“Yeah, you would say that,” he laughed.
“What are we going to do with her?” the girl she now knew to be called Sasha asked.
“I don’t know.” Ethan scratched his head. He looked around at his two teammates, who were still fighting the police. A stunning Japanese girl was outsmarting the officers with some impressive, nifty moves and a bulky, brunette guy was beating them all to a pulp. He looked almost invincible, their punches and bullets didn’t make a dent and almost appeared to make him stronger. He must be super tough too because he was tearing pieces of metal off an unfinished building and throwing them at his attackers.
“We should be helping them, not standing here chatting,” Ethan added.
The Japanese girl spotted Scarlett and effortlessly somersaulted her way through the air to reach her. She kicked her flat in the chest and pinned her to the floor.
“Ow!” Scarlett yelped.
“Where is he!?” the girl screamed.
Scarlett sighed. This lot were all crazy and, like most of the people in this world, talking utter nonsense that she didn’t understand.
“Get off me!” Scarlett screamed, flailing her free hand in a desperate bid to hit the crazy ninja girl round the face. She missed, so she swung her arm again.
“Oh damn it,” Scarlett muttered.
Suddenly, a huge piece of metal flew at all three of them, sending them flying and setting Scarlett free.
“That was a stroke of luck,” she thought.
Ethan, Sasha and the other girl got to their feet and momentarily forgot about Scarlett while they screamed at their strong friend.
“What the hell did you throw that at us for?”
“I didn’t!” he protested. “I swear, I was aiming over there.” He pointed in the opposite direction.
As they rowed, Scarlett seized the opportunity to make a run for it while their backs were turned. She bolted down the street and kept going until she was sure no one was following her, then ducked into a small alley. Panting and out of breath, she stared at her surroundings. The city was grim and unrecognisable from the London she knew, but she was sure she was still in the City somewhere. The narrow streets and mix of old-fashioned buildings and imposing shiny towers told her that much.
“Urgh!” she grumbled as something squelched under her Converse. What had she put her foot in? She scowled at the masses of dirt and scum on the floor. And to think people used to call the London she lived in dirty. This was positively disgusting.
Scarlett heard some people approaching and skulked further back into the shadows. As they passed, she realised they were two policemen on patrol.
“Nope nothing down here,” one of them said. “Shall we get some Detectobots sent in to be sure?”
She wanted to gasp with fear, but she knew she had to stay as quiet as possible.
“No point,” the other cop said. “The trouble is all back up there and you know we get punished when we waste resources.”
“You’re right,” the first cop agreed. “Let’s go back.”
Scarlett listened as they walked back in the direction they came from and waited for ten long minutes until she was sure the coast was clear to step back out into the street again.
“What do I do now?” she thought. “I’ve been hit by a lorry, woken up in a nightmare universe, lost my best friend, found out my family are supposedly dead, I’m homeless and I have been attacked by a bunch of super-powered maniacs. Things really couldn’t get crazier, or much worse.”
She couldn’t even call anyone or go anywhere because she didn’t have a mobile phone or much of Neelam’s money left. Thinking of Neelam, she pulled out the gadget she’d given her and remembered the girl’s words: “Press this anytime and we’ll come running.” Scarlett ran her fingers lightly over the curious contraption. Last night, she’d been a little scared of the weird gang of kids she’d met, with their claims to know her and their special powers, but now she realised they were the only people she could turn to. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and hit the switch.
A gust of wind whooshed against her face and sent litter whirling down the alley. Scarlett opened her eyes and saw the blond boy called Jay standing there. He smiled at her, his chocolate-brown eyes twinkling with happiness.
“Scarlett! You called? Have you remembered us?”
“No.” She shuffled her feet apprehensively. “But I didn’t know where else to go.”
“So you wanna come home?”
“Home?”
“To our house?”
“OK…” she still wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the best option.
“Come on, hop on,” he declared.
