by Ben Onslow
She runs her fingers down my chest, kisses me again. Then sits down on the rock and starts to undo the laces on her boots.
I figure she’s not planning on swimming this time. So I kneel, move her hands away and undo the laces for her. Take off her boots, then her socks. And she sits there all long tanned legs up to that tiny skirt she’s wearing. She leans forward and kisses me again, then presses her forehead against mine. I drop my head and bury it in her lap. She curls her body over me and strokes my hair and cheek.
A pile of clothes on a layer of ferns is a fine place to make love to someone for the last time too.
There’s not going to be any of this in the City.
Ela says you are not even allowed to kiss there.
There are laws against it.
By the time we get back to the house her mum’s arrived. She’s standing on the veranda with Jacob. I’ve met the mum before, but the woman standing on the porch looks like the mother of the Ela I met in Jacob’s dining room two weeks ago. Not how she used to look when she was living here with Ela’s dad. Now she’s Elite: cloak, makeup, high heels, blonde hair piled on the top of her head.
We walk towards them.
I’m not too sure where I stand with Jacob. No idea about the mother.
The mother steps off the porch and makes her way towards me, hand held out.
“Jack, I hear I have you to thank for Ela’s rescue.”
I wipe my hand on my Swanndri before taking hers. I shake without saying anything.
Then she turns to Ela and just touches her arm to greet her.
“How are you Ela?”
“Hi Mum. I’m fine,” says Ela.
“Oh, your poor face.”
The mother turns to Jacob. “It’s good the school term is almost over. Ela will have time to recover.” She doesn’t mention that Ela’s been suspended, I notice.
Ela’s just standing there by her mum, real quiet.
“We should go into town soon,” says the mum. “I’d like to see Patsy again, and thank her for looking after you.”
“Maybe you should leave it until tomorrow. Mrs Fraser starts work soon,” Ela says.
“Will that be all right?” the mum asks Jacob.
“It will be fine,” says Jacob.
“I gotta go.” I need to go home, talk to Mum about this change of plan. Talking to Jacob can wait until tomorrow. It’s problematic again. He keeps looking at me speculatively. Like he still might have opinions he’d like to share with me.
Ela nods. “Will I see you tomorrow? It’s your birthday, I got you a present.”
“What?”
“Not telling.”
“Yeah, I’ll come here early.”
Ela touches my arm, the same way her mother touched hers when she first arrived. “Bye,” she says. We’ve talked the plan through and think it will work. I go to the City and we will find a way to see each other.
I open the driver’s door of the Land Rover. Mon leaps in ahead of me, moves across and sits up on the passenger seat, ready to go. I climb in too. Slam the door shut. Start the Land Rover. Put it into gear. Wave to Ela. Roll up the window. Put my arm on the back of the seat. Turn enough so I can see behind. Back up a bit. Wave again. Then go along the driveway.
Like none of this matters.
33.
Vincent’s Room
Wednesday 22nd Feb 2051
7:30 p.m.
At home, everything’s real quiet. Mum’s still working. I’ve got a plan, but it needs to wait until I can talk about it with her.
I don’t want to sleep or watch a Vid. I don’t feel like doing anything. But I don’t feel like doing nothing either, so decide it’s a good time to check out Vincent’s room. He hasn’t been around for the last few days, and I figure, if he’s gone, I might find something he’s left behind that will tell us what he’s been up to.
I slip into the guest wing without anyone seeing, and check the corridor. It’s empty. I activate that HazeApp, then go to the office and lift the set of keys Mum gives the cleaners. I figure Patsy won’t miss them this late, and the cleaners won’t be back until the morning.
I unlock the door to Vincent’s room and go in, being pretty cautious. I’m not planning on getting caught. I’ve seen Vincent in action. I’ve got the wrist guard on. Got the Locate on my Com off.
I look around, it’s all pretty tidy, no coffee cups left on the bench, towels hung back up in the bathroom, but right there on the table are piles of papers.
It looks like Vincent’s part way through sorting paperwork. And it looks like he’s planning on coming back.
I’m not too surprised about the piles of paper. Vincent is a bit younger than Jacob, a bit older than Fitzgerald, and they use paper, not their Coms, for stuff. It could be habit, or it could be like Jacob said, paper is invisible, Coms can be hacked.
I go over to the table and flick a couple of the pages on top of the first pile, it looks like accounts.
The next pile, is all conversations, have who said what before each comment, like in a play.
Transcripts maybe?
From some sort of surveillance?
I sit down at the table and start looking properly, start to go read the first transcript.
It’s a conversation between Vincent and the sidekick.
Want me to find out where Mike Fraser’s got to?
Yeah, and anything else about him you can get.
That woman who owns the pub – do you know who she is?
But it’s hard to touch stuff when you can’t see your hands. I turn the haze off.
I keep reading.
No.
Patsy Fraser.
Some relation to Mike Fraser?
