by Elle Simpson
Deeke wilted like an overgrown, underwatered, greeny-grey sunflower. “I am sorry, Honoured Leader, but the Professor—”
“Did I not just tell you I care not for your excuses? Find his message. Now.”
“Yes, Honoured Leader,” Deeke said hurriedly. “Of course, Honoured Leader.” She stood for a sec, completely still, her head tipped to the side as though she was listening for something. Then all at once, and so suddenly it made me startle in Creepy Bob’s grip, she whipped her whole body around. “Here.” Deeke put her hand to the side of a computer cabinet. “The Watchkeeper’s distress signal hid itself in this unit.”
Oh god – the same cabinet the extractor had thrummed yearningly for.
“And?” Creepy Bob asked.
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
“The message was here,” Deeke said, “but it has since degraded beyond recovery.”
Creepy Bob made a pleased sound. “Good, though not that it matters. The message is redundant now. The array has been dealt with and—”
She carried on with the creepy gloating, but I hardly listened. My brain was too busy just trying to make sense of everything.
Creepy Bob couldn’t get her hands on the message. That was clear, and that was good. Great, even. But given that the message was also, apparently, Colin’s last, great hope for Planet Earth’s survival, then had the extractor got to it before the degrading happened? Or was the extractor responsible for the degrading in the first place? And also, major point of order, if the message somehow had survived and was in the extractor right now, then how in the name of freaking frick was I supposed to get it to Colin?
Oh my god.
“—the phase flux crystals were rendered asunder and the replacements melted with pulse—
I tuned in long enough to register that the evil alien monologuing was still ongoing, then I tuned straight back out again. I needed all the limited brain power I had available to me to try and even begin to figure out what was going on.
Because the pulse of compulsion was throbbing away in the room still, much stronger than before, closer and heavier, but Creepy Bob – she wasn’t aiming it at me.
I just didn’t get it. Why didn’t she whack me with a compulsion, like she’d done with Mum, and call it a day? Why was she letting me stay awake? Why was she letting me listen in on all her creepy plans?
“What foolish nonsense kept you overlong in the human settlement?” Creepy Bob snapped suddenly.
“I was delayed by a number of members of the human mass media, Honoured Leader,” Deeke explained. “They surrounded me before I could reach the military cordon and were all most keen to make my acquaintance. And for their viewership to make my acquaintance also.”
Creepy Bob pulled a patented psychopathic head tilt. She looked creepily intrigued. “But you were able to do so? To project your voice in such a manner as to be recorded by their primitive technology?”
“Yes, Honoured Leader.” Deeke’s nostril slats fluttered a little. Had to be the Akanarin equivalent of Colin’s nervous clacking. Oh god, the poor kid. She was compelled to Timbuktu and back again, and still terrified under it all. “I was able to alter the manner of my telepathic intent for the human devices to register my voice.”
“Hmm.”
Deeke’s nostrils went for a flutter again. “Did I…did I do wrong, Honoured Leader?” she asked, voice as trembly as her nasal passages. “I thought that in answering their questions I would help to—”
“Cease your pitiful bleating.”
Deeke wilted again, and it took everything I had in me to resist flailing out a foot and kicking Creepy Bob in her creepy shins. But I must’ve moved a little – enough, at least, to make Creepy Bob glance my way again. She shifted her grip on my arm, turned half towards me.
Oh god.
My breath caught in my throat and made this weird hiccupy sound, which Creepy Bob definitely would have heard – if it hadn’t been for the scrape of the main doors opening again.
“In here.” Creepy Bob projected her voice with a fresh pulse of compulsion. “And be quick about it.”
I stood staring at the doorway in horror. Oh god, what if it was Mum? What if the compulsion had worn off and she’d come back? What if Toni—
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I brought the document you requested.”
It was Agent Schwarz.
Agent Schwarz – who’d took my statement at the hospital. The same statement that in all the giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from space hullabaloo that came after, I’d completely forgotten about.
