Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

  She glanced up at him, and her eyes glittered with tears. ‘OK,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I promise. And I’m sorry. But I’m not sorry.’ She shook her head in confusion. ‘You know what I mean!’

  Rhino was spared the necessity of answering by the voice that came from his laptop, on the desk. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

  Gecko sprang off the sofa and got to the desk. Tara’s face was gazing from a window on the screen.

  ‘Tara!’ he cried, a wave of happiness crashing over him. ‘You’re OK!’

  ‘No thanks to you!’ she said, sending a pang of guilt through his heart.

  ‘Look, I left my mobile behind in my room, and I had it turned off anyway, after the flight, and I didn’t get the message for a long time, and—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I forgive you. Things turned out OK, and I wouldn’t have wanted you to get sucked into a life of crime just because of me. Is Rhino there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ Rhino said from behind Gecko. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In a car heading for Calum’s apartment. We’ve got to get him back!’

  ‘We have,’ Rhino said, ‘but right now we’ve got an encrypted hard disk to examine. Can you access it from where you are?’

  Tara leaned forward and typed something into the laptop, and the removable hard disk connected to Rhino’s computer whirred into life. ‘Do bears wear funny hats?’ she murmured. ‘Is the Pope—’

  ‘Can you do it or can’t you?’

  ‘Of course I can. Running some decryption algorithms now.’ She paused. ‘Fortunately it’s not encrypted using the PGP algorithm. That’s more or less unbreakable. This is some commercial off-the-shelf stuff they bought in a computer shop. Should have it decrypted in a few minutes.’ Another pause. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear that it’s in English, rather than Chinese. Thank heavens for Microsoft and Apple’s domination of the computer market. You want me to copy the unencrypted files to your own hard drive?’

  ‘Please,’ Rhino replied, ‘but could you also do a quick search for the word “centipede” and give me a separate file with all that text in it?’

  ‘Will do.’ Silence for a few moments, apart from the growl of a car engine, the click of keys being pressed and, bizarrely, the sound of a choir singing. ‘Right – here it comes.’

  ‘Thanks, Tara – you go and rest now’

  ‘It feels like I’ve been resting for days,’ she said. ‘I want to go out and have fun. And I want to see what I can do to help Calum.’

  ‘Talk later.’

  ‘OK.’

  Tara’s window on the laptop screen closed. Rhino brought up a file listing and clicked on a particular file. The screen filled with text.

  ‘Jeez,’ he murmured, ‘there’s a lot of this!’

  ‘Let me have a look,’ Natalie interrupted, pushing past Gecko. ‘I can speed-read faster than anyone I know. It’s probably a genetic thing. God knows I never asked for it.’ She sat down and quickly scanned down the text. ‘Right, there isn’t a lot of stuff about the centipedes, although much of it is repeated in different places. They don’t appear to have a buyer – the centipedes were discovered in a rainforest in some place called Hainan Island, and Xi Lang was emailing various people to see if they were interested. OK . . . this is interesting. Apparently the centipedes had GPS RFID microcircuits attached to their backs so they could be tracked. All of the animals had these microcircuits stuck on or implanted somewhere inside them so that Xi Lang always knew where they were.’

  ‘So we can track their locations!’ Gecko said. ‘That suddenly makes the problem a lot easier.’

  ‘Have you got the identification codes for the centipedes?’ Rhino asked.

  ‘Yes – they’re here.’

  ‘Right. Get Tara back on the line. We need her help in locating those critters.’

  Natalie pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘I can speed-read,’ she said, ‘but I’m not a telephone operator. Gecko can do that.’

  Gecko rolled his eyes, slid into the chair and called Tara back. When her face appeared, she was obviously still in the car. ‘Hi!’

  ‘Tara, we’ve got codes for GPS chips on the two escaped giant centipedes. Can you locate them for us?’

  ‘Should be able to. It’s no different to locating a lost or stolen mobile phone. There are apps that can do it easily. I’ll let you know what they are and you can download them to your mobiles. What are the codes?’

