CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kieron stared bleakly out at the Israeli landscape beyond the security fence. This might be the last bit of the real world he ever saw. Shame it was mainly rocks, dust and scrappy little plants. If he was going to die on an espionage mission – as was looking increasingly likely – then why couldn’t it be in Hawaii?

A flash of light at the top of a nearby hill caught his attention. The sun glinting off something? Maybe a bit of broken glass. Nothing that was going to help save his life, unfortunately.

‘Come on,’ Tara said, shoving Kieron from behind. ‘You’ve got an appointment with agonising pain. We wouldn’t want you to be late.’

Kieron turned to glare at her. It was the only way he had of showing resistance; well, that and snarky comments. He was just about to speak when he saw another flash of light over Todd’s shoulder.

Todd and Tara were both facing forward, towards the buildings. They couldn’t see the flashes.

A tiny bud of hope began to unfurl in his heart.

‘Dammit!’ Tara snapped. There was a sudden crack! and a clatter as something hard hit the ground. Kieron turned, and saw that the jamming unit she had been holding was now on the ground a few steps away from her. She looked confused.

‘You clumsy idiot,’ Todd shouted. ‘Check that the thing’s OK!’

‘It slipped from my fingers,’ Tara said as she walked over and bent to retrieve it. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘What happened was that you were paying too much attention to pushing the kid around and not enough to keeping hold of the jammer. Is it broken?’

Tara had picked the jammer up and was staring at it bleakly. ‘Smashed. Must have hit a stone when it fell. Sorry, boss.’

Looking at it, Kieron could see that the screen had broken, and a corner was torn off. He glanced back at the hilltop where he’d seen the flashes of light. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

‘Do we have another one? Tell me we have another one.’

Tara’s expression gave Kieron hope that there weren’t any spares.

‘I think so,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll get someone to check.’

‘Why is it that I’m surrounded by incompetents?’ Todd snarled. ‘Seriously, someone – tell me.’

‘Because you hire them,’ Kieron pointed out helpfully.

For a moment Todd looked as if he was going to backhand Kieron, but instead he pushed him towards the golf cart.

‘That,’ a voice in Kieron’s ear said, ‘was possibly the most difficult shot I’ve ever had to take.’

Bex!

The bud of hope in Kieron’s heart suddenly bloomed. Yes, he was still a prisoner, and, yes, he was inside a double-layered security fence while his friends were outside, but at least he had friends, and they were nearer than he’d dared to hope. They’d followed him!

‘So, what’s the plan?’ he asked as they sat in the golf cart and it started to move off. He made it look like he was speaking to Todd and Tara, but really he was asking Bex.

‘Not sure yet,’ Bex said. ‘We’re kind of playing this by ear. The first step was breaking that jammer and getting in contact with you. I can’t read lips at this range, but it didn’t look as if they spotted anything suspicious – did they? Answer me if you can, but don’t act suspiciously.’

‘You do talk a lot, don’t you?’ Todd said as they headed into a red glass canyon between two of the buildings of the Goldfinch Institute. ‘That’s an annoying habit generally, but it’ll come in useful when we’re interrogating you.’

‘No,’ Kieron said firmly, answering Bex but making it sound like he was defiantly rejecting Todd’s threatening words.

‘That’s good,’ Bex said. ‘I was using a silencer and I tried to clip the corner to knock it out of her hand. A fraction lower and there’d be a bullet hole through it, and that would have given the game away straight away.’ She paused. ‘Sam’s fine, by the way, and he’s with me. And we’re going to do everything we can to get you out safely. Don’t worry Kieron – we’re here for you.’

‘Do whatever you need to,’ Kieron said.

‘We will,’ Bex and Todd said at the same time, and Kieron felt a shiver run up his spine. This was going to be tricky: communicating with Bex while making it look like he was making comments about what was going on. He’d been getting used to it, but now his life was at stake.

‘We need to get you away from them before they can get that replacement jammer Tara mentioned,’ Bex said in his ear as the golf cart turned a corner and continued driving between the red glass buildings. ‘And I can’t shoot it out of her hand again once you’re inside. We haven’t got long to think of something. The problem is, I haven’t got access to the plans of the Institute’s buildings here in Tel Aviv, so I can’t guide you. They’ll be on the internal server, not the external one.’

