‘So, you’ll help?’ Carter asks.
‘Of course,’ I reply. ‘Look, you and I have had our differences but that’s no reason to take it out on a baku. I was just thinking, I have a lot of the parts and Jinx here can pull up the schematics and help me. For some of the stuff that I don’t have, we might have to go scavenging if you’re up for it . . . or maybe you can afford to buy it new?’ I shrug. I realize that Carter is still the son of one of the richest people in the city. He might not have to go scavenging. He might be able to access the spare parts we need legitimately.
Carter wrinkles his nose. ‘I . . . I’m not sure I can pay you. My dad’s not exactly in a generous mood towards me at the moment. But I can offer you something else.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘What’s that?’
‘I think I know how to reverse the update.’
‘WHAT?!’ I drop the tweezers on to the desk with a loud clatter. My eyes are as wide as saucers. ‘You know how to reverse it?’
‘I think I do. I think you’ve had the key all along.’
‘The key?’
‘Why do you think my dad has been so desperate to capture that baku of yours? There’s only one thing that can stop him in his tracks – and it’s hidden inside your baku’s code.’
Jinx is the key.
He emerges from the shadows – one paw, then the other, slowly catching the light. He stares up at me, his shiny black eyes unblinking.
>>Tell me what I have to do.
‘SLICK, SEND A MESSAGE TO Zora telling her to meet us at my apartment ASAP. Make sure to write that it’s an emergency.’
>>Done, says the beetle baku.
It doesn’t take long for her to respond. Zora is there when we step out of the elevator on to my floor, her face puffy from crying, but she does a double-take when she sees Carter exit with me. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘It’s okay. He’s come in peace. He’s helping us.’
Zora shakes her head. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Listen, Zora. Carter’s mom was a Lake Baku prisoner too. She was one of the updated.’
She blinks several times, her gaze shifting between Carter and me, trying to figure out whether there’s some sort of trick. But she knows me better than that. There’s no way that I would voluntarily side with Carter, not unless it was absolutely necessary.
‘Zora, he thinks he knows how to reverse the update.’
He nods. ‘I do.’
‘Can you trust him? What does he want in exchange for that information?’ asks Zora, crossing her arms over her chest. My heart swells with love for her. She is the very best of friends – always looking out for me.
‘I’m helping him fix his baku, which his dad destroyed. But come on – there’s no time to waste. We have to see if his theory works.’
I fumble with my keys, barely able to get the door open, I’m so nervous. Carter and Zora are both right on my heels. Once I manage it, Jinx streaks past me, the fastest of all of us.
Mom is in the kitchen, Petal fluttering around her head. We get to the kitchen just as Jinx is bounding up her leg. ‘What are you doing?’ she cries out. ‘Get off me.’
But before she can protest too much, Jinx leashes up to her. The first time he’s leashed to a person since I let him go at the cat park.
Zora, Carter and I hold our collective breaths. Mom’s eyes go blank, her arms falling limp. Petal is frantically buzzing up against Jinx, trying to get at the leash. I capture the butterfly baku in the cup of my hands, and pass her across to Zora.
‘Mom?’ I say, after a couple of seconds go by. Jinx, is it working?
>>I . . . I’m not sure.
I grip one of Mom’s hands, holding it in both of mine. Then, a second later, I feel her fingers squeeze mine back. Light returns to her eyes, and Jinx releases from the leash. ‘Lacey?’ she says, turning to me. ‘Oh, my darling girl, are you okay? Why are you crying?’ She pulls me into a big hug.
I can’t help it. I’m sobbing now. My mom is back. Zora claps her hands together and fist pumps the air, while Carter slumps against the counter, relieved. ‘You’re back, Mom, you’re back!’ I say, when I’m finally able to talk again.
‘I feel so strange,’ she replies. ‘Like I’ve had the strangest dream.’
‘But you’re okay, now,’ I whisper. ‘You’re awake.’
The revelation slowly dawns on me. ‘Zora, we have to go to your family now.’ I kiss Mom on the cheek. ‘I have so much to talk to you about, and so much to explain. But Mom . . . promise me something.’
