by Justin D'Ath
‘That’s right. But I don’t know how you plan to free him, Colt. He’s locked in and Security has the only key-card.’
Colt crunched down another biscuit, then found a couple of tea towels and wound them around his fist like a fabric boxing glove. There hadn’t been time to talk about Superclown in the lift, but sometimes actions spoke louder than words.
BAM!
Colt withdrew his hand, waited for the plaster dust to clear, then peered through the fist-sized hole in the wall. There was a small room on the other side. James sat facing him, tied to a chair. He was wearing a surgical mask like everyone else, but the expression on the rest of his face was much the same as Hayley’s – astounded.
‘Hi, Dad,’ Colt said for the first time in twelve years. ‘Hang on a sec, I’m just going to make this hole bigger.’
There wasn’t time for hugs or anything. Anyway, Colt still wasn’t used to having a father. Even calling him ‘Dad’ felt strange.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine,’ said James. ‘Apart from being tied up, that is.’
Colt had brought a knife from the kitchen. He used it to saw through the tough, plastic cable-ties that bound his father’s wrists and ankles to the chair. Then he pointed back the way he’d come.
‘Can you fit through there?’
The hole was bigger now – man-sized. James peered through at Hayley. ‘Who are you?’
‘Hayley Samson,’ she said. ‘Pleased to meet you, Colt’s father.’
‘James Pater,’ he introduced himself.
They shook hands through the hole.
‘She’s helping us,’ explained Colt.
‘And probably losing my job at the same time,’ Hayley quipped, helping them back through the wrecked wall into the tiny kitchen on the other side.
Suddenly alarms started ringing all over the building. Security must have found out that their prisoner had escaped.
‘Rats!’ muttered Hayley.
‘Rat cops!’ Colt corrected her. He grabbed the half-finished packet of biscuits he’d left on the shelf. ‘Are there fire stairs, Hayley?’
‘Smart thinking,’ she said. ‘The first place they’ll look is the lifts.’
‘Would someone kindly tell me what’s going on?’ James asked.
‘We’re rescuing you,’ said Colt, spitting biscuit crumbs as he talked. ‘Then we’re going to rescue the circus.’
Hayley raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you were going to save the world.’
‘That, too,’ he said. ‘But first we’ve got to get out of this building.’
Hayley checked that the corridor was clear, then led him and his father back past the lifts to an orange door marked Fire Exit. It opened into a cool, concrete stairwell. A big 54 was stencilled on the back of the door.
‘Feeling fit?’ she asked.
Colt stuffed the remaining biscuits into his pocket. ‘Super fit. Would either of you like a piggyback?’
‘Don’t show off,’ said James. He actually sounded like a father. ‘This isn’t a game.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘That’s okay, champ. But try to stay focused.’
A door banged somewhere below them. Everyone froze. The stairwell acted like a sound tunnel. Colt distinctly heard someone say, ‘They’ll either come this way or in the lift.’
Hayley put a finger to her lips. ‘We can’t go down,’ she whispered.
Colt nodded. ‘So we’ll go up.’
‘How is that going to help us?’ whispered his father. ‘We’ll still be trapped.’
‘There’s a Channel Twelve helicopter,’ Colt said. ‘They’ll lift us off. Can we get onto the roof, Hayley?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ve never been up that far.’
‘Let’s find out,’ said James.
They began climbing the flights of stairs. There was flight, after flight, after flight.
‘How many floors are there?’ Colt whispered as they passed a door numbered 72.
‘Ninety-eight,’ puffed Hayley.
They had to stop several times to rest. Even Colt was growing tired. He wished he’d brought more biscuits. They had just reached a door with 95 on it when they heard voices in the stairwell above them. Footsteps started coming down. There were sounds of pursuit from below them as well. They had to get out of the stairwell. Hayley put a finger to her lips and pointed at door 95. There was nowhere else to go. They burst through and they found themselves in a corridor identical to the one on the level where they’d rescued James.
Except for one thing: a rat cop stood next to the lifts with a stun gun in his hand. It was pointed right at them.