She glanced around, but she couldn’t see a bike, scooter, or indeed any kind of transportation.
“Of course, you don’t remember anything.” Jay smacked his forehead for comedy effect. “Sorry, Scarlett, it’s hard to adjust, and I’m just so happy to see you alive, my brain runs away with me.”
“That’s OK,” she said uneasily, even though it wasn’t.
“I run fast, very fast, that’s my power. That’s how I got here so quickly after you called us. So if you just hop on my back, I’ll have you back at the house in a jiffy.”
“Oh, right.” she remembered Dylan saying Jay was super quick, now she thought about it.
“Come on, Scarlett!” Jay joked. “What are you waiting for?”
She clumsily tried to climb onto his back, but she didn’t have much success.
“Don’t clamber about like a feeble kitten,” he said. “Hop on!”
Scarlett hopped. She fell.
“Oh, come here, you silly girl.”
He picked her up.
“Now throw your hands round my neck, wrap your legs around me and hold on tight.”
Scarlett blushed. She’d never been this close to a boy before. She’d never even had a boyfriend because she’d been too busy studying, listening to records and reading comics. She was too embarrassed to hold on too tight.
However, once Jay started to run, she clung on for dear life. He sure wasn’t kidding when he said he was fast, it felt like she was travelling at the speed of light. She tried to focus on their surroundings as they whizzed past, but they sped by in a multi-coloured blur.
“Here you go,” he smiled, as he put her down outside a huge, old house seconds later.
The world was spinning.
“I feel dizzy,” Scarlett said, “and sick.”
Jay laughed as he fumbled for his key.
“Sorry, he said. “You will get used to it, I promise.”
Was he kidding? There was no way she was doing that again. She looked up and down the tree-lined street, trying to figure out where they were.
“Where’s my key?” he muttered.
At that second, the door flung open.
“You’re home!” Neelam announced, as she stepped onto the doorstep to give them both a hug.
Scarlett instantly tried to lock her thoughts up tight. She couldn’t help but feel uneasy and exposed around Neelam and her telepathic powers.
“Did you read our minds, to know we were outside?” Scarlett asked suspiciously.
“No! I heard you silly. You weren’t exactly quiet. Now come inside before someone sees us.”
Scarlett followed Neelam and Jay through the grand entrance hall.
“Where are we?” she asked. “Am I still in London?”
Neelam giggled. “Of course we are, even Jay can’t run that fast. We’re in Highgate, you know, in north London.”
“Oh yeah.” She mentally pictured it being near the top of the Northern Line on the tube map. “I’ve never been here before.”
Jay looked at her confused. “You used to live here!” He turned to Neelam. “Why doesn’t she remember?” he asked impatiently.
Neelam gave him a stern look. “Stop pressurising Scarlett. This is hard for her,” she chastised him.
They walked into the living room, where Lucy and Dylan were sitting
by the fire reading.
“Hi!” they exclaimed. They jumped up ready to get excited, then suddenly acted more composed. She sensed that Neelam had used her power to tell them to behave and go easy on her too.
“Sit down,” Lucy encouraged. I’ve got a lasagne in the oven cooking for later, I know it’s your favourite.
“Thanks,” Scarlett smiled, as she hesitantly perched on the edge of a sofa. Lasagne was her favourite. It baffled her how much they knew.
“Wait till you’ve tasted it,” Jay laughed. “Lucy doesn’t cook very often.”
Lucy scowled.
“I’m sure it’ll be lovely,” Scarlett assured her. She stared around the room as the others sat down around her. The room had cream and pale green walls, which she found to be quite calming. The curtains and sofas were a quite old-fashioned shade of dark green, while the floors were wooden with a large Chinese rug in the centre. It didn’t seem like the kind of house you would find a group of teenagers living in.
“So, who are you… we?” she asked.
“Well, we don’t exactly have a name,” Dylan explained. “We’re a group of people, with special powers. I guess you could say we try to make this country a better place.”
