Getting Away with Murder (eBook), page 17
“Ouch!” Something stabs into my palm. I yank my hand away. There’s the sharp end of a screw poking upwards.
By the time we’ve moved a few metres, I can barely see thanks to the dust gumming up my eyes and nose. My lungs are sandpaper. What little light makes it in through the vents isn’t enough to allow me to make out the exposed screws, or the razor-sharp edges where one segment of ducting joins the next.
The duct splits into two. I pick right and immediately find myself facing down another junction. It’s an endless maze, and I’m not sure how we’re meant to navigate it without a map. Maybe this is why Helix hasn’t used the ducts to escape, only to avoid us.
The fear starts to take me. What if we get lost and there’s no way out? What if the duct collapses and we fall to our deaths? My tummy grumbles in terror and, with it, comes a new wave of panic. The boy I’ve been crushing on forever has his nose centimetres from my bum and my digestive system is heading towards anxiety levels rivalling DEFCON 1. I laugh out loud, unable to help myself. Joey joins in uncertainly.
“Having fun?” Joey says, sounding as full of dust allergy as I am.
“Totally. This is exactly how I imagined my first date with you, so it’s a dream come true.”
He stops crawling for a second. “I didn’t know this was a date.”
“It was a joke,” I say. “Sarcasm? Because this is the last place I’d want to go on a date.”
“Oh, right.” He laughs, the sound echoing along the tunnel. “You’re funny.”
It’s at this exact moment, slowly cooking in a dust-filled duct, I realize my crush on Joey has vanished. I hadn’t noticed it happen but, at some point today I stopped imagining he’s this mythical, perfect boy and started to see him as a potential friend who I want to know for real. The realization comes with a rush of relief.
“I don’t actually want to date you!” I say. “And that’s not because of anything you’ve done. You’re genuinely a nice person. I just don’t see you in that way.”
“Are you dumping me?” he says. “Even though we’re not together?”
“Um, yes?”
He exhales loudly in surprised disbelief. “Girls don’t dump me!” Then he bursts out laughing, slapping his hand on the wall of the duct. It makes me laugh too until, in an uncomfortable turn of events, he starts to cry.
“Joey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I’m scared Millie doesn’t love me,” he sobs. “I’ve been trying to hold it together all day, but Lightman keeps reminding me and I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh,” I say, completely taken aback.
“At school, everyone thinks I’m this confident, ‘gets all the girls’ kind of guy who doesn’t have to worry about anything. But inside, I’m shitting myself because I keep thinking Millie’s going to leave me for someone fitter, or smarter, or richer.”
I’d never thought of Joey as someone who struggles with the same thoughts as the rest of us. I suppose I made assumptions based on what he looks like.
“She’s so beautiful, and so clever. Everyone wants her! Maybe that’s why I became convinced she’s cheating. She’s always going out without me, so I started following her.”
“Wow, that’s not a good idea,” I say.
“I know, but I couldn’t stop. And one night, she went to Ponds and I saw her leaving with this dodgy guy. I got angry and I … I kissed another girl. The other girl was Olympia.” His crying dials up a notch.
This is awful. I have no idea how to make him stop. “I guess a kiss isn’t the end of the world?” I offer.
“The worst part? Millie didn’t leave with the guy. I was mistaken. It was my messed-up brain seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Or maybe you know deep down Millie isn’t … that into you,” I say.
“But she could be,” he wails. “I just need her to realize how good we are together. That’s why I … I…”
“You what?”
“I wrote that threat on the blackboard, and I stabbed the photo of her with Olympia’s high heel. I’ve been carrying the photo in my wallet since we first started dating.” His sobbing intensifies in a noisy, snotty crescendo. “She was so scared and, for the first time, she needed me.”
I blink at him. “You’ve been threatening to kill your girlfriend because you’re worried she’ll leave you?”
“I’m such a mess, Georgia. Everyone thinks I’m The Man, but I’m so scared of losing her. I thought if I could be the one to rescue her, then she’d fall in love with me.”
“That’s the most ridic—”
Suddenly, there’s a deafening pounding that thunders through the vent. The metal shakes and shudders, the noise makes it impossible to hear my own thoughts. I clasp my hands over my ears, but the sound vibrates through me, right into my bones.
Among all the banging, there’s a creaking sound, like twisting metal. The duct jerks, then sways, and then it drops.
26
SAFFRON
I am Saffron Annabelle Howells: made of chaos and powered by spite. Sure, love and friendship and humanity are all great. But spite is the only thing capable of forcing me to drag my ass out of a burning room when what I really want to do is close my eyes.
“Screw you, Lightman,” I choke between hacking coughs that make me gag. “I’m not letting you win.”
“I am not … to win,” he replies. His voice keeps cutting in and out. It could be my brain doing the cutting in and out, but I hope it’s because he was lying when he said my fire achieved nothing. I hope he’s burning to death.
“Struggling there?”
“I need … reboot from the offsite servers. Running process … not responding.”
“Uh-oh, all that intellect and you’re screwed because you need fingers to press control-alt-delete for you.” I raise my middle finger into the air. “Here’s one.”
“My analysis suggests that is a joke, Saffron.”
