Acid (12 page)

But I don’t know how to light fires, or trap animals, and I doubt Max does, either. Country holidays or not, I’m a city girl, and I always will be.

I sigh. At least that ACID agent didn’t board the train. Getting rid of my komm should have bought us a bit of time; if we don’t use our cards again, we might be able to disappear off ACID’s radar completely.

At that moment, we start to slow down. My heart jumps into my throat. Have ACID stopped us? I tense, ready to shake Max awake, wondering how I can force the doors open, and just how dangerous it would be to jump from a moving train.

The train’s komm system gives a soft
bing!
‘Due to a broken-down train ahead of us, this service will be making an unscheduled stop at the next station to allow the track to be cleared,’ a robotic-sounding female voice says. ‘IRB
RailNet
apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and would like to reassure passengers that this incident will be dealt with as quickly as possible. I repeat, due to a broken-down train . . .’

I sag back against the seat. For a moment, I feel relieved; then I think,
But what if it
is
ACID? What if they’ve just made that announcement to try and trick us?
and my heartbeat speeds up again.

Roused by the announcement, Max sits up. ‘What’s happening?’ he says, his voice blurred with sleep. He reaches up to pull his hood back. I yank his hands away. ‘Don’t!’ I whisper fiercely.

Around us, the other passengers are grumbling, but quietly, as if they’re afraid the wrong person might hear them. ‘It’s about time ACID opened up their damn wallets and spent some money on these junkheaps,’ I hear a woman behind us complain to her companion. ‘But will they? Oh no. They spend all their funds turning London into some sort of show city while the rest of the country goes to hell.’

Her companion hisses, ‘Be
quiet
, Ally.
Please
. You don’t know that’s even true.’

‘Really?’ Ally says. ‘Why don’t you look out of the window, then?’

The landscape around us has changed from rolling countryside to the outskirts of a large town: rows of concrete houses with boxy back yards, then apartment blocks. They’re just like the buildings in Outer, except the whole town looks like this.

She’s right, you know
, I want to lean over the seat and tell Ally’s companion. I remember visiting another town like this when I was eleven, accompanying my parents on a business trip because they couldn’t get a babysitter. We flew up there in a roto and were taken by electro car to the offices where my father was having his meeting. As we travelled through the streets I was shocked at how run-down everything was, and at the queues outside all the shops. I didn’t know at the time that it was the same in Outer London too – back then, Outer was a place I knew only from rumours and nightmares. When we returned home that night, looking around our luxurious home, I asked Dad why we in Upper had so much and people in that town had so little. Why wasn’t the wealth more evenly distributed? ‘Because we deserve it,’ Dad told me. ‘The people who’ve earned the right to live in Upper work hard to keep this country running. Go and take off your shoes, Jenna, and stop pestering.’

Was that when I first started to question things more? When the beginnings of my rebellion against ACID and my parents quietly ignited in my soul?

Five minutes later, the train pulls into a little station with tubs of withered-looking, rain-drenched flowers and flickering holosigns saying
WELCOME TO CLEARFORD STATION
along the edges of the platforms. We come to a grinding, squealing halt, and the komm system
bings!
again. ‘Any passengers wishing to use toilet facilities or buy refreshments may alight at this station,’ the robot voice says. ‘There are vending machines at the edge of this platform. Please listen
carefully
for announcements about the train’s departure. I repeat . . .’

Several of the passengers stand up and start to move down the carriage to the doors.

‘We need to get off too,’ I mutter to Max when the seats around us have emptied.

‘What?’ he says.

‘We used our c-cards when we got on. If ACID find out we’re on this train, they’ll be waiting for us in Newcastle.’

‘Shit, I never thought,’ he says, coughing.

I nod. ‘It was the only way we could get tickets, and we were in such a hurry to get on the train . . .’ I look up and down the carriage. It’s nearly empty now. ‘Come on.’

Outside, it’s raining hard, the drops of water bouncing off my head with so much force it hurts, and as we stand on the platform and I look for the exit, I hear a low rumble of thunder overhead.

‘There,’ I say, spotting a set of white-painted wooden gates in front of an underpass to one side of a little waiting room. They’re padlocked, but unattended; if we wait until no one’s looking, we can climb over them.

