Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 103

                I wince as the feeling spreads from the tips of my fingers and toes, up my arms and legs and into my chest.

                ‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

                ‘Dispersing,’ he replies. ‘You’ll still exist, but in another form.’

                Dispersing. That sounds awful. I can only imagine what he’s doing and I know I have to stop him. There is no way to get rid of the connection so he’s going to get rid of me instead. I can imagine that in his twisted head it’s not even murder. I’m already dead.

                He twists a dial and the invisible needles dig in deeper.

                My eyes are already closed. I do what’s instinctive to me. I try to escape. This time the prickle of the Edge comes even easier, as though it’s telling me that’s where I need to go. I don’t have much else to choose from.

                I reach out and try to step forward. This time I feel my leg move, but I know I’m not really moving at all.

                ‘Wait, what are you doing?’ Teague sounds even more desperate. It works. The Edge disrupts his experiment.

                I step forward and take my body with me. I fall into the Edge and for the first time, see it as somewhere safe.

                I fall, but this time I feel controlled. The memories flick past but I can identify each one. There’s the day Dad bought an old Jaguar E-Type and Mum actually left him for a day. There’s the day me and Dad crashed in his secret Jaguar E-Type. I fall, fall fall, and I realise I’m seeing memories I’ve experienced since I’ve been dead. There’s Elle, and Graham and Yates, the blinding explosion of Teague in Graham’s basement. If that’s not proof I’m still alive then I don’t know what is.

                I pick a memory at random as the motion of falling starts to make me feel ill.

                My feet land on solid ground. The polished floors of my St Bartholomew’s. My old maths classroom sits on my left, and windows line the right hand wall. I remember looking out at the woods every single maths lesson wishing I could be out there and not stuck inside. I love maths, I can do maths. Maths and Physics go hand in hand, but sometimes I just wanted to be outside discovering things with them, not sat inside on a computer. The contradiction was that’s where all discoveries were in the real world. Hard work doesn’t come with adventure.