The Fall (33 page)

But the Writings said otherwise.

*

Ana and Dombrant hurtled down three flights of metal gridded stairs and exited into a huge brick passage. Thirty-foot walls with iron girders supporting the brick structure boxed them in on both sides. Ten foot up, fluorescent lights were strung across the left wall, the external wiring showing. At the far end, a bluish hue shone in the dimness.

‘This way,’ Dombrant said, guiding them towards the blue light.

It turned out to be a square opening letting in daylight. They headed into a grimy tiled space resembling the car park where they’d left the Psych Watch van.

‘Almost there,’ he said.

Beyond a concrete arch, Ana saw the power station’s turbine hall with its curved roof. Daylight flared between pillars on their right, nothing standing between them and the outside. The Psych Watch van was no longer in the car park.

‘We’ll take a car,’ Dombrant said. They ran to the nearest saloon. Ana crouched against the back passenger door holding the boy, while Dombrant picked the lock.

‘Wait,’ she said. There was a quiet humming noise. Then two saloons plunged through the brightness into the hangar. The men riding within the vehicles wore brown and green camouflage jackets and caps. They weren’t Board members but Special Ops. Ana clung to the boy.

‘Move,’ Dombrant said. He pulled her up and pushed her behind a pillar. ‘Go!’

The nearest exit lay twenty metres away. She walked stiffly, sheltering the child against her body. Perhaps from behind, with the pillar partially blocking her, they wouldn’t be able to make out what she was carrying. Maybe they weren’t even paying attention.

Reaching the corridor that led to the main atrium, she began to run. Her chest felt like it was on fire. Dombrant caught up and they stepped into the Board’s main hall, polished floors, elegant dining chairs and tables.

‘We’re just going to walk right through,’ he said. She glanced at him as he slipped out his blow pipe. ‘Don’t stop for any reason. I’ll be right behind you.’

Her fingers slid across the child as she hoisted him higher against her. She felt vulnerable with no free hands and no way to fight back. Totally dependent on the Warden.

‘Walk!’ he ordered.

She stepped into the opulent foyer, longer than three Olympic sized swimming pools. High balconies overlooking the restaurants and bars surrounded her on all sides. At first, as she passed the escalators, nothing happened. But then Ana noticed a Board member drinking an espresso stop and stare. And another. Two more on the balcony were looking down and pointing at her.

*

The Chairman entered the personnel department on the second floor and the office fluttered with her arrival. A score of Board members sitting at grey desktops with white screen partitions between each desk, rose. Two stepped out of the ranks to greet her.

‘Ms Knight,’ one of them said. ‘Thank you for your visit. How may we assist you?’

Cole focused ahead, refusing to look at Blaize who glared at him, urging him to fight. Every minute the alarm wasn’t raised was a minute longer for Ana to find the children and get out of there; another sixty seconds for Tobias to lead small groups of the Project guards, including Nate and Rachel, back to the Psych Watch van, and for the van to escape the Board’s Headquarters.

‘There appears to be a discipline problem with the security personnel,’ the Chairman said. ‘Where is Mr Bodrow?’

The man speaking with the Chairman swivelled to the person at the desk nearest him and nodded. The Board member immediately ran a search on his interface for the requested staff member.

‘East wing, first floor bathroom.’

A frown rippled across the Chairman’s forehead. She patted the back of her bun. ‘These two are fired,’ she said. ‘Please collect their IDs and have someone show them out.’

The Board member in charge of personnel didn’t flinch. ‘Yes, Ms Knight.’

Cole’s eyes finally shifted across to Blaize. They had no IDs. They were out of time.

*

Ana was halfway down the great hall when an alarm blasted.

‘Run!’ Dombrant shouted behind her.

‘Leave me!’ she called back over the screeching wail.

She began running, clasping the boy. Dombrant glided along the side of the hall, disappearing behind a sleek wooden bar with black and silver stools. Two guards appeared near the arched doors at the front of the hall. They stopped, shoulders squared to Ana, taking aim. And then they dropped like swatted flies, one a second after the other.
Jack!
she thought, as she began tearing forward again.

Four more guards emerged to replace the fallen two. One of them shouted something but she couldn’t hear him over the alarm. Evenly spaced in front of the main entrance, the four men raised their guns, every barrel trained on her.

