She had to make allowances for her father. His mission required 100 per cent of his attention, day and night. She’d once overheard him talking to her mother, through the thin walls of their townhouse: ‘Emotion is distraction. And distraction is the first step towards a mistake. One that could cost you, or me, or Anya our lives.’

  Anya had accompanied him on missions before, but this—searching a building for a deadly robot hours before the release of a lethal neurotoxin—had higher stakes than usual. She would have thought some show of humanity was appropriate.

  If Anya had been in his position, she would have taken the opportunity to tell her daughter she was proud. She knew he had said it to her sister, before she died. Maybe he believed the words were cursed.

  Even in the dark, the small break room didn’t take long to search. She checked under the table, behind the waste bin, in the dead-end tunnel hidden behind the fridge. No sign of the robot. And she only had six minutes before it woke up.

  There was a bathroom right next door. She searched it. All the cubicles were empty. There was a shower, too. Also empty.

  Something clattered elsewhere in the building.

  ‘Dad?’ she called, poking her head back into the corridor. ‘Is that you?’

  The clattering stopped. No-one responded. Then there was a hissing, whirring sound. Something mechanical.

  Suddenly Anya realised something she should have figured out much earlier. Distraction is the first step towards a mistake.

  If the EMP had knocked out all the electronics, then why had there been A GLOWING RED LIGHT on the charging station?

  Hiss. Thump. Hiss. Thump.

  The obvious explanation was that the station had some kind of shielding which protected it from the EMP.

  And if that was possible, the robot would have shielding, too.

  Hiss. Thump.

  A shadow appeared at the far end of the corridor. Not a human shape. Something out of a nightmare. Like a mechanical wolf.

  Anya ducked back into the bathroom, heart pounding. The robot was already patrolling again. She could hear it getting closer and closer to the bathroom.

  She scurried into one of the cubicles and softly closed the door. She sat on the lid of the toilet and braced her feet against the inside of the door to keep them out of sight.

  Hiss. Thump. The robot was inside the room.

  RECORD MISSING

  ‘Closed!’ the librarian said, pointing at the sign with a pudgy finger. His voice was muffled by the glass.

  Bess kept knocking. ‘Please!’ She shivered as though it were cold outside, and made sure her crutches were in full view. Sometimes people let her bend the rules, feeling sorry for her.

  Not this guy. ‘We don’t open for another two hours,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t even be here.’

  He had opened a dialogue. First mistake, Bess thought.

  ‘But since you are here,’ she said, ‘you can let me in! I’ll be quiet. You won’t even know I’m there.’

  This would have worked on the librarian in Kelton, a friendly lady named Jasmine who was used to Bess hanging around at odd hours. But in Axe Falls, apparently the library staff were made of sterner stuff.

  ‘Young lady, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the library. I do. But it will still be here at 8 a.m.’

  Bess gritted her teeth. After evacuating Kelton and unpacking their things at the hotel, it had been almost impossible to convince her mother to drop her off at the library. It would all be for nothing if she couldn’t get through this door. ‘Please. I really, really, really need to look some stuff up. Urgently.’

  She thought she could see a glimmer of sympathy in his expression. Something to build on.

  ‘There are some things you just can’t find on the internet,’ she added.

  Although he tried to hide it, the librarian seemed to warm to this.

  ‘All right,’ he said gruffly, hitting the green button next to the door. ‘But no borrowing until I’ve got the computers up and running. Understood?’

  Bess nodded eagerly as the doors slid aside. ‘Thank you so much!’

  The librarian shook his head and walked back over to his work station. He moved his cup of tea and his biscuit out of sight, but not before Bess saw them.

  Bess hobbled past the children’s section, where a huge model pirate ship was perched atop the bookshelves. After the large-print section she spotted a sign that said ‘archived news’. Not her usual area—she would normally be reading classic novels or new fantasy releases. But Jarli had given her an important mission: find a list of people who were burned in recent wars. And what she had told the librarian was true. There was so much information in cyberspace that it was easy not to notice what wasn’t there.

