The thunder of footsteps came racing up the stairs. Daryl heard the squawk of a radio and the metallic click of what he guessed was a bullet being slid into a chamber.
He hunted frantically around the room, trying to find something to defend himself with, but he came up with nothing.
His eyes fell on the window. The key had been lost years ago so it didn't open, but that didn't matter. There was no time. The men were upstairs now. There was nothing else for it.
Tucking his chin into his chest, Daryl aimed himself at the double glazing, closed his eyes, and ran.
Five
The window seemed to explode outward even before Daryl hit it. He found himself flailing through a fog of fragmented glass, the wind whistling past him as he fell face-first toward the garden below.
He flipped forward. As far as he knew it wasn't intentional, and yet his knees came up and his head ducked down and he turned himself almost all the way around before—
THACK. His feet planted down on the glass-strewn gravel. His knees bent, his left hand touched the ground, then he was moving again, springing forward like a sprinter and vaulting over the back gate.
Another man in black was crouched behind the fence, waiting. He grabbed for Daryl, but the auto-pilot that had driven Daryl out of the window was still in control. He fired a foot into the man's stomach, doubling him over.
There was a crack from Daryl's bedroom followed by a high-pitched whistle. Daryl dodged, and a dart dug deep into the tall fence behind him. He looked up to see one of the men leaning out of the broken window, already lining up a second shot.
Darts. Better than bullets, but he still didn't fancy being hit with one. Shoving his winded attacker aside, Daryl took off along the alleyway that stretched along the back of his row of houses. The ground seemed to rush past beneath his feet, as if he were running on a moving walkway that was hurtling him along.
Fences and sheds passed in a blur beside him. His legs fired like pistons, his feet punching the pavement and propelling him onward. The alleyway was dozens of feet long, but he was halfway along it already, closing fast on the main road ahead. He had never run at this speed in his life. He wondered if anyone had ever run at this speed in their life.
And then, he began to wonder something else. He wondered if he could stop.
His stomach tightened and he felt his breath go short, not through effort but through panic. The world whistled by him too fast, too out of control. The main road was looming right ahead now with all its cars and vans and smoke-spewing trucks.
One wrong move, one trip, one stumble at this speed and there'd be no getting up again. He had to slow down, stop, bring his body back under control.
But his body had other ideas. To Daryl's amazement and horror, he began to speed up.
"What's happening to meeeee?" he screamed as he bounded from the mouth of the alleyway and raced out onto the road.
HOOOOOOONK! A horn blasted. Brakes screeched. Without seeing them, Daryl was aware of two long black cars with tinted windows skidding toward him. His legs kicked sharply and he sprang into the air, bringing his knees up to his chest.
The world below him seemed to grind into slow motion. Daryl watched as the front of one car met the side of the other. He saw the metal ripple with the force of the impact, heard the groaning and grinding of the collapsing steel.
He landed on the road beside the tangle of metal. One of the drivers' doors began to open and another man in special forces black tried to climb out. Daryl snapped back his foot, slamming the door closed on the man's arm. There was a howl of pain and the clatter of a gun landing on the tarmac, then Daryl was moving again, running along the road toward…
He stopped. Up ahead, the road was blocked by several more cars and vans. They were all identical shades of glossy black, the windows on each one darkened to prevent anyone from seeing inside.
Daryl doubled back. He was past the car wreck and the whimpering driver when he saw the other blockade. It cut off the road from one side to another—cars, vans, and a number of mean-looking men in matching black outfits.
He should stand still, he knew, put his hands up, let them realize they'd made some terrible mistake. Whoever they were looking for, it clearly wasn't him. He was nobody. They'd figure that out soon enough.
And yet, his instincts told him—screamed at him—to run. It wasn't just the weird warning from his dad, either. There was something about the men that told him they had no interest in listening to reason.
He shot a sideways look to the alleyway behind his house. There was another exit at the far end, but the men who'd burst into his house were almost certainly along there, racing toward him even now.