‘This place,’ Kieron said, turning to Todd, ‘it looks just like the one in Albuquerque, except it’s a different colour. What is it – are you obsessive-compulsive or something? Do you like having everything exactly the same? Is that why you only hire redheads?’

Todd just snorted, as if the question was too trivial to answer, but in Kieron’s ear Bex murmured, ‘Good question, well presented. I’ll call up the plans of the Albuquerque complex – you downloaded them from the internal server when you were in there, didn’t you? Let’s assume for the moment that this facility is the same as that one.’

‘Yes,’ Kieron went on, then added, this time to Todd, ‘that must be it. Obsessive-compulsive.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I cut the labels out of any clothes I buy, because I don’t like the feeling that I’m being identified as part of some big company’s advertising strategy. I like to be anonymous.’

‘If you don’t shut up,’ Todd said wearily, ‘I’ll get Tara to cut off the little finger of your left hand. She carries a special device, you know, just to do that. She modified it from one of those things businessmen use to slice the ends off cigars.’

They were approaching one of the red glass buildings now, and ahead of the driverless golf cart Kieron saw a sliding glass door opening to let them in.

‘Right,’ Bex said, ‘I’ve got the plans up. From what I can see, the footprint is identical, but what’s inside might be different.’

The golf cart swept in through the doors. The space inside was huge: occupying most of the building as far as Kieron could see. The cart was driving down a curved corridor made of plain glass, like a tunnel that ran from one side of the building to a position in the middle. The glass was so clean that it almost seemed as though it wasn’t there. Only that slight distortion when Kieron tried to look through it at an angle, rather than straight on, gave away its presence. It also gave away its thickness: that glass had to be nearly three centimetres thick!

That wasn’t the most impressive thing, however. Kieron stared, amazed, at what was on his left and right, beyond the glass. Satellites! Real satellites, designed to go into orbit around the Earth! They ranged from the size of a small car to the size of a coach. Some of them were unique, but others had similar siblings, differentiated only by numbers painted on their sides. Each one had shiny blue solar panels that unfolded around them like wings, and each one bristled with antennae. As he looked more carefully, and as the cart raced past them, he saw that some of them were based around vast, tube-like telescopes with lenses the size of a dustbin lid, while others ended in massive dish antennae that were probably designed to transmit, or scoop up, radio waves. It was like driving through an exhibit of props from some science fiction movie, except that this was real.

‘I didn’t,’ he said, ‘know that the Goldfinch Institute was into satellites.’

‘Oh, we do a lot of things,’ Todd replied. ‘Basically, if I get an idea then I sketch it out on a napkin, give it to my people and they build it.’

‘Everyone needs a hobby.’

Todd shook his head. ‘Not a hobby. I don’t think I’ve sketched anything that hasn’t earned me less than ten million dollars. It’s a business. A very profitable business.’

‘You should put those napkins in an art gallery,’ Kieron observed.

Todd stared at him pityingly. ‘I already have,’ he said.

Kieron opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again. Best not to aggravate Todd too much. The man was threatening to torture and kill him, after all.

Then again, if he was going to be tortured and killed, why not just go for wall-to-wall insults?

Oh, he thought, but then he might decide to torture me worse. Or for longer.

Instead, he said, ‘I guess this is a construction facility. Is that a clean room the other side of the glass? All dust and contaminants removed?’

Todd nodded. ‘Not my favourite part of the Institute. The overheads are high, but the risk of something breaking down in orbit is too great, and you can’t send a technician out into space to repair it. No, non-lethal weapons are far better.’ He paused. ‘And lethal ones of course. I do those too.’

The cart got to the far point of the glass tunnel, halfway across the enormous room, and Kieron gazed around in awe. The centre of the room was effectively an octagonal glass tube running right up to the ceiling. Several massive doors set into thick rubber seals allowed access to and from the satellite area. Right in the middle of the tube was something that looked a bit like a high-tech oven made out of white metal, except that it was the size of a house. Well, larger than Kieron’s house. You could drive a double-decker bus through the door. Cables and corrugated pipes emerged from the top and curved away to the ceiling, where they seemed to join what Kieron had thought was a giant air-conditioning system: square metal trunking that led away towards the walls.

