Underground (21 page)

Peter dropped the gun and ran over. ‘No! No, I didn't mean –!'

I grabbed him and shoved him backwards, a sudden violent strength surging through my body. He wrenched his shoulders, fighting to get free, but for a moment I was stronger.

‘It was an accident,' said Peter, horrified. ‘I thought she was – I thought it was
her.
' He pointed back at Kara, who had picked up the rifle and was busy unloading it.

I didn't want to hear it. I shoved him back toward his room, not even worrying what he might do to me, just needing him out of the way.

‘No, I need to talk to her!' He flailed desperately, choking on his words. ‘I need to tell her it was –'

And then he was shouting and grabbing his leg. Dad had just swooped in out of nowhere, sticking Peter with Mr Burke's auto-injector.

Jordan grunted as her dad picked her up.

‘Wait!' Peter lurched forward again, leg already starting to drag, and I almost let go of him. ‘Please – Mr Burke, you have to let me –'

‘Come on, Luke.' Dad grabbed Peter's arm and we pushed him back into what was left of his room.

‘Please!' Peter cried again, as Mr Burke carried Jordan out into the hallway. ‘No – Jordan! JORDAN!'

He dissolved into tears, melting down completely. Dad threw the door shut. I held it just long enough for him to get the first barricade back into place, then ran after Jordan and her dad.

Chapter 27

S
UNDAY
, J
ULY
5
39
DAYS

‘I'm so sorry,' said Peter's mum, taking Jordan's hand in both of hers. ‘I don't know
where
this is coming from. Peter's not like this. He's a good boy. I know that's what every parent thinks about their own child, but –'

‘Mrs Weir, please,' said Jordan, ‘stop. I'm
fine
. Believe me, I've had worse.'

That was true. But it shouldn't have been.

She should have been dead. That was Kara's assessment. The only reason Jordan was still here was that Peter's desk had hit the wall ahead of her, shielding her from the junk sticking out of the wall.

Kara had checked her out last night and found only a mild concussion and a few little scrapes and bruises. And given Jordan's freakish healing abilities, even those would probably be gone by tomorrow. Still, I couldn't even look at her without picturing all the ways last night
could
have ended.

Soren, meanwhile, had spent the whole morning skulking around the place, wincing at his scratched cheeks and bruised head, looking for someone to feel sorry for him.

The story he and Kara had given us was that they'd seen Peter trashing his room and gone in to “settle him down”. I had a feeling they'd just leave him to it next time.

It was the afternoon now, and the eight of us – everyone except Peter – were in the surveillance room, around the table with all the laptops. Jordan wasn't about to let a little thing like almost getting skewered slow her down. She'd called us all together to start figuring out a way to get her mum back. To get
our
mums back, if mine was even still out there.

But so far, all we'd done was talk around in circles about last night.

Mr Weir had been pacing the room since he walked in. After finally getting his legs back, it was like he never wanted to sit down again.

‘Can't blame yourself, Jess,' he said, pausing behind Mrs Weir. ‘Pete's sick. Whatever this is, it's not – He's not just another one of your behaviour kids. You're not going to fix this one up with a sticker chart.'

Mrs Weir nodded, close to tears. ‘I just wish someone could tell me
why
this is happening to him.'

‘Kara can,' said Jordan abruptly.

‘Sorry?' said Mr Weir.

Kara shot Jordan a look that would've made Mr Hanger jealous.

‘She knows something,' said Jordan, unfazed. ‘Don't you?'

The room fell silent, all eyes on Kara. I could see the gears turning in her head. Peter's parents knew all about last night, and Mr Weir was already calling for Kara and Soren to be locked up. This was not a good time to be difficult.

‘Any answer I gave you would be almost entirely speculative,' said Kara.

‘Great,' said Jordan. ‘Start speculating.'

‘No,' Soren sneered. ‘We don't have to tell you
any–
'

Mr Burke laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let her talk.'

Soren sank back down in his chair.

‘All right,' said Kara, folding her arms on the desk, determinedly calm. ‘The bushland above our heads. How old do you think it is?'

No-one answered. Mr Weir looked at her like he was sure she was wasting his time.

‘A hundred years?' Kara prompted. ‘Two hundred?' She paused again, waiting for a response.

‘Yes,' said Mrs Weir, exasperated. ‘Yes, probably something like that.'

‘That would be a reasonable estimate,' said Kara. ‘To all outward appearances, that forest
should
be centuries old. But that is not the case. Twenty years ago, this whole area was a barren wasteland.'

‘You're saying somebody planted it,' said Dad. ‘The Shackleton Co-operative.'

‘No,' said Kara. ‘Nobody planted it. It grew here naturally. Or, at least, it grew here without human effort. Somehow, this entire forest sprang up from nothing in a mere two decades.'

Mr Weir began circling around the table toward Kara, clearly losing patience. ‘You're full of it.'

‘No,' said Jordan slowly, like she was piecing something together. ‘I don't think she is.'

I thought back to our trip out to the wall. ‘Barren wasteland' pretty much summed up the land on the other side.

‘What does any of that have to do with Peter?' asked Mrs Weir.

‘It might have nothing to do with him,' said Kara. ‘But it's possible that whatever is accelerating the growth of the bushland is having some kind of equivalent effect on Peter.'

Fallout,
I thought.

It took me a second to figure out why the word had suddenly popped into my head. A hazy memory from what felt like a million years ago. Hiding in Ketterley's office, hearing him worrying about ‘fallout' giving them a whole town full of Crazy Bills to deal with.

It was starting to look like maybe he was right.

