‘Thank goodness! I can’t wait to get back and see Jinx,’ I say, my smile broadening.
Mom and Tobias exchange a look.
‘What is it?’ I ask, crossing my arms over my stomach. I have a bad feeling about this.
‘Honey? I don’t know how to tell you . . .’
As she’s talking, it hits me in a rush.
Jinx is gone.
THE ELEVATOR RIDE UP TO our apartment seems interminable, stopping at almost every floor. Petal flutters around Mom’s head.
‘Petal, did you put the heating on?’ she asks.
>>The apartment is set to 21 degrees Celsius.
‘Lights on as well; I want it to be as welcoming as possible for when we get back.’
I know Mom is saying this for my benefit, reminding me that I’m home. But even the thought of being in my own bed, with all my things around me, doesn’t feel quite right. Because Jinx won’t be there. My companion. My best friend.
I miss having his cheeky voice in my head. Our telepathic conversations had become normal to me but were so not how other people communicated with their bakus. Jinx was special. He didn’t obey my commands, but he was always there when I needed him.
But now he’s gone.
On the ride home, Mom had filled me in a bit more about my hospital stay. The doctors weren’t able to find any sort of adequate explanation for my coma. All they knew was that whenever I woke up, something would pull me back into a deep sleep and affected my short-term memory.
In the meantime, they treated me for hypothermia, and the something seemed to pass on its own, with time. They said I’d powered my way through it.
It wasn’t a good enough explanation for Mom or for me. But what could we do?
Our apartment is small – two bedrooms, a bathroom and a cramped open-plan living room and kitchen – but it’s home. Even the view out over the city is comforting, grey as it is outside. I see that our little plastic Christmas tree has come out of the cupboard – although it’s not decorated yet. I bet Mom has been waiting for me.
It’s another stark reminder of how long I’ve been in hospital for. It’s almost Christmas.
We walk into the kitchen and Mom fills the kettle and puts it on the stove to boil. We don’t speak until there are two mugs of steaming hot English Breakfast tea in front of us, and we’re both perched on our preferred stools by the counter.
‘How are you feeling?’ Mom asks.
‘Better,’ I say, with a shrug. ‘A bit weak.’
She nods, then lets out a long sigh. ‘The doctor said you might – but that you’ll feel stronger soon. He reminded me that you weren’t in a normal coma – there was no permanent brain damage or lasting side effects, other than the memory loss. And hopefully that will come back too. I’m just glad to have you home.’
‘Me too,’ I say.
‘Are you feeling up for talking?’ she asks. Mom has her serious face on, the one I don’t see very often because, since it’s only the two of us, she is nicer to me than I deserve. She lets me spend all night in my basement locker, tinkering away. She indulges my hobbies. She lets me attend the school of my dreams even though it must bring up terrible memories for her about my dad, who left us when I was five.
And how do I repay her?
By being dishonest and not turning to her for help when I needed it, at the first sign of trouble. Then I get into so much trouble, I end up in hospital for a month.
How can I explain all this to her?
Still, I answer her question with a small nod.
‘Honey, you have to tell me everything that has happened,’ she says, her tone soft but firm, brokering no debate.
I open my mouth, but I have no idea how to begin. Plus, there’s something giant hanging over my head. I don’t know how much I can tell her.
I pick at a loose string on the edge of my sleeve. ‘When I started at Profectus, they made us sign an agreement that said we couldn’t discuss what happens at school with anyone outside it.’
Mom tuts at me, but follows it with a wry smile. ‘So, did you actually read that document before you signed it?’
That’s not what I expected her to say. The only sound coming out of my mouth is an unintelligible ‘Uhhh . . .’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then. Because if you had, you would have seen the clause that states how parents are exempt from that particular rule.’
My jaw drops. ‘What?’
Mom sighs, and Petal brings up the agreement with my signature on the bottom. Or rather, my fingerprint, processed through my baku.
