by Ben Horton
Instead, his friend lowered his head and looked away.
‘I’m Sorry …’
Cameron’s heart sank. A swift look to the side told him all he needed to know. Tall, shaggy-shouldered figures had stepped into view from behind the concrete pillars of the flyover.
Bloodhounds.
chapter twelve
carla
‘I’m sorry, Cam,’ Darren repeated pleadingly as the canine monsters advanced on Cameron. ‘They’ve taken my mum. I didn’t have a choice. You’d have done the same, I promise you.’
Cameron grimaced. So Rora had been right again. He’d put his friends in danger. He understood why Darren had betrayed him, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. A mixture of anger and embarrassment burned in his throat like bile as he choked back a harsh reply, glancing quickly from left to right, calculating his best escape route.
‘He’s right. He didn’t have a choice,’ sneered a voice from behind him. Marie’s voice, turned ugly. ‘So, are you going to come quietly this time, loser?’
Cameron spun round. He could have done without another look into Marie’s eyes, now soured with that trademark Carl Monkton hatred. But at the same time, he didn’t feel much like standing with his back to her.
‘I hope not,’ continued Marie. ‘Dr Fry still wants you back, but if you ask me, he won’t care how many pieces you’re in.’
Carl swung Marie’s fist at Cameron’s face. He should have been ready, but either the monster had learned to move faster, or Cameron was still being fooled by the sight of Marie. Whatever the explanation, he was sent flying.
He landed in the mud, with the Bloodhounds closing in on him.
‘Rough him up nice, boys,’ the monster laughed, twisting Marie’s voice into still more horrible sounds. Cameron leaped to his feet, and braced himself into a combat stance, ready for the Bloodhounds.
Snarling viciously, the canine hybrids came in at a run, steel jaws snapping. Cameron had to duck or fend off assaults from several directions. He had fought and beaten them before in a blind rage, before he even vaguely understood his new strength and fighting abilities. Now he had a potent new ally – his HUD. The internal display seemed to plot his enemies’ attacks, directing Cameron’s parries and guiding his own punches to where they would have most impact.
The Bloodhounds were like blunt instruments: dangerous, but direct, with no finesse. They simply tried to grab him and bring him down, or tear at him with their teeth. To Cameron, it was as if they were attacking in slow motion. He could easily outmanoeuvre them, dodging back out of their reach, or ducking in under their blows to deliver devastating counter-punches, more or less at will. It was like pitting a carthorse against a thoroughbred, or a playground bully against a kung fu master.
With a cry, Cameron leaped into the air, evading the jaws of his opponents snapping at his feet, and delivered a well-placed double flying kick that put the last of them down.
He landed and met Marie with an acid grin.
‘Looks like your dogs need to go back into training.’
‘Looks like I’m needed,’ sneered the girl in response. ‘But before I go …’ She grabbed Darren’s arm and snapped it like a twig. Darren dropped to his knees, screaming in agony. Marie smiled angelically down at him. ‘Just in case you were thinking of chipping in to help your old buddy.’
Cameron stared in horror, immediately regretting his quip about the dogs. This was no joking matter. The brutal violence should have served as final confirmation that the creature he was looking at had nothing of Marie left inside. But as long as his eyes deceived him, it was impossible to accept that as the truth. Focusing on his contempt for Carl rather than his feelings for Marie, Cameron charged and met his enemy halfway.
If the Bloodhounds had turned out to be an easier match this time, this grotesque hybrid of Carl and Marie had, if anything, grown tougher. She evaded Cameron’s first kick almost casually, and added injury to insult by trapping his leg and – with a sadistic twist – flipping him onto his back.
‘So you beat the Bloodhounds,’ said his opponent. ‘Big deal. Let’s see if you can handle Carla.’
Carla? Cameron snapped himself upright, managing to block the next two attacks, but disastrously missing a third. A boot in the face sent him sailing backwards.
‘I know you always thought of yourself as a bit of a hero …’ hissed Carla, leaping closer, ready to continue the assault.
