‘I don’t know his name.’
Ravana sighed. ‘This is where we have a problem. How does one separate lies from the truth?’ He made a motion with his hands as if panning for gold. ‘It seems a person must be more than willing to tell the truth—’
‘I am willing! I’m telling you the truth!’
‘—but desperate to tell the truth.’
For the first time, I noticed his accent. It was German, I thought. He was horribly reminiscent of one of those death camp doctors during the war.
‘Desperate,’ he repeated.
I said nothing. The silence in the room yawned between us like a chasm.
‘Desperation is a powerful emotion,’ he said. ‘It separates the chaff from the grain. It is not enough that you are telling me the truth.’ He left the chair, kneeled before me, and placed a bony hand on my knee. ‘I must believe you are telling me the truth.’
‘I’ll tell you the truth—’ I began, but Ravana had already crossed to the door and exited. He returned a moment later with a medical trolley. On the top shelf sat a plain silver box with two lights. One was green, the other red.
‘Do not be fooled by appearances,’ he said. ‘This is a highly sophisticated device—and equally effective.’ Attached to the box via a curly lead was a handheld wand made from shiny metal. ‘I will ask you questions, and you will give me answers. Applying the probe to bare skin produces all-consuming pain. A second seems like an hour, but the agony disappears when the probe is removed. In fact, you will feel a strange euphoria. As if you are sitting by the beach on a summer’s day.’
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I said, my voice breaking. ‘I’ll tell you the truth!’
‘I know you’ll tell me the truth.’ Ravana turned the device on, and a low hum filled the room. ‘They always do.’
Chapter Four
Sweat covered every inch of my body. Tears tainted my cheeks. Blood stained my bottom lip from where I’d bitten down on it during the interrogation. My wrists hurt from where I’d struggled against the handcuffs.
I slowly raised my head.
He’s gone, I thought.
I tried not to vomit.
Ravana was right in what he’d said. The feeling of the probe against my skin was like being set on fire. The world ceased to exist during those seconds. There was no city. No room. No chair. There was only Ravana and the probe.
Removing the probe stopped the pain. More than that, a sensation of relief—pleasure, even—instantly replaced it like being bathed in a tub of warm water.
But then the questions would continue—
‘Where is the headquarters of The Agency?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Where is The Swan?’
‘Please! I don’t know where he is! I don’t even know who he is!’
‘Who was the dead man in the room?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘His name? You must know his name?’
‘Please, I don’t know.’
Ravana was gone. It was only now that I looked up again at the clock—6.59 pm. I’d been in the room for less than an hour, and Ravana had already broken me. By then, I would have condemned my own grandmother to death if he had asked me—anything to avoid the all-consuming pain of the probe.
But I knew nothing.
Then I remembered the book. Amid the interrogation, there was no mention of it or questions about the man giving me anything. I’ll tell him about the book. It was still hidden in the wall in the alley. I’ll take him there.
A bottomless void filled my stomach. Deep down inside, I knew the truth. Even if I complied with Ravana’s directions, I wouldn’t survive this experience. Ravana was no amateur. He’d tortured lots of other people and gotten away with it. He didn’t lose his temper once during the interrogation. Didn’t even raise his voice. He was the picture of calm.
I’ll tell him about the book.
Maybe, at least, it will end this.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and he reentered, almost with a spring in his step. His face brightened into a smile.
‘Ah, you’ve awoken,’ he said. ‘Wonderful. I was concerned you would sleep for hours.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I will speak. I’ve just remembered—’
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The sound of gunfire came from beyond the door.
The smile faded from Ravana’s face. ‘What is happening?’
He turned back to the door, and the sound of a man screaming reverberated down the corridor. Ravana frantically slammed the door. I felt more than a little pleasure in seeing this horrible little man hiding nervously behind it. He reminded me of a naughty child waiting for punishment from an angry parent.
More screaming came from beyond the door—and more gunshots. I heard a sound of punches being thrown and then a final crash as a body thudded into the floor. A full minute passed.
Ravana stood fearfully behind the door, clenching his fists. ‘This is not possible,’ he grunted. ‘They cannot—’
The door flew open. Ravana staggered backward as a girl entered the room. Wait a minute. I recognized her. It’s the girl I saw on the motorcycle earlier—the one who ordered me to go with her. She had red hair, blue eyes, and a neat, heart-shaped face. She still wore the same clothing—jeans and a jacket—but this time without the helmet.
She glanced at me. ‘Bet you wish you’d accepted the ride.’
I nodded dumbly.
The girl turned back to Ravana. He looked like a cornered rat, his eyes darting around as if looking for a hole to scuttle into. His gaze finally returned to the girl.
‘Hurting me would be an enormous mistake,’ he said.
‘Not hurting you would be a bigger one,’ she replied.
Faster than the eye could see, her fist lashed out and hit Ravana across the chin. He almost comically toppled sideways and slid to the floor like a sack of potatoes. My mouth fell open.
How did she do that?
