‘We know they dodged the first one,’ I told Luke, coming down behind him. ‘They have to have dodged the rest.’
Luke made a kind of noncommittal noise.
‘She’s right,’ Reeve grunted, struggling a bit on the stairs under Amy’s weight. ‘That was one of his choppers. You don’t think Shackleton’s got a way of dealing with his own defence system?’
I couldn’t tell if he honestly believed what he was saying or if he was just trying to make Luke feel better, but I was grateful for the effort either way.
Mum and Ms Hunter rushed to meet us at the bottom of the stairs. Mum gaped at Amy, at the bloodied mess of my jumper hanging from her leg. ‘Are you okay? Where are the others?’
‘Where’s Soren?’ I asked, following Reeve as he headed for the laboratory. ‘He needs to patch Amy up.’
Luke’s mum pursed her lips. ‘He’s not with you?’
‘We got separated on the way out,’ said Reeve. ‘He was ahead of us, though. He should’ve beaten us back.’
We pushed through the surveillance room, past Mike and Tank, who jumped up and followed us into the lab.
‘What about your dad?’ Ms Hunter demanded, trailing behind us. ‘And Kara? Are they with him?’
Luke turned around to face her, threatening to fall apart again. ‘They’re gone.’
‘Gone. Luke – what are you saying?’ She held him with both hands, just like his dad had done before he left.
‘There were helicopters at the armoury,’ I explained, helping Reeve lower Amy onto one of the beds. ‘They took one of them –’
‘They got out?’ said Tank, lighting up.
Mum’s mouth fell open. She closed it again at the look on my face. There was a long silence.
‘We’re not sure,’ said Reeve, looking Amy over. ‘They triggered some kind of automated weapons system on the way out. They survived the first shot. We didn’t see what happened after that.’ Amy winced as Reeve loosened the jumper around her leg. He looked back at Mum and Ms Hunter. ‘Don’t suppose either of you have any medical experience?’
Ms Hunter shook her head. She dragged Luke towards her, hugging him, looking like she might start crying herself.
‘No,’ said Mum. Her hands rested absently on her stomach, and I realised the full weight of the words. That baby was coming any day now, and we’d just lost our only doctor.
‘Not much more than a scratch, anyway,’ said Reeve, peeling back the fabric from the mangled flesh of Amy’s thigh. ‘I’ll just have to sort you out myself.’
Mum came over and put an arm around me. ‘My brave girl,’ she said softly.
I reached up, clasping her hand in mine. ‘What about you guys? Any drama while we were gone?’
‘No, everyone’s been behaving themselves.’
‘Georgia already asleep?’
‘About an hour ago,’ said Mum. ‘Cathryn turned in not long after.’
Luke pulled silently away from his mum and left the room, wincing at his injured ankle.
‘Back in a sec,’ I said, releasing Mum’s hand. I went to the boys’ room and found Luke dragging his towel down from the end of his bed. He turned to look at me as I came in, but didn’t say anything.
‘They made it out,’ I said, putting my arms around him and resting my head on his shoulder.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No. I believe it, though.’
Luke didn’t answer. He just held onto me, the warmth of his body slowly radiating through all the layers of wet clothes between us. I thought back to the nights we’d spent hiding out from the Co-operative in that abandoned house, just the two of us, taking turns watching each other sleep.
A lot had changed in that week.
Luke lifted his head. ‘Even if he did get away, chances are I’ll be gone by the time he gets back.’
‘Don’t.’ I leant back, hands slipping to his hips. ‘Don’t even –’
But then a voice cut into the room from out in the hall.
‘No,’ Cathryn was hissing, apparently not asleep after all. ‘They’re back! You need to get out of here.’
‘Get your bloody hands off me!’ yelled a second voice, sending panic jolting through my stomach.
Peter. Out of his room.
I heard the sharp smack of a hand against skin and Cathryn stumbled into the doorway, clutching the side of her face. Peter appeared and shoved her out of his way. He froze in the doorway, staring at Luke and me. At Luke’s hands on me.
