The peak, p.15
The Peak, page 15
I crawled out through the fireplace and into the log cabin, which looked as decrepit and abandoned as it had when I’d first arrived here. The wind howled at the broken windows. I grabbed one of the heavy, wooden benches, dragged it over, tipped it onto its side and pushed it into the fireplace so it lay on top of the hatch.
It wouldn’t hold the guards forever. Once they subdued Bastion, they’d climb up the ladder, try to open the hatch and realise what I’d done. Then they’d take a cutting torch to the hinges and open the hatch inwards. Or they’d use some kind of futuristic technology I’d never seen before to get through it even faster.
I wrenched the door open. The snow blew in, gritty like broken glass, scraping my exposed face and hands. In seconds, I was too numb to feel them.
The blizzard was so thick that I could only see a few metres ahead as I hurried down the rickety steps into the forest. Underground, I’d had no idea a storm was raging outside. I’d never seen one this bad, but maybe they happened all the time.
Fighting the gale, I made my way around to the back of the cabin and started my trek downhill towards the supply drop-off point. Whenever a particularly strong gust swept up the mountain towards me, I had to grab the nearest tree to avoid getting blown away.
Could the airship even fly in this weather? Maybe the delivery would be cancelled. Maybe I was out here for nothing. At least that meant Shiva was out here for nothing, too.
Then again, the airship wasn’t supposed to land—it was supposed to lower the supplies on a rope to a clearing down below, one box at a time. I assumed Shiva intended to grab the rope and climb into the cargo hold of the ship. Maybe the airship could stay above the rough weather.
Soon I reached the circular, flat clearing.
No-one was here.
Thinking that Shiva might be camouflaged, I winked. My contact lenses switched to infrared. The world turned into a blurry, dark blue mess, like I was standing at the bottom of the ocean. I was dizzy for a moment, but regained my balance and looked around. Nothing orange; no heat signatures.
Had I missed the delivery? No, the boxes of organs weren’t here—and it was still only 20:20. But I knew Shiva had made it to the surface, because of the unconscious guards. So where was she?
There was a cave further up the mountain, overlooking the valley. I might be able to spot Shiva from up there, but it was a long way from the supply drop-off point. If she did show, I might not make it back down in time to stop her from climbing onto the airship.
I hesitated—then started hiking back uphill towards the cave. It was risky. But doing something was better than doing nothing.
The last 20 metres were almost vertical. Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the gloves that Lex had given me, touched my wrists together so titanium claws sprang from my fingertips, and clambered up the cliff face. It was slow work. The claws were effective on stone, ice and densely packed dirt—but the fresh snow crumbled like granulated sugar when I stabbed the blades into it.
By the time I reached the cave, the severity of the storm had lessened—or maybe I was just above it. I peered out across the treetops. I couldn’t see anyone hiding. Looking up at the stars, I didn’t see any sign of the approaching airship, either. I chewed my frozen lips, wondering where I’d gone wrong. What I’d misunderstood.
Something shuffled in the darkness behind me.
I whirled around and found myself looking down the barrel of a gun, pointed at my heart. Of course—this was the perfect place for Shiva to wait for the airship. I’d been so stupid.
But it wasn’t Shiva holding the weapon.
It was Mr Karl.
Looking good, skipper,’ Mr Karl said.
It took me a moment to remember that I was still
wearing the mask. His face.
I cleared my throat—it felt like a long time since I’d talked. ‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled. ‘Looking for the bathroom.’
My mind was racing. It didn’t make sense. Mr Karl couldn’t be the Swarm agent.
Except he could. He’d been in the airship, right before the transmitter was found in the missing girl’s pod. And when I’d bumped into him outside the cybernetics lab, where the robots were made, he’d casually told me he’d seen Shiva hanging around the organ room, diverting suspicion away from himself.
‘Quite a storm, wouldn’t you agree?’ Mr Karl brushed snow off his shoulders, like dandruff. ‘It’s artificial— the airship generates its own weather, partly to increase speed, mostly to stay invisible from the ground. But that doesn’t protect it from anyone who knows exactly where it’s going. It should be within range in . . .’ He checked his watch. ‘Six minutes and eight seconds.’
