CHAPTER 22
‘What do you think I should’ve done?’ Brennan yelled into his phone. ‘Shoot him? I had my orders.’ Davis and Lithgow watched through the window as Brennan limped around his office. He caught sight of them. ‘Hold on.’
He glared at them as he moved to his desk and pushed a small button. The office windows turned opaque. He flopped down onto the chair. ‘I followed my orders,’ Brennan continued, in a lower volume, ‘and tried to take him in one piece but he doesn’t trust anyone now. Can you blame him?’
‘What did you think Dryden was going to do to the old man?’ Cross’s voice came from the phone. ‘The boy was never going to take it well. So … what do you think he’ll do now?’
‘Who can say? He might stay in the UK, go back to the States or he just might decide to lose himself somewhere else entirely. One thing’s for sure: the professor’s dead and he blames only one man. I know what I’d do if I were him.’
‘Go after Dryden?’
Brennan paused. ‘Yep.’
‘The Top Brass aren’t going to like that.’
‘Then that’s their problem.’ Brennan popped open a bottle of pain-killers with his free hand and tipped several of them onto the desk. ‘If they wanted a different outcome then they should’ve made a decision to act sooner once they knew the Tiberius file had been compromised.’ He tossed the pills into his mouth and crunched them up, washing them down with a swig of cold coffee. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The kid’s not the kitten they all think he is.’
Daniel lay flat on his stomach, in a horizontal air vent and watched through a grille as a technician passed below, along a corridor that smelled of antiseptic.
He waited until the man’s footsteps had faded before moving. It sounded as if the technician had keyed in a security code – eight different-pitched tones – followed by the noise of a door opening and closing. Daniel allowed a few more seconds of silence to pass before he prised the grille away; twisting and pulling it up inside the vent. He was just about to dip his head through the gap when he heard the thud of more footsteps. For a second he thought about replacing the grille but knew that if whoever was in the corridor would surely see the movement.
He paused, waiting for the person to pass by, but they never came. The thudding continued and Daniel swore at himself when he realised he was listening to the frantic beat of his own heart. He took a deep breath and willed himself to calm down.
He edged his head through the gap in the vent and saw that the space below him was still empty. Each end of the fifteen-metre corridor finished with a solid-looking doorway, both had a glass viewing panel and a wall-mounted security key-pad. Six doors, three on each side of the corridor, branched off into what Daniel assumed were side rooms. The tiled-floor was over two metres below him with nothing that he could use as a step to help. It didn’t take a genius to realise he wouldn’t be able to get into the corridor and replace the grille; he’d have to leave it inside the vent. He was leaving too many clues as to where he was, where he’d been, but knew he had no other choice. He lowered himself through the gap and dropped as quietly as he could to the floor.
Coming from the darkened vent, the bright blue-tinted light of the corridor stung his eyes. The door behind him lead back into the main part of the building – its glass viewing panel at head height, with a keypad and bio-reader scanner to one side. The technician had taken the opposite direction and Daniel edged up to that door, twelve metres away. He’d heard the tones the technician keyed into the pad, so he was sure it wouldn’t take him long to figure out the code, but the bio-reader was a different matter. He peered through the viewing panel, seeing that the corridor continued into the heart of the secret labs.
He moved back up to the nearest of the side doors in the wall and, on tip-toe, looked through into the room beyond. If the room in Brinkley House where the professor had been tortured seemed medieval in nature to Daniel, then what he saw now made him think it was something from the future.
The room was about four metres square and in the middle of it had a solitary figure strapped to a cloth-covered table. The figure looked like a man but he couldn’t really be sure – it was deformed and twisted, with a head at least twice normal size. A series of bizarre-looking machines surrounded the man’s head and were attached by numerous tubes and wires. Daniel pressed a hand to the door and felt the throb of machinery. A surge of electricity arced between the man and one of the machines, and although the door deadened the sound, he screamed causing Daniel to jump. The man arched his back and strained against the straps holding him in place, until the surge subsided.
