by Tom Becker
Adam looked over to Wing I, and back at the waiting guards. If he hesitated much longer, then Mr Pitt would be in the air and no one would be able to catch him. There wasn’t time to explain. Whispering a quick prayer under his breath, Adam slowly raised his hands in the air – and then bolted towards the Docking Port.
There a shout of alarm, and then a bullet whizzed over his head. Adam ran on, his heart pounding violently in his chest. He was aware of the loudhailer shouting at him to stop, and then another bullet flying past his nose, and one biting into the frame of the Wing I gate. Then Adam was jumping down from the walkway – grateful that the power outage had dimmed the searchlights – and scrambling into the shelter of the Docking Port.
He slammed the door behind him and leaned against it for a second, catching his breath. The registration area was cloaked in darkness, and at first Adam thought it was empty. Then he made out the form of a guard sprawled in the shadows. Clearly Mr Pitt hadn’t had time to explain either. Looking down at the unconscious man, Adam was reminded why he was pursuing the Assistant Chief Warder: the beatings and the persecution, the bullying and the cruelty, Luca sitting senseless in a chair, seconds away from having his mind wiped. . . There was no way Adam could let this man escape. Roused by a cold thirst for revenge, he rushed through the registration area and back out into the fresh air.
The Quisling cut an ominous outline on the landing strip. The zeppelin’s engines were already throbbing, severed mooring ropes scattered across the tarmac. As Adam sprinted over to the airship, it began to lift slowly off the ground. Coming alongside the gondola, Adam saw that one of the lounge windows was open – he reached up and grabbed the sides of the window as the Quisling rose higher into the air. For a second his feet were off the ground and he was dangling dangerously in the air. Then, summoning the last vestiges of his strength, Adam hauled himself through the window.
The lounge of the Quisling had been restored to its former glory, the slanting windows boasting new panes of glass, the plush armchairs re-stuffed and re-covered, bottles of spirits glinting temptingly along the circular bar once more. This room had been the scene for Adam’s first meeting with Mr Pitt. It felt like a lifetime ago. Mr Pitt wasn’t in the room now, of course – there was only one place he could be.
Taking a deep breath, Adam strode over to the Control Room door and pulled it open.
Doughnut and his roommates watched, faces glued to the dormitory window, as the Quisling struggled into the air. Since the warphole had exploded into life, the Dial had been in a state of complete chaos, the mayhem only compounded by Echo’s alarm and the sudden take-off of the Dial’s only zeppelin.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Doughnut murmured.
“Search me,” replied Mouthwash. “The Quisling’s not meant to be flying tonight. I reckon someone’s making a break for it.”
“The guards had better stop them, then,” an unwelcome voice chimed in. The pandemonium had even managed to drag Caiman out of his bunk to join them by the window. He squinted through the glass. “If the Quisling goes, none of us will ever get out. Why don’t they just shoot it down?”
“And risk blowing up our only airship?” Doughnut gave Caiman a scornful look. “How would we get out then? Give each other a leg-up to the warphole?”
“Well, someone had better think of something quickly,” Mouthwash said nervously, watching the zeppelin as it stuttered towards the swirling vortex. “If the Quisling goes back to Earth we’re stuck here too.”
The boys jumped as one as the dormitory door crashed open and Corbett’s head jutted into the room.
“Evening, lads,” he growled.
“All right, Corbett,” said Doughnut. “Any idea what’s going on?”
“Bits and pieces,” the Tally-Hoer replied. “The guards are taking potshots at anything that moves. Word is that Pitt has just stolen the Quisling. There’s something else that Major X thought you boys should know. Some nutter of an inmate just went for a run over to the Docking Port after Pitt and nearly got turned into Swiss cheese by the guards.”
“Really?” exclaimed Mouthwash. “Wonder who that was?”
“Who d’you think?” Doughnut replied grimly, looking pointedly in the direction of Adam’s empty bed.
