The Adjusters

by Taylor, Andrew

  …which flew open. Henry grabbed the side of the chopper to stop himself falling out as he felt the wind on his back. Christian’s leg brushed the joystick and the chopper went into a slow dive, although the pilot showed no sign of noticing. He was completely focused on his latest command.

  “Christian!” Henry managed to cry as his friend’s fingers tightened around his throat. “It’s me!”

  Christian looked at him blankly, no recognition in his face. In desperation, Henry braced himself against the door frame and kicked out with his left foot, driving his attacker back across the cockpit. As Christian flew back, he hit the joystick again, sending the chopper rolling in the opposite direction. Through the front window the trees below spun dizzyingly.

  “Take the controls!” Mallory cried from behind.

  Christian turned his attention back to the stick, pulling the chopper out of its dive. Henry realized that, in the chaos of the cockpit, using the Initiator that was stashed in his pocket wasn’t an option. He could only take one shot at frying Christian’s SPIDIR properly if he didn’t want to mess up his friend’s head for good, and he couldn’t risk it in a spinning helicopter. Instead he looked around for something to use as a weapon. If he couldn’t take out Christian’s SPIDIR, then he’d take him out of the equation by cruder means. It would mean getting the chopper down by himself – but what choice did he have? A fire extinguisher hung behind the pilot’s seat. Henry snatched it up and raised it high…

  “Sorry, Christian,” he said as he moved to bring the cylinder down on his head…

  But Mallory reached through from the back and caught Henry’s arm, holding him firm. Henry looked round to see the man staring at him with an insane hatred in his eyes.

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” he hissed.

  Henry reached for the top of the extinguisher with his free hand as they struggled. “Too bad you were so busy talking. Like always.” He pulled the firing pin free and depressed the trigger. White carbon dioxide gas flooded from the extinguisher nozzle, blasting Mallory back. Seeing his master attacked, Christian let go of the joystick and launched himself at Henry once more…

  But this time Henry was ready, bringing the cylinder round. It connected with the side of Christian’s head with a clunk. The kid spun and slumped unconscious against the helicopter controls, sending the vehicle into a steep dive.

  Henry moved fast, grabbing Christian and hauling him out of his seat. Choking against the CO2 that was flooding the cockpit, he pulled back on the joystick, levelling the chopper just before it ploughed into the forest. The tops of the tallest firs slammed against the landing struts, rocking the interior.

  “Henry, take the controls, boy!” Mallory screeched, trapped in the back. “Fly the chopper!”

  Henry linked his arm through the unconscious Christian’s and pulled him towards the still-open side door. As the helicopter began to lose altitude again, the front brushing the treetops, he took a final look back at Mallory. The head of Malcorp was gripping the back seat, his face terrified.

  “You’re the genius,” Henry said to him. “You fly it.”

  He paused on the edge for just a second. Directly below was the canopy of trees. Taking a breath, Henry jumped from the helicopter, taking Christian with him…

  Free fall lasted for a split second, then they hit the top of a fir tree. Needles and branches ripped into them, but Henry kept his grip on Christian’s arm…he couldn’t let go…the boy was helpless without him.

  They hit branch after branch, ripping them away from the trunk as they fell from one to the next. Henry cried out in pain as his leg caught against a thicker limb, spinning both him and Christian round 180 degrees. They continued to fall, the ground visible now and rushing up with nothing to stop the impact…

  With a crunch, Henry landed on a branch five metres above the ground. It didn’t break. He hung there, trying to ignore the pain that racked his body. A great weight was pulling his arm almost out of its socket: Christian was dangling below, held only by Henry’s grip. A grip that was quickly slipping. With a cry of effort he hung on for just a second more, but it was no use. Christian fell silently, hitting the ground with a soft thud.

  Henry grabbed the branch he was lying on and with some difficulty pulled himself into a sitting position. Although his body was covered in minor cuts from the tree branches, and his clothes were shredded, no bones seemed to be broken. A glance up the length of the trunk showed how far they’d fallen – at least fifty metres. Each branch had slowed their fall just a little.

