Darkhaven

Dad wasn’t home. I let my breath out in an exasperated huff and called him. He didn’t answer his phone either, so I left a message telling him that Sean was after me.

I didn’t want to add Zenna to the list of things I was currently worried about, but she was there. We’d always been upfront with each other. If one of us needed something, we just came out and asked, no games or codes. Well, I was – it was a code, I realised. Alex’s note was a code. I was useless at lateral thinking, especially without any intuition, but maybe Zenna’s call had been timely. If anyone could break a code of Alex’s, she could. I called her back.

No answer.

Fine. How hard could it be to crack a code? Surely he wouldn’t leave me a note I couldn’t understand.

I sat at Dad’s kitchen table with a pen and paper. I thought there might be a phone number hidden in it, somewhere I could call Alex, but if there was I couldn’t find a way to extract it. I went through every pattern analysis tool I could think of. I reversed the numbers, rearranged them into numerical order, reverse numerical order, found the median and, after what felt like much longer than twelve minutes, concluded that even if I found some pattern or logic I would have no idea what it meant.

I tried Zenna again. Still no answer. I called her home number too, but no one answered there either. Her parents must be out. My gut plummeted as I thought of how I’d dismissed her. Fine. I’d go to her house. And I should probably call Stephen.

Unlike Zenna, Stephen answered on the first ring when I called him from the car, but I pressed the wrong button while trying to turn up the volume without taking my eyes off the road and the Bluetooth dropped out. I picked up my phone and held it to my ear. Day one of having my licence. Whoops.

‘Gabby, are you okay?’ Stephen asked, breathless.

‘Um,’ I said, taken aback by his obvious stress. A traffic light changed to orange – I was tempted, but it was cutting it fine. I pulled up at the lights. A police car stopped opposite. I threw the phone down into the footwell.

‘Gabby?’ Stephen called, voice tiny from the floor. ‘Gabby!’

‘Hang on!’ I yelled, hoping the phone would pick up my voice. It must have worked because he stopped talking. The lights went green and I drew away slowly, waiting until the police car was well past before retrieving my phone. I glanced down to put it on speaker. ‘Honestly, it would just be safer if we didn’t have to try not to look like we were on the phone.’

‘You’re not supposed to be on the phone at all, not just look like you aren’t,’ Stephen said. ‘What’s going on? We got a message about your uncle.’

‘You did? Thank god, I don’t need to worry about the code.’

‘What code?’

‘Wait, what do you know?’

‘The Taskforce have him,’ Stephen said, voice strained. ‘I was hoping they didn’t have you too. Don’t tell me anything else, this line might not be clean. Come quickly. You know where.’

Did I?

‘I can’t, remember?’ I was reluctant to reveal my weakness, my lost intuition, in case Sean was listening in. Could he do that? I had no idea.

‘You’ll find me,’ he said. ‘And keep worrying about it.’

‘Worrying about what?’ I asked, but the line went dead. Angry frustration welled up, saturating my bones. ‘Crap!’ I yelled, whacking the steering wheel. More cryptic clues.

I took a deep breath and replayed the conversation in my head. Worry about it. We’d been talking about the code. Okay. That must be what I was meant to worry about. As for where to meet, Darkhaven was the only place I knew.

I pulled up in Zenna’s driveway. Storm clouds obscured half the sky, eerily reminiscent of the day this whole business had started, although since it was now closer to summer, the air was oppressively warm instead of cold and sharp, like the slow and inevitable press of Alex’s auger juicer.

The front door was locked and no one answered, so I went around to the side gate, climbed on the air conditioning unit to unhitch it and went down the side of the house to Zenna’s bedroom window. I banged on the glass. She appeared, headphones covering her ears, saw me, then disappeared. I went to wait by the back door.

Cecelia rang.

‘How’d you go?’ she demanded.

‘Um, what?’

‘Your test!’ Her voice was excited. Then it changed. ‘What’s wrong?’

