Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

Jamie thought about it for a moment. Then something suddenly occurred to him. “What about Daniel?” he asked.

Alicia nodded. “There was a piece about him too,” she said. “At the time, I didn’t want it to appear and I was annoyed when it did. But the thing is, quite a few strange things happened with Danny too. He used to have these pre monitions. They weren’t dreams… they were just feelings. He once stopped me going on a train. He was only six years old and he got quite hysterical about it. Like, he was throwing stuff around the room and in the end I gave in. I couldn’t leave him with Maria, not like that. So I didn’t go – and you know what happened? A few days later I learnt that there had been an incident on that train. Some guy out of his mind on drugs shot someone. If I’d been travelling that day, could it have been me? I don’t know…

“Then he did it again, only this time at school. He warned a boy not to go home. That same afternoon, a bus skidded off the main road and went straight through one of the walls of the boy’s house. Smashed into the kitchen and brought down most of the upper floor. Of course, everyone at the school was talking about it and a local paper picked it up.”

“And you think someone may have read it,” Jamie said.

“Yeah. I think someone read it. I think someone came for Danny because he was special. And for the last few months, I’ve been scouring the newspapers, looking for kids like you. Because, you see, if there really is someone out there searching for kids with powers, maybe I can get there ahead of them. Maybe I can find out who they are and discover what they’ve done with my boy.

“Now you know why I was in Reno. I happened to see this piece in a magazine. It was about two boys performing a mind-reading act. The writer said he’d seen them twice and he couldn’t work out for love nor money how they did it. So I came over to see for myself…”

“And you arrived just in time,” Jamie said.

“I couldn’t believe it when those men came after you with stun darts and bullets.” For a moment, Alicia’s eyes lit up and she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “But it proves what I’m saying. There is somebody out there who really is going after these special kids. They got your brother and wherever they’ve taken him, that’s where Danny may be too.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Jamie said. “Suppose you’re right and somebody is kidnapping kids with special powers. Why would they do that? What’s the point?”

“It could be the government, the CIA or someone like that. Think about it for a minute. If you could really read someone’s mind, you’d make a perfect weapon. You could be a spy. You could be anything!”

“You really think they’d believe in that sort of stuff?”

“Of course they believe in it, Jamie. They spend millions of dollars every year experimenting with the paranormal. And there are major corporations out there who run programs, working with special children and their families. I even got in contact with one. I thought they might be able to help.”

“Who was that?”

Alicia put down her beer. “They’re a huge multinational. They’re into communications, healthcare, security, energy… just about everything. But they also have a division that specializes in paranormal research.” She paused. “They were the people who came for you in the theatre. Their name,” she said, “is Nightrise.”

The boardroom was on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail – which was the name of the newest and most spectacular addition to the Hong Kong skyline. The Nail had been constructed at an angle so that it slanted towards Orchard Hill and away from the waterfront. It seemed to be made of solid steel, an illusion caused by the one-way glass in all of its windows. The top three floors, sixty-four to sixty-six, were circular, and wider than the rest of the building. Viewed from Kowloon, on the other side of Victoria Harbor, it really did look like a giant nail that had been hammered into the heart of the city.

There were just three men in the boardroom, although fifty could have fitted in easily. A conference table made of black, gleaming wood stretched the full length of the room with black leather chairs placed at exact intervals. Two of the men were already seated, going through papers, preparing themselves for the conference that was about to begin. The third was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that curved round in a great arc, enjoying the view.

The Nail was the worldwide headquarters of the Nightrise Corporation. The man standing on his own was its chairman.

Unlike the office, he had no name – or if he did, he never used it. He was simply the chairman, or Mr Chairman when he was directly addressed. He was in his sixties, although he had done his best to disguise his age with extensive plastic surgery. This left him with a face that was younger than it should be and yet strangely unnatural, as if it belonged somewhere else. He had thick, white hair which could have been a wig but was actually his own, and silver, half-moon spectacles. As always, he was wearing a suit, made to measure by his own personal tailor.

It was seven o’clock in the morning and the sun had not yet fully risen. The great sprawl of Kowloon was still half asleep, the bars and electronics shops briefly shuttered before the start of another day. The sky was a blazing red. The chairman thought it appropriate. Kowloon means “nine dragons” and it seemed to him, looking out from the window, that they had all breathed at once.

Behind him, one of the other two men spoke.

“They’re coming on-line now, Mr Chairman.”

The chairman walked to his place at the head of the table and sat down. He rested his hands on the polished surface and composed himself. There were thirteen plasma screens mounted all around the room and one after another they flickered into life as the other executives, in different parts of the world, came on-line. A webcam, standing on the table, pointed at the chairman, carrying his own image out. In Los Angeles, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. In London it was midnight. But the time of the day was unimportant. This was the monthly meeting of the senior executives of the Nightrise Corporation and none of them would have dared to have been even a minute late.

“My greetings to you, ladies and gentlemen.” As ever, the chairman was the first to speak. He had an unpleasant, throaty voice, as if he were ill. He spoke very softly and his voice had to be amplified as it was transmitted. He had no obvious accent. This was an international businessman and he had managed to develop an international voice.

“I don’t think I need to remind you that this is a critical time for us all,” he went on. “It is a world-changing time. Everything we’ve been working for all these years is about to come to fruition. Business has never been better but right now there is so much more at stake than simple profit and loss. We have the Psi project. We have news from South America. And, of course, we have the upcoming election

… the race to become the most powerful man in the world.” He paused and it was almost as if a thin mist had passed across his eyes. “I hardly need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is one time we cannot afford to make mistakes.”

He stopped. Nobody moved. The images on the television screens were so still that they could have been accidentally frozen. Two thousand miles away, the private Nightrise Corporation satellite that was making this conference possible continued its orbit around the world, picking up the signals and beaming them into the different countries. And it was as if something of the black emptiness of outer space was being sent with them. The images were dead. The dozen offices with their dozen televisions seemed to contain no life at all.