by Steve Cole
Adam recoiled. There was no recognition in the beast’s gaze. Only crazed hunger.
Then suddenly the monster shut his eyes, shook his head like something sharp was stuck inside it. The remaining horses cowered back as Zed’s vast bulk seemed to shimmer and all but vanish, before the dinosaur left his kill and launched himself up into the sky and away from the carnage.
Adam stared after the dragon shadow on the air, feeling sick to his stomach. He didn’t even seem to know who I was.
If he hadn’t taken off when he did . . . would he have attacked me as well?
The rising note of an engine roused Adam as a car drove past. Lucky for the driver he hadn’t chanced by just two minutes earlier.
Adam walked unsteadily onward. Visions of the hunt pooled in his thoughts, vivid as the bloodstains slowly baking into the mud and grass.
It was well past two o’clock by the time Adam neared the warehouse. He had lingered as long as he dared, in no hurry to face the dinosaur again. Obviously Zed had to eat meat, but it was the pleasure he seemed to take in the slaughter that gave Adam the chills. When would Zed next need to feed?
Reluctantly, Adam quickened his step as he turned up the quiet lane that led to the warehouse yard.
“I’m here,” he called warily as he approached the fire doors. He didn’t want to go inside. “Are you back?”
There was no reply beyond the angry hum of the lashed-up cables and a slow, ragged panting. That answered his question.
Steeling himself, Adam went in—and frowned. The lights were on, showing Zed sprawled awkwardly over his bed of dank carpet. He seemed pale again and he was shivering. In the space of half an hour, he’d gone from lethal attacker to feeble animal; the difference couldn’t have been greater. The MP3 player was on the floor, the ghostly echoes of music still sounding from the headphones, slurring slightly as the batteries wore down.
For a few seconds, Adam hung back by the door and regarded him, warily silent. The wild, hideous strength he’d seen Zed use in the field seemed to have fled the dinosaur’s body, but he was taking no chances.
“You’re not looking so good,” Adam said at last, a hard edge to his voice. “Maybe something you ate disagreed with you?”
“Ad,” Zed croaked. “Am . . . Ad . . . am.”
Adam frowned. Zed had never called him by his name before. He moved cautiously closer. “You grabbed your head out there when you . . . Well. Is it your head hurting?”
The black eyes gazed at him, unfocused. “Pain. Brain.”
Adam chewed on a fingernail. This wasn’t the confrontation he’d been expecting. Feeling an unexpected tug of sympathy, he came closer still and stooped to switch off the MP3 player.
Zed thumped the tip of his tail suddenly, growling like a guard dog. Adam left the player alone and quickly straightened up again. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “It’s not like I can call a vet.”
“Jo . . . sephs.” Zed struggled weakly to rise, but couldn’t do it. “Jo . . . sephs. Pain. Dark.”
Maybe he had some kind of fit, thought Adam. That’s why he went crazy out there. “I wish I knew what you were really trying to tell me,” he said. “I found out stuff about Josephs. She’s a woman for one thing—could you not have told me that?”
“Pain, dark,” Zed repeated. He closed his eyes, pursed his scaly lips carefully. “Past . . . pictures. Dark.”
“Past pictures?” Adam had a flash of inspiration. “You mean, memories? You can’t remember stuff?”
“Get.” The dinosaur strained again to lift his head. “File. Man read?”
“Uh . . . he’s started to, yeah.” Adam shifted uncomfortably. “He’s going to help us find Josephs.
“Files,” Zed snarled. “Files tell Adam. Y, Z.”
Adam frowned. “Uh, I did tell you the order got all messed up. But I’m sure he’ll read through them all.”
“FILES!” roared the dinosaur. Struggling up angrily, he towered over Adam. “Y . . . Z!”
“I’m sorry!” Adam cowered away. “I didn’t know you wanted the last files straight back, I . . .” He trailed off, his thoughts racing around a sudden possibility. Wait a second. . . . Y, Z.
You mean, Why Z—why Zed?
“You don’t know any more than I do about where you came from . . . do you?”
Zed stared down at him, panting hard.
