The Remarkables (The Remarkable Owen Johnson, part 1) (13 page)

“Are we going on an adventure?” Ellie asked excitedly.

“We need to borrow her for a few days,” Mrs Argyle explained to Victoria, ignoring Ellie.

“Do you indeed,”
Victoria said. “I feel that I must remind you of the conditions of my stewardship over her, which I only agreed to if there was no more foolishness from any of you.”

“No foolishne
ss, I promise,” Mrs Argyle said. “We just need to take a little trip down to see Fafnir-”

“
Fafnir?!” Victoria snorted. “You want to subject my Ellie to that old fool again? Don’t you remember what happened last time they were in each other’s’ company?”

“I give you my word
that he will be on his best behaviour,” Ken said, “and if there are any problems whatsoever we can revert to the backup plan that we used last time.”

Victoria
stared at him, rubbing her hands together. She sighed and turned to Ellie. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me trying to keep you here anyway. You’ll just sneak off like you did before.”

“That’s right,” Ellie confirmed with a
serious look on her face.

“Fine,” Victoria said, raising her arms, “but if there is a problem let me know and I’ll make the necessary arrangements from here.”

“Very well,” Mrs Argyle agreed. Clive sat down on a bench and buried his head in his hands, sighing.

There was a loud knock at the door. Everyone looked at
one another. The knocking continued. Victoria grunted and marched into the house.

“Where is your car?” Mrs Argyle asked Ken.

“Parked up against the other side of the fence,” Ken replied, pointing down the garden.

They were raised voices
coming from inside the house. From what Owen could hear Victoria was having an argument with a gruff sounding man about letting him in to check her gas meter. “I’m not on gas, I use oil!” she shouted loudly.

“Come on,” Mrs Argyle urged and
began walking down the garden.

“Shouldn’t we help her?” Owen asked.

“She won’t need it,” Ken said dismissively.

“But,” Owen began to argue before hearing
a loud crash from the hallway.

Victoria emerged, her hair slightly awry
, holding onto a large pole as if it was a sphere. “Run along, children,” she called out, “whilst I teach these boys a lesson.” Behind her appeared a man dressed in a black uniform. Victoria span around and lunged at him, letting off a string of expletives that Owen didn’t think he’d ever heard used, even at school. She brought the pole down onto the side of his neck and he crumpled to the ground. She span the pole around and tucked it under her arm triumphantly.

Ken pulled Owen by the arm and led him
down the garden. “Come on, son,” he said, “leave the warrior queen to her battles. She’s seen off hoards of invaders many times before; she’ll manage that lot just fine.”

They jogged down the garden.
“Was she in the war with you?” Owen asked.

“Not
my war, but many beforehand. If you think I’m old, you’d be amazed by what’s written on Victoria’s birth certificate, had they existed when she was born.” They exited through a gate, Ken’s Land Rover parked next to the fence as he had said it would be, the horse box attached to the rear still.

“How old is she?” Owen asked as he
waited for Clive and Ellie to climb aboard

Ken puffed out his cheeks and made a show of doing some complicated maths.  “
Well she stopped counting a couple of centuries ago, but I guess she must be nudging the two thousand mark by about now.”

Before Owen could question this
ridiculously high number, there was a roar of an engine and a motorbike burst out of an alley a few houses down and sped towards them.

“In the car, now!” shouted Ken.

Owen tried to climb in the back but he was too slow, being forced to jump back to prevent the motorbike from hitting him. The bike shot past, the man on the back dressed in black just like the ones that Victoria was dealing with.

From the opposite direction came two more bikes, joined swiftly by
another two from the alleyway. Mrs Argyle leapt from the Land Rover and thrust her hands forward blowing one of the riders off of his bike. He fell to the ground rolling, the bike sliding across the ground towards Owen who had to jump out of the way again, directly into the path of one of the other riders.

The rider grabbed him by the waist and
held him at his side so that Owen’s legs were dangling in the air, his feet hitting the ground intermittently as he was dragged towards the end of the road. Owen tried to reach out and grab hold of whatever he could to stop him, but his hands passed through the air helplessly.

