by Jack Heath
14:40 Tak jammed the blue key into the lock and twisted. The glass casing hissed as the tension released, then it slid back, revealing the cockpit.
Tak dropped down into the seat. The space was cramped—not a centimetre had been wasted in construction. Hundreds of switches and glowing dials surrounded him. Most were labelled—ARM, EJECT, FUEL DUMP—but many weren’t. Tak told himself that he wouldn’t need to know what most of them did. The important ones were the same on every plane.
13:30 It was terrifying, but it was also thrilling. Tak was in the pilot’s seat of a real aircraft. It was exactly what he had always fantasised about.
Well, not exactly. He hadn’t planned on taking out a killer robot.
He could hear a faint voice coming from his helmet. He put the helmet on and tightened the straps.
‘Hello?’ he said.
Peggy’s voice crackled in the speakers. She must have found a radio. ‘I’ve worked out how to switch on the laser-targeting system,’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’
Tak looked around at the instruments. ‘I guess so.’
12:55 ‘Well, do it! You’re cleared for take-off! Go, go!’
Tak closed the hatch above him. There was another hiss as the pressure equalised. He tightened the five-point harness around his chest, flicked a switch and heard the jet engines roar to life. The seat vibrated under him.
12:20 He eased the power up and up, but the plane didn’t move. What was wrong?
Oh. The brakes were still engaged. He flicked another switch. The locks clanked and the plane lurched forwards, knocking over the stepladder and trundling towards the hangar door.
The runway wasn’t very long. Tak would have to reach take-off speed quickly to get over the fence, but he couldn’t accelerate too fast without losing control of the aircraft. This would be tough.
‘Go!’ Peggy said again.
11:15 Tak pushed the throttle and the jet shot out onto the runway.
Clang! Something hit the side of the plane. Tak turned his head in time to see Zeus rolling towards him, rifle raised. The robot was about halfway between the collapsed building and the hangar. If the bullets hit the missile, his plane would turn into a fireball before he even got off the ground.
‘Zeus is shooting at me!’ he yelled.
‘Then hurry up!’
10:45 Tak shoved at the throttle. The acceleration crushed him into the seat as the fighter jet rocketed up the runway. Tak fought with the pedals, trying to keep the jet from veering off.
In seconds he was more than a kilometre away from Zeus. The fence line rushed towards him. The soldiers on the other side—who had evacuated when Griff sounded the alarm—scattered. The world outside the cockpit became a blur and a green light blinked on, telling Tak that he had reached take-off velocity.
At the last minute, Tak pulled back on the control lever. The wings tilted and the plane lifted off the ground. It shot over the fence and the trees, leaving the airfield behind.
It wasn’t at all like the simulator. His stomach was floating around as though he was on a trampoline. The plane was unimaginably fast.
09:30 Tak tilted the stick, trying to turn the aircraft back around. The missile should steer itself towards the laser target, but he figured he had to be facing the right way before he fired it.
The horizon sloped as the plane banked, circling back to the airfield.
‘Is the target ready?’ he asked Peggy.
‘I’ve drilled a hole in the hangar wall,’ she said. ‘I just have to line up the laser with Zeus.’
08:50 Tak couldn’t wait. He was going so fast he would overshoot the base in a matter of seconds. ‘Hurry!’
‘Just give me a minute.’
Tak wasn’t sure he had a minute, but he kept the nose of the plane pointed at the airfield.
‘Ok,’ Peggy said. ‘Locked on.’
There was a switch near Tak’s right hand marked ARM. He flicked it.
For a moment, there was no reaction.
08:15 A shrill beep came from the instrument panel. Then a message flashed up on the screen: ARMED.
Tak reached for the button marked FIRE—
Then he saw a flash of gunfire down below.
‘No!’ Peggy screamed.
‘What’s happening?’ Tak demanded. His instrument panel beeped again: TARGET LOST.
‘Zeus is shooting at us!’ Peggy yelled. ‘It hit the targeting system!’
‘Is everyone OK?’
