Gravity

by Andy Briggs

  Christen used the thumb-toggle to try and change his angle of attack. He was so engrossed that he didn’t notice Dev had run up behind him. Dev flung himself at Christen, and he managed to lay a hand on the gun. In the split second of contact, Dev invoked his synaesthesia, communicating directly to the electronic systems of the weapon. Information flooded into his mind – the name Newton’s Arrow, the weapon’s serial number, what each component did to manipulate gravitons that formed the shimmering beam—

  There was a bright flash in Dev’s mind’s eye. Ordinarily he received the technical feedback as a pleasant mix of colours and sound, but this flash was painful, like having an instant migraine. He slammed into Christen’s back, but barely moved the straining, massive man from his standing position. Dev fell to the ground and, still reeling from the jolt, scurried backwards in confusion.

  At that moment he noticed two things at the same time. There was a second man standing across the street, half hidden by the shadows. His stance was so relaxed – just a casual observer to the chaos unfolding – that Dev wondered whether he’d been there the whole time. The second thing was that Christen had turned around and reoriented the barrel towards Dev.

  Dev ran for his life. The Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower was the closest thing that could feasibly provide cover. After a few long strides, he felt his leg muscles burn as he jumped . . . and he was propelled a full storey up, where his fingers managed to grab hold of a narrow metal ledge that formed the external structure. It was an impossible jump for his friends, but not for Dev. At birth he had been given more abilities than just his special synaesthesia, including a boost in strength and speed in moments of crisis. It was almost a superpower – if superpowers only lasted for one go before requiring rest to recover their strength again.

  But it was enough to take Christen by surprise. Christen jerked back, pulling the trigger. The graviton beam missed Dev, striking the base of the building instead. There was a horrendous screech of tortured metal and a crunch of concrete as the entire fifty-storey building was ripped off its foundations. It rose five metres in the air, with Dev still clinging to a piece of steel lattice.

  In panic, Dev let go. He crashed into one of the still-standing trees in the plaza, the branches snapping under his weight, and he bounced painfully to the ground. His head spun, as did the building above him. His vision blurred, but he caught sight of Christen straining as he moved the entire building with just his control of the gun.

  Dev looked down at his crumpled body, and he tried to move, but everything ached after his super-jump. Nothing seemed broken, at least. Then he heard the sound of the van engine squealing away, and he managed to sit up as Mason and Lot caught up with him.

  “Dev? Dev? Can you speak?”

  The sound of police sirens cut through the air, and Dev slowly, painfully stood up, broken twigs flaking off his sore body. “Where is he?”

  Not only had Christen gone, but so too had the entire Cocoon Tower.

  Dev dreaded trying to explain that to his uncle.

  “He stole an entire building!” said Dev with despair.

  “Well, how hard can it be to find him, then?” asked Mason, scratching his head thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s a flying building! And if I learned anything in physics, it’s what goes up has got to come down.”

  The three teens had fled the scene moments before the police cars had arrived. They were pretty sure none of their explanations would have been believed, and they had most definitely failed to follow Charles Parker’s order to not draw attention to the stolen technology. Lot and Mason had tried to get to Dev, and by the time the van had pulled away, their view of the floating Cocoon Tower had been blocked by the high-rise buildings around them.

  They were headed back towards the park, debating whether they should stay in Japan to track down Christen or return home . . . and face being told off by Charles. They decided to stay and attempt to fix the problem.

  But that didn’t stop Charles from contacting them. “How could you—?” he began, his face glaring from the screen on Dev’s phone.

  But Dev was quick to cut him off. “Where were you? How could you send us out against a madman, only armed with a bag of shocking marbles, when he had some sort of gravity gun?”

  Charles Parker wasn’t used to being shouted at, so he tripped over his words. “W-we had n-no idea what he was, um, using.”

  “Newton’s Arrow. Does that ring any bells?”

  Charles Parker was silent for a long moment. He barely moved, and Dev began to wonder if the image was frozen, buffering. Then Charles’s eyes twitched, and it became clear he was reading from another screen.

  Charles’s voice dropped with deep concern. “Dev, I’m sorry, I had no idea. . .”

  Dev tried to hide his shock: his uncle rarely apologized. He briefly considered mentioning the weird sensation he’d experienced while trying to deactivate the device. The more he thought about it, the more he felt as if he had been deliberately blocked. Was it somehow connected to the man in the shadows, or had he simply been an innocent passer-by? He decided not to mention it; he didn’t want to cause a fuss, when there might be no reason for one.

  “So, Newton’s Arrow,” said Lot in her matter-of-fact way, “it plays around with gravity?”

  “Specifically gravitons,” Charles corrected. “It’s not just about whether or not you stick to the ground; it’s much more complicated. Newton’s Arrow is a very dangerous prototype weapon that had been locked away in the Red Zone.”

  “And he used it to steal a building,” said Mason, shaking his head. “I mean, who does that?”

  “You have a point,” agreed Charles.

  “I do?”

  “Certainly. Why steal an entire building if you only wanted something inside? Then again, why steal a building in a quieter part of the city if you’re doing it to make a statement?”