And then he was charging at us like a crazed animal. He grabbed Luke’s head with both hands, fingers digging into his eyes and mouth, tearing him away from me.
‘Peter!’ I snatched at the back of his jumper, attempting to hold him back as Luke rolled to the ground, grabbing his ankle and moaning in pain.
Peter twisted around, tearing free.
‘HEY!’ boomed Reeve from the doorway, Tank right behind him. Reeve’s voice had such force behind it that Peter actually stopped and looked up. He eyed the rifle hanging from the strap over Reeve’s shoulder.
‘You should go back to your room now, Pete,’ said Tank.
Peter stared down at Luke, dark fury in his eyes. ‘You stay away from her.’
‘All right, mate,’ said Reeve, stepping forward, ‘that’ll do.’ He put a hand on Peter’s arm, and I flinched, half expecting Peter to throw him across the room or something.
But whatever else the fallout was doing to Peter, I guess he still had enough reason in him to feel threatened by the presence of a gun in the room. He roared, backing away, hands shaking like he didn’t know what to do with them. But he didn’t attack again. Reeve and Tank steered him through the door.
I bent down to help Luke to his feet.
‘Sorry,’ said Cathryn, back in the doorway. A tear streaked down the red mark on her face where Peter had hit her. ‘I didn’t – He was so calm before. I thought if I just let him out for a little bit –’
‘Get out,’ I snapped.
She sniffed and disappeared, leaving Luke and me alone on the floor.
Chapter 19
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6
7 DAYS
‘It’s about us, isn’t it?’ said Luke dully, hobbling sideways to get through a particularly narrow section of the passageway out to Bill’s excavation site. ‘That’s why Peter’s going to do it. He comes after me because he wants me away from you.’
I felt my fist tighten on the torch in my hand. ‘That’s such –’ I growled in frustration. ‘How does that even make sense? Even to Peter?’
‘I think we left sense behind a long time ago,’ Luke said. ‘I mean, even before all this fallout stuff started, he was pretty obsessed with keeping you to himself.’
‘When have I ever given him any reason to think that I was –?’
‘You haven’t. You didn’t need to.’ He kept his voice steady enough but I could hear how shaken up he was.
We were down to our last week. Down to his last week. And, whether Luke’s dad had made it out or not, losing him again hadn’t exactly improved Luke’s outlook on life.
I took a breath. ‘There has to be more to it. Surely. You did not come all the way out here and go through all this crap just to get killed over some stupid thing about a girl!’
‘Trust me, I’m totally open to suggestions on how to stop that from happening.’ He sighed. ‘Hopefully Cathryn’s learnt her lesson about letting him out of his room, at least.’
Tank had spent all last night apologising for letting Cathryn out of his sight. But the funny thing was that the apologies weren’t directed at Luke or me. They were directed at Reeve. As if Tank’s biggest regret in all of this was letting him down.
The two of them had gone back to the surface this morning. Reeve wanted to see if he could use our newfound weapons supply to leverage some more support from security before we started planning our attack on the Shackleton Building.
Not that there could be an attack on the Shackleton Building as long as that
surveillance network was still online. Whatever we might have achieved by going to the armoury last night, it was worthless without a way to bring down the cameras.
I lowered my torch as we got closer to the end of the passageway, listening for any sign of movement. According to our previous experience with the sedatives, Bill should still be unconscious on the ground, but there was every chance the usual rules didn’t apply.
Everything was silent. I moved forward again, feeling for the auto-injector pen in my pocket loaded up with Kara’s last sedative cartridge. Just in case.
I would’ve breathed slightly easier if it was Amy wielding the pen instead of me. But given she’d already taken a bullet for us in the last twenty-four hours, it seemed like a stretch to ask her back down here.
Like Kara had said back at the armoury, Amy’s injuries were nothing too serious. Reeve had put his Co-operative security first-aid training to work, stitching and bandaging her up, and we were hoping the fallout would take care of the rest. Already, she was limping around on her own. Still, she’d gone straight back to bed after breakfast this morning and hadn’t gotten up again since.
