Contest

by Matthew Reilly

  ‘Then suddenly I saw one of the pistol-bearing gang-bangers rush toward the wounded cop’s room. I don’t know what made me do it, but when I saw him reach the doorway to the room and see the cop inside—and smile—I leapt at him from behind, tackled him hard.

  ‘We slammed into the doorframe together, but he elbowed me sharply in the mouth—cutting my lip—and we fell apart and then suddenly before I knew what was happening, he was swinging his pistol around toward me.

  ‘I caught his wrist in mid-flight—held the gun clear of my body—just as one of the other gang members arrived right in front of us.

  ‘This second youth saw our struggle and instantly raised his own pistol at me but—still holding onto the first gang member’s wrist—I whirled around and, with my free hand, punched the second youth square on the wrist of his gun-hand, causing his fingers to reflexively spring open and drop the gun. On the return journey, I used that same fist to backhand the youth across the jaw, knocking him out cold.

  ‘It was at that moment that the first gang member started pulling indiscriminately on the trigger on his gun—even though I was still gripping his wrist. Gunshots boomed, bullets shredded the walls.

  ‘I had to do something, so, pushing my feet off the doorframe, I hurled us both to the floor. We tumbled to the ground together—a clumsy rolling heap, so clumsy in fact that the youth’s gun was pushed awkwardly up against his own head and then—’

  And then abruptly—shockingly—the gun had gone off and the youth’s head had simply exploded.

  Swain didn’t need to listen to Dickson any more. He could see it all in his mind’s eye as if he was still there. He could remember the star of blood that had sprayed all over the door. He could still feel the youth’s body go limp against his own.

  Dickson was still reading the statement.

  ‘—as soon as the other gang members saw their dead comrade, they fled. I believe it was about then that I passed out. This statement is dated 3/10/00, 1:55 a.m., signed Stephen Swain, M.D.’

  Dickson looked up from the sheet of paper.

  Swain sighed. ‘That’s it. That’s my statement.’

  ‘Good,’ Dickson handed the typewritten statement to Swain. ‘If you just sign there where it says “Consent granted”, that’ll just about do it, Dr Swain. Oh, and may I say once again, on behalf of the New York Police Department, thank you.’

  Status Check: Grid co-ordinates of labyrinth to

  be transmitted to all systems upon electrification.

  ‘We’ll see you in the morning then,’ Officer Paul Hawkins said as he stood inside the enormous translucent glass doors of the New York State Library.

  ‘See you then,’ the lieutenant said, closing the doors on Hawkins’ face.

  Hawkins stepped away from the doors and nodded to his partner, Parker, who stepped forward with a large ring of keys. As Parker began to bolt the first of four locks on the huge translucent doors, Hawkins could see the blurred outline of the lieutenant affixing bright yellow police tape across the entrance. The tape pressed up against the other side of the glass and Hawkins could make out the familiar words: POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS.

  He checked his watch.

  5:15 p.m.

  Not bad, he thought. It had only taken them twenty minutes to skirt the building and seal off all the entrances and exits.

  Parker finished off the last lock and turned around.

  ‘All done,’ she said.

  Hawkins thought about what the other cops had said about Christine Parker. Three years his senior, she was hardly pretty—for that matter, hardly petite. Big hands, dark heavy-set features, good with a gun. Unfortunately, her image hadn’t been helped along by reports of insensitivity—she was known in the department for her rather icy demeanour. Hawkins shrugged it off. If she could hold her own, that was all that mattered to him.

  ‘Good’ he turned to face the enormous atrium of the library. ‘Do you know what happened? I was only called in this afternoon.’

  ‘Somebody broke in and slashed up a security guard. Pretty messy,’ Parker replied casually.

  ‘Broke in?’ Hawkins frowned. ‘I didn’t see any forced entry on any of the doors we sealed.’

  Status Check: 0:44:16 to Electrification.

  Parker put her keys in her pocket and shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. All I know is that they haven’t determined point of entry yet. SID’s coming in tomorrow morning to do that. Guy probably picked the lock on one of the storage doors. Those things have got to be at least forty years old.’