“And keep out of trouble when necessary,” Jay added.
“Yeah a lot of people have it in for us,” Dylan agreed. “So we have to lie low, but we still do our bit to, you know, save the world.”
“If you’re – we’re – the good guys, then why are people like the police after you?” she asked. “I saw a wanted poster for you, and read some articles on the internet.”
“Propaganda,” Neelam said angrily. “The government have made us look bad for their own ends and that’s why the cops have it in for us too…”
“It’s a long story,” Dylan said, cutting Neelam’s rant off.
“Well, can I hear it?” Scarlett asked. “Please?” she looked around at the four of them.
There was no response.
“Oh, come on! You say you all know me, but I don’t remember any of this. I’ve been chased by funny robots and attacked by some crazy ninja girl, so I’m clearly in danger. Why can’t you tell me the truth?”
Neelam was alarmed. “What? A girl attacked you?”
“Ninja girl? As in super-skilled at martial arts?” Dylan asked.
Scarlett nodded. She should have guessed they’d know her.
The four of them stared at each other – they looked pretty worried.
“Toshiko,” Neelam sighed. “Was she alone?”
“No, she was with three friends.”
Dylan had his head in his hands. “I can’t believe they came after you.”
“Well they didn’t really, I kind of ran into them… they were fighting with police when they spotted me. Two of them, they called each other Ethan and Sasha, seemed to know me, then the other girl – who you call Toshiko – saw me and attacked me like a crazy thing. Then the funniest thing happened, just as I was trying to slap her, a big piece of metal flew at them from somewhere and I escaped. It was so lucky.”
“Yeah lucky,” Lucy said rolling her eyes. “It just flew from nowhere.”
“Who are they?” Scarlett asked, letting Lucy’s strange comment go.
“They’re like us,” Neelam said. “They used to be with us, but they took a different path.”
“OK, I’m starting to get lost now,” she said, pressing her thumbs on her temples. Her brain was close to exploding with the ridiculous overload of information.
“Can you all explain this to me from the beginning? Starting with how we got our powers, what my supposed powers even are and how we met. And tell me how the hell the world became so screwed up and nasty,” she said, gesturing at the window to the street outside.
Jay, Neelam, Dylan and Lucy all looked at each other. She wondered if they were communicating through Neelam or just using old-fashioned eye contact to decide who should speak first.
Eventually Dylan, who she was beginning to realise was the natural leader of the group, stood up.
“OK… I’m going to start from the very beginning, so forgive me if this goes on a while.”
He could talk all year for all she cared. So long as she finally got some answers.
Chapter 5
“Right,” Dylan began. He looked at Scarlett. “You have to understand this is weird for me. Telling you about things that you’ve lived through with us for the last few years.”
Scarlett realised that she had been so concerned with the way this whole situation was affecting her that she hadn’t considered this must be hard for them too.
She looked at Dylan and nodded. “I understand. And I really appreciate you doing this for me.”
Dylan gave Scarlett a smile, then sat down next to her.
“OK,” he began, “so am I right in thinking that your mum studied law at Haybridge University?”
“That’s right, how did you know?”
“Well, the thing is, all our mothers studied there back in the late 1980s. Apparently, as we’ve since learned, they took part in a medical test to earn a bit of extra money.”
Scarlett found it funny to think that her mum was ever poor, a student, or even young. She had always seemed so poised, professional and, well, grown-up.
“The tests were pretty routine trials of a new contraceptive pill that was found to be harmful, so it never made it to the shelves. There didn’t seem to be any lasting side effects to the women though, so they were paid their fee and got on with their lives.”
“OK…” Scarlett was unsure where this was going. “So they were fine? My mum’s never even mentioned this.”
“They were fine,” Lucy interrupted, “but their children weren’t. Something those tests did to our mums meant we were all affected.”
Slowly it dawned on Scarlett what they were trying to say.
