She went past the old university buildings, across the canal, and into Piccadilly Gardens. The restaurant she wanted was in one of the side roads going off to the north.
On the west side of the square was the Metro station, the main interchange between trams heading south to north and west to east. To the north, the road she had been following continued into the main shopping area, though the majority of shops were empty nowadays. Diagonally across from her, a short distance along Market Street, was Debenhams. The place where Ali had died. She set off in that direction and pulled off the hat as she did so.
It was all part of the plan. Her plan. Not the police’s, not the Purity’s, not the kidnappers’, hers. She had not wanted to be picked up on her way into town because she still wanted to talk to Miss Kepple. But now she was here, the bad guys needed to know where she was, as did the police, assuming they hadn’t been following her with a drone all evening. She had no idea how it was going to turn out, but when they tried to take her she would be ready. And somehow she would get the information she wanted from them.
It took Chloe a couple of minutes to cross the square walking at a normal pace. She looked at the memorials for the dead. She supposed Piccadilly Gardens had once been green with grass and flowers, but now it was mostly stained concrete with giant pots for flowers that were overgrown with weeds.
She walked along Market Street, parallel to Debenhams. There were no police, no blue and white tape, but there were barriers where the lorry had struck. Apart from the shops casting their treacherous lights, the place was in shadow. She stared at the wall. A man had died here. Someone she knew. A person she considered a friend, who had discovered something about her, and had been killed. The police had reported it as an accident; how could it be anything else since there could be no motive? But the motive was standing at the scene of the crime, staring at one half of the murder weapon.
‘I’m sorry, Ali,’ she said in a whisper brushing a tear from her eye. Another reason to find the girls, to find her friend, and do something useful before she ceased to think and became a monster.
She turned on her heel, checked the traffic before crossing towards Debenhams and turned right. Three streets further down she took a left, walked past a square and found the entrance to the restaurant down some steps.
Chapter 20
Chloe
Chloe took a deep breath and steeled herself. She had never been in a place like this, a restaurant in the middle of town. The closest she had ever come was the chippy, and that hadn’t turned out well. This wasn’t going to turn out well either. She checked her watch, it was nine-oh-five. Hopefully Miss Kepple would already be here, otherwise it could be embarrassing.
She walked from the freezing cold through the double doors into a maelstrom of heat and noise. She was astonished; the place was packed. Everyone was sitting so close to each other it seemed almost obscene. The place was a confusion of movement and lights. From another room music was playing loudly and there was a wall of talking that flooded her ears. She had managed to gain some skill at tuning out the noise but this was just so much. All her senses were being overwhelmed. And the smell: there were the delicious food smells, but also all the people, so many people, sweating, perfumed and a smell that seemed to be like their emotions bubbling up through their skin. She felt like she could smell anger and lust, hate and love.
She realised there was somebody in front of her, talking to her. Chloe focused. A woman in a uniform asking her whether she wanted a table for one. Chloe shook her head.
‘No, I am meeting someone. Kepple? A woman.’
The waitress’s smile was all lipstick and brilliant white teeth. She led the way through the throng unconcerned at the way she brushed against people in chairs. Chloe tried to avoid everybody although it was not entirely possible. It was easy to see from the quality of their clothes that these people didn’t suffer the way her family did. She hadn’t realised there were so many rich people in the world. Everyone she knew struggled to make ends meet.
The waitress moved to one side and suddenly Chloe could see Miss Kepple. She stood as Chloe approached, and smiled. Chloe was surprised at how genuine her smile seemed to be. Miss Kepple actually reached out her hand to shake. Chloe steeled herself. Her teacher knew she was infected and yet she was still willing to shake her hand; why? Chloe took it and Miss Kepple squeezed hers a little, not so much a shake as just a touch.
‘Take your coat off Chloe, sit down.’ Chloe was reluctant, she might have to leave in a hurry and she didn’t want to leave it behind. The waitress offered to take it from her but Chloe shook her head. She laid the coat over her knees when she sat, and put her backpack at her feet. She might be parochial, but she wasn’t stupid.
