‘Jiao,’ said Pan.
‘Yes, Jiao.’ Wei-Lin’s face twisted and for a moment it seemed she might start crying again. But she composed herself, though it obviously took considerable effort.
‘I try not to think about my brother, Danny,’ said Pan. ‘I figure I need to focus on all this first. When we get out, then I’ll think about him. I will see him again, Wei-Lin. And you’ll see your sister.’
‘Your intuition?’
Pan shrugged. It wasn’t, but it didn’t hurt for Wei-Lin to think so.
‘There’s something I didn’t tell you about Jiao,’ Wei-Lin continued. ‘There didn’t seem much point when I thought she was dead.’ She took a deep breath. ‘She was always a sickly kid, you know? Infections, anything that was going around, she’d pick up. It got to be she’d be in hospital every couple of months, but they never found anything. Until a year and a half ago. A rare blood disease.’ Wei-Lin swallowed hard. ‘Affects one person in a hundred million, apparently. Well, Jiao had won the lottery, but it wasn’t a prize you’d want. She’s dying, Pan.’ This time tears ran down her face and she did nothing to stem their flow. ‘A year or two, maybe longer.’
Pan felt her own eyes fill with tears. She wanted to reach out to touch her friend’s hand, but thought that if she did, they’d both tip into some kind of emotional abyss where recovery would be almost impossible. So she remained still.
‘It tore our family apart,’ Wei-Lin continued. ‘Mum . . . she kind of shrivelled, physically and emotionally. Dad . . .’ She rubbed her eyes and sighed. ‘He did what he always does. Threw himself into the problem, heart and soul. Gave up his career as a research scientist; apparently he was in line for a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, but he walked away to devote himself to this disease. Mum spent all her time at Jiao’s bedside. Dad buried himself in medical books and journals. And in the process our family drifted apart.’
What could Pan say under these circumstances? I’m sorry? It was better to say nothing. But Pan’s heart twisted at the unfairness of it and the emotional trauma Wei-Lin was suffering. How would that feel, to think her sister had died in the plague? There must have been an element of relief to know her suffering had been quick, that it was now all over. Time to grieve and remember. But now she knew Jiao was out there somewhere and the clock was still counting down her life. No wonder Wei-Lin was angry. It was a miracle she was able to function at all.
There was that guilt again, the knowledge that Pan had let Wei-Lin down. Those small acts of kindness, the bread left on her pillow, the unconditional support when that boy had followed her and Jen back to the dormitory. Wei-Lin’s friendliness, given without reservation and with no expectation of anything in return. And how had Pan repaid her? By cutting her out, by not even being a shoulder to cry on when Wei-Lin must have been in desperate need. There were too many things to do. Pan’s thoughts were anguished. Too many demands on my attention. Here was another vow. When this is over, I will be a friend. I won’t just take, I will give. And the first gift would be reuniting Wei-Lin with her sister.
‘You will see her again,’ said Pan. ‘Or I will die trying.’
Wei-Lin smiled, but weariness was engraved on her face.
‘Forgive me, Pan, but from where I’m sitting, it isn’t looking likely we’ll get out of here.’ She gestured towards the dark face of the tunnel. ‘We’re trapped, and I assume that at some stage tomorrow, they’ll open those doors and send in the troops. I’ve got eight arrows and Jen has one knife. Maybe we’ll get lucky and take out a few. But the odds are impossible and you know it.’
‘That’s why we’re getting out of here first,’ said Pan. ‘Seizing the initiative. We’re not waiting for them, we’re taking the battle to them.’
‘Stirring words, Pan. But just words, in the end. How are we going to do that?’
Pan reached into her pocket and pulled out a tuft of red, wiry hair.
‘With specialist help,’ she replied.
Eric’s dreams were wild and chaotic, but as Pan had hoped, they were centred around the explosion in the staff’s quarters. He was reliving the moments just before and after the detonation and for a while Pan simply observed.
