~

  Nielsen standing behind the lectern at the front of the assembly hall, Emily Plant, the deputy, behind him, no sign of the tension I picked up earlier, no way into his mind even though I can see him. Nielsen is the expert at wrapping his thoughts in a cocoon, a white cloud of nothing behind his pasty face, his spectacles a blank screen. His round collar like a priest's, but no religion here, not at the Schoester Academy. He's waiting for everyone to shut up. Shake the lank of hair to the side of my glasses, push the sleeves of my top up my arms, pull them down again, arms skinny like matchsticks. Swing my knee from side to side. Time wasted sitting here like a dumbcluck. Glance across. Garrick sat like a statue, meditating or something. You should have lost on purpose, that's what he said, to make everyone happy. Even Brelle. Yeah, right, Axel Grout loses maths quiz to new Leverhulme star. Be around the academy in minutes. No chance.

  Here we go, a tap on the microphone. The hum dies, silence. Everyone wants to know what's going on because this is unusual, we don't have assembly at the end of the school day.

  'There has been an incident...'

  Pause, looking around as if we're meant to guess.

  '... a student has gone missing.'

  Take a breath, process the words.

  'Beatie Brooke.'

  Brooke, right, junior by a year. Her elder sister Nelly Brooke is part of my subdivision. Pretty smart for her age, Beatie.

  'She was with her friends at lunchtime but failed to appear in class this afternoon.'

  Pause again. That's Nielsen for you, makes the most of the pauses.

  'If anybody has seen her, or has information about her whereabouts, then they must come forward immediately. Is that clear?' A scan of the hall. Kids nodding. You don't speak when Nielsen's speaking.

  'As a precaution, this evening, you will return to your residence supervised. You are not to leave here until your subdivision is called.' Another scan of the hall. For a moment it feels like Nielsen's gaze fixes on me. Only for a second. Like somehow I might know something. 'Above all, nobody is to walk through the park unaccompanied.' The look is severe. Nielsen knows about some of the things that go on in the park, romance behind the bushes, not always boy-girl, fights, and worse. 'You will wait in the foyer to be called.' Nielsen bats his cloak to one side, turns and vanishes through the door that leads from the hall to his office. Now the buzz starts up.

  Beatie Brooke. Where's she gone? How can anyone vanish from the academy with its high walls, metal tubes along the top so you'd have to have suction feet to climb over?

  In the foyer, waiting our turn, me aggro cos we're the last to go, as if Brelle organized it that way on purpose. Miles Hamming walked by a couple of times, his shoulder knocking me. Been in my face ever since he was moved to my subdivision from subdivision 5 because of trouble with one of the other kids. Like me, a shrimp, but that doesn't stop him picking on me. The shrimp and the weirdo facing off, what everyone would like to see. Except Grout can't fight for toffee. Not bad at maths too, Hamming, makes it more personal. Only two points behind in the last quiz. A big Oooh, from everyone when Brelle read out the marks like Hamming had beaten me. Fuckwits the lot of them.

  

  

  The park goes on for miles. The path to the residence clips one edge, a ten minute walk. Once tried to work out the perimeter but it's not circular, not oblong, bits and pieces sticking out here, going in there. Calculated the number to be about 57, means it has an average radius of 9 miles. Grass, trees, flat bits, hills and hollows, paths for cycling or skating. Skating's the thing these days, something I'm not bad at, bend at the knees, thighs working, arms swinging, has me gasping for breath after a while. When I'm on my skates I sometimes make my way to the binary maze. Know the maze by heart. Invented by Schoester, the founder of the academy. Pretty dumb and pretty smart at the same time. Find your way out by the numbers, turn them into binary, a sequence of ones and zeros, gives you the clue as to which way to go. They'd have checked these places for Beatie Brooke. Around the perimeter, along the paths, through the wood on their buggies. Weird, someone going missing.

  

  

  As we exit the park, the residence comes into view. One of five: different ages, different sexes, different talents. The method of Schoester: no clones, everyone with their talent, good at maths, good at running, better to mix it, not so competitive, some star on the piano like Garrick might inspire a mathematical genius – like heck – and a kid who's good at boxing might be good at sliders as well, if only the sliders whiz was there to nudge him along. Yeah, makes sense, except I've wound up with Miles Hamming, and there's a dearth of girls in our group. Just two, Amanda Hamming, Miles' elder sister, and Nelly Brooke. The other criterion to belong to the Shoester Academy is that you have no family ties, nothing to distract you from your studies: a kid from an orphanage who shows unusual talent, or the suspicion, never acknowledged, that one or two of the kids have come from a psychiatric institute, a nuthouse.

