Furnace 3 - Death Sentence (21 page)

OUTSIDE

It was a hard climb, but it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

The steel cable dug into my hands, soon slick with blood from Simon and Zee above me. Our feet slipped, the growing abyss like the mouth of some vast creature, waiting for us to fall so that it could finish the job it started so long ago. Our wheezed breaths echoed back at us from the walls, reminding us of our exhaustion, of the impossibility of what we were doing.

But that cold air never stopped blowing, giving us the strength to keep putting one hand above the next, to keep climbing. Even though the pain in my muscles was greater than anything I’ve experienced in my life I never once thought about giving up, because that draught was the breath of the outside world, a ceaseless whisper that became more powerful with every step, and whose promises of freedom made us smile through our agony.

We didn’t say a word to each other, focusing on the cable like Indian rope climbers, pinching the thick
metal with our feet and pulling ourselves up a metre at a time. I tried to keep track of how far we’d come, but it was a futile attempt, the shaft narrowing to a point in both directions like some endless Möbius strip. Only the illusion had no power because I knew the end was just ahead of us, almost within reach. It was ours for the taking.

Simon saw it first, so drained by the climb that his words dropped down in unintelligible clumps. I looked up, the tendons razors in my neck, saw a glimmer of soft light like daybreak. The excitement that gripped my gut was almost enough to make me lose my footing, before settling into one last burst of pure adrenaline which propelled us up the final stretch of cable whooping like madmen.

I was terrified that we’d get to the top and find another set of armoured doors that were impossible to break through. But Furnace knew it was beaten. When we were close enough we saw the hole that the retreating berserker had punched in the metal. A finger of white light stretched through it, wavering back and forth like it was beckoning us on. In that second we became as weightless as the motes of dust we saw dancing in the glow, our laughter like wings which drew us effortlessly into the light.

The worst part was the short jump from the cable to the broken doors. My heart was in my mouth as I watched Simon pounce, almost losing his grip on the torn steel and plummeting into the darkness. He recovered, pulling himself through the hole then reappearing,
arms stretched out to catch a screaming, flailing Zee.

By the time they had vanished through the gap I was in mid-air, the bottomless pit like a black tongue which reached out to pull me in. I hit the doors, almost bouncing off but managing to hook my fingers into the edge of the hole. Then Simon’s hands were around my wrists, hoisting me into the Black Fort.

For what seemed like an eternity we lay there on the polished stone floor, our breaths coming in deranged fits of giggles as we stared at the ceiling. There were no sirens, no cries of alarm, only the soft hum of the electric lights – blindingly bright after so long in Furnace.

Eventually I sat up, several muscles cramping in protest. We were in the windowless room where we’d first put on our prison uniforms, the shower cubicles shut tight and silent against each wall. The gate at the other end stood ajar, and through the bars I thought I could see bloodstains spattered across the corridor beyond. Something out there sparked, making us all jump, a weak firework show falling from the ceiling.

‘What the hell happened up here?’ said Zee, his voice fluttering high and low like a badly tuned radio.

‘Must have been that thing,’ Simon answered, hobbling to his feet like an old man and wiping his bloody hands on his overalls. ‘You obviously scared the crap out of it, Alex, ’cos it sure as hell tore through here in a hurry.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Before Furnace sends any more surprises.’

‘Somehow I think he might have his work cut out for him,’ replied Simon, offering a hand each to Zee and me and hauling us to our feet.

He was right, if that berserker had made a break for it then Furnace would have bigger problems than escaping inmates. I pictured the beast charging off into the city, the damage it would wreak out there, and found myself smiling despite the horror. At least the world would know about his experiments, know the truth about the prison and what they did to us here.

Even though there was no sign of life in the Black Fort we took our time, glancing nervously at the cameras embedded in the ceiling and listening out for guns being cocked, the booming laughter of the blacksuits. I led the way across the room, through the gate, trying not to look at the corpse of the guard propped up like a rag doll in a puddle of his own blood. Glistening black footprints, too big to be anything but the berserker’s, pointed us in the direction of the exit. The wind on our faces was now an arctic gale, urging us forward.

