The Whisper (8 page)

K
obi’s first night in The Shadows was cold. He’d forgotten how cold it could be. The damp permeated everything, and nothing ever dried. Clothes rotted in drawers, carpets rotted on the floor, and curtains blackened and fell to bits at the windows. The platform was to blame, and the burst river, and ultimately, the adults who had made this mess.

A couple of hours after they arrived, his father decided to go and find John, who’d moved his old pub in Soho to the eleventh floor of the Future Communication Building. He invited Kobi to join him, but Kobi didn’t feel like it. He felt strange, a little sick, and he didn’t understand what was wrong with him. So he said he felt ill and stayed behind.

But although he tried to sleep, he couldn’t. His clothes and the bed were damp, and through the walls he could hear all the people around him. Children fretting, adults talking, doors opening and closing, and people walking up and
down the passage. The room had no window, so it felt like a cardboard box left in the middle of somebody else’s house.

He tossed and turned in the bed, unable to get comfortable and vaguely aware that he was missing out on something. He was also starting to feel guilty. He was in a safe place, but where were his friends? What had happened to Mika and Audrey … and Tom? Tom had been left without a game partner when Kobi stopped playing the game. Kobi hadn’t cared at the time, but he was starting to care now.

He tried to call Mika but got no reply. Mika’s companion had been taken away by Mal Gorman, but Kobi didn’t know this.

He lay in the darkness feeling stifled and restless. Wondering if coming to this place had been a mistake.

His father returned after a few hours, looking warmed by beer and good company. He brought the bustle of the building with him. He talked loudly and filled the small room with movement. He didn’t seem to care that everyone around them could hear what he was saying through the walls.

Kobi lay with his hands behind his head, watching his father change into his pajamas.

“John’s really landed on his feet here,” Abe said. “The bar was packed. He’s got the old pub sign on the wall and they even salvaged his chairs and tables. Real wood. Two hundred years old. It’s good in there … a really good atmosphere. You should come next time.”

“I’m not old enough to drink beer,” Kobi said.

“True,” his father replied. “But you’re old enough to be sociable. They let kids in.”

“They’re all younger than me.”

His father looked at him, with one leg in his pajamas. “Do you still feel ill?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Kobi replied. “And guilty,” he admitted. “All my friends are gone.”

His father finished putting his pajamas on and sat on the bed, next to his son. “Have you spoken to any of them? Have you tried calling Mika?”

“Yes. His companion’s switched off.”

“They’ve probably taken it away,” his father said.

“That’s what I thought,” Kobi replied.

“We were talking about it in the bar,” his father said. “You mustn’t feel guilty. Everyone believes you did the right thing. They’re all saying what a smart boy you are. You’re a hero, Kobi.”

“No, I’m not,” Kobi replied.

“You are,” his father insisted. “You were smart enough to realize that the government was lying to you, and you refused to let it exploit you. They tricked you into playing a game that was training you for war! They can’t get away with that, Kobi. I don’t regret coming here for one moment.”

Kobi was quiet.

His father tried to see his son’s eyes through his hair. “Are you regretting coming here?”

“Maybe,” Kobi admitted. He felt compelled to admit it now that the feeling was so strong. “I feel weird. Like I’m in the wrong place.”

“Try to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. We’ve had a really difficult day. This situation will be much easier to cope with after a good night’s sleep. I’m proud of you, Kobi. Really proud. And so are the SLF. There are some of them living in this building. I met them in the bar.”

Kobi sat up.

“The SLF are terrorists, Dad.”

“They fight for liberation, Kobi. They’re the voice of The Shadows’ people.”

“Since when were you a supporter of the SLF?” Kobi asked sharply. “You hate politics.”

“I’m not a supporter, I just happened to meet some in the bar, that’s all. One of them bought me a beer and we talked about you. They’re good people. They’re your friends, Kobi. They’re offering you protection.”

“My friends are somewhere else,” Kobi said. “I don’t even know where my friends are.”

“Look, just try to get some sleep. You’re very tired.”

His father climbed into bed and turned off the light. Kobi listened to him trying to settle in the damp bed. A few minutes later he began to snore softly, and Kobi lay in the darkness, alone and longing for morning so he could get up and work and think about something else.

But Kobi wouldn’t have to wait until morning to have something else to think about. A couple of hours before dawn, he heard people stirring in the rooms around them, doors opening and low voices in the passage. A baby woke up and started to cry.

