Acid (14 page)

‘Well,’ a voice says. ‘Who do we have here?’

I jump. Standing behind us in the rectangle of light cast by the open door is a man I guess to be in his late
twenties
. As soon as I notice him, the rest of the room suddenly feels very small indeed. He’s nearly two metres tall, broad-chested with a square jaw and shoulder-length, wavy, dark-blond hair. The sleeves of his striped shirt are rolled back to show muscular forearms which are criss-crossed with marks and scars, and when he moves I catch a glimpse of a tattoo on his left bicep, a red circle with something black inside it.

Shaan sticks her head round the door. ‘Jacob, this is Sarah and . . .’ She glances at Max and frowns.

‘Declan,’ Max says quickly.

‘Have you got komms?’ Jacob says.

‘No,’ I say.

Jacob narrows his eyes. ‘Show me.’

I lift my hair to show him my ear. So does Max.

‘What about your pockets?’

‘We don’t have komms, OK?’ I say, keeping my gaze steady.

He looks us up and down. ‘Why are you here?’ he asks.

I sigh. ‘We needed somewhere to hide from ACID, that’s all. If we’d known there were people already here, we’d have found somewhere else.’

‘Hiding from ACID? Why?’

I look at Max. He looks back at me, wearing an expression like that of a trapped animal.
Think of something
, his gaze pleads with me.

‘We’re . . . not LifePartners,’ I say. Heat steals up my neck and into my face as I realize what I’ve just implied about us.

Jacob nods slowly. ‘I see. Shaan!’

She steps into the room.

‘Search her. I’ll do the boy.’

Shaan nods and walks over to me. ‘Put your arms up,’ she orders.

I look over at Max. He’s frowning.

‘What the hell?’ I say.

‘You can’t go back outside,’ Jacob says. ‘The town’s crawling with ACID agents – they’ll pick you up straight away. But if you’re going to stay, I need to make absolutely sure you don’t have any komms on you – or anything else.’

I remember the gun.
Crap
.

‘Put your arms up,’ Shaan repeats. I think about how easy it would be to fold her in two with a punch to the gut or by kicking her legs out from under her. Jacob would be more of a fight, but . . .

No. I can’t, no matter how badly I want to, because Max and I really
do
need somewhere to hide out. Like Jacob says, going back out there is not an option right now. If I fight him and Shaan, I might as well be signing our arrest warrants.

I sigh, very quietly, and lift my arms up. First, they find our c-cards; Shaan hands them both to Jacob without looking at them, but Jacob studies them carefully.
Now he knows we’re not Sarah and Declan
, I think.
To him, we’re Mia and Michael
. Then he finds the gun. ‘What are you doing with this?’ he asks Max, holding it up.

‘Sarah took it off an ACID agent,’ Max says.

Jacob gives an incredulous little laugh. ‘What?’

‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘He cornered us. He would have shot us if I hadn’t got it off him.’

Jacob shakes his head slowly, looking down at the gun. ‘And there I was, thinking you were just a couple of runaway lovebirds.’

I’ve had enough of this. ‘Look, as soon as it gets dark, we’ll leave, OK? You won’t even know we’ve been here.’

Jacob doesn’t say anything, just turns and reaches under the camp bed, pulling out a large metal strongbox. He lifts a silver chain from around his neck. Dangling from it is a small key which he uses to unlock the box. He puts the gun and our c-cards inside, then locks the box and nods at Shaan. ‘Take Declan and
Sarah
downstairs,’ he tells them, putting another slight emphasis on my fake name.

My
fake
fake name.

‘What about our stuff?’ I say, turning back to look at the strongbox, which he’s still holding.

‘I’ll let you have everything back when you leave,’ Jacob tells me, sliding the box back under the bed and putting the chain around his neck again.

‘What?’ I say. ‘No way! You can’t just—’

Then I hear footsteps running along the corridor outside. A boy bursts into the room, his eyes wide.

‘An ACID van’s just pulled up at the end of the road!’ he gasps.

CHAPTER 19

JACOB REACHES UNDER
the bed and grabs the box, which he hands to Shaan. ‘Basement,’ he says. Then he heaves the bed onto its side and starts to kick over the piles of books. In less than thirty seconds the room looks like nothing more than a junk store where someone might have squatted once, many years before.