Cameron swept out with a kick, trying to knock her off her feet, but the thing that looked like his girlfriend hopped easily over it and stamped down hard on his leg as she landed.
‘… but I’ve got news for you, buddy …’
Cameron rolled to his feet, dodging another kick in the process. He spun and whirled with Carla, trading punches in a rapid, brutal succession. She really was quicker than before, Cameron was sure of it. Maybe Dr Fry had been doing some training of his own. Carl even seemed to have started enjoying being a girl, showing his contempt for Cameron by sneaking little girlish slaps through his defences, before following them up with hard-knuckled rabbit-punches to the jaw or nose.
‘… you’re not meant to be a hero at all …’
Cameron doubled over at what felt like a jet-powered kick to the gut. Doing his best to ignore the pain, he switched to defence. Throwing out his arms and legs without thinking, he fought on pure, blind instinct, the way he had first battled the Bloodhounds back at the lab. Still Carla continued to hit home with monster punches and power kicks.
‘… you’re the villain. I mean, look at yourself – it’s what you were designed for. Why do you think Dr Fry couldn’t be bothered to put you together properly? You’re disposable! A one-shot wonder! A flash in the pan!’
Cameron growled. He’d had about enough. Actually, he’d had enough ten or twenty blows ago.
‘You want flashes?’ he snapped. ‘How about this?’
He thrust out his right hand to zap his rival with the Taser. Sparks flickered and danced across Carla’s body, and Cameron expected to see her flung backwards again.
Instead, she just flashed him one of Marie’s smiles and stood there, inviting him to have another go. Turning up the power, Cameron did. Twice. Again the blinding sparks fizzled harmlessly all around Carla’s body.
What was wrong? He went to zap her a fourth time, but Carla just blocked his thrust and brought her other arm up for a solid chop to his chest. Then she twisted his mechanical right arm, turning him round, and drove a foot into his back, propelling him into one of the concrete pillars supporting the flyover.
‘The thing about working for Dr Fry,’ said Carla, marching over towards Cameron’s prone body, ‘is he’s really good about sorting out the little glitches. You tell him you had a problem with electricity, he sorts you out with some insulation. So you keep on improving without even having to try. It’s great. Beats the hell out of school.’
Cameron tried to haul himself up, feeling suddenly drained. The last impact had really taken it out of him. With a bleep, his HUD flashed up a message: ENERGY LOW. A level-indicator, like the battery bar on a mobile phone, told the same story, blinking close to empty.
Damn, thought Cameron, shaking his head to try and clear it. He hadn’t even considered what power source all his electronic systems used to keep running. Whatever it was, it looked like he’d exhausted it with all those Taser blasts. Something else he had needed to know about his capabilities. Something he’d learned now – too late. His HUD chimed repeatedly: ENERGY LOW.
Cameron translated the bleeps into plainer English: YOU’RE DEAD.
Carla was sauntering towards him, taking her time. She too knew the fight was over.
‘Hey!’ cried a voice. ‘Cameron!’
Scrabbling to pull himself up from the dirt, Cameron’s electronic eye groggily zoomed in on Darren, holding his skateboard aloft with his good arm. He flung it in Cameron’s direction. ‘Go! Get away!’
Cameron caught the board and, on reflex, dropped
it at his feet and stepped on. Carla had reacted as soon as Darren had thrown the skateboard, breaking into a run. She was already coming at him fast. With a last look at Darren, and trying to shut out the insistent bleeping of the alarm in his head, Cameron kicked off. Feeling slightly less battered than the rest of his body, his power-driven legs quickly built up a speed that would have given Rora’s motor scooter some competition.
Incredibly, Carla kept on his tail at a flat-out run.
Cameron kicked harder, faster, opening up a gap, metre by precious metre. But a snatched look behind showed that Carla was finding more speed from somewhere too, legs powering unstoppably, pounding the tarmac into submission.
And now she might even be gaining on him, eating up the space between them as fast as Cameron could feed it to her. It was crazy. Impossible. But it was happening.
Ahead loomed the entrance to the building site. On an impulse, desperate to find some means of shaking off his pursuer, Cameron veered in through the entrance.
