Authors: Sarah Alderson
‘It’s true,’ Jack answered for me. His hand was balled in a fist at his side and his voice was tight, as though he was being strangled.
We took the turn onto the base a minute later. Sara wound down her window and flashed her laminated ID out of it. The Marines on duty just nodded her through. No stop and search like yesterday morning. They had obviously been primed to expect us and ordered to let us pass.
The barricade lifted. They’d already replaced the one I’d destroyed on the way out the other day. Dusk was falling, the light was bruised and purple and I couldn’t help wondering if it was the last sunset I’d ever see. We passed the Unit’s headquarters and took the next right, carrying on down a smaller road round the side of the building. The back looked as impenetrable as the front – a solid glass and steel fortress.
‘OK, we have to hurry,’ Sara said as she parked the SUV by the back door.
We all jumped out, Alex and Jack standing sentry, scanning the surroundings, pushing my dad and me behind them.
Sara crossed to the alarm pad on the wall by two steel doors that reminded me of upright mortuary slabs and tapped in some numbers. I hoped Harvey had done his homework. He had merely dragged long and hard on his cigarette when I’d asked him how confident he was about being able to break in. I wasn’t sure what kind of an answer that was, but right now I was going with very confident.
The hallway we walked into was empty and long and lit halogen-white. It looked like a Hollywood filmset for God’s waiting room. Our footsteps echoed like righteous thunder. I glanced to the end of it, trying to recall the map Jack had drawn for us. The control room that Harvey and Demos would be heading for was just on the right-hand side before the elevator.
I suddenly had a moment’s clarity of vision. We were insane. My dad was completely right. Only mad people would attempt what we were attempting. But, on the other hand, maybe it was so insane the Unit would never suspect it. I had to hope so.
We reached the elevator at the end of the hallway. This was it. I was just minutes away from seeing my mum again and adrenaline flooded my system, pulsing through my body. Sara pressed her ID card against a reader and then pushed the button for level -4. None of us breathed. Alex held my hand tight.
The corridor that we spilled into was empty. The ceilings were low, the fluorescent strip lights so startlingly bright I had to blink. We walked towards a double-thickness glass door at the end. There was another touch pad to its right. Sara tapped in the code. The door swooshed open and we stepped through. It slid shut behind us, sealing us inside what could only be prisoner holding.
The room we found ourselves in was deserted. A bank of computers sat along a central column of desks, their screens blank. Along one side of the room were several white doors, each solid-looking and without handles. The only indication they were doors at all was the thin black outline and the flashing touch pad to the right of each one. Were those the cells? Was my mum inside one? My dad must have been thinking along the same lines because he crossed straight over to them and started banging, calling out her name.
‘Where is she? Where’s Melissa?’ my dad shouted, desperation in his voice.
A slow smile eased across Sara’s face.
‘Where is she?’ Jack demanded.
I saw Sara’s face register his tone and her brown eyes narrowed slightly at him. Then, as I watched, she took a stumbling step backwards, her eyes growing round. Her hands flew to her chest, palms outwards. I glanced at Jack again and did a double take. His gun was in his hand and he was pointing it straight at Sara.
‘Where is she, Sara?’ he asked calmly.
I saw Sara figure it out in that instant – finally understand that we were playing her – that this was a double-cross as Suki had so eloquently put it. Sara’s eyes darted to Alex and then to me and finally to my dad, who had stopped calling my mum’s name and instead was staring straight at her, with a look of pure hatred.
‘What are you doing?’ Sara asked, giving innocence one last try.
‘Cut the crap, Sara. I know you’re lying. Just tell me where she is before I shoot you.’
‘You’re not going to shoot me, Jack,’ she said, looking at him like he was being ridiculous. ‘Besides, it’s too late for that.’ She tilted her head to the camera in the corner of the room. ‘Put the gun down,’ she ordered in a completely new voice. Her eyes hardened, the softness in her face melting away, leaving only a brittle, hard-angled stranger in her place.
I drew in a breath. Up until then I had been hoping that Amber had got it wrong – that the aura thing was perhaps just a load of New Age nonsense. I glanced at Jack. I could see he was just as shaken as I was. A part of him must have been hoping and praying that Amber was wrong too. But then his expression turned cold and he raised the gun so it was aimed directly at Sara’s head.