07:40 ‘I can’t lock on. The laser is totally destroyed.’
Tak hit the FIRE button. Nothing happened. He tried ARM and then FIRE. Still nothing. The missile wouldn’t launch without a target.
Tak ground his teeth together. He was close enough to see Zeus now, rolling across the grass. It had almost reached the hangar. In another minute it would reach the door and open fire on his friends.
‘Get everyone behind the barricade,’ he said.
‘What are you doing?’ Peggy sounded worried.
‘Something I’ve done plenty of times in the simulator,’ he said. ‘Just stay down.’
07:00 He aimed the nose of the plane at Zeus. An alarm filled the cabin as the artificial horizon wobbled. A light flashed—PULL UP.
Tak didn’t.
He kept the plane pointed at Zeus as he pushed the throttle as far as it could go. The jet engines screamed on either side of him.
06:25 He didn’t know if the Hellfire missile would explode when the plane crashed into the ground. But it didn’t matter. Tak doubted that the robot could survive a tonne of steel and jet fuel slamming into it at almost two thousand kilometres per hour.
He could see Zeus’s gun swivelling towards the oncoming fighter jet. It was going to try to shoot him out of the sky.
Tak adjusted the angle one last time as the plane hurtled towards the ground, lining the nose up with the robot.
05:50 Then he flicked the switch marked EJECT.
Nothing happened.
Tak screamed. He was about to hit the ground and die in a ball of fire—
05:35 Then the hatch popped off the cockpit and was sucked away. Tak barely had time to lookup before the chair slammed into the underside of his legs.
He shot up out of the fighter jet a split second before it hit the ground, right on top of Zeus. Sharp pieces of metal exploded in all directions. The Hellfire missile detonated in a pillar of flame. The heat cooked Tak’s feet as the ejector seat streaked up into the clear blue sky, crushing Tak’s spine and turning his insides to jelly. Shadows crawled in from the corners of his vision, and he fought to stay conscious. He was shooting upwards so fast that it took a while for the sound of the blast below to catch up.
04:10 The ejector seat reached the top of its arc, and started to fall. Tak’s stomach lurched. He looked around in growing panic. Where was the button for the parachute?
The buttons on the sides of the seat turned out to be just bolts. He thought one of the dangling straps might be a ripcord, but they were all connected to his harness. Tak twisted in the chair, looking for some way to launch the parachute—
Whoosh! The parachute deployed above him. The sudden jolt nearly broke Tak’s neck. He clung to the sides of the seat as it slowly floated to the ground.
01:45 By the time he thumped down on the airfield, an ambulance was tearing across the runway towards the hangar. Peggy must have called them on the radio and told them that Zeus had been destroyed. Soldiers were running in from the fence line. Afire truck zoomed for the burning grass.
A man in a long coat was standing near the wreckage of the plane, staring curiously at the shattered remains of the robot. He wasn’t wearing military garb, but none of the soldiers seemed to notice him.
He turned around as Tak unbuckled his harness. There were lines around his eyes and his hair was grey, but he didn’t move like an old man.
00:55 ‘That plane cost ninety-one million dollars,’ he said mildly.
Tak winced. Was he in big trouble?
&nb
sp; ‘Why did you crash it?’ the man in the coat asked.
‘The missiles wouldn’t fire,’ Tak said.
‘So this was a last-minute plan? Improvised?’
‘More like last-second.’
00:45 The man nodded, smiling faintly. ‘You saved many lives today. You and your friend.’
Who are you?’ Tak asked.
The man looked like he was choosing his words carefully. ‘I’m trying to catch a hacker. I followed the signal here. That’s really all I can tell you … for now.’
00:25 He handed a business card to Tak. ‘Call me sometime,’ he said. ‘It could be a great opportunity for you.’ He walked briskly away towards the hangar.
Tak looked down at the business card. The name was R. Mercer. There was no business address, no email. Just a phone number.
00:00 He turned it over, looking for more. There was just one word: SPII.
NIGHTMARE
40:00 Harry first realised he was dreaming when he heard the knocking.
