Sod it.
I was about ten feet from the road when two more soldiers stepped out and raised their rifles. I didn’t even slow down, just grabbed them both and smashed them first against the walls of the alley and then against each other, tossing them into the air to finish. Not too high. Just high enough. I heard them land and bounce behind me as I exited the alley, and immediately spotted a truck parked up the road with more soldiers standing around it. I concentrated on their guns, ripping them away, pummelled the soldiers against the side of the vehicle until they slumped unconscious on the pavement, then focused all my energy and thoughts on the truck itself and inclined my head to the left, making it spin across the road. It smashed through a lamppost into a solid brick wall with enough force to snap the post in half and seriously dent the wall, and bricks tumbled down onto the wrecked truck. I turned sharply and flew up the road, my pulse machine-gunning hysterical rhythms. They were out for blood now. So was I.
Where the hell can I go?
I raged through the air, keeping close to street level, turning random corners. Here and there I passed police cars and trucks, but I was going way too fast, ducking and diving over and around them, desperately turning over options in my brain.
Stop.
Think.
Breathe.
I ducked down an alley and came to a clumsy stop against a wall, breathing raggedly, smoke still in my lungs. I’d sustained a large cut on the back of my hand, which was weeping blood.
‘Freeze!’
Bollocks. From hell. In a bucket of old piss.
The voice had come from behind. A soldier. I’d let one sneak up on me. What an absolute—
‘Aurghgh!’ Thump. Silence. I turned around gingerly to see a lone soldier face down on the floor with a young woman standing behind him. She was tall and skinny and wore black, and had green eyes and a tight ponytail of auburn hair. ‘Are you Stanly?’ she said, taking in my grotty ensemble with a slightly raised eyebrow.
What the hell? ‘Are you from the Angel Group?’ I asked, striking a fighting stance that was probably entirely pointless.
She shook her head. ‘No. My name’s Lauren. Nailah told you about me?’
I frowned. ‘Yeah . . . how did you know I’d be here?’
‘I heard that someone with powers was fighting soldiers around here,’ she said. ‘I thought you might need some help.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. Time to be suspicious later. Grateful first.
Lauren nodded. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go. I don’t really want to lead them to my house if I can help it.’
Chapter Fourteen
LAUREN LIVED ON a respectable-looking street in a quiet residential area, and as soon as we stepped inside her house I felt comfortable and at home. We’d miraculously managed to avoid any further patrols, but I’d been on edge the whole time, ready to fight. The idea of a chair, and of downgrading from red alert to standby, felt pretty delicious.
She led me through to a small, cosy kitchen, its walls bright and alive with photographs and paintings. It reminded me a little of my kitchen back in Tref-y-Celwyn, all that was missing was a Rayburn. I stood there, feeling a bit stupid, and Lauren gave me an amused smile. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to bite.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I’m just . . . knackered. Flew from Wales today. Plus sneaking around and fighting . . .’
‘And you’re cut.’ She took my hand gently and appraised the wound.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got some cotton wool and antiseptic or something . . .’
Lauren didn’t speak. She just stared intently at my hand, and I looked as well because I could feel something strange. It wasn’t pain, exactly, but something muffled and distant, as though I were feeling someone else’s pain via a bad signal, and then the wound began to shrink, like time-lapse photography, the flesh repairing itself, the dark areas around it turning paler. Within thirty seconds the injury was completely gone and my hand was healed, fresh. New. I looked from the blank skin to Lauren, unable to vocalise. She smiled. ‘Painful?’
‘No . . . you . . .’
‘Fixed it.’ She turned away and set about making tea. ‘I’ve been practising for a long time.’
I put my rucksack down and took a seat at the bar in the middle of the kitchen. ‘And you can just repair it? Living tissue? Just like that?’
She nodded. I leaned forwards, fascinated. ‘How . . . sorry, do you mind me asking, how old were you when your powers first started to show?’
‘Eleven,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ That was a surprise.
‘You were expecting older?’
‘Um . . . yeah.’ Although . . . why? Tara was younger than that when she brought me and Freeman back to life.
‘It’s not the same for everybody,’ she said. ‘For the majority, as far as I know, it’s around fifteen, sixteen. But the abilities can appear much earlier than that. Depends on your brain, your biology.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘When yours appeared?’
She had been making eye contact, standing waiting for the kettle to boil, but now her eyes dropped and she fiddled almost compulsively with her hands. ‘Just . . . it was sudden.’ Neither of us spoke for one of those infinite stretches of seconds, which was rendered even more awkward than normal because we didn’t know each other. There was just the whistle of the kettle getting steadily louder. ‘Nice outfit, by the way,’ said Lauren.
‘Thanks. The latest in autumn superpowered fugitive.’
‘Good idea, being in disguise.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Although I miss not looking like a shambling hobo.’
‘And the guns?’
I’d actually forgotten about them. ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘Sorry. They’re not mine, actually. Picked them up from a friend. Just in case.’ I unhooked the weapons. ‘Anywhere I can put them, maybe?’
Lauren floated the guns away from me and up onto a high shelf, pushing them well out of sight. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Really not a gun fan. So . . . how did you find me?’
