Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(71)
‘Better?’ the Equal asked. ‘You’re not going to like this next bit so much.’
He didn’t.
They’d all heard horror stories at school, or told them to one another late at night on camping trips when the adults were sleeping in another tent. The tales had always made Luke’s flesh creep. Stories of people who woke up in the middle of operations, but were too paralyzed to raise the alarm. Backpackers who went drinking in beach bars, then came to in a bath of ice minus some vital organs. Sicko scientists who’d experimented on living, conscious prisoners during wartime.
The violation felt that deep. Like those cool fingers were inside his body – inside his soul, the existence of which Luke had never given much thought to until now. They were carefully sorting through bits of him that no other person was ever meant to see or know. He was sure he was going to throw up. He probably wasn’t close enough to spatter the Equal’s boots, but he’d try.
‘Interesting,’ the freak said, in a way that even Luke could tell meant no good to anyone, least of all himself. ‘I wonder . . .’
The boy’s eyes closed. But before Luke could experience any relief at being spared that unnerving gaze, he felt himself somehow . . . come loose. It was as if he was an engine still assembled, but with every part unscrewed.
He felt the Equal reach in and take something out of him.
Or add something? Had a new part been placed deep inside, where he’d never been aware that anything was missing? Something so essential it was impossible he had functioned without it?
He couldn’t tell. And then the intrusion was gone and Luke curled into a ball on the hard-frozen ground. He gagged on his fear and let it spew all over the tree roots. The Equal just stood there watching.
‘Finished?’ the boy said, without a scrap of solicitude, when Luke was wiping his mouth with the back of his bound hands.
Luke wasn’t going to dignify that with a reply. He knew only that he hated this freak. Hated him with a passion. No one should be able to do whatever this boy had just done to him. It was obscene that such people existed.
‘Anyway,’ the Equal continued, as if they’d been talking about the cricket scores or last night’s telly. ‘My brother will be over in a minute for all the usual “Welcome to Kyneston” blah.’
Kyneston.
This wasn’t a Security detention facility. Not a lifer camp. It was the estate where his family lived.
The relief was so intense that Luke couldn’t hold back the tears. He ducked his head, not wanting the Equal to see, and scrubbed his cheeks with the sleeve of his boilersuit.
‘How am I here?’ he asked, when he’d pulled himself together.
The freak shrugged.
‘Thank your sister Daisy. Gavar’s taken a shine to her. When we heard there’d been more trouble in the slavetown and he was going back, she begged him to get you out. Gavar is my older brother,’ the boy clarified. ‘I think you were in the audience for his little performance in Millmoor.’
Gavar Jardine.
The Equal who’d blown up the prison after they’d freed Oz. Who had inflicted agony on hundreds of people like it was nothing at all. That same Gavar Jardine had spirited Luke out of Millmoor – because Daisy asked him to?
Luke shook his head, uncomprehending.
‘Looks like Gavar’s idea of a plan involved blunt force and a delivery van,’ the boy continued, smirking. ‘Seems about right. I’m sure Jenner will tell you all about it. I’m done here. For now.’
He walked off towards what Luke realized must be the estate gate. The light flared again and Luke heard the murmur of voices. Then one set of hooves faded away at a trot and the other came slowly towards him, accompanied by a beam of torchlight.
Normal torchlight, not freaky magical light.
‘You must be Luke Hadley,’ said another posh voice, which turned out to belong to a guy cursed with both red hair and superabundant freckles. He was leading a horse that snorted in the icy air. ‘I’m Jenner Jardine. I do apologize for all that. It’s not pleasant, but it is necessary. Welcome to Kyneston. I’ll take you to your family; they’re going to be so glad to see you.’
Jenner pulled out a penknife and sawed through Luke’s bonds, then passed him the blanket, which Luke wrapped round his shoulders like a poncho. The Equal led the way through a huge fancy gate, all twirls and swirls and lit up like a Christmas tree, which was set into a faintly glowing wall.
After that, they walked across what felt like mile after mile of countryside. A vast area of England hidden from the common people, who would never walk here or even see this place. It was theft, really, Luke thought. Theft of something that should belong to everyone, locked up for the enjoyment of a few.
They skirted the edge of a wood, and Luke ducked and swore as a bat flew straight at him. Jenner laughed, though not unkindly, and explained that the creatures used the treeline to navigate. From somewhere far off came a chilling shriek, which Jenner said was an owl. Things rustled among the trees. Foxes? Or maybe weasels? It seemed like everything here was busy hunting everything else: the animals with wings and claws going after the animals with neither.
How appropriate.
They eventually arrived at a row of small cottages, all built in stone and neatly whitewashed, bright in the moonlight. It was ridiculously twee. Mum must love it.
Jenner hammered on the door and after a few moments Dad opened it, a dressing gown hanging off his shoulders. Dad did a double-take and pulled Luke into his arms for a neck-cracking, back-thumping man-hug, then Mum and the girls crowded out the doorway. Briefly, brilliantly, Luke forgot that anything else existed apart from his family. They all seemed safe, well, and in bits to see him again.