The Genius Wars

  So far, the pool on the floor hadn’t spread very far. But it was beginning to nudge the edge of a Wii console.

  ‘Hey!’ When Cadel tried to shout, he only managed to produce a squeak. So he coughed, swallowed, and tried again. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Cadel,’ Devin began, from behind him. Cadel whirled around in time to see Devin’s jaw drop.

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t open the trapdoor?’ said Cadel. Upon receiving no answer, he repeated himself at a higher volume.

  Devin, however, was speechless. He just stood there, staring at the grey tide that was lapping against all his precious possessions.

  Cadel brushed past him. And as the light from the laptop faded, Devin seemed to snap out of his trance. He scurried after Cadel – who set his computer down at the foot of the stairs, before adjusting its screen for maximum effect.

  The noise was much louder in the stairwell.

  ‘Is that trapdoor locked?’ Devin demanded. Cadel shook his head. They both climbed the stairs, then braced themselves against the hatch.

  ‘On the count of three!’ Cadel bawled. ‘One, two, three!’

  They pushed. Nothing moved.

  ‘Again!’ This time, it was Devin who took charge of the countdown. ‘One, two, three!’

  Still nothing moved. The hatch remained firmly shut.

  Devin began to thump on it with his fists.

  ‘Hey!’ he screeched. ‘Stop! There are people down here!’

  ‘Turn it off!’

  ‘Help! Stop! You’ll kill us!’

  Both of them yelled and pounded for another couple of minutes, until their throats were sore and their hands were bruised. It did no good whatsoever.

  Cadel was the first to abandon this tactic. He could see that it wasn’t going to work; their shouts would never be heard above the sound of the concrete mixer (or whatever it was), and the impact of their fists was being masked by the machine’s vibrations.

  Something’s parked on top of this hatch, he decided, having caught a whiff of exhaust fumes.

  ‘Use your phone!’ He knew from past experience that there was no mobile reception in the basement, but was hoping that things might be better at the top of the stairs. ‘Call emergency!’

  Devin thrust his phone at Cadel, who saw from its screen that the signal was practically non-existent.

  ‘Try anyway!’ Cadel urged, at the top of his voice. ‘I’ll check the landline!’

  He grabbed his computer when he reached the bottom of the stairs, using it to light his way back to Devin’s table – which was positioned near one of the many phone jacks scattered around the room. As he picked up Devin’s cordless receiver, Cadel’s gaze fastened on a piece of styrofoam that was being pushed towards him by a lava-flow of wet concrete.

  He couldn’t hear any dial tone. The line was dead.

  This isn’t a coincidence, he decided. Devin hadn’t used official channels to supply himself with either power or a telephone service. Consequently, no legitimate construction company would have arranged to have his utilities cut off, because it would have taken a very talented hacker to work out that he was connected in the first place.

  A talented hacker like Dr Vee, for example.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Devin exclaimed. He had staggered back into the basement, and was pointing at something behind Cadel. Turning, Cadel saw more concrete spilling out of another vent.

  Half the floor was now covered in a swiftly advancing grey puddle.

  ‘Isn’t the phone working?’ Devin shrilled.

  ‘No! It’s been cut!’ Cadel, by this time, was moving towards the elevator. He remembered that there was an access panel in its ceiling, big enough for a man to pass through. If they could open that panel, and climb up the shaft …

  ‘Here!’ he instructed. ‘Come and help me!’

  Devin obeyed. He reached the lift just after Cadel did, and together they tried to force its doors apart, hooking their fingertips into the crack where the two doors met. Devin pulled one way and Cadel pulled the other; they heaved and strained and grunted, slipping on the shiny floor. But nothing yielded.

  ‘We need a crowbar!’ Cadel finally gasped. ‘Or a lever of some kind!’

  ‘I haven’t got a crowbar!’ Devin protested.

  ‘Anything long and skinny! Think!’

  ‘Is there a way out through here?’ Devin wanted to know, and Cadel explained about the access panel as he looked around for a lever.

  The only thing that caught his eye was a computer joystick.

  ‘We have to make a really loud noise!’ Devin wailed. ‘Like a big explosion!’

