by Andy Briggs
Dev hated that Mason was always pointing out the obvious. As another sonic pulse punctured a perfectly circular hole through the metal grating between his legs, Dev leapt to his feet, hauling Lot upright.
“Go! Go!” he said, starting to run. “They can’t get up here.”
Below them, Kwolek and her team ran along the aisle, easily matching their progress.
Dev reached a crossroads and veered right. Mason was still lagging behind as another volley of shots destroyed the catwalk behind them. They watched in horror as the damaged walkway peeled away from the ceiling and cascaded down. The one advantage: the falling walkway forced the soldiers to scatter. One mercenary had nowhere to run as the walkway dropped straight on to him.
Up above, the combined weight of Dev, Lot and Mason caused the remaining catwalk to sag and wobble, like a ruler hanging over the edge of a desk. More supporting spars snapped from the roof and the severed end of the catwalk began to curve downwards. Mason lost his footing first – then slid into Dev and Lot. All three tumbled down the incline towards the drop.
Lot’s fingers clung to the mesh floor and she howled in pain as Dev bumped into her, stomping on her fingers. Dev grabbed the twisted handrail, finally stopping his fall.
Mason wasn’t so lucky. He was on his back and sliding too fast. His legs were already over the edge…
He was suddenly pulled to a halt, the collar of his jacket choking him as it pulled tight. Lot had managed to reach out with one hand and snag his collar, stopping his descent – but supporting herself with one hand was already weakening her grip.
“Dev! Help me!”
Dev began a controlled descent towards Mason. He secured one foot against a section of the rail to brace himself – then reached down. The yawning drop beneath them made his head spin.
“Take my hand!”
Mason moved with agonizing slowness. He was staring at Kwolek below, her sonic weapon trained upon them. One shot and they would all die.
“Mason! Take my hand or you’ll fall!” Dev yelled, straining forward.
Lot groaned in pain, and her fingers supporting Mason began to tremble. “Mase, I can’t hold on much longer.”
Mason snatched Dev’s hand. Dev grunted as he heaved him up. “Why … are you so … heavy?” he grunted.
Mason twisted around to grasp hold of the handrail. His grip on Dev slipped and his fingers hooked on to Dev’s watch. Dev howled as the watch strap dug into his skin. Mason’s weight was too great – and the strap snapped.
Mason fell, the watch clutched in his hand.
With a scream, Mason swung out, letting go of the watch to grab the handrail and stop his fall. Dev watched in horror as his watch, their lifeline – the only communication he had with Eema – plummeted to the floor.
Free to move again, Lot helped Mason to scramble back up on to the sagging walkway, and the two of them clambered to the secure and level section.
“Dev, come on!” Lot urged.
Dev tore his gaze away from his watch and joined them just as Kwolek fired again, blasting the hanging walkway to pieces. Now he ran for all he was worth and didn’t look back. Only the clatter of their footsteps assured him that Lot and Mason were close behind.
“We’re sitting ducks up here,” Mason panted as Dev took a left at another junction.
But they also had the head start they needed. Below, the intruders couldn’t move as freely, forced to change directions every time the shelving units ran to an end.
Dev led Lot and Mason to a large tube, about the diameter of a van, that ran along the ceiling. One end stretched vertically up from the floor, before curving where it met the ceiling. The other end ran straight through a distant wall.
Dev ran his fingers across the surface, his eyes closed. Where his fingers stopped, he pressed the surface. A hidden access panel slid open with a gentle hiss. It was just big enough for them to crawl through.
“Inside, quickly.”
Lot peered into the dark space beyond. “How did you find this, Dev? We couldn’t see this from the outside.”
“I told you. I have gift for this kind of thing. Now, come on…” He indicated into the tube.
Mason entered first, using his mobile phone to illuminate the dark interior. Lot threw a questioning glance at Dev, then followed.