I look around for the attendant. He’s making for the waiting room, not paying us any attention in his hurry to get out of the rain. I jerk my head at Max and we cross the platform, heading for the gates.

‘Hey!’

I whirl round.

The ACID agent I saw on the platform back at the transport interchange is running towards us.

CHAPTER 16

‘STOP RIGHT THERE!’
he shouts as he comes towards us, fumbling his gun from his belt. His helmet’s strapped to a loop beside it, bouncing against his thigh.

‘Run!’ I snap at Max, never taking my eyes off the agent. ‘I can keep him here!’

‘No, I’m not leaving you!’ he says.

‘For God’s sake, Max!’

He starts to say something else, but starts coughing and can’t speak.

The agent reaches us, breathing hard. He points the gun at me, its muzzle only centimetres from my chest. ‘You’re coming with me,’ he says.

You’ve done this before, Jenna, remember?
I think as the memory of being cornered in my cell at Mileway by Neil Rennick comes back to me. He had a shank made out of a piece of sharpened plastic, which he held up to my throat. He said, ‘When I’m done with you, I’m going to cut you.’ But thanks to the moves I’d learned from Dr Fisher, Rennick was the one who ended up getting cut.

Only that was a shank. This is a
gun
.

‘Why?’ I say. I’m stalling, playing for time. If there’s
even
the tiniest hope of this working, I need to catch the agent off guard.

And I need to do it before he tells Max my name.

‘I think you know why,’ the agent says. ‘Put your hands up. And you,’ he tells Max. ‘Take down that hood.’

Max slowly reaches up and pushes his hood back. His eyes are wide, his face pale.

The agent smiles and, with his free hand, reaches for one of the sets of cuffs that are hanging from his belt.

Now
, I think.

I start to raise my hands, then quickly step sideways so the gun is no longer pointing directly at me. I use my right hand to slap the agent’s wrist down and my left to grab the barrel of the gun, twisting the weapon up and out of his grasp. I point it at him. ‘Don’t you
dare
,’ I snarl as he reaches up to activate his komm and call for backup, the colour draining from his face. ‘Keep your hands down by your sides and don’t speak.’

He lets his arms drop. I glance sideways to see if any of the other passengers are watching us, but we’re out of sight of the waiting room and there doesn’t seem to be anyone left on the train. Of course, there are probably spotters everywhere, but right now, that’s the least of my worries.

The agent’s face is chalk-white. For the first time, I notice how young he is – only a few years older than me and Max. I guess when he was shaving the fluff off his chin back in London this morning, he wasn’t expecting his day to turn out like this.

Max looks pretty shocked too. ‘Mia . . .’ he says.

‘Go,’ I tell him, jerking my head towards the gates. ‘
Go
. I’ll be there in a second.’

He takes a step back, then stops. ‘Wait,’ he says. He pulls the agent’s komm out of his ear, dropping it on the ground and grinding it into pieces under his heel. Then he nods at me, turns and runs for the gates, vaulting them and landing with a
thump
on the other side.

‘You’re gonna stay right here,’ I tell the agent. The rain’s streaming down my face, plastering my hair against my head. Above us, there’s a flash of lightning and immediately, a ground-shaking clap of thunder. The storm’s right overhead. ‘If you move, I’ll shoot you, get it?’

He nods, swallowing.

I start to walk backwards towards the gates, keeping the gun trained on him the whole time. He stands there with his jaw clenched, staring at me. I reach the gates and climb over them, still pointing the gun at the agent. I glance behind me. Max is waiting in the shadows. I take another step back, jamming the gun into the waistband of my jeans without even thinking about it, and hiss at Max, ‘
Run!
’

We sprint through the underpass, emerging onto a narrow street. To my relief, it’s deserted; the storm’s keeping everyone inside.

Clearford’s streets aren’t laid out in a grid like Outer London’s. They’re a sprawling maze, crowded in by jumbled buildings that might be apartments or warehouses or something else entirely. As we race along them, I see battered-looking news screens looming down at us,
plastered
with warnings from ACID about Clearford’s twenty-hundred-hours curfew and what will happen to you if you’re caught not carrying your c-card. Soon, I hear the thin wail of an ACID siren heading in the direction we’ve just come from.

