by Andy Briggs
Dev was well built and he had even overheard girls at school saying he was cute. But the label of nerd had stuck, and his confidence had been dashed. Dev had no choice but to accept his role as the quiet one nobody really paid attention to.
Except for Mason, that is.
If Dev was well built, then Mason was over-built, as if somebody had inflated him at birth but then forgot to turn the air off. He was a blunt instrument. A battering ram with the IQ of a hammer to match. He was popular on account of the raw fact that he would beat up any kid who dared claim he wasn’t. It was only Dev who failed to acknowledge Mason’s popularity – and occasionally set them on a collision course.
Such as today, when Dev had been preparing to dive into the pool, and Mason had whipped Dev’s shorts down – and off – as he hit the water.
Bobbing naked in the middle of the pool as the rest of the class gathered around to laugh and wolf-whistle was not the highlight of Dev’s week.
From high on the hilltop, Dev looked at the network of street lights below and wondered which house Mason lived in. There was enough exotic weaponry below his feet to blast the bully’s home into orbit.
Or destroy the entire town.
Or worse.
Charles Parker seemed to have forgotten about the punishment that he had threatened. Maybe, thought Dev, he knew that living in Edderton was punishment enough. It was a town so dull, so unaware of the modern world, that the sleepy citizens had no idea that the entire place merely existed just as a cover for the Inventory that lay under his feet.
Only two people could access the Inventory: Charles Parker and Dev.
As long as Dev could remember, he had lived there with his uncle. The way Charles Parker told the story was that he had been given the job as caretaker two weeks after Dev’s mother, Charles’s sister, disappeared in mysterious circumstances. She had never been heard from since. Charles claimed he hadn’t known what to expect when the World Consortium had asked him to quit his job at some place called the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in America and come here.
Dev often wondered if Charles Parker had been a terrible engineer at DARPA, because surely it was a massive step down to be a caretaker, even if it was to look after one of the most incredible places on earth. (And even if his uncle’s strict rules about not playing with anything in the Inventory made living there pointless.)
Dev shouted at the top of his lungs, “As soon as I’m old enough, I’m outta here!”
His voice carried across the empty fields. He was desperate for a new start; a fresh beginning. But for now he was trapped. Friendless, unhappy, and convinced that the rest of the world was having more fun than he was.
Dev believed that there was life beyond earth. Out in space, maybe in parallel universes. It was unthinkable that mankind was alone in the universe.
He also knew, with absolute certainty, that explaining the concept of school to a higher alien intelligence would be impossible.
It was not that he didn’t like school. Well, yes, it was that. But only because he knew it all. Right from the start, he had found maths straightforward. English was English. History? Well, what use was history to anybody? And he’d been banned from chemistry and home economics for destroying both classrooms with improvised experiments. He had joined the school’s karate team, but that was a short-lived when it dawned on him that he was so bad at it that he was effectively volunteering to be beaten up each week.
For a short while, at least, he had loved science. That was, until he’d got past Newton’s three laws of motion, blah, blah, blah, and wanted to know about more advanced concepts, such as quantum string theory and gravitational waves. It was at that point that his teacher had pulled a face and gently coaxed the class back to more mundane things such as magnetism.
Dev suspected that his teacher didn’t actually know the answer to his questions.
The day ground on, and already people seemed to have forgotten about the previous day’s swimming pool incident. Dev almost wished they hadn’t. Was he so forgettable that even the most embarrassing moment of his life didn’t register interest in these people? How mixed up was his life that he was angry that nobody was taunting him?
With these confused emotions battling in his thoughts, he sat down at his desk and was surprised to find an invite to a party after school.
To Lot’s birthday party, to be precise.
Tonight.
Lot was one of the few people in school, in the entire town, whom Dev would call “interesting”. She was top of the school karate team, always the first with her hand in the air in class. Outside school she was a one-girl road hazard, riding her bike around town as if the apocalypse was pursuing her. Despite her infectious smile, she intimidated Dev.
And why would she invite him to her birthday party? They had never spoken.
For the rest of the day, Dev debated if he should go. He even pondered if he should ask her whether the invite was an accident. Instead he did what he usually did and kept his head down, avoided people and read in the corner of the library while everybody else frittered their time away playing football on the internet or forming gangs just to avoid him.
Dev glanced at his watch and chuckled to himself. The piece of technology on his wrist was a hundred times more advanced than any phone, yet he couldn’t show anybody. If he did, would people still consider him uninteresting?
With a deflated sigh he guessed they probably would.
*
Clouds mugged the sun as the end of the day approached, threatening rain.
Reluctant to go straight home, Dev decided to cycle to the address printed on the invite. It wasn’t as if his uncle would miss him. Dev knew he had a degree of freedom that most kids his age would be envious of. His uncle never demanded that he come home at a certain time, didn’t give him many chores to do (aside from sweeping the nonexistent dust in the Inventory and washing his own clothes), and with no other relatives, there were no family get-togethers. But while all this would excite most of his classmates, it simply added to Dev’s feeling of being out of place.
