Underground (4 page)

I realised our mistake a second before he did.

There was a panicked yelp and a crash of metal and Peter was down again, dangling by one leg over the edge of the bed. Still caught in that last strap.

He pushed up from the floor, writhing around, yanking violently at his trapped ankle. Kara bent down to grab him, but Peter swung out his free foot and caught her in the stomach.

Soren hesitated, taking a step toward his mum.

‘No!' she demanded. ‘Get the others!'

He whirled around to face me again, and I ran.

Someone screamed behind me, but I barely even heard it. There was another crash of metal, but by then I was already through the surveillance room and out into the hallway.

Soren was right behind me. Some dark corner of my brain still remembered the way back to the surface and I kept going, up the hall and through another door.

‘Stop!' Soren panted as I started up the dark stairs. I felt his hand scraping the back of my shirt.

I pushed on, feet hammering, hand against the wall to keep from falling over the far edge. Head throbbing. Ankles raw and screaming.

My foot caught on a bump in the mouldy concrete and I stumbled, landing hard on my knees. I pushed back to my feet, expecting Soren's hands to come clamping down any second.

But the hands never came.

I kept climbing the spiral of stairs. Dim light over my head now. The entrance. Jordan was already out.

Almost there.

And then the light started to disappear.

Soren was doing what he should have done in the first place: sealing us in.

I scrambled up on my hands and knees, watching the sky shrink away again as a square of dirt and concrete slid out from the tunnel wall.

Just a few more steps. Too many. There was no way –

A hand shot down into the tunnel. It grabbed my arm, dragging me up and over the edge. Jordan. She let me go, sending me collapsing into the grass, and shot her arm back down through the gap.

‘Peter!'
she hissed into the darkness. ‘Peter, c'mon!'

I got up, holding onto a tree for support. ‘Jordan …'

‘Get up here! Grab my hand!'

She leapt back, dragging her hands out a second before the tunnel closed on top of them. There was a tiny whoosh of compressed air and the square of earth slid back up into place.

Jordan sat on the grass, chest heaving. ‘What –
happened?'

And suddenly the reality of it came caving in on me. ‘He's gone,' I said. ‘I left him behind.'

Chapter 4

F
RIDAY
, J
UNE
26
48
DAYS

For a few seconds, I just stared at the ground. Waiting for it to split open again. Waiting for them to come after us.

Then something crunched a little a way off.

I froze. For a second I'd forgotten that Kara and Soren weren't the only ones chasing us.

‘Security,' hissed Jordan, yanking my arm. ‘C'mon!'

We bolted into the trees. I looked back, didn't see anyone, kept running anyway. They were still after us. And, last I'd heard, their orders from Calvin were to shoot on sight.

The bush grew thicker up ahead. Long, spindly grass hiding a minefield of rocks and holes and tree roots. Jordan dived into the grass, dragging me down with her, and we took cover behind a towering eucalypt. I pressed myself against the base of the tree, straining to listen over the buzz of the cicadas.

I didn't hear the footsteps until they were right on top of us. A slow, heavy crunching of boots. A few metres away, maybe less.

Jordan bit her lip, grabbing my hand.

The footsteps stopped. I heard a yawn from the other side of the tree. All he had to do was take one more step, and we were dead.

The ground crunched again and I almost ran for it. More footsteps. He was moving.

He was moving
away.

I waited until the noise died off, and sat up in the dirt, head spinning.

It was morning, sky still getting lighter, which I assumed meant we'd been down there for a day and a night. Mum had probably reported me missing by now. Or not. Maybe she'd had a late one at work last night and hadn't even realised I was gone.

‘Let's go,' Jordan breathed.

‘But –'

‘You think he's the only one out here?'

I got up and started walking, hardly believing that Shackleton wasn't still watching our every move from his office. It had been close to a month since he'd had Dr Montag put the suppressors in us, and I had to keep reminding myself that we were free to move again.

Not that we had anywhere to go. Even if Shackleton still wanted us alive – and that was pretty a massive
if
at this point – Calvin had other plans. And apparently he was willing to go behind the boss's back to see them through. There was no going back to our normal lives (or what had passed for normal in Phoenix, anyway). That was all over now.

The bushland slipped past me like it wasn't real. I was somewhere else, caught up in the twisting and churning in my stomach. In the last twenty-four hours I'd been beaten up, shot at, chased through the bush, paralysed, kidnapped and knocked unconscious – and it had all been for nothing.

We'd found Peter. He'd been
right there
.

And I'd run away.

‘It's not your fault,' whispered Jordan, like she was seeing into me. ‘There was nothing you could have –'

‘I left him!' I said. ‘I saw him fall and I ran anyway.'

‘We both ran,' said Jordan.

‘Yeah, but you didn't –'

‘What were you gonna do, Luke? Take them both on by yourself? Look at you. You're one bruise away from a coma.'

‘Jordan –'

‘Listen,' she snapped, ‘
I
woke them up.
I
opened the entrance before you could get him out. And then I ran off and left
both
of you, so if we're handing out blame –'

‘It wasn't like that.'

‘It was exactly like that. It was a disaster. But when has it ever been anything else in this place?' She stopped walking, hugging herself against the cold.

‘So … now what?' I said. ‘I mean, we have to go back and get him, right?'

Jordan stared past me, back the way we'd come. ‘No. We can't. Not yet, anyway. The only way back down there is if they let us in. And they'll only do that if they know they can capture us again.'

