The Faders Trilogy Read online

  The Faders Trilogy

  E. G. Bateman

  Contents

  Contact

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  FADE - Epilogue

  THE NETWORK

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  The Network - Epilogue

  PORTAL

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Portal - Epilogue

  Author Notes

  About the Author

  Copyright © E. G. Bateman 2019

  The right of E. G. Bateman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Fade and The Network - Copy Editing by A. Jack

  Fade - Developmental Editing by G. Withnail

  Cover Design by Charlie at Sapphire Designs

  Portal - Editing by Emmy Ellis @ studioenp

  Come talk to me: https://www.facebook.com/egbatemanwrites/

  For Mum

  1

  Someone is watching me, again.

  I'm sitting on a bench in Somerset, at a castle ruin, or maybe it was an abbey (I haven't really been paying much attention). All that remains of the castle/abbey are a few walls jutting defiantly from the muddy ground. I know I should be more concerned about a random stranger watching me, but it's been happening for years, it's just a part of my life, and I can do nothing about it.

  To be honest, I'm more bothered about the mud. Just to be clear about this, because, as a reader of my diary, you should picture this with sufficient horror, here are my brand new red Converse baseball boots and there is the river of mud seeking to destroy them. I've only had these boots for a week!

  Anyway, yes, getting back to my other point, a woman is standing by a crumbling arch staring straight at me.

  I can see her in my peripheral vision while I'm writing. She hasn't moved for at least three minutes, and, apart from my pen hand, neither have I. I knew someone was looking at me because the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise before I even noticed her.

  Feeling her eyes probe my face, I know from experience, that if I move to look at her, she will appear to be staring at something near me. Her eyes will travel around casually before she wanders off somewhere. This time, I refuse to look up!

  Okay, I looked. Silly me, of course, she's been staring at that fascinating piece of air, three inches from my head. She gazes around and then wanders off. Aarrgh! I've given up trying to convince people this is happening. I think Dad was on the verge of taking me to a shrink or having me carted off to the funny farm.

  I sighed, closed my diary, buried it in my bag and jumped up from the bench. I looked around, but the woman was nowhere in sight. Dad said that people just randomly look at each other all the time and I shouldn't get so weird about it but, sometimes, it was different. I would feel a sort of tickle on the back of my neck, too hard to describe precisely, and I'd know.

  Glancing at the sky, which was still cloudy, I could feel it warming up a little. That's promising, I thought.

  It was the beginning of the summer holidays, if you could call it “summer” with the dismal weather we were having. I'd just finished the last of my exams at school, and my reward was this exercise in footwear destruction. It was time to go and find my best friend, Gill.

  I'd usually find her shuffling along somewhere behind Dad. She'd been totally crushing on him, which was just so unbelievably gross there are no words. She was acting like he was Johnny Depp or something.

  "Oh my God, Jenna! Your dad looks so much like Johnny Depp," said Gill later, as we sat at our table by the window of a Glastonbury café.

  "He so, absolutely, does not," I replied. "Last year you said he looked like Brad Pitt and then six months later it was Matt Damon. You're ruining all the hot older guys for me."

  "Have I mentioned he has eyes like Robert Pattins…"

  "I swear to God, one more syllable and," I reached into the cutlery tray in the middle of the table and pulled out something plastic, "I'll stab you to death with this…"

  I stared at the object in my hand. "What is this?"

  "It's a spork," she said. "A cross between a spoon and a fork. How did you get to fifteen years and eleven months without knowing what a spork is?"

  "Whatever! I'll stab you with this spork. Is that what you want everyone to read on your gravestone? “Here lies Gill Fielding, sporked to death because she couldn't keep her big mouth shut”."

  "Okay," said Gill, "but you'll be known as The Sporker. That will be your serial killer nickname and all the other serial killers will laugh at you."

  "Serial killer? Who else am I going to spork?"

  Gill looked around. "Well, you might as well spork the kitchen staff in this place. They don't seem to be cooking anything."

  I couldn't work that out. It was stupidly hot, but there didn't appear to be much cooking going on as far as I could tell. We French-plaited each other's hair as we sat at the table, although it was more of a necessity than a luxury for me. My fine light-brown hair had been looking possessed lately, so I'd taken to hiding it under a beanie.

