by Leanne Hall
‘Worst-case scenario,’ I reply. ‘She pushed him away, she refused to let him have anything to do with it.’ But I’m thinking about Ortolan, not Wildgirl, and I’m adding and subtracting in my mind.
Wildgirl’s face is scrunched up with something like pain and I’m sure mine is the same, but I didn’t mean to be cruel. Wildgirl kneels in front of the lock and tries the hairpin. The pin scrapes against the metal and I hear a click. Wildgirl presses down on the handle and the gate moves.
‘We don’t know, do we?’ she says quietly. The gate creaks open, wiping an arc in the dust as it swings. The sound it makes is a rusty wail.
I walk through. The tunnel looks exactly the same on the other side. Same pipes, same lights on the roof. I take Wildgirl’s hand and hold it so tightly I can feel a faint pulse in her fingers. She looks up at me and her smile is strangely grateful. Our words have hurt each other but we didn’t mean them to. The truth hurts, but not knowing the truth hurts more.
twenty-five
The basement in Six is almost identical to Seven’s, except instead of washing machines there’s a collection of cardboard boxes and a rotting mattress in the corner. A single hanging bulb lights the corridor at the top of the déjà vu stairs.
‘If I was going to have a safe room,’ I remark, ‘I would put it in a separate purpose-built building, with a moat and armed security guards and an electric fence.’
‘Then everyone would know exactly where you kept your best stuff. And that’s the first place they’d attack. With the biggest army they could muster.’
‘Didn’t you hear me? Gunmen? A moat?’
Wildgirl rolls her eyes, refusing, for a change, to play along. ‘There are twelve floors in every building. Didn’t Blake say around ten units live in each building?’ I nod. ‘So, they need to set aside ten rooms. You’d definitely use a spare floor, at either the top or bottom of the building. Let’s search this level, and then switch to the top level and work our way down. That way the longer we’ve been in here—’
I interject. ‘And the more likely it is that they’re gonna find us—’
Wildgirl jumps in, nodding. ‘Then the closer we’ll be to the ground floor, and our escape route.’
There are two doors on each side of the corridor before the elevator shaft. Without the need for further discussion I take the left-hand side and Wildgirl does the right.
The first door I try leads into a storage closet containing a cache of plastic jerry cans and a suffocating smell of petrol. I pull the door shut, and move on to the next one. ‘They’re not down here,’ I call out. ‘There are no locks on the doors, and everything’s dusty. No one’s been this way for a while.’
The next door opens onto disused sports equipment: spongy basketballs, tangled nets, an old wooden vaulting horse. Nothing useful.
‘I think you’re right,’ she says, ‘but at least I got this.’
I turn around to find her in a fencing stance and swishing a green gardening fork. Her movements send doppelganger shadows flashing across the walls.
‘It’s my trident. Nice, huh?’
‘Lethal. Did you find anything for me?’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t forget you.’
She holds up a small spade with a metal scoop and a short wooden handle.
‘A trowel?’ My voice still goes squeaky when I’m indignant. ‘Behold, the awesome might of my trowel?’
She throws it at me and I catch it with one hand. It looks like a teaspoon in my hands. I fit it into a mesh pocket on the side of my backpack.
‘You’re right, there’s sweet eff-all down here. Let’s head to the top.’
Wildgirl marches past the elevator and opens the last door. There is a large ‘6’ painted on it, so there’s no doubt anymore that we’re in the right building. Wildgirl props the door open with a foot and gestures for me to follow. Cold air wafts through the open door.
‘No elevator?’ I ask.
‘I’ve gone off it. We’ll take the stairs instead. If we hear anyone coming we can go up or down a level and duck through a door.’
The stairwell extends high above us. I peer up through the central gap, all the way to the top of the building, and get reverse vertigo. The stairs are divided into half-flights, with a small landing at the halfway point, and then a larger landing at each floor. A frosted window on each main landing lets in dim moonlight.
