by Ben Onslow
I look out through the window and see a stream of VTroops leaving the main building through a side door and making their way to the guardhouse at the barrier.
“What are they doing?” asks Joe’s voice.
“The next shift. That’s normal.” Nick pulls his Com out of his pocket and hazes.
“Ready,” he asks.
I think we all nod.
We go out into the corridor. Still white tiles everywhere, just like the Vault. We move in single file, can’t see each other. But me, Nick and Joe have hunted together enough to know what the other will do. Should have left Scott with Curley, but the small sounds of movement he’s making help us keep him in line. We stay hazed. From what I saw of the men taking the next shift, there are at least fifty VTroopers right outside to contend with if anyone figures out we’re here.
We can’t afford to get caught.
We need to be real careful.
The corridors all look the same to me – no signs, just lights and tiles. Every now and then Nick whispers, left or right and we follow. It’s real strange, moving like this, in the light but invisible, following a whisper.
It takes forever, twisting and turning through the white corridors. I’m pretty sure if we lost Nick no one would be able to find their way back.
“Open,” Nick says real quiet, at the double doors. They open on cue. Back in the control room, Ela must hear him.
We get to a single door in a wall half way along a corridor.
“Here,” says Nick, and I stop moving. The other’s steps stop too.
So, this is where they’re keeping Lucinda. I look around. No guards, just a small window real high up. They’re obviously not expecting a rescue attempt; it makes me feel a bit better. Curley’s done the first part of his job: he’s got us to Lucinda. It’s going like clockwork.
I see the flash of a Connect from Nick’s Com.
“Now,” he says to Ela.
We wait and then hear the soft click of the door lock releasing.
We wait again, Curley said it would take him a few seconds to disarm the alarm.
“Unlocked. Alarm off.” Ela’s voice comes softly from the Com.
Slowly the door swings open.
There’s a bed a few metres from the door. Lucinda is curled up under the blankets. She stays very still, only her eyes moving. She watches the door as it opens. She looks frightened, blonde hair all over the place, face pale, nightdress drooping off her shoulder. She doesn’t say anything, just stares at the door opening on its own.
“It’s me, Cin.” Joe’s real quiet, his boots whisper as he goes over to her.
“Joe?” she asks.
He comes out of the haze, against everything Curley and Nick warned him about.
“Are you all right?” he asks, still real quiet. He sits on the bed in the curve of her.
“They took the baby,” she whispers back, like she’s broken. “They said they would give it to someone old enough to love it.” Joe and Lucinda are just kids, not much older than Ela. How do they deal with that?
Joe sits there; he is about as adequate at finding the right words as I am. Then he takes her hand and holds it.
Lucinda curls up more and puts her head on his thigh, and he curves his body over her cradling her head with his other arm, his Com in his hand. They stay like that crumpled together and don’t move.
“Joe,” I say real quiet. “We’ve got to go.”
Joe nods.
Lucinda doesn’t seem to hear.
“Have you got clothes here?” asks Joe, real soft.
She doesn’t answer, just curls up into him more.
“We’ve got to get going.” I don’t know how long we’ve got, but I’m pretty sure comforting Lucinda needs to wait for a better time.
Joe looks up at the empty space near the doorway where my voice comes from, like he can’t figure what to do next.
Then Nick’s Com flashes, just a disembodied flash in the air, Nick’s still in the corridor.
“Incoming.” Ela’s voice is real quiet.
“The corridor.” Scott lets the rest of us know where he is.
“Me too,” says Nick.
“The room.” I push the door shut carefully, no noise. Joe and Lucinda still don’t move, as if this has got nothing to do with them.
“Lock the door,” says Nick into his Com and I hear the lock click again. Joe and me are locked inside the room with Lucinda.
Joe and Lucinda still don’t move, like they are in a space where someone can take your baby if they want to and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I go over to them, touch Joe on the shoulder.
“Haze now Joe.” I sound desperate. He doesn’t do anything.
“Joe, haze. You have to haze now,” I order, with as much force as I can get into a whisper.
He still doesn’t move.
I take his Com off him and start the App, put the Com back in his hand; he hazes.
“Lucinda, someone’s coming. You have to pretend you’re asleep,” I say to her, real forceful. Her head is hovering over the covers. I shove a pillow in front of her and move back, it’s the best I can do.
Eyes appear at the window, watch Lucinda for a while then look around the room. I don’t breathe. There’s a depression on the bed where Joe is sitting and a bit of air disturbance, Lucinda’s head is hovering just above the pillow not on it. It looks all wrong.
But it can’t look too wrong to the guard. He moves on.
I breathe again.
It’s got to be ten minutes before I hear a quiet, “Clear,” from Nick.
That guard moves bloody slowly: Vector don’t use the crack troops inside at midnight either. There’s the click of the door unlocking, then Ela’s voice again.
“Unlocked. Alarm off.”
“We’ve got to go, Joe,” I say.
Joe appears again and nods. He whispers to Lucinda, then gently moves her head off his lap and stands up. Lucinda sits and Joe takes a spare wrist shield out of his pocket and clips it onto Lucinda’s wrist. Lucinda slides out of the bed and sits on the side. Her feet are bare and the nightdress hardly covers her knees. There’s blood everywhere. She sways when she tries to stand.
