by Eliza Green
Dom pulled her close and kissed her again, whispering against her lips. ‘Anytime...’
She felt his absence when he pulled away. But he kept hold of her hand.
‘There’s so much more I want to say to you,’ said Dom. ‘But I think we should go. Can you wait?’
She nodded, wanting to hear everything.
‘Are you ready for the fourth floor?’
Her sadness returned. ‘Someone’s going to have to tell Jerome about Frank.’
‘I will. First chance I get.’
‘No. It should be me.’
Her bloodstained clothes were still on the bathroom floor where she’d left them. She retrieved her favourite red T-shirt, which was only lightly soiled, and stuffed it into her backpack. Dom carried both packs.
On their way out, Anya jerked Dom to a stop and pulled him back from the door.
She needed to ask something else.
He turned sharply, looked from her arm to her face. ‘What is it? Are you still in pain?’
Anya shook her head. ‘I need to know if Jason is okay. He was going to the towns before I came here. Is he with the rebels?’
Dom nodded. ‘He’s with Max. Max is a good guy. I trust him with my life. I’ve been communicating with the outside since I got locked up in this place.’
Anya still wasn’t sure about the rebels, but Dom had just saved her life. Her goal now was to get out of Arcis. And Dom needed her help. They could make this work.
Maybe she’d been distracted but she didn’t remember Dom disappearing to make any calls to Max.
‘Wait, how are you communicating?’
He showed her a small S-shaped scar behind his left ear. ‘I can hear them when the power is down, and I can relay messages through a series of taps.’
‘Like a special signal?’
Dom nodded. ‘I sent the last message when the game ended and the supervisor showed up. The reply almost didn’t make it through before the window closed. I wasn’t expecting us to be rotated so soon.’
They’d been on the third floor for only twenty-four hours. Anya tried not to think about Frank.
‘Does that change things for your people on the outside?’ It felt weird talking about the rebels like they were friends.
Dom opened the door a crack. ‘Possibly. If we reach the ninth floor in one piece, we’ll need backup. I must find a way for them to get inside Arcis. The force field at full strength is too strong.’
They reached the walkway in silence. Anya shielded her eyes from its multicoloured glare that was stronger because it was still dark outside.
Outside. How long had it been since she’d felt sun on her face?
The walkway shifted enough to scare her. She let go of Dom’s hand and gripped the railing. Her eyes came to rest on the third-floor walkway. A new group was entering the second tower.
Oh, God. Please let them survive the third.
She caught up to Dom and wiped the look of fear from her face.
The dimly lit room in 4B was separated into three sections: one with clear glass, one with frosted glass, and an empty space in between. A giant screen was positioned over three doors at the back of the space that Anya guessed was the dining room and two separate bathrooms. She looked around the quiet space. Again, no sign of Supervisor Two.
She saw the girls were together behind the clear-glass section on the left. An extension of that space, with its own entrance, housed tables, chairs and old typewriters. She couldn’t tell who was behind the frosted-glass front with a single door but she guessed it was the boys. Her heart tugged with disappointment at having to be separated from Dom.
Movement in the female dorm caught her eye. Sheila jumped up from her bed and walked towards them. She wore the same style of tunic dress as Anya, but it looked so much better on her. Anya wondered if she and Dom had ever been an item.
Sheila skidded to a halt in front of them. ‘No time to explain. The sexes are separated on this floor. Dom, you need to go that way.’ She pointed to the frosted-glass section with brightly lit panels.
Dom stared at Anya as if he, too, felt the pain of their separation.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, memorising his face; from his soft brown eyes, to the way the corners of his mouth pulled down when he frowned, to his slightly crooked, slender nose.
He handed over her backpack.
She turned and followed Sheila as Dom went the other way.
‘You two made up, I see?’ said Sheila.
Anya blushed, but to her relief Sheila wasn’t looking at her.
‘Did he tell you anything specific?’ She looked back. Anya nodded.
‘Well since you’re still talking to each other, I’ll take that as a good sign.’