At the end of the road the rider stopped and
adjusted his grip on Owen, gripping him firmly around the throat. “You struggle and I break your neck, understand?” Owen nodded limply.

A
black saloon car (identical to the one Owen had seen outside of both his and Clive’s houses the day before) skidded to a halt before them, the back door bursting open. The rider threw Owen toward the car and ordered him to climb inside. Owen clambered aboard the vehicle, sitting in the backseat next to another of the men dressed in black, who was pointing a large gun at him. The door slammed shut behind Owen and the driver sped away.

“Best put your seatbelt on,” the man with
the gun advised. Owen did so and risked a look behind him. The car was being followed by two of the motorbikes and ahead there were another three, with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring out.

“Are you the police?” Owen asked dubiously.

“The police?” the man chuckled. “Yeah, why not?” They clearly were not the police.

“Where are you taking me?” Owen
continued.

“Do you always ask so many questions?”

“Yes,” Owen admitted.

“Well not today.
Keep quiet, or I’ll silence you myself.”

The man was looking
through the windows, checking the progress of their journey. They were passing through red traffic lights unhindered, other motorists obediently moving out of their way. Owen looked out of the back window again at the other motorbikes, which were now travelling single file.

Suddenly the
rearmost bike skidded sharply, and as Owen caught a brief side on view it looked like someone was travelling pillion, not wearing a helmet as the others were. The passenger seemed to be struggling with the man in black, so Owen initially thought that the rider was carrying a hostage, just as had happened to Owen. However the rider then fell from the motorbike into a hedge by the road, the ‘hostage’ taking control of the bike. Owen checked to see if his captor next to him had noticed this, but he was too busy barking directions at the driver of the car.

The new rider then accelerated
so that he was parallel to the next motorbike, the rider of which skidded slightly in alarm. They were now close enough for Owen to see who the rider was: Clive.

Clive gave the rider a quick salute and vanished, his bike
skidding away out of control. Clive reappeared sitting behind the rider and knocked him off as he had done to the previous one. It looked like Clive was going to lose control of the bike and crash, but he managed to keep it steady.

He sped forward and overtook the car,
appearing next to the man with the gun’s window, still unnoticed by him. Clive knocked on his window to get his attention, offering him a little wave and a smile.

The man shouted a string of obscenities and pointed his gun at Clive, who pulled a face of mock terror and accelerated towards the
front of the car. The man moved forward to lean out of his window, but his seatbelt held him back. Unbuckling it, he positioned the top half of his torso out of the window and aimed at Clive.

By now Clive was
directly in front of the car. He looked back over his shoulder at the man pointing a gun at him, gave another little wave and vanished.

The
unmanned bike lurched sideways and fell to the road. The driver of the car slammed on the brakes and swerved to the side, the car spinning around and bouncing over the motorbike. The man with the gun was catapulted out of the open window, crashing into unoccupied tables outside of a café. Owen was jolted about in his seat, the seatbelt preventing him from sustaining any injuries other than jolt to his shoulder.

The driver was not so lucky.
As the car span around it hit the back of a parked van, the open doors of its cargo area revealing its payload of fruits and vegetables. The windscreen shattered on the van’s raised bumper, and a selection of fruits were launched at the car. The driver was relatively unaffected by the apples that hit him on the head, but he slumped in his seat when a cantaloupe bounced off the bonnet and struck him in the face.

Owen stared for a moment at the driver in shock, but was brought to his
senses by the sound of sirens. Assuming that they belonged to the other motorbikes, Owen released his seatbelt and went to open the door. Before he could grasp the handle it swung open, and Clive pulled him out.

“You
okay to run?” Clive asked, patting his hands down Owen, apparently checking for injuries. Owen nodded and Clive grabbed his arm, leading him down an alley between two shops, one of which had a burly man in black lying groaning amongst shattered furniture in front of its entrance.