  “He’s a criminal,” said Dev. “That’s what they do. I thought our job was to retrieve the tech, not get involved in solving weird crimes.”

  Charles Parker sighed and nodded. “You are correct. You’re a repo team; that’s your mission. The priority now is to find the Arrow and return it before this madman can create any more mayhem.”

  “And how do we find him?”

  “Easy. Look for the fifty-storey tower block he’s walking around with.”

  Charles Parker deactivated the video link and turned to Sergeant Wade.

  “You still think they don’t require my help?” she asked.

  Charles shook his head. “So far, so good.”

  Wade frowned. “And what happens when things begin to escalate beyond our control?”

  Charles’s attention was on a screen filled with scrolling information, his response sounding almost too casual: “They won’t. We’ll make sure things don’t slip from our grasp. We have laid the bait, now let’s just wait for the trap to spring.” He quickly typed something on the keyboard, then hit a button to shut down the screen just as Wade leaned over to read it. Charles stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I am needed elsewhere.”

  Without another word he marched from the room, followed moments later by Eema rolling close on his heels like a giant metallic boulder – or constant bodyguard.

  “Is it my imagination, or is your uncle completely useless?” asked Mason the moment Charles Parker disconnected.

  Dev sighed. “Welcome to my world.”

  Lot found local news stations on her Inventory phone. Sure enough, sightings of a floating building over Tokyo were already trending across the news.

  Their translator earpieces allowed them to understand the basics of the reports, although Dev was a little dismayed when his translator seemed to possess a life of its own.

  “Be gone the mighty fish!” declared one reporter, who was filming the area from a helicopter.

  Dev tapped his fingers against his ear. “I think the battery is running low.”

  “Found it!” Lot stopped on another news channel that showed the stolen
building. She attempted to turn her screen because it looked like the tower was lying on its side – before she realized it really was lying horizontally on the ground. A helpful map showed just how far Christen had got.

  “That’s not too far from here,” Mason pointed out.

  “Lowering electric monkey results in crash!” declared the excited news reporter in Dev’s ear, but oddly he got the gist.

  “I bet Christen ran out of battery!” said Dev. “He had to drop it wherever he could!”

  Mason laughed. “What an idiot. He didn’t get that far after all.”

  “But I bet Christen is probably long gone in that case,” said Lot. “And he still has the weapon.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when the news camera zoomed in on movement within the building. Somebody was still inside, and the three friends had little doubt as to who it was.

  Mason frowned. “Why didn’t he just run away?”

  “Because whatever’s in the building is so important that he tried to steal the whole thing,” said Dev. “He’s not going to leave empty-handed. Which means we still have time to complete our mission.”

  The surrounding area was awash with flashing lights from the emergency services that had cordoned the toppled building off from a massive crowd of spectators. Christen had dropped the building in the huge moat surrounding the Imperial Palace, a large park in the heart of the city that also included the royal family’s home. The deep walls of the V-shaped moat had acted like a cradle to hold the building in place, although the structure was never designed to lie horizontally, so it had already started to crush the sides of the building touching the ground.

  Luckily the royal family were out of the country, but security had remained high. Police and news helicopters swarmed overhead, searchlights combing over the structure, looking for further signs of movement.

  Dev, Lot and Mason watched from a distance, unable to push through the thick crowd of spectators. It was as close as they could get.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to let the police capture him, and then they can hand over Newton’s Arrow to us?” said Mason.

  “For once I agree,” said Lot. “There’s no way we’re getting through that lot unseen.”

  Dev shook his head. “We have a mission. It doesn’t matter if this guy gets arrested or if we get whatever it is he’s trying to get. We need to return the Newton’s Arrow to the Inventory, and I can’t see the Tokyo police handing over something like that to three foreign teens who don’t even have passports.” Dev almost bitterly added, “And because that’s my only purpose in life, the reason I was created.”

  Mason tutted. “In case you didn’t notice, there is no way we are getting close to the building without being spotted. It’s impossible.”

  That made Dev smile. “Impossible is what we do best.”

  *

  The beached Cocoon Tower was surrounded by amazed spectators, most of whom were recording the sight on their mobile phone cameras. It was being filmed from every direction, even from above, and broadcast live around the world. Approaching unseen would be inconceivable.

  “This isn’t going to work,” growled Mason in a low voice.

  Dev snapped back, “Shut up and keep walking.”

  The crowd before them parted like water, allowing the trio, all wearing dark sunglasses despite it being night-time, an unhindered path straight for the building. They were following a small blue light that floated ahead of them. It was the unremarkable AttentionGrabber from Mason’s kitbag. Dev had taken a picture of it with his phone, and the Inventory database had identified it and provided instructions. Both hemispheres spun around in opposite directions, allowing it to slowly fly in whatever direction it was pushed. It emitted a flashing blue light that drew people’s attention and scrambled their neurons, effectively instructing their brains to ignore the people closest to the light; it was a mild form of amnesia. Dev, Mason and Lot wore Inventory-issue shades from their kitbags, but even a cheap pair was protection enough for users to block the blue light’s effects on their own brains. Luckily due to the late hour, nobody else in the crowd was wearing shades.

