The Covert Academy (16 page)

‘I ha
ve found Brock,’ he said. ‘But you are not going to like this.’

Joshua trotted behind Ichiro as they slipped past Confederate guards and security checkpoints, as they wound their way through the huge “Observation” room. He briefly wondered what it was they were observing here. The room itself was fully enclosed, with no windows or viewing areas. That meant the scientists had to have been observing things on their desktop computers. With the power out there was no way to snoop on what they were up to.

Ichiro reached the far wall and stopped at a door. This one was different. This door was a thick slab of cast iron; its hinges were bigger than Joshua. The door itself stood four metres tall and swung out over a wide area into the Observation Room.

Joshua figured it was normally well guarded, but Sarah’s distraction had saved them a lot of trouble. He wondered where she was, and hoped she wasn’t currently slaughtering the men who had been posted to guard the door.

Ichiro whipped out his pen-laser and hit the button. It flashed, sputtered and died.

‘
Argh,
tawagoto
,’ he muttered.

‘
Forgot to charge the battery this morning?’ Joshua grunted.

‘
Hmph, there is a portal on that side.’ Ichiro led Joshua over to a thick glass slit in the gigantic door. The hole was too small to fit an arm through, but Joshua could see a wide panorama of the room beyond.

There were computer parts and manufacturing equipment strewn everywhere, like an orgy of evidence. Squatting atop a pile of useless parts heaped high off the ground was a man in a lab coat. He swayed precar
iously on the soles of his feet and rubbed the temple of his brow with his hands. As Joshua watched, he hit himself with an open palm over his forehead, and then went back to rubbing. But Joshua recognised him from Prewett’s photo. It was Brock.

‘What i
s wrong with him? It looks like he has lost his mind,’ Ichiro said.

‘Let’s get him back to Prewett, he’ll figure it out.’ Joshua looked around. ‘How do we open this thing?’

Before Ichiro could answer, a section of roof crashed down over their heads. They were covered in white chalky dust, revealing the outline of their bodies. No one in the room noticed, because at the same instant a distraction disc set to overload sounded from the other end of the room, back the way they had come. The powerful noise brought every last guard in the room running away from their position. They’d be back shortly however, and not at all happy to have been fooled.

When the dust from the collapsed ceiling had cleared Joshua looked up into Sarah’s eyes.

‘So that was you huh. All part of your plan right?’

‘Actually yes,’ said Sarah. ‘I did a bit of scouting while you two fumbled about in the dark.’

‘And?’

‘There’s another way into that room.’ Sarah nodded at the imposing iron door. ‘Through Mr. Meyrick’s office.’

The three of them were crawling through the air ducts before Joshua could say a word of protest. He couldn’t deny it was an efficient way to travel, since every scrap of air had to be pumped in through the ducts to each room. Though the high priority areas, like the Experimental Tech
nology room Brock was in, would have their own separate air circulator.

Joshua just felt like a rat in a trap, and he had plenty of experience trapping rats, it never ended well for them.

Fortunately the journey was over quick and Joshua dropped down with the others into a plush private office adjoining the room Brock was in.

Joshua barely had time to take in more than the sickly green carpet and overly large mahogany desk before he noticed the cries from a man
, in the middle of the room, bound with plastic handcuffs. Sarah had worked her magic on him already. She pranced over and gave him a swift kick in the ribs. The man looked as though he would rather die than be found in this position.

‘How do you know this is really Meyrick?’ Joshua asked.

‘I went through his emails. They’re all stored locally on his desktop PC,’ Sarah snorted derisively. ‘He’s been in contact with Ryan since the day he arrived at the Academy,’ she spat. ‘Ryan called himself a Fletcher, which means Meyrick must know something about them.’

Joshua nodded as he wandered around the large office, and Ichiro tagged along to study the walls. There were banks of
screens covering most of them, monitoring the scientists in the Observation room, among others areas. So they’d found who policed the police. It was never-ending.

And a fine job he was doing, mused Joshua. He imagined the thousands of people tucked away further down the Colonnade, forced every day to construct more of the Confederacy’s dreaded drones. How many of them had been kidnapped into slavery on Meyrick’s orders? Joshua felt no sympathy for the man’s current predicament, down on the green carpet.

‘Hey guys check this out!’ Ichiro said, as he grabbed a framed picture off the wall. Meyrick increased the pitch and intensity of his wails when he saw this. Ichiro must have been on to something.

Joshua and Sarah crowded around him to get a look at the picture. It was a group of twenty people posing in rows like a team. Mr. Meyrick, struggling away on the floor next to them, was one of the faces. His picture was as fat and happy as he could possibly be, like a cliché image of a banker in a top hat and tails. All he needed was a pocket watch and monocle to complete the impression.

‘Not so jolly now eh, Mr. Moneybags?’ Joshua asked him. Meyrick stared daggers back.

Joshua recognised a General’s stars on the shoulder on one of the men in the photo. Had Meyrick known the General before the war? He recognised none of the others. They had no names. There was no way to trace them.

But one other man was unmistakeable; his face was being constantly broadcast throughout Chicago by his fleet of drones. It was Simeon Warner.

Which meant that everyone in the photo, including this pathetic creature worming on the floor, was a member of the High Council of the Confederacy.

Sarah snatched the picture off Ichiro and stomped over to Meyrick. She brandished it in his face.

‘Who are these other people?!’ she bellowed at him. ‘Tell me their names!’ Meyrick kept right on squirming, but he couldn’t have spoken if he had wanted to with the gag in his mouth. Sarah seemed to have forgotten she wanted him to speak. She ripped the gag off and hit him with the picture. The glass shattered and she stuck the corner of the frame in his mouth and clamped his jaw down.

