Hidden Among Us (18 page)

I was expendable. If the Hidden had Lissy, I had to help her. Had to try and protect her in any way I could.

I fell forwards into the water, and I went down.

Down
.

29

I woke in a blazing fluorescent glow, curled in a ball on a metal bed jutting out of the wall like a shelf. I had to blink: half because of the unbearable light and half in pain, the quality of which had now changed from shooting agony through my ankle to a dull relentless throb.

What had they done to me?

I sat up, looking down at my ankle, what was left of it. The wound had been bandaged and set in one of those flexible plasters – how long had I been unconscious? – but it still felt as if my leg was on fire.

Why take the trouble to tidy up the god-awful mess I’d made of my ankle but keep me locked in here?

I leaned back and the cold steel wall chilled my skin, even through my t-shirt. It was like being inside a meat locker. A windowless room, walls, floor and bed all stainless steel. Bed was too generous a term for the bare metal slab. There was no blanket, no pillow. Even the bog in the corner was steel. A cell. I was in prison. A prison without windows. Weren’t there rules about that? Regulations?

The whole place reeked of stale air and the faint, sickening-sweet odour of other people’s terrified sweat, not quite masked by disinfectant.

The door was just as shining and impenetrable as the steel walls. Not even a millimetre of space around it. Perfectly fitted. There was no handle on the inside. No keyhole. There had to be a lock. Unable to stop myself I got up, pain shooting through every shred of bone and muscle; I had to breathe through my teeth. I pushed at the door; you never know till you try. Of course it didn’t budge. That was when I saw what they’d done to my hand. A purple bruise spread from behind a dab of cotton wool taped to the skin. I had been sedated.

Another wave of freezing cold fear washed through me.

How long had I been down here? Long enough to be glad of the metal bog. I peed in it and sat down on the bed again without flushing, not wanting to alert anyone to the fact I’d woken up.

I had no way of knowing what time it was, or even which day. If I’d been taken by the police, Mum would surely have been involved by now, tracked down at the hospital. I fought an acid surge of nausea. Connie. What if—

I couldn’t think about that. Not now. I was always the strong one, the oldest. Never in trouble. Too clever for that. Till now.

I stared up at the ceiling. A metal grille no larger than my palm had been screwed into the wall near the ceiling. Air conditioning of some kind. The closest I got to a window. Even if I could reach up there and undo the screws, remove the grille, I wouldn’t fit more than one arm through the hole. So far that and the drain were the only way out.

The door slid open without a sound.

I hadn’t heard anyone coming. The realization hit me like a train.
This whole cell was soundproofed
.

What did they
do
to people in here?

I watched the door open.

“Mr Harker.” Two women stood in the corridor outside. One looked slightly older than Mum, the other was maybe about thirty: old but not that old. They seemed so completely normal – one wearing suit trousers, the other a dark, narrow skirt. Both wore wrinkled shirts and shoes that probably came from a catalogue. Ordinary on the surface of things but they were
here
, which made them serious.

And very, very scary.

“Unless one of you is my solicitor I don’t want to know.” It took a lot to sound so unconcerned, but I was proud that my voice didn’t shake. God, I was hurting.

The older one was holding a crutch. She held it out to me with a disturbing motherly smile. “You might be needing this. Quite a nasty injury to your leg there, Mr Harker. Come with us, please.”

I took the crutch and hobbled to the door. Every time so much as a toe touched the floor, burning pain shot up my injured leg, snatching the breath from my lungs. I was already calculating how easy it would be to get rid of them. I could probably move quite fast with the crutch, even though I’d probably regret it later.

Who was behind these other steel doors? More prisoners – and if so what had they done?

The younger woman closed the cell door behind me. It locked with a quiet, heavy click. She then pulled a gun from inside her jacket and let it nestle in her palm, dark and heavy. Away it went, hidden again. A chilly flutter settled in my belly. Unlike the rifles we use at school in the shooting range above the gym, I guessed that this was fully loaded with live ammunition. The woman smiled. Her teeth were slightly too bright, as if they’d been artificially whitened. “Obviously, Mr Harker, you’re a resourceful young man. Please do be aware that my colleague and I are authorized to carry firearms, and to use them if necessary. Obviously we’re trained to fire only warning shots but sometimes accidents do happen in the course of an incident.”