  In the distance, the sound of an explosion made Henry look round. Somewhere in the forest the light of a fire grew between the trees. The helicopter. It was time to move.

  Edging along the branch, he reached the trunk and lowered himself down a series of smaller branches until he could jump the remaining two metres to the soft floor of the forest. Christian was lying face down in a crumpled heap amid the fallen leaves and bracken. He ran over as fast as his battered legs would carry him.

  “Christian!” Henry said, kneeling down and gently turning him over.

  The other kid groaned and opened his eyes slowly. Henry removed the Initiator from his pocket, held it to the back of his head and pressed the red button… Christian’s body twitched, but when his eyes opened, there was recognition there.

  “Henry?” Christian said. “Where am I?”

  “It’s a long story,” Henry replied, breathing a sigh of relief. “We have to get out of here. Can you stand?”

  Christian nodded and pushed himself into a sitting position. “I feel like I’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards,” he said, rubbing the scratches along his arms.

  Henry glanced up at the tree and grinned. “Something like that. You don’t remember anything?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “That’s probably just as well. I’ll tell you all about it when we get out of here.” He stood up and offered support as Christian tried to do the same.

  “I think my leg is sprained,” Christian said with a wince. Henry put an arm round his shoulder.

  “Which way do we go?” Christian asked.

  Looking through the trees, Henry could see the fire from the crashed chopper was clearly spreading. “As far away from that as possible,” he answered.

  They walked into the forest, supporting one another as they went.

  “I think I’m getting some flashbacks of the last couple of days,” Christian said after some time. Their progress was painfully slow due to his twisted ankle and the uneven ground.

  Henry looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I kinda remember firing a gun at you.”

  Henry nodded. “Yeah. You did that.”

  Christian thought it over for a moment. “And I kinda remember kicking your ass a bit. I felt like a jock.”

  Henry laughed. “Oh yeah. You should join the football team.”

  “And I think I can fly a helicopter. And speak Arabic. And Mandarin. I hate to say this, but it’s pretty cool. My dad’s going to go nuts. Finally I can do something better than my brother.”

  Henry gave him a look. If his SPIDIR was shut down, shouldn’t he have lost all of the knowledge implanted by Mallory’s doctors? Or could it still be active in some way? Made dormant by the Initiator, but ready to be reactivated… That wasn’t a nice thought.

  “What’s wrong?” Christian said. “You’re looking at me weird.”

  “Nothing,” Henry said quickly. “I was just thinking about the last time I saw your dad. You know what? I think he’s just going to be glad to see you again.”

  The trees opened up at that point, onto a cleared area with a building and up ahead a road. A neon sign hung over a set of tired-looking pumps. Behind the crumbling building was a corrugated iron outhouse. The words RESTROOM stood out in white paint on the side.

  “I don’t believe it,” Henry said, shaking his head.

  “What?” Christian asked.

  “This is where it al
l began,” he replied, looking round the dirt yard of the gas station where he’d first met Gabrielle Henson. Holding Christian up, he started across the yard towards the main building with renewed energy, thinking about finding a phone and getting in touch with what was happening at the Malcorp complex. The day was really getting hot now. How long had they been wandering the forest? An hour...two?

  “FREEZE!”

  Henry and Christian stopped dead as a figure stepped from the shadows at the side of the building, the unmistakable shape of a double-barrelled shotgun aimed directly at them.

  “One wrong move and I’ll plug you!”

  “Easy!” Henry said, putting up his free hand. “We just want to use your phone!”

  The figure stepped forward, straining to see better, but not lowering the gun. It was the old man from the gas station. “It’s you,” he said, peering at Henry. “The kid with the girl. And you were the one with the truck who smashed up my forecourt. Tell me I’m wrong! I recognize your voice!”

