by Jon Robinson
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Jon Robinson was born in Middlesex in 1983. When he’s not writing, he works for a charity in central London. Find out more about Jon at:
www.facebook.com/jonrobinsonbooks
Books by Jon Robinson
NOWHERE
ANYWHERE
Prologue
The butterfly was on fire. It fluttered wildly through the air, leaking coils of smoke from its smouldering ochre wings.
Who had done this? She thrust out her hand to extinguish the flames, but the creature dipped nimbly through her fingers. I’m trying to help you! she urged it desperately, and tried again but it was still too quick to capture.
She followed it with her eyes, not blinking, and before long she realized that the butterfly was travelling the same path over and over, caught in some strange loop.
It was trapped.
She waited, anticipating its next movement, and made a grasp for it. The instant her fingers found the flame, she shuddered awake.
‘Pyra –’
Pyra looked around with a sharp intake of breath. The windscreen wipers of the silver sports car whined back and forth, smearing the rain-speckled window.
Anton, a black man in his early thirties with a single glistening stud in his ear, was touching her arm. ‘Talking in your sleep again,’ he clarified.
‘Was I?’
‘Yep. Shouting. Everything all right?’
‘I think so,’ said Pyra.
She rubbed her eyes and shivered, looking outside. An endless froth of white clouds bruised with grey smothered the Scottish countryside.
‘How far are we?’ she said, rearranging her short spiky black hair.
‘Dunno. An hour? Maybe a bit less. You wanna tell me about this dream?’
Pyra thought for a moment. ‘I don’t … I don’t really remember.’ She sighed, plucking grumpily at the seatbelt strap, which had left a deep pink groove in her neck, and wriggled in her seat.
Anton dug his hand around in the side compartment and removed a cassette tape in a battered cardboard sleeve. ‘Let’s have a bit of music,’ he said, shoving it into the player.
‘As long as it’s not that annoying piano crap. God, I hate jazz.’
‘Yeah,’ he said disappointedly. ‘Well, I’m working on that.’
‘Keep working. I don’t get it.’
‘No one gets jazz,’ he said with a grin, adjusting the volume. ‘It gets you.’
Pyra smiled with the corner of her mouth. ‘You want me to take over for a bit?’
‘Not yet.’ He tapped the indicator and let the vehicle drift into the next lane. He looked across at her. ‘If you’re worried about the escaped boy,’ he said, ‘don’t be. We’ll find him, Pyra.’
The traffic up ahead quickly became congested. Pyra wound the window down and stretched. The air was damp and cool against her face. ‘It looks like some kind of roadblock. You think someone’s trying to delay us?’
‘Maybe. I guess they figured we’d be on our way.’
As their car inched forward, Anton lowered his window and called to a workman in a fluorescent yellow vest. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘When’ll we be moving?’
The man shrugged, exhaling a stream of misty air from his red cheeks. ‘It’s the police. Random vehicle check. Had a tip-off about some illegal goods being smuggled or something.’
A knife of panic stabbed Pyra, and she felt the car becoming airless. ‘The stuff in the boot,’ she whispered. ‘You know, the –’
‘It’s fine. They won’t find it. And even if they do, so what?’
It won’t take much to raise their suspicion, Pyra thought.
‘You need to relax,’ Anton said, but Pyra thought she could see some concern in his eyes too as the car in front rolled a little further forward.
The police officers were talking among themselves. One of them, a bald man with authoritatively piercing blue eyes, waved the next car on. A second officer with a radio went round to the boot of the car and opened it. After some moments he nodded to his colleague, who gestured with his head for the car to move.
The police officer waved Anton and Pyra forward. Pyra watched as a uniformed woman walked over to the window. ‘What’s all this about?’ Pyra asked.
‘Just a check, madam,’ the policewoman said with rehearsed composure. ‘My colleague will check the boot, then you can both be on your way, all right? We don’t want to waste any more of your time.’ She stepped to the side and whispered into her radio.
‘He’s going to see,’ Pyra hissed to Anton, watching the police officer with narrowed eyes. She slipped an ivory domino out of her pocket and began rolling it across her knuckles.
‘You don’t need the Ability,’ he whispered. ‘Remember what Luthan said about getting too reliant?’
‘Yeah, well, this is different,’ she spat. ‘This is an emergency.’
Anton quietened her with a pass of his hand.
The police officer opened the boot and peered inside. There was nothing in there except an old, tattered blanket.
Anton moved his fingers round the steering wheel. He turned his eyes to the wing mirror. Only the elbow of the officer’s fluorescent jacket was visible.
The officer was about to close the boot when something urged him to reach towards the blanket.
Anton peered back out of the window. ‘Look, how long is this gonna take? We really have to be somewhere …’
The policewoman returned to his door. She put a hand on the ridge of the lowered window and leant down. ‘Please try to be patient, sir.’
