Monday night, midnight.
I was picturing the delivery man ringing my doorbell earlier that evening, only to discover there was nobody at home. No Bryce to benefit from those eight monstrous boxes. What a waste – something else to aggravate Celeste’s condition.
For the past twenty-four hours, I had been viewing things differently and switching off lights whenever I left a room. I wanted to save her – my Planet Celeste.
Midnight, and my head was spinning with these kinds of thoughts as I navigated the control panel, inside a metal gondola, attached to a pulley system, scaling a gigantic glass building.
!ndustry Tower.
When Bryce had shown up at my place, on Sunday night, I could tell he’d forgiven me for my outburst.
Bryce didn’t ask me for any kind of explanation. He could see the state I was in and wanted to know what he could do to help. I’m not altogether sure what Bryce is doing here on this earth. He’s an angel. When I think about him now, I pray that life hasn’t burnt his wings. I refuse to believe that kindness is a dangerous sport.
“Two things, Bryce. There are two things you can do for me.”
Figuring that it might take us a while, he went to fetch a box of vanilla ice cream from the kitchen.
“Go for it…” he said, on his return.
“First of all, I need to send a message on the computer.”
He smiled at me – a big, friendly, vanilla smile – knowing I didn’t have the faintest idea how to operate that machine. I must be the only boy alive whose fingers have never touched any keyboard other than a piano.
Bryce sat down in front of the screen.
“Right. Who do you want to send it to?”
“Quite a lot of people.”
“How many?”
“Nine billion.”
Bryce was too polite to look astonished.
“It might take a while,” was all he said.
“Can you do it straight away?”
“We’ll have to make it go viral.”
“Meaning?”
“I send a message that keeps reproducing itself until it goes ballistic.”
“Ballistic?”
He paused and wiped the ice cream from his chin.
“You want to send this to everybody, right?”
I nodded.
“What’s your message?”
I held out the photos.
“I’ll do this from my place. Promise.”
I trusted him implicitly. Did I dare to ask him the second favour? I needn’t have worried because Bryce beat me to it.
“And the other thing?”
“Your dad cleans the windows of !ndustry Tower, right?”
“Yes.”
“I could do with his help.”
And that’s how, on Monday night, I came to be in a window cleaner’s gondola, scaling the tallest of tall buildings. Bryce’s dad had met me at the foot of !ndustry Tower to show me how the controls worked.
“I hear you’re not very switched on when it comes to technology?”
“I should be able to manage it.”
We shook hands and Bryce’s dad explained that he would be waiting for me in his van. Not daring to glance down at the void below, I made a rapid ascent and reached the top floor on the dot of midnight.
Before me was an empty room lit by a red lightbulb. I opened the window using the triangular key Bryce’s dad had given me and felt my head spinning again, but for different reasons, as I set foot on the white tiled floor. This was the giddiness of fear: knowing that everything would play out in a matter of minutes.
I crept over to the door and peered through the porthole. Given the number of security guards in the corridor, I surmised that Celeste was still under priority observation. Another quick glance revealed a door at the far end of the corridor, guarded by four more men dressed in black who didn’t exactly look like nurses. Celeste was in there, I was sure of it now, but how could I gain access to her room?
No time to think.
Somebody was fumbling with their keys on the other side of the door. It swung open just as I made it safely back inside the gondola, but I’d left the window ajar. Noticing the draught, the keyholder walked over to the window and closed it again without spotting me; he then turned his back and proceeded to handle the test tubes on a table. This way was blocked.
There was only one thing for it, I decided, as I reached for the controls: I was sure that Bryce’s dad had said the gondola could also move sideways. Slowly, the gondola stirred into motion, sliding across the tower towards Celeste’s room. What did I have to lose?
Sitting here now, chilled to the bone, I can still remember the powerful warmth that enveloped me when I saw her, my tears flowing, and a feeling of surprising strength.
Propped up by pillows on a metal bed in the middle of an empty room, Celeste hadn’t seen me. There was no healthcare equipment, no sign of any treatments, nothing.
Those in charge knew that her recovery didn’t depend on any kind of medical intervention, but on our actions: on every choice made by every country, by every company and by every single one of us on every continent. Her life was hanging in the balance, and it could be saved not by one single doctor, but by the collective action of human beings. Celeste was the only hospital patient in the world whose well-being could be guaranteed if all of us decided to make it happen.
She didn’t look surprised to see me as I came closer. You’d have thought I was just back from taking the bins out or walking the dog, while she’d dozed off.
“Is it cold outside?” she asked, stretching.
“A little bit. We’ll take your blankets with us.”
Helping her to her feet, I was relieved to see she could walk. The only time I had to lift her was when it came to climbing through the window, and this proved easy, too easy. I couldn’t help wishing she weren’t so worryingly light.
The gondola began its descent and, for a moment, we felt like passengers in a hot-air balloon.
Celeste whispered a “thank you” in my ear as the night-time clouds reflected in the towers. I told her I didn’t need her thanks, so she shifted the position of her lips and kissed me instead.
That was the moment the first shot was fired.
Two armed men stood at the window of Celeste’s hospital room, while four others scrambled over the rooftop with automatic rifles. Shots ricocheted off the bulletproof glass, sending sparks flying into the night sky like a grand finale at a fireworks display.
From the bottom of the gondola, Celeste and I examined the four cables that prevented us from crashing to the ground: they were holding strong for now.