At the end of the alley
waited Ken’s Land Rover, its back door open, Ellie seated on the far side urging them on. They clambered aboard and Ken drove away slowly, returning to the main road but away from the scene of the accident. Owen looked back and saw that the sirens were from several apparently genuine police cars that had just arrived, the bogus police escort having vanished.

They drove on past the
first bike that Clive had commandeered, its rider being extricated from the hedge by an elderly couple.

“Are you injured?” Mrs Argyle asked Owen.

“No,” he said, “lucky I was wearing my seatbelt.” He quickly tied the rope around his waist, just as Ken had done the night before. He then turned to Clive. “Thanks for the rescue.”

“No worries,” Clive replied, patting him on the arm, “I
kinda enjoyed it, truth be told. Haven’t ridden a bike since 1944. I’ve still got it, eh Cee? Maybe I should start calling myself Eidolon again...”

“Eidolon?”
Owen enquired.

“My codename during the war; chosen by your good self if I recall,
Cee?”

Mrs Argyle just smiled to herself.

14

“
Two thousand?!”
Owen exclaimed.

“
Ish,” Ken clarified.  They had left London and Owen (after recovering from his ordeal at the hands of the men in black) had repeated his question regarding Victoria’s age. Ken’s answer seemed dubiously high.

“How’s that possible?”
Owen asked.

“Like we told you, certain powers have certain e
ffects on one’s ageing process. Victoria there happens to age rather slowly.”

Owen looked at the other occupants of the car, tryin
g to decide who was the oldest. “But I thought you were hit by a comet; that’s what gave you your powers?”

“Were
you
hit by a comet?” Clive asked Owen.

“Well
, no,” he admitted, “although I still don’t know how I got my powers. So maybe I was when I was a baby. Although comets in the middle of Northampton are few and far between, so it’s unlikely.”

“Perhaps you’re due one then?” Clive added, sarcastically.

Ellie went to say something but Mrs Argyle interrupted. “You’ll figure it out, we all did eventually.”

Owen wasn’t convinced by this
explanation but he let it slide as another question had formed in his mind. “So what did those men want with me? And what did Trilby want with Clive?”

“Trilby
didn’t seem that interested in me,” Clive said, “when he had me cornered on that train all he was interested in was you.”

“Me? Wh
y do they all want me?” Owen asked.

Mrs Argyle sighed.
“I can only assume that they want your abilities, Owen, like they did ours.” She turned in her seat and put her hand on his.

“
Who are they?” Owen asked. “The Remarkables as well?”

“They’ve stopped using that name now, what with so few of them having
any abilities that would elicit such a description. Now they call themselves ‘The Remnant’, even though they keep the old symbol.”

“
’‘The Dregs’ would be more appropriate,” suggested Clive.

Mrs Arg
yle chuckled before continuing. “Whereas before they were a force to protect the many, now they act beyond the scope of the military and the law, acting in the interests of the few. Which is why the involvement of the police is puzzling.

“
Few know they still exist, and those that do are sworn to secrecy by whatever means necessary. They wear those badges to not only identify themselves to one another, but also to instil fear in those that try to work against them. Your father was one such person.”

“So my dad was trying to protect me?” Owen asked.

“I’m not sure your dad was aware of your abilities, Owen,” Mrs Argyle said.

“I think he probably was,” scoffed Clive.

Mrs Argyle shot him a look.  “Well he certainly never mentioned such a thing to me, and believe me, he would have. What’s more he would have made sure that you and your brother were sent somewhere safe. Your father was working to bring them down from the inside.”

“From the inside?
  But Dad works at the power plant; what’s that place got to do with them?”

“I don’t t
hink he ever figured that out. It was only by chance that he discovered that that facility has a connection with the Remnant, but as to what that entailed we are yet to find out. Your father didn’t have the security clearance to get to the parts of the plant where he might have found the answers.”

