‘The elevator!’ Holly whispered. ‘Go for the elevator!’
‘Good idea,’ Selexin said, pressing on through the tangle of standing and fallen desks.
There must have been hundreds of desks in the study hall, half of which still stood, undisturbed. The other half had not been so fortunate, crushed or thrown by the Karanadon, torn to pieces, smashed beyond recognition.
The elevators were close now.
The doors to the left-hand elevator were still pulled wide, revealing the black abyss of the elevator shaft. The Karanadon must have pulled them open so hard that they had stayed open.
Selexin hit the call button on the run, slammed into the wall, spun around.
In the flickering glow of the fire, he saw Hawkins’ body spinning slowly from the ceiling above the entrance to the stairwell.
And beneath the body, stepping slowly and cautiously into the study hall, was a hood.
Through the tangled forest of desk legs, Selexin saw the second hood join its partner and he felt a chill.
They were scanning the study hall very slowly, peering across the room, under the desks.
Selexin watched intently. It was as though the hoods were more resolved now, more serious. It was time to kill. Play was over. The hunt had begun.
Holly snapped to look at the open elevator shaft behind them.
The cables that had run vertically down the shaft were all gone now, snapped by the Karanadon, probably resting at the bottom with the rest of the battered lift. They couldn’t slide down this time.
The numbered display above the other elevator was still working though: one number after the other slowly ignited as the elevator crawled upwards.
LG glowed yellow. Then faded.
G glowed yellow, faded.
1 glowed—
Holly felt Selexin tug on her shoulder. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘But the lift . . .’
‘It will not get here in time.’ Selexin grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the elevators just as she caught a glimpse of the hoods moving in from the left.
Selexin pulled hard, dragging Holly to the right, watching the hoods through the legs of the desks.
The hoods were twenty feet away, moving with the cold stealth of seasoned hunters.
In the strobe-like light of the fires, Selexin could see them clearly. The needle-like teeth protruding from the spherical head; the bony black forelegs with their bloodied claws scraping on the floor; the powerful, muscular hind legs; and the long scaly tail that swished menacingly behind the black torso as if it had a mind of its own.
The perfect hunter.
Remorseless. Relentless.
Selexin swallowed as he jumped over a fallen desk and found himself standing before the janitor’s room. In the corner.
Dead end.
He looked back. The hoods had stopped now, still twenty feet away. They were just standing there, staring at their diminutive prey.
A moment later, they moved again.
In opposite directions.
They were splitting up.
‘Not good,’ Selexin said, ‘this is not good.’ It was better when they were together, because at least then he could see them both at the same time. But now . . .
‘Quickly,’ he said to Holly, ‘get on the desks.’
‘What?’
‘Get on them,’ Selexin insisted. ‘They are seeing us through the legs. If we get onto the desks, they will not know where we are.’
Holly climbed like a monkey onto the nearest L-shaped desk. Selexin jumped up quickly behind her.
‘Let’s go,’ she whispered, obviously in her element now, jumping easily across to the next desk.
‘Just be careful,’ Selexin said, stumbling after her. ‘Do not fall off.’
Holly danced nimbly from desk to desk, skipping over the gaps with ease. Behind her, Selexin did the same.
Beneath them, they could hear the snorting and grunting of the hoods.
There was a sudden bing! and Selexin looked over his shoulder and saw—across the sea of desks—the upper half of the elevator doors.
They were opening.
‘Oh no,’ he said, running across the desk tops.
Holly saw them, too. ‘Can we get there?’
‘We have to try,’ Selexin said.
Holly changed her course, turning in a wide semi-circle, jumping across the desks. She was about to leap across a wide gap between two desks when the able-bodied hood, claws raised to attack, sprang up from the floor into her path.
Holly fell backwards onto the desk and the hood dropped from sight.
Selexin caught up with her. ‘Are you—?’
With a loud squeal, the hood leapt up again, onto an adjacent desk, and lashed out at Holly with a scythe-like foreclaw.
Holly screamed as she rolled clear, off the desk, falling to the floor. Selexin watched her fall out of sight.
‘No!’
The hood swung viciously at Selexin—backhanded—hitting him squarely in the face. He recoiled sharply, losing his balance, falling backwards onto his desk.
With frightening speed, the hood leapt at him as he landed, but Selexin rolled and the hood smashed into the upright partition of the L-shaped table.
The weight of the impact rocked the desk, and in an instant Selexin’s horror became complete as he saw the world tilt crazily and felt the desk he was sitting on keel over backwards.
From the floor, Holly watched fearfully as the desk on which Selexin and the hood fought lurched backwards and tipped over. It seemed to fall in slow motion.
Selexin fell first, hitting the floor hard, his white eggshell hat flying from his head. He rolled clear of the falling desk.
The hood slid off the tilting desk, landing on its feet like a cat, right in front of Selexin.
Selexin was totally exposed, and the hood was tensing itself to attack when abruptly the desk came crashing down on its back.
Pinned to the floor, shrieking like a mad animal, the hood writhed about in a frenzy, attempting to free itself. Its jaws snapped and snarled as it still tried—despite its own predicament—to get to Selexin.
