[Sarah Jane Adventures 06] - The Lost Boy

by Gary Russell

  There it was.

  He rang the doorbell and after a few seconds, it opened. To reveal Mrs Stafford, he presumed. ‘Hi. I’m a mate of Lu — Ashley’s. Is he in?’

  ‘No. He’s at school.’

  But Clyde stood his ground, his best grin on his face. ‘You know, you don’t look much like him, do you?’

  ‘Well, he takes after his dad, doesn’t he?’ Mrs Stafford frowned, and her mouth curled into a smile. ‘You trying to say he’s not our Ashley? Oh, I get it. That Sarah Jane Smith sent you, right?’

  Before Clyde could confirm or deny this, Mrs Stafford grabbed a photograph in a frame from out of a set of drawers nearby. Odd place to keep a photo, Clyde reckoned.

  It showed Luke/Ashley with Mr and Mrs Stafford. Luke/Ashley was clutching a skateboard, grinning broadly. ‘His last birthday,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘We gave him that skateboard.’

  ‘Good was he? On the skateboard I mean?’ asked Clyde as casually as he could manage.

  ‘Course he was. He’s our Ashley. Good at everything he is.’ She passed him the photo. ‘So you take that back to your Sarah Jane Smith and you tell her my boy is back where he belongs!’

  And the door was slammed shut in Clyde’s face. But he didn’t mind, he was grinning now.

  As he walked down the street, he failed to look up. If he had, he’d have seen Luke, locked in his bedroom, hammering on the window, calling Clyde’s name.

  Clyde reached the end of the street but instead of heading back to the tube, he wandered into a park, where some boys were practising basketball, and a couple of old people were walking their dogs.

  He called Maria on his mobile.

  After a few rings, she answered, hushed. ‘Had to say I needed a toilet break,’ she explained, ‘so I don’t have long.’

  ‘Right. Well, this whole Luke thing is suss. His so-called mum wouldn’t let me see him and you know what she said they gave him on his last birthday? A skateboard. You’ve seen him on a skateboard. No sense of balance at all.’

  Maria laughed. Luke did indeed spend more time falling off skateboards than anything else. But, she suggested, that could be an after-effect of what the Bane had done to him.

  ‘I don’t care what the Bane did or didn’t do — you don’t loose skills like that. It’s instinct. And my instinct says that this photo they’ve given me is suss, too.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Photos can be faked. I’m gonna show it to Sarah Jane and see what she has to say.’

  Chapter Six

  The powerful enemy

  Some miles out of London, Sarah Jane Smith was standing in the reception area of a hi-tech establishment, established, so the plaque on the wall stated “for the furthering of paranormal research and investigation”. And imprinted on every door and glass wall (of which there were more than a few), was the legend A BEACON OF POSSIBILITY, above an engraving of a customised atomic energy symbol, but geared more to the Pharos Institute’s directive of exploring the mind.

  Sarah Jane smiled at the receptionist. ‘Hello, I just wondered how much longer —’ but she got no further because a door opened and a tall, elegant woman walked over, hand held out ready to shake, which Sarah Jane did automatically.

  ‘Miss Smith, I am so sorry for keeping you waiting, it’s terribly rude of me. How was your trip? Have you had a cup of tea, yet?’

  ‘Oh, fine and I don’t need a drink, thank you,’ Sarah Jane responded.

  ‘Marvellous,’ the woman replied. ‘My name is Rivers. I’m in charge of this place.’

  ‘Professor Celeste Rivers?’

  ‘You’ve heard of me? You are either a very good journalist, Miss Smith, or a mad stalker. I do hope it’s the former.’

  And Sarah Jane relaxed. She liked this woman with the easy manner and genuine smile that wasn’t just on her lips but was in her eyes as well.

  Professor Rivers led her down a corridor. ‘If I recall from my briefing notes, you were one of the journalists here the day the Institute opened, yes?’

  Sarah Jane nodded. ‘That’s right.’ She looked up at an impressive selection of photographs of top people connected with the Institute’s work over the years.

  ‘Without the pioneering work of people like these,’ Professor Rivers said, ‘we’d still be floundering in the dark.’

  Sarah Jane recognised a lot of the people from her past researches — Peter Fairley, Patricia Conway, Ann Reynolds, Bryan Cawston…

  ‘I’m impressed,’ she said.

