by Dan Smith
How long had he been asleep? How long had he been in this place?
Once again, Ash looked at the solid wall of jungle beyond the fence, no more than a hundred metres in front of him. He remembered when he had visited Mum’s family in Trivandrum, and Dad had taken him into the forest a few times. He’d wanted to show Ash different ways to make a fire and how to build a shelter, and they had even spent a whole night in there, surrounded by the intense darkness and the terrifying noises. Ash hadn’t got much sleep, but Dad had been pleased with him – told him he’d make a good jungle survivor one day.
Ash hadn’t been so sure; sleeping in a comfortable bed was much better than an unstable hammock under a leaky poncho. Roasting chunks of Mum’s tandoori chicken over the fire had been good, though, and at least the mosquitoes had left him alone, even though they’d feasted on Dad.
Ash wondered if maybe that’s where he was now. India. Maybe this was all something to do with Mum.
He saw that the building he had come from was a large, concrete dome-like structure with the glazed lobby area protruding like the entrance to an igloo. The glass was mirrored on the outside and the sun blazed from every surface of it. Trees curved around the whole area, following the line of the fence as if the building was inside a massive clearing. And Ash didn’t like the look of that fence. The way it hummed with electricity made him shiver when he realized it must be there to keep something in.
Or to keep something out.
Over to his right, he spotted a gap in the fence. It was difficult to tell from this angle, but there appeared to be a fenced-off path leading into the jungle, which—
A noise.
It was faint, but unmistakeable: footsteps.
Ash froze, unsure what to do, and a moment later a pair of startled birds rose from the trees. With black and white markings like a magpie, they squawked and clattered their wings as they flew high and separated, disappearing over the forest. Ash wondered how he could have heard the noise before the birds.
The footsteps came closer, and he saw movement through the links in the fence. His instinct was to get away from whoever was coming. But this was the first sign of life he had seen since waking. Maybe they could help him.
Maybe it was Mum.
A figure came along the path and emerged through the gap into the clearing. She moved into the open, swinging a stick, and walked a few metres before catching sight of Ash and halting in her tracks.
The girl was young, maybe about his own age, with olive skin and long dark hair parted down the middle. It occurred to Ash that she might be dangerous and want to hurt him – or bring other people who would hurt him. Adrenalin was firing through his blood, making his whole body tingle, preparing it for whatever was coming next. His eyes flicked from the girl to the ground as he searched for a rock, a stick, any kind of weapon.
The girl pulled her left hand from the pocket of her combat trousers and raised it in greeting. ‘¡Hola!’ she called out. ‘¿Cómo estás?’
Ash was still half turned, ready to run, and his fists were balled, ready to fight.
‘iHola!’ she said again with a wave. ‘Hello.’
It looked and sounded like a friendly greeting. ‘¿Te has perdido?’ she asked. ‘Are you lost?’ She swung the stick up and rested it on her shoulder before heading towards Ash, bringing with her the sweet smell of ginger and cinnamon. A hint of coconut too. ‘Speak English?’
He nodded.
‘You must be from the helicopter.’ She had a thick accent, as if English wasn’t her first language. ‘You looked . . . how you say? Out of it.’
As she came closer, Ash stepped back, holding up his fists.
The girl stopped. She glanced at the stick in her hand, then frowned and threw it to one side. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
Ash kept his guard up.
‘My name is Isabel.’ She pronounced it Ee-sa-bell.
Confused and still wary of her, Ash remained silent and suspicious. He looked the girl up and down, seeing her jungle boots, T-shirt and combat trousers. He wondered what she must think of him – a skinny boy, shorter than average, wearing nothing but a pair of pyjamas.
When Ash didn’t answer, the girl shrugged. ‘I like your hair. It looks cool. The white.’ She put a finger to her head and drew it from front to back. ‘It looks good.’
Ash narrowed his eyes. ‘Where are we?’
‘Isla Negra.’ She flicked her head to sweep away a strand of hair that had fallen across her eyes. ‘Black Island. And that is the BioSphere.’ She gestured towards the building.
