Nightrise

SILENT CREEK

Jamie had been in court once before so there were no surprises here: not the smallness of the room, the few people in it, the speed at which everything took place. There were two tables facing the judge, and a middle-aged woman dressed in black sat between the flag of Nevada and the Stars and Stripes. Jamie was at one table with his lawyer. His probation officer and a woman from the district attorney’s office were at the other. A clerk took notes and a security man stood by with a seen-it-all-before look on his face. There were two rows of chairs at the back of the room. No press or public were allowed into a juvenile court but Alicia was sitting there on her own, an anxious look on her face. She had come as a family friend.

Jamie’s hands and feet were shackled. That had alarmed him because it hadn’t happened the last time he had been taken into custody. But this time the offence was more serious. He had been arrested, supposedly, for selling drugs at school – a crime which would guarantee him jail time. It was all fake, of course. The probation officer and the lawyer were both part of the set-up, somehow connected to John Trelawny, who had arranged the whole thing. They had even given Jamie a false name – Jeremy Rabb: case number J83157. Somehow they had slotted him into the Nevada juvenile justice system and, as far as Jamie knew, the judge was the only person in the room who didn’t know what was really going on.

It was all fake – and yet the plastic strips binding his wrists and the chains around his ankles were horribly real. Free movement, the most basic of all human rights, had been taken from him. He felt the horror of having his identity stripped away, of belonging to a system that would now do with him as it pleased. Worse still, he remembered what the senator, John Trelawny, had told Alicia on the telephone.

“I can get him in, Alicia, but there’s something you have to appreciate: I can’t get him out again, not once he’s been sent to Silent Creek. Too many people would know. What we’re doing here is necessary and I can justify it in my own mind, but it’s borderline illegal. Do you understand what I’m saying? Once Jamie’s inside the system, I cannot intervene.”

Alicia had explained it to Jamie, who understood. The senator was already sticking his neck out for him and couldn’t risk a scandal if it all went wrong. At the same time, Jamie wasn’t too concerned. He had his power and he could use it to walk out of prison at any time. He thought about Scott. Finding his brother was all that mattered to him and there was no other way. It was only now, unable to separate his hands, unable to walk without shuffling, that he had second thoughts. He was about to be sentenced, processed, swallowed up. When that happened, he would be completely on his own.

His hair had been cut short and he had been given a pair of thick black plastic glasses to wear. He was surprised how much his appearance had changed. The danger was that anyone who had met Scott would recognize him as an almost identical twin, but there seemed little chance of that now. Looking in the mirror, he could barely recognize himself.

“…the sentence set down by this court is twelve months in a detention facility…” The judge was talking. Jamie had missed the first part of what she was saying. She turned to the probation officer. “I’ve looked through the case files and I think Summit View would be appropriate.”

Jamie had heard of Summit View. It was a Youth Correctional Centre on the edge of Las Vegas. But the probation officer was shaking his head. “With respect, your honour, I was going to recommend Silent Creek.”

The judge was surprised. “It’s pretty tough out there,” she remarked. “The boy is only fourteen and this is a first offence.”

“Yes, your honour. But he was selling crystal meth to kids as young as twelve. Some of them are now in rehab programmes, out of school. Rabb has shown no remorse. In fact, he’s been pretty pleased with himself.”

Rabb. Jamie had to remind himself that they were talking about him.

The judge thought for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. It’ll be a hard lesson, but maybe that’s what he needs.” There was a file in front of her. She closed it. “Twelve months in Silent Creek.”

The security guard stepped forward and Jamie was led out through a side door, his feet moving only inches at a time. The last thing he saw was Alicia watching him. Her eyes were wide and full of dread.

They took him by minibus, still shackled, with a bottle of water wedged between his knees. He was going to need it. The temperature would rise quickly as soon as the sun rose and they planned to drive all night. There was nobody else on the bus: just the driver – an old, weather-beaten man – and a guard who had briefly checked Jamie’s wrist and ankle restraints and then ignored him.

It had been eight o’clock in the evening when they left. Jamie had watched the darkness fall before he had nodded off, sitting uncomfortably upright, asleep but still aware of the shuddering movement of the bus. When he opened his eyes, the light dazzled him. They had left the highway and were following a track, kicking up a cloud of dust all around them. Jamie could see only sand and scrubland with a few Jericho trees dotted around the landscape. A mountain range, burned red by the sun, stretched out across the horizon.

