by Andy Briggs
“Since it doesn’t look as if he’s ready to charge in here and rescue his old friend, then I suppose I don’t owe him any loyalty.” He treated Charles to a smile.
The sort of smile that belonged to a shark before it was about to strike.
It was rather surprising how things could change in such a short time. Dev used to hate school. The lessons were boring, and he used to be bullied mercilessly – especially by one particular kid, who did his best to publicly humiliate Dev at every opportunity. As a result, Dev avoided interacting with his fellow pupils at all costs.
But now, due to recent events, school wasn’t so bad. The lessons were still boring, of course, but at least Dev’s constant run-ins with his bully had vanished. That’s because the bully had been Mason, Dev’s new partner in crime.
When the Collector raided the inventory, they were forced to work together, and they became friends . . . of a sort. The kind of friends who didn’t acknowledge each other’s existence in public. The sort of friends who didn’t really like each other and had nothing in common, yet when it came to crunch time they could depend on each other with their lives.
That suited Dev perfectly. It kept Mason and his thuggish pals at arm’s length; Mason now spent most of his spare time playing rugby. The other students didn’t know what to think, so they gave Dev an even wider berth.
The situation with Lot, on the other hand, was a disappointment. Dev really wanted to spend more time with her, but she had completely embraced the concept of a secret society and refused to do anything to jeopardize that. She kept herself active with her usual school friends, and he only saw a blur of blonde hair race past or caught her infectious smile across the playground before she quickly turned away and ignored him.
So Dev’s days became a stream of trying to pretend his teachers weren’t going too slowly through the curriculum, followed by lonely walks through the sleepy town of Edderton, back to the place he reluctantly called home – a farm that was a surface decoy, concealing a sprawling complex of warehouses and corridors far below the ground.
The farm had been a smouldering ruin by the time the Collector had finished with it, but the World Consortium had quickly rebuilt it exactly as before, and a gas explosion had been blamed for the noises and devastation heard across the town.
While enduring another physics lesson with Mr Morgan, Dev let his mind wander. The talk of Isaac Newton being amazed as an apple fell on him failed to thrill Dev, and he found the maths behind the second law of motion – resultant force (N) = mass (kg) × acceleration (m/s2) – easy to solve. His uncle had told him that another by-product of his synaesthesia was skill with mathematics. So instead Dev began to dwell on the problem that had been consuming him for weeks: instead of being born like everybody else around him, Dev had been engineered into existence. Made. In the heart of the Inventory’s most secure Red Zone, Dev had discovered the lab he’d been grown in. He’d been designed with special abilities to be a living key to protect the Inventory’s contents. His code name had been Iron Fist, a name he’d now assigned to his battle armour.
That meant Dev had no parents. Technically he wasn’t even an orphan. Charles Parker was the closest thing he had to family, but Uncle Parker was not really an uncle, more like Dev’s creator.
Dev now didn’t consider himself to be an actual person, although Charles had taken great pains to assure him that he was. Dev was as human as the next kid in school.
But with extras.
He had been manufactured to replace the Collector, a failed prototype. Did that make the villain his brother?
Several times he had asked Charles Parker to allow him to visit the Collector, and each time Dev had been refused. No longer willing to take his uncle’s decisions as final, he had turned to Sergeant Wade, who represented the Consortium that ran the Inventory. Disappointingly, she always referred Dev back to his uncle, pointing out that – however vague the family connection – Charles Parker was still his legal guardian.
Mr Morgan’s voice broke into his musings. “Mr Parker? Earth to Mr Parker?” Dev sat up and tried to look interested. “Could you please enlighten us as to what Newton’s laws of motion are.”
Dev hadn’t been listening, but he knew this. It was just that his memory refused to call up the information.
Mr Morgan crossed his arms, his eyes almost concealed by his fluffy caterpillar-like eyebrows as he frowned. “I’m waiting.”
