A Paler Water – Chris Drew Barker

BROKEN EARTH EPISODE THREE

A PALER WATER

CHRIS DREW BARKER

The Earth has exploded, you’re adrift in space… what now?

Marcus and Scarlett’s epic quest with the mysterious Rain Parity continues. As they jump from rock to rock – with new companions Kyle Wilson and Archie the dog – will they ever reach the fabled Alpha Central? Home to the great and powerful Tanyen Manesh – and maybe also some faces from their distant past...

Join the children as their exciting adventures in the stars take them to underwater cities, to desolate moons and encounters with deadly beasts as they desperately try to put their world back together again.

BROKEN EARTH EPISODE THREE

A PALER WATER

“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, once more

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Special thanks to unofficial scientific adviser Rob Manuel @christhebarker 6

BROKEN EARTH EPISODE THREE

A PALER WATER CHAPTER ONE

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Hey diddle diddle CHAPTER TWO

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All that he could see CHAPTER THREE

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Sonne les matines CHAPTER FOUR

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To see a lamb at school CHAPTER FIVE

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What did you there?

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YOU ARE HERE… Gravity has always been the key.

The world has shattered into pieces and nobody knows why. Apart from one man. Tanyen Manesh, leader of the powerful Corusca – once a hugely successful technology company, but now something much bigger. The Corusca seemed prepared for what happened and had been developing gravitational technology for just such an event.

Many died when the world cracked open like an egg, but the lucky few survived on chunks of land held together by the Corusca’s gravity shackles.

Marcus and Scarlett are two children who lived alone for years on a tiny forested rock called Sector 7B. Floating in space and protected by a failing gravity shackle until, one day, Rain Parity – a mysterious lady from a place called Alpha Central – crashed into their lives and took them away in her space craft.

Now, along with some new companions they met along the way – Kyle Wilson and Archie the dog – they are heading for Alpha Central, where they hope to finally get some answers. If they ever reach the centre of this new civilisation, this new galaxy, will they discover what really happened to the world? Will they finally be reunited with their parents? And will they find out exactly what is the big secret behind Tanyen Manesh’s mysterious plan?

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CHAPTER ONE

“Hey diddle diddle”

“My dad always used to say that man had never been to the moon,” said Kyle, looking out of the window on a landscape that wasn’t a part of the North American continent for the very first time in his life, “He used to say we had pretended to go to the moon so that the Russians thought we were better than them.

More powerful. A super-powered country. They had called it the space race. First country to get to the moon would be the winner. Russia versus America. And America won. The Eagle has landed, one small step for man, and all that.”

Kyle paused. Marcus, the young boy he had 3

befriended in the last few weeks, joined him at the window. The two of them staring out at the empty landscape outside. Their reflections shining back at them in the gigantic sheet of reinforced glass. There was only about eight or nine years difference between the two of them but you could tell that one was a boy and the other a man.

Marcus was short, his blonde hair just poking out from under the hood of the top that he always wore without fail. He was a serious boy and very proud. He never did anything without thinking through the possible consequences first.

He didn’t ever like to get things wrong. He had learned to be this cautious, this careful, because he’d always had to look after his little sister. Ever since they were very small, he’d always been there for his little sister who was still only four years 4

old now – pushing her along, helping her up, teaching her everything he knew. He’d needed to, having been left alone to raise her on his own.

Kyle on the other hand was more carefree, happy-go-lucky. His whole life he’d always had other people there to make the decisions for him.

He’d always been happy to go along with the crowd. There was a twinkle in his baby blue eyes and a cheeky smile under that rough beard. He tried to act tough in front of people but Marcus knew him better than that now. He had seen through that tough guy act a while ago.

“But my dad didn’t believe it,” Kyle continued, “He used to say that it was all pretend. That they’d filmed the moon landings in slow motion in a movie studio in Hollywood a long time ago and put it on TV. That they’d made a fake moon surface out of wood and walked around on it 5

suspended by wires so that everybody would think that Americans had got to the moon first.

That America was the best country. That we’d landed on the moon before the Russians. He used to tell me why he thought it was fake all the time. There was something about the shadows that didn’t look right to him and some kind of weird reflection in the astronaut’s helmet in one of the photos. I remember my dad would always say, ‘Kyle, if man has walked on the moon, then I’m Marilyn Monroe.’ He said it to me so much I kinda started to believe him.”

“And what do you think now?” Marcus asked, looking out of the window at the dusty land in front of them, “Do you think maybe... he was wrong?”

“I think,” Kyle said quietly, still looking out of the window, the unmoving red, white and blue 6

Stars and Stripes of the American flag planted twenty metres in front of him the only colour to break the grey, empty landscape below the dark sky, “I think maybe I shoulda called my dad Marilyn…” * Marcus left Kyle to stare out of the window at the surface of the moon. He had recently experienced what Kyle was now experiencing.

To be on new ground for the first time. To not be on the same chunk of rock floating in space that you had always lived on your entire life, for the first time. Marcus remembered how it had felt for him when he had first landed somewhere different. How long it had taken to get his head round being somewhere else. And he knew that Kyle had led quite a sheltered life compared to 7

Marcus, in a way, so he might need even more time to adjust and to take it all in.

Marcus realised that this was actually quite an odd thing to admit, seeing as Marcus himself had spent practically his whole life living alone with his sister in the house they grew up in.

Doing the same routine every day. The same things every morning. Every day he would wake up, make his sister breakfast, light the fire and go about his normal daily business.

His normal daily business of hunting for food and surviving in a forest where gravity misbehaved.

Because, of course, it hadn’t just been a normal forest. This forest was on a random chunk of rock floating in space after the world had exploded, held together by a thing called a gravity shackle. A gravity shackle that had 8

been placed there by a company known as the Corusca. A gravity shackle that had gone wrong.

The gravity shackle was a huge tower that had been built in the middle of the forest in full view of everyone a long time ago. When the world had still been in one piece. The Corusca had said that it was a fracking station. They had said that they were using a technique called hydraulic fracturing to try and find natural gas and oil under the Earth’s surface.

A lot of people hadn’t liked fracking back before the world exploded.

They had said that it was very dangerous and very bad for the environment. They had also said that it was expensive and not a good long term solution to finding the energy needed to power the planet in the future. They had argued that we should’ve been concentrating on renewable 9

energies – wind, wave and solar power – instead of just trying to squeeze the last few drops of fossil fuel out of a planet that was already straining. There had been all sorts of protests and demonstrations to try and stop the site being built. People had felt very strongly indeed about it.

They would have felt even more strongly about it had they known what the Corusca were really up to in the forest – and, indeed, all around the world. The fracking was just a front. A decoy to hide what Tanyen Manesh – the man in charge of the Corusca – was really up to underground.

A disguise for his illegal experimentation with gravity.

But when the world eventually blew up – as it did – it turned out the people who lived near one of Tanyen Manesh’s secret gravity shackles were, 10

in the end, the only ones who survived.

The rest of the population of the Earth was simply wiped out when the planet broke into pieces. Along with everything else – buildings, trees, animals, seas, all sucked from the surface and thrown out into space. The remainder of the Earth broke up into pieces, into planetoids held together by protective bubbles of gravity.

These surviving planetoids were all different shapes and sizes. Amex – the planetoid where Marcus and his sister Scarlett met Kyle – had been huge. It was made up of half of America and half of Mexico. Two countries with a land border now fused into one chunk of land floating through space.

Marcus had assumed that if people were thrown together like they were on Amex – the Americans and the Mexicans forced to share the 11

same space, to exist together on the same rock – that they would’ve worked together peacefully to try to make the best of it, to make things work. But they hadn’t. They were waging a war against each other on that isolated rock in the stars. Shooting guns at each other and launching bombs over a tiny wall that ran down the middle between upper and lower Amex. A wall that separated the two almost identical pieces of land.

The only difference being the colours of the flags that were flying in the wind in the sand.

Marcus still found it hard to believe they hadn’t been able to put aside their differences and work together for the good of humanity, he thought as he walked the circular corridor towards the central control room of the giant spaceship they were aboard that was parked on the moon. He couldn’t believe they hadn’t forced 12

Marcus swerved to avoid the explosion 13

themselves to work together despite everything.

To help people, the human race, to survive. But they hadn’t. They had concentrated more on the silly little differences that divided them rather than on the things that they had in common.

They had chosen to live in the past, endlessly arguing about ancient history and long ago wars instead of looking forwards to the future and thinking how they were going to survive this new inescapable reality. Constantly repeating the same mistakes again and again.

Amex was a vast place compared to the rock Marcus and his sister had grown up on. Their rock was but a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things, Marcus was thinking as he pushed open the door to the central control room of the vast craft that had been their home since they had left Amex. Not so very long ago it had 14

been just the two of them, Marcus and his fouryear-old sister Scarlett, in the forest on the rock known as Sector 7B, endlessly fetching water and firewood and hunting for food just to stay alive.

Every single day the same, nobody even knowing they were there.

Until one day a woman called Rain Parity – the woman who was now standing in the middle of the circular control room in front of Marcus – had crashed her small Corusca space craft onto their rock and turned everything even more upside down than it had already been.

Rain Parity was busy packing her bag next to the control room’s main central console. She was going on a mission. She always seemed to make sure she had everything she could possibly need just when she needed it. Ever since the day her space craft had ploughed into the land 15

right outside Marcus and Scarlett’s family home – churning up the earth, uprooting trees and blowing out windows as it shuddered to a noisy halt – every time she had needed something she’d always been able to go to her bag and get it. When they had needed water in the desert – she had pulled out her rainmaker, when a door was locked – her electronic key, when Marcus had needed to climb the gravity shackle to stop it from malfunctioning – she had a grappling hook launcher conveniently folded away in her rucksack for just such an occasion. She always seemed to have this uncanny ability to be ready for every eventuality. Always expecting the unexpected.

Rain was a strong woman, mentally and physically. Marcus’s sister Scarlett thought she was brilliant. She looked up to her, believed 16

everything she said and trusted her with her life.

And she loved her curly brown hair. She wished she had hair that was as curly as Rain’s.

Marcus wasn’t so sure about Rain though. He liked her and he believed that she would never intentionally put the children in any danger, but he still didn’t tell her everything. He always kept something back. Specifically, he hadn’t told her about his parents.

Rain Parity’s boss was Tanyen Manesh.

She was fairly high up in the Corusca as far as Marcus could tell – Tanyen Manesh’s company that was so interested in gravity all of a sudden.

He’d heard someone from the Corusca call her “Captain Parity” and Marcus knew that you didn’t get to be a captain unless you were pretty important.

But because Marcus’s parents didn’t trust 17

Tanyen Manesh, that meant that Marcus didn’t trust Rain one hundred per cent either. Marcus and Scarlett’s mum and dad had been journalists before they had disappeared just before the world exploded. They had been investigating the Corusca and they had a theory. A theory that involved Tanyen Manesh. It involved him a lot.

And not necessarily in a good way.

As Rain Parity suited up in a fresh khaki flight suit, Marcus approached her. He pulled himself up to his full height and tried to look as tall as he could. He still didn’t quite reach up to her brown shoulders but, as he looked up into her dark eyes, he desperately wanted to make himself seem as grown-up, as responsible, as possible.

“I’m coming with you,” he said determinedly.

Rain laughed as she hoisted her rucksack onto her back and said, “Oh no you’re not. You’re 18

staying right here on the moon my boy. It’s just going to be a quick in-and-out. No sightseeing.”

With that, she strode off into the circular corridor. Marcus followed, having to run to keep up with her.

“I know that place better than anyone,” Marcus said, undeterred as he struggled to keep up with her fast walking pace, “I can find my way around it with my eyes closed. You’ll be quicker with me. And, no offence, but...,” Rain was not stopping as Marcus continued to talk, “What if you get in trouble landing again? I can’t help but notice my landing on Amex was practically perfect compared to the way you crashed on Sector 7B. You nearly blew our whole house up!”

Rain reached the doors of the elevator. She pressed the button and turned to face Marcus.

She was smiling but her eyes were frowning. She 19

sometimes did this.

“Perfect landing?” She said incredulously, “Perfect landing? The craft actually blew up after you landed, Marcus!”

She turned and stormed into the lift, Marcus followed her. He really wanted to go with her on this mission and he was desperately trying to find an argument that was going to work.

“If I hadn’t got us out of there,” she said, stabbing at the bottom button of the lift that had a ‘Top security clearance only’ label on it, “We would’ve all exploded with the craft. BOOM! No more Marcus and Scarlett.”

“I just think we’d be better off going as a team.

It’s good to have backup. To have someone who could take the reins if it all goes wrong. And besides...” his voice dropped a bit, as if admitting something he didn’t want to admit, “There’s a 20

thing I need to get down there. Something in the house.”

The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened. Marcus and Rain stepped out into a huge open room. The sound of their footsteps on the metal floor echoed around the metal walls and ceiling as they stepped out of the elevator.

“Okay, look,” Rain said eventually as she continued to stride purposefully across the vast area, past the craft that was almost identical to the one she had crashed into Marcus and Scarlett’s rock – and that Marcus had later crashed onto Kyle’s rock and blown up, “If it really is so important to you, you can come with me to 7B. But, the first sign of trouble, or if you do anything that might hinder the mission, to slow me down, you’re going straight back to the craft and waiting there.”

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“And one more thing...” they had crossed the length of Hangar Bay 1 – as the sign above them had indicated the vast room was called. Marcus didn’t care what she was about to say. He was over the moon, in more ways than one. He was so pleased that Rain was going to allow him to go back to Sector 7B with her, to his home, he would agree to anything.

“Whatever you say Captain Parity,” he said.

He had never called her that before but it felt like the right moment to start as she pushed open the door into the mission control room that led off the flight deck they had just crossed.

“Scarlett is not coming with us,” Rain said, finishing her sentence as she entered the room, looking back and wagging her finger at Marcus as she did.

“Where am I not going? I want to come!”

