The Orphan Factory (The Orphan Trilogy, #2) (25 page)

“Yo, what ya got there?” the ringleader asked.

“Protection for a torn ligament,” Nine said.

Not believing him, the ringleader reached out to remove the arm band.

Nine pulled away. He couldn’t afford to lose the White Gold. It was all that kept his whereabouts hidden from Omega. Besides, he didn’t want to have to explain to Helen what its purpose was.

The ringleader stood over Nine and looked pointedly at the arm band. He stood legs astride and hands on hips, and he clearly wasn’t going to go without finding out what was concealed beneath it.

Helen could see by the look in Nine’s eye he wasn’t going to oblige. “This is not the time to be a hero, Luke!” she screamed.

Glancing around, Nine noticed the picket fence he’d been backed up against was rickety. Some of its timber batons were loose and several hung at odd angles.

They’ll have to do
.

Without warning, he kicked the ringleader full force in the balls then spun around and tore off two loose batons. The other youths were momentarily transfixed while their leader lay on the ground, groaning in pain.

Now armed with two timber batons each around four feet long and tapering to a sharp point at one end, the orphan employed the Japanese kendo stick fighting techniques Kentbridge had taught him. Kendo was a key part of Teleiotes, the martial art he and his fellow orphans had been drilled in since they were toddlers.

The batons Nine wielded moved so fast in his hands they were a blur. Three more youths were felled before the remaining four had even recovered from the initial surprise of seeing their leader pole-axed.

Helen looked on in disbelief as her date turned his attention to accounting for those who still presented a threat.

Shorty drew his knife and advanced on Nine. The orphan threw one of his batons at him. Its point lodged in Shorty’s thigh, causing him to drop the knife and fall to his knees, screaming in pain and bleeding profusely.

Nine used the remaining baton as Filipino martial arts experts use their infamous Eskrima sticks to dispatch their opponents in what is generally accepted as the most effective form of stick fighting. Alternating between clubbing, stabbing and swinging at his attackers, while never offering them a stationary target, the orphan felled the remaining three youths in what seemed to Helen like the blink of an eye. In fact, it took all of ten seconds.

When it was over, six youths lay on the ground, injured or unconscious. Two others – including the ringleader – had scurried away into the night. Those who remained and were still conscious, lay moaning in pain. Some had broken bones; all were cut and bruised.

Breathing hard, Nine threw his remaining baton away and turned to Helen. She was looking at him as if he were an alien.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “Who are you?”

Still breathless, the orphan could only stare back at her. At first he couldn’t recognize the look on her face.

Is she scared of me?

The tender glances she’d exchanged with him earlier had been replaced by a look of bewilderment and fear. Nine stepped toward her. “Helen,” he said, his hand outstretched.

Suddenly unsure who, or what, this boy was, Helen felt afraid all over again. The realization hit her she was more scared of Nine than she’d been of the African-American youths who had threatened them. She turned and ran for home.

The orphan just stood there for a moment, shocked at what had happened. He forlornly watched Helen as she ran away from him. How easily everything had unraveled. “Helen!” It was a helpless cry.

He was about to chase after her when a police car rounded the corner, its lights flashing. A concerned neighbor had alerted the police when the ruction had started only a few short minutes earlier.

Nine retrieved his wallet and leather jacket, and ran off into the darkness. Behind him, the police car pulled up alongside the six injured youths. The youths didn’t know it, but they had a long night ahead of them explaining to the cops how a young white kid had given them a good old fashioned beating.

45

Helen set out for school with the memory of the previous night’s violent incident fresh in her mind. She still found it hard to believe what had happened and wondered if it was just a bad dream.

Walking past the picket fence where she and Nine had been attacked reminded her it wasn’t a dream. It was real. The fence batons the orphan had used to such devastating effect remained where he’d left them, on the sidewalk. Bloodstains covered both, prompting her to look away.

It was then she noticed Nine. He was walking toward her on the other side of the street. She turned to go back the way she’d come when Nine ran across the street and intercepted her.

