'Never forget,' he said. 'Never forget who you are!'

And they are on us. I'm grabbed, pulled away. Daddy is pushed back down on the sand.

The cold one smiles, raises a gun.

'Lucy, close your eyes,' Daddy says. 'Don't look.' His voice calm, reassuring.

I stare at the gun. No. He is just scaring him like he does me all the time. He won't do it, he won't.

Will he?

'Look away, Lucy,' Daddy says, but my eyes are open wide, and as if something controls them other than me, they are caught, trembling, unable to look away or do anything else.

Moments combine and spread out, a flash in succession and all at once. The deafening noise. The rook clenched tight in my hand. The red that spreads out from one place until there is more and more of it, and still I can't look away. The hands that hold me back let go, and I run to him just in time for his eyes to hold mine before they close forever.

Seeing what scares you for what it is does not lessen the terror. It still has the power to break your heart, over and over again.

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE.

Movement. Dimly perceived but ignored. Until it stops, and a thump of my head against something hard forces me back to now, to my body, to consciousness. I open my eyes, struggle to sit up. Unsure how much time has passed.

I'm on the ground near the house. I feel my arm: the gun that was strapped there is gone. A Lorder with a gun of his own stands close by, pivots towards me when I move, watchful.

Coulson is barking at other Lorders who disappear into the woods: hunting somebody. Who?

Tori is held by a Lorder, one arm pinned behind her back suggesting she's been giving trouble. Cam is sitting up, facing away. A medic checking his head. Dr Lysander is here also, speaking to Coulson. Katran is and I swallow dead: I count him on a list of those whose whereabouts need listing, but shy away from any thought of the gaping loss. Of my part in it.

The only one unaccounted for is Nico. He got away?

Nico runs, and they chase. If caught, will he be shot in the woods like my father on the beach? Like Katran. Both pains are so huge they threaten to take over, engulf me, so all there is, is pain. One current, one years ago but forgotten. Both fresh as today.

Later.

Dr Lysander catches sight of where I've been dumped. She leaves Coulson in mid-sentence, and hurries over.

She kneels down, touching, checking, pulling at my clothes. 'Where are you hurt?' And I can't answer, can't speak. Where don't I hurt? But then I realise it is all the fresh blood on my clothes that has her attention. Katran's blood.

'Not all my blood,' I manage, a whisper more than words.

Coulson walks over, skirting past a few bodies on the ground. Bodies dressed in Lorder black.

'I've told them you got me out, hadn't called them in yet for my safety,' Dr Lysander says, her voice low and hurried.

Everything is remote. Cam was part of the Lorders he claimed to hate? He betrayed you, a voice whispers inside, but even that is something for later. I can't deal with anything beyond the fact of my father's death.

And Katran. Coulson killed him. Given a chance Katran would have killed any of these Lorders without thought. And them likewise. Nico kills even his own to further the cause of killing them. 'What does it all mean? What is it for?'

'Hush,' Dr Lysander says, and I realise the last thing I'd said out loud.

'And there she is,' Coulson says. 'Will she live?' he asks her.

'I expect so. She needs some stitches.'

His cold eyes sweep across me, assessing. 'I understand we owe Dr Lysander's safety to your actions. We will investigate further, and see what has happened here. But tell me now. Who is the one who has eluded us?'

What loyalty do I have to the man who murdered my father?

None.

'Nico. Nicholas. Surname unknown.'

Coulson pauses, a glint in his eyes. 'He is known to us.'

He nods at the Lorder whose gun is trained on me. 'She is free to go. For now.' He turns to me. 'I'll be in touch.'

Tori's face contorts with fury. She lunges, a sudden movement that surprises her guard. She breaks free and is almost on me before being dragged back.

'Traitor!' she screams. 'Kyla, or Rain, or whoever you are, I'll get you. I'll hunt you down and gut you with my knife.' She is dragged away, thrown in the back of a Lorder van. But not before I see the hate in her eyes.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX.

Coulson has one of the Lorders drive me home after a stop at a local hospital for stitches. In one of their black vans, but this time, sitting in the front. Distaste is all over his face at the state of me, but I don't care. Too much caring screams inside.

It is late evening now. Dark. As we go down the main road of our village, I wonder absently if curtains twitch in kitchens and bedroom windows at the sight of a Lorder van going by?

It pulls up in front of our house. Dad's car is here. The front door springs open: Mum.

'Get out,' the Lorder says, voice flat.

I open the van door, step down. Start walking stiffly to the house as he pulls away.

