The guard who had remained in the room had already opened the door and was peering out into the corridor beyond. A deafening klaxon began to sound, which was a relief to Kaz as it masked the noise of his chair scraping on the floor as he pushed it back and tried to stand. His limbs felt lumpen and unresponsive, but he forced himself to concentrate and move slowly while the guard’s attention was elsewhere. He knew he might not have much time; he reckoned the blast must have shut down the machine that had been forcing him to speak, but he didn’t know how long it would stay off. Maybe it was rebooting or something and any moment he would start talking again.
‘Oi, Jim, what’s going on?’ shouted the guard at the door, trying to get answers from a fellow guard who was running past.
Kaz heard the shouted reply. ‘Dunno, some sort of explosion. Stay with the prisoner.’
Jim’s footsteps echoed away as the guard turned to look back at Kaz, who had managed to lift the chair above his head but hadn’t managed to cover the ground between him and the door. The guard smiled and raised his gun.
‘I don’t think so. Sit down, sunshine.’
Kaz felt foolish, standing there in an empty room with a chair over his head. He had no choice but to place the chair back on the floor and sit down again. He grinned and shrugged. ‘Can’t blame me for trying.’
The guard advanced towards Kaz, his face making it clear that he could and would do exactly that. But before he could administer the slap that was so obviously imminent, the door swung open to reveal the man who had been in charge at the house, the one the young girl had called ‘lord’.
‘Leave us,’ said the man.
The guard turned on his heels, snapped to attention, and smartly stepped outside. He was pulling the door closed behind him when the klaxon stopped blaring and a voice echoed across the PA.
‘All guards remain at your posts,’ announced the voice. ‘There has been an explosion but it is outside the compound, I repeat the explosion is not within the compound. It is either a coincidence or a diversion, so remain vigilant.’
The guard paused, the door still half open. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘That was …’ He turned to look at the newcomer, slowly raising his gun as he began to realise that something here was not quite right.
‘Yes, that was my voice,’ said the man. ‘Confusing, isn’t it?’ Then there was a flash of light and the guard crumpled to the floor. The man then grabbed the guard’s feet and pulled him inside the room. As the man leaned out of the doorway, scanning the corridor outside to make sure he was unobserved, Kaz reached down and snatched the guard’s gun.
When the man closed the door and turned back into the room, Kaz was aiming the gun square at his chest.
‘This is the central laboratory, the most secure place in the building. You will be safe in here,’ said Lord Sweetclover, already turning to leave.
Dora did not want him to go, but she would never have thought to question his decision, or beg him to stay.
Sweetclover barked as he passed the young guard who stood inside the door. ‘You, what’s your name?’
‘Simon, sir.’
‘You guard this door with your life, Simon, understand?’
The guard – little more than a boy really, thought Dora, as she noticed his wispy moustache – straightened his posture and barked, ‘Yes, sir.’
Sweetclover left the room through the two swing doors without looking back at Dora. She heard the doors lock shut.
Left alone with a strange boy in a strange room, Dora paced restlessly, scrutinising instruments and computer terminals, never touching anything but wishing that she could. One wall was lined with strange glass cabinets, their frosted interiors containing shelves laden with glass tubes; another featured a huge mirror which hung alongside a large metal door with a kind of wheel set into the middle of it; the bulk of the room was taken up by long tables. In one corner stood a chair, adorned with leather straps and metal appendages. This was the only thing in the room which caused Dora to shudder. It did not seem to her that anything good would befall a person who found themselves strapped into such a contraption.
‘Who are you and what is going on?’ asked Kaz.
The man shook his head and smiled, unintimidated by the gun. ‘Same old Kaz,’ he said, almost fondly. He slowly put the backpack over his shoulder.
‘How do you know my name?’
‘There’s no time for small talk. The bomb won’t keep them occupied for long. We have to move quickly and quietly. I’ll explain later. All you need to know is that I’m here to help and you have to trust me.’
Kaz shook his head. ‘I don’t have to do anything.’
‘Look, I understand,’ said the man. ‘You’re confused and angry, you don’t know what’s happening and you want to run. I get it. If I were in your shoes, I’d feel exactly the same way. But the truth is that without my help you have absolutely no chance of escape. They’ll pick you up, put you back in front of the mind probe, let you finish your story and then, when they’ve got everything they need, they’ll kill you.’
Kaz stepped forward and rested the cold metal gun barrel against the man’s forehead. ‘I don’t believe you. This is some kind of trick. You’re the man who brought me here, why would you let me go?’
The man’s face blurred and shimmered. Kaz recoiled in horror as he found himself standing face to face with … himself.
‘Chameleon shroud,’ said his doppelgänger as his face shimmered again, this time turning into that of Dora. ‘It’s a disguise, see? I’m not Sweetclover, the man who brought you here, but if I look like him, these guards will follow my orders. I can simply march you straight out the front door, get it?’
Kaz was beginning to waver. ‘So who are you, then?’ he asked as the man shimmered back into Lord Sweetclover.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he said. ‘For now, can we go, please?’
After a second’s consideration Kaz nodded. ‘Don’t suppose I have any choice.’ He lowered the gun.
