The Making of Heroes

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Tom Boyd sat upright in his bed waiting for Tavia. The watch had been replaced in Tavia’s (not so secret) hiding place. On Tom’s wrist now was a large play watch, made of plastic. Once, it had belonged to Tavia, but when Tom arrived, it had - somehow - ended up with him.

While he waited, Tom blinked slowly, practicing that wide-eyed, dumb innocent expression which sometimes - but not always - got him out of trouble. His thumb remained in his lap. There was no sense in sucking it if there was no-one around to get annoyed. Poppie had told him to stay out of trouble, and Poppie was always right. But then Poppie didn’t like anything that was exciting. And - if nothing else - Tavia was the most exciting thing in Tom’s small world; the most exciting by a long, long way.

He heard her thumping along the corridor like a fury before she came in. Trembling, Tom slide down beneath the covers and closed his eyes. It was so very hard to predict what she would do: it was like being in an H-Game and facing a random dragon that might at any time decide you were breakfast.

The noise in the corridor ceased and all became silent. Maybe she had gone into her own room, but he hadn’t heard her door open and close. His own door was virtually silent in operation as he’d found a little oil in the tech room and applied it. He didn’t want anyone to know when he slipped out for one of his nocturnal wanderings.

But now, under the covers, eyes closed, heart thumping in his ears, it was hard to judge if she was actually in the room or not. His thumb crept upwards and plugged firmly into his mouth. And then he felt it, creeping through the thin covers: an awareness he was not alone. Or - to be more accurate (and even at the age of five Tom liked to be precise) - he could almost feel the dull colour of another electronic gizmo in the room. Purple, with red streaks and the hint of an ancient pink.

Tavia’s laptop. No, he corrected himself: his laptop.

His covers were violently jerked aside. Tavia loomed over him. She had placed the laptop down and was giving him her full attention. “Hello moron!” Her eyes were wicked. She threw one leg across the bed and sat, her solid, muscular weight firmly planted on his midriff. His wrists were grabbed and pinned back against the bed. Disturbingly, thrillingly, he found himself helpless. Her face loomed into his. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

She lifted herself slightly before dropping drop back down, driving the air from his lungs. “Moron! Hand it over!”

“Hand what over?”

Again the lift and the drop. “My tupping watch, moron. Hand it over!”

He was gasping too much to answer. She waited. Her voice went quiet. “Take your time, but if you get your answer wrong, I’ll tupping murder you. Freak!”

Eventually he managed to say “I was wearing this one.” He waved a pinioned hand, trying to point at his wrist. “This one.”

“Liar!”

“This one. This one I swear.” He closed his eyes and shrieked at the top of his voice “this one, this one, this one!”

He felt her grip weaken and then she was off him, standing by the bed, her face red with suppressed anger.

He stopped shrieking and managed to drop his voice down and under control. “I don’t know, I don’t know where your watch is. I tupping swear.”

Frustrated, Tavia rammed her hands into her pockets. The little s**t was lying, she was sure he was lying, but …. Maybe he had been wearing the other watch? She’d only seen it for a brief moment and .. Tavia took her hands out of her pockets and kicked the wall before swinging round and extending her arm, finger pointing accusingly.

“It’d better be where I left it.” She frowned for a moment as if debating if she should attack him again, but in the end picked up the laptop and went out, slamming the door behind her.

Tom followed the girl in his mind. Her room was next to his. Four steps along the corridor, then a wait for a second to punch in her passcode (12359), another second for the door to unlock. Faintly, through the walls, right on cue, Tom heard the sound of electronic bolts being drawn back. The countdown became simple: 1, 2: she enters and lets the door swing closed behind her. 3, 4: She takes two strides to the slightly loose panel in the wall. 4, 5: she inserts two fingers in the gap to fetch out the key. 6, 7, 8: she crosses the room, lies on her back on the floor and slides under the bed. 9, 10, 11: she inserts the key into the lock of the small safebox she has fixed upside down to the slats. 12: the lid falls open and she can see her watch.

Exactly where he had replaced it some two minutes previously.

Tom counted to ten and on to twenty. Tavia did not reappear. He had won. A dangerous game, for Tavia was becoming more random and unpredictable. One day she might really really lose it, and he’d be in deep deep s**t.

