No Survivors

by Jack Heath

  'You have to tell us where you are and what you're doing,' Mum added. 'Is that so much to ask?

  Jarli changed the subject. 'The police at the house—did you get their names?'

  'No. There was just one man. He asked me to call you. Then he hung up on you when you started talking about Viper.'

  Jarli wondered why Scanner had done that. Maybe he had thought Jarli was about to blow his cover, and he hadn't wanted to involve Mum.

  'Then he left, right?'

  Mum nodded. 'Pretty much straight away.'

  Because Viper had ordered him to plant a bomb. Even after Scanner had rescued him from the liquid nitrogen, Jarli still wondered if he was one of the good guys.

  'I'm sorry, Mum,' Jarli said. 'I was just trying to do the right thing.'

  'Well, I'm glad you're OK,' Mum said, still in her almost-angry voice. 'Speaking of police, there are two outside. They arrived when you were unconscious. But you don't have to talk to them if you're not up to it.'

  'Have they talked to Ter—I mean, to Doug?' Jarli asked.

  Mum hesitated.

  'What?' Jarli said. 'Is Doug OK?'

  'We don't know,' Mum said. 'He's missing.'

  GOOD COP BAD COP

  'So you can't think of anywhere Doug might have gone?' Constable Blanco asked.

  Jarli shook his head. It was like he'd travelled back in time. Again, the police wanted to know where Doug was and, again, he had no idea.

  'Answer out loud, please,' Blanco said.

  She and Frink were sitting by Jarli's hospital bed, phones out. Using Truth Premium, hoping to catch him in a lie. Their uniforms were impeccable, and neither of them looked tired, even though they had been chasing bad guys through the bush late last night. It was like they didn't need sleep. Maybe they were robots.

  Had the bush been last night or the night before? Jarli was struggling to keep track.

  'I don't know where Doug might be,' he said. 'I thought he was going to stay in the factory and wait for you guys.'

  The phones didn't beep. The police looked disappointed.

  'Well, he didn't,' Frink said. 'I found you unconscious in an empty corridor.'

  'And after Constable Frink brought you out,' Blanco added, 'I searched the whole factory, top to bottom. Then the Federal Police turned up, and they searched it too. Doug wasn't there.'

  Jarli guessed that Doug must have fled, just like after the plane crash. Maybe he thought he would be charged with breaking and entering. But where could he have run to? Back to the underpass?

  'You want to talk about what you were doing there?' Frink asked.

  'No,' Jarli said.

  'We also found a bomb,' Blanco added. 'Big enough to destroy a city block. You want to talk about that?'

  'I found it,' Jarli said, 'and dropped it into some liquid nitrogen to stop it from going off.'

  'How did you know that would work?'

  'I didn't. But it works in video games.'

  No beeps from the phones, which seemed to shock both cops.

  'You're lucky to be alive,' Blanco said.

  'So I've heard,' Jarli said.

  'We also found a whole heap of very dangerous tech,' Frink put in. 'Devices which could be used to bring down a plane.'

  'Nothing to do with me,' Jarli said.

  'One of them was missing,' Blanco said.

  Jarli hesitated. 'What do you mean?'

  'I pulled the factory inventory,' Blanco said. 'There were eighteen devices at various stages of completion when the factory closed that day. We only found seventeen.'

  'Yeah, one was destroyed at the crash site,' Jarli said.

  'No,' Blanco said. 'That device was recorded as part of a previous sale. We're talking about a brand new one, stolen today. It's possible that whoever planted the bomb was trying to hide the theft.'

  'And the only person we're sure was there,' Frink added, 'is you.'

  'Right,' Jarli said slowly. 'Let me make sure I understand. You think I broke into the Magnotech factory to steal a laser weapon. Then I planted a bomb, hoping to destroy the factory so no-one would know the weapon was missing. Then I defused the bomb for some reason?'

  'Maybe because you were trapped in the building,' Frink put in.

  'Uh-huh. Then I dunked myself in liquid nitrogen and blacked out.'

  'We have no proof that you were genuinely unconscious.'

