by Andy Briggs
Lot hoped that the Avro was still airworthy after Dev had dropped it to the deck with such force that one of the helipad steel supporting struts buckled, sending a resonating boom through the ship.
As the disc’s ramp lowered, she saw Kardach tense. She couldn’t see any weapons amongst the assembled Shadow Helix personnel. They all stood to attention, arms by their sides. Even Kardach was unarmed.
She looked up at the ship’s bridge, seven storeys above them. It was difficult to tell, with the sunlight glinting off the glass, but she was sure there was somebody standing there. She reasoned that if she were Double Helix, that’s where she’d be.
Her attention was drawn back to the Avro by movement from within. Dev slowly descended the ramp, wearing his kitbag and clutching a red case. She heard a low, triumphant exhalation from Kardach.
Dev’s gaze met Lot’s, and, to her complete surprise, she suddenly heard his voice whispering in her head as if he were standing just behind her shoulder.
“Lot – it’s me, and no, you’re not going bonkers.” She surreptitiously looked around, expecting another Dev to mysteriously appear behind her. “I’m using Professor Liu’s TelePath so only you can hear me.”
“Bring the case forward,” Kardach commanded.
Dev looked Kardach up and down, making his disgust apparent. “You got real ugly, real quick.”
Kardach ignored his insult. “The case for the girl!”
“Lot for the case. She comes over here first.”
Kardach scoffed. “Ha! Do you think I was born yesterday?”
“Well, that’s the thing, you sort of were, and I think it’s obvious that Uncle Parker really didn’t make them the way he used to.”
“You are testing my patience, boy.” He grabbed Lot around the neck. His clammy, extra-long fingers encircled her throat, causing her to yelp.
Dev quickly stepped off the ramp and placed the case down on the floor. Then he took a step backwards.
Lot was on Kardach’s un-deformed side, and she could see indecision on the half of Kardach’s face capable of displaying emotion. He pushed Lot forward and walked behind her, using her as a human shield.
“Get ready to run,” rang Dev’s voice in her mind as she drew nearer to him. Her fingers tightened around the taser in her pocket.
A voice suddenly shouted out. “Before you do anything, Devon, are you not curious to know what is in the cases you have risked your life for?” A door had opened up at the bottom of the bridge tower, and Double Helix strode out holding the blue case.
“My friends are more important,” Dev shouted back.
“Ah, noble sentiments.” He drew next to Lot and Kardach and placed the case down at his feet.
Lot’s gaze was drawn to the blue case. It was within easy reach. All she had to do was make a break from Kardach, snatch it and . . . somehow get on the Avro before anybody could react. She became aware that Double Helix was looking at her with a half smile.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His lips didn’t move, and with a gasp the question formed in her mind: You can read my mind?
Helix’s thin smile was all the confirmation she needed. She looked urgently at Dev – had his thoughts been intercepted? Was his mind being read?
Helix turned his attention back to Dev. “Let’s be reasonable. You know I was never going to allow you to simply” – he flicked his fingers through the air – “fly away with everything I had so diligently worked for.”
Before Dev could react, enormous metal claws snapped from the deck, reached into the air and clutched the Avro’s rim, holding it in place like a giant mousetrap. Double Helix’s laugh echoed across the ship.
Then Dev suddenly sank to his knees, blood trickling from his nose. Lot saw the flicker of a puzzled frown cross Double Helix’s face. Mason ran down the ramp to support Dev.
“Now, there is no need for violence,” Double Helix said. “And there is even less need to dawdle. Mason, bring the case to me.”
Mason scowled and made no move.
Helix let out a long sigh. “Bring the case to me, or her neck will snap like a twig.”
On cue, Lot felt Kardach’s long fingers tighten, and she couldn’t breathe. She let go of the stun gun and used both hands to claw at his gnarled fingers. Mason angrily picked up the case and carried it over. Helix held out his hand – but Mason stubbornly dropped it, smirking when he saw Kardach flinch.
