know will in no way ease whatever punishment he devises.

I can never get away.

He will always find me…

CHAPTER TWO

* * *

A distant rrrring calls into deep nothingness. It pulls me to a moment of regret, half awake, half confusion, then a slow drift back to dreams.

The rrrring sounds again.

Wrongness!

Awake in an instant, I spring up, but something holds me and I almost scream, wrestle and throw it to the ground and crouch in a fighting stance. Ready for attack. Ready for anything…

But not this. Alien, threatening shapes blur and change, become ordinary things. A bed. An alarm clock, still ringing, on top of a dresser. My restraints, blankets: most on the floor now. Carpet under