“Please,” he implored. “Just give me ten minutes. I’ll explain everything.”

Helen shrank back from him. Where she once found him cute and different, she now found him intimidating. A fighting machine. She tried to keep walking, but he blocked her path. “I’ll be late for school,” she objected.

“Your studies don’t matter right now.” Determined to put things right between them, Nine took her by the hand and led her to a bench in a small park next to a daycare center. Mothers were arriving outside the center to drop off their children for the morning.

Helen reluctantly agreed to hear Nine out. She looked into his intense green eyes and wondered what was really behind them.

“What you witnessed last night,” the orphan said, “I can explain.” The skeptical look on Helen’s face told him he had a lot of convincing to do. Nine continued, “I admit there’s a lot I haven’t told you about myself--”

“You’ve told me next to nothing!” Helen interjected. “But you seem to know everything about me.”

“You’re right. And one of the things I never told you was that I’ve been trained in martial arts since I was old enough to walk. I got my black belt when I was ten.”

Helen thought for a moment then shook her head. “No, there’s more to this. I think you have been lying to me all the time.” She moved a few inches away from him as if to reinforce the point. “And there are some other things I find strange. Like how you always wear jackets or long sleeve shirts, even when it’s hot. Like now. Is it something to do with that thing wrapped around your arm?”

Nine had hoped that in the maelstrom of the previous evening she hadn’t seen the arm band when he’d been forced to remove his jacket.

No such luck
.

“What was that thing?” Helen asked.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Fine. Then show it to me.”

Nine looked into her eyes and realized he couldn’t lie anymore. She was too perceptive to be fooled and he didn’t yet have the skills to keep pretending to be someone he wasn’t. It just wasn’t going to wash with her anymore.
The orphan took a deep breath. He knew he had two options: either leave his sweetheart and never see her again, or tell the truth.

Both options totally suck
.

He decided then and there he couldn’t ever leave her.

My life wouldn’t be worth living
.

Problem was he’d been forced to lie for so long that the thought of telling the truth felt totally alien. Every single cell in his body cried out for him to keep lying. “Are you sure you really want to know who I am?”

“Yes!” Helen was becoming impatient. “I need to know you on a deeper level so we can connect more.” She wasn’t at all sure she meant that, but her enquiring mind wanted to find out who this strange boy
really
was.

Overriding the ongoing feelings of resistance he felt, Nine forced himself to roll up his shirt sleeve and reveal the arm band around his forearm.

Helen’s eyes immediately focused on the edges of the plastic bag that poked out from beneath the band. “What is that?”

“It holds a substance that makes me invisible to my superiors’ radar technology.” Nine heard himself saying the words and thought how ridiculous they sounded even to him. “I’m on the run, you see.” He lifted up the arm band and tapped the bag of White Gold that was now almost completely visible. “This is the only thing preventing me from getting caught.”

“Getting caught?”

“Yes.”

“Is this your idea of a joke?”

“It’s no joke, Helen.”

“Really?” she scoffed. “So you’re on the run from the like CIA or something?”

“Not the CIA. No. It’s a much more secretive organization who are hell bent on running the entire world. I am one of a number of orphans they created.” Nine paused for a few seconds, before adding, “It was all unsanctioned by the scientific community, of course
.
”

Stunned, Helen said nothing.

“We are all being raised to become elite spies and assassins,” Nine continued, “but by escaping from the orphanage and being here with you I am going against my programming.”

“You’re insane, you know that?” Helen stood up and appeared ready to leave. “Unlike you, I am in the real world and need to get good grades at school. I can’t sit around listening to someone conjuring up fantasies!”

Nine was upset she hadn’t believed a word he’d said. He knew it could possibly endanger her to reveal anything more, but he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. His desire to remain her boyfriend got the better of him and he grabbed her by the hand, stopping her from walking away. He gently but firmly pulled her back down onto the bench.

