‘What’s yours?’ she asks. ‘What’s your super power?’
‘Maths.’
‘Yuck,’ Kirsten says. ‘Sorry for you. You must have drawn the short straw.’
‘Maths is the language of the universe.’
She looks at him with his fauxhawk, smudged eyes and eyebrow ring.
‘Seriously.’
There are no cabs, so they catch a communal taxi instead. The passengers inside move up quickly when they see the state of the new fares. Even the driver seems concerned. Kirsten pays him double to expedite the journey and he takes the cash with an upward nod. It’s a quiet trip. Kirsten can feel the glares cutting into her body, as if it isn’t lacerated enough. A few passengers are exchanged en route: they swap a sweating businessman for a woman with blonde dreadlocks and a see-through blouse, a couple of floral aunties clutching an over-iced cake inch their way out and in jumps a metal-mouthed schoolgirl in a uniform (Dried Cornflower). Kirsten catches the girl staring at her, so she smiles, but the girl quickly looks away.
It takes them fifteen long minutes to reach Parkview and they jump out when they get to Tyrone Avenue. There seems to be some kind of afternoon street party going on: the road is strewn with streamers, and paper lanterns float above them on invisible wires. Small crowds of people are milling about, drinking craft beer and warm cider in dripping plastic tumblers. A food truck hands out hot crêpes and galettes. Warm air, acoustic tunes on the speakers, and the laughter of strangers. The cafés and restaurants spill their swaying customers out onto the pavements. Despite the sunshine, empty wine bottles act as candleholders, growing capes of white wax. As they pass the tables, someone says a toast and glasses are chinked.
‘This is it,’ says Seth, motioning to a florist with street art for signage that reads “Pollen&Pistils.” Inside a petite girl with a beehive, her back turned, is wrapping a fresh arrangement of hybrid green arums (Neon Cream). They enter the shop, a bell jingles, and immediately her eyes shoot up to the back-wall strip-mirror, where she sees Seth’s reflection.
‘And in come the walking dead,’ she says, spinning around with a giant pair of scissors in her hands. She is wearing glam 50s make-up: dramatic eyeliner, striking red lips, beauty spot on powder-pale skin.
‘Well,’ says Kirsten, ‘I know we’re not looking our very best.’
The different colours and fragrances in the small room swirl around and Kirsten has to blink through them and step slowly to make sure she doesn’t walk into anything. The back wall is a painted mural, graffiti-style, of an outdoor flower market, and this also affects her depth perception.
‘I didn’t mean that, honey,’ she says, ‘I’m talking about when You-Know-Who finds out you Called A Friend.’
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ says Seth. The girl palm-weighs the scissors, purses her ruby lips. ‘Seriously,’ he says, ‘there’s a lot more going on than you know. The bugsweep you sent…’
Her wide eyes flicker.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, handing her the dead boy’s locket.
She looks down and wipes the blades of the scissors on her red and white damask apron, leaving sharp lines of bright green (Cut Grass) that cut across her torso.
‘Your current assignment?’ she asks.
‘We seem to have a bigger problem.’
She puts down the scissors, closes and locks the front door of the shop and turns the ‘closed’ sign to face the street. Automatic blinds shudder across the glass façade. Once the blinds are in place, she claps and they all disappear into darkness. She hits a button under the counter, hidden from view, and a portion of the mural on the back wall starts rolling up.
They follow her down a tapering passage that leads to a security gate. She punches in a complicated code and then has to stand on her toes to look into the small screen above the number pad. A red laser scans her retina and it clicks open.
The door opens up into a large bleached-looking room with a few shoulder-height cubicles. Bright lights, chipboard ceiling boards and cheap wooden veneer desks: not what Kirsten had expected a rebellious cult’s underground HQ to look like at all. There are a few people dotted around, grinding quietly at their desks, who look up unseeingly as the three enter, then return to their screens. A few of them lift their chins at Seth.
They walk towards the back corner, where there is a typical office kitchen attached: a basic sink, bar fridge, and coffee machine. A man springs up from a small Formica table tucked around the corner and Kirsten and Seth both jump.
‘Sorry!’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He is a wiry man with a nervous demeanour and a pale moustache. ‘I shouldn’t have jumped up like that. I guess I’m a jumper. I think I’m just a little nervous. Very nervous. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.’
The flower girl doesn’t make introductions and no one shakes hands.
‘I’m the Lab Man,’ he says, rubbing his palms on the back of his trousers. ‘I’m the one who will be looking at your samples.’ He speaks too quickly and finishes his sentences by putting his index finger to his lips, as if to stop himself from saying more. Seth takes the still intact Fontus samples out of his bag and hands them over, along with Kirsten’s bottle of pills. The florist raises her eyebrows at the pills but doesn’t ask any questions.
‘There’s something else,’ says Seth. ‘I know it sounds insane, but I think I may have a chip, a microchip,’ he rubs the back of his head, ‘and I need it destroyed. We think it has some kind of tracker system…’
The man’s eyes grow wide; he holds the samples to his chest, as if to protect them. The florist bangs a drawer shut and glares at Seth.
‘So not only do you bring a civilian in, but you send the target our fucking GPS co-ordinates?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t have a choice. The chip is the only clue we have. They’ll find the shop, they won’t be able to get in here.’
She stalks out, head down, speed dialling.
‘So the chip,’ says the man, ‘the microchip, it’s still in your… actual head?’
As opposed to his non-actual head? His theoretical head? thinks Kirsten.
‘Yes,’ says Seth. ‘You have a scalpel?’
The man gulps. ‘I can’t take it out. I don’t do blood. I faint when I see blood. I’m haemophobic. Once, in high school, I fainted on the stairs because there was this big poster with a cartoon vampire on it, a blood donation drive. It was this big friendly kind of looking vampire, kind of like a Nosferatu-looking vampire, not a contemporary kind of sparkly good-looking vampire, but friendly, with a big toothy smile, and fangs. He had a cartoon speech bubble and it said “I vant to suck your blood.” And I just fainted. There, on the stairs. Fainted, bam, just like that,’ then he remembers his finger and puts it to his lips.
Seth rummages noisily through the drawers but finds nothing he’d be happy to cut his head open with. He sighs, rubs his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he says to Kirsten. ‘Fine,’ he says again, more firmly, motioning to her bag. She takes out the pocketknife.
‘Do you have any alcohol?’ she asks the Lab Man. He shakes his head. As if on cue, the faux-florist comes back with a first aid kit, a half-empty bottle of whisky and some toasted sandwiches.
‘Thanks,’ says Seth, and she winks at him without smiling. Kirsten wolfs down half a sandwich, its gooey melted cheese like golden lava on her tongue. It’s one of the best things she’s tasted in years. She feels a rolling brown spiral mow towards her, and just before it touches her it disappears. She washes her hands, uses hand sanitizer, and swabs the knife and the back of Seth’s head with the booze. Seth sits at the table and the man turns away, busying himself with the lab kit he brought with him.