The Roar (32 page)

49

FIGHTING SMOKE

T
he moment Ellie entered Mal Gorman’s dressing room and saw his eyes, she knew the YDF had taken Mika. She felt the urge to vomit with horror all over his slippers, then weep with desperate relief. After living like a ghost for so long, she was about to be brought back to life.

But don’t hope for anything good out of this, she thought. If you get a glimpse of happiness, Gorman will suck it out of you then laugh in your face, and he’ll use Mika to manipulate you, just like he does with Puck. Mika will suffer, everyone will suffer – except Mal Gorman.

But we’ll be together, a desperate voice cried inside her, everything will be easier together.

‘Sit down,’ Gorman said.

Ellie looked around the dressing room for a chair, but there was only one and Gorman was sitting on it, so she sat at his feet
on the rug in front of the fire. Like everything else in the dressing room, the rug looked borrowed from another time, a Celtic knot of rambling rose with thorns and orange blooms. The man with the gun leaned against the wall in the shadowy part of the room and melted into the darkness until he was almost not there. She gazed into the fire as it leapt and curled, aware that several Mal Gormans were watching her; the one in the gold chair with the blanket around him and others on the mantelpiece, all in uniform. From schoolboy to Minister of Youth Development, they frowned down on her from photographs and holopics. Gorman was the only person she knew who kept only pictures of himself.

He held out a silver bowl, so she took it. The bowl was also patterned with roses and it was full of plump pink and white marshmallows. In her other hand he placed a skewer. It was about thirty centimetres long and made of silver, with a gold handle shaped like a koi carp fish. She rolled it on the palm of her hand and thought it would make an excellent weapon.

‘It’s sharp, so be careful,’ Gorman said, watching her nervously.

She wondered what she was supposed to do with it.

‘Have you never toasted a marshmallow?’ Gorman asked.

‘No,’ Ellie replied.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Let me show you.’ He took the skewer from her hand and impaled a pink marshmallow on the end it. She noticed his fingers trembling; he looked particularly frail that night. His hand almost dropped the skewer he was holding out over the fire, as if it was too heavy for him. They both watched the marshmallow as it was licked by the flames.

‘You know what I have to say,’ Gorman said. ‘Don’t you?’

‘No,’ Ellie replied, cautiously. ‘What?’

‘Mika’s coming to stay with us,’ Gorman said. ‘He’s one of six new children I’ve chosen. He’s with your parents tonight, but he’ll be coming back to Cape Wrath tomorrow. So if you’re good, you might see him. Here,’ he continued, holding the skewer so
she could take the toasted marshmallow from the end. ‘Mind you don’t burn your fingers.’

She pulled the sticky, hot marshmallow from the skewer and Gorman watched her face as she ate it. Her happiness was so intense, he almost remembered what the emotion felt like, but the flicker of warmth in his heart was snuffed out immediately by a tap on the door.

‘What?’ Gorman shouted, making Ellie jump.

Ralph entered, looking peevish. ‘There’s a man here, sir. He wants to talk to you and he says it’s important.’

‘They always say that,’ Gorman snapped. ‘Tell him if he’s any longer than thirty seconds, I’ll hang him on the outside of Cape Wrath with a cloth and a tin of polish.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ralph replied.

A few moments later, the man entered the dressing room as if he was being pushed from behind. Anticipating bad news, Gorman’s eyes froze. ‘Spit it out,’ he said coldly.

‘We have a problem, sir,’ the man said. ‘There’s trouble in London; the Shadows people are complaining because they want their children back.’

‘So?’ Gorman snapped. ‘That’s not my problem. My job was to collect the children and prepare them to fight, not deal with their moaning parents. Get the police to do it. Arrest them all and throw them in prison.’

‘The police are trying, sir,’ the man continued nervously. ‘And the army. But there is rather more trouble than we were expecting. The people have come up from The Shadows and they’re rioting in the Golden Turrets.’

‘Are they?’ Gorman asked, and his heart began to gallop like a horse with a broken leg. ‘How many?’

‘Over a hundred thousand,’ the man replied. ‘And more are coming up by the minute.’

‘Let me see,’ Gorman demanded.

