Furnace 3 - Death Sentence (20 page)

Like frightened rabbits in their burrows, inmates began to emerge from the rooms around the yard. One – the same kid who had given me the canister – ran right towards me, but the nectar in my blood was still raging and I stopped him dead with a guttural snarl. He watched me, they all watched me, with wide eyes and open mouths.

I could feel the warden’s poison urging me to attack, calling on me to finish the job that the berserkers had started. I was a Soldier of Furnace too, after all. It was my duty to obey the warden, to obey the nectar. And it would be so easy, the figures before me nothing but insects in the face of my wrath. The thought brought down that crimson cloud again and I was charging forward before I even knew it.

Then the voice began to speak, a whisper from the deepest recesses of my brain –
You are Alex Sawyer. You
are one of them. You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them
– the mantra barely audible but repeated again and again and again until it filled my head.

I clamped my hands over my ears and howled to try and mute the voice, but it didn’t give up, cutting through the nectar, cutting through my anger, cutting through the darkness.

You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them. You are Alex
Sawyer. You are one of them.

The two sides of my mind were waging a war just as
ferocious as the one that I had been fighting seconds ago, the conflict threatening to tear my soul in half. I was Alex Sawyer and yet at the same time I wasn’t, I could never be that kid again. I wasn’t him, and I wasn’t a blacksuit. I wasn’t human, and I wasn’t strong enough to be anything else either. I was nothing. I was
nothing
.

I ran for the stairs, heading for the upper levels, for the only thing that would end the madness in my head once and for all.

THE ONLY WAY OUT

I barely even looked where I was walking, focusing just enough to stop myself tripping up the stairs. Behind me, from the yard, I could hear people calling out a name,
my name
, telling me to wait, but I wasn’t listening. The pain in my head was too much to bear, the nectar and the voice like artillery shells pounding seven shades out of each other in the battlefield of my brain.

I knew now how to escape it, how to escape Furnace. A few seconds of free fall, then oblivion, freedom. If I didn’t end it here then there was no telling what I would become, what I would do.

I don’t know what made me stop. I reached the top of a set of stairs and peered along the landing, the view the same as every other level in Furnace but somehow different. I glanced down into the yard, now swarming with bodies in white overalls, and realised I was six floors up. Something made me let go of the banister, walk down the platform, until I came to a halt outside a cell.

There was nothing inside but a set of bunks and a toilet, and with the war still raging in my head I
entered and sat on the lower mattress, the frame bending under my weight. My eyes roved around the tiny room, seeing the fingernail marks on the wall, smelling the residue of gas that seeped up through the sheet, peering out of the bars at a view which was somehow so familiar.

This had been my cell, so long ago that it seemed like a different life.

The nectar did its best to blot out the memories, coating them in coiled tendrils of smoke. But being here gave the voice strength, and each time it spoke –
You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them
– the warden’s poison seemed to ease its grip a little more.

I saw a face drop down from the mattress above, blossoming into a smile so big that it seemed to fill the cell with light.

You still here?
said Donovan, the hallucination flickering like film from a damaged projector. The nectar surged up my throat, carrying with it another animal growl, but it possessed none of the strength it had before. I closed my eyes, Donovan’s smile imprinted on my retinas like the sun. Past its glow I could still see the cell, filled with boys – D, Zee, Toby and me – laughing as we smuggled our gas-filled gloves beneath the mattress, as we planned our escape, as we talked about our plans for the outside.

I haven’t forgotten about that burger
, said Donovan’s voice.
You better eat that thing for me, kid.

‘I will,’ I said, my words chasing the last of the poison from my system. ‘I promise.’

I opened my eyes. Donovan’s face had dissipated into
thin air, but there were two boys standing nervously in the doorway of the cell, drenched in red light. Zee took a step forward but Simon held him back, his wary eyes never leaving mine. I smiled at them, doing my best not to make it a blacksuit’s grimace.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I won’t bite.’

This time both boys burst in, Simon sitting on the mattress next to me and gently poking the gaping wounds in my side, already sealed with clotted blood. Zee stood by the wall, wiping a tear from his eye. He opened his mouth, but it was like a million different things were trying to come out at once, the tangled words more sobs than sentence. He stopped, took a deep breath, tried again.

‘You okay?’ he waited for me to nod, then,‘Man, that was awesome, you totally owned those things.’

‘When you made that fat one explode,’ said Simon. ‘Hell, that was just genius.’

‘Yeah, thanks for the gas,’ I said to Zee.

‘Any time,’ he replied. ‘I thought you were gonna kill me, though. Your eyes, they looked just like a blacksuit’s. You looked seriously pissed.’

‘It was the nectar,’ I explained. ‘Simon injected me with another dose. It was the only thing we could do.’

Zee started to say something but he was cut off by a chorus of shouts from the yard below. I eased myself off the bed, walking out of the cell to the railing, praying that the berserker hadn’t reappeared. The inmates were gathered around the elevator doors, their cries more of excitement than of fear.

‘We should go see what they’re doing,’ said Zee, walking towards the stairs.

‘I thought you were going to jump,’ Simon said before I could follow. ‘How did you fight the nectar? What brought you back?’

I looked into the cell, at the top bunk. It was empty, the sheets stripped, but I could still see Donovan there, legs dangling over the side, watching us go with a sad smile.

‘Come on,’ I said, turning away before the lump in my throat dissolved into tears. ‘We’re not out yet.’

