“Don’t worry,” Alex said. “You kinda get used to it. Right, the back door is over there and I still have a key, so let’s get in there, quickly tell them what we know and get out of here.”
He raced over to the door, but as he went to put the key in the lock, he heard the sound of loud crashing and banging coming from inside.
“We’re too late,” Neelam said in horror. “I can sense their fear and pain from here… and the minds of the five men who are attacking them.”
“Then we have to help,” Dylan said. “Alex, open that door.”
Alex reluctantly did as he was told, then stepped aside to let Dylan charge into the house. Scarlett followed him through the hallway and around the dining room, kitchen and living room as he searched for Andrew, Toshiko, Casey and Stan, but the house was empty. There wasn’t a soul to be seen.
“There’s no sign of them anywhere. They’ve disappeared.”
“They’ve gone,” Neelam said. “I can’t sense anyone now.”
Dylan screamed and punched the wall next to him in anger. “We were seconds away,” he shouted. “Seconds!”
Scarlett flinched and took a step away from Dylan as his face contorted in anger. She’d never seen him so full of rage before and she wasn’t sure how to react. “We can still save them,” she said. She took Dylan’s hand and spoke softly in a bid to calm him down.
“Save them? We can’t even save ourselves.” He shrugged her off and stomped across the room shaking his head.
“What do we do now?” Jay said.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Come on, Dyl. They’ve been captured by Goulden many times before and they’ve always escaped. We know that because we’re usually with them.”
“This time feels different though. I don’t know why.”
“I hate to say it, but I have that same feeling of dread,” Neelam said. “I can’t shake it.”
Scarlett couldn’t believe they were being so defeatist. If anyone should be down in the dumps, it was her. She was the one who was supposedly going to die, after all, but she wasn’t giving up. Quite the opposite; in fact, she felt like going out there and giving Goulden what for. She looked at the group in exasperation, hoping she could make them spring into action.
“Oh come on. You’re all down in the dumps because Mason said I might die, but it’s not going to happen, you hear me? It’s not.”
On some level, Scarlett knew she was trying to convince herself as much as the others, but it was all she could manage to do. There was no point moping around and waiting for the grim reaper to show up at her door.
“I think we should go back to the house, grab a few things and find somewhere else to hide while we figure out what to do next.”
“Leave the house?” Lucy said. “It’s our safe haven, why would we do that?”
“Because Mason’s vision took place there and I don’t think any of us want that to happen anytime soon.”
“Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Alex, can you get us out of here?” Scarlett said.
“Sure, if that’s OK with everyone else.” He glanced around the group, but he was mostly looking to Dylan for approval.
“Do as Scarlett says,” Dylan said. “And once we get home, everybody pack a few things as quickly as you can. I don’t want to be in that house a second longer than we have to be.”
“OK, then. Let’s go.”
The nine teenagers linked hands and Alex whisked them out of there and into their own back garden with a bright flash of light.
“Oh God, I’m going to hurl,” Mason said.
He stumbled around the lawn as though he’d stepped off a fairground ride.
“They’re here!” a voice yelled.
“Get them!” another said.
Five men in black uniforms rushed down the alley at the side of the house and right towards them. Two of them raised their guns as they appeared to take aim at the group. It was too late, Goulden’s men were already here, ready and waiting to ambush them.
“Alex!” Dylan said as he grabbed Mason’s hand and pulled him back into the circle. “Get us out of here now.”
And with a flash of light they were gone.
Chapter 4
After shaking her head to fight off the teleportation-induced dizziness, Scarlett looked around the dark and dingy street they’d popped up in. A car park with dilapidated fencing made from ragged chicken wire stood to her left; there were only a handful of vehicles parked there and two of those had been stripped of their wheels and burned out. To the right, she saw faded blue wood panels with barbed wire on top, and directly in front of them was a main road.
“Where are we?” Neelam said.
“It seems strangely familiar to me,” Scarlett replied before turning to Alex. “Are we still in London?”
“No,” he said. “We’re in Manchester, or at least I think we are.”
“Which part?”
“Goulden Street,” he said with a laugh. “Ironic, huh? I guess that was all my mind could think of…”
That street name rang a bell with Scarlett. She racked her brain as she tried to remember her days out in Manchester with her family. Like Alex, she had grown up in the city.
“I think my parents used to park round here when we came shopping.”
“That’s right, it’s the cheapest part of town. Your dad never liked to be ripped off.”
“Look at the state of it,” she said. “It’s changed so much.”
Granted, car parks on the outskirts of a city were never the most desirable of places, but Scarlett couldn’t believe how different the area looked. Where huge, colourful billboards had once advertised the latest products, now there were plain black boards marred with peeling scraps of paper. The car parks were empty instead of being full of executive cars and even the roads and pavements were dirtier and grimier. Judging by the piles of litter strewn in the gutter, the area hadn’t been swept in a long time.
