Matt looked down at the piece of paper in his hand and frowned. He had long since memorised it, trying to pass the time as the night dragged on and on. He didn't want to think about what was happening at the prison. He didn't want to think that something might have happened to them, to Charlotte, or that he was now the protector of these superhuman students.
The thought nearly made him laugh out loud. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he was in no way equipped to protect these students. He wasn't even sure why he was here. Some ill-placed, lingering affection for Charlotte no doubt, a need to be doing something, anything other than sitting in his grandmother's house in England wondering what could have been.
He found it ironic that now again he was sitting waiting and wondering, though waiting in the yard of the warehouse was a far more tedious than his home in England, even if he would choose it every time.
Matt sighed, wondering again if they were on their way back. He should have been asleep, but he wasn't tired. Sleep would not come to him if he lay down, he knew that. It must have been close to dawn, the early hours of the morning drifting by in a lazy manner without much cause to care for his anxieties.
The clouds that blanketed the starry sky carried the threat of rain. Matt could smell it in the air, the heady scent of earth. Listening to the stirrings of the lazy Potomac as it trudged along its course to the ocean, he could almost try to forget that he had somehow been left in charge. Or that Wallace at least had thought to give him some advice. He looked at the piece of paper again, at her rushed handwriting and sighed before crumpling it and pushing it into his jeans pocket.
He had done little since the others had left. These superhuman students didn't need or look for his advice. He didn't think he had advice to offer them. Mary Abbott had wrangled a group of students to protect the boundary, but the long days they had spent at the warehouse were making the students complacent. He could hear their murmured words even now from the entrance, the still night allowing their voices to travel.
Mary had only taken five people with her to guard the gate, one only ten years old. Ethan had always insisted on at least ten students stationed along the perimeter, though the back of the lot was just overgrown thicket, so security always focused on the front.
Matt stood up and began to pace back and forth. Without the leadership that Ethan or Charlotte, even James, had offered, perhaps the others were little concerned with the likelihood of an attack. Matt sighed. He didn't even know if he was concerned about an attack.
He distractedly gazed at lights moving on the other bank of the river. Headlights, house lights, streetlights shimmering in the night. They were all a reminder that people moved about them, going about their daily lives, perhaps gossiping about the Lost Children of Kingston when they had a chance, not knowing that those students were living right under their noses.
Matt watched the lights move again, catching in the chain-link fence that encircled the lot. They silhouetted the trees and wild brambles that had tried to take over the lot, glistening in the glass of the warehouse.
Had he noticed lights moving around them before? He frowned, coming to a halt.
He scrutinised the lights moving again, waving, and bobbing up and down.
They weren't headlights they were torches.
A deaf silence fell on him as he fought through the sudden panic that grasped at his chest. He tried to focus on what the lights could mean. He strained his ears, listening to the silence that enveloped the warehouse, but it wasn't silent. He could hear the sounds of the river, voices from inside the warehouse, voices from up at the gate, those on watch passing their time by not focusing on what seemed to be moving all around them.
And then in the distance he could hear the whirr of helicopter blades slicing through the air. Matt swallowed. Wallace had been right and now without their strongest alterations they were under attack. Who they were or how far away they were he could hardly guess? But he didn't need some second intuition like Ethan's to know that their time was running out too quickly.
Matt spun around, half-stumbling back into the warehouse. They had a plan. At least they had been left with that, because it was the only thing that was giving him the nerve to continue.
"Maria?" he called, seizing the help of the first senior student he could. He moved to where she was asleep in her sleeping bag and shook her awake.
Maria Rodriguez glanced up, immediately alert as if she hadn't really been asleep at all. Matt met her dark eyes with the purple halo around the iris with a look that he hoped conveyed his panic and sense of urgency. It must have worked because her initial anger changed leaving a rare expression of worry across her perfect features.
"Maria, in a few minutes we're going to be under attack. There are search parties out on the river, helicopters in the sky. I think they know where we are and if we don't move now we're done for".
Maria watched him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. "Are you sure?" she breathed.
