by G S Banks
She looks pleased with herself.
‘But you’re not well-trained. You’re not trained at all,’ he replies.
‘Alisdair, you’ll team up with Nina, she’s the most vulnerable of us all,’ says Heather.
My eyes widen. Me and Alisdair?
‘I’ll go with Ben,’ she says. ‘Foxes work well with Bears, the perfect combination of guile and strength.’
‘A match made out of heaven,’ nods Ben, crossing his arms over his chest.
‘That’s exactly right,’ replies Heather.
‘No, no,’ says James. ‘It’s a match made in heaven. In heaven.’
‘I should go with Lucy,’ cuts in Alisdair.
‘Lucy’s going to be just fine with me,’ says James.
The expression on Alisdair’s face shows all too clearly that he does not agree.
‘We are a team,’ says Lucy. ‘And all team members are equal. Nina needs your help. Go with Nina.’
Alisdair remains tight-lipped. I look around us, as the bickering continues. I look over to the hill where Kelci could be, right this moment.
‘Guys!’ I say. ‘Can we please just do this? We’re here now. Let’s just get in.’
_______
Alisdair and I crouch behind a bushy strip of shrubbery, which is nestled on the ground some fifty meters from the opening, which I can just about see now. We’re so close I feel his arm touching mine. This is it then. We’re actually about to do this. I hear him breathing, sense his chest rising and falling. We wait and watch, wait and watch. I see three figures in dark outfits, roaming in front of the opening. Outrage chokes my throat. Was it one of them who took my sister?
We receive hushed updates from Lucy through our earpieces. I try to glean something from the tone of her voice, strain to hear any noises in the background, wanting to know what she sees but I know that she can’t afford to talk any more than is necessary. Meanwhile, we watch the camera, which glides back and forth above the door. Alisdair gives me a look, the blue of his eyes radiating in the dim morning light. Then I see the camera stop moving.
‘Cameras deactivated,’ hisses Lucy, in our ears.
She’s done it! The doors swing open. Then they close, then they open again. There’s a loud shuffling sound through the earpiece.
‘Go, go, go!’ she says.
Alisdair turns to me and nods sternly. I do exactly what he has told me to do. I stay behind him, moving as quickly as I can, trying my best to keep up. He’s fast, obviously. And he would be much, much faster if I weren’t here. But I run as quickly as I can, and it doesn’t take long until we’re right by the entrance. I hold back, as he told me to, hovering over to the right to stay out of their line of vision, whilst he slinks towards them. He’s twenty meters away, ten meters.
He pounces on one of the guards and hurls him to the floor. My heart pulses like a train at full speed. He picks up the guard’s weapon and throws it towards me, before turning to the next guard. It hits me in the chest and I awkwardly catch it in the crook of my arms. It is black and heavy and I have no idea how to use it. But there’s no time to contemplate that because Alisdair has both guards on him, and one is releasing an electric ray into his chest, just as those guys did to Kelci. When I see that, fury takes over and I run straight into the back of the guard and smack him hard over the head with the weapon. Astonishingly, he drops to the ground right away. Alisdair gives me a look then dispatches the other guard, throwing him to the ground where he lands with a thud.
Remembering what Heather said about the security card, I frisk the nearest guard until I come up with one. I try not to gasp as I see that Alisdair’s face has a gash along his cheek and there’s blood, running down his face. I follow him to the door, which continues to open and close. As we dive through a feeling of dread consumes me. My hands are shaking so hard I have to clasp them together. Inside, it is deserted. A corridor: long and perfectly white. The first thing that hits me is the smell: sterile, pharmaceutical. There are no windows, no natural light. What is this place?
22. Fine Specimens
Eleven days since Kelci was taken, Switzerland
We dart along the corridor and eventually reach a turning. I slip behind Alisdair, staying close as he peers around the corner. He beckons me to follow him and I try to keep pace as we move along another passage, running perpendicular to the first and almost identical save that this one has the occasional door, each locked, solid and impossible to see beyond. As we reach another junction I hear sounds, murmurs, coming from beyond the corner. Together we crouch down and hold our breath, hands on our weapons, tensed and ready.