“So, we have special powers because of the effect the medical tests had on our mothers? That’s why we’re all the way we are.”
“Yeah, what did you expect? Spiders biting us?” Jay joked.
“No, but… wouldn’t my mum have told me about it?”
“She probably never knew,” Dylan explained. “We only found out three years ago.”
“How?”
They all looked at each other darkly.
“Back in the summer of 2010, the New Way Party came to power and Adam Goulden became prime minister. Do you remember that?”
Scarlett shook her head. “I’ve never heard of him, or the party.”
“That’s interesting,” Neelam commented. She looked at the others.
Dylan gave Neelam a silencing look. “Goulden quickly proved himself to be quite the dictator, but the public loves him because he’s charming and pretends to deliver what they want. He pays the media to print lies, you see, and the masses believe every word. He’s bribed the police force and all the country’s top businesses too. The rich have got richer, but there are millions of people living in poverty now or on the streets. It’s unbelievable.”
Dylan hung his head. His fists were clenched and his jaw was set with determination. Scarlett could tell the situation made him passionately angry.
“That’s terrible!” she said.
Dylan continued his story. “Three years ago, a few months after he was elected, Goulden found out about a boy called Andrew, who survived a car hitting him. A series of investigations came to the conclusion that his super strength and invulnerability was caused by his mum taking part in medical tests years earlier, so they rounded the rest of us kids up and tested us. Ten of us were found to have powers.”
“What about our brothers and sisters?” Scarlett asked, thinking of Dan.
“Well… it’s unclear,” Dylan said. “There were six siblings tested – your brother Dan, who was 11, my sister Sophia, who was nine, and Lucy’s brother Aaron, who was 13. They also checked out the flying girl Sasha’s sister, Maria, 11, and the 12-year-old twin sisters of Andrew, the strong guy you met earlier. N
one of those six were found to have powers. As they were of no use to him, Goulden let them go. His medical team decided that only the firstborn children – us 10 – have powers. However, we all think there’s a possibility that their abilities just hadn’t materialised yet because they were all so young, but we can’t be sure.”
“So my brother, Dan, didn’t have powers, but he might have?” Scarlett asked for clarity.
“That’s right.”
She looked down and took a deep breath, as she struggled to ask what she really wanted to know.
“So, is he alive?” Scarlett said. “I read that my family are dead, but I refuse do believe it.”
“They’re alive,” Dylan assured Scarlett, “And as far as we know, safe and well.”
“Thank goodness.” she was so relieved that her instincts were right. “So where are they?”
“We’ll come to explaining that very soon, don’t worry,” he added.
Scarlett wanted to know now, but she kept quiet and trusted Dylan to reveal everything his way.
“Goulden’s a nasty piece of work and his party have been responsible for making Britain a complete mess.” Dylan stood up and started pacing. She could see he was getting wound-up again. “He’s power crazy and only out to line the pockets of himself and his rich cronies. He doesn’t care about us.” He looked angry as he spoke. “He’s made millions unemployed and homeless, imprisoned innocent people and hurts anyone who stands in his way. Or worse. He’s been known to kill, but he always covers his tracks. ”
Scarlett was taken by how smart and passionate Dylan was. She wanted to show him she was clever too.
“I’ve noticed that everything is so expensive,” she said. “Is that Goulden’s fault?”
“Well yes,” Dylan agreed. “Basically, the country’s in a state and that’s caused the prices to go up rapidly over the last few years. It’s a lot more complicated than that, of course, but that’s a whole other story.” Dylan laughed for a second, then his face grew serious again.
“I’m surprised the rest of the world hasn’t stepped in to overthrow Goulden and restore some kind of normality,” he continued. “But then they probably want to keep out of the maniac’s business – especially as they know he’s got so many dangerous weapons. He’s always bullying other countries and threatening wars. He never gives money to health or education; he spends it all on weapons. The man’s obsessed and that’s why he wanted us on his side.”
Out Of Time Page 4