She didn’t react. She just smiled casually. ‘You can’t get out, Jack. It’s too late,’ she said.
‘Why?’ Jack asked.
‘Because, Jack,’ she sighed, ‘your old team are just outside. Well, what’s left of them. The ones you didn’t shoot. They’re watching and waiting for my order.’ She nodded at the camera in the corner of the room. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Neither’s your mother. And I should thank you also for delivering your mutant sister to us too.’
Jack weighed her up for a split second before shifting the gun a fraction and firing at the camera in the corner of the room, leaving an intestinal tangle of wires and smoking metal. ‘I meant,’ he said, training the gun on Sara once more, ‘why are you doing this?’
She snorted. ‘Well, that’s done it. Now they’re coming.’
‘Answer the question,’ Jack demanded.
‘Oh, Jack, it’s not personal. It was never personal.’
‘It’s my mum,’ Jack growled. ‘It doesn’t get more personal.’
‘It’s science, Jack. It’s progress. You can’t stand in the way of it.’
‘Science?’ I screeched. ‘Science? You think that kidnapping people and torturing them is progress?’
Sara looked at me and laughed. ‘Oh, Lila, you do make me laugh. Science is the future. And if one or two people are sacrificed for the greater good – well, so be it. We’re learning so much from your mother. We’re going to learn even more from you, Lila. And imagine how the world will benefit from that knowledge.’
‘Benefit?’ I stuttered, taking a step towards her.
Alex stretched his arm out and caught me round the waist before I could reach her. She flinched a little, but tried hard to cover up her fear. I noticed that Alex too had a gun in his hand and that it was pointed at her. Out the corner of my eye I could see my dad, his face frozen, almost expressionless, his eyes unblinking. He seemed too stunned to even move.
‘It’s OK, Alex, let her go. Let her do her worst!’ Sara said quite calmly. ‘Go on, Lila,’ she taunted. ‘Use that power of yours. It’ll trigger the alarm. It was reactivated the moment you set foot down here. You’ll only hurt yourself.’
I stared at her, loathing seeping from every pore in my body.
‘Oh, did you honestly think we didn’t know about you? About what you were? Lila, we’ve known about you for years. Since the scissor episode at your school – remember that?’
I couldn’t hide my surprise. That was three years ago. How had they known about that? My lungs collapsed as though my ribs had punctured them.
‘We’ve known about you the whole time, Lila. About what you are. We’ve just been waiting for the right moment to bring you in. If it had been up to me, I would have contained you as soon as you stepped off the plane from London, but Rachel wanted to see what might happen. She wanted to see whether Demos would go after you, which he did, predictably. We knew where Alex was the whole time you two were off on your romantic little getaway; we could have swooped on you in Palm Springs, but we wanted to wait until we had you and Demos in one place before we made a move.’
I felt Alex’s hand tighten its grip on my arm.
‘We hoped we’d be able to contain all of you at the same time back at Joshua Tree – make it look like you got shot in the fallout, Lila, and then contain you and no one would have known. You see, we need someone who’s telekinetic.’ She pursed her lips. ‘But you got away. Thank you, Alex,’ she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘But then you came back.’ She shook her head as though she still couldn’t believe my stupidity. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘If you think you’re going to touch her, you’ve got another think coming,’ Alex snarled, taking a step towards her.
‘Oh, Alex,’ Sara said, laughing. ‘You don’t really think you’re going to stop us, do you?’
The bullet whizzed past my ear. I heard the zip before it smacked into the tiled wall behind Sara’s head.
‘Enough!’ my dad roared. ‘Where’s my wife?’
My jaw swung open. My dad was holding a gun. I wasn’t sure where he’d got a gun from or whether he’d missed Sara’s head accidentally or on purpose.
Sara seemed just as astonished. ‘Dr Loveday, put the gun down,’ she said in an uneven tone.
‘She’s here.’