‘Come away from that door!’ snarled the rat cop. He waved his stun gun menacingly. ‘Go over by the windows.’
Colt, James and Hayley walked over to the windows and stood in a row, facing him.
‘Stay there and don’t move,’ their captor ordered.
With his weapon trained on them, he spoke into a tiny voice-bud clipped to his collar. ‘Three suspects apprehended on Level Ninety-five. I’ll hold them till you get here.’
Hayley nervously cleared her throat. ‘You’re making a mistake. These people might be able to stop the RF2 epidemic.’
‘We’ll see what the superintendent has to say about that,’ the rat cop said.
The superintendent, Colt thought. His old buddy Officer Katt. She’d killed the news story about James stopping the ambulance; she’d lied to the press about him and Birdy having rat flu; and for some reason that he didn’t quite understand, she’d kept his identity as Superclown secret.
It was time everything was made public.
‘Is it okay if I put my surgical mask back on?’ he asked.
‘That’s a very good idea,’ the rat cop said sternly. ‘You shouldn’t have taken it off in the first place.’
Colt reached into his pocket for his mask. The tiny microphone that Levi-or-Leon had given him was in there, too. He slipped it inside the mask before he put it on. Then he reached into his other pocket.
The rat cop frowned. ‘What are you doing now?’
‘Getting my glasses.’ Colt showed them to him. They looked just like normal glasses. He wiped their tricked-up lenses on the front of his hoodie, then put them on.
Showtime!
But nothing much was happening. If this was going live, it was pretty boring holovision. People would start reaching for their remotes. Don’t switch channels, Colt thought.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked the man with the gun.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m just being friendly. My name’s Colt Lawless. But most people know me by my other name – Superclown.’
‘Ha ha!’ went the rat cop.
‘I really am Superclown,’ Colt said. He almost nodded, then remembered he was wearing holocam glasses. It would make the picture on people’s HV screens jump up and down. ‘And I can prove it. Why don’t you try to shoot me? I’ll duck to one side before the darts are even halfway across the corridor.’
James nudged his elbow. ‘Cut it out!’ he said, just like a typical dad. ‘Don’t antagonise him.’
Colt swivelled his head round so viewers at home could see who was speaking. ‘This is James Pater. He’s a brilliant scientist. He’s discovered a cure for rat flu, but the new boss at DoRFE, Superintendent Katt, doesn’t want anyone to know. She’s had him locked up here at their head office while hundreds of people out there are dying.’
‘Shut up, kid!’ snapped the rat cop. ‘I’m not interested in your crazy stories.’
‘They’re not crazy,’ Colt said. ‘The Superintendent took James prisoner. He was locked in a room about twenty stories below us. They had him tied to a chair with cable ties. Look’ – he angled his head down – ’you can see the red marks on his wrists. Doctor Samson and I just rescued him.’
Colt turned his head so the viewers could see Hayley. ‘This is Doctor Samson. She works for DoRFE, but she wasn’t involved in
Superintendent Katt’s cover up.’
‘He’s telling the truth,’ Hayley said.
‘That’s enough,’ the rat cop warned. ‘I want all three of you to keep your traps shut.’
Colt removed his transmitter glasses and polished their lenses again. Then he reversed them, holding them up in front of his face so the Channel 12 viewers could see him. He flipped back his hood to reveal the snow-white hair underneath.
‘Just for the record,’ he said, ‘my friend Birdy Flynn and I haven’t got rat flu. Superintendent Katt lied about that, too.’
He turned the lenses towards Hayley. ‘Doctor Samson was on the DoRFE ship that rescued Birdy and me from Plague Island. Did you test us for rat flu, Doctor Samson?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Did anyone test us for rat flu?’
She shook her head. ‘Neither of you was tested.’
Colt turned the glasses back on himself. ‘Superintendent Katt lied at the emergency Parliament meeting in Mimosa last night. She said Birdy and I were tested for rat flu. That’s a total lie. And she said the test results were positive. Another lie. She also said that RF2 came from the Lost World Circus, which isn’t true, either.’
