by Andy Briggs
“It’s an exact living copy. Well, living for a few minutes. This is the next generation beyond cloning. We can print people now.”
Charles Parker couldn’t hold back his astonishment. “Incredible!”
Lee shook his head. “You have been down here far too long, Prof. The world above is moving faster than the junk you’ve amassed here.” He took the hand from Fermi. The fingers tried to grab him; it was like holding an angry crab.
“My orders are to keep you alive as long as possible. Somebody up there must care about you.” Lee waved the appendage at Charles. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t still give us a helping hand.”
He passed the printed hand to a mercenary, who then carefully placed it against the palm scanner. A laser scanned the hand, causing it to twitch. For a second the plate turned green and Eema’s voice spoke out. “Professor Charles Parker identified.” Then a powerful electric shock surged through the plate. There was a sharp crack and the mercenary was vaporized.
The sudden violence shocked Charles. It took a moment for Lee to recover his composure.
“Wow. Looks like your own security system wants you dead.” The old man’s bewildered expression made Lee laugh. “It seems there are some people who know more about the Inventory than you do. What if some miscreants broke in here –” he gestured to his team “– and used you to override every lock? That’s not very secure, is it? So the moment it thinks you’re aiding and abetting the enemy –” he mimed an explosion “– then you’re suddenly part of the problem.”
Fermi frowned. “So if you knew that, what did you hope that would achieve?”
Lee shrugged. “The fail-safe.” He nodded to the wall.
The door suddenly moved along the wall. The entire portal drifted, without leaving a hole, as if it were nothing more than a flat image moving across a screen. As they watched, three more doors spiralled into existence, one half a metre from the ground, another two stories up, with the third somewhere between.
Charles smiled knowingly as Lee looked between the new portals. He wagged a finger as he realized what he was looking at. “Got it – holographic projections, right?”
“They are projections of a kind,” said Charles. “Solid-matter projections. Only one leads into the Red Zone, and no, I don’t know which. The other three are real doors in the Inventory, but I assure you they lead to certain death.”
“It also means that brat nephew of yours hasn’t got through, right?” Lee sniggered. “The electric shock, this matter projection, none of it would have kicked in if he had already broken through. So we’re ahead for once.”
Charles’s smile made Lee hesitate. His eyes darted around the scrapheap, searching for movement. “Which means they could be dogging our heels.”
Lee jerked his head the way they had come. The mercenaries got his hint and readied their weapons as they scanned the hills of trash leading to the door they had entered through.
It was utterly silent.
“Maybe they just gave up?” said Volta. He took a step forward. The room was humid; the designers had evidently thought that a scrapyard didn’t require expensive air conditioning. Beads of sweat dripped into Volta’s eyes. He rapidly blinked – and through the tears he almost missed the object dropping at high speed through the mist above.
Volta saw that it was an enormous claw, the kind traditionally used in junkyards, except this one had snaking tentacle fingers that allowed it to grab objects of any shape without much effort.
Three figures were perched on top of the claw, clinging to the thick metal cable that rapidly lowered them.
Lee pointed and yelled. “It’s them! Shoot them down!”
Volta struggled to lock on to his target through his streaming eyes. He blindly fired – his sonic blast tearing chunks from the flailing tentacles. He wiped his eyes with his wrists and took aim again – in time to see the claw was almost over them. The tentacles were thrashing randomly, forming a shield from the troops firing below.
The flailing mechanical limbs struck two of the mercenaries. Ducking for cover, Charles Parker heard their ribs crack as they were flung across the chamber.
Another volley of sonic blasts missed the descending claw and vanished into the mist above, striking unseen girders which came tumbling down moments later, crushing more mercenaries.
Despite the chaos unfolding around him, Charles Parker could only watch with the whisper of a smile on his face. Dev was showing some astonishing ingenuity, surely a product of the excellent education he had provided for his nephew.
Maybe the boy wasn’t such a failure after all…
Dev clung for his life on to the telescoping cable as sonic blasts shot past and ceiling girders fell down around him. His eyes were tightly shut and his stomach was lurching from the rapid descent.
“You can open your eyes now,” said Lot, nudging him.
It had been Dev’s idea for them to ascend on one of the scrapyard’s many claws that hung across the ceiling, used for lifting particularly large items – from cars to ships. The ever-present shroud of mist kept them hidden from view, providing the perfect hiding place.
The only problem was that Dev had completely failed to foresee the effect it would have on his vertigo. It had been a far worse experience than climbing the shelving racks and he’d kept his eyes glued shut from the moment they had ascended. That had resulted in him accidentally leaning on the control that dropped them down on top of the thieves.
He felt a sharp elbow in his ribs and heard Lot again. “Dev! We need to get off this thing!”
Dev held his breath and opened his eyes. They were only a storey or so above the junkyard, but Dev still felt his head swim. His palms were slick with sweat. The entire claw reverberated as the sonic pulses, fired from below, struck the titanium tentacles. He fought the nausea in his stomach as Lot’s voice rose in his conscience.
“Dev? Focus! Which door?”
