The Paella That Saved the World (The Paella Trilogy Book 1)

by Elle Simpson

  “Oh my god,” I whispered. “Oh my freaking god.”

  Deeke. It was Deeke.

  Deeke had High Compulsion.

  “You will hear me,” Creepy Bob said. “In this room and beyond. You will understand in any language you speak, in any manner you know. This world is mine now.”

  She spoke in a dull, bored monotone, somehow even blanker and flatter than her usual drone. She spoke as if what she was doing was nothing, like it didn’t matter that she was taking a whole planet hostage and turning everyone on it into her mind-slaves.

  “When you hear this message, whenever you hear this message, you will yield to my will and to my words. And if you do not yield then in a few short hours, it will matter not. I will control your militaries, your militias, your police forces. I will control this world in its entirety and you will be made to yield.”

  She paused, looking out over the crowd, and her eyes fell on me. I had to fight to keep my face blank, because my forehead was burning so badly I was honestly surprised I couldn’t smell smoke.

  A breath bungee-jumped down my throat when Creepy Bob looked away.

  “You are a weak and pitiful species. How you rose to dominance on this world is nothing but a cruel accident of evolution. What, I ask, is the point of you?”

  The lights came up again suddenly. The doors to the ballroom slammed open, and in flooded a stream of Akanarin.

  “Rise,” Creepy Bob told us. “And attend.”

  The screech of hundreds of chairs scraping back filled the room.

  “You have your orders,” Creepy Bob told the gatecrashers, already turning away, the curtains closing around her.

  I was a millisecond behind everyone else in standing. Something clinked against my water glass as I straightened. I risked a glance down.

  Oh god. The beacon!

  I reached for it. But I’d hardly twitched a muscle when a huge, spindly hand grabbed my wrist, then my other wrist, and yanked them behind my back. I felt the sharp, stinging bite of cable-ties digging into my skin.

  Oh god. Oh no.

  Hands tied behind my back, beacon hanging at my front.

  Oh no, no, no.

  I’d waited until I had no other choice, but I’d waited too long. And now I had no choice at all.

  25

  Creepy Bob’s creepy minions herded us up and hustled us out of the ballroom, a flock of trussed-up, bedazzled VVIP turkeys.

  We lost most of our creepy security escort as we passed through the weirdly empty lobby – a few of them heading to the lifts but most to the front door, some straight out of it, others taking up position there, like freaky, underdressed doormen.

  And as the hotel’s rotating doors spun open again and again, it was easy enough to hear that it had gone eerily quiet outside too. No more screaming crowds. No more any kind of crowd.

  God, I couldn’t even hear cars.

  (Like, is New York still actually New York if there isn’t at least one rage-monster taxi driver beeping his horn?)

  And a majorly, totally awful thought struck. I remembered – there’d been big screens set up outside. Cameras recorded Creepy Bob’s speech.

  …when you hear this message, whenever you hear this message…

  Could you compel people via TV? Colin had said High Compulsion worked differently – over vast distances, he’d said – but was that different enough to work across, like, radio waves or whatever?

  Oh god. Probably, yeah, knowing my luck. And the freaky silence outside seemed to agree.

  Our security escort whittled down to just two creepy minions, one up front and one bringing up the rear. They led us through an unmarked door. There was a cargo lift there, the bottom of a stairwell. We didn’t climb up though, just carried on down a service corridor, all ancient lino and scuffed magnolia emulsion.

  “Halt!”

  I halted. Not very steadily. Trying to look mind-whammied while wrangling tulle wasn’t the easiest thing. Add cable ties to the equation and you can one hundred percent bet I failed that test.

  “We are to remove their ornamentations,” Evil Henchman One said, in our heads but still straight over our heads, to his creepy buddy at the end of the line. They weren’t even bothering to keep their conversation private. “Our leader requires the minerals and the metals. She says they will be useful.”

  He made his way down the VVIP queue, yanking off earrings and watches as he went, rings and necklaces, tiaras, brooches. And when he got close enough, I could see he was collecting them in this big yellow wheelie bucket, the type you stick a mop in. No mop for the evil minion, though. He was pushing the bucket along with one big, bony foot.

