by Andy Briggs
“I hope you got your calculations right,” Lee said to Fermi. “Otherwise we might just pour straight through the planet and off the edge of the earth.”
The woman scowled. “Of course they’re correct. I’ve calculated the osmotic pressure perfectly.”
Lee activated his watch. The Collector’s hologram appeared. “Sir, the portal is open.”
“Be sure it works,” snapped the Collector. “I don’t want my assault team vaporized at the first hurdle.” The image turned to face Volta. “You will jump first.”
Volta paled. His eyes darted between his companions, all of whom avoided his gaze. “M-me?” he stammered.
“I need to know if it’s safe,” commanded the Collector, his voice lowered with menace. “Jump.”
Lee watched a range of emotions cross the big Italian’s face – from fear to determination. There was no hint of disobedience. They had all seen what the Collector could make men do, and none dared to defy him.
Volta tightened his weapon across his back and stood silently on the portal’s rim. His eyes met Lee’s for a moment – then he jumped into the shimmering energy field. Lee winced as the man was abruptly liquefied at an atomic level and accelerated into the ground with a wet splash.
Volta was passing through the earth by osmosis – meaning he could pass through dirt, stones, and even the atoms of the titanium lining of the Inventory’s subterranean walls – before, in theory, snapping back together.
Lee and Kwolek waited as the rest of the team assembled around the portal. Volta’s voice suddenly crackled through the neutrino inner-ear headsets they all wore. “I’m through!” he cried with relief.
Lee smiled and sensed everybody was collectively catching their breath. It looked like they wouldn’t die just yet.
The heist was on.
Lot watched nervously as Dev paced the room. His anxiety was infectious. Lot was seriously regretting this visit. She had felt sorry for Dev since her party, and his quiet demeanour around school had always made her curious to know him better. But the drama of the attack on the farm and the revelation of the high-tech bunker beneath it was beginning to transform into anxiety and boredom. She wasn’t enjoying being stuck in this huge empty room with nothing to do.
She watched as Dev tapped his peculiar watch and spoke into it.
“Eema, how much longer are we going to be stuck in here? It’s been an hour already.”
There was no response. Lot saw Dev’s frown deepen. She prided herself on being good at reading people’s body language and often tried to analyse her parents. Her mother always told her off for trying to guess their moods. Lot suspected it was because she was mostly correct.
“Eema, come in. Uncle Parker?”
Again, a worrying silence.
“Is that normal?” said Mason, pulling his gaze away from his phone. “That they’re ignoring you?”
Dev shook his head. “Even when my uncle’s mad at me, he’s always contactable. He doesn’t trust me down here,” he added as an afterthought.
Lot saw a flicker across Dev’s face, one that hinted at loneliness, she thought. She was annoyed to find herself starting to feel sorry for him again, when really she should be angry.
Yet again, Dev tapped the door switch. It still didn’t open.
“You’ve tried that before,” Lot pointed out. “Do you expect it magically to start working?”
“Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong,” muttered Dev as he ran his fingers across the panel. Lot guessed that it must usually react to his handprint.
Dev thumped the wall. “The security system isn’t responding. I should be able to open this!”
He accessed his watch using a series of small gestures across the screen. His eyes met Lot’s and she saw him hesitate.
“I’m not really supposed to show anybody this.” Dev sighed and made the final gesture. A holographic map of the complex floated over the watch, expanding five times the size of the screen.
Lot’s eyes widened in astonishment. She had seen all kinds of neat technology on the aircraft her father flew – but this was obviously much more advanced.
“WOW!” howled Mason as he peered up from his own phone. “That is so cool!”
“Simple holographic projection. Years out of date,” said Dev as he spun the map around with one finger and located the canteen at the edge. Even on this security map, the inner rooms of the Inventory were missing for the sake of secrecy.
“Is this where we are?” Lot pointed. She was determined not to sound too impressed with the technology Dev had at his fingertips.
“Uh-huh. And I should be able to access most of the cameras from here.” He tapped tiny holographic representations of the surveillance cameras dotted about the map. Each time a small window popped open showing a video feed. Each one was blank.
“Are they broken?” Lot asked.
Dev shook his head. “Unlikely.”
Mason stood up and joined them. “Then maybe it’s time we got out of here and saw for ourselves?” He examined the door switch panel.
“Oh, sure,” scoffed Dev. “We’ll just hack into the security and override the lock mechanism—”
Mason kicked the panel with his steel-plated toecap. The metal plate buckled, then fell from the clips that held it in place. Before Dev could protest, Mason had pulled two wires off the circuit inside and twisted them together. There was a spark – then the door swished open.
Lot looked at him quizzically. “How did you do that?”
Mason’s cheeks flushed. “My brother taught me how to hot-wire a car ignition a couple of times…”
Lot raised an eyebrow at Dev. “So much for your super security systems.”
Dev walked wordlessly out of the canteen and glanced around the corridor. Everything appeared normal. Quiet. He closed the map on his watch and tried the communicator again. “Eema, Uncle Parker, do you read me?”
Nothing. He began to walk back the way they had come, beckoning the others to follow. “Keep close.”