The golf cart came to a stop near to the huge door.

‘Right,’ said Tara, ‘get out.’

As Kieron stepped onto the white-tiled floor he gazed at the oven-thing. It seemed to loom over him like some kind of gigantic gargoyle. It looked dangerous, like some industrial incinerator. The sight of it did not fill him with pleasant thoughts or confidence.

Tara walked around the oven-thing, to a control console that emerged from the floor like a high-tech mushroom. She pressed a series of buttons.

‘So what’s this?’ Kieron asked, pointing. ‘Are you genetically engineering really, really big people here? Is this where they live?’

‘Space is a very harsh environment,’ Todd said, waving a hand at the myriad of satellites in the clean zone beyond the glass walls. ‘That’s why building these is so expensive. There’s pretty much zero pressure in orbit, which means not only that any sealed container, like a fuel tank, has to have really thick walls so it doesn’t burst like a balloon, but also that substances like rubber and plastic, and even some metals and some types of glass, release atoms and molecules dissolved in them or trapped in microscopic cracks, and those atoms and molecules can spray over optics and solar panels and reduce their efficiency. Also, people think that space is cold, but that’s not necessarily true. In Earth’s orbit, in direct sunlight, things can heat up to 260 degrees Celsius. Of course, if they’re not in direct sunlight then they can cool down to below minus 100. So, obviously we have to test our satellites before we launch them to make sure they can withstand the conditions, and that’s what this thing does. We put a satellite inside, reduce the pressure and then change the temperature from really cold to really hot and back again. That’s what the really big door is for, obviously.’

Tara pressed a button on the control console. A normal-sized door that Kieron hadn’t even noticed swung open in the bottom of the much larger door.

‘So,’ Todd went on calmly, ‘I can’t offer you much choice in the pressure department, but do you want to be frozen or cooked? Either way it’s going to be really, really unpleasant.’

‘You choose,’ Kieron said, equally calmly although he felt sick. ‘I’m not going to let you make me part of this. You’re the one with his finger on the button. Well, she is, but you’re telling her what to do. I’m just an innocent bystander.’

Todd shrugged. ‘Cold it is then. We can always turn the temperature up later.’

‘Hold on, Kieron,’ Bex’s voice said in his ear. ‘I’m working to get you out. Just be brave.’

‘If you’re going to do anything,’ Kieron muttered, ‘then now might be a good time.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ Todd said. ‘Tara – if you could?’

Tara had left the console without Kieron realising. She pushed him from behind. Surprised, he staggered towards the massive environmental chamber, almost tripping. She pushed him again. He grabbed hold of the door so he didn’t sprawl inside.

‘Hang on,’ Todd called. ‘In all the fun, I almost forgot to ask: who are you working for?’

‘I had a summer job in a cafe once.’ Kieron had to force the words past a throat that seemed to have swelled up in panic. ‘I got fired because I couldn’t remember the daily specials, or make a decent cappuccino. Does that count?’

Todd nodded at Tara. She knocked Kieron’s hands away from the door and then shoved him between the shoulder blades. He fell inside the chamber. He twisted around, trying to climb back to his feet and get outside, but the door was already swinging closed against its rubber seal. A small window set into the door gave him a view of Tara’s grimly smiling face.

‘There’s a microphone in here,’ Todd’s voice crackled. ‘Just tell me who you’re working for and I’ll open the door. You’ll maybe lose a toe or a finger to frostbite, depending how long you resist for, but that’s OK. You’re not a golfer, are you? Losing a finger will ruin your swing. Tennis too.’

‘I’ve known people like you all my life,’ Kieron shouted. ‘You’re just like the bullies at school, only you’re richer. They always said they’d give my packed lunch or my schoolbooks back if only I asked nicely, but they never did. So – I can either tell you what you want to know and then die, or I can keep the information to myself and still die. One means I give in, the other means I die fighting. Guess which one I’m choosing?’

‘I’ll ask again once your fingers are so frozen you’d be able to snap them off like icicles,’ Todd’s voice said, ‘and when your breath starts turning to ice in your throat.’

A throbbing sound started up. Kieron could feel the vibration through the soles of his feet. Some kind of device that would reduce the temperature in the chamber? It had to be.