Anton looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘I don’t understand what you’re looking for.’
‘That’s not any of your business, I’m afraid, sir.’ She glared at him and then stepped away from the car.
Pyra was still fiddling with the domino, weaving it over and round her fingers. It wasn’t working. Sh
e’d left it too late, and now she couldn’t concentrate.
‘There’s nothing back there. You’re wasting your time,’ said Anton.
The officer lifted the blanket in the boot. Beneath it were several small canvas bags, large enough to slip snugly over a human head, some coils of rope and two tasers.
The policewoman put her radio back in her belt and walked over to the car. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to –’
Anton slammed his foot on to the accelerator with as much force as he could muster. The nearby police officers leapt out of the way of the speeding car. Then the vehicle burst through a barrier and swerved through a procession of cones, which spilled like skittles.
Pyra looked over her shoulder. ‘They’re coming after us.’
Anton yanked the gearstick back. The car splashed through a stretch of puddles. Three sirens began to wail as one. Anton slammed the steering wheel to the side. The car spun left from the dual carriageway on to a narrow, winding road, steeped with bracken on either side.
Pyra closed her eyes, plunging into a deep state of concentration, using the domino to help her focus.
Moments later, the police car behind theirs careered on a patch of ice. The driver struggled to reclaim the steering wheel as the car veered into the undergrowth, blocking the route for the following vehicles.
‘Guess I was wrong,’ Anton said. ‘We did need it after all.’
The twenty-three-year-old girl sitting beside him stared silently at the road ahead. The look in her eyes was probably relief, but may also have been excitement.
1
‘I understand this is going to come as a bit of a shock, but despite our best efforts there’s been an … unexpected problem with the programme,’ said James Felix, the wealthiest man in the country and the leader of the Pledge, into the answering machine. ‘Six of the inmates have escaped and are loose in the forest. There’s no need to worry about anything just yet, Prime Minister. This is one of the reasons we insisted on such an isolated location and let’s not forget that we have some of our best men out looking for them … and the inmates haven’t the faintest where they’re going.’
There was a momentary pause while he organized his thoughts.
‘We expect this matter will be wrapped up quickly, with little fuss, but I and the rest of the Pledge are keen to hear from you, to know that we still have your support. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have further news on the matter. There is no way out of this, Prime Minister. You and the Pledge are in it together. There is no way out,’ he repeated.
With that, the voicemail message ended and the phone, in the secret compartment under the floorboards of the prime minister’s office, gave a final bleep.
‘The stream ends here!’ Elsa puffed and pointed to where the sheen of cloudy ice merged with a snow-covered thicket as the pair hurried alongside the steep edge. The canopy of trees quivered gently overhead, shielding them from all but a few falling snowflakes.
Elsa and Harlan had become separated from Ryan and Jes and had been following the ice downhill for an age.
‘We should wait for the others,’ Elsa said, and brushed her frizzy brown hair out of her eyes. Her usually pale features, covered with freckles, were tinged red with cold. We’re in the middle of a forest, miles from anywhere and we don’t have a clue where we’re going, she thought.
Harlan, a tall, slim Indian boy, leant against a tree. ‘The guards won’t be far behind.’ He looked at the distant column of black smoke rising from the crashed truck that they’d used to escape from their prison, then he bent down to tie his shoelace. Finding it too hard to tie a knot with his unresponsive, frozen hands, Harlan shoved the length of lace into the side of his boot and straightened. His black hair was pressed flat against his forehead. ‘We need to keep going. We’ll find something soon enough.’
‘And you know this how?’
‘I just do. It’s hard to explain. I’ll tell you some other time.’
‘Why don’t you tell me now? It’s not like I’m going anywhere.’
Harlan lowered his eyes.
‘Go on, Harlan,’ Elsa insisted. ‘I’m all ears. You’re always saying stuff like this – that you have these feelings –’
‘Look, Elsa, I know you’re grumpy and you’re scared, but taking it out on me isn’t going to make things any better –’
‘I’m taking it out on you cos you’re full of it, Harlan. You don’t know anything!’
Harlan glared at her and pressed on. Elsa began muttering to herself when a sudden crack shattered the silence and echoed in the wind for some moments. ‘Harlan – what was that?’
‘For someone who doesn’t know anything, you expect a lot from me, Elsa.’
He cautiously removed the ibis from inside his coat. The weapon was a black metal cylinder, about thirty centimetres in length. Simple and elegant in its design, the ibis was an extremely advanced weapon, able to fire pulses of paralysing compressed sound.
Harlan saw that the power light above the handgrip had dimmed. ‘It’s not working,’ he said, jabbing at the trigger. ‘Try yours.’
