Fire and Water

by Simon Guerrier

  Abby mumbled in her sleep, opened her eyes to look at Connor just for a moment, then curled up against his shoulder again. Funny how just having her close could make it all seem better.

  Soon enough they were pulling through the imposing gates of the ARC headquarters. Rain washed down the sides of the wonky grey egg-shaped building. Their driver eased into a space, bringing the truck to a halt as gently as he could.

  Ben scribbled his mileage into a small notebook that was tied to the dashboard with string, then sighed and yanked open his door. The rain crashed down loudly, cold droplets spattering into their cabin.

  “Thanks for the —” Connor called just as he slammed the door. “— lift,” he added in the sudden quiet.

  Abby shifted, extracting herself muzzily from his arm and the blanket.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, we’re gonna have to run for it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Connor wished he’d not changed out of his waders earlier, even though they’d been half full of the River Thames. The concrete floor of the ARC car park sat maybe an inch or two underwater.

  He jumped down from the army truck right behind Abby, and immediately cold water sloshed over his trainers.

  “Ack!” he said with horror.

  Abby wrinkled her nose.

  “Come on,” she said, taking his arm. “There’ll be tea and toast in the canteen.”

  Together they dashed through the rain to the main entrance of the building, guarded by black-uniformed soldiers with the scary-looking rifles Becker seemed so proud of.

  “Hi!” Abby said brightly, rummaging through her pockets for her pass.

  Connor whipped his own pass deftly from his back pocket and ran it through the reader. Then he let the machine scan his fingertips and retinas.

  The screen by the pass ran graphics of blue circles on grey squares, then showed a photo of his face, looking a bit surprised and goofy where he’d not been ready when they snapped it. In a blocky typeface the screen also said:

  Connor Temple

  432-7891-632-8544 CT

  Dept 432-MT

  Access denied

  Connor pressed his shoulder against the door but it didn’t budge. He checked the screen and only now took in the word “denied”.

  “Oh, great,” he said to Abby, glancing over his shoulder at the heavily armed soldiers just a couple of metres behind them. “This happens to me at cash machines, as well.”

  He rubbed at the shiny chip in the middle of his pass then tried swiping it again. The screen quivered, then showed the same gawping photo and information.

  Access denied.

  “But I’m access-all-zones!” he told the screen. He checked the card just to make sure. Yes, that was what was written under his number and department. He showed the screen the card.

  “Let me.” Abby said, and she swiped her own matching card. The screen pinged and the door clicked open. Abby smiled winningly at Connor.

  “I’m just special.”

  He muttered as he followed her inside, cross that whenever anything went wrong, it always went wrong for him. And because he was so busy muttering he walked slap into her back.

  “Ow,” he said as he twisted to avoid the impact. “You should watch where you’re going.” He looked up. Black-uniformed soldiers waited for them in the entrance hall, guns raised.

  “Um,” Connor said. “We work here, yeah?”

  Becker stepped forward.

  “Abby,” he said, “can I have a word?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  She took a couple of steps towards him and Becker grabbed her arm, yanking her out of the way of the line of armed soldiers, now all pointing their rifles at Connor.

  Connor put his hands out in front of him, showing that he carried nothing but his fingerless gloves.

  “What?” Abby said, struggling to free herself from Becker’s grip.

  “Look, there’s been some kind of mistake,” Connor said. “My pass probably just got wet or something...”

  A soldier stepped forward towards him, brandishing a pair of handcuffs.

  “Your access had been revoked pending a formal investigation into recent activity.”

  “This is mad,” Connor protested as he let them snap the cuffs round his wrists.

  “But he hasn’t done anything!” he heard Abby shouting. “There has to have been a mistake!”

  “I’m sorry,” Becker said. “I have to follow my orders. We’ll get this sorted out.”

  “No!” Abby wailed.

  Numbly, Connor let them lead him away.

