Eye of the Storm

by Mark Robson

  ‘CID?’

  ‘Criminal Investigation Department,’ Niamh explained. ‘Not the regular street police. I must admit, I’m a bit nervous. What if I say the wrong thing? I might get Dad into even more trouble.’

  ‘Hey, don’t think like that!’ Tony said. ‘You’ll do fine. You know your dad’s innocent, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s what you tell ’em. Carrie and me’re still lookin’ through your dad’s notes. There’s loads of crazy stuff in there. You done any more?’

  ‘No,’ Niamh said, feeling instantly guilty. ‘There’s not been much time since I got here and I don’t have them on my laptop. Can you talk me through getting them the way you did with Beth?’

  ‘Sure. No problem. I’ll copy them to online storage while we’re chatting and talk you through pickin’ ’em up before you go.’

  ‘That would be great. Thanks. Have you found anything new?’

  ‘Not really sure it’s new, but your dad seems to have concentrated a lot on the reports of magnetic anomalies and incidents where the sea has been reported as lookin’ different. In one of the files he’s marked at the bottom Note to self: what if it really was a different sea? Not sure what he means by that. You?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Niamh replied. ‘If I’m allowed to visit him, I’ll ask.’

  ‘Won’t he be upset that we’ve been goin’ through his personal files?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Niamh said, giving him a smile. ‘In fact, I’m sure he’ll be pleased we’re trying to help.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Tony helped Niamh retrieve the files he’d posted online and then for the next ten minutes they revisited the topic of magnetic anomalies, the Hutchison Effect and the Philadelphia Project that had seemed so promising before the police had knocked at the Dales’ door. Once again, the hairs on the back of Niamh’s neck prickled. She felt sure they were on the right track, but she simply didn’t know enough about the physics involved to construct any sort of working theory on how such forces might form or how it would help them find the boys.

  Niamh fell silent, staring at Tony’s image on the screen. Their discussion had gone round in circles and now that she could see no way forward with it, the sudden silence was stretching into the realms of awkwardness. Perhaps she should change the subject for a bit. What else could she talk about? She wanted to say something, but ‘Boy, you look hot!’ was all that kept coming to mind and she couldn’t bring herself to say that!

  ‘So is that your bedroom?’ Tony asked.

  ‘No,’ Niamh said, looking round the room, grateful that he had introduced a new topic of conversation. ‘At least, I’m not at home, if that’s what you mean. My room at home is more colourful than this and nowhere near as tidy. I’m staying with my aunt at the moment.’ She lifted the laptop and walked round the room, giving him a virtual tour. ‘Her house is a bit like a mansion. It’s comfortable, but I hardly dare to touch anything in case I break it.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘No. Definitely not cool.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper and flicked a glance in the direction of the door. ‘Especially as staying here means having to put up with Archie.’

  ‘Archie?’

  ‘My cousin.’

  ‘Ah! The rich cousin. I’m jealous already.’

  Niamh laughed. ‘Believe me, you’ve got nothing to be jealous about,’ she said, keeping her voice very low. She wouldn’t put it past Archie to be listening at her door. He’d followed her around like a lapdog from the moment she’d arrived. ‘If you met Archie, you’d know what I mean. He’s a geek of the highest order.’

  ‘He’s there with you,’ Tony replied. ‘That’s enough to make me jealous.’

  ‘Aww! You say all the right things.’

  The next forty minutes passed in a blur. Tony made conversation easy, continually finding new things to talk about. Carrie joined them after a few minutes and Niamh was amazed, and a little irritated, when Archie knocked on her door and called for her to join them for dinner. She looked at her watch, surprised to see how much time had passed.

  ‘OK, Archie. I’ll be right there,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Listen, guys, it was great to chat,’ she told them. ‘Keep looking through the files for me, please? I’ll do the same. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll speak to you again late afternoon or early evening your time tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure thing, Niamh. Good luck for tomorrow,’ Tony said.

