Maddy drew her eyes from the towers and studied Foster intently. ‘Why the rush?’
‘And why us?’ asked Sal.
‘Why you? It’s simple. All three of you have the specific skills we need. Now we have you, though, I need to train you for the work at hand.’
Foster took a moment to consider what to say next. ‘And I’ll not lie to you… it’s going to be dangerous.’ He looked at them sombrely. ‘I lost the last team because of a silly mistake, a simple, stupid mistake. They should have scanned before pulling me back. They didn’t. So this time the training’s going to be more thorough. All three of you will need to work hard. You’ll need to understand how time works, know what you’re doing or…’ He paused, looking away.
‘Or what?’ asked Sal.
‘Or you’ll end up like the last team.’
They stood in silence, watching the busy street, listening to the bustle of cabs, the thumping bass of a passing sound system, the distant squawl of a police siren bouncing off skyscraper walls of glass and steel.
‘Mr Foster,’ Liam said after a while, ‘what if we don’t want to do this?’
The old man offered them a sad, pitying smile. ‘Then there’s only one place you can go… back where I found you. For you, Liam, back on deck E, just as that poor broken ship starts its descent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.’
Liam shuddered involuntarily at the thought.
‘I’m sorry. It’s not much of a choice, is it?’
‘Not really,’ muttered Liam.
He spread his hands. ‘I’m afraid that’s the way it is.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Well, there’s no way I’m going back on to a plane that’s about to crash and burn.’
‘If you decide to stay,’ cautioned Foster, ‘there’s no leaving. If you decide to stay, you’re in for good.’
‘Until we die in the service of this agency?’
He nodded sombrely. The three of them regarded the old man in stony silence.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘we should probably head back. There’s one more member of the team I want to introduce you to.’
Liam cocked his head. ‘Someone like us?’
‘Not exactly… no.’
CHAPTER 15
2066, New York
It’s down here somewhere in the dark, Paul. Can’t you feel destiny tugging at your sleeve?
He didn’t. What he felt were the eyes of Karl and his men upon him, anxiously, impatiently, watching him thumbing through his little black notebook.
Through the open door, leading on to the stairwell up to the main hall, he could hear the muted echo of a loudhailer coming from outside. Apparently they already had a negotiator out front trying to establish contact. If he wasn’t so preoccupied down here, it would have been fun to be upstairs in the museum’s main hall watching the growing circus building up out there.
‘Sir,’ Karl prompted under his breath, ‘there’s only half an hour left of your deadline. They will surely come in soon if they think negotiation isn’t getting them anywhere.’
‘I know,’ he replied, looking down at the pages of his scrawled handwriting. ‘It’ll take just a moment.’
Karl looked around the basement. It was filled to the high ceiling with crate after wooden crate of varying shapes and sizes, each stamped with a unique catalogue number. There were hundreds, no, thousands of them stacked down here on long rows of metal brackets and wooden-slat shelving.
Kramer looked up and noticed the concern on Karl’s face.
‘Karl, these boxes are all categorized. It may appear random, but they were very careful when they closed down the museum to store the exhibits by department, by sub-department, by genus, by species.’
Kramer waved the black book in front of Haas. ‘He wanted to be able to locate it easily, quickly – not have to sift through a thousand wooden cases.’ Kramer looked around. ‘We’ll find exactly where it’s located,’ he added. ‘The answer’s in this little notebook. Trust me.’
Kramer flicked through a few pages, finally running his finger down a page filled with fading handwriting.
‘And here it is. CRM, three-zero-nine, one-five-six-seven, two-zero-five-one.’
Karl Haas turned to inspect the nearest crates, but Kramer grabbed his arm.
‘We don’t have the time to check every box. We can work out where to start looking from the number.’
‘How?’
‘CRM is the prefix code for the scientific exhibits. Three-zero-nine is the palaeontology department.’ Kramer turned round and approached the huddled security guards.
‘Tell me, gentlemen, where are the dinosaur exhibits stored?’
They shook their heads nervously. One of them, a frail old snowy-haired man who looked ten years past retirement age, nodded towards a nearby wall.
‘Th-there’s a chart just th-there.’
Kramer smiled. ‘Ah yes… I see, thank you.’
He stepped over, tore it off the wall and examined it quickly. ‘Right. It’s down there, I think.’ He pointed along an aisle that faded away into darkness. He pulled a torch out of his backpack and switched it on, heading at a swift trot into the narrow passageway flanked on either side by shelves laden with wooden and cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes.
After a minute he stopped and checked the code stamp on the box nearest him. ‘Two-zero-seven, we’re getting closer,’ he whispered to himself, and set off again at a trot.
Footsteps behind him.
He turned to see Karl, his torch a swinging beam of light lancing out in front of him. ‘Sir? Can I help?’
Kramer stopped. ‘Yes. Get the men to bring the Porta-Gen down this way. As soon as we locate this thing, we’ll need that generator cranked and ready to go.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Kramer continued into the darkness a while further, then once more drew up and checked the catalogue stamp on a nearby box.
‘Three-zero-six,’ he wheezed, winded by the exertion.
