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.The contents of Kara’s medical kit were scattered all over the place.I scanned through the mess, snatching up a sedative pen and the penlight Kara had used to check Bill’s eyes.We kept moving, deeper into the research module.Another, smaller tunnel came up on our left and I almost stopped running again.I’d been down there only once before, into a room stained with Luke’s twenty-year-old blood.‘What’s wrong?’ Mr Hunter asked.‘Nothing,’ said Luke.‘Come on.’More noise up ahead, like someone beating at the walls with a hammer.I flicked on the torch as we left the last of the functioning ceiling lights behind.We barely ever came down this deep.The tunnel pressed in all around us now, the remnants of the old labs almost impossible to pick out in the ocean of concrete.The hammering sound was louder now.Slow, irregular smashing.‘So what’s the plan here?’ asked Luke.‘I just want to talk to him,’ I said.‘Yeah, but –’‘He knew about Tabitha!’ I said.‘He knew about stuff that no-one was meant to know! Don’t you think we should find out if that includes Tobias?’The light from behind us had all but faded away, leaving us to navigate by the light of Kara’s little torch.I flashed it around at the tunnel walls.Luke and I had spent a whole week mapping this place out, but it was such a labyrinth that I still got lost every time I came down here.‘Hang on a sec,’ said Luke, pointing past me.‘Turn your torch off.’I clicked the button on the penlight, plunging us into total darkness.Almost total darkness.A dim light slid across the wall up ahead, in and out of view, like it was coming from around a corner.‘There!’ said Luke.I edged towards the light, leaving the penlight switched off.The tunnel squeezed even tighter for a few metres, then widened out again, opening onto a room that seemed to have escaped the explosion and the concreting almost completely.It looked like Peter’s room had looked back in my vision with Soren’s dad and Remi Vattel.Two separate areas, divided by a wall of glass that had long since shattered to the floor.Bill was up the other end, standing with his back to us, waist-deep in smashed computers and upended tables and chairs, swinging a pickaxe out wide over his shoulder.He had one of Kara and Soren’s excavating helmets strapped to his head, which explained the light we’d seen coming in.Bill slammed the pickaxe down again, sending chips of concrete shooting into the darkness.He let out a wild, animal laugh, like nothing could give him more joy than tearing into that wall.‘Hey Bill,’ I said, walking slowly towards him.‘It’s good to see you awake again.’He whirled around, face masked in shadow, spot-lighting us in the beam from his helmet.‘You’re early.’‘Oh,’ I said.‘I’m sorry.We didn’t realise –’‘No, no, no, that’s enough!’ said Bill, raising a finger like a parent scolding their kid.‘Leave.You are the wrong one.I have told you this.You are not right, and you are all far too early for my – my purposes.’ He dropped the pickaxe and put his hands to his head.‘Maybe we should come back later,’ said Mr Hunter out of the corner of his mouth.‘You told us you needed our help,’ I said gently, edging forward again, flicking my torch back on to see him properly.‘Remember? Out at the airport.You said you needed Luke and me to –’‘NO!’ Bill bellowed, and I had to throw myself out of the way as a computer monitor suddenly leapt from the rubble and flew at me.The monitor smashed to pieces against the back wall, narrowly missing Luke and his dad.I straightened up again.‘Please, Bill.Talk to me.If you explain what you’re doing, maybe we can help.’‘No, I already –’ Bill muttered, hunching over like he was trying to get his head around something.‘That’s not how it works! I have seen this! You can’t – Argh!’He broke off in a rage, fists in the air, stomping the floor.The ground between us started moving.Something was rising up off the floor.Glass.The shattered dividing wall, thousands of jagged, glimmering shards, lifting into the air to form a deadly barrier between us and Bill.‘Jordan!’ said Luke urgently, running up to grab my arm.‘Let’s go.’‘Leave!’ Bill shouted, his face fractured and glinting behind the wall of glass.‘Leave me! I will come when you are needed!’He snatched up the pickaxe.Luke yanked at my arm again, dragging me towards the corridor.‘The time is coming!’ Bill raged on.‘It is coming! I will come for you!’Mr Hunter grabbed my other hand.They hauled me into the shadows, a second before Bill fired the shards at the wall, drowning his own shouting in a furious explosion of splintering glass.Chapter 10MONDAY, AUGUST 310 DAYS‘I want to go back and talk to him again,’ I said quietly, ducking under a low-hanging branch.‘Jordan…’ I could hear Luke switching into voice-of-reason mode.‘Do you really think you’re going to get anything out of him? I mean, he’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want to talk to us.’It was early morning, two days after Bill’s breakout.We were heading out past the south end of town to catch up with Reeve.It was a bit of a hike, but we’d made use of the journey to set up another fake campsite in the bush – half-buried rubbish and remnants of a makeshift shelter, just to keep the Co-operative guessing.And beyond that, I think Luke and I were both grateful for an excuse to get outside.Luke’s parents hadn’t spoken to each other since last night, when Mr Hunter had tried to intervene in an argument between Ms Hunter and Kara about not hanging up laundry in the kitchen.Luke’s mum had been furious at him for ‘taking that impossible woman’s side’, and angrier still when he’d refused to keep arguing with her about it.This, apparently, was the same ‘pig-headed, passive-aggressive crap’ that had led her to divorce him in the first place.Meanwhile, Cathryn had lost it with Georgia again – first for playing on her bed, and then for catching her making a grab at Ms Hunter’s kitchen keys – and Mike had taken to sneaking around with his old overseer notebook, trying to eavesdrop on my conversations with Luke.I had a feeling Soren had put him up to it.Bill was still roaming around in the depths of the Complex, smashing at walls, volatile as ever.It terrified me to think what might happen if he strayed into the living area.But all that didn’t excuse us from trying to get answers out of him when there were only ten days left until the end of the world.Kara was looking for a way to contain him
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