Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series)

by Gill, J. G.

  “The boss needs to talk to you first,” Stanley said to Vince. He turned to Thomas. “How about you take a seat out here kid?”

  Thomas shrugged and sat down. He really hoped it wouldn’t take long. Stanley knocked, then pushed the door open, as Vince followed closely behind. The man in black was once again sitting at his desk, but this time there were no papers to distract him. Vince had his full attention.

  “So, you’ve brought me the new candidate?”

  “Yeah boss, he’s outside.” Vince could hardly wait to sniff the crisp, new notes of his pay packet.

  “So, tell me a little bit about him,” said the man.

  “Well…he’s small and could easily fit through the window of a house,” said Vince.

  The man nodded approvingly. “What’s his name?”

  “Thomas,” said Vince. “Thomas Winter.”

  The man smiled broadly. “Perfect.”

  Vince frowned – it seemed odd that his boss would make a comment like that – but he decided to let it go. He was getting used to his boss saying strange, unexpected things. Besides, what did he care? As long as he got paid, that was the main thing. The man looked at him, his eyes glowing in the candlelight.

  “Good, you’ve done exactly as I’ve asked.”

  “So do I get paid now?” said Vince.

  “Of course.” The man opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a thick wad of bank notes. He peeled off a single note and placed it on the table in front of Vince. “The remaining money from your first task,” he said. He then peeled a further twenty-one notes from the roll and placed them on the table. “And your payment for the second task.” The man put the rest of the bank roll back into the drawer, firmly closing it, as Vince leant forward and snatched the money from the table.

  “Nice doing business with you,” he smirked.

  “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to speak to your new colleague,” said the man. “Wait in there.” He nodded at the door to the left of his desk.

  “Sure,” said Vince. He walked towards the door, counting and recounting the bank notes as he went. It was more money than he’d ever been paid in his life. He gripped the brass door handle and, without looking up from the money, entered a small lounge. The man waited to hear the click in the latch before turning to Stanley.

  “Show him in,” he said.

  Stanley went to the door, opened it, and beckoned the waiting visitor inside. Thomas stepped over the threshold, taking a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the candlelight. He took one look at the man and screamed in horror.

  “You!

  CHAPTER XI

  I had no idea how long I cried for, but it felt surprisingly good. I cried because I was trapped and alone, with no obvious way out; I cried because I’d lost my dad and the good things I’d once loved about him were no longer true. I cried because I’d lost Bede somewhere in the Old Town and I had no way of contacting him. I even cried about Arlene, my stepmother who would be as worried about Dad as I was.

  I was still sobbing when I heard the unmistakeable clicks and clacks of the giant door unlocking. There were muffled voices too – the man’s icy tones were instantly recognisable, but who was with him? I brushed the hair back from my face, wiped the tears away, and quickly stood up. Any time the door opened was a potential opportunity to escape.

  I crouched in the shadows and waited. I wasn’t exactly sure what my plan of attack would be, but I figured that if I could make like a cat and slide through a gap in the door, I might be able to catch the man off-guard. My heart thudded nervously in my chest as slowly, very slowly, the door began to shift.

  “Now!” I thought, pouncing towards the light.

  My body smacked straight into a solid dark shape. I looked up to see the man about to break into a thunderous laugh.

  “Did you really think I would be that stupid?” he said, grasping my shoulders and pushing me back firmly into the room. He was still holding me as he turned to the man behind him.

  “Stanley, you’ll need to lock that one up. I can’t afford to have him running about.”

  A short, bald man entered, heaving under the strain of a wriggling sack on his back. He disappeared around a corner of the room that I hadn’t even realised was there.

  “Your new roommate Clare,” said the tall man in black. “You may know him already.” He gave a nasty smile.

  I flattened my palm against the wall and guided my way along its curved surface until I’d turned the corner. The dim light made me blink, as I glanced up to see a small window set high in the brickwork above our heads. A sudden thud drew my attention back to the sack-carrier. Stanley had now emptied its contents onto the floor and a small person was struggling to break free from the bindings around his wrists and ankles. I tried to see if I could recognise the prisoner but Stanley was in the way. As I craned my neck, trying to see around him, I heard the heavy, dull clank of iron hitting iron.

  “Done boss, shackled him good!” Stanley clambered awkwardly to his feet, like a new-born elephant figuring out how to use its knees. He brushed past me and I listened to the two sets of feet walking back towards the door. Suddenly, the taller of the two men paused.

  “If you try to escape like that again Clare, I’ll be forced to shackle you as well.”

  I shuddered and drew back into the shadows, listening to the bolts of the locks being driven into their sockets. I turned nervously towards the small figure that was crouched against the wall.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  There was no response, just a guttural, grunting noise that made me wonder if whoever it was had been gagged. At least it would explain why he or she hadn’t been screaming the place down. As I moved closer I could see that the person was actually a boy. One that looked shockingly familiar.

  “Thomas?” I said.

