Authors: Kerry Wilkinson
‘We can’t go in these uniforms,’ I say, thinking I am stating the obvious but Reith shakes his head, indicating Imrin.
‘You can’t – he can. He wasn’t on the footage.’
I try to remember the moment. Imrin had drifted away from me, getting his bearings. If the camera is automated, there is every chance he wasn’t spotted.
‘Do you have any spare clothes around here?’
Reith shakes his head. ‘Only a Kingsman’s uniform. There’s a gym on floor nine. That’s about the only place you’ll be able to find women’s clothes
easily.’
‘What’s a gym?’
He stumbles over a reply. ‘Somewhere you exercise.’
The concept seems strange to me but then I suppose that if people live somewhere like here, they wouldn’t be able to run and climb through the woods in the way I do outside Martindale. I
pace from side to side, trying to think. ‘
Go
,’ I hiss towards Imrin. ‘Get to the others and wait for me there.’
‘I’m not going without you.’
I sigh and roll my eyes. ‘Don’t be stupid. Just go. You need to go back to the others. I can look after myself –
I
got us this far.’ I am deliberately
over-aggressive, knowing he won’t react otherwise. He looks stung but it works and he heads for the lift with Reith.
As their feet echo across the floor, I have an idea and sprint after them. ‘Everyone’s got shiny shoes,’ I say.
Reith swipes his thinkwatch at the lift. ‘What?’
‘You’ve all got shoes that look new – even you and you wear a Kingsman’s uniform.’
‘What about it?’
‘You must have some polish around here.’
The lift slides into place and the doors hum open. ‘There’s some in the drawer under my desk.’
Without waiting for him, I sprint across the large open-plan room, sliding to a halt in front of the desk and pressing the button to make the drawer swish out. Inside there is another thinkpad
and various bits and pieces I don’t recognise. I pull the drawer out further until it is hanging loosely on its runners and then spy a small tub at the back.
After my father died, there was an almost identical pot which stayed on the windowsill over our sink for years. I don’t even remember when it was finally thrown away, it was one of those
things that became a part of the furniture and then one day I noticed it had gone.
Imrin waits by the lift as Reith hurries across the floor towards me, asking what I’m doing. I have already put the helmet on the table and scooped the dark goo onto my fingers. With one
hand I pull my silver streak of hair forward, closing my fist around the sludge and running it the full length of my hair.
‘Can you still see it?’ I ask.
Reith is watching me, seeming both impressed and repelled at the same time. ‘You missed a bit,’ he replies, stepping closer and guiding my hand.
‘How’s that?’
‘I wouldn’t know it was you from a distance but you’re still going to have to change your clothes.’
‘I know.’
I smear what’s left along the back of my hair until my hands are as clean as they’re going to get. ‘Did you delete the footage you had of us on the communications
floor?’
‘No, there’s that two-hour window. It’s to stop anyone tampering.’
‘Where are the images kept?’
‘The floor below here is archives.’
‘That’s not on the listing.’
Reith seems surprised by my knowledge, even though I only read it off the board downstairs, but he continues, ‘We’re not going to list such an important floor, are we?’
I slide the thinkwatch from my wrist and prise the back panel off, using a thin blade from Reith’s desk. ‘Will the floor be empty?’ I ask.
‘Yes, we’re on a full evacuation. I shouldn’t be here.’
‘Are there cameras on this floor?’
‘No.’
‘Go then.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll sort myself out . . . but when the moment comes, point and gawp like everyone else.’
‘What at?’
‘You’ll see.’
He doesn’t know how to reply, so again I tell him to go before clipping the back of my watch into place, grabbing the Kingsman’s helmet, and following him to the elevator, where
Imrin is still waiting.
‘There are cameras in the lift,’ Reith says nervously.
‘We’ve been in there together already.’
‘That was different – I was with four guards, no one’s going to suspect that. By the time anyone gets around to thinking about checking that footage, two hours will be up and I
will have deleted it.’
‘I don’t need to go with you now anyway.’
‘Oh . . . right . . .’ He sounds surprised, as if he expected me to argue.
