Chapter 54

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Saturday 9th October 1999

 

 

I don’t know what it is that Adam Montgomery does all day besides sitting in his country house and apparently training up teens to become some kind of Lokon-powered strike force, but he’s busy enough that we had to wait a week to go and meet him.

 

Maybe it was all about formalities. I’d phoned Lucy the day after the incident in town centre, pressing her to talk with Adam as – surprise, surprise – she hadn’t bothered to. She went and spoke with him while on the phone, just so I could be certain that she’d done it, and passed back to me the message that he would contact us to arrange a meeting. And then on Monday, we received a letter inviting us to his place on October 9th. Several days in advance. We even had to RSVP!

 

Our efforts to track Melody soured with the revelation that she could teleport. Disheartened, and exhausted from evening after evening spent searching without results, we kicked things down a gear: a couple of us would join Kendal in her car and drive around with our weapons, giving larger stretches of town a more cursory scan. It wasn’t ideal, but nothing about this situation was.

 

For the first time in a month (and since the school year had begun), we had more or less a normal week. And with our Painter duties no longer dominating our lives, Harriet – who’d felt it made more sense to keep out of our way while we were focusing on Melody – finally started hanging out with us again. The huge impact Melody and her broadcast had made on our lives was steadily fading away. Or that’s how it felt, at least, now that homework and chatting were finally able to overshadow it.

 

Saturday arrived before long, and we figured catching a train would be the most convenient way of getting to Adam’s (otherwise it’d mean taking a few different buses – seven of us including Harriet was obviously too much to fit in the Paintermobile). A forty-minute ride took us into the centre of town, and then Kitty and I just about managed to recall the rest of the journey to the outskirts of town and the country house itself.

 

“Hoooo boy, this place is huge!” Kendal was grinning as we advanced up the lengthy driveway. “Imagine living somewhere like this! It’s as big as yours, Harriet!”

 

“This is so much bigger…” the blonde insisted with a wistful smile.

 

“Eh… not much…” Bao countered, while sizing it up with his fingers forming a rectangle like a photographer.

 

“Top architect Bao Thomson there…” I quipped playfully.

 

“It’s at least 30% bigger than my place,” Harriet told us. “And mine isn’t that big, anyway!”

 

“Harriet,” Zahid began, “there are football stadiums smaller than your house.”

 

She sighed softly, and straightened out her jacket sleeves as we reached the double doors.

“You make it sound like I’m wealthy or something…”

 

The seven of us came to a halt at the entrance. A few seconds of silence drifted past like tumbleweed.

 

“Should we knock or something…?” Dakota asked.

 

“I dunno, Dom just opened the doors as we approached last time…” I explained. Kitty gave an “mhm” in agreement.

 

“Maybe there’s a hidden bell somewhere…?” Bao proposed, and then began looking around for any sign of one.

 

“Or an intercom thing?” Kendal added inquisitively.

 

The sound of hurried footsteps down stairs made its way to us from beyond the closed doors.

“No, Lucy, wait!” Dom’s voice followed after it. I braced myself, knowing exactly what was about to happen.

 

The doors flung open and Lucy stood there triumphantly, wearing a dressing gown over a mismatched set of underwear. (Maybe not exactly, then.)

“Welcome to Casa de Lucy! Awesomeness is mandatory, clothing is optional, and every visitor is in with a chance of winning a yak!”

 

Dom hurried across the hall, visibly irritated by my sister (I knew the feeling all too well), and took her by the shoulders the moment he caught up to her.

“Go. And. Get. Dressed!” he ordered her.

 

“I am dressed!” she chirped back. “Trust me, I know when I’m naked-”

 

A quick, sharp puff escaped his nose.

“Put on more clothes!”

 

“Alright, look after this for me!” Lucy conceded, sliding off the dressing gown and draping it over his head. She’d already dashed halfway up the stairs by the time he’d removed the gown and unveiled his scowling face.

 

“Sorry, you’re a few minutes early…” he pointed out to us while folding the dressing gown over his arm. “And I wasn’t prepared, what with Lucy running rings around me…”

 

“We aim to be at least ten minutes early to any formal event,” Dakota smiled at him.

 

“I like your attitude, at least,” the red-headed man smiled. “Come on in, I’ll lead you through to Mr Montgomery.”

