‘I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing,’ I heard Simon answer. ‘And who would we ring anyway? The police?’
‘Maybe there’s some papers in the desk,’ I suggested. ‘Plans of the prison.’
Zee and Simon both nodded, but neither of them took a step forward. For a second we all stood staring at the cruel carvings, lost in our own macabre thoughts. I was the one who broke the collective paralysis again.
‘This is ridiculous,’ I said, storming forward. ‘It’s just a desk.’
My confidence stalled when I reached the other side of the vast table. There were carvings here too, but they didn’t show executions. I caught a glimpse of a battlefield, the detail surely too realistic for an engraving, a boy being carried away by men wearing gas masks. Below that, adorning one of the thick legs, was another kid on an operating table, screaming as his skin was peeled away by a wheezer. If the carvings on the front of the desk were bad then these were plain terrifying, all the more so now that I knew the scenes they depicted were real. The writing on this side was the same, all except for the last word:
THEY ARE ALL SAVED.
I ran my fingers along the letters, the wood hot and smooth like living skin. There were no drawers in the desk that I could see, no shelves full of plans, no hooks with keys. There was nothing. I was about to report this to Zee and Simon when my finger slid under the bottom of the desktop and made contact with something cold and round. I ducked down, peering into the shadows beneath to see what it was. A button.
I could only think of two functions it might have. The first was to sound an alarm, the same as the warden’s portable panic button. If that was the case then it didn’t really matter if I activated it – after all, the siren was already blasting through the prison. The other possibility was …
I pressed it, standing up in time to see a hidden door opening in one of the walls, the sound of rock grating on rock deafening. Simon and Zee heard it too, screaming in unison as they spun round to defend themselves. All that emerged was a fierce white light which turned them into ghosts of themselves.
‘Christ, a little warning would be nice,’ said Zee, one hand to his heart. ‘I almost cacked myself.’
I laughed, walking round the desk to investigate. For a few seconds I couldn’t see anything in the glare; it was like looking into the sun. Then I realised that something in the room beyond was moving, specks of white against the glow that could have been birds swooping and circling. My heart leapt as memories from the outside world hit me, visions of beaches and sunlight and sea breezes. Then my eyes got used to the light and the room swam into focus.
‘Jackpot,’ said Zee, pushing past me. ‘Holy crap, we’ve hit the mother lode.’
Simon and I followed him inside. He was right. The secret room was the same size as the one we’d just left, but there the similarity ended. The movement I had made out came from the television monitors that took up almost an entire wall, each displaying a scene from somewhere inside the prison. We stepped closer, letting our eyes drift over each grainy film.
‘That’s gen pop,’ said Simon, pointing at a screen which showed the canteen. It was empty, the inmates confined to their cells. I could see them on the other monitors, pale faces peering through bars, skinny bodies on bunks, and the feeling of nostalgia that washed over me took me by surprise. I never thought I’d feel homesick for my cell up top.
‘How the hell did we get away with blowing our way to the river?’ asked Zee. ‘There are cameras everywhere.’
‘Not in the chipping halls,’ I replied, seeing no sign of them on the screens. ‘They were hacked out after the prison was opened, remember.’ I looked for the kitchen, saw that the angle of the camera was directed towards the doors rather than at the oven, only one corner of which was visible. I pointed it out. ‘Bloody hell, that was a stroke of luck.’
‘And isn’t that the warden?’ added Zee. We crowded around another screen to see a group of blacksuits hunched over a motionless shape on the floor. The image was fuzzy but the figure was unmistakable.
‘You must have knocked him out cold,’ I said, patting Zee gently on the back.
‘You did that?’ Simon asked. Zee nodded, then looked up at me.
‘Well, Alex here did most of it, I just gave him a little extra.’ He snorted, the noise not quite a laugh. ‘I should have killed the bastard.’
‘Yeah,’ muttered Simon. ‘You shoulda. But at least we know he’s still out for the count. Gives us some time.’