I turned my head. Alex was leaning over the bank of monitors in the centre of the room. He’d turned them all on. Every screen displayed a black-and-white portrait of a cell. I scanned across them – all of them were empty and for a moment my heart seemed to tear through my chest. I couldn’t breathe or see – black-and-white dots were dancing across my vision – then I realised that was just the jumping static of the screens and there – there was movement. On the far screen. A thin white shape, jerking and juddering in front of the camera, looking upon first glance like a ghost hovering or a smear on the camera lens. I pushed closer, leaning across the desk, clutching at Alex’s arm. Even through the jumping static, I could make out the eyes. My eyes. Staring at us. I could see her mouth making shapes.
Michael
. She was saying
Michael
.
‘Dad, Dad, it’s Mum. It’s Mum!’ I yelled.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of movement. Sara had thrown herself sideways, and as I watched, her fist smashed through a square glass box attached to the wall and punched down on the red button inside.
Splinters of glass pierced my brain. I felt my cheekbone smack the tiles and a bolt of pain slice open my head. I heard shouting and the whisk of a bullet past my ear.
Jack was lying by me, his knees bent up to his chest. I tried to reach my hand out towards him, but I couldn’t locate my fingers. Vague thoughts, like drips of acid on an open cut, shrieked through my brain.
The alarm. Harvey and Demos hadn’t been able to deactivate it.
Another bullet whistled by my ear. It seemed to ricochet inside my skull. I tried to force myself to stand, to open my eyes at least. To fight. I couldn’t give in now. I wouldn’t give in now.
A hand started to haul me upright. ‘Lila, come on! I need you. Lila!’
I opened one eye, squinting through a film of tears, and saw Alex had his arm round me and was trying to get me to stand. My feet were dragging against the floor, my body hung limp against his side.
‘Come on!’ he yelled again.
My head tipped back in surprise at his tone, but my feet found the ground and I stood shakily, feeling my head wobble as though it was attached by a fraying thread to the rest of me. The pain was foggy now, less piercing, throbbing in my temples, sending shockwaves coursing down my spine.
‘Lila, focus!’
My eyes snapped open. I hadn’t realised I had shut them again. The room flipped the right way up. The walls zoomed back in. Sound blasted my ears. The pain was sucked away like a syringe drawing blood. I saw Jack kneeling at my feet, his head bent over, hands splayed on the floor. I bent down towards him, wanting to help him stand, but Alex shook me once more, hauling me round to face the door.
‘Lila, I need your help here, please.’
I forced my eyes to focus. But all I could make out was a black mass pounding down the corridor towards us like a huge swarm of bees that slowly pixelated into a solid form. It was them. It was the Unit. They were coming for us – at least half a dozen men stampeding towards us.
‘Do something!’ Alex yelled.
Then I realised what he was asking me to do and tried to focus. There were splashes of red decorating the walls of the corridor they were running down. Fire extinguishers. I ripped them off the walls, feeling a sharp blast of pain in my head as I did, and mustering the last reserve of energy within me, hurled them like skittles into the mass of men. Two of them doubled over and hit the floor, but the others were already at the door, punching in a code. I scanned the room quickly. Sara was lying sprawled on the floor by Jack’s feet and my dad was nowhere in sight, but my brain didn’t have time to process that. Alex fired at the control pad, leaving a smoking box dangling from the wall.
The door made a sputtering noise in response. A man on the other side kept punching futilely at the keypad. He gave up and stood aside as another man wedged the butt of his gun into the hinge of the door, trying to force it. A third man fired at the glass.
‘The door, hold the door. It’s bulletproof,’ Alex yelled at me.
Just then the door made a groaning noise. It juddered and wheezed and started to open. I seized hold of it, forcing it shut and holding it there with every bit of strength I possessed. I watched helplessly, gritting my teeth as the Unit’s soldiers fired their guns repeatedly at the wall of glass in front of us. The glass bloomed with snowflakes and I felt the tears start to trickle acid-hot down my cheeks. How long before they were through? Even if the glass held, I knew I couldn’t hold the door for much longer and certainly not if they fired the alarm again. I had what? Thirty seconds before another one hit me perhaps. What were Demos and Harvey doing? Had they been captured?
‘Alex . . . I can’t hold it long,’ I cried over the noise of the cracking glass.
I was dimly aware of Alex helping Jack to stand. Jack shook him off, steadying himself against the desk, still woozy. It was the first time he’d experienced one of those shots – he wasn’t as able as I was to shake it off.
‘Let’s go.’ Alex’s hand was suddenly on my shoulder.