The Burning (11 page)

“And Uncle Clay’s gone to bed,” Rachel said, attempting to endorse Adam’s weak story.

“No, he hasn’t. He’s in a meeting,” Morag said, with a decisive nod of the head. Rachel and Adam looked at each other. This was good news.

Rachel knew it was a long shot, but asked anyway, “Do you know where he keeps the key, Morag?”

“We don’t need a key. Duncan can open it for you, can’t you, Duncan?” Morag pointed towards her brother in case
anyone was in doubt as to who he was. Duncan thought for a few seconds, then nodded once.

“Would you open it for us, Duncan?” Adam asked.

The small boy stepped forward and placed his hand over the lock. He shut his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, then, taking his hand a few centimetres away from the lock, he rotated his palm anticlockwise, quickly flicked it through ninety degrees and took his hand away. Rachel and Adam almost laughed at the boy’s expression of concentration: his little pink tongue poking from the corner of his mouth. They heard a “
click”
followed by a deep, metallic “
clunk”
and Adam’s smirk of amusement switched to an expression of wonder as the door creaked open.

“Neat trick,” he said.

Adam stole into the room first and Rachel followed, the ticking of the many clocks sounding extra loud in the dark stillness. The beady eyes of the various automata stared down at the two of them as they crept across to Van der Zee’s leather-topped desk. Suddenly, a mechanical whirring noise caused Rachel to freeze and grab Adam’s arm. The whirring was quickly followed by a ratcheting sound as, high up on the wall, a cuckoo sprang out of its clock and piped the hour. Other clocks on shelves around the room began to chime one by one, all slightly out of synch. Eleven o’clock.

Rachel let out her breath and Adam switched on the desk lamp. He leant across and pulled Van der Zee’s wooden box towards him. “Locked,” he said. He grabbed a
letter opener from the desktop and attempted to force the box open. “Come on!” After a few, frustrating seconds, he moaned as the flimsy knife bent against the hard wood of the lid.

Rachel looked round at the younger twins, who had again crept up behind her without a sound, their faces lit eerily by the desk lamp.

“You’ll break it!” Morag chirped. “Duncan?” She pointed at the box.

Moments later, the small boy was pressing his hand against the box’s keyhole, the same look of intense concentration etched across his face. After a few seconds, the lock clicked and he calmly lifted the lid. Adam looked at him in amazement.

“Thanks, Duncan. Awesome. You’re a pretty useful guy to have around.”

Duncan almost smiled. Adam reached into the box, took out the Triskellion and placed it down carefully on the desktop. The amulet immediately began to glow, golden against the glossy green leather.

“It knows you’re here,” Morag said. She watched, open-mouthed, as the Triskellion began to oscillate, vibrating and rotating, picking up speed and rising from the box. It spun above their heads and cast rays of golden light around the room. “It knows we’re here too,” she added, smiling, her wide blue eyes and red hair catching the dancing fingers of light.

The children watched in silent awe as the Triskellion spun around the room, setting the clocks chiming and every one of Van der Zee’s automata whirring and jiggling. The tiny metal chef flipped his tin eggs over and over. The mechanical monkey grimaced and clashed his cymbals together as if in celebration of the magic unfolding in front of his glass eyes. The Triskellion finally came to rest, spinning slowly down and landing in Rachel’s palm like a giant golden butterfly.

“Let’s get out of here,” Adam said.

Rachel nodded, stuffing the Triskellion into her backpack, and the four children filed quickly into the corridor as the clocks ceased chiming and the room became silent once again.

R
achel and Adam moved along narrow, darkened corridors that ran through the old part of the Hope Building. They emerged after a few minutes into the new, high-tech research area and moved towards where they knew the main entrance to be. All the while, creeping through the shadows, Morag and Duncan were tripping along behind them.

“You guys should be in bed,” Rachel said. “It’s pretty late.” She and Adam would never have got this far without the little twins, she admitted to herself, but now it was time to shake them off.