The waitress handed a menu to Miss Kepple, then held one out for Chloe. Chloe took it, and stared at it without really seeing anything. How could she focus on this when there was so much going on? She put the menu down in front of her and looked at her teacher sitting opposite. Miss Kepple was wearing a black dress that left her arms uncovered, exposed the curve of her neck and was slit at least as far as her waist. She wasn’t looking at Chloe, but studying the menu. Her hair is brown, thought Chloe. She’d never really noticed before, you just didn’t look at teachers that way. Her hair had been done in ringlets, pulled up, and seemed to cascade out back. It was pretty. But her skin was so pale, almost like ice. Miss Kepple looked up and smiled at her.
‘Chosen already, Chloe?’
‘I—’ Chloe was about to say that she wasn’t hungry, almost as an automatic thing, but she was very hungry. The run had taken it out of her. ‘—I don’t know what to order.’
‘I’ll do it for you.’
Chloe looked around at the people, so many of them packed in so tight. S.I.D would run rampant here, she thought. Am I infecting them just by being here?
‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Kepple. She reached out her hand and placed it on top of Chloe’s. So much touching. ‘You can’t infect them.’
‘How did you know I was thinking that?’
‘Because you’re a good person, Chloe, you always think about other people. That’s quite an unusual trait, especially nowadays.’
At a signal Chloe didn’t notice, the waitress returned and Miss Kepple ordered food. Chloe’s ears buzzed with the noise of cutlery and the incessant chatter. She would tune in for a moment to something someone was saying, and then it would be gone again. But she felt hyper-aware of her surroundings; it was as if she knew the position of every person every chair, every table, even down to the light fittings. Even, to some extent, she felt she knew the shape and size of the other rooms: there was the kitchen, the office where two men sat talking, the space behind the bar, the room where people packed together dancing, and another space somewhere deeper in, identified only by its emptiness.
Drinks arrived. Miss Kepple had red wine. She had ordered lemonade for Chloe. The teacher picked up her glass and held it halfway across the table.
‘To you,’ she said.
Chloe realised she was proposing a toast; she lifted her own glass and Miss Kepple tapped it with hers. Chloe brought her glass to her lips, she only meant to take a sip, but as the tangy liquid touched her mouth she couldn’t resist drinking it all down.
Miss Kepple smiled indulgently and took another drink from her glass. ‘You are thirsty.’
Chloe glanced around again, there was nobody looking at them but she felt self-conscious, as if she did not belong. She placed the empty glass back down on the table.
‘Why am I here?’
‘I could ask you that.’
‘You said I should come because you wanted to talk to me.’
‘And you came, despite the danger. What do you think I could possibly say that could be that important?’
Chloe did not have to turn her head to hear the sound of the door to the outside opening and four people come tumbling in, clattering down the stairs. She knew, and did not know how she knew, they were not
talking to one another. In this place everyone talked, incessantly, especially when they had nothing to say.
‘Why am I going to die?’ said Chloe.
For some reason that statement seemed to rub any bonhomie from Miss Kepple’s face. She shook her head. ‘Everybody dies, Chloe.’
‘I’m not ready to, it’s not fair.’
‘Quite frankly, Chloe,’ said Miss Kepple. ‘I had imagined you were more mature than that.’
Chloe felt her heart beating faster. ‘I can be whatever I want to be.’
‘Utter nonsense. Don’t be a stupid child.’
This seemed to be a different Miss Kepple to the one that Chloe knew at school. ‘So what did you want to talk to me about?’
It was at that moment the waitress came over. She placed a bowl of soup in front of Miss Kepple, and a large plate with a fish hors d’oeuvre in front of Chloe. Chloe’s hunger took over. She forgot the conversation and dived into the food, barely remembering in time to at least use a fork.
