by Jack Heath
'What's going on?' he asked.
'Come on.' Mum walked out of the room without checking that he was following.
'Everything OK?' Rebecca was still on the line.
'Uh, I'll call you back,' Terence told her, and hung up.
He never called her back.
When Terence entered the lounge room, a strange man in a suit and tie was sitting at the dining table. Three manila folders were stacked in front of him, and he was scratching a scar on his hand. The man smiled at Terence, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.
'How much have you told him?' he asked Mum.
Mum just shook her head, her fist pressed against her mouth.
A chill ran down Terence's spine. 'Who are you?'
'You can call me Mr Smith,' the man said. 'I'm here to take you somewhere safe.'
'What do you mean? What's not safe about here?'
'Someone has threatened your mother.'
'Who?' Terence asked.
'Someone dangerous. We have to get both of you out of harm's way, immediately.'
Terence looked from Mum to Smith and back again. Maybe this was a prank. Maybe Smith was an old friend of Mum's who liked practical jokes.
'You'll need to pack a bag,' Smith said. 'It's a long drive. One change of clothes will do, but make sure it's warm. We leave in ten minutes.'
'Ten minutes? But—'
'Just clothes. Leave everything else behind.'
Terence's phone buzzed. He checked the screen— it was a text from Rebecca.
'Don't respond to that, whatever it is,' Smith said. 'You'll have to leave your phone with me. Viper could be tracking it.'
'Who is Viper?'
'Just do as he says,' Mum told Terence, her voice wobbling. 'I'll explain on the way. But everything will be OK, I promise.'
Smith held out his hand for the phone.
Terence reluctantly gave it to him. 'When are we coming back?' he asked.
No-one answered his question, and that gave him a very bad feeling.
'Will we be here when Dad comes back?' Dad wasn't supposed to be flying home until Friday night.
'Your father is going to meet us there.' Mum glanced at Smith, who nodded.
'Meet us where?'
'Somewhere safe.'
'But when are we coming back?' Terence asked again.
'When it's safe,' Smith said. 'One more thing.' He slid one of the manila folders across the table. 'Pack this into your bag. There's no time to go through it now. You'll need to memorise the contents while we're on the road.'
Terence took the folder, feeling sick. Memorise? This was like a mashup of an exam, a TV show and a bad dream.
'Go,' Mum said. 'Pack your bag. Quick.'
Terence went back to his bedroom, more confused than ever. He emptied out his schoolbag and opened the closet. He grabbed some comfortable pants, a hoodie and his favourite T-shirt from the pile. He was leaving several other favourite T-shirts on the pile, and he had the sudden terrible feeling that he would never see them again.
And what about Sir Ramington? Could he take the robot with him?
Terence stuffed the clothes into the bag. He was about to put the manila folder in, too, when he hesitated. They were in a hurry. But he was scared. He needed to know what was going on.
He opened the folder.
Inside he found a few pictures of himself. School photos, a mugshot from his student ID card and some pictures from last Christmas. But the mugshot had a different boy's details underneath. A different mobile number. A different email. An address in a town he'd never heard of: Kelton.
And a different name: DOUGLAS HENNESSEY.
EXPOSURE
Doug took Jarli and Bess to a bridge which crossed Kelton Creek, and then led them down a bumpy grass slope to the darkness beneath the underpass. Bess rode the bike with him. Jarli was on foot, struggling for breath.
The space under the bridge smelled like earth and damp concrete. It was low enough that Jarli had to stoop. Rather than providing shelter from the wind, the bridge seemed to focus it, blasting Jarli with a non-stop wall of cold. The trickling of the creek echoed off concrete walls stained with unreadable graffiti. A pile of broken pallets and flattened cardboard stood nearby.
'OK,' Doug said, climbing off the bike. 'Viper has no reason to look for us here. The bridge will hide us from drones and satellites. We'll be safe, for a while.'
'From Viper, maybe.' Bess hugged herself, teeth chattering. 'I give it about two hours before we freeze to death.'
