Contest

by Matthew Reilly

  The two men stepped slowly down the aisle, away from the frozen creature.

  And then suddenly it began to follow them, moving around the corner in a darting crab-like manner that belied its size. Then it stopped.

  Swain pushed Hawkins further down the aisle. ‘Keep moving. Just keep moving.’

  ‘What the—’

  ‘Just move.’

  Swain was walking backwards, still facing the creature. Again it made a darting, scuttling movement ten feet forward, and then stopped again, well short of Hawkins and himself

  It’s being cautious, he thought.

  And then it charged.

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  The large animal bounded down the narrow confines of the aisle.

  Swain looked frantically for somewhere to run. But he was still ten feet away from the nearest passageway into the maze of bookshelves.

  There was nowhere to go!

  Swain braced himself, the ground beneath him vibrating under the thumping weight of the fast-approaching creature. Christ, it must weigh nearly four hundred pounds.

  Hawkins turned. He saw it over Swain’s shoulder. ‘Holy Christ . . .’

  Swain just stood there, feet spread wide, taking up the whole aisle.

  The creature kept coming. It wasn’t stopping.

  ‘It’s not stopping!’ Hawkins yelled.

  ‘It has to!’ Swain called. ‘It has to stop!’

  The creature bounded forward, bearing down on Swain like a runaway freight train, until abruptly, three feet short of him, it reared on its hind legs and clasped the bookcases on either side of it with its clawed forelimbs, bringing it to a sudden, lunging stop.

  The four-sided jaw stopped just inches away from Swain’s unmoving face.

  The creature hissed fiercely, challenging him. Its saliva dripped down onto the floor in front of his shoes.

  Swain averted his gaze, stared at a nearby book-shelf, keeping his eyes off the animal’s oscillating antennae. The horrifying alligator-like creature, now standing up on its hind legs, towered over him, looming above him like an evil apparition.

  Swain wagged an admonishing finger at the infuriated animal: ‘Ah-ah-ah. No touching.’

  And he began to walk backwards again, pushing Hawkins.

  Hawkins stumbled down the aisle, looking back over his shoulder every few seconds. This time the creature didn’t follow them, at least not immediately.

  They reached the little white man and the girl, and were a good thirty feet from the creature when it began moving toward them again.

  The little man spoke: ‘Sequencing! She’s sequencing!’

  The man in the loose-fitting shirt and jeans looked at Hawkins, standing there in his well-pressed police uniform.

  We don’t have time to talk right now, but my name is Stephen Swain, and at the moment we’re all in big trouble. You ready to run?’

  Hawkins answered without thinking. ‘Yuh-huh.’

  Swain looked back down the aisle at the large dinosaur-like creature. Twenty feet. He picked up Holly.

  ‘You know the way back to the stairwell?’ he asked Hawkins.

  The young cop nodded.

  ‘Then you lead the way. Just keep zig-zagging. we’ll be right behind you.’ He turned to the others. ‘You two ready?’ They nodded. ‘Okay then, let’s move.’

  Hawkins broke into a run, the others close behind him.

  With a great lunge, the creature leapt forward in pursuit.

  Swain brought up the rear, carrying Holly on his hip. He could hear the pounding of the great weight on the floor behind him.

  The stairs. The stairs. Got to reach the stairs.

  Left, right, left, right.

  He could see the cop weaving up ahead, and then finally, beyond the policeman, he saw the central stairwell block. But he couldn’t see the doorway.

  They were coming from the wrong side.

  ‘Daddy! It’s catching up!’ Holly yelled from his shoulder.

  He looked behind him.

  The creature was indeed closing in on them—a giant black-green monster galloping down the narrow aisle with its salivating jaws bared wide.

  Swain wasn’t worried for himself. Selexin had been right about that. Whatever it was, it was another contestant, and it couldn’t touch him. Not yet. Not until that number on his watch read ‘7’.

  But if it got Holly . . .

  He saw the cop round the central stairwell block up ahead, then Selexin. Swain rounded the concrete block last of all, panting hard.

