The Industry (6 page)

Kirra dropped her chin to her chest. The room seemed to be shifting gently, tilting as though they were on board a ship. She blinked once, twice, and felt a bead of sweat trail down her spine. The swaying sensation was growing stronger, the metal clanging continued with increased enthusiasm, and all the while the pain in her stomach grew. She reached out to the wall to steady herself.

‘You could at least acknowledge me,' mumbled Milo. ‘You could at least do that. Wouldn't be too hard.'

Kirra wanted to say something to him, but found that the words got lost on the way to her mouth. Suddenly, the room tilted further and faster than it had before and, without warning, plunged into darkness.

 

Her eyelids felt like stones against her eyes. Her head was heavy and her muscles sore, but then she felt something soft and wet against her forehead. The sensation was odd … and wonderful.

She opened her eyes a fraction and came face to face with Milo, who had torn off his coat pocket, doused it in the freezing water from the tap and was now dabbing her forehead with it. She was lying on her side, sprawled on the concrete, and he was close, much closer than he'd ever been. It was then Kirra realised he was holding her head in his other hand. On the floor beside him were two plates, one full and the other empty.

‘Are you alright?' he asked.

Kirra's reply emerged in the form of a strangled groan. Milo yanked off his coat and bundled it up. He stuffed it beneath her head and sat back to review his effort. Kirra had to concede that it was a much more comfortable pillow than her scrunched-up school dress. He slid the plate of food across the concrete. The tips of his fingers were still white from the cold.

‘How'd you get this?' Kirra asked softly.

He shrugged. ‘Dialled three for room service.'

He waited for her to laugh. When she didn't, he said, ‘They brought it in while you were out.'

‘Oh,' was all she could manage.

Without meeting Kirra's eye, he folded his pocket into a perfect rectangle and laid it across her forehead. She examined him closely. He looked strangely distressed. Why should he care about her at all, especially when they annoyed each other so much?

When Kirra's head stopped spinning, she heaved herself up and found the wall to lean against.

‘How long was I out?' she asked, her voice croaky.

‘Not long. A few minutes maybe.' His hands were balled into clenched fists.

‘You should eat,' he told her after a while, breaking the weird moment in which there seemed to be almost no mutual dislike.

Kirra scrutinised her plate. It was unusually full.

‘I ate already,' Milo said.

Kirra frowned at him. In a flash, she pushed half the meal — tinned tuna and plain slices of wholemeal bread — back onto his plate.

‘No! It's not … I had mine!'

‘Don't lie,' she muttered, drawing her plate into her lap.

‘You should have it,' he said weakly, though he looked longingly at the meal. ‘Gotta keep you alive.'

‘It could be days before they remember again. Just eat it.'

He sighed and took his plate. They ate together in silence and, to Kirra's surprise, she found she didn't mind that he hadn't returned to his corner straightaway.

Kirra awoke with a start as two hands grabbed her and lifted her swingingly towards the door. She saw Milo wake just as the door to the cell was slammed shut between them.

The recruit hauled her to the long, darkened room she despised so much. She expected her heart to explode into a flurry of panic as he strapped her into the chair, then left her to contemplate the approaching agony of Balcescu's drug, but, strangely, she was completely composed. Losing Lena had changed things, she guessed.

Balcescu was already placing vials on the tables around her, hooking her up to the heart monitor and finding a vein for the catheter. As always, he seemed detached from his environment and his work, only glancing at Kirra once before Latham strode into the room.

‘Good morning, Kirra.'

She said nothing.

Latham laid a piece of paper on a table and cleared his throat. ‘Now, you know the drill, Kirra. Balcescu has your dose ready.' He handed her a pen. ‘Be a good girl.'

She studied him closely for many seconds before she spoke.

‘Why did you kill her?' she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Latham frowned. ‘Why did I …? Oh, I see. Lena meant something to you. Well, Lena broke the rules trying to escape with you, Kirra. She had to be punished. It was unfortunate, but necessary.'

Lena had to be punished? Punishment was something that involved after-school detention. What Latham had done to Lena wasn't punishment.

‘Let me tell you something,' he continued, crouching to her level as though she required eye contact to retain critical information. ‘Connections are dangerous in this world you now live in, Kirra. They will only serve to limit you and hurt you. You see, you too had to be punished for trying to flee, and so Lena's death also satisfied that requirement. And now you understand why friends are such an impractical idea, don't you? Particularly for someone as extraordinary as you.'