Daryl rose onto the balls of his feet. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it fast. The longer he took to come up with a plan, the less chance he had of making it work.
He finally made his mind up to run for the alleyway, when he saw the red dot. It was on his arm when he first noticed it, then a second later it shifted sideways and came to rest in the center of his chest.
Slowly, Daryl looked up at the houses along the street. It took him a moment, but then he spotted it—the long slender barrel of a rifle poking through a gap in some upstairs curtains.
Daryl shifted slightly to his left. The sniper followed him, the red dot remaining more or less stationary over his heart. He couldn't be sure, of course, but something told him there were more than darts in that gun.
"We don't want to hurt you, Daryl."
The voice crackled from an amplifier somewhere in the blockade ahead of him.
"But what…? If I try to run you'll shoot me?" Daryl shouted back.
"Actually no," came the reply. "We're going to shoot you anyway."
There was a muffled ker-ack. Daryl saw a sliver of silver glinting as it sliced through the air. It was just a dart, after all. He could see it quite clearly: the pointed tip; the dark red bristles; the dart's rotation as it hurtled toward him.
It was moving fast. Really fast. He could see that. And yet at the same time, it seemed to lumber lazily toward him. He almost found himself growing impatient as he watched the pointed tip close in.
He reached up and snapped his hand closed a few inches in front of his chest. The dart felt warm against his skin, the metal heated by the friction of its race through the air. He uncurled his fingers and stared down at it resting there in his palm, trying to process what he'd just done.
"Reflexes: ten," he whispered, then he convulsed in pain as a chunk of cold metal was pressed against the back of his neck, and fifty-thousand volts of electricity tore through his body.
There was a needle in the back of Daryl's hand when he woke up. He could feel it in there, digging under his skin, its point deep into one of his veins.
He opened his eyes, then quickly closed them again. One of the men in the military outfits sat nearby, head down, staring at the screen of the iPad he held in both hands. Daryl heard his name whisper out from the tablet's tinny speaker, then a chorus of muttering in the background.
The voice of his PE teacher, Mr Collins, almost made him jump, but he kept still, not wanting to give away yet that he was awake.
"Darren!" the teacher snapped, his voice sounding even harsher on the recording.
"It isn't me, sir,”—that was Daryl's own voice this time—“I’m not doing it."
The next part of the video was drowned out by the revving of an engine. The hard bed beneath Daryl vibrated and he realized he was in the back of a moving van.
There were straps across his wrists. He could feel them pulling tight whenever the van turned or hit a bump. He thought he could feel more down near his ankles, but he couldn't be sure and didn't dare move to find out.
A sudden blast of music almost made him jump again. The man in the suit muttered, then there was a soft bleep and the music stopped.
"Hello? Yeah, it's Carter," the man said, his voice clipped and irritable. Daryl could hear some garbled speech down the phone l
ine before Carter continued. "Of course he's out. He'll be out for hours. Is the plane all set?"
Daryl had to fight to hold in a gasp. Plane? Where were they taking him?
"Good. I'll… what? No, I don't need to dose him again, I told you he's still… Yeah, but I don't think…"
Carter sighed. "Fine. Your call, but if he O.D.s it's because you gave the order. He dies and it's your fault, not mine."
The phone gave another chime as the man hung up. "Idiot," he spat, then Daryl felt him move closer.
"Wait," Daryl said, flicking his eyes open. His throat was dry and the word came out as a deep croak. Carter stopped halfway between the bench he'd been sitting on and the bed. The only light in the back of the van came from a small bulb mounted on the inside of the roof. It cast long shadows across Carter's face.
"What the Hell?" he said, in amazement rather than anger.
"Please, you've made a mistake," Daryl said. "I don't know who you're looking for, but it's not me."
Carter ignored him. He looked Daryl up and down from his toes to his head and back again. "How are you awake?" he said, but Daryl got the impression the question wasn't really aimed at him, and that the man was talking to himself.
