Somewhere (Nowhere Book 3)

by Jon Robinson

  It took Alyn a few hours to find the warehouse. He paused behind a van, scanning the yard for any of Emmanuel’s men who might be keeping watch. There were none around, but the shutter was half-raised. That meant they probably weren’t going to be gone for long. He crept nearer and rolled underneath.

  The warehouse was submerged in darkness. Alyn crept inside, zigzagging behind a row of crates. He paused by one, thinking he’d heard a sound from above.

  He lowered himself down, peering round the wooden slats, scanning for movement. There was no one there. Alyn sped up the metal staircase on to the walkway. He held his breath as the stairs echoed. Once he was there, he darted along on tiptoes and came to the little room where his father had been held. He squinted through the glass window and saw his father lying on the floor.

  His father looked up and groaned behind his gag. Alyn put his finger to his lips, then pushed the door open and ran inside.

  ‘Dad, you OK?’ he whispered. He pulled down his father’s gag and began untying the rope round his hands.

  ‘It’s you!’ he gasped. ‘My boy. My boy. Why’d you come back for me?’

  Alyn loosened one of the knots. ‘I wasn’t going to leave you.’

  His father snorted. ‘Like I left you all those years ago. You’re a better man than I am, son.’

  Alyn unfastened the last knot. ‘I know I am,’ he said coolly.

  This was enough to silence his father. He put his hand across his face.

  ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ Alyn threw the ropes aside and hoisted him to his feet. ‘You need to get out of here.’ Alyn steered him out of the room to the walkway. ‘Don’t go home. Don’t go anywhere where they might find you. You’re going to need to hide.’

  ‘What about you …?’

  Alyn stopped on the stairs. ‘I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  They walked in silence back across the warehouse floor, checking for any of Emmanuel’s followers. ‘Thank you, boy,’ Alyn’s father murmured, once they reached the entrance. ‘And I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just go,’ Alyn said.

  His father then stopped and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You’re bleeding.’ He gave his son a parting nod of what Alyn guessed to be respect, then crawled underneath the shutters and ran.

  Alyn checked his nose. There was a red smear of blood across his fingertips.

  He walked back through the warehouse, pinching his nose with his head tilted back. It was only then that he noticed a dry, powdery scent lingering beneath the aroma of blood.

  He lifted the tarpaulin from the nearest crate and took a sharp intake of breath. Explosives.

  Alyn tore back the covering on another crate and then another, until it became alarmingly clear that all the crates were packed with enough explosives to devastate an entire area of the city.

  A familiar voice spoke from outside: ‘I need a helicopter to take me to Scotland. Have it here within the hour.’

  Before Alyn could find somewhere to hide, Emmanuel lifted the shutters and paused upon seeing the figure before him.

  ‘I’m disappointed, Alyn,’ Emmanuel eventually said. ‘I gave you such an opportunity –’

  ‘An opportunity?’ Alyn could feel his heartbeat in his throat. ‘You didn’t give me any choice.’

  ‘There’s always a choice, Alyn.’ Emmanuel stepped closer. Alyn went to push past him, but was grabbed. Emmanuel’s grip was icy, and his fingers pushed deep into Alyn’s throat.

  ‘I’ve planned this for so long,’ Emmanuel hissed. ‘No one is going to stand in my way. Not you, not the Guild …’

  Emmanuel released Alyn, launching him against the shutters, where Alyn fell to the floor. At that moment, the door on the far side of the warehouse opened and several members of Emmanuel’s gang appeared. Alyn scrambled under the shutter as fast as he could and ran.

  23

  When Elsa opened her eyes a dull blue light was pouring through the thin fabric of her tent. It took her a moment to remember where she was. We’re going to find Antonia. To find her Pledge key, she announced to herself. This gave her the motivation to sit up.

  As Elsa was rubbing her eyes, Pyra unzipped the tent flap.

  ‘Get yourself together, kid,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving soon.’

  Elsa stumbled out. The fire they had made last night was a mass of black ash among the curled dead leaves on the wet soil. Crusts of snow and ice were dotted across the grass. Elsa walked over to a sleepy-looking Harlan, who was zipping up his rucksack.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing her his ibis. ‘Take it. Just in case.’