Kirra stiffened slightly in her seat. ‘I'm not helping you today,' she said, steadying her voice as much as possible.

Latham did not seem particularly bothered by this. ‘Have you forgotten what Balcescu's drug feels like?'

‘No. I haven't.'

He watched her carefully for a moment.

‘Balcescu, if you wouldn't mind,' he said, clasping his hands behind his back.

Balcescu injected the drug into the catheter and stepped back. Kirra braced herself, knowing that while it would be agonising, what was coming could not possibly hurt more than losing Lena.

As the drug took effect her body lurched forward. Her fingers spasmed uncontrollably and her body parts felt weirdly sectioned off from each other, each straining in a different, but no less torturous, way than the last time.

She looked up at Latham and found him watching her curiously because she wasn't yielding. What he didn't know was that Kirra had decided the night Lena was killed that she wouldn't give in. She knew, somewhere deep inside her, that they would kill her when they were finished with her. Perhaps … perhaps better sooner than later?

White-hot flames blazed within her. They licked at her veins and slid across her eyes like shutters over a window pane, but she wouldn't give up. Her lungs screamed, her heart thudded, and suddenly, without warning, the very thing she had been waiting for —
praying
for — happened. She was free and falling into a pitch-black abyss, her eyes rolling back in her head, her body sagging into unconsciousness.

 

‘Kirra?' Latham's voice was soft and very close to her ear. She strained to regain awareness, her mind sifting through the lasting effects of the drug. She prised her eyes open.

‘That was very foolish, Kirra. You shouldn't push yourself like that,' Latham said admonishingly, as though she had injected the drug herself. ‘It can be quite dangerous.'

Kirra watched Balcescu from the corner of her bleary eye. He was drawing more of the drug into a syringe.

‘Do we have to give you another dose?' Latham continued, sliding the paper towards her once more.

‘I won't do it,' she mumbled groggily, fighting to keep herself upright. ‘You'll just have to keep going 'til it kills me.'

‘We can't have that,' said Latham mockingly. ‘We need you. You are vital to us.'

It was then Kirra noticed a second chair adjacent to her own that hadn't been there before. In it sat Milo, strapped in place, twisting his neck to look over at her.

‘Translate the code, Kirra,' Latham said, looking over at Milo.

‘Or what?'

Latham didn't answer her, but indicated something to Balcescu, who advanced on Milo, held down his arm and injected him. For the first moment, nothing happened, but Kirra knew the drug needed time before it could hit with full force, time to slither its way into the bloodstream and find the most vulnerable spots, which was exactly what it did. Milo gasped and bolted forward in his chair, the muscles in his forearms contorting and his veins suddenly prominent beneath his skin. Kirra was horrified. Every ache, every pang, every stab of pain was reflected in his expression and his disjointed body movements. His eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth sagged. For an instant, she wondered if she looked that manic when she was injected.

‘Give me the sequence and we'll provide him with the antidote,' Latham said. Kirra had almost forgotten he
was there. ‘Refuse and the dosage will be increased. It's all up to you.'

Milo was bellowing now. He seemed to be having a seizure, and his yells evolved into outright screams. Kirra looked away, traumatised. She didn't want to give in. That was the last thing she wanted … But she couldn't ignore the fact that Milo was just like her. He was a normal boy, from a normal life, and it wasn't his fault he could do the code, just as it wasn't hers. Besides, the memory of his hand cradling her head last night had not dimmed completely, and it was with that memory in mind that she spoke to Latham.

‘Alright,' she mumbled, fumbling for the pen. ‘Alright, just make it stop.'

She scrawled the sequence beneath the code, and allowed herself to be unstrapped and forced down the corridor. Milo was given the antidote, his screams stopped, and he was released from his own chair and brought with her. Instead of returning to the cell, as she expected, they were taken into the mouth of the hangar. A jet was waiting, its engine rumbling. They were pushed up the stairs and into the cabin, and Kirra found herself back in the storage compartment she'd woken up in on the very first day of her abduction. The door was closed and locked, escape, as per usual, impossible.

