The Roar (8 page)

‘Play POD FIGHTER if you dare.’

The word ‘PLAY’ appeared against a backdrop of fluffy, white clouds. It flashed on and off for a few seconds and then it was replaced by the words ‘POD FIGHTER’, which hurtled through space so fast, all the stars became trails of blurred light.

Then a fleet of real Pod Fighters appeared, crouching like a row of sleek, black panthers on the deck of a battleship. They glinted in the sunshine, their elegant curves menacing and powerful.

A group of children ran towards them and the curved glass windshields slid back. Two children climbed into each fighter, one in the front, one in the back, wriggling down into the low black seats that wrapped around their bodies. They looked happy and purposeful, ramming their black headsets on and adjusting the straps on their harnesses with focused ease. The windshields slid over their heads to cover them, and moments later, the collective roar of engines filled the apartment. The Pod Fighters rose from the deck vertically, in perfect synchronization, to hover over the ship. Then, one by one, from left to right, they tilted their noses towards the sky and shot up so fast they seemed to vanish.

Mika suddenly felt strange – dizzy as if he’d just stood up too
quickly. He closed his eyes and found himself climbing into the pilot seat in one of the Pod Fighters. He could feel the sensation of the seat beneath him, curving around the sides of his body – he knew its smell, the feel of the headset over his face – even the brightly lit control panels were familiar.

‘You OK?’ He opened his eyes to find Helen looking at him curiously. The advert had finished.

‘Yeah, fine,’ he said. ‘So what do you think?’

She was quiet for a moment and she looked as if she was trying to decide whether or not to say something.

‘What?’ Mika asked, hoping to nudge a reply out of her.

‘You mustn’t tell anyone how you feel,’ she replied darkly, ‘not even your parents. They mustn’t know. You’ve got to say you’re sorry and that you made a mistake.’

‘Why?’ Mika asked, feeling angered and scared by her sudden change of mood. ‘You
do
agree with me, I know you do, you know there’s something weird going on, you just won’t admit it! What am I supposed to do about the Fit Mix? I’ve got to go back to school next week and apologize to Mr Grey and drink it and I don’t want to!’

‘You must,’ she said, severely. ‘You don’t have a choice, Mika. Just imagine what will happen if you don’t. Think about what it will do to you and your parents.’

She looked at him with raised eyebrows and two images flashed into his mind, the first was of his family moving to The Shadows because they were too poor to stay in Barford North, the second was of Detroit Pippin in a prison cell. He shuddered.

‘Besides,’ Helen continued, looking away from him and gazing out of the window as a bank of iron-grey rain clouds rolled over the apartment block. ‘I get the feeling that if you play this game you’ll be glad you did.’

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps you’ll find the answers to some of your questions.’

She still wouldn’t look at him, and he studied her eyes as she gazed at the clouds. They seemed to be straining, as if they were
holding in a secret that wanted to pop out, and she had to look away from him to stop it happening. He realized something. How could he have been so stupid? Helen was the only person who believed him when he said Ellie was alive, so she must have an idea where Ellie could be!

‘What do you know, Helen?’ he asked. ‘Look at me.’

‘Goodness,’ she said, as if he’d snapped her out of a daydream. She glanced at her wrist, even though she wasn’t wearing a watch. ‘I ought to get off. I need to pick up some pasta on the way home, or was it nail polish? I can’t remember. Still, if I get both I can’t go wrong then, can I?’

She began to stand up, very creakily, as if her joints had gone rusty while she was sitting down. Mika jumped up and blocked the path to the door.

‘You can’t go yet,’ he said, as she squashed her rain bonnet on to her head. ‘You’ve got to tell me what you know.’

‘Let me concentrate for a moment or I’ll put my wellies on the wrong feet,’ she grumbled, buying some time. Mika was watching her with a feverishness she’d seen before, in the eyes of lovers and drug addicts, and for a moment she felt terribly guilty and wished she’d lied to him and told him that he was mad, or that he’d gone to another counsellor, one who didn’t know what she did, one who’d have convinced him that Ellie was dead. She felt as if she was pointing him towards the cave of a bone-crunching giant.

But, she thought, he was already heading in that direction anyway. At least now he’ll trust his instincts and he’ll get something out of it. Perhaps he will find her, he’s bright and determined enough.

‘You should trust your instincts,’ she said. ‘You’re a very special boy. Trust your instincts, play the game, and be careful.’

‘What do you know? Please!’ he pleaded, as she shuffled towards the door. ‘You can’t go without telling me!’

She pressed the icon by the door and it slid open.

‘That’s it! I’m coming with you!’ Mika said, looking around
for his sneakers. ‘You’re going to tell me even if I have to follow you all around the supermarket.’

‘You can’t,’ Helen said, pointing at the detention collar around his neck. ‘You’ll get an electric shock and you’ll pee your pants.’