She ground to a halt, searched around frantically taking in the cream chairs and glass tables of a nearby restaurant, the huge plant pots with bright growths crawling up out of them. Her chest heaved. Her ears were ringing. Multi-coloured light rippled in the air overhead; a strange trick of the sun through the stained glass window, making it look as though the hall was under water.

Reporters, news cameras, crowds of protestors were all gathered beyond the Headquarter doors. If they could only see the boy! The sight of him would break hearts. Ana held him up, showing him to the guards. She shuffled forwards.
Please don’t shoot.

Suddenly, the alarm cut out.

‘Stay where you are,’ a guard shouted. He wore two gold stripes across the shoulder of his jacket.

‘He needs a doctor,’ she called. Where was Dombrant?

From behind came the sound of dozens of boots.

Dombrant must have realised he wasn’t getting her out. So he wasn’t trying to help her.
Good
,
she thought. He’d keep their agreement. He would save himself and the film of the children.

‘State your name and ID pin,’ the officer ordered.

‘I found him like this,’ she said. Her voice sounded steady. Controlled. Unlike the rest of her. ‘He’s not breathing properly.’

The officer held up his interface. He zoomed in on Ana to get a picture ID. A few more seconds and he would know she wasn’t a Board member. She strode forward to him, the boy held high.

‘Don’t move!’ Rifles clicked, fingers hovered over triggers.

‘I’m not armed,’ she shouted. ‘Can’t you see the child needs help?’

And then there was a loud pop. The ranked security officer cried out. Two others simultaneously fell. The guard still standing, took aim to the side of Ana. She whipped around to see twenty men in grey security uniforms scattered at the edges of the hall. But they were shooting at each other. Some with rifles, some with the blow pipes. It was impossible to tell the Project’s guards from the Board’s.

Ana dropped to her knees, hunched over the boy, and crawled towards the entrance, pulling him beneath her. A Board member hidden under a table watched her passing without the tiniest spark of emotion.

Suddenly, the shouting and screaming intensified. The six Special Ops appeared at the edge of the concourse, near the exit to the car park. They ploughed into the fray swinging trident-fork fighting poles, knives and Stingers. The Special Ops weren’t clumsy like the Board’s guards, and they didn’t distinguish between the intruders and the real uniforms. They were taking out everyone, appearing to enjoy the close quarters combat.

Flesh split, bones cracked, bodies thumped across the hard marble floor. Ana concentrated on blocking it out. Only a few metres lay between her and the doors. She was almost there.

‘Enough!’ a voice bellowed from high on one of the balconies. Ana looked back and saw the Chairman of the Board. A blanket of quiet fell over the Headquarters.
The vibration.
All around her Board members and security guards froze. The Project’s guards, spiked with Benzidox, began wafting about in a daze. Evelyn told them to sit and they obeyed.

‘Ariana Barber,’ Evelyn said, leaning over the first floor balcony, eyes livid. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ She glided towards the central escalators. ‘It’s all right,’ she announced to the Special Ops who were scattering down the hall, three on each side, ensuring it was secured. ‘Ariana has been through an awful ordeal with her father’s death today. But she’ll come with me and we’ll talk it all through.’

Ana turned her back on the Chairman. Dombrant was trapped in here with the film. She had to take her chance. Clinging to the boy, she straightened her shoulders and strode towards the exit.

A loud pop made her jerk. ‘Secure!’ a Special Ops shouted. He dragged a body out from behind a ceramic pot. ‘Dr Barber’s side kick,’ he said, searching Dombrant’s pockets and ripping off his interface. There was no blood. He’d been shot with a sedative.

Ana gulped.
Last chance.
The boy in her arms was the only remaining evidence. She lumbered forwards, legs barely supporting the two of them.

‘You’re not going to leave your friends behind like that, are you, dear?’ Evelyn asked, satisfaction lining her voice. ‘You’d prefer to save that boy, than the man you were willing to give up everything for?’

Ana stiffened and slowed. It dawned on her that though Board members had observed her moving through the hall with the boy, no one had tried to stop her. Someone else had raised the alarm.

On the first floor balcony, Tabitha appeared with two guards, who were dragging Cole. His face was bloody, his body twisted like he was injured. Her heart wrenched and began bashing against her ribs.