“Is that why you wanted Sedona to read the files at Fort Ponil out loud—to ‘tell Zed’? Is that why you bothered to keep him alive?”
The dinosaur sat back down heavily, shaking the entire warehouse. “Am Ad. Why Zed.”
“Am Ad . . . ?” Adam felt the concrete seem to lurch beneath him, and wiped a sweaty hand through his hair. “Oh, boy. When your brain was hurt, maybe those bits of my brain waves you picked up from Ultra got tangled with your own. . . .”
Making you more dangerous and unpredictable than ever.
Oh, Dad, what did you do?
“Jo . . . sephs,” Zed said again, hoarsely. “Dark.”
“I can shed a bit of light on her,” Adam murmured. “Mr. Hayden said she’s some sort of corporate spy. She steals, like, technology secrets and sells them to whoever pays the most.”
Zed closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Thing is, was she trying to sell you, or did she steal other secrets to make you?” Adam pondered. “‘Forceevolving cells,’ that was one of the things Mr. Hayden said. And ‘rejuvenation of fossil matter’—I think that means making it younger. Ring any bells with you?”
The question was answered with a wet snort.
“Thinking about it, though . . .” Adam chewed a fingernail, musing aloud. “What if she stole secrets from my dad last year? From the Ultra-Reality system, I mean. And she’s been working on her own version, but something happened that meant she needed Dad as well as his Think-Send tech. . . .” He felt a speck of excitement start to snowball. “And it was her, or Bateman, who robbed Dad’s employers in New Mexico to get the U-R equipment—which had my fight moves stored in the memory! Don’t you get it, Zed? That would mean Dad really isn’t the one to blame for what happened to you.”
Zed didn’t answer for a while. When he did, his voice was husky and faint. “Dad . . . hurt. Why Zed?”
“I don’t know,” Adam murmured, the brief rush of elation draining away. There were so many questions, so many ifs and maybes—and Zed, the focus of them all, lying there like a fallen giant, unable to give any answers because they’d been burned from his brain. “I’m sorry.”
What if Zed died?
Wouldn’t that be best? thought Adam, with a twinge of guilt. No more risk of him tearing into the people of the city. Or tearing into Dad, if he ever found him. He didn’t belong in this world. It was like Bateman had said—Zed was a freak.
But for all that, Adam still felt conflicted. This was a real, live genetically modified dinosaur for heaven’s sake, capable of the most incredible things. Including murder and destruction. . . . What he’d seen today with those horses was only the tip of the iceberg.
He glanced toward the fire doors. Perhaps I could try going outside? He chewed his lip. Perhaps I could run. I could find Mr. Hayden again; now that he’s got the files, I can tell him what really happened.
“Ad not go,” Zed ground out suddenly, as if listening in on his thoughts. “Stay.”
Adam closed his eyes. “It’s all right, Zed. I’m not going anywhere.”
He sat down and listened to the whine of power resonating through his concrete prison, and the tinny drone from the headphones. Sat there, waiting for another day to end.
16
FALTER
Dad’s phone went off in Adam’s pocket. He woke with a start, fumbling for the handset, blinking away the sleep. His watch showed it was past eleven o’clock, and the lights were still burning in the warehouse; Zed didn’t seem to have stirred, his breathing still ragged and labored. What if someone’s seen we’re here? Adam thought frantically.
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Then he saw the words on Dad’s screen: JEFF MOBILE. He felt a jolt of anticipation and accepted the call. “This is Adam, hello?”
“Adam, hey, it’s Jeff Hayden. I’m sorry to call you so late.”
“It’s fine,” Adam said quickly. “I’m up. Um, everyone’s up. Have you heard anything about Dad?”
“I’m making progress.” There was a pause. “Adam, those files you gave me . . . are there any more of them?”
“No . . .” He glanced over at Zed. “That was all I could take with me.”
“It’s incredible, Adam.” Hayden’s voice sounded strained. “If these notes are genuine, then I believe these people have managed to re-create a living, breathing dinosaur. What’s more, they used stolen Symtek bioregenerator technology to help them achieve it.”
