City of the Falling Sky (18 page)

“
So his hopes of victory are
now with his son, Kimmy?”

“
Yeah. Gonna be hoping for a
long time, though. Kimmy just . . . hasn’t got it, you
know?”

“
Poor Kimmy,” Seckry
said.

“
The thing is,” Tenk went
on. “Kimmy is like, a maths genius. He’s supposed to be amazing. He
won the Skyfall Maths Standout of the Year award recently and guess
what? He couldn’t even bear to tell his dad because he was
embarrassed about it. All his dad cares about is
Friction.”

The next day, as Seckry opened his locker to
get his astrophysics workbook, a note fell to the floor.

Think you’re good at Friction, eh? Well I
don’t. I was only saying that stuff yesterday to make Kimmy cry.
The guy’s pathetic. And when you won those games? I know you got
lucky. Meet me at the training room after school today without the
others and we’ll find out just how good you are. We’ll have a real
match. One on one. A duel.

Seckry glanced all around him. Glaring in his
direction was Lessana. Silently she mouthed, “
Too
scared?
”

Seckry shut his locker and walked away
without saying anything back. He was beginning to see why the
others disliked this Lessana so much.

When the end of the day came, Seckry began
making his way home with Eiya and Tenk, but as they were leaving
the building, he stopped and started tapping his foot.

“
You alright?” Tenk
said.

“
Yeah I just . . . I gotta
sort something out.” He knew Lessana would be waiting for him, and
he wanted to prove to her that he was worthy of being on the
team.

“
I’ll tell you tomorrow,”
Seckry said. “See you in a bit, Eiya.”

He left them staring at him in confusion.

As he entered the training room, Lessana
stood up and smiled triumphantly.

“
I thought you’d got scared
and chickened it for a moment,” she said.

“
Bring it on,” Seckry
said.

Seckry stepped into his pod and shut the door
behind him.

“
If you want to quit,”
Lessana said through the intercom, “all you gotta say is, ‘I’m a
wimp, let me out,’ okay?”

Seckry smirked. “No one is quitting.
Someone’s walking out of here a winner.”

“
We’ll see,” Lessana said
with a malicious chuckle.

“
Just tell the thing to
start, Lessana,” Seckry said.

As soon as Lessana started the game, Seckry
appeared in a forest at night. He felt the artificial chill of the
night air and he could hear owls hooting in the trees. He looked
all around him. No sign of Ogg. He walked forward a few steps,
keeping a look out in all directions. He knew this wasn’t going to
be a simple game of one on one Friction. Lessana was here to prove
a point and he knew she had every intention of beating him.

He wandered around a bit more, flicking his
head in all directions to try to intercept a possible sneak attack.
But there was nothing.

Then something strange happened. There was a
sharp electronic buzz and the forest around him momentarily turned
into a wire mesh before returning to its normal state.

Seckry spun around, taking everything in.
There was silence. Then came a high pitched screech and Seckry’s
pod flashed bright red.

The female Friction voice said, “Warning.
This Friction session has severely malfunctioned and must be
terminated. All players must evacuate their pods immediately to
avoid any harm. Warning. This Friction session has severely
malfunctioned and must be terminated. All players must evacuate
their pods immediately to avoid any harm.”

What?
Seckry thought to himself. But
he had no time to question what had happened. He had to get out of
the game and out of the pod. He reached for the emergency stop
button on his belt, but as he pressed the area, he realised the
button had vanished. Seckry saw something else; Anikam’s fur,
his
fur was drenched in blood.

“
What’s going on?” Seckry
shouted. “Lessana! Can you hear me?” But there was no answer. Was
she stuck inside the game as well? “Lessana!” Seckry shouted again,
over the voice of the Friction announcer.

“
Warning. Session will begin
purge in ten seconds. All players must evacuate their pods
immediately to avoid harm. Warning. Session will begin purge in
eight seconds. All players must evacuate their pods immediately to
avoid harm.”

Begin purge? What did that mean?
Seckry began thrashing about as much as he could, trying to hit the
edge of the pod and break himself free. But he knew the simulation
was still running and in the real world he’d be floating in mid
air, unable to touch anything.

Then a distorted cackle came through the
buzzing of the machine.

“
Remember what you gotta
say, Seckry?”

“
Lessana!”

Lessana laughed cruelly. “Just say the words
and it’s all over.”

“
The words?”

“
What are you,
Seckry?”

“
Lessana, get me out of
here!”

“
What are you, Seckry?
You’re a w . . .”

“
I’m a wimp! I’m a wimp! Let
me out!”

As soon as Seckry said that, the machine gave
an electronic sigh and Seckry felt the floor of the pod hit him
with a thump.

He wrenched himself up to his feet and kicked
the door open before stumbling out into the training room.

Lessana was standing over him with a huge
grin on her face.

“
What happened?” Seckry
said, out of breath. “I was locked in there! The thing
malfunctioned!”

Lessana let out another laugh.

“
Come on, Seckry, you’re not
that stupid are you? I knew I’d fool you first off, but I can’t
believe you haven’t worked it out by now.”

“
You
did all that to
me?”

“
It was a prank! You sounded
like such a girl, screaming, ‘Lessana! Lessana!” She burst into
another fit of laughter.

Seckry felt anger bubbling inside of him.

“
I thought the machine was
going to kill me in there!” he said furiously. “I thought you
wanted to have a duel, not play some stupid prank on
me.”

“
No, watching you squirm
like a drowning rat was much funnier than duelling you, I have to
say.”

Seckry picked himself up and slotted his
Anikam avatar into his pocket.

“
Goodnight, Lessana,” he
said stiffly, and left her laughing.

“
She is in serious trouble,
man,” said Tenk, the next morning.

