by Jack Heath
Dana's conspiracy-nut alarm was still ringing, but there was something else as well. That tingling in her toes. The sense that a good story was on the horizon.
'I have Priya Lekis here with me,' Jarli said. 'The pilot everyone's looking for.'
'Put her on,' Reynolds said.
IN PLAIN SIGHT
The soccer ball came out of nowhere and hit Jarli in the side of the head. He toppled over like he'd been struck by a meteorite. Other kids were already laughing by the time his face hit the grass.
'Jarli,' Mr Hayes yelled. 'What are you doing?'
Jarli rolled o ver. The sunshine dazzled him. 'Headbutting the ball, sir,' he groaned. 'Just like in the world cup.'
'Well, next time use your forehead.' Hayes pulled Jarli to his feet. 'You don't want to wind up with a concussion.'
His classmates were smirking. Jarli was too tired to care. He had read somewhere that being awake produced toxic proteins which made it hard to think; only sleep could wash them away. He could almost feel the toxins jammed between his brain cells. He would have given anything to go back to bed. Lunch break started in ten minutes. Maybe he could sneak into the library for a nap in one of the bean bags.
He couldn't go home. The bad guys knew his face, but they didn't know his name. When Dana Reynolds had realised he was serious and ditched the fake-nice voice, she had said that Doug and the pilot should stay hidden, but Jarli and Bess should act like everything was normal. Viper would be looking for kids who didn't turn up to school today.
Also, Jarli still didn't want to get his parents involved.
Reynolds and her team were trying to find Steven Fussell, the passenger who hadn't boarded the flight. They were also trying to learn more about the magnetic device Viper might have used. Meanwhile, Jarli was at school, pretending everything was fine.
His act wasn't fooling everyone. Anya ran over. She stopped next to Jarli, under the pretext of a hamstring stretch.
'Jarli,' she said quietly. 'You OK?'
Anya was the quiet, watchful daughter of Russian immigrants. Her main sport was boxing, but she seemed equally good at soccer—she'd scored two of the three goals in this game so far. Last time Viper had come after Jarli, Anya had been a huge help. Jarli trusted her.
'The ball didn't hit me that hard,' he replied.
'I don't mean the ball,' Anya said. 'You have been acting strangely all morning.'
Jarli looked around. He kept his voice low. 'I can't talk about it.'
Anya nodded slowly. 'Can I help?'
'Thanks, but I don't think so.'
'Well, let me know if you change your mind.' Anya shifted her gaze, looking over Jarli's shoulder. 'Bess wants something.' Then she ran off after the ball.
Jarli turned. Bess was sitting by the sidelines, waving like a devoted mum. Her crutches lay on the grass beside her.
What? Jarli mouthed.
Bess pointed at the fence.
The ball rolled past Jarli. He realised a moment later that he probably should have kicked it.
'Wake up, Jarli,' someone shouted.
Yeah, he thought. Wake up, Jarli. Revealing how tired he was could be just as bad as not turning up.
He tried to jog after the crowd of kids surrounding the ball, but he lost his footing almost immediately. The collision with his head had left him dizzy, or maybe it was just exhaustion.
'Jarli,' Hayes said. 'You OK?'
Jarli looked up to reassure Hayes that he was fine. Then he saw what Bess had been pointing at through the fence. A POLICE VAN had pulled up near the school. Two men in dark suits and sunglasses were climbing out. One was bald. The other had curly brown hair. They looked like funeral directors, except maybe younger and fitter. Probably Federal Police, since the van had an interstate number plate.
The driver took off his sunnies, revealing dark circles around his eyes. Jarli recognised him. He had been one of the men in hazmat suits. The one with the metal-detector—Scanner.
The realisation hit Jarli like a blow to the chest. Doug had thought Viper was intercepting police communications. But the truth was even worse. Viper had a cop working for him!
The other man was bald. Last night, Jarli hadn't seen the second hazmat man's face, but he had seen his blond hair. So this wasn't him.
The two men walked towards the front of the school, out of sight.