Lot’s house was large and stood on the edge of the town, not quite as far out as his home on the farm.
Dev could hear music belting from the back garden, but he pulled the crumpled invite from his pocket to double-check the address anyway. He felt something small and round beside it, and made a mental note that he still had the mints – they would probably have to do as his dinner. If he stayed long at the party then he wouldn’t be back in time for whatever his uncle had cooked – which would be a good thing. Charles Parker considered “fresh” to be something that had just oozed out of the microwave.
Taking a deep breath, Dev laid his bike against a tree in the front yard and walked around the back of the house.
It was definitely the right place. A DJ was playing on a small stage and lasers strobed through the smoke billowing from a machine. An inflatable obstacle course was crawling with teams of kids armed with laser tag guns, and the centrepiece was a shallow plastic pool that was filled with foam and kids chucking frothy balls at one another. Flaming heat lamps kept the winter’s chill at bay and lent a tropical atmosphere to the party.
It was, in a word, awesome.
Dev walked through it with a growing sense of anticipation. Lot was a popular girl. He recognized many people, but had only talked to few of them. He took a cold chicken wing from the buffet and wandered around, trying to spot the birthday girl.
It took him a few minutes to find Lot among the scrum of people, seated in a gaming chair playing the latest first-person shooter. The entire game was projected on a large screen. Dev was impressed.
He saw her glance over and waved. That prompted a confused look from Lot, who quickly turned back to the screen as the boy next to her seized the advantage and shot her character. Lot threw down her controller and a heated argument ensued.
Sensing he was the cause of her defeat, Dev took a tactical step backwards – straig
ht into the hulking figure of Mason.
“Sorry,” mumbled Dev, trying to step aside.
Mason moved quickly, blocking his path and forcing Dev to walk into him again. “What was that?” cried Mason. He looked at his two cronies on either side. “You see that? He’s trying to cause trouble.”
Dev sensed danger. More than that, he sensed a trap. Mason had conveniently positioned him next to the foam pool. Dev felt his stomach lurch – he wasn’t going to fall for the same trick twice.
“Stop trying to pick a fight with me!” said Mason in the phoniest voice Dev had ever heard. He glanced around and saw all eyes were on them. Surely somebody would intervene and put a stop to it?
Mason moved with a sudden swiftness. Dev felt a firm hand shove him in the chest while another tried to grab his belt to yank his trousers down. Dev wasn’t going to let that happen this time. With both hands he kept his trousers from falling – but that left him off balance. He flew backwards – landing hard in the shallow water, splashing foam everywhere.
Even in a few centimetres of water, Dev was soaked. He quickly stood, wiping the foam from his eyes. As he did so he became aware that everybody was laughing. For several eternally long seconds he realized that Mason had succeeded in his mission – Dev’s trousers were now around his ankles.
It was even more embarrassing than the swimming pool.
Lot was shoving her way through the crowd and looked at the scene with a mixture of disapproval and annoyance. Dev’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. He pulled his trousers up – the contents of his pocket spilling into the pool. His fists clenched of their own accord and, as he stared at Mason’s big grinning face, he felt rage surge though him.
With an athletic bound he was surprised he was capable of, Dev launched himself at Mason. At that exact same moment, the foam around him exploded in a fury of bubbles and another shape emerged. It was the same size and shape as Dev, although its features were translucent – almost watery. It converged on Mason at the same time Dev did – two fists punching the bully’s startled face.
Dev landed with a crouch – and so did the watery figure. Mason was lifted off his feet and sent sprawling into a buffet table. Food scattered in every direction, forcing the crowd to run from flying nuggets and jelly.
Dev caught his breath as he looked around. The figure had vanished. Perhaps it had been a figment of his stressed imagination? But then he saw astonished faces watching him. Lot’s mouth hung open as she stared.
An angry adult hauled Dev to his feet. There was shouting, but Dev wasn’t really listening. He was surprised by his actions: proud, even. He’d never thought he possessed the courage to strike back, but Mason had succeeded in pushing him over a line.
For the first time, he had stood up for himself and it felt wonderful. Dev wondered what else he was really capable of if he put his mind to it.
The Collector inhaled the cool, briny air as the breeze picked up. He’d always felt more at home along the coast, away from the polluted cities. If all went smoothly, polluted cities would be a thing of the past and the planet would thank him. Eventually.
“Everything is checked, sir,” said Lee as the digital scanner embedded in his black-rimmed glasses read the digital manifest for the crates being unloaded from the tramp steamer.
The aging boat looked as though it wouldn’t make the return voyage to its home port of Sierra Leone, but that was just a ruse. Underneath the rusted hull was a state-of-the-art carbon-fibre body with an engine powerful enough to outrun the most curious customs officer. It was part of Shadow Helix’s own private fleet of military-class vehicles that could take them anywhere in the world.
The Collector watched as his team moved back and forth along the quay, loading the crates on to the waiting army trucks. He didn’t expected anything to be amiss – his suppliers knew the dreadful penalty for failure – but it was better to be sure. The Collector never left anything to chance. Every move had been carefully rehearsed.