  TWELVE

  They drove in silence back to the lodge, following the slow dust road rather than cutting through the scrubby bush. Danny sat in the back seat this time, fiddling with his phone. He sent the photo he’d taken back to Sarah at the ARC. A message back explained that Sarah wasn’t on duty — Danny supposed it was a bit late at night. Instead, someone called Anna would try to identify the creature that he’d seen.

  There were lights on and other cars in the car park when they arrived back, and as they emerged wearily from the SUV they were met with plenty of activity.

  Ted, the tall ranger who’d guarded the gate, came over and shook Sophie by the hand. They had a complicated, three-part handshake, but performed it quickly, without fuss. They spoke briefly in the clicking, articulate language they’d used before and then Danny and Lester followed them inside.

  The bodies had been removed as had much of the broken furniture, and a plastic sheet had been secured over the broken window in the mess room, the breeze outside jostling against it. A handful of men and women in the same army-green fatigues scrubbed at bloodstains. They acknowledged Sophie with nods or a few words in the clicking language.

  They completely ignored Danny and Lester.

  Watching them, Danny felt instinctively that Sophie and Ted didn’t fit in with the rest of this lot. He could read the pattern just in how they stood in the room. The other gamekeepers exchanged furtive, knowing glances when they thought no one else was watching. They either suspected Sophie of something, or were up to something themselves.

  Sophie came over to him and Lester. She stood tall, made the effort to seem in command, but her eyes betrayed her exhaustion.

  “There’s not much left to be done here,” she told them. “You might as well both get to bed.”

  “We want to help,” Danny insisted. “Just tell us what we can do.”

  “Keep out of the way,” Sophie replied. He looked for the smile he had seen earlier, but she didn’t seem to be joking.

  “All right,” he said. “But I do a mean breakfast in bed.”

  She stared at him. Hell, had he gone too far? Perhaps being stood in the room where her colleagues had died wasn’t the best place for levity. But again he detected that conflict in her, that effort not to smile or respond.

  “Come on,” Lester said, butting in. “Just show us where we are.”

  She motioned, and Ted led them through the kitchen and down a passageway with doors on either side. The last one on the left had been assigned to them. Two low, simple beds sat on either side of the room, with barely enough space to walk down between them. A sink with a single tap nestled dolefully in the corner.

  “It’s a lot like the Savoy,” Lester said dryly, dumping his bag on one of the beds. Ted didn’t respond, and made to leave them to it.

  “Wait!” Lester moved to stop him. “What about washing facilities?” Ted thumbed back along down the corridor as he walked away.

  Lester grimaced, and unzipped his case, pulled out a wash bag and put a beige towel round his neck.

  “I suppose I’d better investigate.”

  While he was gone, Danny went through his own bag, digging out his change of clothes for the next day, finding his toothbrush and toothpaste. He flicked idly through the guidebook he’d been reading on the plane, then just sat on his bed, the events of the day running through his brain.

  When Le
ster came back, shaking his head at the state of the bathroom, Danny headed down the corridor for his turn. As he washed his hands he noticed a remarkable creature sheltering on the ledge of the window. Not quite as tall as the width of his hand, it was pale brown and spindly, a bit like a stick insect. He didn’t get any closer, but scrutinised the thing with care. Its peculiar posture, its forelimbs hooked together gave him the clue to its identity. It was a praying mantis. He couldn’t remember if they were poisonous, but figured he wouldn’t find out.

  He could hear the gamekeepers still busy putting the mess room back together as he made his way back to his room. Lester was sat on his bed, eyes closed and his dusty shoes discarded in the middle of the floor. Danny sat down opposite him, unsure what to say. Lester, his eyes still closed, reached a hand into his bag and withdrew a bottle of whisky, handing it across.

  Danny grinned.

  “What else have you got?”

  “Some perfume for my wife, but you can’t have that.”

  Danny twisted the top of the bottle, cracking the seal. He took a quick swig, and then another, the hot liquid burning the back of his throat. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten anything since the aeroplane. Well, it’ll have to be a liquid dinner then, he thought.