We peek round the corner. I see a massive domed atrium. There are a handful of people marching around industriously, gripping some kind of electronic device, which they tap away at furiously. They are not dressed in the dark combat clothing of the guards but in silvery grey tunics. The whole thing gives me the creeps. What are they doing? We lean against the wall, out of sight, looking at each other, sideways. Then, Heather’s voice pipes up in our ears.
‘Nina, Alisdair. Are you in?’ she whispers.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re in.’
‘Good,’ she replies. ‘Us too. There’s nothing much here, but will keep you informed.’
I describe the atrium to her, briefly, and we agree to report back when we have made our next moves.
‘Did you read the signs?’ whispers Alisdair.
I shake my head then glimpse back. Suspended from the ceiling, in the middle of the space, is a sheet of glass with glowing electronic words and arrows on it.
‘RESEARCH’
‘TRAINING’
‘ARRIVALS’
‘SPECIMENS’
‘SPECIAL OPERATIONS’
‘TRIALS’
‘LABORATORY’
None of it sounds good.
‘What is this place?’ I mutter.
He shrugs his shoulders. I can’t help notice that his face looks more real to me in this moment than it ever has before. I see every pore, every hair, every contour.
‘Where would Kelci be?’ I whisper.
‘It’s too late for Arrivals. I hate to say it, but how about Specimens?’
My stomach leaps and falls sideways at the thought of what that could possibly mean. I nod anyway. To follow the arrow for Specimens we need to go through the atrium to another hallway opposite. We watch and wait until the area is clear. I am all too aware that someone could reappear at any moment and I pray that the cameras are still out of commission. There’s little else to do other than follow Alisdair as swiftly as possible. We reach the corridor leading to ‘Specimens’ safely … but as we enter it we see that - just inside - there are two more heavily armed guards guarding a door.
There’s no time to pause. Alisdair leaping and kicking one, then the other, in an impressive double move. The moment they are down I push through the ‘Specimens’ door and Alisdair follows. We are immediately met with another corridor, wider this time and lined regularly with doors all facing each other. The first one is unlocked and I burst in. The room is small, white, windowless and almost empty except for a thin bed, more like a slab than a bed – with a boy laid on it, his eyes closed and unmoving.
‘Oh no.’
The boy is strapped down with metallic strips across his arms, legs, stomach and chest. A glass screen hovers at the end of the bed with luminous blue words and letters shining from its surface.
Number: 374
Animal: Fox
Powers: intelligence, night vision, hearing, stealth
There are more words but I don’t stop to read them. He’s a Fox. Just like Heather, just like the other Foxes at Muldoon. Yet here he lies, seemingly lifeless. I see bruises where his arms are bound to the bed. I feel fear, hot and suffocating. I look to Alisdair.
‘We have to keep going,’ he says.
‘We can’t leave him here like this.’
‘We will all end up like this if we don’t keep moving – fast.’
‘Kelci,’ I say. ‘She could be here.’
He gives a grim nod.
‘We’ll search the rooms, one by one. Let’s stick together.’
I glance back to the Fox as we shoot back out into the corridor and open the next door. A Fish girl, her head shaved and her lips an unnatural shade of lilac. Then a Deer boy, pale and corpse-like. Then the next, and the next, and the next. Each door opens onto a similar scene – the bed, the screen, the ‘specimen’. My eyes fill with tears. They are young, our age.
We are half way down the corridor and there’s no sign of Kelci. The next door opens to reveal a slightly older guy lying there, but this time his eyes are open and his mouth is covered with a strip. The screen at the end of his bed flashes:
Warning: sedation impossible
A Horse. He looks straight at me, eyes burning. I look to Alisdair who is already moving towards the bed. I follow him and watch his hands remove the strip. The Horse’s head begins to move around wildly. He shouts out.