Then the road dipped. They had come to a miniature valley. And now he saw his new home, Silent Creek. The two words were written on a sign – unnecessarily. The inmates surely knew where they were and there was nobody else to read it for miles around. Despite everything, Jamie felt a shiver of excitement. He had seen the sign before – inside the head of Colton Banes. Scott was here, somewhere inside this complex. Jamie felt sure of it. He would find his brother and the two of them would bust out. The nightmare was almost over.

A long rectangular compound stood in front of him. The buildings were low-rise but they were surrounded by a razor-wire fence at least ten metres high. There were two satellite dishes pointing up towards the sky and on the other side Jamie saw a playing field with two goals – but of course there was no grass, not in this heat. The surface was yellow-grey sand. At the far end of the pitch, there was a wall – like all the other buildings, made out of cinder blocks and topped with more razor wire. As they bounced down towards the main gate, Jamie caught a glimpse of more buildings on the other side of the wall but realized he would be unable to see them again without the advantage of height. For some reason, Silent Creek had been divided into two: one third on one side, two thirds on the other.

The minibus passed between a number of outlying houses. These must be where the guards and maintenance staff lived. Jamie was annoyed with himself. He had only woken up at the last minute and he had no idea how near they were to any town or community. Scott would have been better prepared. But it was too late to worry about that now. They had stopped in front of the gate. This was the entrance to the prison, known as the sallyport. There was a buzz and the gate slid open electronically, allowing them into a narrow corridor between two lines of razor wire. The minibus jolted forward and stopped in front of a second gate. This only opened when the first one had closed. Now, at last, they were inside the prison. Jamie looked around him, searching for security cameras. There were no guard towers. Nor was there anybody in sight.

The minibus stopped one last time. The door hissed open.

“All right! Out!” They were the only words the guard had spoken since they had left.

Jamie shuffled out of his seat, along the aisle and out of the door. At once the heat hit him. It was like being physically battered. He was forced to squeeze his eyes shut, then opened them more carefully, fighting against the glare. He was already sweating. The temperature had to be in the nineties. Even the air was scorched. He looked around. The sun had sucked the colour out of almost everything. The silver of the fence, the grey sand, the ash-coloured cinder blocks – they all seemed to seep into each other like an over-exposed photograph. An electric generator and a fuel tank stood next to each other, locked in a cage. They were bright yellow. There was nothing else to catch the eye.

“This way!”

The guard led him to a door set in a wall, which opened as they approached. Jamie noticed a camera, mounted high above. It swivelled to follow him when he moved. The door led into a large, shabby room with a second officer sitting behind a desk with a computer. There were a couple of holding cells, some chairs – none of them matching – and a shower with a plastic curtain drawn half across. There were no windows. The room was lit by strip lighting. Mercifully, after the furnace of the courtyard, it was air-conditioned.

“Sit down!” It was the second guard who had spoken. He was casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Jamie saw that he carried no weapon. He was a man in his forties, with black hair tied behind his neck. He obviously had Native American blood and Jamie wondered if that might make him more sympathetic. But his manner was brisk and formal.

“My name is Joe Feather,” the man said. “But you call me Mr Feather or sir. I’m the Intake Officer and I’m going to process you and then show you into Orientation. Do you understand?”

Jamie nodded.

“You’re going to find it tough here. You’ve had a spell in juvie – is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then you know the basics. Keep your head down. Do as you’re told. It’ll make it easier on you.” He nodded at the other guard. “You can take off the shackles.”

Jamie’s hands and feet were unfastened and gratefully he moved his legs apart. There were red marks across his wrists and he rubbed them. In the next twenty minutes, his details were entered into the computer

… or at least, the details of Jeremy Rabb, the boy he was supposed to be. He had been up half the previous night with Alicia, memorizing them before he had been handed over to the police.

“Go into the shower and strip,” the Intake Officer told him. “I want all your clothes, including your shorts. You have any piercings?”

Jamie shook his head.