Kobi sat up and turned on the light.

“What’s going on?” his father asked sleepily.

“I don’t know. Will you go and ask them?”

“You go.”

“I don’t want to, I don’t know them.”

His father sat up slowly and groped around at the end of the bed for his sweater. But before he found it, there was a
hard knock on the door that made them both jump. His father clambered hurriedly out of bed and opened it. A man stood beyond, panting as if he’d just run up the stairs. “You’re an industrial robot engineer, aren’t you?” he said quickly.

“Yes,” Abe replied. “What’s wrong?”

“We need you,” the man panted. “Have you got any tools with you?”

“Yes,” Abe said, pointing to his bag on the desk.

“Then follow me.”

Abe grabbed his bag, Kobi jumped out of bed, and they both followed the man out of the room.

The passage beyond was empty. Everyone had beat them downstairs.

“What’s happening?” Abe asked.

“I’ll have to show you,” the man panted. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t even describe it, but you could save a boy’s life.”

“Really?” Abe said, looking scared. They ran hard down the stairs. When they reached the eleventh floor, they followed the man into an area near the buffer zone. A large crowd had gathered there. It parted to let them through and they saw a strange black mass lying on the floor.

“Oh my odd,” Abe said. “What is it?”

“We don’t know. But you’ve got to get it off him or he’ll die.”

It looked like a giant dead spider with its legs contracted around the body of its last kill. A big black cocoon. There was some kind of web stretched between the legs, encasing the body within, and a pair of bloody feet stuck out one end of it.

Abe and Kobi crouched down next to the dark mass. Through the net they saw a pale face. The face of a boy with
short red hair and a small silver disc in the middle of his forehead. One of the black legs was clamped over the bridge of his nose and he was coated in a viscous orange slime. His breath was shallow, as if he was struggling to breathe. The spider cocoon was locked fast around the child. Abe felt over a leg and tried to pull it back and cut his fingers on the barbs.

“Get more light,” he demanded. “Get some lamps so I can see what I’m doing. Where did he come from?”

“Sandwood Seven,” a woman replied. “It’s a town on the north coast of Scotland. We think he was trying to escape from the fortress in Cape Wrath.”

“So he’s one of our children? One they took from the arcades?”

“He must be. But he was found in a Tank Meat factory. He fell though a skylight in the roof. The security guards heard the glass break, but by the time they got there, this thing was around him and they couldn’t get it off. Apparently, the streets of the town were crawling with soldiers, probably searching for him. He must have escaped from the fortress. When the soldiers left, the security guards sent the boy to us. One of them had a daughter who was taken. He was very upset.”

“Oh my odd,” Abe said through gritted teeth. “And you feel guilty, Kobi? Because you’re free? Because you didn’t let them do
this
to you?”

Kobi dropped his head and hid in his hair, feeling as if he was about to vomit. Crouched next to the cocooned boy, he felt more guilty, not less.

The lamps arrived and his father started to work. Kobi shook out his father’s bag of tools and laid them on the floor so he could take what he needed. Abe lay down, first on one side,
then the other, so he could look at the Creeper Net from all angles, and when he found the processor unit connected to the legs, he began to burn a hole through it with a blowtorch. But the blood from his cut fingers made it slip in his hand.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “You’re going to have to do it, Kobi.”

Abe held out the blowtorch. Kobi tied back his hair, took the torch, wiped the blood off on his sweater, and began to work. The crowd loomed over him, watching. Spooked children pushing through the adults’ legs. It felt as if the whole building was crammed in that room. This would have freaked out Kobi on a normal day, but he didn’t even notice now: The only person who mattered was the boy. As he burned a hole through the hard, black case on the processor unit, he whispered, “I’m your friend. You’re going to be OK.”

When there was a large hole in the case, he took smaller tools and began to disassemble the processor inside. Suddenly, the legs relaxed and the Creeper Net opened like a black flower. The boy in the filthy white gown looked like its crushed stamen inside. Immediately, everyone rushed forward and many gentle hands picked him up. He was carried away and the crowd followed, leaving Kobi and his father alone, still crouched by the broken Creeper Net.

Kobi began to put the tools away.

He felt his father’s hand press gently on his shoulder. “Well done. I’m really proud of you,” he said.

“That could have been me,” Kobi replied.

“Exactly. So don’t you dare feel guilty that it wasn’t.”

