Swain wasn’t sure what he expected to hear. The sizzling of electrostatic currents shooting through the water. Maybe even a scream from Quaid, whom he had last seen standing in the middle of the pool of water, firing at him.
But nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
The parking lot remained dead silent, save for the constant shoosh of the sprinklers.
Swain slowly lifted his hands from his head and saw Quaid and the second NSA agent—still standing near the central concrete ramp, their feet still in the pool of water—staring curiously at him as he lay on the car bonnet.
Reese, however, was nowhere in sight.
The pool of water had reached the Emergency Exit and flowed right under it without incident.
Swain could think of only one explanation. It wasn’t an exterior door. It hadn’t been electrified. There must be another door beyond it.
Sprinkler rain continued to fall.
And then suddenly—ferociously—Reese burst forward from behind the second NSA agent, and abruptly, the man’s ribcage exploded, replaced in an instant by the pointed tip of her tail, protruding grotesquely from his chest.
Quaid spun but he was too slow.
Reese was already moving—extracting her tail from Martinez’s body, letting the corpse drop to the floor like a rag doll—and then trampling roughly over the body and hurling herself at Quaid, bounding into him, pitching him forward, knocking him to the floor with a splash.
She must have circled the central ramp, Swain realised, and then come up behind the two NSA agents, who had been threatening him.
Threatening her kill.
But Quaid was not giving in without a fight. He rolled onto his back just as Reese leapt onto his chest, jaws salivating, antennae swaying. Quaid reached up with his M-16, holding it above the water, and vainly sprayed the ceiling with automatic gunfire. At the same time, Swain thought he saw a flicker of white light flash out from the high-tech-looking unit attached to the barrel of Quaid’s assault rifle.
The struggle continued in the pouring indoor rain—but Reese was too strong, too heavy.
Her thick right forelimb came crashing down on Quaid’s right arm—his gun arm—and Swain heard the nauseating crunch of breaking bone.
The gun stopped firing instantly, and as Quaid’s arm broke horribly in two, the M-16 flew from his grasp, skittling across the water-covered floor of the parking lot, landing a few feet away from Swain’s Civic.
His face covered with saliva, Quaid screamed madly as blood streamed out from his cracked right elbow. With his other arm he tried pathetically to hold Reese at bay.
And then Swain saw Reese’s tail arch.
Smoothly and gracefully, behind her flailing antennae. Out of Quaid’s sight.
Swain didn’t have time to move.
The tail came down hard.
Viciously hard.
The pointed tip penetrated Quaid’s head in an explosion of red, shooting straight through the skull, emerging on the other side. Quaid’s body spasmed violently with the impact, his feet lifting off the ground, and then abruptly his body went completely limp.
Swain watched in horror as Reese coldly withdrew her tail from the dead man’s skull. Her tail came clear and the bloodstained head dropped to the floor with a soft splash.
Then she looked up at Swain.
And hissed at him fiercely.
Your turn.
Reese stepped clear of Quaid’s body, her whole body coiled, tensed, invigorated by the scent of battle.
Sprinkler rain hammered down on her pebbled dinosaurian back.
Swain stepped off the little Honda, eyeing her cautiously, wondering what the hell he was going to do now. And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.
Quaid’s M-16.
Lying in the water to his right, five yards away. Lifeless. Abandoned.
Swain didn’t waste a second. He dived for the gun.
Reese leapt forward.
Swain’s fingers slapped hard against the water as he grabbed the gun, lifted it clear of the pool and whirled it around to face the charging Reese.
He jammed down on the trigger.
Click!
No bullets! Quaid must have run it dry.
Not fair!
Reese was close now. She leapt at him in the driving rain, flying through the air, forelimbs raised, jaws bared—a giant attacking alligator.
Swain somersaulted left, just as Reese came crashing down on the spot he had just occupied, landing in the shallow water with a massive splash.
Swain got to his feet, turned to see where Reese was—
Thwack!
An immense weight crunched into his chest, driving him backwards. It was Reese’s shoulder, slamming into him.
Swain was lifted fully off the ground by the impact and then suddenly—whump—he landed with a thud on the bonnet of the parked Honda.
The car beneath him shuddered violently on its suspension and then before he knew it his ears were filled with the most terrifying sound he had ever heard in his life and he opened his eyes to find that he was looking into Reese’s wide-open jaws from a distance of six inches.
It made for a very peculiar sight: Swain—on his back, on the bonnet of the Civic, his arms splayed wide, dangling over its sides—with Reese, standing upright, her hind legs resting on the parking lot floor, her stubby forelimbs planted firmly on the bonnet of the car on either side of him.
She lowered her snout over his chest, as if sniffing him, smelling him, savouring her victory over him.
Swain kept his eyes averted—not daring to look at her antennae—while also keeping them clear of the torrent of saliva that now splattered down onto his chest.
Through the sprinkler rain, he could see their combined shadows on the wall nearby—her body bent over his—resting on the shadow of the car.