Kardach shoved Lot towards Mason and snatched the case up, checking it for signs of damage. Satisfied, he nodded at Helix.
Lot and Mason retreated to Dev’s side. He was still hunched on the Avro’s ramp, trying to stop his nose from bleeding.
“What happened to you?” Lot asked.
“I don’t know. I’m coming down with something, I think.”
“It’s not an illness, Devon,” said Double Helix as he supervised a technician carrying both cases to a lifeboat at the edge of the ship. “You are suffering from a fail-safe mechanism triggered by Charles Parker. The Dissolution Protocol, he calls it. Think of it as an auto-destruct.”
“Help him!” Lot pleaded.
“There is nothing I can do. The Protocol was Charles Parker’s insidious invention, not mine.” He studied Dev for a moment. “It’s a shame. I could have used you and your abilities in my organization.”
Kardach ran his finger along the seam of the blue case. It unfolded open with a hiss. Inside, both halves were filled with a blue lattice structure made of fine, delicate-looking threads, like candyfloss.
He carefully placed the open case in a special metal slot on the boat, then turned to the red case and repeated the proceedings. Again, inside was a lattice structure, but a red one. Kardach placed it in the slot next to the blue case.
“You may have thought the case was empty,” Helix explained. “But what you are looking at are intense negravity fields. Just as a magnet has two poles, north and south, so does a gravity field, to ensure it all flows the same way. Your flying disc defies gravity in the same way magnets will repel each other if you push the same poles together. That’s antigravity. However, these negravity fields are essentially a world of their own. Observe.”
He turned to watch the lifeboat as it was lowered into the water by a small crane. There was more movement as the Collector came on to the deck through a bulkhead door, Newton’s Arrow slung over his back. He cast Dev a brief glance before joining Double Helix’s side.
“It’s one big family reunion for the ugly squad,” muttered Mason.
“Let me see,” said Dev, struggling to stand. He leaned on Lot’s shoulder, and they all watched as the remotely controlled lifeboat zipped across the ocean, away from the freighter.
Double Helix didn’t look away from the boat. “Look what happens when you expand a negravity field.”
The Collector held out Newton’s Arrow to Kardach. “After what it did to you, I have no wish to fire it.”
Kardach reluctantly took the weapon, noticing that everybody took a wary step back from him as he flicked the switch to activate it. He took aim at the receding boat. As the gun powered up he was forced to spread his feet to take the increasing weight. Then, he fired.
It was the strongest gravity wave they had yet witnessed. It arced over the ocean and struck the boat. Even from far away, they could see the two lattices in the cases absorb the graviton stream like a sponge.
For several seconds nothing happened, and the stream continued. Then the lattices rapidly expanded, bleeding into each other in a bright magenta flash that forced everybody, except the Collector, to shield their eyes.
As Lot’s vision came back, she could see that the water around the lifeboat had become a frothing maelstrom. The lattices were rapidly expanding – unfolding like Slinky springs, but performing moves that seemed to defy logic as they blended into each other.
Against all logic, the lattices continued expanding with a growing rumble. The larger they grew, the more familiar the shapes they formed. Towers began to st
retch into the air, and Lot realized that – incredibly – they were watching an entire city unfold before their very eyes.
A floating cityscape spread across the horizon, a vertical wall of grey steel buildings that blotted out the sun and bathed the ship in deep shadow. The sudden creation sent huge waves crashing towards the freighter, causing it to violently bob and roll. As the last section of towers expanded into position, the thunderous rumble gradually faded away. The incredible expansion was over in less than a minute. The entire city, roughly several miles across, had unfolded from the two cases.
With everybody’s attention on the spectacle before them, Dev grabbed the kitbag and pulled Lot and Mason towards the nearest bulkhead door. Using her stolen key card, they slipped through unnoticed and hurried down a passageway. They stopped and listened for any sign of pursuit, but they could only hear the throbbing engine.
