Jonah didn’t need telling twice.
He still didn’t know if he could trust these new
acquaintances. Right now, though, they were all he had. He flew with them, along the busy streets, through panicking crowds. He glanced back, to see the Recyclers right behind him. They had folded up their legs beneath them and were speeding after their three targets like rockets.
‘We have to draw them away from the people!’ Jonah shouted. The Recyclers were digesting everything – and everyone – in their paths.
Jonah pointed his dragon’s snout upwards, beating his wings as hard as he could. The gryphon and the unicorn followed his lead, and the three of them soared into the sky. ‘They’re gaining on us!’ cried the unicorn.
She was right. Jonah could feel a pull on his tail: a vortex effect from the whirling drills, threatening to suck him in.
He saw a startled budgie frozen in his path, and he ducked beneath it. He hoped he had given it a wide enough berth for the Recyclers to miss it as they followed him.
The gryphon fell in at Jonah’s side. ‘Time to face facts, buddy,’ he growled. ‘The kid and me are done for.’ ‘No!’
‘Our exit halos are back behind the Icarus,’ said the gryphon. ‘We’ll never make it around these things, not a prayer!’
‘But I’m the one they really want. I could lead them away from you.’
The gryphon shook his head. ‘One for each of us, remember? I don’t know what you were thinking, Jason, coming here. Best we can do now, though, is to get you back to the real world. Where’s your exit halo? Tell me it’s somewhere close!’
Jonah surveyed the destruction below him. A giant scar of nothingness cut through the heart of The Mirrors. Most of MetaOx Street was destroyed, and momentarily he thought his exit halo had been Recycled with it.
Then he remembered. He had materialised in the souk. That was where he had to get back to. Jonah’s stomach turned to ice. It was too far away. He wouldn’t make it!
He dived towards Venus Park instead. He swooped over the heads of the courting couples and the marching protestors, and straight into the Delacroix gift shop, its door dissolving at his approach. The gryphon and the unicorn were right behind him, and the secret trapdoor was still exposed, still open.
They dropped through the trapdoor, and Jonah pulled it shut behind them.
The gryphon blinked as he looked around the gloomy cellar. ‘Where is it, then?’ he asked. ‘Your exit halo?’
‘Not here,’ said Jonah. ‘I’ve had a better idea.’
‘You’re kidding me, right?’ the gryphon cried.
‘We can’t hide from them,’ said the unicorn. ‘They’ll eat right through these walls, then—’
‘I know,’ said Jonah. ‘That’s what I’m counting on.’ The cellar was already beginning to shake, as
the first drill head bit into it from above. Jonah took a deep breath, placed his claws against the wall, and summoned up the virus code that his classmate Harry had given him. He felt the data coursing through his virtual body – his father’s virtual body, rather – and into the source code of the cellar walls, which began to blur and distort.
In that same instant, the Recyclers arrived. They broke through the ceiling, bearing down upon their prey. Jonah and the others backed into a corner, but could go no further. Jonah wrapped his giant wings around his two new friends, in a hopeless attempt to protect them. A sharp drill tip pierced the scales on his back, and he screamed in pain and almost belched fire again, but stopped himself for fear of burning someone.
Suddenly, the drills stopped spinning. The Recyclers sputtered and shook, and at last depixelated and disappeared. Jonah’s desperate plan had worked.
‘Where’d you get a virus like that?’ asked the gryphon, not waiting for an answer. ‘You infected the whole shop with it, right? So, when the Recyclers gobbled up the walls, they were infected too.’
Jonah wasn’t listening to him. He poked his dragon’s head up above where the floor of the gift shop had been. There was nothing there now – literally, nothing.
‘It’s all gone,’ he whispered.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the unicorn. ‘This was your place?’ Jonah didn’t answer her. He felt numb. A few avatars
had drifted over from the park, to stare curiously at the new, gift-shop-shaped hole in their world.
‘How...how did this happen?’ asked Jonah. ‘Who sent the Recyclers after us?’
‘It must have been that blackbird,’ said the unicorn.
‘He was staking out the Icarus,’ said the gryphon, ‘in case you appeared there.’
‘Dad and I got there as quickly as we could,’ said the unicorn, ‘as soon as we got the alert that your avatar had been scanned by the Icarus’s gate, but...’
‘Listen, buddy,’ said the gryphon, ‘I’m sorry about this place too – I know you wanted to leave it to your son some day – but you’re not out of the woods yet.’
‘Dad’s right,’ said the unicorn. ‘The Millennials know your RWL. They’ll find your body in the real world. You have to log off and hide.’
‘But how will I find you again?’ asked Jonah.
‘We’re leaving England tomorrow at sunrise,’ said the gryphon, ‘and you need to come with us. Meet us at Delta House. And remember your oath as a Guardian – because it’s time to fulfil it. Now, get to it!’
‘What’s Delta House?’ Jonah asked.
