Danielle's home existed in stark contrast to the building that surrounded it, like it was a much more high-end living space that had gotten lost and ended up in the wrong building but didn’t want to admit that to its wife so ended up staying. It consisted of one large living area, the centre of which dominated by a large bed that, Sarah noted with unbridled glee, looked as if it could fold up into the wall behind it. Erica came to the exact same conclusion and was met more by the feeling that this was probably how she was going to die. “Just don't,” she said. To the left of the bed was a curved work surface that denoted the start of the kitchen. It was small, but every appliance, both conceivable and inconceivable, had been fully integrated. Danielle had never actually figured out how half of them worked, and only recently realised she was using the dishwasher to store tea towels.
The work surfaces hinted at the kitchen never having been used, but the large pile of neatly stacked dishes in the sink and on the draining board politely disagreed. Just off from the kitchen was a small living area that had long since grown into a vastly disorganised office space with manilla folders scattered across, and under, the sofa. One of the armchairs had been co-opted into a desk, with a typewriter balanced precariously on a large chopping board that rested across the arms. The parts of the coffee table that weren't covered in papers and half-finished articles were instead covered in used coffee cups and empty packets of chocolate biscuits, and over on the right of the room was the only door that wasn't the front door. Sarah assumed this might be the bathroom, but if Danielle told her the toilet came out of the ceiling on wires, she would have believed it immediately.
“I'm sorry for the mess, I didn't expect, you know, today.” Danielle straightened the liberally arranged papers and relocated the typewriter to the kitchen. This freed up the living area just enough to meet the requirements of the name. The cups went in the sink and added to the growing tower of dishes that somehow defied several known laws of physics and a couple that weren't, and the biscuit wrappers were thoroughly searched for survivors. “Sit down, the chairs won't bite. Can I get you anything?” Erica's stomach grumbled and started making plans to mutiny. She hadn't eaten since this morning, and up until now, she hadn't had time to even think about making the time to think about eating.
“Yes, please,” Sarah answered for her. “Anything will do, really.”
Danielle opened the fridge and looked across twenty thousand miles of empty shelving. She found half a box of eggs, a tin of something that was doing its best impression of meat and failing spectacularly, and a couple of tomatoes that had been there long enough for the UN to classify them as a new life form.
“Anything it is,” she said. She explored her culinary options, which amounted to what pan she was going to burn everything in until it tasted like fire rather than what it was when it went in. This was clearly a large frying pan job. She started by cracking the eggs into the pan and scooping out the less than egg-coloured bits that just tended to form when they were a week out. Then she chopped the tomatoes finely, made sure to leave some of the greener bits for variety, and finally emptied in the tin of masquerade meat. It came pre-minced, because that was the only way anyone would be willing to swallow it. Focus groups had determined that having to chew it was the number one reason, other than the taste, texture, and terrible nutritional value, for the low rate of repeat purchases in people with functioning taste buds. She finished it off by stirring it with a wooden spoon that had seen better days until it was an amorphous puddle of vaguely food, then seasoned to taste with half a bottle of Tabasco sauce.
Danielle busied her left hand with poking the food puddle with the spoon to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan, or possibly crawling off to make a life for itself, and turned to address the girls who were now patiently hunched over the remaining clutter-free spots of the coffee table. “Food,” she said in a tone that made it sound like a question. “Is nearly ready. Your friend in the costume, who is he?”
“It's not a costume,” Erica said. “Well, it is, but it isn't. He doesn't normally dress like he's been rolling in kitchen foil, but he does always look like that.”
“Your friend is a man-sized dog? You’ve told that joke already.” Child protection or care in the community, Danielle pondered.
“He was taken, I don't know how long ago, really. Keeping track of time has been a little hard lately. Men in grey uniforms, they had guns.”
Danielle stopped poking the food blob just long enough for it to think things were on the up, and went to fetch the last clean plates in the cupboard. “Uh huh, go on,” she said while she struggled to serve up three plates of edible food mush. “Do you remember anything else?”
The girls looked to be dead on their feet, she could wait until they slipped off to sleep before she started phoning around, poor things. Sarah hurled herself face first into her plate and shovelled great globs of could-be food into her mouth. On average, this was slightly better than her own cooking, though it could have probably used a tad more hot sauce. Erica prodded at her food, almost tempting it to attack. When it didn't, she trepidatiously took a small bite of it. It was as disgusting as she expected it to be, but her stomach thought her throat had been cut, so she carried on regardless. After several minutes and many regrettable mouthfuls of air quotes food later, Erica answered the question with one of her own.
“Do you know what Pilot Fish are?”
“Industrial worker drones; landmine clearance, search and rescue, that sort of thing. Why?”
“Well, we found some out in the woods this morning – or yesterday, I don't even know what day it is now. The next thing we know, those lot, the army bastards, were in our village rounding up our friend and his son. He's only four. Who takes a four-year old?” Erica held her breath and bit down on her lip. She tried not to scream and shout and storm out of the front door and just bloody well do something.
“Just take your time, I'll get you some water,” Danielle said, already on her way to the sink. She handed the glass to Erica, who took a small sip and spat it back into the glass in the same movement. The water tasted like chemicals, some of which she could have probably named had she been in the mood – all of which she'd have preferred to not drink.
