20 Years Later (34 page)

“It's not!” Zane retorted. “Titus, when we first met, you thought that me and Mum were bad people–you thought everyone was bad. But now you have us as friends, and you know people in gangs and that they aren't as bad as you thought either.”

“So what?” Erin asked, before Titus could reply.

“So, it could be the same with the Unders!” Zane exclaimed.

Titus stared down at the ground, considering his argument. He was swayed by it for a few moments, but the doubts slowly crept back in.

“Zane, you cannot pick and choose who of them will live and who will die,” Luthor stated. “This is a war.”

“I see where you're coming from, son,” Shannon said softly, “But if you want to stop what they are doing to the children, what they are forcing me to do, then you have to accept that others will die. To shut them down, we have to shut all of it down. All of it.”

“But why do they do those things to the boys?” Zane asked, shaking with tension.

“Cos they're sick in the 'ead,” Jay muttered.

“They're trying to find a cure,” Shannon replied. “And they think that it's right to get that cure, no matter what the cost.”

“But … but what if we found that cure!” Zane exclaimed. “What if they didn't have to do that anymore? Then they could be our friends!”

“Shit, Zane, not everyone in the world can be your friend!” Jay yelled and the boy fell silent. “We gotta go in and take 'em down. Else we'll never be safe. Never. I gotta protect my Boys, and I gotta get the others that are down there out, and if some people die, well then fine. If they're the kind of people that let that kind of thing happen and don't say nuffin' against it, then they deserve it anyway.”

“They've kept us apart all your life, Zane,” Shannon urged. “They said they would kill you and Miri if I didn't do what I was told. These aren't the kind of people that care about making friends.”

Zane turned to Titus, searching his friend's face for any signs of solidarity. Titus looked up from the ground, feeling that gaze, as a flash of Squeak's memories pulsed through him. In the next moment a flash of Lyssa's scarred body, the way
she could barely walk, and the doubts were swept away like leaves by winter gales. His thumb traced the cut in his palm. He pressed it, feeling the sting.

“This is the only way,” he stated coldly.

Crushed, Zane looked from Titus to his father and back again. “I can't do this,” he said, eyes brimming with tears. “I swore an oath to save people, not kill them.”

He spun on his heels and ran back towards Jay's territory, the group watching him go. Shannon took a step after him but Luthor grabbed his shoulder. “Let him run back to his mother,” he said. “We need to plan and move tonight.”

Titus watched Zane run around the corner. “I'm sorry, Zane,” he whispered beneath his breath. “But I swore an oath too.”

Three streets away, halfway between Jay's territory and the garden, Zane stopped and slumped against a wall, shaking.

“This is wrong, this is wrong,” he muttered, covering his face with grimy hands and crying into them. He felt helpless and distraught; one moment he resolved to run to his mother and ask her for help, the next he almost went back to the others to try once more to persuade them to find another way.

Another way.

A thought struck him, one of those thoughts that is so big, so life-changing that even though it's terrifying it won't let go. It was so big that it filled him, making him drop his hands to his sides and his heart thud deep in him like a pestle against the mortar of his chest. He tried to forget it, but that was impossible. He tried to change it, to wriggle away from it, but he knew there was only one thing to do.

“I'll show the Unders there's another way,” he whispered to the moon. “I'll show them why they don't need to hurt the children any more. Then no-one else will have to die.”

Then he was running, his body moving faster than his fear could catch up. He knew where Radley was, he'd heard his father say it. If he could find her and show her that he could heal people, then maybe together they could find a cure to the disease. If they could find a cure, then the experiments would stop and the threat would be gone. His imagination laid tracks into the future that carried him towards a peace for everyone that would begin tonight: Radley would tell Hex to stop the experiments and release the children, and he would find the others and stop them before they got to Green Park. It would take time for Luthor to gather the Hunters and get them into
position, plenty of time for him to convince Radley and stop all of this.