He sat outside the dormitory, gazing into the dark. Waiting. Eric’s thoughts were a jumble of images and words. It was difficult to sort them into chronological order. Pan picked up on some of the preparations he had made – a cocktail of chemicals in a plastic container. A simple detonator. Lighting a trail of petrol. But that was hazy. Then running back to the dormitory, a wild song in his heart. The anticipation of flames blooming, growing, spreading, and the delicious knowledge that it was his. This raw elemental power he had brought to life, the deep visceral connection between himself and fire and the destruction it could wreak. He was giddy with an excitement almost sexual in its intensity.
The seconds ticked by and the dark stubbornly refused to change. Eric’s muscles were twitching and he was mentally counting down. It should have happened by now. It should have happened by now.
Then the first glorious blush against the night. A glow that from his perspective was no bigger than a thumbnail. But growing, growing. Almost immediately, the sound-waves reached him. A muffled boom that signalled an acceleration in the fire’s growth. The flames soared, diminished and then soared again. Another explosion, more violent this time, and the thumbnail bloomed into a red flower unfurling into the night. Spreading its beauty.
Eric was on his feet, fingernails digging into his palms, eyes fixed on the dancing flames. He couldn’t tear his gaze away, even when the first students poured out of the dormitories. Shouts and cries. Alarm. A few flame torches being lit, pathetic sparks that couldn’t compete with the main show. Students were running past him and still he couldn’t move.
Then: a realisation and, with it, the unfreezing of his mind and body. No one should have a better view than him. That wasn’t fair. So he ran, delirium in his veins, and soon overtook most of those rushing towards the fire. Eric was shouting, too, an incoherent outpouring of joy.
A mass of people, staff and students. But Eric stood and watched. There was no thought in his head about why he had done this. Jen and her supposed birthday fireworks were as inconsequential as all the people around him and why they had been drawn to this spectacle. Everything was unimportant except for this moment. Him and his eyes and the bright, fierce monster he had created.
Pan delved a little deeper into Eric’s dreams. She felt certain his intense focus wouldn’t allow him to be aware of anything. Just as in the waking world, he was too obsessed with the dream version to detect her mind moving quietly and systematically through his. Pan was a burglar of thoughts, but to all intents and purposes, Eric wasn’t in residence and she could move freely.
‘I need a pen and paper. Now.’
Pan briefly wondered why she hadn’t thought of this before, hadn’t been prepared. But the headache was swelling, a blossoming of pain as spectacular as the fire she had just witnessed. She wasn’t even aware of Wei-Lin scrambling around in the lab to find what she needed. Pan kept her eyes closed. I must fight this, she thought. Pain is something that the mind can banish, if the will is strong enough. Cast it out.
But it didn’t help. Pan was aware of Wei-Lin putting something in front of her. She opened her eyes, but even that simple act hurt. Her hand picked up the pencil and she scribbled while she still had the energy. All she wanted to do was sleep, find somewhere where the red-hot needles behind her eyes couldn’t prod and prick. But she had to do this first. She was sure she wouldn’t remember afterwards.
‘Wake everyone up, Wei-Lin,’ she mumbled. ‘Ask Sanjit to find these things somewhere. Tell him to hurry.’
‘Are you okay?’
In the murky corners of her mind, Pan wailed and screamed, but her body was still.
‘Pan. Pan.’
The voice was insistent and she wanted it to go away. She had never wanted anything to go away so badly in her life. But it wouldn’t. A hand
shook her arm and the single syllable kept being repeated close to her ear.
‘Pan. Pan.’ Then other words. ‘Pan. We need you.’
She opened her eyes and flinched at the dim light, closed them again. The hand took her by the arm again.
‘Leave me alone,’ she mumbled. She wanted to say other things. I’m no use to you at the moment. I need time to recover. I can’t. I just can’t. But she had no energy to translate the words into sounds. It was too hard.
So she opened her eyes again and tried to lift her head from the bench. There were people around her, but they were little more than hazy outlines. Someone leaned in closer. It might have been Sanjit, but she couldn’t be sure.
‘Are these the ingredients for a bomb, Pan? Tell me.’
She nodded and the pain flared. She rested her head on her arms and closed her eyes. Voices washed over her and she wished they’d stop, but a part of her mind registered the conversation.