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“Mr. Tirren gave the first one a good seeing to, but he couldn't fight them all, and they threatened poor Harry, his son. They took them away and we followed, into the woods. The rest of it sounds insane, as if it already didn't.”
“If it helps, I think you're both insane already– you can tell me, I can't think worse of you.” Danielle smiled and wrapped her hands around one of Erica’s and gave it a little squeeze.
“There was a light in a clearing and behind it was a metal room, a workshop of some kind. We saw the same grey-haired man that made the news. I don’t know his name.”
“Face like a murderer?” Danielle asked.
“Yes.”
“Sykes. Works up at Trinity.”
“We followed the men into the light, and somehow we ended up here. It's mad, and maybe we've gone mad. I'm sorry, I don't know.”
“Tell me about your parents again.”
“Father left, and mother. She-” In her head, she said something along the lines of, “Our mother is dead and I'm being very grown up about it all, and I'm coping, thank you very much.” What actually came out of her mouth was a series of stutters and half-formed thoughts, all of which she was seemingly unaware of.
“I'm sorry.” Danielle squeezed Erica's hand a little harder. “I have contacts in the government, I could see if you have any relatives. Just tell me your name, then go take a nap. You look exhausted.”
“I should hardly think it would do any good. It's Hubert.” Danielle let go of Erica's hand and sat back in her chair. She found a sudden and infinite interest in her shoes and the dust bunnies that frolicked under the coffee table.
“Sebastian Hubert?”
“You know daddy?” Sarah emerged from her food torpor and shuffled so close to the edge of her seat that the rest of the chair was barely a consideration at that point.
“Hubert? Sebastian Hubert? The war criminal?”
“What? How can he be a war criminal? Don't be ridiculous. What war? There hasn't been a war!”
Sarah balled her fists and wanted very much to add to the indignant chorus of her sister, but her words called a strike in the back of her throat and she wretched whenever she tried. She settled for a compromise between anger and the vocalisation of said anger, and threw a plate square at Danielle's face while grunting. Being a career reporter, Danielle was used to people spontaneously hurling objects, or indeed themselves, in the rough direction of her face. Mind you, she hadn't ever had a small girl skim a dinner plate at her in the comfort of her own home before. The plate clipped the side of her head and veered off into the wall behind her and shattered.
“That's one less to wash, then.” Danielle got up and inspected the damage to her wall, then gathered up the pieces of plate and dropped them into the kitchen bin. “I'd much prefer we use words,” she called from behind the kitchen counter as she raked through that one cupboard in every kitchen where you place the things you don't want in other cupboards but can't throw out because you might need them in six months. She produced a small first-aid kit and scooped a handful of loose plasters out and dumped them on the counter. A small trickle of blood made its way down her face, cascaded off her right ear and awkwardly ran down the back of it and into her hair. She’d long since used all the normal-sized plasters and was only left with ones that would still look exceedingly small on an exceedingly small child. She pulled the cut closed with her thumb and forefinger and criss-crossed the diminutive plasters as best she could. Danielle felt like a cartoon character.
She crossed the small room soundlessly and produced a cardboard box from underneath her bed, and without an explanation any greater or more considered than holding the box aloft, she returned to Sarah and dropped it in her lap.
“What's this?” Sarah asked.
“The start of your apology. Open it.” Sarah slid the lid off the box and let it fall to the floor. Inside were yet more documents and unordered pieces of paper, at the top of which sat a newspaper article. It was crinkled and yellowed and served as the cap to an obsessional iceberg that Danielle euphemistically described to friends and colleagues as ‘more of a hobby, really.’ Sarah held the scrap of paper up and squinted at it in the half-light.
“Suspected war criminal hunted.” She took a deep breath and continued reading. “Sebastian Hubert, 34 [pictured left], and his wife Helena, 33 [third from right], were last night still being hunted in connection with the Windstadt massacre. The couple are suspected to have fled across the border with their three-year old daughter during the early hours of yesterday morning.”
“See our friend in the middle of the photo there?”
“Sykes,” Erica replied, contempt wrapped around every word. “Father would never do, well, whatever it is that man is accusing him of. If this Sykes person can kidnap innocent people, he can easily lie.”
Sarah struggled against the words that squeezed their way out of her mouth. “What did he do?” she asked
“You'd be happier if you didn't know.”
“I think that's for us to decide, Danielle, don't you? We've dealt with everything else, we can deal with this.” Sarah nodded and scooted closer to her sister.
“Your parents worked for the government. All the reports have been fuzzy on the specifics, but everything points to a nerve agent. He killed a lot of people, Sarah – some of them probably your age. Your mother wasn't proven to be involved, but when she fled with him, it seemed obvious.”
“And what, you just thought you'd keep a box full of this rubbish like some kind of sick person? Because that's what you are for believing any of this. Sick.” Erica rose from her chair and knocked the box off her sister's lap. Its contents scattered across the towers of paperwork that took near-permanent residence on the coffee table, and toppled them to the floor. “Thank you for the-” Erica's brain struggled to think of a way to describe it that didn't use the word food. “-Food,” she reluctantly settled on. “But I think we ought to go.”
“Where? We’re locked-down until tomorrow morning. There’s something not right about any of this, and maybe we can work this out. Together. Just sit down and listen to me.”