Selexin was scrambling backwards on his butt, away from the wailing creature when, from behind him, Holly tipped over a second desk.
This time the L-shaped table fell forward, and the hood looked up in horror at the desk rushing down toward it.
The leading edge of the desk landed with a loud crunching sound on the hood’s upturned head, shattering the animal’s long needle-like teeth as it crushed its skull against the floor.
The hood’s body jerked and spasmed beneath the two fallen desks, until at last it lay still. Dead.
Silence.
Then Holly heard a soft bing! followed by the grinding sound of the elevator doors closing again.
She knelt beside Selexin, looking quickly in every direction. ‘Where’s the other one?’
‘I . . . I do not know,’ Selexin was badly shaken. ‘It could be anywhere.’
Now it was Holly who grabbed Selexin by the arm and pulled him to his knees. ‘We missed the elevator,’ she said, determined. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.’
‘But . . . but,’ Selexin mumbled feebly.
‘Come on. Let’s move.’
‘But my . . . my hat!’ Selexin clawed at his bald head. ‘I need my hat.’
Holly spun around quickly and saw the hat. The small white hemisphere was sitting on the floor, jutting out from behind a nearby upturned desk.
She crawled toward the fallen desk on her hands and knees, rounded the upturned legs, and reached out to grab the hat . . .
Holly paused.
Then she froze.
Beside the hat stood two bony black forelegs—one with a bloodstained claw; one with no claw at all.
Her eyes lifted, rising up the forelegs, following them until she came face to face with the second hood.
The hood’s jaws opened wide, salivating in e
vil anticipation, inches away from her face.
Selexin watched helplessly from the floor ten feet away. Too far.
Holly was still on all fours, almost nose-to-nose with the hood.
Totally defenceless.
The hood stepped forward and stood over the hat.
It was so close now that all Holly could see was its teeth. Its long, pointed, bloody teeth. She felt the warmth of its hot breath blowing on her face; smelled the foul odour of rotting flesh.
Holly shut her eyes and clenched her fists, waiting for the animal to strike, waiting for the end. Her terror was extreme.
Suddenly, the hood hissed fiercely and Holly wanted to scream and then, as her horror hit fever pitch, she had the strange sensation of hearing her father’s voice.
‘Initialise!’
There was a sudden, glorious flare of white that shot through Holly’s eyelids.
Then she heard the hood shriek in total, rabid agony and she opened her eyes and was instantly blinded by the small sphere of dazzling white light that had flared to life above Selexin’s hat.
The hood’s shrieking cut off abruptly and Holly heard her father’s voice again.
‘Cancel.’
The blinding white light vanished instantly and for a moment Holly saw nothing but kaleidoscopic spots of colour.
Then suddenly there were two strong arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly, and still blind, Holly’s first thought was to break free.
But the grip was firm and gentle.
A hug.
Holly blinked twice as her eyesight slowly returned and she found herself in the warm embrace of her father.
Her muscles drooped with relief and she let her body fall limply into his.
Then she began to cry.
As he held his daughter tightly in his arms, Stephen Swain closed his eyes and sighed. Holly was safe, and they were back together again. He didn’t want to let her go.
Still holding her, he turned to look at the remains of the hood.
The body had been cut perfectly in two—only the hind legs and the tail remained. The head, forelimbs and upper torso had simply disappeared, teleported to God-only-knew-where. Thick black blood oozed out from the exposed cross-section of the animal’s torso.
Selexin limped to Swain’s side and grimaced at the sight of the half-bodied hood.
‘“Initialise”. “Cancel”,’ Selexin laughed softly to himself. ‘It is nice to know,’ he said wryly to Swain, ‘that you do not forget everything I tell you.’
Swain smiled sadly, still hugging Holly. ‘Not everything.’
Holly looked up at her father. ‘I knew you would come back.’
Swain said, ‘Of course I came back, silly. You didn’t think I’d leave you here all by yourself, did you?’
‘Ah, ahem,’ Selexin coughed, ‘I beg your pardon but the young lady was certainly not all by herself.’
‘Oh, excuse me.’
Holly said, ‘He was very brave, Daddy. He helped me a lot.’
‘He did, huh?’ Swain looked at Selexin. ‘That was very noble of him. I really should thank him.’
Selexin bowed modestly.
‘Thanks,’ Swain said softly to the little man.
Selexin, proud of his new-found hero status, shook it off. ‘Oh, it was nothing. All part of the service, right?’
Swain laughed. ‘Right.’
‘I knew you’d come back. I knew it.’ Holly nestled into Swain’s arms. Then she looked up suddenly, made a mock-angry face, and adopted a severe adult tone. ‘So where have you been all this time? How did you find us?’
Actually, in the end, finding Holly and Selexin had been rather lucky.
From the parking lot, Swain had run into the Stack and arrived at the small red door through which he had been bowled out by the hoods. When he found nothing there, not even a trace of Holly and Selexin, he was at a total loss.
And then, in the silence, he had heard the nearby elevator ping.
It must have just been sitting there on Sub-Level Two when somebody on another floor had pressed the call button.
