Hit List Page 11

  Ding-ding! The tour group moved to the side of the path as a cyclist whirred by. When she neared Building 40 she dismounted, dropped her bike on the rack and jogged inside. Seconds later, someone else picked it up and pedalled away.

  “Someone’s stealing that bike!” a girl cried.

  The guide shook his head. “The bicycles belong to the company. We leave them lying around the Googleplex so everyone can get from one side of the campus to the other with minimum fuss. It’s fun, healthy, and good for the environment.”

  He saw the teachers nodding with approval. They liked it when he was a visibly good influence on the students. Maybe, he thought, it made them feel better about taking them on a field trip to a corporate headquarters, rather than teaching them English or science or something worthwhile.

  This was a big group – he counted four teachers, which probably meant three classes. There were pros and cons of giving the tour to large groups of kids. It was easier to get them enthused, but harder to keep them focused, and he had to speak louder to reach them all. After two or three sessions like this one he always went home hoarse.

  “Thirty per cent of our power comes from solar panels on the roof, where you’ll also find endless pools—”

  “Are they, like, the ones that go all the way to the edge of the roof?” a boy asked. A teacher shushed him while the guide answered.

  “Those are called ‘infinity pools’,” he said, smiling. “Endless pools are like treadmills. Thanks to the artificial current, you can swim all day but never reach the far wall. Unless you swim the wrong way, in which case you’re likely to end up concussed.”

  The students giggled, as with every other time he’d made that thoroughly inoffensive joke. Olives, the guide thought. Feta, sun-dried tomatoes, smoked bacon.

  They walked into the foyer of Building 41. The Google® employees barely glanced at them – tour groups visited almost every day.

  “Before Google® came along, this campus was owned by Silicon Graphics, who—”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” one of the girls said.

  The teacher grabbed another girl and said, “Go with her.”

  Interrupt as much as you like, the guide thought. I’m paid by the hour.

  He pointed at a door on the right as he spoke: “—who animated the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, hence the T. rex skeleton you saw in the courtyard outside.”

  When the group reached the lift, a teacher ordered, “Sound off!”

  “One,” a student chirped.

  “Two,” another said.

  “Three.”

  “Four.”

  The guide sighed. Presumably they would do this every time they went up or down a floor, to make sure they hadn’t left anyone behind. It was going to be a long day.

  The sound-off got to thirty-four and stopped. It seemed to the guide that there must be more than thirty-four kids, and sure enough, a teacher said, “Who’s thirty-five?”

  Silence.

  A teacher produced a sheet of paper. “Karen Sloven,” she read. “Karen, are you here?”

  Silence again.

  “Might she be one of the ladies who went to the bathroom?” the guide suggested.

  “No,” the teacher said. “They were Jemima and...who was the other one?”

  Another teacher shrugged. “I thought she was one of yours.”

  They both looked at the other two teachers, each of whom shook their heads. They hadn’t known the girl either.

  “So we’ve got one student missing, and a girl nobody can identify in the bathroom?” the guide asked. He reached for his radio.

  “Looks that way,” a teacher said. He turned to the students. “Has anyone seen Karen Sloven?”

  “Not since the bus,” one of the kids said, eyes wide with excitement. The others were staring at the guide and the teachers with more interest than they’d shown so far. A missing student was an intriguing interruption.

  The guide lifted the radio to his lips. He spoke quietly, so the students couldn’t hear. “This is Tour One, calling security, Tour One calling security, over.”

  “Go ahead, Tour One. Over.”

  “Be advised, we have a student missing from the group, gone since arrival on the campus. There is also a potential intruder in the women’s bathroom on the ground floor of Building 41. Both subjects are teenage, female, and wearing green school uniforms. Over.”

  “Copy that, Tour One. We’ll send someone to check it out. Over.”

  The guide put the radio back on his belt. “Everyone remain calm,” he said. “We’re going to have to wait here until this is sorted out.”

  The students didn’t look calm. They were whispering among themselves. Then talking. Then yelling.

  Well, the guide thought, I wanted my job to be more challenging. “While we’re waiting,” he roared, “allow me to tell you about a typical day at Google®...”

  Ash was just putting the lid back on the toilet cistern when there was a knock on the door.

  “Hey,” called the girl who’d been asked to escort her, and who seemed to resent her assignment. “Are you okay in there?”

  “I’m fine,” Ash said. “Sorry, I was just sending a text.”

  She didn’t expect to find Alice this time – there were too many people around. This was just a reconnaissance mission, so she would be fully prepared when she came back tonight.

  “They might leave without us,” the girl said.

  “They won’t,” Ash said. She put on her backpack, now empty, flushed the toilet for form’s sake, and then opened the door. The girl was chewing a nail anxiously.

  “Hurry up,” she said as Ash washed her hands. “I need to know all about Google® for my assignment.”

  “I know more about Google® than the guide does.” Ash prodded the soap dispenser. “Ask me anything.”

  “Okay: how long does it take Google® tour guides to forget that they’re missing two people?”

  “Longer than this,” Ash said. “Relax.”

  “You sound weird. Where’d you say you were from?”

