Authors: Sarah Alderson
My own smile died on my lips. ‘But you said if his stats kept bouncing, he’d be kept here – and they have – his stats have been bouncing – they’ve been bouncing a lot. See!’ I pointed at the read-out jumping all over the place. ‘They’re bouncing like crazy.’
Dr Roberts shook his head. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I managed to keep him here as long as I could. They were going to transfer him tonight and I stopped them, but they’re moving him first thing tomorrow. There’s nothing more I can do.’
I glanced at Jack. He wasn’t faking it so well anymore. His forehead was creasing, his lips pursing, the heart-rate monitor was spiking like a mountain range.
‘He’s not awake, though,’ I cried.
The doctor pursed his lips and took a deep breath. ‘They don’t care. They say they have the medical equipment to be able to take care of him now. I really don’t understand why they want him so badly – but they do.’
Sure they did. And they were going to want him a whole lot more when they found out what he could do.
‘Are you coming? Visiting time’s over.’
I stared at the doctor who was holding the door open. Then I looked frantically back at Jack. I bent down, took his hand and whispered in his ear.
‘I’ll be back in the morning. I promise.’
Unsurprisingly I didn’t sleep. Instead I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark trying to put my thoughts in some sort of order. It wasn’t like they could be catalogued and filed, though. My mind was cartwheeling from one thing to the next like it was performing an Olympic floor routine. I kept thinking back to Jack. How was it possible? How could he heal himself? And why had it suddenly appeared out of nowhere? Maybe the shooting had triggered it. It was a possibility. Wasn’t it trauma that triggered whatever the hell kind of gene we both had?
I really wanted to start experimenting – see if I could find out what kinds of injury Jack could sustain and still heal from. A bullet was pretty hardcore. What about an axe? Did he feel pain too? My head jerked up . . . could he die? Another unsettling thought followed swiftly behind – was his power better than mine? No way. It was so unfair. For the first time in my life I had been better than him at something.
I pulled myself together. He might be able to heal himself, but I could control nature. Or at least water . . . Or at least I thought I could. I hadn’t had any further chances to experiment since flooding the bathroom.
I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest, wondering what Key would have told Alex by now. Key wouldn’t have seen my meeting with Richard Stirling as it was inside the headquarters, but he would have been at the hospital and seen Jack was up and about so he would also know about Jack’s new-found ability and about the Unit moving him in the morning.
And Alex would definitely agree that we couldn’t let the Unit take him now. So, we’d have to change the plan and rescue him from the hospital instead, and then go back for my mum and to kick Richard Stirling’s ass later. Whatever Alex had been planning, whatever he’d said before about split resources, the circumstances had changed, so the plan needed to change too. And Alex would figure something out. I didn’t need to worry. I’d meet him in a few hours and we’d make our move then. The Unit wouldn’t know what hit them. Hopefully Demos and the others would also be back by then.
But where did that leave my dad? I mulled it over. I couldn’t leave my dad behind. But then, I pulled at the cover on the bed, bunching it between my fists, what about my mum? How was it possible to rescue her and Jack and my dad simultaneously from three different places – when they were all under guard?
Oh God, I needed Alex’s help. I wasn’t known for my tactical planning. I was more of a rash, impulsive, just do it and worry about it later kind of girl. That’s why I was here in the first place, wasn’t it? Almost stabbing someone in the eye? Impulsive. Stealing my dad’s credit card and jumping on a flight to California. Also impulsive.
I’d promised Alex I wouldn’t do anything else reckless – but what was the alternative: stand aside and let them take Jack and cut him into little pieces to see if he’d grow back?
I looked up at the ceiling, hoping to God that Key was up there and not taking a pee or rest break. ‘If you’re there,’ I mouthed, ‘please tell Alex to figure something out. And fast.’
I lay on the bed staring at the alarm clock on the bedside table. When it flashed 5.51 a.m., I got out of bed. There was a pile of clothes hidden under the bed. A pair of Jack’s old shorts and a T-shirt, pilfered from the closet in his room and washed twice. I pulled them on and then sat on the edge of the bed to put on my running shoes. I looked again at the clock on the bedside table.
5.57 a.m.
