Mitchell sighed. He had been outmanoeuvred. There was only one conclusion that could be made: Utopia Genetics had become aware of their intention to raid and done a deal with the Purity.
‘What has Utopia offered you?’
Graham smiled. ‘I really have no idea where you get your fanciful ideas from.’
‘I’ll get the men on the road,’ said Mitchell and headed for the door.
‘Just one more thing,’ said Graham.
Mitchell’s heart sank. One more thing sounded like something very bad indeed.
‘Once the area has been secured, a combined team of Purity and Utopia Genetics personnel will take control of any of those poor girls who are still alive.’
Mitchell said nothing as he left.
Chapter 27
Melinda
Melinda couldn’t see what was happening, but she did see men with electrical impulses running in their nerves go dark after Vanessa did something. Meanwhile, Lucy was clinging to her arm with a grip that was probably light for her but like a vice for Melinda.
‘For god’s sake, Vanessa! Stop killing them!’
Melinda stopped a short distance up the corridor, away from the men.
‘She’s killing them?’ asked Lucy from the blackness.
‘Seriously? They were going to fucking kill you! Why do you even care?’
‘Because we don’t have to kill them,’ said Melinda. ‘Can’t you just find a flashlight or something? That would be more useful. And you’re wasting time, we need to get out.’
‘Can’t you see a battery?’ said Lucy.
Melinda realised she should be able to, if they had them. But there was nothing. If there had been, she probably messed those up as well.
In the darkness there were shouts. She could make out the word ‘lights’ which seemed to occur often.
‘Can you tell where we need to go to get out, Vanessa?’
‘Vix.’
‘Seriously?’
Silence.
‘Can you tell where we need to go to get out, Vix?’
In silence, Vanessa moved ahead along the corridor. Melinda watched her outline moving away. She grabbed Lucy by the sleeve. ‘Come on.’
Vanessa walked fast, almost jogging. Melinda had no idea where they were, but the sounds of people were getting louder. And there were flashlights flickering in the distance.
‘Vanessa—Vix,’ she hissed through her teeth.
The girl stopped. Melinda gave thanks.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’
‘I can smell fresh air.’
The lights came on. In the distance she heard people cheering. Melinda blinked, dazzled. As soon as she could she looked around. There was nothing here she recognised.
And then the alarm started up again. This one she recognised, it was the one they had used when she had tried to break free.
‘We need to go up,’ said Vanessa. She hesitated. ‘I don’t know where the stairs are.’
Melinda managed to stop herself from making a comment.
At that moment there was a shout from a corridor junction further along. ‘Found them!’
A double beam laced down the passage and hit Lucy. Vanessa ducked between the two of them.
Up? She could sense the electrics in the floor above. ‘We need to get out of this corridor.’ Another twin beam burned a hole in her clothes and she shivered as the power tried to flow through her. The beam flicked off. She smelled singed cotton and ozone.
Lucy must have heard her and smashed through a door. They piled through into an office.
‘Well done,’ said Vanessa looking around. ‘Now we’re really trapped.’
There was no other exit.
‘Just shut up a minute,’ said Melinda.
‘Shut up yourself.’
‘Please, Vix, I need to concentrate,’ Melinda said and Vanessa didn’t reply. ‘Lucy, can you rip open the light switch?’ It was done in a moment. Melinda stuck both hands into the wiring and zapped it. She didn’t do it at maximum; she didn’t want to hurt anyone else.
The lights went out again.
Cries of disappointment and anger went off in the distance.
‘Just keep by the door and don’t let them in.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Vanessa.
‘Try not to kill anyone.’
‘Spoilsport.’ And then she was gone, out the door. Melinda sighed. The next floor up still had power, which was what she wanted. The buzzing from the lights and power cables tended to blur out any image of people, but she knew they were there. Which was when she noticed the gaps between the walls. Not every wall, but the one running behind this office—all the offices on this corridor—had a space of a couple of feet. The power cables were pegged on to each of them. The gap went up.
There was a man’s cry then a burner beam slashed along the passage—she could see it clearly.
‘No stairs needed,’ said Melinda. ‘Can you get through the back wall?’
The electronic shadow of Lucy pushed the furniture out of the way, dug her fingers into the wall and ripped away a panel. Another beam flashed and there was that unearthly howl again. Whatever they’d done to her, something had changed her vocal chords too.
‘It goes up,’ said Melinda. She shouted, ‘Vix! Time to go!’
A voice floated back. ‘Be right there, Mother.’
‘Cow,’ muttered Melinda.
‘Heard that.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Melinda. She squeezed into the gap after Lucy. They couldn’t see what they were doing, but there were timber crosspieces that provided foot and handholds. If they could have seen it would have been easy.
There was no sign of Vanessa.
‘Keep going,’ said Melinda. ‘There’s another couple of floors of this.’
Light poked through the occasional gap but it was never enough to really help. Five minutes later they reached the top. Melinda tried to see which was the best side to exit, but in the end she just chose the one on the opposite side to the entrance. Lucy made a hole and they tumbled through one after the other.