  Henry swallowed heavily. “Uh, yeah. Sorry about that…”

  The old man lowered the gun and stepped forward, clapping a bony hand down on Henry’s shoulder.

  “Sorry?” he exclaimed. “What the hell are you sorry for, boy? I’ve had ’em all here this evenin’. FBI. CIA. SWAT. WSIL news. They’re kickin’ up one hell of a stink at Newton. And they are all buyin’ gas!”

  Henry and Christian looked at one another and then at the gun in the old man’s hand.

  “Pardon me,” he said, leaning the shotgun against the side of the building. “Can’t be too careful here. Gotta watch out for them fortune hunters tryin’ to get a souvenir of the place where the story of the century began.”

  Henry frowned at the man as he began to lead them towards the front of the gas station. “Story of the century?”

  “Hell, yes!” he replied excitedly. “There’s got to be a film deal in all this. TV mini-series at the very least. I figure we go fifty-fifty on any contract, seein’ as I was your sidekick and all…”

  As they stepped onto the forecourt, Henry saw that the FBI had set up a roadblock restricting vehicle access to the road leading to Newton. News vans were piled up around the gas station and there were several ambulances and police cars...and a black Hummer sparkled in the brilliance of the sun. Amid the emergency vehicles was a tent where refugees from Newton were being treated.

  Fox was sitting on a gurney by one of the ambulances. Her face lit up as she met his eyes and she waved to him excitedly.

  “Come on,” Henry said, pulling Christian across the forecourt towards their waiting family and friends.

  “Okay, sixty-forty split!” the old man yelled after them as they went. “But I get to say who plays me in the film!”

  Against the protests of a doctor who was bandaging a cut on her arm, Fox ran over to meet them as they reached the road.

  “You’re alive!” she cried. “You’re both alive!”

  “Just about,” Henry said, wincing as she gave him a hug. “Easy. I just fell down the side of a tree.”

  And then Henry’s mom and Coach Tyler appeared with Mary as well. For a moment they stood, hugging one another and laughing with relief.

  “What happened?” Henry asked, nodding at the FBI roadblock.

  “They came in just a few minutes after you left,” the coach explained. His broken arm was finally bandaged. “They rounded up the last of Mallory’s special security team. Sounds like they had some help from an insider.”

  Henry smiled. Hank had finally done something right. “What about Mallory?” he asked. “He went down in the helicopter. Have they found the crash site?”

  Fox grabbed the arm of a passing FBI agent and demanded news of the helicopter crash. The agent, a tall guy in a perfectly pressed grey suit, looked at them with an expressionless face, weighing up what he should tell them.

  “We’re the ones who called you guys,” Fox said. “Come on!”

  “We reached the chopper crash site ten minutes ago,” he said, as if reluctant to give out any info at all. “Whole thing was burned up.”

  “And Mallory?” Henry asked.

  The agent looked at him. “They didn’t find a body, but trust me, nothing got out of that explosion. Most likely he was vaporized in the extreme heat.”

  Henry and Fox looked at one another. “Vaporized?” they said in unison.

  “Yeah,” the FBI agent replied, as if they were being slow. “Happens more often than you’d think. Believe me.”

  With that he walked away. Fox shook her head slowly. “I don’t buy that.”

  “I don’t buy that at all,” Henry said, starting to walk after the agent…

  Jennifer Ward placed a hand on his shoulder. “And where do you think you’re going?”

  Henry looked at her with exasperation. “But, Mom! The creepy FBI agent…the vaporization…”

  Jennifer gave him one of her immovable expressions. “Firstly you are going to get some medical attention. Then you are going to get a good meal.” She looked at Fox and Christian. “None of you look as if you’ve eaten in days. And then…” She placed her hands on Henry’s shoulders. “We are going to get our butts back to the city where we belong. How does that sound?”

  Henry grinned at her. “Great. I’ve had enough of the countryside to last me a lifetime.” He looked around his friends. “It’s really dangerous out here.”

