by Mike Essex
“But it’s boring here. Outside sounds exciting. Like an action movie!” said Anya.
“Do you remember when Q-Whitehall was attacked? How horrible that was? Well outside something much worse is happening. You both nearly died that day so please trust me when I say that you will be safer here,” I explained.
“It’s ok, you can stay here with me can’t you girls?” said Will. “What if I told you I once had the power to control anyone in the world? Would you like to hear that story?”
“No way,” said Anya.
“Way,” replied Will.
He was great around children, always had been, and I think he liked the company as well.
Although Will hadn’t felt the presence of anyone my father had made him control, he started to tell the girls made up stories of what had happened to him. In Will’s version of events he had been a hero, jumping from body to body saving lives. I wished the truth had been closer to his version of events.
I left Will with the girls and met up with Jacobi and Rex who were all kitted up. Rex tossed me a fresh clip of ammunition although I had no idea whether I’d need it. This latest mission could go either way.
“Come on we’ve got a train to catch,” said Jacobi, leading us back into the sewers.
I hoped we wouldn’t see March down there. Rex was liable to shoot him if we did and as for Jacobi if he suspected March as much as we did then he’d definitely shoot without hesitation.
“Who do you think gave away your location?” I asked Jacobi.
“It’s already taken care of,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Carter did it. He was the first one to run when the fighting started so I knew it was him.”
“You’re sure?”
“He confessed right before I killed him. I don’t have time for traitors. No loyalty.”
I was relieved that March hadn’t been the one to betray us but knew I couldn’t take back what I had said now. I had to admit to myself that I just couldn’t trust him any more regardless of how much good he did. Forgiveness I could give but forgetting was something I couldn’t do.
“Sadly I didn’t have time to make him suffer, the girls needed me,” said Jacobi.
“I tried to help people out there but it was all for nothing, a second wave of attacks killed them anyway,” I said.
“Some things you just can’t control,” said Jacobi. “But without people who try to make things better we’d all be savages living in the mud; everyone out for themselves.”
“Some days it feels like that anyway,” I replied.
“Yes, some days it does,” said Jacobi.
“Are we going back to Q-Whitehall?” I asked, noticing a sign for the old base.
“No point,” said Jacobi. “The floods destroyed everything of any use. We’d never get all the water out now.”
Even if the base had been habitable I doubted Jacobi would ever want to go back there now. The bodies of the dead would still be everywhere and no-one would want to see that. He had a new home now so I could understand why he didn’t want to look back.
Jacobi stood perfectly still and looked around himself in a complete circle. He dropped down onto his hands and knees, feeling around in the sludge and dirt. He crawled towards a part of the tunnel that was completely devoid of light, until he disappeared from view entirely.
I started to hear him grunting.
“You alright?” I asked.
“Give me a hand with this!” he shouted.
We walked into the darkness, slowly moving forward until my foot kicked Jacobi ever so slightly. He tugged on my trousers and I moved down towards him.
“Grab this,” said Jacobi, moving my hand onto some sort of handle and then doing the same with Rex.
He counted down from three and then we all pulled in unison. Whatever we were pulling on creaked beneath our combined strength until eventually it released its grasp and sent us ever so slightly up into the air. Light surged from the newly exposed hole, revealing a ladder beneath.
We made our way down the ladder, Jacobi sealing the cover back in place over the hole above us. The lights illuminated our passage downwards. Once I got close to the ground I jumped down from the final rung and into the new tunnel.
It was nothing like the sewers above us. None of the sludge and dirt had made its way down here, it almost seemed clean. Rex jumped down and remarked at how he could finally breathe clean air. Jacobi wasn’t surprised by anything.
“Have you been here before?” I asked Jacobi.
“Just once, but I’ve never been through this door,” he replied.
I looked at the door and noticed the royal crest carved into it. No wonder Jacobi had known it was here. Behind us appeared to be a passage way, closed off by fallen rocks and deep in the middle of the rocks was a sight that terrified me.
A glass pod glistened in the light, an SO13 soldier waiting inside.
FORTY FOUR
“Don’t worry. He’s no threat to us,” said Jacobi, pointing to the skeleton that sat inside the glass pod.
“How did he even get down here?” I asked.
“We’re close to Q-Whitehall,” he replied. “Must have got knocked off course. Good riddance.”
Seeing his body was another sign of Catherine MacDougal’s disregard for human life. This man had never wanted to be a soldier. He’d been an innocent have-not captured by her forces and then controlled by them to do her bidding. When Catherine had been stopped, he’d been left alone down here with no-one to save him.
No matter how many years she spent rotting in prison, it wouldn’t be enough punishment.
“Come on, we’ve got a train to catch,” said Jacobi.
He pulled a collection of keys out of his pocket and used one on the door. The old hinges creaked as the door opened, revealing another passageway that took us down to the station platform. As we reached the platform lights came on automatically illuminating the train waiting for us. Its engines roared to life as it waited to take us to our destination.
