The Whisper (15 page)

“H
ere it comes,” Ellie said.

The
Queen of the North
descended slowly, its engines vibrating through the fortress, the coastline, the town, and the sea. Mal Gorman’s Chosen Ones stood at his window and watched the clouds part and a few megatons of metal and light fill the sky.

“Frag!” Mika said. “It’s huge! Are you sure we can take control of that?”

“Yeah,” Ellie replied. “Its weapons systems are rubbish compared to the fortress. It’s a research station, not a warship. But our main advantage will be surprise.”

They heard a beep from the desk as a message arrived. It was from the Commander of the
Queen of the North
, asking Mal Gorman if the distress signal was a drill.

Ellie replied:

The children watched the screen with their hearts thumping. A minute passed before the Commander replied.

“Oh,” Ellie said. “I was hoping they wouldn’t ask for one of those.”

“Search the desktop,” Audrey suggested, chewing her nails. “Perhaps Gorman keeps it in a file somewhere.”

Ellie searched quickly, but all she found was a folder of wallpaper samples. She dragged it into the bin. “OK,” she said. “We don’t have an authorization code, so we’re going to have to invent one.”

“Quickly,” Mika said. “We don’t want to give them time to start wondering what’s happening.”

Awen paced the office with the whites of his eyes showing.

Ellie summoned a side view of the fortress, so they could see the space station hanging above it. Then she opened the weapons panel.

“I’ve heard Gorman boasting about his cannons,” she said. “They’re supposed to be huge. Perhaps they’ll work as an authorization code.”

“Try it,” Mika said. “Quickly.”

They watched Ellie sweep her hands over the desk. After a
few seconds, they heard a great, grinding noise in the bones of the fortress. They leaned over the screen and watched as the cannons rose out of the top.

“Frag!” Audrey said, grinning. “Gorman wasn’t exaggerating.”

The cannons rose to form a ring, transforming the fortress into a huge weapon powerful enough to blow a hole in the moon. When they’d risen to their full height, Ellie sent another message to the Commander of the
Queen of the North
:

Authorization Code:

Look out the window.

They waited several agonizing minutes. The
Queen of the North
hung above them, a dark silent hulk, and nothing appeared to happen for ages. Sometimes they watched it through the window, sometimes they watched it through the desktop, urgently wanting to see signs of movement. But when things started to happen, they happened quickly. Openings appeared on the undercarriage of the space station and bright yellow evacuation pods began to fly out. It started with twos and threes, but soon there were so many, it was like watching popcorn explode from the ship. The pods puffed out in yellow clouds, then swarmed away from the fortress. The children watched, feeling rushes of excitement, until it slowed down and stopped.

“It’s ours,” Ellie said. “The
Queen of the North
is ours.”

“Can we control it from here?” Audrey asked enthusiastically.

“Yes,” Ellie replied.

“Can you move it a bit?” Audrey said. “So it’s not hanging over our heads.”

“I think so.”

Ellie fiddled for a few minutes until the enormous space station began to rumble toward the sea. Ellie stopped it a mile away, where they could keep an eye on it.

“You just parked a space station,” Audrey said mischievously.

“I’m tempted to drop it in the sea,” Ellie said. “I was forced to live on that thing for a year and a half.”

“Don’t do that,” Mika said immediately. “You’ll cause a giant wave.”

“I know,” Ellie replied. “I’m not actually going to do it. I was just joking.”

“Well, it wasn’t funny.”

They looked at each other.

“Why are you in such a crappy mood?” she said.

“Because we haven’t got time for jokes,” Mika replied. “Now that we’ve taken the fortress and the
Queen of the North
, we have to move quickly. We’ve got to wake up the army, take control of The Wall, tell our government what we’ve done, and then negotiate with the South. And as fast as possible so our parents don’t realize what’s going on. I feel like there’s something happening we need to know about. I want Lilian’s charger. Now.”

They watched as he searched the drawers in Gorman’s desk. Ellie scowled.

