Chapter 2: Deep Dive

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Mum rushes out of the closet, flustered like he's never seen before, and Dev stops pacing at the sight of her; heat creeping up his neck to his cheeks from being caught snooping.

"I'm sorry." He points at Billie. "It was all her."

"I assume you heard everything." For a long moment, she stares between him and his sister, then says the words that send a chill curling down his spine, to his toes. "What are you waiting for? You heard your baba. Pack essentials. Only essentials. Like we used to practice. Nothing that'll set off any alarms."

"Like we practiced?" he asks at the same time Billie says, "Is there a zombie apocalypse coming we don't know about?"

He's surprised to hear her chuckle as she pulls out her ear pod as if being caught red-handed is a regular day for her. "Wanna loop us in? What's going on?" she continues.

"Billie. This isn't the time."

"When is the time? Once we've hit the road? Reached safety? Found Dad—"

"Billie," Mum growls.

Dev snatches his sister's hand like he used to when they were kids. A move she once used to take kindly to because he was watching out for her. These days, however, she hisses as if his touch burns her. As Billie pulls out of his reach, he feels it, the distance between them. He hasn't been able to cross it for the past couple of years, ever since she got bumped up to his class. She's the cool, smart kid. He's... well, he's just Brilliant Billie's brother. He doesn't mind though. He'll be the dumbest kid on the block to have a minute of what they once had. If only she'd talk to him like she used to. Seek him out in the middle of the night, so they can sneak into the kitchen and play video games on mute while their parents sleep soundly upstairs, safe. He misses those times more than he can say. More than Billie will let him admit. And something tells him those times are gone for good. That phone call ensured it. But why? What was Dad caught up in? What kind of trouble could a neuroscientist get into?

"When you say like we practiced?" He turns to Mum, trying not to let Billie's indifference towards him burn too painful.

"Like when we used to go camping as kids." Billie clicks her tongue impatiently.

"Oh." Comprehension dawns on him and he studies Mum's face. "Are we in trouble, Mum?"

"I don't know, Dev." Mum digs out a couple of large backpacks they stash in the cupboard with the phone. "Your dad says be ready so we stay ready."

"And what if he can't get to the phone again?" Billie folds her arms over her chest and glares at Mum. "If Dad's in trouble, maybe I can help?"

"No." Mum turns around so fast she knocks the handset off the phone and Dev can hear the faint dial tone beeping. "You won't do anything." Mum grabs Billie by her shoulders and peers up ever so slightly. Dev's sister is mere centimeters taller than Mum. "Promise me, Billie. You won't do anything. I don't need to worry about you when—"

"Yes?" Billie grins, her goading as transparent as her ego.

"Dev, help me out here." Mum turns to him, pleading. "Get your sister to understand—a thing she does to 'help' Baba might backfire. Please? And get her packed."

"Don't worry, Mum. We'll both be ready. Just say when." He smiles, eager to prove himself useful.

Mum looks from him to his sister again. For a heartbeat, then says, "When."

His eyes go wide. "Are we leaving tonight?"

"Seriously, Ma. What's going on? Where is Dad?" Billie shuffles her feet impatiently, her arms folding tighter across her chest. Defiant. He doesn't blame her. He'd like to know as well, but sometimes, he knows one shouldn't spook a person already on high alert. You've got to wear them down, slowly. So slowly they don't notice what you're doing. Dad taught him that. Along with how to tie multiple different knots and their usage. Just in case.

"You know your father is one of the leading neurologists of our time?" Mum begins and Dev can already feel his skin tingling in that way it often does when a piece of shocking news is about to drop. "Well. He's that, but he's also someone working for the government on various projects he cannot talk about. One of those projects required him to go to a dark lab, and now..." Mum stares at her pretty pink toes in her house slippers briefly. "I don't know the details but something has him spooked. It's best we do what he says in case we need to slip away undetected for our safety as well as his."

"You mean in case they try to get us to get to him?" Billie blurts and Mum looks anywhere but at them as she says, "Yes, maybe."

Then the phone rings again and they all jump like spooked puppies.

"Here." Mum thrusts their backpacks at them and says, "Go. We might not have much time," before she scrambles back into the cupboard, and removes the receiver from its cradle.

Dev turns to his sister then and nudges her towards the stairs. "You heard her. Go pack."

"And let the food get cold?" Billie snatches the the ear pod she'd leant him earlier and shoves them both back into her ears. Then she heads to the dining table where their dinner is getting cold.

