The self-destruct sequence reached fifteen.
We were almost at the door. It didn’t have a regular handle; instead there was a keypad. “Oh no, it needs a code to open it,” I whispered, pretending to be disappointed, but secretly relieved. “What a pity,” I groaned, hoping I wasn’t overdoing it. “So near and yet so—What are you doing?”
Lara hunched over the electronic lock and began to prod at the keypad. She sounded the numbers as she hit the relevant keys. “Five … Two … One … Nine.”
With a rapid series of clicks, the door swung open.
My mouth opened and closed like a surprised goldfish. “But … but how did you know?”
“It’s the address of the shop. 5219 High Street.” She shrugged. “Kind of obvious, don’t you think?”
Before I could reply, a muffled voice pierced the darkness. “Who’s there?” The watchman stepped out of the shadows, his sausage roll raised threateningly. He hadn’t seen us yet, but a few more steps and he’d be on us.
“Three seconds to self-destruct,” said the computer voice.
If I’m honest, I’ve never been all that great in a tight situation.
“Two seconds to self-destruct.”
“Cool under pressure” is definitely not my middle name. I mean, it would be a pretty unusual middle name for anyone, but … that’s not the point.
“One second to self-destruct.”
Lara shoved me through the open door.
12
BORKEDYBORK
Lara’s intelligence was correct – it was not a staff toilet. We stood inside Crystal Comics’ control room. Before you get the idea that we had stumbled on some hitech lair buzzing with operators peering at banks of surveillance cameras, talking into headsets saying things like “Intruders on level forty-seven – release the Mechahounds!” you should know that a toilet would have been more impressive than the sight that greeted us.
It was a dusty, windowless room no bigger than a broom cupboard. Tucked against one wall were a sagging desk and a swivel chair whose best swivelling days were behind it. Flickering light came from a bulky monitor that squatted on the desk next to an ancient computer tower and a tea-stained keyboard covered in crumbs. The monitor displayed pictures fed to it from cameras located about the store, cycling through them every few seconds. Briefly the image settled on the vending machines on the ground floor and I glimpsed Serge contemplating his confectionery options like a cat curled around a fishbowl.
Lara swept up a crumb from the keyboard and scrutinised it with big, dark eyes. “This is pastry from a sausage roll,” she concluded with a raised eyebrow. “Judging from the crumb pattern I estimate that the watchman will finish his lunch in less than six bites before returning to his post. A bite every thirty seconds gives us three minutes. Four with mustard.” Lara looked at me expectantly. Quite what she expected, I had no clue. “Luke, you’re up,” she said, pulling out the swivel chair.
“You want me to sit in the chair?”
She made a face. “You’ll be more comfortable when you hack into the security cameras.”
“Hack … the … cameras?”
“Yes. Why else do you think I brought you on this mission?”
“Uh, I thought that I was a distraction. Like a stink-bomb or … a herd of wildebeest.”
“A herd?” She paused. “Of wildebeest?” She pursed her lips. “Out of interest, why wildebeest exactly?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I panicked. It was the first thing that came into my head. I’m not sure exactly what a wildebeest even looks like. I think it might be like a cow. But with flair.”
I could see from her expression that she wasn’t sure if I was joking or serious. For information, I was serious. I knew as much about wildebeest as I did about hacking. She slid the chair squeaking across the floor. I caught the headrest with one hand and, with a gulp, sat down. I squeaked back to the desk.
“You want me to hack the security system for footage of Star Lad?”
She nodded. “You’re a boy. Boys know about this stuff.”
“That’s like saying all girls know how to bake.”
She snapped the seat round so that I faced the screen, leaned into my ear and hissed, “I have a black belt in fairy cakes. Now, get on with it.”
I looked down blankly at the keyboard. Little did Lara realise that she had played right into my hands. Not only did I want that footage to remain hidden, I had absolutely no idea how to find it in the first place. I smiled inwardly. She had picked me for a task for which I was utterly useless. Brilliant! However, I thought I’d better play up to her expectations, so I prodded a few keys, creased my brow and sighed a lot. Then I got a bit carried away. I didn’t know any actual hacker jargon, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I smacked the keys in pretend frustration.
