Below Zero

by Dan Smith

  Well, not exactly clear as day. Because as Zak’s breath came back to him, and he studied the figure, he thought there was something grey and vague about it; as if it were a shadow. Or a ghost. Or a—

  Pain.

  Sharp, clean, pain drove through Zak’s head like a hot needle.

  It lasted a fraction of a second, and was gone. The figure, however, remained where it was. The man – Zak was sure it had to be a man – was dressed exactly as he had been when he last saw him. The old-fashioned weatherproof jacket, the huge furry mittens, the hood, and the goggles that made him look like a giant insect.

  ‘Do you . . . see something?’ Dad whispered.

  Zak opened his mouth to speak but his tongue was dry. His lips felt numb. ‘See something?’ he managed. ‘Like what?’ If Dad could see it, then he wasn’t imagining this. It wasn’t some crazy episode, like the doctors said he might get.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Dad was still whispering. ‘Like . . . a shadow. At the end of the tunnel?’

  ‘You see it too?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. No. I thought there was something but . . .’ Dad’s voice trailed away as if he was trying to decide what he had or hadn’t seen.

  But Zak could still see it.

  Right there.

  The figure was no more than ten metres away but the more he stared at it, the more unclear he realized it was. The weatherproof coat was like ones he had seen in old photos on the Internet, of explorers standing on the ice, but there was no detail on it other than a few creases. The knee-length boots were dark grey, the hood was white, and the round goggles were filled with the blackest glass. The huge mittens were speckled black and grey and white. The figure didn’t have any colour. Just like in those old photos.

  It raised one hand, curling its fingers, beckoning to Zak.

  Beckoning? Does it want me to go to it?

  It stepped forward, arm extended, flickering like a dodgy image from a CCTV camera. There was movement beneath the woollen balaclava covering its face, as if it were speaking, but Zak couldn’t hear its voice. And there was no sound as it moved. But there was a single flash of colour as the light caught on the surface of the goggles. A muddle of blue and red and green.

  Like beetles’ wings.

  It’s not there, Zak told himself. It’s not there. There’s no such thing as ghosts. It’s in my imagination.

  ‘Must be my imagination.’ Dad’s words echoed Zak’s thoughts. ‘I’m seeing things.’

  But it was still there, moving towards Zak, one jerking step at a time, flickering as if it were trying to break through from another world.

  ‘You don’t see anything?’ Zak’s voice was a quiet whisper.

  ‘No. Come on.’

  ‘Dad . . .’ Zak wanted to stop him, but Dad moved forward, on a collision course with the ghostly explorer, and—

  It was gone. Just like that. The figure vanished as if it had never been there. The tunnel was as empty as the others had been.

  ‘Dad?’ Zak stared at the far end of the tunnel. ‘Tell me what you saw. When we first came in.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Zak insisted. ‘Tell me what it was. What did you see?’

  Dad stopped and turned to him. He tightened his lips and fixed his eyes on the floor. He shook his head before meeting Zak’s gaze again. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘All right. Look, I don’t want to scare you, but . . . a shadow maybe. It felt like there was something there, but . . .’ He turned towards the far door. ‘But there’s nothing there now, and I don’t believe in ghosts so—’

  ‘Ghosts? What made you say that?’

  ‘It’s just my mind playing tricks on me, Zak.’

  ‘Except I saw something too.’

  ‘What? Really?’

  ‘Yeah. A shadow. Something . . . that wasn’t there.’

  Dad watched Zak as if he were expecting this to be a joke.

  ‘I really did,’ Zak said. ‘I really did see something.’

  Dad smiled. It was a sad and sympathetic expression, and Zak knew what it meant.

  He thinks I’m imagining stuff. He thinks I’m going bonkers.

  ‘A trick of the light,’ Dad said. ‘That’s all. Probably our own shadows as we came into the tunnel. There’s definitely something weird going on here, but there’ll be an explanation, and I promise it won’t be anything to do with ghosts.’

  Yeah, not ghosts, Zak thought, but something. Something rotten.

  As soon as Dad punched the button, the door to the Drone Bay slipped open to reveal a large, silent room beyond.

