The Superpower Project (18 page)

He was beginning to wonder if he had misunderstood his father's notes.

His fingers were black with newsprint ink, his eyes ached from straining to read. So many months of digging through boxes, scanning old newspapers, cross-referencing the notes his father had left, ransacking abandoned buildings and stalking children to find every scrap of information about Tin Jimmy or the guardians or the river. He was sure he was missing something.

And it turned out he had been.

***

As I approach my final days, I think often of my robot guardian and of the system I devised to lock away the secret power: only all five sigils applied together are able to unlock the shield beneath the river. I continue to hope that the four other guardians keep their sigils hidden and safe, however, I ensured a final failsafe to protect the power. The fifth sigil is a disguised key, and no one except myself and my robot know its location…

It is the robot itself. He is the final piece, his hand is the key. Each of the other four sigils must be slotted into place first to allow his hand to unlock the shield beneath the river.

If he is lost, no one will ever be able to unlock the power. As long as he functions he will continue to protect the town: an eternal guardian programmed to obey only myself, the four others, and our descendants for evermore.

This will be my final diary entry. My work is done.

Mr Finn almost jumped up and down with glee when he read this. But then he remembered he was supposed to be a serious villain, so he just nodded, stroked his chin and did an evil laugh in front of his mirror. It wasn't very convincing, so he practised it a few more times until it sounded right.

The
robot
was the last sigil. It all made sense now. Finn had never fully understood why the robot had been such an important part of his father's plan. Hacking in and taking the place of James Watt as his master, creating the control signal, setting a trap for the guardians: it was all in order to gather the sigils. His father was much smarter than he had given him credit for. Although that didn't stop him being a rubbish dad.

Mr Finn now had all the pieces in place too. And, unlike his dad, he had five gigantic robots to help him open the shield and unlock the power for himself.

Now Mr Finn's laugh sounded exactly right, but it was interrupted by a beeping from the other side of the room. It was the Morse-code machine. Mr Finn went over to check, expecting nothing more than the random selection of letters and numbers he usually received. This time, however, there was something much more interesting in the code:

Megan woke up early the next Saturday, feeling as if it were Christmas, only instead of elves and presents, there were going to be giant robots and explosions.

She reached for her phone to text Cam, but it beeped just as she picked it up.

Everything had been planned and arranged. All they had to do was wait for the pieces to fall into place. Sure enough, as soon as Tin Jimmy had sent that message to Mr Finn last night, he received instructions to come to the Gaelic church today at noon. That was the starting pistol.

They met up with John earlier than usual to go over the plan.

“This is perfect. Finn won't be expecting us to look for another sigil while TJ is occupied elsewhere,” said John.

“I will stall Mr Finn for as long as possible and tell him I know where you have hidden the sigils,” said TJ, “and offer to take him there.”

“While in fact I will have all the sigils,” said Megan. “And we will be sneaking past Destiny at the Sugar Sheds to get the next sigil.”

“And where will you take Finn, TJ?” asked John.

“To the bomb-shelter tunnels in Port Glasgow, very slowly,” said TJ. “And by the time we're back from the Sugar Sheds,” said Megan, “we will trap Mr Finn and any sculptures that have followed us in the tunnels.”

“There are lots of confined spaces to get stuck in,” said John. “We just have to block the entrance.”

“Easy. What can possibly go wrong?” said Cam, sarcastically. He had already gone through all the things he was pretty sure
were
going to go wrong. The list started with
I fall in the freezing river
and finished with
Waterworx have an army of flying monkey clowns and they're hungry.

“I still wish we knew if the other guardians are out there somewhere,” said Megan. “Maybe they could help.”

“Maybe,” said John, “or maybe they'd get hurt because they haven't had weeks of training.”

Megan wondered if they would feel it – the fizzing in their chests that she and Cam felt now – dragging them like magnets towards the fight.

“Good luck everybody,” said John.

Megan gave TJ a hug.

***

Despite their rather cute name, the Sugar Sheds were not made out of candy bricks and peppermint cobbles, they were gigantic red-brick monoliths left over from the once-booming sugar trade. There were five interconnected sheds in total: two had been cleaned up and turned into offices; the other three were stuffed with junk.

“There's Destiny,” said Cam, pointing. “Looks… scarier than the others.”

“Well, you helped to design it,” said Megan. “Well done.”

The three of them clambered over the rear wall beside the boats, then slipped along the back of the massive building, out of the robot's sight. However, Destiny's eyes briefly flashed red and green.

“I don't think the sigil is actually in the sheds,” said Cam. “The number on the map is on the docks in front.”

“There's an underwater walkway,” said John. “My dad was a docker. He said there were a few tunnels that served as shortcuts between the sheds and the docks.”