“Listen, I am telling the truth. Everything I told you about me before today was a lie, so I don’t expect you to believe me now. However, I can prove things to you.”

“How? By putting on a cape and flying through the sky like Superman?”

“How do you think I beat all those guys last night?” Nine retorted. “Even though I’ve been doing martial arts all my life, it still took the strength of a grown man to do what I did. Me and the other orphans have been genetically engineered for optimal physical, mental, and psychological attributes.
We have a different number of chromosomes than the average person.” He quoted almost word for word what Doctor Pedemont had told the orphans. That was back when Kentbridge considered the youngest orphan, Twenty Three, was old enough to know the truth – or part of the truth at least. The information hadn’t really shocked any of them then, but it shocked Helen now.

The Greek girl remained silent, staring at the nearby play center. Then she turned back to Nine. “So does the orphanage you come from have a name?”

“Yeah.” He hesitated.

Will she recognize the name?
Too bad, I’m past the point of no return now
.

“It’s called the Pedemont Orphanage.”

Helen looked thoughtful. The name obviously rang a bell. “The Pedemont Orphanage? In Chicago?”

“Yes. In Riverdale.”

“Oh my God.” It dawned on her he’d been spying on her. “You followed me here from Chicago?”

Nine couldn’t meet her accusing stare.

“Who the hell are you?” Helen asked fearfully as she stood up once more.

The orphan wanted to tell her more, but he now felt an intense shame. Still he couldn’t look her in the eye.

Helen started to walk off then glanced back. “We’ll talk more about this after school.”

Nine nodded and watched her as she hurried off to school. He felt miserable. To his mind, the meeting had gone about as bad as it could have gone. He wondered if she’d agree to ever see him again.

46
 

“That’s it,” Naylor said, glancing at the diary on his desktop. “Your two weeks are up. So we now have twenty two orphans. Not twenty three. Other than that it’s business as usual, so let it go, Tommy.”

Looking at Kentbridge’s image on the video screen before him, the Omega Agency director could see the special agent wasn’t through arguing his case.

“But, sir, I had other--”

“It’s not a request, it’s an order!” Naylor barked. Observing how stressed Kentbridge was becoming, Naylor tried to soften things a little. “Maybe we’ll find Number Nine in the next year or two, maybe we won’t, but either way the other orphans must be your priority from this moment on. Especially as our cloning plans may possibly amount to nothing now that we’ve lost Doctor Pedemont.”

Naylor’s reference to the deceased doctor had the effect Naylor intended. Kentbridge’s expression and body language indicated he was ready to concede defeat on the missing orphan issue.

The director continued, “This batch of orphans could be the first and only for all we know. We’ve spent hundreds of millions on them and the Pedemont Project, and you need to make sure every one of these kids pays on our investment. Omega’s future depends on them. And it depends on you getting the very best out of them.”

Naylor ended the call and Kentbridge’s image disappeared from the video screen.

#

Kentbridge slammed his office door shut and strode out along the corridor at the orphanage with Naylor’s words still ringing in his ears. He wasn’t going to give up on finding Nine, even if he’d given Naylor the impression he had conceded defeat.

I’m going to find that little ankle-biter even if it kills me.

Desperate for some kind of breakthrough, he headed straight for the tree house he’d visited earlier in the hope of finding a clue to Nine’s whereabouts. As before, Cavell accompanied him up the old sycamore tree.

Inside the tree house, Kentbridge put himself in the state of mind and persona of a rebellious twelve-year-old boy. He remembered that Nine’s voice had recently broken.

Puberty
.

The special agent thought about that for a moment. He tried to remember what he was like more than twenty years ago when he’d gone through puberty.

What did it feel like?

He closed his eyes and attempted to tap into some early recollection.

Pimples. Raging hormones. Self-consciousness. Girls.

That was all that came to him. When he opened his eyes, he noticed a folded piece of notepaper protruding from a crack in the tree house wall. Curious, he reached out for it. Cavell barked as if trying to stop him.