Numbers 3: Infinity (10 page)

‘And you’ve been given a very heavy burden, Adam. The power to see death. You can use it. You’re strong enough. I want you to work with me, be my right-hand man. I can help share the strain. I understand, Adam. I do.’

He puts his hand on top of mine. ‘Are you with me, Adam?’

There’s something about him that makes me want to say ‘yes’. He’d be a powerful friend. And a terrible enemy. But there’s something revolting about him, too, something I can’t get hold of. My head’s spinning.

He can tell I’m confused. He pats my hand and stands up.

‘You don’t have to answer now. Think about it. We’ll talk again.’ He looks at the door in front of us. ‘Do you want to see her now?’

This is it? She’s in there? Sarah. My heart starts to thump. My confusion about Saul is pushed to the back of my mind
– I’m trying to grasp memories of Sarah. I’ve got her face, the feel of my hand on her waist as we sit by the fire. But that’s all. God, why can’t I remember?

No. Not yet. I need time.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I do.’

The guard salutes and unlocks the door. Saul disappears inside, shutting the door behind him. My nerves almost get the better of me. Why didn’t we go straight in? What’s he doing in there? Is Sarah really in there, or is this some sort of set-up?

I’m not ready.

But I want to see her – I want to see my girl.

Chapter 21: Sarah

T
here’s a sharp knock on the door, and then the key turns in the lock. I’m starting to hate that sound.

What now? Probably Marion and more stupid questions. I stuff Mia’s drawing and my nightmare sketch under the mattress. I can’t think about it – what it means. I don’t want to think. All I need to think about is how to get out of here.

It’s not Marion – it’s Saul.

My stomach lurches. What does he want?

Mia’s reaction is even more violent. She scrambles over the bed and hurls herself onto the floor. She cowers in the tiny space between the bed and the wall.

‘Mia!’

She’s got her arms across her face.

‘Bad man …’ she whimpers.

I turn back to look at him. He’s closing the door behind him. The room instantly feels closer, even more claustrophobic.

‘Where’s Adam?’ I say.

‘Good afternoon to you too,’ Saul sneers.

I loathe him. I’ve never hated someone so much.

‘Adam’s here. I’ve brought him from the medical wing.’

‘Here?’

I try to dodge past him to the door. He steps into my path and blocks me. He puts his hand up to my shoulder and my flesh creeps where he makes contact.

‘A word of warning, Sarah.’

‘Warning? Are you going to threaten me, because—’

He raises his hand from my shoulder and places his index finger against my mouth.

‘Shh,’ he says.

I jerk my head away, bile rising in my throat.

He smirks. ‘It’s not about you, it’s about Adam. He took quite a knock yesterday. There’s some memory loss.’

‘What … what does that mean?’

‘He’s got some gaps, he may not remember much about you, your relationship, the child. You may notice a change in his personality.’

I’m scared now. ‘Are you talking about brain damage?’

He snorts. ‘Don’t be so dramatic. He’s had a bump on the head. He’s doing very well. Just use your common sense. Don’t expect too much.’

He opens the door. The first thing I see is the front of a wheelchair. Then Saul wheels him in. I just stand there, rooted to the floor. Mia doesn’t hesitate, though. She’s wriggled out of her hiding place and now she streaks past me and flings herself onto Adam’s lap.

‘Hey! Hey! What’s this?’ He grasps her shoulders.

Then he shoves her away from him, holding her at arm’s length.

‘Dad-dee!’ she wails, trying to wriggle out of his grip.
‘Dad-dee, hurting!’ She’s starting to cry. The tears well up and spill down her face.

The look on his face tells me the awful truth: he doesn’t know who she is. And it’s like the ground’s dropping away. I could never have imagined this happening, but it is.

Then he looks at her, really looks, and his expression changes. He’s frowning, almost scowling.

‘Nan …?’ he whispers.

Oh God, he’s seen the number. He’s recognised where it came from.

There’s a sharp intake of breath from the door. My head whips round to see Saul leaning against the door-frame.

‘Like I said,’ he murmurs, ‘confused.’

But his sharp black eyes are locked on to Adam, and then … they switch to Mia. There’s a new expression in them I don’t like. Something even colder and more calculating than ever. Did he hear what Adam said? Does he know what it means? The way Saul’s looking at Mia and Adam, it’s setting my teeth on edge.

