by Andrew Lane
A shiver ran through him. Was it getting colder, or was he just scared? Actually, it might be both.
He could see his breath forming clouds in front of his face. He wrapped his arms around his chest. Should he sit down? Would the floor retain heat, or were there cooling elements built into it?
Actually, he could feel his feet getting colder. He started stamping them, moving around, trying to keep one foot off the ground as much as possible.
‘You look like you’re skipping!’ Todd’s voice crowed. So he had cameras in there as well. ‘Just like a girl in the playground!’
‘I said you were a bully,’ Kieron shouted. Gusts of vapour drifted away from him and towards the ceiling.
‘Still working on something,’ Bex said. She sounded strained.
‘No hurry,’ Kieron murmured, and then louder: ‘I live in Newcastle. I’m used to the cold.’
His fingers had started to tingle, and every breath hurt his lungs. Looking around he could see drips of condensed water vapour running down the chamber’s walls. Most of them froze before they got to the floor, leaving trails like wax running down a candle in those small Italian trattorias his mum took him to for a treat.
His mum. A sob threatened to erupt from his chest, stopping his breathing. He was never going to see her again! And Bex would disappear to another town, with another identity. His mum would never know what happened.
‘Anything to tell us?’ Todd’s crackly voice asked. ‘If you’re too cold I can turn the heat up. Right up.’
‘Tell my mum,’ he said to Bex, forcing the words past jaw muscles that had clenched against the cold. ‘Don’t leave her in the dark.’
‘No need,’ Bex’s voice said. She sounded … not defeated. Not strained.
She sounded confident.
Something went crash outside, and the lights flickered. The rumbling engine sound cut out completely. Warmth enveloped him like a duvet, making him realise just how cold the chamber had got, and how quickly. What had happened?
The door he’d come through – well, been thrown through – suddenly clicked open. He didn’t know why, but before anyone could change their mind, he staggered towards it and fell back out.
From his sprawled position he saw that a second golf cart had appeared. This one was just as driverless as the first, but it had crashed into the mushroom-shaped control console. The console itself now canted heavily to one side. It had been half pulled from the ground, and wires dangled from its base, dripping sparks. The cart itself lay on its side, wheels still spinning pointlessly.
Todd and Tara had apparently been in the way when the cart drove into the central area. They both lay on the floor, looking dazed.
‘Not as easy to drive as you might think, mate,’ Sam said in his ear.
‘Sam – that was you?’
‘Of course. Bex accessed the central robotic cart area on the external server and took one over, then she got me to drive it.’
‘You begged me to let you drive it,’ Bex shouted in the background.
‘There’s five different cameras on the front of each cart, plus infra-red and microwave sensors. It’s like playing a video game. Right – now we have to get you out of there. Get in the cart.’
Kieron stared at the scene before him. ‘I don’t know what your five cameras are telling you, but you crashed it. Just like you crash vehicles in any computer game you play.’
‘Not that cart, idiot. This cart.’
Something went beep! behind Kieron, making him jump. Turning, he saw a third driverless robotic cart right approaching. He climbed in, still feeling shaky from the stress of the environmental chamber.
‘We’re just outside the main gate,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll get the cart to take you right there.’
Either Bex or Sam must have hacked the cart software, because the one Kieron was in took off with such rapid acceleration he was thrown backwards and almost fell out. He grabbed onto the frame and hung on as the cart raced back along the glass tunnel.
‘A few minutes and you’ll be safe,’ Sam said in his ear, just as something exploded against the wall of the tunnel. The smoothly curved walls suddenly changed into a jigsaw of sharp glass shards the size of Kieron’s head. They fell like fragments of a frozen waterfall, embedding themselves into the ground.
‘What the hell?’ Sam yelled.
Kieron glanced back over his shoulder. Todd had got up off the floor and was pointing a weapon at him. Maybe he kept it in the golf cart that had brought them here. It looked something like a revolver.
The expression on Todd’s face was as close to insanity as Kieron ever wanted to see.
As Kieron watched, Todd aimed at him again and pulled the trigger.
A line of fire etched itself through the air towards Kieron’s head. A small black dot at the front of the fiery line, growing larger with every microsecond, had to be a projectile. Some kind of miniature missile, maybe, propelled by hot exhaust gases from burning fuel. Even as part of Kieron’s mind wondered what kind of fool would fire what was effectively a small rocket launcher in a vastly expensive satellite construction and testing facility, another part tried to tell him that in less than a second that small rocket and his head would occupy the same space. And he couldn’t seem to make his body move out of the way. Time had slowed down massively, but so had his reactions. He couldn’t move.
The cart swerved sideways, taking it into the area where the satellites sat like high-tech monoliths. The rocket swished right past Kieron’s face, so close that the heat from its exhaust burned his cheek. It smashed through the still-falling chunks of curved glass, bouncing off them and deflecting sideways, into the construction space.
Where it hit a huge satellite, passing right through its solar panels and smashing directly into the main body before exploding.
The satellite began to topple.
‘Go left!’ Kieron called. Sam must have heard him, because the cart suddenly veered again.
