The pool wasn’t a myth after all.
17
BIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU
Climbing the ladder in the lift shaft took less than five minutes but felt like days. Halfway up, the Ghost Reapers discovered the air vent that Cheeze had told them about. Casey yanked the grille off and they clambered inside. The vent was long and square, constructed from some kind of thin metal that buckled and popped under their combined weight. They made slow progress crawling along on their hands and knees. All the time Elite muttered under his breath, praying for it to be over.
Eventually, Casey spotted light at the end of the tunnel and saw a familiar face. “Fish!”
“They’re coming!” the boy yelled over his shoulder to someone behind him. “This way, you guys.”
Casey crawled out of the vent first, followed by the other two. Dropping into the shadows, they found themselves in a dimly lit room. The focal point of the room was a bank of monitors against the far wall. They showed images from dozens of surveillance cameras dotted around the shopping centre. In front of the monitors, bathed in their light, sat Cheeze. He spun around to greet them.
“You made it!” He grinned, rocking back and forth on his wheels in a little victory dance.
“What is this place?” Casey asked, staring around the room.
“It’s like the nerve centre of the whole shopping centre,” Cheeze explained, waving a hand around. “All the CCTV cameras, the public address system, environmental controls…”
“And the lifts, too,” Fish butted in, eager not to let him hog the limelight. “That’s how we rescued you. We stopped the lift before the Red Eyes got you.”
“How?” Casey asked.
“I hacked into it,” Cheeze said, pointing to the security console. He had unscrewed part of its casing and pulled out a bunch of wires as if he was hotwiring a car. His laptop sat near by, connected to the desk’s circuit by a cable.
“Thank you,” Casey said to Cheeze. “You saved our lives.”
He reddened slightly.
Fish stared at them, irritated. He screwed up an empty sandwich packet and tossed it into the bin.
“Anyone got any scran?” he demanded, interrupting them. “I’m starving. My blood sugar’s dropping like a stone.”
Elite, who’d spent the last few minutes bent over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath after the ordeal of the vent, pulled a packet of Tic Tacs out of his pocket.
Fish grabbed them. “What flavour you got?”
“Strawberry.”
“Ugh, they’re the worst,” he complained, then poured the entire pack into his mouth in one go. He tossed the empty plastic box back to Elite. “Thanks, though,” he grunted, crunching the pink sweets noisily between his teeth. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“They were to share,” Elite protested.
Cheeze spotted the plasma rifle on Casey’s shoulder. He whistled, impressed.
“I got into a fight with a Red Eye in Starbucks,” Casey explained.
“We saw you,” Cheeze said, gesturing to the console. “You were amazing. How did you do all that?”
“I don’t know,” Casey mumbled, remembering the way she had seemed to operate on pure instinct. “It just kind of happened.”
“Pfft. I don’t see why she’s so amazing,” said Fish. “I could have done that too if I’d had a gun like that.”
Casey ignored him, her eyes flitting to the security desk. “You said you saw me? Where? On the screens?”
Cheeze nodded. “They have cameras all over the place. Must be a hundred at least.”
“Maybe we can use them to find Pete,” she said, her voice suddenly hopeful. She darted over to the security desk and stared at the controls. It was like the cockpit of a fighter jet. There were rows and rows of different-coloured buttons, a couple of joysticks and lots of switches.
“How do I use it?” she asked, impatient.
“You don’t,” Cheeze said, wheeling over and nudging her gently aside. “This is my toy.” He cracked his knuckles with a flourish and turned to face her. “Just tell me where you want to look.”
For the next ten minutes, Cheeze cycled through the various live feeds from the building’s cameras. His hands ran over the camera controls like he was a concert pianist at a baby grand.
Casey stared at each new camera feed as it popped up on the monitors. But there was no sign of her brother. In fact, there was no sign of any of the gamers. “He’s not here,” she finally said, despondent. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why can’t we see him?” She felt her legs go weak. She didn’t know how much longer she could go on.