“
Did she program it to do
all that herself?” Seckry asked.

“
Lessana? No way. She
couldn’t program a Friction game if her life depended on it. Nah,
those prank games are downloadable from FrictionPranks.sf. Nasty
bloody things. The official Friction board has been trying to shut
those kind of sites down for years but as soon as they do, another
one pops up on the net. It basically just proves to everyone what a
coward Lessana is. She arranges to duel you one on one and then
pulls some stupid stunt on you instead. She’s clearly afraid of
you. She knows you’ll beat her hands down in a duel so she decided
to humiliate you instead.”

Later that day Seckry received a text message
from Mr Vance.

Seckry, Thaumatop has agreed to meet me in
private later this afternoon. I’ll let you know what happens.

Seckry dropped his phone back into his pocket
with a feeling of hope. If anyone would know what the innoya root
was, it would be the city’s professor of plant biology.

Seckry, Eiya, Tenk, and Tippian spent most of
the day with Ms Butterkins in the school sanctuary, as they had
triple animal care, and were given the task of feeding baby
bubberybirds, which were lively little things that kept flying
around the room and settling in Butterkins’ frizzy hair, mistaking
it for a nest.

At the end of the day, Seckry and Eiya stayed
behind and went to visit Vance.

“
I took my portable recorder
with me and switched it on in my pocket,” Vance said, looking
rather concerned. He pulled the recorder out and pressed play.
“Listen to this,” he said with an expression of worry.

There was muffled, distorted noise for a
while, as though Vance was still walking, and then closing of
doors, reverberating as though in a large hall. Then came a voice.
Vance’s.

“
Professor, it’s good to see
you.”

There was no reply.

“
I’m grateful for your time.
I know you must be busy.”

There was silence again for a while until
–

“
Jonn. You have to forget
you’ve ever heard this word.”

“
Innoya?” Vance
asked.

“
Don’t! Don’t say it in this
building,” the professor hissed. “The only reason I called you here
is to stop you from hounding me with letters and emails. Are you
trying to get me killed?”

“
I just thought
that–”

“
You just thought you’d
badger me until I gave in, that’s what. Well you’re meddling in
things that you shouldn’t be, Jonn. Who on earth mentioned that
word to you?”

“
I believe that Professor
Holdenbubble was overheard talking about it during his time here at
the university–”

“
Dear Gedin, Jonn. Don’t you
remember what happened to Holdenbubble?”

“
Yes but–”

“
You have to leave, I’m
afraid,” said the professor, and there was the ruffling sound of
material shifting.

“
Professor Thaumatop, I need
to know what’s happening at Endrin, and the innoya root has
something to do with it, doesn’t it?”

“
Out! And I never want to
hear from you again!” bellowed the professor, and the recording
crackled with distortion.

Vance clicked the ‘stop’ button.

“
Wow . . .” said Seckry. “He
really wasn’t happy.”

Vance nodded concernedly. “I didn’t expect
him to react so badly. This innoya thing must be pretty powerful,
whatever it is.”

“
That Professor
Holdenbubble, who tutored Darklight and the others . . . what did
Thaumatop mean when he said ‘don’t you remember what happened to
him?’”

“
Holdenbubble was murdered,”
said Vance. “By who, nobody knows.”

With a smile, Seckry crossed off the last but
one day on his bedroom calendar before the Broken Motion gig. He
had been excited about finally seeing them live since he had bought
the tickets, and now he and Eiya were going to be heading backstage
with them. He couldn’t believe his luck. Not only would they get to
chat to the band about their music, but they’d be able to find out
more about this innoya thing, which seemed even more important
since Vance’s strange encounter with Professor Thaumatop.

That night, just before bed, Seckry’s mum sat
with him in the kitchen area and said, “So . . . you and Eiya are
getting along really well.”

“
Yeah” Seckry nodded. “She’s
great.”

Coralle smiled and nodded. “She’s different
to every other girl to you, isn’t she?”

“
Eiya? Yeah she’s really
down to earth. I thought having another girl in the house would be
a problem after a while, but she’s so easy to get on with . . . why
are you smiling at me like that, mum?”

“
Because for the past month
you’ve been happier than you’ve ever been since . . . well . . .
since your dad left.”

“
Yeah . . . I’m enjoying it
here,” Seckry said. “I’ve got good friends.”

“
And one very good friend in
particular,” Coralle said. “Whenever I say the word Eiya, your eyes
light up and your cheeks blush.”

“
What?” Seckry said
defensively.

“
They’re doing it now,” said
Coralle with a smile.

“
You know we’re just looking
after her, mum. I enjoy her company and she likes the same music as
me, that’s all.”

Coralle nodded. “I think you got really hurt
by that Natania girl and that fake date and you’ve put up a guard
around you. But I think Eiya means more to you than you’re letting
yourself believe.”

Seckry blushed and dismissed it before
heading to bed.

He didn’t fancy Eiya, did he? He could see
why people might think that. They spent most of their time together
in the day, they enjoyed each other’s company, and they even slept
in the same room. But there was a reason for that. There was
nowhere else for her to stay.

He sat on his bed and watched Eiya sleeping,
something he’d been doing quite often lately, before lying down and
sinking into a warm, fuzzy sleep.

During the day on Friday, Seckry and Eiya
kept giving each other excited glances during lessons, and when the
bell rang in their last lesson, botany, Seckry couldn’t contain
himself any more.

He crammed his lypicus bulbs into his
backpack and he, Eiya, and Tenk headed for the monorail.

“
You sure you don’t want to
come tonight?” Seckry asked Tenk.

“
Sorry man,” he said. “You
know I love The Broken Motion, but my nan’s visiting and I’m
telling you, if I ditched her to go to a gig, my life wouldn’t be
worth living.”