City of the Falling Sky (10 page)

The waterfall! Of course. Another player had
left a tip. Seckry stuffed the sheet back into his pouch, rushed to
the pool once more, this time jumping in with a big splash, and
made his way right into the heart of the gushing water.

He emerged in a dark cave and there on the
floor was the golden harp, glowing vibrant yellow and shimmering
with reflections.

He slapped his hand down on it and shouted,
“Got it!”

The Friction logo blasted into his vision and
a victory fanfare started playing.

“
Congratulations, Seckry,”
came the woman’s voice again. “You have successfully found all of
the items and are well on your way to becoming a fantastic Friction
player. You will now be taken to an options area where you will be
able to try other modes of play and explore other
lands.”

Seckry thought he’d better start heading home
but when the options area appeared, which was a room full of
archways, there were two new lands, and he just couldn’t resist
testing them out.

One was called Mushroom Dwelling and had
numerous different types of mushrooms to forage. Seckry had trouble
finding one called the Boisterous Bubblecap, which was growing on
the chimney of a cabin, but he was very pleased with himself when
he managed to find the Shroom of Solomos which was a single, tiny
white thing floating in the dew of a huge leaf.

The other level was called Rocky Outcrop but
Seckry’s experience there was cut short when he was trampled on by
a Golboro, which seemed to be some kind of giant hippo. Luckily the
simulation of being crushed consisted of just a little, mild pain
along with his vision turning to red and the words ‘game over’
appearing in front of him.

When he eventually hit the exit button on his
waist, the simulation came to a halt, the pod’s glass interior came
back into view, and the door popped open. He felt his feet land
firmly on the pod’s floor and it seemed like he couldn’t possibly
have done all that running around while suspended in mid air.

“
Thought you’d never come
out!” said Henrei, who was reading a newspaper at his
desk.

“
That was fun,” Seckry said.
“It’s so . . . real in there. It’s like I was actually in that
Atoria place.”

“
State of the art, I know.
Hasn’t always been like that, mind you. Back when it first started
there was none of this atmospheric simulation stuff.”

Seckry handed Henrei back the help sheet.

“
Oh dear,” Henrei said. “I
haven’t done it again? Tenk will have a fit. He wanted me to throw
this sheet away. Wrote the notes on there himself when he first
started but I’ve been handing it out to new players. He gets mad
cause he says his secrets are being given away. Just don’t tell him
you saw it.”

At that moment Seckry’s phone vibrated in his
pocket. It was a message from Tenk.

Mate wot appened? U ok? They said u was in a
fight!

Seckry looked at his watch. School had just
finished. He sent a reply.

In the arcade. Meet me in here.

While Seckry waited for Tenk, he had a go on
one of the teddy cranes, and he just missed a bright blue bear with
a little t-shirt on.

“
Oh, man!” Tenk said as he
entered the arcade and saw Seckry’s bruises.

“
I know,” said Seckry, half
smiling.

“
Was it Snibble?”

“
Yup.”

Seckry told Tenk what had happened with
Natania and how she’d led him to Snibble down the alleyway. Tenk
shook his head furiously.

“
That guy’s gonna get it one
day, I tell you. He thinks he can get away with it because
everyone’s scared of his dad but, man . . . and that bloody girl as
well . . .”

“
I just want to forget it
now,” Seckry told him. He’d had enough of feeling sorry for
himself.

Tenk nodded.

“
I had my first go at
Friction,” Seckry said, smiling.

“
You started without
me!”

“
Well you guys were going on
about it so much I couldn’t wait that long.”

“
Yeah, that’s
understandable.” Tenk slapped one of the pods. “Can’t postpone
Friction. When you gotta play you gotta play. Ain’t it,
Henrei?”

“
Tell your mother that,”
Henrei said, shaking his newspaper.

Seckry and Tenk left the arcade together and
stopped at the rusty fountain.

“
So you’re telling me you
found all the items on the training level, just like that?” Tenk
said. “Even the golden harp?”

“
Even the harp. It was
behind the waterfall. Quite an obvious hiding place for it, I
thought.” Seckry stifled a laugh at the sight of Tenk’s face. He
couldn’t help playing around with him.

“
You’re gonna be one hell of
a Friction player . . .” Tenk said, in awe. “It took me about five
tries before I found that harp.”

When Seckry got back to his flat, he had
about half an hour before his mum came in from work.

When she did, she looked pained again at the
sight of him, as though she’d forgotten how bad he’d looked this
morning. After insisting on making him a nice cup of tea, she sat
at the table with him.

“
Right, now we can talk
about this properly,” she said.

Seckry took a deep breath and explained
everything that had happened. “It doesn’t matter though, mum,” he
said.

His mum’s face seemed as though it was going
to burst. She was moving her lips silently and shaking her head as
though muttering the incantation of some dark spell.

“
The guy is just a complete
psychopath,” Seckry said. “I think I’ve just got to forget about
it.”

“
Well, I’m not going to
forget about it. What is his name again?” she insisted.

“
Snibble. Snibble
Knotting.”

“
Knotting. Of course,” his
mum said, shaking her head.

“
You know them?”

“
I’ve heard about the
father. Terrorising other parents and that. An absolute pig of a
man.”

“
Yeah, sounds likely,”
Seckry said.

“
I’ve got a good mind to
find out where they live and storm around there right
now.”

“
Please, mum, don’t,” Seckry
said, trying to calm her down a bit. “It’ll just make things worse.
And it’d be dangerous. The mum is in prison for something or other.
It’s best to just forget about it.”

