Rise of the Heroes (11 page)

“What?”

“The casing, get it open! We only need the hard drive.” Pete knelt down and began tracing his fingers along the back of the computer. He took the flashlight back from Toby and aimed it on a set of screws holding the side panels onto the case.

“We need to get these screws out. Do you have a screwdriver on you?”

“Of course I do,” replied Toby sarcastically.

Pete shone the flashlight around the room in the vain hope he could find one.

“Then we'll have to take the whole thing,” said Pete.

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Everything on the computer is stored on the hard drive. The operating system, your games, all of your parents' stuff, and
all
of your Internet favorites! If the hard drive still works, all we have to do is take it out and try it on my computer!”

Hope flooded through Toby. “Awesome! Wait; if the police catch us carrying this through the streets at night, they'll think we stole it!” He looked around the room, and had an idea. “Pass me that brick!”

The policeman threw down the crossword in despair and made another check of the street. Nobody had been around for hours, and he was truly bored. With another five hours of his shift left he contemplated turning the heat on in the car again, but decided to warm himself up with a quick patrol of the area.

If anything the fog had thickened, and the officer tugged his jacket tighter to keep out the chill. He swung his flashlight around, satisfied to see the thick beam outlined by the fog. All the other homes had been evacuated because of fears of a gas leak, so the street was quiet.

Almost. A loud thump made the policeman stop in his tracks. There was another succession of loud bangs, like somebody trying to smash through a door. His hand withdrew his taser—a small stun gun that fired an electrical shock to disable any attacker. He'd been warned about possible looters, and the security of people's homes was in his hands.

His ears strained against the muffled silence offered by the fog—until he heard the thump again, this time
accompanied by a metallic clank. “Maybe car thieves,” he thought.

The policeman advanced.

Toby withheld a cheer as the computer's side panel came away after he had pounded it with a brick. Unable to unscrew it, he and Pete had decided to use brute force. The open side now revealed the mangled computer interior.

Pete's fingers found the oblong black and silver hard drive half-hanging from its bay.

“This is it!” he said, as he pulled the cables from the back of the drive. It was a solid, heavy device, which he carefully passed to Toby.

“Will it work?” Toby asked, shaking it.

Pete's hands shot out, stopping him. “Not if you keep doing that! They're sensitive devices, and after the computer was thrown around in that twister, it might be damaged. But it's the only chance we have.”

A blinding light suddenly fell across them. And with it, an angry-sounding voice.

“You there! Hands up! You're under arrest!” shouted the cop, pushing halfway through a slit in the plastic sheeting.

Toby and Pete exchanged frightened glances. In a flash, Toby was on his feet.

“Run!” Toby yelled and powered down the hallway, shoving the hard drive into the safety of his jacket. He could hear Pete close behind.

“Stop or I'll shoot!” yelled the policeman behind them.

Toby ran up the staircase. This was his home, and he knew all the best hiding places. From below they heard the sound of plastic sheeting being pulled aside with difficulty, hopefully slowing the cop.

“Why are we running?” asked Pete as he struggled to keep up. “We're in
your
house, taking
your
computer! We haven't done anything wrong!”

Toby's voice dropped to a whisper as he reached his bedroom door.

“Because there will be too many awkward questions. Like, why did we come back in the middle of the night to get this? We don't have time for complications, we have to find my mother
now
.”

From downstairs came the sound of pounding feet, and the crackle of a police radio. “Sierra Oscar from Sierra Six. Suspects on Aylton Road. Assistance required. Over.”

Pete and Toby exchanged glances.

“Trust me,” whispered Toby. “Nobody will find us in this house if I don't want them to. Now get in!”

He opened his bedroom door—and Pete's hands scrambled for the door frame as his foot stepped out into open air.

“Your room's not there!” screamed Pete. The twister had completely torn it away. They could hear the cop thudding up the staircase. They had no time left.

“Come on!” urged Toby.

Toby stepped out onto the framework that had been erected where his bedroom had once been. He beckoned for Pete to follow.

“We're superheroes, remember?”

“I'm off duty right now!” Pete retorted through gritted teeth. But a noise behind him motivated him to move: the policeman was getting closer. Pete licked his lips and followed Toby, wrapping both arms around the scaffolding. Toby reached out and gently closed the door. The sound of footsteps suddenly came from just beyond the door.

“I know you're here! There's backup on the way and you've got nowhere to hide!”

Pete tightened his grip on the scaffolding. He was feeling scared; after all, he was up here without
any
superpowers.

A door slammed open from inside the house. It sounded like the door to Lorna's room. Toby nodded his head in the direction of the ground. Pete looked blank. Frustrated, Toby tried again, rolling his eyes downward. Pete shook his head, not comprehending.

Toby sighed deeply. For a smart kid, Pete could be really stupid. “Climb down! Before he opens this door!”

Checking his grip, Toby slid into a sitting position, one leg dangling over the scaffolding. His searching foot found a cross spar, and it was a simple task to lower himself down to the next level.

“Just make sure you've got one hand firmly holding on!” he whispered as loudly as he dared.

Pete nodded and copied the instruction. It was a little more difficult for him, being shorter than Toby, and at first he thought his foot would never connect with the scaffolding below.

“You're doing great!” encouraged Toby.

Another door was roughly left ajar inside the house: his parents' bedroom. His room was the next door over, and it wouldn't take a genius to realize they must have slipped outside.

Toby lowered himself, feeling the reassuring spar of the wooden frame beneath his foot as he eased his weight down.

