by Jack Heath
Senior students head for the car park, drivers fiddling with keys, passengers calling ‘shotgun’. Fiona loiters with two flautists.
‘Hey Chloe,’ she calls. ‘We’re going to the cinema. Want to come?’
Avoid social engagements when you can, but when you can’t, be friendly.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Doctor’s appointment at four-thirty. Don’t think I’d make it back soon enough.’
Fiona’s eyebrows ascend. Perhaps she heard the pregnancy rumour.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Next time.’
‘Next time the school gets attacked by terrorists?’
‘I was thinking public holidays,’ she says, ‘but whatever. See you.’
‘Bye.’
They trot away towards Fiona’s car, and I’m left wondering what I’ll do with the rest of the afternoon.
Being at Chloe’s school, going through her locker, meeting her friends and teachers—none of this helped me understand why she was targeted, or by whom. I’ve thoroughly inspected her room, but now that her parents are both at work, it might be a good opportunity to search the rest of her house.
I walk towards the road, where a school bus is already squeaking and hissing to a stop. I join the queue, and pull Chloe’s MyWay bus card out of her wallet while I wait. Only now do I notice how empty the wallet is; no receipts, no photos, no loyalty cards for coffee shops or scraps of paper with reminders scrawled on them. Just a bank card, a library card, and a drivers’ licence.
It’s as though it’s been sanitized to hinder my investigation. Or perhaps her life was as empty as mine.
I climb into the bus, tap the MyWay against the sensor pad, wait for the beep, and look around for a seat. I find one next to a girl who’s talking on her phone and is unlikely to pay me much attention.
As I tuck Chloe’s bag behind my feet, I notice Becky, the freckled girl from science class. She presses her ticket against the machine and, when it beeps, she turns around and sees me.
She glares for a split second. Then she walks past without looking at me, and sits near the back of the bus. The boys on the seats behind her nudge one another and laugh in a predatory way, and I realize she’s very pretty, or would be if she smiled. She hangs her head, letting her dark bangs tumble across her face.
‘Oh my God.’ The girl next to me is still on the phone. ‘You would not believe the day I’ve had.’
I know how she feels.
~
The bus lets me out at one end of Chloe’s street and, as the doors groan and it rolls away from the kerb, I start walking all the way to the other.
I move quickly. The hunters talked about ‘bringing me in’. I’m not safe until I’m inside Graeme’s fortified house.
The windows of the homes give me snapshots of the occupants’ lives as I trudge past. An old man paints his living room wall the same colour it was before. A woman gyrates on an exercise machine, shining with sweat, eyes locked to the TV. A ragamuffin cat stares at me from its perch on a windowsill. When the wind changes, I smell sausage rolls from the bakery at the local shops.
I tug some mail out of Chloe’s letterbox and check the return addresses as I walk up the driveway. Something from a telephone company, and something from Graeme’s sister, who lives in Borneo. Something intended for the previous owners, who still get letters every month despite having moved to the other side of the country more than twenty years ago.
I unlock the door, push it open, and drop Chloe’s schoolbag just behind it. This feels like something I’ve done a thousand times, even though it’s never happened before; at least, not to me. I’m living in a state of endless déjà vu.
In the last few weeks of her life, Chloe spent most of her time in the basement, building me. If I want to figure out what she didn’t know she knew, that might be the best place to start.
The stairs creak as I descend. My birthplace doesn’t seem to have been disturbed in the last twenty-four hours. I bundle up the nylon net and put it in a box, along with the TV and the cables. Then I slide the box into the darkness beneath the workbench, as though it hasn’t been touched in years. If Graeme goes looking for evidence of Chloe’s project, he won’t find much.
The drawers are filled with hardware supplies—nails, screws, and cubes of chalk like the ones used to polish pool cues. One drawer is full of motherboards, processors, and other computer parts. This might be where Chloe got the components of my brain. There are so many bits and bobs in here that Kylie would never notice if some went missing.
I turn to the computer itself. I already know she used it to control me when I was first switched on, and presumably to modify my programming before that. Perhaps she kept an electronic journal.
I switch on the computer, and find that it’s password-protected—which seems promising, since her laptop wasn’t. I try Chloe’s email password, and it works.
The computer’s hard drive is almost full, since it has the equivalent of a human brain stored on it. The folders are named after neurological functions: short-term memory, long-term memory, hand-eye coordination, imagination, language, and so on. I read through the whole list, but there’s nothing marked What I know about the people following me.
I open up a search field and type stalker. Only one result turns up, and it’s the dictionary definition of the word, stored within a sub-folder labelled vocabulary.
The front door slams up above. I look up, surprised. Graeme and Kylie don’t usually arrive home until after six.
‘Thanks for coming,’ It’s Graeme’s voice.
‘No problem,’ says another voice. Female, soft—and not Kylie’s. ‘It wasn’t hard to get away.’
Unsure of what I’m hearing, I rise to my feet and creep up the stairs. The basement door is thick, but not enough.
‘I had to see you.’ Graeme’s voice is an urgent whisper. ‘My daughter’s school was attacked.’
‘Attacked? By whom?’
