The serpent had stopped breathing, was utterly still. It had given its life to save others.
“You have to save the world,” said Hiss, with a flick of his snake tongue that nearly brushed Finn’s face. “The question is: which world?”
Finn looked at the many eyes staring at him. The yellow eyes of the Legend hiding in the darkest shadow of the hut boring into him. The expectation of those outside who worshipped him. He felt hemmed in, claustrophobic under the pressure.
He gestured at the gathering. “I want to do this, but just because I know where Gantrua and the charm might be, it’s not like we can just walk in there and take it.”
“Actually, kid,” said Sulawan, looking towards the shadows, “you might be wrong there …”
The Legend with the yellow eyes stepped out of the dark.
In Slotterton, Emmie loitered outside the hall, steadying herself. She felt like she had been hit by a wave. Her emotions swung between shame and fortitude. She had done what she needed to do. Finn would have to understand some day. She hoped he would anyway. She knew it depended on her doing the right thing.
An assistant walked down the corridor towards her, an apple in his mouth. He held a thick folder in one hand and a holdall in the other.
Emmie tried not to look awkward.
“Hello,” she said.
Uninterested, the assistant walked past her and through the door.
Emmie hung back, heard the assistant being greeted.
“Yes, Axel,” said Lucien. “What is it?”
The door slowly closed between her and Lucien, a small square window offering a view inside.
She watched Axel approach Lucien and place the folder on the table, take the apple from his mouth. He unzipped the holdall and together they peered inside it. Emmie couldn’t see what they were looking at, and as they half turned away from the door she could only guess at their response to it.
It seemed to her that the assistant was serious, but Lucien? He had been so calm with her, a calm bordering on jollity that she had found creepy for reasons she couldn’t quite figure out. Now, he seemed more animated. His narrow shoulders moved up and down. She saw a hand close into a clenched fist – not of aggression but of frustration.
She could have sworn she saw a speckle of spit fly from his mouth. Axel stepped back at this point, closing over the bag as he did.
Lucien noticed Emmie’s jacket still draped across the back of the chair she had sat on.
She opened the door, quickly.
“My jacket!” she announced. “I left it behind, sorry.”
Axel zipped up the holdall, back turned to her.
Lucien picked up her jacket, and held it by the collar as he watched her cross the floor. The few steps felt like an endless journey to her. He kept it outstretched, ready for her to take it. When she got to him, he withdrew it, just enough to make her hesitate.
“This is going to work out really well for you,” he said. “Are you happy with your mission?”
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Babysitting Elektra and Tiberius can be an exhausting job.”
Emmie tried not to look as reluctant as she felt. “They’ll be great fun,” she said, her tone falsely cheerful.
Finally, Lucien gave her the jacket.
“Thanks,” said Emmie, before walking away as fast as she could without looking like she was running.
Emmie walked through Slotterton Hall, jacket over her shoulder. Suddenly, behind her, she heard an alarm.
In fact, alarms were going off all through the building.
Across the hall, assistants were checking phones which had gone off with a mix of chirps, beeps, wails, bird noises, pop songs – at least one that was the theme tune from the TV show Smoofy the Magic Unicorn.
For a moment, Emmie was afraid the alarm had something to do with her, but as she looked around, she saw that the assistants were ignoring her.
“Gateway!” one of them said. “Gateway alert. Here. In Slotterton.”
Haphazardly, they began to mobilise. Emmie watched as they ran about the place, some picking up the few weapons lying around, others bits and pieces of armour. They were nervous, giddy with excitement and fear. They’d spent their careers so far behind desks, organising schedules, looking after their superiors, making tea, whatever was needed. Everything that had happened in the last few hours had been a most unexpected turn of events.
But not as unexpected as what they saw next.
Emmie followed them to the hall’s front door, but her view was blocked by assistants watching something outside.
“Well, would you look at that,” one assistant said.
Emmie squeezed through and saw a hooded figure approaching up the road, walking steadily towards them, hands raised in a show of peace. Or surrender.
Assistants poured out of the door. A handful were armed with Desiccators – far more of them than might seem necessary for a single target with its arms raised.
The figure stopped outside, slowly lowered its hood and then raised its hands again.
Finn spoke only two words.
“I surrender.”
Finn was in handcuffs. This was not a pleasant sensation at all. The metal digging into his wrists as his hands rested on his lap, the helplessness, the itchy back he couldn’t scratch.
Nevertheless, it was a better sensation than that of Lucien’s breath, which was filled with garlic and annoyance and was currently about three centimetres from Finn’s nose.
“You have made things very difficult,” he was saying. “Very difficult indeed.”
Surrounding them were maybe two dozen assistants, the two guards Finn had met at the Dead House and a few Desiccators pointing at Finn’s head. They were all really quite nervous. One trembled a little. Finn knew they were worried he might explode. He felt like sneezing loudly just to freak them out a bit, but that would risk one of his captors turning him into something resembling a cabbage in clothes.
Lucien withdrew, his agitation clear. He had his hands behind his back, then at the front, then to the back again. He pulled his glasses from his face, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve had to drag all of these good people here to find you.”
