The Crystal Slide – Chris Drew Barker

BROKEN EARTH EPISODE TWO

THE CRYSTAL SLIDE

CHRIS DREW BARKER

What are you supposed to do when the world has ended?

Two children lived alone in a forest where the gravity didn’t work the way it was supposed to, until the day a mysterious woman named Rain Parity crashed into their lives and now nothing can ever be the same.

Now they know what happened to the Earth they want to do something. To put the world back together again.

Join Marcus and Scarlett as they continue their epic journey through the stars and encounter new places, new faces and new dangers in the exciting sequel to Broken Earth Episode One: Older King’s Horses.

BROKEN EARTH EPISODE TWO

THE CRYSTAL SLIDE “I love the familiarity, and yet the strangeness, of the world that Chris has painted. The character Scarlett is a winner.

Nothing’s overstated or obvious but there’s enough mystery to keep those pages turning.

Next episode soon please!”

Sophie Aldred, Actress, Doctor Who on Older King’s Horses

For D and C, again

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Special thanks to Andy Hallbery @christhebarker 6

BROKEN EARTH EPISODE TWO

THE CRYSTAL SLIDE CHAPTER ONE

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Over the hills and far away CHAPTER TWO

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A crooked mile CHAPTER THREE

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Impossible things before breakfast CHAPTER FOUR

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As fast as you can CHAPTER FIVE

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Cradle will rock CHAPTER SIX

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Where a million diamonds shine 7

YOU ARE HERE… The world as we knew it has ended. Earth has shattered into pieces, the decimated population survives on broken chunks of planetary rock orbiting in space held together by advanced gravitational technologies.

Marcus and Scarlett lived alone on a tiny chunk of forested land known as Sector 7B until a mysterious visitor named Rain Parity crashed into their lives.

Now, with the aid of a gravity harness, Marcus is piloting Rain Parity’s space craft and towing their rock back to her home, Alpha Central – the base of the mysterious figure known as Tanyen Manesh, which could also be home to some familiar faces from the children’s past...

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CHAPTER ONE

“Over the hills and far away”

“You know those red buttons I said you absolutely must not press unless I tell you to?”

Rain Parity shouted as the howling screech of the alarm in the cockpit of the craft became louder and louder, almost deafening the boy pilot at the controls.

“Yes, of course I do,” Marcus replied, turning to face the adult in the co-pilot seat beside him and noticing for the first time the look of panic on her face by the urgent red glow of the cockpit emergency lights.

“Well, when I say ‘now,’ press them!” Rain yelled again as she stared intently at the display 3

on the screen in front of her, “I knew this route was a risk!”

Marcus’s four-year-old sister Scarlett strained her neck to see what was going on from the seat behind, stretching the seat’s safety device as far as she could to catch a glimpse of what was happening through the giant windscreen in the front of the craft. What was this sudden panic after hours of peaceful travelling through the sparkly sky? This was all new to her. She had never been on an aeroplane before, never left the ground, let alone been in a space craft dashing through the stars with her older brother at the controls. Up until now they had been laughing all the way. But now, suddenly, the mood had definitely changed. Now there was danger out there, somewhere in the darkness.

“What do those red triangles mean?” Scarlett 4

asked nervously, pointing at the incoming shapes on the radar screen in front of Rain. If Scarlett knew anything, she knew that red meant danger.

In books, in nature, everything – red very rarely meant something good unless it was strawberries or Christmas.

“They mean danger!” Rain replied, confirming Scarlett’s suspicions, then turning to the boy pilot, she ordered, “Marcus... Now!” Marcus reacted instantly, his thumbs pressing down firmly on the buttons on the top of his controls that he had been told never to press.

There was a rumbling noise from the right hand side of the craft they were piloting. Flying through the unknown skies, using skills he had barely had time to learn, the lives of the three people shooting through space in this small craft were suddenly very much in the hands of this 5

one small boy. Totally relying on the speed of his reactions.

Luckily his reactions were super sharp, his senses were super keen. Hunting to eat to live for the past few years had meant that he knew a moment’s hesitation could mean the difference between life and death. If he took a fraction of a second too long before pouncing while hunting his prey in the forest, there were no second chances, and he and his sister would go hungry.

He had learned to fend for himself, having been abandoned with his sister alone in their forested home.

Marcus was no ordinary eight-or-nine-year-old boy. For a start, he was unsure exactly how old he actually was. He had lost count. Which was unheard of in children, so used to using their age as a badge of honour, as a way of defining who 6

they are and what they could do. When a child meets another child, almost the first thing they do is tell each other how old they are. So to not actually know your age would be unheard of.

He had thought that he would be able to keep track of the days after the grown-ups were all gone and he and his sister were the only people left in the forest. The forest floating on a rock in space. Held together by gravity and loosely orbiting around the distant sun. The rock that had detached itself when the Earth had cracked into hundreds of tiny pieces, many of which simply hadn’t survived.

Life had survived on sector 7B – as he’d learned the forested rock had been named. But that life had been hard for the children. The harshest of winters and the cruelest of summers.

He had tried to keep a track of the dark days, of 7

the cold weeks, of the seemingly endless years, but it had proved harder than he could possibly have imagined.

The months of the year, of course, were all slightly different lengths and every year the dates seemed to fall on different days of the week.

So using the one calendar he had in the house in the forest – from the time when his mum and dad had lived with the children and it had been a normal family home – had proved to be complicated and confusing. Once they had been through the days once, crossing them off as they went, it had become a jumble. A jumble on paper and then, eventually, a jumble In his head.

What with everything else he had to remember to do every day – fetch water, keep the fire lit, hunt, cook, care for Scarlett – he had simply lost track. He continued to celebrate their birthdays 8

roughly when he thought they were but having no other living soul to speak to apart from his little sister he had simply given up on dates. As a result he genuinely now had no idea how old he was.

Right this second though, his age was not his main concern. His skills and his quick reactions were all that mattered as the three of them stared out of the front windscreen of the craft hurtling through space, watching the missile that the important red buttons had just launched curl off in front of them on its guided mission towards the threat. Towards whatever it was that had made the alarms sound. Towards whatever the red triangle right in front of them on the radar display meant.

The missile was long and slim, like a giant silver pencil, its shimmering tail of flames 9

snaking out behind it as it torched a path through the darkness of space.

“There it is!” Rain yelled, her eyes widening as she remained transfixed by the view through the windscreen, “Hold on tight!”

Scarlett hadn’t seen her grown up friend this scared since the time Marcus had slipped and nearly fallen from the gravity shackle tower in the forest. The gravity shackle tower that Marcus had climbed and fixed that had meant that they were finally able to leave Sector 7B. To leave and drag their rock behind them to Alpha Central.

Taking the forest, the lake, the trees, their family’s house behind them like an enormous bundle of belongings tied together by gravity, all the way to Rain Parity’s home.

To Rain Parity’s home on Alpha Central, the gigantic rock right in the middle of the clustered 10

formation of orbiting masses that had used to be planet Earth, back before everything changed.

Back before the world had shattered into pieces.

Back before the children had needed to learn to fight for their lives, alone in the forest like Hansel and Gretel.

However good Marcus’s huntsman-like vision was, he hadn’t spotted this incoming threat as quickly as Rain Parity had. But he could see it now. It was heading right towards them and moving at pace. A rocket that was so big it dwarfed the missile that Marcus had launched.

Surely Marcus’s tiny projectile could be no match for this vast weapon, racing straight at them, getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer, filling up their view until...

The sky lit up like someone had set fire to it as 11

Marcus’s missile connected with the rocket and exploded. An orange cloud that looked like a mushroom burst out where the rockets collided and billowed into the heavens above.

“Look out!” Rain shouted as Marcus instinctively swerved to avoid the explosion.

The craft banked to the left, its passengers thrown around inside their seats, but just as they thought they were safe the alarms began to howl once more.

“Incoming!” was the last thing Rain managed to yell as she made another desperate grab at the controls, knowing there was no time to aim the missile guidance system this time. No time to defend against another threat. She had remembered just too late that the rockets always came in twos.

The ship pitched to the right, managing to 12

Marcus swerved to avoid the explosion 13

avoid a direct hit, but it wasn’t enough. The second rocket clipped the tail of the craft in passing, sending it into a spiralling loop. They were out of control.

Marcus turned to his terrified sister, who was white faced and cowering in the seat behind him.

“Close your eyes and hold on tight Scarlett!”

He cried as the craft began to shudder.

“I’m going to detach the forest, that should give us more control,” Rain said as she frantically punched at the gravity harness controls in front of her. More warning lights flashed, more alarms wailed.

It felt as though the craft that had become like a second home to them wanted to tear itself apart, letting out an enormous groan when the giant rock they had been towing behind them with the aid of the gravity harness detached 14

itself. As the craft tumbled away, Marcus could see their rock – their real, first home – spiral off into the distance from through the window.

With the gravity harness locks released it shot away from them, spinning off and then out of sight as the craft continued to spiral in the opposite direction.

Marcus wrestled with the controls, trying to counter the spin by steering into it and at the same time desperately pulling back in an attempt to level up and regain some stability.

There below them was another giant rock.

Far, far bigger than Sector 7B. You couldn’t even call it a rock really, it was so vast. More like a planetoid. He didn’t know what the planetoid was or if it could sustain human life but the chances were, he decided, it would be far safer to attempt a landing than to continue to spin out 15

of control through hostile space, risking another attack from their unseen enemy.

Again he pulled back on the controls with all his might as the sandy ground loomed larger and larger in front of him until he could see nothing else but the land racing up to meet them. He deployed the landing chutes as he had been taught in training simulation, unprepared for the sudden massive jolt as if the whole craft had hit a brick wall. But it hadn’t hit a brick wall, it was still hurtling out of control down towards the ground. Round and round and round.

Again Rain Parity leaned in and grabbed the controls, trying to help Marcus pull back to keep the craft’s nose up as the ground became closer and closer until they were finally upon it.

The back of the craft hit first, throwing its passengers around in their seats again but 16

Marcus and Rain held on tight to the controls as they skidded across the ground, dusty clouds thrown up behind them.

Skidding and skipping and sliding from left to right, pieces of the interior of the craft were flying everywhere. Anything that wasn’t fixed down, and some of the things that were fixed down, were hurtling around their heads as they desperately tried to stay focused on a safe landing. This was nothing like the simulation, this was chaos.

Just as Marcus was thinking this was never going to end, the craft shuddered and rumbled to a halt, as more and more alarms sounded in his ears.

Marcus could remember going on holiday when he was a little boy, and, after the aeroplane they were in had completed a particularly bumpy 17

landing, all the passengers had given the pilot a round of applause as if they were just glad to be alive. Marcus was about to let out a cheer when Rain suddenly grabbed him, removing his seat belt and detaching Scarlett’s safety harness as she made a desperate jab at the door controls.

Marcus just had time to grab his red rucksack and check Scarlett was unhurt as the bright daylight began to pour in from the cracks around the opening door hatch.

The hatch opened and she threw the children onto the sand outside. Then, landing badly on her already injured leg, she grabbed them and ran as best she could. There was no argument, no debate, nobody said a word. Nobody had any doubts about the importance of the situation they were in as they charged towards and then leapt behind, a large rocky outcrop twenty 18

metres from the craft’s crash site, the sound of the craft’s warning alarms still howling behind them.

Marcus turned to look at the vehicle that they had just begun to call home. Its familiar shape was imprinted onto his memory as it exploded in a ball of flames, sending a huge black cloud into the bright sky above. * The immense heat from the blast eventually died down and was replaced by... more intense heat. Marcus couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever been this warm. Stiflingly hot. In fact he had never known heat like it. Like the air was thick with a strange, dry, heavy heat pushing down on him, making it hard to breathe as they emerged from their hiding place.

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Back on Sector 7B – the forest, their home since childhood that they had just had to release from the tethers of the craft, setting it loose in space once more – it had never really got hot.

If they were lucky it might have felt like a crisp Spring day, or one of those friendly warm days you sometimes get unexpectedly towards the end of October. But this was nothing like that. The air was still, unmoving, dry and he could feel the heat on his face in a way he never felt back in the forest. And there were no clouds in the sky. Just a clear, strangely yellow-tinged, uninterrupted sky as far as the eye could see, apart from a thick dark ominous grey strip lining the horizon.

Marcus knelt down and hugged his little sister, glad to be alive. Glad they were both alive, wherever they were. He was still getting used to the idea that the forest, their life, everything they 20

had ever known, had simply been one of many rocks circling around in space and not a part of the enormous circular globe that all the books from the old times had used to talk about. And that now, for the first time in their young lives, they were on another, completely different rock.

A different planetoid. A different chunk of what had used to be the Earth. Another chunk that had broken free when the world had shattered into pieces. And that all the accepted rules, everything he had grown to think of as normal, had changed, just like that.

It was as if they had gone from one room in a house to another. Except that one room was damp and cold and wet and dark, while the other was intensely, blisteringly hot. And if they weren’t careful they would be sizzled like sausages in the scorching heat.

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Scarlett looked up at her brother, who she loved and respected more than anyone. “Marcus, is this the seaside?� she asked as she trickled a handful of sand through her fingertips and squinted, one eye closed, at him.

Marcus realised that she probably had no memory of ever having been to a beach, of being anywhere at all except for the forest, for her whole life. Marcus, being slightly older, could recall the times before everything changed.

Before the Earth cracked into pieces and they were left drifting alone on their cold, damp rock in space. Marcus could remember flying overseas to other countries when it was just him, his mum and dad and little baby Scarlett; sleeping, crying and just doing what babies do. But this would be the first new landscape his little sister would ever remember having laid eyes on. The first 22

bright sky, the first sand dunes, the first horizon without trees she would ever recall having seen in her whole life. She was probably a bit scared by it all. It was probably a lot to take in.

“Scarlett,” he said, about to gently explain the situation to her, to try to make sure she didn’t freak out too much. But, just as he was about to explain what was happening, she interrupted him.

“Can we build a sandcastle?” She said with a big excited smile on her face. She had read about the seaside in books so many times and she had always wanted to go to one. The children in her books always seemed so excited in their little swimming costumes with their buckets and spades. She wanted a part of that.

Marcus was reminded again how small Scarlett was, how childlike her needs were.

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And how she would just accept whatever was presented in front of her as the way things were now, and simply get on with it. Build her own world right in front of her.

Rain Parity, meanwhile, was very much a grown-up. She was getting down to business.

She had folded out a large umbrella-like device – another of the many gadgets she had tucked away in her backpack. The umbrella device was black on the outside, with a silver plastic canopy hanging underneath and some kind of mechanism attached to the central support. Her flight-suit was unzipped to the waist and the arms of the suit were tied together around her middle like you would do with a dressing gown, her brown shoulders exposed to the daylight in the black vest top she had on underneath.

She was hunched on the floor, consulting 24

maps and charts and cross-checking everything with a book. She was shaking her head and she didn’t look happy. Marcus got the feeling that things weren’t ideal. That this wasn’t part of the plan.

“What’s up?” He asked her.

“Well,” she said, looking up, wiping the sweat from her forehead, “It could’ve been a lot worse I suppose. I’ve got charts of all the main rocks showing their built up areas, water sources, potential extraction points – and I’ve used the compass to triangulate where I reckon we are.

We’re in the upper quadrant of the planetoid known as Amex. It’s one of the larger masses and it can sustain life. There’s good news and bad news though. The temperature is 30 degrees, which is really hot obviously. But, and this is a big but, it’s still first thing in the morning and 25

this is as cool as it gets. We’re going to need to get to shelter fast. It could get twice as hot as this by the middle of the day and we have to get under cover as quick as we can.”

