Underground (28 page)

He turned, looking straight at me. ‘Thanks,' he whispered. Then he veered away, charging into the bush on the other side of the path.

The guards shot straight past our hiding place, racing in after Reeve, following him away to the south. For a few seconds, I watched the light of their torches flicker away between the trees.

And then I got up and ran.

Chapter 35

W
EDNESDAY
, J
ULY
8
36
DAYS

For the next fifteen minutes I was just running and running, and trying not to slow down, and trying not to fall, and telling myself over and over again that Jordan was going to be okay. And then finally we were back underground, racing downstairs again, the trapdoor clunking shut above our heads.

Kara met us at the door. She'd come out from the surveillance room, and she had a look on her face like she'd just watched someone die.

She took one look at Jordan and said, ‘Quickly. This way.'

Down the hall, into the lab. She yelled for Soren, and he ran in from the next room.

‘Put her down,' said Kara.

I lowered Jordan onto the mattress while Kara crossed to the sink to wash her hands. Everyone else was flooding in now, rushing around the room.

Kara returned, drying her hands on a paper towel. ‘Is there anyone here with medical experience?'

No-one spoke up.

‘Nobody?' Kara pressed. ‘All right. All of you,
out.'
She pointed through the door to the surveillance room.

Mrs Burke looked up. ‘I'm not –'

‘OUT!'

I was still holding onto Jordan, one hand jammed between her back and her backpack, the other wrapped around her legs. I hadn't moved since putting her down.

She looked up at me, eyes not quite focusing, and opened her mouth to say something. But before she could get the words out, she started coughing again. She closed her eyes, tears running down the sides of her face.

Someone grabbed me from behind. Dad. ‘Come on, Luke. Let them work.'

Kara lifted up a pair of big, nasty-looking scissors.

‘Hey!' I said, tightening my grip on Jordan.

‘You are
in the way
, Luke,' Kara snapped. She started cutting into Jordan's clothes, clearing the way to the wound.

Dad gave my arm another tug, and I let Jordan go. Soren practically shoved us out of the room.

‘Where's Peter?' I asked.

Soren shut the door in my face.

I lurched across the surveillance room, barely conscious, fixated by the blood on my clothes, on my hands, all up my arms …

Dad put an arm around me, guiding me back out toward the hall. ‘Let's get you into the shower,' he said. ‘Find you some clean clothes.'

‘No …' I pleaded. ‘I need to go back in there.'

‘They're looking after her,' said Dad. ‘They'll make sure she's –'

Mum gasped and swore. She was leaning over one of the surveillance computers, looking close to passing out. I staggered over with Dad, my exhausted body finding some new store of adrenalin.

We were looking down on Phoenix's town hall, a big auditorium at the back end of the Shackleton Building. I'd been inside it once, when Peter's dad had taken us on a tour of the building, but I don't think it had actually been used before, at least since I got here.

Mr Shackleton was centre stage, gesturing animatedly out into the audience. Calvin and seven other security guards were spaced out along the podium, aiming their rifles out at the crowd.

Mrs Burke came up behind us, Georgia still wrapped up in her arms.

The camera angle shifted. The hall was packed. Almost every seat full. Some of the people were crying. Others cowering behind seats. Most just sat there, staring, terrified. More guards patrolled up and down the aisles, weapons ready to deal with any trouble-makers.

The view changed again.

‘Look,' said Dad, pointing at the screen.

There, crammed into the back row, looking as scared as everyone else, though not as surprised, were Peter's mum and dad. Caught. Apparently, Mr Weir was right. The mood in town
had
changed. And it had changed enough for the Co-operative to decide that the subtle approach wasn't going to cut it anymore.

The screen flashed back to Shackleton.

‘I don't understand …' said Jordan's mum. ‘What is he
doing?'

‘He's changing the rules,' I murmured.

Shackleton walked out from behind the podium, arms wide, smiling like he wanted to give everyone in the audience a hug. And I didn't need to hear the words coming out of his mouth to realise that things in this place were about to start getting extremely ugly.

Chapter 36

T
HURSDAY
, J
ULY
9
35
DAYS

‘Tell me it's worth it,' said Jordan, wincing a bit as she shifted her position on the bed. ‘All of this. All of the fighting. I just – Tell me we're not just wasting our time.'

At first, I didn't know how to answer. It always made me nervous when she started talking like this.

I wrapped my hand around hers, feeling the warmth of it.

She was okay. Again.

The wound was pretty deep, but the pickaxe had somehow avoided slicing into anything too crucial. The blood loss had been the biggest thing. Kara had given her some blood and stitched everything back together, but it would be a few days before Jordan was back on her feet. Hopefully there wouldn't be too much death-defying to do between now and then.

We were alone in the lab for the first time all day. Everyone else was in the living area, having a meeting to sort out how life was going to work down here, and where we were all going to sleep.

Everyone who'd made it down here, anyway. My parents, Mrs Burke, Georgia and Amy.

And Crazy Bill, although he probably wouldn't be contributing much to the meeting. He still hadn't come around yet. Kara wasn't sure if he ever would. Who knew what that machine had done to him?

