Alex Scarrow - Day of the Predator

Edward Chan sighed and looked out of the coach’s broad window at the scrub beside the highway. Outside the air-conditioned comfort of the coach it was another blistering Texas day. Hot and bright. Two things he hated. He much preferred his dark bedroom back in Houston, drapes drawn, an ultraviolet lamp making the manga posters on his black bedroom walls glow like the halogen signs outside some cool nightclub.

Dark and cool and peaceful. A place far away from the incessant noise of other kids, the shrill laughter of clusters of girls. High-school girls always seemed to come in clusters — mean, spiteful clusters that sniggered and whispered and pointed. And the boys… If it was possible, they were even worse. The jocks — the alpha-male types — loud, brash, great at sports, oozing easy confidence, gangsta rap hissing out of their iPod earbuds, high-fiving each other for any reason. Golden-tanned, sandy-haired, blue-eyed boys who, you could tell, would ease through school, ease through college, ease through life… and never once wonder if someone was whispering behind their back, laughing at them, pointing at them.

That was the tribal system at school: the girls — giggly gaggles of Hannah Montana clones, the jocks in their swaggering gangsta gangs

… and finally the third category, the ones like Edward Chan — the freaks. Loners, emos, geeks, nerds: the cookies that didn’t quite fit the cookie-cutter machine that was high school.

His dad was always telling him it was the freaks that ended up doing the great things. It was the freaks who became dotcom billionaires, famous inventors, movie directors, rock stars… even presidents. The jocks, on the other hand, ended up selling real estate or managing Wal-Mart stores. And the Hannah Montanas ended up becoming stay-at-home moms, getting fat, bored and lonely.

Ahead of the coach he could see a cluster of pale buildings emerging from the ochre drabness, and presently they slowed down and stopped at a security checkpoint. The other kids on the coach, about thirty of them, all a couple of years older than Edward, began to bob in their seats, craning their necks to look at the armed security guards and the lab buildings up ahead.

‘Please stay seated for the moment, guys,’ said Mr Whitmore over the coach’s PA system.

Edward stretched to look over the headrest of the seat in front of him. He saw a man climb up the steps on to the coach. A smart man in a pale linen suit. He shook hands with Mr Whitmore, the school principal who was chaperoning the students.

‘Right, guys, I’m going to hand you over to Mr Kelly, who is from the institute. He’s going to be showing us around the facilities today.’

Mr Kelly took the microphone from him. ‘Good morning, boys and girls. Let me first say welcome to the institute. It’s an honour to have you kids come and visit. As I understand it, you guys have all been nominated by your various schools to come along today because you’re all straight-A students?’

Whitmore shook his head. ‘Not quite, Mr Kelly. “Most-improved performers”. Students who’ve most clearly demonstrated a willingness to learn. We have all levels and abilities here on this coach, from schools right across the state, but what they all have in common is the spectacular improvement in their year-end SATs scores. These students are the ones who’ve worked the hardest to better themselves.’

Mr Kelly’s tanned face was split with a broad smile. ‘Fantastic! We like improvers here. Go-getters. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of you on this coach ended up working for us here one day, huh?’

There was a token of polite laughter up and down the rows of seats.

The coach lurched slowly forward, down a long straight driveway flanked by freshly cut lawns, wet with the moisture from water sprinklers.

‘OK, guys, we’ll shortly be arriving at the visitors’ reception area, where you can get off. We have some refreshments ready for you before we start the tour of this facility. I will be your guide for today, and, as I’m talking, if you have any questions at all, please don’t be afraid to raise your hands and ask. We want you to get the most out of today… to understand what our work is here and how very important it is to the environment.’

Edward looked out of the window as the coach approached a decorative flowerbed and swung slowly around it. In the middle, framed by an arrangement of

vivid yellow chrysanthemums, was a sign: WELCOME TO TERI: TEXAS ADVANCED ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE.

1906, San Francisco

‘Hey! Don’t turn around yet — I’m not ready,’ snapped Maddy irritably.

Liam stayed where he was, facing the grubby redbrick wall in front of him. The back alley reeked of rotting fish, and he wondered if he lingered too much longer here whether the smell was going to be stuck on him for the rest of the day.

‘Are you not done yet?’ he asked.

Maddy muttered under her breath. ‘It’s all these damned laces and hooks and buttons and things. How the heck did women manage to dress themselves back then?’

He turned his head a little to look up the alley. It seemed to open on to a busy thoroughfare. He saw several horse-drawn carts clatter by, and men dressed like him: formal grey morning coats, buttoned waistcoats, high-collared shirts, with top hats, flat caps and bowler hats. Very much like the better-dressed men in Cork might have worn on a Sunday morning. The clothes they’d found in the back room appeared to be perfectly authentic. There’d been another couple of dusty costumes in there. Sal had said something about them being for the other back-up drop-point — another time, another place.

‘Oh, dammit… this’ll have to do,’ tutted Maddy irritably.

‘Can I turn round now?’

‘Yes… but I look a total doof.’

He turned round. His eyes widened.

‘What?’ she gasped suspiciously. ‘What is it? What’ve I got wrong?’

‘Nothing! It’s nothing… it’s just…’

Maddy scowled at him beneath the wide-brimmed sun hat, topped with a plume of white ostrich feathers. Her slim neck was framed by decorative lace that descended down the front of a tightly drawn and intricately embroidered bodice. Her waist seemed impossibly thin, as the gown flared out beneath and tumbled down to the ground, modestly covering any sign of her legs.

She put her hands — covered in spotless elbow-length white gloves — on her hips. ‘Liam?’

He shook his head. ‘You look so… so…’

‘Spit it out!’

‘Like… well, like a lady, so you do.’

For a moment he thought she was going to step forward and punch his arm, like she was prone to do. Instead, her cheeks coloured ever so slightly. ‘Uh… really?’

‘Aye.’ Liam smiled at her. ‘And me? What about me?’

Maddy grinned. ‘Well, you look like an idiot.’

Liam pulled the top hat off his head. ‘Ah, it’s that, isn’t it? Makes me ears stick out like a pair of jug handles.’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it, Liam. Obviously it’s the fashion over here. You won’t be the only person wearing one.’

‘It was mostly flat caps and forage caps back home. You tried wearing a top hat or a bowler, you were asking for some joker to try an’ knock it off.’

She pointed at him, ignoring the quip, her smile replaced with her let’s-get-down-to-business frown. ‘What time have you got on your clock?’

Liam pulled the ornate timepiece out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘Seven minutes after eleven in the morning.’

‘OK, we should get a move on. The return window here is in four hours’ time.’

‘Right you are. How far is it?’

‘Not far, I think. It’s on to Merrimac Street, then up Fourth Street to Mission Street… short walk up that on to Second Street. Ten minutes… at a guess?’