Revenge (11 page)

Sligo was reaching out awkwardly for
something
on his left, but what? There was nothing in the room. It was empty.

But suddenly his fleshy fingers gripped a round, rocky protrusion in the wall, close to the corner. He pushed it flat with the palm of his hand and it sank away. The wall on our left started moving. Like a huge stone sliding door! Were there two chambers down here?

Sligo dived through the opening, out of Ryan's startled grip.

Ryan and I flung ourselves on him, trying to pull him out. He mustn't get away!

But Sligo wasn't giving up. He kicked out and I copped a hit square in the face and fell back, knocking Winter down with me.

As quickly as the opening had appeared, it began closing again. I swooped forward,
shoving
my bag in the gap to try to keep it wedged open.

Sligo kicked out at the bag and sent it flying, knocking torches everywhere. Zigzags of light fell to the floor with us.

‘I'm losing him!' Ryan yelled, as his fingers slipped. ‘Boges, quick, help!'

Ryan desperately tried to hang onto Sligo's ankle but it was too late. Sligo had disappeared behind the closing wall.

‘Cal!' Winter was screaming. ‘Are you in there? We're here! We're here for you!'

I reached out, but the wall had already closed.
Ryan was left clutching nothing but an empty shoe. He shook it, frustrated, then threw it hard against the wall on the other side of the room.

A piercing sound brought our attention up to the speaker in the corner. The three of us stared up at it, waiting for our next crippling message.

‘Temper, temper,' Sligo's voice mocked.

‘Where's Cal?' Winter shouted. ‘What have you done with him?'

I ran my hand over the wall near the secret door, trying to find the protrusion Sligo had pushed to open it. But all I could find was a deep, round depression, as though the mechanism had jammed or had sealed shut from the other side.

‘There's no way we're leaving here without Cal,' Winter cried. ‘Where is he?'

‘No, you will not be leaving this chamber,' Sligo warned. ‘If any of you make a move for the trapdoor, Cal dies. I don't want to end his life prematurely. Believe me, I don't. I have other plans for him first.'

‘What plans?' Winter shouted. ‘Plans for Cal? You said you'd give him the antidote and release him on the night of the charity auction!'

‘Yes,' Sligo said. ‘
If
you'd fulfilled your side of the deal, my little Delilah. But this changes
everything. Very disappointing. How can I trust you now? Now that you've come spying on me? Maybe I should inject you
all
with a lethal dose of Toxillicide!'

‘Toxillicide?' I repeated. He'd let the name of the poison slip. What was it? I'd never heard of it.

Winter nudged me urgently. ‘Boges, look,' she whispered. ‘There's someone up there!' Moonlight streamed onto the floor. Someone had opened the trapdoor. And that someone was up there right now, listening to every word.

A bodyguard? Rathbone?

I braced myself for Sligo's accomplice to show himself. Instead, the moonlight vanished.
Darkness
fell as the trapdoor closed tightly again.

I jumped at the sound of Sligo shouting at someone. I couldn't make out what he was saying through the crackly speaker. Did he have
someone
in there with him?

A thought struck me. He was talking to Cal—he was right there on the other side of the wall! Had he been in there all along? I shone my torch on my friends' worried faces.

‘We need to get into the other chamber!' I said, grabbing a piece of metal from the broken TV, jamming it into the tiny slit where the door had closed. I tried to use it like a crowbar, but it was no good. It bent under the pressure in seconds.

Ryan and Winter both grabbed with their fingers, trying to get a grip on the door.

‘Whatever you're doing out there,' Sligo roared, his voice deafening through the speaker, ‘stop immediately. Don't do something you'll regret! I'll kill him!'

I froze at these words and heard Winter's suppressed sob. But we had to do something to save our friend. I pressed the round depression in the wall nearby. Maybe if we could dismantle the mechanism, we might be able to get the wall to move again. But what could I use?

Suddenly I knew just what would do it. ‘Where's my bag?' I whispered.

‘Here,' said Winter, picking it up from the
corner
and handing it to me.

I swept my good hand through the pocket in the back, trying to find the tin capsule.

I pulled it out and cracked it open with my fingers. Out fell my latest toy. Unfinished, but that didn't matter right now.

‘What's that? A beetle?' asked Ryan, shining his torch on it.

‘Meet Atom Ant,' I whispered. ‘It can't walk yet, but see its abdomen? Filled with explosives.'

I placed the miniature grenade into the depression in the wall and pulled the tiny fangs out to activate it.

‘Quick!' I said, grabbing my friends and
pushing
them down.

Winter's eyes widened in shock. ‘You're going to blow us all up!'

‘Hope not.' I tried to sound confident. ‘Cover your ears!'

The Ant exploded in a blinding flash,
spraying
us with minced concrete and rock.

Sligo yelled something from the other side of the wall but I couldn't make it out.

I bolted over to the door and pulled back with everything I had. Ryan and Winter jumped up to help me, shaking dirt and debris from their hair. Shooting pains pulsed up my injured arm as centimetre by centimetre, the wall shifted.

‘I'm warning you!' Sligo yelled.

Finally the door opened enough for us to see into the other, dimly lit, chamber.

Winter squeezed through the gap sideways and ran in.

I barely had time to register the size of the other chamber, except to notice it was twice as big as the dungeon we'd been held in. Rubbish littered the corners, there were two makeshift beds, dirty rugs, some buckets, shelves, dirty towels and a couple of lanterns. A tripod for the video camera, a desk, two widescreen laptops—one showing some type of architectural plans,
the other flashing green like a sonar screen. And two red-and-white striped mugs, same as the one we'd seen at the lighthouse.

‘Cal!' Winter screamed, skidding to a halt almost instantly.