“Um, stop, drop and roll?” said Dev desperately. The class burst into tittering laughter, and he felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment.
“Impressive, Devon. Well, you can learn them in detention tonight.”
Dev was no stranger to detention. In fact, he often relished it as an excuse not to go home. This evening, however, he didn’t want to be there. He had hoped to catch Lot on the way home so he could talk through the concerns bothering him. She was the only one who would listen and understand what he was going through.
Dev spent thirty minutes reading a rather dry textbook about Sir Isaac Newton’s contributions to science while his teacher sat at the front of the class marking homework. After looking forlornly at his coffee cup, Mr Morgan excused himself.
Dev flipped the page and stared at the bland text: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Dev yawned.
“Hello, Dev.”
Dev looked up. There was nobody in the room. He checked his phone and watch, in case they had activated without him knowing, but they were both on silent mode. Had he imagined the whisper?
“I know you can hear me.”
The voice sounded as if the speaker was directly next to his ear. Dev bolted to his feet so sharply that he knocked his chair over. He slashed his arm through the air behind him, just in case the speaker was invisible. Still nobody.
“Where are you?” said Dev, his eyes darting across the classroom for any signs of movement.
“That’s not really the question you should be asking, is it?”
That’s all Dev needed right now, a smart-mouthed ghost. His eyes fell on his water bottle; he could have sworn he’d seen movement there.
“OK, then: who are you?”
A gentle mocking laughter floated around the room. As Dev watched, concentric circles vibrated across the surface of the water in his bottle.
“Bravo. That is the correct question.”
Dev gently touched the table as the stranger spoke. He could feel the vibrations through the plastic-coated wood and saw ripples form across the surface of his water bottle. Was the voice somehow projecting in the room and resonating off everything?
The voice continued. “I am somebody who is looking out for you, Dev.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Dev as he rushed to the window to see if anybody was outside, somehow projecting the voice through the window. But the yard beyond was empty. “But I prefer my friends, you know, a little more visible.”
“You have a greater purpose than being a puppet for Charles Parker, and I intend to help you achieve that.”
“What if I just want to be left alone?”
“I know you better than you think. I want to help you. To warn you: never believe your eyes. There is more happening around you than you realize. We shall meet soon enough.”
“Who are you?”
There was no answer. Dev turned around and saw Mr Morgan had re-entered the room with a steaming cup of coffee. One hand was still on the door handle. His expression was one of bemusement.
“Um . . . it’s me. Are you feeling OK, Devon?” His eyes moved to Dev’s toppled chair.
Dev felt a flush of embarrassment and hurried to right the chair. “Just thinking of drama class. Practising a scene from. . .” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence, so he lapsed into silence.
“This is detention, not some sort of rehearsal space. Your time’s up, though, so you can go do that someplace else now. And, uh, break a leg.”
Dev smiled weakly at Mr Morgan, nodded, gathered his things and hu
rried from the classroom before he started hearing any more disembodied voices.
Mason yawned as the giant screen in front of him changed to depict a map of the world. He was in the Inventory command bunker, so this was no normal screen, but a holographic one; the globe gently rotated in three dimensions. Lot nudged him in the ribs.
“What?” Mason said quietly. “I didn’t get much sleep before they woke me up for this.”
Charles Parker used his hand to rotate the map so all three teens could see Asia. He moved his fingers apart to zoom in on a long island at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
“Japan. More specifically, Tokyo. The World Consortium has picked up reports that a piece of Inventory technology has found its way there.”
“So it’s something small?” said Dev with a frown. Some of the missing equipment was so huge and cumbersome that it was hard to imagine it going anywhere without drawing attention. “That will make it harder to find.”
“Not necessarily. We don’t know which item it is.” Charles pointed to another screen. Surveillance pictures appeared of a powerful-looking man climbing out of a car. “This is Christen Sandberg, a South African crime lord with a vicious rap sheet. He was previously spotted in America, and now he’s just arrived in Japan.”
