by Vic James
What did Kessler’s pursuit of him mean, on this of all days? Think, Luke. Think!
Luke wondered if there was any blood in the middle part of his body at all. It would all be flowing frantically to his legs and his brain. And right now, his legs were getting the lion’s share.
Kessler had been looking for him. Which could mean that he hadn’t succeeded in fooling Ryan last night. Or maybe Zone D had been deserted all day, and for want of any better leads they were pulling Luke in for questioning by someone who actually knew how to do it.
Or maybe they knew about the club.
The first two scenarios Luke would just have to handle. But if it was the last one, he had to warn the others. And there was only one way he could think of to do that: find Jackson.
He had to get to the Doc before Kessler caught up with him, then Jackson could get word to the others. Help them keep a low profile, somehow.
He snatched a glance at his watch. The cruddy BB digital display was hard to read, but the sky itself told Luke that the afternoon was wearing on. The rally at the MADhouse had been scheduled for three o’clock. That was where Jackson would be – even if he wasn’t giving any speeches. Hopefully Luke would be able to lose Kessler in the crowd for long enough to find him.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all he had.
He ran through the streets as swiftly as he could without pushing himself to exhaustion. His throat and lungs began to burn. He was sucking in air that was too cold, too fast. At least Kessler wouldn’t be finding it any easier. Luke couldn’t hear the man behind him any more.
He settled into a regular pace, like doing cross-country back at school, and eventually the surroundings became more familiar. Ahead he saw the agglomeration of offices that kept Millmoor functioning: Supply, Sanitation and the vast Administration block. Off to the right was the huge, blank barracks of Millmoor Security.
The streets were strangely empty, but over the noise of his thumping heart and scraping breath Luke could hear what sounded like a cacophony of many voices.
It must have worked.
The club’s plan must have actually worked. That sounded like hundreds of demonstrators. Maybe more.
As he approached the MADhouse, the streets began to fill with people. At first they were just in small groups and loosely packed knots, but ahead they thickened up into a dense crowd. And beyond that, it looked as if they formed a solid wall. There were no guards here at the back of the gathering. They must all be at the front, keeping protesters away from the MADhouse and other key buildings.
Luke hurried forward, first weaving his way between people, then shouldering his way deeper, and finally pushing through.
How the hell was he going to find Jackson?
The crowd spread as far as he could see. It filled the confined area in front of the MADhouse – a meanly proportioned space never intended for public celebrations or display – and flowed into the avenues that led away from it. He revised his estimate of numbers. There must be a few thousand here. It certainly smelled and sounded like that many.
His face was squashed up against jackets and overalls, hair and skin, as he shoved his way through. He inhaled sweat and the caustic smell of the standard-issue soap. And here and there he smelled something ranker: a whiff of moonshine alcohol, or some workplace stench that never faded no matter how long you stood under the shower.
There was something else, too. Did anger have a smell? Luke thought it might. Something that you released like pheromones. Because the atmosphere was infused with more than words. It was composed of something greater than the catcalls, the derision, the call-and-response from one side of the crowd to the other. He could hear shouts of ‘UN!’ and ‘EQUAL!’, of ‘VOTE!’ and ‘YES!’ It was more, too, than just the raised, clenched fists and hunched shoulders, the restless press and sway of the crowd.
These weren’t the sort of folk he’d met in the outer districts, being quietly subversive by wearing unapproved clothing or frying up some stolen food. No. These people were like those who’d gathered round the shop that morning and heckled the guards taking down the banner. They were angry. And determined.
He was near the front now. He had seen more than a few faces he recognized from Zone D, too, as he pushed forward. Then for the first time he had a good view of the MADhouse itself. It had had yet another paint job in the night: ‘UN-EQUAL’ sprayed in vivid yellow right across the front.
The building was ringed by guards. These were the older guys: big, tough veterans. The head of Security stood on the small balcony above the building’s stubby portico. He was a lean, hard man by the name of Grierson, who was rumoured to be ex-Special Forces. Next to him was the Overbitch. Gotta hand it to the woman, she didn’t look scared, just pissed off as hell.
Next to her was someone else Luke recognized.
Gavar Jardine.
The scumbag who had come to torture Oz. Who’d tried to shoot Jackson. Back for more. The heir of Kyneston stood there in his sinister leather coat, his flat blue eyes bored by the spectacle before him. Luke imagined this man giving Daisy orders, reprimanding her, and his skin crawled.
The Overbitch stepped forward.
‘This is your last chance,’ she told the crowd. ‘We know the identity of everyone present.’
She held up a small device with a screen, presumably linked to whatever tracked the implanted chips.
‘Those who begin to disperse immediately will receive only light sanctions: an additional six months. Those who remain will face a heavier penalty.’
There was some muttering at that, a few shouted curses. Luke was jostled as a number of people began to push their way back. But from what he could see, it wasn’t that many. Hundreds still remained.
‘As if!’ yelled a man’s voice from the middle of the pack. ‘You gonna slap us all with slavelife? Where’d you put us all?’
The Overbitch actually smiled. The effect wasn’t pleasant. Luke guessed she didn’t do it much.