Swain raced for the elevator and reached it just as the doors were about to meet. He jumped inside and rode the lift to whichever floor the call had come from. It was better than nothing. And besides, who knew? Maybe Holly or Selexin had pressed the call button. Then again, it might not have been them, but by then Swain didn’t care. It was a risk he had to take.
The elevator had opened onto the Third Floor and Swain had been confronted with the burning study hall.
He had ducked and crawled out of the lift on his hands and knees, trying to stay out of sight.
Then he had heard voices and the grunts of the hoods, and then the crash of a falling desk, and then another.
He jumped to his feet, and followed the noise, rounded a clump of desks and saw his daughter crouched on her hands and knees, nose-to-nose with one of the hoods.
Swain was too far away, and didn’t know what to do, when he realised that the hood was standing over Selexin’s white, egg-like hat.
And at that moment, a single word had leapt into his mind—‘Initialise’.
‘Can you get them?’ Marshall asked the radio operator inside the NSA van.
‘Negative, sir. There’s no response from Commander Quaid or Agent Martinez.’
‘Try again.’
‘But, sir,’ the operator insisted, ‘all I’m getting is static. We can’t even tell whether Commander Quaid has his radio turned on.’
Status Report: Station 4 reports detection of
contaminant inside labyrinth.
Awaiting confirmation.
‘Just keep trying,’ Marshall said, ‘and call me as soon as you pick up anything.’
Marshall climbed out of the van onto the parking lot ramp. He looked up at the electrified grille, at the crumpled lead cube at its base, at the surging blue grid of electricity.
What the hell had happened to Quaid?
In the study hall, Swain stood up, holding Holly in his arms. ‘We better get going.’
Selexin was putting his white, dome-like hat back on. It was stained with the black blood of the hood. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘Bellos cannot be far away.’
‘Bellos,’ Swain thought aloud. ‘It had to be.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Bellos is the other one,’ Swain said. ‘The only other contestant left.’
‘There are only two contestants remaining in the Presidian?’ Selexin asked.
‘Yep,’ Swain offered him the wristband.
Selexin perused it for a moment, then looked up at Swain. His face was grim. ‘We have a serious problem.’
‘What?’
‘Look at this.’ Selexin held Swain’s wristband up to him. It read:
INITIALISED—2
STATUS REPORT: STATION 4 REPORTS DETECTION OF
CONTAMINANT INSIDE LABYRINTH.
AWAITING CONFIRMATION.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Swain said.
‘It means,’ Selexin said, ‘that they have discovered the hood.’
‘Which hood?’ Swain asked. ‘And who on earth are they?’
‘The hood that you just killed using the teleport in my hat.’
‘And they?’
‘They are the officials watching at the other end of that teleport, who I imagine received quite a shock when half a hoodaya was teleported into their laps. They are in Station Four, the teleport station assigned to monitor the progress of contestant number four—you.’
‘So what does the message mean?’
Selexin said, ‘This contest is for seven contestants only. It is a fight to the death between the seven intelligent beings of the universe. Outside assistance is strictly forbidden. Hoods are like dogs. They are not intelligent beings. Wherefore, they do not compete in the Presidian. And they most surely do not live on Earth. So when the officials in Station Four received a hood teleported from the labyrinth on Earth, they immedi
ately realised that the Presidian had been compromised, contaminated by an outside agent.’
Swain was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘So what are they doing now?’
‘They are awaiting confirmation.’
‘What’s confirmation?’
Selexin said, ‘An official must go to Station Four and visually confirm the existence of the contaminant.’
‘And what happens when it’s confirmed?’
‘I do not know. This has never happened before.’
‘Can you guess?’
Selexin nodded slowly.
‘Well?’ Swain prompted.
The little man bit his lip. ‘They will probably annul the Presidian.’
‘You mean call it off?’
Selexin frowned. ‘Not quite. What they will probably do—’
‘Daddy . . .’ Swain heard Holly’s soft voice come from his chest. He was still holding her in his arms.
‘In a minute, honey,’ Swain said. Then to Selexin, ‘What will they do?’
‘I think they’ll—’
‘Daddy!’ Holly whispered insistently.
‘What is it, Holly?’ Swain said.
‘Daddy. Someone’s here . . .’ she spoke in such a low, hissing whisper that it took Swain a couple of seconds to realise what she had said.
He looked down at her. She was staring fearfully out over his shoulder.
Slowly, Stephen Swain looked behind him.
Across the wide room, he saw a body—bloodied and mutilated—hanging upside down from the ceiling, just inside the stairwell door.
And standing beside the body was Bellos.
Swain spun and saw the body next to Bellos swing around lazily. A wave of sadness shot through him as he saw the police uniform.
Hawkins.
Without a word, Bellos began to walk through the tangle of L-shaped desks toward them.
Toward them.
‘Let’s go!’ Holly said loudly in his ear.
Swain moved laterally to his left, trying to keep as many desks as possible between him and Bellos.
Bellos did the same, moving in a peculiar, wide arc from left to right, threading his way calmly and quickly between the desks. He still had his white guide draped over his shoulder.
Swain stumbled away from the big man, toward the elevators, Holly in his arms, Selexin by his side.
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