‘You go,’ Arthur groaned. ‘I don’t think I can march that far.’
‘Yes, you can,’ said Fred. He removed Arthur’s hand and pushed on his shoulders to turn him around. ‘Do you good. Bit of a stretch.’
Arthur groaned and tried to turn back towards the beds, but Fred nudged him onward.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Arthur. He shook his head to try and clear it. ‘Let’s go, then. By the left, quiiiiiick march!’
This time, with Arthur carefully giving the command, they managed to halt properly. After a nervous look around for a jack-in-the-box sergeant, they studied the schedule papers on the noticeboard.
Fred was the first to notice that their names had appeared, all on their own, under a single heading on a separate piece of paper.
‘Oh, no,’ he said, tapping his finger on the paper. ‘That is really bad luck.’
Arthur read the notice. In his weary state it took him several seconds to even focus on the words and they didn’t mean anything to him.
Recruits R Green and F Gold report to Bathroom Attendants in Administration Building Blue at 0600. ‘What’s bad about that?’
Fred looked at him, his eyes wide in disbelief. ‘Bathroom Attendants, Ray. From the Upper House.’
Arthur still looked puzzled.
‘Cleaning between the ears, Ray! They’re here to clean between our ears! Tomorrow morning!’
Ten
LEAF HESITATED IN the corridor, uncertain whether to go back to the fire stairs or explore more of the Lower Ground Three floor. She had no time to think, but through the cracked lenses of her glasses the fire stairs looked ominously red-tinged, so Leaf decided to check out what was on her current level.
Clutching the box with the precious pocket in it, she hobbled off down the corridor, pushing through the swinging doors that led deeper into the hospital.
The nurse might or might not come after her, but if she didn’t, Leaf knew other mind-slaves of the Skinless Boy would. She had to find somewhere to hide and rest and work out what to do next. But that was easier said than done. Particularly since every door she tried along the corridor was locked.
Leaf forced herself to move faster, though it hurt, as her options grew more and more limited. The corridor was turning out to be like the fire stairs: if she couldn’t open any of the doors, she’d be cornered at the end.
She had a moment of relief when she saw a utility door open in the wall, with orange safety cones around it and a sign that said CAUTION WET FLOOR. But when she looked inside it was just a tiny room, not much bigger than a cupboard, with a big red vertical pipe marked FB WET RISER, whatever that was.
Finally, with the end of the corridor in sight, Leaf found a door that opened. She slid through it, then shut and locked it before even looking around. It was a laundry room, a big open area dominated by four huge washing machines on one side and four equally large driers on the other. They were all off, though there was laundry in wheelie baskets in front of them.
There was also a desk with a phone on it. As soon as Leaf saw it, she had an idea. She couldn’t think of what to do next, but she could phone a friend. Or, in this case, her brother, Ed. He was almost never without his mobile phone, and since he’d been recovering from the Sleepy Plague he’d been sitting up there in quarantine messaging his friends.
Leaf picked up the phone and dialed. She could hear her brother’s phone ringing, but he didn’t pick up right away.
‘Come on!’ Leaf urged. She couldn’t believe she was going to get diverted to voice mail.
‘Hello?’
‘Ed, it’s me, Leaf.’
‘Leaf? Where are you? Mum and Dad are going crazy in here!’
‘I’m in the hospital, downstairs. Look, this is going to sound weird, but I’ve been somewhere else … I mean like a whole other planet … with Arthur Penhaligon. It’s complicated, but there’s an enemy of his here and it’s trying to get me and I’ve got to get out –’
‘Leaf! Have you hit your head or something?’
‘Well, yes … but no! I know it sounds strange. Remember the dog-faces we saw?’
‘Yeah …’
‘They’re part of it. And this new bioweapon, the Greyspot thing. That’s part of it too. Oh, and the Arthur that’s here now isn’t the real Arthur. I don’t suppose he … it … will get into the closed quarantine areas, but if it does, don’t let it touch you. Not even a handshake or anything.’
