The Red Slayer
26 - Double Life

I only have to tell Luke about my new title the next morning and he immediately turns to his sketchbook and draws right there at the kitchen counter while Dad makes breakfast.

‘I love it,’ says Dante. ‘The Red Slayer. Simple, but effective.’

‘It’s heaps better than the Phantomettes at least,’ adds Olga. ‘Should we have similar codenames?’

Luke thrusts his hand in the air, not taking his eyes off his sketchpad. ‘Dibs on Gold Slayer. It matches my mask.’

Olga laughs and thinks over the entire colour spectrum before settling. 'I’ll be the White Slayer. I was going to say Silver Slayer, but that gives me terrible Fantastic Four flashbacks.’ She shudders. ‘How about you, Dante?’

Dante takes a long sip from his coffee cup. ‘What colours go with red, gold and white? I don’t want our names to clash.’

‘Green if you’re in for a Christmas vibe,’ I joke. ‘Or black—’

'Black,’ he replies. ‘I don’t look good in green. And you’d expect to replace the colour on my costume, wouldn’t you?’

‘The Black Slayer it is,’ I say. ‘That was easy. I thought we’d spend hours crossing off names we couldn’t use.’

Dad laughs and adds the final plate to our breakfast spread. I wasn’t joking about his hangover breakfasts. Cinnamon toast, fried eggs, grilled bacon, orange juice and coffee a slice of melon to top it all off. And with Luke, Olga and Dante here, there’s enough to feed the England Cricket Team.

‘Right,’ says Dad, halfway through his second helping, ‘For now, we’ll have to wait for Michael to dial that number again. It’s hooked up in the lab to trace his location. Once I replace it, I’ll do some reconnaissance and try to contact MI5. If, and only if, I can’t persuade them to investigate him, you four can do your breaking and entering as a last resort.’

It sounds mean, but I don’t want MI5 to take Dad seriously. I want him to unleash his last resort. I’m strong now, I’m not scared of this pathetic bully.

***

I’m squirming all weekend. I’ve never been good at sitting still, so I alternate between the gym and the pool; working out new stretches and beating my best time for a half-mile of front-crawl.

School isn’t much fun either. During class, during lunch and even the time between lessons, all I can think of is where and when I can confront Michael. I have to wrench myself away from speculation to make sure I’m not ignoring Tara.

Prizegiving rehearsal is the only time I’m truly living in the present. They strive for perfection at Olivier’s, meaning I have to rehearse with the school orchestra every day for final period, along with the girls’ choir (of which Tara is a member) and boys’ choir. Once each of us have finished our respective songs, we go over the finale. We banded together to demand Fearless from the Mean Girls musical, and I get to sing Cady’s part.

Tara seems much more cheerful when we’re rehearsing, or perhaps I’m too wrapped up in my own troubles at other times to notice. It’s a good thing she knows I’m not the most conscious person when there’s something on my mind.

We’re leaving rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon when I notice Tara taking her time.

‘Won’t dawdling annoy your stepdad?’ I ask.

‘He hasn’t shown up Monday or Tuesday. I doubt he’ll show up now. He’s been working late all week. Shouting into his phone. “Where is this? Where is that? Why isn’t it working? Maybe it’ll work if I shout loudly enough!” I have to wear earplugs just to get to sleep because he won’t let me close my door.’

‘You can’t even close your bedroom door?’ I say loudly enough to turn our classmates’ heads. ‘That’s not right. That’s downright creepy.’

She sighs. ‘I wish I knew how to install a lock.’

My eyes widen and I step into her path. 'I know how to install a lock. Do you have a screwdriver and drill?’

‘Yeah, we keep some tools in the garage. My mum’s at work until six and my stepdad will likely be at work himself if he isn’t at the gate.’

We hurry there with high hopes not to see that blacked-out silver car. Tara’s whole body appears to deflate with relief at its absence. ‘Do you think you can come over and install them today? We might not get another chance.’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘There’s a Wilkos nearby we can get a bolt from.’

She squeals with delight, pulling me into a tight hug and jumps up and down. ‘You’re so awesome, Iorwen! Thank you.’

Tara’s house looks more like an Ikea showroom than someone’s home. The hall is beige, the living room is beige, even the bathrooms are beige. What wholesome carpet cleaner commercial did it spawn from? I’ve been here before, but the bland décor takes me by surprise every time. The only breaks in this trend are Tara’s room with its hot pink walls and her brother, Kyle’s, room, which is too dark to tell what colour it is.

Since the bolts were Buy 1 Get 1 Free, we offer to put the spare on his door too. With no sign of adults in the house, I drill the holes for both doors as quickly as I can.

‘How come you’re great with tools?’ asks Tara, holding screws for me.

‘Dad showed me when I was eight,’ I say. 'Thanks to him, I did the dressing table and the cabinet for my Phantom shrine on my own.’

‘Mum won’t let me use tools. She thinks they’re for boys only.’ I roll my eyes. I’ve rarely interacted with her since Tara prefers coming to my house. She’s had a few things to say about my toned arms and passive aggressively slut-shamed my makeup. No wonder Tara doesn’t want her to know we’re girlfriends.

I head home once I’ve put the bolt on Kyle’s door. He gives me a tube of Pringles and a can of Monster as a ‘thank-you’. I put them in my school bag on my way down the street and notice the silver car of this nameless stepdad coming around the corner. The LED headlights stops me seeing his face as he passes by. I shrug it off and head home.