  He glanced up at me from under his floppy blonde fringe, pleading with his eyes for me to remove the strip of fabric that was preventing his mouth from working. I ran to him and began working at the knots. Whoever had tied them knew what they were doing. Finally, after about five minutes, the gag fell away in my hands.

  “What on Earth are you doing here?” I said.

  “I could ask the same of you,” he said. “It’s not exactly the maths room, is it?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. The maths room? Given the last couple of days I’d almost forgotten that I’d ever actually been to school. It seemed to belong to a completely different life that some other girl called Clare was busily having.

  “This is so weird,’ I said as I slumped myself down next to him. “I thought it had something to do with my dad being…” I trailed off, catching myself just before I started spilling the beans. “Why are you here? It doesn’t make sense. And why have they done that?” I said, pointing to the wrist shackle which was fastening him to the wall.

  Thomas gave a long sigh.

  “Sorry. I’m ranting, aren’t I?” I said, suddenly remembering how Bede told me that I did that when I got stressed. “It’s just that…well, this whole thing is so crazy.”

  “Yes, it is quite difficult to explain,” said Thomas, in a tone that didn’t sound anywhere near as freaked out as I felt.

  I looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?” I said slowly. “Do you know what’s going on?” Thomas always had been a bit….well, different at school, but this was a whole new level.

  “Not entirely,” he said, laughing nervously. “But let’s just say that I probably know more than you do at the moment. We’d hoped to tell you in slightly different circumstances, but unfortunately events have conspired against us.”

  “What?” I said. He was making no sense at all now. “Who exactly is ‘we’ and what do you mean about needing to tell me something? This isn’t some weird thing to do with what happened at school the other day is it? You know, with Vince and the BBTs?”

  Thomas laughed so hard he actually snorted.

  “Them? No, I’m afraid not.
That would make things much simpler. Unfortunately, this is slightly more serious than the size of Vince’s biceps or whether or not the rain turns the BBTs’ hair frizzy.”

  I smiled, surprised by his sarcasm.

  “How funny, I had no idea we thought the same way,” I said.

  “Really?” said Thomas, raising his eyebrows. “From where I was sitting they weren’t exactly friends of yours either.”

  I felt myself blush as I remembered how cringe-making it was having “ging-er” screamed at me.

  “Well no,” I agreed. “But if I’d known you thought the same thing, maybe it would have been, I dunno, funnier somehow. I might have been able to laugh about it then, rather than feel like I was going to die with embarrassment.”

  Thomas did laugh then.

  “So, who you were talking about?” I prompted again.

  “Me, and one of my colleagues who I believe you’ve met. Min-Isis?”

  “You know Min?” I said.

  “Yes, very well as it happens. She and I go back a long way.”

  “Oh right, like she’s your aunty or something?” I said.

  “No, not exactly.” Thomas paused for a couple of seconds, biting his bottom lip as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Or how to say it. “Min and I are actually the same age.”

  “What?” I said, yet again. It was lucky I wasn’t paying for word usage. “Umm....that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Min looks like she’s the same age as my stepmother.”

  Thomas laughed, but this time he sounded bitter. “She almost is,” he said.

  Now I was really confused. “Hang on, how do you even know who my

  stepmother is?” I said. Thomas had definitely never been to my house and Arlene’s allergy to teenagers meant that she’d definitely never been to my school. “Either I’m stupider than I thought, or you’re just not making any sense at all,” I said.

  “You’re far from stupid,” said Thomas. “I’m just not explaining this very well. I should start again.”

  I readjusted the leg I’d been sitting on, catching it just before it fell asleep on me, and waited for Thomas to continue.

  “I guess the first thing you need to know is that not everything is entirely as it seems,” said Thomas. “For instance, I am not actually a teenager.” He paused, allowing the words to sink in. “I am, in fact, much older than that.”

  “What, like forty or something?” I said.

  Thomas smiled. “Err, not quite. More like…many thousands of years old.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes.

  “Yeah, right. Me too,” I said.

  “No. I mean it,” said Thomas. I waited for his face to crack and for him to start laughing, but he didn’t.

  “You can’t seriously expect me to believe that?” I said.

  Thomas ignored my question. “Tell me, how’s your ankle, the one that Min repaired?” he said, suddenly catching me off-guard.

  “You, of course. Surely you’ve noticed me watching you?”

  “How do you know about that?” I said. Thomas just shrugged. “C’mon, this has got to be some sort of joke, right?” I continued.

  “This, a joke?” said Thomas, glancing around and the gloomy, dank walls of the prison. “Look, you’ve got every reason to think I’m crazy, I know that, but please, just hear me out.”

  I cast him a sceptical look. On the one hand, the things he was saying were clearly insane. Yet on the other, he knew stuff that he had no logical or obvious way of knowing. I couldn’t help but be curious.

  “So how come you look younger than Arlene and Min if you’re all supposed to be the same age?”

  “We have a choice as to the form we take in this world,” said Thomas. “It depends on what we need to be at any given time.”

  “In this world? This is the world” I said.

  “It’s the world you know Clare, but it’s not the only one”.