“OK. I’ll pass you your new kit…”

Jamie went into the shower and drew the curtain. But it seemed he wasn’t going to be given any privacy. The side wall of the shower contained a window looking into a storeroom and, as Jamie stood under the running water, he was aware of Joe Feather examining him from the other side. Jamie had been through strip searches when he was in juvenile hall, but even so he was embarrassed and turned away. That was when the officer saw the tattoo on his shoulder.

“Mr Rabb…” Joe Feather spoke the words softly. “Turn off the shower.”

Jamie did as he was told. He stood with drops of water trickling down his shoulders and back.

“Where did you get that tattoo?” the Intake Officer demanded.

“I’ve always had it. It was done when I was born.”

“You have a brother?”

Jamie froze. Had he been recognized already? “I don’t have a brother,” he said.

“No brother?”

“No, sir.”

Joe Feather handed him a bundle of prison-issue clothes. It fitted through a slot beneath the window. “Put these on,” he said. “I’ll take you in.”

Jamie was the ninety-sixth boy to arrive at Silent Creek. The prison could hold one hundred in total with ten full-time guards – or supervisors, as they called themselves – to watch over them. There were four living units – North, South, East and West – and life was arranged so that the inmates were kept apart as much as possible. That way, rival gang members barely saw each other and never spoke. Each unit ate at a different time – there were four sittings for every meal – and there were four exercise times in the prison gym. The age range went from thirteen to eighteen.

There were rules for everything. The boys had to walk with their hands clasped behind their backs. They weren’t allowed to talk while they moved and they couldn’t go anywhere, not even the toilet, without adult supervision. They were watched constantly, either by supervisors or security cameras. They were patted down after every meal and if a single plastic fork went missing, they were all strip-searched. There were six hours of school every morning, two hours of recreation (in the gym – it was too hot outside) and two hours of TV. Only sport was allowed – never movies or news. The prison uniform consisted of blue tracksuit trousers, grey T-shirts and trainers. All the colours had been chosen carefully. Nothing was black or bright red. Those were gang colours and might be enough to provoke a fight.

Life at the prison was not brutal, but it was boring. There were library books for the boys who could read, but otherwise every day was the same, the hours measured out with deadly precision, stretching out endlessly in the desert sun. There was solitary confinement or loss of privileges for anyone who stepped out of line and even an untied shoelace could bring instant punishment if the supervisors were in a bad mood.

And there was the medicine wing. Boys who were violent or unco-operative went to see the doctor in a small compound set right against the cinder-block wall. They were given pills and when they came back they were quiet and empty-eyed. One way or another, the prison would control you. The boys accepted that. They didn’t even hate Silent Creek. They simply suffered it as if it were a long illness that had happened to them and that wasn’t their fault.

It didn’t take Jamie long to find out what he needed to know. None of the other boys had met Scott. There was no record of his ever having been here. But he knew that what he had so far seen of Silent Creek was only half the story. There were two parts to the prison: he had seen that much for himself when he arrived on the bus. There was a whole area of the prison, on the other side of the wall, which stood quite alone. Nobody communicated with it. It had its own gymnasium, its own classrooms, kitchens and cells, as if it were a slightly smaller reflection of the main compound. And there were rumours.

On the other side of the wall. That, it was said, was where the specials were kept.

“They’re the real hard acts. The killers. The psychos.”

“They’re sick. That’s what I heard. They’ve got something wrong with their heads.”

“Yeah. They’re vegetables. Cretins. They just sit in their cells and stare at the walls…”

Jamie was having lunch with four other boys. The chair he was sitting on was made of metal, welded into the table, which was in turn bolted to the floor. The canteen was a small, square room with bare white walls. No decoration was allowed anywhere in Silent Creek, not even in the cells. The food wasn’t too bad though – even if it was served up in a compartmentalized plastic tray. Jamie had been surprised by most of the boys he had met. Nobody had given him a hard time – in fact they’d been glad to see a new face. Perhaps his experience at juvenile hall had helped. From the start he was one of them. So far, he hadn’t needed to use his false name. The other boys at the table called him Indian. He knew them as Green Eyes, Baltimore, DV and Tunes.

