Enemy Invasion (6 page)

The canisters were releasing their poison.

Summoning all of his strength, and fighting against the muscular spasms running through his arms and legs, Hack rolled onto his stomach and began to crawl for his life.

5

The hovercopter was almost fifty kilometres from the outskirts of Hong Kong when Sarah Williams’s voice sounded in her brother’s head.

Are you almost there?
she asked.
The target is in danger.

Robert looked at the pilot sitting beside him in the cockpit. “How much longer?”

“Ten minutes,” the pilot said.

Robert relayed this information to his sister.

He doesn’t have ten minutes!
Sarah replied. She was back in the cargo bay of the
Ulysses
, keeping track of the boy as best she could.

Robert looked through the curved windscreen of the hovercopter. On the ocean’s horizon, the lights of the city glittered in the darkness. It was still quite a distance away – further
than he’d ever teleported before. But he heard the desperation in his sister’s thoughts.

Can you get a definite lock on the kid?
Robert asked.
I’ll try a teleport.

Okay,
Sarah replied.
I’ll guide you.

Robert unclipped his seat belt and spoke to the pilot again. “I’m teleporting out. I’ll call in our location as soon as I make contact.”

The pilot nodded. “Just remember the prearranged extraction point—”

But Robert Williams had already disappeared.

He advanced into the thick, white cloud of halon gas, which had cut visibility down to a metre. The other two guards took positions to his left and right and they went forward in a line.

“Stay close,” the leader whispered into his comm. “Keep to your firing vectors.” He wasn’t so much worried about the intruders – the halon would have knocked
any fight out of them by now – as getting shot in the smog by one of his own men.

His earpiece crackled and his second-in-command, who was leading a second team up the emergency stairwell (the only other way off the level), barked an urgent message. The leader shook his head
and spoke to his men. “Beta team has been fired upon in the stairwell. One man down.” Then he added, “Shoot anything that moves in here.”

His men nodded and they carried on, reaching the centre of the floor where the glass cube stood, only half intact. Halon hung densely here, but the leader spied something at the far end of the
office space – a shadow moving through the mist.

“Target, two o’clock!” he barked, firing at the shape. His men spotted it and also went “weapons free”. Computer terminals and office chairs exploded as their
bullets cut a swathe through everything in their path. Ten seconds later, the leader held up his fist for them to cease firing.

Inside the halon cloud, nothing moved.

The leader gave the
forward
signal and they continued their advance.

He reached the back wall of the office and followed it towards a door, praying it wasn’t locked. It wasn’t. He collapsed into the adjoining room on his hands and knees and kicked the
door shut. His lungs were on fire from the gas he’d inhaled, but Hack fought the urge to crawl into a ball and lie there on the floor. He was in a conference room with a long table and
floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall. The halon was pouring under the door and through several holes in the wall made by stray bullets, so he moved to the other side of the table and leaned
against the window.

Outside, the skyline of Hong Kong Island glittered, its shimmering skyscrapers distant and unreachable. One IFC was lit up directly ahead and Hack thought of Batman again – not much chance
of making it off the building without a glider or parachute, and even then it would probably be suicide. There was, however, a thin ledge that ran around the edge of the level. It was less than a
metre across, but Hack guessed it would be possible to walk round the ledge to the other side of the building and maybe even climb down to one of the lower levels. He touched the window –
thickened safety glass that would take a sledgehammer to break.

Another volley of bullets burst through the wall of the conference room. Hack hit the carpet as a round tore over his head and through the window. The glass went opaque as the bullet punched a
one-centimetre hole in the middle of the pane.

Wasting no time, Hack threw the T-shirt over his head, grabbed one of the leather chairs from the table and heaved it at the weakened pane. The chair sailed through the glass and over the side
of the building. Gulping down some of the halon-free air blasting through the gap, Hack struggled forwards and stepped out onto the ledge.

Standing on the side of a building, seventy-seven floors above the earth, a half-metre ledge doesn’t seem very wide at all. The window panes provided no purchase, so Hack pressed his back
against the glass and slid along towards the corner of the building. His plan was to walk round to the other side, hopefully out of the immediate view of the guards, and then try to climb down.
This was easier said than done, what with the force of the wind at this height, which threatened to catch him and sweep him off the side at any moment. Centimetre by centimetre, he edged his way
along to the comparative safety of the other side of the building...

Inside the conference room, one of the guards kicked the door open. Taking a quick glance over his shoulder, Hack started moving faster as the man entered the room and swept his gun around. He
was almost two thirds of the way to the corner when the guard spotted him.

Sacrificing caution, Hack ran the remaining few metres as gunfire split the air. The windows behind him exploded. Hack made the metal support at the edge and threw himself round as glass
splinters flew. Somehow he managed to keep his balance, but then a powerful crosswind hit and he staggered back, feet on the edge of the ledge. He caught a glimpse of IFC plaza, over three hundred
metres below. Turning from the vertigo-inducing sight, he grabbed the support and pulled himself against the building. He looked at the ledge along the other side of the building and tried to get
his feet moving, but they just wouldn’t obey.

Another volley of bullets ricocheted off the metal.

“I’m not a thief!” Hack screamed. “You’ve got the wrong guy!”

He was answered by more gunfire.

Holding on for dear life, Hack looked at his feet and wondered just how far the drop was to the level below.

“It’s too far to jump,” a voice said at his side, as if in answer to his thoughts.