Daniel moved to the five other side doors. Each room held a similar-looking individual. Were these the people the professor had meant? Were these six supposed to be what Dryden was attempting to perfect? The professor had said that the people Dryden was experimenting on were like Daniel, but he looked nothing like these unfortunates. Dryden must have more people hidden elsewhere on this level, and Daniel knew that he’d have to get through one of the end doors to find out.
But right now he felt like he was a rat caught in a trap.
The engines on Dryden’s torpedo-shaped helicopter reached full power, the wheel locks released and the machine lifted gracefully into the air above Brinkley House. The pilot eased the throttle forward and the aircraft moved upwards at a steep angle.
‘I expect you to set a new record,’ Dryden said, turning to the pilot, ‘for the time it takes to get between here and PathGen.’
‘Yes, sir. Will do.’
‘You can find yourself another job if you don’t.’
The edge of the pilot’s mouth twitched and he pushed harder on the throttle. ‘Yes, sir. Understood.’ The engine power output display on his bank of monitors reached 114%.
Dryden activated the secure Hermes programme on his phone and keyed in an encrypted message: Capture of Tiberius at PathGen imminent. Will report initial findings after primary surgery is complete. I trust that will satisfy the Board. GD
Daniel crouched by the foot of the door leading deeper into the research wing. The minutes he waited for anyone to come through felt like hours. If only he’d had stayed in the air vent then he could have by-passed this security door and gone straight to the heart of the floor, but there was no way he could climb back up to the open vent. He hoped that this would be the only mistake he made.
He jumped when the tones of the key-pad sounded from the other side of the door and he had to squeeze himself flat against the wall as the door opened towards him. A white-coated technician strolled into the corridor, consulting a Tablet, and let the door close behind him. Daniel thought about slipping through the closing door but knew he needed the bio-reader the technician carried, in case other security doors needed to be by-passed. The technician paused at the nearest side door, looked through the viewing panel and made a note on his Tablet.
He keyed a sequence of numbers into the pad next to the door – the same tones he’d used to open the end door – and pushed the thick, white door open. The sound of medical machinery coming from the room was drowned out by the scream of the man strapped to the table. Daniel was on the technician in a flash. He jabbed the man in the side of the neck and bundled him into the room.
The man gave a brief cry of surprise and crumpled to the hard floor, his Tablet skittering away. Daniel pushed the door closed then checked that the technician was unconscious. He snatched his bio-reader from the man’s white coat and scooped up the Tablet.
Now that he was in the room he could see the man on the table more clearly – tubes ran from the machines into the back of his scalp, just like as they had with the professor. The man’s elongated and distorted head was a mesh of scars; they looked like old surgical wounds which had been stitched, crudely, back together. It looked like he was an early attempt at a Frankenstein monster.
Another spear of electricity arced from one of the machines to a silver-colour
ed collar around the man’s neck. His scream made Daniel jump and the man strained once more against the straps that held him tight. A pulse of pinkish liquid made its way from the man’s head along a clear plastic tube and the electricity stopped. Daniel watched as the fluid emptied into a sealed glass beaker – from the amount already collected he guessed that the man must have been enduring this torture for hours.
The man’s eyes flicked open and latched onto Daniel’s with a clarity that surprised him. For long moments the man stared at him. He opened his mouth but no words came from his dry lips. ‘Please,’ the man eventually whispered.
Daniel moved to his side. ‘I’ll … I’ll come back for you,’ he said, holding the man’s hand. ‘I’ll come back for all of you. I promise.’
The man gripped Daniel's hand, nearly crushing it with a strength that surprised him. ‘No!’ The man gasped. ‘Please …’ He licked his lips. ‘Please let me die.’
‘What?’
‘Let me die.’
‘I … No, I can’t.’
Tears welled up and fell from the man’s eyes. ‘Please? You must.’
Daniel pulled away from his grip and backed-up towards the door. The man watched him move away and tried to form more words from his dry mouth.
‘I will come back for you,’ Daniel repeated.
