The Adjusters (40 page)

“Nothing,” Henry said quickly. “I was just thinking about the last time I saw your dad. You know what? I think he’s just going to be glad to see you again.”

The trees opened up at that point, onto a cleared area with a building and up ahead a road. A neon sign hung over a set of tired-looking pumps. Behind the crumbling building was a corrugated
iron outhouse. The words
RESTROOM
stood out in white paint on the side.

“I don’t believe it,” Henry said, shaking his head.

“What?” Christian asked.

“This is where it all began,” he replied, looking round the dirt yard of the gas station where he’d first met Gabrielle Henson. Holding Christian up, he started across the yard
towards the main building with renewed energy, thinking about finding a phone and getting in touch with what was happening at the Malcorp complex. The day was really getting hot now. How long had
they been wandering the forest? An hour...two?

“FREEZE!”

Henry and Christian stopped dead as a figure stepped from the shadows at the side of the building, the unmistakable shape of a double-barrelled shotgun aimed directly at them.

“One wrong move and I’ll plug you!”

“Easy!” Henry said, putting up his free hand. “We just want to use your phone!”

The figure stepped forward, straining to see better, but not lowering the gun. It was the old man from the gas station. “It’s you,” he said, peering at Henry. “The kid
with the girl. And
you
were the one with the truck who smashed up my forecourt. Tell me I’m wrong! I recognize your voice!”

Henry swallowed heavily. “Uh, yeah. Sorry about that…”

The old man lowered the gun and stepped forward, clapping a bony hand down on Henry’s shoulder.

“Sorry?” he exclaimed. “What the hell are you sorry for, boy? I’ve had ’em all here this evenin’. FBI. CIA. SWAT. WSIL news. They’re kickin’ up
one hell of a stink at Newton. And they are all buyin’ gas!”

Henry and Christian looked at one another and then at the gun in the old man’s hand.

“Pardon me,” he said, leaning the shotgun against the side of the building. “Can’t be too careful here. Gotta watch out for them fortune hunters tryin’ to get a
souvenir of the place where the story of the century began.”

Henry frowned at the man as he began to lead them towards the front of the gas station. “Story of the century?”

“Hell, yes!” he replied excitedly. “There’s got to be a film deal in all this. TV mini-series at the very least. I figure we go fifty-fifty on any contract, seein’
as I was your sidekick and all…”

As they stepped onto the forecourt, Henry saw that the FBI had set up a roadblock restricting vehicle access to the road leading to Newton. News vans were piled up around the gas station and
there were several ambulances and police cars...and a black Hummer sparkled in the brilliance of the sun. Amid the emergency vehicles was a tent where refugees from Newton were being treated.

Fox was sitting on a gurney by one of the ambulances. Her face lit up as she met his eyes and she waved to him excitedly.

“Come on,” Henry said, pulling Christian across the forecourt towards their waiting family and friends.

“Okay, sixty-forty split!” the old man yelled after them as they went. “But I get to say who plays me in the film!”

Against the protests of a doctor who was bandaging a cut on her arm, Fox ran over to meet them as they reached the road.

“You’re alive!” she cried. “You’re both alive!”

“Just about,” Henry said, wincing as she gave him a hug. “Easy. I just fell down the side of a tree.”

And then Henry’s mom and Coach Tyler appeared with Mary as well. For a moment they stood, hugging one another and laughing with relief.

“What happened?” Henry asked, nodding at the FBI roadblock.

“They came in just a few minutes after you left,” the coach explained. His broken arm was finally bandaged. “They rounded up the last of Mallory’s special security team.
Sounds like they had some help from an insider.”

Henry smiled. Hank had finally done something right. “What about Mallory?” he asked. “He went down in the helicopter. Have they found the crash site?”

Fox grabbed the arm of a passing FBI agent and demanded news of the helicopter crash. The agent, a tall guy in a perfectly pressed grey suit, looked at them with an expressionless face, weighing
up what he should tell them.

“We’re the ones who called you guys,” Fox said. “Come on!”

“We reached the chopper crash site ten minutes ago,” he said, as if reluctant to give out any info at all. “Whole thing was burned up.”

“And Mallory?” Henry asked.

The agent looked at him. “They didn’t find a body, but trust me, nothing got out of that explosion. Most likely he was vaporized in the extreme heat.”

Henry and Fox looked at one another. “
Vaporized?
” they said in unison.

“Yeah,” the FBI agent replied, as if they were being slow. “Happens more often than you’d think. Believe me.”

With that he walked away. Fox shook her head slowly. “I don’t buy that.”

“I don’t buy that at all,” Henry said, starting to walk after the agent…

Jennifer Ward placed a hand on his shoulder. “And where do you think you’re going?”

Henry looked at her with exasperation. “But, Mom! The creepy FBI agent…the vaporization…”

Jennifer gave him one of her immovable expressions. “Firstly you are going to get some medical attention. Then you are going to get a good meal.” She looked at Fox and Christian.
“None of you look as if you’ve eaten in days. And then…” She placed her hands on Henry’s shoulders. “We are going to get our butts back to the city where we
belong. How does that sound?”

Henry grinned at her. “Great. I’ve had enough of the countryside to last me a lifetime.” He looked around his friends. “It’s really dangerous out here.”

