Fallout

by Chris Morphew

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Reeve…’ I said, moving to intervene. I wanted justice for this as much as anyone, but shooting Soren wasn’t the solution. More bloodshed wouldn’t fix anything.

  Reeve turned to Luke, who was standing in the doorway behind me. ‘Where can we put him?’

  ‘In his room,’ said Luke. ‘We’ll barricade the door.’

  Reeve grabbed Soren by the back of his collar and hauled him towards the door. ‘Get moving.’

  Luke led them along the corridor. I left Tank with Cathryn and followed, feeling cold all over.

  Mike was not a good guy. He was obsessive, ruthless, borderline psychotic. Sometimes not even borderline. We had never been anything but enemies. But he was gone now. And somehow, none of that other stuff made this feel like any less of a waste. Not to mention the guards on duty in the security centre that Mike had taken down with him.

  Reeve shoved Soren into his room and held him in the corner long enough for us to drag out a couple of beds to barricade the door with. Soren gave up protesting pretty quickly and sat on his bed, sulking. Luke’s mum stood in the corridor, watching, but didn’t say anything.

  When he was safely sealed away, we returned to the surveillance room and found Cathryn lying on the floor, head resting on Tank’s lap.

  For a long moment, no-one spoke. No sound except the hum of the computers and Cathryn’s muffled, spluttering sobs.

  Tank looked up, teary-eyed but stoic. ‘What now, boss?’

  Reeve pulled a chair over and slumped down with his arms on his knees. ‘This changes things. What those two did was –’ He breathed out, gathering himself. ‘It was inexcusable. But we’ve just been handed an incredible opportunity.’ Reeve stood up again. He looked back at the sea of static. ‘I’m going to need a couple of days to meet with my people. Assuming they’re still out there.’

  ‘Reeve, we’re running out of days,’ I said.

  ‘Which is exactly why we need to take the time to get this right.’ Reeve pulled a few clips from the weapons locker and padlocked it shut again. ‘The price on our heads just went up again. Shackleton’s going to be more determined than ever to find us and snuff us out. But Mike just took the Co-operative’s eyes out. I don’t need to tell you kids how huge that is.’ Reeve ejected the empty clip from his rifle and slapped in one of the new ones. ‘Give me two days. Whatever we do next, we need to make it count.’

  Chapter 22

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 8

  5 DAYS

  A nauseating jolt shot through my body and I shuddered awake. It was dark. Everyone else still asleep.

  Slowly, I registered the sound of my own breathing, hard and uneasy, like I’d just woken up from a nightmare. I reached up to rub my eyes. My face was slick with sweat. But whatever I’d been dreaming about, I couldn’t remember it.

  The lights in the bedroom were all off, but I could still make out the shape of Luke’s body sprawled on the bed above me.

  Wait. Above –?

  I was on the floor. I sat up, groggy, feeling like I was missing something important. I hadn’t fallen out of bed since I was Georgia’s age.

  Voices drifted in from over the hall and I got up to investigate, head spinning. I yawned, barely awake, ignoring the weird rumbling in the pit of my stomach. I stumbled through the open door to the surveillance room and gasped at the figure looking up from the circle of computer monitors.

  ‘Kara!’

  She didn’t answer. She was too busy staring across the room.

  Cathryn had just come in from the laboratory. The security feeds were all back online, and she was gazing at them, open-mouthed. ‘This is how you watched us…’ she said, taking a hesitant step towards Kara. ‘It was just cameras.’

  And finally, it clicked. This wasn’t happening. Not now. It was a vision. I must have slipped into it in my sleep.

  The night we’d brought Cathryn and Mike down here for the first time, we’d dragged Mike straight into the laboratory so Kara could operate on his bullet-shredded hand. He’d passed out on the way downstairs without laying eyes on Kara or Soren. Even after the surgery was done, Cathryn had refused to leave his side, so we’d let her sleep in there on the other bed. Kara and Mr Hunter had taken turns keeping an eye on them so Luke and I could rest.

  But now here I was again.