 

“So are you, like, a butler or something?” Bao asked as we crossed the threshold, his eyes scanning the place. To be fair, everyone else was doing the same, and I only know that because I glanced at them briefly while looking around myself. Sure, it wasn’t my first time here, but it was still quite the sight and something I couldn’t help but gawp at. The front hall alone was probably bigger than my entire house…

 

“Secretary-stroke-technician-stroke-PA, according to my CV,” Dom chuckled, gesturing with his free arm to follow after him and heading not up the stairs, but leftwards, deeper into the ground floor.

 

Names were exchanged, paintings were passed (how much art can one man own…?), and in short order, we wound up walking into a large room set up with several chairs and a blackboard. A computer was perched by the far wall, while a workbench was shoved aside to the left, like it had been moved to clear some space.

 

“He’ll be right with you,” our guide assured us. “Take a seat, I’ll- I’ll get rid of this dressing gown and then tell him you’re here.”

Thank goodness he’d remembered the dressing gown. I’m sure Adam would’ve been incensed if he’d walked in with that over his arm.

 

“What a nice man,” Harriet proclaimed once Dom had left the room.

 

“He’s cool, yeah,” I nodded, sitting myself down in one of the chairs.

 

“Uh-oh, I’ve got competition!” Bao laughed, hugging Harriet from behind.

 

We weren’t left waiting too long. Either Dom moved incredibly fast when nobody else was around or there were secret shortcuts through the building, as Adam turned up only a couple of minutes after his secretary-stroke-technician-stroke-PA had left us. He was wearing a full suit, which made me feel a little underdressed; we’d gone to the trouble of putting on semi-formal clothing to be at least somewhat appropriate whatever dress code may’ve been expected of us, but he looked so dapper that I’m sure I seemed like a scruff in comparison.

 

“Good afternoon, Painters,” he greeted us warmly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. My name is Adam Montgomery. Don’t worry about introductions, I’m aware of your identities…”

His attention settled on Harriet.

“Except for you, young lady…”

 

“Harriet Evans,” she introduced herself. “Bao’s girlfriend. I hope you don’t mind me joining this meeting, but I want a better understanding of what’s going on here.”

 

“Not at all, Harriet,” the man smiled while making his way to the blackboard. He pulled up a chair, sitting down facing us. “If the Painters trust you, then I’m happy to have you here.”

 

“See, there was nothing to worry about!” Bao told her, patting her back affectionately. She shrunk into her chair in response, a sheepish look spreading across her face like a rash.

 

“How’re we starting this?” Dakota asked Adam, in full business-mode, leaning forwards a little.

 

“With Melody Hill.”

Adam wrapped one hand around the other, his expression suddenly serious.

“I understand she attends your school, and that Lokonessence is inhabiting the form of her twin sister. I’d like to have explained to me exactly how she’s gotten to the point she has, provided you’re aware of the finer details.”

 

The seven of us looked amongst ourselves. That was a pretty big topic and it was going to require a thorough response.

 

“Well, how much has Harmony mentioned to you about… the Hill family and all of that stuff…?” I asked our host. No point going into more detail than we had to.

 

“Only the very basics. She’s inhabiting the role of a deceased girl within the family. Nobody is aware that the original Harmony passed.”

 

“Except for Melody,” Zahid clarified coarsely. “She needed someone to bond with, so she chose Melody. Plucked the form of Harmony from her head.”

 

“And Melody’s spent the past decade or so living with that secret,” Kendal added.

 

“Lokonessence bonded with Melody…” Adam mused, perhaps sounding less taken aback then he could have. Maybe he expected as much, or maybe it wasn’t that surprising in the grand scheme of things.

“I trust you understand what that means of Melody? The conditions under which Lokonessence bonds with an individual?”

 

For the second time in quick succession, none of us answered immediately. Touchy subject.

 

It surely says something that Harriet was the one to speak on our behalf.

“We know. Abnormal brain chemistry.”