The nightmare was the same every night. The closet would be closed, even though he remembered leaving it open. He would hear two slow taps from inside. Knock. Knock. When Harry opened the door he would see a man standing in the shadows, eyes closed. The man would be wearing Harry’s clothes, which were far too small on him. The cuffs of the sleeves would be halfway up his forearms and the trousers would leave his shins exposed.
The man would grab Harry by the collar of his pyjamas. He would smile and open his eyes—
But he didn’t have any eyeballs. Instead there were coins placed in his eye sockets, shining silver in the dark.
39:15 Knock. Knock. There it was again. And there was another sound, too. A distant hissing, as though someone had left the hose on in the backyard.
38:25 Harry cowered under his doona. His heartbeat was like thunder. This is a dream, he told himself. There’s no need to panic.
He had experienced this nightmare almost every night since his school project about ancient Egypt. He had learned that coins were often placed upon the eyelids of the dead to pay for admittance to the afterlife. The nightmare would end with a realisation—that the dead man in his closet, the man wearing his clothes, was Harry. He was Harry’s future self.
37:40 These midnight terrors were slowly draining the life out of Harry. He kept going to bed later and later because he knew the dream was waiting for him. At school he was a zombie, walking slowly, mumbling and losing the thread of conversations. His grades started to suffer.
Predictably, that was the point at which his parents had gotten involved. His mother had banned him from watching scary movies. Harry had pointed out that it was a school project rather than a horror movie which had triggered the nightmares, and that maybe he should stop going to school instead. Mum hadn’t reacted well to that suggestion.
His father had asked him to keep a journal beside his bed, and to write the content of his dreams as soon as he awoke. This didn’t seem useful, since the dream was the same every night. But Dad had told him that looking for differences wasn’t the point.
‘Keeping a dream journal can help you realise when you’re having a nightmare,’ he had said. ‘If you know that you’re asleep, you won’t be scared any more. You can even control what happens in the dream.’
Harry knew he was dreaming now. He willed the dark, silent bedroom to transform into a tropical beach.
36:25 Nothing happened.
Harry got out of bed. His cotton pyjamas were soaked with sweat. His vision was blurred and his limbs were heavy. He felt half asleep, rather than completely asleep.
Avoiding the closet, he walked over to his bedroom door. But the handle wouldn’t turn. The door was locked—even though there had never been a lock on his bedroom door.
Dream logic. Harry willed the door to unlock itself. It didn’t.
35:30 If he couldn’t get out of the room, perhaps he could wake himself up. He blinked several times, hard. Nothing happened. He pinched himself on the arm. It hurt, but he didn’t wake up.
Someone had once told Harry—or maybe he had read it in a book—that bravery wasn’t about not being scared. It was about being scared and doing the right thing anyway.
He turned to face the closet.
‘OΚ, Coin Man,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
He walked up to the closet door and put his hand on the handle.
It’s just a dream, he told himself. It can’t hurt you.
34:45 He yanked open the door.
There was no-one in the closet. Just polo shirts on hangers, and running shoes on the floor. His socks were piled in a basket. There was a coiled black scarf he didn’t remember seeing before, but otherwise he found nothing unusual.
33:50 Harry forced himself to paw through the clothes, looking for signs of the man with coins for eyes. But he wasn’t here. The dream was different this time.
Harry turned to look at the rest of the room. He didn’t shut the closet door, for fear that the man would appear inside as soon as it was closed.
He peered under the bed and behind the curtains. There was nowhere else to hide, but Harry was sure he had heard the knocking.
Maybe the sound had been the air conditioner expanding or contracting. No, Harry had left it switched off. This was one of those summer nights when the air conditioner would make it too cold to sleep.
33:00Click. His bedroom door swung slightly open. Just enough to reveal a sliver of the corridor beyond.
Goosebumps crawled over Harry’s skin. The door hadn’t been locked—someone had been holding it closed. Now they had let go of the handle.
32:40 ‘Wake up,’ he whispered. ‘Wake up!’