  She cocked her head indifferently. ‘Larry at Dispatch told me they spent most of the day just trying to clean it all up.’

  Parker walked over to the Information Desk and sat down. ‘Anyhow,’ she put her feet up on the counter, ‘this isn’t so bad. Doesn’t bother me if I get double time for sitting in a library all night.’

  ‘Come on, Daddy!’ Holly said impatiently. ‘I’m missing Pokémon!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Swain pushed open the front door. Holly burst past him, dashed into the house.

  Swain pulled his key from the door and called after her, ‘Don’t slide on the carpet!’

  He stepped inside as Holly charged out of the kitchen, biscuit tin in one hand, a can of Coke in the other. Swain stopped in his tracks as Holly cut across his path, making a beeline for the TV.

  Watching her, Swain put his suitcase down, folded his arms and leaned against the bench that separated the kitchen from the living room. He watched as, unsurprisingly, in mid-stride Holly dropped to the floor and slid gracefully across the carpet, coming to a halt inches away from the television set.

  ‘Hey!’

  Holly gave him a throwaway smile. ‘Sorreee.’ She flicked on the TV.

  Swain shook his head as he went into the kitchen. He always said not to slide on the carpet and Holly always did it anyway. It was kind of a ritual. Besides, he thought, Helen had always said it, and Holly had always ignored her, too. It was a good way for both of them to remember her.

  It had been two years now since Swain’s wife had been killed by a drunk driver who had tried to run a red light at fifty miles an hour. It had happened late one August evening, around eleven-thirty. They had run out of milk, so Helen had decided to walk to the 7-Eleven a few blocks away.

  She never came back.

  Later that night, Swain would see her body at the morgue. The mere sight of it, bloodied and broken, had knocked the wind out of him. All the life, the essence, the personality—everything that had made her Helen—had been sucked from it. Her eyes had been wide open, staring blankly into space, lifeless.

  Death had struck—brutally, swiftly, unexpectedly. She had gone out for milk and then all of a sudden she was gone. Just gone.

  And now it was just him and Holly, somehow continuing life without her. Even now, two years on, Swain occasionally found himself staring out the window, thinking about her, tears forming in his eyes.

  Swain opened the fridge, pulled out a Coke for himself. As he did so, the phone rang. It was Jim Wilson.

  ‘You missed a great game.’

  Swain sighed. ‘Oh, yes . . .’

  ‘Man, you should’ve seen it. It went into—’

  ‘No! Stop! Don’t tell me!’

  Wilson laughed loudly on the other end of the line. ‘Now would I do that?’

  ‘Not if you wanted to live. Want to come over and watch it all over again?’

  ‘Sure, why not? I’ll be there in ten,’ Wilson said and hung up.

  Status Check: 0:14:38 to Electrification.

  Swain glanced at the microwave. The green LED clock read 5:45 p.m.

  He looked over at Holly, camped less than a foot away from the television screen. On the screen, multi-coloured creatures danced about.

  Swain grabbed his drink and went into the living room. ‘What are you watching?’

  Holly didn’t move her eyes from the screen. ‘Pokémon,’ she said, feeling for the biscuit tin beside her and grabbing a biscuit fro
m it.

  ‘Any good?’

  She turned quickly, scrunched up her nose. ‘Nah. Mew isn’t there today. I’ll see what’s on the other channels.’

  ‘No, wait!’ Swain leaned forward, grabbing for the remote. ‘The sport will be—’

  The station changed, and a newsreader appeared on the screen.

  ‘—while in football, fans in the national capital were not to be disappointed as the Redskins scalped the Giants twenty-four to twenty-one in an overtime thriller. At the same time, in Dallas . . .’

  Swain closed his eyes as he sank back into his chair. ‘Aw, man.’

  ‘Did you hear that Daddy? Washington won. Grandpa will like that. He lives in Washington.’

  Swain laughed softly. ‘Yes, honey, I heard. I heard.’

