chance. Maybe somewhere right now, someone’s trying a land invasion that’s failing just as badly.’
Ewan wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘And they chose today because…’
‘Because my father must be close. He’ll have sped everything up after your break-in.’
‘And we’ve no idea how long we have,’ Ewan whispered. ‘Weeks, days, hours—’
‘Four days,’ interrupted Shannon. ‘We’ll have until midnight on the twentieth.’
Ewan stared into Shannon’s face, and found her as worried as him.
‘One year from Takeover Day,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t think your father was the sentimental type.’
‘May twentieth is his birthday. It’s pride, not sentiment.’
Ewan rolled his eyes, and restarted his walk home.
The rest of the journey passed in silence. The less they talked the faster they could move, and the more time Ewan could spend with his thoughts.
He had hoped they would be productive thoughts, but they weren’t. They were chaotic ones that cycled through his brain, growing bigger and bigger as they went. The thoughts themselves never changed: his brain repeated the exact same phrases, but said them louder each time until they became his whole universe. Grant took Oakenfold. Grant took Oakenfold. GRANT TOOK OAKENFOLD.
Over the course of his life, Ewan had tried numerous strategies to break the cycle and set his brain back on track, and the most effective one had been finding a distraction. After a childhood of being told distractions were bad, it seemed strange that they worked so well for him in times of anxiety. (Of course, adults commanding him to avoid them had only forced him to do the opposite.)
Ewan found a suitable distraction, in the form of his mentor’s face pictured in his mind’s eye. Dr Joseph McCormick, the anchoring figure of stability for Ewan and the rest of the Underdogs, who had turned him little by little from an impulse-driven violent child to someone vaguely capable of doing things well. Ewan pictured everything about McCormick: his glasses that magnified the calmness in his eyes, the hair that wore thinner on his scalp, and that warm smile that he seemed to wear no matter what mood Ewan was in. The mere image of that face in Ewan’s mind helped him to steady his breathing, and before long he could start to refocus on his long march home.
It was almost midday when he and Shannon got to the trapdoor, and a short walk through a narrow tunnel led them to the cellar entrance to Spitfire’s Rise.
Ewan let Shannon through the door first. Partly out of respect, and partly so she would not see him glancing at the Memorial Wall on his way past. The name of Charlie Coleman still looked out of place: Ewan’s old classmate and Temper Twin, with whom he had shared troubled times at Oakenfold and heroic adventures at Spitfire’s Rise, now reduced to two words on a slab of dead people’s names.
Gazing at his best friend’s name felt like staring at the sun, so Ewan distracted himself with the cellar’s other contents. Namely the weapons and combat tools on their respective shelves, and the doors to the other two underground tunnels to neighbouring houses: one which led to the room where they kept their electricity generator, and the other which led to their makeshift farm where they grew their freshest food.
As Ewan and Shannon climbed the stairs, they began to hear gasps and high-pitched voices from inside the house. Ewan had predicted his friends’ reactions well; the news about Oakenfold must have been painful for them too. But their shouts were even more panicked than he had imagined. It was not worried conversation coming from the Underdogs: it was mass hysteria. He and Shannon scrambled to the top of the stairs, and burst through the door to the living room.
The collapsed body of Dr Joseph McCormick lay on the carpet, unmoving.
Chapter 3
Throughout Ewan’s life, his first reaction to emotional hurt had always been anger. Whether it had been students setting him off, or idiot teachers asserting their authority with pointing and loud voices, anger had always been his go-to state of mind.
But with McCormick out of sight in the clinic, his anger was nowhere to be found. All he felt was fear, and lots of it.
It was barely midday, but the boys’ bedroom was packed. A crowd of people had found various excuses to be there; nobody mentioned the little fact that McCormick and Lorraine could be heard arguing through the walls of the clinic, but each person had sat themselves as close to that side of the room as possible. Presumably, on the other side of the clinic, Kate, Shannon and Gracie were doing the same in the girls’ bedroom.
‘No, Joseph,’ came a muffled yell, ‘I will not do that to you!’
Well, he’s still awake at least.
The relief when McCormick had woken up on the living room floor had nearly reduced Ewan to tears. The man had tried to get to his feet too early, and a flurry of hands had struggled to keep him upright as he stood. Ewan’s memories of what had happened next were a blur, but Lorraine had sat McCormick on the sofa and asked a bunch of questions. Most of his answers had been along the lines of ‘don’t worry, I’m fine’. At some point he had been helped up the stairs to the clinic, with a full pint of water in his hand.
McCormick did not appear to be in immediate danger, but people didn’t collapse without reason. And as Kate so often said, the worst part of any worry was not knowing the truth.
‘I don’t care about the chain of command,’ Lorraine continued, ‘and you bloody well know it. I’m the woman with the scalpel, I decide where it goes!’
Ewan was used to Lorraine being blunt and uncompromising. But this wasn’t defiance. It was fear, just like his own.
‘What’s she talking about?’ asked Thomas at his side, his little nose pushed against the wall and his voice unusually wavy by his regular chirpy standards.
Ewan shushed him. The nine-year-old’s anxiety may have been more visible, but it was no more severe than Ewan’s. Ewan was just better at pretending not to be frightened.
‘Scalpel?’ asked Raj. ‘She’s not thinking of operating, is she?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Ewan, ‘because people keep bloody talking.’
That shut everyone up.
Of all the people in the room, the lad with the Asperger’s diagnosis was the only one who knew what to do. Jack Hopper was as quiet as a dead church mouse, with one hand cupping his ear against the wall and his eyes forming their strongest expression of concentration. Once in a while he even brushed his dishevelled hair away from his ear. Every sound wave mattered.
Ewan imitated Jack’s pose, and hoped it would reveal some extra words.
‘What you’re asking is terrifying,’ Lorraine continued. ‘I can’t put it any… no, it’s not my personal fears getting in the way of the greater good! I’m not that selfish! The greatest good is keeping you alive, and cutting you open would…’
A pause, and inaudible words from McCormick.
‘Then go out there and see what they think!’ Lorraine yelled. ‘If this goes like I think it will, they’ll lose the most important figure in their lives!’
McCormick spoke again. He muttered something about ‘defeating the object’.
‘Is McCormick going to die?!’ wailed Thomas. Ewan decided it was the wrong time to shush him.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. Hardly the reassurance the boy would have wanted, but it was against Ewan’s nature to make false promises.
‘He’ll be fine, don’t