“We were carrying a city,” exclaimed Mason in disbelief.
Dev didn’t reply. He was still trying to comprehend Double Helix’s words. He only looked up when Lot nudged him.
“Are you feeling OK?”
He nodded, although it wasn’t true: he felt sick.
“I’m sure Helix was just winding you up,” said Mason. “Your uncle wouldn’t try to . . . um. . .”
“Kill me?” said Dev bluntly. “That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.” He wanted to feel angry about it, but could only drum up acceptance of the fact that his uncle had triggered a self-destruct. Could he blame him? All the evidence pointed to Dev working for the other side; he had played into Double Helix’s hands time and time again. And now, finally, he had delivered the case to the villain, giving him everything he needed.
Dev chased the morose thoughts from his mind. If things were going to end, then it would be on his terms. He would at least prove his innocence and bring Double Helix and his whole operation down with him.
“So, this city,” Dev said. “Crushed down by gravity.” He was trying to replay events in his mind, searching for Double Helix’s motives. “The only way he could have expanded that city was with Newton’s Arrow. Professor Liu had said the weapon was unique.”
“Which meant Shadow Helix had to break into the Inventory to get it. And that’s all he really wanted?”
“Maybe he took everything else as a bonus? But that means whatever is in the city is more valuable that anything we have. Had,” he corrected himself.
The fact they hadn’t yet been chased and that no alarm had sounded indicated that either their disappearance hadn’t been noticed, or that Double Helix didn’t see them as a meaningful threat; that seemed more likely to Dev.
They heard a dull clang. Then the entire ship trembled and the engines fell silent.
“I think we’ve docked with the city,” said Lot. She looked at Dev with concern. “If you’re not well, we should go. Leave this for Sergeant Wade to deal with.”
“I don’t want to run,” said Dev, drawing himself to his full height. He felt more resolved than ever, determined to use Helix’s own arrogance to defeat him.
*
The Collector couldn’t help but be impressed as he looked up at the city. He knew the mechanics behind it, that it had been shrunk down to hide it from detection; that during the process, half the city had been charged with negravity and stored in the red case, while the blue case contained the regular gravity component. Mixed together . . . it was quantum cookery.
He understood that the negative gravity fields in the cases had kept both halves weightless and protected. Only when the intense stream of gravitons from Newton’s Arrow had vaporized the negravity had it allowed the two halves of the city to merge back together. The gravitons had then expanded it back to its full size.
The scope of the quantum physics behind it sent a chill tickling his spine as he walked down the freighter’s gangplank and set foot in the cold, quiet streets. It was a ghost city, and he, Double Helix and Kardach were the only occupants.
Double Helix led the way, with Kardach carrying Newton’s Arrow just in case, and the Collector bringing up the rear. The rest of the crew remained on the freighter; a few units had been ordered to find the problematic children.
The footsteps of the small expedition team echoed eerily in the streets; the only other sound was the wind whistling between the high tower-block spires.
The Collector wondered what kind of warped mind had designed such a city, bringing a nightmare into the real world: the building facades were angular, some with jagged projections poking from the sides like crowns of thorns. Some structures had bridges connecting them high above, while the streets themselves had no pavements, road markings or foliage. In fact, the entire colour scheme was limited to dark grey or black. In the shadows the construction material soaked up light like a sponge. Everything was jagged and grim.
“What is this place?” whispered Kardach.
“A PocketCity,” the Collector replied in a low voice. “Did you ever consider what happened to those secret bases and island lairs the bad guys of old used to use? Professor Liu worked with the Inventory on a rather novel way of hiding them, by increasing their density and shrinking them to a tiny size, like a white dwarf star.”
“All of this was inside those two cases?”
Kardach nodded towards the buildings. “Why not destroy it all?”
