CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The black-clad troops acted with military precision as they bundled Kieron towards one of their black SUVs and Sam into the other one. One of them expertly searched Kieron and took away both his own mobile phone and the burner he’d been using to talk to Bex and Bradley. Neither of the phones would help the kidnappers. The problem was that they had Kieron and Sam as well, and each of them could provide a lot of information.

But what would the kidnappers do to get that information? Would they hurt the two boys? Torture them? Or maybe threaten their families? Kieron wasn’t sure how much physical pain he could handle before he broke down and told Avalon Richardson everything about Bex and Bradley – he needed full sedation when he visited the dentist, rather than just a local anaesthetic – and if anyone threatened his mum he would probably snap straight away. He couldn’t let anything happen to her.

As Kieron was pushed into the back of his SUV he glanced across to the other one. Sam was looking at him. Their gazes locked, and what Kieron saw in Sam’s expression was probably what Sam saw in his: fear and panic, but also a resolve to cause the bad guys as much grief as possible before the end. Whatever the end might be.

He glanced up at the dark facades of the houses. No curtains were twitching; nobody was silhouetted against the light, looking out at them, wondering what was happening. If anybody in there suspected that something was amiss outside, they were keeping it to themselves.

The rest of the troops piled in, and the cars pulled away from each other; driving backwards at speed until they got to either end of Sam’s road, then reversing around the corners before setting off – both in the same direction, but on parallel roads. They seemed to be heading out of Newcastle.

It occurred to Kieron that the bad guys hadn’t blindfolded him, or blocked his ears so he couldn’t hear them talk. That was a bad sign. It probably meant that they didn’t care what he saw or heard, which probably meant they didn’t intend releasing him. Or Sam.

That was the pessimistic interpretation. The optimistic one was that when the bad guys had finished with the two of them they would just tell them that if they said anything, if they gave anything away to anyone else, their families would suffer.

Kieron decided to look on the bright side. Maybe they would both get out of there alive.

But what about Bex and Bradley?

Kieron’s car drove for about ten minutes, then pulled off the road and into a car park that had once belonged to a discount warehouse. The place had closed down a few years before, and the tarmac of the car park was cracked, with weeds poking up through the gaps. The burnt-out skeleton of a car sat over by the graffiti-covered metal shutters of the warehouse. On the other side, by the fence that separated the car park from the train track, a massive articulated lorry had been parked – the kind that supermarkets use to get their goods to the stores. As well as the cab it had two large sections, separated by a kind of hinged bar that would allow it to go around corners – although Kieron reckoned they would have to be pretty wide corners. Small roundabouts would be completely impossible.

Both cars stopped, and their captors bundled the boys out and pushed them across to the rear of the lorry. The doors had been opened, and a set of metal steps led up from the ground into the back.

One of the kidnappers shoved Kieron towards the steps. When Kieron turned around to protest, the man pointed his weapon at him, then at the steps. The implication was obvious.

Kieron climbed up the steps, into the lorry, and Sam followed.

Kieron wasn’t sure what he was going to find inside: stacks of shrink-wrapped boxes, perhaps? Slabs of meat hanging from hooks? What he wasn’t expecting was a cross between a conference room and a control room, with the front section taken up with two rows of computers, and the back half occupied by a narrow table with chairs set along both sides. A mug, a flask and a dish with paper packets of sugar sat at the far end of the table, near where a woman sat. She wasn’t looking at Kieron or Sam. In fact, she was turned to one side, studying the last in the row of computers that lined that end of the lorry.

‘Please,’ she said, not looking at them, ‘take a seat.’

Kieron walked down one side of the table and Sam down the other, until they were halfway along, and then they sat. There wasn’t much room between the backs of their chairs and the sides of the lorry.

Two of the troops entered the lorry and stood at the back. The steps retracted automatically, folding themselves up, and the doors swung closed. Somewhere up ahead an engine started, and the lights flickered momentarily.

‘You have seen me before, I think,’ the woman said, still looking at the screen in front of her. ‘It was about a year ago, in the Newcastle Arts Centre. We spoke then, briefly, and again earlier today.’ Finally she did look up, glancing from Kieron to Sam and back again. ‘Yes,’ she said, staring at Kieron, ‘you, I think. I’m not sure why, but you look like you might be in charge. Your friend looks like a follower.’

