SATURDAY, MAY 30
75 DAYS
Ketterley’s place was on the edge of town, in the block behind the Shackleton Building. I’d been over there for dinner a couple of times, back in the early days, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing a giant metal door.
Ketterley lived a few blocks down from Jordan, and his house pushed up against the bushland like hers did. We planned to use that bushland to our advantage: meet at 4.15 p.m. and hide out in bushes until the tech people arrived to upgrade the security on Ketterley’s house. Then we’d figure out our odds on actually getting inside.
I decided to show up at 4 p.m.
I’d be the first one there – and maybe Jordan would be the second.
I had news for her. It took an almost sleepless night (which probably would’ve been almost sleepless anyway, given the latest round of suicidal madness we had planned for today), but I’d finally removed the call restrictions on Pryor’s phone. Now we could call anyone we wanted.
If we had reception. Which we didn’t.
Progress, though, I told myself as I clambered through the bush, moving parallel to Ketterley’s street. She’ ll be happy with progress.
But when I came up on the place where we’d agreed to meet, I saw Jordan and Luke both already there waiting.
And they looked pretty bloody settled too.
They were sitting side by side on a fallen tree, chatting away. Luke was gesturing with his hands like a freaking caveman.
I crept closer, trying to hear what he was saying to her, but then he heard me coming and looked up. I glared at him, and he twisted his face into what he clearly thought was an innocent expression.
‘Oh, hey,’ said Jordan, looking up too. Her eyes were red, face streaked with tears.
I felt fingernails digging into my palms and realised I was clenching my fists. I took a step towards Luke, more than ready to streak his face with tears, then caught myself.
Not now. Look after Jordan first.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jordan. She rubbed her eyes and stood up. ‘All good.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’ Jordan peered out at Ketterley’s house. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t want to talk about it.’
You seemed happy enough to talk to him about it. What was he going to do? He didn’t even know her.
I didn’t say any of this out loud, though. I didn’t say anything.
I just went over and stood next to Jordan, close enough that my arm brushed up against hers. She stepped away, pushing a couple of branches aside for a better look at the house.
Bloody Luke. He was probably the one who’d convinced her not to talk to me. Trying to squeeze me out. Push her away from me.
And now here we all were, stupidly early, with nothing to do until the tech guys showed up.
I leant back against a tree and settled in for an action-packed half-hour of house-watching. Highlights included a bike going past and Ketterley’s next-door neighbour coming out to put something in his rubbish bin.
It felt so ridiculous to be hiding in the bushes, afraid of being spotted. But these were our lives now. It wasn’t just security on our backs anymore. It was the whole town. If any one of them spotted us doing something even vaguely suspicious, Calvin would be on us in a shot.
Finally, two guys in light-blue tech uniforms appeared from around the corner. One of them was Malcolm, Tank’s dad, every bit as big and sweaty and hairy as his son. He was lugging along a trolley thing filled with equipment. The other one – a new guy I didn’t recognise – was struggling along with a massive ladder.
The new guy propped his ladder up against the side of Ketterley’s house and came back to help Mal get the trolley in through the front gate. Then he went up to the front door and let himself inside. Mal grabbed a toolbox and a big reel of electrical cable from the trolley. He stood at the foot of the ladder and waited.
‘Why’s he just standing there?’ asked Luke.
‘Probably has to wait for the other guy to turn off the old security before they can start putting the new stuff in,’ said Jordan.
She was right. A minute later, the new guy came back outside and gave a thumbs-up to Mal, who hoisted the reel of cable over his shoulder and started climbing up onto the roof. New Guy grabbed some stuff from the trolley and headed back inside.
I saw Jordan following Mal with her eyes, tongue poking at the corner of her lip like it always does when she’s concentrating. Mal opened his toolbox, squatted down on the roof, showing just a little bit more of himself than we all needed to see, and got to work.
‘Let’s go,’ said Jordan, stepping away from her tree.
‘Wait,’ I said, ‘what about the guy inside?’
‘Just don’t let him see you,’ said Jordan.
‘Oh, right,’ I said, following her out onto the street, ‘hang on a sec while I switch on my invisibility.’
We crossed the bike track and bolted up Ketterley’s front path.
Mal on the roof. This was not a good thing.
Not that he was dangerous. He just hated me. He and I had kind of gotten off on the wrong foot after I accidentally rode his bike into the fountain the week after we all got here. I knew he’d love an excuse to report me to security and this would be the perfect –
A shout from above us.
My eyes shot to the roof, expecting to see Mal staring back down at me. But he must’ve just smashed his thumb with a hammer or something, because he was still facing the other way, grumbling to himself.
I breathed.
Graceful as a cat, Jordan leapt silently onto the veranda and paused at the front door.
Luke was like a cat too. Like a blind cat with one leg. He thumped up the steps behind me, almost tripping. Jordan whipped around and shushed us both.
Inside, the house was just like mine. Just like every other house in Phoenix. I was pretty much used to all the houses being identical but for some reason it felt creepy and weird all over again.
We crept up the hallway, keeping an ear out for the other techie.
Jordan froze just short of the lounge room doorway. She peered into the room, then jerked her head straight back out again.
In there? I mouthed, pointing through the door.