Ex-wife. Got a kid too. Jack Fraser, eighteen. He visited Jacob with the granddaughter. Ran a search on him. Works for Jacob. Been real trouble; police record as long as your arm.
What sort of trouble?
Kid stuff. But in the wrong place a lot. Disappears OffGrid a fair bit too.
There’s a handwritten comment on the transcript.
Likes to be OffGrid – needs watching – put intercepts on all the devices in the pub; see if the kid or the mother are up to anything.
When did that happen? How long have they been listening to us?
I check the date.
Nearly a week.
I frantically move to the next transcript.
Anything else on Hennessey?
Nothing yet. I’ve got Jacob under surveillance, but nothing to report. He’s just getting visits at the hospital from that granddaughter and the Fraser kid.
I flick to the next page.
Or she doesn’t exist. What about the Vault?
Nothing there either. That guy we talked to in Sydney gave us the plans.
We’ll step up the surveillance and start looking at the old records. Something will give.
Then transcript after transcript of Vincent and the sidekick just talking through the case.
A couple of transcripts about the trolley incident and Ela’s mum’s Connect with Jacob when she asked him to look after Ela.
Something you might be interested in Boss.
What is it?
A couple of things picked up by that Intercept you asked for.
The Hennessey Intercept?
Yeah.
Why would I be interested in some kids racing trolleys?
Look at the name.
Ela Hennessey?
And the next.
Doctor Hennessey: Can Ela come to the farm and stay with you for a while?
Jacob Hennessey: Is there a problem?
Doctor Hennessey: Yes. She’s in trouble. She got herself arrested by Vector, and the situation could CatchFire at any moment.
Jacob Hennessey: Is she in custody?
Dr Hennessey: No, she’s home. But I have a conference next week, so I won’t be here to protect her if things go wrong. I want to make sure she’s safe.
Jacob Hennessey: Send her here for as
long as you need to. I’ll look after her.
Bit of an overreaction from the mother. Has the kid gone?
Then another transcript about Ela.
The Intercept picked this up; don’t know why it’s taken so long to get to us.
A DNA test on Ela Hennessey? Why’s that interesting. They would have done one when she was arrested.
It’s a match with Thomas Hennessey’s. That’s why the Intercept picked it up.
He’s a Local, and she’s his kid, so it would match.
He is, but look at the next match. The mother isn’t a Local. She’s Elite.
He wrote the report about his own kid?
Looks like it.
How did we miss that?
Don’t know, but I think it’s the final piece of the puzzle.
Next transcript.
So they got no one at the road blocks?
No. Only one kid and his story checked out.
Check who else was in the vicinity before we arrived.
No one.
Not even the kid at the roadblock?
Can’t find him.
Go forward in five minute leaps.
Got him. He appears out of nowhere about forty minutes later.
Is it the Fraser kid? He goes in and out of the pub all the time. Has to be going somewhere.
No, but he was OffGrid all day too. Appeared about three kilometres from the farmhouse. It looks like the other kid picked him up. Do you want me to go get them, have a talk?
Fuck.
I move to the next pile it’s all the results of an electromagnetic survey and some maps. There’s a hand drawn ring around the waterfall site on a map under a survey printout and a big question mark.
I guess it’s the printouts of what Henry and Charlie were getting Huey to do. So Vincent has worked out where the Vault is. Whether the Willises knew it or not, they found it. Lucky Joe and Lucinda have already been moved.
Vincent’s careful. He’s right OffGrid. Why would he leave this stuff lying around?
I shift to the next pile of papers, and find the plans for the Vault. Could be the originals. All Dad’s work. Don’t know how they got them.
I check the plans. No handwritten numbers on the bottom, so Dad must have done that just on Jacob’s copy. But there’s a handwritten note of the coordinates of the waterfall. Figure Vincent did that just after he drew the circle on the survey results – same pen colour. Under the plans are more drawings, this time of the Outpost. I recognise them from the NavMap Curley put on our Coms so we could find Lucinda.
Under that are consignment slips for building materials. About every third one has a question mark on it or a figure circled in red. I keep going through the piles, more and more urgently. Records from building the Outpost. The quantity surveys. The accounts. Plans. Orders for deliveries matched to invoices. Handwritten notes where the quantities supplied don’t match estimates by the quantity surveyors. It looks like truck-loads of building materials went missing while they were building the Outpost, like Jacob said.
On one estimate there is a handwritten comment: ‘The Vault exists’. Then a big exclamation mark.
I figure I don’t have long to look at the papers. The way all this stuff is in piles, it looks like they’ll be back. Maybe they’re just in the middle of shifting the stuff here.
Or moving it somewhere else.
It’s all making me pretty anxious. But I keep looking.
In the next pile are lists of names.
All Ela’s family.
All my family.
Fitzgerald.
Curley.
Everyone.
Under each name a summary about the person. There’s Ela’s birth record with a big red question mark under it.