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Scarlett asked from inside the room. Archie, the four-year-old girl’s dog, looked up, smiling his big smile. Rain could have sworn the dog was laughing at her. * Rain had experienced some incredible things in her time in space. She’d once seen two enormous meteorites collide in front of her with the force of a ten megaton bomb, she’d seen entire civilisations destroyed in the blink of an eye when the gravity structures failed. But nothing had prepared her for the power of a full blown meltdown from a four-year-old girl being told she wasn’t allowed to go with you on a visit to her childhood home.

Tears, thumping, howls of anguish. There seemed to be no way to stop this total force of 23

nature.

Rain Parity, to her credit, stood her ground as best she could. She used logic, reasoning, bargaining and bribes. She used all the tools at her disposal to convince Scarlett that she would be better off staying on the moon-base with Kyle while she and Marcus took the craft in the hanger down to Sector 7B and scavenged around in the children’s house.

Rain was adamant that this little girl’s basic techniques were not going to get the better of her. Even when Archie joined in, growling to defend Scarlett whenever anyone approached her, she was still determined that she was not going to let this under-five get her own way. Not a chance. Scarlett was definitely not coming with them.

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* One hour later, as the small space craft from Hangar Bay 1 rounded the moon on its second orbit, building up enough momentum for the slingshot manoeuvre to the forested rock, Scarlett explained to Archie how the radar alert system worked.

“And if there’s anything bad,” she was saying to the dog, pointing at the screen in the centre of the cockpit’s navigation desk as she did, “Red triangles pop up on this little television. And an awful noise. You wouldn’t like the noise. I’ll probably cover your ears when that happens.”

There is nothing in this universe that can change a four-year-old girl’s mind when it’s set on doing something. Nothing.

As they orbited for the second time, Marcus stared out of the window of the craft at the 25

circular doughnut shape of the ship that they had landed on the moon. It looked so natural there as the stars reflected on its curved silver walls. As if it had been built there on the moon, in the dusty vacuum of space, instead of having been built in the foothills of Mexico eight years previously. The doughnut had sat there, in Mexico, disguised as part of a building, waiting for the day it was needed. Hidden in plain sight.

A building that just happened to look like a spaceship. What better way to hide a spaceship?

The Mexican Space Authority’s satellite research centre, known to all as Satmex. Every day people would walk past it, unaware that at any time the magnetic couplings could be released and the top half of the building that looked like a spaceship could just slide off, then leave the atmosphere and be an actual spaceship.

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And now, it was parked there in the dust, after a quick jaunt to the moon. They had parked it there like you would park a car in a supermarket car park and proceeded on their journey in one of the smaller exploration crafts that were hidden in the lower levels of the Satmex facility. One of two launch hangars in the building that only those with top level clearance could enter. And also, seemingly, somehow so could Scarlett.

“You can see there,” Rain was saying to Kyle, pointing out of the window at the rocky point at the bottom of Sector 7B, “That’s where the impact happened. I hope the damage wasn’t too bad.”

Kyle was staring at the floating mass of the rock that used to be the children’s home just ahead of them. 7B had been set adrift. Rain had been towing the rock behind them to Alpha 27

Central using something called a gravity harness, but an unexpected encounter with an automated missile defence system had meant that she had to release the harness to try to stop them from crash landing. Leaving it free in the universe. Free to choose its own path.

Unfortunately Sector 7B had chosen to collide with the moon. To bash straight into it.

“It doesn’t look like much damage,” Kyle said, positively, “There’s just a little bit of erosion on one side and the pointy bit at the bottom looks a bit bent now.”

Rain sighed, “That pointy bit, as you call it, is the gyroscopic tidal stabiliser. If there’s been any serious damage to that it could be disastrous.

Catastrophic even.”

“Really?” Marcus interjected, worried about his home, “What kind of problems are you 28

talking about?”

“Very wet ones,” Rain said as they began the descent into 7B’s gravitational atmosphere.

“What was that?” Scarlett asked in surprise, “My stomach felt like it turned upside down?”

“That was us passing the grav barrier as we entered the atmosphere,” Rain replied, “That’s a good sign. That means gravity is functional. I’m going to program the craft to land exactly where it did last time. I know that area is clear.”

“Well it certainly is now,” Marcus said, sarcastically referring to the enormous channel she had carved into the front garden of their house when she had crash landed there last time, “Try not to hit a tree this time eh? Your leg’s only just recovered.”

Rain smiled at Marcus, although Scarlett could tell that she didn’t really mean it, as she 29

engaged landing mode on the craft. * The first time you do something is always the most memorable. The first time you ride a bike, your first day at a new school, your first time going away without your parents. You’ll never forget the thrill of expectation, the excitement of not knowing how long it will take and what might happen along the way. The second time is never quite as exciting as the first time, whatever it is. Your second flight in an aeroplane will never give you the same level of thrill as when the wheels leave the runway on take-off for the first time on your first ever flight.

The same was true for space travel for Marcus.

His second trip into space hadn’t exactly felt like a bus journey. His second take-off and landing 30

were still exciting, but he hadn’t quite had the same rush of excitement as he’d had the first time. Although, to be fair, on the first take-off he had actually been piloting the craft himself and the first landing was pretty dramatic to say the least.

Marcus’s third space craft landing couldn’t possibly be as dramatic as his first. His first landing had ended with the craft exploding in a ball of flames and Rain and the children only managing to escape by the skin of their teeth.

The third landing would be a doddle compared to this, he thought as the craft slid into the atmosphere and the navigation computer took control, locking on to the route Rain Parity had programmed into it based on her previous landing.

Marcus could see on the computer display 31

that there was a gap in the trees – that she had accidentally created last time – then a stretch of land which should be just long enough for the craft to decelerate and come to a halt without hitting anything important. She had factored in a twenty per cent margin of error and had trusted the computer to do the rest.

“You’re going to love our house Archie,” Scarlett said, hugging her huge black and white best friend, “I can show you my room and all my toys and everything. Oh hang on, that doesn’t sound good...”

As the craft descended into the atmosphere the crew didn’t need the alarms to tell them something was amiss, but they were sounding anyway. As the red warning lights lit up the cockpit, Marcus could see through the window that something was definitely wrong. Marcus 32

was getting used to the pilot’s eye view of the ground rushing up to greet him when a space craft lands. The first time it had been terrifying, he had thought that big hard surface racing towards them couldn’t possibly pull away in time but it had. At what felt like the last possible moment, the nose of the craft would lift just enough for the back end of the craft to hit first, cushioning the blow on the hard surface.

But this time it was different. This time the surface most definitely did not look hard.

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CHAPTER TWO

“All that he could see”

“I’m going to give this to you for good luck,” Marcus and Scarlett’s mum had said to Marcus when he was much younger, back when their home in the forest had been just a normal home in a normal forest on a normal Earth, “I want you to wear it at all times. It’ll keep you safe whenever I’m not there.”

Marcus remembered holding the special gift in his small hand, letting the long thin silver chain run through his fingers as he studied the shape of the silver pendant. It was small, only about the size of a two pound coin, but the level of detail on it was astounding. Every continent, 34

every country, every mountain of the world was engraved in microscopic detail on the two sides of this tiny, round, miniature replica of planet Earth. Marcus’s Mum had explained that it had been engraved by a micro-laser and had every single detail of the planet’s surface on it.

A perfect miniature world. Marcus hung it round his neck and promised his mum that he would always keep it with him at all times, wherever he went.

Marcus had intended to keep this promise.

He had worn it every day for years, long after everything had changed and they were left on their own, only taking it off at night. He had used to keep it hidden when he was at school so that his teachers didn’t take it off him because they didn’t used to allow jewellery.

Many years later though, something had 35

happened when Marcus was out hunting in the loose gravity at the edge of the forest.

He had been lying in wait, half way up a tree, waiting for the rabbit eating the grass below him to stray close enough for him to pounce. When the moment came, when Marcus had decided he would be able to drop and catch the rabbit in one move, he had released his grip on the branch and intended to fall straight on top of the rabbit. But his chain, the chain on the pendant around his neck, had got caught on something.

Too small to be called a branch, but too big to be a twig, the chain had wrapped itself around it and as Marcus had dropped from the tree it had tightened, choking him.

Unable to break free, Marcus dangled, kicking his legs and desperately pulling at the pendant to stop it from strangling him. He had hung there 36

alone, trying to wriggle free, for what felt like forever. All he could think as he was suspended, finding it hard to breathe, was how stupid he had been. How stupid he had been to risk his life because of a stupid pendant. And how stupid he had been to potentially leave Scarlett all alone in the house, unable to fend for herself because he had, stupidly, accidentally choked himself to death with a stupid necklace in the woods.

As he was worrying about how his sister would survive on her own without him, the chain broke. The weakest links in the silver length had eventually buckled and snapped and released the boy from the choking hold of the tree. As Marcus sat on the ground, forgetting all about the rabbit, he had regained his breath, rubbing his sore neck and vowed never to wear the pendant again. It was too much of a risk. Too 37

dangerous. He would keep it safe in the house.

His mum would never know he wasn’t wearing it every day and it’s not as if he could leave the forest anyway. He wasn’t going anywhere.

So he kept it safely in a metal box on the mantelpiece behind a photo of his parents and, after a while, he kind of forgot it was there.

He had almost completely forgotten about the pendant’s existence until the moment he realised his parents might still be alive. His parents who he hadn’t seen since before the Earth exploded and he and Scarlett had been left alone in the forest, unable to leave. The moment he realised there was even a slim chance he might see his parents again he had suddenly realised how disappointed his mum would be if she saw him and realised he wasn’t wearing his special lucky pendant. That she might blame the fact that 38

he hadn’t been wearing his lucky charm for all the bad luck that had befallen the world since she had left. And he had vowed that if he ever had the chance to return to the forest, he would retrieve the pendant. He would save that tiny world, fix that chain and keep it safe. That he would take it with him wherever he went from that day onward. * Marcus was quite used to seeing his house like this in a way. In his dreams Marcus would sometimes find that he knew how to fly. He’d always been able to do it. He would often find himself up in the clouds looking down on their home in the forest. So seeing the roof of their house from this angle now wasn’t quite as unusual as it might have otherwise been.

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As Marcus and Rain hung suspended, propelling themselves with the flippers Rain had packed just in case, using the breathing apparatus she’d had a feeling they might just need, they headed down, deeper into the murky water, towards the roof of Marcus’s childhood home. Towards the pendant he wished he’d never left behind.

Rain manoeuvred herself around in the water to face Marcus. He could see her eyes through the diving mask but she was unable to speak because of the breathing tube in her mouth.

Rain switched on her head torch and encouraged Marcus to do the same with his. It was going to be dark down there. She gave him a thumbs up to check he was alright, he replied with the same gesture, then she pointed to the house below and turned and headed down, kicking her flippers 40

like a mermaid’s tail. Marcus followed the trail of bubbles Rain was leaving behind her, down past the submerged treetops and on to the roof of the house below. * The very tops of the tallest trees were just visible above the surface of the water. The only other thing breaking the shimmering, rippling line that went as far as the eye could see to the horizon was the tip of the gravity shackle itself.

It had been built on the highest point of Sector 7B so that it could stand the best chance of surviving exactly this sort of situation. If the worst came to the worst it would still be able to broadcast its signal, to maintain the gravitational shell holding the rock together. So, now that the worst had come to the worst, there it was. The 41

only thing poking out above the surface of the water apart from a few tall trees. The only thing breaking the surface of the water apart from the trees, and the crew’s craft bobbing on the top of it.

When the craft had unexpectedly splashlanded into the water on the flooded rock, the sudden drop in air pressure inside had caused everyone’s ears to pop. In space there is no sound. The airless vacuum of space means there’s nothing for the sound to travel in so the crew had become quite accustomed to silent running, to only being able to hear the sounds inside the craft’s cabin itself. This had meant the sudden noise of the splashdown and the muffled echoes of the bubbles that followed had sounded particularly eery and different.

Rain Parity had wasted no time in switching 42

the craft to aquatic survival mode. As she pressed the emergency button on the console, huge yellow rubber cushions had emerged from the side skirts of the ship and begun to automatically inflate. As the floatation devices inflated, they had forced the craft back up into the daylight, breaking the water surface with a splash and bobbing to a halt like a floating apple. Which is where it sat now. Not far from the only other significant object as far as the eye could see, the top of the gravity shackle pylon.

Scarlett, Kyle and Archie were waiting on board the craft while the others were down below. Scarlett was lying on the sofa in the relaxation area with her feet high up on the wall above her head. This was something she would never have got away with doing if Rain Parity was with them and she knew it. She would have 43

told her to get her feet off the wall immediately and Scarlett would’ve obeyed. But she wasn’t here and Scarlett knew that Kyle wouldn’t tell her off so she was doing it anyway. Her little act of rebellion because Rain hadn’t chosen Scarlett to go with her on the exciting adventure under the water. Her little way of getting back at her for giving the only spare diving mask to Marcus. She was still very annoyed about that.

Archie had been quite upset too. When the craft’s doors had opened he’d had no idea that he wasn’t supposed to dive into the water outside. He had thought that the big people had overreacted a little bit to be honest. There had been no need to shout at him like that. So now he was sulking as well. Lying with his ears down on a towel next to Scarlett, who was deep in thought.

44

Kyle was trying to read a book. It had been Rain’s suggestion when he had complained that he didn’t get to go diving with her either. “Why don’t you try reading a book for once in your life?” she had said when he had moaned that he’d get bored waiting on the craft with no TV, no internet and nothing to do. She’d thrown a tattered paperback copy of a book called Frankenstein by Mary Shelley right at his head.

At first he’d found it difficult to concentrate on the book because Scarlett had kept going on at him about how unfair it was that Marcus always got to do the exciting things. But she’d been quiet for a while now while she was thinking and he’d actually started to really enjoy the story. He’d seen the film but the book was very different. It was tense and exciting and he genuinely had no idea what was going to 45

happen next. Some of the words were a little offputting but now that Scarlett was quietly deep in thought he’d found it easy to lose himself in the words on the page.

