Blue's Revenge (9 page)

‘Oh. Yeah.'

‘It was at the end of the disk Blue sent,' Dretch said awkwardly. ‘The others thought it would be too upsetting for you, but I thought you should know.'

Max and Linden had a bad feeling about what they were about to see.

Max took out her palm computer and plugged in the memory stick. The image of a darkened room appeared before them. ‘It's the picture of Mum.'

As Max whispered the words, her mother called out.

‘You can't keep me in here! Do you hear me? As soon as the police find out where I am, you will be spending the rest of your miserable, brain-dead days in a prison much worse than this.'

‘Mum,' Max said quietly. ‘Don't upset them.'

The image then pulled away as if the camera was backing down a long corridor. Max's mother kept up her angry abuse. Then there was an explosion. Max flinched as if she'd been hit. The image filled with smoke and flying bits of debris. Then it went black.

They stared at the computer. Dretch's hands made fists in his coat pockets, clenching and unclenching. His lips moved as if he was trying to speak.

‘Max?' Linden said gently.

A dull, greyish colour filled Max's face.

Dretch looked quickly between the two young spies.

‘Max?' Linden wanted her to say something, do something. Anything but keep quiet.

‘I think I'm going to be sick.'

Dretch caught the palm computer that flew from Max's hands as she ran from the VART into the closest bathroom.

Linden ran after her and pushed open the door.

‘Max!' His voice echoed around the tiled room. ‘Max? Are you in here?'

He looked in all the cubicles until he saw Max huddled on the floor. Her hands cradled her knees, which were pulled tightly into her chest. Linden sat next to her and watched as the shock of what she'd just seen sank into her. She felt like she was in a nightmare she couldn't wake from.

The door of the toilets creaked open and Dretch slunk in with his head down, so that his
spaghetti fringe dipped over his scarred face more than usual.

‘I … ah … I …' he mumbled.

Max started to cry. ‘It can't be true, Linden. It can't be!'

Dretch stared at her folded body bobbing up and down with each sobbing breath. He watched as her tears made small circular stains on her suede trainers, her sniffles reverberating off the walls so they sounded even sadder.

‘Remember, this is Blue,' Linden said firmly. ‘What we see isn't always what is happening.'

Dretch took an awkward step towards Max but then stopped, unsure of what to do. His spindly fingers came out of his pocket and he reached over and patted her head.

‘I think Linden's right,' he said gruffly. ‘I worked with Blue long enough to know he's up to something, I just don't know what it is yet.'

Max wanted to disappear forever from who she was and what she'd just seen.

‘I want to go home.' Her voice fluttered around the room like a broken-winged butterfly, but after she'd said it, she realised she didn't have a home anymore. Not now that her mother wasn't there.

Suddenly she had this itching, breathless need
to run. To get away from Spyforce. To get away from what had happened.

She stood up as another wave of nausea swiftly came over her, but it was then she realised it wasn't being in or getting away from any one place that she needed. She needed to get away from what she'd just found out and, no matter where she went, she knew she never could.

The Sleek Machine swayed and lurched in the fury of thrashing winds tearing at the craggy coastline of Cape Wrath. The wind circled around them like a pack of howling wolves, biting into them with each ice-filled blast. Sleek held the controls firm as he negotiated each gusting push and shove that slammed into the machine, until he finally landed on the damp, rock-strewn ground.

Sleek took the goggles Harrison offered him and gave a sombre nod of farewell. A farewell, he knew, that may be their last. He adjusted his goggles before taking off into the sky, reaching his oscillation speed and disappearing seconds later.

Harrison looked around him at the gloomy horizon and pulled his overcoat tighter across his chest. A white mist whipped up from the freezing waves of the Atlantic Ocean smacked into him, leaving him cold and stinging.

‘So this is where you live?' His lips moved slowly in the biting cold.

From over the horizon a four-wheel drive vehicle with thick, all-terrain tyres drove into view. It bumped over the gnarled and stony landscape before coming to an abrupt stop.

‘Kronch. Of course,' Harrison murmured.

It always amazed Harrison that Blue kept
Kronch on as one of his henchmen, especially considering his brain was rarely used for thinking.