“And now you’ve found me,” said Finn, trying to mirror how confident and unflappable he imagined his father would be in this situation.
“Oh, the Most Great Lives writer is going to have a field day with this, though,” said Lucien. “You think you’re worthy of a mere entry? Oh, you are going to get a whole book written about you. They’ll run out of ink just trying to describe the scale of your duplicity. They’ll level whole forests to find enough paper.”
Finn sat, as impassive as he could for a person whose hammering heart must have been visible in his chest. He sought out anyone familiar among the crowd, caught Estravon’s eye. He was standing away from the main body of assistants, as if uncomfortable. Finn couldn’t see anyone else he recognised.
“Where’s Emmie?” he asked.
Lucien gave an exaggerated look of surprise. “You’re not the one asking questions,” he said. “You answer mine, and then we can talk.”
He walked behind Finn. “Why did you come back?” he asked, reappearing at his right, arms folded now, the fingers of his left hand tapping away at his bony shoulder. “A gateway opened in Slotterton. Which showed up on our scanners. And, lo and behold, you walk in here and surrender. Why?”
“Because I had nowhere left to run,” said Finn, resigned. “Where am I going to go?”
“The Infested Side seems to like you paying a visit,” suggested Lucien. “Maybe you should stay with them. Open a pet hotel or something.” He appeared pleased with his joke, even if no one in the room laughed at it.
“It’s more dangerous over there than ever,” said Finn. “This is my world. This is where I belong. Whatever you think I’ve done.”
Lucien continued tapping his shoulder, trying to figure out the puzzle.
The jittery assistants wat
ched, waited for an order.
“I want to talk to my mam and dad,” Finn said. He really did.
“You don’t get to make demands,” Lucien said. “How did you get so easily to the Infested Side in the first place? Where did your crystals come from?”
Finn considered his answer, decided to be bold. “Have you told the others here what you’re doing with your experiments?” he asked.
Lucien allowed a half-smile to creep across his face as if he was finally seeing the behaviour he had hoped for. “They all know what I’m doing. They know I’m keeping us safe.”
“You are putting everyone in danger just so you can feel like a real Legend Hunter.”
“That is quite an accusation coming from someone doing exactly the same thing,” said Lucien.
Finn spoke to the crowd again. “He is using dangerous techniques to open gateways in Darkmouth. And here too. If you carry out those experiments here tonight, in the place you’re planning, and with crystals you don’t understand, it’s going to be disastrous. You could open a portal to a creature bigger than anything you’ve ever imagined.” Finn addressed the gathered assistants, but with an eye on Estravon, who looked away while picking at his cufflinks.
Finn’s claims caused a ripple among those present, but they did not step forward to confront Lucien. This made sense. If Lucien was up to something, he would have the most loyal assistants with him to ensure it was carried out without question. Besides, they saw Finn as the enemy now. As untrustworthy and dangerous as any Legend.
Lucien had calmed somewhat, the anger having ebbed a little to be replaced by curiosity. “You say it’s dangerous to open gateways, yet you just entered this world through one,” he said, smiling.
“I know what I’m doing,” said Finn. “I have pure crystals.”
“Given to you by whom?” asked Lucien.
“I know you don’t know what you’re doing with your experiments, and your attempts have already caused leaks in the barrier between the worlds. And I know you’re planning more experiments in a place where there are bones, and—”
“And you know this how? The Legends told you?” said Lucien.
Finn sighed. Whatever he said, Lucien would twist it.
“I’m not sure you realise what kind of trouble you’re in,” Lucien said. “You have your own private revolving door into the Infested Side. There is no precedent for this, is there, Estravon?”
The distracted Estravon took a moment to register that he was being talked to. “Yes,” he said. “I mean, no. There’s no precedent. I’m looking for anything that comes close to all of this. There was that time the Isle of Wight was rumoured to have disappeared for a whole day. Or the occasion in Italy when a Legend pushed over the Tower of Pisa. Or—”
“I think Estravon has made his point, don’t you?” said Lucien, leaning heavily towards Finn. He stood again, ran his hand across his thin hair. “No matter. You are back. And no sooner are you here than you will be gone again. Tell me, have you ever wanted to visit Liechtenstein?”
Finn hadn’t known what to expect when deciding to hand himself over, but he had presumed Lucien might want to cart him off to Liechtenstein rather than send him home to Darkmouth. At least they’d not desiccated him.
“I didn’t bring my passport,” Finn replied.
“No need to worry about that,” Lucien said. “We can arrange anything.”
“Swimming togs?” asked Finn, warming to the challenge of winding Lucien up. “Sunscreen?”
Lucien pressed in, arrogant. “Why would you need sunscreen in a windowless cell twenty metres below ground?”
That quietened Finn.
Tension crackled in the room.
Estravon approached. “Lucien, can I have a word?”
Lucien looked irked but agreed to Estravon’s request to walk away from the group for a quiet conversation. Estravon’s unintelligible muttering was backed up with chopping hand movements. Lucien was shaking his head, with occasional replies that only seemed to spur Estravon into becoming more forceful.