We climb side-by-side, wordlessly. Wildgirl has tucked the garden fork into her belt loop. I settle into the climb, glancing across at her occasionally. Every now and then a pale stripe of moonlight cuts across her face. Neither of us has mentioned what we talked about in the tunnels. It’s as if it never happened. Maybe what goes on underground stays underground.
‘You’re miles away. What are you thinking about?’ I ask.
‘I was thinking about revenge.’
‘On the Kidds?’
‘No. Not the Kidds.’
‘Then who?’ I ask, but she doesn’t reply.
The problem with Gram’s death was that there wasn’t anyone to blame except for him, and he wasn’t around to take it. I know my parents went dark on Ortolan, or at least my father did. If I was forced to pick sides I would have put the blame closer to home.
‘What level do you think we’re up to?’
Wildgirl’s cheeks are pink and she’s short of breath.
‘Coming up to Seven,’ she says. ‘I’ve been keeping count.’ I stop. ‘That’s the Elf’s home floor. Why don’t we take a quick look?’
‘Too dangerous. We know they were heading for home a while ago, so we could walk right into their clutches.’
‘We don’t know for sure that the safe rooms exist. If for some chance they’re there with the lighter, we could negotiate.’
Of course there’s no way the Elf would give up the lighter for a plastic bag full of garden-variety chocolate bars, but there are other things we could bargain with, no matter what Blake thinks. I know people in Shyness who can get you whatever you want, at a price. Or I could offer my own services.
‘Don’t you think your friend Blake tried to reason with them? And look what happened to her.’
Wildgirl climbs again, her boots making way too much noise on the concrete stairs.
I give up. I’m supposed to be the one who knows how Shyness operates, but it occurs to me that we’re acting on a bunch of second-hand information. From people who may or may not be trustworthy. Maybe we need to quit the subterfuge and ask the next Kidd we see where the Elf is. Deal with him directly.
At the top of the stairwell I glance down at all the floors we’ve passed. If we have to get out fast, it will be straight back down here. I judge the distance between flights. I could vault over the railing and take half a flight of stairs at a time, but I’m not sure Wildgirl could do the same.
Wildgirl stands in front of the final door.
‘When we go through this door, there will be the elevator to our right, and stairs to the rooftop on the left, same as the other building. To get to the main corridor we go through a glass door on the right, beyond the elevator.’
I picture it, trying to fix the layout in my head.
‘Ready?’
I push past Wildgirl, and press my weight against the door. She may be calling the shots, but I can at least take the first blow when it comes.
The twelfth floor glows with purple light from two UV lamps positioned at either end of the corridor. I hit the locking mechanism at the top of the glass door to keep it open. Someone has stuck rows and rows of different coloured electrical tape along the length of the floor, making a rainbow. I move forwards on the balls of my feet, hugging the wall. The ceiling and walls are painted black, with silver stars that glow.
Wildgirl follows close behind. We pass a door on our right: there’s a faint throb of music behind it. Wildgirl raises her hand to the handle and I shake my head. We keep sliding forwards. The next door, on our left, is bolted and padlocked. I could get a screwdriver out of my bag a
nd have a go at it, but I think we’re better off seeing what the other rooms hold.
Wildgirl lays her ear against the next door and nods.
She steps back and I open the door onto a room bathed in moonlight. There’s a clump of blankets on the floor, a cache of spray cans in a box, a death-metal poster tacked to the wall and a terrible stench. I hold my nose, walk inside and take a cursory look around. Off the main room there’s a kitchen full of lab equipment, and a festering bathroom. Another tiny room contains a blow-up mattress and a sleeping bag.
It looks like we’re on an ordinary residential floor. The next few doors are unlocked. One opens onto an empty apartment with a burnt-out kitchen. The next is stocked heavily for entertainment. The bedroom has a wall-to-wall stereo system instead of a bed. The kitchen is unused. The corridor ends in an open smoking room. I use one finger to indicate we should do a U-turn. Wildgirl backtracks but stops again at the door with the bolt and padlock.
