Shadow Breakers (6 page)

For a moment I'm disappointed that Josh isn't here. And surprised at myself. But I don't let it show. I imagine the boys are busy with stuff. Other parts of the investigation, if that's what they want to call it.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

Cal doesn't answer. “Miss Bellini's left me in charge,” she says to us both. “So you do as I say, whatever happens, right?”

Lyssa nods eagerly. “Fine by me.”

I shrug. “Okay.”

We head off toward the edge of the park, passing the fountains and the kids' playground.

“So, do you ever get a day off from this?” I ask, trying to sound more nonchalant than I feel.

“Where's your spirit of adventure, Miranda?” asks Lyssa. I glance over at her and notice she is playing chess on her phone as we walk along.

“Oh, I've got one, believe me,” I answer. “But, you know, girls,
Saturdays
? Aren't Saturdays for chilling? Relaxing? Can't we get the bus to the shopping center, and hang round on the benches, drinking lattes and making fun of other people's ugly shoes?”

“That isn't what we do,” says Cal, and the coldness of her response seems to match the expressionless stare of her shaded eyes.

“Okaaaaay,” I reply.

Cal turns around, and she looks at me properly for the first time, peering over her shades. “Miranda. This town is full of shadows,” she says in a low voice, all sweetness now. “The way I see it, we can spend our lives running
away
from shadows . . . or we can go
toward
them.” She smiles. “I know which
I
find more interesting.”

We walk on, in silence now.

And before long, I realize where we are heading.

The gate is brand-new — gleaming, steel mesh, controlled by an electronic lock. We stand there looking up at it.

“School?” I say scathingly. “On the
weekend
?”

Lyssa looks up from her phone chess game. “It's the best time to look around,” she says in that unnaturally precise voice. “Nobody's there.”

Cal looks up and down the street, checking that nobody is in sight. “Ollie hacked into the network this morning and took care of the security cameras. We don't want the principal asking difficult questions, after all.”

“I take it,” I say, “that the principal doesn't know what you lot do?”

Cal laughs. “Nobody knows about us,” she says. “Officially, our investigations don't exist.”

“Except in some underground bunker in the Seaview Hotel?”

Cal nods. “You got it,” she says, and flips her phone open. She dials a number. “Now, then . . . we just send the signal. . . .” She clamps her phone over the lock and holds up a finger for silence.

“Breaking and entering?” I say. I try to sound surprised, but I don't quite manage it. Nothing much surprises me about them.

The lock beeps, and there's a click. The gate whirrs and slides back just a few inches — enough for the three of us to squeeze through. When we're inside the playground, Cal sends the signal again and the gate slides shut with a clunk.

Cal grins. “Easy-peasy,” she says.

“Lemon-squeezy,” I add without thinking, and then I blush as Cal gives me a withering look.

“Grow up, Miranda,” she says, then she carries on talking as if I hadn't said anything. “Much harder to do with a padlock, I can tell you.”

“New tech's always easier to crack,” Lyssa agrees. “Ooh!” she suddenly squeals, looking at her phone.

I jump. “What?”

“The Lucena position!” she exclaims, showing me the screen. “He's lost.
Yessss.
” She looks embarrassed. “Sorry. I get very excited about rook and pawn versus rook endgames.”

“C'mon,” says Cal, rolling her eyes. “Lyssa, put that away now.”

I'm heartened to see that, although Lyssa snaps her phone shut, she sticks her tongue out at Cal first. She may be a paranormal-investigating genius, but she's still nine.

Cal starts striding across the playground toward the main door, like she owns the place. Lyssa skips after her, without a care in the world. I hurry after them, still smarting from Cal's put-down, and nervously looking over my shoulder. I'm convinced the caretaker or even a policeman is going to slap a hand down on my shoulder at any second.

“What are we
doing
here?” I hiss as Cal presses her phone on the front door lock, just as she did with the gates. The doors spring open.

“Going to check out the computer lab,” says Lyssa from behind me.

My eyes widen. “It's been sealed off. It's out of bounds!”

Cal stops, folds her arms, and looks down her nose at me. “Miranda,” she says, “I know you're new. But come on. You really think anywhere is out of bounds?
Pleeeeease.
”

I ought to be used to Cal's manner by now. I keep having to remind myself she's only a year older than me.

I look at Lyssa, who just shrugs and smiles and follows Cal inside.

What can I do? I follow them into the musty shade of the school. Running toward shadows.

