Armageddon Read online

  PART ONE: ULTIMATUM

  OF COURSE, THE APP CAN ONLY TELL IF SOMEONE IS LYING. IT NEVER TELLS YOU WHY.

  —From the documentation for Truth, version 5.1

  JAILBREAK

  The slot opened. The masked face of a guard appeared in the gap.

  ‘Move away from the door,’ she said, her voice distorted by her breathing apparatus.

  Doug obeyed, pressing his back against the concrete wall of his prison cell.

  The lock clunked and the hinges groaned. The guard entered carrying a tray. Doug couldn’t tell if she was the same guard who always came. She was covered head-to-toe in white plastic.

  ‘What day is it?’ Doug asked.

  He tried a different question every time. Where am I? Who are you? When can I go home? Do my parents know I’m alive? As always, she didn’t respond. But he knew she could hear him, because last time his question had been, Could I have a book? And some reading glasses? Now here they were on the tray, next to a bottle of water and a bowl of brown rice. No spoon.

  Doug hadn’t really expected the guard to give him what he wanted. She worked for Viper, a criminal mastermind who stole weapons, poisoned people and once even crashed a plane. Doug still wasn’t sure why Viper was keeping him alive.

  And Doug wasn’t the only one. He had heard other voices echoing around the prison. Someone sobbing, someone else screaming, somebody who wouldn’t stop mumbling to themselves. Viper was holding a lot of people in here. The question was: why?

  ‘Thank you,’ Doug said.

  The guard put the tray on the floor and backed out of the room without saying anything. The door slammed. The lock clunked. The slot closed.

  Doug picked up the tray and sat down on the bed. The metal frame was hard beneath the thin foam mattress. The book was a dusty old horror novel, with a skeleton on the cover wearing a top hat. Doug ignored it, and picked up the reading glasses.

  Yes, he thought. These might work.

  Doug glanced at the door to check that the slot was still closed. Then he ripped one arm off the glasses. He prodded the jagged end of the arm with his fingertip. Too sharp. He scraped it against the concrete floor for a while, shaping the metal into a flat blade, like the head of a screwdriver. Then he lifted the mattress, exposing the bedframe.

  Holding his breath, he poked the broken arm into the head of a screw, and TWISTED. The screw was too tight. Doug scraped the blade on the floor some more, flattening it for a better fit. This time it worked. The screw rotated, just a tiny amount. Careful, Doug told himself. He kept twisting, and soon the leg of the bed was loose.

  He felt like cheering. Two suffocating weeks in this grey room, with nothing but fear and brown rice for company. He didn’t know anything about the outside world. He didn’t even know if his friends had survived the attack on the hospital.

  But he was getting out of here.

  A SECOND OPINION

  ‘Stop!’ Plowman hissed. He dragged Jarli back behind the tree.

  ‘What?’ Jarli looked around at the deserted street. It was another quiet afternoon in Kelton, the sun beginning to dip below the horizon.

  ‘A drone.’ Plowman was staring at the darkening sky.

  Jarli peered up through the branches of the tree. He could see a plane—Kelton lay under a major flight path—but no drones.

  Listening, he could only hear the rustling of the leaves and the buzzing of insects.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s too high up to see.’

  ‘How do you know it’s there?’

  ‘Look.’ Plowman’s arm was still in a sling, so it took him a while to get his phone out of his pocket. On the screen was a map of Kelton, covered with a vortex of spiralling dots. ‘Those are drones. I get a notification when one is nearby.’ He pointed. ‘That one is passing over us right now.’

  ‘Whose drone is it?’

  ‘Mine.’

  Jarli frowned. ‘You’re still spying on the town? I thought—’

  ‘No-one is safe until Viper is caught,’ Plowman said.

  ‘But if it’s your drone, why do you care if it sees us?’

  ‘Because I still don’t know how Viper’s goons found me, before they dumped me in that car crusher. It’s possible that Viper got into my network somehow.’