“The story I heard is that nobody wants them,” DV said. He was seventeen, Latino, arrested following a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. The boys weren’t meant to ask one another about their crimes but of course they did. DV was a member of the Playboy Gansta Crips. He had tattoos on both arms and planned to go back to the gang as soon as he got out. He had never known his father and his mother ignored him. The gang was the only family he had. “They got no parents,” he went on, “so now they’re using them for experiments. Testing stuff on them. That sort of thing.”

“How many of them are there?” Jamie asked.

“I heard twenty,” Green Eyes said. Jamie wasn’t sure how he’d got his nickname. He was fifteen years old, arrested for possession of a deadly weapon – meaning a gun. His eyes were blue.

“There are fifty at least,” Tunes growled. He was the youngest boy in the prison, barely fourteen. He turned to Jamie and lowered his voice. “You don’t want to ask too many questions about them, Indian. Not unless you want to join them.”

Jamie wondered where all these rumours began. But that was the thing about prisons. There were never any secrets. Somehow the whispers would travel from cell to cell and you had as much chance of keeping them out as you had of stopping the desert breeze.

As usual, they were being supervised while they ate. This was one of the few times when they were allowed to speak freely, but they still couldn’t even stand up without asking permission first. This was what had most struck Jamie about life at Silent Creek. They were no longer people. They were objects. At no point in the day could they do anything for themselves. The man watching them was the most senior – and the toughest – supervisor. He was a bulky, round-shouldered man with thinning hair and a moustache. His name was Max Koring. If anyone was looking for trouble, it would be him. He seemed to enjoy humiliating the inmates, carrying out strip searches for no reason at all, taking away a month’s privileges simply because it amused him.

Baltimore leant across the table. He had been named after the city where he’d been born. He was a tall, handsome black boy who never spoke about the crime that had brought him here. “You want to know about the other side, you need to talk to Koring,” he whispered. “He works both sides of the wall.”

“How do you know?” Jamie asked.

“I’ve seen him come in through the medicine wing.”

The medicine wing stood right up against the wall. Everyone knew that it served both sides of the prison. At least, that was what they said.

“He’s one of the only ones who’s allowed,” Baltimore went on. “They’ve got guards working the whole time on the other side. Armed guards. They don’t have nothing to do with us.”

“You want to visit the other side, just ask Max,” DV said. He smiled briefly. “The only trouble is, he’ll have your brain wired up to a computer and the next time anyone sees you, you’ll be a vegetable like all the others.”

The meal came to an end. The boys handed in their trays and plastic forks, then turned out their pockets and stood with their legs apart for the pat-down before they were returned to their cells for an hour’s rest. As they left the room, walking slowly through the blinding sunlight, Jamie noticed Joe Feather standing on the edge of the football field, examining him. It seemed to him that the Intake Officer had been watching him from the moment he had arrived. Did he suspect something? If so, Jamie would have to move quickly. He might be running out of time.

He remembered what Feather had said when he was processed, almost a week before. He had seen the tattoo on Jamie’s shoulder and he had asked, “You have a brother?” There was only one way he could have known that. He had seen Scott. And that meant that Scott had to be here, at Silent Creek.

Jamie was sure of it. After all, it made sense. Silent Creek was the only privately run prison in Nevada and it was part of the Nightrise Corporation. According to Alicia, Nightrise had been responsible for the disappearance of not one but many boys with paranormal abilities. What better place to keep them than within a maximum security prison, miles from anywhere, surrounded by the Mojave Desert? He had seen the name in Colton Banes’s thoughts. And what else could there be, concealed on the other side of the wall?

Jamie took off his trainers (it was rule number 118 or 119: no shoes inside the cell) and left them neatly in the corridor. The other boys had done the same. He went into the cell and a few seconds later there was a buzz and the doors slid shut electronically. His room, painted white, measured ten steps by five. There was a bunk that was actually part of the floor, moulded out of it. The cement simply rose up to form a narrow shelf with a thin, plastic mattress on the top. Opposite the bed he had a metal shelf which acted as a desk, with a chair bolted into the floor. A stainless-steel unit stood beside the door – a toilet and a basin combined. There was a mirror made of polished steel. And that was it. The room had a single window: a long strip no more than a few centimetres wide. There were no bars. Even if he had been able to smash through the industrial-strength glass, he could never have slipped out.