He looked around wildly. The chamber was maybe twice his height, with white metal walls and a white tiled floor marred by scuffs and scratches. Light came in through narrow but long vertical strips of glass running up to the ceiling, which was almost hidden by various pipes and vents. The glass strips had scorch marks on them, which didn’t make Kieron feel any better at all.

A shiver ran through him. Was it getting colder, or was he just scared? Actually, it might be both.

He could see his breath forming clouds in front of his face. He wrapped his arms around his chest. Should he sit down? Would the floor retain heat, or were there cooling elements built into it?

Actually, he could feel his feet getting colder. He started stamping them, moving around, trying to keep one foot off the ground as much as possible.

‘You look like you’re skipping!’ Todd’s voice crowed. So he had cameras in there as well. ‘Just like a girl in the playground!’

‘I said you were a bully,’ Kieron shouted. Gusts of vapour drifted away from him and towards the ceiling.

‘Still working on something,’ Bex said. She sounded strained.

‘No hurry,’ Kieron murmured, and then louder: ‘I live in Newcastle. I’m used to the cold.’

His fingers had started to tingle, and every breath hurt his lungs. Looking around he could see drips of condensed water vapour running down the chamber’s walls. Most of them froze before they got to the floor, leaving trails like wax running down a candle in those small Italian trattorias his mum took him to for a treat.

His mum. A sob threatened to erupt from his chest, stopping his breathing. He was never going to see her again! And Bex would disappear to another town, with another identity. His mum would never know what happened.

‘Anything to tell us?’ Todd’s crackly voice asked. ‘If you’re too cold I can turn the heat up. Right up.’

‘Tell my mum,’ he said to Bex, forcing the words past jaw muscles that had clenched against the cold. ‘Don’t leave her in the dark.’

‘No need,’ Bex’s voice said. She sounded … not defeated. Not strained.

She sounded confident.

Something went crash outside, and the lights flickered. The rumbling engine sound cut out completely. Warmth enveloped him like a duvet, making him realise just how cold the chamber had got, and how quickly. What had happened?

The door he’d come through – well, been thrown through – suddenly clicked open. He didn’t know why, but before anyone could change their mind, he staggered towards it and fell back out.

From his sprawled position he saw that a second golf cart had appeared. This one was just as driverless as the first, but it had crashed into the mushroom-shaped control console. The console itself now canted heavily to one side. It had been half pulled from the ground, and wires dangled from its base, dripping sparks. The cart itself lay on its side, wheels still spinning pointlessly.

Todd and Tara had apparently been in the way when the cart drove into the central area. They both lay on the floor, looking dazed.

‘Not as easy to drive as you might think, mate,’ Sam said in his ear.

‘Sam – that was you?’

‘Of course. Bex accessed the central robotic cart area on the external server and took one over, then she got me to drive it.’

‘You begged me to let you drive it,’ Bex shouted in the background.

‘There’s five different cameras on the front of each cart, plus infra-red and microwave sensors. It’s like playing a video game. Right – now we have to get you out of there. Get in the cart.’

Kieron stared at the scene before him. ‘I don’t know what your five cameras are telling you, but you crashed it. Just like you crash vehicles in any computer game you play.’

‘Not that cart, idiot. This cart.’

Something went beep! behind Kieron, making him jump. Turning, he saw a third driverless robotic cart right approaching. He climbed in, still feeling shaky from the stress of the environmental chamber.

‘We’re just outside the main gate,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll get the cart to take you right there.’

Either Bex or Sam must have hacked the cart software, because the one Kieron was in took off with such rapid acceleration he was thrown backwards and almost fell out. He grabbed onto the frame and hung on as the cart raced back along the glass tunnel.

‘A few minutes and you’ll be safe,’ Sam said in his ear, just as something exploded against the wall of the tunnel. The smoothly curved walls suddenly changed into a jigsaw of sharp glass shards the size of Kieron’s head. They fell like fragments of a frozen waterfall, embedding themselves into the ground.

‘What the hell?’ Sam yelled.

Kieron glanced back over his shoulder. Todd had got up off the floor and was pointing a weapon at him. Maybe he kept it in the golf cart that had brought them here. It looked something like a revolver.

The expression on Todd’s face was as close to insanity as Kieron ever wanted to see.

