by Joseph Evans
With the whole situation of finding the girl, Seckry had almost forgotten that he had to put the container of worms on the 7.45 train, but luckily he just about caught it. He received a few curious glances from the other passengers, but he disappeared before anyone could comment.
That evening, when his mum arrived home from work, she sat with Seckry and allowed him to talk.
He told her about Snibble melting the Friction gift card and about the email and him sneaking out in the night, and he watched her expression of disappointment with a horrible feeling in his stomach.
“Who on earth is the person on the other side of that email address?” Coralle asked rhetorically. “I mean, what kind of person are you involved with now?” She cupped her head in her hands and shrugged her shoulders. “I always thought it’d be Leena that’d be the troublesome one, not you, Seck.”
She didn’t say much to him for a long time after that, and Seckry knew she’d need time to forgive him.
The next day, Seckry was back in school. The swelling around his eye had reduced and the bruising on his legs was getting better. He saw Snibble not long after arriving, but the boy said nothing to him. Whatever Vance had said or done to him, it seemed to be working for the moment. Seckry simply shot him a look of disgust and carried on with his work.
When the buzzer rang for lunch, Seckry grabbed a sandwich and hurried to Mr Vance’s office.
“Seckry, come in,” said Vance, clearing some papers off a chair for Seckry to sit on.
“Hi, sir.”
“Have you had a good morning?”
“It’s been okay. We just finished a lesson with that Mr Pegglewim. Didn’t manage to get much done to be honest, though.”
“Ah. Yes. Mr Pegglewim. Lovely chap. Deserves to be in a better school really.”
“Mr Vance,” Seckry said, unable to keep his curiosity at bay any longer. “What you said about the leak on the phone yesterday. That it didn’t happen. Is that true?”
Before Vance said anything in response, he shut the blinds, closed his door and locked it.
“I don’t want anyone to overhear,” he explained quietly. “And yes, Seckry, it’s true. I visited the power plant. The workers there wouldn’t say anything about the spill. But before leaving I managed to take a photo of their records. When I got back and looked at them there was no mention of the leakage at all. In fact their reports for that day show that business went pretty much as usual.”
“So all this power plant leak stuff is just a big lie to get everyone wearing one of the white chips?”
“It would seem so,” Vance said grimly. “It’s deeply disturbing.”
“What kind of thing is so important to find that they’d make something up this big just to find it?”
Vance breathed out and put his hands behind his head. “I can’t believe I’m actually contemplating this to be honest, but . . . the thing that Endrin seem to be looking for is an element that people wrote about around two thousand years ago. It was something that scientists were fascinated with. Some spent their whole lives devoted to studying it. But nowadays it’s never spoken of. All studies regarding it were dismissed on the conclusion that the element doesn’t, and never did, actually exist. Contemporary scientists believe that all that time ago people were so caught up in superstition and folklore that their minds were warped and confused. The strange thing is that every other element the ancient scientists discovered are the same ones that are in our elemental table now. This . . . mystery element is the only one we’ve never been able to find.”
“What’s this mystery element called?” Seckry asked.
“Helitonium,” Vance said, and he seemed to shudder just saying it. “The thing with helitonium is that it wasn’t regarded as just any element by the Ancient Klaxions. It was the ruler of all elements. They worshipped it and they feared it equally.”
Vance turned around and began running his finger across his shelf of books, which seemed to be populated with all manner of dusty tomes and ancient encyclopaedias.
“The great salt lake . . .” he muttered to himself, and pulled out a thin, worn book with a frayed leather jacket and about five or six post it notes sticking out of its pages.
Vance opened the book on his desk in front of Seckry and flicked through a few pages before reaching one with a large illustration on it of a lake.
“This,” Vance explained, “is the Great Salt Lake of Isperland. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes,” Seckry said. “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know where.” He assumed it must have been in a geography lesson somewhere along the line.
“It’s known as the Isperland Salt Flat now as the lake has dried out, but back in the times of the Ancient Klax it was a deep lake high in concentration of salt. What is unique about it is that the Klaxions recorded the lake as having a giant mass of helitonium hovering above it.”
Vance turned the page and there was another illustration of the lake, this time with bright green and blue coloured patterns just above its surface, like glowing, liquid smoke.
“Of course, modern scientific research at the flats has revealed that there could have been much more practical reasons for the strange clouds above the lake. Salt conducts electricity, and the high concentration of it in the water could have caused it to form small thunder clouds in the air.”
“Is that what you think it was?” Seckry asked. “Small thunder clouds?”
Vance closed the book. “I don’t know what it was that the Klaxions were looking at, but those illustrations don’t look like thunder clouds to me.”
“But why was helitonium so important to them?” Seckry asked.
“Because . . . helitonium had the power to manipulate all of the other elements in the periodic table in ways that no others could. Things that came into contact with helitonium were changed by it in very unpredictable ways. There are records of inanimate objects starting to hover off the ground in the presence of helitonium, fires sparking up on pieces of fabric that were stone cold, certain plants began growing rapidly out of the ground, and all other manner of strange things that defy the laws of physics. There is even one account of a starving man in contact with helitonium wishing for food so badly that fruit began appearing out of thin air.”