  ‘Didn’t know you still had it! You sure?’

  Harlan nodded, rubbing the side of his head.

  Elsa took the weapon and grinned. She instantly felt safer with it in her possession.

  ‘Now, what about breakfast?’

  ‘No time,’ Pyra said. ‘But if we get that key from Antonia you can have as much pizza and ice cream as you can eat. All right?’

  Elsa looked down at her rumbling stomach and sighed. Could I last another few hours? she wondered.

  When the tents were collapsed and packed away, the group set off in search of Antonia’s mansion through the remaining woodland.

  Charlie was following a compass alongside Harlan while Elsa trailed Pyra at the back.

  ‘Keep up,’ Pyra said.

  Elsa huffed, struggling to keep her backpack secure. ‘If she gives us this key, you promise you won’t hurt her?’

  Pyra shrugged, hoisting her own rucksack further up her back. ‘I’m not promising anything.’

  Elsa looked at her sadly. ‘There are good people in the world. I just think you’ve had some bad experiences …’

  Pyra stopped walking and glared at Elsa. ‘Since when did I ask for counselling from some damned thirteen-year-old?’

  Harlan glanced over his shoulder at the pair. He seemed weary. ‘You two all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ Pyra said. ‘Though you don’t look so good, Harlan.’

  ‘I – I feel a bit weird,’ he said, and dropped to his knees without warning.

  Pyra let go of her rucksack and ran over to Harlan.

  ‘Harlan,’ she said, slapping the side of his face.

  ‘I – I can’t concentrate …’

  ‘How much have you been using the Ability, Harlan?’ asked Pyra.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, Harlan struggled to talk. A stream of blood trickled out of his nose.

  Elsa ran over and knelt down beside him. She grabbed Pyra’s arm. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘His nose …’

  ‘I see it,’ Charlie said. He dug in his pockets for a tissue. When he found one, he began mopping up the blood.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Elsa cried. ‘Can somebody just tell me?’

  ‘You’re going to need to stay with him, Charlie. Set up a tent with him in the woods back there, all right?’

  Charlie nodded and knelt behind Harlan, lifting his head on to his lap. ‘He’s sick,’ he said. ‘He –’

  He’s got the same thing as Saul, Elsa thought, remembering the nosebleed. The sickness.

  ‘Please be OK,’ she begged. ‘Don’t go mad, Harlan.’

  Pyra grabbed Elsa by the scruff of the neck and lifted her away. ‘There’s nothing we can do. Come on. Let’s get going.’

  24

  Back in London, Jes sat on a bench near the station and put her head in her hands. ‘Mad!’ She spat the word aloud in disbelief. ‘They think I’m mad!’

  The woman sitting beside her gave her a quick look and shuffled to the side.

  ‘Oh, so you think I’m crazy too?’ Jes said, glaring at her. ‘Well, I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean anything, I just –’

  Jes narrowed her eyes. ‘If you had any idea what’s happened to me … But you don’t! You don’t have a clue what’s going on, about the people who run this country … about the kind of stuff they’ve been doing!’<
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  The woman smiled politely and stood, gathering her bags.

  ‘Wait!’ Jes called back. ‘I didn’t mean that, I swear there’s nothing wrong with me …’

  Jes’s head sank back into her hands. She was cold and wet, and the scar on her side was aching. She stood slowly, and miserably trudged away into the crowds of pedestrians. There was only one place left for her to go, and that was back to the Guild.

  After escaping Emmanuel, Alyn kept running until he was doubled over and huffing hoarse breaths of chilled air. His body ached and his legs felt close to buckling.

  Alyn looked at his surroundings, a quiet suburban road, with little idea of where he was.

  I have to find the others. I have to find Jes. He closed his eyes and imagined a butterfly moving quickly through the city and locating her, and drawing them both together. He felt the familiar tingling sensation in the back of his mind and then a sudden surge of light-headedness. Just moments later, he noticed a flattened cardboard box in the road, with THIS WAY UP printed on it beside an arrow. The ‘up’ was partially obscured with mud. As good a start as any, Alyn thought and hurried in the direction that the arrow pointed.

