Beyond the Shroud (12 page)

‘
Adam! Where are you
?' — one of the girls, shrill with panic.

‘Gaaaaargh!'

‘Sssssssssss …'

Desperately I lunged through the trees towards the sounds of the struggle, terror for Richard washing through my brain in a icy tide. ‘
Richard! Hold on! I'm coming! I'm here!
' My lungs were raw; adrenaline burned like acid in my blood. I smashed though the bushes, branches tearing at me, twigs whipping my face, my clothes ripping. At last they were in front of me, shapeless in the dark — a writhing, twisting, struggling shape convulsing on the ground. I skirted the dark mass with my weapon raised, waiting for a clear strike.

Then one of the shapes reared up over the other, straddling it, its face — dimly lit by the distant fire — a mask of blood. ‘Stop struggling, or I'll throttle you within an inch of your life!
I mean it!
' The face was unrecognisable, but the voice — harsh and gasping, savage with pain and
triumph — was Richard's.

The dark shape on the ground lay still, face down in the dirt. I advanced on them warily, stick raised. ‘And I'll smash your head in for good measure,' I growled, hoping I sounded as fierce as Richard. Slowly, stiffly, he clambered to his feet, wiping a hand across his mouth and staring down at the dark blood.

‘Rich — are you —'

‘It's by dose,' he said briefly. ‘I'b fide.'

He aimed a none-too-gentle kick at the figure on the ground. ‘On your feet, whatever you are — one false move, and you're mincemeat. Come into the light where we can get a look at you.'

I followed the two silhouettes into the circle of firelight. The other three were clutching each other on the far side of the fire, eyes wide. I stepped up beside Richard, my weapon at the ready. And then every nerve in my body went numb, and the stick fell from my hand. As if from very far away I heard Richard's voice, anger edging into disbelief: ‘Who are
you
?'

I didn't need to ask. I already knew.

It was Weevil.

Muddy, bloody and shivering, standing there in the firelight in his striped pyjamas.

‘Who
are
you?' Richard repeated.

‘Yeah — and how did you get here? Because you're from —' Jamie hesitated.

Our world.

Weevil smiled. ‘Adam knows who I am,' he said. ‘I live at Highgate wiff him. I'm his friend.'

‘Well, come closer to the fire then,' said Kenta with her shy smile. ‘You must be freezing. And look at your slippers — they're in tatters. Here —' she dug in her backpack — ‘you can use my spare top if you …'

‘Hang on one second, Kenta.' Richard was scowling.
‘This guy says he's Adam's friend … but Adam doesn't seem very pleased to see him. And how did he get here in the first place? Not with his
friend
Adam, that's for sure. And what was he doing sneaking round our campsite, punching me on the nose when I …'

‘When you tackled me,' finished Weevil. ‘In the dark, when I was all alone.'

‘Adam?' said Rich. ‘Is this guy — what's your name?'

‘Weevil.'

‘Weevil?
What kind of a name is that?'

‘My name. Don't you know what a weevil is? It's a fing …'

Suddenly, numb shock gave way to fury. ‘Don't listen to him!' I yelled. ‘He's not my friend! He's snuck in here somehow — he said he could get in anywhere, and he was right! He wanted to come to Quested Court, but I wouldn't let him! He — he steals everything! My penny whistle — my project — my hide-out — and now this!' My words were harsh and jagged, and tears burned my cheeks. Everyone would see them — Weevil would see them — but I didn't care.

‘I know you're surprised to see me, Adam. But you're forgetting your manners. Won't you introduce me to your friends?'

‘
No!
Get away from us! Go back where you came from! You've stolen everything else — you're not stealing them too!'

The others looked helplessly from Weevil to me and back again. ‘I can't get back,' said Weevil. ‘I don't know how.' His voice trembled slightly, as if it was on the edge of tears. ‘I'm cold — and hungry.'

‘Oh, for goodness sake!' said Gen impatiently. ‘What do we do now? As if things weren't bad enough! Adam — can you put your differences aside while we get to the bottom of this? And you — whatever you call yourself
— I suppose you'd better come closer to the fire before you get hypothermia or something. I think you owe us all an explanation — especially Adam.'

‘He can give the explanation where he is,' I growled. I could feel the new Adam sloughing away like a dry snakeskin. The old one was right there underneath — bitter, angry, unforgiving. ‘If he comes near this fire, I'm going. I'll set up camp on my own. I won't be with him —
I won't!
I won't let him burrow his way in — you don't know him! You don't know what he's like!'

‘Adam.' Kenta's voice was very gentle. ‘I can't believe … this isn't like you. Surely he can't be so bad? It's frightening enough for us, being here in the dark. And we have each other. Imagine …'

‘The problem is, it's dangerous,' said Richard slowly. ‘Whether we like it or not, he's here. And this … this is Karazan. There might be things out there, in the forest … Adam, we have to offer him the protection of our fire, at least. If we don't, something might happen to him — and it would be our fault. But I don't understand how he's here at all. Did you go to Quested Court and convince Q to let you follow us?'

‘If you'll let me sit by the campfire, I'll tell you. Adam already knows part of it, don't you, Adam? It's all to do wiff computers. You can burrow inside and find out all sorts of fings, if you know how. That's what I did. Not at Quested Court — at Highgate … on Adam's computer.'

