Tech gave Bird Girl the spare torch he kept in his camera bag. He took his own from his rucksack and waited for the others to do the same. ‘Want me to lead the way?’ he asked them.
Nobody argued. Although Tech had never thoroughly explored the tunnels he’d set up the cameras and oversaw the monitors. ‘Kai, will you bring up the rear?’
Kai nodded. Raven moved up to the front with Tech, closely followed by Leo. Sarema and Gita were sandwiched between. Darcey clutched the nest in one hand while Bird Girl took her sister’s other hand. They came beside Kai at the end of the line.
As they entered the tunnel Kai looked back at the place that had been his home for the last two months. It looked desolate in the harsh light, with the café and Arena empty, parts of their costumes discarded, and debris from the storeroom strewn around. But still…for those short weeks of his life he’d felt safe there. And now he was going into the darkness, to nothing and with nothing.
They’d hardly gone five metres when Raven said: ‘Anyone notice anything different?’
‘Like what?’ Tech stopped walking.
‘Dunno.’ Raven gave her head a little shake. ‘Just…different.’
There was a silence. Then Sarema said, ‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘Me neither,’ said Leo.
‘Kai?’ Raven called back to him. ‘We’ve been in this tunnel a few times. You think anything’s off-key?’
‘Uhhh…’ It was unnaturally silent. Hairs rose on the back of Kai’s neck. Crawling into his mind was the suspicion that someone could be watching. And you’d not know. Never know. Until it was too late.
‘That’s good then, isn’t it?’ said Bird Girl. ‘That there’s nothing to hear?’
‘Mole says that there’s always something to hear.’ Kai spoke slowly. The earth being alive, the stones themselves organic. Kai wondered if perhaps Mole saw spirits: ghosts of those who died during the Blitz. But he knew he mustn’t spook the others. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Keep walking.’
But in another metre or so something did go wrong that they couldn’t help but notice. One by one their torches faded and went out. The only one left shining was the torch carried by Bird Girl. They stopped while Tech looked at the batteries.
‘These are not new batteries. Someone’s replaced them with used ones.’
‘Spartacus?’ asked Bird Girl.
‘But why would he do that?’ asked Leo.
‘To slow us down,’ Tech answered.
‘Or make us return to HQ where the lights are on,’ suggested Sarema.
‘He wants to keep us there!’ Raven voiced their fears aloud.
‘Bird Girl is carrying my own torch that I brought underground and kept in my camera bag,’ Tech said in an encouraging voice. ‘I’ll use it.’
‘We’ll get lost.’ Bird Girl’s voice resonated with apprehension.
‘Raven and I know this route.’ Kai tried to copy Tech’s positive attitude. ‘And I always counted the steps between direction changes. I can do that if everyone keeps quiet.’
Kai made his best estimate as to how many steps they’d already taken. Ten short of his total, Tech’s torch illuminated the slash of blue on the wall next to Access Chute 4.
They squirmed in and climbed down the ladder.
What had taken him and Raven less than a minute seemed to take an age for eight people plus Darcey, who was making sure the birds’ nest was snuggled against her chest.
Now they were on the lower level, alongside the floodwater runoff from one of the small underground rivers.
In the wavering light of one torch they lurched forwards. Water was spilling from the overflow gulleys at each side. The slapping sound echoed eerily from the walls as it burbled and gurgled along.
They approached the bend before Air Duct 6 and, even before Tech’s warning cry, Kai knew that they were in trouble.
Real trouble.
At first he thought the growing noise was the sound of traffic and the disturbance around his legs a few stray rats. When he felt something slosh over his shoes he stooped and touched them. Liquid was swirling around his ankles.
Moving fast and rising.
And then a wall of water came roaring round the corner, throwing Tech and Raven aside, battering Leo and Bird Girl against the wall and knocking Darcey right off her feet.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Kai snatched at Darcey as she went down. His fingers connected with her hair. He gathered a huge handful and hauled her clear.
Spluttering and coughing Darcey’s only concern was the birds. She held her hands above her head, fingers curved around the birds’ nest.
