Boy X (7 page)

‘They are making a decision,' Isabel said.

‘Yeah. But about what?'

Eventually they nodded to one another, shook hands, and then Mum came forward and typed another message while the others watched.

Boat is in bay on other side of island. Isabel knows it. You must get to it before Pierce. Damage it. Destroy it. Stop them getting on boat. They MUST NOT leave island.

Ash nodded, excited by their sudden burst of optimism.
We will bring cure and keycard.

When Mum read his message, Ash was confused to see the look of sadness still on her face as she typed something else and held it up.

Most important is that they don't leave island. It is a priority. Kronos must be destroyed.

Ash read the three sentences over and over, feeling certain that he had missed something. From the look on Mum's face, he knew something wasn't right about this. Why was she so insistent about— And then it hit him. She was telling him to stop Pierce from taking
Kronos
off the island, not telling him to save her. If
Kronos
left the island, millions of people could die – that's what she wanted him to stop.

Mum didn't expect him to bring back the cure and the keycard. She wasn't expecting to be saved.

I can do this,
he typed.
I will bring it back. I promise.

Mum sobbed and turned her back on him. She walked to the far end of the lab and stood for a moment. Isabel's dad put a hand on her arm and they spoke quietly. When they were finished, Mum stood up straighter and returned to the
glass. She typed a message and held it up for Ash to see.

There is no time. We have only a little more than 24 hours until Shut-Down. That is when our organs will begin to fail and the antiviral will not work for us. It is already too late. No more questions. You have to go. You
MUST
stop Pierce leaving the island. You MUST destroy the boat. You
MUST
destroy Kronos.

Ash read the message over and over until he could have spoken it word for word. When he could look at it no longer, he took a deep breath and turned to Isabel. ‘We can do this, right?'

Isabel swallowed hard and fixed her most determined expression. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘We can. We
must
.'

‘OK, then, we should go now. We don't have much time.'

Ash typed one more message and placed the tablet computer on the metal floor by his feet, turning it so the scientists could read what he had written. He nodded to his mum and looked at her for the last time before heading out of the lab.

When Ash and Isabel reached the door, the tablet screen had already dimmed, preparing to close down and conserve its battery, but the message was still visible:

I will come back. I will save you. I promise.

23 hrs and 45 mins until Shut-Down

‘
T
wenty-four hours.' Isabel set the countdown timer on her digital watch. ‘And we were in there for . . . fifteen minutes?'

Ash nodded, and when Isabel thumbed the button, the minutes began to tick away. Time was already running out. ‘You sure you know where we're going?' he asked. ‘HEX13?'

They sneaked back upstairs, bathed in the white glow of a handheld fluorescent light taken from one of the labs. Ash worried it would make them easy to spot, that Thorn would see them coming, but Isabel said she couldn't make it to the other end of the building without it. In a way, it was a relief not to be in total darkness, but Ash still had a prickle
down the back of his head when he thought about Thorn being just beyond the light, so he reached out with all his senses, trying to detect him.

‘Twenty-four hours is not long,' Isabel said.

‘Just
over
twenty-four hours.' Ash tried not to think about Mum locked in that room with
Kronos
swimming in her blood.

‘Maybe it's not enough.'

‘It
is
enough,' Ash said. ‘It's a whole day.'

‘And even if we get out—'

‘
When
we get out,' Ash corrected her. ‘And don't think about it. Just get us out of here and we'll find Cain and Pierce, and get the cure. We'll be all right. We have to be.'

‘Yes. We have to—' Isabel gasped and came to a stop.

On the floor just in front of them was a red footprint facing in their direction. It was faint, like a print in wet sand just on the edge of the shore, but it was clear enough to see the heel, the curve of the arch, the ball and the toes. Behind it was another, and then another, each one a little more visible than the last.

Ash's footprints. Not his blood, though.

And there were other prints too, from shoes or boots too large to be Isabel's.

‘Thorn,' Isabel said.

‘Ignore it.' Ash tried to sound brave. ‘We already know he's here somewhere.'

Isabel nodded. ‘That body – Paco – is up here, isn't he?'

Already, Ash could see a dark shape in the gloom on the floor ahead, and he could smell blood in the air. There was
a hint of peppermint and leather too – Thorn's smell. It was swirling in a shimmer of chemicals, tropical fruit and fear. ‘Look away,' he said. ‘We'll go past.'

Paco was lying slumped against the wall. There was blood down the front of his white coat, a heavy patch of it around his stomach (
he'll gut us both
) and a puddle on the floor beside him. Ash could see where he had knelt when he was searching for the keycard, and the place where he had stepped in the man's blood before walking away.

‘Look at the wall,' he told Isabel, and they left the horror behind, continuing past the lobby stairwell and along several other corridors leading into the darkness.

‘Where's everyone else?' Ash whispered.

‘There is no one else.'

‘There's no one else on this island? No one at
all
?'

‘Just Papa and me. Maria and Begonia and . . . and Paco. And a security team. Sometimes more guards come if there is a big project.'

‘And you live here?' Ash asked. ‘But how old are you? What about school?'

‘I'm fourteen. Papa teaches me. Science. Maths and English.'

‘And your mum?'

‘I have no mama.' Isabel said it like she didn't want to talk about it, so Ash stopped asking questions and just followed for a while, the white light from the fluorescent bulb illuminating the way.

Isabel led them down the third corridor on the right, all the way to the door at the end, passing the mangled bodies
of two more security guards, and when Ash put the card into the slot beside the door, something clunked inside. ‘Still power to the locks,' he said. ‘I wonder how long it lasts.'