  ‘How?’ asked Cadel. He snatched up the joystick, just in time. Two seconds later and it would have been engulfed in concrete. ‘Do you have any explosives?’

  ‘No! Do you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There must be something we can use!’ Devin peered up at the ceiling. ‘Do any of those pipes have gas in them?’

  ‘You wanna blow us to pieces?’

  ‘It’s an emergency, Cadel!’

  ‘It will be if you set fire to a gas pipe!’ Cadel had retreated to the lift, and was trying to insert his rescued joystick between the elevator doors. ‘Is there some kind of disinfectant in that bathroom?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go and have a look for toilet cleaner!’ Cadel snapped. ‘Hurry!’

  ‘But –’

  ‘We’ll need whatever foil wrapping you can find, too! And one of those plastic bottles, over there!’ Seeing Devin hesitate, Cadel scowled at him. ‘It’s for a bomb, you idiot! Just go!’

  Devin went. He didn’t have to travel very far, because the bathroom was right next to the lift. It was also about the same size as the lift, barely big enough to contain a toilet and a pedestal basin. So the search for cleaning fluids was a short one; Cadel was still struggling with the joystick when Devin returned, wielding a plastic container full of disinfectant.

  ‘What about this?’ Devin panted. ‘Is this any good?’

  Damp and red-faced, Cadel paused in his desperate attempt to lever open the lift doors. He brushed accumulated dust and cobwebs off the toilet cleaner’s label. Then he checked the list of ingredients printed there. ‘That’ll do!’ he said loudly. ‘Now go and get the foil! The foil and the bottle!’

  Devin stared at him in disbelief. ‘But – but there’s concrete in the way!’ he objected.

  ‘There’ll be even more concrete in the way if you don’t hurry!’

  Cadel was losing heart. No matter how hard he pushed, the lift doors wouldn’t budge. And the concrete had almost reached him. Soon it wouldn’t have any more room to spread, and its level would start to rise.

  Devin was cursing. ‘It’s sticking to me! It’s on my feet!’ he howled. ‘Help! Yuck!’

  Suddenly Cadel felt something press against his own feet. Glancing down, he saw the concrete surging against the soles of his shoes.

  ‘Jesus,’ he croaked.

  ‘You’ll never do it!’ Devin called to him. ‘We should climb the stairs! It might not get to the top of the stairs!’

  Cadel calculated the odds. They weren’t good. But if they detonated their toilet-cleaner bomb right under the hatch, they just might get lucky. Especially if they still had space enough to keep away from the blast zone.

  He began to follow Devin, slopping through liquid concrete – which was very cold and heavy. The further he walked, the more difficult it became to pick up his feet. He felt like a mammoth in the La Brea tar pit.

  But he broke free upon reaching the stairwell, where Devin accosted him, waving an empty plastic bottle and a piece of foil wrapping.

  ‘We can blow a hole through the trapdoor!’ cried Devin.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe!’ Cadel wasn’t so sure. He’d only once experimented with a toilet-cleaner bomb (when he was still very young) and it hadn’t done much more than make a loud noise. Certainly there hadn’t been any flames; just some r
ather toxic fumes. But perhaps a loud noise would be all they needed.

  Halfway up the stairs, he sat down to assemble his explosive device, almost deafened by the clamour of the giant gears overhead. When he’d finished, he placed the sealed bottle right under the hatch.

  ‘Aren’t you going to light it?’ Devin shouted.

  ‘We don’t have to light it!’ Cadel shouted back. ‘The chemicals react with the aluminium!’ He hustled Devin down the stairs and into a corner of the stairwell. Here they stuck their fingers in their ears, watching wet concrete creep across the floor towards them. They waited. And waited.

  WHUMP!

  In such a confined space, the noise had an almost physical impact; Cadel could feel it resonating in every bone. Then all at once he was coughing his lungs out. Devin was coughing, too – coughing and pointing. The concrete had almost reached them. The machine’s roar hadn’t stopped. It was way too dark to see what had happened to the hatch.

  Not good, thought Cadel. There should be light coming in from outside.

  ‘Maybe … hack-hack-hack … weakened it … hack-hack-hack …’ He was so dizzy that he nearly fell as he moved back towards the stairs, stumbling against the wall as he tried to get his bearings. He had to feel his way up to the hatch, which – though hot and charred – didn’t break when he pushed it. Instead, it drove a splinter into his hand.