‘We can always find room,’ she said.
‘Traitor!’ came another voice, female this time. It wobbled, as if the speaker couldn’t believe her own daring. ‘Oppressing your own people. We don’t ask much. Fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Not hard to grasp.’
‘But contrary to the law,’ said the Overseer.
‘Rubbish laws!’ the woman called back.
‘It’s regrettable that you think so,’ said the dumpy woman on the balcony. ‘Now.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Fascinating though this has been, we’ve had quite enough. As you’ve shown yourself unwilling to disperse voluntarily, I can see we’ll have to encourage you.’
‘You an’ whose army?’ yelled the first man. ‘Don’t see many of your goons here.’
‘Oh,’ said the Overseer. ‘I don’t need an army. You see, there’s such a thing as natural authority in this country.’
She simpered up at the redheaded freak. Luke felt fear grab him by the scruff of the neck and shake him till he trembled.
Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that.
There was a stirring in the crowd just in front of Luke. He recognized the woman who’d been heckling at the Labour Allocation Bureau. Next to her, a tall skinny bloke stepped forward with something in his hand – a pole, with a knife on the end. He launched it up at the balcony.
It struck the Overseer – only a glancing blow, by the looks, but there was blood and she screamed murder. Then Grierson strode to the edge of the balcony, lifted his rifle, and fired.
Once: at the man who had thrown the makeshift spear. Again: at the woman by his side.
He must have shot her in the head because an arc of gore spattered across the people standing behind. Luke’s eyes closed reflexively but he felt something warm splash against his cheek and gagged.
He dabbed at it with his cuff and blinked, then saw Jackson shoving his way towards the two people who’d been hit.
There was screaming now, and panic. The unity of the crowd ha
d ripped apart. Most were trying to turn and flee, but many were surging towards the thin line of guards around the MADhouse entrance.
They could do it, Luke thought. There were enough of them.
‘At will!’ Grierson yelled. ‘At will!’
Luke heard more shots go off and more people screaming, but still he and others kept going. This was it, he thought. They’d get no second chances after this.
‘No!’
The voice had come from up above, from the balcony, and there was only one person it could belong to. It made the Overseer’s threats and Grierson’s commands seem as inconsequential as a child trying to overrule its parents.
But there was no more time to analyse it. Luke doubled over with the pain that slammed into him, as heavy and terrifying as his workstation hoist. He howled, and heard a stricken animal yelping in his own voice. He tried to curl up to minimize the agony, but it was everywhere, in every cell of him.
He wanted just for an instant, fervently, to die so it would end.
Then the wave of torment rolled over him and he was beached on the other side. He lay there gasping, flat on his back with tears streaming from his eyes. His abdomen was heaving as if there was an alien inside about to burst out. He coughed and it sent excruciating ripples through every part of him. He needed to spit, and turned his head as carefully as if his neck was made of glass.
From his sideways viewpoint, he realized that everyone he could see was in the same state. The square was full of fallen, writhing, groaning people. The Security guards too, by the look of it, though his vision was too blurry to be certain.
So that was Skill, Luke thought, when he found himself able to think. The sexy, subtle magic from Abi’s books. The Skill with which smouldering Equals seduced women, wove exquisite illusions for them, and punished those who tried to hurt their girl.
In reality, an agony so excruciating you wished you were dead.
How could you fight against that? How could you win against people who could do that? Not people – monsters. It didn’t matter that there were hardly any of them. There didn’t need to be.
Jackson was going to have to come up with a better plan than today’s, that was for sure.
Luke let his head fall back onto the gritty ground. All around him he could hear people sobbing, swearing; a few throwing up.
Then in his peripheral vision – movement. A pair of black boots came to a halt by the side of his face. The toecap of one insinuated itself beneath his cheek and turned his head. He looked up into Kessler’s meaty face as the man bent over him.
‘Wishing you’d let me catch you earlier, Hadley?’
The tip of a long baton tapped the row of eyelets on Kessler’s boots – not impatiently. Slowly. As if he had all the time in the world.
‘Now here’s a funny thing,’ Kessler continued. ‘When we were trying out our stunners on a few troublemakers earlier, we found they weren’t having quite the usual effect. Seems some scallywag must have been messing with the settings. But don’t you worry. I can do this the old-fashioned way.’
Kessler grinned, his lips going thin like a dog’s. The baton stopped tapping. Luke saw the black length of it upraised above his head.
‘I’m going to miss you, E-1031. But they’ll take good care of you where you’re going.’
Luke closed his eyes before Kessler’s arm smashed down.
When he came round, his head felt twice its normal size. He couldn’t see. For a terrified moment he was convinced that Kessler’s blow had done awful damage, detached something in his head beyond repairing. Then he thought his eyes must be swollen shut.
It was only once his vision had adjusted that he realized he was in a cramped, windowless space.
And it was moving.
17
Luke
He was in the back of a vehicle. A small one. So it wasn’t one of Security’s prisoner transport wagons – but it wasn’t Angel’s stolen van either.
He was lying on what felt like folded tarpaulin, which protected his tenderized body from the vehicle’s hard shell, and a couple of blankets had been draped over him. He had a bandage around his head. So someone cared about the state he was in.
