'Cadel?' said a boy's voice. 'Cadel Piggott?'

At that point, Cadel stopped walking and started running.

He ran all the way home.

THIRTY-FIVE.

So now he knew. Thaddeus was paying big money to a certain James Guisnel, whose credit card receipt had been lying on the floor of the Piggotts' wardrobe. It couldn't be a coincidence: Stuart Piggott must be James Guisnel. And Stuart almost certainly worked for Dr Darkkon.

When Cadel arrived home, Mrs Ang was there, mopping the kitchen floor. If she was surprised to see him in his old school uniform, with his hair slicked back, she didn't show it. She simply stared at him with her black, impenetrable gaze.

No doubt she, too, was employed by Dr Darkkon. To spy on Cadel.

Just like everyone else in that house.

Cadel went straight to his bathroom. Automatically, he stripped off his clothes and hopped into the shower. But as he started to lather his sticky head with shampoo, he began to shake. He felt sick again. Sick to his stomach. He had to prop himself up against the tiled wall.

He didn't know if he was genuinely ill or in a state of shock. The shock of knowing that his whole life was a lie. That his own father had handed him over to a couple of people who didn't give a stuff about him. Who were only looking after him because it was part of their job description. Who were probably away so much because they had real lives to live a not this pathetic, empty, feeble excuse for a life. To his fury, Cadel found himself crying. Angry tears mingled with streaming hot water as he fought to contain his hiccupping sobs. He dropped his head, trying to smother the noise in case there were hidden cameras installed in the room. In case Dr Darkkon wasn't allowing him any privacy at all a not even in the shower.

They had played him for a fool. They had planned it out, from the very beginning. He doubted now that the authorities had even heard of his existence. Or maybe they had, but not to the point where they were keeping an eye on him. No a the whole story of his being stolen away and hidden, like a smuggled prince, was probably Dr Darkkon's. His goal for Cadel must have included some kind of siege mentality, to go with a carefully cultivated distrust of everyone in the world except Dr Darkkon himself. Oh, and Thaddeus Roth. It wouldn't do to forget Thaddeus.

Even as he sniffed and gulped, Cadel was reviewing his situation. At last he could see it clearly, from every angle. Dr Darkkon had made good and sure that the Piggotts were bad parents. After all, he couldn't have wanted Cadel to bond with them. For the same reason, he had arranged it that not a single pleasant person had ever been invited to the Piggotts' house. He had encouraged Cadel's efforts to divide and conquer his cla.s.smates at school, condemning the stupidity of some while scoffing at the pastimes of others. Cadel's isolating intelligence, his obscure interests and awkward manner, had further cut him off from the rest of the world a until Sonja arrived on the scene. That must have been nasty surprise. How frightened of Sonja Dr Darkkon must have been! No doubt he had been monitoring every email exchange with great concern, comforted only by the fact that the whole friendship, being founded on a lie, was as fragile as a spider's web.

Then, after Dr Deal's a.s.sault on Cadel, Phineas must have decided that enough was enough. Outside support was making Cadel too independent. Cadel was beginning to hold back information a to argue with Thaddeus. Sonja (or Kay-Lee, as she called herself) would have to go. It didn't matter that she was Cadel's only friend. It didn't matter that he needed her. What mattered was that Cadel had to remain his father's puppet so that Dr Darkkon could take his revenge on society. Cadel Darkkon, after all, meant 'Battle Lord'.

Cadel was to be his father's heir in everything.

Fighting back the urge to scream, Cadel beat the wall with an open palm. He felt utterly used, and shamefully stupid. How could he have been so blind? But then, the foundations had been laid when he was so very, very young. He had been taught to despise the Piggotts in order that he might come to love and trust his father. His father and Thaddeus Roth. They were the only support he'd had a until Sonja.

Once again, hysteria bubbled to the surface. Once again, he fought it off. He had to. He knew now that he could not afford to put a foot wrong. For every unusual activity he must have an excuse. There was a good chance that the entire house was under surveillance, inside and out, twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps it had always been so.