“So you think he has something to do with the Inventory loot?” asked Lot.
“We don’t know for sure.”
“Great. So is there anything you do know?” said Lot brightly. She met Charles’s gaze, refusing to look away first.
“That is why you are going there to track him down, and hopefully he will lead you to the missing item. Then you will retrieve the gadget with, and I can’t stress this enough, the minimum of fuss. So, to that aim, you are leaving the mech suit here.” He deactivated the screens. “Your last mission left way too much collateral damage, and we can’t risk a repeat of that in a city as densely populated as Tokyo.”
Dev looked at his two companions with a puzzled frown.
“Is that it?”
Charles Parker didn’t look up as he busied himself on a computer. “Yes. Eema will see you to your transport.”
With a soft rumble, a large metal sphere rolled up to the door. As it stopped, metallic spike-like legs emerged from the body to stabilize it. A holographic head appeared, displaying a bright yellow smiley emoji. This was Eema, the Inventory’s artificially intelligent security system.
“Follow me,” she said.
Her legs retracted and she rolled down the corridor with Dev, Lot and Mason following behind.
Dev couldn’t hide his surprise. They may have only been on one real mission, but his uncle had dragged them through countless long briefings on how they were to behave during missions, and none had been so short. Furthermore, Sergeant Wade had always been with them, but now there was no sign of her, and he couldn’t imagine that she had anything more important to do than attend a mission briefing.
A handful of scientists passed them, hunched over their tablets as they discussed their research.
“Eema, where are we going?” Dev finally asked.
“To the hangar.” Ever since the break-in, a small special area had been reworked to allow quick and easy access from the Inventory, but under the most stringent security procedures. “Your aircraft is being prepared for you there.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. The hangar was a hive of activity. Several technicians removed hoses and electrical wires from the undercarriage of a large aircraft that was mostly hidden behind a canvas sheet. Dev could see the excitement on Lot and Mason’s faces, and he was reminded how new this was to them still. They hadn’t yet tired of discovering the contents of the Inventory, even though most of it was missing.
“Where’s Sergeant Wade?”
“Your new ride does not require Sergeant Wade to pilot it.” Eema led the way to the aircraft. “Unless you feel you are unable to conduct the mission on your own? If you need a babysitter . . .”
“No way!” snapped Mason. “We’re totally ready.”
Dev didn’t reply. He knew Eema was more than a machine. She was capable of just as much subtlety and sarcasm as he was, and she was definitely trying to provoke a reaction from them. But he wasn’t sure why. It was as if they were being tested.
“Here’s your ride,” said Eema with a wink. “It’s rather cool.”
“Robots can’t pull off saying ‘cool’,” said Dev gruffly.
Eema’s mechanical arm unfurled from her body and pulled the canvas away.
“No way!” said Lot, her mouth hanging open in astonishment.
Dev tried to conceal a sudden thrill of excitement. For several years he had walked past an odd shape hidden under a canvas sheet, tucked in the corner of the Inventory. He had often wondered what it was, but now he knew.
It was an olive-green disc about ten metres in diameter, in the classic flying saucer shape, with hemisphere on top and a bowl-shaped hull below. It rested on five stubby legs, and a ramp lowered from the underbelly led inside. On closer examination, Dev couldn’t see any lines across the hull, as if it was made from a single piece. Running from the central canopy to the rim, on opposite sides, was a sunken access ladder on which a technician was perched, examining something.
“Is that a real. . .?” Mason began.
Eema’s emoji face winked, pulling a virtual tongue. It was a little disconcerting to see a robot do that. “We just call it the Avro. It’s the descendant of the United States Air Force’s VZ-9 Avrocar, built in Nevada, USA. It has a silent negative-grav drive, total cloaking ability, and this is where we originally obtained the DigiJam tech. It will take you halfway around the planet before you notice, and you don’t have to lift a finger. Your flight is preprogrammed.”
