Fifty Fifty (25 page)

But now he’d seriously messed up Plan B. He’d deactivated the alarms so they wouldn’t go off. The back door would only stay open if he held it open, and there didn’t seem
to be a way of drawing attention to the break-in without getting himself into serious trouble. Gil didn’t even know
how
to open the door from the inside – he hadn’t paid
any attention at all when he’d left the building with Dad. He rolled over on to his knees and got to his feet to examine the door, and at once he heard voices coming from the other side.

Panic blazed under Gil’s ribs again. It was the guards, coming to find out what was going on. Angrily he squashed the fear down into his guts. He had to find somewhere to hide and that
could only mean going deeper into the labs. Gil ran towards the door just up the corridor and fumbled again with Dad’s keys until he found the one that worked. Outside he could hear the
voices muttering, and there was a little thump on the back door behind him. Then Gil was through the door, and rushing to the next one. He touched the pad on the wall with the silver disc on
Dad’s pendant and the door slowly hummed open. Then he dived into the small space under the stairs beyond and waited.

Through the glass windows in the inner doors Gil could see a wedge of torchlight that grew wider as the back door opened. The beam shone straight down the corridor and made it impossible to see
who was behind it. It moved past the first door and then, as the next door opened, the voices spilled out, sounding much too loud in the darkness. The torch beam swung wildly and Gil shrank as far
back as he could and listened to what the voices were saying.

‘Can you believe they didn’t set the bloody alarm?’

‘Those dogs were a total pushover.’

‘I told you, didn’t I? Piece of cake.’

‘You don’t think there’s somebody in here, do you? Waiting for us?’

‘They’ve got a bit of a shock coming if they are. There’s some rope left over, isn’t there, and gaffer tape?’

‘Yeah, sorted.’

‘So let’s get on with it, eh? Just keep your eyes open.’

A familiar chuckle came out of the darkness and Gil held his breath to stop himself gasping out loud.

It wasn’t the guards at all. It was Jude.

Jude took the stairs two at a time and was gone. Gil tried to count the people who followed him but quickly lost track. Six, was it, or seven? They merged into one long blur, like a giant maggot
lolloping up the steps, and then Gil was alone in the silence.

He lay back under the stairs, utterly defeated. His plans had failed. All he could do now was raise the alarm and get Jude arrested, or walk away and leave him to liberate the mice that might be
Mum’s only hope.

Or perhaps, thought Gil, sitting up again, perhaps there was an alternative. Maybe he could stop Jude taking the mice. If Gil got there first he could move Dad’s mice to a safe place. And
if there wasn’t time for that – well, Jude was still his friend, after all. Gil could argue with him, explain everything, beg him to take all the animals except the ones that Dad
needed. It was a very long shot. But Jude would listen, wouldn’t he, when he saw how desperate Gil was?

Gil began to creep up the steps after Jude and his gang.

He didn’t dare to use the torch in his backpack. Instead he replayed the memory of the video he’d taken for Jude. You went up and up the stairs until they reached the landing where
the toilets were. Then it was straight on, through the automatic doors and past the room where Dad made his mouse embryos. Gil found that every single automatic door he came to had been propped
open, so there was no need to use the pendant. He carried on down the corridor, through more open doors, and left to another set of stairs. When you got to the top you went right . . . or was it
left? Gil stopped uncertainly at the bottom of the staircase. It wasn’t quite pitch dark. Faint streaks of light came from panels set into the ceiling, and ghostly fire exit signs pointed
back the way he had come.

As Gil stood trying to make up his mind, feet pounded on the floor directly above and he managed to jump backwards out of the way as someone clattered down the stairs and charged past him. They
were gone in a moment, breathing hard with effort, but Gil thought he’d seen a big box in their arms. There was a torch strapped to the person’s head, and the beam of light bounced and
wobbled ahead of them as they raced away from Gil down the corridor.