Evelyn strolled onto the escalator and began descending to the ground floor. ‘I can handle this from here,’ she said to the Special Op in charge. The soldier’s eyes hardened, but he obligingly unclipped the miniature metal blocks fixed to the back of his skull. His team reluctantly followed suit. Evelyn nodded at the security guards on the balcony with Cole to do likewise.

Once they were all immobilised, she smiled. ‘There we go,’ she said. ‘Just you and me.’ She sauntered across the vast marble atrium.

She likes taking risks
, Ana thought.
She likes testing her power.
Ana’s eyes shifted up to the balcony where Tabitha was staring down at her. ‘You’re forgetting your assistant,’ she said. ‘Just the three of us. Except you’re not impervious to the Paralyser, are you, Evelyn?’

The Chairman laughed. ‘You’ve been a challenge. Full of surprises. Unlike your father, who was thoroughly predictable.’ She let out a satisfied sigh. ‘Isn’t this fitting. You here now, when your mother was the start of it all.’ She circled around Ana. ‘You see, I’d just wanted to get Isabelle out of the house without anyone else hearing. I was going to take her for a little drive. Have her disappear. But once we were in the barn, I was chatting away, telling her about the indiscretions of her husband. “Of course, this would be so much easier if you’d just kill yourself,” I said. “OK,” she answered.’ Evelyn laughed. ‘ “OK!” It was just like all the great discoveries – Evander Fleming, Louis Pasteur – Lucky happenstance accompanied by a scientific mind evolved enough to grasp the opportunity.’

She stopped circling Ana and stood face to face, only an arm’s length between them. ‘The Benzidox your mother was taking, along with the Paralyser I was using to keep you and your father out of it, made her not only mobile, but totally suggestible. I just got out of the car and left her to it.’

Ana gasped for breath, her chest rolling like building waves that would crash and destroy everything in their path. For a moment she thought she would burst into tears, but the pain and hatred climbed higher and wider, blinding her with the dark lure of revenge.

‘Then you showed up,’ Evelyn continued. ‘Moving through the Paralyser like there was nothing to it. Fascinating. You were the first person I’d ever come across who was able to do that.’

A green barn door. Car fumes poisoning clean air. Messy morning hair hanging in tangles across her face. Mud seeping up the bottoms of her white pyjamas. A gentle throb of a car engine.

Her mother had been the start of it all.

And she would be the end.

Turning her back on the Chairman, she moved haltingly towards the doors. A click echoed in the silence behind her.

‘Bullets not sedative pellets,’ the Chairman said. Ana glanced back and saw the raised gun pointing at her. ‘I just took off the safety mechanism.’

Warden sirens wailed in the distance. Dozens of them slowly growing closer.

Ana turned to face Evelyn. Her body shook but she was not afraid of losing her life. If she died now, it was for the boy in her arms. For all the children who would be saved from  Evelyn Knight’s cruelty.

‘It’s over Evelyn,’ she said. ‘Every Warden in the City is on their way here. Even if you get away with shooting me, after what’s happened here today, after all the accusations against the Board and their neglect with the mental rehab homes, there’ll be an investigation. I hope you’ve been careful covering your tracks. How many Arashan children died during your experiments?’

‘Tabitha,’ the Chairman called out. The skin beneath her chin wobbled as she spoke, her eyes blazed. ‘Give Cole Winter your pistol. And tell him to hold it up to his head.’

Ana’s attention hooked onto Tabitha up on the balcony. The Chairman’s assistant obeyed the Chairman to protect her mother. Would she do so now?

Tabitha stepped towards Cole. Something metal flashed, passing from her hands to his. He raised the glinting instrument to his head.

Inwardly, Ana felt herself collapse. The ultimate sacrifice wouldn’t be her death, but his. How would any of this mean anything without him?
Hope, Ana. Courage.
Mikey had refused to shoot his brother.
Cole won’t shoot himself. Please, don’t shoot yourself.
But remembering his last exposure to the Paralyser field only hours ago and his agonising migraine afterwards, doubt crept over her darker than the night sky.

She looked down at the boy’s huge empty eyes.
This boy will destroy the Chairman of the Board.
She gasped in air. The Chairman had not broken her because she’d found Cole. Now she needed to find a greater strength. From within. From the best of herself.