by Dan Smith
In one of the bedrooms, there was a single piece of white paper stuck to the wall. In simple black lettering it said ‘Be Prepared’ and right below that were the words ‘Improvise, adapt and overcome.’
‘Come on,’ Dad said. ‘This place is empty, let’s check the others.’
So Zak took one last glance and followed Dad along the corridor checking the rest of the living quarters. Each one was identical in design, and each one was brightened up with a few personal items. In the last room, however, the contents of the shelves were scattered on the floor, and the chairs were overturned. Tiny black fragments lay everywhere among the personal belongings.
‘What happened in here?’ Zak said. ‘Looks like there was a fight or something.’
Dad raised his eyebrows and shook his head. When he turned to Zak, he smiled and said, ‘Nobody home, I guess. Let’s check the—’
‘I know what you’re doing. Pretending you’re not worried. Pretending everything’s OK.’
‘Everything is OK,’ Dad said. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this. You let me and Mum worry about it. It’s not your job to worry about things like this.’
Zak glanced round the last room again, his gaze coming to rest on a bobble head figure of Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy lying on the floor among all those weird black fragments. ‘So where do you think they are?’
‘Well, they have to be somewhere. People don’t just disappear.’
‘And what about the MRV? And the plane? How did that happen?’
Dad shook his head. ‘The storm, I guess.’
‘The storm? No way. The wind couldn’t do that.’
‘So what do you think it was?’
Zak thought about polar bears that shouldn’t be there, and ghostly explorers, but he shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Exactly.’ Dad moved back into the tunnel. ‘So let’s see if we can find out what’s going on.’
But the second living area was as empty as the first, and Zak found himself hoping Mum and May had more luck. There was only the lab left for them to search on this side of the base, and every empty room they went into had him more and more certain something terrible had happened at Outpost Zero.
In the lab, Zak recognized some of the kit as better versions of the apparatus they had at school – Bunsen burners, beakers, tripods, microscopes – but the rest of it was stuff he’d never seen before. He had no idea what most of it was, but right at the back of the main room there were two sealed labs, and one them contained a large machine similar to the MRI scanner they used at the hospital to check out the inside of his head.
On every wall, there was a fire extinguisher; right next to more of those orange Nerf gun things he’d seen in The Hub. Zak put his hand on the one beside the door, wondering what it was for.
‘That’s an RCDS,’ Dad said. ‘Ranged Chemical Delivery System. Catchy name, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, totally. Not.’
Dad smiled. ‘That’s scientists for you. Invent something awesome and give it a rubbish name.’
‘You mean like “Spider Drones”?’
‘You don’t think it’s a good name for them?’
‘Dad, no one likes spiders.’
‘Maybe.’ He pointed at the RCDS. ‘Anyway, it’s a kind of rifle. Fire’s a big concern here, and it will be when they get to Mars – you can’t just call the fire brigade, right? So BioMesa came up with this idea to help out. It uses compressed air to fire small canisters that burst on contact. They’re filled with chemicals that extinguish the fire. Not much good for a big fire, but for something small, it’s perfect. We call it a Ranger for short.’ Dad turned to leave. ‘We’ll have a go later, how about that?’
‘OK.’ But as Zak was about to follow Dad back into the tunnel, he saw something that made him stop.
‘What’s wrong?’ Dad asked.
Zak ignored him and headed deeper into the room. He went to a bench by the far-left wall. ‘You need to see this.’
There were three bugs, each roughly the length of his little finger, lying on a white dissection board. One of the bugs was on its front. Its body was cone-shaped, and segmented as if it were wearing armour. It had a round head at the wider end, and something like a pincer at its tail end. To Zak, it looked like a cross between a scorpion and an earwig. Its armour plating was black, but when Zak tilted his head, he saw flickers of colour, like when a sheen of petrol shimmers on the surface of a puddle.
‘It’s like all those little bits we found everywhere,’ he whispered.
The segment immediately below the bug’s head was marked with two faint yellow circles. Wings, two on each side, were splayed out from beneath the armour plating, as if someone had pulled them out to display them.
Beside it was a similar bug, lying on its back. Someone had cut this one down the middle and removed whatever was inside the shell. Next to it, there was a fleshy, grey, caterpillar-like bug – except it wasn’t a caterpillar because it had six pairs of short legs.
‘What is it?’ Zak said. ‘Some kind of insect?’
Dad puffed his cheeks and blew out. ‘I don’t know much about insects, but I’m pretty sure they only have three sets of legs.’ He found a tablet computer lying beside the dissection board and switched it on. It lit up immediately, showing a document which had the words ‘Core Sample #31’ written at the top, followed by a long list of numbers and charts and tables.
Zak watched as Dad scrolled through it, his frown growing deeper and deeper.
‘What does it say?’
Dad tapped the screen. ‘I’m not sure. It looks like a lot of DNA information. Something about genomes and stem cells and—’ His attention switched from the tablet computer to the creatures on the board, to the tablet again. ‘— and a list of species.’
‘Species?’
