by Steve Cole
“But why would they kill their own kind just ’cause you told them to?” Adam didn’t get it. “You’re a Vel, the enemy—”
“I was an outsider, just as they were,” Loner insisted. “You saw their pathetic gang—bottom of the pecking order, always fed last and passed over for breeding. I encouraged them to take revenge on those who spurned them—just as I did.”
Adam swallowed dryness in his throat. “So . . . now what?”
“They planned to have hatchlings of their own to feed on the humans. . . .” The raptor barked his laughter. “But now that they’ve done what was required, I will kill them—before they kill me. Lisa and David will be so happy, won’t they? They’ll be pleased with me. All the humans will. Everything has gone according to plan.”
Adam’s unease was growing. Loner sounded wilder, rougher. “Uh . . . your plan?”
“Did Josephs say things to you about me?” Loner asked suddenly. “About who I used to be?” Loner stared down at him, his scaly lips twitching. “Bad things?”
“N . . . no.” Adam couldn’t keep the tremble from his voice. Sitting on this cold slab, surrounded by bodies, alone with . . . what?
A psychopath, Josephs had said. A manipulator. One of the most dangerous men here.
“She did, didn’t she?” Loner tipped his head to one side. “You know about me now. Don’t you?”
“I . . . I know you’ve been through things I could never imagine,” Adam began. “I mean, it’s no wonder you wanted to help the people here. Deep down, you must’ve known that you were human once.” He hesitated, looking into Loner’s eyes. “And I know that whoever you were before this happened and whatever you did, you’re different now. You . . . you’ve changed.”
“Changed.” Loner seemed to taste the word in his mouth, jaws twitching. Then he sighed, a gust of hot, wet breath. “Oh, Adam. I haven’t changed at all—”
Suddenly the raptor pounced forward, claws splayed, jaws cranking open. Adam shouted out in horror as Loner grabbed hold of him by the shoulders and slammed him back against the slab.
“What are you doing?” Adam struggled helplessly. “Let me go.”
“You kids, you’re so trusting, aren’t you? So stupid. I told you, stupid is good. People like me, we love stupid.” Loner’s jaws swung shut, the scaly muzzle grazing Adam’s cheek. “Oh, but I’m forgetting—there are no people like me. Not now.”
“Josephs said it wasn’t really possible yet to put a human mind inside an animal,” Adam whimpered, as if parroting the words might make them true.
“Then we know better than she does,” Loner hissed. “Because I know exactly who I used to be . . . and all that I can become.”
“But you . . . you helped us.” Adam couldn’t accept what was happening. “Harm and Lisa and David and me—you risked your life for us over and over.”
“Of course I did. That was the plan. I had to keep you alive.” Loner bared his teeth in a crocodile grin, his voice harder, rougher. “I always knew that when this was over I’d need witnesses. Grateful survivors who’d testify to my goodness, my kindness.” A quiet chittering sound rose from his throat like a snake’s rattle—or like laughter. “That’s why I can’t leave any incriminating evidence behind. Like Josephs and her scientists. Like those files.”
“You set the fire in the data room?”
Loner glared down at him. “Chen and Harm will believe it was an electrical fault. They’ll think it was Josephs’s men who hit them from behind.”
Adam felt a rush of helpless anger. “The stuff in there could’ve helped us to nail Geneflow. Whatever they’re planning—”
“WHO CARES?” Loner snorted in Adam’s face, his features alive with little jumps and tics. “Geneflow gave me new life . . . higher life, just like they said they would when I was stuck on death row. They tried to trick me, but I tricked them. Tricked everyone!” He squeezed a little harder, and Adam gasped as the claw tips pinched his skin. “Without Harm and Agent Chen and the others to speak for me, when rescue came, I’d be put to death or locked up. A dangerous animal. A killer.” He shook his head. “Not again. Been there. Done that.”
Adam was trying not to whimper like an animal himself. “You . . . you think that just because you helped people, Dr. Marrs will let you run off into the wild?”
“Chen contacted his ship. Help is coming soon. And Chen will owe me for saving him and Stone. He won’t like it, but he’ll agree to take me off this island . . . and once I’m on board, I can make him take me anywhere.”
