Double-Cross

by Sophie McKenzie

The man coming up behind me slipped in the fire extinguisher foam and fell to the ground. I focused on the exit ahead and on the two officials who stood between me and freedom.

  The one with the gun lowered his arm and said something to his companion. He spoke too fast for me to understand the words, but I caught the word ‘jeune’ which I was certain meant ‘young’ as in . . . ‘just a young guy’.

  I started running towards the exit. The other official spread out his arms to stop me. ‘ Arrêtez-vous!’ he yelled. ‘Stop!’

  I kept my eyes on the man’s gun. Out of the corner of my eye I could see officials in the booths looking over at me and car passengers straining to see what was going on.

  This was not the discreet exit I’d hoped for.

  Making the movement as subtle as I could, I twisted both hands. Wham. The two guards fell forwards, smack on the tarmac. I passed them, still running full pelt.

  Through the gate and out of the terminal I raced on. I crossed the road and darted down a side street. Then another. I took a few more twisty turns, then finally stopped. I leaned against a lamp post, my lungs burning, taking in huge gulps of air.

  I looked up. Listened hard. There was no sound of men chasing me. No raised voices.

  I’d lost them.

  Still panting, I thought over what had happened. I was sure I couldn’t be identified on the CCTV at the terminal – I’d kept my cap pulled low over my face the whole time. And it would seem odd, but not inexplicable, that the two guards I’d teleported might have tripped over and that the fire extinguisher had accidentally fallen off the wall. Hopefully, Geri wouldn’t ever hear about it, let alone put two and two together and work out I’d been here, using my telekinesis.

  I let out a long, shaky breath and set off again, along the back streets, towards my meeting point with the others. As I did so, Ed appeared in my head, asking where I was. Apparently, the ten minutes I’d allowed to reach the pier were already up.

  I decided against a full account of my escape from the terminal and just told him it had taken longer than I’d expected. It actually took me another fifteen minutes to reach the pier. I’d run so far inland and through such winding side streets that I’d kind of lost my bearings.

  At last I found the pier, on a fairly quiet road opposite a small copse of trees. It was virtually deserted, apart from a few food stalls near the entrance.

  I spotted Dylan first. She was standing under a street lamp, her dark red hair shining, staring out to sea. Two guys in baggy jeans were eyeing her up, but Dylan seemed oblivious. She’s fit. Every guy I knew fancied her, but I’d never seen her show more than a passing interest in anyone – other than Harry, of course. He was the boy we’d met recently – Jack Linden’s son – who’d helped Dylan and me get away from Geri.

  As I walked towards Dylan, Ed came up to her. The two guys watched him, evidently astonished that someone so geeky-looking should be on speaking terms with anyone as hot as Dylan. And then Ed turned and saw me. He threw his hands up as I approached.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. Starving, though,’ I said. ‘Where’s Ketty?’

  ‘Your girlfriend’s getting us food from that stall.’ Dylan pointed across the pier.

  I turned and there she was. My Ketty – the prettiest, coolest girl in the universe – smiling as she walked towards us, her eyes fixed on my face. I smiled back, getting that happy, settled feeling I always have around her.

  ‘I got burgers,’ she said, holding up four wrapped packages.

  ‘Thanks.’ I took one and watched Ketty as she handed out the others. Did I say how pretty she is? Not striking like Dylan, but softer . . . natural-looking, with curly brown hair and big, golden-brown eyes and a small nose that turns up a little at the end. But despite the delicate features, Ketty’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. Not to mention the most stubborn.

  In that moment it struck me that I couldn’t bear to lose her.

  ‘I didn’t want freakin’ cheese on mine,’ Dylan complained beside me. ‘Or fried onions.’

  ‘That’s how they came,’ Ketty said with a shrug. ‘My French wasn’t good enough to understand what he was asking. He spoke too fast – I just said “oui ” to everything.’

  Dylan muttered something under her breath and wandered away, across the pier.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Ed.

  ‘We need to contact our families,’ Ketty said. ‘We’ve got phones and, now we’re off the ferry, there’s a signal. I want to call home and let my parents know I’m okay. D’you think it’s safe, Nico?’