But both his sneaker sole and the spar were slick with rain. It was like stepping on ice. His foot slipped and he screamed as he dropped backward, protecting his head from hitting the ground. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed his head was inches away from several rusty nails protruding like claws. One head injury per day was enough.

Pete stared down, wide-eyed. “Tobe!” he shouted.

The door above Pete opened and the cop almost
stepped out, also forgetting half the house was missing. He steadied himself as he spotted Pete just below him.

“You! You're under arrest!”

“Jump!” shouted Toby. He kicked away the plank of wood with the dangerous nails.

Pete was alarmed as he looked between his friend and the cop, who was holding on to the doorjamb with one hand and trying to bring his taser around with the other. It was too dark for him to make out they were just children. Pete jumped.

He crashed into the wood, remembering at the last minute to bend his legs, and dropped into a roll to slow his momentum, just like he'd read somewhere. It worked, and Pete rolled between the sheets of plastic, springing to his feet like a seasoned gymnast.

Toby ran out after him, giggling with excitement.

“Pete, you were awesome!”

The compliment washed over Pete as he tried to calm down. “Got the hard drive?”

Toby patted his jacket. “Right here. Let's go!”

They sprinted into the cloaking embrace of the fog as fast as they could. They had reached the end of the street before the cop had managed to retrace his steps and run out of the house.

They didn't stop running until they were safely back inside Pete's—wet, exhausted, and grinning triumphantly.

* * *

Pete found it almost impossible to wake up the next morning. But his parents were adamant that he get up for school. Pete complained and sulked, but they didn't listen. Pete's mother had told Toby he could stay home from school, until the police could track down his father. Toby had taken off the bandage covering the scar on his head, just to get a little more sympathy.

Pete was ushered from the house by his parents, who went their separate ways as soon as they reached the end of the path.

Toby retrieved the hard drive from his coat pocket. He knew Pete would return soon—they had arranged that he would skip school today. Pete would normally balk at the idea, but he agreed that they were the only people who could save Sarah Wilkinson.

He dialed Emily's phone number. Emily answered almost immediately and put Lorna on.

“Hey, Lorn,” said Toby. “Emily home too?”

“Yeah, her dad said it would be better if I had company.”

Toby chuckled; that was so typical of Emily's parents. They always seemed so cool and accommodating. “Pete's parents sent him to school,” he said.

“That doesn't surprise me.”

“But he's ditching, and coming back soon.”

Lorna hesitated for a moment. “Why?”

Despite the sadness he was feeling, Toby couldn't suppress the smug tone in his voice. “Because last night we went back home and took the computer's hard drive. We should be able to access Hero.com.”

There was a faint gasp from the phone. “I … I thought we'd never be able to … I thought it would have been destroyed.”

“Hopefully not. You and Em get here as fast as you can. We've got our own mission to do!”

It was ten thirty by the time everybody arrived. Toby had watched Pete surreptitiously walk past the house twice to make sure his parents hadn't returned home. When Emily and Lorna arrived, it was clear Lorna had slept very little. Her face was pale, and her eyes bloodshot, but she put on a brave face and actually hugged her brother.

Pete rummaged through the laundry room off of the kitchen. In between the washing machine and an old exercise bike, he found his father's toolbox. He found the right screwdriver and held it up like a sword.

“Let's do this!” he said.

His laptop was an old model, much older than Toby and Lorna's. Pete unplugged it from the main electrical supply before trying anything. He slipped the screws
from the bottom panel and opened it up. A cloud of dust greeted him, forcing him to sneeze.

“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” asked Emily.

“I was the one who last upgraded this computer.”

Toby looked doubtfully at the elderly system. “Upgraded it from what? An abacus?”

Pete started to point at things inside the case. “This is the hard drive. Looks exactly like yours. This cable leads to the motherboard, which is like the main part of the computer.”

“So we replace your hard drive with ours?” asked Lorna.

“That won't work. We need Windows to start my system; your version won't work on my motherboard. Wrong drivers and configuration.”

“You lost me,” said Lorna.

“Well, it
is
complicated,” said Pete, adopting the tone he remembered mechanics always used when his dad took the car in for repair. Emily snatched the hard drive from his hand.

“It's simple,” she said, rummaging for a cable in the recesses of the case.

“What're you doing?” said Pete, aghast, as Emily pushed him aside.

“This cable connects Pete's hard drive to the computer. It has this other connection on it.” She showed them a
plastic socket on the cable and slid it into the back of the new hard drive. “See? Now your hard drive is piggybacked to Pete's. The computer will see both!”

Pete watched her in amazement as she adjusted a jumper switch at the back of the drive, and then plugged a multicolored power lead into it. “Just make sure the computer thinks it's a slave … bingo! Turn it on.”

Pete was openmouthed, and speechless for once.

Toby burst into laughter. “You should close your mouth. You're drooling,” he said, nudging Pete conspiratorially.

Emily slid the side panel on, plugged in the laptop, and powered it up.

“How did you know all that?” Pete finally managed to ask as the computer bleeped to life. Emily smiled shyly.

Lorna shoved Pete playfully. “Why wouldn't she know?”

Toby dragged over some chairs so they could all see the screen. In moments the computer's desktop appeared.

“This is it,” said Pete as he took the mouse. “This is where we find out if your hard drive works or not. This is going to tell us if we can access Hero.com.”

He dragged the mouse pointer across the screen, and double-clicked his computer icon.