Kronch lifted his log-shaped legs and tennis racquet-sized shoes out of the vehicle with a concerted wheeze.

‘Your lift awaits.' He swung his arm out as if he was a doorman at an expensive hotel.

Harrison climbed inside and strapped himself in, happy to be out of the gnawing wind. Kronch took a small device from his pocket and seemed to be taking a reading of the area.

‘Well done. You're here alone. It's good to see you can follow orders when you want to,' Kronch snivelled as he squeezed his jellied belly behind the wheel.

Harrison knew it was a dig at his last days with Blue at Spyforce and the conflicting views of the two men when it came to running the agency. Harrison believed in a sense of honesty and fair play, whereas Blue couldn't see the harm in bending a few rules to make money. Selling Spyforce inventions to known criminals, for example. Inventions such as the Doppelgänger.

Harrison stared outside as the grey and brown landscape blurred past.

There was something else he noticed. Kronch
hadn't blindfolded him. He thought meeting at Cape Wrath was to conceal the real location of Blue's mansion, but here he was being driven there in murky daylight. It could mean Blue had a security system in place that Harrison could not hope to renegotiate if he returned. Or, and this second idea seemed more likely, Blue planned Harrison would never leave.

Kronch wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left, sending the vehicle ricocheting off a large rock before hitting the ground with a bouncing thud. Harrison dug his heels into the floor and gripped the armrest even tighter, refusing to be thrown around by Kronch's attempts to frighten him. He held firm and stared into the rear-view mirror, catching Kronch's thick-witted grin. Blue and his pack of brainless thugs could try to scare him all they liked. Harrison had no intention of letting them get to him, and he became even more determined in his refusal to be afraid.

The jolting ride continued up a slippery, mud-soaked hill, and it was only when they reached the top that the vision of Blue's property appeared before them.

Only his property turned out to be a castle.

Flanked by eight round towers joined by stone curtained walls, the castle keep rose in the centre of the fortress, dominating not only the castle but also the windswept hill it rested on.

‘This is it,' Kronch yelled into the wind, bringing the vehicle to an abrupt, screeching halt.

Harrison stepped out and watched as the car drove off in a shower of rocks and mud. He walked towards the entrance of the castle but stopped as he reached the deep, cold moat, snaking around the ancient building and licking its algae-stained walls. It looked dismal and dark. As he was about to turn away, something in the moat moved, breaking the icy surface in an angry splash, as if lashing out against being there.

The drawbridge then began to slowly lower towards him. On either side of the rough, splintered bridge, great iron chains slowly unwound in a yawning, screaming creak, like the souls of a thousand dead had risen to welcome guests who entered.

The drawbridge finally slammed into the ground with a dull, exhausted thud. Harrison squinted into the dim arched entranceway and saw a figure walk from the shadows.

‘Welcome.' Blue strode across the bridge in his immaculately polished shoes. He looked smug and
lordly, delighted to be able to show off his not-so-humble home.

‘Sorry about the weather. It's unusual to be so chilly at this time of year.'

Harrison plunged his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘I haven't come all this way to talk about the weather, Theodoran.'

Blue was disappointed that Harrison didn't seem more impressed, but immediately recovered his arrogance. He straightened his back and flicked his head in a superior gesture. ‘I knew all I needed was to create the right conditions and you'd come running.'

‘Well, I'm here now and I don't plan on staying long.'

A creepy smile slithered onto Blue's lips.

‘Oh, but there's so much to talk about. All those old times. You and I, side by side, working together to create the greatest agency the world had ever seen.'

An angry gust of wind bullied its way between the two men.

‘We may have been physically side by side,' Harrison said, at pains to make his views clear, ‘but our ideas on what made an agency great were never closely aligned.'

‘Come now. You know you wanted exactly what I wanted … it was simply our methods that varied in a few minor ways.'

Harrison had finished talking about the past and wanted Blue to know it.

‘What is it you want, Theodoran?'

‘Ah, still the same old Harrison, I see. Straight down to business.'

Harrison held his gaze firm, refusing to buy into any of Blue's games.