“Awesome!” said Mason, running his hand across the hull.
Dev noticed a look of disappointment cross Lot’s face. She liked to play around with the tech, control it – not sit there and do nothing.
“So that’s it? We don’t actually do anything?”
Eema gestured towards the ramp. “All aboard. I’ve packed a kitbag of useful gadgets for the mission. Don’t draw attention to either yourself or the technology. Remember your training, and stick to the plan.”
The short walk up the ramp led them to the cockpit, the only room on board. Dev thought the interior of the craft felt more like a home theatre, with three leather chairs in the middle of the circular cockpit facing a wrap-around window that took up half the front wall. There was a crescent-shaped, angled panel below the window, presumably a control panel, but it was smooth and featureless. Kitbags had been left on each of the seats. He didn’t recall seeing a window on the outside, so he reasoned that it was some kind of one-way screen.
Dev patted the back of one of the three seats. “I guess that explains why Wade isn’t coming with us.”
“I’m surprised they’re letting us do this on our own, after all the complaints last time,” said Lot, taking the middle seat. She rummaged through the kitbag. She pulled out a pair of shades and three silver pin badges; there was no explanation as to their purpose. She dropped them inside with a frown and extracted a blue plastic cylinder. The label, in groovy 1960s font, read: SHOK-BALLS!TM The jagged lines coming from the illustration indicated the contents were charged with electricity.
She threw it back and found what looked like a fat thermos flask. She read the label. “EverFrost – keeps your drinks cold for ever!” She opened it – and a smoky wisp of gas seeped out. “Wow! That’s cold! How does it get your drink so chilled without freezing it? And for ever? Weird.”
Mason checked his own bag and pulled out a golf-ball-sized object. The two separate hemispheres turned in opposite directions, but it didn’t seem to do anything else. He saw a logo on the side, the name written in a circle around it: AttentionGrabber. “I don’t get it. What’s this supposed to do?” He tossed the AttentionGrabber back in the bag. “All of this stuff looks rubbish! What was Eema thinking?”
Dev took his seat. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being tested, or worse, that his uncle really had no idea what was waiting for them.
The blank, smooth surface of the panel below the window suddenly bubbled and transformed, with buttons and screens appearing from nowhere.
Lot traced her fingers over them. “Incredible. It’s like liquid metal.” She noticed a set of controls had appeared in front of her, and they were not dissimilar to a helicopter’s cyclic, collective and pedals. She experimentally pulled at them, but nothing happened. She poked some of the buttons. “There must be a manual override here somewhere. . .”
“Stop pressing stuff,” said Mason. “Eema said it was all preprogrammed.”
The entrance ramp folded up behind them, seamlessly merging with the wall. Lot quickly raised her hands off the controls.
“I didn’t touch anything!”
According to the screen, they were already lifting up through the hangar.
“Wow,” said Mason. “I can’t feel a thing!”
They passed through the Inventory’s roof doors, which swiftly opened as they approached. The section of floor in front of them suddenly became translucent, so they could see directly below as the roof slid closed, camouflaged with crops. In seconds they passed through clouds, but there was still no sense of movement inside the vehicle.
Lot pulled a face. “Yeah, so much for excitement.” She slumped back in her seat, arms folded.
Dev smiled. Every time they had flown, Lot had got excited whenever they had hit turbulence. If this was going to be a smooth, long ride, then she was going to be in a bad mood when they arrived.
Just over an hour had passed when Eema’s voice chimed around the cockpit, surprising them all. “Prepare for arrival.”
In the night-time, crazy, multicoloured, neon noise of the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo, it was unlikely anybody would notice the appearance of a flying saucer. But not even the keenest observer would have had the chance, as the Avro’s cloaking device made it appear like nothing more than a shimmering haze in the air when it landed in the quiet, fenced-off Gyoen National Garden.