  I held my breath as he reached me, desperately hoping he wouldn’t notice my jewellery was the most priceless of the lot.

  But creepy minion didn’t look twice. Just snapped the wire and tossed the beacon into the bucket. I watched the crystal disappear under a necklace with diamonds on it the size of Toni’s fancy organic eggs.

  Evil Minion One took his bucket and waddled off like a happy toddler at the seaside, but he was hardly gone before he was back again. “Move!”

  We shuffled forwards, heading in the direction of what I was pretty sure was the back of the hotel. The underground carpark, maybe? But wherever our creepy intergalactic babysitters were taking us, the route to it turned a corner into another corridor.

  This one was shorter – really short – two tight right angles at either end, like the middle of a straightened out ‘Z.’ And there was a door there, right smack in the middle.

  If I timed it right, if the door wasn’t locked…

  I glanced around. Creepy Bob’s evil henchmen were both out of sight, ahead and behind. So if I was doing this, I had to do it now.

  And – yeah, I was so totally doing it.

  I slipped out of line and pressed myself and my tulle as tight to the wall as we could go. Held my breath. Clenched everything that could clench…

  And the VVIP parade carried on without me.

  “Oh god,” I breathed. “Oh my god.”

  I’d timed it right, but now I needed the universe to cooperate and the door to be unlocked.

  “Please, please, please,” I mouthed.

  I fumbled behind my back with my tied-up hands, found a door handle, got a grip, twisted – and the door came open with a push.

  “Oh, thank you, universe,” I whispered as I stumbled backwards into the room. “Oh my god, thank you so much.”

  I shuffled round in a wobbly circle and grabbed for the inside handle. Pulled the door shut as quietly and as quickly as I could. Then I reversed, pressed my forehead to the doorframe, and looked out through the tiny gap between the door and the wall.

  The end of the VVIP line shuffled by, then the evil henchman, then? A wonderfully and entirely empty corridor.

  “Oh god.” I sagged against the doorframe, floppy with relief. “Oh my god.”

  But relief – floppy, sagged, or otherwise – couldn’t last long. I needed to get my kinda, sorta back-up plan under way.

  So I felt about on the wall with my shoulder, sliding up and down until I found a light switch and nudged it on. Said hello to the janitor’s cupboard that was apparently my safe haven for the evening.

  Then? Bye bye, cable ties.

  (Because you bet your bum I’ve watched a bajillion of those videos on youtube – though, like, probably should’ve watched a few more, because my wrists were rubbed raw and bleeding by the time I was done.)

  I held out my hands and shook them against the sting. Tore off a few strips of tulle and made some makeshift bandages. Still hurt, but at least I couldn’t see the mess anymore.

  Next step in my less than cunning plan? Struggling out of the tulle explosion and standing half-naked in a janitor’s cupboard in a luxury hotel in New York in the middle of a creepy evil alien invasion.

  “Oh my god,” I muttered. “How is this my life?”

  I flipped my dress inside out and unpeeled the duct tape that
was holding leggings and a pair of ballet flats to the folds of my underskirt. I pulled them on. Then I shrugged into my Big Dish hoodie. I’d had it tied around my hips, no duct tape required, more than well-hidden by all the poo-green bustle I’d been lugging around.

  There, ready.

  At least now I could run and climb and maybe, absolute worse case scenario, deliver a few flying kicks. Or something. I mean, it couldn’t hurt.

  (Or yeah, probably could very much hurt in that I have no idea whatsoever how to deliver a flying kick, so the only bones I’d have broken would’ve been my own. But I’ll forgive past me for overestimating her non-existent martial arts skills, because she was pretty much running on pure triple-shot adrenaline at the time.)

  I had a poke about. My cupboard was a decent enough hiding place but not totes well-equipped in terms of an exit strategy. One door in, one door out, no windows, and not even an air vent to make a dramatic but hella improbable ingenious escape through.