It was no use. He was trapped in the nightmare.
A police car drove past the house, slowly, the blue and red lights making strange shapes across his curtains. Then it was gone. That hadn’t happened in the dream before. He would have to put it in his journal.
Harry walked up to the bedroom door and opened it all the way. The corridor stretched out before him, dark and still. No sign of the Coin Man.
31:35 He stepped off the rough carpet of his bedroom and onto the cool floorboards. They squeaked, like always. It was impossible to move quietly in this house. Further proof that this was a dream—if someone had been standing outside his bedroom door a minute ago in real life, he would have heard them walk away.
He thought about waking up his mum and dad. Then he realised they couldn’t help. They would be dream versions of themselves, powerless to stop the Coin Man.
31:10 He opened their door anyway. Their bed was empty. Harry was alone and defenceless.
Wiping his hands on his pyjamas, he walked further up the hallway. The back door was open, rocking back and forth on the gentle breeze. The moonlight illuminated the veggie patch and the compost bins outside. No sign of the Coin Man. Harry closed the door and locked it. After a moment’s thought, he locked the cat flap too.
30:50 He looked into the bathroom as he passed. Empty. The shower curtain was open. There was nowhere else to hide. Harry kept moving.
When he rounded the corner he saw the front door standing open. Mum and Dad were hovering on the porch in their pyjamas, looking anxious. They were talking to a police officer, a burly man with a notepad in his hand and a gun on his hip. His patrol car was parked on the street, lights flashing.
Harry let the air out of his lungs. He wasn’t dreaming. The knocking had been the police officer at the door. Mum and Dad had gotten up to answer it. Everything was fine.
A hand snaked out of the darkness behind him and clamped across Harry’s mouth.
29:25 ‘Shhhhh,’ a voice said.
Harry’s eyes went wide. He tried to cry out, but the palm across his mouth made it impossible. Fingers pinched his nose so he couldn’t breathe.
The man dragged him backwards around the corner, out of sight of the door.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ the man whispered, in a voice that implied that he absolu
tely would hurt Harry if necessary. ‘I just want my snakes back.’
28:50 The words made no sense to Harry. He struggled, but the arm across his chest was like an iron bar.
This was not a dream. This was life or death. A maniac had sneaked into the house through the back door, and now he was holding Harry prisoner.
He could faintly hear his parents talking to the police officer. ‘Why would someone break into the reptile house?’ Dad was asking.
‘We’re not sure,’ the cop said, ‘but CCTV shows him coming this way. Are you sure you haven’t noticed anything unusual?’
‘I’m sorry, Officer,’ Mum replied, ‘but we’ve been asleep. We haven’t seen anything.’
‘Well, if you do see anything …’
28:10 That was all Harry heard before the man pulled him into the bathroom and closed the door.
The faint light coming through the window didn’t reach the man’s face. It was like being menaced by a giant shadow. The man probably wasn’t all that big, but in the small, dark bathroom, he seemed enormous.
‘Speak quietly, or both you and your parents will be in deep trouble,’ the man said. ‘Where are the snakes?’
Harry’s heart raced. ‘I don’t know anything about any snakes.’
27:20 The man produced a knife from his pocket. The blade gleamed in the moonlight. It looked like a simple fruit knife, small but sharp. He held it up to Harry’s eye.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said. ‘After my snakes escaped, I saw them crawl through your cat flap. You were up and about—I watched you opening doors, searching.’
Harry realised this man must have stolen the snakes from the zoo that the police officer was looking for. But how had they ended up here? It was so bizarre that Harry almost thought he was dreaming, after all.
26:35 ‘I was sleepwalking,’ Harry said. It was almost the truth—he had believed he was asleep.
The man toyed with the knife, spinning it in a gloved hand. ‘I once watched a dinosaur take a bite out of a man’s leg,’ he said. ‘The human body only has about five litres of blood, and it can come out very quickly.’
26:15 That was when Harry realised that this man was completely insane. ‘Did you say “dinosaur”?’