Dangerous Dimension

by Pippa Le Quesne

  The three of them peered down at the ugly creature squirming beneath its glass prison. It was about the size of a scorpion but with a weirdly segmented body and long feelers. It had moved swiftly in pursuit of Abby, but now the colour was leaching out of its body. Whatever it was, it was dying.

  ‘Hey, I’m trying to watch Countdown here…’ Duncan said good-naturedly as the dodo grabbed the television remote control in its beak and began to chew it.

  The dodo squawked in response and then, as the television flicked on to a black-and-white film about dinosaurs, it screeched in distress, launching itself at the TV and hammering on the screen with its powerful beak. The glass cracked and the television shorted out.

  ‘Bad Dodi,’ Duncan scolded.

  ‘No – good Dodi,’ said Tom, glancing at the broken portable. ‘He’s going to buy us a 42-inch plasma.’

  Duncan smiled at his friend, who was busy looking up dodos on the Internet. ‘What does it say about behaviour?’ he asked.

  “‘The dodo was renowned for being slow, stupid and harmless,’” Tom read from the screen.

  Bemused, Duncan watched the bird, who had now returned to its placid self, reeling clumsily around on the carpet. But then, just as suddenly as it had calmed down, it lunged across the room and took a violent swipe at Tom.

  ‘Ouch! That really hurt!’ exclaimed Tom, clutching at the deep gash in his arm.

  ‘Maybe he’s getting overexcited,’ Duncan said with concern. He got to his feet and led the dodo towards his bedroom. It followed him obediently and he shut the door behind it before running back to examine the cut on Tom’s arm. It was a long, red mark and inside it were two round puncture marks. It looked serious.

  Duncan furrowed his brow. ‘Birds don’t have teeth,’ he remarked.

  Tom frowned. ‘What if they’ve created an attack dodo?’

  ‘Just how evil are these people?’ Duncan said in disgust.

  ‘Never underestimate the unseen power, Duncan. Never,’ Tom said dramatically, pointing a didactic finger at his friend. ‘But the time for the little man to fight back has finally come.’

  He high-fived his friend and then winced in pain. Whatever kind of dodo they were dealing with, it certainly had a mean streak.

  Cutter lifted the bell jar off the sinister dead creature and Lester, who had joined the zoologists in the laboratory, peered at it in distaste.

  ‘It looks like some kind of larva,’ Stephen commented.

  ‘Nope,’ said Cutter, picking it up with a pair of surgical tweezers and holding it out for Stephen and Abby to examine. ‘It’s an adult. Some kind of giant Cestode.’ He handed the tweezers to Stephen and pointed at an X-ray of the dodo that was illuminated on the table in front of him. ‘It’s destroyed the internal organs and attacked the central nervous system.’

  Lester grimaced. ‘I thought the trick of being a good parasite was to live off the host creature without killing it,’ he said.

  ‘This one obviously doesn’t believe in compromise,’ Cutter responded. He motioned to the X-ray. ‘It enters the bloodstream as larvae, feeds off the host, then moves up the body to lay its eggs…’

  ‘Keeping itself alive just long enough to reproduce itself,’ Stephen interjected, dangling the Cestode in front of Lester’s face. The civil servant paled and backed away.

  ‘And then,’ Cutter went on, ‘mission accomplished, they both die together.’

  Lester gazed at the parasite in disgust. ‘Isn’t nature wonderful?’ he remarked dryly.

  Duncan ran into the living room to find Tom lying on the floor, sweating profusely and holding a hand across his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Duncan in shock.

  ‘My head really hurts,’ Tom moaned.

  Duncan glanced back at his bedroom. ‘I think he’s trying to escape,’ he said.

  ‘Well, can you try and stop him?’ Tom sounded desperate. ‘He’s the only proof we’ve got of this whole conspiracy.’ He held his head in pain and rolled on to his side as Duncan dashed back to check on the dodo.

  Warily, he opened the bedroom door and peered in.

  The dodo had trashed the contents of the room and now it was jumping up at the brightly burning light bulb hanging down from the ceiling.

  ‘Dodi! Enough!’ Duncan commanded the bird who was squawking furiously.

