CHAPTER 19
The drab brick and stone exterior of Brinkley House belied the modern, technical interior which Daniel knew it housed. Deception, he’d come to learn, was one of Dryden’s weapons – make people think one thing when in reality the opposite was true.
The only people Daniel had seen coming and going through the polished wood and glass doors looked as if they were office workers taking lunch breaks, and a group of three workers were now making their way back to the corner building. He glanced at his watch. This trio had been the last he’d seen to leave; it was now or never.
He eased himself from the disused shop doorway in which he’d been standing and picked up the black back-pack at his feet. His phone rang and he scrambled to get it out of his satchel. The screen identified the caller as Eleanor. His finger hovered over the accept button but the three workers were nearly at the doors to Brinkley House. He pressed decline and made his way across the street, the black back-pack slung over one shoulder.
Daniel followed the workers into the marble foyer, up a short flight of steps which lead to a series of barriers – similar to those Daniel had seen used in London underground stations – and which stood before the main security desk. The three people in front of him passed a plastic card across a digital reader that allowed then to enter through the barriers one at a time. They each placed their mobile phones, keys, coins and other electronic equipment into small black trays and handed them to the guard behind the desk.
Daniel stood at the barriers and patted his jacket pockets, pretending to be looking for his ID card. The three workers took turns to pass under the metal detector arch and entered the E-M Pod.
The security guard frowned at Daniel. ‘You coming?’
‘Sure, just … give me a minute.’
The guard sighed and turned to the others. ‘Keep your eyes closed,’ he told them. ‘When you hear the all-clear alarm exit the pod and make your way to the lifts.’
The Pod door hissed shut and the security guard started the machine. Only then did he turn his attention back to Daniel. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘I think I’ve lost my ID,’ Daniel muttered.
The guard’s face was stone. He moved around the desk and stood on the opposite side of the barriers to Daniel. ‘No card, no entry. You know the rules.’
Daniel looked back towards the entrance doors. ‘It must have been when I paid for my sandwich.’
‘Then you’d better go back and get it.’
‘You see the thing is,’ Daniel continued, ‘I’ve got a programme running upstairs and I need to make sure it’s okay. I can go back and get the card as soon as I make sure that everything’s working.’
‘No card, no entry,’ the guard repeated. He looked Daniel up and down. ‘What department do you work in, anyway?’
‘R and D,’ Daniel said.
‘I don’t recognise you.’
‘I’m new. Only started last week. Couldn’t you let me just through this once?’
The guard unclipped a phone from his belt. ‘Who’s your manager?’
‘Do you have to call him? It’ll be embarrassing.’
‘Who’s your manager?’ the guard asked again, harder this time.
‘You see, it’s like this.’
Daniel threw his backpack over the barriers, and the guard instinctively raised his hands to catch it. While the bag was still in the air Daniel leaned on top of the barriers and flipped his legs up and over. Before the guard had the chance to react Daniel kicked him in the chest and sent him sprawling backwards, his phone clattering across the floor.
Daniel jabbed the man three times in quick succession – twice in the chest and once in the neck. The guard raised his head and, with a confused look on his face, grunted once before slumping back to the floor, unconscious.
Daniel nodded. ‘Amazing what you can learn from a book.’
He picked up his backpack and the guard’s phone then, grabbing the man by the back of his collar, dragged the guard around the desk, tucking him in as tight to the base of the high unit as he could.
Daniel knew from the building schematics that the exit door from the E-M Pod would only be unlocked once the machine pulse had completed its cycle, and that would only begin once the door this side had been sealed. And the only way to start the process was from the security guard’s desk. The high-toned pitch of the machine started to lessen – telling Daniel that the three workers would be exiting the Pod any moment.
He took his phone out of his satchel, activated the Artificial Intelligence programme and linked it in to Brinkley House’s security system. The majority of the security measures in place would take far too long to hack into but it seemed that none of the designers thought that anyone would want to activate the E-M Pod with a time-delay countdown.
He glanced towards the entrance doors. It only took the A.I. programme thirty seconds to bypass the nominal security on the E-M Pod and Metal Detector sub-systems but Daniel knew that if anyone walked in before he’d passed through them then it would all be over. That half-minute felt like an hour.
The Detector arch was turned off, the Pod door opened and the other measures Daniel had pre-programmed into the phone were put in place. He set the countdown timer to ten seconds, placed the phone into one of the empty black trays and slid it onto a shelf. He slipped his backpack on, tapped the screen to start the countdown and ran under the Metal Detector arch into the E-M Pod.
