by Mike Essex
Jacobi rose up and walked backwards keeping his eyes on us. “We’ve got a little mission for you in the morning. A way to earn your keep.”
“We’ll be there,” I volunteered. Staying close to Jacobi felt like the only way to find out if he still trusted us.
“Good, as you really don’t have a choice now do you?” he replied.
TWENTY SIX
“So you didn’t explode,” said Grace as we left the room. “That’s good.”
“For now,” I replied. “But what if I hurt someone later?”
“I won’t let you and I refuse to let you hide yourself away. That face of yours is too pretty to hide.”
On our way back to the room we walked over a marble archway with stairways that led down to the main chambers; a large bowl shaped room carved out of the rock. The white and grey stone floors were barely discernible in amongst the hustle and bustle of the people below.
“How many people do you think live here?” I asked.
“Who knows? I’ve seen over a hundred people so far. It looks like Q-Whitehall has a lot of citizens.”
“That’s a lot of people I could hurt, Grace. They’re all twins, all connected by Tethers, all potential targets.”
“And the rest of the world isn’t? Wherever you go there will be Tethered twins. Your best bet is to keep quiet until we find Will. Then I promise I’ll help you get out of the city and back to The Deck.”
“Back to March? Do you think he could help?”
“Definitely. But we have to finish what we came here for. We have to find Will.”
Grace was right. We’d come too far to head home now, although I still had no idea how she hoped to get out of the city without our scoodos.
“Whatever happens, Tom and Chris cannot find out,” I said.
“Agreed. And R&R?”
“I can’t tell them yet. They’d only worry. Let’s just keep this between us.”
We checked in on Olive in the medical room. The medicine had sent her into a deep sleep which made me wonder if we could pretend everything that happened was simply a tripped out dream. Although I doubted it would be as easy as that to make her forget.
Before bed we stopped off at R&R’s room to catch-up.
“You’re alive!” exclaimed Rex as he embraced me. Scared I might hurt him I kept my arms out either side of his body. He backed away and looked at me confused.
“I’m sorry I’m in a lot of pain, I …” I said.
He saw the medical robe draped over me and placed a hand over his mouth. “I’m really sorry.”
“Rex, you dufus!” joked Rufus. “I’d love to hug you honey but some of us are more considerate than my brother. I’ll just send you love instead,” he closed his eyes as if focusing on something really important. “Done.”
“Thanks Rufus,” I replied.
“I’m really sorry Emmie,” said Rex, still feeling embarrassed for hurting me.
“It’s ok. I’ll heal. You didn’t know,” I gave Rufus a glare so he’d lay off his brother. Truth be told I was the one who felt bad. Rex hadn’t really done anything wrong, the pain in my burns had almost gone thanks to the medical treatment; the real pain I felt was from not knowing if I could be trusted around them.
“Did Jacobi hurt either of you?” asked Grace.
“He tried to interrogate us a little,” said Rufus, “kept asking us to start a discourse or some nonsense like that. We just ignored him. How about you?” he asked Grace.
“Yeah I ignored him too. I was hoping to break out of the room but it looks like Emmie got us out first.”
“So none of you talked to him?” I asked.
“Nope,” came the replies from across the room.
“That must be why he chose me to get medicine for Olive, because I answered him. Maybe he feels like I’m his puppet now?”
“Or just someone he can trust?” said Rex.
“Either way, I think the only way we’ll be getting out of this cave to search for Will is to do a mission for him. I doubt he’d just let us go.”
“So we’ll all go,” said Rex.
“You can’t go! Something could happen to you or Rufus and then I’d lose you both.”
“We could all die Emmie, even you. None of us are invincible. We’re going and that’s final,” said Rex.
“Yep final,” said Rufus.
“Ok, final,” I replied, hoping I could leave before them in the morning.
We had one more stop to make before the morning mission. I knew that if we were going to do this right then we’d need Tom and Chris but first I had to know why they didn’t get the medicine for Olive. I couldn’t believe they’d just betray us like that.
When Grace and I made our way to their room we found the door wide open. Looking inside it was like they had never been there. There was no note or any clues.
They were long gone and didn’t want us to find them.
TWENTY SEVEN
I woke at six in the morning, presumably just as dawn was breaking. In the artificial hollow of Q-Whitehall it was impossible to tell night from day and my body refused to wake up, convinced it was still the middle of the night, desperate for more sleep.
“Wakey, wakey,” said Grace who had started to sleep in my room just in case I lost control.
“What time is it?” I feebly asked.
“Six o’clock, at least that’s what the alarm says.”
“We’ve got an hour before the briefing, can’t I just snooze?”
“Nope, the Grace alarm 2.0 does not come with a snooze button. There is one button you could press.”
“Anything.”
“Ok then,” Grace switched to a robotic sounding voice. “You have activated tickle mode, initiating.”
“Noooo,” my protest turned into uncontrollable laughter as Grace tickled my arms and legs, full well knowing that was where I was most sensitive. “Ok, ok, I give in.”