I can’t see how we’re going to get her out. She was meant to walk out with us and it doesn’t look like she can walk. If we get chased she’s definitely not going to be able to run.
“I’ll carry her.” Joe pulls the bedcover off the bed and wraps it around Lucinda. He’s finally starting to think again. He picks her up; she wraps her arms around his neck and curls into him again. She’s small but I don’t think he’ll be able to carry her for long. I guess it isn’t far to the ute. We can take turns carrying her if we have to. I start the App on Joe’s mum’s Com and give it to Lucinda.
She hazes.
“Turn mine on,” says Joe. Thank God he’s thinking again. He holds his Com out from under the hole in space that is Lucinda. I touch the screen and Joe hazes too. There’s a bit of blanket showing so I flick it up into Lucinda’s haze.
We start moving towards the door. There’s no way to make the bed look like Lucinda’s still in it so we only have until the guard comes back to get away.
We need to move fast.
“We’re out,” says Joe.
I go out and shut the door.
“Me too.”
“Lock,” says Nick to Ela through his Com. I hear the slide of the lock.
We work our way back to Nick’s base room, corridor by corridor, one door after another opens, then shuts behind us. Finally, we get to the base room, go in.
Nick shuts the door. “I’ve shielded the cameras in here,” he says. “You can turn the haze off.”
We all unhaze. It’s a relief to see the others. Everyone looks a bit crazy with relief.
Ela and Curley should get here any minute and we can go.
We wait for them.
Wait some more.
They don’t show.
Then we wait a b
it more, thinking that at any moment they’ll appear.
But nothing happens.
As the minutes tick by and we don’t see them, a cold dread builds up in me.
Scott’s thinking the same as me.
He nervously moves his Com from one hand to the other.
“Something’s gone wrong,” he says.
Talk about stating the obvious, typical of him.
A stream of VTroops go past the window outside in the other direction from the earlier group; a couple of stragglers go past. I recognise the two from the gate. They disappear into the dark too, the rise and fall of men’s voices talking quietly drifts into the room.
“The guards coming off duty,” says Nick.
“What do you think has happened to Curley and Ela?” asks Joe. He is resting against a desk. Lucinda is leaning against him, blanket still wrapped around her.
“No idea,” says Nick, “but it shouldn’t have taken Curley this long to get here.”
I don’t think we can muck around much longer. That guard could look in Lucinda’s room again at any moment. No point in us all waiting, risking getting caught.
I make a decision. “Nick, you leave with Scott, Joe and Lucinda. I’ll go and find Curley and Ela and we’ll follow.” I give him my keys. “Go back to the pub, wait for us there.”
“Right.” He puts the keys in his pocket.
Joe nods and pushes himself away from the desk, picks up Lucinda. He’s looking pretty weary.
“You all right with her?” asks Nick.
“Yeah, I can get to the ute.” Joe goes into haze, then Lucinda does too.
“I’ll stay with Jack,” says Scott. “He might need help.”
“You okay with that?” asks Nick.
“Yeah.” I go into haze mode too. Scott follows. I would have preferred any of the others with me.
We wait until Nick is out of the room.
I hear Joe say, “I’m out.”
Then Nick walks along the corridor to the entrance of the main building, a soft rustling and vague shimmering from the others following him.
Me and Scott use the NavApp, move through the white, shining corridors, until we are close to the computer room. The door is open and I hear Curley talking to someone.
“Some malfunction with the locks,” he says. “It’s fixed now.”
“It was a late callout.” I recognise the voice. I look in the room and there’s Vincent lounging in an office chair and his sidekick propping up a wall. It’s pretty hard to imagine why they would be at the Outpost at this time of night.
“Yeah, I’m shagged,” says Curley. “Can’t wait to get home.”
“Where do you live?” It sounds casual, not like Curley’s being interrogated.
“Karangahake,” he answers.
I can’t see any sign of Ela.
I decide to take the risk and let him know we can help if he needs it.
I move away from the door. Hold my Com far enough away from my body it unhazes. I send Curley a Txt. By the door.
I go back to the doorway just in time to see Curley’s Com flash. He picks it up and looks at it.
“Who’s that?” asks Vincent.
“My mum,” lies Curley. “She gets worried if I’m on a callout for too long.”
“Nice mum.” Vincent stretches out in the chair as if it’s been a long day, swings the chair a bit from side to side with his heels.
“I’ll tell her I’m on my way home.”
Curley answers my Txt.
I move away from the door again, don’t want Vincent to see the flash.
“Under control,” says the Txt. Curley’s still in spy mode.
Vincent yawns and stretches his arms out wide. “I’d better get going too, bed awaits.” He stands up and wanders out followed by his sidekick.
I wait until he’s at the end of the corridor then go into Curley’s room.
“Where’s Ela?”
“Here,” she says from the corner. I sort of focus on the shimmer against the wall, relieved.
We get out of there real fast.