I stare at the bolt, assessing the risk. It looks flimsy. I could probably get the screws out fairly quickly. But if it was a safe room wouldn’t it be secured better than this? Wildgirl puts her hand on my arm, about to say something, when there’s a thump at the end of the corridor.
The elevator.
I don’t have time to think.
I pull her by the hand and we run up the corridor towards the stairwell beyond the elevator. We’ve only got a second or two, at the most. We’re just through the glass doorway when there’s a ding.
The elevator doors slide open and we stand in front of it, momentarily shocked into stopping. Three suited men look back at us, and, towering palely in the corner, is the Elf.
Wildgirl grabs my arm and pulls me away. She hurtles up the steel steps to the rooftop and I have no choice but to follow her. We’re out in the night air, looking around frantically before I even have time to consider how trapped we are.
twenty-six
Another concrete rectangle bounded by a concrete wall, with the black sky above, and only one door in and out. The men in suits and the Elf can only be a few metres away on the other side of the door. My hand jams the handle upwards, so it can’t be pressed down on the other side. We look at each other with dinner-plate eyes.
‘Quick.’
I have no thoughts other than getting away from the door and finding a good place to hide. We dodge stacked paint tins and crumpled tarpaulins and canvas sheets spattered with colour. We need something tall. I leap over a discarded typewriter and take a split-second look back.
The door swings open and the three men and the Elf step onto the roof. The suits fan out around the doorway. The Elf hangs back, silhouetted against falling yellow light.
I pull Wildgirl down behind an upright ladder draped with a sheet. Not ideal, but good enough. We’re almost as far away as we can get from the men, huddled in the back corner of the roof.
I peek through the rungs. A rip in the sheet frames one of the suited men perfectly. He stands statue-still and switches his gaze from place to place efficiently. Sunglasses cover half his face. I don’t think he’s one of the men I saw earlier at the car but there’s something familiar about him. He gestures for one of the other men to circle around the back of the stairwell, and the second to check in our direction. The way he stands suggests that he’s more than just a security guard.
I look around, seeing if there’s anything within arm’s reach. A bucket full of paint rollers won’t be much use. Nor will a pile of old egg cartons. Could I use the ladder to make a bridge to the neighbouring tower? No. Far too dangerous. Wildgirl crouches lower than me, looking around the side of the ladder. She unhooks the garden fork from her waist and stares at the sunglasses man.
‘I know that guy,’ she whispers. She tugs on my jeans. Her mouth is open with surprise. ‘It’s Doctor Gregory!’
I look through the rip in the sheet.
She’s right. He’s removed his sunglasses now—it’s definitely him. He looks like a different person in a suit and long black overcoat, with his ginger hair slicked back. The orange tan is still in place, but the cheesy grin has turned grim. Smooth on the outside and rotten underneath.
My skin prickles all over. Doctor Gregory. It makes perfect sense that he’s involved with the Kidds and Orphanville. First you create the problem, and then you sell everyone the solution.
Doctor Gregory steps forward as if he knows that we’re looking at him. As if he’s on the set of another motivational video.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
His voice rings out clearly despite the open air and whistling breeze. He holds a small silver object above his head with a thumb and index finger. It looks like my lighter, but I don’t trust him. He swivels from side to side, holding the lighter up high, making sure we don’t miss it, wherever we are.
‘Would you like it?’ Doctor Gregory’s voice is steel-hard and nothing like the voice he uses in his videos. ‘You must really want it to go to these lengths. I admire that. I don’t think young people should be punished for showing such initiative.’
My eyes are fixed on the lighter. It’s not as bright as the flashy watch buckled to Doctor Gregory’s wrist. I crouch so that I am face-to-face with Wildgirl. ‘We have to get out of here, right now.’
‘Why don’t we just talk to him?’
‘The Elf steals my lighter and what does he do? He calls Doctor G, who comes as soon as he can. Don’t you see it’s strange?’
Wildgirl thinks it through. I don’t want to keep whispering with the men nearby, but I have to convince her.
‘We need to get out of here.’
‘How?’