The statement in which I’d told Agent Schwarz all about Cheekbones, and our chit-chat, and Cheekbones’ concerns vis-à-vis creepy evil aliens taking over Earth.
The statement Agent Schwarz had made me forget with his freaky, colour-changing, mind-wiping sunglasses.
That statement.
And that Agent Schwarz.
16
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think.
Oh god, Agent Schwarz had told Creepy Bob what I’d said. That’s why she was here. And that’s why it didn’t matter if I heard everything, because I so obviously wasn’t leaving the room alive. I was about to be vaporised by a raygun and Planet Earth was—
“You brought the list?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Agent Schwarz said, handing over a sheet of folded paper.
Wait. What?
(No lie, my thought process that morning was basically just, ‘Wait – what? I mean, like, what? Hold up, what?’ repeated ad infinitum. So if you’re wondering what I was thinking at any point in proceedings, then it’s a good bet it was either a variation on the above or totally just, ‘Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.’)
“And all of these will be in attendance?” Creepy Bob asked as she read.
“At least, ma’am. Potentially more.”
“Inform me as and when additions occur.” Creepy Bob handed back the note and let go of my arm in the process. “Be sure to delete any records pertaining to your request. No one need know.”
“It’s already done, ma’am.”
“Good.”
I took the opportunity to shift a sneaky half step away from Bob the Creeper. But not sneakily enough. The movement caught Agent Schwarz’s eye. He glanced at me – but then looked away again, not so much as a flicker of recognition.
And I legit wished my brain would do something other than flicker. Because with his mind-wiping sunglasses no longer in attendance, I could see Agent Schwarz’s eyes, and so I could see him blink out another weirdly slow-mo blink. The same blink I was rapidly coming to recognise as the totes major tell when it came to compulsion.
What in the name of bejesus was going on? Agent Schwarz was so obviously compelled. Had he always been? Then why even bother going to the trouble of making me forget? Why not just shoot me with a raygun and call it job done?
What was he waiting for? What was Creepy Bob waiting for?
“Hannah Stanton.”
Nothing, apparently. My eyes snapped up to hers. Caught and locked.
“I asked you a question not so long ago,” Creepy Bob said, voice aiming at blankly pleasant and missing it by a psychopathic country mile. “You have not answered. You will answer now or you will find the consequences unpleasant.”
And then – a pressure trying to build in my skull. Not the thrumming pulse outside me, the same one washing all around me. But there, inside my brain, right at the edge of my awareness.
Compulsion.
I took a breath, braced for it, and—
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Creepy Bob just stood there watching me.
Oh god, why wasn’t she doing anything? She’d compelled Mum in front of me without so much as lifting a finger. Sent a compulsion straight through a brick wall at Agent Schwarz. So why wasn’t she—
The thought struck not unlike a spaceship crash-landing in an heirloom potato field: Creepy Bob’s compulsion wasn’t working. Not on me anyway. Oh god, Col
must’ve done something when he was brain-surgeoning. Forgot to screw in the last brain bolt. Flicked the compulsion resistance button or something equally helpful.
So, “I came to see Mum,” I lied, concentrating on keeping my face blank and my voice flat. “Met Des outside. Thought I’d give her the tour. Bought her a hoodie. It’s kinda small but she seems to like it.”
“I do like it,” Deeke agreed. “Most ardently.”
“Be silent, you feckless child,” Creepy Bob snapped. She spared Deeke one flicking, snotty glance. “And remove that ridiculous garment. You look utterly absurd.”
Then, oh god – Creepy Bob reached out towards me, tipped my head up again with a fingertip under my chin, a horrible echo of that moment in the car park just before she’d dropped the mega-compulsion hammer.
But no mega-compulsion. Instead, “Such a tiny creature,” she murmured, “but such an immense annoyance.” Then, sharply, “What did you hide in your hooded garment when you exited the control room?”
My heart thumped. Painfully. “I didn’t hide anything. I just put it away.”