Marcus was listening hard. This was a very different situation from what he was used to.

Whereas he had used to spend all his days trying to avoid being cold – to keep the fire burning and to keep Scarlett safe and warm – he realised now that the situation had been completely turned on its head. Now it was crystal clear that they had to keep cool, drink water and to keep out of the sun. It was essential. He understood, but he wasn’t sure Scarlett was going to get it, having never known anything different from forest life, but he certainly got it. Crystal clear.

“Have we got any water?” Scarlett suddenly asked. Marcus was surprised. This was a good 26

point. If they were going to survive out here in this vast sandy wilderness with no protection from the elements, then they would need drinking water.

“That is a very good question Scarlett,” said Rain Parity, “We’ve got a few bottles in my bag and I’ve erected the portable rain-maker, but we have to be really careful. We need to head that way,” she said, pointing at a specific part of the landscape that was completely identical to every other part of the landscape, “I’m pretty sure I’ve spotted a shelter on my chart. It’s in some rocks way over in that direction. which is, if my calculations are correct...”

She looked to the horizon and consulted the charts in her book and her compass again as she passed one of her small bottles of water to the girl.

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“Scarlett no!” Marcus yelled but it was too late. Scarlett was splashing the water into the moat around the little castle she had made in the sand.

Rain Parity grabbed the bottle from the little girl’s hands before too much of the precious clear liquid had soaked away into the ground, “No! This is our life blood Scarlett! If we don’t have water we will die! It’s eight Ks that way, which is a very long way. If we head off now we should be there before the heat hits its peak. But we absolutely need to stay hydrated if we stand any chance of survival.”

She jammed the lid back on the remaining water in the bottle, tight, and crammed it back in her rucksack along with her books and charts. She kept one chart and the compass out and picked up the umbrella-like device. The 28

‘rain-maker’ as she’d called it, was collecting condensation, the natural moisture in the air, and turning it into water. But it was going to be a long, slow process, Marcus could tell. He hoped to goodness they wouldn’t live to regret his sister accidentally wasting half of one of their precious water supply bottles.

“The clock is ticking guys,” she said seriously, “Put your boots on, Scarlett, we’ve got eight Ks to cover.”

Marcus had no idea how long a “K” was, but he imagined that eight of anything would be a struggle in this unbearable heat as they set off. * “Marcus, why is my back so wet?” Scarlett asked, her little round face poking out like a pea from under the t-shirt that Rain Parity had tied 29

around the girl’s head to protect her from the rays that were beating down on them. They had needed to adapt what clothes they had to protect them from the elements in this new harsh environment.

Everything they normally wore was designed to keep them warm, to keep them dry. Jumpers, hoodies, anoraks, boots, thick socks. None of this was suited to these new, dry, desert-like conditions on Upper Amex. They were trying to wear as little as possible to stop them overheating in the Amex heat, but at the same time they were also having to cover up as much as possible to stop themselves from burning. Marcus was doing his best to ignore the intense temperature and just trying to get as much ground behind them as possible to complete the eight Ks – whatever a K was. But he could see Scarlett was struggling 30

as the trail of footsteps in the sandy dunes behind them trailed off like a snake. She had never experienced anything like this heat before and she was having trouble with the conflicting messages that her body was sending her brain.

“It’s sweat, Scarlett,” he said, breathlessly – every word of conversation having become more and more of an effort in the still, baking temperatures.

“That’s what I said, silly,” Scarlett replied angrily, having misunderstood her brother’s answer.

She was clearly getting agitated, argumentative, the heat was causing her to snap angrily at the others and, for Marcus and for Rain Parity, the end of their trek couldn’t come soon enough.

Rain Parity was being patient. This was a 31

learning experience for her – interacting with children, dealing with the routine, unexpected moods that Scarlett went through every day. One minute tears of anger, then suddenly, without warning, it could all be forgotten and she’d be laughing and silly again.

Rain didn’t have children of her own so this was all new to her. She had always said she wanted to wait to raise a family until she knew what she wanted out of life.

Her job had been going well before the world had come to an end. She had been progressing nicely in her chosen career. She had been working her way up the company, learning more and more about the Corusca and being given more and more responsibilities.

She was becoming quite a senior player in the management team and had decided it would only 32

be a few more years before she could settle down, take a break from her job, and start a family of her own.

Her own family life had been a bit of a disaster. Her mum and dad had never got on.

From her earliest memories all she ever knew was them arguing. They used to disagree on everything. They’d never had much money. They lived in a small two-room place and they had to struggle just to survive. They struggled to earn enough money to pay the rent on the apartment, to keep the car running and to keep little Rain fed and clothed.

Raising children was an expensive business and Rain had decided that, if she was ever going to do it, she would wait until the time was right, until she could look after them properly. She would have to make sure she was with the right 33

partner and to make sure she was settled and secure enough to ensure her child would never be left wanting like she had been when she was a girl.

Her mum and dad had eventually decided to live apart from each other when Rain was about ten. They had decided that it would be better for everyone if they admitted that it wasn’t working and they should both live their separate lives.

Even though Rain had missed having both her parents there whenever she needed them, she knew, even at such a young age, that it was all for the best in the long run. Mum seemed happier and little Rain could still see her dad regularly.

He never missed a single one of her birthdays and he always took her to exciting places when he saw her at the weekends. He took her climbing, swimming, mountain biking, exciting things 34

like that. It had made her stronger. It had helped make her the wise, independent, self-sufficient woman she was today. It had made her think of her own survival first. As her priority.

She had decided that if she was to have children, then their home would have to be perfect. She had just been starting to think that the world was nearly ready for her to bring another little life into it, when suddenly it had ended. The world had ended and everything had changed.

In the years since the world exploded, having children, settling down, couldn’t have been further from her mind. It was hard enough to survive on your own in this new, disjointed universe, let alone to try to bring a new life into it. So she had dismissed it all. Put it out of her mind and forgotten about it. As far as she was 35

concerned she was never going to be a parent, never going to take on the responsibility of looking after any young lives. Until now.

Now, due to circumstances beyond her control, she had found herself leading two children under ten years old through dry, dangerous desert conditions, with very little water and a desperate need for shelter before they reached the peak heat of the day. Their survival was on her shoulders.

Rain kept being reminded of something from her own childhood. One of her earliest memories of her dad from back when her parents were together. They were on holiday somewhere. She was four maybe – probably about the age that Scarlett was now. They were staying in a place up a steep hill near the beach somewhere. It had been very hot there too and that’s probably why 36

she kept being reminded of it.

There was a long trek down a steep hill to the beach. Every day Rain and her mum had packed up their beach bags and trotted down with their towels and toys and sat on the sand and played.

Rain had insisted that her dad had bought her an inflatable boat. A gigantic pink inflatable dinghy. It was enormous. To little Rain it had seemed as big as a car. Her dad had tried to talk her out of it, saying it was too big and that she would probably hardly use it. But Rain had insisted in that way that only four year old girls can. She had cried in the shop and told her dad that she hated him, that he was the worst dad she had ever had. Then her parents had started arguing between themselves, mum taking little Rain’s side in the row while dad argued that the boat was a waste of money. Rain’s mum had 37

eventually argued him round. She had said it would be a happy memory for little Rain and that he shouldn’t worry so much about money.

So, every morning on that holiday, the girls had skipped merrily off leaving Rain’s dad to carry the gigantic boat slowly down the steep hill on his back, following the long, narrow, winding path to the seashore. Like an enormous pink turtle with the boat as a shell on his back, he would plod slowly down to his family on the beach. Then at the end of their day on the sand he would load it up on his back again and begin to trudge up once more to where they were staying at the top of the hill.

He never once complained. Even though he had said it was a bad idea to buy it in the first place, and that little Rain had hardly taken the boat out in the sea at all the whole time they 38

were there, preferring instead to learn about the various creatures that lived in the rock pools.

Her dad would still carry the uncomfortable, bulky load down to the bottom of the hill at the beginning of every day, and then march it back up again at the end.

Rain had never thanked him for doing this.

She had never said sorry for tantrumming until she had got what she wanted, and had never admitted to him that he was right. But she knew he would never have minded. That when you are a parent, responsible for a child, nothing else matters. That you shoulder that burden, you carry that weight and you forget all about yourself.

Like her pink turtle shell dad struggling up the hill all those years ago, Rain Parity now felt that weight. The enormous weight of 39

responsibility for her two small companions bearing down on her shoulders. She had got them into this situation and it was up to her to make sure they survived it.

The rain-maker device was working, slowly creating moisture from the condensation. She knew that if she kept an eye on them and made sure they didn’t dehydrate, then they would all be fine if they just kept plodding on together through the steadily increasing temperature. She knew that where they were going would be safe and sheltered from the heat. As long as nobody else had chosen the exact same cold caves on the border to shelter in as she had. Or at least, if anyone was in the caves, that they were friendly.

Rain led on through the endless, featureless, dusty land.

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CHAPTER TWO

“A crooked mile”

“Cherry, did you leave the storeroom door open again?”

“No Clarke I did not leave the storeroom door open again. Ask your bro here. He’s probably been sneaking extra porridge again.”

“I heard that.”

Marcus was used to being silent and still.

Luckily he had taught his little sister the importance of acting invisible too. They were accustomed to having to soundlessly stalk their prey in the forest. To sneaking up as close as they could to the animals before pouncing. To breathing without making noise, to holding in 41

their sneezes. But this time, as they hid in silence in the dark, they were not the predators. This time, if they were not careful, if they made a sound at the wrong time, they themselves could quite easily become the prey.

The gruelling trek in the relentless heat had eventually come to an end. Marcus had found himself barely able to see for the majority of it, without quite knowing why. Maybe it was because his senses were so tuned to the darkness of the forest, to having to pick out the slightest of movements when hunting, that the intense brightness was too much for his super sharp eyesight? Rain Parity had sprayed sunblock on the children and Marcus hadn’t enjoyed this experience. The oily liquid on his skin, the sweat mixing with it and running down into his eyes, the sand sticking to it everywhere, caking his 42

face, his arms and particularly his hands. He had felt like his eyeballs were steaming up and any moisture that his tear ducts were creating was stinging even more and making it harder and harder to see. And every time he had tried to wipe them, the irritation in his eyes had just got worse. Scarlett had coped slightly better with it and she had ended up sometimes having to lead her older brother by the hand as the trek had gone on. So, for several hours, Marcus could see nothing but blurry shapes and he’d had to trust his little sister to guide him through the unknown landscape and to believe in Rain Parity’s directions.

By the time they had finally reached the caves that Rain had spotted on the map, he was blinking one eye at a time and just following the vague blob in the brightness ahead of them that 43

was their determined grown-up companion.

When Rain had finally announced that they had reached their goal, Marcus had thought that she must have been mistaken. He couldn’t see anything at all. Just a mound in the sand, not unlike the dozens of other mounds in the sand they had passed along the way.

But as they rounded the mound he could just make out that on the other side of it was rock.

And leading down from the rocks was a steep, sandy track. He could vaguely see ahead of them, below the overhanging stony escapement was a giant, black, shape that resembled the shape of an enormous human eye. The overhanging rocks looked like the top eye lid and the piled up sand below it, the bottom lid. Marcus presumed that the entrance to the cave was probably in the darkest part, right in the centre of the eye where the pupil would be.

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Entering the shade of the eyelid of rock he could finally start to see things properly again, his own eyes beginning to function once more as he again tried to wipe away the irritation without getting more oily sand in them.

Cautiously approaching the cave, Rain had told the children to be wary because she said that she had spotted vehicle tracks. Fresh vehicle tracks, she had said, although Marcus still couldn’t quite see well enough to tell.

As there was barely any breeze, she had said that the sand had remained undisturbed, so it was clear to her that a large vehicle of some sort had recently left the mouth of the cave.

Following the tracks backwards she had been able to locate the cave entrance with ease. She had said that she hoped to goodness her guess was correct and that the people who had made their home here were not around at the moment.

45

They didn’t, she had said, want to get a nasty surprise. She had, however, drawn her gun from its holster on her belt as they approached, so she clearly wasn’t one hundred per cent convinced of her theory.

The deep furrowed line that Rain Parity sometimes got on her forehead when she was anxious or worried had appeared again, so Marcus and Scarlett had known that she was taking this very seriously indeed. * Entering the shelter of the cave for the first time, Marcus had felt the cool air wrap itself around his body. The sweat that had caked his face had instantly chilled and after the intense scorching heat outside it had brought him blessed relief. His vision had taken on a slightly blue tinge as his eyes had adjusted to the rapid 46

change in light, having been blinded for so many hours by the relentless brightness and irritants in his eyes.

Inside the cave mouth he could feel that the ground was shingled like a pebbly beach. As they had headed in, it had sloped downwards into the darkness below. Rain had cautioned the children to remain silent as they had stepped carefully on the loose stones. At one point Scarlett had stumbled slightly and caused some loose chippings to topple down the steep slope. Marcus could hear the loosened stones echoing around the vast chamber as they tumbled and fell.

They had passed an area that Rain Parity had suggested must be where the vehicle that had made the tracks would normally be parked. This, she had pointed out again, was more evidence to suggest that nobody was home and had helped to calm everyone’s fear that they were about to 47

unexpectedly encounter someone.

At the bottom of the sloped cave they had found a vertical opening in the rock face, wide enough for a person to fit through, that had been reinforced with wood. Whoever lived there had built up the passageway with timber support beams, and as they had continued to tread carefully along the narrow winding gap it became more and more supported, with steel brackets holding up the rocky ceiling.

Using Rain’s solar powered torch to light their path, they had made their way down, down into the darkness below. They had reached a solid looking man-made door which was housed in a metal frame bolted to the stone walls of the inside of the cave. Marcus’s vision had pretty much been restored by then and he had been able to watch as Rain had used an electronic device from her backpack to release the door lock 48

and make their way through into the unknown mystery inside.

The soft yellow lights mounted on the cave walls had made it all seem magical and the children had been mesmerised by everything they had discovered inside this Aladdin’s cave of wonder. Rain Parity, however, had wasted no time. She had unlocked the storeroom door using her electronic device again and replenished their water supply immediately. She had then filled her backpack with whatever she could find that was nutritious to eat but that wasn’t going to take up too much space.

Scarlett had started bouncing on one of the beds of course – she did like a nice springy bed – until Rain had very sternly told her to stop.

Marcus meanwhile was studying the array of pictures and photographs that were stuck to the wall in what must have been the sleeping 49

quarters. There were American flags and cut out pictures of some famous people he had recognised from some of his mum and dad’s less serious magazines back in their house. He had recognised, for example, the actress that his dad had told him that Scarlett was named after, and he was fairly sure he had recognised a picture of the strange looking American leader that his parents had used to talk about all the time.

And there were more normal photographs there too that seemed to mainly focus on the same three faces. Two men who Marcus had thought looked very similar, except one had a beard, and a woman with red hair. Not just ginger hair, but literally red, like a fruit. He had pulled one of the pictures off the wall to take a closer look. It was a picture of just these three people. They were all holding large glasses with colourful drinks with straws in and they had 50

very big grins on their faces. Their arms were around each other and they were making strange symbols with their fingers that Marcus didn’t really recognise or understand.

They were doing all the things that people do when they’re happy, but something about their faces in the photo wasn’t convincing Marcus that they actually were. Their eyes were a little too open, their wide mouthed smiles a little too forced. They looked to Marcus like people who were trying really hard to look like they were having a good time for the sake of the photograph, rather than people who were actually having a good time for real. As he had looked from photo to photo of these three people he had noticed that all the pictures were basically the same. The three of them in different settings but pulling practically the same expression in each picture.

