‘Stop doubting Vanora, Sorlie,’ he snapped.
What was I supposed to do? We were walking, or rather stumbling, into a situation that was laid out for us in a T-map.
‘I thought you had cleared the mines, didn’t you notice the pipe was under water then?’
I was treated to that dramatic sigh again. ‘I came to clear mines, not look for pipes.’
‘What’s the pipe for anyway?’
‘It’s a cooling system,’ Ridgeway said, looking round with his monocle glass, ‘and if there is an inlet pipe there will be an outlet pipe.’
Both Kenneth and Ridgeway walked the perimeter of the boulder while I tried to remember what the plan had shown. Were there one or two pipes? And if there were two pipes, why hadn’t Kenneth seen the other?
‘There it is,’ Ridgeway said, pointing to a trickle of slime that ran from a patch of green algae about three metres above the beach.
‘Come on Sorlie.’ There was infectious excitement in his voice like some rogue set on mischief. He was a guard; all he needed to do was walk up to the prison and let himself back in – why was he doing this?
I scrambled to keep up to where the two men were beginning to lower themselves off the rock and down to the small stretch of soft sand. Kenneth had forgotten I was tied to the other end of his rope and nearly pulled me over, but stopped in time to grip my wrists and jump me off the boulder to land in a heap.
‘There, can you see it?’ Ridgeway said. Jupe, no wonder Kenneth didn’t notice; it was a tiny grill, only about a metre across, well camouflaged into the rock with its covering of algae. Drops of water seeped from its bottom lip and slavered down the rock face.
Kenneth untied my rope end and handed it to Ridgeway, who began climbing to the grill, hooking the rope around a jutting boulder as he went. He threaded the rope through the grill and descended again, still holding the rope end. Both Kenneth and Ridgeway wrapped the rope around their bodies and heaved. Splinters of debris showered from the grill and a wrenching sound cracked the air. Both men fell backwards, a flying grill narrowly missing them before it thudded in the sand. An O in the cliff mouthed its astonishment at being exposed.
The lovelies lay on the sand chuckling like schoolboys who had just pulled off a monumental prank, Kenneth more so than his partner-in-crime. I had the impression Ridgeway was humouring him.
‘OK, so we have a way in,’ Kenneth said as he extricated the grill and threw it behind a rock.
‘What about the boats?’ Ridgeway asked him.
Kenneth scratched his beard then rummaged in his bottomless bag. He sat on the sand clicking a small device like an antique video game shooter. The lightbuoy’s constant beacon broke sequence for several revolutions then regulated. Kenneth stopped his clicking, held his breath and narrowed his eyes away from the beacon towards the horizon. He held his hand over one ear and fiddled with the tympan in the other. The buoy broke sequence again and the breath hissed from Kenneth’s mouth. ‘They’re here.’
‘Are you sure?’ This time Ridgeway dared to doubt, but Kenneth’s dagger look quelled any further dissent.
‘Let’s go, then.’ Ridgeway straightened his back, showing no sign of his earlier fall. Whatever was in the drip’s miracle juice had a future.
My hands were already on the rock and I had started to climb before I realised what I was doing. The T-map was in my head. It wasn’t just Ridgeway’s enthusiasm – something in my blood line was pushing me forward. This job needed doing; these two old men, who knew each other so well, were risking their lives for this. Vanora needed me to be here. Or did she? I still wasn’t sure. She needed me to get out of the prison and to bring Ridgeway, the T-map and plug-in to Kenneth. I tried hard to ignore the image on the plan: the old man in the library with the gun, the undecided figure whose fate we never discovered. What else did Vanora need from me? Merj’s kidnap attempt still bothered me.
My communicator told me it was past midnight. It had taken us over three hours to get here from the turn of the tide.
• • •
Although the cove beneath the pipe entrance was sheltered, a desolate wind howled round the coast, creating an eerie chorus in our amphitheatre. The short, steep climb required my face to the rock and my nerve in my boots. Unseen from below was a small ledge where Ridgeway waited for me. He held out a hand, then pulled me up and over the last crease of rock. Without waiting for Kenneth, he said, ‘Do you want to go first or shall I?’ Close up, the opening looked no bigger than a truck tyre.
