NOW
As soon as he entered the North Tunnel, Zak stopped as if he’d hit a brick wall. His breath caught in his chest, and all he could do was stare.
The figure was back.
The same one he’d seen in The Hub, but this time there were no shadows to hide it. This time it was standing at the end of the tunnel, directly beneath the furthest spotlight. Clear as day. No mistake.
Well, not exactly clear as day. Because as Zak’s breath came back to him, and he studied the figure, he thought there was something grey and vague about it; as if it were a shadow. Or a ghost. Or a—
Pain.
Sharp, clean, pain drove through Zak’s head like a hot needle.
It lasted a fraction of a second, and was gone. The figure, however, remained where it was. The man – Zak was sure it had to be a man – was dressed exactly as he had been when he last saw him. The old-fashioned weatherproof jacket, the huge furry mittens, the hood, and the goggles that made him look like a giant insect.
‘Do you . . . see something?’ Dad whispered.
Zak opened his mouth to speak but his tongue was dry. His lips felt numb. ‘See something?’ he managed. ‘Like what?’ If Dad could see it, then he wasn’t imagining this. It wasn’t some crazy episode, like the doctors said he might get.
‘I’m not sure.’ Dad was still whispering. ‘Like . . . a shadow. At the end of the tunnel?’
‘You see it too?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. No. I thought there was something but . . .’ Dad’s voice trailed away as if he was trying to decide what he had or hadn’t seen.
But Zak could still see it.
Right there.
The figure was no more than ten metres away but the more he stared at it, the more unclear he realized it was. The weatherproof coat was like ones he had seen in old photos on the Internet, of explorers standing on the ice, but there was no detail on it other than a few creases. The knee-length boots were dark grey, the hood was white, and the round goggles were filled with the blackest glass. The huge mittens were speckled black and grey and white. The figure didn’t have any colour. Just like in those old photos.
It raised one hand, curling its fingers, beckoning to Zak.
Beckoning? Does it want me to go to it?
It stepped forward, arm extended, flickering like a dodgy image from a CCTV camera. There was movement beneath the woollen balaclava covering its face, as if it were speaking, but Zak couldn’t hear its voice. And there was no sound as it moved. But there was a single flash of colour as the light caught on the surface of the goggles. A muddle of blue and red and green.
Like beetles’ wings.
It’s not there, Zak told himself. It’s not there. There’s no such thing as ghosts. It’s in my imagination.
‘Must be my imagination.’ Dad’s words echoed Zak’s thoughts. ‘I’m seeing things.’
But it was still there, moving towards Zak, one jerking step at a time, flickering as if it were trying to break through from another world.
‘You don’t see anything?’ Zak’s voice was a quiet whisper.
‘No. Come on.’
‘Dad . . .’ Zak wanted to stop him, but Dad moved forward, on a collision course with the ghostly explorer, and—
It was gone. Just like that. The figure vanished as if it had never been there. The tunnel was as empty as the others had been.
‘Dad?’ Zak stared at the far end of the tunnel. ‘Tell me what you saw. When we first came in.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’ Zak insisted. ‘Tell me what it was. What did you see?’
Dad stopped and turned to him. He tightened his lips and fixed his eyes on the floor. He shook his head before meeting Zak’s gaze again. ‘Nothing.’
‘Dad.’
‘All right. Look, I don’t want to scare you, but . . . a shadow maybe. It felt like there was something there, but . . .’ He turned towards the far door. ‘But there’s nothing there now, and I don’t believe in ghosts so—’
‘Ghosts? What made you say that?’
‘It’s just my mind playing tricks on me, Zak.’
‘Except I saw something too.’
‘What? Really?’
‘Yeah. A shadow. Something . . . that wasn’t there.’
Dad watched Zak as if he were expecting this to be a joke.
‘I really did,’ Zak said. ‘I really did see something.’
Dad smiled. It was a sad and sympathetic expression, and Zak knew what it meant.
He thinks I’m imagining stuff. He thinks I’m going bonkers.
‘A trick of the light,’ Dad said. ‘That’s all. Probably our own shadows as we came into the tunnel. There’s definitely something weird going on here, but there’ll be an explanation, and I promise it won’t be anything to do with ghosts.’
Yeah, not ghosts, Zak thought, but something. Something rotten.
As soon as Dad punched the button, the door to the Drone Bay slipped open to reveal a large, silent room beyond.
Dad went straight in, but Zak stayed in the doorway as if trying to break through an invisible barrier. The headache was gone, but this room gave him the strongest sense of something being wrong. Whatever had happened, it was somehow connected with this place. He scanned the room, searching for the figure he’d seen in the tunnel, but the Drone Bay was free of ghosts. For now.
White walls, white floor, white ceiling, the place was more like an operating theatre than a workshop, but there was still the faint smell of oil and electricity in the air, mingled with the metallic tang of hot steel. Zak could taste the Drone Bay.
In the centre of the room was a large disc about four metres in diameter that was used as an elevator to lower the Spider drones on to the ice below. When Outpost One – the base on Mars – was completed, the whole module would be a giant airlock to give the Spiders access to the surface of the planet.
Around the edges of the disc, spare parts were laid out in cabinets, and tools were arranged like surgeon’s instruments on white benches. Wires snaked out from machines ready to be plugged into the Spiders, for diagnosing faults, and keeping them charged.