On one side of the room lay the window where I’d been handed my Furnace overalls, now as dark and empty as the rest of the Fort. We passed by it breathlessly, entering another corridor featureless except for a gate to one side and a door at the far end. It was open, and through it lay the outside world, visible only as a pale light too pure, too beautiful to be artificial. I couldn’t stop myself staggering towards it, only Zee’s hand on my arm pulling me back.

‘We’ve got to get that elevator up,’ he said. I didn’t move, every instinct in my body and mind screaming at me to make a run for the exit now, before the blacksuits came, before we were thrown back into the pit. But there was no way we could leave everybody else to rot. I nodded, and the three of us uttered a shuddering sigh in unison as we turned away and walked through the gate.

The passageway beyond was lined with barred doors, but it didn’t take us long to find the control room. It too was deserted, the gun rack empty of weapons and the smell of gunpowder still lingering in the air. I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but I figured that the remaining guards had been sent in pursuit of the renegade berserker.

I scanned the screens that lined the wall, seeing on one marked ‘Deliveries’ a black truck parked in a loading bay. The logo on the side made it clear that the vehicle belonged to Alfred Furnace, and I guessed that it had been used to transport the berserkers here. It would be going back empty. I couldn’t make out a single living blacksuit anywhere.

I swept my gaze across the monitors until I found the one I wanted. The elevator was packed to bursting point, hundreds more inmates thronging around the doors.

‘This must be it,’ said Zee, running his finger across a set of buttons embedded in the control panel.

‘Main elevator,’ said Simon, reading the stencilled letters on the console. ‘Wow, Zee, you really are smart.’

Zee flicked him the bird, then pressed his finger onto the button marked with an up arrow. A tremor ran through the stone beneath our feet, and on one of the screens I saw the crowd buck away from the elevator. The image was small, but I could make out sparks flying from the doors as the lift struggled to rise.

‘Come on,’ I hummed under my breath. ‘Come on, you can do it.’

The elevator lurched up, hard enough to send a couple of inmates spilling from the doors onto the yard. Then the cabin was suddenly sucked out of view, the vibration in the rock around us letting us know it was on its way. Zee whooped, turning to give us a high-five that both Simon and I ignored in our excitement. We looked at each other, grinning so hard that all we saw was teeth.

‘You ready for this?’ Zee asked.

‘I ain’t never been more ready for anything in my life,’ Simon replied. ‘Come on, before the Skulls beat us to it.’

I swear we almost floated out of that room, down the corridor, through the gate, our bodies as light as air, as dreams. We didn’t so much as breathe as we entered the main hall, not until we saw the heavy doors buckled outwards, and beyond them the electrified cage torn to shreds. Then we each exhaled as one, our breath becoming soft, uncontrollable cries as we walked towards freedom.

I faltered when I reached the threshold, staring at the line that separated the polished stone of Furnace
from the rough ground outside, too afraid to look up, to take that last step, in case it was an illusion. But the cool breeze wrapped itself around me and drew me from the door, pulling me out into the night.

I stumbled forward, caressed by the gentle rain which fell from the moon-drenched sky. The strength had all but gone from my legs, but there was enough to carry me out of the ruined cage before I fell to my knees in the mud.

I was out. I was free.
I was free
.

I looked up, hearing my own relentless sobbing, seeing the boundless heavens through my tears. Past a weave of clouds I could make out the moon, watching us from a bed of stars, so crisp, so far away that I was gripped by vertigo. Flecks of rain fell like diamonds, coating the landscape in molten silver, bringing life to every blade of grass, every flower, every pebble.

I shifted my eyes to the horizon, the skyline of the city burnished by a copper glow as dawn prepared to roll out over the world. Somewhere a bird was singing, the sound so alien to me that I didn’t understand what I was hearing.

