Every Second Counts (30 page)

‘Right.’ Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘Was there anyone you didn’t tell?’

I met her gaze. ‘It just came out.’

Charlie opened her mouth as if to say more, then shook herself. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she said. She pointed across the road to the Silvercross Institute, a large brick
building built over several floors. ‘I took a look around earlier,’ she explained. ‘It’s mostly offices, as far as I can see – though it says online that they do
chemical research here, that there are labs in the basement. The best way in is going to be through the front door, then overpower the security guard before he has a chance to call for
backup.’

‘I’ll go in first and pretend to be a courier,’ I said, explaining the plan we had discussed. ‘I’ll leave the front door open so you can rush in while I’m
distracting him. Then we search the building. You two as one team, me and Charlie as the other. Okay?’

Aaron nodded.

‘Sure,’ Lucas said, ‘except I should pretend to be the courier. I’m older, it’ll be more convincing.’

‘Good idea,’ Charlie said.

‘Fine,’ I said, feeling rattled. It was stupid, of course, Lucas was right. But I didn’t like being told what to do. Especially by him.

A few moments later we were all in position. Lucas rang on the front door, while the rest of us hid out of sight of the entry-cam.

‘Hello?’

‘Delivery,’ Lucas said into the intercom.

The door buzzed. With a final glance at us, Lucas disappeared inside. I held the door.

‘Will he be okay?’ Aaron whispered.

I nodded. ‘Lucas was trained by the EFA, just like me and Charlie. Come on, let’s go.’

We burst through the door. The security guard sprang to his feet as I ran in, but Lucas was already behind the desk. Charlie and I raced over. In seconds, the security guard’s hands and
feet were tied. Lucas wound a gag around the man’s mouth. Charlie took the bunch of keys that hung from his belt.

‘Wow.’ Aaron’s eyes were wide with awe. ‘That was
fast
.’

‘We need to search the place,’ Lucas said, brushing back the hair that had fallen over his face in the struggle with the guard. Apart from his rather gaunt appearance, there was no
trace of the pale, sick victim I had helped from the hospital just a few hours earlier. His eyes were clear and bright and he wasn’t even panting that much more than the rest of us.

‘Charlie and I will take this floor and the basement,’ I said pointing to the stairs behind the guard’s desk. ‘You two try upstairs.’

We set off. As the others disappeared up the stairs, Charlie and I explored the ground-floor rooms. We moved in silence, passing through four or five meeting rooms, each one set with a
semicircle of tables and chairs.

As we headed down to the basement, Charlie asked again if I was alright.

‘Seriously, I’m fine,’ I said.

We reached the basement and turned on to the main corridor.

‘Lucas seems really nice,’ she went on.

‘Yeah, he is,’ I said. ‘Everyone loves Lucas.’

Charlie fell silent. I shivered. Was it cooler down here? Or was I cold because of the virus? I pushed the thought out of my head and glanced at Charlie. The black jumper Aaron had brought her
was slightly too big for her and she had rolled up the sleeves. In the dim light her eyes shone, huge and brown. She looked unbearably beautiful.

I turned away. Even if we found the antidote and I somehow managed to survive the Qilota virus, there was no way I’d hang on to Charlie.

‘What the hell is your problem, Nat?’ she demanded suddenly.

I stopped in my tracks, shocked.

‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ she said, stamping her foot. ‘I know you’re upset about Jas
and
about getting ill yourself
and
about Spider hitting on me,
but you won’t talk to me about any of it – though you didn’t seem to have any problem telling the entire world about my birth dad, even though I specifically asked you not
to.’

‘I don’t . . . I didn’t . . .’ My voice fell away. I didn’t know what to say. Which was, of course, part of the problem. Guys like Spider and Lucas and Aaron, they
always
knew what to say and when to say it.

Charlie’s eyes flared with exasperation. ‘You didn’t
what
?’

I latched on to the easiest thing to explain.

‘I didn’t like the way Spider acted like you owed him something,’ I muttered. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Charlie looked me in the eyes, her expression as hard and as bright as I’d ever seen it. ‘You didn’t upset me, not over that. But you see, if you don’t talk, I
don’t know how you feel, or how to tell you how
I
feel.’

‘How
you
feel?’ I stammered, feeling uncomfortable. How had we got on to the subject of emotions so quickly?