  ‘Ouch!’ he cried. Overtaken by another coughing fit, he didn’t have the strength to keep pushing.

  ‘They must have heard!’ Devin sobbed beside him. ‘They must have!’

  Cadel shook his head numbly. It occurred to him that the situation was very, very serious. He was trapped, and couldn’t think of another escape route. There was no phone. No power. The water supply was useless. A smoke signal? It would choke him to death long before it escaped through enough chinks to alert the people outside – who might, of course, already know that he was trapped.

  He tried to calculate how swiftly the concrete would rise. How long before it reached the top step? It was already at the bottom step; he could just make out a faint, wet sheen. Devin was shaking him. The smell was terrible.

  Then, all at once, the noise stopped.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There was a moment’s stunned silence.

  Devin was the first to collect his wits. ‘Hey!’ he bellowed. ‘Hey! Stop!’ He began to thump on the hatch – until Cadel grabbed his arm.

  ‘Shh!’ hissed Cadel, who was listening intently. He could hear a scuffling noise. Something creaked overhead. A light dusting of soot fell onto his upturned face as the charred timber above him vibrated; he had to turn away, coughing.

  At last a muffled voice said, ‘Cadel? Is that you?’

  ‘Gazo?’ wheezed Cadel.

  ‘Hang on.’ Gazo sounded flustered. ‘I’ve gotta move this truck.’

  Almost immediately, an engine roared to life again within metres of where Cadel was sitting. He slapped his hands over his ears. Then, as heavy wheels rumbled across the hatch, a sharp crack sent him scurrying down to the bottom of the staircase.

  He had a horrible feeling that the damaged trapdoor might cave in if the weight on top of it shifted. And he didn’t want to be squashed by the rear tyre of whatever monstrous vehicle had been blocking his way out.

  ‘Keep clear!’ he shouted at Devin, who ignored him. Devin was so desperate to escape that he kept shoving at the hatch, apparently oblivious to the fact that a huge weight was rolling across it. An ominous crunching sound, which made Cadel wince, didn’t trouble Devin in the slightest. When the wood split and sagged, Devin simply pushed harder.

  He gave a whoop of triumph as daylight suddenly flooded into the stairwell.

  ‘Yay!’ he cried. ‘Done it!’

  Cadel scrambled up the stairs, so eagerly that he almost tripped over. But he managed to reach the hatchway without falling down, and followed Devin through it. Meanwhile, Gazo had parked the truck and switched off its engine.

  ‘See?’ was the first thing that he said to Cadel. ‘Ain’t you glad I decided to check on you?’

  Cadel had to crawl out onto the brick paving. His knees were like cotton; they wouldn’t hold him up. He sat gasping for breath, squinting in the bright light.

  Gazo squatted beside him, exuding a faint, foul odour.

  ‘Christ!’ Devin squawked. ‘What happened to them?’

  He was on his feet, though he reeled slightly as he glanced around, shading his eyes with both hands. Cadel lifted his head. Not six metres away, a man wearing an orange safety vest lay face-down in the high grass. His hard hat had rolled off, and he had dropped his mobile phone.

  Gazo must have seen Cadel’s gaze fasten on this motionless figure, because he said, ‘I had to stop ’em somehow. They wouldn’t listen. They kept talking about this pumping job they had to do.’

  Another man was lying on his back, not far from the first. He had been dragged some distance along the ground, to judge from the marks that his muddy boot-heels had made. He, too, was dressed like someone off a construction site, in a toolbelt, overalls, and a reflective safety vest.

  ‘I had to pull ’im outta the truck,’ Gazo volunteered, as if he could read Cadel’s mind. ‘I couldna moved it, uvverwise.’

  ‘You mean you stank them to death?’ Devin exclaimed, causing Gazo to stiffen.

  ‘They’re not dead!’ Gazo snapped. ‘They’re out cold!’

  ‘For how long?’ Cadel inquired, and Gazo shrugged.

  ‘I dunno. About ten minutes?’

