Alien Storm (6 page)

At the sound of a boot pressing into the carpet, he held his breath and peered round the edge of the desk. Two of the armoured cops stepped cautiously through the main door and looked around the rows of cubicles.

“He could be anywhere in here,” one hissed, loud enough for Alex to hear.

“Use the torch,” the other said. “I'll cover the door so he doesn't slip through.”

The cop who had spoken first nodded and removed something from his belt – an oversized lamp that emitted a UV beam. He advanced down the row of cubicles, a dart-gun held out in one hand and the lamp in the other, sweeping it left and right. Alex shrank back as part of the beam shone under the table, showing up droplets of fluorescent dye on the carpet. The cop went left, taking him away from the hiding place, but Alex knew it was only a matter of minutes before he was discovered.

Moving out from under the desk as silently as possible, he poked his head around the cubicle wall and checked out the burly cop guarding the only unlocked exit out of the room – he didn't fancy his chances. Worse still, that cop also had a UV lamp in his hand and was waving it around.
Got to get rid of the dye somehow
. Alex looked round and up for an alternative – and his eyes fell on something in the ceiling.

Set into one of the tiles was a metal nozzle that he recognized as a sprinkler fitting. Inside the fitting was a temperature sensitive cell designed to trigger the sprinkler system in the event of a real fire. The other cop's footsteps approached as he made his way back to cover the cubicles he hadn't checked. Not wasting another second, Alex carefully slid open the top drawer of the desk and instantly found what he needed – a cigarette lighter, the disposable kind Stella and his uncle used all the time. Taking the lighter, he stepped up onto the desk and raised it to the nozzle, aware of the table creaking under his weight.

“Hey, did you hear that?” the cop at the door yelled to his partner. “Over to your left!”

Alex struck the wheel on the lighter and held down the gas button. The flame flickered around the nozzle and within seconds he felt the heat burning his fingertips. Alex gritted his teeth.
Come on
.

“What's that light?” the nearest cop asked, flicking his lamp towards the ceiling.

The sprinkler spurted into life, spraying an arc of water in all directions. Simultaneously, six other nozzles around the room went active. Alex lowered the lighter and stood stock still as the water poured around him. The cops waved their lamps around in confusion and in one of the flickering beams Alex caught a glimpse of the dye washing away from his body. When he looked down he saw a pool of purple mixing with the water collecting on the carpet.

“What do we do?” yelled the cop nearest the cubicle over the sound of the water jets. The bulb in his lamp exploded in a shower of sparks. “Aren't these things waterproof?”

Taking advantage of their confusion, Alex put his hands on the flimsy cubicle wall and jumped into the walkway behind it. He ran for the door, aware of the water bouncing off his shoulders and head, creating an outline for the guards to see. Luckily they were too preoccupied with their exploding lamps to notice as he slipped through the door and into the corridor beyond.

Alex moved fast towards the back of the building – hoping to find some kind of exit that he'd missed the first time. Getting trapped in the office space was stupid, so no more mistakes. Rounding a corner, he found exactly what he was looking for – a set of double doors with an illuminated
Emergency Exit
sign above them. Splashing through the water pooling across the tiled floor, he ran full pelt for freedom…

He drew up fast as a figure stepped out of the shadows – the big cop from the foyer. The leader. In the darkness of the corridor Alex could make out the whites of the man's eyes and his hard gaze. Alex flattened against the wall, hoping he hadn't given himself away. The leader scanned the corridor ahead, as if sensing something, then raised a UV lamp. He swung the beam across Alex, but this time no dye was illuminated – the water from the sprinklers had done its job. Alex almost cried with relief.

Sweeping the lamp around again, the leader reached for a communicator clipped to his chest. “All units, report.”

“Foyer, no movement, over,” the comm barked back a second later.

“Office area, no sign,” came a second reply. “But we've got dye residue on the floor here. Looks like the sprinklers washed it off the target's body, over.”

