Furnace 4 - Fugitives (25 page)

Simon, red-faced and sweat-drenched from climbing the stairs.

I sliced my hand up again, catching the warden just below his throat. He teetered back, hands to his neck, and with another cry of pain I gripped the stone branch and pulled. It was embedded deep in the oak boards but I had just enough strength left to tear it free, sliding it out of my chest and using it like a crutch to help me to my feet.

‘Alex, Jesus, you okay?’ Simon said, rooted to the spot, his expression one of disbelief. I didn’t blame him, the warden and I – mutated into freaks, beaten halfway into oblivion, leaking nectar everywhere – must have painted one hell of a picture.

The warden growled at Simon, the wound in his neck already sealed by a shining coat of nectar. Then he turned his attention back to me. But not before I’d seen Simon begin to run, the grenade belts around his shoulders clinking and one of the explosives gripped in his white-knuckled hand.

I started running too, both of us converging on the suited freak in the middle of the penthouse. He lashed out and I ducked under his arm, plunging my blade into his stomach once again, all the way up to my shoulder. I heard him gasp, felt his fingers on me as he fought to pull me loose. But he had bigger problems. I looked up, saw Simon clinging onto the warden’s back, his arm swinging round like a basketballer’s as he slam dunked
the grenade into the man’s distended, gaping, blood-rimmed mouth.

The warden coughed, trying to spit the explosive loose. I pushed Simon away, as hard as I could, sending him sprawling over the floor. Then I pressed my good hand over the warden’s lips, holding the grenade there, praying that it would be over quickly, praying that it would take us both.

The warden had time for a single, gargled roar. Then the grenade went off.

It ripped away one entire side of his face, his cheek and his eye blowing outwards in a wet explosion. I had time to notice that my left arm was missing from the elbow down as the warden staggered backwards, his hands held up to his ruined head, the remaining eyeball staring at me in disbelief.

But he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even close.

I hobbled over the floor after him. The world was fading fast, like a computer game switched off mid-scene. I was dying. There were too many injuries for even the nectar to repair. The old nectar, that was. There was only one way to finish this. There was only one way to beat him, and only one way to save myself.

The warden hit the remains of a tree and toppled over. I reached him in a flash, throwing myself onto his chest.

His mouth was a mess, but I saw it there, the nectar. It sparkled up at me from the tattered remains of his throat, pumping from the arteries that were already beginning to mend themselves, tiny crimson eyes almost
willing me to consume it. I didn’t wait. I
couldn’t
wait. I could feel the life draining out of me, spurting from the stump of my arm, from the matching holes in the front and back of my chest. If I didn’t act then the warden would recover, and he’d finish this. It had to be now.

I leant forward, put my lips against the warden’s ruined face.

Then I began to drink.

Lost

It was like swallowing liquid fire. As though I was an engine that had been on the verge of guttering out but had suddenly been pumped full of fuel. The nectar splashed down my throat, quenching a thirst that had been raging unnoticed in every cell of my body. I didn’t think about the horror of what I was doing, the fact that I was supping blood from the severed neck of the warden – blood that he, in turn, had drawn from a berserker. I just drank, letting the nectar fill me from head to toe; drank until it felt as if my entire body was burning, as if I could have brought down this tower with a single blow; drank until my vision sparked back on, picking out every single thing in immaculate detail; drank until my lungs were screaming for air and my stomach felt as though it was about to split.

The warden squirmed beneath me, and I stabbed my right arm through his shoulder to anchor him in place. His only reaction was a wet, feeble cry. He was done. I had drained him. He was finished. And he
knew it, too, his movements becoming less and less urgent as the life force leached out of his system.

‘Alex, please stop.’

I could hear the voice behind me, the boy called Simon, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything other than feasting, feeling my body repair itself, strands of nectar bleeding from the veins and arteries in my severed arm, from the ragged holes in my torso, from the countless other wounds, knitting flesh back into existence. I had no idea power like this could even exist, no idea that I could possess such strength.

I was invincible, I was indestructible, I was immortal.

I ripped my head up, snatching in a raw, desperate breath that stank of blood and nectar. The warden’s single eye blinked at me, full of fury and fear, and I grinned at him, the nectar storming up from my stomach and exploding from me in a guttural, unstoppable laugh. I heard the way it sounded, about as far from anything human as it was possible to be. And I loved it. Why be human when I could be so much more?