Neela and Shaan hustle us down to the ground floor, then down again. I get a brief glimpse of a wide, low-ceilinged room where the bookshelves have been pulled into squares to make little dens, with blankets and sheets draped over them for privacy, glolamps flickering inside. ‘ACID!’ Shaan calls. The glolamps start to go out. I hear people stirring, muttering; the sound of the sheets being torn down and a thudding which I realize is the bookshelves being tilted and laid flat on the floor.

‘This way,’ Neela tells me. She sounds frightened. She leads us to another door and thrusts her glolamp into my hands. ‘When you get down there, go right to the back and climb the shelves. Lie on top of them as flat as you can. And put the light out!’

Other people are coming up behind us. I shove the door open, making the hinges squeal loudly, and an
almost
overwhelming smell of damp and mould hits me in the face. I’m at the top of a flight of stairs. When I reach the bottom, in the pale light thrown out by my glolamp, I can just make out rows of shelves that reach almost to the ceiling, stretching away on either side of me. They’re unevenly spaced, and they have spoked wheels on their sides. We thread through yet more piles of paper and books that have spilled – or perhaps been pulled, to make it harder for anyone to get through here – from them, and head for the back of the room.

Max climbs the shelves first. I hand the glolamp up and scramble after him. The top is easily wide enough for us both to lie face-down and side by side. I can hear the clang of feet against metal as other people climb the shelves around us. Max shakes the glolamp to extinguish it. Then he starts coughing again.

‘Shut up!’ someone hisses.

Somehow, Max gets his coughing fit under control. The basement goes quiet. All I can hear is the blood roaring in my ears. I wonder how many other people are down here. And why
are
they here? What
is
this place? I curse myself for not finding somewhere else; somewhere empty where we could have hidden out by ourselves, before trying to slip out of Clearford unnoticed.

‘Are ACID really—’ someone starts to whisper to my left.

Then, overhead, we hear a thud.

And footsteps, moving slowly across the floor.

‘Everyone
shut up
,’ says another voice, unmistakably
Jacob’s
. Even though he’s whispering too, it carries right across the room. ‘Don’t even
breathe
.’

I inhale and exhale as quietly as I possibly can through my nose. I’m aware of the heat of Max’s body pressed against mine. We’re shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, ankle to ankle. He smells like dust and rain.

At the top of the stairs, the door to the basement squeals open.

Two pairs of feet walk slowly down them, their tread heavy and deliberate.

‘Look at this place,’ says a man’s voice, filled with disgust. ‘If they’re in here, we’ll never find them.’

Please don’t say my name
, I think, closing my eyes.
PLEASE
.

I hear a click, and when I open my eyes, I see the blaze of two torch beams at the other end of the room. The agents walk slowly across the basement. The torches are fixed to their gun sights. As they direct them between the shelves, I’m convinced that at any moment, they’ll point them up and see a foot, a hand, a pair of eyes shining in the dark . . .

Beside me, Max has started to shiver. I concentrate on my slow and silent breathing, praying that he won’t start coughing; praying for this to be over.

There’s a crash, heart-stoppingly close, as one of the agents collides with something and knocks it over. ‘Ouch!’ she cries. ‘For God’s sake, it’s a death trap down here.’

They’re right below us. Her colleague points his gun
upwards;
my heart lurches as the torch beam glances off a tangle of pipes and ventilation shafts on the ceiling just centimetres from the shelves Max and I are lying on.

Then he points it back at the floor. ‘There’s nothing down here except junk,’ he says, sounding as grumpy as the first agent. ‘Why would they stick around here, anyway? They know that’s the first place we’d look. I bet they’re miles away from Clearford by now.’

They leave, tramping back up the stairs, and I hear the door squeal again as they go through.

CHAPTER 20

‘WAIT,’ JACOB WHISPERS
. ‘Nobody move.’

I can still hear footsteps over our heads. Max is shivering harder than ever, his teeth chattering together. ‘Are you OK?’ I murmur in his ear, but he doesn’t respond. It must be a reaction to ACID’s raid and everything else we’ve been through today.

The footsteps upstairs fade away. We wait another ten minutes, then Jacob says, ‘I’ll see if the coast’s clear.’

I hear him climb down off the shelves somewhere in front of us, and the door scrape open as he leaves.

A few moments later, he’s back. ‘They’re gone,’ he says. ‘It’s safe.’

