Joyride Read online

  ‘He doesn’t think he’s Amar,’ says the youngest of the three, Tanya Adeola. ‘He says he’s called Viola.’

  ‘Like the instrument?’ he wonders out loud, then wishes he hadn’t.

  ‘Oh, do shut up,’ says Amar. ‘You haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about and I’m wasting my time sat here.’ The boy stands up and moves to leave. Quill makes it quite clear she won’t let him. She makes it clear without even moving, something that impresses Toby beyond measure.

  ‘Look,’ says Amar, drawing to a halt, ‘this is nothing to do with you and I haven’t paid good money to just sit here being patronised by idiots.’

  ‘He really isn’t Amar, is he?’ says Charlie, looking at the boy with fascination.

  ‘We should ask where Ram might be,’ says April.

  Toby is getting even more frustrated by the fact that he seems to be an ignorant spectator to this entire situation. ‘Please sit down, Amar,’ he says, ‘and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of all this.’

  ‘Where’s Ram Singh?’ April asks.

  Amar simply stares at her. ‘Never heard of him,’ he says. ‘Should I have?’ He looks up at the clock on the wall and sighs. ‘Is that thing right?’

  Charlie checks his phone. ‘A few minutes slow.’

  Amar shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter then, my time’s almost up anyway.’

  ‘What time?’ asks Quill, finally stepping into the room, realising that any slim opportunity this situation offers is vanishing fast.

  ‘The time I’ve paid for,’ says Amar. ‘The time I’m stuck here staring at your silly little faces.’

  Quill grabs Amar, and Toby jumps up out of his chair in shock.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he cries.

  ‘Who’s behind this?’ Quill roars, shaking Amar.

  ‘You can’t attack a student!’ Toby begs. He knows he should intercede, but then Quill might hit him and he’s too scared of her to risk that.

  ‘You won’t hurt him,’ says Amar. ‘I know you won’t.’

  ‘I won’t do any permanent damage, no,’ says Quill and pokes her fingers into the pressure points on Amar’s arms. He screams. This is too much for Toby, as scared as he is of Quill, he can’t just stand here and watch his career go down the toilet.

  ‘Get off him!’ he shouts, pulling at Quill.

  ‘He’s right, Miss Quill,’ says Tanya. ‘You can’t hurt him, because it isn’t him, is it?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to find your friend,’ says Quill, but drops Amar anyway.

  ‘You’re a right bitch,’ Amar says. ‘You know that?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Quill replies with a smile that will give Toby nightmares in the weeks to come.

  ‘Please just tell us where we can find our friend,’ begs April.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to,’ Amar replies, then his face goes slack for a second before he stares at them in clear confusion.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s really him now, isn’t it?’ says Charlie.

  Quill sighs. ‘Well, that was a waste of time.’

  ‘At least we know we’re right,’ says April. She shivers slightly. ‘To think that happened to me this morning. It makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Look,’ says Toby, ‘this has all gone too far now. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re all talking about. It’s ridiculous and extremely, extremely annoying. I demand that everyone leaves the office except for Amar. He and I will have a little chat and, after that . . .’ He looks at Quill. ‘I suppose we’ll see if you still have a career.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she says, and smiles sweetly at Amar. ‘Have I ever physically attacked you, Amar?’

  Amar is still clearly disoriented but he can answer that question easily enough. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good boy,’ says Quill. ‘Don’t forget to tell anyone else who asks the same thing.’ She looks at the other three.

  ‘Come on, you heard Mr Moore, he needs to have a little sit down and a cry.’

  She walks out, Charlie, April, and Tanya following behind, somewhat sheepishly.

  EIGHTEEN

  STEVE’S LITTLE PROBLEM

  Steve is beginning to think he may be developing an ulcer. Only a few hours ago everything was going so well. He loves this new job, loves the money, and loves the infrequent opportunities to finally deal with his Little Problem.

  He calls it his Little Problem but nobody else does. Especially his wife, who has made it quite clear that he won’t see her or the kids for dust if she smells booze on his breath ever again.

  Steve is an alcoholic. But that’s OK, because now Steve has a job that lets him tie one on at regular intervals without a drop of it ever entering his bloodstream. It’s not the perfect solution of course—these mad binges don’t stop the constant craving—but knowing that he can drink, will drink in fact, very soon, just as soon as the boss leaves the office for a while, makes a hell of a difference. It doesn’t deal with the physical cravings, but the psychological ones? It helps with those a fair bit.

  The way he looks at it is this: he can still drink, he just has to binge it. He daren’t stay too long in the transfer room—he knows without a doubt that if Fletcher catches him hooked up to the machine he’ll be screwed—so he dashes in, transfers over, grabs a bottle he’s stashed earlier (the day he spent ten frustrating minutes digging around in a hedge before accepting that some thief had found it and beaten him to it was just the worst), neck it, then feel the buzz for as long as he dare before transferring back to dull sobriety. It isn’t perfect, far from it, but just knowing that drink is still available to him, with none of the long-term side effects to his liver or marriage, that’s an amazing and beautiful thing.

