23
Apparatus Man
I arrived at the Burgess Hill secret agency on the dot of two o’clock in the afternoon. I was greeted by Jonathan and then before I knew it he was gone. The next thing that happened was a load of sparks came flying out of the walls, and then the floor set on fire followed by a loud buzzing sound in my left ear. Something was firing a round of bullets at me. I got out of my powered chair onto the floor so that I could take the cushion off the seat. I then got back into my wheelchair and held the cushion in front of me shielding me. I then pushed through the flames protected by the cushion. I saw a corridor stretched out in front of me which had Greek carvings on the walls. I took the armrests off my powered chair and then I crawled slowly up the slope. Suddenly a computer controlled character appeared in front of me, it pointed a gun at me and started firing - I tried to avoid most of its shots but one of its artificial bullets clipped me on my right hip - it was extremely painful. I started firing my gun at the computer controlled character and within seconds of firing at it blew up. I let out a sigh of relief. I saw a blink of light, everything stood still.
“Well done Chris you passed with flying colours!” Jonathan exclaimed “You’ll need to come to more of our sessions.”
As I was still in shock I didn’t know what to say apart from to ask –
“When do you want me in?”
“Any time but a weekday would be best you need to allow about two hour’s.” Jonathan replied.
“I have gym on Monday and two days at Crawley College next week on Thursday and Friday. So, Monday and Tuesday I can more or less do as I please apart from gym so I will make it on Tuesday then.”
On Monday, Mark my personal trainer was really cruel to me at the gym and he made me do 20 minutes on the treadmill, another 15 on the cross-trainer, 10 minutes on the rowing machine, and the arm curl for 5 minutes and the bench press for what seemed like 20 minutes. They had moved back into the Olympos at Haywards Heath from the Triangle now that all of the rebuilding had been completed. I was really tired after that incredible workout at the gym.
The next day I told Keith about our arrangements, he seemed fine with it. Jonathon Bore came through a door to Keith’s office somewhere behind or to the side of me as I couldn’t see him.
“We had better move quickly, if we don’t want to be blown to smithereens because Alex wasn’t joking! What I mean is that with the bombs that he has, he could blow up at least a good proportion of England and certainly he could do some damage to the channel tunnel.” Jonathan announced.
Keith looked even more disturbed than usual.
“We’ve got to go to Alex’s house and take a look at this so called sphere.” Jonathan went on.
“Yes we should really.” Keith replied.
“If you do go I want to be there.” I said.
“Absolutely.” Jonathon replied.
“I don’t know, you’re still awfully young.” argued Keith.
“But Alex is the same age as me.” I said insistently back to Keith.
“Alright then you may as well come, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Keith said.
“You had better be off to C.H.I.S now, or they will send out a search party.”
So Keith dropped me back at C.H.I.S, the time was approaching four a clock in the afternoon. I told the nurses that Keith was my stepfather but didn’t give any more details.
The next three days were filled with Pat the physio, Val the speech and language therapist and Mario working on my computer abilities. Then at the weekend I was back home so on Saturday I played on my PS2 for half an hour, then I went to see Julie and Diane who were friends of mine and my Mums. I woke up on Sunday morning, pushed three on my TV remote, turned the volume down to a mere churning to listen to the news.
“This is South East today with Tim and Lauren. Breaking News! Boy could blow up England if he’s not stopped.”
I had woken my Dad up with my shenanigans which in turn woke my Mum up. I quickly turned my TV off and snoozed till my alarm went off at 8:30. I had my usual Coco Pops for breakfast and I had done my English homework by half past nine. I was out the house at exactly half ten. My mum dropped me off at Wintons fishing lake. I wheeled myself over to the cave, looked at my watch there was a quarter of an hour remaining till Keith was due. I decided to see what I was missing out on at Wintons when two men stepped out of a massive truck, it was Keith and Jonathon but I hardly recognised them with their heavy duty body armour on and their gas masks and packs on.
“We’re going to ask Alex a few questions but we don’t know where he lives.”
“Do you want me to show you where to go?” I offered.
“Couldn’t you just tell us?” Keith asked.
“Not really.” I answered
“Alright then you may as well come.” Keith gave in.
Twenty minutes later we had arrived at Alex’s farm. Keith waited 15 minutes to see if there was any sign of life, then Keith nodded for me and Jonathon to proceed. We got to the sphere and saw that there was no obvious way of getting into this object. Jonathan got out what looked like a normal tube of toothpaste, he squirted some onto a tile on the sphere and then he covered his ears - I copied him and covered my ears too. Suddenly there was an explosion and I could see that the tile was disintegrating in front of my eyes. Through the hole that had appeared we could see a smaller sphere with four large robust looking radio devices on top.
