The Power of Five Oblivion

and they had much the same look. None of them ever spoke, though. If either of the boys hesitated, or refused to come out of the cell, they struck out with short, heavy batons, which didn’t break their bones but left plum-coloured bruises that didn’t go away for days.
    Scott had preferred the church, or whatever it was, because (he half-smiled at the thought) at least he’d had a room to himself. He was fed up with being with Pedro, day and night … not that there was a lot of difference between the two. There was no window. No TV. Nothing to read. Nothing much to talk about. Scott had given up thinking about the others. He didn’t even know if they were still alive. The last he had seen of Scarlett, she had been shot in the head.
    That bullet would have killed Jamie if it hadn’t been for me .
    Nobody had thanked him. They had just sent him on his way, bundling him through the door and into a cell with Pedro. And that was where he was now. Just the two of them. Stuck here.
    Scott closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in darkness and anger and silence.
    Pedro didn’t understand the American boy.
    He knew what Scott had been through. Before he had arrived in Peru, he had been held captive by people working for the Old Ones and they had used drugs, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and physical beatings to bend his mind and break him. Pedro had a special power. He was a healer. But that meant understanding and even feeling the pain of anyone who came to him, and with Scott it was almost unbearable. Pedro had known many bad things in his life. He had met people who were like brutes. In Lima there had been criminals and there had been policemen and often it had been hard to decide which of the two was worse. But he still found it incredible that anyone had set out to hurt Scott the way that they had done.
    Matt had left the two of them together in the hope that Pedro could heal him – and Pedro had tried. Without saying anything, he had stayed close to Scott because that was the way it worked. It was like being a magnet and somehow drawing out the pain.
    But Pedro had soon realized that this time it wasn’t going to work. It was almost as if Scott didn’t want to get better. The two of them had seen each other every day in Vilcabamba, the secret city of the Incas, but there had never been any friendship between them. Scott almost seemed to blame Pedro for what had happened to him and it was while they were in Vilcabamba that he had started calling Pedro a name – Stick Insect – and although Pedro hadn’t understood exactly what he meant, he knew that it was something stupid and hurtful. Insecto . Insect. It was the same word in Spanish and English. The insult didn’t bother him. But it worried him that Scott should be so hostile. Weren’t they meant to be the Five? Didn’t that mean looking out for each other?
    The two of them had only been together for about a week, but by the end of that time Pedro knew for certain that there was nothing he could do. Something inside Scott had been broken and nothing in the world was going to put it back together again. Secretly, he wondered if Matt had made the right decision separating the two brothers. Pedro had seen how close they were. Maybe Jamie would have been able to help. He, like nobody else, knew what was going on inside his brother’s head.
    And then Scott had suddenly announced that he was going to leave the safety of Peru and travel to Hong Kong. Pedro hadn’t argued. In fact he was glad. It seemed to him that it was a good sign that Scott wanted to help Jamie. Perhaps he was getting better after all.
    The two of them had gone to Cuzco, the old Inca city, and then crossed the world to Hong Kong, only to arrive in the middle of an incredible storm with chaos and destruction all around them. Pedro had just had time to see Matt again. Jamie was there – and Richard, the English journalist. He had also glimpsed Scarlett, the girl that they had all wanted to rescue.
    The five of them had been together in the temple and for a brief moment Pedro had thought it was all over, that they would have the strength to do whatever it was they were meant to do and that after that they could all go home. But then someone had fired a shot. The girl had been hit. The temple had fallen apart and they had all been forced to escape through the door that had brought Scott and Pedro there just moments before.
    But it hadn’t taken them back to Cuzco.
    Scott had been