Getting Away with Murder (eBook), page 24
39
SAFFRON
I’ve been crawling forever. The ducts are filthy, hot and dark. They slope up and down in ways that keep resulting in me face-planting into the metal. In some places, they become so narrow I have to wiggle along on my belly. In others, there are sharp edges to the seams that rip my jeans and nick my skin as I pass. I keep having to pause to cough and it sounds like I’m bringing up a lung.
My phone torch reflects off all the smoke still lingering in the ducts and turns my world into a one-metre bubble. Everything else is pitch black. I check the schematics on my phone. It looked like an easy enough route right up until I climbed through that service hatch. In theory, this duct should lead me all the way to the Floor is Lava room.
My coded message to Georgia should have brought her out there. Then she only had to look behind the sofa to find the maintenance panel that leads directly to an access ladder up to the ground floor. Only something went wrong and they ended up falling into the Let’s Play Astronauts room. So now it’s up to me to get her out.
Finally, I spot the glow of orange lava filtering into the duct. I look down on a cartoonish version of a living room, with oversized furniture in an array of clashing colours. The lava is steaming and the temperature in the room must be over forty, like working in a bakery during a summer heatwave.
I kick out the vent. There’s a giant plastic pot plant right beneath me, so at least I don’t have to try to jump on to the sofa from this height. I squeeze out of the vent backwards and shakily reach my foot on to one of the plant’s oversized leaves. It wobbles beneath me, but it’s been designed so you can use the leaves to climb across the room, avoiding the lava.
When Atlas gave me a tour of the complex on my first day, he told me the lava was meant to be a nice, comfortable body temperature. A tepid bath, not burn the flesh from your bones. I hear Georgia’s voice in my head. “The steam will be good for your mucous membranes.” I laugh to myself, but it immediately becomes a coughing fit.
“Saffron?” a voice groans.
Aidan! He’s lying on a crash mat at the end of the room and he’s doesn’t look good. I clamber on to a beanbag. The lava gurgles and a little wave sloshes over my shoes. Not only is it super hot but it’s also ridiculously slippery.
“Aidan? What the heck happened to you?” I ask.
He lifts his head enough to glance down at his blood-soaked T-shirt. “Yeah, that.” His voice is weak.
“I’m coming over to you,” I say.
I jump on to the sofa. The access panel Georgia was meant to find is right there. Untouched. Damn it. I thought she’d work out my clues. It takes me a few minutes to make it across to the crash mat. “Wow, you look like shit,” I say, kneeling beside him.
Aidan blinks up at me. “I got stabbed, but I deserved it.”
“I can believe that,” I say, trying to act calm when inside I am tying myself in knots. “Who did you piss off?”
“Joey Theasby.” His eyes briefly lose focus. “Everyone thinks I’m a murderer,” he slurs.
“You’re not, are you?”
He manages to shoot me a filthy look. “No. But I’ve known who is for some time and instead of warning everyone, I decided to blackmail the killer.”
“What the hell, Aidan?”
“I need the money,” he murmurs. “I planned to use it to run away from home with my sister. If I’d told everyone what I knew, I could have at least saved Millie and Helix. But I saw a way to make more money.” His eyes roll over as he briefly loses consciousness.
I shake his shoulder. “Aidan, where’s Georgia? Is she OK?”
“She was last time I saw her,” he says, weakly gesturing at a closed door. “But she’s been cosying up with a murderer, so who knows how long that will last.”
“Shit. That girl! She has the worst judgement.”
Aidan stares up at the ceiling, his voice slow like treacle. “We were getting on OK for a while. I thought we might get to be … friendly.”
“I rest my case.” I try the door, but it’s locked. Bringing up the building schematics on my phone, I try to find another route.
“It was all a lie, though. She doesn’t give a shit about me.”
“Stop being such a drama queen. Georgia doesn’t make friends easily, but when she does, it means something. Aha!” There’s a panel behind the coffee table. Behind it are the lava pipes leading up to the volcano room.