A DNA test on Ela.
There’s Ela’s father’s report of what he discovered about Genus 6.
There’s Vector’s report on an explosion at the Outpost. I guess it was when Dad and Ela’s dad tried to blow up the records office.
I go to the next page.
There’s a transcript of Ela’s dad being interrogated by Vector. Doesn’t look like he told them anything. Was real brave.
Hope Ela never gets to see that report.
It goes on and on and on.
I get to one that seems to be Vincent and the sidekick talking again.
Anything else on Hennessey?
Nothing yet, I’ve got Jacob under surveillance but nothing to report.
So far, the story – that we’ve been sent in to round up OffGridKids and RogueSeeds – is working as a cover, but it isn’t getting the results with the real mission. We might have to step up the pressure. I would have thought Hennessey would have done something by now. Contacted her, tried to move her somewhere safer.
Doesn’t help that our guys put him in hospital.
Maybe he knows nothing about her.
Doesn’t seem likely. It was his son who wrote the report.
Or she doesn’t exist. What about the Vault?
Nothing there either. That guy we talked to in Sydney, the one that gave us the plans, seemed sure it existed. He had plenty of incentive to tell the truth.
We’ll step up the surveillance and keep looking at the old records. Something will give.
Then another conversation between Vincent and the sidekick.
Bad news.
From the way you look, it can’t be too bad.
Our prisoner’s gone. Disappeared last night.
How?
Don’t know yet. Security checked their surveillance records but haven’t found anything. I haven’t had time to check the Loop I set up. The Outpost commander’s got itchy fingers, wants to shoot Locals until the kid’s returned.
I’ll just remind him it’s not his decision. Our commander will have to wait a few days before there are any reprisals. Don’t want anyone to close ranks. She isn’t the girl we want, and if the right girl is still around we don’t want her spirited away. So far all they know is its business as usual; we’re looking for rogue seeds and OffGrid kids. We’ll flush them out. A few more raids should get a reaction.
Another conversation between Vincent and the sidekick.
What have you got?
Accounts, records from building this place, quantity surveys and so on.
Put them in the corner; we’ll get to them soon. I’ve found something here.
What’s that?
Vector’s report on an explosion when this place was first built.
Someone tried to blow up the records office?
Yeah. A Jules Willis was badly injured, died under interrogation. But he implicated Thomas Hennessey and Mike Fraser first. Thomas Hennessey dies while he is being questioned too. He never talked. Mike Fraser disappeared.
Want me to find out where Mr Fraser’s got too?
Yeah, and anything else about him you can get.
Bloody Vincent has been putting it all together and he has most of the pieces, even Lucinda and Dad.
Finally, between the piles is a notebook.
It’s shut.
I start to frantically flick through it. I figure it has to be Vincent’s handwriting, or maybe the sidekick’s.
It’s like an old book my granddad used to have – two fighters on each page, and they change position a bit as you flick through the pages so it looks like they’re fighting. But this is words, not pictures.
From the beginning to the end, and it’s all there.
The meeting with Leblanc about Ela’s dad’s report.
Trying to find the girl.
A SeedVault in the region, and the find and destroy order.
Using Charlie and Henry to find OffGrid kids and the Vault. There’s even a few notes about Henry and Charlie doing some surveying.
Then at the end of the notes are two entries.
13th of Feb. Girl taken from Outpost. Curley there –talked to him. Caught on surveillance tapes. No record of a call out.
Then
Nick on surveilla
nce tapes. 13/2. No record of callout.’
Both entries have a few exclamation marks after them, circled in red.
And the pen used to do them is still sitting there between the pages, like Vincent made the circles, banged the pen down, and flipped the book shut as if he’d just figured something out. I’ve seen him do things like that a couple of times when he’s been with Henry and Charlie.
Vincent has figured out he’s looking for Ela.
I need to warn her and Jacob.
And Vincent knows Curley and Nick helped rescue Lucinda.
I don’t know where Vincent is.
I don’t know where Curley or Nick are.
I fish in my pocket for my Com, to make a Connect with Fitzgerald. I need Fitzgerald to help to get rid of these papers. Neutralise Vincent and the sidekick before they get back. Or get to Nick and Curley.
I switch my Com on. Send the CatchingFire to Fitzgerald.
And see an Intercept hit the Com.
Fuck.
I knew about the Intercepts.
And I still used my Com.
I break the Connect real fast, but figure whoever monitors the Intercept on calls from the pub knows I’ve made a Connect.
Knows I’m here.
I wait, expecting to hear Hovers. But it doesn’t happen.
The Intercept can’t be connected to the DroneCams that surveillance the town. I know from experience that Vector arrives at parties in seconds if there’s trouble.
I figure Fitzgerald has shields to protect his Com and he’ll be all right. But I’m a goner. Whoever is watching the Intercept on the pub knows I’m in Vincent’s room.