The sight of the warden unconscious on the other side of the prison’s underbelly did take the knife edge of tension from my back. I let myself breathe, studying the monitors for a clue to our escape, a way out. Then I saw something that almost broke my heart.
‘Look,’ I said, feeling the gooseflesh erupt on my skin. I lifted a trembling finger to the top right-hand corner of the display, at a sight I never thought I’d see again. ‘It’s still there.’
‘What?’ Zee started, but the rest of his question trailed away. For what seemed like forever we gazed at the screen, at a live video feed from a camera that must have been mounted on the side of the Black Fort, staring at the world we thought we’d lost. The picture may have only been small, but that glimpse of moonlight and tarmac looked bigger than a football pitch, an endless expanse of ground without walls, without bars. I felt as though I could travel right up those cables, bursting free at the other end and surging into the night like a free spirit.
‘It’s raining,’ said Simon. And that did it – all three of us broke down. I hoped there was no camera in here because we wouldn’t have made a pretty sight, the three of us bunched up against each other bawling like babies. I know it sounds crazy, but none of us ever expected to see the outside world again. We didn’t know if it even existed any more. And yet there it was, in glorious black and white, right above our heads. I couldn’t have stopped those tears if my life had depended on it.
We emerged from the moment together, coughing with embarrassment and trying not to make eye contact. When we finally managed to look at one another that same unstoppable force which made us cry gave us a fit of the giggles, the laughter bubbling up our throats like geysers. Eventually it passed, leaving us exhausted but exhilarated.
‘It’s right there, boys,’ said Zee as the last echoed laughs faded into the walls. ‘We can do this.’
‘So let’s do it,’ I added. ‘Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.’
A PLAN
When we finally managed to drag our eyes away from the bank of CCTV monitors we realised they were actually the least useful thing in the room.
‘Oh man,’ said Zee, his hushed tone one of awe. ‘Oh man oh man oh man. If the warden was here right now I think I’d kiss him.’
He walked towards the right-hand side of the room where a glass and steel cabinet held a selection of weapons that would have made a terrorist blush. Zee reached in and pulled out a shotgun, his skinny arms obviously struggling with its weight. He held it to his shoulder, swinging it wildly around the room.
‘Take it easy, kid,’ yelled Simon, ducking down and shielding his face with his mammoth arm. ‘I don’t want no pepper shot in my ass.’
‘It probably isn’t even loaded,’ Zee replied, resting the barrel of the huge gun over one arm while he prodded the various clips and clasps that ran along its length. Still eyeing him nervously, Simon walked to another cabinet next to the first and I saw him slide something long and metallic into his pocket.
I left him to it, turning my attention to the wall opposite. Set in a recess, framed in glass and wood, was a blueprint of the prison, every corridor and room laid out in a three-dimensional network of fine white lines. Even in miniature the place looked huge, the Black Fort on the surface just a speck when compared with the monstrous leviathan than lurked beneath it. The tip of the nightmare iceberg that was Furnace.
And we were right at the bottom.
‘You are here,’ I muttered to myself, running my finger dow
n the spider web of lines until I found the room we were in. I had to crouch to see it, the warden’s quarters the size of a grain of sweetcorn almost lost in the bulk of what lay overhead. I let my finger trail back upwards, through the endless layers of gen pop, rising to the surface, to freedom.
‘Somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy,’ said Simon from behind my shoulder. ‘You see any way out on there?’
I returned to my starting point, focusing hard on the blueprint. I knew that the prison’s underbelly was a warren of tunnels, wards and storerooms, but I’d had no idea how complex it truly was until now. They spilled out in every direction, seemingly at random, like the roots of a tree. But none of them led anywhere except right back where they started.
‘Those two doors were the only way out into the caves,’ I said, pointing to the place on the map where the tunnel we’d just been in ended, and another on the north side. Both doors had been scored over with a red X. ‘But even if we’d found a way through then we’d have just been stuck out there in the dark. There is no way to the surface from there, remember? The steeple was our best bet, and that failed.’