The plush apartment blocks at the end of the road had lost their sheen too; their fancy balconies were boarded up and the walls were daubed with graffiti. Meanwhile, the nearby red-brick buildings were deserted. Some windows were smashed while others were covered with metal shutters and vegetation had started growing around the doors. It was nothing like the place she’d last visited a year or two ago.
She reminded herself that she and Alex were in a different reality to the normal one they knew. One where Prime Minister Goulden was running the country into the ground. And judging by the state of this place, he’d done a good job of it since coming to power almost four years ago.
“This is Manchester?” Lucy said. “Boy, I heard it was rough, but this is disgusting.”
“It’s not rough,” Scarlett said. “That’s a stupid stereotype. I’m guessing that the city has fared even worse than London under Goulden’s regime. The London you guys know is much worse than the one I remember, after all, so who knows what he’s done to Manchester, where he has no home, friends or interests.”
“I keep forgetting you came from a happier reality,” Lucy said. “It must be horrible to see your home city like this. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Scarlett shrugged her shoulders. “No worries,” she said to Lucy, even though she was a bit offended.
Most of the time, she almost forgot herself, but when she was confronted with just how much the world had changed, it reminded her with a metaphorical slap in the face.
Life had seemed normal until her 18th birthday last October when she and Alex were hit by a lorry. Four weeks later, she woke up in this strange, dark world, which was being governed by Prime Minister Goulden.
She’d never heard of him or his New Way party before, nor had she met Lucy, Jay, Neelam and Dylan or known she had superpowers. However, she soon settled into the group and her new way of life. It’s hard not to when you’re busy fighting villains every other day.
Eventually, Dylan figured out that
Scarlett had used her boosting power to augment her telekinesis and Alex’s teleportation and move them out of the lorry’s path, somehow flinging them into a whole new reality. This reality. His theory seemed to make sense, but she still didn’t know how to get home or if she even wanted to. Not only was she tied to her new friends and boyfriend now, but she felt a duty to bring Goulden down too. She couldn’t walk away without doing that.
Dylan cleared his throat to signify he had something to say. “So what do you think we should all do next?”
“Go back to London?” Lucy suggested.
“No way, Goulden will be waiting for us.”
“We don’t have to go back to the house, we could find another home down there.”
He didn’t look convinced. “You made that place super secure with your electricity powers and inventions and Goulden still tracked us down, so I’m not sure we’d be safe anywhere else. Plus, London’s crawling with Goulden’s men, but he’s less bothered by the north. It could be wise to stay here.”
He looked around at the group to judge their responses. He, Lucy, Isabella and Neelam had never been north of Watford before, so it was hard to predict how they’d react.
“Here?” Lucy wrinkled her nose.
“Well, yeah. Why not?”
“It’s a bit run-down and dirty.”
“Oh stop being so snooty, Lucy,” Jay said. “We’ve been here five minutes and we haven’t even left this side street yet. Come on, Alex, lead the way, let’s check things out and see what’s going on.”
Alex, who had only been half listening to the group while he surveyed the damage done to his city, turned around at the sound of his name.
“Me? Lead? Yeah, sure, OK. Follow me.”
The 17-year-old brunet headed down the road, turned right onto Oldham Street, then suddenly came to a halt as he reached the corner of Miller Street.
“Oh my God.” He was staring to their right in disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” Neelam said.
Scarlett followed Alex’s gaze and noticed what had stopped him in his tracks.
“The Ethinance Tower is gone,” she said. “It was one of the tallest buildings in Manchester and I always used it to help me find my way back to the car.”
“It was huge,” Alex said. “How can it have just vanished?”
“I don’t know and all the other buildings round here have gone too. Didn’t there used to be a few blocks of offices down that way?”
Alex nodded. “There’s nothing left.” He stared around in shock. “I can’t believe it.”
“Has the whole city been flattened or something?” Lucy asked.
“No, no,” Scarlett said. “This is just the edge of it and I can see many familiar buildings past Shudehill tram station, which is a short walk from here. Something must have happened to this specific area.”
“Maybe we should go back to London…”
“Lucy!” Dylan shot her one of his stern, silencing glances, so she went quiet without even finishing her sentence. He looked to the rest of the group, who all seemed dazed and confused.
“We’ll head in the direction Scarlett mentioned and see what we find. Everybody keep your eyes peeled in case we run into trouble. Lucy, can you use your electricity powers to scramble any CCTV we come across?”
“Sure.”
“OK, follow me,” Scarlett said, but she wasn’t feeling anywhere near as confident as Dylan sounded.
She led the group down Miller Street and towards the main shopping area in the hope she would find something there, but when she came to the Arndale Centre, a large, two-storey collection of chain stores and restaurants, she found it closed. Ten-foot-high brown boards ran around the edge of the mall, blocking all the windows and doors.
“What’s happened to the Arndale?” Alex said.
“It looks closed off, let’s try the other entrance.”
Scarlett made her way around the perimeter of the shopping centre, but it was sealed all the way to the main entrance. As she stared at the building in the hope of finding some answers, Scarlett noticed a young woman coming out of a small door cut into the brown board fence.