She didn't care where they were heading or why. The thought of helping Latham still stung sharply, and the after-effects of the drug hadn't worn off — after-effects that seemed to be plaguing Milo too, although differently. He looked unsteady on his legs and was sweating profusely, whilst Kirra had to work hard to
ignore the growing nausea in the pit of her stomach. That turned out to be more difficult than she'd anticipated, and she lunged for another small packing box, wondering vaguely who had cleaned up the last one, and emptied the contents of her stomach into it.

She jumped a little when she felt Milo place his trembling hand on her shoulder. He kneeled by her side and gathered her hair in his hands to bunch it at the nape of her neck.

When the nausea ceased, Kirra wiped her mouth and backed away from him, her hair unravelling and spilling across her shoulders. She missed Lena, suddenly more than ever before.

‘Kirra … I —'

‘No,' she whispered, wiping a stray tear away and shutting her eyes tightly. ‘Just leave me alone.'

The plane taxied out and took off, and Kirra turned away without another thought for Milo or their mysterious destination.

Milo spent the flight standing against the wall, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, occasionally rubbing at his eyes. Kirra didn't pay him any attention. The last thing she wanted was a conversation that might result in him trying to thank her or attempting to discuss what had happened at the hangar.

She slid open the closest window shade and looked down to see an infinite blue gulf beneath them. They seemed to soar above the ocean for hours. Kirra knew she ought to be trying to establish her location; but really, she thought, what difference would it make?

She kept her place by the window, and saw when the sea finally gave way to land. They were still in the northern hemisphere: the fields below were coated in layers of fresh snow. This didn't really tell her anything useful, however, as the northern hemisphere happened to be quite extensive. All she knew was that she was as far
from Freemont as it was possible to be; as far from her family as she'd ever been before.

Perhaps by now they'd assumed she'd been seized by a crazy man. Murdered and thrown in the Yarra River. There was nothing to link her to an assassin and the ever-mystifying Spencer code, so what chance could they ever have of understanding it all when she still didn't herself?

 

It was still light when the plane landed. The door snapped open and a familiar recruit, Marcam, stood at the threshold, a gun dangling in his oversized hand. He wasn't a good-looking man; in fact, his face looked as though it had been struck with a ping-pong paddle, and his teeth reminded Kirra of the mottled knuckles of a skeleton hand she'd once seen on a biology excursion.

‘Up. Now.'

She got to her feet and crossed to the door with Milo behind her. Marcam followed them down the stairs and out into the wind. Kirra sighed when all she found waiting for her was another hangar. However, instead of being dragged inside, as she expected, she was forced into the back of a grey car, Milo beside her. An agitated-looking Latham sat in the front seat, next to a driver Kirra didn't recognise. Another car followed them. Kirra frowned as the hangar disappeared behind them. Where were they going?

Milo stayed silent, content to stare at the passing trees and grassland. Kirra did the same, until Latham's phone rang. She looked up.

‘Yes,' he answered curtly. ‘What? The meeting's been moved?'

Kirra snuck a quick glance at Milo. He was listening intently.

Latham raised his voice. ‘Ensure you have the correct floor! We need to do this now. It has to be today or we won't be compensated. It'll have to be deciphered on-site.'

Latham ended the call and massaged his forehead aggressively.

Milo looked sideways at Kirra. She had a sinking feeling they were about to witness something catastrophic.

Fifteen minutes later, the passing fields had become city streets, trees giving way to skyscrapers and office buildings. The car turned into an underground car park. The recruits pulled Kirra and Milo out of their seats and set them on their feet. Latham turned to them, looking stressed.

‘Occasionally, plans change,' he told them. ‘We always endeavour to be prepared for that. Today, however, caught us off guard. I am going to make something very clear to you — both of you. You are about to enter a building where you are going to translate codes, separately, and then we are leaving. You will not fight us and you will not draw attention to yourselves. Are we clear?'

Milo stood with his brown eyes trained on the opposite wall. Kirra stared at her boots, almost overcome with dread. What was in this building? What or who was Latham after? Was she going to see another person die today?

‘Good,' Latham said, even though neither of them had answered him.

The two recruits prodded them towards the car park's exit. After spending so much time in the darkened cell, the city street and its glaring sunlight came as a nasty shock to Kirra.