  Her web searching had given her a starting point, though. There was a publication for veterans which included lists of people who’d received medals after injuries in battle. Hopefully the lists had been digitised, so she could search them quickly.

  At first, she thought she was in luck. The library did have digitised copies of the publication. Bess logged into one of the computers using her Kelton library account, and started bringing up pages from various editions.

  Then her luck ran out. There were lists of wounded soldiers, but it didn’t say what the injuries were, or which state the soldiers came from. And even if Bess read all the lists, hoping to recognise the name of someone in Kelton, there was no guarantee that Viper would be listed. He could have been a civilian, or perhaps a soldier from another country. It was hopeless.

  But since she was here . . .

  Bess typed the word VIPER into a search field. Just in case.

  And something came up.

  Record missing.

  Bess twisted the screen towards the librarian’s desk. ‘Excuse me.’

  The librarian looked up. ‘You said you’d be quiet.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ Bess asked.

  The librarian shuffled over, frowning. ‘Huh. That’s not right.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It looks like that issue has been erased from the digital catalogue. But that’s not supposed to be possible.’

  A tingle ran up Bess’s spine. Viper had a habit of making impossible things happen. ‘Do you still have the paper version?’ she asked.

  The librarian glanced at a door marked Archive. ‘Customers aren’t supposed to—’

  ‘I can help you find the issue so you can re-upload it,’ Bess said. ‘You’d have to do that anyway, right? It’ll be quicker with my help.’

  The librarian sighed and pulled some keys out of his pocket. ‘Follow me.’

  NOT EVEN YOURSELF

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Jarli shone his torch around the cell block. ‘Where could they have gone?’

  ‘Are there any other cells in the building?’ Plowman asked.

  ‘Yes, but Scanner said they were empty. All those prisoners were loaded onto a transport truck.’ Jarli checked his watch. Two minutes until the robot was due to wake up. He hoped Anya and Scanner had found it.

  Plowman raised a finger. ‘Possibility number one: they escaped.’ He held up two fingers. ‘Possibility two: Viper moved them somewhere else. Possibility three.’ He raised a third finger. ‘They were never here in the first place.’

  Jarli’s heart sank. ‘You’re saying Scanner can’t be trusted.’

  ‘Think about it. What do you really know about him?’

  ‘Not much. But my phone has been on the whole time. He can’t lie.’

  ‘You already know Viper and his people can beat the app,’ Plowman said.

  ‘Truth Premium, sure—but not my original version.’

  Something shifted in the darkness behind Plowman. A human figure grew out of the shadows.

  Jarli stepped backwards. ‘Watch out!’ he cried.

  Plowman whirled around. ‘Who goes there?’

  ‘Take it easy. It’s me.’ Maria Eaton, the school nurse, emerged from the shadows.

  Jarli sagged with relief. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were leaving town.’

  ‘I am,’ Eaton said. ‘But two people were being held prisoner here. I came to get them out.’

  ‘How did you know about this place?’

  ‘I’m the one who told your friends about it, remember?’

  This was true. Jarli had been able to expose Throwaway in part because Eaton had told Doug and Bess about it.

  Eaton looked over her shoulder. ‘We have to be careful. There’s an attack-robot on the loose.’

  ‘We shut it down with an EMP,’ Plowman said.

  ‘No, you didn’t. It’s still walking around. It must have been shielded somehow. But you killed all the security cameras, so it’s taking a long time to find you.’

  ‘Are they OK?’ Jarli said. ‘My dad and Doug?’

  Eaton nodded. ‘I got them out of their cells. They’re on their way out of town. But there’s something I have to tell you.’ She glanced from Jarli to Plowman, looking troubled.

  ‘Can it wait until we get out of here?’ Jarli asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Eaton turned to Plowman. ‘I’ve been thinking about your scar. Viper didn’t perform the surgery in person, right?’

