by Paul Bristow
“Yeah, but not for your teeth,” said Megan. “He has nice teeth John, don’t let him melt them.”
“I think you should drink the sugary juice,” said TJ.
Cam frowned at him.
“How are you getting on?” John asked Megan.
“Well, I’m managing ok on low flying but…”
“Right. Good. Now do the same thing again, but on your back.”
“Eh? How will I see?” asked Megan.
“You ever swim on your back?”
“Yes. But…”
“Like that, but without water,” said John, miming a backstroke.
“Make Cam do something hard as well,” said Megan.
“That’s the plan,” said John, grinning over at Cam. “You can only change into a few things just now, right?”
“Yes. I’m still not totally sure how.”
“It’s to do with how well you can visualise particular animals. Let me guess… there’s a gorilla poster in your room, and you’ve had rabbits and hamsters as pets?”
“No gorilla poster,” said Cam, “but I do play ‘Donkey Kong’ quite a lot.”
“Right. So, you just need to get to know more animals in the same way. Useful animals.”
“Can you show me how to be a werewolf?” asked Cam. “No! Lion! No! Yeti!”
“Yetis aren’t real!” laughed Megan as she lay on her back just above the grasstips.
“Incorrect,” said TJ. “I once encountered them in caves beneath the Kremlin.”
“TJ apparently had all these other adventures before we met him,” said John. “We were never quite sure how much to believe.”
“Neither are we!” laughed Megan.
“Believe in yeti,” said TJ. “They bite.”
“What is it like being a guardian? What do you do?” asked Megan. “I just can’t imagine my gran keeping quiet about it and staying out of trouble.”
“No, she didn’t,” said John. “None of us did. Same with you two. You should run towards trouble, because chances are, it will be trouble you can fix.”
“We haven’t fixed much so far,” said Cam. “Mostly some buildings have fallen down.”
“Trouble will find you anyway,” said John, tapping his chest. “You’ll feel it, right here. Pulling at you.”
“Yes!” said Megan. “We get that, the fireflies flickering at your chest.”
“That’s how you know,” said John. “When you feel like that, there’s trouble nearby. You’ll be drawn to it.”
TJ was staring silently at the river again.
“Enjoying the view, Jimmy?”
“The river. We watched the river. Protected it.”
“That’s it Jimmy, it’s coming back to you.”
“What was in the river?” asked Megan. “Is that what the sigils are for?”
John nodded grimly. “More or less. There’s something down there, something old. People who become guardians, like me and Sarah and the rest of us, are supposed to stop it getting into the wrong hands. But from my generation there’s only me left, and I’m retired. So it’s your turn to do the same.”
“It’s never my turn,” said Cam. “I’m last in the queue, last pick at teams and that’s the way I like it. Now, let’s go yeti!” Cam looked to Megan for a laugh, but she seemed to be deep in thought.
“Listen,” said John, “let’s start simple and save the monsters for another day. You’ve only just mastered hamster.”
John’s skin gradually turned green and scaly, very slowly, so that Cam could watch how to become a lizard.
“Ugh, I hate lizards,” said Megan, flying higher up.
Lizard-John nodded to Cam as if to say, Now you.
Cam began going green, laughing as a forked tongue popped out from between his teeth.
“Rivers and monsters,” Megan whispered to herself. “Rivers and monsters.” Those words hung there, before drifting gently away like the dandelion seeds she’d been swishing past all afternoon. I’ve forgotten something, she thought, something important.
Chapter 25.
Hide and Seek
In his lab, Mr Finn put down the blowtorch and stared again at the pile of his father’s notes and diaries in the corner. He was trying really hard not to just set them on fire.
“No. I don’t get it. It makes no sense.” He turned to look at spiky Resilience and clock-faced Chronos, who were both in the lab tonight receiving some new weaponry. “Does it make sense to either of you?”
Neither of the robots could talk, shrug, or even shake their heads, but Resilience flashed his eyes in response.
“Why was the Tin Jimmy so important to Dad’s plans?”
Chronos swivelled slightly to look at Resilience, hoping the thornier robot would have a better idea of what to do in this situation.
“I mean the so-called ‘master control signal’ doesn’t even work! And the tracking device isn’t much better. Runs slow half the time. Total amateur!”
Resilience flashed his evil red eyes sympathetically.
“Its systems have probably rusted away to nothing wherever it was hiding for fifty years,” said Mr Finn, shaking his head. “Shoddy workmanship.”
Mr Finn was now talking directly to the big pile of books. “This is how you build robots,” he said, gesturing to Chronos and Resilience. “These robots do what they’re told.”
Resilience and Chronos both flashed their eyes in appreciation. Mr Finn was actually being a bit generous here because, to be honest, so far Resilience had been flattened by a building and Chronos had been half-destroyed by a collapsing staircase. Not to mention Evolve who had recently bungled the burglary at the museum.
Mr Finn was so busy being angry and creative that he didn’t hear the regular beeping of the tracking signal. Chronos had to ring its alarm-clock head to stop him drilling holes in things.