  Professor Rivers gestured around them as they passed room after room of activity involving white coated scientists and researchers. ‘I’m glad. We don’t have nearly enough media interest. Most people still write off our work as that of cranks, but we’re in good company. Galileo and Copernicus were both dismissed by their blinkered scientific contemporaries.’

  Professor Rivers opened a door, and indicated for Sarah Jane to lead the way in.

  ‘Of course,’ Sarah Jane said as she passed into the room, ‘Galileo and Copernicus weren’t carrying out experiments into the paranormal.’

  Professor Rivers held up a hand, and smiled. ‘Ah, but don’t forget, Sir Isaac Newton and Thomas Edison both had strong personal interests in the “paranormal”, Miss Smith.’

  ‘It’s your work into telekinesis that I’m particularly curious about.’

  The Professor grinned wider. ‘Then, Miss Smith, you are in for a treat.’ She waved her arm around. ‘This is our telekinesis laboratory.’ She pressed a button on a wall and a screen slid up, revealing another room beyond. ‘Two-way mirror,’ she explained. We see in, they can’t see us.’

  A technician was sat a desk, a wire from each temple going into a monitor, and a diadem around his head had more wires leading off it, into a black box.

  He was staring at a ball on the floor. He then closed his eyes and the ball started to rise up of its own accord. Jerkily, but it was moving.

  ‘That is… astonishing,’ Sarah Jane said, mouth open. She was indeed impressed. Then the ball exploded with a pop, and the technician opened his eyes and sighed loudly.

  ‘Unfortunately we’re having a little difficulty with our energy-focus stabilisation. He was using a prototype of MITRE.’

  ‘Which is?’

  The professor was in her element now, delighted to be able to talk about the Pharos Institute’s work to someone open-minded. ‘Magnified Intensification of Telekinetic Reactive Energies. That headset takes the latent raw psychic ability all of us possess and enables the wearer to move the objects with the power of thought.’

  ‘Amazing. And you developed that here?’

  ‘Yes. Our resident child prodigy, Nathan Goss.’ She pointed to a side door. ‘In here.’

  She led Sarah Jane through into a much bigger room, which had a huge LAB 2 painted on one wall. Opposite this wall was another wall with a massive transparent board on it, onto which a young boy was writing furiously.

  He kept his back to them, rudely.

  Professor Rivers cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, Nathan, but this is Miss Smith. She’s here to do a feature about the Institute.’

  ‘So?’ was the surly response, as Nathan carried on writing.

  ‘Hello, Nathan,’ said Sarah Jane. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I’m working,’ snarled Nathan.

  ‘Oh I’m sorry’ she replied. ‘To disturb you, I mean. That looks very complex.’

  And with a sigh, he finally turned to face the two women.

  Sarah Jane thought in some respects he was an attractive lad. Mousy, unkempt hair, looked like he played sports (unusual in a science student, she thought, but good too). But there was something… not quite right. The down-turned, angry mouth and the blue eyes that glared with something close to hatred at her. She took an involuntary step back.

  ‘Don’t waste your time, or mine, asking me to explain,’ he shot back, venomously.

  Professor Rivers tried to break the tension. ‘Miss Smith wants to talk
to you about MITRE.’

  And Nathan Goss exploded in anger. ‘You told her? About MITRE? How stupid can you get?’

  ‘But your work…’ Professor Rivers stammered. ‘It’s important. It needs recognition — and funding. So I thought.

  ‘You thought? You thought? The day you think will be the day man learns to teleport himself to Mars!’

  Professor Rivers put her glasses on, perhaps in an attempt to look more in charge. ‘Now, I’m sorry Nathan but that behaviour —’

  ‘Just get out,’ Nathan all but screamed, staring straight at Sarah Jane, those angry eyes glaring in a passionate hatred Sarah Jane couldn’t understand. She’d never even met this boy before.

  ‘Come along, Miss Smith.’ The professor chivvied her out, all apologies and embarrassed pleasantries.

  As they reached the door, Sarah Jane swung back to Nathan Goss.

  ‘I used to know someone your age who could wipe the floor with your intelligence. And you know what? He could wipe the floor with you, too.’

  And she was gone.