I looked left. Cal lay slumped in Sligo's arms, hanging like a dead weight. Shocked, I saw the shackle that bolted his ankle to the stone wall.

But worse than that, Sligo held a syringe to Cal's neck, pressing it hard against his skin.

‘Don't hurt him!' cried Winter.

‘Then don't do anything stupid,' Sligo warned. ‘Or come any closer. I
will
kill him.'

Winter, Ryan and I backed up. I held my hands out, trying to calm Sligo.

‘We won't,' I said. ‘I swear. We won't do
anything
you don't want us to do. Just don't hurt Cal.'

‘Cal?' Winter whispered fearfully. ‘Talk to me! Say something!' Winter moved closer. Sligo thrust the needle harder against Cal's skin.

‘OK, OK,' Winter fell back, defeated.

‘Cal!' I shouted. I needed to see him move, hear him speak.

The sight of my friend like this made me sick. I couldn't think.

Cal moaned. He was still alive!

Sligo adjusted his grip on Cal and scowled at us. Sweat dripped down his reddened cheeks
and fell to the floor. ‘You'll wish you'd never come here!'

‘No, Sligo, please!' Winter cried.

Sligo thrust the syringe towards Cal again, skimming his skin. ‘You want me to use this? Finish it right here and now?'

‘Stop!' Winter pleaded. ‘Leave him alone! Let him go!'

‘Why should I?' mocked Sligo. ‘I gave you very simple orders and you have not obeyed them. What use is he to me any more?'

Cal looked grey. My mind was whirling but I couldn't think what to do.

The syringe's point began piercing Cal's skin.

‘No!' Winter screamed, kicking herself free from Ryan, and charging, screaming, like a
soldier
going into battle. She hurled herself onto Sligo, knocking him off balance, and the two of them crashed to the ground.

Cal fell limply to the side.

‘Cal! Winter!' I shouted, as Sligo rolled on top of Winter. ‘No!'

I couldn't lose my two best friends!

Where was the damn syringe?

Then both of them were suddenly, ominously, still.

Filled with dread, I helped Ryan grab Winter and lift her up, terrified at what we would find.

Her body was trembling and cold.

She was staring at Sligo, eyes wide with shock. Her breath was coming in short sharp bursts. The syringe! Had Sligo stuck Winter with the lethal toxin?

I looked in her eyes. They were bloodshot and smudged with black. I desperately checked over her body, but couldn't find anything.

I turned to grab Sligo, then froze at what I saw.

The depressed syringe was sticking out of
his
chest!

He tried to pull himself up, but his knees gave way and his body slowly slid down the wall. His legs kicked out in front of him and he slumped to one side, eyes glassy, his movements heavy.

I shuffled Winter away from him as Ryan ran to Cal.

Sligo looked down at the syringe and up at Winter. He moaned. His eye bulged, streaming tears as it darted around the room haphazardly.

‘It's OK,' I whispered in her ear calmly. ‘It's OK.'

The eye fixed on Winter. ‘We could have been an unstoppable team, you and me,' Sligo gasped.

‘Never,' she panted. ‘I am nothing like you.'

‘I wanted it to be you,' he said, grimacing with pain, ‘by my side. But you forced me to find someone else. My new … protégé … young,
ambitious. He shows promise, just like you once did, Little Bird. The boy—'

The effort to speak was taking everything Sligo had. His body convulsed, then slumped like a severed puppet. I had to strain to hear his words.

‘He's so fiendishly talented,' Sligo whispered. ‘He knows so much … about botany, about
electronics
, about …
payback
. Perhaps he's even more wicked than I am.'

‘Who's he talking about?' Ryan asked, cradling Cal's head.

‘I never planned on being stuck with you … after
the accident
,' said Sligo, his whisper barely audible. ‘But you grew on me. You counted on me for everything. You needed me.'

‘I was ten years old. And you'd murdered my parents!' cried Winter.

‘I wanted you there with me,' continued Sligo, ‘but you had to go and ruin it, didn't you? You betrayed me … and you ran to the one boy capable of destroying everything I'd worked for.'

Sligo's face was growing paler. Thin
purple-coloured
veins were pulsing across his temples like parasites searching for a way out from under his skin.

‘And here you are again … with Bodhan Michalko, the loyal best friend, and the Cal-clone, Ryan—or should I say
Samuel
. I might not be
able to show Cal's dying moments, but—'

‘Cal's dying moments?' I swore. ‘
That's
what you wanted the screen for! You were going to project Cal's death onto the big screen at City Hall!'

Sligo strained to lift his head to look at Cal. ‘He probably won't make it now anyway, I think I gave him too much … look at him. You didn't really think I'd let him live, did you?' Sligo laughed. His laughter turned into coughing. Flecks of saliva shot out of his mouth. ‘But it won't end here … I will still go out … with a bang!' he hissed.

‘You're gone already,' I jeered. ‘No-one cares.'

‘And when the twin pillars of society descend,' Sligo continued ominously, ‘the earth … will feel my power returning.' Sligo held up a shaking fist and looked to the ceiling. ‘Everyone will remember me as the great hero who brought the house down! Still able to put on a great show for all the Philistines!'

Despite his fading powers, Sligo even managed an evil smirk.

‘
What
is he raving about?' Ryan asked. ‘Great heroes and Philistines?'

‘I don't know.' I said. ‘I don't think
he
knows either.'

Sligo's condition was worsening by the second, and so was Cal's. We had to find the antidote.

I scanned the shelves of the squalid chamber
but all I could see some jars of food and bottles of water. I ran to the jars, picking them up and checking their labels.

My search turned more desperate. We had to save Cal. We had to stop the poison!

I looked in the desk drawers and even through the papers on the floor.

Sligo half-laughed, half-coughed, bloody froth flying from his mouth.

‘You'll never find it,' he said.