  I felt a stab of panic as I finally woke up enough to realise the full danger I was in. Luke was still asleep. There was no-one to come for me.

  I glanced out into the hall, thinking about going back to the bedroom, but what was the point? I could scream all I wanted but he still wouldn’t hear me. I was too far gone. Too deep into the vision.

  ‘Mike!’ Cathryn called back through the door. ‘Get in here!’

  A shiver ran up my spine as Mike’s terrified voice rang out from the next room. ‘No. Not – not until she tells me I can.’

  I watched Kara’s face shift from resignation to something deeper. And I realised that this was the moment. This was when she’d finally started to take it in, to feel some of the weight of the damage she’d done to these guys. ‘You may come in, Michael.’

  I tried to tune them out and focus in on my own body – maybe somehow I could get back by myself – but my concentration shattered as Mike stepped out from the laboratory.

  He edged slowly, hesitantly, into the room, holding his bandaged hand up against his chest, eyes to the ground like he still thought Kara might strike him down with thunder if he looked at her. His other hand was clenched into a fist, but it wasn’t anger. It looked like he was trying to keep himself from shaking.

  For a minute, I forgot about trying to get back to the present. I forgot about everything. He was right there. Still standing. No idea that he only had about two weeks left to live.

  ‘Mike!’ I shouted, knowing it was pointless but calling out anyway. ‘Mike!’

  He stepped straight through me, edging towards Kara. ‘That letter,’ he said, still refusing to lift his head. ‘That – that was really from you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kara.

  I let out a startled yelp as Luke suddenly appeared between Mike and me, bleary-eyed and frantic.

  ‘Luke!’ I said, grabbing at him. ‘How –?’

  ‘It was a test,’ said Mike behind him, nodding like he understood. ‘The letter. After what happened out at the lake – after we f-failed you – you had to test us to make sure we were still –’

  ‘No, Michael.’ Kara’s voice was steady, but I could see tears glinting in her eyes. ‘It was not a test. It was the truth. We are not who we claimed to be.’

  Luke’s hands crashed down against my sides. ‘– up and get back here!’ he shouted.

  I sneaked a quick glance over his shoulder. Mike hadn’t moved. His fist was still clenched. His head hung there, face hidden in his ragged hair, and all at once it hit me that I had seriously underestimated just how deep Mike’s obsession with the overseers had gone.

  A tear ran down Kara’s cheek. ‘Please, Michael. Look at me. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s over.’

  But it wasn’t over. Not as far as Mike was concerned. He just stood there, shaking his head.

  ‘Jordan!’ said Luke, shaking me. ‘C’mon, please –’

  ‘Let me speak to him,’ said Soren behind me, slinking in from the corridor. He took Mike gently by the arm. Mike flinched, but didn’t pull away. ‘Let me explain the situation. I believe he will listen to me.’

  ‘NO!’ I shouted, struggling under Luke’s grip. ‘No, you filthy piece of crap! Get away from –!’

  A tidal wave of nausea slammed into me, knocking the words from my throat. The two timelines blended together again, and Mum and Georgia flickered into view, standing in the same place Kara was sitting in the past. One of them must have heard something and run in to get Luke. They hung there for a moment, horrified, and then the room was dashed to pieces, everything falling apart and me falling apart with it. My insides clenched, like my body was trying to turn it
self inside out.

  The pieces rushed back together and suddenly there was sunlight streaming down on top of me. I looked up and found myself standing at the bottom of an enormous square hole in the ground. Construction workers milled around me, drilling holes and laying concrete and scooping up the soil with heavy machinery. Building the Vattel Complex.

  My knees buckled and I dropped to the ground, bringing Luke down with me. The scene shifted again and I found myself back in the surveillance room. But it wasn’t a surveillance room now. Soren’s dad and another man I didn’t recognise were locked in a heated game of table tennis while more people in Vattel Complex jackets stood around, cheering them on.

  They all disappeared in a swirl of colour and then the lights switched off around me. Darkness took over, surging through my body like it had done before, rushing into every part of me but somehow never filling me up. I shuddered, convulsed, nails digging into Luke’s skin.

