There is thumping behind – Skye is throwing herself at the hall door.
‘Not even Tori believes that; she just doesn’t care.’
He looks at her.
‘Shut up,’ she shouts, and the knife is in her hand. She lunges and I’m on the floor, up against the wall, weaponless. Limp and lifeless already: where has my fight gone? This is it. This is really it.
A foot swings out: the knife flies through the air. Ben. He’s kicked the knife out of her hand.
‘What have you made me do?’ he screams, and I don’t know if he means stopping Tori from killing me, or Tori’s lies and what they led to. Or if he even knows.
Tori screams in fury. She reaches behind, to a holster. A gun is in her hand. She raises it at Ben.
A crash: the thin hall door has given way.
A flash of fur – Skye – jumps between them.
The gun goes off and Skye yelps, falls, red in her golden fur. Tori stares, disbelieving.
My fight is back. I’m on my feet, and I take the biggest swing I’ve ever taken to punch Tori full on in the face. She drops the gun, falls to the ground. Unconscious. And then the gun is in my hand and pointed at Ben.
Who am I kidding? I put it down.
Ben is holding Skye, pushing at the red spreading in her fur. It’s her shoulder? I grab a curtain tie off the wall, tie it tight around and around to try to stop the bleeding, and she’s whimpering, but still licking Ben’s face. He’s shaking.
‘Ben? Do you remember Skye? Remember!’ And then he’s crying, convulsing, and I’m holding both of them.
That’s when the front door is kicked down. A man steps through.
Nico?
CHAPTER FORTY
* * *
I twist, dive for Tori’s gun, but then there is pain: a sudden explosion of agony in my head so severe I drop and curl into a ball.
‘This is why we track the trackers,’ a woman’s voice says. ‘They really can’t be trusted to get anything right. Young people today have no sense of focus or purpose.’
Footsteps approach. They stop; a hand strokes my hair. The pain is so intense it is all I can do to open my eyes and look up at the ones staring into mine: pale blue irises. Nico’s eyes used to mesmerise me, hold power. Not any longer.
‘Poor child. You see, over there?’ He gestures to the front door, and my eyes follow. It’s Astrid, and in her hands is a device. ‘Once a Slated, always a Slated. Just key in the brain chip number, hit a button, and bingo: pain. Or even death.’
Tori is stirring on the floor. ‘Allow me a small demonstration,’ Astrid says, and taps at the machine. Tori screams, convulses, then lies still.
As if to emphasise the point, Astrid taps again; a new spike of pain explodes in my head. My vision goes fuzzy. All the Lorder talk of second chances for Slateds: all lies. We’re still in a prison. They can strike us down whenever they want to.
‘Enough for now,’ Nico says. ‘She’ll pass out.’ He lifts me up onto the sofa. Ben is held between two Lorders, and Tori and Skye are unmoving on the floor.
The pain subsides a little, enough that I can turn my head, fix Nico once again with my eyes. I swallow, try to speak with a mouth that is thick and dry. ‘Why are you here? You hate Lorders.’
‘Ah, my dear, love and hate have nothing to do with winning. I was always with Astrid. The side of strength.’ He leans over me, close, and I try to pull away but can’t convince muscles to respond. He kisses my cheek.
I fight to think through the pain. Is Nico in some sort of self-serving alliance with Astrid, or was he actually a Lorder all the time? But Nico ran from Coulson’s Lorders when they tracked me and attacked the AGT; Coulson was hunting Nico. Or was that just an act? If Nico really is a Lorder, that may explain why all the attacks Nico and Katran planned just fizzled out: sabotage.
The clock over the mantel says 6:08 pm. The transmission is well under way! I have to keep them talking, keep them from stopping it.
With great concentration I manage to turn my head to Astrid. ‘It was you who set up them taking me when I was ten. Wasn’t it.’
She smiles, and it is a grandmotherly, gentle smile. Shivers run up my back. ‘Of course it was, my dear. You had a glorious purpose on Armstrong Memorial Day. Shame you didn’t fulfil it.’
A glorious purpose? That of suicide bomber. Concentrate; delay her. ‘It was no accident I was assigned to that family, that I was there that day.’
‘Of course not. It just took a little meddling to sort it.’
‘How could you do that to Stella? Take me away from her?’
Her face goes hard. ‘My daughter dared to hold information over me, threatened to tell: she had to learn. And then having you back with her in Keswick, without telling me?’ She shakes her head in disgust.
‘So you really did have the Prime Minister and his wife killed, all those years ago.’
She smiles. ‘First rule of politics: eliminate the opposition.’
‘How did you know I was at Stella’s?’
She shrugs. ‘It was obvious Stella was hiding something. A little information, and the conclusion was apparent.’
‘From Steph. My green eyes.’
She raises an eyebrow. Amused. ‘Indeed. And it didn’t take long to work out it was also you and that Finley at the orphanage that day.’
No. She knows about Finley? She must see the horror on my face. Her smile widens.
I’m going cold inside: if she knows Finley was there, that he helped me, he’s dead. And all these things she is saying to me; I’m not leaving here alive, either. None of us are. Not with all the things we know.
But there is still one thing I want to know more than anything.
‘Why me? Who am I? Why?’
Astrid laughs. ‘That is quite enough family reunion time, dear. Now: tell me. Where is your camera?’
‘My camera?’ I frown. ‘I don’t know.’