For twelve years he had lived in a cage. A trap. His whole life was a prison, carefully designed to stop him from even wanting to get out.

But Sonja had breached the prison walls, just a little. And at last he knew what he had been missing all these years. He realised that there were people out there a people living in the world that Dr Darkkon hated a who were just as intelligent and interesting as Cadel was. Who deserved respect. Who had the sense to respect him, but demanded nothing in exchange for their admiration. Sonja didn't expect anything from Cadel. She didn't want him to change. Dr Darkkon, on the other hand, wanted Cadel to be a well, to be a clone. A clone of Dr Darkkon.

It occurred to Cadel that his father had been poisoning his mind for years. He and Thaddeus had been feeding Cadel tales of a hostile and narrow-minded society a tales that probably weren't true. Oh, there were idiots and bullies around, of course there were. But there were Sonjas as well. There had to be. Mathematically, it didn't make sense that she should be unique.

And if there was more than one Sonja in the world, Cadel thought, then why should the world go to h.e.l.l if Dr Darkkon failed to seize control of it? He realised, suddenly, that the human race might very well survive without Dr Darkkon's guidance. And that the Axis Inst.i.tute was therefore unnecessary.

Cadel turned off the shower and dried himself. He was no longer crying; his red eyes could be blamed on the shampoo. He tried not to display any emotion as he got dressed. With a blank expression he combed his hair, retreated into his bedroom and shut the door. Even here he wasn't safe. There could be hidden cameras. Listening devices. He didn't want to be paranoid, but he couldn't afford to make a mistake.

So he curled up under his bedspread, shut his eyes, and firmly swallowed the lump in his throat.

He couldn't bear to think about the betrayal. The manipulation. It was too painful a it made him gasp. So he forced his mind down other paths, trying to ignore the waves of hurt and fury that kept welling up, disturbing the logical progression of his thoughts.

What did he want to do? He wanted to escape. Why did he want to escape? It was his only option, really. If he didn't, and he continued to communicate with Sonja, he would be putting her life at risk; there was no doubt about that. If, on the other hand, he stopped communicating with Sonja a well, he might just as well kill himself. He would be killing himself. He wouldn't survive. Little by little, he would fade away to nothing. A dry husk. An empty puppet.

A soulless clone.

His father was mad. Why hadn't he ever seen that before? Perhaps at the beginning, when he was very young a but then Thaddeus had convinced him that all was well. Even more than Dr Darkkon, Thaddeus had guided Cadel's every step. Thaddeus was so clever, so cool, so a so kind. No one else had ever been as kind to Cadel. Certainly not the Piggotts.

Even now, Cadel's feelings for Thaddeus were complicated. He hated his father with a pure and simple hatred (G.o.d a oh G.o.d a he felt like smashing that froggy face in), but Thaddeus, Cadel realised, was neither mad nor obsessed. Just what did Thaddeus want from life? Cadel had never before asked himself that question. Nor could he provide an answer. Thaddeus's motives were a mystery. Thaddeus was . . . unreadable. Secretive.

Unnerving.

Though Cadel had always liked and admired Thaddeus, he had never ceased to regard the psychologist with a touch of fear. Thaddeus would make a formidable foe. And Cadel also knew that Thaddeus wouldn't stop a ever a until he tracked Cadel down. It wouldn't be hard, not for Thaddeus. He knew Cadel so well. Cadel had confided in him, trusted him, believed in him . . .

Suddenly, Cadel leapt up, driven to his feet by the force of his own feelings. With clenched fists, he moved about distractedly from wall to wall, bouncing off them like a ball in a pinball machine. The sheer scale of the deception a the perfidy of it! Oh, but he had to calm down. He had to focus on the task at hand. He had to work out what was the best thing to do.