Whereas normally the Quisling’s cockpit would have been busy with navigators, now there was only Mr Pitt scurrying around the cabin, shuttling between instruments like a stiff-backed spider as he attempted to pilot the giant zeppelin on his own. Wisps of smoke were rising from a cigarette in an ashtray balanced on the dashboard. Through the window, the Dial was slipping from view as the zeppelin continued to rise.
At the sound of the Control Room door sliding open, Mr Pitt glanced up from an altimeter.
“Wilson!” he said, through clenched teeth. “What a pleasant surprise. Anything I can do for you?”
“Go back to the Dial,” Adam replied. “Land this thing.”
Mr Pitt shook his head. “This flight is going directly to Earth. No unscheduled stops.”
“Not if I can help it,” said Adam, swallowing nervously.
The guard stepped away from the altimeter, amusement etched across his face. “Are you trying to threaten me, Wilson? Haven’t I taught you enough lessons in that department? If you’ve got a single ounce of sense in that skull of yours you’ll shut up and let me pilot this ship out of here. Maybe when we get back to Earth I’ll even let you live.”
“We’re not going back to Earth,” Adam maintained. “We’re going back to the Dial.”
“So be it.” Mr Pitt briskly unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. “If you want to return to the Dial so much, I’ll help you,” he snarled. “I’ll throw you out of the flaming window!”
Mr Pitt lunged towards him, hands outstretched, fingers twitching in their desire to grasp Adam’s throat. Adam ducked instinctively, driving his shoulder into Mr Pitt’s midriff. The guard grunted as the air was knocked from his lungs, and the two of them staggered backwards into the dashboard. Adam heard a click, and then a pained creak from the aft of the airship as the Quisling’s rudders swung to one side. The zeppelin veered sharply back towards the Dial, sending both Adam and Mr Pitt stumbling to the floor.
With a snarl, the guard fastened his fingers around Adam’s neck and began to squeeze. Adam tried to break free, but the grip around his throat was mercilessly strong. Mr Pitt’s pressed his face up close to Adam’s, his filmy left eye glinting with triumph behind its monocle.
“I always knew I’d be the last thing you ever saw,” he spat.
Adam’s lungs were pleading for air, dark spots exploding in front of his vision. As light-headedness threatened to overwhelm him, his left hand reached up to the dashboard and scrabbled frantically for some kind of weapon. His fingers closed upon a heavy circular object: Mr Pitt’s ashtray. With a last, agonizing effort, Adam grasped the ashtray and brought it down hard on the guard’s head.
Mr Pitt howled with pain, his hands springing free from Adam’s throat. The guard clutched at his head, which was covered in ash, discarded cigarette butts and a streak of blood. Adam rolled away, wheezing for breath. Through tears of pain, he saw a large black handle built into the dashboard. He dived over to it and jerked the handle down as far as it would go, dipping the front of the Quisling and sending it nose-diving towards the prison below.
“What are you doing, you fool?” Mr Pitt screamed. “You’ll kill us both!”
Adam wasn’t listening. His gaze was fixed on the window. The Commandant’s Tower was looming larger and larger before them, until it filled the view, and he could make out each individual tile on the roof and brick in the wall. Numbly, Adam realized that he was going to die. Thoughts of his family flashed through his mind, and Danny, and his friends on the Dial, and – unexpectedly – of Jessica.
Then the Quisling ploughed straight into the Commandant’s To
wer, and there was no time to think about anything any more.
The airship shuddered as it crumpled into the tower, and there was a deafening boom as one of the fuel tanks exploded. As the aft of the Quisling was swallowed up in flames, the cabin sloped sickeningly upwards until it was almost vertical. Adam clung on to the handle on the dashboard, watching Mr Pitt go rolling across the floor. They had only seconds before the airship crashed to the ground.
As he looked desperately around him, through the cabin window Adam caught a glimpse of something bobbing outside. It was Luca’s balloon, still attached to the side of the Commandant’s Tower. There was a chance – a slim one, but a chance all the same – that he could reach the balloon through the hatch in the Control Room floor.
Adam let go of the handle and slid down to the hatch. His trembling fingers struggled to undo the catch, and it took an age to spring the hatch open. The Quisling was sinking past the tower – if he was going to jump, he had to do it now.