‘What, honey?’
‘Don’t leash up to Petal until I tell you too. Promise?’
‘Lacey, wait – you can’t just . . .’
‘I have to go, Mom! I’ll be back as soon as I can!’ I cry out, before racing to the stairwell to join Zora and Carter.
We take the stairs two at a time, jumping down and using the banisters as a pivot. Zora’s braids are flying out behind her, and Carter and I can barely keep up.
Jinx is at her feet, though. He knows now that he can help.
It takes a good few minutes for Jinx to reverse the update on Zora’s parents, and by the time he’s done, they’re as fired up as we are – outraged by the stories that we have to tell.
‘We have to do something!’ says Zora’s dad, Michael, his voice booming in their small apartment.
‘Mrs Layeni,’ I say to Zora’s mom. ‘Can you go to my mom and bring her here and make sure she’s okay? I don’t want her to be alone after what she’s gone through.’
‘Of course! But honey, where are you going?’
I exchange a look with Zora, and then we both look at Carter, who is hanging back against the wall, his head low. ‘Jinx can’t go to everyone in the city individually and reverse the update, so we have to figure out a way to spread it more widely.’
‘I’m on it!’ says Zora, and I can see from her expression that she’s already thinking through possible options.
‘And while she’s doing that, I have a favour to complete . . .’ I gesture with my head to Carter, who perks up.
Alesha, Zora’s oldest sister, is raging. ‘You said you put a post up on the St Agnes message board, little Z?’
Zora nods.
‘We’ll amplify it. Thank the lord we didn’t all update. I was just about to when Zora came running in. We’ll try to get to anyone else who hasn’t updated yet to make sure they don’t. I can’t believe what Eric Smith has done . . .’
‘Anything we can do to help – just call on us.’
I smile gratefully at Zora’s family, but I’m itching to get back to the basement. There’s a different kind of urgency now that we have a way to reverse it.
Maybe Monica did know what she was doing, after all. If it was only a matter of time before someone tried to manipulate her technology, then she needed to make sure there was an antidote.
Jinx. My beautiful, difficult, independent, snarky, incredible baku was the key all along.
JINX PLUGS INTO THE COMPUTER in the basement, and Zora stares at his code as it appears on the screen in front of her. The last time we looked at his code, he’d been under the influence of a black mark, which disables bakus. Now, he’s giving us free access to a code, and Zora is gobbling it up with her hungry eyes.
After she’s looked at it all twice over, she plugs Linus in as well, so that she can see the update code side-by-side with Jinx’s.
‘Seriously? This is amazing . . .’ Her eyes scan the code. ‘I think I know how I can separate out a reversal of the update . . . but it’s going to take some time. You need to figure out how we then get it to the rest of the city.’
‘I’ve thought about this. We have to reverse Monica first – then she can issue the command to go out to all the bakus that have been affected,’ says Carter. ‘But we are going to need a distraction if we’re going to get into Moncha HQ. Something big and public, that will draw attention away.’
It still feels strange to me to be working
with Carter, who’s been my rival for so many years. But now we’re working towards the same goal . . . we actually make a pretty good team. ‘Do you think anyone else will listen to us?’ I ask. ‘The news outlets that Jinx showed me were almost overwhelmingly positive.’
Carter laughs, and the sound puts me on edge. He seems to understand that, as he turns serious almost immediately. ‘Have you checked the Profectus forums recently?’
‘No . . .’ Then it hits me. ‘Oh, of course! Profectus students won’t have been affected because they all have level 3s and above!’
‘Right. You’ve got some of the most popular kids in school – Kai, Ashley, even that strange dude River – all fired up about how unfair this is. Of course people are listening.’
My eyes open wide. ‘They’re still trying to protest the update?’
Carter nods.
I take a deep breath, and leash Slick up to the mains. After a few seconds, he buzzes to life. >>Hello, Lacey. I’m afraid I’m running an old operating system. Soon I will lose functionality if you don’t allow me to update my systems.