‘Hey!’ Sam protested, but Kieron shushed him.

‘Yes,’ the woman said, smiling slightly as she finally turned to face them, ‘as I thought.’

Tell them your name, rank and serial number and nothing else! Wasn’t that what they always said to do in war films if you were caught by the enemy. The trouble was, Kieron didn’t even want to give her his name. Instead, he kept quiet.

He could feel himself shivering. He made a fist with his left hand and then put his right hand over it, trying not to let Avalon Richardson see how scared he was.

The container they were in vibrated slightly. Although they couldn’t see out, Kieron had the distinct impression that the lorry was moving. But where were they going? And why?

‘I know that you are both working with Rebecca Wilson and Bradley Marshall,’ the woman went on. ‘I’m not sure what exactly you are doing for them, except that I know they have allowed you to use the Augmented Reality Computer Capability equipment – which, by the way, is top secret and shouldn’t be demonstrated to anyone who isn’t cleared.’ She paused, looking again from Kieron to Sam and back. ‘I think you already know that Rebecca and Bradley have gone significantly beyond their job remit. They are supposed to find and deal with threats to the United Kingdom. Instead they seem to have employed amateurs and turned their attentions to me.’

‘Because you’re a threat,’ Kieron said. He’d meant to keep quiet, but there was something about Avalon Richardson’s calm tone of voice, and the fact that she was talking about his friends, that forced him to speak.

‘Blood and Soil,’ she said, nodding. ‘That group of fascist thugs. Stupid, but useful. Yes, I’d already assumed that the four of you had connected me to them. The only thing I need to know is: do Rebecca and Bradley know who I am? Do they actually know my identity?’ She paused again. ‘Actually, that isn’t everything. I need to know if they are aware of my plans for the PEREGRINE satellite network. While we are at it, you can give me their current locations, and the locations of their ARCC equipment.’

‘We won’t tell you anything,’ Sam said bravely.

My plans for the PEREGRINE satellite control network. Her words struck a chord in Kieron’s mind. Did she mean what had happened in the Falkland Islands, and what was happening in Japan? Was she connected with that as well? It made some kind of sense that Avalon Richardson was working with the people who had attacked the control centre in the Falklands. They had taken control of PEREGRINE for her, but what did they get in return?

‘You will.’ There was something about the calm certainty of Avalon Richardson’s voice that sent a chill down Kieron’s back. ‘I have various methods of persuading you to talk. I can hurt one of you until you decide to tell me what I need to know. I can hurt one of you until the other one decides to tell me what I need to know. I can threaten your families so that you both tell me at the same time, rushing to see who can get the information out first.’ She shrugged. ‘If I had more time there are drugs I could use that would destroy your willpower and your resistance, and then you would love to tell me of your own accord. Believe me, there isn’t any method of torture devised by humanity in the past three thousand years that I wouldn’t be prepared to use to get what I want out of you.’

Kieron deliberated and rebelliously looked past her, keeping his mouth tightly closed. He focused his gaze on the screen of the computer Avalon Richardson had been looking at when the two of them entered. He kept wondering where Bradley was. He knew that Bex was in Japan and couldn’t possibly help, but Bradley was there in Newcastle.

But what could he do against Avalon Richardson and her troops? He was only one man. One man with partially working ARCC glasses.

‘Your choices are very limited at the moment,’ Avalon Richardson said. ‘You can either give me Rebecca’s and Bradley’s locations now and tell me how much they know about me, and so save yourselves a great deal of pain and, I am afraid, lasting damage. Or you can foolishly try to brave it out, in which case you will feel agony such as you have never experienced before, and you will leave here with, what I think they call on the television news, “life-changing injuries”.’

To distract himself from the mental picture that Avalon Richardson was deliberately trying to create, Kieron focused hard on the computer screen that she had been looking at when they came in. Something about it looked familiar. He squinted, trying to make it out. Suddenly he felt a flood of familiarity followed by a rush of excitement, and it took a moment for his brain to catch up and let him work out why. The screen was showing something very similar to the initial information Kieron usually saw when he switched the ARCC glasses on! He glanced down to the table where the keyboard sat. Yes, just next to the mouse was a headset and microphone, probably connected to the computer. This was the terminal from which Avalon Richardson had managed to infiltrate the ARCC glasses and talk to him when Kieron had been wearing them earlier. Or, more probably, one of her team had done it. Kieron didn’t think Avalon Richardson had the computer skills to create an avatar of Bex that would be realistic enough to fool him into giving up information.