“Let’s go back to the truck now we know that Alex wasn’t bluffing.” Jonathan instructed.
We got back in the truck.
“You two weren’t long, how did you get on?” Keith asked.
So we’re going to have to put a stop to this Alex business.” Jonathan reported.
I was awoken by the twittering of the birds and the cries of the squirrels at seven the next morning and I had a splitting headache. I decided to get up. I walked along my cabin bed by holding on to the side of it, collapsed into the chair and pushed 2 on my remote control for my TV. I made sure that my Dad couldn’t hear the TV by turning down the volume so that my Mum and Dad wouldn’t hear anything through the listening device that they had in their room. I had my breakfast at 8:15; my breakfast consisted of a bowl of cereal and a glass of cold milk. Then my Mum and Dad had their breakfast, I was the first to finish, closely followed by my Mum and then slowly my Dad finished about ten minutes later.
“What do you want to do today Chris?” Mum asked.
“I’ll only go down Wintons fishing lake again. I’ve met this really nice set of people down there.” I replied innocently.
Mum dropped me off at Wintons lake about half an hour later. I waited until my Mum was out of sight before I made my detour to the cave. I could see Keith practice shooting with his Wolfa-Pl9. I waited for what seemed like forever for him to finish so that I could speak to him.
“Well what are we going to do about Alex C now we know that he’s not bluffing?” I asked Keith.
“What the bomb thing?” Keith replied.
I gave a small nod.
“We’d have to get permission from MI5 before we do anything heavy.” He answered.
That was all that was said on the matter. I then had a couple of combat scenarios in the simulator with Keith.
I woke up the next morning, didn’t brush my teeth, and didn’t have breakfast. I opened the back door as quietly as possible and I wheeled myself onto the flat bit of the ramp. I then put my brakes on a quarter of the way and then I pushed down on the floor to give me a bit of leverage and very slowly edged my way down the ramp. I then wheeled myself down to the green at the end of my road to meet Keith. I greeted him and got into his green plumbing van and he drove down to the station. He slammed the brakes on which forced me to go forward in my seat. He then got out of the van to get my chair out of the back. Luckily Keith had parked round the back of the station; he pushed me on to the platform where a man was standing carrying a ramp for me to use to get on this supposed train which was overdue now. We waited a further 10 minutes for the train. The man with the ramp came over to where we were sitting when a train came flying past from Brighton at high speed. 5 minutes later our train came in at 10 mph slowing down to 5mph and then it finally stopped. Four people got off the train two of the people were in suits and were carrying briefcases. They looked as though they could be bankers or they were very good at acting like it anyway. The other two were ladies one of them with a pushchair. Once on the train I passed the time looking around at the passengers in the carriage - Haywards Heath, Three Bridges and Gatwick Airport had all flown past so quickly I hadn’t even noticed. Keith nudged me when we got to Clapham Junction.
“It’s our stop now – we’re going to see Kaowen Jacque he’s the inventor of the monorail tunnel, which runs from Burgess Hill to Brighton and also many of your gismos.”
Keith stepped out of the train and asked one of the station staff for a ramp so I could get off the train. As if by magic a heavily built man who looked to be in his 50s appeared with a ramp and proceeded to put it up against the train door. Keith then pushed me in my wheelchair down the ramp and onto the platform. The man with the ramp said -
“Have a good day or are you on holiday?”
I thought he was having a laugh but Keith just thanked the man. We went into the subway which went under all of the platforms. Once we were out of the station we headed towards a big old, decrepit factory which I could see about 100 yards in front of us. We went into the factory through a side door, once inside I was surprised to see that the interior was decorated but it stunk of cabbage. Keith pushed me into the lift that looked a bit out of place in the factory. We went up to the first floor and went into a room which reminded me of my dentist’s old waiting room. I was half expecting to see my a massive room. My mouth dropped open as I was wondering what on earth this room could be used for.
“Hi Kaowen, its’ so good to see you I’d like you to meet Chris, he’s planning on becoming a field agent, he’s got a question for you.” Keith announced.
“I was wondering if I could get your permission to plant a couple of bombs on a massive sphere which are set up to trigger off a massive string of explosive devices that if successful could blow up the whole of England? ”Yes alright, we’ll have the usual paper work for you to sign.” Kaowen replied to Keith.