BANG!

Ivy slammed the broken propeller blade down onto the table. ‘There’s your proof!’

All eyes were on her. She and Bernie were in the research centre’s meeting room. They sat around a large oval table, fancy sandwiches cut into crustless triangles arranged on platters along the length. Also seated at the table were Mr Meier, Doctor Saunders, Professor Bolete, Ms Evans and Bernie’s mum. Bernie was halfway through a tuna sandwich, grateful that the meeting had been catered.

Evans reached for the blade, turned it over in her hands and blew air through her teeth. ‘Well, it’s definitely not one of ours.’ She pulled a scalpel from a vest pocket and started scraping at it.

Ivy looked pointedly at her father.

‘Okay, okay.’ He raised his hands defensively. ‘I believe you.’

‘And?’ Ivy continued to glare at her father.

‘And . . .’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘I . . . apologise for doubting you earlier, Ivy Heidi Meier.’ He rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘I should have known you would not have made up something like that. I was just frustrated by our other security breach.’ He glared at Bernie.

Like daughter, like father, Bernie thought. Their accusatory glares were identical.

‘This is a somewhat more worrying breach,’ said Evans, looking up from the propeller blade she had continued to examine. ‘Judging by the shape, material and construction, I would hazard a guess that this was from a military-grade drone.’

‘It did try to zap us,’ piped up Bernie.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Ivy, ‘with electricity.’

‘It had TED capability?’ Evans looked even more interested now.

‘What’s that?’ asked Bernie.

‘TED,’ explained Evans, ‘stands for Targeted Electrical Discharge. It’s a weapon. Often used to disable vehicles and equipment from a distance.’

‘Yep,’ confirmed Ivy. ‘It fried the buggy we were using.’

‘What?’ Meier’s eyes flared. ‘It destroyed some of our equipment?’

‘It was trying to destroy me,’ said Ivy. Then, glancing at Bernie, she added: ‘Us!’

‘And Lea-Lea,’ added Bernie. He frowned as he ran through the events in his mind. The way the drone fired at them and the dinosaur. He’d been thinking about it for a while now. ‘Actually . . .’

‘What?’ Ivy looked at him.

‘I’m not sure it was trying to destroy us,’ said Bernie.

‘Um . . . yes, it was!’

‘Hang on a tick,’ he started to explain. ‘If it’s a military drone, it would have a targeting system, wouldn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh,’ confirmed Evans. ‘Hence the term targeted electrical discharge.’

‘So, it’s not likely to miss a target at a distance of only a couple of metres, is it?’

‘Agreed,’ said Evans.

‘But it did miss,’ continued Bernie. ‘It missed every time.’ He took a deep breath, continuing to think through the sequence of events. ‘First it came after me and Ivy. We had the propeller. Then when Lea-Lea took out the other drone, the first one went for her. It was really close, but it zapped the ground, which knocked Lea-Lea over but didn’t kill her. Then it came after us.’

‘Drones. Targeted Electrical Discharges.’ Bernie’s mum spoke with a quavering voice. ‘This is all too much. What if it hadn’t missed?’ She raised a shaking hand to her mouth as if to stop herself from answering her own question.

‘But it did miss.’ Bernie gave his mum a reassuring smile and continued. ‘As we drove off, it fired at the ground and surrounding trees . . . but not at us. And when it had a clear shot at the blade, the discharge of electricity was a lot less. It hurt enough to make me drop it, but it didn’t, like, fry me.’ He gave a half grimace. ‘After that, it stopped firing. It just chased us.’ He paused again, brow crinkling in concentration. ‘When it caught up, it only destroyed the buggy. It waited for us to get clear. And it only went for Lea-Lea after she threw the mushroom at it.’ Bernie ran through the events yet again. It all meant something. He just had to figure out what.

‘Mushroom?’ asked Bolete suddenly. ‘What mushroom?’

‘When we were trying to get away from the drone,’ explained Ivy, ‘Lea-Lea led us to the fungal core.’

‘That area is off limits!’ Bolete jumped to his feet, eyes wild and blinking. ‘I expressly forbade anyone from going there until it had been properly investigated.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not as if we planned a daytrip,’ snapped Ivy.

‘Yes. Right. Sorry.’ Bolete took a deep breath, smoothed a hand over his jacket and sat back down. ‘Tell me everything that happened there. Do not leave out any details.’

He bit at his lip as Ivy recounted exactly what they had seen, including the strange projectile. Every now and then he’d mumble ‘fascinating’, ‘intriguing’ or ‘amazing’, his eyes growing wider and his nostrils beginning to flare.

As Ivy spoke, Bernie continued to go over what had happened. The drone had fried the buggy but left them unharmed. Why? Its actions must have had a purpose. And then suddenly, things clicked and Bernie realised what had been happening. It was his turn to jump to his feet.

‘It was like it wanted to slow us down!’ he announced.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Meier.

‘The drone,’ explained Bernie. ‘It tried to stop us from bringing the propeller blade back as proof. Then it chased us and destroyed the buggy to slow us down. It wasn’t trying to kill us. It was trying to delay us. So we couldn’t report what had happened.’

‘But why?’ asked Bernie’s mum.

‘Because something is happening out in the jungle,’ said Bernie. ‘Whoever is controlling the drones is doing something out there. And they want to keep us from investigating.’

‘That is quite a leap in logic, young monsieur,’ said Bolete, dismissively. ‘We do not know that there is anything happening in the jungle.’

‘It makes sense,’ persisted Bernie. ‘Whoever is controlling the drone . . . they knew that once we were able to convince you that there were intruders on the island, you would do something about it. Search for them? Capture them? Stop whatever it is they were trying to do?’

‘That sounds like a paranoid delusion,’ said Bolete, with a harrumph.

Bernie’s mum shot the mycologist a dangerous look. ‘What? You’re a psychologist now? My son is not paranoid or delusional. Stick to your damn mushrooms.’

Bernie smiled at his mum. He could always count on her.

‘There’s part of a serial number on here.’

Everyone turned to look at Evans. She was looking at the blade through a jeweller’s magnifying eye piece. ‘That should be enough to identify the model and then I’ll see if I can track the likely owner. There aren’t many suppliers out there.’

‘Right,’ said Meier. ‘Get someone else onto that immediately. I want you to mobilise all our drones. I want them scouring the jungle for these intruders.’ He looked to Bernie’s mum. ‘Doctor Bailey, perhaps you and Doctor Tanaka could check on Lea-Lea. I want to make sure that she is unharmed. She is, after all, our most valuable specimen.’ He turned to Doctor Saunders next. ‘We have no security force on the island, but I believe that some of our staff have had military training. I need you to go through the files and identify them. As well as anyone with any sort of self-defence training. If there is something going on, and there is the chance of a confrontation, we need people who know how to handle themselves.’ He turned to Bolete and the professor cringed slightly. ‘And you . . . well . . . you can go back to your mushrooms.’

‘What about us?’ piped up Ivy.

‘You have done enough. I want you out of danger.’

‘But –’ began Bernie and Ivy in unison.

‘No!’ Meier reiterated. ‘You will stay inside the research centre. And that is that!’ He held up a finger to stop further protest.

Bernie’s heart sank. And he could see by the expression on her face that Ivy felt the same. After everything they had done to get the evidence, to show Meier that there really was something going on, they were being sidelined. It wasn’t fair!

‘I thank you for bringing this to our attention,’ concluded Meier. ‘But I want you to keep out of the way. Let the grown-ups handle this.’