By grinchly

  The garden gate let out a long, whining creak before finally falling shut. Jems could hear it, even inside the house, but she turned away from the French doors at the grating of the key in the lock. She wandered over and threw herself into an armchair – mercifully free of Eliza's footprints – and let out an exasperated sigh, glaring at the ceiling with a ferocity that might have melted it. Who did that girl think she was? She'd just met Lee, and already she was acting like he owed her his house and his Oyster card and trips to McDonald's, and his parents' sofa to trample all over. Something about this felt wrong, so very wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it. However strange Eliza was, she couldn't deny the look of fear that always seemed to linger behind her eyes, and how it changed to wild panic when she had seen that car from the window.

  "Oh God, why couldn't I just have come anyway?" Jems groaned, burying her face in her hands in defeat. She could have helped them, she was sure of it, or at least she'd have kept Lee company. He was always so sweet, she thought with a wry smile, as she dragged herself out of the armchair again. Clearly he wasn't any more fond of the girl and her dog than she was, but there he went, still trying to keep them safe.

  "Idiot," she muttered to herself, though she couldn't keep the smile out of it. "Stupid lovely idiot."

  Jems began pacing the room restlessly, when an idea came to her. Somebody like this Magnus Reynolds guy had to have been noticed other people, surely? For whatever reason he wanted to hunt Eliza down, maybe she wasn't the only one he wanted. After one last peek through the curtains to check for the car – not there; whether that was good or not, she didn't yet know – she raced up to Lee's bedroom, taking the steps two at a time.

  It was her second time up there today, but the way it looked now still took her a little by surprise. Since they'd been close years ago, when house visits were regular occurrences and she'd known his room like her own, it had become much more empty and neat, with a poster of Lord Kitchener jabbing a finger at her from above his bed. One of Cass's joke gifts, probably, she thought with a smile. As Jems busied herself with finding his MacBook – Lee thankfully still never used passwords on his electronics – she noticed a camouflage jacket and matching baseball cap slung over his wardrobe door, and sighed. She'd never understood his fascination with the army. Maybe he had a thing for getting himself into dangerous situations and trying to find a way out. Maybe that explained this whole Eliza thing.

  Google popped up, and Jems hesitated for a moment before typing Magnus Reynolds into the search bar. As she'd expected, the results were filled with Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and even a cooking blog. Probably not that, she thought, when her eye caught something. A PDF document by someone of the same name, but with 'Dr.' tacked onto the front. Huh. She clicked on it. It was a thesis, some thirty-odd pages long, but as Jems's eyes skipped over the document, words popped out at her — genetic mutations – superhuman — and then a particular passage that caught her attention.

  It read: There are some of us who share a closer connection with life on Earth than the rest of us. Sight beyond the visible light spectrum, the ability to heal without medicine, even, absurd as it may sound, communicating with animals. The sets of genes that cause this, the sheer power they have shown to give their carriers, are transferable to others with the right experimentation; and the survival of the human race may depend on it...

  Jems shut the laptop suddenly, her heart thudding wildly in her chest now. This wasn't just some ordinary creep — it'd be ridiculous if he didn't sound so deadly serious. Some...some sort of fanatic. She slipped her phone out of her pocket and hastily typed out a text to Lee:

  Lee are you okay?? I've just looked up this Magnus Reynolds guy and he's terrifying. Some geneticist freak and I'm pretty sure he'll do worse than just kill eliza

  Minutes passed, but the phone didn't vibrate once with a response text. She checked the screen for the millionth time. Not even a missed call. She texted again:

  Seriously you'd better be okay, Leander. this guy is TROUBLE. are you at the tube station yet??

  Still no response. Lord Kitchener glared accusingly down at her, and she glared back in defence, despite the sinking feeling beginning to settle into the pit of her stomach. If he couldn't even text her their location, how was she going to find him now? Oh, why didn't she just insist on going? She was stumped. Lee always answered his texts, and he knew how much she'd be worrying now. If something had happened...