‘Darcey! Let the nest go!’ Bird Girl entreated her sister as she realized what she was doing. ‘You need both hands to keep your balance!’
For answer Darcey raised her hands higher, still gripping the nest.
‘Back up!’ Tech was screaming. ‘There’s more water on the way! Back up!’
‘Get rid of your rucksacks and join hands!’ Kai shouted. He shed his own rucksack as he felt the swell of the next wave buckle his knees, staggering as the backflow swamped his waist.
A ray of light arced in the air, reflecting on the water, letting Kai see how high the level had risen. Then they were plunged into utter darkness.
‘Kai!’ Sarema called out. ‘Kai? Are you there? Tech’s torch is gone. We can’t find it.’
‘Forget the torch!’ Kai shouted. ‘Link up!’
Keeping a grip on Darcey’s hair Kai reached for Bird Girl. Their fingers connected…and separated as another eddy of water surged between them. Where had she gone? He could hear splashing, someone moaning. Was that Gita?
Tech was doing a roll call of their names. Everyone answered.
Apart from Bird Girl.
Kai’s heart was hammering in his chest. ‘Bird Girl?’ With his free hand he paddled the surface, slashing in the widest circle he could. ‘Bird Girl!’ His voice came out a croak. She’d been swept away!
Then a figure broke surface beside him, choking and gagging.
‘Got you!’ Kai said. He bent to tighten his arm around her waist and, pushing Darcey ahead of him, waded back to the access chute.
Without the rucksacks and driven by fear they climbed up faster than they’d come down.
Too fast.
A dozen or so steps up and Kai’s shoe soles, slimy with filthy water, slipped. Darcey slid with him. He crashed onto Bird Girl, bumping them both down a rung, two…three…recovered himself, and managed to stop.
‘Sorry! Sorry!’ he gasped as he heard the commotion and cries of fear. Hanging on grimly, he reconnected his feet with the ladder and began again.
One step and another.
And another.
‘The nest!’ Darcey screeched from above his head. ‘I’ve dropped it! It’ll fall into the water! The chicks will die.’ And her shoes were on his head and then his shoulders as she tried to squeeze past Kai back down the chute.
Tech was bawling. ‘Keep moving! The level’s rising! The current’s faster. Hurry! It will pull us down like a whirlpool.’
Darcey was straining and sobbing and pushing against Kai. His fingers began to lose their grip on the rung. He was going to fall, cannon into those below him and, this time, take them to the bottom. To where the churning flood water would drag them under with its deadly power.
There was a scuffle and then Leo, who’d slithered over Tech’s shoulders shouted, ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got the nest!’ and scooped up the nest as it hit the water.
‘Come on.’ Kai put his mouth close to Darcey’s ear. ‘If you want to see those chicks fly you have to climb up the ladder.’
‘Have you got the nest?’ She snuffled the question.
‘Leo’s got it and…’ Kai hesitated. ‘Leo’s a great guy and he’ll look after it for you until we get to the top.’
Arms aching with propelling Darcey ahead of him, Kai reached out constantly with his left hand, groping for his mar
ker stone. Exhaustion crept up on him. Blood was seeping through the dressing Tech had put on his fight wounds and trickling down his neck. He was exhausted. They should be there by now. Had he missed it? Would they climb onwards and upwards and become hopelessly lost? With no light to guide them they could wander for ever in these passageways and never be found.
Kai shut off these thoughts and tried to reason logically. It was taking longer because they were moving more slowly.
Raven’s voice came echoing. ‘Kai! Watch out for our junction opening!’
Maybe he’d passed the opening without knowing. Distance was hard to judge in complete darkness. He should have counted the number of rungs on the ladder.
Raven’s voice again. ‘Kai. I counted my steps too. You must be almost there.’
Kai stretched out his left hand. There was a space. He smoothed his hand over the surface. A craggy piece of stone! Tears ran down his cheeks as his fingers connected with the lump of protruding rock where the chute met the green Main Tunnel.