‘Leaf, you’re freaking me out! What do I tell Mum and Dad? They thought you must have been hurt in that water explosion and no one’s found you yet.’
‘What water explosion?’
‘On the fifth floor. Some kind of big pipe called a firefighting riser exploded and flooded a whole bunch of rooms. It was all over the Net until this Greyspot thing.’
‘The Border Sea …’ whispered Leaf. Ed had to be talking about the wave that had carried her and Arthur and his bed out of this Secondary Realm.
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Leaf quickly covered. ‘I need to work out some way of getting out of the hospital. Past the quarantine line.’
‘Leaf! They’ll shoot you! Just … I don’t know … relax. You sound really stressed out.’
‘I am stressed out! Look, can you think of anything or not? I haven’t got much time.’
‘Hang on, Dad wants to talk to you –’
‘Leaf?’
Leaf’s father sounded very anxious.
‘Dad, look, I know it sounds weird, but I’m caught up in something –’
‘Leaf, we’re just relieved to hear from you. Stay where you are, and stay on the phone. I’ll arrange for the police to come to you –’
‘Dad, I don’t need the police. This isn’t … it’s not something … look, I can’t explain. Love you!’
Leaf dropped the phone on its cradle, collapsed onto the chair, and pressed her fingers into her forehead. That reminded her she was still wearing the glasses. She thought about taking them off for a moment, because it was a bit distracting seeing the coloured auras. But she left them on, since they might help her see things that would help.
‘There must be some way out,’ she whispered to herself.
I can’t go out any of the main doors or the staff exits or anything like that on the ground floor. There’s no point going higher, because there’s no way out from there, unless I got picked up by a helicopter or something off the roof, and that’s not going to happen. But lower down … there are the parking lots. But those entrances will be guarded too. All the entrances for people or cars will be guarded.
The door handle suddenly rattled. Leaf jumped in her seat. She heard male voices on the other side and tensed, waiting for the door to be unlocked or broken down.
‘Locked,’ she heard a man say. ‘Try the next one.’
Leaf listened intently. She heard footsteps, then someone else talking, though she couldn’t make out the words. Then more footsteps, going away.
The search had begun. It could be either hospital security, catching her on a surveillance camera, or mind-slaves of the Skinless Boy. Or they could be both, Leaf realised.
I can’t go out at ground level. No point going up. But there must be other ways out. A laundry chute …
Leaf got up and carefully looked around, but there was only the door she’d come in. Still, an idea lurked at the back of her mind. She just couldn’t tease it out of her bruised and numbed head. Something had flashed up when she was talking to Ed …
The fire-fighting riser that burst. FB Wet Riser. The big red pipe. Caution wet floor. Maybe the pipe went somewhere …
Leaf went to the door, listened, opened it, and slid out into the corridor. There was no one visible on this side of the swing doors. Quickly she ran to the utility door and went in, shutting it after her.
She had only just started to inspect the pipe when she heard running footsteps move past her, then a man shouting.
‘She’s in 3G104 – she called from there two minutes ago!’
Leaf turned to the pipe again. It was only a few inches wider in diameter than her shoulders and extended through the floor and the ceiling. At first it looked like there was no way in, but when Leaf walked around, she found a panel had been unbolted from the back, the eight nuts laid out neatly on the floor. There was a long wrench next to them and an open lunch box next to it, with a half-eaten sandwich and an apple indicating the workers had been forced to leave quickly, presumably to join everyone else waiting upstairs.
Leaf looked inside the pipe. There were beads of moisture all over the steel lining, but it wasn’t full of water. Looking up, she could see that other panels had been removed, and cold white fluorescent light was shining in.
Looking down, it was dark and the pipe was blocked. But as Leaf’s eyes adjusted, she saw that the blockage was a big box mounted on a swivelling ring that had little wheels all around its edge. The box had probe-arms that touched the sides of the pipe, and there were warning stickers on it that Leaf couldn’t quite make out in the dim light.
