Solitary

  And if you could do that to a mouse, then why not a kid?

  I groaned, realizing that this theory sounded just as insane as demons stalking the corridors of Hades. There was no way they could turn a man, a child, into a monster. It couldn’t happen. And what kind of nutcase would want to? Who would go to the trouble of framing innocent kids for murder and dragging them into Furnace just to mess with their genes?

  But my mind kept flicking back to the infirmary we had passed, the wheezers all marching through the plastic slats like surgeons going to work.

  Taking another deep breath, I lifted the loose end of the grille and wedged my heel against it. Bracing my back against the wall, I pushed as hard as the space would let me, hearing the metal loose a creak of distress. My foot shifted as the grille bent, but my leg cramped before I could finish the job. I lay still, rubbing the knotted muscles beneath my overalls and waiting for the throbbing agony to subside.

  Could science explain the creature that attacked me back in the cavern? And the constellation of silver eyes racing through the darkness drawn to the smell of fresh blood? And what about the thing that had saved me? I remembered the touch of his skin, so hot it burned me even through my overalls. Science could change somebody’s appearance, certainly, but make it feel like there were glowing embers set under their flesh? Surely that was impossible.

  So what were the rats? Why didn’t they cluster around the warden like all his other sick freaks? Why were they running like wild dogs in the lightless tunnels beneath the prison? Each time I thought I had an answer a million different questions presented themselves.

  The pain in my calf had dulled to an echo, beating in time to my heart. I tentatively flexed my leg, pointing and rotating my foot like we used to do in soccer after a charley horse. The thought inevitably conjured a rush of memories—sunshine on our backs as we belted the ball up and down the field, laughter roared out over the world in celebration. I wondered if my old mates were playing now, wondered who had replaced me at left back, and who was taking Toby’s shots up front. This time it felt as if my mind was cramping, bolts of white-hot pain flashing across the back of my eyes.

  I growled with anger, a sound that could have come from an animal. Then, suddenly pumped with adrenaline, I began pounding the grille with my feet. After the first dozen strikes my heels were bruised and bloody, but it only took a couple more blows before the rigid metal popped from its frame. The squeal of rending iron was deafening, and the clatter of the grille as it dropped onto the rock reverberated around my cell like a wasp. But that was one advantage of being in such a tightly sealed space—there were no cries of alarm from outside, no stamp of booted feet on the path above my head.

  Crouching forward, trying not to put any pressure on my battered feet, I picked up the grille and held it to my chest. It was still useless, but the fact that I’d been able to pry it loose was an achievement that brought a grin to my face—so wide that my cheeks were aching. I would have kissed the bloody thing if it hadn’t been covered in crap. Instead, to celebrate, I got to my feet and used the toilet, the sound of splashing below giving the pleasant illusion of space.

  I didn’t sit down again straightaway, happy to let some blood flow to my legs. While I was standing I swung the grille at the wall between my cell and Zee’s. After I had been in the dark so long the spark it produced was like a firework going off in my eye, the clang deafening. I blinked, enjoying the spots of light that had burned my retinas. Then I whirled it around again, harder this time. Another spark, flashing the cell into life for a fraction of a second—wet, red walls like the inside of a stomach.

  I stopped, putting my head against the cold stone and waiting for a response. Zee must have heard it—human voices might be too soft to penetrate rock, but I knew sound traveled through solid objects a hell of a lot better than through air. Surely an impact like that must have carried.

  But there was nothing, not even a scratch. I swung it again, more from frustration than with any hope of a response. Then I dropped the grille to the floor.

  “Zee!” I howled, the volume of my own voice somehow making the panic rise up in my gut. I clamped it before it could get any worse, slapping my palm against the wall before sliding onto my haunches again. A couple of deep breaths calmed me down, and they also brought tiredness—my eyelids drooping as if drawn shut by my last spluttered exhalation.

  I lay down as best as I could in the tiny space, wedging my head in the corner opposite the toilet and stretching my feet out. I wasn’t sure if sleep would be able to find me here, hidden so well in the rock, so far underground. But it was on me in seconds. Everything we’d been through since we’d tried to escape had drained me of all but the last gasp of wakefulness. And with a sigh even that fled, freeing me—if just temporarily—from my tomb.

  * * *

  THE DREAM, when it started, was more real than the reality I’d just left. I guess it was bound to be—in the hole I was completely cut off. There was no light, no sound, no connection at all to the everyday world, but in the dream my senses were bombarded with fresh information. It was a wonderful feeling, until I realized where the illusion was taking me.

  When I did, my hollow groan seemed to settle over me like a thunderhead. I was walking down the corridor of the house where Toby and I had been caught. Although this time Zee was there instead, a few meters ahead of me, running at full pelt. He turned in my direction and the way his face morphed into a grimace of pure fear was like a dagger in my heart.

  There was something right behind me.

  I started running too, my pace sluggish, the way it always is in nightmares. Zee looked back again, and even though he was gasping for breath he unleashed a haggard, desperate scream.

  He reached the door to the living room, now guarded like Furnace’s infirmary by a curtain of plastic slats. With a choked cry he swung around and vanished through them and I followed without thinking, feeling the filthy strips like pondweed on my face.

