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Fifteen-year-old Freedom Smith is a born fighter - it’s in his gypsy blood.

Freedom’s no angel, but he’s no killer either. When he is falsely accused of murder, the law gives him the chance to prove his worth, by infiltrating a sinister fight game that’s recruiting runaway boys. But what he discovers is something else. Something big. A mind-bending world of dangerous science  -  and a fight that never ends. 

A nail-biting, fast-reading science-fiction thriller from filmmaker Kate Wild, whose interest in the survival skills of gypsies helped her to create her unusual hero, Freedom Smith. Fightgame is the first of two Freedom Smith adventures.

I was halfway down the drainpipe, hanging on for dear life. I couldn’t go any further because there was a police woman down below, nailing a poster to the wall. I’d seen the same thing pinned up all over town, asking for information about this Johnny fella.

            It was past midnight, so it was just my bad luck to run into the police woman. And even though I swear to God I wasn’t up to anything bad, it didn’t look good for a gypsy boy to be shinning down the nineteenth-century drainpipe of the cathedral.

            I’d been up on the roof, but only so’s I could sit on the highest ledge and eat my takeaway Chicken Balti and Peshwari Nan with only the gargoyles and the stars for company. This combined my two favourite pastimes: climbing the highest thing I can find, and eating chillies. But you can bet that if the police-woman saw me coming down she’d think I’d been up there after the lead or something. I’d got a good grip on the pipe, the sort monkeys use on tree trunks when they’re climbing. It meant my feet acting like another pair of hands, so I could hold on for a while longer without moving, but not for ever. I was already losing the skin on my palms to the rusted iron of the pipe.

            So to take my mind off my predicament I began thinking about what my mammy’d do if I got lost. I don’t think she’d sit back and rely on posters; traveller kids are like little princes and princesses. If you don’t believe me just go to a gypsy wedding and see them all in their D&G Junior, with their mammies and daddies watching them with doting eyes. Gypsy families are so close-knit, there’s never a chance to stray.

            I shifted my grip slightly. Another cop had joined the policewoman and they were standing talking. Jeez, didn’t they have any crooks to chase?

            ‘Johnny Sparrow? Is he one of the Sparowski Corporation Sparrows?’ said the cop, nodding at the poster.

            ‘Yep, the only son,’ said the policewoman. ‘Ran away from boarding school. Last seen living rough near the park. Poor little rich boy, eh?’

            I let go with one hand and shook it to get some life back in it. This Johnny Sparrow should have been a traveller boy, then he wouldn’t have had to run away from school. I’m almost sixteen and I’ve hardly seen the inside of a classroom since I was eleven.

            At eleven we go out with our dads and learn something useful like a trade, instead of sitting behind a desk all day long. It’s not that our parents don’t want us educated. If we could afford private tutors, then I swear we’d all have degrees and letters after our names. They just don’t like us out of their sight. As I said, we don’t get lost, not like this Johnny Sparrow.

            There was a crack and the nineteenth-century pipe left the wall by a fraction. Bits of brick showered down. I made myself light. I swear, if I’m desperate enough I can nearly hover when I want to. It’s not magic, it’s how you spread your weight; just a tiny movement can shift the balance in your favour. It’s a monkey thing again. Just watch them, they’re the masters.

            ‘What the hell—’ The cop brushed brick dust from his shoulder.

            ‘What’s up?’

            ‘Thought I heard something up there.’

            I froze. The cop was squinting up through the darkness. If he shone a torch he’d see me straight away. The world stopped and my fate hung in the balance.