They sat huddled close to each other. Teeth chattering, shaking with reaction to the trauma and the cold, conscious of the noise of the water lapping at the bottom of the chute.
‘Thank you, Leo,’ Darcey said as he found her and gave her the birds’ nest. ‘You are very brave.’
‘What do we do now?’ Bird Girl whispered in the blackness.
‘Back to HQ,’ said Tech. ‘This green line tunnel slopes upward so we’re safer there.’
‘And then?’ asked Raven.
‘Albert said to go south,’ said Darcey.
‘Of course he did,’ said Bird Girl, soothing her.
‘And south is where we should have gone,’ said Sarema.
‘With the rats?’ Kai asked.
‘The rats were going away from the flood water, running to safety.’ Sarema heaved a sigh. ‘We should have realized that and followed them. We didn’t pay enough attention when Darcey said Albert told her which direction to take. It wasn’t Albert who was telling Darcey the safest route. It was Mole. He must have found out what Spartacus intended, dug through the fallen rock and brought Darcey to the storeroom with the message to go south.’
‘Of course!’ said Tech. ‘South is the exit with the incline leading to the ladder which is well above river level.’
‘Kai, can you find the way to HQ in the dark?’ Bird Girl was very close to him.
‘We’ll do it together,’ said Kai.
They saw the lights shining out from HQ before they heard the noise.
On seeing the glow at the end of the tunnel they automatically increased their pace. And then stopped, colliding with each other, as a sound reached their ears. A sound they’d never heard underground before.
‘I like dogs.’ Darcey detached herself from Bird Girl and went forward to greet the Alsatians and their police handlers. ‘Not as much as birds,’ she added. ‘But I do like dogs a lot.’
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
‘Yes,’ the detective answered Raven’s question. ‘You were betrayed.’
‘Spartacus?’
‘If that’s what you call the man who set the explosives which blocked your exits and burst an underground river channel causing some of the tunnels to flood, then yes. But I don’t think his intention was to harm you, just to keep you contained while he fiddled the bank accounts and got away. I’m guessing he was the one who made the phone call to give us the location of the HQ of the Cage Fighters for Freedom and tell us we’d have to dig you out – and that there was a girl trapped inside the old Langsdaine Station.’
‘Did you catch him?’ Bird Girl asked.
‘We’ll call it a work in progress,’ replied the detective. ‘But even without his phone call we were closing in. You were betrayed in another way.’
Leo pointed at Bird Girl. ‘It was her, wasn’t it?’
‘No,’ said the policeman. ‘It was you.’
‘Leo!’ said Kai. ‘You weasel!’
‘That’s rubbish!’ Leo’s face turned the colour of putty. ‘Why would I do that? I’ve the most to lose.’
‘To be fair,’ the detective replied, ‘Leo didn’t know he was doing it.’
‘No?’ said Kai. ‘How does that work?’
‘Because, technically, it was her.’ The detective turned his attention to Raven.
‘Liar!’ Raven was on her feet.
Tech grasped her hand. ‘They’re trying to get information from us while they wait for more officers to take us topside. He’s messing with you.’
‘I’m not,’ said the detective. ‘I’m sympathetic to your situation. From what I can gather you’ve worked really hard on your scheme, both for money and a worthy cause. This man Spartacus fooled you into thinking there’d be rewards for you at the end. Instead he’s siphoned your money off into a phoney account. But the Fraud Squad are on the case, and it can be simple things that catch a criminal out. Al Capone, the infamous American Mob gangster, was eventually done for income tax fraud. Did you know that?’
‘It was actually Kai, wasn’t it?’ said Leo. ‘Him chasing after Bird Girl that day. You saw them on the street CCTV and it was easy to link them to the park and wonder about his sudden appearance – coming out of the gate without first going in.’