‘Mine’s not working either. It’s like they’ve been turned off –’
There was a second shot. Elsa dropped her ibis into the snow. ‘Run!’ she cried.
Harlan looked back towards the sound a final time and then ran, with Elsa in close pursuit. The pair sped on until a flailing Harlan tripped, staggered and stumbled.
‘Get up,’ Elsa pleaded, pulling at his coat. ‘Get up, get up, before they catch us.’
‘I think we’re OK,’ he wheezed, wiping his face with his sleeve.
Elsa doubled over by a tree, struggling to reclaim her breath from her pounding heart, which seemed to be beating it out of her. She exhaled, and clutched her stomach. ‘It sounded like a gun,’ she said. ‘Is that what it sounded like to you?’
Harlan kept quiet, although he suspected she might be right. When Elsa eventually stood upright, she spotted something among the trees. ‘Look.’
He followed the trajectory of her finger to a small grey hut. ‘Cables,’ Harlan said, and started towards it.
‘Harlan …’
Harlan ignored Elsa and tiptoed across to the door. He gave it a gentle push and the door slowly withdrew.
‘There’s an electricity generator in there. Maybe it’s some sort of back-up generator for the prison,’ he said, and brushed inside, immediately noticing an indistinct mud pattern on the floor. ‘Footprints.’ He looked down at his own boot and compared the patterns. ‘One of ours.’
‘Alyn must’ve stayed here when he escaped!’ Elsa realized.
Harlan mulled it over. ‘We should probably rest here for a couple of hours and see out the worst of the night.’
He hopped on to the desk and sat down to pull off his boot. A pile of snow trickled to the floor.
‘What’s this?’ he said, leaning down and poking at a pile of paper files on the floor before picking one up.
‘Dunno,’ Elsa said, squinting at the folder. ‘Do you think this place is part of Nowhere? Seems pretty far from the prison.’
‘Maybe they want to keep it secret from the rest of the guards,’ Harlan replied, flicking through a couple of pages before finally tossing it on to the floor. ‘It just looks like loads of numbers.’
Elsa glanced over her shoulder at their prints in the snow. It wouldn’t be long before they were covered. ‘What if they look inside?’
‘We just have to hope they call it a night before then,’ Harlan replied, shutting the door. ‘Whatever happens, I know I’m not being taken back without a fight.’
2
‘Let us go,’ Ryan begged, looking at Jes, lying on her side in the snow. ‘Please … if she doesn’t get help, she’ll die.’
Rayner, a tall, muscular guard with several days’ stubble, narrowed his eyes and slipped his finger round the trigger.
Words rushed together on Ryan’s lips, but none formed. Jes muttered
softly, her face obscured by her long red hair.
‘Claude,’ said the young guard beside Rayner. ‘Come on, put the rifle down.’
‘She’s not what you think – she’s not a bad person,’ Ryan went on. Lumps of snow were trapped in his curly blond hair. ‘I swear it … none of us are. None of us.’
‘You might have convinced me, had you little animals not killed him,’ said Rayner.
‘Killed him? Killed who? Hang on, we haven’t –’
Rayner pointed the rifle at Ryan’s chest. ‘You should know by now the innocent act doesn’t work with me, Farrell.’
Ryan closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact.
The rifle fired, but was knocked to the side, leaving a steaming hole in the snow just centimetres from Ryan’s legs.
Ryan looked up with wide eyes as a bearded man slammed a branch down across Rayner’s head. Rayner looked baffled momentarily, and then collapsed wordlessly into a heap.
The guard beside him lifted his ibis, but not before the bearded man had raised and swung the branch back at him and knocked him to the ground. He released it and hurried over to Jes, whose consciousness seemed to be slipping away by the second.
He bent down and picked her up, then made eyes at Ryan, who was still kneeling, too shocked to say anything. ‘Are you just going to sit there?’
Ryan didn’t need telling twice and sprang up. The bearded man gathered his bearings and began to trot with the girl in his arms.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Ryan said.
‘My name’s Henry.’
Jes groaned and tried locating the wound in her side with her fingertips. Her green eyes were failing to focus.
‘Hey, it’ll be all right,’ Ryan called across to her. ‘You’re going to be OK, Jes.’
Henry turned through the trees and they arrived at a small clearing.
‘Where do we go?’ asked Ryan, looking around for some indication of where they might be. ‘There’s nothing in every direction, except –’
‘Except down. Here. Hold her for a moment.’ He passed Jes to Ryan. Weary and aching, Ryan struggled to hold her in his arms and lowered to his knees, trying his best to keep her head raised. He winced as pain jolted through his ankle, which was still sore from the escape.
‘What’s going on?’ Jes said. ‘Are we … are we free?’