Atomic Swarm Read online

  ‘So what next?’ Jackson stuttered. ‘You going to kill me?’

  Lear let out a spontaneous laugh. ‘I’d certainly be justified, wouldn’t you say, Farley?’ Then his countenance changed, becoming darker. ‘When you and English betrayed my trust, things became extremely difficult for me. The empire I’d sweated blood to build had crumbled. Even after my disappearing act, the scavengers continued to pick the meat from my bones. Corporations that had stood side by side with me, and governments who had contracted MeX to do their dirty work, all stood in line for whatever morsels they could strip from the skeleton of Lear Corp.’

  Lear walked to a table across from Jackson’s bed and picked up something from a silver tray. As he held it, the blade of a scalpel flashed in the light.

  Jackson’s whole body went rigid.

  ‘As you suspected, Farley, I decided to make use of the openness of certain South American countries to visitors who want to keep a low profile. Even so, I couldn’t stop sightings of me appearing on the Internet. So I decided to go under the surgeon’s knife.’

  Lear drew the scalpel blade across his face, just millimetres from his skin.

  ‘But the imbecile who tried to change me got it wrong!’ Lear’s eyes burned with rage and he stabbed the scalpel down, its blade snapping on the surface of the metal table. ‘The infection he gave me ate my face. If I hadn’t had the vile tissue cut away, it would have killed me.’

  Jackson could see beads of sweat forming on Lear’s forehead, but not on the undulating ridges of shiny skin that bubbled up around his cheeks and nose – those remained shiny and plastic-looking.

  ‘What can I say?’ Lear’s mood seemed to lighten. ‘I wouldn’t recommend visiting this particular plastic surgeon – not that he has a hospital left to visit.’

  Jackson dared not think what Lear meant by that last comment.

  ‘So now we come to the diamonds, Farley. For thousands of years, so many stones, so much blood. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is about gemstones that so enchants. Coloured ones are especially beguiling. As your scrawny little geologist friend would attest, the most valuable diamonds in the world are naturally occurring coloured ones. But as we both know, Farley, science is amazing and if you can convince a buyer that your isotope-bombarded rocks are naturally coloured – well, he’ll go to the ends of the earth to get his hands on them.’

  ‘So the diamonds your swarm stole from Brazil are sitting in MIT’s reactor right now?’

  ‘What a clever boy you are. It’s a shame you’ve always been so… idealistic, shall we say.’

  Lear walked up to the metal table, where a tube that snaked into Jackson’s arm terminated in a bag of fluid. Lear turned a small tap underneath the bag, then smiled back at Jackson.

  ‘I think you should stay here for a little while,’ he said. ‘For your own safety, Farley, you understand. When you wake up, both I and my new blue diamonds will be gone – and, as the dust settles, the last thing the authorities will be concerned about is some English kid chasing a ghost.’

  Jackson could feel the effects of whatever was flowing into his veins from the tube in his arm. The lights seemed brighter again and his head felt light.

  Lear stood at Jackson’s bedside for a moment, just watching him. ‘Goodbye, Jackson,’ he whispered, then he turned and walked out.

  All Jackson’s body craved was to give in to the effects of the inebriating liquid that was mixing with his blood, and to drift into a deep sleep. But he fought it – he had to if he was going to get out of here alive.

  Shifting his weight from side to side, he started to rock the bed sideways towards the metal table. Something gave on the wheels underneath, a brake perhaps, because now the bed moved more easily. Quickly, Jackson bent his right arm at the elbow and reached out his hand to yank the tube from the bag that fed it. As the clear liquid drug drained from the bag and on to the table, he saw it was pooling around his phone, which had obviously been removed from his pocket and switched off. Next to it sat the broken scalpel.

  Jackson stretched and grabbed the scalpel between the tips of his fingers. Most of the instrument’s metal blade was missing, but a chunk at the base was left.

  The room was spinning now and he felt as if he was holding on to the side of a carousel. He sliced the stub of the scalpel blade across the rope holding down his arm and somehow managed to drunkenly sever the rope without lacerating himself in the process.