I thought it would take a while to fight through the crowd, but as soon as the prisoners saw me in their midst they backed off without question, parting like the Red Sea all the way to the elevator doors. I assumed it was fear which sent them skittering away, then I saw that most were smiling, their eyes awe-filled, some even murmuring their thanks in quiet tones.

From outside, the elevator looked like a write-off, the doors gone, the floor dented, a gaping hole in the ceiling. The berserkers had punched through one corner of the cabin like it was aluminium foil. They had ripped the machine gun from its mount, bending it into the barely recognisable hunk of metal that now lay forgotten against the rear wall.

Through the splintered gap I saw the elevator shaft stretching upwards to infinity, no sign of life other than the handful of inmates who stood on the roof. Bodie
was one of them, and when he saw me enter he stuck his head down through the hole.

‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Looks like Furnace’s pets have given us a clear route to freedom.’

‘No way,’ said Zee, following me in. ‘You kidding me?’

Simon pushed past us, using his bigger arm to haul himself up through the hole. Bodie made way for him, ushering for us to follow. I grabbed the broken ceiling, doing my best to forget about my aches and pains as I hefted my weight onto the roof. It was as black as solitary up here, but my eyes picked out every detail in silver light – the metal scaffold that held the counterweights, the power cords, and the massive steel traction cables which connected the elevator to the surface.

‘Don’t forget about little old me,’ yelled Zee, his voice tinny. I ducked back in, offered him my hand, surprised at how little effort it took to pull him up. He snatched a startled breath as he found his balance. ‘Jesus it’s cold in here.’

It was, and we all knew why. Dropping down the shaft from a mile above our heads was a current of cool, fresh air. We stood in silence for a minute or so, all of us breathing it in and grinning as though we could see up past the rock, past the Black Fort, to the rain-drenched world outside.

‘Man, that feels good,’ said Bodie. ‘Think we can all climb it?’

‘We might not need to,’ said Simon. He was standing over the reinforced bolts which connected the cables to the car. From what I could see everything looked intact,
the berserkers having broken through close to the edge of the roof. Not that I knew the first thing about elevators. ‘Don’t see no damage.’

Before anyone could answer we heard a thump from way over our heads, panic driving us back through the hole so rapidly that we almost crushed each other. We peered up from the relative safety of the cabin, the source of the noise invisible.

‘Like I said,’ repeated Simon, his pulse so hard that I could hear it in his voice. ‘Those cables look like they’re all intact. Elevator might still run.’

‘Yeah, but the doors are screwed,’ said Bodie. ‘You think this thing will go without ’em?’

‘Not to mention the controls are up top,’ Zee added. ‘Someone’s gotta get up there first.’

‘I’ll do it.’

Both Simon and I had spoken the same words at exactly the same time. We laughed at each other, the sound filtering through the hole and echoing up the lift shaft like it was making a break for freedom without us.

‘The hell you will,’ said Zee. ‘You think you get to be the heroes again ’cos you’ve got the muscles? I can climb just as well as you.’

‘With those twigs you call arms?’ Simon replied. ‘You can’t even see where you’re going. You’d make it five metres, maybe ten.’

‘First round of fries up top says I beat you,’ he said. ‘Not that I’ve got any money on me.’

This time we all giggled, the oxygen blasting down the shaft like a drug, making us giddy. We didn’t care
about the tang of dust and oil, or the reek of the berserker which had pulled itself back up to the surface. All we could smell was freedom.

‘We all go,’ I said, turning to Bodie. ‘When we get to the top –’

‘
If
,’ interrupted Simon.

‘
When
we get to the top, we’ll pull up the elevator. Make sure you clear the wreckage from around the doors, and fill it with as many kids as you can. With any luck we can bring everyone up in a few trips.’

‘No doubt,’ he said, nodding. ‘We don’t hear from you in a few hours, then we’ll send up another group.’

‘How you gonna know when a few hours is over?’ asked Simon. Bodie shrugged.

‘Just be safe,’ he said. ‘And don’t get so carried away by escape that you forget to press the call button, you hear me? We all counting on you down here.’

I nodded, and moved to climb back through the hole before turning instead to stare out of the elevator doors. The sea of faces gathered outside reminded me of the day I’d arrived here, the first time I’d stepped from these very doors into the yard. The memory rushed back, bitter-sweet – the fear and the anger, then the hope when I saw Donovan’s smile. He’d been the only reason I didn’t jump on my first day, and the only reason I didn’t jump on my last. He’d once told me that he wasn’t my guardian angel, but he was, and once again I found myself missing him like a part of myself.

Stop being such a wuss
. I heard his voice, knew it was my imagination but at the same time hoped that if
there was anything left of him he was making this break with us.
Get your ass up to the surface!

‘Yes, sir,’ I said under my breath. I took one last look at Furnace Penitentiary, still lit by the blood lights and the dying embers of the fire, like it was being bled dry. I guess it was, the inmates that kept its dark heart beating about to flood from its main artery, reducing the prison to a husk.

My eyes glided across the yard, over the doors to the trough room, the showers, the chipping halls, up the stairs and past the cells. Every scrap of stone, every rusted knot of iron, every bruised shadow, carried with it a charge of memory and emotion so powerful that it knocked the air from my lungs. I knew without doubt that I would never see this place again. Even if I was caught, I would die before I came back.

‘We beat you,’ I said, addressing the walls, the cells, the air, and the warden, who was probably still watching us through his cameras. ‘We beat you good, you bastard.’

Then, with Bodie and the Skulls wishing us luck, telling us again not to forget them, I followed Simon and Zee through the roof into the cool, dark shaft.