Scarlett had clearly finished her thinking now though. She had been thinking about her house and how it was underwater now. Now that the tides on Sector 7B had stopped working properly. Now that everything on the whole rock was completely underwater. Something had been bothering her. Something had been going round and round in her head since it was first mentioned.

“Kyle, if my house is underwater now...” she said, Kyle looked up from his book for what felt like the twentieth time and smiled patiently, “If it’s completely completely underwater...”

“Yes Scarlett?” Kyle prompted. He had just got 46

to a good bit in the book after loads of setting the scene stuff and now he just wanted to get his head down and read. There was a crazy mad scientist trying to make a completely new human by stitching together lots of different parts of lots of other dead humans and Kyle couldn’t wait to see if it was going to work.

“Well, won’t everything in the house be...” said Scarlett slowly, “Won’t everything in the house be really really wet?”

“Yes Scarlett, I reckon it will,” he said and went back to his book. * Marcus and Rain had reached the submerged house. Rain had used a special metal bar she had brought with her to force the wooden boards from one of the ground floor windows. Rain 47

had remembered that some of the windows of the house had needed to be boarded up after her craft had crash landed the first time. She had figured that it would be easier to enter the house by removing the boards and swimming in through the window rather than trying to force open the front door. The pressure of the water pushing against the heavy front door would have probably made it very hard to get it open.

As the boards came off, Marcus kept a close eye on the objects that floated out of the familiar window and into the water outside. A pair of red handled scissors, some firewood, a cup. Marcus just wanted to make sure that the metal box containing the pendant didn’t escape and float away as well.

Rain turned to Marcus and pointed at her watch. Then she pointed at the house and then 48

held up both hands with all her fingers and thumbs extended. Then she held up just two fingers on one hand and then pointed again at her watch and then pointed up to the surface of the water. She gave the thumbs up again and then shrugged, as if to check that Marcus had comprehended.

“You’ve got twelve minutes inside and then you’ve got to get out. Understand?” is basically what Rain had been saying. Marcus gave a thumbs up in reply. They only had a limited air supply in the tanks on their backs and Rain didn’t want him to take any chances. While he was in the house, Rain was going to swim to the underwater gravity shackle, attach her remote control device to the pylon and then return to the craft. Marcus was on his own.

If he thought the thing he needed to get from 49

the house was so important then so be it, she had said, Marcus could use his air tank to salvage whatever he wanted. But Rain couldn’t come in with him. She needed to go and fix the shackle so that they could reactivate the gravity harness and tow Sector 7B to the place called Alpha Central as originally planned. She didn’t know how long it would take to fix the remote to the shackle but she couldn’t guarantee she’d have enough air left in her tank to come back and save him if he got in any trouble inside the underwater house. * Back on the craft, Kyle was really powering through Frankenstein now. He had reluctantly had to put the book down a little earlier when Archie had demanded to be fed. The dog had stood in the kitchenette area whining and 50

whimpering until Kyle had eventually got the message and come in and emptied a pouch of food into a bowl for him. Kyle had looked around for Scarlett but she was nowhere to be seen, having gone to use the bathroom.

Kyle got comfortable on the sofa again, one arm behind his head and the paperback held open in the other hand as he delved back into the storyline.

It was a very intriguing idea. It was all about moral decisions as far as he could tell. This scientist had worked out a way to create a new life-form from existing parts of other bodies.

Kyle, of course, knew this was impossible but he was prepared to ignore this fact and just pretend it was possible for the sake of the story.

The story was making Kyle ask himself all sorts of questions as he was reading it. Questions 51

of morality that he had never considered before.

The rights and wrongs of the decisions the scientist was making. Just because he could build a new life like a jigsaw puzzle, does it mean that he should? Did he have the right to create a new life like a god?

Something told him it was all going to end badly too. All the clues were there. The scientist was so convinced by his own intelligence, his own genius, that he couldn’t imagine that anything could possibly go wrong. He was so confident in his ability to create the perfect specimen that Kyle just knew it wasn’t going to work out in the way he hoped. The scientist was meddling with things he shouldn’t. He was playing God with incredible forces that should be beyond mere humans.

Kyle was so completely wrapped up in these 52

moral questions of life and death, of good and bad, of right and wrong that it took him a while to notice that Scarlett had been calling his name for quite some time.

“Ky-le!” Scarlett was shouting over and over again. She didn’t sound in distress, or like anything was wrong, but she was pretty persistent in her requests as he made his way over to the wash-room facilities area.

“What is it Scarlett?” Kyle said through the closed door, “Is there something wrong in there?”

Scarlett slid the door open to reveal she was sitting on the toilet with her knickers and trousers round her ankles.

“Can you wipe my bottom for me?” she asked, innocently, “I can do it myself, but Marcus always says it’s better if someone else does it for me for now. Until I get just a little bit better at it.”

53

Kyle closed his eyes and shook his head to himself. This is not what he had thought that space travel would be like. * Marcus had found the metal box pretty easily.

It was quite heavy so it hadn’t really moved much from where it had always been on the mantelpiece, since before the house had been underwater. He had removed the pendant and placed it securely in the zip up pocket of the wetsuit Rain had given him to wear.

Marcus had made the decision not to tell Rain Parity about the pendant. This had meant that he had needed to invent a cover story to stop any awkward questions. He would need to return with something else from the house as well as the pendant to use as a decoy. To pretend that 54

the other object was what he had really gone in for and avoid any awkward questions about the pendant and his parents.

It was one of the oddest things Marcus could remember ever having seen. The room looked exactly as he’d remembered it. Exactly as it had looked all those years growing up in the house.

The same windows, furniture, carpet, but he was up by the ceiling. Marcus was floating around by the lampshade, looking down as all the objects in the room danced slowly around in front of him in the spotlight of his head torch as the water ebbed and flowed all around him. As he had headed down towards the mantelpiece, the alarm clock he used to wind up every morning had danced past his face as if to say, “Hello! Where have you been? Would you look at the time?”

After retrieving the pendant, he had swum 55

over and managed to open the door in the living room that led to the stairs fairly easily.

He could see what Rain had meant about the water pressure though. He had needed to use all his strength to pull it open against the weight of the water in the room pushing up against it.

The front door would’ve been even more difficult as it was much bigger and twice as heavy. His mum’s old alarm clock had danced over again and hit him on the back of the head while he’d been doing it, which had reminded him that he ought to check the waterproof watch Rain had given him.

He rolled up his sleeve. He had been four minutes so far. There was no time to waste looking around at the strange dancing furniture.

This meant he had eight minutes to get up the stairs, into Scarlett’s bedroom, pick up the decoy 56

and then out. That should be doable, he had thought. Easy.

It had been easy as well, he had made it into Scarlett’s bedroom upstairs, which had looked so strange underwater. Scarlett had never exactly kept her room tidy at the best of times, but now it had been like trying to swim through soup. A weird sort of soup where half of the ingredients were picture books and toys and the other half was plankton and moss and other more regular underwater items you would see in the sea or if you were swimming in a lake.

He had found his decoy item fairly easily despite this though. He stuffed it inside the zipped up top of his wetsuit to keep it safe and headed back down the stairs to the dancing underwater kitchen again. Floating down the stairs using the bannister to pull himself along.

57

“This is all going swimmingly well,” Marcus thought to himself with a chuckle as he reached the door at the bottom of the stairs and checked his watch again. He had been nine minutes.

That should be fine. The remaining three minutes should be plenty of time to get across the room, out of the window and back up to the surface, he was thinking as he pushed the door.

He could feel the water pressure resisting as he pushed but it was okay, the door was shifting.

It was open just enough that he could see a chair dancing by the fireplace in the spotlight of his head torch when, suddenly, the door stopped moving. He could push it open no further.

It wouldn’t budge another inch. It wasn’t the water pressure causing the resistance though, something was stopping it from the outside.

Something big must’ve shifted in the room, 58

dancing over to block the door and preventing it from opening.

Marcus checked his watch. Two minutes left.

Where exactly had that minute gone? Panicking, he tried to squeeze through the gap. It would’ve been big enough if it wasn’t for the diving mask on his face and the air tank on his back but, with them on, there was simply no way he could fit. There would be no getting through the door until he shifted whatever it was that was blocking it unless he removed the diving equipment. But then he would run out of air before he could reach the surface.

Marcus was really starting to worry now as he reached his arm around the door to see what was causing the obstruction. He felt around until his hand touched something. Something very familiar. The mattress that he and Scarlett used 59

to share by the fireplace to keep warm must’ve floated across from the fire and wedged itself up against the bottom of the door frame, blocking his escape.

Marcus had needed to move mattresses a lot over the years and he had come to the conclusion that moving a mattress was one of the hardest jobs known to man – and especially to boy.

They were awkward, heavy and cumbersome at the best of times. He found them almost impossible to get a grip on even when they were dry as a bone, let alone when they were heavy with water and you were running out of air in an underwater house.

Marcus had no choice as the time continued to tick on. He would need to remove the air tank from his back and try and squeeze out.

Otherwise his air would run out and he would 60

drown. He would drown in the doorway of his own living room and that would be a ridiculous, embarrassing way to die.

One minute left. He checked his diving watch as he slipped his arms out of the harness the air tank was attached to. There was no way he would make it. His body slipped through the gap in the door easily and the tank, now removed from his back, could also just make it through. He kept the air tube in his mouth so he could still breathe but with the diving mask on he couldn’t get his head through. He had to remove it.

With the mask off, he tried to keep his eyes open underwater but that was something he’d never been able to do. He’d tried many times to open his eyes when swimming underwater but it just didn’t come naturally to him. Some people can, some people can’t. As the head torch had 61

floated away when he’d removed the mask he would have been in the dark anyway, even if he could open his eyes.

Marcus tried to put the tank back on in the darkness but he was struggling. Flying blind across the living room, trying to aim for the open window he had entered through, chairs buffeting him and making him lose his sense of direction. Spinning round in circles, tangled in his shoulder straps in the middle of the fireside rug, the air in his tank ran out. * This was so exciting. The mad scientist in Kyle’s book had succeeded. He was alive. The thing built from other parts was actually alive. A technically functioning living organism pieced together from discarded limbs, organs, a brain.

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*

*

The brain at the centre of it all was the problem though. The scientist had sent his assistant to get the brain of a genius. The cleverest man ever to have lived or something. He had reasoned that the genius brain would create a new, super human with super strength and super brain power. But his assistant had got it wrong. He had either dropped or lost the genius brain, Kyle couldn’t remember which because he was reading so quickly now. The assistant had decided to replace it with another brain and hope that the scientist didn’t notice. The trouble was that the only brain he’d been able to find was the brain of a criminal, a madman.

So at the centre of the scientist in the story’s big creation, controlling everything, was the brain of a madman. A madman who didn’t understand the value of human life.

63

The people in the village nearby didn’t get what the scientist had been trying to do. They didn’t understand that he was trying to improve the world for humanity. To allow people to live longer and fuller lives. They just saw a monster.

When the scientist’s creation had escaped and been spotted in public, all they had seen was a stumbling monster stitched together from dead parts, not the beauty and the genius behind the scientist’s great creation.

The villagers just wanted to burn the thing they didn’t understand. It didn’t look like any kind of human they had ever seen before and they wanted to destroy it.

Kyle thought this was pretty unfair.

That they weren’t looking at the bigger picture here. The scientist had created life, like a god.

A living, breathing, thinking human. Kyle had 64

been particularly touched by the part where the scientist’s creation had befriended a small girl.

It had shown him that the creature had the power to evolve, to become more than the sum of its parts. Admittedly someone had ended up dying – in fact, there had been a few deaths – but, you know, accidents happen. It was all part of the process.

He continued to read, the water gently lapping against the side of the craft as it bobbed around on the giant lake that Sector 7B had become. He was enjoying this book. How the letters printed on the paper pages in front of him were whisking him away to another time, another place that only he was experiencing. He was starting to wish that he’d read more books in his life as Archie suddenly leapt down from the sofa next to him and began to bark at the open hatch of the craft.

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“What is it, boy?” Scarlett asked as she jumped up too and ran to join him. The dog’s barking echoed around on the surface of the water. He was clearly very upset about something.

With a huge splash the surface was broken.

Two little heads burst through the water gasping for breath, sending a fountain-burst of water up into the fresh air.

“Quickly! Help!” Rain yelled.

Kyle wasted no time. He folded the corner down on the page he was at so he didn’t lose his place, dived straight into the water, fully clothed, and raced across to where Rain and Marcus had burst through a short distance away from the craft.

Rain passed Marcus’s limp body to Kyle and he dragged him back up the steps of the craft and laid him out on his back. Scarlett watched in horror as her brother’s soggy body was laid out in 66

front of her like a rag doll.

Kyle knew CPR. When he had lived in a cave under the sand on Amex, he and the two other people he lived with had known it would be important for them to know the basics of first aid. If anything had gone wrong out there in a hole in the ground in the desert, there would be no emergency ambulances, they would have to deal with everything themselves.

Kyle checked Marcus’s mouth to make sure there was nothing blocking his windpipe and then began to pump his chest. Both hands locked together pushing down rhythmically to try and force the boy’s lungs to start working again. One, two, three, four...

Then Kyle held the boy’s nose and began to breathe directly into his mouth, to force air into him. To get him breathing again. This was CPR, 67

this was what you had to do if someone had stopped breathing.

Scarlett was hugging Archie as she watched the man repeat the same actions over and again.

It didn’t appear to be working. Just as Scarlett had given up hope, there was movement. A spurt of water jetted out from Marcus’s mouth and he sat up, coughing.

“He’s alive!” Kyle shouted out through the open hatch.

Rain swam up to the craft, more relieved than she could’ve imagined. As she climbed up onto the hatch’s steps and Kyle held out his hand to help her on board, she could see Marcus was up and breathing. He was unzipping the top half of his wetsuit and reaching inside. Rain stood dripping on the craft’s kitchen floor, exhausted from the extra effort of having to rescue the child 68

trapped in his house.