  The door!

  He saw Selexin duck inside it, and then the policeman appeared in the doorway, his hand outstretched.

  ‘Come on!’ he was yelling.

  Swain heard the creature slide around the corner behind him.

  He kept running, kept holding Holly to his chest. He was breathing very heavily now. He was sure he was running too slowly. He could hear the creature’s snorting grunts close behind him. Any second now it would be all over him, ready to pluck his daughter—the only family he had left—right from his very arms . . .

  ‘Come on!’ Hawkins called again.

  Behind him, Swain heard the creature’s tail slam against a bookcase, heard the sound of books crashing to the floor. Then suddenly, he was at the door and he reached for Hawkins’ outstretched arms and Hawkins grabbed his hand and hurled him and Holly inside the stairwell just as Selexin slammed the door shut behind them.

  Selexin turned, breathless, exhilarated. ‘We made it—’

  Bang!

  The door behind him shuddered violently.

  Swain lifted himself up from the floor, gasping for air. ‘Come on.’

  They were a whole floor up the stairwell when they heard the door to Sub-Level Two bang open with a loud bone-jarring crack!

  INCOMPLETE—6

  Swain frowned at the wristband. He’d missed the arrival of the last two contestants. Now there was no knowing when the next—and last—contestant would enter the library.

  No knowing when the Presidian would begin.

  The group had left the stairwell and were now hiding in an office on Sub-Level One. Like all the others around it, this office was partitioned by waist-high wood panelling with glass reaching the rest of the way up to the ceiling. Everyone was careful to stay low, out of sight, below the glass.

  Swain had found a directory of the library attached to the wall of the stairwell and wrenched it free. He was looking at it now while Selexin sat behind the desk, quietly explaining their situation to Hawkins. Holly was sitting on the floor nestled up to Swain, holding him tightly, sucking her thumb. She was still a little shell-shocked by their close encounter with the big creature downstairs.

  The directory showed a cross-section of the library.

  Six floors—four above ground, two below—each a different colour. The two sub-levels below the Ground Floor were both shaded grey and stamped with the label NO PUBLIC ACCESS. The others were brightly coloured:

  THIRD FLOOR — STUDY HALL

  SECOND FLOOR — READING ROOMS,

  FUNCTION ROOMS,

  COMPUTER SERVICES

  FIRST FLOOR — ON-LINE SERVICES

  CD-ROMS, COPIERS,

  MICROFILM

  GROUND FLOOR — CATALOGUES,

  CD-ROMS, REFERENCE

  Swain remembered the study hall on the top floor with its odd-looking desks. He tried to memorise the rest. Small blue squares picturing a stick-man and woman indicated toilets on every other floor. Another blue square, with a car pictured in it, was tacked to the edge of Sub-Level One. The parking lot.

  He checked his wristband again.

  INCOMPLETE—6

  Still ‘6’. Good.

  He looked over at Selexin and the policeman, and shook his head in wonder.

  That young cop was lucky to be alive. It had been only blind luck that had led Swain to his rescue—the instant when he, Holly and Selexin had been descending the stairs and seen a long shadow stretch out onto the landing bel
ow them.

  They had watched from the shadows above as the creature—Selexin said its name was Reese—stepped slowly into view, accompanied by its guide. It stopped on the landing, seemed to examine the floor with its snub dinosaur-like snout, and then peered down the stairwell.

  Then it had slithered quickly down the stairs.

  Something had caught its attention.

  Curious, they had then followed it down into the Stack and seen it weave purposefully in and out of the bookshelves for several minutes—stalking something, leading it on. It was only at the last moment that Swain had ventured out into the furthermost aisle to actually see Reese’s quarry—a lone policeman, trapped in the corner.

  He’d moved instantly—stopping only for a piece of last-minute advice from Selexin: avoid all eye contact with Reese’s antennae.

  And so they had met Hawkins.

  Swain turned to Selexin. ‘Tell me more about Reese.’

