Missing (9 page)

I kept moving, climbing over rocks, avoiding the deep crevices between them and the surging waves that frothed up through the narrow channels. Even though the surf here was reasonably low, eddies and jets of cold water sprayed all over me as the water slapped against the uneven shale and boulder-strewn edge of Shadow Island.

Finally, soaking wet, I made it to the sandy headland that ran out into the sea not far from the resort compound. Now all I had to do was get back inside safely.

Then I saw the time.

I couldn't believe it! I'd missed the window to contact BB. But there was no point in kicking myself. Maybe there was a chance that the channel was still open. I tried calling BB again, but my luck had run out for the day.

Back at the boys' dormitory, I saw my name on the noticeboard near the door. I was to report to Damien's office after breakfast and explain why I had missed evening rollcall.

I was wondering what excuse I could possibly make when something whizzed past my head! Instinctively, I ducked. I looked up to see an arrow shuddering in the timber frame of the noticeboard. I craned around. All I could see and hear past the lit area was the darkness of the night and the occasional rustle of the palm trees.

I threw myself back down on the ground, scared and shocked. I waited. Nothing happened. Nothing moved. Cautiously, I climbed to my feet, pulling the arrow out of the timber when I noticed something—a wad of paper tied around its shaft. I took the arrow into the dormitory with me, pulled my sneakers off and climbed into my bed. I untied the folded paper and, hiding my mobile light under my doona, smoothed the piece of paper out. It was a very brief message—

Where had this come from? Was it from one of the Zenith team?

I lay awake, trying to work things out. If the message was from someone at the resort, why deliver it in such a dramatic fashion? It could have been tucked under my pillow or under my placemat in the dining room. Could this be the work of the mysterious runaways—whoever they were?

Next morning, I was standing in front of Damien in his office as he looked at me sternly. ‘So, you got lost, did you?'

There hadn't been any reference to the events of the night before. Maybe I'd gotten away with it, and someone had retrieved the boat, and as I had hoped, assumed it had somehow come loose on its own. But right now, I had to find a convincing story to cover myself.

I told him part of the truth about what had happened yesterday evening as I made my way around the coast. ‘I didn't realise that I'd wandered off,' I said. ‘I was exploring the rocky area over by the beach. I went further than I'd planned. And then it started getting dark. I tried going inland a bit but then I think I must have gone around in a circle, the way you do when you're lost.'

‘It's just that we worry, Ryan. I'm sure you
understand. Your safety is our number one priority,' said Damien. ‘As long as it doesn't happen again. I hope I haven't misjudged you. I like your initiative, but it's also very important to obey the rules. Paradise People—
real
Paradise People,' he said, his tall figure suddenly towering over me, ‘are people who know how to follow rules—who know how to obey orders without question.'

As Damien looked away, I strained to look at a bunch of keys on his desk but I couldn't read the tag attached to them. For some reason, they looked like the ones Dad used to throw down on the kitchen counter when he came home. I thought of our times together at Treachery Bay. Those days seemed to belong to someone else's life now. I pulled myself away from the sadness by wondering if those keys were for Damien's submersible.

I nodded when Damien turned to me again, doing my best to look meek and apologetic. ‘Did you ever find that lost dog, Damien?' I asked innocently.

For a second, Damien looked completely bewildered. He's forgotten that lie, I thought. But he rallied quickly. ‘Oh, the
dog
,' he said. ‘Oh yes, we did.' His smile was forced. ‘Off you go then, Ryan.'

‘Thank you, sir,' I said, and turning to go, I
noted the other keys hanging temptingly on the key rack.

As I left Damien's office, I tried to look suitably contrite. Right now I was desperate to make contact with whoever had sent me the message about Sophie. And then I would help the prisoner on the rocky outcrop.

An hour later, I found a quiet moment to head back into the rainforest, along the sketchy pathway. At Ryan's hide-out, I called Boges as Ryan hungrily ate the breakfast I'd brought him.

‘Sophie is in trouble,' I said when he answered. I told him what I'd discovered behind the rock face, about my visit to the bunker on the desolate island off the coast of Shadow Island. ‘Someone is locked up there,' I said, ‘and he's asked for help.'

‘Who is it?'

‘He says he doesn't know.'