'Oh my God,' Mum says. 'What has happened to you? What have they done?' I sway on my feet, and she tries to grab me.

I shrug her off. 'I'm fine,' I say, the biggest lie of all, and walk through the front door.

Amy's shocked face appears from the kitchen. Silent.

Dad walks over from the lounge, and looks me up and down. Smiles. Claps his hands: once, twice, again; slow and deliberate. He knows; somehow, he knows. Lorder, my mind processes. Not just an informer, but one of them.

Mum looks between him and me.

'Kyla?' she asks uncertainly. 'What has happened?'

But I stare at Dad. 'You didn't just report me to the Lorders. You're one of them.'

He doesn't answer; his eyes shift uneasily to Mum, and back again.

'Doesn't matter,' I say, realisation sinking in. Cam was here, worming his way into my life before I even made that drawing of the hospital. They were keeping their eyes on me anyhow, like Coulson said. All Dad did by reporting me and getting us hauled in was tip me off that I was watched. 'You're a small fish, aren't you? They didn't even tell you what was really going on in your own home. Then when you finally noticed something, they told you to shut up and keep out of it.'

His mouth starts to open, then shuts again.

'Kyla?' Mum says again, but I can't talk any more, not now.

'Excuse me,' I manage. 'I need a wash.' I walk up the stairs. Lock the bathroom door. Strip and chuck my clothes covered in a bit of mine and more of Katran's blood into the rubbish bin. Moving stiff, slow, like a puppet. Not quite in control of my body with so much control required elsewhere. To stop me from curling into a ball in the corner and screaming, over and over.

Blood washes away, I know this: soon I'm clean, skin soft, smooth. A few new scars on the way courtesy of Cam. Half a dozen stitches in my shoulder, more on my side. Painkillers still in my system to help me go on, but they do nothing for the real damage, inside.

But I'm never forgetting anything, ever again. No matter what it is, or how bad it hurts. Nico and that doctor Doctor Craig in that place I didn't even remember properly until this afternoon: they taught me ways to forget, to hide. And my missing years, between Lucy disappearing at age 10, and Rain taking over at 14? That is where I was. With them, being forced to split down the middle, so that part could be hidden behind a wall in my mind, and survive Slating.

And the brick, big enough to smash me in two: now I know what it was. Watching Nico kill my father. When Katran died in my arms, it brought it all back.

In my room I get into pyjamas, and wrap a blanket tight around myself. There is a light knock at the door.

Amy peeks in. 'Want some company?' she asks, hesitant. I shrug. She comes in, and Sebastian follows. He jumps up on the bed, climbs into my lap. Amy gets up next to me. Puts an arm around my shoulders. I wince and move her hand so it isn't on my stitches, then droop against her.

There are echoes of voices downstairs. Heated voices.

'They sent me upstairs,' Amy says.

'Oh?'

'I'm sorry.'

'What for?'

'For telling Dad about your drawing. Mum got him to admit he reported it. I can't believe it.' Amy's face is a picture of shock.

'What else did he say?' I ask, my voice sounding dim and distant to my ears, like I'm talking under water, and not really here.

'Stuff I can't believe. That you've been some sort of double agent for the Lorders. Mental.'

'Yeah. Mental,' I whisper.

'Do you want to talk about it?'

I shake my head and instead of asking twenty questions like I expect, she seems almost relieved, says nothing else. But she stays, warm and solid, next to me.

There is a sudden slam of door downstairs. A car starts out front, squeals up the road and is gone. There is a long pause, then footsteps on the stairs. The door opens and Mum stands there, quiet, taking in the two of us and the cat snuggled up together.

'What a good idea,' she says, and manages to slot herself in by my other side. A tight squeeze.

I must drift to sleep. Hours later when I wake, the room is dark, and the only one still with me is the cat.

The numb blankness is seeping away, leaving nothing but pain behind. I cry for the little girl I was, who I can't even remember apart from the fact that she loved her dad. I cry for him, and all he did to try to rescue her, no matter how she ended up there in the first place. I cry that I failed him, utterly: never forget who you are, he said, and I did. I cry for Katran, whose flaws were obvious, but whose caring was not. When he could have run, got away like Nico, he came back for me. Trying to save me led to his death.

And I cry for myself, who I am now. Where is my place in this world?

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN.

A Lorder comes for me days later. Another black van out front early morning, and I suppress the urge to run, to hide. Where am I going to go? And I wonder if it is the back or the front of the van for me today. Have they worked out it was because of me that Dr Lysander was a prisoner in the first place?