“Is someone doing all this?” I asked.
“No, it’s completely automated,” replied Jacobi. “We just enter our destination and it’ll take us there.”
“Tom would have loved it down here,” I said.
Rex took my hand.
“He always suspected there was a secret railway line underneath London,” I explained, missing his conspiracy theories.
“Oh, it goes much further than that,” said Jacobi.
He beckoned us onto the train where we sat on delicately fashioned velvet seats. Beautiful paintings decorated the ceiling, enhanced with specks of gold on their finer features. Bone china cups and cut glasses sat upright on the table in front of us, whilst a nearby bar had anything we wanted to drink. It made first class on the Birmingham trains look like a class for have-nots.
Jacobi poured himself a glass of whisky from behind the bar.
“How old is that?” asked Rex.
“Well, when they bought it originally it was twenty years old but you can add almost another thirty onto that,” he replied.
“Couldn’t that kill you?” said Rex.
“I will let you know,” replied Jacobi, downing the glass and pouring himself another. “Now let’s go operate some heavy machinery.”
We walked through another beautifully decorated carriage and reached an engine room at the front of the train. A control panel whizzed into life as we walked through the door and asked us to set a destination. Jacobi entered the letter ‘P’ and then hit enter.
“That’s all?” I asked.
“It only lets you enter one letter. See,” said Jacobi.
He showed me the small space he could enter a letter into and then to illustrate the point kept hitting various keys. Each new letter replaced the one before it. He typed ‘P’ again and hit enter. A screen asked him to confirm his selection and he did so. The screen thanked him and started a sixty second countdown.
“We’
d better get back to our seats,” said Jacobi, drinking the second glass of whisky.
Back in our seats I asked Jacobi what the ‘P’ meant.
“Well let’s just say if I’d entered ‘Q’ then we’d stay right here,” he replied.
“Because of Q-Whitehall?” I asked.
“Exactly, and the Q stands for Queen in case you’re wondering.”
“So we’re going to P-Whitehall?” I asked.
“Close. It’s actually P-Holyrood or Prince Holyrood if you prefer,” he replied.
“Holyrood? But isn’t that in Scotland?” asked Rex.
The timer must have reached zero because the train started to move forward with a rapid pace. With no-one to drive it I hoped there were no soldiers trapped along the line.
“Aye,” said Jacobi.
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
He took the chain of keys out from his pocket and showed me the one that he’d used to open the door to the station.
“The servants that had been tasked with looking after me gave me this on my 18th birthday and a note from my mother,” explained Jacobi.
“The Queen?” I asked
“Yes. It explained how terrible she felt for what she’d done and that she wanted the family to be together again. I was told to head to P-Holyrood and stay there with my brother.”
“But you didn’t go?” asked Rex.
“Of course not. They left me down here to rot. I had no interest in seeing any of them again. Not when she didn’t even have the decency to meet with me face to face.”
“So you never saw them again?”
“Never. That was the last I heard from her and now according to Eli she’s dead. She ran away when this country needed her so good riddance I say.”
“And that means your brother is the rightful heir to the throne?”
“Precisely. One of the advantages of being born just before me. That’s James’ problem now not mine,” said Jacobi.
It took eight hours for the train to travel across England and make its way to Scotland. Jacobi passed the time by raiding the drinks cabinet and regaling us with tales of his time spent bringing people into Q-Whitehall and how he hid his royal past.
With every story he told of the lives he saved it made me wonder if he should have been the rightful heir; I didn’t see how his brother could do a better job.
“… and then there was Alyx and Anya,” said Jacobi.
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“It’s tragic really,” said Jacobi. “Their parents had never wanted children, they just saw them as another burden. My scouts on the surface received word of this so I paid them a visit. Quick as a flash they thrust their children on to me and ran away. To them kids were just another outgoing that meant they’d have less for their sweet Treysyx.”
I’d heard about Treysyx in Smyth West; a designer drug used by the haves, it created a short term Tether event allowing couples to feel what their partner felt during sex. Eventually it was banned, due to the long term damage it could do to the Tethers shared between twins.
“Wasn’t that banned?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” said Jacobi. “And that was the best thing to ever happen to the Jones’. They copied the design of Treysyx to make their own version and now they sell the drug on the black market at insane prices.”
“That’s horrible,” I replied.
“That’s not even the half of it. Not only do they control the supply, they also created the demand by giving the drug addictive properties. It’s a practice that still goes on to this day.”
The Jones’ were known as a leading pharmaceutical company. The huge advertisements for pills and creams that ran down their skyscraper, showed products people use every day but I never knew of this side of them. For all the people my father had made me control he’d never once attacked the Kings, the Jones’ or the McDougals.
I’d always just assumed they were powerless so therefore of no threat. Jill had stopped the King’s, I’d stopped the McDougals and the Joneses were just a normal pharmaceutical company or at least that’s what I’d suspected. Now I wondered if something much larger was at play.