‘I can hear them. Can’t you hear them?’
My entire body goes still.
I have heard those words before.
Before I can say anything the door of the room swings open and a bundle of uniformed men swarm in waving their weapons. The blood freezes in my veins. The guard at the front, a wide faced man with thick eyebrows, growls:
‘Looks like two new specimens.’
Another of the guards, a shorter one to the left of their formation, moves towards Alisdair with his weapon pointing at his chest.
‘Hold off,’ says the leader. ‘He wants them unharmed. To begin with anyway.’
The Horse looks up at us with desperate eyes and cranes his neck upwards as far as the restraints will allow. The small guard gives a vicious flick of the wrist and hits the Horse square in the face with his weapon, then keeps his eyes on Alisdair as he backs away.
‘We can’t trust these creatures, even for a second,’ he says.
A stream of blood runs down the Horse’s face, as he goes limp and his eyes close.
‘Take their headsets,’ says the leader. ‘And the weapons.’
The small guard rips the headset from my ear and snatches the weapon from my hands.
‘Get off!’ I shout.
I watch in dismay as he does the same to Alisdair. We are alone now. I lock eyes with him across the bed. He’s urging me to stay calm, I can feel it. With that the two guards swoop towards us with what looks like a pair of black hoods.
_______
My eyes are open but all I see is blackness. All I smell is the mustiness of the hood, all I feel is the harshness of the fibres against my face. I sense Alisdair close by, but I don’t know where. We trundle along for some minutes, pulled along and sometimes hit across the back. I try to breath evenly beneath the hood but all I feel is the air sticking as it meets the fear that floods upwards. I try in vain to focus through the material of the hood but I see nothing. I feel a prodding to the side of my head from the sharp end of a weapon. We come to a standstill. It feels warmer here, wherever I am. Everything is silent … then a male voice, deep and oily, slides across the room like mercury.
‘Well, who do we have here?’
There’s a note of amusement in his tone and I begin to wriggle against the hands that grip me, but the grip just clamps on tighter. I feel the jab of a weapon prodding my lower back.
‘Get off me!’
‘Be still.’
‘Let me see our visitors,’ says the slippery voice.
The hood is lifted from my face and the brightness of the room hits me. Surrounding me are the three guards. One of them stands in front of me holding a weapon close to my face. I turn my head and see that Alisdair is there, surrounded by the remaining four guards. The small one right in front snarls up at him like a yappy dog, but he’s not tall enough to reach any further than Alisdair’s chest.
Alisdair’s head is held high and he looks as confident as ever, perhaps even more so, showing no hint of apprehension. How does he do that? I pull back my own shoulders and copy his pose, even though it means the weapon at my back digs deeper into my skin. The guard in front of me steps aside to reveal a man sat behind a white desk that looks as though it’s suspended in the air. He has slicked back hair and wears a crisp, expensive looking suit. His forehead is high and tanned like the rest of his face and his eyes slope above sharp cheekbones. He could be some young Congressman or banker from New York, I see those types stepping out of limos on Wall Street all the time.
Stood at his side, and possibly even more startling, is a tall woman who has black hair that curls itself into a bob. She looks like a silent movie star with her ivory skin and fine features. Her lips shine red and she wears a skirt suit. Behind them a symbol – the purple flower surrounded by green leaves - and the words: ‘Lotus Corporation’ in bold black letters. The woman’s smooth hand rests on the right shoulder of the man, which makes them look like a kind of King and Queen, presiding in their chambers.
‘Ah, who do we have here,’ says the man. But it’s not a question. ‘And to think how lucky we are, to meet this time. We’re growing so rapidly these days I hardly get the chance to visit the outer compounds. Now I am glad we came.’
He gives a smile showing a set of square white teeth.
‘Young Nina Gregory,’ he says, nodding right at me. ‘And Alisdair MacDowell at your side. What a pleasant surprise.’