His thoughts raced as he tried to work out how this new information could help.

If he assumed that the computer was still connected into his ARCC glasses – which Bradley now had – then he might be able to get Bradley’s attention. If the satellites happened to be up and running. But to do that …

He glanced across at Sam. His friend had a fierce expression on his face, but beneath that Kieron knew he was scared. They had known each other for as long as Kieron could remember. Sam was his best friend and he was Sam’s. They knew each other so well that they could finish each other’s sentences and make each other laugh just by saying a single word that reminded them both of something funny in the past. They sometimes phoned the other one at the same time. When they were playing against each other in multiplayer computer games each of them instinctively knew what tactics the other one was going to use. They were linked.

He had to trust that link now.

Kieron caught Sam’s eye. Sam looked at him, glanced away, then looked back when it was clear that Kieron was still staring at him.

‘GamR BlamR,’ he said cryptically, hoping that Sam would remember the YouTuber whose gaming channel they’d been addicted to for a while, and who they’d actually met in Venice a few weeks before.

Sam nodded cautiously. Avalon Richardson stared at Kieron oddly, as if he had just started uttering random words. Which, as far as she was concerned, he had.

‘Timeslice!’ he went on. The word would mean nothing to Avalon Richardson, but Sam would recognise it as the last game they’d been playing online together; Kieron in his bedroom and Sam in his.

Sam nodded again, intrigued.

‘Plan Omega,’ Kieron said. That was one of the many tactics he and Sam had agreed on when they were playing online as a team, against other players scattered across the world. Sam would make his character step out of where he was hiding and sprint across the terrain, while Kieron would stay in hiding with a sniper rifle and pick off anyone who started firing at Sam.

Plan Omega. It meant ‘create a diversion’.

Sam grinned, then suddenly half stood up and collapsed across the table, shaking.

The two guards by the exit raised their weapons, expecting some kind of attack, but Sam slid off the table and onto the floor, babbling incoherently in a loud voice.

Avalon automatically sprang out of her chair and moved towards Sam. ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded.

‘He’s having a hypo!’ Kieron shouted.

‘A what?’

‘A hypoglycemic attack. His blood sugar is too low. This happens when he gets stressed. You need to help him!’

‘You!’ Avalon pointed at the guard on the left. ‘Get him back in his chair. We need to make sure he doesn’t choke on his tongue. I’m damned if I’m going to let him die before I want him to!’

She moved closer to Sam, obviously concerned. For a second Kieron found himself wondering if she had kids. He just automatically assumed that all bad guys lived alone, in some kind of impressive futuristic apartment, but maybe Avalon was married, with two kids and a dog. He almost – almost – felt a twinge of empathy for her, but he pushed it down until it surrendered. She’d been happy to torture him. She didn’t deserve sympathy.

He got out of his chair and moved towards the computer screen he’d been looking at. Avalon’s attention was directed at Sam. So was that of the guards.

As Avalon headed round the corner of the table, towards Sam, Kieron sidled up to the computer. It was showing the ARCC screen. He let his gaze slide over it, looking for anything different. Actually the whole thing looked slightly different, because it was solid. Kieron was used to seeing through the translucent text boxes and images on the ARCC glasses to whatever was beyond. Here there was no ‘beyond’.

There! A communications menu, listing all the times recently that this program had been active, and who it had been communicating with. Kieron scanned through the information, listening out for what was happening behind him. It sounded like Sam was thrashing around, knocking chairs over and shouting out random words.

The program had communicated through PEREGRINE to something called ‘ARCC-1’ about two hours ago, for ten minutes. That was pretty much the same time Kieron had seen the faked image of Bex on the ARCC glasses.

Kieron checked quickly over his shoulder. One of the guards was pulling Sam up into a chair while Avalon Richardson was tearing open packets of sugar from the dish on the table and pouring them into her mug. Presumably she was going to treat Sam’s fake diabetes attack with a massive amount of sugar.

