Spiral (13 page)

“And I don’t know you.” As if uneasy under the stranger’s gaze, Elliott looked quickly away from the mirror. Rising from her seat, she slid the rifle onto the dressing table. As the bottles and items of makeup were pushed aside, some falling to the floor, she went to fetch her old clothes.

The moment Will and Chester entered the house and saw Elliott at the foot of the stairs, they knew something was wrong. Not only did she have her rifle with her, but the feminine clothes were gone, and she’d cropped her hair short again. The Elliott they’d relied upon for so many months while they were underground had been restored to them.

“Uh-oh,” Will exhaled. “Looks like trouble.”

Chester was about to ask her what was going on when Elliott ordered, “In there,” and pointed at the drawing room.

The boys found that everyone else was already assembled in the chairs around the fireplace, with the exception of Parry.

Will gave Drake a questioning look.

“Waiting for my father,” he said.

Then Parry stormed in and, without a moment’s delay, began to speak. “Every call made from the phone in the study is logged.” He brandished several pages in his fist. “As you might guess, the line isn’t there for anything remotely sensitive. It’s for routine, day-to-day stuff — ordering oil for the central heating and suchlike.”

He put on his reading glasses to examine the top sheet. “A number cropped up on the log not long after you all arrived. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I had another careful run through and found two further calls to the same number. The duration of each of them was around a minute. And they were nothing to do with me.”

“But none of us were allowed in the study until very recently,” Mrs. Burrows said, turning to Drake. “Are you sure it wasn’t you?”

“I wasn’t even here when the second and third calls were made,” he replied. “The only explanation is that someone’s been sneaking in and making these calls in secret.”

Everyone looked at each other.

“But why would any of us do that? And who were the calls to?” Mrs. Burrows asked.

“London. And the number’s unobtainable now,” Parry said.

Drake stood up. “I’m afraid I do know who it was, but I don’t want you to blame him. It wasn’t something he was doing consciously.”

“You said ‘he’?” Will burst out.

Drake nodded. “And the calls stopped after he was purged by Danforth.”

Will shifted uneasily on his feet. “So the Styx programmed me — or someone — to make —”

Drake waved him into silence. “Elliott and I watched all the films from the purging sessions. I regret to say” — he wheeled around to face Chester — “the upshot of it is that you mentioned a couple of the digits from the phone number, along with some Styx words that Elliott was able to translate.”

“What . . . no!” Chester cried, blanching. “Me?”

“Yes, you. Most likely the Styx conditioned you to call in and report our location. You may have even made some calls to them without knowing it long before we arrived here,” Drake said, without reprimand. “So the odds are they probably have a good idea of where we are right now.”

“But . . . I wouldn’t do that!” Chester tottered back a step.

Elliott went over to him, taking his hand. “You mustn’t blame yourself. You couldn’t help it.”

“No, it wasn’t me,” Chester said, his voice uneven. “I’d remember something.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Drake said gently.

Chester just looked at him, his eyes swimming with tears as he tried to speak, to say something to defend himself. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” he blurted and ran from the room. Mr. Rawls followed after him.

“That went well,” Parry said without any suggestion of humor, then addressed everyone. “So now we’re on a condition of high alert, and we can’t stay here much longer. Our location is blown.”

“But if it’s the Styx, why haven’t they attacked already?” Will asked.

“I don’t know. Perhaps we’re on their ‘To Do’ list and they’ll get around to it when they have a spare moment,” Parry replied a little sarcastically. It was evident that he wasn’t taking this latest development well. “I’ve already warned Wilkie and the others, and Danforth is running a full systems check on the security cameras and thermal sensors around the estate to make sure they’re fully operational.”

Drake took over. “What’s for sure is that we must be a prioritized target for the Styx. They won’t want us popping up at an inopportune moment and gate-crashing their party. When — and it’s not
if
— they show up here, we’ll have to leave in a hurry. So everyone should pack. And you should all check out a weapon from the armory in the basement.”

Parry grimaced. “A damned nuisance.” He began to mutter to himself. “There’s too many of us. We’ll need more water and food to keep us ticking over in the alternative location, and I can’t do that with a wave of a magic wand.” Thwacking his walking stick hard on the floor, he hurried from the room, still complaining to himself.

WILL CRADLED HIS STEN
in his lap. “I feel better now I’ve got my old friend back.” He glanced up at Chester. “But are you OK about that Darklighting stuff?”

Chester gave a small shrug. “What freaks me out is that I can’t remember a bloody thing about making any calls. Nothing at all.” He frowned. “Even that time in the cottage in Norfolk with nutjob Martha . . . there was a phone there. . . . Maybe I rang the Styx from it. I couldn’t have told them much because I had no idea where I was. When she bashed me over the head, I thought I was trying to call my parents. But maybe I wasn’t, and maybe she was right t —”

“Don’t,” Will said. “You’ll end up going crazy yourself if you don’t just forget it. It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. And remember what they stuck in my head. That was worse.”

