Time stood still.
Pan’s brain sent an order to her mouth, but nothing happened.
‘Hello?’ said the voice again, and this time Pan’s heart clenched. Her mother. She sounded so casual, so like her old self. In that instant, Pan processed a thousand thoughts. She saw her mother standing in the kitchen at home, the phone – an old cordless – pressed to her ear. She was probably tapping her foot, waiting for a response. Maybe Danny was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a meal – breakfast, dinner, who knew? – his hair sticking out at strange angles. Pan could see the scenario in her mind. It was so familiar, so ordinary. But her world had changed dramatically. She had changed, and at that moment she could find no way to switch from one world to another.
‘Pan? Is that you?’
There was the slightest click. Then the phone went dead.
It wasn’t her mother who had hung up. There had been no time; a fraction of a second after her mum said her name, it was disconnected. No time for her mother to have done that. Which left only one possibility. Someone had hung up for her. Pan found her fingers had lost all sense of feeling. The phone slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.
‘What?’ said Jen. She reached her arms around Pan, who was kneeling on the floor in front of her. Pan shook her head and looked up. The two seamen were gazing at her, their expressions concerned. The silence stretched and Pan found it hard to break it. So hard. Jen held her and waited.
‘I got through to my mother,’ said Pan, her voice a whisper.
‘You’re sure?’
Pan didn’t reply, lost in her own head.
Jen shook her arm. ‘Pan, stay with me. Are you sure it was your mother?’
Pan took a deep breath. It was too much to take in, this validation of all her suspicions. The world was out there. Her family was out there. The School was a lie.
‘Talk to me, Pandora.’
‘It was my mum, Jen. It was my mum.’
‘You’re really sure?’
Pan took a deep breath and tried to calm her heart. ‘Yes,’ she said and was surprised at how her voice sounded so much in control. ‘She said my name. It was her, Jen. She’s alive. Everyone’s alive.’
This time, Jen shook her head as if to clear it. There was silence for a second or two.
‘But you didn’t say anything, Pandora.’
‘We were cut off. Someone cut us off.’
Another pause while Jen processed this information. ‘The School,’ she said finally.
‘Who else?’ said Pan. ‘They must be monitoring my home number.’ She grabbed her hair in her hands and tugged at it. ‘Of course they would. I escape, we escape. They’d know that sooner or later, if I survived, I’d get in contact with home. So they tap the phones, probably have people watching the house in case I rock up out of the blue. Now they know we didn’t drown out there.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘Which means they’ll be looking for us.’
‘But . . . but.’ Jen searched for words. ‘This is crazy, Pandora. How could The School tap your mother’s phone?’
‘Jen, listen.’ Pan had suddenly achieved a clarity of thought that, just a minute ago, would have seemed impossible. Almost everything slotted into place. ‘Think about it. The School has taken us to God knows where, it’s given us false memories – who the hell knows how that is possible, except it means they have technologies at their disposal in advance of anything we’ve ever heard about in the old world. Don’t you see, Jen? This isn’t just about The School. This is much bigger. This is about a power that can kidnap children from all over the world, remove them from their parents, from school and friends. Can you imagine the organisation that would require? They made us remember things that never happened.’ She tapped the side of her head impatiently. Think, Pandora. ‘They kept us in a high-security, secret location. They put our lives at risk on the island. They are clearly above the law. The School is not an outpost trying to save humanity. It is a hugely powerful outlaw organisation.’ Pan lifted her head and met Jen’s eyes. ‘We have no idea who we’re dealing with.’
Jen shrugged. ‘So nothing has changed. We didn’t know who they were before. We don’t know who they are now. Let’s see what happens, see where this boat is taking us. Then we can think again. We can make a plan when we’ve had a chance to rest. Pandora?’