Mia and Adam …

Adam and Mia …

Seeing numbers made Adam a target. Does Mia’s number-change make her a target, too? Except, no one knows about it but me and Adam.

I need to get Saul out of here, before Adam says anything else.

Chapter 22: Adam

T
here’s a child, a girl. I didn’t know there was a child. She throws herself at me, face down on my legs, hands clawing at me. I feel like I’m under attack. I peel her off me, hold her away. She’s only little, I don’t want to frighten her, but I don’t want her on me – this small, noisy, sticky stranger.

And then I look in her eyes.

They’re blue like a summer sky and her number shimmers inside them.

2022054.

It dances in my head and brings the smell of cigarette smoke, the memory of another pair of eyes, eyes so fierce that once they got you, you were caught until she let you go. It’s my nan, Val.
What is this?
I don’t understand.

‘Nan …?’

There’s an intake of breath behind me.

And now there are hands on my hands, and another pair of eyes. Just as blue and intense as the child’s. But the
number’s different. It floods me with warmth so every cell in my body glows. 

2572075.

‘Sarah.’

How could I have forgotten?

I know her now. I know her story, her past, our life together. I know that she loves me. I know that I love her. And I know who this girl is. She’s our daughter. She’s got a name now – Mia.

Tears of relief well up in my eyes.

‘It’s all right,’ she says, and I believe her. Her number tells me that it will be all right in the end. Whatever’s going on now, we’ll get through it. We’ll be together.

‘Could you leave us?’ she says to Saul. There’s an edge to her voice now. Her blue eyes, looking over my shoulder, are hard.

There’s a long pause. I don’t look at him, just at Sarah. My girl.

‘Of course. Take your time. Have a good … chat,’ says Saul eventually.

I hear the door close. A key turns in the lock. There are footsteps in the corridor, growing fainter. He’s gone. It’s just us.

I look around. We’re in a bare cell, three of us shut in together.

I stroke Mia’s shoulders with my thumbs. ‘Mia,’ I say. ‘Hello, Mia.’

She stops crying and tips her tear-stained face up towards mine.

‘Daddy,’ she says between hiccups.

‘Yeah, it’s Daddy,’ I say. I lift her up, so she’s sitting on my lap. I wouldn’t blame her if she wriggled off and hid from
me, but she don’t. She snuggles close to me, burrowing in. I put my arms round her. She’s so little. Her curly hair tickles my chin. I don’t know what to say to her, but it don’t matter. We just sit and hug each other, while Sarah holds my hand tightly, and watches us with her blue, blue eyes.

‘So, how are you?’ she says after a long while.

‘Sore all over. I can’t remember things. Like how I got here.’

‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

‘Sitting by a fire with you. There were other people. We were in the woods.’

‘That was Daniel and the people at his camp. Before Saul turned up. So you don’t remember him coming, or him taking Mia?’

‘He took Mia?’

‘Yes. And you don’t remember the bikes?’

‘Pedal-bikes?’

‘No, whopping great motorbikes. That’s how you knocked yourself out.’

I try to look inside my mind, to search out these missing pages, but I’m grasping at thin air.

‘It’ll come back.’ Sarah’s soothing me, stroking my hand. ‘Don’t get stressed. You’re here now. You’re safe, but …’ she pauses, ‘… this place isn’t, Adam. We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘Saul says it’s safe.’

Sarah pulls a face. ‘What do you know about him, Adam?’

I think about this before I answer. ‘He’s … powerful. People listen to him, do what he says. He stopped them asking me questions, got me back here to you.’

She looks away from me, examining her fingernails. Then she gazes straight at me again.

‘He’s a killer, Adam. He shot one of his own men dead, and he shot Daniel in the leg, too.’

He shot one of his own men. The guy lying in the road. Is that the killing Newsome accused me of? Why did Saul stay silent? To save his own skin?

I can’t say anything for a moment. ‘No,’ I say at last. ‘I can’t believe it …’

Then I stop, remembering the dark eyes that seemed lit by fire, the shimmering number …

I want you to work with me, be my right-hand man …

Is this is the man who abducted my daughter and my girlfriend, who shot my friend? But why did he help me, take my side against Newsome? I struggle back to the present, and then, further back, to the past.

‘What happened?’