‘It’s not big enough. Why is it so small? What’s it for? Not sewage?’ It didn’t smell like sewage.
‘No, I told you, it is the outlet pipe for the cooling system.’
‘Cooling system of what?’ The rusting of the grate and the dribble of water which teamed with slime growth on the pipe entrance and floor all evidenced a moribund system.
‘The small nuclear reactor that used to power the building when it was military.’
The word ‘nuclear’ pushed me back and Ridgeway’s sharp grab reaction just prevented my fall.
Kenneth, with perfect timing, chose that minute to join us and placed steadying hands on my shoulders.
‘Calm down,’ he chuckled, ‘you’ll come to no harm.’ This was what he said before, but radiation scared the shit out of me. ‘On you go, Ridgeway. Come on Sorlie, help him in.’
As Ridgeway grasped the lip of the pipe we each took one foot and hoisted him further into the aperture.
‘Watch out, it’s on a slight incline,’ he shouted. ‘I’m using the tight walls to lever me in,’ he continued as he began to grunt his way up the pipe. Kenneth helped me. The pipe stank of sour breath and rust and another unidentifiable metallic substance that tasted rancid on my tongue. There was no glow or heat or evidence of anything deadly. Sweat burst on my brow.
The pipe was at an incline of only a few degrees, but the slime that covered its bottom meant each hand and knee scramble up was followed by a slide back. Behind me I could hear Kenneth grunting and swearing to enter the pipe and then a voice far off. ‘I can’t get in. You go. I’ll man the boats.’
So we were on our own, just as the plan had shown. I don’t know how long I shucked up the pipe, pushing with my knees, elbows, head and hips, anything I could find to make contact with the wall and stop me backsliding. My infrared lens persisted in clouding over. Each time I tried to wipe it the damn thing slipped from my eye; one minute I would see the big backside of Ridgeway in front and the slime covered walls of the pipe, the next I would be plunged into a total frightening blackness until I scrabbled to place the lens back on my eye. The smear on the lens thickened with every wipe, leaving a kaleidoscope of blurred images.
Suddenly Ridgeway stopped.
‘Sorlie? Kenneth?’ His whisper came through the miniscule gap between his body and the pipe.
‘I’m right here. Kenneth couldn’t get in the pipe; he stayed behind.’
He swore under his breath. Even though I couldn’t hear his exact words, the slump of his body told me how he was taking the news.
‘Right then Sorlie,’ the voice came stronger now, as if he tried to twist to face me. ‘When we enter the reactor room an alarm is going to go off. When that happens the power will automatically shut down. That means we have ten minutes to get to the main prison door and the security control room before the electric locks kick back in.’
‘What about the guards?’
‘You saw the plan; there were no guards in the prison. We have to assume Scud did his job.’
‘What if he didn’t?’
‘I don’t know. But we have to trust in Vanora’s plan and hope Scud is still with us.’ He was nippy but there was something dejected in his voice as if he didn’t quite believe it either. ‘We have to have faith in Vanora’s power. You heard Kenneth, you saw the beacon change; the boats are here, that part cam
e true.’ On this point I think we both had a fear that Kenneth might have been manipulating the truth.
‘OK, Sorlie, are you ready?’
The fluttering in my gut was urging me to let go of the pipe and slide back to the beach, but that just wasn’t an option any more.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked again.
‘Yes.’
‘Stick to me like a fly on shite and keep your lens on, you’ll need it.’
He rotated his body to lie on his back and began work on a small manhole cover on top of the pipe. He chipped at the bracket with a driver, then wedged his baton into a wheel. With brute force and strangled curses he tried to lever it open. Once or twice he stopped and lay back for a few seconds then bent to the task again. There was no room to manoeuvre, so any help my puny strength could have added was redundant. He took in a huge breath, gritted his teeth and with an almighty grunt heaved. Rust and muck showered his face and hands, but he never flinched, keeping the pressure on. The hatch squeaked open.