‘Nailah has a contact.’
‘A contact where?’ I felt like maybe I knew.
‘Inside the Angel Group.’ Bingo. ‘Or in one of their sub-divisions, or something, I’m still not terribly clear how it all works. Your presence in the city was reported, anyway. That’s why they sent the soldiers to intercept you.’ Damn drone must have had a camera after all.
‘So Nailah found out and told you?’
Lauren nodded.
‘She told me she came to see you on Sunday. That you . . . weren’t keen to get involved.’
‘Well, how would you feel?’ said Lauren. ‘Some stranger turns up at your house, claiming to know your biggest secrets . . . I thought I’d kept myself well hidden. I was very close to leaving town after she left.’
‘You changed your mind, though.’
‘I decided I was overreacting,’ said Lauren. ‘Decided to . . . I don’t know. Wait and see. And then there was all that stuff with the escaped animal, and then Nailah came back, late on Monday. She was scared. Really scared. I . . . I just suddenly felt like she was worth listening to. She told me that there were more people with powers, that she’d spoken to some, your friends. That you’d had to leave London, that bad things were happening. I still wasn’t exactly keen to get involved, but . . .’ She trailed off, made tea and handed mine over.
‘Thanks. So why did you? Get involved?’
‘Nailah told me a little more about what’s going on,’ said Lauren. ‘Stuff she’s heard from your friends. About the monsters, among other things. She said that everyone with powers could potentially be a target. And . . .’ She paused. ‘I could feel that something was different.’
‘Feel?’
‘In the air,’ said Lauren. ‘Obviously when the army
and the police were suddenly everywhere, and there were drones in the sky, and that giant thing, the atmosphere changed. It couldn’t not change. But there was something else. It’s hard to put my finger on.’
‘You think it’s because of your powers? You’re sensing something?’
‘Possibly,’ said Lauren. ‘Let’s just say that I had a very bad feeling. And I decided I’d rather make myself useful than sit at home waiting for the next catastrophe.’
I smiled. ‘Well, I’m grateful. Do you have a way to get hold of Nailah?’
‘Sort of,’ said Lauren. ‘She’s . . . paranoid. And with good reason, really. She said she wants to avoid phones if at all possible, although she did give me one. Mostly we’ve been communicating via some . . . hidden internet site, or something. She had to write down how it works, I’m terrible with technology. She’s been acting as a go-between, getting messages from her contact, helping your friends.’
‘She knows where they are?’
‘Yes,’ said Lauren, ‘but I don’t, I’m afraid. I know about as much as I’ve told you. Nailah will get in contact, though, and when she does I’m sure she’ll tell you where to find them.’ She smiled. ‘She’s been using her blog and Twitter and things to mess around with the Angel Group.’
‘How?’
‘She has a number of different accounts tied to the blog,’ said Lauren, ‘and a few others she’s involved with. They report sightings of monsters and other strange occurrences. Not the kind of thing that the authorities would usually pay attention to.’
‘Until now.’
Lauren nodded. ‘Until now. She’s been reporting bogus sightings around the city. Trying to keep the soldiers off-balance, to keep them away from her, from me. From your friends.’
‘Presumably her Angel Group contact led her to you in the first place.’
Lauren smiled again, but there was a hint of embarrassment there this time. ‘No, actually,’ she said. ‘It was . . . I never use my powers in public. Never, ever. But I happened to be out a while back, and I saw a dog run into the road. It was about to get crushed by a bus. I didn’t even think. Just moved my hand, pulled it out of reach. I wouldn’t usually move my limbs when using my powers, you don’t need to, do you? But I suppose . . . the panic? Instinct? It wasn’t much of a movement, but . . .’
OK, interesting. ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘Nailah was on the bus?’
‘She was walking behind me,’ said Lauren. ‘I imagine she knew what to look for. Nobody else noticed, and I got out of there pretty quickly. But she tracked me down. Spied on me a bit, to confirm her suspicions.’ She shook her head. ‘Not exactly what you want to hear from a mysterious stranger . . . but a good lesson, I suppose. In being careful.’
And a good lesson in lying.
I decided not to let on that I’d heard a somewhat different story, or that I knew anything about Lauren’s missing friend. We drank tea in silence for a little while. ‘So you’ve lived in London for a long time?’ I said. ‘Did you ever try to seek out others with powers?’
She looked away. There was a lot in her head, I could see, a lot of pain and barbed memory, and I wanted to know all about it. I felt compelled to make it better somehow, to repay her for saving me, but all I’d managed to do was create another awkward silence. This was going well. ‘I wanted to hide,’ was all she would mutter. Then she asked if I was hungry.
‘Starving,’ I said.
‘I’ll cook something.’
‘No it’s fine, I can . . .’
She shook her head. ‘Not allowed. Guest. And I’m a bit OCD about my kitchen anyway.’ She put something classical on the CD player and began to rifle through cupboards. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’
‘Most definitely not.’
‘Good. I have some chicken, and there’s pasta . . . rice . . . something along those lines?’
‘Really, you don’t have to cook for me,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry . . .’