Dev peered below to check that Kwolek hadn’t spotted them, but she and her team were nowhere to be seen. Taking a deep breath, he entered the dark tube and sealed it behind them.
Lee gazed at the door leading to the Blue Zone. It remained resolutely closed. He would rather have stayed in the command bunker, but so far his team had failed. He had no wish to report back to the Collector that they had been unable to open a door.
He glanced at Charles Parker. “Well, Professor Parker, if you could just open it up, then you will save us a lot of effort.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Lee sighed and waved his hand to one of his men. “OK, we’ll stick to Plan A and blow this thing wide open.”
The muscular man cracked his knuckles and climbed on board the tank that they had taken from a display. It was unusual in that it had no tracks. The driver’s head poked from the hatch at the front and the machine rumbled to life, rising on a cushion of sparks and emitting a loud crackling noise that drowned out any conversation. Once it was a metre off the ground the noise abated and the HoverTank silently drifted forward.
“All right!” Lee yelled. “Batter up!”
The tank’s barrel swivelled around to face the door. The engine began to hum and lights strobed down the barrel as it built up a charge.
Charles Parker shook his head. “You plan to shoot your way through the door? I’m afraid that won’t work.”
Lee wagged a finger. “Do you know why the HoverTank never made it to front-line combat? Aside from the awful start-up noise, of course. The energy weapon was made from a standard terawatt laser. Useless. My guys have replaced it with a zero-point energy cannon from one of your other little relics back there.”
Charles Parker looked uncomfortable. “The zero-point cannon was never fully tested. It could collapse every particle in the door, thus creating a small black hole…”
“Exactly! And that would collapse the door on itself.”
“Or escalate out of control and suck the entire Inventory down to the size of a pinhead!”
A shadow of doubt crossed Lee’s face. “That would kill us all.”
“Possibly.”
The sliver of hope Charles had been clinging to was suddenly extinguished when Lee burst into laughter.
“Oh, Prof. You really think that hadn’t occurred to us?” Lee pointed at him. “The look on your face was classic. You almost thought I’d turn around and quit, didn’t you? Well, newsflash, that is not going to happen.” He turned to the tank driver. “Fire away!”
The tank suddenly emitted a brilliant light. Charles Parker looked away, shielding his eyes as a tongue of energy rolled lazily from the barrel and struck the centre of the door.
With a terrible crunching sound of tortured metal, the door folded in on itself, shrinking so fast that a hurricane force drew them towards it. Charles Parker’s ears popped and he was dragged closer to the door, his leather-soled shoes skidding across the smooth floor.
In seconds the storm abated. Charles looked up and was astonished to see the door was no longer there. Neither was a ragged chunk of wall around it.
A gaping portal now led into the Blue Zone.
The driver killed the tank’s engine and the machine dropped to the floor with a resounding clang.
Lee strode forward into the next zone. “It seems your Inventory is open for business after all.”
Suddenly a voice came over his headset. Lee stopped in his tracks and listened with concern.
“All units, we have visitors outside. And Kwolek has news about the kids.”
Turning away from the newly opened portal, Lee hurried back towards the bunker.
; The tunnel was smooth and featureless. The light from Lot’s and Mason’s phones failed to reveal anything ahead. It was as if they were walking into a black hole; and it felt as if they had been walking for miles, which Dev thought was probably close to the truth.
“Are you certain they won’t find us in here?” asked Lot. “It’s not as if there is anywhere to hide.”
“Relax, they won’t look in here,” said Dev confidently. “Nobody would think of looking in here. This is the old Vacuum-Pod system. Have you ever seen those air suction tubes they used to use in banks in old films?”
Mason laughed. “Yeah. They’d pop canisters full of cash inside and they’d be sucked into the vault.”
“Exactly. It’s that except on a bigger scale. Without air there is no resistance, so the pods could shoot through the tunnels faster than a train. You might have noticed the suction has been deactivated or we would have been there already.”
Lot suddenly stopped and shone her light behind them. “I thought I heard something.”