He opened the door and darted into the corridor, the man’s screeching “Please” cut short as the door sealed tight. Daniel closed his eyes, steeled himself, now more resolved than ever to end Dryden’s reign of torture. He swiped the bio-reader across the scanner by the door and keyed in the code the technician had used.
Twenty kilometres out from the PathGen labs Dryden’s helicopter’s engine warning lights flashed red, but still the pilot kept the throttle at its highest point. With ten kilometres to go the Master Alarm warning started to sound, and flooded the cockpit with an ear-piercing whoop, whoop, whoop. A matching red light pulsed above the pilot.
He switched them both off but several more alarms took their place. He glanced over his right hand shoulder and saw that they were leaving a trail of black smoke. More alarms started to sound until the display panel in front of him was lit up like a Christmas tree. The throttle control juddered in his hand and the automated “distress warning” voice activated; repeatedly stating that the helicopter was in imminent danger of stalling and that throttle power should be reduced to a safe level. The pilot silenced everything, gritted his teeth and fought to steady the joystick.
He angled the aircraft down at a sharp angle; approaching the wide Heli-pad on top of the PathGen building at breakneck speed. At the last moment he corrected the angle of descent – turning the four engine vents to face down – and cut the air-speed to near zero. He brought the helicopter to a bouncing halt on the edge of the northern wing’s Heli-pad. He activated the wheel locks and cut the engine but the mechanics housed behind him continued to whine and complain about what they’d been forced to endure.
Dryden glanced at his watch and pursed his lips in a sneer. ‘Congratulations,’ he muttered as he opened the door. ‘You still have a job. Wait here.’
The sterile, brightly-lit corridors were eerily quiet, except for the ever-present hum of electricity, as Daniel made his way deeper into the Wing. The information on the technician’s Tablet showed him where he needed to go; the main room with a dozen test subjects – labelled as the Claudius programme – lay at the far end of the wing.
He passed four more side rooms but these contained a number of other white-coated technicians, using research equipment on aluminium benches. To Daniel these rooms looked more like what he thought of as a typical lab. Two more secure doors blocked his way to the Claudius room. He swiped the stolen bio-reader across the scanner, entered the same eight numbers he’d used before and eased the penultimate door open. The door to the Claudius room blocked the corridor eight metres away. This was it; the end of the road.
Daniel took a breath, steadied his nerves and stepped up to the door’s viewing panel.
The room beyond covered the entire width of the Wing. The room was bathed with blue-tinted light and, dotted around the perimeter, frosted windows let in diffused daylight. But Daniel's eye was drawn to the twelve gurney-like beds half way into the room facing the door and spread in a semi-circle.
On each of the beds lay an unconscious young boy or girl – six of each – their heads shaved, and with a green sheet draped across most of their body; they looked to be no older than eleven or twelve. A metallic pad on each of their temples pulsed with a violet light. Banks of monitors and medical equipment were arrayed behind each gurney.
Daniel swiped the bio-reader across the scanner and keyed in the eight numbers. Magnetic locks released and the heavy door clicked open. A release of oxygen-rich air escaped into the corridor as he pushed it inwards. He stepped nervously into the room, closing the door behind him, and laid the Tablet on top of the closest monitor. With slow steps he approached the unconscious forms. The children’s chest’s rose and dipped in unison, as if they were all on a fixed life-support system. Across each head – in an identical spot – Daniel noticed that they had a five centimetre scar, but unlike the Frankenstein man he’d just met their wounds had been neatly sewn back together.
He ran a hand across the back of the head of the child on the end gurney and found a familiar thick tube, leading away to one of the monitors. He dipped to his knees to get a better look and saw that the tube had been grafted into the back of the child’s head. A quick check told him that the other eleven had a similar tube running into the back of their head. A brutal, full-frontal attempt to free the professor of such a tube resulted in his death, so Daniel decided to try a different tactic. If he couldn’t free the victim from the tube then perhaps he could free the tube from the monitor.