  With his free hand, he clumsily unclipped the belt round his waist and slipped his other arm free. As he dropped to the floor, his legs almost gave way, but Jackson wouldn’t let them – he grabbed his phone and drew a circle with it in the air, the gesture that switched it back on.

  Giddy from not only the drugs but also relief at escaping the horrendous room, Jackson stumbled through the surgery doors into the corridor. His jelly legs carried him as quickly as they could, past doors in other rooms, towards what he hoped was the exit, when he heard someone shout from behind him. He knew that voice and this time it wasn’t Lear.

  Jackson looked round in horror and his fears were confirmed. It was Goulman – and he didn’t look as if he was there to help him.

  Jackson rattled the handle of the door nearest to him, but it was locked. He ran to the next one as Goulman ate up the corridor with his large strides, and almost cried with relief as this one opened and Jackson fell in, locking it instantly.

  There was a roar of anger from outside. ‘Lear! Get someone to find the key for this room! He’s locked himself inside.’

  Jackson couldn’t believe it – what on earth were Goulman and Lear doing working together? This nightmare was getting worse by the minute.

  As key after key was tried, Jackson knew it was a matter of seconds before his captors entered his temporary refuge. He could try to call Brooke, but if she wasn’t by her phone it might take her a while to answer. Besides, his phone would be checked and then he’d just be moved on to another location. Jackson made a lightning-quick calculation in his head as his fingers stroked the device’s glossy plastic surface and stabbed at the SMS application.

  He focused all his energy into his fingers as they quickly punched number and letter combinations into his phone.

  With the entry finished, Jackson hit SEND. As he began to lose consciousness, the last he heard was the crash of the door flying open and the voices of Goulman and Lear.

  ‘Check where it was sent!’

  ‘It just clicks! It’s a dead line. It must be the drugs; he’s just typed a load of gibberish.’

  ‘Good. Put him back in the storeroom. And make sure you lock it this time!’

  CHAPTER 18

  It had been twenty-four hours since Brooke had last had contact with Jackson.

  It was very strange. Even when Jackson needed some space after his dad’s visit, he’d texted to say he was OK. Something was very wrong.

  Brooke had had no luck with his phone, finding it switched off every time she called. So she’d got the number for Atticus79 from the janitor of their building and had arranged to go round and see him.

  If Atticus79 didn’t come up with anything useful, Brooke thought, as she rounded the corner to Simmons Hall, she would go to the police. The irony of asking the very people who had wrongly accused her father of terrorism didn’t escape her, but it might just be her only option.

  When Brooke reached the building, she noticed a small crowd of students gathered outside, pointing up at the front of the building.

  Brooke looked herself and saw what was causing all the fuss. Unusually, considering it was dark, most of the building’s lights were out, except for a few glowing in windows in the centre of the huge structure, which seemed to form a pattern.

  ‘Ghoul!’ said Atticus79.

  Brooke hadn’t even noticed him.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense!’ the gaunt boy continued. ‘There’s no point doing a hack if no one understands what you’re trying to say.’

  Now Atticus79 mentioned it, the l
it windows did form crude letters, which spelled Ghoul.

  Brooke stared open-mouthed at the towering matrix of lights. She was in no doubt that the message had come from Jackson.

  As Brooke entered the lab, she made straight for Goulman’s desk. She felt guilty about snooping in her dad’s lab assistant’s things, but Ghoul wasn’t here for her to ask questions about Jackson and it was unlikely that he’d be back before the morning.

  Atticus79’s account of Jackson asking about diamonds had given Brooke no further clues to what Jackson meant by his message, and so Ghoul – or in this case his laptop – was her only chance of finding any information about her missing friend.

  But just as she booted up his machine, Brooke heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell. She could tell from the energetic way the feet pounded the stairs that it was Goulman.

  ‘Shucks!’ she said under her breath, promptly shutting the laptop and checking that nothing else was out of place on his desk. She wasn’t sure she needed to be hiding anything but she felt guilty for poking about nonetheless.

  ‘Hi, Brooke!’ said Goulman nonchalantly as he entered the lab. ‘How’s J.P. doing? That lawyer of his made any progress?’