  'If I couldn't get out of the building,' Jarli asked, 'why is the device missing? Where did I hide it?'

  Blanco and Frink looked at each other.

  'You're a famous programmer,' Frink said finally. 'Maybe you reprogrammed one of the security drones to take it away.'

  Jarli laughed. 'That's awesome. You should be writing movies. OK, so how did I make the bomb?'

  'Your search history will tell us that,' Blanco said. 'If you knew how to defuse it, knowing how to make it isn't much of a leap.'

  'Right. And why did I even want this magnetic weapon in the first place?'

  'It's worth a lot of money,' Frink said. 'To the right buyer.'

  'Well, let me put your mind at ease,' Jarli said. 'Make sure your phones are on: I didn't do any of that.'

  Neither of the phones beeped.

  'You programmed the app,' Blanco said. 'You could have made your own voice immune somehow.'

  'That seems a bit far-fetched,' Frink muttered, but Blanco silenced him with a glare.

  This made Jarli realise what was going on. They didn't really think he was guilty. They just wanted him to think they did, so he would spill the beans about what really happened.

  'OK, fine,' he said. 'Here's the truth.'

  He told them almost everything—that he and Doug had broken into the factory looking for evidence against Viper, that they had found the bomb on their way out and that they had used one of the magnetic weapons to recover the keys. If this information somehow found its way to Viper, no harm done—Viper knew it already.

  But he left out the return of Scanner. Hopefully that was the right decision. Fortunately, neither of the two police seemed to suspect that anyone else had been involved.

  'Did you get the evidence you came for?' Frink asked.

  Jarli replied carefully. 'I assume it was on the computer in the control room. But there were way too many video files to watch, and I didn't have a flash drive big enough to download them all.'

  'Did you download any of them?'

  'No.' True—Jarli had only uploaded. 'But you guys can get the videos off the computer, right?'

  'Maybe,' Blanco said. 'Our tech people have had a look at it. Apparently, some kind of virus deleted everything.'

  Whoops. Jarli swallowed. That wasn't what the virus he'd installed was supposed to do. Had there been a bug in the code?

  'But just because it was deleted doesn't mean it's gone forever,' Blanco continued. 'Our team are working on it.'

  She didn't mention the burner phone Jarli had plugged in. Maybe she didn't realise it was his, and didn't want him to know they'd found it. 'Are you going to arrest me for breaking into Magnotech?' Jarli asked, trying not to sound scared.

  'What do you think, Constable Frink?' Blanco asked.

  'I think the department's priorities lie elsewhere, Constable Blanco,' Frink said.

  DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

  For two days, nothing much happened.

  Kirstie posted a theory on social media that Jarli had been abducted by aliens, and that his sudden frostbite could only have come from exposure to the vacuum of space. She got some enthusiastic comments from some very sketchy people, and then Mum and Dad made her delete the post.

  The Federal Police who put the town into lockdown had left. Jarli guessed that they had given up the search, for now. Viper's trail had gone cold.

  Bess came back from Warbydale farm. No point hiding anymore, since the people looking for her had turned out to be the good guys. She said she'd had a good time, and was now thinking of buying a farm when she grew up. Apparently she'd befriended a cow.


  Jarli went back to school. The burns itched, and he had to move carefully to avoid tearing the new skin. He was excused from PE, but not his other classes. The bandages and Kirstie's outrageous rumours about his absence made him a homeroom celebrity for about two hours. Then two popular kids, Tammy and Sam, broke up. After that, everyone forgot all about him.

  Hiding had been scary, but not-hiding was even worse. Jarli kept looking over his shoulder, wondering if Viper would send someone to attack him. But the police had told him that there was nothing to worry about. He didn't know enough to be a target.

  Doug was still missing. Jarli and Bess had checked the underpass and the storage unit. No sign of him.

  Now Jarli was in his bedroom, hiding from Mum and Dad. Their anger had bubbled away, leaving only worry, which was almost worse. They had become completely overprotective, fussing over his burns and watching him like eagles.