  His eyes feeling bloated and red, he handed the bottle back to Lester, who took a couple of swigs himself. Then he flicked his eyes at the open door, and Danny lent an arm out and batted it closed.

  “Well,” Lester said in a low whisper.

  “Not a great first day,” Danny said.

  “What do you make of our hostess?”

  “She’s got something she wants to tell us, but doesn’t know quite how. I tried to work the charm. Might be useful to us.”

  Lester raised an eyebrow. Then he spoke.

  “She was well out of the way when that thing attacked, left both of us in its path. Perhaps it’s just the instincts of a ranger on her home ground, but I got the feeling that she moved to the edge of the road because she knew what was coming.”

  Danny considered.

  “Hell of a thing to have set up,” he said. “She nearly didn’t make it herself.”

  Nonetheless, Danny felt the skin on his forearms prickle with goose-flesh. Something had been bugging him about that, too, but it didn’t make any sense. Why would Sophie wish harm on them? How could she have known about that creature? And if she had planned any part of what had happened, why had she put herself so much in danger? Despite the reserve she showed them, the tough act she tried to keep going, he’d seen something in her eyes. Like maybe she thought he wasn’t such an idiot.

  “We’re missing something,” he told Lester. “We have to be.”

  And on cue his mobile buzzed — it was Anna at the ARC. Now that he heard her voice, he thought he could remember her: pretty, red hair. One of the tech girls, helped with the science stuff, filled out the late shift. She didn’t have a boyfriend — why would he know something like that?

  Danny listened for a while then thanked her and clicked off the phone.

  “Connor was right,” he said. “The theropod was yoo-strep-toe... whatever it was. Callovian stage, mid-Jurassic.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The creature that jumped on it was a Postosuchus. Early sort of crocodilian thing. Tall, narrow jaws like a T-rex that gives it a really strong bite. Back and head have got thick armour plating, plus a whole load of other special features.”

  “I see. Well, we don’t try to catch it and send it home. We’ll just have to bring this one down.”

  “Yeah, but dealing with it’s not the problem. There’s a lot of debate about the early crocodilians, she said, when they split from the archosaurs and stuff. But Postosuchus is mid-to-late Triassic, maybe fifty or sixty million years before that theropod.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said, “so we’re dealing with at least two different anomalies.”

  THIRTEEN

  Abby tore down the main corridor of the ARC labs and offices, catching up with Becker as he pushed through the double doors and walked into the main operations room. Despite it being the middle of the night, technical staff attended the strange machines in various states of disarray on the high tables. Jonny, who liked eighties music, was working on one of Connor’s gadgets; Manpreet had her tongue out as she connected tiny pieces of something together. Anna was working at one of the desks by the ADD, just in front of the curving walkway leading around to Lester’s office.

  Everywhere she looked there were black-uniformed soldiers brandishing guns and looking surly. They guarded the artefact and the tall hanger doors, watching and waiting, ready. Abby’s stomach clenched in horror.

  “You’ve taken over!” she yelled at Becker. “The moment Lester is out of the country, you’ve pulled off a coup!”

  Becker turned to face her, his expression stern. She marched right up to him, caught him by surprise and poked him in the sternum hard enough that he had to take a step back to regain his balance. He reached his hands out to her shoulders, but she shrugged him off.

  “I’m not going to go along with it,” she told him.

  “Abby,” he said, “I’ve got my orders.”

  “Oh, orders. Well that makes all the difference. Lock up who you like!” Becker flinched at this and turned to look round at his men.

  God, she thought, he’s embarrassed ‘cause I’m shouting. Like I’m the one who’s lost the plot.

  “Becker,” she said, stamping down on her anger, “Connor’s one of the good guys. What happened to your sense of loyalty?”

  He blanched at her, and looked stung.

  “I —” he began.