51

Marcus had been deep in thought about this.

How strange it had seemed to him to want to have so many pictures with so little variety. He had been thinking about how they must have stopped whatever they were actually doing to try and create this same false impression of fun any time someone produced a camera. He had just turned the photo over to find “Clarke’s 21st, Sammy’s Bar, San Diego” written on it, when he had heard the sound of the steel bolt on the main door being electronically released from the outside. He had looked around to Scarlett, who was standing motionless, her mouth wide open.

Even she had realised what that sound meant.

How important a moment this was.

Suddenly Rain Parity had burst into the living quarters with her backpack on and her gun raised. Without a sound she had grabbed the kids and they had all dived underneath the 52

three beds that Scarlett had earlier been jumping on, one underneath each. Marcus had noticed that Rain still had her gun in her hand as she turned to them in the darkness from under her bed with her finger on her lips and a very serious expression on her face. Whoever it was that had made their home in this hole in the ground under the sand, it was clear that they had, almost certainly, just returned. * Marcus realised he still had the picture he had taken from the wall in his hand. As he listened to the voices coming from down the corridor and drifting into the bedroom, he was studying the faces in the photo from the light from the crack in the door. He was trying to imagine which voice went with which face. It was pretty obvious which one was the lady, although her voice was a 53

lot higher than he might have imagined it would be. Then there were the two other people in the picture, Beard and No-beard. He figured that the bigger man, No-beard, was the louder voice of the two of them as he seemed slightly older and more in charge. The other two seemed to stop talking whenever he said anything.

“Did you see the look on that little skinny guy’s face?” he was yelling, even though his companions would have definitely been able to hear him if he’d spoken more quietly, “He nearly jumped out of his Mexican skin!”

“Yeah bro,” said the other man’s voice, who Marcus had decided must be the slightly smaller man with the beard. It seemed that Beard didn’t like the sound of his own voice quite as much as No-beard did.

Marcus was reminded of when he was younger and his parents would have dinner parties in 54

their flat back when they lived in London, before Scarlett was born. He would be in his bedroom, supposedly asleep, but instead he would lie there listening to the chattering voices echoing out from the dining room. He would follow the muffled conversation and try to imagine the faces of the people talking as he drifted off to sleep. The crucial difference here of course being that his parents’ dinner party guests were highly unlikely to suddenly burst in and discover him hiding under the bed and threaten his life in any way.

“This sure is a big lizard Clarke. Y’all gonna eat well tonight,” the red haired lady’s voice screeched excitedly outside.

They sounded extremely American to Marcus. He had become so used to Rain Parity’s American accent now that he hardly even noticed it. In fact, if you’d asked him, he 55

might not have even remembered that she was American. But these accents were so thick, so pronounced, that they sounded to Marcus like people who were pretending to be American and not actual Americans. He didn’t realise people actually said “y’all” in real life for example. He’d thought that was just a phrase people used when they were doing impressions of American people.

Suddenly there was the sound of confusion and chaos from the corridor. There were raised voices and then the lady screamed. He could hear a lot of panicked movement going on and the sound of things being knocked flying in the corridor.

“Catch it Kyle!” shouted No-beard, sounding more than a little scared all of a sudden, “It’s getting away!”

There was a loud bang which made all three of the under-the-bed-hiders jump. Scarlett buried 56

her head in her arms as Marcus looked to Rain, who simply shook her head at him. He wasn’t sure what she meant but he presumed she meant to remain still and silent.

“It’s heading for the quarters!” shouted Nobeard, closely followed by the sound of heavy footsteps getting closer.

Marcus knew it had clearly been a gunshot.

It sounded exactly like the noise he had heard when Rain had fired her gun in the forest back on 7B. He had been scared enough when Rain Parity had used her gun in defence of Marcus and Scarlett, but to know that someone nearby who was a potential threat to them had a gun was a far scarier prospect. They were like three Goldilockses hiding under the bears’ beds... but these three bears were armed with a gun, and were clearly already spooked by something.

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* Marcus had witnessed a lot of unusual things recently. He was probably the only boy alive who had ever piloted a craft through open space, the only boy to shoot down an incoming missile to save his sister’s life, the only boy to see his childhood home drift off into space untethered from a gravity harness and then to see a crashed space craft he had only just managed to escape from explode in a vast, empty desert. But he had never, ever seen anything like this before.

Less than twenty centimetres in front of where he lay in the darkness underneath the bed, an evil looking, scaly brown face with eyes rotating on either side of its head was menacingly tasting the air with its tongue. Marcus thought for all the world that it looked like a dinosaur, a dragon or some kind of space monster. But right in his face.

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He didn’t dare move as the half metre long creature simply sat there, motionless beside him. With just the occasional blink of one of its bulging eyes or a twitch of its strange fingerlike toes to give him any clue that the hideous beast was actually alive. He had read that reptiles weren’t actually slimy, but as Marcus stared at its reptilian body, unable to tell whether it was breathing or not, he couldn’t imagine in a million years that it would be dry if he were to reach out and touch its scaly brown skin. He found it hard to believe that the raised yellow bumps all over its face, back and legs would be anything other than slimy if he just put a finger on them. But, frankly, he had no intention of touching it. In fact, any movement at all was pretty low down on his list of priorities at the moment.

They caught each other’s eyes again in the 59

The creature sat motionless beside him 60

dark. As boy looked to beast and beast to boy, Marcus was very aware how much he had in common with the lizard at this precise moment in time. They were both hiding in unfamiliar territory, trying to remain silent and motionless for the sake of their lives. And they both knew that any slight movement could have very bad consequences. Suddenly, the room was bathed in light.

“Where are you, you ugly son of a gun...” he heard No-beard growl as a large pair of black boots appeared next to the bed that Marcus and his scaly companion were sheltering under together.

Marcus pulled his arm a safe distance away as a gigantic male hand appeared right next to him, feeling around for the escaped reptile.

The hand swiped left to right – swinging like a pendulum between Marcus and the giant 61

lizard – every time moving that little bit closer to finding one of the two hidden intruders. Marcus could see the lizard’s eyes following the hand like a fly it was planning to catch, its tongue once more protruding from its mouth and flickering up and down with interest, ready to pounce.

No-beard’s hand came within an inch of touching Marcus on this swing past. Marcus knew it would only be a matter of time before either he or the lizard were discovered. It would all be down to luck now as the hand made another swift sweep from left to right and back again. Purely down to luck.

On this occasion it seemed Marcus’s luck was in, and No-beard’s luck was most definitely out.

As the thumb of No-beard’s huge hand finally brushed against the scales on the giant lizard’s left rear leg, its whole scaly body suddenly flipped up as if a trap had been sprung. It turned in mid62

air, its tail twisting round and its jaws opening wide to reveal vicious-looking fangs inside. Fangs that in the blink of an eye sank deep into the fleshy hand that had been feeling around in the darkness. The hand that was now clamped hard between the locked jaws of the enormous angry reptile.

No-beard yelled out in pain as he dragged his hand out from under the bed and he screamed some words that Marcus had never heard before but was pretty sure weren’t supposed to be said in the earshot of children. No-beard was quite clearly in fiery agony. He was lying in the middle of the floor with his back arched, shaking, convulsing, his eyeballs bulging. Marcus had no idea what to do.

But luckily for him, Rain Parity knew exactly what to do. She wasted no time taking decisive action as No-beard continued to shake violently.

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The creature held on tight to his hand with its powerful jaws as Rain instantly darted out from underneath the neighbouring bed to Marcus.

Almost with one movement she kicked Nobeard’s gun out of his reach and slammed the door shut. Then with her back against the door she put her foot on the man’s chest and aimed the gun at his head.

“Okay, everybody be cool and this is all going to work out just fine,” she cried over her shoulder to Beard and Red-hair outside, “Your man on the floor has had a stroke of bad luck here. He’s been bitten by a Heloderma Suspectum, also known as a Gila Monster, which is extremely unfortunate for him and if you listen I will tell you why...”

Marcus could hear the other two muffled voices outside the room stop as they were listening to the frantic goings on inside the 64

bedroom. No-beard’s howls of agony continued but Rain just shouted louder to drown out the screeches and moans.

“Now the Gila Monster is very rare,” she continued, “Its very big, and it has the kind of face only a mother could love. Or, somebody who’s very into reptiles. Now, believe it or not, I happen to be one of those people. I happen to be very into and very informed about reptiles.

Very informed indeed. There’s only a few types of venomous lizards in the whole reptile kingdom.

Most lizards would barely give you a second lick. But, the Gila? Oh boy. If you get bitten by a Gila monster and it gets its poison in you, there’s only two things going to happen to you, the second of which is death. Which under any normal circumstances would obviously be the worst of the two things. But to be honest with you, compared to the hours of absolute pain and 65

agony that your friend in here is going to suffer before this night is through, I think death is actually going to feel like sweet relief.”

“Who the hell are you?” Red-hair demanded as she banged on the outside of the door Rain Parity was pushed up against, “What are you doing in our sleeping quarters? And what are you doing with Clarke?”

“Who am I?” Rain replied, she was still shouting, but Marcus could tell she was now trying to calm the situation down a little now, to take back control, “My name is Rain, but right now, all you really need to know is that I am literally the only person in a thousand mile radius who can stop your friend in here from dying in the next two hours.”

Marcus had never seen Rain Parity this cool, this calm under pressure, this ruthless and efficient before. He couldn’t help but be 66

impressed by her as he crawled on his belly over to shelter Scarlett, to try to protect her from danger, as he always did.

“You’d better not be hurting him!” Beard yelled through the door, “Or so help me I’ll kill you!”

“Oh quite the opposite,” Rain laughed calmly, her foot still firmly on the man on the floor’s chest, “But he is definitely hurting. And it’s about to get a lot worse. The blood coursing around his body is starting to feel like it’s on fire, that will peak in about half an hour, then his eyes are going to bulge until they feel like they’re going to pop out. Then, after that, as the pain gets even worse, one by one, his organs are going to stop functioning. Starting with his liver, until finally his heart is going to stop. This is going to be in roughly two hours from now. Unless, of course, you do exactly as I say.”

67

Red-hair was sobbing uncontrollably outside.

She begged Rain Parity to help. But Beard was clearly still not convinced.

“I don’t believe you!” He cried, “You’re trying to blackmail us! It’s not going to work!”

“Fair enough,” Rain said calmly, checking her watch, “You have ten minutes. After that, his body is going to start to shut down. It’s up to you. We’ve got two guns in here. There’s three of us and there’s about to be only two of you.

So we’re coming out of here whether you like it or not. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Scarlett turned to her brother in their hiding place and whispered, “I really hope they choose the easy way...”

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CHAPTER THREE

“Impossible things before breakfast”

Marcus was sat alone on one of the beds in the now silent sleeping quarters, long after all the previous night’s drama had died down. Marcus had never known this feeling before. His whole life until now, he had always had the safety and security of his own home, his own bed, to go back to. However bad things got, and things had got pretty bad at times, he had always been able to curl up in his familiar safe place at the end of each day. Even when everyone else was gone and it was just him and Scarlett left surviving on their own, he had always been surrounded by familiar things. The familiar feel of his bed, the 69

familiar ticking of the clock, the pictures of his parents on the mantelpiece, his books, his toys.

But now all those things were out there in their house, in the forest, in space. Untethered and floating further and further away on a drifting rock alone in the stars. He had nothing left except the clothes on his back and the few belongings he had in his rucksack. And his sister, who was off in another room right now, having her hair done like none of this mattered.

Sat alone in the living quarters of the bunker under the sand he was flicking through his familiar scrapbook that he must have read a hundred times. His scrapbook, that was reminding him of home, now that he was trapped here on Amex with these strange new people. His scrapbook, that was his link to the past, his reminder that other places existed and that nothing was permanent, that nothing lasted 70

forever. His scrapbook, like a familiar song that reminds you of home. His scrapbook, where he had pieced together his theory about what had happened to the world. His scrapbook, that he believed may hold a clue to what had happened to his parents and to where they might be now. If only he could join up the final dots of the puzzle, make sense of the final clues.

As he leafed through the book, “Pulling Power” was the headline on the cover of a copy of Newspeak magazine that Marcus had stuck on one of the pages a long time ago, far away from here. “Tanyen Manesh’s gravitational transport revolution – is it a force for good? By Daniel and Alison Starbrook” His mum and dad had spent years traveling the world as journalists – when there was still a world to travel – investigating their theories, uncovering the bad things that big businessmen 71

and women were doing to make money. His mum and dad had stopped a nuclear power company from polluting a river that a village in Argentina used as their water supply. They had stopped a rich man who wanted to build a golf course from digging up a forest which was home to a rare tree frog. They had used their lives and the gift of writing as a force for good whenever they could. They would fight for the rights of the little people against the rich and powerful.

They would be a voice for those who couldn’t be heard. Speaking truth to power. The more of their articles that Marcus had read, the more he had found out about the great work they had done over the years, and the more proud he had become of them.

When he was little, journalism had just been something his parents did. He had grown up surrounded by newspapers and magazines 72

featuring his parents’ work and with their names all over them. He had taken it all for granted. It was just what they did.

It was normal for thousands of people to follow what they wrote on the internet and it was normal for them to jet off for weeks at a time covering a story that they couldn’t tell anyone about, leaving Margaret to look after them and make sure Marcus hadn’t been late for school.

There had been times when he had hated them having to go away. He’d hated being left to be looked after by their neighbour, Margaret, from down the valley who had no children of her own. It was only now the world had ended that he realised how important their work had been. And he knew that if they had thought that they had a choice, they would have never have left the children on their own. He realised now that was why, whenever they had come back, 73

they had always been so loving, so pleased to see them. And why they had always promised they wouldn’t go away again unless it was really important.

Then one day they had never came back. The day the Earth had shook so hard and the sun had disappeared from the sky. The day when everything changed and there was no more electricity, no more television, no more internet, no more daylight.

It was only once his parents were gone, and Marcus was a little bit older, that he realised how important their work had been. If they hadn’t investigated it, nobody would’ve ever known about the links between fracking – high pressure underground oil and gas mining – and sinkholes – the giant holes that had begun to appear in the Earth’s crust around the world. It seemed so obvious once they had written about it. It 74

was important stuff, but nobody else had been mentioning it. Nobody except his mum and dad.

Because they had kept printed records of everything they had written it was all still there for Marcus and Scarlett to read even though there was no internet any more. It would always be there. Forever.

The last trip his parents had gone on – the one they had never come back from – had been to investigate the man in the picture on the cover of Newspeak magazine, Tanyen Manesh. The man that Marcus had seen Rain Parity making a video call to from her craft to her home rock of Alpha Central just before they had launched.

He hadn’t mentioned this to Rain. He hadn’t mentioned that he had recognised the man’s face or about the link to his mum and dad. He didn’t want her to know about his parents just yet – about what they did for a living – unless 75

she absolutely had to. And he definitely hadn’t mentioned it to Scarlett. She had trouble keeping things to herself. It wasn’t her fault, Marcus knew it was just her age, but he wasn’t about to tell her anything he wouldn’t say directly to Rain because he knew she would just go and tell her straight away anyway. But Marcus had worked out where his parents had gone. To a place called Dubai, in the Middle East on Earth of old, to investigate their theory about Tanyen Manesh’s illegal gravity mines.

Tanyen Manesh’s face had been all over everything in the old days. The covers of magazines, the news, chat shows, everywhere.