“It’s no use,” I said. “The Shweitzer interface on this thing is locked down tighter than the Hulk’s underpants. Whoever built this rig knew what he was doing. I’ve got perimeter uber-bots up the wazoo. And as for the borkedybork file, well, it’s completely … um … borked.” I pushed myself away from the desk and shook my head in mock frustration. I looked up to see if Lara was buying it. She was bent over the keyboard.
“Here,” she said, swiping a couple of keys and bringing up a menu. “It’s the backup directory.” With a shimmy of her hips she bumped me out of the chair and lowered herself in front of the monitor. Her face glowed in the screen-light.
She navigated swiftly through a couple more menus and then sat up. “This is it,” she said excitedly. “Look.”
She hovered the cursor over a folder dated to the day that Zack had first blazed to the rescue as Star Lad. Lara was a double-click away from revealing Star Lad’s true identity. If I was going to stop her, then I had to do something now. I needed a distraction. There was never a wildebeest when you wanted one.
“I think I hear the watchman,” I whispered.
With an anxious glance at the half-open door, Lara dug into a pocket and drew out a high-capacity flash-drive. She sucked the file on to the drive, before tucking it securely back in her jeans. I was going to have to get my hands on that drive.
The door swung inward. Beside me, I heard Lara let out a small gasp of horror. I held my breath, awaiting the inevitable. There was a rustle and a rasp and then a figure stepped into the dim light of the control room.
“Bonjour,” breathed Serge, Ventolin in one hand, bag of salt ’n’ vinegar crisps in the other.
Lara sighed with relief. “Let’s get the heck out of here,” she said, darting for the door. “That sausage roll isn’t going to last forever.”
13
IT’S NOT AN EVIL COMPUTER
Lara, Serge and I sat together on the bus home. She chatted non-stop about the story on Star Lad she planned to write that afternoon, while I contemplated picking her pocket, but rejected that on the basis that I’m not a nimble-fingered Victorian street urchin. Serge left us at the next stop. Only two more to go before ours. I needed a miracle.
Actually, what I needed was an alien invasion.
I’d often thought that if I were an evil alien overlord I’d commence my invasion of Earth with a massive electromagnetic pulse that would neutralise every electrical device on the planet. The people of Earth would be at my mercy, planetary defences down, power grid on the fritz, the whole world unable even to make a slice of toast. Not that making toast would be the first thing on the minds of the panicking humans as my mighty galactic mothership disgorged atmospheric strike fighters to rain evil alien destruction across the planet, blasting strategic targets. Like my school. And the dentist.
An electromagnetic pulse would wipe the data from the drive in Lara’s pocket in a nanosecond. I squinted through the window at the sky, scanning the cloud formations in hope.
“What’s up?” asked Lara.
I pointed to a hulking black cloud. “Does that look like an alien mothership to you?”
Lara fixed me with a
look. “Y’know, you’re even weirder than I thought,” she said. But not unkindly.
Before I knew it we were at our stop. We walked the last half-mile to Moore Street and paused outside her house. I had failed in my mission and tomorrow Zack would be splashed all over the front page of the The Globe.
“Well, bye then,” I said, sloping off along the pavement, already figuring out how to break the awful news to Zack. Being revealed as Star Lad couldn’t be good for his upcoming battle against Nemesis. If Zippy the Doorbell was telling the truth, the whole world – two whole worlds – were circling the galactic toilet bowl because of a cub reporter trying to land the story of the school year.
“Where are you going?” Lara called after me, holding up the drive. “Don’t you want to see what’s on this?”
A few minutes later we were in her big sister Cara’s bedroom. Cara was not.
We threaded our way past puddles of balled-up clothes and discarded shoes to a desk at the window that overlooked a small back garden ringed by a wooden fence. Over it I glimpsed our tree house, two gardens along. Zack was probably alone in there right now. Either that, or he was out rescuing people and stopping criminals.