  I sighed and shook my head wearily. “Don’t tell me this is something you’ve seen on ‘science-geek’ TV,” I said. Bede loved all that kind of thing too.

  “No, I’m serious. This world that you think you know is only a small part of a much wider picture.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. I could have said that he was making absolutely no sense, but I’d already said it so many times that by that stage that I was beginning to sound like a broken record. Instead I said, “why do you need to be a teenage boy?”

  Thomas squirmed slightly.

  “Well…because…I needed to go to a high school,” he said.

  “Any high school? Why choose ours?” Wiltsdown High wasn’t exactly on the league table of ‘No.1 Great Schools’.

  “I was sent to look for someone.”

  “Who?” I said.

  Thomas paused. “I would have thought that was slightly obvious by now,” he said.

  “It’s about as obvious as ancient hieroglyphics,” I said, frowning.

  “What?” I said, defensively. In the pit of my stomach though, I knew exactly what Thomas was talking about. That day in the maths room, when I’d caught him staring at me before the BBTs had gone on a rampage, was just one example. I edged away from him subconsciously. “You’re seriously creeping me out,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to,” said Thomas quickly. “Like I said, I was sent. I’ve just been doing my job.”

  “That doesn’t actually make it any less creepy,” I said.

  “Clare, I’m on your side, so is Min. You are in extreme danger while we remain in this cell.” His voice was low and flat.

  “Okay, not reassuring!” I said.

  “Look around.” Thomas’s voice was soft, apologetic. “Do you really think this is some sort of accident?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “All I know is that my dad’s mixed up in something pretty bad and he’s gone missing, my stepmother is nowhere to be found and, in the process of looking for them both, I’ve lost my brother somewhere in the Old Town.”

  Thomas’s mouth was set in a thin line. “Clare, you’ve got to understand that this is very different from anything you know and it’s dangerous.”

  I gulped. “So, who exactly was that guy that brought us down here then?” I said. “Min called him ‘Demarge’?”

  Thomas nodded. “He’s the arch-enemy of Min and I and anyone else like us.”

  “She fought with him in the Consus Room,” I said. “I thought I saw…” I trailed off as I realised how crazy the next words would sound if I said them out loud.

  “I know what you saw,” said Thomas.

  “How?” I whispered.

  “Min and I are close. We can sense certain things about each other.”

  “So, how do you explain it then?” I said. “I mean, I saw her literally disintegrate. How can that possibly happen?”

  Thomas took a deep breath, exhaling heavily. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Not yet, anyway. Let’s just say, it’s a trick with light.”

  I frowned. That definitely wasn’t a good enough answer.

  “But…”I began.

  Thomas swiftly intervened.

  “We will explain it to you, just not yet,” he said.

  I scowled, feeling slightly patronised.

  “So what does this guy, Demarge, want with you?” I said.

  Thomas sighed wearily. “He needs me to help him find something – a place, hidden away – that he’s been desperate to find for years.”

  “Is this place somewhere near Wiltsdown?” I asked.

  “In a way,” he said. “You can get to it from Wiltsdown, but the place itself is in a totally different …” Thomas struggled for the right word to explain; “…dimension,” he said finally.

  I frowned, trying to get my head around what he meant. “What’s the place called?” I said.

  “The ‘Slipworld’. It’s where Min and I are from.” Thomas must have been able to tell from the look on my face that I barely had a clue what he was talking about. “You
really need to see it to be able to understand properly,” he said. “And you will.”

  “So what’s so great about the Slipworld?” I said. “Why does Demarge want to go there so badly?”

  “If Demarge could gain access to the Slipworld and find a way to destroy it, he would become extremely powerful.” Thomas paused and looked at me so intensely that I found myself looking away. “Clare, he is very dangerous and he can never be allowed to find out where we live.” He took a breath and continued more gently. “Which brings me to you. Demarge has been looking for you for a long time.”

  “He’s been what?” I said slowly, as a cold shiver sliced down my back. “Why?”

  “Because you have something he needs,” said Thomas.

  “To do with my dad?” I said. “Like information about what he’s been up to?” It was the only thing that made sense.

  “No,” said Thomas carefully. “This has nothing to do with your father, at least not directly. Demarge only needed him when he enlisted the help of Morana.”

  “Morana?” I’d never heard of her before.

  “You know her as Arlene, your stepmother,” said Thomas.

  I shook my head.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong person,” I said. “My stepmother is definitely called Arlene, not Morana.”

  “Believe me, Clare, they are one and the same person,” said Thomas. “We’ve been watching her for a while. She works for Demarge, has done since the beginning.”

  “The beginning?” I said dully.

  Thomas nodded. “Morana is a contemporary of mine and Min’s.”

  I laughed, almost snorting with disbelief.

  “Don’t tell me that she’s supposed to be thousands of years old too?” I said. Arlene had just celebrated her thirty-ninth birthday and was pretty touchy about her age. I cringed as I imagined what she’d say to anyone who dared suggest she was thousands of years old. It wouldn’t be pretty.