A cursory inspection of the nearest monitor suggested that he wasn’t likely to be able to do that either – the tube ran into the lower part of the machinery, and there was no visible access panel to open to see where it went from there. The plates of the monitor fitted seamlessly together so there wasn’t any way he could try and prise them apart. And if he just tried pulling the tube from the monitor then he’d be relying on brute strength and he knew that hadn’t worked before.
Perhaps the answer was much simpler, perhaps if he woke them up they might be able to free themselves?
‘Hello?’ he called to the girl on the end. ‘Can you hear me?’
The girl’s chest continued to rise and fall as it had before.
He leaned in closer to her ear. ‘Hello!’ he called louder. ‘Can you hear me?’
Nothing, not even a flicker came from her closed eyes.
Daniel wiped his mouth and chin. He had to think of something. There had to be a way of freeing them from the tubes. There might be a release programme on the monitor. He inspected the array of buttons and switches – some were coded with mathematical symbols, some weren’t labelled at all. Panic started to grow in his stomach – his plan, such as it was, ended when he walked into the room – now he was just winging it. He had to do something. He changed switch positions on the monitor.
A red light flashed on each of the monitors and the unmistakably familiar wail of an alarm began to sound.
The blue-tinted light dimmed and was taken over by amber light which flashed in the corners of the room. With a hiss a barely visible gas entered the room from hidden ceiling ports and sounded over the bleep of the machines. Daniel took a deep breath and tried once more to free the nearest of the unconscious forms from the thick tube, but to no avail. It was just as fixed as had the one which had been attached to the professor.
The twelve unconscious children began to simultaneously convulse, as though each were having some kind of seizure. Daniel took the shoulders of the girl nearest to him, trying to wake her up but stopped dead when her body relaxed, and he saw blood seeping from the edges of her ears and nose. He looked to the others – each of them had stopped convulsing and they were also ble
eding from their eyes, ears, nose or mouth.
Each of the monitor’s behind the children started to emit a constant, high-pitched tone. Daniel pressed a finger to the girl’s neck, searching for a pulse but there was none to be found. The gas, or the system controlling their breathing, had killed them all. He’d failed, and now everyone in the building knew he was there.
He ran to the door, punched in the number sequence but the magnetic locks didn’t release. He pulled on the handle the door remained fixed. He keyed in the eight-digit sequence once more and pulled harder on the door, but still it wouldn’t budge. Try as he might to hold his breath longer, he had to take in more air. He released what air was left in him and gulped in a quick lungful. He nearly gagged as the bitter, acrid sting of the gas hit his throat.
The clack of Dryden’s heels on the hard corridor floor, mixed with the stern expression on his face, was enough to make anyone in his way ensure they moved out of it double-quick. The only thing to cause him to slow his pace was the warning bleep of his phone. He checked the message and then his fast walk turned into a run.
‘I’m in the building,’ he said into the phone. ‘Keep him contained and away from them if you can. I’ll be with you in less than a minute.’
He barked at the white-coated workers to open the doors ahead of him as he raced towards the southern wing, and to Daniel.
His bio-reader opened the security door leading to the southern wing research level without the need for him to key any numbers into the pad. He stepped into the ten-metre long “air-lock” chamber, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The door sealed tight with magnetic locks, an amber warning light came on and a pale blue gas flooded the small chamber, killing any bacteria present on his clothes.
After ten seconds the amber light changed to pale green and hidden fans in the chamber wall activated, sucking out the anti-bacterial gas. Dryden swiped his bio-reader across the scanner on the far door and hardly needed to glance up to see the missing vent grille halfway along the corridor. He pace didn’t falter as he headed deeper into the Wing.
Dryden opened the last door before the Claudius room to find Oscar Kent, along with a trio of other technicians, clustered around the viewing panel each trying to snatch a glance of the intruder. Daniel sat, perched on the edge of one of the gurneys; his head low and his shoulders dipped. The amber flashing light pulsed out through the small window.
‘He was messing with the machinery,’ Oscar said, making space for Dryden to reach the door. ‘The central safety protocols activated before I could stop him, or them. We have no choice but to let the cycle complete before acting.’