‘So what, then?’ asked Zee, who had joined us. I could smell the cordite and grease from the gun he still held, the scent making my stomach churn. ‘Ain’t there no emergency exit from here?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, scouring the plans for any sign of a back way out or a secret elevator to the surface. An escape route made sense, if not for a fire then certainly for a riot. I mean, if the inmates took over the asylum then the warden would need somewhere to run.
Only that would never happen, not in Furnace.
No, as far as I could see there was only one way to the surface. I drew my hand up the single white line that ran through the prison from the lowest levels of gen pop towards the Black Fort.
‘The elevator?’ said Simon. ‘Hell no.’
‘It’s the only way,’ I replied. ‘You see any other link to the surface? Everywhere’s a dead end except that.’ I rammed a finger against the glass to emphasise my point. ‘The elevator, if we can get to it then it’s our way out.’
‘But that’s in gen pop,’ said Zee. ‘How are we even supposed to get there?’
‘And we know it ain’t no ordinary elevator,’ added Simon. ‘We don’t just hop in and press the penthouse button and sit back to enjoy the ride. It probably isn’t even operated from the car.’
‘One thing at a time,’ I said, studying the base of the map to try and find a path to the main section of the prison. If the undersection was like the roots of a tree then gen pop was the canopy. Although both sprawled out in all directions there was only one narrow point where they met. I jabbed my finger again.
‘This is where we need to get to. It’s back down past the infirmary, you know that junction that splits off to the solitary cells? I think that’s it. We take the other branch and it leads to this room. That thing there’s another elevator, a smaller one, goes up as far as the base of gen pop. Okay?’
‘You say so, boss,’ said Simon. ‘Let’s get kitted up and go.’
I straightened up and pulled the frame from the wall, smashing it on the floor and carefully pulling the blueprint from the pool of broken glass. It was as I was folding it up to slide into my suit that I realised Simon was staring at my chest.
‘Something got you pretty good there,’ he said. I looked down, ran a hand along the claw marks that Gary had made in my shirt, and in the skin beneath. The pain was almost gone, so much so that I’d completely forgotten about it, and a thick black scab had already formed over the wound. Simon flashed a conspiratorial look at Zee, who was still fiddling with the shotgun, then turned back to me.
‘Only reason you’re still standing is because of the nectar,’ he went on. ‘That injury there would have killed you otherwise. How you feeling? A little dizzy? A little weak?’
I shook my head, but now that he’d mentioned it I wasn’t feeling as strong as I had before. I blinked and for a second the room seemed to spin, although I was pretty sure I was imagining it. Reaching up, I unknotted my tie, throwing it to the floor and breathing deeply.
‘Sooner or later the supply of nectar in your blood is gonna dry up, and that ain’t pretty. I’ve been there.’ He waved his mutated arm at me as if I’d forgotten it. ‘It’s like a drug, this stuff. The more you have, the more you want. And without it your body gets weak. Best-case scenario: you stop being a man of steel and you start being just a boy again. Stronger than you were, yeah, and just as big, but no match for a blacksuit. I was lucky, that’s what happened to me.’
‘And what’s the worst-case scenario?’ I asked, flexing the muscles beneath my suit just to reassure myself they were still there.
‘There are two,’ he replied with a whisper. ‘First off, you just die. Body can’t handle its new shape without the nectar there to fuel it and just disintegrates.’
‘Great,’ I said.
‘That was the good news. The alternative is your body stays the same but your mind goes. You snap, go schizo with bloodlust. You become something a million times worse than what they made you.’
I didn’t reply, trying not to think about what Simon was saying. But how could I not? There was a pretty good chance, then, that even if I did get out I’d end up either dying horribly or becoming some sort of psycho monster rampaging through the streets. Simon must have seen my face drop because he rested his hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently.