“Obviously.” I didn’t bother to hide my contempt. They were just a couple of idiotic patronizing jobsworth –
what
? Policewomen? Government endorsed psychopaths? But doing what? None of this made any sense. I hadn’t even been accused of anything. Yet.

All I’d done was steal an old manuscript from the British Library, which I admit was not exactly ethically pure, and I was being held under the Terrorist Act.

I was kidding myself. The Fontevrault Group. The grey car. I was here because of the Hidden. Because I’d stolen that manuscript.

I staggered between them to another steel door, but this one led to an elevator. Even so, I was still trapped in a room without windows. With
them
. No one spoke. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of asking questions, only to be refused a single answer. It was clear enough who had the advantage. I looked down at my boots, my torn and bloodstained jeans, trying not to panic. My legs were still caked with mud. What had happened to Joe in that lane? He was just a kid no older than Lissy. Even if those men had called for back-up and managed to catch him, surely
he
couldn’t be held in a place like this? But then again, I’d read newspaper reports of immigrant children being chucked into prison, and they hadn’t even stumbled into an enormous scary cover-up operation that was trying to disguise the existence of—

Of what? I still didn’t even know what to call them. The Hidden, but what did that really mean?

All I could do was hope I’d bought Joe enough time to get away. He was cocky and annoying and northern but he didn’t deserve to be caught up in this mess. What would he
do
by himself? Try to reach the hospital? He’d talked about going back to the church to find that woman who ran the shop at Hopesay Edge, he’d seemed convinced she knew something and might be able to help.

I didn’t really see how
anyone
could help.

I tried to imagine what Dad would say if he knew I was here. He’d kill me, then kill me again. He’s got a contacts book the size of a brick, website designer to the rich and famous. He’s the kind of guy who always knows someone in the right place. But I knew that even Dad would be helpless in the face of this place, these people. Because who were they even authorized by? Rooms with no windows. Middle-aged women with guns. It was just ridiculous. I’d heard about the police using mobile signal jamming to break lines of communication during major criminal activities. Could that really be why our phones hadn’t worked for God only knew how long? Were Joe and me now considered such major deviants that the authorities wanted us all out of contact?

Normal authorities or the Fontevrault?

The lift stopped with a jerk. The doors slid open and we stepped out into another corridor. This one had windows – high, pointed Gothic arches. A hellhole hidden inside a beautiful old building. Where? The walls were painted bare white, the floor dark polished wood. My whole body sagged with relief just to see daylight: weak rainy daylight, but real. I was still a prisoner but didn’t feel like one any more. I stepped across and glanced down, trying to get my bearings, and just caught sight of a grey city street far below, glimpsed the London Eye rearing up from the skyline, a flash of sunlight glancing off water.

London. Not far from the Thames.

For God’s sake. I’d driven for hours to escape this place, these people. Here I was again. More or less back where I’d started.

“Come with us, please, Mr Harker.” The older woman reached out, steering me away from the window. “I hope I’m not going to have to use force.”

So did I.

As we went on down the corridor, the atmosphere changed. The bare dark boards were covered in worn-out carpet now. Old but clearly once extremely expensive: you can tell by the way they fade. Dad told me. Oh, God. What the hell
was
he going to say about this? I’d been in trouble before but this time was different. This time I’d been caught.

The same questions whirled around in my head without end.
Someone
had searched the Reach. Had they found the manuscript in my pocket? Who were these people, really?

We stopped before a door – another Gothic arch, heavy wood, but the younger woman reached out and spoke quietly into an intercom panel screwed to the wall.

What were they going to do to me?

The door swung open with a soft metallic hiss.

And instead of walking into another cell, I stepped forwards into an office. More tastefully faded old rugs covered the floor from wall to wall. Light shone in through another arched window overlooking the street far below. All those people down in the street below, none of them knowing what was hidden in an ordinary London street: windowless rooms with soundproofed walls—

The door shut behind me, a gentle click. I sensed that the women were no longer behind me; I’d been left alone, or not quite.