  "How much anti-frizz serum did you use this morning?" asked Gill. "Your hair is actually slippy. It looks like you haven't washed it in a month, and it's still frizzy."

  Gill picked a wet wipe from her bag and wiped her hands with a look of disgust.

  "It's not that bad," I said.

  "It kinda is," she replied.

  I plunged
the beanie back on to my head and looked around the place. It was a vegetarian café, a cake shop, an art gallery and in the back room, a vinyl record shop. That's where my dad was. We could see him, looking at old Rolling Stones albums.

  "Honestly, I don't think we've even got a record player," I said, "and I'm surprised they don't all just warp with the heat in here."

  "Are you kidding? I'm bloody freezing today. Someone should sue July under the Trade Descriptions Act." Gill shuddered. "Maybe you're ill. You're all pink looking."

  "Excuse me? I think you'll find that I'm Mediterranean Gold."

  "Yeah, sorry, that wore off. You're pink now."

  "Awesome!" I sighed.

  I looked out on to the High Street. Glastonbury was weird, but I liked it. It seemed like every other shop sold crystals and pentacles, and the air was so thick with incense that you could cut it with a spork. Gill had just bought a pack of Merlin themed tarot cards, so we amused ourselves by attempting to read each other's fortunes while we waited for the food.

  Gill turned over a card. "The Nine of Cups," she announced in a mysterious voice. "You will soon achieve your heart's desire."

  That was good news. I might find out why complete strangers kept watching me in the street.

  "And what does the Nine of Cups really mean?" I asked.

  "I have nooo idea," in the same woo-woo voice. "I haven't read the instructions."

  After that, the readings became more preposterous with each attempt. By the time the bean burgers finally arrived, I was going to marry a hunchbacked elf, and Gill was going to become the bearded lady in a travelling circus and give birth to a monkey.

  Dad arrived about one and a half seconds behind the food as though it were tugging him along on an invisible ring through his nose.

  "Move up, Little Duck," he said as he nudged me to shift across the bench so he could sit down. I would have died if he'd said that in front of anyone other than Gill. Luckily, I already knew her dad called her “Pudding” so my secret was safe.

  "What's next?" I asked Dad.

  "Well, I did notice a second-hand…"

  "Bookshop," Gill and I chorused.

  "Okay," said Gill, "weird meatless food first, then bookshop."

  "Gill," said Dad, going into his teacher's voice, "a meal without meat is not weird."

  "No, it's a side salad."

  "Can I just point out that you're eating a burger the same size as your head? I don't think it could be called a side dish by any stretch of the imagination."

  "Fair point!" Gill said. "So, bookshop. Anything in particular this time? Or are we in it for the long-haul and praying for padded armchairs?"

  As Dad and Gill bantered, my neck prickled with the familiar feeling that told me someone was watching me again. I glanced quickly around. Sitting two tables away was a boy, maybe a year or so older than me, who was blatantly staring at me. He had a mop of wavy brown hair and a scruffy denim jacket over a grey t-shirt with a logo I couldn't identify. As I looked at him, the sun broke from behind the clouds and streamed in through the window behind me. Intense green-hazel eyes were illuminated and directed straight at me.

  I don't think I'd ever turned around and caught someone looking right at me. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what came next. I could feel myself blush. His brow furrowed in apparent suspicion, or maybe confusion. He continued to stare for a few more seconds, and then he winked.

  Talk about mixed messages. I was flustered, and I looked around to see if the boy was winking at someone else. No person other than Dad was near me, and I was fairly certain he wasn't winking at my dad. I turned my hot face quickly back to my food.

  Dad was immediately on the alert.

  "Jenna? Are you okay?" He sounded worried.

  I tried for a casual tone. "Fine, just looking around."

  Dad glanced around the café, not even pausing at the boy who was now demolishing a burger of his own. He didn't seem to notice anything unusual and turned back to me.

  "Have you taken your pill today?"

  "Of course! I never miss taking it." A little knot of muscle tightened in my shoulders.

  "It's true, Mr Banks," said Gill, "you've turned her into a total junky. If she doesn't get her iron pill, she starts chewing the railings on the school gate."

