The Industry (3 page)

Searching for a seat, she spotted Cassie Cheng in the back row. She caught Kirra's gaze and smirked, her eyes blinking lazily and her ebony hair blowing in wisps across her forehead.

Cassandra Cheng, who was in Kirra's Year Ten English class, had grown up on Lowe Road. She had always lived at Number Fifteen and Kirra at Number Nine and they had, according to vague reports from her parents, been friends during their toddler years.

Cassie had stopped talking to Kirra soon after they both reached primary school, which, by that stage, suited Kirra perfectly anyway. Cassie's very presence — perpetually accessorised by the insensitive Matilda Young and the nasty Troy Silber — had started to become unbearable.

Kirra plugged her earphones into her ears and shifted closer to a man with a newspaper, pretending to read it over his shoulder. She skimmed some article about a fire in a storage facility and waited a moment before shooting a glance back at Cassie.

Just as she did a man with dreadlocks moved into the aisle and blocked her from view. Kirra returned to the newspaper and scanned the rest of the page, reading about record university intakes, plans for a new railway line and an inner-city bicycle accident, anything, really, to look busy. The man reading it turned to the final page and looked over it briefly before folding the whole thing in his lap. Kirra was just going to sneak another look at the back seat when a voice called her away.

‘Excuse me.'

A young woman with curly red hair leaned forward in her seat, addressing the man with the newspaper.

‘Are you finished with that? Do you think I could steal it from you?' she asked.

The man seemed surprised by her request for a moment but then she flashed him a smile and he handed her the paper as though he'd just been hypnotised.

Kirra tore her eyes away from the exchange, and gasped. She'd almost passed her stop! She scrambled to press the little button by the door, bumping clumsily into
passengers with her heavy bag on the way and wincing when she heard a soft, sneering giggle from the back.

Once she had alighted and crossed the busy Waverly Road she looked around for Cassie, who normally strode ahead or lagged behind, outright refusing to even seem to be an acquaintance of Kirra Hayward's.

It appeared, however, that Cassie wasn't going home tonight as the bus chugged off in a cloud of exhaust with her firmly still on board.

Kirra kicked a flat stone ahead of her for a few paces, before it skittered off course and into the gutter. She dawdled along the street, paying much more attention to her music than to where she was going, having taken this route home more times than she ever cared to remember. It was only when she turned the corner into the quieter Barrie Avenue that she slowed and came to a halt. Standing by the blossoming yellow rose bushes that filled the garden of the house on the corner, she felt goose bumps sprout along her forearms despite the afternoon warmth, and the all-too-familiar shudder trickled down her spine. This time the feeling was much stronger and far more threatening than before, and her brow crinkled in a frown. She
was
being watched. She was certain of it.

But there was no one around. The street was empty except for a stationary bright gold Honda, a blue Jeep with a dent in the driver's door, and a dark green van. The faint clanging of a piano resonated from one of the houses, the roar of traffic from Waverly Road continued, and a dog yapped in the next street.

It's nothing, Kirra told herself firmly, replacing her headphones and almost digging them into the canals of her
ears in the hope that music at a high enough volume might force the menacing feeling away. She turned towards the safety of her house on Lowe Road, her stride far more purposeful than before. She couldn't help feeling that the faster she got away from Barrie Avenue, the better.

But something made her stop again. She yanked the headphones from her ears and looked back, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling. The green van, so unremarkable before, had now become the centre of her attention. The windows were tinted and it was motionless, but Kirra was sure — no, she was
positive
— the engine had started in the time she'd replaced the headphones and taken those few steps. Now it sat very still, simply watching her.

Not watching
you
, she chided herself silently. Don't … don't be paranoid.

She'd taken a few more steps, still teasing herself for being foolish, when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the green van pull out onto the street. It crawled along behind her and Kirra increased her pace. It was entirely plausible that the van had nothing to do with her at all. Perhaps it was purely chance that it had pulled out behind her. But her heart sank as it accelerated with her stride. Another few steps proved the van was indeed tailing her. It wasn't merely her imagination on overdrive. Her mouth went bone-dry.

She stopped and stared at it openly for a moment. A nervous little laugh bubbled up in her throat.

Blood roared in her ears and her heart thumped in her chest as she looked between the buzzing main road she'd come from, where cars and buses still zipped
past, and her house just around the corner. Which was closer? Which could she sprint to faster? The road was a slightly shorter distance, but the path towards her house was downhill. Her mind raced to calculate her chances as the van hovered before her, like a chess piece waiting comfortably for her next move.

Kirra gulped and, making a split-second decision, hurled her weighty school bag to the ground and ran for her house.

The van roared into the chase.

