From her spot behind the thick velvet curtains, she could see the stage but not the audience. The drum kit gleamed, alone in the centre of the stage.
The master of ceremonies' voice boomed through the auditorium. '...headlined at the Tokyo International Arts Festival,' he was saying, 'featured at the Sunset Celebration of Percussion and named best new female artist at the New Jersey Soloist Music Awards – please join me in welcoming to the stage Daniella Burnett!'
The audience started clapping.
Ash looked back at the stagehand. He made a shooing gesture. 'Go!'
She walked out onto the stage. A spotlight fixed upon her as soon as she emerged from behind the curtain. She walked out to the drum kit, trying to look like she knew what she was doing.
She sat down on the foam rubber stool and looked out at the audience. A sea of expectant faces stared back at her.
Ashley's eyes widened. There must be a thousand people in here, she thought.
The drum sticks rested on the largest tom. She picked them up and twirled them in her fingers. A hush fell over the crowd.
From the three lessons she had taken, Ash knew how to produce a rock beat and a swing waltz. But she wasn't very good at either of those things, and if she attempted them now, she would surely be exposed as an amateur.
She raised one of the sticks high in the air.
Hesitated.
Here goes nothing, she thought.
She brought the stick crashing down on the snare drum. The crack echoed out across the auditorium. She was relieved to discover that although the drum was stuffed with her escape equipment, this wasn't evident from the sound.
Ash slammed the stick into the high hat twice before hitting the snare again. Then she tried some quiet taps on the floor tom before hitting the splash cymbal with all her strength.
The audience remained in a state of silent hypnosis.
They're buying it, Ash thought.
She went all out, bashing the sticks against every drum and every cymbal. With her foot, she stomped on the kick drum pedal to make what she hoped sounded a bit like a heart beat. None of the strikes seemed to fit with any of the others. She hoped this would be mistaken for complex rhythm, rather than no rhythm.
Abruptly she switched from using the whole kit to using just one drum – the smallest tom, which she bashed at as quickly and loudly as she could. After almost a whole minute, she swapped back, tapping all the other drums and cymbals quietly and unevenly.
When it felt like seven of the allotted eight minutes had passed, she started getting louder. She struck the hat louder and louder, more and more quickly. Sweat poured down her face. She tried hitting the drums near the edges of their skins, and then moved back to the middle. When it felt like she couldn't strike them any harder or faster, she stopped.
The last echoes died away, and the auditorium was silent.
Ash put the sticks down.
Someone clapped. Someone else joined in.
The claps coalesced into applause. Ash realised she was still sitting down. She rose and bowed stiffly. The clapping became louder. Someone whistled.
Ash walked off the stage in a daze. In the wings, the stagehand was holding the door open for her. A distinguished-looking man with a high widow's peak and short, wavy hair stood next to him, holding a violin.
'Very well done indeed,' he said, in a way that suggested he thought she would need the encouragement.
Ash nodded modestly and slipped back out in the corridor. The door slammed shut.
He seemed like a nice guy. She almost felt bad about her plan to steal his violin.
* * *
As Ash had hoped, the green room was deserted. Tognetti was the last act, so there were no other musicians warming up.
She took the phone out of her pocket, checked that the call to Benjamin was still connected, and pressed it to her ear.
'Benjamin,' she said. 'I'm inside the green room.'
'That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard,' he said. 'If you die before I do, I'm going to make sure someone brings a drum kit to your funeral and replicates that piece, note for note.'
Ash smirked. 'I think the other mourners would be less than impressed. But hey, it's your funeral.'
'Were you even listening? I said it was your funeral.'
'Figure of speech.' Idly, Ash wondered if there would be any other mourners to upset. Her father, her school librarian and Hammond Buckland would probably die before she did. Benjamin might be the only attendee.
'Anyway, shut up,' she said. 'I'm trying to concentrate.'
She scanned the variety of black instrument cases, some hard, some soft, scattered around the room like the shadows of the instruments they were designed to carry. They were shaped like guitars, double basses, tubas, xylophones – and violins.
