That’s what the baby wanted a picture of.
All right, kid, I thought, crouching to pick up Calvin’s belt with my free hand. I hope you know what you’re doing.
I started towards the skid. Immediately, Amy rushed in to block me. ‘Jordan, no! You can’t be – It’s a trick! You can’t trust him!’
‘I know I can’t, but we need to get out there and right now, he’s our best shot. Remember how well it turned out the last time I tried driving one of these things?’ I said, handing Amy the baby so I could climb into the open-topped storage cage at the back of the skid. I shot a warning look at Calvin, who kept his distance. Then I swung inside the cage and took Tobias back. ‘I’m not asking you to –’
‘I’m coming,’ she said, gun trained on Calvin again as he returned to the driver’s seat. ‘You think I’m leaving you alone with him?’
On either side of the storage cage were little platforms with non-slip treads where passengers could ride standing up. Amy jumped up onto one of them, holding the cage with one hand and keeping the pistol determinedly fixed on Calvin with the other.
‘You can put that down,’ said Calvin without turning around. ‘I give you my –’
‘Just drive,’ said Amy.
Calvin started the ignition and the skid rattled to life underneath me. Tobias let out a gleeful little squeak. I stared down at him, trying not to read anything into it, and crouched in the cage, wishing there was some safer way to strap him in.
We rumbled slowly through the bush, headlights off. I looked up, watching the dark cords of the shield grid slip past above our heads, trying to visualise the quickest route to the edge of the bush.
‘How are we even supposed to get over the wall without that shield thing burning us to bits?’ Amy asked, jolting as the skid rolled through a bush.
‘We can’t,’ said Calvin. ‘Shackleton has already locked down the controls, and any attempt to penetrate the grid by force would be pointless. There may be another way, but it will require a detour to the armoury.’
‘For what?’ I asked, my suspicion ratcheting back up again. ‘If you try to hurt anybody –’
‘I hope it won’t come to that,’ he said, in that unnerving new introspective tone of his.
‘Then what?’ said Amy impatiently. ‘If we can’t get over the wall by force –’
‘We’re not going over the wall,’ said Calvin, veering through a gap between two enormous trees. ‘We’re going through it.’
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 4.22 A.M. 12 HOURS, 38 MINUTES
‘You’re WHAT?’
‘Shh!’ said Jeremy. He and Lauren glared at me from their lookout at the bedroom window. I looked back apologetically, then slipped out onto the landing.
‘Jordan, this is –’
‘I know,’ her voice crackled in my ear. ‘I know what it sounds like.’
‘It sounds like you’ve got a death wish!’
‘I know, but –’
‘Is he making you say this?’ I asked, fingers tensing on the phone. ‘Does he have a gun to your head or –?’
‘No. Actually, we’ve got one to his,’ she said, with enough confidence for me to believe that at least she thought she was safe. ‘Did you get onto Reeve?’
‘Jordan –’ I began, not ready to change the subject.
‘I’m fine, Luke. Really. It’s under control. Now did you get onto Reeve or not?’
‘Not yet,’ I said, pacing over to a window. ‘That’s kind of why I called. We’ve made it into town. We’re hiding out in a house for a bit, but –’ I paused, my attention snatched away by a gunshot from somewhere out on the street. ‘Listen, it’s pretty crazy out there. Wherever Reeve is – I mean, we can’t just walk out there and look for him.’
I stared out the window. We were right up against the centre of town now, but it was still pretty hard to get any real sense of the fight – except that we were losing it.
It didn’t seem like there was any kind of organised attack going on at all; just pockets of resistance from the few people who’d made it out onto the streets. Now and then, we’d hear an explosion of gunfire or see someone scuttling through the shadows, but it looked as though the majority were still trapped in the Shackleton Building.
Instead of the glorious overthrow of the Co-operative we’d been dreaming of last night, it seemed like our coup attempt had just littered the streets with a bunch of scared civilians with guns. And now we only had a couple of hours left until the sun came up. If we hadn’t found Reeve by then, we could pretty much give up on finding him at all.