I got up from the bed and crept to the door, easing it open and then tiptoeing across the landing in the semi-darkness. I bent and slipped a piece of paper under my dad’s door. His alarm was set for 6.15 a.m. The note told him to meet me at the hospital by 7 a.m. I’d underlined URGENT three times.
Down the stairs, jumping the creaking one, landing in the hallway by the front door. I paused. Timing was crucial. At 6 a.m. the Unit did a changeover. I needed to head out just before the new cars arrived, when the men who’d overnighted at the house were tired and waiting for relief, and at the moment that would cause the most confusion. Alex had run over the plan with me at least a dozen times when we’d met on the pier.
I opened the door, glancing back up the stairs to where my dad was still sound asleep. I stepped onto the veranda, pulling the door closed behind me, and then bounced down the steps and started stretching, waving to the men in the cars guarding the house. It couldn’t look like I was about to give them the slip. As far as they were to know, I was just going for an early-morning run. I noticed the two men in the back of the first car were asleep, faces pressed like lumps of Play-Doh splatted against the windows.
The guy at the wheel swore when he saw me. He poked the guy next to him in the ribs and I watched him rub the blur from his eyes and then confer, looking over his shoulder, obviously trying to evaluate whether to pass it onto the relief cars which hadn’t yet appeared or to the car behind them whose occupants were clearly doing exactly the same calculations. Before they could make up their minds I bounded into a sprint, making it to the street corner before I heard the sound of an engine turning over and the black shape of the SUV pulled alongside me. I didn’t pay it any mind. This was what we’d anticipated. Alex had been quite right. The timing was perfect.
Once I hit Main Street, my heart was slamming into my ribcage as my feet pounded the sidewalk. Did the Unit soldiers know about me? Had Richard Stirling told them? This could all go horribly wrong if they did. But just then Jonas’s face flashed into my mind. He had no idea what I was – I was certain of that. I had to take the risk that the others didn’t either. There was no other choice.
I scanned the road ahead. There was more traffic, but it was still early and I needed there to be a few more cars on the road, bigger cars, or it wouldn’t work. I slowed my pace a fraction, sighting the red light a hundred metres ahead. I pulled up by a lamp post and started to stretch my calf muscles, peering over my shoulder. The Unit pulled up beside me and the driver wound down his window to glare at me. He’d been on shift for twelve hours and looked like he needed to be heading to bed and not kerb-crawling a dawn jogger. I smiled sweetly at him and started running just as he opened his mouth to say something.
The light turned green up ahead. A truck appeared on the horizon. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder again, checking the SUV was still right on my tail, and then, with my eyes on the oncoming traffic, I stepped right out in front of the Unit’s car. The driver slammed on his brakes and I darted to the other side of the road where the lights of the Seven-Eleven beckoned.
Once my foot hit the sidewalk, I swung my eyes to the truck heading towards us and forced it to fishtail across the road. It was heavier than the Humvee, but to me it was easier than pushing a piece of paper across a table with my fingertip.
The back end of the truck swung across both lanes of traffic, right into the path of the Unit’s car. I saw the driver from the Unit frantically trying to ram the car into reverse to avoid the oncoming smash and I let him reverse a few metres, scared that the smash would be too big when it came and that someone might get hurt, but once it had cleared a few metres, I held it in a lock. The wheels spun, grinding up the asphalt. I didn’t wait for the impact. I turned on my heel and sprinted towards the Seven-Eleven, making it inside just as the sound of metal slicing into metal tore through the air.
I ran down the row of canned goods and noodles, past the place Key had first accosted me – which felt like a year ago already – past the fridges blowing condensed cool air, towards the fire exit looming large at the back and that’s when I fell.
The pain was so intense I curled immediately onto my side and tried to wrap my arms round my skull to stop the bone from shattering into a million pieces. I wondered where the axe had come from and who was swinging it at my head. Except it wasn’t an axe. I knew what it was. I’d felt it before, only never like this – never this badly. All I could compute was that they knew.
They knew. They knew.
How stupid had I been to think that Richard Stirling wouldn’t have warned them? Of course they knew!