“They . . . they did?” Adam swallowed hard. Zed had healed so quickly after the shark savaged his arm, and he’d survived the brain-blast—it made sense that he’d been exposed to something that helped his body fix itself faster. “That’s uh . . . wow. So, have you found out where Josephs might be?”
“I’ve got nothing on Geneflow Solutions so far, but I managed to track down an address for Josephs herself, off the Royal Mile. This could be the biggest breakthrough in modern science since we split the atom. It could literally change the world—but if they stole Symtek’s technology to make it happen. . . .”
“They could’ve taken Dad’s too,” said Adam.
“Intellectual property theft is Josephs’s specialty,” Hayden agreed. “She must have been helping herself to all sorts of cutting-edge technology.” He paused, as if marshaling his thoughts. “My first instinct was to go straight to the police—”
“My dad said not to.”
“I know. And in any case, if it gets out that blueprints for our bioregenerators have been given to another company . . .” Hayden whistled. “Believe me, Symtek can do without that kind of publicity. Our stock value would plummet.”
Adam glanced over at Zed, whose eyelids were twitching, and lowered his voice. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to call on Josephs tomorrow morning and insist that she speak with me at Symtek with lawyers present,” Hayden declared. “I’ll confront her with the evidence you’ve given me—and I think perhaps you should be there too.”
“Right.” Adam’s insides twitched at the thought of coming face to face with the woman who had turned his world into wreckage. “Of course. I’ll be there.”
“And either she lets your dad go free, or else I’ll have to go to the police with what we know.”
“But . . . what if she tries to stop us? She’s got these men working for her, security types.” Adam thought of bruised-faced Bateman and shuddered. “They tried to catch me in New Mexico.”
“They what?” Hayden paused. “Why didn’t you say so before? Look, Adam, I can only really help if you come completely clean with me.”
“I have come clean with you.” As he spoke, Zed shifted noisily onto his side and let out a colossal fart. It sounded like a small explosion.
“Say again?”
“Sorry, it’s a bad line,” Adam said quickly, running for the fire doors. “All that really happened is that some men came to Dad’s apartment. Proper hard men. They tried to get me to go with them someplace. But I managed to get away from them. . . .” With a little help. “Went straight to the airport and came here.”
There was a long pause. Adam tried not to choke on the smell of Zed’s horrific wind, strong enough to strip the lining from his lungs.
“Sounds like you’ve been through an awful lot,” Hayden said at last. “Well, don’t worry. Symtek’s got its own security. And I’ll make sure that Josephs knows I’ve given full details from those files of yours to my friends at the UN, including her address. She won’t dare lift a finger against us.”
And we can get Dad away, Adam thought in a rush of excitement. We can maybe get Zed back under wraps, looked after by experts—and the baddies all sent down to jail.
He ached at the thought of seeing Dad again. Could this be it? The beginning of the end of the whole ordeal?
“Adam?” Hayden prompted.
“Sorry. I’m fine. I’m great.” He cleared his throat. “So where’s this address?”
“Lawnmarket, over in the Old Town,” Hayden said. “For safety’s sake, how about we meet just around the corner? Bottom of The Mound, say . . . beside the Scott Monument?”
“Right.”
“Say about nine?”
“Whenever.” Adam eyed the sleeping Zed nervously. “That should be fine.”
“Just one thing—I want you to promise you’ll stay with my security men and let me do all the talking, right?”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
“This will need very careful handling.” Hayden paused again. “You can’t imagine what this Z. rex stuff might mean for the world.”
Wanna bet? thought Adam, looking over at Zed. He spoke in a small voice. “I just want my dad back, Mr. Hayden.”
“We’ll get him back, Adam. I promise.” Adam could hear the warmth in Hayden’s voice, and drew some comfort from it. “I’ll meet you tomorrow. Good night—and try to get some sleep.”
“Night,” Adam said, and killed the connection—just as Zed started to stretch, his jaws swinging open in a low, rasping yawn. The dinosaur noticed the lights were still blazing, got up with only a little difficulty and stomped across to the cables. He yanked them apart, sending sparks dancing. The lights went out and the buzzing changed pitch.
“You seem a bit better,” Adam remarked. “Except it smells like something crawled up your butt and died there.”