'Jarli,' Hayes said again. He looked worried. 'Can you hear me?'
'What? Yeah.'
'I think you'd better go to the sick bay.'
'I'm not sick,' Jarli said. Act normal.
But this was the wrong thing to say. Hayes was always suspicious of kids who claimed to be sick or injured. He was alarmed when they claimed not to be.
Go,' he said. 'Let Nurse Eaton have a look at you.'
Bess was hobbling over. 'I'll take him.'
Hayes nodded. 'Good idea. Make sure he doesn't get lost.'
'Those guys are cops,' Bess whispered, as they hurried across the oval towards the gym.
'I know,' Jarli muttered.
'And one of them was at the crash site last night.'
'I know.'
'What are we gonna do?'
'Act normal, I guess,' Jarli said. 'They don't know who we are.'
'They know what we look like,' Bess said. 'Especially me.' She was the only girl at the school who used crutches to get around.
'Then we need somewhere to hide. I guess the sick bay will have to do.'
Nurse Maria Eaton shone a painfully bright torch in Jarli's face. His eyes watered. He idly wondered if he would look more honest now that she had basically blinded him. He had programmed his app to check pupil size, since liars tended to have dilated pupils.
'You remember your name?' Eaton asked.
'Jarli Durras.'
'You know what day it is?'
'Tuesday.'
Eaton switched off the torch. She scribbled some notes on Jarli's patient file, rolled her computer chair over to a chest of drawers and put the torch inside. The sick bay was so cramped that there was barely enough room for the chair to fit between the bed and her desk. There was no daylight. The only window was boarded up, because Jarli had smashed it the last time he was here. He had been trying to escape from Viper's assassin, Cobra. He wondered how the nurse could spend all day in this dark, tiny room without going crazy.
'You're fine,' Eaton said. 'Was this just an excuse for you two to get out of class?'
Eaton had once been a surgeon in the army. Jarli suspected that anything less than a missing limb counted as 'fine'.
'No,' Bess said. 'Mr Hayes insisted. That ball hit Jarli hard.'
'Uh-huh. You feel OK, Jarli?'
'Pretty tired.' Jarli looked longingly at the narrow bed. 'But I don't think that's a symptom. I stayed up kind of late last night.'
'Sounds like cause and effect to me,' Eaton said. Jarli had thought nurses were supposed to be gentle, but Eaton was always blunt. Her trust rating on Truth Premium was 100 per cent.
The phone buzzed on Eaton's desk. She picked it up. 'Yes?'
She listened for a moment. Then she looked at Jarli.
'No,' she said. 'Anything else?'
A pause. Jarli could hear the neon lights humming.
'OK. Thanks.' She hung up.
'What's going on?' Jarli asked.
Eaton hesitated for a moment, as though she wasn't sure how much to tell him. Then she said, 'Apparently someone at reception wanted to know if any students have gone home sick today.'
Goosebumps grew on Jarli's arms.
'Who's asking?' he asked.
'The receptionist didn't say. Why?'
Jarli just shrugged. He felt Eaton's eyes on him like a laser.
'You two know anything about this?' she asked.
'Us? No,' Jarli said.
'Of course not,' Bess added.
Eaton's phone buzzed. LIE
'I made that app,' Jarli said. 'It's not as reliable as everyone thinks.'
The phone buzzed again. LIE
'See?' Bess said.
Eaton sat back down. Her computer chair squeaked. 'OK,' she said. 'Who's at reception, and what are they looking for?'
Jarli and Bess looked at each other.
'Are you in some kind of trouble?' Eaton asked. 'Have you done something you shouldn't have?'
'We can't talk about it,' Bess said. 'But we haven't done anything wrong.'
'Next they might ask the receptionist if anyone is still at school but not in class. That will lead them here. I could get another cali any minute.'
'Why would the school tell them?'
'Why indeed?' Eaton looked Jarli up and down. 'They must be someone official. If that's the case, I'll need to tell them what I know.'
Eaton's phone rang again. She and Jarli both looked at it.
'Am I going to answer that?' she asked.
