The Detachable Boy by Scot Gardner

Author:Scot Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: JUV000000, book
ISBN: 9781741763218
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2008-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

ALL I NEEDED to do to stay awake was think about Crystal. I wondered how she’d coped with being carried halfway around the world in a bag. If she was stuck in a cell by herself, she would be lonely. Lonely and hungry. I hoped the men in suits realised she ate twelve meals per day. With snacks at twenty-minute intervals.

I lay motionless on my bunk waiting for Wilkin to begin snoring. It wasn’t a chainsaw snore, just a little bubbly snort on the in-breath that told me for certain he was asleep. I slid off my bunk and crawled across the floor. At first I was just going to reach under the blankets and take my hands back, but I had a sudden and mischievous desire to join heads. I wanted to know if it was real, if I really could read minds, and I wanted to know how much – if any – of what Wilkin had told me was true. I gently lowered my forehead against the greasy grey hair at the back of the old man’s skull.

Instantly, Wilkin’s memories were my memories, but Wilkin had only named himself Wilkin a minute before I’d been thrown into his cell. Previously he’d called himself Jack Queen, and before that he was known as Ace King. Before that he was called Harold Potter but that was a ridiculous name. There was no dog rescue in Wilkin’s recent history; in fact he’d lost his hands – and the rest of his body – in a game of Texas Holdem poker with a scary-looking individual named Al Burman who appeared as a gangster in more memories than I cared to look at. Al knew someone who knew someone else who traded in limbs. He’d sold Wilkin to the highest bidder.

It was the memory of Wilkin’s truck ride into the Hive that made me catch my breath. It had been dark for the entire journey – as though he, too, had been transported in a bag – but in the memory, I could hear people whimpering and moaning. As the engine died, metal locks clanked and light streamed into the image – the bright lights in one of the subterranean loading bays.

Slumped in the corner, her wrists and mouth bound with yellow tape printed with the word ‘fragile’, was a tallish girl with shining brown hair.

Crystal.

I watched through Wilkin’s eyes as she and several other people were shunted along a pedestrian tunnel with a large letter ‘E’ painted above the door.

In my excitement, I jerked my head from Wilkin’s and accidentally thumped the old man in the face with my wrist.

I froze.

Wilkin snuffled, rubbed his nose with the palm of my hand, and sighed.

I rejoined heads and sent messages to my hands, encouraging them to detach. They obliged, and so did the rest of Wilkin’s body. Feet, arms, legs, head and torso separated, and still Wilkin didn’t stir.

I grinned. I collected my hands and distributed Wilkin’s body parts around the cell before climbing back into my own bunk.

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