“Cara’s out for the afternoon,” Lara explained. “With Matthias.”
“Oh, OK,” I said, not really that interested.
She huffed, bothered at my lack of curiosity. “Matthias is her boyfriend. He’s from Sweden. Cara says he’s soulful. And Mum and Dad don’t know about him.”
So, Cara had a secret boyfriend. I glanced again at the tree house. Zack would be gutted. But he had enough on his plate saving the world without having to hear that his dream girl was dating a sensitive Viking. In that moment I decided to keep it from him. Another secret for me to shoulder.
Lara opened the desk lid and pulled out a shiny silver laptop.
“This is Cara’s,” she explained, with a note of irritation. “Mum and Dad gave it to her last Christmas. And do you know what they gave me?”
“Shoes?” I guessed.
“Worse.” She flipped open the laptop and mashed the power button. “Ballet lessons,” she spat. “I mean, do I look like a ballerina?”
“Maybe you will after the lessons?” I suggested.
With a glower she sat down at the computer. As we waited for it to boot up I glanced round Cara’s bedroom. I’d never been in a girl’s bedroom before. Her bed didn’t have flowers or ponies on the duvet cover and looked just like a normal bed. On the walls were a smattering of posters – two of a stubbly-faced singer I vaguely recognised, one for a black and white French film. And of course there was one of her in Star Lad’s arms. Apart from that, there was a disturbing lack of superhero posters.
The home screen blossomed on the laptop and the hard drive stopped whirring. Lara slotted in the flash drive.
“This is it, Luke,” she said, her voice rising with anticipation. Part of me wanted to tell her to relax, maybe have a lie-down. I saw her glance quickly at the poster of her sister and Star Lad on the wall. It was a look I recognised at once: Lara was jealous of her big sister. It made perfect sense. Since that day Cara had become a celebrity and everyone wanted to be her friend. Lara, on the other hand, was forgotten. Overlooked, second best, just a nameless extra in the background. I felt the same way about Zack. The difference was that Lara had done something about it. If she could land her story then she’d eclipse her big sister. I didn’t want her to succeed, but I couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Here we go,” she said, the arrow hovering over the “play” icon.
Any moment now she’d discover that Star Lad was my brother. I prepared myself for the inevitable by closing my eyes and wishing I was in a galaxy far, far away. I heard the double click of doom.
“What?! That’s not possible.”
Her shrill surprise gave me hope. Gingerly I opened one eye to see her dragging the cursor back and forward over the video timeline.
“It’s not here,” she groaned.
“What are you talking about?” I leaned on the desk for a better look.
Instead of recording the whole afternoon the footage jumped from two o’clock straight to three, meaning the time that Zack and I were in the shop was missing. Lara banged her fist against the desk in frustration.
Relief flooded through me like an ice-cold can of Coke. Zack’s secret was safe. For now.
“Maybe the cameras broke down,” I suggested. “That control room wasn’t exactly S.H.I.E.L.D’s helicarrier.”
She gave me the kind of stare that would have made my head explode, if she’d been an evil telepath. “The cameras stopped working at the exact moment Star Lad happened to be in the shop? Yeah, sure, because that’s so-o-o likely.”
Something told me that Lara’s instincts were correct. It was no coincidence that the footage had vanished.
“Someone removed those forty-seven minutes,” she said.
“Someone.” I held up a finger. “Or something.”
Lara shot me a doubtful look. “Uh, no. Don’t think we’re looking for a thing here, Luke. Pretty sure it’s a person who did this.”
I shrugged. “Could be an evil computer, or a being made entirely of energy, or—”
“Luke!”
“Yes?”
“It’s a person who did this. A real, flesh and blood person. And he – or she – sliced out the section that reveals Star Lad’s identity.” She pushed the chair away from the desk and began to stalk round the room. “What we have to figure out is who and why.”