Doug lifted one of the broken pallets, revealing a round hole in the wall of the underpass. It was just wide enough for a person to crawl into.
Jarli stared. He and his family had lived here forever. He could draw a detailed map of Kelton, even blindfolded. It was surreal to find a place he'd never noticed before.
'Bilbo Baggins!' Doug called.
His voice bounced away through the tunnel. There was no response.
Jarli and Bess looked at one another.
'That was a password,' Doug said gloomily. 'When I first moved to Kelton with Mum and Dad, we didn't entirely trust the police. Viper can get to anyone. So we secretly rented a storage unit and filled it with supplies in case something happened and we needed to move again.'
'Something like a plane crash?' Jarli asked.
'Not what we expected, but yeah,' Doug said. 'Unfortunately, the only storage facility in Kelton was too far from the house the Federal Police gave us. We needed a meeting place. Somewhere we could hide until nightfall without anyone finding us.' He gestured at the hole in the wall. 'This old mining tunnel was the best we could find. Come on.'
He crawled into the hole. After a moment's hesitation, Jarli followed.
The hole opened out to a long chamber with a lumpy stone floor and a low ceiling. It wasn't really a tunnel anymore—the far end had collapsed. Boulders and dirt blocked it off from the other mining tunnels under Kelton. Moss grew in the cracks.
Doug looked around hopefully. But other than a couple of cardboard boxes in the corner, Jarli couldn't see any sign that anyone had been hiding out here.
Bess tossed her crutches through the hole and crawled into the chamber after them. 'Wow, nice place you have here,' she said.
Doug ignored this. 'What were you guys doing at the crash site?'
'Looking for part of Bess's crutches,' Jarli said, before Bess could shush him.
'Oh.' Doug's gaze settled on the slot where the missing bolt was supposed to be. 'Can I see that?'
Bess's eyes narrowed. 'Why?'
'Maybe I can fix it.'
'I doubt it.' But she handed the crutch over.
Doug squinted at the hole in the side. Then he tore a strip of cardboard off the nearest box, rolled it into a tube and packed it in.
'If it could be fixed that way, I would have done it myself,' Bess said. 'Cardboard won't be strong enough.'
'I know. I'm just trying to work out the shape.' Doug pulled the cardboard back out and examined it carefully.
'Are you going to tell us what's going on?' Jarli asked.
Doug opened his mouth, and then hesitated. 'Turn your phone off first,' he said.
Bess raised an eyebrow. 'So you can lie?'
'So no-one else can listen in. For all I know, your phones have been hacked.'
Jarli's phone didn't beep. Doug was right—any phone with an internet connection could be used as a recording or listening device.
'I promise I will tell you the truth,' Doug added.
Jarli's phone didn't beep, so he turned it off. So did Bess.
'OK,' Doug said. 'So, you already know that Doug Hennessey isn't my real name.'
'We do?' Bess said.
Jarli nodded. 'When he told the firefighter his name, my app said he was lying.'
'I knew it,' Doug said bitterly. 'Your app put my whole family in danger. It was only a matter of time before someone found out.'
'Found what out?' Bess said. 'What's going on?'
Ja
rli had already figured it out. 'He's in witness protection,' he said. 'Aren't you?'
Doug nodded. He broke a piece of wood off one of the pallets. 'I won't tell you my real name, or where I really come from. If you don't know, then you don't have to keep it a secret. No-one can keep a secret anymore, thanks to you.'
'Yeah, yeah,' Bess said. 'We get it: you're mad at Jarli. Get to the point. Why are you in witness protection? What did you do?'
'I didn't do anything. The cops sent me here because of my mum. She used to work for Magnotech.'
'The magnet company?' Jarli asked. He knew about Magnotech because they had a factory just north of town, and they had released an unintentionally funny television ad. Jarli and his friends had spent days laughing at it.
Bess did an impression of the guy from the ad: 'We're magnanimous!'
