Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

Memorandum from the Chairman’s Office: October 15

We are about to take power.

Four months ago, on June 25, the gate built Into the Nazca Desert opened and the Old Ones finally returned to the world that once they ruled. They are with us now, waiting for the command to reveal themselves and to begin a war which, this time, they cannot lose.

Why has that command not been given?

The triumph of Nazca was tainted by the presence of two children, teenaged boys. One has already become familiar to us… indeed, we had been watching him for much of his life. His name, or the name by which he is now known, is Matthew Freeman. He is fifteen and English. The other was a Peruvian street urchin who calls himself Pedro and who grew up in the slums of Lima. Between them, they were responsible for the death of our friend and colleague, Diego Salamanda. Incredibly, too, they wounded the King of the Old Ones even at the moment of his victory.

These are not ordinary children. They are two of the so-called Gatekeepers who were part of the great battle, more than ten thousand years ago, when the Old Ones were defeated and banished. It is absolutely crucial this time, if our plans are to succeed and a new world is to be created, that we understand the nature of the Five.

1. Ten thousand years ago, five children led the last survivors of humanity against the Old Ones. The battle took place in Great Britain, but at a time when the country was not yet an island, before the ice sheets had melted in the north.

2. By cunning, by a trick, the children won and the Old Ones were banished. Two gates were constructed to keep them out: one in Yorkshire, in the north of England, the other in Peru. One gate held. The other we managed to smash.

3. The Five existed then. The Five are here now. It is as if they have been reborn on the other side of time… but it is not quite as simple as that. They are the same children, somehow living in two different ages.

4. Kill one of the children now and he or she will be “replaced” by one of the children from the past. This is the single, crucial fact that makes them so dangerous an enemy. Killing them is almost no use at all. If we want to control them, they have to be taken alive.

5. Alone, these children are weak and can be beaten. Their powers are unpredictable and not fully in their control. But when they come together, they become stronger. This is the great danger for us. If all five of them join forces at any time, anywhere in the world, they may be able to create a third gate and everything we have worked for will be lost.

The fifth of the Five

So far only four of the children have been identified. The English boy and the Peruvian boy have now been joined by American twin brothers, Scott and Jamie Tyler, who were revealed to us by our Psi project. At the time, they were working in a theatre in Nevada.

Note that Scott Tyler was thoroughly programmed whilst held captive by our agents in Nevada, USA. Although he was subsequently reunited with his twin brother, it is still possible that he can be turned against his friends. A psychological report (appendix 1) is attached.

We know very little about the fifth of the Five. She is a girl. Like the others, she will be fifteen years old. We expect her to be of Chinese heritage, quite probably still living in the East. in the old world, her name was Scar. it is certain that the other four will be searching for her and we have to face the fact that they may succeed.

We must therefore find her first.

We have agents in every country searching for her. Many politicians and police forces are now working actively for us. The Psi project continues throughout Europe and Asia and we are still investigating teenagers with possible psychic/paranormal abilities. There is every chance that the girl will reveal herself to us. it is likely that she still has no idea who and what she really is.

Once we have the girl in our hands, we can use her to draw the rest of them into a trap. One at a time, we will bring them to The Necropolis. And once we have all five of them, we can hold them separately, imprison them, torture them and keep them alive until the end of time.

Everything is now set. The Gatekeepers have no idea how strong we are, how far we have advanced. Our eyes are everywhere, all around the world, and very soon the battle will begin.

We just have to find the girl.

Ja sakkath. Jak sakkakh. Ja sha xul.

The girl didn’t look before crossing the road.

That was what the driver said later. She didn’t look left or right. She’d seen a friend on the opposite pavement and she simply walked across to join him, not noticing that the lights had turned green, forgetting that this was always a busy junction and that this was four o’clock in the afternoon when people were trying to get their work finished, hurrying on their way home. The girl just set off without thinking. She didn’t so much as glimpse the white van heading towards her at fifty miles an hour.

But that was typical of Scarlett Adams. She always was a bit of a dreamer, the sort of person who’d act first and then think about what she’d done only when it was far too late. The hockey ball that she had tried to thwack over the school roof, but which had instead gone straight through the headmistress’s window. The groundsman she had pushed, fully clothed, into the swimming pool. It might have been a good idea to check first that he could swim. The twenty-metre tree she’d climbed up, only to realize that there was no possible way back down.

Fortunately, her school made allowances. It helped that Scarlett was generally popular, was liked by most of the teachers and even if she was never top of the class, managed to be never too near the bottom. Where she really excelled was at sports. She was captain of the hockey team (despite the occasional misfires), a strong tennis player and an all-round winner when it came to summer athletics. No school will give too much trouble to someone who brings home the trophies and Scarlett was responsible for a whole clutch of them.

The school was called St Genevieve’s and from the outside it could have been a stately home or perhaps a private hospital for the very rich. It stood in its own grounds, set back from the road, with ivy growing up the walls, sash windows and a bell tower perched on top of the roof. The uniform, it was generally agreed, was the most hideous in England: a mauve dress, a yellow jersey and, in summer months, a straw hat. Everyone hated the straw hats. In fact it was a tradition for every girl to set the wretched thing on fire on their last day.

St Genevieve’s was a private school, one of many that were clustered together in the centre of Dulwich, in South London. It was a strange part of the world and everyone who lived there knew it. To the west there was Streatham and to the east Sydenham, both areas with high-rise flats, drugs and knife crime. But in Dulwich, everything was green. There were old-fashioned tea shops, the sort that spelled themselves “shoppes”, and flower baskets hanging off the lampposts. Most of the cars seemed to be four-by-fours and the mothers who drove them were all on first-name terms. Dulwich College, Dulwich Preparatory School, Alleyn’s, St Genevieve’s… they were only a stone’s throw away from each other, but of course nobody threw stones at each other. Not in this part of town.

It was obvious from her appearance that Scarlett hadn’t been born in England. Her parents might be Mr and Mrs Typical-Dulwich – her mother tall, blonde and elegant, her father looking like the lawyer he always had been, with greying hair, a round face and glasses – but she looked nothing like them. Scarlett had long black hair, strange hazel-green eyes and the soft brown skin of a girl born in China, Hong Kong or some other part of Central Asia. She was slim and small with a dazzling smile that had got her out of trouble on many occasions. She wasn’t their real daughter. Everyone knew that. She had known it herself from the earliest age.