Part 9 (1/2)

Alex stood up. 'If she has, she'd better not be alone. If it's like the stuff I had it's horrible.'

He went out into the corridor. The sound of the TV floated towards him the news on high volume.

At the far end, the TV room door opened. Tiff twirled into the corridor, and skipped lightly towards the crowd coming to join her.

Alex caught her in his arms. He'd expected her to struggle and maybe even kick him but instead she swayed to and fro. She was trying to get him to dance. He looked into her face. Her expression was cherubic completely unlike the sour Tiff they knew. Her eyes were flicking quickly from side to side. She had definitely taken something.

She slithered past him and ran into Paulo. 'Got any music, cowboy? Do you dance?' She twirled in front of him, round and round, delighted by the movement.

Paulo gave Alex a long-suffering look and pushed her back into the TV room. She went easily, but he didn't follow her in. He slammed the door as though he'd trapped a rat in there.

'Should we call a doctor?' asked Li.

Alex shook his head. 'She seems OK. She's not like I was; she's having a good time.'

'How long does it last?'

Alex shrugged. 'Who knows? We don't know what it was.'

The TV sound jumped. Tiff was channel-hopping.

'We'd better not leave her alone,' said Amber. 'She might not stay in there. We'll watch her in s.h.i.+fts.'

'I'll do the first,' sighed Hex. 'After all, I've done it before.'

There was silence. Tiff had turned off the TV. 'Uh-oh,' said Amber. 'The pacifier isn't working.'

Hex put his hand on the door. His face was grim. 'Check on me in half an hour.'

Paulo said, 'Let's have a look in the Range Rover. I had two pills; one of them might still be in there.'

Li, Amber and Alex joined Paulo outside. Paulo had scoured the entire Range Rover twice.

'Nothing?' said Alex.

Paulo shook his head.

'It's not in her room,' said Li.

'And it's not in her pockets,' said Amber. 'She must have taken them both.'

Paulo straightened up and ran a hand through his hair. 'That was good evidence. We could have taken that to the police. I shouldn't have let them out of my sight.'

Li spluttered, 'None of us thought she'd actually go through your pockets.'

'We can still go to the police,' said Amber. 'A pickup by boat, a slick method of transportation across the moors all the suspicious stuff you guys saw at night... It's a big operation, transporting big quant.i.ties. There must be a factory close by.'

'Paulo and Li, you've seen the strongest evidence,' said Alex. 'You come with me.'

Li turned to Amber. 'Amber, will you be all right here to take over from Hex?'

Amber sighed. 'It'll be an experience, I suppose.'

13.

TIFF.

Tiff was sitting quietly on the floor in the TV room. Hex had done his best to keep the atmosphere calming the TV was off, the curtains were closed because the sun wouldn't be going down yet. At first she'd been leaping around like a monkey, excited by every sound, trying to get him into the same mood. Now she was sitting with her back to the cold radiator, looking thoroughly bored, her knees pulled up to her chest. Aside from that she looked fairly normal, except that her pupils were huge black holes and she kept grinding her teeth. And she was rather more talkative than usual.

'You guys, you just want to stop me doing anything. I should be having fun. You think you can brainwash me to be like other people... It's so boring.'

Hex tuned it out. He was catching up on his e-mails. He had friends in online communities all over the world, some of whom he hadn't e-mailed for a while. Plenty to be getting on with.

'Everything is so dull,' said Tiff. 'Everything and everybody. Dull, dull, dull.'

Hex was looking at the screen but no longer paying attention to it. He was listening to Tiff in spite of himself. He was thinking about what it was like before he met the others. Bored rigid by school, he was an outsider no one understood. Everything seemed trivial and unchallenging. Then he'd discovered the Internet and had reinvented himself in a virtual world. He had friends people he'd met online who were interested in the same things. He was e-mailing some of them now. He didn't know what most of them looked like, how old they were, what their real names were in the online universe, you chose your own name, you were a person you'd invented.

'You won't understand,' said Tiff. 'n.o.body does.' She ground her teeth again.

Perhaps he should tell Tiff to go online. Sort her life out that way. His online world had been more real than reality. He'd quite happily have become a pixel, slid into a machine and stayed in virtual reality for eternity. That was until he'd met Amber, Alex, Paulo and Li. Virtual Hex had thought he knew what excitement and danger were. If he made a wrong move on the Internet his machine could be trashed his virtual world could end. It seemed like high stakes indeed. Now, though, he could pay for mistakes with real injuries, his actual life. Not only that; other people could be hurt, crippled or killed. His four friends, to whom he was closer than he had ever been to anyone, were still alive today because of things he had done. He was alive because of things they had done. Together they'd saved people, brought killers to justice, changed people's lives. They'd done things that mattered, and that made the real world worth living in.

He looked at the e-mail windows he had open, the friends waiting for a reply. The first was to ScaryHarry. He'd 'known' ScaryHarry for years. He was a reformed hacker who designed security systems for banks. Not the kind of security systems that dealt with hold-ups; the kind that kept out other hackers like him. Hex didn't quite feel able to relate to ScaryHarry right now. He miniaturized the window. Next was johnsmith. Hex knew even less about johnsmith all lower case than he did about ScaryHarry. Hex was intrigued by him johnsmith revelled in enigmatic e-mail exchanges yet had chosen the world's most deliberately anonymous name. But that would have to wait until later too.

He glanced at the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Any moment, Amber would take over.

'Dull,' said Tiff again. She fidgeted in the pockets of her denim jacket and pulled out a dark tube. She looked at it and shook it, inspecting it minutely. It was her green glow stick from the morning. 'It's dead,' she said. 'What a pity.' She flicked it from side to side, trying to start it again.

She looked so genuinely sad. It was such an unexpected sight, after her habitual carping sarcasm that Hex found himself looking at the dark stick too. It reminded him of cramped places, of breathing in dust, of a dead body. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'you think you're going to die and you don't. That stops you thinking life is dull.'

It came out before he even thought it. He buried his head in his hands. What was he doing?

'Wow,' said Tiff. 'That is so profound.'

She was stoned out of her head, thought Hex. Tomorrow she wouldn't remember a word he'd said. He looked at his watch. 'You need to have a good talk to Amber,' he said confidently. 'She'll understand exactly where you're coming from.'

The door opened. Right on cue, Amber was here.

Hex was on his feet immediately. 'See you in a bit,' he said, and closed the door behind him.

Tiff was talking immediately. 'I've misjudged Hex. He's a really good listener. He's so cool. Really deep. No one's ever listened to me like that before.'

Amber was wary. Tiff laid back, thoughtful? What on earth was that drug she'd taken? Perhaps they were wrong to go to the police if it could tame a h.e.l.lcat like Tiff.

'Hex says I need to have a talk to you, woman to woman,' said Tiff.