Nightrise pof-3

by Anthony Horowitz

  “You want to visit the other side, just ask Max,” DV said. He smiled briefly. “The only trouble is, he’ll have your brain wired up to a computer and the next time anyone sees you, you’ll be a vegetable like all the others.”

  The meal came to an end. The boys handed in their trays and plastic forks, then turned out their pockets and stood with their legs apart for the pat-down before they were returned to their cells for an hour’s rest. As they left the room, walking slowly through the blinding sunlight, Jamie noticed Joe Feather standing on the edge of the football field, examining him. It seemed to him that the Intake Officer had been watching him from the moment he had arrived. Did he suspect something? If so, Jamie would have to move quickly. He might be running out of time.

  He remembered what Feather had said when he was processed, almost a week before. He had seen the tattoo on Jamie’s shoulder and he had asked, “You have a brother?” There was only one way he could have known that. He had seen Scott. And that meant that Scott had to be here, at Silent Creek.

  Jamie was sure of it. After all, it made sense. Silent Creek was the only privately run prison in Nevada and it was part of the Nightrise Corporation. According to Alicia, Nightrise had been responsible for the disappearance of not one but many boys with paranormal abilities. What better place to keep them than within a maximum security prison, miles from anywhere, surrounded by the Mojave Desert? He had seen the name in Colton Banes’s thoughts. And what else could there be, concealed on the other side of the wall?

  Jamie took off his trainers (it was rule number 118 or 119: no shoes inside the cell) and left them neatly in the corridor. The other boys had done the same. He went into the cell and a few seconds later there was a buzz and the doors slid shut electronically. His room, painted white, measured ten steps by five. There was a bunk that was actually part of the floor, moulded out of it. The cement simply rose up to form a narrow shelf with a thin, plastic mattress on the top. Opposite the bed he had a metal shelf which acted as a desk, with a chair bolted into the floor. A stainless-steel unit stood beside the door – a toilet and a basin combined. There was a mirror made of polished steel. And that was it. The room had a single window: a long strip no more than a few centimetres wide. There were no bars. Even if he had been able to smash through the industrial-strength glass, he could never have slipped out.

  The other boys had told him that the door was electronically sealed and whenever he was alone, locked into the cell, Jamie had to fight back a growing sense of panic. Alicia knew he was here. At the end of his second week, he would be allowed to telephone her. But she was his only link with the outside world. What if something happened to her? Then he would be stuck here as Jeremy Rabb – or Indian. How long would it be before he went crazy and either had to be locked up in isolation or drugged?

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Jamie still had his power and tonight he was going to use it. There would be a guard on duty in his unit and that guard would take him to the other side of the prison. He would find Scott and together the two of them would walk out.

  Except…

  It was only now, when it was much too late, that the first whispers of doubt came. Scott had the same powers as him -so why hadn’t he used them to break out himself? Was there something Jamie didn’t know? Why was he so certain that Scott was even there? A sickening thought occurred to him. Scott could be dead. He could have escaped and got lost in the desert. Anything could have happened.

  Sitting alone on his bunk, Jamie opened his mind as he had done every night since he had arrived. He was sending his thoughts along the corridors, into the different blocks, trying to feel for any sense of his brother being near by. He concentrated on the other side of the wall. But there was nothing. Why was that? Jamie refused to accept that Scott wasn’t here. He had to be somewhere. Inside the secret compound. And if he wasn’t responding there must be a reason. Maybe it was simply that he was asleep.

  Somehow the next hour crawled past. Then there were more lessons, an hour in the gym, dinner. The day finished with a wrap-up session in the unit’s living area – an open space with four circular tables where they were allowed to play cards or board games. The boys were supposed to talk about the day and how it had gone, but of course there was never very much to say. A guard sat watching them from behind a bank of television screens which showed different views of the corridors. There were no cameras in the cells. Tonight, Max Koring was on duty, which meant that the lights would snap out at exactly ten o’clock – or perhaps fifteen minutes earlier if he felt like it.