As the lift doors slide open, Imrin and Reith step in and I move to one side. As soon as the lift doors slip shut, I crouch, wedging my fingers into the same spot Reith did when he was
collecting the communication device. I have to stretch my fingers and use all of my strength but the doors spring open just as the lift compartment containing Reith moves slowly down and out of
view, exposing the gaping space.
It is a leap of faith but I have no other option, jumping forward and landing heavily but safely on top of the lift compartment as it slides downwards. I know I have to be quick and as I pass
the door directly below us, I leap sideways, clawing desperately at the row of holes in the wall. Gravity tugs me, willing me to plunge, until my fingers lock around a ridge. Small flecks of dust
and earth slip through my fingers and, although my momentum sends me into the wall itself, I manage to hold on.
I take a few seconds to compose myself, breathing in and out slowly as I hear the thick lift cable sizzling with menace.
With my left foot, I can touch the door that leads onto floor 87 but it takes a few attempts to twist my body enough so that I can reach one of the gaps in the wall directly above where I need
to be. A moment of panic jolts through me as I stretch across and, for a fraction of a second, there is only one hand supporting my weight. My shoulder stings as it bends in a direction it
shouldn’t but with an unplanned shriek of satisfaction, I arch my body down and drop, comfortably grabbing the ledge at the bottom of the door.
After another few seconds to compose myself, I press the small emergency button in the bottom corner of the doorframe, identical to the one on Reith’s floor, and it slides open invitingly.
It is only when I have fully pulled myself up and flop on the ground that I realise how exhausted I am. My fingers are stiff and every centimetre of my arms aches from supporting my body
weight.
More deep breaths and then I force myself to stand. Floor 87 is a complete contrast to the one above it: dark and full of equipment. The constant hum of electricity that vibrates through Middle
England is particularly loud here and I squash the helmet on my head in an effort to drown it out.
It doesn’t take me long to find the central server where the security footage is kept and although there is a scanner next to it, I have used the frequency settings from Reith’s
thinkwatch to give myself the same level of clearance he has. The system is the same as the one from Windsor Castle and within seconds, I have found the footage from floor 43 with the correct day
and time. I isolate a section where I was walking ahead of Imrin on my own and clear any parts in which he is visible. Reith is right: I cannot delete the entire footage but I am able to create a
new file and save my edited version.
Finding the controls for the screen on the front of North Tower is simple enough and I also set up the screen above reception for good measure and set the timer for ten minutes. I can feel it:
my plan is going to work.
I press the button for the elevator, waiting anxiously for it, before typing ‘9’ into the keypad inside the door to head to the gym.
After the dizziness I had going up, I am braced for the same disorientation going down but all I can feel is my heart beating excitedly as the lift zips through the floors before sliding open to
reveal another corridor. At the end I can see various pieces of strange equipment but rather than walk towards these, I head through the nearest door into a room lined with benches.
I check my watch to see I have a little over six minutes.
Over the tops of the benches are rows of locked cabinets. All are sealed shut but I use my knife to jab the nearest key holes aggressively until they pop open. In the third, my salvation is
hanging neatly. I struggle with the catch at the back of the armour but the rest of it comes off easily. In under a minute, I am dressed the same as most of the other women – a clean white
shirt, short dark skirt and black heels which feel far more alien than the boots that were too big for me. I tuck the knife into the back of the skirt, smooth my hair down and head back to the
lift, pressing the button for the ground floor.
I emerge into the front hall with thirty seconds to spare. The reception desk and market stalls have all been abandoned, creating an eerie silence as I clip-clop towards the only way in and
out.
The final ten seconds take an age until the giant screen above me changes from the images it has been showing on a loop into the footage I have just edited of me walking around the
communications floor. To emphasise the point, the words ‘Security alert: Floor 43’ flash in red letters underneath. It takes a few seconds for everyone to notice but there is quickly a
hum of excitement outside. Through the glass, I can see a black horde descending until the first Kingsman rushes through the doors into the North Tower.
‘Floor 43!’ I shout. ‘She kept me up there, I only just got away. She’s got a knife.’