It didn't take her long to spot the case she was looking for. She had studied it at length the last time she slipped backstage at one of Tognetti's performances.
'Found it,' she told Benjamin.
'Work fast. Six minutes until he comes back.'
Tognetti's violin was two centuries old and worth $11 million. It was never separated from him by more than a metre – when he boarded a plane, he wouldn't even put it in the overhead locker, and kept it on his lap instead.
But whenever he was on stage, he was more than a metre away from his case.
Ash opened the case and tipped some handwritten sheet music and a spare block of rosin onto the floor. Then she took it over to the giant nylon bag which had held her kick drum.
When she unzipped the bag, she found a steel box, roughly forty centimetres tall with a lid which was about eighty centimetres square. A violin case, exactly like Tognetti's, was fixed to the top of it at a slight angle.
She put the real violin case into her bag and closed it. Then she placed the box on the floor where the real case had been. She opened the fake case on top, put the rosin and sheet music inside, and closed it again.
She stepped back to examine her handiwork. When Tognetti entered the green room, he would see that someone had placed his violin case on top of a box. He would open it, see his rosin and sheet music, and put the $11 million dollar violin inside. Then he would close the lid and lock the case.
When he engaged the lock, the bottom of the fake case would open, dropping the violin through the hole Benjamin had cut into the lid of the steel box. When he picked up the fake case, it would detach itself from the box, closing both the hole in the box and the underside of the case. Then Tognetti would leave, carrying the weighted but empty case under his arm, and leaving the expensive violin in Benjamin's box where Ash could later fetch it.
There were several ways the plan could go wrong. The box was padded, so Tognetti was unlikely to hear the violin falling, but he might hear the mechanism which opened the bottom of the case. Or he could attempt to move the fake case before he opened it. Or he could decide that he wanted his sheet music after all, and open the case to find that the violin was gone.
But this was the best plan Ash had been able to come up with. And Benjamin's box functioned so beautifully that she was feeling very confident.
'Hey Ash,' Benjamin said. 'If something really bad happened, and there was nothing you could do about it, would you want to know?'
'Yes,' Ash said immediately. 'Why?'
'Really?' Benjamin sounded surprised. 'I wouldn't. Ignorance is bliss, I say.'
'What's happened? Tell me.'
'You know that party at the building next door? It turns out to be the State Police Christmas Party. Half the cops in the city are within two hundred metres of you right now.'
Ash's stomach lurched. 'Well,' she said. 'Nothing we can do about that.'
'Exactly. That's why I thought you might not want to know.'
'Doesn't matter,' Ash said. 'I'm all done here.'
She turned to walk toward the green room door–
And bumped into somebody.
Ash squeaked and stumbled backwards
, dropping the phone. It felt like she'd hit a stone wall. The boy – a pale, dark-haired youth of about sixteen – didn't react to the impact.
'Sorry!' Ash stammered, wondering how he'd gotten so close without her hearing him. 'Didn't see you there.'
The boy said nothing. His blue eyes were wide with horror, fixed on something behind Ash.
She looked over her shoulder, and saw nothing but instrument cases.
'Are you okay?' she asked, turning back. 'I hope I didn't – oh my God!'
The boy had no legs. But he wasn't in a wheelchair. His upper body hovered in the centre of the green room, as though he were simply invisible below the waist.
'Wha...' Ash began. 'What... how...'
As she watched, the boy's legs materialised beneath him. Slowly. Ash felt like she was trapped in a photograph as it touched the developing fluid.
The boy still hadn't moved. Ash suddenly got the impression the he was frozen, a hologram, part of some elaborate security system.
'Ash!' The phone was still on the floor, but she could still hear his panicked voice. 'What's going on?'
'I have no idea,' she whispered. 'There's a–'
'Argh!' The boy's scream was brief and anguished. Ash got the sense that she was hearing only the second half of it. Suddenly mobile, he turned to face her. 'Who are you?' he demanded. His voice was cold and deep.
