Aftershock (8 page)

Raven tightened the final strap on the stretcher, making sure that the unconscious boy lying on it was firmly secured. She checked the pulse on his neck and was pleased to feel that it was steady and strong. The Sleeper guns were designed to incapacitate their targets as safely as possible but she did not want to take any chances. She moved further along the Shroud’s passenger compartment and repeated the check on the young girl who had tasered her. She had a small bruise on her cheekbone from falling against the car when Raven had hit her with the Sleeper but nothing more serious than that. Raven had to admit to a grudging respect for the speed and accuracy of the girl’s shot with the taser. It wasn’t often that someone caught her by surprise like that.

Raven headed back to her seat and picked up the tablet displaying the latest reports from the retrieval teams. Everything seemed to be progressing smoothly. The vast majority of the operations had been completed successfully and there had only been a couple of minor injuries. Nero would be pleased. She placed the tablet back on the seat and climbed up the ladder to the Shroud’s flight deck. The two pilots sat in the darkened cockpit, the only illumination provided by the banks of video displays and hundreds of illuminated switches that lined the control panel in front of them.

‘How long until we’re back at H.I.V.E.?’ Raven asked.

‘Three hours,’ the pilot replied.

‘Good,’ Raven said. ‘Notify me when we’re five minutes out.’

‘Understood,’ the pilot replied with a nod.

Raven climbed back down to the lower deck and sat on one of the seats opposite the young girl. She looked like she was simply in a deep sleep, her chest rising and falling rhythmically, her expression peaceful. Raven watched her for a few minutes before she closed her eyes and leant back in her seat. She was too wired to sleep but she had taught herself over the years to use these moments of rest to clear her mind and centre herself. Normally it was easy but for some reason tonight she was finding it difficult. She could not shake off the image of the girl’s face from earlier that evening as she had pulled the trigger on the taser. Unafraid, determined, efficient. It reminded her of something, a place that she had tried very hard to forget over the years. Tonight though, for whatever reason, she could not stop the memories flooding back. Memories of the past. Memories of the Glasshouse . . .

eighteen years ago

‘Natalya,’ the boy whispered, urgently shaking the shoulder of the girl lying on the top of the steel-framed bunk. ‘Natalya, wake up!’

‘What is it, Tolya?’ Natalya groaned as she reluctantly opened her eyes. The boy standing next to her bed was looking round anxiously. They would both be punished if they were caught talking after lights out and she was already physically exhausted by the day’s training without adding punishment exercises on top of everything else.

‘It’s Dimitri, he’s gone,’ Tolya whispered.

‘What do you mean “gone”?’ Natalya asked, pushing herself up in her bed and looking down the dormitory that was only dimly lit by the watery moonlight pouring through the skylights far overhead.

‘I mean he’s gone, not here, vanished, what do you think I mean?’ Tolya said impatiently. ‘A noise woke me up and when I looked across at Dimitri’s bunk it was empty.’

‘If this is some kind of joke, Tolya, I’m telling you now that it’s not very funny,’ Natalya whispered, getting up out of her bunk. The pair of them crept through the room as quietly as they could. It was always cold in the dormitory and the plain cotton pyjamas that they wore did little to keep them warm now that they were out from under the heavy woollen blankets on their beds. They arrived at Dimitri’s bunk and sure enough, it was quite empty.

‘You checked the toilet?’ Natalya asked, nodding towards the door in the corner of the room.

‘No, I suppose he could be in there,’ Tolya replied.

‘Tolya, you idiot,’ Natalya said with a sigh, ‘if you’ve woken me up just because Dimitri needed a pee I am going to hurt you really quite badly.’

Natalya walked over to the door to the bathroom and looked inside.

‘Dimitri,’ she whispered, ‘are you in here?’ There was no reply. She walked down the long line of cubicle doors and checked that none were occupied.

‘See, he’s not here,’ Tolya said, sounding rather relieved.

‘Then where is he?’ Natalya said. ‘He can’t have just vanished into thin air.’

Suddenly something caught her eye.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing into the gloom.

‘What?’ Tolya said, looking in the direction she indicated but seeing nothing.

Natalya walked over to the corner of the room and with a rush of excitement she realised what it was. Hanging down from one of the bracing girders that ran across the space below the skylights was a thin rope. Natalya tugged on the rope experimentally and found that it felt firmly attached.

‘Where’d that come from?’ Tolya asked.

‘The rope fairy must have left it,’ Natalya said.

‘What?’

‘It’s Dimitri, you idiot,’ Natalya said impatiently. ‘He must have found a way out.’

‘Up there?’ Tolya said with a look of disbelief.

‘Only one way to find out,’ Natalya said as she grabbed the rope and began to haul herself towards the ceiling. She stopped halfway up and looked down at Tolya who was standing at the bottom of the rope looking extremely nervous. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘what are you afraid of?’

‘It’s not what I’m afraid of,’ Tolya muttered to himself as he grabbed the bottom of the rope, ‘it’s who.’

Natalya reached the top of the rope and hauled herself up on to the dusty girder. It was probably only ten metres to the concrete below but that seemed quite a long way down from up here. She could also see the rows of bunks on the other side of the partition wall that separated them from the toilets and she was glad to see that no one else seemed to have been woken by their creeping around. A few moments later Tolya pulled himself up on to the girder beside her.