  Gecko read them out from the screen of the laptop. Tara typed away, scowling in concentration. ‘Right – I’ve got them. I’m also installing an app on your laptop that will put markers on a map so you can find the little critters.’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry – big critters.’

  ‘Thanks, Tara.’ Gecko hesitated. ‘Look –’

  ‘Don’t worry’ she said softly. ‘We’re OK, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Now I’ve got to go. Things to do.’

  Tara’s window vanished, and a few seconds later a map sprang to life on Rhino’s laptop screen. Two red dots were flashing in locations in Kowloon. They weren’t that far from the warehouse where the centipedes had been kept.

  ‘Right,’ Rhino said grimly. ‘This is now a search-and-destroy mission. Everyone good to go?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gecko.

  ‘Yes,’ Natalie added.

  ‘No qualms about hunting down giant centipedes?’ Rhino asked pointedly, looking at Natalie. ‘You don’t want to save them and return them to this Hainan place?’

  ‘Eeuw!’ she said. ‘There are limits.’ She paused, staring at Rhino. ‘But when we’ve finished, can we give that hard drive to the UN animal exploitation team. There’s a man named Evan Chan I spoke to. They might find it useful as evidence.’

  ‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘It’s a deal. Get ready to leave.’

  ‘What happens if one of the centipedes escapes while we’re chasing the other one?’ Gecko asked, concerned.

  Rhino grimaced. ‘Good point. We may have to take that risk.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Natalie said quietly. They both turned to look at her. ‘You go after one; Gecko and I will go after the other.’

  Rhino’s face reflected his indecision. ‘Are you sure you can cope?’ he asked.

  Natalie shook her head. ‘Of course not, but it’s the only practical solution, isn’t it?’

  He nodded reluctantly. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘These creatures are poisonous and vicious.’

  Gecko looked at his hands, which still hadn’t fully recovered from picking up the centipede’s shed skin back in the warehouse. He knew all too well how dangerous those things were.

  Calum managed to slide the tablet computer beneath his mattress before the door to his room fully opened and Dave Pournell and Dr Kircher entered, along with two bulky orderlies in white uniforms. They looked like bouncers heading for a fancy-dress party.

  ‘Ready to have those electrodes implanted in your brain?’ Pournell said cheerily. ‘I’ve talked it over with Dr Kircher here, and we’ve decided that rather than shove them all in at once we’re going to do one a day for the next ten days. That’s the good news. We’re also not going to use any anaesthetic, because Dr Kircher assures me that the brain doesn’t have any nerves. That’s the other good news. You may, however, experience an unpleasant drilling sensation. That, I guess, is the bad news. Isn’t that right, Dr Kircher?’

  Kircher was looking pale. He nodded, once, and Calum noticed that he was looking anywhere but at Calum.

  ‘So – about that Almasti DNA . . .’ Pournell continued, as if the two subjects were linked. Which, of course, they were. ‘Any update on when Nemor Inc. can take those samples over and evaluate them?’

  ‘Not any time soon,’ Calum said in a whisper. He could feel fear building within him like a growing core of ice, but he wasn’t going to give in. He couldn’t give in. It was just plain wrong. And maybe, just maybe, Gillian Livingstone or Rhino or Tara would find some way of rescuing him, although right now he w
as wondering how late they were going to leave it.

  Pournell gestured to the two orderlies. ‘Take him away,’ he said. ‘Nearest operating theatre.’

  The two orderlies moved to the head of the bed and started pushing it towards the door.

  ‘Last chance, kid . . .’ Pournell murmured as the bed passed him by.

  Calum told him to go and do something biologically improbable.

  ‘Hey’ Pournell said, ‘let’s maintain a little politeness, shall we?’

  The bed was out in the corridor by now. As the orderlies tried to turn it round, the tablet computer slipped out from beneath the mattress and crashed to the floor. Pournell bent down to retrieve it. He shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Naughty boy, Calum. Just for that I’m going to tell Dr Kircher to drill extra slowly. Purely for safety’s sake, you understand.’

  Calum’s last link to the outside world was gone.