It’s another automated message. I ignore it, and clear my throat. ‘Slick, open the Profectus Student app and flashes side-by-side,’ I instruct.
There’s a brief moment where I’m not sure if the baku’s going to obey my command (it would be just my luck to have two disobedient bakus in my life) but then Slick obliges. Within a few seconds, both the apps are projected side-by-side and I try to take in the deluge of messages that flood through both apps.
What can we do?
This is bananas – I’m scared to even turn my baku on.
Seriously man, I’m accessing these apps on a PC like some kind of millennial.
It’s clear that I’ve missed a load of messages, and I attempt to scroll backwards to find out what was said in the beginning. I scan for handles that I recognize – like Tobias’s or Ashley’s. But the messages have been completely scrubbed.
Carter leans forward. ‘That’s odd . . . there were loads of messages complaining about the update yesterday.’
‘Look!’ I point to one of the latest messages.
They’re erasing these boards as fast as we can post! What are we going to do?
Did you see that they’ve made it mandatory for all level 1s and 2s to update before the New Year?
Crap – I just saw that too.
I stare at Carter. ‘They actually do care.’
‘It’s the same on the St Agnes forum,’ says Zora. ‘And my sisters are firing up all the upper grades right now. If we figure out a plan then I can totally post a message there – get Linus to send out a call to action before the New Year.’
‘So not all St Agnes kids updated last night?’
Zora shakes her head. ‘I guess a lot of teens are smarter – and more savvy – than Eric thought. He released it too quickly, too widespread. We might want to fit in and be part of a crowd, but some of us definitely don’t want to be told what to do.’ She looks up at the screen and tuts. ‘Okay, while you two are thinking of a plan, I need to properly concentrate to get to grips with this code,’ she says. ‘And since I don’t have Linus, I’m going to have to block you out the old-fashioned way.’ She swings around, searching my shelves. ‘I know I stashed a pair of heads around here somewhere. Aha!’ She reaches behind one of my boxes and pulls out a pair of garish pink headphones, each ear-covering almost the size of her face. ‘They’re noise cancelling as well. No disturbances.’
‘Aye, aye, captain,’ I say to her.
Then, just like that, it’s just Carter and me once more. We eye each other across the table, both of us feeling awkward.
‘Any ideas?’ I ask him. To distract myself while Zora is working, I pull the wrecked remains of Hunter towards me, going in for a closer inspection.
Carter sighs with relief when I start working on it – and I realize how worried he must’ve been that I wouldn’t uphold my end of the bargain. This is someone not used to trusting anyone.
For a second, I feel sorry for Carter. Growing up with a dad who constantly puts him down, his mother gone, always having to put up a front, never knowing if anyone was his friend because of him or because of who his father is.
I pull down two pairs of safety goggles from the shelf behind me, and hand one of them to Carter. He takes it with surprise. ‘You want my help?’
‘Of course. Two hands are better than one.’
‘What, are you going to run a full health-and-safety briefing next?’ he says, but he grimaces, as if ashamed of his own defensive words.
‘If you don’t want to lose an eye, you gotta take precautions. Haven’t you learned anything at Profectus?’ I nudge him in the side to show I’m joking.
Cautiously, he smiles at me. He’s surprisingly helpful, too. He leaves me to work, and instead spends a suspicious amount of time studying my toolkit. But then, when I need the right tool, he’s already got it out and ready for me. Maybe he’s not as useless as I once assumed.
‘I always liked this kind of stuff, but Dad was much more the “just buy a new one” type.’
‘Yeah, he strikes me that way. I hadn’t even realized that your mom wasn’t around. You were sometimes so cruel about my dad . . .’
Carter shrugs. ‘Defence mechanism? But also, obviously Dad didn’t want it to become common knowledge that Mom had gone. Or maybe he wanted her out of the picture – somewhere nice and easy to control. Turns out, if you’re a psychopath in business, you’re that way at home too.’
‘I’m really sorry you had to deal with that.’
Again, he shrugs. ‘Better for me to find out now, I suppose.’
