The Power of Five Oblivion

their covers, I know I would have seen the date, ninth of May, printed on each one. The exit was closed with a metal grid but Blake had a key and I realized that we were close to the safe house that Miss Ashwood had mentioned and that the Nexus must use this route quite often.
    I was exhausted by now. My legs were aching and I longed to be in bed. The streets that we followed seemed to be filled with rubble. There were cars everywhere – not just parked at the sides but stuck in a traffic jam that would never move again. I saw a bus. A red London bus. I got the impression of shops and restaurants but they were little more than shadows – and empty and broken ones at that. The breeze had dropped and nothing was moving. I think it was the stillness rather than the darkness that made the biggest impression of all.
    And finally we reached the house. It loomed up in front of us, tall and narrow with a solid-looking door with the number 13 and boarded-up windows. Once again, Blake had the key and he let us into a hall with a door on one side and a staircase leading up. He didn’t turn on the lights, if the lights even worked. In fact Amir and Ryan had kept their hands cupped over their torches as we hurried through the London streets. They’d found their way here through memory and instinct as much as anything else.
    “We’ll get some sleep,” Will said. He turned to Jamie. “You and Holly will share a room. I’ll be with Graham next door. The others will be downstairs. Once it’s light, you’ll be able to get your bearings. When you wake up, try not to leave the room. And – I probably don’t need to say this – the toilets don’t flush. There’s a chemical toilet in the basement. Do either of you need to use it?”
    Thankfully, I didn’t. I shook my head.
    “Then I’ll show you upstairs.”
    Amir, Ryan, Blake and Simon went into the downstairs room. Will had a torch of his own and led us upstairs. He took us into a room that was empty apart from two mattresses on the floor. There was a pile of blankets next to them. We grabbed one each and without taking our clothes off, stretched out.
    I meant to say goodnight to Jamie. I meant to thank him for the nice thing he’d said in the tunnel. But in about two seconds, I was asleep.
    Daylight, when it came, was harsh and grey, as if the sun had completely forgotten about such things as warmth and colour. It filtered through the window to reveal a room that had once belonged to a child. The wallpaper was striped – yellow and blue – and although there was no electricity, a lampshade still hung down, shaped like a teddy bear. The room was carpeted and there was a fireplace. It might have been quite cosy at one time. But it made me sad just to think of the child who had once slept here, to wonder what had happened to him or her and to accept that there was little chance that he or she was still alive.
    Jamie was already awake. I wondered if he had visited the dreamworld. I knew that he always hoped to find his brother, Scott, and the best chance was when he was asleep. And I thought about what it must be like to meet someone, to have conversations in your dreams and to remember them all when you woke up. But he said nothing and a moment later the Traveller and his brother arrived, knocking before coming into the room.
    “Did you sleep all right?” the Traveller asked. We both nodded and he went on. “Nobody saw us arrive last night so we’re safe here for the time being. We’re in East London. Do you want to take a look before we have breakfast?”
    “Are we going out?” Jamie asked.
    “Not out in the street. It’s too dangerous. We can go on the roof.”
    “You may be a bit shocked,” Will added. “I think you’ll find it’s not quite the same as when you were last here.”
    “Let’s go,” Jamie said.
    We left the room and walked along a short corridor. The house must have been a nice place to live once. There was an antique mirror on one wall, a chandelier, and thick carpets. But there was a mustiness everywhere. The Nexus might have used it from time to time, but the house had been abandoned for too long. It was almost as if it knew that it was no longer wanted.
    We climbed another staircase to a single door, which led onto a roof with a slate floor, a low wall and a chimney stack right in front of us. There was a TV aerial still plugged in and even a couple of deckchairs, although the material looked mouldy and I wouldn’t have trusted