One day, but not yet. Tom went to the door and listened intently. No sounds.

Next time, he thought, I’ll put a spider in there. Or a mouse. Maybe even a rat, if one could be caught. Then when the safebox lid was unlatched and swung down it’d tumble out, making Tavia jump. Might even cause her to sit up and bang her head. Tom’s mind - as it was always wont to do - ground on. A spider wouldn’t necessarily work, as it could construct a web to hold it in place. And they had sticky feet that let them run upside down across ceilings, so it might not even drop out. Well then, not a spider. But a rat now: that would be perfect. A hungry rat, with sharp teeth falling down onto Tavia’s face …… but trapping a rat, and forcing it into the safebox: not easy, not safe. So it’d have to be a mouse. For a few seconds longer Tom explored various possibilities before deciding - with a sense of relief - a mouse would be almost as much trouble as a rat and therefore could be forgotten about.

He clambered back into bed and waved his V-Screen on. As ever, for him it glowed with a faint iridescent blue colour. Other bits of electronic kit appeared in different colours and some in more than one: Kzar’s 3D printer, for instance was a weird, gently moving mixture of orange and purple, while the digistats in the kitchens were a solid yellow.

To Tom, this synesthesia was normal. But Poppie had told him to keep it to himself; once - on a rare occasion when they weren’t feuding - he’d mentioned it to Tavia, but in return received such an outpouring of scornful disbelief he hadn’t spoken of it again.

And it did have uses: when Tom studied the keypad to Tavia’s room it glowed violet with dark spots of black that - somehow - appeared incorrect, and shouted out a need to be made right. The spots were in a pattern which - when transposed into a matrix - yielded 12359. The code to unlock the door.

And when they had walked past the scavenger stall, it had been Tom who recognised the significance of the laptop. A bit of ancient - but still functional - tech. Now - after he had played with it for a few hours - it was showing the maps and schematics. But it had been Tavia who recognised this would help in a Splice raid.

Tom snuggled down. His arm ached a little, the fine scar - perhaps an inch long, below the elbow - giving out a familiar thrum, as if the muscle beneath it had been torn and not fully repaired. He opened his mouth, addressing the V-Screen. “Show Mum.”

Poppie - as he always did - appeared. He was in a long nightgown with a sleeping cap on his head and carried an ornate candlestick complete with lit candle. He yawned, rubbing his eyes theatrically.

Tom repeated “Show Mum.” He hoped the VF was not going to put up an argument.

Poppie turned and with an exclamation of surprise, pretended it was the first time he’d noticed the small boy. “Tom! I was sleeping. Why did you wake me?”

“Show Mum.”

“It’s late. You should get some sleep.”

“Show Mum. I have told you three times. Show Mum, show Mum, show Mum. Now it’s six, so you have to do what I say twice.”

“It doesn’t work like that, as you well know.” Poppie sighed, as if regretting ever telling Tom that any command, if repeated three times, would compel him to obey. “OK.” Suddenly he was wearing a teacher’s gown and standing in front of a blackboard. “But we’ll talk about this in the morning.” He stood to one side and tapped with a long ruler. On the blackboard, in ornate white writing, was: ‘Your emotions and the necessity of letting go.’ Poppie vanished and the blackboard grew, taking up the whole of the V-Screen. The vid began.

It was a short, grainy clip, maybe twenty five seconds, on a loop. Tom had found it in Kzar’s cloud dustbin. A disregarded scrap of an image, a static view of the street at night. Into shot, growing larger as she approaches, is a woman clasping a small baby. She is hurrying from door to door. Her eyes are wild and her hair matted with blood and dust. She holds the small bundle with both arms hard against herself with a muted, desperate terror.

She knocks on each door, but they remain closed. She retraces her steps, now banging on the blank, unresponsive metal with such a ferocity her fists and forearms become discoloured and begin to bleed. She calls and begs, but the clip has no sound, which somehow manages to emphasise her plight: a silent, yelling mother in a sterile, uncaring, cloying world. She knocks on three doors before the clip ends and begins again. Over and over.

Tom watched twenty-eight times before he fell asleep.