  ‘Bye, Niamh,’ Carrie added.

  ‘Thanks, guys. Bye for now.’

  Niamh broke the link and switched off her laptop. Pausing to take a quick look in the mirror to check her hair, she took a deep breath and opened the door. Archie was waiting for her on the landing outside. He was so upright and stiff he looked like a soldier on parade.

  Perhaps Aunt Aggie puts extra starch in his clothes so he can’t slouch, she thought, biting at her lower lip to keep from giggling. ‘You OK, Archie?’ she asked aloud, unable to meet his eye as she swept past him and headed for the stairs.

  ‘Fine thanks,’ he replied, half-running to catch up. ‘So what were you doing? Did I hear you talking to someone?’

  Niamh thought for a moment. She was tempted to say something like ‘I was just rehearsing the pack of lies I’m going to tell the police tomorrow’ or ‘I was just arranging to hijack a jet so I can fly back out to Florida’. He was so gullible that he would probably take whatever she told him at face value, but she found she hadn’t got the heart to wind him up.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ she said. ‘If you must know, I was talking with my boyfriend and his sister.’

  ‘Oh! Boyfriend. Of course. Wizard,’ Archie said, his enthusiasm clearly forced. ‘On your mobile?’

  ‘Internet: Skype.’

  ‘Super.’

  And to Niamh’s relief, her admission killed the conversation stone dead. Is Tony my boyfriend? she wondered. It feels like he is, but we’ve not exactly gone out on dates or anything. We’ve had one proper kiss. Does that count? If nothing else, telling Archie I have a boyfriend should keep him from getting any daft ideas. He’s the sort of dork who might see being my cousin as an advantage in winning my affection. They descended the stairs in silence and then Archie rushed ahead to open the door to the dining room for her, standing bolt upright and staring ahead as she passed.

  All he needs is the white gloves and he’d make a great butler, Niamh thought, thanking him. She took her place at the dining table. Checking her watch she saw it was exactly six o’clock. Was life always this regimented with Aunt Aggie? What must it have been like for Archie, growing up with her for a mother? She looked across at him and he immediately looked down at his place setting and busied himself making minute adjustments to his cutlery placement.

  And I thought I was unsure of myself around boys, Niamh thought. Archie is so shy!

  Making polite small talk over dinner was surprisingly easy. Aunt Aggie was well versed in dining-room etiquette, and she effortlessly steered the conversation through a string of innocuous and trivial subjects. An hour later, Niamh left the table and returned to her room.

  Turning her laptop on, she opened her father’s files on the Devil’s Triangle. For several minutes she re-read the section on the Philadelphia Project, but after looking at the same few paragraphs several times, she realised that although her eyes were scanning the words, nothing was going into her head. She could recall almost nothing of what she’d been reading. Anxious feelings about the interview with the CID were destroying her powers of concentration.

  Perhaps it would be better just to relax and get an early night, she thought. Hoping to distract herself, she picked up a book from her bedside table and climbed into bed. It turned out that she was more tired than she’d realised, because after only reading a few chapters she felt her eyes beginning to droop.

  * * *

  To her surprise, it seemed almost that she had blinked and it was morning. She sat up and looked around, momentarily confused.
The clock next to the bed read 07:35 – early, but not ridiculously so. As her mind oriented and placed her at her aunt’s house, fleeting snatches of dreams hovered at the edges of her mind and she tensed. A momentary, ephemeral memory of running through magical gardens linked by strange gateways, being chased by police; bluebells in the woods; lying on a branch watching as a drip of sweat fell towards one of the policemen; a fight; one man dead with a knife in his chest.

  No, she thought, remembering. I’m mixing fact with fiction. The man killed by the knife was in the book I was reading. Come on, Niamh! Pull yourself together.