Loner made the chittering noise again. “Such a shame you had to find out the truth about me. You’d have helped to convince him, I know.”
Chen knows about you too, thought Adam. But the moment he mentions it, Loner will have to kill him—along with anyone else he’s told. ...
“Please don’t hurt me,” Adam begged. “I won’t say anything, I promise.”
“Of course you will, Adam. The first chance you get. Because you’re desperate, and you’re scared.” Loner breathed in deeply, his jaws widening and stringing saliva. “I never truly appreciated what fear was until I could smell it . . . taste it.” His claws clacked together menacingly. “So many lives will be mine for the taking. The one true Z. raptor. Think of the hearts I shall bite out and gorge on when I am truly free again.” His jaws twitched and trembled as he edged closer to Adam’s chest.
“Wait!” In Adam’s terror, inspiration struck. “No one’s going to defend you to anyone if you kill me. I haven’t turned off the defenses in the sea, remember? No one can get to this island or away from it till I do.”
Loner’s hideous grin didn’t falter. “I can use Ultra-Reality.”
“Not anymore you can’t,” said Adam, speaking through gritted teeth. “You saw that game room—the headsets are designed for human heads, not yours.”
“Then Harm can use it. Or one of the others.”
“Do they look like gamers to you? They won’t know how.” Adam gasped again as he felt trickles of blood run down his bare arms. “If they mess up, the system will go into lockdown and then you’ll never get away from here.” He looked into the raptor’s eyes. “You . . . you still need me.”
Slowly Loner pulled away his claws. Adam wiped at the slick, sticky blood on his arms, wincing as he did so, glaring at the raptor.
“All right. But no tricks. No stalling.” Loner pushed Adam off the slab, gripped him by the back of the neck and forced him across the room, past Harm and the grisly bodies beside her, out into the main passage.
Adam fought to keep his voice steady. “What do I get once I’ve done this for you?”
Loner kicked open a door and shoved Adam down the stairs toward the base’s bottom level. “I’ll spare your father on board Chen’s boat.”
Like I can believe anything you say, Adam thought bitterly, shivering in the concrete cool.
“Perhaps I’ll even let you run,” Loner went on. “But I wouldn’t try running up these stairs to your friends above.” He smashed open the door to level three and pushed Adam through. “The last of my pet Brutes will be on their way to join me now that their work is done. I told them where to find the hidden keypad and carved the entry code on the wall of the sickroom.”
That’s why he looked so shifty and kept his back to the wall as the rest of us ran through, Adam realized. Hiding what he’d done.
“They should be here anytime now.” Loner kept pushing him onward. “The three of us can take care of Geneflow’s last guard . . . then once Harm is awake to see it, I’ll kill the Brutes too.” He clicked his claws as they passed the ash-black, twisted ruin of the records annex. “Thanks to me, the ordeal of these poor, stranded castaways will be over at last. Shame you won’t be around to celebrate with them.”
Finally Loner pushed him into the A-V Unit. Adam tried not to stare at the heavy door on the other side of the room, which Harm had said led into the cave tunnels—and ultimately freedom. The way out to the Brute’s camp must be almost a mile
or so from here, he thought grimly. You’d be dead before you got a grip on the door handle.
“Spent a lot of happy hours in this room.” Loner was gazing around. “The sense of power that raptor sim gave us . . . the realism. The hunting. It was addictive. So addictive.”
Adam barely heard him; he felt numb as he surveyed the terminals. If he took down Raptor Island’s defenses, Loner would escape and could kill countless people. If Adam faked his obedience, then Chen’s other ship would cruise straight into the sea monsters—and Adam might be killing his own dad.
How could he decide what to do?
“Well?” Loner made a threatening noise in the back of his throat. “I warned you. No stalling.”
“I’m not sure which . . . wait.” Adam realized the console and tabletop in the far corner had marks and trails in the dust—signs it had been used. “It could be this one.”
Loner forced him down into the chair. “Get on with it.”