‘Where did Dimitri manage to find a grapple?’ Tolya asked quietly as Natalya examined the hook that secured the rope to the girder. Natalya had no idea but then she rarely had any idea how Dimitri managed to get his hands on the things that he did. He had been one of the first friends she had made when she arrived at the Glasshouse two years ago and without him and Tolya, Natalya doubted that she would have survived the first six months. He was one of the few people she knew who had not had his spirit broken by this place and she loved him for it.

‘We can ask him when we find him, can’t we?’ Natalya said with a smile. ‘Look.’ She pointed over at one of the nearby skylights. The padlock that had secured it hung open and it was propped open, just a crack, with a thin piece of wood. Natalya crept carefully along the girder towards the skylight. She slid her fingers into the narrow gap and lifted it open very slowly as its old hinges creaked in protest.

‘Come on,’ Natalya said, as she stepped on to the roof outside, holding the skylight open for Tolya. He hesitated for a moment, looking uncertain. ‘This could be our chance to get out of here.’

‘OK,’ Tolya said with a slight shake of the head as he climbed out after her, ‘but I must be crazy.’

‘After two years in this place I think crazy is actually pretty normal,’ Natalya replied as she crouched down and crept over to the parapet that ran along the edge of the roof. She peered over the top of the dirty brickwork and down into the moonlit courtyard below. Everything seemed quiet. There were no signs of any unusual activity. Beyond the courtyard was the perimeter wall and she watched as the guards who were supposed to be patrolling it, stood sharing a cigarette and chatting. On the other side of the wall was another fence and beyond that many miles of frozen forest. They wouldn’t make it more than a couple of miles in the pyjamas they were wearing, so their first priority had to be finding warmer clothes. She knew that there was a storeroom on the east side of the courtyard that held just what they needed. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get down there.

‘What now?’ Tolya asked as he too peered down into the snow-covered courtyard.

‘First we need to . . .’ Natalya stopped as the courtyard was suddenly flooded with bright, white light. A small figure bolted out of the storeroom she had just been planning to loot and sprinted across the cobbles towards the perimeter wall. He was wearing full survival kit with one pack on his back and was carrying another two bulging packs, one in each hand.

‘Dimitri!’ Natalya gasped as she recognised the boy running across the brightly lit square. There were shouts from the guards on the wall as they raised their rifles to their shoulders. Dimitri slowed to a halt, dropping the other two packs to the ground and raising his hands in surrender.

‘What’s he doing?’ Tolya asked, sounding bewildered.

‘You idiot, Dimitri,’ Natalya said under her breath. ‘Why do you always have to play the hero? We should have all gone together.’ But she knew what he had done. He had been trying to get the gear that all three of them would need to escape. He had more chance of successfully escaping on his own but he was going to come back and take her and Tolya with him. That was why he had propped the skylight open and left the rope in place instead of taking it with him.

‘Oh no,’ Tolya whispered as he recognised the two figures that were walking out of the front door of the compound’s main building. Anastasia and Pietor Furan. They walked towards Dimitri who stood his ground defiantly, head held high. Pietor Furan raised his hand and delivered a scything backhand fist to the boy’s jaw, knocking him to one knee. Dimitri slowly stood back up as Anastasia put a restraining hand on her brother’s arm. She began to talk to Dimitri and Natalya strained to make out any details of the conversation from her high vantage point but it was pointless, they were too far away. Her mind raced as she watched the scene unfolding below. There had to be something she could do to help him. Anastasia turned away from Dimitri and reached inside her long white coat. Natalya felt the scream issuing unbidden from her lips as she saw the woman raising a pistol towards Dimitri’s chest.

‘Nooooo!’ Natalya screamed, standing up and watching powerlessly as Anastasia Furan’s head turned slowly towards her. The woman stared at Natalya, looking her straight in the eye as she pulled the trigger. Natalya felt her legs give way underneath her as Dimitri fell backwards, the white snow blooming with crimson red beneath him.

Natalya sank to the floor, turning her back against the parapet and wrapping her arms round her knees. She sat there staring vacantly into space as Tolya, tears streaming down his face, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

‘Natalya, please, we have to run, now!’ he pleaded, knowing in his heart that there was really nowhere to run to. She didn’t offer any resistance as the guards poured out of the nearby door on to the roof and dragged her down the stairs to the courtyard. What was the point? The guards hauled her across the snow-covered cobbles and threw her to the ground in front of Anastasia Furan. The older woman leant down and cupped Natalya’s chin in her hand, raising her face until she was looking directly into her eyes.

‘What a terrible waste,’ Anastasia said as she looked towards Dimitri’s body, ‘of a bullet.’

Deep inside Natalya something broke, something that would never again be truly whole. She let out a scream that turned the nearby guards’ faces pale as she launched herself at Anastasia Furan with every intention of killing her where she stood with nothing but her bare hands. Pietor slammed Natalya to the ground, pinning her against the cold cobbles as she fought fruitlessly to get free. Tolya could do nothing but watch in horror as he saw his friend Natalya replaced by someone . . . no, something . . . different.

‘I wondered how long it would take us to find the animal inside you, Natalya,’ Anastasia said, a chilling smile on her face. ‘And now I have my answer.’ More guards helped Pietor to restrain the feral girl. ‘Take them both to the detention block,’ Anastasia said with a dismissive wave as she turned to leave. ‘Indefinite isolation.’