‘Can you rip the light switch out please?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘They’ll know what floor we’re on if you kill the lights again.’
‘Yeah, good thinking.’
She looked round this new office. It was bigger than the one below, with three desks. The drawers hung open. The cupboards had been stripped of their contents.
‘What’s going on?’
‘They’re getting out.’
‘Because of us?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Perhaps we’re being rescued.’
Melinda gave a grim smile then glanced at the hole in the wall. ‘Where’s bloody Vanessa?’
She went to the door and listened. There was noise of bustling and shouting but it wasn’t close. The door wasn’t locked and she looked out. The corridor was similar to the ones below, but here they were carpeted and had pictures on the wall. ‘Very homely,’ muttered Melinda.
She glanced back at one of the desks; her electrical sense had noticed the ironwork in its construction. There was a drawer with a short iron rod running through it. She pulled it out and handed it to Lucy. ‘Can you get that bit of metal out?’
Lucy crushed the wood until the joints snapped, then ripped it apart. She handed Melinda the rod. ‘Magic wand?’
Melinda shrugged. ‘So I can put power through it if I need to zap something.’
Lucy nodded and her lips creased into a smile. ‘Magic wand.’
Whatever it looked like, its weight was strangely comforting.
She peeked out again. Still nothing. ‘We can’t wait any longer,’ she said. ‘They’ll be coming after us soon enough.’
The two of them stepped out into the corridor.
‘Which way?’ said Lucy.
Melinda wondered when she had been promoted to chief decision maker. ‘I don’t know. Maybe if we head for where there’s the most noise, but try not to actually bu
mp into anyone.’
‘It’ll be the last thing they bump into for a while,’ said Lucy.
‘Maybe we should try not to hurt anyone?’
‘Vanessa was right, Melinda,’ said Lucy. ‘They are happy to kill us. What level of not-hurt-them are you aiming for? Not quite enough to stop them hurting us?’
‘Why does this have to be my decision?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘Someone has to make decisions; you ever tried to make a choice by committee?’
‘But why me?’
‘You started it when you made the first one. That made it your job.’
‘But I’m not the one who does that, Chloe makes the decisions.’
‘Who’s Chloe?’
Melinda shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter, she wanted to work in the Purity.’
‘Really? She must be a total arsehole.’
‘No, she’s not, she’s great.’ Melinda wasn’t quite sure how they’d got into this conversation; standing in the middle of a corridor, in the middle of the place they’d been held captive for weeks.
‘Whatever.’ Lucy glanced both ways. ‘Either way is as good as the other as far as I’m concerned.’
‘This way,’ said Melinda and headed towards the most noise. She held her iron rod as if it really was a magic wand she could use to defend herself. Lucy followed, lumbering along at her shoulder.
The carpet muffled the sound of their feet, but the noise of the crowd grew to a point where they couldn’t have been heard anyway. As they approached the next junction, someone crossed in front of them moving quickly. And didn’t look their way.
Melinda panicked and pushed open a door they were passing and went inside. She barely registered the sign on the door saying ‘SECURITY MONITORING’.
Her electrical sense was overwhelmed for a moment. The room was full of electrical equipment and ranks of monitors curving round a single chair. The man in the chair stared at them.
Melinda raised her wand. ‘Try to alert anyone and I’ll zap you.’
He didn’t move.
‘Tell me you understand.’
‘I understand,’ he said clearly.
‘Can you tie him up, Lucy?’
‘Pleasure.’
She walked over to the chair which was mounted on a small pedestal. Even sitting down he was taller than her.
‘Where do you keep your spare cables?’ she said.
He stared at her—was it possible the ones at this level didn’t know what was beneath them?
Lucy snapped her hand around his forearm. He cried out in pain. ‘Got your attention now? Spare cables?’
He still didn’t respond.
Lucy frowned. The creasing of her forehead was impressive. ‘I’ve heard,’ she said in a conversational tone, ‘that knocking someone unconscious with a blow to the head is really quite serious. It usually means they’ve got a cracked skull. That might not be true, but unless you tell me where your spare cables are we’ll put that to the test. I’m game, are you?’
Hesitantly he pointed to a drawer at the bottom of a storage unit behind her.
‘Come on,’ she said and pulled him off the chair. He staggered as she yanked him across the room. The drawer did contain spare cables, and Lucy set about tying him up.
Meanwhile Melinda was staring at the screens. It looked like organised chaos, with people putting papers through shredders in one shot. Burning containers outside—she noted the snow, they weren’t dressed for that—people piling into coaches. It looked like there must be a couple of hundred people working here. A huge operation.
Then she saw a camera that was trained on what seemed to be the reception and groaned.
She closed her eyes. ‘Untie him, Lucy.’
‘What? No. I’ve been practising my knots. I used to be good at them.’
‘Untie him!’
‘No!’
‘Look.’ She pointed at the screen showing the reception area. Where Vanessa lay on the ground wriggling as she tried to get free of her bonds. She was screaming. Five goons had their guns aimed at her. Real guns.