There was a screen on the wall facing the fire and the butler quickly found a news report. They watched the human tornado
as it ripped the golden city to pieces.

‘My children,’ Gorman said. ‘Where are they?’

‘Well, that’s why I’m here, sir,’ the man replied. ‘
That’s
the problem . . .’

‘What’s happened?’ Ellie cried. ‘Is Mika in danger?’

‘Shut up!’ Gorman snapped, turning to glare at her. ‘How dare you interrupt!’ Then he fixed the man with a look that shrank him to half the height. ‘Where are my children?’ he snarled.

‘We’ve found
four
, sir,’ the man replied hopefully, as if Gorman should be glad they’d found so many. ‘They were with their parents at the top of the building on one of the pod strips, waiting to be rescued.’

‘Four?’ Gorman yelled. ‘FOUR? I don’t want FOUR, I want SIX! Where are the others?’

The man’s face bloomed scarlet with embarrassment. ‘We’re not sure, sir,’ he blustered. ‘The riot happened so quickly, you see. All of a sudden there were thousands of people running around smashing everything, and the police you sent to watch the apartment got distracted and—’

‘Stop waffling, man!’ Gorman roared. ‘Just tell me where my children are!’

‘We think they’ve run away, sir,’ the man said sheepishly. ‘In a . . .’

‘What?’ Gorman snapped impatiently.

‘In a Pod Fighter, sir,’ the man muttered.

Mal Gorman gripped the marshmallow skewer and held it up as if he wanted to stab the man through the heart with it. ‘In a
Pod Fighter
?’ he roared. ‘HOW THE FRAG DID THEY GET A POD FIGHTER?’

‘Our men left it on the balcony of the children’s apartment,’ the man replied, quickly. ‘But it was locked. It should have been safe. No normal person could have stolen it; the children must have used their special powers to undo the lock from inside. Their parents didn’t know anything about it. They thought the
children had followed them up to the roof with the others.’

‘So these two thought they’d sneak off, did they?’ Gorman roared. ‘And run away while no one was looking! Which ones are missing? I’ll skin them alive!’

‘Mika Smith and Audrey Hudson, sir,’ the man replied.

Gorman was silent for a moment and Ellie watched the firelight flicker in his eyes. She had never seen him look so angry before.

‘No!’ she cried, frantically. ‘Mika wouldn’t run away, and he’s never stolen anything! There must be a mistake!’

‘I thought I told you to SHUT UP!’ Gorman roared, throwing the skewer like a dagger and just missing her eye. It clattered on to the hearth, and as he watched her shrink away with a sob, the darkness of her brother’s dream closed in on him. He saw the face of the Telly Head reflected in her tears, heard the slither of vines coming from the fire and suddenly he was engulfed by a terrible sense of foreboding. He closed his eyes for a second and saw Mika looking down on him, with a smile on his face.

‘Your brother has betrayed me!’ he yelled. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him!’ Then he turned to the man and shouted, ‘Find those children and KILL THEM! And get this girl OUT OF HERE!’

* * *

High above the Golden Turrets, Mika and Audrey hid in the darkness while Mika tried to figure out how to use the communication system so he could tell Mal Gorman where they were. It was quiet above the city, but chaos still reigned below. The mob had reached the upper floors of the Turrets and was smashing out the windows of the government minister’s homes. But in the streets below, the army was gaining control, beating back the mob with their electric batons and shields and pushing it towards the tube stations, where it could be forced back down to The Shadows.

‘It looks like they’re fighting smoke from up here,’ Audrey
whispered, as she watched the mob swarm backwards through the golden streets. It looked as though the stations were sucking it in.

The Pod Fighter’s com wasn’t as easy to use as they’d hoped.

‘Why does it keep asking for a stupid code?’ Mika said, jabbing the control panel impatiently. ‘It won’t work without a code! Frag! I’ve tried everything I can think of. What are we going to do?’

‘We might be able to go back soon,’ Audrey said. ‘They’re forcing the people down into The Shadows.’

‘How soon?’ Mika said anxiously. ‘If Mal Gorman finds out we’ve taken a Pod Fighter, before we can tell him we’re not trying to run away, he’ll go ballistic.’