Brennan’s phone sounded an alarm. He tapped the screen and read the displayed report. The signal acquisition had been brief – lasting no more than a second or two – but it was clear. A GPS location stamp displayed at the bottom of the report.
Brennan shook his head – he knew the location well. ‘What the hell is he doing?’
‘What was that?’ Lithgow asked looking up from the newspaper he was holding.
‘Nothing,’ Brennan muttered. ‘Where’s Davis?’
‘Getting a coffee, I think.’
Brennan headed out of his office. ‘Davis,’ he yelled.
Davis poked his head around a corner further down the corridor. ‘Yep?’
‘Get the chopper ready.’
‘We going somewhere?’
‘Just get it ready. I want to be airborne in two minutes.’
‘What’s going on?’ Lithgow asked making his way out of the office.
‘Nothing,’ Brennan answered again, going back into the room. He opened a drawer in his desk; his gun lay next to a small Taser device. He looked at them both then pushed the gun aside and picked up the Taser.
‘What’s happened?’ Lithgow asked.
‘I’m not going to need you on this one,’ Brennan said, pushing passed him back into the corridor. ‘Finish your paper.’
Lithgow watched as Brennan made his way down the corridor towards the helicopter platform. ‘Oh. Right.’
Daniel eased the exit door from the E-M Pod half open and peered into the marble-floored concourse which lay beyond. It was empty.
He darted across to the right hand lift that stood all by itself and pulled a small poly-ceramic unit from the satchel. It was oblong, about six centimetres long and three wide with an opening at one end. On the top of it was a clear, yielding plastic square – large enough to place a thumb or finger onto.
Two female voices drifted down the stairwell to the left in the corner of the concourse, along with the click of heels against the wooden flooring.
Daniel held the unit up to the encoder pad next to the lift entrance and hurriedly ran the open end of it across the pad. He checked the colour of the plastic square. It remained clear. The women’s voices seemed louder – they were coming down the stairs and it sounded as if they would step into the concourse any moment. One of them laughed and her voice echoed around the empty room.
Daniel pushed the open end of the unit against the encoder pad again. Too fast; it slipped off the pad before it could take a clean reading. The voices were closer now, louder. He passed the unit over the pad a third tim
e. The women were almost there.
The colour of the plastic square changed to green.
Daniel placed his thumb onto the plastic and it was instantly coated in a thin duplicate print of the person who had last called the lift. He pressed his thumb against the encoder pad; a thin beam of red light scanned the print and the lift door opened. He darted inside – squeezing himself into the corner – and as the lift door eased closed the women stepped into the concourse.
Daniel breathed heavily for a few seconds then inspected the inside of the lift. This wasn’t something he was expecting – the polished metal interior had no visible means of being controlled. How did they tell the lift where they wanted to go? That was it, it must be voice activated: they had to say where they wanted to go.
‘Twenty- five,’ Daniel muttered.
Nothing happened.
‘Top floor,’ Daniel continued.
Still nothing happened. Daniel started to breathe heavily. He didn’t have time to second guess what the correct command might be. He’d have to climb up.
He slipped the poly-ceramic unit back into his satchel and pulled out a short length of climbing rope from a side pocket of the back-pack. He tied one end around his waist and the other to the straps of the satchel and back-pack. From another side pocket he took out a pair of gloves and pulled them onto his hands. The palms of the gloves were covered in a grey fabric which would protect his hands from the harsh twisted braids of lift cables. He braced himself against the walls of the lift and reached up to open the hatch in the centre of the ceiling. Daniel hauled himself through the hatch and stood on top on the lift, pulling the satchel and back-pack back up after him. When the bags were sitting on top of the lift he took out a head-torch, closed the hatch and looked up the shaft. He remained motionless for a few moments, frowning, not quite sure what to do now; the beam from his head-torch showed that the lift had no cables.
‘What is this place?’
He looked up into the darkness of the shaft – close to a hundred metres lay between him and Dryden’s offices and he couldn’t see any way of getting there. It was then that he noticed a slim, ladder-like lattice attached to one wall, disappearing into the shadows. The lattice was just wide enough for a hand or boot. He made sure the knot holding the bags to his waist was secure, swivelled it around to his back then started climbing.
The rotor blades were spinning at half power by the time Brennan ducked his way through the open door and into the seat beside Davis. The blades reached full power and seconds later the sleek, black helicopter eased its way off the roof.