  I couldn’t wait there forever though – and more importantly than anything else, I needed the beacon back. Therefore? Time to move. I pressed my ear to the door. No telepathic chit-chat. I pressed my eye to the gap. No evil henchmen.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Now or never.”

  I creaked open the door. Stopped for a second to listen again. Still nothing. So I scooted down the zig-zag corridor and back to the stairwell. No evil aliens around – but no evil alien buckets either.

  Oh god, oh god, oh god.

  “Hannah, think!” I whispered.

  Evil Henchman One – he’d been gone for less than a minute, so he couldn’t have gone far. That only really left two choices: the bucket either went out into the lobby or with someone heading upstairs in the cargo lift. And the lobby was a total no-go: I was more than a couple of metres from the door, but even then I could still hear psychic nattering floating through.

  So upstairs it was.

  But I’d hardly turned towards the stairwell when the Akanarin early warning system slip-slapped an alert from the landing above: humungous alien feet heading down my way.

  “Oh, are you fricking kidding me?” I whisper-yelped through clenched teeth.

  Back the way I’d come, frantically twisting handles until I found another unlocked door. This one led out into the hotel proper. A conference suite or something: fancy carpet on the floors, little alcoves all along the wall. I shoved myself into one because—

  “Seriously, what did I do to offend the universe?”

  —evil flat-footed thumping coming towards me.

  There was a door behind me in the alcove. I threw a half-glance at the gold sign as I pushed it open. Ladies loos. Not exactly a panic room but I’d take what I could get.

  The sign was lying though, because the room beyond wasn’t loos at all. Just some kind of fancy powder room. Padded benches and posh tissues, mirrors with old-fashioned lightbulbs around them, and this weird upholstered panel on the far wall, all gold studs and red velvet.

  I flopped down on one of the benches and pressed my hands to my chest, felt my poor heart beating triple-time. “Col?” I whispered. “Colin, can you hear me?”

  No answer. And I hadn’t really been expecting one, but it was still a punch in the gut. I didn’t have a watch, my phone, I didn’t know the time – if Colin should’ve been back by now, I had no way to know.

  But…

  God, I did know. In my heart. In my queasy stomach. In my poor, overworked adrenal system. Colin wasn’t coming back. Creepy Bob was creeping closer. And I—

  From behind the upholstered wall came the distant but distinct sound of a toilet flushing – because the wall wasn’t a wall.

  It was a door.

  To where the actual loos were.

  “Oh god.”

  (Firstly, I will tell you the exact thought that passed through my mind then, because I know you’re totally thinking it too: Akanarin, loos, how exactly does that work? Secondly, who in the name of frick upholsters loo doors? )

  I bolted to my feet, then froze, hand on the doorknob. Someone was passing by outside. Multiple someones, in fact. If I opened the door, I’d run straight into them.

  But if I didn’t…

  “Oh god,” I whispered.

  I was trapped. Surrounded. No way out.

  26

  The toilet door swung open.

  “Oh my god, Dr Mensah!”

  Dr Mensah was busy drying her hands with a fancy towel. She startled when she saw me. “Hannah! Hello again. Oh, but since you’re here, you must tell me – did I miss Bob’s speech after all? It was the most terrible timing, but I had to make a dash to the bathroom. You see, I do so love a soft pretzel but…” Dr Mensah pressed a hand to her stomach with a queasy grimace.

  “They don’t love you,” I finished, my voice kinda blank with repressed hysteria. “Yeah. You mentioned that before.”

  Dr Mensah shook her head, laughing at herself. “Every time, you know. You think I would learn…” Her voice trailed off as she blinked at me, then her eyes went wide. “Did – did you change your clothes, Hannah? Oh goodness, sweetheart, whatever has happened to your wrists?”