‘Frag!’ Mika said, putting his hand to the collar. ‘Wait!’

‘Take care,’ she said, shuffling out of the door.

The door began to slide shut, and Mika’s heart sank.

‘Please!’ he cried. ‘You’ve got to help me! You promised you would, remember? When we first met, you promised!’

She paused and turned and her eyes softened as she remembered that she
had
promised to help him. But she didn’t know Mika then, she had met a troubled boy with black eyes, a boy grieving for his twin. But he knew things that were impossible, he had all the pieces of a very dangerous puzzle in his head, and when he figured it out he would be vulnerable. He was angry and passionate. They would kill him.

‘Stop the door,’ she said.

Mika thumped the lock icon with his fist and it juddered to a halt and began to open again.

‘If I’m going to help you,’ Helen said, wagging her finger, ‘you’ve got to promise me you won’t go charging around yelling at people.’

‘I will,’ he replied, desperately. ‘I mean, I won’t, I promise!’

‘You won’t tell
anyone
?’

‘Not a soul,’ he said.

‘Not even your parents?’ she went on.

‘Of course not,’ he said irritably. ‘They don’t believe a word I say anyway.’

‘You’ve got to be careful, Mika, if these people realize you know
anything
, they will hurt you.’

‘I will, I’ve promised!’ he went on, feeling as if he was going to explode with impatience. ‘I’ll be good, just tell me what you know.’

She leaned forward and whispered, ‘If you play the game, I
think you will find Ellie.’

‘How?’ he asked urgently. ‘How can I find Ellie by playing a game?’

‘I’m not saying any more,’ said Helen, adjusting her rain bonnet. ‘You’ve nagged too much out of me already. Just play their game and keep your mouth shut. Right. I’m off. I don’t think it was nail polish or pasta I wanted, I think it was cream for my bunions.’

Mika watched her shuffle towards the lift, like a tent with yellow rubber legs, feeling waves of relief and happiness wash over him. All the nightmares, the mockery and the paranoia he had been burdened with for so long seemed to lift up and leave him and he felt as if he was floating in the doorway, despite the weight of the detention collar. Helen turned and smiled as she entered the lift and Mika smiled back, the broadest, happiest smile he had smiled for a very long time, and far above his head, Ellie smiled too without knowing the reason why.

9

OR DIE TRYING

M
ika realized that Helen’s advice to ‘play the game’ meant more than just learning Pod Fighter in the new arcade – the most important thing he had to do was keep his suspicious thoughts to himself and convince everyone he had changed his mind about the Fit Mix and was sorry. By the time his parents came home from work that day, he was a different person – he apologized for causing them so much trouble, promised to drink the Fit Mix and cooked tea and
tidied up afterwards
for the first time ever. He even tidied the floor in his bedroom.

‘So how did it go with Helen?’ David asked, watching in amazement as Mika dropped an armful of dirty socks and pants into the laundry bin.

‘OK,’ Mika replied.

‘What did you talk about?’ Asha asked.

‘Not much,’ Mika said, walking quickly towards his bedroom
to get away from their questions. ‘I’d better get on with the sorting beads.’

Asha and David looked at each other and smiled and shook their heads.

‘That woman deserves a medal,’ David whispered.

On Monday morning when Mika returned to school after his exclusion, he drank the Fit Mix while Mr Grey glared at him with eyes like frozen pebbles. It ran down his throat slimy and cold, making him want to gag with disgust, but he knew he mustn’t show how he felt. The last thing he needed was to give Mr Grey an excuse to pile on more punishments, and judging by the reluctance the Headmaster showed whilst removing the detention collar, the slightest whiff of dissent and it would be straight back on again. So Mika saved his grimace of disgust until he’d left the Headmaster’s office, and then it was no more than a flicker across his face. He was playing this game to win.

‘I’m going to find you, Ellie,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘or die trying.’

His senses were particularly keen that night as he walked to the arcade in the centre of town with Kobi. Every detail felt as sharp as the January frost. He was a week behind everyone else learning how to play Pod Fighter, and he was anxious to catch up.

‘What do you think of Pod Fighter?’ Mika asked.

‘It’s brilliantly designed,’ Kobi replied, thoughtfully. ‘It feels so real you really do forget it’s a game, just like it says in the advert. But it’s having a weird effect on everyone, half the class have bought the T-shirts already and no one talks about anything else. They’re obsessed. And it’s really competitive. How come you want to play all of a sudden? A week ago you didn’t want anything to do with it.’

Mika shrugged and looked away. He could feel Kobi’s intelligent eyes searching his face through his hair. ‘Haven’t got anything better to do,’ he said stupidly.

‘I’ll help you catch up if you like,’ Kobi offered. ‘I’ll show you everything I’ve learned.’