  I glanced around before speaking, to check we were quite alone. To my relief, the two guys who’d been eyeing up Dylan had disappeared and the nearest people, a couple, were crossing the road several metres away. In the distance another ferry was docking at the terminal.

  I looked at Ketty and Ed. ‘Geri thinks that Dylan and I are dead, so we should both be fine calling home. But right now she thinks you two have gone on the run, so there’s a good chance she’ll have your home phones tapped in case you call in on them. It doesn’t matter. I’ll call home and speak to Fergus . . . He can get a message to your families.’

  Ketty and Ed nodded their agreement. They both looked pale and strained.

  ‘However, we don’t have much time,’ I went on. ‘The explosion at Wardingham will cover our tracks for a while, but I reckon we’ve only got a few hours until Geri realises our bodies aren’t in that building. Fergus is one of the first people she’ll go to and she won’t hesitate. She’ll be after us with a vengeance.’

  Ed looked around nervously.

  ‘Did I hear someone say the word “vengeance”?’ Dylan walked over, crumpling her burger wrapper in her hand. ‘Because that’s the priority as far as I’m concerned. We can’t let Geri get away with trying to kill us – or murdering my parents.’

  There was an awkward silence. Ketty caught my eye.

  ‘But Geri is so powerful,’ she said with a frown. ‘I don’t see how we or our parents can act against her. I mean, look at us. We’ve got hardly any money and no useful papers. We don’t even have any clothes, other than what we’re wearing. And we’ve got no proof that Geri’s done anything wrong. We might be better off just finding somewhere to live outside the UK. We can probably get work somewhere – and our parents will help support us.’

  ‘But even if our parents help, we won’t have enough money,’ Ed said, clearly aghast. ‘And we’re too young to get jobs. I mean, we should be at school right now. Anyway, I want to take my GCSEs next year . . . I want to do A levels and go to uni and—’

  ‘Jeez, I’m sorry us finding out that my parents were murdered is getting in the way of your education, Ed,’ Dylan drawled sarcastically.

  The atmosphere tensed.

  ‘Man, could you two calm down?’ I said. ‘We have our psychic abilities. We’re more powerful than we think. Anyway, we don’t have to decide everything tonight. We just need to find the place Laura booked for us.’

  Laura was Harry’s mum. She’d helped us get away from England earlier today.

  ‘I checked on my cellphone,’ Dylan said. ‘The hotel’s about a mile away.’

  ‘Good, we’ll get going as soon as I call Fergus,’ I said.

  I was certain Dylan wouldn’t have a problem with this. Fergus was her uncle after all – as well as my stepdad and the former head teacher of all of us. However, instead of nodding her agreement, Dylan folded her arms.

  ‘I’m fed up with adults controlling what we do,’ she snarled.

  ‘I’m just going to make sure he knows we’re okay,’ I protested. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  Dylan turned away, her face mutinous. Ed sighed again.

  ‘I think Nico’s right,’ Ketty said quickly. ‘We can’t let them all worry.’

  ‘Course you think Nico’s right,’ Dylan muttered. ‘You freakin’ worship him.’

  Ketty rolled her eyes, but said nothing. That’s another
thing I like about her. Loads of girls would get all huffy or hysterical with Dylan over comments like that, but Ketty doesn’t let people get to her. And, even though I knew the past twenty-four hours had been as hard for her as the rest of us – harder, maybe, seeing as she’d been bitten by a guard dog on top of everything else – I also knew that she’d never get all hyper-emotional over stuff that wasn’t worth it.

  I swallowed the last of my burger. I wanted to make the call to Fergus, but get away from Dylan as well. ‘Let’s you and me go over there, babe,’ I said, pointing to the copse of trees. ‘I can call Fergus on my mobile.’

  Ketty nodded. We left the pier and crossed the road. There was a path into the trees and, as we strolled towards it, I gazed up at the sky. It was cloudy – the moon hidden behind clouds. And cold. The wind whipped round our heads. I hugged my jacket to me and looked sideways at Ketty. Any other time and I’d have been thinking about taking advantage of the fact that we were on our own. But right now all I really wanted to do was make the call to Fergus.