I was too far away to charge at him, and the canister of compressed air and the launcher tube for my HEAP gun were both strapped to my back. With his weapon already pointed right at me, he’d shoot long before I could draw mine.
The darkness behind him was beginning to take shape. He’d set up a laptop on a trestle table. A cable trailed down the side of the table, across the stone floor and over to something that looked like a pirate’s cannon.
I talked fast, pretending not to know what I knew. ‘We have a problem. Shiva is secretly working for Swarm. She’s out here somewhere. Security is coming, but—’
‘Let’s not play this game, Nolan,’ Mr Karl sighed. ‘I know how smart you are. It’s a shame that the Peak found you before we did. You could have been a real asset to our organisation, and we could have done wonderful things for you.’
I backed away from him, slowly enough that I hoped he wouldn’t notice. ‘“We” meaning Swarm?’
Mr Karl wagged a finger. ‘Now, now. Don’t pretend you joined the Peak out of a desire to do good. You signed up because they got your mother a job and you wanted some excitement. Swarm could have provided both those things just as easily.’
‘You told me Swarm were the bad guys.’ I was still reeling. Why was he so far from the drop zone? Why did he have a cannon? What was his plan?
‘No, I said they were anarchists. The Peak turns children—’ Mr Karl pointed at me. ‘—into weapons. Then it scatters them across the globe to enforce its rules on people who don’t even know it exists. Swarm just provides a little . . . balance.’
‘You tried to kill billions with a flu.’
‘Me? No. I opposed that particular plan. But try to see it from our perspective.’ He spread his hands wide, the gun no longer aimed at me. ‘When the governments of the world wouldn’t pay the ransom, we had to release the virus. We needed to prove we were serious. But we didn’t want anyone hurt, so we had a contingency plan. Who do you think redirected the truck to the wrong town, prompting Bastion to make his vaccine?’ He smiled. ‘Even if his formula hadn’t worked and billions had died, more lives might have been saved in the long run. Imagine all those regimes crumbling, and the freedom welling up from beneath. Imagine how humanity might grow and thrive without the rules of petty bureaucrats holding it back.’
Denials, excuses, rationalisations. He was stalling. But for what?
I side-stepped, blocking his path out of the cave. ‘I won’t let you board that airship.’
He looked nonplussed. ‘Board it?’
‘You can’t fool me,’ I said. ‘I worked out your plan. You stole those organs so Dr Clot would send for replacements. Once they arrive, you’re going to board the airship and fly away. As soon as you know where we are, you’re going to send word to Swarm, so they can destroy the Peak.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I understand. You’re mostly correct. But you’ve added some unnecessary steps. There’s no need to send word to anybody—not when a large enough heat signature is visible from space. I have no interest in boarding the airship.’ He walked back over to the cannon and flicked a switch. ‘I’m going to blow it up.’
Adroning sound filled the air. A huge airship, full of hydrogen, ready to go full Hindenburg if Mr Karl fired that cannon. The explosion would be so big it would be visible from space. Swarm’s satellites would pick it up, and they’d know exactly where the Peak was. Then the warheads would rain down.
‘It’s a good plan,’ I said, my heart racing. ‘But you made one mistake.’
This was a bluff. He hadn’t made any mistakes, as far as I could tell.
And Mr Karl didn’t fall for it. ‘I’m your Psychology teacher,’ he said. ‘I taught you the “one mistake” ruse, remember? Now, stand aside. The cannon is programmed to go off automatically as soon as the airship is in range . . .’ He gestured at the laptop. ‘. . . and I’d hate for it to blast a hole through you.’
I’d been trying to work out if I could get close enough to crash-tackle him, but if he was telling the truth, that wouldn’t stop the cannon blast from destroying the airship.
I didn’t move. ‘What does it matter? I’m dead either way. As soon as Swarm knows where this place is, they’ ll destroy it.’
He nodded. ‘With a space laser, that’s correct. But as you’ve probably guessed, I have an escape plan. I could take you with me. After a few months of deprogramming, you’d be ready to join Swarm.’
