Chapter 30

"What are you doing, Ebony?"

Ebony froze. The voice was cold, chilling, even evil. It also sounded amused. She turned round. There was nobody there. There was always nobody there. Even when the voice sounded as though it was right behind her. Even when she was sure she could feel the speaker's breath on the back of her neck. Even then, there was nobody there. She took a deep breath and turned back to the window frame she had been scraping at. Her breath came out in a sharp burst. The hole she'd been making in the old, dry mortar was gone. Looking down, she saw the small pile of grey dust at her feet, even the torn piece of wallpaper she had removed, breaking a nail in the process, was lying on the ground. She looked back at the wall. There were no signs the area around the window had been tampered with. The mortar was complete and covered by the old wallpaper. Even her broken nail, she saw, looking down at her hands, was back in place.

Turning, she slumped down, her back to the wall, and let her head fall into her hands. It was hopeless. The door and windows were solid. The walls magically repaired themselves. Food appeared without warning and whenever and wherever she wasn't looking. Whenever she got a new idea and it began to bear some fruit, the voice would interrupt her and when she looked back all her hard work would be gone. She only left the room, under armed guard, to travel in the police car with Zoot. Not that the armed guards were particularly necessary. A child could have led her from one prison to the other. She had already discovered, painfully, that if she moved more than a metre from either of her chaperones an intense electric current would flow through her body, paralysing her and sending her crashing to the ground.

She looked up as the television screen caught her attention again, the moving images drawing her eye. It was Jack again. He was still in the room with the blue haired woman. He was examining the bare wall of the room while she walked up behind him carrying a plate of food from somewhere. Ebony watched as the she slipped an arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. Jack had started at first, but now his attention was on the plate of food the woman was waving under his nose. He caught the plate on the second attempt and Ebony could see, if not hear, the woman's laughter as she spun away from him and led him over to sit down on the side of the bed. As they ate, the picture faded to black once more.

Ebony looked down to see a similar plate of food lying beside her on the floor. She picked up the apple from the plate and threw it full strength at the television. The screen crashed to the ground sending glass, plastic and wires everywhere. Ebony looked back to the plate and picked up the chunk of bread, biting into it before she looked up again. Chewing, she raised her head to survey her handiwork and froze. The television screen was back on the wall, in perfect condition as always. Ebony groaned and curled up in a ball on the floor by the plate.

xxxx

"You're in a weird mood all of a sudden," Jack frowned as he and Jetta divided their latest ration of food between them. "What was all that about?"

"We have enough food, water, shelter... Even a comfortable place to sleep," Jetta shrugged. "That's something to be thankful for in this world. Plus you're making progress on the door."

"Yeah, right," Jack snorted. "If by making progress you mean working out where it's not!"

"That is progress, though!" Jetta replied, gesturing in the direction of the walls. "The more places we know it's not, the fewer there are left to check and the more likely you are to find it soon."

"I guess there's some weird kind of logic to that..." Jack sighed. "I just wish I knew why they were keeping us here."

"It must be something to do with the work you did for them," said Jetta, leaning back on her elbows. "Take a break from the walls and let's go through the projects you worked on again."

"I don't know that we'll find anything there. I mean I only wrote a few individual pieces. The only one I know I can find in the city is the mall. The rest were almost entirely separate. They might not even be in the same virtual framework as we are now."

"What were they?"

Jack shrugged, shuffling backwards so that his back was against the wall and resting a foot on the edge of the bed so that he could rest his arm on his knee. If nothing else it would make it considerably more difficult for Jetta to try the same trick she had last time he'd been sitting there.

"There was the artificial intelligence programme, of course," he said, chewing his lip. "And then there was this research lab thing, off on an island and surrounded by land mines. It had to be protected, you see: that was the remit. So I put it on an island that was supposedly haunted, I put land mines in the ground all around it, I made it security card entry and half full of skeletons and then, to cap it off, I added an automatic lock down on an electronic tripwire."

"Just as well they didn't put us there!" Jetta laughed.

"That I can get out of," Jack shrugged. "I wrote it, after all."

"It has a secret door?"

"All my programs do. Some of them have whole other layers on the other side of secret doors. All of them lead out though."

"What else?"

"Well, not much," Jack's brow crinkled. "There was the maze, but that was just a minor thing and I don't think they could use it in this situation. The mall you know about. Then there was a sort of random, underwater coral reef thing that I worked on with Ved. The last thing I was working on was the hotel. I was just putting the finishing touches to the exterior when I got snatched and ended up here."

"It must be something to do with the hotel then," said Jetta. "Either something they needed to add or change, but they need you to do it."

"They wouldn't need me to add anything," Jack shook his head. "Not if it didn't alter the general structure of the building. A-And all they would need to change something would be my pass codes for the program. Those could be hacked if you knew what you were doing."

"So if they're not changing something or adding something, then what?" Jetta shrugged, frowning up at Jack.

Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I wish I knew," he said. "I really do."

xxxx

"Quiet! I can hear something," Salene hissed, her ear pressed to the wall of the room that should open onto a corridor, but instead refused to open at all.

"Probably our friendly neighbourhood crazies discussing what they're going to do with us," was May's acid reply from the bed on the opposite side of the room. "If they have finally decided, at least it'll be a change from being stuck in here!"

"I don't think so. It doesn't sound like them," said Salene, ignoring May's surly tone. "I think there's a girl there. I think they're talking about computers, I'm sure I heard the guy say something could be hacked."

"Limbs can be hacked," May reminded her.

"Yeah, I know, May," Salene sighed, looking over her shoulder at the black and red hair and outfit that lay along the farthest bed from the door. "I'm sure I heard the word program too, though."

"Well, roll out the red carpet and hang up some bunting!" May sighed. "What does it matter unless they're on our side and can get that door open!"

Salene rolled her eye and turned back to the wall. Maybe the mystery voices were on their side, and maybe they could get the door open. One thing was certain: she would never find out unless she did something about it. Hammering on the wall with the heel of her hand, Salene began shouting.

"Hey! Hey you out there!" Salene yelled at the top of her voice. "Can you get us out of here? Please! We can't open the door from this side! Can you help us? Hey there! Can you hear me?"

xxxx

Amber grabbed Dal's arm and dragged him behind some overflowing rubbish bins. The siren was drawing closer again. It wasn't the first time they had encountered the crazies. The first time had been much closer. At that point, a police siren still meant order and safety to Dal and Amber. As soon as the car had turned the corner, however, they had known they were wrong. The crowd of oddly dressed kids and teenagers surrounding the graffiti covered vehicle had been warning enough, even before the cry of "Get them!" had reached their already fleeing ears. The roller blades had certainly proved useful; they would have been caught long ago without them. Dal risked sticking his head up above the parapet of the rubbish bins, only to be pulled back sharply by Amber.

"Are you nuts? They'll see us!" Amber hissed in his ear.

"There's a girl," Dal replied. "Out in the middle of the road. She must be deaf or something: she's not running!"

"Where?" Amber looked up over the bins and spotted the girl. Sure enough, she wasn't running or trying to hide. She was crying though. "She's upset," said Amber. "Wait here. I'll go get her."

"Amber, no!" Dal cried, reaching out a hand to hold his friend back and missing her by millimetres.

Dal wasn't aware that he was holding his breath as he watched Amber skate across the road and grab the girl's hand, leading her to the opposite side of the road and dragging her down behind some old boxes. He couldn't see or hear what Amber said to her, but he knew she would be trying to calm the girl down and keep her quiet and out of sight. He shook his head. They should have started at the farm, like he had suggested. Then at least it would be easier to find Jewel and take stock of what was going on around them.

Suddenly the siren intensified and Dal ducked back down as he saw the police car come careening round the corner. He watched with bated breath as the car, its entourage and its occupants glided noisily by. As the siren faded from his hearing, he felt a hand on his arm and looked up to see Amber looking down at him with a worried frown on her face.

"What is it Dal? You look like you've seen a ghost?"

"You could say that!" Dal's voice was higher than he remembered it, and he could hear it shaking. He put out a hand to steady himself. "Is the girl okay?"

"She's fine," said Amber, dragging Dal to his feet. "Do you recognise her? Look closely. The makeup put me off at first too."

Dal frowned as he stared at the girl's face, aware that a slight look of uncertainly and confusion was creeping in to her features. The girl looked nervously to Amber and suddenly it clicked.

"You're Cloe!" Dal cried, a smile breaking out across his own face. "Of course: I've seen your picture!"

"So I hear," said Cloe, still nervous. "Amber said you're here to find people?"

"A lot of people!" Amber added, raising her eyebrows. "One down, umpteen more to go, though, I guess."

"More than one," said Dal, turning from Cloe to his friend. "Weren't you watching the car as it went by?"

"I can honestly say I had other things on my mind," Amber shrugged. "Like them not seeing me?"

"You're not going to like this," Dal warned her, his face dropping again. "There were two people in the car, standing up through the sun roof. I recognised them both."

"But that's great, Dal!" Amber looked at him, frowning in puzzlement. "Why would you think I won't like that?"

"Well one of them is someone we're looking for," Dal nodded. "In fact, it's Ebony. I recognised her from the restaurant. She looked weird though, like she was in some sort of trance. The other person though, that's the one you're really not going to like."

"Why?" Amber's expression now was deadly serious.

"I didn't recognise him from the meetings," said Dal. "I recognised him from the newspapers." He paused as Amber's frown deepened even further. "It's Martin Fielding, Amber: Trudy Fielding's husband."

"But... But I thought he was dead?" Amber gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.

"He is," Dal nodded. "I did the background check on the whole family. He definitely is dead!"