Everyone loved him. He was a genius inventor and he had become very, very rich. He had made the internet faster, cars better for the environment and his latest project had been magnetic flying vehicles that were cheap 76

enough so that anyone could buy them, not just the super-rich. He had revolutionised public transportation, making it more efficient and reducing pollution. He had won loads of awards for it and he could do no wrong in the eyes of the public. He gave a lot of money to good causes and was a regular guest on panel shows because he was so funny and interesting.

But Marcus’s mum had always said you should never judge a book by its cover. If someone is trying so very hard to make everyone think they are the good guy, then they’ve probably got something to hide. They were probably secretly up to no good. And that’s what they wanted to know. What was Tanyen Manesh’s secret?

What was he really up to? And that’s why they had gone undercover in the Corusca, Tanyen Manesh’s highly secure headquarters in Dubai.

“Breakfast’s ready Marcus,” Scarlett suddenly 77

said as she poked her head around the door to the underground bunker’s sleeping quarters. The sight of his little sister’s smiling face, taking it all in her stride as always, brought Marcus back down to Earth with a bump. Or, technically speaking, back down to Amex. She was showing off the French plaits that the red haired lady, whose name turned out to be Cherry Brady, had done for her. A very appropriate name, Rain Parity had said, as her own hair was both cherry red in colour and braided. As Scarlett swished her head from side to side, making the plaits swing around her face, Marcus wiped a slight tear from his eye, hoping Scarlett hadn’t noticed it. He put his scrapbook back in his rucksack, got down off the bed and went over and put his arm around Scarlett.

“Come on then, Scarbo,” he said ruffling her newly plaited hair, “Let’s go and see what treats 78

they’ve got in store for us.”

As they walked out into the corridor of the bunker, Scarlett timidly said, “Marcus, that dragon isn’t going to come back is it? I didn’t like him at all. He was a very naughty dragon.”

“No lovey, he’s fast asleep in a cage and Rain’s going to put him outside later, far, far away,” Marcus reassured her, “But he’s not really a bad creature. He was just defending himself. He thought the no-beard man – I mean Clarke – was going to hurt him, and he didn’t want him to.”

They both paused as they passed the open door of the medical room where Clarke, the no-beard man, was lying, asleep. Rain had given him what she had said was a very, very large sedative injection to make him sleep, and he had been out cold ever since the lizard incident the previous day. Marcus could see that Clarke’s eyes 79

weren’t as swollen looking as they had been the night before and that his skin was starting to look a slightly more normal colour, although his breathing was still very irregular. Rain Parity had given the lizard a sedative as well, so she could prize its jaws open and release Clarke’s hand and start to treat his venom poisoning. The other two Americans had argued that they should just shoot it but Rain had insisted that the lizard should live if she was going to treat their friend. She knew a surprisingly large amount about lizards as it turned out and she said the Gila monster was incredibly rare and should be protected.

“Is the man going to be okay Marcus?”

Scarlett asked as they closed the medical room door, “Is he still going to be angry when he wakes up?”

“I hope not Scarlett,” Marcus replied as they 80

headed off to the bunker’s dining area, “I really hope not.” * “Come in, come in, sit down,” Kyle, the smaller one with the beard said as the children entered the small, bare room. He was sat at a long rectangular table in the middle of the room.

There was a smell in the air coming from the kitchen just next door. It sort of smelled like cooking, but it wasn’t a hugely pleasant smell. It didn’t smell like freshly baked bread, eggs being fried or meat being grilled, the kind of smells Marcus associated with breakfast. It smelled kind of artificial, a sort of chemical smell.

Kyle was sitting at the end of the table furthest from the door. Marcus pulled out the chair nearest him and sat down. Scarlett took the chair next to him.

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The chairs were plastic. Boring plastic chairs with no character at all. The children’s mum would’ve hated them. She had liked their furniture, everything in their house, to have character, she had used to say. From the curtains in the living room to the toilet seat in the bathroom, everything in the family home had been hand picked by their mother. Everything in their house had character.

Everything in the bunker, however, looked functional, like these people were only there temporarily. A plain rectangular table with metal legs, plain plastic chairs, the racks on the walls just metal brackets and struts bolted together with functional, visible metal screws. There was no decoration anywhere, no pictures on the walls except for the cluster of photographs Marcus had been studying in the sleeping quarters when everything had gone crazy the day before. All the 82

“Come in, come in, sit down…”

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walls were just bare and wall coloured. In fact, everything was just the colour it came in. Wood was wood coloured, metal was metal coloured.

These people had made no attempt to make their home a home. They were functional people living out a functional life. Even the inside of Rain Parity’s craft had more character than this place, the lucky rabbit’s foot hanging in the cockpit, the colourful cushions. Even somewhere as temporary as the craft had been treated better than these people had treated this hole in the ground.

“How long have you, err, lived here?” Marcus asked as he pulled the plastic chair in to the table, its legs making a nasty scraping sound on the cold, bare stone floor as he did. He was still unused to making polite conversation but he thought he ought to try. They were guests, of a sort, after all.

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“Well,” Kyle said, with a bit of a smile, “That is an interesting question Marcus. A very interesting question indeed.”

Marcus hadn’t thought it was that interesting a question. In fact he’d tried to ask as inoffensive a question as he could think of. He’d intended it just to be small talk, as he believed that kind of non-threatening conversation was called.

Kyle took a drink from the bottle in his hand and winced as if it wasn’t a very pleasant taste, “Sometimes it feels like we’ve been here forever!” He laughed even though it wasn’t really funny, “Buried alive, you could say. We’ve been here since before the old Big Bang Two. Before it all went boom. We were stationed here way back when the wall was finished. Stopping the Mexicans getting in, you know?”

As he said this he closed one eye and mimed shooting a gun with his fingers. He then blew the 85

end of his fingers as if there was smoke coming from the end of the imaginary gun. “God bless America,” he said laughing and raising his bottle.

He took another glug from the bottle, wincing again. It was clearly not very nice and Marcus wondered why he kept drinking it.

“Is that where we are?” Asked Scarlett, “America? I’ve never been to America before.

This isn’t what I thought it would be like at all.

I thought there’d be all starscrapers and that big statue of that lady with the ice cream?”

“Liberty?” Kyle replied, hunching down to Scarlett’s level and looking her right in the eye, “Liberty fell a long time ago, baby girl. A long time ago and a long way away. You’re in old New Mexico. Old New Mexico. And frankly, what you see outside, that’s pretty much how it’s always been!”

He laughed again as he took another glug 86

from his unpleasant drink. But again, it wasn’t really funny.

“Mexico?” Scarlett asked, confused.

“No!” Kyle yelled suddenly, slamming the bottle down on the hard wood of the table, making Scarlett jump at the noise, “America, god damn it! I hate those Mexicans!”

“Oh right, I see,” Scarlett said, although clearly she had no idea what he was talking about. She had no idea there had been a state on the US border with Mexico that was called New Mexico in the first place, so calling it old New Mexico was just doubly confusing and she was quite relieved when her two female friends finally joined them in the dining quarters.

“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Cherry said as she entered with a plate in each hand, “It’s the twenty-first century and it’s still the women folk in the kitchen doing all the cooking!”

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Rain Parity followed behind with an eyebrow raised. She clearly wasn’t as happy with the way the roles had been shared out as her red headed companion. She pushed the door shut behind her with her foot as she carried three plates expertly towards the expectant diners.

“But you’re our guests and I wanted you to eat well, not the kind of slop this guy dishes up,” Cherry said, pointing an elbow at Kyle, who smiled and looked at her. He didn’t seem quite so angry, so scary, now that Cherry was in the room.

“And I,” Rain Parity added with a smile that looked like she didn’t mean it, “Just wanted to keep an eye on the chef. Make sure she didn’t add any... special ingredients... to any of the dishes.”

Marcus got what she meant. Rain didn’t trust these people. She hadn’t known them long and they had met under particularly unusual 88

circumstances to say the least. Marcus knew how that felt. It had taken him a long time to trust Rain when she had first crashed into their world. In fact he still didn’t completely trust her.

He still made sure he always knew where his bag with the scrapbook in was at all times.

“So, bon appetit as they say in Paris, France!”

She said, placing a functional metal plate in front of each of the children, “Or at least that’s what they used to say before it blew up, anyway!”

Cherry laughed as she sat down opposite Scarlett. It wasn’t a very nice laugh. It was kind of nasal and sounded mean, as if she had no sympathy at all for the massive loss of lives she had just joked about.

Marcus and Scarlett stared at their plates.

If this was the best they had to offer, what Kyle would have prepared for them didn’t bear thinking about.

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Kyle had already picked up his functional knife and fork and started tucking in from the plate Rain had placed in front of him. Then he stopped and looked up, some white stuff dripping from his beard, as Rain Parity pulled out the chair next to Scarlett, at the head of the table.

“That’s Clarke’s seat,” he said, wagging his finger with his mouth full.

Rain sat down in the seat anyway. Clearly testing the boundaries of the group, seeing how far she could push it, how far she could bend the rules. Reminding them that they weren’t the boss of her. That she was used to being her own boss.

“Well I don’t think he’s going to be needing it this morning, sweetie,” she said, shaking out her napkin with a smile on her face. Kyle stared straight at Rain Parity but she didn’t look back so, eventually, he stopped staring and just got on 90

with eating.

“What is this?” Scarlett asked, poking the wet grey pile on one side of her plate with her fork.

“Steak and eggs, baby,” Cherry said with a smile, “Only the best New Mexican breakfast for our special guests!”

Scarlett stared at the dry looking red strips of hard cured meat on her plate as she tried to scoop up some of the grey runny egg with her fork. She tasted it. It did not taste good. She tried to hide it but it was pretty obvious from the look on her face that it was not to her liking.

“Here you go baby girl,” Kyle said with a smile, “Smother it in this. Honey makes everything taste good. Even jerky and powdered egg.”

He slid a bottle of honey across the table to Scarlett. She opened it and squeezed it out on her plate until it was swimming with the stuff.

It certainly helped hide the nasty chemical 91

aftertaste but it still wasn’t the greatest meal Scarlett had ever eaten, and she had eaten boiled toad.

“Honey lasts forever,” Cherry whispered to Scarlett, “And we’ve got Twinkies for after. Did you know that Twinkies will even survive a nuclear bomb? Imagine that! All the buildings gone, no survivors, but the Twinkies still standing!”

Scarlett had no idea what a Twinkie was but they didn’t sound much more appetising than powdered egg and beef jerky, frankly. She was missing Marcus’s hot porridge.

After they had finished eating their bland, unpleasant meal, the grown-ups had coffee, which Rain had to admit was actually pretty good, and Cherry poured out cups of CocaCola for the children. The children had never had Coca-Cola before but they knew all about 92

it from pictures in magazines. It didn’t look as fizzy as it did in the pictures but it was a pleasant enough taste she supposed. She didn’t really know what all the fuss was about though really.

“We’ve got enough Coca-Cola to fill a swimming pool in the stores! Who needs fruit juice, right?” Cherry said proudly, although it didn’t sound much like something to be proud of to Scarlett.

“So when are we going to take the reptile out?”

Rain asked the two residents of the bunker. She was clearly impatient and wanted to set the beast free, get it back in its natural habitat and out of this hole in the ground.

“Not long now,” Kyle replied, “We just have to wait for the night-winds to die down. It’ll be daylight soon. Trust me, you don’t want to be above ground when the night-winds are blowing.

You really don’t.”

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CHAPTER FOUR

“As fast as you can”

“We’ve always been at war with Mexico!” Kyle yelled as they bumped through the sandy terrain, “Some people just refuse to admit it!”

Marcus couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t really necessary for Kyle to be driving quite this fast.

He was regretting having asked to sit in the front passenger seat now as the truck leapt around on the uneven landscape, its wheels leaving the ground every time Kyle hit a big rock. From the passenger seat it felt like at any moment the whole vehicle could hit something big and just flip over. As he looked back, he could see Scarlett wasn’t fairing much better strapped into the booster seat behind him, her newly braided 94

hair bouncing around across her face as the four wheel drive vehicle bumped its way across the terrain. When Marcus had seen the truck, he had begged to sit in the front, or “ride shotgun” as Kyle has called it for some reason, but he now felt that Rain had probably chosen the best position after all. She was standing in the back seat with her top half poking out of the vehicle’s sunroof “keeping an eye out for any Mexicans” at Kyle’s request. She was listening to him rant and shaking her head as she surveyed the road ahead through her binoculars. She clearly didn’t agree with anything at all that the man driving was saying.

“Ever since the Mexicans tried to take Texas off us in the 1840s things just haven’t been the same,” Kyle was continuing, “And then, what with all the criminals flooding over the border and what not...”

95

The truck leapt around on the uneven landscape 96

“That’s just not true Kyle,” Rain yelled down into the cab of the truck, she’d clearly had enough of his nonsense, “Mexico and the US have had a comparatively peaceful history over the years, all things considered. There’s been no wars, no major conflicts to speak of for over a hundred years. In fact in the early 2000s, Mexico was America’s third biggest trade partner and over a million Americans were permanent residents in Mexico. I don’t know who’s been feeding you this fake history, Kyle, but you should read some books. Do you actually have any books in that bunker of yours?”

“Nah,” Kyle said turning the steering wheel sharply to avoid a large rock in the road, “We’ve got TV and the internet down there. Who needs books?”

Rain shook her head in disbelief. “Well, therein lies the root of your problem my man,” 97

she shouted, “Have you ever stopped to think who’s feeding you this news? They’re just telling you what they want you to know. Making you think what they want you to think. It’s state-run propaganda. You ever hear the word propaganda before, Kyle?”

Kyle reluctantly admitted that he had never heard the word before. He didn’t like being schooled, but he had to admit he had always had some niggling doubts about some of the things that Clarke was so passionate about.

Why was keeping the border wall protected so important? The Mexicans didn’t seem that bothered about getting into America any more.

In fact, if anything, it kind of felt like the border wall was there to stop the Americans getting into Mexico now, and not the other way around. He was actually secretly finding it quite refreshing to hear Rain’s perspective. To hear things from a 98

different point of view for a change.

“Propaganda,” Rain continued, “Is when the state or government is intentionally selective about what information they release to the people. When they use the news to tell the story they want to tell. If they continually tell you that another country or another group of people are the bad guys. If they constantly tell you it all the time, every single day, that it’s someone else’s fault that you haven’t got any money, or someone else’s fault that there’s no jobs, eventually you’re gonna start to believe it. If the only news you’re reading is scripted by the people in charge, then they can tell you what they want. They can keep you in your place, get you to do what they want you to do easily. Make you believe what they want you to believe. And, get this Kyle, sometimes the government lies. Yup. They lie to you to make you do what they want you to do.”

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“I’m no idiot,” Kyle yelled up at Rain, “I make my own mind up on things!”

“Oh yeah? Who payed for the wall, Kyle?”

Rain asked with a shrug.

“The Mexicans!” he shouted back automatically.

“Wrong...” Rain replied.

This went on for quite some time as Kyle continued to fling the truck around and they sped on through the desert. Kyle passionately convinced he was right about something and Rain patiently trying to use facts and evidence to prove that what he believed was, more often than not, wrong.

“It’s like these social justice warriors,” Kyle was saying as they continued to thunder on through the desert, “They’ve ruined everything with their political correctness. You can’t even say what you really think any more without being thrown 100

in jail. You can’t even say Merry Christmas any more. It’s illegal. You have to say happy holidays or something.”

“Really?” Rain squatted down next to the driving seat for this one, it had clearly riled her, “Really Kyle? You know people who’ve been thrown in prison just for saying Merry Christmas? Really?”