“Oh no,” Morag said. “We’re coming with you.” She nodded to her little brother and, in perfect unison, they each held up a small, tartan suitcase.

“Why? You can’t—”

“Please,” Morag begged. “We don’t want to disappear like the others.”

“Others?”

“There were … other twins before you came.”

Before Rachel had a chance to learn any more, she became aware of a light in the small office to their right. As they approached it, a security guard stepped out, his protective glasses perched on his head and his inhibitor earplugs dangling on their wires round his neck. Rachel and Adam instantly hit the wall, disappearing into shadow, leaving Morag and Duncan standing squarely in the middle of the corridor, suitcases in hand. Just as Rachel realized that there was no time to pull the twins to safety, the guard turned and froze: caught in the twin headlight stare of Morag and Duncan’s bright blue eyes.

Rachel watched, aware suddenly of a distant buzzing; aware that it was growing less distant. A sound she hoped meant help was coming.

“Hello, Martin,” Morag said.

The guard fumbled quickly for his glasses and struggled to plug in his inhibitors, but he was forced to flap his hands at the bee which had appeared from nowhere and had begun buzzing angrily around his head. Suddenly, the panic died in his eyes and his hands dropped, hanging uselessly at his sides as the bee landed and began to crawl lazily across his shoulder. The man could do no more than stand, like a waxwork, transfixed by Morag and Duncan.

“Now. You’re going to escort us, and our friends, to the main entrance,” Morag continued. The guard stared, his mouth opening and closing slowly. “Dr Van der Zee’s instructions.”

“OK,” the guard said. Though it was clearly too late, he plugged in his earphones, pulled down his dark glasses and walked slowly away down the corridor.

Morag grabbed her brother’s hand and grinned at Rachel and Adam as they emerged from the shadows. “Don’t dawdle,” she said.

Rachel began to move, pulling Adam with her, while watching the bee rise from the guard’s shoulder and drift away ahead of them.

“We haven’t got long,” she said.

The guard, whom Morag called Martin, dutifully took them down corridors, through sliding doors and past other security guards, punching in key codes, giving passwords and swiping keys as he went.

“Martin’s a nice man,” Morag explained to Rachel as they trotted along behind him. “Me and Duncan caught him out once before. We made him think he was a cat. It was really funny, he kept purring and licking milk off the floor. We got in trouble when Dr Van der Zee caught us and Martin rubbed himself against his leg.” Rachel grinned. “Not as much trouble as Martin, mind you,” Morag added.

Not as much trouble as he’ll be in this time, Rachel thought.

They passed another security office near the main entrance and Martin spoke to the duty officer. He filled in his name and number in the log and assured the officer that
he was escorting all four twins on the explicit instructions of Dr Van der Zee.

“That’s all right then,” the duty officer said, before going back to his crossword.

As the guard slammed the steel doors behind them and the chilly night air filled their lungs, Rachel and Adam could not quite believe how easily they had got outside.

In front of them, the wide gravel driveway snaked off past the near-empty car park towards the security hut. Rachel looked at the field of long, wet grass that stretched out to the right and saw the tops of the dark trees in the woodland beyond. She didn’t want to hang around in front of the building a moment longer.

“Let’s head that way,” she said, pointing towards the trees. All four jogged off through the wet grass, keeping their heads low. The trees appeared to be around thirty metres ahead of them. Adam led the way, Duncan trotted behind him with Rachel following, holding Morag by the hand. The tops of the trees, now distinguishable as tall pines, loomed closer and closer, and Rachel began to allow a mounting sense of relief to take hold of her, now that they were clear of the building.

Then Adam tripped and fell.

A few steps ahead of the others and only a few metres shy of the trees, Adam had been caught by a low-level tripwire concealed in the long grass. Instantly the whole area was lit by strong halogen spotlights and the two sets of twins
could do little but stare at one another in horror, their faces bleached out and bewildered in the harsh white light.