‘Let's get out of the cold, shall we?' Blue suggested casually. ‘We can discuss matters further in more comfortable surrounds.'

Blue stood aside, inviting Harrison into the dark interior of the castle. Their footsteps reverberated off the stone floor, echoing around their heads into the shadowy corners of the lofty ceilings. Behind them, the screeching crank of winding chains drew the heavy wooden drawbridge to a booming close.

The Time and Space Machine flung Max, Linden, Ben and Eleanor through space so quickly that, in a matter of seconds, they were transported from Spyforce HQ in London to Max's lounge room in Sydney. In a flash of fluorescent light they hovered momentarily in the air before floating gently to the floor.

Max recoiled, taking a sudden deep breath. She had known it would be hard to come home, but now that she was actually here, it felt like she'd been punched hard in the chest.

When Dretch alerted Ben and Eleanor about what he'd told Max, they immediately hurried to the toilets and found her slumped in Linden's arms, crying. Ben carefully picked her up and Eleanor wrapped her in a sweeping shawl.

Ben softly lifted Max's chin and looked intently into her eyes. ‘I'm not ready to believe anything that comes from Blue. Remember that. And now we're going to get you home, where we can take proper care of you and wait to see what has really happened.'

Max nodded her head lifelessly and after a brief and sad goodbye to Steinberger, they had left.

‘Let me get that for you.' Linden leant across and took off Max's backpack. Normally she would
have told him she could do it herself, but today she lowered her shoulders with a listless, resigned slouch, letting the backpack slide off into Linden's waiting hands.

The apartment was still overrun with unopened wedding presents, baskets of fruit, boxes of chocolates, flowers and cards, so that it looked like a party where no-one had turned up. It only made Max feel sadder.

Ben kept looking at a drawn and pale Eleanor, as if he was scared she was going to break, and Linden was never far from Max's side. They hadn't slept for over twenty-four hours. They hadn't been able to. Just closing their eyes filled their minds with the same terrible images.

No-one knew what to say or do. It seemed everything they thought of was trivial and unimportant compared to what had happened.

‘Max, love, can I get you anything?' Ben stared at her anxiously.

‘No thanks, Ben. I think I'll go to my room.'

Max started climbing the stairs. Ben couldn't stand the idea of her being alone. ‘How about we make up a bed for Linden on your floor? Would you like that?'

‘Sure.' Max paused. ‘We should tell Dad. And Aidan.'

‘We'll wait until we know for certain what has happened.' Eleanor had seen the tape too, and although she felt despair at what she'd seen, she too wasn't ready to believe anything that had come from Blue.

After Eleanor and Ben had made up a makeshift bed for Linden on Max's floor, they closed the curtains, kissed both of them and left the bedroom.

Max's bed was normally so soft and comfortable that one of her favourite parts of the day was sinking into it, but now it felt big and cold, and no matter how much she snuggled in, she couldn't get warm.

Linden lay on his back on the floor, the reading lamp throwing a soft glow over both of them.

‘Linden?'

‘Yeah?'

‘I don't want to do this anymore.'

‘What?' He held his breath and felt his body tense all over.

Then she said it. The thing Linden had dreaded most.

‘Be in Spyforce.'

Linden turned over to face Max. ‘Sure you can.
You just don't feel like it now. Later on when this is all sorted out, it'll be different.'

‘No,' Max whispered. ‘I can't.'

The way she said it made Linden feel like he'd lost his footing and fallen over the edge of a deep ravine.

‘I … I …' Max knew what she had to say but every ounce of her was trying to resist it. ‘I can't be a spy anymore.'

‘But Max, you're a great spy. A real natural. You've worked so hard … and look at all the things you've learnt, like …'

‘Like this business is too dangerous, and if you stay long enough you lose.'

There was a grinding pause between them.

‘I almost lost my dad and you, and now I've lost my …' She tried to steel herself for the rest of what she had to say. ‘Look at Alex. She lost her dad. And Dretch, he was a top spy before the accident on his last mission, and now he's a maintenance operator. Plomb was nearly blown up and Quimby and Steinberger aren't even safe in their own homes.'