The other boys had told him that the door was electronically sealed and whenever he was alone, locked into the cell, Jamie had to fight back a growing sense of panic. Alicia knew he was here. At the end of his second week, he would be allowed to telephone her. But she was his only link with the outside world. What if something happened to her? Then he would be stuck here as Jeremy Rabb – or Indian. How long would it be before he went crazy and either had to be locked up in isolation or drugged?

But that wasn’t going to happen. Jamie still had his power and tonight he was going to use it. There would be a guard on duty in his unit and that guard would take him to the other side of the prison. He would find Scott and together the two of them would walk out.

Except…

It was only now, when it was much too late, that the first whispers of doubt came. Scott had the same powers as him -so why hadn’t he used them to break out himself? Was there something Jamie didn’t know? Why was he so certain that Scott was even there? A sickening thought occurred to him. Scott could be dead. He could have escaped and got lost in the desert. Anything could have happened.

Sitting alone on his bunk, Jamie opened his mind as he had done every night since he had arrived. He was sending his thoughts along the corridors, into the different blocks, trying to feel for any sense of his brother being near by. He concentrated on the other side of the wall. But there was nothing. Why was that? Jamie refused to accept that Scott wasn’t here. He had to be somewhere. Inside the secret compound. And if he wasn’t responding there must be a reason. Maybe it was simply that he was asleep.

Somehow the next hour crawled past. Then there were more lessons, an hour in the gym, dinner. The day finished with a wrap-up session in the unit’s living area – an open space with four circular tables where they were allowed to play cards or board games. The boys were supposed to talk about the day and how it had gone, but of course there was never very much to say. A guard sat watching them from behind a bank of television screens which showed different views of the corridors. There were no cameras in the cells. Tonight, Max Koring was on duty, which meant that the lights would snap out at exactly ten o’clock – or perhaps fifteen minutes earlier if he felt like it.

They were sent back to their cells at nine o’clock. They were given nothing to wear in bed – it was too hot anyway – so the boys just slept in their shorts. Each of them was given a toothbrush to use but it was collected and locked away again before the doors were shut. The handle of a toothbrush, sharpened, could make a lethal weapon, and the supervisors weren’t taking any chances. Jamie had no watch. It had been taken away from him along with anything else that might give him any sense of identity or independence. Eventually the lights in the cell blinked out. Although it still wasn’t truly dark, there were arc lamps all around the prison perimeter and they would stay on all night, the white glare seeping in through the window. Jamie lay on his bunk for about half an hour. Then he got up and dressed. It was time.

He pressed the call button next to his cell door.

A few minutes later, there was the rattle of a key and the door slid open. Max Koring stood there, his stomach rising and falling, his face half hidden in shadow. He had opened the door manually, overriding the electronic control. And he wasn’t pleased to be here. None of the supervisors enjoyed the graveyard shift, but being bothered by the kids just made it worse.

“Yes?” he demanded.

“I want you to take me to the units on the other side of the wall,” Jamie said.

The supervisor stared at him. He looked puzzled.

“You will do it now,” Jamie continued – and pushed, projecting his thoughts into the man’s head. He knew what he was doing. He had done exactly the same thing when he had come face to face with the policeman at Marcie’s house in Sparks.

Max Koring didn’t move.

“We’re leaving now,” Jamie said. And pushed again.

“You think you’re being funny?” Koring muttered. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

Jamie felt a shiver of bewilderment – followed by panic. It wasn’t working! But it had to. “Take me to my brother!” he demanded. He was still pushing, burning a hole in the man’s brain.

Now Koring was examining him as if seeing him in a completely new light. He smiled – but there was nothing warm or pleasant in it. “You have a brother?” he asked.

Desperately, Jamie changed tack. He couldn’t make the man obey him – but he could still use the moment to get information from him. He no longer cared about the consequences. He had to know about Scott and so he concentrated and jumped into Koring’s mind, just as he had with Colton Banes.

Nothing happened. His power wasn’t working. Jamie just had time to absorb the shock before Koring grabbed hold of him and backhanded him – hard – across the face. The room spun. Jamie tasted blood. Then he was thrown backwards, crashing into the bunk.