“Do they not have alarms in this place?” I ask.

“Of course they do,” says Cal airily, peeking in one classroom after another as we go past. “And they're all linked to one central system. Switching it off is child's play. Luckily, we had a child to do it.”

Lyssa licks a finger and dabs an imaginary mark in the air.

“Have you been investigating the virus?” I ask.

Lyssa nods. “Ollie and Josh trawled all the web sources they could find,” she says as we hurry along the corridor and up the stairs. “No record of any virus doing that sort of thing to a network. Whatever this is, it's brand-new.”

The place seems so weird when it's empty — bigger, darker, more echoing. The chairs, parked on top of the desks, seem to watch over the school like guards. I shudder. School always seems
wrong
when nobody's here.

Up to the second floor. At the end of a long corridor, the computer lab's been sealed off behind clean, shiny white plastic. It makes it look as if the corridor ends in a wall of ice.

“Aren't the police going to be looking round?” I ask nervously.

“The
police
?” says Cal with a snort. “They're out chasing joyriders and beating up student protesters. Er, I mean, keeping the peace. Do you think they're bothered about a computer breakage?”

“Bit more than a breakage, though, wasn't it?” I say.

“Ka-boom!” says Lyssa, and waves her hands in delight.

“Why didn't they all go up?” I wonder out loud. “Some computers were left intact.”

“Oh, good question!” says Cal. “Possibly your best so far. Well
done
, Miranda. Asking the right questions can be more interesting than getting the right answers.” She rummages in her capacious pockets, then throws me something that I catch instinctively. “Here. You do it.”

I realize I'm holding a Swiss Army knife. I look up at Cal, and she nods encouragingly.

I clear my throat, open the knife, and slice a line through the white polyethylene, unsealing the room. I give Cal back her knife, and we step through the gap.

The computer lab's almost completely dark — the only lighting comes from the reddish emergency lights. Someone's put plastic sheeting over all the windows as well, I notice. The computers that exploded are covered with sheeting, too, but the few that weren't damaged are still uncovered.

Cal darts from one computer to another, checking the numbers on the keyboards. “When Ollie hacked the system for us,” she says, “he was able to isolate the source of the power surge to a particular subroutine running on one machine. But there was some coding we couldn't get through.”

“And I couldn't make sense of everything we did get,” Lyssa adds.

“Wow.” I tilt my head at Lyssa, mentally unscrambling the geek-speak. “So even Little Miss Sunshine isn't infallible.”

Lyssa ignores me. She is checking the back row of PCs. “Here it is,” she calls. “Terminal Thirteen. And it's still intact.”

“Unlucky for some!” says Cal gleefully. She places her hands on top of the computer and closes her eyes.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Trying to read it,” she says.

“Read it?” I whisper, baffled.

She nods. “Sometimes objects leave a trace of their user. A memory. Like an imprint. And sometimes, if you have the right kind of mind, it's readable.” She shakes her head, looking cross, opens her eyes. “But not today. Lyssa, we'll need to get the data off.”

I am curious about this skill of Cal's, but I don't have time to ask anymore. Lyssa nods and sits at the terminal, booting it up.

“Anything you'd like me to
do
?” I ask. “Or am I just here to watch and make admiring comments?”

“Tell you what,” says Cal, “you could guard the door if you like.”

“So I'm Scrappy-Doo.”

“Yeah.” Cal grins. “Well, everyone's got to start somewhere.”

I hover by the sliced-open plastic, looking and listening down the corridor for any signs of movement.

“What's happening now?” I ask.

Lyssa holds up a stubby red flash drive. “Stealing!” she says.

Lyssa, I have discovered, is a girl of few words. It's left to Cal to give me the proper explanation.

“All we have to do,” Cal says, “is rip the event history data off this hard disk and get it back to base for analysis. We can't do that remotely, though. We have to get it off this actual machine. Problem is, a lot of it will be encoded. It's not designed to come off. But if anyone can get through the firewalls, Ollie can.”

“Okay, I should say you lost me shortly after
rip
,” I admit.

Cal sighs and leans her head to one side. “All right, Scrappy. Just bark if you see anyone coming.”

Lyssa plugs the flash drive into the computer's USB port and a number of pop-ups flash up on the screen. I watch in awe as Lyssa's hands flicker across the keyboard, entering strings of numbers.

“Make sure it's not traceable,” says Cal. “Can you patch a block in to disguise the incursion?”