  Dad went straight in, but Zak stayed in the doorway as if trying to break through an invisible barrier. The headache was gone, but this room gave him the strongest sense of something being wrong. Whatever had happened, it was somehow connected with this place. He scanned the room, searching for the figure he’d seen in the tunnel, but the Drone Bay was free of ghosts. For now.

  White walls, white floor, white ceiling, the place was more like an operating theatre than a workshop, but there was still the faint smell of oil and electricity in the air, mingled with the metallic tang of hot steel. Zak could taste the Drone Bay.

  In the centre of the room was a large disc about four metres in diameter that was used as an elevator to lower the Spider drones on to the ice below. When Outpost One – the base on Mars – was completed, the whole module would be a giant airlock to give the Spiders access to the surface of the planet.

  Around the edges of the disc, spare parts were laid out in cabinets, and tools were arranged like surgeon’s instruments on white benches. Wires snaked out from machines ready to be plugged into the Spiders, for diagnosing faults, and keeping them charged.

  At the back of the room there were three large bays, each with a name stencilled on the wall above it in black paint. HAL, ROY, and ED – each of them named after a robot from one of Mum and Dad’s favourite sci-fi movies. Right now, HAL and ROY were empty, but the bay with ED above it was home to something that was one of the most amazing things Zak had ever seen. And one of the scariest.

  The Spider was slightly bigger than a two-seater Smart car, and was made of a flat oval casing about a metre and a half deep that housed the robot’s ‘brain’. On top of that, the bulk of its body was a ribbed dome, like a bloated tick that had filled itself with too much blood. It had four legs, each jointed in six places, giving it the look of a weird, grey metal spider. Close to the front, it had four narrow arms designed to accept interchangeable attachments. For now, the arms were tipped with pincers.

  Right now, ED was in its ‘down’ position, body resting on the ground, jointed legs in an upside down ‘V’, arms retracted.

  Everyone in the ‘robotic world’ knew about Drs Evelyn and Adam Reeves because they had designed robots for researching the Mariana Trench, deep under the Pacific Ocean. So when the Exodus Project asked them to design something for them, Zak’s mum and dad created some of the most sophisticated robots the world had ever seen.

  Transfixed by the Spider, Zak could hardly believe three others like it were already on the surface of Mars, preparing Outpost One. Zak imagined them moving through the orange dust like aliens, conjuring new components from their 3D printers as if by magic, and putting them together to build a new base.

  ‘We’ve got another problem,’ Dad said.

  ‘Hmm?’ Zak was so busy staring at the metallic monster, he hadn’t noticed he was already halfway across the room. A few more seconds and he would have been face to face with the Spider. He blinked hard, not quite sure how he had got there.

  Behind him, Dad had the walkie-talkie to his mouth, his thumb pressing the ‘talk’ button. In fact, he was pressing it so hard the pad of his thumb had gone white.

  ‘What is it?’ Mum’s distorted voice came through the walkie-talkie. ‘Did you find Dima?’

  ‘No. And there’s something else. Hal and Roy are missing.’

  ‘Say again. It sound
ed like you said “Hal and Roy are missing”.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said. Ed’s here, but the other two are gone.’

  ‘Nothing on the system?’

  ‘No response at all.’ He tapped at the tablet computer in his hands. ‘Everything’s dead.’

  There was a pause, then Mum said, ‘We’re on our way.’

  ‘So, this is bad?’ Zak couldn’t take his eyes off the Spider. ‘They should all be here?’

  ‘Seems like everything’s disappearing.’

  ‘Maybe that’s where everyone is? They’re out practicing with the drones?’ Zak watched the Spider resting in its bay like a monster sitting in its lair. There was something ugly about the way it sat there. Like when you find the crusty remains of a spider in the corner of the shed.

  The door swished open and Mum came in with May right behind her. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Dad said. ‘Ed’s powering-up but all the controls are dead.’

  ‘He’s powering-up on his own?’