‘Stupid cow,’ said Lucy.
Melinda looked over. She half-expected Lucy to claim they should leave without Vanessa, but she was untying the guard.
The energy went out of Melinda.
Episode VI: Utopia
Chapter 1
Chloe
Eleven miles in the snow to a destination she only had the vaguest idea of: Alderley Edge. The only thing she knew about it was from a novel she had read when she was young, about King Arthur and weird Norse creatures. That scene where the children were crawling through a tight underground tunnel. She hated that. She could feel the claustrophobia of it just remembering it.
Her mind was wandering. She had been running for an hour at least and was way out beyond the edge of the city. The roads were empty and the scenery consisted of snow-covered fields and woods composed of skeletal trees. She hadn’t eaten and she was starving.
But the idea that she might have found her friend at last kept her energised, kept her moving.
She knew Alderley Edge was near the town of Wilmslow—in the old days that was where all the rich people lived—and there were signposts to Wilmslow. She had got herself on to the motorway. It combined a flat terrain with gentle curves which meant she could manage her best speed. She had no idea how fast she was going. The only problem was the occasional car buried beneath the snow.
When the plague first caused trouble the cars had been cleared from the roads, but a point was reached when there weren’t even people enough to do that. So even now there were cars, rusted and rotted, that littered the roads least used. Like motorways.
It was dark now, of course, and the clouds prevented the moon casting any light, but the signs were huge. She found the sign to Wilmslow and left the motorway. The road she was following dived down into a tunnel. There were lights above it and she could see the runways of the airport. She came to a halt.
The military ran the airport, and she did not fancy the tunnel.
There was no good choice. At least in the tunnel she could use her acoustic sense properly. She did not want to catch the attention of the army, or air force. She had no idea which used it—or even if they were different anymore. They were not in the public eye very much.
So she went under. She dialled her speed back to a jog, there was no snow here but she was so light on her feet she still had to click her fingers to make enough noise to see by. There were two tunnels side by side; each would have taken two lanes of traffic, had a rectangular cross-section and was made from concrete. They carried sound very well.
There was a gentle curve that stopped her from seeing too far. It wasn’t a long tunnel and she made it all the way through in about a minute, although as she approached the exit she could see that the road was lit by artificial light and the tunnel started again after another fifty yards or so. She came to a stop.
If the road was lit, somebody would be watching.
There might be no snow in the tunnel but it was just as cold as outside. There was a wind blowing through. There was no choice. She could go back and try to find a way round the airport but that would cost her time. Perhaps a lot of time if she got lost again.
But this was only fifty yards. If she took it at full speed she could cover it in less than five seconds. They wouldn’t be expecting her and by the time they reacted she would be gone.
She backed up until she couldn’t see the exit anymore. Then she ran. Leaning forward so she was in a constant, barely controlled, fall.
In moments she rocketed out on to the snow and her shoes immediately slipped. She tumbled forward and her wings strained against the coat, desperately trying to help balance her. She felt the cloth rip a little. But she was trained to fall, so she went over into a ball. Her shoulders hit the ground. She turned over and thrust upwards. Her jujitsu-trained responses were too powerful and she shot into the air.
It took her barely a moment to realise she was
going to hit the wall above the tunnel.
She flattened her body out, tilted her head down and spread her arms to provide balance. Her wings tore at the coat again but she held them flat. Her angle forced her flight into a new trajectory and she shot just beneath the overhang. She pulled up her legs and landed at a run, then launched herself again.
That gave them a show, I hope someone was watching.
Except she didn’t, she hoped the lights were just a feature of having the runways lit up. But even as she thought it she knew it to be a lie. The runways had not been lit, only that space.
The second tunnel was shorter. Moments later she was out of it and running towards Wilmslow again. For the next mile the road curved through fields and then into Wilmslow proper. There was no one about. She had not expected there to be; there might be a small conclave of people somewhere but there would not be many. She reached the centre and found a sign pointing south to Alderley Edge and set off again.
Then she heard wolves. Since the cold winters came there had been a solid bridge every winter between the British Isles and the mainland. Wolves, wild boar and bears had made a comeback after the human population was reduced. Although some said there had been wolves in Scotland anyway and the weather drove them south.
She made her way south through Wilmslow and there was a short stretch of countryside. She had wondered how she was going to find the right place in Alderley Edge, but high up, atop a ridge—the Edge itself—was a mass of lights. She guessed that to be the place.
Chapter 2
Mitchell
With Graham’s insistence on the revised schedule, there had been no time for preparation. The only thing Mitchell was grateful for was that night had fallen by the time they arrived.
The cavalcade of police vehicles wound their way up through the deserted streets of Alderley Edge. The place they were heading was based in an old manor building. The road shrank in width to a single lane and was piled with snow, but from the tyre marks there had been traffic here recently. Some of it heavy.
‘I have deployed men round to the back of the building,’ said Lament. ‘The next turning takes us to the house.’
Mitchell stared out of the window. The walls on each side were old and high. He could see only the roof of another building which looked modern.
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