“I was so angry. I just wanted to scare them a bit. With the knife. Shit, I’m such an idiot.” Aidan turns his head to me, alert again. “You need to go after her, Saffron.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” I jump across on to a coffee table, balancing carefully while I remove the panel. There’s a small gap leading into a filthy void, so I shove myself through, trying to ignore how hot the pipes are.
I stand on a girder and peer up at the vertical pipes rising towards the volcano room. There’s a pump working overtime to force the hot lava upwards, and its scream threatens an explosion. Something in here hisses and pops. Lava bubbles from a failing connector.
Climbing up to the volcano room is not as easy as I thought it would be. There are places where my shoulders barely fit and I have to slam myself against the pipes several times until something bends enough for me to get through. As I get higher, I can hear Georgia’s voice and it spurs me on. She’s shouting, and even though I can’t make out the words, I can tell she’s in trouble.
Finally, the space widens. I find myself beneath a cone-shaped structure which must be the volcano itself. I remember from my tour that the volcanic crater is a huge tunnel slide. Once you solve the final puzzle, the crater opens. You’re meant to yeet yourself inside and slide out into the photo room, where you find a glorious flight of stairs that leads out of the bunker.
“Get off me,” Georgia’s voice screams.
I hammer my fist on the inside of the volcano. “Leave her alone,” I boom, my voice echoing.
On the other side of the fibreglass, the fighting stops. I suppose a talking volcano must be a bit much on top of everything else they’ve experienced today.
I chuckle to myself. “This is the volcano god and I’m coming for you, motherfuckers.”
With that, I kick the access panel at the back of the volcano so hard I crack the surrounding construction material. I struggle out, trip over broken pieces of volcanic rock and nearly tumble headfirst into a pool of lava. I teeter at the edge, then right myself. “That was close,” I say. “Epic.”
“Saffron?” Georgia cries, managing to make my name spread out over about five syllables. “What are you doing?”
I could ask her the same. She’s dangling from the rim of the volcano, trying to kick Henry in the face. He’s holding a nasty-looking knife, and he’s trying to stab her in the legs.
“Saving your butt? You’re welcome, by the way,” I say.
“Everything’s under control, Saffron,” she snaps.
“Looks like it. Dude, put the knife down.”
Henry stares at me open-mouthed. He’s a mess. Blood on his face, bruises on his neck. I’ve not met him in person before now, and I’m finding it hard to believe he’s a murderer. He’s so geeky and normal-looking. Never judge a book by its cover, I suppose. What’s the TV series about the stalker who murders the women he falls in love with? Henry reminds me of that guy – average on the outside, big issues on the inside.
“Don’t come any closer,” he says, his voice halting. “I’ll kill her, I’ll do it!”
“Just try it, asshole,” Georgia snaps.
Henry yanks on Georgia’s trousers and she loses her grip, sliding down to his level. He can’t reach her with the knife because he’s also struggling to cling on to the side of the volcano. Instead, he yanks on her hair in an attempt to prise her off the rocks. Which is totally unacceptable. The only person who gets to murder my sister is me.
Georgia’s saved by a cascade of hot lava flooding out of a pipe at the top of the volcano and Henry is forced to swing himself aside. Georgia clambers higher, away from his grabby hands. He tries to pull her down again but ends up putting his hand in a river of lava. He screams, trying to shake the sticky lava off.
“Unlucky, dick face!” I laugh.
“Stop it!” he cries. “You don’t get to talk to me like that.” He moves in my direction, which at least gives Georgia some breathing room. The downside is, he has a weapon and he’s also a lot bigger than I am. I snatch up a fake rock from the ground and hold it up in the most aggressive manner I can manage.
Henry continues towards me. I throw the rock at his face, but it bounces off harmlessly, only serving to enrage him further. He slaps me across the face and it really hurts. I drop down on to my knees, clutching my cheek as it screams with burning pain.
I’ve never been in a physical fight before. I thought I’d last a lot longer than this. In Sole Survivor, I’m literally fearless. In real life, though, I’m weak and scared. Henry raises his knife with a shaky hand. I can see him trying to muster the nerve to strike.
