Acid (36 page)

I weave my way through them and my visor fogs up with the rain. I swipe it irritably. The gantry is lit up by floodlights; I look around and catch sight of Anna standing near the railing, herding people into the elevator. Both of the larger boats are moored on the water below.

‘Is Felix on the island?’ I ask her through my komm.

‘Yes, he, Rebekah and Nik are with the roto. They’re calling for help,’ she says. ‘You go with this lot.’

‘No!’ I say, wiping more rain off my visor. It spatters against my helmet, making it difficult to hear. ‘I have to wait for Max.’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ she says. ‘It’s too dangerous!’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’

‘For God’s sake, Jenna—’ She shakes her head, then presses the button and sends the elevator down to the boat. A few minutes later it comes back up, empty, and we usher the next lot of inmates into it. Behind me, more
and
more people are edging out onto the gantry, filling the spaces left by those who’ve already gone down to the boats. Where is Max? He should be here by now.

Then I see him, standing just outside the doors.

I shoulder-barge my way back through to him. ‘Max,’ I say, grabbing his arm. He flinches, and I remember I still have my visor over my face. I push it up and immediately get a faceful of rain.

‘Max, it’s me,’ I say.

His frightened expression turns to recognition. ‘What’s going on?’ he says. I tell him. Then, behind me, Rav appears with a small group of people in grey uniforms – the prison medic, her assistant, and the kitchen and maintenance staff, including the guy I saw cleaning the general’s room. Fiona’s there too.

Anna comes over. ‘How many more?’ she says.

‘Block Four,’ Fiona says. ‘Steve and Drew are bringing them down. Then they’re going to go back up and get the general and the other agents. D’you want me to take the second boat over?’

Anna nods and goes back over to the elevator with them. They all look anxious. I wonder what Rav told them to get them out of there.

Anna holds up a hand, stopping the people who are moving towards her. The boat must be ready to leave. I look up, scanning the sky for rotos, but see nothing. I turn back to Max. ‘We should go down to the boat,’ I say. He nods.

‘
Anna!
’ someone shouts behind us. I whirl round
to
see Steve and Drew running out onto the gantry.

‘He’s gone,’ Drew says breathlessly when they reach us. ‘No sign of him. The other agents have vanished too.’

Anna stares at him. So do I. ‘But that’s impossible,’ I say. ‘I cuffed him.’

‘The cuffs were still there. Someone found him and released him.’

The agent in the shower
, I think. He must have woken up. Or the general managed to make a loud enough noise to wake the others up somehow.
Crap
.

‘He’s got to be somewhere,’ I say.

‘We searched the staff quarters from top to bottom,’ Steve says. ‘There’s no sign of him.’

‘But there isn’t any way out except through these doors,’ Anna says. ‘He must be—’

She breaks off, jerking her head round. ‘What was that?’ she says.

‘What was what?’ Drew says.

‘Shh.’ She holds up a hand. We all listen, and a few moments later, we hear it.

The thud of roto blades.

CHAPTER 65

THE FIRST ONE’S
on us before we can do anything, bursting out of the darkness with its headlights blazing.

‘Get down to the boat! Get down to the boat!’ Anna screams.

Steve and Drew run for the elevator. I start to go after them, then see the roto’s gone into a hover over the staff quarters at the top of the prison. ‘Wait!’ I yell. ‘What’s it doing?’

Anna looks up too. A spotlight beams down from the bottom of the roto, bathing the already floodlit gantry in blue-white light and turning the rain into glittering shards. I pull my visor back down to shade my eyes and see a rope being lowered from a small hatch in the roto’s side.

‘The general’s on the roof!’ I yell. ‘They’re rescuing him!’

I run back inside to the elevator, punching the buttons to take me up to the top floor. When I reach the lounge, it’s filled with the glare of the roto’s spotlight.
How did they get up there?
I think. I scan the edge of the room, looking for a door, but I can’t see one. And the windows don’t open, but none of them are broken.

Then I notice that a table from the edge of the room has been dragged into the centre. I look up at the ceiling above it and see the faint outline of a hatch, disguised to look like it’s part of the tiles.

