Boy X

by Dan Smith

  A rush of air and the world hurried back into real time with a sharp clang as the crowbar hit the floor, and a clatter as Thorn’s knife spun away to be lost beneath the shelving.

  All Ash could do was crouch there, staring at the space where Thorn had been standing. He couldn’t believe what he had done. What had felt like ten seconds must have happened in the blink of an eye.

  ‘You got him,’ Isabel said. ‘You . . . you hit him.’ Her words were tight and breathless.

  Ash stared at the spot where Thorn had been standing. ‘I killed him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just hit him.’

  As if to confirm it, a long groan came from the shadows.

  ‘We have to get away.’ Isabel reached into the locker, taking the first block out of the metal box and shoving it into the satchel. ‘He’s waking up.’ She grabbed another two, jamming them in, then threw in a box of detonators and took hold of Ash’s arm. ‘We must go.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ash shook himself, still trying to understand what he had done; how he had moved so quickly and felt so strong.

  ‘Come on.’ Isabel threw the satchel over her shoulder. ‘We have to get out of here. Leave him in the dark.’

  Ash nodded and snatched up the light before they took off, hurrying between the shelves, racing along the length of the storage facility towards the way out. Somewhere behind them, Thorn groaned again and tried to get to his feet.

  It wouldn’t be long before he came after them – they didn’t have much time . . .

  Sprinting past the rack where the tools were stored, Ash glanced over at them, an idea forming. ‘This might give us some time.’

  He grabbed a second crowbar without breaking stride, and continued along the length of the cavernous storeroom. Isabel’s boots thundered on the concrete floor and their panting echoed around them. By the time they reached the exit, Ash was ahead, running so fast that he slammed into the doors, arms out to avoid hurting himself. He grabbed the handles, yanking them open, and the two of them rushed out into the corridor. Ash then turned to push the doors shut and slip the crowbar through the handles.

  ‘That should slow him down.’

  They ran and ran, blundering on with only the cocoon of light around them. Isabel stayed just ahead, picking out the right way to go, and Ash followed close behind, watching the satchel bouncing about on her back.

  Boom! the voice kept saying in his head. That sneering voice, floating down from the dark tower in his mind. Boom! She’s got a bomb on her back.

  When they came to the lobby stairwell, they raced down, taking the stairs two at a time, turning the corner then jumping the final few steps. Debris from the helicopter crash dug into the soles of Ash’s feet as they hurried over to the building’s entrance. Without power, the sliding doors remained firmly shut. Isabel shucked the pack from her back and crouched to remove one of the bricks of explosives. She was breathing heavily.

  ‘You’re not tired?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Ash dismissed the comment. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘I saw Papa do this.’ She tore off the brown paper to reveal a firm, white putty underneath.

  ‘Careful.’ Ash took a step back, expecting it to explode in Isabel’s hands as she twisted off a piece the size of a matchbox. She squashed it flat and stuck it onto the glass doors like a giant blob of used chewing gum.

  ‘Is that enough?’ Ash asked.

  ‘It’s powerful.’

  ‘Oh.’ He winced and took a step back.

  When she was done, Isabel reached into the satchel and took out one of the metal matchstick detonators. She pushed it into the putty and switched on the trigger device that looked like a smartphone.

  It burst into life, displaying a large red button on the touchscreen with the word PAIR on it. Isabel tapped it once. Immediately, a tiny green light appeared at the end of the matchstick detonator. At the same time, three words materialized on the device’s touchscreen.

  HE

  FLASH

  SMOKE

  ‘Do you know what they all mean?’ Ash peered over her shoulder, then glanced back at the stairwell.

  ‘Mm-hm.’ Isabel nodded. ‘This one is High Explosive.’ She touched HE which flashed once before it was replaced with two other words.

  TIMER

  MARK

  Isabel touched MARK, and a white dot began tracing across the screen in a ‘Z’ pattern. The word CONFIRM appeared above it.

  ‘I think that’s it,’ Isabel said.