As it sped closer Kirra screamed, at first without realising it, then again on purpose, willing someone —
anyone
— to help her. It felt as though she was running through a ghost town. No one emerged to stop her pursuers. No one peeked out of a front window to see what was wrong.

The van sped ahead of her and slammed to a halt. Kirra tried to stop and instead skidded into a lavender bush. She untangled herself furiously from the plant and stumbled to her feet, her heart hammering, lavender buds tangled in her hair. Whipping around, she started off in the opposite direction, back towards the main street.

It was then that the van's side door burst open and a masked man shot out to chase her on foot. She looked back. He was twenty metres behind her. Ten. Five.

Kirra only made it back to the house on the corner and its glorious rose garden before she was snatched around the waist and hoisted high into the air. The music player was knocked from her hand and smashed on the footpath; the headphones shattered beneath the thick rubber sole of the man's boot.

‘HELP!' she bellowed, clawing at the arm around her waist, wriggling desperately. ‘HELP ME!'

She kicked out, thinking the man might slacken his grip if she caused him enough pain, even just for a moment, just for a second, so she might be able to run into someone's front garden, hammer on the door and yell — beg, even — for help. She felt her heels connect briefly with his kneecaps before she was passed into another set of arms where she watched the first man fish her old black wallet out of the front pouch of her schoolbag and flick through its contents. He discarded her bus change, her birthday money and her house key, then found what he was looking for: her student identification card. He ripped it from its slot and reviewed it carefully.

‘It's her,' he said.

At this affirmation, the other man dragged Kirra, her arms flailing furiously, towards the van, muffling her screams with a huge, sweaty hand. Her panic reached its peak as she realised her struggles were useless. No matter how ferociously she twisted, lashed out and thrashed around, her abductor would not release his grip on her. In a last desperate attempt, she latched onto the side of the van's door. She was pulled away quite easily a moment later, her fingernails leaving ten little chips in the dark green paint — a surprising sign of the strength she didn't know she had.

Inside the vehicle, she looked up to find one man in the driver's seat and another in the back with something that looked suspiciously like a syringe. All of them wore ski masks. Her eyes widened at the sight of the needle. She barely noticed that her schoolbag and her destroyed
music player were tossed in beside her, the street wiped clean of her presence. Horrified, she racked her brain to come up with an explanation for all this. Why would anyone kidnap her? What possible reason could there be?

Two other men jumped into the van and slid the door shut with a heavy clunk. Barrie Avenue vanished from view as the van started to pull away.

The men gripped her limbs and held her down, one of them pinching her skin tightly between his fingers. The man with the syringe turned to her and leaned his hand on her knee, trying to steady her for the injection. Kirra cried out as she felt a sharp stab in her thigh; fluid warmth dispersing beneath her flesh. Her scream died, unheeded, as she fell limp and silent.

 

On the corner of Waverly Road and Barrie Avenue a man with a steel cane stopped by the yellow rose bushes. He was out of breath, his broad chest heaving in the summer heat. He had only just managed to catch the tail end of Kirra Hayward's kidnapping, and now, as he panted, he extracted his phone from his breast pocket, dialled a number he knew by heart and brought the device to his ear.

‘We were too late,' he rasped. ‘They've already got her. We need to call Des.'

He snapped the phone shut and limped away just in time to escape the attention of a woman from the house across the road, a couple from down the street, and a pair of teenage boys, all of whom emerged into their front yards, curious as to what all that yelling had been about.

A low roar filled Kirra's ears, accompanied by a strange, dull pressure she found vaguely familiar. She stretched out a little bit at a time, feeling sluggish and exhausted. Her eyes were far too heavy to open just yet, and a stiff ache was registering horribly from somewhere in her body, although she wasn't sure exactly where.

The incident on Barrie Avenue had been a nightmare, of course. A twisted, terrible nightmare. Kirra stretched out, feeling stupid. Why on earth would anyone ever kidnap her? Finally, she mustered the strength to open her eyes, stifle a yawn and squint around. Immediately, she felt the blood drain from her cheeks. The room was unfocused and unfamiliar.

She blinked and sat upright. Fear rose in her throat like bile. Barrie Avenue had been real? That meant she was … where? And who were those men? What did they want with her? Perhaps there would be a ransom for her. Yes. Yes, that was probably it. What else could they
want? What kind of money would they demand? Could her parents afford to pay it?
Would
they?

Did they even know she'd been kidnapped yet? Maybe they wouldn't realise for some time. No, they would have realised something was wrong at dinnertime. Kirra was always home by dinnertime; she never had anything to keep her away. Would they be looking for her right now? Had anyone told the police yet? How long would she have to wait before being rescued? Hours? Days, even?

