Fighting Pax. Robin Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ I can’t get out of my head and what eats me up inside. She wanted it.”

      “She only did that so she could find Paul! Remember how distressed she was when he became the Jack of Diamonds and disappeared. She was beside herself; she had to find her son. Why is that so impossible to understand? She sacrificed her own identity, everything she was, for her child’s sake. That’s what every mother does. How can you hold that against her? She wasn’t to know she’d become the Labella character.”

      “She didn’t have to do it. I would’ve found him.”

      “And a fat load of good you were when you eventually did. But that was then and this is now and we need to act. We’ve got to persuade Lee to take those guards of his into Mooncaster. Whether you like it or not, he’s our one and only chance to get the rest of these kids out of here alive. We’re all dead if we don’t.”

      “Then God help us.”

      The water in the bucket had iced over. Maggie cracked through it with the handle of the mop then began swabbing the bloody traces from the floor. The young refugees were not given work to do, but they were expected to keep their areas clean. Sometimes they almost wished they did have some sort of duties to keep them busy, but they never found themselves missing the minchet harvesting they’d been forced to do back in the camp.

      Maggie couldn’t understand why Lee hated Martin so much. OK, so he was a bit up himself, thought his opinions were more important than everyone else’s and slipped back into teacher mode too regularly, but hadn’t he been proven right all down the line? If the authorities back in England had taken him seriously at the start, the horror of Dancing Jax might have been averted.

      Working her way down the corridor, she didn’t notice the guards sent by Doctor Choe emerge from around the far corner. The men stared at her and exchanged glances. That girl would do. One of them opened his mouth to call out when Spencer came from the refectory to join her.

      “I’ll finish that off if you like,” he offered.

      “Nah,” she said, thanking him with a smile. “I might as well do it now. Not as if I’m missing anything.”

      “Gerald was a bit weird just now. Said we couldn’t stay here.”

      “What did he mean by that?”

      “I dunno. Something Nabi said spooked him.”

      “Oh, blimey, what else has Lee been teaching her?”

      Before Spencer could reply, the guards began to shout. The teenagers looked back at them in surprise. The men were pointing at Maggie and beckoning.

      “What’s up with them?” the girl asked.

      “They want you to clean their bit as well.”

      “But we’re not allowed over there.”

      “They just don’t want to have to do it themselves. It’s women’s work, you know.”

      The guards became impatient and started to advance down the corridor towards them.

      “Well, they can sod off,” Maggie declared through a phoney smile. “I’m not cleaning a floor I’m forbidden to walk on. The lazy, sexist buggers.”

      Spencer took the mop and bucket from her. “I’ll go,” he said. “You find Gerald and see why he was so rattled.”

      “All right, I’ll ask Nabi what she’s been saying first. She’s a right little madam that one. Her dad’s going to have his hands full when she gets older. Can’t see her being a party drone like her sister. She’ll probably be leading the revolution single-handed.”

      “It wasn’t like that,” the boy tried to tell her. “It was to do with cutting up the Shark or something.” But Maggie had already breezed back into the refectory.

      Spencer approached the guards, whistling a few bars of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme to himself. They seemed a bit put out that Maggie had gone and barked at one another.

      “I can handle a mop,” he assured them when it looked like they were about to follow her into the refectory. “It’s not gender-specific you know.”

      They regarded him for a moment then nodded and led him away. Spencer smiled to himself. With the rest of the world in chaos, it was almost funny, perhaps even comforting, to encounter this unyielding chauvinism.

      A bitter draught blew down the stone steps that led to the terrace on the left. Spencer shivered and glanced in at the last door on the right before the corridor bent sharply. This was Lee’s room. He was slouched on his bed, glaring down at the steel cuffs on his wrists. When he was in that mood, he was best left alone if you didn’t want your head bitten off. Spencer had never been the most socially adept person. Even before the Jax phenomenon, he’d been a loner at school and at home. Back in the camp, Lee had been the first to stick up for him, and accepted him and his oddball devotion to that Stetson. Spencer had never forgotten that and, as he set the bucket down, he determined to brave the boy’s temper and go talk to him – as soon as the floor was clean. After all, even if he did get his head bitten off, it was no big deal; there was no hat to put on it.

      But now the guards were shouting again.

      “All right!” he said. “I’m doing it as fast as I can. What’s the hur—?”

      Without warning, one of them snatched the mop away and threw it to the floor. The other covered the boy’s mouth with his hand. Crying out was impossible and there was no time to struggle. Startled and fearful, Spencer was dragged further into the prohibited area. Locked doors flashed by and he was hauled into the lab where Doctor Choe Soo-jin was waiting.

      “On the table,” she ordered severely.

      The guards slammed him on to the gleaming metal surface. He barely registered his surroundings, but he saw the body of the Marshal covered in the blanket and, suddenly, he understood why Gerald had been so alarmed. The shock of realisation was like a violent punch.

      “You’re not serious!” he yelled when the guard uncovered his mouth and began fastening the restraints about his wrists. “You can’t do this! You’re crazy!”

      Terrified, he began to yell at the top of his voice and twisted and kicked, hitting one of the men in the face. A brutal fist struck him in return and Spencer shouted even louder.

      “This room soundproof,” the doctor said. “No one hear you.”

      Spencer continued to fight frantically. They caught his right foot and strapped it down. Doctor Choe moved closer to check the strap was secure and he booted her in the shoulder with his left. The woman went reeling sideways. She crashed against the other table and fell across the Marshal’s corpse.

      Springing back, she snapped at the guards and they hastily buckled the other foot down.

      “Make final strap tight!” she commanded. “Then wait outside. I am not to be disturbed, by anyone or anything.”

      The last restraint was pulled under Spencer’s chin and over his throat, almost strangling him and flattening his windpipe. He choked and gasped and his cries were crushed into desperate croaks.

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