  Status Check: Officials attending to

  Earth Contestant await special

  instructions regarding teleportation.

  Paul Hawkins strolled idly around the foyer of the library.

  His every footfall echoed hauntingly in the open space of the atrium.

  He stopped to survey the atrium around him. It was, quite simply, a massive interior space. When one took into account the rail-lined balcony that ran in a horseshoe above the lower floor, its ceiling was actually two storeys high. In the early evening darkness, the atrium looked almost cavernous.

  Ten-foot-high bookcases loomed in the brooding semi-darkness. Indeed, with the onset of night, apart from the harsh white glow coming from the Information Desk where Parker sat reading, the only light that penetrated the gigantic room was the slanting blue light from the streetlights outside.

  Status Check: 0:03:04 to Electrification.

  Teleport Officials standby.

  Hawkins looked over at Parker. She was still sitting behind the Information Desk, her feet up, reading some Latin book she said she’d read back in school.

  Jesus, it’s quiet here, he thought.

  Status Check: 0:01:41 to Electrification.

  Status Check: Officials on Earth confirm

  receipt of special instructions.

  Standby.

  The phone rang again. Holly leapt up from the floor and grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Hello, Holly Swain speaking,’ she said. ‘Yes, he’s here.’ She put the receiver to her chest and yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘Daddeee! Phone!’

  Swain emerged from his bedroom down the hall, doing up the buttons on a clean shirt. The belt around his jeans dangled from his waist and his hair was still dripping from the shower.

  He gave Holly a crooked smile as he took the phone from her. ‘Do you think the whole neighbourhood now knows I’ve got a phone call?’

  Holly shrugged as she danced away toward the refrigerator.

  ‘Hello,’ Swain said into the phone.

  ‘It’s me again.’ It was Wilson.

  Swain glanced at the microwave clock. ‘Hey, what are you doing? it’s almost six. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m still at home.’

  Status Check: 0:00:46 to Electrification.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘The car won’t start. Again.’ Wilson said, deadpan.

  Swain just laughed.

  Hawkins was bored.

  Idly, he poked his head inside the library’s central stairwell, flicked on his heavy police flashlight. White marble stairs flanked by solid oak banisters rose in a wide spiral up into the darkness.

  Hawkins nodded. Had to hand it to these old buildings, they were built to last.

  Status Check: 0:00:15 to Electrification.

  Parker stood up from her seat behind the Information Desk. She gazed lazily around the atrium, squinting in the darkness.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ she called.

  ‘Just looking around.’

  Status Check: 0:00:09 to Electrification.

  Standby.

  Parker walked over to Hawkins. He was standing at the doorway to the stairwell, his flashlight on, peering up into the darkness.

  :06

  She stopped next to him.

  ‘Nice old place,’ Hawkins said.

  ‘Yeah’ Parker nodded. ‘Nice.’

  :04

  :03

  :02

  :01

  Standby . . .

  —Electrification initialised.

  At that moment, while Hawkins and Parker stood in the stairwell, bright blue sparks flashed out from the main entrance to the library. An electric blue current shot up between the large glass doors while sizzling claws of electricity lashed out around the edges of the door frame.

  Every single window of the library shook as tiny forks of blue lightning shot out from their panes. At the small side entrances to the library, yellow police tape bubbled slowly, boiling under the intense heat of the electricity now flowing through the doors.

  And then, in an instant, it stopped.

  All the windows and doors giving access to the library were suddenly still.

  Suddenly silent again.

  The State Library, old and dark, stood sombrely in the darkness of New York City, its magnificent glass doors grey in the moonlight. To the casual observer a few feet away they looked regal and austere, just as they had looked the day before.

  It was only when one came close that one would see the intermittent flash of tiny blue lightning that licked out from between the two huge doors every few seconds.

  Just as it did at every other entrance to the library.

  Status Check: Electrification complete.

  Dispatch grid co-ordinates

  of the labyrinth.

  Commence teleportation.