‘People with guns, chemical grenades, and a land-to-air vehicle.’
There’s a pause. And then my flesh crawls as the woman speaks.
‘You don’t know it was them,’ she says. ‘Even if it was, it couldn’t have had anything to do with you.’
INVESTIGATION
The wood of the basement door is cold against my ear. I can hear Graeme and the woman talking clearly, but it doesn’t help me understand. How could he be connected to the men who killed his daughter?
‘You’re telling me it’s a coincidence?’ Graeme hisses. ‘No. You’ll have to do better than that.’
Footsteps. They’re moving away from the front door.
‘Look,’ the woman says, still within earshot. ‘They don’t know I’m the one who took the QMP. Even if they did, they couldn’t possibly know I gave it to you. Unless you told somebody?’
‘Nobody. Do you think I’m an idiot?’
A pause.
‘Hey!’
‘Well, what do you want me to think?’ the woman demands. ‘You don’t trust my bosses with the QMP. Fine. Neither do I. But you don’t trust your bosses with it either, and you won’t destroy it.’
‘Destroy it? It’s a huge breakthrough. It’s revolutionary. I can’t …’
‘Well, how long do you plan to keep doing nothing?’
‘I’m trying,’ Graeme hisses, ‘to work out who they’re leaning on in the defence department. How can I risk giving the QMP to anyone until I’m sure?’
I don’t recognize the acronym. QMP could stand for a million things. What are they talking about? That’s the Question Most Pertinent if I want to Qualify My Problem and Quickly Make Progress.
‘If you haven’t told anybody you have it,’ the woman is saying, ‘then they can’t be targeting your daughter. If it was them who attacked her school—and I’m not saying it was—then there must have been another reason.’
But they are targeting me. They were stalking the real Chloe, before they killed her.
‘These are ruthless people. You said they’d
pay a fortune to get the QMP back.’
‘They would.’
Graeme says, ‘Doesn’t it also stand to reason that they’d be willing to kidnap Chloe?’
‘Willing? Yes. Able? No. Like I said, they don’t know you’re involved.’
‘You said they have sources inside the police force.’
‘Graeme, trust me. No one knows you have it.’
He says, ‘If they grab my daughter for revenge …’
‘Don’t be stupid. These people don’t care about anything except money. That’s what makes us better than them. If they grabbed your daughter, it would be for ransom—but if they knew about you at all, they would have taken her from here instead.’
‘Then why attack the school? What were they trying to do?’
She sighs. ‘I’ll do some digging at work. If it was them, there’ll be some trace of it. OK?’
‘It was them.’
‘Well, I’ll look. There’s nothing more I can do.’
‘You’ll let me know,’ Graeme says, ‘as soon you find anything?’
‘Of course. We’re in this together.’
‘Sure we are. Now that you’ve dragged me into it.’
‘We’re doing the right thing, and you know it,’ the woman replies. ‘The defence minister herself is clean.’
‘You know that for sure?’
‘I’m positive.’
Graeme sighs. ‘OK. I’ll get the QMP to her within the next forty-eight hours.’
‘Good. I have to go, or they’ll get suspicious.’
Footsteps clatter back up the hall towards the front door.
‘Call me,’ Graeme says, as the door squeaks open.
‘You got it.’
The front door closes. Shoes crunch away across the garden path. Silence, then; perhaps Graeme is watching through the peephole, checking that she isn’t being followed. Maybe he’s just thinking.
Then he starts moving again. His footsteps get closer and closer to the basement door.
A jolt of fear zips down my spine. I tiptoe back down the stairs as quickly as I dare. There’s nowhere to hide down here, so I sit down in front of the computer. Some headphones are tangled up in the cables under the desk. I pull them free and jam them over my ears.
The basement door creaks open. Without looking up, I bob my head as though listening to music.
‘Chloe,’ Graeme says. I ignore him. It’s not until he’s almost at the bottom of the stairs that I look up at him, and jump in my chair.
‘Dad!’ I say. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’
‘You’re home early,’ he says, cautiously.
So is he, but I don’t say so. ‘School was cancelled. There was a gas leak—well, at first they said it was a gas leak, but actually it was terrorists! Everyone’s fine though, don’t worry.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yep. Terrorists released a knock-out gas in the school, but everyone made it out safely. There was one kid who got dosed, and Henrietta inhaled some of it when she was giving him mouth-to-mouth, so they both had to go to hospital—but they were both conscious before they got put in the ambulances. She’s going to text me when she gets out.’
Graeme puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes the silicone. ‘But are you OK?’
I smile. ‘Relax, Dad. It wasn’t even that scary, since I kind of thought it was a drill until they let us go home afterwards.’
‘Did the police catch them?’
‘Not that I know of. They escaped in a helicopter.’ Trying to sound natural, I ask, ‘Can you think of any reason terrorists would choose my school?’
Graeme shakes his head. ‘Since they didn’t kill anyone, it doesn’t sound like terrorists at all.’
‘What does it sound like?’
He bends down and kisses the top of my head. I try not to flinch. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘We’ll know more soon enough. I’m just glad you’re OK.’ He looks at the screen over my shoulder. ‘What’s this?’