The scars on my burns had started to fade slightly and although they stung a little, the pain was almost all gone now. It made Grace’s tickling slightly more bearable that it could have been, although I still wanted to hit her.
Grace’s tickling did have the advantage of helping get the blood pumping around my body and I did feel more awake afterwards. It didn’t stop me from saying I hated her but only in jest.
Our chambers had a sophisticated power shower that worked wonders in making me feel alive again. I’d never felt so clean and I made the most of every minute in the shower. Until Grace started knocking on the bathroom door that is.
“Are you sleeping in there?”
“No!” I quickly dried myself and let Grace have the honours of trying out the shower. It gave me a moment to take in the surroundings. This room had a light blue colour scheme, with curled opaque circles forming patterns on the walls, and running across the trimmings on each piece of furniture. The way the colours ran from ceiling to wall to furniture made every part of the room feel custom made, designed for this specific space in this layout.
Along the blue decorations shone specks of gold across each surface. It was a wonder this place had never been raided by looters. Jacobi must have thought it was his lucky day when he found this place; he could have been a very rich man if he’d taken some of these treasures for himself. What use was living in a dead city with all this glamour when he could sell the trinkets and move to any city he wanted, living in true luxury?
Perhaps there was something about the solitude of this place that helped him relax, or possibly he simply felt like it was his home and always would be. Jacobi had certainly taken in a lot of other lost souls; definitely far more people than this base had ever been intended to help. They had food and water for now but it wouldn’t last forever and I had to wonder what Jacobi’s long term plan was. He couldn’t keep helping people like this indefinitely.
“Are you still not ready?” asked Grace as she walked into the room with a small blue towel that barely covered her sizeable bust.
“I a
m ready,” at least I thought so. I’d scrunched my hair up into a ball and put on my top and jeans,that had been returned to the room the night before. They were heavily torn and burnt whilst most of the bulletproof gel had been burned off, making them pretty useless for a fire-fight. My jacket had been too damaged by the flames so I left that on the bed in the hope that I could repair it back at Smyth West.
“You’re doing this all wrong,” said Grace as she tossed the towel on to the floor. She walked back into the bathroom and retrieved two silk black dressing gowns from the back of the door. “Put this on.”
“I’m not going on a mission in a black dressing gown Grace, no matter what fantasies we didn’t fulfil when we were younger.”
“Naughty,” she slipped into the dressing gown. “But that’s not what I mean and I don’t think March would like that either. Well, maybe he would. Anyway. Put it on.”
“No way.”
“There are much better clothes where we are heading anyway,” she threw the spare dressing gown onto the bed and raced out of the room. I looked at it, shook my head and ran after her in my jeans and top.
My knees and shins ached, not yet recovered from my encounter with the flames. Grace clearly had not factored this into her running as she darted ahead. It was like she’d bottled up all her crazy during her time in captivity and was now letting it out in one go.
It didn’t matter to Grace that it was half six in the morning and that most of the base was probably sleeping. She ran through the corridors cheerfully singing away. I had a feeling Jacobi would regret ever capturing Grace Wilkerson.
We turned a corner and I remembered this cross section from my journey into the base. I looked in all four directions but couldn’t see Grace down any of the paths. She had run too far ahead.
I tried to remember the different paths. I knew one walkway led to the medical centre, the other led to the base entrance and the third I had no idea about. The fourth would take me back the way we came.
I doubted she had gone to see Olive, at least in her current outfit, which just left the entrance and one other path. The un-walked path seemed the most tempting but also the more risky and then I remembered what I’d seen previously on my way into the facility. A huge library and a giant wardrobe. I decided it was more likely that Grace was interested in thousands of clothes than in thousands of books and I headed towards the base entrance.
I darted round another corner and came face to face with Jacobi.
“Good morning Emmie,” he politely greeted me.
I was thankful now that I’d chosen the jeans and not the dressing gown. “Hi … have you seen my friend?”
“Oh you mean the hyperactive girl in the silky negligee? She was pretty hard to miss. She went that way.”
“Thanks. See you at the briefing room in...”
“Five minutes.”
“Right.”
“Emmie!” Grace’s voice echoed through the halls. I thanked Jacobi and heard him chuckle as I ran towards the noise.
I walked into the giant walk-in-wardrobe and was knocked from my feet by a barrage of clothes that Grace threw at me. Big furry coats, tight fitting corsets and dresses decorated with thousands of diamonds lay on top of me. The weight of them was unbelievable; I wondered how anyone could possibly walk in such extravagant and heavy clothes.
Pushing the clothes off of me I stood up to find Grace adorned in a pure white wedding dress that flowed down over her ankles and spilled out across the floor. The dress was cut just above her chest, curving around her. She’d fashioned a red and purple feather boa around her neck and was wearing a gold crown with a red base.
“What do you think?” she asked.
I’d seen Grace wear so many ridiculous fashion combinations that it was hard to know exactly what to say to this one.
“Err ... I think you’ll be pretty easy for the soldiers to spot,” I replied.
