200 Minutes of Danger

by Jack Heath

  Kelsey wasn’t a great hacker, but the phone was. She snapped a picture of the serial number inside the broken end of the eye-stalk, and almost immediately, she found the feed from the eye-stalk on her phone screen.

  06:30

  The infrared feed was a mess of orange blobs, but Kelsey could decipher it. Thirteen people were inside that shipping container. They must have hidden inside and locked the door when the creature showed up. Now it was directly above them. If it jumped or fell, they would be flattened in a steel tomb like meat in a sandwich press.

  Maybe Kelsey could move the truck out of the way. She climbed up to the cab. But the door was locked, and the keys weren’t in the ignition.

  05:05

  With her supercharged hearing, Kelsey detected the whop-whop-whop of an approaching helicopter.

  ‘Bug, call Mercer,’ she said. The earpiece automatically put her through.

  Mercer picked up quickly. ‘Backup’s almost there, Kelsey,’ Mercer said. ‘Is anyone dead?’

  ‘You have to call off the snipers.’

  ‘They’re good agents, kiddo. They won’t hit anything they shouldn’t.’

  ‘There’s a truck full of civilians right under the creature. If it falls, they’ll be crushed.’

  Mercer swore. ‘On it.’

  04:15

  Too late. Kelsey heard the sharp pop of a gunshot. She didn’t have an eyeball implant like some of the other agents, so she couldn’t zoom in on the tranq dart sticking out of the giant—but she didn’t need to. She could see the animal reaching over its shoulder, as if trying to scratch an itch between the shoulderblades.

  Kelsey spent a second and a half thinking fast. Can’t stop the gorilla falling. Can’t move the truck. No time to turn the crane.

  No time . . .

  03:45

  Kelsey ran towards the front of the truck. She leapt onto the bonnet, ran up the windscreen and climbed onto the top of the shipping container, right where the giant was about to fall.

  She ripped off her backpack and started digging through it. There it was—the artefact. A copper boomerang, glowing with mysterious energy. The power to rend spacetime.

  At the research lab, Kelsey hadn’t had much time to look at it before she stuffed it into her backpack. But an undercover agent at Blackwell had given her an idea of how it was supposed to work. The trigger controlled the clock. This switch controlled the synchronisation of the device to the earth. That slider changed the radius of the effect, and those dials set the direction. There was a button, too.

  The trigger was tipped with a ring, so it could be pulled back or pushed forwards. She put her finger through. It was as cold as ice. A screen lit up, showing the date and time in a string of numbers. Kelsey pulled the trigger. The clock scrolled backwards. A minute. A day. A year. A century.

  03:20

  The crane groaned as the animal lost its footing. It fell out of the sky like an asteroid, blocking out the sun, ready to end Kelsey’s world.

  Kelsey pushed the slider to maximum, twisted the direction dial, and pointed the device upwards. She fought the urge to close her eyes as she pushed the button.

  There was a blinding flash, and a deep ZZROP noise. The creature slammed down on top of Kelsey—

  And vanished.

  Kelsey’s heart skipped a beat. She looked around. Nothing else had changed. She was still crouched on top of the truck. But the giant was gone. She checked the readout on the copper artefact. The giant had been successfully transmitted 142 857 years into the past.

  02:55

  When she looked up, she saw that the beam of the crane was shorter than before. Half of it had vanished. Presumably it had gone back in time, like the giant. Kelsey wondered how SPII would explain that if a palaeontologist happened to find it.

  The important thing was, she’d saved everyone. Even the animal, who would surely be happier in a world without guns and cages.

  She returned the artefact to her backpack, and zipped the bag closed.

  Moments later, Mercer was in her ear again. ‘What just happened, Agent?’

  ‘I just proved that the time travel device works,’ Kelsey said. ‘And dealt with the threat. You did train me to do several things at once.’

  Mercer sighed. ‘Why do I feel like SPII’s hush money budget is about to be stretched to breaking point?’

  ‘This is nothing a few pairs of wipe-goggles won’t fix,’ Kelsey said.

  01:00

  From her vantage point up here, she could see some blue-uniformed security people working their way through the maze of containers towards her. It was time to get out of here.