There was no hiding anything from Cecelia. Zenna was unlocking the glass sliding door, and I had Alex’s card clutched in my other hand.

‘Gabby?’ Cecelia pressed.

I took a deep breath. ‘The thing I told you about. That I couldn’t tell you about. Alex is missing.’

Zenna ushered me in, although she looked sullen.

‘Where are you? I’m coming over.’

‘I’m at Zenna’s. Look, Ceel, thanks, but don’t stress, you have study to do.’

The line was already dead. I looked at Zenna. Her eyes were red and her face puffy. Her headphones hung around her neck now, her hair all frizzed up from where they’d been sitting. She was wearing a jumper, even though it was thirty degrees outside and the air was becoming a swimming pool in water content.

‘I’m sorry, Zenna. I shouldn’t have brushed you away.’

She shrugged. ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s Alex. Sean – the guy from the Taskforce – I think he’s taken him.’ Unlike Cecelia, Zenna didn’t shock easily. I handed her the card. ‘Alex left this. I think the number is a code. I thought you might know what it means. Please,’ I added.

Zenna sat down at the table with the card. She pulled out her laptop and started tapping away while I sat opposite, fidgeting, staring at the numbers and trying in vain to reach into my absent quiet place.

The doorbell rang. I jumped up and met Cecelia at the door. She dragged me into a hug, her shoulder-bag full of books bumping into my hip. ‘What can I do?’

‘We’re trying to crack this code that Alex left.’ My voice was thin.

Cecelia took the card. ‘Are you sure he’s not just out somewhere?’ She looked at it for about three seconds, then her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Oh! It’s a book cipher.’

Zenna and I stared at her.

’Fiona made me watch Sherlock with her last night, there was a book cipher in it. Gabby, Alex isn’t missing. This implies he’s imprisoned.′ She frowned. ‘Sort of.’

‘How do you get that?’ I asked.

Cecelia gave me a questioning look. ’Didn’t you read A Tale of Two Cities?′

I shrugged. ‘I didn’t finish it.’

She pulled the novel out of her bag and started referencing pages. Zenna got up and disappeared down the hallway. After a minute, Cecelia had the message written out: House not safe. Get friends to father’s.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked. House not safe was obvious enough. I hardly needed a secret message about that now. But get friends to father’s? Did that mean Cecelia and Zenna? Or my Darkhaven friends? Presumably Alex didn’t know about Darkhaven, so he must have meant my school friends. But Dad was gone, so how was he going to help?

‘Gabby?’ Cecelia asked softly. ‘If this refers to me, I’d like to know what’s going on.’

It was a fair request. Undecided, I looked down at a steak knife that had been left on the table. I could show her, cut my hand to demonstrate the healing, explain everything. Have my best friend back as the one who knew all my secrets. It seemed so simple.

But it wasn’t simple. There was danger. And Stephen may have been lenient with Zenna so far, but I didn’t fool myself into thinking that was going to last once I had made my decision, one way or the other. If I chose to return and forget, someone would be slipping into Zenna’s room with a little blue syringe, and she would be forgetting too. If I stayed at Darkhaven, well, they’d have to modify her memory so she’d believe I was dead along with everyone else.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head. Now was not the time to think about that decision. Cecelia sat in front of me, expectant.

‘I, ah…’ I wracked my brain for a plausible lie.

‘What is going on, Gabby?’

Half-truths, maybe. The knife glinted in the light and I thought of the disk, the glittering holofoil. ‘I stole something.’

She frowned. ‘What, like from a shop?’

‘No.’ I twisted the knife in my fingers. ‘No. From some bad people.’

‘Drugs?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.

I shook my head. A door slammed down the hall, and I jumped, my hands slipping, and the knife sliced across my palm. I hissed in a breath. The knife clattered to the table with a speckling of blood.