‘HEY! THAT’S ENOUGH!’ yelled the rat cop.
Colt ignored him. He kept speaking to the transmitter glasses. ‘Superintendent Katt lied about everything. She wants to silence everyone who might be able to stop the rat flu eipdemic. She wants the world to think that she found the cure.’
The rat cop aimed the stun gun right at Colt’s face. ‘DIDN’T I TELL YOU TO SHUT YOUR MOUTH, KID?’
‘You did,’ he said, calmly putting the glasses back on. ‘But I’m not going to.’
‘Colt, for goodness sake keep quiet!’ hissed James.
‘It’s okay, Dad. This is all going live on Channel Twelve. They wired me up before I came in here. Millions of people are watching. If this guy tries to shoot me, it’ll be great for ratings.’
‘You’re bluffing,’ said the rat cop. But suddenly there was doubt in his eyes. ‘I can’t see any holocams.’
‘They’re in my glasses,’ Colt said, walking boldly towards him. ‘And there’s a mic in my mask. Now hand over your gun before you embarrass yourself in front of millions of viewers.’
It was a tense moment – Colt didn’t know whether he’d have to duck or not – but the rat cop lost his nerve. His shoulders slumped and he handed over the stun gun.
‘You’d better not be lying,’ he muttered.
‘I’m not,’ said Colt. ‘The only person who’s lying is your boss, Superintendent Katt.’ He stuffed the big weapon into the band of his trousers. ‘Do the lifts go up to her office?’
‘Yeah. It’s on Level Ninety-eight. But she said she was coming down.’
‘In the lift?’
The rat cop shrugged. ‘She’s the boss – she wouldn’t use the stairs.’
‘Shouldn’t she be here by now? It’s only three floors.’
‘I guess so.’
Colt put his ear to the closed lift door. Complete silence. He went to the second lift. It was silent, too. He pressed the button and nothing happened.
‘Is there any other way out of this building?’ he asked. ‘Apart from going down in the lifts, or taking the stairs?’
‘There’s the roof.’ The rat cop pointed at the ceiling. ‘The boss has her own helicopter.’
★★★
Three floors up, in the lavish penthouse suite that belonged to the Superintendent of DoRFE, an unwatched HV was tuned to Channel 12. For a few seconds the screen went fuzzy as Colt raced up three flights of stairs faster than his little transmitter could send the signals. A door with 98 stencilled on it crashed open in a shower of splinters and twisted steel. For a split second Superintendent Katt’s office appeared on her own HV, then there was a blur of fuzzy carpet, toppling furniture, a glass door shattering, and suddenly Colt-cam was outside. Now an empty orange-and-white heliport filled the lower half of the screen. The upper half showed an equally empty sky. At least, to five million viewers glued to their screens, phones and devices right across the country, it appeared empty. But to someone with superhuman vision, someone who was standing in the middle of the heliport on the roof of DoFRE Headquarters, someone gasping for breath and pulling glass splinters out of his bleeding knuckles, the sky wasn’t empty at all.
Colt looked on helplessly as two helicopters – one painted orange, the other with the Channel 12 logo on its underside – went speeding off in the direction of Culdesac.
A small crowd had gathered outside the building when Colt, his father and Hayley came out. Even though everyone wore surgical masks, Colt could see that most of them were smiling. They clapped when they saw him. A woman with a spare mask and a marker pen asked him to autograph it for her son.
‘Could you sign it, To Clayton from Superclown, please?’
Several police cars were there, too. A senior officer was speaking on-camera to Verity Dingle. She terminated the interview when she spotted Colt and came hurrying across the street to meet them. Leon and Levi followed with the big holocam and mic. Behind them, Jasper gave Colt a thumbs-up from inside the Channel 12 van.
Verity winked at Colt, but she spoke to James. ‘Mr Pater, is it true that you have discovered a cure for rat flu?’
Colt didn’t give his father time to answer. ‘Can you call the Channel Twelve helicopter back, Ms Dingle?’
She looked unhappy about being interrupted. This was going live-to-air to her biggest audience ever. ‘It’s following the runaway Superintendent. The whole country’s watching. She can’t escape.’