“What? What is it I’m… oh. I wonder if they’re out searching again.” Mr Finn brought the map up on his computer screen. “He’s up in the hills. Why is he up in the hills? Robots don’t need fresh air and exercise. Odd. Still, worth checking out just in case.”
He searched around for the device he used to communicate with each of the sculptures, pressed a button and cleared his throat. “Evolve?”
Far off, near the dam where it was positioned as a public work of art, the spherical robot rolled upright, standing as near to attention as it could.
“Fetch,” said Mr Finn.
Chapter 26.
Springs and Magnets
It was breakfast time on Monday before Megan realised what she had been missing, as if, like TJ, the cogs and wheels in her head had been quietly working away on the problem overnight.
“The old newspaper!” she shouted at her mum, who spilled her Shreddies in surprise.
Megan thundered upstairs to her room and took her gran’s letter out from the little china-print box, carefully unfolding the old scrap of newsprint. It was dated September 1964. There were several stories, but only now did she realise they were connected – the photo was of Crowfell hospital, and the main story…
Next to the article, there was a photo of some serious-looking men in white coats standing by the riverside, pointing. John Bone had told them it was Clutha Chemicals doing experiments on children at Crowfell Hospital.
These things must be related, Megan thought.
Before she could wonder much more about it, she heard the special frantic banging at the door that meant Cam had arrived.
“I’ll get it Mum!” said Megan, because the less time Cam spent trying to sound polite in front of Megan’s mum, the better.
“Well, there’s good news and bad news,” said Cam. “The good news is, we actually don’t have school today, school’s shut. A bit of the roof caved in again.”
“Really? Brilliant, we can train!”
“The bad news,” said Cam, “is that last night, John saw Evolve rolling around the hills. He went all cheetah and sprinted over to tell me this morning. He thinks i
t might have been looking for TJ.”
“How did it know we were there?”
“That’s what worries me,” said Cam. “The cave’s well hidden by the trees and the valley, so I don’t know how it could have known we were there…”
“Maybe we should go and check out Evolve,” said Megan.
***
A quick search of Evolve and the surrounding area didn’t reveal anything useful. Cam had even taken the opportunity to turn into a beetle and scuttle in and out of the sculpture’s nooks and crannies just to be sure. But tiny scuffmarks of grass and mud suggested John had been right about Evolve rolling round the hills after them.
So now they were sitting on a bench across the street, waiting to see if the statue did anything unusual. While they sat, Megan quietly explained what she had found in the old newspaper clipping.
“Burying monsters under school football pitches? Seriously? Surely that’s just asking for ghosts,” said Cam. “How long has this stuff been happening?”
“Probably for much longer than we think,” said Megan.
“Do you think that’s why the science department smells so bad?” wondered Cam. “Because there’s a dead sea monster under it?”
“No,” said Megan, “it smells bad because none of the science teachers use deodorant. Also, sulphur.”
“We should dig this creature up!” said Cam.
“It’s hardly going to be there now, is it? It was buried fifty years ago.”
“So was your robot,” said Cam.
You could just about see the river from this part of town. Megan had found herself staring out towards it much more since their conversation with John Bone.
Cam saw her looking. “Do you think that’s what they were protecting then? A monster?”
“But the monster died, so why would they still be hang—” Cam stopped, grabbed Megan’s arm and pointed to the statue. “It moved. I’m sure I just saw Evolve move.”
Megan peered over at it. “Well it’s not moving now.”
Although Evolve was a spherical sculpture, it stood near the dam in what someone had decided to call a ‘sculpture garden’, which was all sharp angles and pyramid shapes. Naturally this meant people were always using it as a playground or a skate park, and hardly ever as a sculpture garden, whatever that actually was.
“A real skate park would probably have been cheaper,” said Cam, as another BMX smacked up against Evolve. “So are we staying here all day?”
“Well, I could get TJ to hack into the CCTV, instead.”
“How does that work? Surely he’s… not very digital.”
“He’s now almost fully Goozberri-Five-powered, off a solar plate in his head.”
“Ha! He’s getting even more like one of those Lego robots,” laughed Cam.
“At least I’m not actually helping build another robot sculpture to attack us!”
Cam shuffled uncomfortably. “Yeah, well.”
The conversation stopped abruptly. They both stared at one another.
“Did you feel that too?” asked Megan.
“That fizzing?” said Cam, tapping his chest. “Yeah.”
“No… more than fizzing this time – more like… magnets, pulling…”
The two of them stood up suddenly.
“We run towards trouble, right?” said Cam.
It was slightly easier for Cam to use his powers in broad daylight than it was for Megan, providing he didn’t turn into anything too exotic. Having assumed that the park would already be full of squirrels, he was off and running. Megan picked up their backpacks and ran after him, wondering whether people wouldn’t realise she was flying if she hovered very low.
The dam was slightly pretty and quite dangerous, like Sandra McKee in their class. It invited dangerous ice walks in winter, and dangerous nesting swans that hissed and flapped in spring and summer. It was also an excellent spot to sail model boats. There was even a specially built jetty jutting out from the muddy shore.