Adam fought to stay calm, knowing he’d need all his concentration to go straight into using Think-Send in a completely foreign program. The Z. raptor simulation had been bad enough, but to actually control those sea monsters . . .
He started up the console, hooked himself into the pads, picked up the headset and hesitated, afraid of what he might find inside the virtual world. Afraid of choosing wrongly. Afraid of Loner’s claws slicing into him the moment he was through.
“Do it,” Loner grunted.
Slowly, carefully, Adam put on the headset. As he closed his eyes, a sensation of pressure formed in his ears and temples. A soft turquoise glow appeared in his mind, resolving itself into a kind of electronic grid. Yes, he thought. This is the interface.
There was a strip of yellow at the bottom—a shore, presumably—and then different shades of blue, each relating to a zone of either depth or distance. No fancy menus or start-up screens—this program was simply a tool of control.
Adam saw a large red boat-shaped graphic flashing in one of the grid squares. The Pahalu, out at sea, waiting to sail to Raptor Island. And there, ranged all around the island’s perimeter in a thin belt, were forty smaller, darker shapes.
The guardians. Primed and ready to attack.
Adam thought back to that night of terror when the Hula Queen sank, pictured JJ or somebody sitting here, calmly moving and motivating the creatures around this virtual board, careless of the carnage they were creating and the life-or-death frenzy that followed.
It mustn’t happen again, thought Adam. But if I stop it, and Loner gets free . . .
Dad could die either way.
Adam could almost feel the raptor’s shadow hanging over him.
There were no instructions or prompts on this level of the control game, but he didn’t need them. It wasn’t just convenience or favoritism that had caused Bill Adlar and his team to build Ultra-Reality around Adam’s mind—We’re all agreed. You’re one of the most instinctive gamers we’ve tested.
Adam braced himself. Here’s where I have to prove it.
He let go of his thoughts, allowed the blue wash of the screen to stream deep into his mind, as though he were out there beneath the waves. In a sense, he supposed he was—the A-V Unit was in the part of the base built below sea level, closest to the tidal power station that fed the systems of this hidden outpost. That made it easier in Adam’s mind to drift away through the concrete walls, through the winding caves and into the depths. He saw the black, ominous figures lying dormant in the water, waiting. Soon he could feel a kind of tension in his head, a tentative link with the sea creatures. Pressure rose in his ears, a sensation that he was really under water, but still breathing. Still okay. He began to feel the monsters’ liquid movements in the deep, still waters. The sound of distant engines carried to him, heavy and rumbling, weighing him down with their noisy shimmer. He could almost sense the intrusion of the sound in the monsters’ minds. A trigger for their violence. He felt the tug of the rigid instructions that directed their behavior. Attack the ship—bite—disengage—turn—attack again. . . .
His mind began to cloud. Adam tried to drag his focus away from the black shapes, but by now his mind was hooked into their emptiness. The gaping dark of their consciousness held him fast. They were hungry for commands, for any contact, and he felt an overwhelming pity for these animals—butchered by Geneflow and turned into killing machines.
Keeping calm, ordering his thoughts, Adam forced himself to lift his senses out of the dark and concentrate again on the grid—to take control of the reef of creatures instead of drifting among them. This was the moment of decision. What would he do—switch off the monsters, or direct them to keep up their defense of the island waters? Or maybe . . .
Adam felt the dark seawater in his eyes like tears. He knew there was only one course of action he could take now.
I love you, Dad.
He concentrated on each dark spot in turn and fed through its final instructions.
22
EARTH SHOCK
Adam was finishing up when he felt cold weight on his shoulder, a disembodied hand. Then a distant scream carried to him through the blurring darkness of the sea—no, not the sea, I’m here in the A-V Unit, I’m not lost out there with the creatures, I’m back—
“Adam!” It was his name being shouted, as if from a million miles away. With a jerk, he realized it was Harm’s voice.
“Harm, I’m here!” Adam shouted. “The game room!” For a dizzying moment, he saw the real world overlain on the grid—the green eye of the console, the lazy flourish of dust in the artificial light, Loner’s claws—
Then the headset was in his hands. Wetness was brimming in his eyes, and he could hear Harm’s footsteps racing closer.