Mr Weir stood over Kara. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Your guess is as good as mine,' said Kara, holding up her hands. ‘As I said, most of this is speculation.'

I had a feeling our guess was nowhere near as good as hers, but it only took one look at Kara to tell me that was all she was planning on telling us – and one look at Mr Weir to tell me how quickly the meeting would implode if we kept pushing it.

And to be honest, right now I was more interested in rescuing our families than I was in helping the guy who'd almost got Jordan killed.

‘All right, look,' I said, ‘even if that's all true, it doesn't really change much, does it?' I turned to Kara. ‘Not unless you actually have some way to help Peter.'

Kara shook her head.

Mr Weir said something obscene under his breath. ‘Then why are we even
having
this conversation?'

‘You didn't
ask
me for a solution,' said Kara irritably, rolling her chair away from him. ‘You asked me to guess at the
cause
of Peter's condition, which I have done. Now, are we going to discuss the matter we came here to talk about, or are we going to degenerate into a brawl over a problem I have no power to solve?'

Mr Weir didn't answer right away. He seemed to be seriously weighing up the brawling option.

‘Please, Mr Weir,' said Jordan, indicating the empty chair next to Peter's mum.

Mr Weir rubbed his eyes. He circled back around the table, finally taking a seat. ‘Okay,' he said heavily, ‘let's get started. Like I said, Shackleton hasn't had much to say to me since he put me in that wheelchair, so all I really know is what they give me to write up for the paper. But it doesn't take insider information to see how much strain the security guys are under right now.'

‘Not for long, though,' said Jordan.

‘Right,' said Mr Weir. ‘Calvin's recruiting. But, for the moment, that's also giving him a whole pack of new hassles to deal with, like how does he train them all? And how does he make sure they stay loyal when he starts asking them to do things they don't want to do?'

I nodded. In hindsight, probably the only reason we'd gotten out of Jordan's house alive was that half of Calvin's team had been new guys.

‘Anyway, the upshot of all that is that Shackleton hasn't had a whole lot of manpower to spare, scouring the bush for you guys,' Mr Weir said. ‘But that's not going to –'

‘But how is it that the Shackleton Co-operative doesn't already know about this place?' Jordan's dad cut in. ‘It must stretch halfway under the town.'

‘Of
course
they know about it,' grumbled Soren. ‘Who do you think Shackleton got this land from in the first place?'

‘Then why haven't they –?'

‘Because,' said Kara, ‘as far as Noah Shackleton knows, this whole complex was completely filled in with concrete when my mother and her people left.'

‘Huh,' said Mr Weir. ‘I guess that'd be why Ketterley was always complaining about
obstructions
when the town was being built.'

‘What about the giant
crater
in the middle of the bush?' asked Jordan. ‘That didn't raise a few eyebrows?'

‘Yes, well, that tunnel's been sealed off now,' said Kara. She glanced disapprovingly at Soren, who glowered back at her.

I stared down at the surveillance image in front of me. Kids from school, stuffing around on their skateboards. A couple of them looked up uneasily as a guard strolled past.

‘Okay,' said Dad, ‘so, where does that get us?'

‘Not far,' sighed Jordan. ‘Our main problem is still the cameras. We've got no chance of even getting close to the medical centre unless we can find a way to knock that network offline again.'

‘Is there anyone back in town who might be able to help us?' Dad asked. ‘How about that security officer? The one who let you into the Weirs' house.'

‘The guards wouldn't have a clue about how to disable the new network,' said Mr Weir, shaking his head. ‘No-one does, except Shackleton's top brass.'

‘What about Dr Montag, then?' asked Mrs Weir. ‘He's pretty high-ranking, isn't he? And he tried to help us before.'

‘He tried to help
himself
before,' I corrected bitterly. ‘Who do you think's been making all these people “disappear” in the first place?'

It felt so weird, doing this stuff by committee. So far from me, Jordan and Peter making snap decisions in the back of an English class.

‘Look, the cameras are going to be a problem,' said Mr Weir. He stood up and started pacing the room again. ‘But they're not going to be our biggest problem. Not for long. That's what I was trying to say before. This new recruitment program – it's the biggest media push the Co-operative has ever done in Phoenix.'

‘They're planning something big,' Jordan agreed.

‘There were rumours flying around the office, last time I was in there,' said Mr Weir. ‘A major announcement that was meant to be coming up. I never found out what it was, but …'

‘But what?' said Mr Burke.

Mr Weir shrugged. ‘The mood in town is changing. You've seen it, right? Those blood screenings rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Throw in this run of disappearances, and – and yeah, the
Herald
is always right there with a neat little explanation, but –'

‘But there's no neat little explanation for the Cooperative abducting a six-year-old,' said Mr Burke.

‘Things are getting out of hand up there,' said Mr Weir. ‘I think people are starting to ask questions.'

‘About time,' Jordan muttered.

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘But that's not what Shackleton will be thinking.'

I looked back down at the computer screen – people chatting in line at the bakery. Were they still talking about work and sport and whatever? Or were they actually noticing what was going on around them for a change?

I glanced over and saw Kara watching me. She was sitting completely still, with a look on her face like she was seriously disturbed by something but trying not to show it.

‘We'd better get on with it, then,' said Jordan. ‘The longer we wait –'

‘Whoa, guys.' I jumped up. ‘How long has that been up there?'

The camera angle on the laptop had just shifted again, pointing straight at the front doors of the Shackleton Building. A big white banner was stretched over the entrance. The Co-operative's red phoenix logo, and two lines of huge letters:

COMPULSORY TOWN MEETING