‘Yes.’ There was a long pause, then Charlie jutted out her chin. ‘You see I love you,’ she said defiantly. The way she spoke the words made them sound like a
challenge.

My mouth gaped. My head spun. I had no idea what to say.

‘Now come on,’ she said, suddenly grabbing my hand. ‘We need to find this antidote.’

I felt bewildered as we raced along the corridor, opening each door in turn. There were three labs, all kitted out with gleaming metal pipes and bottles of chemicals, plus a kitchen with an
old-fashioned dresser and a dumb waiter in the corner. We scoured these thoroughly, using the keys Charlie had taken from the security guard upstairs to open the various cupboards we came across,
but could find no reference to the Qilota virus.

I kept hearing Charlie’s words in my head.

I love you.

I had never said those words to anyone. Now I thought about it, I wanted to say them back to Charlie, but how? I’d already let the moment pass. Again. My vision blurred and, for a few
seconds, I was completely blind. Then the floor came back into view. I didn’t have many more moments to tell Charlie anything. I didn’t have many more moments at all.

‘There’s nothing here,’ I said, pushing my thoughts away along with an empty packing crate. ‘Shall we go back upstairs?’

‘I want to take another look in the kitchen first,’ Charlie said. ‘It looked like it was all just catering stuff, but maybe there’s some info in the dresser, behind the
pots and pans.’

I shrugged. I couldn’t believe information about an antidote to a deadly virus would be stored in a basement kitchen, but I didn’t have a better suggestion. Charlie left the office.
I heard her padding into the kitchen and opening and closing a cupboard door.

I rifled through the papers stashed in the corner of the biggest lab. Again, there was nothing that obviously related to the development and weaponising of the Qilota virus, though that was
surely what had gone on in these very rooms. Most of the paperwork consisted of academic research documents – not a million miles away from the essays I used to write for school. Everyone
there would be gearing up for exams. I should have been taking plenty of them myself. I was predicted a whole bunch of top grades. How pointless did that seem now?

I wondered how Aaron and Lucas were getting on upstairs? It was time to find them. I hurried along the corridor. There was no sign of Charlie in any of the rooms we’d examined. She must
still be in the kitchen.

I peered around the door. The room was empty.

‘Charlie?’ I hissed.

No reply. I raced up and down the basement corridor. Charlie was nowhere to be seen. Heart beating fast, I rushed up the stairs to the ground floor. Lucas and Aaron were walking towards me,
expressions of disappointment on their faces. So they hadn’t found anything useful either.

I stared up at them, my vision smudging again, my pulse throbbing.

‘Where’s Charlie?’ Lucas asked, looking around.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, as the full horror of the situation sank into me. ‘She’s gone.’

My second search of the kitchen revealed a low door at the back of the dresser which neither Nat nor I had noticed before. It was locked, but one of the keys from the security
guard’s bunch fitted.

I crept through and found myself able to stand upright. The room I was in was pitch black and utterly silent. I felt for a light switch with trembling fingers.
There.
With huge relief I
flipped it on. The two naked bulbs hanging from the low ceiling cast a dim and shadowy glow around what I realised straight away was a narrow corridor. There was a fire door at one end, with an
alarm set over the top of it, and a door halfway down the corridor that led into a room on the left. No sounds came from the room, so I scurried inside. It was some kind of storeroom, with boxes
stacked against three of the four walls.

I hurried over to the nearest box. What was inside? The docket on the top of the seal made me gasp.

Serum 3489 for use in treatment of Qilota Virus

It was the antidote.
Yes.

I tore open the box. Inside were eight or ten smaller boxes. I lifted one out and opened it up. The box contained twenty or so tiny plastic phials, each filled with a pale yellow liquid. The
label on the box read:

Serum 3489. 5ml phial – one adult dose. Half for children under 12.

This was it. At last I had a cure for Nat and his family in my hands. For the first time in days, hope surged through me. I grabbed a box, tucked it under my arm, and headed back to the low door
that led into the basement kitchen.

The door had shut. I pulled and twisted on the handle, but it wouldn’t open. It must have self-locked when it closed behind me. Panic rising, I fished Latimer’s bank card out of my
pocket and slid it along the gap, trying to find the edge of the lock. But, unlike most of the other doors I’d used this trick on, the little basement door was crooked, its wood warped. I
tried again and again but it was no good.

