He shakes his head. “It’s no good. I’m going to have to cut your hair off. Those blond locks are too obvious, even under the helmet.”
I run my fingers through my hair. After everything that’s happened, a dodgy haircut really doesn’t worry me. I reach for the scissors from the stationery tray. “Go for it.”
He hacks away at my hair and then gathers it up off the floor, cramming it into a large brown envelope which he stuffs down into the bin.
“Got to cover our tracks.”
He looks me up and down again. “That’s better. That’s much better. Right. Have you ever used a gun? Stupid question, of course you haven’t. Hopefully, you won’t need to, but I’m going to give you one anyway, OK?”
He hands me a revolver. I stare down at it.
“It’s easy to use,” he tells me, “like a water pistol – just aim and pull the trigger. Don’t do it unless you need to, only if there’s no other way. Once you fire that gun, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.”
He doesn’t need to tell me that. Less than a week ago, I was worrying about the football results. Now, I’m trying to prepare myself for the possibility of killing real-life policemen.
“Follow my lead,” Jack instructs. “Don’t speak unless it’s necessary. I’m going to try to get you out of here and into the back of my van. OK?”
I remember my pirate costume again, how it made me feel and act differently. I need to be like that now, let the costume I’m wearing work its magic. If I skulk about, they’re going to notice me more. I have to march out of this room, not creep.
I look at myself in the mirror. I don’t look like me at all any more. I look stupid. They’re going to notice straight away.
It’s as if Jack can read my mind because he turns me round to face him and claps his hand firmly on my shoulder.
“You don’t have a choice. There’s no other way. Come on, let’s do this thing.”
I nod. Pull the cap down low. Put one hand on my gun. Turn, follow after him, out of the room. Right into the firing line.
HOSHIKO
The police officer reminds me of one of the Cirque clowns. Scratching his head in confusion, he looks like he’s playing a slapstick role. He’s really fat, in the way that only overindulged Pures ever get to be, and his big wobbly jaw actually drops as he stands there looking around the room.
He peers under the desk, even trying to open the drawers, as if I’m going to have miraculously shrunk and be hiding in one of them. He rests his hands on his large belly and stands there, brow furrowed, shaking his head from side to side. After a moment, he turns and walks back towards the door.
I look up and give Greta a thumbs up; he’s clearly so stupid that it looks like we might actually get away with this one.
No such luck.
He pauses with his hand on the door, turns back to the room and then reaches into his jacket, pulling out his police radio. He pushes a button.
There’s no time to think now. No time to wait and hope. I mouth to Greta to stay where she is, then I grab my gun, pull myself over the hatch and drop down into the room, right in front of him.
His jaw drops even further. I don’t think he’s registered what’s going on at all and is, instead, under the impression that I’ve momentarily vanished and then magically reappeared from nowhere.
Despite the searing pain which shoots through my feet, I manage to speak, inwardly giving myself a little pat on the back for how remarkably steady my voice is.
“Give me the walkie-talkie.”
I aim the gun right at him.
He looks at me. I think he’s trying to decide if I actually have the courage to do anything with it. He must come to the conclusion that I don’t, because his hand reaches down to his waist again – this time it must be for his own gun.
“I said, give me the walkie-talkie. Now!”
He stares at me. I can almost see his little brain cells trying to work out what to do.
“Look,” I whisper: I don’t want Greta to hear what I’m saying. “If you’re in any doubt about whether I’ll shoot, let me put your mind at rest. One of the people I love most in the whole world has been murdered today by your lot, and all the other people I care about have been threatened with death and torture. If I’m caught, I die. I’ve got nothing to lose, and…” I move closer to him and enunciate each word as clearly and distinctly as I can. “I hate Pures.”
Meek as a lamb, he passes over the walkie-talkie.
“And the gun.”
He hands it over. What do I do now? If I let him go, he’ll run straight to Silvio. I’m going to have to kill him anyway, but I can’t do it when he’s looking at me like that.
“Turn around,” I order him, “and drop down to your knees.”
“Please! I’ve got children,” he begs. “And a wife. Please don’t do anything. I was just doing my job. I swear, I won’t tell anyone.”
My eyes flick away from him, up to the ceiling hatch. Greta stares down at me, wide eyed. She shakes her head; she doesn’t want me to do it. I scowl at him, but I can feel my resolve weakening. That Pure boy has made me soft; I can’t put a bullet in this man.
There’s a tense silence, broken by his radio, crackling into life. “You OK, Joe? You’ve gone all quiet on me.”
I hold the gun to his head. “Speak into it. Tell them it’s fine. And if I think you’re saying anything to give the game away, any secret code, or message, I will shoot you.”
He nods, and I hold the radio to his face with one hand, keeping the gun pointing at him with the other.
“All fine here, Ma’am. Sorry, false alarm.”
“Have you got the girl with you?”
“I’m escorting her to the interrogation suite right now.”
“Good work, Joe.”
I notice then that he’s got a set of handcuffs hanging from his belt. “Give me those handcuffs.”
He hands them to me.
