15 - THE BIT IN THE STORY WHERE IT ALL KICKS OFF

 

The black Range Rover with the blacked-out windows pulled up outside Blackwell Books. The rear passenger door opened. Two teenagers got out. They were both dressed in brand-new Nike trainers, jeans and hoodies. One was a girl with curly black hair. The other was a boy with blond hair. They didn’t have names. Not any more. Now they were known as Beta Female (the girl) and Beta Male (the boy). A short time ago they had been known as Betsy Irwin and Joe Hess but a lot had changed since then. Some people would even argue that, even though they still looked like Betsy and Joe, those two children no longer existed. There was no sign of what had made Betsy and Joe. It was there but it was buried beneath tens of millions of tiny electronic circuits in their brain. Of course, calling them Beta Male and Beta Female didn’t help Joe and Betsy to remember who they were. And that was the point.

The passenger door of the black Range Rover was closed by someone sitting inside and the vehicle pulled away. The two teenagers walked inside the bookshop, which was busy with students and dons and people buying Christmas presents. The shop was so busy that no one paid any attention to them as they walked past the stacks of cookbooks and celebrity memoirs, down the stairs and into the basement. A harassed bookseller pushed a trolley laden with new releases past them as they kept walking, their heads bowed so that the security cameras couldn’t catch their faces.

Their heartbeats remained steady. They didn’t sweat. They were focused only on their mission. They turned a corner and stopped in front of the section devoted to business and economics. As Betsy made sure that no one was watching them, Joe reached up and ran his finger along the spines until he found the book he was looking for. He pulled at the top of it as if he was trying to take it off the shelf.

The massive tome tilted and the whole wall of books moved to reveal a dark passageway. Joe stepped into it, quickly followed by Betsy. The bookshelf closed behind them, and the most boring book in the world slid back into place.

A rat scuttled under their feet. They kept going. The tunnel sloped down. There was no lighting and neither had a torch. It was so dark that not even night-vision goggles, such as soldiers wear, would have helped. Instead they were using a system called ‘sonar’, used by submarines. Several times every second their bodies sent out a high-pitched sound that bounced off the walls of the tunnel (and any other solid object it hit) and they used the time it took to come back to work out what was around them.

They moved at a steady pace. After three hundred yards the tunnel curved gently around to the right. Not that they knew it, or would have cared if they did, but it dated back to the early days of the college when it had been dug by students desperate to escape the nightly beatings in the Master’s study.

Finally, the tunnel began to slope upwards. It dead-ended after another three hundred yards. Together, Betsy and Joe, the two Betas, pulled at the wooden trapdoor with such force that the rotting old wood splintered in their hands.

‘Step back,’ said Joe.

Betsy did as he said and he aimed a vicious kick at the last of the door, reducing the wood to sawdust with the force of his boot. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the gap. A second later Betsy followed him.

On the other side of the door there was a storm drain. It was about three feet wide and four feet tall. They reached inside the pockets of their hoodies and pulled out what looked like clear plastic bags. They untied the bags and shook out their SNORTS. They helped each other to put them on, which was easier said than done.

Now came the hard part. It was the hardest part of any operation like this. You had to wait, quietly, but without letting your attention wander.

The winter sun sank. A quarter-moon rose. Clouds drifted in, slipping past the towers and turrets and spires of the old city. There was no place in the world that was more beautiful on a foggy, frosty winter night.

At the edge of the main quadrangle a manhole cover tilted, like the lid of a silver coffee pot. It stayed like that, one side seemingly suspended in mid-air. There was a rustle, which was caught by the wind and swept up into the night sky. Less than a minute later the manhole cover slowly lowered itself back down as the two Betas made their way across the grass, soft footprints the only sign that they were there.

 

 

Dinner had been a strange affair. Everyone sat at two long oak tables in a huge old panelled dining hall. One table was raised on a plinth, and the other was on the floor. The kids and teenagers sat at the lower table and the adults at the high table. The food was served by Sue, from the Buttery, and a young woman whom Extolziby thought must be her daughter because she looked exactly the same, but younger. He imagined that if you were running such a top-secret place it made sense to have just a few staff: the more people there were, the more likely it was that someone would talk.

When he explained his theory to Talura, she laughed. ‘The whole place is like that. It’s not the done thing to talk about what happens inside the university. And, anyway, who’s going to believe someone who goes around telling people that they work at a secret college that does stuff like this and that no one can even see? You’d be carted off to the funny farm. If you weren’t locked up first.’

‘Locked up?’ asked Extolziby. For some reason, and despite the Gruffs’ casual attitude to prison, the idea had always struck terror into him.

Talura rolled her eyes. ‘The Official Secrets Act, X. Everyone who works here has to sign it. Just like any other government facility. But chill, it doesn’t apply to kids.’

‘So we could tell someone? I mean if we wanted to,’ he said.

One of the boys looked at him. They had barely said anything beyond hello since he’d arrived. ‘If you wanted to ruin everything!’ said the boy.