  They were sent back to their cells at nine o’clock. They were given nothing to wear in bed – it was too hot anyway – so the boys just slept in their shorts. Each of them was given a toothbrush to use but it was collected and locked away again before the doors were shut. The handle of a toothbrush, sharpened, could make a lethal weapon, and the supervisors weren’t taking any chances. Jamie had no watch. It had been taken away from him along with anything else that might give him any sense of identity or independence. Eventually the lights in the cell blinked out. Although it still wasn’t truly dark, there were arc lamps all around the prison perimeter and they would stay on all night, the white glare seeping in through the window. Jamie lay on his bunk for about half an hour. Then he got up and dressed. It was time.

  He pressed the call button next to his cell door.

  A few minutes later, there was the rattle of a key and the door slid open. Max Koring stood there, his stomach rising and falling, his face half hidden in shadow. He had opened the door manually, overriding the electronic control. And he wasn’t pleased to be here. None of the supervisors enjoyed the graveyard shift, but being bothered by the kids just made it worse.

  “Yes?” he demanded.

  “I want you to take me to the units on the other side of the wall,” Jamie said.

  The supervisor stared at him. He looked puzzled.

  “You will do it now,” Jamie continued – and pushed, projecting his thoughts into the man’s head. He knew what he was doing. He had done exactly the same thing when he had come face to face with the policeman at Marcie’s house in Sparks.

  Max Koring didn’t move.

  “We’re leaving now,” Jamie said. And pushed again.

  “You think you’re being funny?” Koring muttered. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

  Jamie felt a shiver of bewilderment – followed by panic. It wasn’t working! But it had to. “Take me to my brother!” he demanded. He was still pushing, burning a hole in the man’s brain.

  Now Koring was examining him as if seeing him in a completely new light. He smiled – but there was nothing warm or pleasant in it. “You have a brother?” he asked.

  Desperately, Jamie changed tack. He couldn’t make the man obey him – but he could still use the moment to get information from him. He no longer cared about the consequences. He had to know about Scott and so he concentrated and jumped into Koring’s mind, just as he had with Colton Banes.

  Nothing happened. His power wasn’t working. Jamie just had time to absorb the shock before Koring grabbed hold of him and backhanded him – hard – across the face. The room spun. Jamie tasted blood. Then he was thrown backwards, crashing into the bunk.

  “I don’t like my time being wasted,” Koring said. “And you don’t give me orders. You may be new here, but you should know that. So maybe it’s time you had your first taste of CRR.”

  CRR. Corrective Room Restriction. Another way of saying solitary confinement.

  Ten minutes later, Koring returned with another supervisor. Neither of them said a word. They simply jerked Jamie out of his cell and dragged him down the corridor. The other boys must have heard what had happened. Suddenly they were all awake and shouting encouragement.

  “Good luck, Indian!”

  “Don’t let them grind you down!”

  “See you soon, Indian. You take care!”

  The isolation cells were in a separate area, a pair of
heavy steel doors separating them from the main unit. Jamie didn’t even try to resist. He was flung into a cell half the size of the one he had left. This room had no mattress, and although there was a narrow window, the glass was frosted so there was no view.

  “Let’s see how you feel after a week in here,” Koring said. “And in future, you call me sir.”

  The door slammed shut.

  Jamie stayed where he was, curled in a ball on the floor. He had hit his head against the bunk when he fell and his nose was bleeding. He was utterly alone. And his power had let him down. Had it gone, or was there something about the prison that he didn’t know? Maybe it had been built in this part of the desert purposefully. There could be something in the water or even in the soil that was playing with his mind. It made sense. If they were locking up kids with powers, they would have to be certain that those powers were under control.

  Eventually, almost reluctantly, he crawled onto the bunk and fell asleep, his knees close to his chin, his arms loosely folded around his legs. And that was when he had the second dream.