‘We're not wasting our time,' I said finally, with more confidence than I felt. ‘I mean, I'm not saying we can beat them. I'm not saying we're going to win, but – Look, you're the one who keeps telling me there's a reason for all this. And if that's true …'

I trailed off, losing track of who I was trying to convince. ‘If that's true, then it's true all the time, right? Not just when the reason is easy to see.'

She looked at me like she didn't know if that was profound, or just stupid.

‘And last night … we did what we went up there to do,' I said. ‘We got Georgia and your mum. They're safe.'

‘Yeah,' said Jordan, ‘in exchange for my dad and –'

‘Jordan, you can't –' I stopped again, choosing my words carefully. ‘Your dad knew what he was doing. He can handle himself. And, look, I don't want to sound heartless, but – I mean, better him up there than Georgia, right?'

Jordan's dad was okay. Alive anyway, which was as okay as he could be, under the circumstances. Mrs Burke had found him on the security cameras this morning. He was in the town hall, along with the Weirs and everybody else in town.

The whole place was quickly being transformed into a kind of concentration camp. The guards had started a food line out in the welcome centre. They were bringing a few people out at a time, shuffling them along at gunpoint, and then sending them back to their seats. I didn't know what they were going to do about showers or toilets.

‘We need to go see Peter,' said Jordan. Kara and Soren had sedated him as soon as he'd got the cameras down last night, and put him straight back in his room. ‘Has anyone told him about his mum and dad?'

I sighed. ‘Not yet. Although I guess he might've seen it for himself by now, if …'

‘Yeah,' said Jordan. ‘How's your mum?'

‘She's – I don't know,' I said. ‘Not good.'

Montag was gone. Really gone. We'd seen Calvin heading out to the graveyard this morning with the body and a shovel. I'd wondered at the time why he hadn't got one of his hacks to do it.

Jordan nodded. ‘At least now she's –'

Someone knocked on the door. I looked up. ‘Yeah?'

The door clicked open and Kara walked in. ‘Can we have a word?' she asked.

Soren came in behind her, carrying the dusty old TV and VCR from the next room. He plugged them in on the bench nearest to us.

‘There's something we need to show you,' said Kara, locking the door behind her. She moved around to the other two entrances, locking them as well, then pulled up a chair across from me, on the opposite side of Jordan's bed.

I straightened in my seat, nervous.

Kara paused, lacing her fingers together. ‘It appears that our assessment of the situation up on the surface may have been somewhat … inaccurate.'

Jordan laughed. It turned into a coughing fit and she rolled over, holding her side.
‘Really?'
she said. ‘You think?' But she was less aggressive than she might've been if Kara hadn't patched her up the night before.

‘You must understand,' Kara said, ‘we have spent years labouring under the assumption that
you
were the ones responsible. We did this with the best of intentions, and with what we thought was the most reliable information. But in light of recent events …'

Jordan pulled a face. ‘What are you doing, Kara? Trying to apologise?'

‘No,' said Kara. ‘I am trying to explain.'

‘Wait a minute,' I said. ‘Reliable information from
who?
Who told you it was us?'

Kara glanced over at Soren, who was hooking up the VCR to the TV. ‘I suppose it's best if I start at the beginning,' she said. ‘Twenty-six years ago, my mother arrived in this area with a small group of graduate students to investigate a phenomenon that one of her colleagues had documented. The ground on which Phoenix now stands was curiously unstable. Shifting unexpectedly, almost as though whole pockets of earth were simply
disappearing.

' Kara paused, like she was expecting us to start asking questions, but I think we were both still wondering why she was telling us this.

‘However,' she said, moving on, ‘it quickly became clear that any explanation for this phenomenon was far beyond the scope of a small-scale geological survey. Over the next four years, my mother assembled a team of specialists, and sought funding to construct this research facility –' She spread her arms out at the room. ‘– at which point, I was brought aboard as team physician.'

‘And?' said Jordan. ‘What happened?'

Kara hesitated, apparently still working out how much she wanted to tell us. ‘We're still not entirely sure
what
they were. The team simply referred to them as
events.
They were always unstable,' she said darkly, ‘sometimes dangerously so.'

‘Dangerous enough to destroy this place?' Jordan guessed.

‘Most of the time, when the events happened, the damage was fairly insignificant,' said Kara. ‘But the last event was different. It destroyed the entire research module, killing almost all of my mother's team.'

‘And your mother?' asked Jordan. ‘Did she –?'

‘There was another consequence of the collapse,' said Kara quickly, veering away from the question. ‘The whole area became saturated with a kind of …' She wavered, grasping for the right word.

‘Fallout?' I suggested, piecing it together, remembering the word Shackleton's people had used.

I watched the surprise register on Kara's face. ‘Yes. We believe this – this
fallout
to be what fuelled the sudden appearance of the bushland above our heads, as well as –'

‘Peter,' said Jordan, cutting her off. ‘And Dr Galton, and Bill, and that guard I saw.' She stopped short of adding herself to the list, but I could see she was thinking it.

‘Quite possibly,' said Kara. She took a couple of deep breaths. It looked like we'd finally got to the point of her story. She glanced at Soren, who pulled out an old black video tape, pushed it into the machine, and pressed play.