They spent the next couple of minutes in silence while they ate, or, more accurately, Miss Kepple delicately spooned her soup and dunked her bread. Chloe excavated the plate in front of her and left only smears of grease as any sign there had been any food there.
‘I see it hasn’t dulled your appetite.’
Chloe wondered if she was making fun of her. ‘I’m hungry all the time.’
‘You know Chloe, there are such things as clean transitions.’ Miss Kepple finished her soup and laid her spoon down. She sat back in her chair with her hands in her lap.
‘I’ve never heard of that.’
‘No, it’s not on the Purity school syllabus because people misunderstand it.’
‘Is that what you think I have?’
Chloe saw the waitress come up to them without turning her head. She began clearing away the plates. By the entrance, one of the four people who had entered seemed to be arguing with the person at the door. They wanted a table but they hadn’t booked. Apparently there were no tables available.
‘A clean transition is when the acquired DNA seems to merge smoothly with the infectee’s own DNA.’
Chloe felt a surge of hope, but Miss Kepple did not seem happy. ‘It doesn’t end well, Chloe. An S.I.D infection never ends well.’
Chloe’s moment of hope was ground into the dirt.
‘Is that it?’ said Chloe.
Miss Kepple looked awkward; she examined her hands and seemed to shrink. ‘I was ordered to lure you here.’
‘It’s that agent, isn’t it?’ said Chloe. ‘He’s trying to flush out the kidnappers.’
Miss Kepple nodded and Chloe gave a humourless laugh.
‘Well, that’s fine by me.’
‘You want this?’
‘Three girls, maybe more, and one of them my best friend, have been taken by these people. I need to help them, while I still can.’
Miss Kepple laughed. ‘You really are amazing,’ she said. ‘Such selflessness, and all it’s going to do is get you killed.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘You’re being used. Chris doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about the other girls.’ She waved her hand around indicating the people around the room. ‘He doesn’t care about these people here. He was the one that said I should come here to this restaurant. He must have known it would be crowded. If the kidnappers come in force to get you Chloe, it could be a bloodbath. It’ll be a war, with the police on one side, the kidnappers on the other, and everybody else in the middle.’
Chloe felt a rising panic. She had been so sure she knew what she was doing. She didn’t want anybody else to get hurt on her account. Especially if they weren’t even aware of what was happening.
‘I need to get out.’ She pushed back her chair. It screeched across the stone floor, sending shivers through her. Miss Kepple stood up.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘You can’t. You mustn’t.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Chloe. She pulled on her coat and started to do it up. ‘I can’t stay here. I can’t let these people get hurt,’ she said in an intense but quiet voice. Carefully she pulled on her backpack and settled it between the lumps on her back; as far as she could tell they were a couple of inches long now.
‘But Chris hasn’t arrived yet.’
‘Who the hell is this Chris?’ said Chloe. She saw in Miss Kepple’s eyes the diminishing of power as she shrank into herself at the man’s name. ‘He’s your lover?’ She gave a bark of laughter. ‘And I thought you liked girls.’
Miss Kepple reached out her hand. ‘It’s not like that; it’s you I want.’
Chloe looked incredulous and shook her head. ‘No, no, I am sorry. I like you, as a teacher, or I used to. But I can’t have a relationship with you.’
Chloe had never seen someone get turned down before. Let alone been the person doing it. Less than a minute ago she hadn’t really understood she was in that position at all. The way Miss Kepple seemed to deflate, the broken look on her face as she sat back down in her chair. Chloe felt terrible, but the truth was the truth.
‘Then you’d better run,’ said her teacher. ‘Get away from the kidnappers, the police, and especially the Purity.’
A couple of people sitting nearby were looking in her direction. One of them, a woman, peered intently at Chloe’s face then turned and whispered something to her companion, who also stared.
Definitely time to go, thought Chloe to herself. She glanced one more time at her teacher who was wiping her eyes. Oh, for God’s sake.
She took a deep breath, turned, and headed for the door.
