23
Despite my breakthrough of sorts with Jela, she says nothing for the rest of the evening and the way she screams, fidgets and throws off her covers after the lights have gone out means I have to take extra care before sneaking out. She is on the bed next to Pietra and it is hard to tell from the other side of the room whether it is just Jela who is making the noise. After a while, I gamble that it is only her and head into the hidden tunnel. Imrin has transferred the maps into my side of the passageway, so we sit under the blankets adding a few extra corridors and cameras that we have gone looking for through the day.
Neither of us mentions the previous night, which, at least for now, is fine by me.
‘Come with me,’ I say, taking Imrin’s hand and leading him through the door out into the main corridor.
We stop to look through the window, where the thin clouds are failing to block the bright white moonlight from flooding the area. Part of me wants to stay and watch but it is late already, so I tug Imrin away towards the far end of the passageway. I release his hand and touch the screen of my thinkwatch, then step away from the safety of our dead end onto the wider corridor and begin walking away from him.
Imrin’s eyes are wide and scared as he hisses my name.
‘It’s all right,’ I assure him as I stop moving and check my thinkwatch’s screen before meeting his eyes.
‘There are cameras at either end.’
‘I know. One of them is too far away to see me.’
‘What about the other one? What are you doing?’ Imrin hasn’t stepped towards me and is still hidden from view.
‘Do you trust me?’
‘I don’t … yes.’
I hold out my hand. ‘Then come here.’
At first I don’t think he is going to but, after a moment, he stares into my eyes and steps forward, looking uncertainly at the fixed red camera light.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, eyes on the camera.
I check my thinkwatch again, the light overhead catching the gentle orange colour of the face. ‘Twenty-nine, twenty-eight …’
Imrin clutches me but is clearly confused. ‘You’re going to get us caught.’
‘Twenty-four … I’m not. Tell me what you see.’
He is pressed up against me and I can feel his heart beating quickly. It makes me feel excited. ‘A camera, I see a camera …’ He is stumbling over his words.
‘Nineteen … what else?’
‘I don’t know, a red light.’
‘Sixteen … exactly, what about it?’
‘That it’s on and pointing at us.’
‘Thirteen … look again.’
Imrin’s voice is shaking now, his heart thumping through his clothes but I want him to see it. ‘Silver …’
‘Eleven. Tell me what you see, Imrin.’
‘The camera is pointing at us and the red light is on.’
‘Eight … Exactly, but what about it specifically?’
Imrin’s breathing has increased and then I feel it in his body as his fingers tighten around me. ‘The light isn’t blinking!’
I snatch his hand and yank him back into our corridor. ‘Four, three, two, one. That’s right, blinking light means it is recording, steady red light means it is on but not sending images.’
‘But … how?’
I lead Imrin back to our spot and we wrap ourselves in the blankets, even though he isn’t cold. ‘After what happened with Lumin,’ I whisper, ‘Porter put me on a new project working with the cameras. I haven’t figured the whole thing out yet – but what I have done is reconfigure my thinkwatch so that I can stand in front of the cameras and they aren’t able to recognise me.’
Imrin raises his arm. ‘Isn’t mine going to give us away?’
‘As long as you are close to me, mine overrides it because it works on a stronger frequency. I found the information on the system.’
‘So what does that mean?’
I point to the blank areas of the map we haven’t figured out yet. ‘The thinkwatch gives me ninety seconds before the camera resets itself.’
‘Can you use the ninety seconds over and over?’
‘Not quite, I tried it with the camera directly outside the lab. I get the ninety seconds, then the light starts blinking. I tried it a second time and got around a minute before it reset itself again. I’ve been going through the camera logs over the last couple of days and it looks like they’re on twelve-hour cycles.’
‘So you can get a ninety-second window and then something like another sixty seconds, then you can’t do anything for twelve hours?’
‘Exactly, after that anything I’ve managed to reconfigure is overridden by the original system. It’s not amazing but it’s better than the position we were in yesterday.’
‘Well … not quite …’
I can see Imrin’s cheeky grin in the faint light through the door and pinch him on the arm.
‘Do you want to go exploring?’ I ask, feeling my own heart beating. It feels rebellious and exciting. Exactly what I shouldn’t be doing but perhaps that is why I’m so thrilled.
‘Where?’
‘If we turn right out of the corridor, I’ve used up one of my goes on that first camera. We could go that way but we wouldn’t be able to get back – so let’s go left. If we’re careful not to pass any camera twice, we will be able to trace our route back.’
‘There could be anyone out walking around …’
‘I thought you said last night there were no guards?’
I’m teasing but Imrin squirms. ‘I know, but …’
‘We’ve got ninety seconds a camera, so we can go slowly and listen out for anything. We don’t have to go far; I just want to do … something.’
Imrin seems torn but he eventually agrees and, before I know it, we are creeping along the corridor, listening for the merest of creaks and watching every red camera light to make sure it doesn’t blink while I keep a steady eye on my thinkwatch. We whisper to each other about the individual cameras, memorising where they are so we can add them to Imrin’s map.
On this floor, there is only one relatively small area we do not know – the area where the Minister Prime’s office is. I had the slightest glimpse when I first encountered Hart, but have not returned since because of the two recording devices above the only corridor leading to the office.
We quicken our pace as we grow in confidence. No one is around, which only supports Imrin’s thinking that there are a lot fewer people here than we’ve come to think.
There are plenty of doors around the Minister Prime’s offices, all of them closed, but with various names on the front such as ‘Deputy Minister’, ‘Home Affairs Minister’, ‘Foreign Affairs Minister’ and ‘Defence Minister’. We ignore them all and pass the place where I ran into Hart until we reach a door at the very end of the corridor. I feel my heart start to race again as I spot a scanner identical to the one next to the entrance stairwell which led to the train platform. I take the borodron out of my pocket and check my thinkwatch. ‘We’ve got forty seconds – in or out?’