  The bed trundled down the corridor towards the nurses’ station, and then past it and round the bend in the corridor. Calum cast one final despairing glance at the lifts in the lobby as they disappeared behind him.

  Halfway down the corridor was an open double door. The orderlies stopped there, and turned the bed to steer it through.

  Calum could feel the pressure building within him to agree to give Pournell the Almasti DNA, but he had a terrible feeling that the man would proceed with the brain surgery anyway, just because he enjoyed having that power over Calum.

  The operating theatre was dominated by a large white MRI scanner, like a doughnut on its side. A bed with a sliding top allowed the patient to be moved into the scanner. It was similar to the one that Calum had been in at the Robledo place in Farnborough, except that this one looked as if it allowed surgery to be carried out at the same time.

  Dr Kircher confirmed this as he followed the bed into the room. ‘We’ll put you into the scanner and ask you a series of questions,’ he murmured. He didn’t sound as if he was enjoying himself. ‘Depending on how your brain lights up, we’ll decide where to insert the electrodes.’

  ‘I might be being stupid here,’ Calum said, his voice scratchy, ‘but isn’t there a bloody great magnet inside that thing? Won’t that make it hard to do any drilling and inserting?’

  ‘Nice try,’ Pournell said from behind him, ‘but all the medical implements are made of ceramics rather than metal. They won’t be affected by the magnetic field. The electrodes are metal, sure, but what we’re going to do first is insert some long ceramic tubes, like straws, through holes in your skull. We can slide the electrodes down the straws when you’re out of the scanner.’ He paused. ‘Any last words, kid? Anything you want to tell me?’

  ‘Lots of things,’ Calum replied shakily, ‘but they all break that politeness rule of yours.’

  ‘Remember – you can stop this any time. Just raise a hand.’

  Calum raised a hand.

  Pournell laughed. ‘Somehow I think you’re just joking with us now’

  At a signal Calum couldn’t see, the two orderlies pushed the bed up parallel to the scanner and lifted Calum across. They strapped him down so he couldn’t move, and then they put a white plastic frame down over his face so that he couldn’t turn his head. All he could do was stare straight up.

  ‘It’s . . . normal procedure,’ Dr Kircher said as he checked the lights on the scanner. ‘We need you to remain perfectly still while we’re . . . working.’ He licked his lips.

  ‘Keep telling yourself that,’ Calum said. The frame held his jaw closed, and he had to speak through clenched teeth.

  He was then slid inside the scanner until his head was tight up against something rounded, something that his skull fitted into snugly like it was a cap. There were sharp bits around the inside of the cap that touched against his scalp.

  ‘Really, really, really last chance,’ Pournell called from outside. He was so sure that Calum was going to crack that the boy felt a hot spike of anger piercing the icy cold of his fear. He was not going to give that DNA to Nemor Inc. He wasn’t.

  Except that part of him knew that this was sheer bravado. He was going to give in sometime in the next few seconds . . .

  Suddenly an alarm went off.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Pournell shouted.

  Then a bang! and the sound of breaking glass.

  ‘What is this?’ Pournell screamed. He sounded as if he was somewhere between furious and terrified. Calum got the impression he didn’t like to be in situations where he didn’t control everything.

  ‘Don’t know,’ one of the orderlies said. Calum could hear the other one talking frantically on a mobile phone.

  A series of heavy thuds shook the room now. They were getting louder, as if something very big was getting closer and closer . . .

  ‘OK, get him out of there!’ Kircher shouted. ‘Get him out of there!’

  Someone grabbed hold of Calum’s feet and yanked him out of the scanner. The metal frame was pulled away from his head. He sat up, staring at the closed doors in wonder as the thuds shook them.

  And then the doors exploded inwards, scattering wood and metal everywhere.

  Something enormous stood there.

  CHAPTER fifteen

  The signal from the giant centipede that they were chasing was coming through strongly on their mobiles, so Gecko and Natalie set out after it. They took a taxi as far as they could, out through the streets of Kowloon, before the press of people and other traffic got too much. After they’d abandoned the taxi they ran through the crowds of people and market stalls towards the point where their mobile phones told them that the giant centipede was located. It wasn’t moving, which worried Gecko more than if it had been moving. Was it already dead, he wondered as he ran, or was it feeding?