  Ash had thought her fake West Coast USA accent was pretty good. Not good enough, apparently. “My parents moved here from Idaho,” she said, picking a state at random.

  They walked back out into the Building 41 foyer, where they’d last seen the tour group. They were gone.

  “Fantastic,” the girl said. “You were saying?”

  There was a sign on the wall: Elevators C. “They’ll be that way,” Ash said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because otherwise the guide could only show us the ground floor.”

  There were two security guards approaching. They hadn’t spotted the two girls yet.

  Uh-oh, Ash thought. I thought I’d have more time.

  “Let’s ask them,” the girl said, pointing.

  “Good idea,” Ash said. But as the girl walked forwards, Ash fell behind, out of her peripheral vision, and then moved sideways, towards the stairs.

  Someone was in her way, moving too slowly for comfort. Ash couldn’t push past him without drawing too much attention. But she couldn’t stay here, because any second now the guards would—

  “Stop right there!”

  She froze.

  “Have you seen a tour group around here?” she heard the girl ask.

  “I said stop,” the guard replied.

  They were talking to the girl. They hadn’t seen Ash. She overtook the guy in front of her as quickly as she dared, and then she was on the stairs.

  It wouldn’t take the guards long to realize the other girl wasn’t the one they were looking for. When they did, they would lock down the building. Ash had no hope of making it to an exit before that happened.

  She bit her lip. So how do I get out of here?

  She could break a window and climb down, but all the windows were wall-sized, and in Ash’s experience, the wider a pane of glass was, the harder it was to break – pressure got diffused across the surface, and b
ig windows tended to be thicker. It would take her a while to smash one, and this building was full of people. Someone would stop her.

  She was already getting a few strange looks as she walked around in her borrowed uniform. But no one openly questioned her – there were lots of weird outfits around, and several wandering employees had kids with them. One woman was even walking a dog through the halls. Ash guessed she didn’t seem so strange by comparison.

  A man in board shorts strolled past with a towel on his arm. Endless pools on the roof, Ash thought. There’s roof access. Surely there’d be a fire escape or something. And even if there wasn’t, swimming pools meant changing rooms, lockers, showers – lots of places to hide.

  There was another flight of stairs up ahead. She ran up and opened the door at the top.

  The roof was hot, bright and deserted. Ash could feel the concrete warming the soles of her shoes, and she smelled the chlorine from the pools, although she couldn’t see them yet. A field of solar panels glinted around her. They would be generating lots of electricity today.

  She ran across to the edge of the rooftop and looked down. A lone pedestrian waddled past far below. Not many people on this side of the building. Too high to jump – as expected – and there was no fire escape.

  She circled the whole rooftop. No ladders, no external stairs, nothing. There were bridges to nearby buildings on the south-eastern and south-western sides, but they weren’t accessible from the roof.

  And what’s more, there were no swimming pools. Just solar panels and blocky extractor fans. The roof was completely dry.

  Ash was sure she’d heard the guide say there were pools on the roof. And she could still smell chlorine! So where were the pools?

  She ran over to the eastern corner, following her nose. There – a glimpse of blue through the trees below. The two pools had their own separate building, too low and too far away to jump. As she watched, the man she’d seen in the board shorts climbed the stairs, dropped his towel and dived in. He’d been on his way to a swim, not from one.

  Ash had cornered herself. She ran back to the door, hoping to backtrack down – and heard someone coming up the stairs. Someone running.

  Fear squeezed her lungs. Security must know she was up here.

  There was a fire axe in a glass case on the wall next to the door. She smashed the glass with her elbow, hefted the axe, crouched, and swung it like a baseball bat.

  The blade slammed into the seam between the door and the ground like a giant doorstop. Seconds later, the handle turned. Someone was trying to get through.

  The axe held. But the door wouldn’t stay closed for long.

  “Open up!” a voice demanded.

  Choices. She could surrender, and hope there was a chance to escape before the cops showed up. Or she could jump and hope she didn’t die.

  She hated hoping. Anything that involved hoping was a bad plan.

  Was there a third option?

  Ash turned to the solar panels on the north-eastern side. A quick glance didn’t discredit her crazy idea, so she moved closer.

  Each row of connected panels was bolted to the ground at both ends. Standing between the three parallel grey strips, each tilted slightly to catch the most sun, Ash felt like she was standing on the head of a giant disposable razor.

  She wished she had the Benji with her. It probably had a wrench in it somewhere – Benjamin seemed to have included just about everything else. Never mind, she thought. There’ll be something around I can use.

  There was a broom leaning against the wall – for sweeping leaves and debris off the panels, she guessed. She grabbed it and pulled off the head, exposing the square slot on the end.

  The voice yelled, “Open this door!”

  Got to hurry, Ash thought.

  She ran back over to the panels. Using the slot in the broom handle, she twisted out the eight bolts pinning one of the solar arrays to the roof. But it was still connected by several power cables, which Ash wasn’t sure how to cut. Electrocution on the roof of the Googleplex wasn’t how she wanted to die.