‘Mmm. Mammals, reptiles, birds, fish . . . insects . . . everything, basically. I don’t understand, though, because according to this, all this information has come from Ice Core Thirty-One.’
‘Why is that weird?’
‘Well, firstly, no one here has been taking ice core samples – at least not as far as I know – and secondly, it’s impossible to have found all this DNA in one sample. You’d have to scour the planet to gather this kind of information. Take DNA from every animal you could find. It doesn’t make sense.’
Zak inspected the insects, or whatever they were, and shivered. ‘They give me the creeps.’
‘They’re even worse when they’re alive,’ Dad said.
‘What?’
‘These ones are alive. Come and look.’ Dad was heading towards a tall glass container at the far end of the long bench.
Zak wasn’t sure he wanted to see them, but they were behind glass. What harm could they do?
The glass container was like a tall fish tank, about two metres high and a metre wide. From where he was standing, Zak could see some of the black bugs, motionless at the bottom. As he went closer, the bugs began to move. Some crawled to the front, butting against the glass, and others spread their wings from beneath their armour and fluttered upwards to clatter against the top of the container.
‘There’s quite a few of them in here,’ Dad said. ‘I wonder where they came from.’
Inside the tank, the bugs grew more and more agitated, all of them now spreading their wings and scattering around the container in a swirl. Their armour battered against the glass, ting-ting-ting, in a bizarre rhythm. They moved faster and faster, becoming a blur of black that shimmered with hints of colour. And, right in the centre of the swirling swarm, two bright yellow streaks appeared. Zak had seen photos where people had used glow sticks to write words in the dark, and it was similar to what he was seeing now. Two fluorescent yellow spirals were rising and falling inside the glass container, twisting around one another.
‘What are they doing?’ Dad leant closer. ‘They making some kind of pattern?’
Zak took a step forward, and the movement stopped. In an in
stant, and as one, the bugs smacked against the glass and stuck there like a solid wall of insects. Zak caught a glimpse of the grey, fleshy creatures inside the armour before a sharp pain flooded through his head.
POW!
The lab disappeared. Dad, the bugs, everything.
Like before, Zak was hanging in the air, and when he looked down, he saw an endless sea of blackness, but now he knew it wasn’t a sea, but a hive of bugs stretching into eternity. And he knew if he fell into them, they would swarm over his body. They would smother him and he would drown in them as they ate him alive. In the seething darkness below, he saw the beginnings of a glowing yellow spiral. It turned and turned. Rising. Rising. A fluorescent double corkscrew reaching up and up towards him. He moved his arms, trying to float higher, to keep away from its reach, afraid of what it wanted, of what it would do.
‘Zak? Zak?’ Dad’s voice was reaching out to him in the darkness. ‘Zak?’
He turned towards the voice, feeling the comfort of its familiarity and POW! he was back in the lab, standing a few steps away from the glass container. Dad was frowning at him. ‘You OK?’
Zak glanced at the container where the insects had now settled at the bottom. ‘Yeah.’
‘You zoned out for a minute. Like before. You sure you’re OK?’
‘Creeped out by the bugs,’ he said.
‘Mm-hm. Me too. Come on, we should go find Mum and May.’
‘Yeah,’ Zak agreed. ‘Good plan.’ He cast one more glance at the container of bugs.
‘We’ll check on Dima, then head over to Control,’ Dad said as they reached the door at the end of the tunnel. But when they re-entered The Hub, they saw they weren’t going to be able to do that.
Because Dima was gone.
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
‘Dima?’ There was still a dent on the cushion where the pilot had been sitting. His glass was lying on the floor, on its side, with water pooled around it. Close by were the remains of armoured insects, like the ones they had seen in the lab.
‘I don’t think these were here before,’ Zak said. ‘I mean . . . we’d have noticed, wouldn’t we?’
‘I don’t know.’ Dad put his arm around Zak’s shoulder. ‘Maybe not.’
‘And why is it just the shell?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, shouldn’t there be something inside it? The grey yucky thing we saw in the lab?’
The two of them stood there, staring at the insect remains. This whole situation was turning out like one of the weirder Jackson Jones adventures, except actually being right in the middle of it was much scarier than reading about it.
‘Come on, my young Padawan,’ Dad said eventually. ‘Dima didn’t turn into a bug. He must be with Mum and May.’
‘Yeah.’ Zak took a last look. ‘That must be it.’
At the far end of the Control Room there was a semicircular bank of ten screens arranged in two rows of five. Right now, they displayed images fed from CCTV cameras around the base. In front of the screens, keyboards and unfamiliar electronic devices were neatly arranged on a long desk. Mum and May were sitting behind the desk in swivel chairs.
‘Find anything?’ May asked when Zak and Dad came in.
‘Where’s Dima?’ Zak said, looking around. ‘He’s not out there. Where is he?’
‘We haven’t seen him.’ Mum was confused. ‘Not since we split up.’
‘What about the cameras?’ Zak pointed at the screens, but he could see the feed that was coming in from The Hub, and it was obvious that all four cameras in there were pointing away from where Dima had been sitting.