  ‘Well, you did save almost everybody,’ Mercer said grudgingly. ‘Good job.’

  Kelsey had been climbing down the side of the truck, but now she paused. ‘Almost?’

  ‘The cargo ship sustained some damage. Some containers fell out and sank. Apparently a kid was trapped in one of them. His name was Zak Webster. We believe he drowned.’

  Kelsey felt sick. Oh no.

  00:25

  ‘Not your fault,’ Mercer said. ‘It happened before you got there.’

  ‘How long before?’

  ‘Two hours or so. Why?’

  Kelsey was already getting the boomerang out of her bag.

  ‘Kelsey.’ Mercer sounded worried now. ‘What are you doing?’

  She pulled the trigger, watching the timecode wind back.

  00:00

  ‘Completing my mission,’ Kelsey said, and pushed the button.

  20:00

  Zak looked frantically around the inside of the shipping container. It was full of outdoor furniture: chairs, pots, barbecues. Nothing useful. The water was already lapping at his ankles as the container sank. He could sense the ocean pressing in from outside the walls. Soon he would drown, or be crushed—

  Knock, knock.

  Zak looked up. It sounded like someone was tapping on the outside of the container. He was fifty metres or more below the surface, but maybe a diver from the Vanguard was here.

  Knock-knock-knock! The sound was more urgent now.

  19:30

  Zak climbed up on top of some lawn furniture. The sound was coming from the doors above his head. But if he opened them, the whole ocean would flood in.

  Thunk, thunk. The sound was moving. It was as if someone was climbing down the outside of the sinking container so they could get underneath it.

  ZZROP!

  19:05

  There was a blinding flash, and suddenly Zak wasn’t alone anymore. A girl crashed down into the pile of furniture beside him, causing Zak to lose his balance and topple over. He landed on his back and found himself looking up at the girl, stunned.

  ‘I’m Kelsey,’ she said. ‘I’m here to help.’

  ‘Where . . . ?’ Zak said. ‘How . . . ?’

  The girl was drenched, but showed no sign that she felt the cold. She had short hair and intense hazel eyes. Her jacket, backpack and leggings all looked grey at first, but seemed to shift through brown to black while he watched, as though they were responding to her environment.

  She fiddled with a strange boomerang-shaped object in her hand. It made a sad fizzing sound.

  ‘Getting through the wall used up the last of the charge,’ Kelsey muttered. ‘Why didn’t you let me in?’

  ‘Let you in?’ Zak repeated.

  Kelsey looked like she was reassessing his intellect. ‘Didn’t you hear me knocking?’

  18:30

  Zak scrambled to his feet, still baffled. ‘I heard knocking, but I couldn’t open the door. The container would have filled up with water instantly.’

  ‘Yes, but then I could have used this to get us out of here.’ Kelsey waved the boomerang. ‘Now we’re stuck.’

  ‘Sorry, who are you?’

  ‘I’m Kelsey,’ she said again. ‘Listen, Zak. The container is sinking. I figure we have twenty minutes before we hit the ocean floor, and the pressure down there will crush this container like a drink c
an. We need to be out of here by then. Any ideas?’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  Kelsey looked angry now. ‘Get it together, Zak! We’re going to die unless we figure this out.’

  18:10

  ‘OK, OK.’ Zak’s mind was racing. It was impossible for this girl to be here, but now wasn’t the time to demand an explanation.

  The container creaked ominously around them.

  ‘I was about to try the barbecue,’ Zak said. ‘Light the gas, use the heat to cut through the bars across the window, swim out.’

  ‘Why not just open the door?’

  ‘The hinges are damaged. And it opens outward, so we’d be fighting the pressure.’ Zak realised it had been impossible to let Kelsey in when she knocked. He wanted to point this out, but held in the urge.

  Kelsey nodded. ‘OK. How do we ignite the gas?’

  ‘There should be an igniter built into the barbecue.’ Zak scanned the water lapping around his feet, looking for the submerged barbecue.

  ‘Wait,’ Kelsey said. ‘You were about to try that? Before I got here?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Then it won’t work.’