  ‘He’s good,’ said Brooke, moving away from Goulman’s desk. ‘The lawyer says the police investigation has fallen apart. Dad should be released tomorrow!’ Goulman walked to his desk. He opened a drawer and transferred a few things from it to a holdall. Brooke squinted, but couldn’t see what things exactly he was loading into the bag. Goulman felt Brooke’s eyes on him and turned.

  ‘Um, I’m outta here, Brooke,’ he said. ‘I might work from home for a few days.’ Then he corrected himself. ‘Unless of course there’s anything you need me to do for J.P.?’

  ‘Er, no,’ Brooke said. ‘Working from home should be fine.’

  The last thing Goulman packed was his laptop. ‘See ya later!’ he said, scooping up the bag full of stuff with one large powerful arm and striding towards the stairs. And then he was gone.

  That was strange, thought Brooke. Goulman hadn’t seemed as pleased as she had expected at the news that J.P. was about to be released – in fact, he hadn’t commented on it at all. And he’d been so keen to get in and out of the lab quickly, she hadn’t even had a chance to ask him about Jackson.

  Brooke felt a mixture of confusion and guilt. She didn’t want to be feeling suspicious of a man she’d known and trusted for years, but something just wasn’t right here. And Jackson was still missing.

  Brooke turned to the robot pens.

  Tread hardly made a whisper as he cruised fifteen metres behind Goulman’s station wagon.

  One of the advantages of the wheel-bot’s two-stage, hybrid fuel-cell engine, which J.P. had made sure to explain to the government funding agencies, was that it was whisper quiet. Stealth was something the professor had always felt was missing from high-speed police pursuit vehicles. If a car-jacker didn’t know anyone was following him, so J.P.’s pitch went, there was no need for the criminal to speed. That made him safer to the public and easier to catch.

  Brooke followed Tread in Tin Lizzie – Tug and Fist were stowed inside the trunk. She kept her distance, as she didn’t want to risk Goulman spotting her in his rear-view mirror. It was around 11 p.m. and there weren’t too many other cars on the road, but via Tread’s camera Brooke had noticed one or two pedestrians and a guy on a bicycle double take as Tread glided noiselessly past them.

  Crucially, Goulman hadn’t clocked a thing as he wormed his way through Cambridge and, so far, he looked as if he was just going home. That is, until he turned left when he should have taken a right. Instead of picking up the expressway out of the city, he was travelling to the other side of the university campus.

  The station wagon descended down a service road and pulled up at the bottom, beside steel double doors. Brooke knew immediately where on the campus they were – the ramp led down to the storage facilities and access tunnels beneath one of the huge chemistry blocks. When the gas tanks and chemical feeds that supplied the laboratories in the building needed servicing, this was where the maintenance staff drove in.

  Brooke watched Tread’s feed on the screen that was built into Tin Lizzie’s dashboard. The door opened and a man stepped out. He turned, threaded a chain through the handles of the doors and padlocked its two ends together.

  As the man climbed into Goulman’s car, Brooke strained to see if she recognized him, but the brim of his hat cast a harsh shadow over his face.

  The station wagon then drove forwards and up the ramp, bearing left at the top and joining the main road.

  Brooke intended to let Tread follow the men, but as she drifted down the ramp and past the steel doors, she saw that they were fire doors – doors designed to open out in the event of a laboratory blaze.

  Why would you lock a fire door? she thought. To keep someone from getting out!

  As Brooke manipulated the thin white plastic handset in her hand, Fist jumped from Tin Lizzie’s trunk. Seconds later the chain and padlock lay in tatters. Fist made short work of the fireproof doors too, bending back the toughened steel.

  Without a single window in the concrete maze of tunnels, it was pitch black, but Tread’s powerful LED beam lit up the subterranean tunnels as Brooke scurried after her uni-wheeled machine, Fist walking faithfully behind on his fingertips.

  Fist must have smashed down the doors of twenty different rooms before Brooke heard the faint trace of a voice in the dark.

  ‘Jackson!’ Brooke burst into one of the rooms, horrified to find her friend delirious and handcuffed to a bed.

