Blackout (6 page)

Jack sighed. ‘I don’t know. I’m not really in the mood.’

Slink stuffed postcards into his bag. ‘Come on, Jack, it’ll be fun.’

Jack looked at Wren – she was bouncing with excitement and doing silent pleading gestures with her hands. Finally, he let out a breath. ‘OK, let’s go.’

Wren squealed with delight, ran to the airlock door and grabbed her coat from a hook on the wall.

Mihone Street in East London had the reputation of being one of the worst places in the country to live. High crime. Low income. Everything was dirty and decaying, but most of the residents were just down on their luck. Not given a chance to help them­­­selves.

The Outlaws liked RAKing on Mihone Street – it felt good to put smiles on people’s faces.

Jack, Charlie, Slink and Wren marched down an alleyway between an abandoned church and a you­­­th centre.

At the end, Slink lifted a pallet aside to reveal a box underneath, just under a metre square, made out of formed sheet metal.

Charlie stepped back. ‘Go for it.’

Wren hurried forward, knelt down and peered into the box. After a moment, a huge grin swept across her face.

‘Well?’ Slink said.

She looked up. ‘It’s him.’

‘Get ready.’ Slink pressed a button on his phone and the lock on the box disengaged.

Wren lifted the flap, reached inside and carefully took out a cat. It had all black fur apart from a round white patch that covered one ear and half its face.

Slink held up his phone with a picture of the cat filling the display.

Jack looked from the picture to the cat and back again. ‘She’s right.’ He couldn’t believe it. The trap they’d made had worked.

Charlie walked over to a skip, rummaged inside and pulled out a cardboard box. She checked it was secure while walking back to Wren. ‘We can put him in here,’ she said.

Wren was reluctant to let the cat go at first, but then decided it was probably for the best – they didn’t want him running off again.

Charlie secured down the flaps. ‘Let’s take him home,’ she said, then the four of them marched from the alley.

As they turned into the road, Obi said in their ears, ‘Well? Is it him?’

‘Yep,’ Slink said. ‘We’re going there now.’

‘Awesome.’

Two roads down, the Outlaws walked into a cul-de-sac. At the end was a rundown terraced house, its garden overgrown and flanked by three-metre high bushes. They stopped outside the gate.

Slink checked the address on his phone and nodded. ‘This is the one.’

Charlie held the box out to Wren. ‘Do you wanna do it?’

Wren beamed and took it from her.

Slink opened the gate and Wren hurried up the broken path. She reached the front door and gently set the box down on the step. She glanced around, then knocked loudly and ran back down the path.

When she was through the gate, the Outlaws hid behind the bushes and watched.

It was a minute or so before the front door opened and an elderly lady peered out. ‘Hello?’

There was a miaowing and clawing sound and she looked at the box. The old lady frowned, then with a lot of effort, she bent down and undid the flaps. She gasped and almost toppled backwards as the cat stuck its head out.

‘
Oscar?
’ For a long time, the old lady seemed not to believe her eyes.

The cat miaowed again.

The old lady picked Oscar up and cradled him in her arms. ‘Where’ve you been? I was so worried.’

Oscar purred as though nothing was wrong and nuzzled his face into her shoulder.

The old lady’s name was Irene Gardener and her cat had been missing for over a month. Some kind neighbours had put up a few posters, but Oscar was nowhere to be seen.

That’s when Charlie, Obi, Slink and Wren had come up with the idea of building a trap. Charlie constructed it out of steel, with a flap that would drop into place. They’d set a bowl of tuna as bait and fitted it with a wireless camera.

Every day or two, the trap would go off and Slink would check the pictures. Each time, it had been a different cat, and they’d had to free it and refill the bait. They’d been convinced that Oscar would stay in the local neighbourhood. He just had to stumble upon the box.

‘It’s a house cat and not used to being outside,’ Charlie had said.

‘Yeah,’ Wren agreed with a fervent nod. ‘Oscar is lost, that’s all.’

Well, Jack had to hand it to them – they’d been right.

Irene peered in their direction, but they kept out of sight. With another glance up the road, she held Oscar tight, went back inside and shut the door.

Wren smiled. ‘That was amazing.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Slink said. ‘We can’t hang about here all day. We’ve got things to do.’ He pulled a list from his back pocket. ‘These are all Wren’s ideas today.’

As they walked away, Charlie keyed a message into her phone.

‘Who are you texting?’ Jack said.

‘The Consultant, telling him we’ve found Oscar.’

‘The Consultant’ – real name James – was a friend of the Outlaws who helped them out occasionally with missions. This time he’d supplied them with something called the Cat-Cam 9000. Essentially, it was a tiny camera and transmitter which could be inserted into a cat’s collar, undetected. Three other cats in the area had been secretly fitted with the cat-cam to pick up images of Oscar.

Charlie’s phone beeped. She looked at the display and smiled. ‘The Consultant’s happy we found him.’

‘Me too,’ Wren said, skipping after Slink and looking at the list in his hand.

As always, the next couple of hours passed in a blur.

Slink and Wren had taped money to the back of their homemade postcards and were now handing them out to any homeless person they came across.

Jack and Charlie sauntered behind them as they hurried up and down streets, looking under bridges and in alleyways for worthy recipients.

‘Did Obi tell you he’s found a plan of another one of his mum and dad’s old houses?’ Charlie said.

Jack looked at her. ‘Another house? How many did his mum and dad have?’

She shrugged. ‘They were rich.’

‘No kidding.’ Jack glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘What’s he got? Some kind of blueprint?’

She nodded. ‘I think so.’ She looked thoughtful a moment. ‘Obi’s really determined to prove his uncle faked his mum and dad’s will.’

‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘Well, we should have a look at it. You never know, he might even be right. He was about Proteus, remember?’

Charlie nodded and grinned at him.

‘What?’ Jack said.

‘Nothing. You’re just a nice guy. I ever tell you that?’

Jack looked away, embarrassed. ‘I’m no saint.’

Slink and Wren ran out of postcards and the four of them stopped outside a block of flats. First, Wren wanted them to clean up the flowerbeds. Taking it in turns to keep a lookout, they ripped out the weeds, picked up the rubbish and cleaned the stone path.

When they were done, they stood back to admire their handiwork.

‘Well?’ Jack said to Wren. ‘What’s next?’

Wren pointed to an underpass by the block of flats. It was almost pitch-black because the floodlight bulb was broken and no one had bothered to fix it. Kids had to walk down that tunnel. It wasn’t safe.

They hurried over to it and Wren sat on Charlie’s shoulders, unscrewed the glass covering on the light and removed the broken bulb.

‘Careful,’ Charlie said, passing her a replacement bulb. ‘It’s mains electricity.’

Wren gingerly took the bulb and clicked it into place.

The light flickered on, illuminating the tunnel.

Wren screwed the cover back and Charlie lowered her to the ground.

Wren stared up at it, looking proud of herself.

Jack’s phone beeped. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display. It was a text message from Obi.

‘What’s up?’ Charlie asked.

‘We have to go home.’

‘Why?’

Jack looked at her. ‘The program’s found the virus.’

Back at the bunker, they all gathered around Obi’s chair.

‘I’ve managed to locate the virus’s signal.’ Obi clicked a trackerball and brought up a window. ‘It’s here.’

‘Another power station?’ Charlie said.

Obi nodded. ‘Bransgore – it’s in their system.’ He clicked on another window showing the virus’s code. ‘Looks like it’s been there for a couple of hours.’

Jack stared at the monitor as the virus adapted to the new computers it was infecting.

‘What’s it doing now?’ Wren asked.

‘If it keeps going like this,’ Jack said, ‘it could cripple the entire power station.
Permanently
.’

Even take down every power station in the South East. Perhaps the entire country
.

The computer beeped and the screen went dark.

Obi’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, no.’

‘What now?’ Charlie said.

‘The connection’s been severed.’

Jack pulled the keyboard over and started to type quickly. ‘He’s right.’

‘What’s “severed”?’ Wren asked.

‘It means,’ Jack said, straightening up, ‘the network engineers at Bransgore power station have cut the connection to the internet.’ He looked at the others. ‘They’ve done the worst thing possible – they’ve trapped the virus inside their computer system.’

‘Now it’s their problem,’ Slink said, sipping his lemonade. ‘So what?’

‘
So
,’ Jack took a breath and chose his next words carefully, ‘the virus could cause the power station to have a meltdown.’

They all stared at him.

‘Meltdown?’ Charlie said. ‘You mean it could explode or something?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Maybe, yeah.’

‘Still don’t see the problem,’ Slink said.

‘That’s not all.’ Jack turned to the screens and waved a finger. ‘If someone gets their hands on the virus, there’s a chance they could use it to find us. Track down the location of the bunker.’

‘How would they do that?’ Obi asked.

‘We don’t know how this virus works yet,’ Jack replied. ‘It could be keeping a log of every place it visits.’

‘And it’s been here before,’ Charlie added.

‘Exactly,’ Jack said, remembering when the virus had infected the bunker’s computers and caused havoc.

‘What do we do?’ Wren asked in a quiet voice.

Jack started to pace, his mind ablaze. ‘This is actually the best thing they could’ve done.’

‘Wait,’ Slink said. ‘A moment ago you were saying –’

Jack stopped. ‘They’ve trapped the virus, right? It has no way out. Don’t you see? We can grab it once and for all.’ His excitement grew as the realisation dawned on him.

‘You’re saying we break into that power station?’ Charlie said.

Jack nodded. ‘We need to remove the virus ourselves. And we need to be quick.’

‘How are we going to do that?’ Obi asked.

Jack pulled a USB pen drive from his pocket. ‘With this.’ On the stick was a program he’d used before to send a signal, attracting the virus. If he modified it, he could physically trap the virus.

Slink frowned. ‘OK, so how do we get into the power station? They will have some serious security there.’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Jack said. ‘But we have to do this. Are you in?’

They all nodded.

‘Good.’ He turned to Obi. ‘Can you hack into all the CCTV cameras around the power station? I need to see what we’ve got to work with.’

‘No problem,’ Obi said. ‘It’s going to take me a while though – I need to find the cameras that aren’t affected by the blackouts. If there are any.’

Slink nudged Wren’s arm and they went to play on a racing game.

Obi set to work and twenty minutes later he had a still image from a camera on the other side of the River Thames. It pointed directly at the power station on the opposite bank. Obi zoomed in the image. ‘This is the closest I can get.’

Jack pointed at the screen. ‘That’s where we’ll come in – the river side of the plant.’

Obi nodded. ‘Looks like the fence is electric, but I bet Slink can get over it.’ He glanced at Slink and muttered, ‘Hopefully, it’ll electrocute him.’

‘Obi,’ Charlie said, ‘play nicely.’

‘I’m joking.’

‘Is there any way you can see inside the building?’ Jack asked.

Obi opened another window. ‘No, but I think I can get something else that you can use.’

Jack turned away and watched quietly as Wren beat Slink on the racing game three times in a row.

Finally, Obi said, ‘Got it.’

Jack turned back.

Obi gestured at the main monitor. ‘I’ve got you a layout of the inside of the power station.’