Out Of Time (Book 0): Super Unknown (10 page)

Neelam
nodded.

“We
all do. You saw what Dylan showed you. If you remember Dylan at all, you’ll
know he’s a steadfast, honest guy who never lies.” She paused. “Scarlett, I
want you to know that we love you. You’re part of our family. Whenever you’re
ready to find us, or if you remember us or ever need our help, please do get in
touch.”

“Here.”
She placed a small green gadget in Scarlett’s hand. “This is one of Lucy’s
special inventions. Press it anytime and we’ll come running.”

“Thanks,”
she said. She wasn’t sure what else to say.

Then
Neelam thrust a thousand pounds into her other hand.

“Take
this. It’s to help you find somewhere to sleep and eat. I want to know you’re
safe. And whatever you do, don’t tell anyone your real name.”

That
sounded ominous, Scarlett wanted to ask why, but Neelam hugged her and walked
away before she had a chance.

“Thank
you,” Scarlett yelled.

She
couldn’t believe how kind Neelam had been. It certainly didn’t seem like anyone
else in this crazy world was nice.

Scarlett
stuffed the money and gadget into the inside pocket of her jacket. Maybe she
shouldn’t have run off as quickly as she had, but everything that had happened
today had made her super paranoid. She could go back, but she realised it was
getting late. Now she had some money for a taxi, she should make another
attempt to get back home to East Dulwich. Maybe everything would seem normal
once she was in her own bed.

Scarlett
made her way back towards London Bridge station in the hope of finding a taxi
office. There had to be one somewhere around there, surely? However, as she
trudged past rows and rows of empty shops, she began to lose hope.

“Thank
goodness!” she shouted as she spotted what looked like a cab office with a
light on. It was dirty and dilapidated, but it would do considering the
circumstances.

She
pushed open the door and watched a grumpy old man look up from behind the
window to his kiosk.

“Hello?”
she said meekly.

“What
do you want?” he barked. The place reeked of old cigarette smoke and the man
smelt even worse. The walls had turned yellow, probably from years of being
exposed to nicotine, and the wallpaper was peeling off in several places.
Scarlett really hoped she didn’t have to wait here for too long.

“Could
I get a cab to East Dulwich please?” she asked.

“Yeah.
That’ll be £300.”

“What?
The fare usually costs £30 at the most.”

He
laughed. “Kids today, don’t know the value of money,” he muttered.

Scarlett
suddenly recalled spotting the extortionate price of coffee in the café, and
the homeless man demanding £50 at the station. It seemed that everything had
got incredibly more expensive overnight. Was she in the future? No wonder
Neelam had given her so much money.

Scarlett
silently scolded herself for being so stupid before her thoughts ran away with
her.

“You
want a taxi or what, girly?” the man snapped, interrupting her thoughts.

“OK,”
she said begrudgingly.

As
the car sped through the streets of south London, Scarlett realised that the
whole city looked different. Entire high streets were boarded up and prostitutes
and drug dealers lined the pavements of what used to be nice areas. It was like
a nightmare. She was so happy when the taxi pulled into her parents’ road, but
relief soon turned to horror when she saw that there was no house there.
Judging by the scorched floor and ruins, it had been burned to the ground.

“You
sure you got the right address, girl?” the driver asked.

“Yes!”
Scarlett didn’t understand.

“Well
I’m pretty sure there’s no one home,” he joked.

She
didn’t see the funny side. Where had her home gone? Where were her family? She
got out of the taxi and took a look around the place where her house had stood.
The ground felt cold and grass was growing around the charred ruins. It
appeared that the fire had been much more than four weeks ago. It was weird.
She glanced up and down the road and noticed the whole street seemed scary – it
was nothing like the cosy, tree-lined road she knew. She walked back to the
cab. There was no point in hanging around. In fact, she sensed that hanging
around was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Can
you drive to 14 Lingfield Avenue?” she asked, thinking she could see if her
friend Millie was home.

