Underground (25 page)

‘Good.' Mr Weir's hand slipped to his pocket. ‘Really sorry about this, Sonja.' He whipped out an auto-injector and stabbed it into her thigh. The nurse gasped, stumbling back against the wall.

‘Brian!'
said Mrs Weir, scandalised. She reached out, taking the nurse's arms. ‘It's all right. It's all right. It's only a sedative …'

I cringed at the look of horror on the nurse's face.

Peter's dad ducked into the room for a second, returning with a pillow. ‘Here, put this under her.'

The nurse slumped down to the ground, out of Mrs Weir's grip. Mr Weir stooped, apologising again, and slipped the pillow under her head.

‘No, wait,' I said, ‘we shouldn't leave her out here. Someone might see her.'

‘Right,' said Mr Weir, still hunched over her. ‘Okay Sonja, I'm just going to put you through here with the others.'

‘No …' she groaned, but she was almost completely gone by now.

Mr Weir hoisted her up and carried her inside.

‘What did you do that for?' demanded Mrs Weir as he came back out, pulling the door shut behind him. ‘We could have just
talked
to her!'

‘Yeah, we could have,' said Mr Weir. ‘And what do you reckon Shackleton would've done to her when he found out she just let us go?'

The anger drained away from Mrs Weir's face. ‘All right. All right. Sorry.'

‘Almost there,' said Jordan, walking again. ‘Come on.'

She took us around one more bend and down a flight of stairs and there, at the end of another little corridor, was a heavy steel door, just like the one on Pryor's office.

Jordan pulled out her key card and waved it in front of the sensor. The door clunked open, onto a tiny, empty room with rough grey tiles on the floor.

‘Wrong place?' said Dad.

But Jordan was already inside, searching around the walls. She spotted a power outlet over in the far corner and reached down to flick the switches.

Air blasted up from under her feet, and she jumped aside as a square of tiles started sinking down into the ground. It dropped down about five centimetres, then slid away to the side, smoother and gentler than the one above the Vattel Complex, revealing a staircase down through the floor.

Mr Burke stared. ‘You've been down here before?'

‘We used the school entrance last time,' said Jordan, starting down the steps, ‘but I guess they all open the same way.'

‘I see,' said Mr Burke uncertainly. He ducked down after her.

I hesitated. We were assuming the cameras here in the tunnels had been replaced along with the others on the surface. This would not be a good time to find out we were wrong.

Bit late to back out now,
I thought, following Mr Burke down. It was only about ten steps to the bottom; nowhere near as deep as the Vattel Complex.

I stopped again on the last step. Last time we'd gone into Shackleton's tunnels, it had been all blinding light and gleaming steel. Tonight, everything was dark.

Jordan pulled a torch from her backpack and flicked it on, sending light glinting off the silver walls. Three doors led off in different directions. Jordan pushed open the closest one and shone the torch down a long, narrow tunnel.

Mr Weir whispered something into his wife's ear as Jordan closed the door again.

‘What's down there?' asked Dad.

‘Shackleton Building,' I said, trying to picture the town above my head. ‘The tunnels all join together at this bunker place. What's happened to the power, though? Last time –'

The room grew suddenly brighter and I jumped.

Jordan had just pushed open another door. Light streamed in from the other side. ‘Come on. This way.'

‘Wait,' said Mr Weir. He glanced at Mrs Weir again, like he was looking for confirmation on something. She breathed in, steeling herself, and nodded. Mr Weir squeezed her hand. ‘We'll meet you guys back here.'

‘What?' said Jordan. ‘No. Where are you going?'

‘Someone needs to find out what's going on in that meeting,' said Mr Weir. ‘We're going to head up and see what Shackleton's got to say for himself.'

‘You can't!' I said. ‘You think you can just walk in there after –?'

‘We'll go through here,' said Mr Weir, opening the door to the tunnel again. ‘Duck up in the lift. Trust me, mate. I was here when they
built
this place. I know a spot where we can listen in without getting seen.'

He's been planning this all along,
I realised. That was what they'd been arguing about before.

I looked at Jordan. She shrugged back. It wasn't like we could stop them if this was what they really wanted to do.

‘Besides,' Mr Weir grinned, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a whole handful of plastic auto-injector cartridges, ‘I've got enough tranquilisers here to take down King Kong. We'll be all right.'

‘Okay,' I said, head swirling with all the ways this could go horribly wrong. ‘So – what? Back here in half an hour?'

‘Twenty minutes,' said Jordan, chucking him the torch.

Mr Weir nodded. ‘Done. See you then.'

They disappeared, and the rest of us pushed on through the door with the light shining through it.

We emerged into a short, wide hall, with a couple of rooms on either side and a big set of double doors at the far end, all locked from the outside. No more gleaming steel, though. Everything was hospital white again.

I tried the first door on the right. Inside there was medical equipment everywhere. Scanners and monitors and vials of who knew what. And in the middle of it all, an unconscious figure, curled up on a hospital bed.

He was lying on his side, breathing deep and slow, hooked up to an IV unit on one side and a heart monitor on the other. Tiny white lines crisscrossed his skin, almost-invisible remnants of a nightmarish injury.

And even though a part of me recognised him straight away, I just stood there for the longest time, trying to understand what I was seeing. Because it was impossible, even by Phoenix standards.

Impossible.

‘Office Reeve?'

Chapter 32

W
EDNESDAY
, J
ULY
8
36
DAYS

Jordan almost knocked me down in her rush to get to the bed, but I hardly even noticed. My brain was still too busy melting down at the insanity in front of me.

He's dead,
I told myself.

‘Officer Reeve!' Jordan shouted, heaving at his shoulders. ‘Officer Reeve,
wake up!'

He's dead. You saw him die.