‘Science homework. Neurology.’
‘That’s pretty advanced. When I was in high school, we never learned anything more specific than biology.’
I shrug. ‘The other students are studying proteins. I wanted to go a bit more in-depth.’
He chuckles. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’
I turn back to the computer and try to look like I’m studying. He opens one of the drawers beside me, and frowns.
‘What are you looking for?’ I ask.
‘I … I bought some parts at the hardware store a few weeks ago, and left them down here.’ He rummages through the drawer with growing urgency. ‘Have you moved anything?’
No, but Chloe might have. ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’
He stares at me. His gaze is unbearably intense.
‘You’re not sure?’ he asks.
‘I’m pretty sure. What are you missing?’
I can see the anxiety in his face, but clearly he doesn’t want to tell me exactly what’s going on. He pulls open another drawer. Digs through the contents. Slams it closed and steps back, dragging his hands through his thinning hair.
‘Dad?’ I say. ‘What’s wrong.’
‘Nothing,’ he mutters. ‘It’s nothing.’ The veins stand out in his neck. His hands are squeezed into fists.
Electrical pulses zip through the wires that make up my brain. Metallic synapses fire.
I’m not happy she’s started spending all her time in the basement.
What if the QMP, whatever it is, was hidden down here? What if someone broke into our house earlier today and stole it? What if the attack on the school was just a distraction?
The theory doesn’t quite make sense—Graeme would still be at work right now if it weren’t for the attack. I’d still be at school. And the hunters clearly believed they were searching for something there.
But I’m getting closer to the truth. I must be.
~
Kylie comes home while Graeme is stir-frying some vegetables and rice for our dinner. ‘Chloe!’ she cries, as she comes through the door. ‘Are you OK?’
I’m sitting on the couch and scribbling in my school notebook, the same way Chloe used to. The words are all possible motivations for the hunters—blackmail, espionage, revenge—but above them I’ve written Themes in Hamlet in case someone finds it.
Not that there’s much risk, since I don’t know anything worth putting to paper. I’ve worked out that the mystery woman stole a QMP from her employer and gave it to Graeme, who was supposed to pass it on to someone in defence, but didn’t trust them to have it. He kept it here at the house, and it has since vanished. The woman’s employer then sent soldiers to search for it at Scullin High School—the same soldiers who were following Chloe.
But why were they stalking her? Who are they? Why did they think the QMP would be at the school? And what is a QMP, anyway?
My head is filled with so many questions that it might burst.
Kylie stares at me. I haven’t answered her question.
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
‘I heard what happened at school,’ she says, dropping her handbag onto a chair. ‘They didn’t hurt you?’
‘I’m fine. They never even got near me.’
She takes my hand and squeezes it, making me nervous. My hands feel like the least realistic parts of me—soft, rubbery things that occasionally bend in the wrong directions. But Kylie doesn’t seem to notice.
‘If anything like that ever happens again, you run,’ she says. ‘You run as fast as your legs can carry you. Got it?’
‘I did run. And I’m fine. See? Lesson learned.’
‘Do you want to take next week off school?’ she says. ‘Are you traumatized?’
‘Thanks Mum, but for the millionth time, I’m fine.’
Graeme ladles the food into three bowls and two microwave-safe containers, and we all sit down at the table to eat. Chopsticks feel alien in my hands—perhaps I was never progra
mmed with that skill—so I use a spoon. No one comments.
Kylie asks endless questions about the attack on the school. She’s more thorough than the cops were. Her voice covers the hissing and sucking of my mouth as I swallow the food. When replying, I find myself embellishing the tale, describing my desperate search around the outside of the school, the lifeless way Pete was sprawled on the asphalt, how heavy he was when I carried him. If I can’t be honest, at least I can be entertaining, and I feel a strange need for Kylie to be proud of me.
But I wish I could tell the truth to someone.
Graeme stares into space, saying almost nothing. His lips are swollen from chewing on them. When prompted, he tells us his day was ‘tiring’, but offers no more information. I was hoping for clues to identify the woman who paid him a visit, but he gives me nothing to work with.
When the conversation dries up, I stop eating, and carry my bowl over to the sink.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say. ‘That was yummy.’
‘You’re finished?’ he says. ‘Already?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’ve been eating less and less lately. You’re not starving yourself, are you?’
I gesture at my body, which is slightly curvier than Chloe’s was. ‘Do I look like I’m wasting away?’
‘Well,’ he says, embarrassed. ‘There’s more in the fridge if you get hungry again later.’
‘Cool.’
I wash my bowl and spoon, dry them, and stack them in the cupboards.
‘Night Mum,’ I say. ‘Night Dad.’
‘You’re going to bed?’ Kylie asks. ‘It’s only …’
‘Homework, study, you know. I’ve got a test tomorrow.’
‘I thought your test was today,’ Graeme said.
‘Postponed due to terrorism.’
‘Oh. Well, study hard.’
I go to the bathroom to empty my food tank—the process, thankfully, seems to work the same way for me as it does for humans—before washing my hands, walking into Chloe’s room and shutting the door. One day down. I hope tomorrow is easier.
