Smithy drove Fortescue’s Mini like Ricciardo, swerving through the skinniest of gaps between cars. I clung to my seatbelt, tossed around as though on a fairground ride. Using a Wet One from the glove box to dab crusted blood from my upper lip one-handed, I inspected myself in the visor mirror. I had failed miserably in an attempt to neaten my braid: my hair looked not unlike Medusa’s nest of snakes.
“Dying in a car accident would make the Crone’s job easier. And I don’t think poking an eye out would improve my appearance.”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said distractedly. The Mini slowed marginally. “Do you get the impression I’ve gained a creepy stalker? I don’t trust Daniel. And I don’t get why his name’s changed either. He’s probably reporting back to his friends in the freak brigade.”
“The diary doesn’t lie.”
“I hate the way he looks at you. It’s … greedy. Like a drunk guy salivating over a kebab at 3 am.”
I choked back laughter.
“You think it’s funny?”
“No, not the situation. The situation sucks, big time. Same can be said for comparing me to a kebab.” I pressed my lips together. He stared over at me with a scowl, before we burst into laughter.
“Fine,” he said after a moment. “Seems I’m as crap at similes as I am at handling this whole horror movie. And now, we’re dragging my friends into it as well.”
Early-afternoon rays shafted intermittently through high rises. The reflection off his sunglasses was blinding, and denied me the chance to study his profile for long.
“The Claiming Ritual will happen very soon and then things will get better.” This would be the single pro in a long list of cons.
“Will they?” He snorted, sounding identical to his father. “Sure as hell not for the Traceurs.” Smithy and his gang had christened their Parkour club the ‘Traceurs.’
For the umpteenth time this interminable day, I fought tears. The concept of friends was new to me, and not as unwelcome as I’d conditioned myself to believe. Destroying these bonds in their infancy just didn’t seem fair and wanting it made me feel selfish. I thought about Daniel and how much we had in common, both solitary by circumstance, an undercurrent of loss dictating our reactions. Of course, Daniel’s grief was more profound than that of a girl who’d never put down roots.
Smithy’s warm, strong fingers wormed into mine, no noticeable difference between his one-handed driving and two. “Look, you’re right. The tension will ease up once you and I aren’t worried about the olds every nanosecond. The thing that disturbs me most is that I already know what my guys are going to say. Pack of mad bastards. I guess I’d better give them a vague heads-up.”
He spoke into the bluetooth set attached to his ear. My mind wandered. With each passing kilometre, the daunting task of persuading Smithy’s Traceurs to join us on the lunatic fringe neared. We’d concocted no specific plan for how to achieve this – without them calling the crisis intervention team to have us certified. I gnawed a nail, staring out the window. Pedestrians in business suits and shoppers blurred by against a flashing backdrop of skyscrapers. Normal people, normal jobs, normal lives. I’d always felt apart from that existence anyway. But now I was more separate than ever.
“Yep, there in ten. Wait on the highway and watch out for a new model, British racing-green Mini with white stripes.” I heard a garbled objection over the earpiece. “I know, Hud, but we’re kind of in a rush. And I don’t want to have to drive around the uni campus. You know what a snail-trail it is. Besides, you’re a BASE-jumper. It should be easy to throw yourself into a moving vehicle.” The volume of the reply rose a few decibels. “Of course I’ll slow down. A bit. Nope. Can’t explain over the phone, it’s something you need to see to believe. Thanks heaps.”
Smithy hung up and spoke a new phone number, waiting silently while it connected. He concentrated on the road, ignoring the pandemonium of screeching tires, horns and abuse triggered by his Formula One driving.
“You’d better hop over the seat. We’re nearly there.”
I shimmied between bucket seats, perching forward to point. “I can see Hud, up ahead.”
A figure balanced on the gutter with his thumb thrust out in the universal hitchhikers’ signal. Smithy veered across a line of cars and into a bus lane, earning a further round of honks. He slowed marginally and thrust open the door. We still travelled at speed. With the precision of a gymnast, Hud caught the door and swung himself around, jumping nimbly onto the ledge and into the cabin with minimal exertion.