  Jarli stared at his computer screen, watching video files. Even at 4X speed, they were boring enough to cause brain damage. Strangers entered Magnotech's foyer and left again. Cars pulled in and out of the car park. There was no sound, and the footage was just blurry enough to hurt his eyes.

  Jarli still couldn't figure out why the virus had deleted everything on the control room computer. That shouldn't have happened. But his plan had worked. The virus had transmitted hundreds of hours of footage to the server in India. Hacking it was easier than Jarli had expected. It used a proxy server, but Jarli could break through by overloading the proxy with requests from a shell script. And they had a tough firewall, but the OUROBOROS virus was permitted to bypass it in order to deliver stolen files to them.

  So Jarli had modified the virus. He'd changed the destination IP address so the files would be sent to his computer, rather than to India. Then he'd sent the virus back to them. The Indian hacker had been burgled by his own virus.

  Jarli was thrilled with his own cleverness, but he couldn't tell anyone about it. What he had done was probably illegal.

  The only problem was that Jarli's hard drive had quickly filled up with millions of other people's stolen files. It had taken him a while to work out how to automatically delete everything which wasn't a security video from Magnotech.

  A knock at his door.

  'Jarli,' Mum said. 'We're going out to buy Kirstie some new shoes. You want to come?'

  'No, thanks,' Jarli said, without looking away from the screen.

  'OK. Well, don't go anywhere until we come back.' Mum's footsteps padded away.

  After he heard the front door close, Jarli wondered if the invitation had been an olive branch. Maybe his mother was trying to say Jarli had been forgiven for lying and putting himself in danger. But it was too late now, and he had hours of lethally boring videos to watch.

  Jarli couldn't give up. He figured Doug wouldn't come out of hiding until Viper had been identified. And Dana Reynolds said she'd run out of leads. Jarli sent her the videos, but he didn't hold out much hope.

  The problem was that they didn't know what they were looking for. Jarli had hoped to spot a man with burns on his face, or a snake tattoo or something. But the resolution was too low. Any of the people walking in and out of Magnotech could have been Viper. And Doug's parents were still missing. Without Doug's mother to provide the exact date when the RCG device was meant to get picked up, Jarli was at a DEAD END.

  The doorbell rang.

  His family must have forgotten something. It was like the universe was giving him another chance to go with them.

  He paused the video and switched off the screen so they wouldn't see what he had been doing. Then he limped over to answer the door, trying not to aggravate his burns.

  It wasn't Mum and Dad, which made sense. They wouldn't ring their own doorbell. It was Constable Frink, with a sports bag under one arm and a bundle of folders under the other. No sign of a car, or Blanco.

  Jarli,' he said. 'Are your mum and dad home?'

  'You just missed them,' Jarli said. 'What do you want?'

  'I know who Viper is,' Frink said. He patted the folders. 'I've brought some photos.'

  This announcement was so astounding that Jarli half expected his phone to beep. But it didn't. Frink was telling the truth.

  'Can I come in?' Frink asked.

  Jarli nodded and stood aside.

  Frink entered the house, looking around at the framed family photos and open doorways. He seemed anxious. 'Viper's identity is a dangerous thing to know,' he said, placing the manila folders on the dinner table. 'I have to ask—are you sure you want to be part of this?'

  'Yes,' Jarli said. He wasn't going to give up now. And it wasn't like not knowing had kept him safe.

  'Is there anyone else in the house?' Frink asked. 'Can anyone hear us?'

  'No.'

  'Alright.' Frink gestured to the folders and stepped back. 'Take a look.'

  Jarli sat down at the table. He opened the first folder and found a bundle of blurry photos, printed on cheap paper. They showed several people of various ages and ethnicities, engaged in various activities. None of the pictures were labelled.

  'Which one is—' Jarli began. Then there was a sharp pain at the back of his neck, like a bee sting.

  'Ow!' he said. He twisted his head to see what had hurt him.

  Frink was holding a syringe.

  'What . . .' Jarli began. 'I don't . . .'

  Frink put a cap on the syringe and pocketed it. Then he stood back, glancing at his watch.

  Jarli tried to stand up, but he couldn't. Something cold was spreading out from his neck across his shoulders and down his spine. He couldn't move his arms or legs. It felt as though he was turning to stone.