Without allowing himself time to think, Gil ran up the stairs and turned right, immediately diving into a side corridor as a second person hurtled past with a full box. This time he caught a
glimpse of a rabbit’s head with scared eyes gleaming red in the light from the headtorch. He kept going, along the corridor and up another flight of steps, watching out for the headtorches
that gave him advance warning that someone was coming.

Then Gil heard footsteps behind him as well as in front of him, and guessed that the first person must be coming back for another cargo of animals. He slumped back into an alcove that was hardly
a hiding place at all, but somehow nobody saw him. The two people shot past each other in the corridor, mumbling something under their breaths, and were gone in opposite directions.

By the time Gil reached the curtain of plastic strips that led to the animal rooms he was exhausted. He hid under a workbench in the washroom as yet another person burst into the room and puffed
away with a box full of animals. It felt as if Jude’s helpers had multiplied into thousands of shapes in the gloom. They were all dressed in black, they all wore balaclavas and gloves and
torches on their foreheads, they all had the same big plastic storage boxes. Gil slipped through the air shower and the plastic curtain and into the room where the rabbits were kept, wary of
bumping into someone. But there was no one there. All the hutch doors swung open. The sandpit was empty. The rabbits were gone, and he knew the mice would be next.

Gil stood hesitating at the entrance to the room where Dad kept his mice, listening and hearing nothing, and then he went in.

Empty mouse boxes lay in heaps everywhere. There was a smell of mouse pee and sawdust. Between the rows of cabinets where the mice lived knelt a figure who was pulling out drawer after drawer,
scooping out the mice and dropping them into a big box next to him. The headtorch dipped and swayed as he moved. There was nothing to distinguish him from the other shadowy figures that Gil had
seen flashing past him in the corridors, but Gil knew at once that this would be Jude.

Gil stepped behind the stacks of mice while he tried to think what to do. He heard someone come into the room, panting loudly, and there was a clatter that he guessed was their empty storage box
dropping on the floor.

‘Here you go,’ said Jude’s voice. ‘Tellthe others we’re nearly done. Only two more after this, I reckon.’

There was a grunt and then the noise of the plastic curtain strips slapping together. Quietly Gil moved up behind the rows of drawers. On the other side of them Jude was steadily getting closer
and closer to Dad’s mice. It was too late to rescue the mice without confronting Jude. And when he sees it’s me, thought Gil, what will he do?

He stood there for a moment, sick with a fear that was not like the fear he’d had of the guards and the Alsatians. He wasn’t afraid that Jude would hurt him. He was afraid that Jude
would laugh at him, ignore him, push him aside, tell him he was just a kid. He was afraid that Jude would have too many answers. The fear made his head swirl. Gil swallowed a few times, pushed back
his hood and stepped out in front of Jude.

Jude glanced up for a fraction of a second and then went on lifting mice out of drawers. The big box in front of him was heaving with mice – squeaking, nipping,
clambering over each other, falling on their backs and getting up again.

‘Not quite finished with this lot yet,’ he said, and then he looked up at Gil properly. The beam of light from the headtorch shone right in Gil’s eyes and he had to close them.
He heard Jude swear softly, several times.

‘Gil,’ he said, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ Gil said very fast, without opening his eyes. The insides of his eyelids glowed blood-red in the torchlight.

‘You what? Bloody hell, you pick your moment, don’t you. Can’t it wait till I’m a little less busy?’

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Can you move your torch a bit? I can’t see.’

The light dropped away and Gil blinked his eyes open.

‘Well, crack on with it, then, I haven’t got all day,’ said Jude.

Gil tried to judge whether Jude was being friendly, but it was impossible to tell from his voice alone, and the expression on his face was hidden under the same black balaclava that Gil had seen
in the photo above his desk. Even Jude’s eyes were invisible. As Gil struggled to put some words together one of Jude’s gang whipped through the curtain into the room. He stopped dead
when he saw Gil, but without even turning round Jude put up a hand.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ he said calmly . ‘Everything’s under control here. Just give us some space for a minute, will you?’