Lyssa nods. “Doing it now,” she says.

“Couldn't Miss B have done this?” I ask.

Cal shakes her head. “She has to be hands-off sometimes. And her login could be traced.” She checks her watch. “Come on, Lyssa. Speed it up.”

Lyssa looks up and smiles. “You don't want me to do any damage, do you?” She leans back, hits a couple of keys.
“There.”

The screen goes black. We all hold our breath.

Across the center of the screen, I can now see a bar, filling up like mercury in a thermometer as the data transfers across.

I blink, remembering the heat when I first saw the computers erupting. I brush the perspiration off my forehead. It's still warm in here.

The bar turns red agonizingly slowly. Beside it, there's a running count in yellow digits of how much data has been transferred to the portable drive: 10%, 15%, 20% . . .

“Don't you find it hot in here?” I ask, a little nervous.

Cal and Lyssa look at each other. Cal looks back at me. “Do you feel something?” she says urgently. She grabs my shoulders. “Don't run away from it. What is it? Tell us.”

I shake my head, almost angrily. “No. I don't feel anything.”

Something — there — over her shoulder — a fleeting shadow?

I gasp, pull back from Cal. She suddenly scares me.

“You're lying,” says Cal.

But then we all hear it. Outside in the corridor, a door slams and the sound echoes through the whole floor. Then there's a jangling noise, and shuffling footsteps.

This is a sound in the real, physical world. And the footsteps are human. I whirl around to face Cal and Lyssa.

“Someone's coming!” I whisper, glancing up the corridor through the gap in the plastic sheeting.

Cal looks at Lyssa. “How much further to go?”

“About fifty percent done,” Lyssa says, looking up calmly.

I try to listen, see if I can pick out where the footsteps are coming from, but there's too much echo. I bite my lip, frantically looking back and forth from the corridor, into the room, and out again.

“Seventy percent,” says Lyssa from the terminal.

We all hold our breath, uncertain what to do. The footsteps are coming closer.

My heart is thudding. We're going to get caught.

“We need this information,” says Cal firmly. “We can't leave without it.”

I look in panic at Cal and Lyssa. “Come on! We've got to get out of here — right
now
!”

Outside, the slow footsteps come closer and closer. . . .

“THE CLOSET,” SAYS
Cal. “Quickly!”

For a second we stare at her as if she's mad. And then we look over at the big storage closet in the corner of the computer lab, where they keep the manuals and spare parts and all that kind of junk.

“Leave the stick in the machine,” says Cal. “We'll have to risk it.”

I pull on the handle of the closet door. I pull again. It rattles but it won't budge.

“Locked!” I hiss at Cal.

She flips out her Swiss Army knife again, slides it in between the door and the frame, and levers expertly. With a judder and a creak, the door snaps open.

“In!” she says to me and Lyssa, bundling us inside.

We pile in, squat down on the bottom shelf underneath all the stuff. Cal pulls the door behind us and holds it shut. The enclosed space smells of metal and paper. Cal's on one side, Lyssa and I are on the other. And we hold our breath. I try to peep out through the crack, but Cal waves a finger at me and shakes her head.

I want to see what's making that noise. Human intruders I can deal with. But I'm worried about what else I sensed back there, just for a moment.

There was a shadow.

And now someone steps into the computer room. We hear the footsteps stop, and we hear a
tut-tut
sound.

“Bloomin' vandals,” says a gravelly voice.

We look at each other, because we all recognize the voice. It's Mr. Harbinson, the school custodian. I almost sigh out loud with relief. I imagine he is looking at my clean incision in the plastic across the door, and I feel a twinge of guilt.

“Blimey,” he says. “I dunno.”

He's still muttering to himself. His footsteps come closer to the closet. We hardly dare breathe. We hear him bending down, then we hear something shuffling on one of the desks. I realize straightaway what has happened — he's found the computer on, and he's moving the mouse around to see if anything appears.

A second later, the whine of the computer cuts out — Mr. Harbinson has switched it off, muttering, “Gawd, I dunno,” again.

I cross my fingers. I hardly dare look at Lyssa or Cal.

Now, at last, his footsteps start to go away again, and we hear him wheezing and coughing as he shuffles out of the computer lab.

He'll be on the phone to the principal, I imagine, to report that someone has been messing about in the computer lab. I hope we'll be miles away by then. But we still have to get out of here.

