P.N.E. (The Wolfblood Prophecies Book 4)

by Silk, Avril

  ‘Not bad at all; even more cover. You’ll have to familiarise yourself with her toot sweet. For now, let’s keep this strictly on a need-to-know operation.’

  After all the pacing they had arrived back at the motor pool door.

  ‘I asked if I could trust you, Jo, and I think that I can. You are to tell nobody what lies beyond this door. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes Sir, you have my word.’

  And with that Quinn heaved the huge sliding door aside and there before them was an enormous tunnel. It was made out of concrete and was fifty feet wide. The walls were reinforced and it looked brand new. Apart from the pillbox it was the only strong, reliable looking building Jo had seen in this place. It made her smile and raised her hopes.

  ‘Genius, this was. Took a lot of manpower and a lot of secrecy and I’ll tell you right now that Brenda was a huge part of that. Up there is a warehouse. We convinced the Vermin their whole facility was toxic and then placed our boys as the clean-up crew. They evacuated the soldiers and workers alike and then cordoned it all off and sealed it up. Of course, we sealed it up from the inside and then we dug our way down until we hit this place. Hundreds of men working in silence in unison in the dark. It’s remarkable when you look at it. It was Reg who had the idea.’

  And again, a moment of silence for the fallen.

  ‘So how shall we get me in?’ asked Jo. ‘And I’m glad I was wrong about Brenda.’

  By now they had reached the top of the service ramp. Quinn smiled at her again. ‘We’ll have to pull a switch.’ And with that he yanked on a pulley and above them an enormous hatch drew back. He handed her a gas mask and they stepped out into the hollow shell of a giant warehouse.

  ‘Sometimes I just need room to breathe,’ said Quinn, his voice made thin and reedy by the respirator. Despite the irony, Jo knew exactly what he meant.

  Jo was in position. She was wearing the hideous grey coverall that she had found when she first awoke in this nightmare. Beside her stood Corporal Watkins; one of Quinn’s best men. He was dressed as every inch a Vermin trooper. They had slipped out of the pillbox at the end of Dayshift and Watkins had marched past the crowds, dragging Jo along behind him. Nobody said a word, and the ones who saw, looked away.

  Never had Jo witnessed such helplessness. Beneath a tortured blackened sky choked with dark red rainclouds, there was a shanty town, a shell formed from the rubble and ruins of the former civilization. Hollow-eyed workers trudged through the filth and the biting cold and the stinging rain. Another day of ceaseless productivity under armed guard before being spat out back into the cold as the night shift was churned in to replace them. More troops marched them to the makeshift hovels where, among the broken glass, the best thing in life awaited them; sleep. They were told when to sleep, when to wake, when to work, when to eat and when to die, and thanks to the tranquilisers that the VMN pumped into the workhouses, they did it like frightened cattle.

  The Heart of London, however, was a fortress.

  Once through the checkpoint with an ‘Open the gate, this one’s for the nobs,’ and a swipe of forged ID, the disguised Watkins and Jo set foot in the grounds beyond.

  The rich lived an immaculate life beneath a celestial bubble, through which the red rain could not fall. A force field above the streets protected the bright and beautiful city – beautiful despite being full of corruption and debauchery.

  VMN soldiers were not permitted on the streets unless they went through strict decontamination protocols, however, and this was where they now were. Following the same tactic he had used thus far, Watkins flashed his authority whenever they were approached and, at the very first opportunity, they slipped out of view into some maintenance tunnels and made their way to the far side of the building. They proceeded in silence until they reached the opposite checkpoint - the gateway into the capital itself.

  They waited for hours in silence. Jo was fully trained; she had to stay sharp, stay quiet and stay hidden until they were ready to move. This was what Smokey did all the time and it was the reason he was still alive. She wished it could have been him here with her right now, but he was still bedbound and bandaged; the only patient in the ward she hadn’t healed. But Watkins knew the route too and was every bit as dependable as him. Dusk fell upon the capital and floodlights lit the Vermin compound. And still they waited.