‘Aren’t you worried that this might mean you lose both your parents?’
Carter stops what he’s doing (messing around by stripping some wires, ready for me to solder) and stares at me. ‘I hadn’t even thought of it like that.’
I cringe. ‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘You don’t think that the update can be reversed that far back?’
I think back to the dead eyes, the placidly cheerful actions of updated people inside the Lake Baku dome. They’ve been living like that for years – over a decade. Is it possible to come back from that? What would it be like if you hadn’t had to use your mind – your real mind – in years?
If it isn’t possible . . . it will be agony. To have found Dad again, but then not be able to get him back properly . . .
But I can’t look into Carter’s face and tell him that I don’t know if his mom will ever be back to normal. Mostly because that would mean me having to confront that same fact about my dad. I’d rather not think about it just now, and try to concentrate on saving the world instead.
‘So, tell me the story of what happened exactly?’
Carter sighs. ‘So, I saw Monica, my mom, your dad and the others being loaded into vans last night and one of the guards let me know the destination. There’s not a lot of people who will keep a secret from the son of the acting CEO of one of the world’s biggest companies.’
‘Guess there have to be some perks,’ I say, wryly.
‘Exactly. I confronted my dad before he was due on at the convention and that’s when . . . this happened, with Hunter. So I stole one of the cars while he was on stage to take me down here to find you. Wasn’t too difficult. Honestly, I don’t think Dad even cares where I am most of the time.’
We both jump as one of Hunter’s legs jerks to life, his cloven hoof scraping along the metal surface of my desk. ‘Ah ha! Looks like the connections aren’t too broken then!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s good – it means the motherboard hasn’t totally been destroyed. It’s just mechanical repairs he needs – we’ll be up and running, no problem.’ Carter looks delighted, his eyes lighting up. I use it as my opening.
‘But how are we going to get into Moncha HQ?’ I ask. ‘It’s not as if I can just walk in there . . .’ I’m sure that I’m on the top of the security team’s watch lists.
‘So somehow we’re going
to have to divert the security team’s attention,’ says Carter.
‘I guess so.’
>>We could create some havoc! It’s the first time Jinx has spoken up in a while. >>Storm the gates?
‘Or something that would create even more attention,’ I say, raising my eyebrows. ‘A proper protest. One that the media will be interested in covering.’
‘Well, I’m sure Dad’s one step away from owning most of the media, so it would have to be something BIG.’
‘Something they won’t be able to ignore, or hide.’
Carter looks at me, his eyes searching my face. ‘You have an idea?’
‘I think I might.’ Focusing on work – on engineering – opens up another part of my mind to solve problems. My solution is a bit out there, and I’ll need a lot of help with it. Including from you, Jinx. You’re going to have a big part in this plan.
>>Whatever I can do, Lacey. I’m here with you.
Good.
I look up at Carter. ‘If we’re going to make it work, we’re going to need more than just Profectus and St Agnes teens on board. We’re going to have to get every teen who hasn’t updated in on it. A totally coordinated attack.’
‘We’d better get the word out then.’
THE IDEA IS A CITY-WIDE protest. The non-updated teens of the city, as many as we can round up, are gathering at a few major hotspots so that we can protest the update. The date is set for New Year’s Eve, and we need to get as many people as possible to join us.
But even before we can properly get organized, Eric Smith throws a spanner in our plans. He must have noticed that thousands of teenagers weren’t updating – the numbers not computing, not adding up – so they decided to ramp up the consequences. Update by New Year or else the un-updated bakus would be put out of commission. We lost a few supporters that day, scared of losing their companions.
So instead, they lost their minds.
The days in between Christmas and NYE are both excruciatingly long and way too short – Zora works around-the-clock on the code, Carter goes back to his dad, acting like nothing is happening, apologizing for his outburst – hoping to lull his dad into a false sense of security – and I enlist the help of Jake to rally the troops – thanks to his skill at running an underground Baku Battle gambling ring, he’s the master of keeping things under the radar while still spreading the word, and he’s devised a series of code words and false leads in case Moncha is watching.
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