“I don’t understand,” Audrey said. “What do we need to know about?”

“Well, that’s it, I dunno,” Mika said. “I just feel it. I wish we could hear more in The Whisper. There’s something in it I want
to hear louder. Frag! I can’t find my charger! Where did Gorman put it? I need it!”

“Don’t worry,” Audrey said. “We’ll find one. Calm down, Mika. You know we won’t be able to do this if we get all stressed.”

Seven children, a monkey, and a dream dog had taken control of a fortress and a space station. This was an auspicious act, but it was also a catalyst. Taking over from the Northern Government would be like tipping out a box of marbles and trying to catch them all again before they rolled off the table. They’d started something that couldn’t be stopped, they’d never done anything like it before, and they were aware that if even one marble fell, the consequences would be devastating. Their world could end up more of a mess than it had ever been before.

For half an hour they remained in Mal Gorman’s office, trying to think of everything that could go wrong and securing the fortress through his desk. They turned off the security borgs that patrolled the passages. They deactivated the children’s implants, so they no longer had to fight the Northern Government commands. Then they spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to transport the Pod Fighters up to the hangar. There were thousands of them stored underground, but it was a complicated process. When this was done, they searched for clothing for the implanted army. They couldn’t fly out of that fortress in white gowns and bare feet. And they would need food, water, medical supplies. There was so much to think about, with marbles skidding across the table.

While all this was going on, the communication network crashed under a sudden deluge of messages. The fortress staff
were not completely stupid. As they ran through the streets of Sandwood Seven, they waited for the megabomb to fall, but instead, after several quiet minutes, they saw the
Queen of the North
arrive.

Why would Mal Gorman summon the
Queen of the North
when a megabomb was just about to hit the fortress?

This did not make sense.

Gorman’s precious space station had no weapons to defend it against the might of a megabomb and now it was perched right above the fortress, where it would get hit.

As evacuation pods began to fly out of it, the staff clicked that there was something fishy going on. They turned and began to run toward the fortress, sending messages, demanding to know what was happening.

“Look at them,” Audrey said, as they began to appear on the other side of the fence. “They’re really angry.”

“They can’t get back in,” Ellie said. “They’re the least of our worries. Try to ignore them.”

She swiped them away, turned off the communication network, and stood up. “Right,” she said. “That’s everything we can do here. Let’s find Mika a charger and collect the army.”

They quickly explored the rooms around Mal Gorman’s office. They found companion chargers in the drawer of another desk belonging to one of his commanders. Mika connected Lilian and left her in a heap with the rest, then they set off down the fortress toward the mutants’ enclosure.

The fortress felt cavernous with the adults gone, like a lost ship drifting through space. Security borgs slept in the silent passages, and computers dozed in their desks. Now and then
a cleaner borg droned past, looking a bit lost and lonely. The children hurried toward the mutants, knowing they’d feel more in control when they were all together again. They’d met many of these mutants during the game. They had competed against each other then, but now they were a team. The mutants were the elite, the best pilots and gunners. Working together, leading squadrons of Pod Fighters, they would be very useful.

The mutants paced their enclosure, watching the door. As Ellie and Mika and the others walked through it, they came together in a rush of risk-fueled adrenaline. They wore a similar white uniform, without the black stripe down the side. Standing together, they looked exactly what they were: young, talented, and dangerous.

When they’d talked for a few minutes and most of them had marveled and smooched over Puck, they prepared to move down the fortress again, to wake up the implanted army. But as Mika moved toward the door, he had a sudden, horrible thought. He’d forgotten about someone. Someone who ought to be there but wasn’t.

“Audrey, stop,” he said. “Where’s Ruben? Where’s that nasty little perp, Ruben Snaith?”

Audrey turned and scanned the crowd with her green eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

“Who’s Ruben?” Ellie asked.

“You know him,” Mika said. “He was in our class in Barford North. That rat boy who bullied mutants.”

