Jimmy Coates: Blackout. Joe Craig

      The voice echoed through the concrete structure, and sent a thrill through Jimmy’s heart. He dropped Eva’s collar, hardly noticing when she stumbled to the floor. Then came another shout, this time a girl:

      “Jimmy, wait!”

      It was the voice of his sister, Georgie. She was with his best friend, Felix, who for some reason had his hands pressed down on the top of his head. Together, they were strolling out of the lift, huge smiles on their faces.

      “What are you…?” Jimmy’s words were breathless and soon drowned out by Eva and Georgie running to each other and crushing each other in a hug. Jimmy was so stunned he didn’t even take in the happy words they were exchanging. He quickly came to his senses again.

      “You want to chat a bit louder?” he whispered. “I think there’s a deaf wombat in Australia who didn’t quite hear you. And how did you find me?”

      “We nearly didn’t,” panted Felix. “You run too fast. We saw you come in here, but we didn’t know what floor you were on. We’ve just had to check every level!”

      Jimmy couldn’t help smiling. He hadn’t wanted anybody to know what he was doing, but at the same time he was impressed that Felix and Georgie had managed to follow him.

      “You nearly took off the top of my head!” said Felix, his grin revealing the longest line of teeth Jimmy had ever seen, every one of them at a slightly different angle. Meanwhile, his hands were still clamped down on top of his crazy nest of black hair. Finally Jimmy realised what had happened.

      He jogged to the lift, where the hubcap had lodged in the back wall, trapping a clump of frizzy black hair with it. “Er, yeah,” Jimmy mumbled, realising he had aimed the missile at the level of an adult’s chest, but that instead it had skimmed the top of Felix’s head. “Sorry.”

      Felix shrugged. “I needed a haircut anyway.”

      “What’s going on?” Georgie asked, in her most stern voice. “You can’t just go sneaking off, you know.”

      “Looks like you’ve done the same,” Jimmy replied. “Didn’t Mum notice? Or Chris? And what about the security guards?”

      “Everybody is so distracted with the election we could have driven a herd of geese through the building,” Georgie explained. “And we saw what you did to the security guards so we just told them we were with you.”

      Jimmy shook his head in amazement.

      “I thought you might have gone out to get some midnight snacks or something,” said Felix. “I don’t think I’d have come if I’d known you were meeting Eva. No offence, or anything, Eva, it’s just, you know…” Eva glared at him, so he held up his hands and stretched his eyebrows so high they looked like they were going to merge with his hair. “What?” he squeaked.

      “Why didn’t you tell us you were meeting Eva?” asked Georgie.

      “It’s complicated,” Jimmy replied, sheepishly.

      “So explain it.” Georgie wasn’t going to be put off. Jimmy suddenly felt as powerless as any normal boy. There were no assassin skills designed to get round an older sister. Georgie stood there, arms folded, her head tilted to one side and her lips pursed.

      “You’re in so much trouble,” Felix whispered. “All the way here she’s been telling me what she’s going to—”

      “Shut up, Felix,” snapped Georgie. “Let him explain.”

      Jimmy felt like the pressure of a waterfall was building up inside his head. His whole life was constructed out of secrets. The first secrets had been the ones his parents kept from him: that they were really NJ7 agents given the long-term mission of raising an experimental government assassin, designed genetically and grown organically.

      As soon as he’d discovered the truth about himself, Jimmy’s life had imploded. His father had betrayed him, choosing to stay loyal to NJ7 rather than join him and his mum on the side of Christopher Viggo. Then the man had revealed that he wasn’t even Jimmy’s real father. He had been richly rewarded for his loyalty to the Government: Ian Coates had risen to become Prime Minister of Britain.

      All this flashed through Jimmy’s head as he wondered whether to reveal his latest secret to his sister. It was possibly the most dangerous secret of them all, and one that he had guarded obsessively for the last six months. He could feel his fingers shaking, while his mouth and lips seemed to have frozen, refusing to form the words.

      “Well?” said Georgie, but her expression was softening. She stepped up to her brother and placed her hands gently on his shoulders. Jimmy looked up into her face. It was a long time since he’d felt like a younger brother, but Georgie’s searching brown eyes somehow made him feel glad he was.

      Slowly, he raised his hands and turned them round to show his sister the backs of his fingers. In the strange half-light of the car park it took a few seconds for her to see what he was showing her. But then her expression changed.

      “They’re blue,” she gasped. “What is this? What happened?”

      “It’s still happening,” Jimmy said in a whisper, almost choking on the words. “I have radiation poisoning.”

      His own whisper echoed back to him and spun through his head. He looked at the confusion on the faces of Felix, Georgie and Eva and suddenly found himself unable to stop.

      “It was in Western Sahara,” he said quickly. “The French Secret Service tricked me. They sent me to a uranium mine. They told me it was safe, but they knew it wasn’t and…” The words tumbled out of him, as if they’d been building up for months. At times he talked so fast he hardly made any sense, but eventually his story came out, along with all the information he’d gathered in the last few months.

      “I read about what happens with radiation,” he said, “but it just tells me what’s meant to happen. And some of it isn’t happening, or it’s different because, you know, I’m…” He paused, breathless.

      “It’s OK, Jimmy,” said Georgie. “Go on.”

      “The level of exposure I had should have… well, it should have killed me by now. I have some of the symptoms but not all, and not all the time. My muscles ache, but sometimes it might be to do with my programming and I know that sometimes I might just be feeling it because I think I’m meant to. But I also have headaches – worse than I’ve ever had – and this…” He held up his fingers again, wiggling them. “…the blue spread at first and I thought my fingers were going numb, but then it stopped, or maybe it’s just slowed down, I can’t tell any more. But I don’t know if this would happen in anybody else, or if it’s just in me. I keep thinking I should be dead by now, but I’m not, and I don’t know whether I feel weaker because of the poisoning or because my programming is changing, or taking me over and making the rest of me weak, or…”

      At last he had to stop. His breath was short and he could feel the muscles in his face contorted in anguish. Felix, Georgie and Eva were staring at him. What were they thinking? Jimmy longed for them to still see him as normal. Now he felt so stupid. He should have known that eventually Georgie and Felix would find out everything.

      “You need to see a doctor,” said Felix with a shrug, as if Jimmy had merely sneezed or revealed that he had a nasty rash.

      “Thanks, genius,” said Jimmy. “I tried that already. The first doctor just checked that I’m not a danger to other people – which I’m not, by the way. Then NJ7 got to him. After that I tracked down a specialist, but NJ7 got to him first.” Jimmy dropped his eyes to the floor. “It looks like my illness is more deadly for doctors than it is for me.”

      “You should have told us,” Georgie said softly. “Why didn’t you? You idiot!” She couldn’t help raising her voice now, and she clenched her fists in frustration. “Didn’t you think we’d help?”

      “What