“Well no, not personally,” Kyle admitted, slightly embarrassed, “But you read these stories on...”

“On the internet? On the governmentcontrolled internet where they lie to you?

Where they only tell you what they want you to believe?” Rain interrupted.

Marcus was enjoying this. It was like watching Rain beat Kyle at tennis, but just using her brain.

Every idea he threw at her, she was batting back at him and smashing it out of the intellectual 101

tennis court with her mind.

“Let me ask you something,” she said, getting closer to Kyle, “Is there really something so wrong with wanting social justice? For wanting everyone to have the same chances in life? If you’re going to be a warrior for something, it might as well be to help others. To help the people who can’t help themselves. Robin Hood, Davy Crockett, Batman. All these legends, these heroes in stories passed down through the ages, they fought for people who couldn’t fight for themselves, not for big businesses, not for the people in charge. Because it’s the right thing to do. And political correctness? What’s wrong with political correctness? That’s just being polite. Not calling people the names that upset them. I learnt not to do that in first grade. Didn’t you? People who say that they’re just saying what everyone else is thinking and are too scared 102

to say? They’re just not right. Not everyone is thinking those things. Just racists. Racists, bigots and bullies.”

Marcus was starting to realise that maybe Rain Parity and his parents had more in common than he thought. They were both trying to make the world a better place in their own ways. To help people.

“Tell me honestly,” Rain said to Kyle, “Am I the first actual black person that you’ve ever had a proper conversation with in real life?”

There was a pause while Kyle thought about this. Marcus could see that Scarlett was staring at Rain Parity from the back seat with a confused look on her face.

“Well yeah, technically,” Kyle was forced to admit once again, “I mean, I’ve chatted to black people on...”

“Don’t tell me,” Rain said again, “On the 103

internet...”

“What do you mean Rain? You’re not black?”

Scarlett suddenly interrupted from behind, “Why would you say you’re black? You’re just a kind of light brown?”

Rain looked round. It hadn’t occurred to her before that Scarlett, having been brought up only ever knowing a handful of people in her lifetime, would have no real concept of colour. That the thought of people with slightly different shades of skin being labelled as black, white or whatever might be an idea that had never crossed the little girl’s mind. That thinking of people as different wasn’t an automatic thing you were born with, it was learned. And that it didn’t have to be that way.

This was a conversation that they didn’t have time for right now. They had arrived at the gas pipeline they had been heading for across the 104

bumpy sand dunes and Kyle jammed the brakes on hard, enveloping the truck in a huge cloud of dust. As the dust settled the children could see an enormous yellow pipe, running off to the horizon, and just by where they had pulled up there was what looked like an enormous metal tap, sort of like you might get on a bathroom basin. But much bigger.

Kyle climbed out of the driver’s seat and slammed the door. He’d had a lot to think about on the journey. He had expected to disagree with everything that Rain Parity had said but, as he trudged his way through the sand round to the back of the truck, he found himself thinking that a lot of the points she argued had made a lot of sense. As he opened the back doors of the truck and started to unspool the huge syphon hose as he had done so many times before, he found himself wondering if she might be right.

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Dragging the hose over to the gasoline valve, he wondered if maybe he was living in the past, living a lifestyle that was doomed to die. As he attached the hose to the valve for what felt like the hundred thousandth time he couldn’t help thinking that maybe there might be a better way. Maybe there was more to life than living in a hole in the ground in old New Mexico and stealing gasoline to live? He didn’t like the feeling that he might be wrong about things that he had believed for so long – nobody does – but he was definitely considering the possibility that he might have been misled, been lied to, for the first time in his life. * The rest of the crew got out of the truck.

Even though it had been a long journey, it was still fairly early in the day so the heat was still 106

just about bearable. Scarlett instantly started climbing around on the big yellow pipe as if she was at a playground. Marcus wandered over to have a closer look at what Kyle was up to while Rain Parity sat down and got her charts and compass out of her bag.

Marcus could see that Kyle had attached the hose to the big valve and that something was flowing down the giant tube into the massive tanks in the back of the truck.

“What are you pumping?” He asked. He had got more used to Kyle. He’d worked out that the aggressive tone he had used with the children the other morning had just been his defence mechanism. He had been trying to appear tough in front of the children so they didn’t think he was weak. Clearly he had felt threatened by Rain. He wasn’t used to having to deal with such a strong woman. Marcus got the feeling that 107

in Clarke and Kyle’s world, the women just did the cooking and cleaning and the men tended to make all the decisions. And that wasn’t how Rain worked at all.

But since then, and particularly since Clarke had woken up, Kyle had let his guard slip a little a couple of times. More than a couple of times.

Marcus had found himself warming to Kyle.

They had played kart racing games against each other on his games console, he’d let Marcus help him change the tyre on the truck that had worn down and there’d been a few times when they’d actually made each other really laugh.

It was nice for Marcus to have a man to talk to for a change. And they weren’t actually that far apart in age. Marcus was, they had worked out, probably only about eight years younger than Kyle, who, until the three newcomers had arrived, had been the baby of the group.

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“This?” Kyle squinted at Marcus in the daylight, “This is black gold Marcus. The most precious resource known to man. Gas-o-line.”

He had said gasoline in the same way he sometimes said U S of A. As if it was something to be proud of.

“If we didn’t have this, we wouldn’t have nothing,” he went on, “No electricity in the bunker, no vehicles, nothing. This is the life blood that keeps this country running. It’s the only thing that keeps us alive Marcus.”

“Well,” Marcus paused, unsure whether he should say what he was about to say, “That’s not strictly true Kyle. There are loads of renewable alternatives to oil-based power. There’s solar power, wind and even gravity driven alternatives now. We don’t actually have to rely on fossil fuels any more.”

Kyle turned to Marcus. He huffed and then 109

laughed a little and shook his head. As if it wasn’t bad enough being lectured by Rain all the way here, now the kid, his friend, was laying into him too.

“I mean,” Marcus went on, “What are you going to do when the oil runs out? I’ve seen this rock from the outside and it really isn’t that big.

Wherever this pipeline you’re stealing the gas from originally comes from, like the Coca-Cola in your store room fridge, one day it’s going to run out. And what are you going to do then?

You’ve made no plans. You’ve not planted any crops so your food will run out one day, and it seems to me like you’ve not thought about your energy supply either. You can’t live on powdered eggs and stolen fuel forever, can you?”

Kyle shut the valve off. The tanks were full. He wished he could shut off what everyone had been saying to him for the past hour as easily because 110

he felt like his head was full too. But he couldn’t.

All these new ideas were swimming around in his mind. He was trying to avoid thinking about it but it was quite overwhelming.

“Okay okay,” he said in frustration, “I hear what you’re saying. I’m living with my head in the sand.”

“Literally!” Marcus laughed. He was surprised to hear Kyle laugh too.

“Right, well we’re done here anyway,” Kyle said, “Let’s release the dragon and get out of here.”

Kyle spooled the hose back into the truck, shaking the excess fuel onto the sand. Marcus watched the dark liquid get absorbed by the light sand as Rain Parity came and lifted the cage containing the lizard out of the back of the truck.

Kyle insisted on standing guard with his 111

gun as Rain took the cage a fair way away from the truck into the shade by the side of the pipeline. He was worried that the giant reptile might attack again but Rain had insisted that it would only attack if it was scared. That reptiles generally speaking didn’t want any trouble and would only attack if they felt endangered or needed to eat.

As the beast was released from the confines of its cage, Marcus was surprised how handsome it looked in its natural habitat. The daylight glinted on its shiny brown and yellow skin as it slithered off into the shade to look for something to eat, stopping briefly to look back and flick its tongue, almost to say thank you for its release from its cold, dark captivity back into the big wide world where it belonged. * 112

The group sat in the shade of the truck and had the lunch that Cherry had prepared for them. Cold canned hot dogs and dried fruit washed down with warm, flat Coca-Cola.

They were discussing Rain’s plan to get south of the border. Beyond the wall. Rain had found a tunnel on the internet that they said used to be used to smuggle people illegally into America from Mexico in the old days, back when America had still been a more appealing place to live than Mexico. She had worked out where the tunnel entrance was on the map, and that’s where she was planning to get across the border. Kyle had said he would take them there before heading back to Clarke and Cherry in the bunker.

Marcus could read Kyle pretty well now and he could see that something was troubling him.

“Why don’t you come with us Kyle?” he asked, just putting it out there without checking first 113

with the girls, “We could do with an extra pair of hands.”

Kyle instantly looked to Rain Parity. She just smiled and shrugged as if to say, “whatever.”

But Scarlett was hugely excited by this. She said it would be like being a real family again.

With a mum and a dad.

“Well, its not totally out of the question,” Rain said, “In the old days we had no choice. We were all totally linked. Part of the same ecosystem.

What you were doing on one side of the planet, destroying the environment, affected the people on the other side of the planet. But now, there’s another way. A new world, if you like. On Alpha Central we’ve sorted all that out. It’s all renewable energy, solar, wind, what have you. And we’re totally self sufficient. We grow everything we need. It’s not utopia, it’s not the Garden of Eden but it is a better way. And it’s going to survive 114

longer than Amex, that’s for sure.”

As they stood up and cleared away their things, Kyle said he’d think about it on the way.

He’d think about coming with them. * Meanwhile, back in the bunker, Cherry was sweeping the living quarters. Like she did every day. She would do the washing up after breakfast, clean the living quarters, make the beds, get what she needed out of the stores for lunch and then sit down to watch daytime chat shows on TV. It was her routine. What she did every day.

As she shook out Kyle’s duvet, she saw something sticking out from under his pillow.

An envelope. She picked it up. “C and C” it said on the front, so she opened it and read the note inside.

“Dear Bolesey and Cherry,” it said – Bolesey 115

was the nickname Kyle sometimes used for Clarke – she read on, “I’ve decided I’m going to ask the others if I can go with them. Alpha Central sounds amazing and, if they’ll have me, I think my life would be better there. Thanks for everything you’ve done for me over the years.

I really do appreciate it. I hope you’ll be happy together without me. You should really think about starting a family together. You’d make good parents. Good luck in the future. All my love, Kyle.”

“Oh my goodness,” said Cherry, dropping the broom on the floor with a clatter.

“Something wrong darlin’?” Clarke called from the other room, where he could hear her over the reruns of the football he was watching in the relaxation area, “Is everything okay?”

Cherry didn’t answer. But she hoped it was.

She hoped everything was going to be okay. It 116

seemed that Kyle had made a big decision.

It seemed that Kyle had made a big decision before they had even set off.Â

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CHAPTER FIVE

“Cradle will rock”

It had taken a long time to explain what ‘people smuggling’ was to Scarlett. She didn’t understand why people weren’t allowed to just move freely wherever they wanted. She didn’t really understand what borders between countries were, how you could just step over an invisible, imaginary line that someone had made up and drawn on a map and suddenly you were somewhere else. Even though it looked and felt exactly the same. The sky was the same, the ground was the same, but you were in a different country with a different coloured flag and sometimes even a different language.

At first Scarlett had insisted that to get to 118

another country you had to go by sea or in an aeroplane and she couldn’t accept that you could just walk across a border from one country to the next.

The tunnel helped though. When they reached the tunnel entrance she could accept that you could go into a tunnel and come out in another country. She was fine with that. That made sense to Scarlett.

She still found it very hard to understand what an illegal person was though. How someone could be breaking the law just by being somewhere, even if they hadn’t done anything wrong. Even if they were a doctor or a teacher and were happy to help, to do whatever was asked of them, that they were still breaking the law.

They could be put in prison or made to go back to where they had come from for no reason at all, even if they were really nice.

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Rain had told Scarlett that the tunnel had been dug to get people across the border illegally in the old days. To smuggle Mexican people into America who didn’t have the right documents, the right pieces of paper, to say that they were allowed to be there. The American government had said that they didn’t want any more Mexican people in their country and that was that. Rain had explained to Scarlett that a lot of Mexican people wanted to live in America because there were more jobs there than in Mexico in the old days. That people would be paid more money for doing those jobs than they would at home, and that there were better schools for their children there. Scarlett couldn’t really see what the problem was and she said she thought the American government were silly. If people were happy to work and not to break the law then why shouldn’t they go there? And how could 120

children be illegal anyway? They hadn’t even done anything yet.

The tunnel wasn’t very long. Scarlett had been disappointed that even though there were little train tracks running along the floor of the tunnel, there was no train. Marcus explained that they wouldn’t have needed to take a train anyway because the tunnel was only about 400 metres long. About the distance from their house to the rope swing they used to play on back when they lived in the forest. A perfectly fine distance to walk. No need for a train. But secretly Scarlett pretended she was on a train anyway. She didn’t tell anyone but she did it in her head. “Choo choo!”

*

The night-winds were as bad as Kyle had said.

Marcus hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Curled 121

up against the wall of the tunnel, resting against their bags, Scarlett had found it easy to sleep. She could always sleep when Marcus was there. With her head on his lap, like they had used to do back home by the fireplace, she had drifted off really quickly and slept soundly. There was no fireplace for light and warmth here though. Just the pitch black of the tunnel and the sound of stones, big stones, throwing themselves repeatedly at the metal sheets lining the outside of the tunnel entrance.

Marcus hoped Kyle and Rain would be alright. He didn’t know what he would do if something happened to them in the winds of the night. He knew the plan, but it was Rain’s plan.

He knew they had to make it to The Free and Sovereign State of Hidalgo, but he had literally no idea where that was or how he would get there. He had seen the maps and it had looked 122

a long, long way away. Near the sea down South by the very edge of Amex. It was about as far away as you could get from where they were now, behind the wall. If Kyle and Rain didn’t make it back, he had no idea how he would get Scarlett there. Even if they did manage to get there he had no idea what they would do when they got there. He had no idea what Satmex was or why it was so important.

Torchlight, the sound of scrambling feet, and then, just like that, Marcus didn’t have to worry about having a plan any more. Not for now anyway. His temporary, makeshift mum and dad were back, and they were out of breath.

“We can do it Rain,” Kyle was panting, “We can do it if we go now, before daylight. They’ll never see us.”

“It’s crazy Kyle,” Rain panted back, “There’s stuff flying everywhere, we won’t make it a mile 123

without hitting something.”

The grown-ups weren’t including Marcus in their debate so he just sat and listened in silence trying to work out what was happening. As far as he could tell, they were trying to decide between two options. They had found a vehicle of some sort that they thought they could take – they were calling it “the bus” – and they were trying to decide between them whether they should take it now, or to wait until the morning.

Rain was arguing that they should wait until morning because the night-winds were too dangerous. Visibility would be too bad and there would be too much debris, stones and other things being thrown about by the force of the wind. Kyle, on the other hand, was saying that they should use the darkness, the cover of night, to their advantage. That they should make a break for it while the men with guns at the 124

border wall had their guard down. If they waited til morning, he argued, more of the armed men would be awake and they would be sitting ducks, as he put it. Kyle said that he had driven in nightwinds before and, although it was dangerous, it wasn’t impossible. He was presenting a very convincing argument.

The two grown-ups eventually remembered that Marcus was there listening to them, and that they weren’t just sitting there debating on their own. They turned to him as one and asked his opinion.

“What do you think kid?” Kyle asked with a smile.

“Yeah, it looks like you get the casting vote Marcus,” Rain said, also smiling, “You can make it two against one.”

Marcus looked from one face to the other. He wasn’t used to having so much power. Almost 125

since the moment Rain had crashed into the forest, she had been calling the shots, deciding everything. She had led them to her craft, up into the skies, and then crashing back down again.

