“The authorities say they are unable to gain access to the shopping centre through what appears to be a force field,” the newsreader was explaining. “As of yet there has been no contact from the invaders or any indication of what they want. Our reporter Samira Khan is at the scene.”
The footage cut to a news reporter standing in the car park, microphone in hand. “Thanks, Sally. I’m here outside the shopping mall. As you can see, there’s a heavy police presence and troops have started arriving. With me are some of the families of people trapped inside.”
The camera panned along a crowd of worried civilians penned behind a police barricade. Casey gasped as she saw a woman in a nurse’s uniform among them. The reporter shoved the microphone in her face. “Your kids are inside, aren’t they? How old are they?”
“My son’s eleven; my daughter’s fifteen,” Casey’s mum said. Her voice shook. “They came here to watch a video-game tournament.”
“Have the authorities told you anything?”
“Nobody’s telling us anything. I just want to know they’re safe.” She started to cry. The reporter was about to move on to speak to someone else when Casey’s mum looked up and stared straight into the camera. Her face filled the screen. “If you can hear me, kids, I love you,” she said, her voice breaking. “And Casey, look after your brother. I know you will. You always do.”
Then, just like that, the camera had moved on and she was gone.
In the shop, the boys all stared sympathetically at Casey as she fought back tears. She didn’t want them to see her crying.
“Hey, look at these guys,” Brain said, tapping the screen.
Everyone looked at the laptop. The camera had zoomed in on a group of people behind the perimeter line. They were pulling on bulky, powder-blue spacesuits with huge Perspex face visors. One of the figures caught her attention.
“He was in the car park this morning,” Casey said, recognizing the man with a buzz cut stepping into one of the suits.
“They look like they’re coming inside,” Fish said.
“I don’t think that suit will be enough to get past that force field,” Cheeze replied.
Before anyone could say more, they heard the sound of heavy footsteps behind them. Two Red Eyes were crossing the balcony, attracted by the sound from the laptop. The Ghost Reapers stared at one another in panic.
“Who’s on look-out?” Brain demanded.
“I thought he was!” Fish said, pointing at Elite.
“You said you were!”
“Hide!” Casey hissed, ducking down beside Cheeze’s wheelchair. The monitors were tall enough to cover them.
The others grabbed whatever hiding places they could find. Brain and Elite slid behind a row of washing machines. Fish crouched between two chest freezers.
The two Red Eyes stepped cautiously into the store, their guns up. They moved along the aisles of gadgets and electrical appliances, sweeping from left to right. Their heavy combat boots thudded with each step they took.
Casey recognized one of them as the alien who’d been rugby-tackled by the security guard. A deep scratch ran across its chest plate.
Elite peered around a washing machine.
“There’s only two of them,” he mouthed before whispering cockily, “I reckon I can take them.”
“This is our first contact with an alien species,” Brain hissed sharply, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “We have to try and reason with them.”
“Stuff that!” Fish snapped. “Didn’t you see what they did to that old guy?”
“Shh!” Casey warned. “They’ll hear you.”
“I’m gonna rush them,” Elite said, ignoring her. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and brandished it like a weapon.
“No showboating,” Brain warned. “We need to work together.”
The Ghost Reapers held their breath as the Red Eyes continued walking through the store, towering over everything. In a few seconds they’d be right on top of them.
“What’s the plan?” Casey whispered.
No one answered her. She looked at each of the boys in turn. They seemed paralysed with fear. Even Brain didn’t seem to know what to do.
“Maybe they’ll go away in a minute,” Fish whispered, hopefully.
Casey looked at the Red Eyes. They weren’t going anywhere.
She swallowed hard as the aliens continued to advance, their guns sweeping left and right across the store. It was like being hunted. Casey hesitated. She didn’t want to be in charge. But someone had to do something.
The reflection of the Red Eyes’ bulky shadows in the rows of TVs on display gave her an idea. She reached into the drawer of the display counter and silently grabbed the remote controls.
She held them up for the boys to see, hoping they’d understand, but the boys just stared back at her, confused.
The Red Eyes took another step closer.
Casey jabbed the button on the first remote and a TV across the store turned on at full volume. A footballer had just scored a winning goal on-screen and the cheers of the crowd erupted from the speakers. It was loud.
The Red Eyes turned in surprise and opened fire together. They blasted the TV into pieces. Smoke billowed out.
Casey jabbed the other remotes in quick succession and TVs and hi-fi systems all across the store switched themselves on one by one. Convinced they were under attack, the aliens began firing left and right.
“Push the fridges!” Casey yelled, running towards a row of tall, American-style fridge-freezers near the aliens.
With Brain and Fish’s help, she shoved the first fridge over and it crashed into the one beside it, setting off a cascade as the appliances toppled like dominoes. The last fridge in the row, a cream SMEG, crashed onto both Red Eyes, knocking them off balance.
One of the aliens hit the floor, trapped under the fridge. Elite sprayed its helmet with the fire extinguisher, covering its red eyes under a layer of thick foam.