Geology… very close now.
He walked swiftly, panning his torch across boxes that were increasing in size, from small shoeboxes to crates that could fit an armchair, and even larger ones in which one might fit a small car… or even a dinosaur.
He grinned. This was it, palaeontology.
It’s got to be somewhere here.
Kramer checked his watch. They had about twenty minutes left until the deadline he’d given expired. There was no guarantee the police were going to hold back until then, of course. But he suspected they probably would, and then stall a while longer after that, fine-tuning their plans to storm the museum and take down the terrorists inside with the minimum amount of damage to the nation’s treasures.
He swung his torch from one box to the next, quickly scanning the catalogue numbers.
Getting close.
He clambered up on to the lowest crate and swiped the beam of his torch across the ones stacked on the shelf above.
‘Come on, come on,’ he found himself hissing, ‘where the hell is it?’
His eyes darted from one number to the next. ‘It’s got to be here somewhere.’
It is, have faith.
As if in answer to a prayer, his torch spilled across a CRM-309 number. He quickly swung the torch back and read the next four digits.
‘One… five… six… seven…’
He looked down at his notebook.
CRM-309-1567-2051.
He looked up at the crate again and his lean face creased with relief that the old man, Waldstein, had been smart enough not to smash up his machine as he’d publicly claimed… but instead to have secretly arranged to hide it down here while the museum was being mothballed.
There, didn�
�t I say have faith?
Kramer nodded. His instinct always seemed spot on.
CHAPTER 16
2001, New York
Liam looked unhappily at the graffiti-sprayed metal shutter. ‘Are you certain it’s safe to go back in there, Mr Foster?’
The old man nodded assuredly. ‘We left nothing on in the arch that the seeker could leach from. No power for six hours. It’ll have faded to nothing by now.’
He grabbed the bottom of the metal shutter. ‘Liam, crank the manual winch at the side there, would you?’
Slowly, creaking noisily, they winched it up and found themselves staring into the ominous pitch-black interior of the archway.
From above the arch a deep rumble made the girls and Liam jump.
‘Train from Manhattan to Brooklyn,’ chuckled Foster, ‘runs over the Williamsburg Bridge above. Come on, there’ll be no spooks in here now.’
The old man stepped inside, out of the litter-strewn backstreet, and disappeared into the thick darkness.
Maddy nodded at Liam. ‘You first.’
He managed a wavering smile. ‘There was me thinking ladies first.’
‘Not in a million freaking years,’ she replied.
They heard a switch being thrown inside somewhere and immediately several flickering fluorescent lights, dangling on dusty flex suspended from the archway’s ceiling, winked to life, bathing a damp cold floor inside with a pale, unwelcoming glare.
Maddy made a face.
That’s our ‘field office’?
The floor was an uneven, cold concrete; stained with oil; gouged, scarred and pitted from a lifetime of previous tenants. Across the floor she could see loops of thick cable running from one side of the archway to the other. Inside she guessed it was just about big enough to park two single-decker buses tightly beside each other.
Along the left wall a bank of computer monitors haphazardly filled a grubby workbench. A few yards along from it in the corner she could see a large perspex cylinder filled with liquid, like some kind of giant test tube.
The back wall was laced with entwined drooping cables hitched up off the floor on hooks and running towards a hole in the wall through which they disappeared. Beside the hole was a sliding door of corrugated metal. She presumed that led to another room.
On the right she noticed the little brick alcove they’d awoken in several hours ago. Beside the alcove was a wooden kitchen table, and a scattering of mismatched chairs. A couple of armchairs were arranged over a threadbare throw rug. Another alcove contained an electric stove, a kettle, a microwave and a skanky-looking sink. Beyond that, an open door led on to an uninviting toilet.
It reminded Maddy of her older brother’s grubby shared flat in Boston; all it needed was a floor knee-deep in dirty laundry and discarded pizza boxes.
‘It’s a mess,’ said Maddy.
Foster stepped over a rats’ nest of network cables gaffer-taped to the floor.
‘It’s your home,’ he said. ‘Come on in.’
They stepped gingerly inside. Sal scooped her fringe out of her eyes and surveyed her surroundings with a barely concealed expression of distaste on her face.
‘Can we decorate?’ she asked.
Foster laughed. ‘By all means. A few more cushions, posters and throw rugs won’t do any harm. Sal –’ he pointed – ‘would you hit that switch there?’
She turned round and looked at the wall beside her. ‘This one?’
‘That’s right.’
She did so and, with a cranking whir, the metal shutter wound down behind them, clattering noisily as it hit the bottom.
While the three of them stood motionless, trying to find something to like about their new surroundings, Foster strode across the floor, stepping carefully over snaking cables, towards the metal sliding door on the back wall.
‘What is all this stuff, Mr Foster?’ asked Liam, pointing towards the computer monitors on the workbench and the large cylindrical water tank.
‘All in good time, Liam. First, I’m going to acquaint you with the fourth member of your team.’ He reached for a handle, slid back a locking bolt and pushed the door noisily aside.
Sal, Maddy and Liam stepped cautiously towards Foster, looking through the opening into the dark space beyond.