  Need to get back to my workstation, only a short interval before dinner, half-an-hour usually, but because of the delay, it will only be about ten minutes tonight. sissyboy5, what a wet fart. You're projecting, bratt. Projecting. Not the kind of word used by a kid. Want to find him again, see what he's worth, or she, or it. An AI bot? Won't take long to find out if sissyboy5 is an AI bot.

  sissyboy5: What happened bratt, got cut off? or chickened out more like, couldn't take the heat?

  bratt3161: the heat? you're about as hot as a wet hanky flapping in the wind.

  sissyboy5: getting your similes twisted bratt, wet hankies don't flap, think you meant hot as a furnace.

  bratt3161: frog's arse.

  sissyboy5: hot as a frog's arse? you'd know, you been up a frog's arse?

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  bratt3161: watch your language, there might be kids on here.

  sissyboy5: kids? you a kid then?

  bratt3161: bit of a giveaway sissyboy, now I know you're a perv.

  sissyboy5: could be I'm thought police checking on kids like you.

  bratt3161: like me? didn't say I was a kid.

  sissyboy5: didn't say you weren't either. but that's the thing about kids, they're all talk until someone pushes back.

  bratt3161: big talk for a sissy boy.

  sissyboy5: ironic, coming from bratt3161. what's the number mean, your IQ? or how many times you've lost today?

  bratt3161: you're not worth explaining it to.

  sissyboy5: because you can't dude. no backup, no brains, no bite—just bark.

  bratt3161: I'm not barking, idiot.

  sissyboy5: oh, you're barking, all right. mad little dog with its tail between its legs. gotta admit, it's cute.

  bratt3161: you wanna say that to my face?

  sissyboy5: yeah, I'd say it—and then watch you scramble for a comeback just like now.

  ...

  sissyboy5: stumped for words bratt?

  bratt3161: f you.

  sissyboy5: thought so.

  ...

  

  

  Stab the off switch, kick the panel under the desk.

  'Eeugghhh...'

  Chair goes flying as I get to my feet. Can't believe it. He beat me. Damn. What did Sonia say? Prone to temper tantrums. In any case he's not an AI bot and he's not a mathematician, otherwise he'd have worked out the number. Unless ... he's playing double bluff. Check the VPN before I leave. Not your typical VPN, hidden behind a buffer, behind a buffer, behind a buffer ... Have to serve time if I got busted, deprived of web connections for a month.

  Kids quiet over dinner. Beatie Brooke gone missing. Nobody talking everyone thinking. She was there at lunchtime and now she's not there. Vanished into the sky, or kidnapped... Okay, so you could get over the boundary wall if you had a long enough ladder. But there's the closed-circuit TV. They'll be checking that now. What distracted me on the chat, trying to pick up thoughts but only a blank. Need to get back on hi7 if sissyboy5 will talk to me after my crappy display. wanna say that to my face? Pathetic. Kind of bugs me, how quick he is on a comeback, like an AI bot.

  'Hey, Axel, want to play sliders this evening?'

  'Sliders?' Big sigh. What to say to Garrick? You're crap? No, button it.

  Sat on hard upright chairs in the games room, the table between us, me and Garrick. The clip-clop of the table tennis ball, kids playing video games, the games that have been approved, inside a cockpit with bucket seats, big screen, padded steering wheel. Nobody uses the logic games anymore, their different components woven together, aim is to try and separate them. For the first couple of days after your arrival, a bit of interest, then couldn't be stuffed. Sliders is something else. The table with its flat control panels on either side, the graphite plate in the middle to produce the hologram, a collection of nodes connected by fine lines in space, edges. Shift the edges around to make shapes, a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron. But your opponent might block you, or make a mistake and create an opening for you. Mathematical cunning, mental visualization, speed of thought. All the attributes of a good sliders player.