The cop leader sucked his teeth in frustration and flicked off his lamp. “Okay, all units hold position. He's trapped in here and we'll get him if we have to wait till Christmas. Shoot anything that moves. I'm calling in back-up, over and out.”

Alex edged along the wall, centimetre by centimetre, until he was almost level with the hulking cop. He was aware of the water splashing off his body – a dead giveaway for anyone paying enough attention, but the man's mind was elsewhere.

“Beta team,” the leader said into his comm, “prepare to move in. We've lost the dye-tagger. And someone shut off these damned sprinklers, over.”

Alex moved past him and turned his attention to the exit at the end of the corridor. The doors were closed with a metal bar across the middle that pushed to open. Even with the sprinklers going full blast, the noise would be sure to attract the attention of the cop. He looked round at the man and the rifle slung over his shoulder, wondering if he could possibly be fast enough. Then his eyes fell on a dart-pistol tucked into the back of his trousers.
Dare I?
thought Alex.

Without warning the sprinklers shut off and the lights came up in the corridor.

“About time,” sniffed the leader. Alex took a deep breath.

Don't think… Do
.

Reaching out fast, he grabbed the handle of the pistol and fired at the area of the cop's body he thought most likely to hit – his backside.

The leader gave a cry that was an equal mix of shock and pain as he spun round, bringing his rifle up in the process. In his concentration on grabbing the gun, Alex had allowed his invisibility to slip. For a moment they looked one another in the eyes.

“Kid?” the cop said, before his eyes rolled up into his skull and he crashed backwards, landing with a splash on the floor.

Alex dropped the dart-gun at his feet and threw himself at the emergency exit. Pushing the bar, he ran out into brilliant sunlight.

8

The two-bedroom unit owned by Uncle Pete was silent in a way that gave Alex the creeps the moment he stepped through the unlocked back door. Normally the place was filled with the sound of his uncle arguing with Stella, the TV blaring out a football match, or some of their no-good mates laughing and drinking. But not today. Alex walked through the kitchen, past the piles of dirty dishes stacked in the sink (his job to clean them, under normal circumstances) and down the corridor to the lounge room. It was empty and the giant LCD TV in the corner was turned off for the first time he could recall.

“Hello?” Alex called through to the bedrooms, but there was no response. The place felt abandoned – cleaned out. All that was left was the junk his uncle and Stella couldn't carry.
And me
, thought Alex as he slumped wearily onto the sofa and pointed the remote at the TV.

Getting back to his uncle's place had been easy enough. There were just a few cops covering the rear of the bank and he'd slipped past them and round to the front, just in case Uncle Pete was still there. The car was long gone, of course. He ran a few blocks before making himself visible again in a side street. The roads had been chaos, but he'd jumped in the back of a cab. The driver agreed to take him anywhere he wanted when Alex pulled a couple of hundred dollar bills from the bag still tied to his belt.

In the apartment, he flipped through the channels until he reached a station showing the local news. A reporter stood in front of the bank, talking about the massive police operation that was under way right in the centre of the city.

“They're bringing someone out,” the reporter announced, turning back to the building as the camera focused on the door. Two medics appeared, wheeling a stretcher towards a waiting ambulance. “It seems as if one of the Special Forces team members has been injured.”

Alex recognized the cop he'd shot, still unconscious on the stretcher.

The reporter looked back at the camera. “We don't know if the criminals are still inside the bank, but clearly they're not afraid to use violence to evade capture.”

Alex had heard enough. With a shake of his head, he raised the remote to turn off the TV…

“Wait, Alex!”
the reporter on the screen said urgently. “
You should keep watching—
…the start of a city-wide manhunt for any of the robbers who might have escaped…”

Alex froze with his finger over the
off
button. Slowly, he leaned towards the screen, feeling more than a little stupid as he watched the reporter continue the story as normal.