I guessed that deprogramming actually meant brainwashing. ‘I’d prefer the cannon.’
He pointed the HOPE back at me. The dark circle at the end of the barrel became the new centre of my universe. Like a black hole, impossibly small, utterly deadly, drawing my gaze in.
‘Stand aside,’ he said again. Either he really didn’t want to kill me, or he was worried that my fleshy body would change the trajectory of the cannon blast. The second possibility seemed more likely.
I could feel the HEAP launcher on my back. But he would shoot me if I reached for it. I needed a distraction.
‘What’s that behind you?’ I said, staring into the darkness of the cave.
He didn’t fall for it. ‘You have five seconds,’ Mr Karl said. ‘Four.’
Knowing the Psychology teacher, I suspected he would shoot me on two.
I widened my eyes and backed away. ‘It’s a polar bear!’ I yelled.
He looked amused. ‘Three.’
Then a much better distraction arrived. Shiva crawled into view at the mouth of the cave. She looked from Mr Karl, pointing the HOPE, to me. I was still wearing my Mr Karl mask. As far as she could tell, there were two of him.
‘What the . . .’ she began.
Mr Karl was quick. ‘It’s one of Swarm’s robots!’ he bellowed, pointing at me. ‘Grab him!’
But I was quicker. I’d used the distraction to unsling the HEAP launcher from my back and take aim.
Not at Mr Karl. At the cannon.
Phut! It was a perfect shot, straight into the dark mouth of the weapon. Inside, the sticky, spiky ball grew and grew.
‘No!’ Mr Karl screamed.
I fired a second HEAP, then a third. They went straight down the barrel. My launcher jammed on the fourth shot, so I dropped it.
Mr Karl ran over to the cannon and stuck his hand right down the barrel, trying to get to the foreign projectiles. It didn’t seem like he could reach, which was lucky for him. If he’d touched the spiky balls, his hand would have stuck to them, and then his arm would have been trapped inside the cannon. A cannon about to explode.
Maybe Mr Karl realised this, because he pulled his arm free and then dashed over to the laptop and started typing furiously. Probably trying to cancel the firing process. Judging by his panicked expression, he didn’t think he was going to make it.
‘What is going on?’ Shiva demanded. She’d pulled shurikens from her pockets and raised them with both hands, like she’d decided to throw them at the two of us.
I whipped off my mask. ‘We have to get out of here. That thing’s gonna blow!’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Mr Karl snarled, raising his weapon. He seemed to have given up on the laptop, and was now hellbent on revenge.
‘Run!’ I yelled, already sprinting towards the mouth of the cave. Shiva started to turn, but too slowly. I tackled her, and we both hurtled out of the cave and flew over the edge of the cliff.
Zap! A laser blast scorched the air. I thought Mr Karl had missed, and then the pain hit me. The laser had punched a hole through my chest. Shiva screamed in my ear as we fell.
The cannon exploded.
It sounded like a firework—a deep thud that I felt in my brain. Fire shot out of the cave mouth. Heat roiled across us, and suddenly we were enveloped in a sideways rain of metal shards and sharp, little pebbles. The explosion propelled us away from the mountain, sending us tumbling out over the valley.
‘Hold on tight,’ I tried to yell, but the heat had sucked the air out of my lungs. I was getting dizzy, either because the blast had consumed all the oxygen or because we were spinning as we fell at 100 kilometres per hour.
I frantically unbuckled my jump vest. It was designed for one person. Could it save us both? As we hurtled towards the ground, I got the zip undone and one arm out. Shiva seemed to realise what I was doing. She pushed her arm through the empty hole. Now we were sharing the vest, each with one arm through it, still falling. With no hope of getting the zip or the buckles closed I hugged Shiva as tight as I could and reached for the toggle with my other hand.
My fingers were too numb to feel anything, but the claws must have snagged the toggle. Ropes of web shot outwards in all directions. Shiva and I fell like a giant dandelion for two, three more seconds, and then the rigid white strands hit the ground. We bounced, barely managing to hold onto each other. I felt one of my ribs snap. The spines caught the tree trunks and we were immobilised, the strands vibrating around us with a bass hum.