  And the dark, twisted face of Nathan Goss suddenly brightened into a knowing smile as he enjoyed the solitude. ‘Well see about that, Sarah Jane Smith.’

  When Sarah Jane got home she went straight up to see Mr Smith in the attic.

  She plonked down some of the brochures the apologetic Professor Rivers had given her and told the computer about the events of the morning.

  ‘Nathan Goss is a genius,’ he told her. ‘He has an IQ of 195, was reading quantum physics at the age of eight. He has already turned down offers from Cambridge, Oxford, Durham and even the Rattigan Academy. Some call him the young Einstein. Others say his potential exceeds Einstein.’

  ‘He’s an obnoxious brat,’ was Sarah Jane’s considered response. ‘But there was something about him, Mr Smith. Something in those eyes that made my blood run cold.’

  Mr Smith continued as if Sarah Jane hadn’t spoken. ‘However, despite his IQ, a telekinetic energiser such as MITRE is still beyond his genius.’

  ‘It could be a terrible weapon.’

  ‘Yes, a destroyer of worlds. In the right hands, with the right mind.’

  Sarah Jane was lost in her own thoughts, too distracted to take in what Mr Smith had said. ‘Where did it come from then, if he didn’t create it?’

  ‘If I could analyse it’s composition,’ he said encouragingly, ‘I could perhaps define its technological origins.’

  Sarah Jane half-laughed. ‘You mean, sneak back into Pharos and nick one of those headsets?’

  ‘I mean exactly that, Sarah Jane,’ the computer responded. ‘It would be of great assistance.’

  Chapter Seven

  Journey into terror

  At 26 Chalsey Grove, Luke was trying to get out of his locked room. He was using some of the things he had found in a geometry set in a drawer in the bedside table — a ruler, a triangle and a compass.

  He heard the lock finally click back after half an hour’s work, just as the doorbell rang.

  Was it Clyde, come back for a second attempt? Mrs Stafford opened the door and he could hear a new voice. A kid.

  ‘We have a problem,’ the boy was saying.

  ‘What sort of problem?’ That was Mr Stafford. So, he hadn’t gone to work at all. Something strange was definitely happening here.

  ‘That stupid Rivers woman gave a demonstration of the telekinetic energiser.’

  ‘Who to?’ That was Mrs Stafford.

  ‘Oh three guesses.’

  ‘Sarah Jane Smith,’ Mr Stafford replied, and Lukes heart leapt at the mention of his mum. His real mum. He knew that now. Whoever the Staffords were, they certainly weren’t his biological parents. ‘But that doesn’t change anything, does it? She can’t know anything.’

  The boy was furious, speaking to the grown-ups in a way that even Luke thought was downright rude.

  ‘She must know something, you gravy-brained moron, or she wouldn’t have been at the Pharos Institute would she?’

  Mrs Stafford spoke quietly. ‘Okay, but there’s no need to talk to us like that —’

  But the boy cut her off. ‘This is my mission. I shall talk to you any way I choose.’

  Luke managed to silently ease the door open and head for the stairs, keeping an eye out for the Stafford’s and the boy downstairs, who all seemed to have gone into the living room.

  The front door was fifteen steps down, and two feet across. Freedom.

  ‘The Xylok said she might poke her nose in. It said it would take care of her.’ Mrs Stafford sounded alarmed.

  The boy responded angrily. ‘Oh, I am so sick of hearing “the Xylok says this” and “the Xylok thinks that”. The Xylok is just hired help, okay?’

  Mr Stafford sighed. ‘The plan’s too far advanced. Sarah Jane Smith can’t stop us. We’ve got the Bane archetype now.’

  And on the stairs, Luke’s heart leaped into his mouth — they knew about the Bane. It had all been a set-up.

  And he trod on the next step down.

  Which gave out a creak that in that moment of silence might just as well have been a gunshot.

  Luke didn’t wait then, no pretence was necessary, he had to get through the door and out.

  He never made it to the bottom stair before Mr Stafford had him pinned down, a cruel armlock causing Luke to yell in pain.

  He dragged Luke into the living room, where Mrs Stafford and a boy about his own age, who Luke had never set eyes on before, stood.

  Or had he? There was something about the boy’s eyes, some powerful feeling of hatred towards Luke coming from them.