Ash boggled at him. 'Who am I?'
'Where am I? What is this place? What–' The boy's eyes fixed on hers. 'What year is this?'
Ash raised her hands, as though he had pointed a gun at her. 'Listen,' she said. 'I don't know if this is some kind of joke–'
'It worked,' the boy whispered. 'I don't believe it.'
'How did you get here?' Ash snatched up her phone. 'What's going on?'
'I...' The boy hesitated. He looked around the room, wild-eyed, before turning back to Ash. 'I'm from the future. And I need your help.'
There was a pause.
'I stand corrected,' Benjamin said, his voice tinny in the phone's speakers. 'That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard all day.'
Chapter Four: Escape
'You're from the future,' Ash repeated.
'I need to talk to someone in charge,' the boy said. 'There's not much time. No!' He hesitated. 'Wait. There's lots of time. There's decades. I'm in the past.'
'The past? Decades? In charge of what?' Ash was aware that she sounded ridiculous, but she was faced with a ridiculous situation. Surely the boy was insane – but how had he gotten here? He had appeared right in front of her eyes.
'In charge of radioactive materials,' the boy said. 'Rare ones. If you don't know who that is, perhaps you can tell me–'
'I can tell you you'll get arrested by the TRA if you ask anyone in charge of anything about radioactive materials,' Ash said. 'Who are you?'
'What's the TRA?'
Ash was a very, very good liar, and she could usually tell when someone else was. The boy looked completely honest. But if he hadn't heard of Terrorism Risk Assessment, then where had he come from?
The green room door creaked open. Tognetti stepped in, holding a bow in one hand and the $11 million violin in the other.
He smiled at Ash. 'Hello again.'
Ash's heart kicked in her chest. 'Hi – how was the performance.'
'Fine, fine.' He looked at the boy. 'Who's this?'
I wish I knew, Ash thought.
'Are you in charge here?' the boy demanded.
'Mr Tognetti, this is Quentin James,' Ash said quickly. 'He's my driver. I'm afraid we really must get going.'
The boy frowned at her. 'Where are we going?'
'Straight to the hotel tonight, thank you,' Ash said, herding him out the door. 'Lovely to meet you, Mr Tognetti.'
'Wait.' The boy stepped around her and walked over to the far side of the room. Ash was horrified to see him stop right next to the fake violin case, and pick up a small canister with a pointed nozzle mounted on one end.
Tognetti frowned. 'What's that?'
'My cutting torch,' the boy said.
Tognetti's eyes went back to the fake case.
'Gotta go,' Ash said. She grabbed the boy's arm – which felt like an iron bar wrapped in thin silicone – and dragged him out the green room door. It fell closed behind them.
'Why do you have a cutting torch?' she hissed.
'I had it with me when I was captured,' the boy said, frowning. 'Byre must have left it on me when she sent me through time. I don't know why she would do that – or why it appeared all the way over on the other side of the room.'
Stagehands, musicians and audience members bustled back and forth through the corridor, chattering excitedly. Their voices bounced off the high ceiling, magnifying the din. Ash wasn't sure what was causing the commotion, but she figured she could use it to escape.
'Okay,' she told the boy. 'Wait here. I'll find someone to talk about radioactive materials with you.'
To her relief, he nodded. She threaded through the crowd, looking for a way out. She had planned to leave by the main exit, but the rest of the audience was going that way, and they might slow her down, particularly if they recognised her. Instead, she headed for the rear loading dock.
As she passed another television screen, something caught her eye. A metal table stood on the stage, adorned with nylon straps, designed to restrain someone. The wood beneath it was cracked, as though the table had been dropped from a few metres up.
I had it with me when I was captured. I don't know why it appeared on the other side of the room.
Ash stared at the screen, transfixed. Was it possible that the boy really had travelled through time, and that some nearby objects had made the journey with him?
And that one of them had appeared on the stage after Tognetti left, starting a panic?