  ‘Then we’ll have to be quick.’ Cadel rose unsteadily, using Gazo’s arm as his support. Nothing else moved. The vehicles were silent and still. The supine figures could have been discarded shop dummies.

  Cadel looked from one piece of evidence to the next. He noted that the white ute on the grass had ‘Greening Landscapes’ painted on its door, whereas the much bigger truck parked near the hatch was labelled ‘Corlucci Constructions’.

  ‘Is that your ute?’ he asked Gazo, who nodded.

  ‘Yup,’ said Gazo. ‘I were on me way to work, see, and I figured if I brung a gardener’s truck, people would fink I come ’ere to cut the grass –’

  ‘Are those sandbags, in the back?’ Cadel interrupted.

  ‘No. They’ve got gravel in ’em.’

  ‘We’ll need some of those.’ Cadel stumbled slightly on his way towards the ute. ‘Two sacks each will probably do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ Gazo sounded worried. ‘Cadel, we gotta get out. Before these blokes wake up.’

  ‘Hang on. There’s something I have to do, first.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Devin protested. ‘Could someone please tell me what’s going on? Why the hell are these guys even here?’

  ‘Because Prosper English sent them.’ Reaching the ute, Cadel began to tug at its tailgate. ‘Come and help me, will you? We need about six of these sacks down in the basement.’

  ‘What do you mean, Prosper English sent them?’ Devin’s voice was shrill. He had to raise it over the shriek of rusty metal, as the tailgate was lowered. ‘What’s Prosper English got to do with it?’

  ‘Prosper must have got someone to cut off your power and phone,’ Cadel explained. He began to yank at the topmost bag of gravel, before Gazo gently pushed him aside. ‘Then he would have organised a hack into Corlucci Constructions, to get this job booked in. Either their booking system is based on computer readouts, or Prosper did it over the phone, with a bit of social engineering. He’s good at that. He’s good at manipulating people.’

  ‘But how could Prosper English even know you’re here?’ Devin demanded. ‘I thought you were supposed to be dead?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then –’

  ‘Later. We’ll talk later.’ Cadel turned to Gazo, who was pulling a two-wheeled trolley from the back of the ute. ‘Can we load some of these sacks onto that pushcart thing?’

  ‘I can,’ Gazo replied. ‘But not you. You ain’t trained for it.’ He dumped a bag of gra
vel onto his trolley. ‘So where do you want ’em, anyway?’

  ‘I need to get my laptop,’ said Cadel.

  ‘Your laptop?’

  ‘And my green bag.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I can’t leave without them,’ Cadel insisted. ‘We have to throw these sacks into the concrete downstairs, like stepping stones. That way I can reach my computer without getting stuck.’

  ‘But this gravel ain’t mine!’ Gazo paused, a second bag cradled in his arms. ‘I can’t just frow it into wet concrete, I’ll get fired!’

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘Yes, I will!’

  ‘Not if I pay for it. You can buy some more.’

  ‘Cadel –’

  ‘Would you please hurry?’ Cadel was fast losing patience. ‘We haven’t got much time!’

  For a moment Gazo hesitated. Then, slowly and reluctantly, he dropped the second bag onto the first.

  Devin, however, wasn’t so accommodating.

  ‘This is crazy,’ he spluttered. ‘Why the hell do you need your laptop? My stuff’s all down there, and I’m not going back for it. No way.’

  ‘Your stuff ’s all over the floor,’ Cadel rejoined. ‘It’ll be trashed, by now. My stuff’s up high.’

  Thud! Another bag of gravel joined the pile on the trolley.

  ‘Well, I’m not hanging around for the sake of your bloody computer,’ Devin decided. ‘I’m off. Right now. Before someone blows the whistle on us.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Cadel. His tone was flat. ‘Good. Off you go, then.’

  Thud! went the next bag.

  ‘And no offence, or anything,’ Devin added, ‘but don’t come after me, okay? Because I can do without the hassle.’

  Cadel sniffed. ‘If it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t be any hassle,’ he muttered. Whereupon Devin’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said sharply.

  Thud!

  ‘It means that Prosper found out where I was. And not because of anything I did,’ Cadel retorted. He could feel a familiar tide of hot rage creeping up into his throat. ‘I’ve been really, really careful, Devin. I haven’t made a single slip.’