‘She’s totally out of it. I don’t think we’ll get much sense out of her.’
‘Can we get hold of these things she’s scribbled down?’
‘No idea. But this is a lab so there should be chemicals around. Plus, there are cleaning materials in the storage cupboards. Take Ruby and see what you can find.’
‘This diagram. It looks like it’s meant to be the bomb’s casing. No idea about the detonator. But we’ll need something better than a simple container. We need something that will channel the blast in the right direction, focus its energy.’
‘Can you rig this up, Sanjit? Assuming we get the materials?’
‘I’ll try.’
The words finally merged into meaningless babble. Pan was dimly aware of being lifted but then time, like the floating words, ceased to have meaning.
When she woke, she was lying on a bed in one of the rooms and Jen was sitting cross-legged on the bed opposite. Pan struggled to get upright, worried the slightest movement might bring the pain back to life. But her head was relatively clear, only a dull ache deep behind her eyes. Jen watched her sit up, but didn’t say anything. She held up a lock of red hair and fixed Pan with a stony stare.
‘Did you get all the ingredients?’ Pan asked.
‘You’ve been rummaging around in someone’s head again, right?’ said Jen. ‘Dipstick Eric, our resident bomb expert.’
‘Yes. But that’s not important. Did you get the ingredients?’
‘I think so. Sanjit said he couldn’t get all the stuff you listed, but thinks he’s found reasonable substitutes for those he couldn’t.’
‘Has he built the bomb?’
‘Working on it as we speak.’
Pan swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tried to stand. She wobbled a little and had to put one hand down to steady herself, but on the second attempt she managed to take a couple of steps without faltering.
‘You don’t seem happy, Jen,’ she observed.
‘I’m not.’
‘Why?’
Jen got to her feet in one easy movement and pressed the lock of hair into Pan’s hand.
‘You were supposed to be guarding Morgan,’ she said. ‘You didn’t. While you were off having fun in someone else’s head, he was escaping.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘He’s gone, Pandora. And we have no idea where.’
Chapter 19
The team was gathered around the bench in the bottom-floor lab when Jen and Pan joined them. Sanjit was working while the others watched. All heads rose as the girls entered the room.
‘Welcome back, Pan,’ said Nate. His smile was broad.
‘I’m sorry about Dr Morgan,’ said Pan. ‘I thought he was asleep. I didn’t think he’d . . .’
‘Too late to worry about it now,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing he can do to us. He’s probably hiding, maybe back in the Infirmary, waiting for rescue. We should just leave him.’
‘That’s beside the point,’ said Jen. ‘She was meant to be watching him and . . .’
‘Wei-Lin’s right,’ said Karl. ‘Spilled milk. And go easy, Jen. Pan got the recipe for a bomb, at considerable personal cost. That gives us a chance. Without her, we wouldn’t have one. So I reckon she’s ahead of the game.’
Jen didn’t reply, but folded her arms and tapped one foot on the floor. She’s not convinced, Pan thought. And maybe she’s right. I could at least have asked someone – Nate, perhaps – to watch Dr Morgan while I went into Eric’s mind. Now there’s another element over which we have no control. And there are too many of those already.
‘How’s it going, Sanjit?’ Pan asked. She moved closer to the bench and peered over Sam’s shoulder. Sanjit was decanting a liquid into a cleaner’s bucket, Pan’s notes to his right.
‘Chemistry was never my favourite science,’ said Sanjit without looking away from what he was doing. ‘Not compared to physics and maths. But I think I remember enough.’ He tapped the list of ingredients. ‘This is rather clever. As far as I can tell, an electrical charge would cause these chemicals to undergo an exothermic reaction. A sort of chain reaction, producing considerable heat and also, more importantly, kinetic energy.’ He took up another bottle from a range to his left and peered into it. ‘Couldn’t get all the ingredients, but actually I think I’ve improved Eric’s original formula with some substitutes of my own. Seems he was less of a chemist than me.’
‘So, it’ll work as a bomb?’ said Wei-Lin.