Jordan nodded. She bolted across the doorway and kept going down the hall.
I followed behind her, catching a fleeting glimpse of the techie screwing something into the ceiling as I flew past.
Jordan stopped again. She was staring at the door that would’ve led to a bedroom in her house, or to the spare room in mine.
But in Ketterley’s house, the door was cold, gleaming steel.
I heard a creaking sound behind me and jerked my head to look down the hallway. Through the open front door, I could see Mal’s ladder leaning against the front of the house.
The ladder was moving. A giant work boot dropped onto the top rung. Mal was coming back down.
Jordan saw it too. Her hand shot down to grab the doc’s key card from her pocket.
More creaks. The other foot came down. Any second now, he’d be low enough to see us.
Jordan pulled out the doc’s key card, and it dawned on me that we didn’t actually know if this would work. After seeing More let himself into Pryor’s office, we’d just assumed that all the key cards worked in all the doors.
Now wasn’t a good time to be proved wrong.
‘Oi, Lucas!’ Mal yelled, still coming down. ‘C’mere a sec!’
‘Yeah, coming,’ the other techie yelled back.
Jordan waved the card in front of the sensor on the doorframe. Nothing.
‘Do it again!’ Luke hissed.
Mal was two rungs away from us. One rung.
I could hear the other guy striding towards the hall.
Jordan tried again.
With a familiar clunk, the door swung open.
We ran inside. Luke heaved the door closed behind us, with a crash of metal that I seriously hoped sounded quieter from the outside than it did on the inside. He put his ear up against the door.
‘I think we’re okay,’ he whispered after a minute.
I scanned the rest of the room. There was an L-shaped leather lounge at one end, and a giant pile of paperwork at the other that probably had Ketterley’s desk buried somewhere underneath it. Between them was a huge empty space, like Ketterley was making room to bring in a pool table or something.
All along the back wall, where the windows would be in a normal Phoenix house, there were bookcases stacked with ring binders and document boxes.
‘This floor is the same as in the room in the medical centre,’ said Jordan.
I looked down at the rough grey tiles.
‘Same as Pryor’s office too,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Jordan. ‘No it isn’t.’
‘Yeah, it is,’ I said. ‘You probably didn’t notice them because of that massive rug.’
‘Should we maybe stop arguing about floor coverings and get on with this?’ asked Luke, who was already searching the bookcases.
‘Right, sorry,’ said Jordan. She went to help him, while I crossed to Ketterley’s desk to try and dig up his laptop.
I found it sitting under a pile of maintenance papers. Password-protected. But I was ready for that.
At least, I hoped I was.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a shiny silver memory stick with J.B. scratched into the side. I’d loaded it up this morning with a couple of not-strictly-legal programs I built to help me get around the security on Ketterley’s computer.
I plugged in the memory stick and the software got to work.
‘Find anything good?’ I asked, walking over to the others.
‘Just a bunch of forms and stuff,’ Luke whispered, closing the folder he was flicking through and sticking it back on the shelf. ‘You?’
‘We’ll see in a minute,’ I said.
I glanced at the door, then down at my watch.
4.43 p.m.
Seven minutes left to find some useful information and get out of here.
Assuming Reeve’s information had even been reliable in the first place.
I went back around to his laptop. The desktop glowed up at me, a photo of Ketterley and some woman, hidden behind a mess of icons.
I was in.
I clicked through to Ketterley’s documents folder and scanned the list for something useful. But unfortunately, there was no folder called TOP-SECRET METAL DOOR INFO.
Ketterley’s computer was about as tidy as his desk. Didn’t like my chances of finding anything in this mess. I’d just have to drag as much stuff onto the memory stick as I could and sift through it all when I got home.
I hit select all and started copying.
‘All right,’ I said, going back to join the others, ‘couple of minutes and we should be …’
I trailed off. For a second, I thought I’d heard a muffled voice coming from somewhere inside the office. ‘Did you hear that?’ I whispered.
‘Hear what?’ asked Luke.
‘Shh!’ I said, walking out into the middle of the room, straining to hear.
There it was again. A voice, or maybe two voices, and footsteps.
I bent down. It almost sounded like they were coming from –
There was a hiss of compressed air and the floor under my feet started moving. I stumbled back, almost tripping.
What?
A square section of tiles, maybe a metre across, was slowly sinking into the ground.
‘Out!’ I whispered. ‘Get out!’
But instead of running for the door, Luke panicked and dived behind the lounge.
‘Luke!’ I hissed. ‘We need to get –’
Too late. Jordan had just crouched down beside him. And whatever was happening with the floor, it was happening now.
I ducked down next to Jordan and twisted around to look under the lounge. The square of tiles had dropped about five centimetres into the floor and was sliding aside to reveal a kind of chute.
‘… should be completed by Tuesday,’ said a no-longer-muffled voice from inside the chute.
It was Ketterley. I heard the sound of footsteps on metal and a second later, he walked up into the office.
‘Good,’ said another, deeper voice.
More footsteps, and this time they were accompanied by the clank – clank – clank of a crutch beating down on the metal steps. Officer Calvin hobbled up behind Ketterley.
And, suddenly, I realised I’d probably just got us all killed.
Ketterley’s laptop.
It was still sitting open on his desk.
And my memory stick was still inside.