Stealing Phoenix (2 page)

Reminding myself to keep focused on the job, I eased my way nearer to the boy. I could now see him in profile: he had the kind of face you saw in girls’ magazines next to some model as gorgeous as him. He had got the whole deal in the genetic department: chiselled nose, casual-cut ink-black hair that looked good no matter how rumpled it was, dark brows, cheek bones to die for; I couldn’t see his eyes because he was wearing shades but I would bet they were huge and a soulful chocolate brown—oh yeah, he was too good to be true and I hated him for it.

I caught myself before I glowered at him, surprised by my response to the guy. Why was I reacting that way? I didn’t normally feel anything for my victims, apart from a twinge of guilt that I’d singled them out. I always tried to find people who wouldn’t notice the loss that much, a bit like Robin Hood. I enjoyed outwitting my rich targets, but I didn’t want to think anyone really suffered from what I did. The Sheriff of Nottingham had his ill-gotten taxes; these days people had insurance from big multi-nationals, and they were the ones who really ripped off the poor. It wasn’t as if I were like them, robbing widows and orphans, was it? They got compensation eventually. At least that was what I told myself as I planned how to pick his pocket. This job was a bit different as I was acting under orders; it was fairly rare for me to be asked to steal from a particular mark, but I was relieved the target looked like the sort to be insured up to the eyebrows. Neither he nor I had chosen this so it wasn’t rational to turn against him. He’d done nothing to earn it but stand there, looking so sorted, clean and kind of centred whereas I was such a hopeless mess.

The guide wittered on about how the seating had been constructed to be removable. As if I cared about Olympic legacy; I was never convinced I’d see next month, let alone ten years away. A plane rumbled overhead on the Heathrow flight path, scarring the summer sky with its white trail. As the boy looked up, I made my move.

Reach for their mental patterns …

They were whirring away like so many beautiful kaleidoscopes, ever shifting. Then …

I stopped time.

Well, not exactly, but that’s what it feels like to be on the receiving end of my power. What I really do is freeze perceptions so that no one notices time passing—that’s why I need small groups in enclosed spaces. Other people might just notice if a bunch of people suddenly went into Madame Tussaud mode. It’s a bit like the sensation of passing out under anaesthetic and then jolting awake again, or so I’ve been told when I’ve tried my ability out on others in the Community—that’s my sort-of-home, though often it felt more like a zoo.

All of us are Savants in the Community: people with extra sensory perceptions and powers. Savants exist because every now and then a human is born with a gift, a special dimension to their brain that allows them to do what others can only dream of doing. There are some of us who can move stuff with their minds—telekinesis; I’ve met a few who can tell if you are using thought-speak, or telepathy; and there’s one person who can mess with your head and force you to do his will. The ways the Savant powers develop are many and varied, but no one else has a gift exactly like mine. I preferred it like that; it made me feel special.

The little group of ten students and their guide all stopped in their tracks, the Scandinavian girl with her hand halfway through her hair, an Asian boy mid-sneeze—the ‘aah’ never reaching the ‘choo’.

Go me: I can even stop the common cold.

I quickly rifled through my target’s backpack and struck gold: he had an iPad and an iPhone. That was brilliant news as both are easy to conceal and have a high resale value, almost as much as the original shop-bought items. I felt the familiar rush of victory and had to resist the temptation of taking a picture with the phone of them all standing there, eighteen year olds caught playing Musical Statues. Experience told me that I would pay for indulging my winner’s celebration with a crashing headache if I held them for more than twenty or thirty seconds. Stuffing the goods in my canvas tote, I settled the backpack on his shoulders exactly how it had been—I’m good at the details. But now I was standing so close, almost embracing him, and I could see his eyes down the side of his glasses. My heart stopped when I caught sight of his expression. It wasn’t the dull glazed look my victims usually wore; he was somehow aware of what was happening, fury burning in his eyes.

He couldn’t be fighting my power, could he? No one had ever managed that, not even the strongest Savants in the Community had managed to throw off my freeze-frame attack. I quickly shifted focus to use my other power to check his mind-pattern with my inner sight. I see brainwaves like a corona around the sun, a little as if the person is standing before an ever-changing circular stained-glass window of their souls. You can tell a lot about a person from the colours and patterns, even glimpse their preoccupations. His wasn’t stopped in the last arrangement before I struck—that had been an abstract halo of blues entwined with numbers and letters; his brain was still moving, more slowly but definitely alert. The corona drifted into the red spectrum and my face now danced in the flames.

Oh, that really sucked.

Abandoning my attempt to do the zip of the backpack up all the way, I legged it for the stadium exit. I could feel the strength of my hold on them slipping free like sand running out of the bottom of a split sack, far faster than normal. Part of me was screaming that this couldn’t happen: I was good at nothing except this; my power to freeze minds was the one thing that had remained totally reliable through all the other madness that was my life. I felt scared to death that somehow that too was failing me. If it did, I’d be washed up. Finished.

My left shoe slapped my heel as I ran out of the stadium— the frigging lace had broken. I headed for the JCB I had originally hidden behind. If I could get that far, I would be able to duck down out of sight and lie in the wild-flower meadow grass. From there I could go on my belly to the concrete culvert that I had used to conceal my entry to the site.

My sole slipped on a rough patch and I lost the Ked by the ramp but I was too panicked to retrieve it. I never made these kinds of mistakes. I always went in and out of a steal leaving no trace. I reached the loader, my heart pounding against my ribs like an amplifier with bass notes booming. The connection snapped and I knew the rest of the students would be aware again. But had he managed to shake off my freeze attack already and track my exit route?