  ‘No,’ Plowman said. ‘He used a remote-control robot.’

  ‘Are you certain that it was remote controlled, rather than autonomous? A robot programmed to do brain surgery by itself?’

  ‘I suppose that’s possible,’ Plowman said slowly. ‘But Viper would need to know a lot about robots to pull that off.’

  ‘I agree.’ Eaton looked him up and down. ‘Imagine you’re Viper—the head of a huge criminal network. Imagine someone made a lie-detector app which threatened to expose you. What could you do to hide from it?’

  ‘Well, I could do what Viper did—release my own version of the app,’ Plowman said. ‘And program it to recognise my voice and tell users that everything I said was true.’

  ‘That wouldn’t protect you from anyone using the original version. Or any future versions. But there would be one way to make sure no-one would ever find out the truth. Not even yourself.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Take a look at this.’ Eaton walked into one of the cells and crouched down next to the wall. Jarli and Plowman followed her in.

  ‘See that?’ She pointed into the corner.

  Plowman frowned. ‘No.’

  Eaton stepped back, moving out of the way so Plowman could get a closer look. Then she grabbed Jarli and dragged him back out of the cell. She SLAMMED the door. The lock clicked.

  Plowman spun around. ‘Hey! What are you doing?!’

  ‘The best way to protect yourself,’ Eaton said, ‘would be to erase your own memory. You wouldn’t need to lie, because you wouldn’t even know you were guilty.’

  CAGED ANIMAL

  ‘Let me out this instant!’ Plowman demanded. He grabbed the bars of the cell and shook them, but they didn’t even rattle.

  Jarli stared at Eaton, mouth agape.

  ‘Think about it, Jarli,’ she said. ‘Viper is brilliant. Rich. Good with computers and robots. Anti-government. Seems to know everything. Does that sound familiar?’

  ‘But Plowman has been helping me track down Viper,’ Jarli said.

  ‘Since the surgery erased his memories. Right?’

  ‘I . . .’ Jarli’s heartbeat was getting louder in his ears.

  ‘If Plowman knew who he was hunting,’ Eaton said, ‘he might not have been so helpful.’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ Plowman bellowed. ‘I am not Viper!’

  Jarli looked down at his phone. He’d come to depend on the app. ‘It says he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘He thinks he is telling the truth,’ Eaton said. ‘But ask yourself if an innocent man would have drones surveilling the whole town. Ask yourself why Viper didn’t just kill Plowman, or make him disappear. That’s what Viper did to the other people who got in his way.’

  ‘But what about the video, where he threatened the town?’

  ‘The burned face was a mask. And there’s no proof that the video wasn’t recorded weeks ago.’

  ‘I’m warning you,’ Plowman snarled.

  Eaton turned to face him. ‘Warning me of what? What will you do if I don’t let you out? Your memories may be gone, but your personality hasn’t changed. Are you feeling the urge to hurt me? Kill me?’

  ‘Jarli.’ Plowman’s face had darkened with rage. ‘This is madness. Let me out of here.’

  Jarli agreed. This was madness. And yet, everything Eaton had said made sense.

  Something else occurred to him. He had assumed the botulism canister would be placed somewhere high, so that it could explode and shower the surrounding buildings with the deadly toxin. But if Plowman was Viper, he would use a drone. Something which could fly over the whole town, raining death.

  ‘We can’t just leave him here,’ Jarli said weakly.

  ‘The prison is airtight,’ Eaton said. ‘If we close the door, the toxin won’t get to him.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her, Jarli,’ Plowman insisted. ‘She’s lying.’

  Not according to Jarli’s phone. ‘My app says—’

  ‘Then someone else has deceived her. Get me out of here!’

  Eaton pointed at a green button on the wall. ‘It’s your call, Jarli,’ she said. ‘You know him better than I do. If you really think he’s innocent, let him out. But I don’t know what he’ll do.’