Dev forced his eyes open. He studied the matter-projected doors. Eema’s advice on accessing the zone had been horribly cryptic.
Just then he spotted logos etched on to the portal’s hand scanners. Each was different. A circle, a square, a triangle – then he saw a hexagon.
“Rule of six,” he muttered. “That’s got to be it.” The door was to the right and just above them. He pointed. “There!”
Mason moved Dev away from the controls. “Don’t sit on anything else!”
“It’s the heights…” said Dev feebly. He had jury-rigged hacking into the claw’s actuators, a system usually controlled via Charles Parker’s mobile phone. It had taken Dev just two minutes, running his hands over the circuits and complex hydraulics, in order to figure out how to rework the system.
Mason circled the joystick backwards and to the right. The claw moved so quickly that their stomachs jolted as they were thrown against the main supporting girder.
“Ram it!” Dev screamed.
Mason pivoted the claw around and swung it straight for the doorway. The claw gained speed – accelerating straight for the closed door.
“Hold on!” Mason yelled – then closed his eyes.
Dev didn’t blink, but Lot and Mason both threw their hands over their heads for protection as the claw ploughed into the door.
There was no impact.
Instead, the door budged like a thin rubber sheet – and the claw passed effortlessly into the room beyond, silencing the howls of frustration from the thieves below…
Dev cheered victoriously as the claw scraped across the floor of the new chamber, trailing a fountain of sparks. Lot and Mason leapt off, their legs shaking.
“Was the door just an optical illusion or something?” asked Mason.
“Liquid metal,” Dev answered. “Solid to everything, but not to these.” He patted the claw. “I remembered my uncle telling me that the security systems were designed to keep people out, but the mechanical structures like these still needed to work.”
Lot was ahead on this. “So the secu
rity system would detect this claw and know it belonged to the Inventory…”
“And allow it to pass right through,” Dev finished.
“Well, isn’t everybody a genius,” said Mason, who was still a few steps behind the conversation. “While you two pat yourselves on the back, can we assume it won’t take our friendly neighbourhood thieves long to work that out either?”
Dev nodded. “You’re right. Let’s get the Iron Fist and find the way out of here.”
The new room looked as if it was made of white plastic. Every surface seemed dazzling under the pure white spotlights above. It was about the size of a football stadium, complete with a tiered area at the far end that led to a dome of what looked like interlocking metal spars.
Rather than the usual racks of storage they had become accustomed to, boxy cabins lined the periphery, like sleek modern sheds. Inventory exhibits were displayed in their own areas, each cordoned off with a pulsing energy shield that distorted the view of the contents into nothing more than a mass of pixels. It was like looking into a sandstorm or a Magic Eye autostereogram picture – the exhibit only came into focus once you’d stopped and squinted.
“Which one is the Iron Fist?” said Lot, urgency in her voice as she glanced at the doorway behind them.
Dev hurried from exhibit to exhibit, pausing to squint through each energy shield. Every so often he would murmur wow, before hurrying to the next. Lot and Mason followed.
“I don’t get it,” muttered Mason. “I don’t see a thing.”
“Nor me.” As hard as she tried to focus her eyes to see beyond the shield, Lot couldn’t pick out the objects either.
“You’re not trying hard enough.” Dev suddenly stopped at a plinth, the energy shield clouding the object on the upper portion of it.
“This is it.” He sounded disappointed. “It doesn’t look so spectacular, does it?”
Lot and Mason joined him. Try as they might, they couldn’t see the object beyond.
“What does it look like?” Lot asked.
But Dev had turned away from the Iron Fist. He was looking along the row of cabins. Each door sported a variety of symbols, some of which the children recognized – the three segments around a circle declaring radiation; the pincer-like circles denoting a biohazard – and others that were unfamiliar. Dev was drawn towards a cabin marked as a biohazard. He took a few steps closer to it.
Mason raised his hands helplessly. “Dev, mate, what the heck’re you doing? If this is the Iron Fist, let’s just grab it and go.”
“I’ve been here before,” Dev said in a low voice.
Lot frowned. “I thought you hadn’t been in this section?”
“I haven’t … at least, I thought I hadn’t. But this.” He pointed at the cabin doorway. “This looks familiar.”
“How is that possible?” said Lot gently.
“Maybe you had your memory wiped,” joked Mason.
Dev ignored him and stepped up to the door. There was no code. No palm scanner. Just a simple button to open it. A sense of familiarity nagged at him; he could almost hear whispering voices encouraging him inside.
Dev reached out to press the button. The door swished open, and the lights in the room beyond automatically flared to life. Without looking back at his friends, Dev entered.
The room was no bigger than a classroom, and it looked like one too. A row of benches were filled with clinical equipment, microscopes and old computers. Large monitors hung on the wall, their dark screens reflecting Dev’s image as he entered.
He didn’t hear the door slide closed behind him but he felt the change in air pressure in his ears. Whatever biological hazard was kept in here needed its own air supply, and he suspected it was linked to the four large glass cylinders filled with liquid. They were big enough to hold a person inside. Which was exactly what they were doing.
