They reached the next landing and Steve again swiped the card in an entry coder and pushed Kaz through a door, this time into a long corridor lined with windows on one side and glass-walled cells on the other. The door closed behind them and Steve broke into a run. Kaz followed suit. As they reached the final cell there was a muffled explosion from the stairwell they had just ascended. Kaz looked back at the door and saw smoke and dust billowing upwards behind the glass.
Kaz turned back and saw that Steve had opened the cell and was now kneeling by the single bed it contained, shaking a sleeping girl. Crimson sparks flashed around the pair of them as he did so. Kaz recognised her at once.
‘Jana,’ Steve was saying urgently into the girl’s ear. ‘Jana, wake up, you need to wake up now.’
The girl moaned and stirred, rolled over and tried to bat him away.
‘Has she been drugged?’ asked Kaz.
‘And worse,’ replied Steve. He pulled a syringe from his backpack and, in one fluid move, popped off the plastic cap and delivered its content into Jana’s jugular.
That woke her up fast enough. She roared in pain, sprang up in bed and began pounding on Steve’s head and face with tightly curled fists, yelling all the time. Red fire arced and spat in the air each time she made contact. It took Steve a few moments to get a grip on her wrists and restrain her, but eventually he stopped the onslaught. For a second they faced each other, she sitting up on the bed, fists raised, he kneeling at the bedside, restraining her, preventing her from hitting him any more.
So she head-butted him.
Steve reeled back, his nose spraying blood, but he still held her wrists tightly so she tumbled out of the bed on top of him. They sprawled in a jumbled heap on the black and white tiled floor, a penumbra of crimson fire surrounding them like an electric halo.
This bastard’s grip was too tight to escape, so Jana decided to keep up her assault another way. She opened her mouth wide and snapped forward, intending to bite off his ear. But before she could crunch the cartilage she felt strong hands around her waist and she was lifted onto her feet. More red sparks flashed in the air around her. The man on the floor let her go. Jana turned her attention to her new assailant, but stopped as she recognised the boy from the old house.
‘Please stop,’ he said. She wrestled herself free of his grasp and stepped backwards into clear space, adopting a fighting stance. She didn’t have the first clue how to fight, but they didn’t know that. Jana had long ago learned that a posture of defiance was always better than one of submission.
‘Jana – it’s Jana, isn’t it?’ said the boy. ‘We met before.’
She nodded, wary, keeping her eyes on the other man, the one who had kidnapped them, who was rising to his feet looking very annoyed indeed.
‘OK, listen, Jana,’ said the boy. ‘Like you, I have no idea what is going on. I don’t know where we are, I don’t who anybody else is and I don’t know why they’re doing this to us. But this guy’ – he indicated his companion – ‘is trying to rescue us. I think.’
‘You don’t sound very sure,’ Jana replied.
The boy shrugged and held out his right hand, offering her the gun that lay within it. ‘I’m not. But we can ask for an explanation later. There are security guards with big guns trying to catch us, so I say we get out of here. Yes?’
Jana eyed the gun suspiciously. It was old and crude, heavy, metal and alien to her. She could not deny she would feel safer with it in her hand, but she had no idea how to use it. She looked up at Kaz, trying to work out the angle, the trap she was missing. But try as she might, she couldn’t get a handle on the situation. Reasoning that it was better to be armed and confused rather than merely confused, she took the proffered weapon and nodded.
‘Great,’ said the boy. ‘I’m still Kaz, this is Steve, but I don’t think that’s his real name and it’s definitely not his real face. And you’re Jana, yes?’
‘Have they already removed the ENL?’ snapped Steve, before Jana could answer the boy’s question.
Jana’s left hand flew to the back of her neck where it found a patch of gauze. She ripped it off and felt a raw, puckered wound, glued shut. She nodded, which pulled at the wound, causing a flash of hot pain that made her wince.
The man cursed under his breath and reached into his backpack, pulling out another gun, which he handed to Kaz.