The girl examined the chair. It only took a moment for her to break the armrests, legs and pick the locks on the handcuffs.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.
‘You’ll get no arguments from me,’ I said, stepping around Ravana’s motionless body. ‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘It’s Brodie.’
She spoke with an accent. I hadn’t noticed it before.
Groaning and bleeding men lined the hallway outside. I vaguely recognized some of them from when I was kidnapped. She’d worked her way through them like a human wrecking ball. To my surprise, instead of heading down to the street, we went upstairs. I didn’t argue. It was only when we reached the roof that I looked around in confusion.
There was nowhere to go.
‘What’re we doing up here?’
‘I’m pretty sure more reinforcements are arriving,’ Brodie said. ‘I can handle them, but I can’t protect you at the same time.’
My eyes darted around.
‘So how do we get off here?’ I asked.
‘We jump.’
‘We jump?’
‘It’s only to the next roof,’ she said, starting towards the edge. ‘It’s not far.’
Openmouthed, I followed her. Jumping from building to building may have been something she did for laughs, but it was more than a little out of my league. We reached the edge, and my legs started to shake like jelly. Sure. There’s a building next door, but it’s not a step across. It’s at least eight feet away.
I can’t do it.
Maybe I couldn’t remember my past, but there was something I was utterly sure about right now.
I’m afraid of heights.
‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘We’re going to take a long run-up and then jump across.’
‘There’s part of that I don’t understand.’
‘Which part?’
‘Everything after, trust me.’
She started to argue with me, but by then, I was already heading back across the roo
f. Stairs have worked for people for thousands of years, and I could see no reason to abandon them now. I was about to enter the stairwell when the sound of racing feet echoed up the stairs. Someone—correction—a bunch of people were coming.
Uh oh.
I turned around just in time to see Brodie in mid-flight. Maybe she’d intended to shame me into jumping from one building to the next. If so, it didn’t work. She landed and rolled and was back on her feet in a second. She waved to me.
Come on!
I glanced down the stairwell as the sound of footsteps drew nearer. As I saw it, I had two options: jump or stay to be interrogated again by Ravana.
So, really, I only had one option. I ran towards the edge on shaking legs, picking up speed as I went. It’s not an enormous distance. I’ll be across in a moment. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t notice the ridge on the edge of the roof until it was too late.
My foot caught on it, and instead of a graceful leap, I tripped and went sprawling out into space. Everything happened in slow motion. Brodie’s mouth opened in horror. My arms reached out. I screamed. The roof of the building opposite disappeared from view.
I fell between the buildings.
Chapter Five
Thud!
My forward momentum took me as far as the opposite wall. I slammed into it with both hands. My nails raked the brickwork but didn’t find a grip—and then gravity took hold.
To make matters worse, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. My collision with the wall resulted in a slight rebound. As I fell, I glanced down to see something rushing towards me.
I reached out. One hand grabbed the top of a window frame. My body swung toward the glass and then—
Crash!
I hurtled through the window and into someone’s living room. It wasn’t a graceful landing. Far from it as I went sprawling like a duck with a broken wing. But it was a landing, and I’d only fallen a few feet as opposed to a hundred, so it was a win as far as I was concerned.
Picking myself up, I flailed at a mess of glass, timber, and shredded curtain that entangled my head. My landing had also destroyed a flowerpot and knocked over a small television. Sitting opposite me was an elderly black woman with knitting in her hands. She was sitting on her lounge chair, staring at me with openmouthed astonishment.
I couldn’t blame her. It probably wasn’t every day that a teenage boy came smashing through her window.
Bang!
A bullet thuds into the carpet next to me.
Someone’s shooting!
‘Sorry about this,’ I muttered.
She stood, regained her composure, and waved a finger at me as she yelled something unintelligible.
I charged through her apartment, and more by chance than design, found the front door. Yes! I struggled with the locks on the door. How do I—
Whack! I turned to see the lady had hit me over the head with a broom. A second hit smacked me in the face. Blocking the weapon with one hand, I struggled the door open and stumbled into the hallway.
‘And don’t come back!’ she yelled.
Those words I understood. I was at the end of a long hallway in a rundown apartment building. A door eased open, and a young mother and her son peered out in astonishment. Part of the curtain still hung from my shoulder. Dislodging it, I try to wave reassuringly.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Knocked over a vase.’
I hurried down the hallway to the elevators at the end. Just as I reached for the down button, I saw the elevators were ascending. Both of them. Is that good? They could be Ravana’s men.
Fire stairs were on my left. Dragging open the door, I started down. The gap in the middle allowed me to see all the way to the bottom. I was up about ten stories, and there was no sign of anyone climbing up. Good. I raced down one set of winding stairs and paused.
Are they footsteps? Or was I just imagining it?
Silence filled the stairwell. Regardless, I had to keep moving, so I continued down another floor, stopped, and listened. Nothing. I rushed down another flight. The door to that floor flew open, and a huge guy tackled me from the side. He threw me towards the railing and thudded a fist into my stomach. Getting me into a headlock, he dragged me towards the exit door.