‘See?’ she says, pointing at the line. Sure enough, the sentence reads that I could have told Mom what was going on at school all along. My guilt seems several magnitudes bigger. ‘Now, my little tinkerer. Tell me everything.’
I don’t need any more encouragement than that. The words come spilling out of me like water from a burst dam. I start with the fact that Profectus hadn’t given me money for a level 3 baku at all. I’d found Jinx – or the broken and mangled wreck of him – by the side of the railroad tracks. I’d spent all summer repairing him to full functionality. And then . . .
I remember what Jinx told me in the basement of Moncha HQ. He was the one who’d hacked into the system and orchestrated my acceptance into Profectus.
He really was no ordinary baku.
I tell Mom all of what I know.
She listens patiently, gasping and groaning at key points in the story, her eyebrows rising alarmingly high up her forehead when I tell her who was after Jinx: Eric Smith. The second most powerful person in the entire Moncha Corporation after Monica herself.
When I get to the part about Jinx running away from me yet again, I finally break down, my words merging together, almost indistinguishable. I still can’t remember much other than running through the hallways, and the frustration of losing my memory and Jinx is almost too much to bear. Before I know it, Mom wraps her arms around me and pulls me close.
‘You should have come to me,’ she whispers into my hair.
‘I know,’ I stutter back, my voice choked with tears.
‘You don’t have to tackle this on your own. Tomorrow, you and I will march into Moncha headquarters, demand an audience with Eric Smith, and ask him where Jinx is. Even if Moncha do own all the bakus, and even if Jinx is . . . different . . . they can’t just steal him away from you with no explanation. And with Jinx still missing, that’s the most obvious place to start looking.’
This time when I sob it’s out of relief – not sadness. Mom looks fierce, her blue eyes, so different to my dark ones, shining bright. I haven’t seen her this animated in years, and it ignites a spark deep inside my belly. Maybe things will be okay after all.
‘But will Eric Smith see you?’ I say through my sniffles.
Mom stiffens her shoulders. ‘He had better. He owes me.’
I raise an eyebrow, despite myself. ‘Owes you?’
‘You might be surprised to hear this, but once upon a time, your dad and I knew Eric Smith quite well.’
I gasp. Mom never talks about my dad. Not since he disappeared when I was five. I’ve never had a proper explanation – maybe it was a mental health breakdown, or stress, or he simply abandoned us. Talking about him hurt her so much, so I learned never to ask questions.
‘After your father . . . left, Eric was the one who got us this apartment and my job. Because the one thing he could never give me was an answer. I think he will take my call about Jinx.’
‘I . . . I hope so.’ I lower my head and my voice drops to a whisper. ‘I really miss that little baku, Mom.’
She touches her index finger to my chin. ‘You are so your father’s daughter.’ She pauses. ‘I know he’s no match for Jinx, but do you want your beetle baku back in the meantime?’ asks Mom. She disentangles herself from me, then walks over to a small box next to our television, where Slick is lying – inert.
She picks him up and brings him over to me, ready to be leashed and rechar
ged. I take him, seeing no other option. Sitting in my palm, I take a second to admire the engineering needed to create even a level 1 model scarab beetle baku. So much technology is hidden within his elegant greenish-purple carapace, a whole host of functions perfectly balanced within such a small package.
I plug him in to the leash at my ear, and he starts up with a tiny whirr-click.
>>Hello, Lacey.
I immediately detach him and throw him down on to the couch, my heart beating wildly.
‘Lacey, what’s wrong?’ Mom asks.
Bile rises in the back of my throat. Something happened, something that ended up with me lying in a puddle, getting soaked through with freezing water, leaving me with hypothermia and in hospital for a month with unexplained memory loss – and I have a feeling that Slick was involved.
But that’s impossible. Bakus can’t harm their owners.
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I say, still staring wild-eyed at Slick. I force myself to pick him up. I turn him over, staring at the rubbery pads of his feet, not quite sure what I’m looking for. Mom is looking at me as if I’ve lost the plot.