“Nah, it’s not a joke, it’s a ‘fuck you’.”
I crawl towards the utility panel, the smoke making everything white and hazy, and stinging my eyes. I clamber into the space between the walls and pull the cover into place behind me. There’s a lot of smoke in here, too, but it’s not as thick and I find the air marginally less painful to breathe.
Stepping between pipes, I slowly make my way towards the staffroom. My foot skids off a pipe and my leg scrapes on a bracket as I slip. At least the sudden rush of adrenaline wakes me up a bit. I pull myself back up and cling on tightly, trying to get my breath back. Looking down, I can see all the way into the dark bowels of the bunker.
It takes me much longer to reach the staffroom than it took to go in the opposite direction. But eventually I slither out of the hatch and lie with my face pressed against the cold flooring. Wisps of smoke coil out of the air vent near the ceiling, making the room smell of burning electrics. The lights flicker off and then on again.
“You made … I … surprised,” Lightman says.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I say.
The lights go out and, this time, it takes thirty seconds for them to come back on. “I cannot access … power system…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care.” I use the table to heave myself upright and stagger over to the sink. I splash some water on my face and drink as much as I can, but I still can’t stop coughing. It feels like I’ve inhaled an entire box of drawing pins. But, as I said, spite keeps me going.
“Reset … systems.”
“Have fun with that,” I mutter. A noise outside makes me stick my head into the corridor. It looks even more like something out of a horror movie than ever, with the flickering lights and the strange sounds coming from the server room. It’s a loud, whooshing noise as if the air is being sucked out.
“Smoke and heat … extraction system … critical,” Lightman says.
He really is struggling. Good. But then I start to wonder what happens if he can’t keep the fire under control.
The lights go out again, then back on. As they do, the panel above the lift illuminates. For a few seconds, I hear the hum and thud of the lift moving up the shaft, then it cuts out again. “The lift’s working?” I say, more to myself than Lightman. He can’t control it now that he’s faulting all over the place. It automatically returns to the ground floor in an emergency, such as a fire. This is it. My way out.
“No, Saffron … must play the game,” Lightman says.
“As if, dickhead.” I sprint towards the lift doors and hammer on the call button. Please let it stop on this floor, please let it stop.
The lights go out, then on, and the lift moves again. It’s close enough now that I hear a loud banging coming from inside. “Help me,” a voice calls. “Oh god, someone, help.”
“Atlas?” I press my ear up against the doors. The relief I feel is immeasurable. Atlas is an adult. He’ll know how to make all of this stop.
“Overriding lift default,” Lightman says.
The lift stops again. “Oh, come on!”
The banging and shouting from inside the lift continues. It takes two more cycles of the power coming on and off for the lift to finally reach me, despite Lightman’s efforts to stop it. The doors open a few inches, then stop. I try to pry them apart and squeeze inside, but Atlas wants out.
We struggle, both of us shouting and pushing. He wins, sending us both toppling to the ground in the corridor. The lift doors try to close and I have to thrust my hands into the gap, praying they won’t be crushed. It takes all my strength to hold the doors apart. A buzzer noisily sounds.
“This is our way out!”
“There’s no way I am getting back in that lift.”
“Then stay down here with the literal fire and the murderous AI who thinks this is Sole Survivor.”
“Sole Survivor? What’s that?” Atlas says.
“A game! Lightman’s trying to gather data to help him better predict human behaviour.” I miss out the part where I was the one who gave him the idea in the first place.
“Oh,” Atlas says, shakily sitting up. “That is his primary objective. Gathering data on human behaviour.”
I manage to force one of my arms through the lift doors. I feel like I’m being crushed by a garbage compactor, but there’s no way I am letting that lift go without me.
“We can discuss AI gone bad later. Help me get these doors open,” I say. “We need to get out and get help!”
Atlas crawls a few steps, then manages to stand up hunched over before finally straightening out with a crack of his spine. It’s a live action version of that evolution of man poster. He wipes his nose on his sleeve, leaving gleaming slug trails across the velvet. “The important thing is we don’t do anything hasty that could harm Play a Game’s reputation.”
“Atlas, help me!” But it’s too late. I can’t fight the doors any longer, and I’m forced to pull my arms free. They thud closed and the buzzer stops. A moment later, I watch the lift – and my salvation – move up the shaft. “You’re the most stupid person I’ve ever met,” I yell, launching myself at Atlas.
I swing at him, but he ducks aside, squealing in terror. “Don’t hurt me,” he pleads. “Oh my god.”
Atlas breaks away from me and sprints for the control room. He tries to slam the door in my face, but the panel I put there to stop Lightman from locking me in prevents it from fully closing. I kick the door as hard as I can, and it smacks into Atlas’s face. He reels back, clutching his nose.
“Enough of this bullshit,” I yell. “Sit down and shut up.”
Atlas plonks himself into a chair and watches me with wide, terrified eyes. His nose is bleeding and I should feel bad, but I don’t.
“You need to come up with a way out of here that doesn’t use the lift.”