  On the other side of the curtain was the room where the wheezer had picked Toby to die and me to be framed for murder, where the blacksuits had laughed as one of them, Moleface, pulled the trigger.

  Only this time the bodies of a dozen boys hung limp and bloody from the ceiling, suspended upside down, ancient ropes tight around pale ankles. They were all dead. And they were all screaming.

  I felt terror grip me, and I mean really grip me, so hard I thought my insides were being crushed—my heart too constricted to properly pump my blood, my lungs unable to expand, my vision flickering on and off like a faulty projector.

  Zee flew into one of the corpses, the impact knocking him off balance. He careened to the floor, spinning around to face whatever was behind us. I ran toward him, terrified but knowing that we stood more of a chance if we fought together. I thought he’d be grateful, but instead he lashed out at me with his feet, screaming words that were soundless but which were all too clear.

  You’re one of them, you’re one of them, you’re one of them.

  I tried to argue, but before I could the figures above me started to convulse, their drooping hands snatching for my head and their lifeless eyes burning into my soul. I fought them but there were simply too many, their cold touch grabbing, tearing, gouging.

  You’re one of them, you’re one of them, you’re one of them.

  I felt one of the dead boys press something against my mouth, the sting of a needle in my flesh. I screamed, but all that came out was a dry wheeze, and when I tried to catch my breath to cry out again I felt poison flood my lungs. The room began to spin, the cadavers spiraling outward like some macabre Catherine wheel. In a second all that remained was their howls, an endless funeral dirge as I tried to rip the gas mask from my face.

  I shot up in my cell, the dream fading as the darkness around me once again began to seep into my mind, erasing all that had been there.

  Except for the screams.

  It was so faint it could have been an echo of my nightmare, but I k
new immediately it wasn’t. The noise was loud enough to penetrate my cell, dripping down on me like ice water. I felt my skin tighten into gooseflesh, held my breath the better to hear it when it came again.

  Louder this time, and closer. This wasn’t the same scream I had heard in my dream, although it had obviously inspired it. This sound definitely wasn’t human but a frenzied cry devoid of anything but hatred and cruelty. And whatever it was, it was coming this way.

  I thought about what the warden had said, about the rats—those creatures from the cavern—coming to get us. But it was fine, I was locked up here, safe from whatever it was. Right?

  Except the lock was on the outside.

  When the scream came again it could have been from right above me. It still sounded like it was miles away, but I knew it was just a thin barrier of rock giving the illusion of distance. Something hit my hatch hard, and my entire body flinched. Another thump, then the sound of claws against metal. I curled into the smallest ball I could, praying for the noise to stop. Praying so hard I thought my clenched fingers would break.

  There was a muted shot, little louder than bubble wrap popping, then a thump as something fell onto the hatch. A second shot followed, then what might have been feet, and a third shot, which I could hear pinging off the metal. I strained my ears to hear more, but whatever had been happening now seemed to be over.

  I didn’t move, kept my arms and legs bound tight and my head pressed into the warmth of my chest. With nightmares waiting for me when I slept and death here when I woke up, it was all I could do.

  COMMUNICATION

  I DON’T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP, but I must have because I was woken by another noise. I sat up, thinking for a split second that I’d gone blind before remembering where I was.

  There was an unpleasant feeling in my gut, like someone had twisted my stomach around then pinched it in place with a bulldog clip. It was probably hunger—I had no idea how long I’d been here, but it must have been more than a day.

  The noise didn’t repeat itself, but I could have sworn it had come from the direction of the toilet. I shuffled my body around, too used to the pain to really bother with it, and lowered my head to the opening.

  Nothing.

  Maybe I had dreamed it. Given what had been going through my head last night (or morning, or afternoon, whatever it had been), another weird noise didn’t seem unlikely. I realized I needed the hole for something else, and did my best to squat over it in the darkness. I never thought I’d miss the stained hunk of metal that had been our toilet back in the cell up top, but right now as I tried and failed to hit the target I would have traded my eyeteeth for it.

  As I crouched there, wondering what to do about toilet paper, a muffled clank rose up from beneath me. I turned and put my head as close to the floor as I could bear, holding my breath to better hear if the noise came again—as well as for more obvious reasons. It did, another sound like metal on metal.

  Without warning, something in my heart lifted. I scrabbled around the tiny floor and found the grille, smashing it as hard as I could against the wall. The noise it made was loud, but it didn’t sound like the one I’d just heard. I poked a finger down the hole where the grille had been set and felt a pipe with a ring of iron or steel around its lip. There was another clank, and this time I answered, lifting the grille above my head and smashing it down against the ring of metal.

  It hit with the sound of a muffled church bell and I dropped it, putting my hands to my ears to try to stop them ringing. Behind the whine of my eardrums the noise came again, followed by a pause long enough for me to know what to do. I snatched up the grille and struck, softer this time, just once. A few seconds later the sound from the pipe came twice and I echoed it. Then three times, followed by three strikes which I belted out with choked sobs of relief.