‘He’s new, Masood,’ said the girl with red hair, in what sounded like an Irish accent.

‘I was only asking,’ said Extolziby.

‘Well, don’t,’ said the boy. ‘I couldn’t walk before I came here. You have any idea what it’s like, sitting in a wheelchair all day, people pushing you around, having to ask to go the toilet?’

He was still in a wheelchair but he seemed so angry that Extolziby stayed quiet, not wanting to make things worse.

‘See?’ said the boy to Talura, tapping a finger to his temple. ‘This is going to be exactly like the last time. They’re troublemakers. They can’t help themselves.’

Before anyone could say anything else the sound of a metal spoon being tapped loudly against a glass echoed around the dining hall. Everyone looked towards the high table as Frank put down the spoon.

‘We shall now say grace.’

Extolziby noticed that the Principal seemed to roll her eyes as she lowered her head along with everyone else. Frank started to speak but Extolziby didn’t understand a word he said.

Benedic, Domine, nos et dona tua,

quae de largitate tua sumus sumpturi,

et concede, ut illis salubriter nutriti

tibi debitum obsequium praestare valeamus,

per Christum Dominum nostrum.

‘It’s Latin,’ whispered Talura, as he joined with the others and bowed his head.

Frank finished and Extolziby faced his next challenge. He might have had super-strength (he still hadn’t taken in what they’d told him about that yet because it was just so weird) but he didn’t think that he had any new special ability that would help him sort out the five or six knives, forks and spoons in front of him on the table.

Again, Talura came to the rescue: ‘Work from the outside in.’

‘What about the ones at the top?’ he whispered.

‘If you’re not sure, watch me,’ said Talura, as Sue ladled soup into their bowls.

Extolziby waited until everyone had started, then got stuck in. He hadn’t realized just how hungry he was until he’d seen food. More than anything he wanted to ask Talura and the others about what he’d been told in the gymnasium but he was afraid of the reaction. It was clear from how Frank, the blonde lady and the other grown-ups whispered among themselves, then stole a look at him that he was the centre of attention. Maybe that was why the boy was angry with him. At Extolziby’s school, the best way to avoid being picked on was to keep a low profile. Okay, no one was going to beat him up because they were scared of his family, but there were a hundred and one other ways they could make him feel bad. The easiest was to ignore him. He had spent lots of breaks and lunchtimes by himself. More than anything he wanted to be totally average but now that seemed more impossible than ever. At least he seemed to have a friend in Talura.

He took a spoonful of soup. Talura leaned towards him. ‘You’re not supposed to put the spoon in your mouth. You’re supposed to tilt it,’ she said. ‘Like this.’ She demonstrated.

He tried to do it like she had and ended up spilling the soup down his front. The older boy laughed, the younger one joined in, then the girl. Even Talura’s lips puckered.

Extolziby smiled and she burst out in a fit of giggles. He laughed. Something told him that they weren’t laughing at him. Or not in the same way the kids at his school did.

They would stop laughing, then one of them would start again. He spooned some more soup into his mouth. Extol laughed so hard that he started to choke on the tiny bit of soup that had made it into his mouth. Once he had his breathing back under control, he looked at the boy who was in a wheelchair. ‘So who were the troublemakers?’ he asked.

The laughter stopped. At first Extolziby thought it was because of his question. Then he realized that what he had thought was someone dropping a huge glass bowl or a tray of glasses in the kitchen was a small metal cylinder smashing through one of the dining hall’s stained-glass windows, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

The cylinder landed in the middle of room. There was a very loud BANG. It was so loud that Extolziby was sure his teeth actually rattled in his mouth. He couldn’t hear anything. Around him, the others were opening and closing their mouths but it was as if they were under water. He thought they were talking but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

At the top table the grown-ups were panicking too. They were looking around, confused, and the blonde lady had her hands pressed to her ears.

Another cylinder sailed through the air. This one left a trail of thick purple smoke. By the time it had landed, Extolziby couldn’t see the grown-ups’ table any more. A trail of orange smoke followed the purple. There was another deafening explosion from a flash-bang device. Now he could barely see the boy in the wheelchair, but he saw enough to know that he was having trouble breathing. His face had gone bright red and he was gasping. The others had dived to the floor where there was still some air. Smoke rose.

Talura grabbed a jug of water from the table, doused a handkerchief in the water and pressed it against her nose and mouth. She was motioning towards the entrance with her hand, urging Extolziby to follow her as she began to crawl towards it.

Extolziby couldn’t take his eyes off the boy in the wheelchair. The boy who had called him a troublemaker. The boy who had told him he needed help to go to the toilet and now couldn’t move.

If Extolziby didn’t help him, he would die. He had never been more certain of anything in his life.

CONCENTRATE, X!

 

Extolziby coughed and spluttered. Whatever powers he had didn’t extend to his lungs. He saw the girl with the red hair and the older boy following Talura towards the door. He thought he could hear Frank shouting somewhere far off in the distance but he couldn’t see him.

