Skyfall

by Anthony Eaton

  He turned and marched towards the internal lifts, leaving the two girls alone.

  ‘We’d better settle down somewhere.’ Jem looked around the largely empty space.

  ‘How long do you think it’ll take?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘If our maglift redirect sets off alarm bells …’

  ‘It won’t.’ Jem sounded smug. ‘I’ve been messing with the mags a lot longer than you, mixie. I know how to cover my tracks. Over here …’ She led the way to where two of the high walls of the foyer met at a tight angle, which threw the corner into deep shadow. ‘This’ll do.’

  ‘But there’s no cover.’

  ‘You don’t always need cover to hide, mixie. Sometimes nerve is enough.’

  ‘What if someone comes?’

  ‘Then don’t move. Don’t make a sound and they’ll never even notice we’re here.’

  Unconvinced, Kes hunkered down beside Jem, resting her back against the hard wall and feeling its coldness seep into her shoulders.

  ‘So, why didn’t you tell him?’ Jem asked.

  ‘I couldn’t. How would you tell your best friend that your whole relationship was a setup from the start?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to.’ The girl didn’t try to hide the superior edge to her voice. ‘If I was in your position, he wouldn’t be my best friend. He’d be my assignment, nothing more. And if things changed and I had to let him know, then I’d just do it then and there.’

  Kes said quietly, ‘That explains why you’ve got so many friends.’

  Jem turned her head sharply and Kes could feel those dark eyes flashing.

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about me, mixie, so don’t pretend you do. If I needed friends, I’d have them, and unlike you I’d be honest with them, above everything else.’

  ‘Even the Underground?’

  The girl didn’t answer, but her shoulders tensed and Kes thought that she was about to lash out at her, but instead she simply shook her head.

  ‘That’s why I don’t have friends. So that’s a choice I’ll never have to make.’

  ‘You hope.’

  Jem abruptly stood. ‘I’m going to look around. You wait here. Don’t move.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Do what I tell you, mixie.’

  She skirted along one of the foyer walls and melted into the darkness. Kes tried to see where she went, but it was uncanny the way the girl moved and vanished. Alone now, Kes glanced at the time readout on her wrist. Lari had been gone almost twenty minutes.

  ‘Come on, Larinan,’ she whispered, but barely louder than the volume of her breathing.

  There was no sign of Jem. It was like the shiftie had never been there. Kes tried to ignore the nagging anger that Jem’s whole demeanour seemed to trigger in her. She was a fine one to talk about people not making assumptions. She didn’t know the first thing, didn’t have the faintest clue what it had been like all those years, living one life and knowing there was another lurking somewhere around the corner.

  Until now, Kes realised. Until finding out she had a sister, a Darklander, and that the past had been waiting for her to catch up to it, too.

  It still didn’t make Kes like her, though.

  She was still thinking about the differences and similarities between herself and Jem when the front doors of DGAP slid open, their slight ‘hiss’ sounding like the scraping together of two large blocks of plascrete.

  Heart thundering, Kes froze, peering at the figure who quietly walked into the foyer and then stood motionless in the crimson glow, listening for any signs of life, of having been observed.

  Kes held her breath, her skin prickling into gooseflesh. Then the man turned and she recognised him.

  Doctor Dernan Mann. Lari’s father.

  For a moment the red light caught his face at such an angle that Kes found herself staring not at the familiar visage of a thousand newswebs but at Lari in thirty or forty years time. The angle of his chin and the sweep of his brow were so familiar.

  Dernan Mann stood there silently until satisfied that he was alone. Then, slowly and steadily, his footsteps not even ringing a whisper off the hard floors, he walked across to the reception desk, slid behind it, and settled at the terminal.

  Kes watched all of this, petrified. From the desk, Dernan Mann had a clear view directly into the corner where she huddled, and she felt horribly exposed despite the deep shadow. All he had to do was glance this way, just once and …

  Kes fancied she could hear the shiftie girl’s voice in her ear. Don’t make a sound. If you don’t move, he won’t see you. Keep your nerve.