  Ketty was definitely still walking with a slight limp from where the dog had bitten her.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ I asked. ‘Your leg?’

  ‘Nah, not really.’ She paused. ‘So where’s your phone?’

  I grinned. Practical as ever.

  I took out my mobile. We’d bought new pay-as-you-go phones on the way to the ferry yesterday, so Geri couldn’t trace us. It already seemed like a lifetime ago.

  As we reached the little path, I called Fergus on his mobile phone. It went straight to voicemail, so I left a message saying I was fine, but needed to talk to him urgently. I felt better once I’d finished, and pulled Ketty into a huge hug. At least Fergus wouldn’t be worrying now. And surely he would call me back soon.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I said with a grin.

  Ketty grinned back. As I bent to kiss her, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.

  I straightened up, on my guard at once. A woman in a dark red suit was in the street just ahead of us. Her sharp blonde bob swished from side to side as she walked, her heels tapping along the pavement. She was looking around for something . . . her face screwed up with anxiety.

  ‘What is it?’ Ketty said, turning to follow my gaze.

  I pointed at the woman, too shocked to speak. She had stopped to consult a map and was chewing on her lip.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Tell me that’s not . . .’

  ‘Geri . . .’ Ketty said. She turned to me, wide-eyed. ‘How can it be?’

  We both stared at the woman. It was definitely Geri . . . the same face . . . the same clothes . . . the same hair . . . except, now I was really staring at her, I could see she wasn’t holding herself like Geri. She didn’t make the same sharp, birdlike movements or exude Geri’s usual poise and confidence.

  And I’d never seen Geri Paterson look anywhere near that anxious. At that moment the woman looked up. I ducked behind a tree, tugging Ketty beside me, but it was too late. The woman had seen us.

  ‘Nico?’ she squeaked, in a high-pitched girl’s voice that was a million miles away from Geri’s clipped tones. ‘Ketty? Is Ed with you?’

  I glanced towards the pier. I could just make out Ed and Dylan, their silhouettes shadowy against the railings. They were looking away from us, out to sea.

  ‘It’s a trick,’ Ketty said. ‘Be careful.’

  I flung out my hand and teleported a cardboard box from the pavement up into the air. I steadied it for a split second, then hurled it at the woman’s face. She ducked, then stood up.

  ‘Stop it, Nico,’ she said.

  Again with the high-pitched, girly voice. I frowned.

  ‘I’m not Geri,’ the woman said. Her face seemed to alter as she spoke, softening and filling out.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Ketty said, her voice shaking.

  ‘No.’ The woman screwed up her face, clearly concentrating hard. ‘Look.’

  And then, before our eyes, she changed. The sharp blonde bob lengthened and darkened . . . the skin paled and the face plumped out and grew smoother . . . the body shrank and narrowed . . .

  A girl – about twelve years old – stood on the pavement. She looked at us with terrified eyes. ‘Please don’t throw things at me again. I came after Ed . . . to find you all . . . I know the hotel’s on this street somewhere . . . Don’t you remember me?’

  I stared at her. She did look vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Beside me, Ketty give a gasp of recognition.

  ‘Amy?’ she said.

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Who’s Amy?’ I turned to the girl. ‘Who on earth are you? And how come . . . how come a minute ago you looked just like Geri Paterson?’

  ‘I’m Ed’s sister,’ Amy said. ‘And I have the Medusa gene, too.’

  3: Amy

  The sea breeze was cold, but it wasn’t the air making me shiver now.

  ‘What d’you mean you’ve got the Medusa gene?’ I grabbed Amy’s plump arm, still sure this was some kind of trick. ‘What’s that got to do with you looking like Geri Paterson?’

  Amy’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I realised a couple of weeks ago,’ she said. ‘I’d been looking in the mirror and I hated my nose and I’d been wishing and wishing to be able to make it straighter and then one day I realised that it was happening. I mean, I could see . . . actually see the nose rearranging itself. So I focused on my mouth and my eyes and . . . my size and I realised I could change all that, too. It’s hard to hold it all with your whole body, but I’m getting better at it.’