As it thrashed around blindly, Casey leaped forwards and scooped up its dropped plasma rifle. The other Red Eye, knocked off balance by the trap but still standing, let out a roar of anger and opened fire just as Casey ducked down a side aisle between some washing machines.
She headed for the doors, plasma searing through the air around her. Toasters and tumble dryers exploded as the Red Eye released a pitiless barrage of fire. Casey half ran, half stumbled towards the entrance, hoping to draw its attention away from her friends, who were still crouched between the fridges and the trapped Red Eye covered in white foam.
“Run!” she yelled. “I’ll distract it.”
The alien with the scratched armour lumbered after her, its heavy boots pounding the floor. Its red eyes seemed to narrow as it acquired her as a target.
Her plan was working!
She put her head down and sprinted out of the front of the shop. She just hoped the boys would make the most of their chance to escape.
13
SHAKE AND BAKE
As she sprinted through the shopping centre, Casey passed the sandbagged doorway to the tournament zone. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d been in there playing SkyWake. Now here she was being chased by a real-life Red Eye while clutching an enormous plasma rifle. The gun felt big in her hands, and was incredibly heavy. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold it.
Looking around for somewhere to hide, she darted towards a nearby kitchenware shop. As she approached, the security shutters were rolling down, blocking off the entrance. She stuck her fingers through the gaps in the shutters and rattled it, shouting at the people inside as they hid among chopping boards, blenders and dinner sets.
“Let me in,” she begged. “Please let me in.”
The shoppers stared back at her in fright.
“We didn’t shut them,” said a woman in a long, flowery skirt. “It must be some kind of automatic thing.”
Casey looked around. It was true. All the other shutters on this floor seemed to be descending. She pulle
d at the metal barrier in front of her desperately, and several people inside the store did the same on the other side.
It was hopeless. The shutters wouldn’t move.
“It’s right behind me,” Casey said, panting for breath.
“You have to run,” the woman advised. “Those things are rounding up all you gamers. We saw them. They’re not interested in anyone else. Just the players.”
“What are they doing to them?”
“They took a bunch of them upstairs. They looked like prisoners.”
Casey’s vision swam as she realized what that meant. Was Pete upstairs too? She had to go after him.
The woman stared through the shutter at the strange alien weapon in Casey’s hands.
“Get out of here,” she told her. “Save yourself.”
Casey nodded and fled, sprinting along the marble floors until she saw a Starbucks further along the balcony. It was the one she’d met her teammates in earlier that morning. Something about its familiarity was comforting. She slammed through its doors.
She was safe … for now.
The coffee shop had been abandoned in haste. Mugs and half-eaten muffins were left on the tables. Upturned chairs lay on the floor. The coffee machine behind the baristas’ counter hissed and thudded, full of steam that needed to be released.
Casey darted between the tables and ran towards the back of the café, hoping to find a rear exit, but there wasn’t one. The only door she found led into the toilets.
Behind her, through the shop window, she could see the lone Red Eye searching the food court outside. The alien moved slowly and deliberately, the shopping centre’s bright lights reflecting off its scratched black suit.
Scratch, she thought. That’s a good name for him. She had decided it was a “him”, although she couldn’t actually see who or what was inside the bulky combat suit.
Crouching low in the mouth of the corridor that led to the toilets, she considered hiding in the ladies’. Maybe Scratch wouldn’t search in there. But the idea made her nervous. Once she went in she’d be trapped with no way out.
She didn’t want to die in a toilet.
She didn’t want to die full stop. But she definitely didn’t want to die in a toilet.
She looked at the plasma rifle still in her hands. It was a strange shade of silvery grey, like it was made of graphite. There was an instrument panel on its side, a touchscreen about the size of an iPhone. She let her fingers brush against the touchscreen and the weird alien glyphs glowed as they sensed the proximity of her skin.
She stared at them, suddenly realizing they were familiar.
And that was when it hit her.
They were exactly like the ones in SkyWake. She’d seen this control panel a million times before in the game. Her avatar’s fingers had moved over it every time she reloaded. She knew the sequence off by heart.
She tapped the glyphs in the order needed to ready the gun. There was a low-frequency hum as the weapon drew power from its battery packs. Casey felt her skin tingle as the electrons in the air around her were charged with energy.
If this gun worked like the rifles in the game, she knew exactly how to use it.
There was a crash as Scratch banged open the doors and stepped into the café. He looked around the empty store suspiciously, his black armour silhouetted against the window.
As Casey watched, his helmet shot out a lattice of red scanning lasers. They roved over the abandoned shop, moving across the tables and overturned chairs. She wasn’t sure if the scanner was tracking body heat or looking for signs of movement. Or maybe it was some advanced alien tech that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. She ducked back around the corner, trying to stay hidden. She wanted to scream or run away. Doing either would mean instant death.
The scanner moved methodically, searching every inch of the café, slowly making its way towards her hiding place. She flattened herself against the wall as the laser beam approached. It was no good. It was going to find her.
She wondered what lay behind the alien’s helmet. Was it anything like a human face? Could he feel compassion? Could she reason with him? Would he hesitate to pull the trigger if he saw that she was just a scared teenager?