Cam immediately spotted the problem. There were small splashes and bubbles just a few metres from the jetty’s edge – someone had fallen in. Only half sure of what he was going to change into, Cam dived into the murky water.
To stay unnoticed, Megan half-ran, half-flew closely behind. She arrived at the water’s edge just as Cam disappeared. “Cam! No!”
Cam was usually a rubbish swimmer. Even with armbands on he flailed like a broken octopus. But today he was sleek, swift and determined.
He could see the boy, struggling, caught in the reeds. Cam tore and chewed his way through the tangled plants, trying to free him. The current was against them, pulling them both further down, but Cam nudged the boy urgently.
Panicking, the boy understood enough to know what he had to do. He pushed himself upwards, arms flailing, trying to grab at anything. And then something grabbed him. Megan flew low, dragging the boy quickly onto the jetty. He coughed and spluttered, blinking in the sun.
“Are you ok?” asked Megan, reflecting how little first aid she remembered from that one time she went to Guides.
The boy nodded, still coughing.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Richard,” he spluttered. “I’m Richard. I slipped and then… How did you…?”
Back in human form, Cam pushed himself up onto the jetty. “I think we should get you home, Richard,” he said. “Sounds like you might be in shock or something.”
“An otter rescued me,” said Richard.
“Of course it did, Richard,” said Megan. “Come on, let’s go.”
As they walked Richard through the small crowd of BMXers that had gathered around, Megan couldn’t stop smiling. She knew you were probably supposed to look all serious after rescuing someone, but actually, she was totally delighted. She stole a look at Cam, who was also grinning from ear to ear.
***
At the other end of the dam, just out of sight, a girl stood watching them lead Richard away. She bit her nails nervously the whole time. When the drowning boy and his rescuers were out of sight, she began absent-mindedly twirling her fingers through the air in front of her, and as she did, tiny waves and whirlpools appeared in the nearby water, then gradually calmed.
Chapter 27.
Gods and Monsters
Even though they were up the hills behind the town in a cave hidden by forest, there was still a fair chance that people could have heard Megan shouting.
“John, it was amazing! We totally saved someone’s life!”
“I think that should count as today’s training session,” said Cam, rifling through John’s cupboards, hoping for chocolate digestives.
“We have run out of biscuits,” said TJ, handing Cam a stale-looking pink wafer.
“How did you both do it without being seen?” asked John. He looked as pleased and excited as they were.
“I sort of hovered,” said Megan, “flying really close to the ground like you showed me!”
“Brilliant,” said John, beaming with pride, “and what did you change into?”
“Otter,” said Cam, spitting wafer crumbs everywhere. “It’s basically just a soggy hamster.”
“This is great,” said John, “two real-life superheroes!”
TJ brought Megan a cup of tea and some chocolate digestives. Cam frowned at his pink wafer.
“John,” said Megan, “see what you were saying about something in the river? I remembered my gran left me this old clipping.” Megan handed the newspaper to John. “Was this what you meant?”
“Not the fish or the eels,” said John, reading the page, “but this was the start of it all for us.”
“What’s in the river, John?” she asked. “Why is it so important?”
“Ok,” said John, sitting down in his torn chair, “I’ll tell it to you as it was told to me. Almost three hundred years ago, not long after the very start of our little town, there was a storm. Strange lights filled the sky and a great meteorite crashed to earth, right into the Clyde. A few of
the folk who had seen it from the shore rowed out to where it had sunk, and a green glow surrounded their little boat, bubbling and boiling. They were terrified. The wind stirred up again and their boat capsized, dropping them into the green, broiling depths.”
“Did they drown?” asked Megan.
“No, they didn’t,” said John. “Somehow, much later, all five of them found their way safely back to shore. Though they were alive, they were changed.”
“They got superpowers?”
“You could call it that,” said John. “Back then people displaying superpowers would have been accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Nowadays people would probably explain it as genetic mutation caused by whatever element fell to earth in that meteorite – hence all the freaky mutated fish monsters that kept washing up on the shore. Either way, those who had been in the green glowing water knew they had to protect the source of their powers from being discovered and misused by others. They became the first guardians, and their gifts and responsibilities were passed down through their family lines.”
“So where do the sigils fit in?” asked Megan.
“Well, the son of one of the first folk out on the wee fishing boat was James Watt, the famous inventor.”
“The James Watt that made TJ?” asked Cam.
“The very same,” said John. “He inherited his father’s super-intelligence, and he began to realise he had a talent for invention and engineering. He also understood that unless they guarded that power under the water, it could be used for terrible things. He took a diving bell out onto the river, and plunged down to try and discover the truth about what had fallen from the sky that night, and what he could do to protect it.”
“What did he find?” asked Cam.
“He never revealed it,” said John. “But whatever it was, Watt decided to build an unbreakable shield around it. It took him years: his life’s work, his most amazing invention, carried out in secret. And to make sure his shield could only be opened by the guardians, he created a locking mechanism for it; one that needed five keys.”
“The sigils?” said Megan. “Are the sigils the keys?”