‘What’s this?’ asked Kaz, handling the strange device warily. The way he held it told Jana it was heavier than the revolver he had just given her, although it had no metal components that she could see. It looked like porcelain, cream coloured, smooth and featureless. There was a trigger, barrel and handle, but instead of a hammer there were two dials sticking out of each side, like the volume controls on an old radio. Jana recognised it as laser weapon, not that dissimilar from the ones used in her time. Which meant this Steve character could be from the future, like she was.
Steve snatched the gun away from Kaz, adjusted the two dials, pressed a small button on the top of the barrel, and handed it back. ‘Point and shoot. I’ve set it to non-lethal, OK?’
‘But …’
‘Give it to me,’ said Jana impatiently, offering the revolver back to Kaz. ‘I know how to use one of those.’
They swapped weapons. Jana felt the cold weight of the laser and smiled. This was more like it.
‘Are we done?’ asked Steve impatiently. ‘We have very little time. We need to get to the central lab. That’s where they’ll be running the analysis. We need to get that chip back at all costs. I’ll lead the way. Kaz, bring up the rear. Shoot if you see any guards.’
Without waiting for agreement, Steve ran out of the room. Kaz shrugged at Jana again and indicated that she should go ahead of him.
Seeing no other choice, Jana raised the gun and ran.
6
‘I do not understand. You say that if you were to walk down one of the streets in your town wearing any garment coloured blue, a gang of boys would attack you with knives?’
‘Yeah.’
Dora shook her head in frustration. She was certain there was some deeply buried religious or philosophical grievance behind such territorial aggression, but she could not get Simon to explain it to her. ‘But why they would do this? Is the colour blue a symbol of a particular religious sect? Do the boys who wear red pledge their allegiance to a different church?’
She was certain this would prove to be the explanation; surely the blues were Catholic and the reds were Protestant. Simon shook his head, as confused by her suggestion as she was by his answers.
‘Nah. ’Sjust territory.’
‘So the dispute is political. Either Reds or Blues claim their territory for a foreign power. Are they Spanish puppets?’ Dora did not understand how they could be Spanish agents without being Catholics, but she was determined to try.
Simon laughed at her, which made Dora blush with embarrassment and annoyance, even though she knew his laughter was not unkind.
She pouted, folding her arms crossly.
‘Calm down, I’m not taking the piss,’ he said. ‘’Sjust funny. Look, it’s real simple. The Dully White Gang own my part of town, the Kingswood Estate. They hate the Ninerz from Norwood. They don’t want them on their patch, causing trouble, trying to cop off with their sisters. If everyone stays in their territory, there’s no trouble, is there.’
‘But you said that sometimes innocents are hurt.’
‘Well, yeah, if you’re thick enough to go walking down Kingswood with a red scarf on or summat then yeah, you’re gonna get stuck. But that’s your lookout. Shoulda done your homework.’
Dora sighed, finally accepting that the situation Simon described was as arbitrary at it had first appeared. ‘This lacks all sense,’ she said. ‘Were such gangs to arise in my village, the boys would be soundly whipped on the orders of the magistrate and that would be an end to it.’
Now it was Simon’s turn to look astonished. ‘Whipped?’
‘Yes,’ replied Dora,
matter-of-factly. ‘On the green, for all the village to witness their shame. The oldest Watkins boy sought to force himself upon little Milly Allan three weeks ago. He was in the stocks for two days and then received thirty lashes upon the post. I wonder that your magistrates do not lock these gang boys in the stocks and let the local citizens put them in their place.’
Simon shook his head in wonder. ‘Where did you come from, Duchess?’
‘Cornwall,’ replied Dora with a mostly successful attempt at haughty pride.
Somewhere in the depths of the building there was a muffled explosion which rattled the glass tubes in the cold cabinets.
‘What was that?’ asked Dora, belatedly remembering her predicament. She had been enjoying her conversation with Simon.
‘Sounded like another bomb,’ said Simon, as he pulled a short black pistol from a leather pouch on his hip. Dora had never seen such a weapon before, but it was sufficiently similar to a flintlock for her to guess what it did.
‘Simon,’ asked Dora, eyeing the weapon nervously. ‘Are you my protector or my gaoler?’
