Kate staggered to her feet and jogged in an approximate straight line, picking up speed as she went. If her life weren’t under threat, it might have felt liberating to run in the school corridors. Once she got into her rhythm she found herself sprinting faster than she ever had as a student. Even as a gymnast, she had never been so athletic. The new Kate Arrowsmith, hardened through a year of combat, ran so fast that her feet could barely support the shifting weight above them. It was like running downhill, except in the dark.
She reached the school’s entrance. Against all common sense, and the imaginary noise of her brain screaming at her to reach safety, she grabbed the nearest fire extinguisher and used it to wedge the door wide open. The others might not have time to open the door for themselves.
Kate ran exhausted through the car park, and stumbled past the little metal objects that looked like landmines. They were starting to hum and make aggressive electrical sounds. Mark had already stopped a few metres beyond them, in a position he assumed to be safe. In the background, Gracie could be seen heading for the hill. She must have been looking for Jack.
‘What will it look like?’ Kate asked as she approached Mark. ‘When it goes up?’
‘We’ll find out any second,’ Mark replied.
‘Maybe we should cover our eyes.’
‘You can, if you want.’
Kate trembled, and realised she didn’t want to look away. Rightly or wrongly, her eyes fixed themselves on the entrance and looked for signs of her friends.
There was movement, and Kate sighed with relief. Ewan was right on time. He and Simon bolted out of Oakenfold like racehorses from a gate, and made it past the boundary of metallic objects halfway through the car park.
‘Everyone OK?’ Ewan asked. Or at least mouthed while he caught his breath.
‘The twat got me in the forearm,’ said Mark. ‘Otherwise, I’m OK. So are Kate and Gracie. Not heard from Jack but I assume he’s fine.’
Kate’s legs started to weaken, but not from the run. Seven students had come to Oakenfold, and six had walked inside.
One was missing.
*
Halfway between the library and the front entrance, Raj took the longest strides he could manage at top speed. He knew he had the right documents under his arm, although it had taken a lot of reading – even after Kate’s warning to get out.
He regretted nothing. He couldn’t afford to escape Oakenfold without the right documents, and he couldn’t carry them all out. Not in the time he had.
The entrance was ahead, wedged open by a fire extinguisher.
That must have been Kate. Nobody else would be so thoughtful in a crisis.
Her efforts saved Raj at least three or four seconds, at a time when every single one of them counted.
He was about twenty metres behind the metal points when they buzzed, and the shield went up.
There was a red flash, like sheet lightning up close, which vanished a moment after it came. It was replaced with a sea of crimson ripples which distorted the sight of the world outside Oakenfold, including the hill and the faces of his horrified friends.
Before the ripples lost their colour, Raj looked up. The AME shield formed a dome over the school, like a semi-spherical net pegged down by the metal points. The crimson barrier faded in silence, and their surroundings returned to normal.
Kate was screaming.
Raj said nothing. He retrieved his handgun, pulled the topside to remove a bullet, and tossed it half-heartedly towards his friends.
The bullet hit the shield and exploded violently, causing Raj’s bladder to weaken. Around the area the bullet had hit, a set of furious lightning shards buzzed across a metre-wide canvas of crimson ripples, before they all faded again into nothingness.
‘Raj!’ shouted Ewan, running as close to the shield as he could get away with. There was anger rather than sorrow in his eyes. ‘What the bloody hell took you so long?!’
He’s not angry at me personally. It’s his way of grieving the loss of a friend.
‘These did,’ Raj replied with a hiccup, lifting the files he had seized from the library. ‘I can’t pass the folder through because it’s got metal rings, but I can give you the paper.’
He opened the folder and removed its contents, concentrating hard enough on the task to ignore the enormity of what was happening to him. But that became difficult when he passed the pile through the shield, and saw the air calmly ripple around the papers as they went through. Ewan’s hand took them at the other side and passed them to Jack, who had made his way down the hill.
‘It tells you which parts of New London deal with AME,’ Raj said, his voice quaking. ‘I know because… because I read it.’
Jack and Ewan’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
‘…I read it, guys,’ Raj repeated for the satisfaction. He may have been a dead body in waiting, but he had kept their hopes in the war alive. And he had done it by reading.
‘The way they’ve set it up in New London is similar to here,’ he said, hoping that Ewan would take time away from his anger and listen to him. ‘There’s a computer that controls the shield, filled with coordinates for these metal things. They’re border points of some kind… Grant probably has a posh name for them.’
Raj pointed to the nearest mine-shaped object. Ewan took one glance, and then fired a stream of bullets towards it – perhaps in the hope of making a hole in the shield’s coordinate field or something. To Raj’s horror, the border point seemed to have its own miniature shield too.
There was a shriek on his right. Mark was physically holding Kate back as she screamed.
‘But destroying a computer won’t be enough,’ he continued, doing his best to sound brave. ‘You’ve got to wipe out all their research too. Get into their files and delete anything that mentions Atmospheric Metallurgic Excitation, and blow up their physical archives too. Do that, and they’ll have to start over. It could take years for them to get it right again. And don’t worry about here… I set fire to the library before I left it, and the fire should spread. I’m sorry, Ewan… but like you said, stop AME even if it means…’
‘You did the right thing, Raj,’ Ewan said. ‘Now find a way out.’
‘What, through the shield? Sorry Ewan, I’m screwed.’
Raj had noticed how casual Ewan’s voice sounded, like he was refusing to accept the hopelessness of the situation. Raj did not have that luxury: his dyslexia-driven ability to see to the core of a problem told him exactly what his situation was, and his ability to come up with off-the-wall unexpected ideas would have helped if there were any kind of way out. But Raj knew that searching for one would be like trying to avoid a one-move checkmate.
‘Dig underground,’ Ewan said, trying to hide his growing desperation. ‘Get to one of the grassy areas, and—’
‘The brains that came up with AME must have thought of someone tunnelling,’ said Raj, his first tears emerging. ‘And besides, how much time do you think I have? Reinforcements are minutes away.’
‘Then strip,’ said Jack in his usual matter-of-fact manner. ‘Leave your weapons, and remove any clothes that have traces of metal. We only need your body to get through.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Raj replied. ‘I had a spinal operation when I was twelve, remember? I told you when McCormick and Lorraine were arguing. There’s metal all down my back. Even if I were naked, the shield would blow my spine out.’