Drone Racer

by Andy Briggs

  Trix took her last bag and looked sadly at him. “If we’re not a team, Carson, what are we?”

  Carson’s mouth hung open in an unspoken answer. Trix shook her head. Then she walked away.

  Carson snatched his half-filled Coke and noisily slurped from it, hoping the noise would drown out his own thoughts.

  Vanta’s muffled voice came from his bag. “Why are they going?”

  “Because they’re idiots.”

  How could such an amazingly fun day have suddenly turned so dismal? They’re just greedy, Carson tried to convince himself. They had planned to go bowling and maybe even to the cinema, but that was clearly not happening. The Coke tasted flat, so he put the plastic cup down with a hollow thud that got disapproving looks from the family at the table next to him.

  With a sigh, he slung his backpack over one shoulder and gathered his shopping. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  “Maybe you should go after them and say sorry?”

  “Are you crazy? I’m not apologizing!” Carson snapped so loud he got puzzled looks from passers-by. One lady even squeezed the hand of her young daughter and pulled her away from the glowering boy who was arguing with himself.

  Carson walked from the food court, back into the main avenue of designer shops. He glanced around the artfully placed trees and barrow stalls selling handmade crafts, all under an enormous arched glass ceiling that trapped the summer sun like a greenhouse. There was no sign of Trix or Eddie. Not that it matters, he thought; he had nothing more to say to them.

  He headed to the escalator leading down to the ground floor. He’d decided to go home, download a film and watch it with Vanta. He stepped on to the moving escalator just as he noticed who was standing on the upward side. It was Agent Anders, without her shades and dressed in a black bomber jacket and baseball cap, and black shirt – but he instantly recognized her from the minivan chase. And she was looking straight at him. Her wrist shot to her mouth as she urgently spoke into a microphone concealed there.

  Carson pushed himself backwards – straight into an elderly woman stepping on to the escalator behind him who squealed as he shoved past her, ignoring her comment about the youth of today.

  And he ran.

  Chapter 23

  TRAPPED!

  Carson’s new trainers squealed on the polished marble floor, making him instantly regret buying them; what had been wrong with the old ones? The long avenues of the shopping centre didn’t have many places to hide, but he weaved between a pair of kiosks and across a footbridge connecting one side to the other.

  On the level below, music suddenly struck up as the ornate fountain began to spit water droplets in formation as part of its hourly show. Surrounding shoppers stopped to watch, the crowds adding further cover for Carson.

  Vanta’s voice was barely audible from his bag. “I detected familiar biometrics.”

  “They’ve found us.”

  “Oh no. It must have been the credit card!”

  “But they don’t know who I am!”

  “All they had to do was wait and track the prize money into the account, then wait for the credit card to be used. The moment you started spending cash today, they would have narrowed their search down to right here and then identified you from the league photos.”

  Now on the other side of the avenue, Carson crouched behind a potted plant twice his size and peeped across. He could see Anders running to a halt as she met up with Bevan, who was similarly dressed. They both straightened up and looked around like meerkats. Agent Anders was already on her mobile phone.

  “Agent Bevan is here too.”

  “Let me see.”

  Carson ignored the odd looks people were giving him as he unzipped his pack and Vanta flew on to his shoulder. She gave a little hacker-face wiggle.

  “What did you do?”

  Vanta sounded proud of herself. “Accessed the shopping centre’s security cameras and put them out of action. They won’t be able to use them to track us!”

  As if to confirm that, Anders angrily hung up her phone and started talking into her wrist.

  “Who’s she talking to…?” Carson asked nervously.

  “There!” The sharp voice came from his left. Another two men, dressed identically – apparently all in black was a government agent’s idea of inconspicuous – were sprinting towards him.

  Carson sprang into a run, shoving through the thickening crowds now also gathering on the balconies to watch the fountain display below. Using her rotors to balance herself, Vanta stayed on his shoulder and Carson had the momentary image that he must look like a twenty-first-century pirate.

  Another pair of agents suddenly loomed ahead of him. They had already begun to slow down, knowing they had him. Carson stopped. He was trapped.

  “Get ready to run!” Vanta shuddered a little – then the fire alarm howled throughout the building. As usual when an alarm sounded, nobody moved, other than to peer around wondering if it was a deadly fire or merely a drill. The agents hesitated too.

  Then the sprinklers activated. Hundreds of them, mounted on the curved glass roof, unleashed a torrent of cold rain. A chorus of screams arose from people who were suddenly darting for cover. In an instant people flowed between Carson and the agents.

  The agents, realizing they were about to lose their prey, shoved their way through the throng – but Carson was already running for the bridge. It wasn’t the best option, as it led back to Anders and Bevan, but he had no choice.

  He felt a firm hand on his arm as one of the agents caught up. Vanta leapt from his shoulder and banked into the hand. The agent shrieked in pain and immediately let go as the drone’s propellers, grazing his knuckles with the horrid sound of a paper shredder.