“Rafe?”

A man was sitting by the desk, watching me. I hardly recognized his face. It had been years since I’d last seen him. He was skeleton-thin now, grey-skinned, smudges of purple beneath his eyes like a pair of bruises.

“Miles.” I tried not to sound too horrified.

“I warned your mother not to try keeping it all secret.” He even sounded different to how I remembered, so tired. “Clearly, she didn’t listen. You found out, didn’t you? Or did you just remember?” He laughed, but nothing was funny. “It started with these Internet searches, didn’t it? They’ve been watching you for years, Rafe. That trip to the British Library was your biggest mistake. You led the Fontevrault straight to me.”

For once, I had nothing to say.

30

I ran through twisting gloomy corridors, tears streaming down my face. At last, I found an empty chamber lit by a faint silvery light that shone from above. A heap of wizened apples sat in a corner. I reached up and felt a sticky bump on the back of my head where I’d hit the wall. Been
thrown
against the wall. I couldn’t stop shivering even though it wasn’t cold. When had I sat at the kitchen table with Mum, Nick and Joe, pushing that spaghetti Bolognese around my plate? Last night? The night before? I was already losing track of time, just like Tippy. I thought of Mum, of Connie, and I couldn’t stop sobbing.

Till the moment Rafe told me Connie had gone to hospital, death was something that only touched other people, like a virus I’d been immune to up till now. I still didn’t know what had happened to Connie, trapped down here, but the Swan King’s words echoed in my mind again and again. I had immortal blood, genetic material from an inhuman creature who had lived for thousands if not millions of years. Even if Connie fought the poison in her body and survived this illness, one day I would still watch her die. And not just her but everyone I knew – an endless cycle of knowing people, loving them and losing them while I lived on, grieving. For ever.

And then I heard footsteps. Someone coming. Fear gripped me again; I was frozen with it, totally unable to move. If the Swan King had sent someone to bring me back to his hall, I wouldn’t go. He had thrown me against a wall without even touching a single hair of my body: powerful, cruel and heartless. Not even Mum and me at our nastiest could beat what the King had done to Larkspur, torturing him with every word.

He was my father, too.

I clutched my knees and stared at my hands, long-fingered and paler than the belly of a fish. No matter how hard I gripped my legs, I couldn’t stop my fingers shaking. There was alien blood in those veins knitted together with inhuman DNA. I was a freak, a monster.

“Mum, what did you do?” I whispered,
“Mum.”

“Those tales about never eating the food, they’re not true. You can have an apple.”

I looked up, wiping my eyes. Tippy stood watching me, tugging at her nightie: it might have fitted a five-year-old, but it was obviously tight under her arms and too short, dangling above her knees. They hadn’t even bothered to find her any proper clothes. Sudden anger burst inside me. How dare they treat a child like this, neglecting her like an unwanted pet?

“What tales?” My voice was shaking just like my fingers. I tried to breathe steadily; I had to calm myself and think clearly or I’d never find a way out. I reached out and took an apple, though – I had no idea how long it was since I’d last eaten, and I was hungry. It tasted sweet and dusty. The juice ran down my chin.

“Oh, you know. Nurse was always telling me I must never eat fairy food, or I’d have to live in the fairy hill for ever. Well, it’s not true. I never ate fairy food. Nurse wouldn’t have let me. And I was still caught. I remember her kissing me good night, then Mammy. And I woke up here.”

“Come over here.” I tried to stop my voice shaking, not wanting to frighten her. “Your hair’s a state.” I could at least try to make her more comfortable.

Tippy stared at me. “A state?”

She didn’t understand; she was hundreds of years old. I tried again, choosing my words more carefully. “Your hair’s all tangled. Where can we find a brush?”

Tippy smiled, and for the first time she looked happy and excited, like an ordinary child. “Oh, please let’s get one. You’re the King’s daughter. You only need to ask anyone at all and they must bring whatever you desire. Only not Rose: she would have to do it, but she’d find a way to make you pay.”