The clear-glass section had twelve beds facing out, a few bedside lockers and not much else. Anya shivered in her dress and wondered if the boys had a similar view.
‘There’s not much privacy for the girls here,’ said Sheila, as if she’d read Anya’s thoughts. ‘I think that’s the point of this floor.’
Anya counted eight occupied beds. She saw Lilly’s blonde hair spilling over one pillow, and someone with brown hair was in the bed at the end. She took one of the spares, next to Sheila.
‘There’s not much left of the night, but you might as well get some rest. How’s the arm?’
‘Okay,’ said Anya. But she felt the urge to explain. ‘I didn’t try to open the door, you know.’
Sheila grinned at her. ‘Why do you care what I think?’
‘I don’t.’
Sheila sat down on her bed and slipped her slender legs under the covers. ‘Look, don’t feel too bad. I come from a long line of mind manipulators.’ Anya frowned at her. ‘Psychologists? I assume Dom told you it was my idea to mess with your mind. He didn’t want to do it, but he couldn’t resist me, you see.’ She winked.
Anya’s blood heated. She hid under the covers.
All she saw was Sheila close enough to Dom to see all his scars. The same ones he’d tried to hide from her.
36
Jason stood back as a soldier pushed past to get to the window and gain access to the flat roof. Preston cursed at the soldier when he stepped on his capacitors without so much as an apology.
Jason followed the soldier out to the roof. He picked up a spare pair of binoculars and kept to the rear of the activity. More soldiers climbed up the side of the house, carrying guns of various shapes and sizes. The mineral-felt roof could hold ten people, but with the satellite dish taking up valuable space and more guns than the supply tents, it was a little crowded.
The roof offered the best unobstructed view across the landscape. Foxrush was about ten kilometres from Essention’s walls but a thick forest in between protected them from Essention’s prying eyes. Sending orbs to spy on them made sense to Jason. It was the only way to watch the towns.
A small object zigzagged in the open space between the forest and the town. Max perched a rifle on his shoulder and used the scope to track the orb. Preston climbed out and passed Jason with a monitoring device in hand, swiping at the screen.
‘Nothing yet,’ he said to Max.
Jason guessed he was trying to hack the orb’s software.
Max lowered his rifle and cursed. ‘I can’t get a clear shot. It’s moving too fast.’ He turned to one of the younger soldiers. ‘Get Thomas. Tell him to bring the Disruptor. Now.’
The nervous soldier nodded and used the drainpipe to slide down the side of the house fast. Jason pressed the binoculars to his eyes. Now he could see the scout clearly: a bright metal orb zigzagging horizontally, but definitely heading for Foxrush.
Max directed the soldiers with guns. ‘Unless you have a clear shot, don’t try to take it. That thing’s recording everything we do.’
They set their aim but nobody fired.
Thomas climbed out the window a few minutes later, out of breath. He handed Max a strange-looking gun—the Disruptor, Jason presumed—boxier than the sleek and sm
ooth weapons carried by the soldiers.
‘He’ll need a clear line of sight for it to work,’ said Thomas.
Max nodded and handed the gun to Preston. A short fat barrel had been soldered to the front of the homemade weapon. Jason frowned at the exchange. Surely the soldiers were better trained to fire it?
Thomas stood beside Jason, gnawing on his thumb. ‘This had better work.’
They both watched as Preston flicked a switch on the side of the boxy gun, as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Bright floodlights, normally used to illuminate the town’s main street, were temporarily arranged around the roof, angled outwards to give Preston a clearer view. Jason stared at the strange weapon in Preston’s hand.
‘What’s he going to do?’
Thomas glanced at him. ‘The Disruptor displaces energy, momentarily disrupts the orb’s signal. Stuns it. The orbs can change direction fast. We need to disable it before it transmits our location back to Arcis. Bullets are too slow. It can compensate easily for the speed.’ He pointed at Preston. ‘Watch.’