‘Not good, dude. Have you spoken to BB? Do you want me to call him? This is getting seriously out of hand.'

‘I've had communication problems and I was going to try again tonight.' I thought a moment. ‘The problem is, Boges, that it's not only Sophie
who might be in trouble. Or even that prisoner. I'm worried in case there's a much bigger problem here than any of us thought. If SI-6 launch a full-scale raid, I get the feeling that Damien could be quite ruthless.'

‘And do what?'

‘Something to hide the evidence. Maybe even hurt people.' I pulled out the message from the arrow, showing it to Ryan. ‘This was fired just over my head last night,' I said.

Ryan read the note. ‘We've got to get her back, Cal,' he said.

‘Dude, what's happening?' Boges asked.

I told Boges about the message delivered by arrow. ‘Ryan and I are going to see if we can make contact with whoever sent it.'

‘But Cal,' said Boges, ‘they might be some lost tribe of headhunters living in the jungle! You don't know what's on that island!'

‘Boges, I don't think headhunters would write a message, in English, about helping a friend of mine.'

‘OK, OK, I guess I'm exaggerating a
little
,' said Boges. ‘But these people have bows and arrows. You'd better be careful.'

‘I will. We will.'

‘I have some news too,' Boges said. ‘Winter has spent some more time with Brittany Philips.
She said she can't remember anything more about a key except for one word—Mordred. She refused to have anything to do with it but she can't remember why. And yes, I looked up what Mordred might refer to. The only thing I can find is that Mordred was a character in the legend of King Arthur. He was an enemy of the king,
not
a good guy. Not sure that's much use to you, dude.'

I was about to ask more when Ryan kicked me hard.

‘Hey!' But then I saw the expression on his face.

Fear
.

He was looking straight past me, through the gaps in the creepers that covered the front of his hide-out. His voice was a low hiss. ‘Cal! There's someone out there!'

I abruptly hung up on Boges, shoving my mobile under a pile of Ryan's clothing. Cautiously, I got to my knees and looked through the gaps.

And looked straight into the eyes of a boy, about my age, who stood just a few metres away with a drawn arrow pointed right at my head!

‘Come out of there!' he ordered. ‘Both of you!'

For a moment, I was immobilised with fear. But surely this boy didn't mean me any harm, if he was the one who had sent the message about Sophie. Though the arrow begged to differ.

‘We'll come out,' I said, ‘if you point that thing in another direction.'

Slowly the boy lowered the bow and arrow, and as he did, I saw a girl, similarly armed, standing just behind him. Their dirty clothes were threadbare and both of them were heavily tanned and barefoot, with long dark hair flowing over their shoulders. Slowly, Ryan and I crawled out of the hide-out, straightening up and standing in front of the two of them.

‘Who
are
you?' I asked. ‘Did one of you fire that message last night?'

‘Come with us,' said the girl.

Ryan and I did as we were asked, following the girl, who led the way, while the tough-looking boy brought up the rear. We walked through rugged and overgrown jungle, our feet squishing in the mud which was becoming heavier the higher we went. As we walked, I realised that the pair might know a lot more about Shadow Island than I did. It was probably best to cooperate unless I sensed we were in real danger.

At last we stopped at a particularly thick clump of overgrown rainforest trees, knitted together
with vines and creepers to form a seemingly impenetrable green wall. I was startled to see the girl easily raise a dense, leafy bough to reveal a small, dark opening. She pointed to show I should crawl through. I hesitated a moment, but a prod from the boy's arrow decided for me.

I crouched down and crawled through the opening, looking up in surprise as I saw where I was. In front of me was another arching cavern, smaller than the large one hidden behind the secret entrance in the rock, furnished with rugs and cushions and lit from above by a hole in the ceiling which allowed slanting sunlight to fall on the cave floor. I stepped further in and waited while the others came through. Runaways or not, these two knew how to make a comfortable hide-out.

‘How about you tell us who you are?' I asked. ‘And then we'll tell you more about who we are.'

‘You're Cal Ormond,' said the boy, ‘and he's Ryan Ormond. Right?'

‘So obviously you've been watching us for a while,' I said.

There was a hint of a smile on the boy's stern, sunburnt face. ‘Could be,' he said. Then he put his hand out. ‘I'm Zak Katz.'