Vance sat down in his desk chair and began swivelling slowly from side to side.
“Do you think it’s real?” Seckry asked. “Do you believe that helitonium exists?”
Vance was staring into space.
“I don’t know. But something is for certain. Endrin believe that it exists. And they’re looking for anyone that might possess it.”
“You mean, like in a bottle or a jar or something?”
“Yes, maybe. Something like that. The Klaxions were never able to store helitonium, it was too volatile, too chaotic. Endrin obviously believe that it can be stored. Did you hear about the supposed toxins being cleared?”
Seckry shook his head.
“Endrin announced this morning that the toxins have now been successfully contained and everybody can remove their white chips and dispose of them. It’s unnerving to think that Endrin have found what they were looking for so quickly. Now, Seckry, I think it’s time for you to tell me how on earth you found yourself inside the Endrin compound.”
Seckry had been dreading it, but he had to tell Vance, it could be important. He took a deep breath and began recalling everything; about the job request, the email, and the worms. He felt sick knowing how much trouble he was in.
Vance listened intently and didn’t interrupt once. When Seckry had finished, Vance took a breath himself as though he had been holding it in.
“I know you’re expecting me to raise my voice at you, Seckry, but you can relax, I’m not going to.”
Seckry gulped.
“Aren’t you angry?”
Vance leaned back in his chair.
“Seckry . . . to be honest, you remind me of myself when I was your age. I could sit here and scorn you for being
idiotic . . . but the truth is . . . when I was your age I did a very similar thing. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong at the time, but if I could go back and change things I wouldn’t, because I would never have learned the lessons it taught me. We all make mistakes and we all learn from them.” Vance laughed briefly. “Do you think I’m too understanding?” he said, a slight smile in the corner of his mouth. “I’ll never make a good parent, will I?”
Seckry let himself smile a little.
“There is something very important to discuss here, though,” Vance said, his expression losing its humour. “Did Endrin see you?”
“I don’t know . . .” Seckry said. “Floodlights came on all around us but we jumped into the manhole pretty quickly. We hid for a while nearby, but nobody came looking.”
“Let’s hope that they saw nothing. Tresspassing on private property in Skyfall can be punishable by a prison sentence. You’re fifteen years old which means that you wouldn’t be sent to the juvenile detention centre in the north, you’d end up in Skyfall City Penitentiary.”
Seckry almost felt like crying. Going to prison would kill him.
Vance grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it.
“Hey, in any other situation that’d be the case. But not for this. I’ll make sure you don’t go to prison, you hear me?”
Seckry nodded.
“Sir, what do you think someone wanted those worms for anyway?”
“I don’t know, Seckry,” Vance said honestly. “It’s something I will be looking into very acutely over the next few days. Rintide worm, you say they were? They’re a very rare species, the rintide. Very valuable. They may have been at Endrin simply for the purpose of breeding for monetary gain . . . but something tells me that they were using them for more than that.”
“Do you think the girl I found . . . do you think it’s all connected, that she’s some part of this helitonium thing?”
“It’s very possible, yes. I’d like to speak with her soon.”
At that moment the bell rang and it was time for Seckry’s last but one lesson of the day, psychoanalysis with Professor Frudenberg.
Before leaving, Seckry thanked Vance and helped him reopen all of the blinds.
“Try not to get into any more trouble,” Vance said with a small hint of sarcasm. “First a fight, then a break in . . .”
Psychoanalysis went smoothly that day. It was Seckry’s third lesson so far and he began to realise that he was enjoying it. Come to think of it, he was enjoying his lessons of planetary science, ecology, and typography too. The worst thing about his day was what he knew was coming next; electronics with Cutson once more. He knew that electronics was one of the most important subjects in the city, but he was sure he had had more lessons with Mrs Cutson than any other teacher.
The lesson began by Cutson dictating to them all about the regulations of circuitry in the city and how they were the most refined and well researched regulations in the world. Then she got them all to copy nine pages out of a textbook into their work journals.
It was during his ninth page of arduous and painfully mind numbing copying that Seckry heard a patter of hollow footsteps echoing in the corridor that became louder and louder. A sense of dread washed over him but he didn’t know why. He could hear the muffled voice of the headmaster, fast and nervous.
There were a few murmurs from the class and everyone seemed to be looking towards the classroom door, though Cutson sliced through the noise with a sharp, “Silence!”
Then the door opened, and Gobbledee stepped in.
“I b-believe it’s this class you’re looking for,” he stammered.
Two men in white uniforms entered the room slowly.
Cutson leaped out of her chair and nearly knocked over her desk. She frantically tidied a few papers and began straightening her skirt.
“Oh my, do come in, do come in,” she said, flustered. She pushed past the headmaster. “How can I help you today, gentlemen?”
But the two men had no interest in Cutson, they were both staring calmly at Seckry. Seckry’s heart began pounding. Both men had a badge embroidered on the left side of their uniforms.
Endrin Corp.
Cutson kept pushing her permed hair in an attempt to make it look better, but all it was doing was springing back into place.
“Mr Sevenstars,” one of the men said, in a sickly tone that made Seckry feel like retching. “We’d like you to come for a chat.”