‘Let me try him,’ said Jordan.
‘Yeah,’ I said, tracing a finger along the windowsill, thick with dust after all these weeks of abandonment.
‘That’s what I was thinking. Reeve knows you’ve got Ketterley’s phone. He might answer for you.’
‘Right. Let me know if you get anywhere with – with the thing,’ she said, avoiding the word transceiver in Calvin’s hearing.
‘I will,’ I said. ‘And look, just be careful, okay? You know who you’re dealing with. If you can get him to do what you want, then great. But make sure you can get away when you need to. Don’t –’
‘Don’t die,’ she said. ‘Got it.’
‘Don’t trust him.’
‘That too. Okay, I’m calling Reeve. Be safe.’
She hung up and I headed downstairs.
I passed the front door and felt the insane impulse to just walk straight out.
We were wasting time. Hours left until the end and we were sitting around like we were waiting for someone to come in and tell us what to do. If I was going to find Shackleton and free Mum and the others, it wasn’t going to be with this lot.
Fifteen minutes, I told myself, glancing up at the clock on the wall. If Reeve hadn’t called back by then, I’d push on without him.
I walked into the lounge room, feeling like I’d just drunk ten cans of Red Bull, still jittery with the shock of being alive. Mr Weir was hunched over the coffee table, tinkering with the broken transceiver. The others crowded around. Alyssa had a torch pointed down at the table, shielded by her hand to keep the light from reaching the windows.
Mrs Weir stood at the other end of the room, looking out onto the empty street. Theoretically, she was keeping watch, but one look at her face told me she was somewhere else altogether. I caught Mrs Lewis’s eye, and she went to take over.
‘Anything?’ I asked, taking her place in the circle.
Mr Weir held the transceiver right up to the light, pulling a screwdriver from his mouth and levering off a half-melted bit of casing to reveal the circuitry underneath. His eyes grew very slightly wider, and I felt a flicker of hope. But before he had a chance to speak, a buzz in my pocket pulled me away again.
‘Luke!’ said Reeve as soon as I picked up. He sounded a bit out of breath. ‘Sorry mate, didn’t realise it was you. Where are you? Jordan said you’d made it into town.’
‘Yeah, we’re behind the security centre. Where are you?’
‘On the move,’ he said. ‘We’re back out of the Shackleton Building, but – Hold on a sec.’ I heard another voice at his end of the line, and then Reeve said, ‘Yeah, okay, but check round the back first.’
He turned his attention back to me. ‘Sorry. Bit of a situation. Can you get down to the south end of town? I’ll send someone out to meet you.’
‘Um … yeah, probably,’ I said. ‘We’re –’
‘No, still coming. Maybe a block behind,’ said Reeve to whoever was with him. Then to me: ‘Get down to the bike tracks. We’ll – Hang on, mate. I think –’
He broke off, and I heard a frantic shuffle of footsteps. Someone shouted. Then a burst of gunfire echoed through the speaker in my ear and the line went dead.
JORDAN
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 4.27 A.M. 12 HOURS, 33 MINUTES
‘Okay,’ I said, hanging up on Reeve, my voice raised over the rush of air as we tore along the road out of Phoenix. ‘Start talk
ing, Calvin. What happens when we get out there? What does he actually have to do?’
Visions were spiralling through my head of the moment when Tobias and Tabitha finally collided. Visions of defeat, Tobias hanging limp in my arms, failed by the fallout. Visions of victory with Tobias dead anyway, the price of saving the rest of us.
Stop it, I ordered myself. You know that’s not how this ends. Whatever the plan is, it has to be better than that.
I stomped it all down and focused on interrogating Calvin, thinking wistfully that I could really have used an actual vision right about now.
The trees flew past the skid, a blur of shadows. Tobias took it all in with gleaming eyes, eerily unfazed by the cold or the crackling sky or the jolting of the skid.
He still hadn’t cried for a feed. That wasn’t right. Not normal, anyway. But then, we were talking about a baby who’d reached full term after only three months in the womb. Abnormal had been written into his life from the very beginning.