  ‘So you built this surveillance system, and now you’ve lost control of it.’ Anger flared in Jarli’s chest. ‘You’re helping Viper spy on us.’

  Plowman was looking at the dots on the screen again. ‘OK, we’re clear. Go, before another one comes!’

  Jarli raced across the street to the apartment building, Plowman limping after him. All the windows were dark except one.

  ‘I hope she’s not freaked out to have one of her students visit her on the weekend,’ Jarli said.

  Kellin Plowman hesitated, his hairy finger hovering over the doorbell. ‘Wait. She’s the nurse from your school?’

  Jarli reddened. ‘Miss Eaton isn’t just a school nurse,’ he said. ‘She used to be an army surgeon.’

  ‘That might be useful if I had been shot,’ Plowman said. ‘But I’ve had my memories stolen instead. So unless she has experience treating memory theft on the battlefield—’

  ‘I trust her.’

  ‘You’re not the one whose head she’s supposed to examine.’

  Well, it’s not just you who had something taken. Jarli swallowed the words and fought the urge to touch the scab under his hair. After two weeks, the wound still itched. Jarli hadn’t told Plowman or anyone else that Viper had stolen some of his memories, too. He had hoped the missing day would resurface somehow. But there was nothing—he had gone to bed on a Wednesday and woken up on a Friday, with only a grey gap in between.

  ‘I don’t think we should trust anybody,’ Plowman said.

  Funny, Jarli thought. Eaton had once told him the same thing.

  The wind picked up, and the trees rustled in the street. A crow picked at some discarded chips in the gutter. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon.

  ‘Eaton saved me from Viper several times,’ Jarli said. ‘So unless you want to go to a hospital—’

  ‘No hospitals,’ Plowman said automatically, as Jarli had known he would. The last time Plowman visited a hospital, it had been taken over by mercenaries who worked for Viper. They had stolen a biological weapon and killed one of Jarli’s friends.

  Poor Doug. Jarli swallowed. Doug’s body had burned away to nothing. At the funeral, his parents had put flowers on an empty coffin. Doug had been working on designs for a new robot. He had been applying for early entrance to universities out of town. Now he would never do anything ever again.

  Jarli shook off the gloomy thoughts. ‘This is the only other place in Kelton where you’ll find a second medical opinion,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to try a dentist? Or a vet?’

  Plowman grimaced.

  ‘So ring the doorbell already,’ Jarli said. ‘I’m freezing.’

  This was true, but it wasn’t the only reason he wanted to get inside. Being alone with Plowman was making him nervous.

  In many ways, Plowman was the opposite of Jarli. He had invented a new kind of encryption which helped people keep secrets. Jarli had made a lie-detector app which exposed them. Plowman’s creation had made him a billionaire, while Jarli had released his app for free and earned nothing. Plowman had become a recluse up in the hills—most people didn’t even know what he looked like. Jarli had become an unwilling international celebrity . . . and a target.

  Plowman had said he didn’t know who Viper was, and Jarli’s app indicated that he was telling the truth. But the billionaire was also monitoring the whole town with his DRONES. Jarli got the feeling he wasn’t entirely on the level.

  Finally Plowman pushed the button. A buzzer echoed fr
om somewhere inside the apartment building.

  Jarli turned to the camera so Eaton would be able to see his face.

  A voice crackled in the speaker. ‘Jarli? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hi, Miss Eaton,’ Jarli said. ‘We need to talk to you.’

  ‘ . . . Well, OK. Come on up.’

  There was another buzzer, and the gate clicked.

  Eaton’s apartment was small, clean and full of cardboard boxes, like she was just moving in. But that couldn’t be right. Bess and Doug had visited her here months ago.

  Jarli thought, I should ask Doug if . . . And then he remembered, again, that Doug was gone.

  Plowman extended a hand. ‘Kellin Plowman,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve met before.’ Eaton looked him up and down, taking in the sling and the bruising on his face.

  ‘We have?’ Plowman looked confused.