  

  

  A shadow falls across the table, a glance over my shoulder. Miles Hamming. Shit. Can't handle him. Knock his block off, Axel. Yeah, sure, as if I've the confidence to knock anyone's block off, even if they are as small as Hamming. He's moved close, inches from my face, hands on hips, bouncing his pelvis against the edge of the chair like he's trying to put me off. Don't know how to deal with him. He only arrived in the subdivision a few weeks back and he's focused on me. Cos we're both shrimps. About the only thing in common. He's cocky as hell, got a way with words, leaves me red in the face and stuttering. Gets the big kids on his side with his looks, a smile that would win anyone over, not reserved for me but. Don't know what Amanda Hamming thinks having her smart little brother in the same subdivision.

  'You dudes are crap.'

  Dudes.

  Don't speak, don't open my mouth.

  'Yeah, well, that's how it is,' Garrick says. Flicks a switch on his control panel, the hologram vanishes. 'Here, you play him.'

  Fuck, Garrick. Me against Hamming, what I don't need right now. A fart of air from Hamming's mouth.

  'Hardly worth it, Grout, twin primes about as good as it gets.'

  Fine by me. Don't want to play you. Except Hamming's moved round to the other side of the table, adjusting his dress. Always looks immaculate does Hamming. Joggers stretched up his waist, hoodie tucked in, a worn leather belt holding everything in place, folds the elastic waistband of the joggers over the belt so they don't slip through. On anyone else it would look weird, but on Hamming, somehow the belt fits. Same as his sister like a family uniform. Hamming sits, swings back in the chair, tosses the lank of dark hair from his eyes, top lip arched up in a sneer, mouth always half open as if he's mocking you.

  Kids coming over to watch. Knew this would happen. Garrick did this on purpose because of the business in class earlier. You need to lose sometimes, Axel. Sliders one of my things, complexity, grasping the whole plan. Means I beat Garrick every time. Don't know how good Hamming is.

  Flick the switches, set up the game. A new configuration every time. Memory doesn't help, about seeing connections, using the special glasses to flick your eyes, the hologram sensitive to your electrical impulses, a stray flicker and you're done.

  Hamming spreads his legs, swings back in the chair, drags his belt higher at the front, tightens it a notch as if it isn't already too tight. That cocky sneer. Something about him excites me. Fuck, what's the matter with me? Dudes. The word sissyboy5 used. No way could Hamming be sissyboy. Hasn't been here long enough to know how to play the system. Everything controlled from The Core, the hub of the academy. That mysterious place which nobody can find a way into except Axel Grout. Because Grout's not only top in maths, he knows about codes, about protocols, the jumble of symbols that finds a way into the far reaches of the web. Axel Grout knows how to burrow out of the Academy's information processing system into a virtual world of gamers, of AI bots, of cyberchats, rooms where kids shouldn't be found – dark spaces.

  Fuck. Hamming's slammed the start button without telling me. Mind drifting. Not like me. A maths problem, shut everything out except the symbols, piecing them together, flows, logical inferences, finding paths, the different pieces coming together to form a whole. But Hamming's getting me tangled in a knot. I love him, and I hate him. Amanda Hamming watching, Nelly too. Won't be watching me. No. Her brother Miles, yes. Grout with his black-rimmed glasses, ears that stick out, spindly arms and legs. What the fuck am I comparing myself with Miles Hamming for? Okay, ignore the space he's created by moving an edge. Trying to tempt me in. Block his attempt to form a complete set. A complete set can't be busted, gives it strength, a way to win the game. Slide an edge along another edge, a way in, like finding my way around the network, looking for a weak point.

  Hamming wipes out my tetrahedron. I eliminate one of his triangles. He's ahead on points. Keeps fiddling with his belt. He knows. That it was bluff on my part, that I'm going to invade along one of the braids that has formed.

  'You'll never beat me, Grout.'

  I look up briefly. Locking eyes not my thing, staring each other out. He knows the score. That I've got him beat. Strange, the way he wants to raise the stakes, so his defeat will be the more crushing. In front of Nelly. You need to lose sometimes, Axel. Right. I've already worked out that if I switch crossings too soon, ignore his linked circles, I'm done. What I should do is attack his eleven-cycle and then the game's sown up. Hamming humiliated, squirming in his chair, tightening his belt another notch but it won't do any good. I switch crossings like it's the most natural thing to do. Poor Axel, can't help himself, too keen to get the job done. Hamming forms a complete set on seven nodes. The bubble appears, the shape inside. My turn to squirm. Push the hair from my glasses, toss my head around.

  

  

  'Yeah, ripper.'

  'Grout's done.'

  'Hey, Axel, better luck next time.'

  Amanda smiling.