At the back of the room there were three large bays, each with a name stencilled on the wall above it in black paint. HAL, ROY, and ED – each of them named after a robot from one of Mum and Dad’s favourite sci-fi movies. Right now, HAL and ROY were empty, but the bay with ED above it was home to something that was one of the most amazing things Zak had ever seen. And one of the scariest.
The Spider was slightly bigger than a two-seater Smart car, and was made of a flat oval casing about a metre and a half deep that housed the robot’s ‘brain’. On top of that, the bulk of its body was a ribbed dome, like a bloated tick that had filled itself with too much blood. It had four legs, each jointed in six places, giving it the look of a weird, grey metal spider. Close to the front, it had four narrow arms designed to accept interchangeable attachments. For now, the arms were tipped with pincers.
Right now, ED was in its ‘down’ position, body resting on the ground, jointed legs in an upside down ‘V’, arms retracted.
Everyone in the ‘robotic world’ knew about Drs Evelyn and Adam Reeves because they had designed robots for researching the Mariana Trench, deep under the Pacific Ocean. So when the Exodus Project asked them to design something for them, Zak’s mum and dad created some of the most sophisticated robots the world had ever seen.
Transfixed by the Spider, Zak could hardly believe three others like it were already on the surface of Mars, preparing Outpost One. Zak imagined them moving through the orange dust like aliens, conjuring new components from their 3D printers as if by magic, and putting them together to build a new base.
‘We’ve got another problem,’ Dad said.
‘Hmm?’ Zak was so busy staring at the metallic monster, he hadn’t noticed he was already halfway across the room. A few more seconds and he would have been face to face with the Spider. He blinked hard, not quite sure how he had got there.
Behind him, Dad had the walkie-talkie to his mouth, his thumb pressing the ‘talk’ button. In fact, he was pressing it so hard the pad of his thumb had gone white.
‘What is it?’ Mum’s distorted voice came through the walkie-talkie. ‘Did you find Dima?’
‘No. And there’s something else. Hal and Roy are missing.’
‘Say again. It sounded like you said “Hal and Roy are missing”.’
‘That’s exactly what I said. Ed’s here, but the other two are gone.’
‘Nothing on the system?’
‘No response at all.’ He tapped at the tablet computer in his hands. ‘Everything’s dead.’
There was a pause, then Mum said, ‘We’re on our way.’
‘So, this is bad?’ Zak couldn’t take his eyes off the Spider. ‘They should all be here?’
‘Seems like everything’s disappearing.’
‘Maybe that’s where everyone is? They’re out practicing with the drones?’ Zak watched the Spider resting in its bay like a monster sitting in its lair. There was something ugly about the way it sat there. Like when you find the crusty remains of a spider in the corner of the shed.
The door swished open and Mum came in with May right behind her. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing,’ Dad said. ‘Ed’s powering-up but all the controls are dead.’
‘He’s powering-up on his own?’
‘Someone else must be controlling him.’ Dad’s fingers tapped icons on the touchscreen. ‘I have no idea where the other two are. All the cameras are off-line, all the read-outs are flatlining . . . I can’t get any response.’
Mum watched the Spider. ‘Where are your brothers?’
He? Him? Brothers? Zak shivered. Yuck. As if they weren’t creepy enough already, without Mum and Dad treating them like they were alive.
Ed sat there while Mum and Dad started with their foreign-sounding technical speak. It was all ‘normalize’ this, ‘autonomous’ that or ‘kinematic’ the other.
‘It’s freaky, isn’t it?’ May came over and whispered in Zak’s ear.
‘It’s not the only thing.’
‘Hey, you.’ She slapped his arm.
‘I didn’t mean you; I meant everything that’s happening here. The lights, the people, the plane, those bugs in the lab . . .’
‘We should’ve stayed in St Lucia.’
‘Yeah, you’re not wrong about that.’ Zak’s gaze was drawn to the Spider once more.
There was something glistening within the complicated joints and limbs. Zak frowned and put his hands on his knees, leaning down to see the Spider’s underside where sinewy grey strands threaded backwards and forwards among the movable parts. Each strand disappeared into the oval casing that contained what Mum and Dad called its ‘brain’, but the strands weren’t mechanical – and they definitely weren’t wires. They looked more like something biological. Like something fleshy was growing on the Spider’s brain. Or growing out of it.
Was that supposed to be there? He didn’t think so. It looked like—
All at once, and with more speed than he could have imagined, the Spider came to life. With a quiet mechanical whir of parts, its legs extended, raising the body off the ground, the arms lifted as if they were ready to attack, and it came forward.
Tick-tack-tick-tack, its metal feet sounded on the floor. Tick-tack-tick-tack, as it came right at him.
Startled, Zak tried to get away but fell backwards, sprawling on to the circular platform. The Spider kept coming, huge and horrific, stopping only when its whole body was standing over him. It tilted forward so the dark lenses of its cameras were staring into Zak’s eyes. Metallic arms reached out towards him, the nimble pincers coming straight for his face. Glistening, fleshy sinews twisted around the rods and wires of its joints, tightening and relaxing with the Spider’s movements.
Behind him, May screamed.
‘Stop him!’ Mum shouted. ‘Turn him off!’
Instinctively, Zak threw his arms up to his face for protection. Cold pincers touched his hands, and in that instant he knew why they couldn’t find anyone at Outpost Zero. He knew what had happened to Dima. This Spider had killed them all. It had torn them apart.
And now it was going to do the same to him.