  ‘You helped me with a technology problem. You don’t remember?’

  ‘No. So that means . . .’ Plowman turned to Jarli. ‘Whatever happened, whatever Viper wanted to remove, it must have happened at around the same time. Maybe even the same day.’ He turned back to Eaton. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Whoa, back up,’ Eaton said. ‘Did you say Viper is behind this visit?’

  It took Jarli a few minutes to explain. Plowman had left a voicemail for Jarli, saying he knew Viper’s identity and that they needed to meet up. The next day, Plowman had been kidnapped by Viper’s mercenaries, who used a surgical laser to remove some of Plowman’s memories.

  Privately, Jarli assumed that Plowman had met with him and revealed Viper’s identity before the mercenaries got to him. So Viper had taken Jarli’s memories, too.

  Eaton listened, her eyes wide.

  ‘I wish I’d seen it,’ Plowman added. ‘Surgical robots are truly fascinating.’

  ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ Eaton said. ‘Even with a robot, it takes a lot of skill to perform brain surgery without killing the patient.’

  Jarli was still looking around at the boxes. The closest ones had CHARITY scrawled on the side. ‘Are you moving?’

  ‘Leaving Kelton,’ Eaton said. ‘Viper is making it too dangerous to stay.’

  Jarli’s heart sank. Not just because he would miss her. If a war veteran like Eaton thought it was too dangerous to live here, what hope did he and his friends have?

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  Eaton glanced at Plowman. ‘No offence, but I’d rather not share that information.’

  Plowman held up his hands. ‘Fair enough.’

  When Jarli invented Truth, his lie-detector app, he had imagined a world where everyone trusted each other. But after his app went viral, people seemed more suspicious of one another than ever. Even worse, Viper had released Truth Premium, his own version of the app. Truth Premium was much more popular than Jarli’s app, but it had a secret white-list. It was programmed to always believe certain people, no matter what they said. Now no-one could be trusted.

  ‘Can you help me get my memories back?’ Plowman asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Eaton said. ‘But I can take a look at your head. Take a seat.’

  There seemed to be only one chair in the whole apartment. Plowman sat down. Eaton washed her hands at the sink, scrubbing all the way up to her elbows. Then she stood behind Plowman, parting his thin hair to see the scar.

  ‘Have you experienced any dizziness?’ she asked, palpating his skull. ‘Fatigue?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Personality changes?’ Eaton looked at Jarli.

  Jarli shook his head. ‘He doesn’t seem any different.’

  ‘I’ve been a bit jumpy,’ Plowman admitted. ‘Paranoid.’

  ‘That’s a normal reaction to being attacked.’ Eaton let go of his head. ‘Your face is a mess, as I’m sure you know. But there’s no discolouration of the skin around the incision, and the bones of your skull feel like they’re knitting together well. Whoever did this to you, they’ve done it before.’

  Jarli again resisted the urge to touch his own scar.

  ‘You should still go to a hospital.’ Eaton went to the sink and washed her hands again.

  ‘What about getting Mr Plowman’s memories back?’ Jarli asked.

  ‘As I said, it’s very unlikely.’

  ‘But not impossible?’

  Eaton dried her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Please,’ Plowman said. ‘I’ve run out of other options.’

  ‘The brain is a web,’ Eaton said. ‘With trillions of connections between billions of cells. Viper could have used the laser to fry the cells containing the relevant memories. But if the point was to erase your memory without killing you, it would have been safer to snip the connections around them instead.’

  ‘So the memories could still be there,’ Plowman said slowly, ‘but I just can’t get to them?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How does that help me?’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Eaton said. ‘But if Viper missed one of the connections—and there would have been thousands to get through—then you could access the memories. If you could find the connection.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  Eaton shrugged. ‘Try something new. Go somewhere you’ve never been before. Try to learn a musical instrument, or a second language. Creating new connections in your brain is your best hope of stumbling across the old ones. Have you considered, I don’t know . . . a holiday in Paris?’

  Plowman looked tempted.