  ‘Reese?’ Selexin said. ‘Well, for one thing, Reese is, in human terms, female. Her tail tapers sharply to a point, like a spear. Males of her species possess only blunted tails. This is because in their clans, the female is the hunter, and her chief weapon is her sharp pointed tail.

  ‘Didn’t you see, when Reese was moving in on your new friend here,’ Selexin nodded to Hawkins, ‘that her tail was poised high over her body, in a large arc, pointing forward? And he couldn’t move an inch.

  ‘That is why I told you not to make prolonged eye contact with her antennae. Any extended visual contact with them will cause instant paralysis. Just like it did with him.’ Selexin gave Hawkins a look. ‘That is how Reese hunts. You look at her antennae for too long and you suffer hypnotic paralysis, and—bang!—before you know it, she’s got you with that tail. Right between the eyes.’

  The little man smiled. ‘I would say she bears a rather strong resemblance to the female of your own species, aggressive and instinctive. wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Hey,’ Holly said.

  Swain ignored the remark. ‘Tell me more about her hunting methods. Her stalking methods.’

  Selexin took a breath. ‘Well, as you no doubt noticed, Reese has no eyes. For the simple reason that she does not need them. She comes from a planet surrounded by opaque, inert gases. Light cannot enter their atmosphere, and the inert gases are impervious to any chemical change. Her race has simply adapted over time to utilise and enhance their other senses: increased auditory acuity, sensitive ampullae for detecting the distressed heartbeat of frightened or wounded prey, and, most of all, a highly evolved scent detection mechanism. In fact, I would say that her sense of smell is her most well-developed hunting tool.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Swain said, alarmed, ‘she can smell us?’

  ‘Not now. Reese’s sense of smell has a very limited range. No farther than, say, a couple of feet.’

  Swain breathed in relief. Hawkins did, too.

  ‘But within that range,’ Selexin went on, ‘her sense of smell is incredibly astute.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ Selexin said, ‘that the manner by which she detected him,’—Selexin pointed roughly to Hawkins—‘was by his scent.’

  ‘But I thought you said her range wasn’t that good. How could—’

  Swain cut himself off. Selexin was waiting for him again, giving him an expectant ‘are-you-finished?’ look.

  ‘That is correct,’ Selexin said, ‘In a way. You see, Reese didn’t smell him. What she smelled was the scent he left behind. Do you remember when Reese first came into our view in the stairwell? She bent low and sniffed the floor?’

  Swain frowned. ‘Yeah . . .’

  ‘Footprints,’ Selexin said. ‘A trail not long cold. With any fresh trail like that, Reese doesn’t need to smell anything beyond two feet, because she just follows the scent of the trail itself.’

  ‘Oh,’ Swain said.

  And then it hit him.

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  He shot up to look out through the glass partition above him—

  And found himself staring at Reese’s menacing four-pronged jaws—wide open, foully salivating—pressed up against the other side of die glass, only inches away.

  Swain fell backwards, stumbled away from the glass.

  Hawkins leapt to his feet, mouth agape.

  Reese slammed against the partition, smearing saliva everywhere.

  ‘Eyes down!’ Swain yelled, snatching Holly up in his arms. Reese rammed the partition again—hard—and the whole office shook. ‘Keep your eyes away from the antennae! Go for the door!’

  There were three glass doors to this square-shaped office—one west, one south and one east. Reese was banging on the western wall of the room.

  Swain ran for the eastern door, threw it open and charged into the next office, Selexin and Hawkins close behind him.

  With Holly in the crook of his arm, he slid smoothly over a desk in the centre of the office, opened the next door.

  ‘Close the doors behind you!’ he yelled back.

  ‘Already doing it!’ Hawkins called forward.

  And then, from behind them, there came a loud crashing sound—the sound of breaking glass.

  Up ahead, Swain continued to run. Over desks, through doorways, dodging filing cabinets, sending paper flying everywhere. Then he came out of the last office and was suddenly faced with something different.

  A heavy blue door set into a solid concrete wall.

  Hawkins was yelling, ‘She’s coming! And she seems really pissed off.’