The
driver did the short five-minute journey, but there was no one in. She thought
of trying to track down Alex’s family to tell them what had happened, but they
lived in Didsbury in the north. There was no way she could afford to get a taxi
up there. It would probably cost at least £10,000. Who else could she try?
Maybe her friend Sarah from sixth-form English class would be home. She lived
near here.

“Can
you go to 19 Murray Common please?”

The
driver sighed.

“I
promise this is the last place I’ll try.”

He
reluctantly sped to Sarah’s house and Scarlett was delighted to see there were
lights on. Someone was home.

She
bounced up the driveway excitedly and punched the doorbell. Sarah answered the
door.

“Hi!”

Sarah
wrinkled her nose. “Do I know you?”

“Stop
kidding around!”

Sarah
gave her a look that assured her she wasn’t joking.

“Oh
for goodness sake, Sarah, please tell me you know who I am.”

“But…
I don’t. Sorry.”

“We
sit together in English!”

“Are
you mad? I don’t even study English.”

“At
sixth form…”

“I
left school at 16 to work with my dad. The sixth form shut down when the
government cut education funding two years ago.”

“What…
but…”

“Sorry.
I don’t know you. Please go away or I’ll fetch my father.”

Then
she shut the door in Scarlett’s face.

Scarlett
trudged back down the front yard to the waiting car.

“This
not your house either then?”

She
shook her head dejectedly.

“Come
on girl, are you drunk or something? Don’t you know where you live?”

“I…
I’m sorry. Can you please drive me to a hotel back in London? A cheap but
decent one.”

“Alright,
girl, but it’s gonna cost yer.”

“Doesn’t
it always?” she thought as she sunk into the seat and flung her head against
the hard leather defeatedly.

Half
an hour later, Scarlett was standing in a Travel Hut near Liverpool Street
Station, but check-in was taking longer than she would have liked. After ten
minutes of being ignored by the shoddy receptionist, who seemed far more intent
on flirting with a customer, she rang the little bell for the third time.

“What?”
the surly blonde snapped as she shot Scarlett a dirty look.

“Can
I have a room for the night?” Scarlett asked, staring at the receptionist
defiantly. There was no way she was letting this catty little madam intimidate
her.

“Yeah,”
she glowered. “Take room 475. What’s your name?”

“Dorothy
Dove,” she lied, recalling what Neelam had said about not giving out her real
name.

“Alright,
Dorothy. Here’s your key. The stairs are on the left.”

The
world’s worst receptionist then threw the key at her and returned to making
gooey eyes at her love interest.

“Thanks,”
Scarlett snapped sarcastically.

She
headed up the stairs and made her way to the room. It was damp, mouldy and
smelly and the dirty cream décor left a lot to be desired for, but it was
better than being out on those crazy streets.

She
picked up the remote, flopped on the rickety bed and switched on the TV. It
looked like an old set from the 1980s, so she was pretty amazed that it worked
as it clicked into life to show some boring drama. Scarlett changed the channel
with a flick. Boring soap full of people shouting at each other. Flick. Boring
manufactured girl band pouting and miming like robots. Flick. Boring news.
Flick. Hang on, maybe she should watch the news to see if she could learn a few
things. She clicked back to the previous channel.

A
woman was reporting from a riot in Sheffield. From what she could gather,
hundreds of people were ambushing the home of a gas company boss in protest.
Something about the prices having got so high that only the rich could afford
them.

Another
journalist was at a homeless shelter on the outskirts of Birmingham. It was
full to the brim of poor families who had lost their homes and jobs. One member
of the public started to say something about the jobless being made to do time
in a workhouse to earn their benefits, but the reporter wound the story up
right away.

The
next story focussed on a group of anti-war protesters in Trafalgar Square. The
police were being horribly heavy handed. It sickened her. Surely that wasn’t
allowed? But an official was defending their behaviour as being necessary – he
was even commending the officers and the journalist was lapping it right up.

The
world had gone mad and horrendous overnight. What could have happened?

Maybe
she
had
travelled to the future. After all, this was like the world she
knew, but a million times worse and it couldn’t get this bad overnight. Surely
more than four weeks must have passed. Scarlett laughed at her own theories and
again wondered if she’d been watching too many sci-fi films. She wished Alex
was here. He’d talk some sense into her and tell her to stop letting her
overactive brain run away with her.