  ‘Why not?’ Zak demanded.

  ‘It just won’t, OK?’ Kelsey looked up at the doors. ‘We have to try something else.’

  ‘How do you know it won’t work?’

  17:15

  ‘Because I travelled through time to save you,’ Kelsey snapped. ‘Where I come from—when I come from—you’re already dead. So whatever you did last time, it didn’t work.’

  Zak just stared at her. Had she just said she travelled through time? He started to wonder if she might be dangerous. Crazy.

  Then again, she had appeared out of nowhere . . . Now Zak started to wonder if he was the crazy one.

  ‘And it’s too late.’ Kelsey was looking out the window. The ocean was almost black. ‘We’re too far down. If we go out there, we’ll drown.’

  Zak crouched down in the water. He could see the barbecue submerged below. Kelsey had said his idea wouldn’t work, but he could at least try.

  16:40

  He took a deep breath and ducked under the water, grabbing the lid of the barbecue to pull himself down. Soon he found the rubber hose which connected the gas bottle to the burners. He traced that to a screw, which he unwound to release the bottle.

  When he came back up for air, Kelsey was staring at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Something,’ he said. Rather than nothing. ‘Hold this.’ He passed her the canister and went back down for the igniter.

  He found it quickly. A tube with a trigger, designed to create a spark. He hoped it would still work even though it was wet.

  15:25

  ‘This won’t work,’ Kelsey said, when he popped back up. ‘You tried it already, and you died.’

  ‘Stop saying that,’ Zak snapped. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  ‘Bug, call Mercer,’ Kelsey said. ‘Bug!’

  She touched her ear. Zak couldn’t see an earpiece. Loony, he thought.

  ‘Can’t get through,’ she said. ‘I guess because my other earpiece—the earpiece of the other me—is on the same channel.’

  ‘Right,’ Zak said, not believing her.

  ‘Wait.’ Kelsey was looking at the igniter in his hand. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s to light the gas.’

  ‘With electricity, right?’

  ‘A spark of it, I guess. Why?’

  14:00

  Kelsey took the igniter. ‘Maybe we can use it to recharge the battery in the time machine.’ She pressed it against the copper boomerang and clicked the trigger, over and over, trying to make a spark.

  ‘That’s not going to work,’ Zak said.

  Kelsey stopped clicking. ‘You’re right. We need more power.’

  Zak gritted his teeth. ‘It’s not going to work because that’s not a time machine.’

  Kelsey ignored him. ‘We need something else electrical. You look over there, I’ll look over here.’

  She spoke with such authority that Zak found himself sloshing around the water, looking for something else with a battery. This is insane, he thought. What am I doing?

  13:25

  He found his radio, and some solar lamps. Neither one would have enough charge. The water level was creeping higher.

  Zak remembered the box he’d seen before, marked FUSION PROTOTYPE—FRAGILE. Maybe something electrical was in there.

  He found the box and ripped it open. Beneath the packing foam was a sphere made out of copper mesh, a little larger than a basketball. Zak could see a smaller mesh sphere inside the first one. There was a little steel tube labelled H. A wire traced from the underside of the sphere to a plastic block.

  12:50

  ‘What’s that?’ Kelsey asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Zak said. ‘But it doesn’t look like lawn furniture.’

  He looked at the plastic block. The top read, LITHIUM-IRON PHOSPHATE CELL. In Wes’s puzzle game, there was a battery called lithium ion, used in phone and electric cars. Zak hadn’t heard of lithium iron, but he guessed this was—

  ‘A battery,’ he said. ‘A big one.’

  Kelsey peered at it. ‘Perfect!’

  She fiddled with the catches on the battery, trying to work out how to get it open.

  ‘What’s that?’ Zak pointed at the mesh sphere.

  Kelsey barely looked at it. ‘Whatever this battery was meant to power, I guess.’

  Zak crouched down, examining the apparatus. His eyes grew wide. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s the other way around. This thing is supposed to power the battery.’

  11:20

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ Kesley was tapping the wires against the time machine, frustrated. ‘Grr! Not enough charge.’

