Chapter Nineteen

 

Radclyffe carried the birthday cake out into the parlour, setting it on the table with the sandwiches, little cakes and sausage rolls. Brett played with the twins, showing them the food and the presents. Damn, Ivy thought, the twins' birthday party!

 

A clutch of mothers and toddlers from the village had arrived, plus some uniformed nannies from the county families with their young charges. Radclyffe's sister and Brett's brother rushed around helping, and a magician was setting up his table. The noise levels rose as the toddlers showed an interest in the bright colours of the presents on the side table.

 

Radclyffe looked up and saw Ivy. She dropped the birthday cake and staggered sideways into the table. Brett frowned when he saw Ivy, and he dashed towards her. Everything flickered, and the asylum suddenly felt real and immediate again. She was there again, standing in the corridor.

 

Birgitte was being restrained by two nurses. She broke free and made for the door. Ivy pressed herself back into an alcove as the nurses dashed after Birgitte, relieved that they had not seen her. She fumbled in her pocket and took out the key Birgitte had given her. She pushed it into a crack in the wall. If they search me and find this, I'll have lost my only way out, she thought.

 

Ivy crept on towards the centre of the asylum, climbing two flights of stairs. The whole place was a warren of corridors. There were no windows and few features to enable her to get her bearings, but she stayed calm and kept working out where she was going.

 

Voices coming towards her startled her. She'd just passed a laundry chute. Dashing back, she yanked it open and clambered inside. She gently closed the lid and held it in place. Footsteps rang out on the stone flags as the two nurses ran past. The whole place was disgusting. The laundry stank of faeces and urine. Something to her left emitted the odour of vomit. It was pitch black and the scuttling of rats approached, but she was not unnerved. Growing up in the slums of the west had meant frequent encounters with vermin.

 

Suddenly, the chute floor opened and she tumbled, head over heels, down through it. Hitting a pile of dirty laundry at the bottom, she bounced upwards as it cushioned her fall. She tried to grab for anything to pull herself out, but slipped backwards into it instead. She was now trapped and with no way of climbing back up to the corridor.

 

As she took a moment to catch her breath, she tentatively inspected her knee. It hurt, and she winced when she tried to move it, but it began to feel better as she rubbed it. Then she scrambled out of the laundry pile and over to the nearest wall. The rough wood was split with damp and age, and rays of sunshine shone through cracks. She groped along the wooden wall until she found a door. It was locked, but she pried back the rotten wood in the wall to force a hole, silently scrambled through it and emerged into the sunshine.

 

*

 

Gerald nursed his foot as they sped towards Coventry, while Hendra stared silently out of the window. The vehicle kept up a steady stream of updates about how far they were from the forward command centre. About ten miles from the airport, the car slowed down. They drove round a corner and saw a group of men standing in the middle of the road, which they had barricaded with tree trunks.

 

One of the men approached the vehicle. The black car was a hallmark of the authorities. Hendra leant out and pointed her gun at him. “You probably know the resistance is failing. Janus has fled, and we’re likely to be back in charge pretty soon. You can make things easier for yourself, or you can make them more difficult. It's really up to you.”

 

The man stepped back, gesturing for his companions to move part of the blockade to let them pass. As the car passed the barricade and sped up again, Hendra leant back out of the window, aimed and fired at the man who’d helped them. Her bullet hit the ground right in front of him, and he jumped back in alarm.

 

She chuckled as she rested her gun on the dashboard. “We’ll be safe, and I'll be able to start helping you put your life back together,” she told Gerald with a smug smile.

 

A few minutes later, the car pulled up in front of an innocuous-looking storage facility just outside Coventry airport. Hendra leant out and tapped the code into the security system, and the gate rolled open.

 

So this is what a forward command centre looks like, he thought. It was just a disused, filthy hangar. The car parked up on a hatched rectangle marked 'reserved parking' and switched off its engine.

 

A low rumbling sounded as the rectangle shifted, and they descended to the level below. A whole centre, designed to fight back against any resistance to the government’s power, lay right under the innocuous storage facility.

