Losing Lila (33 page)

The elevator doors opened onto another corridor and I swept the thought away. We had come this far – we were almost in sight of the finish line. We were going to do this.
I
was going to do this. We ran down another long corridor, past a dozen glass-fronted rooms. I caught sight of stainless-steel worktops, banks of computers and futuristic-looking machines – something that looked like an X-ray machine, another that looked like an MRI scanner. The last room on our left made me stumble. It was empty except for a metal gurney. White straps hung down from each corner like zombie bandages. Next to the bed was a shining tray of metal instruments and a machine like the one Jack had been rigged up to in the hospital. This was the place they did their tests. My mum could have been strapped to that very gurney. Alex pulled me forward, past the room.

Ahead of us was a door with a lock on it. Before we were five metres away from it, Jack blew the lock off. I kicked the door back with a quick glance. Inside was a room the size of my bedroom back at Jack’s. It was filled with blinking lights and towering stacks of computer servers. This was the heart of Stirling Enterprises, where all the data they had was kept. If we destroyed it, we would destroy all the data they had on us, all their findings. It was a start. Then I’d destroy the labs, starting with the one I’d just passed with the bed and the machines in it.

Jack didn’t wait for me to get out a lighter and try to direct the flame. He fired a round of bullets into the server’s heart. It smoked and whined in protest.

‘That’s not going to work,’ Alex said. He turned and jogged down the corridor.

‘Are you sure you can handle this?’ Jack said, looking at me nervously.

I turned my head slowly to stare at him. ‘Are you doubting my ability? Because, you know, it totally beats yours.’

Alex was back at our side. He was holding a small glass bottle in his hand. It was full of a clear liquid – alcohol or something from one of the labs. I noticed the skull and crossbones label on its front. ‘Get back!’ Alex shouted, pushing Jack and me behind him.

‘Wait!’ I yelled. There were pipes latticing the ceiling inside the server room. Some kind of sprinkler system. I focused all my attention on them and ripped them free, bending and twisting them like pipe cleaners. They screamed in response and we all covered our ears.

Alex smiled at me in pride and then threw the bottle into the room, firing a bullet straight into it as it flew through the air. The bottle shattered loudly, exploding in a giant ball of fire. Instantly licks of blue, green and orange flames began streaking along the corridor and black smoke started to billow around us.

The sprinkler system above us kicked in, drenching us in seconds.
Crap
, I thought, staring up at the pipes. I should have tackled these ones too when I’d had the chance. It was a lot harder to focus with water pouring into my eyes and soaking me.

‘Harvey couldn’t have disabled the sprinkler system while he was disabling everything else?’ I cried over the hiss of the water.

‘Can you stop it?’ Alex shouted back.

I looked up, squinting through the lashing rain at the pipes above us, my hair plastering over my face. I tried to feel for the edges of the water like I’d done in the shower and when the tidal wave had ripped towards us. I tried to order it to go backwards or upwards or anywhere that wasn’t onto us and the smouldering fire. The flames were already sputtering, cowering back into the room. At this rate nothing was going to burn down.
Back the hell off
, I roared in my head, feeling the surge of energy start to build inside me as if thousands of cells in my body were waking up.

The water stopped cascading on us all of a sudden. It was listening to me. It was sucking backwards down the pipes. I pushed it and pushed it as though I was jamming my finger up a hose.

‘OK, Lila, the fire! Focus on the fire. We need the fire to destroy this whole floor. We need it to burn fast and hard.’

The flames were darting out of the server room once more, hissing where they were making tracks across the wet surfaces. A single flame sprang along the ground, racing blue and orange towards us. Jack dodged back out of its way and I took hold of it like a snake’s head and held it back, away from us, twisting it and forcing it back into the server room. Dense black smoke filled the corridor, throwing itself on top of us like a thick wool blanket that I couldn’t breathe or see through.

‘Come on, this way!’ Jack started pulling me back towards the fire exit.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Hang on.’ I could feel the water starting to press again, like my mind was the dam and it was starting to crack. I shoved it backwards hard, letting the flames surge upwards. The pipes started to buckle and whine under the heat, scalding steam evaporating into the smoke. My face felt like melting plastic. I was aware of Jack and Alex calling to me, of someone pulling at my arms, but I dug my heels in and stayed where I was. I needed to make sure it burnt. That everything burnt. I wanted to make sure nothing was left.