Willing herself to move, to do something, anything, she crawled across the carpeted floor and flopped against the wall. Barely audible over the unidentified roar was the low drone of voices. Male voices. The men who had taken her! She wanted to yank the door open and demand an explanation, wanted to ask them what right they thought they had in kidnapping her, but instead she stayed where she was. She wasn't sure she was brave enough for something like that.

The room was small and stark and full of suitcases and packing boxes. Unexpectedly, she was moved off balance. At first she assumed it was her fuzzy head trying to recover from the drug the men had injected her with, but, as another hard jolt hit, she froze. She was moving. Actually moving. Her ears popped uncomfortably. She got to her feet, a task exceedingly harder than usual, and stepped over to a small oval window. She opened the shade.

A shriek of surprise and terror escaped her before she could stifle it. Below, as far as she could see, were clouds; an infinite white blanket of clouds stretching off into the horizon. Above them, the sun was bright and strong and
the sky a perfect clear blue. Her stomach plunged horribly. She was in a plane, in some sort of storage compartment. The shock of it hit her like a punch to the face.

Kirra backed away from the window and inhaled unsteadily, telling herself to be brave. Much to her disappointment, however, she found all she could do was to bury her face in her hands and bawl.

 

Keller, one of Latham's associates, was flicking through a file. ‘Since Spencer's death, as far as I can tell, we are the only Contractors to have discovered the prototype,' he said. ‘Thank god for that tip-off.'

‘And no one else knows about the Translator girl?' Latham asked, dabbing with a perfectly folded napkin at the ring of moisture his glass had left on the tray table before him.

‘No, but word will spread quickly, and when it does we can expect to be hunted. You will have to increase security as much as possible.'

‘I've taken on more staff to handle it.'

Latham sat back in his plush chair and watched the clouds flutter past the window, feeling delighted with himself. How satisfying it was to know things were going just as planned. Amid the low hum of the engine a new noise punctured the air. Crying? Wailing, almost. He rolled his eyes. The Translator girl was awake.

‘I thought she'd be out for the whole flight,' Keller commented, glancing over his shoulder.

‘So did I.' Latham sighed and rose from his chair.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Going to see if she'll make things easy for us.'

 

At first Kirra, with her head tucked firmly in her arms, didn't hear the door open. She only realised the man was there once he'd addressed her.

‘Kirra Hayward?'

She gasped. Her head jerked up. ‘Who are you?' she demanded, though it came out as a squeak. ‘What's going on?'

The man observed her closely and Kirra stared back. He was dressed neatly in black pants and a charcoal grey shirt and looked to be in his mid-forties. He was tall, slightly overweight and had dark eyes which bore into hers beneath a thick honey-coloured fringe. He also had an accent of some sort, though Kirra couldn't tell what it was yet. ‘Are you Kirra Hayward?' he asked.

Kirra wasn't about to tell the man who had kidnapped her anything. Instead, she concentrated on keeping her tears at bay.

He sighed when she didn't answer. ‘We know you are Kirra Hayward. We know you recently turned sixteen on the first of January. You live at Nine Lowe Road in the suburb of Freemont and you have attended Freemont Grammar School for the past ten years. Your father, David, works in community development, and your mother, Sandra, works in advertising. You have a younger sister, Olivia, in Year Nine at your school, a younger brother, Mitchell, in Year Seven, and a golden retriever named Oscar. You are the only student at your school taking advanced subjects and we've found that most afternoons you supervise Mitchell as he attempts
tricks on a black and blue skateboard outside your house.'

Kirra stared at him, horrified. ‘How do you know all that?' she finally breathed.

‘My name is Latham. I own an agency and I require your assistance.'

But Kirra wasn't listening. ‘But … but when are you taking me home?' she spluttered.

‘If you are good and you help us, there is the possibility of some day being reunited with your family.'

Kirra's throat seemed to close up. Her chest felt as though it was collapsing, as though she were being crushed beneath several tonnes of concrete.

‘Some day?' she choked quietly, a single, traitorous tear threatening to spill. ‘
If
I'm good?'

Latham acted as though he hadn't heard her. ‘Last week you completed a puzzle code you found via an internet search engine,' he said calmly. ‘Do you remember that, Kirra?'

She stared blankly at him. What did that code have to do with this? With anything?

‘Do you remember?' he urged.

She nodded. If she was good, they would take her home. She just had to keep telling herself that.

‘Yes, I remember.'

‘The answer you submitted was correct,' Latham told her, his tone implying she should be pleased. ‘There are very few people who have that skill.'