Somehow she didn’t think so.
You’re going to die in here, she thought to herself.
Casey swallowed hard, wishing she had some water to soothe the dry itch in her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything to drink. Her hands trembled as they gripped the plasma rifle. She felt the same tremor building in her legs. She wished she could just run away, but there was nowhere to run.
She had to fight.
She stepped out of her hiding place with the stock of the plasma rifle pressed against her shoulder. Her muscles screamed at the weight of it but she knew she couldn’t drop it. She pressed her cheek against the metal side, feeling it cool against her skin, and lined up Scratch in her holographic sights.
He hadn’t spotted her yet.
“Looking for me?” she asked loudly. She wasn’t sure why she said it, but there in that moment it made her feel like she was the heroine of a blockbuster movie. One of those sassy, whip-smart girls who always know the right thing to say, no matter how bad things get.
She felt her finger curl around the trigger as Scratch turned to face her. The firing mechanism was stiff and heavy and it took all her strength to pull back on it. Even when the trigger moved, it seemed to take for ever to do anything. She felt the tremor building in her hands and arms and …
… FWUUUMMMMPPPHH! The rifle’s barrel filled with energy and shot out a bright green streak of plasma. The recoil from the gun took her by surprise, almost ripping the weapon out of her grip. The barrel jerked upwards, sending her shot wide of its target. The plasma burst smashed into the wall behind the baristas’ station and sliced through the brickwork, creating a perfect circle. Through it she could see a pizza restaurant next door.
Casey’s body sagged as she realized that she’d missed. Scratch shifted his weight slightly and turned to stare at it too. It was impossible to know what he was thinking behind his expressionless helmet. She guessed he wasn’t happy. She had just tried to kill him after all.
“Um…” Casey muttered, letting the plasma rifle drop beside her leg.
“Rth’he calfu mort,” the alien droned, his mechanical eyes burning bright red. His voice sounded flat and insulting, as if he was saying, You should have aimed better, you stupid girl.
“Yeah,” Casey agreed with a thin grimace. “I guess you’re right.”
Scratch lifted his rifle onto her. At that moment, Casey knew that she was going to die in Starbucks in the West Point shopping centre. It didn’t seem like a very fitting end to her fifteen years of life.
Still, at least it wasn’t a toilet.
Scratch’s plasma rifle hummed and glowed, and then it fired.
THWUMP!
Casey felt the room moving around her. It took a moment to realize what was happening. It wasn’t the room that was moving, it was her!
She had no memory of making a decision to dive. It just kind of happened. It was as though her body had taken over from her mind, leaving all her usual doubts and uncertainty behind. She found herself flying through the air as the plasma blast ripped towards her. She landed, with a thud, face down on the floorboards behind the counter with the plasma rifle underneath her. It jabbed into her ribs, winding her.
She might have passed out if it hadn’t been for another massive THWUMP! above her head as a second blast of plasma seared through the thick wooden counter. She felt its burning heat on her scalp. The coffee machine released a hiss of pent-up steam and then exploded. Roasted coffee beans and shards of broken mugs were thrown into the air.
Casey crawled along the floor behind the counter, stomach flat on the ground. A third blast from the plasma rifle ate into another section of the counter, chipping away at her cover. She knew there was no way she could stand and return fire.
What should she do?
Her fingers were already tapping her own plasma rifle’s touchscreen. She was halfway through the sequence before her mind caught up with them.
“Shake and bake,” she whispered to herself.
In SkyWake it was possible to turn a plasma rifle into a makeshift bomb by overcharging its battery pack. If you were really lucky you could take out the whole enemy team with it. But if you timed the “shake and bake” wrong by even a fraction of a second, you’d blow yourself up. A lot of SkyWake players thought shaking and baking was an exploit, an unintended bug in the code that gamers were able to use for their advantage. Casey wasn’t so sure. Shaking and baking was so crazy it felt like it must have been intentional. It was a lunatic strategy, the kind of thing you had to be both fearless and stupid to try.
Well, Casey though to herself, I guess I never was all that clever.
She watched as the glyphs glowed beneath her fingers. The rifle began to hum and crackle as it overcharged. In the game, all you had to do was hit a key to throw it. In real life, it was going to be harder. The rifle was as heavy as a sack of potatoes.
She took a deep breath and stood up behind what was left of the wooden counter.
“I surrender,” she said, cradling the plasma rifle in her arms like a giant metal baby. Scratch trained his gun on her again.
“Han flecht na daruda!” he shouted, nodding at the weapon in her hands. She guessed he was telling her to put it down.
“Sure,” Casey told him, “you can have it. I don’t need it any more.”
With that, she gathered all her strength and threw the plasma rifle over the counter into the coffee shop. It landed on the floor among the overturned tables and chairs. Scratch grunted, satisfied, and took a step towards her. As he did, he noticed the flashing touchscreen on the side of her rifle. He stared at it for a second, his eyes glowing an even darker shade of red. Maybe it was just her imagination, but for a moment Casey was convinced they looked scared.
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