So Below: The Trilogy

by Matt Whyman

  “If I jump, I die,” she informs the young parkour now. “I trust my instincts just as you trust yours, and right now mine are screaming at me to keep my feet on the ground.”

  “Livia, it’s our only hope!”

  “Believe me,” she says, “I desperately want out as much as you do. It’s just I’d like to live to tell the tale.”

  Yoshi stares at her, thinking hard. “Do you know how to make yourself invisible?” he asks finally.

  “Excuse me?” Livia frowns, one corner of her mouth all bunched up now like she’s unsure whether or not to burst out laughing. “OK, so how do I disappear?” she asks, like this is some kind of joke. “If there’s a risk that bones could be broken then you can forget it.”

  The evening Yoshi had taken off, following a furious row with Aleister, Livia had wondered if she’d ever see him again. Yoshi had made his escape through an open window. Just vaulted over the sill like a spur-of-the-moment suicide, and disappeared from view. Livia remembered seeing the Director and his team crowd the window in a panic. With so much greenery in the beds and rockeries below, however, none of them could see whether the boy had survived such a fall. Then one of the counsellors had chanced to glance up, and spotted the young wall-hopper shinning up a drainpipe.

  Only Aleister had climbed out in pursuit, roaring at the kid to get down and face the music. The Director had come close as well, but then even he must have resigned himself to the fact that this was Yoshi’s territory. Livia had lingered at the window, and returned there at every opportunity. When she had sensed him viewing her remotely, she knew it wouldn’t be long before he showed up for real. Now here he is, asking if she knows how to make herself vanish! It seems it isn’t just his memory Yoshi has lost. His marbles have gone missing, too.

  “Livia, I’m not suggesting we can get out of here in a puff of smoke. I’m talking about falling in so closely behind your target that they can’t see you. It’s called shadowing.”

  “Look at me,” she says, stopping Yoshi there and drawing his attention to her aura. It’s cooled a little since his arrival, but still flickers and pulses around her. “Do I look like the kind of person who can blend in with a crowd?”

  Yoshi registers her point with some embarrassment. “OK, in that case there’s only one way out of here.”

  “And what way is that?”

  “Through the main entrance.”

  “First you want me to shimmy behind the guards. Now you think we should simply stroll down to the lobby and wave goodbye as we leave? That’s even crazier than your shadowing idea.” She taps her temple. “Is everything working upstairs, Yoshi?”

  The boy smiles and turns for the door. “Not quite,” he replies, “but I’m feeling more like myself by the minute.”

  24

  WATCH CLOSELY

  Yoshi has no clear plan this time. Nor does he have any more tricks up his sleeve. All he takes with him is an instinct to survive and a girl who wears her emotions on the outside. Creeping back into the corridor, the glow surrounding her turns amber like a warning beacon. She grips his hand. He leads her several steps across the floor, upon which that light around her suddenly switches to red.

  “We can’t just leave!” she hisses.

  “What do you mean?” Yoshi looks around nervously. At any moment the guards are going to be back on this level like bloodhounds. Throwing his shoes over the balcony has distracted them all right. Once found, however, those goons will know they have been fooled. He faces the girl again, takes her by both hands this time. “Livia, if we hang around we’re history. This is our only chance!”

  “I’m thinking of the others!” She begins to pull him back. This time, it’s the compassion in her eyes, not the colour of her aura, that spells out her reluctance to leave. “Don’t they deserve a chance, too?”

  Slowly, Yoshi’s attention turns to the vast horseshoe of half-open doors flanking the one they’ve just left. It takes a moment for him to register the curious but frightened-looking faces now peering from each of these rooms. None of the others leave their quarters, as if too scared to cross that threshold. Instead they simply stand and stare at the pair.

  “I know you,” breathes Yoshi, as if consulting his memory. “You all look so familiar.”

  Livia frees herself from his hands. “You really have gone gaga, haven’t you?”

  “OK,” he whispers finally, aware that time is pressing. “If we all go together perhaps we can charge our way out. Follow me!”

  He turns for the balcony, hoping to scope out the guards’ position before breaking for the stairs, only to come right round again when one of the kids hisses, “No!”

  “What now?” says Yoshi, in both frustration and fear.

  “There’s no time for second thoughts,” adds Livia, equally bemused. “Isn’t this what we’ve all been waiting for?”

  “Please!” Yoshi says, practically begging now. “If we don’t get to those stairs in the next few seconds, the guards will be back on this floor and we’ll lose our advantage. At least if we all go as one we can bundle our way to the lobby.”

  The kid in question shakes his head. “I’m not coming!” he squeaks. “I don’t want Aleister to get mad with me.” He’s young, this lad, with bottle-bottom glasses that magnify his frightened eyes. Yoshi also notes the faint trace of an aura around him. The kid’s psychic powers might be in an early stage of development, but his terror has clearly overwhelmed him.

  “You have to come!” pleads Livia. “It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for.”

  There’s another little one beside this kid with the glasses. He drops away a step and looks at his shoes. “Count me out as well.”