 

“She must be that way too…”

 

“She…”

I bit back on my words instinctively, regretting having gone to say anything. Of course, it was already too late. Adam was looking right at me now. It was further information for him, at least…

“She’s spoken with me a lot about… being different. She puts on a friendly face with everyone else but she’s straight as an arrow with me… keeps bringing up how we’re monsters and we wear masks…”

 

“So, when she speaks of monsters, she’s referring to mentally-unwell people…”

 

That room suddenly felt ice-cold. Or maybe it was just me. If Adam noticed, he chose not to dwell on it.

 

“She seems to be familiar with you all as the Painters, too.”

 

“Yeah, she and Harmony chose us, and by us, I mean me, Alex, Kendal and Zahid since Dakota was still in Ireland, and then they got the Lokon weapons… somehow…”

Bao stopped there, looking at the rest of us.

“We still don’t know how, do we? Then again, it’s Harmony, she probably turned into a rainbow and danced her way into wherever Neil hid them.”

 

“Something like that, yeah” Kendal nodded.

 

“They delivered the weapons to us, not like we knew it was them, and then we were too busy fighting monsters and being teenagers to focus on finding out who sent them to us and we didn’t have any leads anyway…”

 

“My mother was a member of the team that recovered the weapons,” Dakota added. “She brought the spear with us when we moved to Ireland, and Harmony kept an eye on me through that. Right when Melody and Harmony took the other weapons, the spear started… flashing, creating all this green light… I wound up bonding with it and Mam sent me over here to try and find the other weapons. Which led me to my new friends and the rest is history.”

 

“I’ve read about your family connection to the weapons, yes,” Adam smiled softly at her. “I’m grateful to them for curbing Nick’s efforts where I couldn’t.”

 

Dakota smiled back, just as softly, wordlessly. Her eyes were sad, holding so much unspoken emotion. I placed a hand on her back in the hopes of comforting her at least a tiny bit.

 

“Basically,” Kendal picked up the thread, “Melody suddenly showed up one time rocking her own Painter gear and that scythe. We didn’t have any clue why or how, but it took us to Harmony and then we found out about her being Lokonessence, and the… brain chemistry thing.”

 

“And that was it for the next few months,” I concluded. “We saw her at school, but that news-hijacking-moment was the first thing she’d done Lokon-wise since then. At least that we’ve seen.”

 

“Perhaps she spent the time preparing…”

Adam spent a moment mulling things over. The room fell silent yet again.

“Her weapon. What do we know about it?”

 

“It’s powered by ‘the shadow of Lokonessence’. She must’ve made it herself. She can choose whether or not Lokonessence can affect it. Oh, and she can block Harmony from reading her mind,” Dakota listed off succinctly; so much so that Kendal seemed to perk up.

 

“Exactly! She’s a genius who’s ahead of the curve. And now she can teleport herself like the weapons!”

 

“I’m sure you’d be able to do that too, given practice,” our host remarked. That was an interesting prospect…

“Thank you for all of this information. It’s invaluable.”

 

“Shouldn’t you have written it all up on that blackboard?” Bao asked him. “Or do you have a really good memory? Incidentally mine can be spotty, so if you already mentioned the blackboard…”

 

Adam chuckled warmly, something of a grandfatherly feel to him.

“My memory is plenty sharp, but I’ll be writing all of this up later to compile with the rest of my notes. The blackboard is Dominic’s drawing board, in essence.”

He got to his feet, and turned the blackboard around on its wheels. On the reverse side were various technical drawings of small, semi-circular devices. For the most part, I couldn’t tell you what they depicted or what they meant – my technical expertise is absolutely tiny – but “sensor” and “detection” cropped up a lot in the annotations and notes.

“We’re working on these. Lokon detectors. We’ll produce plenty of them and affix them across your town. They should locate Melody whenever she happens to be in their vicinity… granted, now that we have a better sense of what power she’s utilising, we’ll have to make sure they can detect even that ‘shadow’.”

 

“And once you’ve got a lock on her? Then what?” Harriet enquired, brow furrowed.

 

“I’d like to take custody of her, if possible. Question her about her philosophy and her methods. Discuss Lokonessence. See if we can’t come to an arrangement of some kind.”

 

“She’s not going to change her mind,” Kitty spoke up.

 

“Then I would allow the authorities to take her.”

 

“And how would you stop her from teleporting her weapon into her cell again? It’s how she broke out the last time,” Zahid pointed out.