As she had been returning from her shackle mission a mere few minutes earlier, she had noticed some commotion from the submerged house. Bubbles had been flowing out through the open window they had entered through.

She had guessed something was wrong and had wasted no time darting down and in through the unboarded window.

Upon entering the house, she had seen Marcus in some distress, tangled up in household objects and the straps of his air tank. Rain had grabbed him and powered her way back through the open window and up to the surface like a rocket.

By her reckoning this was the third time she had saved Marcus’s life. Not that she minded.

She was just happy to see he was alright as she watched him pull a soggy woolly object out from 69

his top and present it to Scarlett.

“Cuddly Claude!” Scarlett yelled in joy, squeezing the soaking teddy bear, dirty water flowing out from it like a sponge down the front of her top and puddling on the floor. Archie sniffed at the water at his human best friend’s feet and looked up at Scarlett with sad eyes, hoping he wasn’t about to be replaced in her affections by this bear.

A bear. A teddy bear. Rain shook her head and closed her eyes, knowing nothing about the pendant. As far as she knew, they had risked both their lives for a stuffed bear.

“A cuddly toy,” she said, looking towards Kyle as they both slumped together against the wall in a pool of dirty water, “These kids will be the death of us.”

70

CHAPTER THREE

“Sonnez les matines”

“Woody, do you remember that aeroplane years ago that just disappeared?” said Carl, “They never found it, did they? They never worked out what had happened to it. One minute the passengers were all sitting there eating nuts or whatever, watching a film maybe... Then the next minute, well, nobody knows what happened do they? It just vanished.”

The man that Carl called Woody – although that wasn’t actually his real name, Carl just liked to give people nicknames – was working the controls while his co-worker, sat and chatted. He was used to Carl babbling away all the time. It 71

was nonsense of course, most of it, but it helped pass the time of day while they were on duty. Carl was very good at his job but occasionally it was tempting to just tell him to be quiet. The man known as Woody kind of knew that it would probably get a bit boring out there on Sector 2K if it wasn’t for Carl. There were certainly never any quiet moments with him around, and sometimes – just sometimes – Carl would say something that would actually make Woody think.

This was one of those times. He could remember the plane that Carl was talking about.

It was a long time ago, but it had been a big mystery at the time. It had just disappeared and nobody had ever found it. Everyone had been baffled by it and it had been the talk of the town for ages. It had been top story on the news for weeks and then, suddenly, it had gone quiet.

72

Suddenly, nobody was talking about the mystery of the disappearing plane any more. Eventually everyone had simply forgotten about it and moved on to the next big story. Everyone, that is, except the friends and relatives of the people on board. The friends and relatives of the people on board, and Carl.

“Yeah, I vaguely remember it mate,” Woody said in his soft Australian accent, “What of it?”

“Well, I’ve got a theory. A theory about what happened to it,” Carl said, leaning in towards his co-worker and looking from side to side as if he was about to say something really important and he didn’t want anyone else to hear, even though there was nobody else there, “Well, what if, right... What if it just flew too high, too close to the edge of the atmosphere and got sucked out by gravity?”

73

In years gone by, if someone had come up with this theory, everyone would’ve laughed at them.

In fact, Carl had actually come up with this theory years ago. Before the Earth exploded, he had talked about it on his YouTube channel and everyone had treated it as a big joke.

They had assumed Carl had been trying to be funny. But he hadn’t been. Carl had actually believed that the Malaysian airlines flight had flown too close to space and been sucked out of the Earth’s protective atmosphere by gravity.

In years gone by, everyone had laughed at Carl’s theory, but now though, the man known as Woody was taking it quite seriously. With everything else that had happened since, with gravity becoming such a thing now, the idea of a plane being stolen in this way didn’t seem that farfetched. Now, the man known as Woody wasn’t 74

wondering whether Carl was right. He wasn’t wondering if gravity could possibly have been used by someone to steal a plane. He wasn’t even wondering who might possibly have been behind it. All he was wondering was why Tanyen Manesh had done it. Why would Tanyen Manesh choose to pluck this aeroplane out of the sky? Where did the plane end up? And what had happened to the passengers on board the plane as it flew over the South China Sea all those years ago?

The man known as Woody was looking up the flight log of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 on the screen in front of him. The list of who had been on board said there had been 239 passengers from 14 different countries. Six Australians, two Canadians, 50 Malaysians... and 153 passengers from the People’s Republic of China. 153 Chinese people? That seemed 75

an unusually high number? Woody thought he’d have a closer look. Among the Chinese passengers was a group of scientists from a technology company that Woody recognised the name of. They were a big rival of the Corusca back in those days, having developed wireless phone chargers and computers that were so small that they could be swallowed and left inside the human body if necessary. People had talked at the time about a great race to be top between the two companies. About how one day Manesh’s company might be replaced as number one in the field of innovation technology. Woody wondered what had happened to that Chinese technology company. You certainly never heard about them any more. Going a little deeper into their history, he also discovered that the Chinese company had been responsible for a computer virus, a bug 76

that Woody seemed to remember had caused very big problems for Tanyen Manesh’s computer software at the time. But then, a year later, due to some financial irregularities, the company had closed down under suspicious circumstances.

This all seemed a little too convenient, too neat, to Woody so he looked up the names of the Chinese staff who had gone missing on the flight, pretty sure by this point he knew what name he was about to find.

There it was. Hidden in plain sight as it always was with Tanyen Manesh, like with the spaceship disguised as a building, like with the giant gravity shackles in the middle of cities, Manesh always seemed to think the best way to hide something was to put it right in front of people’s noses. There, on the passenger list of the missing Flight 370 that had been all over 77

the news, was Wenbo Li. The Chinese scientist at the centre of the Corusca Gravitational Development Think-tank. The genius inventor who kept himself to himself. The genius inventor who had appeared out of nowhere and taken the world of science by storm. He had revolutionised Manesh’s experiments with gravity, making the shackles, the harnesses, all of it a reality instead of just an idea.

“Well stone me,” said Woody, taking off his hat and scratching his head, “He stole a Chinaman.”

Some people said that Wenbo Li was even more of a genius than Tanyen Manesh. There had been some people who whispered that Manesh might have even taken the credit for some of the Chinese inventor’s creations. Claiming them for the good of the Corusca. Pretending that he, 78

not Li, had invented them. But you would never dare to mention that, certainly not now. Not on Alpha Central. Not even way out here on the outer spiral arm that tethered Sector 2K to the central core.

The man known as Woody was even slightly worried about the fact that he’d searched for details about Flight 370 on his Corusca work terminal. They probably had alerts set up for key search words. He was worried that he or Carl might get in trouble next time they went back to see friends or family on core-leave.

The Corusca would probably punish them by stationing them somewhere remote. Sending them to work somewhere even more isolated than the safari rock. Although, as he looked out at the dry arid landscape in front of him and a giraffe’s head bobbed past outside the bottom 79

of the window, he found it hard to imagine anywhere that could be more remote, more isolated, than Sector 2K. Unless you really liked warthogs it could be quite a lonely job, keeping an eye on the animals and shepherding the flight crafts of holiday-makers in and out of the landing strip. That’s why he was glad he had Carl there to distract him. A friendly face among the wild animals outside the monitoring tower.

“Hang on a minute, what’s that?” Carl said looking at the long range radar display that tracked incoming craft, “We’ve got no trips planned today? It’s a Twoday. We never do changeover on a Twoday.”

Sure enough, there in the middle of the dozens of monitor screens showing the animals outside, on the radar monitor for incoming craft, was a red triangle. A red triangle closely followed by 80

a blue circle. And they were heading this way.

Particularly fast.

“This is indeed very unusual for a Twoday,” Woody agreed as he opened the communication channels in an attempt to make contact, the sound of alarms ringing loudly around Sector 2K’s safari monitoring tower as he did. * Slide, slide, bump. Slide, slide, slide, bump.

Slide, slide, slide, slide, bump. Marcus liked to walk round in circles when he had something on his mind. Slide, slide, bump. He found the circular central control room of the doughnutshaped space craft particularly pleasing for this.

Slide, bump. Slide, slide, bump. Because the whole room was curved, everything in it was curved. Slide, bump. All the seats had curved 81

backs, the steps down to the seats in the middle were curved. Slide, slide, bump. The panels around the walls with the displays on were curved. Slide, slide, slide, bump. And the smooth curved desks with little raised bumps every now and then that he was running his hand along as he completed yet another lap of the room were curved too. Slide, slide, slide, slide, bump.

In the same way as she had got used to Scarlett jumping up and down on anything that was bouncy, like a bed, Rain had just had to get used to Marcus walking round in circles. It didn’t matter how big the circles, he did it whenever he could. She didn’t even think Marcus was aware he was doing it most of the time. Small circles, big circles and the central control room circles – which were the biggest of all. It didn’t fit in with Rain’s logical, ordered world but she had learned 82

to live with it. She had got used to the sliding noise as he ran his hand along the control desks around the edge of the room and the occasional bumps as his hand hit the raised ledges that separated the different areas of controls. She could blank it out now. At first she had tried to fight against it, to tell Marcus to stand still and stop pacing. But she realised now that it helped him concentrate and it didn’t really do any harm.

So, as she and Kyle sat on the important seats in the middle of the room trying to do some essential calculations, she found she was able to completely ignore the boy in the corner of her eye endlessly circling the wall of the room like a sports car gliding round and round a circular race track. Slide, slide, bump.

“You see, this is what I didn’t take into account,” Rain was saying as she pointed to a 83

specific part of a diagram that just looked to Kyle like a purple mountain range on the screen, “The automatic ambient oxygen replenishment filter.

You don’t normally need to worry about it. It just does its thing.”

Kyle was nodding. He liked when Rain talked to him like this. Confided in him. Treated him like a fellow adult member of the crew, rather than just another one of the kids. She was so much more informed about a lot of things than he was that sometimes he got the impression she thought he was stupid. Sometimes she baffled him with science like the teachers at school had used to. Back in his school days, sometimes Kyle had used to pretend he understood what the teachers were saying even when he didn’t get it at all. Looking back on it, he wished he hadn’t. He wished he’d asked a few more questions instead 84

of being too embarrassed, too worried about looking stupid in front of his classmates. His classmates that he didn’t even know now. Hadn’t even seen for years. Could well be dead for all he knew. If he’d only asked a few more questions at school, maybe he’d know what Rain Parity was talking about now. Something about the air supply on board the doughnut – as everybody was calling the craft now – and something about how far it was to Alpha Central. But she kept using words like trajectory and estimate and ambient oxygen replenishment filter.

Kyle plucked up the courage to ask Rain what she was talking about. He wasn’t going to just sit there quietly and make the same mistake he’d made at school. He was going to try and learn something. Even if she laughed at him.

“What does ambient mean?” Kyle asked.

85

Rain didn’t laugh, she didn’t look at him funny, she didn’t think any the less of him for asking, she just answered. “It means when a craft is tethered in landing mode it automatically fills up the oxygen storage tanks from the local air supply wherever it’s sitting. Basically it sucks up the air outside and stores it so we can breathe on our onward journey.”

Kyle nodded. He understand that. He loved it when he understood what Rain was talking about. He loved working out problems and finding solutions with her. He liked the way she smiled when they solved something together. He liked making her smile. It made him smile too.

He realised that she wasn’t smiling now though.

She was staring at him as if he was supposed to have worked out something important from what she had just said. He hadn’t. He’d just been 86

listening to her voice, looking at her face and trying to appear interested.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle admitted, “I don’t know what you’re getting at I’m afraid.”

Rain sighed and shook her head, which upset him a little. “Kyle,” she prompted, trying to get him to put two and two together, “Where have we just been? Just before 7B?” Ah, thought Kyle, the moon. Where there was no air. Kyle suddenly got it. The air tanks would not have had an opportunity to refill themselves.

That was not good. They would have set off without the air supply at full capacity. Because there had been breathable air on the waterlogged planetoid it had slipped Rain’s mind that there was no air on the moon where the doughnut had been parked. A stupid simple mistake. It’s one thing to run out of fuel but, as Marcus had 87

recently discovered in his underwater house on 7B, it was another thing entirely to run out air.

Just then, there was a voice from the ship’s speakers.

“Incoming craft, please state your name and intention,” the soft Australian accent boomed out of the speakers around the central control room of the space doughnut.

“My name is Rain and we’re running out of air,” Rain Parity said calmly into the microphone, “Do we have permission to land?”

Slide, slide, slide, thud. “...Urgently,” she added as Marcus fell to the ground, gasping for breath. * An Impala is a bit like a deer, but with long sharp pointy horns where its antlers would be.

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And they can jump. They can jump around ten metres in length and about three metres off the ground, able to jump over bushes to escape predators. It’s quite possible that people may have been impaled by impala over the years. Spiked on their pointy horns. And maybe this is where the name impala came from originally? Or maybe the word impaled came to mean pierced by a spike after a surprise encounter with a leaping impala? Maybe. Maybe not.

This young impala wasn’t thinking about where her name came from though. She didn’t even know that she was an impala. She was just drinking from the water hole, like her parents had taught her, and minding her own business.

She didn’t know it was a Twoday. She didn’t know what days were, that they even had names.

She just knew that she was thirsty and the wet 89

stuff in this big hole in the ground would stop her from being thirsty.

She continued to drink, her head bent down at the water’s edge. As her long tongue lapped away at the cool liquid, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A shining disc high in the sky. A small silver circle that was getting bigger all the time. She didn’t think it was unusual. She didn’t think anything at all. She just wondered if, like with a lot of things on this floating rock tethered in space, it was going to try and eat her.

And if it did decide to try and eat her, where she would choose to run.

She put her head down again but kept her gaze fixed firmly sideways on the disc as it got closer, just in case she needed to get out of there, until It was so big she could ignore it no longer.