  Alyn followed a multitude of signs that seemed to appear to him over the next hour or so. He travelled on trains and buses, causing the machines to stutter and ticket gates to falter. He felt like both a trespasser in the city and its possessor, able to move freely, wherever he wished.

  Back in the prison, Jes had been the only one who’d kept him going. He had seen her briefly in the ballroom with the others. And in all the chaos she had disappeared.

  Before then, he’d thought she was dead. Felix had told him that. When he had caught sight of her that night, Alyn had thought he was looking at a ghost. If only he knew where she was now …

  When he eventually reached Tottenham Court Road, Alyn lowered himself against a shuttered shop window. Was this even working? It was almost midnight and there was no sign of Jes anywhere.

  He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. The cold air sliced his throat. Go left, some voice within him urged.

  Jes wiped the tears of frustration from her eyes. Another dead end. She had been walking in circles, spiralling deeper and deeper into a maze of unrecognizable roads.

  ‘I’m looking for a block of flats called Hermes House,’ she said, stopping a female pedestrian. ‘It’s in a pretty rundown area, there’s a park just by it … and some shops …’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said the woman, giving her a sympathetic look and walking on.

  As Jes turned back round, she collided with a man and tripped, landing on her hands.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ he said, helping her to her feet.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, and hurried across the road before the lights could change.

  For the rest of Jes’s journey, it seemed like the world was conspiring against her, nudging her towards certain directions. Her initial path was blocked by an ambulance after a man had collapsed; she unwittingly followed a flashing neon sign, which resembled an arrow but on closer inspection was simply broken.

  If I had the Ability things would be easier, she thought. If only I had someone with me, like Ryan, or … or Alyn.

  Why had he been with James Felix, the leader of the Pledge? Had they really managed to turn him too?

  When she reached the end of the road, Jes realized she was panting. The wound in her side ached with a dull soreness, made worse by the cold. She had no idea where she was.

  ‘Jes?’

  She looked up. There was a figure standing by a tree. It couldn’t be … She looked harder. ‘Alyn?’

  Alyn jogged towards her. His mouth was open and he was trying to speak, but the words caught on his lips.

  ‘It worked,’ he whispered, and started laughing to himself. ‘It worked, Jes, it worked! I’m so happy to see you …’

  She looked at him with disbelief and growing suspicion. ‘What worked?’

  ‘Finding you,’ Alyn replied. ‘After everything I’ve seen … after everything I’ve done … this is the best of all.’ He laughed again and stepped towards her.

  Jes backed away and held out her hand for him to stop. ‘Don’t!’

  ‘What?’ Alyn showed her his hands. ‘Jes, it’s me. Alyn …’

  ‘I know everything,’ she whispered. ‘I know you’re with them.’

  Alyn looked confused. ‘With who?’

  ‘The Pledge.’ Jes took another step back. ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘Yours,’ Alyn answered. ‘I’ve only ever been on your side.’

  Jes looked at him for a few moments and her lip trembled. For some reason she believed him.

  She hurried towards him and threw her arms round him. Warm tears fell across her face. She tried to speak but her words dissolved into sobs so she said nothing and hugged him in silence.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,’ Alyn said. The pair were sitting together in a park a short way from where they’d met, holding hands. ‘Then when I saw you guys at the opera house, I just …’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me near you,’ Jes whispered. ‘Elsa had been spying. She saw you with Felix and Blythe.’

  Alyn smiled and shook his head. ‘You can’t have thought I’d ever join them, Jes?’

  ‘What was I supposed to think? People have been turned before.’

  Alyn let out a breath. ‘I was trying to figure out what was going on. Felix – Felix was the leader, but he was the best of a bad bunch. Stephen is completely insane.’

  ‘Yeah, we know all about him. We know he’s a problem.’