“So how di
d Dad know about the Remnant?” Owen had never heard his dad talk about the Remnant, the Remarkables, their neighbour’s powers, or indeed anything more exciting than a change in the weather. Owen looked at the faces staring back at him, hoping for answers but receiving only looks of concern. Except from Ellie who was smiling happily.

“Oh Owen, that’s simple really,” she said
airily, clapping her hands together. “Your mum was one of us as well!”

“Ellie!” Mrs Argyle snapped.

“My mum?!”
Owen shouted. And then again, more softly: “My mum? She’s been dead for years. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Mrs Argyle sighed.
“It was what your father wanted, Owen. He thought that if you knew the truth it might make you remember her differently.”

“Differently?
” Owen didn’t understand what she meant.

“When you think of your mother, what’s the first thing that comes into your mind?”

Owen didn’t have to think. It was the same summer’s day on the beach in Devon, his mother and him making a boat out of the sand whilst his father played with Jack in the shallows of the water. In Owen’s bedside drawer was a picture of the boat with Owen and his mother sitting on the little bench they had sculpted. There was another memory as well, just beyond his reach, wherein his mother was scared by something, but he couldn’t recall it fully.

Mrs Argyle smiled at him.
“That’s who your mother was Owen. Your father was worried that if he told you about her powers and her activities with the Remarkables, that would be your abiding memory of her. Not the happy times you spent together.”

“
What powers did my mum have? And is that where I get my ability from: my mum?”

Ellie started to say: “Well not exactly-”, but w
as once again interrupted swiftly by Mrs Argyle.

“Your mother was a very gifted individual
,” she said, ignoring the latter of Owen’s questions, “but her ability was much different to your own.” She pointed out of the window at the sun shining in the sky. “Here we are protected from the sun by layer upon layer of gases in the atmosphere.”

“Like the ozone layer,” Owen offered, to prove he had learned something in school.

“Amongst many, yes. Without these protective layers the surface would be too hot by day and too cold by night for any life to survive. Well, the Earth that your mum could tap into had, for whatever reason, boiling hot days and freezing cold nights, and by opening small portals she could release pockets of these environments into our world, much like I can with the wind. Quite a talent.”

“So she joined t
he Remarkables after the war?” Owen was trying to figure out how old his mother was when she died, as he didn’t expect her to have become a member until she was in her late teens at least.

Mrs Argyle looked over at Ellie and Clive, biting on the inside of her cheek as if consider
ing her answer very carefully. Finally she turned to Owen. “No, your mum was with us during the war.

Owen stared back at Mrs Argyle’s face and studied the lines and wrinkles, remembering that the outward appearance of age had no bearing on actu
ally lifespan with their kind. “How old was my mum?” he asked simply.

“A lot older than me.”

“How much older?” Owen pressed her, recalling that Mrs Argyle was over one hundred and thirty years old.

Mrs Argyle smiled gently. “She never did let on.
Your father did some research after she had gone, and figured her to be at least two hundred and fifty years old.” Owen’s face went pale. “But age is irrelevant, Owen. You were everything to her and however many birthdays she may have celebrated; you and your brother were the most important part of her life. I had never seen her as happy as the day she brought you home.”

“I sometimes forget what she looked like,” Owen said, staring at a
tear in the back of Ken’s seat, picking at the frayed edges around it. “I have to look at photos to remember. And then most of them have Jack and her on, hardly ever me. In the ones that do show me she looks tired; not happy like she does with Jack.” Owen had always thought that she looked younger in the ones featuring his younger brother, but this could probably be explained by the weird ageing process he now knew that she was subject to. The slowing of the advancement of years would seem to be not just limited to outward appearances either, if his mother was able to give birth to him and his brother after her two hundred and fiftieth birthday.

“She was more than happy when you arrived,
Owen, don’t ever doubt that.” She patted his leg again reassuredly.

Owen smiled back
at her, but a doubt remained. “What are we going to do about Dad?” he asked.