  ‘We don’t have time for that,’ Jarli said. ‘Viper has struck four times over the last year. And Cobra is still out there. We’re in danger.’

  Cobra was an old man who worked for Viper. He had tried to kill Jarli and his father. He had kidnapped Jarli’s friend, Anya. Then he had vanished from a police cell, never to be seen again.

  ‘Well, you figured out who Viper was once before,’ Eaton said. ‘It’s possible you will again. But if you want my medical advice, it’s this: leave Kelton.’ She opened her kitchen cupboard and started wrapping bowls in newspaper and loading them into another box marked CHARITY. ‘It’s your best hope of staying alive.’

  A SICKENING CRACK

  Doug hefted the leg of the bed. It was carbon steel—lightweight but strong. Half a metre long. Not much of a weapon, especially since the guard had a stun gun. But that wasn’t why Doug had removed it.

  He listened at the door to his prison cell. It didn’t sound like anyone was coming. He could wait until lights-out, when they expected him to be asleep—but there would be less activity in the building. Less noise to hide behind. And besides, he was going crazy in here.

  At one end of the leg were two small wings which had been bolted to the bed frame. Doug wedged one wing under the door and pulled the leg back.

  The leverage multiplied Doug’s strength. The hinges were strong, but the steel leg was stronger. With a sickening crack, the hinges popped off the door frame, and the door leaned inwards, hanging precariously by the lock mechanism.

  Doug jimmied the door further open and poked his head into the corridor. Concrete walls. No windows. No people either, but someone would have heard the noise. He had to get out of here, now.

  Doug pulled the broken door back against the frame so it looked closed, then he ran up the corridor, taking the steel bed leg with him. His bare feet made soft slapping sounds against the floor. He passed several other locked doors just like his. No time to check if the cells were occupied. No way to free anybody if they were. Doug would send help as soon as he was out of here.

  He turned left, and then right. He passed an open door leading to what looked like a control room—lots of screens, several keyboards, some swivel chairs. No people. He ran down some metal stairs towards what he hoped was the ground floor. Viper’s prison was way bigger than he’d guessed.

  Doug found a fire door on the bottom level, and was about to push it open when he heard voices on the other side.

  ‘We can’t just leave them here.’

/>   ‘Those are Viper’s orders.’

  ‘But they’ll starve.’

  ‘Not our problem. And no, they won’t. When the rocket launches, there will be . . .’

  The voices were getting closer. Doug turned and ran back up the stairs. When he reached the second landing, he heard the fire door open just below. The guards were coming up the stairs.

  Doug headed in the direction of his cell—but skidded to a stop. A SHADOW moved on the wall at the other end of the corridor. Someone was coming from that direction, too. Fear clutched Doug’s heart. He was trapped!

  There was only one place to hide: the control room. He ducked inside, slowly closed the door and locked it. The guards would have keys, but at least he would have a few seconds of warning before they came in.

  Doug turned to the bank of glowing monitors. Lots of security feeds of concrete corridors. Most were empty, but guards in plastic suits were walking through a few. One monitor showed the street outside, which Doug didn’t recognise from this angle. There was no map, and he couldn’t see an exit on any of the screens.

  He sat down on a swivel chair and tapped at one of the keyboards. A dark screen lit up, revealing a spreadsheet full of nonsense numbers. After some quick searching, Doug found the email client.

  He hesitated. His plan was to email someone for help. But if the guards happened to check, they would see his email in the sent folder. Even if he deleted it they might find it in the trash. They would know who he had contacted, and what he had said.

  Instead, he opened a web browser and logged into an encrypted messaging service called kGram. He’d used it before, and had some contacts saved.

  Doug paused, wondering what other useful information he could include. At that moment, an alarm sounded. The lights in the ceiling flashed red. The guards must have realised that his cell was empty. It wouldn’t take them long to find him.

  A pre-recorded voice echoed through the corridors of the building:

  Doug typed frantically:

  The door rattled. Someone was trying to get into the control room.