He glanced back. No sign of Carla. Had he lost her?
To his left, a loud crash – and a shock. There she was, smashing clean through the wooden fence and coming at Cameron out of a shower of splintered planks. The brute-force short cut closed the distance a bit more.
With shouts of alarm, Cameron saw builders throwing down tools and bricks as they frantically scattered out of his way, swearing at him even as they dived for cover. Then they must have caught a proper look at him – because as their heads came up again, their faces wore stunned, horrified expressions. They stopped swearing and just stared.
Cameron swerved the board to avoid a cement mixer, losing vital seconds. There was a tremendous thump behind him and he knew Carla had just hurdled the obstacle.
‘You’re mine, Reilly!’
Carla’s yell sounded dangerously close. But Cameron couldn’t risk looking back to see how close. More obstacles were coming up fast: a JCB, a section of low wall and a pair of enormous metal girders pointing skywards at a steep angle, balanced against a stack of bricks. Lungs burning, Cameron dodged the JCB with scant room to spare, Carla catching up all the while, practically breathing into his ear.
Then a crazy idea lodged in his head. He was never going to outpace Carla on the ground. But what about in the air …?
Desperately Cameron steered for the nearest girder. He kicked and kicked, building up as much raw speed as he could muster. Braced and balanced, there was no time for anything more than the briefest of prayers as he leaned back and nosed the front of the skateboard off the ground.
He hit the girder with a jolt that almost threw him from the board.
But it didn’t.
Regaining his balance, Cameron carried on, the skateboard shooting up the length of the narrow iron beam, further and further from the ground. Behind him, Carla shouted again, but Cameron didn’t hear the words. He stole the swiftest of glances behind and she was right there, lunging for him. Racing up the narrow girder like an insane tightrope-walker.
Cameron faced front and focused on the end of his impromptu ramp – and the stretch of motor way beyond. He was running out of girder, and this next stunt was going to be way trickier than just hitting the ramp had been …
As he bent his knees and grabbed the board, he felt Carla’s hand snatching at the ends of his hair. Then he was airborne, sailing off the end of the girder – arcing through space, it felt like – clutching the board to his feet.
From somewhere far behind now, it seemed, he heard Carla’s scream of frustration. He looked back, and saw her balanced precariously on the tip of the girder, arms windmilling, a furious scowl managing to make her beautiful face ugly. Without the momentum Cameron had gained with the board, she hadn’t been able to make the jump.
He had finally shaken off his pursuer.
It was only a small consolation though. Because, as he hit the top of his arc and began accelerating downwards towards the approaching lanes of traffic shooting along in either direction, he realized that the landing was surely going to kill him.
chapter thirteen
running on empty
Soaring through the air, the wind whistling past his face, Cameron clung to the skateboard, desperately trying to coax it towards the gap between lanes. But the motor way was rushing up to meet him too fast. Twisting his body in mid-air, he managed to turn the board enough so that he was at least travelling in the same direction as the traffic. Grazing the top of a huge articulated lorry, he braced himself as he came slamming down on the tarmac just in front of the metal monster.
Cameron felt the board bowing beneath his feet, threatening to snap under the strain but, amazingly, it held. His momentum carrying him forward, Cameron swerved to the left, out of the path of the lorry. The angry driver sounded his horn deafeningly, and Cameron let out an enormous, triumphant ‘Whooooo!’ in reply, adrenaline surging through him.
But his chance for celebration was short-lived. And he would be too, if he didn’t focus right away on dodging the rushing traffic. It didn’t help that his HUD was still blinking furiously at him, its supposedly helpful warning now a hazardous distraction as he propelled himself along the narrow corridor between lanes.
Cars and trucks whooshed past, perilously close, swerving violently as they caught sight of him, their after-tow threatening to throw him off balance. Horns blared, drivers and passengers stared with wide eyes, shaking their fists as he whizzed past. Cameron knew that some would soon be on the phone to the police. He had to get off the bypass and out of sight as quickly as possible.