I was trapped.

I checked the security guard. He was still tied up, exactly where we’d left him.

‘Maybe Charlie went outside?’ Aaron suggested.

‘She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me,’ I insisted.

‘You’re sure she isn’t still downstairs?’ Lucas asked.

‘Definitely. I went into every room.’

‘Let me check,’ Lucas said. ‘You and Aaron take a look outside, just in case.’ He hesitated. ‘Charlie’s great, Nat.’ He winked. ‘I’m
impressed.’

I nodded. A year ago Lucas’s approval would have meant everything. Now, all I could think about was how much danger Charlie might be in.

As Lucas disappeared down the stairs to the basement, I hurried over to Aaron. He was already at the front door, his hand pressing against the wood. With a sudden shove, it opened against him.
Aaron stumbled back. A second later, two masked soldiers forced their way past him.

‘No!’ I yelled. I turned, ready to run. A huge hand gripped my shoulder.

‘Let me go!’ I shouted, as the soldier wrenched me round to face him. In seconds he wound a length of rope around my wrists and yanked on it, hard. Across the room, Aaron was being
similarly trussed up. A moment later Lucas was shoved into the room, his hands also tied.

‘Roman Riley wants a word, Nat,’ the soldier hissed.

And, leaving Charlie goodness knows where, we were forced out of the building and into the car that had pulled up outside.

I tried – and failed – to break through the lock on the low door again.

‘Nat!’ I yelled.
‘Nat!’

There was no reply. Had he gone to look for me upstairs?

I couldn’t help but think how weird it had been seeing Nat with his brother. Of course, it had been weird seeing Lucas at all. He didn’t look like Nat. Well, maybe around the eyes.
But Nat was all I really saw in any room. He hadn’t said anything when I’d told him I loved him. I hadn’t expected to say it, but the words had just come out. At least I’d
told him how I felt. But how did Nat feel?

I tried the lock of the low door one last time. It still wasn’t opening. With an exasperated sigh I gave up on it, picked up the box of antidote serum and ran along the corridor to the
alarmed fire door at the other end. It was marked
Emergency Exit
. A key sat in a tiny glass box on the wall, along with a notice explaining that the exit was set with an alarm and only to be
opened in an emergency or with prior permission from the security desk.

I hesitated. I had no idea what was on the other side, but I had to find out. Staying here any longer simply wasn’t an option. Gritting my teeth, I broke the glass and took the key. As I
pushed open the door, an alarm screeched into the air. Cursing under my breath, I raced outside. The door opened on to a small basement yard. Stairs led up to the pavement. I didn’t recognise
the street, but I was clearly at the back of the building. Gripping the box of antidote vials, I ran up to ground level, the alarm still ringing in my ears. I crept to the end of the road and
peered around the corner. I waited a few seconds, my heart pounding, then raced over to the Institute’s main entrance. The front door was open wide. I went inside, blood thundering in my
ears. The place was utterly silent. Where had Nat and Lucas and Aaron gone?

And then I saw the two EFA guards – I recognised them both from Riley’s house. They were by the reception desk, untying the security guard.

Horrified, I spun around. Only to find Taylor blocking my way. Before I could make a move or a sound, he had grabbed my wrist and wrenched the box of antidote vials out of my hand.

‘We’ve got her,’ he said into his mouthpiece. Terror spiralled in my head. I struggled, but Taylor held me tight. ‘We’ve got them all.’

I paced up and down past the window. Even if it hadn’t been locked, with concertina bars fastened over the glass, the rope around my wrists would have made it impossible
to open. I peered out. The sun was low over the horizon outside, glinting off the fishpond.

Lucas and I were prisoners in Riley’s house. We had been here for roughly an hour and the only person we’d seen so far had been Taylor. He had marched us up the stairs into this
bedroom without speaking.

I had no idea what had happened to Aaron. He had been trussed up with me and Lucas and shoved into the back of a van, but taken out when the van first stopped, ten minutes or so before Lucas and
I had arrived at Riley’s house. As for Charlie, I didn’t know if she had got away or was a prisoner too. I didn’t want to think about Parveen or the other members of the
resistance who had been trying to stop Operation Neptune. Were they still being held captive somewhere? Or had they already been killed? As for me and Lucas, I could only assume that Riley was just
waiting for it to get dark before he disposed of us.