He sat down again and doggedly, desperately, reviewed his options. He knew that if he was going to disappear, he would have to do it properly. Half measures would not be good enough. He would have to find himself another home, another ident.i.ty a perhaps even another country. Of course, if he made contact with the police, then the police would do it all for him a but Cadel was wary of the police. To begin with, he wasn't sure that the police could outwit Thaddeus Roth. For another, he didn't know if Dr Darkkon might have employees working within the police force.

Moreover, once the police were involved, there would be no turning back. He would have declared himself Dr Darkkon's enemy for all time. And as Dr Darkkon's enemy, he would also be Thaddeus Roth's enemy.

That was something he very much wanted to avoid.

Cadel considered his cache of forged doc.u.ments. Many of them were made out in the name of someone called Ariel Schaap a an eighteen-year-old girl he'd created for his coursework. Suppose Ariel became the girl in the Indian cotton skirt? She already had a birth certificate, and even a series of bank accounts. (Fake bank accounts were fundamental to his Embezzlement course.) He could easily whip up a pa.s.sport to match, using his own photograph. Ariel had become his 'John Citizen'; her existence was something he had been working on almost as a hobby. Though perhaps, deep down, he had known that he would need her some time. Perhaps he had known that she was his ticket out of this cage.

Except, of course, that she wasn't. Not while Art and Brendan and Alias were around. All of them had marked his Ariel a.s.signments. All of them knew about Ariel. Alias had actually seen her, dressed up in her Indian cotton skirt. If Cadel was going to escape (and he would have to do it soon, or somehow a he was sure a Thaddeus would begin to read his mind), then he would have to arrange that those three Axis staff were out of the picture. Those three and Dr Deal, who had also seen Cadel in his Ariel disguise. And perhaps even Luther Lasco? Cadel didn't want Luther called in to 'deal' with him.

Yes, Luther was a problem as well.

Cadel tried to work out if there was a flaw in his reasoning. It really didn't seem so. Students were supposed to destroy the doc.u.ments that they produced for Art's course, so he had been very careful with the ones he'd kept. Unless cameras had been installed inside his wardrobe a a very remote possibility, in Cadel's opinion a then no one would have seen him transferring Ariel's doc.u.ments from the pocket of one garment into the lining of another. What's more, if Alias had told Thaddeus about the Ariel disguise, then the Fuhrer's surveillance team wouldn't have lost Cadel in the mall. It was clear, Cadel thought, that Thaddeus wasn't keeping a very close eye on his coursework a just on his results. Just on what would please Dr Darkkon, no doubt. Because did either of those two really care about Cadel? Of course not. Cadel was just another tool a another means to an end a another step in the program . . .

This time, the rage and misery seemed to blast through Cadel's head with such strength that they propelled him off the bed, across the room. They scattered all his well-organised arguments and interfered with his breathing. At last, unable to stand the confusion, he slammed his head against the wall: once, twice, three times.

The shock of the impact helped him, oddly enough. He recovered a little. His hands stopped shaking and he was able to catch his breath.

Yes, he had been abused. Yes, it was unbearable. But he had to move on. He would move on. He would remove those five inst.i.tute staff from the picture, and create a new life for himself.

Of course, he wouldn't be able to focus his attention solely on his own teachers; not if he wanted to avoid all blame. Someone, probably Thaddeus, would put two and two together. No, he would have to involve other staff. Other staff from the other campus. Staff who had nothing to do with him.

Cadel returned to his bed and lay on it. Slowly he allowed his tangled emotions to settle at the back of his mind, like sediment at the bottom of a pool, as he concentrated on the problem he had set himself. His brain began to turn over, smoothly and efficiently. Synapses began to fire. Patterns began to emerge. He knew that his half-completed predictive program would have been very helpful, but he didn't know who might have been monitoring his databases. So he was forced to rely on the complex programs in his own head.

Even committing an equation to paper was out of the question. He couldn't let anyone see what was going on. It was vital that he keep his plans secret, especially from Thaddeus Roth.