As her eyes adjusted, she spotted a man standing on the kerb on the other side of the road. She only noticed him because he stood stock-still amid the bustling crowd. He looked like the type of man who wasn't easily pushed around, a fact reflected in the behaviour of the passers-by, who gave him a wide berth, some even sidestepping to stay out of his way. He was scrutinising Kirra and her companions very closely. Short-bearded and stout, he wore a grey suit and was leaning on a steel walking cane, his fingers gripping it tightly. He didn't seem nearly old enough to need a cane. Something vague and distant tugged at Kirra's memory. She narrowed her eyes. Who was he? Why was he so interested in them?

She snuck another glance at Milo. He seemed oblivious to the odd spectator; and Latham was clearly too preoccupied with the task at hand to take any real notice of what was going on around them. Kirra looked back. The man didn't move at all as they crossed the street and entered the revolving door of a vast building with the word Bachmeier printed on the side in giant white lettering. Kirra craned back and was sure she saw the man take off in the opposite direction down the street as soon as they were safely inside.

Latham preceded them into a stark white reception area, empty save for two security guards sitting at a desk. He pushed the elevator button and waited. Kirra looked expectantly at the security guards, waiting for them to
look up so she could get their attention. She was horrified to find neither guard took any notice at all.

The elevator doors opened and then closed with Latham's group tucked safely inside, Kirra wedged between two recruits. They exited on the third floor, where Latham punched a number into his phone.

‘Where are you?' he asked impatiently. He listened for a moment. ‘Alright, Cochran will go with the girl. Keller? Do not let anything go wrong.'

He hung up and turned to his two recruits. ‘Keller has the equipment and the codes,' he told them. ‘He'll meet you in the stairwell.' Then he strode back into the elevator and disappeared.

Marcam and Cochran led Milo and Kirra through a grey door into the stairwell. A man Kirra guessed to be Keller was standing against the wall, a large black sports bag at his feet. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Cochran.

‘Take the girl and disable the system at the end of this floor. Get back here as soon as it's done.'

Cochran took the code and grasped Kirra's arm, forcing her back into the corridor and away from the others. She turned back to see Keller remove a gun from inside his jacket. Her heart jumped into her throat. What were they going to do to Milo?

The corridor was white and mostly empty, with many small side passages running off it that seemed to go on forever. Glass-panelled doors revealed glimpses of huge open-plan offices, meeting rooms and the occasional cafeteria. Finally, Cochran stopped at a cabinet set into the wall by a doorway. He forced it open without
difficulty; inside was a small touch screen showing a keypad.

He turned to Kirra. ‘Give me the sequence,' he said, brandishing the paper at her.

Kirra ignored him.

He raised his gun and pressed it against her neck. ‘Do it.'

Kirra felt him force a pencil into her hand.

‘Do you want to die over this?' he said.

Kirra blinked at him. She'd had an abundance of time in the past few weeks to consider death, and, really, she had to admit to herself that her answer was ‘no'. Did she want to give her life for something she didn't even understand? Did she want to die for someone she'd never met before? Could she really just allow herself to be killed? In the safety of the cell, it was easy to believe she might have that sort of strength (or perhaps it was foolishness?), but when faced with the choice between her death and someone else's, she knew she'd choose someone else's. She wasn't proud of it, but it was the truth. Then, as the recruit pressed the gun further into her throat, a thought came to her.

‘You can't kill me,' she said. ‘You need me.'

It seemed he'd been expecting her answer. ‘All I have to do is make a phone call and they'll kill the other one.'

Kirra glared at him. She'd been expecting his answer too.

‘Fine,' she muttered, taking the paper from him. Within moments she'd scrawled the code across the bottom of the page.

Cochran tore it away from her and punched it into the touch screen. A moment later the screen read ‘SYSTEM DISABLED'.

Cochran pulled out his phone. ‘It's off. You can go in,' he said quickly.

He snapped the phone shut and grabbed Kirra's arm. ‘Move,' he said, pushing her down the corridor.

He marched them straight ahead, ignoring every passing door, every corridor, every elevator, his focus on getting back to the stairwell as quickly as possible, but as they went Kirra caught glimpses of people at work, people making coffee, people in meetings. She chewed her top lip. Someone in this building had only moments to live. She suddenly felt ill. Some person was about to die because of her.

‘NO!'