Four bodies, a little smaller than Dev, were curled in foetal positions, suspended in the liquid. Their eyes were closed. It wasn’t until one of them jerked that Dev realized they were alive.
Dev felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had often wondered what occupied his uncle in the bowels of the Inventory.
Now he knew.
His uncle was just as much a monster as the thieves or the Collector. Dev knew, just knew, that this was where he had come from. Eema’s words echoed in his mind:
This is what you were bred for…
This was where he was made.
Dev ran from the macabre chamber, back into the Red Zone. He wanted to scream. He wanted to demand answers from his uncle. Myriad questions raced through his mind … but they all disappeared as soon as he saw the look on Lot’s face.
Her eyes were wide as saucers as she met his gaze. “Sorry, Dev,” she whimpered. “There was nothing we could do.”
Eema’s huge security husk loomed over them. Her yellow emoji face glowered as she kept her guns trained on Lot and Mason. They whined to life, rising in a pitch that Dev knew would end in a devastating blast.
“Eema! Stand down!”
Eema’s guns suddenly lowered as the machine relaxed. They spun around to see Lee striding through the doorway, his team following, weapons raised. Charles Parker followed, his cuffs drawn so tightly together, he couldn’t move his arms.
Dev felt helpless. His few minutes of horrified hesitation in the cabin had meant defeat.
“Impressive, Dev.” Lee grinned and pointed to his troops fanning out around them. “These guys are the most highly skilled mercenaries in the world. The best money can buy, and yet you constantly kept ahead of them.” He looked behind him at Charles Parker. “Quite a feat, don’t you think, Prof? A real testament to all your hard work here.”
Charles Parker remained silent. He was looking at the open door of the cabin.
“I’ve been inside,” said Dev, his voice cracking with the strain. “I know what you do here.”
Lee’s confusion was not lost on Dev. He also saw the shock on Lot’s and Mason’s faces. Charles Parker refused to meet his nephew’s gaze.
“But I guess I don’t need to know.” Dev fought to keep his tears back. “I was grown in one of those tubes, wasn’t I? Just one of the many Inventory projects the World Consortium dabbled with, then discarded when things didn’t work out to their advantage.”
Charles Parker cleared his throat, and for the first time Dev could ever remember, he heard a tinge of regret in his uncle’s voice. “These tanks come from a project originally created in North Korea. They were an attempt to create a super-soldier – the most elite warrior on the battlefield. Of course it didn’t quite work, although the technology was years beyond anything the rest of the world had. So the World Consortium did what it does. It sent out a task force to steal the technology to bring it back here where nobody could dabble with it.”
“Except you?”
Charles Parker finally met his gaze. The regret in his voice had vanished completely, replaced by the familiar jaded tone his uncle always wore when dealing with Dev.
“We needed something more advanced than Eema to guard this place. A security system that couldn’t be hacked and could think for itself.”
Charles’s eyes bored into Dev, who was rapidly trying to sift through the overwhelming evidence he had uncovered.
Lee clapped his hands, breaking the moment. “OK, what a lovely dysfunctional family reunion. We’ve all got problems, kid. And yours are about to get worse if you don’t start cooperating.” He gestured around the room. “Iron Fist. Go fetch. Or I will let Eema here start making holes in your friends.”
“Psst!”
Volta turned around at the noise, glad to have a distraction from the tense scene unfolding in front of him. He saw the boy’s lips move but heard only a low mumbling. He shuffled closer. “Speak up, boy.”
Mason tilted his head towards Kwolek and raised his voice a little. He had mumbled deliberately to lure the man closer. “What happened to your girlfriend’s arm?”
Volta foll
owed his gaze towards Kwolek and sighed. Girlfriend was clearly something he wished for. “It’s a long story, but quite incredible,” he whispered back.
“I’d love to know, but…” said Mason.
It took just seconds for Volta to understand. Lot dropped to her knees behind the mercenary the exact instant that Mason shouldered all his bulk into him. It was an old trick, but neither Lot nor Mason could have taken the big man down on their own.
Volta’s arms windmilled as he tried to catch his balance, but it was no use. Mason watched as, almost in slow motion, Volta stumbled with a shout.
The group spun round just in time to see him drop his rifle and then lurch in the other direction to avoid it firing the moment it hit the floor.
But he wasn’t looking where he was going. Mason winced as Volta stumbled straight into the nearest energy shield.
There was an enormous bang and then a haze of smoke where Volta had been.
“GO!” Lot yelled as she jumped to her feet, pulling Mason after her. “Dev – go for it!”
The confusion over Volta’s sudden disappearance was enough for Lot and Mason to put a gap between them and their pursuers before the mercenaries opened fire.
Lot sidestepped as the floor in front of her exploded. She rolled behind the cover of a bulldozer-sized exhibit, unslung the AirCannon from her back and aimed at the twins, who were running towards her. She pulled the trigger.
The blast of ultra-compressed air smacked full force into the twins. They were flung backwards – somersaulting over and over before smashing into the wall.
Mason high-fived Lot. “That was awesome.”
Dev watched in mute shock as Volta was vaporized. He couldn’t move – until Lot’s voice pierced his brain.
“Dev – go for it!”