Linden sat up. He felt like he was in a whirlpool, sinking, about to be swallowed up. He had to make Max change her mind.

‘At first I thought it was great,' Max went on.
‘When I wrote my spy stories, I'd take on the bad guys and defeat them and the world would be a safer place … But it's not safe. It's a world where people die and get kidnapped and buildings with your mum in them explode. Why didn't I see that before?'

She gasped from the effort of what she'd said. It was true. Knowing she was the cause of her mother's kidnapping and possibly her death, Max had lost the one thing that made her want to fight crime. The knowledge that, no matter what happened, somehow Spyforce could make it all right again. If what she saw on the memory stick was true, this time there was no-one who could make things right ever again.

‘And Linden, there's something else …'

‘What's that?'

‘Since Mum was kidnapped, I haven't been able to get a clear picture of her in my head. I try to see her in my mind but it's like an old photo that's out of focus. And when I do remember times we had together, all I can remember are the bad ones. The times when we yelled at each other or fought, or when I said really mean things to her.' She drew in a quick breath. ‘I'm scared, Linden. What if she really is dead and I can never say sorry for all the times I
was horrible? What if I can never tell her that she's a really great mum and I'm so proud of her because she's smart and strong and …' She gasped again as tears salted her cheeks. ‘I really love her.'

Linden looked at Max's shaking shoulders. He stood up, sat on the edge of her bed and put his arms around her. Her whole body trembled and Linden just held her and let her cry.

When she had settled a little, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Sorry. It must sound silly, huh?'

Linden gave Max a half-smile. ‘It doesn't sound silly. I think about those kind of things every day.'

Max had been so caught up in her sadness she'd forgotten about Linden's mum.

‘It's almost three years since Mum died and I still have things I want to tell her. Especially if I feel sad.'

‘So what do you do?' Max sniffed.

‘I tell her anyway. She's always listening.' He looked down and let loose a small, crooked smile. ‘She had the best hearing of anyone I know. No matter where I was, if I mumbled or complained about something, she'd hear me. I could be whole rooms away in the house or even in the yard and she'd still hear. Never worked out how she did it.'

‘How do you stop missing her?'

‘I don't. It just doesn't hurt as much as it did. At first I was really angry. Angry at everyone and anything. Angry at the doctors because they couldn't cure her cancer, angry at Dad for not talking to me, angry at myself for not taking better care of her when she was here.'

Max couldn't imagine Linden angry with anyone.

‘And you know what, I couldn't remember what she looked like either. I'd lie awake at night and try to remember things we did, homework we'd sat over, holidays we went on. I'd sneak old photo albums into my room and look at them, trying to remember.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Cried a lot at first. I don't remember much else. Then eventually it all came back. Little things at first. Her laugh, a few jokes she'd told me, times when I'd fallen asleep lying on her lap while she read me stories. It was all there in my head. I guess I just had to get over being so sad about it.'

Linden looked up briefly at Max and even though her hair was messy and her eyes were red and puffy, he thought she looked pretty.

‘Max, can I tell you something?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I just want you to know that I … well … I really …'

The muffled sound of someone knocking on the front door filtered up from downstairs.

‘Who's that?' Max slipped under the blankets.

Linden got up and put his ear against the door. He heard Eleanor talking to someone, but after a few minutes, the front door closed and it was quiet again.

‘Whoever it was, it sounds like they didn't stay.'

Linden went back to his makeshift bed and, moments later, there was a knock on Max's door.

‘Max, honey, it's your friend Toby. I told him you weren't feeling well but he really wants to see you,' Eleanor said softly.

‘Toby?' she whispered to Linden. ‘What's he doing here?'

Linden frowned. ‘Not sure.' There was something about Toby being there that really annoyed him. ‘You don't have to see him if you don't want to.'

Max sat up and gathered the blankets around her. ‘No, it's okay.' She turned to the door. ‘Come in.'

Toby walked in, dropped his bag on the floor and sat on the bed next to Max as if he did the same thing every day.

‘I'll be downstairs if you need me.' Eleanor quietly closed the door.