I gaped at him. ‘I don't believe you,' I said flatly. ‘There isn't a VRE Interface on that computer. There isn't even a single computer game — Matron sold them all. There's no way you could get to Karazan from there.'

‘Fink about it, Adam. Not about what there
isn't,
but what there
is.
Quentin Quested's e-mail address — a hotline to his personal computer system at Quested Court. Did you ever find out what a hacker was? I said I could
get in anywhere, Adam — and it's true.'

‘But … my secret password …'

Weevil snickered. ‘Password? I found that out in less than five minutes. You silly fing. Trying so hard to make it secret — and then giving away two secrets in one! It gave me access to Quentin Quested's computer —
and
it told me the key combination to bring me here to Karazan.' He smirked round at us all. ‘Saved me a lot of trouble, that did. Fanks, Adam.
Alt Control Q.
Clever password — I don't fink.'

I still didn't believe it could be true. ‘But … how did you even
know
?'

Weevil smirked at me. ‘It started off wiff me just wanting to come to Quested Court and meet Quentin Quested. But then I read your e-mail to Richard …'

‘You
what
?' growled Rich.

‘… and it made me fink.
Imagine if we got to go to Karazan again
, you wrote. Was it just an imaginary game, or could it have something to do wiff Quentin Quested's “top-secret breakfrough in computer game technology”? And now,' he finished with a smug smirk, ‘I know.'

I didn't know whether to be angrier with Weevil or myself. How could I have been so dumb? But then, how could I ever have guessed what he would do? Suddenly I felt exhausted, as if my body and my brain had turned to putty. The day had gone on forever — all I wanted now was for it to end. Kenta stepped forward, as if she'd read my mind. ‘Well, it was very wrong of you,' she told Weevil severely. ‘Like reading someone's private diary, only worse. No one invited you here, and you shouldn't have come. You deserve to be left out in the cold. But right now, we all need to sleep.' She passed him her sleeping bag. ‘You can use this — but you can take it over to the other side of the fire, on your own. I'll share with you, Gen — there's plenty of room for two, and it will be warmer that way. Perhaps things will look better in the morning.'

Jamie looked over at me and pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Yeah — and in the morning, when it's light, we'll have a
private meeting
,' he said importantly. ‘Just the five of us — to decide what to do. But now, I'm sleepy — and I vote we don't let this
Weevil
have a turn on watch. Not till we're sure he can be trusted. And that —' he said with a meaningful glare at Weevil — ‘just might be
never
!'

But the only thing that looked better in the morning was Jamie's orange face, which had faded overnight to a more natural-looking tan. Apart from that, things looked just the same — to me, anyhow. Weevil's presence cast a shadow over the whole forest — the whole of Karazan. A shadow even the rising sun and the dawn chorus of birds could do nothing to lighten.

The freeze-dried scrambled eggs we made tasted slimy and bland and reminded me of Highgate. My eyelids felt as if they were made of sandpaper, and my head ached from lack of sleep.

The five of us squatted together round the fire, nibbling at our eggs and sipping our mugs of cocoa, having Jamie's secret meeting. Weevil sat a few metres away in Kenta's sleeping bag, his back to a tree, watching and doing his best to listen.

‘Whatever we do, we can't win,' muttered Richard. ‘There's no two ways about it: Weevil — what a dumb name! — was wrong to come. But he's here now — and the only way for him to get back would be to use —' he lowered his voice to a whisper so low we could barely hear the words — ‘the microcomputer.'

‘But
we
need that,' hissed Jamie in alarm. ‘What if he nicked it? Then we'd be sunk! I vote we don't even tell him about it.'

‘He probably already knows,' I said bleakly. ‘He seems to know everything else. And anyhow, he doesn't
want
to go back — he wants to be here, with us. And if he doesn't want to go, he won't.'

‘So what do we do?' asked Gen. ‘Ignore him, and hope he goes away? Pretend to be friends, but keep an eye on him?'

‘I hate excluding people,' Jamie muttered, not meeting my eye. ‘It's happened to me often enough, and I know how it feels. It's a kind of bullying, my mum says. Sometimes people really do just want to be friends — but they haven't had any practice at it, so they don't know how.'

I snorted, but said nothing. Jamie blushed.

‘What about food? And water? We can't just leave him to drink from streams and things — it might not be safe. It seems unkind, having our breakfast while he sits there with nothing. I feel really uncomfortable about it. I'm not hungry — can't I give him …'

‘For heaven's sake, Kenta — you'd give him the shoes off your feet if you had the chance,' said Gen. ‘Adam — you're very quiet. What do you think we should do?'

I sighed. ‘I don't know,' I said dully. ‘I really don't. What I'd like to do is go back to Quested Court, dump him off, and start all over again. But every minute we waste is a minute more for Kai in Shakesh — and for Hannah.'

‘Do we have to make a decision now?' asked Richard slowly. ‘Can't we get moving — find the north road, at least? What he does is his problem. He can tag along or not — his choice. If you feel bad about him being hungry, Kenta, you can give him the leftover bread — that'll make him wish he hadn't come, if nothing else. We're talking in circles. We might as well do that at the same time as we walk — but we can do the walking in a straight line, at least.'

Richard's straight line was surprisingly easy to find.