Soren, meanwhile, had made it back to the Complex about half an hour after us, still a bawling mess and covered in mud from head to toe. Apparently, he’d taken a wrong turn and run off into a ditch. Not surprising, given the mental state he was in.
Mike had gone crazy with relief when Soren reappeared at the entrance, like he couldn’t imagine anything worse than not having a violent psycho to run his life. He’d been delivering food and drink to Soren’s room all day, and had got into another fight with Ms Hunter after she’d refused to give him Kara’s share of the rations as well.
I stopped again at the end of the passageway and shone my torch cautiously around the corner. Bill was right where I’d left him, tied up on the floor with his arms and legs behind his back.
‘Okay,’ said Luke, limping behind me, ‘what now?’
‘I want to find out what he’s doing down here.’
‘Didn’t you look already, when you knocked him out?’
‘Yeah. I want to talk to him,’ I said. ‘While he’s still tied up. It’s been twenty-four hours. The sedative should be wearing off by now.’
I felt Luke’s hand tense on my shoulder. ‘You really think him being tied up is going to make any difference?’
‘Guess we’ll see,’ I said, walking out and crouching in front of Bill’s face.
‘He broke out of a prison cell,’ said Luke, exasperated. ‘You don’t remember that?’
‘This is different. He needs us.’
‘Didn’t stop him throwing a computer at your head.’
I shone the torch into Bill’s face. He grunted, shrinking away from the light.
‘Hey,’ I said gently. ‘You awake, Bill?’
Bill’s eyes snapped open. He rocked from side to side, trying to push himself off the ground, and I saw the anger flare up behind his eyes as he realised he was bound.
‘THERE IS NO TIME!’ he shouted. ‘NO TIME FOR THIS! I must – I must be released!’
‘I’ll untie you,’ I said, getting up. ‘I’ll let you go, but I want you to tell me –’
‘No, no, no, NO!’ An invisible force pounded my stomach and I staggered backwards into Luke. ‘I don’t need you! Not yet. You are an obstruction.’
‘We should go,’ said Luke.
‘What are you trying to do?’ I straightened, not ready to back off without an answer. ‘What are you looking for down here?’
‘Nngh!’ Bill groaned, his face screwed up in concentration. He rolled over onto his side, and I saw the ties begin to loosen all by themselves. ‘I need to – Nngh! Timing is critical for the undertaking to be… to be…’
‘What undertaking?’ I asked. ‘Bill, please, does this have something to do with the Co-operative?’
‘I don’t care about it!’ Bill spat. ‘Not until – not until – no. All things in sequence. Your concern is premature.’
‘Not until what? What are you looking for?’ The invisible hands shoved me again, harder this time. Luke’s injured ankle rolled under him and he collapsed.
Bill dropped onto his stomach, face contorting again. All at once, the ropes came undone, slithering apart like they were alive. Bill stumbled to his feet, woozy from the sedatives. He gave his hand an angry shake and the last coil of rope fell to the floor. ‘These two will take me back,’ he said, switching his helmet light back on. ‘That is the mandate. But first – first, I need the space. This is critical. Cyclical.’ He was pacing now, hands clutching his head. ‘I require the location. It must end the same. Inevitable. Inevitable. It cannot be altered.’
‘Bill…’ I said slowly, wary of interrupting him. ‘Anything that was down here – it all got destroyed twenty years ago.’
Bill’s head snapped up, like he’d only just realised we were still here. ‘NO!’
He lumbered up to the other end of the room, grabbed his pickaxe, and crawled through the hole he’d made in the back wall. I heard the shink of splintering concrete as Bill returned to his excavation.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 7
6 DAYS
‘Freakin’ stupid dumb-arse morons,’ spat Tank. ‘All of them!’ He kicked his chair, sending it skittering across the surveillance room floor. ‘Don’t they get it? Don’t they have people outside that they care about?’