“Drink,” came the deep, throaty whisper in the dark. “Hungry. Ad . . . stay.”
Like a good wee doggie. Adam sighed as Zed staggered over to the loading bay and clanked open the doors. Outside’s the best place for you. But come tomorrow morning, it’ll be my turn to go for a walk. . . . He heard wings unfolding, the stamp of scaly tiptoes on the concrete. Then the beast lurched away, escaping into the night.
Adam let out a long, shaky breath. “Lock up your horses, Edinburgh,” he muttered grimly.
Alone again.
Tomorrow, this could all be over. Adam clung to the thought like a little kid might clutch at a teddy bear for comfort as he lay down on his damp sleeping bag. Too bone-weary to do anything but dream of somewhere safe, far away from here.
The new day began for Adam with the usual chill of the damp concrete bleeding into his bones. Only this time, excitement was seeping through as well. This is the day something happens, he thought, willing it to be true. The day I start getting my life back.
Zed had come back after an hour or so at large. Adam had held dead still and pretended to be asleep when the creature shambled back in, scraping his tail along the ground.
Around seven-thirty, Adam rose and dressed, crunched on a mint and swigged from a can of flat Coke. He was fizzing himself, with nerves. And he still hadn’t asked permission to go out this morning.
He crossed a little closer to where the dinosaur laid resting, sunlight falling on him in squares through the dirty windows. Zed’s skin was still mottled with paler patches, and the shadow of dried blood haunted his jaws. Adam noticed lumps of fleece, smeared sticky and black, lying in the shadows. Must be working his way through the whole farmyard, he thought darkly.
Adam cleared his throat. “You, uh . . . you any better, then?”
Zed’s eyes opened. They seemed blacker than ever.
“I need to go out,” Adam announced boldly. “To get those files back from Dad’s friend I saw yesterday.”
Zed blinked, scaly eyelids chopping down like the blades of twin guillotines. “No. Ad stay.”
“I won’t be gone long. . . .” Adam cleared his throat. “This man’s going to tell me all about you. And help find Dad.”
Zed remained silent for long, heavy seconds. “Come back,” the creature said at last, car
efully arranging its lips around the words.
“Back?” Adam was taken off guard. “Yeah, of course I’ll come back. Soon as I can.” Only it might just be with company, he thought guiltily. “Things . . . they’re going to work out, Zed. You’ll see.”
The scaly eyelids flickered closed, and Zed resumed his silence.
The Scott Monument, with its soot-blackened spires, pointed bleakly at the clouds like a stone rocket that could never fly. But Adam’s hopes were doing their best to zoom into orbit as he cycled through the fumy, traffic-choked bustle of Princes Street. He was half an hour early for his rendezvous, but better that than late. He hurtled past the Royal Scottish Academy with its pillars and banners and make-believe gaslights, past the big stores and the tourist shops with their tartan-towel souvenirs.
He passed the monument—no sign of Hayden as yet—and swung a left onto St. David Street, heading for the bike racks at nearby St. Andrew Square. The glass-roofed café in the square’s gardens was already doing a roaring trade. Adam parked his bike, jogged past the rows of cars and across the road to the monument and threw himself down on a bench at the end of Princes Street Gardens to catch his breath.
On the journey over he’d gone through a million possibilities in his head. Sam Josephs—a tall, pale ice queen in his imagination—would try to run as soon as she saw Hayden with his security men, and he would join them in chasing after her. Or Frankie Bateman would answer the door, try to attack Adam, only to be beaten back by the guards. Or Josephs would come out holding a gun to Dad’s head, and Adam would have to reason with her. . . .
He glanced up worriedly at the sky. What if Zed got the scent of what was happening here and came sailing out of the sky to smash everything?
“It’ll be okay,” he breathed. It was five to nine. “It’s got to be okay.”
He paced around the park, killing time. Surveyed the circular beds of tulips and the grassy slope leading down to trees and train tracks. Looked across to Arthur’s Seat, the ancient, blocky volcano where he and Zed had first landed. It seemed forever ago, and yet no time at all. The days and nights had melted into a long, frightening blur. But soon . . .