‘Don’t suppose you do.’ The man stooped down and began rifling through the guard’s pockets.
‘Is he dead?’ asked Kaz warily.
The man stood, holding a chipped key-card. ‘OK, we have three things we need to do before we can leave. First, we need to get the recording from the mind probe. We can’t let them keep your life story, it’ll cause too much disruption. Second, we need to find the chip they’ve taken from Jana. Then we need to round up the girls.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Kaz. ‘Can you at least tell me your name?’
The man smiled. ‘You can call me Steve.’
The real Sweetclover was feeling a lot less cheerful as he surveyed the wreckage of what looked like a very expensive motorbike, strewn across the road outside the complex’s main gate. Around him stood five short men in heavy black riot gear – Kevlar helmets and chest plates, black uniforms and heavy boots. They carried very big guns and their faces were obscured by mirrored visors on their helmets, but their uniformity went beyond their clothing and equipment.
Unlike the rest of the guards, these five stood motionless as if reserving their formidable power for when it was most needed. All roughly the same height and build, they stood with exactly the same posture. Even a person accustomed to facing riot police would have found these men unusually unsettling, their lack of individuality a physical manifestation of something sinister and repressive.
Sweetclover turned to the gatekeeper, who was eyeing the five riot guards nervously. ‘And nobody’s approached the gate since it blew?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ replied the twitchy gatekeeper.
‘And there’s nothing on any of the perimeter cameras, all the other guard posts have checked in?’
‘That’s correct, sir.’
Sweetclover shook his head, puzzled. ‘Then why blow it up, if it’s not a diversion? Motorbikes don’t just spontaneously combust.’
The gatekeeper cleared his throat and nerv
ously offered an opinion. ‘Perhaps it’s a warning, sir?’
Sweetclover shook his head, annoyed. ‘Of what? No, while we’re standing here gawping at this wreckage somebody is doing something they don’t want us to know about. Check the perimeter again. And you’ – he gestured to the riot guards – ‘come with me.’
Sweetclover turned on his heels and began walking back to the main building followed by the five hulking soldiers, who, although not marching, still walked in step. After a few paces, Sweetclover stopped dead.
‘Unless …’ He turned back to address the gatekeeper. ‘Has anybody come through the gate in the last half an hour?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Not a delivery van, or a courier of any kind?’
‘No, sir, you were the last person through the gate.’
Sweetclover nodded and turned back to the building, took one stride, paused and turned back again.
‘You mean when I returned with the prisoners two hours ago in the vans?’
Now it was the gatekeeper’s turn to look puzzled. He shook his head. ‘No, sir, when you came through twenty minutes ago. On foot.’
Sweetclover was running back towards the complex before the gatekeeper had finished talking.
The sound of five pairs of heavy boots running in perfect unison echoed off the cold, white walls behind him.
Steve swiped the card through the reader, tapping his foot impatiently as it processed the card’s ID. Before the door had slid even halfway open, he had turned sideways and slipped through into the room beyond. Kaz followed quickly, keeping his eyes on the corridor as he backed inside, making sure they weren’t discovered.
The door closed behind him and Kaz turned to see a darkened room with a huge array of electrical equipment ranged across one wall. Lights and monitors flickered, needles vibrated in semicircular dials.
‘What’s that?’ he asked Steve, who had rushed to the bank of machinery and was typing a series of commands into a keyboard.
‘Mind probe,’ he replied as he typed. ‘Built from scratch using local equipment. Local in time, I mean. A normal mind probe, one from the period in which it was invented, is about the size of a small briefcase … ah, got it.’
The machinery whirred and clicked and a small solid-state hard drive popped out. Steve grabbed it, threw it on the floor and shot it with the stubby light gun he had used to disable the guard earlier. The drive smoked and buckled as its destroyer looked up at Kaz and smiled.
‘One down. Now they have no record of your memories. Your family is safe. For the time being.’
Kaz didn’t think he had any shock left in him, but these words sent a fresh chill through his bones. ‘My family? What you talking about?’
‘No time. Come on, next we need Jana’s chip.’
But as Steve hurried back to the door, Kaz held out a hand and stopped him. ‘They were going to use this information to hurt my dad?’
Steve nodded, impatiently. ‘Only as a way to hurt you. But they can’t because the drive’s fried. As long as we don’t get ourselves recaptured by standing around chatting when we should be running, you’re both safe.’
Kaz shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant. What about the guard who was there? He heard everything. When he wakes up he can report what I said.’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ replied Steve, dismissively. ‘He won’t be telling anyone anything. Now can we go, please?’
As Steve pushed past him and swiped the card to reopen the door, Kaz realised that Steve had never answered his question about whether the guard was dead.
‘Split up,’ yelled Sweetclover as he burst through the main doors into the lobby. ‘Sweep the building floor by floor, room by room. If you find the impostor, radio in but don’t wait for back-up. Engage and destroy on sight.’
The five faceless drones walked smoothly, without hurry but also without pause. They broke apart and kept moving in different directions without conferring, moving and thinking as one. As they walked away a thought occurred to their master.