  “Zee,” I said, more to myself than from any hope he’d hear me. “You genius.”

  He’d obviously managed to pry his grille off too, and had thought to smash it against the iron in the toilet. The sound was traveling down then up again, making it seem like it was coming from right beneath me. I yelled in celebration, and this time rapped out the five notes of “shave and a haircut.” Even before the echo had died down in the pipe, Zee’s “two bits” burst through it with glorious clarity.

  I collapsed back against the wall, giggling helplessly. It seems like a stupid thing to be so happy about, but those tiny taps broke all hold that solitary had over us. They punched through its one power, its only strength—its ability to keep us isolated, locked away from the world. It wasn’t much, and we wouldn’t be using it to discuss the next World Cup or who our favorite Hollywood babe was, but it was enough. I wasn’t alone anymore.

  This time, so overwhelmed by enthusiasm, I raised the grille to my mouth and kissed it.

  * * *

  KEEP YOUR MIND BUSY, keep yourself occupied, find things to do. If you’re doing things, then you still exist, right?

  “Right,” I said, remembering Donovan’s words. Well, remembering the words spoken by the piece of my subconscious that was masquerading as the memory of Donovan to stop me crumbling into depression. It’s weird how complicated things can get when you’re on the edge of madness.

  I’d been keeping my mind busy for what seemed like forever; Zee too, as we tried to work out a system of communication. He’d started by tapping out short clacks then longer ones, and I guessed he was doing Morse code. I’d never gone to Scouts or anything like that, so all I could do was repeatedly bang my grille against the pipe in frustration until he got the hint. It would have been easier if we had a one hit for yes, two for no system, but we had no way of asking questions so it was impossible.

  We spent quite a bit of time just tapping meaningless staccato tunes, not really caring that we weren’t forming words, just happy to hear each other. At least I was just tapping out nonsense—for all I know, Zee was coming up with a master code that I just wasn’t grasping.

  There was a moment, sometime after we’d discovered each other, where he did seem to be creating a system of taps. I listened carefully, trying to work out the code. There were five clear taps, followed by five more, then a pause. Next there was one tap, followed by five, another pause, then one and five again. I tried to work out what it might mean, but it was probably something he’d seen on one of his damn documentaries and I didn’t have a clue.

  After racking my brains for a while, the only thing I could think of was that he was using numbers to stand in for letters. But that only spelled EEAEAE, and unless he was being tortured and letting me know he was screaming, it didn’t seem to mean anything.

  My own confusion gave me an idea. Waiting until Zee had fallen silent I smashed my grille against the pipe eight times, one for each letter up to H. I paused, then brought it down five times. E. Twice I smashed out twelve dull, battered notes. LL. My fingers aching, I finished off with fifteen clear, steady hits. O.

  Silence. I chewed my nails in anticipation, spitting violently when I realized what I was doing. There was no time to think about it, though, as Zee’s response drilled up the pipe with all the subtlety of a homicidal robot on the loose.

  Eight. H. Nine. I. One. A. Twelve. L. Five. E. I didn’t need to wait for the twenty-four notes of X to chime like clockwork from the pipe to know he’d got it. I let the grille drop for a moment, flexed my weary fingers. Then, from nowhere, I began to cry. They weren’t bad tears, I guess. They weren’t happy ones either. I couldn’t tell you what they were. It’s like when you’re listening to the radio and all of a sudden a song comes on that really jerks your heartstrings. And it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing but you can just feel the emotion welling up inside you like a tide. There’s no stopping it.

  Here in Furnace there was no music, so this was our song. And it was more beautiful than anything I’d ever heard. As Zee hammered out another tuneless verse I let my body heave, warm drops of salt water dripping past my lips onto the rock. When the
sobs had subsided I wiped my eyes, even though there was nothing to see, and decoded Zee’s message.

  Seven. G. Fifteen. O. Fifteen, again. O. Four. D. A longer pause. Twenty. T. Fifteen. O. Another pause. Eight, five, one, eighteen, pause, then twenty-one. Hear u. Good to hear you.

  I wanted to send back You’re not kidding, but it would have taken forever, so I settled with twenty-one short notes like we’d been using, then two longer ones. U 2. I hoped he’d get it.

  U OK, came his eventual reply. I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, then answered with a series of strikes.

  GR8. Sound couldn’t penetrate the walls, but it seemed sarcasm could.

  ME 2.

  We went on like that without daring to stop. In a way it was just like texting using a really ancient phone, and we quickly picked up on each other’s shortcuts and abbreviations. It wasn’t the easiest form of communication in the world, the simplest sentence taking minutes to hammer out. But that was perfect—it kept our minds occupied far longer than a spoken conversation would. Each tap was like the seconds ticking by on a clock, and it forced time back into the room, brought us back to reality. We could hear the minutes passing, our conversations literally devouring the hours.

  I replayed Zee’s messages in his own voice, although surprisingly I couldn’t remember exactly what it sounded like. I knew his accent, though, and after we’d been “talking” for a while it was like he was right there next to me, speaking in my ear.

  “Been to the toilet yet?” he asked, his taps becoming words.