It was some sort of remote-controlled device for inspecting the pipe. It had electric motors too, driving the four biggest wheels, as well as a whole bunch of electrical and other cables hanging below it.
‘Not here!’ shouted the voice down the corridor. ‘Check all the rooms.’
Leaf hesitated, tucked the box with the pocket into her waistband, and wriggled into the pipe, standing on the inspection unit. It rocked within its ring, then started to slowly slide down into darkness, taking Leaf with it.
Alone, pressed in on all sides, accompanied only by the sound of her beating heart and the faint whir of the inspection unit’s wheels, Leaf felt the sides of the pipe get wetter and wetter, triggering an instant of total panic.
What if there is water down below, and I go straight into it?
Rational thought fled. Leaf clawed the sides of the pipe and pressed her back against the metal, trying to slow her descent. But the metal was too water-slick, and the inspection unit kept going down, taking Leaf with it.
A light swept down from above. Leaf looked up, but the flashlight beam fell short of her.
‘Nothing!’
The guard’s voice echoed down the pipe, from at least fifty feet above. Leaf stared up at the light, choked with panic, desperately trying to draw a breath so she could scream for help, fear now overriding her desire to escape with the pocket.
The scream suddenly became a stifled grunt as a dim red light spilled in from the side. Leaf just had time to throw herself against an open inspection port and grab hold of the lip before the wheeled unit continued on its way down.
As Leaf hung there panting, she heard a splash below and then a glug-glug-glug as the inspection unit continued down the riser, into deep water.
Two seconds later, the weary but relieved girl pulled herself up and slithered out onto the floor of a narrow tunnel filled with pipes, cables, and all the other circulatory systems of a major modern building. She lay there for several minutes, gathering her strength, then sat up and looked around.
As above, the inspection panel here had been unbolted. In this case the nuts had been put in a plastic bag taped to the panel.
The tunnel stretched off as far as she could see to the left and right, but that wasn’t far, because there were only the small, dim red lights in the ceiling every fifteen yards or so. It was also extremely cluttered, with only just enough space between all the pipes and cables for a small adult to crawl along.
That was plenty of room for Leaf. She chose a direction at random, checked that she still had the box with the pocket, and started crawling.
Eleven
‘ I CAN’T LET them wash me between the ears,’ said Arthur.
‘There’s not much choice,’ said Fred gloomily.
‘Even if you hide, they always find you. We’d better start getting ready.’
‘There must be a way to avoid it,’ Arthur insisted.
‘And what do you mean “start getting ready”?’
‘Start writing down the important stuff,’ said Fred.
‘You know, name, friends, favourite colour. Sometimes it’s enough to bring some memories back. Of course, if we had some silver coins and some salt …’
‘We could even forget our names?’ In Arthur’s weary state it was only just beginning to hit home that cleaning between the ears could be even worse than he’d thought. He’d been worried about forgetting some details about his life on Earth, or his family, or the Morrow Days and the Keys … not that he might entirely forget who he was.
‘You must have been cleaned quite recently if you can’t even remember that,’ said Fred. ‘If they do a complete job you’ll forget everything about yourself. And they don’t care if you were only done yesterday, they just do you again.’
‘What was that about silver coins and salt?’
‘A silver coin under the tongue is supposed to help resist the washing,’ said Fred. ‘And salt in the nose. But we’ve got neither, so we’d better start writing. I really hope I don’t forget how to read this time. It’s going to set back our training too. I’ll never make general if I get washed between the ears too often. Come on.’
He marched back to the beds, Arthur following more slowly and out of step. But no NCOs appeared to berate him. As far as he could tell, it was the middle of the night and their appointed wake-up time would be in only three or four hours.
Despite his weariness, Arthur followed Fred’s lead and got out a service notebook and scarlet pencil with the platoon name on it in gold type. But while Fred wrote busily, Arthur wondered about what he should put down. If he wrote his real name and other important stuff, someone might see it.