As Kieron watched, Todd aimed at him again and pulled the trigger.

A line of fire etched itself through the air towards Kieron’s head. A small black dot at the front of the fiery line, growing larger with every microsecond, had to be a projectile. Some kind of miniature missile, maybe, propelled by hot exhaust gases from burning fuel. Even as part of Kieron’s mind wondered what kind of fool would fire what was effectively a small rocket launcher in a vastly expensive satellite construction and testing facility, another part tried to tell him that in less than a second that small rocket and his head would occupy the same space. And he couldn’t seem to make his body move out of the way. Time had slowed down massively, but so had his reactions. He couldn’t move.

The cart swerved sideways, taking it into the area where the satellites sat like high-tech monoliths. The rocket swished right past Kieron’s face, so close that the heat from its exhaust burned his cheek. It smashed through the still-falling chunks of curved glass, bouncing off them and deflecting sideways, into the construction space.

Where it hit a huge satellite, passing right through its solar panels and smashing directly into the main body before exploding.

The satellite began to topple.

‘Go left!’ Kieron called. Sam must have heard him, because the cart suddenly veered again.

The exit lay just ahead. The floor between the cart and the exit was covered in shards of glass from the smashed tunnel.

‘Drive straight ahead!’ Kieron shouted. ‘If you do that, we’ll get through the door.’

The cart sprang forward. Kieron heard the crunch of glass beneath its wheels. He looked sideways, to see the massive satellite falling sideways and crashing into the next one in line. That one began to topple as well. It was like watching dominoes fall, one after the other, except these were multi-million pound pieces of astronomical technology.

The first satellite hit the floor. Its solar panels seemed to explode upwards in thousands of fragments of blue while its body crumpled and cracked.

Fascinated, Kieron would have liked to watch the next one go down, but he had more important things to do. He glanced behind him, searching for Todd Zanderbergen as the cart sped towards the door to the outside world. For a moment he couldn’t see where the man had gone, but then he spotted him standing at the shattered end of the glass tunnel, halfway between the giant environmental chamber and where Kieron’s cart had reached. He was aiming his weapon again, but not at Kieron. He was aiming off to the left.

At the nearest satellite to the door – the one on the other side of the one that had fallen and smashed so completely.

Kieron immediately saw what Todd intended. He wanted to bring the satellite crashing down like a tree, blocking Kieron’s path out.

Or crushing him. Kieron suspected that either result would please Todd.

‘Stop!’ he shouted.

‘Why?’ Sam sounded confused. ‘We’re nearly there!’

‘Just do it!’

The cart came to a skidding stop just as Todd fired. The tiny missile whooshed past him and hit the base of the satellite. This one was taller and narrower, made of several sections linked by thinner bits, like an extended wasp. Fire splashed around its base, and slowly, majestically, it started to fall. Just as Todd had intended, it hit the ground where the glass tunnel had been, crumpling and cracking into several sections at the joints. There must have been fuel in a tank inside, because the small fire caused by the missile suddenly became swamped by a much bigger explosion so hot and so bright that Kieron had to throw his arm up to protect his eyes. A wave of heat washed over him.

Kieron leaped out of the cart and ran towards the door to the outside, but it was no good. The blazing, crumpled satellite completely blocked the way.

‘Find me another way out of here!’ he shouted to Sam.

‘Working on it,’ Sam said.

Kieron looked back towards the centre of the building. Todd was stalking towards him, murder in his eyes.

Kieron glanced around desperately, looking for something, anything, he could use to fight Todd or escape, but there was nothing.

Except … except the gun that Todd held.

Kieron ran sideways until he was clear of the crashed satellite, standing in front of the thick red glass wall of the building. He turned. Trying to look as casually defiant as possible, he put his hands on his hips.

‘How much damage have I caused?’ he shouted at the approaching Todd. ‘Must be millions of dollars’ worth by now. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions?’

‘I’ll get it all back,’ Todd shouted. ‘ANCIENT MARINER will make me billions!’

‘And kill billions,’ Kieron pointed out.

‘Ordinary people.’ Todd raised his gun. ‘People like you, not extraordinary people like me. The world will be less cluttered and better off.’

‘You’re a psychopath,’ Kieron said.