“Yeah, I remember him,” she scowled. “That’s one person I didn’t miss when I was taken.”

“And he’s a mutant,” Mika said. “Can you believe it? He made our lives hell during the game and he didn’t get chosen
because he’s such a psycho. We have to find him. Does anyone know where he is?”

The question traveled, but nobody knew. Ruben had wanted Audrey as his gunner when the game first began, but she’d chosen Mika instead. Ruben had never forgiven him for this and made a dangerous game miserable too. Ruben wasn’t like them; he used his power to cause pain. He fed his jealousy and hatred instead of trying to control bad feelings. No one had seen him since the prize-giving dinner when he’d transformed the table into a whirlwind of knives and broken glass. He’d been shot by Gorman’s men and dragged away….

But to where?

“We have to look for him,” Mika said. “We can’t leave here until we know where he is.”

They began searching the rooms around the enclosure. After a few minutes, a boy came running to find them and they were taken to an area just along the passage on the same floor. They walked through a pair of two-feet-thick security doors into a suite of rooms.

“Oh no,” Mika said, looking around.

Despite the heavy security, it looked like a luxury hotel suite, fitted with everything a psycho boy like Ruben could wish for. A king-size bed; a sea view; a fridge full of real food; a cinema-size screen on one wall; a large, illuminated mirror to preen himself in. Most of the furnishings looked as if they’d come from Mal Gorman’s private apartment. There was even one of his oil paintings hanging over the bed. Soft towels, silk curtains, an antique vase, and hanging in the wardrobe, a row of uniforms similar to theirs … but black …

“Gorman’s been treating him like a prince,” Audrey said. “He must be crazy!”

“We already knew that,” Mika said. “Frag it! Where is that rat boy? We let him escape when we opened the doors.”

“He’ll be long gone,” Audrey said, closing the wardrobe. “He’s not going to hang around to help us stop a war. He’s not one of us.”

“We have to go,” Ellie said urgently. “We could spend hours searching for him when we’re supposed to be waking up the army and flying out of here. We need to concentrate on what we’re doing.”

She began to walk toward the door.

“But I want to know where he is,” Mika said.

“We haven’t got time,” Ellie said. “Come on, we have to go. Please. If he follows us, we’ll deal with him then. Forget him for now. Come on.”

They moved down the fortress toward the implanted army, and Ruben was shelved. There really were more important things to worry about. They all knew this. They were about to fly again, most of them for the first time in reality. Now they’d taken the fortress and the
Queen of the North
, they would have to take control of The Wall. They would stand on The Wall that divided their world and talk to the adults who’d broken it.

The mutants stood among the implanted army, watching them sleep in their beds.

It was thrilling to be among them like this. There were so very many, and the second awakening would not be like the first. There would be no pain or confusion or anger, just haste to climb into their Pod Fighters.

Ellie, Mika, and Audrey stood among the rows of beds. They waited in the silence until they sensed everyone was ready, then they took a deep breath.

K
obi sat at the desk between the beds, working on the borg kittens. They were nearly finished. He was attaching their silver whiskers and the tiny pads on each paw. Nevermore watched him intently, with beady silver eyes. He watched the kittens glint in the light of the lamp as if he understood how precious they were and as if he’d quite like to thieve them before they were finished. Kobi knew this was an illusion and that Nevermore didn’t really know what he was doing. But it made him feel a bit better. His father was still out, pretending to fix the bolt borg. Kobi was working on the kittens because the boy’s room was still out of bounds, and he was sure he’d go crazy if he didn’t force himself to think about something else.

The Whisper had been quiet for a while. It was pensive, as if it was waiting for a coin to land, heads up or down…. Kobi realized something was happening.

He couldn’t concentrate on the kittens. He got up and paced. Then he felt a bit better and sat down again and managed to focus for ten minutes. Then he started feeling something else, a feeling he recognized from his days in the arcade: the anticipation of flight; the nervous excitement and the lust for speed as he slid into the pilot seat and put his headset on.