“You never have any fun Emzie. Here try this on.”
“We’ve got to be in the briefing room in three minutes.”
“Like I said, you never have any fun.”
“Fine!” I tried on a pair of sleek black leggings that fitted my legs perfectly and although they were thick they had just enough freedom of movement for running. I actually quite liked them, but didn’t want Grace to know that.
The top she gave me on the other hand was a white corset that when laced up made me feel like I was being strangled.
“People used to wear this?” I asked.
“Sure, the cost of looking fabulous,” she replied.
I wasn’t sure it was worth the cost. Nor was the giant red and black jacket that Grace placed over my shoulders. It was clearly five sizes too big, the base of the coat reaching my knees, my arms unable to protrude out of the sleeves without much folding of them.
Grace placed a smaller gold crown on to my head, this one with a black base rather than a red one. She stood next to me in her wedding gown and held my arm.
“I do! I do!” she joked as we looked at each other in the mirror. I knew we’d be late for the mission but in that moment I didn’t care. I felt young and free for the first time in months. I looked at the image of us in the mirror and tried to hold on to the moment.
“You look beautiful,” said a small, sweet sounding voice.
“You’ve done it now,” said another cute voice.
I pulled a pile of clothes off the floor to reveal two cute little faces staring back at me. “Ah ha!”
“We’re sorry, we weren’t spying on you,” said a cute blond haired girl with pigtails.
“Honest,” replied another girl, the spitting image of the first only with her hair in a long plait. Aside from their hair they were both identical, even dressed in the same blue dresses. They couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.
“That’s alright,” said Grace. “I’ve always wanted to put on a fashion show and now thanks to you little ones I have. Come on out from under there.”
We lifted the girls up and slightly into the air. Their dresses fanned out at they landed on their feet and I could see the white birds that decorated the blue material.
“Wow,” I said. “You are both so pretty. Perhaps you could be the stars of our next fashion show?
They both blushed, their rosy cheeks lighting up instantly, big beautiful smiles filling their faces. “So what are your names?” I asked.
“Alyx,” said the pigtailed girl.
“And I’m Anya,” said the girl with the plait.
“A&A,” I liked it when twins had the same first initial. Just like R&R. Most families used the same first initial for their twins and for those that didn’t it was usually a sign of defiance; of wanting to be different. In my father’s case I just put it down to him being distracted by his work. Will and Emmie were probably the first two names that came into his head.
“So girls, what’s it like living underground in this giant castle?” asked Grace, instantly taking a liking to the two children. There weren’t many children in Smyth West; most families struggled just to support themselves, so this was a nice novelty for both of us.
“It’s amazing. We get all these cool clothes,” said Alyx.
“And we get to live with millions and billions of friends down here. Everyone is so nice,” said Anya. It seemed impossible to dislike the girls. I was sure they must get a lot of attention from the other citizens.
“But it’s scary some times,” said Alyx. “The bad men want to get us.”
“Jabobi,” Anya stuttered, mispronouncing his name “He says he’ll stop the bad men. Are you going to help him?”
It was hard to say no to the girls. Stopping SO13 wasn’t one of my top priorities and I’d only agreed to help Jacobi to increase my chances of finding Will. Nevertheless the words “Yes. I’m going to stop them,” soon escaped from my mouth. I’d only intended for it to be a silly little thing to say, that would make the girls feel better, but as soon as the words left my lips I felt like they wer
e formed in concrete. A promise had been made.
“Don’t worry girls. We will stop them,” said Grace, probably making the promise with every intention of following through on it. She loved a cause to fight for and people to save.
“And the snatcher? He’s the scariest of all,” said Alyx, her pigtails swaying as she shook her head from left to right. “Promise you’ll get him too?”
“The snatcher?” I asked.
Anya hid back under the pile of clothes. “He takes people and they don’t come back,” said Alyx. “The boys say he’ll take us if we don’t eat our vegetables.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, relieved that this figure was probably nothing more than a story designed to make sure they cleaned their plates. “I’m sure he would never hurt you or your sister. Isn’t that right Grace?”
Grace smiled and nodded. The girls certainly had an active imagination, although the threat from the SO13 soldiers was very real. If they ever found out about this place I don’t think anyone would survive.
“We’ll protect you,” said Grace. “Don’t you worry about the soldiers or the snatcher. You’re safe down here.”
Anya popped up from the pile of clothes. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Grace and I replied.
I looked at the clock on the wall and realised we were very late for the meeting. Still dressed in the royal outfits I asked the girls for help. “So girls what should we wear for our big mission?”
They disappeared behind the curtain with Grace and she emerged wearing black and grey urban camouflage, holding a similar outfit for me to wear. It was a surprising choice. “Didn’t you want something more colourful girls?” I asked.
“Nope. This will keep you safe,” they said together.
They were right, the dark colours may not have made us invisible but their tiled pattern looked like it would tip the odds a little in our favour. At this stage in the game, that felt like all we could ask for.