"Evidence of telekinetic ability and enhanced reflexes but, I mean… you're awake. Metabolism must be off the chart."
"I don't… I'm not… I don't know what you're talking about," Daryl said. "Is this about the basketball? I didn't mean to hit him with it. That wasn't… I don't think that was me."
The van hit a bump and Carter had to lean on the bed to support himself. This seemed to jolt him into action. He reached down toward the foot of Daryl's bed.
Lifting his head, Daryl saw Carter take two small items from a tray. The man glanced at Daryl as he slid a needle into the top of a small glass bottle and drew liquid up into a clear syringe.
"What's that? What are you doing?" Daryl asked. He tugged on the straps that bound his wrists, his heart pounding against the inside of his chest as if trying to escape all on its own. Daryl tried to squirm away as Carter turned the needle toward him, but the straps were too thick, too tight. The leather creaked as he heaved against them with all his new-found strength, but the bindings held fast.
"Relax," soothed Carter, bringing the needle in close to the crook of Daryl's arm. "Try not to struggle, you'll make it worse."
"No, no, don't," Daryl yelped, panic rising in his voice. "Don't, please don't! Please don't! Please—"
Something shifted in Daryl's head, like a ripple spreading out through his brain. Carter flew backward and slammed with a boom against the van's wall. His head snapped back and he slumped to the floor, the syringe falling from his hand and rolling into the narrow gap beneath Daryl's bed.
Daryl gaped down at the motionless man all tangled up in a heap. There was no escaping it—that one was definitely his fault.
"Oh Jesus," he whispered. "Don't be dead, don't be dead, don't be…"
Carter stirred. Daryl almost cheered.
"Oh thank God!"
But even before the words were fully out, Carter's back arched and his eyes went wide. A hiss burst from his lips, rising quickly to something more like a scream.
And then, as quickly as it had started, the sound stopped. Carter opened his mouth, but the voice that emerged was not his own. It was the same one Daryl had heard coming from his dad earlier.
"Hold on," it said, then something smashed against the van from below, flipping it off the ground. Daryl heard the muffled shouts of the driver. He saw Carter tumble limply across the floor then up toward the ceiling as the van rolled onto its side.
The wall beside Daryl buckled inwards with a squeal. He felt a sickening sensation of weightlessness like he was floating off the bed, but the straps pulled tight, holding him down. The inside of the van twisted in a dozen directions at once, his stomach lurched and the wall across from him became the floor, then caved in with a screech of rending metal.
The light flickered and went out, plunging the inside of the van into darkness. Daryl was jolted violently around on the bed, suddenly grateful for the straps holding him in place.
With a final crunch the van rolled to a stop. Gravity pulled Daryl toward the crumpled wall beside him, which he guessed was now against the ground. The needle in his hand had been torn free and he could feel blood trickling up his arm.
The rasp of his breathing was all he could hear at first, exaggerated in the now much narrower confines of the van. But other sounds soon came rushing in—a car alarm; muffled shouting; the distant wail of sirens closing fast.
"H-hello?" he said into the darkness. The only reply from Carter was a soft unintelligible groan. "What do I do now?"
The answer came in the form of a noise unlike anything Daryl had heard before. But was he hearing it? Was it a sound or a sensation? He wasn't sure. It felt like a low, rumbling frequency that rattled through his bones and shook his skull.
The droning deepened and the shaking increased. His whole skeleton vibrated, chattering his teeth together and turning his brain to jelly. He cried out, but the screams were swallowed by the din.
There was a rush of movement. The world seemed to stretch and contract at the same time. The inside of the van was filled by a brilliant, blinding blue light that forced him to screw his eyes shut tight.
When he finally opened them again, everything had changed.
Six
Daryl was still inside the van. Part of it, anyway.
The crumpled wall beside him was still there, along with a chunk of the roof and some of the floor. The wall across from him was missing, though, and there was a perfectly smooth straight line along the ceiling, like the slice of a surgeon neatly cleaving the vehicle in two.