"No," he whispered. "But the others warned of a chance it would happen before they left". He didn't want to point out it had been Wallace Lynn's concerns rather than anybody else's. "If I'm wrong, fine, but we're better safe than sorry. They left an escape plan... just in case".
It seemed like an age before Maria answered, though only a few seconds had passed. She stood up and grabbed her shoes pulling them on.
"What do we do?" she asked, kicking the body in the next sleeping back awake.
"What's going on?" a voice groaned.
"Everybody up now. Grab your packs. You have twenty seconds. This is not a drill," she yelled. Matt watched her for a long moment as the students moved in choreographed perfection rolling up their sleeping bags and shoving them away. Matt could hardly believe they had even been asleep, but he had no time to marvel at the delights of their training.
"What's the plan Desmarais?" Maria snapped, already finished packing her own meagre belongings.
"We move now. We don't engage," he breathed. "There's a gap in the fence at the back and a narrow path along the riverbank. It's not a marked path so it should be unguarded. At the end of it there's a dockyard and..." He trailed off. That was all he had. Wallace's note had left little further instructions. "We'll figure it out from there".
"You had better be telling the truth," she snapped. The boy she had kicked jumped to his feet, his pack on his back. He had straw-blonde hair, tightly shaven on each side but long on top. He was tanned and his hands carried many scars. Matt tried to remember him, but couldn't place him from his time at Kingston.
"Kuba I want you to help Desmarais," Maria ordered. "We're under attack - helicopters. You can deal with them right?"
"Sure thing," he nodded, his expression a little too gleeful at the prospect.
"Olivia and Akara I need your help," she breathed, repeating Matt's instruction to an auburn-haired girl with green eyes and a dark hair boy with wideset brown eyes and a turned up nose. "Akara you lead them along the path, Olivia you stay in the centre and I'll follow up behind".
They both nodded.
"Okay everybody follow Akara and Olivia. Make sure nobody is left behind and for god's sake don't do anything stupid. Stay quiet. Stay alert. Stay hidden. Now move," Maria bellowed.
Kuba moved to Matt's side as Maria turned back to them.
"Get the others on watch," she said. "You won't have a lot of time. Kuba will buy you as much as he can but don't take any risks".
Matt swallowed and nodded as the helicopters grew louder.
"And Desmarais if this is some trick..." she paused. "Well you know what my alteration can do," she called after him, her words heavy with threat. He shook his head ignoring her. He would always be the founder's son to most of them, no matter what he did.
Matt could see the lights of three helicopters circling the warehouse at a wary distance as they emerged. Sirens rang in the distance and lights flashed around the sky.
"You go get the others - I'll slow down the helicopters," Kuba hissed, shoving Matt in the back.
"Right...yeah," Matt replied, not pausing to consider what he was doing.
He sprinted to the gates, as a crack of thunder rolled overhead and the sky lit up with a blinding flash of white light.
"Desmarais what's going on?" Mary yelled above the wind that had picked up out of nowhere. It whistled through the yard, whipping at their clothes and hair, howling through the buildings and along the river.
"It looks like they found us," Matt explained, glancing up at the sky as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall like bullets towards the ground. "We're evacuating - now".
Mary gazed at him, considering his words before putting her fingers to her lips and sounding a high pitch whistle. The others emerged from their watch, the same look of apprehension on their face as Mary wore.
"We're going, come on," she ordered, beckoning them as the first red and white flashing lights could be seen in the distance.
"Anything you can do to slow them down, do it," Matt snapped.
There was a small hesitation before Mary nodded. "Florence, slow them down," she ordered, signalling to the others to keep moving back towards the warehouse. Matt starred as the ten-year-old girl chosen as part of the watch turned to face the gates. A grim determination settled over her face as the storm roared around them
"She'll be fine, Matt. Now let's go," Mary said, as the ground beneath them began to shake. "I presume you have a plan?"
"Wallace had an escape planned. I think she suspected something like this might happen..." he frowned jogging alongside Mary. He could see a hazy outline of Kuba ahead of them, his hands faced towards the sky.