  Carefully, Kes drew in a deep breath and concentrated on staying completely still.

  Over at the receptionist’s station, Dernan Mann’s attention was fully occupied by whatever was on the display.

  ‘Shi!’ she thought she heard him mutter at one point, but other than that he remained almost as silent as her. Only the occasional soft tap of his fingers against the interface betrayed his presence.

  What is he doing? she wondered. If she wasn’t so completely exposed she’d be able to creep around and try to see. No chance of that, though. If she moved even a muscle he’d look up and spot her right away.

  Then a more horrible thought occurred to her. What if Lari comes back?

  Involuntarily, she glanced down at her wrist again. Almost half an hour. He must be close. If he came out of the lifts with the girl while his father was sitting behind reception …

  To Kes’s horror, the internal lift chimed softly and the doors slid open, throwing a dim rectangle of white light out across the hard floor. Kes tensed, getting ready to spring to Lari and Saria’s defence, but when she glanced across she was surprised to find Dernan Mann vanished and the terminal dark. He must have slipped under the desk.

  From the lift, a lone figure emerged, walking confidently out to the middle of the foyer.

  It wasn’t Lari.

  ‘I know you’re there.’ Even though she’d never met Janil, Kes knew him immediately. Lari’s older brother stood in the red light, his arms folded.

  ‘You might as well come out now and save me the bother of calling Jenx.’

  Kes’s heart raced. Perhaps if she gave herself up, it’d give Lari and Jem enough time to get the girl and …

  ‘Fine.’ Dernan Mann rose from behind the reception desk and Janil gave a quiet snort of laughter.

  ‘Honestly, Father, hiding behind a desk. Is that the best you can come up with?’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t have monitor programs set up for this kind of situation? I knew you were here the moment you hit the system.’

  ‘It was worth a try.’

  ‘Worth a try? Look at you, Father. What did you think you’d accomplish by coming here? I’m almost done, you know? Only a few more files to close on and then I can … finish your project completely. Did you think you’d be able to get to her before then?’

  ‘Janil, listen, son—’

  ‘No, Father, I’m done listening to you. It’s your turn to listen to me now. I thought the Prelate made that quite clear last night.’

  ‘If you do this thing—’

  ‘Then the city will be no worse off than it was before we pulled that little piece of desert weed out of the sand, and possibly a lot better for it.’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘I know that I’ve run out of patience with you trying to interfere with proper scientific protocols, just because you’re still soft on Mother’s insane ideas.’

  ‘This isn’t science, Janil. This is politics. Surely you can see that?’ Dernan Mann took a couple of steps towards his son. ‘If I’ve taught you anything, I must have taught you that.’

  ‘The only thing you’ve taught me, Father, is that sometimes even the most brilliant minds lose their way.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Janil?’

  ‘Now? I’m going to put you outside
where you belong, then I’m going to call Jenx and have him retract all access to DGAP for both you and the copygen, and then I’m going upstairs to terminate this project once and for all.’

  ‘Janil …’ Dernan Mann spread his hands towards his son in appeal, but before he could say anything more, the internal lift opened again and both men’s eyes snapped towards it.

  ‘Sky above!’ Dernan Mann exclaimed, as Lari struggled out of the lift, supporting a semi-conscious Saria.

  ‘Shi!’

  Janil was the first to react, hurling himself at Lari who, startled by the sudden appearance of both his father and his brother, stumbled back towards the now-closing lift doors. As soon as he realised that Lari had nowhere to go, Janil stopped his charge and closed on his brother slowly, dangerously.

  ‘You devious little shi! I suppose this was your idea too, Father?’

  But Dernan Mann looked as stunned as Janil. ‘Larinan, what in the sky are you doing?’