And isn’t that what you’re counting on? Don’t you need him to be abnormal?
‘You going to answer me?’ I pressed.
Calvin kept driving, like he hadn’t even heard me speak. I grabbed him from behind. ‘Hey! Listen –’
The skid swerved, throwing me sideways against the cage. Tobias murmured but still didn’t cry out.
‘Enough!’ Calvin growled, steering us back on track again. ‘Unless you believe running us all off the road is a productive use of your –’
‘TELL ME WHAT HE HAS TO DO!’
‘Pull over,’ said Amy, black hair fluttering behind her as she clung to the side of the cage. The words didn’t have much force behind them, but she made up for it by raising Calvin’s pistol again. ‘We’re not going any further until you tell Jordan what she wants to know.’
The skid slowed just enough to soften the roar of the wind in my ears.
‘It’s better if you don’t know what’s coming,’ said Calvin, not turning around.
I sneered at the back of his head. ‘How about you let me decide what’s –?’
‘Better for humanity,’ said Calvin, ‘even if not for you.’
‘You know what, Calvin?’ I said, almost laughing. ‘I’m not sure you’re actually the most qualified person to make that call.’
‘Perhaps not. But I am the one who knows what is coming, and I cannot risk losing your co-operation at this late stage.’
‘You don’t think you might be risking that now?’ I said, shoving aside my apprehension at his words.
‘No,’ said Calvin. ‘I don’t. I know you, Jordan.’
‘You don’t –’
‘I know enough. I know that with half a day left until the extermination of humanity, you are not simply going to abandon your one hope of putting things right.’
I straightened angrily, the cold wire of the cage digging into my back. I wanted to argue with him, to bite back, put him in his place. To jump out of the moving skid and prove I couldn’t be so easily manipulated.
Instead, I just slumped back down to the floor of the cage. He was right. I couldn’t leave without knowing. Which meant that as long as Calvin kept me in the dark, he was pretty much guaranteeing my co-operation. Amy glanced back at me, her right hand still stretched out towards Calvin’s head.
‘Mm,’ said Calvin approvingly, taking my silence for agreement. ‘You are a person of incredible moral integrity, Jordan. It is only recently that I’ve come to appreciate what a great strength that is.’
‘Yeah, well, thanks for the compliment, Chief,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘That means a lot, coming from you.’
The skid roared up to full speed again. The wind swirled around my head, throwing my ratty dreadlocks up against my face. Tobias gazed up at me with something oddly like a searching look. Like he’d heard what Calvin had said and was trying to work out if he agreed with him. He yawned, closing his eyes, and I shoved the idea aside.
‘I won’t let you hurt him,’ I said after a minute.
Calvin kept driving.
‘Is that what this is?’ I asked. ‘Is he going to have to, like, go in there and get injected or something? Because I won’t … I won’t let you …’
I trailed off, the confidence I’d just been preaching to myself getting shaky again. My baby brother, going up against a virus powerful enough to exterminate humanity; surely that wasn’t going to happen without a cost.
And still Calvin refused to speak.
‘Calvin!’ Amy snapped.
‘It won’t kill him,’ said Calvin finally. ‘It shouldn’t –’ He glanced back, frowning like he’d heard something, then turned his eyes back out onto the road.
‘Jordan, I have no doubt that you will try to do what is right,’ he went on. ‘But if there’s one thing that might persuade you to compromise that cast-iron conscience of yours, it’s your family. Which is exactly why –’
Light exploded behind us.
Calvin barked in shock, and the skid swerved, throwing me to the floor on my back. I rolled over, looking back through the cage, and saw headlights bearing down on us.
BLAM! BLAM!
Calvin jolted in his seat, and the skid unit spun out of control. I wrapped both arms around Tobias, curling into a ball to shield him from the impact. Amy shrieked, lost her grip, and disappeared, thrown to the ground. The skid kept spinning, stars and shield grid blurring together above my head, so eerily like slipping to one of my visions that I almost believed I’d been wrong about the fallout being over. Then, with a nauseating jolt and a spray of gravel and dirt, we dropped into the ditch at the edge of road.