‘So where are we going?’ Davis asked.
His words sounded tinny through the ear-pieces Brennan wore. ‘Brinkley House.’
Davis turned to him. ‘What’s the rush? What’s going on?’
Brennan checked the controls on the Taser unit. ‘Just get me there as quick as you can.’
‘Always a bloody mushroom,’ Davis muttered looking away through the windows.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Just something Lithgow mentioned.’
Daniel was panting and smeared with dark, oily grease by the time he’d hauled himself up to the twenty-fifth floor but the gloves had prevented his hands from the worst the lattice ladder could offer.
He stepped onto a ledge by the shaft doors and, running his hand gently around the edge of them, found the emergency release switch. The doors glided silently open and he stepped in the penthouse lobby, pulling up the back-pack and satchel. He noticed the ceiling cameras at once and hoped that Dryden was in his office watching him right at that moment. But no alarm bells sounded, no security sirens wailed.
He was almost disappointed. Perhaps he’d have to face Dryden another time.
His breathing began to ease, the tiredness from his arms melting away. He took off the gloves, tucked them into his jacket, and pulled out a plastic wedge. He jammed it under the open door; no lift would not operate if its doors were open, no matter how good the technology. Basic safety. At least he hoped that was true for this strange new lift.
He un-clipped what looked like a large cummerbund from around his waist and moved up to the first set of doors. He slipped a number of polymer tools from a hidden pouch and selected one that resembled a dentist’s pick. Almost every door in Brinkley House, according to the schematics he’d read at Pickford’s, was automated but when it came down to it a lock was just a lock. And if you had a key …
It took Oscar Kent four attempts before he managed to catch Gregory Dryden’s attention.
The man in the maroon suit stood in one of the experimental rooms with only a thin Teflon-coated mask for protection, and watched as Batch #3142 was administered to the test subject. He never named them – the test subjects, that is – and seldom even acknowledged if they were male or female. This subject, however, was a man; thin and wiry, his limbs abnormally long and the sides of his head bulbous.
Straps ran across the width of the bed and held the man in place. Wireless sensors attached to his chest and head displayed readings on several monitors. A large plastic tube ran into the base of the man’s skull from a tall metal cylinder behind his bed. The man shrieked when the dark, silvery fluid running along the tube reached his head and he thrashed against the straps.
Dryden watched the results on the monitors with passionless eyes.
Eventually the knocking at the door made him turn around and he saw Kent’s apologetic face.
Dryden pressed a button on the nearest console. ‘What is it?’ he snarled. ‘I told you that I wasn’t to be disturbed.’
‘I know, sir,’ Oscar replied, his voice shaking. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Then why are you disturbing me?’
‘There’s word come from Brinkley House, sir.’
Dryden waited for Oscar to continue. ‘About?’
‘Apparently someone has broken in,’ Oscar said. ‘The security guard’s been found unconscious and we’re having difficulty communicating with personnel inside.’
Dryden tore the mask from his face and stormed out of the room. Oscar stepped away from him as Dryden entered the corridor. ‘When was this?’
Oscar swallowed hard. ‘It’s happening right now, sir.’
Daniel prised the small panel away from the base of the door leading to Dryden’s office and repeated the procedure he’d used to open the outer lobby door. He placed a thin polymer strip between two of the node connectors and attached fibre-optic leads to several of the junction points.
He snipped four of the thin, transparent cables with a small pair of plastic secateurs and the door opened on silent hinges. His nemesis’s office lay before him. Daniel got to his feet and slowly stepped into the room. It was not as he expected but perhaps the austerity of the space gave more away about the nature of its owner than anything else.
Daniel pulled the poly-ceramic unit from his jacket pocket, passed it over the encoder pad attached to Dryden’s computer and took a reading of the print used to access it. He covered his thumb with the new coating and a second later the entirety of Dryden’s private files lay open to him.
He was tempted to delve into Dryden’s secrets there and then; to find out more about the man and his shadowy past but knew that time was against him. He had a plan and if there was any chance of this rescue working then there wasn’t any option for deviation. Concentrate, he told himself. Focus on what’s important right now. He opened a web mail browser, synched it to Dryden’s files and began sending them. He tapped at the virtual keypad again and searched for where the professor was being held.
The down-wash from the helicopter’s rotor blades was the first indication to the handful of pedestrians on the pavement outside Brinkley House that something was amiss.