The boy bit his lip nervously, momentarily betraying his youth and inexperience. ‘Bit of both, I reckon, Duchess, if I’m honest.’
This answer did not reassure Dora one little bit.
The weapon felt comfortable in Kaz’s grasp.
He’d never fired one in anger, but that didn’t mean he was unfamiliar with guns. He had grown up around soldiers, and even though his parents had disapproved, he’d always been able to find a squaddie willing to let him take a few shots on the range when they weren’t around. His parents insisted that Kaz should pursue his studies, get qualifications, find a safe job somewhere, even as they travelled the world dragging him from one war zone to another. Their lives were full of danger and excitement, but they told him every day that he mustn’t be like them, they wanted better things for him than that. Do as we say, not as we do. The hypocrisy of it had infuriated him, so he had trained in secret, finding allies amongst the troops, willing to teach him to shoot, to fight, to plan and strategise.
Then his mother died, and everything changed. His father had brought him back to Poland, tried to build a normal, stable life. But neither of them had taken to it. Undone by grief, they had fought almost constantly, until eventually his father had threatened to put Kaz into a Catholic boarding school that would fence him in with rules and regulations, curfews and timetables, the tedium of routine. He’d run away at the first opportunity. It hadn’t been difficult, not after the preparations he’d spent his life making. And now here he was, eight weeks later, being pursued through a building in a strange country, outnumbered and outgunned.
He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help it – he was enjoying himself. He was surprised to find, though, that he wasn’t entirely sure he had it in him to actually shoot anybody.
The girl ahead of him, Jana, seemed to harbour no such doubts. A couple of times they almost ran into the riot guards, and each time she let off a few shots in support of Steve’s more focused fire. She did not hit any of them, but it was not for want of trying. To Kaz, Jana did not seem to be enjoying herself. She just seemed really, really angry. He was glad she was on his side.
The guns she and Steve were using did not fire bullets, but projected a single beam that shot out like an extending tape measure and then switched off. It seemed more like stabbing than shooting. It buzzed when it fired, like a crossed wire in a light fitting, sparking and live.
They hit a long corridor, the longest yet. It stretched out ahead of them, its numerous side corridors offering a world of cover for potential attackers. It was silent and deserted but Steve slammed to a halt so unexpectedly that Jana and Kaz barrelled into each other. There was a momentary scrabble for balance.
‘What is it?’ asked Kaz.
‘Those doors at the end, that’s the lab,’ said Steve softly.
‘Come on then,’ said Jana, pushing forward. Kaz grabbed her shoulder to hold her back. She angrily shook herself free and turned to scowl at him.
‘I think he’s about to say something like “it’s too quiet”,’ said Kaz.
Steve nodded as a clatter of footsteps echoed around them. There were definitely guards behind them, and almost certainly guards waiting for them in the side corridors up ahead, ready to cut them down in a crossfire if they attempted to run the gauntlet to the lab.
‘If we can get through those doors and secure our position, we’ll only need a few minutes,’ said Steve.
‘For what? Won’t we be stuck in there?’ asked Kaz.
Steve smiled knowingly. ‘Oh no, we’ve got an escape route. We could leave right now, but we can’t abandon Dora, and we must retrieve Jana’s chip at all costs.’
‘Think fast, because those guards are getting closer. I say we run,’ said Jana, tensing as if to sprint. But before she could take off there was a massive unified stamp, as if a battalion had stood to attention. A phalanx of riot guards stepped out ahead of them, two from each cross-corridor entrance. Kaz found the unnatural synchronicity of their movement chilling.
He turned as if to run back the way they had come, but a group of four guards rounded the corner of the corridor behind them.
They were trapped.
It would have surprised Kaz to learn that Jana felt afraid.
Not the almost-fear she had felt on the rooftop as she had leaned out into the crosswinds, but proper, bone-deep terror of death. She’d been feeling it ever since she had been rudely awoken in her cell and, after a moment of disorientation, remembered that her ENL chip had been removed. That chip was her ticket to immortality, the safety net that made her invulnerable. It was because of the chip that she had been so devil-may-care throughout her short life, so reckless that only the craziest of her classmates had anything to do with her. Jana, they all knew, was willing to push it one degree more – swim that bit further from the shore, take a corner a few mph faster than the car was designed to handle.