“Fortunately for us, Professor Liu was a savvy businessman. Why destroy technology when he could make money from it? That was his deal with the World Consortium. He would make their devices, and in return he would be allowed to exploit certain technologies for a profit. That is why he kept the cases himself rather than in the Inventory, and they kept Newton’s Arrow. One needed the other, a perfect arrangement for them both.”
“And what is it we’re supposed to find here?”
“That,” said Double Helix, drawing to a halt. Ahead of them was a large oval stadium; the curved walls made it look more like a discarded piece of giant fruit. “This particular city was once the secret lair of a wonderful villain who went by the name Dr Extar.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “It was the 1960s, and you could get away with calling yourself pretty much anything then, as long as it sounded sci-fi enough. The World Consortium murdered him, and this, his legacy, was crushed and hidden away from the world.”
“No offence, but this place looks like a dump,” said Kardach. “Why do you need it?”
Helix spun to face him. “What is the best way to control the world?”
“By force.”
Helix gave a hollow laugh. “No. That is the quickest way to get spotted and defeated. The best and most efficient way is by stealth. Right now the World Consortium controls the world. All those other governments, they’re just puppets who fall into line. And when they don’t. . . Well, you see those countries on the news all the time. They are the ones always struggling; they always seem to be at war. There are more than enough criminal organizations that try to use brute force to get their way. And they always fail. They’re idiots who never get the message. If you want to control the world, you don’t tell anybody about it.”
“But won’t people notice if someone takes over the world?”
Double Helix replied with an enigmatic smile. “People believe whatever they want to believe.”
With that, he continued walking towards the stadium.
Avoiding the Shadow Helix guards in the freighter’s long passageways looked to be a straightforward task. Dev had performed his usual trick on the security cameras mounted at every junction, and they guessed that there weren’t enough crew to perform a thorough search.
The teens made their way down a few decks, Lot’s stolen key card opening every locked passage door. Then they circled around and upwards, hoping they were doubling back on themselves. A few times Dev had stopped and shushed them as he heard the dull footfalls of search parties on the decks above or below them.
Eventually, Mason hauled a heavy steel bulkhead door open and they felt a blast of fresh sea ai
r. “I think we’re back on the deck.”
They sneaked out, crouching behind a pile of rope and metal cases lashed to the deck. Beyond they could see two guards at the gangplank.
“Piece of cake,” chuckled Mason.
A mosquito-like whine caught Lot’s attention, and she slowly turned around. Hovering behind them was a tiny drone, about the size of a thumb. The iris on the small camera spiralled open as it focused on them, and a tiny, pencil-thin cannon aimed at her.
Lot moved on instinct, thrusting the taser – which she had grimly wielded the moment they had gone on the run – at the drone. The electric charge exploded one of the four small turbine engines, and the drone slewed sideways as it fired its cute little cannon.
Lot had expected the tiny missile to have the savagery of a pea-shooter. Instead it exploded against the deck with enough power to blow up a car.
The deck shuddered, and the two guards drew their energy rifles, but they didn’t move from their station.
Lot followed through with a high kick to the drone – which struck the bulkhead and pathetically snapped in half.
Dev was baffled as to why the guards didn’t close in. He was answered a moment later by a loud buzz as a swarm of hundreds of tiny drones soared into view like an angry black cloud. It was no wonder Shadow Helix didn’t bother to search the freighter. He had seen such swarm behaviour before in the Inventory and had even played with a group of microbots designed to mimic a swarm of ants in order to repair objects.
He hoped that, like most military applications, these drones had a built-in sense of self-protection. “Run!” he bellowed, leading a charge towards the two guards.
The guards opened fire. Their first volleys were warning shots, intended to fall wide, but instead they accidentally struck several drones, blasting them from the sky.
That’s what Dev had been hoping for. He suddenly veered sideways, drawing Lot and Mason with him.
His timing was impeccable. Sensing a more immediate threat than the escaping prisoners, the drones turned their collective firepower on to the guards. Dozens of miniature high-powered missiles were launched at the confused guards.