But Pan was no longer listening. She was following her own internal logic, trying to think about things from The School’s point of view. What would they do now? They knew the girls were still alive – the phone call must have been confirmation. They must have traced the origin of the call, seen the satellite phone transmissions. Then they had severed the connection. They would realise the girls must have been rescued by a passing boat. Then it would be simple to check maritime records and . . .
Pan jumped out of her seat and grabbed the captain by the arm. He flinched instinctively and backed away, but Pan maintained her grip.
‘You need to get us on shore,’ said Pan. ‘Now. Please. Please. It’s an emergency. Drop us at the nearest port, wherever you can. Better still, give us a boat – the boat you used to rescue us. We’ll take our chances . . .’
Jen slid between Pan and the man. She took Pan’s hand and gently loosened her grip.
‘Pandora,’ she said. ‘Take it easy. He has no idea what you’re talking about and you’re frightening the guy. Hell, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And you’re frightening me. Just take it easy. Breathe.’
But Pan paid no attention. She had become . . . detached. A part of her recognised the feeling. She had experienced it before, when she had flown with the falcon over bleak and barren mountains coated with snow, when she had seen a group of men on an island and known they’d meant them harm, when she had looked through the eyes of a man she had never met and seen Nate connected to a machine. She knew.
‘It’s too late, Jen,’ she said, but her voice was low and didn’t carry. ‘They’re coming. They’re coming now.’
For possibly ten or twenty seconds, silence greeted her words. The men watched her, puzzled by a conversation they couldn’t decipher. Jen’s brows were furrowed, worry and concern etched on her features. Far off in the distance there was the low susurration of the sea, but it was muted, tamed by the barrier of the tanker’s skin and the faint ticking of a clock. Pan glanced from face to face and no one moved.
Then, rising from the comparative silence, there was a thudding of blades. The sound swelled, at first an almost imperceptible background vibration, but growing to a rising roar. The men were the first to react. The captain turned towards the window at the front of the bridge. His crewmate joined him. Jen stayed with Pan, her eyes never leaving her face. The men talked, their words unknown, but concern apparent in their tone. Pan saw a dark shape loom up to her right, then a second to the left. She gasped, and Jen turned.
Two black helicopters were approaching the tanker, one from each side. Ropes hung from open doors. On the end of the ropes, men in black uniforms dangled. Silhouetted against the sky was the unmistakable shape of their guns.
‘Run, Jen,’ yelled Pan. ‘Run and hide.’
As they left the bridge, the last thing Pan saw was the captain speaking into a radio. They don’t want you, thought Pan. They want us. The roar of the helicopters’ engines were louder now and the downdraught from the blades made their hair whip across their eyes. They stood for a moment on the top of the short flight of steps, brushing hair from their faces and scanning the boat, which lay spread before them.
The tanker was huge. There had to be many places they could hide, endless corridors, sleeping quarters, cargo holds. But that would only buy them time. They were on a ship. They couldn’t get off, unless they launched a lifeboat, and they’d be seen immediately, even assuming they could physically do it. Where would they go? But hiding, maybe in the ducts, would only postpone the inevitable. Sooner or later they would be found.
A quick glance over her shoulder, and Pan saw the first men approaching off to her right, dangling only a few metres from the deck.
‘Let’s go,’ yelled Jen, and the girls clattered down the steps and raced towards the nearest entrance to the main bulk of the ship. Pan couldn’t remember if it was the same one they had used when they had come up from the sick bay. They pulled open the metal door, slammed it behind them and ran along the corridor, Jen leading by a few metres. Pan’s dizziness and sense of disorientation had abated, and she felt flushed with adrenaline again. They had to put distance between themselves and the men who must by now have landed on the tanker and be spreading out in search.
Jen came to a narrow staircase leading down to the left and without hesitation she took it, Pan close on her heels. The corridor continued and six or seven metres ahead ended in a T-junction. Good, thought Pan. Three possible ways to go. Maybe the pursuers would choose the wrong one. They reached the bottom of the staircase and again Jen didn’t hesitate, taking the corridor on their right. There were doors along this section. Sleeping quarters, maybe. Entrances to the cargo hold. Maybe each door would have to be checked by their pursuers, wasting more time.