  The teens were able to wirelessly command the Avro to hover high overhead, completely cloaked, while its stealth technology blanked every video recording below. Lot felt as if they were living ghosts, able to go anywhere.

  Keeping up with the slow-moving AttentionGrabber, they walked straight up to the police cordon, ducking under the tape, and straight past the glazed expression of the policeman standing guard. They clambered through a broken window as Dev plucked the AttentionGrabber from the air and pocketed it.

  Inside it was dark, completely without power; the electricity cables had been severed the moment Christen had raised the building into the air. The noises from the street were muffled, replaced with the groaning and creaking of stressed metal as the building struggled to stay intact around them. Plaster dust trickled down like fitful snow, and the occasional tremor sent cracks splitting across the walls.

  “My head is spinning already,” said Dev as they looked around. The Inventory shades they wore were no ordinary ones; the lenses in them amplified light, even if there was very little, transforming the darkest hole into a crisp world of grey.

  Because the building was lying on its side, office furniture had slid across the carpeted floor and piled up against one wall – the new floor. The desks and chairs made a handy hill they could scramble up to reach the door, which was now in the ceiling.

  The ascent up the desk-hill was punctuated by alarming moments when the furniture seemed to shift under their weight, threatening to topple. They cautiously made it the doorway, which was now more of a hatch, as if accessing a loft space. They reached up and hauled themselves into the corridor above.

  Lot’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Wow!”

  Due to the topsy-turvy geography of the building, one branch of the T-junction corridor stretched upwards in a menacing shaft that had doorways on either side. It would be a horrendous climb if they needed to reach the centre of the building. The branching corridor in which they now sat on the floor, which was actually a corridor wall, ran along the bottom of the building. Every several metres there was a doorway in the “floor” – some were closed and could probably take their weight. Others were open, deadly pits that could swallow them whole. The same pattern was mirrored in the “ceiling”, although these doorways were so near they could reach the handles with outstretched hands. The floor-wall itself was a shattered collection of plasterboard, which Mason had already put his leg through when he’d stepped on it. They had to be careful to keep to the studwork beneath that held their weight.

  Eema’s voice came over their headsets. “Dev, you asked what this building was used for. It housed a fashion design company—”

  Mason grinned. “Boy, Christen must really be desperate for some new clothes.”

  “—and it was also the home of a technology company: NiGen Labs. It is located on the top floor.”

  Dev exchanged knowing looks with the other two. There was no chance of going back outside to try and re-enter the building further up, as the news feed on their phones showed them that the crowds had doubled outside; all it would take was the AttentionGrabber not working for a second and they would be caught. Plus, the top of the building curved upwards from the ground, meaning they would only gain a small advantage. No, the only way upwards, or rather sideways, was through the building itself.

  Dev’s further worry that they would have to climb up the imposing corridors was replaced when he mentally twisted the building in his mind’s eye and realized the top floor was, at least partially, now on ground level. As they had approached the building along its length, he calculated they must be on the fifth floor already.

  “That means we’re going to have to smash our way through the ceiling,” said Mason, who had also worked out the mind-bending geography.

  Dev pointed to an elevator door in the “ceiling” a little further al
ong the corridor. “Not if we can open that.”

  They gingerly leapt over an open doorway to reach the elevator door. Dev was the tallest, but his fingers still failed to gain purchase between the smooth metal doors.

  “I need a piggyback to get higher.”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Lot.

  With a sigh, Mason stooped down low. Dev climbed on to Mason’s back, then wrapped his legs so tightly around Mason’s shoulders and neck that he heard Mason gasp.

  “I can’t breathe!”

  “Ssh!” Dev needed both hands. His fingertips were just small enough to prise open the doors. The doors grated as he did so, opening wide enough for him to hoist himself through.

  Inside the sideways lift shaft, thick steel cables ran past Dev, back to the lift car that had been on the ground floor. His eyes, still enhanced by special lenses, followed the path of the cables – which now ran horizontally at chest height – to the giant winches at the end of the building. It looked a straightforward journey.

  Lot was next. Dev offered his hand to help her through. Of course she was too determined to accept any help – other than placing her foot on Mason’s head – to spring into the shaft. It took both of them to lift the heavier Mason in after themselves.

  Dev beckoned for them to follow him further into the shaft. Their footsteps thudded against the solid elevator walls but echoed like barrel drums each time they crossed the hollow doors in the floor. Every few moments the building trembled, and there was a far-off creak of straining metal.

  Soon they reached the uppermost floors. Dev put his finger over his lips, even though the others hadn’t said anything. They stopped at a set of elevator doors in the floor, from which they could hear movement and muffled talking beyond. They exchanged worried looks, wondering if they were about to confront more than one bad guy.

  “This is it,” whispered Dev. He pulled the kitbag from his shoulder and unzipped it. “Let’s keep this simple. We dart in, stun him, grab the gun and leave.” He handed them several glass capsules. “Smoke bombs. Should create enough of a distraction, along with this.” He took the AttentionGrabber from his pocket. “Ready?”