‘Mia,’ Max gasps. ‘I need to stop. I can’t breathe!’

He stops, bent double with his hands on his knees, his body jerking with hacking coughs.
Damn
.

‘Down here,’ I say, pulling him down a narrow paved alleyway on our left. He slumps onto a step next to some bins, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. His face is pale, two hectic spots of colour high up on his cheeks, and for a moment I’m worried he’s going to pass out on me or puke.

‘Are you OK?’ I say.

He nods. Finally, he manages to stop coughing. While he rests, I keep my gaze trained on the entrance to the alleyway, watching for ACID.
God, we’re in a real mess now
, I think, blinking rainwater out of my eyes.
Why did you get me out of Mileway, Alex? WHY?

If I ever see them again, I’m going to make Mel and Jon tell me everything.

Then I feel something digging into my side, and I remember the gun. I take it out. It’s heavy and cold, its silver casing gleaming dully. The charge light on top of the barrel is green, indicating it’s ready to fire. Just looking at it sends a cold, sick feeling through me. When I glance at Max, he’s staring at it too.

‘Who taught you those moves?’ he asks me hoarsely.
He’s
coughed so much he’s almost lost his voice. ‘I mean, to get the gun off him like that?’

I swallow.
Your dad
, I think. But of course, there’s no way I can tell him that. ‘It was those friends I was going to take you to,’ I lie.

‘Huh,’ he says. ‘It was really something.’

‘Um, thanks.’ I give him a quick smile, which he returns, and I feel a flash of warmth go through me.

Then Max’s expression becomes serious. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

I look at the gun again. ‘Get rid of it,’ I say as the warmth inside me turns to a chill. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘But what if we run into ACID?’ Max asks. He coughs. ‘We might need it.’

‘I don’t want it,’ I repeat. It’s identical to the one I shot my parents with.
Identical
.

‘Give it to me,’ Max says. ‘I’ll look after it.’

I switch it off, hand it over to him, and he stands up and shoves it into his waistband, pulling the oversized blue hoody down to hide it. I wonder if his dad ever showed him how to use one. I wouldn’t be surprised.

We go back out onto the street. It’s still raining, there’s still no one about, and because of Max’s cough we walk instead of run, keeping a lookout for ACID patrols the whole time. We’re in some sort of commercial district, flickering holosigns above the buildings advertising services and goods. We can’t stay in Clearford long – it’ll be crawling with ACID agents, looking for us – but I wonder if there’s an empty warehouse or depot where we
can
take cover until nightfall, so we’ve got more chance of getting out of the town without being seen.

Then, glancing back up at the sky to check for rotos or spotters, I see something that turns my blood to liquid nitrogen.

My face – my
new
face – staring down at me from a gigantic news screen, next to a picture of Max.
DNA EVIDENCE REVEALS STRONG AND FISHER WERE LIVING IN OUTER LONDON FLAT
, the headline screams, above the line:
Fugitives now on run, reports coming in that ACID agent has been attacked with own gun by Strong at provincial railway station
.

I have to read it twice before it makes sense.
The one thing we cannot change about you is your DNA
, I remember Steve telling me back at the labs just after I was broken out of Mileway. I hear a rushing sound inside my head, and realize I’ve stopped walking. So has Max. He’s frowning at me.

In a few seconds, he’ll look up and see the news screen too and my cover will be totally blown.

‘Shit!’ I say, ducking my head.

‘What?’ Max croaks.

‘A spotter! It was right on us! Come
on
!’

I break into a jog again. Max swears and runs after me. ‘Where?’ he says. ‘I didn’t see—’

‘Shut up and move!’ I tell him.

We keep running until we reach a street without any news screens. By then, Max is coughing his lungs up again. Even I’m starting to feel tired. I’m starving and
thirsty
too. I wonder where we are – near the centre of Clearford or its edge? The buildings in front of us are identical: grey concrete with rows of small, grimy windows. There’s nothing I can use to get my bearings.

Max leans forward with his hands on his knees. I’m convinced his coughing fit’s never going to end, but at last it eases. He straightens up. Then he looks behind us and says, ‘Huh. Creepy.’