  And then it was over. The darkness drained away and the surveillance room slowly took shape around me. The convulsing stopped. My muscles relaxed again. Luke was kneeling over me, chest heaving. He pulled me up into a crushing hug, breath hissing in my ear. I looked over his shoulder and saw Georgia crying behind him.

  ‘Is she okay?’ Mum asked desperately. ‘Jordan, are you –?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, releasing Luke and getting to my feet. ‘I’m fine. That’s not the first time that’s happened.’

  Mum threw her arms around me, squinting as Luke switched the lights on. ‘Your “fainting spell” out in the meeting room. Emily told me – but it was this, wasn’t it? Jordan, what –?’

  ‘Gross!’ said Georgia, cutting her off. She’d come over to hug me to, but then stopped herself. ‘Why are you all dirty?’

  ‘Huh?’ I backed off from Mum and looked down at myself.

  ‘See?’ said Georgia. ‘Where did that come from?’

  Yeah… I thought, stretching my arms out for a better look. Good question.

  Every centimetre of my body was caked in a layer of crusty black mud.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 9

  4 DAYS

  ‘He believed it,’ I said, hunched over the surveillance room table with my head in my hands. ‘All the way to the end, even after everything he’d seen. He still believed in the overseers. He was totally devoted to Soren.’

  ‘I guess we’re all like that about something,’ said Amy from her seat in the corner. Her bandage was off, leg almost completely healed.

  ‘Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘Well, Mike picked the wrong something.’ I sat up, feeling like pulling my hair out. ‘But – why did I get the vision now? If I was going to see all that, why not show me two days ago when it might have made a difference?’

  ‘Maybe it did make a difference,’ said Mum, who was slumped back in a chair, watching Georgia drawing with some old crayons we’d found. ‘Maybe you saw that to help you understand why he did what he did. To help all of us understand.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, head dropping down into my hands again. ‘Maybe.’

  But there were things I would have liked to understand even more than Mike’s death wish. Like what Tobias was, and where the Co-operative was keeping it. And how in the world Luke was going to wind up dead twenty years in the past.

  I’d finally explained to Mum about the visions. After last night, I didn’t really have a choice. She’d been surprisingly calm about it all, under the circumstances. I guess when you’ve already got one daughter who can read minds, finding out that the other one sometimes dislodges herself in time is just the icing on the cake.

  The door swung open and Luke backed into the room, carrying a tray crammed with bowls of rice.

  We were running low again. According to Luke’s mum, we had food enough for a few more days. Maybe a bit longer, now that –

  I suppressed a shudder, disgusted at myself for the thought that losing some of our number at least meant more food for the rest of us.

  In any case, with four days left until Tabitha was released, it wasn’t food we were short on. It was time.

  Luke went over to Mum, who sat forward and took down a couple of bowls.

  ‘Careful, sweetheart,’ she said, as Georgia abandoned her drawing and reached up to grab one of them, ‘that’s going to be hot.’

  I stretched across the table and picked up one of Georgia’s crayons. For all we knew, they might once have belonged to Dr Galton.

  ‘Shackleton must have changed Galton’s name after the adoption,’ I said. ‘Kara and Soren would’ve worked out who she was ages ago, otherwise.’

  ‘Is that normal?’ Luke asked, moving around to pass a bowl to Amy. ‘I mean, you said she was six or something, right? Bit late to be changing someone’s name. And if he was going to change it, why not make her a Shackleton?’

  I tossed the crayon back into the box. ‘Something tells me it wasn’t the only thing about the adoption that wasn’t normal.’

  I caught myself staring absently at the laptop in front of me, like I was expecting to see my dad wandering around in the static somewhere. We’d left the computers switched on, just in case anything changed, but it looked like Shackleton’s surveillance network really was gone for good.

  Two days had passed since Reeve went out to get in touch with his people. He’d taken Tank and Cathryn with him, which I think was good for everyone. In fact, with Soren and Peter still locked up in separate rooms and Bill at the other end of the complex, digging, the past couple of days had been surprisingly peaceful, apart from the incident last night.