Cadel lay thinking until dinner time. Mrs Ang was the one who called him to the table, informing him as she did so that she was going now, but that Mrs Piggott would be back soon. Cadel therefore ate alone in the big dining room, forcing himself to swallow a few mouthfuls of the ca.s.serole that Mrs Ang had heated up in the microwave. He wasn't the least bit hungry. Afterwards, he stared at the television for a while, his mind working busily as the pictures unfolded before his blank gaze. He couldn't go to bed a not yet. It would have seemed odd. Unusual. He couldn't afford to relax his guard for a moment.

Finally, at nine o'clock, he retired for the night. It was a great relief to lie in bed again, though even here he had to be careful. For all he knew, there were infra-red cameras planted in the air-conditioning vent above him. Therefore, although he would have liked to thrash about, pace the room, and perhaps go outside to stare at the stars, he could not. For most of the night he lay with his eyes shut, thinking and thinking.

Only when the dawn light filtered into his room did he drop into a restless slumber. For by then, at last, the new construction in his head was complete.

THIRTY-SIX.

Mrs Piggott woke him at eight.

'Cadel! Pet! How are you feeling?' she crooned, entering his room without knocking first. 'I'm going now, but I'll be here tonight. And Dad will be home too, thank goodness. We can all have dinner together!'

Cadel grunted. Blearily, he realised that he could think of nothing worse.

'Are you okay? Yes? Then you'd better get up, honey, or you'll be late for your first cla.s.s. Come on, now. Up, up, up!'

Cadel's first cla.s.s was at ten. He had a busy day ahead of him. Pure Evil would be followed by Disguise, Infiltration and Dr Deal's Law cla.s.s, which was at four. He probably wouldn't make the Maestro's session; he had other things to do. Poor Gazo would have to face Maestro Max alone.

He felt sorry for Gazo, but it couldn't be helped.

After skipping breakfast, Cadel began to look for Abraham's address on the Internet, careless of anyone who might be monitoring his activities. When he found it he scribbled it down, threw on his clothes and ran to catch a train.

It was his normal train, but it didn't take him to the inst.i.tute. Instead, he alighted before he reached his usual stop, emerging into a soiled, gritty area of inner-city streets and dark little terrace houses. Toiling up and down hills, past murky corner shops and dressmaking businesses and little parks smeared with dog poo, Cadel kept glancing back, trying to work out if anyone was following him. It was impossible to tell. There were quite a few odd-looking people walking around, any one of whom could have been a Grunt.

At last he found the house where Abraham lived. Since it was now nine forty-five, Cadel was hoping that all its other occupants (there were three, if he remembered correctly) would be out at work. The house was a dingy terrace, with a front door and window ledges painted dark green. The handkerchief-sized front yard had been paved over, though there was one dark-leaved tree which grew out of the cement and threw gloomy shadows over the building's facade.

As promised, the key to this depressing structure was sitting on top of the fuse-box by the entrance. In fact there were two keys: one opened the iron-barred gate that protected the front door, and one opened the door itself. Cadel was careful to lock both behind him, conscious of the house's smell before he even noticed its layout. The smell was a mouldy one a mouldy and septic, like the smell of bad drains. From the front entrance, a long, dark hallway led past two open doors to a flight of stairs. Behind the stairs was a larger, lighter room, but before Cadel could explore it a voice rang out from somewhere down the back of the house.

'Who's that?'

Cadel's heart missed a beat. d.a.m.n, he thought.

'Uh a my name's Cadel Piggott.'

'What?'

'I'm a friend of Abraham Coggins.'

Padding footsteps heralded the approach of a young woman who appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs. She was dressed in a short black skirt and a neat white blouse, but her feet were bare. Gazing down at Cadel, she said: 'How the h.e.l.l did you get in?'

'Abraham told me where the key was,' Cadel replied. 'He asked me to get some things.'

'Abraham's in hospital.'

'I know. I saw him yesterday a '

'You're just a kid!'

Cadel didn't know what to say to that. He waited as the young woman descended the stairs, doing up the b.u.t.tons of her sleeve. It occurred to Cadel that, had he waited a few more minutes, this occupant too would have been hurrying off to work.

Bad timing.