  She had to suppress a hysterical giggle when she thought of a group of police standing around her charred body, a pocket knife in her hand, the blade lodged in a cable. What in hell, one detective would ask another, was she trying to do?

  She figured she could break the cables without touching them – the trick was leverage. She jammed the broom under the solar array, well away from the cables, and then heaved on the end, pulling upwards as sharply as she could.

  There was a humming sound, and then a snap! The cables came loose, and the whole row of panels keeled over like synchronized swimmers. Photovoltaic cells chinked against the roof.

  Ash dropped the broom, gripped the support poles under the panel at one end of the row, and started dragging it towards the edge of the roof, inch by exhausting inch. She’d hoped the array would be lighter, having read somewhere that solar panels were more efficient if they were thin, or something like that.

  But she could move it. That’s what counted.

  The noise of the array scraping along the concrete was like a stone door rumbling closed in a booby-trapped temple. Ash started listing all the movies with ancient temples in them, to distract herself from how far away the edge was, and how close the security guard sounded to breaking through the door.

  Alien vs Predator, she thought. Indiana Jones, all four movies. Tomb Raider. Did The Da Vinci Code have one?

  She reached the edge, moved to the other end of the row, and started pushing. The solar array poked out into the void, further and further.

  It got easier as she neared halfway, since there was less resistance from the concrete. Two more shoves, Ash thought. That ought to do it.

  She pressed her shoulder against the hot panel and pushed. One.

  The row was sticking out over the edge of the rooftop like a bizarre work of modern art. Ash could feel it starting to see-saw.

  She pushed again, harder. Two!

  The row of panels took on a life of its own, lurching up out of her hands as the other end fell, sliding off the rooftop. There was an enormous clang and a splash as it hit the bottom of the unoccupied pool below, leaving Ash’s end leaning against the roof at a crooked angle. She’d made a bridge to the pool building. The guy swimming stationary laps in the other pool didn’t even seem to notice.

  Do-it-yourself ramp, Ash thought. You will need: one broom, one rooftop, and several thousand dollars’ worth of solar panels.

  “What in God’s name...”

  Ash whirled around. There was a security guard standing in the doorway to the stairs, boggling at the mess she’d made.

  “What...” he said. “What are you doing?”

  Ash didn’t answer. She threw herself onto the top panel, landing on her back, and immediately started sliding away from the rooftop, hurtling head first down the row of panels towards the pool.

  It was like a water slide, but a million times more dangerous – there was nothing to stop her falling over the side and breaking her neck on the path below. She held her arms out sideways, keeping the panels between her elbows so she’d stay in the centre. She looked back the way she’d come, and saw the guard peering over the edge of the roof at her, astonished.

  The sun blinded her, and she turned her eyes away. Trees were already appearing in her peripheral vision. I’m going to land head first, she thought. Got to slow down!

  She squeezed the sides of the panels as she slid past, the hot metal burning her palms. She lost a little speed. Not enough.

  She tried to swivel around so as she was falling feet first. But the panels were too slippery, and soon she was sliding sideways towards the edge. She was going to fall off.

  “No!” she cried. She had to get back to the centre, or—

  Splash! Suddenly she was underwater.

  She’d made it. She was in the pool.

  Choking, she fought the artificial current, and managed to plant her feet on the bottom. Her head bre
ached the surface, and she gasped for air.

  Blinking water out of her eyes, she turned around to see the security guard on the roof of Building 41, yelling into his radio.

  No time to waste, she thought.

  She clambered over the side and ran for the stairs, leaving damp shoe-prints on the concrete. She dashed down them three at a time. There was a rack of bikes nearby – she grabbed one and ran alongside it, gaining momentum, and then jumped on and pedalled towards the car park.

  Now that she had no students to blend in with, the wet school uniform had outlived its usefulness as a disguise. Some of the employees wandering around the campus were already looking at her strangely, wondering why she was away from the group and riding a bike. And if security saw her, she was screwed. She had to get her clothes back.

  She could see the school bus at the far end of the car park. The bicycle tyres hummed across the bitumen.

  As she got close, she dismounted, dropped the bike, and ran around to the far side of the bus. Karen Sloven was standing in the shade, wearing Ash’s clothes, and sucking on a cigarette.

  “Where’s the other half?” Karen asked.

  For an alarming moment Ash thought she meant Benjamin, and wondered how she knew about him. Then she remembered the money.

  “I want my clothes back first,” she said.

  “Why are you wet?”

  “I went swimming. Clothes, please.”

  Karen shrugged, dropped her cigarette, stomped on it, and started undressing. Ash took off the green skirt and blazer, and passed them over. Karen handed her the jeans, shirt and jacket, which all now stank of cheap tobacco. Better wash that top, Ash thought, before Dad smells it.

  She was annoyed at the inconvenience, but it wasn’t a surprise. She had picked Karen because she was a smoker – a square bulge in her purse, teeth and fingernails slightly yellowed, gnawing on a pungent lump of gum. When the school group had just arrived and was still milling around the bus, Ash had approached her, figuring a poster girl for teenage rebellion was most likely to respond to her bizarre request. I’ll give you a hundred bucks to change clothes with me for an hour.