  ‘You think? God, I hope you’re right about this.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Ash took a deep breath and shook his head in disbelief. ‘OK. What now?’

  Isabel looked at Ash and blinked hard. There was sweat on her brow and determination in her eyes. ‘We get back. Right back.’

  ‘Behind the counter?’ he asked.

  ‘Further.’

  ‘The stairs?’

  Isabel got to her feet and picked up the satchel. ‘Further.’ Without waiting for Ash, she started walking back to the stairwell, taking strong, purposeful strides. ‘Bring the flashlight.’

  Ash was glad to see Isabel being tough. She had taken control of the HEX13, and looked stronger now than she had in the lab. It was as if she had realized there was no point in being scared and hoping someone would come to help them. No one was coming except Thorn. Seeing Isabel like that made him feel better, and he snatched up the light and jogged after his friend, picking through the debris and heading along the corridor at the top of the stairs.

  They continued to the end, past room X, where it had all started for Ash, and crouched with their backs against the solid wall.

  ‘This is it.’ Isabel took a deep breath.

  ‘Will it be loud?’ he asked.

  Isabel nodded, and Ash knew he had to prepare for the worst. With his senses as crazy as they were, there was a good chance this was going to hurt. A lot.

  They stared at each other for a moment, then both looked down at the device in Isabel’s hand.

  ‘You’ve seen this before,’ Ash said. ‘You know what you’re doing. I trust—’

  Clang! From somewhere deep in the building came a metallic sound, followed by doors rattling.

  ‘He’s trying to get out!’ Ash said.

  Isabel moved her thumb so it was hovering over the touchscreen.

  Another loud CLANG!

  Ash imagined Thorn, face twisted in anger, swinging an axe at the door, breaking it from its hinges.

  ‘The door’s too strong,’ Isabel said. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course. I’m sure it is. Definitely.’

  ‘But what if he uses the HEX13?’

  ‘It’s experimental isn’t it?’ Ash said. ‘Even if he can find it in the dark, it’ll take him time to work out how to use it. Come on, let’s do this and get out of here.’

  Isabel focused on the trigger device in her shaking hand. The white glow continued to move in a ‘Z’ shape across the screen with the word CONFIRM along the top. It repeated the pattern, waiting for Isabel to trace it, but she couldn’t get her thumb to move.

  ‘Do it,’ Ash said.

  It was their only hope. The only way they were ever going to get out. The only way to help his mum and Isabel’s dad. The only way to stop Pierce from taking Kronos off the island.

  Millions will die.

  ‘I can’t,’ Isabel said. ‘I can’t move.’ Her voice wavered in panic.

  The banging continued, echoing through the corridors. It was growing louder and more terrifying with every passing moment. Thorn was like an angry caged beast, and with every second he was coming closer to escape.

  Isabel was struggling to keep the device still, her whole hand jittering about. Ash put his own trembling hands around Isabel’s, his thumb over the top of hers, and looked into her eyes.

  They would do it together.

  Unable to cover his ears, Ash prepared himself for the painful noise and began to count. ‘One.’


  The banging continued. Clang! Clang! Over and over again.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Three.’ Ash pushed Isabel’s thumb onto the touchscreen and together they traced the ‘Z’.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  22 hrs and 42 mins until Shut-Down

  The HEX13 exploded with a tremendous BOOM! The floor trembled as the sound and shock wave expanded from the lobby. Even where Ash and Isabel had taken cover, up two flights of stairs and all the way at the end of the corridor, something in the air changed. The oxygen was drawn away, making it impossible to breathe, and then it was sucked back in a blast of warm, scorched gases.

  A sharp pain stabbed through Ash’s head as it was filled with the sound of the explosion, but in an instant everything went blank and he could hear nothing at all. At his feet, the fluorescent lamp wobbled and toppled over. Dust filled his nostrils and coated his mouth.

  He doubled up, pressing his forehead to the ground. He had tried to push the sound away as he had managed to push away the smell of blood, but he had failed. The noise of the explosion had been too much for his heightened senses. It was as if his skull were being crushed in a vice. He didn’t care about anything now; couldn’t think about Mum or Isabel. It didn’t matter that Thorn was coming or that Pierce and Cain might escape with Kronos. In that moment – right then – Ash wanted nothing more than to die.