Dryden frowned, as if he couldn’t make sense of what he was being told and what he saw through the viewing window. ‘Hasn’t the gas been deployed?’
‘It most certainly has.’
‘And he’s still alive?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Is there a malfunction in the system?’
Oscar shook his head. ‘That’s the first thing I checked,’ he said, referring to the information displayed on his Tablet. ‘The fail-safe’s working exactly as designed. I don’t understand it either, sir; he should be dead. The Claudius subjects were all terminated in less than a minute.’
‘Interesting.’ Dryden pressed a small red button next to the keypad. ‘Hello, Daniel.’ His voice boomed out through hidden speakers in the room beyond the door. ‘So glad you could join us.’
Daniel looked up. Even over the sound of the alarm he recognised the voice. His eyes hardened when he saw the man’s smiling face through the window. ‘Dryden.’
Daniel’s voice came out clear and crisp in the corridor.
‘Sorry I missed you earlier,’ Dryden said, ‘in London. But at least we have the opportunity to talk now. Although, in truth, I’m surprised to see that you’re still breathing, let alone capable of speech.’
Daniel moved up to the door and came as close as he ever had to the man who had been responsible for the deaths of his loved ones. ‘Then why don’t you come in here and talk to me.’
‘Wish that I could. However, once you tried to remove one of them—’ he nodded at the twelve dead children ‘—from the system the fail-safe cycle activated and not even I can open the door until the protocols have finished.’
Dryden released the red intercom button and turned to Oscar. ‘Alright, everyone out,’ he muttered.
‘Sir?’
‘Out,’ Dryden repeated. ‘Now! Get yourselves back through that door. Leave him to me.’
‘Yes sir.’
Oscar signalled for the other three technicians to move back down the corridor and waited for the last of them to pass through the security door before closing it.
Dryden, his composure now regained, pressed the intercom button once more. ‘Now it’s just the two of us.’
Daniel glanced over his shoulder. ‘Just the fourteen of us, you mean.’
‘Fourteen? I think that you’re getting confused between people and experimental material. They’re lab rats, Daniel; nothing more.’
‘They aren’t lab rats!’
‘They’re dead lab rats now, at that. There isn’t any difference between them and something that’s grown in a Petri dish. They were grown to be experimented on.’
‘They’re people, just like me.’
Dryden gave a thin laugh. ‘What a strange concept. I wonder who ever gave you that idea. You’re not a person, Daniel. You’re an experiment gone wrong.’
Daniel keyed the eight numbers into the pad and pressed the door release again, but no matter how hard he tugged on the handle the door remained sealed. He let out a cry of frustration and smear of blood oozed from the corner of his right eye. He wiped it away.
‘Ah,’ Dryden cooed. ‘I see that the gas is finally starting to have some effect on you. About time. It’s a weaponised mix of codeine and cyanide, if you’re interested, spliced with a touch of the Tunguska haemorrhagic fever.’ He waved a finger at Daniel. ‘That’ll be the bleeding, you’re experiencing. The gas has a long, technical name, which I won’t bother to bore you with, but the lab boys who developed it have rather jokingly termed it their Very Dirty Martini. Strange sense of humour they have. I’m told that the cyanide gives it a rather pleasant aroma of almonds, though. What do you think?’
‘I think you should open the door and try it for yourself.’ He blinked and blood seeped from his eye.
Dryden smirked. ‘I really am going to have to disappoint you there. You see, what’s in that room is just too sensitive to be allowed to get out. One of the primary tenets of research like this is: It’s better to let some experiments die than let them reach the outside world. By the way, how did you ever think you were going to get out with them?’
‘I—’ A stabbing pain shot through Daniel’s chest, cutting his words short.
‘Did you imagine that you’d just simply walk them out through the front door?’
‘I hadn’t thought. I mean –’
‘Or perhaps you were going to get them crawling through the air vents?’ Dryden interrupted. ‘And then what? Even assuming that you managed to get them outside, what would you do then; call for a cab?’ He laughed. ‘You’re pathetic. Even Alan Cuthberts had a plan when he snatched you. And, to be honest, he did me a favour. The damage he caused enabled me to re-vamp the facilities here. I doubt I could’ve achieved all that I have if it hadn’t been for him. I’m not sure I told him that before you killed him.’