They had followed her, without question, across the dry desert, into Kyle’s cave, and now under the border wall. As she sat there, expectantly looking at Marcus, the dirt and the moisture from the night-winds still fresh on her face, he thought that maybe it was time to give Kyle a chance to take the lead for a change. He seemed just as capable of making good decisions as Rain and, although he could see her point, he kind of agreed with Kyle. Surely it was better to try to steal a vehicle in the dead of night rather than broad daylight? And how bad could the nightwinds be really? * 126

The night-winds were worse than Kyle had said. It was almost impossible for Marcus to stand up straight against the gale force that was blowing. It wasn’t just sand being thrown around, it was full blown pebbles and rocks.

And they hurt. Every stone that hit as he held his hands up to protect his face was bruising him.

The horizontal sheets of rain flying straight at his face meant he could hardly see Rain Parity charging ahead with Scarlett wrapped in a blanket in her arms.

“Are you alright kid?” Kyle yelled over the howling storm. Marcus could hardly hear him but he raised his hand in a thumbs up to indicate that he was. Deep down, he was starting to wonder whether Rain’s plan to wait until morning might not have made more sense after all.

The bus, as they were calling it, was up ahead 127

of them. It was so dark and there was so much stuff flying around he couldn’t see much else apart from the bus so he kept his head down and headed straight for it. The bus was more like a camper van, gun metal grey and with metal slats on the windows like on an army vehicle. He could see that there were dents in all the panels on its sides. Whether that was from being hit by the flying rocks of the night-winds or if the bus had been in some bigger kind of battle, Marcus wasn’t sure, but it had clearly seen some action.

Rain and Scarlett were already inside. Rain was struggling to hold the passenger door open against the force of the wind that was desperate to slam it shut.

“Come on Kyle,” she was yelling over the wind, “Hot-wire this thing and let’s get out of here.”

They were lucky the wind was howling so 128

much. Nobody nearby would’ve been able to hear them, even though they were shouting really loud.

Kyle scrambled into the bus first. He dived underneath where the steering wheel was and started fiddling with some wires as Rain continued to struggle holding the door for Marcus. The wind now felt like it was getting even stronger, if that were possible, and she was having to use all her strength just to stop the door from either slamming shut or flying off its hinges.

As Marcus grabbed the door frame, about to climb up into the bus, he was struck on the head.

A flying piece of rock hit him square on the temple and he was out. Out like a light as Rain grabbed him and dragged him into the cab of the bus by the hood of his jacket.

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* Marcus hadn’t dreamed he was flying for a long time. He had wondered if perhaps, because he had flown for real now, maybe his imagination no longer felt the need to do it for him? He had actually wondered if he might possibly never fly in his dreams ever again.

He was back up in the air now. Back in familiar dreamflight. He had used to hate dreamflight. He had always felt out of control and worried that at any moment he might crash.

Now it felt different. He felt more like he had it under control. He could choose which direction the dreamflight would take him a lot more than he used to be able to do.

As he looked down he could see the sea. The beautiful indigo sea rolling below him, the light catching the tips of the waves as they crashed and tumbled into each other. As he soared closer 130

to the shore he could see the water becoming a richer, turquoise colour and the foam of the surf spreading on the sand like fingers feeling its warm golden glow.

He soared a little closer to the ground and then began to glide along level with the line of the shore. As he looked to his left he saw a horse.

A beautiful rusty brown horse racing to keep up with him. He flew level with the horse as it galloped along the sea’s edge. He looked into its chestnut brown eyes, its mane bouncing on the back of its neck as it kept pace with Marcus along the coastline.

After a while the horse stopped, but Marcus kept going. He looked back behind him and he felt as if his majestic horse friend was saying he should go up and over the hill that was just to his left.

So, trusting the dream horse instinctively, 131

he did. He followed the line of the lush, green hill up and over the top to the other side where he was greeted by one of the most incredible, breathtaking sights he had ever seen, in a dream or in real life. There, below him, hundreds of people had made their homes. Carved into and built onto the hillside were hundreds of tiny houses. The tiny houses were painted in a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colours. Purples and pinks and yellows and greens and turquoises, all mixed together to make one gigantic beautiful mural on the side of the hill. And all the people who lived in the houses were coming out and waving at him. Cheery-faced grown-ups and children, looking up into the sky and waving as Marcus flew by. It was the happiest feeling Marcus could ever remember having had as he soared up high into the sky again. He was just about to wave 132

back when he woke up. * The bus was rattling. It was bouncing around.

Squeaks and rattles, squeaks and rattles and bumps.

He was lying on a narrow bed in the back of the bus. He had a blanket over him even though it definitely wasn’t cold.

“Oh hello,” a female voice behind him said.

He turned, it was Scarlett. She piled on top of him and gave him a massive hug and a big kiss on his forehead where the rock had hit him.

“I’ve been kissing it better a lot,” she said with a smile, “I think that’s why it’s got better so quickly.”

Marcus kissed Scarlett’s forehead in return.

He was really pleased to see her and that she was alright. He was always pleased to see that his 133

little sister was alright.

“Thank you Scarlett,” he said, stroking her hair as he liked to do, “I think you’re probably right.”

From the front of the cab of the bus, Rain Parity turned around and smiled. She was pleased to see him too. She offered him some water and beckoned him over, to come and sit beside her in the front seats of the bus as Kyle drove on along the dusty track.

They seemed to be safe. Certainly everyone was acting as if they were safe, that they had made it out of the chaos of the border wall last night. The guards and the night-winds were all a distant memory now as they cruised on their way, bumping along in their big grey bus.

Through the slats in the window beside him Marcus could see the landscape around them was far greener than it had been in old New Mexico.

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There were trees and plants lining the side of the dusty road. Marcus hadn’t realised how much he’d missed trees until he saw them again. They reminded him of home, even though the types of trees looked very different from the ones in the forest. They were much taller and thinner and shaped kind of like teardrops or snowdrops. And they were so green. He felt like he hadn’t seen the colour green for days. Everything in old New Mexico had just been the colour of sand. Dusty sand. Behind the trees he could see fields full of plants growing in the daylight.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said as he paused for breath while drinking deep from Rain Parity’s water bottle, “Why are those plants in such neat straight rows? They look like Scarlett’s hair.”

“That’s fields of corn Marcus,” Rain replied, peering through the slats in the window, “A very 135

impressive harvest actually. We should stop and get some. What do you think Kyle?”

“Great idea,” said Kyle, “Let me just pull up over here.” * They emptied their rucksacks so they could fill them with corn. Marcus made sure Rain didn’t notice him hiding his scrapbook under the mattress of the bed he had been resting on earlier. He still didn’t want her to see his book full of things about a person she knew. A person she knew well enough to talk to face-to-face. He hadn’t quite worked out what to make of Rain’s relationship with, her connection to, Tanyen Manesh. Everything he had heard about Alpha Central and Manesh’s company, the Corusca, had sounded good. Squeaky clean. It sounded to Marcus that everything Tanyen Manesh 136

had tried to do had been good for the world, when there still was a world. But Marcus knew that his parents were very rarely wrong. They never seemed to be on the wrong side of history so there must have been something that had made them suspicious. There must have been something that made them want to investigate him. So Marcus was going to keep his scrapbook to himself for just a little bit longer.

They slid down the slope at the side of the track and out into the field. From the bus it had just looked like endless green lines, but up close Marcus could see that each of those lines was made up of rows and rows of tall plants with luscious green leaves flopping down all the way up to the tops which were higher than their heads. So high that even the grown-ups couldn’t see over them.

“Look at this, kids,” Rain said, parting some 137

of the leaves to reveal a whole golden ear of corn, just sitting there, smiling up at them in the daylight.

“I’ve...” Kyle stuttered, as amazed as the children, “I’ve never actually seen real corn growing in the wild before. It looks... It looks exactly like it does on the cans. I didn’t really believe they actually just grew like that. So complete and ready to, you know, eat.”

Rain explained what they should be looking for. How to spot the freshest, most ready ears of corn that were ripe for picking. Then she sent them off on their way.

Scarlett skipped off, her still-plaited hair bouncing behind her with her bag in her hand.

Marcus followed her. He thought she would probably be fine on her own, but he just liked to know where she was. Just to make sure she was safe.

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“These feels so naughty!” Scarlett was singing as she ran through the corn rows with Marcus.

Marcus was reaching up high for the corn that Scarlett couldn’t get and was throwing it into her open bag. She was jokingly moving her bag at the last minute so it fell on the floor. Normally Marcus would get annoyed if his sister messed around like this when food was involved because it was so important and there was normally so little to go around. But here, in the bright fresh daylight, with so much corn all around them it didn’t seem to matter quite so much. He was finding it as funny as she was. When she grabbed his bag of corn and ran off he didn’t scold her, he didn’t tell her to stop messing about he just ran after her, laughing as he turned the corner after her. But as he turned the corner he was stopped in his tracks by what he saw.

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* Face down on the ground, ears of corn scattered all around, Scarlett screamed as the robot approached.

Bright orange and almost as tall as the sheafs of corn, but not quite – which explains why they hadn’t spotted it from the road – rolling towards the girl on the floor with wheels where its feet should be and menacingly wielding giant mechanical pincers as it approached.

“Intruso! Alerta! Intruso! Alerta!” It was repeating over and over in the same flat robotic tone as it got closer and closer to Scarlett, who was rooted to the ground in fear. Marcus grabbed her and tried to pull her away but the robot was moving too fast, they would never make it.

A few rows of corn down, Rain and Kyle, hearing the sudden alert, dropped their bags full 140

of harvested corn and ran towards the noise.

“What is it?” Kyle yelled as they turned the corner to where the children were cowering. The enormous industrial monstrosity almost upon them and the sound of pistons and gears was immense.

“Agribots!” Rain said, recognising the technology, “Wish we hadn’t left the guns in the bus now! Marcus, get her out of there!”

But it was too late. The robot was over them, its pincers like the claws of a giant metal crab opened revealing sharp blades, glinting as they rotated, catching the light. The machine raised the deadly claws high as it prepared to dispose of the unwanted intruders. Marcus once again tried to shield his little sister’s body but he knew it would be no use, his body would be no defender against the blades descending towards them.

BANG! 141

The central panel of the industrial robot exploded, sending a shower of sparks over Marcus as he sheltered his sister. Wires splayed out from the central processor like the tentacles of some kind of electronic octopus as the pistons stopped pistoning and the gears stopped gearing with a hiss and a grind. Then silence.

The giant robot toppled backwards away from Marcus and Scarlett, landing with an almighty thud and a cloud of dust and corn leaves.

As the dust died down, Scarlett looked up and saw possibly the last thing she would’ve expected to see. An enormous dog came bounding over to Scarlett and licked her face as she lay on the floor. The biggest, happiest looking, most gorgeous black and white dog she had ever seen, his tail wagging like a steam train as he nuzzled his face in Scarlett’s. She stroked his head and gave him a good rub behind the ears, just behind 142

a large black patch over one of his eyes and the friendliest looking smile that she had ever seen – making his tail wag even harder.

“What the...?” Kyle said as he looked up, behind the fallen robot and the friendly dog, at the woman on horseback silhouetted against the bright sky, the smoke from the end of her rifle drifting up above the corn.

“Que pasa?” she said as she tipped her hat at the strangers, “Americanos?”

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CHAPTER SIX

“Where a million diamonds shine”

“Five little ducks went swimming one day...”

Scarlett was singing as she lay on the colourful bedspread. Archie the dog was sprawled next to her. She hugged him, rubbing his head. Marcus loved seeing how much enjoyment she was getting from this new friendship with her big, hairy, black and white companion.

“The mama duck said quack, quack, quack, quack...” she continued as the dog’s tail thump, thump, thumped on the mattress, almost in time with her.

They had enjoyed an absolutely glorious morning. Their new host had given them breakfast – freshly baked bread, fruit juice and 144

scrambled eggs. Proper, yellow, scrambled eggs – not like the sad, grey, wet excuses for eggs they had eaten back in the cave in old New Mexico.

Then she had suggested that they all go for a swim in the sea. Scarlett had obviously been absolutely, definitely up for this idea, so they had got their things together and headed down to the golden, stretching sands at the bottom of the hill.

“Me and Marcus can be the children,” Scarlett was saying to Archie the dog as Marcus watched her from the next bed back in the house later, “Kyle can be the daddy, Rain Parity can be the mummy and you can be our pet,” she paused to think for a bit and then added, “And Blue, Blue can be the grandma.”

Blue Garcia Flores. Scarlett had at first said that Blue wasn’t a real name. That it was just a colour. Until Blue had pointed out to her that 145

scarlett was a colour as well and that people could be called whatever they wanted to be called. At the beach, Rain had been wearing a bright, colourful swimming costume that Blue had let her borrow as she ran down into the splashing waves. Her leg was fully healed from her crash on Sector 7B now and she no longer needed to wear the cast. Kyle had run after her in his black shorts and challenged her to a race. Marcus had never seen her wear anything other than her khaki flight suit before. She looked happier than he’d ever seen her as both the grown ups dived into the foam like dolphins. They swam as fast as they could to a wooden platform just a little way out in the sea, battling against each other all the way. From where he was standing, it had looked like it was a draw. They had both reached the platform at almost exactly the same 146

time. He could hear them laughing and joking about who the winner was as they climbed up onto the wood and started taking turns diving in, showing off to each other about who could do the best tricks.

Scarlett had happily splashed up and down the shore with the dog, throwing a red and yellow ball into the sea and getting him to fetch it back to her on the sand. They had become instant friends. Marcus swore that the dog smiled every time Scarlett spoke and Scarlett could hardly keep her hands off him, wrapping her arms around his neck at any opportunity – but the dog clearly didn’t seem to mind.

After a refreshing paddle and dip in the sea, Marcus had decided to sit with Blue on her rainbow blanket on the sand. She seemed very relaxed and he felt the air of calm about the woman was rubbing off on him.

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“It’s lovely here, Blue,” Marcus said, “Thank you for letting us stay with you in your house. It’s very kind of you.”

“Mi casa, su casa,” Blue had replied with a shrug. She had a tendency to occasionally speak in Spanish even though her English was very good. Marcus had learned that they spoke Spanish in Mexico, not English or Mexican. He hadn’t really asked why. It didn’t seem to matter much. Nothing much seemed to matter here in Hidalgo.

Back in the house, Marcus decided Scarlett was alright where she was, playing with Archie, and he would go downstairs and see what the others were up to.

“My house is your house” is what Blue had said in Spanish back on the beach and she had certainly made Marcus feel very much at home.

It was a lovely big house and as he slid his hands 148

down the cool wood of the wide mahogany handrail on the stairs he was thinking it wouldn’t be so terrible if they just stayed here.

If it wasn’t for the thought that his parents might still be alive on Alpha Central there would’ve been no doubt in his mind. He would’ve just stayed here with the fresh fruit and the sea and the lovely dog to keep his sister company.

As he came down into the wide open living space on the ground floor and saw the white curtains blowing in the breeze that was whisping in from across the hillside he could hear Rain and Kyle’s conversation from out on the balcony.

“It’s not right to automate farming,” Kyle was saying, “Those corn-picking Agribots are taking American jobs.”

Rain laughed, Marcus was starting to think that they actually quite enjoyed talking to each 149

other like this. Neither of them seemed to really get that angry. Even though they always started off totally disagreeing on everything, Kyle seemed to quite enjoy being told he was wrong now. Almost as if he brought up topics that he knew Rain knew more about than him just to start the ball rolling.

“Firstly, we’re not in America, so they wouldn’t be American jobs, they’d be Mexican jobs...” Rain began. Marcus thought he’d leave them to it. They would either end up agreeing or not agreeing, but they’d soon find something else to argue about. It was how they worked.