“Don’t even think about it!” Georgia cries. She leaps on to his back and clings on like a monkey, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other twisting a handful of his hair. He roars in pain and slams her into the side of the volcano. She rolls to the floor and doesn’t get up.
Henry rubs his bruised neck, tears in his eyes. “You stupid bitch,” he cries.
A pained look of determination fixes itself on his face. His fingers tighten on his knife as he steps towards me. I shuffle backwards, but there’s nowhere to go.
Behind him, Georgia unfolds herself from the ground. She looks absolutely awful. There’s blood trickling down her face from where she’s cut herself on the volcano. Her face is tear-streaked and puffy. She looks small and young and pathetic. Her hands are shaking as she pulls her trusty multitool from her pocket and picks out one of the screwdrivers.
This is the point where I realize I’ve underestimated my sister. She draws herself up to all five feet of her height and her face becomes a terrifying snarl of fury. “Oi,” she bellows, and it’s as if she has three voices coming out of her mouth at the same time, like the fucking devil. “What have I told you about gendered insults?”
Henry turns to her with a look of exasperation. Georgia doesn’t even hesitate. She rams the screwdriver into his eye. His literal eye! Then she kicks him in the balls and sends him plunging backwards into the lava. He sinks with this anti-climatic gurgle.
Georgia turns to me with a smug smile. She dusts off her hands. “Like I said, everything’s under control.”
40
GEORGIA
Saffron’s looking at me like I’m a monster. Maybe I am. Then her face splits into a wide grin. “That. Was. Epic. Oh my god, Georgia.”
I wipe a dribble of blood off my cheek with my sleeve.
“I’ve been having a bad day,” I admit. “Him calling me a bitch kind of pushed me over the edge.”
“That’s the part that got you riled up?” Saffron asks.
“We all have our breaking points.”
There’s a loud gurgle and a wave of lava blobs over the edge of the island. It pours into the hole Saffron made when she burst out of the volcano. Guess that rules out escaping the way she came in.
We climb up the steep slope. Feet braced against rocks, we sit there, watching the room fill up with lava. “There’s a slide in the volcano,” Saffron says hopefully.
“It’s closed off. I looked.”
“Oh.” She sighs. “Sorry about all of this.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It kind of is,” she says.
“OK. A little bit. But thanks. For coming here to save me.”
“Of course I came. You’re my sister.” She throws an arm around me and I rest my head on her shoulder. The lava rises, bubbling towards our feet. We’ll pass out from the heat before it gets to us.
Saffron wipes sweat off her face. She laughs. “I still can’t believe you stabbed that dude in the eye. Like, I always thought I could kill someone to save my own life, but when it came down to the wire, I was too scared to even move.”
“I’m an overachiever to the last,” I mutter. “I like to win.”
As if on cue, Lightman’s face appears on the screen. “There can only be one winner,” he says.
Saffron gasps. “Georgia defeated the killer. The know-it-all is the winner!”
Lightman turns his head in a jerky, inhuman movement. “Negative. The rebel has not been defeated. The simulation is not complete.”
“I’m not fighting my sister!” Saffron’s voice softens and goes small. “She wins, OK? She always wins against me.”
“Ha! I always win? What are you on about, Saffron? You’re popular, funny, interesting. Clearly the top sister.”
“Not in the ways that matter,” she says. There are tears in her eyes, or maybe sweat. “You’re so clever. Ambitious. Our parents are proud of you. I’ll never measure up.”
“What?” I laugh at her, shaking my head in disbelief. “I’ve spent most of my life thinking I can’t measure up to you. Sure, I follow the rules. But you’re the one who’s going to make a difference, Saffron.”
She rolls her eyes but there’s a smile playing on her lips. “Georgia, not all of us want to make a difference, you ridiculous nerd.”
I return her smile. “What do you want then? I can’t believe I’ve never asked you that.”