Loner pressed his scaly snout up to Adam’s face. “One word of warning to her,” he snarled, “and I’ll kill her while you watch.”
Harm raced in, her arms still tied behind her back. Loner left Adam and loped over, his head bobbing low in eager welcome. “Thank God,” she panted as the raptor sliced through the ropes around her wrists. “Now, can someone tell me what in the world’s been happening while I was out? I wake up to find I’m lying in a bloodbath and get out in time to find two Brutes coming this way. They’ve got one of Josephs’s guards with them—”
“It is all right.” Loner put on his concerned act for her, and Adam glared at him hatefully. “Those Brutes are on our side. They have turned on their pack with human weapons, saved your friends from the feast.”
Harm blinked, looking overwhelmed. “They what?”
“And I’ve taken care of the sea monsters,” Adam told her, fighting to keep his voice steady. I’m so sorry, he told her silently. If there had been any other way . . .
“Do not be afraid, Harmony.” Loner stopped her from crossing to Adam and gently pushed her in the other direction, motioning her to hide behind the desk. “I shall protect you.”
Liar! Adam longed to yell the word, to warn Harm away. But that would get the two of them killed at once. His ragged nerves were chafed again by a dragging, splashing noise from the wet corridor outside. Moments later, the thump of heavy footsteps signaled the arrival of the Brutes. One Eye and the stooped, skinny female were carrying Ford’s limp body between them; the guard was clearly dead. But what had happened to Chen?
Loner straightened to his full height, asserting himself as their superior. “You have killed your pack brothers and sisters?”
One Eye nodded, his eyes narrowed, his jaws darkened with blood. “All of them.”
“And their eggs,” hissed his partner, an evil glint in her eyes.
“We brought you this.” One Eye shook Ford’s corpse. “He had taken another soft-skin for the feast and was returning. He did not see us.”
“We hid,” the female added, casting nervous looks at her mate. “We hurt him.”
“And these others.” One Eye looked between Adam and Harm. “They are also for us to kill?”
“No,” Loner snapped. “They a
re mine.”
One Eye and the female bowed and bobbed their heads. They lowered Ford’s body carefully to the floor and seemed to have some trouble withdrawing their claws from his corpse. Adam saw a metallic glint from something in Ford’s shirt pocket, the same sheen he’d glimpsed on the TV in the lab when One Eye disposed of the alpha male in the makeshift hatchery. ...
Ford’s stuffed with grenades. They’ve pulled the pins and turned him into a bomb to kill Loner—
“Harm, get down!” Adam shouted, throwing himself behind the desk and clamping his hands over his ears. At the same time, the Brutes turned and ran. Loner swung his head between the two groups—
Ford’s body exploded in a storm of fire and noise that did its best to level everything in the room. Monitors shattered, desks and chairs splintered and burned, concrete was blasted from the walls and ceiling. Adam curled tightly in a ball. His back felt skinned raw; he smelled burning hair and choked on smoke and rock dust. Something fell on him.
Harm.
They lay still for a moment as debris settled. It was Harm who spoke first.
“You okay?” she said, her eyes wide and terrified. “Am—am I okay, Adam?”
They got up together, leaning on each other for support. Adam looked her over briefly. “You look okay. Does anything hurt?” he asked.
“No,” she said back. “You?”
“I’m good.”
Squinting over her shoulder through the flames and smoke, Adam saw a seven-foot silhouette stagger from the shattered room, screeching and spluttering with rage.
“He was going to betray the Brutes,” Adam murmured, “but they betrayed him first.”
“He must be hurt,” Harm murmured, pulling away. “We have to help him.”
“No, we don’t,” Adam told her.
“But he got Josephs, he saved the others—”
Adam grabbed her hand. “Trust me on this, Harm, Loner’s been playing us all for fools. He’s a born-again killer, only looking after us so we’d speak up for him when rescue finally came.”
“I don’t believe it,” Harm began as the scream of the female Brute, short and rattling, drilled through the smoke. “He’s always been—”
