Mind Secrets: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 1) (28 page)

“Let us through!” came another try.

It turned into a chant. “
Let us through! Let us through!
” Hundreds of young voices together. “
Let us through! Let us through!
”

Michael leant towards Jennifer and shouted to make himself heard. “You need to talk to the police. Make them do something.”

“Do what?” she said, as a bottle was lobbed from behind. It sailed over their heads and landed centimetres from the police in a smash of glass splinters.

A police officer at the end of the line lifted his radio to his mouth and said something into it. Tension built in the crowd. The buzz in Michael’s head increased its intensity. The chant collapsed into a mix of out of sync voices. As it died, it was replaced by frustrated conversations. The amplified voice in the square had ceased and more of the adults watched the teenagers.

A lone teenage voice rose from the crowd: “The police can’t stop us all. Charge!”

It was what the angry crowd wanted to hear: “
Charge! Charge! Charge!
” cried the teenagers.

“No!” screamed Jennifer. But hardly anybody heard her.

Everyone behind them surged forward. Michael was pushed aside. Jennifer grabbed onto Otis to stop herself being knocked over.

In seconds the teenagers had overwhelmed the police and were pouring into the square. Car horns sounded all around them as they swarmed across the road. Alarmed cries and several women’s screams erupted from the adults on the grass.

Michael, Otis and Jennifer stood among the few who hadn’t surged. The police officers who’d made up the line re-appeared from the left and from the right. Michael got the awful feeling they were going to be arrested – easy pickings for a constable desperate to have something to show from the fiasco.

Otis and Jennifer ran.

Michael ran.

He ran into the square and joined the huddled teenagers at the edge of the grass, berating the adults who were penned in like worried sheep.

“
We want to be ourselves! We want to be ourselves!
” Fists jabbing the air.

At the near end of the square, where the grass stopped and a pavement began, steps led up to a raised area half a metre high. In the centre – between two bronze statues on stone plinths – was Mrs Angelheart in her red coat. She spoke into the microphone in her hand and her voice – straining to be heard above the teenagers – boomed out of two speakers either side of her.

“This is the sort of behaviour we’ve come to expect from perceivers!” said her amplified voice. Cheers and shouts of approval from the norms. “Not content with invading our minds, they want to invade our democratic right to free speech.”

At that, a girl not much older than fifteen with red streaks in her hair, jumped up onto the raised area and launched herself at Angelheart. Clunk went the speakers as the microphone was knocked from her hand, struck the hard pavement – and, with a screech of feedback – died.

Mrs Angelheart went down after the microphone, the girl on top of her, mauling at her like an enraged animal. Two men appeared from the side. They tried to pull her off. She resisted and struck one in the face with her elbow.

The square was sudden pandemonium.

Panic from the norms.

Teenagers charging at every adult.

Fights breaking out everywhere.

Anger, pain, violence.

Police officers wading in, too few to make much impact.

A TV news crew getting pictures of it from a safe distance.

The emotions of hundreds of people around him clawed at Michael’s mind. He whirled around, not knowing what to do. He couldn’t see Jennifer. He couldn’t see Otis. He was in the middle of a flash of flying fists. Shouting people. Running people. He needed a way out. But police were streaming in from all sides. The only way to escape from the square was into another jail cell.

Something hit him in the back. He lurched forward. It was a man – with ginger hair, ugly freckles and a cut on his cheek – who’d been pushed hard by a teenager. He emitted a flash of anger so loud, Michael couldn’t help but perceive it. The man’s assailant – a boy with wire-rimmed glasses – took fright and dashed off into the crowd.

The ginger man turned on Michael. “Perceiver!” he shouted.

“No!” said Michael, backing away. Not a denial of who he was, but a plea not to be beaten up.

He brought his hands to his face to protect himself. Ginger rammed a hard fist into his stomach. Every last bit of breath was knocked out of his lungs. He clutched his belly, but had hardly registered the pain before a second fist struck his face. The force of the punch propelled him backwards. His foot stood on a discarded water bottle and he lost his balance.

He screamed as he fell.

His head struck the ground with the hideous sound of bone on pavement.