The skid lifted onto two wheels, sending me sliding across the bed of the cage, and then crashed down onto its side, scraping along through the bush, before finally hammering to a stop against an enormous eucalypt. Somewhere through the dizziness, I took in a glimpse of fading lights and the noise of an engine rumbling off into the distance.
I stumbled out of the cage, beat up and dizzy but otherwise okay. I held Tobias to the moonlight, heart in my throat, checking him for injuries. He was fine. Conscious. Nothing broken.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Amy came limping in through the bush, holding her side, the pistol still clutched in her other hand. ‘Oh my goodness. What was that?’
‘A delivery truck,’ grunted Calvin, peeling himself off the seat of the skid. ‘Probably headed for the same place we are.’
He rose to his feet, apparently uninjured, and scowled at the skid’s front tyres, torn apart by the gunshots. My heart sank. No way was that getting back on the road again.
‘Who were they?’ Amy asked. ‘Were they Shackleton’s or –?’
‘It doesn’t matter who they were,’ said Calvin. He reached into the back of the upended skid and grabbed his utility belt. ‘They’re gone, and so is any prospect of reaching the armoury before sunrise.’
I watched him fasten the belt around his waist, suspicion trickling through my mind again. Had this been his plan the whole time? To strand us out here in the middle of nowhere? To lure us off to some secret Co-operative facility where he could torture us in peace?
Get a grip, I told myself. You’re starting to sound like Luke.
In a place like Phoenix, though, Luke’s paranoid hunches had an unfortunate habit of being right.
Calvin pulled a compass from his belt. He threw our ruined skid one last resentful glance, and then jogged away through the trees. ‘This way.’
‘Now what?’ Amy breathed, coming up behind me.
I wavered for just a moment longer, then sighed, setting out after him. ‘Now we run.’
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 5.25 A.M. 11 HOURS, 35 MINUTES
I snapped the phone shut, resisting the urge to shout in frustration. Still no answer.
‘Give it a rest for a bit,’ said Mr Weir, crouching next to me. ‘That battery won’t last forever.’
I stuck the phone in my pocket. I hadn’t heard from Jordan in almost an hour. I’d tried her ten times since, and
every time, the phone just rang and rang. I’d even tried calling Calvin’s number, but he wasn’t picking up either.
I shifted in the undergrowth, working out a cramp in my leg. In the end, only the Weirs and I had come to meet Reeve. Everyone else had lost their nerve when I’d told them the part about my phone call ending in gunfire. Apparently, creeping through a warzone to meet with a guy who might have just been killed was not their idea of a good time. And the longer we waited out here in the cold and the dark, the harder it was to blame them.
The transceiver still wasn’t working, but Mr Weir seemed confident. Seemed determined anyway. While Mrs Weir had shrunk down inside her grief, Mr Weir seemed to be channelling his outward, like he’d forged some connection in his mind between fixing this thing and honouring the death of his son.
I gazed up through the shield grid at the stars.
What did it mean? A hundred days without even a hint of rescue, and now suddenly we had a jet getting shot down right on top of us.
Surely this had something to do with Dad. He had to have got out. He had to. And surely, I told myself with as much conviction as I could, surely Dad couldn’t have been onboard that jet. If the military were mounting some kind of rescue mission, they wouldn’t send a civilian in on their first –
I shook my head, fighting to get a grip on myself. This was pointless. Assuming Dad was still alive, the best I could do to keep him that way was to focus on getting hold of Shackleton.
I gazed out through the trees at the town. Where would he be?
Please not in the bunker.
Please nowhere near Mum and the others.
No, I thought firmly. Surely he had more important things to worry about. He must have realised by now that the fallout was gone. And surely he had to be at least as freaked out by that as we were.
So, what then? The medical centre? Would he risk moving out from the Shackleton Building? Could he risk it even if he wanted to? If the bunker was still locked down, maybe he was just –
Wait.
My hand shot to my pocket, a dangerous idea flaring to life inside my head.
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