  The heat was oppressive, and Gecko found himself covered in sweat almost instantly. The humidity was so high, however, that the sweat had no way of evaporating to cool him down, so it just soaked into his clothes and pooled in his trainers, making them squish each time he took a step. Every few minutes he had to wipe a sleeve across his eyes to get rid of the stinging sweat. His sleeve was already dark and dripping. His lungs were also labouring to pull the thick, wet, hot air into his lungs. It had been a long time since he had experienced conditions like this.

  He knew he was going to get dehydrated very quickly. He and Natalie would have to stop and get a bottle of water from somewhere, if they could.

  He glanced sideways as his feet pounded against tarmac and pavement, wondering how Natalie was holding up. She seemed fine, and he remembered that she had been a runner, back in school in America. She obviously had a lot of stamina, and he found he had to exert himself to keep up. He was better at short sprints and long jumps.

  There seemed to be no rhyme or reason, no grid system to the alleys and streets that they ran through. The city’s layout appeared more organic than planned, like the veins and arteries in some massive biological system.

  Through the half-open doors of the buildings they passed, Gecko could see fragmentary flashes of life in the city: dried fish hanging on strings from the ceilings; women with bundles of steaming noodles wrapped round sticks in their hands, which they pulled apart to thin and stretch the food; men crouched over paper rolls on which they painstakingly painted Chinese characters in thick strokes of black ink; entire families crowded into single rooms, all talking or eating or sleeping at the same time. It was mesmerizing and confusing, a kaleidoscope of foreign life.

  Natalie shouted across to Gecko. ‘Up ahead! We’re nearly there!’

  ‘Up ahead’ turned out to be a pair of ornately carved pillars that marked the entrance to a park. The two of them ran unhesitatingly inside. Paths led, twisting and rising, towards a central low hill. Bushes and flowers of all colours lined the paths, providing plenty of cover.

  Gecko indicated that Natalie should go left while he went right. Hopefully, if one of them didn’t find the giant centipede then both of them would converge on it somewhere near the top of
the hill.

  As he ran across a narrow stone bridge that crossed a stream, Gecko checked his mobile. The centipede was only a little way ahead – and it was still motionless.

  He diverted left, leaping over a bush covered in small red flowers, and found himself running across a clearing where elderly Chinese men and women were performing t’ai chi – a form of exercise that looked to the idle observer like martial arts being performed underwater.

  Gecko threaded his way between them and over another bush – to find the creature they were looking for curled round a pigeon that it had partially consumed. Its bright red exoskeleton, mottled with blue rings, was stark against the lush green grass.

  His heart, which was already hammering in his chest, suddenly speeded up. He could feel the thud, thud, thud of blood in his neck and his temples.

  He reached into a pocket and removed a green string sack that Rhino had bought from a fruit-and-vegetable stall. Without pausing, he threw it.

  The sack fell across the creature, which twisted round and reared up, trying to locate whatever was attacking it. Gecko could tell that it was the smaller of the two centipedes they had seen back in the warehouse.

  Its flat, blunt head weaved around like a snake’s. The scattering of black dots that acted as eyes glinted with anger and hunger. Its legs – many more than a hundred, surely, Gecko found himself thinking – scrabbled at the taut strands of string that made up the sack, making strange plucking noises.

  Gecko moved to grab the sack’s handles and scoop it up, intending to hold it well away from his body so that the thing couldn’t bite him. His plan was to dunk the giant centipede into the water, assuming that it wasn’t aquatic, and wait for it to drown. He would then crush it with a large rock, just in case it was aquatic.

  The centipede had other plans. Its scissor-like pincers closed on the string covering its head, and cut them with an audible snick! The strands parted. The centipede’s scrabbling legs managed to pull the sack downward, along its segmented body, while its head bobbed around free. For a moment it seemed torn between wanting to attack Gecko and wanting to escape. Gecko could hear a hissing noise coming from its head. Its black eyes fixed on him, transfixing him. Its feelers waved hypnotically.