Jason turned his gaze on the Disruptor just as Preston pointed the barrel at the approaching orb and pulled the trigger.
The gun released a burst of shimmering air. The nearby orb drew towards the disturbance. It pitched and rolled to an almost-stop, as though it had hit a body of water. Preston pulled the trigger again and the gun shuddered in his hand, as if reabsorbing the shot.
‘We need the orb intact,’ said Thomas, ‘so Preston’s disabling it by sucking out its power. It’s one of my designs. As well as displacing energy, it absorbs it too. Basically, it steals energy from the machines.’
The orb dropped from the sky about a hundred feet from the gate. Max climbed down from the roof and Jason and Thomas followed. Three soldiers stepped outside the defence perimeter and returned a moment later, carrying the fallen scout.
They handed the shiny silver object to Max. It looked as smooth as glass. Jason stared at it. He’d seen the orbs before, in Essention, but never this close up.
‘Both of you,’ Max said, holding it out. ‘I want to know what this is made of and how we can attack it.’
Thomas took the orb, and Jason followed him to a room attached to the rear of the accommodation block. In the area where Thomas worked was a trestle table and an assortment of tiny screwdrivers, wires, moulds, sketchpads and rough drawings. Around the edges of the room, consoles had been dismantled and the parts divided into neat piles.
Jason stood by the table while Thomas set the orb down and picked up a small black box that fit neatly into his palm. It emitted a blue scan, which he ran over the orb—the same blue that the scanners in Essention emitted.
The orb beeped erratically at first but then the energy signal faded.
‘What’s the scan for?’
‘It looks for machine parts. It’s the same one that scanned you when you came into Foxrush.’
‘Why?’
‘Some people carry Praesidium tech inside them. Tech they were given when they were young.’
‘Tech? Like what, exactly?’
Thomas shrugged. ‘Not entirely sure. Ask Max about it. All I know is the scanner picks it up.’ He checked a display monitor that he’d rigged up to the scanner. ‘There’s a faint energy signature, but I don’t think it had time to transmit anything before we disorientated it.’ He grinned at Jason. ‘You wanna see what’s inside?’
Jason nodded and moved to the other side of the table just as Thomas stepped back.
‘Go ahead. See if you can open it.’
Jason ran his fingers over the orb’s surface, not feeling any divots or deviation in its smooth outer casing. He picked it up and turned it over, looking for a tiny hairline crack that might accommodate a flathead screwdriver. There was nothing.
Thomas stood with his arms folded. ‘Think of the outer casing in an organic way. It might help if you close your eyes.’
Jason did and gently pressed at the sides of the orb. His thumb sank in further than the casing should have allowed. He opened his eyes to see the soft depression.
Thomas smiled. ‘Go ahead. Push it all the way in.’
Jason did and heard a click as the top half separated from the bottom. He placed one hemisphere on the table, and examined the middle of the other half, where a dull-grey ball sat in the centre of a cluster of white gel. He noticed the tiny lever that had kept the covers closed.
Thomas supported Jason’s hand and carefully removed the sphere from the gel.
‘This is both recorder and transmitter. It’s far more elaborate than the tech we use.’ He placed the ball in a small ceramic bowl. Judging by the flat sound it made, the object was solid, dense.
Jason had spent his time building and fixing devices with flat-panel transmitters. But he’d never seen anything like this.
‘What’s the gel around it?’
‘It probably provides some kind of protection for the sphere, but it may also store energy that keeps the orb active.’
‘Like a battery.’
Thomas rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, like those ridiculous things our ancestors used to use.’
Jason looked at the half-shell in his hand. ‘Can they still transmit the data without the gel?’
‘I’m guessing no, not once the sphere has been removed. But I’ll keep an eye on it.’
Thomas took a seat at the table and read some data from the monitor. Jason pulled up a chair beside him.
‘If we can figure out how it works, we should be able to design a weapon to harm it. Let’s start with this casing, then we’ll move on to figuring out what the gel is made of.’