‘Just giving you a heads up, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there, remember. I know what it’s like, and I’m still me – well, sort of. True, you’ve had a hell of a lot more nectar than I ever got, but there are probably doctors on the surface who can cure you, hospitals and –’
In such a small room the gunshot was deafening. I felt like my eardrums had been blown out, the pain so great that I thought I’d been shot. I dived to the floor, feeling Simon beside me, desperately looking to see where the attack was coming from. But there were no blacksuits, no warden. There was just Zee, holding the smoking shotgun in his hands, his face twisted into a grimace of shock.
‘Oops, my bad,’ he said. Or at least I think that’s what he said; the ringing in my ears was like a church bell. I saw Simon jump up, could read the curses on his lips. I got to my feet and threw in a few choice words of my own. Several of the monitors were now lifeless, dozens of ragged holes in the glass where there had been pictures only moments ago. Tendrils of black smoke curled lazily upwards and pooled in the corners of the ceiling.
‘You idiot!’ yelled Simon, wiping a hand across the back of his neck and pulling it away to reveal a thin red line across his fingers. ‘You shot me!’
‘It’s just a graze!’ replied Zee, laying the shotgun on the floor and holding up his hands. ‘I don’t know what happened, it just went off.’
‘You pulled the trigger, that’s what happened,’ Simon muttered. ‘Almost blew my goddamned head right off.’
I tried to fight the smile but I couldn’t. It sprang up on my face like a jack-in-the-box, and it must have been a good one because pretty soon both Simon and Zee were imitating it.
‘Don’t see what’s so funny,’ muttered Simon, trying and failing to look serious as he rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Zee, maybe you should leave the gun here. Stand a better chance of getting out if we’re still in one piece.’
Zee nodded, kicking the shotgun away like it was a poisonous snake. I stared at it for a second, wondering whether we should take it along. I mean, the blacksuits were armed, and we needed all the firepower we could get. But we really were just as likely to shoot each other as we were a guard, and the thought of the warden’s smug expression when he found out we’d done his job for him was too much to bear.
I slotted the map into my jacket and took a quick look at the remaining monitors. There were fewer blacksuits with the warden now, which meant that the rest were probably on their way back here. We had to move. I ran for the door, back into the room with
the desk, heading for the corridor beyond.
That’s when the phone started to ring.
The blast from the shotgun had been loud, but this was a million times worse. Only it wasn’t the same sort of loud. This felt like something was exploding right in the core of my brain, a noise so sharp that I could almost see it – a blinding white light that made me stagger and fall. I clamped my hands to my ears but it didn’t help, the shrill ring burrowing into my head like a wasp laying its eggs.
And those eggs hatched into visions that made everything else I’d seen look like something from a kids’ book, even the nightmares that sprouted from the warden’s eyes, even the dreams I’d had when they were pumping the nectar into me. It was as if the carvings on the desk were coming to life, each scene played out in terrifying detail. I watched each of those poor souls die again and again and again, those few short seconds dragged out into an infinity of pain and suffering.
It was Zee who ended it. Past the churning ocean of blood that sat across my vision I saw him lurch forward, one hand leaving his ear to swipe the telephone from the table. Its flight was arrested by the cord that linked it to the wall, the receiver spinning off and hitting the floor by my head.
The ringing ended, but it was replaced by something even worse – a presence that seemed to engulf my mind in a fist of shadow. I stared into the holes of the earpiece, from which there appeared to emanate something rancid and rotten from the darkest part of the world.
Furnace. Alfred Furnace.
I clawed my way up, half running and half crawling towards the door, feeling invisible fingers in my head, probing my thoughts, leaving filth and decay wherever they went. Only when I’d wrenched it open and fallen into the corridor beyond did the sensation recede, literally purged from me as I unloaded my stomach over the red stone. Zee and Simon fell by my side, retching and crying, wiping the blood from their ears and the puke from their faces.
Death Sentence Page 12