The corridor curved sharply as they drew near to the command bunker. The bleak corridors reminded Lot of the many military installations she had visited with her father. The first couple of doors they passed were closed – but Dev tensed and stopped in his tracks when he saw three were not only open, but the contents of the rooms had been thrown out into the corridor.
“My uncle is a tidiness freak,” he explained. “He would go crazy over a mess like this.”
Lot felt her fingers bunch into fists as she realized what Dev was implying. “That means somebody else is in here, doesn’t it?”
Dev nodded and slowly moved forward. Lot kept close, noticing Mason was trailing behind. Not so tough now, she thought.
The first doorway was obstructed by a large metal shelf that had been toppled into the corridor. Boxes of electrical components had burst open, scattering their contents across the floor: reels of different-sized wire gauges, rods, pneumatic pumps, electric motors, soldering irons and other mechanical pieces.
They froze when he heard laughter coming from the next room.
“Down!” hissed Dev, as he ducked behind the fallen shelf.
Lot and Mason crushed behind him just as two men emerged from the room. They were muscular, and from their profiles they looked like identical twins. Both had rifles slung over their backs. Not primitive guns, Lot noticed. They were some kind of alternative advanced weapon that oozed menace. She spotted an entwined double-H logo on their uniforms.
“And they said security here was the best in the world! Ha!” scoffed one man.
“They hadn’t counted on the Wright brothers!” said the other, raising his fist so the other could bump it. They continued down the corridor, disappearing from view as it curved. “This Iron Fist better be worth it.”
“Do you know them?” whispered Mason.
“Never seen them before in my life,” said Dev, his mind racing. “They shouldn’t be here.” He slowly stood up.
Lot grabbed his hand to pull him back. “Wait! Where are you going?”
“I want to know what they were doing in there. Judging by the mess, they were looking for something.”
Dev peered around the door frame to check there was nobody else waiting in the room. Coast clear, he slipped inside. Lot hurried after him. She glanced back at Mason, who tried to mask his apprehension.
“I’ll keep watch,” he said.
The room was filled with aging stationery items. Paper clips had begun to rust, while pages of writing pads had turned yellow. She supposed that if the Inventory was so high-tech the stationery had gone unused for decades.
A cupboard had been pulled away from the wall and the concrete surface beyond had been split open by sledgehammers, which had been thrown aside with the rest of the rubble. The cavity that had been revealed housed a series of plastic pipes that had been sliced open, revealing a thick trunk of wires. They all had crocodile clips attached, while the mass of fibre optic cables had small prisms attached to bounce the light signal within. The hijacking wires ran to a laptop that sat to one side of the space. The heavy-duty casing around the laptop was the kind used by soldiers during military operations.
“They’ve tapped into your security system,” said Mason from the doorway.
Lot jumped. She hadn’t been expecting him to follow them inside. “How do you know that?” she said.
“Duh! Have you never seen a film?”
Dev edged past Lot and tapped the laptop’s touchpad. The screen flicked to life with a series of windows. Each was labelled – radio, microwave, video, optics, audio – and showed sine waves pulsing up and down. “That’s why I can’t raise Eema,” he said. “They’re intercepting everything. But if I just unplug—”
He reached for a clip – but Lot grabbed his hand. “OK, genius. How do you know that’s the right one?”
Dev smiled. “Trust me, it’s … a skill of mine.”
Lot hesitated for a moment, then let him go. There was a confidence in his smile that she hadn’t seen before.
Dev ran his fingers over the wires, a frown of concentration on his forehead.
Lot and Mason exchanged a curious look. “I don’t think massaging the wires is going to help,” Mason quipped.
Dev’s brow furrowed. Then he shook his head. “It’s not working.”
“What’s not working?” asked Lot.
“He thinks he’s some kind of rubbish superhero,” said Mason.
“I’ll unplug them all.”
“And they will know we’re here!” said Mason suddenly.
Lot nodded. “He’s right. We need to get to the surface and raise the alarm.” She didn’t like the look on Dev’s face. “We can raise the alarm … can’t we?”
Dev looked between her and Mason. “Not exactly.”
Lot felt her heart sink. She wasn’t claustrophobic, but the idea of being trapped underground and never seeing daylight again sent a chill down her spine.
“I wouldn’t know who to call,” Dev explained. “It’s not like we can ask the police for help. They don’t know this facility exists.”
“The military?” asked Lot hopefully. “Maybe my dad—”
Dev shook his head. “Like I said, the Inventory goes beyond stupid things like countries. The World Consortium is above all that.”
Mason groaned. “You must have a number? Somebody you call when you need help. If they’re that important we can just dial ‘one’, surely?”
“We’re not the kind of place that usually needs help,” said Dev. “Besides, I don’t exactly have a direct phone number for the World Consortium.”
“Brilliant!” spat Mason. “So what do we do?”
“First, we do everything we can to spoof the security.”
Dev held up his watch and, using the tiny embedded camera, took photos of Mason and Lot. Lot watched as Dev transferred them wirelessly to the network.
“Is that it?” Mason asked incredulously. “We need a real plan!”