 

“Nick did have these restrictor clamps that he placed on our weapons before…”

Dakota began rooting around in the rucksack she’d brought with her.

“My aunt and uncle and their group picked them up when they cleared out Nick’s hideout.”

She took one out of her bag, holding it out for Adam to take.

“We’re thinking placing one of these on her scythe will prevent her from summoning it, like they did with our weapons. Assuming it would work the same…”

 

“That could work, yes…” Adam considered as he took the clamp from her, inspecting it curiously.

 

“So you’re gonna… what?” Zahid grunted, scowling at the older gentleman behind folded arms. “Give us a break, swoop in, stick a replica clamp on her scythe and haul her in – because that’s so easy – and then sit her down for tea and Psych 101? I’m sick of people telling us not to worry about things. None of us like spending every day searching around for her but it’s our damn business.”

 

“It’s mine too. All of this goes back to me experimenting with Lokonessence.”

His tone felt complex. On one level, he seemed to be holding back a little anger at Zahid’s tone, presumably through understanding of why he was saying what he was. But there seemed to be remorse there, too, just a sliver.

 

“Speaking of which…” I began, adjusting myself in my seat a little. “When Kitty and I met you, you said that you didn’t want to weaponise Lokonessence. So what’s the deal with those Contact Suits or whatever they’re called, and why are you sending out a bunch of teenagers to fight Melody? And I get the irony of me asking that second bit.”

 

“The Contact Suits aren’t weapons,” he replied immediately, “they’re defensive armour.”

 

“Lucy had a knife.”

 

“The weaponry, and the suits as a whole, are powered by Lokonessence. They don’t weaponise it. These are not like the weapons Nick created that manifest Lokonessence in offensive manner. The knives are knives. They can harm Lokon constructs, but that is all that makes them special.”

 

“And the strike force?” I pressed him.

 

“Because I need people acting on my behalf,” he told me, all of his warmth dispersed in the wake of the severity of his voice. “The last time someone tried to use this power for their own ends, I lost everything. I refuse to let that happen again.”

 

“Alright…” I shrunk back, more than satisfied with (and slightly scared by) his answer.

 

“I’d offer up an alliance, but I don’t think we could do much more than cooperate from a distance…” Dakota noted.

 

“Yeah, as radical as this place is, I’m not ready to up and move in here,” Kendal added with an almost apologetic note.

 

“I understand,” Adam nodded, “and I appreciate any help you can offer. I’ll provide you with a monitor that will alert you when a detector has been tripped. My team will join you in the field. But whenever Melody is finally captured, I would like to be allowed to take her in.”

 

“Okay,” our leader conceded, “but I don’t think you’ll get anywhere with her…”

 

“Thank you for your words of warning.”

At the least, his warmth had returned; he smiled across to Dakota as he said that.

“I’ll call time on this meeting now, and you can spend some time socialising with the residents. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me. We’re hosting dinner for you later, so don’t feel that you have to leave any time soon. You’re more than welcome to stay the night if you like.”

 

“Ah man, sleepover at Britain’s biggest mansion!” Kendal cheered.

 

“I guess that’s a maybe,” Dakota told Adam with a twinkle.

 

Despite Adam officially concluding the meeting, things wound down quite slowly. We hung out in that room for a little while longer, taking in the detector schematics as much as possible and checking things out until Dom appeared to show us to the common room. He had a note reading “please be gentle in bed” stuck to his back, in what I’m sure was Lucy’s handwriting; Harriet informed him the moment she spotted it, ruffled by it like she found the idea bothersome. Considering she has a younger brother, I can only imagine she’s been the victim of a note like that before.

 

And, well… from there, we spent a couple of hours hanging out with Lucy, Kayleigh, Will, Rin and Nathan. Too much for me to start going into detail with – or else I’d spend an eon writing everything up – but it was pretty fun. Granted, Kayleigh and Will wound up slipping away before long, which was pretty understandable considering how our relationship with them had left off… For much of the time, it was us getting to know Rin and Nathan better, and regaling them with tales of our time as Painters. And we learnt who the other guy was during the skirmish with Melody: Clay, who spent most of his time shut away in his room. Lucy insisted he’d give Zahid a run for his money in the bad-boy stakes. Almost weird to think of Zahid as a bad-boy now, being friends with him for so long…

 

Dinner was served just as our stomachs began performing a hunger chorus, and dear lord, it was a full-on banquet. Fourteen of us (Clay still absent), sat around a great dinner table, with more food than I think I’ve ever seen in one place, uniformly delicious. I was worried about etiquette… got nervous about it, which I’m sure doesn’t surprise you… but despite the grandiose, formal setting, the entire thing was remarkably casual. We sat, talked, and laughed (and we had only one set of cutlery each). Then, we retired to the common room again, to tuck into some tubs of ice cream. Yes, that’s how casual this was.

