The Fandom(90)

Ash pauses to examine the markings while Nate sloshes in my direction, seizing the opportunity to grill me. ‘So what was Willy doing in that hovercraft?’

‘He’s still into me,’ I whisper. ‘The canon’s back on track. If I get myself captured by the Gems, Howard Stoneback will see I make it on to the gallows, then all that needs to happen is Willow saying his lines and . . . voila!’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Nate, we can go home tomorrow.’

His face unfolds into a massive smile, the same one he used to wear when I pushed him full force on the swings. ‘Oh my God, Violet, this is immense. OK, OK, so how do we get you captured?’

‘Well, the canon seems to come good whatever we do.’

‘So we go to the river? Where Rose and Willow were finally caught?’

‘That’s what I’m thinking. We get the Humvee from the bolthole, we bust Katie out of headquarters, we head to the river, then you and the others cross to No-man’s-land. I’ll wait for the soldiers and surrender.’

‘My God, sis, check out your balls, they’re positively gleaming.’

I grin. ‘Katniss and Tris – they’re just a couple of Girl Guides.’

Nate looks thoughtful. ‘Is there time? Maybe Katie and I should find another hiding place?’

‘No-man’s-land is the safest place. If we hurry, you can easily cross the river before the soldiers arrive – we just need to navigate the sewers better than Rose, buy back some time. Can you remember where she went wrong?’

‘Maybe, these tunnels all look the same,’ he says.

Ash joins us. The movement of his legs causes a gentle wave to lap against my calves. ‘So what’s the plan?’ he asks.

‘We’re just discussing our next move,’ I say.

Ash looks at the bricks above, purposefully avoiding eye contact. ‘I thought that was what you and Willow were doing.’

‘Oh get over it, Squirrel,’ Nate snaps. ‘She wasn’t about to dick off the only person who could set us free.’

Ash exhales sharply. I can tell he isn’t convinced.

‘We find a vehicle,’ I say. ‘Get Katie, then we all cross the river to hide in No-man’s-land.’ Except for me, I think. I’ll be surrendering to those Gem soldiers.

‘There’s just one problem,’ Ash says. Even in the gloom, I can tell he’s blushing. ‘I can’t swim.’

None of the Imps can swim. I know this from canon. The only water available is filled with sewage and debris.

‘Don’t worry, there’s a boat,’ I say.

Nate swings the torch beam over the first marking. ‘If we could figure these markings out, life would be a lot easier.’

Ash glances at the markings again. ‘Two lines, one slightly shorter than the other. Are all the markings like this?’

‘Yeah,’ Nate says. ‘Just a load of different angles.’

‘They look like the hands of a clock,’ Ash says.

He’s right. A minute hand and an hour hand. I can’t believe I never noticed this before – a result of living in a digital age, I suppose. Count the minutes, not the hours. Where have I heard that recently?

‘The skipping rhyme,’ I say to Ash.

‘Count the minutes,’ he replies. ‘Do you think the rebels hid the answer in an old nursery rhyme? One that only the Imps would know?’

I nod. ‘The minute hand must point to the correct tunnel. Clever.’

Nate grins. ‘OK then, let’s buy back some time. Follow the human sat nav.’ He runs down the corridor, kicking up his boots so the water sprays around him, arcing from his feet and catching in the torchlight.

‘Keep up, slow coaches,’ he yells over his shoulder.

Ash and I follow. The air grows increasingly humid the further we get from the manhole, and running requires more and more effort, like pushing through treacle. Nate pauses at another pair of clock hands before jogging down a different corridor.

‘So what did the demigod want?’ Ash says, the damp and the moss of the walls absorbing his voice.

‘Look, Ash, what you saw in the hovercraft—’

He cuts over me. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I had to keep up the act so he’d let us go. It wasn’t real.’

‘It looked pretty real to me.’

We round a bend, pass another clock face. The passage tightens.

‘Bear right,’ Nate shouts.

The ground below us suddenly curves. This tunnel is entirely tubular, and my feet take a moment to adjust. Ash catches me as I lurch towards the murky water. I collect myself, only to see a rat weaving past my boots – slippery and black, half-running, half-swimming. I grip Ash’s hand, the warmth branching up my forearm, and push on through the warren. Something about that skipping rhyme bugs me. Where did it come from? The clock markings were in canon, so perhaps the coded skipping rhyme was too. But could a rhyme exist in canon if Sally King didn’t write about it? Perhaps not. Rose never figured out the yellow markings, after all. And she would have known the rhyme had it existed; Ash made it sound like it was well known by all the Imps. Maybe the rhyme really is a prophecy about me.

Hope starts as a little flower.

Nate stares up a ladder. ‘You have reached your final destination.’ He gestures to a single yellow brush stroke on the wall. ‘It’s the mark from canon. It means the bolthole’s overhead.’ The beam of his torch explores the manhole cover resting above.