  As Fist carried him to her waiting Hummer, Jackson was muttering jumbled words.

  ‘Dust!’ he mumbled. ‘Diamond… dust!’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on, Jackson,’ said Brooke, jumping into the driving seat. ‘But you’re going to the hospital! Look at the state of your head! It looks like you were sewn up by a three-year-old.’

  ‘No!’ he groaned. ‘Not hospital. No time!’

  ‘Why’s there no time, Jackson?’ Brooke asked. She looked round; there didn’t seem to be anyone coming after them. What was it Jackson was trying to tell her?

  ‘Dust…’ he tried again. ‘He’s going to do it, when the… the dust settles.’

  ‘What dust? Who?’ asked Brooke gently.

  ‘Dust… the radioactive dust. Dust from the bomb.’ Jackson took a deep breath, desperately trying one last time to speak sense through the effects of the drugs. ‘Lear’s put a bomb in the reactor.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Tin Lizzie skidded sideways through the crossroads as Brooke gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. Jackson’s drugs were slowly wearing off and he had managed to explain, with some difficulty, about Goulman’s betrayal and, even worse, Lear’s reappearance in their life.

  ‘He done fooled us all!’ said Brooke. ‘That evil scumbag just doesn’t know when to lie down and accept defeat.’ She really had believed he’d been dead all this time.

  They were too late to prevent Lear’s diamond theft from the reactor, but their main concern now was to stop the explosion that Lear and Goulman had set up to cover their tracks and distract the authorities from pursuing them.

  Brooke accelerated up the street where MIT’s nuclear reactor was. As the self-driving Hummer passed the building, with her tachometer touching 70 kilometres an hour, Brooke kicked open the tailgate and Tug and Fist dropped out.

  Tin Lizzie continued on to the basement of the Fire Proof building as Brooke, still in the driving seat, targeted the reactor complex’s front door through Tug’s camera.

  ‘FLTTN IT’ read her text command.

  ‘MY PLESUR ;-)’ came Tug’s reply.

  No sooner had Brooke’s handset warmed to Tug’s response, than the snubnosed robot had shot across the road and demolished the armour-plated door.

  ‘SRCH AN DSCVR,’ texted Brooke, sending the robot on an automated tour of the reactor plant. Then Tin Lizzie arrived o
utside the entrance to the lift in the Fire Proof building. Jackson was feeling much better, but he was in no state to control a robot. As they descended in the lift cage down to the lab, Brooke helped him from her Hummer. Once in the basement, she sat him in a workstation chair, then ran to her own desk.

  Transferring Tug’s video feed to the widescreen monitor on her desk, Brooke could see two guards in a corridor, holding their stomachs in agony.

  ‘It’s the Bass Bombs,’ said Jackson. ‘Lear’s swarm robots are fitted with Bass Bombs.’

  ‘We’ll come back for them later,’ said Brooke. ‘We need to check the main building first.’

  With Tug leading the way on autopilot, Brooke directed Fist to follow him.

  The rhythmic blinking of yellow warning lights revealed a curved corridor, which ran, moat-like, round the concrete dome inside which the reactor core was housed.

  ‘It’s eerie,’ whispered Jackson. His head was throbbing, but he was feeling more alert.

  ‘It’s also deadly,’ said Brooke. ‘Look at that reading.’ Brooke pointed at her 32-inch LED monitor, which was showing what looked like a rectangular clock on the concrete wall of the reactor corridor. ‘It’s a Geiger counter. It measures ionizing radiation. And it’s showing lethal levels. Anyone in this building is in terrible danger.’

  ‘What about the guards?’ Jackson rasped. ‘There is nothing between them and the reactor.’

  ‘Fist can get the guards out,’ said Brooke. ‘Tug is best set up to check on the reactor core. Do you think you can manage him?’

  ‘I can try,’ said Jackson.

  Tug was still in his automated discovery mode as he entered the circular corridor that ringed the reactor. He was halfway round the concrete-lined passage when his camera locked on to some rubble, below a hole cut out of the inside wall. Jackson could clearly see that the uneven edge of the hole was made up of other, much smaller circles.