Stormbreaker

state-of-th-eart software of the Stormbreaker. Even when his sandwich arrived, he ignored it, letting it curl on the plate. He would never have said that schoolwork was fun, but he had to admit that the computer made it lively. The history program brought the battle of Port Stanley to life with music and video clips. How to extract oxygen from water? The science program did it in front of his eyes. The Stormbreaker even managed to make algebra almost bearable, which was more than Mr. Donovan at Brookland had ever done.
    The next time Alex looked at his watch it was one o’clock. He had been in the room for over four hours. He stretched and stood up. Nadia Vole had told him not to leave, but if there were any secrets to be found in Sayle Enterprises, he wasn’t going to find them here. He walked over to the door and was surprised to find that it opened as he approached. He went out, into the corridor. There was nobody in sight. Time to move.
    Block A was administration and recreation. Alex passed a number of offices, then a blank, white-tiled cafeteria. There were about forty men and women, all in white coats and identity tags, sitting and talking animatedly over their lunches. He had chosen a good time. Nobody passed him as he continued through a Plexiglas walkway into Block B. There were computer screens everywhere, glowing in cramped offices piled high with papers and printouts. Software development.
    Through to Block C—research—past a library with endless shelves of books and CD-ROMs. Alex ducked behind a shelf as two technicians walked past, talking together. He was out-of-bounds, on his own, snooping around without any idea of what he was looking for. Trouble, probably. What else could there be to find?
    He walked softly, casually, down the corridor, heading for the last block. A murmur of voices reached him and he quickly stepped into an alcove, squatting beside a drinking fountain as two men and a woman walked past, all wearing white coats, arguing about Web servers. Overhead, he noticed a security camera swiveling toward him. He made himself as small as he could, crouching down behind the fountain. The three technicians left the room. The security camera swung away again and he darted forward, keeping well clear of the wide-angle lens.
    Had it seen him? Alex couldn’t be sure, but he did know one thing. He was running out of time. Maybe the Vole woman would have checked up on him already. Maybe someone would have brought lunch to the empty room. If he was going to find anything, it would have to be soon.
    He started along the glass passage that joined Block C to Block D and here at last there was something different. The corridor was split in half with a metal stair case leading down into what must be some sort of basement. And although every building and every door he had seen so far had been labeled, this staircase was blank. The light stopped about halfway down. It was almost as if the stairs were trying not to get themselves noticed.
    The clang of feet on metal. Alex backtracked to the first door he could find. Fortunately, it opened into a storage closet. He hid inside, watching through the rack as Mr. Grin appeared, rising out of the ground like a vampire on a bad day. As the sun hit his dead white face, his scars twitched and he blinked several times before walking off into Block D.
    What had he been doing? Where did the stairs go?
    Alex slipped off his shoes and, carrying them in his hand, hurried down. His feet made no sound on the metal steps. It was like stepping into a morgue. The air-conditioning was so strong that he could feel it on his forehead and on the palms of his hands, fast-freezing his sweat.
    He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and put his shoes back on. He was in another long passageway, stretching back under the complex, the way he had come. It led to a single metal door. But there was something very strange. The walls of the passage were unfinished dark brown rock with streaks of what looked zinc or some other metal. The floor was also rough and the way was lit by old-fashioned bulbs, hanging on wires. It all reminded him of something … something had very recently seen. But he couldn’t remember what.
    Somehow Alex knew that the door at the end of the passage would be locked. It looked as if it had been locked forever. Like the stairs it was unlabeled. And it seemed somehow too small to be important. But Mr. Grin had just come up the stairs. There was only one place he