‘You killed him, you mean.’
‘I beg to differ. He was very much alive when I left him. You killed him when you broke into Brinkley House. You really must learn to take responsibility for your actions, young man.’
‘You killed him like you’ve killed everyone close to me.’
Dryden gave a moment’s pause. ‘I haven’t killed that little American girl yet.’
‘Don’t you dare touch her!’ A trickle of blood escaped from his nose.
‘Or you’ll do what?’
r /> ‘I swear that if you hurt her –’
‘Listen to yourself, Daniel. Your threats are ridiculous. There’s nothing you could do to me, even if you weren’t dying.’
‘I might not be able to do anything but when people find out what’s been going here, they will. When they do, you’ll be closed down and pay for your crimes.’
‘Crimes? What crimes? Are you really so naïve to actually think that I’d ever enter into a programme like this without a “get out of jail free” card? Let me tell you a truth, Daniel,’ Dryden smiled. ‘The people who you seem to think that would be so horrified by what I’ve done here wouldn’t even bat an eye-lid.’
Dryden held his forefinger and thumb a few millimetres apart. ‘I’m that close to ending Alzheimer’s and CJD for good. Do you think that all those millions of sufferers would really be concerned about how a cure was reached? Or would they and their families just fall to their knees, grateful that the torment was over and thanking God for what Gregory Dryden has done for them?’
‘You don’t care about finding cures,’ Daniel said. Another stabbing pain shot through his chest. ‘You want the money. You want the power.’
Dryden smiled again and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Okay, so you’ve got me. But – just between us – the whole cure thing sounds altogether more altruistic, don’t you think?’
‘If we all die then it’s over for you.’ Daniel coughed and his lips became smeared with blood. ‘I get them out of here or we all die; the result’s the same: you lose.’
‘Lose? Lose?’ Dryden laughed again. ‘Listen to me, Daniel, because this is very important. Do you really think that those twelve are the sum result of sixteen years of research? Please. There are plenty more Claudius subjects and I’m more than ready to move onto the Nero phase, so I have no worries there. And the thing I need from you – the one small piece that I haven’t been able to replicate all these years – I can just as easily get from your corpse as from your living body.
‘Your DNA might make you more resilient – and trust me I’ll have a look at it in detail later – but it isn’t anything special, not really.’ He tapped his head. ‘But your brain is. You remember everything you see and hear, don’t you? It’s called Eidetic Memory, as I’m sure you already know. That’s what I’m after. Any money that’ll be generated from the cures we’ve developed as by-products of our DNA programmes – and we’re talking billions, here – will pale into insignificance from the prospect of harnessing the intelligence gene. Now how much do you think people will pay for that?
‘Just think of the control the person who wielded that sort of technology could exert. After all, knowledge is power as the saying goes. Once the effects of the gas have left your body I’ll simply cut out what I need from your head.’
Tears welled up in Daniel’s eyes and fell in red streams.
‘Was it worth it, Daniel?’ Dryden continued. ‘All this effort, all this running around, over the last week? Think of all the people who’ve been effected because of you: Alan Cuthberts, those people who pretended to be your parents, that American girl. The end result was only ever going to have one outcome. You’ve just made it easier for me by coming here.’
Daniel staggered back into the nearest gurney as another spasm gripped him. He coughed once more and a splatter of blood spread across the tiled floor. The blood seeping from his eyes and nose gathered in intensity.
‘This …’ He coughed more blood. ‘This isn’t over.’
He took a step but slipped on the blood-splattered floor and fell to his knees. He took two painful, ragged breaths then collapsed and lay still. His final breath caused bubbles to form on the bloody floor.
Dryden released the intercom button but his eyes never left Daniel’s body. ‘It was over for you sixteen years ago,’ he whispered. ‘You just didn’t know it.’