  More images surfaced: more running, this time through dark tunnels. She was breathless and anxious. They were after her, hunting her. Not police, but creatures – powerful creatures – incredibly fast and covered with scales, their mouths full of wickedly sharp teeth. She was trapped. They were everywhere. There was no way out. Terror! Terror in the dark.

  She blinked a few times. That wasn’t from the book. Sam? She closed her eyes and reached inside to the place she could normally feel him. Was he still alive? Her body was rigid with tension. Breathing in through her nose, she deliberately drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before slowly releasing it. Then she took another. He was still there. Faint, but definitely there.

  Feeling light-headed with relief, she staggered out of bed and across to the bathroom to wash. Splashing her face first with hot water and then with cold, she lifted a towel from the rail and buried her face in it. For a moment, she held it still, then almost like a child playing peek-a-boo, she peered over the top and into the mirror above the sink. What would the police think if they saw her like this? There was a haunted look in her eyes that no amount of make-up was going to hide. If they saw her as she was now, they would think she was hiding something for sure!

  ‘Calm down,’ she breathed aloud, and thought. Sam’s alive. As long as he stays that way, there’s hope of finding him. Concentrate on that.

  The interview was due to start at ten and Aunt Aggie had said it was only a ten minute drive to where it was going to be conducted. Niamh had about two hours to pull herself together. Crossing back to her room, she dressed quietly and then crept downstairs to the kitchen with the intention of foraging for some breakfast. To her surprise, Aunt Aggie was there already.

  ‘Morning, Niamh. You’re up bright and early. Nervous?’

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear,’ Aggie assured her. ‘It’ll be fine. You’ll see. And I’ll be right there with you.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘Yes. I asked the constable the other day and he said it was fine for me to sit in on the interview if you want me to.’

  ‘Thanks, Aunt Aggie. I appreciate that.’

  Did she want Aggie there? Some of the things that seemed likely to come up in the interview would sound pretty outlandish. In particular, the mental link with her brother and some of the strange images she had been receiving from him. Niamh decided the best thing she could do was to give them the truth. What they made of it was their problem. However, she was concerned about what Aggie would think. If her aunt formed the impression that she was lying, Aggie was likely to then consider her untrustworthy. The implications of Aggie forming this opinion of her for the rest of the summer holidays could be considerable.

  Niamh fretted about this as she toyed with a bowl of muesli, eventually binning half of it and retiring back up to her room where she picked up her book again. Opening up to the bookmark, she skimmed back a few paragraphs to refresh her memory and quickly found herself embroiled in the story once more. Before she knew it, Aggie was calling her name and a glance at the clock showed it was time to go. There were precious few pages of the book left and the murderer was surely about to be revealed. Unwilling to leave it, she tucked the bookmark back in and slipped the book into her handbag.

  ‘Coming,’ she called. Then she added under her breath, ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  By raptor standards, the building Sam was approaching looked positively ramshackle. There was certainly nothing that marked its importance. It was a plain, boring oblong structure, made of the same structural materials as the rest of the city. David’s description of it as a shed appeared surprisingly accurate.

  ‘Not very impressive, is it?’ David whispered, grinning at the boys.

  ‘It’s not going to win any architectural awards, that’s for sure,’ Callum muttered back. ‘But I was always taught never to judge a book by its cover.’

  ‘A wise philosophy.’

  ‘Cut the chatter,’ Nathan hissed over his shoulder. ‘We’re getting close. Concentrate.’

  Sam didn’t care if the guards heard them coming or not. He was carrying the rifle again. This time not only was it loaded, but he had more ammunition in a pouch attached to his belt. The way he felt at the moment, he would welcome a fight. All he needed was an excuse to flick off the safety catch and start shooting. Previously, he might have been a bit wary of actually shooting at raptors, but he’d wanted to hurt something, or someone, almost from the moment he had discovered his mother had been captured.

  He watched as David gave a shrug and nodded at the bearded rebel leader. As far as Sam and the others knew, there were no audio or proximity sensors around the building. Nathan was simply being ultra-cautious.

