Free BZRK by Michael Grant

definitely included the employees, who did a creditable job of concealing their concern that such a creature as this grubby teenager should be in, actually physically
in
, their store.
    On the other hand, quite a number of those employees wore high heels and pencil skirts and taut blouses. So the environment wasn’t entirely without points of interest for Noah.
    He’d been instructed to go to the food department and buy a jar of sherbet pips, which cost a shocking five pounds, nearly all the money he had. Well, they’d make a gift for his mum, although she’d think him an idiot.
    He was to carry the sherbet pips in a bright yellow Selfridge’s bag to the cigar humidor, a walk-in sauna of sorts with hundreds of very expensive cigars on shelves and behind glass.
    This was ridiculous, and Noah very nearly decided to walk away. Of course first he would try to return the pips.
    But as he hovered indecisively outside the walk-in humidor, a man—Indian or Pakistani by the look of him, with an extravagant mustache—gave him a look. A look. He ushered Noah into the humidor and said, “You enjoy a good cigar?”
    And Noah completed his instructions by saying the coded response, “I have your pips.”
    He handed the jar to the man, who looked at them and nodded and said, “Yes, I do.” The mustache stretched into a smile. “You were not followed,” the man said. Seeing Noah’s quizzical look, he added, “We, of course, have watched you on the CCTV cameras since you left your home, and then security cameras within the store.”
    He was lying. No question about that—whoever these people were, they weren’t that hooked in, no. They weren’t police or the sort of people who could just tap CCTV at will, or even the store cameras, most likely. If they had that kind of juice, they wouldn’t be doing this whole cloak-and-dagger thing.
    The man eyed Noah very closely, and his eyes crinkled when he saw Noah’s suspicion. “Good. You’re not a damned fool at least.”
    “And you don’t work here.”
    “Clever boy. Meet me on the street in five minutes.”
    It was cold outside, and dark compared to the store’s bright-yellow-and-chrome magnificence. It was only just noon, but the rain clouds were so low Noah could have reached up and touched them. The man materialized beside Noah and said, “Walk with me. You must not tell me your name, you have no name yet, but my name is Dr Pound.”
    Noah did not believe that. Maybe Chaudhry, maybe Singh, maybe a lot of things, but the man’s accent did not flow from places where the last name of Pound was common.
    They had left Oxford Street and now skirted Cavendish Square, one of many small, contained, melancholy parks in London. The rain started up and the umbrellas bloomed, and for a while conversation was impossible.
    Then up Harley Street to one of the doors in one of the segments in the endless line of indistinguishable four-story townhomes.
    There was no lift, so Noah followed Dr Pound up quite a number of steps to a brown, varnished wood door with no number or nameplate. Dr Pound came out with the key, flourishing it and grinning as though this in itself was quite an accomplishment. Dr Pound was missing two teeth together, the right canine and the one behind it. Something about the gumline spoke of a cause more traumatic than mere dentistry.
    “After you,” Dr Pound said.
    Noah heard a
Pfft!
sound and felt a sting on the back of his neck. Then he decided it was time to lie down on the rug, time to lie down right there and then. He was conscious of the doctor’s hand grabbing the back of his shirt and softening the facedown landing.
    No time passed—well, none that Noah was aware of—before he woke. He was sitting in a chair. Not a comfortable chair, a very sturdily built chair that looked as if it had been bolted together out of 4 x 4 beams. Wide Velcro straps held Noah’s legs to the legs of the chair, and his arms to the arms of the chair, and his back to the back of