The road ahead curved into a gradually steepening downward slope. As he accelerated downhill, Cameron’s first thought was that freewheeling might help him conserve energy. The problem was, the slope didn’t show any sign of levelling out and, unlike the cars around him, he didn’t have any brakes …
The board was racing along now. Cameron had no idea how fast he was going, but he did know that he was testing his reactions – and his nerve – to the limit. He was forced to veer this way and that, dodging cars behind him, in front of him, and rushing past on either side.
Still picking up speed, he weaved past a gleaming Porsche 911, squeezing his board into the gap between it and a high-sided truck thundering the other way. Wind buffeted him from all sides, threatening to knock him under the wheels as he sped through the narrow corridor and shot out the other end.
It was insane. Freakishly insane. Heart pounding, eyes glancing everywhere at once, Cameron looked desperately for a way out of this death-trap.
Finally, ahead of him at the foot of the hill, he spotted a slip road and the sprawl of a service station nestled close to the junction. At once, he was hit by the one thing he wouldn’t have objected to being hit by earlier – an idea.
Calculating the distance and the speed of the traffic around him, Cameron’s HUD flashed up a pathway through the speeding vehicles and into the slip road. It would be tight, but there didn’t seem to be many options.
Bracing himself, Cameron cut across the traffic, aiming for the turnoff.
A protesting squeal of tyres came from behind him, but he’d made it into the slow lane. Breathless, his HUD constantly tracking distance and remapping his trajectory, Cameron steered a tight curve at the base of the hill, veered left into the exit lane and onto the garage forecourt.
He shifted his balance in an attempt to bring the board round in a spinning stop, but he already knew it was hopeless. As if it was punishing him for his speed-freak antics, the board chucked him off and Cameron went clattering and crashing across the tarmac, feeling the hard surface shredding his skin and bashing dents into his metallic parts. He finally slid to a stop against the back wheel of a tatty old flat-bed truck.
Battered and bleeding, Cameron pulled himself back onto his feet. He glanced around for Darren’s skateboard, but it was smashed beyond repair.
Time to switch transportation.
The truck was the only vehicle at the pumps. Luckily the driver, a tall bu
rly figure in a hooded top, was inside, paying at the desk. Limping to the back, Cameron hauled himself into the truck, ducked down and pulled a muddy tarpaulin over himself. It was rough and dirty, but Cameron didn’t care. For the first time since he’d woken in Fry’s lab, he was utterly, genuinely tired. Exhausted, even, as his HUD kept reminding him: ENERGY LOW.
He lay back and closed his good eye. He needed to rest. Just for a moment …
* * *
The grumble of the engine jolted Cameron awake in a panic. The truck was moving, and with a shock he realized he had no idea how long it might already have been travelling. He was still groggy and dog-tired and, infuriatingly, his HUD was still blinking away: ENERGY LOW – CRITICAL.
Cameron wished he had some way to shut it off. He tried concentrating on the energy bar and thinking the word ‘off’, but it just carried on flashing. He stuck another word in front of the ‘off’, but that didn’t work either.
Poking his head out from under the tarpaulin, Cameron saw rows of houses slipping past. The truck was still in Broad Harbour and he thought he recognized the area, but his senses were still too foggy to work out how far he’d come.
Sitting back on the bed of the truck, he let himself get bumped around a bit. If nothing else, the vibration and growl of the engine would keep him awake. Gathering the tarpaulin over his head as a crude sort of hood, Cameron watched the world roll by. The truck seemed to be heading for the outskirts of town, which was a good start. It gave him time to breathe and consider where on earth he was going to go from there.
He shivered, and not just from the cold. The anger and confusion that had been driving him ever since he woke in Fry’s laboratory was fading now, replaced by the numbing sensation of fear.
At first, despite the shock of discovering what had been done to him, Cameron had been certain that everything could be put right somehow. Now he wasn’t so sure. Everything seemed to be going wrong.
He had walked out on Rora and the Republic. Burned his bridges. Even if he could find his way back, there was no way they would take him in again now. His family had sent him packing – hadn’t even recognized him. Now his best friend had betrayed him. Where was there left to turn?