  ‘Listen,’ Zak said. ‘I think this is a fusion reactor.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘It says “Fusion Prototype” right here on the top.’ Zak pointed to the label on the sphere. ‘A fusion reactor would release energy by smashing hydrogen atoms together. If we could get it started—’

  ‘I know what a fusion reactor is,’ Kelsey said. ‘No-one has ever built one that works. They all consume more power than they produce.’

  ‘Well, someone thought this would work,’ Zak said. ‘Look at the way they hooked up the battery. The battery is supposed to start the reaction, and then the reaction is supposed to power the battery.’

  10:45

  Kelsey still looked extremely doubtful. ‘You really think this “fusion reactor” might generate enough energy to charge the time machine and take us back to before the container sank?’

  ‘I think the fusion reactor is the least unlikely part of what you just said.’

  She ran a hand through her short hair. The water was getting deeper and deeper around them. The container groaned ominously.

  ‘No time to try anything else,’ Zak said.

  Kelsey looked grim. ‘OK. How do we switch it on?’

  Zak was already reattaching the battery to the mesh cage. ‘This sphere needs a positive charge, and the one on the inside needs a negative—’

  ‘Can you hurry up?!’

  09:05

  ‘I’m working as fast as I can!’ A battery-based puzzle game and some YouTube videos about fusion reactors hadn’t made Zak an expert. But there were only two wires and one switch. The designer might be a genius, but he or she had made the device idiot-proof.

  Zak flicked the switch on the battery. Nothing happened.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Kelsey asked.

  ‘Hold on.’ Panicked, Zak checked the wires again. Cathode, anode, both in place. His eyes fell on the cylinder marked H. Of course! The reactor wouldn’t work unless it had some hydrogen atoms to smash.

  He twisted the valve. A faint hissing filled the air. He placed the cylinder under the sphere, so the leaking hydrogen would rise up through the mesh. Immediately a dazzling light appeared in the centre of
the smaller sphere.

  08:20

  ‘Fusion!’ he whispered. His voice came out high and squeaky. The broken hydrogen atoms were re-forming as helium in the air. It was working!

  The light got brighter and brighter. Soon Zak couldn’t look directly at it. The water beneath him sparkled. The steel walls of the container glowed.

  ‘Wait,’ Kelsey said. Her voice was squeaky too. ‘Doesn’t hydrogen explode?’

  Zak opened his mouth to tell her that the reactor wouldn’t ignite the hydrogen, just smash it.

  07:55

  BOOM! The shockwave was deafening inside the container. Zak and Kelsey were thrown backwards against the wall. Half the seawater in the container was vaporised, filling the air with a glittering mist. And still the light was getting brighter. The fusion reaction was getting out of control.

  ‘Quick!’ Zak yelled. He could hardly hear himself. ‘Unplug the battery and plug in the time machine!’

  Kelsey reached for the reactor, but it was already lifting off the pile of junk. It floated up above their heads, made buoyant by the hydrogen and helium fusing inside.

  ‘I can’t get to it!’ she shouted.

  Zak jumped, but he couldn’t reach the reactor either. It drifted up and up, like a rising sun . . .

  And then it hit the ceiling.

  06:35

  As soon as the copper mesh touched the steel, the whole container lurched upwards. Zak lost his balance and crashed down into the water. Kelsey fell on top of him.

  The container had stopped sinking—it was rising back up towards the surface, faster and faster. Zak could feel the movement in his gut. It was like riding a lift in a skyscraper, shooting towards the top floor. The humming and crackling got louder and louder.

  Kelsey scrambled off him. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Don’t touch the walls! The reactor has electrified them.’ Zak was figuring it out as he spoke. ‘It’s turned the container into a giant electromagnet!’

  ‘So where are we going?!’

  ‘Towards the closest giant metal thing—the cargo ship. Hold on to something!’

  05:10

  They couldn’t touch the walls, so Zak grabbed one side of the barbecue, and Kelsey clung to the other. It was the heaviest thing in the container, so it was shaking around less than everything else. Fortunately the electricity didn’t seem to be flowing through it, or through the water around them. Zak guessed that steel was a better conductor than saltwater.