Turning his attention back to the screen, he reactivated the link to ARCC-1 via PEREGRINE. He looked frantically for anything labelled ‘Input’. The box he needed was half hidden behind another one, and he frantically clicked on it to bring it to the front. He selected ‘Microphone’ from the list of things he could link the equipment to. A box opened with the question: Transmit local audio over PEREGRINE link to ARCC-1? He clicked on Yes, then turned around quickly and stepped closer to the table in case Avalon looked his way.

He was only just in time.

The guard had the mug of sugary coffee up to Sam’s lips and was forcing him to drink it. Avalon Richardson, looking stressed, turned back to Kieron.

‘Maybe I should have just let him have his attack, and held back the treatment until you told me what I want to know,’ she said tersely.

‘Why didn’t you?’ Kieron asked, taking a step sideways while she looked over at Sam.

She turned back to him. He expected her to say something about having a similar problem herself, or having a child who did, but instead she said, ‘Too difficult to control. When I torture someone, I want to know exactly how much pain I can inflict. I’m not familiar enough with his condition to know how long I could withhold treatment.’ She shook her head. ‘Enough delays, enough wasting time. I have things to do.’ She snapped her fingers at the trooper who hadn’t been helping with Sam. ‘Take him,’ she said, pointing at Kieron. ‘Open the back door, half-extend the ladder and hold him over the road. I want that tarmac going past right under his nose.’

Kieron felt as if the world had dropped out from beneath his feet. She was really going to do this?

Apparently she was. The trooper moved towards Kieron, weapon pointed at Kieron’s stomach. He – or she; it was difficult to tell with the bulky black jumpsuit and the facemask – nodded towards the back of the lorry, then backed away so Kieron could get past.

Once Kieron was facing the metal shutter, the trooper pressed a large red button on a box next to the shutter’s edge.

The shutter began to roll up, hiding itself somewhere in the roof of the lorry. Suddenly the noise of the lorry’s tyres against the road became much louder. Kieron could smell diesel fumes. The shutter moved steadily and remorselessly. It was up to his waist by now, and the wind whipping past the lorry and swirling behind it caught Kieron’s trousers and made them flap against his legs. He could feel the cold air outside nipping at his skin. The low pressure caused by the vortices of air swirling in the lorry’s wake dragged at him like some huge but invisible creature trying to pull him to his doom.

He turned to look over his shoulder at Sam.

‘Don’t tell her anything,’ he said bravely, but he didn’t feel brave inside. Not at all.

The trooper pressed another large button on the control box and the metal steps unfolded from the floor in front of Kieron’s feet, extending downwards until they hung about thirty centimetres above the road. And as the shutter rolled up even higher Kieron could see the road itself; grey and blotchy, whipping past in a blur. Off to his right, white road markings flashed by; there, gone, there, gone …

The shutter retracted above his head, and he saw the surface of the road, extending away from the lorry. He’d hoped there might be a car following them that he could signal to, but the road was empty. Presumably Avalon Richardson had deliberately chosen a section that hardly saw any traffic. Maybe they were even on a deserted army base, off the beaten track and away from prying eyes. He tried to get sight of any buildings as they flashed past. They might have been old army huts, or farm outbuildings; he couldn’t tell.

The wind plucked at his jacket and sucked the warmth from his hands. The edge of the lorry’s floor and the first metal step were only half a metre away.

Something struck him between his shoulder blades and he fell forward. He tried to catch himself, to get his leg underneath him to prevent himself falling out of the lorry, but it was too late; his foot went right over the edge at the back, and by the time it hit that first step his weight would be too far forward and he would tumble out and hit the road. And probably die; scraped along the rough tarmac like a tomato on a kitchen grater.

A hand caught the back of his collar, stopping him from falling. He hung there, half in and half out of the lorry. He imagined his body was a perfect diagonal line, suspended by the hand of the trooper behind him. No going forward; no going back.

‘How much do Rebecca Wilson and Bradley Marshall know about me?’ Avalon Richardson’s voice shouted above the roar of the wind. Kieron could hardly hear her. ‘Either of you can answer.’

Kieron wasn’t sure he could answer, even if he wanted to. It was hard enough to breathe, with the air being pulled from his lungs every time he opened his mouth. If he tried to speak his words would just be whipped away by the wind.

