‘Ow!’
I couldn’t apologise. I could only retch. Dygall reached me as Sloan pushed past, anxious to see what I had just seen. Yestin had also followed us into Pathology; he watched Dygall grab my arm.
‘What is it?’ Dygall hissed. ‘Cheney?’
‘Shh!’
‘
What’s the matter?
’ ‘Good God,’ breathed Sloan. One look was enough for him. He stumbled away from the opening, flapping his hands at us. ‘Back!’ he whispered. ‘Get back!’
‘What -?’
‘There’s something out there!’ Sloan’s voice was barely audible as he shooed us across the room. Dygall tried to resist.
‘What do you mean, “something”?’ he demanded.
‘It looks like – could it be an
OTV
? Cheney?’
‘I – I think so.’ It certainly resembled an On-board Transport Vehicle. It was the right size, the right shape and the right colour – a charcoal-grey capsule, as big as a standard single bedroom, with a thin red strip along its flank. It had retained the little black shield on its nose, and the hand-grip shafts next to each door. But the shafts were now whipping around like tentacles; the vast expanse of tinted glass was now part of a slimy, fibrous envelope; and the doors were now wrapped around . . . around . . .
‘It’s eating,’ I groaned. ‘It’s out there
eating someone
.’
‘He was already dead,’ Sloan hissed. ‘He was. I saw him earlier. That thing wasn’t around, then . . .’
‘We’d better get back.’ Yestin tugged at my sleeve frantically. ‘Let’s get back in the air duct.
Now!
Before it sees us!’
‘Wait.’
Sloan was watching the hole in the door. ‘It probably
can’t
see us. Not without our wrist bands.’
‘Sloan -’
‘I know. Don’t take risks. But there’s a bunch of Dewar flasks over there. I need to find out what’s inside.’
‘
Sloan!
’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Do you want to get
eaten
? Don’t be a
fool
!’
‘We have to get back in the theatre!’ Yestin pleaded, under his breath. ‘Now!’
‘Just wait,’ Sloan rejoined quietly. ‘Just get in the theatre and wait. I can use my laser-head if things get nasty.’
‘Against
that?’
I squeaked. ‘It’s
enormous
!’
‘Exactly. It’s far too big to get through the hole.’
‘Sloan -’
‘I won’t be a second.’
And he bolted across the room, towards the vacuum flasks. I pursued him, of course. It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t. Dygall came too – but not Yestin. He dashed back to alert Mum.
I was furious. I didn’t want my mother out there.
‘Yestin!’ I whispered. ‘Don’t – damn it -!’
‘Nothing,’ growled Sloan. The label on the flask in his hand was signalling ‘empty’; there was nothing on it except a pressure reading. The flask that I picked up was the same. Together we scrabbled through them, glancing over our shoulders every so often while Dygall passed behind us. He was heading for the dispenser, which lay on the far side of the room.
‘Get back, Dygall!’ I was so angry, I found it hard to keep my voice down. ‘You idiot!’
‘We need food!’
‘Dygall!’ I reared up, and scurried over to him. ‘Leave it!
Come on!’
‘Let go!’
‘It’s probably like a macrophage of some kind,’ Sloan murmured distractedly. ‘They’re scavenger cells . . .’
Then several things happened at once. As my furious mother appeared at the communicating door, something charged through the other door – the door to the street. An eruption of fluid was accompanied by a horrible tearing sound, and there it was, suddenly. Between me and the theatre. The OTV.
It was like something you would normally see through a microscope. Its cylindrical body bobbed about in a fluid kind of way, and through the pulsing, wallowing, charcoalgrey walls of muscle I could vaguely make out pale, heavy shapes that might have been (God, it was awful) the limp remains of its latest meal. Its tentacles lashed about, and its doors – one on each side – opened and shut like the mouth of a sea anemone.
I couldn’t believe how big it was, even in that big room. It had torn a huge hole in the wall, and was squirming around in the yellow goo now spurting from all the damaged vessels. I don’t know where its eyes were, but it could see. Or sense. Because it headed straight for Sloan, who was standing right in front of it.
He dodged away. Though it was quick, it wasn’t quick enough. Sloan sprang aside, and hurled himself through the theatre door, which snapped shut as he knocked down the stand that was holding it open. I saw all this in the split second it took me to grab a handful of Dygall’s suit. I didn’t think. I just moved. I made for the ragged, bleeding gash that the OTV had left behind. In other words, I made for the street. Screaming.
