by John Saul
She let herself go, plummeting into the blackness of the shaft, falling into the empty silence below, welcoming it as the pain began to ease, and the fear of the creatures began to ebb away.
She gave herself to it completely, letting the darkness and silence absorb her.…
George Engersol watched as the chaos of color on the monitor above Amy’s tank slowly faded away until the screen was blank, then shifted his attention to the monitors next to her support system. The patterns of her brain waves had changed, and he was puzzled for a moment before he suddenly understood.
Catatonia.
Amy’s mind had finally collapsed under Adam’s attack, and she had sunk into a catatonic state, rejecting incoming stimuli and putting out none of her own.
How long would it last?
And how could he bring her out of it?
His mind began working quickly, examining the possibilities, savoring the opportunities for new research that the condition of Amy Carlson’s mind offered him.
The brief moment of excitement faded away, though, as he realized what he had to do, for he would never have the opportunity to work with Amy’s mind now, nor Adam’s, either.
It was time to shut them down, time to cut the support systems that gave them life.
Time to let their brains, like their bodies, die.
Should he tell Adam what was about to happen?
No.
There was no point to it, and possibly no time, either. He began tapping instructions into the computer, knowing that this time Amy wouldn’t be able to stop him.
Adam, he was equally certain, wouldn’t dare. Adam was too used to obeying instructions.
With Jeff Aldrich next to him, watching, Engersol finished typing in the commands, and entered them into the computer. Instantaneously, Adam’s image appeared on the monitor, his eyes cold and angry.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Engersol froze. On the computer screen the commands that would end the lives of Adam and Amy had stopped scrolling up the screen almost as soon as they had appeared.
“Adam,” he said quietly, “we’re going to have to close down the project.”
On the monitor Adam’s expression darkened. “Close it down? I don’t—”
“It’s not a secret anymore, Adam. Josh MacCallum knows what we’re doing, and he’ll tell others. So we have to end the project, Adam. We have to be able to show them that Josh was wrong about what is happening here.”
“But—”
“You understand, don’t you, Adam?” Engersol went on, his voice taking on the same hypnotic tone that had convinced Adam to volunteer for the project last spring. “You always knew there was a certain risk. We talked about it.”
Adam’s eyes flashed from the image on the monitor above his tank. “You’re going to kill me.”
“I don’t want to, Adam,” Engersol told him. “I don’t want to at all. But I have no choice.” He was silent for a moment, then: “Would you like me to give you a drug? I can put you to sleep first You won’t feel anything, won’t even know anything is happening to you—”
“No!”
The word crackled from the speaker. Both Engetsol and Jeff stepped instinctively back, glancing at each other.
“I’m not going to let you do it,” Adam said, the image on his monitor reflecting all the pent-up fury inside him. “I won’t let you kill us!”
Josh stared wide-eyed at the monitor on the desk, and listened to Adam’s words with growing panic. He had to do something, had to stop what was happening in the laboratory beneath the basement. But how?
He tapped frantically at the keyboard, but there was no response. Turning away from the computer, he ran to the bookshelf from behind which he had heard Hildie’s muffled cries. He pulled at it frantically, trying to find a way to open it, but it held fast He began yanking the books off the shelves, scattering them over the floor, until finally, on the third shelf from the top, he found the button that would release the bookcase. It swung open, and he pushed the button that would summon the elevator.
Nothing happened.
His mind reeled, and once again panic welled up, reaching out to grasp him. He fought it off, his eyes scanning the room. There had to be something—
The telephone!
He ran to it, jerked the receiver off the hook and pressed three keys. On the second ring the 911 operator answered.
“Help!” Josh cried. “He’s going to kill them! He said so!”
The voice at the other end replied calmly, “Who is this? Tell me your name and where you are.”
Fighting back the panic that still threatened to overwhelm him, Josh tried to explain what was happening. “They’re still alive,” he said. “Adam Aldrich and Amy Carlson. They’re not dead at all!”
As the operator at the other end listened incredulously, Josh blurted out his story.
• • •
Jeff Aldrich stared at the image on the monitor over the tank. The face that was etched there no longer looked like the brother he remembered, the soft-eyed boy who would do anything he was told. Was this really Adam?
His eyes moved to the mass of tissue within the tank itself.
A brain.
That’s all his brother was now. Just a lump of gray tissue in a tank of nutrient solution. Not a person.
Not a person at all.
And that’s what he would have become, too, if he’d been the one to go first
Adam had gone crazy, just like Amy had.
“You can’t do anything to us,” Jeff said, his voice etched with contempt. “You’re dead, remember? All that’s left of you is a piece of tissue in a tank!”
Adam’s rage congealed into hatred as he heard his brother’s words. Finally, he understood Jeff. Jeff didn’t care about him—had never cared about him. Any more than he’d cared about their parents. “You thought I was going to die, didn’t you, Jeff? You thought I’d die, and Dr. Engersol would figure out what had gone wrong, so when you went, you’d survive. That’s why you killed Mom and Dad, isn’t it? So you could come back and go into the tank, too?”
Jeff’s lips twisted into a sneer. “And wind up like you? Man, you are nuts! Who’d want to be where you are?” He turned and started out of the lab.