  ‘Please, Dad …’

  Saria was mumbling and staggering and her weight, slight though it was, was enough to pull Lari off balance, and the two of them crashed to the hard floor in front of the lifts. Janil closed the space, his eyes narrow and his fists tight as Lari struggled to disentangle himself from the girl.

  ‘This is for what you did to my face.’

  Janil’s fist slammed out at Lari, aimed squarely at his nose, but Lari managed to twist his head at the last moment and the blow caught him across his left cheek. A grinding crunch echoed around the bare foyer.

  ‘And this is for everything I’ve had to put up with because of you …’

  He cocked his fist again and, frozen in the shadows, Kes realised with a sickening feeling that Lari, dazed from the first blow, wouldn’t be able to avoid this one at all.

  But then a shadow slipped from a small alcove beside the lift, slid across to Janil as silently as a ghost, pressed something to the back of his neck and immediately there was a sharp ‘crack’.

  Janil didn’t even have time to scream before he hit the floor.

  The darkened foyer whirled crazily around Lari for a few moments as he lay there, dazed.

  Then a shadow leaned over him. ‘Larinan? Are you all right, son?’

  ‘Dad?’ Slowly, assisted by his father, Lari pulled himself upright. His cheek throbbed. ‘What’s going on? What are you doing here?’

  ‘We haven’t much time. Here …’ Lari allowed himself to be hauled back to his feet. ‘How did you get her out of the chamber?’

  ‘Janil left the lab suddenly, to look for you, I guess, and he left the security program running on his terminal, so I overrode the airlock.’

  ‘Good boy.’

  At their feet, Saria groaned softly.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Lari asked. Dernan Mann knelt beside the girl, pressing his fingers into the soft skin of her neck and peering into her eyes.

  ‘Janil had her sedated. She’ll be coming out of it soon, though. You should get her away from DGAP, fast as you can.’

  ‘You want us to take her?’

  ‘Of course. You’re the only hope she’s got, now.’

  Saria groaned again and Lari started to bend down to her, but a hand reached out and stopped him.

  ‘Let me.’

  After pacifying Janil, Jem had blended back again into the shadows. Now she elbowed Dernan Mann aside and knelt beside the girl on the floor.

  ‘Hey! You hear me?’

  Saria didn’t respond, but she seemed to relax slightly.

  ‘Who’s this, Larinan?’ Dernan Mann said, looking down at the slight figure and the masked face.

  In answer, Jem stood and faced him. ‘You really want to know?’ Her voice was a glittering whisper.

  ‘If you’re taking that girl …’

  ‘You bet we are.’

  ‘Then, yes, I think I have a right to know.’

  ‘A right? A right? Ha!’ Jem’s sharp laugh rang off the plascrete walls. ‘You’ve got no rights, Doctor Dernan Mann. No rights at all. If I hadn’t just heard what you said to this shi here’ – she nudged the still-unconscious Janil – ‘then it would’ve been you on the other end of the pacifier and I’d have set it a lot higher, too. No. You got no right to anything, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Larinan …’ Dernan glanced at his son, but Jem stepped close, whipped her mask off and shoved her face up towards his. Lari thought she looked as though she was about to kiss him.

  ‘Do I remind you of anybody, Doctor Mann?’

  Even in the bloody light, Lari could see the colour draining from his father’s cheeks.

  ‘Jani!’ The name escaped from his lips.

  ‘No, not Jani. You killed her twelve years ago. I’m Jem …’ ‘You’re …’

  ‘Jem.’

  Dernan Mann looked shocked to his very core.

  ‘You lived. All this time we’ve been looking out there and you were right here. Right below our feet…’

  ‘And happy to stay there. DGAP never did pay enough attention to what goes on below.’

  ‘But you lived. This could have changed everything.’

  ‘Nothing changes, skyman. Not in this city.’

  Saria groaned again and, turning her back on Dernan Mann, Jem knelt once more beside her sister.

  ‘Hey! You hear me?’

  Slowly Saria’s eyes opened and focused on Jem.