Todd stopped about twenty metres away. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. Mom and Dad sent me to a psychologist. He made that diagnosis. Didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but I killed him anyway, for his attitude. He thought I needed treatment. He didn’t know what I know – it’s people like me who are successful in this world. So, yes, I am a psychopath. And you’re dead.’

He fired the weapon.

Before the projectile had even left the stocky barrel of the gun, Kieron had dived sideways. His shoulder hit the ground hard, sending a lightning spike of pain through him, but he rolled clumsily and scrambled back to his feet as the projectile hit the building’s glass wall. Massive cracks propagated in all directions. The missile exploded, and the blast pushed the glass fragments outwards, into the open air. Kieron ran through the flames and through the gap that had been opened, shielding his eyes with his arm.

The heat of the fiery explosion gave way to the heat of Tel Aviv’s climate. The blue sky above seemed like the most beautiful thing Kieron had ever seen after the red-tinged, sterile building interior. He ran along the side of the building, desperately trying to get ahead of Todd. Left at a junction between buildings, then right at another junction, breath rasping in his chest all the time. He thought he could hear Todd’s footsteps behind him all the while. The centre of his back, right between his shoulder blades, itched, waiting for the next missile to hit his spine.

The maze-like configuration of the buildings confused him, and the long stretches of glass wall meant that Todd could come around a corner behind him at any time while he was running for the next corner, and that would be fatal.

He got to yet another junction, a crossroads this time. He was about to turn right when Sam’s voice in his ear said, ‘Go straight on!’

‘I can’t!’ he virtually screamed; ‘Todd will see me!’

‘There’s a door just ahead, on the left. It’s your closest route into a building.’

Kieron ran, stumbling now rather than sprinting. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could do. He felt as if he was right on the edge of collapse.

Just as Sam had said, there was a doorway in the left-hand wall just ten steps past the crossroads. It opened silently as he approached.

He ran inside, and the door closed again behind him.

This building seemed to be a storage area. Yellow lines on the floor delineated separate zones. The first one on Kieron’s right had wooden crates stacked up almost to the ceiling high above; the one on his left had hard plastic boxes in military camouflage colours arranged on racks of shelving. He ran along an aisle, then turned down another one lined with large metal containers so that he couldn’t be seen from the doorway.

‘There’s a way out on the far side,’ Bex said suddenly. She seemed to have taken over from Sam on the ARCC kit. ‘Keep on going straight, then turn left at the end.’

He got to the end of the row of containers, and stopped.

‘Keep going,’ Bex said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Can you see what I see?’ Kieron asked, staring straight ahead.

He was looking at an area in the centre of the room, surrounded by high walls of metal containers. Right in the middle were around forty barrel-shaped canisters, bright orange in colour. Each one had a stark yellow-and-black biohazard symbol stuck on the side. And each one had the words ‘Project ANCIENT MARINER’ stencilled in black letters above the symbol.

‘That’s the virus,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s ready to send out.’

‘Leave it,’ Bex said urgently. ‘We can alert someone as soon as we get you out of there.’

‘Like who?’

‘Don’t worry about that now. Just get out!’

‘The police? The army? For all we know, the Israeli government might be one of the Goldfinch Institute’s customers. Even if they’re not, by the time they do anything, Todd will have shipped all these canisters out, and then what will happen? People will die. Lots of people.’

‘There’s nothing you can do. Just get away from there. We’ll worry about Project ANCIENT MARINER once you’re safe.’

Kieron felt torn. He wanted to do something about the virus, but he didn’t know what. If he had more time he might think of something, but he couldn’t have more than a few seconds before Todd caught up with him.

Todd? Could he get the man to fire his missile gun at the canisters, blow them up by accident?

‘Would fire destroy the virus?’ he asked, glancing around to see if Todd was near.

‘Yes,’ Bex said after a few seconds, ‘as long as it’s hot enough. I can see what you’re thinking, but the explosion might just disperse the virus before the heat destroys it. Unless –’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless I close the building’s door from here and turn off the ventilation system and the fire-suppression system. That way the fire would keep burning until everything inside was destroyed.’

Kieron shook his head angrily. ‘Wouldn’t work anyway. The gun’s not got enough missiles to destroy all these canisters.’