I was on my back, looking up at the night sky. No, wait. It must have been the ocean, because a whale was up there. Mirrors glittered all over it. I’d never seen a whale like that. Someone was calling my name, but I was sinking towards the seabed, into the dark; no air, but plenty of quiet.
‘How did you know what the Swarm agent was planning?’ Principal Sykes asked.
We were back in her office, surrounded by typewriters. Dr Clot’s miracle treatments had saved my life, but my voice was still raspy.
‘Watching people, eavesdropping, that kind of thing.’
‘Hmm.’ Her gaze was stern. ‘I thought I was very clear when I told you to focus on your studies.’
There was a pause.
‘But if you had,’ she went on, ‘it’s likely that there would be no school to study in. I don’t know whether to thank you or expel you.’
It seemed prudent to change the subject. ‘Shiva’s coin is a tracking device, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You use it to keep tabs on her.’
Principal Sykes hesitated, then said, ‘Yes.’
‘She left it in the lobby before she went outside, because she didn’t want you to know she’d gone out to try to find the traitor. She knew you’d try to stop her.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Because she’s your granddaughter.’
Principal Sykes chewed her lip, and then said, ‘Close. She’s my great-granddaughter. Remember, I’m older than I look. Did you figure that out with eavesdropping, too?’
‘Her story about being the only survivor of a plane crash didn’t quite add up,’ I said. ‘And she seemed angry at me for getting invited to the Peak. Like I’d just gotten lucky, whereas she’d been training for this her whole life. But no-one was supposed to know the school existed.’
Principal Sykes smiled. ‘Very good. Shiva found out about the school when she was just a little girl, very much by accident. She’s always been precocious. I was supposed to erase her memory, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She was desperate to enrol. Eventually, I relented and told her she could—but only if she passed a test.’
‘Three weeks alone in the rainforest with no supplies?’ ‘Precisely.’
I nodded. ‘When I told her about the Swarm agent, she seemed so sure you would trust her.’
‘Which I did,’ Principal Sykes said. ‘I sent backup to the exit as soon as the two guards stopped responding to comms, and I had more agents waiting at the drop site. They saw you arrive, though you didn’t see them. If they hadn’t been so close by, you may have died from your injuries. But they didn’t check the cave. I had assumed the Swarm agent was planning to board the airship, rather than shoot it down.’
‘I thought that, too,’ I admitted. ‘I was lucky.’
The principal leaned back in her chair. ‘A long life like mine is a series of narrowly averted catastrophes. Psychology, equipment, anatomy and knowledge all played their part—but I’ve come to learn that luck is perhaps the most important ingredient. We’d add it to the curriculum, if only it could be taught.’
‘Did Mr Karl survive the explosion?’ I asked.
Principal Sykes seemed to choose her words carefully. ‘The cave collapsed, and the excavation is proceeding slowly. We’ve recovered parts of the cannon and pieces of the laptop. The hard drive was fried, but a fragment of the RAM gave us confirmation of what he’d been trying to do. As for the man himself, though, so far no sign. Perhaps he was vaporised. However, we found the missing organs hidden in Professor Vine’s office—I assume Karl planted them there to divert suspicion—and several pouches of B-negative blood are missing.’
A chill ran down my spine. ‘Was that Mr Karl’s blood type?’
‘Yes. It’s possible he hid them somewhere else, but it’s also possible, however unlikely, that he somehow escaped from that cave and returned to the stash to treat his own injuries. We’re searching the area, just in case.’ She sighed. ‘Either way, you’d better pack your things.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘You are expelling me?’
‘You disobeyed a direct order.’ She let me stew in my fear for a moment, and then said, ‘But no, I’m not. I just thought, even though term isn’t quite over, you might like to visit your mother.’ She smiled sadly. ‘My own mother is long gone—for me, this place fills the same role. It made me what I am. It protects me and shares its wisdom. Without you, it would be gone. This is the only reward I can really offer.’