Reeve sighed. His last round of meetings had not gone well. ‘Yeah mate, I know it’s frustrating,’ he said, resting a hand on Tank’s back, ‘but you’ve got to see it from their point of view. Our trip to the armoury hasn’t exactly improved Shackleton’s mood.’ He smiled at the rest of us. ‘And we did pick up one piece of useful information while we were away. Word on the street is that we were right about where Shackleton’s keeping Tobias. Miller’s heard several officers talking about an emergency shutdown mechanism hidden somewhere in the Shackleton Building.’
‘The restricted level,’ I said. ‘Has to be.’
Luke frowned. ‘But security don’t know about the restricted level, do they? So where’s this information coming from?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Reeve. ‘But we’re hearing lots of voices all saying the same thing, and it seems to tally pretty well with what we’ve figured out on our own.’
‘And have these voices said anything about what Tobias is?’ Luke asked.
‘No,’ Reeve admitted. ‘Nothing specific, anyway.’ He turned to the bench behind him and grabbed the padlock on a big steel box with a red Co-operative logo on the side. A toolbox, like the one Luke had dropped into the path of the security officers. Reeve had gone back to the other skid and retrieved this one for us to use as a weapons locker.
I looked around the surveillance room, which was suddenly feeling extremely empty. Soren and Mike were holed up in Soren’s room again. They’d been weirdly quiet all day, especially Mike, who’d skipped breakfast and spent most of the morning sitting alone on his bed. Luke said he’d heard him throwing up in the bathroom last night. I didn’t want to think about it. The last thing we needed was some flu or whatever sweeping through this place.
Mum and Georgia were across the hall too, setting up another video camera for Georgia to replace the one I’d given to Luke’s dad. Georgia hadn’t been too happy with me when she’d found out it was missing.
That left six of us. Reeve, Tank, Cathryn, Amy, Luke and me.
I spaced out for a second as Reeve undid the padlock on the toolbox, distracted by a glimpse of Dad and Mr Weir lining up for lunch on one of the monitors. I knew both of them would jump at the opportunity to help us out, but what chance did they have against a pack of armed security guards?
‘Here’s what we’ve got,’ said Reeve, grabbing my attention back. I got up to join the others, who had already gathered around him (all except Amy, who was staring into space again, bandaged leg propped up in front of her). ‘There’s the ammunition from Jack’s bag, plus those few extra clips Jordan confiscated from Soren w
hen he got back. Still only two rifles, though, since the others went up in the chopper.’
Reeve moved his hand across to the neat stacks of grey-white bricks at the other end of the box. ‘Then there’s the C-4. We’ve got enough to do a decent amount of damage, but there’s a bit of fiddling around with detonators involved. If we’re going to use it, we’ll need to get the timing right.’
‘What about that stuff?’ Tank asked, pointing at the gas canister standing up behind the toolbox.
Reeve picked it up, spinning it around to reveal the words Inhalational Anaesthetic followed by a bunch of letters and numbers. ‘Sleeping gas,’ he said, ‘or something like it. One of Dr Galton’s concoctions.’
‘Brilliant,’ Luke muttered. Galton was Shackleton’s second-in-command. She was also the person we had to thank for Tabitha.
‘How do you know it’s one of hers?’ I asked.
Reeve turned the canister over again. The words Sparkbrook Technologies were stencilled onto the other side, next to a logo with eight black arrows spinning out from a central point.
‘Sparkbrook Tech was the company Dr Galton founded before she came to Phoenix,’ Reeve explained. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing was a front for what they were planning to set up here. Back in the early days, before you kids got here, there were rumours going around that a few of the construction workers who’d helped build this place were called away to take part in some testing. We’d hear stories about – Well, I guess they were more than stories, weren’t they?’
I shuddered, mind burning with slow-motion images of a young couple being torn inside out. Sleeping gas wasn’t the only thing the Co-operative had been testing.
‘Anyway,’ said Reeve, replacing the canister behind the toolbox, ‘if we want to get into Shackleton’s “loyalty room” and take away security’s reason to –’
‘Um…guys?’ a voice broke in, making me jump. It was Amy, suddenly right behind me. ‘Should they be doing that?’
I followed her gaze to the row of monitors along the wall and saw movement in the feed of the tunnel entrance.
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