‘Accommodations?’ I frowned. ‘We’re not staying here. I’m going home. I have to go to work tomorrow.’
‘Please show our guests the way to their rooms,’ Pretense said. The two guards nodded and indicated the door. Drakeforth and I exchanged glances before marching out of the office.
‘Until next time!’ Pretense called after us and waved cheerfully.
*
The corridor with the timeline of statues seemed longer on the way back. Drakeforth frowned at the various figures, each one perfect and reaching for some lofty, invisible goal.
‘These are quite remarkable,’ Drakeforth said, turning slowly to take them all in.
‘The later ones look almost human,’ I agreed. Drakeforth went in for a closer look.
‘Oh, it appears the heads on these are loose.’
‘Please step away from the statue, sir.’ One of the guards reached for his pacifier baton.
‘Perhaps the poses are designed to be changed, so they don’t get bored?’ I suggested.
‘I think you might be right. The arms and legs are articulated too.’
‘Sir, I must insist you step down from the pedestal!’ The guards stepped forward, batons whining as they powered up.
‘Oops,’ said Drakeforth and shoved hard on the back of the figure he was examining. With a metallic shriek the statue tilted and crashed down, striking one of the guards across the temple with its outstretched metal hand and knocking him out cold. The other guard leapt back. Drakeforth sprang at him, grabbing the first guard’s pacifier and tapping the second fellow neatly on the nose. A flash, a squeal, and the guard dropped, convulsing on the floor like a trout doing the limbo.
Drakeforth crouched and took the stunned guard’s access card and pacifier. Together we hurried down the corridor.
‘What about Miss Perfect?’ I said.
‘Do you think she has forgiven us for deconstructing her entire life?’ Drakeforth asked.
‘Would you?’
Drakeforth skidded to a halt on the polished floor. ‘Good point. There must be another way out of here.’
We hurried back the way we came. The guard’s access card worked on the first door we came to – a janitor’s closet. We moved on to the next one, which was a stairwell going up and down.
‘Which way?’ I asked, looking back to see if we were being pursued.
‘Can you fly a helicopter?’ Drakeforth said.
‘Of course not.’
‘Then we go down.’ Drakeforth let the door seal behind us and we made our way down the concrete stairs. Five floors later we reached the bottom of the shaft. I had no idea if we were above ground or below it. The only indicator of level was the different colours on the doors at the landing of each stairwell.
He opened the door and peered out, ‘We are in luck, this appears to be a garage. And that means an exit to the nearest roadway.’
‘Can you see any guards? Security cameras? Attack mongooses?’ I said from my frustrated position behind Drakeforth.
‘Not that I can see. Unless you have a cobra in your pocket, which should bring them out.’ Drakeforth cleared the doorway and I let it swing closed behind us.
The concrete ceiling glowed with the same recessed lights as the hallways. We walked down the lane between vehicles like a couple out shopping for a new car.
‘Here!’ I said. Parked between two hulking great HugeMachine trucks, my Flemetti crouched like a little dog at a water dish flanked by Rottweilers.
‘Fantastic,’ Drakeforth said. ‘You have the keys, right?’
I patted myself down like I was spontaneously combusting.
‘No …’ I wailed. ‘I left them in the car.’ We cupped hands on the windows and looked inside. No keys.
‘What do you know about hot-wiring cars?’ Drakeforth asked.
‘As much as I know about the mating habits of the Siberian Koala.’
He gave me a pained look, ‘Sarcasm in the hands of an amateur is an ugly thing.’
I tried the driver’s side door. It was locked. I snarled in frustration and turned around so I could kick something else. The HuMa truck’s panels were armoured, and pain shot up to my knee. ‘Ow …’ I moaned. The Flemetti’s locks popped open.
‘How …?’ I started to ask through teeth gritted against the pain.
‘Give me a hand,’ Drakeforth said. ‘We’ll roll her out and see if we can push-start it.’ He leaned over and opened the driver’s side. I walked backwards twisting the steering wheel, the car rolling smoothly out into the concrete lane.