  "Gill, I think your food is getting cold," said Dad with an eyebrow raised.

  "Mr Banks, have I ever told you how truly fantastic you are for letting me come on holiday with Jenna again? Seriously, I would be slaving in Dad's bakery for the whole six weeks if it weren't for you."

  "So you're saying I've saved you from the inconvenience of developing a good work ethic?"

  "Erm. Sort of." Gill pointed at her plate. "Oh look, my head burger is getting cold."

  Dad shook his head, rolled his eyes and started on his food.

  My shoulders relaxed. That had been a fantastic job of misdirection by Gill. Dad's totally over-the-top about my anaemia. He would have a fit if he knew the truth: I ran out of my iron pills after two days away; I never was the most organised at packing. I popped into a supermarket and bought some more straight away, refilling the bottle I usually used so Dad wouldn't worry. He's a bit weird about my pills always being the same brand.

  I didn't dare look at the boy again for the remainder of the meal.

  Dad finished his burger in two minutes flat. He had bought a book on the mythical history of King Arthur and read some interesting sections from it as we ate our food.

  "…And so ended the night of Uther's deception," he said, putting the book away as we got up from the table.

  "…And so ended the meal of the Spork," I added to Gill's giggles as we walked to the door and I held the spork aloft like it was Excalibur. Embarrassed, I remembered the boy and shoved my hand into my pocket. I glanced around towards his table and was surprised to discover that he was gone. I hadn't even noticed him leave.

  We walked into the bookshop, which was even warmer than the café had been. Gill and I had a great system for surviving Dad's book worshipping trips. Dad would announce that he was going to look for science books and head straight for the Sports section, then Gill and I would mutter something about teen fiction and hunt for some raunchy adult book we shouldn't be reading.

  We hid our raunchy book this time inside a Harry Potter and took turns to read a few pages while the other stood on lookout. I would have preferred to read the teen fiction, but I enjoyed the whole cloak-and-dagger exercise too much to admit that to Gill. She didn't seem to notice that I'd only been turning the pages of the Potter.

  I stood in the corner with the book, well beyond Dad's field of vision. It was getting difficult to read because the light above me had started to flicker, so I was holding it close to my face.

  "Are you sure you should be reading that?" an accented voice drawled from behind me.

  I almost jumped out of my skin and just managed to swallow a shriek. I whirled around to see the boy from the café. How the hell had he got behind me without me seeing him? I had virtually rammed myself into the corner.

  "I…well…" I was almost speechless with embarrassment. I closed the books and looked intensely at the bookshelves, wishing that Gill would come back.

  "Tell me the truth," he said. I could tell his accent was American and it had a slightly mocking tone. "You're reading the outside book, aren't you?"

  "Yes, obviously," was all I could say as I scanned the shelves and resolutely refused to make eye contact. Obviously? Why did I say that?

  "Well that's…complex." He chuckled, seemingly more to himself than to me. I turned around and looked him dead in the face, unamused.

  He smiled uncertainly. Being this close to him, I had the full impact of his green-hazel eyes. He had a scar above his lip which did nothing to dampen his looks. I could feel my face flaming up again. He looked suddenly alarmed and promptly backed off. As he moved away, I could see that the faded logo on his t-shirt was from some American sports team. He turned around and marched a
way, leaving me alone with hot cheeks and a dropped jaw.

  Almost on cue, Gill popped her head around the corner to demand her five minutes with "the book of sin."

  "Holy smoke! You're red up to your ears. You must have found a good part," she said as I handed the books to her.

  I don't know why I didn't tell her about the boy. I just took my turn around the corner at the lookout post. The light above me here was also flickering, even more than the other one, and the heat in the shop was getting quite uncomfortable. My cheeks were warm, but I couldn't tell if it was from the residual embarrassment.

  Within a few minutes, I began to hear a buzzing in my ears. I shook my head as though that would dislodge something, but, of course, it didn't stop. Sweat prickled on my scalp, and my back and arms were unpleasantly damp. I could see another entrance at the back of the shop and thought that if I could just get a few seconds of fresh air, I'd be okay and back at my post before Gill noticed I'd gone.