'That's them,' Doug said. 'But they don't just manufacture fridge magnets and door latches. They also make high-end, experimental magnets. The kind they use in bullet trains and MRI scanners. Anyway, Mum worked in one of their offices interstate. It was her job to schedule meetings between buyers, sales reps and engineers in various countries.' As Doug talked, he pulled a pocket-knife out of the cardboard box and started hacking away parts of the broken A pile of formed at his feet.
'Viper contacted Magnotech via email,' Doug continued. 'With a false name. He wanted them to design some kind of magnetic laser device. He requested a particular engineer, who built a prototype. Viper picked it up from one of the factories. A few days after the job was finished, the engineer turned up dead.'
The wind howled like ghosts outside.
'How?' Bess asked.
'Officially it was a heart attack.'
'And unofficially?'
'The police found an RFID chip embedded in his hand. It's the same kind of chip they put in credit cards, phones, whatever. Most engineers at Magnotech get one implanted so they can prove their identity when working on secret projects. It's a kind of ID that no-one can steal.'
Jarli winced. He wanted to work in the tech industry someday. But he didn't like the idea of his boss implanting something under his skin.
'This particular chip,' Doug continued, 'wasn't the same as the ones the other employees had. There was a fluid capsule built in. The police thought it might have been used to poison him.'
The hairs stood up on the back of Jarli's neck. 'You think Viper implanted a poison capsule in the engineer's hand? And then triggered it once the prototype of the device was finished?'
Doug nodded. 'Covering his tracks. He must have someone else working at the company who swapped the chips the last time the engineer got his implant replaced. The police said that another one of Viper's enemies died the same way soon after. That was how they guessed it was him.'
'What does this have to do with your mum?' Bess asked.
'She set up the meetings between Viper and the engineer. So she was the only person left alive who knew for sure where Viper had been, and when. The police thought that was enough to make her a target.'
Bess wrapped the coat more tightly around herself. 'So what did the police do?'
Doug kept his eyes on the knife in his hands. 'They took away our names and gave us new ones. My dad had to quit his job. He was mad about that, I think. I never got the chance to say goodbye to any of my friends. It's been a year since then. I don't know what they think happened to me.'
Doug looked away, and Jarli thought he might have been trying not to cry.
'The cops sent us to the middle of nowhere so we'd be safe while they investigated,' Doug continued. 'And then we heard nothing. For a year. I was starting to think I'd never get to go back.'
Jarli didn't like hearing his home town referred to as nowhere. 'Does your mum still work for Magnotech?' he asked. 'At the factory in Kelton?'
'No, she works in the mayor's office. Why?'
'Just wondering.' It seemed like a weird coincidence that the police had moved Doug's family to a town which had a Magnotech factory. But it was a big company. Jarli supposed they had buildings in a lot of places.
'And then a plane crashed into your new house?' he asked.
'Right. We would all be dead right now if Mum hadn't been asked to stay back late at her new job. That meant Dad had to catch the bus home from work, and I had to walk home from school. When I got back, my whole house was gone. All my books, my game console, my robots . . .' His voice was flat. 'For the second time in a year, I lost everything.'
'You don't think it's just a coincidence?' Jarli asked hopefully. He didn't want to believe that Viper was still active.
Doug glared at him. 'Are you an idiot? The plane was empty. There were no passengers. The pilot set a course for my house and then bailed out.'
'There must be a less obvious way of killing someone,' Bess said.
'I think Viper wanted it to be obvious. He wanted news coverage. He was showing off. Saying, "This is how easily I can find the people who cross me."'
'How do you know Viper is tracking police Communications?' Jarli asked.
'No-one else knew who we were. Our new address was top secret.'
'Better stop blaming Jarli, then,' Bess said. 'If the police leaked your location, then it's nothing to do with the app.'
Doug opened his mouth, then closed it again.
'If you can't go to the police,' Jarli asked finally, 'what are you going to do?'
Doug wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'I came straight here after the crash. A few hours later Mum and Dad still hadn't shown up, so I went back to the house to look for them. They weren't there, so they must still be on their way here. I just have to wait.'
Jarli and Bess looked at each other. That sounded like wishful thinking. If Doug's parents were coming, they would have been here by now.