'Abe shouldn't be telling all and sundry about our spare key,' she complained, stopping in front of Cadel. 'What did he want, anyway?'

'Uh a some of his clothes. One of his books.' As Cadel racked his brain for a likely list of requirements, he blinked his big blue eyes and sucked in his mouth.

It worked.

'Well, I can't help. I'm late already,' the young woman snapped, brushing past Cadel and turning towards the kitchen. 'Do you know where his room is? Upstairs, right down the back. Don't go into any of the others. And if we're robbed, we'll know who to blame. What's your name again?'

'Cadel Piggott.'

She grunted and disappeared. Finding himself alone, Cadel mounted the stairs. He noticed that the plaster on the walls was cracking, and that the light at the top of the stairs was a naked bulb hanging on a wire.

When he pa.s.sed the bathroom, he realised that it was the source of the smell: its ceiling was covered with mould.

Yuk, thought Cadel. What a place to live.

Abraham's door was shut, but not locked. When Cadel pushed it open, something fell off the hook that was nailed onto its back: a belt, Cadel saw. The room contained one double bed, one bookcase, and one clothes rack a there wasn't room for much else, except a few stacks of plastic storage boxes full of paper. A limp curtain hung over the window, so Cadel turned on the light.

Almost immediately, a c.o.c.kroach skittered across one wall, disappearing behind the bed.

Cadel gritted his teeth. He went straight to the bookcase, which he scanned with a practised eye. Principles of Internal Medicine was a large volume sitting in the middle of the bottom shelf. When Cadel pulled it out, the dust he dislodged made him sneeze.

He was half afraid that Abraham had been feverish, so he didn't necessarily expect to find the key. But it was there, taped to the inside back cover as Abraham had promised. Cadel removed the key and replaced the book. Then he looked around the room for the sorts of things that Abraham might need in hospital, finally choosing a grubby old dressing gown, a little address book full of phone numbers, a couple of pairs of underpants (from a plastic bag hanging on the clothes rack) and a bottle of pills. He didn't know what the pills were for. He just pushed them into his backpack with the rest of the stuff.

'Can I use your phone?' he loudly asked Abraham's house-mate, as he descended the stairs. He knew that she was still around because he hadn't heard any doors shut. 'I'll pay for it. It's just a local call.'

'It's in here,' came the reply. Cadel followed her voice into the living room, where she was standing in front of the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece, pinning up her hair. The room made Cadel's skin crawl. Its s.h.a.ggy carpet looked like the coat of an old and filthy dog. Its white sofas were stained and sagging. Only the TV and sound equipment were in good condition.

'Did you find what you wanted?' the young woman asked, twisting and turning in front of the mirror. She was now wearing shoes.

'Oh, yes thanks,' said Cadel, offering her his backpack. 'I got the dressing gown, and the address book, and the underpants a '

'Ugh,' she interrupted. 'Don't tell me. I don't want to know.' Then, because she was obviously satisfied with her hair, she turned to Cadel with an outstretched hand. 'So?' she went on. 'Where's the money?'

Cadel blinked. Then he realised what she was talking about.

'Oh! For the phone, you mean? Here.' He dug into the front pocket of his trousers, drawing out a few coins. 'I promise, it's only local. I don't have a mobile.'

'You can call whoever you want,' the young woman interrupted. 'I won't have to worry about the phone bill. I'm leaving this dump next week a it's impossible living here.' On her way out, she picked up her handbag and addressed him over her shoulder. 'Lock up when you leave, all right? And don't even try to get into my room. It's padlocked.'

As if a padlock could keep me out, Cadel thought. But he said nothing a just waited until the front door slammed. Once again, it seemed, his innocent appearance had worked in his favour.

Or perhaps she was hoping that he would steal something from her fellow occupants? She certainly didn't seem to like them very much.

Cadel picked up the sticky beige receiver of the telephone and punched in the number of Sonja's local library, which he now knew by heart. After two rings, the call was answered by a female voice. Cadel asked for Beatrice.