‘Come on, nothing’s going to bite you,’ he said, waving them over. ‘Your other team member’s in here.’
‘So, er… why’s our teammate hiding alone in a dark closet?’ asked Maddy suspiciously. ‘He’s not some kind of weird albino freak, is he?’
‘He’s…’ Foster hesitated. ‘Well, perhaps the best thing is for me to just introduce you. Follow me.’
He took a step into the darkness. Sal swallowed nervously as she heard his shoes clacking across the hard floor inside.
‘We normally keep the lighting very low in here. The in-vitro candidates are very sensitive to bright lights, especially the smallest ones. Just a second…’
They heard Foster moving around, fiddling with something in the darkness. Then, very gently, a couple of wall lights began to glow red softly. With that, they could just make out half a dozen tall cylinders in front of them, each about eight feet tall. As the soft crimson glow from the lights above increased, Maddy decided to lead the way in.
She could see tall cylinders of clear perspex. Inside each she could just about make out some dark, solid mass.
‘So, uh… what’s in those tubes?’
‘I’ll give you a little more light,’ Foster spoke in the gloom. They heard him flick a switch and then, in the bottom of each cylinder, an orange spotlight winked on, illuminating the contents.
‘Oh my God!’ She recoiled. ‘That’s… utterly gross!’
Each cylinder contained what looked like a watery tomato soup in which floated a gooey sediment and strands of soft tissue that dangled and wafted like snot in a toilet bowl. In the middle of the murky stew of the nearest tube floated something small and pale and curled up on itself. Strands of umbilical tissue connected to it so that it looked like a pale larva caught in a glistening web of entrails.
‘That’s a… that’s a human foetus! Isn’t it?’ said Maddy, stepping towards it and peering closely through the glass. Liam and Sal joined her.
‘Prenatal phase. That one is in pre-growth stasis. It’ll remain like that until we need it.’
‘Here,’ he said, standing by the next tube along, ‘we have one that is approximately one third of the way through the growth cycle.’
They looked into the murky water of the second tube to see what appeared to be a boy of eleven or twelve years of age, hairless, naked and tucked into a similar foetal curl. Like the foetus, umbilical cords connected to it and curled down to the bottom and up to the top of the cylinder.
Liam found himself recoiling at the sight. Horrified, disgusted and curious at the same time.
‘That’s not a real boy in there… is it?’
‘No, it’s an artificial,’ Foster said. ‘Grown from engineered human genetic data.’
Liam shrugged. The word ‘genetic’ meant absolutely nothing to him, but he was reassured by Foster’s answer that he wasn’t looking at a real child floating like a pickled egg in a vinegar jar. He leaned closer to get a better look at the still form of the boy.
And then its eyes suddenly snapped open.
CHAPTER 17
2001, New York
‘Oh Jayzus!’ Liam blurted as he and the girls lurched backwards in horror.
‘It’s OK,’ said Foster. ‘It’s OK. It’s not going to leap out and get you.’
All three of them gathered their breath. Sal giggled nervously. Maddy shook her head. ‘Oh my God, it’s like something out of Aliens.’
They watched in s
ilent fascination as the boy’s eyes slowly swivelled round to look at them through the murky fluid.
‘I think it’s seen us,’ said Maddy.
‘Yes,’ replied Foster, ‘it’s seeing us, but there’s no intelligence there. The body’s motor responses are handled by a small organic brain at this stage. It has the brain capacity of a mouse. Real cognitive processing, in other words… thinking, that’s incorporated later when they’re nearly full term.’
The boy’s mouth opened and closed silently.
‘Is it trying to talk?’ whispered Sal.
‘No. That’s just a reflex action.’
Liam watched the cloudy liquid drift in and out of the boy’s open mouth. ‘How can it breathe?’
‘Oxygenated liquid solution. It’s breathing the liquid into its lungs, just like we breathe air.’
Liam shuddered at the thought of that. ‘But that must feel just like drowning.’
Foster nodded. ‘I suppose it would feel like that if you were unused to it. But this unit has known no different.’
The boy in the tube cocked his head.
‘Jahulla!’ gasped Sal, leaping back. ‘Did you see that?’
Maddy stepped closer to the glass tube. ‘Are you sure it’s not… you know… thinking?’
Foster nodded. ‘Trust me. There isn’t enough brain matter in there to think. Yes, it’s awake and looking at us, but it’s not wondering who we are.’
She shook her head. ‘It looks just like a normal little boy. That doesn’t seem right to me.’
‘Come on,’ said Foster. ‘We’re here to meet your colleague.’
With some difficulty he managed to drag them away from the boy in the tube, past a couple of tubes covered over with a tarpaulin.
‘What’s in there?’ asked Liam.
Foster shook his head. ‘Mis-growths. I’ll need to flush them some time.’
‘Mis-growths?’
‘Ones that didn’t turn out quite right. It happens from time to time.’
Sal started to lift the canvas and peek under, before Foster stepped forward and pulled the tarpaulin back down. ‘Probably best if you don’t look, Sal. Inside these tubes is the stuff of nightmares.’
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