Dev stares between her, the cupboard, and the stairs, torn. Should he do as Mum instructed and go pack immediately or should he grab a bite like Billie is doing? Eventually, he settles for a compromise. He quickly piles his plate with food and rushes to his room with one hand gripping the backpack. He can eat while he packs, that way, he's ready to run the moment Mum says 'Go.' 

After eating, he makes a note to go check the car for fuel. If it's even a smidge low, he reminds himself to go get it full, along with a couple of large petrol cans in the garage for an emergency exit. Then he can help Billie pack hers, if she hasn't done it already, that pain in the bum.

Dad said 'be ready' and he plans to be ready.

#

It's midnight when he feels Billie's talons poke him awake. "What?" He sits up surprised and a little excited. It's almost like the old times. Almost. Except she's not smiling her cheeky smile, nor is she trying to get him to scoot over because there are monsters in the shadows in her room.

She shushes him, before perching on the end of his bed. "Dad's not going to make your play this weekend, or any weekend." She turns her tablet towards him and he reads the headline: Renowned Neurosurgeon and a Lead Neuroscientist and Stem Cell Researcher arrested for murdering his partner.

He reads and rereads the headline. "What makes you think it's Dad?"

She deadpans at him. "Read ahead."

He grabs his glasses from the nightstand and does as he's told. He took his contacts out ages ago. He doesn't have to get far, by the second sentence, the article names the dead scientist. He was Dad's research partner for the past eight years. By the second paragraph, they've named the suspect. Renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, Dr Narendra Shah. Their dad.

"What the hell is this?" He growls at Billie. "It's not funny."

"I'm not making a joke." She nudges him to move over a little and settles under his cover, leaning back against the wall. "I found it when I was deep diving..."

"Deep diving?" he repeats. He knows it's Billie's code for whatever the heck she does on the internet. Dismantling firewalls and paywalls and whatever other walls there are. The whole thing is incomprehensible to him. All he can think about is, his sister is only fourteen and is probably already a notorious hacker.

She shrugs. "It was too easy. Their firewall is like a sandcastle. Too many porous layers."

"You're gonna get in trouble one day, Billie. I mean it. Stop this."

"Just, shut up and look at the date of his arrest!" She thrusts her tablet in his face again.

He reads the article and a strange detail jumps out at him. "Arrested in his apartment around midday, yesterday? Yesterday?" He turns slightly to watch Billie in awe. "This means he's back home in London?"

"Dad's in trouble." Billie nods, tapping at the corner of the screen. At the date. "Look."

Dev squints at the date. "But... two days from now. How did you get this?"

"Doesn't matter. What matters is it's going to be published." Billie growls, then points at another date embedded in one of the paragraphs in the copy. "Then there's this."

Dev reads the sentence again and his stomach turns sickly. "But... that was three days ago. He was home... here. With us. This doesn't make sense. How can he kill Arun Uncle three days ago in his London apartment when he was home with us, oceans away?"

"Exactly." Billie sneers. "I bet Dad went there to help Arun Uncle with whatever was going on... and instead, found him dead, and now they've gone to arrest him while he was on the phone with Mum."

"But who'd want to kill Arun?" Dev blinks at his sister. "He's like the sweetest man there is."

Billie types away at her device again, bringing up a whole bunch of files that look like they are a stranger version of crosswords, except here, there are paragraphs with blacked-out words.

Dev gets a shiver running along his spine. "Billie?"

"Dad's being framed for murder." Billie is glaring back at him. "I found these on Dad's secret server... Turns out they weren't working for CodeTech's rival. Brace yourself, D"—she lays a gentle hand on his leg. Then she pulls up more and more classified documents, some even so heavily redacted they are just black line after black line, fished from her deep dives into agencies she should not be meddling with. "I don't think Dad's who he says he is."

Dev blinks at Billie again. Her words bouncing around his head like a pellet. He knows Dad. Dad's that guy who can talk their ears off about nervous systems and techs designed to make said nerves work or not, depending on their desire. To make a cripple walk, or to render a threat inert. Dad's that guy who does everything Dev asks for within his power, even so far as to go skydiving for his eighteenth when the man is terrified of heights. Dad's that guy who braids Billie's hair and bakes cakes, even though he hates sweet things. He is someone who makes Mum laugh like a loon, because he doesn't mind dressing up like a Grinch in public and going Christmas shopping with her, in character. He's someone who—who—

Dev shakes his head. No. They know their dad. "No. You've made a mistake." He waves a hand in the general direction of her device. "It's probably some other Dr Narendra Shah."

