“I’m sorry,” Finn said. “Really, I shouldn’t have said that. But I just mean that we’re here and we’ve a chance to sort out this problem. We have to take that chance before it’s too late.”
In the window, three shelves of TVs of various sizes all flashed up one thing: pictures of Finn and Emmie. Finn’s photo was a couple of years old, his hair stuck in a cowlick, one eye not yet finished blinking. Emmie’s picture was more recent, her smile contrasting with the words on the screen below.
TRAIN ATTACK: YOUNG SUSPECTS ON THE RUN.
Finn looked around cautiously. A couple of shoppers were already eyeing them a touch suspiciously. Across the street a woman was standing with a policeman, pointing in their direction. The policeman lifted the radio at his shoulder, said something into it.
A bus along the road blocked the view between them before slowly rumbling away again.
When the policeman crossed the street to find them, Finn and Emmie were gone.
“I can’t run,” Emmie protested, even as she followed Finn, reluctantly, down a side street.
“You can,” he insisted. “According to the map there should be a bus station this way. We can reach that and get out of here for a while, make it look like we’ve left Slotterton for good.”
“That’s not what I mean, Finn.”
She stepped after him as he hid in a bookshop, where he picked up the first thing that came to hand and peeked over its spine to see if they were being followed.
“Hello, can I help you?” asked the bookseller. “If you’re interested in yoga for babies we have other titles available too.”
Finn looked at the cover of the book with its picture of a baby doing a handstand. “Thanks,” he said. “Just browsing.” He picked up a book about cheese and pretended to read that instead. The bookseller wandered off.
“It’s obvious they’re going to catch us eventually,” said Emmie. “They must be able to call in the police when needed. They could probably use the army if they wanted to. And when they catch us, they’ll pack us off back to Lucien in no time. It would be hard to blame them.”
Finn put the book down, took out the creased map of Slotterton and examined it quickly. Holding it, he left the shop, hugged the walls with his hood so tight on his head it was in danger of cutting off the blood supply to his shoulders.
“Finn,” Emmie called, her face fully visible to the world as she tried to keep pace. “I’m not doing this any more.”
“The map tells us where they’re going to experiment,” he said. “We know it’s at 8pm. It’s almost 5pm now. We’ll get there, wait for them to do it and send the evidence to everyone. Every last bit of it. They’ll see how dangerous it is.”
“You’re not listening to me,” said Emmie, slowing. “I’m not going with you.”
She stopped on the street, forcing him to backtrack.
“I’ve told you everything, Emmie,” he said, anxious to keep moving. “I promise I’ve not held anything back. You have to trust me.” He kept glancing around, looking for the police officer.
“I want to,” said Emmie. “But after everything you’ve told me—”
“I am not a traitor,” he said, the desperation clear in his words. He had hung off the edge of an abyss or two in his life. This felt too similar for comfort.
“This can’t be the only way out,” Emmie said, staying where she was even as Finn tried to start moving again.
They were at a junction, people and cars coming from four directions. Finn felt horribly exposed.
“Emmie, you have to believe me,” said Finn. “There’s a huge conspiracy going on here.”
“There has to be a better way,” she said.
“The worst thing is that I think they want it to happen,” Finn continued. “Lucien wants Legends invading again so he and the other assistants can stop sitting around doing nothing but reports and jobs and whatever they’ve been doing. They’re trying to make it look like it’s the Legends coming after us again. They can then step up to protect us. It’s crazy. We’re going to stop it. We’re going to let every Half-Hunter know what’s really going on.”
She bowed her head, shook it.
Finn saw someone watching them across the road. “It’s that woman,” he said. “Anne. The one who gave us the lift.”
Emmie didn’t look up, simply let her hair hang heavy over her eyes.
“Seriously, she’s over there, watching us,” said Finn.
Across the street, Anne caught his gaze, held it for a few moments. It wasn’t a look of friendliness, but Finn couldn’t detect any malice either. Her true intent was difficult to make out.
“Finn—” Emmie started.
“Look,” he said, “I know you hate me right now. I know you think I’m paranoid and a liar and can’t be trusted and probably loads of other things as well.”
“We can’t—”
“And I’ll admit some of those things are probably true, but some are not. So you have to come with me, because she is watching us for a reason and we need to move.”
Anne started to walk across the road towards them, and Finn’s instinct was to run – but Emmie did not move. Anne hesitated as she left the pavement, her attention apparently drawn to something else to her right. Finn followed her eyeline, down the street, saw the police officer spot them and break into a sprint in their direction. He slowed momentarily to wave to someone on the road to his right.
Grey Suits. Assistants. Homing in on Finn and Emmie.
Among them, his legs moving at twice their speed just to keep up, was Lucien.
It meant they were being converged on from three directions now.
“Let’s go,” Finn said.
Emmie shook her head. “I’m not running,” she said.
The police officer was about to cross the road to get to them. Lucien and the assistants would reach them about the same time. Anne was still watching, but hanging back now, hesitating for whatever reason.
“It’s over,” said Emmie.
Finn looked at her, saw the determination hardening on her face.