‘I shall remain here at the main desk until contact is made,’ he shouted. Then, more quietly, ‘Don’t want to get myself shot, do I.’
‘What is a labratree?’
Simon the guard looked confused, though whether he was puzzled by the question, or by the fact that it had been asked at all, was hard for Dora to say. ‘I’m sorry, miss?’ he replied, his voice rich with an accent that Dora found strange but not unpleasing. Wherever he was from, it was far from Cornwall.
‘This place. His lordship said it was the “central labratree”. I do not understand what those words mean.’
‘Um, well, it’s a laboratory,’ said Simon, confused by her confusion. ‘Where they do science and stuff.’
‘Séance? Ah, I understand,’ replied the girl with a firm nod of the head designed to make her seem resolute and sensible rather than terrified and confused. ‘This is a place of magic.’
The guard laughed. ‘Might as well be, for all the sense I can make out of it.’
Dora decided that she liked Simon and, realising that the lab was not going to reveal any of its secrets to her, she turned her attention to him.
‘Where are you from?’ she asked bluntly as she sat on a stool close to the door where he stood, no longer at attention.
‘Dulwich, miss.’
Dora shook her head. ‘I do not know this place. And I am not your mistress, my name is Dora.’
‘Um, Dulwich’s in London. So I’m a Londoner, I reckon.’
‘London.’ Dora spoke the name as if it were a curse. For some of the boys in her village – and some of the girls too – London had signified excitement and adventure. Her older brother, James, had run off to London on his fifteenth birthday and nothing had been heard of him since. But for Dora it had represented everything she wished to avoid. He father had once told her of a visit to the capital that he had made when he was a young boy, seeking his fortune. To hear him tell it, London was a squalid place of filth, disease and moral decay. It was also populated by strange peoples from around the world, which Dora supposed explained the boy’s aspect. She had heard of blackamores but Simon was the first she had ever encountered. She resisted the urge to approach him and touch his face and hair, feeling that it would be rude to give in to her curiosity.
‘I have never been to London,’ she said. ‘What is it like?’
Simon shrugged. ‘Like it is on the telly really. My part of town was banged up, yeah. No money, lots of drugs and gangs and shit. But, you know, it’s home. My mum and my sis are still there. It’s all right, I s’pose. But when I got this job, I can’t lie, I was happy to get out.’
Dora made a mental list of all the things she had not understood about Simon’s answer and began to work through them one by one.
‘What is telly?’ she asked.
As they approached a lobby that marked the junction of two wings of the building, the man disguised as Lord Sweetclover shoved Kaz back against the wall and raised a finger to his lips. They heard heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor ahead of them. Kaz held his breath, desperate to make no sound as their unseen pursuer stalked them.
Steve reached down and grabbed the gun Kaz was carrying. Kaz held on tight and scowled his refusal to let go, but Steve whispered, ‘Play prisoner.’ Kaz reluctantly relinquished the weapon, which Steve shoved in his pocket before grabbing him by the shoulder and pushing him forward, out into the lobby and plain sight.
The footsteps had been made by a short, wide man encased head to toe in riot armour. Upon noticing Kaz and Steve, the guard stopped dead and turned to regard them from behind his mirrored visor. There was a predatory stillness to him that made Kaz deeply uneasy.
‘Good,’ said Steve, pushing Kaz ahead of him towards the stationary sentry. ‘You can help me get this prisoner to a secure location …’
The bluff didn’t work. Kaz saw the guard’s arm begin to rise, registered the heavy gun it held, realised that there was a good
chance he was about to die and felt a huge surge of fear-fuelled adrenaline coursing through him. His stomach felt empty, his head felt light. Fear paralysed him. Then he felt Steve pushing down on his shoulder, understood what he was being asked to do, forced himself to relax and crumpled to the floor in a heap.
There was a flash of light above his head. Before he could gather his wits, Kaz was being dragged back to his feet and hurried past the twitching guard, who lay sprawled against the wall, his gun lying useless in his outstretched hand. Steve paused and pulled the guard’s helmet off. Upon seeing the guard’s face he nodded, as if confirming something to himself.
Kaz didn’t know what he would have expected to see beneath the helmet, but it certainly wasn’t a bald head and face covered in elaborate indigo tattoos. The guard’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
‘Down here, quickly, we haven’t much time,’ said Steve as he handed the gun back to Kaz. ‘My disguise doesn’t seem to be fooling anybody.’
Kaz ran after Steve and the gun almost fell out of his hand, so badly was it shaking with excitement and fear.
‘Can’t we make a break for it?’ he gasped.
‘I told you, no,’ replied Steve as he skidded to halt outside a heavy door. ‘We need the chip and the girls.’ He swiped the card, the door slid open and they slipped into a stairwell. Steve led them up the stairs at a run.
They were two storeys up when they heard a door crash open somewhere below them. Heavy footsteps echoed upwards. Without breaking his stride Steve reached into his backpack and pulled out a small round object, about the size of a casino chip. He stuck it to the wall. Kaz noticed that it shimmered and vanished as he passed.
TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Page 5