Henry Ward stood in the middle of the corridor and closed his eyes for a moment…

The sounds of kids laughing and shouting all around… Locker doors being slammed noisily… Running feet screeching on the polished floor…

He smiled to himself… It was good to be back in a real school. This was so unlike the silence of Malcorp High. Four months had passed since the events at Newton and he was back in the
city, attending a school of over a thousand, shouting, screaming, arguing kids. And he loved it.

“Hey!” a girl yelled, bumping into his arm and carrying on past. “The corridor ain’t for standing, idiot!”

“Sorry!” Henry said, opening his eyes and raising his hand. The girl gave him a dismissive wave and he walked to the row of lockers over to his left. As he flicked the combination
wheel on his padlock, he saw the note sticking from the edge of the door. Depositing his bag inside, he opened the note.

Have a story you need to look at – Fox.

With a grin, he crumpled the note and headed across the school to the janitor’s closet that had been converted into the office of the school newspaper.

When Henry and his mom had moved back to the city, Fox and Mary had followed soon after. In the aftermath of the Malcorp incident a special fund had been set up by the company’s new owner
to help the victims of Mallory’s experiments – and the fund had bought Full of Beans for a very generous figure. Generous enough for Mary Layton to set up a new cafe in one of the
trendiest neighbourhoods in the city. And for a high-school dropout, Fox turned out to be some kind of genius – placed in every gifted and talented programme going. The art teacher kept
raving about how she was the most gifted painter she’d taught in twenty years, although Fox’s main interest was the school newspaper.

Up on the second floor Henry stopped at a door with a handwritten note Blu-tacked on the front:
Newspaper Office – Private
. He tried the handle and found it locked. With a sigh, he
knocked three times and waited.

The door opened a crack and the round, bespectacled face of Roland, Fox’s assistant editor, peered through suspiciously.

“Yes?”

“I’m here to see Fox,” Henry said, trying to keep the impatience from his voice.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Henry pushed the door open and stepped in past Roland, who gave him a murderous look and then sat back at his desk in the corner. The newspaper office was windowless and about three metres
square, but in that space they’d managed to cram two desks, a filing cabinet and a stack of aging computer equipment collected from around the school. On the far wall a pinboard was filled
with newspaper clippings and web printouts of stories associated with the Malcorp affair. Fox looked up from her monitor as Henry approached and cast his eyes over the story wall.

“Quite a collection,” he said, noticing a story he hadn’t seen before. There was a photograph of Blake under the headline
Teen
Malcorp Heir Vows to Dismantle
Company
. In the image he was smiling and relaxed, with Gabrielle at his side. Next to it was a postcard from Christian –
Greetings from Quantico
. It seemed the FBI were making use
of his new skills and, by the sound of it, he was having the time of his life as the youngest and most rebellious candidate on their
special entry
programme.

“It gets bigger every day,” Fox said, handing him a printout of a blog entry. The title was
John Mallory Lives
. A quick scan of the text was enough to tell him everything: the
usual conspiracy theory about how Mallory’s body was never found in the chopper crash…that he had fled to a South American country, where he had set up a new
clinic…experimenting on native tribes…

“Maybe it’s time to stop collecting,” Henry said, handing it back to her. “Malcorp is over. We have a new life now.” He waved a hand over the clippings.
“Dwelling on everything isn’t…healthy.”

Fox was about to respond when her laptop emitted a beep. She leaped back to the screen, her expression excited.

“What is it?” Henry asked, moving round so he could see.

“I’ve got a news monitoring service installed,” Fox said as a new window opened. “It trawls the web for keywords. You know…
Malcorp…Adjustment…Mallory…”

“Right.”

“And look what it just threw up,” Fox said, scanning the story that had opened on her screen. Henry leaned in a little closer so he could see better.

It was a story on the website of a local newspaper from some nowhere town in Ohio. A student had been arrested on the campus of the high school when a semi-automatic weapon and what appeared to
be an improvised explosive device were found in his locker. Local police thought he was planning some kind of attack on the school. The student’s name was Stephen Lehane.

Henry shrugged. “So?”

Fox gave him a look that said he was being slow. “I fed the names of all of the Malcorp High students into the tracker. They’ve been scattered all over the country. Some of them have
even been given new names. But a few are starting to show up. This Stephen Lehane is…”

She scrolled down to a picture at the bottom of the story. It was a blurry shot of a cop shoving a handcuffed kid into a cruiser. Henry recognized him immediately.

“It’s Steve,” he said.

Fox nodded. “Once a soldier, always a soldier.”

“But his SPIDIR was fried by the electric shock from the lamp,” Henry said. “Wasn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Fox said. “Maybe not. Remember, the deactivated SPIDIRs were left in the brains of Mallory’s adjusted kids, right?”

Henry nodded. “Because it was too dangerous to try removing them.”

“So what if Mallory’s Initiator didn’t deactivate them fully. Maybe they’re still following orders.”

Henry looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps Mallory embedded some deeper programming in the adjustment process. Who knows what he was planning to do with his little army of robots? But now he’s not there to control
them, perhaps that programming is going a little haywire. Hence our friend Steve here – planning to kill his classmates and teachers.”

“They could be a bunch of time bombs waiting to go off,” Henry said quietly.

“And nobody knows when or where.”

They sat in silence, staring at the screen for a moment. Finally, Henry said, “Show me what else you’ve found.”