Mrs Argyle smacked her hands on he
r thighs and nodded. “Yes, your father. Well, if we were to ask him he’d want you to leave well alone, and to come away with me and be safe.” Owen opened his mouth in protest but was silenced by Mrs Argyle raising a hand.

“But,” she
continued, “I know there is no point in following that particular course. You’re far too headstrong for that. And besides, if there’s one thing we were always rather good at in The Remarkables, it was rescue missions.” Owen returned the smile that Mrs Argyle was sporting.

“Where are we headed?” Owen asked as he watched Windsor Castle shrink back into the distance behind.

“Cornwall,” Ken answered.

“
Are we going straight to see Mr Wyllt?” Ellie asked enthusiastically.

“Yes, but that’s all we’re going to say about it for now,”
Mrs Argyle said. Ellie shrank back into her seat and sulked.

“Katie’s in Cornwall,” Owen said to nobody in particular.

“Is she?” Mrs Argyle said, in a tone that suggested that she was quite aware of this information. A few butterflies fluttered to life in Owen’s stomach, secretly hoping that there would be time to see her. This feeling of warmth was soon replaced with guilt for not being more concerned for his father’s welfare.

“Dad
will
be okay, won’t he?” Owen asked.

Clive turned to Owen.
“Your dad is a mine of information that The Remnant would find invaluable, and he was clever enough to squirrel away secrets that the Remnant would never want revealed with people that would release them should anything happen to him. They won’t do anything to jeopardise that.

“
I fear that all of these events are because they want you, Owen. For years they have been desperate to get their grubby hands on someone who can reach out into the other worlds.” He grinned and pointed at himself. “Just like me.”

“How do you know that?” Owen asked.

“Your father picked up titbits of information over the last year or so,” Mrs Argyle explained. “Although he didn’t know for what ends, he gathered that they were desperate to obtain someone who could travel between the parallels.”

“So why don’t they just come after you?” Owen asked
Clive.

“They keep trying!”
he replied, shaking his head dramatically but smiling still. “Our friend in the suit this morning was the latest in a long line of would-be kidnappers. Normally I make my escape before they realise I’m gone, and find somewhere else to sleep. That house wasn’t mine, by the way Owen, even though I have used it in the past, right Cee?” She ignored him.

“Whose
house is it?” Owen asked.

“Dunno
who owns it now,” said Clive. “Ordinarily I just pick somewhere that looks empty and slip in for the night. But this one has…sentimental value.” Owen realised that he had raised his eyebrows in response to this admission of squatting.

“I
never steal anything!” Clive said, clearly offended, to which Mrs Argyle snorted. “Well, apart from the occasional mug of coffee, maybe and the odd taxi ride.” Owen thought back to Clive’s behaviour upon entering the taxi earlier and realised why and how he had offered such a generous fare. “Anyway, normally I slip away as soon as the owners return or if people get wind of me being there. The Remnant usually track me down after a few months, but to date they’ve never clapped eyes on me face to face. But today, there was a distraction.”

“Trilby,” said Owen.

“Trilby,” Clive confirmed. “What did you make of our friend in the hat, Cee?  Remind you of anyone particular?”

Owen could see Mrs Argyle frowning
face reflected in the wing mirror. “I’d prefer that we didn’t speculate on that for now,” she said, then turning to Ellie, “understood?” Ellie locked her lips with an imaginary key, which she tucked away in her handbag. At least she didn’t throw it away, Owen thought, hoping she’d let something slip later.

“How
does The Remnant know about my power?” asked Owen. “I’ve only known about it for a day, and that was after Dad was taken.”

“They have thei
r methods,” Clive said. “As do we, of course.” Ellie grinned and nodded in apparent agreement. “Have you brought any treats for our friend later?” Clive asked Ken. “You know, to entice him out?”

“Treats?” Owen asked
, wondering who or what would need coaxing with an offering. “Are we going to see another cow or something?”

“If only,” Ken responded.
“No, the good Mr Wyllt has certain tastes that make him more…amenable. And in answer to your question, Clive, I have a box in the back which should be to his liking.”