The warden must have sensed my power, because he made one final bid for freedom. He bucked his body, tipping me off. I rolled onto the floor and he started to throw himself around, trying to get up. I stood casually, looking at my left arm, which had been severed by the grenade. The nectar had formed a second, shorter blade which jutted out from my elbow like a spear carved from a burned stick. It was still working there, tiny black feelers stretching from the tip like plants, weaving together to make me a new limb.

It was working on the rest of my body, too. My skin was shimmering the same way the warden’s had, as if draped in shadows. And it was more than that. It felt as if the world was running in slow motion, and that every move I made was faster than time.

‘Alex?’ That childish voice behind me, Simon. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time left. Zee, he’ll be on his way, right now. Remember?’

I glanced over my shoulder to see the kid there, tapping his watch, a kid I didn’t want to waste my breath speaking to. He too had been under the influence of the nectar, one arm swollen and muscled by its touch. But it was
old
nectar, and it had abandoned him. He hadn’t been worthy of it. I hissed at him, revelling in the way he staggered back, fear lighting up his face.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘What have you done?’

I looked away, bored with him. With a grunt the warden finally made it to his feet, teetering unsteadily as he turned to face me. I don’t know how he managed to keep going, considering his head had practically been turned inside out. But somehow he lurched my way, gaining speed and momentum, his fist held back, ready to strike.

I held my ground, punching my right hand through the warden’s shoulder again before jabbing my left into his ribs. Both sunk in deep and he slapped at me in an effort to knock them loose. But without the nectar his blows possessed nowhere near the same strength they had before.

With another howl of laughter I twisted my body and slung my arms around, lifting the warden off the
floor and launching him into the air. He swung slowly, almost lazily, towards the elevator shaft that punctured the middle of the penthouse, thumping into it with an explosion of plaster.

‘Screw this,’ the boy called Simon said, retreating to the door that led to the stairs. ‘If you’re in there then you’d better snap out of it soon.’ He took another look at me, waiting for a second or two before shaking his head. ‘Goodbye, Alex,’ he said. Then he was gone, the clatter of his feet on the staircase gradually fading out of earshot.

I walked to the warden, his wiry body lying in a pool of black blood. He was still trying to push himself up but there just wasn’t enough nectar inside him to patch his broken limbs, his split sides. He saw me coming and tried to spit at me, the weak gob of dirty saliva making it as far as his own ravaged chin.

This is for what you did to me
, I wanted to say, only the words wouldn’t come, nothing but a loose groan falling from my lips. Maybe it was because I knew the words were a lie. In truth I had the warden to thank for
everything
. He had made me this creature of pure fire, of absolute power. Without him I’d be just another pathetic kid trapped at the bottom of the world.

Or would I? I fought the black cloud that blanketed my mind, trying to snatch any thought that wasn’t murder. But my memories had scattered like birds before a storm cloud, lost in the darkness.

I dug the blade of my hand into the warden’s back, the fibres of nectar expanding inside his skin, acting like
a hand. I dragged him around the elevator shaft towards the stairwell, kicking him down the steps, flight after flight, until he rolled to a halt against the stencilled wall that read ‘48’.

He seemed to know what was on this level because he tried to crawl away, actually attempted to throw himself down the steps. I didn’t let him, lifting him up like an eel on a hook and pushing him towards the door. He fell through, ripping it off its hinges and falling against the opposite wall.

Noise filled the corridor, a sound like thunder, rising fast then fading. Seconds later the entire tower seemed to shake, the floor splitting in two, one section dropping at least half a metre below the other, a network of cracks spreading over the walls and ceiling. I ignored it, pushing the warden onwards until we reached the first door.

The room was still dark, drowned in red light. And it was still full. The wheezers backed off into a corner as the warden tumbled through the door, their breaths and their cries rising to a crescendo. The warden lost his balance, sprawling forward, knocking one of the infirmary beds away as he crashed onto the floor. A trolley of surgical equipment spun into the crowd, shedding metal as it went.

That noise again, the sky tearing. The building rocked, harder, the windows in the room shattering in time for me to see a jet blast past outside, arcing gracefully to its right and out of sight, its missile bays empty. In the depths of my memory I knew what was happening. I knew that the girl Lucy’s plan had worked – that she and … Zee, that was his name; that
they had found help, had explained what was going on – and the tower was now under attack.