  He felt Isabel put an arm around his shoulder and hold him, leaning her head against his and giving him a gentle shake.

  Ash remained still, face contorted, as the pain began to subside.

  Isabel shook him again, making him turn to look at her, and he realized she was speaking to him.

  He watched her, seeing her lips move, but hearing nothing. Instead, he felt a cold fear wash over him. Goosebumps tingled down his back and across his scalp, popping to the surface of his skin like tiny explosions.

  He couldn’t hear.

  In panic, he put his fingers into his ears and waggled them.

  Isabel spoke again, deep concern in her expression as Ash took his fingers from his ears and looked at the blood smeared across them.

  ‘I can’t hear.’ He held his hands out for Isabel to see the blood. ‘I can’t hear.’

  Isabel slung the satchel over her back, grabbed the light and took hold of Ash, pulling him along the corridor.

  Ash stumbled along behind her in a daze, shaking his head, trying to banish the pain from his ears. His joints hurt too, and his muscles were aching, but as they moved along the corridor he began to feel better, and by the time they pushed through the doors at the end of the passage he actually felt strong. The pain in his head had faded to a dull throb and his joints felt smooth and efficient – but his hearing was still shot. The world was silent and dead around him.

  Isabel led him into air that was grey and thick with dirt. The glow from the fluorescent tube diffused around them like they were drifting through dense winter fog, the particles moving about in a cloud. Swirls of it formed here and there like tiny whirlpools, then broke away and dissolved into nothing.

  Isabel looked at Ash, her lips moving. He still couldn’t make out what she was saying, but could detect a faint sound like the rushing of air. He shook his head at her. ‘My ears feel weird.’ They had started to itch somewhere deep inside. ‘I think maybe I can hear something but . . . I don’t know. It feels weird. Like . . . like something trying to get out. Or—’

  Isabel gripped his arm and made him follow her down the stairs, turning the corner at the bottom of the first flight and coming to a dead stop.

  It was a no-man’s-land of destruction.

  The lobby was awash with sunlight streaming through a large hole in the shutters, right behind the place where Isabel had stuck the HEX13 onto the glass doors. About the size of a small window, it was large enough for them to squeeze through. There was something else about the explosion that made Ash stop, though. Something that was going to make it impossible for him to escape – what lay between the stairs and the hole meant that the lobby might as well have been planted with land mines and barbed wire.

  The counter behind which they had hidden from Thorn had been blown into splinters with such ferocity that the only part left standing was the far corner. It leant at a severe angle as if giant hands had torn it out of the ground, twisted it and tossed it aside. The computers were nothing but dust and smoke, and pieces of scorched paper were scattered on the ground, shuffling here and there. Embers danced like fireflies in the breeze. The glass doors and panes around the blast area were smashed into a thousand pieces, leaving jagged lightning bolts where there had once been smooth surfaces. Large spears of glass hung like gleaming icicles from the ceiling, ready to fall at any moment, and Ash knew that if they tried to cross the lobby, those shards could drop around them like a death trap.

  The worst thing, though, was that all those splinters of wood and knives of broken glass were scattered everywhere. There wasn’t a clear patch between the stairs and the hole ripped through the shutters. Ash looked across at that sea of destruction, then down at his bare feet, and something became clear to him. ‘It’ll cut me to pieces.’ His words sounded odd in his muffled ears. ‘I’ll never get across.’

  Isabel stepped forward, moving down the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, though, she was walking on glass, and even in her heavy boots she had to tread carefully. An upturned shard could pierce the thick sole and slice through her skin without much pressure, and the slightest disturbance might cause any one of the overhead spears to fall.