  ‘Someone else must be controlling him.’ Dad’s fingers tapped icons on the touchscreen. ‘I have no idea where the other two are. All the cameras are off-line, all the read-outs are flatlining . . . I can’t get any response.’

  Mum watched the Spider. ‘Where are your brothers?’

  He? Him? Brothers? Zak shivered. Yuck. As if they weren’t creepy enough already, without Mum and Dad treating them like they were alive.

  Ed sat there while Mum and Dad started with their foreign-sounding technical speak. It was all ‘normalize’ this, ‘autonomous’ that or ‘kinematic’ the other.

  ‘It’s freaky, isn’t it?’ May came over and whispered in Zak’s ear.

  ‘It’s not the only thing.’

  ‘Hey, you.’ She slapped his arm.

  ‘I didn’t mean you; I meant everything that’s happening here. The lights, the people, the plane, those bugs in the lab . . .’

  ‘We should’ve stayed in St Lucia.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re not wrong about that.’ Zak’s gaze was drawn to the Spider once more.

  There was something glistening within the complicated joints and limbs. Zak frowned and put his hands on his knees, leaning down to see the Spider’s underside where sinewy grey strands threaded backwards and forwards among the movable parts. Each strand disappeared into the oval casing that contained what Mum and Dad called its ‘brain’, but the strands weren’t mechanical – and they definitely weren’t wires. They looked more like something biological. Like something fleshy was growing on the Spider’s brain. Or growing out of it.

  Was that supposed to be there? He didn’t think so. It looked like—

  All at once, and with more speed than he could have imagined, the Spider came to life. With a quiet mechanical whir of parts, its legs extended, raising the body off the ground, the arms lifted as if they were ready to attack, and it came forward.

  Tick-tack-tick-tack, its metal feet sounded on the floor. Tick-tack-tick-tack, as it came right at him.

  Startled, Zak tried to get away but fell backwards, sprawling on to the circular platform. The Spider kept coming, huge and horrific, stopping only when its whole body was standing over him. It tilted forward so the dark lenses of its cameras were staring into Zak’s eyes. Metallic arms reached out towards him, the nimble pincers coming straight for his face. Glistening, fleshy sinews twisted around the rods and wires of its joints, tightening and relaxing with the Spider’s movements.

  Behind him, May screamed.

  ‘Stop him!’ Mum shouted. ‘Turn him off!’

  Instinctively, Zak threw his arms up to his face for protection. Cold pincers touched his hands, and in that instant he knew why they couldn’t find anyone at Outpost Zero. He knew what had happened to Dima. This Spider had killed them all. It had torn them apart.

  And now it was going to do the same to him.

  NOVEMBER ISLAND, INDIAN OCEAN

  10 HOURS AGO

  The Sikorsky MH-60S Seahawk helicopter came in low across the foam-crested waves. Reaching the coastline of November Island, it thundered over the narrow stretch of white sandy beach, and skimmed the jungle canopy as it headed inland.

  To anybody who noticed it, November Island was unremarkable. It was charted only on the most detailed maps, and any keen-eyed kid with a love of scrutinizing Google Earth images wouldn’t bother to take more than a second glance at it. Even to the most experienced analyst, it was nothing more than one of the many beautiful spots of sand and jungle that lay in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

  The unassuming spit of teardrop-shaped land was only one and a half kilometres long from end to end, and one kilometre across its widest point. It would take the average person no more than an hour to stroll around it. However, very few ‘average’ people visited the island, because if they did, there was a strong chance they would be dead in less time than it would take for them to walk those beautiful beaches.

  November Island could only be reached by boat or helicopter, but both were restricted. Every centimetre of the emerald jungle, and the idyllic beach surrounding it, was monitored for intruders. Any boat that approached, perhaps carrying adventurous tourists hoping to discover a deserted island, would be met by a security patrol and turned away with a polite word. Those who ignored the polite word would either disappear without trace, or would be found far out at sea, victim to an unfortunate boating accident.