The first Kingsman pulls me awkwardly towards him, swiping his thinkwatch against the sensor on the door and then angrily shunting me into the revolving door. ‘If she’s up there, why
didn’t you do something about it?’
His voice drifts away as the door rotates.
In less than a minute, I have moved through the crowd over the rail bridge until I am on the far side of the plaza. Everyone is watching the giant screen, muttering under their breaths about how
I got in and what I might be after. ‘I’ve heard she’s building an army,’ one of them says to another as I squeeze past, while I almost laugh as another speculates that I
have a twin who has silver hair with a black streak.
As soon as I am out of sight, I kick the cumbersome shoes off and run as quickly as I can bare-footed through the empty streets until I reach the outskirts. Imrin got out before me and I can see
him from a distance, sitting on a wall in his Kingsman’s uniform close to the house in which we were hiding.
‘Are they okay?’ I ask, slightly out of breath as I draw level with him and continue towards the house.
‘I’m not sure, I was waiting for you.’ I can tell he wants to have a serious conversation but he can’t stop himself from smiling. ‘You look different,’ he
says.
‘At least my old clothes are still in the house. I can’t wait to get out of this.’
‘You actually look like a girl.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about.’ He smiles but it’s obvious something isn’t right. ‘I don’t think it was just me that got us all to this
point,’ I add. ‘But sometimes, you’ve got to trust me. You don’t have to be the one to say, “I’ll save you”. Sometimes, you can just run for it.’
Imrin puts an arm around me. ‘What I was going to say is that you don’t always have to be the one to put yourself in the middle of trouble. At the castle, you set the diversion on
your own. You went with Faith to see her parents. You sent me away again here. I
do
trust you – the problem is that I’m not sure you trust me.’
He pulls me closer, not wanting a reply, which is good because I don’t have one.
‘We’re not going to Lancaster first,’ I say. ‘I’m going to see what X has to say but, if we’re going that far north, I want to go home to see if I can find my
mum and Colt and tell them about the second Offering. Colt could be in bigger danger than he already is – we’ve got a week to get there.’
‘Okay.’
‘If any of the others want to go to their families, they can, but I’ve got to do this first. Hart’s parents are in Martindale too.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t mind coming?’
‘No.’
It is good to hear he will support me but there was a part of me, perhaps a large part, hoping he would say he didn’t want to go.
At some point, I am going to have to tell him about Opie.
My feet are beginning to hurt from the hard ground as we tread around the hedge onto the front part of the dilapidated house where we left the rest of our group. I stop where I am standing and
Imrin pulls me close.
‘Are your feet all right?’ he asks, but all I can do is point to the ground where a trail of blood leads directly to the crooked piece of wood sealing the entrance of the house.
I feel a stabbing pain shoot through my foot as I dash forward and tread on a sharp, loose stone. Imrin catches me and together we rush to the wooden board, throwing it aside.
I head through the gap first, expecting a bloodbath – Jela, Faith, Pietra and Hart, any or all of them, tortured and dead as the two Kingsmen I voted to spare stand and sneer.
Instead, the drips of blood get thicker and larger, leading to a corner that is veiled in darkness. I smell the bodies before I see them. Both Kingsmen are dead, one with a gash that seems to go
the entire way through his stomach; the other has had his throat slit. I turn away, not wanting to see any more.
Imrin peers around me at the bodies but says nothing.
‘Is there anything to say where they’ve gone?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t see anything.’
Together we search the other three corners of the crumbling room but there is nothing except the trail of blood. Outside, I check the walls for anything that may lead us in the direction of the
others but the four of them have vanished. In the distance, the faint sound of the siren still chirps from the plaza. By now the Kingsmen must have realised I’m not on the communications
floor. They will probably be checking the rest of the footage but I have set anything incriminating Reith to be deleted within the next few minutes.
I use the wood to re-block our improvised doorway and then follow the trail of blood towards the main path, looking from side to side to see if there is anything I’ve missed. Imrin is
checking the underside of the hedges as the panic within me begins to build. There is no way they would have left without giving us some clue where they were going – not unless they had no
choice. Could they have been captured? Have they had to run away? Is anyone hurt?