One

Dead Fish

I can smell dead fish. And blood. Putrid. Metallic. Mingled with salty air.

“Seb! Move.”

Fragments of memory begin to circle. The HappyHead building. Sterile and white. A video playing in the assembly hall. The coach. A bitter pill. A blindfold pulled over my eyes.

The ground lurches beneath me. A hand on my shoulder. “Come on . . .”

I’m sitting on the floor. Something is moving around me in the darkness. Something wet. Seeping into the fabric of my clothes, my shoes, weighing me down.

“What’s the matter with you, Seb? Get up!”

The voice is loud and comes from right next to me. I open my eyes, but the darkness remains. The elastic of the blindfold cuts into the tops of my ears.

The memories keep coming. A boy. Blistered hands. A bee tattoo.

Suddenly the blindfold is pulled from my head.

Light flickers. On and off. Blazing white. Then back to pitch-­black.

“I—­” My voice tears against my throat. “I can’t—­”

Creaking. More shouting. Crying.

Hands push my chest, forcing me back. My arms twist, searing with pain.

I’m tied to a pipe jutting out from the wall.

The hands pull at the rope around my wrists. Fingers fumble with a knot. Shaking. Bloody.

“Guys! It’s getting deeper!”

Blazing white. Pitch-­black.

“Seb, you need to help me here, for God’s sake!” I focus on a pair of eyes—­bloodshot and filled with terror. A trickle of red runs down the side of the girl’s face, over her dirty cheek. I hardly recognize her. Blond hair sodden and filthy. Green hoodie torn.

Eleanor?

She bites down on the rope and pulls with her teeth like an animal. The knot begins to loosen. As it does, I wriggle my arms, pulling them down to free them. My hands slide out, red raw.

“What the . . .”

She turns to me, eyes wild. “Focus, Seb. Focus.”

In the flickering light I see snapshots of rusty walls. A long metal room. Figures steadying themselves, hunched over, half submerged.

Water. Water everywhere. Knee-­deep now.

“It’s filling up,” she says, breathing heavily. “Here.” She holds out her hand, and I take it. “We need to help the—­”

The ground rocks again, and she’s thrown into me, slamming us both into the wall. The air is knocked from my lungs, and I buckle forward. As the room tilts, the water swells and crashes over us. The weight of it forces me down, the burning cold tearing into my brain. For a moment, I’m suspended, floating, weightless.

Move. I twist my body and feel for the floor with my feet. There.

I push myself up, breaking through the surface, inhaling gulps of freezing air.

“Help! Please! Help me!” someone screams. I spin around to see two people crouched by the opposite wall. I remember them from before. From the facility. The twins.

Li is pulling at the arms of her sister, whose head is below the waterline, her dyed-­blue hair floating above her.

“The knots are too tight!” Li screams. “Get up, Jing, please!”

I thrash toward them. “Let me try!” I plunge underwater and fumble in the murkiness to find the end of the rope that’s tied around her waist. I follow it with my hands and locate the knot, somewhere near her back. Then I dig in my nails and pull until it feels as if they might snap off.

Come on, come on.

The rope loosens, and she begins to wriggle free. My lungs pound in my rib cage. My inhaler. Where is it?

When I break through the surface, my body doesn’t feel like it’s my own.

Jing pulls herself up, gasping, and leans back against the wall.

“You’re OK. Breathe.” Li pushes the hair out of her sister’s eyes.

“What the hell is happening?” Jing splutters.

I look behind me, and for a moment, the light holds for long enough for me to see nine other teenagers cowering against the metal walls.

The Ten.

“Is everyone free?” a voice booms out. Man-­Bun Boy—­Sam. His eyes dart around the group, counting. Then he nods.

My brain throbs. Voices enter it from around me, words struggling to find meaning.

“How do we get out?”

“Everyone, just take a second. This is clearly a challenge. We need to think.”

“Search the walls—­there must be a door.”

I run my fingers over the coarse rust, fumbling for something, anything. . . . 

Someone joins me, breathing in shallow sobs.

Lucy. Lucy. She was always so nice. . . .

“Seb,” she whispers. “There’s nothing—­”

A bang. More screams. The light above us explodes and sparks fly, showering down over the water.

Darkness. I feel the water swirling around my waist.

“What now?” Matthew Parry-­Brokingstock. His voice is strained with panic.

Something catches my eye from above. As my eyes adjust, I see the outline of a square of light.

“Look! Up there!”

“It’s a hatch,” I hear Raheem say from somewhere close by.

“How do we get to it?” Jing asks.

“Lift me,” Ayahuasca Girl—­Rachel—­shouts, and I can just make out her outline wading into the center of the room.

A hulking figure joins her. Fridge Boy—­Jamie. He picks her up, places her on his shoulders, and maneuvers himself under the hatch. “This had better work. . . .”

Rachel runs her hands over the ceiling.

“There! You’ve got it!” Raheem yells.

She can just about reach. She pushes.

“Hurry up!”

“All right! It’s really heavy. . . .”

She struggles, nearly toppling back down into the water. Then, all of a sudden, the hatch creaks open and a shard of light pours in. She slides it to the side, revealing a square of sky. A gust of wind blows down, whistling around us.

“Easy now, Rachel.” Jamie steadies himself as the room tilts again.

“Give me a push,” she calls down to him.

He lifts her legs so her head rises up through the square hole.

“Holy shit!” Rachel’s voice echoes down to us.

“What is it?”

Her head reappears. “A boat. We’re on a fucking boat.”

Two

Bad, Bad, Bad

Rain whips into my cheeks, and the harsh tang of petrol fills my nostrils. As I try to pull myself up through the hatch, my legs dangling beneath me, the muscles in my arms shudder uncontrollably. The weight of my body is about to drag me back down, when Jamie gives my feet a shove.

I jolt forward. My hands slip.

Crack. My chin slams against the deck.

“Get him up.”

Feet scurry into my vision; then I’m heaved upward and dragged across the deck, sliding along the grimy wooden panels until I’m dumped down onto a heap of fishing nets.

I spit. Blood.

Someone sits me upright. Raheem. “Arms up, mate. Quickly.”

He pulls something over my head, clipping it around my waist.

A yellow life jacket. My name written on the front. Below it, a smiling HappyHead face.

My stomach drops.

“You OK?” Raheem says. “You good?”

I nod.

I watch the chaos happening around me. Panicked faces and flailing limbs, obscured by lashing rain. One by one the rest of the group is lifted up through the hatch and scrambles to get the life jackets scattered across the deck. Matthew and Sam then lean down and pull Jamie out.

Move. I drag myself up.

A captain’s shelter stands at the boat’s top end. I crawl toward it, hoping there might be some instructions, someone, inside. When I reach it, I steady myself on the window ledge, paint flaking loose in my hands. Through the single pane of glass I can just make out a large steering wheel in the gloom. A dashboard. A stool.

Empty.

The deck creaks, sending tremors up into my legs. The window frame vibrates.

I realize two things in quick succession. One: we are alone on this boat. Two: it is sinking. Sinking into the water, the actual sea. The reality of it makes my brain feel thin, stretched. Like it might snap.

How did we get here? I don’t remember getting here. . . .

I notice my reflection in the cloudy glass. Gray. Half dead. A crack appears, creeping its way across my face, cutting me in two.

“Seb!” Eleanor shrieks. “Get away from that!”

I edge toward the side of the boat and reach for the metal handrail, but my fingers struggle to grip. They’re swollen. Unnaturally white.