  Mr Stafford threw Luke onto the sofa. And smiled. ‘These new slim-line compression units might handle the gas exchanges better, but they’re a bit on the snug side.’ And he raised his hand to his forehead.

  Luke knew exactly what was going to happen next.

  A blast of harsh blue light poured out from Mr Stafford’s forehead as he tugged at an invisible zipper.

  Mrs Stafford started to do the same.

  ‘Slitheen,’ Luke said quietly. ‘But you’re so slim!’

  Mrs Stafford laughed as her Slitheen head popped out from the neck of the human skin she was wearing. ‘Amazing isn’t it. With all this new technology “borrowed” from the Blathereen back home, I can eat all I want and still be a size eight.’

  Luke looked at the boy, already guessing the answer to his next question. He’d known it as soon as he saw the eyes. ‘And you?’ he said anyway.

  Nathan giggled unkindly. ‘I’m sure you remember me, Luke Smith,’ he said, unzipping his head. ‘I’m sure you remember killing my family and leaving me locked in a sealed room to die along with them.

  But the Slitheen boy Luke remembered from a few months back, when the Slitheen had used his school as a base from which to turn the sun off, had been an overweight, dark-haired lad called Carl.

  ‘Same Slitheen, different skin. I teleported out and survived. My father wasn’t so fortunate. And now I will have my revenge!’

  Clyde reached the corner of Bannerman Road in time to see Sarah Jane’s car roaring out of the drive.

  He sighed and was about to head home when he thought about Mr Smith. He’d know if the photo was a fake.

  Clyde looked furtively around as he wandered up the drive, knelt down and lifted a plant pot by the front porch.

  Sure enough, a spare key, as always.

  He let himself into the house and went up the stairs to the attic.

  He’d been inside dozens of times, but rarely by himself and he felt a bit guilty about being there without Sarah Jane’s say-so.

  But this was about Luke, his best mate in the whole world.

  ‘Mr Smith, I need you,’ he said.

  And with a surge of steam and hydraulics, the computer emerged from the chimney, the gyrating pattern on his screen pulsating slightly faster than normal.

  Almost like he was excited, Clyde thought. Then remembered why he was there.

  ‘Mr Smith�
��’

  ‘Clyde,’ the computer interrupted in a way he’d never done before ‘What a pleasure.’

  ‘Really? Oh… umm… cool.’

  ‘You have something for me?’

  Clyde frowned. ‘Yeah. Yeah, how’d you know that? Anyway, look, it’s this photo. Of Luke and that pair that reckon they’re his mum and dad. See? I think it’s a fake. Luke’s head stuck onto someone else’s body.’ He went to place the photo on Mr Smith’s little diagnosis drawer. ‘I thought you could do your analysing thing and —’

  Once again, Mr Smith interrupted him. ‘You’re right, Clyde. This is a fake. I faked it.’

  And Clyde let this sink in. Am I missing something?’

  ' ‘More than you could ever imagine,’ Mr Smith replied, icily. ‘You see, I am a Xylok. I have a purpose here on Earth. And you, Clyde Langer, are a big part of it.’

  And before Clyde could blink, a red beam of pencil thin light blasted out from Mr Smith’s control panel and hit Clyde straight in the chest.

  And without a sound, Clyde simply vanished. There was a second or two of silence, and then laughter began echoing around the empty attic.

  Mr Smith was laughing. A cold, heartless laugh of dark pleasure…

  Chapter Eight

  The ordeal

  It was dark now. A full moon offered little pockets of brightness through the trees, giving the whole area an other-worldly beauty.

  But Sarah Jane Smith had little time to take in the wonders of nature. She was in the grounds of the Pharos Institute, about to commit a criminal act. Breaking. Entering. Theft.

  She had spent so much time teaching Luke about right and wrong and here she was, doing exactly the opposite of what she preached.

  Sometimes, she tried to convince herself, the end justifies the means.

  Trouble was she didn’t really believe that axiom at all. Not one bit.

  But it was either this, or go home empty-handed to Mr Smith and leave whatever alien power the computer had detected (and Mr Smith was never wrong) in the hands of Nathan Goss to do whatever he was going to do. Sarah Jane liked Professor Rivers but she didn’t remotely trust the boy.