‘Is there another helicopter?’ he asked. ‘She’s going to the circus.’
‘Colt, you can relax,’ Verity said. ‘If even half of what you, your father and Doctor Samson said in there is true, Superintendent Katt will be spending the next few years behind bars.’
‘But she’s going to the circus first,’ Colt said. ‘She’ll kill all the Lost World animals!’
His father put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’ll be all right, champ. Why would she kill the circus animals?’
‘For revenge. Because I said all that stuff about her, and now she’s probably going to lose her job and go to jail because of me. She hates me, Dad. She’s always hated me. And she hates the circus.’
Birdy appeared out of nowhere. She came and stood next to Colt. ‘What happened to your hands?’ she whispered.
He looked down at his knuckles. The bleeding had stopped, but they still looked a bit cut-up and scabby. ‘Nothing serious. They’ll be better in five minutes.’
The holocam’s big lens was trained on him and Birdy. Leon-or-Levi dangled the microphone just above their heads. Millions of viewers were watching.
‘It’s true what Colt said,’ Birdy said straight to camera. ‘Superintendent Katt will kill the Lost World animals. Someone’s got to drive us there.’
‘I will,’ said Clayton’s mother. She pushed through the crowd, ignoring Verity Dingle and her HV crew. ‘Come with me, kids. I’m parked just over there.’
‘Can Dad come, too?’ Colt asked.
‘Of course he can.’
‘Wait!’ Verity cried as the three of them followed Clayton’s mother down the street. ‘You can’t just run off! We’re in the middle of an interview!’
Colt looked back. ‘I’ll wear my transmitter glasses.’
But he didn’t. He put them in his pocket as soon as they got into Clayton’s mother’s car.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
It was a little rechargeable Zipcar. They weren’t very fast. And Culdesac was hundreds of kilometres away. Colt looked at his father.
‘The Blowpipe?’
James looked worried. ‘It’s pretty expensive. I don’t have my wallet.’
‘I’ve got it,’ Colt said, pulling it from his pocket. He explained how he and Birdy had broken into James’s car and found his wallet. ‘But you’ll have to use your credit card because I spent al
l the money on a phone call.’
‘You’re kidding me? There were several hundred dollars in there!’
‘It’s a long story, Dad,’ Colt said. ‘But you probably owe me a bit of pocket money after all these years.’
James sighed. He turned to Clayton’s mother and rolled his eyes. ‘Kids!’ he said.
‘Tell me about it!’ she said, rolling her eyes, too.
‘Excuse me,’ Birdy interrupted. ‘But don’t we have a runaway superintendent to chase?’
‘Ex superintendent,’ said Colt.
The Blowpipe, the world’s first air-powered train, had only been in operation a few months. It wasn’t really a train, but nobody had thought of a better word yet. Single, cylindrical carriages, called pods, were propelled through a 1,200-kilometre-long pipe using compressed air. The pipe was made of transparent polymer and was supported on pylons, giving passengers a 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside as they shot across the treetops at 500 kilometres per hour. The pods normally carried 30 people, but because of the RF2 outbreak hardly anyone was using public transport and there was only one other passenger. He sat at the back of the pod, Colt and James chose seats in the middle, and Birdy went down the front. James had bought her a cardphone at the station and she wanted to call her parents. It gave Colt and his long-lost father an opportunity to get to know each other.
‘Why did you never come and see me, Dad?’ he asked.
‘It’s complicated, son,’ said James.
They’d been given food trays when they boarded and Colt ate a spoonful of ice cream. ‘I missed having you around,’ he said.
James picked up his tofu and salad wrap, then put it down again. He looked out his window. ‘I missed you, too.’
It was very quiet in the pod – they could hear Birdy down the front telling her parents about Colt finding his father.
Colt lowered his voice. ‘Mum won’t even talk about you,’ he said.
James continued staring out the window. He didn’t say anything.
‘Did you do something bad?’ Colt asked.
‘I guess you could say that,’ James said. ‘Your mother certainly thinks so.’