The thump of something heavy snapped his attention back to the quay. Kwolek had dropped a crate. Everybody around her had frozen in horror, as if expecting it to explode.
“Sorry,” she said, swiping at the long strand of red hair that flapped across her eyes.
The muscled man next to her began shouting in Italian, then switched to English. “You stupid ox! Be more careful!”
Lee looked up from the manifest and winced. Calling Kwolek an ox could turn out worse than dropping a dozen crates.
Kwolek moved with her usual deliberateness. She picked the crate up with both hands – a task that had required two burly longshoremen just moments ago – and placed it on to the truck. The contents were so heavy that the suspension groaned and the body of the truck lowered a few centimetres.
“See,” she said, scowling, “I didn’t blow us all sky high.” She turned to the Italian and grabbed the scruff of his neck, lifting him off the floor without the slightest effort due to the bionic implants that had replaced most of her muscles. “And call me an ox again and I will collapse that fat head of yours.” She dropped him and clapped her hands in front of his nose. The noise sounded like a thunderclap and made the big man jump. “Like so!”
Lee approached the Collector as the team continued loading the trucks.
“I did warn you about her temper,” he said. The Collector didn’t answer, so Lee continued. “Everything is on schedule. We’ll be ready to leave within the hour.”
“You have the access schematics?”
Lee tapped the side of his glasses. Only he could see the head-up display projected on the inside of the lens that told him the state of his latest cyberattack. Lee had once been part of the world’s most notorious hacking group, known only as Anonymous, but he had since left the secretive movement to work for the Collector. As for the identity of the mysterious Shadow Helix that the Collector worked for, that was beyond Lee’s skills to uncover.
“Working on that as we speak. Just manage your expectations; that security is so tight and advanced, we won’t really know what we’re up against until we’re in there.”
The Collector’s voice turned ice cold. “We are depending on you, Lee. There will be no help from within.”
“Relax.” Lee forced a laugh. “We’ll hack them as we go along. But there is nothing I can do for the last step. Iron Fist is beyond even me.”
The Collector turned his gaze back to the quay.
“But not me.”
The following day at school Dev imagined he was a special forces soldier avoiding the enemy, who, in this case, was everybody who had been present at the party.
Slinking into the background was a gift he had long used to avoid trouble. However, word spread like wildfire about the incident. It ranged from pure hysteria that Mason had pulled Dev’s trousers down in the middle of the party, to the spectacle of Dev punching Mason to the ground – through to rumours that the bully was planning painful revenge.
You just can’t win, thought Dev despondently.
He tried to work out just what had happened during the brief incident. The odd figure that had appeared next to him hadn’t been a figment of his imagination after all. Some pupils claimed to have seen it too, and whispers circled that Dev knew some arcane magic tricks.
Typical idiots, thought Dev as he cycled home, grateful that a weekend lay between him and more school. He knew everything, no matter how bizarre, could be explained by science. Even magic.
There was only one way to explain the strange figure. It must have been caused by something he had inadvertently picked up in the Inventory – and that could only have been those small discs that he had thought were mints. They were now missing from his pocket. They must have been responsible for his doppelgänger.
What bothered Dev more was the fact it was out of character for his uncle to overlook a missing item, no matter how small. What could have been distracting him? Was Dev really such a terrible hindrance?
As he left the town and powered down the la
ne leading to the farm, Dev was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t see the figure on a bike up ahead until it turned to block his path.
Dev squeezed his brakes and skidded to a halt, sending a curtain of mud shooting into the air. His first thought was that Mason had finally caught up with him – but a second glance was more surprising.
It was Lot.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” she said, eyeing him with suspicion.
Dev couldn’t meet her eyes. “Look … I’m really sorry for what happened last night.”
“You mean making a colossally embarrassing scene at my party?” She folded her arms.
Dev was suddenly angry. Why should he be apologizing? It wasn’t his fault. “No. Not for that. For turning up! I shouldn’t have been so stupid to believe you would have actually invited me in the first place.”
He nudged his bike past her and continued cycling. How dare she make him feel so bad? He was surprised when he heard her voice next to him a few seconds later as she caught up.
“I didn’t not invite you,” she said, her tone softer. “I just didn’t see the point.”
“Oh, thanks. That’s so much better.”
She gave a theatrically loud sigh. “Because you never come to anything. When I joined in primary school I invited you to every single one of my parties but you never came.” That surprised Dev. He didn’t recall ever being invited to anything. “And you don’t exactly go out of your way to talk to me in school.” She let the words hang in the air.
Of course. Dev suddenly worked it out. “Mason faked the invite,” he said “The fact he spelt everything correctly threw me.”
Lot snorted with laughter. “He just wanted to embarrass you in public again,” she said. “But I think you won this time. That was a nice trick you pulled.”
They rode on in silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Dev noticed that she was studying him.
“My grandpa used to do magic on stage so I know how a lot of the tricks are done,” added Lot. “But that was quite something.”