  The man sucked his fingers – and didn’t see Carson arcing his shopping bag around like an Olympian hammer thrower. Packed with various heavy boxes, slammed straight into the agent’s face. The bag’s straps broke, pitching the boxes over the edge of the bridge, where they smashed apart on the stone floor below. The agent staggered, his feet slipping in the wet floor, and he crashed on to his back, whimpering in his own silent world of pain.

  The other three agents behind him stopped and simply blocked Carson’s escape. Anders and Bevan confidently walked towards him from the other side of the bridge.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Anders cautioned, while at the same time drawing a gun. Carson spotted the black and yellow stripes on it, and recognized it as a Taser like the one that knocked out their driver. “We just want the drone.”

  “You can’t have her!” Carson’s damp hair clung to his forehead, sending rivulets of rain into his eyes.

  “It doesn’t belong to you, Carson.”

  Well, now she knew his name.

  “She doesn’t belong to you either, Agent Anders,” he said.

  Anders looked as if her patience was about to snap. She raised the Taser in a threatening manner. “It’s not a she, kid. It’s an it. A piece of military hardware that isn’t safe amongst the general population.”

  Carson glanced behind. The three agents stood stock-still in the deluge. Peering over the balcony, he was now directly over the ornate fountain, which was still playing its jaunty tune.

  He was trapped and Agent Anders knew it.

  “The way I see it is, you give it up right now and things don’t have to get messy. Or, we shoot you and take it anyway.” She smiled. “The choice is yours.”

  Carson’s fists bunched. If they were going to take Vanta by force, then he’d at least give them a fight.

  “Do you trust me?” whispered Vanta. Carson gave a single subtle nod. “When I say jump, don’t hesitate.”

  Carson’s heart pounded in his chest and he nodded again.

  Vanta lifted into the air. “I’ll come quietly, Agent Anders. Just put the Taser down – you’re scaring the boy.”

  Anders paused … then slid the Taser back into the holster under her jacket. Vanta turned to Carson.

  “Th
ank you for trying to help me, and I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way you wanted.” She slowly drifted forward and out over the drop. “So now I only have one thing left to say … JUMP!”

  Carson didn’t hesitate – nor did he fully know what Vanta intended. He gripped the metal barrier on the bridge and vaulted over it, plunging towards the stone floor far below…

  Chapter 24

  RUNAWAY

  Carson’s stomach suddenly filled with butterflies as he plummeted towards the ground with arms and legs spinning like windmills in a storm.

  He heard Agent Anders scream something and saw Vanta dive towards him. Electrical surges crackled over her body and, in the blink of an eye, she expanded to the size of his bed. She caught him on his back, mid-fall. The impact knocked the breath from him and he felt her wobble.

  “OOF! You’re heavier than you look. Hold on!”

  Carson threw his arms either side of Vanta as she sharply banked upwards. The acceleration was so savage that Carson felt his grip slip and his cheeks pull backwards. The sprinkler rain now felt as if he was being pelted by stones as they shot towards the roof.

  “Vanta!” Carson yelled, seconds away from impact with the glass roof.

  The concealed compartment in Vanta’s belly popped open and, with a loud bang, a missile shot towards the glass roof and detonated!

  Glass exploded and the metal spars holding it all in place were torn away as Vanta zoomed through the newly created opening, and out into the rain-free blue summer sky.

  Carson howled in victory, twisting so he could see the shopping centre recede far below them. The wind stung his face, but he didn’t care.

  He was flying.

  He was really flying.

  Luckily, Carson didn’t live too far from the shopping centre; at least, not if you were travelling well above roads. Vanta aimed straight for his house, and they soon landed in the back garden. Carson saw the twitch of a curtain as a nosy neighbour peered out.

  The instant they touched down, Vanta shrank back to her miniature form. She hovered uncertainly in the air, her voice sounding weak. “Get what you need, then we must go. They will be heading straight here.”

  As usual, his dad wasn’t home, so Carson snatched a towel to dry his hair and changed into fresh clothes. He stuffed a few clean tops and underwear into his backpack.

  The sound of an over-revving engine outside caught his attention. Five black SUVs were speeding down the road towards his house. If that wasn’t alarming enough, he saw his dad’s car approach from the other end of the street.

  He hurried his packing, throwing in his toothbrush, a packet of Penguin biscuits and, on impulse, his passport. All done, he looked back out to see the vehicles had stopped right outside and filled the road with stern, black-suited agents armed with a variety of electronic detectors they waved in the air, searching for telltale signals from Vanta. He saw his dad begin a heated conversation with Anders.

  “Dad…” Carson uttered under his breath. He saw the concern on his father’s face as his father found his house key and slowly walked to the front door. He was obviously cooperating with the agents; Carson could only imagine what he had been told.

  With time running out, he and Vanta darted out the back door and clambered over the neighbour’s fence at the back of the garden. As they made it on to the street, he shoved his clothes tightly in his pack to make room for Vanta and she dropped inside.

  Carson glanced up as the sound of helicopters grew and he pressed himself against the wall as two black aircraft rushed overhead. Without looking back, he sprinted to the end of the road, putting his house as far behind him as possible and leaving him wondering if he’d ever see home again … or his dad.