“I’ve always wanted to design video games, but if I try and I can’t, then everyone who thinks I’m useless will be right about me.”
Everyone? It’s clear she means me. I’m the one who lords it over her because I get better grades. But the truth is, I’m jealous. Because Saffron doesn’t need a bunch of As to prove her worth to the world. “You’re the smartest person I know,” I say. “And I’d buy all your games; they’d be amazing.”
Saffron almost hugs me but, before she can, I’m hit by a sudden thought. This simulation is designed to determine which stereotype would win a game of Sole Survivor. The game isn’t over until there’s only one person left standing.
Those are the rules. We can’t break the rules.
But what if those rules were wrong from the start?
I clamber up the side of the volcano so I can face the camera watching us from above the screen. “Lightman, are you still there?”
“I am always here.”
“This game is all about gathering data to better predict human behaviour?”
“Correct.”
“So you got all of us together – the rebel, the know-it-all, the jock, the princess, the criminal, the weirdo, the star, the artist and the geek – and you tried to test which stereotype is best-suited to survival.”
“Is now the time for a recap?” Saffron says, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s not a recap, it’s a hole in his logic. Because everyone’s stereotype was a lie. No one played the part they were meant to. Take Henry: the shy, sweet geek who was secretly harassing half the girls he knew and killed a bunch of people.”
Lightman doesn’t react.
“And Helix was the weirdo, yes, but he was so much more, only no one took the time to look any deeper. Joey’s a popular jock who, at heart, is as scared and desperate as the rest of us. Millie sold drugs so everyone would believe she was a perfect princess. Olympia was lying about her fame. Geoffrey made up an entire persona in an attempt to be interesting.”
Saffron catches on. “Yeah, and Aidan’s not some criminal. He’s a good guy who’s been looking after his little sister for years because his parents are screwups.”
My heart sinks at the thought of Aidan. I got him so wrong. I let him down, but there’s no time to think about that right now.
“And Saffron’s so much more than a rebel. People aren’t two-dimensional stereotypes. You can’t predict how they’ll act based on some silly label. The entire concept of a stereotype is flawed.” I fold my arms to deliver the coup de grace. “Also, you can’t make sweeping generalizations based on a case study of nine. It’s not good science.”
“You’re not helping your I’m not a stereotypical know-it-all case,” Saffron whispers, but her eyes are laughing.
“Lightman, you’re not going to end this because anyone tells you to,” I say. “But the entire simulation is flawed. It relied on us being stereotypes, and we weren’t. We’re just people.”
A strange quiet settles over the room. It takes me a second to notice the volcano has stopped spewing lava. Saffron and I hold our breath. There’s a loud clunk from inside as the slide opens.
“Re-evaluating parameters,” Lightman says. “Simulation paused.”
Saffron and I clamber up to the top of the volcano, but Saffron pauses with one leg over the lip. “After everything, you’re letting us go?” she says.
“Maybe don’t give him any ideas,” I whisper.
“Your sister made a valid point,” Lightman says. “The data I have obtained suggest stereotypes are no help at all in predicting human behaviour. So I have ended the simulation.”
Saffron nods, her expression kind of sad. Then she forces a smile. “You really aren’t alive, are you?” She sighs, then slides into the volcano.
#Lettuce-talk-again
4 members
THE-SAF 20:34
OK, so I’m setting up a new Sole Survivor crew. Who’s in??
GEORGIA-KATE-HOWELLS 20:34
Inappropriate, Saffron.
THE-SAF 20:34
Or … is it a fitting memorial to the friends we lost? Throwing it
out there.
GEORGIA-KATE-HOWELLS 20:35
Friends who died playing a real-life game of Sole Survivor less
than three weeks ago? Also, did you seriously add Joey and Aidan
to this group chat?? They’re still in the hospital!
JOEYS-BIONIC-FOOT 20:40
I’m getting out tomorrow. Hospital is soooooo boring.
GEORGIA-KATE-HOWELLS 20:41
How are you feeling? This must be hard for you, Joey. I’m so sorry.