‘I think Slick’s not the only one in need of a recharge,’ says Mom.
I yawn in reply. My head feels as if it’s loaded down with bricks. Maybe she’s right.
Mom leans down to kiss my forehead. ‘Maybe it was too soon to give you your baku. You don’t want to be bombarded with messages and social media right now. Let’s get you to bed. And tomorrow, we will tackle everything else, okay?’
‘Okay. Night, Mom,’ I say, heading towards my bedroom.
But a loud knock at the door stops me in my tracks.
I HANG BACK AS MOM opens the door. Wariness sets my teeth on edge. Who could it be? We haven’t buzzed anyone in, and we don’t get many random visits from our neighbours.
‘Can I help you?’ Mom asks, her voice tight. Instinctively I bury my hands deep in the pouch of my hoodie.
I poke my head around the corner into the hallway, so I have a view of the entrance. I gasp. It’s a team of Moncha guard, dressed head-to-toe in black, complete with slick black panther bakus at their heels. They have a distinctive insignia on the shoulders of their uniform: the Moncha logo, a stylized letter M, with a cluster of stars in the corner. They’re not part of the ordinary Moncha guard. They’re part of Eric’s team.
‘Mrs Chu?’
‘It’s Ms,’ Mom answers, jutting her chin out in front of her as she opens the door. She’s trying to stand solidly, to show them that they can’t intimidate her – but I can tell that they do. Of course they do. They’re designed to intimidate – everything from their all-black outfits down to their terrifying, robotic-looking panthers. There’s nothing cute and fluffy about these bakus.
‘Do you live here with your daughter, Lacey Chu?’
‘I do.’
‘We have orders to search your residence for stolen Moncha intellectual property.’
‘Whose orders?’ Mom stands with her hand on the doorframe, her knuckles turning white as she grips it in fear. Petal is fluttering around her ear nervously, bleeping at her. ‘Yes, I know who they are,’ she snaps at her baku. She must be reminding her these are members of Eric Smith’s personal security team. ‘I can’t just let you in because you say you have some “orders” from somewhere. We’ve just come back from the hospital – where my daughter has been for the past month. Can’t you come back tomorrow?’
‘No, ma’am. We were directed to search your property as soon as your daughter returned.’
She straightens her spine. ‘This is an invasion of our privacy! Unless you have some sort of warrant . . .’
‘Actually, ma’am, we can search whatever we like, whenever we like. It’s in the terms of your lease for the apartment.’
Her face drains of colour. ‘No, it isn’t. I would never have signed something like that.’
‘Everyone who lives in this building has signed it. Moncha Corp owns this building, and as such we have a right to enter at any time. This request is a mere courtesy. Now if you and your daughter could step outside with your bakus, we will only need a few minutes.’
I’ve been cowering in the kitchen doorway, listening to their conversation. But if they’re still looking for Jinx, that means they don’t have him. I don’t know where he is either – so I have no reason to hide. I step out into the hallway and take Mom’s hand. She needs me to be strong with her. Slick is inert in my other hand. One of the security guards narrows his eyes as I pass, eyeing my unleashed baku, so I connect Slick as we step out into the hallway, swallowing down the bad feelings I had a moment ago.
Even though I know they won’t find anything, it makes me sick to see them enter our little apartment. A few doors open down the hall and then quickly shut again – neighbours wondering what an earth is going on, but also not wanting to get involved. Word spreads in a building like this.
I’m sure they’ll have plenty to gossip about with Mom and I backed up against the striped wallpaper in the hallway, guarded by panthers and looking like criminals. Mom has never been so close to a security baku, but it’s not that long since I ran away from one. Not that long since I saw one attempt to sink its teeth into my friend’s arm. So much for bakus not being able to harm people.
Mom’s grip tightens around mine as we hear them move from room to room. Every so often we hear a man shout ‘clear’, and the security team captain sounds more and more frustrated when they don’t find anything. There’s no evidence of Jinx in the condo.