‘Thanks,’ Mika replied, gratefully.

Kobi took something out of his pocket and fiddled with it.

‘What’s that?’ Mika asked.

Kobi held it up so Mika could look at it. It was a tiny giraffe, a mini borg. It blinked at Mika and moved its mouth as if it was chewing leaves. Kobi stood it up on his palm and it walked around. A gust of wind caught it and Kobi only just stopped it falling off on to the walkway. He put it carefully back into his pocket.

‘That’s amazing!’ Mika said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘I made it,’ Kobi said, ‘out of bits of vacuumbot.’

‘That’s clever—’ Mika stopped suddenly, remembering. He wanted to go on, he wanted to tell Kobi how much Ellie would like it, and only just caught the words before they left his mouth. Kobi didn’t know about Ellie, he’d never met her, didn’t even know Mika had a twin sister, and Mika realized it was better that way. It was easier, less complicated to have a friend who didn’t know. But Ellie would have liked Kobi Nenko and his giraffe and Mika felt treacherous not mentioning her.

It was a cold night and the wind was wet and cruel, but Mika noticed there were loads more people out than usual and everyone was heading towards town. Three girls ran past them, then stopped and turned, their eyes bright and their long hair whipping across their faces in the wind.

‘Hey, Kobi!’ one cried. ‘Are you going to the arcade?’

‘Yeah,’ he muttered.

‘Oh good! See you there!’

Mika watched the girls run on, wondering who they were. ‘When did you meet them?’ he asked, remembering that girls were usually scared of Kobi.

‘Last week in the arcade,’ Kobi said. ‘If you’re good at the game, people get to know you.’

‘So you’re good at the game?’ Mika asked.

‘’Spose so,’ Kobi said, shrugging. ‘They put up the scores on a screen at the end of the night so you can see how you’ve done.’

‘Who’s the best?’ Mika asked hungrily, feeling a surge of competitive lust.

‘Ruben Snaith.’

At the mention of Ruben’s name, Mika felt his face grow hot. ‘It would be, wouldn’t it,’ he said, bitterly. ‘Nobody would dare be better than Ruben.’

They entered the town square and Mika saw the arcade for the first time. The building used to be the Bargain Mart store, selling stuff that fell to bits within minutes for one or two credits, but it had been closed for a year. The arcade was twice as tall as the old building and bathed the whole square in pulsing blue light, and for the first time since Barford North was built, forty-three years before, it felt alive. Even the puddles and the stagnant old fountain looked beautiful, and every droplet of water on the rainy glass shop fronts glittered like a jewel. The fluorescent light, in rows of curved neon, rippled up the building to erupt in a cascade of blue at the top, and below, crowds of people were pouring through the great glass doors into the arcade. There was an air of enchantment and anticipation that was contagious, and Mika felt it as a shiver down the back of his neck, enhanced by the cold wind.

As they approached the doors, they were hit in the face by hot air, food smells, shouting and music. Mika let Kobi walk ahead and watched as he was stopped by two men wearing dark blue uniforms with the Youth Development Foundation logo, YDF, on the pockets. One of the men scanned Kobi’s retinas then nodded him in. Mika followed, feeling briefly anxious as the hard light searched his eyes. Once inside, he looked around, trying to take it all in. The entrance area of the arcade was a shopping mall, with a polished white floor, open-fronted stores and fast food restaurants on either side: Tank Meat Express, The Banghra Balti, The Kosha Snack Shack and the Ra Ra Shake Bar, as well as stores selling clothes, shoes, sweets, make-up and jewellery. The place was packed and noisy, every store and restaurant playing different music, every table squirming with
bodies and laughter. The Youth Development Foundation logo was written on everything: the uniforms of the staff, the backs of the chairs, even the straws in the Fabshakes, and Mika felt a wave of mistrust seeing it. It was weird watching how everyone was behaving and he felt as if he’d been away for a year, not just a week; the atmosphere was so different in this place than school, gone was the lethargy that made people drag their feet and yawn all day, replaced by an almost hysterical excitement. There had never been anything like this for them before and it seemed like a desert mirage – Mika felt as if he could close his eyes, open them again and it would all be gone and he’d be standing alone in the rainy town square. He watched kids shout to each other across the mall, a girl splutter with laughter, Fabshake dribbling down her front. He didn’t like it.

‘Told you they’ve all gone nuts,’ Kobi said. ‘Follow me.’ He walked quickly towards a pair of huge, dark doors at the end of the mall. Above them was a screen playing the advert for Pod Fighter. They walked through the doors and paused just inside to let their eyes adjust to the darkness, and as the shadows of the Pod Fighter simulators took shape, Mika felt as if he was looking into a rock crevice full of giant spiders. The eight-legged simulators were eerie and menacing. They were set out in rows with four of their robotic legs fixed to the ceiling and four fixed to the floor, with their egg-shaped black bodies in the middle. Some of the simulators were motionless and silent and looked as if they were hiding in the darkness waiting for unlucky, human-size flies. Others were rocking and rotating, their robotic legs contracting and expanding as the people inside played the game. Mika walked slowly towards them with his heart thumping.