Cal nods and points to me. I carefully open the closet door a crack and check the coast is clear before emerging, trying not to make any sound. Lyssa rushes over to the computer, which is now switched off.

But the flash drive has been left in the machine. Lyssa grins at me and Cal before pulling it out and pocketing it.

“Lucky!” I mouth.

Old Harbinson can't have spotted anything other than the fact that the computer was left on. With any luck, what was displayed on the screen wasn't of any interest to him.

“I just hope we got all the data before he cut the power,” Cal whispers.

I check at the doorway.

“All clear!” I hiss.

We tiptoe our way back along the corridor. We can hear Harbinson whistling downstairs, clanking about and doing something in his little room off the main downstairs corridor.

“Back to the main entrance,” whispers Cal. “Quick!”

Less than half a minute later, we are back in the lobby, and Cal has her phone out again. I look nervously over my shoulder, but Harbinson's whistling is still echoing through the school, giving us a good idea of where he is.

Cal thumbs the number for whatever signal it is she uses, and the electronic lock springs open.

We're out, racing down the playground toward the gate, and we have our treasure.

Miss Bellini looks across the big wooden table at each of us in turn.

“All right,” she says. “So what do we know? Let's ask our newest member. Miranda?”

We're in a transparent pod that serves as Miss Bellini's office — it's held by girders right up in the ceiling, and is accessible only by a ladder.

Everyone is looking at me. Miss Bellini with her warm, dark eyes peering over her metallic glasses. Josh, sprawling on a chair, one arm over the back of it.
Where's he been
? I wonder. Cal, lean and graceful. Lyssa, hands folded on the desk as if she's in school. And Ollie, his face alert and keen beneath his mop of white-blond hair. There's a laptop computer open on the table.

I'm surprised how quickly I've been accepted here. How easily I seem to fit in.

“Well,” I say carefully, “I think we're dealing with something that, for some reason, needs
energy
. The bus — practically all the heat energy was extracted from it, right? Every ounce.”

“Joule,” says Josh.

“What?” I say, irritated.

“You measure energy in joules, May. Not grams. Don't you learn
anything
in your science class?”

Miss Bellini holds up a hand. “Go on, Miranda,” she says.

I try to focus. I've been thinking about this. “The engine seized up, the gasoline froze —”

“Diesel,” interrupts Josh.

I look at him irritably. “All right, the
diesel
froze . . . the metal and plastic started icing up. I think that was a
massive
exchange of energy going on. As if some kind of reaction was happening that needed a lot of power. And then again, with that virus in the computer lab — something was channeling an awful lot of electrical energy through that one computer, Terminal Thirteen, which turned into heat and blew the whole system.”

Josh gives a low whistle. “Not bad. Not bad at all!”

“What's the freezing point of diesel?” asks Ollie.

“Good question,” says Miss Bellini. “The thing about petroleum-derived diesel is that it's not just
one
chemical. It's a mixture of different sorts of hydrocarbons. In Alaska, trucks can still run in temperatures of minus 46 Celsius. I'd say anywhere between, ooh . . . about minus 70 and minus 185 degrees Celsius.”

“That's pretty freakin' cold,” says Josh. “What have we got on the computer data?”

“All extracted,” replies Ollie, and spins the laptop around so we can all see it. The screen shows a timeline graph — a wobbly green line against a black background, plotting network activity against time. “A viral spike was inserted into the network's copy of the Image-Ination software at 11:02,
here
. It attacked the system from within. Now, the thing about
most
computer viruses is that they're a pain, they can wipe your data off, but they don't actually damage the hardware itself. Well, this one did.”

“How?” I ask, genuinely interested.

“Yes, how?” echoes Cal. “A computer virus causing an overload of electrical energy? It doesn't make sense.”

Ollie grins. “I was hoping you'd ask. The virus didn't come from Terminal Thirteen, but for some reason that was the first one to be zapped.”

Lyssa says, “The Image-Ination software's not corrupted, is it? No, so the virus is a decoy. It was
inserted
there so that when the techies came along to find out what went wrong, they'd be led up the garden path.”

“So,” says Miss Bellini softly, taking her glasses off and twirling them between thumb and forefinger, “our conclusion is . . . ?”

Ollie says, “The overload was caused by something
outside
. Something, or someone, in the room.”

There is a moment's silence, and we all draw breath and look at one another.

Then Cal says cautiously, “Something . . . transferring energy straight into the computer network?”

“Or drawing it out,” I suggest.

