Resurgence (19 page)

Knave turns to me and takes a deep breath. He has never used the teleportation device before. ‘What does it feel like?’ he asks.

‘As if someone is pulling you hard.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Then I guess the fightback starts here . . .’

He winks and then steps into the orange smog, disappearing with a shallow pop. When he’s gone, there’s a moment where I’m by myself and doubt starts to tickle my thoughts.
It’s a creeping sense that I don’t know what I’m doing, that these five people will be captured, injured, killed, all in my name. This is the tipping point, where there’s no
turning back – they’ve made their decisions and I have to make mine. I take a breath and step forward, feeling the air warm as it clasps me. And then I’m gone.

This time I am ready with a rag in my pocket as we reappear. Before anyone can notice, I wipe the inevitable blood away from my nose and re-pocket the stained material. My head
is spinning but I close my eyes for a few seconds until the feeling has cleared.

We are on the dirt track outside the ramshackle house where our group hid before Imrin and I ventured into the North Tower the first time. Jela, Pietra and Hart are familiar with the place as
they have been here before; this area is new only to Opie and Knave. The partially collapsed building next to us is where we left the two bodies of the Kingsmen we had to kill. A small part of me
wants to check if they are still there, but not enough to make me actually do it.

We are on a schedule but I still stop for a few moments, staring ahead at the four towers soaring high into the darkening sky. Bright white lights blaze upwards, making them seem even taller
than they are. At dusk they look even more impressive than during the daytime. Every time I see them, I am awestruck.

Knave speaks for everyone: ‘Wow.’

The back of the teleporter is warm but not too hot and I know it will be cool enough in a couple of hours to get us out of here.

The route to the central plaza is straightforward but the doors to each of the towers need thinkwatches to gain access. Rom says the security procedures have been tightened since we were last
here. We have a single Kingsman’s thinkwatch but this will only gain us access to one of the towers. It is made of a different material to ours, the dark sides eating the light, rather than
reflecting it.

When we are two streets over, I check my bearings and then we head along a route Rom has given us that takes us in between two small office buildings. We have timed it so there are still another
ten minutes until most of the people who work here finish for the day. Hart and Opie crouch and lift a heavy metal hatch and one by one we drop into the sewer. Knave is last through, passing down
the bag containing our suits and sliding the cover back into place.

‘How many of your plans involve us traipsing through a sewer?’ Hart asks sarcastically.

‘Firstly,’ I tell him, ‘it wasn’t
my
plan to get out of Martindale through the sewers. Secondly, this wasn’t my plan either, it was Rom’s. Sort
of.’

‘But you do seem to be attracted to sewers.’

‘Or maybe it’s you – you were with me both times.’

That shuts him up.

It is dim but there are regular grates above where we are walking, providing intermittent shafts of light that help us work out where we are. The darkness amplifies the squeaks and squeals of
what Knave unhelpfully points out are rats. After that, Jela stops and jumps every time we hear something that sounds animal-like. At one point, she shrieks herself, before covering her hand with
her mouth.

‘I felt one,’ she says. ‘A rat ran across my foot. It brushed my leg.’

I tell her the squeaks are just water pipes and that I haven’t noticed any rats around us. Everyone else tries to be equally reassuring but we’re kidding ourselves. I feel at least
two more scurrying around my feet.

Rom’s map is basic but the network of tunnels is easy enough to navigate. They run in a square around the plaza, dipping underneath the train tracks, before rising again towards the
towers. The first tower belongs to the East. This is Knave’s stop and we wait as he changes into his suit and drops his other clothes on the floor, ready for the rats to do with as they
please.

We work our way around the grid of sewers, leaving Opie underneath the South Tower and Hart at the West Tower. Hart in particular is pleased to be a part of something. With his illness and
injury, he has missed out on being able to contribute to previous plans. Now he looks strong and fit. As he is changing clothes, I have to tell him to calm down and focus because I am worried he is
going to stand out and give himself away.

‘Most people will have finished for the day so the only ones here will be those who are working lates. They aren’t going to be walking around smiling and happy, so you can’t be
either. Stay serious and look rushed.’