  'Don't fight it,' Frink said. 'That never works.'

  Jarli tried to swing a fist at Frink, but he couldn't even close his hand. His vision blurred.

  The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Frink laying a huge sheet of plastic on the floor.

  PRISONER TRANSPORT

  Jarli dreamed he was in the cockpit of a plane. There was no pilot. Through the windscreen, he could see the ground. The plane was falling out of the sky. He could feel it getting faster and faster. His organs were swimming around in his chest. Below was Doug's house, getting bigger and bigger . . .

  'Argh!' Jarli woke to find himself in pitch blackness. He was tangled up in a blanket—no, a plastic sheet. It covered his whole body, including his face. It had been tied around him with nylon ropes. There was a rumbling sound in the air, and the floor was vibrating beneath him.

  Ignoring the pain from his burns, Jarli writhed like a caterpillar in a cocoon. The ropes weren't tight enough to hold him now that he was conscious. He pulled them down over his hips and wriggled out of the sheet, heart pounding.

  Then he remembered: Frink.

  Jarli was in a vehicle; that much was clear. A van. Maybe the same one he had seen at the crash site.

  One of the two hazmat guys, Scanner, had been the man with the dark circles around his eyes. Could the other one, Bagger, have been Frink? Yes—he was about the right size, and had the same colour hair.

  Jarli crawled around the back of the van, eyes wide in the dark. His legs were too wobbly to stand up, and he couldn't see a single speck of light. A frightening thought struck him. What if it wasn't dark? What if the stuff Frink had used to knock him out had blinded him?

  He checked his pockets for his phone. Gone. He felt his wrist. His smart watch was missing, too.

  If Frink was Viper, that explained how Cobra, Viper's assassin, had vanished from his police cell. It also revealed how Viper always seemed to be one step ahead of the investigation. It even explained why Priya had vanished. Doug thought she had gone to look for the police. Maybe Frink was the first police officer she had found.

  Then what had he done with her? And with Doug's parents? A cold feeling spread through Jarli's belly.

  Blanco's voice echoed through his mind. After Constable Frink brought you out, I searched the whole factory, top to bottom
. Then the Federal Police turned up, and they searched it too. Doug wasn't there.

  Doug hadn't fled. Frink had already caught him. Maybe he'd thrown Doug into the liquid nitrogen, or sealed him in one of the crates in the garage.

  For a moment, Jarli's terror was washed away by grief. Doug, the friendless boy who just wanted to make robots, had left his whole world behind. He had spent a year pretending to be someone else, trusting no-one. And that still hadn't been enough to save him from Viper.

  Wherever Frink was taking him, Jarli didn't want to go there. Viper was willing to kill people who knew too much. That included Jarli, now. Blind or not, he had to get out of this van before it reached its destination.

  He crawled over to what felt like the back door, and fumbled around until he felt the handle. Then he hesitated. The engine was still rumbling, the floor still shaking. The van felt like it was going fast. If Jarli jumped out, the gravel would rip his bandages to shreds and destroy the tender new skin underneath.

  He grabbed the plastic sheeting and wrapped it tightly around himself. It wouldn't provide much cushioning when he hit the road. But it might just stop him from losing too much skin to run away.

  A factoid from history class surfaced in his mind: when the nuclear bomb destroyed Nagasaki, some people had survived just because an extra shirt protected them from the radiation.

  Jarli took a deep breath and reached for the handle.

  Then the van started to slow down. It had arrived. He was too late.

  Jarli twisted the handle anyway.

  The door didn't open. Locked from outside.

  Brakes squeaking, the van stopped. Jarli lay back down in the blackness, still half-wrapped in the plastic. He found one end of the nylon rope, held it and rolled over, winding it around himself. Maybe he could convince Frink he was still unconscious.

  Footsteps crunched around the van. Jarli mummified himself in plastic and lay still just as the back door opened.

  Even through closed eyelids and the plastic sheeting, Jarli saw the daylight flood into the van. He wasn't blind! He had to stop himself from crying out with relief.