“The Jones’, are they powerful?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” said Jacobi. “Treysyx isn’t the only backstreet drug they peddle. Their pockets are deep and their resources vast. They could get away with pretty much anything.”
“When your brother is in power, can he stop them?” said Rex.
“I’ll make him,” he replied.
“Ow!” I hit the back of the chair in front as the brakes on the train kicked in suddenly causing us to reach a dead stop.
Jacobi looked out of the window at the grey walls. There was no platform to be seen on either side. This definitely wasn’t P-Holyrood.
“Where are we?” I asked but Jacobi was already gone out of the room.
We followed him into the control room where he looked out of the window to the tunnel ahead. Five guards were illuminated by the lights of the train, walking towards us.
“What now?” I asked.
“We give ourselves up,” said Jacobi.
He opened the doors to the train and stepped outside.
FORTY FIVE
“My name is Jacobi Gillby, brother of Jamie Gillby, second in line to the throne and…” the guards threw Jacobi down into the dirt before he could finish his sentence.
They forced him into handcuffs and then turned towards the train.
“What do we do?” I said to Rex.
The control panel was completely greyed out and refusing to turn back on again no matter how much we prodded at it. I looked back at Jacobi who was moving his head forwards repeatedly in an effort to give us a signal.
“Do you think he actually wants us to surrender?” said Rex.
“It seems that way,” I replied.
“What other choice do we have?” said Rex. “It’ll be ok.”
He turned to kiss me but before our lips could connect he was dragged backwards out of the train and onto the floor. I turned the other way only for a hand on my leg to pull me down. I hit the floor of the train with my chin and the world went blurry.
The guard pulled my body from the train and bound my hands. He pulled me up to my feet and marched me towards Jacobi and Rex. The three of us stood next to each other whilst one of the guards, presumably their leader, looked us over. He grabbed our weapons and comms units and stuffed them inside a rucksack.
The leader of the group bound our handcuffs together so all three of us were connected with me in the middle. He then motioned for everyone to move forward. One soldier took Rex’s arm, a second took Jacobi’s and a third walked behind me, his gun pointing towards me.
“Jamie will sort this out,” sad Jacobi. “Don’t worry.”
Except I was worried. Jacobi hadn’t spoken to his brother in almost thirty years. The person we were going to meet today would be a far cry from the child he knew before the Siege. I hoped Jacobi really knew what we were heading towards.
The guards walked us forwards for what seemed like an hour, eating away at the precious time we had. They must have been watching our train for quite some time in order to have met us so far along the tunnel.
“That’s the station,” said Jacobi, lifting his arm and at the same time mine towards the distance.
I hoped he was right. My feet were starting to ache and the longer we took the more chance we had of missing the deadline.
“You go up here,” said the leader of the group in a thick Scottish accent.
We walked up a small ramp onto the station and through a door into a set of twisting tunnels. They smelt just as bad as anything in the sewers beneath London, just as grimy and derelict.
“I thought your brother lived in luxury?” I asked Jacobi.
“So did I,” he replied.
The tunnels led directly into P-Holyrood; an almost mirror image of Q-Whitehall. The underground city was full of life, citizens going about th
eir daily tasks and meeting in the dome shaped living area. It was a tragic reminder of how Jacobi’s brother had managed to protect his citizens when he could not.
Everyone we passed greeted us with suspicion. I wasn’t surprised, we were just another group of outsiders to them, a threat to everything they’d protected all this time.
We were marched into a new room where a large throne was turned away from us. I recognised this room layout from a similar meeting with Jacobi in Q-Whitehall.
“Toss the keys on the floor and leave them,” said a booming voice from the throne.
“I don’t think that’s wise,” said the leader.
“I said, leave them,” he replied as the tip of a sword emerged from the side of the chair.
“Ok, but we’ll be right outside,” said the leader.
“See to it you stay out there.”
The guards handed us the keys and then left the room, closing the door behind them.
“Where the hell is Jamie?” asked Jacobi.
“Now calm down son,” said Jacobi’s father as the chair swivelled round. He looked directly at me. “First of all let me apologise for the charade in getting you in here. My name is George.”
I didn’t know whether to courtsey or not. George looked tired, with deep bags under his eyes and wrinkles across his forehead. He was probably in his late sixties or seventies and was dressed in several overlapping rags to keep warm. For a supposed former royal, he didn’t look the part.
“I’m sure you can appreciate the need to keep a royal hidden in these times, can’t you Jacobi?” said George.
“I said, where is Jamie?”
“He’s safe, another citizen of this complex just like the many others down here. Not like you though son. You were magnificent.”
“You were watching me?”
“Oh yes,” said George. “I watched both of you for many years, from K-Senedd in Wales.”
“You weren’t here with Jamie the whole time?”
“Is that what you thought? That we left you on your own and looked after Jamie instead? Why would you think that?”