The Caged Griffin

by Richard Dungworth

He fell silent for a few seconds. Moments later, he had regained his usual composure.

  ‘We must focus on our main goal,’ he said decisively. ‘I want the four of you to go ahead with the mission as planned, setting off immediately. I’ll try to track down Balista and get her back onside.’

  The four young knights nodded earnestly. They quickly slipped on their helmets, snap-locking them in place.

  As Salt watched them hurry away in their pairs, he muttered anxiously to himself.

  ‘I only hope I find her before anyone else does . . .’

  Chapter 7

  The Chairman’s Sister

  TEA-LEAF HAD VANISHED.

  Salt had combed the entire Old School, but there was no sign of her. Now he was back in the upper Academy, hurrying along the corridor from his workshop. He knew that Tea-Leaf had found her way into the Attiring Chamber yesterday. Today, it would be out of use. Maybe he would find her lying low there, feeling sorry for herself.

  I wish I hadn’t done such a good job on that suit of hers, thought the old armourer bitterly. He had put great care and skill into crafting Tea-Leaf’s armour so that it would maximize her ability to conceal herself. He had never imagined that he would be first person to test its effectiveness.

  As long as she hasn’t gone far . . .

  His fear was that in a fit of temper, Tea-Leaf might do something rash. She was a great kid and talented too. He was confident that he – and her medallion – had chosen well. But there was some truth in what Rake had said. She was rather more unpredictable than Salt would have liked.

  He could talk to her about that when he found her. The priority was to get her back. While she was missing, in full armour, she was in danger of blowing her own cover, and possibly the whole team’s.

  As he rounded a bend in the corridor, Salt nearly charged headlong into a tall, athletically built woman coming the other way.

  ‘Look where you’re going, old-timer!’ she snapped. ‘Why the rush?’

  Salt’s heart sank. This was the last person he needed to run into.

  The woman now glaring at him was the older sister of the Chairman himself. Her influence within the Corporation was second only to that of her baby brother. She was also the most famous of all the Arena’s stars – a fearsome fighter, who had cut down opponent after opponent with her cruelly curved, laser-edged ion-sica. She had been beaten only once in her long career, by the very man Salt’s Armouron team was now trying to rescue – Griffin.

  This dangerous, ambitious, scheming woman was known solely by her Gladiator name: Lanista. It was from ancient Eurolese and loosely meant ‘she who commands others’. It fitted her well.

  ‘Well, whatever your business, it will have to wait,’ she told Salt haughtily. ‘Strangely enough, I was actually on my way to see you.’

  She was carrying a pair of shoulder guards. She thrust them against Salt’s broad chest, so that he had no choice but to take hold of them.

  ‘My spaulders. That fool Brand made them. They’re useless.’

  Salt remained silent.

  ‘They restrict my movement when I raise my arms,’ continued Lanista. ‘I want them fixed as a matter of priority.’

  When Salt still failed to respond, the Chairman’s sister grew impatient. She was used to immediate obedience from her inferiors.

  ‘Let me spell it out.’ She took hold of the armourer’s shoulders and turned him forcibly round. ‘You go back to your grimy little workshop now. You don’t leave till my armour works like it should. The moment it’s fixed, you bring it to me. I’ll be at Corporation Headquarters for the rest of the day. Understood?’ She gave Salt a condescending smile. ‘Or is that too complicated for your prehistoric brain?’

  Inside his head, Salt was screaming with frustration.

  I don’t have time for this! I need to find Tea-Leaf! What about the mission?

  But there was nothing to be done. He couldn’t afford to risk going against Lanista’s wishes. It was only likely to raise her suspicions.

  He nodded respectfully.

  ‘I understand, madam. I’ll see to it immediately.’

  Clutching the offending shoulder guards, he hurried back the way he had come.

  Less than an hour later, Lanista was striding along a very different passageway. It led to the boardroom of Perfect Corporation’s headquarters. The impressive HQ building was in downtown Nu-Topia, not far from the Academy. It was the dark heart of the Chairman’s corrupt organization.