“That guy Lee said the Red Eyes were rounding up the gamers,” Brain said, remembering their earlier conversation.
“One of the shoppers told me the same thing,” Casey whispered. “She said they were taking them upstairs.”
“So where are they?” Cheeze asked, flicking through the screens. Inside the stores they could see plenty of shoppers still cowering in fear, but no sign of any of the gamers from the tournament.
Casey’s eyes began to ache from staring so hard at the grainy security camera footage.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Brain mused. “We’ve been through every floor. They can’t have just vanished into thin air.”
“Thin air,” Casey repeated, her mind whirring. “Thin air… Oh my God, the dropship!”
“What are you on about?” Fish said.
“The roof!” Casey said. “Show me the roof.”
“I don’t even know if there’s a camera up there,” Cheeze said as he cycled through the different feeds. He squinted at the control console until his eyes fell on a switch marked EXTERNAL FEEDS. He flipped it.
Casey and the boys gasped as they saw the lines of captured gamers being herded across the roof towards the dropship ramp.
“Look at the size of that thing!” Fish whistled. Brain and Elite pushed forwards, eager to get a better view of a vehicle they’d only ever seen in the game. As Casey searched the monitor screen, she saw Xander and the rest of Strike Force. Then, behind them, she finally spotted the face she’d been looking for.
“There he is! That’s my brother.”
Pete was heading up the dropship ramp. He looked pale and small. The Red Eyes towered over him. Cheeze grabbed a joystick on the console and zoomed in until the boy’s anxious face filled the whole screen. Casey touched his cheek gently with her fingers. A second later, he disappeared inside the dropship and vanished from sight.
“Why aren’t they taking any of the staff or the shoppers?” Cheeze asked. “Why do they only want gamers?”
Brain cleared his throat. “I have a theory,” he announced. Everyone turned to look at him expectantly. “I think they’re recruiting us.”
Elite snorted in disbelief. “Recruiting us for what? SkyWake’s a game about a made-up war on a made-up planet. Unless London’s about to be invaded by Squids, we ain’t no use to nobody.”
“Who says Hosin is made up?” Brain asked, speaking calmly and deliberately. He had clearly been chewing this over in his head for a while. “Before today, we all thought Red Eyes weren’t real. But now here they are, with guns that work exactly like the ones in the game, taking the best players prisoner. I think they’ve been using the game to train us. That’s why Casey knew how to use the plasma rifle.”
“Sometimes we play as Squids, not Red Eyes,” Cheeze pointed out, disbelieving.
“Best way to know your enemy…”
Elite shook his head. “This is mad, innit?”
“Maybe it’s not,” Casey said. “My dad told me that the military’s been using games to train soldiers for years. Games teach you how to strategize, how to give and take orders, how to work together as a unit. SkyWake could be like a virtual training simulator.”
“So what about Area 51?” Fish asked behind them. “Are you saying they’re working with the aliens?”
“Maybe Area 51 are the aliens,” Casey said, warming to
the theory. “That brand management guy never met anyone from the company. He told us they did everything by email.”
“But the Red Eyes can’t even speak English,” Cheeze pointed out. “There’s no way they could have made a video game like SkyWake.”
“Someone must be helping them.” Brain shrugged.
“Who?”
“How should I know? Someone who knows about video games, I guess.”
The boys looked at one another uncertainly.
“Rubbish!” Fish said. “There’s no way a bunch of aliens made a video game.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if that settled the matter. But, as he did, he stared down at his SkyWake T-shirt nervously. He looked like he was regretting wearing something that pegged him as a SkyWaker.
“So what do we do now?” Cheeze asked.
There was a clatter as Casey reloaded her rifle. The gun’s barrel opened up like the petals of a flower and released a belch of green plasma gas that smelled of bitter almonds. Then it closed again with a satisfied click. It was reloaded and ready to go. Just like her.
“I’m going to get my brother back.”