Everyone turns to look at me.

God, I hate it when they do that. But I have got something to say, and it seems they're listening.

“Go on,” says Miss Bellini.

“Well, that can cause a power surge, too, can't it? And it would make more sense. This . . . whatever it is we're fighting, it must need energy.”

Josh hasn't spoken much yet, but now he unfurls himself from his chair and leans forward. “What about,” he says, “some bizarre form of energy that can adapt itself to its surroundings? Like a chameleon?”

“Very good, Joshua,” says Cal. “You're
thinking
. Is it your birthday?”

Josh smiles at her. “Just to please you.”

Cal smiles back, and the two of them hold their gaze just long enough for me to see the special look of understanding that passes between them. They seem close, Josh and Cal. They bicker and banter, but I can tell there's something there. Oh yes, even I can see that. And why does this bother me? It shouldn't.

“I'll start looking some things up,” says Ollie, gathering his notes together. “Got a lot to go on.”

“And I'll take a closer look at the data from the computer with you,” says Lyssa with her usual eagerness. “Something else may come up. Something I missed.”

Miss Bellini smiles, leans back in her chair, spreads her hands. “This is what I like to see, folks. Self-motivation. Now, Miranda.”

“Yes, Miss Bellini?” My voice sounds thin.

She smiles. “Good work. Go back home for now. You look tired. But come back on Tuesday after school. I have something to show you.”

I'm lying on my bed. My eyes are so heavy. I don't feel too well. I think I need to sleep. What is the matter with me? Glandular fever? Flu? Feels weirder than that, like the times when I've been sort of disconnected from reality — on the freezing bus, seeing the Shape, that shadow in the computer lab. There's an odd weakness in my body and bones.

Mum's “helper” Tash has taken Truffle for a walk, while Mum's house visiting. Outside, the spring sunlight is struggling through low gray clouds.

I don't know if my eyes are open or closed.

I think I'm down on the Esplanade. It is dusk, and the place is deserted. This is so strange. Am I awake? I hear screeching seagulls and I imagine . . . dream . . . no, more than that, I
feel
I'm barreling along the seafront with the cold salt wind in my face. I can smell that seaweedy death-smell again, that odor of burning.
Sulfur.
I stop, shade my eyes against the setting sun.

And there.

It's standing at the waterline again. Just as it was that day, before I ate ice cream in the café with Josh.

But this time it's a recognizable Shape. Human. It's wearing a long, dark dress, and its face is shrouded by a hood. A girl . . . ? And she's beckoning to me. I am shaking with fear. I can hear my own ragged breath, feel my heart pumping away.

Am I waking or sleeping?

• • •

The room stabilizes around me. I am awake now.

I take several deep breaths, feeling my mouth dry and claggy with fear. I look around the room. Nobody but me, all my usual clutter, my clothes and posters.

But my heart is still pounding.

I need to get away from the bed. I need to get out of the bedroom. This bed and this bedroom, they're where I first saw the Shape, where the terror started. I can't let this happen anymore.

Do not dream.

And yet . . . I need answers.

I remember what Cal said that day in the park.
Running
away
from shadows or
toward
them? I know which I find more interesting.

Still shaking, I go downstairs and pour a Cola-Maxx, shove my iPod into the dock on the counter, and flick through the tracks.

Nothing matches my mood. I don't want the Janies, Crank, or Elusive today. Not even the JumpJets. I need something empty and meaningless. I flick down further and there are some dance tracks one of the boys from my old school bootlegged for me. MC Gaia and the Force. Means nothing. Don't think I've ever listened to it.

I put it on while I slurp my drink. It's good. Pounding and rhythmic, but kind of lush, echoing through the kitchen with a bass line as strong and head-kicking as the cola, with a lilting keyboard line like froth over the top. Good Sunday afternoon old-school techno.
“And if you know that I love you, you'll feel it in the air, feel it everywhere . . .”
Stupid lyrics, but I'm nodding along to the track, leafing through a local paper Mum has left lying on the table. I'm trying to tell myself I feel normal, but I'm still shaking from the dream. I try to take an interest. Stuff about gardening shows, local children getting awards, something about the new power station going online . . .

“
And if you know that I love you, you'll feel it in the air, feel it in the air —”

The sound skips for a second. I wonder if it is supposed to do that. It skips again, missing several beats.

I go over to my iPod to see what's wrong with it. The music's not only skipping now but trapped in a two-second loop.