'Please, don't,' Jarli pleaded. 'We're in danger. Some bad people are looking for us.'
'It's to do with the plane crash yesterday,' Bess added.
'We know some stuff about it, and they don't want anyone else to find out.'
Eaton picked up her phone.
Jarli stood up. He and Bess needed to leave.
But the nurse rejected the call and held the phone up to Jarli's face. 'Say that again,' she said.
Jarli spoke quickly, 'Some bad guys are looking for us because we know things about the plane crash yesterday. They'll hurt us if they find us.'
Eaton looked at the screen and saw that Jarli wasn't lying.
'Interesting,' she said finally. 'How much do you know about these guys?'
'Not much. But—'
Someone knocked on the sick-bay door.
SECRET TUNNEL
Jarli felt the blood drain out of his face. Bess's knuckles were white around her crutches.
The knock came again. Louder. And a voice: 'Miss Eaton?'
Jarli looked at the boarded-up window. Prying the boards off would be too loud and too slow. They couldn't get out that way.
Eaton made some hand signals at Jarli and Bess. They both shook their heads. Neither of them knew any sign language.
The doorhandle turned, but the door didn't open. It was locked.
Eaton put a finger to her lips.
Jarli nodded. He knew that sign.
The nurse crouched down and crawled under the bed. Jarli stared. Was her plan to hide from the bad guys? If they broke in, under the bed was the first place they would check. And there wasn't room for all three of them under there.
'Maybe the kids have gone back to class already,' said a man outside the door.
'Maybe not,' another man replied. 'We need a key for this door.'
There was a faint clunk from beneath the bed. Jarli bent down and saw an air vent under there. Eaton had removed the grill, revealing a dark metal tunnel. It looked just big enough to crawl through.
Eaton beckoned to Bess and pointed to the tunnel.
Bess's eyes widened.
Jarli swallowed. The tunnel was very narrow. What if he got stuck?
But those guys sounded like they were coming in soon. And there was no other way out. Bess was already wriggling into the tunnel, one hand holding the crutches out in front. Jarli watched her legs disappear. Eaton gestured for him to go next.
Jarli crawled under the bed and squeezed into the vent. The STEEL WALLS pressed against his shoulders, and the ceiling rubbed the back of his head. Every instinct screamed to go back.
He went forwards instead, wriggling like an earthworm. His body blocked the light from the sick bay. He couldn't see anything other than Bess's dirty shoes up ahead. How long was the vent?
There was a muffled clanking sound from behind him, and he realised that Eaton had crawled into the vent too. Now he really couldn't go back. The thought made it hard to breathe.
A hand grabbed his ankle, and he jolted.
'Stop,' Eaton whispered.
Jarli froze. So did Bess.
Keys rattled. A door creaked. The men were in the sick bay.
Jarli stayed frozen, his heart in his mouth. Eaton's hand was like concrete around his ankle. He hoped she'd closed the grill behind her somehow.
'Not here,' one voice said.
'There'll be patient records,' the other replied. 'You check the computer, I'll try the filing cabinet.'
Rustling papers. Tapping keys.
'Password protected.'
'Never mind. I found it. Jarli Durras—possible concussion. Here's his address, phone number, treatment history . . .'
'Anything about the girl?'
'Not that I can see.'
'Try to phone Durras.'
Jarli quickly reached for his phone. It was hard to dig it out of his pocket in the confines of the vent, but he managed it. Unable to see the screen, he held the power button until he felt it vibrate and shut down.
'Did you hear something?' one of the voices said, quieter now.
'Yeah. Someone outside, maybe. Let's check it out.'
Footsteps scuffled away. The door closed. Silence.
'OK,' Eaton whispered. 'Keep moving.'
Bess started crawling again. Jarli followed.
Soon they found the other end of the vent. Jarli slithered out and uncoiled his body gratefully.
He couldn't see much in the dark, but the echoes told him that this was a small room with hard surfaces. It smelled ancient and undisturbed, like the cave in the bush last night.
'Where are we?' Bess whispered.