But Jordan kept shaking him, and he rolled onto his back, and groaned, and –

‘Whoa!' he shouted, springing up. ‘Jordan! How – How did –?
What's going on?
'

‘You're
alive
,' I said, feeling like it was important for someone to point this out.

‘Yeah,' said Reeve, pulling off the heart monitor stuff and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. ‘What's happening? Is it over? Are we rescued?'

‘No,' said Jordan, ‘but you are.'

Reeve grabbed her arms. ‘Lachlan. My kid. Is he okay?'

‘He's fine,' she said. ‘Your wife too. At least, they were the last time we saw them. But, Officer Reeve –'

‘Call me Matthew,' said Reeve. ‘I'm not Shackleton's bloody
officer
anymore.'

‘Um, okay,' said Jordan.

That was going to take some getting used to.

‘Everyone thinks you're dead!' I said. ‘The whole town – We went to your
funeral.'

‘In that case,' said Reeve, standing up, ‘you kids had better get me out of here, so we can go set the record straight.'

Jordan couldn't stop smiling at him. She hesitated, holding herself back for maybe two seconds, then dived in, squeezing him around the middle.

‘Oof! Right,' coughed Reeve, patting her on the back. ‘Yep. Okay – Come on – Better get going.'

Jordan finally released him, and we raced out of the room.

There was a heavy thud from the other end of the hall as Mr Burke threw himself at the double doors. They rattled, but stayed closed. He stood back, taking aim with the pickaxe.

Dad had just walked out of the room opposite us.

‘Anyone in there?' asked Jordan.

‘Empty,' he said, shaking his head, and Jordan moved off to try another door. ‘Who's this?' Dad asked.

‘Officer Reeve,' I said, over a crunch of metal from Mr Burke's pickaxe.

‘Matthew,' said Reeve, extending a hand.

‘Matthew,' I corrected myself. ‘Dad, this is the guy who got us into the Shackleton Building so we could call you!'

‘Hang on …' said Reeve. ‘It worked? But then –'

‘Luke!' called Jordan from across the hall. ‘Get over here!'

‘It's kind of complicated,' I told him, running across to Jordan. ‘I'll explain later!'

Another huge crunch and a smash and the double doors gave way. Mr Burke shouldered them open and ran inside.

I found Jordon in another one of the side rooms, bent over another figure in a hospital bed. It was Jeremy. He was waking up slowly, groggier than Reeve had been.

There was medical stuff in this room too, but it was different. A whole bunch of what I assumed were blood samples, all treated and dyed and lined up and labelled. And not just
little
samples, either. Some of these containers were the size of Coke cans.

No wonder he was out of it.

‘Here,' Jordan grunted. ‘Help me get him up.'

I dashed over and grabbed his legs, and together we twisted Jeremy around into a sitting position. We sat down on either side of him and brought his arms up around our shoulders.

‘Lauren …' he murmured, stroking me with his fingertips.

‘Uh, no,' I said. ‘Guess again.'

We hoisted him up and started helping him out the door. I glanced down at one of the benches as we passed by, and had to close my eyes to control my gag reflex. A row of petri dishes, sealed off in a glass cabinet, all filled with this horrible red jelly stuff. And on top of each one, there was stuff
growing.

Stuff that looked an awful lot like human skin.

‘I missed you …' Jeremy mumbled, dragging my attention away again. His head rolled down onto my shoulder.

‘Yeah,' I said, hauling him out the door. ‘Great.'

I looked down at my hand, already smudgy and discoloured in the places where I'd touched him. He was coming around, slowly figuring out how to use his legs again, but we were still supporting most of his weight. And clearly his
brain
wasn't fully –

There was a high-pitched squeal from around the corner. ‘JORDAN!'

A second later, Georgia came sprinting out of the open doorway at the end of the hall.

Jordan dumped Jeremy on top of me and ran
.

Georgia leapt up, little hospital gown billowing, and crashed into Jordan's arms. The tears were streaming down Jordan's face before she'd even caught her.

‘Georgia,' she choked, squeezing her. ‘I'm sorry … I'm so sorry …'

Jordan's mum came hurrying out, more pregnant than ever, helped along by a red-eyed Mr Burke. Jordan ran over, still clutching onto Georgia.

‘There are more inside!' called Mr Burke, pointing back into the room at the end of the hall.

‘Right,' said Reeve, running past him.

I lowered Jeremy down against the wall, glancing over my shoulder to figure out where Dad was.

‘You're beautiful …' he said blearily, clinging to me. ‘Beautiful. You … You know that, right?'

‘Seriously, Jeremy,' I muttered, peeling him off, ‘you are
this close
to getting left behind.'

Still no sign of Dad. I headed for the end of the hall, figuring he must be in there already.

The room behind the double doors was about four times as big as any of the others. There were about ten beds, but a few of them were empty. I guessed this was the main holding room or whatever. The place where they all got kept when they weren't being experimented on.

Around the room, people were starting to get up. Officer Reeve was helping a skinny bald guy to his feet. Amy, the crazy-fast girl, was already up and waking Mrs Lewis. Dad wasn't in there. I ducked out again, starting to worry.

‘Luke!' A door opened to my right and Dad poked his head out. ‘You might want to look at this.'

I walked over, breathing a bit more steadily. Dad held the door for me. It was the only room we hadn't been into yet, and –

No.

No way.

Almost the whole of the room was taken up by a big dome thing, all thick glass and heavy steel, with a low, round door at the front, just big enough to crawl through. The whole thing was humming, like there was something electrical going on inside.

Inside the dome, stretching up from a wide metal column in the middle of the floor, was a kind of sloped platform, tilted toward where I was standing. And lying on the platform, unconscious and shaved bald and naked except for a pair of dirty white underpants, was Crazy Bill.