  At the sound of his raised voice, it turned its attentions on him and jumped off the bed, lungeing at him viciously. Duncan slammed the door shut and gripped the handle tightly.

  ‘I think we should call the police,’ he suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Tom decisively. He looked pale and ill, and was shielding his eyes from the light. ‘They’ll be in on it. They’ll take me away and do experiments.’

  Duncan looked at his friend closely. He was shaking and he sounded on the verge of hysteria.

  Suddenly, there was a dreadful thunk from the bedroom and a huge crack appeared in the door panel. Duncan leapt away from the door. ‘What are you going to do?’ he yelled.

  ‘I don’t know…’ Tom groaned, now writhing around on the floor. ‘Let me think…’

  At that moment, the dodo’s powerful beak broke through the door.

  ‘Right,’ said Duncan decisively, running over to Tom. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

  He helped Tom to his feet and tried to manoeuvre him towards the front door, but his friend lurched at him aggressively. His eyes, though sunken with sickness, seemed to burn brighter and he was gnashing his teeth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Duncan yelled, staggering away.

  ‘Duncan, I’m sorry!’ Tom pleaded, coming to his senses.

  Appalled and scared, Duncan grabbed his coat and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Tom stared after him. Then he began to tremble again, his body taken over by a force beyond his control as he felt a powerful surge of hatred flood through him.

  Connor Temple paced up and down the library aisle, trying to take on board everything he had just heard. He turned abruptly and addressed his friend in an urgent whisper.

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘We…’ Duncan faltered. ‘Just, sort of, took it,’ he said weakly.

  ‘How did you know?’ Connor shook his head in confusion.

  ‘We followed you,’ Duncan said emphatically. Connor sighed in exasperation. ‘It’s some kind of mutant!’ his friend went on quickly. ‘It bit Tom – now’s he’s really sick.’

  ‘Well, you’re both idiots!’ Connor forgot himself for a moment and raised his voice. He reached for his mobile and hurriedly began to punch in a number.

  ‘You’re not calling the police?’ Duncan asked him uneasily.

  Connor held his phone to his ear and looked at him. ‘It’s way beyond them now,’ he replied gravely.

  The convoy of SAS vehicles screamed to a halt outside Tom and Duncan’s flat. Soldiers, led by Ryan, streamed out of them, followed by Nick Cutter and Claudia Brown.

  ‘How infectious is this thing?’ Claudia questioned the professor as they hurried along.

  ‘It’s not a virus, it’s a parasite,’ he explained.

  ‘And the host is now Tom?’ Claudia concluded, looking at him apprehensively.

  Cutter nodded as they came to a standstill at the front door. ‘We have to isolate him before he can pass it on to anyone else.’ Then he patted Ryan on the shoulder. ‘Now, when you go in there, whatever you do, don’t let him anywhere near you,’ he said solemnly.

  Motioning his team to follow, Ryan pushed the door open.

  ‘Whoa… heavy…’ said Duncan in awe. He and Connor had been brought along and he was feeling much more confident now that he was surrounded by armed men.

  Claudia swung round to face him. ‘Are you the idiot who stole the dodo?’ she snapped at him.

  ‘There’s no law against catching extinct animals,’ Duncan retorted.

  Claudia looked him over. She had grown accustomed to Connor and his wisecracks, but one student was
about all she could handle. ‘You stole government property,’ she said icily. ‘That makes it treason.’

  Duncan stared at her in horror as she marched off into the house. ‘That was a joke?’ he called after her. ‘Right?’ he said nervously, turning to face Connor.

  His friend raised his eyebrows and patted him on the back. He wasn’t about to let Duncan off the hook that easily.

  ‘Tom? Tom? Where are you, mate?’ Ryan called. He had been first through the door and his men had fanned out behind him to search the other rooms that led off the living room

  ‘Where is he?’ Claudia asked apprehensively, entering the flat with Cutter and Stephen, Duncan and Connor bringing up the rear.

  ‘No sign,’ Ryan reported.

  Tom had gone.

  ‘You know those movies where you think the killer is finally dead and then they just kind of jump again?’

