Whilst Zane consoled his mother, Titus walked purposefully towards Jay’s square, the overheard conversation fuelling his determination. It didn’t even occur to him that listening at the open window had been a breach of privacy. After learning that about him, he knew that Zane would never allow anyone to speak to the Bloomsbury Boys about his father, not only because of not wanting to upset them, but now also because he was ashamed of him. Zane wouldn’t want anyone to know that his father could be involved, so Titus knew that if he wanted answers about how he was connected to the Giant, he’d have to find them out himself.
For Titus, there was no moral quandary; it was simply a matter of getting answers without Zane finding out. Then his friend wouldn’t get upset, and he would be one step closer to finding Lyssa. Quite frankly, ending her suffering was much more important than whether his friend was upset or not. As he marched, he considered a flickering feeling of guilt at the back of his heart, realising that no-one other than his sister had made him feel this way before. But then he dismissed it as an irrelevance. How could he let his sister stay in that place he saw in the dream a minute longer than necessary? Her dying alone, in pain, was a far worse outcome than Zane being merely upset.
He was challenged at the entrance to the square by Smudge who grudgingly agreed to ask Jay if Titus could speak with him. As he was admitted, Jay strode over from the steps of the Russell Hotel.
Titus didn’t smile in greeting as Zane would have done, and Jay was too busy swaggering to worry about such things, so only a curt nod was exchanged when they met.
“Titus.” He looked down the street. “You by yourself?”
Titus nodded. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Jay appraised the serious young man in front of him. “Alright, go on.”
“I want to talk to the new Boy–Squeak.”
Jay raised an eyebrow. “What about?”
Titus paused, not wanting to disclose this, but realising that Jay wouldn’t let him without knowing why. “I wanted to see if I could help him. I think I might be able to.”
Jay frowned deeply, searching Titus’ eyes. “Why’d ya wanna do that?”
Titus maintained eye contact, unperturbed by Jay’s scrutiny. “Two reasons. The first is because it isn’t very nice when you’re having problems. The second is because it upsets Zane when he sees how scared Squeak is of him.”
Jay considered this carefully. “Alright, but I stay with you the whole time.”
Titus nodded after a beat. “Agreed.”
Jay started to walk off, but Titus stopped him. “Jay, Zane isn’t to know about this, at all. I don’t want him to feel embarrassed.”
Jay paused and then nodded in agreement. Satisfied, Titus followed the young leader across the square. Squeak soon came into sight, huddled in the doorway of one of the large Georgian houses that lined the square.
Jay halted Titus and went to speak quietly to the Boy, who eyed Titus with open suspicion. The child gave a reluctant nod and Jay beckoned Titus over, standing back to allow him to sit opposite the small Boy.
“Hello, I’m Titus. I just want to ask you a few questions.” The Boy looked at Jay and then nodded, chewing the sleeve of his jumper.
“Good,” Titus said softly as he reached into his pocket. He pulled out something that he’d taken from the desk in the hospital office, a photo of Zane’s father. He steeled himself as he held it ready in his hand. This was going to be difficult.
“Do you remember where you were before you came here?”
Squeak shook his head rapidly. Titus frowned.
“Are you sure?”
The Boy nodded and glanced nervously at Jay.
“I’ve asked him all this before,” Jay sighed. “He don’t remember anything.”
“He’s lying,” Titus said back to him unemotionally.
Jay’s eyebrows shot up. “You callin’ one of my Boys a liar?” he said, taking a step forward.
Titus nodded. “Yes, because he is.” He ignored Jay’s threatening stance and turned back to Squeak, too set on his goal to be distracted by petty posturing. “There’s no need to lie, no-one will send you back there. Is that what you’re afraid of?”
The Boy chewed furiously on his sleeve, making squelching sounds as he looked from Titus to Jay and back again. He finally nodded slowly.
Jay knelt next to Titus. “I told ya, you’re one of us now, you don’t have to go anywhere else, and no-one’s gonna get ya.”
Squeak looked down at his tattered trainers that were far too big for him. Jay sighed and looked at Titus, who was silent, considering his next question.
He could see how intimidated the Boy was and how their proximity to him was making him nervous. He tried to think of a way to broach the subject of Zane’s father without being too obvious for fear of the Boy clamming up even more.
“Do you remember anyone else being where you were before?” he finally settled on and the Boy shook his head.
Titus’ keen mind latched onto the way the Boy’s eyes looked away briefly as he nodded, the way his shoulders tensed just a little more. He was certain he was lying again.