  ‘You mean you’re a shape-shifter?’ I said.

  As I spoke, the moon appeared from behind a cloud illuminating Dylan and Ed across the street. They were still standing by the pier railings, looking out to sea, unaware of Amy’s arrival.

  Ketty nudged me. ‘Remember what Harry told us before we left . . . about the records he’d hacked into that proved William Fox threatened to go to the police if Geri sold the Medusa gene?’

  I nodded. It had struck me earlier that if Geri had killed Fox to stop him going to the police, that must have left her free to sell the Medusa gene fifteen years ago. At the time I’d kind of assumed she hadn’t done so – after all, the four of us were the only people we knew who had the gene.

  But Amy’s existence suggested Geri had sold the gene.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Twelve,’ Amy answered.

  ‘That proves it,’ I said. ‘William Fox died three years before you were born. That means he couldn’t have implanted the Medusa gene inside you. Which means Geri must have sold it to someone else who did.’

  ‘Show us how the shape-shifter thing works, Amy,’ said Ketty.

  Amy swallowed. ‘It’s hard when I feel under pressure.’

  ‘I know how you feel.’ Ketty grimaced. ‘I haven’t been able to see into the future for hours. Just do your best.’

  ‘Okay.’ Amy frowned, closing her eyes. ‘Focus on my nose.’

  I looked intently at her nose. There was a little bump halfway down. As I watched, the bump smoothed out.

  ‘I can change my hair, too,’ Amy said, still squeezing her eyes tight shut.

  As she concentrated, her shoulder-length hair shortened into a spiky ginger crop.

  My mouth fell open. Ketty sucked in her breath.

  ‘That is really cool,’ she gasped. ‘Can you do animals?’

  ‘Er, no.’ Amy looked at me anxiously, her hair and nose returning to normal. ‘Just other humans – and I have to study them hard before it works, though it got easier once I got my lenses. Except for the hair. That was always easy. I can do that whenever I want.’ She hesitated, gazing intently at me.

  I shook my head, amazed. I knew the gene worked with other factors such as personality characteristics to come out differently in different people, but I was used to Ed’s mind-reading, Dylan’s protective skills and Ketty’s precognition. It was hard enough to believe another person with the Medusa gene existed,
let alone that, in them, the gene had developed into such an extraordinary ability.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘I came looking for Ed,’ Amy said. ‘He contacted me remotely this afternoon, before you got on that ferry . . . and told me you were all okay and that you guys were running away to France. He didn’t want to tell me which ferry terminal you were coming to, but I saw it anyway and I followed on the next ferry.’

  ‘You can mind-read, too?’ Ketty said.

  ‘No,’ Amy sniffed. ‘But Ed was in a bit of a state and he wasn’t holding back like he normally does when he goes into your head, so I could see all sorts of superficial stuff he was thinking.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Ed didn’t mention he contacted anyone,’ I said, remembering the conversation we’d had earlier.

  ‘I don’t think he likes reminding people he can do remote telepathy with me,’ Amy said. ‘Anyway, he just wanted me to tell Mum and Dad that he was okay . . . that he hadn’t run off for any bad reason.’

  ‘So why did you come after us?’ Ketty asked.

  ‘Because . . . omigosh . . . Geri Paterson turned up soon afterwards and said . . .’ Amy stopped, her blue eyes filling with tears again.

  ‘Said that Nico and Dylan had died in that explosion?’ Ketty said gently. ‘We know, but they’re both fine, so—’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that.’ Amy choked back a sob.

  ‘So what did Geri say that made you come after us . . . ?’ I said, trying not to sound impatient.

  ‘Geri said that Ed and the rest of you broke into this man’s house – Bookman – and murdered him. I came to warn you . . . to help you . . .’

  The pavement seemed to shift under my feet. Beside me, Ketty slapped her hand over her open mouth.

  ‘No!’ She turned to me, her eyes wide with fear. ‘She’s blaming us for Bookman’s death.’

  ‘She made up this whole story that you resented having your identities covered up, even though she’d only done it to protect you,’ Amy explained. ‘She said you were taking it out on the person behind the original Medusa Project.’

  I stared at her in stunned silence.