If the OTV had been quicker (as quick as a sampler, for instance), I wouldn’t be alive now. Perhaps all its scavenging – all the corpses in its belly – had slowed it down. Whatever the reason, we got out, Dygall and I. We scrambled into the street and ran, ran for our lives, without the faintest idea of where we were going. We were so stupid. So lucky. For all we knew, there was another OTV just around the next corner. It never even crossed my mind that we could have been running into a nest of OTVs. I never stopped to think: ‘Oh! Does this mean that the samplers can target us even without our wrist bands, or is it just the OTVs?’ I simply ran like an animal, up one street, sharp right at the tube, slipping and sliding and stumbling along until I reached the next street. Down that one. Left at the intersection. And left again . . .
Then I was pulled back. Dygall had dug in his heels.
He was pointing.
‘There!’ he gasped. ‘Air duct!’
The air ducts. Of course. We had to get into an air duct.
Dygall was pointing at a damaged door. Through it, I could see a room as black as a scab – its walls bulging with all kinds of strange flaps and knots and protrusions – which was empty save for a large metal toolbox.
Dygall pounced on the toolbox.
‘Quick!’ he shrieked, dragging it under the access panel.
After a moment, my vision cleared and I joined him. I jumped up on the toolbox, but I still couldn’t reach the panel.
‘Here! Quick!’ I crouched down. ‘Stand on my back!’
He managed it, somehow. Once he slipped, and nearly ripped my ear off, but I was past caring. We were both sobbing for breath, sweating and staring and incoherent. Dygall tore the access panel free with clawing fingernails, doing it some damage. Hot, white fluid dripped onto my neck. Blood dripped onto my knee from my torn ear.
‘Quick!’ he shrilled. ‘Help me!
Help me!
’ I gave him a boost, springing to my feet so that he was thrust upwards. Once he was inside, he backed over the hole – wriggling and scrabbling – until he was able to lean out, extending his arms. I must have climbed up them, somehow. I certainly gave his shoulder-socket a nasty yank; it troubled him for a long time afterwards.
I don’t really remember, to tell you the truth. I was too frantic. All I remember is the sense of relief when we were finally huddled in that stuffy, dingy, enclosed tube.
‘Can you seal it?’ Dygall wheezed, from behind me. ‘Can you close up the panel?’
‘I – I -’
‘You’ve
got
to, Cheney,
quick
!’
‘I know, I know . . .’ The panel didn’t exactly snap back together – not the way it was supposed to – but I managed. The leaking fluid was already tacky, coagulating like blood; I was able to use it as a kind of glue. We waited for a few minutes, until it had almost dried. Until it was safe to crawl over.
While we were waiting, Dygall panted, ‘They’ll be in an air duct, too, don’t you think? Arkwright and -’ ‘Yes.’
‘That door closed, didn’t it? The one to the theatre?’
‘Yes.’
‘They would have had time to make it back into the air duct.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Cheney . . .’ His voice broke on a sob. He began to sniff and choke.
I couldn’t do anything for him. I was beyond tears, and couldn’t think of a single comforting thing to say, except, ‘They’ve probably gone back to the Vaults.’
There was a long pause. At last Dygall said thickly, ‘Do you know which direction?’
‘I – uh . . .’ It was hard to concentrate. Which way had we been running? The escape had slipped by in a panic-stricken blur.
‘I – I think the other way,’ Dygall gulped.
‘I think you’re right.’ Reviewing our route in my mind, I added, ‘There should be a junction up ahead. Over the street. We should turn left there.’
‘Cheney?’
‘What?’
‘It saw us.’ Dygall was speaking very, very quietly, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to raise my own voice. I didn’t even want to move, in case I gave away our position.
I wanted to curl up and hide, like a frightened mouse. ‘It didn’t need our wrist bands, Cheney,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘So – so -’ ‘Maybe only the samplers need our wrist bands. Maybe the OTVs are different. Sloan said something about scavengers. Macrophages.’ I could hear Sloan’s voice quite clearly in my head. ‘Maybe they just . . . go for everything in sight. Maybe they don’t differentiate between people, like the samplers do.’
Even as I spoke, I was thinking about Sloan. Sloan had run away. He had left us. Not that he could have done much to help – the OTV would have grabbed him, if he had – but still I couldn’t get that image out of my head: the image of Sloan jumping through the door to the theatre. I remembered his comment in the Vaults, too, when he had described himself as ‘expendable’.