Until Lucien shouted him down.
“We’re not taking him back to Darkmouth, so stop saying it!” he snapped. “Who cares about any report now? We have him. We can do what we want with him now. And we will. And if you don’t like it, there’s a lovely job in the Liechtenstein laundry room which I’ll be very happy to transfer you to.”
Estravon kept his back to everyone, unwilling to show his response.
Lucien returned to the centre of the room, where Finn was still seated, handcuffed, and looking around the room in the hope of spying an ally.
Lucien stepped across his eyeline. “These assistants will accompany you.”
The shiny-headed Olaf, wild-bearded Ricardo and two other Desiccator-wielding assistants stepped forward from the group.
“They will be with you every step of the way,” said Lucien. “They will be armed every step of the way. You will be safe with them,” he concluded, as if any of this was for Finn’s safety. He leaned in to Finn’s ear, bringing again that smell of garlic. “I just wouldn’t blow your nose, if I were you. These guys might get a little bit jumpy with their trigger fingers.”
Lucien stood and motioned for him to be taken away.
Finn rose, shook off Olaf’s attempts to grab his elbow and instead made his own way towards the door at the end of the hall.
Taking a last look over his shoulder, he caught sight of a face in the window of the door at the opposite end of the hall. It was Emmie.
He nodded to show her he didn’t hold a grudge.
She lifted her hand to her ear in an urgent “I’ll call you” motion.
Then the door closed, and Finn was alone with four armed assistants and his own growing fears that he’d made a terrible, terrible mistake.
The four assistants formed a square around Finn as they walked him down a corridor brightened by the sunshine splashing through windows. Hemmed in, keeping pace while his cuffed hands bounced at his belly, Finn felt small among them. They blocked the world from him, giving him only glimpses at the windows, and at the faded wood-panel walls with yellowed, frail notices pinned along them, occasional scraps of graffiti, scrawled names of people and rock bands.
Finn took a deep breath to find his focus, almost lost pace with the assistants ahead of him. Between their shoulders he saw fire doors open, and a short, boxy truck backed up to the exit. This would be his next stop.
He looked around again, searching for a face he might recognise. A look in the eyes that might tell him he would be safe.
The assistants stopped a few metres from the end of the corridor, the squeaking of their shoes ceasing suddenly. To Finn’s front right-hand side, Olaf opened a door into a new room, turned and beckoned him inside. Finn looked at him, saw cold eyes over a crooked, broken nose and tried to figure out what was going on.
“Aren’t we leaving?” Finn asked.
The guard repeated the gesture and this time Finn complied, finding himself in a tiny room, with a small tower of chairs in the corner, a dried-out mop and bucket beside them. Nothing else.
Finn turned to ask again what was happening, and found all the assistants had followed him in, facing him in ominous silence.
“What’s going on?” asked Finn. “Lucien said I was being taken away.”
“Change of plan,” said Ricardo, radiating threat.
Finn’s unease was beginning to tell in the sweat coating his forehead.
“Lucien won’t like it if you don’t follow the rules,” Finn said. “Especially his rules.”
“The change of plan is his idea,” said Olaf, impassive, almost robotic. He was particularly cold and hard-edged, his neck pouring out of his collar, his head like a bullet.
Finn looked to the other assistants for some indication they might be softer. He didn’t see it.
“All we know is that when we were taking the traitor to the storage room, he tried to escape again,” Olaf said ominously.
“Wh
at are you talking about?” asked Finn, incredulous. “I haven’t tried to escape.”
“And when we cornered him he was on the verge of exploding with that weird trick of his,” continued Ricardo, scratching his beard with the nozzle of his Desiccator. “And it would have wiped out everyone in this building and, for sure, a few innocent passers-by too.”
Finn’s stomach somersaulted, and the room seemed to shrink.
The assistants took a step away from him, creating some distance in the small space.
“You can’t do this,” Finn said, trying to close that distance down again.
One of them pushed him back.
“Actually, we’ve been told exactly what we can do,” said Olaf, raising his Desiccator at Finn, finger on the trigger.
“Wait!” Finn shouted, cuffed hands raised. “I know something.”
Olaf hesitated, finger still on the trigger, but eyes narrowing with curiosity.
Finn decided the only way to keep them from shooting was to tell them the truth. Hold nothing back.
“When I came back from the Infested Side I didn’t come alone,” he said. “I brought a Legend with me.”
The assistants glanced at each other, as if wondering if this was the truth or a stalling tactic.
“It’s true. It came with me but it’s been hidden among us since you captured me.”
“Hidden?” asked the Desiccator-wielding Ricardo, his lips lost within the heavy beard.
“Really close,” confirmed Finn, nodding with exaggerated enthusiasm. With the back of a wrist, he wiped the sweat from his brow, felt the damp hair of his fringe, the handcuffs chafing his skin.
“I don’t think so,” said Olaf. “If a Legend was sneaking around, I’m pretty sure we would have noticed it.” He lifted the weapon again to get on with the business of desiccating Finn.
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Finn. “And I can prove it.”
“How?” asked Olaf.
Hero Rising Page 13