“You can’t, Casey,” Cheeze warned. “It’s suicide. Brain, tell her…”
“The probability of surviving against that many Red Eyes is less than zero,” Brain said. “Even with that plasma rifle.”
Elite sucked his teeth noisily. “It’s all probability and logic with you, brainiac. This ain’t a maths problem. Where’s your heart?” He turned to Casey. “You go out there, girl, you’re gonna get mashed up.”
“Well, someone’s got to do something,” Casey said, standing tall with the plasma rifle in her hand. “What do you think will happen when all the gamers are onboard the dropship?” She mimed the ship blasting off with her free hand. “Those gamers need our help. Not just my brother – all of them.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Fish said, shaking his head petulantly. “I’m staying put – right here, right where it’s safe – and waiting to get rescued.” He jabbed a finger at Casey and looked at the other boys for back-up. “All she’s done today is get us into trouble. Girls are all the same, always ruining everything with their drama.”
“Why do you have to be so toxic?” Cheeze demanded. “Shield tanks are supposed to protect their teams but all you do is have a go at everyone. It’s not her fault your mum left.”
“Guys, this isn’t helping,” Brain said sharply.
Fish put his hands on the sides of Cheeze’s wheelchair, getting right in his face until they were almost nose to nose. He was furious at the mention of his mum.
“Don’t touch my chair,” Cheeze warned him, although Casey could tell he knew he’d overstepped the mark.
Fish ignored him. “If we go out there, she’s gonna get us killed!” he shouted. “I don’t care how much SkyWake we’ve played together, she’s not a leader and we’re not soldiers. Maybe if you weren’t so lovesick, you’d be able to see that yourself.”
“Wh-what are you on about?” Cheeze stammered.
“I’ve seen how you look at her,” Fish continued gleefully, realizing he’d hit a nerve. “Oh Casey, you were a-ma-zing…”
Cheeze pushed Fish’s hands off his wheelchair and spun away. His face burned red with embarrassment.
“Guys!” Brain said again, more insistent this time. “Someone’s coming.”
On the screens, a squad of human soldiers could be seen advancing through the underground car park beneath the shopping centre. They wore biohazard suits and carried automatic rifles. The leader approached a CCTV camera and peered into it until his face filled one of the monitors.
“This is Lieutenant Richard Dreyfus. Can anyone hear me?”
18
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
Casey gasped as she saw Dreyfus’s weather-beaten face up close.
“I know him. He was outside when I got here this morning. I spilled coffee over him.”
“Well, he’s inside now,” Cheeze said. “That’s the camera in the underground car park.”
“How did they get in?” Casey asked.
“I heard this place was built over the Central Line,” Brain said. “Maybe they found a way to get under the force field through the Tube tunnels.”
“Sneaky,” Fish whistled, impressed. “I bet those dozy Red Eyes don’t even know what a Tube train is.”
“If he can get in, it means we can get out,” Brain continued, one step ahead of everyone as usual. The Ghost Reapers exchanged excited glances.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me?” Lieutenant Dreyfus’s voice was slightly out of sync with the movement of his lips on the CCTV monitor. It made him seem unnatural, as if he was contacting them from another dimension.
“We can hear you, Lieutenant,” Casey said hurriedly into the microphone on the console. “We can see you too. You’re on our screen in the security control room.”
“We’re coming to evacuate the building,” Dreyfus told them. He clearly wasn’t the kind of man to bother with pleasantries or introductions. “But first I need you to open up the security gates down here. They’re locked tight.”
Casey looked at Cheeze. He nodded, his fingers already reaching for the buttons.
“We’re on it, Lieutenant,” Casey said into the mic.
Dreyfus lifted a gloved hand into the air, giving the camera a thumbs-up.
“It’s the cavalry,” Fish said, bursting with relief. “I told you someone would come. These guys are the professionals. They’re gonna get us out of here.” He high-fived Elite and Brain. When he got to Casey, he let his hand drop sheepishly. “I’m sure they’ll help you get your brother back, too,” he mumbled, embarrassed.