Chapter 21
Chloe
Chloe squeezed her way through the gaps between the tables and chairs. She noticed their waitress carrying two plates of food. She almost wished she’d waited. But there was no time for that. The four who had come in late and didn’t have a table were lounging near the bottom of the stairs, drinks in hand, probably hoping for one to come free. They won’t have long to wait, thought Chloe, unless Miss Kepple decides to stay for the main course.
Chloe needed to get outside before any trouble started. She thought perhaps the police had been watching her, even tracked her while she was coming into town. But she didn’t think the kidnappers could know where she was until she removed the hat.
She headed for the stairs. As she passed the bar area, one of the four laughed, though it was more of a cackle. He seemed to slip and stumbled in Chloe’s direction. She dodged to the side only to come up against one of the others.
‘Careful there, love,’ he said.
Chloe heard and felt it at the same moment: a quiet hiss and a prickling sting in her side. She reacted without the slightest thought. She swung her left arm backwards as she turned away from the sound and pressure. Her arm struck his, knocking it away. She kept lifting, his arm caught in hers. Within moments his wrist was on her shoulder. She drove her elbow down onto his forearm and something snapped.
He screamed with the pain and she shoved him away.
In her mind’s eye she saw the other two coming up behind her. The one who started it was in front of her. She jumped. High and forward.
There was the double hiss of aerosol injectors behind her as she soared upward, but they were too far away to penetrate. She was halfway through the flight up to the first half level of the stairs, when she reached out and grabbed the vertical support. It was iron, painted green, and slick with condensation. Her momentum carried her through one hundred and eighty degrees, until she was heading back towards her assailants. She planted her feet in their faces, using the push to launch her back up the stairs.
She hit the opposite wall hard, halfway up, but used her arms to absorb the energy. She dropped back onto the upper flight of stairs and ran upwards. Behind her they were pulling out guns; she heard them click as the safeties came off. She reached the door, grabbed the handle and yanked at it, jamming her feet int
o the lower step and pulling hard to make it open faster. A deafening shot thundered in her ears. The wood of the door beside her splintered. I thought they wanted me alive.
The door was open enough. She slipped through. Her backpack caught for a moment but it barely slowed her down.
Outside, under neon lights, the freezing wind tore at her exposed skin. There was no time to deal with it. She focused. Rather than run she paused and looked around deliberately, peering into the shadows. Her ears were still ringing from the gunshot.
This area of Manchester was arranged in blocks with the roads criss-crossing at right angles. Most of the buildings were a couple of hundred years old. Warehouses from the heyday of Manchester’s industrial past. They were modernised inside, but grim and dirty outside. And in the dark, they were just black. What she did see were men in uniform, lurking in the shadows of the streets across from her, and to the south in the direction of Piccadilly Gardens. Police.
In the other direction there was more movement. Darker figures, moving surreptitiously. The kidnappers. Should she call them that? They had resources and people. They had access to the riffy grid. And they just wanted her.
The door behind her opened. She felt the rush of warmth accompanied by shouts and screams. She spun on the spot. She could not make out the face of the man silhouetted against the lights of the restaurant. She jumped. Straight up with as much power as she could muster. In school games she managed a creditable high jump, but that was before. This time she soared two floors in a moment.
‘Fuck!’ echoed up from below her.
She had tried to jump in towards the wall, but at the highest point she was still too far to grab anything. She had no way to gain any purchase, nothing to push against. The problem lasted for only a moment. Gravity took charge and she began to fall.
But she was still moving in. She hit. Desperately she tried to find something to grab on to. Rough stone tore her nails as her body dragged down the side of the building. Her foot caught on a ledge but for only a moment before it slipped off again. There was a window to the right. Her arm lashed out and she hooked her fingers round the edge. Her weight still dragged her down but she hit a gap between two stones and her fingers anchored her. She swung lightly in towards the window just as another shot ricocheted off the stone where she had been.
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