The exit lay just ahead. The floor between the cart and the exit was covered in shards of glass from the smashed tunnel.
‘Drive straight ahead!’ Kieron shouted. ‘If you do that, we’ll get through the door.’
The cart sprang forward. Kieron heard the crunch of glass beneath its wheels. He looked sideways, to see the massive satellite falling sideways and crashing into the next one in line. That one began to topple as well. It was like watching dominoes fall, one after the other, except these were multi-million pound pieces of astronomical technology.
The first satellite hit the floor. Its solar panels seemed to explode upwards in thousands of fragments of blue while its body crumpled and cracked.
Fascinated, Kieron would have liked to watch the next one go down, but he had more important things to do. He glanced behind him, searching for Todd Zanderbergen as the cart sped towards the door to the outside world. For a moment he couldn’t see where the man had gone, but then he spotted him standing at the shattered end of the glass tunnel, halfway between the giant environmental chamber and where Kieron’s cart had reached. He was aiming his weapon again, but not at Kieron. He was aiming off to the left.
At the nearest satellite to the door – the one on the other side of the one that had fallen and smashed so completely.
Kieron immediately saw what Todd intended. He wanted to bring the satellite crashing down like a tree, blocking Kieron’s path out.
Or crushing him. Kieron suspected that either result would please Todd.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
‘Why?’ Sam sounded confused. ‘We’re nearly there!’
‘Just do it!’
The cart came to a skidding stop just as Todd fired. The tiny missile whooshed past him and hit the base of the satellite. This one was taller and narrower, made of several sections linked by thinner bits, like an extended wasp. Fire splashed around its base, and slowly, majestically, it started to fall. Just as Todd had intended, it hit the ground where the glass tunnel had been, crumpling and cracking i
nto several sections at the joints. There must have been fuel in a tank inside, because the small fire caused by the missile suddenly became swamped by a much bigger explosion so hot and so bright that Kieron had to throw his arm up to protect his eyes. A wave of heat washed over him.
Kieron leaped out of the cart and ran towards the door to the outside, but it was no good. The blazing, crumpled satellite completely blocked the way.
‘Find me another way out of here!’ he shouted to Sam.
‘Working on it,’ Sam said.
Kieron looked back towards the centre of the building. Todd was stalking towards him, murder in his eyes.
Kieron glanced around desperately, looking for something, anything, he could use to fight Todd or escape, but there was nothing.
Except … except the gun that Todd held.
Kieron ran sideways until he was clear of the crashed satellite, standing in front of the thick red glass wall of the building. He turned. Trying to look as casually defiant as possible, he put his hands on his hips.
‘How much damage have I caused?’ he shouted at the approaching Todd. ‘Must be millions of dollars’ worth by now. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions?’
‘I’ll get it all back,’ Todd shouted. ‘ANCIENT MARINER will make me billions!’
‘And kill billions,’ Kieron pointed out.
‘Ordinary people.’ Todd raised his gun. ‘People like you, not extraordinary people like me. The world will be less cluttered and better off.’
‘You’re a psychopath,’ Kieron said.
Todd stopped about twenty metres away. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. Mom and Dad sent me to a psychologist. He made that diagnosis. Didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but I killed him anyway, for his attitude. He thought I needed treatment. He didn’t know what I know – it’s people like me who are successful in this world. So, yes, I am a psychopath. And you’re dead.’
He fired the weapon.
Before the projectile had even left the stocky barrel of the gun, Kieron had dived sideways. His shoulder hit the ground hard, sending a lightning spike of pain through him, but he rolled clumsily and scrambled back to his feet as the projectile hit the building’s glass wall. Massive cracks propagated in all directions. The missile exploded, and the blast pushed the glass fragments outwards, into the open air. Kieron ran through the flames and through the gap that had been opened, shielding his eyes with his arm.
The heat of the fiery explosion gave way to the heat of Tel Aviv’s climate. The blue sky above seemed like the most beautiful thing Kieron had ever seen after the red-tinged, sterile building interior. He ran along the side of the building, desperately trying to get ahead of Todd. Left at a junction between buildings, then right at another junction, breath rasping in his chest all the time. He thought he could hear Todd’s footsteps behind him all the while. The centre of his back, right between his shoulder blades, itched, waiting for the next missile to hit his spine.
The maze-like configuration of the buildings confused him, and the long stretches of glass wall meant that Todd could come around a corner behind him at any time while he was running for the next corner, and that would be fatal.
He got to yet another junction, a crossroads this time. He was about to turn right when Sam’s voice in his ear said, ‘Go straight on!’
‘I can’t!’ he virtually screamed; ‘Todd will see me!’
‘There’s a door just ahead, on the left. It’s your closest route into a building.’
Kieron ran, stumbling now rather than sprinting. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could do. He felt as if he was right on the edge of collapse.
Just as Sam had said, there was a doorway in the left-hand wall just ten steps past the crossroads. It opened silently as he approached.
He ran inside, and the door closed again behind him.
