We, The Lucky Few (Book 1 of The Surge Trilogy)

9 P.M. - 10 P.M.

Theia

I'm back in the past, sitting in the hospital behind the reception area that is strewn with paper since electronic records are unreliable and any electricity in surplus is stored for the most complicated of surgeries. And I'm in my own body, ten again and helping a nurse alphabetise some files in eerie silence, a calm before the storm that is my mother and Dr Adam Jefferson who burst through the doors to our right with a man on a stretcher, shouting instructions at one another. I'm frozen to the spot and unable to do anything but watch as they rush past. The nurse too is motionless but snaps out of it quicker than I do and returns to her task. 'That's what they do,' the nurse says. My hands take a few minutes before they return to organising the paperwork confidently.

On the walk home I look in awe at my mother who explains it to me. 'There are two ways to deal with panic, one is to fight it and the other is to freeze.'

'But why don't we all react the same way?' I ask. She is braver than me and I know that fearlessness is needed to survive in this world. Still, there must have been a time when she was not as quick-witted and I wonder what the turning point is.

'I've had longer to master it but it doesn't come easily Theia, but when you're confronted with life and death situations on a daily basis you soon get used to it.'

Mr Ethers stands at the top of the staircase, a few steps above his wife. He holds the gun at me and I can't move from fear. Enough time has passed for me during the flashback that contains the lesson from my mother for him to react but he hasn't shot me yet. Already tonight I have frozen three times: at the policeman outside Henry's, watching the girl kill her family across the gardens and at the double gunshot that turns out wasn't from a suicide pact but a murder. And now this. My mother would be disappointed I haven't mastered the fear yet.

To Mr Ethers I am an intruder and dangerous and he has the upper hand, whilst I don't have the strength to flee so instead I brace myself for the pain of death. As much as my body is incapacitated my mind races and tells me that now my parents have no option but to focus their efforts on Ronan. Then I think of Henry and all the unsaid things between us.

I must have regained control of my body because someone speaks and it is not Mr Ethers. 'It's me, Theia Silverdale,' I catch myself saying. I raise my hands up slowly to show I am unarmed. 'From next door.'

'Don't go near my wife.'

'You used to babysit me. You still sometimes look after Ronan and Leda, my brother and sister.'

'What did you do?' I watch his gaze flit between his wife and me and he doesn't understand this any more than I do, as if he has just now found her dead. How could that be?

'Mr Ethers, please,' I start to beg but I stop when he shakes the gun at me and places his finger over the trigger. He crouches down and with his free hand he reaches for his wife's ankle. He keeps his gun fixed on me as he feels for a pulse.

'What did you do?' he asks again, slower, taking in the fact that she is not coming back.

'Nothing,' I stutter. 'I didn't do anything.' I fumble over my words and know I should run, that his confusion may distract him long enough from reacting, but running would make me look guilty and I don't even know if I have the energy in my legs to move away fast enough. I work out how my presence must look to him: I must have broken in and killed his wife. Yet that can't be right because he holds the weapon and a shiver runs down my spine when I realise there might be an alternative explanation, which terrifies me even more. What if neither one of us killed her and there is a third person hiding in the house? More adrenaline shoots through me.