The Touch

Chapter 5 - The Plan

The next morning I looked over the train schedule to Liverpool Station and the route and distance I would have to walk to the School. I had to allow time to find the girl and to get her out of there to safety. Over and over again I replayed the memory of the girl in my mind. She had brown hair tied in pigtails and blue eyes, other than that she was just a normal child in her school uniform. I decided to concentrate on the teacher as I felt he knew this girl had the Touch. There was something in the way he was trying to plead with the Watcher and the way he looked over the Watchers shoulder to the area where she stood. I was positive that he knew she had the Touch.

Blind Bird had done her job correctly in keeping the information on the girl to a minimum. The Watchers still didn't know that Blind Bird could pin point exactly where that child would be, what she looked like and exactly where she would be standing. All the Watchers knew was what Blind Bird told them such as there was a child at Kentshire Elementary who was a girl and her age. In fact there were over 150 girls at that school with that description and she could pin point the exact child, but they did not know this. That was why it was so important that they never knew that we worked together. Blind Bird gave the Watchers the location, but she gave me the means to save them.

Over and over I played out what I needed to do, how I would get there and what I had to do once I found the girl. I would take the train at 9am to Lindwig Station then I would walk to the school, taking me around half an hour. I would allow extra time to be on the safe side as there could always be delays in trains and the timing of getting to the school. Then I had to locate the teacher and find the child. Simple! But the reality was that it wouldn't be simple. I would have to explain who I was, get to the child and get the child out of there and then get myself away from the scene before the Watchers arrived. Not simple at all.

It could be dangerous but I knew I had to do it and do it correctly. Blind Bird was correct when she said that if I got caught then the lives of every child with The Touch would be at risk, but I couldn't think of it that way. I was here to do a job and that was to save the children with the Touch from the hands of the Watchers and the Government run institutes.

Tomorrow was going to be a long day where I would need to use all my senses to stay alert. I also needed to release some of the pent up energy I had building in me, and I knew just where to go.

I stepped out of my safe room and the apartment then locked the door behind me and walked down the stairs to the street outside. The rain over the past two days had finally been reduced to a drizzle and people were no longer running around trying to get out of it. A slow steady pace of people with umbrellas lined the streets as I made my way up to the end of the main road.

Weaving my way through the jungle of dull colours I sped up slightly and passed people to get where I needed to go faster. Three blocks later I came to a side street that would connect me to the back of the building. The building was an old warehouse which had been separated into offices and commercial spaces about ten years ago. There were a couple of cars parked at the back but there was no one around. I pulled down the emergency fire escape stairs and climbed up the ladder that connected to the second storey. I pushed the window open from the fire escape, climbed into the hallway and made my way down to room 213.

As I approached the door I could see the large industrial metal lock on the door that looked like it had been there since the last century, meaning that Max wasn't in. I grabbed the key from the hidden area above the doorway and opened the lock and the door groaned as I pushed it aside, then I closed it behind me. I turned on the lights and the polished floors gleamed under the bright fluorescent. The familiar smell of the dojo always made me smile. It was somewhere between stale musky sweat and bleach. This place was the only other place apart from my apartment where I could feel safe and Max, my trainer, had been the only friend that I had trusted since I had arrived in the city.