She had him.
Reese hissed fiercely.
And at that moment, on the wall, Swain saw the shadow of her tail rise behind her back.
This was it.
This was the end.
Reese knew it. Swain did, too.
And then suddenly he felt it—somehow it was still in his hand, hanging over the edge of the bonnet—and like the dawn of a new day, a new realisation hit him and Swain looked up into Reese’s eyeless face and said, ‘I’m sorry.’
And with that Swain jammed down on the second trigger of the M-16 he was still holding—the trigger that was attached to the gun’s barrel-mounted Taser—and fired it into the pool of water beneath the car.
A bolt of electricity flashed out from the prongs of the Bayonet and slammed into the water at the base of the Honda.
Instantly, a blinding flare of light illuminated the parking lot as a thousand branches of jagged white lightning snaked out across the surface of the water at astonishing speed.
Reese shrieked in agony as the electricity from the M-16’s underslung Taser shot through the water and up into her body—via her hind legs which were still planted in the shallow pool.
She shuddered violently, her whole lizard-like frame convulsing and spasming, causing the Honda beneath her to rock.
Swain just tried to keep himself clear of her body as it absorbed the stunning surge of electricity.
And then, in a final, lurching fit of electrocution, Reese vomited all over his chest—a disgusting greeny-brown slime—before she reared up on her hind legs and fell to the ground, splashing into the pool of water.
Dead.
For its part, the little Honda Civic—with Swain still on it—stood its ground as the electricity from the Bayonet hit its tyres but proceeded no further, its attempts to climb the car frustrated by the rubber.
Moments later, the sprinklers stopped.
The parking lot was silent once more.
Flat on the bonnet of the Civic, Swain breathed again. The initial flare of white light was gone and now only weak glints of electricity flickered up from the water.
The surge of
power from the M-16’s Bayonet had dissipated. The water was back to normal. The Bayonet itself was spent, sizzling, shorted out by the water contact. Swain let the gun splash to the ground.
He looked down at Reese. Strangely, in death her bulky dinosaurian body seemed even larger than it had in life. He also saw the bodies of the NSA agents, Quaid and Martinez, lying motionless on the watery floor.
He shook his head in astonishment, wondering how the hell he had managed to survive this confrontation.
And then his wristband beeped.
INITIALISED—2
Now there was only one other contestant left—and he still hadn’t found Holly and Selexin.
Swain took a deep breath and heaved himself off the car. His feet hit the concrete with a soft splash.
It wasn’t over yet.
‘We have to,’ Selexin said urgently.
‘You can. But I’m not,’ Holly said.
‘I am not going to leave you here.’
‘Then we can just stay here together.’ Holly folded her arms resolutely.
They were still standing on the Third Floor landing of the stairwell, outside the study hall.
After seeing Hawkins’ mutilated body suspended from the ceiling and throwing up, Holly had slumped down against the nearest wall and stared off into space. Now she was flatly refusing to enter the study hall, which meant walking past the body, and—worse still—through the blood.
Selexin looked about himself nervously. Down the stairs, he could see the open door to the Second Floor. Inside the study hall, upside down, he saw Hawkins’ body swaying gently from the ceiling.
Whatever had done this—Selexin suspected it had been Bellos and his hoods—it had ripped his arms right out of their sockets and torn off his head, accounting for the enormous pool of blood underneath the swinging body. Clusters of parallel gashes cut across Hawkins’ body—claw marks. Hood marks. When combined with the ominous yellow glow of the fire in the study hall, it made for a particularly grisly sight.
‘You can shut your eyes,’ Selexin suggested.
‘No.’
‘I can carry you.’
‘No.’
‘You must realise, we cannot stay here.’
Holly remained mute.
Selexin shook his head in frustration and again looked down the stairs.
He froze.
And then he turned back to Holly, picking her up roughly whether she liked it or not.
‘Hey—’
‘Shh!’
‘What are you doing—?’
‘We’re going inside. Right now,’ Selexin said, pulling her toward the door, looking over his shoulder.
Resisting, Holly followed his gaze down the stairwell. ‘I said, I don’t want—’
Her voice trailed off as her eyes came to rest on the door to the Second Floor. She fell silent.
A faint rectangle of light stretched out onto the Second Floor landing, and slowly—very slowly—Holly saw a dark shadow extend into it.
The source of the shadow appeared and Holly watched in terror as a hood stepped out onto the landing and looked up into her eyes.
The M-16’s underslung unit had writing on it: TASER BAYONET-4500.
Jesus, Swain thought, as he stood over the body of Harold Quaid, it made it sound like a new model motorcycle.
Swain had seen Taser shock victims before. Usually you recovered with a monster of a hangover, chiefly because police Taser sticks were unchangeably set at minimum voltage.
But this rifle-mounted Taser unit was not standard police issue. And if Quaid really was NSA, who knew what sort of voltage it was packing.