He got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl under the table. He could see the boy’s feet. They weren’t moving. Extolziby’s eyes stung from the smoke. Tears formed, making it even more difficult to see.

He heard Talura nearby. ‘Concentrate, X. It only works if you concentrate.’ He looked around for her but she was gone. He was remembering what she’d said to him before.

Something snapped in him. It was like kicking a ball that came towards you if you were good at football. He didn’t think about it. It was just there. Everything around him disappeared. The smoke was there but he didn’t think about it. It was the same as being in class when the teacher was droning on about something really boring, as teachers like to do. You can hear something but you aren’t sure what it is.

He was next to the boy in the wheelchair. The boy’s eyes had closed and his head was slumped so that his chin was resting on his chest. There was no time to work out if he was breathing. If he stayed where he was he would stop breathing eventually. Extolziby knew that too.

He took a final gulp of semi-fresh air and stood up.

Concentrate, X.

He reached under the boy’s arms with his hands and lifted him from the wheelchair. It was impossible. The boy weighed more than he did. A lot more.

Concentrate.

Impossible. But so was throwing a bloody great medicine ball through a basketball hoop without it touching the sides.

With a heave, Extolziby lifted the boy from the chair. He bent his knees and shifted his weight so that the boy’s head, shoulders and torso were slung over his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around the top of the boy’s legs and kicked the wheelchair out of the way. It rolled backwards and crashed into the far wall, reminding Extolziby of the strength he seemed to have. The thought spurred him on and he took a step towards the door.

With each pace the boy seemed to get lighter. Extolziby broke into a jog. The boy got lighter still. He began to run, faster and faster. In no time he was through the door and out into the corridor. He saw shapes through the murk and followed them down the corridor. They grew bigger. The smoke fell away. Ahead was another door. It had a big metal bar across it. Extolziby ran towards it and kicked.

The door burst open. His momentum carried him through into the clear, crisp night air.  His feet found grass. He heard someone clapping. More than one person. A small group of people were applauding. He felt a hand patting his shoulder and realized it was the boy he was carrying.

‘You can put me down now, mate,’ said the boy. ‘Squeeze my legs any harder and they really won’t work ever again.’

Extolziby looked up to see the others standing in a small semi-circle: Talura, the Irish girl with the red hair, the other boy, Frank, Ms Rostokovich, three men in white lab coats.

‘Well done,’ said Ms Rostovich. ‘You passed with flying colours.’

‘See?’ said Talura, as Extolziby lowered the boy to the ground. ‘All you have to do is make like a blonde staring at a carton of orange juice.’

‘What?’ said Extolziby.

‘Never mind,’ said Talura, as the others beamed with pride.

‘No ’olograms either,’ said Frank. ‘That was the real deal, that was. Well, almost. Anyway, well done, X. Well done, mate. You channelled that perfectly.’

The two Betas, Betsy and Joe, had been outside the dining hall, ready to go in, when the test had started. It was Betsy who had noticed it begin. Twenty yards to her left and fifty yards in front of them, a strip of lawn had sunk away and a row of mini rocket launchers had popped up from their concealed position. The glass had popped from four low-grade explosive caps mounted at each corner of the frame. The launchers had tilted upwards and four grenades had fired directly through the space where the window had been. It was all carefully designed so that no one inside could possibly be hurt. The others knew to stay close to the floor and, Joe had guessed, were probably wearing ear plugs. They would have popped them into their ears when someone was saying grace.

As Betsy had seen the lawn move, she had said, ‘Wait!’, her voice muffled by the explosion. They had frozen.

After a few seconds, Joe had said, ‘This is a drill. Remember?’

‘If it is,’ Betsy whispered, ‘then this is going to be even easier.’

Betsy was right, thought Joe. When he had done this particular training drill, or testing, as he thought of it now, everyone had assembled right here.

‘We’d better ditch these SNORTS then. They’ll be out here any minute.’

Together, they moved off to a quiet area of shrubbery near the emergency exit to the dining hall. They peeled off their cloaking devices, wrapped them up and put them into the light bags, which were made from the same material.

Of course, you could attack while cloaked but it had its drawbacks. That was the thing about the technology. For every advantage there was always a downside. The device restricted your movements. Running wasn’t too bad but if you had to throw a punch you were slower and clumsier. It wasn’t possible to get the same force into it, even for Betas like them.

And, in any case, once the element of surprise was gone there was no way to get it back. Some people might not be able to see you, but they could hear you and see your footprints, especially in damp grass. There was one other factor. They would be up against someone just like them, another Beta, maybe even a more advanced Beta. Barnaby Magellan had already factored that into the plan. He thought of everything. They were so lucky to have met him. He was a true man of vision, thought Joe, as Betsy appeared next to him.

A few seconds later they were hunkered down in the shrubs as coloured smoke billowed from the dining hall and explosions filled the night sky. Soon, Talura, very soon. Joe was looking forward to this more than he had to anything in a very long time.