The clock in the town square chimed five times.
“In three hours they’re going to try and open a gateway in this town,” said Finn. “I still plan to be there. This won’t be over for me until I get Darkmouth back for my family.”
He turned and ran across the street, through the pedestrians, in front of a truck that had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting him. He feinted to go one way but instead went another. And when he thought he had a sliver of a moment, he glanced back, still expecting to see Emmie alongside him, having decided to trust him after all, to fight with him, to blow the conspiracy apart.
She wasn’t there.
He saw her being swallowed up by chasing assistants. Lucien put a hand on Emmie’s shoulder, looked up, met Finn’s gaze and grinned as the other assistants resumed their chase.
Finn turned away and kept running.
Alone.
Finn didn’t know Slotterton like he knew Darkmouth. Didn’t know its shortcuts, its alleys, its gaps and cracks. So he ran in the general direction of the bus station, but with only half an idea how to get there.
People jumped aside as he sprinted past, shouted at him to be careful. Drivers punched their car horns as he jumped off the narrow pavements to get around obstacles, people, pets.
He ignored every yell, but couldn’t ignore the sound of the siren, its rising wail echoing off walls so that it sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once.
The whole world seemed to be closing in on him, streets narrowing, pavements becoming busier with people.
He found a side street, ran into it, stopped to get his breath and his bearings. He was standing in a small square of old, low houses, a couple of them with overhanging thatched roofs.
Hearing footsteps and further shouts approaching, Finn looked again for a way out and this time spied a very narrow gap between houses, just enough to squeeze through sideways. He fled down it as a poli
ce car screeched to a stop at the entrance to the square.
His shoulders scraped against the walls; his bag bumped against the stone. Through the gap, he could see two police officers leaving the car to chase after him.
Exiting the gap, he found himself on a quiet street of empty buildings, stone warehouses and what seemed to be small abandoned factories. It was as if the street had been hidden here to crumble alone. Finn stepped on to the pavement at the exact same moment the assistants arrived from a road a few metres to his right. He almost stumbled in an effort to get away from them, just as the police squeezed through the gap behind him.
A full gang was on his tail now. Police. Assistants. He still wasn’t sure that Anne, the woman who’d given them the lift, wasn’t about to pop up out of a drain and grab his ankle. It was clear that no one was going to stop until he was in handcuffs. Or a jar.
But Finn was far more accustomed to running from trouble than they were to chasing it. He opened some distance between himself and the chasing pack while seeking a building to hide in or escape through. He checked doors as he passed, but they were all locked up or boarded over, some with empty windows too high to clamber into. He ran across the street to another door, pulled at it while still moving. No luck. Dashed back across the road to try another. It didn’t budge either.
More assistants appeared around a corner ahead of him, forming a pincer move with those behind him. He realised that one of them was the bearded assistant Ricardo, now trussed awkwardly in an overcoat because his armour would have been too conspicuous.
But bulging beneath his coat was the unmistakable form of a Desiccator.
Finn pulled hard at another rusted steel door into one of the street’s empty, blank-stoned buildings. This time it opened just a touch, a sliver for him to squeeze in under the heavy chains securing it.
Inside it was muggy, a smell of mould in the air, and bare but for blackened brick and the long-cold ashes in an old fireplace filled with burnt cans. There was a second storey above, but the stairs were gone, leaving only a square hole in the ceiling through which thin streams of daylight mixed with dust. Otherwise, the back wall was a solid stretch of stone. No doors. No windows.
Unless he could walk through walls, there was no way out but the way he had come in.
He was trapped.
Outside, the footsteps reached the door. There was the sound of the chains being pulled, then hacked at. Voices, shouting together so Finn couldn’t make out what they were saying, only that it wasn’t anything pleasant. Fingers pulled at the gap at the door, trying to open it fully.
Unless he could walk through walls …
Finn patted his jacket, felt the object within. The Gatemaker.
He went to the fireplace, shoved the bag with the computer as far up the chimney as possible, so as to be out of sight. He still had faith it contained vital evidence of Lucien’s wrongdoing so it might be useful later on, but it would have to stay there for now, because he couldn’t be sure it would survive the trip he was about to take.
“Stand back,” he heard Ricardo say. “I’ll desiccate this door and if you’re standing behind it I won’t be responsible for turning you into a doorstop.”
Finn went to the farthest wall while fumbling for the Gatemaker, pulled it free from his jacket, gave it the quickest of examinations to figure out how to use it. It had a rounded piece at its base, about the width of his thumb. He pushed it, felt the strange sensation of something wriggle inside. A small crystal peeked out of the top. It was clear, beautifully so.
Outside, there was the click and wheeze of a Desiccator being armed.
“Right,” said the assistant’s voice. “You’ve been warned.”
Gripping the Gatemaker in his palm, Finn was relieved to find a snag on the air quickly. The crystal sparked instantaneously, like a match finding a flame. There was what he thought might be the brief, tormented squeal of a dying scaldgrub – he really, really hoped it wasn’t that – before a golden, sparkling gateway sliced down the wall.