Hack turned and saw a blond-haired kid just a little younger than himself leaning casually against the glass right beside him. In shock, Hack’s grip on the support loosened. He took a step
back—

And fell off the side of the building…

Hack tried to scream, but found it impossible as he fought to get air into his lungs. Two seconds after going over the ledge, he passed the fiftieth floor of Two IFC, picking up speed as he
went. His arms and legs flailed uselessly as he spun round. The side of the building raced past like a track and the illuminated plaza rushed up to meet him at terrifying speed. His mind was filled
with the awful certainty of death approaching.

Four seconds down, passing the thirtieth floor, Hack finally managed a scream that came out as a strangulated gurgle.

A second figure blinked into existence directly beside him…

Hack recognized the face of the boy from the ledge as he reached out to grab his arm…

The world disappeared. For a split second, they were nowhere at all.
So, this is what it’s like to be dead,
Hack thought.

Then reality rushed back as he and the other boy rematerialized less than a metre above the ground. Hack slammed against the concrete of IFC plaza, every bone in his body jarred by the impact,
and lay still for a second. With a groan, he looked over at the body of the blond kid, lying beside him on the ground. They should have been dead – pulverized by the fall – but somehow
that hadn’t happened. Around them, people were murmuring and pointing. Someone ran over and crouched beside him.

“I’m okay,” Hack said, pushing himself into a sitting position. He looked up at the skyscraper and shook his head at the hundreds of metres he’d just fallen. “Somehow I’m okay.”

“They’re calling an ambulance,” the woman reassured. The other kid snatched Hack’s wrist and they disappeared again…

Teleporting back into existence on the far side of the plaza, hidden in the shadows of a tree. Hack yanked his arm free and rounded on the kid.

“Will you stop doing that?” he snapped, still aching from the impact.

“Sorry,” the boy said, sitting heavily on a low wall in the semi-darkness. It was clear from the look on his face that he was in pain also. Across the plaza, the crowd that had seen
their original fall was now in complete turmoil at their disappearance. “We were generating a little too much interest.”

Hack sat down and rubbed his aching shoulder, which had hit the concrete hardest. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Robert Williams,” he answered. “And I’m here to make sure you don’t get yourself killed tonight.”

6

“So, let me get this straight,” Hack said. “You came here looking for me because your sister had a premonition I was in trouble. She just knew I’d be
there on the 77
^th
floor needing someone to save me from the men with guns?”

Robert nodded. “Something like that. Sarah has advanced telepathic abilities and she uses them to track down kids like you. Kids who’ve been given powers by the fall
virus.”

“Track down?” Hack said. “Or do you mean
hunt
down?”

“We’re with a scientific organization called HIDRA. It stands for the Hyper-Infectious—”

“I know what it stands for. I’ve read the blogs.”

“Then you’ll know we’re working to find a cure for the fall virus,” Robert continued. “We’re also a safe haven for kids who’ve been persecuted because
of their abilities. We give shelter if necessary, advice on controlling and developing your powers—”

“And all I have to do in return is help out your private army from time to time, right?” Hack interrupted. “I’ve heard all about Colonel Moss. And what was the other guy
called? Major Bright?”

“That’s in the past. Colonel Moss is in jail. The military doesn’t call the shots at HIDRA any more.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” Hack said. In the middle of the plaza, a couple of uniformed cops had arrived and were listening to the woman’s story. He got to his feet,
keeping in the shadows. “Well, thanks for saving me from getting squished. Maybe I’ll look you up sometime—”

“Hey, you can’t just walk away!” Robert protested, standing also.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Hack said and he started across the plaza, keeping to the edge.

His thoughts had turned to Jonesey, who was still in the hands of Hui. They could be anywhere in the city, but if he knew his friend he’d go to the Golden Chip. The only question was,
would Hui let him? Thankfully, the crowd was too busy bending the ears of the cops to notice him as he approached the entrance to the MTR station. The teleporting kid, Robert, seemed to have taken
the hint and wasn’t following him either.

Hack ran down the escalator into the station, waved his Octopus card at the turnstile reader and made the platform for the Tsuen Wan line just as the train was arriving. The protective doors,
designed to stop the rush hour crush of passengers pushing themselves onto the tracks, opened and he slipped inside, grabbing a post in the middle of the carriage. A few seconds later the train
pulled away smoothly on its high-speed trip under the bay towards Kowloon.

Glancing down the carriage, Hack saw someone he recognized: the fake tourist guy from the GC. He cursed inwardly and looked in the other direction. Sure enough, there was camera woman from that
day in Tai-O. Both of them were staring directly at him, making no effort at pretence now. How had they found him again?

“Friends of yours?”

Hack turned. Robert stood beside him, holding onto the pole as if he’d just appeared out of nowhere – which he probably had.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

Robert shook his head. “I told you I wasn’t going to let you get yourself killed, and I meant it. My sister sensed people are after you because of your powers – people who
don’t have your best interests at heart.”

“And did she
sense
that before or after your HIDRA spies started following me?” Hack pointed at the man down the carriage and then the woman. “I spotted my tails a week
ago, so you can stop with the telepathy story.”

I’ve never seen those two before in my life,
Robert replied, using his mind to communicate directly for the first time.
But judging by the way that guy is talking into his wrist,
I’d say they’re not alone.

Hack turned his attention back to the man. Robert was right – he was whispering into a mic concealed in the sleeve of his coat. There was a receiver in his left ear.