  Lanista reached the entrance to the boardroom and impatiently wiped a finger over its DNA-recognition pad. The double doors sliced open, admitting her to the spacious, luxurious office beyond.

  The room was dominated by a large black table, surrounded by twelve high-backed chairs. Right now, they were empty, and the office deserted.

  At the table’s far end – where Lanista herself always sat – part of its glossy surface was blinking with a red glow. A message.

  She crossed to lay her palm on the flashing area. A miniature projection of her brother instantly appeared above the tabletop.

  ‘Hi, Big Sis,’ grinned the mini-Chairman. ‘Sorry not to be around. I’ve popped out of the office to meet up with Decimal. We’re all set to begin clearing up our little problem at the Epsilon site.’

  Clearing up our little problem. Lanista smiled to herself. Her brother had a tendency to make the use of lethal force sound like everyday tidying up.

  ‘By the way,’ the message continued, ‘from the scans he’s taken, Decimal thinks it’s very likely that your old friend Griffin is leading the Skirter group. Just as you suspected. I’ll try to bring you back a souvenir of his death. In the meantime, hold the fort while I’m gone. Ciao!’

  As the hologram cut out, Lanista heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see a man in a black uniform enter the room.

  ‘Director, I have a report for the Chairman, from the DEM.’

  The DEM – the Department for Energy Management – was responsible for checking the use of electricity and computer data by Nu-Topia’s citizens. Some years ago, the Chairman had banned any unauthorized use of electrical power or digital information. You now needed Corporation permission to run any electric device, or even send an email. The Chairman had claimed this was in the public interest. Energy was scarce, he argued, and its use needed to be controlled. In reality, it gave him a stranglehold on the city.

  ‘My brother isn’t here,’ Lanista told the messenger. ‘You may deliver your report to me.’

  The man bowed his head respectfully.

  ‘Our SeeBlock scanners have recently picked up two instances of unauthorized power usage, Director.’

  The SeeBlock tower, which loomed over central Nu-Topia, was the DEM’s centre of surveillance.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Lanista dryly. ‘And why, exactly, is that a matter for the Board?’

  The man in black was looking increasingly nervous.

  ‘The location of the surges is unusual, Director. Both occurred underground, in the disused sewer tunnels.’

  Now Lanista was interested.

  ‘Go on.’

  The man hurriedly produced a slim display screen, showing a computerized map.

  ‘The first trace was here – directly beneath sector W14. The second, fifty-seven minutes later, was in sector W26.’ Two small blips blinked on the display. ‘This suggests that the party responsible is moving along this tunnel section.’

  ‘And if they carried on in that direction? Do we have an idea of their possible destination?’

  ‘Their projected course leads out towards the West One area, Director.’

  And if they continued beyond that, thought Lanista, studying the diagram, they’d pass right underneath the Epsilon site . . .

  This was too much of a coincidence. Someone was secretly making their way directly towards where Griffin was holed up. It had to be some form of rescue attempt.

  A thin smile spread across Lanista’s face.

  And if I follow, th
ey’ll lead me right to him.

  ‘Captain, I want a squad of Knights at my disposal within the next five minutes, fully equipped for underground exploration.’

  ‘Yes, Director.’ The man turned and hurried away.

  ‘Whoever it is sneaking around down there,’ murmured the Chairman’s sister to herself, ‘I think it’s time I paid them a surprise visit . . .’

  Chapter 8

  Pest Control

  THINGS WERE NOT turning out quite as Hoax had imagined. Being involved in the daring rescue of a band of rebel fighters sounded pretty exciting. But as he waded slowly through the thick, grey sludge that slopped around his knees, and peered ahead along the murky sewer tunnel, Hoax felt that the reality was so far proving rather less thrilling.

  Oddball, striding through the unpleasant gunk beside him, gave a sudden groan of dismay.

  ‘What now?’

  A little way ahead, the tunnel appeared to be blocked. Hoax squinted through his helmet visor’s night-sight overlay. Given that it was completely pitch-black inside the sewer, the quality of the ghostly, monochrome vision the visor provided was remarkable. Nevertheless, Hoax was finding it hard to make out what the obstacle was.

