Dangerously Placed

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Imprint Page

Dedication

1. Sunday

2. Monday

3. Tuesday

4. Wednesday

5. Thursday

6. Friday

7. Sunday

8. Monday

9. Tuesday

10. Wednesday

11. Thursday

12. Friday

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Mishaps by Nansi Kunze

The crowded ballroom shimmers with the flash of a thousand jewels. The guests are rich and beautiful, and every single one is as crooked as the skeleton key I just slid into my stocking.

One man stands out from the throng: tall and intense, with Latino good looks and haunted eyes. He's been watching me ever since I entered the room. I weave my way through the crowd and look up into his face.

‘So much wealth in one place,' I say, gesturing at the glittering revellers all around us. ‘Perhaps this is the city of gold the conquistadors sought?'

‘If anyone could find El Dorado, it would be our host,' he replies, just as I hoped he would, and smiles. Then he takes my hand and leads me out of the room.

The air is humid on the balcony, the view spectacular. The jungle is thick and vibrant, pulsing with flowers as bright as the infra-red beams at the palace perimeter. My new friend leans close to me. I can almost feel his breath on my cheek.

‘Come,' he whispers, ‘I know what you want. Let me show it to you, Agent …?'

‘Thaler,' I say. ‘Alex Thaler.'

‘I am Arturo,' says my new friend, and jumps off the balcony.

For a moment I'm startled, but I know that in this business, hesitation costs lives. I jump after Arturo. To my relief, I land in soft leaf debris that someone has piled below.

‘Hurry.' Arturo takes my hand again. ‘El Rico's men will notice our absence.' He darts away through the undergrowth and I follow. The jewelled watch I'm wearing beeps discreetly – a message from HQ, telling me that time's running out. But I can't let that distract me. Arturo pushes aside thick vines, ducking to avoid huge, looped snakes and insects bigger than my hands.

At last we reach a clearing. There's no sign of sweat on Arturo's handsome face, not even as he looks down and sees the steel grid that confirms what my predecessor discovered on that fatal reconnaissance mission.

‘One missile with enough of the GX-55 virus to wipe out every living thing on the planet,' I whisper, glancing up at the monkeys playing in the trees above
us. But the flaw in El Rico's plan, I muse, was the truth about Alexandra Thaler, millionaire playgirl. I'd never have made the guest list if he'd known who I really worked for.

Our lasers bite through steel and the small locked access plate comes free with a snap. In the console underneath, I type in the code I extracted from El Rico's databanks and the steel grid slides back, the missile's tip rising slowly out of the ground. But something's wrong – the timer panel is flashing and I see Arturo's eyes widen in fear.

‘The code!' he breathes. ‘The code activated the missile! We must remove the virus NOW!'

My fingers shake as I pry open the casing. The GX-55 is there, green and gleaming, but the vials won't come free. The timer panel shows fifteen seconds left.

‘It's no use!' shouts Arturo as the missile begins to hum. ‘Run – if the missile launches, we will both be roasted!'

‘If I don't get the GX-55 out, billions will die,' I yell back, struggling with the vials. At last they come free, but the timer is down to five seconds. There's no escape now. ‘The two of us are a small price to pay,' I tell Arturo.

We look into each other's eyes, knowing we're about to die. Arturo glances at the display. It flashes ‘TIME'S UP'.

‘Not quite,' says Arturo, and his strong arm encircles my waist. ‘There's always time for one last kiss …'

Our lips touch … and suddenly we're surrounded by noise. Not the roar of a missile launching – the sound of laughter. In the tree above us, someone is speaking in a very familiar voice.

‘I'm afraid you're wrong about that,' he tells me. I look up and see, instead of monkeys playing, the highly amused face of Phoenix Torsten – known to his friends as Nix – staring down at me. ‘Your time really is up. 'Cause unless you want to hand over another twenty bucks, “Agent” Thaler, your virtuadventure's over.'

‘Nix,' I hiss through gritted teeth. ‘I'm about to finish the level! You wouldn't!'

‘I would. Virtuadventures' company policy – no one gets a second more than they've paid for.'

And suddenly everything is gone: Arturo, the jungle, all of it. The only thing left is me, tearing off my gaming mask so I can glare at Phoenix on the monitor in front of me.

‘What?' he says. ‘No need to get mad at me, you got your money's worth.' He grins. ‘Or did you want another go, Double-Oh-Snogger?'

‘No offence, Sky, but your cousin is incredibly juvenile.'

Sky looked up from the pile of clothes she was rifling through.

‘And you think this is news? Of course Nix is juvenile, he's like a year and a half younger than me. So
are you, though, so I wouldn't have thought you'd have a problem with him.'

‘Oh, thanks,' I said. ‘Next you'll be suggesting we go and play nicely in the sandpit together.'

‘Hey, if that's what turns you on …' grinned Sky, putting her hands up in defence as I launched a hair band at her from across the room. ‘All right, I'm sorry! I swear I'll never put you and Nix in the same mental category again, okay?'

‘If only we could believe that …' murmured Kiyoko, who was sitting beside me on Sky's bed.

Kiyoko and I often hung out at Sky's place after school and on the weekends. It's right by the beach, it's an easy walk from Flinders High, and best of all, it has the advantage of Sky's mum and her ‘none of my business' attitude to whatever we're up to. If we went to my place, my parents would be knocking on my door every two minutes to check if the three of us were doing our homework. And frankly, that would be offensive to all of us: Ki because she's so smart she barely needs to do homework at all, me because I have my homework schedule carefully structured so I can spare time for my friends, and Sky because for her, homework ranks right up there with planning her retirement.

‘Now quit complaining about Nix and tell me which you like better,' said Sky.

She held up a green floor-length dress made entirely of crochet, and an extremely small tie-dyed miniskirt and crop top set. I looked at Kiyoko. She shook her head.