‘This is the price of failure to cooperate.’ Her fingers move to the device she holds, and I brace myself for a slam of pain that doesn’t come. But there is a cry to the side, and I turn.
Ben is curled up in a ball on the ground.
‘Now answer my question.’
I think fast. Does it matter? It’s just a backup copy. It is 6:12: the transmission should be nearly over.
She raises her hand to the box again.
‘Wait. Ben took it from me; he must still have it.’
She nods at one of the Lorders, who goes through Ben’s pockets, then holds up my camera.
The back door opens; there are footsteps in the kitchen?
‘Ah, your other friends are arriving, at last,’ Nico says. The door from the kitchen opens. More Lorders, dragging two prisoners along with them. They throw them on the floor.
Mac and Aiden. Both of them bloody and beaten, Aiden’s arm hanging at an angle that is wrong.
‘No!’ I sag back.
‘Yes, I’m afraid we stopped them: no movie premiere for you tonight. And we’ll round up all the insurgents that appear on your little production as well. We’ve got some of them in custody already. But don’t worry, they won’t be in custody for long.’
They’ll be dead.
So will I.
The Lorder with my camera takes it over to Astrid. She puts down the device she was holding, her box of pain, to look at the camera.
It doesn’t matter any more, does it?
I fill myself with every bit of resolve I can find inside, every reserve of strength, every fragment of AGT training. One last flood of adrenalin before it all ends.
Tori’s knife, the one Ben kicked out of her hand. It lies just out of sight, under the edge of a chair near Astrid.
I dive for it and for her.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
* * *
I hold the knife against Astrid’s neck, position her body between them and me. ‘Drop your weapons,’ I say to the Lorders. They look at her.
‘Do it,’ she hisses, and they hesitate, start to bend down, to put guns on the floor.
‘Don’t bother,’ Nico says, walking slowly towards Astrid and me, his gun still in his hand and pointed at us.
‘Don’t take another step!’ I say.
He stops. He smiles, amused. ‘Really? Don’t forget I know you, Kyla or Rain or Lucy or Riley or whoever the hell you want to be today. You can’t kill anybody. Can you?’
The moment is stretching, each second a slow eternity. After everything, is it this moment, this one defining, ending moment of my life? If I kill her, I’ll die. If I don’t, I’ll die. She deserves it, she deserves it more than anyone I can imagine in this world, except maybe Nico: push the knife into her neck. Cut her throat. Watch blood spill down her body: revenge for so many.
I can’t do it. I can’t be like them.
And he knows it.
The knife loosens in my hand. I swallow.
Nico smiles and steps closer; he takes the knife.
Astrid pushes away from me, her face twisted with fury; she reaches for her box of pain. ‘You never would do what I wanted you to, would you? No more.’
‘Let me take care of her outside,’ Nico says to her. ‘It’s about time.’
She smiles, puts the box down again. ‘As you will. But make it quick. We’ve got to get out of here.’
Nico slips an arm across my shoulders, gently pulls my hair back. Kisses my cheek. ‘We have unfinished business, you and I.’
There is a scuffle behind Nico; Aiden cries out as a Lorder twists his injured arm behind him.
Nico opens the front door, pushes me out into the night. I trip on the step, sprawl onto the muddy ground in the cold rain.
Run.
I glance back; he stands there. Watching and waiting.
It’s what he wants me to do. He wants me to run, doesn’t he? So he can shoot me in the back.
I stand up. Face him down, like Florence did at All Souls.
He shrugs, raises his gun.
‘Goodbye, Rain. It’s been fun.’
And I stand there, stare back at him. He’s waiting for me to cry, to plead. I won’t do it.
It’s a funny thing. Earlier I thought I was ready to die, but I’m not. Despite everything, I want to stay, to breathe this air, to feel even if all there is to feel is pain. I’m fighting tears that threaten, fear that trembles through my body as he slowly points his gun straight at my heart. He smiles, and then—
BANG!
And I flinch, anticipating impact, pain, being pushed to the ground, but instead am full of confusion.
Nico has fallen? It is Nico clutching at his chest, red red red spreading. Nico dying.
Footsteps approach.
It’s Coulson? Gun in hand, looking at Nico at his feet. But Coulson is a Lorder; Nico is with the Lorders now. Isn’t he? Other Lorders run in behind him.
‘I’m not dead,’ I say.
‘Correct,’ Coulson says. He opens the door, looks back. ‘Come on,’ he says. Dazed, I step around Nico’s now still body, walk back in the house behind Coulson.
Astrid’s eyes go round with shock. Her Lorders aren’t looking happy either, not that it is easy to tell with Lorders. But Coulson is a Lorder. Aren’t they on the same side?
Coulson gestures at the other Lorders in the room. ‘Get out,’ he says. They look at Astrid. Indecision plays on her face.
More Lorders step in behind us.
‘Do as he says,’ Astrid says, and they are ushered out.
Coulson checks the room, holds an arm out the door. A gesture.
In walk two people I was never more surprised to see: Dr Lysander? And with her is Prime Minister Gregory.
Dr Lysander rushes to the injured. Checks Ben, Aiden and Mac. Skye. And Tori, too: but this time Dr Lysander shakes her head. She closes Tori’s eyes. Tori…dead? Another shock that I can’t take in, can’t believe. ‘Paramedics are needed for the others,’ Dr Lysander says. ‘And a vet.’ Gregory nods, and a Lorder speaks into his collar. They’re not going to be killed, but helped?