Mrs Cutson followed their gaze and as her eyes met Seckry’s she mouthed the word ‘you’ with silent contempt.
Seckry was frozen to his chair.
“Don’t just sit there, boy! How rude of you!” Cutson shouted, her face red with nervousness and fury.
“We only wish to talk with you, Mr Sevenstars. If you would just like to come with us.”
Seckry stood up and followed the men into the corridor, much to the excited speculation of the rest of the class.
Mr Gobbledde gave Seckry a curious and slightly concerned look of confusion as he passed him.
“Please, follow us,” the same employee said, and then thanked the headmaster.
Seckry’s mind was racing. What could he do? He had nowhere to run. He was just going to have to act oblivious. He was going to have to force himself to believe that he hadn’t done anything wrong.
As they walked along the corridor, Mr Vance burst out of a set of doors behind them.
“Seckry!”
Out of adjacent corridors, two more Endrin employees appeared and grabbed Vance, holding him in place.
“Seckry, you’ll be alright, okay?” Vance called. “You’ve done nothing.”
Seckry nodded at him.
When they reached the entrance the men ushered Seckry into the back of a four by four car with tinted windows and drove away slowly.
It didn’t take long for them to reach the Endrin compound, and neither man said a word. Seckry was led through the front gates and into the main building.
Everything inside was just as white as the outside. It was like a hospital, but quieter. Seckry hated the atmosphere of hospitals but this was even worse.
Seckry seemed to follow the men around corridor after corridor, and for most of the time, Seckry kept his head down. But at some point he thought he heard a muffled scream behind a door, and his eyes darted in its direction. The face of the door was printed with a symbol of some sort, a few DNA strands encased in a circle with graphical wings. Underneath it were the words Divinita Project.
Before Seckry had time to study it more, he was dragged into a room in which someone was waiting for him. A blank table was situated in the middle. On one side of it sat a woman, with tied back blonde hair and a clipboard, and on the other side was an empty chair.
“Mr Sevenstars,” the woman said with velvety smoothness. “Please, have a seat.”
The two men left the room at that point, leaving Seckry alone with her.
“Would you like a glass of water?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” Seckry said. He was going to say as little as possible.
There was a squeaking of stretched plastic as the woman leaned back in her chair.
“My name’s Jenniver Layne,” she said. “I’m not here to interrogate you. I just want to ask a few simple questions.”
Seckry remained sitting absolutely still, his mouth pursed into a tight clench.
“You can relax,” she said comfortingly. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Seckry forced himself to breathe a little more.
Jenniver scribbled something on her clipboard and looked Seckry in the eyes.
“It must have been hard relocating to the city. It’s mind blowing here isn’t it?”
So they’d done their research on him. Seckry wondered what other information was being stored about his personal life. He decided not to comment.
“The reason we’ve brought you here today, Seckry, is that we know you gained unauthorised access to our facility and we need to know what
happened while you were here. Did somebody ask you to do it?”
Seckry’s stomach was doing back flips, but he had to keep focused and he had to keep to his story.
“No,” he said simply, his eyes fixed on the table.
“Seckry,” Jenniver said calmly. “The area that we saw you enter is a very dangerous place to be without the right protective clothing. The worms that are being held there are very important to us and if they were to be removed from the soil it could have very serious consequences. It’s very important that the worms don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Seckry swallowed hard.
“Did you take any of the worms, Seckry?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seckry said unconvincingly.
Jenniver sat, looking at her papers for a while. She placed the clipboard on the table and rested her chin on her closed hands.
Seckry caught a glance at the papers. He could just about make out the text, reading upside down.
Fatal breach . . . Divinita Project . . .
“What’s the Divinita Project?” Seckry asked.
Jenniver’s eyes darted to the papers. She picked up the clipboard and slid it into a drawer on her side of the table.
“I’m afraid that’s one question I cannot answer for you,” she said.
She was silent for a long while.
“Seckry, we cannot tell from the security footage if you took any worms from the soil or not, as there was some malfunction on the tape. We only have footage of you entering through the drainage system, and then you seem to spot something before our tape begins to go very distorted and becomes undecipherable.”
Seckry’s pulse was racing. If what Jenniver was saying was true, that meant that they hadn’t seen him escape with the girl. Jenniver hadn’t mentioned the girl at all yet. Was it possible that Endrin had no idea she had been there?
“We don’t know what happened to the tape, but we have specialists working to repair the footage. It won’t be long before we see the rest of it, so Seckry, if there’s anything that you’d like to tell me about why you were here, who sent you, or what you did here, then please do so now.”
Seckry swallowed and tried to avoid Jenniver’s gaze. He said nothing.
“Okay,” Jenniver said finally. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Seckry. We’re going to let you go now. You’ll be driven back to your school where you can rejoin your classmates.”
Thank Gedin for that, Seckry thought.
“We’re not going to inform the Skyfall Patrol. This is a matter for us to deal with and we’ll deal with it accordingly. In the meantime, Seckry, if you manage to remember anything that happened that night, just come to our front gates and ask for Jenniver Layne. I’ll be here.”
Chapter Ten
The Blacklear