A hand fastened around Adam’s leg.
To his horror, he saw that Mr Pitt had clawed his way back over to him, murderous intent in his eyes. Any thought of escape and survival seemed to have vanished from the guard’s mind. Adam cried out and shook his leg free. Before Mr Pitt could come at him again, the airship rocked violently, sending the guard sprawling backwards.
Adam didn’t think twice. Pulling himself through the hatch, he leapt out of the Quisling. The second he was in the air seemed to stretch out for hours, the wind whipping by him – and then his right hand latched on to a guide rope, and there was a tremendous tug on his arms as his plummet was brought to an abrupt halt. His legs flailing in the air, Adam grabbed hold of the basket with his other hand and pulled himself inside the balloon.
Breathless, he looked up to see the Quisling sliding past him in a fiery free fall. Over the roar of the burning airship, Adam heard a rage-filled scream – the final cry of Mr Pitt, as the zeppelin hurtled to the ground and buried him in flames.
With gunfire crackling across the Dial and the Quisling fleeing in the direction of the warphole, Mr Cooper swung into action, quickly declaring an emergency roll call. The inmates surged across the walkway towards the exercise yard, urged on by the guards’ loudhailers. The elder children took care of the younger ones, who were pale and shaking at the chaos.
Once the prisoners’ quarters had been emptied, the walkway swung round from wing to wing, collecting everyone else from the prison: guards recalled from their watchtowers; nurses helping the patients out of the infirmary; even a grumbling Bookworm, torn from his beloved library. Before long there were several hundred people milling about in the exercise yard, guard and inmate alike staring pensively at the warphole, united in their unspoken fears.
Doughnut was trying to find Adam amongst the crowd when a commotion in the corner of the yard caught his eye. A circle of inmates had gathered around Corbett, who was standing menacingly over another boy lying on the ground, with Major X an interested spectator on the edge of the circle. As Doughnut pushed his way forward he saw that the boy on the ground was Echo. In the confusion, no one had noticed the announcer slink nervously into the yard – and now the guards were too distracted by the Quisling to step in and save him. Doughnut groaned. A fight was the last thing anyone needed.
Echo cowered as Corbett kicked a shower of gravel over him. “Not so high and mighty now, you little suck-up,” growled the Tally-Hoer. He looked over to Major X. “This runt needs a lesson, boss. Permission to teach him?”
A weary voice answered before the Major could open his mouth.
“Leave my brother alone,” said Luca D’Annunzio, pushing into the centre of the circle. “He’s not what you think.”
“Luca?” gasped Major X.
“Your brother?” gasped Doughnut.
Corbett merely stared, his jaw dangling open. He was too stunned to stop Luca hauling Nino to his feet. Side by side, it was just possible to see the family resemblance, even if it was little more than a shared gleam in their eyes.
“Someone had better tell me what’s going on here, and fast,” rapped Major X.
“Pitt finally lost it,” Luca replied. “He tried to wipe my mind in the Re-education Wing. Adam stopped him by turning on the warphole, and then he went after him.”
Major X looked over towards the fixer. “Did you know about this – that Luca was still here?”
Doughnut nodded. “Only found out recently. It took me a while to get my head round it too. But Luca’s on the level, so I’m guessing Echo is too.”
“One thing’s for sure,” said Luca, “we won’t get anywhere fighting amongst ourselves. We need to—”
He was interrupted by the throbbing of zeppelin engines. The Quisling had abruptly changed course, and was cutting through the sky like a shark back towards the prison. Straight towards the Commandant’s Tower.
“It needs to pull up!” Mr Cooper shouted. “Pull up!”
The Quisling ploughed into the tower, causing shrieks of panic amongst the children. As the airship went up in flames, the inmates turned to one another, fearful questions trembling on their lips.
Doughnut’s face went pale. “Adam!” he whispered.