  ‘Let’s shed a little light on the subject,’ said Oddball. He tapped the cuff of his left gauntlet and it dispensed a tiny yellow capsule into his palm. A glo-cap. Oddball crushed it in his armoured glove to mix the chemicals in it together, then tossed it into the gloom ahead. The tunnel was suddenly brightly lit with a yellow glow, given off by the capsule as a result of the chemical reaction.

  Hoax’s visor immediately adjusted to the flood of bright light, to prevent him being dazzled. He could see that what lay ahead wasn’t a cave-in, like the other blockages they had so far had to deal with. It was a grille of vertical metal bars, stretching right across the tunnel and from floor to ceiling.

  The two boys waded forward to examine the grille more closely. Oddball gave it a firm tug. It was as solid as it looked. Judging by the metal’s still-shiny finish, it had been installed only recently.

  ‘But why would anyone go to the trouble of blocking off a disused sewer?’ puzzled Hoax.

  Oddball shrugged.

  ‘Dunno. But that glo-cap won’t last long,’ he said. ‘And I’ve only got a few left. We’d better get cracking.’

  He reached over his shoulder to release his warhammer from its clasps.

  ‘I don’t think even your hammer will shift that,’ said Hoax, eyeing the grille doubtfully. ‘It’s heavy-duty stuff.’

  ‘I’m not planning on bashing my way through,’ replied Oddball.

  With a series of twists and snaps, he separated his weapon into several sections. He passed all but one to Hoax to hold.

  The final component – a cylindrical pin that secured the warhammer’s head – rapidly transformed in Oddball’s expert grasp into a tool like a sealant gun. He quickly ran its nozzle all the way round one of the grille’s bars, applying a bead of red gel. He clicked the tool’s flat end, then repeated the process. This time, blue gel oozed from the nozzle. As they came into contact, the gels began to fizz fiercely. Within seconds, their reaction had burned right through the metal bar.

  Hoax watched impatiently as Oddball began tackling the other end of the bar. He only hoped they could still reach Griffin in time. Obstacles were not all that had hampered their progress through the tunnels. Twice, they had got lost. The map that Salt had given them – as a holographic overlay for Hoax’s helmet visor – showed the original layout of the old City sewers. But in many places, the ancient tunnels had now collapsed. Elsewhere, service tunnels had been added. Within the first hour, they had found themselves at a junction that Hoax couldn’t confidently match to his map.

  ‘We can’t know where to go next till we’re sure exactly where we are now,’ he had grumbled. ‘I think you should use your wrist-stat, Oddball.’

  The wrist-stat was one of Oddball’s many ingenious inventions. It had a wide range of functions. One was the ability to obtain a satellite-based location fix. But doing so meant releasing a brief pulse of electrical energy from the device’s tiny emergency battery.

  Oddball had been reluctant.

  ‘Salt said no electrics. We’d light up on the SeeBlock scanners for sure.’

  ‘Only for a split second. Anything’s better than wandering around down here till we drop dead.’

  In the end, Oddball had agreed. Hopefully, if anyone noticed the brief pulse of energy underground, they would think it was a mistake.

  Less than an hour later they had found themselves at another mystery junction and had reached the same decision. Since then, they had been making good progress – until coming up against this annoying grille.

  But Oddball was going great guns. He had already removed several lengths of bar. He yanked yet another section free and tossed it into the sludgy water. Hoax looked at the opening in the grille and gave a thumbs-up sign.

  ‘Reckon that’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Bit of a squeeze, perhaps . . .’

  He led the way, easing himself carefully through the opening. Once through, he began wading forward along the murky tunnel again. The light from the glo-cap was dimming, as the fluorescent chemical reaction within it began to slow.

  Oddball was a fair bit bigger than Hoax. He was still struggling through the grille when his friend gave a delighted cry.

  ‘It dries out up here! The floor slopes upwards until you’re clear of the gloop. Boy, am I glad to— WAAAH!’

  Oddball squeezed past the bars and hurriedly sloshed his way up the incline. Hoax was sprawled face-down on the tunnel floor.