‘Get in, when I tell you, drop the clutch and give it some throttle.’
I slid in behind the wheel and waited for Drakeforth’s shout. The car rolled forward in silence, ‘Now!’ Drakeforth called. I let the clutch out and pressed down on the throttle pedal. The car jerked and shuddered before grinding to a halt. Drakeforth jerked the passenger door open. ‘What did you do?’
‘Exactly what you told me to do!’ I snapped back.
‘Pop the hood.’ he went around to the front of the car. I pulled the lever and the view ahead vanished behind polished red paint. I got out and joined Drakeforth looking in the engine bay. The empathic engine looked as unfathomable to me now as it did when Liz the autotherapist examined it.
‘Do you know anything about cars?’ I asked.
‘Do I know anything about cars?’ Drakeforth gave a snort and reached in and wiggled a rubber hose. ‘Do I know anything about cars,’ he repeated, poking at something else. ‘Not a bongo thing,’ he concluded.
‘Hello, car,’ I said, placing my hands on the smooth cover of what might have been the main e-flux resonator. ‘I really need you to start. Could you do that for me?’ The car sat silent.
‘I didn’t know Flemetti made a voice-activated model,’ Drakeforth said.
I ignored him and leaned in closer to the cold engine, ‘Please,’ I whispered. ‘It’s very important.’ The engine trembled and purred into life. I straightened up, knocking my head on the inside of the hood in my surprise. ‘Thank you,’ I said, rubbing the back of my skull.
We closed the hood and piled into the car. I gunned the throttle, feeling the engine respond. ‘Good girl,’ I said to her.
Drakeforth sighed, ‘Yes, very clever, now can we get the hay bale out of here?’ A shout came from behind us. Guards were spilling into the parking level, batons and other weapons at the ready. Shots rang out and chips of concrete spanged from the pillars.
‘Hang on,’ I said with a grin. Dropping the car into gear we laid a streak of black rubber on the concrete and howled down the lane, cars and trucks flashing past. At the end I spun the wheel and, tyres screaming, we skidded around the corner and roared down the second straight.
‘Exit,’ said Drakeforth, clipping his seatbelt on.
‘Got it.’ We slid into a right-hand turn and blasted up the long ramp, tripping a sensor that sent the door at the top rattling down as we flew towards it. I grinned as Drakeforth sunk down in his seat.
‘We’re not going to make it! We’re not going to make it!’ he yelled from his vantage point.
‘Come on, girl,’ I whispered. We shot through the gap, the roof of the low slung car missing the swooping door by an inch.
The yard outside was filled with mysterious crates of an industrial type. The darkness made it hard to see the specifics of whatever the Godden Corporation was using this place for.
‘Go that way,’ Drakeforth said, pointing to a narrow roadway between two shipping containers. The Flemetti zipped along, her headlights blazing in the night.
More shots were fired at us, lights flashed and the steady beams of searchlights speared the darkness. Any moment one of them would nail us to the tarmac like an insect pinned to a card.
Headlights flashed and heavy engines roared as HuMa trucks zipped past on the other side of the stacked containers. We drove around the giant steel blocks in a high-speed game of hide and seek.
‘Stop! Back!’ Drakeforth bark
ed. The car skidded to a halt. I slammed the gear stick into reverse and shot backwards. A moment later a truck thundered through where we had been scant seconds before.
‘Go! Go!’ Drakeforth yelled. I moved the gear stick into
first and we tore out into the maze of containers again. A man ran out of the darkness and bounced over the front of the car. I screamed as he passed through the flash of our headlights and rolled off the hood of the car without a sound. I stamped on the brakes, looking horrified in the rear-vision mirror. The man we had hit sprang to his feet and start running after us.
‘Do not stop!’ Drakeforth shouted, twisting in his seat and staring at the pursuing figure. ‘He certainly isn’t!’
The face of the man running after us was expressionless and entirely focused on the chase. I didn’t know what Pretense would do with us when we were caught. My imagination could not conjure anything as terrible as that blank face promised. We cut across another intersection and the night vanished in a flare of lights as a HuMa bore down on us. I checked the mirror again in time to see the heavy truck shoot through the crossing, smashing into the running man and knocking him from view.