  Stephen said, peering cautiously at the dead dodo under Duncan’s bed.

  ‘Yeah, I hate those films,’ Ryan replied, crouching down beside him and training his gun on the inanimate bird.

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Stephen. He glanced at Cutter who was by his side. ‘After you,’ he said with a smirk.

  Cutter grunted and edged forward, raising the bed with one hand and giving the dodo a couple of sharp raps with the other. There was no response. ‘It’s dead.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Claudia said from the doorway.

  Cutter looked up. She was standing with folded arms, looking at the lifeless bird, while Connor and Duncan shifted uneasily behind her.

  ‘Pretty sure,’ he muttered. Then he turned back to Stephen. ‘Let’s get it bagged up.’

  ‘Be careful,’ he added as his colleague bent down to move the feathered creature.

  Duncan gazed sadly at the dodo. ‘One minute it was friendly,’ he said ruefully. ‘The next minute it just went crazy…’

  Cutter looked at him seriously. ‘The parasite changed the dodo’s behaviour to suit its own purposes,’ he explained.

  ‘Which were?’ Claudia asked.

  ‘To pass itself on,’ Stephen interjected. He stood up and faced Claudia. ‘That’s why it bit Tom.’ He ran his hand through his dark spiky hair. ‘So it could incubate its eggs in a new host.’

  ‘He’s not safe to be around now,’ Cutter added. He glanced at Connor who had been absorbing everything quietly, a solemn expression on his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ the professor said gently. ‘Maybe if we’d got to him straight away then he’d have stood a chance.’

  Connor glanced at Duncan. A look of sorrow passed between them.

  Cutter paused for a second longer, then tapped the broken bulb hanging from the ceiling. ‘The parasite must be light sensitive. Wherever Tom is, he’ll be trying to stay in the dark.’

  For a moment, no one spoke. They all stood in silence, gazing at the dodo, mulling over Tom’s cruel fate.

  A & E was too noisy. It was too bright. Tom sat hunched on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, and pushed up his Ray-Bans, trying to block out the intense light that was burning his eyes. He’d never before had such an acute sense of his skin crawling. He felt awful.

  Suddenly, he was overcome by an uncontrollable gagging sensation. Something large had appeared in his throat and was stuck fast. He began to cough, irritably at first but then more and more violently. He stumbled to his feet and looked frantically around until he found the sign for the Gents. He was going to hurl.

  Tom retched into the sink, but nothing would come up. He straightened up and glanced in the mirror. What on earth was wrong with him?

  And then he felt something moving under his skin. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was as if there was an alien body inside him. He pulled back his sweatshirt and stared at his reflection. Just below his left collar bone something, almost as large as his hand, bulged and moved. He staggered away from the mirror, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

  But he hadn’t been imagining it. There was actually something inside him.

  ‘Look, we really don’t have time for this,’ Nick Cutter said impatiently.

  He stood in front of James Lester’s desk with Claudia and Stephen on either side of him. Lester was seething and Cutter had the uncomfortable sensation of being ticked off by a disapproving headmaster.

  ‘So how exactly does the parasite pass itself on?’ Lester sat on the edge of his desk, stony-faced.

  ‘Biting in this case,’ Cutter said. ‘But kissing would do just as well.’

  ‘From the look of him,’ Lester said, glancing at the photo of the skinny, ginger-haired student that he held in his hand, ‘kissing isn’t likely to be much of an issue.’ He paused but nobody laughed. ‘I assume this thing is an automatic death sentence?’ he asked, tossing down the picture and folding his arms.

  ‘If we get to the victim during the parasite’s incubation period, there might be a chance of saving them,’ Cutter explained.

  ‘But we’re talking hours at the most,’ Stephen went on. ‘This creature’s life cycle is unbelievably accelerated.’

  ‘And who knows how many people Tom could infect? Three, four? And if they bite three or four more each in turn…’ Claudia spoke quickly, eager to press the point home to her boss.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Lester said impatiently. ‘I can do the maths for myself, thank you.’

  He looked at Cutter coldly. ‘You know this is all Helen’s doing.’ His voice was unforgiving. ‘Unleashing a pandemic on us is one more part of her twisted plan.’