He walked into Blue’s studio. She was at a canvas doing a painting of the sea. But she wasn’t just using blue paint she was using all sorts of different colours – Oranges and greens and yellows and pinks.

“I know it’s probably an obvious question,” 150

Marcus asked as he entered – he wouldn’t normally just ask someone something like that but he was so relaxed around the Mexican lady that he felt able to, “Why isn’t the sea just blue, Blue?”

Blue paused with her paint brush in her hand, “When you look at the sea you see the world,” she turned towards Marcus but she had her eyes closed and her head back as if she was smelling the sea she was describing, “All the colours of the rainbow are reflected in the water. Everything that has ever been and ever will be is mirrored in the light bouncing off the waves.”

She was such an artist.

As she continued to describe the method behind her art to Marcus in her mesmerising Mexican accent, he wandered around her studio studying all the different canvases. They were all different sizes and they were all of different 151

things but they all shared the same bright, bold palette of colours and Marcus loved that.

So many things in his life had been drab and grey and boring that he was finding it really refreshing to see a splash of colour for a change.

There was a picture of a dog in rainbow stripes, a colourful galloping horse, a tree with colourful sunlight pouring through between the leaves. They were all so beautiful. Marcus stopped at one small square canvas. He could hardly believe his eyes. It was of the buildings that he had seen in his dream.

As clear as day it was the little rainbow houses on the hillside with the kaleidoscopic colours that he had seen as he flew by in his dream.

“You like that one?” Blue asked, seeing him staring, “I call it The Crystal Slide. You can have it if you like? It’s yours.”

He picked up the small canvas. It was, as luck 152

would have it, small enough to fit in his bag.

“I can’t possibly keep this,” he said, “Don’t you want to sell it?”

“Sell it?” Blue laughed, “Who buys art these days? I don’t paint to make money. I don’t do it to be famous.”

“Then why do you do it?” he asked, genuinely not knowing the answer to the question.

“Come with me,” Blue said, wiping her hands on her painting overalls and gesturing to Marcus to follow her outside.

It was bright outside and it should have been as hot as it got in Upper Amex, but because they were up in the hills the temperature was a lot lower and the breeze made it feel quite pleasant. As Blue was talking to Marcus she was wandering gently among her orange trees picking fruit and cradling it in the folds of her overalls.

“I don’t make the art, Marcus, the art chooses 153

me. It grows through me from the earth like the oranges on the trees. It chooses to let me express it,” she went on, casually, matter-of-factly, “The art comes up from the very ground, from the Pachamama herself if you will, and chooses to pour itself out into the air using me as its instrument. I couldn’t stop it if I tried, and why would I want to when it brings such colours, such beauty, such joy into my life and the lives of anyone who sees it?”

Marcus liked the sound the words she was saying were making but he wasn’t entirely sure he followed the point. This seemed to happen a lot. He liked the sound her voice made generally.

It was rhythmic, like a song. He found himself drifting off sometimes when he was listening to her because it sounded like music, beautiful music. Sometimes he had to remind himself to pay attention to what Blue was actually trying 154

to say, as well as to the way she was saying it, because he felt it would be rude not to. As he followed her back into the kitchen of the house he tried to catch onto the thread of what she was talking about again.

“So,” he asked, “Do you actually enjoy painting?”

Blue laughed, she leant her head right back again and let out a huge laugh as she unloaded the five oranges onto an exquisitely painted wooden plate on the huge, solid oak dining table, “Do I enjoy painting? Painting is my reality.

Without it I have no life. Everything passes through me and I pass through everything. It is the only thing I will ever love and the only thing I will ever know. If I ever stop loving painting, I will have stopped loving life,” then changing the subject suddenly, but not rudely, she said, “Marcus, go and see if the others would like 155

some orange.”

He liked the way she said his name. She put the emphasis on the end of the word, “Mar-coos.”

He smiled again about this as he went to find the others.

The others did want some orange so, soon, all five people in the house were sat on one side of the long table – Scarlett with Archie at her feet, looking up at his favourite human ever – as Blue got knives to cut the fruit and began to share it out among them.

Rain was asking Blue about the facility known as Satmex. It was where she wanted to go, but she had heard it was heavily guarded. Blue said that she also believed this to be the case. She said she had heard about another group of Americans who had once tried to break into Satmex and that the armed guards had made quick work of them. She didn’t recommend approaching 156

the building directly from the main entrance, but she did have another suggestion that might work. Apparently it was only a few hours drive from Blue’s house across the hills. Not a difficult journey at all, but it was what would be waiting for them when they got there that was the problem.

“But I like it here,” said Scarlett, looking up briefly from her four legged companion under the table, “Why do we have to go? It’s lovely.

You’ve got the sea, you’ve got the sand, you’ve got the sun, what more could you ask for?”

Blue passed over a plate with an orange and a knife just as Rain was about to speak. “You see Scarlett, that’s actually the problem,” Rain said, picking up the knife and starting to peel into the round fruit’s thick skin, “This... outside...” she waved the hand with the knife around in a circle, pointing towards the window, “This... daylight.

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It’s not sunshine. It’s not right, it’s not normal and one day soon, nobody knows when, it’s going to swallow up the whole of Amex.”

Whereas Rain Parity was choosing to carefully peel her orange, removing all the skin and pith, Kyle had instead just chopped his orange in half, right down the middle. He was just about to cut those halves in half again when he stopped, looking up at Rain with one raised eyebrow, and said but one single, solitary word: “What?”

“Sorry Kyle, I wasn’t sure if you knew,” Rain removed the last of the pith from her orange and put it with the rest of it on her plate, “That’s not the sun up there,” she said, “Have you never wondered why the constant yellow haze in the sky? Why you never actually see the round shape of the sun like you used to any more? Why the night-winds are so strong?”

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“I thought it was all, you know, just normal global warming stuff?” Kyle said with a shrug, as if climate change was no big deal.

Rain held her skinned, bare orange up with one hand. “It’s not the sun out there at all,” she said, rotating the orange around in her fingers as she spoke, “It’s the Earth’s core, floating in space just outside the Amex atmosphere. When the Earth cracked, the hot molten core poured out into space and just hung there, glowing with the heat of a sun but much, much closer. That’s why it’s so hot down here. That’s why it gets so much hotter here than it ever used to get on Earth. And at night, when Amex has rotated the other way, away from the gravitational support of the suspended molten lava in space, that’s why all hell breaks loose. The night-winds aren’t just wind, they’re gravity fighting back, trying to force everything off the face of the planetoid.

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Amex simply can’t survive. It’s either going to burn if it gets too close to the core, or just be wiped away if it goes too far the other way. It’s a lose-lose situation. It can’t win. I’m sorry. It simply won’t survive.”

Kyle was silent.

Blue simply said the word, “Icarus.”

She was referring to the Greek legend of the boy who tried to escape from the island of Crete by building a pair of wings. His father had warned him not to fly too close to the sun or his wings would melt, and not to fly too close to the sea or he would drown. It had proved to be an impossible balancing act and, in the story, young Icarus had flown too close to the sun and ended up dying. The moral being that it’s ok to try but you have to be aware that if you fly too close to the sun, you might get burned.

“Can’t we just take it with us like we did with 160

the forest?” Scarlett asked, looking straight in Archie’s eyes as she spoke, “Pull it further away from the big burning thing in the sky?”

“No, I’m afraid not. It’s just too big,” Rain explained, in one hand she held up a segment of Kyle’s orange, “7B is small. Small enough for the gravity harness to lasso around it. We were able to reverse the polarity as far as we could and make it possible for the craft to tow it. Whereas, Amex,” she held up her whole, peeled orange in her other hand, “It’s just too big. It’s one of the biggest planetoids in the system. We could never get the harness to loop around it I’m afraid.”

During the silence that followed, the only person who could think anything positive at all was Marcus. He was thinking that the news had actually made his decision about whether they should stay or go to Alpha Central easier.

But then Marcus looked at Blue. She had 161

such a friendly face. A smiling face he felt like he’d known forever, not just the few days they’d stayed in her hillside lodge – picking oranges and learning about art. He wanted to ask her to come with them but he already knew what her answer would be. It was like she was a part of the landscape. If she left Mexico she would never feel whole, never paint again. And as she had said, when she tired of painting, she would tire of life. * The bus was shuddering. The five of them had been willing it on. Marcus had been praying that the fuel would last the whole journey, but it looked like their luck might finally be running out.

Rain, in the driving seat this time, had been turning the engine off every time they had been going downhill to try and save petrol, 162

and then trying to build up as much speed and momentum as possible so they could freewheel, engine still in neutral, as far up the other side of the hill as they could before turning the key and starting the engine again. But it seemed as though the old bus had finally given up as it spluttered and wheezed and eventually conked out by the side of the dusty road.

“How far is it?” Marcus asked.

“It’s still about eight Ks from here I’m afraid,” Rain replied, resting her head on the scorching hot plastic of the steering wheel. Marcus knew how far eight Ks was now and he didn’t much fancy having to cover that distance on foot again. To have to end their time on Amex exactly as it had begun, with a huge gruelling trek in the scorching heat across the desert. He had experienced such highs and lows the past few days, but this really felt like a kick in the teeth.

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Kyle, meanwhile, calmly reached for his rucksack under the front passenger seat. From out of the bag he pulled one of four three litre coca-cola bottles, the dark liquid inside swilling around as he shook the bottle towards Rain Parity.

“Lucky I brought some black gold then isn’t it?” he said with a smile.

“You...?” Rain said, looking up with a bemused look, “When the rest of us filled our bottles with water to keep us alive back in old New Mexico, you decided instead to bring petrol?”

“Gas-o-line. The life-blood of Amex,” said Kyle, looking very pleased with himself, “And it’s a good job I did, too.”

“And when exactly were you planning to tell me this Kyle?” Rain laughed, shaking her fist at him in jest, as if she was angry with him. Despite 164

all her preaching about the new world, about clean energy, she had never been so pleased to see a huge bottle of petrol in her life. * They parked a safe distance away from the town, hoping that the tree-lined route had helped to hide the bus’s approach from anyone who might have been looking out for them. It was the peak of the midday heat though and they had calculated that this would be the best time to arrive, when everyone would be sheltering from the heat and the least number of people would be around to potentially witness their arrival. Marcus stopped and stared at the giant dish poking out from behind the hill they were approaching. Blue had described it to them back at the house, and he had seen pictures of 165

satellite dishes before, but nothing could have quite prepared him for the enormity of it, like a giant dessert spoon being held up above the land, waiting to take a big scoop out of the creamy yellow sky. It was about a thousand times bigger than the dishes on the gravity shackle pylon on Sector 7B. Marcus supposed it had to be, seeing as Amex itself was at least a thousand times bigger than the forest.

The Satmex facility, Rain had explained, was one of Tanyen Manesh’s scientific research bases from back before the world had split.

His company, The Corusca, had gone into partnership with the Mexican Space Agency and the entire base was, Rain had explained, being used as a clever way to disguise Manesh’s ongoing research into the effects of gravity.

He had made sure that there were obvious results from other projects that the public could 166

see so nobody suspected what was really going on behind closed doors. The agricultural robots for example had got significant press attention.

While, all the time, secretly, The Corusca had been advancing their big plan where nobody could see it.

The main research building itself was incredible. It was perfectly smooth and circular like a doughnut. Like a giant silver metal doughnut with the familiar Corusca horse logo massive in silver right in the middle of it, glinting in the light, the light that they had recently discovered wasn’t sunlight at all, but the deadly glow of the Earth’s molten core, hanging dangerously just above their heads.

There was a very high fence around the facility and Marcus could see, even from this distance, that there were at least two guards outside the fence, just as Blue had told them there would be.

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Marcus had found it funny that the Mexican Space Agency had never actually been into space.

In fact there had only ever been three or four Mexicans who had even been on a space flight at all. Marcus realised that there were almost more members of Marcus’s family that had been into space than people from this entire country.

The Space Agency had actually been closed down ten years ago as the Mexican government had decided the money would be better spent elsewhere. It was only when businessmen like Tanyen Manesh had offered to help fund it that it had been able to start up again at all. It had seemed, as always with Tanyen Manesh, like he was doing it for the good of Mexico, for the good of the world. But Marcus realised this was another example of what his parents had always suspected about Manesh – that he was secretly using the situation to his own advantage.

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“It’s this way,” Rain said, consulting Blue’s hand-drawn map, “Just through these trees.”

The five of them made their way through the thick overgrown branches, being careful on the way to make sure none of the sharp thorns pinged back into the smaller members of the group’s faces. They reached the rock face and Rain used her knife to cut away the tendrils and vines that covered the wooden panel that was just where Blue had said it would be.

The mythical Lost Diamond Mines of the Pedernals. The legendary Crystal Caves. Stories told how over a hundred years ago a trader from far away Santa Fe had taken shelter from a storm inside the caves. He had entered the dark mouth of the cave to get respite from the wind and rain and by sheer chance had discovered crystals scattered on the rock floor. Diamonds. It had made the trader more rich than he could possibly 169

have imagined and people had flocked to the caves under the mountain, desperate to share in the wealth he had discovered. The caves had been mined until they could be mined no more. Thousands of diamonds had been dug out from under the rock, weakening the support of the mountain above, until the caves were no longer considered safe to enter.

People had died when parts of the caves had collapsed and when it was decided there were too few precious stones left to justify the risk of entering the mines, they were shut down. They were closed and forgotten about. Now they only existed in stories, in legends. People forgot in the end exactly where the cave entrance was located and it got overgrown and covered in dust. But Blue had heard the stories and Blue remembered. Diamonds are one of the strongest materials known to man. Marcus remembered staring at 170

the diamond on his mum’s engagement ring long ago, back when the family all lived together in the forest. It was a tiny, characterful diamond, beautifully housed in a delicate silver ring.

Just the sort of ring that his mum would have chosen. He remembered having asked his Mum if anything was as strong a diamond, if anything could outlive a diamond. He remembered her answer really clearly – and she hadn’t mentioned the Twinkies that Cherry Brady had talked about over breakfast back in the cave in the desert.

His mum had said that nuclear radiation, the after-effects of a nuclear explosion, could last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, devastating the land around and poisoning the air and water for generations. But Marcus had wanted to know if anything could actually last forever, to never die. She had admitted that eventually even 171

diamonds, the strongest thing known to man, would break down into dust. Eventually, after maybe thousand of years. But that there was one thing that would last forever, as long as there were people still left alive in the universe. The power of a good story. Parents pass their stories on to their children, and then those children grow up and pass them on to their children, and to their children’s children and so on, forever. People will continue to tell stories about Jesus Christ, about Thor, about Winnie the Pooh, for as long as people can read or speak and that is why stories have such power. The messages hidden inside simple stories have the power to change the way people think.

To make the world a better place. As Kyle smashed down the ancient wooden panels covering the cave entrance, Marcus wondered if people might tell stories of their 172

adventures one day. If he and Scarlett might one day become legends themselves. * As they entered the Crystal Caves, and Rain and Kyle switched on their head-torches, there were no diamonds glinting in the light Now. Not now. Just dust floating in the beams of the torchlight. They headed off into the pitch black, holding on to each other so that they didn’t get separated in the darkness.

Their footsteps echoing around the high rock walls were the only sounds until Rain Parity raised her fist, to indicate that the group should stop.

“Listen,” she whispered, “Do you hear something?”

Sure enough, almost imperceptible to the human ear, way off in the distance was the 173

familiar sound of grinding gears and pistons. A very familiar sound indeed.