‘It was when we were kidnapped. Daniel tried to help us …’

For a brief moment, I see a man with a beard, standing in the road. A friend. He’s holding a rifle to his face, shooting at something … Then the picture’s gone.

‘I can’t remember, Sarah. Why can’t I remember?’

I slap my forehead with the palm of my hand.

Mia twists round and looks at me. Her eyes are wide and troubled. She squirms away from me and sits down the other side of Sarah.

‘What else don’t I know?’ I look at Sarah then, and another memory slots into place – two boys, laughing by the fire. ‘The boys. Your brothers.’

Her eyes fill with tears. ‘I think they’re okay – they’re at the camp with Daniel’s friends. But I don’t know for sure. We have to get back to them.’

I feel like I’m going mad. I slap my head again.

‘What is this place? Why are we here?’

Slap, slap, slap.

It’s not helping. The movement, the noise is winding me up more, but I can’t stop.

‘Adam! Stop it! Adam!’

I’m shaking my head now, trying to shake my thoughts back into place. I can hear the fear in her voice but I can’t stop.

‘Adam! Look!’

Sarah’s holding something in front of me, breaking through my mad wound-up state.

‘Look at this.’

‘What is it?’

Peeping round Sarah, Mia’s smiling now. ‘Mia’s picture,’ she says. ‘Mia done it.’

Sarah’s smiling, too. ‘I bet you’ll know what it is, if you really look.’

There are five round shapes in different colours. Two big shapes – one red, the other blue and pink – and three smaller ones, one green, one orange and a little yellow one. Straight away I can see it’s a family, a family of shapes. And then I get it, like a thunderbolt striking or a firework going off. It’s our family. Me, Sarah, Mia and the boys.

‘It’s us,’ I say. ‘Did you really draw this?’

Mia nods, beaming, too proud to say anything.

‘That’s awesome.’ I put my arm round her and give her a squeeze.

‘Adam,’ Sarah says slowly, ‘do you remember your nan saying she could see my aura?’

‘Daddy,’ says Mia, pointing to the red shape, then to the blue and pink one. ‘Mummy.’

I look at Mia, and then at the picture again. The colours
mean something. I whistle through my front teeth.

‘She sees them, don’t she?’ I say. ‘She’s got it from Val.’

This is big. I can see by the look on Sarah’s face she thinks so, too.

‘She’s got her number, Sarah, and she can see auras, too.’

I look down at Mia and her number teases my mind. She’s a tiny, fragile little thing, with someone else’s number. A death that fitted Nan, but sits oddly with her. She’s the living proof that something amazing and terrifying happened two years ago in that fire. I’ve got goosepimples all over me, and the same question that’s nagged at me before resurfaces in my head.

Did Nan give her all this – her life, her gift?

Or did Mia take it?

Can she reach out and take anybody’s life?

Chapter 23: Sarah

‘W
e’ve got to get her out of here,’ I say. 

   ‘Do they know? Do they know anything about her?’

‘No, it’s just you and me. But they’re interested. There’s this woman, Marion, that interviewed us this morning, and she was pushing all the time, poking her nose into our business. She was the one who got Mia drawing.’

‘Do you think she knew what it meant?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Adam, we’ve got to protect Mia. She’s special – even more than we thought. She’s different.’

‘Her number’s different, too.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It shimmers in my head. I’ve only ever seen one other one like it.’

‘Who? Someone here?’

He pauses, like he doesn’t know whether to tell me or not.

‘You don’t have to tell. I don’t want to know people’s numbers.’

He’s silent for a moment, looking away from me, towards
the door. He’s wrestling with something inside, and I know not to push him, so I turn the conversation back to Mia.

‘We don’t know what really happened in the fire, do we?’ I say.

‘No.’

‘You were there. What do you think happened? Can you remember?’

He rubs a hand over his forehead.

‘I sent Nan out through the flames. I thought she’d be okay. Her number was a good one. And we stayed to find Mia.’

In my mind, I’m there with him now. I can hear the crackle of the flames, the splintering of timbers all around us, I can smell our singeing flesh and hair.

‘She was hot, wasn’t she?’ he goes on and his voice trembles a little. ‘Really hot. We all were. You went out and I held Mia, tried to shield her from the flames. Then I just walked through the fire. I didn’t see Nan, or nothing.’