Thanks to Captain Atilio the army already knew the blacksuits were enemies, that Furnace was fighting against them, and it must have made Zee’s story easier to swallow. I hadn’t honestly believed the authorities would take down an entire building, but things out there were catastrophic enough to try the most drastic tactics. Needs must when the devil drives, as they say. And there was no doubt who was driving now.

But it was none of my concern, not any more.

Somehow the warden managed to turn himself over, shuffling back against a bed and pulling his legs up defensively. He stared at me with that cyclops eye, then he seemed to notice the wheezers. They had seen him, too. They were edging forward, their faces masked but somehow alive with curiosity. One stepped right up to the warden, a scalpel clenched in its gloved hand. The warden lashed out, knocking the creature over. But it seemed to use up the last of his energy and he crashed down onto his side, sucking in rasping gasps of air.

Slowly, but unrelentingly, the rest of the wheezers approached, dozens of them, some holding surgical blades, others gripping tools, and some just flexing their fingers as if they couldn’t wait to start work.

And work is exactly what they did. I don’t know whether they knew it was the warden, whether they were somehow getting revenge for the part he had played in their nightmare existence. Or maybe they just sensed his fear, his weakness, and it angered them.

Whatever it was, they descended on him like flies on a corpse, their black coats flapping like wings, their fingers scuttling over his flesh, and that endless, buzzing wheeze filling the room.

The warden tried one last time to knock them away but there were too many of them. I saw his eye flick between his attackers, growing ever wider and ever wilder. And just before it disappeared altogether it settled on me, a look of pure, absolute horror.

Then, with a final, desperate scream, he disappeared beneath them.

I watched for as long as I could bear it, until there were too many pieces to count, then I turned and walked from the room, back into the corridor. There was smoke here, hanging over the floor like mist, and an alarm was ringing too. I ran back to the stairwell, peering down between the railings to see a fire raging below.

With no other choice I headed upwards, climbing all the way back to the penthouse. I wasn’t scared, the nectar took care of that, but a slight tremor of panic was beginning to rise as I pictured myself trapped inside the tower. I started across the floor just as another plane tore past, so close that the rest of the glass up here shattered in its deafening wake, golden light flooding into the space.

The tower shook, uttering a groan so deep and so loud that it was almost subsonic, a feeling more than a sound. It reminded me of some vast sea creature calling
out in the depths. There were no other stairs here, but there was the roof. Maybe there’d be a way out up there. And if not, at least I’d have a better idea of what was going on.

I ran for the nearest window, faltering when I heard the sound of another missile ripping into the tower further down. The penthouse was already beginning to fill with smoke, the breeze from the windows doing little to clear it. Once again the floor seemed to lurch, dropping by a metre or more, the view outside shifting like the horizon in a stormy sea, so violently that my stomach flipped.

I grabbed a stone tree to steady myself as another jet screamed past right outside. Fire licked through the cracks in the floor, curling up towards the ceiling and taking hold there. I reached the window, the stone frames drooping as the foundations of the tower crumbled. I stuck my head out, the view of the ground blocked by curtains of pitch-black smoke that poured from the windows all the way up the tower, like nectar bleeding from a corpse. It clawed into my eyes, into my lungs, and I turned my head up to see the ledge of the roof over my head.

I had no hands to speak of, not any more, but I jabbed my bladed fingers into the walls, swinging myself up. The slope was steep, and it was slippery, but I managed to perch there in the shade of the vast black spire that topped the building.

The plane was coming round again, glinting in the sunlight as it banked. When it had lined itself up, two
white trails hissed from beneath its wings, slamming into the tower beneath me with such strength that I was almost jolted into the void. The rumble grew in volume as the plane burned past, more smoke churning upwards.

I shuffled up the roof, feeling the heat through the stone. And it wasn’t just the tower that was alight. All around me the city burned, fires devouring entire blocks, entire neighbourhoods, stretching into the distance as far as I could see.

I peered down onto the streets to see shapes there, too far away to make out clearly, indistinct figures that bounded through the smoke, who clambered over the rubble. There were soldiers, too, armies facing off on the avenues and squares of the city. I saw tanks, and helicopters, men and women in camouflage firing at the marching ranks of blacksuits, all so far away and yet so clear.