  Inside the Seahawk helicopter, Larisa Lazarovich sat with her carefully selected team of operatives. She flicked through images and files on a tablet computer, double-checking the details Phoenix had sent her several hours ago. Lazarovich was a highly-skilled soldier, and her mission success rate was one hundred per cent. Only one of The Broker’s operatives – a man named Thorn – could beat her record of twenty-eight successful missions. This was to be Lazarovich’s twenty-ninth mission, and she did not intend to fail. The Broker did not like failure, and nor did Lazarovich.

  During her first mission for The Broker, when she was twenty-one years old, Lazarovich had led a team into the Amazon jungle to recover valuable documents from a crashed plane. Only one of the team had objected to having a young woman as his leader, so Lazarovich made an example of him. She challenged him to a knife fight, during which she cut him badly, then left him to die. Now his bones were picked clean and scattered across the jungle.

  No one ever again questioned her ability to lead a successful mission.

  As soon as she detected the helicopter slowing down, Lazarovich pocketed the computer, unclipped her safety harness and stood up. The other operatives followed suit, two of them moving to the side doors and pulling them open.

  The pilot said one word. ‘Clear.’

  Immediately, the operatives dropped two coiled ropes from each side of the aircraft, and rappelled to the grass below. The instant their boots touched the ground, they sprinted across the clearing and disappeared into a large concrete hangar concealed on all sides by thick jungle. The hangar’s roof was camouflaged from the air by a photo-realistic mesh of images blending seamlessly into the trees. Even from the helicopter, close as it was, the hangar was invisible.

  Lazarovich was the last to leave the aircraft, and when she had landed safely, the ropes withdrew into the helicopter, the doors slid shut, and the Seahawk turned and headed away from the island at top speed.

  Inside the hangar, the operatives hustled over to the two prototype Osprey aircraft waiting with their pilots already prepared for take-off. On the floor, between the seats in the passenger cabin of each of aircraft, sets of kit were laid out in preparation for the team’s arrival. Thermal clothing, Arctic camouflage, combat helmets, snow boots, webbing and state-of-the-art HK 416 A5 Heckler & Koch Carbines. As requested, Lazarovich’s kit also included a XM25 grenade launcher – ‘in case of emergencies’.

  As soon as all the operatives were on board, Lazarovich spoke into her headset.

  ‘Team is green.’

  On that order, Land Rovers towed the
aircraft out into the clearing and the engines started up. With tremendous noise, the Ospreys rose vertically from the jungle floor, pausing when they were several metres above the canopy of trees. They hovered as they rotated to face south, then the engines tipped forward and they flew out across the sea.

  From the moment the Seahawk had arrived, to the moment the Ospreys were out of sight, less than five minutes had passed. A brief disturbance of noise and activity before November Island returned to being an uninhabited spit of land.

  Lazarovich and her operatives weren’t even ghosts. It was as if they had never been there at all.

  OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA

  NOW

  Last term, one of the kids in Zak’s school died. It happened on a Saturday, so on Monday they had this big assembly. Mrs Thompson, the head teacher, told the whole school what happened, and lectured them about how they had to be careful when they went to the coast. The sea was dangerous, she said, and when it was cold like that, it could shock you and you’d drown.

  Zak already knew all that stuff, everyone did, but Jason Crowley from Year Six must have thought he was indestructible or something, because one Saturday in October when he was messing about on the harbour wall, he got this crazy idea it would be fun to jump in. The cold shocked him, making him take a deep breath – except instead of breathing air, he breathed cold, salty sea water. After that he went under and didn’t come back up. The lifeboat crew found him that evening, but it was way too late for Jason Crowley.

  On the way to Mrs Coulson’s maths class after assembly, Krishna Gopal told Zak that when you drown, your whole life flashes in front of you. Properly, he said. Every second of it. In fact, any sudden death was the same according to Kris. He told Zak you see it all in slow motion, playing out like a film.

  Zak had never doubted Kris’s words, but as the Spider loomed over him, its pincers lightly touching his hands, Zak’s short life did not flash through his mind. Nu-uh. Not at all. There were no happy visions for Zak Reeves in his dying moments. Instead, he started to drown, but it wasn’t cold sea water that washed over him, it was emotion. Strong and suffocating emotion, flooding like a tidal wave.