“What was Vincent doing?” I ask Curley as we drive along.
“Don’t know,” says Curley. “He’s been around a lot over the last couple of days. He does what he was doing there – acts friendly, asks a heap of questions. The other guy just stands around, watching.”
“Did you check him out?” I ask.
“Tried to. He’s not anywhere on the system. I figure he’s undercover for someone, looking for something.”
It’s about three in the morning before I finally see my bed. Joe and Lucinda are in the living quarters at the back of the Vault. It’s the only place we could think of to stash them.
Curley, Scott and Nick still don’t want Fitzgerald to find out that we were in on getting Lucinda away. They think we’ll be lucky to survive. I agree with them. Jacob and Fitzgerald won’t take this well. Curley says he knows how to get Joe and Lucinda away and out of the country; he says he’s done it for Fitzgerald before, and it just takes a while.
The whole world will be looking for Lucinda tomorrow.
We’re just going to lie low – pretend Joe did it on his own somehow and now he’s disappeared with her – make like we’re innocent if Fitzgerald asks.
26.
Pub
Monday 20th Feb 2051
4:30 a.m.
Before we go to bed, I check the ComMail.
An envelope icon floats onto the monitor.
“You’ve got new mail.” Ela’s leaning over my shoulder.
I open the envelope. The message is from Jess. It says it was lovely to see me and to talk. We should keep in contact and she hopes Ela’s all right and I didn’t get into any trouble after the party.
She’s seen Patsy in action.
“I’ll answer that later,” I say about Jess’s note and flick to Yvette’s Connect.
“Jess is very friendly still,” says Ela standing up.
“Yeah, she’s nice.” I’m a bit slow. Then I realise what Ela’s read and that she doesn’t sound too happy about it.
I turn around and look at her. She’s standing there twisting her hair the way she does when she’s worried and not sure what to do.
“You don’t have to worry about Jess. We are just friends.” This time I don’t try to make it a joke.
She nods, still real hesitant, stays where she is.
What else can I say?
I go back to the ComMail.
There’s the reply from Yvette.
It’s short.
Vincent is dangerous. He’s being investigated for everything. We think he was involved in the accident at Mt Annan. There have also been a few disappearances he’s connected with. Don’t try anything clever.
Yvette
I flick to eSerch, type in Mt Annan.
“Your stepmother knows you well, doesn’t she?” says Ela from her corner.
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
“Fitzgerald said not to do searches on him.”
“Didn’t say anything about seedbanks.”
Ela lifts her eyebrows at me.
A newspaper story comes up.
‘The NSW Seedbank at Mount Annan was established in 1986 as an integral part of the Australian Botanic Garden. It was a facility for storing seeds collected throughout Australia, with a focus on NSW native and threatened species. There were more than 9000 collections of fully documented wild sourced seed held in the Seed bank. In January 2051 a fire broke out in the facility, destroying both the building and the collections it protected. This was a huge blow to those trying to protect Australia’s biodiversity.’
The fire was only a few weeks ago.
“We need to go see Fitzgerald again,” says Ela.
I decide to be responsible. “Yeah, first thing tomorrow.”
“I’ve got a bit more information on Vincent,” Fitzgerald says to us when we turn up the next day. He doesn’t mention Lucinda. There can’t have been any reacti
on from Vector to Lucinda going missing. Can’t figure what that’s all about. “I want to make sure you know what we’re dealing with. The guy I was talking to says Vincent is some sort of agent for Eugenics Corp; if he turns up its trouble for everyone.”
That’s no news to us.
Fitzgerald hands me a printout of an article about a badly beaten man who was found in Sydney a few weeks ago, and he hands a couple of other bits of paper to Ela.
“The police are investigating what happened to this man.” Fitzgerald, nods at the news article I’m reading. “The last person he was seen with was Vincent, but he isn’t talking.”
The date of the fire at Mt Annan and when this guy was beaten up are pretty close. “You might like to tell your friend to look at the timing of the Mt Annan fire,” I say.
“You still doing searches on him?”
“I sent a ComMail to Yvette.”
“Mike’s partner?” asks Fitzgerald.
Maybe Fitzgerald knows more about my dad than he’s let on.
“Yeah, it was before you told me to stay out of it. Yvette came back with the Mt Annan thing.”
“Seed banks get wiped out pretty often,” says Fitzgerald. “Usually it’s put down to mismanagement, or accidents, equipment failures, or funding cuts. Natural disasters and war are blamed too, but maybe someone could be trying to destroy them systematically. Okay, that gives us some idea of what he might be here for. Is there anything else I should know?”
“And there’s the Willises. When Patsy heard them talking at the pub the other day, I think they were discussing how to locate the Vault.”
“What makes you think that?” Fitzgerald doesn’t seem surprised that I know about the seed bank, but I guess he visits Jacob.
“She heard them talking about Jacob,” explains Ela. “We think the Willises know Jacob knows where the Vault is, and are going to try to make him tell them.”
“You’re probably right,” says Fitzgerald. “We need to figure out a way to stop them getting to the Vault.”
“Jacob comes out of hospital on Friday,” says Ela.