  But it has caused other, small complications. Because although everyone thinks Steve is a bit stupid, he’s actually not bad with technology. Even this weird, alien technology. Which is how he figured out you could set an automatic timing function for transfers, enabling him to run it by himself. It’s also why he is now staring at the pyramid and knowing that the reason all hell is breaking loose in the world of Joyriders is that he can’t keep his damn hands to himself.

  The problem with Mr O’Donnell is Steve’s fault. He’d been playing with the controls, exploring functions, seeing what else the thing could do. What he hadn’t realised, during his messing about—but did now, oh yes—was that the machine could do a full transfer. That’s the only explanation for what’s happened. Mr O’Donnell has been sent into the host body and the mind of the host body has been sent into that of Mr O’Donnell. Permanently. Add to that the fact that Steve has been futzing with the timer controls and boom, you’ve got yourself exactly the problem they’re facing now. When the timer had gone off, the host mind must have woken up in O’Donnell’s body, causing their current problem.

  God, but he wishes he’d never started tinkering with this thing while Fletcher was out.

  God, but he wishes he could have a drink.

  So how to fix it? How to reverse what he’s done? Of course it would help if he could figure out exactly what he did do, figure it out precisely. If he can only remember that, then fixing it should be a doddle.

  ‘Time to wake up, Mrs Cummings,’ says Fletcher, strolling into the room. He doesn’t seem to notice the way Steve backs away from the machine, desperately trying to appear like a man who most definitely wasn’t just messing about with the controls.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, and points at the machine, ‘do you want me to . . . ?’

  ‘Do me a favour, I’d rather get her back in one piece.’ Fletcher pushes him out of the way and Steve watches over his shoulder as he reverses the transfer. He doesn’t mind his boss treating him like an idiot—in fact, he’s relieved by it. If Fletcher believes him incapable of using the machine, then he’s unlikely to guess what Steve’s done.

  Mrs Cummings groans slightly and Fletcher dashes over to ensure he’s the first thing she sees when she opens he
r eyes.

  ‘Hello there, Mrs Cummings,’ he says in the voice Steve knows his boss considers charm itself. Personally, Steve thinks it sounds like a particularly bad waiter in a restaurant that isn’t half as posh as it believes it is. Fletcher will insist on being charming with the ladies, even old birds like Mrs Cummings. ‘I can have any woman eating out of my hand inside two minutes,’ Fletcher frequently claims. Steve has seen precious little evidence of it; they all just look at him as if he’s a bit creepy.

  ‘And how was our ballet lesson today?’

  Steve notices that she hesitates for a second, looks awkward.

  ‘Delightful as always, thank you,’ she says. ‘I’d love to tell you all about it but I have another appointment this afternoon, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Next time,’ oozes Fletcher as he leads her out of the door.

  The minute they’re gone, Steve is back staring at the controls. There must be a way around this, there must be!

  He hears Fletcher’s phone going off and his boss making apologetic noises to Mrs Cummings as he answers it. Suddenly Fletcher is heading back towards him, talking excitedly on the phone. Steve backs away from the equipment again, grabbing the headset Mrs Cummings has just taken off and making a big show of carefully coiling the cable around his hands as he tidies it up and places it back near the central console.

  Fletcher bursts in.

  ‘Steve, my beauty!’ he says, and for a moment Steve is terrified. He’s never seen this amount of enthusiasm from his boss before, and he’s quite convinced it can only be a trick, a way of getting him to lower his guard so Fletcher can kill him. He’s sure Fletcher killed the last bloke that worked for him, Mike something . . .

  Fletcher doesn’t kill him. ‘I’ve solved all our problems. Well, Mr O’Donnell has, to be fair.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s only gone and found us the one thing we need to get this machine working properly! He’s found us another alien!’

  NINETEEN

  NO CONTROL

  ‘We’re no better off now than we were already,’ Tanya moans. Nobody can disagree with her.

  They’re heading towards Ram’s house because . . . well, because they have no idea what else to do.

  Charlie can’t help but notice that April has been quiet.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course she’s not alright,’ Tanya interrupts. ‘Our friend might be dead in a minute!’ Sometimes Charlie is so far away from being human, she thinks, so cold and confused, as if emotions are something he’s still working on. He’s like a small dog that doesn’t bat an eyelid when charging into battle against an Alsatian but would quake in terror at the sight of an unusual stick. It’s as if all the responses are there but sometimes he forgets the cues that trigger them.

  ‘It’s not that,’ April admits, then feels a bit embarrassed. ‘Not only that anyway—obviously I’m worried for him.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ asks Charlie.

  ‘Watching the way Amar was. Someone else inside him, someone else in control. That was me this morning. Have you any idea what that feels like?’

  ‘Having another living thing trapped inside your body controlling your actions?’ says Quill, who is walking a short distance behind them and has, until this moment, been pretending that she wasn’t even listening. ‘I can’t imagine. Must be horrendous.’

  ‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ Charlie snaps.

  ‘No, Prince,’ Quill replies. ‘Of course, Prince, I’m sure it’s nowhere near as cruel or invasive as that, Prince.’

  At which point she falls silent and resumes pretending she’s not with them.