Adam hauled himself out of Luca’s home-made balloon and through the window of the Commandant’s Tower, still not quite able to believe that he was alive. By rights, he should have consigned with Mr Pitt to the pyre of the Quisling, which was burning furiously at the base of the perimeter wall.
He wasn’t safe yet, though. Already the temperature was rising inside the tower, and Adam could hear flames crackling across the roof. The Commandant was looking out through the bay windows up at the warphole, his form flickering like a television screen as it shifted from one victim to another – one moment a young girl, the next an old man, the next a teenager with a wounded expression. He stood motionless, hands clasped calmly behind his back, apparently unmoved by either his constant transformations or the fire now clawing at the edges of the window frame.
“Come on!” Adam cried, grabbing the Commandant’s arm. “The Volcano Chilli is still in my balloon! If that catches fire the whole tower’s going to explode!”
The Commandant nodded. “So be it,” he said calmly. “I cannot leave.”
“Are you crazy? If you stay you’ll die!”
The Commandant changed shape once more, reverting to Danny and this time holding the form. Carefully but firmly, Danny removed Adam’s hand from his arm.
“You need to get out of here, mate,” he said. “It won’t be long before Luca’s explosives go up.”
“And then he’ll get his wish, won’t he?” Adam said bitterly. “The warphole machine will be destroyed and we’ll all be trapped in no-time.”
“Maybe,” replied Danny. “Don’t be too hard on Luca, though. He could have got out of here years ago, remember? But he didn’t. He stayed behind for his brother, and wanted to blow up the warphole machine because he cared more about the freedom of future prisoners than his own. Not bad going for a collaborator, if you ask me.”
Things slowly began to fall into place inside Adam’s head. “That’s why you let him hide away all these years, wasn’t it?” he asked. “You wanted him to do something right!”
Danny shrugged. “Everyone deserves a second chance, I reckon. Look at you. You could have left Luca and been back on Earth by now, but you’re still here. That’s loyalty. That should be worth something.”
“It won’t be worth anything when the warphole closes,” Adam said quietly.
“Don’t be so sure. Luca may have been wrong about a few things, but he was right about one. Maybe I can help bring a dream of his true.”
Before Adam could ask him what he meant, Danny gave the vortex a critical glance. “Enough talking,” he said. “Time for you to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“So many bloody questions!” exc
laimed Danny, exasperated. “Just get downstairs and leave the rest to me, eh?”
“OK,” Adam said dubiously, “but are you sure you won’t—?”
“GO!” Danny roared. “And don’t leave anyone behind!”
Adam raced out of the room and down the stairs, with a final glance back at the Commandant, who quietly closed the door behind him as the first sparks of flame spat on to the carpet by his feet.
When the Quisling ploughed into the Commandant’s Tower, there were cries of dismay in the exercise yard. Several of the younger children burst into tears; even the guards looked shocked.
Doughnut saw that a couple of the guards were remonstrating with Mr Cooper, jabbing fingers in the direction of the Commandant’s Tower.
“We have to put the fire out now!” one shouted.
Mr Cooper shook his head. “Too dangerous,” he said. “It’s already an inferno up there. Anyone trying to put out the fire will only get themselves burnt to a cinder.”
“But if the warphole control goes up we’re all stuck here!” the other guard yelled, hysteria creeping into his voice.
The Chief Warder folded his arms. “I said no – and I’m the only person in this prison with the key to that wing, remember? We’re in the hands of the Commandant now. Trust in him. I do.”
One of the older prisoners elbowed his way forward and jabbed a finger at Mr Cooper.
“It’s all Pitt’s fault!” he yelled. “And you goons call us traitors!”
As the crowd descended into squabbles and recriminations, fingers levelling against one another, Luca and Nino D’Annunzio trudged away and slumped down on one of the benches. After a minute or so a figure appeared out of the darkness and took a seat beside the brothers.
“You two OK?” asked Doughnut.
“We should be,” Luca murmured. “This is what we wanted. It’s just. . .” He gestured at the bickering, bewildered throng in the yard. “All these years we’ve been telling each other that we were ready to be stuck here in no-time – we didn’t really think about them.”