Several cars screeched to a halt as Davis eased the sleek, black machine down towards the tarmac. The support runners had barely touched solid ground before Brennan slid the door open and stepped out. Car horns sounded but the angry yells of motorists were lost in the whum
p, whump, whump of the rotor blades.
‘Do you want me to wait?’ Davis yelled above the roar of the engine.
‘Negative,’ Brennan replied. ‘Stay at altitude and get ready for an emergency evac.’
Davis didn’t reply, choosing instead to hold his commander’s eye.
‘What?’ Brennan asked.
Davis gave a shake of his head. ‘Nothing.’
He powered the engine back up and lifted the helicopter into the air. Brennan ignored the numerous irate on-lookers and watched it go for a moment before he headed towards the corner entrance of the building Tiberius had forced his way into.
Brennan couldn’t help but smile, as he passed through the first line of barriers, when he saw the security guard being attended to by a medic.
‘Where is he?’ Brennan asked after regaining his composure.
The guard looked up into Brennan’s grey eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
‘You don’t know?’
‘He’s done something to the internal scanners,’ the guard muttered. ‘He could be anywhere.’
‘What about a floor-by-floor?’
The guard shook his head and shrugged his shoulders once more.
The expression on Brennan’s face suggested what he thought of the guard without him having to actually speak the words. ‘Let me through, then. And don’t let anyone out until I come back.’
The guard gave another embarrassed wince. ‘He’s … He’s jammed the Pod mechanics. We can’t get the door open. Tech-services should be here any minute.’
Brennan smiled again. It wasn’t a warm smile. ‘Do you really want to be around when he gets here, and have to tell him that?’
The guard’s expression said he knew whom Brennan was referring to.
‘I mean, you’ve done a bang-up job so far,’ Brennan continued, ‘he’s bound to be impressed. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little something extra in your pay-packet this month.’
‘If the boy went through the Pod,’ the guard muttered, ‘then he’s stuck in there. There’s no other way out. He’ll be found before long.’
‘Yeah right,’ Brennan smiled, ‘’cos that’ll save you.’ He moved back through the barriers and out onto the street. He took out his mobile and dialled a number.
Daniel ran his gloved hand gently around the edge of the lift door on the floor below Dryden’s office, found the emergency release switch and stood aside as the door glided open.
He waited for a moment before stepping out of the shaft into the corridor. It was a world away from Dryden’s austere office and if he didn’t know better he would have thought this was part of the PathGen labs. The bright corridor smacked of surgical cleanliness and even the air smelled of antiseptic. But at least it was empty.
Dryden’s computer listed the professor as being held in the far corner room. The only sound as Daniel made his way along the corridor was the soft tread of his boots.
‘The doors are being jammed locally,’ the Tech-service engineer told Brennan.
‘What does that mean, exactly?’
The engineer swivelled his Tablet around and showed Brennan the fluctuating display. ‘There’s a pirate signal overriding the Pod’s mechanism protocols.’ He tapped at the screen. ‘Its source is local, somewhere close.’
‘Find it.’
The engineer tapped at the screen a few more times and quickly isolated the source of Daniel’s hacking signal. ‘Here,’ he said pointing, ‘in the personal drawers.’
Brennan pulled out the black plastic tray; a blue light pulsed in the corner of the display screen on Daniel’s phone. Brennan handed the phone to the engineer. ‘Close it down.’
Daniel edged down the corridor, holding his breath despite the fact that there was no one else present. The step of his boots sounded like a thunderstorm to him in the stillness of the corridor.
He turned the last corner and the white door which sealed the room holding the professor came into view. One look at it told Daniel that this one would be significantly more difficult to open that the doors to Dryden’s office.
Dryden’s torpedo-like helicopter sliced through the cloud layer as it sped over the Aylesbury countryside. A flickering, holographic image of a man was projected out of a small, floor-mounted glass screen in the centre of the passenger compartment.
‘Where the hell is he?’ Dryden barked at the image.
‘We suspect that he’s—’ the image crackled as the feed distorted, ‘— two floors. We’ve confirmed that your private lift has been disabled.’ The image flickered and wavered once more.
‘Say again. You’re breaking up.’
‘We’re sure that he’s on one of the top two floors,’ the man’s image repeated. ‘They’re the only levels which we can’t get to.’
‘Then get someone up there,’ Dryden yelled.
‘Yes, sir.’ The man’s voice didn’t convey confidence.
