Below Zero

14 OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA ^NOW

Last term, one of the kids in Zak’s school died. It happened on a Saturday, so on Monday they had this big assembly. Mrs Thompson, the head teacher, told the whole school what happened, and lectured them about how they had to be careful when they went to the coast. The sea was dangerous, she said, and when it was cold like that, it could shock you and you’d drown.

Zak already knew all that stuff, everyone did, but Jason Crowley from Year Six must have thought he was indestructible or something, because one Saturday in October when he was messing about on the harbour wall, he got this crazy idea it would be fun to jump in. The cold shocked him, making him take a deep breath – except instead of breathing air, he breathed cold, salty sea water. After that he went under and didn’t come back up. The lifeboat crew found him that evening, but it was way too late for Jason Crowley.

On the way to Mrs Coulson’s maths class after assembly, Krishna Gopal told Zak that when you drown, your whole life flashes in front of you. Properly, he said. Every second of it. In fact, any sudden death was the same according to Kris. He told Zak you see it all in slow motion, playing out like a film.

Zak had never doubted Kris’s words, but as the Spider loomed over him, its pincers lightly touching his hands, Zak’s short life did not flash through his mind. Nu-uh. Not at all. There were no happy visions for Zak Reeves in his dying moments. Instead, he started to drown, but it wasn’t cold sea water that washed over him, it was emotion. Strong and suffocating emotion, flooding like a tidal wave.

Terror, guilt, sadness, joy, jealousy – every emotion he’d ever had.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the flood of emotion stopped. The turmoil was replaced by the same queasy, floating feeling he’d had before. He was hanging in the darkness again, and he didn’t dare look down because he knew what he’d see: the seething ocean of a billion insects. And it felt like something was watching his thoughts, feeling his emotions, crawling across his brain. The ache pulsed behind his right eye, throbbing like a fresh bump on the head, and Zak had the strongest sense something was examining what grew there. The ache intensified, then faded as the invader searched deeper into his mind. Zak tried to move, but his body refused to do what he wanted. His arms wouldn’t budge, his legs were frozen in place, his head was filled with white noise and…

It’s trying to tell me something. The thought struck him like a sudden slap in the face. It isn’t attacking me. It’s trying to tell me something important.

No, not something important. This was way beyond important. It was crucial. It was monumental. It was world-changing.

But it didn’t know how to tell him. There were no words; there was just white and black and…

Ice.

Something buried deep inside ice. Something old. Something lost. No; something that was hiding. And it was calling to Zak, not saying his name exactly, not with words, but it was calling to him all the same.

‘— away from him!’ Mum’s shrieking commands cut through the white noise filling his mind. There was a whoosh and a pop as the world came back to him and he opened his eyes to see the Spider still standing where it had been when he last saw it – legs taut, arms ready, body tilted towards the spot where he had been lying.

Everything else in the room had gone crazy. Somewhere behind him, Mum was shouting and hammering at the control tablet. May was yelling at the top of her voice, and Dad was dragging him by the shoulders, pulling him across the floor to the side of the room.

‘I’ve got you. It’s OK. It’s OK,’ Dad kept saying over and over again.

‘Is it alive?’ Zak was breathing hard. ‘What was it doing?’ The unreachable image of something important lost in the ice was fading.

‘No, it’s not alive,’ Dad said. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘It’s not supposed to be.’ May rushed to her brother’s side. ‘But what if it is? And where are the others? Maybe they did something.’

In the centre of the room, the Spider came to life once more, tilting back and swivelling in their direction.

‘What’s it doing?’ Zak got to his feet.

Mum stabbed at the control tablet again. ‘It’s not responding to anything.’

‘This is not cool,’ May said. ‘Literally. We have to get away from it.’ She grabbed Zak’s sleeve and dragged him towards the door. ‘We’re not staying in here.’

‘You’re right,’ Dad agreed. ‘You two go back to The Hub. We’ll try to figure out what’s going on.’

‘Seriously?’ May hit the button and the door slid open. ‘You want to stay in here with that thing? And you want us to go out there on our own? There are two more of those things, remember? They must’ve done something to the people here. And what about Dima? Have you forgotten about him?’

‘Of course not, but we need to—’

‘Wait,’ Mum said. ‘He’s doing something.’

Halfway out of the door, Zak glanced back to see the Spider lower its body, the intricate leg joints shifting its weight.

‘He’s going into a cycle,’ Mum said. ‘How is that possible? It must be receiving instructions from somewhere.’

As she spoke, a high-pitched whirring came from the Spider, and it began to move its body in quick, jerking movements. Its legs remained strong and stationary, keeping it stable, and it was moving at such speed, it was almost impossible to detect the tiny changes in direction, but Zak knew what it was doing. He’d sat at the kitchen table at home, watching videos of it doing this, Mum and Dad showing it off like proud parents.

The Spider was printing something.

‘What is it?’ Mum said. ‘What’s he spinning?’

Spinning? Yeah, that’s about right. Like a spider spinning its web to catch a fly. Except we’re the flies.

