Chapter 1

Jack sat up so abruptly he banged his head on the base of the top bunk. Around him his friends slept. He looked at his antique fob watch, with its gold hands and case covered in intricate engraving. It was the last present from his mother before she died. The hands were still and showed less than two hours had passed since he and his friends boarded the train. He wondered how long ago the watch had stopped, but felt sure they had been on the train longer than two hours.

He stood up to open the carriage window, which was covered by a roll down blind.  The window wouldn’t budge and there seemed to be no catch. He shook his head.  If he didn’t get some fresh air soon he’d be asleep with his friends even though he never usually slept during the day.

He opened the door and poked his head outside, into eerie silence. He could hear breathing and a quiet snore or two and no other sound. Quietly he tiptoed into the passage and opened the compartment door directly opposite. The four people inside were as fast asleep as his friends in compartment five. He eased himself through the door and picked up the wrist of a dark-haired boy on the bottom bunk. The boy’s watch glowed in the dark and had stopped at exactly the same time as Jack’s watch.

All around him, no one moved. It felt like he was riding in a ghost train. The prickle of unease he’d felt earlier when they’d been assigned to their carriages by a group of tutors so perfect they looked like they’d come off an assembly line was now full-blown alarm.

He turned back to the doorway, anxious to wake his friends and share his concern. They would probably laugh at him, he guessed, and he would stop feeling paranoid. A sudden sound made him hesitate.  Footsteps. Someone was walking along the corridor. A door handle rattled and then another. He poked his head out the carriage door and quickly withdrew it again.

Walt, the carriage supervisor, appeared to be checking the compartments at the front of the carriage. His heart thumped.  No one had forbidden them to leave their compartments, but something told him Walt would not be pleased to find him outside his assigned space.  He didn’t want to be marked as a trouble maker on his first day.

He ducked his head beneath the glass door pane and looked around. The bottom bunks were low to the floor, but there was a small space beneath. He dropped to his knees, wriggled under the bed and folded his long legs under him.  His heart was still beating erratically, and his chest felt tight. He willed his breathing to quieten as he heard Walt’s footsteps approaching and then the sound of the compartment door rattling.

“Everything okay?” a female voice called.

“All quiet, Cheryl,” Walt replied. “They’re sleeping like babies.”

“It worked then?”

“Did you ever think it wouldn’t?”

Another voice intervened. He hadn’t heard him speak before but Jack guessed it was Cain, Cheryl’s fellow tutor. “Well, they’re smart kids.  It’s lucky we seem to have given the right dose. It just needed one person not to succumb and it might have raised suspicion.”

“Mine are all present and asleep,” Walt said. “At least they will be when I check these last two carriages.”

Jack held his breath, hoping Walt’s check didn’t include looking under seats.

“Hurry up then,” Cheryl said. “I want to go over the schedule for tomorrow.”

From beneath the bunk, Jack heard the sound of Cheryl’s retreating footsteps and the scrape of his compartment door opening. He froze. He caught a glimpse of a pair of highly polished black boots in the doorway and felt the breeze of air as the door closed again.  His breath came out in a whoosh and his insides turned over. Walt hadn’t detected him, but it would be a short-lived reprieve. He would know that Jack was missing when he opened the door to compartment five and found an empty bunk.