Lila Shortcuts by Sarah Alderson Read Free Book Online Page A

he’d brought along especially which already contained several guns we’d stolen from a gun show a week before. Always be prepared was my motto. Not that I was pro-guns. The guns were for show only. It wasn’t like we needed them.
    Amber locked the door behind us. We were smooth, practiced even, as though we’d been breaking into prisons together all our lives, and I got a familiar high from experiencing a job in flow, panning out as though it had been programmed. But then an alarm sounded, so loud it made us all duck and cover our heads.
    ‘Damn,’ I cursed, crossing to the console, wondering who had set off the alarm. Had we missed a guard? I located the cell that Harvey was in and hit the door release button on the console – admiring the beauty of modern jails and remote electronic locking systems. On the boxy CCTV screen we watched the bars of a cell on the top floor of a three-storey block roll back. I tuned back to the flashing console. The alarm had triggered a lockdown of the wing we were in. I found myself smiling as I watched an army of guards carrying riot shields and guns storm down a corridor on another screen. The others seemed a little nervous at the sight, but I always liked a challenge.
    ‘Come on,’ I shouted to the others, marching towards the door that led out into the adjustment wing. The four of us walked onto the cell block floor, where the alarm blasted even louder, drowning out the noise of our feet rattling the metal walkways. From inside the cells came catcalls, the sounds of furniture being thrown and metal clanging against metal. The shriek of the alarm was acting on the prisoners like one of those high-pitched dog sirens – sending them into a frenzy. We bounded up the steps to Harvey’s cell.
    He didn’t even glance up when I stepped inside. He was bent over his bed piling his belongings neatly on top of a blanket.
    ‘Nice place,’ I said, glancing around. He shared it with another prisoner – a huge Latino guy with tattoos and a gut that wouldn’t have been out of place on a delivery ward. I nodded at him. He squeezed his bulk back into the corner of the cell between the concrete toilet and the concrete desk, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture.
    ‘You took your time,’ Harvey muttered straightening up and hefting the blanket with his belongings – books, cigarettes, a couple of photographs – onto his shoulder.
    ‘Well, better late than never,’ I grinned, slapping him on the back.
    I introduced him to the others as we jogged back down the steps, having to shout to be heard over the noise of the alarm and the prisoners tearing apart their cells. Amber was covering her head with her hands, Ryder had his arm about her shoulders, even Bill had started to look nervous.
    ‘I take it you have a plan for getting us out?’ Harvey asked, stopping halfway down the stairs to light a cigarette. He blew a cloud of smoke in my face.
    ‘Sure I do,’ I said, glancing through the thick, scarred plexiglass into the control room where the guards sat struggling against their binds.
    The press went wild. You might remember it? It was big news at the time. A prison riot during which a prisoner (prisoner 18974), escaped custody.
    Once we had Harvey it felt like we were finally becoming a force to be reckoned with. What had started as revenge quickly became an offensive on my part – a co-ordinated attack to bring Stirling to its knees and destroy its research programme. We recruited more members – you have all their names – Suki, Nate, Alicia – but the Unit recruited even more. They recruited soldiers, trained killers, and they became relentless in their hunt for us. We were no longer on the offensive but on the defensive, always on the run. Even so we might still have managed to destroy them, to fight back. I think they knew this.
    That’s why they recruited you.
    The first time I saw you, Jack, I realised it straight away. You were walking across the quad, a freshman at