“Agribots,” Marcus whispered in horror, the memory of the whirring blades plunging down towards his sister coming back to haunt him.

“Not quite,” Rain whispered back, “Minedroids. They’re similar, but slightly different. They have drills where the Agribots have shears. Their vision sensors are much stronger because of the dark, but their audio receptors have been dampened because of the amount of noise the mining creates. We should be able to sneak up on it if we switch off our torches.”

“But then what?” Kyle whispered anxiously, “Turn it off and on again?”

“Yeah, kind of...” Rain said, taking her gun from its holster and clocking it – the sliding, clicking motion that makes a gun active and 174

dangerous, “If it’s facing the other way, and I can get a clear shot at the deactivation module on its back, then it will shut down, just like the Agribot in the field.” * Repetitive, boring, manual labour. That’s what robot workers are good for. They will happily do all the jobs that people don’t want to do, either because they are too monotonous and dull or because the conditions are too dangerous.

When the automated workforce first began to become more common, in the early 21st century, people had been scared that it would mean the end of human employment. Much like in the agricultural revolution of the 17th century and the industrial revolution of the 19th century, people have always worried when new systems, new machinery and new technology come along.

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It was just the same with the rise of the robot workers. The people worried that robots would take their jobs and destroy their livelihoods, leaving them with no work and no money. Some people had even tried to destroy the factories where the robots were made and that was part of the reason the Corusca facility was so well guarded. Part of the reason the group of five had needed to approach via the underground tunnels, where they thought the facility would be least defended, not accounting for the Minedroid of course. The Minedroid was very similar to the Agribot. It had wheels by its feet and it was a tall as the corn plants. But where the Agribot had been orange, the Minedroid was dark blue and instead of the pincers it had large, cone shape drills. Golden sparks were showering down as the drills spun against the hard rock walls of 176

the tunnel. The Minedroid was slowly moving further in to the cave wall as the drills wore down the granite.

Lying on the floor, unwanted, was the odd diamond. They were shining like crystals in the dirt, but seemingly of no interest whatsoever to the Minedroid. Whatever it was that the droid was mining for, it was clearly more valuable to it than diamonds.

Without warning the Minedroid’s drills suddenly stopped. Its whole body span on its wheels to face the group as floodlights from the middle of its body suddenly lit up the group where they stood.

Kyle, Rain and Marcus froze with no idea what to do. There was no point shooting at it unless its back was turned. Its front casing was armoured and the bullets would just fly off it, probably causing more damage by bouncing 177

around the enclosed space and hitting someone.

Luckily Scarlett was thinking fast. Quick as a flash she grabbed the red and yellow ball she had been playing with on the beach and threw it down the tunnel, past the Minedroid’s legs and under its drill extension arms.

“Archie! Fetch!” she shouted and the fifth member of their group, Scarlett’s faithful fourlegged friend, shot off up the mine, underneath the robot arm and slid to a halt in a cloud of dust and crystals, grabbing the ball in his mouth as he did.

The Minedroid reacted to the sound and the movement, swivelling instantly around on its wheeled feet.

“Now, Rain!” Scarlett shouted. Rain Parity took aim and fired as Archie scrambled back towards Scarlett, wagging his tail with the ball in his mouth and bounded into her arms.

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The Minedroid, like the Agribot before it, exploded in a shower of sparks and tumbled forwards sending diamonds and dust up in the air.

“Major design flaw that,” said Kyle as he patted Rain Parity on the back.

“Yeah,” she replied, putting her gun back in her belt, “We’re working on it.”

“You saved our lives, Scarlett,” Marcus said to his sister, “You’re a hero! An actual living hero!”

“No,” Scarlett said selflessly, giving her dog – the dog that Blue had asked her to take good care of wherever they were going – a big kiss on the black patch just over his eye, “Archie’s the real hero, aren’t you boy?”

After a brief round of “good boy” shouts from all concerned, the five of them moved on through the network of tunnels towards the underground entrance to the Satmex facility.

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One step closer to Alpha Central. * As they entered the central control room of the Satmex facility, the large round room with screens around all the walls right in the centre where the hole would be in the doughnut – as the children were referring to it – it had whirred into life. Sensing the digital transponder on Rain’s wrist and recognising her as senior Corusca staff with top level clearance, the computer systems had come out of standby mode automatically, deactivating the internal defences and switching to active mode for the first time in years.

After climbing a ladder and entering through a service hatch that Rain had used her electronic door key on, the group of five – four people and a dog – had followed the darkened corridors 180

round in a seemingly endless spiralling loop upwards until they had finally reached the room at the top. The circular windows on the ceiling had made it feel even more like a doughnut hole, the light from the sky shining down contrasting with the darkened corridors below, the giant gravity dish just visible outside.

Scarlett recognised the sound as the systems whirred back into life. She had heard that sound before whenever they entered Rain Parity’s craft.

She knew what that meant. She liked that sound.

“Kyle, check this, out” Scarlett said, then thrusting her arms out by her side she shouted, “Miranda! Play Jingle Bells!”

Booming out from the massive speakers around the circular room, far louder than the speakers on Rain’s craft, the female voice of the intelligent central computer said, “Playing Jingle Bells from the festive Motown party playlist.”

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As the familiar opening to Scarlett’s favourite song echoed round the walls of the doughnut, Rain Parity got down to business. She sat at a screen and accessed the communication files while Scarlett danced her favourite dance and sang along to her favourite tune, getting most but not all – of the words right.

“She loves this song,” Marcus mentioned to Kyle.

“So do I, man,” Kyle replied, “Booker T and the MGs! My dad used to love this version! He’d play it every Christmas,” he went and joined Scarlett in her silly little dance, as did Archie, bounding around as the music played with his tongue hanging out.

Marcus decided that, as she was the only sensible one, he’d go and sit with Rain. He spun round the fixed swivel chair next to her and sat down. Peering over her shoulder to see what was 182

on the screen he could see she was typing, “Parity R. (Female), Starbrook M. (Male), Starbrook S. (Female), Garcia Flores A. (Dog, male)...”

“Kyle, what’s your surname?” she shouted across the room to where Kyle was still dancing like a loon.

“Wilson, why?” he yelled, not missing a beat.

“Passenger log,” she shouted back, then whispered to Marcus so he couldn’t hear, “Wilson? What a boring name!”

“Yeah I guess,” Marcus replied, he’d never really thought about how some names just sounded naturally boring before, it had never really concerned him, but she was right, it wasn’t the most exciting of surnames, “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going to contact Alpha Central again,” she explained, “It moves around a lot so I need the exact coordinates.”

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Marcus looked up at the huge screens around the walls and saw the familiar horizontal rainbow-coloured video call connection lines and heard a scratchy beeping noise as Rain attempted to make contact with Alpha C. This was the first time he’d ever heard this connecting noise.

Previously, when Rain had contacted Alpha Central, she had worn a headset so Marcus had been unable to hear the other end of the conversation. He wondered if he might be able to glean more information from the call this time, if he could hear it over the songs Kyle was playing over the speakers. It was now something about the soul of California or something.

“Captain Parity,” the woman who appeared on the screen suddenly said - which came as a surprise to Marcus, he had never heard her called that before, “Good to hear from you. We were starting to worry. We haven’t heard anything for 184

weeks. How goes the mission?”

She sounded professional, but friendly, like it was business, but Marcus could tell that she knew Rain – or Captain Parity as she called her – pretty well. Marcus wasn’t really that surprised that, even after all this time, he was still discovering new things about Rain Parity. That she was, apparently, a captain. She never really liked to reveal anything unless it was essential, unless other people absolutely needed to know it.

A bit like Marcus himself.

“Yeah, we’ve had a few hiccups on the way but we’re back on track now,” Rain said, again not revealing too many details, “We’re at the Satmex facility and I need clearance for take-off.”

“You’re in Southern Amex? How in the heck did that happen?” the woman on the screen asked, then she looked distracted, touching her earpiece as if she was receiving a message from 185

someone, ”Hold on, I’m just going to put you through to Manesh. I’ll arrange launch clearance for you. And then let’s arrange lunch when you get back! Good luck Captain Parity. Hopefully see you soon.”

As the screen went back to rainbow again Marcus felt a shiver. This was as close as he’d ever come to the mysterious Tanyen Manesh. He would actually be able to hear him this time. It was a bit like coming face-to-face with him for the first time, and that scared Marcus. The screen started crackling at that moment as if there was interference. Rain banged the control console, as if that would make a difference.

“Cheap Mexican parts!” she growled as the image on the crackly screen changed. It was flickering more and more and it was as if there was some kind of snowy interference on the screen as well as Tanyen Manesh appearing 186

right in the middle of it. He was surrounded either side by clean shaven men in khaki jump suits. Marcus couldn’t help noticing that they all seemed to have very similar haircuts. They all looked almost identical, bar the different hair colours and facial features.

“Prince Manesh,” Rain said, and Marcus could’ve sworn she almost did a little bow, or certainly a little nod of the head, “Peace be with the Corusca.”

“Ah Rain, good to see you,” he said, his voice was deep and smooth, Marcus would be tempted to call it chocolatey, “I’ve been tracking you.

No idea what you’ve been up to since the Amex automated defence system shot you down but I’m sure it’s been awfully exciting. Sorry about that, we really tried to deactivate it, but the communication down there is so bad. I think it must be the effect of the core, interfering with 187

transmissions.”

“It was one of ours?” Rain said, shocked, “We were shot down by our own missile?”

“Yes, my apologies,” Manesh said with a smile, “Really should’ve thought about it sooner. Still.

No harm done in the long run eh Rain?”

“No, it’s been quite the adventure,” she replied through gritted teeth, “Now, about those coordinates?”

“Yes I was going to send them to you but, as I said, bit of a communication problem,” as if to prove his point the screen flickered and buzzed again.

Marcus was staring at Manesh. He had almost got used to his appearance now but he still couldn’t help but think his face was a little too small for his head, and his hair definitely still needed a brush.

“Launch sequence initiated,” the female voice 188

said over the speakers, causing boos from the dancers for interrupting a song about somewhere called Alabama that appeared to be someone’s home. Meanwhile, on the screen, Tanyen Manesh was reading out a long series of numbers and letters that Rain was writing down on a note pad on the console in front of her. The connection was getting really bad now though, there was a buzzing of interference and the picture was flickering more and more. Marcus could see that Manesh was frustrated at having to keep repeating parts of the long, complicated coordinates. He probably wasn’t a man who was used to having to repeat himself. Rain had to insist that the others stopped the music so she could hear better. The singing had finished anyway and there were just guitar solos that seemed to go on forever anyway. Then the 189

connection dropped altogether. The screen went blank.

“Gah, never mind, I can play it back and try and pick up the bits I missed once we’re underway,” Rain said to Marcus, then turning to the whole group she announced, “Okay everyone find a seat. Launch sequence is activated.”

“But,” said Scarlett, confused, “Where is the spacecraft?”

“We’re in it,” Rain replied, putting on her seatbelt where she sat.

“Wow,” said Kyle, “A giant flying doughnut!”

The countdown commenced as the group took their seats. Kyle helping to get Archie into a harness as best he could while Scarlett reassured the dog that everything was going to be alright and that they were just going up into space in a big silver doughnut. The look on Archie’s face suggested he wasn’t entirely sure about all this 190

but that he trusted Scarlett and that he knew she wouldn’t put him in any danger on purpose. * As the doughnut slid from its magnetic housing in the centre of the Satmex facility the armed guards at the perimeter fence looked up in shock. They were saying some choice words in Spanish as they raised their guns, unsure whether they should shoot at the thing they were supposed to be protecting as it lifted and separated from the building with hardly a sound except for a slight magnetic humming.

The doughnut continued to slide through the yellow sky, past the gravity dish, past the crystal cave, and out over the sea.

From miles away, as she watched a huge, perfectly round silver cloud slide out over the sea towards the horizon, Blue raised a glass with a 191

slice of orange in it to old friends and new. She watched as the doughnut headed out towards the grey strip that separated the turquoise sea from the creamy sky and then slip out of the Amex atmosphere and into the universe. * On board the doughnut in space, Marcus was looking up through the glass ceiling as Rain Parity piloted the craft and endlessly replayed the video of Tanyen Manesh reading out the coordinates.

As Marcus watched the stars through the ceiling slip past he was listening to the numbers, to Tanyen Manesh’s chocolatey voice repeating the sequence over and over again, with a frustrating slight crackle and flicker over the same crucial numbers every time. He looked back to the giant screen, to Manesh’s sleepy-eyed 192

face in the middle. His eyes wandered to the men behind him and he had a sudden shudder of recognition, a shiver down his spine.

As he looked along the line of similar looking men in their identical outfits he suddenly realised he recognised one of the faces. It was a face he knew almost as well as he knew his own face. But it was a face he hadn’t seen in a very long time.

Dad. It was definitely his dad. Slightly older and with no beard but, without a doubt, that was his dad.

Transfixed by the face as the video looped and replayed over and again he realised that the man, his dad, was mouthing something. A message.

He must know that Marcus and Scarlett are on board and must be trying to tell them something.

Marcus continued to stare at his dad, trying 193

to work out what he was saying. But just as the coordinates kept missing a crucial number, his dad’s message kept glitching on a crucial word, flickering so he couldn’t quite make out what shape his mouth was making.

But he was absolutely sure he could make out the rest of the message. Crystal clear: “Don’t come here, head straight for - - -”

Marcus and Scarlett will return in Broken Earth Episode Three: A Paler Water 194

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About this book So I’ve written another book on my phone and gosh is my thumb tired.

The response to the first episode has been so positive. Thank you so much to everyone who said nice things. It’s so nice to hear and it really has encouraged me to get on and tell the second part of the story. But I don’t want to sound like one of those self-publishing unicorn books for girls authors who says, “To my husband Patrick, for encouraging me to write,” because nine out of ten times those books are unreadable and Patrick should, frankly, be more honest with his wife. I have a daughter who is currently saddle-deep in the unicorn phase so trust me on this.

They say write what you know so, because we were about to jet off for a family holiday to the Caribbean I thought I ought to at least set the first part of the book somewhere hot because I planned to get a lot of it done on a beach while the kids were in Kids Club. I did get a lot of it done, but frankly there’s only really one way to describe hot and that’s “hot”. I spent one morning drawing spaceships sitting by the swimming pool and the best compliment I got was from a young Jamaican guy who walked past, turned and said, “Mad skills, bro!” I’ll take that. Yamman.

This book is slightly longer than the first one. I think that is the curse of the sequel.

Those later Potters are like house bricks. I really tried to keep the wordcount down to approximately the same as the first but my son insisted I added robots so that necessitated adding a whole new strand. This ended up making it one chapter longer than I had intended. But I like the robots so it’s all good really.

After discovering the stray comma on page one of the last book, I thought it might be worth getting someone to give it a light sub this time, so my friend Andy offered to give it a quick once over. He said he really enjoyed the first book and I think he just wanted to be the first to find out what happened next. I asked him whether he thought it was too long and he said it’s only too long if it’s boring, andthat it’s not boring.

So you can blame him for the length. Also blame him for any grammatical errors.

People have asked me why I’m still insisting on writing it on my phone. Well, it’s kind of a tradition or a superstition now I suppose. Also it means I can do it literally anywhere – in bed, on the bus, on the toilet. I even wrote quite a large chunk of it on a nine hour overnight flight. It also helps by suggesting words occasionally. In fact half of one of the chapters was written purely using predictive text. I’m joking of course.

Well, I think that’s just about all I’ve got to say really. So, thanks for reading.

And remember, why read a book when you could write a book?

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