He waves a hand towards me dismissively. ‘Okay.’

I tell him good luck and Jela and I head along the tunnel, leaving Hart to have a few moments alone with Pietra before he makes his way into the tower. She catches us up shortly after and
accepts the gentle ribbing from Jela about their ‘lovey-doveyness’.

The communicator crackles in my ear as Knave confirms he is inside safely.

When we three girls reach our entry point to the North Tower, we stop and change before I climb up the metal rungs and push as hard as I can to lift the metal cover above. It looked easier when
the others did it, but as Jela and Pietra support my legs, I use my shoulder to press as hard as I can to make the metal pop up.

We emerge into a dingy basement that stinks of rotting food and stale, damp clothes. There is a dim orange light bulb overhead that leaves the corners of the room fully in shadow. In the areas I
can see, there are piles of purple bags full of rubbish. The hard floor is damp and water is dripping all around us.

My ear buzzes again: Opie telling me he has made it into the South Tower.

Rom says there are cleaners but that they shouldn’t be here at this time of the day. Most of them work overnight and they will be starting in a couple of hours. I make sure the metal hatch
is back in place and then we are all grateful to get away from the stench of the basement into a darkened corridor. As well as sewers, I seem to have a thing for corridors.

This is the part of the route I am most unsure about, but Jela remembers it perfectly from Rom’s instructions, directing us through a labyrinth of identical-looking passages until we reach
a thick metal door with a small window in the centre. I glance through but can’t see anything, before I’m distracted as Hart’s message comes through to say he is in the East
Tower.

‘They’re all in,’ I say, turning to the keypad next to the door and typing in the code Rom gave us.

We head through the door and up two flights of stairs until we reach a bright landing. We need a second code to get through another door and then emerge into a room filled with mops, buckets and
any number of cleaning products.

‘Frank would love to get his hands on this,’ Pietra says, picking up a bottle of cleaning fluid.

Hearing his name makes me reach for my back pocket and the knife I keep there. There is another strapped to my ankle. Although I am wearing a trouser suit, I also have the teleporter in my other
back pocket, and the belt I always wear with the pouch that contains the blood bomb is underneath my top. Pietra was worried that it would look bulky, but the clothes are too big for me and I am so
thin that it would take a lot more than this to make it obvious what I am concealing.

I tap the button on my ear and tell the others we are safely into the North Tower before touching it again to turn the transmitter off.

The next door leads us into the huge reception area of the tower. I have been here before and confidently lead Jela and Pietra out from the rear of the lifts. It is now dark and the final few
stragglers are leaving for the evening, swiping their thinkwatches to the side of the revolving doors at the front and stepping outside. Through the wide glass front, we can see the plaza, a
beautiful, brilliant white because of the light projecting onto it. In the centre, there is a train sitting on the platform, its sleek shape reflecting the glorious glow.

Everywhere we look, there is something breathtaking, from the giant ceiling that makes everything echo in a manner none of us is used to, to the way the clock and screens above the main desk are
integrated as part of the glass itself.

‘It’s amazing,’ Jela whispers, unable to stop herself.

I have seen the reception area during the daytime but there is a haunting quality at dusk. The bright white outside filters through the glass to create an ethereal blue glow on the inside.

If we had the time, I would happily sit and enjoy the view but we have things to do. ‘Come on,’ I say, checking my thinkwatch.

Every step we take echoes ominously but no one behind the reception desk pays us any attention. On the other side of the lifts, we slip through the door that takes us into the stairwell. Rom
says very few people use the stairs and that we shouldn’t be interrupted. By the time we are five flights up, I realise why they aren’t widely used – because it is exhausting. We
have to stop to catch our breath for a few moments.

‘How many more floors?’ Pietra asks.

I look up to the flights of black handrails and white posts that stretch as high as I can see.

‘Eighty-four.’

My ear buzzes and Knave tells me he is in position at the eighty-ninth floor of his tower. I know I should conserve the battery but can’t resist pressing the button. ‘How did you get
there so quickly?’ I hiss.