Ash didn’t like the sound of ‘Black Island’, or ‘the BioSphere’, but all he could do was add them to the list of things he didn’t like about this place. ‘You saw us arrive? My mum too?’
‘ Sí. Two days ago.’
It was like a slap in the face. Two days? How was that possible? Surely Ash couldn’t have been asleep for two days. ‘Do . . . do you know where my mum is?’
Isabel touched the collar of her faded black T-shirt. ‘In the . . .’ She paused. ‘In the lab-or-a-tory, I guess.’ She nodded once, pleased to have got the word right. ‘With Papa.’
‘You’ve seen her?’ Ash felt a glimmer of relief. ‘She’s all right?’
‘Your mama is . . . morena like you? Brown skin? With dark hair like mine? About this high?’ She held her hand about thirty centimetres above her head.
‘Yeah.’
‘Then I did see her. She came off the helicopter with you and the others. I asked Papa who you are, but he said it is a secret. There are many secrets here, so I don’t ask again. Come. I take you to Papa.’ With that, Isabel walked past, heading towards the BioSphere.
Ash hesitated, afraid to trust her.
‘Come,’ Isabel insisted, and smiled at him. ‘We’ll find your mama.’
There wasn’t much choice, so Ash followed, asking, ‘What is this place? Where is everyone?’
The doors swished open and they walked into the cool interior of the building.
‘I already told you. Isla Negra,’ Isabel said. ‘It is an island near Costa Rica.’
‘What?’ Ash couldn’t hide his shock. ‘Costa Rica? Isn’t that, like, South America or something?’
‘ Central America. And we are not many here. Just a few, until you came to—’
Her last words were interrupted by the loudest and most awful wailing. A high-pitched electronic screeching that drilled into their heads.
Isabel stopped with her mouth open and put her hands to her ears, but Ash hunched, stunned by the outburst. It felt like an enormous spike was being hammered through his skull, and he screamed in pain.
He squeezed the identity tag tight in his fist and imagined he was back at home in his bedroom with his headphones on, listening to music. Mum and Dad were downstairs and everything was as it should be. Everything was normal. After a few seconds, the pain began to fade and the sound withdrew as if being dragged away along a tunnel. The harder he concentrated, the easier it became.
‘Are you OK?’ Isabel was shouting in his ear. ‘Are you—’
‘Yes.’ Ash let go of the tag and held up his hand. ‘I’m . . . I’m fine. What’s that noise? He opened his eyes and looked at her.
‘The alarm,’ Isabel said. ‘Something must have happened.’
Then, from somewhere inside the building came a sound that was far more frightening. Ash had never heard it before in real life, but he had seen enough films and played enough video games to know what it was.
Gunfire.
They were still standing there in shock when the alarm cut out. Ash’s ears were ringing, and it felt like someone had been slapping him round the head.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I have to find—’ He stopped. ‘Wait. Someone’s coming.’
‘I don’t hear anything.’
But Ash could hear it as if it were right beside him. The sound of running. He turned as two men came into view, hurrying down the stairs at the far end of the lobby.
The first man jumped the last few steps and hit the tiled floor with a thump! He landed in an awkward position, twisting his ankle and falling to his knees. He swore and struggled to his feet as the second man grabbed his arm to pull him up. As soon as they started moving again, the first man hobbling on one leg, they spotted Ash and Isabel.
Brrratatat! From somewhere upstairs came another short burst of gunfire.
‘Get out of here!’ the first man shouted as they hurried past. ‘It’s not safe. Not for anyone. Come with us.’
Ash stepped back as the doors swished open. ‘We can’t. We have to find my mum.’
‘My papa works in there too.’ Isabel watched the men leave the building and make straight for the helicopter. When they reached it, the one with the twisted ankle pulled open the door and climbed in.
Brrratatat!
This time the shots were much closer, as if right above them. And then came the sound of pounding footsteps echoing down the stairwell.