It was all too much – the sights, the sounds, the smell of the rain, the wet earth beneath my fingers – too much to be real. It
couldn’t
be real. I clamped my eyes closed, feeling the universe spin. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, anchoring me, and risked looking again to see the world that I thought I had lost forever, still laid out in platinum and bronze before me.

‘We made it,’ sobbed Zee, helping me to my feet.

‘We’re free. I don’t believe it, Alex, we’re free.’

‘Free, but not safe,’ said Simon. ‘You hear that?’

I cocked my head, rivers of rainwater running down my throat, parching my thirst. It took me a while to recognise the sound of sirens, the slow whump of helicopter blades, still distant but growing louder.

‘Now that we’re out there’s no hiding it,’ Simon went on. ‘Can’t ignore a prison break when the inmates are on the street.’

The noise was lost beneath more sounds, screaming voices and the clatter of scores of feet on stone. We turned to see an ocean of kids breaking from the main gate, surging towards us, the whites of their eyes like sunlight flecking the tips of waves. Some crashed to the ground, overwhelmed by the existence of a forgotten world, others flew past us, cheering as they streamed out onto the street, flowing towards the safety of the shadows. I saw a number of Skull bandanas amongst them, but no Bodie. I called out his name.

‘He’s in the control room,’ explained a Fifty-Niner, stopping for long enough to suck in some air. ‘Sending the elevator down for the next lot. We sorted out a rota so nobody would get left behind.’ He looked nervously through the door, back into Furnace. ‘I hope they make it in time. Something’s trying to come up from below, we heard it. You guys had better scram ’fore it gets loose.’ He started to run, then whipped round, grinning. ‘Oh, and thanks.’ Then he was gone, lost in the sea of bodies.

‘He’s right,’ said Zee. ‘We should get out of here. We’ve done enough.’

‘Got that right,’ said Simon. ‘Anyone know where to go?’

Zee and I shook our heads. With a prison break like this the whole city would soon be in lockdown, every stone turned over by the police, every hiding place probed. Not to mention the fact that the berserker was out there, that the warden and his blacksuits would soon join the hunt, that the rats were probably heading for the surface too.

And I didn’t even know what would happen when the nectar inside me ran out. I might already be dead, living on borrowed time.

But none of that mattered. Right now we had made it. We had beaten Furnace. We were free. I cast one final look behind me, at the broken gates of the Black Fort, the dark tunnels that led back underground. It was a fleeting image, but one I will never forget.

I started to turn, laughing so hard it hurt, but I didn’t get far before catching a glimpse of the sculptures that decorated the sides of the prison – monstrosities of stone depicting boys like me being punished for their crimes. I screwed my eyes shut, my mind back inside the warden’s office, seeing the same figures carved into his desk, hearing that voice on the end of the phone.

I am coming for you
.

And suddenly I was on my knees again, Alfred Furnace in my head, his words no longer a whisper but a raging storm that forced blood from my nose, my ears, my eyes.

Do you hear me?
it screamed.
I am coming for you
.

I forced my eyes open, the prison now a hulking behemoth that seemed to pull itself from the earth like a giant leech in pursuit of its prey. Against the backdrop of that hallucination I saw another: a fleet of trucks, each carrying a creature that howled with bloodlust, all heading this way. And ushering them forth was a man who was nothing but shadow against the night, but whose skin seemed to crawl as though he had just stepped forth from a maggot-infested grave.

‘Alex!’ Hands on my collar, trying to pull me up. I blinked, the prison once more just a prison, the vision of Furnace’s army nothing more than bile in my throat. I looked at Zee, saw his confusion, and for a second I thought the whole thing had been a waking nightmare brought about by exhaustion. Then I turned to Simon, saw my own expression mirrored in his red-rimmed eyes, knew he’d seen it as well. Of course he had, there was nectar in his blood too, Furnace’s poison running through his veins, channelling that inhuman voice.