"I thought you'd say that." Billie sighs and types something else on her crazy keyboard and suddenly, Dev's projector lowers from his ceiling and flickers on, volume so low he wonders briefly if his speakers aren't working.

For a minute he doesn't know what he's looking at. The image is grainy and jostles as if someone's holding the camera in hand while they are running. It's dark. Voices are hushed.

'Approaching residence. Confirm target is inside?' A gravelly voice says from Dev's walls, right where the speakers are behind his head.

'Infrared and audio confirmation. Target seems to be in the bedroom, moving, talking. He may be armed.'

'Roger that. We're going in...' Crackle.

The bodies move in the dark, rushing upstairs through a service staircase. Dev can see the faint glow of the exit sign. Then blinding whiteness for a second before the camera adjusts to the hallway light. He recognises it immediately. It's the apartment Dad inherited from his mother when she passed away. Dev was only four so he doesn't remember Ama, but he remembers that apartment well. They've spent great summer holidays there over the years.

"What is this?" He turns to Billie, who's engrossed in watching the footage.

"When I heard Dad go silent, I tried to get into the building CCTV to see what was going on... while you were busy confessing to Mum like a kid... and I picked up another outgoing signal from the building, so I tapped in."

"You tapped in?"

"Don't sweat your brain." Billie throws him a sympathetic smile. "This is the bodycam footage of the team who 'arrested' dad 'three days ago'"—she air quotes the words she's lifted from the article he read earlier. "But we all know this happened tonight, about three hours ago."

"So what are you saying?" Dev can feel the adrenaline coursing through his blood as Dad's face comes into view. There is no shock on that familiar face. No 'what are you doing?'. Instead, Dad looks straight at one bodycam and says something soundlessly, but he can read the lips. After all, Dad spent years teaching him and Billie to read lips as a game. And it was the one game he was better at than his prodigal little sister.

"Bear, scenario 99," he repeats.

The camera angle changes as Billie's keyboard clacks again, all while Dev's still reeling— "Scenario 99? What's that?" On his wall, another camera angle flicks to life, and they both stare at the silent hand signal: I love you.

Dev'a had enough. He turns to Billie and demands, "What's going on? What did he mean by scenario 99?"

"Remember how we used to make up scenarios, like the world's going to shit for this and this reason, what do you do?" Billie shifts uncomfortably in his bed.

"Those were just games we played when we were bored and on a screen detox."

"Yeah, see." Billie grimaces and tuts. "But they weren't. Dad used to make us do all sorts of things normal kids didn't do, like how to survive an avalanche, a tsunami, a drought, a zombie apocalypse, a war blah blah blah." She scratched her head sheepishly. "He even called them drills, D. Please tell me you're not so naive."

Dev feels a flush of embarrassment and clears his throat as manly as possible. "Of course I know that. But remind me what scenario 99 is?"

For some strange reason, Billie doesn't reply with words. She uses Auslan instead, or a Shah family variation of Auslan so they can talk to each other and say things and have eavesdroppers believe they said something different.

The moment Billie's hands still Dev feels the weight of her words. Of Dad's words.

"If this is true... then"—he eyes the image still on his wall, at Dad's hands, having just said 'I love you' to them as if it was a goodbye. And he knows it. He knows what Billie's been trying to say this whole time.

"This is a cover-up." He breathes in a hiss. "He's a patsy, and of all the scenarios we played out as a game, 99 is real?"

"Yes, but why now, and who?" Billie replays the bodycam video from another body, another angle, as if her answers lie in it, in a grainy image where everyone but Dad is clad in nondescript black gear, and armed.

Dev watches the footage with Billie a moment before he says, "You have until the morning. Find out as much as you can. Where they are taking him? Who? What? Why? Dad said 'go' so we go at the crack of dawn."

"We don't have until the morning." Billie slips off his bed and heads for the door. "Mum's packing the car already." There's a steely determination to her words. "And don't worry. I'll find Dad if it's the last thing I do."

Dev knows if anyone can find out what is going on, it's her. The freaking genius that is his sister. He has no doubts about that. But the question remains. What the hell had Dad gotten himself involved with? And what did it have to do with Scenario 99, a nuclear apocalypse?

Word count to date: 4940