Maybe they did stand a chance. If they could remain hidden for long enough. If the captain had sent out an emergency message, then maybe the police, or the maritime patrol or whoever, would be on their way. It wasn’t much more than a crumb of comfort, but it was better than nothing.
The lighting was dim in this corridor, the way illuminated by a few low-powered bulbs placed at long intervals. They came to a pair of narrow staircases, one leading up and the other down. Jen clattered down. Deeper into the bowels of the ship. The air was musty. At the bottom Jen stopped and held up a hand. Pan halted beside her. A corridor stretched before them, but it was too dimly lit to see where it headed. The girls stood for a moment, listening. The only thing they heard was the creaking of metal under strain. There were no sounds of pursuit.
‘We need a plan,’ Jen whispered. ‘We have no idea where we’re going or even where we are. We need to think.’
‘Maybe we should just choose one place and hide. It could take them hours to search thoroughly. Perhaps all we need is time,’ said Pan, but Jen didn’t seem convinced.
‘You said they had more power than we could imagine, Pandora,’ she said. ‘What if they jammed the distress signal?’
‘Maybe I was wrong,’ said Pan.
‘Maybe you weren’t.’
‘Too many maybes.’
‘Yeah, so what do we do now? And if they find us, do we fight or just give up?’
‘Fight?’ said Pan. ‘They had guns, Jen. And what have we got?’
Jen reached into the waistband of her pants and drew out her hunting knife. Its blade was long and, even in the murky light, gleamed murderously.
‘I have this,’ she said. ‘And I have black belts in four martial arts. And you kicked my butt, remember?’
‘I still don’t know how I did that,’ Pan said. ‘And it’s not something I think I can recreate. Anyway, you think these guys aren’t trained?’
‘You’re too pessimistic,’ said Jen. ‘You and me against the world, and you wanna know something? I like those odds.’
They moved more cautiously, aware that having put distance between themselves and their pursuers, keeping quiet was the best chance of escaping detection. The men would have to make quick progress and that would mean creating noise.
Pan and Jen crept along into the darkness. This corridor was long and barely lit at all. Pan remembered the torches in the emergency pack she had taken from the boat, but that must have been left in the sick bay. There was nothing to do but grope along in the darkness and hope they found a place to hide.
A large metal door blocked their way forward. It was oval in shape and reminded Pan of the kind of hatches seen on submarines. There was a spoked wheel in the centre of the door, though there was no window to indicate what lay beyond. The girls stepped up to it. Pan placed a hand on the wheel and prepared to turn it, but Jen gripped her shoulder before she could try.
‘Listen, Pandora,’ she hissed.
Pan cocked her head and for a moment could hear nothing. Then she understood. The sound of footsteps clattering down a metal stairway – the same stairway, she assumed, they had come down only minutes before. Then the noise suddenly stopped and she heard voices, a distant hiss of conversation. She thought back. They had come down a stairway and then what? A long, dark corridor with no deviations. The men were behind them and there was no place to hide. No rooms, nothing, only an exposed expanse of corridor.
‘We’d better hope,’ whispered Jen, ‘that there’s somewhere to hide beyond this door, or we’re deep in the brown stuff, Pandora.’
Pan turned back to the wheel and braced herself. She shifted her weight and thrust the bars anticlockwise. Nothing happened. She tried again, but the wheel didn’t budge. Think, Pandora. Stay calm. She took her hands from the wheel and breathed deeply. How did it work? Anticlockwise to open, clockwise to close. That was right, wasn’t it? She tried anticlockwise again, but with the same result. Okay, it must be the other way around. She shifted her weight once more and tried the door the opposite way. There was no sign of movement.
‘It’s locked, Jen,’ she said.