The school grounds looked different to Jonah.
It took him a moment to realise what was wrong. Of course, he hadn’t been back here since he had filtered his father’s avatar. He had not grown used to looking at the virtual world through the dragon’s yellow eyes, to being bigger than he had been.
He felt as if he had outgrown this place. A wave of doubt crashed over him. Jonah had affected to be so confident in the real world, in the broadcasting van, in front of Sam. Now, he was a kid again.
A dialogue balloon popped up beside him: No visitors without appointment. The school’s security software didn’t recognise him as a pupil here. The main doors were closed, the padlock icon in place. Even if the doors were open, Jonah wasn’t going to risk being scanned. But he still had Harry the rooster’s virus.
He placed his talons against the brick wall, transferred the virus and pushed his way through into the school’s entrance hall. He hesitated there, unsure what to do next. What if a teacher caught him here? How would he explain himself? What if they reported him? He was risking exile.
The school bell rang. Jonah panicked, and looked for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere. He was too big – and, already, the corridors were filling up with avatars released from their lessons. Some of them cast curious, even admiring, glances at the red dragon in their midst.
To most, Jonah realised, he was just a visitor touring the school, of no importance to them. Emboldened a little by this, he set out towards his old classroom.
The school clock read 11:00 local time, but ‘local time’ for the Chang Academy shifted throughout the day. Once Jonah, his classmates and the rest of their school went home, a second intake of pupils arrived from different time zones.
The Chang Academy had three school days altogether, to each real-world day. Fortunately for Jonah, the man he had come to see worked two of these.
Mr Peng was seated at his desk, marking class work on a datapad. He had a pair of pince-nez spectacles perched on his beak.
Jonah knocked tentatively on the open classroom door.
Mr Peng looked up at his visitor and frowned. ‘Can I help you, sir?’
Jonah tucked in his giant wings and stepped through the door into the classroom he had escaped from just days ago. ‘Mr Peng,’ he said, ‘it’s me. It’s Jonah Delacroix.’ He knew that only the truth could help him now, whatever the risk of telling it.
Mr Peng rose slowly and waddled forward. The spectacles disappeared as he regarded Jonah through astonished eyes. ‘My goodness me,’ he breathed. ‘I have seen this avatar before, have I not? Your father, I think.’
Jonah nodded, looking over his shoulder to be sure no one was eavesdropping. ‘Please, sir, don’t tell anyone.’
‘On that, my boy, you have my word. But pray, tell me how—?’
‘There’s no time to explain, sir. I’m in Moscow with... friends, and I need to speak with Mr Chang, because his people are trying to kill us, and I remember how you said once you knew him and I thought maybe you could—’
‘Slow down, my boy. One thing at a time. These “friends” of yours. Who...?’
Jonah couldn’t say the words: they’re Guardians. I’m working with the Guardians.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Peng, noting Jonah’s silence. ‘We are talking about associates of your father’s?’
Jonah gaped in surprise. He wondered how much his teacher knew.
‘In our classroom debates,’ said Mr Peng, ‘you always spoke up for stricter regulation of the Metasphere. You were strongly opposed to the views of Mr Chang and those of like mind to him. Am I to infer you have had a change of heart?’
It occurred to Jonah that Sam, Axel and the rest were probably watching him on a monitor, in the van. ‘Mr Peng, please,’ he said. ‘We’re in trouble, real trouble, and only Mr Chang can help us. Can you take me to see him?’
‘I cannot do that, Jonah. I just don’t move about as... freely as I would like to.’
So it was true, thought Jonah, what everyone said about Mr Peng. The rumours had been going around the school for as long as Jonah had been a pupil. They said that Jonah’s teacher was a political prisoner in China. His real-world body was confined to a cell and his avatar to the co-ordinates of his workplace.
‘Mr Chang and I were friends once, it is true,’ said Mr Peng. ‘He was kind enough to arrange my employment here. It has been some time, however, since we were last in touch, let alone able to meet. You understand, a man in his position—’
Jonah groaned. ‘I know. He can’t afford to be associated with an outlaw.’
‘I prefer to use the word “dissident”.’
‘Isn’t there anything you can do, sir?’ pleaded Jonah. ‘Can’t you tell me how to find Mr Chang for myself, or... or, I don’t know, get a message to him somehow? I know he’d agree it was important – crucial, even.’
Mr Peng considered this for a moment, then nodded. He closed the classroom door for privacy. He reached into his inventory space and produced a small, golden statuette, which he handed to Jonah. ‘A good luck charm,’ he said.
Jonah looked at the statuette. It was a cat. A golden cat. It had two faces, one looking each way. From one side, the cat was smiling, a paw raised as if in greeting. From the other, the cat was scowling and holding up a broom.