Lot silently agreed. She saw Dev’s shoulders sag.
“The only person who could help is my uncle. And I have no idea where he is right now.”
Somewhere far from the Inventory a message appeared on a screen. There were no alarms, no flashing warning lights, nothing that indicated the magnitude of the problem that had been detected.
The plastic coffee cup that had been placed on the desk lasted a whole six seconds before the figure who had just placed it there read the message on screen, and knocked it over as they sprinted from the room.
The unthinkable was happening right now.
Charles Parker strained at his cuffs. They didn’t budge, not that he had expected them to. The electromagnetic band around his wrist allowed his captors to loosen them with ease if they required him to do anything – or tighten them if he was being annoying. He slumped back in his chair.
The attack on the Inventory had come with a vicious suddenness that had taken Charles by surprise. One moment he had been monitoring the situation from the bunker as he and Eema had frantically tried to intercept the assailants’ signals. The next moment an entire assault team had literally oozed through the bunker’s ceiling in a fine rain that had immediately reassembled into heavily armed thugs.
Their method of travel had surprised Charles Parker the most. There was a prototype osmosis device here in the Inventory, confiscated from a genius scientist. Clearly he was not the only one to possess the extraordinary technology to travel through the planet in this way.
Lee studied the monitor screens carefully. They showed security camera footage from the corridors and lower-security areas in perfect 3D. “Where are they?” he muttered. “The kids.”
Charles Parker sighed. “I told you, those other two children shouldn’t have been here in the first place. But they can cause you no harm while you fruitlessly attempt to infiltrate the complex.”
“We got this far, didn’t we?”
“The Inventory has long proved to be impregnable, even from the inside.”
Lee smiled amiably. “Well, if you simply open up access to the Red Zone for us, then we can get out of your hair.”
Despite the danger, Charles Parker laughed and shook his head. “You know that’s simply not possible. And you can’t use your osmosis trick on any of the vault walls. The gravity field between them could shred atoms apart. And the doors…”
“I am aware of the problems ahead,” said Lee. “But my boss wants what’s in there. And he does tend to get what he wants … one way or another.”
“Your boss? And who might that be?”
Lee knelt down and met Charles’s gaze. “He goes by the name of the Collector.”
Charles Parker felt his blood run cold. The mere mention of the name was enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck.
Lee’s smile broadened when he saw its effect. “Oh, you’ve heard of him?” Lee playfully ruffled Charles’s hair and moved back to his seat. “So you know what he’s capable of?” Charles dared not answer. Lee turned his attention back to the monitors. “So getting to the Red Zone will be difficult, but not impossible. Yet that is what we do, isn’t it, Charles? The impossible. Even if it means losing a few lives?”
Charles Parker’s eyes narrowed and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Do not think for a moment that your threats have any effect upon me.” His voice dropped further. “Your orders are not to harm me, correct?”
Lee’s silence confirmed this.
Suddenly Lee spotted something on the monitor and frowned. “Hey, Volta, I’ve got something here!” he called to his colleague.
Volta ran into the room and looked at the screen. “What am I supposed to see?” he asked.
Lee pointed to the window showing an angle of the empty canteen. “This.” He paused, then looked expectantly at Volta. “Do you see it?”
Volta shook his head. “I see a door.”
Lee sighed and rewound the image, then zoomed in on the door. Again, nobody could be seen
– but the lock on the door suddenly broke and dropped to the floor as if struck by a ghost. Moments later the door opened … then slid closed again.
“They’re invisible?” said Volta.
Lee shrugged. “It seems so, but how … that’s another matter. The twins checked in. The external lines are secure. The surface team is ready and Eema has been partitioned offline. We have complete control, so why don’t you go and do your thing, huh? It’s game on.”
The look of hatred Volta threw at Lee was not lost on Charles. Obviously the big mercenary hated taking orders from him. Volta wordlessly hurried from the room.
Lee slowly turned to Charles Parker and steepled his fingers. “Y’know, I was instructed not to harm you. Those kids, on the other hand…”
Charles Parker’s eyes darted across the monitors as he wondered just what his nephew was up to…
Dev ran down the corridor with Lot and Mason close behind. Lot eyed the surveillance cameras they passed under. “Are you sure they can’t see us?” she asked.
“Where are we going?” Mason added.
“Don’t worry about the cameras,” said Dev. “I’ve taken care of them.” At least I hope so, he added to himself. He had used the same trick many times on Eema and just hoped that the intruders hadn’t worked out what was happening. “And we are heading somewhere safe.”
“Wait,” said Mason, “shouldn’t we try and get out? You know, very far from the men with weapons?”
“It’s not going to take them long to find us in these corridors,” Lot added. “And there’s nowhere to hide.”
They turned a corner and Dev stopped at a large circular door that looked more like a bank vault.
“Exactly,” said Dev. “That’s why we’re going to hide in the warehouse until help arrives. They’ll never find us in there. The place is a labyrinth.”
He placed his hand on a black plate in the centre of the door. It not only scanned his palm, but also checked his DNA: foolproof security that meant only he and his uncle could access the room beyond.
The door rolled open and the trio entered the cavernous room beyond.