I clamber onto the table, shoving my gun back in my belt, and punch the door in the ceiling open. As I grab onto the lip of the hatch and haul myself up and through, I’m blasted by the downdraught from the roto’s blades.

There are only two ACID agents left on the roof. One is clinging onto the rope, being winched slowly up to the door in the roto’s side, the wind and downdraught sending him swinging perilously close to the roto’s bottom blades. The other is standing with his back to me, waiting. I feel a burst of despair. I’m too late. He’s got away.

Then I see the three triangles on the arm of his uniform, and the name below them. 912
S. HARVEY
.

Because of the noise from the roto, he hasn’t heard me come through the hatch. I reach for my gun, then change my mind and grab my taser instead. I want to incapacitate him, not kill him. I run up behind him and leap on his back, trying to pull his head back with one arm so I can jam the taser into the space between his collar and the bottom of his helmet. He roars and twists round, but I cling on. I can’t get the taser under his helmet, so I stick it in his armpit. When I press the button it discharges, but nothing happens. The jumpsuits must be taser-proof.

The general spins, and I can’t hold on any longer. I let go and stagger back, dropping my taser and almost
skidding
over on the rain-slick surface of the roof before managing to right myself. The general lifts his visor. I lift mine too. We look at each other, chests heaving. ‘You,’ he says, his top lip curling. ‘I’m going to
end
you.’

He glances up at the roto. ‘Tell two and three to hold fire. There’s some unfinished business I need to attend to,’ he says into his komm, and I realize he must be talking to the other rotos waiting out at sea nearby. ‘No, I don’t need backup. Just wait for me.’ Then he pulls his gun from his belt. There’s no time to draw my own gun. No time to retrieve my taser. I take a step back, turn, and run for the hatch.

I reach it just as the general fires his first shot at me. The deadly electric charge from the pulse gun, a hundred times more powerful than the discharge from a taser, sizzles past and I feel a searing pain in my upper right arm, just below the shoulder. Diving through the hatch and onto the table beneath, I reach up to pull the hatch closed, jump down to the floor and look wildly around for a hiding place.
BANG!
The hatch door disintegrates in a shower of smoke and sparks.

The general lands on the table hard enough to make it rock from side to side, and I run out of the lounge with him right on my heels. I head for the elevator, but he fires at the controls, and the doors slide shut before I can get there. I make for the stairs instead, leaping down them two at a time. He fires again; I duck and the charge slams into the wall in front of me, showering me with shrapnel. I reach the first landing, my boots squeaking against the
floor
as I take the corner and start down the second flight.

The others. I’m leading him straight to them
. Anna has a gun, but what if he shoots Max, or realizes where the other prisoners have gone and orders the rotos out at sea to bomb the island?

At the bottom of the second flight of stairs is a half-open door marked
KITCHEN/MAINTENANCE
. I dart through and kick it shut behind me. I’m in a narrow, dim corridor. I hesitate for a moment, wondering where to go. Then, behind me, the door flies open again. I run through the first door I see and into a large kitchen that looks just like the kitchens at Mileway, with metal worktops, an island, and gigantic fridges and ovens. I run to the far end and duck behind the island. My breath comes in gasps. I concentrate on trying to quiet it. My heart’s beating so fast it feels like it might explode right out of my chest, and my arm is throbbing. When I look at it, I see a long scrape on my upper arm where the charge from the general’s gun has penetrated my jumpsuit, the skin blackened and raw-looking. Another couple of centimetres to the left, and he’d have blown my arm off.

The general bursts in a few seconds later. He’s breathing hard too. ‘Don’t play silly games, Jenna,’ he says. ‘We both know how this is going to end.’

I stay where I am, fists clenched, trying to ignore the pain in my arm as I watch him walk to the far end of the island. As he starts to come round it, I shuffle round the corner away from him, still in a crouch, edging back
towards
the door. I’m nearly there when, in the corridor outside, I hear footsteps and someone calling, ‘Jenna?
Jenna!
’

Anna
. The general’s head snaps round. I freeze, listening as she comes closer.
Not in here
, I think as I see the general lift his gun.
Please don’t come in here
.