Was the army waking up?

His put down his tools and stared at the wall behind the desk, listening carefully.

Nevermore pecked at the kittens.

Then he heard it.

His heart began to pound.

He burst out of the room and ran down the stairs, determined to be with that boy even if he had to kick the door down and wrestle the adults out of the way.

But when he reached the boy’s room, he found the door open and the bed empty. For a moment he stood and stared at it, confused. Then he noticed the thin plastic tubes that had been attached to the boy’s arm were dripping drugs and saline on the floor. And there were patches of blood on the sheets where the needles had been yanked out. The boy must have done this himself. He’d awoken already … and run….

Kobi turned, panic-stricken, wondering which way he’d gone. It could only have happened moments ago. He found his path blocked by a startled woman.

“Where is he?” she cried, pushing past him. “I only left him alone for a minute and he was fast asleep. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Kobi replied. “I’ve only just got here.”

The woman began to shout for help, and suddenly, adults were running in from every direction.

Kobi thought fast.

Which way would
he
go if he’d awoken in the wrong place?

Out, he decided. Out of that building and away, to find the army.

But beyond that building was a stinking, broken river and it was high tide. And the boy was sick. He wasn’t well enough to be out of bed; he’d never survive The Shadows. Kobi pushed through the adults and hurried toward the buffer zone, hoping they wouldn’t notice him leave. But within moments, they were following and he had a mob on his tail. He half fell down eleven flights of stairs, throwing his coat off, taking three, four steps at a time, desperate that the boy would either drown or the adults would reach him first.

In the foyer he found the tide higher than he’d ever seen it before. It was almost up to his chest and it heaved around the stricken walls. He leaped into it and gasped as the cold hit his chest. Then he half swam, half waded to the doors. Just beyond them he saw the boy about a hundred feet away, struggling west through the water. His pale arms flailed as it dragged him toward the corner of a building. Kobi swam with all his might, using every bit of strength Fit Camp had given him and reached the boy as he slammed against the wall and turned facedown.

The pull of the water was so strong, it was difficult to turn him over. Kobi pushed him against the wall, gripped him under
the arms, and yanked him up. He could hear the adults behind him, shouting. He cut them out, refusing to listen to them.

“What’s your name?” he asked the boy frantically. “I’m one of you, talk to me.”

But the boy lolled in Kobi’s arms, his red hair plastered to his head, and his skin tinged blue by the cold. He wasn’t asleep, he was unconscious.

“You mustn’t tell,” Kobi whispered urgently. “Can you hear me? Please don’t talk. Don’t tell these people anything.”

Then Kobi was surrounded by adults grabbing at the boy’s arms. He would not let go.

“Let me do it!” he shouted. “He needs to be with me!”

The adults looked at him with a mixture of surprise and pity.

“It’s all right, Kobi,” someone said. “We know this is upsetting for you, but the boy needs medical care. Let go of him.”

It became a tug of war. The adults pulling one way and Kobi pulling the other, with the boy limp between them, and the black water rushing all around.

“What are you doing?” someone said. “Let go!”

Now they were angry. Kobi wanted to yell at them. He wanted to tell them exactly what he thought of them, but he knew if he pushed this too far, he might never be allowed near the boy again. He let go of his arms and they pulled him away as if he were a sack of gold. Then Kobi followed them back into the building.

The second awakening happened quickly. The children opened their eyes and gathered momentum. They visited the uniform stores and collected clothes — underwear, trousers, shirts, and boots — searching the metal shelves for their sizes
and sitting on the floor to dress in a concentrated silence. They left their long white gowns behind, in heaps on the floor.

Then they collected water bottles and ration packs and returned to the dormitories to form the squadrons that would fly to The Wall.

“I need a gunner,” Ellie said.

“I know a good one,” Mika replied. “Find one of the nurses’ tablets and we’ll search for him.”