  ‘What plan?’ Cutter retorted.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘She didn’t do this on purpose,’ Cutter replied defensively. ‘It’s pure chance that the dodos were contaminated.’

  ‘Who knows what Helen’s capable of?’ Lester said through gritted teeth. ‘She’s left us behind, all of us. But you’re the only person who can’t admit it.’

  He walked round his desk and sat down decisively. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was over. ‘Door’s open,’ he said patronizingly, sifting through the papers on his desk. ‘Thank you.’

  Cutter, Claudia and Stephen didn’t move a muscle, all of them shocked by what he had just inferred.

  He glanced up at them. ‘I suggest you all go and find him.’

  Slowly, Tom’s body was ejected from the claustrophobic white tunnel.

  ‘What is it?’ he called out.

  The doctor frowned at the screen in front of him and spoke into a microphone. ‘Have you been abroad recently?’ he asked, watching the organism moving inside Tom’s body.

  ‘No,’ said Tom, sitting up and squinting in the light. He had decided to get help, and after he’d described what he’d seen to the A & E nurses he had been rushed for an emergency MRI scan.

  The doctor stepped out of the monitoring room and came over to Tom. ‘I don’t want you to panic,’ he said levelly, ‘but we need to do emergency surgery.’

  ‘What is it?’ Tom asked fearfully.

  ‘Don’t worry, whatever it is… we’re going to get it out.’

  The doctor took a small examination torch out of his top pocket and held it up to Tom’s eyes.

  The bright light triggered off some ruthless survival instinct and, without warning, Tom lashed out at the doctor, his eyes flashing with pure hatred.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the doctor cried out as Tom sank his teeth into his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tom wailed remorsefully, hurrying from the room. Just as quickly as the urge to bite had come, it had now subsided and he was left with a feeling of horror. What was happening to him?

  Tears welled up in his eyes and he ran blindly back down the corridor until he reached the men’s toilets. Checking no one else was in there, he flicked off the lights and locked himself into a cubicle. Then, pale and sweating, he pulled out his mobile phone from his backpack and turned it on. There had been fifteen missed calls.

  ‘What have they done to me?’ he whispered out loud as he pressed the speed-di
al button for his friend’s mobile. ‘What have they done?’

  ‘Tom, is that you?’ came Duncan’s disembodied voice from the phone.

  ‘It’s big, Duncan, it’s big,’ Tom muttered. ‘We’ve got to go public. Now!’

  ‘Where are you?’ Duncan sounded worried.

  ‘No, no, no. They’re using us as carriers,’ Tom said insistently. ‘They want to take over… from the inside!’

  Duncan didn’t respond. A new voice came on the line.

  ‘Tom, it’s me – Connor. Tell us where you are, mate, and we can help you.’

  ‘No… you’re one of them. You’re one of them!’ Tom was panic-stricken. ‘Just stay away from me!’ he hissed and then switched off the phone and flung it into the toilet bowl.

  He clutched his head in his hands and swayed back and forth, trying to think. ‘Proof… I need proof…’

  Tom sank to his knees. Then, catching sight of his rucksack, he had an idea. Rummaging around inside it, his hand closed on the satnav device.

  Tom pulled it out of his bag. It was beeping and the small red arrow flashed over a spot on the map. He smiled slowly.

  ‘Now, we have to think like Tom,’ Cutter mused as he strode along a corridor of the Home Office with Claudia and Stephen. ‘In his position where would you go?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know if he’s on foot, in a car, using public transport…’ Claudia replied, sounding ruffled.

  ‘We don’t know anything,’ Stephen pointed out. ‘Our only real chance of tracking him down is after he attacks again. Someone will raise the alarm.’

  ‘That might take longer than you think,’ Cutter responded impatiently. He stopped walking. ‘Tom isn’t just an animal. He’s human and he has willpower. He’ll put up a fight against this thing.’

  Stephen wandered over to the large glass window. As he looked down on the street below, a thought suddenly occurred to him. ‘Connor,’ he said, swinging round, ‘and the other student – they could shed some light on this.’