‘We can't just …' I trailed off. She was right.

‘We should go back into town,' said Jordan.

‘We can't do that either!' I said. ‘If Calvin sees us – If anyone sees us –'

‘We have to get back to our families. Let them know what's going on before they do anything to make Shackleton –'

‘You want to
tell
them?' I said.

‘No – not about –' She closed her eyes. ‘I don't know. Maybe. Maybe we have to.'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘But how happy do you think Mum's going to be when Montag's name comes up? Somehow, I don't think she's going to respond too well when I say that her new boyfriend's helping plot the apocalypse.'

‘Yeah, okay. Well, one thing at a time. We need to make sure they're all right, at least. We can figure out the rest as we go.'

I thought about pointing out that this kind of planning hadn't exactly served us well in the past, but Jordan was looking shaken up enough as it was, and I didn't want to push it.

We headed for her place first. It was right up at the north edge of town, and we'd be able to see it from the bush.

I slowed down as a row of identical two-storey houses came into view between the trees. Jordan and I crouched again. There was a line of scraggly undergrowth in front of us, right at the edge of the bushland.

Jordan got down on her stomach, squeezing her way through the bushes for a closer look at the street. The undergrowth clawed at me as I clambered in next to her, scratching at my assorted cuts and bruises.

Jordan's place was on the corner across from us, one street parallel to the bushland and the other heading down to the town centre. Georgia's pink swing set sat on the front lawn – the only thing distinguishing their house from all the others.

Judging by the light, I guessed it was maybe eight o'clock in the morning. Already, there were people whizzing back and forth along the bike path in front of us. A couple of houses down, a guy in a suit was out watering his lawn before work.

As usual, no matter how ridiculous things got for Jordan, Peter and me, life for everyone else in Phoenix just continued as normal.

‘Should be okay,' said Jordan, wriggling closer to me. ‘We'll just wait until the traffic clears a bit, and sneak across before –'

She gasped, grabbing my wrist.

Her front door had just swung open.

A black-uniformed security guard walked out onto the front porch. He yawned, lacing his fingers together and stretching them above his head, then leant casually over the railing.

We were too late.

Jordan's mum and dad had already been suspicious. Already dangerously close to the truth about Phoenix. They'd been trying to book a flight back home for a week now. It didn't take much imagination to see how they would have reacted when Jordan went missing.

I winced as Jordan tightened her grip on my arm. She was shaking her head at the guard, eyes dark. ‘If they've done
anything
…'

‘There's another one,' I said, trying not to think about what might be going on back at my place. The second guard was upstairs, peering out into the bush from behind a closed window.

‘That's Mum and Dad's room.' Jordan let go of me and started backing out from the undergrowth.

‘Jordan, stop –'

‘They've got my family!' she hissed.

‘Yeah,' I said, scrambling out after her, ‘and how is getting shot going to help that situation?'

She pushed to her knees. ‘We have to do something!'

‘We have to wait until there's something we
can
do! If they've got your family, then they've got my mum. And Peter's parents too, probably. We can't … just …'

I trailed off, seeing more movement across the street. Jordan caught it too, and we dived back under the bushes for a better look.

Her front door was opening again. The guard on the porch turned around. Jordan's mum came out, baby bump bulging, holding a mug of coffee. The guard smiled and reached out to take it from her.

Mrs Burke called back over her shoulder and Jordan's little sister, Georgia, came bounding out the door in her school uniform. Jordan's mum took her by the hand, leading her out the front gate and down the street toward school.

I glanced at Jordan. Her face was frozen, squinting across the road like she was sure there'd been some kind of mistake.

‘Huh?' she managed after a bit.

‘I don't think …' I began, still working it out as I spoke. ‘What if those guys aren't guarding your family from getting away? What if they're guarding the
house?
Maybe the Co-operative's only doing this to make sure we can't come back home.'

‘Then why would my parents –?' She sighed. ‘Right. Because they just think security's there to help find their missing daughter.'

‘Well, that's kind of true,' I said.

‘Yeah, well, I'm assuming they left out the part about wanting to kill us.' She rested her head on her hands, still watching the house. ‘I just hope Mum and Dad don't start asking too many –' Her brow furrowed. ‘Hey. Dad's still home.'

I searched the windows and spotted Mr Burke's towering figure standing in Jordan's bedroom. He was slumped over, hands resting on the windowsill, and I didn't need to see the tears to know that he was crying.

I looked at Jordan, worried that she was going to jump up and start waving her arms around or something. But she just looked at him, fighting back her own tears.

‘He's not going to work,' she whispered. ‘And he's not taking Georgia to school either.'

‘Does that mean something?'

‘He doesn't want Mum to be alone with the security officers. He doesn't trust them.'

Then, as though this was the crucial detail we'd been waiting for, Jordan slid back out from under the bushes and sat up. ‘We need a hiding place,' she said, determination blazing up again in her eyes. ‘Somewhere safe while we figure out what to do next.'

‘Safe,' I repeated. I was pretty sure that no longer existed for us.

And if it did, we weren't going to find it in town. Shackleton had done a pretty slick job of turning the rest of Phoenix against us, convincing them that we were dangerous criminals. Besides, anyone who
did
help us would be putting themselves in danger, whether they knew it or not. Too many people had already wound up hurt or dead because of –

And then another possibility occurred to me.

It was dangerous, and probably stupid, and the fact that I was even thinking of it was proof of how much Phoenix had screwed with my head.