He turned to Jay. “His lying is not making this any easier.”
Now intrigued by the questioning, Jay looked at Squeak sternly. “If he tells me you’re lyin’ once more, I’ll be pissed off. Have the others told you what happens when I’m pissed off?” Squeak nodded nervously. “Well then, stop messin’ us about and tell the truth.”
Squeak pulled the sleeve from his mouth and swallowed hard. “Sorry,” he whispered.
Titus smiled, but it was only to make the Boy feel more at ease. He read the Boy’s reactions carefully, noted how that smile didn’t seem to help much. If anything, it seemed to make him more nervous. He let it fade from his face. “What do you remember?”
“Grey walls,” the Boy whispered after a few moments.
Titus nodded in an effort to encourage him. “Good, that’s a start, carry on.”
The Boy pointed up at the sky. “No blue, only grey, low down.”
“We don’t think he was ever outside,” Jay added in a whisper. “He gets a bit freaked out about the weather and he don’t like being in the middle of the square. Come to think of it, quite a few of the Boys are like that when they first arrive.”
Titus nodded, pushing back memories of the dream he’d had of Lyssa in an attempt to stay focused. He looked back at Squeak. “What else?” The Boy fidgeted nervously. “Were there any other people there?”
The Boy stared off into space briefly and then nodded. Titus noted how he’d started to shake.
“Bad people,” the Boy spoke in barely a whisper. “But sometimes Eve.” The deep lines of worry that were nestled between his eyebrows lifted when he spoke her name.
“Who’s Eve?” Titus asked, intrigued.
“Like me, in the bad place. Eve opens the doors, even after the bad people lock them.” He pressed a dirty forefinger to his lips. “But it’s a secret.” He took a deep breath and made a show of swallowing deliberately, then pointed at his stomach. “Keep it down, keep it quiet.”
Titus frowned as he considered the Boy’s behaviour. He suspected that the Boy’s words and actions were a pattern … a habit, similar to the way that he checked all of his pockets before he left the house to make sure he had the most important things, just like Lyssa had taught him. Then there was a flash of intense emotion as the longing to be with his sister surfaced briefly before he put it aside to concentrate on the task in hand.
“Never heard that name before,” Jay commented.
Squeak shook his head. “No, cos Eve’s a girl. Only boys here.” He said forlornly, “I miss Eve.”
“How did she open doors?” Titus asked. “Did she have a key?”
Squeak shook his head. “No, she didn’t need one.” He looked up at Titus. “She was special.” He looked concerned all of a sudden. “But you mustn’t tell anyone! It’s secret–keep it down and quiet, in your belly.”
He swallowed hard again, waiting for Titus to do the same, which he did to allay the Boy’s fears and encourage him to speak more. Titus consciously filed the information about Eve away; it interested him greatly, but he didn’t want to focus on that. “Did you see another girl there? A bit taller than me, with eyes like mine?” The Boy shook his head and the brief hope that Titus had harboured faded quickly. “What else do you remember?” The Boy went back to chewing his sleeve. “What about the bad people–what were they like?”
Squeak looked fearful again at the mere thought of them. Titus saw this but still wanted to pursue it, his goal taking precedence over the child’s emotions.
“They kept the doors locked,” he whispered. “Kept me in the room. Did bad things.” The shaking started again, this time more intense.
Titus didn’t let that change his line of enquiry. “What things?”
The Boy chewed fiercely on his sleeve, staring into space just past Titus’ shoulder. He decided to change his tack.
“What did they look like?”
The Boy’s face scrunched up. “Don’t want to talk about them.”
“But it’s important,” Titus pursued.
“Sayin’ stuff about them won’t bring them ’ere,” Jay said reassuringly. “I got my blades, see? If they even come close I’ll kill ’em before they even see you.” He patted the hilts of his knives and Squeak looked at them. “If you tell us what they look like, I’ll know who to kill, won’t I?”
“But most of them are very big,” he whispered. “Much bigger than you.”
This piqued Titus’ interest. “Do they have square heads?”
The Boy nodded, huddling back further into the corner of the doorway, glancing around the square as if they might arrive at any moment.
Titus began to get excited. “Have you shown him the picture of the Giant?” he whispered to Jay.
Jay shook his head. “He gets freaked out about stuff too easily,” he whispered back.
Titus turned back to Squeak. “The people with square heads, did they breathe strangely, like this?” He tried to sound like he was wheezing, thinking hard about Zane’s description of the Giant and what he saw in the dream.
