My mother paused, looked at me for a moment as she processed this information.
‘I know,’ she said at last, ‘You’re right.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t know if you’d believe me.’
‘Trust me, I believe all kinds of things.’
‘It’s about your father. I…’
She trailed off. I prompted her to continue.
‘Go on.’
‘I remember him… controlling Leya. I don’t mean verbally. Or even physically. But like… a puppet master might control a puppet. Or a brain might control its body. But it wasn’t his body, it was her’s.’
‘You’re talking about telepathy. Telepathy doesn’t exist, Mum. It’s a myth. We’ve known this for decades.’
Mum looked at me, tears in her eyes. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’
I felt my gut wrench in the way that only disappointing a parent can make happen. ‘Sorry. I believe you. Go on.’
‘I would’ve thought I was imagining it, too. But Leya… before she left, she told me, she remembers it happening to her. It was innocent things at first, like stopping crying fits, but then it got more sinister. He stopped her from going out, from having friends, until all her free time was spent in the house. Here. With him.’
‘How…,’ I began, not quite sure if I wanted to hear the answer to the question I was about to ask. ‘How does she remember this? Wouldn’t she have been a bit young?’
Mum burst out in tears. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I should have stopped him sooner!’
‘It was me, too, wasn’t it?’
Mum forced the sobs to stop, and nodded, her eyes red. ‘You were too young to remember, Syl. But Leya… she wasn’t. She has to live with it.’
‘And you think these are the memories you overwrote with the ‘Liks?’
‘Yes. Well, some of them, at least. But how can I know for sure what I’ve erased from my mind?’
This was getting all too much to process.
‘So… you made Dad leave? Because of this?’
‘I…,’ Mum began to reply through sobs, ‘I think so.’
‘Mum, this is…’
I trailed off, and we sat in silence for a while, processing everything that had been said.
Eventually, Mum piped up again. ‘There’s something else…’
I looked at her with wide eyes, afraid to ask the necessary question.
‘What else?’
‘Leya, when she left… She told me she was going to go looking for him. Get answers about what he did to her. And to you.’
I touched at my cheek and found that it was wet. I’d been crying.
‘She went looking for him?’
Mum nodded.
‘You need to give me that journal, Mum. I need to find out where she went. You can’t protect me from this any more.’
She nodded again, still remaining silent, but reached for the diary - and passed it to me.
I took it and stared blankly into the distance for a few moments.
‘You’ll tell me what you find, won’t you?’ Mum asked. ‘I promise I won’t use again. I’ll live with the truth this time.’
‘When I find anything, I’ll tell you,’ I lied.
The console on my arm began to vibrate. It was the agency again:
Holiday’s over. We need you in. ASAP.
STATION 34-ALPHA
“NEXT SERVICES: 7.5 BILLION KILOMETRES”
Iron Sector
25c-11-2337
3
Not Bad For A Terran
I spent the journey flipping through the encrypted pages of Leya’s journal, to no avail. Not only did I not see any way of easily decoding it, but I barely recognised some of the languages being used. It was split into sections - which I could only assume were ordered chronologically - each using a different set of characters. Beaten by this puzzle, I slammed the book shut and returned to staring absent-mindedly out the ship window.
When I docked back at Station 34-Alpha, I was welcomed with the familiar hustle and bustle of the central promenade. Businesses lined the Strip - a great many of them owned by fine, upstanding members of our great galaxy. There was a Gulian restaurant that served food which would fill you up as quickly as you wished - a single bite for those in a hurry, or several courses for those travelling for leisure. A bar, manned by a mute Iyr who never seemed to remove his helmet, sold some of the purest alcohol on the galaxy - just don’t expect great service. And who could talk of 34-Alpha without mentioning the great Trunon, the best plasma-spinner in the sector?
Other businesses, such as the one I worked for, were not held in quite so much high regard. The shopfront was coated in a thick layer of dust, the door’s opening protocol needed fixing up, and the ageing holosign was more often than not hacked to instead display pornography (courtesy of the kids of the promenade). These three issues conspired to give the agency the illusion of being a strip club and attracted all the wrong sorts of customers.
As I entered the agency premises, a small, rotund Bringla looked up from his desk. Well, mostly he did - two of his eyes remained trained on his console. Typically he would be sat, locked up, in his office, but today he was using the communal desks, perhaps taking advantage of nobody else being around.
‘Raynor. You’re late. Expected you back here two rotations ago,’ he started.
‘Yes, sir. Sorry. Came from Terra, other side of the sector. Traffic was a nightmare.’
‘Ah… yes. I forget that you’re one of those. From Terra. Maybe keep that hush-hush for the time being, eh?’
‘What? Why? What’s going on?’
‘You mean to say you haven’t figured it out yet? What sort of detective are you? Come on, Raynor. I’m sat out here, my office door closed, what do you think is going on?’
Oh, leave it out, mate, I’m tired.
‘Maybe, sir, if you sent me on those training programmes you promised when I signed on at this agency, I’d have worked it out.’
Hutch sighed, rolled a few eyes in exasperation.
‘Well, good news and bad. Good news is the company’s been purchased, everyone with shares gets a payout.’
‘I don’t have shares.’
‘Oh? Really? Shit. Just bad news for you, then. You have a new boss. He’s been waiting for you.