This building seemed to be a storage area. Yellow lines on the floor delineated separate zones. The first one on Kieron’s right had wooden crates stacked up almost to the ceiling high above; the one on his left had hard plastic boxes in military camouflage colours arranged on racks of shelving. He ran along an aisle, then turned down another one lined with large metal containers so that he couldn’t be seen from the doorway.
‘There’s a way out on the far side,’ Bex said suddenly. She seemed to have taken over from Sam on the ARCC kit. ‘Keep on going straight, then turn left at the end.’
He got to the end of the row of containers, and stopped.
‘Keep going,’ Bex said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Can you see what I see?’ Kieron asked, staring straight ahead.
He was looking at an area in the centre of the room, surrounded by high walls of metal containers. Right in the middle were around forty barrel-shaped canisters, bright orange in colour. Each one had a stark yellow-and-black biohazard symbol stuck on the side. And each one had the words ‘Project ANCIENT MARINER’ stencilled in black letters above the symbol.
‘That’s the virus,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s ready to send out.’
‘Leave it,’ Bex said urgently. ‘We can alert someone as soon as we get you out of there.’
‘Like who?’
‘Don’t worry about that now. Just get out!’
‘The police? The army? For all we know, the Israeli government might be one of the Goldfinch Institute’s customers. Even if they’re not, by the time they do anything, Todd will have shipped all these canisters out, and then what will happen? People will die. Lots of people.’
‘There’s nothing you can do. Just get away from there. We’ll worry about Project ANCIENT MARINER once you’re safe.’
Kieron felt torn. He wanted to do something about the virus, but he didn’t know what. If he had more time he might think of something, but he couldn’t have more than a few seconds before Todd caught up with him.
Todd? Could he get the man to fire his missile gun at the canisters, blow them up by accident?
‘Would fire destroy the virus?’ he asked, glancing around to see if Todd was near.
‘Yes,’ Bex said after a few seconds, ‘as long as it’s hot enough. I can see what you’re thinking, but the explosion might just disperse the virus before the heat destroys it. Unless –’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless I close the building’s door from here and turn off the ventilation system and the fire-suppression system. That way the fire would keep burning until everything inside was destroyed.’
Kieron shook his head angrily. ‘Wouldn’t work anyway. The gun’s not got enough missiles to destroy all these canisters.’
‘Then get out – we’ll think of something else.’
Kieron started to move again, heading for the far side of the building. When he was two-thirds of the way along a row of empty metal shelves, something pinged off a strut.
He turned. Tara stood at the end of the row. She held a nasty-looking gun with a silencer on the end of the barrel.
She fired again.
Kieron dived to the ground and rolled beneath the lowest shelf. There was barely enough clearance for him: he had to lie on his back and haul himself along by grabbing hold of metal struts. The bottom shelf was so close to his face that he had to turn his head sideways. The ground beneath him scraped his ear as he pulled and slid his way to the other side of the rack. He heard footsteps as Tara ran towards where she thought he was going to emerge. Quickly he reversed course, wriggling back to where he’d entered. He got to his feet and quickly pulled his shoes off, then ran soundlessly along to the nearest corner and went in the opposite direction.
Tara and Todd, both searching for him. He didn’t stand a chance.
His lungs burned with exertion and his muscles ached. Blood trickled down his neck from his scraped ear. His two pursuers were wearing him down, and they didn’t seem to care how much damage they did to the Goldfinch Institute, just as long as their precious ANCIENT MARINER survived.
He stopped and bent over, hands on his
knees, desperately trying to find some last reserves of energy he could use.
‘I think this is it, Bex,’ he said. ‘I can’t go any further.’
He expected Bex to shout at him, give him a pep talk, tell him that he had to fight on, but she didn’t. All she said was: ‘Look to your right.’
He looked. Ten containers, like large military suitcases, were lined up on the floor between two piles of wooden crates.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Look at what it says on them.’
He looked. The stencilled lettering said: ‘ICARUS’.
For a moment the word made no sense, and then he remembered. The other Goldfinch Institute, in Albuquerque. The tour of the buildings. The video showing a man strapped to a device that had a tiny jet engine, a fuel tank and a wing about as wide as the man was tall.
‘You’re kidding,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to fly one of those things!’
‘I’ll get hold of the specs,’ Bex said. ‘You put it on.’
He glanced quickly around. No sign of Todd or Tara. With the last of his strength he pulled one of the suitcases out and opened it. The device inside looked like a metal rucksack with rubber straps. The wings had folded down into a shape like a surfboard. He struggled into the straps. The folded wings dragged along the floor, and a circular plate with various controls pressed against his chest.
‘What now?’ he asked. He felt like he had no willpower left, no energy, no ability to do anything apart from follow instructions.
‘You’re not going to like the next bit.’
‘I don’t like it already,’ he said quietly, feeling the rubber straps dig into his chest and the weight of the folded wings pull against his shoulders.
‘You’re going to have to get as high as possible so you can launch yourself.’
‘What?’ he said, confused. ‘You mean go up to the roof? I can’t do that! I can hardly even walk!’