  Considering it had been such a lovely, warm summer day, Carson couldn’t quite believe how cold it was at night. He pulled his coat tighter around him, but it only served to make him shiver more.

  Wandering the streets had proved increasingly perilous as additional black SUVs drove quickly past in convoy, forcing him to duck down alleys and hide behinds rubbish skips. At one point he counted six helicopters crisscrossing the sky at low altitude, obviously searching for them.

  Vanta had put herself into sleep mode in case she accidentally emitted any telltale signals they could use to track her down – just in time, as a large military truck growled past with a spinning radar dish on the roof.

  If Carson had had any questions about the serious trouble they were in, the scale of the search closing in on them left him with no doubt.

  He briefly considered visiting Eddie or Trix, but thought they wouldn’t be pleased to see him, especially if he was being followed by the country’s entire military … and he couldn’t be sure if they were safe either. He felt powerless. Before powering down, Vanta had instructed him not to phone or text anybody, as the agents would be able to trace the call back to his phone and find him. His new phone remained switched off.

  Night started to fall and with it came rain. Carson hid out in the old derelict cinema complex on the edge of town. With part of the roof intact, at least it was dry, and the old wooden seats may have been musty, but they provided something to sit on. It had once been a grand theatre, and the beautifully crafted walls and ceiling were now weathered away to nothing more than warped wood.

  Carson poked around the lobby, complete with smelly water-stained carpet and old decaying popcorn counters. There was a sad atmosphere common to places that were once filled with happy people. He began to wonder if his parents had come here when they were younger.

  That thought was replaced by a more chilling one when he discovered the electricity was disconnected; would Vanta have enough power left to wake up? He kicked the rotting countertop apart into small planks and hurried into the main theatre. He built a small pyre on the concrete floor in the space where the screen once stood. As he did, he anxiously watched as Vanta powered back up. It seemed to take an awfully long time before Carson heard the reassuring BEE-BOP. The drone ignited the pyre by producing sparks from a pair of wires Carson carefully attached to her power orb.

  The fire still didn’t stop Carson from shivering, but it kept the darkness at bay. Vanta sat on an old seat but didn’t say much more. He suspected that the transformation and effort in carrying him had severely depleted her batteries, but she didn’t complain. The problem was, he had no way of recharging her.

  He glanced at the dancing shadows around them. He was filled with dread about Vanta completely draining her batteries. The idea that the agents could take her from him was bad enough, but losing her for ever… How could he handle another loss like that? But then again, he couldn’t stay on the run for much longer.

  He replayed the last week through his mind.

  “You said you were created by your father,” he said, poking the fire to invigorate it.

  “Of course. He made me. He’s my father.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Professor Jira Zushi. He’s such an amazingly clever man. He told me he had dreams of changing the world, stopping wars, ending crime … and he said it would start with me. That’s why he made me intelligent and gave me emotions. He thought it would make all the difference in the world. But the military didn’t agree with him.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  Vanta was thoughtful for a moment. “Yes. When I was alone in the scrapyard I thought I would never see him again. Never see anybody again. It made me very sad. Then you came along.”

  Carson smiled as he held his hands to the fire to warm his fingers. Then something she said came back to him. “When you said the military didn’t agree, you mean about giving you a personality?”

  “They didn’t want a weapon that worried about hurting people. They liked everything else about the technology my father invented, but they intended to wipe my neural network.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  “Oh, I would still be smart, but without emotions. Like your phone. I mean, right now your phone isn’t at
all worried about you shivering. It isn’t concerned that you’re going to catch a cold out here.”

  Carson burst into laughter and fed more pieces of broken wood into the fire to keep it going. He watched a fountain of embers dance into the air. “You sound like my mum,” he said wistfully.

  “Do you miss her?”

  Now it was Carson’s turn to pause. He gave a sharp breath to stop himself from welling up as he always did when he thought of her.

  “Every single day. She died of…” The words stuck in his throat.

  “I know,” said Vanta softly. Carson looked questioningly at her. “You forget I can access all sorts of records.” With a little buzz from her engines, Vanta hopped on to his knee to get a better look at him. “You don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to.”

  “I worry if I don’t talk about her, I’ll forget her. Like Dad has.”

  “Your dad hasn’t forgotten about her.”

  Carson gave a disbelieving sniff. “Now I know you’re making that up. He’s never home. He doesn’t care…” His chest heaved as he fought back the tears that threatened to spill. He had never been able to open up to his friends, and now he couldn’t stop talking. “I think he’d be happier if I wasn’t around either. Then he could start again…” He rubbed his eyes, feeling suddenly embarrassed for the outburst.

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  Carson felt a knot form in his stomach. “Know what?”

  “Your dad nearly lost the house you’re living in. He used every penny he had to take care of your mother. He’s currently working three different jobs to keep the house and to feed you, to keep you from having to go through any more changes. The doctors have warned him to take it easy, in case he exhausts himself too much. He’s doing all of that because he loves you, Carson. You’re all he has left.”

  He wanted to believe it, but instead he just felt angry. “That’s rubbish! How could you know that?”

  “I accessed his bank account and medical records. It wasn’t hard to piece the truth together.”

  “I don’t believe it.”