“Thanks, Fish.” Casey hoped he was right.
For the next half an hour, the soldiers secured the lower floors of the building. They worked quickly and professionally, ferrying the staff and shoppers to the underground car park. Casey, watching events unfold on the monitors, felt a warm tingle of relief. Maybe it was going to be OK. The soldiers would rescue Pete and this would all seem like a bad dream.
“Hey, where are all the Red Eyes?” Elite asked, noticing their absence. “They just chilling or what?”
“They’re running scared,” Fish sneered. “They know these soldier dudes are gonna go all Call of Duty on their alien butts.”
Cheeze tapped the buttons on the console and brought up the camera feeds from the top floor. A dozen Red Eyes had taken up positions behind clam-shell-shaped energy shields at the top of the escalators outside the multiplex cinema. A couple of them carried supply crates full of weapons and ammo familiar from the game.
“They don’t look very scared to me,” he muttered, unwilling to start another argument with Fish. “It looks like they know the soldiers are coming in.”
“That’s a rearguard action,” Brain said authoritatively, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It’s what armies do when they retreat. They leave some troops behind to cover their backsides.”
“The dropship must be getting ready to leave, then,” Casey said, biting her lip. She thought of Pete being held prisoner inside. Who knew what the aliens might be doing to him in there? She remembered what Fish said about alien experiments and shuddered. Then she thought about Brain’s theory that the Red Eyes were taking the gamers to fight on another planet. She wasn’t sure what was worse. She only knew that she had to save her brother somehow.
Behind them, the doors to the control room burst open. Lieutenant Dreyfus stepped carefully through the narrow doorway, making sure not to snag his blue biohazard suit as he entered. Judging by the air tank on his back, the suit was designed to protect him from airborne toxins and diseases. The authorities were clearly taking no chances. He gently placed a chunky yellow box on the table, keeping it within easy reach.
“Where are the security guards?” he demanded, looking around for a responsible adult.
“It’s just us,” Cheeze told him. “We opened the gates for you.”
&n
bsp; If Dreyfus was impressed by their resourcefulness, he didn’t show it.
“My men are evacuating everyone through the tunnels beneath the building,” he growled in his clipped, no-nonsense voice. “We have a decontamination tent set up outside beyond the force field. Once the building is clear, we’ll nip this invasion in the bud.”
“This isn’t an invasion,” Casey corrected him, stepping forwards. “They’re abducting the gamers from the tournament.”
A flicker of recognition passed over Dreyfus’s face. He looked her up and down quickly, taking in her bubblegum-blue streaks, the military dog tags around her neck and, finally, the alien plasma rifle in her hands. His scowl deepened.
“Where did you get that?”
“I took it off one of the Red Eyes.”
“Red Eyes?” the Lieutenant repeated, his eyebrows arching upwards in disbelief.
“It’s what we call them in SkyWake.” Casey could tell that the soldier didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
He took a step towards her and held out his hand. His baggy suit flapped around him like a balloon as the air inside redistributed.
“You need to give that to me, young lady. It’s not a toy.”
Casey instinctively gripped the gun a little tighter. She didn’t like this man.
“Not until you tell me how you’re going to rescue the gamers. They took them to the dropship. My little brother’s up there with them.”
Dreyfus’s brow furrowed behind his suit’s Perspex visor. “That’s not possible,” he said, talking more to himself than the Ghost Reapers. “They’ve never abducted civilians before. It’s not how they operate.”
Casey felt her body tense up as she realized what he was saying. “You knew they were here, didn’t you?” she said sharply, her face flushing with anger. “That’s why you were waiting outside in the car park this morning. Why didn’t you warn anyone?”
From upstairs, the sound of plasma rifles could be heard, followed by the snap, crackle and pop of automatic rifles.
“Give me a sit-rep,” Dreyfus growled into his suit’s microphone.
SkyWake Invasion Page 11