'You mentioned a storage locker,' Bess said. 'Maybe they went straight there.'
'No. That wasn't the plan. We're supposed to meet here.'
'You can't just stay here, though. What will you eat?'
Doug opened the cardboard box and started rummaging through it. 'There's muesli bars somewhere in here.'
'You can't live off muesli bars,' Bess said. 'You'll get scurvy.'
'That's weird.' Doug stopped rummaging. 'I can't find them.'
'Have some of this.' Jarli dug the lasagne containers out of his bag and passed them to Doug. 'Still warm.'
'Thanks.' Before Doug opened the container, he held out the piece of wood he had been carving. Jarli realised it was the same shape as the missing bolt from the crutch.
Bess took it, frowning. 'That's . . . amazing,' she said finally.
'Don't thank me yet. It might not work.'
Bess pushed the bolt into the hole. It looked a bit stiff, but it fit. She leaned on her crutch, and it held.
'Wow,' she said. 'Thank you.'
Doug shrugged and started eating the lasagne. He didn't have any plates or cutlery, so he ate directly out of the container with his dirty hands. He looked like a stray animal.
'Excuse us,' Bess said, and dragged Jarli back over to the entrance.
Doug barely seemed to hear.
'Are you buying this?' Bess whispered when they were out of earshot.
Jarli shrugged. 'I don't see a reason for him to lie.'
'You never see a reason to lie,' Bess said. Jarli's bluntness sometimes got him into trouble. 'If he's telling the truth, then where are his parents? They've had plenty of time to come here.'
'Maybe they did,' Jarli said. 'Maybe they ate the muesli bars while they were waiting . . . and then Viper found them.'
They both looked back at Doug, hunched and dirty in the underpass. He did look like an orphan.
'How about we look for the pilot?' Jarli suggested.
Bess's eyebrows shot up. 'The pilot who tried to kill Doug?'
'Exactly. If she was working for Viper, she might know his real name or what he looks like. We could follow her. See where she goes, who she meets.'
'How would we even find her?'
'I know what she looks like,' Jarli said. 'I saw her on TV. And I know where her parachute was. Plus I have an app which I think will help.'
'No offence, but your apps sometimes did more harm than good.'
'We could listen to any calls she makes,' Jarli pressed. 'In fact, we could steal her phone and give it to the police.'
'If Doug's right, Viper's monitoring pólice Communications.'
'A private investigator then.' Jarli doubted there was one in Kelton, but maybe an out-of-towner could do the job. 'They could use the pilot's call log and message history to identify Viper, publicly. Doug gets to go home to whatever city he came from. Boom. Done.'
'Surely the pilot would have deleted anything incriminating,' Bess said.
'There are always traces. It's hard to delete stuff off a phone permanently.'
'You remember that Doug's a jerk, right? It's not your job to help him.'
It's not about who he is, Jarli thought. It's about who I am.
TAKE COVER
An hour later, Jarli and Doug were both on Jarli's bike, bumping down a dirt road towards the place where Jarli had seen the parachute. They couldn't afford to wait for daylight. Every second let the pilot get further away.
Convincing Doug hadn't been as hard as Jarli expected. For some reason, the idea of spending the night in a freezing overpass must not have appealed to him much. Not that hiking through the bush in the dark was much better.
Bess couldn't come with them. Her crutches would make a hard job impossible. So they had dropped her off at her place on the way. Her job was to track down a private investigator who could help them.
Jarli sent a text to Mum.
He couldn't tell her the truth. She wouldn't want him wandering around at night, especially not with Doug. Jarli was pretty sure she wouldn't suspect anything, but he could feel the net of lies tightening around him anyway.
The wind blustered against Jarli's face. Kelton whooshed past, as still and quiet as a cemetery. The full moon looked down on them like a spotlight, somehow making the rest of the world darker. It was like being in a play—the stage lights making the seats invisible. Jarli had turned his phone back on and strapped it to the handlebars so he could use it as a torch and a GPS.