Matt glanced back nervously at the young girl, standing alone at the gate only to see a wall of earth at least three storeys high where the gate had stood and the small girl skipping towards them, a wide grin on her face.
The rain was falling so heavily that it was gathering in pools on the concrete. It thundered off the ground, echoing the monstrous rolls of thunder that rumbled through the sky. Matt fought to see through the downpour, his clothes already soaked to the skin, his hair stuck to his forehead.
"Brilliant, Kuba," Mary grinned, running faster to the door, Matt fighting to keep up with her. Kuba joined them as they passed, just as Florence caught up with them.
Bolts of lightning ripped through the sky, illuminating the clouds above them. The smell of sulphur spread through the air, as thunder rumbled once more about them. He laughed out loud as he realised the storm was Kuba's doing, though the sound was carried away by the wind. He was glad to notice he could no longer hear the sirens or the helicopters anymore, but he doubted he would have been able to hear anything over the thunderous cacophony of the weather.
"That was bloody brilliant, Kuba," Matt yelled as they skidded into the now empty warehouse.
"Thank you," he bowed, a half-grin on his rain-soaked face.
The others moved, grabbing their backpacks as they moved, rolling up their sleeping bags and shoving them out of sight.
The back door was ajar and the rain fell in sheets beyond, creating a pool of water across the threshold. They stepped back out into the rain, the ground slick with mud. Mary dragged the door shut.
"Florence you know what to do," she breathed, as Kuba moved forward and motioned to them towards the hidden path the others had already taken.
"It's pretty slippery down here," he called. The others slipped and slid down the rain-slick bank as Florence barricaded the back door with a mound of earth. Kuba led the way, Matt following him while Mary and Florence came behind.
The path was hard to manage as the tangle of brambles pushed over into their way, causing them to be unbalanced, but Matt found it was only him who seemed to be having the trouble. Glancing across the river the lights had been pushed further back, bobbing aimlessly on the wild surface as Kuba's storm continued to wreak havoc on the attempted-raid party.
When they finally emerged, soaked to the bone and covered in mud, they found themselves in a small yard with three yellow school buses. Matt faltered for a moment. Maria had the students already seated on the bused and as they appeared she jogged over.
"Good job, Kuba," she grinned, slapping the blonde-haired boy on the back. "Maybe you'll be as good as me one day".
"Please Rodriguez, you are a one trick pony. A little lightning? I bring the whole storm".
"Give it up," Mary snapped. "We're ready to go?"
"Yeah, his friend left instructions - old maps and stuff. We should be there in a few hours," Maria sighed, pushing her wet hair away from her bronze face.
"Can anybody drive?" Matt asked. "I mean I can if..."
Mary shook her head and rolled her eyes. "We all can - Maria take the first bus. Kuba take the second. I'll take the third".
"Will we go in convoy?" Matt asked.
"Follow the maps," Maria said. "Forget about the other buses. We are all able to read maps".
"She's right," Mary agreed. "Just get onto the buses now. Florence - the path," Mary said, as Kuba and Maria began towards the buses. The little girl flashed a bright smile and without even turning around the path crumbled into the river.
"Okay everyone heads down until we're out of danger. If we're stopped have a plan - without kidnap or murder. There are enough of us to come up with something clever," she called after Kuba and Maria, each waving as they took in the words.
"Come on then," she breathed to Florence and Matt as they headed towards the last bus, their heads bowed against the rain. Matt sat behind Mary as she slid into the driver's seat and started the engines. Florence sat beside him, the water dripping off her clothes onto the floor with a steady tap.
Matt closed his eyes, praying that they would make it out without being seen. He didn't think he could deal with the tension and fear. He pressed his head against the fogged up window, the raindrops carving tracks down the outside of the glass and watched as the searchlights were thrown around on the water. As the bus pulled out of the yard he caught sight of the lights of a helicopter in the distance as it fought through the onslaught of the storm.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read Feared. I really hope you are enjoying it so far! There will be a bonus update this week, sometime mid-week as it's only a short chapter so keep an eye out for it! Please vote and leave a comment if you get the chance, love to hear what you have to say! Sorcha x