‘Go left,’ Drakeforth said. I drove as fast as I dared down the narrow gaps between the shipping containers. We only slowed down as we approached a closed gate nestled in a high fence next to a guard booth.
‘I hope you have a plan,’ Drakeforth said.
‘I plan on going home,’ I replied, still in the grip of an adrenaline rush. The car slid to a halt in a spray of gravel before the fence. A man wearing a black flight suit and a bored expression stepped out of the guard house and approached us. The beam of an electric torch flicked over the Flemetti’s panels.
‘Nice wheels,’ he said leaning down to the driver’s window.
‘Thanks,’ I replied.
‘ID?’
‘Here,’ I passed over the door access card we had taken from the unconscious guard. He flashed the torch over it and then directed the light back in my face.
‘When did you shave the beard, Milton Burrito?’
I laughed and blinked at him, ‘I’m sorry. Obviously I’m not Milton, but I’ve been asked to do a pizza run.’
The guard with the torch turned the beam on Drakeforth. ‘They sure make them look
life-like,’ he said.
‘Amazing, isn’t it,’ I agreed, completely baffled.
‘Hey, can you make him say something?’ the guard grinned.
‘Uhh … Sure. Say hello to the nice man,’ I ordered Drakeforth.
Drakeforth slowly turned his head and regarded us with soulless eyes. ‘Thankfully the guard appears to be developmentally challenged,’ he intoned.
‘Oh yeah, there’s no way you could mistake that for a real person,’ the guard laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘No fungi on my pizza, I’m allergic.’ He stepped away from the car and pushed a button in his phone-booth-sized box. The gate slid open with an agonising slowness.
‘Back soon!’ I floored the throttle and we tore out onto a single-lane road that wound through the trees and joined the highway after five miles.
Chapter 11
We rolled up the street with the headlights off and stopped the car opposite my front gate. Peering over the driver’s door sill we watched my house for a full minute. It didn’t move.
‘Seems quiet,’ I ventured, becoming aware of Drakeforth’s body pressing against my arm.
‘I think that is just the neighbourhood. I’ll bet the most exciting thing to happen in these parts is the weekly garbage collection.’
I opened my mouth to scoff and then remembered that old Mrs Alpine in number 12 liked to sit in her front room, doing her knitting and watching the garbage trucks emptying the bins every Wednesday.
‘Some people like the quiet,’ I said instead.
‘Some people live their entire lives without ever questioning anything. We, my dear Pudding, are not those kinds of people.’
‘Certainly not,’ I agreed.
‘So, do you want to go first?’
‘Certainly not,’ I said again.
Drakeforth sighed and slipped out of the car. I wondered if I should wait, engine running, ready to tear off through the late evening traffic at a moment’s notice if the police, or Godden’s agents, or the acerbic Anna Coluthon should prove to be lurking in the shadows of my airing cupboard.
Drakeforth knocked on my window. ‘Are you coming or what?’
We crept into the house through a brand new front door. The idea of someone restoring the illusion of normalcy after the police had kicked it in chilled me to the core.
Inside I sniffed the air; the usual comforting and familiar scents of home underlaid with the remnant odours of acetylene gas, pipe smoke and vigorous cleaning.
‘Can you open the vault?’ Drakeforth whispered.
‘Of course I can. Shouldn’t we check that no one is here first?’
‘If you like. You unlock, I’ll search.’
I turned on the hall light and peered into the retinal scanning lock of the broom cupboard. It beeped and I spun the big wheel open. Several perfectly balanced tonnes of hardened steel and titanium swung out on silent hinges.
My home office was an oasis of calm silence, the desk waiting for me inside as it always had. I wanted to crawl into it and pull the roller top down over me. Drakeforth hadn’t returned. I went looking for him.
The kitchen was as we had left it, a cold pot of tea and two empty cups, the chocolate biscuits on the plate going softly stale.
‘Drakeforth?’ I asked quietly. No response.