The Desiccator fired outside.
The door crumpled violently, its hinges ripping from the brick, and the assistants poured into the space within.
It was empty.
Finn was already in the portal to the Infested Side, experiencing a sensation he had not forgotten, no matter how much he had tried. There was nausea, of course, like a punch in the stomach, but this was also accompanied by a sense that every single cell in his body had been separated, washed, scrubbed, pecked at by birds, then put back in the wrong order.
It only lasted a moment.
For ever.
Both.
All he knew was that almost as soon as he stepped into it, the gateway shut behind him with a crunchy snap and he was in the gloom of the Infested Side, doubled over, searching for breath, relieved he hadn’t exploded but half wishing he could so that it would blast away this terrible feeling.
He looked up to find he’d landed in the middle of a horde of Legends, teeth upon teeth, eyes upon eyes, claws upon claws.
Gasping.
Roaring.
Reaching for him.
Finn dived to the ashen ground, scuttling between at least two legs of a Legend that had an abundance of them, until he was clear enough to jump to his feet. He registered some kind of village of muddy huts, heated by meek fires leaking smoke into the low grey cloud he knew all too well as an oppressive feature of the Infested Side.
Nausea heavy in the deepest part of his stomach, he still managed to get a head start on the Legends and dodged between huts, before arriving at a clearing and glimpsing something strange, causing him to stop dead in his tracks for a moment, a mud-formed figure sticking up from the burnt ground.
Is that …? he thought.
But there was no time to think.
The Legends were seeking him out, their snarling breaths closing behind him. There was nothing for it but to dash inside the nearest hut. He was relieved to find it empty of Legends, but somewhat concerned to see its floor covered with sharp spears and jagged knives instead.
How many crystals had Sulawan the sort-of-Cyclops told him were in this thing? Three? Four? Then he should be able to open another gateway, escape the Legends and return to his world – far enough from the assistants and police in Slotterton that he could flee from them too.
He pushed his thumb into the base of the Gatemaker again, revealing another crystal. He searched for a snag, struggled to find it this time as the ground shuddered under the pounding of approaching Legends, their growls and cries growing so loud he could hardly hear himself think.
The crystal hooked on empty air. Finn breathed again in relief.
Sparks. A scaldgrub scream. Gateway.
He threw himself back into Slotterton.
The journey was hell, as always.
The gateway closed. Finn was back in the town, in the middle of a road, as a car bore down on him blaring its horn. He rolled out of the way just before it flattened him.
Up the street, outside the building he’d first disappeared into – and from – the assistants were alerted by the squeal of brakes and quickly abandoned the warehouse to come and grab him.
He forced himself up, every step a feat of superhuman effort over the gateway’s uniquely awful travel sickness, calculating how far he needed to get from his pursuers in both worlds.
An assistant appeared from his right, surprising him with a tackle that sent him sprawling to the ground, the Gatemaker rolling away towards a drain. The assistant followed him to the tarmac with a winding thump, letting go just enough for Finn to rise and use his assailant’s chest as a launch pad to jump after the Gatemaker.
He grabbed the device as it was about to drop from the street into the drain, stood, took flight again.
His sense of direction skewed by tackles and gateways and cars, he realised he’d run straight into a dead end, the alley hemmed in by a tall building, completely boarded up, metal door riveted shut, wood nailed over windows.
He pulled at the door anyway, searched for a rotten section in the windows. Nothing gave.
The Gatemaker held how many crystals now? He pushed, and one emerged. Was it the last one? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t want to put a finger in there and lose it to a snarky scaldgrub.
“Finn,” said Lucien.
Turning his head at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, Finn saw the man who had taken everything from his family.
Lucien pushed his glasses up his nose, held a hand out. “This can end now,” he said. “No more running. No more trouble. You can be home in Darkmouth with your mother and father in a couple of hours. This will all be over.”
Finn faced the wall again. Solid brick. Nowhere left to go. He’d lost Emmie. He couldn’t get into the computer, but he figured that was safely hidden away for now in the warehouse. If he was captured, though, he wouldn’t be able to produce the evidence to condemn Lucien. Every decision he had made had ended in near disaster. Total disaster, really.
But he couldn’t give up. Not now.
Behind Lucien, a group of sweating, panting assistants arrived, as well as the two guards with Desiccators, fingers on triggers, pointing at him. Finn saw them from the corner of his eye as he turned his head again. But he did not turn fully, instead kept himself facing the wall of the locked-up building.
“What do you say, Finn?” Lucien asked. “We don’t want any accidents.”
Finn had seen something over on the Infested Side. Something that had caused him to stop, but which he couldn’t forget and which hinted at other, stranger things going on over there.
But if he opened a gateway now, he might be lost there. For good. No guarantee he would ever get back again.
Finn put his hands at the back of his head, a show of surrender. He left the crystal snagged on the air.
“Good choice,” he heard Lucien say.
“My dad said something before that made no sense to me, but does now,” Finn said, hands raised, his back still to Lucien.
A snarl of satisfaction played on Lucien’s lips.
Hero Rising Page 10