  ‘What happened?’

  Hoax rolled over and sat up. He pointed to a black object lying on the tunnel floor.

  ‘I fell over that, I guess!’

  The black thing was only small – a fragment of something, by the looks of it. It didn’t appear substantial enough to have tripped Hoax. Oddball stooped to take a closer look. He attempted to lift it. But despite its modest size, it was too heavy to move.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s incredibly dense.’ He snapped his visor’s high-mag lenses into place and examined the material’s surface. ‘And it’s organic, by the looks of it. Some sort of ultra-tough cellular tissue.’

  ‘There’s more over there,’ said Hoax. He got to his feet and approached a much larger piece of the black substance further along the tunnel. ‘This bit looks like part of some sort of shell. Must be the remains of something that died down here. Judging by this, it must’ve been pretty huge.’

  Oddball looked thoughtful.

  ‘Do you remember that news story, a few months back, about something living in the Old City sewers?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ affirmed Hoax. ‘Our beloved Chairman sent down an extermination squad to sort it out. I remember him being very pleased with himself, as usual. Some rubbish about it “demonstrating the Perfect Corporation’s tough stance on pest control”. Why? D’you reckon this stuff is what’s left of whatever it was?’

  ‘Maybe. But there was a rumour at the time – I heard it from Shiv in the kitchens – that things didn’t go nearly as smoothly as the Corporation made out. According to Shiv, not one of the White Knights that went into the tunnels came out again. He said the creature exterminated them, not the other way around.’

  He looked from one fragment of black casing to the other.

  ‘These could be the remains of an animal. But like you said, they look a lot like a body shell. An exo-skeleton, shed by something as it grew.’

  Hoax was looking at his friend anxiously.

  ‘What are you driving at?’

  ‘What if the rumours were true?’ replied Oddball. ‘What if the Corporation didn’t manage to kill whatever was down here. What if to hush up their botched operation, they just settled for isolating the thing in a particular tunnel section. Trapped it in. Behind bars . . .’

  The glo-cap chose that moment to finally fail. The two boys were plunged into pitch darkness once
more.

  As his visor’s night-sight kicked in again, Hoax anxiously scanned their surroundings. He heard Oddball suck in a long, deep breath through the hyper-sensitive nasal vents in his helmet.

  ‘I’m picking up a strong organic scent. Something live, approaching fast.’

  Despite Oddball’s warning, the creature’s attack caught Hoax unprepared. A monstrous black head suddenly burst from the gloom and took a ferocious snap at him with its pair of huge, serrated mandibles.

  Hoax just managed to avoid being sliced in two by diving to his right. He rolled over – once, twice – then sprang back onto his feet. In an instant he had his slim fighting staff in a firm double-handed grip, ready to fend off the next attack.

  ‘Oddball! Hit the lights!’

  Oddball frantically emptied his glo-cap dispenser into his palm, clenched his fist around the half-dozen capsules to activate them and scattered them across the tunnel.

  The sudden glare of the glo-caps’ light was enough to cause the creature to recoil, dazzled. It also enabled the young Armouron to see their attacker clearly for the first time.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  The creature was all black and the size of a small vehicle. Its arching back was shielded by a thick shell of the tough material Hoax had stumbled across. It had no visible limbs – just an eyeless head, with its pair of huge, pincer-like mouthparts that had narrowly missed chopping Hoax in half.

  Before the creature could recover, Hoax quickly took a fierce jab at it with his staff. But not quickly enough. The monster’s left mandible batted the staff aside, knocking it from Hoax’s grasp. The grotesque head darted forward again and Hoax found his upper body locked in the grip of its powerful jaws.

  Only his armour saved him. In crafting Hoax’s orange and black suit, Salt had focused on the cadet’s talent for trickery. Hoax was one slippery customer – in his Armouron role as False-Light, his suit made him even more so. Its plastallic plates could shed their surface layer. By triggering this feature now, Hoax was able to wriggle free of the creature’s grasp. The monster gave a screech of anger, spitting out thin slivers of armour. Then it came at him again.