No, not in two. The back doors and front cab were nowhere to be seen either. The van hadn't been sliced in half, the bit with the bed in it had instead been cut out of the vehicle like a tumor.
Beyond the space where the wall had been was… the past. It was the only way Daryl could think to describe it. He was in an underground train station, but one which had clearly long gone out of service.
Faded posters hung from the dirty tiled walls, advertising everything from the cleaning power of soap to 'the cool refreshing tang' of cigarettes. Beside those was a larger image with a First World War army helmet on it and an instruction to 'Keep it Under Your Hat', that warned of the dangers of gossiping during wartime.
Daryl let his eyes wander across the station. He took it all in, from the antique benches and the dusty platform signs, to the wooden hatch of the ticket booth and the girl leaning on the other side of it, resting her chin on one hand.
It all looked old, but not as old as it should have looked. It was like time down here had slowed to a snail's pace, while the rest of the world…
Hold up. Rewind.
Daryl looked back at the hatch.
"Does this seem awkward to you?" asked the girl. She swapped the hand she was using to support her chin. "It feels pretty awkward. I'm having to sort of bend my knees to get low enough."
Daryl blinked. "What?" he said, although he felt that wasn't really a fitting response, so he said it again for emphasis. "What?"
The girl straightened up. She folded her arms, fidgeted, then folded them the other way.
"No, that's worse," she said, more to herself, Daryl thought, than to him. She let her arms fall loosely by her sides, gave a brief nod, then shot him a shy smile. "Hi."
"Uh… hi," Daryl replied. He found himself nodding and smiling back at her, entirely out of habit. It seemed to make her happy and her smile broadened.
The girl ducked her head through the hatch and caught hold of the wooden ledge on the outside. She wriggled and squirmed and clumsily hauled herself through the gap, then let out a brief scream as she slid forward and tumbled to the floor.
"I'm OK, I'm OK!" she announced, springing back to her feet. "I meant that."
If he had to guess, Daryl would have said she was around
his age, although she moved like an awkward twelve-year-old, all flapping arms and nervous energy and wide, darting eyes. (Gawkiness: 9)
She wore a purple knitted hat that covered her head down to the eyebrows, with a fluffy bobble wobbling about on the top.
Her skinny frame was drowned in a thick woolly jumper that came almost all the way down to the knees of her jeans, and she had just a hint of an accent—Australian, he thought, but she hadn't said enough yet for him to be sure.
"Who are you?" Daryl asked.
"Oh, yeah, we haven't done that bit. I'm Riley." She thrust her hand out for Daryl to shake, remembered he was strapped down, so diverted into a wave instead. "I helped break you out. You know that big, like, crash underneath the van? That was me! Well, I mean, it wasn't me under the van, that would have been crazy dangerous, but I made it flip."
She beamed proudly, folded her arms again, unfolded them, put her hands on her hips, then clasped them in front of her and twiddled her thumbs.
"You could've killed me," Daryl said.
"Didn't, though," she said, the smile fading. She folded her arms again, and this time she kept them there. "Probably saved your life."
"Who are you?"
"Told you. I'm Riley."
"No, but who are you?" Daryl demanded. "What am I doing here? What's going on?"
"Perhaps I am better placed to answer your questions," said a voice from somewhere beyond Daryl's line of sight. The voice was low and deep with a slight gravelly edge. The moment he heard it, Daryl was reminded of Simba's dad from The Lion King. He really hoped it wasn't, though. The day had been weird enough. A talking cartoon lion might just tip him over the edge.
A man stepped into view beside the girl. No, not a man. Something else.
He was human-shaped, but a good bit larger than human-sized, like he'd been scaled up by twenty-five percent or so. He had to be over seven feet tall, with a dome-shaped head that rose straight up from his broad, muscular shoulders with barely a suggestion of a neck.
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