‘But we didn’t have a choice,’ Audrey reminded him. ‘At least we’re still alive. Look, is that a police pod flying towards us? Perhaps we could ask them for help.’

‘How are we going to do that?’ Mika asked irritably. ‘The com doesn’t work, remember?’

‘Damn.’

They saw a flash of light to the left.

‘They’re firing at us!’ shouted Audrey.

‘Oh, great,’ said Mika. ‘Now we’re in trouble.’

He flew under the police pod and banked steeply up behind it. By the time it had turned to look for them, they were two kilometres away.

‘They’ll be able to track us with their mapping systems,’ Audrey pointed out, ‘like in the game. We’ll never get away from them.’

‘I think we should go back to the apartment,’ Mika said. ‘This was a really bad idea.’

‘OK,’ Audrey said, fearfully. ‘Quickly, before they find us again.’

But as Mika flew down towards the Golden Turrets, they saw a squadron of Gorman’s men waiting for them. Within seconds, they were being chased by dozens of Pod Fighters and the air
around them was blistering with laser fire.

‘Go down!’ Audrey screamed. ‘Fly through the Turrets!’

* * *

Ellie rocked on her bed in the darkness, tugging at the roots of her hair, and as she wondered desperately what was happening to Mika, she felt the dark noise between her mind and his dissolve. It was what she had wished for since the day they were parted, it was as if she was retuned like a radio so that suddenly, she was right there with him, seeing what he could see: the Turrets glowing like a heap of hot treasure, the air roads winding streamers of gold and blue light around them and the Pod Fighters chasing him like a flock of carrion birds. She felt what he felt like a flicker book of emotions: the rushes of adrenalin, the brief moments of fear, panic and relief and his utter desperation to cling to life, not just for his own sake, but for those he loved. His mind was as sharp as a scalpel, but his heart was falling to pieces and she was worried he would make the same mistake she had and try to escape through The Shadows. She had a better idea; she knew a safe place he could go. It would be risky trying to get there with Mal Gorman’s men chasing him, but he had a much better chance of survival than trying to escape in The Shadows. So she did what she could to save him by reciting a silent mantra.

‘Mika, please, go over The Wall.
Go over The Wall
.’

* * *

After ten minutes of flying with a squadron of fighters on their tail, Mika knew it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake. He was blinded by laser fire and they faced death at every turn, and not just from Mal Gorman’s men; the whole city had been stirred up by the riot; horns blared, sirens flashed and the air roads had broken apart so all the traffic was flying in the wrong direction. Civilian pods kept dropping like stones right in front of them and buildings full of rioting people appeared out of nowhere.

‘I can’t do this much longer!’ Mika shouted. ‘I’m going to hit something!’

‘Watch out!’ Audrey yelled, and she closed her eyes and bit her lip as they shaved the roof off one pod then swerved to avoid hitting another. ‘Hide somewhere!’ she cried. ‘Find somewhere to hide!’

Mika shot down to ground level and they flew along New Regent Street towards New Leicester Square. The riot was still in full swing below them like a boiling mass of batons and fists. But as Mika banked down the curved street, the mob froze and ducked and covered their heads as he nearly scalped them at two hundred kilometres per hour.

‘Oops,’ Audrey whispered.

In New Leicester Square, he stopped dead.

‘They’re right above us!’ Audrey said, looking up. ‘Go in there!’ She pointed towards the foyer of a large cinema. The doors had been smashed by the mob leaving an opening large enough to fly through. Slowly and skilfully, Mika manoeuvred the craft inside the foyer with only centimetres to spare. Inside everything was broken and the floor was strewn with sweets.

‘What are we going to do now?’ Audrey said, desperately. ‘They’ll find us in no time.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mika replied, ‘but I can’t keep flying through the city like this, it’s too dangerous.’

‘I wish there weren’t so many people around,’ Audrey said. ‘I’m afraid to use my guns in case I hurt someone. But we’d be safer if I could destroy the weapons on the Pod Fighters chasing us. Perhaps we should leave the city. There won’t be so many people outside London so we’ll be able to defend ourselves better.’