As the space doughnut came into Sector 2K’s 90

atmosphere and began its fast descent to the ground, the impala decided that it probably was going to try and eat her and the best thing to do would definitely be to run away. The impala bounded off to safety on its muscular legs as the doughnut came in to land, its anchoring restraints magnetising themselves to the dusty ground of Sector 2K just as they had done to the surface of the moon before it. * As the ship’s door ramp folded down and the fresh air rushed in like a wave crashing on the shore, the crew inside removed the oxygen masks they’d been forced to wear for the last stages of their journey. It was a relief for Kyle that he no longer had to struggle to keep Archie’s mask in place. The dog hadn’t got on with it at all, 91

growling and pawing at it every time Kyle had tried to slip it back over his head, however much Scarlett had reassured him that it was for his own good and that it was very important for him to wear it.

Marcus still felt a little woozy from passing out but he had only been asleep for a short time and there had been no harm done. He felt like you do when you fall asleep unexpectedly in the middle of the day and you wake up unsure what time it is, whether it’s morning or evening.

Slightly disoriented by the new, unfamiliar surroundings but, other than that, fine, as the group made their way down the ramp and Rain Parity explained where they were.

“Technically this is a part of Alpha Central,” she explained as the four adults and a dog stepped out into what looked to Marcus like the 92

rolling plains of Africa.

Marcus had read all about the national parks of Africa. Wide open spaces where wild animals were free to roam and holiday makers would visit in Jeeps to study the animals in their natural environment back when the Earth was still in one piece.

People would fly to countries like Kenya to see lions, elephants, rhinos, giraffes, but not tigers – there were no tigers in Africa. The animals would go about their daily business and people would take photographs of them from the safety of their vehicles, protected by armed safari guides who would whisk them away at the first sign of danger.

Marcus marvelled at the landscape as Archie sniffed around at the trees. The trees were so different here. They were wide and low, not like 93

the trees on any other rocks they had visited. It was the little differences that Marcus had noticed every time they had landed somewhere new. The little differences that meant he was definitely standing somewhere he had never been before.

The landscape was wide and the blue sky seemed so high. Was it even possible for the sky to seem so high above the horizon? Marcus didn’t know.

But it seemed like it was.

“This is Sector 2K on the outer spiral arm of Alpha Central. The safari rock,” Rain continued as Marcus gazed at the distant mountain on the horizon, he hadn’t had a good look at the rock from the ship because he had been more concerned with breathing at the time, but he realised it now must be a big one if there was an entire mountain that far away, “The people on Alpha Central work hard,” Rain continued, 94

“They work hard together to keep the system functioning. And they’re always busy trying to find new ways to do things, to make things function better. People who work hard deserve holidays and that’s what this place is for.”

“Nice,” Kyle nodded in approval, “A little vacation spot in the stars.”

“It is quite a way out in the stars, yes,” Rain added, “It needs to be closer to the sun to create the right ecosystem for the wildlife. But it is anchored to the main core to keep it tethered.

Part of the system.”

“What. Is. That?” Scarlett said, pointing behind Rain and Kyle at the horizon while Archie crouched down and began to growl to defend his friend from whatever this threat was that was approaching across the plains.

As far away as Scarlett could see, just below 95

Archie knew he was out of his league with these beasts 96

the loaf of bread-shaped mountain poking out above the clouds like it was flying, she could make out four black dots. Four black dots moving this way fast. Gliding across the sand like boats on a lake, getting bigger as they approached. When they were big enough Scarlett could recognise them as elephants. They were moving far faster than Scarlett imagined animals of this size would move, their legs and their trunks swinging in time as the mum, the dad and the two smaller elephants with little white birds on their backs along for the ride glided across the sand towards them.

Archie hid behind Scarlett’s legs as the girl gazed open mouthed at the magnificent creatures. As much as he wanted to protect her, and as big a dog as he was, Archie knew he was out of his league with these enormous beasts.

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Neither girl or dog had ever seen anything like this before in their lives. As the elephants reached the edge of the lake they one by one unfurled their grey trunks, dropping them into the water and using them to scoop the liquid up into their mouths. Scarlett stared at the smallest one, watching as it learned, copying its older relatives as they quenched their thirst. The baby elephant was exactly like its brother or sister and its parents except a miniature version. Miniature versions of their legs, their ears, their eyes, and a diddy little trunk with tiny little tusks poking out either side of it. It was repeating the same moves as its family as it drank, learning how to survive by copying their actions.

As she watched, the youngest elephant looked up, straight at Scarlett, water dripping clumsily from its mouth as Its big brown eyes caught 98

Scarlett’s emerald green eyes, just for a moment, before it returned its gaze to the water and got on with the process of life. Like all the different animals on the safari rock, relying on the water hole to survive.

Scarlett really wanted to touch the baby elephant. To stroke its wrinkled skin. To see what its trunk felt like. But as she stepped towards the baby – the baby that was taller than her – she heard something. The distant roar of a vehicle approaching and somebody shouting.

“Get back in your ship now!” Carl was shouting as he skidded to a halt and leapt out of the driver side of his Jeep.

Scarlett didn’t understand why the man was panicking so much and waving his arms so frantically. It had seemed so peaceful here. The still trees, the sunshine, the elephants calmly 99

drinking the cool water in the sun. Why were Rain and Kyle taking him so seriously? Why had they grabbed the children and Archie and immediately rushed back up the ramp into the doughnut?

As they were bundled up into the craft, Scarlett just caught a fleeting glimpse of the man called Carl in the khaki jumpsuit just like Rain’s fumbling with his rifle before Kyle grabbed her and turned her head away.

As the doughnut’s ramp retracted and the doorway sealed, the last thing Scarlett heard was a hideous scream and the roar of a wild animal.

She had never heard an adult man scream before.

She didn’t like it. It was a sound that she hoped she would never ever hear again. She also hoped never to hear the howl of agony as a leopard was shot dead ever again.

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CHAPTER FOUR

“To see a lamb at school”

Scarlett didn’t like it when the other children laughed at her. There was one group of girls in particular who sat at the back of the class. Any time Miss Zeiba had to leave the classroom for one reason or another they would laugh at her and call her ‘Sunday girl’ because of the time when she had got the days of the week wrong.

Scarlett was scared of them. She had no idea how to deal with them. Particularly Callie Bennington, the one with the longest curliest hair who acted like she was in charge. Whenever she said anything her little gang of friends would join in too, until it felt like the whole class was 101

laughing at her. They were doing it now. Miss Zeiba had needed to go and get some slides from the storeroom. She had only been gone less than an Alpha minute but they had started the song already.

“Sunday girl, Sunday girl,” they were chanting quietly, but loud enough that they were sure that she could hear, “Living on another world...”

Scarlett just faced forwards with her hands on her desk as they repeated the song over and over again. Sometimes she hated it here. Why did the other girls have to be so mean to her? Was it because her hair was different? She hated that her hair wasn’t as long or as beautiful as all the other girls. Marcus had cut it so unevenly over the years that it felt like it would always look a mess, however many clips she put in it. She was trying really hard not to cry, her bottom lip pushed as 102

far up into her top lip as she could. She hated that she was different. She just wanted to be like all the other girls.

Scarlett wished she knew all about their numbers and their days of the week. Sometimes she hated Marcus for teaching her everything wrong. Deep down she knew it wasn’t really his fault, that things had been different back then in the forest, and he had just been doing the best he could, taking on the roles of both of their missing parents. But part of her couldn’t help but blame him for this mess. This horrible situation where all the other girls were being so mean to her every single day because she wasn’t as clever as them. That all the other girls laughed at her just because she didn’t know things like why there were clouds outside the window of the school on floor 92 of Central Shard.

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Well, that wasn’t quite true. It wasn’t quite all the girls. Jasmine, who sat at the desk to her left on the front row, was nice to her. She always helped Scarlett when she was confused about how to operate her computer. She was really good at computers and had a very calm way of explaining things when they didn’t make sense.

Of all the girls Scarlett had met in the last six weeks, Jasmine was the only one that Scarlett could even come close to calling a friend.

“Don’t listen to them Scarlett,” Jasmine said to her as the girls at the back were chanting louder and faster. But this just made it worse. It was even worse that someone else had noticed that she was upset. Scarlett tried to hold it together but, for some reason she couldn’t understand, the end bit of her chin had started to wobble. This had happened once before when Rain Parity had 104

shouted at her. That time she remembered she had got tears in her eyes. She concentrated hard to try to make sure this didn’t happen again but just thinking about it made it worse. Scarlett was relieved when Miss Zeiba finally came back through the door of the class, singing about how she had got her slides.

Miss Zeiba was one of those teachers who, if she could, would sing everything instead of saying it. “Whe-ere’s my ta-blettt...?” she would sing to the class when she could’ve just asked where her tablet was – which would be much quicker but not nearly as much fun.

Scarlett liked Miss Zeiba, even though she had very short hair and sometimes asked her difficult questions. She was so funny and interesting and she was always smiling. Scarlett liked people who smiled the best. She thought everyone should 105

smile all the time. But Scarlett wasn’t smiling now. She had managed to stop the tears from coming, which she was very pleased about, but she still didn’t feel much like smiling.

The initial excitement of going to school every day and meeting new people had definitely worn off now. At first the white socks, the red bag and the pencil case had seemed so much fun.

She had got up early each morning, got herself dressed and told Rain Parity what she wanted her to do with her hair. She hadn’t understood at first why Marcus wasn’t finding this whole new way of living as thrilling as she was. Why he would slump his shoulders and take ages putting his shoes on. Kyle would end up having to shout “Shooooooes!” at him every morning just to get him to hurry up, while Scarlett was skipping around him choosing different coloured 106

hair bands, asking for high pony tails, two pony tails or even a French plait. It had all seemed so different back then. Like an adventure.

But the last week or so, Scarlett had started to hate going to school. The girls were being so mean to her every break time now. She hated leaving Archie alone in the apartment down on the 67th floor every morning as well. She didn’t like leaving him with just the foodbot and the walkadog treadmill and Kyle for company. She knew he’d be fine but she could see the sadness in his eyes every time they left him alone.

It had turned out that Scarlett was five now, not four any more. They had missed one of her birthdays during all their adventures. But even stranger, it turned out she was actually six in Alpha years, which was just far too confusing for Scarlett. How could you change the length of a 107

year? Marcus had explained how, because Alpha Central didn’t go round the sun in the same way that the Earth had, there was no need for the old calendar any more. That because they could set the speed at which the core revolved to whatever they wanted, Tanyen Manesh had decided it would make sense to make a year ten months, all the same length, rather than the chaotic old calendar that had been left over since Roman times – which were apparently a very long time ago. But she still didn’t quite see how, all of a sudden, she was six and Marcus was ten. That made no sense to her at all.

“So, who can tell me where we get our food from?” Miss Zeiba asked the class. A sea of hands went up. It was always the same five or six children keen to answer though. Mostly girls, and Charlie. Charlie was very bright. He always 108

knew the answer to everything but he didn’t really know how to have a normal conversation with other children. All the others would talk about ordinary everyday things – games they were going to play at break time or what was happening in AlphaPonies – but Charlie was always so serious. He talked more like an adult than a child, using words like ‘privilege’ as if that was a normal thing for a child to say.

Charlie had his hand up now, desperate to answer as usual, but Miss Zeiba passed him by and asked if anyone else knew the answer for a change. Scarlett kept her head down. She hated being called on in class. At first she hadn’t cared, she would just answer with what she thought was right. But she had got it wrong so many times now that she preferred to stay quiet. Even though she knew deep down that the answers she gave 109

were correct in the world she came from. She had learnt everything from the books in their house and she knew that books couldn’t be wrong. That you couldn’t change what was written inside a book just because everything outside the book had changed.

Miss Zeiba eventually chose to ask a boy called Milo who sat over by the windows near the back of the classroom. Milo had been keeping his head down as well. He didn’t like answering questions either. He knew he wasn’t as clever as Charlie, who somehow seemed to know everything. He stayed silent as Miss Zeiba asked the question again, where does food come from, Milo?

Scarlett could see Milo was going red. He hated being the centre of attention almost as much as she did. He didn’t say anything, but he pointed out of the window and upwards, to 110

where the sky should’ve been. To where the sky would’ve been in the old days, where Scarlett came from.

“Very good Milo, well done,” Miss Zeiba said, “Plants are grown in fields in the Agrizone. Now, can anyone tell me what shape the fields are?”

This time Miss Zeiba had no choice but to call on Charlie. His hand was stretched almost to the ceiling and he looked like he was actually going to burst if she didn’t ask him, “Yes Charlie?”

“Miss,” Charlie said, standing up and straightening his uniform as he did, “Because of the nature of the rotating irrigation sprinkler units, the crop fields have evolved into a functional circular shape. This causes unused areas in between the circles which in turn creates tessellation issues, gaps between the fields.

Therefore, the empty diamond shapes between 111

the circles have been allowed to remain wild, letting certain crops seen as superfluous to the food chain continue to grow. This is one of the many ways the Corusca encourages biodiversity while maintaining a stable food chain within the Alpha Central infrastructure.”

“Charlie’s such a clever-clogs,” Jasmine whispered to Scarlett. Scarlett giggled.

“Something funny Scarlett?” Miss Zeiba said, suddenly turning to Scarlett, making her want to disappear into one of those sink-holes she’d heard so much about, “Well, perhaps you’d like to tell us where we get our meat from now that Charlie has told us where our crops are grown?”

Instantly Scarlett started to panic, she knew that everyone would already be looking at her, the weird new girl who couldn’t tell the time properly. But she calmed herself down. She knew 112

this one. She and Marcus had been hunting, catching and killing their own meat since they were tiny. She knew that, of everyone in the room, she was the best placed to answer this question. She doubted any of the other children had ever had to help to skin a deer and prepare it for the fire. They probably thought food just came pre-wrapped in the freezer units, like all the meals seemed to on Alpha Central.