‘Here’s how it’s going to work, children,’ Doctor Gregory’s voice rings out again. He sounds like he’s wandered closer. ‘You have something of mine; I have something of yours.’
Something of his?
‘One of my employees, it seems, has been quite careless with company property. And one of you has been less than scrupulous in your dealings with it. You give me my bankcard, I’ll give you your lighter, and we can forget the whole thing. I’ll even overlook any charges made in the course of the evening.’
Shadows settle over Wildgirl’s face. She’s not going to give up the card without a fight. Doctor Gregory speaks again. The man does not shut up, ever. ‘There’s some very pretty engraving on this lighter. What is it? A “G” and an “O”. What can that mean?’
I’m too busy looking at my shaking hands to stop Wild-girl when she steps into plain view.
‘How do you want to do this?’
‘No!’ I whisper, but she moves out of sight.
‘Let’s be straightforward about this—you hand me my card and I hand you the lighter.’
‘No.’ Wildgirl tries to sound confident, but her voice wobbles. ‘You put the lighter on that gallon drum over there, the blue one. And I’ll put the card on top of those tins. And then we can retrieve our things. But I don’t want you or anyone coming near me, right?’
Doctor Gregory laughs without warmth. I’ve got to get Wildgirl off the roof. This has nothing to do with her. I don’t believe for a second that Doctor Gregory cares about the card.
‘Very well, young lady. We’ll play your funny little game, if it pleases you. Hold up the card now so I can see it for a second. I want to make sure it’s mine.’
Wildgirl steps back while her hand is in the air, so she enters my line of sight again. Doctor Gregory’s footsteps sound out, crisp and sharp. He must be putting the lighter down on the drum. It’s almost impossible to make a clear plan when I can’t see what’s going on. Wildgirl doesn’t look at me when I whisper. ‘Is the Elf still there?’
‘Nope.’ She replies without moving her lips or turning her head.
‘Put the card where you said you would. Then run for the door. I’ll keep them busy.’
‘The lighter?’
‘I’ll get it,’ I say. ‘Meet me in the tunnel.’
I stand up and watch through the rip in the
sheet. When Wildgirl puts down the card I spring into action. I lift the ladder like a battering ram, and charge towards the nearest suit, screaming. Wildgirl sprints for the door. Doctor Gregory lets her go without a second glance.
The man ducks as I try to clobber him with the end of the ladder, and then darts behind me. I swing around, hoping to collect him on the way, but he’s too fast. He jumps on my back and clasps his hands against my throat. Something in my backpack presses against me painfully. I let the ladder fall and work on shaking him off. I growl and snap my head backwards, colliding with his nose. There’s a squeal as the man slithers to the ground.
I’ve only got a few seconds to decide how to play this. I bring on the crazy-eyes and feign confusion, all the while checking out possible paths of escape. The man who attacked me has crawled away, leaving a trail of blood. I’m not sure I can outrun three of them.
‘How are you feeling, Jethro?’ Doctor Gregory cocks his head like a curious budgerigar. ‘You haven’t replied to any of my letters. I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.’
I snarl, baring my teeth. I don’t want them any closer. The guy I headbutted is on his feet again, by Doctor Gregory’s side. The other bodyguard, taller and thinner, completes the trio.
‘Did it feel good?’ Doctor Gregory inquires. ‘Hurting Delany like that?’
Delany glowers. The lower half of his face is sticky with blood and saliva and snot. A purple bruise is already spreading from his nose into his eye sockets. I had no idea I could do that with one blow.
‘It must feel good to give way to your animal side,’ continues the doctor. ‘To obey your true nature.
I remember the trowel on the side of my pack and bend my arm up to reach it. Doctor Gregory is watching my face so intently he doesn’t notice the movement, but Delany is watching every little thing I do. The trowel comes loose in my hand and I lower my arm.
‘I’m really interested in your situation, Jethro.’
Doctor Gregory takes a step forward, his hands steepled in front of his stomach like a priest or a politician. I flinch and jab the trowel at them. I back away towards the edge of the roof.