“That sounds like the sort of dark, dank place we've come to know and love,” said Cam.

“Let's take a shed each and look around,” said John. “We're probably after a trapdoor or something.”

Cam sighed, already fairly sure he was going to find the trapdoor first, just as soon as he'd fallen through it.

Inside the sheds, there was a stickiness to the air, and to the floor – a faint smell of candy apples and molasses mixed with petrol and damp.

“This is lovely,” said Megan. She brushed against a wall and got covered in bird poo and brick dust. “I think Sugar Sheds may be too nice a name for these.”

Scaffolding and rickety rusted-steel stairs hung from every wall, daring the unwary to climb. Megan was wary though, so the scaffolding was wasting its time.

“Over here,” hissed John, his whisper echoing around the empty sheds. He had lifted a steel hatch on the ground, revealing a set of steps that plunged sharply downwards.

“Yeah, that looks about right,” said Cam, as he came over, his nose wrinkling at the stale air that rushed out of the hatch. “And it smells right too.”

Megan and Cam began treading down the stairs, occasionally steadying themselves against the wet walls.

“I'll stay here,” said John. “I don't want us all down there if the hatch shuts.”

Cam whimpered a bit. “Can I have the big torch then?” he said. “For once I actually miss TJ with his big light bulb eyes.”

John tossed the torch to him. “Be careful,” he said, “and be quick.”

At the bottom of the stairs, the walkway stretched off into the dark, far enough that even the big torch couldn't find the end. Little puddles were dotted before them, moisture splashing gently down from the ceiling.

“Ok,” said Cam, “I think we should just run over to the other end really fast with the torches on full beam, then quickly work back.”

“Agreed,” said Megan.

Together they splished and skiddled through the damp dark, torchlight throwing strange shadow shapes on the walls as they ran. When they reached what had looked like the end of the tunnel, they were disappointed to find that it was a junction, with two equally damp and dark tunnels stretching off to the left and right.

“We should split up,” said Cam. “You take left and I'll take right.”

“What, really?”

“No! Are you mental?”

Megan smiled. “Let's try left first.”

At the far end of the tunnel was an old ladder leading to a steel door in the ceiling, which had been welded shut.

“It was a brick in the crypt, so maybe it's a brick in here too,” said Megan. “Let's check the walls for anything unusual.” She shone the torch onto the wall – the entire tunnel was built of red bricks.

“We can't check every single one, there's thousands of them!” said Cam. “Also, if you pull bricks out of an underwater tunnel… doesn't water get in?”

“I suppose,” said Megan. “Ok, let's try the other one.”

Down the right-hand tunnel was a massive steel door, badly rusted and firmly shut.

“Do you think it's behind here?” said Megan, pushing at the door. “Because I'm not sure how we can get this open.”

“What if we both charge at it?” said Cam. “If I go gorilla and you go back down the tunnel, take a run-up, then fly at it, full speed.”

“We might bring the whole place down,” said Megan.

“Well, if that happens,” said Cam, “you'd better be ready to fly back out carrying a gorilla.”

Megan disappeared back along the corridor, as gorilla-Cam began to push. With a whoosh and a smash Megan flew into the door. It crumpled and gave way in a shower of brown dust, and they tumbled together into the next section of tunnel. They held their breath as a single solitary drop of river water dripped down from the ceiling above.

In the space behind the door was another ladder leading up to another welded door.

“This is useless,” said Cam, shaking dust from his hair after he had changed back into human form.

Megan was staring at a rusted sign which had been screwed onto the wall behind the ladder. It said ‘In Case of Emergency'. She turned to her friend and whispered, “Cam, help me get this sign off the wall.”

It didn't take much effort to loosen the sign; it slipped down on one side, hanging by a single persistent screw and revealing a loose brick in the wall. A brick stamped ‘IV'. Megan reached over and pulled it from the wall.

Megan took the sigil coin out. “Four–nil,” she said, smiling. She threw the brick to Cam.

“Four. Wait a minute,” he said. “Four! IV is roman numerals for four.” He turned the brick so Megan could see.

“Oh yeah, that's clever.”

“No. Don't you see? It really is! Each sigil has been marked with roman numerals! The brick in the crypt didn't say ‘ill', it said three – roman three. III.”

Megan suddenly understood. “Five is V,” she said, hopping on the spot. “That Morse-code message! U.R.V. You are five!”

Cam's mouth dropped open. “TJ isn't just the fifth guardian, he's the fifth sigil! You are five!”

There was a distant clang, the terrifying but un-mistakable sound of a steel hatch slamming shut. Then, from above and echoing all around them, they heard an awful metallic squeal like something rusted being forced open.