After his mum had drunk her own cup of tea,
she did relax a little, and she decided to bake an ellonberry pie
for Mr Vance as a gift for helping Seckry.

When Leena joined them, the topic of
conversation changed.

“
I’m
sick
of seeing
the word Endrin plastered everywhere,” she complained. “It’s even
on my own arm!” She eyed her white chip with disgust. “And what’s
this saying that they’ve got underneath their logo sometimes?
Something about being ethical?”

“
Proud to be ethical,”
Coralle recalled. “A million miles away from the lab baby
affair.”

“
Yeah, that’s it. What’s
that all about?”

“
The lab baby affair? Oh, I
suppose you won’t have heard of it. People don’t talk about it much
now. I remember my parents going on about it when I was young. It
happened about two years before I was born. It was this terrible
experiment gone wrong. These two scientists tried to make
artificial babies in their lab but they didn’t survive long. They
were horribly mutated and died soon after their
creation.”

“
And those two scientists
used to work for Endrin?”

“
I think those two
scientists
were
Endrin. They founded it. I guess the modern
day Endrin just want to prove to people that they’ve come a long
way since then. Your dad used to hate it whenever anyone mentioned
the lab baby thing. It used to send shivers down his spine, I could
see it, and he’d always change the subject. I think some people
just find the thought of it disturbing. Most people think it’s
unnatural. It’s just messing with nature in a way that people
shouldn’t. Luckily there’s been nothing like it since.”

After they had all had some food, Seckry
decided to go upstairs and set his computer up. It was an old,
tower based one that was ancient by current standards, but his mum
had bought it from a charity shop back in Marne, and Seckry had
decided to wait until he could afford to buy something contemporary
with his own money before asking for an upgrade.

It was covered in dust so he gave it a little
vacuum, hoping that the pinging sound in the tube wasn’t something
important getting sucked up.

It took him a while to get everything back
together, but when he did, the first thing he checked was his
emails, realising that it had been over a week since he’d been able
to access the internet, having an old, second hand phone too which
could just about send and receive texts.

‘
27 unread messages,’ said
his email client.

Half were advertisements from companies he’d
never even heard of, a few were from banks that he had nothing to
do with, claiming his account had been violated and they needed his
account information, and just one of them caught his attention.

It was from The Broken Motion mailing
list.

Dear Seckraman

The Broken Motion are back on tour!

The band will be touring all over the country
with their latest album, In Search of the Promised Land, beginning
in their home city of Skyfall and ending in Gollow upon Dyne.

Venues and dates are as follows.

Thanks to everyone for supporting us! We hope
to see you there – E. J.

Seckry scrolled down the email until he
reached the Skyfall details, scribbled down the date on a scrap of
paper, tore it off and stuck it to his wardrobe. He’d never seen
them live, and he made a promise to himself there and then that
he’d do it this year.

The next thing he needed to do was find a way
of getting fifty notes so that he could replace the Friction gift
card that Snibble had melted. And the only way he was going to be
able to do that was to find some kind of job.

He typed in ‘superfind.sf,’ tapped the
control and enter keys on his keyboard, and the city’s official
search engine appeared, a clean page with the Skyfall flag as its
logo.

Seckry typed ‘Jobs in Skyfall,’ hit the enter
key and waited for the results to load.

He clicked on the first of them; probably the
most relevant. When it loaded, he clicked on a current vacancies
tab and a huge list of jobs stared at him: Accounts Director –
Teletron Networking, General Manager – Neo Emporium, Sales Analyst
– Cogwork Corporation.

They were all full time, never mind being way
beyond his capabilities. He needed something one off. A little job
to get him some pocket money. He scrolled down the list.
Nothing.

He tried some of the other sites listed on
the search engine but realised after checking the seventh one that
they were all the same, and most were listing the exact same jobs
as the others.

For a moment, he thought he had struck gold
when he saw an advertisement for a one off job that paid in cash,
but slumped in his seat when he read the details:

Applicant has to be big, burly and strong, as
this is manual labour.

He looked at his scrawny arms and typed in
the words ‘short, skinny teenager looking for one off job,’ and one
result was returned:

One off job – Looking for small, nimble
person to retrieve something of value. Please email for further
details. Will pay in cash.

Seckry peered closer at the screen. This was
just the thing he was looking for. He quickly loaded up his email
client.

Hi, my name’s Seckraman Sevenstars and I’m
interested in the job you’re advertising on the Skyfall Jobs 4 U
website. Please let me know the details. Thanks.

He hit ‘send’ and reread the job description
again. ‘Looking for small, nimble person to retrieve something of
value.’

It was vague. He wondered what kind of thing
he’d have to retrieve.

That evening, Seckry left his computer
running, and even though he spent most of his time in the living
area with his mum and Leena, he kept running back and forth to his
bedroom, refreshing his emails to see if he’d had a reply.

When ten o’clock came around, Seckry still
hadn’t had an email back so he decided to do a bit of reading to
occupy his mind.

Then, out of nowhere, came a bleep. He’d
fallen asleep with his computer running. His mouth was hot and dry,
and his heart was beating fast.

It was a new email.

Seckry took a sip of water and moved his
mouse to get rid of the screensaver. His email client was still on
the screen.

Hello Seckraman, thank you for getting in
touch. Now this task is a very dangerous one, something that can
get you into a lot of trouble, so I will understand fully if you
want to decline.

As you will no doubt know, the Endrin
headquarters are at the heart of the city, and they are barricaded
by a huge circular wall. Behind that wall, Seckraman, lies
something that is very valuable to me – rintide worm. I will not
trouble you with the details here and now about why I would like
them.