The sounds of the construction work carried on without interruption. No shouts or whistles. I sneaked a peek around the wheel of the JCB. The boy was standing at the top of the ramp, quartering the Olympic Park with his gaze. He wasn’t raising the dust, demanding a search be carried out, or calling for the police: he simply looked. That made me even more scared. It just wasn’t normal.

No time to think. I retreated to the long grass and found the path I’d already made in the meadow. That should lead me directly back to safety. There were fewer security cameras fitted on this part of the site and several blind spots if you knew where they were to be found, so I should be difficult to locate. I could still get away.

Lying on my stomach, I cast the bag to one side and sagged against the earth for a moment, adrenalin still thundering through my veins like a runaway tube train. I felt sick—disgusted at myself for my unprofessional panic and terrified of what had just happened. There was no time to get my head round it; I still had to escape into the streets and get rid of the stuff I’d stolen.

Reminded that I was now in possession of two very expensive bits of kit, I checked my bag. It felt warm—no, hot. I stuck my hand inside to see what was wrong—so stupid.

The phone and tablet burst into flame.

Swearing foully, I pulled my hand back and pushed the bag away. My fingers stung like hell and it looked as though my whole hand was burnt. Shaking away the agony, I couldn’t stop to see how bad it was because my tote was now on fire, sending up a smoke signal of exactly where the thief was. I stumbled to my feet and ran blindly for the fence, gasping with pain. I had to get my hand in water. I no longer cared if anyone saw me; I had to get out.

More by luck than judgement, I found the concrete channel and the gap in the perimeter fence. Wriggling through the wire, my hair got caught and I had to pull hard to get free, adding another injury to my growing list. Then, limping and cradling my hand to my chest, I headed across the waste ground for Stratford Station to get lost in the crowds on the platform.

‘Tony, Tony, let me in!’ I beat with my uninjured fist on the battered fire door at the back of the Community; it was the kind with the push-bar on the inside so I had to wait for someone to take pity on me before I could enter.

As I’d guessed, Tony was the only one on duty this early in the day. The others were out and about ‘gathering’ the Community’s wealth. I could hear him shuffling to the entrance, his bad leg dragging with every other stride. With a thump, he fell against the bar and forced it open. The bottom scraped on the broken concrete paving.

‘Phee, what are you doing home so soon?’ He stood back to let me past and then dragged the door closed. ‘Where’s your bag—did you stash it somewhere?’ A little guy with pepperand-salt hair, bronzed skin and eyes like a hedgerow bird always on the lookout for a predator, Tony was the closest I had here to a friend. Two years ago, he had come out worst in an argument with a truck he was trying to jack in a lay-by near Walthamstow, not realizing the driver was asleep in the cabin. The man had taken off when he heard Tony’s telekinetic powers at work on the door locks, not looking to see the cause. Tony had gone under the wheels and nearly died. Since then, he’d only had the use of one good arm and leg, the others crushed and never properly healed despite everything I tried to do for him. Community members aren’t allowed to use emergency services. We have to fly under the radar, according to our leader.

‘You shouldn’t be back.’ Undecided, Tony hovered in the entrance, not knowing if he should kick me out or shut the door.

‘I’m hurt.’

He gave a nervous glance over his shoulder. ‘But you’re still walking, Phee—you know the rules.’

Having had enough of struggling along, my eyes filled with tears that I could not afford to shed. ‘I know the effing rules, Tony. My bag went up in smoke, OK? And I got burned.’ I held up my blistered palm. For once, I wanted some sympathy, not to be told my duty. ‘It really hurts.’

‘Oh,
dashur
, that looks ugly.’ His shoulders curved in defeat for a second as he contemplated the consequences, then he stood up straight. ‘I shouldn’t let you back in but so what? Come with me and I’ll sort you out.’

‘Thanks, Tony. You’re a star.’ His kindness helped more than he knew.

Closing the door, he waved off my appreciation. ‘You and I both know this won’t be the end of the matter, not when our
kommandant
gets to hear of it.’ He gave a hopeless shrug. ‘But for the moment let’s deal with your injury. I expect we’ll both regret it.’

I mopped my tears with the back of my hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, yes.’ With his back to me, he made a dismissive gesture with his fingers, a flick of defiance at the onset of trouble. ‘We’re all sorry—sorry all the time.’ He shuffled on ahead down the ill-smelling corridor, part basement, part service tunnel. The Community was squatting on an empty council estate slated for demolition. I think the Local Authority had had dreams that the Olympic development would swallow up this ugly bit of their housing stock but the recession had cut those dreams off at the knees. They’d emptied the low-rise blocks, thinking that the benefit-claiming inhabitants would be replaced by tax-paying city workers, but no one had moved in with bulldozers to build the fancy apartments they had speculated would replace the concrete boxes. Instead, six months ago, we had crept in and established our own little colony. It wasn’t as bad as some of the places we’d been in as it still had water, even if the electricity had been cut off. The police had been persuaded with a well-placed bribe or two to look the other way as we broke in to the boarded-up fl ats. The area tough guys who would’ve used it for dealing had soon been scared off by our guards. If there was any bad stuff going down in this place, our leader wanted to make sure he was the one benefiting. So we were left to ourselves, a group of about sixty Savants and one dominant Seer, him being our equivalent of a queen bee and us the workers.

‘In you go.’ Tony ushered me into the little cupboard of a room he had been allocated. Forced by his injuries off active duty, he was only allowed to stay through the ‘goodness’ of our leader’s heart. That goodness only stretched to this hole. I, by contrast, had been granted a proper bedroom on the top floor—the equivalent of a commendation. And, being the best at my craft, I’d never failed the Seer, until today that was.