‘Nothing works,’ Mum replied. ‘Well, the cameras are on, and they move from time to time, but none of the controls work.’ To prove her point, she punched her fingers at a keyboard on the surface in front of her. ‘See? Nothing happens. And that’s not the only thing; none of the communications are working except for email, but—’
‘Email Head Office, then,’ Dad said. ‘In Switzerland.’
‘Totally tried it,’ May replied.
‘And?’
Mum put her elbows on the desk and rubbed her face with both hands. ‘Where to start? OK, the email system seemed to be working, so I sent a message to Head Office explaining the situation. A couple of minutes later, they replied.’ She pulled a keyboard towards her and brought the message up on screen.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Outpost Zero Status
Dr Reeves
Thank you for your status update. Apologies for disturbing your holiday.
Everyone here is relieved to know that you have landed safely and that Outpost Zero operations are under control. Please keep us up to date with your findings on the drones.
And there’s good news; the Project Leader has promised to refund the cost of your holiday!
Best wishes
Dr Ernest Hardy
Dad frowned. ‘I don’t understand. What did you send them? Why do they think everything’s under control? How is our situation even close to being under control?’
‘That’s the thing.’ Mum tapped the keyboard again. ‘This is the email that went to them . . .’
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Outpost Zero Status
Please be advised that some systems are down due to adverse weather conditions, but everything is under control. Normal communications will resume as soon as we manage to get everything back to full operational capabilities.
Dr Evelyn Reeves
‘. . . but that is not the email I sent. Not even close. I told them the actual situation, but somewhere between me writing it, and it leaving the base, the text of the email changed.’
‘What do you mean changed?’ Dad stared at the screen. ‘How? Who changed it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And why would they say everything’s OK?’ May asked. ‘Everything isn’t OK.’
‘To stop them sending help,’ Zak guessed. ‘I mean, there’s no need to send help if everything’s OK.’
May stared at him like she was trying to get her head round what he’d said; that someone was doing this – deliberately isolating them here in Outpost Zero.
‘And that’s not the strangest thing,’ Mum said, ‘because as far as I know, the only way to access this system is from Head Office in Switzerland, or from inside this room.’
‘You think someone hacked into Head Office?’ May asked.
‘What for?’ Mum pushed the keyboard away. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Yeah, like everything else in this place,’ Zak said. ‘We found some weird insects in the lab; all pinned out and cut up. And there’s a big glass container full of live ones and – all those bits on the floor? I think they come from the insects.’
‘Insects?’ Mum asked.
‘See for yourself.’ Dad handed the tablet computer to Mum and waited for her to scroll through the document. May stood and peered over her shoulder.
‘They’ve been taking ice core samples?’ Mum said.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Why? From where?’
Dad took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Well, we’re close to the Antarctic Chasm. Maybe they’ve been taking samples from there.’
‘But Outpost Zero isn’t equipped for that kind of operation,’ Mum said. ‘You need kit, personnel. These people are here to train for life on Mars, not to take core samples. And anyway, they couldn’t find all this down there. All this . . . life. It’s impossible.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Dad agreed. ‘We have to be reading it wrong. We’re not biologists, we don’t understand the data. There’s no way it’s from that deep in the ice.’ He tapped the tablet screen. ‘That would make it old.’
‘How old?’ May asked.
Dad raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m no expert, but as far as I know, the ice in cores is
usually thousands of years old. This, though? This looks more like billions.’
Mum put the tablet on the desk. ‘I need to see these things.’
‘Or maybe we need to find out what happened to Dima first,’ May said. ‘And everyone else. Maybe if we do that, we’ll find out what’s going on here.’
‘You’re right.’ Dad sighed. ‘Maybe Dima’s with the others.’ He dug his hands in his coat pockets, tapping his fingers against his hips. ‘Wait a minute.’ He stopped tapping and stood tall. ‘Project members all have implanted microchips, don’t they? So the Exodus Project can monitor their vital signs. Heart rate, blood sugar. They can be tracked. There should be a handset that—’
‘Well, duh, Sherlock.’ May crossed her arms. ‘We already thought of that, but we can’t find the handset.’
‘You checked Medical and Science Two?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, well . . .’ Dad threw up his hands. ‘You two stay here, see if you can get anything working. Zak and I will head to the Drone Bay; it’s the only place left in the main part of the base. Without going outside, there’s nowhere else they could be.’
‘Right,’ Mum agreed. ‘But take one of those walkie-talkies.’ She pointed to a row of handsets on the shelf to her left. ‘They don’t rely on these complicated comms, so they should work fine.’
‘Makes sense.’ Dad snatched two walkie-talkies from the shelf and checked they were on the same channel. He handed one to Mum and clipped the other to his belt. ‘Stay in touch,’ he said as he and Zak left.
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
As soon as he entered the North Tunnel, Zak stopped as if he’d hit a brick wall. His breath caught in his chest, and all he could do was stare.
The figure was back.
The same one he’d seen in The Hub, but this time there were no shadows to hide it. This time it was standing at the end of the tunnel, directly beneath the furthest spotlight. Clear as day. No mistake.