MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 39

Jonah thought he might have screamed as he was catapulted into the sky. He wasn’t sure. Any sound he might have made had been whipped away by the stinging wind before it could reach his ears.

When the Aboriginal driver had done this, he had made it look easy. He had been in perfect control of his body, as if he was flying. This was nothing like flying.

Jonah couldn’t control his arms or legs. They were flailing about, making things even worse. He could see the top of the rock below him.

Jonah was too high, coming in too fast. He didn’t stand a chance.

The lift had carried Granger up to the loading area. There, he had picked up an executive escape glider before climbing the ladder to the top of Ayers Rock. Four clusters of solar panels marred the top of Uluru. Granger looked underneath the panels, between their supporting steel girders, and scanned across the flat planes of the sun collectors.

He couldn’t see anyone up here, at least no one still standing. He couldn’t take any chances, though. Some of the bodies that were sprawled in the sand might still be clinging to life, and might raise the alarm if they saw him.

Granger ducked beneath an array of solar panels. He crouched down in the diffused moonlight beneath them, and pulled the glider harness onto his shoulders.

A shadow fell over him. Granger looked up, saw a dark shape in the sky between the translucent panels and the moon. A flock of cockatoos, he thought at first.

But, no, this shape was coming closer... It was plummeting towards him...

Granger flung himself aside as the solar panels exploded inwards.

He hadn’t moved quite fast enough. He was struck by something soft, warm and heavy. A body, he realised. A human body. The breath was knocked out of Granger as he landed on his stomach, and the intruder landed on his back.

He threw up his hands to protect his head from a shower of glass shards.

Jonah had tried to get his feet under him. Instead, he had sent himself into a spin. The last thing he had managed to do before impact was curl up into a ball.

He had been lucky. Instead of hitting an unyielding rock surface, Jonah had crashed into and through a grid of fragile solar panels. He should still have hit the rock beneath the glass panels hard, but something had cushioned his fall.

He tested each of his limbs in turn, wiggling toes and fingers. He was smarting all over, but nothing appeared to be broken. He hoped the same could be said of the Chang Bridge device in his pocket.

Jonah heard a sickly groan. He leapt to his feet, alarmed. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

His ‘cushion’ was alive, doubled over in pain and cupping a hand over his face to conceal his features. As the man rose to his feet, however, Jonah caught a glint of moonlight off the man’s shiny, metallic legs.

‘Oh no,’ Jonah gasped. ‘It...it’s you, isn’t it?’

Matthew Granger sighed. There were some drawbacks to fame.

He dropped his hand from his face, to look closely at the kid who had landed on him. The Guardians were recruiting them young these days, he thought.

The kid didn’t look like much: too scrawny to pose any real physical threat.

He pounced while the kid was still reeling in surprise. He grabbed hold of him, spun him around, clamped a hand to his mouth and forced him to his knees. ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you,’ Granger hissed in the kid’s ear. ‘I just want to get out of here. But make the slightest sound, and I’ll snap your neck!’