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My eyes twitched around inside my head, trying to look and not look at the same time.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

And finally the old cripple was gone.

Ketterley was still at the door. He threw a glance back out across his office, almost as though he sensed he was being watched. I held my breath, positive we were about to be spotted.

But then he turned again. Walked out of the office.

And pulled the door shut behind him.

I took a moment to call off the impending heart attack, then stuck my head around the corner to give the others the all clear.

‘Now what?' I asked.

‘Now we get out of here,' said Jordan.

‘With
them
outside?'

‘What's your solution? Stay here and wait for them to come back?'

I didn't answer.

‘She's right,' said Luke, standing up. ‘We're no safer in here than we are out there.'

‘Says the guy who dived behind the couch in the first place,' I muttered.

‘Both of you shut up,' said Jordan, heading for the door. ‘Get ready to run.'

I crept across to Ketterley's desk, half-expecting him or Calvin to pop out again from some other hiding place. I pulled the memory stick out of the computer and dashed back to join the others at the door.

Jordan pulled the door open a crack and peered into the hall. I could hear Ketterley's coffee machine buzzing in the next room.

She stuck a hand in the air behind her and counted down with her fingers.

Three. Two. One.

And then she was out in the hall and we were tearing out after her.

We fled past the lounge room without even looking in, and made a break for the front door. I heard a quick snatch of Mal's mate saying sorry, he hadn't realised Ketterley was still here, and then we were outside and sprinting down the garden path.

We were halfway to the gate when I realised that Mal was back up on the roof. He twisted around, reaching for something in his toolbox, and grunted.

Maybe he saw us, maybe he didn't. We were already through the gate and onto the bike track outside.

We didn't stop running until we were around the corner and halfway down the street.

‘You do realise,' I panted, ‘that one of these days, your famous run-blindly-through-the-path-of-danger manoeuvre is going to get us all
killed.
'

‘Oh, stop complaining,' said Jordan. ‘They didn't even have any guns this time.'

‘Right,' I said, ‘well, nothing to worry about, then.'

‘Did you find anything on the laptop?' Luke asked me.

I unclenched my fist from around the memory stick. ‘Good question,' I said. ‘Why don't we go find out?'

Chapter 20

S
UNDAY
, M
AY
31
74
DAYS

I tore up the path to Luke's house and hit the doorbell.

He'd found something. And whatever it was, he'd been too excited to type a coherent sentence about it.

After escaping Ketterley's office yesterday afternoon, we'd gone back to my place to start trawling through the stuff on the memory stick.

All 8714 files of it.

Invoices and maintenance request forms and photos of Ketterley and a couple of kids who had to be his grandchildren. Kids he'd left behind on the outside.

The longer we searched, the more convinced I became that there was nothing worth finding.

When the 7 p.m. curfew rolled around, we still hadn't found anything useful.

We split the rest of the files up three ways and agreed to email each other as soon as anything turned up.

And we kept looking. And still nothing.

Until about fifteen minutes ago, when Luke had finally struck gold.

At least, I
thought
that's what his email had said.

guys i fund s/thing! coem ovr here rigt now!1

I punched the bell a few more times and Luke's mum finally answered.

She was tired and angry, but trying not to look it.

‘Hey, Ms Hunter,' I said. ‘Is Luke around?'

‘He's in his room,' she sighed, like this was a strange and frustrating place for him to be.

‘Uh, thanks,' I said, brushing past her and heading upstairs.

I knocked on Luke's door.

‘What?' Luke grumbled from inside.

‘Mate, it's me,' I said, pushing the door open. Luke was sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the TV.

150 Satellite Channels COMING SOON!

Right.

I walked in and sat down in his desk chair. ‘Jordan not here yet?'

‘On her way,' said Luke.

I grabbed the remote from the desk and switched the TV off. ‘So … yesterday arvo,' I said. ‘You and her just happened to both get there early, did you?'

Luke shot me an exasperated look. ‘Do we have to talk about this right now?'

‘Is there something to talk about?' I asked, skin prickling.

‘I already told you there wasn't.'

‘So she was crying for no reason, was she?'

Luke opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated. ‘She's been having … headaches,' he said after a minute.

‘Headaches,' I repeated.

Was that seriously the best he could come up with? Jordan did
not
go to pieces over a sore head.

‘Fine, don't believe me,' said Luke. ‘You know, for someone who took forever to believe all this Tabitha stuff was real, you're pretty quick to jump to conspiracy theories about your own friends.'

I was on my feet and charging at him before I even knew it, sick of his lies, sick of him taking what wasn't his.

‘You reckon I'm stupid?' I said, grabbing at his shirt. ‘You think I don't –?'

‘Wh – Peter, what is this?' Luke held up his hands to block me.

I stumbled back and hit the carpet.

‘Peter, c'mon,' he said, getting up, ‘just settle down for a minute, okay? You're acting like –'

‘Screw you, mate!' I grunted, aiming a foot up at his stomach.

He jumped back and grabbed my leg out of the air.

‘Should I give you boys a minute?'

Jordan was standing in the doorway. She stared down at me, then up at Luke.

He dropped my foot and sat back on the bed, glaring at me like
I
was the unreasonable one.

‘Hi,' I said, getting up and straightening my shirt.

‘Yeah, hi,' she said, like she didn't know whether to laugh or give us both a time out. She turned to Luke and said, ‘Your mum's in a great mood. I take it you talked to her about Montag?'

‘He was
here
last night,' Luke spat. ‘I got back from Peter's and found him talking to Mum on the doorstep.'

‘What did she say?' Jordan asked, sitting down on the end of the bed.