  Jarli hesitated, looking at the button. If he let Plowman out, he could be freeing Viper. But if he didn’t, he could be leaving an INNOCENT man in prison. And no-one in this room knew the truth, not even Plowman himself.

  ‘We’ll come back for you,’ he said finally.

  ‘No!’ Plowman screamed, and kicked the bars.

  ‘You’ll be safe here while we search for the botulism. We—’

  ‘Don’t do this! Jarli!’

  Jarli swallowed, and turned away.

  POTENTIALLY USEFUL PRISONER

  ‘Look.’

  Glen was pointing at the old petrol station. The sign above it was dark, and the lights were off inside. But Doug could see that one of the windows was broken.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘They would sell phones,’ Glen said. ‘Cheap ones.’

  When the school nurse had found them and let them out of their cells, neither of them had asked if they could borrow her phone. They had been too surprised. Too grateful.

  Until she told them that the whole town was about to be drenched in deadly particles. Then they had been too scared.

  Doug wished Eaton had come with them. But she had said she wanted to search the rest of the building. He had been relieved when she didn’t ask them to stay and help.

  For Doug, the truth didn’t sink in until he saw the empty streets and the looted shops. They had been walking for kilometres, and hadn’t seen a soul. Occasionally they heard footsteps or voices, but the sounds always turned out to be their own echoes.

  Even if the botulism wasn’t released, Viper had already won. He had killed this town.

  ‘We need to keep moving,’ Doug said.

  Glen checked his plastic wristwatch. ‘We still have a couple of hours before the toxin is dispersed.’

  ‘You trust Viper not to release it early?’

  Glen hesitated. Apparently this hadn’t occurred to him. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘By accident. Or if he thinks the police are getting close. Or just because he’s evil.’

  Glen started to move towards the petrol station. ‘We’ll be quick. We need to call our families.’

  Doug grabbed his arm. ‘We don’t have time.’ He was desperate to hear his mother’s voice. But he knew she would want him to get to safety as fast as possible.

  ‘If we don’t call them, they might come back into town looking for us,’ Glen insisted. ‘Then they could get trapped here when the toxin is released.’

  Doug put his face in his hands. Glen was right. Also, Doug hadn’t told him that he had been replaced—that there was a fake Glen Durras with his family right now. Doug hadn’t wanted to upset him. But it was important that they warn Jarli if they could.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Doug said. ‘But we have to be really quick.’

  Glen hadn’t waited for Doug’s permission. He was already running towards the petrol station.

  Doug followed Glen past the air hoses and petrol pumps and across a puddle of petrol—someone had left a nozzle dangling. Doug tried the door. Locked.

  ‘Watch your head.’ Glen clambered through the broken window.

  Doug followed, hunched over to keep clear of the spikes of glass that hung from the top of the frame like stalactites.

  The inside of the petrol station looked like a garbage dump. There was more stuff on the floor than on the shelves. All the water and most of the food had been taken. Someone had cut through the wires over the counter and taken all the cash out of the till. Doug found that strangely unsettling. Money wasn’t essential for survival, like food or water, but the thieves had taken it anyway. Just because they could.

  ‘I don’t know how we’re going to find a phone in all this,’ he said.

  Glen was already on his hands and knees, pushing aside magazines and CDs. ‘We just have to try.’

  They both rummaged through the junk. Cheap toys. Boxes of tissues. Matches. Batteries. When Doug found a packet of chips—cheese and onion flavour—it was hard not to rip it open. He hadn’t eaten anything other than brown rice since he’d been imprisoned. He resolved to take it with him when he left—then he wondered if that made him as bad as the people who had emptied the till. After all, he wasn’t starving. He didn’t need the chips to live.

  There was no sign of a phone. Burner phones were useful enough that they had probably all been taken already.

  ‘I don’t think—’ Doug began.

  And then headlights swept across the window.

  Doug instinctively flattened himself against the floor.

  ‘What—’ Glen began.

  ‘Down!’

 

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