So Scarlett confidently explained everything she knew about where meat came from. She explained the best way to stalk a rabbit in the woods and the most humane way to kill it without causing it any distress. How she used to place a large stick across the rabbit’s neck while her brother held the animal still. She was just about to say what you do next when she noticed the classroom was completely silent.

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She looked up at Miss Zeiba, her face was white. She looked round at Jasmine, who was sitting open mouthed, staring at her. When she heard a soft sobbing from one of the quieter girls on the other side of the room she realised she had got it wrong again. She had misunderstood what Miss Zeiba had meant somehow and made herself, as far as she was concerned, look even more foolish than before.

“No Scarlett,” Miss Zeiba said firmly, “Oh my goodness, that’s not how we do it on Alpha Central at all. All our meat is grown in scientist’s laboratories. I don’t know how you do it where you come from but we haven’t killed animals for food here since before the great referendum.”

The beeps went for the end of the lesson and Scarlett couldn’t have been more relieved. She just wanted to hide away where nobody could 114

find her as she packed her tablet into her red bag, desperately trying not to get eye contact with anyone. She kept her head down and didn’t look up as the whole class marched out of the room.

“Murderer,” Callie Bennington whispered as she passed with her head held high. It was too much for her. Scarlett could hold in the tears no longer as the classroom emptied.

Only Jasmine had stayed behind to see if her friend was alright.

“It’s alright Scarlett,” she said comfortingly, “You didn’t know that’s not how we do things here.”

“It’s not fair,” Scarlett blubbed, “I hate it here.

I get everything wrong and everyone hates me. I wish I’d never come to this stupid place.”

Jasmine hugged her friend. She didn’t quite know what to do as she patted her on the back.

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She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone so upset before. People didn’t tend to show their emotions like this around Jasmine. She thought hard, what would she want to do if she was in Scarlett’s situation?

“Do you want to come and play at mine?”

Jasmine asked.

Scarlett looked up through the tears. She rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say anything but she just about managed to nod in reply and smile.

“OK,” said Jasmine, smiling too, “Well let’s call your carers and see if that’s alright. You can have tea with us too maybe?”

“That would be nice,” smiled Scarlett. * Marcus had been going through a similar 116

experience but, being that bit older, he had adapted slightly better than Scarlett. He tried to keep himself to himself as much as possible. He knew that things on Alpha Central were very different from how they had been in the forest.

He had worked out very quickly that a lot of the things he thought of as normal would be seen as very strange here. The Alphan people didn’t go outside as such. There was no tree climbing, no running through the fields, no swimming in rivers. If you wanted to climb, you arranged to go to the climbing centre. If you wanted to run you would use the running machines. If you wanted to swim, you would book a session in the gym.

It all worked perfectly well, like clockwork in fact. The whole place ran smoothly, but Marcus didn’t really like that you couldn’t just randomly choose to do something on the spur of the 117

moment. That you couldn’t just wake up and decide to go swimming, you had to log into the system and book a place. That sometimes you would be held in a queue until a position became available and, by the time you were allowed to go swimming, you might well have changed your mind. He knew that the Alphan diets had been specifically designed to provide the correct nutrients, vitamins and minerals that meant that they didn’t need to go outside to stay healthy, but he missed the feeling of the sun on his face, the breeze in his hair.

He’d made a few friends – Alfie, Will, Ralph, Henry – but on the whole he had found it was safer to try to keep himself to himself. In class he had worked out that there were certain subjects he was better off staying quiet in. Science had moved on a lot since the books 118

he knew so well had been written. A lot of what he had learned had been disproved, and some things were so out of date he would sound like a caveman trying to explain a microwave oven if he opened his mouth.

It seemed to Marcus that a lot of the history books had been rewritten as well. He had got in awful trouble when he had tried to talk about the Gulf War the other day. His teacher, Mr Harpin, had got quite cross with him when they had discussed the reasons for the war. Marcus had no idea from his books that it had all been about oil.

The books he had read in the forest had seemed to make it pretty clear that it had all been about freedom and justice. He didn’t know who was right, but he found it was best to just agree with whatever Harpin said, not to argue and to just accept his lessons as fact. And if the discussions 119

ever turned to the second referendum, he had learned the hard way that he should definitely keep his mouth shut. The people on Alpha Central had very strong views indeed about that.

Marcus had decided that maths was the safest lesson to speak up in. Numbers were constant. They would never change. He could trust them. Even though the Alphans had a five day week and a ten month year, the numbers still added up the same, they just represented different things now.

Even though he tried really hard to do as little as possible to draw attention to himself, he still seemed to keep getting in trouble. He hated having to dress the same as all the other boys.

He missed having his hooded top to hide inside.

Sometimes at school he just wanted to be able to pull the hood up over his head and disappear.

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Some boys had pushed him too far today at second break. They’d refused to leave him alone, teasing him about having walked on the moon.

They didn’t believe he’d really done it. They said he was making it all up so everyone thought he was cool. Marcus had tried to ignore them, to walk away, but they’d kept on and on and when Laurence, one of the biggest boys had started pushing him, he had snapped.

Marcus had lived a very physical life. Even though he was by no means the tallest, he was far stronger than these boys. They may go to the gym and work out every day, but Marcus had needed to fight to survive alone in the forest with his sister for years. He’d gone one on one against huge animals and come out on top. He was far more developed and agile than any pupil at Alpha High so, when he 121

had punched Laurence, Laurence had felt it.

It wasn’t like a normal playground punch. All the anger and frustration that Marcus had been building up had been released in that one hit, clean on the chin. Blood flew out of Laurence’s mouth as he span and fell. And a tooth flew out as well. It was the tooth that everyone had talked about. Although Marcus didn’t really see what all the fuss was for. He was pretty sure the wise and powerful Tanyen Manesh could easily grow him another one in one of his laboratories.

As Marcus opened the door to their apartment, Archie ran up to him, wagging his tail. Marcus didn’t have the same emotional attachment to the dog as Scarlett but he couldn’t deny he was a lovely animal. He was so big and friendly. All Marcus’s problems didn’t seem so important with this friendly black and white face 122

smiling up at him and this muscular tail banging away on whatever it happened to be near.

“Eventful day?” Kyle asked from the sofa.

He was sitting with a tablet on his lap, writing something. Kyle always seemed to be writing something these days whenever he had any free time. Kyle had quite a lot of free time. After they had all settled in to Alpha Central and the initial buzz had died down, after they had explained who they were and where they had come from, Rain went back to the job she had been doing before and the children were allocated places in schools. But Kyle had been a bit of an odd one.

There didn’t really seem to be anywhere that he fitted in to Alphan society.

Most of the jobs on Alpha Central that Kyle would be suitable for were performed by robots. Farming, manufacturing, the service 123

industry, anything that you didn’t really need qualifications for was automated. All the cooking, the police, the waiters and waitresses, anything that Kyle might be able to turn his hand to had probably been automated by now.

What Alpha Central really needed were scientists and thinkers. They needed the people who would think ‘outside the box’ as they called it. The people who could think of new ways to do things and who were prepared to rip up the old rule books. To not stick with how things had always been done just because that was how they’d always been done. And that wasn’t really Kyle.

Kyle had always been good at engineering, good with his hands. His dad had taught him how to strip a car engine at a very young age and he’d always felt happiest covered in oil and 124

surrounded by machinery. When the Corusca central employment office had tested him they had found the job he would be best suited for would be a position in robot repairs.

Normally when a robot went wrong, another robot would fix it. And if the repair robot that fixed the robots went wrong they had a repair robot repair robot to fix that robot. But, on the rare occasions that the repair robot repair robots went wrong, well, that was Kyle’s job. He was a maintenance worker in repair robot repair robot repair. He had been on a week-long course about it and now he knew everything. Any time a repair robot repair robot went wrong, he knew exactly what to do.

The trouble was these robots didn’t go wrong very often so he spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for the call. Even the repair robots didn’t 125

need fixing very often, let alone the repair robot repair robots.

So Kyle read a lot of books. He had got a taste for it now. He’d tried watching Alpha Central TV but so much of it was just people saying how great Tanyen Manesh was and what a great things he had planned for Alpha Central that he couldn’t bear too much of it. He was in the middle of the third book of The Lord of the Rings, or the fourth if you counted The Hobbit.

Which Kyle didn’t. It had started slowly, which had annoyed him, but he had got into it now, although he didn’t see why it was taking them so long to get to the mountain or whatever, couldn’t they just hitch a ride on a dragon or something?

Kyle wasn’t really that bothered that there wasn’t much work for him. It’s not as if anyone got paid anyway. Apparently it was all about the 126

greater good. Everyone just did what needed to be done for the good of the Corusca.

“Oh you know,” Marcus said sheepishly, “Just a normal day at school really.”

“Marcus they send us a report every day,” Kyle said in his best angry dad voice, “With video highlights.”

On the wall screen Marcus could see the Laurence incident playing back in a loop endlessly. The blood from the boy’s mouth splattering out all over the wall and the tooth spinning off over his shoulder. Marcus dropped his head. He wished he could pull up his hood.

He looked up to see Kyle standing there with a serious expression on his face and his hands on his hips. Marcus was just about to say sorry and how he could explain everything when Kyle suddenly broke into a big smile.

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“That was a heck of a punch, kid,” he suddenly shouted, slapping Marcus on the back, “He deserved it, right? Where’d you learn to punch like that? You could take out a horse with a swing that strong!”

“Yeah, he’s had it coming for a while,” Marcus smiled, kicking off his shoes and slumping next to Kyle on the sofa as the shoebot came out of its hatch and cleared away the footwear for him, “Where’s Rain? Working late again?” Kyle nodded. They sat and watched the video replay a few more times together. Kyle sniggering every time at the look of shock on Marcus’s face in the video when he realised what he’d done.

“What’re you writing?” Marcus asked leaning over to look at the tablet screen, thinking it was about time they changed the subject from the big fight.

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“Oh, it’s nothing,” Kyle said, switching the tablet off and putting it to one side, “I’ve been trying out poetry. Some stuff about the things we’ve seen, the places we’ve been...”

“Well that’s a good start,” Marcus said, “It rhymes at least!”

Kyle was just explaining how poetry didn’t have to rhyme and giving Marcus a playful hairruffle when a call came in. Kyle put it up on the big screen.

A serious woman’s face appeared on the wall in front of them. The boys sat up straight and tried to look serious too.

“Can I speak to the carer of Scarlett Starbrook please,” said the serious woman on the screen.

“Err yeah,” Kyle said in his most grown up responsible voice, brushing some imaginary crumbs from his top, “That would be me.”

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“My client Jasmine has requested a two hour play-date with Scarlett this evening,” the woman went on, “I have entered it into Scarlett’s personal organiser and I just need you to authenticate the approval node.”

A fingerprint recognition pad appeared on the screen in front of the lady. Kyle went and pressed his thumb on it and a message saying ‘Play-date approved’ flashed up in green.

“Many thanks,” the woman continued, “The busbot will return her to your apartment following the allotted hours. Peace be with the Corusca.”

Kyle just had time to blurt out incorrectly, “Yeah, and also with you,” before the woman’s face disappeared and the screen went back to the repeating video of Marcus and the boy Laurence.

“This place sucks,” said Kyle, slumping back 130

down next to Marcus, “It’s like everyone is always at work. There’s no fun. Even going to a bar is like being in an office, you know? You can only stay a certain amount of time and only consume your allotted allowance. It’s just dull, dull, dull.

Hardly anyone ever talks to me and, when they do, all they want to talk about is their work.

Then when they find out what I do, they just lose interest.”

“I hear you Kyle,” agreed Marcus, “I hear you.”

“I never thought this would ever bother me in a million years, but where’s the art?” Kyle said, raising his arms as if to point out the lack of art in his immediate surroundings, “How can anyone be expected to write a song about the unexpected beauty of a rainbow if they know that there’s a rainbow scheduled to happen at lunchtime on Fiveday?”

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“Every Fiveday,” agreed Marcus.

“Every Fiveday!” repeated Kyle, clearly letting it all out now, “When we first got here, when I saw Alpha Central like a giant shiny apple core spinning in the sky, the sunlight glistening off the solar panels all around, the circular fields and the rivers in the sky… When I saw the look on Rain’s face… I thought everything was going to be brilliant…”

“When we docked,” Kyle continued, “And the man called Woody led us out and introduced us in that giant golden hall, where the trumpets were sounding and everyone was shouting, ‘Three cheers for Captain Parity and her crew!’

I thought we’d reached the promised land. But it’s not. Everyone here is just treated like a part in a big machine. Like we are the cogs in the engine that keeps the core turning. There’s no room for 132

individuals. Nobody is unique or different in any way. Even love is done by computers! Everyone is analysed, everything you’ve ever shown an interest in, every thought you’ve ever written down, all chewed up by a big machine that mashes it all together and then spits out your perfect partner. I mean, do you think the damn love machine would’ve ever put me and Rain together? Do you?”

There was an awkward silence in the room before Marcus finally plucked up the courage to ask the question that was hanging in the air.

“Are you in love with Rain Parity?”

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134

CHAPTER FIVE

“What did you there?”

Unlike most of the other children who went to Alpha High, Jasmine didn’t live in the Central Shard. She had explained to Scarlett that she lived in a house in the city below, or above, depending on your point of view.

Because of the way that gravity worked on Alpha Central there was no real above and below. If you were on one of the most middle floors of Central Shard you could either go down the elevator one way to the city below, or down the elevator the other way to the Agrizone, which was also below, and above, depending on your point of view.

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The central Alpha core was like a vertical axle and the circular land mass at each end like fixed wheels, rotating with the core in space. You just got into one of the elevators and the gravitational stabilisers did the rest. The elevator would decide whether you were going down one way or going down the other way and rotate while it descended to make sure you were the right way up when you got to the floor you were going to.

