Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Jade - Chapter 4 - Now

'As I've always said,' Adrian declares, once we've paced out of The Clinic in triumph. 'I found a way!'

Adrian Lively has always gotten everything he's ever wanted.

Skirting the car park, remnants of the protests protrude from pockets of snow. Crumpled leaflets litter the nearby bus shelter. We pass a fallen banner demanding greater access and equality. Nowadays everybody voices their indignation. We're the nation of free speech after all. And with so few places on the birthing scheme, everyone wants to qualify.

I nestle into Adrian's chest, letting the soft wool of his blazer engulf my cheeks.

Adrian straightens.

Up ahead, soldiers have cordoned off the street. Four men in sand coloured uniforms and flat canvas hats bear machine guns in their grasp as they pace between a line of oversized concrete blocks. The blocks were here before. They're on pretty much every street corner these days. To stop them ramming into pedestrians. Recently that's become a thing. As they're typically unmanned and go unnoticed. Now their menace is obvious. If those soldiers don't want us to cross their border, there's no getting around it.

'You're iD card worked in there. It'll work out here,' Adrian mutters, taking my hands in his, twisting our fingers together. If it wasn't so cold, my hand would slip right out of his grasp.

One of the soldiers puts his hands on his gun. Lifts it slightly. Another picks up a megaphone. He directs the advancing car to slow. They mean it. They'll gun down a motorist for going a mile over the speed limit if they want to. I've seen it before. But that won't happen today, for this car slows, it's engine purring quietly as the window winds down. When I recognise the number plate I understand why. It's Adrian's father, a big wig in the pharmaceuticals industry and a budding politician. He carries himself with the poise of a man who ought to be revered and true to form, they dip their heads and wave him through.

The sight of Marcus, Adrian's father, should impress me. How I wish it could have been my dad. Sometimes I imagine they were wrong and he'll come back.

Marcus smiles through the windscreen, a perfect line of teeth glimmer and his eyes come together. Adrian inherited the thicket of auburn hair from his father though Marcus is greying. And the stubble on his top lip and below his sideburns is as sharp as razor wire.

With such similar features, I can't pinpoint what in Marcus's expression makes him look aggressive. Perhaps it's the crook of his black eyebrows that form upside down 'V' shapes. Either that or the lack of empathy in his voice when he lowers the window and orders us in.

Whilst they talk vitamins and tablets, I concentrate on the detached houses we pass, scattered amongst a web of frost-bitten forestry stretching from Epping to Buckhurst Hill and Loughton in the East. It's a contrast to those near the Clinic, where housing quotas are met, homes are stacked like Lego blocks and council erected 'no ball games' signs populate the roads.

'Now, no one can touch you. Apart from me,' Adrian says, as we wave Marcus off from the front step of Adrian's house. Our home. When he smiles, grabs my hips and plants a kiss on my lips, the final curls of fear pressing at my temples dissolves away.

****

Moonlight illuminates the denuded snow-fringed branches and the water fountain which has frozen into a miniature, silk-spun lake. With a few more days until Christmas, winter has timed itself perfectly. I pull at the blinds in the bathroom, then study my doe-eyed reflection in the mirror above the sink. It's so rare to wear this much make-up, I barely recognise the brown-eyed girl who stares back at me with the reams of golden hair. It's thicker now. Another side effect of my condition.

I change into a vest and shorts, for bed.

What I am supposed to be doing now? Wait for him?

I flick on the TV. It's another news report on the rioting; justifying the army's presence on the streets. How has the country imploded in such as way. My father founded his career in the Territorial Army as a teenager. If he were still alive, he'd tell me this could never happen. Planes can't be grounded over a terrorist attack. Not four months later. When holidaying with Mum and Stuart was a threat, I'd welcomed such rules. Now it's an iron curtain, and the more they protest, the tighter it's pulled.

Out of nowhere, Mandy's image springs to mind: the roadside, our philosophy class, the lunch queue, climbing onto the stage in the Banyard Building with her twin brother, Isaac. A haunting thought chases the vision. Would she still be here if her mother had the Clinic's green notes? When the 192 bus screeched into her, Mandy landed at cross angles. Her box-pleated school skirt was hocked around her hips and her legs crooked like spiders' legs, only inches from the kerb.

'Now they won't want me,' she'd whispered as Christmas-red blood trickled in fine rivulets from her nostrils.

And she was right.

My thoughts are somewhere between Mandy and the riots when I hear a creak. It's so late. In the four days since I moved in, I've established Adrian works too hard. He'll say it's the frost, and that his sports tyres are futile across the country lanes around our home or another such excuse. But I know it's another task his father has thrown at him. He intimated as much in the car from the Clinic.

The sound shifts to the door handle, its polished etched brass vexing and squeaking as it turns.

'So late again, Adr—'

'Hello, Jade,' he says.

I freeze.

It is not Adrian. Instead stands a stranger. He wears dirty jeans, a jet-black hoodie and tight black hat. His face is a riddle of angles, a mathematical equation: sunken eyes over hollow cheeks, divided by a long, thin nose. This is a man I'd walk around in the street; one who might look to steal your bag or whisper perverted words into your ear just for the thrill of it.

He is in my bedroom.

And he knows my name.

Thanks for reading Chapter Four of Sever. I told you you were going to be on the edge of your seat for this one. Could you breathe when he uttered the words 'Hello Jade?' (It makes my skin crawl every time). I'm in a great mood, so here's a little spoiler... the intruder is called Terrence Ridley. Is he a nice guy? Well, you'll have to see for yourself. We're not flicking back to Blue's story just yet, so click to read on, to find out what happens to Jade...

CAST LIST (so far, new ones in bold)

Marcus Lively - William Fichtner aka Alex from Prison Break (Adrian's father)

Terrence Ridley - Mackenzie Crook (one of the pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean)

Jade Lively - Lilly Collins (the protagonist)

Adrian Lively - Alex Pettyfer (Jade's husband)

Blue - Liam Hemsworth (the protagonist / anti-hero and Jade's ex-boyfriend)

Mikey Drosner - Jack Black (Blue's lawyer)

Detective Pike - Viola Davis (Blue's prosecutor)

Prime Minister Christopher Seaford - Gary Oldman

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