  Alyn turned to her. ‘And he’s not your biggest problem. There’s someone else, even worse than Stephen. Emmanuel. The Pledge thinks he’s an adviser …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But he’s planning on screwing everyone over. He wants the Pledge destroyed, the Guild destroyed. He’s been organizing an uprising. A revolution. There’ll be a blackout, no power for days, so he can take control of the city and –’ Alyn searched for the word – ‘and rebuild it. He wants politicians murdered, the banks destroyed. It’ll be anarchy.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  Alyn nodded. ‘He’s been organizing this for years, Jes. He’s unified all these different groups. There’s an entire network of them. They have bombs, everything. As soon as the blackouts hit, all of this anger and everything that’s been building up is just gonna explode. He also –’ Alyn paused – ‘he also has the Ability too. And he’s more powerful than any of us.’

  Jes looked at Alyn. ‘We have to tell the Guild as soon as possible.’

  ‘That’s another problem,’ Alyn said. ‘Luthan. He was going to give Julian to Stephen.’

  Jes gave him a look of disbelief. ‘I know Julian’s annoying, but Luthan wouldn’t do that …’

  ‘It’s true, Jes. I was there. We need to tell the others – Elsa, Harlan, Julian … Ryan. None of you are safe while he’s around …’

  Jes pressed a hand against his face. ‘I’m so glad you’re back.’ She kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Let’s go.’

  25

  Ryan tossed and turned on his thin mattress in the Guild’s building. He and Anton had been following Blythe around the city, hoping for a moment when he might be unguarded. So far they had been unsuccessful.

  A siren wailed in the distance. He could hear a group laughing somewhere in the park opposite. He turned again and the sheet tangled round his leg like a vine.

  Eventually he stumbled out of bed, hitching up his scruffy tracksuit bottoms, and sat on the couch in his room. Through the wall he could hear Anton snoring loudly.

  After a few minutes Ryan picked up the phone. He dialled a number, pausing before the last digit. His finger hovered over the button. He jabbed it aggressively and pressed Call.

  The phone rang. It was the third time Ryan had called since he had been with the Guild. Each time had been in the dead of night, when he knew his mum probably wouldn’t answer.


  But this time she did. ‘Hello,’ she said in a voice so tired and despairing that it seemed to peter out before it even reached his ear.

  Ryan couldn’t speak.

  ‘Hello,’ said the voice again, more irritated this time.

  ‘Mum,’ Ryan said.

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’ said his mother. ‘Who’s this? Who are you?’

  ‘Mum, it’s me,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s Ryan.’ As he said his own name, a lump stuck in his throat. He swallowed it.

  ‘My son’s missing,’ said his mother.

  ‘I’m not missing, Mum. I was kidnapped!’

  ‘Kidnapped?’

  ‘I swear it. Remember Dave and Callum and Carl, me best mates? It’s me, Mum, honest.’

  ‘Ryan,’ she said quietly. ‘What are you doing? What have you gotten caught up in?’

  He laughed suddenly. How good it was to hear her voice again.

  There was an intake of breath from the other end of the line.

  ‘I’ve got to do something important,’ Ryan said, ‘and then I’ll be home. I’ll be coming home, Mum. As soon as this is done, all right? I’ll be on the first train home.’

  ‘ “Something important”,’ his mother repeated, and started laughing but it was choked by tears. ‘Whenever did you ever do anything bloody important apart from causing trouble with your mates? “Something important” …’

  ‘I’m gonna help save the country,’ he blurted out. ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’

  ‘ “Save the country”?’ His mother’s voice became nasal, punctuated with tears. ‘If you really are my son, come home in one piece,’ she said, her voice softening. ‘Just come home, Ryan. And don’t go being a hero, all right? Come home.’

  The call ended. Ryan held the phone in his hands until he could bear to hold it no longer and tossed it on to the chair.

  26

  A light fog was swirling by the time Pyra and Elsa arrived at the heart of Antonia’s estate. Elsa had not been able to take her mind off Harlan, Saul and the sickness. Was it contagious? She kept checking her nose to make sure she wasn’t bleeding.

  In the distance loomed the spires and turrets of Antonia’s mansion, shrouded in fog. Pyra walked towards the maze. Elsa grabbed hold of Pyra’s arm, the ibis tight in her other hand.