‘I will ask again,’ Avalon said, ‘and then I will count backwards from ten. On zero the grip on the back of your friend’s collar will be released, and he will tumble out to an unpleasant and very messy death. So, tell me: how much do Rebecca Wilson and Bradley Marshall know about me?’

Half of Kieron’s brain was begging Sam not to answer, while the other half was begging him to answer so that Kieron didn’t have to.

‘Ten …’ Avalon said calmly. ‘Nine …’

This couldn’t be it, Kieron thought despairingly. This couldn’t be how it all ended.

‘Eight … seven …’

There was so much he wanted to do with his life. Well, he didn’t know quite what it all was, but he knew there were loads of things he would be missing out on if he died now.

‘Six … five …’

And Beth. He’d only just got a girlfriend; he couldn’t lose her now!

The grip on the back of his collar suddenly vanished. He fell forward, gasping so much that he couldn’t even cry out. The road in front of him blurred.

The grip came back, almost choking him. He was nearly horizontal now, looking down at the steps and the grey tarmac. The trooper holding him was incredibly strong. Kieron guessed he must be holding onto a strap or a bar or something.

‘That was just for fun,’ Avalon said. ‘Now answer the question. Four … three …’

Kieron opened his mouth to shout the answer as loudly as he could – and then shut it again. He couldn’t betray Bex or Bradley. Not even if it cost him his life. He knew – knew for certain – that they would risk their lives for him. He had to do the same.

‘Two … one …’

Still nothing from Sam. Kieron felt a warmth flow through him, and a strength. If his last memory, his last thought, was one of friendship, then so be it. What a way to go.

The roar in his ears suddenly became louder. He glanced up, shocked, as something moved in the corner of his vision. A car – no, a flatbed utility truck! – had suddenly slewed in from a side road and joined the road the lorry was pounding along. It settled in right behind the lorry, barely a metre away. Kieron stared at the windscreen. It took him a moment to realise that Bradley was driving. His expression was as fierce and determined as Kieron had ever seen it.

There was no way the three of them could coordinate their actions. What happened next was a combination of coincidence and hope; three people acting independently towards a single end result.

Bradley sent the ute into a handbrake turn. Amid squealing rubber, purple smoke and the smell of burning he managed to skid the vehicle through 180 degrees and slam it into reverse, so that he was still behind the lorry but travelling backwards. How long he could keep that up for, Kieron had no idea. Kieron found himself looking into the ute’s rear end: a flat wooden bed surrounded by slats. And the gate at the back was down!

Sam, meanwhile, must have suddenly run full pelt at the trooper holding Kieron, because the man’s grip loosened, and his whole weight hit Kieron in the back. He and the trooper tumbled out of the back of the speeding lorry –

– And fell into the flatbed of the truck.

Despite the bruises and scrapes Kieron had received, he knew exactly what had happened – and exactly what would happen if he didn’t act quickly. Bradley was still driving backwards, but that wasn’t a viable long-term strategy. He would have to turn around, and that could send Kieron sliding and falling onto the road. He had to act.

Kieron was lying on his front, feeling wooden splinters from the flatbed digging into his hands. He wormed his way onto his back, and stared ahead of him in shock.

Directly in front of him, the trooper was trying to climb to his feet. Just off to his right, Sam clung to the wooden slats on the side of the van. He must have fallen out behind the trooper and Kieron. And a few metres away, from inside the open back of the lorry, Avalon Richardson stared with grim disbelief.

Kieron did what he had to. He kicked the trooper in the middle of his facemask. The man fell backwards, screaming and clawing at the air, but Bradley was slowing down now and the trooper’s momentum carried him onto the metal steps at the rear of the lorry. He bounced off and vanished sideways.

Sam slithered down the wooden slats to the end of the truck, reached down with one hand and hauled the tailgate up. It clicked into place automatically.

Kieron grabbed hold of the side as Bradley skidded backwards to a halt, then threw the gears into ‘forward’ and started to speed away. Kieron could hear his whoop of triumph even above the squealing of the tyres.

‘Please tell me you were filming that!’ Sam shouted, grinning.

‘No,’ Kieron shouted back, ‘but I’ll remember it for as long as I live.’ He stared at his friend for a moment. ‘Thanks, mate.’

‘No probs.’ Sam gave a little salute with a free hand. ‘Just goes to show that I really do have your back!’