  When she stopped and looked back to say something, Ash shook his head and tapped one ear. ‘I think it’s getting better, but I still can’t hear you.’ It made him feel good that the damage to his ears obviously wasn’t permanent. It gave him a new boost of hope, and he began to feel more positive. There had to be a way to get across.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a plan.’ He heard his own voice, warped and fuzzy, as if it were coming to him down a long tunnel. ‘See if you can find me a couple of pieces of wood from the counter. They need to be about this long.’ He held his hands about thirty centimetres apart. ‘And about this wide.’ He narrowed the gap to fifteen centimetres.

  Isabel looked at him in confusion before it dawned on her what he was planning. Her face lit up and she moved carefully over to the remains of the counter. Alternating between glancing up at the giant shards hanging from the ceiling, and scanning the ground, she searched left and right for what Ash needed, then crouched and held up a stumpy piece of dark wood.

  Ash gave her a thumbs up.

  It didn’t take Isabel long to find another piece the right size, and then she was coming back, holding one in each hand.

  By the time she reached him, Ash was sitting on the top step in just his pyjama bottoms. The sunlight streaming through the hole in the shutters highlighted his ribs beneath his skin as he took the pyjama shirt and ripped it down the middle. When that was done, he folded half the shirt into a long strip and placed it on the step. He took one of the pieces of wood, laid it on top of the strip, then rested his left foot on top of that. When he pulled up the ends of the material, they were like the ends of a giant, fat shoelace that he wrapped around once more and tied together before lifting his foot to test it.

  ‘It’ll do.’

  He did the same with the other pieces of pyjama and wood, and within a couple of minutes he had a makeshift pair of shoes. It wasn’t easy to walk in them, but he hobbled down the stairs and into the lobby, crunching glass under his weight. The pieces of wood stayed on his feet and the cotton held tight.

  Isabel went ahead to the hole in the shutters and looked out, but as she did so, something moved above, drawing her attention. Her eyes widened in horror and she waved her hands at Ash, making him look up in time to see a spear of glass coming loose right over his head. It was at least as long as his arm, with a dagger-like point.

  Just like in the storeroom, time dropped into treacle-like slow moti
on. Ash saw the huge piece of glass sway, then slip from the ceiling and begin to fall as if it were on film, being played a few frames at a time. He watched the glass spear drop past him as he took two large steps to the side before it smashed into the ground with a muffled crash. Above him other shards were coming loose. Like a complicated design of dominoes built to fall one after another, each shard of glass dislodged the next. A second slipped from a spot close to the first, and then a third and a fourth so that a nightmare of sharp death began to fall around him, showering him with splinters as they smashed into the floor.

  ‘Run!’ Isabel mouthed, but Ash was already moving faster than ever, running as if through a dream, stiff-legged because of the strange shoes.

  He passed among the shards, anticipating which would fall next, flowing like water, twisting and dodging. One large piece came right at him, but he leant away and it whispered past, hitting the ground and exploding into a thousand pieces. Another just missed his toes as he turned his foot at the last moment – the glass cut like a razor through the cotton binding of the makeshift shoe. Without the material to keep it tight, the piece of wood slipped to one side, threatening to come loose.

  Isabel was already climbing through the hole in the shutters. She threw the satchel into the clearing and followed it out head first. For a moment, all that was visible were her legs disappearing through the opening, and then she was gone.

  The board on Ash’s foot was loosening with each step, and the glass rain was cascading around him like it was never going to stop. Any moment now he expected to feel a sharp pain as something hit him in the head, or sliced through his back to pin him to the floor.

  When the cotton finally ripped away, though, when the piece of wood finally slipped from his foot, leaving it naked to the terrible ground beneath, all he needed was one more step.

  Just one.

  It was the most painful step Ash had ever taken. He trod as lightly as he could, but when the glass cut through his skin, it was like fire enveloping his foot. He gritted his teeth and pushed down, launching himself head first at the hole in the metal shutters.

  Arms stretched in front of him like he was diving into a swimming pool, Ash burst into the sunlight. As soon as his fingers touched the grass, he tucked in his head and tried to roll, but was moving faster than he realized. Instead, he landed in an undignified heap, his legs flipping over so he came down hard on his shoulder and landed on his back.