“I don’t like my time being wasted,” Koring said. “And you don’t give me orders. You may be new here, but you should know that. So maybe it’s time you had your first taste of CRR.”

CRR. Corrective Room Restriction. Another way of saying solitary confinement.

Ten minutes later, Koring returned with another supervisor. Neither of them said a word. They simply jerked Jamie out of his cell and dragged him down the corridor. The other boys must have heard what had happened. Suddenly they were all awake and shouting encouragement.

“Good luck, Indian!”

“Don’t let them grind you down!”

“See you soon, Indian. You take care!”

The isolation cells were in a separate area, a pair of heavy steel doors separating them from the main unit. Jamie didn’t even try to resist. He was flung into a cell half the size of the one he had left. This room had no mattress, and although there was a narrow window, the glass was frosted so there was no view.

“Let’s see how you feel after a week in here,” Koring said. “And in future, you call me sir.”

The door slammed shut.

Jamie stayed where he was, curled in a ball on the floor. He had hit his head against the bunk when he fell and his nose was bleeding. He was utterly alone. And his power had let him down. Had it gone, or was there something about the prison that he didn’t know? Maybe it had been built in this part of the desert purposefully. There could be something in the water or even in the soil that was playing with his mind. It made sense. If they were locking up kids with powers, they would have to be certain that those powers were under control.

Eventually, almost reluctantly, he crawled onto the bunk and fell asleep, his knees close to his chin, his arms loosely folded around his legs. And that was when he had the second dream.

He knew where he was immediately, and he was almost grateful for it even though this world – this dream world or whatever it was – was as alien to him as Silent Creek. There was the sea in front of him, the island once again, the sky as empty and as dead as ever. Jamie didn’t know what it all meant or why he should find himself here again, but somehow he understood that it was important. He remembered the two boys in the straw boat and searched for them, hoping they would come into sight. Maybe, at the very least, they could tell him where he could find Scott.

Something moved close to the water’s edge and Jamie’s heart sank. It was the man he had encountered the last time he had been here. He was already straightening up – all seven feet of him – moving across the shingle, the hollow eyes staring out of the grey, putty-like face. The man was holding his bowl. This time there was no sign of the knife.

“He’s gonna kill him,” the man said.

Despite everything, Jamie felt a spurt of anger. “That’s what you said last time,” he called out. “But I can’t stop them killing Scott unless you tell me where he is.”

“No, boy. You don’t understand-”

The man was about to go on but he never got the chance. There was a lightning strike. No – it was more than that. It was as if two giant hands had seized hold of the universe and ripped it apart like paper. The whole world – the sea and the sky – was torn in two. Jamie felt the ground convulse underneath him – an earthquake more powerful than anything the world had ever known. Everything was shuddering. He could feel his teeth rattling in his head. He was thrown off his feet and as he fell he tried to catch sight of the man… but he had already gone. At the same time, an ear-splitting scream echoed all around him. He would have said it was a shout of triumph, except that there was nothing remotely human about it. Jamie was deafened. He was clinging to the ground, which was twisting in turmoil beneath him.

In the next few seconds, a series of shapes suddenly appeared, plummeting through the sky – flying or falling… he couldn’t tell. It was as if a great hole had opened up on the other side of the universe and flames were bursting out. The whole sky was on fire. He thought he saw a gigantic spider, another animal like an ape or a monkey, something that looked like a huge bird… Thousands of tiny specks followed them: a great dark swarm of them, twisting and cartwheeling in the air.

And there was something else. Jamie was aware only of an approaching blackness, a sense of something so terrifying that he could no longer bear to look. He closed his eyes and hugged the ground. The sea had gone, the water rushing away from the coastline. The wind was howling all around him.

It seemed to go on for ever. But there was no real time here and it could have been all over in a minute. As the storm died down and the waves returned, he lay where he was, completely exhausted.

Jamie knew nothing of the Old Ones, the five Gatekeepers, the struggle that had been going on for thousands of years and the part that he had been chosen to play. He knew nothing about a stone circle called Raven’s Gate or the second gate that had been built in the Nazca Desert in Peru. Nor did he know that it was now midnight on 24 June – the day known as Inti Raymi.

The second gate had just opened.