23. Max & Valerie
Eleven days since Kelci was taken, Lotus Corporation
The man talks as politely as if we were at a dinner party, introducing himself as Max Wilder and the woman next to him as ‘Ms.Valerie Redfoot’. Meanwhile, my heart is in my mouth in horror. How the hell does he know who we are? Even Alisdair seems to lose his cool, shifting uncomfortably on his feet, brow furrowed.
‘How do you know our names?’ I say, pulling against the guards.
‘I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t know who you were, sweetie.’
He leans back in his chair.
‘What job is that?’ I spit out. ‘Kidnapper? Torturer?’
I think of the Anitars we just saw, laid there like corpses, the life sucked out of them. He just grins.
‘That’s not quite how we see it.’
‘How do you see it?’ says Alisdair in a low growl.
‘Well, our work here is incredibly important,’ he replies.
My head spins. The woman looks at Alisdair with a weird fascination that makes me want to knock her out.
‘You have no idea what you’ve got yourselves into,’ says the man, running a finger lightly over his tie. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised by that. The only one of your esteemed family without powers, the only one who’s struggled to manifest. You should have stuck with your pretty little Manhattan life. Much easier than getting involved in all this. A girl like you, an Anitar? You ought to stick to your love affair with fashion.’
My ‘love affair with fashion’? How does he know all this? A creepy feeling, like spiders crawling across my skin, ripples all over me. If he knows who we are, he probably knows who we are looking for.
‘What have you done with my sister?’
‘Don’t worry about your sister, Nina. There’s just yourself to worry about now. Tell me, were the great Luke and Stella Gregory terribly disappointed when you didn’t manifest?’
‘My parents love me for who I am,’ I say.
And I realise that it’s true. My parents do love me for who I am.
‘What is he?’ says the woman, still peering at Alisdair.
Something about the sound of her voice makes my stomach turn.
‘Always look to the eyes, Valerie,’ he says. ‘To know what you’re dealing with.’
The woman looks enthralled.
‘He is a Snow Leopard. The eyes, the hair, the slight arch of the back. Unmistakable and extremely rare.’
Alisdair glares at them.
‘Very good,’ says the woman, looking at Alisdair like
a hungry cat might look at a bird.
‘Useful, very useful.’
Useful for what? I scan the room, desperately looking for a means of escape.
‘Tell me, how are dear old Luke and Stella? I’ll bet they were anxious when their firstborn failed to manifest. God knows they were desperate to manifest themselves, all those years ago.’
He knows my parents? I stare at him, appalled.
‘I can relate to you, you know Nina. My Mother wasn’t at all pleased when my efforts came to nothing. She was a Tiger, just like yours. We’re not so different, you and I.’
I grimace.
‘I’m nothing like you!’
‘Of course you’re not,’ says Alisdair. ‘Don’t listen to him.’
‘Oh,’ says the man, keeping his eyes on me. ‘So you didn’t care when they left you out of everything that was important to them? All those years? All for the “good” of the Anitars. I know how it goes. If you don’t manifest, you are nothing to them. They take away everything from you, even your memories.’
Alisdair shoots me a wary look.
‘However, your mother is still alive, for now at least. Whilst mine is dead.’
My knees turn to jelly.
‘See, there’s always something they’re not telling you. Ugly little truths like the fact that my mother died on a mission – murdered by the killer she was assigned to track. Bet they didn’t teach you that kind of thing at Muldoon Academy, did they?’
I am speechless.
‘And how is dear old Lady Muldoon?’ he says. ‘I’m sure she hoodwinked you into hanging on her every word, I’m sure she has you believing her decisions are oh so just and oh so right.’
‘More just than you ever could be,’ I say.
He laughs.
‘There are countless victims of the Anitar life. Collateral damage. But you must know all about that, with your friend Terence Bonfant.’
‘Terence?’ I gasp.
‘He’s messing with you,’ says Alisdair, pulling towards me as the guards crowd in tighter around him.