  ‘But, hang on,’ said Luke, as his mum walked in with a jug of murky water and some glasses, ‘what about Galton’s crazy mind powers? If the Co-operative’s known about her all along, then why were they so surprised when they found out about Bill? Why were they so unprepared when other people started changing? Surely they should’ve seen it coming.’

  ‘Could Galton’s abilities be more recent than that?’ asked Mum. ‘What if they didn’t appear until she came back here as an adult?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Or she might have – I’m not sure. When I saw them talking, it almost seemed like Galton was hiding something from Shackleton. Like maybe she knew what she was capable of, but didn’t want to tell him.’

  ‘There’s something else that doesn’t make sense,’ said Ms Hunter. ‘If Dr Galton lived in this place as child – if she knows where it is – then why hasn’t she led them to us already?’

  ‘Galton couldn’t have been any older than Georgia when she left here the first time,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how much she’d even remember.’

  ‘Plus, the Co-operative doesn’t think this place exists anymore,’ said Luke, sitting down. ‘They think it was all abandoned and flooded with concrete twenty years ago. That’s why they’re all up there, searching the bush.’

  In the last two days, it seemed like Shackleton had diverted a bunch more resources to scouring the bushland, trying to track us down. We’d seen more than a few guards near the entrance to the Complex. None of them had stopped or shown any sign of suspicion, but I still held my breath every time they crossed the path of Kara and Soren’s security camera.

  And in the meantime, what was I doing? Babysitting prisoners. Lying in bed, worrying that Peter was going to break out and kill Luke while I slept. Sitting around eating rice while Reeve was out there getting things done.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Reeve. I did. But the waiting was driving me insane. It just didn’t feel right. This was my fight. I wanted to be doing something.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Luke, like he was reading my mind. He leaned in, rubbing my arm. ‘He’s back tomorrow night. We’ll come up with a plan. I’m sure you’ll get the chance to do all the running and screaming you want.’

  I shivered at his touch. Four more days.

  The invasion of the Complex. Mum’s baby. Luke’s murder. Whatever Bill was digging for. And the end of the world. It was all coming. All of it at once.

  Luke was righ
t. I should be saving my strength. Enjoying the peace while it lasted.

  If I was looking for a chance to risk my life for the cause, there was going to be no shortage of opportunities in the days to come.

  Chapter 23

  MONDAY, AUGUST 10

  3 DAYS

  ‘We’re going to have to bring Soren with us,’ said Reeve.

  ‘No,’ I said instantly, almost shouting it. ‘Reeve, he’s completely unstable!’

  We were back in the conference room. We’d spent the last hour thrashing out our plan to get into the Shackleton Building, which was actually shaping up to be three plans that had to be pulled off all at the same time.

  Plan number one involved two of Reeve’s guys, Miller and Ford, creating a distraction to keep security busy, and then heading up to the old staff cafeteria – Shackleton’s loyalty room – with our sleeping gas. They were going to incapacitate the guards on duty and free the security staff’s families – and they were going to film the whole thing.

  Meanwhile, the rest of us would be sneaking in the back way: through the secret tunnel underneath the school. While Reeve’s guys held the cafeteria, Reeve, Tank and Amy would run their footage down to the audio-visual control centre on the third floor, hijack the P.A. system and the big screen, and let every security officer in the building know we’d just taken away their reason to co-operate with Shackleton.

  That left Luke and me with one job: head up to the top floor of the Shackleton Building, find Tobias and get it out to the release station.

  It was our last shot, our only shot, at taking Shackleton down. It was risky, complicated, and the whole thing was completely reliant on our ability to work together.

  No way in the world was I about to let a maniac like Soren come in and derail it all.

  ‘Look,’ said Reeve, ‘I know it’s not ideal, but –’

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘It’s insane. He’s insane! What could you possibly –?’

  ‘We need someone to get past the security on the A/V computers and feed through that camera footage,’ said Reeve. ‘And they’re going to need to do it in a hurry. So unless there’s someone else here who knows how to do all that…’