I hurled a spear of flame into the glass wall of the lab and heard the splintering crack of glass and the roar as the fire gulped down the air in the room. There was a bursting sound and another huge explosion which knocked me off my feet, throwing me onto my back and sending shooting pains down my arms and legs. Flames arched over my head and a ball of fire raced towards us. In the next instant I felt Alex fall on me, his chest colliding with mine, slamming me flat against the ground, his arms braced round my head. I closed my eyes, curled into him and forced the fire back, back, back. Away from him.

A second later Alex was on his feet, dragging me upright as the flames licked hungrily over his head. Coughing and spluttering, he pushed me the last few steps into the stairwell.

The fire door clanged shut behind us and I felt the cool blast of air hit me. I glanced at Jack and Alex. Alex’s T-shirt was clinging to him; the backs of his arms were scorched red with burns, streaked black with smoke. Jack was bent double, coughing, one hand pressed to his chest, the other clutching the banister.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ Alex said, drawing a rasping breath and taking my hand.

‘No, no!’ I said, pulling out of his grip and turning back towards the door. ‘I have to stay. We have to make sure it burns.’

‘It
is
burning!’ he yelled back at me.

Jack’s hand was on my back, urging me down the stairs. ‘Lila, you did it. It’s burning. We need to get out of here.’

I let them both pull me down the stairs, my eyes streaming from the smoke still, my lungs fit to burst, glancing backwards the whole time, wondering if the fire really was burning it all to ashes. We smashed through the door into the lobby, letting it slam behind us. Demos hadn’t moved. He was still standing in the centre of the room, his gaze level with Richard Stirling, his shoulders slightly rounded with the concentration it must have been taking to hold him and Robocop frozen for so long.

‘Did you do it?’ he called out to us.

‘Yeah, we gotta get out of here,’ Jack replied, running past him. ‘Let them go,’ he said, waving his gun in the direction of Richard Stirling and Robocop.

‘You ready?’ Demos asked, pulling a gun from the inside of his jacket.

‘Yep, do it,’ Jack answered.

Richard Stirling blinked then frowned. He opened his mouth, saw the gun in Demos’s hand and shut it again. Robocop fired off an empty round, his gun clicking feebly in his hand. He looked at it in disgust then spat a curse in our direction. He glared at Jack. Jack smiled warmly back at him.

Demos held Stirling’s gaze for a few seconds. Then he marched straight over to Stirling and brought his gun up to rest against his temple.

‘Demos!’ Alex shouted. ‘No. We agreed. We’re bringing him with us and handing him over to the police.’

Demos paused, his eyes drilling into Richard Stirling’s. His finger eased down on the trigger.

‘Demos!’ I shouted. ‘Come on! Let’s get out before the place burns down.’

Richard Stirling turned to me, a frown creating a furrow between his eyes. Then he looked over his shoulder at the door. Black smoke was starting to slide underneath it, wisping its way towards us. The surface was starting to blister.

Demos still didn’t move. Alex waited a beat then he took my hand and pulled me towards the door. ‘Come on, Jack!’ he shouted over his shoulder.

Jack pushed his gun into Robocop’s back and nudged him towards the door. He looked over at Demos. ‘Are you coming?’ he shouted at him.

Demos still didn’t answer. He continued to stand there with the gun against Stirling’s temple. The two men stared each other out as smoke started to swirl in clouds around them.

I paused in the doorway. ‘We can’t just leave him.’

‘We’re not staying,’ Alex shouted back just as a huge explosion blasted open the fire-escape door.

I stopped arguing with him. Plaster and concrete had begun raining down and the flames from the stairwell seemed to gather before leaping in bold streaks across the lobby, towards where Demos was standing, engulfing him in black smoke.

Jack pushed Robocop through the doorway. Alex pushed me through after and I copied him, pulling my T-shirt up to cover my mouth, all the while craning backwards, trying to catch a glimpse of Demos through the flames. What was he doing? Alex was right behind me, though, urging me forward.

