Eyes of the Owl (Part One of Two)

I used to play dodge-the-motion-sensors when I was younger.

A lot younger. And my boyfriend lived in his office. I can hardly remember the boyfriend now, except that he was hot; he was blond; he had a purple hat he liked wearing. He had stupid ambitions, but he believed in them big time. And he couldn't pay the rent on his apartment. So he moved into the office he was renting with his arty friends, all revved up on starting a graphic arts business.

I remember when we wanted to go out at night. The office was in a building, and the security came on at 6.00pm. If you didn't want to set off an alarm, and have a security guard down here checking it out, swearing, threatening to send you the bill – if not arrest you – then you had to keep pretty close to walls, keep your back against them, moving slowly; if you stepped out too far – the alarm was piercing. You couldn't help but know about it. Everybody a block either side of you...

And so we played.

I'm playing again now, but for higher stakes. The stakes make my spine tingle – fear and excitement feeding off each other, twining like vines, sinking deep. I'm too old for this, aren't I? Too sane?

“Charlie?” I send the call only in my head, through the twisty wires implanted in my brain. Painless. Inserted through the corner of one eye as a child. Who doesn't, these days?

“Em.”

“You getting anywhere with that security set-up?”

“It's a good one. Can you dodge?”

Dodge? Shit. Because this is what it is: invisible lasers shooting all over the entrance-way; for certain: pressure pads under the fine pseudo-marble tiles. And this isn't the piss around type, this is the dart shooting, electric current firing nasty shit. This is what kills you if it doesn't make you stronger – and most likely it just gets straight to the good stuff and kills you.

But I'm responding with a mild: “Would rather not.”

“Hang in there.”

Hanging. Balanced on tip toe. On held breath. Wondering if the cool-suit is enough to fool heat sensors, wondering at the same time, how long before it gives me hypothermia?

“This is a good deed, Em. This is like our first.”

“Not...” I start. Is it? No, we've done right before. We have. Maybe not always on the right side of the law. But right. Just not world-saving. Not until now.

“It's worth it.”

Easy for her to say, her life's probably not on the line here. But worth it... there's that warm, restless, sparkling energy inside. This promise – a hero after all. A somebody. A something. And there's the paydate at the end....

“Nearly there, Em.”

“Okay.”

This place is amazing. Mostly hidden by darkness, but still, I can see the shining walls, the whirly, glistening polish. I can make out these patterns that flow over whole walls and ceilings. Display cases sliding up out of the floor like rock formations, and like they've grown here. In daytime, with the lights everywhere... I might come back here one day, pay the door fee – marvel at everything I've saved. Hey, Charlie, let's go out to museum today.

“Okay, I'm in. Good news is I've disabled the sensors – motion and thermal.”

“Bad news is that's there's lasers and pressure pads still in full operation?”

“Sorry.”

“Okay, can you...?”

“Not from the outside. They're local wired.”

“But you can send me schematics?”

“Roger. On it. Hey, do you remember Roger?”

“He was an asshole.”

“Yeah. He was. But he was cute.” The sound of her voice isn't her voice. And I know that. It's just the sub-vocaliser, it's just code translated into sound, translated into a voice like music, one that does and doesn't sound like her. And still, its comforting; still, it's a lifeline. Just this sound of not being alone in here. Not remembering...

No. I can do this.

“Okay Em. Check it out.”

This won't exactly be easy. A myriad cross-hatch of digital tripwires, floors studded from wall to wall with pressure plates. Those shouldn't be all that bad, I can see the spread, I can avoid them if I pay attention. The lasers are harder. There's a window of about half a second you can break their connection before it sets off an alarm. They're positioned with the intention of covering the whole area, but they're set by people, and people have limits. People don't dust in the corners, they skimp on the vacuuming underneath the furniture. So there: where the building's an irregular shape. I can crawl under the first bunch, slide along that wall, move quickly right there – but around that sophisticated burgundy tile - then into the corner. A straight line, a very narrow one, and then there's the stairs.

“Hey Em? Are you on this?”

“On it.”

“Careful. We're on a timeline now.” They'll catch on that she's disabled the locks and the sensors. A security sweep is going to pick her up and then go chasing down her signal.

I play again. It's not so unlike dodge-the-motion-sensors. The lasers are dodged in mostly the same way. Keep peripheral. Keep low. Just once: be fast. And I'm a gymnast at heart. I pretend to myself that I'm dancing – I play my music, I move. I wash up against the stairwell, intact, and Charlie's in my head, pronouncing the all-clear.

I flop against the stairs for a moment.

“You're good.”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“Well don't slack off.”

“Bite me.” And I can't quite help it: “If I don't come back...”

“Shut the fuck up!”

But I do know. I know what the risks are.