E
llie and Mika didn’t talk to Mal Gorman until the mansion was far behind them. He’d told them to kill a young girl, and this made them so angry, The Roar crackled at the back of their heads, threatening to start more fires. It was not a good idea to talk to Mal Gorman while they felt this way.

Gorman became frantic with worry. After a quarter of an hour, he was convinced he’d lost his two best mutants
and
the Everlife-9. He sat at his desk, grinding his teeth. When he heard their voices again, his relief was intense. They blamed the loss of contact on signal failure, but he wasn’t interested. He hurried them over the fence as quickly as possible. Mal Gorman was addicted to Everlife-9 before he’d even touched it.

On the other side of the fence, the children climbed the slope in the forest and searched for their capsule. But when they found it, they discovered the bear had gotten there first and crushed it. It had found their ration packs inside and there
was a scatter of food packaging through the trees. Gorman ranted at them while they picked this up, telling them they should have killed the bear when they landed.

I hate him so much I could puke,
Ellie thought.

Ignore him
, Mika replied.
Just concentrate on getting back
.

They pulled the micro wings from underneath the seats and found they were damaged. But at least this meant Mal Gorman had to go so an engineer could talk to them. They sat at the base of a giant redwood tree and listened while they made their repairs. Ellie had to mend her engine. Mika had to fix one of his wings. Luckily, their tool kit had not been damaged.

The forest was peaceful. Gold light coursed through roots and earth and through the leaves and into them. That magic calm, that feeling of being part of something beautiful made their work enjoyable. By the time their micro wings were fixed, they knew they could face Mal Gorman again.

They placed the micro wings on the ground. They were sparse structures, just a skeletal frame with an engine attached. Just enough to get them over The Wall where the Stealth Carrier would be waiting for them. As the micro wings touched the ground, they sprang to life, standing up with their wings unfolding. Then the children backed into them and let the metal arms wrap around their bodies.

The wolf borgs returned to watch them leave.

The micro-wing engines were silent. The twins flew up through the trees as quietly as fish rising to the surface of a lake. As they cleared the forest canopy, they were spotted by a pair of eagle hawk borgs that rose up and followed them to The Wall. Great silver wings
whomped
the night air. Red eyes glowed in the darkness.

The forest ended abruptly and they crossed no-man’s-land. This was a half-mile-wide strip of concrete scattered with dead leaves. The giant birds turned for home, and the children flew up and over The Wall. Then the Ghengis borgs watched them from their concrete plinths, with more pairs of red eyes. If the children had tried to cross from North to South, rather than South to North, they would have been shot down by their massive guns. The door over The Wall opened only one way.

Then the children crossed another strip of no-man’s-land, this one scattered with concrete rubble and litter, and the North stretched out before them, concrete towers and people as far as their eyes could see. Plague sirens, factories, traffic trunks, and pylons that were denser than the forests on the other side of The Wall. Even so far above it, the children could smell the mold.

Just as they passed the first rows of towers, the Stealth Carrier appeared, hovering in the air like a lump of molten silver.

An hour later, they were standing in front of Mal Gorman with the bottles of Everlife-9.

“Give it to me,” he said.

They placed six bottles on his desktop and watched him pull them toward him with bony fingers.

“Well done,” he said. “You can go now. There’s a mail pack for you by the door.”

“From home?” Mika asked.

“Yes,” Gorman replied.

Mika and Ellie turned quickly. It was sitting on a shelf, a bulging, white mail pack full of gifts from home. They walked toward it and Mika picked it up.

From Mum and Dad
, Ellie thought.

Yeah, and I bet there’s something in there for you
.

Mal Gorman felt happy.

After Mika and Ellie left, he watched his fortress through his desktop, with a bottle of Everlife-9 in his hand.

His implanted army was sleeping. His engineers were working on Pod Fighters in the hangar. His Chosen Ones were resting in their enclosure after a hard day of a mission and training. Gorman watched them for a few minutes, curious to know what mutant children did when they were alone. Not much, it seemed. They were slouched across the white sofas in their living area. Leo was reading. Iman was stretched out like a black cat with her head in Leo’s lap. Colette was oiling her silver hands. Santos was gazing at a screen that played a loop of old cartoons. Audrey leaned against Mika’s legs, watching him open his mail pack. At his side sat Ellie, with her hot, black eyes fixed on it.

They looked so ordinary.