The “
whoop-whoop”
of an alarm sounded from the Hope complex and Adam struggled to his feet. Bells rang and lights flashed as he joined the others, staring back towards the main building, rigid with panic. Turning to the woods, lit now by the powerful spotlights, they could clearly see the fence that ran the whole perimeter of the grounds. A high fence topped with razor wire and marked with warning signs of lightning flashes and skulls. A fence that was crackling with the thousands of volts of current that ran through it.

A fence that Duncan, in his panic, was running towards…

Adam threw himself after the boy, his feet slipping on the wet grass. “Duncan!
Duncan…!
”

But the boy was too far ahead, and Rachel, Adam and Morag could only watch in silent horror as the small figure jumped up and grabbed at the wire, as a jagged blue flash delineated his body, then scream as his limp form was thrown back several metres and delivered lifeless at their feet.

An unearthly, terrifying howl came from Morag as she dropped to the ground in front of her brother. A noise that sounded as if her lungs were being torn from her by unseen hands: an ear-splitting pitch that wailed above the sounds of the alarm. Rachel fell to the ground and clasped the girl’s shaking body to her own, feeling the sharp sting of guilt that told her she was responsible for this tragedy.

Adam gently touched Duncan’s chalk-white face, placed a finger under his nose to feel for breath, but there was none. He put his hand on the shallow chest, feeling for movement beneath clothes that were still smouldering. Nothing. He grabbed at the limp wrist and felt for a pulse. Not a flicker. Adam looked at Rachel and his lip began to quiver as hot tears spilled from his eyes and splashed on to the body of the dead boy.

The three living figures huddled together in the wet field and howled, their escape attempt clearly over as guards began to pour from the building out into the grounds. Rachel and Adam pressed their heads together in anguish.

Suddenly, Morag’s sobs subsided and she pulled away from Rachel and Adam, as if to look at Duncan again, to confirm that the worst had actually happened.

“Michael?” she said, suddenly calm. “What are you doing here?”

Rachel and Adam looked up, expecting to see another security guard, but instead they saw somebody they already knew.

Gabriel.

Speechless, they watched as Gabriel crouched down and put one hand to the chest and the other to the smooth forehead of the dead boy. Rachel’s jaw dropped as Gabriel took his hand away from Duncan’s head, keeping his left hand on the boy’s chest, and her tears came even harder as she saw Duncan’s eyelids flicker, and then open.

“That was amazing,” Duncan said.

All four twins looked up at Gabriel with expressions of wonder.

“Duncan spoke!” Morag said.

“Wouldn’t you?” Gabriel replied, helping Duncan up on to wobbly feet. “Now come on, or they’ll catch us.”

Gabriel nodded in the direction of the main building, where guards with flashlights were beginning to swarm towards them.

Gabriel took the ten steps towards the perimeter fence and calmly lifted the wire up from the bottom, creating a gap for the others to crawl under. The children looked stunned as sparks fizzed and cracked around him, but Gabriel suffered no ill effect from the electricity that was obviously surging through his body.

“Hurry up!” he said. “I can’t stand here all night.”

Quickly, the four twins scrabbled underneath the fence and into the woods. Gabriel followed them, leaving the fence as he had found it and melting into the blackness.

Kate Newman was woken by the alarm.

The siren had snaked into her nightmare, pulling her from it, clammy and breathless, and as she sat up in bed there was only one thought in her head.

The children.

She flung back the blankets and rushed for the door, slammed her palm against the panic button and waited for
a guard to arrive. She tried to shout, but the words would not come clearly: the drug she was given at night was far too strong.

Waiting for the guard, the dream came back to her in flashes. Home. Walking in the park. The three of them safe, somewhere bright and familiar. She hammered on the door, then clapped her hands tight against her ears, the siren deafening, making her feel as though her brain was bleeding.