The figure vanished again, like a black ghost.

‘You followed us in, did you?’ said Jude in the same calm voice. ‘I guess you worked out we’d be here tonight?’

‘I didn’t follow you. I was here first,’ Gil said.

Jude’s head jerked in surprise. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said sharply.

‘I was the one who turned off the burglar alarm,’ Gil said. ‘It was off when you came in, remember? I heard you talking about it.’

‘Oh my God. Never work with children or animals, isn’t that what they say?’ Jude laughed, and the torchlight moved from side to side across the box of squirming mice.
‘You thought you’d be a hero, did you, and do your own raid? You could have screwed the whole bloody thing up for us, do you realise that?’

‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to stop you.’

The mice squeaked and rustled in the silence.

‘Oh, come on, Gil,’ said Jude, in a voice that sounded dangerously quiet. ‘Don’t let me down, mate. We planned this together, you and me. Why do you want to ruin it now?
You don’t want these animals to suffer any more, do you?’

‘You can have all of them,’ Gil said. ‘I really don’t care. I just want you to leave the ones in these boxes, that’s all.’ He put his hand on the stacks that
held Dad’s mice.

‘Oh,’ said Jude. The torchlight flicked to the tiny clipboards on the front of the drawers. ‘So these are your dad’s little victims, are they? I thought you
couldn’t stand your dad. So why would you want to stop me taking his mice?’

‘Because – because I’ve just found out my mum might have a really horrible disease and my dad’s trying to find a cure. He’s using the mice to find a cure. Please,
Jude. Leave them.’

‘Oh, I get it.’ Jude laughed again. It was not a good sound. ‘You’ve decided you’re against torturing animals in experiments unless your mum’s life happens to
be at stake.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others
, is that it?’

Gil almost stopped breathing. Jude had too many answers. There was no way to argue with him. Panic started to rise up Gil’s legs. Jude was going to take all the mice, and there was nothing
he would be able to do to stop him.

‘No creature deserves to suffer and die to save the life of anyone, not even your mum,’ said Jude. ‘I’m sorry to say this, but your mum is no more special than anyone
else.’

‘She
is
special!’

‘Really? How about my mum, then? Or your best friend’s mum? Or the bloke next door’s mum? We’ve all got mums, you know. They’re all special.’

‘Jude, you’re not listening to me!’

‘In any case, these experiments don’t work. Mice aren’t people. Trying to cure a diseased mouse won’t help your mum. It’s a complete bloody waste of time. You might
as well let me take them.’

‘
Please!
’

‘Sorry, Gil. It’s got to be done. It’s what we came for. This is the revolution, brother.’

Jude stood up and reached a hand towards one of Dad’s drawers. Without a thought in his head Gil stepped forwards and pushed him hard. Jude stumbled back, almost tripping over the box of
mice behind him, and Gil stepped into the space between him and Dad’s mice.

‘Just leave them,’ Gil said, as firmly as he could manage.

‘You’re a good kid,’ said Jude slowly, ‘and you mean well, but you don’t know what you’re messing with. Now, just step back.’

‘No.’

‘Get out of my way,’ Jude said, and Gil saw his lips move in the hole of the balaclava.

‘
No.
’

Gil pressed himself back against the drawers of mice. An instant later his head hit the wall with a bang and he fell in a heap on the floor. It took several seconds to work out that Jude had
picked him up and thrown him aside as if he was just a big stuffed toy.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jude said from somewhere above him. ‘But I did warn you.’

As Gil’s head began to throb, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. He lay slumped on the floor at the base of the wall and watched Jude’s arm, lit by the torch beam, moving
through the air towards the drawers of mice. On the wall above him Gil could see a square lump, lit up in the torchlight. He stared at the lump, puzzled, trying to work out what it was. At last he
realised it was a fire alarm. And then, suddenly, he knew what he could do. He pushed himself to his feet and raised a fist, and just before he began to move he saw Jude tense up, preparing for
attack.