  “I…” Had to take the risk, right? If Dr Mensah was already compelled, then I was done for anyway. But if she wasn’t…

  “Dr Mensah, please, you’ve got to listen to me. And I know this is going to sound whackadoodle but—”

  “Hannah, whatever is the—”

  It all came out in one epic rush. “It’s Bob. Creepy Bob – she’s evil. She’s trying to take over the world. She’s just put everyone in the hotel – maybe everyone outside too – under this kind of mind control thing she does. Compulsion it’s called. But I’m not affected because I’m a raging bucket of hormones, and because of my friend Deeke, because she has this different type of compulsion that Creepy Bob’s using to make her own more powerful. And I had this necklace – this beacon thing to call for help – that Colin gave me, but they’ve taken it. Colin was helping me. Colin’s – you haven’t met him. He’s an ethnographer. Like, an intergalactic one. He works for space U.N. But he’s not here and I don’t know if he’s coming back.” Everything looked wobbly through the tears that had suddenly decided to flood my eyeballs. My voice cracked. “I don’t even know if – if he’s still alive.”

  Dr Mensah blinked, just once, then reached around me to lock the powder room door. “You had best tell me everything,” she said. “Start at the beginning.”

  27

  Dr Mensah’s a smart lady. She kept up – and then some.

  “The way I see it,” she said, “our priority is to get out of this hotel. And quickly.”

  I nodded. “But there’s no way we can just walk out the front door or whatever. There are creepy minions prowling about everywhere. The beacon is the only way we can get out of here safely.”

  “But the Akanarin have it?”

  “In a wheelie bucket in the service corridor through the wall. Or that was where I saw it last anyway. It could be anywhere by now. But I’m thinking probably it’s upstairs somewhere.”

  “Well, at least we know where to start looking.”

  That was a pretty optimistic assessment, given how much upstairs there actually was. I mean, the hotel wasn’t a skyscraper but it wasn’t exactly a bungalow either.

  “But how to get upstairs?” Dr Mensah said, rubbing a hand over her mouth.

  “We can’t risk going through the lobby,” I told her. “Too many four-knuckle whackjobs. A bumtonne of them, in fact.”

  “Or by elevator, I suppose? Far too easy to get trapped or spotted. There’s a stairwell nearby, isn’t there?”

  “There was an Akanarin on the stairs, though.”

  “Just one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I think those are our best odds,” Dr Mensah said. “One Akanarin, surely, is better than a ‘bumtonne.’”

  So out the loos and back to the stairwell. We made it up one flight, no evil aliens encountered, and found
ourselves in another service corridor – one that seemed to run parallel to the actual guest hallway outside.

  “I’ll search this one,” Dr Mensah whispered, pointing. “You get the other one. We’ll meet each other at the far end.”

  “Can do, will do,” I said, and pushed open the heavy fire door.

  It led out into another little alcove, then into the hotel proper again. The hallway there was empty, the doors to most of the rooms lying ajar.

  I tiptoed my way along, mega cautious, but still sticking my head through every open door, looking for a flash of yellow in the weird half-light filtering in from outside. I had to find that bucket. The beacon was our only hope of—

  Ding!

  Down at the far end of the hallway was a bank of lifts – and one of those lifts was opening.

  “Oh god.”

  I shifted my weight, ready to bolt.

  One step. I managed one step.

  Then a grip like a vice crunched down on my shoulder and dragged me backwards into the dark.

  28

  The hotel room door swung closed. I tried to scream but a hand clamped over my mouth.

  “Silence would be advisable,” a voice whispered from the darkness. “Do you understand, Miss Stanton?”

  I nodded frantically.

  My grabby-hands friend let go. I whipped around, fists up, like I actually knew what to do with them. But I didn’t have to do anything at all, because, “Schwarzy!”

  Agent Schwarz quarried out a smile from somewhere. “Hello, Miss Stanton.”

  “Oh my god! What are you doing here?”

  “My orders were to infiltrate this location in order to act as a fail-safe for your protection. But the gala has begun sooner than expected,” Schwarzy said, managing to look vaguely perturbed. “That is troubling.”

  “That is an understatement.”

  “Yes,” Schwarzy agreed, “I used understatement for the purpose of creating dramatic effect.”

  “Uh…good to know? But also?” I held up a hand. “What exactly does a ‘fail-safe for your protection’ mean?”