‘You do realise that this is work experience we're going on, not a Woodstock re-enactment, right?' I asked Sky. ‘Correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding from Mr Reynolds's big speech about appropriate behaviour at your placement was that it was a
bad
thing if your employer could see your undies. Or practically your entire body.' I gestured at the crochet dress.

Sky shook her long, blonde hair.

‘You guys are such prudes! People aren't so hung up about nudity in Denmark, you know.'

‘Sky, you lived in a hippie commune when you were in Denmark,' Ki reminded her. ‘You can hardly claim that's representative of mainstream Danish cultural mores.'

‘Well put,' I nodded.

‘Anyway, when you're working at a florist, you're
supposed
to look bright and flowery,' said Sky, ignoring us. ‘It's not like I'm going to be at some high-powered corporate place like you, Alex. No one's expecting me to turn up in a business suit.'

‘Actually,' I said, as Ki got up to inspect Sky's wardrobe for herself, ‘no one's expecting me to turn up in a business suit either. You can't wear clothes to a virtual office.'

That stopped both of my best friends in their tracks.

‘You mean you're going to your placement
naked
?' Sky turned a startled face to Kiyoko. ‘And she has the cheek to tell me
my
clothes are inappropriate!'

‘Of course I'm not going naked!' I rolled my eyes. ‘I just meant that no one would be able to see my realspace clothes anyway, since they'll only see a virtual representation of me. So there's no need for me to do this whole frenzied-search-for-the-perfect-outfit thing.'

Which was a huge relief, frankly. For a start, I didn't own anything that would have looked professional enough for the place I was going. For another, I just would have spent the whole time worrying about how my slightly pear-shaped figure looked in everything I tried on.

‘Man, that's such a waste,' sighed Sky, holding up a cheesecloth shirt with a hopeful look, only to have Ki throw it deftly onto the reject pile. ‘Don't you realise that not having to wear uniform is one of the two main advantages of work experience?'

‘What's the other one?' I asked.

‘Getting the chance to meet some guys with a little
maturity
.'

I grinned. It was a bit rough on Sky, being older than the rest of us. She came to Australia when she was nearly fourteen, after her parents split up. Sky's mum chose Flinders because her brother's family – including Sky's cousin Phoenix, who was in our year at school – lived here. But when Sky's mum enrolled her at Flinders High, the principal decided that Sky's English wasn't quite up to scratch, so she was put in year seven with us. Sky still maintained that Ms Durand had some kind of
anti-Danish prejudice, but she'd stopped complaining so much about being put in a lower grade now that she was the only person in year eleven with P plates, and everyone wanted to get in her good books.

‘So if you won't be naked, what do you wear to a virtual placement, Alex?' asked Kiyoko. ‘Didn't that email they sent say something about leotards?'

‘Bodysuits,' I corrected. ‘We wear a bodysuit under the Virk Suit. The Virk Suit's like a whole-body virtual gaming outfit.'

‘Meaning it can sense your movements?' Kiyoko said, as she waded further into the wardrobe through a sea of jewelled sandals.

‘Yeah. And it exerts pressure on you so you can feel virtual objects, sit on virtual chairs, that kind of thing. The virtual workplace – “Virk”, they call it – is a lot like a virtuadventure, but it's meant to be way more realistic.'

I felt my stomach tightening at the thought of tomorrow. I'd never been in a Virk Suit before – hardly anyone had, since so far Simulcorp was the only company in the world that used Virk. Getting to do work experience there was the chance of a lifetime – particularly as there was a rumour that last year's most promising student had been offered a Simulcorp internship – and I'd worked damned hard to get it. The thing was, while Sky was beautiful and Ki was gifted, all my life I'd been kind of … average. In most ways, anyway. The main thing I'd ever shown any talent at was gaming. And I'd never thought that would help me
get a good job; my skills didn't extend to programming, and it hadn't taken me long to discover that there were far more experienced gamers than me lining up for the chance to review and test new games. But then Mr Guildenhall, my year ten Commerce teacher, had told me about Simulcorp. A multinational company whose success hinged on their innovative use of virtual reality technologies, and whose employees went to work in a virtual environment? Now that sounded like somewhere I could really fit in. More than that – it sounded like somewhere I could be
successful
. I couldn't wait to start work experience at Simulcorp. But after beating several hundred applicants for the placement, I couldn't help feeling just a little bit worried that I'd fall on my butt the moment I stepped into the office.

‘What about you, Ki?' I asked, to take my mind off my nerves. ‘What are you wearing tomorrow?'

‘A white coat, of course. What else would one wear in a pathology lab?'

‘Apart from that, I meant.'

Kiyoko turned calm, dark eyes on me.

‘Black,' she said, and fished something off the floor.

‘Really? I never would've guessed,' murmured Sky. Ki has a bit of a Goth thing going on.

‘Here.' Ki pushed a bundle of clothes into Sky's arms. Sky untangled it and pulled on the contents: a blue shirt with a mandarin collar, a pair of denim flares with a flower painted on one knee and her cream EcoSneakers. Sky looked in the mirror.

‘Perfect! I've got to hand it to you, Ki, you know style when you see it.'

Kiyoko gave a tiny ‘It's true, I am incredibly wise' nod, and turned to me. ‘Alex, stop worrying about tomorrow.'

I blinked.

‘Who's worrying?'

‘You're not going to embarrass yourself,' continued Ki. ‘Everyone is going to like you, and the next two weeks are going to be everything you ever dreamed of.'

Ki has a bit of a reputation for guru-like wisdom, and I have to say it's generally well-deserved. But this time she was wrong: my work experience placement wasn't going to be everything I ever dreamed of. Before I went to Virk, I never dreamed of murder.