#

Young girls. Really young. And we used to play on the streets. There were only streets, endless and dirty and snaking. Military patrols were a daily thing – only barely less than what you get these days. And we knew we could get ourselves killed. And still. All the children. All over the neighbourhood. You'd lean out the window of some abandoned high rise, drop a pebble, or a tiny fire-cracker, watch it falling, picking up speed, watching it hit, watch the sparks burst out. And then you'd run.

You'd depend on the other kids to help you. To save you. Distract the soldiers. There were only so many kids they could chase at once. One popping up. Dropping down. Another one shouting to get their attention.

Only sometimes: they might start shooting. Firing. Actually bullets. And your chest would be torn open with fear. You'd feel your heart shuddering right through your bones. Running for your life – actually for your life – with the wind catching hold of your hair, the ground twenty stories below. The jump between rooftops. Sailing. Flying. Fate in the hands of the universe, because if the jump was too long, the walls too wide apart, there was nothing left to do, no second chances, no hope.

And landing. Jarring all over. Rolling. Bruising. Keep going at all costs.

Well, what? The schools had been closed for a decade.

Charlie was one of the fastest. She was all limbs, and she could contort them any way you liked. You couldn't catch her. She was shimmying through air ducts, spidering along walls. Until the bone-poison got her.

Until then.

There was a time once, when a couple of kids got caught. The news went wildfire all over the neighbourhood. It was Jimmy Hargest and Sallyanne Riff. Cornered because a lift shaft had been sealed off unexpectedly. Suddenly they were in the cross-hairs and didn't have anywhere to run. I like to think that if that'd been me and Charlie we'd have called their bluff, distracted them, crawled away between them, through their stocky, wide-spread, grown-up legs.

But this was late at night, older kids, thirteen and fourteen. No-one had ever tried to surrender before. Who knew what would happen? And the grapevine filled us in. The two of them were beaten. Held down on stone ground, cheeks pressed into hard asphalt and beaten with the butts of guns, kicked repeatedly, punched on the side of the head. A rain of blows that just kept going until neither one of them could keep count. Until they were bloody and cold and the dawn was just starting to creep in through the gaps.

Stains on the ground where the two of them had been.

Jimmy's leg never came right. Sallyanne was scarred. One of the soldiers had paid special attention to her face. So her nose was twisted sideways, her eyes swollen shut, her cheek shattered so that it was never going to come up how it used to be. She didn't remember him cutting, she only knew that a blade had left deep, straight lines in her ruptured cheek, that it must have slid down along her jaw, teased her throat, bit into her chin

“Dad'll come back,” she told me, but it hadn't sounded like that. It'd been all “s”s and “h”s; a wet, desperate collection of sounds. But her father would come back – one day – and he'd exact the proper payment.

She'd been six. And no-one but her even thought he was still alive.

#

Charlie's grandma was 150 years old.

She'd been a child when the internet was new. When computers were chunky, black-and-green, with graphics like stick figures. She'd grown up without a phone, unwired. In a shorter, gentler world.

She would listen to the music of her own time, tapping it out with her mesh-plastic fingers, humming, smiling. She was too old to live, and she didn't tell even Charlie where she sourced her replacement parts, or how she kept her official age secret.

It was her cries that brought Charlie running, just weeks ago. Her lined face wet with tears.

“Gran, Gran, what is it?”

“They've found her, haven't they? The stupid fucks, they've found her.”

“Who?”

“The owl woman.”

“Who?”

“Her. The cursed. Nobody remembers.”

There's records, there's banks and banks of data.

But no. Not this. Not her. The data corrupts. It goes blank. Don't you know?

“Listen,” she'd whispered to Charlie, holding her millimetres away. “Listen to me now. If she's seen by human eyes. She feeds, she revels in the attention. She grows with every moment there's eyes on her.”

And so of course. They were going to display her in a museum.

Unveiled, Charlie's grandma warned us, she would drink in their interest, she'd drink it until she glowed with it. And as they crowded in to see her – glowing, changing – she'd strike, start killing, escape. She'd reach critical mass, and then she'd just walk the world, soaking up its life essence.

“We barely stopped her last time.”

“What?!”

“Charlotte, love, she's doom. She's doom.”

#

And it seemed that Zoon Paricott agreed. He likes to think he runs this neighbourhood. Right there under the military's eye.

I guess he does of sorts.

But he's still just a rat like the rest of us, hiding in the shadows, scavenging, scrounging, bowing his head when he's spoken to. Just another insect. But his finger's on pulses. He does have resources.

“You can take care of this?” It seems we have a reputation.

Charlie, saying: “Sure.”

Me: asking the price.

“10k,” he said.

I said: “Each.”

“On completion.”

“Deal.”

And so, I'm here, I'm now. Not entirely sure if the world depends upon me or not. Not sure how it could, how it could make any sense that it does. And still. I almost feel as if I can sense her, as if her eyes rake the building, hunting me, calling me, knowing I'm here.