  Leander, call me NOW you are seriously scaring me. Where are you and do you see that mercedes anywhere???

  Jems sighed and threw her phone down on the unmade bed, flopping down into two huge pillows, when the hallway phone rang, almost startling her out of her skin. She trailed out and picked it up on the fifth ring.

  "'Llo?" she said morosely. "I'm afraid none of the Rosses are here right now, but I'd be happy to leave a message."

  "Jemima?" said a very familiar voice on the other end, and Jems instantly brightened. "Jems, is that you?"

  "O – oh, Cass!" Jems said, a little surprised. Lee's sister Cassia was two years older than her, but they'd always been close, even if they didn't talk much either since Cass had gone off to study to be a vet. That seemed to be a running theme, she thought with an inward sigh. "Yep, it's me! How're things with you, anyway?"

  "Thank God you're there," Cass said, and Jems felt her stomach twist with that unpleasant feeling again at the nervous tone of her voice. "Well, I'm fine, but please, please tell me Lee is there somewhere, and he's just ignoring me because he thinks he's being funny by pretending to be dead, or something. I've sent him seven texts in the last half hour, and he hasn't replied to one of them..."

  Jems frowned. "Wait, he isn't answering you either?" There was a long pause on the other line, and Jems had to check with an awkward, "Cass?" to see if she was still there.

  "What do you mean?" Cass said finally. Her voice sounded frantic, and a little strangled, and suddenly picking up the phone didn't feel like such a good idea after all. "Isn't he at home? If he's not at home, and you're – where...?" Now it was Jems's turn to be silent. Her whole mouth went dry, and all of a sudden, she couldn't think of anything but the image of Lee, Eliza and Ava cornered in an empty train carriage, and Magnus Reynolds advancing on them menacingly with a gun. "Uh, Jems?" Cass sounded worried about her now, too, which only made her feel worse.

  "Cass, listen," she began, swallowing hard. "I'm...oh, how do I say this? Just earlier, Lee went out to catch a tube to Heathrow with this girl and her dog because she needs to get away from this guy who's trying to possibly kidnap her for some weird genetics experiments, except Lee doesn't know that yet, and oh God, they're going to get killed—"

  "Wait, woah, woah, what?" Cass interrupted. "If Lee's setting you up for some stupid prank on me, I promise you, he is going to pay—"

  "No!" Jems said hastily. "I swear, they've really gone off to get Eliza to Heathrow now, and I was going to go with them, but then Eliza got all pushy at me, and that's why I'm still here. I told Lee I'd look up this guy who's following them – Magnus Reynolds, he's called – and he...he wants to experiment on people with superhuman powers, or something. He's mad, he must be, but we saw his car and everything, and Eliza looked so scared about seeing him."

  "Why — who is this girl? Does he know her? Actually, no, don't answer that." Jems heard Cass sigh a little shakily, and felt that sense of guilt again. "I know I was meant to have looked after him, but can you do me a massive favour, Jems? If you know sort of the direction they were going in, can you go after them, and call me when you have Lee? I don't know who the hell that other girl is, but if Lee gets hurt, Mum and Dad are going to literally skin me alive."

  Jems shifted the phone to her other ear, a little impatient now. They had left the house pretty quickly. That meant they could be anywhere by now. "Sure, sure, definitely," she said. "I'll see if I can catch them now before they get on any tubes, or anything. And I'm really sorry, Cass, again. I know I should've—"

  "Not your fault," Cass said, trying to sound comforting, but she couldn't quite hide the anxiety beneath it. "This is sounding way weirder than anything you could possibly do. But go! Please!"

  "Okay! Sorry! Bye!" Jems slammed the receiver down and raced down the stairs at lightning speed. For this, she figured the front door would do just as well as the back – it wasn't like she needed the element of surprise on someone who wasn't even after her in the first place. As she stepped out onto the street, closing the garden gate behind her, the wind suddenly felt very cold on her arms.