‘The paw is to attract fortune,’ Mr Peng explained, ‘the broom to ward off evil.’
‘I don’t understand, sir. How...?’
Mr Peng smiled indulgently. He took the charm back and manipulated it deftly with his talons. The cat’s two-faced head popped open, to reveal a small button beneath it.
Mr Peng handed the statuette back to Jonah. ‘Press the button,’ he instructed. ‘It is pre-programmed to take you to the one you are seeking.’
‘We’ve lost him!’
Sam and the others had been watching Jonah’s progress. A moment ago, his red dragon avatar had been in a schoolroom, talking to a wise-looking old bird. Now, all Sam could see was the reflection of Bradbury’s glowering face in a blank screen.
‘Where’d he go?’ asked Axel.
‘The teacher had some kind of a figurine. The kid pressed a button in its neck, and everything went screwy.’ Bradbury was shifting icons around on a datapad. The monitor flared to life again, but with a stream of error reports.
Sam leaned forward. ‘It’s saying – is this right? – it’s saying there’s no avatar registered to this terminal. But...’
‘But the computer’s still holding Point of Origin co- ordinates,’ said Bradbury. ‘It’s maintaining the kid’s exit halo. It’s as if—’
‘No,’ breathed Sam. ‘He couldn’t have...’ She looked at Jonah’s lifeless body. She didn’t dare put her fears into words. Everyone knew what happened when an avatar was destroyed – or, almost as bad, when it became detached from its user.
‘It might just be a glitch,’ she hoped.
Suddenly, there were headlights approaching. A black limousine drove across the end of the alleyway, and Sam heard it braking.
‘Looks like we’ve been made,’ groaned Axel.
Dimitry vaulted into the front passenger seat. ‘Go, go, go!’ he yelled.
Andrey restarted the engine and threw the van into reverse. Sam held onto Jonah as they bounced along the cobbles of the alleyway. The worst, she thought, might not yet have happened – and if it hadn’t, then the last thing Jonah needed was to be thrown from his chair, accidentally disconnected.
The limousine backed up too, turned into the alleyway, and followed the van down it. Sam could see it gaining on them, its bull bars almost kissing the van’s front bumper.
They emerged into another broad road. Andrey wrestled the van around, crunching its gears. They surged forward, but the limousine was right on their tail.
Bradbury elbowed his way down the van, past Sam. She opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing, but the answer became obvious. Bradbury whipped out his shotgun, smashed the butt through one of the back windows. He rested the gun barrel on the window’s lip and fired.
Bradbury peppered the Chang limo with explosive pellets. Its windscreen and one of its headlights shattered, but it kept on coming. It must have been armour plated, thought Sam. Bradbury swore under his breath, ejected his spent magazine, smacked a new one into place. The shotgun flared again and again, and a line of holes appeared in the limo’s bonnet. Suddenly, a geyser of steam erupted from its engine, blowing the hood open, and the limo swerved off the road and collided with a stone bollard.
‘That’ll teach them!’ Axel whooped as they left their crippled pursuer behind.
The words were barely out of his mouth when the van ran over something in the road, shuddered and began to slow.
‘Spike strip!’ cried Dimitry.
‘A trap,’ said Sam, realising too late that the Chang crew had anticipated their route.
It lay across the road behind them: a narrow strip, black – Andrey wouldn’t have seen it even in his headlights – studded with metal barbs. It must have been deployed by somebody on the pavement, although Sam hadn’t noticed anyone.
‘The tyres, they are shredded!’ Andrey reported.
He kept on driving anyway, but the van was suddenly impossible to control. It almost missed the next corner, sliding across the road. ‘This is hopeless,’ cried Sam. ‘Dad was right before. We’d be better off taking our chances on foot!’
In response, Andrey put his foot down, until the screeching of the van’s wheel rims against the tarmac set Sam’s teeth on edge.
And, suddenly, there was another Chang limousine in front of them, and another one turning out of a side road to their left, and Sam knew the chase was over.
Andrey wasn’t ready to accept it. He tried to swerve between the two black cars. He didn’t make it. The van struck the kerb and, for a heart-stopping instant, was hurtling through the air. It landed with a jolt, scraped a recycling machine and rolled to a despondent halt with its nose to a concrete wall. Sam and Jonah were spilled from their seats, and the wire to Jonah’s back pulled dangerously taut.
The limousines pulled up behind the van, blocking its escape. They emptied out four men each, in dark fatigues and balaclavas.
The men were all armed. They raised their guns, aiming them at the broadcasting van. Sam remembered what Dimitry had said: If they capture me, they will kill me.
It looked as if that moment had come.