I didn’t say it, but of course the most likely suspect was Nemesis. This could be part of her plan to defeat Star Lad. I couldn’t put it like that to Lara without giving the game away, so I said, “Maybe whoever has the footage took it for the same reason you want it – to tell the world who Star Lad really is.”
She shook her head. “If that was their aim then they would have done it by now.” She tapped a finger against her cheek. “No,” she mused, “whoever did this had an interior motive.”
“Um, do you mean ulterior?”
“Uh, no,” she scoffed. “That’s not even a word.”
“Oh. OK,” I conceded. It wasn’t worth arguing.
“If we’re going to find out why they did it, then the first thing we have to do is find out who we’re dealing with. Who has access to the Crystal Comics control room?”
“What about Sausage Roll Guy?” I said.
“Yes, but he’s low level. Just a goon working for the big boss. There’s always someone in the shadows pulling the strings,” she said, opening a new window on the laptop and typing a subject into the search engine. “Ahha! Now, this is interesting.”
At the top of the page was a photograph of an unsmiling man who looked a few years younger than my dad. Blue eyes narrowed behind black-rimmed spectacles. A lock of dark hair curled in the middle of his high forehead. His face looked clenched, his expression that of someone who didn’t want his photograph taken. The photograph accompanied an article for Blam! a well-known comic book blog.
“Christopher Talbot, owner of Crystal Comics,” read Lara. “It says here that he’s a millionaire playboy and flan-therapist.” She shook her head. “Typical rich man, wasting his money on stupid eggy-pie-based treatments when there are thousands of people who need real medical help.”
I skimmed the article over her shoulder. “It’s not flan-therapist. It’s philanthropist. I think it means he gives away his money to good causes.”
“Oh,” said Lara, disappointed.
Armed with this knowledge, we turned again to Christopher Talbot’s photograph and studied him in silence. Did he look less suspicious now that we knew what he did with his riches? It was hard to say. For me. For Lara, it was less hard.
“He owns Crystal Comics, so he has access to the security camera footage. He could be the one who removed the Star Lad section.” She slapped a fist into her palm. “We have to investigate him.”
There was a click from the door. A dizzying waft
of perfume entered the room moments ahead of its wearer. Cara stood in the doorway, blazing like the eye of Sauron.
“What are you doing in my room?!” she yelled. “You’d better not be using my laptop.”
“Mum said I could,” protested Lara.
I felt fairly confident that was a lie. And I was not the only one.
“No she did not,” said Cara, folding her arms and levelling her fiery gaze of doom at Lara. “Mum would never let you in here without checking with me first.” She took a step towards her hapless sister. “And I haven’t spoken to her since she told me I was leaving the house wearing this skirt over her dead body.”
I decided to make like a Hobbit and get my furry feet out of there, fast. I edged towards the door, hoping to slip out before she noticed me, but as I made my bid for freedom I tripped over a pair of Cara’s discarded sneakers and fell on my face. When I looked up she was glaring down at me. After seventeen hours of the movies, DVD extras, several average videogames, a horrendously expensive role-playing game and all three books, I finally understood how Frodo must have felt.
“You!” she spat. “You’re the brother of that weird kid who stalks me at school. What are you doing here?”
I got unsteadily to my feet, pressed a palm to my forehead and staggered around like a dazed faun. “Where … where am I?” I stuttered. I wasn’t actually dazed, I was pretending. “The last thing I remember was a bright light in the sky, eerie music and then some kind of tractor beam. I … I think I was abducted by aliens and then teleported here.” I blinked slowly at Cara.
“Another weirdo! Out,” she snapped, pointing to the door. “Both of you, out of my room. RIGHT NOW.”
Lara and I hurried past her outstretched finger. The bedroom door slammed behind us. As we trotted downstairs I thanked my lucky stars. I’d survived the day without being arrested, vaporised or worse. Nonetheless, there was no question in my mind that Lara was a dangerous person to be around. She should be forced to wear a warning label: hanging out with this girl may be hazardous to your health.
My Brother is a Superhero Page 6