Swain looked down at Reese, lying face down in the shallow pool of water. One thing was certain: NSA Tasers weren’t set to simply stun. This one had carried enough voltage to kill Reese.
Swain held the M-16 in his hands. With its magazine empty and the Taser shorted out, it was useless. He discarded the assault rifle and bent down to examine the bodies of Quaid and Martinez. They might have something else on them.
Martinez’s SIG-Sauer pistol, or what was left of it, lay half-submerged in the water. It had been completely flattened—Swain guessed Reese must have stepped on it—and now it was little more than a collection of bent metal and broken springs.
Swain rummaged through the pockets of the two NSA men’s uniforms. He found a pair of small Motorola walkie-talkies, four extra batteries for the Taser unit, extra clips for the SIG-Sauer, two telescoping truncheon sticks, and each man had two CS tear-gas grenades.
Swain wondered if Karanadons were susceptible to tear gas—probably not. Hell, if he used the grenades, Swain thought, he’d probably only succeed in incapacitating himself. The radios were no help—after all, who was he going to call? And he didn’t like his chances with the truncheons against someone like Bellos. No, Harold Quaid and his partner had little to offer him.
He wondered how they had got inside the library in the first place. The parking lot presumably. But something must have gone wrong—otherwise they would have had ten more guys with them and much more artillery. Surely they wouldn’t come searching for aliens with only two guns between them.
Then Swain found something.
In Quaid’s back pocket. A sheet of paper. A list:
LSAT-560467-S
DATA TRANSCRIPT 463/511-001
SUBJECT SITE: 231.957 (North-eastern seaboard: CT, NY, NJ)
* * *
NO. TIME/EST LOCATION READING
1. 18:03:48 CT. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:09
2. 18:03:58 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:06
3. 18:07:31 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/ Dur:0.00:05
4. 18:10:09 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:07
5. 18:14:12 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/ Dur:0.00:06
6. 18:14:37 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:02
7. 18:14:38 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:02
8. 18:14:39 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:02
9. 18:14:40 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:02
10. 18:16:23 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:07
11. 18:20:21 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:08
12. 18:23:57 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:06
13. 18:46:00 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN
Type: UNKNOWN/Dur: 0.00:34
Swain stared at the list, bewildered.
Numbers and times and energy surges and the constant repetition of the word UNKNOWN. And presumably it all had something to do with the library.
Thirteen surges of energy in all. One in Connecticut and twelve in New York.
Okay.
Swain looked at the times of the first few surges.
18:03:48. A surge—source unknown, type unknown—detected in Connecticut, lasting nine seconds.
Exactly ten seconds after that initial surge began, at 6:03:58 p.m., a surge appeared in New York.
All right. That was easy. That was Swain himself and Holly being teleported from his home in Connecticut to the library in central Manhattan.
Six other surges of roughly the same duration—five to eight seconds—accounted for the other contestants and their guides being teleported into the library for the Presidian.
Swain remembered that Selexin had already been inside the library when he had arrived. His teleportation must have occurred too early to be on this list.
But that still left five other surges.
Swain scanned the lis
t further and saw the entries numbered 6 through 9—the four two-second surges that had come in rapid succession one second after the other. They had been underlined.
Swain frowned at the fifth surge.
18:14:12. A six-second surge. Nothing special about that, just another contestant and his guide being teleported inside. But twenty-five seconds after that surge came the four rapid surges in quick succession.
The hoods! he thought, realising.
They were small, so teleportation must not have taken very long. Only two seconds each.
And that explained the variation in the times needed for the other teleportations—some contestants were bigger or smaller than others, so they required more or less time to be teleported into the labyrinth, somewhere between five and eight seconds.
Swain smiled, this was coming together nicely.
Except for one thing.
The last energy surge.
It had come more than twenty-two minutes after all the other surges, which themselves had all occurred within twenty minutes.
And it had lasted thirty-four seconds. The longest surge before that had lasted only nine seconds.
What was it? An afterthought perhaps? Was it something the organisers of the Presidian had forgotten to put inside the labyrinth?
It wasn’t the Karanadon. Selexin had told Swain that the Karanadon had been placed inside the labyrinth almost a day before the Presidian was to commence.
Swain couldn’t figure it out now, so he let it be for the moment. It was time to go.
He put the sheet of paper in his pocket and with a final glance at Reese’s motionless body, he headed for the door marked TO STACK.
The study hall was bathed in the yellow glow of a fire out of control.
In the far corner of the wide room, beyond the flames, the janitor’s room stood sombrely—dark and charred, the fire inside it having burned itself out.
Holly shut her eyes as Selexin led her around the bloody corpse swinging from the ceiling. Her feet slipped suddenly on the pool of blood, but Selexin steadied her before she fell.
They could hear the hoods climbing the stairs behind them, grunting, snorting.
Selexin pulled harder, guiding Holly in among the L-shaped desks of the study hall.
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