‘Ah,’ Sanjit replied. ‘That’s the tricky bit. You see, Eric, I suspect, was more interested in fire. So when this is ignited, it will produce a blaze, no worries. And an explosion. But we need more than a raging bonfire.’ He turned to Pan. ‘The plan is to blast open those steel doors at the end of the tunnel, right?’
Pan nodded.
‘In which case, we need a way to direct the blast.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘I’ve got an idea. It’s all to do with the casing. Something solid on the outside, but with a gap where the energy can escape. Put it up against the door, with the gap towards the door and we’ll maximise the explosive power, direct it where we want it to go. Me and Nate have ideas. There’s got to be something in the labs. Once I get this mixture right, we’re going searching.’
‘You said it would need an electrical charge,’ said Karl. ‘How are you going to manage that?’
‘I think Eric used a basic detonator. A trail of flammable liquid – petrol maybe. Lit it and waited for it to burn to his bomb and ignite it. We could do that, but I’d prefer a spark. Again, Nate and I’ll look around. There must be torches somewhere. And batteries. I’ll probably be able to rig something up.’
‘How long will this take?’ asked Pan.
Sanjit instinctively glanced at his wrist, but there was no watch there.
‘Couple of hours,’ he said. ‘Assuming we find the stuff we need quickly. Putting it together, going down the tunnel, positioning the device, getting back here – we don’t want to be anywhere close when this stuff goes up – yeah, two hours, three tops.’
‘What time is it now?’ said Pan. The group gazed at her blankly and Pan blushed when she realised the futility of the question. ‘We should’ve taken Dr Morgan’s watch,’ she added.
‘We still could if you hadn’t . . .’ Jen shrugged. ‘Never mind. I’ll go get Ruby. She’s probably got one. And then she can help Sanjit and Nate find what they need.’
‘Where is she?’ asked Pan.
‘Tied up very securely in a room upstairs. Trust me, she won’t get out of those bonds.’
‘Unless Dr Morgan’s released her,’ said Pan.
Jen swore. ‘Come on, Nate. Let’s go.’
The waiting was the worst part. Ruby had, indeed, been where Jen had left her – Dr Morgan might have had the opportunity to release her, but Pan figured he was probably only concerned about his own safety. Jen brought Ruby down to the lab and handed over her watch to Pan. It was seven-fifteen. In The School, students would be eating breakfast, preparing for physical activities p
rior to the start of lessons. Unless, of course, the events of last night – the fire and the invasion of the Infirmary – had panicked the staff and normal routine was suspended. Pan intended to find out. But she still had time to kill before that was possible.
Nate and Sanjit took Ruby with them when they went exploring for materials. She seemed cooperative, almost eager to help. Sam, Karl, Pan, Wei-Lin and Jen sat at the bench or paced the floor when the inaction got to them. Tiredness and adrenaline fought in each of their systems, but adrenaline won.
‘Tell me this, Pan,’ said Sam after fifteen minutes of complete silence. ‘Let’s assume all this works, that the bomb blows a hole in those doors and we get out into the village. What then? There’s probably going to be guards or soldiers waiting for us. Those boats we can see from The School will either be gone or heavily guarded. How are we going to get away?’
Pan rubbed her temples and sighed.
‘The truth, Sam? No idea.’ She stood and walked the length of the room, turned on her heel and retraced her steps. ‘We’ve been making this up as we go along. The elevator, the lab, the tunnel and the doors. So far, we’ve done okay.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘We’re still alive, anyway. I guess we’ll just keep on making shit up. Get through the doors, see what’s out there, deal with the situation. I’d love to say I have a plan. I haven’t.’
There was silence and then Karl laughed.
‘It’s been a blast, though, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive.’
Even Jen smiled. ‘Yeah, I’ll give you one thing, Pandora: you make life interesting. No opportunity to get bored.’ She frowned. ‘Though this situation is getting damn close. Where are those guys? I want to get the hell out of here. Being stuck in this place is starting to rattle me. I want to see the sky. I want to breathe fresh air. Even if it’s just for a while. If I’m going to die, I don’t want it to be down here, cooped up and caged like a rat.’
Pandora Jones: Reckoning Page 17