Jonah thought he might have screamed as he was catapulted into the sky. He wasn’t sure. Any sound he might have made had been whipped away by the stinging wind before it could reach his ears.
When the Aboriginal driver had done this, he had made it look easy. He had been in perfect control of his body, as if he was flying. This was nothing like flying.
Jonah couldn’t control his arms or legs. They were flailing about, making things even worse. He could see the top of the rock below him.
Jonah was too high, coming in too fast. He didn’t stand a chance.
The lift had carried Granger up to the loading area. There, he had picked up an executive escape glider before climbing the ladder to the top of Ayers Rock. Four clusters of solar panels marred the top of Uluru. Granger looked underneath the panels, between their supporting steel girders, and scanned across the flat planes of the sun collectors.
He couldn’t see anyone up here, at least no one still standing. He couldn’t take any chances, though. Some of the bodies that were sprawled in the sand might still be clinging to life, and might raise the alarm if they saw him.
Granger ducked beneath an array of solar panels. He crouched down in the diffused moonlight beneath them, and pulled the glider harness onto his shoulders.
A shadow fell over him. Granger looked up, saw a dark shape in the sky between the translucent panels and the moon. A flock of cockatoos, he thought at first.
But, no, this shape was coming closer... It was plummeting towards him...
Granger flung himself aside as the solar panels exploded inwards.
He hadn’t moved quite fast enough. He was struck by something soft, warm and heavy. A body, he realised. A human body. The breath was knocked out of Granger as he landed on his stomach, and the intruder landed on his back.
He threw up his hands to protect his head from a shower of glass shards.
Jonah had tried to get his feet under him. Instead, he had sent himself into a spin. The last thing he had managed to do before impact was curl up into a ball.
He had been lucky. Instead of hitting an unyielding rock surface, Jonah had crashed into and through a grid of fragile solar panels. He should still have hit the rock beneath the glass panels hard, but something had cushioned his fall.
He tested each of his limbs in turn, wiggling toes and fingers. He was smarting all over, but nothing appeared to be broken. He hoped the same could be said of the Chang Bridge device in his pocket.
Jonah heard a sickly groan. He leapt to his feet, alarmed. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
His ‘cushion’ was alive, doubled over in pain and cupping a hand over his face to conceal his features. As the man rose to his feet, however, Jonah caught a glint of moonlight off the man’s shiny, metallic legs.
‘Oh no,’ Jonah gasped. ‘It...it’s you, isn’t it?’
Matthew Granger sighed. There were some drawbacks to fame.
He dropped his hand from his face, to look closely at the kid who had landed on him. The Guardians were recruiting them young these days, he thought.
The kid didn’t look like much: too scrawny to pose any real physical threat.
He pounced while the kid was still reeling in surprise. He grabbed hold of him, spun him around, clamped a hand to his mouth and forced him to his knees. ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you,’ Granger hissed in the kid’s ear. ‘I just want to get out of here. But make the slightest sound, and I’ll snap your neck!’
*
Jonah heard footsteps. Two pairs of footsteps. Then, a voice, a man’s voice:
‘Is anyone there?’ it called. The accent was Aboriginal.
Guardians, then. They must have seen Jonah plunging through the panels. He wanted to yell out to them, but Granger’s threat was still ringing in his ears.
He heard the Guardians muttering to each other. He prayed they would keep searching for him. His stomach sank as, instead, they moved away. He heard them descend the metal stairs of the access hatch.
‘Very good,’ whispered Granger. ‘Now, all you have to do is stay still and keep quiet for another few seconds, and we’ll be out of each other’s hair for good.’
Granger let go of Jonah, who saw for the first time the escape glider on his captor’s back. He was walking away from Jonah, his metal feet crunching on broken glass, about to fly out of here – and Jonah’s first impulse was to let him go.
Another lucky break, he thought. After all the times Granger had tried to kill him...and yet, when he had had Jonah right there in his grasp, he hadn’t recognised him.
But then, another sensation built inside Jonah’s chest: a white-hot anger.
Why should Granger escape? Why should he fly free, live to fight another day, when so many others haven’t?
Granger was approaching the edge of the rock. In another few seconds, he’d be gone. Not if Jonah could help it.
Granger turned around. The kid came hurtling at him, a spitting, screaming ball of fury.
He tackled Granger around the artificial legs, and for the second time the two of them fell in a tangle of limbs. Granger wasn’t a man used to fighting with his fists, but he was bigger, heavier than his opponent. He soon gained the advantage. He managed to get on top of the kid, put a titanium knee to his chest and pin his arms to the floor. ‘Listen, kid,’ he said, ‘I meant what I said. Let me go on my way, and no one has to get—’
‘No!’ The kid was struggling hard. It was like trying to hold on to an octopus.
‘What is it with you, anyway? What makes a kid like you join a terrorist group like the Guardians? Why would you—?’
‘You,’ the kid spat. ‘I joined the Guardians because of you, to get back at you. You... I used to worship you. And then you took everything from me. My father. My home. You killed my mum!’
Jonah had fought all he could.
His outburst against Granger had drained him. His brief adrenalin rush had worked its way through his system, left him sweating and shaking.
Granger let go of Jonah’s arms and stood up. He made no move towards the edge of the rock, however. He looked down at Jonah, frowning, and Jonah wondered why he had called off his attack. Jonah pushed himself up with his feet into a sitting position. He leaned back against a girder, breathing hard, fighting back tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Granger.
Jonah was completely taken aback. ‘What?’
‘I said I was sorry. About your mother.’
‘You didn’t even know her!’
‘I know that, sometimes, my desire to build a better world can lead to people getting hurt. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, but—’
‘It doesn’t!’
‘I mean what I say,’ said Granger. ‘I never wanted this war between the Guardians and the Millennials.’
‘My mum wasn’t a Guardian,’ said Jonah. ‘She was just...just someone who got in your way. You didn’t even know her name!’
‘Tell me her name,’ said Granger.
And Jonah knew he shouldn’t do it, should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help himself. All he could feel was anger and pain, and he needed to release it somehow. He wanted Granger to know, to know what he had done.
‘Her name was Miriam,’ he said. ‘My mum was Miriam Delacroix.’
Now, it was Granger’s turn to look astonished. ‘Delacroix?’ he repeated. ‘You mean you... You’re Jason’s son? Did you come here with him? Is Jason here?’ Jonah shook his head. ‘My dad’s dead,’ he said. ‘He died three years ago.’
Granger just stared at Jonah, for a very long time. Then he did the last thing Jonah would ever have expected.
Granger threw back his head and he laughed out loud.