But was that only so he’d be able to bear interrogation upon his arrival?
Plus, his hands and ankles were securely tied. So whoever had him thought he might try to get away.
Luke’s other senses didn’t have much to contribute. The wheels whirred rather than rumbled on the road surface, which likely meant they were on a motorway. This was reinforced by the fact that the vehicle wasn’t making frequent changes of direction. He could hear one of the national radio stations faintly from the cab, meaning they were still in Britain. No conversation, so whoever was driving might be alone.
His nose told him nothing at all. The space around him smelled simply of van: that bloke-ish blend of metal, newspaper and oily rags. Corners of Dad’s garage had been just the same.
There was nothing more he could discover without getting free. Luke struggled with the ropes round his wrists, but the effort turned his head into a throbbing mess. He also didn’t want to alert the person in the cab to the fact that he was conscious. It might give him an element of surprise when the doors were opened.
Though what was he going to do, tied up as he was? Headbutt the driver, or aim a two-footed kick at his middle? Luke was pretty sure stunts like that only worked in the movies.
Best-case scenario: Kessler was somehow linked to the club and had broken Luke out of Millmoor for a reason. That would require the man’s taste for inflicting grievous bodily harm to be some sort of screwed-up deep cover, but it wasn’t completely impossible. He had, after all, been the reason Luke had met the Doc in the first place. And Luke’s quick recovery from their encounter in the storeroom showed that whatever he’d done that day had felt worse than it actually was. But still, that was unlikely.
Worst-case scenario: the other club members had also been rounded up and were this very minute lying hog-tied in vans. They could all be speeding to a short trial followed by a long sentence in a lifer camp. More probable. Which wasn’t reassuring.
Luke’s brain cycled between these two possibilities and a good few more besides. But it hadn’t settled on one by the time he felt the vehicle’s movements change and the speed drop.
Then they stopped.
His pulse rate shot up. He managed a sort of caterpillar wriggle towards the doors, rolled onto his back, and shuffled till his legs were bent up and his feet flat against the door panel. He heard footsteps round the side of the van; the click of the door handle. As it opened, he stamped down hard . . .
. . . on empty air and fell out of the back of the van. He landed at the feet of someone who sprang back with a yell.
Luke writhed on the ground, moaning. He hurt everywhere. It was pitch-black and absolutely freezing. He opened his eyes and looked up at a night sky filled with stars. Hundreds – thousands, must be. He hadn’t seen them since going to Millmoor.
‘Who the heck are you?’ a voice demanded.
A voice that apparently hadn’t expected to find a trussed-up teenage boy in the back of his van.
‘Was about to ask you the same thing,’ Luke croaked, trying to manoeuvre into a sitting position. ‘Where are we?’
He couldn’t see the driver clearly. The darkness was almost total, apart from a muted glow just beyond the trees that edged the road. Was it one of those useless security lights that only went off like a beacon when a cat jumped on a fence half a mile away?
‘Didn’t get orders to tell you nothing,’ the driver said. ‘Didn’t even know there was a “you”. Was just told to make the drop-off here. Got a number to call when I arrived.’
He pulled out a phone and there was a Post-it note stuck to it. Squinting at the number, the man dialled and explained to whoever answered that he had made the delivery.
Luke heard him repeat back ‘Leave it? You know what “it” is, right?’
Th
en the conversation ended and the delivery man began to walk back to his vehicle.
‘Wait!’ Luke called. ‘What’s going on? You’re not just going to abandon me? I’ll freeze to death.’
‘Not my problem,’ the man said, though he pulled one of the blankets from the back and threw it in Luke’s direction. It landed several metres short. Bastard.
Then he climbed in the van and drove off.
Luke waited a few moments to be sure he wasn’t returning, then started casting around for anything that might cut the plastic twine binding his wrists and ankles.
The roadside verge wasn’t promising, but he caterpillared his way over to the nearest tree where he found a stone embedded among the roots. It didn’t have much of an edge, but if he could work up a bit of friction he might be through by morning.
Luke didn’t think he had until morning.
He’d made no headway when the light beyond the trees flared up, then died. Metal creaked and shrilled, like hinges opening. Damn. He should have bunny-hopped down the road and hidden while he could. He curled against the tree trunk and tried to make himself as small as possible.
The light shifted and he heard a muffled sound resembling horse’s hooves. Two horses? Then footsteps. They came straight towards him as if they knew exactly where he was. So much for any escape.
The voice, when it spoke, was even closer than he thought.
‘Hello. It’s a bit late to be letting people in, but I do like having my brothers owe me.’
The voice was male, the tone wry and the accent cut-glass posh. Yet something about it made Luke want to burrow into the earth itself rather than see its owner. He pressed his shoulder blades back against the tree trunk, which was slippery with hoarfrost, and tried to control his rising panic.
The guy was Skilled. Luke could feel it in the way he spoke, just as with the Equal in Millmoor. His words could do stuff. Make things happen.
‘Let’s have a look at you, then.’
A faint, cold brightness suffused the air, as if someone had turned up the starlight, and Luke found that he could see.