The hospital wasn't far out of Jay's territory, and he had seen it marked on the map that tracked all of the Giant sightings. Zane had never been out at night alone, yet his mind didn't have time to be frightened.

As he sprinted down shadow-filled alleyways, he remembered how frightened he'd been that night at the hospital with Dev. How he'd thought it was a terrible Giant with huge metal feet that would crush him. And all along it had been a woman in strange clothes, just as frightened as he had been.

The hospital came into sight and he slowed down, the fear now slamming into him from behind and making him shiver. He almost turned back, but then he thought of all of the people in the Unders dying and it kept him moving forward. He crouched down and kept in the shadows, watching for any signs of the scientist.

He saw a flash of light from a second floor window that was instantly recognisable: Radley's torch. From the way it moved, it looked like she was coming down a stairwell with long windows. He stopped and hunkered down, waiting for her to emerge, biting his teeth hard together to stop them chattering.

It seemed like an eternity until she came out, the familiar metal clang of her boots ricocheting off the nearby buildings. She had a case in her hand, like before, and he could hear the wheeze and click of the oxygen being drawn in.

She moved down the street, walking slowly and carefully around the rusting wrecks, taking care not to get snagged on anything. Zane stayed down as long as he could bear, listening carefully for Guardians, but none could be seen. He waited until she was a matter of metres away, took a deep breath, and stepped out into her path.

She yelped in surprise, dropping the case, and in moments black-clad figures materialised as if from the night air itself. They closed around Zane as he spread his hands in front of himself, trying to appear as non-threatening as he could.

“Dr Radley!” he said hurriedly, the fear making his voice crack. “I'm Zane. I want to talk. I won't hurt you.”

He could hear the wheeze and click more rapidly now, her eyes wide as they peered through the glass visor at him.

“Down on the ground!” one of the Guardians yelled. “Down on the ground now!”

“Please, let me talk to you!” Zane begged, painfully aware of the guns being pointed at him.

Radley studied him for a moment and then said, “Hold on, hold on, don't shoot him. He's not here for a fight.”

“Check the area, secure it,” said the one who had yelled at Zane, and half of the Guardians broke away, fanning out with bright torches. Never taking his eyes off Zane, he said, “Keep your hands out in front of you, don't move.”

“I'm by myself,” Zane said in a quavering voice. “I wanted to speak to you.”

“How did you know I was here?” she asked, beginning to look more intrigued than terrified.

“It doesn't matter,” Zane answered, looking at the lightning guns trained on him. “What matters is that I think I can help you to find a cure to the disease that killed everyone.”

Her surprise was evident, even though he couldn't see all of her face. “Well, I wasn't expecting that,” she commented.

“I know about the experiments you do on the children, and I thought that if we found a cure, you wouldn't have to do that anymore, and then we could stop being afraid of each other.”

There was an awkward pause. “Children?” Radley finally asked, and then smiled and said, “Oh! You mean the orphans! The carriers. You must mean the children who are carriers
that they take care of in one of the spokes.”

Zane swallowed, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “You don't know about what they do to them?”

Radley frowned. “You make it sound like they do something sinister there. I'm sure they don't.” Zane didn't argue. “Did you say your name was Zane?”

Zane nodded.

“Look, Zane, I don't have a long time on my air left. Tell me something I can take back to Hex, something I can use to discuss this with them.”

“We can take him with us,” the Guardian said. “Secure him outside of the clean area, in the spoke with the carriers.”

“No!” Zane and Radley said in unison.

“No,” repeated Radley. “He came here to talk, he hasn't threatened me or any of you, so back off. He's just a boy for God's sake.”

Zane chewed his lip, watching the exchange. He couldn't think of anything that he could tell her that she would believe, let alone anyone in Hex. Now he was here, talking to her, the idea he'd had before seemed significantly less plausible. But now he was committed.

