His next joke he says quietly, just sharing it with me. ‘What’s the difference between a Half Code and an onion?’ He lifts my shirt up. I feel his fingers scratch over the lower part of my scars, his scars, as he says, ‘Cutting up an onion makes you cry.’
After four or five hours the van stops. From the few voices I hear it has to be a motorway service station. They fill up with petrol and then sit around eating burgers and chips and slurping drinks. The smell would be tempting but I’m desperate for a piss and don’t want to think about food and drink.
It probably isn’t going to be worth it, but I say it anyway. ‘I need a pee.’
The chain whips across the top of my thighs. I have to clench my teeth and breathe through my nose.
When the pain eases I say, ‘I still need a pee.’
The chain hits my thighs again.
The van sets off. Clay is giving mumbled instructions to the driver but I can’t hear them.
Twenty minutes later the van stops. I’m dragged backwards by the ankles and out of the back of the van, which is backed up into some bushes. There is little traffic noise. They’ve found a quiet spot.
‘Any trouble. Anything. And you’re dead.’ Kieran says it so close to my ear I can feel the spray of spit.
I don’t acknowledge him.
He undoes my handcuffs and frees my right hand.
I piss. A long, long wonderful piss.
I’ve hardly zipped up and I’m back in the cuffs and shoved into the van again. I’m smiling inside at the relief, and because I’m thinking of Celia. She is tougher than these idiots.
The journey just keeps joggling along. Kieran must be sleeping cos he’s not bothering me. The nail is still in my mouth but there’s no chance of escape with three Hunters round me.
The rust of the van’s floor scratches across my cheek as I’m pulled out of the back end of the van once more.
‘On your knees.’
I’m in the courtyard of the Council building, the place where I was taken from just before my fifteenth birthday.
I’m pushed down. ‘Your knees!’ Kieran shouts.
Clay has gone. Tamsin and Megan are by the cab of the van. Kieran is standing to the side of me and I squint up at him. His nose is swollen and he has one black eye.
‘Your healing’s a bit slow, Kieran.’
His boot flies at my face, but I roll out of its way and up to my feet.
Tamsin laughs. ‘He’s fast, Kieran.’
Kieran feigns disinterest and says, ‘He’s their problem now.’
I look around as the two guards reach me, grab my arms and drag me off without a word.
They take me into the Council building through a wooden door, along a corridor, then right and left and past an internal courtyard, through another door to the left. Then I am in the corridor I recognize and sitting on the bench outside the room where they do the Assessments.
I heal the various scrapes and bruises.
It’s almost like old times. I have to wait, of course. My hands are still cuffed behind me. I stare at my knees and at the stone floor.
A long time passes and I’m still waiting. The door at the far end of the corridor opens; there’re footsteps but I don’t look up. And then the footsteps stop and a man’s voice says, ‘Go back the other way.’
I look up and then I stand up.
Annalise’s voice is quiet. ‘Nathan?’
The man she’s with must be her father and he’s pushing her back through the door. The door shuts and that’s it.
The guard stands in my way, blocking the view. I know he wants me to sit and I hesitate but I do it and the corridor is the same as it always is.
But Annalise was here. She looked different: older, paler, taller. She was wearing jeans and a light blue shirt and brown boots. And I replay it over in my head: the footsteps, ‘Go back the other way,’ seeing her, our eyes meeting and her eyes are pleased, and she says my name softly, ‘Nathan?’ and the way she says it she isn’t sure, like she can’t believe it, and then her father pushes her back, she resists, he pushes and blocks the way, she looks round his arm, our eyes meet again, then the door shuts. The door blocks all noise out; footsteps and voices on the other side can’t be heard.
I replay it all again, and again. I think it was real. I think it happened.
They take the handcuffs off to weigh, measure and photograph me. It’s the same as before an Assessment, but it’s not my birthday for months so I’m not sure if I’m going to be assessed or what. I ask the man in the lab coat but the guard who stands watching it all tells me to shut up and the man doesn’t answer me. The guard puts the cuffs back on and I am back in the corridor and there is more waiting.