“What’s goin’ on, Vee? It had better be no less than an incoming meteor. I’ve just ditched my funding presentation on Hudson’s Orchid to the faculty heads.” He squirmed against the leather, getting comfortable. “My supervisor looked apoplectic when I ran out. Poor guy will have to up his meds.” He glanced over his shoulder and grinned broadly at me, completely contradicting any worry in his words. “Hey, Bear. Great hair! Are you growing in dreadlocks?”
“Funny,” I mumbled. “You won’t get in too much trouble, will you?”
Hud chuckled. “Nah. The funding for my next excursion to Borneo is in the bag. I discovered a brand new species of flower with never-recorded medicinal properties. See?” He lifted the sleeve of his t-shirt to show me the tattoo of a vivid hot pink orchid on his biceps. “The Departments of Botany and Pharmacology would be mad not to throw money at me. Only one problem, I can’t get the damn plant to grow out of its native environment.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah. Nastiest sucker I’ve come across, though.”
Hud carelessly waved at festering ulcers on the inside of both arms. I couldn’t hide my shock. The sores were deep and painful-looking.
“The petals are covered in a waxy acid that eats anything it touches. The ground beneath it is a veritable graveyard. Even small mammals aren’t safe. Beautiful – maybe, powerful deadly – definitely.”
“Charming,” I said, sorry I asked. He should have called it the ‘Finesse Orchid’.
He turned back to Smithy. “So, what’s the story, anyway?”
“You’ll have to wait a little longer. We’re meeting at Andie and Bickles’ lab. Then all will be revealed. I appreciate you coming, Hud. Thanks.”
“Very Houdini. I dig the suspense. You know their lab is restricted, right? Hard-arse rent-a-cop manning the boom gate won’t even let us into the car park.”
“Oh, I don’t think access will be a problem.”
Smithy dipped his face to wink over rims at me in the rear-view mirror. His confidence had me very nervous. I’d never achieved what we were about to try, and failure had the potential for acute humiliation. And possibly arrest for breaching national security.
“Whatever. So,” Hud said slyly, “have we finished packing for overseas to visit the poor bereaved relatives? Where was it you’re going again … Budapest?”
A short while later, we juddered to a halt on the road outside a complex of squat buildings, best described as white-panelled, four storey bricks, taller on one end than the other. Whiplash seemed a distinct possibility. A chain-link fence with razor wire on top surrounded the compound and armed guards cruised the perimeter, pulled by Alsatians that appeared far too jumpy.
We hopped out of the car and gathered on a slim verge of patchy dirt and clumped grass in the vicinity of the boom gate. Every vehicle granted entry idled while the guard surveyed under its chassis with a mirror on a rod. Credentials were checked fastidiously.
“Remind me to pop an economy box of motion sickness pills the next time I take a vehicular journey of death with you, Vee.” Hud stretched and massaged the small of his back.
“At least my driver’s licence is valid. And just because I don’t drive like my grandmother on her electric shopping-scooter. If you were behind the wheel, Hud, we’d get here tomorrow.”
“Minus the bruising,” Hud protested. “My coccyx is throbbing.”
“Your coccyx is not a topic for polite conversation.”
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Peabody and Sherman are sketchy on details,” Hud said. “If we’re going to pole vault the fence or something, we might want to make it snappy. Looks like we’re drawing interest.” A couple of guards, their dogs keen for action, headed our way across manicured grass that wrapped the facility in a broad skirt of green.
“Bear?” Smithy said. “How do we do this?”
Oh, god! I held up my wrists so the Deltas were on display. “You can see these, right, Hud?”
“Um, I’m not Iffy.” The guard dogs strained on their leads and began to bark, hauling their handlers towards us.
“Don’t freak out. And don’t break contact.”
“Huh?” Hud regarded me suspiciously.
I grabbed his hand, Smithy on the other side, and touched my Deltas together. We vanished. The two dogs halted and whined, dropping onto their bellies. One of the guards looked at his mate.
“What’s wrong with them?”
His partner stood with a perplexed frown on his face, lifting his cap to scratch his scalp. “I could have sworn I saw three kids …” He pointed. “Over there by the fence.”
“I don’t see nothin’.”
“Let’s move,” I urged. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”
“Keep what up?” Hud peered at me, more baffled than ever.
