Shadow Walker

Training

"Close your eyes," Rain said.

Dec shot her an apprehensive look through mist-dusted eyelashes. It was all part of the plan they'd made mere minutes before, and already, Dec was beginning to question the proposed execution of it.

They'd walked, or rather, slid down the soggy, inundated hill to the patchy protection of poplars at the edge of the dam, all to get away from the mad scientist that had become of Teegan after setting her the task of creating an explosive that would destroy the packages. Dark storm clouds hung like soggy papier mâché over the late afternoon sun, heavy with the threat of bursting open again. Dec looked to the sky, then up the hill to the shelter where a high whizzing sound like that of a very old-fashioned kettle was growing louder.

Rain gripped his shoulders. "Declan," she said. "Focus."

The kettle noise gave way to a sound like a hot pan of oil spitting and crackling. Dec scrunched his nose. "Do you think she's got everything under control?"

"Teegan is a great scientist," Rain said.

Dec lifted an eyebrow. If she was talking about Teegan's crude lighting solution in her flat, Frankenstein, or the clamp that currently held her stomach together, then she mustn't have known many great scientists.

Rain, reading his expression, said, "Being a great scientist isn't about the complexity of your experiments, or the cost of your equipment. It's about the inquisitiveness of your mind, the ability to think beyond what most people would class as conceivable. It's about the combination of bravery and intellect. And Teegan might be one of the bravest, most inquisitive minds I've ever known."

Dec glanced back up to the shelter, where the whizzing and crackling had receded, giving way to a shower of sparks. Brave, or stupid? he asked himself, his father's words flashed in his mind—a hero thinks with his head, a fool thinks with his heart. He couldn't decide which one Teegan was, just cringed at how much he was beginning to think like the Captain.

"Let's get this over with," he said, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to endure Rain's searching expression.

Rain gripped the sides of his head, her thumbs pressing the crease of his brow bone. She had to stand close to reach him, so close, he could feel the point of her hipbone grazing his thigh. His body strained to put some air flow between them. But he forced himself to stand still.

"Concentrate on your breathing," Rain said, increasing the pressure on his skull so he could feel the blimp of his pulse in his temples. "And try to slow your heart like you did back at the casino."

Dec restrained a snort. "What's this, some kind of meditation shit?"

"Med-i-tation?" Rain said, slowing the word as she did with all new words.

Dec didn't bother explaining. "I don't get how this is supposed to help me remember."

"We're trying to remove all interference from your mind so that it can recover the detail of one source of input. Think of it like clearing processes on a computer hard drive so it can perform a faster search."

"You do realise humans and computers are very different things," Dec said, cracking open an eyelid to emphasise his words.

Rain smoothed his eyelid back down with her thumb. "You'd be surprised at how similar they are," Rain said. "Now focus. We don't have much time."

Dec took a deep breath, feeling with it a compressive heaviness in his body like he was in a rising elevator, pushing upwards through gravity. As he breathed out, the elevator slowed, and with each breath after that, peaked and began falling. A sense of lightness took hold, as though he was shedding the weight of his thoughts, and defusing the distractions of the world around—the whizzing and whirring of Teegan's experiments, the trickle of water around his feet and the drip, drip, drip of runoff from the Autumn-thinned poplars overhead.