We’d already made it three quarters of the way down, but I was worried the !ndustry men would take the lifts and catch us at ground level.
A fresh explosion rang out. This time our gondola lurched dramatically, and all the window-cleaning equipment flew out of the cabin. I grabbed Celeste’s shoulder to stop her joining the brushes, squeegees and bottles in the void. Something must have given way in the pulley system because our gondola was plummeting at a rate of several floors per second. We were now guaranteed to reach ground level before our pursuers, but in what state?
“Why did you tell my father I was a thief?”
I’ll never understand how Celeste had the presence of mind to ask a question like that, while hurtling in free-fall down a skyscraper. A thief, why had I called her a thief?
“I don’t know. I made it up.”
I remember I had wanted to provoke a reaction in her father, but there had also been some truth in the words I’d uttered so instinctively. When Celeste first appeared in my life, she had robbed me of my independence, my childhood, my carefree existence. She had left me with nothing but empty pockets, and the desire to be with her. Not that I held this against her, quite the opposite, in fact: thanks to her, I was now living life with my eyes wide open.
Living? As the ground rushed up to meet us, I had to admit we couldn’t take staying alive for granted … I hugged Celeste more tightly.
“Are we landing?”
“Yes, Celeste, we’re landing.”
What followed wasn’t the din or bump I’d been expecting. Nothing. Just a violent braking action that forced us to the bottom of the gondola.
Then silence. The peaceful silence I experienced in Celeste’s arms, for the split second I had my eyes closed. Was this paradise? If so, eternity proved short-lived because a man grabbed hold of Celeste. I lashed out by kicking him in the face. In return for breaking his nose, I received a blow to the head and lost consciousness. Blackout.
***
When I came to, Celeste was sitting next to me in the cab of a van that was speeding along. The driver, who had stuck a piece of cloth over his nose with medical tape, was bleeding profusely.
Bryce’s father.
“Did I break your nose?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, I thought—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Briefly, Bryce’s dad explained how the gondola’s free-fall had been slowed by a security system installed at ground level, which he had managed to activate just in time. He didn’t dwell on the way I’d thanked him, or the blow he’d dealt to my head so as to calm me down.
I glanced behind us to find there was nobody on our tail.
“I’m a fast driver,” Bryce’s dad explained.
So I’d noticed. The truth is, he was driving like a madman. The traffic lights were a blur, but we seemed to be heading in the right direction.
“Look!”
The first brick towers appeared. Despite all the dust and noise, I liked this district. The cityscape alternated between red and gold, according to the light and the colour of the bricks. The towers were linked by wooden planks thrown up to form criss-crossing walkways. Everything looked precarious and improvised, including the flow of pedestrians. Life was harsh in these brick towers, where workers made no distinction between day and night. Basements were often flooded by the river; nets were hung from the windows to protect against rats.
Celeste was sitting very still next to me, her eyes closed, until a left tug on the steering wheel made her slump against my shoulder. The van took a road which spiralled upwards inside a blackened tower. By the time Bryce’s dad had switched off the engine, I was dizzy and Celeste was awake.
“Here we are,” announced Bryce’s dad, getting out of the van and walking round to open the door on Celeste’s side. At almost twenty-four stone he was even heavier than his son. But I watched him lift Celeste by the waist, and out of the vehicle, with the grace and agility of a dancer.
She whispered her thanks and then I led her by the arm, the two of us walking beneath an enormous steel entrance. The van was already revving its engine behind us.
Central Station.
The station was on the fiftieth floor of the tower. It felt like a pressure cooker, heating up, steaming and whistling; except that, instead of kitchen aromas, what assailed your nostrils was the smell of hot metal against metal. Whichever way you looked, platforms and railway tracks were squeezed in tightly, while a grey crowd threaded its way through the maze.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured Celeste, who didn’t look worried. Nobody appeared to have noticed her white nightgown, which scarcely hid the wounds on her body. We were just a young couple limping through the main concourse, and nobody gave us a second glance.
A few minutes later, we had a compartment of the Northern Express to ourselves. I helped Celeste to lie down on the seat, then collapsed opposite her and heaved a sigh of relief: the hardest part was over. Through the steamy window, it was still possible to glimpse passengers wandering up and down the platform. The whistle would shortly blow and we would be off, headed for safety.
Thud. A face flattened itself violently against the glass and I leaped towards Celeste. Two giant hands framed the enormous features peering into our compartment.
The man recognized me through the steam and smiled: it was Bryce’s dad again. He was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear because the train was beginning to pull out of the station. I tried to force open the window as he ran along the platform, signalling with his hands:
“Bryce just called me. You asked him to send something on the computer…”
“Yes!”
“Photos, I think…”
Bryce’s dad was sweating profusely as he weaved between the people on the platform.
The train was moving swiftly now and his voice began to rasp.
“He won’t be able to send them. The … the cyber detectives tracked him down. They came to … to the house. They’ve taken away the computer and … and the photos…”
“What about Bryce?”
He stopped at the end of the platform. Our train gathered speed and this twenty-four-stone man in his green overalls was reduced to a tiny green pea, far away, at the edge of the railway track.
I turned back to find Celeste fast asleep on the seat.
In one sense, she was lucky … she didn’t know, as I did, that our only hope had just vanished, along with the steam from the train and the whistling on the platform.
The name of our destination was printed in capital letters on the two tickets in my hand: NORTH TERMINUS.