Not quite a lie, but definitely not the right answer.
Creepy Bob managed to sneer somehow, despite not having most of the equipment required for sneering. She yanked me towards her – much closer, too close – and I tried not to cringe as her grasping fingers slid into my hoodie pocket.
Then, in bowel-churning slow-mo? Creepy Bob’s hand appearing in front of me, her spindly, twiggy fingers unspooling one by one, the extractor lying there in the middle of her greeny-grey palm, the extractor that…
Didn’t look like the extractor anymore.
Because it looked exactly like the sort of absolute, brand-new, top-of-the-line iPhone that I could never ever begin to afford in a bajillion, quadrillion, gazillion years.
Oh god. My breath burst out of me, then burst straight back in again. If this was Colin’s idea of a ‘degree of camouflage,’ then the supersoldiers needed to hire him quick smart.
Creepy Bob turned the extractor over in her huge hand. The screen lit up, unlocked to a youtube video of a cute cat trying to fit into a stupidly small box. “This device appears very new.”
Not a question so I didn’t answer. Held my breath. Hoped instead.
And hoping worked. Creepy Bob made an unimpressed, sniffy noise. “It is but a child’s toy.” She held the extractor out to me. “Take it.”
You bet I took it. But all the while, I kept on looking up at Creepy Bob, concentrated on keeping my eyes glassy. Only blinked when I had to and slow-mo slowly when I did.
“Hmm.” Finally – finally – Creepy Bob let my chin drop. She turned to Agent Schwarz. “Leave. Take this irritation with you. I will contact you again when your services are required.” She made a careless gesture and the distant feeling of compulsion dropped away entirely.
Instantly, Agent Schwarz turned my way. His eyes looked bright and clear. “Miss Stanton, I need to clarify a few timing details in regards to your statement. If you’ll come with me.”
Wait, that was it? Creepy Bob was just going to let me walk out? Just like that? No rayguns? No mind control hammers? No imminent and painful death?
And…
Yeah, apparently she was. I followed Agent Schwarz out into reception, no evil alien interventions to speak of – until, that is, he grabbed my elbow and yanked me to a stop next to the locked cleaning cupboard.
“What—?” I began, but Agent Schwarz shushed me.
“One second.”
He reached for the main doors, pushed them open, let them scrape and screech and drop shut again. And then he sent a quick, assessing glance over his shoulder – too assessing a glance, too sharp, too awake.
“Oh my god, you’re not compelled either!” I whisper-yelped. “You were faking too!”
Agent Schwarz didn’t react. His eyes were still fixed on the control room door. “I don’t have the neural pathways required for a compulsion to be effective. Faking was required.”
My mouth fell open a little. It’s very possible at least some of my brain dribbled out too. “I have no idea what that means, and I have no idea who you are or what you’re up to, but if—”
“You don’t need to know anything other than that I’m here to help you,” Agent Schwarz whispered.
“Help me? You wiped my memory with your weird, pervy sunglasses!” I hissed. “You made me forget everything! How’s that helping?”
“If you remembered that I made you forget,” Agent Schwarz replied, irritatingly calm, “then have you really forgotten anything?” The lock on the cleaning cupboard tumbled without him touching it, and the door swung open. “After you, Miss Stanton.”
“No. Nuh-uh. Not happening.”
“I’m afraid it’ll have to happen. Or we’ll both likely be deactivated.”
I blinked up at him. Weird choice of words. “Like…die you mean?”
Agent Schwarz’s eyebrows crunched together for a sec. “Yes, also that.” He nodded to the cupboard. “After you.”
“No! Oh my god, I’m so not going in there. Not until you tell me who you really are! And like, probably not even then.”
“I’m Special Agent Schwarz,” Agent Schwarz said.
I boggled at him – violently. “And you just expect me to believe that? You just expect me to trust some random—”
We both glanced around. A noise coming from the control room. Big feet slapping towards the door.