“Did you just speak to me?” he asked finally. Immediately, the screen flickered and crackled, making him jump back in surprise. The picture went to static for a split second before being replaced by a new image: a desert of snow that seemed to stretch on for ever. In the distance a skyscraper rose into the sky – out of place in the icy expanse. Shaking his head, Alex pressed the channel up button a few times, but every side seemed to be showing the same programme now. He lowered the remote as a tall, thin figure walked out of the snowscape towards the camera: a man in a dark suit that made him look like a silhouette against the glaring brightness of his surroundings. As he came closer to the screen, Alex could see his hair was pure white, although he only looked about as old as his uncle, perhaps in his early forties. The man stopped and smiled at the camera. Alex had the strangest feeling he was looking directly at him.

“Hello,” the man said, “my name is Nikolai Makarov. If it's easier for you, feel free to call me Nicholas. It's so nice to finally get a chance to speak to you alone, Alex.” His accent was Russian, but his English was perfect.

Alex sat back on the sofa and was silent for a moment. This had to be some kind of trick – a joke thought up by his uncle and his mates to make him look stupid. They loved to play their games. But the man on the screen – Nikolai Makarov – shook his head.

“Come, come, Alex,” he said, as if reading his thoughts, “you know your uncle doesn't have the brains to set something like this up. In fact, he's busy selling you out as we speak. Take a look.”

Makarov snapped his long fingers and the TV image abruptly changed to a shot of what looked like an interrogation room from a cop show. Uncle Pete sat at a metal table nervously smoking a cigarette while a suited man with a badge on his belt paced before him.

“It was the kid!” Pete whined. “I tell you, my nephew got these freak powers since he was exposed to that virus. Always sneaking around, all invisible like. He made me drive him to the bank – just ask Stella. He said he'd hurt us with some kind of mind control if we didn't help him rob the place!”

Alex stood abruptly and pointed at the screen. “Hey! He's making that up!”

The image snapped back to Makarov and the ice desert. He nodded sympathetically. “One of his so-called friends tipped off the police and they picked him up trying to escape the city. He's already given you up, Alex. In about three minutes the cops will be banging down the door of the house in which you're standing.”

Alex shook his head. “How did you get those pictures of him? This must be…”

“Some kind of trick?” Nikolai Makarov finished for him with a wry smile. “Not possible? Please, Alex, I would expect someone who can make himself invisible to be a little more open-minded about such things.”

“Then you're…”

“Like you,” the man on the screen finished for him once again. “Your gift is a by-product of your exposure to the fall virus, as I'm sure you've guessed. And so is mine.”

Alex frowned. “You can control TVs?”

Makarov laughed. “And much more besides. I'd like to tell you all about it, but at the moment we have the small matter of the police to worry about. You shouldn't have gone back to the house, Alex. You're going to have to get smarter if you're going to stay free long enough for me to rescue you.”

Alex looked around as a car screeched past outside. He turned back to the TV, deciding that the guy on the screen was his best bet at that moment. “What do I do? I haven't got anywhere to go.”

“You've got about one minute,” Makarov said urgently. “Just get out of there. Move!” The screen went dead.

Not hanging around, Alex ran straight through to the kitchen. Something crackled near the sink as he went past. Looking round, his eyes fell on Stella's iPod, lying forgotten near the window. The little white headphones were still plugged in and sound was coming from them, faint but audible.

“Take it, Alex!” Nikolai Makarov's voice commanded tinnily. “Go out the back door. They're already covering the front.”

Hearing the sound of vehicles on the road, Alex grabbed the iPod from the window sill and ran out the back. (As he ran across the lawn he remembered that the player hadn't worked since Uncle Pete had thrown it at the wall during one of his and Stella's arguments – but he decided to think about that later.) From the house there was a crash as the front door was smashed open.

Alex jumped the back fence in one fluid movement and landed in the alleyway beyond, hitting the ground running.

He didn't look back.

Thirty minutes later, Alex walked onto the platform of a suburban train station with the hood of his jacket up to hide his face. Somewhere a police siren howled, but he didn't look round as he walked past the ticket office. It was tempting simply to fade out, but the run from Uncle Pete's house had left him too exhausted for that. For now he walked to the end of the platform, trying to keep out of people's way. The speakers announced that a train was due in two minutes.