  Swain looked at the heavy blue door. It looked strong, with a hydraulic opening mechanism. At the end of the short corridor to his right, he saw another option—a glassed-in elevator bay. He glanced back at Hawkins racing through the offices behind him.

  Better do something . . .

  With Holly still in his arms, Swain turned the knob on the hydraulic door. It opened.

  Three concrete stairs. Going down.

  He stepped through the doorway, pulled Selexin with him and waited for Hawkins. Hawkins was running hard, through the last glass-walled office.

  Beyond Hawkins, Swain could see nothing but offices divided by glass partitions.

  And then he saw it. Saw the long pointed tail flashing up above the waist-high wood panelling. It was barging through anything that lay in its path—like a great white shark’s fin slicing through water—launching desks and filing cabinets and swivel chairs high into the air.

  Two offices away and heading directly toward them.

  Moving fast.

  Closing in.

  Hawkins ran past Swain, through the doorway, and Swain shut the big hydraulic door behind him. It closed with a dull thud.

  Strong door. Good. It would give them some time.

  Holding Holly, Swain took the lead again, heading down the three concrete stairs. White fluorescent lights lit a modern grey-painted corridor. Black piping snaked its way along the ceiling.

  The four of them followed the winding corridor for about twenty yards before, suddenly, they burst into open space.

  Swain stopped and took in the scene before him.

  An underground parking lot.

  It looked new—almost brand new, in fact. Glistening newly paved concrete, white-painted floor markings, shiny yellow wheel clamps on the ground, pristine white fluorescent lights. It was quite a contrast to the old dusty library they had seen so far.

  Swain scanned the parking lot.

  No cars.

  Damn.

  There was a Down ramp in the centre of the lot, about twenty yards in front of them. Swain figured that the Exit ramp going up to the street must be on the other side of the Down ramp.

  There came a sudden, loud bang from somewhere behind them.

  Swain spun.

  Reese was through the door.

  He quickly led the others to the Down ramp. It was wide—wide enough for two cars to pass each other side-by-side. They had just reached the top of the ramp when he heard a hissin
g sound from behind them.

  Swain turned around slowly.

  Reese was standing at the entrance to the parking lot, her guide positioned silently behind her.

  Swain swallowed—

  —and then, suddenly, he heard another sound.

  Clop . . .

  Clop . . .

  Clop . . .

  Footsteps. Slow footsteps. Echoing loudly in the deserted parking lot.

  Swain, Holly, Selexin and Hawkins all spun at the same time and they saw him instantly.

  Coming up the Down ramp.

  Walking slowly, purposefully.

  A six-foot bearded man, dressed in a broad-shouldered animal-skin jacket, dark pants and knee-high black boots that clip-clopped loudly on the concrete ramp.

  And behind him, yet another guide, dressed completely in white.

  As the big bearded man stepped onto level ground and stopped, Swain instinctively pushed Holly behind him.

  At the sight of the new contestant, Reese became visibly agitated. She hissed even louder.

  They all stood in silence—the three groups forming a precarious, unspeaking triangle.

  It was then that Swain looked down at his wristband. It now read:

  INITIALISED—7

  Seven.

  Swain looked up slowly.

  The Presidian had begun.

  THIRD MOVEMENT

  30 November, 6:39 p.m.

  The parking lot was silent.

  Somewhere off to his left Swain could hear the drone of New York traffic, the honking of car horns. The sounds of the outside world—the ordinary world.

  Selexin drew up beside him.

  ‘Just keep looking forward,’ Selexin was staring intently at the tall bearded man before them.

  ‘He is Balthazar. The Crisean. Small-blade handler: knives, stilettos, that sort of thing. Technologically, the Criseans are not well-developed, but with their hunting skills, they don’t need tech—’

  Selexin cut himself off.

  The bearded man was staring right at them. Looking directly at Swain.

  Swain kept his eyes locked on Balthazar.

  Just then the big man turned slightly, revealing something hanging from his waist. Something that glinted under the harsh electric light of the parking lot.

  A blade.