Joshua turned away, not wanting to see Sarah’s terrifying half again. Ichiro’s face paled, he looked like he wanted to puke. After a minute of listening to Meyrick gurgle and shriek, Joshua resolved to intervene. As he began to turn and rebuke Sarah, a sudden movement on one of the security feeds caught his eye.

Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were streaming into the bunker from the landing platform.

Joshua shouted at Sarah. ‘We’re done! Forget Meyrick!’ He pushed Ichiro towards the back door of the Experimental Technology Room. ‘Get in there and grab Brock!’

Joshua glanced inside at the piles of components Brock was perched atop of. The room was a mess; everything had just been dumped in there like trash. But it was a treasure trove of gadgets. Tracking devices, probes and recorders. Stacks of iPCs that sent a shiver down his spine as they seemed to follow him around the room.

Ichiro was trying to convince Brock to come down without hurting himself any further. He wasn’t having much luck. Brock was acting like a child in a timeout room, hitting his head and moaning
with his eyes shut tight. Finally Ichiro simply leaped up on the pile in a single bound and scooped up Brock in his arms. He kept right on hitting himself.

Several small devices strewn about a
table top caught Joshua’s attention. They were shaped like wristbands, with a single button and a large lump on one side. One was flickering a projection off and on from the lump. It projected a circle of energy that looked similar to the Stunner beams. Joshua hefted a circuit board and hurled it at the circle of energy. It bounced off, smouldering. He chose a wristband that wasn’t flickering, put it over his wrist, and mashed the button. The projection flared to life, creating a shield over his torso. This would come in handy.

‘Joshua! We’ve got company!’ Sarah called from the office. He hurried back through, bringing his wrist mounted projection shield with him.

Meyrick grinned up at him through a mouthful of bleeding, broken teeth. ‘You’re dead. All of you. There won’t be any trial. I’ll shoot you myself, then...’

Joshua didn’t find out what would happen to him after Meyrick would shoot him, as Sarah had gagged him again, pistol-whipped him over the head with her blowgun, and slung him over a shoulder. She looked at Joshua, an apology written on her face at least.

‘He can lead us to the rest of the Confederate Council members. I wouldn’t have killed him. He’s too useful for now,’ she said.

Joshua had to wonder what she would do to him when Meyrick was no longer useful, but tried to put it out of his mind. Ichiro returned carrying Brock, out cold. Hopefully Brock hadn’t caused himself any permanent damage. Why had he been attacking himself? At least they had an alternative if Brock couldn’t help with the bio-ID. Would Meyrick break under pressure? Too many questions, and no one providing any answers.

Joshua now had two teammates with heavy loads. That would slow them down. Their suits’ camo would be useless with the two men over Ichiro and Sarah’s shoulders. They could use the enhanced strength to run faster, but they would be seen instantly by the horde of guards massing outside Meyrick’s office.

They both looked at him expectantly. He was on po
int here. He had to take charge and find them a way out of this mess.

He turned to the door leading back to the Observation Room. A sudden
thud from the other side and muffled orders to break it down put an end to that idea.

They’d have to find another way out,
fast.

The door out of the office began to glow. A small point of warm orange light bloomed out from the centre. It grew more intense as it spread, until the middle fell away in tiny chunks and a hole appeared. The Confederate guards were coming through.

Joshua dashed around the room, looking for another way out. Nothing. The office was adjoining the tech lab, but both rooms were heavily secured from the outside world.

All of the toys in the lab were strictly defensive or non-lethal. Brock hadn’t been trusted with any significant weaponry.

‘Check the table,’ Sarah said, staggering under Meyrick’s bulk even with her suit’s strength. Joshua crawled around it.

‘What am I looking for?’

‘This fat-ass won’t walk in past his minions every day,’ Sarah reasoned. ‘He’ll have his own private transport and exit somewhere.’

Joshua brushed his hands over every centimetre of the table. Still nothing. The hole in the office door was the size of a baseball and growing. The barrel of a
Two-Shot appeared and began firing aimless bursts into the room. Ichiro threw a smoke bomb in front of it, masking their position.

A hidden panel in the wall slid up without warning, revealing an elevator shaft.

‘Ha ha, I got it!’ Joshua whooped. He ran over to the shaft and looked down. He couldn’t see the bottom. The elevator itself hung far above, unmoving.

‘They’ll have cut the power to the elevator,’ Sarah said. ‘And they’ll expect us to try and climb out. I say we go down, find another way out.’

Before Joshua could open his mouth to argue, she jumped into the shaft, pulling Meyrick after her.

Sarah fell, but she wasn’t used to the added bulk from the sack of blubber she had draped over her shoulder. With her suit’s anti-grav, she’d expected to land as gracefully as a cat on one of the support beams in the shaft. Instead, Meyrick made her top-heavy, and she dropped like a stone, spinning head over heels.

Straining with her other arm, she locked her elbow, pointed up at the support beam and fired the thin coil of rope from her wrist. The claw scraped the hard metal surface, but managed to dig in slightly. The rope snapped taught as Sarah reached the bottom of the shaft and she swung up into the wall of the shaft with a sickening thump.

Joshua
winced as he watched from the secret exit in Meyrick’s office.

Sarah would be lucky to come out of that fall with only a few broken
ribs. She gently lowered herself the rest of the way and pried open the door at the bottom. Light streamed through and she gave a thumbs up to Joshua, who waved Ichiro forward. He jumped next and fared much better. The rope allowed him to swing to the support beams, one at a time, and land next to Sarah uninjured.

The hole
back in Meyrick’s office door was now large enough for a guard to duck through. The smoky room scattered their aim, but it would be only seconds before they found Joshua. He tapped his wrist where the useless dangling end of the ninja rope was.