Squeak nodded more quickly, eyes wide. “You know them!”
Titus shook his head. “No, but my friend has seen one.”
“All of them were like that apart from one.” The Boy shuddered. “He was the worst.”
Titus held out the photo of Zane’s father that he’d held hidden in his palm up until this point. “Did he look like this?”
Squeak looked down at the photo and drew in a sharp breath that lodged in his chest. An expression of absolute terror leeched away the little colour in his cheeks and he froze in a paroxysm of fear. He couldn’t tear his eyes from it, and Titus felt a brief triumphant thrill at the fact that his private theory had been proven. But then something very strange happened that took him by complete surprise.
One moment he was watching the Boy’s reaction; the next it was as if he were in a small grey room with featureless walls and a solid metal door that was set flush into the one opposite where he was. It was exactly the same as the one in which he’d seen Lyssa imprisoned in the dream, but this time it was like he was lying where Lyssa had been. The door was closing, and he realised that someone had just entered. He was lying on some kind of bed, and when he tried to move, he realised he was strapped down. He couldn’t think; his mind was flooded with the purest feeling of terror as he heard footsteps approaching him.
The man was dressed in a white coat. His hair was dark with a peppering of grey, his small beard neatly clipped. He looked just like he had in the photos, only paler and older. If it hadn’t been for his blue eyes, he could have been an older version of Zane.
He held something in his hand, something narrow and sharp, filled with clear liquid. He pushed the air out of it with the plunger and Titus felt himself begin to struggle frantically, hearing a boy’s high pitched voice begging the man to stop, and realising with confusion that it was coming from his lips.
“Shhh,” Dr Shannon said gently. “Just a little scratch, it won’t hurt a bit.” He smiled, which sent Titus spiralling into an abyss of fear, somehow knowing what was going to happen next.
There was a pinch on the back of his hand, and a horrible feeling of cold fluid racing into his veins. No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t stop the feeling of numbness beginning to spread as his cries died in his throat.
“There there,” Shannon was saying softly, smiling all the while. “See, soon you’ll be asleep.”
But he wasn’t, and he knew he wouldn’t be. He felt his eyes become glassy, unable to move them away from the doctor’s smile. His body was utterly limp, no matter how much he willed it to try to break free. He could feel the straps holding him down, the pressure of the bed against his body. All physical sensations were still present, but he was simply unable to move. Then a hand reached over, shutting his eyelids, and there was the sound of the door opening, a harsh mechanical wheeze, and loud metallic footsteps entering the room.
“He’s ready,” Shannon said.
There was the sound of something being opened and the scrape of metal against metal as some kind of instrument was pulled out of something. Then the awful sensation of something beginning to slice into his arm.
Titus screamed and found himself stumbling backwards, arms flailing, heart pounding painfully in his chest.
Jay grabbed his arms and held him up as he almost fell. “Titus!” he yelled. “Titus! What the hell happened?”
Titus looked around, utterly confused and bewildered to find himself in Jay’s square, and not in the grey room. He struggled to regain his composure but let Jay hold his shoulders, as his legs were like water beneath him.
“Are you alright?” Jay said, trying to make eye contact with him.
Titus looked past him at Squeak who was staring into space, eyes wide, distant and terrified. Titus knew where the Boy’s mind was trapped, realised what had just happened. He’d shared his memory; somehow it had penetrated his mind and he had experienced it with the same intensity. And now the Boy was replaying that memory over and over again, unable to break out of it.
“Say something!” Jay urged and shook his shoulders a little.
“I’m ok, I’m ok,” Titus said, trying hard to break away from remnants of the flashback. He forced some distance between himself and the emotions that still echoed inside him. He reminded himself that it didn’t happen to him, that it had been a memory, someone else’s memory, nothing more.
“I gotta get Squeak inside,” Jay said, looking round the square. “I don’t want the others seeing him like this. He’ll be like it for a while, it’s ’appened before. I’ll talk to you later.”
He gently let Titus go, who staggered a little and then braced his hands on his knees, lowering his head to get some more blood into it.
Jay picked Squeak up gently and carried him away, cradling him tenderly as the Boy shook violently.
Titus noticed the photo lying on the ground nearby where he must have dropped it. He picked it up, stuffing it quickly into his back pocket, checking that neither Jay nor any of the other Boys saw what he was doing. He paused to take a few more deep breaths before making his way home on shaking legs that hardly felt like his own.