  He knew where he was immediately, and he was almost grateful for it even though this world – this dream world or whatever it was – was as alien to him as Silent Creek. There was the sea in front of him, the island once again, the sky as empty and as dead as ever. Jamie didn’t know what it all meant or why he should find himself here again, but somehow he understood that it was important. He remembered the two boys in the straw boat and searched for them, hoping they would come into sight. Maybe, at the very least, they could tell him where he could find Scott.

  Something moved close to the water’s edge and Jamie’s heart sank. It was the man he had encountered the last time he had been here. He was already straightening up – all seven feet of him – moving across the shingle, the hollow eyes staring out of the grey, putty-like face. The man was holding his bowl. This time there was no sign of the knife.

  “He’s gonna kill him,” the man said.

  Despite everything, Jamie felt a spurt of anger. “That’s what you said last time,” he called out. “But I can’t stop them killing Scott unless you tell me where he is.”

  “No, boy. You don’t understand-”

  The man was about to go on but he never got the chance. There was a lightning strike. No – it was more than that. It was as if two giant hands had seized hold of the universe and ripped it apart like paper. The whole world – the sea and the sky – was torn in two. Jamie felt the ground convulse underneath him – an earthquake more powerful than anything the world had ever known. Everything was shuddering. He could feel his teeth rattling in his head. He was thrown off his feet and as he fell he tried to catch sight of the man… but he had already gone. At the same time, an ear-splitting scream echoed all around him. He would have said it was a shout of triumph, except that there was nothing remotely human about it. Jamie was deafened. He was clinging to the ground, which was twisting in turmoil beneath him.

  In the next few seconds, a series of shapes suddenly appeared, plummeting through the sky – flying or falling… he couldn’t tell. It was as if a great hole had opened up on the other side of the universe and flames were bursting out. The whole sky was on fire. He thought he saw a gigantic spider, another animal like an ape or a monkey, something that looked like a huge bird… Thousands of tiny specks followed them: a great dark swarm of them, twisting and cartwheeling in the air.

  And there was something else. Jamie was aware only of an approaching blackness, a sense of something so terrifying that he could no longer bear to look. He closed his eyes and hugged the ground. The sea had gone, the water rushing away from the coastline. The wind was howling all around him.

  It seemed to go on for ever. But there was no real time here and it could have been all over in a minute. As the storm died down and the waves returned, he lay where he was, completely exhausted.

  Jamie knew nothing of the Old Ones, the five Gatekeepers, the struggle that had been going on for thousands of years and the part that he had been chosen to play. He knew nothing about a stone circle called Raven’s Gate or the second gate that had been built in the Nazca Desert in Peru. Nor did he know that it was now midnight on 24 June – the day known as Inti Raymi.

  The second gate had just opened.

  25 JUNE

  Nazca, Peru

  The jeep seemed to be on fire. As it tore across the plain, it trailed a cloud of dust and sand which, in the moonlight, could have been smoke. The headlights were on but they were almost ineffectual in the great emptiness of the Nazca Desert and the moon itself was a better guide. It was three o’clock in the morning on the twenty-fifth of June, the day after Inti Raymi. The night was unusually cold, even in a desert where the temperature could drop ten degrees with the setting of the sun. And there was something strange about the light. It had a hard, almost unnatural quality – as if there had just been a terrible storm.

  A woman was driving. Her name was Joanna Chambers and she was a professor of anthropology, a world expert on the wonder known as the Nazca Lines. She was large and slightly eccentric in appearance. She enjoyed playing the mad professor and she could be outspoken, even rude at times. But right now she was tight-lipped, her hands clutching the steering wheel. She was gazing ahead with a real dread of what she might find.