We all are, to some
degree, except Quenby and Arkwright
. Those had been his exact words.
Surely he hadn’t decided that
I
was expendable? And Dygall too?
No; I rejected the notion in horror. No – Sloan wouldn’t have left us if he hadn’t been forced to. He was a First Shifter; he had a responsibility. He would have tried to rescue us. He was probably trying to rescue us right now.
Somehow, I was sure, he and Arkwright would find us again. They knew what they were doing. They always had.
Not like me.
‘What’s that noise?’ said Dygall.
I listened, but couldn’t hear anything except the beating of my own heart, and the whistle of my own breath. I could feel something, though. Through my hands and forearms.
Vibrations.
‘Someone’s coming!’ I yipped.
‘Shh!’
‘It might be Mum!’
‘
Hello?
’ A muted hail, from somewhere down the shadowy tunnel in front of me. The voice seemed vaguely familiar.
‘Who – who’s there?’ I stammered.
‘Cheney?’ A different voice. ‘Is that
you
?’
My heart skipped a beat. ‘
Merrit?
’ I exclaimed, and struggled forward. Luckily, the access panel underneath me didn’t give way; I passed over it without incident, writhing along like a snake in a sock, until I suddenly found myself face to face with . . .
Haemon Goh.
‘
Haemon?
’ I had to blink away tears all of a sudden. The last time I’d seen Haemon, at his birthday party, he’d been a shyly grinning, neatly groomed, perfectly content little nine-year-old. Now he looked like a different boy.
Not that he had been injured, as far as I could see. Physically, he was unscathed. But his face had changed forever. It was all eyes – big, black, staring eyes – and
beneath the grime and goo, it was devoid of hope.
‘Cheney!’ cried Merrit. She was right behind Haemon; I caught a glimpse of her collar-spot, flashing about as she moved. ‘Oh, Cheney . . . oh, Cheney . . .’
‘What happened to your ear?’ Haemon whispered.
‘Nothing.’ I realised, suddenly, that my ear hurt. But I dismissed the fact without interest. It wasn’t important. ‘Who else is with you?’
‘No one,’ Merrit quavered, and stopped abruptly. I think she had lost the power of speech for a moment. But she cleared her throat, at last, and went on. ‘Who’s that behind
you
?’
‘Dygall.’
‘Hello, Dygall,’ said Haemon, in a dull tone.
‘Hello, Haemon. I figured you’d be in here somewhere.’
‘Did you?’ It surprised me to hear this. If I could have turned around, I would have. ‘Why?’
‘Because Haemon’s the air-duct master,’ Dygall wearily replied. ‘Didn’t you know? He used to spend all his free time in the ducts.’
‘He did?’
‘Sure. Where do you think I got the idea from?’
I stared at Haemon, who stared back at me. Merrit said, ‘If it wasn’t for Haemon . . .’ and trailed off again, sniffing.
‘I bet Haemon knows exactly where we are,’ Dygall continued, with a muffled sigh. ‘Don’t you, Haemon?’
Haemon nodded. I realised that he was on his hands and knees – that he was small enough to turn around inside the air duct. I asked him where he was going, and his bottom lip began to tremble. It was Merrit who finally answered.
‘We didn’t know where to go,’ she replied. ‘We . . .
we . . . oh, Cheney, it was so awful . . .’
‘I know.’
‘We had to get out -’ ‘You should cut off your wrist bands,’ I interrupted, and heard Dygall’s scornful sniff. ‘It’s still worth trying, Dygall!’ I said sharply.
‘Why?’ he growled. ‘That OTV went for us anyway.’
‘But the samplers didn’t.’
‘Arkwright was wrong.’
‘He was not!’ Arkwright couldn’t be wrong. The very idea made my blood run cold. ‘CAIP’s still got our details on file, remember? It knows what a human being is. Even if it can’t recognise individuals, it can still send an OTV after us all! Arkwright wasn’t wrong. If we can wipe all references to human beings from CAIP’s memory, we’ll be all right. We
will
.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Merrit, and I tried to explain. I tried to explain about the wrist bands, and the samplers, and the scent pellets, and the On-board Transport Vehicles. I didn’t mention Zennor. I didn’t mention Sadira. I told Merrit that Dygall and I were searching for
Arkwright, Yestin, my mother, my father and Sloan. We had become separated, I said. But they couldn’t be far away.
‘You should come with us,’ I concluded, and Merrit said, ‘Where to?’