  ‘What’s …’

  ‘Shh … Don’t talk. Just lie still and get your head together, eh?’ Saria nodded mutely, and Jem looked into the shadows on the far side of the foyer.

  ‘You still here, mixie?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kes appeared from her corner.

  ‘Come and give me a hand.’

  ‘I can help.’ Lari started to assist, but Jem pushed his hand away.

  ‘You talk to your old man and find out what we need to know to care for her.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to him.’

  ‘Listen, Jem,’ Dernan Mann said, but Jem spat on the floor at his feet.

  ‘Nothing to say,’ she repeated, then returned her attention to Saria, who was now trying to sit upright. Dernan Mann watched the three girls, his face etched with regret.

  ‘Come over here, Larinan.’

  Lari followed his father across to the reception desk, where a few quick instructions soon had the terminal active again.

  ‘You’ll need to get her out of the city as fast as you can. I was going to try and fly her out, but there’s no way that’ll work now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Once Janil comes round we wouldn’t have a chance of getting away. And there’s too many of you. Besides, it’s years since I’ve flown and I doubt Jem would come anywhere near a flyer with me at the controls. Your best bet will be to take her through the underworld.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t argue, Larinan, there’s no time. Once you get down to ground level, take her east, out of the city. Don’t wait around hoping to come back up again, because it’s only a matter of time now before things are as bad up here as down there.’

  ‘Dad, listen—’

  ‘No, you listen, Larinan. It’s started. The entropy scenario. It’s started, and there’s not a thing anyone can do. Sky! Nobody even wants to do anything about it. This is all we’ve got left. You, and those two girls. The three of you need to get out.’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘Anywhere. East. Inland. Get away from the coast and follow the sunrise until you find a safe place.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Dernan Mann made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

  ‘Then you try and live, Lari. Try and survive. If you meet anyone down there who you can persuade to come with you, then do it. The more genetic diversity you have, the better our chances. But the bottom line is that you, Jem and Saria need to get out of this city and you need to do it tonight.’

  ‘What about you? And Janil?’

  ‘Janil
can do whatever he wants. I imagine the Prelate will keep him busy.’

  ‘But the city’s dying.’

  ‘I know. I helped cause it.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t prevent it, Larinan. That’s just as bad. In any case, you’ll need me to cover your tracks as best I can.’

  ‘How?’

  His father smiled. ‘I’ve got a few ideas. Janil’s not the only one in the family with a devious mind, you know.’

  Lari glanced down at his unconscious brother.

  ‘What will we do about him?’

  ‘I’ll deal with your brother. You get the girls and go.’

  Lari looked at his father. Bathed in the glow of the DGAP sign, Dernan Mann looked old all of a sudden. Old and exhausted.

  ‘Here.’ His father had been entering commands into the interface pad, and now the display flashed up a map which meant little to Lari, but he looked anyway. ‘These are remote survey stations. They’re dotted all the way across to the Darklands. Most are non-functional now, but a few still have uplinks to the skyeye system, so you might be able to use them to scout out the land. They’re also pretty well shielded, so you’ll be able to use them for protection.’

  ‘Protection?’

  ‘Shelter. The girls should be okay, but you can still max out, Larinan. Never forget that. More than a few minutes of direct sunlight and you’ll be beyond help. You’ll need to shelter during the day, wherever you are.’

  ‘Where am I supposed to find shelter out there?’

  ‘There are places – these survey stations, caves.’

  ‘Caves?’

  ‘Deep caverns in the ground. This continent is geographically ancient, Larinan, and a lot of fissures opened up during the Pacific Circle catastophe, so you should be able to find shelter during the day. The girls can always scout ahead. Here…’ He punched a series of commands into the terminal. ‘I’ve set your access level so that you can enter any DGAP facility.’

  ‘Janil will just change it back when he wakes up.’

  ‘Janil will never realise. Trust me, Larinan. I know more about this system than your brother, even though he’d like to think otherwise.’