Kirra lunged towards the wall and yanked open a small glass case by a door. Inside was a red switch — a fire alarm — and she pulled it down as hard as she could. At once, a siren blasted through the building, great sweeping wails that filled the corridor and alerted people to the imminent danger. Cochran froze. Kirra ignored him and watched impatiently as it dawned on the office workers that the alarm was cause for real panic, not a mere drill. All along the corridor, doors flew open and people tumbled out, looking around wildly.

There seemed to be hundreds of them, and Kirra was unexpectedly surrounded, the crowd jostling her forward. She was separated from Cochran, who had let go of her to fumble for his phone, and as the fire alarm screamed on and people fought for passage to the stairwell, Kirra
seized her chance. She tore down the corridor, shoving through the mass of bodies with ease, adrenaline boosting her strength.

‘No!' Cochran screamed after her.

She glanced back to see him struggling through the swelling barricade of workers, but it was too late. She was already whipping around a corner and dodging through the throng. She couldn't believe it. She was free!

‘Kirra?'

Her head shot up. Milo was standing still amid the swarm, staring at her.

‘What are you doing?' she panted.

‘Looking for you!' he said. ‘What happened?'

‘I rang the alarm!' she yelled over the din.

He stared blankly at her as a gangly man bounded out of a door beside them and raced off in search of an exit. ‘You did that?'

Kirra nodded. A girl shoved past them in a pinstripe suit, one of her high heels stabbing Kirra's big toe. She almost didn't notice.

‘There's an explosive,' Milo said, his jaw set. Beads of sweat lined his forehead.

Kirra felt her heart seize.
An explosive?

‘What?' she spluttered. ‘D-don't they just want to shoot someone?'

‘No! They came to blast the whole building apart! They needed the sequence so they could plant the bomb in some central room or something.' Milo seemed oblivious to the effect this information had on her. ‘We need to get out of here right now!'

‘How did you —'

‘I got away from them,' he cut in.

It was then Kirra noticed Keller's gun gripped tightly in his hand.

‘What are you doing?' she yelled. ‘Did you kill them?'

Milo frowned at her. ‘Would you care if I had?'

She stared at him, unsure of her answer.

‘I just got away,' he told her before she could say anything, shoving the gun in the waistband of his pants. He jammed his hands in his hair and stared at a spot over Kirra's shoulder. Then he seemed to come to some sort of decision. ‘They're looking for us,' he said. ‘Come on.'

He started down the main stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. Kirra struggled to keep up, her boots slipping on every other step, her hand sweaty on the railing.

Milo came to a halt on the stairs and she stopped just short of running into him.

‘Shhh!' he whispered.

Peering over the railing, Kirra spotted one of the recruits racing up towards them. Milo cursed under his breath and grabbed her hand, then pushed his way back into another corridor. They were met with the same havoc, people shoving and yelling and almost climbing over each other as they flooded to safety. Kirra's heart was pounding and her breathing shallow and sharp. The need to exit the building was overwhelming, but avoiding the recruits was paramount. She didn't know how much more she could take of captivity. She didn't know how much more she could take of being away from home.

In the corridor, she turned just in time to see two recruits step out of the nearest elevator. ‘Milo!' she yelled. He looked around and swore loudly …

They shoved through the crowd and turned down a narrow passageway. A door to their left read ‘SERVICE STAIRWELL'. Milo pushed through it and skidded down the stairs, Kirra following closely.

Another door burst open and a couple entered the stairwell from a lower floor. Kirra and Milo came to a stop, fearful they might be more recruits, but Kirra saw the fear etched across their faces, and knew they were office workers who had nothing to do with anything.

The couple flew down the remaining stairs, reaching the ground level before Kirra and Milo. They forced open a service exit, which led into a dusty alleyway cluttered with rubbish bins and discarded office furniture and when Kirra saw it she felt victorious. They could escape this way. If they were quick, they could make it to safety before Latham found them.

Above the noise of the alarm, a more terrible sound suddenly met Kirra's ears. She stopped, frowning. A thunderous rumble resonated down the stairwell and the building began to shake; only slightly at first, and then violently, as though it had sprouted legs and was taking great, lurching steps across the city. She looked down at Milo, who had raced ahead into the alleyway and was holding the door open for her.

‘Come on!' he bellowed, staring at her like she'd gone mad.