“You can’t leave,” Adam said.
Jeff stopped, turning around. “Yeah? Who’s going to stop me?”
He turned away again, starting once more toward the elevator, when he felt George Engersol’s hand on his shoulder. “No! That’s what he wants us to do. Hell do to us what Amy did to Hildie. Come on!”
Pulling Jeff with him, Engersol started back toward the lab.
He paused as he heard a sound from one of the other rooms.
The sound of a generator starting up.
Dropping Jeff’s arm, he punched his code into the security pad on one of the doors.
Nothing happened. Instantly he realized that Adam had used the computer to change the codes, locking him out.
He peered through the small glass window set at eye level in the door.
Inside, he could see that the emergency generator, which he himself had caused to be installed down here to keep the computers and life supports functioning in case of a power outage, was now running.
But why? What could Adam hope to accomplish?
Then he thought he understood. If the police were coming, and discovered what was happening down here, they might cut off the power to the building. Without the generator, Adam would die.
He moved on into the lab.
“It won’t work, Adam,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’ll find you.”
“It’s not for me,” Adam said. In startling contrast to the fury of only a moment ago, his voice was now placid. “It’s for you. Don’t you smell anything?”
Engersol frowned, then sniffed at the air.
Exhaust! But that was impossible—the generator room had its own ventilating system, automatically controlled.
“I’ve b
een experimenting with the ducts,” Adam explained in the same conversational tone he’d used a moment ago. “It wasn’t very hard, really. All I had to do was close two of them, and open two others.”
Engersol stared at the image of the boy above the tank. Behind him, Jeff Aldrich was already coughing and choking, and Engersol, too, was starting to feel the effects of the carbon monoxide that was quickly replacing the oxygen in the room.
Grabbing Jeff’s arm again, he ran back toward the elevator, but before he was halfway there, the doors slid closed, and didn’t respond as he frantically pressed the button next to them.
“No!” he bellowed. “You can’t do this to me!” Dropping Jeff’s arm, he lurched back to the lab, fury—and panic-building inside him. He tried to hold his breath, refusing to inhale any more of the deadly fumes. Eyes darting frantically about, his mind working furiously, he tried to think of some means of escape, sickened with the realization that these rooms, for so long his favorite retreat, had suddenly become his execution chamber.
Reason!
He had to reason with Adam!
He glowered at the image of the boy, who seemed to be watching him, a look of contempt in his eyes. “No!” he gasped, his carefully controlled breath bursting from his lungs in a rush. “Don’t you understand? What you are is what I made you! You belong to me!”
“I don’t,” Adam said quietly. “I don’t belong to anybody. Not any more. Not after what you and Jeff have done. Now I can do anything I want to do.”
Engersol lurched backward, his lungs filling once more with the poisonous gas. A wave of dizziness washed over him as the carbon monoxide seeped inexorably into his brain, and he began feeling the will to fight slip away from him as the first drowsiness of impending death enfolded him in its arms.
He stumbled against the desk, then turned.
He saw the monitor that had refused to obey him when he’d tried to turn off the life support system. Battling against the specter of death that now loomed uppermost in his fading consciousness, Engersol marshaled his fury for one last attempt to save himself. A hot surge of adrenaline flowed through him, and with the strength the chemical lent his failing body, he picked up the monitor, jerking it free of the wires that connected it to the keyboard. Turning, he hurled it at the tank that contained Adam Aldrich’s brain.
“No!” Adam screamed over the speaker a split second before the glass of his tank shattered.
As George Engersol collapsed to the floor, nearly overcome by the carbon monoxide that was at last overwhelming his system, the nutrients gushed out of Adam’s tank. His brain, no longer floating in its supportive milieu, moved with the rushing fluid, rolling out of the tank, a shard of glass slicing deep into its cortex.
As it dropped to the floor, the leads connecting it to the computer were ripped away.
But it didn’t matter, for the instant that razor-sharp spear of broken glass had slashed through the brain that was his entire existence, Adam Aldrich died.
Died, just as Timmy Evans had died a year ago. Timmy Evans, as far as George Engersol knew, had never regained consciousness at all. Adam, at least, had awakened, his brain still functioning in the tank, proving that despite all his failures, in the end Engersol had been proved right.
Right—and even more brilliant than the children he taught.
But now it was over, not only for Adam Aldrich, but for George Engersol himself. Gasping for breath, his vision fading, the last image George Engersol fixed on before he died was the tank Adam had lived in, now as shattered as Engersol’s own dream.
A moment later, Jeff, who had watched Adam’s death with no emotion whatsoever, also collapsed to the floor.
Except for the throbbing of the generator, the laboratory was silent.
30
Alan Dover had been on his way back from the Aldriches’ house to the police department when the call had come through diverting him up to the Academy adjoining the university grounds. What the dispatcher had told him sounded crazy—Adam Aldrich and Amy Carlson still alive? Impossible. Dover had seen their bodies himself.