'It's left over from the mining days.' As Eaton emerged from the vent, she used her phone screen to cast some light across the room. An old hurricane lamp was mounted on a brick wall between two metal doors. Each door had two big padlocks—one with a combination, the other with a keyhole. The doors looked old and rusted, but the padlocks were shiny and new.
'If you don't want me to report this, I need you to tell me everything,' Eaton said. 'But first we have to get you as far away from the school as possible.'
Jarli was still staring at the doors. 'How did you find this place?'
'Rule number two in the army,' Eaton said. 'Find and protect all access points to home base.'
'What was rule number one?' Bess asked.
'Rule one was don't ask questions.' Eaton was already unlocking one of the doors. She had the key to one padlock and knew the combination to the other. She must have put them there.
'You're not in the army anymore,' Jarli said.
'They tell new recruits that the friends you make there will last forever,' Eaton said. 'Unfortunately, that's also true of enemies.'
The door opened with a squawk of old hinges. Beyond was a rectangle of blackness. As Jarli's eyes adjusted, he saw stone walls and a ceiling held up by wooden beams.
'I'll have to show you the way,' Eaton said. 'If you get lost down here, you'll never find your way out.'
Jarli gulped, and followed her into the blackness.
NIGHTMARES
Doug woke when a mosquito flew into his ear.
He yelped and slapped himself in the side of the head. It hurt, but the mosquito flew off. He wondered if it had bitten him already. As a kid he had read a book which featured a mosquito as big as a horse, chasing the main character through a forest. The scene had scared him so much that he was still frightened of mozzies, years later.
Doug sat up, rubbing his eyes. His face and hands were freezing. Birds were chattering and trees were rustling.
He hadn't intended to fall asleep. He was just so tired. After Jarli left, Doug and Priya had argued for most of the night—she still wanted to go to the police, and he still thought it was a bad idea. Eventually she had given up. Doug had been sitting down, then leaning on one elbow, then lying down. Priya had said she needed to go to the toilet and walked outside. Doug had closed his eyes, just for a second. Now suddenly the sun was up.
He'd been dreaming about his old house, from before he'd come to Kelton. In the dream, his parents had been put in witness protection without him. They had changed
their names and moved away, leaving him behind in an empty house. He was going through the stuff in their bedroom, searching for clues about what their new names might be, getting more and more frantic. Because Viper was coming, and Doug needed to be gone by the time he arrived.
And then there was a scratching sound at his parents' bedroom door. Viper was already inside the house—
And Doug woke up.
He had this nightmare often, but it had been especially vivid this time. It took him a minute to reassure himself that it had only been a dream. Then he turned to ask Priya if he'd missed anything important.
SHE WASN'T THERE.
Doug looked around. The cave was dark and empty. In the light of day, he could see that it was small, with no tunnels or other openings.
He crept over to the mouth of the cave and gazed out. There was no movement amongst the trees. No sign of Priya's black and white pilot uniform.
'Priya,' he hissed. His voice was still rough-edged from sleep. 'Are you there?'
The bush took his voice and gave nothing back.
He called out louder. 'Priya? Where are you?'
Insects hummed. Leaves rustled.
Doug took a deep breath. The bad guys haven't found her, he told himself. Because they would have taken me, too. So where is she?
Only one possibility remained. Priya had left. She had gone looking for the police because she trusted them more than two kids and a stranger on the phone who claimed to be a journalist.
Fair enough, Doug had to admit. But now he had a problem. Priya knew where he was. She would tell the cops. Then Viper would find him.
He had to move.
Doug took one last look around the cave to check that he hadn't left any traces behind. Then he trudged out into the trees.
He walked in a random direction, because he wasn't sure what he was looking for, exactly. Maybe another cave. Maybe a trail leading to a disused cabin, or a farm with a barn he could hide in. Maybe he should walk to his family's storage locker—it was on the edge of town, so he wouldn't have to go through Kelton to get there.
He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked. A twisted ankle could be disastrous. Can't be on the run if you can't run, he thought.