  While they waited a truckload of VMN troopers returned from their tour of duty. The truck was halted and everyone was ordered to disembark. Names and details were checked and the thirteen men, including the driver, were ordered to remove their uniforms by other Vermin soldiers dressed in protective hazardous materials suits.

  The discarded street uniforms were collected and the truck parked, both ready for further use. The thirteen men were ordered to the electric showers where they would have any foreign particulates literally burned away. The men had to experience this regularly and the process was unpleasant but not unbearable.

  It took thirty minutes before a door at the opposite end of the sauna was unlocked and Quinn and his twelve Righteous commandos were permitted access to the inner sanctum. They donned pristine purple dress uniforms and exited the building, where stood a gleaming fleet of purple 4x4s with matching tinted windows; all bearing the Royal Crest upon the bonnet and the VergissMeinNicht insignia upon the doors.

  All this was done simply so that the rich could tolerate having the soldiers in their midst. They were ordered to be as unobtrusive and as discreet as they possibly could. Bothersome soldiers were simply sent to Doctor Rainmaker. Once inside the Capital they were not required to keep the peace but to cater to the appetites of the Elite and to remove any evidence of their excesses.

  Jo had been counting the time waiting for the Righteous to appear and had grown anxious as they waited past their deadline.

  ‘Relax,’ whispered Watkins. ‘You’re spooking the wildlife.’

  Jo took a deep breath and stayed focused until Quinn and his men, having collected the vehicles, headed towards the exit where they were lurking. This was just one of the many parts of the plan Jo was worried about but there was no time to waste as Watkins quickly pulled off his Vermin uniform to reveal the black wool night camouflage beneath. Jo shed her ghastly coveralls for what was thankfully the last time and stepped into the night, the very vision of a Princess. She caught the look in Watkins’ eye as he saw her transformation, but there was no time to think about that as the moving vehicles sped past them.

  Outreaching arms plucked them from their hiding space and bundled them safely into the moving 4x4s.

  So far, so good.

  They cruised through the lavish city. The streets were lined with trees adorned with lights. Everything was beautiful and new; the buildings shone. The stark contrast made Jo gasp.

  ‘Yeah, it’s nice to see how the other half live,’ mused Quinn.

  ‘It’s so clean!’ gasped Jo.

  ‘We once heard it was something in the rain clouds, that they were the offshoot of one of the Rainmaker’s experiments. Everyone is fuelling their nuclear reactors but they’re nothing more than plutonium factories for the Vermin. Which he needs for his ships.’

  ‘What ships?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Who knows,’ winked Quinn. It was disturbing for Jo to see that this habit had stayed with him despite the loss of an eye.

  ‘But the last intel we got was that the force field bubble these people live under has saved them from the toxins in the atmosphere. You’d think they’d be building the damn things all over the planet, but they don’t care about the rest of us. They’re just going to use up this world, do a runner and leave us all to die.’

  Watkins nodded his agreement. ‘This world is screwed; the rich are bailing and leaving us with the mess, and they’ll suck up the last bit of goodness before they go, too. But not if we stop them first.’

  ‘Aye, lad. Not if we stop them first.’

  It was Quinn had who spoken but it was Reg they all heard. Nobody else spoke until they eventual
ly reached their destination; the Preston North End tunnel.

  Precisely four hours before Princess Jocasta’s cavalcade was due to pass through.

  At the furthest end of the tunnel they set up their ambush. The Righteous Commandos unloaded and divided into squads of four men, then positioned themselves around the vehicles at optimum firing position, nestled behind support struts. They blocked the road with three of the four 4x4 jeeps and set the emergency lights flashing. The fourth van waited, facing the opposite direction, with Corporal Watkins at the wheel. Quinn stood next to the open driver’s window, both of them eyeing the tunnel ahead. Jo was beside him, trying not to feel overdressed. I seem to spend my life in tunnels, she thought to herself.

  To keep herself alert Jo focussed on the plan. She was to join the Royal Family and fake a concussion by falling at breakfast the following morning. She would take to her bedroom, where she would accustom herself to Jocasta’s surroundings and feign a protracted convalescence during which time she would infiltrate the Royal family. It was clear that, while this Lethe was still megalomaniacal, she had also found a genuine happiness in being Queen and was in many ways more like her twin sister, Princess Alithea. Jo did not relish the task of being the loving daughter that she had to become; it was all just another strange twist on the world that she now belonged to.