‘Ready?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. The minute he shoved the hatch and torpedoed through the gap, a shrill siren screamed into life. A hand came down and hauled me through the hatch onto a crossbeam gantry which we clattered over to reach a door. Ridgeway touched it and it slid open. Within seconds of leaving the tube we were in a corridor. He knew exactly where he was going and it struck me that ever since he had seen the T-map he had been working the layout of the prison over in his mind. We ran, or rather stumbled, half blind along the corridor to stairs. We clanked up two flights. The climb busted my gut and lungs and yet this bulking guard, who had so recently suffered an injury, was sprinting ahead like an Olympian, fuelled by Kenneth’s magic juice.
Another door barred us at the top of the stairs. Ridgeway shoved it and then tugged. The door held firm.
‘Damn.’ He slammed a frustrated palm to his brow.
‘What? What is it?’
‘It’s bolted from the other side. Idiot, I should have remembered.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to have to find another way in.’
‘How? We don’t have time, you said only ten minutes.’
‘I know.’ He punched the door. ‘Damn.’ And then it began to open a crack.
Ridgeway hurled me against the wall and unholstered his gun. The crack widened to reveal a beam of emergency light from the corridor beyond.
As quick as a lizard swipes a fly in its tongue, Ridgeway’s hand jabbed and snatched a creeping figure from the doorway.
‘Scud!’ I said too loudly.
‘Shush,’ they both hissed.
Ridgeway shook Scud from his grasp.
‘How did you get here?’ I asked.
‘I’ll explain later, come on.’
‘The guards?’ Ridgeway asked.
Scud ruffled his fingers together like a successful pickpocket. ‘A little something special in their bedtime brews tonight. Vanora’s visitation delivered mucho goodies. I got some too. Left in the library.’ His voice was as rich and cloying as corn syrup.
It was Scud but not as I knew him. The guard’s uniform hung on his wiry body, but it suited him. His now blond hair had more than one day’s growth. Even in the poor light I could see how pale his eyes had become – the sign of a true Privileged. But, unlike a true Privileged, here he was helping us. The closer I examined his change, the deeper the doubt crept into my bones.
‘You can take those lenses off now,’ Scud said, but Ridgeway signalled for me to keep it on.
Ridgeway reclaimed his lead and took us to a circular room fitted out with monitors and imagers. Empty chairs faced half-filled beakers and picked-at food packs. It was like the legend of the Flannan Isles lighthouse, when the three keepers disappeared without a trace. This was the surveillance control room, the room behind the dot on the wall, but there was no time to dwell on that. One grid monitor viewed the waffle stack of the prison cells; it looked exactly as it had laid out on the cave floor. How had she known?
‘We need to open the cells,’ Scud said.
‘How will we stop them all panicking and rushing out?’ The T-map images had shown chaos, but orderly chaos.
‘This,’ Scud said, holding up his wrist and showing off his command band. ‘And this.’ He held up his other arm – a communicator.
So it was true. Scud really was the inside agent.
‘Each level will release, one at a time; I have appointed a leader in each section – they know what to do.’ As he was saying this he grabbed my hand, tugging at my communicator. As I resisted his grasp, he drew in some breath between his teeth and snapped his fingers. ‘Quick.’
He dragged me towards a control panel with multiple switches and ports. I shook him off.
‘I know what I have to do.’ It was incredible. Even though no one had told me, I did know what to do. One of the ports was similar to the plug-in button. My hand gravitated to this and I positioned the plug-in over it. As soon as they connected magnetically, the monitor on one level showed cell doors swinging wide. Heads appeared in doorways. Soon the cell landing was awash with men.
‘We’d better help,’ Ridgeway said. Scud followed him to the door.
‘What about me?’ I tried to move but the plug-in resisted. I wrestled with the communicator but it was welded to my wrist.
‘You have to stay here until all the doors are open. Vanora’s key should release you then.
‘Why can’t I take it off?’
‘Because you can’t,’ Scud said, and then they were gone. I watched the door swing closed behind them. Trapped. The more I wrestled to tug the communicator from my arm, the tighter it bit into my wrist.