  ‘At least you have control over most of your actions,’ April replies. ‘I had no control at all. They could have made me do anything. Getting drunk? That was nothing. But I have no idea what else they might have done, no idea at all. And without knowing, I can’t help but think the worst, you know? I was completely helpless for, what? Half an hour? A lot can happen in half an hour. One hell of a lot.’

  Charlie puts his hand on her shoulder, but she flinches so he takes it away again, not knowing what he’s supposed to do.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I just . . . It’s not the first time someone has tried to control me.’

  She’s thinking of her father. Of that day in the car. Of the roaring engine, the sound of her mother screaming. But she doesn’t want to talk about that. Not now. She made a promise to herself after that day. She promised that she would always be in control, that she wouldn’t let others dictate her circumstances for her. That promise is going so well right now. Not even her heart is entirely her own.

  They’ve reached Ram’s house now, and April’s glad to change the subject. ‘He’s not there, we know he’s not there, going in is just going to cause a scene with his dad, you know that, right?’

  ‘I’ll go on my own,’ says Tanya. ‘The rest of you stay out of sight. If Ram’s dad is going to kick up a fuss, he’s not as likely to do it if it’s just me.’

  Charlie, Quill, and April walk off while Tanya heads towards the house.

  None of them see the figure watching them from a short distance away.

  TWENTY

  HE JUST MIGHT BE ABLE TO SAVE THE WORLD

  John O’Donnell knows he can’t let them see him. If they see him, then they’ll think he’s the boy, their friend, and then questions will be asked, and while he keeps remembering new details, they’re sketchy, not enough to let him play the part. Better to stay back, better to watch and remember.

  There, he thinks, posh boy, that’s the one. Charlie. That’s what it calls itself. That’s the name it pretends with. And the woman, the one hanging back from the other two, pretending she’s not with them. Not a woman. No. She’s like the other one. Wrong. Alien.

  He’s surprised by how easily he accepts the idea. It’s not because of what he’s currently experiencing; the idea of transferring bodies might seem miraculous, but he’s always imagined it in purely scientific terms. No, the reason he knows those two people aren’t what they seem, absolutely knows it, is because his host body knows it. He shares its conviction along with everything else. He wonders what other convictions he might end up feeling if he stays in the body too long. What other things will he begin to believe?

  So what does he do about it? What does he do about any of this?

  He needs to call Fletcher, he’s decided that much. The initial idea of staying in this body permanently, of maybe even starting a whole new life inside it, has started to sour. Because he’d get caught in the end, he’s bound to. Maybe, if all of the boy’s memories were opened to him, he might be able to bluff it. Maybe. But he has no guarantee of that. Besides, what if the boy’s mind is still in here somewhere? What if that’s why he’s remembering the few things he has? What if that mind suddenly took control? Where would that leave him?

  And there’s Cheryl of course. For all he doesn’t deserve her, he does love her. He can’t just abandon her, their home, their life, his business, everything. However tempting it might be to wipe the slate clean and start a new life in a young and beautiful body, it’s just not something he can do. So he needs to change back.

  And now there’s this. Aliens living amongst them. He’s got to do something about that, hasn’t he? It could be an invasion! They could want to wipe everyone out. He’s lucky he’s stumbled on this. It’s just possible that his . . . urges, his crime, might lead to something good after all. He just might be able to save the world!

  He calls Fletcher.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘I’M GOING TO CUT THIS BLOKE TO PIECES’

  Steve is finally alone again. Fletcher’s excitement doesn’t quite make sense to him. Just because he’s found an alien—a concept Steve has no problem running with, he’s played with this machine too much to balk at that—that doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to work this thing, now does it? What does Fletcher think? That all aliens understand the machinery of all other
aliens? That’s like assuming all humans know how to split an atom.

  Fletcher’s enthusiasm wasn’t shared by Mrs Cummings either when he begged her to stay a little longer, to help him with ‘a little problem’. If she remained, he was only too happy to reward her with free transfer time. In fact, he promised her two whole free sessions, but she just shook her head and asked to be taken home.

  Something had unsettled her during her last transfer, Steve could tell that even if his boss can’t. She always makes a big show of being happy, a loud, vivacious figure whenever she visits. She barely talked above a whisper after they revived her. No, something definitely happened.

  Well, as long as it isn’t something that will cause Steve further trouble he doesn’t care. For now he has enough things of his own to worry about.

  He starts experimenting with the machine, feeling its presence in his head, guiding his fingers, leading him on. What did he do before? What were the precise instructions he gave this damned thing?

  From nearby, there’s the sound of broken glass and Steve panics so hard he screams and flings himself away from the machine. What now? What now?!

  He heads out into the corridor in time to hear shouting coming from the room at the end. The room he’s not allowed in, on pain of death. The room in which Fletcher locked away the body of Mr O’Donnell.

  Why did this have to happen now? Why did it have to happen when Steve was on his own?

  ‘What are you doing in there?’ he shouts.

  The broken glass. Is there a window in there? Has the body of Mr O’Donnell broken out? Surely Fletcher wouldn’t have locked him in a room with a window he could just crawl out of? His boss isn’t half as clever as he thinks he is, but he’s not that stupid. Probably.