Ω
For the next couple of hours, Jason and Thomas ran all sorts of tests on the hard casing to try to break it down. They used chemicals, acids of different strengths, alkaline solutions, but to no effect.
Some soldiers were practicing at the range when Jason and Thomas brought one half of the orb shell, with a sample of the gel, to the firing range. One of the soldiers close to Jason’s age, who had a deep scar on his cheek, stopped firing when Thomas tapped him on the shoulder.
‘I need you to fire at this.’
Jason wondered who, or what, the soldier had fought to gain such a nasty injury.
Thomas held out the casing to the soldier. Jason had expected laughter at the unusual request, but the soldier just nodded. Thomas set the casing, open side up, on the ground. Max appeared at the edge of the range and watched.
‘Don’t bother with bullets,’ said Thomas to the soldier. ‘They don’t make a dent in it. Try these two.’ He pointed to two medium-sized guns finished in slick black.
The soldier picked up the first.
Thomas stepped back and said to Jason, ‘He’s using a sonic-blast gun. It emits a highly concentrated burst of energy.’
The soldier pointed the gun and fired. A sharp crackle sent a rattling shock wave through Jason’s eardrums.
Thomas had stuck his fingers in his ears. ‘Sorry. I should have warned you.’
The outer casing liquefied momentarily, then re-hardened into its original shape. The gel remained unaffected.
‘I have a theory. I’ll be back in a minute.’ Thomas ran back to the accommodation block.
Max stood silently beside Jason, staring at something off in the distance. Jason wanted to ask him about the tech that Thomas had said some people carried inside them. Did they have any pieces here? Could he study it? But Thomas returned too soon, carrying a weapon that was cruder in design than the homemade Disruptor.
‘Try this.’ Thomas passed it to the soldier. Jason lifted his brows at the silver box with two sticks fashioned as handles.
The soldier frowned. ‘Another Disruptor?’
‘No. It’s something that can break down pure elements. Chemicals don’t work. I call it the Atomiser.’
Jason tried not to laugh. The soldier, not as polite, rocked with laughter.
Thomas huffed. ‘The name is a work in progress, alright?’
He stepped back beside Jason while the soldier readied himself. ‘In a lump of copper, there are trillions of copper atoms,’ he said. ‘You can apply heat and change the copper to a liquid, gaseous or different hardened state, but the atoms will still exist. Elements cannot be divided into smaller units without large amounts of energy. Normally you’d use a nuclear reaction to destroy or change the atoms, but we’re not dealing with something as simple as copper in the orb’s outer casing. They use this very same material to make the exoskeletons for those giant wolves.’
‘What powers it?’
Thomas wiggled his eyebrows. ‘A little antimatter.’
Jason backed away from the highly volatile substance. ‘What?’
Thomas laughed. ‘Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe. It has its own containment field. They use it in Praesidium tech quite safely. That’s where I came across it. In a piece of their tech.’
‘Okay, so how does it break down the atoms?’
‘It doesn’t. It inserts minuscule amounts of antimatter into the atom and breaks the bonds of the protons and neutrons. It forces space between them to create a paper-like fragility.’
Jason’s attention returned to the soldier, who had steadied the gun against his chest. He aimed and fired.
The single blast caused a ripple in the casing. The soldier bent down and pushed his finger through it.
Thomas slapped Jason on the back. ‘Told you it would work.’
It was a start, but when would they storm Arcis? He turned to ask Max but he’d already left.
A boy from Preston’s team ran up to Jason. ‘Preston needs you.’
Jason followed him, happy for the distraction. If they could get the communication sorted, that would bring them one step closer to leaving for Essention and getting Anya out.
37
A bell sounded in the girls’ dormitory, so loud it threatened to shatter Anya’s eardrums. An assault of harsh lighting followed the intrusion and illuminated their sleeping quarters. Anya groaned and draped her good arm over her eyes. She couldn’t shake the tiredness that ran bone deep. Her arm throbbed. At least Dom said the cut was superficial.