‘I can’t tell.’ Dad couldn’t take his eyes off it as he returned to where Mum was standing. They were lost to it now; the way Zak and May had seen them lost to their work so many other days of his life.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ May nudged her brother.

On the underside of the Spider’s body, the stinger-like printer head was moving so quickly it was a blur, as if the monster was conjuring objects out of thin air. Beneath it, where Zak had been lying a couple of minutes ago, there were now two discs, no larger than a ten-pence piece. Beside them, a series of electronic components that could have been ripped out of a smartphone or a games console. As the printer continued to spin tiny new parts, the Spider’s arms retracted, selected two fine attachments, and began fixing the components together. Fine wisps of smoke snaked up from it, and there was a vague smell of burning.

May tugged at the back of her brother’s coat. ‘Zak, let’s go.’ She raised her voice. ‘Mum. Dad. Please. I’m scared.’

Mum approached the Spider. ‘Just a second, sweetie. We need to…’ Her words trailed off. ‘Adam, what does this look like to you?’

Dad went to join her, crouching to get a better view of what the Spider was building. ‘It looks like… I’m not sure. Is he building…? No, it can’t be. We don’t even have blueprints for something as sophisticated as this.’

As the Spider continued to assemble the parts, the high-pitched whirring stopped and the needle-like printer head retracted back into its underside. The room was overcome with an eerie silence. The only sound was the gentle tick tick tick as the spider fitted the components together.

‘It’s building itself,’ Zak said. ‘A small version of itself.’

‘Can’t be,’ Mum told him. ‘That’s impossible.’

Impossible? That was a word Zak had heard too much since arriving at Outpost Zero. But he was beginning to think anything was possible.

The Spider’s arms jittered and flicked at incredible speed, and within less than a few minutes of starting, it stopped. It didn’t step back or sit or crouch, it just stopped.

They all stayed exactly as they were.

No one said anything until May broke the silence. ‘Can we please go. Like, now?’

But Mum and Dad weren’t listening. They were scientists – robotic engineers – and they had witnessed something they had never seen before. Their robot had built a smaller version of itself. Now it had their undivided attention.

‘Hey!’ May shouted at them. ‘We’re here. Right here. Zak and me. Forget about your stupid robots for a minute and think about us!’

The small version of the Spider tapped its legs on the smooth surface of the lift. Tick-tack.

‘Wait. Did you see that?’ Mum asked.

‘I saw it,’ Dad replied.

‘Mum!’ May shouted again. ‘We’re literally standing right here!’

The small legs tapped again, one at a time, and the tiny monster began to move forward. Slowly at first, but gathering speed. It made a beeline for Dad who stood there, transfixed as it scuttled towards his foot. But it didn’t stop there. As soon as it reached him, it gripped the front of his boot and began to climb.

That’s when Dad started to back away. He lifted his leg, shaking it, trying to get the scuttler off, but it clung to the coarse fabric of his boots and continued to clamber higher. Dad slammed his foot down, dislodging the creepy robotic-spider-thing. It swung to one side, losing its grip, and skittering away across the floor. Before it came to a stop, though, it righted itself, planted its feet and headed for Dad once more.

Tick-tack-tick-tack. The noise was so horrible. Tick-tack-tick-tack.

The way the scuttler moved was so lifelike. It reminded Zak of a spider scurrying across the carpet, heading for a dark place. But this thing wasn’t trying to escape; it was fixed on attacking Dad, and there was no sign it was going to give up.

May was out of the door faster than Zak had ever seen her move. Zak was close behind her, Mum and Dad too, but the scuttling robot was catching up. Behind it, in the centre of the module, the drone was spinning up for a second cycle and Zak had a feeling that soon there would be two of these little monsters to deal with.

Full of confusion and fear, Zak chased May along the tunnel, glancing back to see Mum and Dad make it out of the Drone Bay. Mum stopped to watch as Dad slammed his fist on the button and the door swished shut. But he was a fraction of a second too late.

The scuttler slipped through the gap as the door closed, and it jumped. It travelled at least a metre through the air and landed on Dad’s thigh. Immediately, it was on the move again, scurrying up his trousers, heading for the hem of his jacket and the dark safety beneath.

‘Get off!’

Zak had never seen Dad so scared.

‘Get off!’ He swatted at his leg, swiping the thing away. Once again, it hit the floor with a quiet ting. Its legs skittered as it flipped itself over, but this time it wasn’t quick enough. It had fallen close to Mum and she brought her boot down on it with a satisfying crunch.

‘Got it.’ She lifted her foot and inspected the tiny broken robot on the pale blue floor.

‘Is it… dead?’ Zak wasn’t even sure it had ever been alive.

‘Who cares?’ May opened the entrance to The Hub. ‘Just leave it and let’s get out of here.’

But they couldn’t get out of there; that was the problem. There was no way for them to leave, and there was nowhere for them to go. They were trapped and alone. In the middle of nowhere.

And from inside the Drone Bay came the high-pitched sound of the Spider going into a third cycle.