It was confusing but, once Scarlett had got her head round how gravity worked here, it kind of made sense. If you went all the way up, eventually you were going down again. She had accepted it in the same way as she had eventually accepted how people in Australia in the old days weren’t standing on their heads. The Australians had been standing up normally just like the people in Britain, even though they had used to 136

call it ‘the land down under’ because they were on the other side of a big ball spinning in space.

To the Australians, the people in Britain were upside down. It all depended on your point of view. It was exactly the same principle at work on Alpha Central, except here, it was on the inside and not the outside.

That was why, when she stepped out onto the city streets, she could see the circular fields far above her where the sky should probably have been reflected in the car door that automatically opened as they approached.

Scarlett hadn’t been out in the city much since they had arrived on Alpha Central. She and Marcus both lived and went to school in the Central Shard. When they had first landed they had been given a guided tour with the rest of the crew. They had been shown all the important 137

landmarks – St Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, The London Eye Grav Beacon – and had gone to a special party in their honour at a place called The Gherkin, which was a silly name for a building as far as Scarlett was concerned.

Rain had explained that all of the Corusca buildings in London had been given silly names so that people hadn’t thought too much about why all these strange new gigantic buildings were popping up all over the city, and why most of them were being left empty. Tanyen Manesh’s reasoning was if you gave something a silly name, the people would just concentrate on the name and not worry about what the building was actually for. You couldn’t feel threatened by something called The Gherkin or the Cheesegrater or the Walkie-Talkie. The Corusca hiding in plain sight as usual.

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The party in their honour at The Gherkin hadn’t seemed like much of a party to Scarlett though. There had been no cake, no party bags and no dancing. It was nothing like all the parties in her books. Just a lot of old people talking and asking her the same questions over and over again. What was it like in the forest?

Are you excited to be on Alpha Central? What was the most exciting adventure you had on your way here?

Scarlett was too young to remember when they had lived in London when she was tiny so it hadn’t been as strange for her as it had been for Marcus. Marcus had worked out where their mum and dad’s old flat had been back when they were growing up, but apparently it had changed a lot since then. Rain Parity had explained how the Corusca had bought up a lot of the land in the 139

centre of London over the years and built new housing developments on the sites of old land, making normal people move further away from the centre of town and leaving the buildings empty for when they would be needed.

Jasmine’s house was very familiar though. She recognised the golden spires and the big clock tower that Jasmine pointed out through the window as they glided along in the sky, following the line of the river. The golden spires flying the familiar Corusca flags with the prancing horses and the Alpha Central flags with two grey semi circles on a blue background, and the big tower that now had a new, ten-hour clock face so it could show Alpha time.

“You live in Big Ben?” Scarlett asked incredulously as their car automatically landed in one of the parking bays in the square outside the 140

She recognised the spires as they glided through the sky 141

building and the car doors smoothly lifted up to let them out.

“Well actually,” Jasmine answered as they stepped out onto the spotless pavement beside the giant oak doors, “Big Ben is the name of the bell inside. Everyone says that. The tower itself is called the Tanyen Manesh Tower and we live next door in the Houses of Parliament.”

The doors in front of her were bigger than any doors Scarlett had ever seen before. At least three times as tall as the girls were, with wooden engravings and huge iron hinges. These doors were so big they looked like the kind of doors a giant would have and, as they reached them, they swung open inwards automatically.

“That’s strange, they don’t normally open by themselves?” said Jasmine, pausing to look up and around the arched door-frame, “You must be 142

my lucky charm Scarlett.�

As they entered the gigantic entrance hall, Scarlett couldn’t help but think that Jasmine was the lucky one, living in such a grand place.

The hall was as big as Scarlett’s entire house back in the forest, and the ceilings felt as high as the tallest trees. There were stained glass windows, statues and a huge six pointed star in the middle of the black and white tiled floor.

This was the sort of house a princess would live in, Scarlett thought as she stared up at the statues. There was one big fat marble man wearing a waistcoat standing beside the door they were heading towards staring angrily down at her, whilst on the other side of the door was another man with a frilly coat and very tight trousers who looked for all the world like he was about to start singing and dancing. As 143

Jasmine pushed open the door, Scarlett could see the entire corridor behind was also filled with statues. There were rows and rows of them silently lining the corridor walls – mainly of men, although there was one of a scary looking woman who kind of looked like a witch.

Scarlett had never properly looked at statues before. They were really strange. Everything from their skin to their hair to their clothes was all the same pale colour and their eyes were scarily blank. She found them a little bit creepy, particularly the ones that looked like they were in the middle of saying something. How did that work? If they had posed for the sculptor making the statue had they needed to stand there with their mouth open the whole time? Scarlett found herself wondering how they had chosen what word they should be in the middle of saying 144

and if they had got a really dry mouth standing posing like that for hours.

As they reached the end of the corridor there was another door with a friendly looking man sitting at a desk by it. Scarlett was pleased to see a real person with real eyes after all those statues.

“Good evening princess, let me open the door for you,” he said, but as he turned to enter the door code on his tablet, the door swung open behind him. The man looked puzzled by this – as if that wasn’t what usually happened – but he waved them through anyway and went back to his tablet.

As the children passed through yet another door that was big enough for a giant and began walking along yet another corridor that was tiled like a chessboard, Scarlett asked Jasmine if the man was her father.

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“No?” Jasmine replied, confused, “Why would you think that?”

“Oh,” said Scarlett, slightly embarrassed that she might have got something wrong again, “I just thought... he called you princess... that’s the kind of thing dads call their daughters... My...

My dad used to call me princess when I was little...”

Jasmine pushed open another set of giant sized doors and finally they were in her bedroom.

It was like a bedroom from a little girl’s dream.

She had a rocking horse, white bunk beds with pink curtains, a mountain of toys, a wardrobe overspilling with pretty dresses and there, right in the middle of the room was a huge trampoline.

“He called me princess...” said Jasmine, kicking off her shoes and encouraging Scarlett 146

to do the same as she clambered up onto the trampoline, “Because I am a princess!”

Scarlett couldn’t believe her luck. The one friend she had made in the whole time since she had got to Alpha Central was a princess.

An actual, real princess. She kicked off her school shoes and scrambled up onto the trampoline to join her friend, the princess. * Scarlett was having the time of her life at Jasmine’s. After they finished bouncing on the trampoline they played AlphaPonies. Jasmine had the full set of ponies with absolutely all of the accessories, of course. Scarlett had never seen so many toys in her life, but the one she was drawn to most was the Alpha Central play-set.

The Alpha Central play-set was a miniature 147

version of the whole of Alpha Central. Scarlett could tell it was a simplified plastic version of the real thing, the rock bases were rounder and the colours were more simplified, but it helped make sense of everything to her. She could see really clearly now how the two cities fitted together.

When you turned it one way up, there was a circular plastic rock with what remained of London on it with that big sharp pointy building in the middle and reflective solar panels all round the edge of the circle. Then if you turned it the other way up it had the other city with the even bigger curly building from Dubai that she’d been told the name of a hundred times but just didn’t seem to be able to remember.

She could see clearly now how the Shard slotted into the curly building and made one big central column that made the central Alpha core.

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As she turned it the other way up she could see the city on the other side was smaller and it was surrounded by the circular fields with streams connecting them.

But the thing that was intriguing Scarlett the most was on the London side of Alpha Central.

In the middle of the River Thames just outside Jasmine’s house was an island. A big heart shaped island with four smaller islands next to it in the shape of crosses, or kisses.

“What’s this?” Scarlett asked, pointing at the islands, “I don’t remember seeing any of this in my atlas?”

“Oh don’t ask,” Jasmine said, she seemed slightly embarrassed, “I designed those ages ago when I was tiny. Heartland and the Islands of Lost Kisses.”

“You designed an island?” Scarlett asked. She 149

wasn’t sure she understood.

“Yeah, I used to play there when I was really little,” the little girl who was apparently a princess replied, “It’s so embarrassing!”

Scarlett was even more confused now, “Oh, like imaginary islands that you would pretend to go and play on?”

There was a beep and an alert appeared on the screen on Jasmine’s wall that up til now had been playing the latest episodes of the AlphaPonies cartoon. The screen alerted them to the fact that dinner was ready.

“No, not imaginary islands,” Jasmine said as she stood up, “My dad actually made them for me out on the Thames.”

As they skipped down the corridor to the dining room together, still just in their socks, Jasmine stopped and pulled back one of the 150

curtains, pointing outside. Sure enough, there, in the middle of the river just outside the Houses of Parliament, was an island that was the shape of a heart drawn by a little girl. And there right next to it were all of Jasmine’s lost kisses with pink trees growing on them as if they were real islands – which of course they were. Scarlett couldn’t believe how lucky this little girl was. She had everything.

Despite the fact that this little girl had everything, she still got the same regulation dinner that everyone else on Alpha Central had on a Threeday. Threeday was pasta Bolognese.

Every Threeday until the menus rotated. Scarlett didn’t mind Threeday dinner and she ate the lot. While she was waiting for Jasmine to finish eating and for the robots to bring out pudding, she asked Jasmine if she could go to the toilet 151

and whereabouts it was.

“Oh it’s quite a way down that corridor,” Jasmine said pointing, “it’s the fifth door on the left. But don’t worry, your Alpha pass will open the door for you when you get there. Everyone’s allowed to go to the toilet!”

Scarlett laughed as she pushed her chair in and headed off down the marble corridor.

When they had first arrived on Alpha Central, the crew had all had computerised chips inserted into their arms. They were tiny little things, about the size of a grain of rice, and they sat just under their skin. Scarlett could feel it sometimes on her forearm, she would trace the shape of it with her fingertips when she was thinking. It didn’t bother her though. She had got used to it fairly quickly.

The tiny grain of rice in her arm contained all 152

the information about Scarlett that the Corusca had gathered. It knew where she was, where she’d been, what she’d eaten and how fast her heart was beating. If she got ill, the rice would know. It would automatically confine her to the apartment so that she didn’t spread her germs around the rest of the school. The rice knew if someone was trying to contact her and it would make the video call appear on whichever screen she happened to be nearest. It told her when it was time to go to bed, and when it was time to wake up. It also knew which areas she was and wasn’t allowed to enter. It would allow her in their apartment, in her school classroom, the breakout zone and various other places. But if she tried to get into an area she wasn’t authorised to enter, in theory, the rice would stop her. It would automatically lock down any places she 153

wasn’t supposed to go into.

That was the theory anyway. But Scarlett had noticed that she seemed to be able to go wherever she wanted. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone but it happened all the time now. She had managed to open the store cupboard at school and hide in there when Callie Bennington had been being mean to her at break time last Oneday and Callie hadn’t been able to get in.

Eventually she had given up trying to be mean and wandered off to find something else to entertain herself with.

That’s why Scarlett hadn’t been that surprised when the doors to the Houses of Parliament had opened automatically, and again when the doors to the living quarters had swung open before the friendly man had entered the pass code. She was quite used to doors opening for her. She 154

had even found she had been able to wander wherever she liked when they had been on board the doughnut when it was parked on the moon.

That’s how she had ended up in the hangar bay when Rain and Marcus hadn’t expected her to be there. Seemingly her tracking device didn’t work properly either. People didn’t seem to know where Scarlett was half the time. The teachers were supposed to be able to pinpoint exactly where all the pupils were every minute of the day but quite often it appeared they had no idea where Scarlett was. It was the same for Marcus. The Corusca had tried turning their rice chips off and on again to make them work properly several times, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. So nobody could tell where they were and they could open whichever doors they wanted to.

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That’s why it came as no surprise to Scarlett when the first door that opened for her down the corridor at Jasmine’s house turned out not to have been the toilet at all, but a room full of people sitting round a big desk and shouting at each other. They were just around a corner in the room so they couldn’t see her and she couldn’t really see them, but she could certainly hear them. They were being very loud. She was just about to turn around and walk out again when she realised she recognised one of the raised voices.

“But that’s not why we dragged Sector 7B half way across the system at all!” Scarlett could hear Rain Parity’s voice shouting. She knew she should walk away but this was her home that Rain was clearly getting very agitated about.

“Your mission was to fetch the water,” a man’s 156

voice interrupted, “There was no statement of intent beyond that. You’ve done your part Captain Parity now leave it to the infrastructure department.”

Another man took over, “Just because you’re emotionally attached to the silly rock and you’ve got a little family now, that doesn’t change the facts. Harnessing Sector 7B gives us a twelve year water supply. Once it’s drained and of no further use to us we will deactivate the gravity shackle and let it loose. It’s simple economics Captain, you can’t get sentimental about it.”

“What about 12C?” Rain was protesting, Scarlett wasn’t used to hearing her get this emotional, “Iceworld can provide all the water we need. It’s self-replenishing and there’s barely any wildlife out there in the snow. But there’s a really diverse ecosystem in the forest – deer, 157

rabbits, loads of species of birds and plants – we can’t just allow everything to die out. What will the children say in the future if we let all these species become extinct?”

Scarlett thought that Rain was making a very good point. People were one thing, but there were hundreds, thousands of other birds, plants and animals that deserved to live as well. And besides that, it was her home. All her stuff was there. Admittedly it was all a bit wet, but it could dry out. Her teddy bear had been fine after it had been in the dryer a couple of times.

“Captain Parity,” another man’s voice said firmly, it sounded like the chocolatey-voiced man that Rain spoke to on the ship that time, Tanyen Manesh, “I think my children would be more upset if I told them they could never go skiing on Iceworld again than if I told them they’d never see 158

a chaffinch again. This is no different from when we released Ranraq after the oil was depleted. This is a sacrifice for the greater good and my decision is final. Iceworld will live and the forest will die.

There was a vote. It is the will of the Corusca.�

Scarlett gasped. She was pretty sure she had followed the conversation, even though some of the words had been fancy. Rain Parity had lied to them all. The only reason they had actually brought the forest all this way was so they could plug it into Alpha Central and drain all its water.

And when they had finished they were just going to throw it away like an empty paper cup. She slipped quietly out of the room and back down the corridor to the toilet.