  “Me too,” concedes another voice, further along the row, which quickly turns into a chorus. Yoshi watches, aghast, as one child after another retreats into their room, until just one door is left open.

  One door with two girls, standing side by side.

  Two girls who appear to be identical in appearance, from their hipster jeans, chain-link belts and high-cut tops. They look about fifteen, at a guess, though it’s safe to say there’s only seconds between them. Even the way they appear to size up the boy seems cut from the same cloth. If it weren’t for one striking difference, there’d be no telling them apart.

  “I’m with you,” says the girl whose long hair has been braided with red and silver beads. She speaks with a tough American accent, but what impresses Yoshi more than anything is the fact that she’s volunteered. “Aleister might scare me, but I like to think that sometimes I can scare him back a little bit!”

  “Where she goes,” echoes the one with the blue beads instead of red, “I go, too.”

  Yoshi glances questioningly at Livia, who flattens her lips and says, “If your memory is really that muddled, you need me more than you think. Yoshi, meet Scarlett and Blaize.”

  “You’re twins, right?” says Yoshi, wishing he could remember more about them. “From the States?”

  “Well spotted, genius.” Livia smiles wryly, then turns to address the two girls. “Before Yoshi makes an even bigger fool of himself, perhaps you’d like to remind him what qualifies you to be here for so-called treatment.”

  “We don’t have much time,” says Yoshi fretfully.

  “It’ll be over in a flash,” says the red-beaded twin called Scarlett, turning to high-five her sister. As their palms connect, bright flames snap out from in between and then vaporise immediately. “It’s called pyrokenesis.”

  “We’re firestarters,” says Blaize to explain, sounding almost triumphant. “Sometimes I get mad with people, and before they know it they’re wondering why the soles of their shoes have started smouldering.”

  “Back home in the Bronx,” says Scarlett, taking over now, “when the juvenile court ordered us here for treatment, the press dubbed us the Sizzle Sisters.”

  “Don’t ever call us that, though,” her sister warns. “We don’t warm to nicknames.”

  “Shh!” T
his is Yoshi, cringing at the noise they’re making. “Girls, that’s hot stuff you just did there, but let’s save the rest for later. If you’re with us, let’s go!” He turns, dropping low to cross to the balcony, and is relieved this time that all three fall in behind.

  What’s not so heartening is the sound of boots heading up the steps towards them. Yoshi keeps on moving, aware that whoever it is has only just begun climbing. He reaches the balcony and signals for everyone to stay low.

  “What now?” breathes Livia, clearly rattled.

  Suddenly, Yoshi finds all eyes on him. He glances between the balcony rails, through the hanging foliage. What he sees are several guards down there examining the shoes he’d thrown, and one making his way up to this floor.

  “Someone give me a shoe,” he says, appealing to them all.

  “What happened to yours?” asks Blaize.

  Yoshi glances at his toes, sensing an explanation will just take too long. “I jump better in bare feet,” is all he says.

  “Will you stop talking about jumping?” Livia looks at him fiercely. “What you do is a death wish, Yoshi. Like I told you the first time, I don’t have a problem with pavements. You can take a running jump if you like. I’d sooner stay here and watch.”

  “I need a shoe now!” he hisses so urgently that all three volunteer. Scarlett is the first to oblige, kicking off both pumps. With no time to explain himself, Yoshi grabs one, lobs it like a hand grenade, and ducks out of sight.

  Even before the shoe has dropped into the atrium, a shout goes up from below.

  “There! One of the freaks! Get him!”

  “Run!” yells Yoshi, breaking cover now, and again imploring the girls to follow. Immediately, the building transforms into a hive of panic. There are guards shouting, footfalls echoing everywhere and kids at their doors once more, screaming at the three would-be escapees to run for their lives. And yet, despite it all, Yoshi hears only Mikhail’s advice about magic and illusion replaying in his mind. His stunt with the shoe might have misdirected the guards once. This time, it has served to alert every single one of them to their presence.

  Never pull the same trick twice. That’s what the young Russian had warned him, and this kind of uproar from an audience was the reason why.

  “There’s no way out!” Livia tells him. Her aura is pulsing now, like a heart working overtime. “We’re finished!”

  Yoshi implores them all to keep up, only to backtrack when the first guard appears at the top of the stairs. He falters on the last step, and then focuses on all three escapees. But before he’s summoned the wit to call out to his colleagues, the light around Livia begins to regroup. It seems to flow in front of her face, as if taking instruction from behind her closed eyes now.

  “Don’t hurt him!” pleads Scarlett, as this strange illumination stretches towards the guard. Meantime Blaize detects another one approaching from their blind side. She spins around and scowls.

  “Stay back, buddy, or you’re toast!” This guard advances by a step, only to lift his foot from the floor like he’s suddenly walked onto a bed of coals. Several others pull up behind him. Blaize’s sister, Scarlett, issues the same threat at them, although she doesn’t seem so sure of herself. Even Livia is faltering. Her aura has brightened so intensely that her target has to look away, but there are yet more guards spilling up the stairs.