It made her fun to be around. And dangerous.
More than once a classmate or friend had been injured trying to emulate or impress her. The pattern was always the same – they’d try to push things as far as Jana but, at the last minute, realising how much of a risk they were taking, they would lose their nerve and try to pull out of whatever mad death-spiral they had committed themselves to. There was a look they got in their eyes as they recalculated the odds, Jana had seen it many times, a mixture of fear and surprise. She wondered if that was what she looked like now, as she stood trapped by an army of faceless kidnappers in a building farther from home than she had ever thought it possible to be.
The secret, she had learned, was to follow through, to never back out once you’d committed to a course of action, no matter how risky. Whatever danger you were in, it was always more dangerous to second-guess yourself at the last instant.
Gripping the gun tight in her right hand, she forced herself to wait. Normally she would have taken charge, but not today. Instead she looked to the man called Steve and said, ‘What do we do now?’
Steve paid her little attention. He was assessing the forces arrayed ahead and behind them. The guards stood there, unmoving, implacable, penning them in but in no hurry to disarm or capture them. Their immobile calm was terrifying.
‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’ yelled Kaz.
The guards did not respond in any way to his taunt.
‘They’re waiting for Sweetclover,’ said Steve, almost absent-mindedly, his gaze now fixed firmly on the lab doors at the end of the corridor before them. ‘He wants to be in at the kill.’
‘You said we could leave right now if we wanted,’ said Jana, alarmed at the tremble in her voice.
Steve nodded. ‘But I may have a better idea.’ He glanced down at his watch, then turned to face Jana and Kaz. ‘When the bomb goes off, stay focused on me,’ he said. ‘We need to hold hands to form a circle and you must, absolutely must, empty your minds of all thought.’
Ja
na didn’t even know how to begin to respond to such a bizarre order, so she decided to go with it.
‘OK,’ she said.
‘What bomb?’ asked Kaz.
‘Not a place, not a time in your life, not a person. Nothing, understand?’ Steve continued. ‘Think of the colour white. Empty, blank, void. Can you do that?’
Jana nodded. Kaz just looked confused. ‘Um, I’ll try,’ he muttered.
‘Hello there.’ It was Sweetclover. He had stepped out into the corridor ahead of them, about halfway to the lab door, flanked by guards. He was waving and smiling. ‘I must say, you are the most handsome terrorist I’ve ever met. Dashing, too. When this is over we really must share grooming tips.’
Steve did not smile as his doppelgänger made jokes.
‘You can drop the disguise now,’ Sweetclover continued, his fake smile fading away. ‘It’s not fooling anybody any more and I would so like to look you in the eye.’
Jana slowly slipped her gun into her pocket so that her hands were free. She caught Kaz’s eye and, with a glance, indicated that he should do the same. He gave an almost imperceptible nod and did so. He reached for her hand but a single red spark arced between their outstretched fingers and he whipped his hand away again. If Sweetclover noticed this, he gave no sign of it. His attention was focused tightly on Steve.
‘You did Kaz no favours, you know,’ Sweetclover was saying. ‘By destroying the recording you merely ensured he’ll have to go through the mind probe again. I imagine he’d prefer to avoid that, wouldn’t you, Kaz?’
‘Screw you,’ Kaz shouted, an act of defiance that finally earned him a smidgen of respect from Jana.
Sweetclover tutted and shook his head. ‘Such manners. When I see your father, I’ll have to tell him the kind of man he raised.’
Kaz balled his fists and took a step forward but Steve held out his arm, not touching the boy, but blocking his way.
‘Calm down, Kaz. He’s playing with you,’ he said. Then he whispered to them both, ‘Look at the lab door and get ready.’
Jana squinted down the corridor. She could see silhouetted figures moving behind the frosted glass windows of the central lab doors behind Sweetclover.
TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Page 6