‘And I want him alive,’ Dryden added. He prodded at a button before the man could answer and the hologram zapped away into nothingness.
Dryden flicked at his earpiece, connecting through to the pilot. ‘You can get a bloody move on as well.’
A six-centimetre side panel lay on the pristine corridor floor as Daniel tweaked the polymer cells in the frame of the white door. Several more fibre-optic leads ran from junction points and circumvented what he knew to be the standard security measures. He snipped some more of the thin transparent cables but the door didn’t open as expected.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his jacket sleeve. ‘Come on, come on.’
He was missing something. The security schematics that had been displayed on Pickford’s holographic table only listed the door mechanics up to the twenty-third floor and this laboratory-type door was even more complex than those on the upper penthouse level.
It was clear that Dryden deemed whatever was going on behind these doors was more sensitive than even his own personal secrets.
Daniel ran the schematics through his mind: the thousands of pathways, the security loops, the traps and pitfalls. None of it was any use now. He wasn’t going to be able to open this door simply by remembering how to bypass the mechanism.
He’d just have to use what he knew and try to figure out the rest. But that meant time, and Daniel knew that was the one thing he didn’t have a lot of. For the first time since stepping foot inside Brinkley House he was worried.
The Tech-services engineer passed Daniel’s phone back to Brennan. ‘I’ve stopped the jamming frequency,’ he said, ‘but there’s no knowing what damage it’s already done without running a full diagnostic.’
‘Just tell me where he is.’
The monitor screens running the length of the security guard’s desk flickered into life. One showed the lobby beyond the far E-M Pod door; it stood ajar, with several of the suited office workers trying to prise it fully open. They were having no success – the door was jammed half way open.
‘Can we open the door this side?’ Brennan asked.
‘Not with the other one as it is,’ the guard replied.
The Tech-engineer continued looking at his Tablet but made a grunting sound.
‘What?’ Brennan said.
The engineer shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Can the door be opened?’
‘No,’ the guard repeated, stronger this time. ‘Not possible.’
‘That’s not strictly true,’ the engineer muttered. He turned to Brennan. ‘One of the emergency safety protocols we have is that each of the doors can open a maximum of half way at the same time. In case of fire or something, you know.’
‘No one told me that,’ the guard said.
‘Need to know, I guess.’ The engineer continued. ‘Anyway, we won’t be able to operate the E-M pulse but at least it’d be enough for us to get people out if we needed.’
‘Or be able to get me in,’ Brennan finished. ‘Do it. And don’t let anyone else out.’
The engineer nodded. ??
?Sure. And by the way,’ he turned his Tablet to face Brennan. ‘He’s on twenty-four.’
On the seventh attempt at reconfiguring the fibre-optic connections and polymer cells Daniel managed to ease the white door open. Concealed wall lights powered up and gave him just enough light to see by.
The room was large with the central rectangular area cordoned off with floor-to-ceiling plastic strips. The thick plastic was opaque but through it Daniel could see the twinkle of coloured lights and hear the beep of electrical equipment. Daniel wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, stepped up to the plastic and parted the strips.
What lay in the darkness behind reminded Daniel of a medieval torture chamber. Three flat, circular metal discs were suspended from the ceiling by thin cables and through the middle of them lay a naked Professor Cuthberts. He was connected to the discs by myriad of silvery wires which slipped under his skin, and wireless sensors were attached to his chest and legs. The professor’s head had been shaved and a freshly stitched wound sliced from above his right ear to the centre of his head. His eyes were closed and only a small, blue surgical cloth protected his dignity. Sweat glistened off him in the dim light. Numerous monitors charted the fluctuations of the professor’s condition.
Daniel dropped the back-pack and satchel to the floor. He took a deep breath and stepped closer to him. ‘Professor?’
The older man’s eyes flickered but didn’t open.
‘Professor,’ Daniel repeated with more conviction. ‘I’m here to save you.’
Alan’s eyes opened; slowly, painfully, and he rolled his head to where the words came out of the dark. He blinked and focused on the boy standing there. ‘You’re not real,’ he muttered through dry, cracked lips. His eyes closed. ‘You’re not real.’
‘I am.’ Daniel began inspecting the discs. ‘I’m very real.’
The professor’s eyes opened again, this time focusing clearer on Daniel. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘No.’ Several of the monitor’s registered elevated readings and a high pitched beep began to sound. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Well I am. You saved me – twice. It’s about time I started paying you back.’ He took out his secateurs and began snipping the silvery wires.