  “We’re outnumbered!” Yoshi yells, trying to keep an eye on them all. Slowly, the security force begins to circle and close around them. The boy glances at Livia. She meets his eyes through her haze, which is thinning by the second.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry I called you back here.”

  “Don’t say that!” he tells her, and turns to glare at these uniformed thugs. “I discovered who I am thanks to you,” he adds. “There’s no way I’m leaving your side now.”

  “Give it up, guys,” says one of the guards. It’s the oversized one who Yoshi had shadowed earlier, and he’s sweating badly. “Aleister is on his way here right now. If he finds everyone is home as they should be, maybe he’ll go easy on us all.” He stops there to address one of his colleagues. “Get the rooms on lockdown,” he mutters, glancing at the horseshoe of conspicuously closed doors. “I can’t afford to lose any more freaks.”

  Yoshi glares at him, then shoots one desperate glance at the skylight high overhead. There’s no human way that anyone could get up to it, let alone three kids who have never taken to the rooftops as he has. Just then, the deadening sound of bolts crashing informs the boy that all the rooms behind them have now become out of bounds. He considers scrambling for the balcony, if only to give the girls a chance to slip away. But even if he had the courage to leap for it, gravity would drag him down – and with a deadly splash to finish. That water feature in the lobby certainly hadn’t looked deeper than a bath, thinks Yoshi, though it isn’t what happened to the woman in the white coat that persuades him to stay put. It’s the draining sound – a great gurgling that rises through the atrium now, as if a giant plug has come unstuck.

  The guards are first to react, glancing around in turn. Yoshi sees some break away, drawn by the interruption. They lean cautiously over the balcony, and then turn to one another in shock and disbelief.

  “What’s happening?” asks Livia. “Something’s going on below us.”

  “There’s a lot going on below us,” says Yoshi, wishing they could just magic themselves back to the bunker. Only then does he consider what’s just popped out of his mouth. “In fact,” he adds, sounding brighter all of a sudden, “Something big may just be about to surface.”

  Even as he speaks, yet more guards turn to investigate the commotion. Only the big guy is left squaring up to them, but it’s clear the disturbance is troubling him. Finally, he abandons this face-off to take a look, which prompts the boy and his friends to do likewise.

  And way down there, breaking the surface of the tropical water feature in the lobby, what looks to one and all like a swamp monster delivers an anguished howl.

  25

  SHADOW SIEGE

  “Boss, I don’t like what I’m looking at here. Whatever’s underneath all that weed and slime is mad as hell!”

  “Stay cool, people.”

  “Could it be one of the freaks, messing with our minds?”

  “Why don’t you go and find out, Butch.”

  “Me? Why me? It’s always me!”

  “Because then I don’t have to listen to you whinnying like a lost pony!”

  “But Boss—”

  “Do as I say!”

  As the guards continue to bicker, betraying their fear and confusion, Yoshi turns to his friends and whispers, “It’s OK.”

  “How can you say that?” asks Scarlett, her eyes locked on the wailing beast.

  The pond is little more than a puddle now, exposing this tortured creature from the deep. Its face is streaked by muddy silt, like some kind of tribal war paint. As it fights to be free from the weed through which it has risen, all that can be seen are two angry eyes.

  “I just can’t believe what I’m seeing,” her sister offers.

  Yoshi thinks back to the lessons he learned in the bunker, and begins to understand what’s going on. “It’s a weapon of mass delusion,” he tells them, and just prays that he is right. “By playing to the crowd, it’s less likely that anyone will dare to question what’s going on. We should use the opportunity to get away before someone braves speaking up.”

  “We really should make that move now,” breathes Livia, her attention still locked on the abomination below. “Everyone is watching it, so if we’re going to leave let’s make it right away.”

  Yoshi is set to creep under the guards’ noses, only for this beast from the deep to stop thrashing and face the audience on several galleries. A hush falls over the atrium, but instead of roaring some more, it clears its throat and, in a voice suited for the stage, asks: “Is Yoshi in the building?”

  The guard closest to the boy, the twitchy one
called Butch, comes alive in response and shouts, “Here he is!” Yoshi peers over the balcony. This time, he sees a familiar face behind the muck. “Go to him,” Butch whispers, clearly sold on what’s happening here. Yoshi glances at the other guards. If any of them have doubts about what’s going on, their gullible colleague has just made it harder for them to speak up. “He’s come for you,” Butch whispers to the boy. “Sacrifice yourself!”

  “If I go,” says Yoshi, playing to the crowd himself now, and jabs a thumb over this shoulder, “my three friends here come with me.”

  “Don’t lay down demands!” Butch hisses. “Just do as it asks!”

  “Nobody is going anywhere!” This is the guard Butch had called boss. His uniform is no different to the others, but his baseball cap sports seven stars of rank across the bill. The look on his face tells Yoshi this charade might be over sooner than he had hoped. “Aleister will be here any minute now!” he bellows. “If he finds that order has broken down, we’ll all be fired. Butch, I don’t intend to tell you again. Get down to the lobby and eject this idiot from the premises. It’s no monster. Be a man and admit you were fooled for a moment. Just look at what’s freaking you out here. It’s some skinny toerag badly in need of a clean up.”