I opened the fridge, a reflex distraction brought on by the confusing anxiety of recent events. The fridge didn’t say anything. I stared into its cool white interior. ‘Oh no! Drakeforth!’ I shouted.
Slamming the fridge shut, I ran out of the kitchen and up the hall stairs. I reached the top landing and the doors to my bedroom, the bathroom, and the two other bedrooms that waited for the serendipitous arrival of guests since I moved in. Drakeforth lay face-down on the carpet, half out of the bathroom doorway.
‘Drakeforth!’ I dropped to my knees and turned him over; he groaned, his eyelids fluttering.
‘Logout,’ he mumbled.
A dark shape detached itself from the shadows and I heard a metallic click.
‘Stand up please, Miss Pudding,’ said a confident male voice, the kind of voice that expected to be obeyed without question. I stayed where I was.
‘We need to call an ambulance. Drakeforth is hurt.’
‘Not hurt, simply rendered useless,’ the voice said. ‘It wasn’t that big a job to be honest. Vole Drakeforth has never served much of a purpose.’
‘He’s saved my life once already,’ I said, coming to Drakeforth’s defence.
‘Probably by accident. He’s quite comfortable, I assure you. We can lay him out in the guest bedroom if you prefer. But honestly, I’d rather maintain my position of tactical superiority.’
‘Take his legs,’ I said, lifting Drakeforth enough to drag him clear of the bathroom. The shadow sighed and stepped over Drakeforth’s ankles. I could see now that the man wore a dark trench coat with the collar turned up and a wide-brimmed hat of black felt. Slipping a silver-coloured wand with a needle protruding from the tip into his coat pocket, he seized Drakeforth’s legs and together we got him off the floor and into the guest bedroom. With some manoeuvring we levered him onto the bed.
‘No, thank you,’ the man said, adjusting the snap brim of his hat so it continued to hide his face.
‘I was just going to ask if you would like a cup of tea.’
‘I know, and I was pre-empting that by saying no, thank you. I’ve drunk plenty of tea today awaiting your return.’
‘You bought fresh milk. I saw it in the fridge.’
‘Yes, your refrigerator has issues,’ he declared.
‘You should have seen my old toaster.’
‘I knew you were something special after you felt the distress
of the old Python building.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked. His absurd sense of drama beginning to really grate.
‘Diphthong, the engineer from the Python building.’
‘You were with Mr Mulligrubs. Wait, you work for Empathy Tech Services? You’re a Godden employee.’
‘Yes, but my true purpose there is to infiltrate the organisation. There are others who share Vole Drakeforth’s concerns about empathy technology. We are trying to find the truth, just as you are. We want to educate people as to what is really going on.’
‘Why on earth did you knock Drakeforth out?’
‘I simply injected him with a sedative.’
‘Because?’
‘I’ve never had a chance to use the needle gun before. I wanted to try it out.’
I stared at the young engineer, completely speechless.
‘It worked really well,’ he said. ‘I invented it. It needed testing, and Drakeforth needed calming down.’
‘He saved my life today.’ I felt this was worth repeating.
‘Brother Hoptoad contacted us and said you were being chased by Godden agents in a helicopter.’
‘How did he know it was a Godden Energy Corporation helicopter?’ I said.
‘Who else would give a tartan trombone where you go and what you do with your time?’
‘You, apparently,’ I snapped.
‘We. I am not alone. We are an underground organisation dedicated to bringing the truth to light.’
‘Where are the rest of you?’ I looked around the small bedroom. Other than us, and the lightly snoring Drakeforth, the room stood empty.
‘They are organising things. Underground,’ he said.
‘Why are you here, then?’ I found myself whispering so as not to disturb Drakeforth.
‘Because you are in danger.’
‘No kidding!’ I threw my hands up and went downstairs, Diphthong on my heels.
‘I’m not kidding,’ he insisted.
‘What do you know about danger? Particularly relating to me?’ I stood in the kitchen and folded my arms.
Engines of Empathy (Drakeforth Series Book 1) Page 10