She dashed over to her. “Are the shops open?”
“Are you mad?” she said. “They all closed more than a year ago.”
“Then why were you in there?”
“I’ve been to work.”
“Work?”
“Yes, now get out of my face, I’ve got a train to catch and I don’t want to miss curfew.”
The dark-haired woman ran off down Market Street, fastening up her long brown coat as she went.
“Curfew?” Scarlett shouted as she chased after her. “Come back. What do you mean curfew?”
But she didn’t stop once to look back.
“Let her go,” Dylan said. “She seemed a little scared of us.”
Scarlett sighed as she stopped running and looked around her. All the shops on Market Street were shut and boarded up too; it was weird seeing the city she grew up in looking so run-down. The last time she was here, she could barely walk down the road for the crowds of shoppers, but now there was no one around and it was eerily quiet. She never thought she’d say it, but she missed the heaving hordes of people and the sound of the buskers and chattering public. She sighed and walked back to her friends.
“Everything’s closed; it’s like the whole city has shut down,” she said. “It’s even worse here than London.”
“Not everything,” Lucy said. “Kerridges and Harvey Nicks are still open.”
Her eyes sparkled as she pointed at the posh department stores, which appeared to be very much in business with the lights on and shoppers rushing in and out of the contemporary glass doors.
“I guess it is like London then,” Neelam said. “The shops for the rich have continued trading because they’re the only people who have any money to spend.”
Scarlett wandered past the department stores and down New Cathedral Street, where all the high-end boutiques were also open. As she led the group through the more upmarket part of town, they found the streets were bustling with smartly dressed men and women in office attire. Some of them were laden down with fancy carrier bags as they browsed the shops and others were dashing past in a hurry as though they were on their way to an important business meeting.
“It’s thriving round here,” Neelam said.
“Yeah, it’s like nothing’s changed,” Scarlett said. “In fact, it seems busier than ever and it looks like new developments are being built over there.”
She pointed towards Spinningfields, where several cranes dotted the skyline. There were at least five new skyscrapers, including one huge one, and as many as 20 more under construction.
“That area’s full of banks and shiny new offices,” Scarlett explained. “And judging by those building sites, it looks like the state of the country hasn’t slowed down big business one bit.”
Alex nodded. “There are way more towers than there used to be, and what are those weird structures?”
He pointed up at two long strips of metal that arched over this corner of the city. They criss-crossed in the middle as though they formed the framework of an upturned basket. Scarlett couldn’t think of a single use for the towering, contemporary structure, which had a chrome surface that glistened as the setting sun poked through the grey clouds. It was so tall that it loomed over the top of each one of the skyscrapers. She’d never seen anything like it on such a grand scale before. It was weird.
“It could be some kind of modern art,” she said. She didn’t have a clue, but it seemed like the most logical explanation.
“Shall we go and check it out?” Neelam asked.
Dylan shook his head. “If that’s where there are lots of businessmen and money, there’s sure to be more security and surveillance there too. I think we should go back to where we were and try to find somewhere to hide out for the night. It’s only 6pm, but it’s getting dark now, so I think it’s for the best if we get of
f the streets.”
“And where are we gonna go?” Jay said. “Are we supposed to magic a house out of nowhere?”
“Look, I know it was deserted and derelict back there, but that means we might come across an empty building to sleep in.”
“He’s right,” Scarlett said. “I’ll take us back up to Miller Street and see what we can find.”
Scarlett weaved her way in and out of the side streets as she made her way back across the city and their surroundings began to look rundown again as they neared the area she knew as the Northern Quarter. As they passed an old red-brick warehouse, Dylan came to a stop.
“Neelam,” he said. “Can you see if there’s anyone living in this one here?”
The 18 year old concentrated as she did a quick telepathic scan of the building.
“There are dozens of people and they don’t strike me as being particularly nice either. Let’s keep walking.”
Scarlett continued on her way and led the group round the next corner, only to be confronted by three men in what looked like police uniforms and helmets. Before she could even think about heading a different way, the men spotted the teens and ran towards them.
“Oi, you lot! You look too young to be out at this time of night. You know under 21s should be indoors by 6pm.”
“We do?” Jay said.
“Yes, it’s the curfew. Don’t play dumb with me, kid. Everyone knows. Now, let’s be having your names and addresses, so we can take you home to your parents.”
As the man reached into his pocket for a notepad, Scarlett saw another one moving to grab his gun. Aaron must have noticed too because he raised his arm ready to throw a laser ball in defence.
“Don’t use your powers,” Neelam said in their heads. “I’ve got this.”
The young telepath stared at the men intently and willed them to do her bidding.
“It’s OK,” she said to them persuasively. “We’re on our way home now, so you can let us off on this occasion. It’s only quarter past six after all.”
“Hey, no worries,” one man said. “If you go home now, we’ll forget about it.”
“And you won’t report this? You don’t want to have to fill out all that paperwork…” Neelam insisted.
Out Of Time (Book 2): Heroes and Villains Page 3