‘I’m not worried.’ She sat down and things started to happen around us. The hob switched itself on, oil sloshed itself into a frying pan, and two chicken breasts emerged from the fridge and landed on a chopping board. An onion landed on a second chopping board, and two knives set about chopping the chicken and the onion into bits, striking alternately. Pots of herbs, a can of chopped tomatoes and other bits and pieces floated out of cupboards and arranged themselves on the counter, everything working in perfect synchronicity. I looked at Lauren, who was half-watching what was going on but mostly smiling at my expression. ‘Powers can be fun,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘You can do all that at the same time? It’s so . . . precise.’
‘Practise,’ she said. ‘Plenty. Seems you’re not a bad crack at it either, throwing trucks about.’
‘That’s different,’ I said. ‘Blunt. Clumsy.’
‘Like I said. Practise.’ She snapped her fingers and the CD skipped to a new track.
‘You know you don’t have to snap your fingers,’ I grinned.
‘Of course,’ said Lauren. ‘But it’s fun. Surely you do it as well.’
I thought of everything I did with my mind. Every time I moved my hands for effect it seemed to be in combat. In fact, most of the time when I was using my powers these days it seemed to be in combat. It was good to see the power applied to such banal, domestic things, injecting them with magic. The onions scattered themselves in the hot oil and started to sizzle. I laughed. ‘It looks really cool, to be fair.’
‘I don’t usually do everything like that,’ said Lauren. ‘I did for a while. Got really lazy. But you have to find a balance, otherwise you start to forget how to do things physically. I was just . . . I don’t know. Showing you what can be done. And it doesn’t stop there. It goes deeper.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All that,’ she said, pointing at the meal gradually assembling itself, ‘that’s just doing what you’d normally do with your hands but cutting out the physical movement. When I say deeper, I mean it should be possible to put the ingredients together with my mind and cook them just by thinking. No oven involved.’
‘What, just . . . will it to cook?’
‘Basically, yes, although it takes a degree of concentration I haven’t managed to achieve yet. I did toast a piece of bread once. It took a long time and I had the worst migraine ever, but I did it. You’re willing it to do something that’s physically possible, using the power of your intention. Like repairing your wound, your skin would eventually repair itself anyway. I just . . . expedited the process. Theoretically you could apply it to everything.’ She nodded, pouring some sauce in with the onions, and I heard the kettle begin to boil. ‘You could look at a building and make it collapse. Turn someone blue. Liquify glass.’ She summoned a packet of crisps to the table and split them open with a thought. ‘It’s pretty scary, potentially.’ She took a crisp and nodded for me to do the same. I took a handful, remembering how hungry I was. As I crunched them down, I wondered if this was a conversation Lauren had been waiting to have with someone, a like-minded, like-powered person. She must miss her friend.
‘You could look at someone and kill them,’ I blurted out, because of course that’s the kind of thing you say in a casual conversation with a new acquaintance. ‘Just like that.’
Lauren didn’t seem rattled, though. She nodded. ‘Yes. It makes me think that maybe the reason there are so few of us around is that the Angel Group got to them first.’
Although the kitchen was full of steam, richly infused with onion and garlic and peppers, I felt a momentary chill. ‘Yeah,’ I said, thinking back to my conversation with Nailah and Skank. ‘That crossed our minds too. How much do you know about the Angel Group?’
‘Nailah’s told me a bit,’ said Lauren. ‘I’d never heard of them before. Very powerful. Mysterious motives. In possession of a lot of mad technology, which they’re usin
g to perform experiments.’
‘Experiments with very aggressive consequences that try to eat you.’
‘Yes, and that. Nailah seems to think that they’re using people like us for their experiments. Either employing them, or keeping them under duress.’
‘They just round us up? Put us to work?’
‘To use our power.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But . . . it doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, they’ve known about me and my lot for ages. Why haven’t they just come and taken us?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lauren. ‘I assume they would want your power, but . . . maybe not. Or maybe there’s something more they want from you.’
Tara, I thought, and that made me think of Kloe. It had only been hours since I’d spoken to them but I was already anxious, despite the note from future Stanly reassuring me that they’d be fine. Worry must have been splattered across my face because Lauren asked, ‘Penny for them?’
‘Eh?’
‘Thoughts.’
‘Oh! I . . . just . . . my girlfriend. I should call and check to see if she’s OK . . . but it’s pretty late now. And I’m wondering if using my phone might be a bad idea.’
‘There’s the phone Nailah gave me,’ said Lauren. ‘She said . . . what’s his name, is it Skunk?’
I smiled. ‘Skank. Our resident stoner Q.’
‘Yes, he got hold of some phones that can’t be traced, or they’re difficult to trace at least? Or they use an old network, or something? Like I said, I’m not brilliant with technology. I imagine it should be OK for you to use it, so long as you keep it quick. We don’t want to use them very often, Nailah said. Just in case.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks. I . . . I did speak to her earlier. I mean, I saw her just this morning. And she’ll probably be asleep. So . . . I’ll wait until tomorrow. Thank you, though.’
‘It’s fine.’ Lauren walked over to the steaming, sizzling pots and pans and started to help them along with her hands. ‘What’s your girlfriend’s name?’
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