‘And I'm Ariel,' said the girl, lowering her bow and arrow. ‘We've had you two under surveillance
for a while. It's not every day someone lands by paraglider and then swaps places with another guy who looks exactly the same as him.'

‘You must be the runaways,' I said.

‘That's what
he
calls us.'

‘So you did send the message about Sophie?' I said.

‘Yes,' said Zak.

‘She was running away, but they caught her,' Ariel said. ‘She kept yelling out ‘‘No way! It's not going to happen!'' And then we saw her get taken into the mountain. We'd overheard some of your conversations about Sophie and about the situation here on Shadow Island.'

‘Sounds like we're all on the same side,' Ryan said. ‘Maybe we should all shake hands and swap information. See what we can come up with together?'

I noticed a small smile start on Ariel's face, twinkling her eyes.

The atmosphere in the cave suddenly warmed, Zak and Ariel put down their weapons and pulled up boxes for us to sit on, while they brought out something to drink. ‘The drinks carton was heavy but we managed to pinch it from the supply ship,' Ariel grinned, passing them around. ‘We've got pretty good at raiding food. And there's always some kind of fruit ripening in the rainforest. We
don't cook, because the smoke would give away our location. And so far it hasn't gotten too cold.'

‘How long have you two been here?' I asked.

‘Zak and I ran away from the resort nearly three months ago,' Ariel explained. ‘He's my brother.' She sighed. ‘At first, we loved the place. We weren't happy at home when our parents split. Dad went overseas and Mum had this new boyfriend who couldn't stand us. That's when we decided to go. We heard about this place and thought it sounded great. The Paradise People seemed really cool and for a while we were glad to be here. Especially when we were both picked from The Edge to join the Zenith team.'

‘So what went wrong?'

‘The initiation—we didn't want to be involved in that,' Zak said.

‘You mean that wound on the arm?' I asked, sitting up straight.

Ariel nodded as Zak continued. ‘They explained it to us as a lesson in trust. Like how people in the olden days used to cut their arms and mix the blood to swear loyalty to each other? Something like that. I wasn't too keen on it so when Ariel refused, so did I. Man, did that get us into strife! They told us that nobody else had ever refused and that it meant that we weren't team players and weren't suitable to be in the
program any more. We're guessing that Sophie didn't want it either.'

‘So then what happened?' asked Ryan.

‘They said they were going to send us back when the next supply ship came because we “no longer upheld the high values of striving for excellence and loyalty to team members”.'

‘So, if Sophie also rejected the idea of the initiation,' I said, ‘we can assume she got the same kind of lecture and treatment?'

‘It's our best theory so far,' said Zak. ‘We were locked up and I reckon she is, too. Maybe they've decided to hold her inside the mountain to make sure she doesn't run away like we did.'

‘We were cool with not being in the The Edge anymore. We'd learned a lot about ourselves and decided we'd go home and explain things to Mum—try to get her to understand. Work it out with her instead of just running away again.'

‘And then?' I asked, riveted by their story.

‘But then we discovered it wasn't going to be that simple,' Ariel said. ‘We were in disgrace, kept apart from everyone, like we had a disease or something. Zak was held near Damien's office, and I was in one of the smaller storage rooms.'

‘The morning before the supply ship came in, I saw Brittany through the window, running like crazy towards the room where I was. She had
two counsellors and Damien after her. She burst through the door and came racing in—almost knocked me over. She pressed something into my hand just before they grabbed her. She said, “Help him! He knows what's going on! He says there are others, too!” and then they hauled her away.'

‘Who do you think she meant?' I asked, extremely anxious now. ‘What others?'

‘We don't know. All I know,' she said, ‘is that there was an announcement at rollcall that Brittany had taken a stinger suit without permission and gone swimming near the outcrop where it's really dangerous. But that's not why she was sacked. We think she got too close to the truth about what's going on. We've heard the rumours about someone being locked up out there.'

‘Actually, it's a fact,' I said, and I told them about my night journey to the outcrop and the strange man who didn't know who he was.

Ryan's question interrupted my thoughts. ‘What did Brittany pass you?'

Ariel searched around in a small box on the floor of the cave. ‘This. I wish I knew what it meant,' she added, passing it to me. It looked like a name tag of some sort, one that had been pulled off something.