Shattered by Teri Terry

snatched me back from the AGT, that we nearly got away. But Nico caught us. The gun in Nico’s hand. Does she know how Dad – her husband – died?
    I straighten up. ‘Later on, they succeeded: I had a split personality. When I was left-handed, I trained with the AGT as one of them; now and then I was right-handed, and I was Lucy. When the Lorders caught and Slated me, the other part of me hid away and Lucy was dominant, so I was Slated as right-handed, and it was Lucy’s memories that were Slated. The later memories I had with the AGT survived. Lucy’s early life is gone.’
    ‘Why would they do such a thing?’
    ‘As far as I understand it was all part of a scheme, to show the Lorders that Slating could fail: that any Slated criminal could be violent, even though that was supposed to be impossible. That none were safe.’ I don’t spell out what the consequences of Nico’s plans would have been: with no way to tell which Slated might turn, what would the Lorders do to all the Slateds? I shudder inside.
    ‘But if you were Slated, why haven’t you got a Levo?’
    This is venturing into no-go territory: it would be dangerous for her to know how I was caught between the violent plans of Nico’s AGT and Lorder blackmail. How they tracked me to the AGT, and I thought Agent Coulson was going to kill me, but Katran – terrorist, yes, but an old friend who really cared about me – raced to my rescue, and Coulson shot Katran point blank in front of me. How holding Katran as he died made me finally remember my dad’s death. Because of Dr Lysander, the Lorders thought I’d done as they wanted; they let me go, removed my Levo.
    ‘Lucy? Sorry, Riley, I mean. What happened to your Levo?’ Stella prompts, and I wonder how long I’ve been staring into space.
    ‘It was cut off,’ I say. A small lie. The Lorder method of removal was gentle: a few buttons pushed on a machine, and it painlessly sprang away.
    ‘I didn’t think that was possible,’ she says.
    ‘It is,’ I say, and this I say with truth. I cut Ben’s Levo off with a grinder, didn’t I? He survived. Barely, but he did: then the Lorders took him away.
    ‘There is something I don’t understand. If you were Slated as right-handed, how can your years here be gone? You were left-handed until you were ten. You must remember!’ She says the words like if she wants it enough, it will be so.
    ‘I don’t understand all the neurology of it. It’s like what hand was dominant was plastic; it could be bent and changed. I think doing that was part of how my personality was fractured.’
    ‘So young.’ She shakes her head. ‘But some memories stayed with you after you were Slated?’
    ‘Not exactly. To begin with, I was just like any other Slated. I had this new family, and—’
    ‘Were they nice?’
    ‘Mostly. Mum and my sister were, though Mum was difficult to work out at first.’
    She holds still. ‘You called this other woman Mum .’
    ‘I was Slated. They told us to do that.’
    ‘Sorry. It doesn’t matter. And then?’
    ‘I started to get memories back.’ I hold back how. She doesn’t need to know that I was attacked, that fear and rage crashed through the boundaries and made Rain emerge: the half of me that was pure AGT, pure terrorist, under Nico’s spell, and ready to do whatever he asked.
    ‘So what do you remember?’
    I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry. The memories I have are from after I left here. With the AGT. Before then is the half that was Slated.’
    She looks back, eyes desperate and pleading. ‘But do you remember anything about me? Do you remember anything from here, before, at all?’
    Something, I don’t know what, makes me say no . Even though there are some little snippets that have come back: this cat, now curled up between us. Playing chess with Dad, and the rook. Is it because, as she said, I was left-handed when I was little? If that is true, then more may come back. Or is it because these are things that Rain knew?