I tried to roll onto my haunches, dimly aware that there was a man shouting somewhere in the distance or maybe he was yelling right by my ear. But I couldn’t understand whatever he was screaming. Was he one of the Unit? I had to stand but I couldn’t find the floor. Or my feet. The room was a shrieking, spinning cage. I sobbed and choked, realising I was on my knees, with my head resting on the ground. I needed to get out of here. I needed to get to Alex. With an unsteady arm, I reached out and found something solid to lean on, a shelf maybe. But then the shelf tipped or the room tipped and I tipped with it and I lay there amongst the fallen packets of noodles, feeling the tears slide down my cheeks.
Then I was lifted up. My arms flopped over somebody’s back, my head banged against something hard and I groaned.
Put me down. Let me go.
But the words didn’t make it past my lips.
Please.
Something bashed my leg and then I was held upside down. No, I was upright. No. I couldn’t tell any longer which way up I was.
‘Lila, Lila . . .’ I tried to raise my head.
‘Lila, can you sit? You need to hold on. Can you hold on?’
I opened one eye. It was Alex. He was yelling at me. I frowned, wincing at the pain that shot through my head.
‘. . . hold on . . .’
What was he saying? He grabbed both my arms then and hauled me like a sack of potatoes onto something, something unsteady, and I wobbled and wanted to fall to the floor. But he wasn’t letting me. He was tugging me upright and he wouldn’t let go of my wrists. He had his back to me and I rested my head between his shoulder blades. Then the drilling in my skull was joined by a throbbing sensation that made my whole body vibrate violently.
My head lolled to one side and it was just too much effort to lift it back up so I let it hang there, feeling the lure of the horizontal and the screaming pull of the muscles in my arms and shoulders. Alex was shouting still and I tasted salt and I didn’t know why, and then the drilling stopped and the pain receded slowly.
I raised my head from its painful back bend position and felt wind pummel me. The sob that had been crushed in my windpipe burst free and I pushed my face forward into Alex’s back to stifle it. I shifted my balance on the bike, squeezing Alex even tighter than he was gripping me.
‘Are you OK?’ The words whipped away in the wind as he said them. I nodded against his back, hoping he could feel it. Speaking was out of the question.
At some point he slowed the bike to a stop and the noise of the air juddering in my ears faded. My head felt hangover heavy as though I was trying to balance a cannonball on top of a blade of grass.
I let Alex put one hand round my back and one underneath me and lift me, and I curled into him, pulling my head under his chin. But the blunt stick of a memory was starting to poke at my bruised brain. I tried to ignore it. It felt good here folded against Alex, hearing his pulse under my ear, loud and steady.
We were walking on wood. And I could hear the slap of water beneath us. The pier again? I twisted my head to see and cracked open an eye. We were on a jetty, not the pier. There were rows and rows of boats – sailing boats, speedboats, dinghies and one or two super yachts towering over the rest, making them seem like plastic bath toys.
What were we doing here? I needed to be somewhere.
‘Key!’ Alex’s voice vibrated against my cheek. ‘Start the engine. We need to go. Now!’
Key? Did he just say Key? I squinted into the shatteringly bright sun and saw a silhouette above us standing on the deck of an enormous boat.
‘What? Why is she here? What happened?’
That was Key’s voice. But what was Key doing here? Why wasn’t he in Washington? Why wasn’t he up in the sky floating around?
‘We’ve got to go,’ Alex said. ‘The Unit know about Lila. They’ll be on our tail. We’ve got to go now.’
What was Alex saying? We couldn’t go. I needed to get somewhere. I just couldn’t think where.
‘What happened?’ Key repeated.
‘I don’t know. But we need to haul ass out of here.’
No. No, no, no hauling. No ass. This wasn’t right. The hospital. That was right. I needed to get to the hospital and rescue Jack. I pushed myself away from Alex’s chest and threw my legs out in a jerking puppet dance in an effort to get down.
‘No, no. Go back. Go back! Down!’
The roar of an engine severed all lines of communication. Alex held me tight, reining my legs in. ‘Whoa, calm down. We’re going, Lila. We have to go.’
He started shifting my weight so he could throw me over his shoulder and hoist me onto the boat, but I fought him, pried his arms off me with an enormous effort, forcing them apart with my mind. I slid to the jetty, banging my knees as he dropped me. Alex staggered back, rubbing his shoulder, a crease of irritation running between his eyes.