She
suddenly had an idea. She picked up the TV remote again and switched to
Teletext. There in the right hand corner was the date: 15 November, 2013.

A
quick calculation told her that was right. It really was just four weeks after
her birthday back in mid-October.

Why
was the world so different then? She didn’t understand. Her brain hurt with the
confusion and possibilities and she rubbed her eyes with tiredness and
frustration.

“Maybe
I’m still asleep?” Scarlett decided. “In a coma or something. Or maybe I’m on
another Earth? Maybe I
am
in the future, but someone is trying to hide
the fact from me… or maybe… maybe I am exhausted and thinking nonsense.”

“Get
some sleep and think about it in the morning,” a wise voice inside her head
said. She was never going to achieve anything while she was so manically tired,
so she’d might as well get some rest. Tomorrow, and possibly every day to come,
was going to be a long day.

Scarlett
woke at 7.30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. After wondering what to do next,
she remembered seeing an internet café near reception, so she headed down
there.

She
paid ten pounds for an hour and sat down. She looked in her purse and realised
she was getting through the money Neelam had given her far too quickly. This
hellish place sure was expensive. She switched on her computer, logged in and
typed “Scarlett Shortt” into the search engine. Nothing. No Facebook, no
Twitter, no official records. No mention of her at all.

That
was weird. She deleted Scarlett and typed in her mum’s name, “Alice”.

Links
to several news stories came up on the screen. The headlines were all similar.

“Family
die tragically in fire”; “Blaze kills couple and son”; “House burns down,
killing three”.

It
couldn’t be true. She clicked on the top one.

“A
couple and their 11-year-old son were tragically killed in a blaze last
night...” it read. “... Firefighters battled to save Alice and Tom Shortt, both
41, and their son Daniel, 11, but sadly none of them survived. The cause of the
fire is unknown.”

Scarlett
refused to believe it. Her whole family was dead? The date on the story said
January 7, 2011, so how could that be? That was almost three years ago and she
knew they hadn’t died then, she’d seen them every day since. The reports must
be wrong.

But
what if it
was
true? Her heart sank. That was too horrible a thought to
imagine.

She
read some of the other articles, hoping to find more information, but there was
nothing. It seemed suspicious to her. Why had there been no investigation to
show what happened? Scarlett’s experience of reading the news told her there
should be more details available than this. And why hadn’t she been named?
Surely the grieving daughter would have been mentioned. It really was like she
didn’t exist. It felt like the more answers she tried to find, the more
questions cropped up. It was frustrating.

Scarlett
grabbed a notepad and pen she’d taken from the hotel room and jotted the
information down. She tried several more searches for information about herself
and her family, but there was nothing to be found.

What
about if she looked up Alex? Was he in this crazy world? Had he survived the
crash? She typed in “Alex Connor”. Nothing. He didn’t exist either. That was
interesting. She glanced at the clock and saw she still had 15 minutes of internet
access left.

Maybe
it was time to try a different line of investigation.

She
typed in “wanted”, “London” and “super powers” to see if anything would come up
about the teens she’d met last night. Again the search engine gave her a page
of articles. At the top of the page was a row of images, none of them were very
clear. She clicked a fuzzy group one so she could go to the page and see it in a
larger size. There they were: Neelam, Lucy, Jay, Dylan… and Scarlett.

“That’s
me! I really do know them.”

She
sunk a little lower into her seat to be less conspicuous, suddenly aware that
if she was one of them, then she was wanted too. She went back to the list of
news articles and clicked through to read one of them.

“The
super menace group is still at large and The London Evening News has got an
exclusive picture. If you know the identity of any of the people in this photo,
call us on 020 7999 1000. We’ll call you straight back.

“The
group, as you may remember, are to blame for the Victoria Incident that devastated
the capital and indeed the whole country last year. It’s time they were brought
to justice.”

Victoria
Incident? What did that mean? She looked at the list of articles again. “What
could those nice kids – and me – have done that was so bad?” she wondered.
Scarlett refused to believe it was true.