The professor gripped Daniel’s hand. ‘No. You have to listen. Dryden wanted you to try. He doesn’t care about me; it’s you he’s after.’
‘I’ve been up in his office,’ Daniel told him, ‘he’s not here. Just give me a minute and I’ll have you—’ He ran his hand around the back of the professor’s neck and discovered a thick, clear tube running from the floor into the old man’s head ‘— free.’
‘There is no freeing me,’ the professor muttered. ‘I’m just the bait to get you here.’
Daniel eyes hardened, and so did his voice. ‘I am going to free you.’
He placed the blades of the secateurs around the tube but, despite how hard he squeezed the handles, it wouldn’t break.
A siren sounded in the hallway and the monitors next to him started to flash red.
‘Get out,’ Alan ordered. He gripped Daniel’s hand once more. ‘Now! Please, while you still can.’
A thick, silver – almost metallic – fluid began to seep up the tube from the floor. Daniel let go of the professor’s hand and tried once more to cut the transparent tube. The secateurs didn’t even make a mark on it. Daniel dropped them and tugged at the tube but it held fast to the floor.
‘Daniel.’ The professor’s voice was weak.
‘This might hurt.’ Daniel held the back of the old man’s head and tried to pull the tube free. The professor screamed and his whole body tensed. Daniel released his grip. The silver fluid edged ever closer to the old man’s neck.
‘I can’t stop it,’ Daniel yelled.
‘Daniel, listen to me: you have to leave before it’s too late.’
‘I’m not going without you.’
The professor’s eyes became clear. ‘It’s already too late, my boy. It was over for me the moment they hooked me up to these machines.’
‘No.’ Tears welled up in Daniel’s eyes. ‘I won’t let it.’ He tugged and strained at the cable, desperately trying to wrench it out of the floor. It didn’t budge. ‘I’ll not leave you. I’ll not leave you.’
The silver fluid reached the professor’s neck. The scream that came from the old man’s mouth didn’t even sound human. He thrashed at the wires that still held him and the three metal discs rattled against the cables.
He gripped his hand, surprising Daniel with his strength.
‘No,’ Daniel cried. ‘I can save you.’
The professor opened his mouth. ‘Save the others,’ he gasped. ‘Save the others … like you, at the PathGen labs. Dryden hasn’t stopped, Daniel. He’s trying to recreate something we perfected with you. He’s—’ His words were cut short by a violent spasm.
The old man convulsed as the effects of the silver fluid coursed through him and another primeval scream broke through his lips. The life-sign displays on the monitors peaked then suddenly dropped to zero. A thin, constant tone pierced through the wail of the sirens and the professor’s body went limp against the wires holding him. His final breath came out in a wispy, throaty gurgle.
Daniel cradled the old man’s head, crying over and over that he couldn’t be dead.
Brennan clambered up the last few metres of Dryden’s private lift shaft to the doors on the twenty-fourth floor when the sound of the sirens reached him. Above him the open doors leading to Dryden’s penthouse lobby sent out a beam of light.
He activated the release mechanism and stepped into the brightly lit corridor, pulling out the Taser and Daniel’s phone from his jacket – three red dots pulsed on its screen, somehow the tracking sensors had survived intact after an E-M pulse. The wail of the sirens was louder now he stood in the corridor and the cascade of noise bouncing off the walls was close to overwhelming him.
Brennan edged along the corridor and caught sight of a flashing pulse of red light coming from the open corner doorway. He flipped the Taser to ‘On’ and stepped quietly up to the room.
Daniel knelt on the floor, holding the professor’s hand, with tears streaming down his face. The blare of the sirens blocked out the sound of the young man’s sobs but the wracking shudder of his shoulders told Brennan all he needed to know. He lowered the Taser.
‘Daniel,’ he said but the word was lost against the alarms. He moved the plastic sheeting further aside and stepped inside. ‘Daniel,’ he repeated, louder.
The young man’s head turned a fraction.
‘It’s time to go,’ Brennan said.
Daniel let go of the professor’s hand, slowly stood up and wiped the tears away with the back of his sleeve. His normally calm and peaceful eyes were now full of anger.
‘I’m the first one to get to you, Daniel, ’ Brennan told him. ‘The tracking beacons on you told me you were here but it won’t be long before the others turn up. There isn’t any way out of here, except if you come with me. Now.’