The smoke in the corridor was heavy, leaking through the air-conditioning vents above us and making it feel as if we were running through an underground tunnel. My eyes were burning; the air I was sucking into my lungs was as thick and acrid as tar. I could just make out Jack about ten metres ahead.

I tried to blow the smoke backwards, force it to retreat, and it did a little, starting to thin in places, billowing out to the sides like a cloak. We could at least see where we were going now, the long corridor stretching ahead of us. The back entrance that Sara had led us through at the far end was propped open with something, letting in a sliver of light.

Then we heard a crack, muffled among the roaring of the flames and the rising shriek of sirens from outside. Alex jerked to a stop, his arms flying out to the sides, grasping for me. I grabbed hold of his arm to keep upright. Ahead, I watched Jack stumble, then stagger, his shoulder banging into the wall. In slow motion, with a scream welling inside me, I watched him slide to the ground.

‘Jack!’ I shouted, my throat burning, shoving my way past Alex to get to him.

The smoke swallowed Jack whole just then and I blew it back with such force that it swept like a hurricane down the narrow corridor, smashing the door wide open and letting in a flood of light. A shadow appeared, striding through the smoke, heading towards us. I barely registered that it was Robocop. I didn’t register the gun at all – not until I heard the second crack. Then it was automatic. I hurled Alex out of the way so hard and so fast that the sound he made when he collided with the wall behind me drowned out the sound of the bullet smacking home.

It was the force of it that shocked me. It felt like a spear had been hurled into my ribcage. It splintered through the bone, twisting and mauling until I felt its hot, fat body sink into the cushion of my lung.

My knees smashed into the floor, graceless and heavy. Alex’s voice roared in my ear before becoming faint and tinny, as though he had been suddenly transported to another dimension. There was another crack; this one sent me tumbling forward, my temple smacking into the floor. Thick, cloying black smoke closed over me, filling my nostrils and my mouth.

An image of my mum floated in front of me. It wasn’t the image of her from a few minutes previously, lying like a corpse in my father’s arms, but from before, from way back. She was kneeling on the deck by the swimming pool of our old house in Washington, a towel in her outstretched arms. She was smiling, saying something I couldn’t hear. She was waiting for me to climb out of the pool so she could wrap me up in it and bundle me dry. I felt my limbs heavy and cold as though I was treading water in a lake of quicksand. I couldn’t reach her and a panic took hold of my heart and squeezed with all its might. The image turned foggy and dissolved. And then a thought poked through the darkness, swamping my head.
Jack
. Was he OK? I tried to turn my head to look, but black and red spots jumped and swam in front of my eyes. I tried to call out for Alex, but my mouth felt as if it had been crammed full of rusty coins. I choked on a warm stream of bile that gushed up my throat then rinsed back down.

A sudden jolt. Warmth against my cheek. Wetness underneath me. Hands clutching me. Then footsteps pounding, jarring me with each stride, sending rivers of fire flashing through my veins. And then cool air engulfed me, stinging and vicious against my skin. The softness of arms was replaced by hard, unforgiving ground. Hands were tugging and voices were calling my name, barking orders at me. Then, just as the darkness started to throb and close over me and the pain started to lessen, a stream of molten lava was poured directly into the hole in my chest. A scream tore out of my throat, slicing apart the night air, and seemed to cleave my whole body in two as well. The lava cooled instantly, turning to rock, pressing down so heavily on my chest that I could no longer breathe and the darkness was falling again, heavier this time, a blizzard of black ice which was slowly burying me.

‘Come back to me, Lila!’

That was Alex. I had come back to him. What was he talking about? I always came back to him. I always would.

‘Stay awake. Come on, wake up, damn it!’ He shook my shoulders hard. ‘Don’t go to sleep. Open your eyes. Lila, listen to me, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, but you have to stay too. You can’t just give up.’ His voice was hoarse, threaded through with panic.

I tried to smile. Why was he panicking? Alex never panicked. I wasn’t going anywhere. I just needed to sleep a little bit. If he could just hold me, I could sleep right now. But he’d need to hold me really tight because it was so cold. Freezing in fact. The air con was blasting. Or maybe it was because my clothes were wet from the sprinkler.