The Last Murder at the end of the World

TWENTY-SEVEN

Numb with grief, Clara trudges down the lane near the school, the glass vials of the sample kit clinking inside her knapsack. Normally, they’d be kept company by her little wooden bird carvings, but when she packed her bag in the lab, she discovered they were all missing. She had twelve last night, and they’ve all vanished. She can’t imagine where they could have gone.

Compared to the deaths, the disappearance of her bird carvings shouldn’t be so upsetting, but it’s another thing she’s lost and can’t explain.

She arrives in the exercise yard to find that everybody’s given up on breakfast and is walking out towards the farms, carrying their tools over their shoulders. They’re talking in hushed, scared voices about the bodies in the warehouse. They’re comparing their injuries, asking me questions I can’t answer.

Their entire lives I’ve whispered in their minds, guiding them, urging them to kindness and selflessness. I’ve tended their hurts, and stripped the sharp edges from the world, by pointing out every danger. Suddenly, the certainty they’ve come to depend upon has evaporated. It’s like discovering you’ve been living on melting ice. They’re sinking, and I don’t have hands with which to pull them out of the water.

The tables are being cleared and Clara briefly considers grabbing a hunk of bread to take with her, but she feels too sick to eat. She doesn’t even have Hui’s memory gem for comfort. Her best friend has been ripped out of the world by the roots.

Halfway across the yard, she comes across her mother, who’s dripping wet and futilely shoving the bird bath with both hands. Hearing Clara’s steps, Emory glances at her daughter.

Their eyes meet.

A flicker of regret passes over Emory’s features, transforming into concern when she sees the pain on Clara’s face. Before either of them realises it, Emory is holding Clara in her arms, while her daughter sobs uncontrollably.

They don’t speak for a while, but when they do it’s Emory who initiates it, moving her head to meet Clara’s stricken eyes.

‘Tell me,’ she says tenderly.

‘Hui’s dead.’

Emory pulls Clara tight again, as more sobs come rolling out of her. She helped carry the bodies out of the warehouse, so she knows Hui wasn’t amongst them.

‘Where was she found, Abi?’ queries Emory, in her thoughts.

‘No body has been located,’ I reply. ‘Hui has been disconnected from my mitochondrial network, meaning I can no longer see through her eyes, or hear her thoughts, as I can with everybody else on this island.’

‘That’s a lot of words, none of which mean dead,’ she points out. ‘Why is Clara crying when there’s still hope?’

‘She consulted Thea,’ I say. ‘The conidia that bonds us can be interfered with by a few viruses and brain conditions, but Thea concluded that if Hui was suffering one of these conditions, there would be no reason for her to be missing.’

‘If she was dead, there’s no reason for her to be missing either,’ argues Emory. ‘We’ve just pulled seven bodies out of the warehouse. If she had died last night, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume she’d be among them?’

She pushes Clara slightly away, staring her full in the face.

‘No tears until we know what we’re crying over,’ she says, straightening Clara’s shoulders for her. ‘What happened yesterday? I noticed Hui was acting a little strangely at the cable-car station. I assumed you’d argued about something.’

Clara relates how they became separated in the cauldron, and how odd Hui’s behaviour was afterwards.

‘I’m sure it was Hui who screamed,’ she says.

‘What kind of scream was it?’

Clara stares at her mother, trying to understand this unexpected question.

‘Shock, fear, surprise?’ clarifies Emory. ‘People scream for all sorts of different reasons.’

‘Shock, maybe,’ says Clara, trying to remember. ‘Whatever it was, she didn’t come back to our dorm last night. It was like she couldn’t bear to be around me. I felt like I’d done something wrong.’

‘Niema left with your grandfather last night, a little before curfew,’ says Emory. ‘She was carrying the metal box that Hui brought down from the cauldron. Do you know what was inside it?’

‘No idea. She had it when we found each other again in the cauldron garden. Why does that matter?’

‘Because Niema’s dead and Hui’s missing, and they both touched that box. It’s either really unlucky, or it was carrying something dangerous.’

‘Thea will know.’ Clara’s eyes widen, reading her mother’s mood. ‘You think Hui’s alive, don’t you?’

Emory wants to say something reassuring, but she has a psychological aversion to lies and secrets. She venerates the truth, cold and jagged as it often is.

Emory tries to distract her daughter by turning her around by the shoulders and pointing towards the stage.

‘The instruments are on different racks from last night, which means the band was using them after they were supposed to be asleep. Everybody has injuries they didn’t have before bed, so it wasn’t just the band that was awake. There was some sort of panic, because the flower beds have been trampled and the statute smashed. The debris wasn’t cleaned up, which is odd because we’d never leave this place a mess, normally. Niema left just before curfew in a rowboat, with a metal box, to perform an experiment at the lighthouse. I’m not sure what she was trying to do, but everything tells me that she came back to the village last night and woke us up. There was a celebration that became something very different, and now we can’t remember any of it.’

‘That’s because I wiped your memories,’ I say, speaking in both of their minds. ‘On Niema’s order.’

‘You can do that?’ asks Clara, startled.

‘Yes, but it’s dangerous, and Niema was exceedingly fond of you all. She wouldn’t have ordered me to undertake the procedure, unless she believed possessing the memories posed a greater threat than removing them.’

Emory stares at the dark plumes of smoke still rising above the barracks, a terrible suspicion gathering in her breast. ‘You said the procedure was dangerous?’

‘I did.’

‘Potentially lethal?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many of the people we found in the warehouse were killed by the memory wipe?’

‘All of them, except Niema,’ I confirm.

Clara gasps, burying her head in her hands and sinking to her knees, struggling not to be sick. ‘You killed them,’ she says weakly.

‘That was not the intent,’ I argue. ‘They died as a patient on the operating table might die.’

This cold summation sends a shudder through Emory, who’s never heard me talk so bluntly. I’ve always done my best to present myself as a warmer presence than I actually am, a confidante rather than an overseer.

That mask no longer serves me, though. If Emory’s to accomplish the tasks ahead of her, she has to understand all the pieces on the board, and what purpose they serve.

‘But the surgery wasn’t necessary,’ she argues.

‘Niema believed it was.’

Emory crouches beside Clara, putting a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders, while trying to keep tight hold of her own anger. Nobody sees clearly when they’re upset, and everybody’s currently upset. That worries her.

‘Did Niema order my father’s memories wiped?’ she asks suddenly.

‘Yes,’ I confirm.

Emory lifts Clara’s chin, meeting her eyes. ‘I know you’re angry, but Niema wouldn’t have put Seth in danger unless she felt like she absolutely had to.’

Clara shakes free of Emory’s grip. ‘How can you be so calm about this? Abi killed six of our friends.’

‘Don’t you see? Whatever happened last night cost Niema her life, and was so terrible she risked killing people she loved rather than let them remember it. There’s something else we’re not seeing. Something much bigger.’

Emory raps the metal bird bath with her knuckles. ‘And I think the answer might be underneath here.’