“You’re right,” Chester agreed. “C’mon, it’s your move.” They were in the drawing room and on their second game of chess as a log crackled comfortingly in the fireplace. Drake had asked them to stay up until the early hours, in case unwelcome visitors decided to call at the estate.

Will’s hand had wandered to his queen, but he withdrew it as his concentration shifted to the dancing flames. “Talking about Martha, remember all those times we played chess in her shack?” he said.

Chester nodded.

Will’s gaze was still lost in the fire. “We really thought Elliott was going to die,” he said.

“You like her a lot, don’t you?” Chester asked casually, assessing his position on the board.

Will didn’t answer straightaway. “Yes, I suppose I do. But you do, too, don’t you?”

“Mmmmm . . . I don’t think she’s as keen on me as she is on you,” Chester said, still surveying his pieces.

“I’m not sure about that,” Will mumbled, then focused on the game again with a grunt — it hadn’t been going his way.

“You should say something to her,” Chester suggested.

Will finally moved his queen, then spoke with candor because he felt that he could trust his friend. “No, not with everything else going on. It would make things too . . . too complicated.” Will glanced at Chester as it occurred to him that he could have broached the subject because he himself had strong feelings for Elliott, and his friend wanted his blessing. But when Chester remained silent, Will assumed this wasn’t his motivation. “I have to tell you, I’m not sure I’m cut out for all this relationship stuff,” Will confessed. “Not after what went on with my parents.”

Will had been thinking about Dr. and Mrs. Burrows. Stuck in their lethargic and loveless marriage, they’d led separate lives for years. He couldn’t forget the acrimony between them when he and Dr. Burrows had returned to Highfield. Mrs. Burrows had made it quite plain that she wasn’t prepared to take her husband back.

“Which ones?” Chester asked.

“Huh?” Will replied.

“Which parents? You mean your real ones?” Chester said.

This prompted Will to think about his biological parents and what Cal had told him, how Mr. Jerome’s allegiance had been not to his wife when their infant son was losing his life to chronic fever, but to the laws of the Colony. Driven mad with grief, Sarah Jerome had deserted her husband when she’d done the unthinkable and escaped Topsoil.

Although it seemed irreverent to do so, Will laughed out loud.

Chester looked up with surprise.

“Take your pick,” Will said. “They were all as bad as each other.”

They heard hurried footsteps in the hallway, and Parry appeared at the door. “Multiple signals!” he bellowed at the boys, his paging device bleeping so rapidly, it almost became a solid tone. He went to the gong on the hall table and began to beat it, the urgent rhythm filling the house. Then he tore into his study with the boys following behind. Mr. Rawls, still manning the telex, was already on his feet. Parry went straight to the monitor on his desk. He jabbed at the keyboard, flicking through different camera views. “There! Got one on infrared!” Parry shouted. “They’re inside the wall.”

Will could clearly see a dark form flitting under a tree. He drew in a sharp breath as, caught on another camera, a man stood in full view with the main gates of the estate behind him. “Look at the weapon,” Will said, instantly recognizing the long-barreled rifle with its bulbous night scope that the Limiters used. “It’s them!”

“Oh, God,” Chester gasped. “It is!”

“Well, it’s certainly not the vicar doing his rounds. And there’s another team,” Parry pointed out as a camera showed at least four men creeping in the lee of a wall. “We’ve got several breaches of the perimeter — all to the south.” Parry looked up as Drake entered with Colonel Bismarck. “Did you catch that?” he asked his son. “They’re here.”

Drake nodded once. “Time to bug out.”

Stepping from behind his desk, Parry consulted his watch. “The Styx are on foot, so it’ll take them eight — maybe nine — minutes to get here. Stick to the evac procedure we discussed,” he said to Drake. “Draw them east while we take the storm drain to the Bedford. And if Sparks isn’t waiting for you, just go without him. He can look after himself.”

“Jiggs and Danf —?” Drake began.

“Jiggs likes to do his own thing, and Danforth’s already left,” Parry interrupted, holding up his pager. Then he swept his arms at everyone in the study. “Now, out — out — GET OUT!” he ordered. He went down on one knee beside his desk and flipped open a panel set into the floor. Inside a small recess was a key in a slot, which he turned. “I’ve primed the charges. They’ll not get a thing from this room.”

Drake, Will, Chester, and Mr. Rawls met Elliott and Mrs. Burrows at the bottom of the staircase.

“I sensed something was heading our way even before I heard the gong. I told Elliott to get dressed,” Mrs. Burrows said. “I take it we’re leaving.”

“Yes,” Drake confirmed. “All of you grab your kit.” He surveyed the Bergens and weapons lined up at the back of the hallway. “My father will take you to the Bedford.” He threw a look at Colonel Bismarck, about to say something, but then seemed to check himself and addressed Will instead. “Got your lens handy?” he asked the boy.

Will pointed at the top of his Bergen.

“Good,” Drake said. “We won’t be using lights for most of the way, and I could do with a co-driver. You up for that?”

“Sure . . . yes,” Will answered, flattered that he’d been picked instead of the Colonel.