They all strained to listen, but couldn’t hear anything.
“Don’t worry,” Dev assured her, “the Vacuum-Pods can’t operate if there’s air in here. Besides, it hasn’t been used for years. My uncle shut it all down when the security was improved.”
They continued walking in silence. Dev’s mind was churning through what Eema had said about the Collector needing help from somebody on the inside. That confirmed his suspicion: it was no coincidence that Lot and Mason had turned up on the farm at the very same time as the attack. Either of them could be the mole. His natural suspicions fell on Mason, especially now that Mason had caused him to lose his watch, their only contact with Eema, leaving them blind as they delved deeper into the Inventory. But could he really trust Lot either? She hadn’t spoken to him for years, then suddenly…
Ahead, the tunnel began to sharply curve downwards. Steps had been moulded into the floor, presumably to allow people to service the tunnel. They descended cautiously, their phones illuminating the utter darkness only a few metres ahead.
“Stop!” Dev said suddenly.
In the darkness he almost hadn’t seen that there was no more tunnel ahead of them – instead it inclined sharply downwards. Dev had expected this. It meant they had crossed into the Blue Zone already and the almost-vertical drop would take them to the next Pod stop. He had hoped for a ladder or some other way down, but there was nothing.
“It’s a dead end,” Lot said. “Or it will be for us if we carry on.”
Just then they became aware of a faint whirling noise behind them. They spun around to see a small disc-shaped drone hovering at the edge of the pool of illumination created by Mason’s mobile. The light reflected off the dome of a small thumb-sized camera. Whoever was operating it had definitely seen them.
With a bellow, Mason lunged for the hovering object.
Lee recoiled from the screen as the oversized image of Mason filled it. They had a view straight into the boy’s mouth before the picture cut to black.
Lee leaned back in his chair. “Looks like that kid owes you a drone.”
He grinned at Kwolek, who was sitting the wrong way round on another chair as she watched the transmission. She shook her head, impressed. Her men had lost sight of Dev and his companions after they narrowly escaped being shot down on the walkway, but she had found the watch and returned to the control bunker with it. It hadn’t taken Lee long to find Eema’s last command from the watch was to flood the Vacuum-Pod tubes with air. The twins had then accessed the tubes and flown a drone inside to see if the kids were really there.
“I have to ask,” said Lee conversationally, “what kind of name is Kwolek? I mean, why choose that as a code name?”
“Why choose Lee?” she replied without taking her eyes off the screens. “I mean, Faraday, Edison, they’re obvious. But Lee? It’s kinda boring.”
Lee shrugged as if it was obvious, but Kwolek clearly didn’t get it. “Tim Berners-Lee?” She shook her head. “Give me strength,” he muttered. “He only invented that little thing called the Internet. What did Kwolek invent? The rubber band?” He laughed at his own dumb joke.
Kwolek snorted with derision. “She was the genius who created the bulletproof vest. That saved my life on more than one occasion, let me tell you.” She continued to stare at the blank screen. “What would happen if you turned the tubes back into a vacuum?”
“They’d suffocate and die. No need to do that. Inside there they’re not going anywhere. They’re no longer a problem for us. I need you to focus on the main task at hand.”
Lee turned his attention to a radar screen that showed three World Consortium Chinooks bearing down on the farm.
“The cavalry is right on time. Impressive.”
Kwolek didn’t answer. Lee turned around, but she had left the bunker. He adjusted his headset and patched his communication link directly to the surface team. “OK, people, we have three incoming bogeys. Get ready.”
Kwolek hurried back to the supply room, where the laptop was connected to the security system. While she was no expert black-hat hacker like Lee, she could navigate through the laptop and locate the controls to purge the air from the tube network, reverting it back to a vacuum.
No matter what Lee had said, she was certain the Collector wouldn’t want any loose ends – and those annoying kids were definitely loose ends. Plus they had made a fool of her, which made them targets for her revenge.