The gryphon roared his eagle head back with
laughter and slapped Jonah on the wing with his lion’s paw. ‘I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humour! Now go!’
Jonah didn’t know what Delta House was, but he would have to figure that out later. Right now, he knew that the unicorn – Sam, as her father had called her – was right. He had to get back to the real world.
Jonah’s exit halo was just where he had left it, in the crowded souk.
He was relieved to have reached it without more Recyclers coming after him.
He dived through the halo, and returned to his physical body in the City Tower. His eyes took a moment to refocus on the real world, as if he had woken suddenly from a deep dream. Everything he had been through – the Icarus, the chase, the destruction of the shop – felt like it had been a dream. Or a nightmare.
Jonah rubbed his eyes and looked around frantically. He couldn’t see his mum.
He unplugged himself, toppled out of his hammock and ran through the sea of suspended traders’ bodies, calling for her. He followed a crunching, splintering sound, and found her hacking her way through an office door with a fireman’s axe.
‘Jonah,’ huffed Miriam Delacroix, ‘get over here now!’ She swung the axe into the door again, successfully amputating the handle. She kicked the door open, and burst into a furnished but unoccupied suite, an office purely for show.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’ cried Jonah. ‘You’re scaring me!’
He watched from the doorway as she threw open a metal cabinet in one corner of the room. She yanked out an aluminium and canvas contraption emblazoned with a Pegasus logo, hurried back to her son and began to strap it to his back.
‘You should be scared,’ she said. ‘Put this on, Jonah. You have to go.’
‘But, Mum, I need to tell you—’
‘I already know, Jonah. I was watching you on a monitor. I saw the Recyclers. I saw everything. The Millennials know you’re here, in this building.’
‘Then let’s go. I’ll call the lift, and we’ll—’
Mum placed her hands on Jonah’s shoulders and held him still with the power of her urgent, sad gaze. ‘There’s no time, darling,’ she said. ‘Look!’
She pointed to the window. Jonah looked out and saw two unmarked, black lorries racing up the street below them. He had no idea what they were, or who might be inside them, but his mother was clearly terrified of them. She tightened straps around Jonah’s waist, legs, chest and arms. A drawstring dangled over his stomach, and he reached for the red toggle at the end of it, to pull this tight too.
‘Not yet,’ said Mum, batting his hand away. ‘Not until you’re out. Cover your eyes, darling.’
She hefted the axe again, and swung it into the window. As it shattered, glass fragments blew back into Jonah’s raised hands, scratching his palms. He was looking at the metal cabinet his mum had opened, and for the first time he saw the words stamped into its door: EXECUTIVE ESCAPE GLIDER.
A fierce wind blew into the sixty-first-floor office, forcing him to squint against it.
Mum bundled Jonah over to the smashed window. She took his hand and closed it around the red toggle on his harness. ‘As soon as you’re clear of the building,’ she instructed him, ‘pull the ripcord. Do you hear me, Jonah? Pull the ripcord!’
He was looking down at the street. Those black lorries were still coming. Too fast.
The first lorry smashed into the base of the City Tower, and exploded. A mushroom cloud of fire billowed up towards him. The building shook, and Jonah fell into his mother’s arms, unbalanced by the weight on his back. She pushed him firmly away from her, back to the window. ‘No, Mum, don’t!’ he screamed.
‘It’s the only way,’ she insisted as she held him for the last time, too briefly. ‘I love you, Jonah. Your father lives inside you now. Learn from him, but listen to your own heart, and you’ll always do the right thing.’
Then she gave him one final shove, out through the window, and Jonah was falling. Falling towards the fire. He remembered his mum’s instructions and pulled as hard as he could on the red toggle. The pack on his back sprung open. Two black wings unfurled above him, a series of aluminium poles snapping into place to form a frame.
For the first time, Jonah flew in the real world.
He felt the second explosion before he saw it, his hang-glider rising on a sudden wave of hot air. He turned to see what was happening behind him, but the wings turned with him like a kite and almost curved him back into the burning building. He quickly focused his gaze ahead, at the vast urban sprawl of south London, and the glider responded and banked him away from the collapsing tower to safety.
He didn’t dare look back again. He couldn’t bear to look, anyway. His mum was trapped in the inferno, lost to him. He should have refused the glider, put it on her instead, but he hadn’t had time to think. It wasn’t fair that she had sacrificed herself for him. It wasn’t fair that he should lose his mum too.
As he soared across the river, Jonah spotted his bus- burb, a huddle of red rectangles. He leaned to his left and steered the hang-glider away from it. There was nothing for him there. In the past few hours, he had lost his homes in both the real and the virtual worlds. He had become an orphan – and all because of one stupid mistake.
He couldn’t take it all in yet. He needed someone to talk to, someone to tell him what to do, but he was entirely alone. He had no one. At least, no one still alive.
I’ll go to the Island of the Uploaded, he thought. He would talk to the dead.