 

She put her arm around his waist to help him out of the car, and they staggered over to a soldier holding a handheld device. He scanned their retinas. “Welcome!" he said, as the results pinged through onto his device. "I’m Sergeant Tallis. Hendra, I’m so delighted to see you made it here safely. And Gerald Flint, too! I’m so sorry about your father. Rest assured we’re doing all we can to help find the renegades who killed him.”

 

Hendra shot a wry look at Gerald. He almost hoped she would be honest with everyone here about his past sympathy for the resistance. He longed to know what had lured him to their cause, and how he had helped them, but she was so coy on that subject.

 

Tallis showed them into a small room, and Gerald sank down into a comfortable chair.

 

“Fetch the first-aid kit. Gerald took a flesh wound helping me interrogate a soldier we’d captured,” she said. "He's a hero to our cause, and I want everyone to know about it."

 

*

 

Don formed a vision of the facility's layout in his mind. He mentally traced a line around the perimeter until he located the pipeline leading from the diesel fuel tank to the generator. His gaze lingered above the schematic image of the tank. Curling his fingers into his palm, he squeezed until his nails dug into his skin. Soon, he thought. Very soon.

 

He opened the door of the utility room a crack to peer out. Constructing a protective shield of invisibility, he snuck along the corridor, keeping to the wall. He listened for any sound or sign of people coming his way. His powers meant they would pass right through him if they approached, but they would feel something decidedly odd happening when they did so. The more sensitive might even begin to suspect that another sentient being, invisible but present, lingered there. If it occurred too many times, the scientists would be on their guard. Right now, they're cocky, and that works just fine with me, he thought.

 

Walking along the identical white corridors, he used his mental map to keep to the correct orientation. The hint of diesel fumes reassured him that he was headed in the right direction, and he quickened his pace. He skirted nervously around two engineers coming back from their break and hid in a janitor’s closet.

 

Crammed in between stacks of boxes, he closed his eyes and visualised the outcome he wished to achieve. Since he’d been a young child he’d learned to do this whenever he wanted something specific to happen. He built a detailed mental picture of the facility with its alarms blaring and people running around in panic. He imagined its doors springing open and everyone rushing out into the icy darkness. Gradually, it all became so real that Don believed it was actually happening.

 

An alarm went off, clanging on and on. Women started shouting, followed by footsteps ringing out as people rushed past his door. He had done it. It was real. Clenching his fists, he threw all his mental power into locating each prisoner in turn. It was going to be draining and difficult to achieve his mission, but he was utterly focused on it and gave no thought to the cost to himself.

 

One at a time, he removed the men from the facility and transported them away. Each time he built them a new identity out in the busy world with a complete backstory that would keep them safe and anonymous. It would protect them from the Master and prevent any attempt to trace their whereabouts. Some he sent to cities, others he planted in families in rural areas. The practice he had completed imagining his own alternate life with Radclyffe and Brett had soothed and satisfied him when he remember what his existence had been to date, but it had also been a warm up for the his genuine manipulation of time and space now on behalf of these men.

 

He became exhausted at the mental effort involved in changing so much about the world. In the past he had used computer programmes, but here without that sort of omnipresent technology he had to use mental effort to achieve it more directly. It sapped his energy and threatened to overwhelm him, but he refused to quit until all the men were safe.

 

His palms became sweaty. Always repelled by sweat and other bodily sensations, he opened a box labelled ‘surgical wipes’ and cleaned them. He tossed the soiled one on the floor and slipped the packet inside his jacket.

 

Eventually, all the men were safe. They wouldn’t remember anything about their experiences. He was too exhausted to move, and he constructed a shield around himself so that he could rest.

 

*

 

Ivy dashed across the lawn and hung around in the woods for a couple of hours until the return of quiet to the asylum reassured her that the search for her had been called off. She observed the staff coming and going for their breaks and worked out how often people came outside. Several loitered by the main entrance to smoke or sit on the benches during their rest period. There was a firm pattern to their movements that she could now use to gain access.

 

Just before the next break was due, Ivy snuck back and lingered behind the doors until a young nurse came out for a cigarette. Ivy leapt forward, grabbed the woman by the neck and squeezed until she dropped to the ground. Dragging her behind some bushes, Ivy stole her uniform and swapped it for her dress.

 

She nodded in satisfaction at the nurse’s uniform. She had an official-looking way into the asylum now, and she would find Henry and bring him home.