She quickly found the controls for the vacuum tunnel system. It was an old interface with tick boxes and sliding controls that looked as if it had been designed last century. The click of a mouse was all that was needed to start the powerful pumps that would suck the air from the tubes in just over a minute.
Then she returned to Lee to watch the battle on the surface unfold.
The way Mason held up the broken drone as a spoil of victory reminded Dev of a faithful hound retrieving a stick. He wondered how he could have suspected Mason was a traitor. An idiot and a bully, sure, but a traitor?
He glanced at Lot. She was smiling her infectious smile at Mason, and this too vaporized any notion in Dev’s mind that she was working with the bad guys.
Then a dark thought struck him – maybe that was the perfect cover?
He felt a sudden breeze against his face. His immediate fear was that a Vacuum-Pod was hurtling towards them, but he knew that was impossible with air in the tunnel.
The breeze suddenly turned into a hurricane that threatened to roll them back down the tunnel. The wind stung his eyes and they began to water.
“What’s going on?” Lot yelled above the increasing roar.
Dev knew exactly what was happening. “They’re sucking out the air! They’re turning the tube back into a vacuum!”
Dev knew that if they didn’t do something fast they would suffocate. His first instinct was to run back the way they had come, but the access panel he had closed behind them was already too far away. That left one other option.
“We’re going to have to jump!” he shouted.
“Are you crazy?” Mason screamed back.
“We jump – or we suffocate in less than a minute!”
With streaming eyes, they peered into the void below. The air blasted them in the face so hard that their jowls flapped like flags.
“It could work,” said Lot with growing excitement. “The wind’s strong enough. If we open our jackets, it should help slow our descent.” Even in the dim light she could see Mason’s dubious expression. “I did a tandem parachute jump with my dad once. We’re not going to sail down like a feather, but it should be enough to act as an air brake.”
Dev unzipped his jacket and gripped both sides, ready to open it like a wing the moment he took the plunge. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to jump now!” He stood on the edge. The darkness beyond soothed him; not being able to see the perils below eased his vertigo. He was certain that if the tube was lit he would be quaking in his trainers.
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br /> “Mase, you have to do this,” Lot urged.
Mason didn’t move; he looked terrified.
“It’s either this or we suffocate.”
“Come on! Go now! NOW!” bellowed Dev, and he leapt head first into the darkness.
Lot followed immediately.
Dev’s stomach lurched as it did when his uncle drove over a bridge too fast, except it didn’t settle back again as he plummeted down the tube. He screamed with both fear and exhilaration. He spread his arms, opening his jacket. It immediately inflated as the air filled it, expanding the material, and he felt himself slow a little.
Lot shot past him with a scream. She was still clutching her mobile phone as a light and he could see the wall zipping past them in a blur. She opened her jacket moments later and her speed reduced to match Dev’s.
Seconds later Mason tumbled past, spinning head over heels. He tried to open his jacket but the fabric tore from his hand and left him free-falling. The illumination from his phone spun around and around, marking his trajectory. The wind slowed his descent a little, but Dev was certain it wouldn’t be enough.
Just as sharply as it had started, the ferocious wind ceased, and Dev and Lot found themselves plummeting straight down, even faster now that there was almost zero air friction.
The side of the tube raced towards them, and Dev remembered that the tubes were not completely vertical; they arced steadily near the bottom to allow the Vacuum-Pods to level out at the ground floor.
They landed on the slope, transitioning from a free fall to riding a huge death slide. They were sliding so fast they could feel the friction heat through their clothes. If any bare skin touched the tube, it would be flayed clean off.
The tube’s arc increased so dramatically that they were horizontal before they knew it and rolled along the floor for several metres before sliding to a stop. The two mobile phones had escaped Lot’s and Mason’s clutches and skittered on a little further, still providing just enough illumination.
Dev laughed with relief – but no sound came out. With horror, he realized they were now in a vacuum. There was no air to carry sound.