  Holly grabbed onto Swain’s leg. Swain shook it playfully as he spoke into the phone.

  ‘It won’t be much of a surprise anyway. I already heard who won.’

  ‘You did?’

  Swain frowned down at Holly as she reached into his jeans pocket. ‘Yes. Unfortunately I did.’

  Holly pulled her hand out of his pocket and frowned at the object in her hand.

  ‘Daddy, What’s this?’

  Swain glanced down at her and cocked his head in surprise. ‘May I?’ he said.

  Holly gave him the small silver object.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Wilson asked.

  Swain turned it over in his hand. ‘Well . . . Doctor Wilson, maybe you can tell me. Maybe you can tell me why my daughter has just pulled a Zippo out of my jeans. My jeans that you borrowed for your little cowboy thing on the weekend.’

  Wilson hesitated. ‘I have absolutely no idea how that got there.’

  ‘Why don’t I believe you?’

  ‘All right, all right, don’t start.’ Wilson said. ‘What are my chances of getting my lighter back?’

  Swain put the cigarette lighter back into his pocket. ‘I don’t know. Sixty-forty.’

  Status Check: Teleportation sequence initialised.

  ‘Sixty-forty!’

  Holly grabbed another drink from the refrigerator. Swain shifted the telephone to his shoulder and bent down to pick her up. He grunted under the weight.

  ‘God, you’re heavy.’

  Initialise teleport: Earth.

  ‘Dad . . . Come on, I’m eight now . . .’

  ‘Too old to be picked up, huh? All ri—’

  At that moment the room around Swain began to brighten. A mysterious white glow filled the kitchen.

  ‘Daddy . . .’ Holly gripped his shoulders tightly.

  Swain turned around slowly, staring, mesmerised, at the soft white light glowing around him—glowing around him—growing around him.

  Growing.

  The kitchen was getting brighter. The light was gathering intensity.

  Swain spun. All around him, the soft white glow had become a dazzling white light. Wherever he turned, his eyes reeled at the brilliant light. It seemed to come from every direction.

  He lifted his forearm to shield his eyes.

  ‘Daddy! What’s happening!’

  Swain held her closer, pushed her h
ead into his chest, guarding her from the light. He squinted as his eyes tried to penetrate the blinding wall of white light surrounding them, searching for a source.

  Recoiling from the light, he abruptly looked down at his feet—and saw a perfect circle of white light ringing his sneakers.

  And then Swain realised.

  He was at the centre of the light.

  He was the source!

  Gusts of wind shot through the kitchen. Dust and paper swirled around Swain’s head as he held Holly close to his chest. He shut his eyes, bracing himself against the screaming wind.

  Then, strangely, above the howling of the wind, he heard a voice. A soft, faint, insistent voice saying, ‘Steve? Stephen Swain, are you still with us?’

  It took him a second to realise that it was the phone. Wilson was still on the line. Swain had forgotten that he was still holding onto the phone.

  ‘Stephen, what’s going on. Ste—’

  The phone went dead.

  A deafening thunderclap boomed and Swain was instantly plunged into complete darkness.

  SECOND MOVEMENT

  30 November, 6:04 p.m.

  A lot of people would say that fear of the dark is nothing but a phenomenon of childhood.

  A child fears the dark simply because he or she does not have the experience to know that in fact nothing is there. But as Stephen Swain knew, fear of the dark was common in many adults. Indeed, for some, the human need for sight was often as basic as the need for food.

  Standing in pitch darkness, without a clue where he was, Swain felt it strange that he should be thinking of his college studies in human behaviour. He remembered his lecturer saying, ‘Human fears are very often irrational constructs of the mind. How else would you explain a six-foot-tall woman being petrified by the mere sight of a single white mouse—a creature barely four inches long?’

  But no fear was seen as more irrational—or more innate in man—than a fear of the dark. Academic theorists and weary parents had been saying for centuries that there was nothing in the dark that was not already there in the light . . .

  But I’ll bet something like this never happened to them, Swain thought as he stared into the sea of blackness around him.