When she had washed her hands she went back to her friend Jasmine. They had sticky toffee pudding with ice cream like every Threeday and 159

they played for about another half an hour before the busbot arrived to take her home as planned.

But Scarlett’s heart hadn’t really been in it after what she had just learned, if she was honest. She just wanted to get home and tell Marcus about everything she had just heard. * Rain was already home when Scarlett got back to the apartment. She must’ve finished shouting at the men while the girls were still eating their pudding and headed back before the flying car had arrived to pick Scarlett up. Scarlett could tell she was still in a bad mood though so she didn’t think it would be a good time to ask her about what she’d overheard her saying at Jasmine’s house. Or to ask her why she had been lying to the children all this time.

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Marcus and Kyle were playing their racing game as usual so she didn’t get a chance to speak to her brother all evening either. She decided she’d wait until after bath and bedtime and then sneak into Marcus’s room and tell him all about it. * Scarlett had laid in bed in her grey pyjamas, waiting for the main apartment lights to go out for ages. She had waited while Rain Parity had brushed her teeth for what felt like forever.

Rain Parity did have exceptionally good teeth, but surely she didn’t need to brush them for quite that long? Scarlett carried on lying there in the dark, fighting sleep and forcing her eyes to stay open as she stared at the gap where she had left her soundproof door slightly open, until she finally saw the lights go out in Rain 161

and Kyle’s bedroom.

This was her moment. As quick as a flash she was out of her bed once more, the socks intentionally on her feet so as to make as little noise as possible on the hard floor when she came out of her room. As she pulled open her door, just a crack, and peered out into the hall to make sure the adults were definitely in their bedroom, she saw Marcus, fully dressed in his jeans and hoodie, heading toward the front door of the apartment. She could just make out he was holding something on a chain in his hand as the door popped open and he slipped through, silently closing it immediately behind him.

Scarlett had no idea where her brother was sneaking off to at this time of night, but she knew for sure that she was absolutely going with him. She crept up to the door on her tiptoes and 162

tried to open it. To her surprise, it remained locked. Of course it did, it was after ten and children definitely had to be in bed by now. They called it a curfew for some reason. All children to remain behind locked doors after dark. But locked doors didn’t normally stop Scarlett, and they certainly didn’t seem to have stopped Marcus either.

Scarlett suddenly realised something. She wasn’t wearing her lucky pendant. The lucky pendant her mum had given her all those years ago and told her never to lose and never to tell anyone about. The lucky pendant she hadn’t even told her brother about, who she loved and trusted more than anyone else. Without a sound, she slipped back into her room and grabbed it from the drawer by her bed, putting the chain around her neck and heading for the door once 163

more, hoping that her brother hadn’t had a chance to get too much of a head start on her.

Sure enough the door popped open for Scarlett as soon as she was wearing her pendant.

Well, this explained a lot, she thought as she raced for the elevator, it was quite clearly a magic necklace. * There was only one active elevator and Scarlett could see which direction it was travelling in. Down. Proper down. Down-down to Old London Town. It didn’t surprise Scarlett that there were no other elevators moving at this time of night. All the good little Alphans would be safely tucked up in bed where they were supposed to be. Like she and Marcus were supposed to be.

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As she entered the empty elevator next to the one Marcus had taken she hoped that her magic necklace would also protect her from the security cameras in some way. She reasoned that the necklace did everything else so it would probably do that as well. She really didn’t want to be seen and be sent back to her room, and then never to know where Marcus had been heading off to on his midnight jaunt.

So far so good. Scarlett had made it onto the street level just in time to see Marcus disappearing in the dark under a huge traffic bridge. She raced off in his direction, using the shadows of the half lit street to avoid detection.

Everything looked different at night. Once the solar panels had rotated the other way round at 8.50pm and stopped reflecting the sunlight in to Alpha Central there were just the street lamps 165

to light their way. Each lamp creating a circle of light around it with dark gaps in between them, much like the gaps between the circular fields that Charlie had described in class earlier.

Scarlett used these shadowy secret areas to keep herself hidden just in case Marcus looked around. Marcus clearly knew where he was going because he was moving pretty fast as Scarlett skulked in the shadows, skipping across the islands of street light to avoid being seen.

Marcus stopped and looked around as if he had heard something. Scarlett ducked down behind a parked car, careful not to touch it and make the alarm go off. She had learned how sensitive Alphan car alarms were the hard way.

Scarlett sat motionless, barely breathing, as Marcus had taught her when hunting back in the forest. When she thought she’d left it long 166

enough she cautiously poked her head up above the driver-less car. Marcus was nowhere to be seen.

In a panic she leapt up and ran towards where she had last seen him. There was a park to her left and a crossroads in front of her. Her brother could be anywhere. She peered down each of the empty London streets, desperate for a sign to show which turning he had taken but could see nothing.

Scarlett turned to her left and spotted him.

She could just make out the reflective strips on the back of his rucksack that Alphan health and safety laws had meant he had needed to add to it, glinting in the darkness as he made his way across the open green space, past the deserted playground. Thank goodness for health and safety, Scarlett thought as she slipped through 167

the metal railings around the park and hurried to catch up with Marcus.

Scarlett passed the playground, empty swings hanging motionless in the night, then crouched behind a bench as she saw her brother stop in the bushes by the railings on the opposite side of the park. He was clearly waiting for something. Scarlett got the feeling that Marcus had completed this journey several times. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He was checking his watch and looking up, waiting for something that was about to happen.

Sure enough, moments later there was a blue flashing light. The entrance to the street Marcus was poised opposite was strobing blue, light flashing and reflecting off the old fashioned windows and the modern parked cars, getting brighter and brighter. The noise was getting 168

louder as well, it was loud enough that it would’ve woken all the sleeping Alphans if their houses weren’t all soundproof by law.

Round the corner emerged a patrol droid or “plodbot” as they seemed to be called locally.

Giant caterpillar tracks like on a tank, two guns mounted on its front swinging like pendulums from left to right as the blue light on top where its head would be flashed rhythmically in time with them. Scarlett could see why Marcus was staying hidden. This was the sort of robot that looked like it was programmed to shoot first and ask questions later. Marcus must’ve known the plodbot’s routine. He had known to stay hidden as it had completed its programmed route and disappeared round the corner to continue its patrol of the city. Sure enough, as soon as it had gone, Marcus hopped over the park railings with 169

ease and scampered down the dark street directly opposite.

Scarlett didn’t want to run the risk of losing her brother again so, as quickly as she could, she made her way over to where Marcus had mounted the fence and slipped between the railings. She was held up briefly as her pyjama trousers caught on a spiky branch in the undergrowth, pulling them free, leaving a slight tear.

The little girl out alone in the dark in her torn pyjamas reached the end of the narrow street Marcus had entered. There were plenty of shadows here to hide in. It was a very old looking street that sloped downwards to a dead end. The type of buildings in the narrow street were in very stark contrast to the enormous imposing housing block that towered over it like some kind of alien monolith. Scarlett ran 170

her hand along the cold metal of the road sign as she watched Marcus tiptoe down the cobbles.

‘Sanctuary Street SE1’ the sign said. The name was just starting to tickle the edge of Scarlett’s memory when she saw Marcus stop and tap on the window of a plain looking brown building on the left.

This was Scarlett’s cue to get as close to the building as possible. To find out what Marcus was up to.

There were four plastic bins outside. Red, yellow, green and blue. Scarlett knew this system.

It was the same as the rubbish chutes in Central Shard. One for each type of recycling – plastic, paper, food waste and electronic components. She snuck in behind the bins and peered up through the window on the ground floor of the brown building Marcus had entered moments earlier.

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The first thing Scarlett saw through the window from her hiding place behind the bins was a machine. A dark metal machine that looked like, if she could hear it, it would make a lot of noise.

It was chugging away doing something, the middle part spinning around and around and large pieces of paper churning out of one end.

Scarlett couldn’t read the words on the paper but it looked like one of the newspapers her parents used to bring home from work that Marcus was so obsessed with.

There was a diagram in the middle of the page that looked a little bit like Alpha Central, but cleaner, more symmetrical and with less buildings. On the top of the page it said something in capital letters. Scarlett wasn’t very good at reading capitals, particularly when they 172

were upside down as these were on the pages churning out of the machine. She could see the word started with a B and ended with a TA but in between it could’ve been an E or a number 3, she wasn’t sure. But, either way, it was a word she wasn’t sure how to say out loud.

Marcus had worked his way round the big machine that took up half the room to the man in the hat who was standing on the other side with his back to where Scarlett was standing.

Scarlett couldn’t have been more surprised when she saw the face of the man as he turned around. It was the man everyone called Woody.

The man who had flown them back from the safari rock after his friend that Scarlett couldn’t remember the name of had got eaten by that naughty leopard. Scarlett was surprised to see Marcus hug him. She hadn’t realised they knew 173

each other this well, that they were this close.

Marcus never hugged anyone. Scarlett could only remember a handful of times in their entire lives when he had even hugged her. The man known as Woody appeared to have grown a bit of a beard in the weeks since she had last seen him and Scarlett was just trying to work out who he reminded her of now when she heard a noise entering the end of the road behind her and an urgent flashing yellow light lit up the walls, getting closer and closer.

It must be the plodbot on its route again, she thought in horror. Scarlett slid down the wall and hid behind the nearest bin as best she could.

The flashing lights and the sound of the robot were getting closer and closer. That familiar pistons and gears sound that more often than not in Scarlett’s experience meant danger. The 174

pyjama clad girl sunk lower to the ground, covering her head with her hands. As she saw the robot’s claw-like clamps reach out either side of the bright red bin she couldn’t help but let out a scream of terror.

“It’s a binbot Scarlett!” Marcus hissed as he grabbed Scarlett and pulled her in through the open door. She could just see the robot emptying the red bin food waste into its body as the door closed safely behind her.

“What on Earth are you doing here Scarlett?”

Marcus shook her by the shoulders angrily as he questioned her, “How did you get out past the curfew locks?”

Scarlett said nothing but reached inside her pyjama top and pulled out her engraved golden world pendant. Her pendant that was identical in every way to the one that Marcus had with him as 175

well. The one that he had rescued from the sunken house on Sector 7B all those weeks ago.

“I don’t know where you got that from Scarlett but you risked your life coming here tonight!”

Marcus was yelling as Woody came over to where the children were arguing.

“Calm down Marcus,” Woody said softly, Scarlett noticed he appeared to have dropped the Australian accent now, “Scarlett, it’s alright.

I’m just happy you’re safe and we’re all together again. Do you remember me?”

Scarlett looked up at the man and nodded as he removed his hat. She did remember the man from the safari rock and from the journey back.

She remembered he had been very kind to her and made sure she was alright after the leopard incident. But there was something else. Now, with the beard, and with his hat off, suddenly 176

she realised she knew him from another time.

Another time a long time ago. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognised him before. It was staring her right in the face like one of Tanyen Manesh’s clever disguises. Of course it was him.

“Daddy!” Scarlett said, choking back the tears and the years as she threw herself into his arms and gave the father she had thought she would never see again a massive hug.

“Hello princess,” Scarlett’s Dad said as he hugged her, “Now let’s find your mum and get out of this place before the Beta Project starts.”

But before he’d had a chance to explain, a familiar rhythmic blue light began to flash in the street, lighting up the walls in the room.

Marcus and Scarlett will return in Broken Earth Episode Four: The Clouds Aweigh 177

178

About this book Firstly an apology. I really did intend for this to be a trilogy.

As a designer, I’ve worked with writers for years and they always say the same thing; they always ask if they can have just a few more words because “there’s just so much to say.” But as I passed the 24,000 words mark I knew I only had two options. I was either going to have to short change you, the reader, by wrapping it all up really quickly and leaving loads of questions unanswered or I was just going to have to bite the bullet and admit to myself that I needed four books.

I should probably have gone back and trimmed huge chunks out of it. Literally.

Made Marcus and Scarlett visit possibly one less chunk of Earth to save some words. But, you know, there was just so much to say...

When you’re inventing a new world, a new planetary system, you have to start from scratch. And I feel you have to make that world as real as possible.

I need to know everything from how the climate works to who does the bins. Not that all of it even gets mentioned and it’s not like anyone would necessarily ever ask me but, if they did... If they did think they had found a flaw in the structure of Alpha Central it would destroy the drama. There’s nothing worse than an inconsistent Jar Jar Binks society where they live in huts but have advanced technology or a city that’s underwater for no apparent reason. To this end I actually used an unofficial scientific adviser to help me work out how Alpha C would need to function to survive. Robots, by the way, robots do the bins on Alpha Central.

I didn’t just want my characters to land on a planetoid, say it was sandy, do what they had to do and then move on. I’m only going to get to explore these places once, so I wanted to actually go into a bit of detail, tell some stories, expand some characters.

So basically, sorry. You’d either have a house brick sized Rowling book or two normal Broken World books. And I hate trying to hold those massive books comfortably.

The other problem I found was recapping. It’s kind of unnecessary but you still need to do it. Even though probably nobody is about to start reading from something that clearly says episode three on it, it still had to work on its own.

I can’t just assume you’ve leapt straight into the next book after finishing the previous, or even that you’ve remembered everything that’s happened up til now.

So there’s basically about a chapter’s worth of exposition I have to get out of the way as well. But I’ve tried to do it as subtly and gently as possible. When I was little and I used to read Doctor Who novelisations from the library avidly, I would always notice the same stock Terrance Dicksisms creeping in. The way he would describe the central console time rotor rising and falling, or how the fifth Doctor has a “pleasant open face.” Hopefully I’ve avoided repeating myself quite so openly but it does concern me that there’s going to be even more to explain in the fourth one now. That was another reason I was keen to wrap it up in three.

There’s going to be even more to say in the fourth one.

Despite all the apologies here I’m actually very pleased with this story and I hope you enjoy it. Oh, actually, one last apology. Sorry Carl.

Sent from my iPhone

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