  David had briefed them all on the raptor security system before they had left the cave. The main problem for the rebels if they had tried this raid on any other day would have been the DNA sensor on the door, but luckily David’s was one of the few whose patterns would be recognised. Assuming the raptors hadn’t amended their security protocols immediately after his abduction the night before, they were approaching through one of the blind spots in the security camera network and should be able to sneak through undetected. At the briefing, David had been confident that the chances of their being seen during this phase of their approach were remote.

  The group closed in on the building until they reached the wall. Then they turned left and, staying tight to the wall, sank down and crawled until they reached a small service door.

  ‘Ready?’ David whispered.

  Nathan nodded.

  Sam’s hands instinctively tightened round the stock of the rifle and he drew in a deep breath. If there were more than a handful of raptors on the far side of that door, the plan would likely go horribly wrong in a hurry.

  David lifted his hand to the sensor pad.

  This was it. They were going in.

  Nipper and Grunt had entered the city and taken a ride in one of the multitude of cabin cars heading for the plaza in front of the Imperium Tower. Nipper’s muscles tingled constantly with the after-burn of prolonged exercise. Although he did not feel particularly weary, he knew he would not be at his peak for the challenge ahead. In his favour, he had made more kills in the wild than most city-born raptors. He was counting on his experience and strong hunting instincts today. If they failed him, he would die.

  For raptors like Nipper, death held no fear. He was content that if it was his time, he would die a worthy death. Defending his adopted humans felt natural. Sam and Callum were younglings and Nipper felt a keen sense of responsibility for them. He had not yet forgiven himself for the Brad-human’s death on the train when they had first travelled from the Reserve to the city. Although the man had been fully grown, Nipper had been protecting him for some years. The Brad-human had been special. Unlike most, Brad had taken the time to learn the raptor language and to understand many of the raptor ways. That another raptor had killed him without observing the rites of the hunt was wrong. None of Brad’s flesh had been consumed and the killing had appeared to be an act of bloodlust or plain prejudice against humans. Neither of which sat well with Nipper.

  Although human ethics were different, and there were many things about them that Nipper still did not understand, he had come to admire much about them. He had observed that humans could be every bit as honourabl
e as raptors. They were physically fragile and their ways were strange, but humans had subtle strengths and he did not doubt their intelligence. Killing them for no reason was an act without honour: an act not worthy of a raptor.

  Nipper growled his frustration as the cabin car came to an abrupt halt. The tracks ahead were jammed solid. Everyone, it seemed, was trying to reach the Central Plaza. Some raptors were already abandoning the cars to walk the final stretch. He glanced at Grunt and with unspoken agreement, they elected to join the crowds on foot. Time was running short. They had to reach the plaza and get to the front of the crowds before the executions. For the first time since they left the cave, Nipper felt a pang of unease as he realised this might not be as easy to achieve as he had first thought.

  Nipper had never seen so many raptors in one place before. Shoving through the crowd was likely to spark confrontations and he needed to conserve his strength now for the challenge. Meaningless spats would be dangerous. He turned to Grunt.

  ‘Clear me a path,’ he ordered.

  Grunt bared his teeth in a grin of pleasure. Stepping in front of Nipper, he took a deep breath and began to growl. But this was no ordinary growl that rasped in the throat; it emanated from deep within the raptor’s chest, reverberating and penetrating. It was a sound that oozed danger. The nearest translation in a human tongue would be: Get out of my way or I’ll tear you limb from limb. It was not a threat that a raptor used lightly, nor was it ever treated with anything other than the utmost respect by others unless they actively sought confrontation. Grunt knew there was always a chance he might meet a raptor who was spoiling for a fight, but he felt this less likely among the city-dwelling raptors than it would have been if he’d tried it back in the Reserve.

  He was right. The crowd parted ahead of him and raptors fell silent, moving aside as he approached, all giving him wary looks as he passed. Nipper followed tight in his wake.