Still, though he was sure it was a crank call, maybe one of those Academy kids pulling off a weird practical joke, he wanted to talk to Jeff Aldrich anyway. He’d found some papers hidden in the boy’s room. Though he couldn’t read them very well, they were clearly electronics diagrams for the same model car the boy’s parents had died in that morning. Was it possible that the boy had actually killed his own parents? Of course, he knew it was possible—younger children than Jeff Aldrich had committed such crimes. Dover shook his head as he pulled up in front of the Academy, wondering once more at the kind of world that could produce such kids.
In the foyer of the mansion, he found a crowd of children chattering among themselves. As they spotted him coming in the front door, their voices instantly rose, each of them trying to be the first to tell him what had happened.
“There were screams,” one of the girls said, her face pale. “It was really weird. They sounded like they were coming from inside the walls!”
Dover frowned, then turned to another of the kids, a boy of about twelve. Brad Hinshaw nodded his agreement with what the girl had just said. “It was only for a couple of minutes, but it was really strange.” He hesitated, then decided he might as well tell the police what they’d all been talking about. “There’s a story about Mr. Barrington,” he began. “He’s supposed to come back sometimes. You can hear him at night in the elevator, but—”
“All right,” Dover cut in. “I’m not here to listen to ghost stories. I’m going upstairs, and the rest of you aren’t.” He fixed them with his severest stare. “Is that clear, or do I have to call some more officers?”
A couple of the kids backed away from him, and none of the rest seemed interested in following, so Dover hurried up to the fourth floor, where he found a locked door. Rapping loudly, he called out, “Josh? Are you in there?”
There was a brief silence before Dover heard a timid voice coming through the heavy wood of the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s the police, Josh. I’m the one who talked to you at the beach. Remember?”
Dover waited again, then heard a lock click. The door opened. Josh, his face pale, his eyes frightened, looked up at him. “Something’s happened,” he whispered. “Something terrible. Adam’s dead. And so is Dr. Engersol and Jeff and Hildie and …”
Easing his way into the room, and closing the door behind him in case any of the kids downstairs decided to come up and see what was happening, Alan Dover looked quickly around. Except for the books scattered all over the floor, everything looked normal.
Certainly, he saw no bodies.
“All right,” he said, moving toward Josh, who had gone to the desk and was now staring at a computer screen while his fingers tapped at the keyboard. “Why don’t you just tell me—”
“Look!” Josh said. “Look—you can see it!”
Dover came around the desk and glanced at the screen, instantly freezing. The image he saw made his groin tighten and his stomach churn. What he was looking at was some kind of laboratory, and on its floor were two bodies, both of them lying faceup.
He recognized them instantly.
Jeff Aldrich, whom he’d seen less than an hour ago, and George Engersol, the director of the Academy. “Holy Christ,” he whispered under his breath. His eyes still on the screen, he spoke to Josh. “You said—”
Understanding the policeman’s question even before he asked it, Josh tapped at the keyboard, and the view changed. Dover recognized Hildie Kramer lying on what looked like some kind of operating table. From her position alone, he could see that she was dead.
His gaze left the screen and fastened on Josh. “Do you know what happened down there?”
Josh nodded, his chin quivering and his eyes glistening with barely controlled tears. “P—Part of it,” he stammered. Slowly, concentrating as hard as he could on keeping his voice steady, he told Dover as much as he knew. “I didn’
t see all of it,” he finished, his voice finally breaking. “F—For a while I couldn’t see anything, because Adam turned the camera off. But after he died—”
“Josh, Adam Aldrich has been dead for more than two weeks,” Alan Dover interrupted.
“No, he hasn’t!” Josh wailed. “He was down there! His brain was still alive!”
Dover decided not to try to argue with the boy, certain that after what he’d seen, he must be on the edge of hysteria. “All right,” he said soothingly. “Do you know how I can get down there?”
“The elevator,” Josh told him. “I think I got it working again. And I got the vents fixed, too, and the generator turned off.”
Dover stared at the boy. “The vents? A generator? What are you talking about?”
“He killed them!” Josh shouted, almost hysterical now. “Don’t you understand? That’s how he killed them!”
“Take it easy, Josh,” Dover broke in. “Let me make a call, and then I’m going down there.” Flipping his radio out of the holster on his belt, he spoke quickly, asking for three ambulances and more officers. “I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.” Putting the radio back on his belt, he started toward the elevator.
“I’m coming, too,” Josh announced.
Dover stared at the little boy. “Son, I don’t think—”
“Amy’s down there,” Josh said, his face setting stubbornly. “She’s my friend, and she saved my life. Hildie was going to kill me, and Amy stopped her. Now I have to help her!”
Dover thought it over quickly. The boy had already seen what was down there, and he didn’t have time to argue with him. Besides, Josh seemed to know what had been going on in the lab. He made up his mind. “All right,” he said. “Come on.”
The elevator descended slowly. Josh, standing silently next to Alan Dover, unconsciously slipped his hand into the sergeant’s, who squeezed it reassuringly.
The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open.
“Jesus,” Dover muttered as he stepped out of the car and saw Jeff Aldrich’s body lying just inside the laboratory door.
With Josh following behind him, Dover went into the lab, quickly stooping to check both Jeff Aldrich and George Engersol for signs of life.