Contact by Chris Morphew Page A

fine,’ she said. ‘In fact …’
    Jordan went across to her schoolbag and grabbed her copy of The Shape of Things to Come . She flipped it open and pulled out a bookmark or something from between the pages. She held it up in front of us.
    â€˜Are you kidding me?’ I said.
    It wasn’t a bookmark.
    It was a key card.

Chapter 14
    T UESDAY , M AY 26
79 DAYS
    â€˜Told you I’d find out what was behind that door,’ Jordan grinned.
    â€˜Yeah, but …’ Luke trailed off. ‘How did you get that?’
    â€˜Actually, it wasn’t as hard as I thought,’ said Jordan. ‘Montag seemed sort of distracted when Mum and I went in to see him. Like he had somewhere else to be.’
    â€˜The meeting with Ketterley and your dad,’ said Luke, pulling his eyes away from the key card to look at me. ‘That was today, right?’
    â€˜Think so,’ I said, really not wanting to get into Dad again.
    â€˜Anyway,’ said Jordan, ‘Montag let us into his office – as in, his normal office, not the metal door place – and then he clipped all his keys and stuff to the side of his belt.’
    â€˜The key card too?’ I said.
    â€˜Yeah, on one of those little clamp things,’ she said, miming with her finger and thumb. ‘I waited until Dr Montag went to type something into his computer, and I reached over and unclipped the card from his belt while he and Mum had their backs turned.’
    â€˜That’s it?’ said Luke.
    â€˜What do you mean, that’s it? ’ I said, looking for a reason to snap at him. ‘What if he’d seen her?’
    â€˜He didn’t,’ Jordan shrugged. ‘I mean, these guys are still only human, right? So, yeah, I stuck the card in my pocket and then asked Dr Montag where the toilet was. I was planning to have a quick look in the locked room and get back again before anyone realised something was up.’
    â€˜But?’ said Luke.
    â€˜Well, the first part worked,’ said Jordan, sitting down on her bed. ‘Actually, Dr Montag said it might be good if I stepped out for a couple of minutes so he could talk to Mum about some personal stuff.’
    â€˜What kind of stuff?’ I asked, sitting down next to her.
    â€˜Pregnant women’s business,’ said Jordan pointedly. ‘You really want me to go into detail?’
    â€˜You know what? Why don’t you just keep telling us what happened?’
    â€˜Right,’ said Jordan, shuffling away from me a bit, ‘so it took me a few minutes to find the place from the photo. It was right at the other end of the building, near the room they had Luke in after he got bashed.’
    â€˜And?’ said Luke. ‘What was in there?’
    â€˜Nothing,’ said Jordan.
    â€˜What, so it was just another hospital room or something?’ I said.
    â€˜No,’ said Jordan, ‘it was an empty room. ’
    â€˜Are you sure?’ said Luke. ‘Did you … I mean, you went in and had a look around, right?’
    â€˜At what? ’ said Jordan, and it was nice to hear her getting stuck into him for a change. ‘Of course I looked, but it wasn’t even a proper room. It was just this tiny little cupboard thing with, like, kitchen tiles on the floor.’
    It didn’t make any sense. There had to be something in there. Something Jordan had missed. But my survival instinct kicked in before I said this out loud. Telling Jordan she hadn’t looked hard enough wouldn’t do me any favours.
    â€˜What happened then?’ I asked instead.
    â€˜I started heading back, but this nurse stopped me halfway and asked me what I was doing,’ said Jordan. ‘I told her I’d got lost on the way to the toilets. She let me go, and then followed me all the way back up the hall. When we got to the waiting room, she kept going and walked straight out of the building and across the