Page 49 of Out of the Blue
There are a dozen ways this could play out. The scenarios flash through my mind, each one ending with more of those deep-purple bruises on Leah’s arms – but before I can put any of them into words, a door above us slams open and footsteps creak across the metal walkway. Leah blanches and scurries away.
‘Leah?’ says a voice, a man with a Glaswegian accent. ‘What’s this about?’
He walks slowly down the stairs: I recognize his strawberry-blond hair and cauliflower ears from the video of their last display. The stocky, bearded man in charge of the Edinburgh chapter comes next, with Mrs Maclennan close behind them.
‘Come on, then!’ says the Glasgow leader. ‘We’ve no got all day.’
‘I need to show you something.’ Leah’s entire body is trembling, but she manages to keep her voice steady. ‘Downstairs. Please. It’s about . . . It’s about the Being.’
The three adults blink in surprise. Right then, my phone buzzes. My heart leaps, but the noise is muffled inside my pocket.
‘Show us,’ the man snaps at Leah. ‘Now!’
She nods and shuffles towards the staircase, both men and her mother following in rushed steps. Allie and I shrink back behind the pillar, but Leah’s gaze flits towards us as she turns on to the stairs. That sudden flare of the old Leah has already faded – she looks so scared now, so fragile – but she leads them downstairs and away from us.
As soon we hear the door close, I grab Allie’s hand and hurry upstairs towards the control room marked on Leah’s map. The door is unlocked, but it’s pitch black inside. I take out my phone and switch on the torch. The room is a large oval, its walls lined with bright green control panels covered in complex buttons and gauges and levers. In the middle of the space, tied to a computer chair, is Teacake.
Relief explodes on to her face when she sees us. Her cheeks are streaked with tears, and there’s a smear of metallic blood across the right side of her jaw. She begins babbling, a mix of our own words and ones snatched from the radio. ‘Thundery showers, moderate or – Calum, what are you – so don’t feel guilty, OK? – every little helps –’
Her wings are strapped together so tight some of Allie’s carefully stitched feathers are coming loose. Her arms have been pushed behind her back, and her ankles are tied to the base of the chair. I rush forward, gently shushing her, but she keeps babbling, her words tangled in her panic. Just as Allie starts to undo the knots, there’s a sound from outside: footsteps creaking on the metal stairway.
They’re coming.
It’s only been a couple of minutes. I feel a sickly blast of fear for what that means for Leah. Allie’s fingers grapple at the ropes, but I put a hand out to stop her.
‘If we untie her, they’ll know we’ve been here. We need to hide.’
There’s a space opposite, leading behind some of the switchboards. One of them has a metal panel missing from the back – cables and wires sprawl out from it like guts, but I push them back to make space for us to hide. I swing the light of my phone towards Allie. She’s holding Teacake’s face in her hands and is saying something, her voice quiet and slow. On the stairs, the footsteps are growing louder.
‘Allie, quickly!’
‘I’m coming.’ She crawls through the missing panel of the switchboard. She has to pull her knees to her chest to give me enough space to sit, and I have to tilt my head so my chin is by my collarbones, but we just about fit. Behind us, Teacake keeps moaning. Allie calls to her softly.
‘Just do what I said, Tea. Remember what I said.’
Before I can ask what she means, voices coming floating along the walkway. I switch the torch off on my phone and drop it into my lap. The door opens, smacking against the wall with a bang.
‘. . . too much of a coincidence,’ the Glasgow leader is saying. ‘We find the thing, and then the girl claims to know something about it? There has to be something in it. We should interrogate her.’
‘She doesn’t know anything, Ross.’ The Edinburgh leader’s voice, loud and so close it sets my nerves alight. ‘I don’t know what she’s playing at. We’ll discipline her once this is all over, find out what she’s up to.’
He clicks a button, and a beam of light sweeps across the room. The leaders fall into silence. There’s a dull groan of plastic on tiles as Teacake shifts in her chair. I can feel Allie’s breath on my shoulder, shallow and warm. My pulse is so loud I’m amazed they can’t hear it.
‘Jesus Christ. I still can’t believe this.’ A light scratching sound, followed by a whimper from Teacake. I picture the Edinburgh leader running a finger over her face, touching her wings, and my chest tightens with anger.
‘We need to make a decision,’ he says. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is.’
Ross grunts in agreement. ‘Aye. It’s gonnae get out of hand if the followers catch wind of this.’
They’re divided. Ross is torn between contacting ‘administration’ to tell them about Teacake – ‘the thing’, as he calls her – and selling her to a research centre, splitting the reward between them. For a while, the Edinburgh leader, Damien, keeps quiet, listening to Ross talk through their different options. But then footsteps move across the room. There’s another long moment of silence, broken only by a tiny whimper from Teacake.
‘We should destroy it,’ Damien says. ‘Break its wings. Throw it off the roof.’
The beam of light sweeps from right to left.
‘Are you mad? If administration finds out we had a Being andkilledit—’
‘Administration are crooks. They’re frauds,’ Damien says. ‘If we tell them, they’ll just ship it off to America for testing anyway. We won’t see a penny of it.’