Before I could stop her, Cecelia reached out and took my hand, uncurling my fingers. She watched the blood clot, the skin close and the wound heal over, leaving my palm unblemished. Her face blanched as she lifted her eyes to mine. ‘What was that?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to tell you only what you need to know, okay?’

She nodded, biting her lip.

‘It’s a genetic experiment. Enhanced healing, strength, senses. I’m supposed to be super intuitive too, but I’ve lost that, so I should have some hunch about what’s going on at the moment, but I don’t.’ My gut twisted painfully. I continued with a basics-only information dump, trying not to think about how much like Donovan I sounded, and hoping that without specifics Cecelia might be left with her memories intact.

‘Right now, I need to go and meet the people who have been helping me develop my skills. The people who took Alex are trying to take over the experiment and they are ruthless. It’s dangerous, the less you know the better. But you’re my best friend. I should have told you ages ago.’

Cecelia eyed the knife lying on the table. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay, what?’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘But I want to.’ She met my eyes, determined.

‘You can’t, Ceel, it’s too dangerous.’

‘More dangerous if you go by yourself. They might not do anything if there’s a witness.’

‘Or they’ll kill the witness.’

Cecelia was silent. Until now, we’d talked of danger and trouble, but not death. Nothing that real. I wished I had my intuition, but I didn’t need it to know I wouldn’t be talking Cecelia out of this easily. I needed her and Zenna to go to Dad’s house. Stephen was waiting. I was running out of time.

The silence was broken by a sharp cry. Cecelia and I jumped out of our chairs and raced down the hall to Zenna’s room, but she wasn’t there. Panicking that somehow the Taskforce was here too, I pounded on the bathroom door while Cecelia went to check the study. I’d drive them to Dad’s, I decided, then think of a way to trick them into staying there. I knocked again. ‘Zenna? We have to go.’

I heard a sob.

‘Zenna?’

The door flew open. Zenna stood in front of me, arm held up to my face, blood dripping from shallow cuts striping her forearm in vivid, angry lines. I glanced past her to the bathroom vanity, where a razor blade rested next to the sink.

My own blood drained from my face.

‘This is how I feel,’ she said, voice glittering with icy hatred. ‘How would you like to be the second-best friend of a super-human girl who can do everything better than you anyway and only calls you when they’re waiting for their other friends to call them back?’

‘Zenna, that’s not how it is. I need your help.’

‘Well, I needed yours. And now it’s too late. Tell Alex I’m sorry.’ She turned back to the bench and picked up the razor.

‘Zenna, no!’ I cried, reaching towards her. She turned, eyes lifeless, pushed me out of the room and slammed the door in my face. The lock clicked in the door just as Cecelia appeared behind me.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘She’s hurting herself.’ I raced down the hallway to grab my phone off the table. As I picked it up, Stephen rang.

‘Can you call an ambulance?’ I begged Cecelia. She nodded. I answered Stephen’s call. I couldn’t shake the image of Zenna’s arm and barely heard Stephen’s voice. Something about hurrying up.

‘Go.’ Cecelia was firm.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked, already gathering my keys.

‘We’ll be fine. Go save Alex.’

I gave her a quick hug and turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ Cecelia called. ‘What did she do?’

Somewhere deep down I had some empathy, a flash of guilt for leaving, but it was a long way down. I had tried, and she kept throwing it away. Rage and shock swelled over the top. ‘Shoved her sliced-up arm in my face and basically told me it was my fault,’ I spat. Then I realised Cecelia was just trying to figure out if she needed to break into the bathroom to stop a suicide. I bit my lip. ‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t know. They weren’t deep. But maybe she’s going over the edge.’

Cecelia’s arms were back around me. ‘She’s going to survive this. We’ll figure it all out.’

Fighting back tears, I jumped in my car and tried not to speed too much on my way to Darkhaven. Sirens howled further down the freeway, and fitful rain splattered the windscreen. I turned on the wipers and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned pale.