Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

Boo stretched out her fingers, displaying her long, fake purple nails, then slashed playfully at Callum’s hip. She accepted the teas, passing one to me, and Callum moved on to Stephen.

“That’s my atlas,” Stephen said, observing the object Callum was using as a tray.

“Sorry, love.”

“I’ve told you about that.”

“No one needs an atlas,” Callum said, passing him the last mug. “What with the Internet and all. Here’s your tea.”

Stephen came over to join us, and the atmosphere in the room settled instantly.

“Right,” Stephen said. “So, tonight, we had a meeting with Thorpe…”

“I still don’t understand why you had to have a meeting at two in the morning,” Boo said.

“That’s when it had to happen,” Stephen said.

Callum glanced over at Boo.

“And we have official clearance to continue,” Stephen finished.

“Clearance to continue?” Boo asked. “They were going to shut us down?”

“It was being discussed.”

“And you didn’t mention this?” Boo said.

“They were concerned because we don’t have the termini anymore,” Stephen said.

“And so am I,” Callum said, his voice edged with anger. “Please tell me this solution involves getting some new ones.”

“It does,” Stephen said. “It involves Rory.”

Callum and Boo looked at me expectantly. Stephen cleared his throat a bit.

“She…is a terminus.”

I can’t fault Callum and Boo for not knowing what to say to that.

“You’re shitting me,” Callum said, after a moment.

“I’m not,” Stephen said. “I can only assume that it happened at some point after the final Ripper attack. Which is why you need to tell us everything that happened to you from the minute of impact.”

Now the focus was back on me. Julia had been trying for weeks to get me to this very point—the point of the knife as it went in, those minutes when I was slumped on the floor, when I saw the blood coming out of my own abdomen. When the Ripper—his name was Alexander Newman—told me that I was going to die.

It was not something I felt like talking about. But there did seem to be a compelling reason for me to do so—there was a logic to telling them.

“He cut me,” I said. “He said he did it in such a way that I would bleed and die slowly. He gave me the terminus.”

“He gave it to you?” Callum said.

“I couldn’t move. He said he had this theory that if someone with the sight died connected to a terminus, that person might come back…because he had died holding one. He wanted to see what happened when I died. And then…Jo came through the door.”

“The door was locked,” Stephen said.

“She went through the door.”

“That would have hurt her,” Boo said quietly. “She told me that hurt. She said it felt like being ripped apart.”

I paused for a moment out of respect for that. I didn’t know Jo could feel pain, or that she’d felt it coming to get me.

“And once Jo came into the room?” Stephen prompted.

“She took the terminus from me, and she went after Newman with it. That’s when…everything blew up. There was a really bright light, and the mirrors smashed. And then they were gone, and I passed out.”

“When did you first know what you could do?” he asked. “Was it on the bench, in Bristol?”

Callum and Boo looked over in confusion, but I guess they decided to let me keep talking. This story was full of weird surprises.

“No,” I said. “There was one before that, on the day I left Wexford. I found a woman in the bathroom where it all happened. I went down there before I left school, just to look at the room, and I found her in a stall.”

“Had she been there before?”

“No,” I said. “I’d never seen her before. I have no idea where she came from. She was hiding in the bathroom stall, and she looked really scared. She didn’t speak. I don’t think she could. I just reached out…I was telling her it was okay. I didn’t know. I just touched her. And it happened.”

“Did you have to touch her in any special way?” Callum asked. “I mean, did you have to keep your hand on her?”

“I don’t know. I just touched her on the shoulder. It happened right away, I think.”

“Any physical effects after that?” Stephen asked.

“My arm tingled.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not pain. I sort of feel like my arm is being sucked into something, and then it starts to shake. It feels…electrified, I guess. The rest of it is like normal terminus stuff. There’s a light. There’s a burning smell. But that’s it.”

“But tonight you were physically ill,” Stephen said.

“Tonight?” Boo cut in. “ That’s where you were? I mean, what if it’s dangerous? What if it hurts her?”

“I thought about that,” Stephen said. “But it’s doubtful we could ever find that out. Much like our sight, it may not come up on any kind of examination. I suppose we can schedule a full physical workup…”

But now that Boo had brought it up, this new possibility was going to be on my mind. What if it did hurt me? What if having an internal terminus was like having cancer?

Or what if it made me super healthy?

God, I was tired.

“Stop,” I said, holding up my hand. “Can we just…stop? I’ve had enough medical stuff in the last few weeks, so…just, don’t.”

That ended that part of the conversation and they all looked very uncomfortable. Even among my freaky friends I was a freak.

“Let me make one thing clear,” Stephen said. “Rory is not a weapon. How she uses her ability is entirely up to her.”

“And that’s fine,” Callum said, “but we aren’t police if we have no power to do anything. This is still the problem, even though Rory is a terminus. If she isn’t around, and if she isn’t—don’t take this the wrong way, Rory—willing or able, where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us exactly where we’ve been for the last few weeks,” Boo said. “We can still do our jobs, just without weapons. Regular police don’t carry guns.”

“But they have units with guns if they need them. Don’t they? There are armed response units.”

“Callum is making a valid point,” Stephen said, “but I agree with you, Boo. The squad long predated the terminus. According to what records I have, they didn’t get them until the seventies.”

“Where did they come from?” I asked.

“That’s unclear,” Stephen said, scratching his jawline.

“They must have come from somewhere,” I said.

“They clearly did come from somewhere, but that somewhere isn’t known to us. Diamonds come from a range of places. Africa. India. Russia. Canada.”

“It doesn’t matter where they came from,” Callum said. “We don’t have them now, and we need them. For weeks, I’ve been getting calls. All kinds of problems on the Tube. Trains being delayed, dangerous situations where people could be hurt or even killed.”

“The Tubes ran for years without us zapping anyone,” Boo countered. “They don’t need us to make the Tubes run. And if there are problems, we go and we deal with them. By talking. ”

“And if they don’t listen? Was the Ripper going to listen? And whoever comes next?”

“None of this is for tonight,” Stephen said, and there was finality in his tone. “It’s late. I have to take Rory back before anyone misses her. We’ll deal with our procedural problems some other time.”

I said my good-byes. There were more long hugs with Callum and Boo while Stephen stood by the door, keys in hand. And then we were back in the car, going to Wexford.