‘Hide.’ Ash darted away from the staircase, towards the wooden reception area in the centre of the lobby. Isabel hesitated, then followed as Ash skidded under the folddown section and slipped beneath the lip of the counter, right below the computers.
Seconds later came the thunder of several pairs of boots on the steps.
‘There they are!’ It was a woman’s voice; commanding and strong. ‘Stop them!’
For one terrifying moment, Ash thought she had seen them; that she was sending someone after them. But then she shouted, ‘Don’t let them take off!’ Boots pounded on the lobby tiles, racing straight past them and fading as the doors swished open and people hurried outside.
Ash looked into Isabel’s dark brown eyes, seeing that she was just as scared and confused as he was. ‘We’re going to be all right.’ He said it as much for himself as for her.
‘Why are they doing this?’ Isabel whispered. ‘Why are they shooting?’
‘I’m going to look.’
‘No.’
‘I have to see.’ With a deep breath, Ash stood just enough so that his eyes were above the counter, and he peered through the glass at what was happening outside.
As soon as he spotted the woman, a memory blind-sided him. It came out of nowhere like a speeding car and slammed into him with great force. You remember her, said the voice. She came to your house. Called herself ‘Cain’.
Ash’s thoughts swum as if he’d just woken from a dream; images coming back to him. He had been in his room, looking out of the window when he had seen the shiny black Range Rover speeding down his cul-de-sac. Gleaming black alloys and smoked-out windows, it had stopped outside his house, and a man and woman had come to the door. When Mum had answered it, they’d pushed their way in and—
Injected you. Brought you here.
Ash shook the voice away and stared at the woman called Cain. Athletic and confident, she wore camouflaged combat trousers and jacket, with a dark green vest covered in bulging pockets. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a cap on her head, the peak bent into a curve. She was wearing black military boots and carried a short assault rifle. Ash recognized it from the video games he had played. It was an M4 carbine, and right now, the woman was standing in front of the helicopter, pointing it directly at the glass cockpit.
There was a man with her, armed and dressed the same, as if it were some kind of uniform. He was huge, like the Hulk, with broad shoulders and almost no neck. He was trying to pull open the helicopter door while Cain was shouting something, and Ash turned his ear towards it, trying to hear as he had heard before, but the glass was too thick and he couldn’t make out anything more than a mumbling. From her tone he guessed Cain was ordering the men to get out of the helicopter. It didn’t look as if they were going to do what she said, though, because the helicopter engines roared into life and the rotor blades began to move.
‘They’re leaving?’ Isabel said.
Cain turned her head as if she had heard. She looked across at the building and her cold blue eyes met Ash’s.
‘Get down!’ He ducked.
As soon as he was below the counter, Ash started to shuffle under, his throat burning from the acid that had risen from his stomach. Cain had seen him, and now she was going to—
Mirrored glass.
Cain couldn’t have seen him because it was impossible to see into the building from outside. The glass was smoky from the inside but mirrored from the outside.
Ash told himself to calm down, and rose up for another look.
Cain was still turned in his direction. She had a finger to her ear, and was speaking as if arguing with someone.
The helicopter engines were whining, audible even inside the lobby, and the rotor blades were gathering speed. Cain’s cap peeled back and whipped away in the draught but she ignored it and continued speaking. After a few more seconds of animated conversation, she nodded and turned back to the helicopter.
She lifted her weapon and aimed directly at the cockpit.
Hulk realized what she was about to do and jumped away from the door.
Brrratatat!
Ash heard the muffled gunfire as the weapon kicked in Cain’s hands and the cockpit glass shattered, but she was too late. Already the aircraft was leaving the ground and the skids were a few metres above the grass.
‘Bring it down!’ A voice came from the stairwell behind them. ‘You can’t let them leave!’
Ash and Isabel ducked back under the counter as footsteps echoed down and past them, then there was a roar as the doors swished open and the amplified sound of the helicopter flooded into the lobby.
