ed?!” said Lucy. “Ned, are you in there?”
Lucy was smiling, but she looked nervous, Ned realised, as he focused on the room again.
“Yeah, sorry. I had a bit of a, um, moment outside. How’s my frenemy today? Tricked anyone? Scared them out of their minds?”
“Not yet, but it’s still early!” replied Lucy brightly.
“Ahem? When you two have quite finished.”
Ned looked down to see that it wasn’t the Tinker, but Whiskers talking, in a decidedly tinny and high-pitched voice. Try as he might, Ned still couldn’t get used to him speaking.
“Congratulations on your returning powers, Master Ned,” said a grinning Tinker.
“Thank you, Tinks,” said Ned. “It’s a start at least. Where’s Bene?”
“He’s with your parents and the others. They’re reaching out to the Hidden, asking them to fight.”
“So we’re going then? It’s really happening?” said Ned.
“In the morning, from what I understand.”
Ned took a minute to let it sink in. He looked at Lucy, who shrugged. He supposed they’d known this moment always had to come. At least now he had something to take into battle.
“And on that note, I need to ask you a favour, Ned.”
“A favour? Of course, anything, Tinks.”
“I, that is, we –” the Faisal part of Ned’s mouse bobbed its head in solidarity – “still believe that taking out the Central Intelligence is the only thing that will turn the tide. There are vast amounts of Guardian-class tickers in the taiga now. If we can turn them against Barba, there’s a chance of getting you to the Darkening King, or at least to Sar-adin. Our issue is the code. We’ve run every test imaginable, but the definition of artificial intelligence is that it’s intelligent – it can think for itself, and change accordingly, should it come under attack.”
“So what can we do, Tinks?” asked Lucy.
“We hit it back with artificial intelligence,” said the Tinker, who was now beaming, as though he’d just told them the secret to eternal life.
As far as Ned could tell, there was one glaring issue with this idea. “Erm, but I thought the Central Intelligence was unique – or am I missing something?”
The scientist part of Whiskers sat upright, his two eyes blinking like flashlights.
“Actually, Master Armstrong, you’re missing me. I, like the Central Intelligence, am both sentient and made up entirely from code. We were made in different ways, thank the Cogs, but if I can get close enough, if I can connect to his circuitry and I’m quick enough, I can take it over – at least in principle.”
Lucy shot a look to Ned. She knew how much the mouse meant to him and what the Tinker’s favour would entail.
“You want to put the future of our entire alliance in the hands of my pet mouse?”
“That’s about it, Master Ned, yes,” blushed the Tinker.
Ned’s blood was starting to boil. He wasn’t sure whether he was more angry about it having to be Whiskers, or that he and Lucy would die if the little wind-up rodent failed.
“I take it you’ll be sending top agents with him?”
“The best,” replied the Tinker, whose face was now going from a deep fuchsia to an unsightly purple.
Ned calmed, but only slightly. “So, let me get this right. While I was away on a desperate mission to save my parents – with Lucy’s help, of course.”
Lucy smiled appreciatively.
“You hijacked my childhood pet and stuffed your great-uncle into his mind – or circuits, whatever. And now …” Ned had to pause. “Now you want to break into the Central Intelligence’s stronghold in Gearnish and use my mouse, again, to take him – it – over? In, err, principle?”
The Tinker beamed up at him proudly, and so did Ned’s mouse.
“Yes, sir, I think you have it exactly.”
Ned leant in to the table. “Whiskers? You in there?”
The furred ticker did a sort of twitch, then blinked its eyes repeatedly, before sticking its tongue out and wagging its minuscule tail. Faisal had relinquished control and handed it back to Ned’s pet.
“We’re in a bit of a bind, aren’t we, pal?”
Whiskers nodded.
“You don’t have to do this, you know. You’ve got a soul in there somewhere, so if you do, do this, you have to do it because you want to.”
The Debussy Mark Twelve cocked its head to one side and started to flash his eyes with Morse code. A long dash and two dots: a “D”… Little by little, the small rodent blinked out his message.
“D O N ’ T - B E - D A F T - I ’ M - O N L Y - D O I N G - I T - F O R - Y O U - A N D - L U C Y.”
Ned’s chest suddenly felt tight – his pet mouse and eternal sidekick was going to risk everything to help him and Lucy on their mission.
But Whiskers hadn’t finished.
“D O N ’ T - M E S S - T H I S - U P.”