She looked back at him. “Well? What can you tell me that Hex won't know about the virus already?”

“It isn't about the virus,” Zane began, desperately trying to think of how to say what he needed to. “It's … it's about me. I can heal people, I can make them better, and maybe, I could heal people with the virus.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, this isn't wrapping a doc leaf on a sting. What do you know about medicine?”

“Um, quite a bit actually,” he replied in a small voice. “More than you might think. And I didn't mean that I do first aid. I mean that I heal people … in a …” Erin suddenly came to his mind and he said, “In a weird way.”

She sighed and looked at the guardian. “Let's go.”

“Wait!” Zane shouted. “I'll prove it! Shine the light onto my hand.” When a torch was trained on his hand, he moved it slowly towards the nearest car. With a swift downwards thrust, he sliced his palm open on a jagged piece of metal, making Radley gasp. “I know this looks weird,” Zane said, wincing, “But please, please let me show you why I'm doing this.”

He held his bleeding hand in front of him, and in the yellow light of the torch they all watched as Zane dabbed away some of the blood with his sleeve to reveal the wound. More blood began to seep out, but then the gashed skin began to close and seal itself in an impossible way.

Zane held up his hand, palm towards Radley. “That's what I mean when I say I can heal people.”

Radley frowned. “It's a trick.”

Zane shook his head. “No. It's not. I can do it for other people too, if they're hurt. But I can't show you that.”

“Look I have no idea why you're doing this but –”

“We're taking him in,” the Guardian interrupted. “Hex wants him brought in now.” At Radley's incredulous expression, he tapped a small device on the side of his helmet. “Live feed back to base. Hex saw it–they want him in now.” He moved closer to Zane, finger curled around the trigger of his gun. “Hands on top of your head, no sudden movements. I'll tell you where to walk. You do anything else, I'll fry you.”

A thousand times on that journey Zane regretted his decision and then immediately persuaded himself that he was still doing the right thing. He clung to that idea like a child to a rock, watching the tide rising around him. He tried hard to remember the route they were taking but lost concentration as he battled his fear. The streets, shadowed and silent, all began to look the same.

At one point he was told to shut his eyes and he heard a door opening. He was told to walk forward, still with eyes shut,
which made the fear bubble over into terror. When he heard a scraping sound behind him and the sound of a lock, his breath caught in his throat, but then he was told he could open his eyes again and he found himself, and his escorts, at the top of a dingy, narrow spiral staircase, lit only by their torches. Radley went ahead, making slow progress with her large boots. Zane was grateful that the pace was slow as his knees were trembling and his legs barely felt like his own.

The staircase was steep, and it felt like they went a long way underground. At the bottom there was a wider space, but he could see very little of the walls, being forced to look only where they shone their torch light.

A series of heavy metal doors were each unlocked and locked behind them, and then one of the Guardians pressed the tip of the gun into his back and told him to shut his eyes again. He did so and heard a very curious sound unlike anything he had heard before, melodious somehow, like his mother's singing, but not sounding like a human voice at all. The sound of an electronic keypad made no sense to him; he didn't even have a name for it.

A hiss, then a loud thunk, and the barrel of the gun in the small of his back pushed him forward. He was told to wait as the hiss and the thunk sound happened again in reverse. He wondered if they had trapped a snake in a heavy door but thought it better not to ask.

This process happened once more and then he was told he could open his eyes again. He found himself, Dr Radley, and three Guardians in a corridor unlike any he had ever seen. The walls were grey and smooth, the ceiling and walls blending into one another in one graceful arched curve. Doors were spaced at regular intervals, and he could see at least ten off the tunnel that stretched ahead. Each had a number painted onto the wall above it, and to the right of every door was a metal board with a piece of paper clipped to it with the same name at the top: Eve,
followed by a number. Beneath each of these was a pad with numbers on it set into the wall, the use of which was entirely beyond Zane. But it wasn't that which took his attention. It was the light.