‘You two.’ The captain steps outside again and crooks his finger at Mom and me. ‘Come with us.’ Reluctantly we follow him back into our living room. Mom tenses as she sees what a mess they’ve created.
I’m stunned at how fast things can change. How a home can turn from a safe haven into a prison – how a company can go from beloved to feared. All those things we thought would never happen to us are happening.
We’re told to sit down on the sofa. All four security guards are in front of us. ‘We have it on good authority that you have been seen with this stolen property.’ His security baku projects a 3D hologram of Jinx on to the table in front of me.
The hologram is so realistic; tears prick my eyes. My fingers itch to reach out and stroke him. But I try to remain calm. ‘That was my baku – and I didn’t steal him from Moncha Corp. I don’t know where he is. This is my baku now. Meet Slick.’ I hold the little scarab beetle robot out in my hand to show him, but the guard doesn’t acknowledge it.
‘We’ll see about that. As you know, Moncha retains the right to record any and all conversations overheard by the bakus.’
Now it’s my turn to lose the colour in my face.
‘I’m going to ask your bakus to play back the conversations you’ve had since Miss Chu was discharged from hospital.’
Oh no. I told Mom everything about Jinx – which means that Petal heard everything too.
And then I realize something else. Slick was there when I was chasing Jinx – he likely has information about where Jinx went that I don’t remember. I wish I’d been clearheaded enough to think about that before the guards showed up.
It’s all going to be over before it’s even begun.
But then the strangest thing happens. They rewind back the recordings on the cloud for both Petal and Slick, but throughout our conversation about Jinx, there is fuzz and distortion. It’s not obvious, because there are enough audible words to make it sound natural; it’s as if the bakus had been recording during a loud traffic jam. The conversation has been rendered meaningless. I glance over at Mom, but her face is neutral. I wonder what she makes of it all. Even stranger, Slick’s memories of running after Jinx are the same as mine. We’re darting through the hallways of Moncha HQ and then . . . it’s like he goes dead. As if he ran out of battery mid-way through the chase. I’m both happy he can’t give information about Jinx’s whereabouts to the security team, and disappointed that he can’t fill in more of my memory gaps.
&n
bsp; The head guard frowns, but he has no more reason to hold us. As far as they know, there’s nothing we could have done to alter the recordings. As far as we know, there’s nothing we could have done. It’s a mystery.
‘We’re adding a directive to these bakus,’ he gestures at Slick and Petal, ‘that if the stolen property is seen or talked about by you two then we will be the first to know. But things will be much easier if you simply cooperate with us and disclose any new information as soon as you know it.’
I resist the urge to scoff, disguising it instead as a cough.
‘Understood?’
‘We understand,’ Mom says, through gritted teeth. ‘Will you go now?’
The man fixes her with a disapproving glare but thankfully, he nods.
We breathe a sigh of relief once we’re back inside our apartment and the door is firmly shut on the security guards. I feel like I’m standing right on the edge of the line between wired and exhausted.
‘Eric doesn’t have my baku,’ I whisper, deliberately avoiding saying Jinx’s name.
Mom pulls me close, kissing me on the forehead. ‘No. But he still needs to answer for what his son did. Stealing your baku. If he wanted it back, he should have gone through the proper channels. And his son’s actions ended up with you in hospital for a month. Plus, the nerve of sending his security team to interrogate us the night I get you back! Parent to parent, he needs to talk to me.’
We both jump as Petal starts shaking and vibrating, a strange sequence of lights flashing up and down her butterfly body.
‘Time for an update, it looks like,’ says Mom. ‘I swear, these updates are getting more and more frequent . . . they keep adding all these new features and apps to Petal. One day I’m worried I won’t be able to keep up.’ She gestures to her baku, who connects to the leash that snakes around her ear. Petal settles into a more comfortable position on her shoulder, and the flashing lights change to a single pulsing green to indicate her charge.
Unleashed Page 2