  “Captain Becker understands loyalty very well,” a plummy voice said from up above them. Abby wheeled round. On the balcony of Lester’s office, looking out over the room, stood a tall, well-groomed man in a tailored pinstripe suit, silver lines on black. His hair and beard were shaved close to his skin, giving him a practical, no-nonsense look. He leant his forearms on the railing of the balcony, revealing chunky silver cuff links.

  “Who the hell are you?” Abby demanded.

  “A friend, I hope,” the man said amiably. He smiled, stepped back from the railing, then made his way calmly down the slope to join them. He walked with a definite swagger, the movement showing off the taut muscles that hid under his suit. Despite his expensive clothes and posh accent, he had the air of a gangster.

  Abby glanced around the room at the soldiers, the technicians, certain all of them were part of this mad conspiracy. She had fought all kinds of creatures and people, but at this moment, in her own headquarters, she’d never felt so trapped.

  “My name is Tom Samuels,” the man said, extending a large and muscular hand as he made his way towards her. Abby ignored it.

  Unfazed, he carried on.

  “I’ve come over from the Home Office to help out. It’s all above board. In fact, I’m an old sparring partner of Jim Lester’s. We even boarded at the same school.” He smiled, showing perfect teeth.

  “You’ve arrested Connor,” Abby replied, struggling to keep her cool.

  “I’m rather afraid we have,” Samuels agreed. He nodded to Becker. “Interrogate him, Captain. Leave no stone unturned.”

  Becker glanced at Abby, then back at Samuels.

  “Sir, Abby was with him the whole evening. Surely that means —” But he tailed off as he saw the expression on Samuels’ face.

  Samuels kept smiling but his eyes, which had been warm and friendly a moment before, now glittered like ice.

  “Sir,” Becker persevered. “I’d personally vouch for Connor.”

  “Captain Becker,” Samuels said, “the young lady questioned your sense of loyalty. I trust I won’t have to do the same?”

  Becker stood smartly at attention. “No, sir.”

  “I gave you an order, and I expect you to follow it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Becker clicked his heels and marched out, studiously avoid
ing Abby’s eyes as he passed her.

  Her throat was dry, and she felt completely helpless.

  “You can’t do this.” Somehow, she didn’t believe her own words.

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “We’ll stop you,” she told him. “Somehow we’ll stop you.”

  He toyed with the chunky Rolex on his wrist, as if he wanted her to notice his expensive taste. Then he looked up at her and spoke.

  “Abby,” he said, “I appreciate that this is a bit of a surprise. But you’re wasting your time on Connor.”

  “He hasn’t done anything,” she insisted.

  “No?” Samuels said, again with that cruel smile. “Well, I suppose you haven’t yet seen Dr Page.”

  “You can’t —” Abby began before she registered what he’d said. She felt her heart thumping in her chest.

  “What...” she murmured, “what’s happened to Sarah?”

  “Well this is a bit awkward, isn’t it?” Becker grinned as he took a seat opposite Connor.

  Connor slouched in his chair, arms pinioned behind his back. It seemed to hurt him to sit up straight, so he gazed up at the man through his messy fringe.

  The ARC didn’t have an interrogation room, so they had commandeered the security room. A bank of television screens flicked between different views from the building’s many CCTV cameras. Dirty cups and crockery nestled by the sink.

  “You want a cup of tea?” Becker asked. “I could do with one myself.”

  “I want,” Connor replied, “a lawyer.”

  Becker sat back in his seat and sighed. He had tried to be nice.

  “And under your terms of service and the Civil Contingencies Act, you’re not entitled to one.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” the young man insisted angrily.

  “Really?” Becker said. “Nothing at all?”

  “Come on!” Connor snapped. “You know I haven’t!”

  And really, Becker couldn’t believe that Connor had been responsible for any of what had happened. But the tape was running, recording this interrogation, so he had to go through with it, carry it out properly. And some things just didn’t add up.