 

Lucy was busy sharing chocolate chip with Nathan in the corner when I decided to approach her.

“Hey, uhm…”

I’m glad Nathan immediately looked to me, because my sister’s attention was entirely on her new boyfriend.

“Can we talk, Lucy? In private?”

 

“Busy, call back later,” she purred while licking their spoon clean.

 

“Go talk with him, Luce,” Nathan told her gently; she shrugged, and stood up with the ice cream tub in her hand.

 

“Your loss!” she teased him, then turned to me. “Let’s go to my room!”

She skipped out of the common room and I followed after her, having to walk at brisk pace to keep up with her. After a few turns left and right, we reached a dorm room not at all unlike the one Kitty and I had stayed in months ago. My sister plopped down on her bed, took a mouthful of ice cream, and then gestured for me to sit myself down opposite her with the spoon. I settled down on what I assumed was an unused bed.

 

“So-”

 

“I know this isn’t as me as my room at home,” she interrupted me, “but it’s pretty awesome to be crashing here!”

 

“I stayed here for a few days, remember.”

 

“You make it sound like I’m getting your sloppy seconds!”

She smiled brightly and took another spoonful of ice cream.

 

“Lucy… the thing Melody said about us being monsters…” I started, this time stalling myself purposefully to gauge her reaction.

 

“Mhm!” was her first response as she swallowed down her mouthful. “Yeah, how cool is that?!”

 

“You understand what she meant, right?”

 

“Crazy psychos, yeah, she made it pretty clear.”

She was sporting one of those smiles… warm, glowing, heartful. Like the mere suggestion of being a “crazy psycho” made her deeply happy.

 

“Please don’t tell me you’re okay with that…?” I asked.

 

“Alex… who’d want to be normal?” she countered. “I always knew I didn’t fit in and now… it fits. Y’know? Like a glove. Like when I realised I swing both ways. I’m a monster. We’re monsters.”

 

“This isn’t… we’re not…”

I sighed, searching for the words I wanted.

“You and I will never fit in, Lucy. It’s not about being normal, it’s about…”

 

“I don’t care,” she shrugged.

 

“What, then… you want in on Melody’s rebellion?”

 

“Nah, that’s dumb. Screw changing the world or whatever. I don’t care what other people think. Why do you?”

 

“Because I have to live with other people,” I began raising my voice, “and if I stopped caring, I’d end up hurting them all. You aren’t alone in the world. What you do affects other people.”

 

“I know, I know,” she said like I was stating the obvious. “And I’ll deal with that my way. But Melody’s right. We’re monsters. I don’t see why we should fight that. Life’s too much fun to play by the rules!”

 

“And I guess that’s why you’re giving up on Sixth Form, and your family, and your friends?”

 

“Yep!” she giggled. Another spoonful of ice cream.

 

“You’re really just… abandoning it all, for this?”

 

She nodded emphatically.

 

“Guess that’s that, then.”

My temper was flaring. I thought – hoped – she might see sense, but in her own way not a million miles from Melody’s, she was infatuated with this idea of being a monster. And she was throwing everything away on a whim. I stood up, leaving the room before I could snap.

 

“Send Nathan here when you see him!” my sister called out after me as I began my way back to the common room.

 

In the end, we chose not to stay the night. It didn’t feel right, like imposing, even though Adam assured us we were more than welcome to. It was past 11pm when we returned to the train station, and after a sleepy train journey, we reached town with minutes to midnight. Everyone wound up staying over at Dakota’s, too tired to begin making separate journeys home. All of us there, and all of Lucy and her new friends at Adam’s… two teams in alliance, now. And yet my sister and I seemed divided like never before…

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