Considering all of the walking I have done up and down the country, I can’t believe the toll five flights of stairs have taken on me. My heart is hammering and my chest is tight. His reply
is a withering, sarcastic ‘I walked.’

The chuckle at the end doesn’t help. The cocky so-and-so.

‘Was that Knave?’ Pietra asks, as we start on the stairs again.

‘Yes, he’s at his floor already.’

She looks upwards and pulls a face. ‘How did he do it so fast?’

‘Apparently, he walked.’

Her ‘whew’ only makes me feel worse.

By the time we reach the thirtieth floor, we’ve had two further breaks and Opie has messaged to say he is in position too. It is a small consolation that he at least sounds out of
breath.

At the halfway point, we have only passed one other person, a middle-aged man coming down who offered a short nod. We each nod back and he doesn’t pay us a second glance.

We have just passed floor fifty when Hart says he is waiting in his assigned place too. ‘We’ve just gone past halfway,’ I huff quickly, letting Opie, Hart and Knave know they
are going to have to stay put for a while.

It serves them right for walking too fast.

We stop for another rest at floor sixty. As we pass the doors, a large black number is painted above each one, taunting us. At one point, Jela insists we have passed the same number three times
in a row, but she doesn’t agree with the suggestion that she should go back down a floor to make sure.

The only sound is the low hum of electricity and the constant methodical echo of our shoes on the hard ground. Considering where we are and what we’re planning, the atmosphere is very
light-hearted. Jela tells me a story of how Imp tricked Pietra when they were all staying in the campsite at the gully. I was with Opie, Faith and Imrin on our way to Windsor Castle at the time.
Imp told her he’d heard some suspicious noises just outside the camp. Pietra was worried and went anxiously with him. He led her to an abandoned car and said he’d heard something
nearby. From inside the car, there was some sort of rattling and, as she got close to it, Imp’s brothers Eli and Felix leapt out from under the bonnet and scared her.

‘That kid!’ I say, laughing.

‘He talked about you every day,’ Pietra replies. ‘Three or four times, he tugged on my top and asked when you were coming back.’

‘For some reason, I’m about the only person he ever listens to. His mum has even asked me to have a word with him in the past. He’s very excitable.’

I am walking ahead but there is a momentary gap in between Pietra and Jela’s footsteps and I know they have just exchanged a glance.

‘What?’

‘Isn’t it obvious why he listens to you?’ Jela asks.

‘No . . .’

‘What were you like as a kid? Did you ever listen to your mum?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Didn’t you just run around, sneaking out to the woods, climbing, running, getting dirty and generally being a pest to everyone?’

I want to say ‘no’ but it would be a lie. ‘So you’re saying he’s like me?’

‘Exactly,’ Pietra says. ‘I bet you were just like him as a kid – seeing what you could get away with. You would never have known you were any good with electrical things
if it wasn’t for the fact you spent all your time sneaking away and playing with the old items that had been abandoned.’

They’re right. When I saw Imp and his brothers tearing around the clearing at the bottom of the gully, my first thought was that I wanted to join them. I know how to talk to him because I
say the things I would tell myself.

I glance above the next door at the number seventy-one, but as we round the corner to start on the next staircase, I collide with the unexpected thick wooden barrier that is built across the
entire width and height of the stairs. Pietra and Jela aren’t paying attention either as they bump into the back of me.

A yellow sign with bright red writing is in the centre of the barricade.

‘DANGER: Maintenance. This area is strictly off-limits.’

I tap my ear. ‘Did any of you have a barrier blocking the stairs?’

Three consecutive ‘no’ responses hiss in my ear.

‘What do we do?’ Pietra asks.

I look around but there are few options other than returning to the ground floor, or going through the door leading onto floor seventy-one.

I push the door open, looking both ways, before calling Jela and Pietra through. We emerge onto a dim corridor with rows of doors in each direction. Another corridor. This is becoming very
‘me’. It is very similar to the communications floor Imrin and I broke into, thirty floors below. The lights flicker on, tracking our movement. At first it is disconcerting but they
turn off behind us, so I assume they are wired like that to save electricity. It is a small concession considering how much power these towers use in comparison to how many people have to freeze at
night in the rest of the country.