“Listen, I don’t want to shoot you unless I have to, but I’m going to lock you up.”
He nods, vigorously: he’s petrified of me. I feel a little thrill of power. All these years, I’ve lived in the shadow of the police and now there’s a member of the establishment here, shaking in fear. It’s really tempting just to hold the gun to his head. Bang, this one’s for Amina.
I can’t though, not with Greta following my every move.
“Sit down on that chair.”
He sits.
“How do these work? Don’t give me any bullshit.”
His voice shakes. “The best thing is to restrain me to the chair.” He must think I’m a complete idiot.
“The chair? That you can lift up? I don’t think so. I’m only going to ask you one more time, how do these things work?”
He nods. “OK. Move me over to the radiator. You need something rigid: that pipe’s the best bet.”
“Right. Walk.” He moves over to the side of the room. “Sit down.”
“Now you need to click that half on my wrist and the other half on to the pipe.”
I can’t cuff him and hold the gun to his head at the same time. I was hoping to keep Greta out of this, but I don’t have a choice.
“Greta. I need your help.”
Immediately, she springs down. She stares straight at him and nods to me. “What do you need?”
“OK, I’m going to give you the gun in a minute. I need you to hold it, that’s all – be careful with it. He’s not going to do anything silly.” I glare at him. “Are you?”
She nods. “You bet.”
Without taking my eyes off him, I hand her the gun. I cuff him to the radiator. Now, all that’s left to do is gag him, to stop him from crying out as soon as we leave the room. “Keep aiming the gun at him, Greta.”
I pull off his tie as quickly as I can. My fingers fumble though and it feels like it takes ages. His neck is all clammy; it’s disgusting.
I loop it round and round his head, over his mouth and tie it tightly.
I look at him once more. His flabby chest is heaving up and down really quickly, and his eyes are bulging. Maybe he’s about to have a heart attack. The aggressive thrill of power I felt leaves me as suddenly as it came. If there’s one thing Ben’s shown me, it’s that not all Pures are evil.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “It’s either this or we kill you.”
I pick up his gun and walkie-talkie; they’re bound to come in useful.
Greta hands me the other gun. She climbs easily back up into the loft and is about to pull me up, when she stops.
“Get his keys, Hoshiko!”
Genius. How could I have forgotten those? “Well done.”
I cross the room again. They’re poking out of one of his front pockets. “Stand up.”
I reach my hand in there. It feels horrible and I’m scared of what I might end up touching. I hook one finger through the key ring and pull them out. I throw them up to Greta, and then she pulls me up after her.
Before we seal up the gap, I look down into the room once more. Nothing untoward there, just a member of the police, bound and gagged with his own handcuffs.
I check to see if Greta’s OK. She grins at me. “Good work, partner!” It breaks the tension somehow, it makes me laugh. We slide the hatch back over.
“One down,” I tell her. “About a million to go.”
BEN
We head quickly down the corridor. I can see a load of police cars outside, through the windows of the building.
“My van’s out there,” Jack whispers. “We’re seconds away now.”
We hasten our pace, practically running down the corridor.
Suddenly, the exit door we’re heading for opens from outside and three police officers run through it, towards us. Two of them rush past us without a second glance, but one of them stops.
“All right, Jack?” he says, and then looks at me. I fight the urge to run away. I make myself look up; make myself smile at him. He seems friendly enough; he nods at me, then claps Jack on the back and laughs. “You’re going the wrong way, mate; they’ve called an emergency meeting.”
“Really?” Jack sounds confused. “I was told to check down here.”
“No. It was crystal clear – ignore previous instructions and check in at base.”
He looks at me again for a second.
“I don’t think we’ve met?”
“This is John – he’s a cadet,” Jack answers quickly. “First day out on the beat and all this kicks off.”
“At least it’s not boring,” the other guy laughs again. “Jack here will look after you and, you never know, you might even get to shoot some Dregs!”
We join in his laughter, chuckling heartily. “Come on, we’d better get there quick.” He turns away from us.
I look at Jack. His hand goes to his gun and he takes it out of his holster. He raises it up and points. He’s going to shoot the guy. Because of me, he’s going to shoot someone.
I want to tell him to stop.
I want to tell him to do it.
The door slams open again. Jack lowers his hands, quickly. Four more police officers come running through. The other guy turns round.
“Come on,” he calls. “What you waiting for?”
“Nothing.” Jack turns to me. “Let’s go.”
The decision’s made for us. We’re heading away from the vans, away from safety but maybe, just maybe, towards Hoshiko. Me, Jack and every other police officer in the city.
HOSHIKO
We head left, away from the direction of Silvio’s office.
It’s really slow going, dragging my poor, aching feet along this narrow space. The dust catches in my throat and makes my nose itch. I keep having to stop myself sneezing – not easy.
I’ve been suspended from the wire in boxes loads of time, bound up in chains from which I’ve had to escape – it’s all been there in the act – and I’ve crawled through these tunnels hundreds of times, so why I suddenly feel claustrophobic now, of all times, I don’t know, but there’s a fluttering of panic in my chest and I feel like screaming, as if I’m going to lose control completely.