‘You really need to check your answering machine. I had a look as we passed it in the hallway and you have thirty-two messages.'

‘Yeah, we've um … we've been …' Max didn't know how to explain.

‘We've been busy,' Linden said abruptly, staring at Toby as a warning for him to drop it.

Suddenly Toby became serious. ‘I'm only joking, Max. I know what happened to your mum. It was all over the TV.'

He went quiet, checking to see if Max wanted to say anything, but she didn't.

‘They said your mum's been kidnapped, but they wouldn't say why or who did it. At school today they wouldn't tell me where you were and when I called your mum's work, they wouldn't say anything about it.'

Still Max didn't speak.

Linden stood up, ready to show Toby out. ‘I think it'd be better if you left.'

Toby ignored Linden's offer. ‘What's going on, Max? I'm sorry for just barging in and I know you probably don't want me here, but I wanted to make sure you were okay and see if there's anything I could do.'

In the past, whenever Toby was this close to
her, Max would either get away from him as soon as she could or be ready with a verbal attack that was sharp and funny, but there was something in his voice Max had never heard before. Something that made her want to tell him everything.

Linden saw that look in her eyes and suddenly realised he didn't like how close Toby was sitting to Max. ‘I can take you downstairs and we'll call you if –'

‘Mum's been kidnapped by this guy who hates us because Linden and I are spies and we've ruined his plans on a few missions we did for this intelligence agency called Spyforce, only now it looks like he may have killed her.'

Toby didn't know whether to believe her or not. It sounded more like the plot of an action film than the life of the slightly weird girl in his class.

‘Killed her?'

Now Linden really needed Toby to leave. ‘Max is upset, Toby. She's not really making any sense right now.'

Linden knew they could use the Neuro Memory Atomiser to wipe Toby's memory of what Max had just told him, but to do that they'd need to tell Quimby why they needed it, and revealing
Spyforce information to a non-Spyforce person could get Max kicked off the Force. And despite what Max had said about leaving, he had no intention of letting her quit, or get expelled.

‘What are you going to do?'

Linden clenched his teeth as Toby put his hand on Max's knee.

‘There's nothing I can do,' Max whispered.

‘Is it true, Linden?' Toby turned to him. He looked sincere, but Linden didn't want to tell him anything.

‘We don't know what's happening,' Linden said with an edge to his voice.

‘But you can't just sit here. We have to do something.'

Max's palm computer beeped from her pack. ‘Spyforce!' She reached in and grabbed the computer while Linden pulled Toby to the floor, out of sight of the computer's screen.

Max opened the connection and activated the message.

‘Max? Err … ahem.'

Linden held his hand over Toby's mouth and watched as Max recoiled slightly from the computer.

‘It's me, Dretch.' He moaned as if he was having trouble knowing what regular people
did after they said hello. ‘Ah … everything okay there?'

‘Sort of. Not really,' Max replied.

Toby pulled Linden's hand away and whispered, ‘Who's Dretch?'

Linden scowled and put his hand back. ‘Someone you don't want to know.'

‘No. Course not. Right. Well,' Dretch continued uneasily. ‘I've been doing some thinking about your mum.'

‘You have?' Max felt weird talking to Dretch. As if she'd suddenly decided it was a good idea to put her head in the mouth of a crocodile.

‘Yeah. It's no secret I didn't think much of either of you two when you first came to the Force, but now, well, Harrison and Steinberger like you so there must be something good there.'

Linden and Max's eyes met. This was probably the closest thing to a compliment they would ever get from Dretch.

‘I don't think your mother's dead.'

Max's grip on her computer tightened. ‘How do you know that?'

‘There are a few things that don't add up.' His voice wheezed out of the speakers. ‘I used to do data analysing when I was a young agent and I've
analysed the recording of the … explosion … and there's a point within the digital coding of the tape where the pixellation becomes more like a computer-generated image than a recording of an actual event.'

Linden signalled to Toby to stay quiet as he moved next to Max and spoke to Dretch. ‘At the point just before the explosion?'

‘Exactly.'

‘So …' Max needed to get it straight. ‘The part we see of my mother standing at the bars of the cell is real but the rest never happened?'