Ash risked poking his head up again, and saw a potbellied man in a dishevelled suit stride out and look up at the rising helicopter. He was older than the others, short and scruffy, with messy hair. He wore dark-rimmed glasses and had a close-clipped beard. Over his shoulder was a zipped-up messenger bag.
The man from the funeral! The same one who had sent Mum into a panic.
Following just behind him was an athletic man with bright orange hair, and then came two more soldiers carrying a wooden crate between them. It was the kind of thing used for transporting animals, with poles slipped through loops of rope on each side so they could carry it more easily – one from the front and one from behind. There were six rows of small air holes in the side of the crate, and two large round ones on the front, covered with a metal mesh. For one horrifying moment, Ash wondered if his mum might be in there.
As the doors closed behind them, the man in the scruffy suit pointed at the aircraft and yelled something at Cain.
Cain looked round at Hulk, then they both raised their weapons and began firing.
Brrratatat!
Bullets thumped into the helicopter, punching holes right along the underside as it rose high above the trees. On the ground, Cain ejected her spent magazine and pulled another from a pocket in her vest, reloading and firing again.
The untidy man from the funeral stood back against the glass lobby as the aircraft rose and slipped sideways like an animal trying to escape the irritating prattle of the bullets. When it was way above the trees, the nose dipped and it looked for a second as if it might actually escape. But then the machine twisted and the tail dropped, lifting the nose so it was pointing at the sky.
Cain and Hulk continued to fire as the helicopter tipped further back, then jerked to the left and began to drop.
It came down hard and fast.
Cain and the others stopped shooting and ran towards the building to escape the crashing aircraft. As they came, the door opened, letting in the sound of the struggling engine. Whatever was in the crate must have been important because the two men didn’t put it down. Despite the extra weight, they ran with it back to the BioSphere, followed by their orange-haired colleague.
At the far edge of the clearing, the helicopter’s rotors clipped the forest canopy, jolting the aircraft into a lazy spin that twisted it first one way, then the other, as it whirled toward
s the ground, hitting the grass with a sickening crunch.
Even then, the helicopter continued to spin, flicking round as if it were nothing more than a toy. The tail boom smashed into the electric fence, sending up a shower of sparks. It tore through the mesh and hit the base of a large tree. There was a sharp scream of metal as the tail tore off, then what was left of the aircraft flipped over onto its side, the rotors ripping away and breaking into pieces that shot across the clearing like missiles.
Plumes of dust and smoke rose from the crash site, billowing across the ground, rising to form a huge cloud that washed over the clearing. It rolled towards Ash and Isabel like a tidal wave, forcing its way through the open doors. It smashed into the lobby, spraying everything with soil and broken twigs, turning the space inside the glass into a raging storm, smothering Cain and the others.
‘Are you all right?’ Isabel was shaking his arm. ‘Are you hurt?’
Ash lay in a ball, arms wrapped round his head. His eyes were stinging from the dirt blasted there by the cloud that had barrelled into the lobby. Tears welled and spilt over, running down his cheeks. His mouth was full of grit.
‘Say something.’
‘I’m . . . OK.’ He blinked and sat up. ‘I think.’ He rubbed his eyes and squinted at Isabel. She was covered in so much dust that her hair was now a greyish colour. Her face was streaked where tears had run through the grime. She looked as if she had just survived a hurricane – which was exactly how Ash felt.
All around them, the air was hazy. Dirt floated in a heavy fog, specks of it sparkling in the sunshine.
‘Damn it.’ Cain’s voice in the lobby, boots crunching. ‘How the hell do we get off this island now?’
Ash and Isabel dropped flat and slipped as far as they could under the counter.
‘Don’t you have someone you can call?’ It was the older man who had spoken. The one in the dishevelled suit.
‘Disable all communications.’ Ash could tell Cain was trying to control her temper. ‘Contain all personnel, and seal this place. By the time anyone comes to investigate, we’ll have Kronos and be long gone. That’s what we agreed, Pierce. All you wanted was what you’ve got in that bag, and that thing in the crate.’