It’s an L-shaped room, tiled floor and walls lined with pale grey lockers, numbered, no keypads or padlocks. I try the first and find a neatly folded uniform of black pants and jacket with epaulets, buckles and zippers. I think of Benjamin and Davis and shiver. I make a quick search for a cell phone. Nothing. Several more lockers are empty. I turn the corner to try another bank and stifle a scream. But it’s only a mirror and only me staring back. Like a badly drawn stick figure, I’m all legs and arms and head. My eyes, huge dark smudges over a smear of red mouth. My torso, an irregular paper triangle, my hair like a scribble with a blunt black crayon.

My morbid stocktake cuts short when the swish of doors precedes boots from the corridor. I stumble back, afraid they’ll turn the corner. The blank wall disappears behind me, not a wall – another sliding door. It opens on a storm.

I spin to face a squall of static, the roar of signals so bewilderingly loud it’s hard to stay upright. A mess hall. Rows of metal tables and bench seats. On the right, a large window looks out on a vast gymnasium, where others are training, sparring, working out. On the left, a kitchen with a steaming array of meat and vegetables and gravy and fresh baked bread. Maybe twenty or thirty men are sitting, eating, talking, laughing, waiting in line to be served. From teenagers to men in their middle twenties, all of them dressed in black pants and black shirts; some wear the jacket with buckles, others wear the hoodies with the silver zip, others still wear plain black singlets. All of them, chiselled and beautiful like they were hand-picked from a catalogue.

With monumental effort I draw myself back from the signal surge, imagining in my mind a wall to block the torrent, to keep from drowning. The signals lose their roar, the static dims and I become aware that the whole room has grown silent and every face has turned towards me, several with forks halfway to mouths. Even the men in the kitchen have frozen, ladles in hand. I am then profoundly aware of being naked beneath a flimsy paper gown that finishes above my knees and ties insufficiently behind my right shoulder, with a second tie at my waist, a third at my hip and breezy gaps between.

“Well, hello,” a deep voice rumbles from the table directly before me, a white smile spreading out in a dark face. A few chuckles rise around him but mostly the men stare at me in disbelief.

Clutching the edges of my gown together, I bring a shaking hand to my hair as though I might smooth it down. I focus on the smiling man and say, “Um, you wouldn’t happen to have a phone on you?”

His eyebrows rise, crinkling his smooth brow and his smile makes dark rose apples in his cheeks. “A phone? Honey, there’s no coverage in here.”

“Oh.” I blink at him. “Shit.”

“Are you lost?” The smiling guy rises from his seat, two others rise next to him, curious grins, travelling eyes. Some lean in their seats for a better view. “Looking for the women’s mess hall?”

“Um,” I stall, clueless as to how to explain myself.

“She’s not supposed to be in here.”

“Look at her hair – you know what that means?”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah, leave her alone. She’s the first girl I’ve seen in a month.”

“She’ll mess with our signals. You felt it.”

“Oh, I felt it.”

Sniggers.

I grip the edges of my surgical gown tighter.

The smiling guy gives me an apologetic look and growls over his shoulder, “Can you animals shut the hell up? You’re scaring our guest.”

Several men laugh, a few grunt and one or two exchange looks that vary from eagerness to outright suspicion. Most settle into eating though eyes rove back to me.

“You hungry?” a man calls from the kitchen, apron, ladle, toothy grin.

“Um …” What am I doing? The reality of a room full of Shields, in the bowels of a compound the size and breadth of which I can’t even guess at, brings my escape whim into sharp perspective. They can’t help me. They won’t. While no one appears to be in a flap to alert the authorities, I’m clearly breaching some kind of protocol by invading their gender-specific space and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. My initial spike of adrenaline ebbs and I sway on weak legs.

“Whoa, careful.” The smiling guy goes to steady me and spots the bloodstains on my bandaged wrists and frowns at the sensors on my temples. He doesn’t say anything and settles for my shoulder as a safe place to hold me. On contact his eyes widen then glaze over. I feel it at the same time. In the bandwidth, a meeting of signals. His mind opens to me, an unresisting flood of images.

Not wanting to see, I shake my head, somehow cutting off the involuntary Harvest.

He blinks. “Whoa, that was– You can Harvest. Holy … she can Harvest.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

His mouth pops open before he finds words. “Are you the Proxy?”

The room grows quiet.

“What? No. No.”

“As if.” The no-longer smiling guy’s friend nudges him. “The Proxy’s not a girl.”

Comments rise from the tables behind them.

“He’s a dude.”

“Like an old dude.”

“An original.”

“Like Gandalf.”

“Gandalf? Honestly, moron.”

“Seriously, he has a long white beard and shit.”

“That’s Santa, you idiot.”

Snorts of laughter.

“I’m not the Proxy. It’s just all the signals in the room amplify my …” I don’t know what the terms are. Red with all the attention, I wave my hand uselessly at the ether. “Radar, or whatever.”

“Still, that’s a hell of a reach.” His apple cheeks blossom briefly before concern clouds his face. “Shouldn’t you be in the infirmary? You look like you need a medic.”

“No. I need a phone. I need to c-call–” I try again. “There must be a landline, right? It’s just really, really urgent that I make a call. Someone’s life sort of depends on it.”

His face sobers, his friends’ too. Giving my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze, he releases his hold on me and lowers his voice. “They took you from an active Spark, didn’t they?”

The clatter of dropped utensils.

A hiss.

Mutters from the kitchen.

“Bastards.”

“Protocol, my ass.”

The collective disgust is palpable and I feel an inexplicable rush of … what? Comradery? Belonging? They think I’m like them, that I’ve suffered what they’ve suffered, extraction by force, leaving an unprotected Spark cluelessly vulnerable.

“You put up a fight.” He releases my shoulder and nods at my bandaged wrists. Others lean to see and nod their heads too.

I shudder at the thought of what they’d say if they knew my worry was for Aiden. “No, it’s not like that.”

“Wait.” His face screws up, puzzling over the math. “You can’t be fresh off the street. Newbies can’t Harvest. I don’t get it.”

The doors open again behind me and a strong familiar signal touches mine. I don’t need to look to know it’s Benjamin. My panic can’t get off the ground and my shoulders slump. His hand comes under my elbow, his body heat warming my side.

“I wasn’t running.”

“Of course not,” he says, his voice full of warning.

This time I do look up.

His almond eyes simmering and fierce.

“It’s cool,” the smiling guy says, “she’s not hurting anybody.”

“Bullshit.” Davis. Naturally. He steps forwards, baton in hand, mercifully unlit. “You know the rules.”

The smiling guy gives the baton a wary look. “Really? You gonna zap this girl?”

“This girl is a felon.”

“Davis,” Benjamin says quietly.

Davis ignores him, bristling at the others. “Twenty-four hours ago she helped a Stray escape from a detention centre.”

The atmosphere fissures, a collective recoiling. Several seats scrape the floor as men lurch to their feet as though poised to attack. The expressions now range from horror to hatred. I find myself moving closer to Benjamin. He’s angry but he won’t let them tear me apart … will he?