Mind Blind (20 page)

He screamed…

I heard a scream. I wondered if I’d heard Bain die.

Then Daniel toppled over. Bain crawled out from under his cousin, stood up and lurched towards me.

“Lucy, I can’t argue or explain…” He coughed. “We don’t have time. Give me the urn.”

I clutched the urn to my chest. “But the flash drive is my only chance to be safe!”

He held out his hands. “Trust me. Please.”

And I did trust him. I gave him the urn.

I watched as he scrambled onto a low girder, untwisted the lid and shouted loud enough to be heard in the shadows by everyone watching and waiting. “The only copy of Dr Ivy Shaw’s page of codenames is on a flash drive in this urn. Once it’s gone, there will be no link between Lomond and anyone alive today.”

He held the urn high above his head, he tipped it up and, in the lights of the docks, a stream of black curved down to the smooth surface of the river. A line of silver, like a fish, dived out of the mouth of the urn, through the darkness, and dropped with a tiny splash into the water.

The flash drive was gone.

Bain jumped back down, groaning as he hit the boards of the bridge.

I heard a muted cheer from the family. Or it might just have been Roy.

Bain stood beside me, bent over with pain, and mumbled, “Get out of here, Lucy, quickly.”

“But won’t your family come after me? Now that I can
identify you and Daniel, and all the rest?”

He straightened up. “No, it would be too risky to come after you again. Now MI5 know for sure Lomond’s family exists and that we have attacked your family, the spooks will keep a very close eye on you all.”

I shook my head. “But you got past the spooks before. The mindblind are no match for mindreaders, are they? I thought you were going to use the flash drive to bargain for my life, but you just threw it away. Now you’re throwing me away too.”

Bain pushed his mask up onto his forehead. I could see his face dimly, but it was hidden from the cameras high above. “Lucy, just go, now. You will be safe, I promise.”

“How can you promise? And how can I believe you?”

He grabbed my hand, pressing something hard and rectangular into my palm. Then he pulled his hand and the object away, and slid his hand in his pocket.

“What was that?”

“The flash drive.”

“You dropped the flash drive in the river.”

“No. I nicked a spare from your house the night I broke in. I dropped the blank one in the river.” He coughed again. “An old carnie trick, sleight of hand. I’ve got the real one, Lucy. The one with the codenames. If my family think about coming after you again, I’ll threaten to post this straight to MI5.”

“But I thought you wanted to protect your family.”

“I’ve already protected them. MI5 think their only lead to us has gone. But I can take that protection away if my family decide to come after you. That’s what I always planned, to use the flash drive to keep you alive. So that’s how I can promise you’ll be safe. And if threatening them isn’t enough to stop them, then I’ll warn you, give you time to get away.”

“But how will you know? How will you be able to threaten them? Are you going back to your family? Ciaran, don’t go back to them!”

“We don’t have time to argue.” He pointed behind me. “You go that way to MI5 and let them ask their questions, then take you home. They’re no danger to you, because it’s not you they want, it’s us. And I’ll go that way, back to my family.”

In the middle of the bridge, Daniel moaned and rolled over. I saw a couple of the cousins creeping from the family side to pull him away.

“Why would you go back, when you’ve been running from them all this time?”

“Because now I know what I can do and so do they. I have a choice, for the first time. And I choose to be with my family. For now, anyway.”

“But Daniel tried to kill you and the rest of them just watched! You won’t be safe with your family.”

“I think I will be. I beat Daniel, so Daniel and Malcolm now know I’m as strong as them, in ways they don’t understand. Malcolm is a practical businessman. If he can use me to turn a profit, he’ll keep me alive. He might even be polite to me, to persuade me to stay with the family, now they know I can cope outside, too.” He smiled very slightly. “I survived two days with you, Lucy Shaw. I think I can survive my family!”

He looked around. “This is your last chance. Everyone is getting closer. The spooks are just round that corner. Go now.”

He turned away and took one step towards his family. Then he turned back.  “Remember, if they do come after you, I’ll be in touch, to warn you. I promise.”

“So I should hope I never see you again?”

“Yeah. You should hope that. Do you?”

I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. He grinned and walked away.

Then I turned my back on him and limped off the bridge.

As I struggled to walk in a straight line, I could sense everyone around me.

Ahead, just beyond the bridge, I could sense Daniel’s grogginess. A little further on was Roy’s relief, and Mum’s exhausted happiness.

The rest of the family were backing off, keen to get away fast.

And in the midst of them all, I could sense Malcolm’s calm reassessment of the situation, and his grudging respect. Respect? For me?

On the other side of the river from my family, I sensed MI5’s accelerating intent to rush the bridge.

So I walked faster, trying to ignore the pain jarring up my body with every step.

I sensed people getting on with routine lives in the buildings by the river, and the excitement of genuine guisers a couple of streets away.

And I could sense Lucy…

As I walked away from her, I sensed Lucy’s mind, which had become almost as familiar as my own over the last two days.

She was still worried. I sighed. I’d done all I could for her. What was she worrying about
now
?

Ah. She was worrying about me…

She didn’t need to worry. I could handle my family. I was getting used to being the sensitive one.

As I walked off the bridge, I grinned. We’d all been worrying about experiments conducted last century; now I was ready to think about experiments in this century. I was ready to discover how far my powers could stretch and what I was really capable of. Not for my family, not for some shadowy spies, but for myself.

“Come on, Lucy. He must have told you something.

“Where he lives?

“Where he goes to school?

“The name of someone in his family?”

“No. Sorry. He didn’t tell me anything at all. We barely spoke. I don’t even know his name.”

If I just kept repeating the same story, eventually they’d let me go home.

After all, they couldn’t read my mind.

Lari Don has worked in politics and broadcasting, but is now a full-time writer. Born in Chile, she travelled round the most exotic parts of South America before she was old enough to notice any of it, then she grew up in the north-east of Scotland. She now lives in Edinburgh with her children and two cats, who enjoy distracting her by walking on the keyboard and chasing the mouse in a bid to write themselves into her books (the cats that is, not the children). She is the author of more than twenty books for younger readers including the award-winning
Fabled Beast Chronicles
, which were inspired by Scottish folklore and legend.
Mind Blind
is her first novel for teens.

Visit Lari’s website at
www.laridon.co.uk
,
or follow
@LariDonWriter
on Twitter