Empress of the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

bottom, his little finger on the lid. He squeezed. Seals popped, aluminium crumpled and split, the drink exploded all over Derbyshire and Jennings. They jumped back. Their white school shirts were speckled with brown.
    ‘You shouldn’t have had a go at my mum,’ Everett M said. He dropped the flat disc of crushed metal into the trash.
    By lunch the word was all around the school: by SMS, Facebook, BBM, word of mouth. Even the cool kids, the ones who never seemed to do anything, but did that nothing in the most stylish way possible, looked at him. Just a look, for a moment, maybe a tilt of the chin, but acknowledgement.
    ‘Did you do that with your bare hands?’ Nilesh Virdi, a friend in both universes, asked.
    ‘No, I’m an alien cyborg who’s taken over Everett’s body,’ Everett M said. ‘How do you think I did it?’
    ‘Have you been buffing up?’ Gothy Emma, queen of the emo girls, asked.
    Her lieutenant Noomi handed Everett M a Coke can. ‘Can you do it with Diet?’ she asked. She got out her phone. ‘This is so going up on YouTube. Like twenty million hits.’
    Everett M handed it back to her.
    ‘I don’t do tricks.’
    ‘We’ll come and see you in goal!’ Noomi shouted after him as he walked away.
    If the word had reached all the school, it had reached Mrs Packham. She popped her head into Mr Boateng’s English class.
    ‘Everett, can I have a quick word? In my office.’
    Mrs Packham’s office smelled of windows and sandal-wood. A jar of aromatic oil with little dipsticks lancingout of it sat on the window ledge. The room was painted a golden yellow, and with the perfume and the light it seemed like a little warm haven in the dour grey winter. That was part of the plan, Everett M calculated. As was the box of tissues on her desk.
    ‘Did Mrs Yadav tell you?’ Everett M asked. This was the lesson he had learnt from the Battle of Abney Park Cemetery, and the fight against the Nahn. Strike first.
    ‘Before everything else, Bourne Green is a caring community,’ Mrs Packham said. ‘We’re a family. So it’s natural for us to look after each other, to let each other know if something isn’t exactly right. So if we hear that Social Services are involved, that involves us too. There are synergies here. Would you like a cup of tea, Everett?’
    ‘I’d prefer coffee.’
    ‘I’ve only decaf.’
    ‘I’ll leave it.’
    ‘You’ve been through a lot recently, Everett, and we haven’t really dealt with it, have we? First your dad going missing, and the police involvement – that’s never a nice experience, Everett. And then, well, over Christmas when you went off. You’ve never really talked about it. I know, I blame myself partly, and it did happen at a bad time …’
    ‘When would have been a good time?’ Everett M said.
    Mrs Packham ignored the snark. Everett M guessed she was in her mid-thirties, though to him everyone over twenty-three looked the same. To mark herself as separatefrom the teaching staff she wore loose clothing in bright colours.
    ‘That’s all right, Everett. This is a safe place where you can talk about anything. No one will judge you.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Really.’
    ‘Okay then. I am not really Everett Singh. I’m a cyborg double from a parallel universe. I’m a secret agent sent by a group of politicians from the Plenitude of Known Worlds. What happened in Abney Park …? That thing in the news …? That was me. I could level this entire school if I wanted.’
    Mrs Packham stared at Everett M for the space of two slow blinks.
    ‘When I say
anything
, I meant anything about how you feel. I hear what you’re saying, but how does that make you feel?’
    ‘How do you think a cyborg double from a parallel universe feels?’
    Mrs Packham’s mouth twitched. She leafed through a plastic folder.
    ‘I heard about your stunt at break time. It’s not just the physical aggression that’s making me concerned; there’s verbal aggression as well. What you just said to