  She was not alone. There was an Englishman in the passenger seat next to her. He was Richard Cole, the journalist who had been with Matt Freeman – the first of the Five – when he had discovered the secret of Raven’s Gate in Yorkshire and who had then chosen to travel with Matt to Peru. He was looking exhausted, more gaunt and bedraggled than ever. Richard had come a long way – in more than one sense – since he and Matt had met in a rundown newspaper office in Greater Malling. At the time, Richard’s work had mainly involved writing about weddings and funerals… and he wasn’t sure which he found more depressing. But Matt had introduced him to a world of impossibilities: dinosaur skeletons that came to life, witches and demons, lost civilizations and cities hidden in the mountains of Peru. And now this. It seemed that their adventures had come to a sudden and sour end. Matt might be dead. This time, they hadn’t won.

  “We’re almost there,” Professor Chambers said. She glanced briefly at Richard, who didn’t even seem to have heard her. “I feel this is my fault,” she went on. “If only I’d been able to work it all out sooner, maybe we’d have had more time…”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” Richard took a deep breath. “I should never have let them go into the desert alone. Matt and Pedro. They’re just kids, for heaven’s sake!”

  “It was a two-seater helicopter and there were three of them in it anyway. There wasn’t room for anyone else.”

  “I shouldn’t have let them go. The Incas warned us. They said that one of them would be killed…”

  “They said one of them might be killed. And you know that Matt is no ordinary child. He’s one of the Five. Pedro too. I think you should have more faith in them.”

  But as they drove on, it became clear that something terrible had happened. The ground had been torn up, the entire landscape broken apart. An earthquake had already been reported on Peruvian radio, but both Richard Cole and Professor Chambers knew that was only part of the truth. Matt had taken off to intercept Diego Salamanda at his mobile laboratory in the desert, but it seemed that he hadn’t arrived in time. The second gate had opened. Richard would have known it even without looking at the upturned desert floor. He could sense it in the air. There was a sheet of lightning pulsating in the far distance, behind the mountains. It burned into his eyes. He was beginning to feel sick.

  “There!” Professor Chambers exclaimed and swung the wheel.

  The jeep’s headlights had picked up the wreckage of a helicopter, half buried in the desert floor. Two of the rotors were missing and the other two were buckled and broken. The tail had snapped in half and the cockpit was a mess of shattered glass and dangling wires. Now that they were closer, they could smell fuel
in the air. Professor Chambers slammed on the brake but Richard was already out and running before the jeep had come to a halt. He had seen a boy, lying with his back against the wreckage, his legs stretched out in front of him. One of them was bent at an impossible angle.

  It was Pedro.

  “What happened? Where’s Matt?” Richard shouted out the questions before he remembered that Pedro didn’t speak a word of English. Pedro looked at him quizzically and Richard felt ashamed of himself. He had been so worried about his friend, he hadn’t stopped to consider how the other boy must be feeling. He crouched down and laid a hand on Pedro’s shoulder. “Are you OK?” he asked.

  A moment later, Professor Chambers arrived. She had thought to bring a bottle of water with her and she handed it to Pedro, who drank. “?Como estas?” she asked. “How are you?”

  Quickly, Pedro explained what had happened. The helicopter had been hit by a bullet. They had lost control and crashed. Richard looked into the cockpit and saw the young pilot – Atoc. He was belted into his seat, his hands resting on the controls. He was obviously dead. Pedro was still talking. His leg had been broken and he was unable to move. Matt had gone on his own to find Salamanda.

  “You must leave me,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “You have to find Matteo. The gate opened. I saw…”

  He faltered and stopped.

  “What did you see?” Professor Chambers asked.

  “I can’t talk about it. Just find Matteo.”

  Richard had understood the gist of what Pedro was saying. He reached out and touched Professor Chambers on the arm. “You stay here. I’ll go on,” he said.

  The professor nodded. Pedro pointed. “Alla…” Over there.

  Richard didn’t take the jeep. He was afraid he would miss Matt if he drove too quickly. He was sure that he couldn’t be far from the helicopter, but even so it took him twenty minutes to find him, and when he did it looked as if he had arrived too late. Matt was lying on his back and Richard had never seen anyone more broken or more still. The boy had wept blood. His face was completely white.