(Which is legit the Akanarin early warning system. Seriously, if you’re worried about another evil alien invasion, rip up your carpets and get some lino instead.)
“Miss Stanton,” Agent Schwarz whispered, somehow managing to sound both tense and monotone simultaneously. “Please. Time is of the essence.”
“You try anything,” I warned him in a murderous whisper that was definitely tense but in no way monotone, “and I will knee you where the sun don’t shine.”
“Noted.”
“It better be.”
With Agent Schwarz at my back, I stepped into the stink of air freshener and floor polish. The door clicked shut behind us, the light flashed on above us, bright and white and blinding, and—
“Wait,” I said, “why does it smell like custard in here?”
17
I took a second to reassess. “Did we just do the beamy-up thing and I was too busy threatening your crown jewels to notice?”
“Pretty much,” Agent Schwarz said. Then he took me by the shoulders and spun me in the direction of the console and the giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from outer space who was sitting there.
“Col!” I scrambled over to him, and Colin reached out a pincer to pat frantically at my hair.
“Oh, my dear little hatchling! I am so glad to see you are unharmed. You are unharmed?”
“I’m fine. Are you fine?”
“Far the better for seeing you,” Colin said on a clack of wings. “Oh, indeed, far the better.”
“Here.” I extracted the extractor from my hoodie pocket and held it out to him. “Quick. Do your thing. Creepy Bob said the message was degraded and stuff, but I’m hoping that was your doing?”
“As I also hope,” Colin said, taking the extractor from me with a tiny, delicate click of his pincer. Instantly, the fancy phone was a pebble again, and Colin pressed it into a matching depression that appeared on the surface of the console. The extractor repeated its underwhelming light show, some enthusiastic thrumming happened, and then…
“Did it work?” It better have worked. I’d had every last drop of adrenaline wrung out of me like I’d been squished through the weird decorative mangle Toni keeps in The Snail’s Arms beer garden. It so better have worked.
A pincer fluttered in my direction; the rest of Colin stayed focused on the extractor. “A moment…the processing will take but a moment.”
I waited a moment. “Well?”
“It will take longer than your definition of a moment.”
“Then your definition of
a moment is a fricking weird definition of a moment, Col!” I burst out.
Colin looked over at me, and whatever he saw made his eyestalks draw together with concern. He took my shoulder in one huge pincer and squeezed. “Hannah, I am so awfully sorry for having put you through such a trying ordeal. But I knew Agent Schwarz would alert me the moment your were in any true and present danger.”
And speaking of – I hooked my thumb in Schwarzy’s direction. “I take it you know this freakjob then?”
“I do.”
“Then did you also know that this freakjob wiped my memory with his freakjob sunglasses?”
Colin winced. Or, at least, I think he did. Imagine a cockroach looking contrite and you’re halfway there. “He was perhaps a touch overzealous in carrying out the fundamental remit of his programming, that is certainly true.”
I blinked. I blinked again. I removed my chin from the floor and said, faintly, “If I ask why Schwarzy has programming, is my head going to explode?”
“Are we speaking in the literal or the figurative sense?”
“Col!” I yelped, not even slightly faintly.
Col held up a quelling pincer. “In short, Agent Schwarz is a replicant holomatrix.”
Time for some more yelping: “Schwarzy’s a hologram?”
“A replicant holomatrix,” Colin said, “which is not quite the same thing, but judging by your expression, I doubt you wish for me to elaborate on the differences.”
“Then you doubt right.” So many questions to ask – so, so many – but only one bubbled to the top of my hysterical septic tank. “Wait, who programmed him though?”
“I did,” Colin said.
“Col!”
“For which I can only apologise,” Colin added, fluttering a little. “But Agent Schwarz’s actions were designed entirely to ensure your safety.”
“By wiping my brain?”
“By storing certain memories in a temporary repression module,” Colin corrected. “So that in the event you were subject to a compulsion, the memories of the crash would be beyond your conscious reach – and thus B’oab would have no way to access them.”