‘We’re not finished with you, kid,’ he hissed into my ear. ‘The doctor’s got a long night of fun planned for you.’
The doctor’s face appeared in my mind.
Where is the headquarters of The Agency?
Where is The Swan?
Who was the dead man in the room?
I screamed and brought my elbow up into the man’s stomach. He gave a satisfying oomph, and his grip loosened. I elbowed him three more times as we slid and stumbled down the steps. Pushing him against the railing, I swung about and slammed a fist into his jaw.
That’s when it happened.
The railing wasn’t high. Probably some building inspector looked at it thirty years ago and gave it the green light without a moment’s hesitation. Little did he think this little piece of building design would become the stage of a life and death battle.
Because at that instant, the man fell backward. He flipped over, his arms flailing about like a cartoon character. If it weren’t so horrifying, it would have been funny.
I made a desperate grab, but all I got was the corner of his jacket. This ripped out of my grasp as he disappeared from sight, screaming as he fell down the gap. It seemed to take forever. For one brief instant, his eyes met mine during that endless fall. It was almost an expression of disbelief.
This can’t be the end of my life.
Then he slammed into the ground floor.
Spl-aaaat!
Openmouthed, I stared down at his motionless form.
Please, don’t let him be dead.
I stumbled down the remaining stairs in a daze. All I could think of was the expression of sheer disbelief in the man’s eyes. This can’t be the end of my life. I clattered down the stairs. He can’t be dead. People survived falls worse than that.
But not this time. Reaching the last turn in the stairs, I stumbled to a halt as I stared at the man’s motionless body. He lay in the middle of a growing pool of blood, the shape of his body like a crooked swastika. His dead eyes stared into mine.
This couldn’t be real, but it was.
I’ve just killed a man.
Chapter Six
Evening came.
Shops and apartment buildings slid past my gaze. Cars beeped at each other. Someone practiced opera from an open window. A man swept his front step with a straw broom.
I saw and heard it all, but it meant nothing.
I’d killed a man.
I am a murderer.
It was self-defense. That went without saying. There was no doubt the man would have dragged me back to Doctor Ravana, and I would have been horribly tortured and murdered. My body would have been buried in an unmarked grave or thrown into a river. My parents, whoever they were, would have never known what happened to me.
Still, I’d killed a man and would carry that with me for as long as I lived. I could still see it in a kind of stop motion sequence. I tried to grab him. He fell. His eyes met mine. Then he was lying motionless on the floor, his neck at an unnatural angle.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself. I was freezing. Stopping at a street corner, the city slowly came to life around me. A man walked his dog. A woman played with two kids on the sidewalk. A bus screeched to a stop, and passengers exited. It seemed unbelievable that people were still carrying out their everyday lives.
I killed someone.
Shaking my head, I tried to drive the images from my mind. I had to think about the future. My eyes searched the street, finally settling on a dimly lit vertical sign:
LIBRARY
They often stayed open later than shops. Crossing the road, I made my way into the warm interior and found it wasn’t a big library, more like a local community center. Still, it was better than nothing.
The woman at the desk smiled at me.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘I’m very lost. I was on the tourist bus, and I’ve gotten out at the wrong place.’
She nodded.
‘Can you tell me where I am?’ I asked.
‘Sure. You’re on Fort Washington Avenue.’
‘In Manhattan?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course.’
‘Thanks.’
Turning, I sauntered aimlessly up and down the aisles of books. How did I end up in New York? Do my family live here? Images of the city flowed through my mind, but I had the impression they were from television shows. I couldn’t remember anywhere in detail.
I reached a decision.
‘Can I use your internet?’ I asked the woman at the desk.
She glanced up. It looked like she was playing chess on her phone. ‘Usually, you could,’ she said, her tone a little sharp. ‘But our internet is offline. I’m sorry.’
‘Where’re your encyclopedias?’
She nodded to a nearby shelf, and a few minutes later, I was leafing through them. It was an old set. I was surprised they still had them. Soon I was rifling through the S-T volume. The man in the room said I had to find the Swan. He didn’t say to find Mister Swan. I had to find The Swan. Maybe something in the encyclopedia would give me a clue.
After about half an hour, I put the volume down in frustration. I’d discovered a lot about swans. They were part of the same family as geese and ducks. They were also some of the largest flying birds in the world.
Unfortunately, none of this was helpful. If someone gave me a snap test on swans, I’d ace it, but as far as finding out what was going on—
I dragged open the encyclopedia again. There must be something in here that can help. I was halfway through rereading the section when something leaped at me from the first line:
Swan (Genus Cygnus)
That was the second time I’ve seen the word Cygnus. The business card from the dead man’s pocket bore the company name Cygnus Industries and an address on West Forty-Ninth Street. I sat down the book in triumph. At last, I had a lead. The Swan had to be located at Cygnus Industries.
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 2