Vision, sound, sensation, perception collapsed.

His consciousness fell into a deep hole and the world went dark.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE WORLD WAS
lit by blobs of misty colour that blinked in and out of the blackness. Pain throbbed through his head, amplified by the violent thoughts of hundreds of people he perceived around him.

“Michael? Michael?” a woman’s voice called to him.

He squinted open his eyes. The light stung him. Adding to the pain in his head. He groaned.

He saw a familiar face through the veil of his eyelashes and the still-blinking coloured blobs.

A hand took his and pulled him to his feet. He felt dizzy. He gripped the hand tighter for support as nausea rose from his stomach. His nose hurt – he touched it and winced. It could be broken or, at the very least, badly bruised. It was too painful to wiggle it to find out. He took his hand away and brought his fingers down in front of his eyes. They were covered with blood.

“We need to get you out of here,” said the woman.

He turned and focussed on the familiar face. “Doctor Page?”

“Rachel,” she corrected him.

He looked around the square. Things had changed in the however-long-it-was he was unconscious. There were fewer people, many of them in groups scattered on the grass, still fighting. Fists, feet, missiles flying in a mess of flesh and blood. A man dressed in jacket and tie – looking more like a headmaster than a protestor – ran past them clutching his forearm, dripping blood from a gash just below the elbow. Others hadn’t been so lucky. A kid, several years younger than Michael, lay on the ground under the statue of Nelson Mandela, groaning from a wound in his side. An adult – a woman – knelt at his side, her smart white coat smeared with the boy’s blood. She held his hand and gently wiped his forehead. In all the craziness, a norm had found compassion enough to tend to a perceiver.

“We have to get you out of here,” said Page.

“Where’s Jennifer and Otis?” said Michael.

“Who knows? Gone, probably.”

“I’m not leaving without them.”

“Michael, it’s not safe.”

“I’m not leaving without them.”

She must have perceived he meant it because she sighed as if she knew she wasn’t going to win the argument. “They could be anywhere. They could’ve been arrested. They could have been taken to hospital.”
They could be dead
.

Michael pretended he hadn’t perceived her thought. He strode out across the square, calling: “Jennifer! Otis!”

Page reluctantly followed.

Police in riot gear – helmets with visors down; truncheons drawn – waded into a fight in front of them. They pulled a fighting teenager off an adult. Both were forced to the ground and handcuffed.

“Jennifer! Otis!”

“Michael, this is a waste of time,” Page called after him.

He didn’t hear her. He didn’t want to hear her.

Sirens wailed close by. A girl barely old enough to be in her teenage years sat on the grass with her knees pulled up close to her chest, crying.

He walked by the statues of former prime ministers, dukes and lords. All of them, had they been still alive, would probably be sickened by what was happening in front of them.

“Michael!” cried a voice from the left. He turned.

Jennifer ran out from behind the stone plinth where the bronze figure of Sir Winston Churchill gazed out towards the Houses of Parliament. Michael hugged her. She squeezed him. The warmth of her body melded with the warmth of the feelings he perceived from her.

“Thank God,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah.” Michael touched his sore nose again and felt the stickiness of his own blood. “Took a bit of a bump.”

“He was knocked out,” said Page. “He’ll need to see a doctor, he might have concussion.”

Jennifer looked up at Page as if noticing her for the first time. “It’s you.”

“Never mind about that,” said Page. “We need to go.”

“Where’s Otis?” said Michael.

Otis emerged from behind Churchill’s plinth. His shirt was torn and his hair was messier than usual, but he appeared uninjured. He looked directly at Page. “You again.”

“I think we’ve established that,” she said. “Can we go now?”

Otis shook his head. “We tried. Police have sealed off all the exits.”

“Why?” said Michael. “Are they trying to keep everybody in here until they kill each other?”

“That’s one theory.”

Screams behind them caused them to turn. A police car – lights flashing – mounted the grass square and drove into the middle. Teenagers and adults, perceivers and norms, scattered out of its way. Smoking canisters dropped from its windows on either side. They billowed fumes as they rolled across the grass.