Mika pulled things out of the mail pack — a letter, candy bars, and a handful of holopics — and handed them to Ellie to look at. The only gift he kept himself was a packet of biscuits, which he put to one side.

Boring,
Gorman thought.
But good
.

Everything was just as he wanted it to be: quiet and uneventful.

This was the perfect time to take Everlife-9.

He swept the images of his children away and summoned Ralph to his dressing room.

Ralph had been required to perform many strange tasks in the time he’d worked for Mal Gorman, but none as peculiar as filming his master while he took Everlife-9. Gorman sat before the fire in his dressing room, holding the small bottle in his hand. The butler felt as if he were about to make a horror movie.

“Hurry up,” Gorman said.

The butler felt confused by all the buttons on the camera. He’d never used one before.

“Sorry, sir.”

He found a child’s tutorial in the menu and began to follow the instructions. Gorman waited, with a vision of his younger self walking through his mind.

“I think I’m ready now,” Ralph said.

Gorman pressed the Everlife-9 to his lips and drank.

He felt something happen immediately.

“I feel hot,” he muttered. A warmth built in his mouth that escalated rapidly to a blistering heat as if he were chewing a mouthful of Scotch bonnet chili peppers. His eyes began to water, he coughed violently, and the machines on the frame around his chair began to blink and beep. Ralph’s hands trembled on the camera as the veins on Gorman’s forehead began to throb.

“Do you still want me to film this, sir?” Ralph asked. “Or do you want me to help you?”

“Film!” Gorman rasped, clutching his throat. “Something’s happening!”

Ralph had no doubt something was happening, but he wasn’t sure it was what Mal Gorman wanted to happen. The life-support system was now in full panic mode as if Gorman were about to explode. There was a quiet knock on the
dressing room door as a doctor from the hospital unit arrived to find out what was happening.

“Keep them out!” Gorman rasped. “I don’t want anyone to see me until I’m young!”

Five awful minutes passed, and Ralph continued to film. But the spectacular event they were waiting for did not happen. The heat subsided in Gorman’s mouth, and the machines fell calm again. The old man sat rasping in his chair, looking frailer and freakier than ever, with his last few strands of parched gray hair standing up like lightning rods.

“Give me the mirror,” he choked. “But don’t stop filming.”

Ralph placed a mirror in his master’s hand, and Gorman raised it to look at his reflection.

“I look worse!” Gorman yelled. “Look at me! Look at the state of my hair! I’m bright red! I look like a freak!”

“Perhaps it needs more time, sir.”

“For what? To make me redder and older?”

“Do you want me to stop filming now, sir?” Ralph asked.

“Of course I do, you idiot!” Gorman yelled. “Turn it off and get it out of here!”

Ralph unlocked the door and hurried out with the camera, hearing the crack and smash of the mirror as Gorman hurled it into the fire.

In sleep Gorman twisted, tangling in his tubes.

At two o’clock in the morning, a shrill scream tossed Ralph out of bed. He pulled on his dressing gown and ran to Gorman’s room. In the darkness, his master looked hideous, eyes white and mouth wide in a horror-film howl. Ralph grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Wake up, sir,” he urged. “You’re having a nightmare.”

Gorman stopped howling and panted heavily, his eyes hazed with interlight.

“The vines,” he muttered. “They won’t let me go….”

He trailed off and pushed Ralph away. “Light!” he shouted. “Light!”

The bedroom light blinked on, and Gorman looked up to see Ralph gazing at him strangely.

“What?” he snapped. “Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m going to get you another mirror, sir,” Ralph replied. “You need to look at your reflection.”

Ralph hurried out of the room and returned a minute later to find Mal Gorman staring at his hands.

“I can’t see the bones,” he whispered.

“Look at your face,” Ralph said eagerly, handing him the mirror.

Gorman gazed at his reflection and saw a … boy.

He was quiet for a long time, touching his face and turning it from one side to the other.

“I took too much,” he whispered. “I wanted to be thirty, like Raphael Mose. But I feel GREAT!”

Gorman dropped the mirror on the bed and began to yank out the tubes and wires attached to his body.

“Get the camera, Ralph!” he shouted. “Film me now! This is fragging brilliant!”

“Is there anything else you’d like, sir?” Ralph asked, looking startled.

“Yeah!” Gorman shouted enthusiastically. “Get me the biggest pizza you can find! A fragging enormous pizza! I’m starving!”