  And as for King Paul, even that vile tyrant still held the warm compassion for his daughter that Jo’s own dear father held for her. She would have to play upon that to remain ahead of him. Her assignment was to locate Jocasta’s Aunt Alithea and then get her out.

  Quinn broke her train of thought.

  ‘I was telling you about the shield, Jo. Have you heard of nanotechnology?’

  ‘Tiny machines? I know that some of the doctors in the Glory Heights hospital were testing the medical applications, but it’s not widely used in my world.’

  ‘Glory Heights?’ asked Watkins from inside the jeep.

  ‘Top secret information from another dimension, man,’ quipped Quinn before Jo could reply. He continued.

  ‘Well, it’s widely used here. The rainclouds above? They’re actually swarms of nanites; the barrier is a compressed mesh of these tiny machines, half working their way in and half working their way out. The radioactive nanites are decontaminated by the rest as they pass each other. They’re set on an infinite loop. Once they reach the inside edge of the shield, they peel off, layer by layer and set to work cleaning. The maintenance bots scrub the city from top to bottom of radiation; they go back through the shield and dump their nuclear waste onto our streets.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ asked Watkins. ‘I never heard that.’

  ‘From a dying man,’ said Quinn, and left it at that.

  After a while Jo said ‘We don’t have anything like that where I’m from. I guess that…’ but before she could finish Quinn hushed her.

  There were lights in the tunnel ahead.

  They waited until the Princess’s limousine was deep into the tunnel and out of sight of the rest of the world. Quinn ushered Jo behind the barricade of 4x4 trucks. and then ordered Corporal Watkins to intercept. Nobody moved as his Vermin patrol unit flashed its lights, stopping the limousine. They warned Jeeves, the driver, of a suspected threat on the road ahead, adding that Watkins had been assigned to the Princess for additional protection.

  And so they proceeded, the Princess’s limousine and Watkins’ jeep full of Righteous commandos behind her. As they approached the roadblock, Jeeves slowed but Watkins gave him no room to manoeuvre and swiftly shepherded him into the trap.

  The moment the limousine stopped, the tail unit burst from Watkins’s jeep and held position as the other three teams of armed men converged upon the car. Jeeves was targeted and ordered to switch off the engine by the primary team as the other two squads carefully approached the middle of the car. And then it happened.

  Jeeves panicked and gunned the engine, lurching the limo towards the blockade of 4x4s. The squeal of rubber and the shriek of tortured metal echoed along the length of the tunnel. One of the commandos tried to block their path and he paid for it with his life. As he was crushed by the limousine, his hand spasmed and his trigger finger tightened and bullets let fly, and when that happened, everybody else started shooting too.

  Jo stared in horror at the scene. This was supposed to have been simple; they would stop the car, kidnap the Princess and Jeeves, and then she and Watkins would take their place. The real Princess would be held at a safe house by Quinn and the commandos. They were all hoping that Ali hadn’t been wrong when she had assured them that Princess Jocasta was a rebel who strongly disapproved of the status quo. They hoped to persuade her to join the Righteous voluntarily. If she wouldn’t, well, they could still keep her as a bargaining chip should things go badly for Jo.

  The luxurious royal limousine was a wreck, smashed, bashed, dented and torn. Three of four VMN 4x4s were scratched and dented. Bullet holes stitched the sides of the limousine and the shattered windows conveyed all that Jo needed to see. Princess Jocasta was dead. One of the commandos had been killed by the limo and another wounded by friendly fire. Jeeves had been shot dead too.

  ‘What the hell do we do now?’ asked Corporal Watkins.

  ‘Watkins,’ snapped Quinn. ‘Right now you are getting Jo the hell out of here. Take the last good jeep and get her clear then come back for the rest of us.’

  ‘What about you?’ gasped Jo.

