The Power of Five Oblivion

doctor slapped him on the side of the head and muttered something in Portuguese. After that he stood still as the doctor listened to his heart and lungs using the stethoscope. At least Matt was prepared when it was his turn. He tried not to show any expression, even though the doctor’s breath stank of rum.
    Both examinations had taken no more than a couple of minutes. At the end of them, the doctor stepped back, rubbing his hand against his chin. He was obviously trying to make up his mind. Then, abruptly, his hand shot forward, pointing at the curly-haired boy, and he turned and walked back the way he had come. At the same time, Matt’s travelling companion went mad. He must have known something that Matt didn’t because he ran forward, screaming, and would have made it all the way to the perimeter fence if two guards hadn’t caught up with him and clubbed him down. Even then he writhed and kicked out, shouting and sobbing all the while. Two more guards caught hold of his feet. Then they dragged him across the central yard, his head trailing in the dust, and disappeared into one of the laboratories.
    “Rapidamente – porco!”
    With his eyes on the other boy, Matt didn’t see the guard shouting at him and a moment later he felt his legs fold underneath him as he was struck down from behind. He collapsed into the dust
    “Le vantai!”
    Matt got to his feet as quickly as he could, knowing he would be hurt more if he hesitated. The guard – a small, bearded man who looked like a teacher with glasses and thinning hair – gestured in the direction of a building on the other side of the compound. As he went, Matt caught sight of a square, brick shed with an engine running inside. This was surely the main generator. He looked at it carefully, imprinting an image of it on his mind. He would need it later.
    The guard took him to a room that might have once been a store cupboard but that was going to be used as a cell. There was a mattress on the floor but nothing else. However, as Matt was led in, the guard handed him a plastic bottle – a litre of water – filtered from the look of it. That told him two things. They wanted him alive and hydrated, in reasonable health. It wasn’t good news. Matt already had a good idea what they were needed for … he and the Brazilian boy. The appearance of the doctor and, now, the drinking water confirmed it.
    He stretched out on the mattress as the door slammed shut. He heard the rattle of a chain being drawn on the other side. There was no window in the room and no light. Matt had to force himself to breathe slowly, not to panic in the intense dark. He had to remind himself that, in a way, he had chosen to be here. And he didn’t intend to stay long. He lay back with his eyes closed.
    Five weeks had passed since he and Lohan had found themselves in the Brazilian city of Belém. The door from Hong Kong had led them to a huge church – the Basílica de Nossa Senhora de Nazaré – although it had long been abandoned to the floods, the filthy Amazon water that had swallowed up much of the city, spreading through the streets and under doorways, lapping through the once magnificent nave. The church itself was fairly modern but there had always been a holy building in the same place. An image of the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared there three hundred years before. Nobody had ever taken much notice of the little door, with its five-pointed star, that was concealed behind the altar.
    Belém was almost completely abandoned, the few thousand people who remained either killing each other or letting disease and starvation do it for them. Matt and Lohan had quickly realized that they had been away for many years and had come back to a world that was very different from the one they had left. Worse still, the door in the church no longer worked. They were stuck here.
    Matt was shocked to find himself separated from Richard. It had seemed to him that they had been together for so long and had faced so much danger together that they would never be apart. At the same time, he blamed himself for what had happened and the thought of it was still bitter in his mind. He hadn’t been thinking straight in those last moments at the Tai Shan Temple. If he had shouted out a single word, a destination, they would have all arrived there together. It could have been London, Cuzco, Lake Tahoe – anywhere. Instead, he had allowed them to pile in mindlessly and as a result they had ended up in