Daniel stepped forward and the expression on his face suggested that he wasn’t prepared to go quietly.
Brennan held out his other hand with Daniel’s phone. ‘Now hold on just a minute. I can see you’re upset –’
‘Upset?’
‘Just … just take it easy, Daniel. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not your enemy.’
Daniel covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye and hit the man blocking his exit with a snap kick to the ribs. This may not be Dryden but he worked for the man and was therefore guilty by association for killing the professor. Brennan bundled backwards through the plastic sheeting, knocking over one of the monitors as he fell, surprised by the speed and ferocity of the boy’s attack.
Daniel didn’t let up – he followed Brennan past the sheeting; a snapping jab to the side of Brennan’s head was followed by a heel to the man’s left knee. Brennan buckled, crying out in pain and dropping Daniel’s phone. He blocked
the next attack and, when he stood up, locked the teenager in what he thought was a secure embrace.
‘We haven’t got time for this,’ he said. ‘I need to get you out of here now!’
Daniel let his knees buckle and twisted sharply to the left – Brennan’s grip weakened momentarily; Daniel slipped away from him and stung the older man with an uppercut to the jaw.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ Brennan yelled, blocking another attack. ‘I am not your enemy.’
‘You’re the one who’s made the mistake,’ Daniel answered, hitting Brennan in the chest with a jab. ‘And you’ve made me your enemy whether you want it or not.’
Brennan went to grab Daniel, to shake some sense into him but Daniel gripped the lapels of Brennan’s jacket before the older man got a strong hold. He smacked his forehead into Brennan’s nose then rolled onto his back, pulling Brennan with him. Daniel tucked his legs in and when Brennan was at the apex of being unbalanced, he kicked. Daniel launched Brennan over the wall of monitors and sent him crashing into the wall.
Brennan sprung back to his feet; blood seeping from his nose and forehead, and his grey eyes no longer placid. ‘Okay, that’s enough. I don’t care if you want to or not,’ he said wiping the blood away, ‘but you’re coming with me.’
Daniel was on him as the final word left his mouth – another kick sending Brennan back into the wall. Brennan blocked Daniel’s next punch and thudded a fist into the teenager’s stomach. It seemed as if all the air in Daniel’s body left him in the blink of an eye, and he fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
Brennan grabbed Daniel’s collar and hauled him to his feet. ‘I don’t care who you are; you shouldn’t play games if you don’t know the rules. Now come on.’
Daniel took a deep, shuddering breath and kicked at Brennan’s knee again; the older man’s leg gave way and he fell to the floor. Daniel followed up with crunching punch to Brennan’s nose. His fist came back speckled with blood. Brennan raised the Taser and tried to press it against Daniel’s leg but Daniel’s oil-stained boot caught the move. He slammed Brennan’s wrist to the floor, the Taser bouncing out of his hand. Another snapping jab caught the older man on the nose for the second time, and sent Brennan crashing into more of the monitors.
Daniel grabbed Brennan by the collar of his jacket with his left hand and balled his right into a tight fist. He knew where to hit the man to kill him – at the base of the nose, to drive the bone and cartilage up into the brain. He pulled his arm back, ready to strike but paused as he saw the look of comprehension in the man’s eyes.
‘No,’ Brennan gasped through bloodied teeth. ‘Wait. Wait!’
With one easy motion he could send a message to Dryden that this wasn’t over. But was he really ready to kill someone? With one swift punch he could take this man’s life. But the fire of rage dulled a fraction in Daniel’s eyes. Learning an action in a book was one thing; putting that theory into practice was another thing altogether.
He punched Brennan on the bridge of the nose instead of the base – more blood sprayed from the man’s face – then Daniel followed up with a thumping front-kick to Brennan’s chest, sending the Scot crashing into the wall. Daniel calmly moved over and picked the Taser up. ‘I’m not one of you.’
‘No, don’t. Listen –’
Daniel pressed the activation button and jabbed the Taser into Brennan’s neck. Fifty thousand volts arced between the two electrodes. Brennan convulsed as the electricity surged through him and within seconds lay unconscious on the floor.
Daniel stood, dropped the Taser next to Brennan and considered how close he’d come to crossing a line. There had been countless philosophers over the years, he’d remembered reading about, who had argued that once a person takes another’s life they are irrevocably tainted. He decided that there was only one person who’d be worth paying that price.
But to do that he’d have to focus on the now. And the “now” was the easy part: getting out of the building.