‘I like your nail varnish.’ The detective took Leo’s hand and inspected the fingers. ‘It’s not an ordinary shade of orange, is it? To match your image you wear Fluorescent Wild-Orange. We’d been watching the film clips of your fights. Initially Cage Fighters for Freedom was thought to be an illegal gambling scam, but after a while we began to worry it was something bigger. Your leader covered his trail expertly when posting the fights online so we couldn’t track the server or the source. But a sharp-eyed police officer noticed that you always wore the same orange nail varnish: so distinctive that they found out exactly what shade it was. And there’s only one which is that unique colour. One evening, on her way into the tunnels, Raven made a detour to pick some up.’
‘You stole the nail varnish!’ said Boudicca. ‘Spartacus warned against shoplifting!’
‘I didn’t shoplift!’ Raven shouted. ‘I’m not that stupid!’
‘Raven didn’t steal the bottles of nail varnish,’ said the detective. ‘The manufacturer was contacted and we asked them to reduce the number of outlets they supplied. We ensured that the CCTV cameras were working properly, not only in those stores but in the streets round about. Thereafter it was a waiting and watching game. The moment that barcode went through a till we had you.’
Kai groaned. ‘It would have been better if Raven had been a thief. But Spartacus said if we got done for shoplifting it would ruin the whole project.’
‘I can’t believe you were able to follow Raven,’ said Tech. ‘She’s so alert.’
‘No one personally followed her. It took us time to track her movements using the street CCTV. And even longer to work out the point where she disappeared from view. After that it was a case of getting the London Underground involved and studying the old maps to find out where you were.’
‘If only everyone had kept to the List of Rules,’ Kai said bitterly.
Do nothing unusual.
Do nothing out of the ordinary.
Do nothing that attracts attention to yourself.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Leo. ‘I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.’
Sweet revenge, thought Kai. He turned to enjoy mocking Leo for the vanity that had helped the police trace the Cage Fighters.
Leo put his head in his hands. ‘It’s my fault,’ he sobbed. ‘It’s all my fault. I betrayed everyone.’
‘Leo, what you did wasn’t betrayal.’ Sarema went over to him. ‘Betrayal is when a person gives another person away deliberately.’
‘I’m responsible for everyone being caught by the police.’
‘Then you are also responsible that we are all safe,’ said Sarema. ‘For if the police had not arrived with their rescue equipment, then perhaps some of us would not be alive.’
That’s not one hundred per cent true, Kai thought. Both groups of Cage Fighters had made it back to HQ, and it remained free of water. But then he recalled Leo rescuing the baby chicks, and he clamped his mouth shut.
‘There’s enough food and water here to keep you going.’ The detective glanced around the storeroom. ‘I’m going to check if the exits have been secured before I move you to the surface. There will be officers guarding the door until then.’
‘I’m quite glad we’ve been caught.’ Beowulf was the first to speak when the policeman left. ‘I reckon we’ll get a load of media attention when this story breaks. Maybe we can make some cash from that.’
‘Trending on Twitter?’ asked Magog.
‘It’s possible,’ said Tech. ‘I saved the film of the last match and I’ll make sure it gets out there. Not merely the fight but the message behind the project. I don’t know about you guys, but I was proud of our Cage Fighters for Freedom. It seemed to sum up the life of street kids – fighting to break free but caged by multi-nationals, bad government legislation, incompetence and uncaring officials.’
‘Internet advertising could bring money in too then,’ said Beowulf.
‘But you lost the camera bag in the flood,’ Medusa said sadly.
‘Yeah, but not the file.’ Raven lowered her voice and pointed to the thick plait of hair wound round her head. She looked at Bird Girl. ‘It’s not the first memory card I’ve kept hidden.’
‘Why did you do that for me?’ Bird Girl asked her. ‘Stop Spartacus from getting hold of my camera card?’
‘I was brought up in children’s homes, like you and Dove were. Nobody wanted to adopt me either. Kind of admired you for sticking with your sister through those years.’
‘I’m just thinking,’ said Kai. ‘If Mole brought Dove into the storeroom without unlocking the door then there must be a secret way in and out of here.’
‘Darcey.’ Bird Girl took her sister by the hand. ‘How did Mole bring you into this room?’
Darcey shook her head. ‘I promised not to tell,’ she said.
Caged Page 15