The progress of the orderly line threading the corridors shown on the monitor reminded me of the convoy of prisoners destined for Dead Man’s Ferry; but unlike those chained wretches, these men on the screen were controlled by chemicals and electrical pulses and they would soon be free. The men were of differing hair and skin colour; some of the pigments were blotchy, but they all had the weary tinge Scud carried before he became Privileged.
Emotion bubbled in my chest and almost choked me. I saw Gobo, his white hair shorn, his skin shedding and mottled like a patchwork quilt. The rims of his pink eyes were swollen and red with weeping sores. He shuffled like an oldie and stumbled to his knees. The leader of his pack, a man with an ear to ear smiley scar, lifted Gobo by the scruff of his neck and half carried, half dragged him after the line of men. Scud conducted the procession at one end and Ridgeway was leading them towards the reactor room and the pipe at another. One body broke from the rank and ran in circles, his arms flapping. When he ran into the wall under the surveillance, I almost choked. His eyes had no pupils: he was blind. Scud held up his communicator arm and the body became a juddering heap on the floor. Scud turned his back on the surveillance then and bowed his head, forehead pressed to the wall. Poacher turned gamekeeper? The mass of men stopped and witnessed the scene, then allowed themselves to be herded once more. There was Toad, his thick lips now shredded, loose skin hanging in ribbons and his front teeth protruding in a gruesome grin of agony. The only sounds from the control monitors were the dragging of a hundred pairs of boots, some supporting those who could not support themselves. Ridgeway was right, we could never have manoeuvred this sorry bunch down the cliff face.
When one corridor was clear, Scud moved to another level to repeat the process as another set of doors automatically opened. It was obvious now that the plug-in was controlling the whole operation; it was a marvel of micro-engineering. Ridgeway, still with the first group, conducted them into the reactor room. I watched him on the monitor as, like a gambler at a slot machine in a Pleasure Zone, he fed the men one by one into the pipe. The slope would be to their advantage, creating a flume for them to slide down. I imagined them catapulting through the opening onto the beach. Jackpot!
The incarceration had rid the prisoners of excess fat, so even brutes could fit the space that Ridgeway squeezed through. I just prayed that Kenneth could help them into the boats.
Minutes dissolved in the fascination of the escape. Hundreds of cameras revealed angles of the prison I had never seen before. I viewed my cell from the dot on the wall. Beast station sat idle on the desk. The room dazzled white and small; how had I survived in that bubble for so long without going bonkers? Unlike Kenneth, I felt no need to say goodbye to my island home. Another screen showed the two doors leading into the library: the one from my quarters and the heavy ornate door from the prison. Both remained resolutely shut. The plan predicted the old man behind those doors, but Vanora couldn’t have known what the reality was, could she? She only guessed it, or wished it. Wherever Davie was, he must be scared. With his kingdom crumbling around him, would he run, or would he hide in a sewer like a deposed dictator? A pang of guilt swept through me like fire. He was my grandfather – an old, confused, sick man. And then I noticed the other room. In a dim light I made out a row of about a dozen beds carrying bundled-up bodies suffering unspeakable horrors – the Infirmary. To be left behind. To be destroyed. Destroyed in more ways than one. My guilt was doused by hatred for this tyrant, a replica of what my grandfather felt for them and for me. There was something strange about the light in the Infirmary. It was muted and something stirred within it. A movement passed across the wall, like a shadow puppet, stretched and grotesque. It travelled over the greyed sheets of the beds, scraping across each body with its outstretched claw. As the shadow shortened I could see it wasn’t a claw but a hand clutching a gun. A dark figure appeared into the line of the camera.
‘No,’ I groaned.
As if he heard me, he faced the camera and grinned. Then he lifted that ancient gun, turned, aimed it at the head of the mound in the first bed and fired. The figure jerked once then was still. I jabbed a call button.
‘Stop this murder,’ I screamed. My grandfather took no notice of this call as he moved to the next bed and fired again, but from the corner of my eye I was aware of Scud and his hoard pausing.
Ways of the Doomed Page 23