‘Then get out – we’ll think of something else.’

Kieron started to move again, heading for the far side of the building. When he was two-thirds of the way along a row of empty metal shelves, something pinged off a strut.

He turned. Tara stood at the end of the row. She held a nasty-looking gun with a silencer on the end of the barrel.

She fired again.

Kieron dived to the ground and rolled beneath the lowest shelf. There was barely enough clearance for him: he had to lie on his back and haul himself along by grabbing hold of metal struts. The bottom shelf was so close to his face that he had to turn his head sideways. The ground beneath him scraped his ear as he pulled and slid his way to the other side of the rack. He heard footsteps as Tara ran towards where she thought he was going to emerge. Quickly he reversed course, wriggling back to where he’d entered. He got to his feet and quickly pulled his shoes off, then ran soundlessly along to the nearest corner and went in the opposite direction.

Tara and Todd, both searching for him. He didn’t stand a chance.

His lungs burned with exertion and his muscles ached. Blood trickled down his neck from his scraped ear. His two pursuers were wearing him down, and they didn’t seem to care how much damage they did to the Goldfinch Institute, just as long as their precious ANCIENT MARINER survived.

He stopped and bent over, hands on his knees, desperately trying to find some last reserves of energy he could use.

‘I think this is it, Bex,’ he said. ‘I can’t go any further.’

He expected Bex to shout at him, give him a pep talk, tell him that he had to fight on, but she didn’t. All she said was: ‘Look to your right.’

He looked. Ten containers, like large military suitcases, were lined up on the floor between two piles of wooden crates.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Look at what it says on them.’

He looked. The stencilled lettering said: ‘ICARUS’.

For a moment the word made no sense, and then he remembered. The other Goldfinch Institute, in Albuquerque. The tour of the buildings. The video showing a man strapped to a device that had a tiny jet engine, a fuel tank and a wing about as wide as the man was tall.

‘You’re kidding,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to fly one of those things!’

‘I’ll get hold of the specs,’ Bex said. ‘You put it on.’

He glanced quickly around. No sign of Todd or Tara. With the last of his strength he pulled one of the suitcases out and opened it. The device inside looked like a metal rucksack with rubber straps. The wings had folded down into a shape like a surfboard. He struggled into the straps. The folded wings dragged along the floor, and a circular plate with various controls pressed against his chest.

‘What now?’ he asked. He felt like he had no willpower left, no energy, no ability to do anything apart from follow instructions.

‘You’re not going to like the next bit.’

‘I don’t like it already,’ he said quietly, feeling the rubber straps dig into his chest and the weight of the folded wings pull against his shoulders.

‘You’re going to have to get as high as possible so you can launch yourself.’

‘What?’ he said, confused. ‘You mean go up to the roof? I can’t do that! I can hardly even walk!’

‘No, I mean you’ve got to climb those shelves behind you and jump off.’

‘Bex, I –’

‘Do it,’ she said, like a PE teacher telling him to climb a rope in the gym.

He was too tired to argue. He grabbed a high shelf with both hands, put his right foot on a low shelf, and started to climb.

It seemed to take forever, and his muscles kept screaming at him to stop. The folded wings dragged him backwards relentlessly. Several times his fingers slipped or lost their grip and he almost fell, but eventually he pulled himself onto the empty top shelf. He gazed up into the space around him, between the top of the shelving and the cables and ventilation tubes attached to the ceiling high above.

‘That was the easy bit,’ Bex said firmly. ‘Now you have to jump.’

‘I really –’

A bullet flashed past him, clipping the top of his ear and cutting through a lock of his hair. Hot blood splattered across his forehead. Calling on energy he didn’t even know he had, Kieron scrambled to his feet and stumbled towards the edge of the shelf.

‘Red button, dead centre of the control plate –’ Bex’s voice reminded him of all the teachers he’d ever hated at school – ‘that’ll activate the jets. Then there are two joysticks, one on either side. The left one takes you up and down; the right one takes you side to side. Now … run!’

Several holes suddenly appeared in the metal surface ahead of him, sharp edges reaching up like tiny claws. Bullet holes.

The edge of the shelf was coming up fast. He fumbled for the control plate and pressed the button in the centre. It might have been red, it might not; he couldn’t see it.

