and the blades began to spin.
Drake’s blood pitter-pattered on the scuffed vinyl floor in perfect time with his frantic footsteps. He sprinted along a corridor, trying desperately to escape the ball and its blades as they sliced through the air somewhere behind him.
He wiped his sleeve across a deep, bloody scratch on his cheek as he skidded round a corner and two-at-a-timed down a flight of stairs. The ball could easily outpace him on the straights, but it had to slow down for the bends, he’d quickly discovered. If he could find enough corners he could put some real distance between him and it.
“Help!” he tried for the fourth or fifth time. “Someone help me, please!” Once again, no one answered his plea. It was almost as if the school had been emptied of everything but the armoured sphere and himself.
Drake stumbled to a stop outside a classroom. Twisting the dull metal handle he shoved against the door with his shoulder, throwing it wide open. Staggering inside, he slammed the door shut again behind him, then turned to find something to block it with.
A strangled yelp of shock escaped his lips. Instead of a classroom, he found himself in a corridor. Not just any corridor, either. His trail of blood spots led directly up to the door he had just closed. Somehow he’d ended up back in the same corridor he’d just tried to escape from. How was that possible?
His mind raced back to the garden yesterday afternoon. A reality loop, they’d called it. And now it was happening again. They were trying to kill him. Those nutjobs were trying to kill him!
The next corridor swung into view as he flung himself round another corner. Drake felt his heart crash down to his toes. Ahead of him, the walls stretched out into infinity. He could hear the ball of death whizzing closer and closer, its spinning blades already stained with his blood. Pointlessly he powered forward, painfully aware that there was no way he could outrun the thing on a straight like this.
Within seconds the blades were biting at his back, their sharp teeth chewing up the fabric of his uniform.
He cried out in shock as the first blade scraped against his exposed skin. Instinctively, he threw himself to the ground. Death, he knew, would be on him soon.
A shadow fell over him. He heard the soft creak of leather and the gruff growl of a Scottish accent. “Stay down.”
A sword flashed in a wide, horizontal arc across the corridor. With a screech of tearing metal, the blade passed through the ball, mid-flight. War crouched down, shielding Drake from the brief, blinding explosion. Shards of metal rained down around them, peppering the floor and walls.
When the debris had stopped falling, War stood up, his sword still held at the ready. The floating ball was no longer floating. Nor was it a ball. A tangled mound of wreckage lay on the floor, smouldering gently. War gave it a cautious poke with the tip of his sword.
“What... what was that thing?” Drake asked, using the wall to pull himself to his feet.
War’s eyes narrowed. “Techno-magic mumbo jumbo,” he muttered.
“What, like—?”
“Exactly like that,” War nodded. He looked along the corridor in both directions. “And exactly like them.”
Drake made a noise that was embarrassingly like a whimper. Two more floating balls blocked each end of the corridor. Their blades spun to a high-pitched hum as they began to hover closer.
“Hold on,” War commanded, scooping Drake up and depositing him on his back. Drake caught hold of the giant’s armoured shoulders and clung on for dear life. “We’re leaving.”
“How?” Drake asked, his gaze flitting between the two spinning spheres. “There’s no way out.”
War’s muscles tensed. He sprang towards the corridor wall, raising a leg. Plaster and brick exploded outwards as he kicked. “Aye, there is,” he replied. The whine from the floating balls increased in pitch as they raced towards the hole in the wall. “Right then, sunshine,” War warned, “whatever you do, don’t let go.”
DRAKE DUCKED, KEEPING his head behind War’s as they crashed through the hole in the wall and out into the car park. War took two big paces, then jumped, clearing a waist-high wall with ease. The ground quaked when he touched down on the other side, and Drake had to kick frantically until he found a foothold on the giant’s back.
War scanned the car park, his eyes flitting from vehicle to vehicle. Behind them, the floating spheres came in single