Ellie found one under a bed, where a nurse had flung it as he ran from the megabomb. Stored in its memory were the locations of every child in the dormitories.

“What’s his name?” Ellie asked.

“Frazer,” Mika replied. “Tom Frazer. He was Kobi’s gunner in the game. He’s not a mutant, but he’s still really good.”

Ellie entered Tom’s name, and a dormitory and bed number appeared. “He’s in dormitory nineteen,” she said.

“Let’s go and find him.”

Mika felt better now that the army was awake. They were moving quickly, proving how much they’d learned through the game, and he liked the idea of Ellie flying with Tom. Tom had been completely beguiled by Pod Fighter and refused to listen to Kobi’s and Mika’s warnings, but that wasn’t his fault, and any gunner good enough to fly with Kobi Nenko was good enough to fly with his sister. It felt right and safe that Ellie flew with Tom. No mutant would try harder for her.

But when they found him, Tom started with shock. He hadn’t seen anyone from Barford North since he lost Ana, and Mika reminded him what a fool he’d been.

“Mika,” he said. “Audrey.” Immediately, his face reddened with embarrassment. “You tried to warn me…. I’m really sorry.”

“I know,” Mika said. “Forget about that now. We’ve been looking for you. I have a special favor to ask.”

“Anything,” Tom said.

“I want you to gun for my sister. Meet Ellie … and Puck.”

Tom blushed again, moved by Ellie’s dark charisma and startled by her monkey friend. Then he felt a glow of gratitude and pride that they had searched for him, despite what had happened before. Pilot and gunner relationships were special. They chose each other carefully. “I’d love to,” he said.

“Yaaay!” Audrey cried. “I’m excited now! We’ve got Tom back!”

“I wonder where Kobi is,” Tom said.

“I dunno,” Mika replied. “But I wish he was with us.”

Each dormitory formed a squadron of a hundred pairs of pilots and gunners, with at least four mutants in each. The structures that Mal Gorman made, the children adapted and made their own. This was still Pod Fighter and this is what they were born to do. They’d known it in their hearts since the day the arcades opened. And the addiction they’d felt to this dangerous game, that had landed them in this mess, now seemed to have a reason instead of just being stupid. They would use the same skills to stop a war that their government would have used to start one.

When the squadrons were formed, they divided into two teams, one that would stay to protect the fortress, and one that would fly to The Wall. It was difficult to do this. They’d never craved to fly this much. But they had learned through the game that strategy was everything. That those who didn’t fight were as important as those who did.

They were almost ready.

As the squadrons prepared to leave, Mika left Ellie with Tom and traveled up the fortress with Audrey to collect their companions. Once they’d taken The Wall, they would have to make two calls. One to the Northern Government and another to Raphael Mose.

In the elevator, Mika leaned against the wall, worrying about this.

“That’s going to be the most dangerous time,” he said. “When we’re standing on The Wall and we’ve told both sides what we’ve done. They’re going to be very angry.”

“I know,” Audrey replied. “It’ll be a while before they calm down and listen to us. But we’ll be standing on The Wall. We’ll control all the weapons in the North. It doesn’t matter how angry the Northern Government gets; they won’t be able to do anything. They can’t threaten us with sorting beads and detention collars anymore. And the South will be scared. When they calm down, they’ll realize they have to take us seriously.”

“Yeah,” Mika said.

“And we’re being reasonable,” Audrey said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone, we just want to talk.”

She leaned against him and he put his arm around her, soothed by her simple optimism. Sometimes it seemed as if Audrey was “happiness,” that all he had to do was talk to this girl and the way he felt changed.

The elevator reached Gorman’s floor and stopped.

I love you
, he thought, as the door opened.

And I love you. And we’re going to fly!

He grinned in her hair.

That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Getting in a Pod Fighter again
.

No,
she thought.
But since I was thinking about things I love, I thought about that as well
.

He laughed and followed her out of the elevator. He was still feeling happy when they were traveling down in it again, with their charged companions in their pockets.