Something seemed to kick him hard in the middle of his back. He staggered and almost fell, but somehow he kept on running, running … until he launched himself off the shelf and into empty space.

He assumed he was going to drop straight to the ground. He was convinced of it, but behind him, the wings snapped out, unfolding into the graceful curves he’d seen in the video back in Albuquerque. Instead of shielding his head protectively, his arms tucked back so his hands could grasp the controls.

He felt the heat of the jet exhaust against his legs. The kick became a push, the push became a shove, and he was flying! He was really flying! Beneath him he saw shelves, crates, boxes and canisters sliding past like the landscapes he’d seen from the windows of the aircraft as he, Bex and Sam had flown in to Albuquerque.

No difficulties for him. He tested the controls: swooping right and swooping left, then up and down. It was so easy!

Except, he suddenly realised, he was fast running out of building.

‘Can you see the door ahead of you and to the right?’ Bex’s voice asked.

‘No!’ he shouted.

‘Look down, near the ground.’

‘Oh yes, I see it now.’

‘Aim for that. I’ll make sure the door stays open.’

Kieron jinked down towards the ground, then levelled out. He was heading along one of the aisles between the crates, shelves and boxes. He thought he saw Todd Zanderbergen’s face flash past, contorted in comical surprise, but that was behind him now and the doors were ahead of him, getting closer really fast.

His hands jerked the controls, and suddenly his path curved upwards. The doors disappeared below him, and the wall above them flashed past so close he could have reached out and touched it.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Bex’s voice was a frustrated shout, like the PE teacher’s voice when he’d struggled up her damned gym rope then pulled the end up after him and refused to come down.

He altered his path again, so that he was flying upside-down along the ceiling, away from the doors and back into the building. Pipes, cables and vents formed a bleak cityscape. For a second he imagined that he was flying along the surface of the Death Star out of Star Wars and he laughed joyfully. Then a quick twist of the controls and he was the right way up again.

‘I’m doing what has to be done,’ he shouted, hoping that Bex could hear him over the rushing of air and the roar of the jet engine. ‘This thing is armed. I remember seeing it on the video. How do I fire the missiles?’

‘Kieron –’

‘Just tell me!’

He looked around, trying to get some sense of where he was. The ANCIENT MARINER canisters were stored in the centre of the building, he remembered. He adjusted his course into a spiral, and gazed down intently, looking for them.

Bright orange. Yes, there they were.

Todd Zanderbergen stood beside them protectively. He raised his missile gun and fired it. A line of bright orange and yellow flame headed straight for Kieron, but he adjusted his flight controls gently and moved slightly out of the way. The missile passed beneath him. He thought he heard the boom! as it hit the roof.

‘There are two buttons, one on each of the directional controls. They fire the left and right rockets. Kieron –’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ he said.

He adjusted his course, straightening and dipping so he was heading right for the bright orange canisters. His fingers touched the buttons on top of the flight controls, and suddenly, from beneath the wings behind him, two small, pencil-like objects flashed ahead of him and towards the crates of Project ANCIENT MARINER. Todd – a small figure on the ground – saw what was happening and raised his hands desperately, like King Canute trying to hold back the inevitable tide. Kieron steered his course off to one side, but a tall stack of shelving was in the way. He spotted a gap between two stacks of crates and aimed for it. The crates flashed past him, then he was in the open again.

He couldn’t see what was happening behind him, but he felt a wall of heat pass over him. The air itself seemed to ripple.

‘I’m keeping the doors open,’ Bex said, ‘and I’ve disabled the fire-suppression system. Are you going to get out now, or hang around and do some sightseeing?’

‘Time to leave,’ he said, pulling the jet wings around and heading for where he thought the doors were located. ‘I don’t know how much fuel I’ve got left.’

The approaching wall was alive now with dancing orange and red light. Whatever was happening behind him, it was big and it was impressive and it was spreading rapidly. He just wished he could see it.

‘Can I keep this thing?’ he asked as he swooped through the doorway. The brightness of the clear blue sky blinded him for a moment, but the hot Israeli air was cool in contrast to the burning building behind him.

‘If you’re not careful,’ Bex said, ‘I’ll make you fly back to England in it.’ She paused. ‘But good work, kid. Really good work.’