“Tear gas!” said Page.

The few near the police car started to cough. They staggered away from it like they couldn’t see.

“Hey!” a voice shouted. A young Asian man with smart hair, smart shirt and garish jumper stood near them, a broken off wooden chair leg in his hand. “Perceiver bitch!” he shouted at Jennifer. He lifted the chair leg, warrior-style, and rushed at her.

Otis charged – his head bent like a bull in a bullring – and struck the man in the chest. Both went sprawling onto the ground. They wrestled.

“People recognise me because of all those interviews I did,” said Jennifer. “Otis, be careful!”

Michael blinked his eyes several times. They were stinging. Everything became blurry.

“We need to get away from the gas,” said Page. She’d lifted the top of her blouse to cover her nose and mouth, but tears still streamed from her eyes.

Otis and the man fought on the ground, but half the time their punches and kicks weren’t hitting each other. They had to be affected by the gas.

“Otis, leave it!” shouted Michael.

Otis either didn’t hear or didn’t pay attention. Michael stepped forward. His vision was blurred, but he could see enough to distinguish between blond and black hair. He grabbed hold of Otis’s shirt. At the same time, Page weighed in and, between them, they separated the fighters.

With a hard shove, Page threw the man towards the tear gas. Disoriented, he staggered a few steps, giving the four of them enough time to hide behind Winston Churchill.

“Skankin’ hell,” said Otis rubbing his eyes. “My eyes hurt like skank.”

“We need to get out of here,” said Page. “My car’s parked not too far away, if we can get out of the square, we can get to it.”

Michael peeked around the side of Churchill’s plinth. Blinking, trying to focus – even though it hurt – he saw police vans encroach from all sides. They mounted the grass. Doors opened and uniformed officers in gas masks poured out. Confused adults and teenagers stumbled away from them.

He ducked back behind the plinth. On his next breath, he took in a mouthful of gas. He coughed and wheezed. “Which way?” he said through a rasping throat.

“Up Parliament Street,” said Page.

“Come on,” said Michael.

He ran out onto the road and headed towards Big Ben’s clock tower. The others followed him, zigzagging through stranded cars with their engines off. A taxi driver and his female passenger looked fearfully through the windows at them as they passed. Onto the pavement where two teenagers leant against the railings, their arms round each other, sharing a tissue to wipe their streaming red eyes.

Michael dodged a police van, its back doors wide open, a gaping invitation for arrested prey. Back on the square behind him, officers in gas masks rounded up demonstrators, perceiver and norm alike.

They made it to Parliament Street. Page took over the lead and broke into a run, her blouse still over her nose and mouth. The others followed, their lungs wheezing at the after effects of the gas.

It was further than she’d made out and, at the end of Whitehall, they slowed to a walk. They’d put some distance between themselves and the fighting and, besides, four running people drew the attention of others on the street.

Eventually, they made it to the NCP where Page had parked her car. They went down the steps of the pedestrian entrance, with its piss-stench, to where she’d left her Peugeot on the underground floor.

She pointed her electronic key. The car responded with a bleep and flash of yellow indicators. “Get in.”

Michael reached for the handle on the passenger side. But there he stopped. “Why should I?”

“Don’t you trust me?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“You can perceive I mean you no harm.”

“Come on, Michael mate,” said Otis. “There’s three of us and one of her – what’s she gonna do?”

He perceived Otis was tired. Both he and Jennifer.

“Don’t you want to know what she was doing at the demo?” said Michael. “Why she came for us?”

“Not really,” said Otis.

Page tapped the roof of her car with her fingertips. “Can we have this conversation in the car?”

“No,” said Michael. “We make our decision here. Once we’re inside and you’re at the wheel, you’re in charge.”

Page slammed the driver’s door shut again and marched to the other side of the car. “What do you want to do? Deep perceive me now?”

“Tell me why you’re helping us,” said Michael.

“I’m your father’s employee,” said Page. “He wants you safe.”

“So he sends his assistant into a riot to pull me out?” The idea was so incredulous. “My ‘father’ is under Cooper’s thumb. And you – Cooper said you’d been arrested.”