She’s in the corridor; I can hear her boots squeaking against the floor. As she reaches the door and the general raises his gun to fire at her I stand and shout, ‘Hey!’

But I’m a fraction of a second too late; he’s already pulled the trigger. Anna cries out. Head down, I run for the door to see her leaning against the wall just outside, clutching her left side.

When I see Max standing next to her, my stomach lurches. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask Anna. She shakes her head. She takes her hand away and shows it to me. Her fingers are streaked with blood and there’s a hole in her jumpsuit, burned and wet-looking like the one on my arm.

‘Come on!’ I yell at them both. We run along the corridor, Anna clutching her side again, and duck into an alcove as the general fires another shot at us. Pushing her and Max behind me, I flip back my gun’s charge switch, poke my head round the edge of the alcove and, gritting my teeth against the pain in my arm, I fire, aiming at the general’s feet. There’s a crack, an explosion of sparks and the general gives a howl and staggers as the charge slams into his right ankle.

But he keeps coming.

Any moment now, he’ll be level with Anna and Max.

I have to get him away from them
, I think. Ignoring Anna’s gasp of ‘Jenna, no!’ and Max’s ‘Don’t!’ I step out into the corridor, holding the gun out in front of me.

‘I’m here,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you come and get me?’

‘With pleasure,’ the general snarls. He’s limping, and has slowed to a fast walk. The bottom of his right trouser leg has been reduced to charred shreds.

As he carries on hobbling towards me, I walk backwards. He’s so focused on me that he doesn’t even glance into the alcove. At the end, the corridor turns sharply right. I glance down it and see another door at the end. I run down there, but it’s locked. Stepping back, I blast the lock to vapour. Then I yank the door open and sprint through, straight out onto the little walkway I saw when we first got here, slamming against the metal railing at its edge so hard I fold in half over it and knock the breath out of my lungs and the gun out of my hand.

CHAPTER 66

I GRAB AT
it, but it’s already out of reach. I watch as it falls, turning over and over before disappearing into the water churning against the bottom of the rig. Gasping, winded, furious, I sag against the railing. Then, behind me, I hear the general yelling into his komm. ‘What’s that? The roto pilots are doing
what?
Dammit, I can’t hear you! I’ll link you in a minute!’

He limps through the door behind me. He still has his visor up, and when he sees me, a shark-like grin spreads across his face.

‘Thought you could escape, eh?’ he calls over the sound of the roto, which is still hovering above us. I start to edge away from him. When he sees I no longer have a weapon, his grin gets even bigger. He flips back the charge switch on his gun.

‘OVER HERE, YOU BASTARD!’ Max yells, running out onto the walkway behind him.

The general whirls and aims his gun straight at his heart, squeezing the trigger.

‘NO!’ I scream, and fly at the general, colliding with him and trying to tackle him to the ground. The gun goes off, firing into the sky, and the charge must have hit one
of
the bottom blades of the roto because it lists sideways suddenly, the whine of the blades changing to a scream. I manage to get hold of the general’s wrist and crack it against the railing; he drops the gun and it plummets down to join mine beneath the water.

‘Max! Tell Anna to send the others back up here! I need their help!’ I scream as the general and I grapple, our feet skidding on the wet concrete of the walkway. Max yells something back, but I can’t hear him; the damaged roto, unable to hold its hover, is trying to land on the prison roof. ‘GO!’ I bawl at him. He ducks back through the door.

The general and I are getting closer and closer to the railing. He has hold of my arms, his grip vice-tight. I duck and turn, twist and kick. But I can’t break free. And I’m getting so
tired
. The wound on my arm burns and my ribs ache from where I slammed into the railing. I want this to be over.

I hook my right foot behind his knee. The general, already thrown off-kilter by the injury to his ankle, loses his balance and stumbles against the railing. But he still has hold of my arms, and he falls back with such momentum that he keeps going, flipping backwards over the railing and taking me with him.

The next moment, there’s nothing around us but empty air as we tumble down towards the waves.

CHAPTER 67

AT SOME POINT
while we’re in freefall, the general lets go of me. I just have time to gulp a mouthful of air and close my eyes before I hit the water with a stinging
smack
, the waves instantly dragging me under.