It’s so dark and restricted up here and the pain in my feet gets more and more agonizing every time I haul them along the floor.
We reach the next ventilation hatch. At least there’ll finally be some light and air, whatever else awaits us. I’m about to start pulling the cover away when I feel Greta’s hand on my arm.
“Don’t you think we should keep going?” she whispers. “We’re hidden up here; we won’t meet anyone.”
Of course, she’s right. If we go as far as we can up here, there’s less distance to cover to actually make it out of the building, and much less likelihood anyone will see us. I suppress the fact that I still have no idea what we’re going to do anyway when we do get out of the building, if we do get out of the building.
I know it’s the best thing to do, but the idea of being up here any longer is almost unbearable. I take a few deep breaths and feel her eyes on me through the darkness.
“You OK?” For the first time, I can hear the fear in her voice.
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
I resume the painful drag and crawl forward, making slow but steady progress, past one, two, three, four more rooms.
There’s no noise from below. I guess it’s early evening by now; everyone must have finished rehearsals. It seems funny, to think of them all carrying on as normal. I wonder how the others are all doing, whether they know about Amina yet.
I can’t remember the last time I ate anything, the last time I slept. I must be running on adrenaline alone, we both must be.
The walkie-talkie breaks the silence.
“The young girl, Greta, she’s escaped. Someone must have got her out of Silvio’s office. Anyone seen her?”
We hold our breaths. There’s a few seconds pause.
“Joe. Shouldn’t you be here by now with the girl? Joe, are you there?”
The tone of the voice becomes increasingly more panicked.
“Something’s not right. Immediate response required. Someone tell me we’ve still got her, or all our necks are on the line.”
That’s it then: there must be only seconds until they find out where I’ve gone. I grip Greta’s hand in the darkness.
“Whatever happens now, thank you,” I tell her. “For trying.” She places her other hand over mine.
“Let’s go down fighting,” she says.
We keep moving forward, more quickly this time, and it’s not long before the silence below is replaced by the heavy thud of more than one set of running footsteps. I should have killed that guard; he’s going to tell them straight away that we’re up here.
More and more footsteps rush down the corridors below. We turn off the walkie-talkie. It’s a good source of information, but if anyone hears it from below, we’re finished. We’re going to be finished any minute now anyway, but we edge slowly forward, inch by inch.
BEN
So, in order to escape from the police, here I am right in the middle of what feels like hundreds of them, forming part of the man-hunt that’s searching for me. There must be real criminals on the loose out there but, apparently, they’ve just drafted in even more officers.
What will they do to me when they find me? I’m not sure. Maybe they’ll try to get me to conform; try to force me into retracting my statement. Maybe they’ll just kill me.
We arrive in a building at the back of the Cirque, and an important-looking woman calls us to attention. She’s wearing a black trouser suit and her hair is pulled back in a tight, functional bun.
“I’m going to keep this brief. There have been some major game changes in the last ten minutes. The girl, Hoshiko – you probably know her as the Cat – has escaped from right under our noses. We believe she’s been helped by a young female Dreg accomplice: Greta Bukoski. They’ve gagged and bound one of our men, and stolen his radio and his gun and are therefore believed armed and danger
ous.”
An overwhelming sense of relief floods through me. She’s alive! And she’s not just alive, she’s on the run. She’s made them look totally incompetent. I want to whoop with joy.
She continues, grimly. “These are the worse kinds of Dreg: they are lawless and desperate. Our brief is simple: we must stop them. Anyone spotting them should shoot on sight. The boy, Benedict Baines, has well and truly nailed his colours to the mast; even his own mother has conceded that he cannot be relied on. He has assaulted a security guard, leaving him for dead, and his online incitements have already led to riots and unrest across the country. If you find him, keep him alive if you can, but if it’s a choice between taking him down or letting him go, shoot the bastard.”
There’s my answer, then.
“The two Dregs escaped into the tunnels above our heads; they’re up there now, inches above us. These tunnels are rat runs: they stretch all the way across the Cirque.” She clicks a button and the projector screen behind her head lights up, displaying a blueprint of the overhead passageways.
“They could be anywhere up there, or indeed already back down below; there are ventilation points in most rooms. I need men on either side of the building and on every door and window, and I need someone to get up there and flush them out, to force them here,” she points to the far left point of the map. “That’s the direction we believe they’ll be headed in, and where we will focus most of our manpower. Volunteers please?”
There’s a silence. As I take in what she’s said, I realize that the best officer of all to go after Hoshiko and Greta, is me. I’m certainly not about to fire a gun at them, and if I can reach them maybe, somehow, I can get them out.
It’s too risky though; it would only take one person to recognize me and the whole game would be up. Not just for me, for Jack too.
I look sideways at him. He meets my eyes and gives a barely distinguishable nod. I hear a voice, my voice but a bit deeper, a bit manlier, calling out.
“I’ll do it, Ma’am.”
A hundred pairs of eyes turn on me – surely one of them will realize who I am.
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