‘But I … I d-don't know how I did it. It just h-happened. It just —'

‘Made sense?' Latham suggested. He smiled. ‘Yes,
the Spencer code is quite fascinating. It doesn't require an algorithm, despite its complexity. You can either translate it into a workable sequence, or you can't.'

Kirra suddenly felt a glimmer of hope. They obviously had the wrong person. She knew she had few hidden talents and nearly no noteworthy skills. Being simply clever at maths didn't mean she was a genius code cracker.

‘It's not me,' she said, almost feeling sorry for all the trouble she seemed to have caused the man. ‘I can't do anything like that. You've got the wrong person.'

Latham smiled again. ‘No, Kirra,' he said. ‘Yours was the correct answer.'

‘It couldn't have been,' she said. ‘I've never done anything like that before. It must have been someone else!'

‘Someone else who logged into a computer at your school library using your student number and password?'

Kirra gaped at him. ‘You can find all that?' she whispered.

Latham seemed to be tiring of the conversation. ‘We can find anything. Indeed, any
one
.' This was said with a substantial amount of smugness.

‘Can you do it?' Kirra asked. ‘Can you break the code?'

‘If I could, I wouldn't need you,' he told her.

Kirra frowned. Some of her dread gave way to confusion. ‘What do you need the sequence for?' she asked slowly.

‘A question I've often asked myself,' said Latham, a strained smile on his lips. ‘My reasons for needing the sequence need not worry you too much. What should
worry you, however, is your safety, which all depends on whether or not you'll cooperate with me.'

‘Cooperate with you? You kidnapped me! My family will call the police! They'll come looking for me!'

‘I'm positive they will,' Latham agreed. ‘Absolutely positive. They'll never find you though. I can promise they won't.'

Kirra goggled at him for a moment.

‘What are you?' she breathed.

‘A Contractor,' was the answer.

Kirra blinked. She wasn't sure she knew what that meant. Her bewilderment must have been apparent because Latham sighed and elaborated.

‘A Contractor is someone who does things for normal people — for a price, of course.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘Whatever. People often want things done but don't want to get their hands dirty. For the right price, they can hire my agency, which has a reputation for incomparable efficiency. You, Kirra, are going to help me maintain that reputation.'

He studied her for several moments. The air between them buzzed, the plane's engine a blaring roar.

‘Do you kill people?' Kirra asked eventually.

‘I do whatever I'm hired to do.'

She felt her eyes widen. He was a murderer!

‘I'm not going to help you,' she said, feigning bravery.

‘I think you will.'

‘No. I won't. Not ever.'

‘Then you will never be reunited with your family,' Latham said, an edge to his voice. ‘Not that it matters.
My employees aren't afraid to use force in order to gain your cooperation.'

Force? Kirra tried not to think about what that meant.

‘You kill people,' she said. ‘That's all I need to know. I won't help you. You can do whatever you want to me, but I won't help.'

Latham's smile was patronising. ‘Kirra, far braver and stronger people than you have succumbed under force. Be assured, I will make you help me.'

He seemed so certain that Kirra couldn't help but feel terrified. She was neither brave nor strong, so perhaps he was right. Perhaps he would be able to force her to help him.

‘Now,' he said charmingly, ‘I have work to attend to. We'll be landing soon, so make yourself comfortable until then. Goodbye, Kirra.'

He disappeared through the door, locking it with a smart click behind him.

The nausea that had plagued Kirra since she'd woken flared, and she just made it to an open packing box in time to vomit into it.

She mopped her mouth with the back of her hand and crumpled to the floor, where she replayed the conversation in her head, again and again. Not one bit of it made sense. She'd been kidnapped because she'd submitted a correct answer to the code. But what
was
the code? And what did the answer do? It was crazy. It couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening, not to her. It was a dream. It had to be a dream. She would wake up in bed in her tidy room with its blue carpet and curtains, and she would get up and get ready for
school. It would happen any second now. She knew it would.

 

Latham stood by his seat, his fingers caressing its leather upholstery. For all the many who succumbed to physical force, there was always one person who stayed strong and died because of it. Latham was fairly certain the pitiful creature in the storage compartment wouldn't be one of those strong people, particularly not under duress … and yet he couldn't afford to take the chance. The only thing he knew for absolute certain was that Kirra Hayward could not die.

‘Everything alright?' Keller asked, glancing up from his papers.

Latham nodded, moving slowly to resume his seat. He looked from Keller and the many files in his hand, to the small band of men sitting together at the back of the plane, where his gaze hovered for a moment, and, finally, to the clouds that whispered past the window. A brilliant idea suddenly struck him, an infallible idea, and he turned to Keller with a growing smile.

‘It will be.'