‘There could be anyone inside.’
‘Or there could be more stairs that lead outside. We’re never going to know if we don’t look.’
Imrin stares at me and then the door. I can feel his indecision but somehow I know there is nobody waiting for us, the same way I knew there wouldn’t be anyone on the stairs. I press the material against the scanner and step back as it swishes into the air.
I pull Imrin inside and the door slides into place behind us. I check for a camera, but there is nothing except white walls, stretching many metres away from us.
I turn my attention to the rest of the room but Imrin says it before I can: ‘Wow …’
The three letters can barely describe the wonder as I turn a full circle taking in the entire spectacle. It is the most amazing room I have ever seen; fixed to all four walls are rows of glass-fronted tanks filled with animals of all shapes and sizes. A few I recognise; small dogs, cats and mice, but most I don’t.
Imrin pulls me towards the nearest enclosure and we stand in silence watching small green and brown creatures hop across mulched pieces of wood scattered around a pool of water. There is a sheet of glass that means we cannot touch or hear anything but the animals are fascinating, their bulging eyes totally out of proportion to their bodies.
‘What are they?’ I ask, not expecting an answer.
‘They’re called frogs,’ Imrin says. ‘Haven’t you ever seen them before?’
‘No.’
‘I guess if your lake is dried up, you wouldn’t have done. They live around water. We have them around the farm – although I’ve not seen ones this bright. The ones at home are darker.’
I watch them hopping around almost hypnotically in the artificial light before Imrin pulls me towards the next tank. ‘What are they?’ I ask.
‘Tortoises.’
‘Do you have them too?’
Imrin shakes his head. ‘No, but I’ve read about them in this old book we’ve got. It’s about a race between one of these and a hare. Do you know what one of those is?’
‘They’re like rabbits. We used to chase and catch them in the woods outside Martindale when we were hungry.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
I realise my mistake. Imrin isn’t asking because he’s particularly suspicious, he’s just interested. I try to think quickly but blurt out the only name other than Opie’s I can think of. ‘Colt.’
‘Oh, your brother?’
‘Yes.’ I hastily try to change the subject. ‘I can’t see how one of those could beat a hare in a race. A hare is really quick – he doesn’t look as if he’s moving.’
Imrin laughs slightly as the tortoise plods across a patch of mottled grass and twigs. It is around the size of my palm with a rounded dome shell and I struggle not to giggle as it looks as if it is smiling.
‘It is supposed to be a lesson about not rushing into something. My mum would read it to me and my sisters when we were younger. The hare tears off but gets tired and over-confident, so it stops for a sleep. The tortoise is a lot slower but it keeps plodding away and wins.’
I’ve never heard the story and I’m not completely convinced. ‘What distance were they racing over?’
Imrin laughs and I feel slightly inferior to him. ‘I don’t think that’s the point,’ he says, smiling. The tortoise stamps around its enclosure tearing various leaves from the twigs and merrily chewing away.
The rest of the room is fascinating. Imrin knows almost all of the creatures. He tells me about iguanas, geckos, canaries, parrots and other creatures I have no knowledge of. I’m fascinated by the fish. There are other creatures I do recognise as we make our way around, although the hedgehogs and squirrels seem somewhat strange when they aren’t out in the open.
‘It must be someone’s job to feed them all,’ Imrin says, checking his thinkwatch.
It isn’t a subtle hint but I take it anyway, making one final stop by the tortoise to see how far it has moved. It is sleeping with its arms and legs inside the shell and a small snout sticking out of the front part. I run my fingers around the enclosure wondering how someone gets in and out. At the top is a catch that looks like a much smaller version of the scanner I swiped to get in but it is a darker colour. For a moment, I think about pressing the borodron into it to see what will happen but I feel Imrin staring disapprovingly at me.
‘Not now,’ he whispers loud enough for me to hear, before I join him by the door.
It doesn’t take long for us to retrace our route back to the corridor and I spend a few minutes helping Imrin fill in the blank spots on his map with our new knowledge of the cameras, passages and the zoo, as he has christened it. Aside from the offices we ignored, our knowledge of this floor is complete – although the other major areas will be trickier to map: the medical area, dungeons and the King’s quarters.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ I ask, as Imrin says goodnight.
‘Not as much as you.’
‘It was fun – we should go out again tomorrow.’
‘Where are we going to go?’
‘I’m not sure, downstairs? Perhaps we can see how close we can get to the medical wing?’
Imrin looks at me in a way I’ve not see before, as if he is slightly scared. He certainly has doubts about something. ‘Do you remember the hare and the tortoise?’
‘Your story?’
‘Yes. We need to be the tortoise.’
Imrin kisses me on the forehead and then he is gone. For a few minutes, I sit under the blankets thinking about what he is saying. I understand it completely – keep doing what we’re doing and wait for an opportunity, rather than rushing into something recklessly. In his story, Lumin is the hare and we’re the tortoise, but then we are only ever one King’s bad mood away from being forced into something that could potentially see us thrown out of whatever race Imrin thinks we are in altogether.
I am torn between believing he is right and being angry at him for not wanting to get us out of here quickly enough. The fact we have no plan, except trying to figure out where an exit passage might be, is something I am almost trying to forget in the excitement of thinking I have got somewhere with my camera trick.
I throw the blankets off and hurriedly make my way back to the girls’ bedroom, tracing the rough surface of the wall with my hand. By now I know every bump and nook, but I am so focused on Imrin’s final words that I have already tripped and fallen to the floor with a painful crunch of my wrist before I realise there is something on the ground close to the exit.
As I try to disentangle my legs from whatever it is, I shriek with surprise as Pietra’s voice hisses through the darkness.