  Henry Ward stood in the middle of the corridor and closed his eyes for a moment…

  The sounds of kids laughing and shouting all around… Locker doors being slammed noisily… Running feet screeching on the polished floor…

  He smiled to himself… It was good to be back in a real school. This was so unlike the silence of Malcorp High. Four months had passed since the events at Newton and he was back in the city, attending a school of over a thousand, shouting, screaming, arguing kids. And he loved it.

  “Hey!” a girl yelled, bumping into his arm and carrying on past. “The corridor ain’t for standing, idiot!”

  “Sorry!” Henry said, opening his eyes and raising his hand. The girl gave him a dismissive wave and he walked to the row of lockers over to his left. As he flicked the combination wheel on his padlock, he saw the note sticking from the edge of the door. Depositing his bag inside, he opened the note.

  Have a story you need to look at – Fox.

  With a grin, he crumpled the note and headed across the school to the janitor’s closet that had been converted into the office of the school newspaper.

  When Henry and his mom had moved back to the city, Fox and Mary had followed soon after. In the aftermath of the Malcorp incident a special fund had been set up by the company’s new owner to help the victims of Mallory’s experiments – and the fund had bought Full of Beans for a very generous figure. Generous enough for Mary Layton to set up a new cafe in one of the trendiest neighbourhoods in the city. And for a high-school dropout, Fox turned out to be some kind of genius – placed in every gifted and talented programme going. The art teacher kept raving about how she was the most gifted painter she’d taught in twenty years, although Fox’s main interest was the school newspaper.

  Up on the second floor Henry stopped at a door with a handwritten note Blu-tacked on the front: Newspaper Office – Private. He tried the handle and found it locked. With a sigh, he knocked three times and waited.

  The door opened a crack and the round, bespectacled face of Roland, Fox’s assistant editor, peered through suspiciously.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here to see Fox,” Henry said, trying to keep the impatience from his voice.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Henry pushed the door open and stepped in past Roland, who gave him a murderous look and then sat back at his desk in the corner. The newspaper office was windowless and about three metres square, but in that space they’d managed to cram two desks, a filing cabinet and a stack of aging computer equipment collected from around the school. On the far wall
a pinboard was filled with newspaper clippings and web printouts of stories associated with the Malcorp affair. Fox looked up from her monitor as Henry approached and cast his eyes over the story wall.

  “Quite a collection,” he said, noticing a story he hadn’t seen before. There was a photograph of Blake under the headline Teen Malcorp Heir Vows to Dismantle Company. In the image he was smiling and relaxed, with Gabrielle at his side. Next to it was a postcard from Christian – Greetings from Quantico. It seemed the FBI were making use of his new skills and, by the sound of it, he was having the time of his life as the youngest and most rebellious candidate on their special entry programme.

  “It gets bigger every day,” Fox said, handing him a printout of a blog entry. The title was John Mallory Lives. A quick scan of the text was enough to tell him everything: the usual conspiracy theory about how Mallory’s body was never found in the chopper crash…that he had fled to a South American country, where he had set up a new clinic…experimenting on native tribes…

  “Maybe it’s time to stop collecting,” Henry said, handing it back to her. “Malcorp is over. We have a new life now.” He waved a hand over the clippings. “Dwelling on everything isn’t…healthy.”

  Fox was about to respond when her laptop emitted a beep. She leaped back to the screen, her expression excited.

  “What is it?” Henry asked, moving round so he could see.

  “I’ve got a news monitoring service installed,” Fox said as a new window opened. “It trawls the web for keywords. You know… Malcorp…Adjustment…Mallory…”

  “Right.”

  “And look what it just threw up,” Fox said, scanning the story that had opened on her screen. Henry leaned in a little closer so he could see better.

  It was a story on the website of a local newspaper from some nowhere town in Ohio. A student had been arrested on the campus of the high school when a semi-automatic weapon and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device were found in his locker. Local police thought he was planning some kind of attack on the school. The student’s name was Stephen Lehane.