‘She tried to deny it all,' said Luke. ‘She told me Montag was here for “work reasons”. I asked her if sucking his face off outside the medical centre was for work reasons as well, and she went off at me for not respecting her privacy.'

‘Because she was being
so
private about it,' said Jordan.

Luke shrugged. ‘So, yeah, we're not talking a whole lot at the moment.'

Jordan frowned.

Right. Of course.
Instant
sympathy for all of
Luke's
problems.

‘So do you want to show us what you found?' I asked, wanting to see it and get out of here.

‘Right,' said Luke, getting up, apparently putting the fight behind him. Easy enough when you're the one getting everything you want.

He opened his laptop and the screen flashed on.

‘I can't believe it took me so long to find this,' he said, clicking through a bunch of folders until he got to a slide show file labelled
Network Schematic,
last modified sometime last year.

The first slide was a map of Phoenix.

‘That's the map they gave us all when we got here,' said Jordan. ‘The one that came in the welcome pack.'

‘Yeah,' said Luke. ‘Well, here's what they
don't
show you in the welcome pack …'

He clicked to the next slide. A bunch of grey boxes appeared on the map. Rooms. One in every major building in town.

‘That's Pryor's office,' I said, pointing to one of the boxes.

‘Right,' said Luke, tapping the screen. ‘Pryor's office, Ketterley's office, that room in the Shackleton Building …'

‘Montag's too,' said Jordan. ‘All the rooms with the security doors.'

‘Yeah,' said Luke. ‘And check this out.'

He clicked again.

A thin grey line stretched out from each of the boxes, shooting across the map, towards the centre of town. The lines all came together in one place.

The Shackleton Building.

‘Tunnels,' I said.

‘Uh-huh,' said Luke. ‘Look.'

The next slide was a computer-generated side-view of the Shackleton Building, with all the different departments and offices labelled.

There was a grey section marked out underneath the building, below ground level. An underground room where all the tunnels met up.

‘What do you reckon it's for?' I wondered out loud. ‘What are they keeping down there that's so –'

‘Not down there,' said Luke. ‘Up here.'

He pointed to a tunnel leading out of the room. A tunnel that went straight up.

Luke traced along the path of the tunnel with his finger. It rose into the air, up through the middle of the Shackleton Building, and came out at the top floor.

‘But we've already been up there,' said Jordan.

Luke had a weird look on his face. ‘No, we haven't.'

‘Mate, what are you talking about?' I said, exasperated. ‘Where do you think we were last Sun –?'

And then it clicked.

The top floor of the Shackleton Building that Dad had shown us last weekend was actually not the top floor at all.

There was another floor above it.

A floor you could only reach by coming in through one of those underground tunnels.

‘We have to get up there,' said Jordan.

‘I dunno,' I said. ‘I mean, that's not just your average, run-of-the-mill suicide mission. We get caught up there and we are all
kinds
of dead. Unless we've got a really good reason to –'

‘Are you blind?' snapped Luke. ‘
There's
our reason!'

He stabbed a finger at a room on the top floor.

A room marked
External Communications.

Chapter 21

M
ONDAY
, J
UNE
1
73
DAYS

Knowing the way into Shackleton's communications centre was one thing. Actually getting in there and using it, and then getting out without being killed, was a different story altogether. Especially with the new security they were putting up around the entrances. Not to mention the whole town watching our every move.

The only way we'd have any chance of warning the outside was with help from someone on the
inside.

Which is how we found ourselves walking up to the security centre the next day, with a note for Officer Reeve.

‘You're
sure
you've got the right number?' asked Luke as we walked between the fountain and the Shackleton Building, weaving our bikes through the after-school traffic. ‘If someone else finds that note …'

‘I looked it up in the directory this morning,' said Jordan. ‘Relax.'

‘Yep,' I said. ‘Nothing says
relaxation
like sneaking around behind the security centre to –'

‘Shh!' said Jordan. A pair of security guards was coming past. They glared at us as they crossed our path, but they kept walking and didn't give us any trouble.

We waited until they were gone and then turned up the street that runs between the security centre and the Shackleton Building.

‘Shouldn't we take another way around?' asked Luke, looking back over his shoulder. ‘Isn't it kind of suspicious for us to be wandering through here?'

‘This is the way I come home every day,' I said. ‘The only thing that's suspicious is you jittering around like an idiot.'

Not that we actually had to be
doing
anything suspicious to be treated as suspects these days.

The Shackleton Building loomed on our left. For all we knew, everyone in the building could be staring down at us through the one-way glass. I forced myself not to look up until we were around the corner and out of sight.

We stopped at the row of bike racks at the back of the security centre – the place where all the security staff parked while they were at work. Lucky for us, there were no windows back here.

‘All right, start looking,' I said, starting down the row of bikes. ‘Number zero-one-eight-nine.'

I kept glancing back at the row of houses on the other side of the track. It wasn't even four o'clock yet. Everyone should still be at work.

So why was I so sure we were being watched?

‘Over here,' whispered Luke after a minute, hand resting on the seat of one of the bikes.

We dashed over. Jordan pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket.

NEED TO TALK - IMPORTANT.
3.30 P.M. TUESDAY @ ROMEO IX.

She checked the number engraved into the frame of Reeve's bike, then wedged the paper under the seat.

‘Done,' she said.

Romeo IX
was a set of coordinates on the town map. R9. It corresponded to a place along one of the riding paths called the Nest. I just hoped Reeve was smart enough to –

‘Hey, what are you guys doing?' squeaked an all-too-familiar voice.

It was Freckles, the Year 7 kid. Ghost was with her.

‘Going back to my place,' I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder, down the street.

‘Then why are you over here?' asked Freckles, coming towards us. ‘Only security are allowed to park here.'