‘Weird, aren’t they?’ Kobi said.

Mika nodded, but couldn’t speak.

‘They don’t look like Pod Fighters on the outside,’ Kobi went on, ‘but apparently, inside they are exactly the same down to the slightest detail: the control panels, the seats, the headsets, everything – and not only that, they feel the same too, the robotic legs
make them move as if you’re really flying. But it’s when you flip the Pod Fighter into a corkscrew spin that things get really interesting. Watch that one.’ He pointed to a simulator that was moving particularly frantically. After thirty seconds an amazing thing happened: the legs detached themselves from the body, leaving it floating in mid-air, and it began to spin. At the end of the spin, the legs locked on to the body again.

‘How does it float like that?’ Mika asked, watching avidly.

‘Magnetism, I reckon,’ Kobi replied. ‘Similar to that of a hover car: the magnetic force keeps a hover car off the ground by pushing a negative force against another negative force, or a positive against a positive.

‘We need to go down the end.’ He pointed to the red walk-way, which ran down the centre of the arcade and melted into the darkness. Mika began to make out the shadowy forms of people milling around the legs of the simulators. Kobi began walking and Mika followed.

At the far end of the room there were a few motionless simulators and a large group of people standing around them. They turned and watched Mika and Kobi approach, and to his dismay, Mika saw Ruben.

‘Ignore him,’ Kobi murmured, walking quickly past without allowing himself to be caught by Ruben’s glare. ‘What a perp. Let’s take this one.’

Mika cursed his bad luck. The arcade was easily big enough to avoid Ruben, yet they’d bumped right into him within minutes of arriving. Kobi pressed his ragged foot on a metal plate on the floor next to a simulator and the lower legs contracted so they could climb into the cockpit. Next he touched a dark, almost invisible icon with his pale fingers and the door slid open, but before they had time to climb in, Ruben appeared with a pair of girls behind him.

‘You teaching him?’ Ruben said to Kobi, jerking his head in Mika’s direction.

Kobi ignored him and began climbing into the cockpit.

‘Good luck,’ Ruben smirked. ‘You’re going to need it.’

As he walked away Mika felt his chest contract with anger. The girls were laughing, mocking him.

‘Get in,’ Kobi said. ‘Ignore them.’

‘I’m trying,’ Mika said, climbing into the simulator. But he wasn’t doing very well – inside he was burning up with a powerful desire to squash Ruben like a fly. But suddenly, all thoughts of Ruben were extinguished and he faltered for a moment. He had this feeling they were climbing into the cockpit from the wrong angle – that they should be getting in from above, not the side.

‘You get in the gunner seat,’ Kobi said. ‘It’s best you learn that before you try to fly, it’s a bit easier.’

There were two seats in the cockpit, one behind the other, and Mika climbed into the one at the back. It was higher than the front seat, so he was looking down on Kobi’s mop of tangled black hair. As he settled into the seat, he felt it wrap around the sides of his body, holding him down.

‘The seats feel freaky,’ Kobi said.

‘Yeah,’ Mika lied – the seat felt comfortable and familiar to him and he was reminded of the way he had felt while he watched the advert with Helen, as if he had experienced this before – but something wasn’t right. He looked around.

‘Where are the control panels?’ he asked. Apart from two pairs of simple hand controls, there was nothing inside the cockpit apart from the seats. Kobi touched a red circle next the door and suddenly there were hundreds of brightly lit icons covering every surface around them, each one with a different symbol.

‘Put the headset on,’ Kobi said, pointing behind Mika’s head to where it was hanging on a hook. The headset was a black helmet with no back and a curved glass visor across the face. It was surprisingly light, the back cut away so it was comfortable to wear when his head was leaned back against the seat. As soon as he put it on, a display appeared on the transparent visor – he could see a grid of green lines surrounded by green icons and he
felt a dark thrill looking from one to another. They looked alien, but familiar.

‘Don’t blink yet,’ Kobi warned.

‘Why not?’ Mika asked.

‘You control the icons in your visor with your eyes. It took me a whole day to figure that one out. You have to blink at them.’

‘What if you blink without meaning to?’ Mika asked.

‘Don’t,’ Kobi replied. ‘It’s not that hard, you learn not to look at the icons unless you need them.’

‘OK,’ Mika said, trying not to blink. ‘Where are the instructions on how to play?’

‘There aren’t any,’ Kobi said, laughing. ‘That’s half the fun.’