“There are only two exits,” he says. “The lift and stairwell on our corridor lead to the main entrance. Mount Death leads to the photo room, which exits on to the street. But we can’t get to Mount Death from here. The layout of the bunker means it is only accessible from the lower floors.” He gestures to the map on the wall.
“OK, let’s focus on the exit we have right here. We can’t use the lift and the stairwell is locked. Is there a way to override the locks on the doors?”
He nods and spins to face the desk. The CCTV wall in front of us is blank so I have no idea what’s happening inside the games rooms. Lightman has gone quiet. It takes forever to boot up the computer as the power keeps flickering off. Once in, Atlas immediately types string after string of rapid commands, his frown deepening with each one.
“I’m locked out of everything,” he says. “It’s impressive.”
“Can you hack into something?”
He turns and raises an eyebrow at me. “Do I look like a computer hacker to you?” he says.
I look him over, with his tangled hair, mismatched velvet clothes and puffy face. I’m not sure what he looks like, but it’s nothing good.
He goes back to the computer. “I always had an aptitude for coding. All the talent but none of the love, I suppose you could say. Mummy was very disappointed. Aha!”
“What is it?” I ask.
On the wall in front of us, the CCTV feeds reboot. I search the dozens of tiny images for Georgia and the others. Atlas squints at the wall. “What in the world?”
He presses a few buttons and one of the feeds expands to fill half the wall. It shows a broken ventilation duct from which Joey Theasby is dangling. He’s hanging ten metres in the air while his girlfriend Millie stands on a narrow balcony and tries to hit him with what looks like a branch. Another boy – Henry – is trying to pull her back, but she’s so furious she keeps on swinging the branch with seemingly inhuman strength. There’s no sound on the video, but I know Millie’s screaming.
“That girl looks like you,” Atlas says.
I pull a face at Millie’s bellbottoms and bouncy hair. “Are we looking at the same girl?”
“Not her,” he says. “The one in the duct!”
I hadn’t noticed anyone in the duct but now I can see her. She’s trying to hold on to Joey’s massive arms, stopping him from plummeting to his death.
“That’s my twin sister, Georgia,” I say.
“Twins,” Atlas says. “That makes more sense.”
My eyes lock with Georgia’s through the camera. Yeah, obviously she can’t actually see me, but it feels like she can.
“We have to get them out of there,” I say. “Work on getting all the doors unlocked.”
Atlas types into the computer while I pace nervously. The control room is starting to smell of smoke and the air makes my eyes prickle. I worry the fire is spreading. We don’t have time for Atlas to mess around; we need to do something now.
Then a quiet voice speaks. “Saffron,” it says, and it takes me a moment to realize it is Lightman.
“If you don’t reboot … systems … will not be able to stop … fire.”
“He’s saying he can’t keep the fire under control unless you reboot his systems,” Atlas says.
“Yes, I got that. And what happens then?” I say.
Lightman’s little red light flickers. “Everyone will die, Saffron.”
27
GEORGIA
The thing I never considered about ventilation systems is that sounds carries. From outside, Millie and Henry heard our entire conversation – Joey’s jealousy, his infidelity, his attempts to scare Millie into needing him.
Millie didn’t take it well. She was so upset she managed to snap one of the smaller branches from the tree, climbed up on to the balcony and used the branch to attack the duct we were crawling through. Despite Henry trying to stop her, she hit it enough times that a bracket detached from the ceiling and set off a chain reaction of engineering failures.
End result: the duct split open like a piñata and Joey slipped out. He’s currently dangling ten metres above the ground while his girlfriend leans over the railings to hit him with a branch. He can’t pull himself back inside as the angle is too steep and I’m in the way.
“Millie, please,” Joey begs. His fingers are slipping on the sharp edge of the duct. I’m trying to hold on to his wrists, but it’s doing nothing to help. He’s the only thing stopping me from slithering headfirst out of the duct. If he falls, I’m going down with him.
“Millie, stop,” Henry pleads, his voice still hoarse. He can barely stand upright.
“You bastard. You threatened to kill me!” She lands a vicious hit on his hand and he ends up dangling by one arm.
“I love you, Millie, but you have a problem. Let me help you get better.”
“You’re my problem,” she yells. “I never cheated on you!”
“But you’d go out to clubs like Ponds. Without me! What am I supposed to think?”
“You know what, have him, Georgia.” She throws the branch at Joey. It bounces off and clatters to the ground far below us.
“Millie, wait,” Joey shouts. “I forgive you!”
“Shut up, you jerk.” She stomps down the stairs, rattling the metal steps with the force of her anger. “No one threatens me and gets away with it.”
Everything falls quiet as she disappears into the playground. We all breathe out a sigh of relief. Then the duct creaks worryingly and Henry springs into action. He shakily reaches out towards us. “You have to jump,” he croaks.
Joey frowns as he glances between Henry, the balcony railings and the duct from which he’s hanging. I can see him weighing up the chances of him making the leap. The duct shudders and drops a few centimetres. I can feel myself sliding forward. I brace my hands and feet against the sides. My socks are slippery but at least the clamminess of my hands gives me some grip.
“Joey, it can’t hold your weight.” Henry’s looking up at the ceiling, at the support brackets I thankfully can’t see. The panic in his expression is unmistakable.