  ‘We’ll have to split up and each make our way to the designated safe point. I’ll see you back on the other side,’ said Quinn, and to her surprise he hugged her. ‘Ali would never have let me put you in so much danger,’ and with an abrupt ‘I’m sorry,’ he bundled Jo into the 4x4 and banged on the door and Watkins got Jo the hell out of there.

  The Corporal dropped her back at the decontamination facility and then sped off back towards Quinn and his remaining men. Quickly Jo put her disguise back on, silently ridiculing herself for having believed she was free of the hateful sack forever. But she looked the part now more than ever, all shell-shocked and frightened. She had gazed with horror upon the dead Princess and had seen herself from another life, now gone forever. She carefully made her back through the maze of maintenance tunnels that she had mentally rehearsed so often; she crept past the electric showers and the decontamination lobby until she was once more outside in the biting cold and the stinging wet rain. She tiptoed her way through the rubble, avoiding Vermin troopers until she reached the pillbox, where she slipped back into the dark and it was only then did she dare to breathe again.

  Chapter Nine – The Apprentice

  Five days had passed and Jo had heard nothing. Quinn and his men had not returned, nor had Corporal Watkins. The few brief times anyone had managed to tune the television in, all they’d seen were the same repeated loops of the state funeral. But life underground never stops being dangerous and despite all she had been through Jo was quite busy attending to accidental injuries. It had been less than a week since she had summoned the lotus and healed a whole regiment, and now all of the beds were full again, many of them the same young men she had already healed once.

  She was helping Brenda to change Smokey’s bandages when the TV finally changed its newsreel.

  ‘Vergiss Mein Nicht. That is the message King Paul and Queen Lethe sent today to their loyal subjects. The Palace has just announced that the killer responsible for the death of our beloved Jocasta is this man.’

  An image of Quinn filled the screen.

  ‘Oh no,’ gasped Brenda.

  ‘The notorious Quinn is the latest in a long line of partisan leaders for the Rioters. But the real shock came when the Palace further announced that Quinn is also the secret lover of none other than Princess Alithea, aunt to the deceased Princess.’

  Brenda raised her hand to cover her mouth. Jo looked at her with grief and compassion as she stared at the television, which cut from an image of the Queen’s sister to Titus seated behind a desk, staring directly o
ut of the screen.

  ‘Treachery of this magnitude cannot go unpunished. I give my promise to the people of the great city of London that these Rioters will be rooted out and destroyed. In light of this vile attempt to seize the throne and the brutal murder of our own dear Jocasta, I have decreed a Barabbas Ball to be held in the late Princess’s honour.’

  ‘Tickets have already sold out,’ said the voiceover. And then the loop started back upon itself. Eventually somebody turned it off.

  Jo stared at Brenda long after the television fell silent. Eventually she found the words. ‘Will they be executed?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jo. Yes. Well, probably – ‘

  ‘Probably?’ Jo’s eyes were swimming with tears. ‘Do you mean they might be pardoned?’

  ‘Perhaps. But you mustn’t get your hopes up. Pardons are rarer than rubies. This Barabbas Ball… Do you know who Barabbas was?’

  ‘I know the name…’ A vague memory surfaced from Jo’s R.E. lessons. ‘Wasn’t he in the Bible? A thief who was going to be executed?’

  ‘Actually, some of us think he was a freedom fighter,’ interrupted Brenda.

  ‘Whatever he was, didn’t the mob get him pardoned and Jesus was crucified instead?’

  ‘That’s right. Whatever you know about the Bible, keep it to yourself, Jo. Titus hates Christians and his spies are everywhere.’

  It felt really mean-spirited, but Jo couldn’t help remembering how Titus had effortlessly managed to get Brenda to give away all sorts of secrets. Was Brenda his spy after all, however unwittingly, in this reality as well? Even worse, might it have been Brenda who betrayed Ali? She forced herself to drop that line of thought.

  ‘So what happens at a Barabbas Ball?’ asked Jo.

  ‘The Royal Family invite the XXXIX, and their wives – or whatever – to the Roundhouse.’ Brenda noticed Jo’s puzzled expression. ‘The XXXIX are the judges. The number thirty-nine is associated with purification from an undesirable state, apparently. They’re all men, of course.’