Lady Friday. Гарт Никс

sailed on the Mantis,” Leaf whispered to herself. It was all coming back. She had sailed the Border Sea in the House for six weeks. She’d become one of the crew… then the pirates had attacked. Her friend Albert had been killed…

      Leaf shut her eyes. She didn’t want to have that memory come into her head. But at least she had helped Arthur defeat the pirates, and had kicked their leader Feverfew’s head into a pool of Nothing-infused mud. Then they’d gone back to Port Wednesday and caught an elevator to—

      “The Front Door,” said Leaf. “Doorstop Hill. The Lieutenant Keeper…”

      She and Arthur had tried to get back home through the Front Door in the Lower House, but there’d been a problem. The Lieutenant Keeper wouldn’t let Arthur through the Door and then there was the meeting with Dame Primus where they’d found out that the Skinless Boy had taken over Arthur’s identity back on Earth, preventing him from going home. But there hadn’t been anything to stop Leaf from going home. She’d wanted to go home, after what had happened, but it wasn’t as easy as that.

      “I volunteered to banish the Skinless Boy,” Leaf muttered, in amazement at herself. “I must have been crazy.”

      But she had succeeded in finding the source of the Skinless Boy’s power, and she had managed to deliver it to Suzy Turquoise Blue, against all odds. But along the way she had been infected with the mind-control mould that would let the Skinless Boy control her every thought and action.

      Memories joined up and stitched themselves together. Leaf frowned in concentration as she tried to work out what must have happened. Suzy had obviously delivered the sorcerous pocket the Skinless Boy had been made with to Arthur, and he must have used the pocket to destroy the dangerous Nithling. If either one had failed, Leaf wouldn’t be conscious now. She’d be a brain-dead slave of the Skinless Boy.

      But Leaf didn’t feel particularly victorious because she’d finally remembered that this wasn’t the first time she’d regained consciousness after being affected by the mind-control fungus.

      “There was a tent hospital… a temporary one,” Leaf said. Talking to herself helped bring back the details. “I was vomiting up the sludge left from the mould…”

      Leaf groaned and pushed her knuckles into her temples as she remembered something else. The nurse had told her she’d been in a coma for a week. From Thursday afternoon to Friday morning.

      But how long ago was that? she wondered. I must have gone back into a coma, or…

      Leaf stopped knuckling her temples and let her forehead smack into the mattress. She leaned back and did it again. It was a bad habit, but she couldn’t help herself. She always beat her head – with something soft – when things went wrong.

      The last thing she remembered was the nurse pointing out an approaching female doctor. And then she’d said the terrible words:

      “Doctor Friday, imagine that! We call her Lady Friday on the wards…”

      Leaf vaguely recalled feeling an awful sensation of fear swarm up inside her as an incredibly beautiful woman had approached with a whole host of people behind her… but everything after that was blank.

      Doctor Friday – who clearly had come from the House and really was the Trustee called Lady Friday – must have done something to her.

      Maybe I’ve lost even more time, Leaf thought. Anything could have happened. To Arthur. To my parents. To Ed. Anything.

      A noise from the end of the room startled Leaf. She froze for a moment, dropped down behind the bed, then crawled to the end to take a proper look around. Someone was pushing open the double-swing doors at one end of the room. First something slid through the gap. It took Leaf a moment to recognise it as a bucket being pushed along with a mop. The person who was doing the pushing eased through the doors and kicked them shut behind her with a practised heel.

      She looked very normal and human: a middle-aged woman with downcast eyes and sensibly tied-back hair, wearing a green smock, green overalls and white rubber boots. Leaf was relieved by that. If the woman were six foot four and strikingly good-looking, then she would probably be a Denizen and that would mean Leaf was back in the House.

      After coming through the door, the cleaner stopped for a moment to dip the mop in the bucket and then started mopping a path about six feet wide down the middle of the room. She didn’t look particularly observant, but there was no way she could avoid seeing the empty bed.

      Leaf looked around for something she might be able to use as a weapon and tried to gauge whether her legs would support her if she attempted to stand up again. She felt incredibly weak, a result of being in bed for so long, but fear lent her strength. There was something about all the sleeping bodies in the beds in the rest of the ward that really freaked her out. The room just didn’t feel like a normal hospital and Leaf knew it had something to do with Lady Friday.

      Her quick scan confirmed that it wasn’t a normal hospital. There was none of the usual equipment on the walls or near the beds – the oxygen outlets, the call buttons and all that kind of stuff. In fact, all there was in the whole room were the simple beds and the people sleeping their strange sleep.

      She looked back at the cleaner, who unfortunately chose that exact moment to look up. They both stared for a moment, gazes locked, then the cleaner gave a suppressed shriek and dropped her mop.

      Leaf staggered upright and tried to make a dash to grab the mop. Even though she could barely stay upright and didn’t feel like much of a threat, the cleaner shrieked again and backed away. Leaf almost fell over the bucket but did manage to get the mop, stand up and brandish it like a staff.

      “Don’t… don’t do anything!” said the woman in a forced whisper. She was clearly afraid – but not of Leaf. She was looking back at the door. “You have to get back into bed. She’s on her way!”

      Leaf lowered the mop. “Who’s on her way? What is this place?”

      “Her!” said the cleaner. “Quick! Get back in bed. You have to pretend to be like the others. Just copy what they do.”

      “Why?”

      The cleaner shuddered.

      “You have to. If you don’t, she’ll do something to your head. I only saw it once. Someone like you, awake when he shouldn’t have been! She used that mirror of hers and I saw… I saw…”

      “What!?”

      “I saw the life drained out of him,” whispered the woman. She was pale as cotton wool now, and shaking. “She shone that little mirror and I saw something… come out of his head. Then she tilted the mirror to her mouth and she—”

      The woman stopped talking and swallowed convulsively, unable to continue.

      “There must be a way out,” said Leaf fiercely. She pointed at the other door, the one opposite where the cleaner had come in. “Where does that go?”

      “To the pool,” whispered the woman. “Her pool. You have to get back into bed. Please, please, I don’t want to see it happen again!”

      Leaf hesitated, then thrust the mop back at the cleaner, who gripped it like she might grab a lifeline. Then Leaf started to walk down towards the far door.

      “No!” shrieked the cleaner. “She’ll see the empty bed! It’s Friday, nothing is the same here on Friday!”

      Leaf tried to keep walking, but her legs gave way. She fell down on her hands and knees. Before she could get back up, the cleaner was lifting her up under the armpits and carrying her back to bed. Leaf struggled, but she was just too weak.

      “Copy the sleepers,” gasped the cleaner. “It’s your only chance. Follow them.”

      “Where?” snapped Leaf. She was furious that her body wouldn’t obey her properly.