I scramble to my knees, wincing at the stiffness in my arms and legs from lying still for so long, and climb down from the bookshelf, reaching up to give Max a hand down. As soon as his feet hit the floor, he starts coughing again. The skin on the back of my hands is prickling at our near escape.

Glolamps flicker into life as Max and I follow the others out of the basement. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ I murmur, noticing that he’s still shivering. He nods. Then, just as we’re about to go up the stairs after everyone else,
he
grabs my arm, stopping me. ‘Are we pretending we’re a couple, then?’ he whispers, barely loud enough for me to hear.

‘Yes,’ I whisper back. ‘We’d better, if Jacob thinks we are. Sorry. I couldn’t think of what else to say.’

‘It’s fine,’ he answers.

Back on the floor above, everyone, including Jacob, sets about righting the bookshelves, picking up sheets and putting the dens back together. I stand with Max, watching and trying to ignore the suspicious looks people are shooting at us. I’m startled at how young most of them are. There’s a boy and a girl who are about my age, but the rest, three boys and another girl, can only be fourteen or fifteen at the most, including the boy who ran into Jacob’s room to warn him ACID were here.

It doesn’t take long to make the dens. When they’re done, Jacob claps his hands.

‘As you might have guessed,’ he says, ‘ACID were here looking for our new arrivals, Sarah and Declan.’

Several of the suspicious looks become openly hostile.
Thanks a lot
, I think. I scowl, stick my chin out and square my shoulders, shaking my still-damp hair out of my face. Max shuffles his feet.

‘I’ve agreed that they can stay here until tonight, which is when they want to leave,’ Jacob continues. ‘That offer still stands. It’s not the first raid we’ve had and it won’t be the last, and if ACID weren’t looking for Sarah and Declan, they’d have come here for something else.’

He looks over at me and, to my surprise, he smiles. I don’t smile back. I’m thinking of the gun in the box under Shaan’s arm. Don’t ask me why, but I have a feeling getting it back isn’t going to be as easy as just asking for it.

Jacob takes the box from Shaan and goes back upstairs.

I remember that Max and I are supposed to be a couple. Feeling horribly self-conscious, I reach for his hand. His fingers twitch in surprise, but then he realizes what I’m doing and threads them through mine. He gives my hand a little squeeze, as if to say,
We’ll be OK
, and I find myself squeezing his fingers back. I’m glad he’s here with me.

The girl who’s the same age as me steps forward. She’s pretty, almost doll-like, with feathered blonde hair and blue eyes and porcelain skin, wearing a loose dress sewn from a patchwork of fabric scraps and a flowery scarf tied round her slender waist as a belt. ‘I’m Elyn,’ she says, then indicates the boy behind her. ‘This is Rory.’

Rory nods at us.

‘And this is Jack, Lukas, Paul and Amy,’ she continues, pointing at the younger teenagers.

‘I’d better get back upstairs,’ Jack says. ‘I’ve still got half an hour of watch duty left. Then it’s your turn, yeah?’ he adds, looking at Rory. Rory nods.

Max starts coughing again. It sounds much worse than before: a harsh barking sound from deep inside his chest. He lets go of my fingers and plasters both hands
across
his mouth, his shoulders shuddering. ‘You’re not all right, are you?’ I say.

He shakes his head.

‘What’s up?’

‘I can’t get warm,’ he says.

I touch the back of my hand to his cheek and feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. He’s fever-hot. Crap. Maybe he
hasn’t
just got a cold. And if it is something more serious, getting soaked and running away from ACID won’t have helped at all.

‘We’ve got some medpatches. D’you want one?’ Elyn asks him.

Max nods. She ducks into one of the dens and re-emerges with a blister pack, which she hands to him. Max takes one of the medpatches out and sticks it on his neck, just under his jaw.

‘I can get you some blankets if you’re cold,’ Elyn adds as some of the others start to drift back to their bookshelf-dens. ‘We’ve got a few spare.’

Max nods again. ‘If I can sleep for a couple of hours, I’ll probably feel better,’ he says.

Elyn leaves the room, returning a few minutes later with an armful of blankets. We take them to an empty corner of the room and I help Max spread two of them out on the floor. It’s less dusty down here than the rest of the library; I wonder why they haven’t cleaned anywhere else, then realize it’s probably deliberate, to make it look uninhabited.