She turned back toward the loading dock–
And saw a group of police officers swarming up the corridor. Officers from the party next door. They wore civilian clothes – suits and ties – but they had badges attached to their belts and guns holstered under their jackets.
She put the phone to her ear. 'Benjamin,' she said. 'We have several very serious problems.'
* * *
'Talk to me,' Benjamin said.
Ash pushed through the crowd, back toward the green room. The pale boy was still hovering beside the door. She ducked so as he wouldn't see her in the throng.
'I think a table appeared out of nowhere and landed on the stage,' she said.
'At about the same time as the weirdo showed up in the green room?'
'Irrelevant. The point is, it brought the cops here. They've just come in through the rear loading dock.'
'Can you go out the front?' Benjamin asked.
'If they're at the back, they'll be at the front too. My guess is, they've got the building surrounded.'
'You have nothing to do with the table or the mystery man. They can't hold you. Right?'
'No,' Ash said. 'But–'
Tognetti burst out of the green room, holding his violin in one hand and the fake case in the other. The false bottom flapped open wildly.
Ash paled. 'Oh no.'
'Officer!' Tognetti shouted.
One of the cops – a hulking, square-jawed blond – turned to look at him.
Tognetti pointed the case at the pale boy. 'Arrest him!'
The cop moved closer. 'What's going on here?' he demanded.
'He's a thief,' Tognetti said. 'He planted this contraption as part of a plot to steal my violin.'
Pretty smart for a musician, Ash thought.
The boy stared curiously at the fake case. 'I don't know anything about that,' he said.
'What's happening?' Benjamin asked.
'They're arresting the guy from the green room,' Ash hissed. 'They think he was trying to steal the violin.'
'Okay – problem solved. Right?'
'I told Tognetti he was my driver. If either of them see me, I'm done. I need a distraction.'
&nb
sp; 'No problem. At the front, or the back?'
Ash hesitated. 'The front. Something which will make people panic.'
'Can do.'
The cop was looking at the cutting torch, still clenched in the pale boy's hand. 'Can you explain why you have this?'
'No,' the boy said.
'All right.' The cop pulled out a pair of hand cuffs. 'I'm arresting you on suspicion of–'
The boy ran up the wall.
Ash blinked. One moment he had been standing still, the next he was sprinting up the concrete as though gravity didn't apply to him. Soon he was clinging to invisible hand holds in the ceiling high above.
Someone screamed. The cop drew his gun. Tognetti vanished back into the green room.
'Come down from there!' the cop ordered.
The boy ignored him. He moved across the ceiling like a monkey swinging from branch to branch, leaving the cop struggling to keep up as he pushed through the crowd below.
'I don't think I need that distraction any more, Benjamin,' she said.
There was no reply.
'Benjamin?'
* * *
Benjamin was no kind of athlete. He had a weak, skinny frame and hair that always seemed to be in his eyes. He usually left the physical stuff to Ash. But he could sprint for short bursts if he had to, and tonight, the adrenaline pumping through his body made it easy. A chilling wind blustered in his ears as he dashed through the car park and ducked down behind the car closest to the conservatorium.
Puffing, he listened for a moment. No approaching footsteps. When he peeped over the bonnet, he saw that the police had set up a makeshift checkpoint in front of the main door. They were taking driver's licenses, and shining torches in faces to check that they matched the photographs. The civilians babbled amongst themselves, as though they'd seen something unbelievable.
Something like a table appearing out of nowhere, Benjamin thought.
The car was a four-wheel drive, grey, with plenty of room underneath. He sniffed – no sign that the engine was leaking oil, or petrol, or anything else flammable. Perfect.
No time to waste. Ash was counting on him. Benjamin unzipped his backpack and took out a plastic tube.
The sale of fireworks was restricted. The buyer needed to have a special license except at certain times of year, and even then, they needed to be at least eighteen years old. But sparklers, the kind used in birthday cakes, were available all year round from Benjamin's local supermarket. He kept a stockpile for occasions such as this.