Isabel shook her head and pushed on the door, stepping into a huge concrete room that smelt of dust and cardboard and a jumble of other things Ash didn't recognize. It was filled with shelving that reached from floor to ceiling, and had the open, empty feeling of a cave. The glow from the fluorescent tube reached only a couple of metres around them, and there was no sight of the far wall.

‘I sometimes come in here with Dad to get supplies,' Isabel said. ‘Always makes me feel . . . Brrr.' She shivered.

‘You mean it gives you the creeps?' Ash looked around, squinting into the darkness beyond the light.

‘The creeps. Yes.'

‘Me too.'

They stole like thieves between two banks of shelves stacked high with orange plastic containers that looked like petrol cans, tins, spools of wire, jars of powders and pills. Even boxes containing cans of food. There were huge crates with images of medical equipment stuck on them, and rows and rows of the stainless-steel temperature-controlled containers they had seen in the labs.

Approaching an area stacked with tools, Isabel gave Ash the light, telling him to hold it close to the shelf so she could find what she was looking for – a red crowbar as long as her arm.

‘What do we need that for?'

‘You'll see.' Hefting the crowbar, Isabel took Ash to the back of the room where there was an endless line of metal cabinets. Each was taller than Ash, painted olive green and with a yellow number stencilled onto the door. Isabel counted along the row, ‘
Uno
. . .
dos
. . .
tres
. . .
quatro
. . .' touching each cabinet as she went. When she came to number seventeen, she stopped and stood in front of it, crowbar hanging at her side.

‘This one,' she said.

Ash watched in confusion. ‘I thought we were looking for the way out?'

‘We are.'

‘And it's in there? What is it, some kind of secret entrance? It looks too small.'

‘You'll see.' Isabel lifted the crowbar and slotted the narrow end into the crack in the cabinet, just above the lock. She put as much force behind it as she could, pushed and pushed, but nothing happened.

‘You're never going to open it like that,' Ash said. ‘Are you sure this is the way out?'

‘This' – Isabel puffed as she leant on the crowbar – ‘is the
only
way out. We need what's in here.' She held tight with both hands and jerked her weight against the bar, two, three times, but the locker door didn't budge.

‘What is it? Some kind of key?'

‘Just help me with this.' Isabel waggled the crowbar, trying to jam it deeper into the gap, and levered at the door once more. She grunted with effort, then stopped to catch her breath. ‘Are you going to help me or not?'

‘All right.' Ash put the light on the floor. He wasn't big for his age – not as strong as most of his friends – so he wasn't sure he'd do any better than Isabel, but he grabbed the crowbar, and—

From somewhere among the racks of supplies came a scuffing sound that made Ash snap his head up and look into the darkness.

‘You heard that?' he whispered.

‘I don't think so. You have good hearing.'

Ash nodded and held the crowbar back over his shoulder, ready to swing it hard like a cricket bat. ‘It feels like someone is watching us,' he said. ‘You feel that?'

‘Maybe.'

He tightened his grip on the crowbar and listened, searching for the source of the sound. He strained his ears for the faint thrum of a heartbeat, or the soft sigh of a breath. He tested the air, detecting a trace of the horribly familiar scent of peppermint.

‘Thorn?' he called. ‘Is that you?'

Nothing.

‘Come on,' Isabel said. ‘Let's open this and get out of here.'

Ash waited a little longer, then nodded and turned back to the locker. It felt wrong to be facing away from whatever danger was out there, but Isabel was right. They had to get away fast. Ash had to think about saving Mum. If he concentrated on her, remembered how she had looked, how scared
she
was, then he could be strong. He could do this.

He turned and jammed the crowbar into the gap above the lock, looking at Isabel and saying, ‘Together.'

One more hard shove was all it took. There was a crack as the lock snapped, and a bang as the door swung open and slammed back against the locker beside it. Isabel and Ash stumbled forwards, dropping the crowbar with a loud clatter that echoed through the room, jarring his sensitive hearing. At the same time, part of the lock shot away and pinged against the shelving. Ash put his hands on the bank of lockers to the left, stopping himself from smashing into them face first, and Isabel smacked into him from behind so that her head was right next to his, her chin on his shoulder.

Her heart was thumping so hard Ash could feel it against his back as well as hear it.

‘You all right?' he asked.

‘
Sí.
' Isabel nodded, her hair tickling his face, and then did the weirdest thing. She laughed.

It took Ash by surprise. There was nothing funny about what was happening. They were stuck in a research facility, in the dark, with a deadly virus and a lunatic killer on the loose. And he was still in his pyjamas. There was nothing funny about it
AT ALL
.

But Isabel's laugh was as infectious as
Kronos
and Ash couldn't stop himself from joining her. It was better than crying. Better than curling up in a ball and wishing they were safe. So they stayed there, leaning against the locker, laughing away the fear and horror of the past hour.

‘I think we did it,' Ash said, finally coming to his senses. ‘I think it's open.'

Still leaning against him, Isabel stifled her giggling. ‘You're stronger than you look.' She became serious, as if remembering where they were and what they had to do.

Ash did the same and looked at the box nestled in the bottom of the locker.

It was metal, olive green, with writing stencilled on the top:

DANGER. HIGH EXPLOSIVES.

Ash stepped back. ‘Seriously? That's our way out? Explosives?'

Isabel picked up the light and held it towards the locker, peering inside. ‘You could read that?' she asked. ‘Without the light?'