We took off at a steady trot, slipping into the grounds via the open end of the boom gate and progressing up three black-slated steps and inside tinted sliding glass doors without incident.
The grey waiting area had all the warmth of a hospital foyer. They hadn’t even bothered with fake-flower arrangements. Rather, framed bits of machinery decorated the walls. Robotics Today and Inside Programming magazines were scattered over a round piece of glass that perched upon a low chunk of rock, veined with bright blue copper. An assortment of angular chairs closer to the judge’s modernist sculptures than furniture, grouped around the coffee table. The anodyne secretary, who’d been surreptitiously shaping her nails, hurriedly hid the file and gazed at the door. She adjusted her glasses carefully and frowned.
Hud winked, plastering on a smarmy grin. The girl ignored him.
“Hmm, hard to get. I like a challenge.”
He made a beeline for her, dragging from my grip and abruptly visible in the foyer. Her jaw fell and she planted her hand on an alarm, which burst out in shrill ringing.
“Security breach!”
“That’s not very nice.”
I huffed in frustration and lunged for his hand. “Don’t break contact!”
Hud vanished. The secretary blinked in shock, her eyes darting about the spot he’d just vacated. A guard lurched inside the foyer from outside.
“Was there …?” Mr Security trailed off, his squint competing with growing confusion. “Haley, turn the alarm off.”
“I swear, Ted, there was a boy. Right there!”
Next to her secretarial nook on my right, an opaque door with a glaring red warning of ‘Do not proceed beyond this point’ signposted where we needed to go. I oriented myself within the building and mapped potential escape routes. It was almost the same as pulling up three-dimensional blueprints in my head. Attuned to the empty space internal cavities, stairwells and electrical ducts created in the building’s skeleton, I learned what projected above ground was mimicked many times in the depths below us.
The secretary pointed at the bare spot. Vee and I hustled Hud towards the door, his protests rising.
“I’m a man, not a boy. A manly man. Hey, what kind of circus act is this, Vee? What are you guys doing?”
“Shut up and move, Hud. Don’t make me carry you,” Smithy threatened.
“Yeah, I saw them outside,” Ted was saying. “We’re checking the plates on their car.”
“Them?
“Three teens. Magicians, apparently,” the guard said ruefully. “Lock down the facility, Haley. Secure every section and I’ll coordinate a search. No one in or out.”
This was definitely not going the way it should. I peered overhead at all of the cameras recording our every misstep and worried about the Mini giving the warehouse away. It might have been smarter to try and explain to Hud before we entered the building, but we were committed now. And as if he’d have believed us without a demonstration. I barely believed any of it myself.
I projected into the locking system of the barricade with red lettering and telekinetically disengaged the system. If I wasn’t worried senseless over the looming impossibility of our task, I might have considered it very cool. The door slid ajar and we whispered through. Still, the action gained notice, the guard drawing his taser, plus a baton for good measure, and attempting to pursue his mysterious quarry. The door sprang back behind us, blocking his progress. I heard him swear and shout commands over his walkie-talkie.
“I think we’re kind of crap at this.”
“I disagree, Bear,” Smithy muttered. “We’re exceptionally crap.”
We hurried deeper inside, ever downwards, hauling an increasingly resistant Hud. My palms were hot and sweaty, my fingers numb from holding on tight. Nervousness and hunger warred unpleasantly in my hollow belly.
“Nearly there.” Pressing ourselves against walls when guards ran by, we passed interminable labs where I detected the odd activities of their occupants in electronically fortified areas. “Why can’t you have normal friends, Smithy?”
“I guess if they were normal, they wouldn’t pass the enlistment test.”
“Who are you calling abnormal?” Hud asked. “And I’ve had enough of the weird cloak-and-dagger. Tell me right now what’s going on. Why can’t those guards see us?”
He tried to pull his hand from my grip, but I clung like a barnacle. I wondered if the Crone’s plans unfolded with such a lack of dignity and smoothness. Maybe our ineptitude gave us the advantage of unpredictability. It was a lie I couldn’t maintain, even in my desperation.
“This is the one.” Psychically releasing the locked door, triggering yet another blast of alerts, we finally stumbled into a rarefied terrarium teeming with my least favourite creatures.
