MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 11

Jonah didn’t need telling twice.

He still didn’t know if he could trust these new

acquaintances. Right now, though, they were all he had. He flew with them, along the busy streets, through panicking crowds. He glanced back, to see the Recyclers right behind him. They had folded up their legs beneath them and were speeding after their three targets like rockets.

‘We have to draw them away from the people!’ Jonah shouted. The Recyclers were digesting everything – and everyone – in their paths.

Jonah pointed his dragon’s snout upwards, beating his wings as hard as he could. The gryphon and the unicorn followed his lead, and the three of them soared into the sky. ‘They’re gaining on us!’ cried the unicorn.

She was right. Jonah could feel a pull on his tail: a vortex effect from the whirling drills, threatening to suck him in.

He saw a startled budgie frozen in his path, and he ducked beneath it. He hoped he had given it a wide enough berth for the Recyclers to miss it as they followed him.

The gryphon fell in at Jonah’s side. ‘Time to face facts, buddy,’ he growled. ‘The kid and me are done for.’ ‘No!’

‘Our exit halos are back behind the Icarus,’ said the gryphon. ‘We’ll never make it around these things, not a prayer!’

‘But I’m the one they really want. I could lead them away from you.’

The gryphon shook his head. ‘One for each of us, remember? I don’t know what you were thinking, Jason, coming here. Best we can do now, though, is to get you back to the real world. Where’s your exit halo? Tell me it’s somewhere close!’

Jonah surveyed the destruction below him. A giant scar of nothingness cut through the heart of The Mirrors. Most of MetaOx Street was destroyed, and momentarily he thought his exit halo had been Recycled with it.

Then he remembered. He had materialised in the souk. That was where he had to get back to. Jonah’s stomach turned to ice. It was too far away. He wouldn’t make it!

He dived towards Venus Park instead. He swooped over the heads of the courting couples and the marching protestors, and straight into the Delacroix gift shop, its door dissolving at his approach. The gryphon and the unicorn were right behind him, and the secret trapdoor was still exposed, still open.

They dropped through the trapdoor, and Jonah pulled it shut behind them.

The gryphon blinked as he looked around the gloomy cellar. ‘Where is it, then?’ he asked. ‘Your exit halo?’

‘Not here,’ said Jonah. ‘I’ve had a better idea.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’ the gryphon cried.

‘We can’t hide from them,’ said the unicorn. ‘They’ll eat right through these walls, then—’

‘I know,’ said Jonah. ‘That’s what I’m counting on.’ The cellar was already beginning to shake, as

the first drill head bit into it from above. Jonah took a deep breath, placed his claws against the wall, and summoned up the virus code that his classmate Harry had given him. He felt the data coursing through his virtual body – his father’s virtual body, rather – and into the source code of the cellar walls, which began to blur and distort.

In that same instant, the Recyclers arrived. They broke through the ceiling, bearing down upon their prey. Jonah and the others backed into a corner, but could go no further. Jonah wrapped his giant wings around his two new friends, in a hopeless attempt to protect them. A sharp drill tip pierced the scales on his back, and he screamed in pain and almost belched fire again, but stopped himself for fear of burning someone.