***

When I get home, Luke is cross-legged in an armchair with his sketchbook, I offer him the can of Monster and go to perch on the arm of the sofa next to Dad, whose playing chess with Elisa. Ariel bounds over to me and jumps up to rest her paws on my knees. I scratch her ears while explaining where I’ve been.

‘I wish I could do more for Tara,’ I remark. ‘But being able to shut out her stepdad is good enough for now.’

‘What if he breaks the door down?’ asks Luke.

I shrug. ‘Call the police, because what’s a grown ass man doing breaking into an underage girl’s room?’

He grins. ‘Good thinking.’

I turn to Dad. ‘Any luck tracking Michael down?’

Luke looks up from his sketchbook with an excited grin as Elisa’s mouth slants and Dad turns to face me properly. ‘I’ve found the location he was calling from. You’re never going to guess where it is.’

I lean forward, fists clenched, totally rigid.

‘Jason,’ says Elisa suddenly, trust her to break the tension, ‘I’m really not comfortable with this.’

Dad turns to look at her instead. ‘Can you think of a better way?’

‘Sending teenagers into a secured building because MI5 won’t listen to you hasn’t been your best idea.’

I slump off the arm of the sofa to the armchair where Luke sits and stand with a slouch and a sigh.

‘Do you know anything about it?’ I whisper to him.

He nods. ‘Jason’s found Michael Hughes signal was coming from an office space he bought in the Shard months ago. MI5 keeps saying they don’t have “sufficient evidence” to investigate him besides our word. And we don’t have the most impartial opinion of him.’

‘The Shard?’ I repeat loudly. ‘Michael’s working in the Shard?’

Dad and Elisa look ’round, dropping their discussion on the spot. ‘He’s on the fifty-third floor,’ the former explains, ‘That’s where the signal was coming from. I went there earlier today. Only accessible via combination lock.’

I sigh. ‘How on earth are we meant to get in there?’

Luke raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You and Dante went up skyscrapers all the time.’

‘Yeah, the ones with flat roofs. We never watched the sunrise from the Gherkin.’

‘Look,’ says Dad, standing up to draw our attention, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll make a plan with as little risk as possible.’

‘Good luck,’ I say glumly.

***

I can’t possibly sleep that night. I’m at my laptop until midnight learning everything I can about the Shard, embracing the futility of our task. I read every page of their website, the Wikipedia page and scroll through Google maps. I even look at the Shard levels of Mirror’s Edge and Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst in case they’re similar to its real-life counterpart. But they’re too unrealistic. For one, I’ll parkour a bunch of rooftops and maybe even abseil down the side of a skyscraper like Tom Cruise, but you couldn’t pay me enough to go crawling around an elevator shaft or air vent. Something tells me they’re not as spacious as fiction would have me believe.

I get out of bed at 2AM in search of food. My stealth tactics to get downstairs without the stairs creaking or waking Ariel are in vain, since Dad is sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop, staring aimlessly at the screen.

‘Morning,’ I say. ‘Plan’s not going well, I’m guessing.’

He nods and rubs his eyes with his palms. ‘It’s getting in there that’s the problem. You could sneak onto the roof of the Shangri-La Hotel, then go through one of the windows and break into the office through there. I thought a power cut on the building might cover you, but then, how will you get past the lock?’

He shuts the laptop with frustration and gets up. He’s not going to sleep; nothing feeds his insomnia more than an enigma he can’t solve. Instead, he goes to the fridge, scans what we have and looks over his shoulder at me. ‘Fancy a fried egg on toast?’

I nod. While he fries up the eggs, two each, I prepare the toast and slice up some lettuce and tomatoes. Dad still has a glass of whiskey, but I can’t fault him for that. I’d have a drink too if I was old enough.

‘Out of interest,’ I say, ‘How would you cut the power to the Shard? I read that it’s connected to the National Grid.’

‘I can hack in and out of it whenever I want,’ he says casually with a grin. ‘This country is so lucky I’m working for it.’

‘And if you cut the power to an entire skyscraper, how long would it be before the Grid replaces out and turns it back on again?’

He mulls it over a few seconds, sipping his whiskey. ‘Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. That’s as long as I can stay in there before they reset the system and push me out, meaning I’d have to hack myself in again.’

‘Hm,’ I remark. I eat slowly with my left hand while my gaze wanders to an unknown corner and my right hand draws invisible lines in the air. I know Dad’s watching, but I hold off confiding my thoughts until the egg yolk starts running down my arm which breaks me out of my trance.

‘You have an idea?’ asks Dad.

I lick the runaway yolk off my arm and he forces a piece of kitchen paper at me.

‘Could we…’ I say, ’Turn the power off for a few minutes so we can break in and get past the lock without triggering an alarm, then turn it back on so we can grab the data and upload the virus, then turn the power off again to cover our escape?’

Dad’s eyebrows jump up with surprise. It may just work.’ He closes the laptop again. ‘Right, we’ll have a meeting after school tomorrow. By then I’ll have everything planned out.’ With that he finishes his toast and whiskey, shuts his laptop and begins heading upstairs. ‘Just leave the plates in the sink. I’ll clean them in the morning.’

© Alice of Sherwood, May 2020