The Forgotten Room

by Lincoln Child

  Logan scanned the controls, located the next one: ENGAGE.

  As the curved doors to the elevator swung open, he activated the control.

  Flashlight beams flooded the room now, and he ducked farther behind the protective bulk of the Machine. Peering over its upper housing, he could see three forms, all of whom he recognized: the man in glasses who had first followed him into the subbasement; the other in the waxed raincoat; and, in particular, the hawk-faced, cruel-looking man in the tweed jacket. All held flashlights in their left hands; all held weapons in their right.

  He glanced over at the set of controls. Just above those he had activated was a rotary dial, the numbers 0 to 10 inscribed into its faceplate. Next to it was a VU meter, its analog needle resting at the leftmost setting.

  Recalling what Kim had done, Logan reached up and turned the knob to the 1 position.

  The hum of the Machine increased ever so slightly. As if in reply, he heard the men now talking among themselves: low, uncertain.

  He realized that he had only a few moments to make this work. If the men discovered him now, they’d simply shoot him.

  He turned the knob to the 2 setting. The needle of the VU meter came sluggishly to life, bobbling back and forth along the indicator marks at its leftmost edge.

  The men went silent. One spoke briefly, in an alarmed tone, only to be shushed by another—no doubt the ringleader, the figure in the tweed jacket.

  Logan knew that, when he and Kim had briefly tested the Machine, it had been in beam mode, set to emit an ultrasonic pulse at a specific, discrete target. Even so, he’d felt its effect. Now, with the Machine set in field mode—directed at the entire space ahead of him—he could only imagine what his pursuers were beginning to experience.

  It was time.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m in control of the Machine,” he called out through the sound hole in the faceplate. “I’m directing it at you right now.”

  There was an expostulation of surprise, followed by a metallic racking of weapons. “For fuck’s sake,” one of them murmured. “Be careful what you shoot in this place.”

  “You know what it’s capable of,” Logan said. “I’ll use it on you if I have to.”

  More muttering. He heard stealthy footsteps coming toward him.

  In response, he turned the switch to the 3 setting. The Machine began to sing—a basso profundo sound from deep within its workings—and one of the men gasped.

  “Stay back,” Logan said. “I won’t warn you again.”

  A shot exploded from among the flashlight beams in front of him, and a bullet ricocheted past his ear. In response, he dialed the machine up to 4, then 5.

  There was a cry from the group of men—a howl of pain.

  Now, Logan dared to peer over the faceplate of the Machine. One of the men—the one in the waxed jacket—was bending forward, hands to his ears, mouth open in a rictus of pain. Next to him, the one in glasses was fumbling with his weapon, as if trying to unjam it. And beside him, the hawk-faced man in the tweed jacket was aiming—directly at Logan.

  He dropped back behind the Machine as another bullet whined past just above his head. Craning his neck awkwardly in the bulky suit, he reached up with a gloved hand…then spun the knob over to the 7 position.

  The howl of pain returned; only worse now—a shriek of agony. As Logan leaned against the Machine, it seemed to vibrate like a living thing, shaking and bucking, filling the room with its presence.

  He ventured another look forward. The man with the waxed coat was still in the same position, bent over, apparently incapacitated. But the man in the glasses had cleared his weapon and was raising it toward him, steadying it. Blood was dripping from his nose and ears but he was ignoring it, wiping at his eyes with the back of one hand. And the man in the tweeds not only had his weapon leveled, but was advancing…

  Logan ducked back, breathing fast. He knew he had only a second or two if he was going to act; otherwise, he’d be dead.

  He glanced back up at the controls. The rotary dial was set in the 7 position, the VU meter jerking and bounding along its semicircular course like a mad thing. He thought back to his conversation with Sorrel: We never redlined it…

  With a brief, muttered curse, Logan reached up and cranked the dial all the way to 10.

  Immediately, several things happened. The deep-throated song of the Machine became a sudden roar as it threatened to tear itself from its moorings. The VU meter abruptly pinned itself all the way to the right. The sounds of pain he’d heard from the direction of the spiral elevator became first shrieks, then yelps, then strange, guttural, animalistic sounds. There was a tremendous bang, followed by the crash of something heavy collapsing to the floor.

  Once again, Logan dared to rise up, take a glance over the top edge of the Machine.

  The man who’d been bent forward, hands to his ears, was now on his knees, blood pouring from his nose and mouth. The man with the glasses was spinning around, keening dreadfully, as if in time to the song of the Machine. Droplets of blood flew out from all the orifices of his head as he twirled—nostrils, ears, mouth—forming a horrible corona of matter, coruscating in crimson circles as if spun by centrifugal force, flying out in all directions. The man in the tweed jacket had knocked over a lab table and was now walking in strange, jerky motions, like an automaton. As Logan watched, he crashed into one wall as if blind, turned with a laborious gesture, began walking in another direction.

  All three had forgotten their guns, which lay on the floor of the lab.

  Very carefully, keeping his eyes on the three men, Logan crept slowly around the front of the Machine. He gathered up the guns, then retreated back to the bank of controls. Only then did he slowly dial the setting back, first to 5, then to 2, and finally to 0.

  The hum of the Machine, the terrible animal trembling, slowly subsided. But the strange, guttural noises of the man in the waxed jacket did not go away.

  After several moments, Logan stood up. Carefully, he unscrewed the faceplate, then undid the fastenings of the suit and climbed awkwardly out of it. And then—one gun in his hand, the other two snugged into his waistband—he reached over to snap on the lights, then stepped forward.

  He looked at the three incapacitated figures for a moment. Then, turning away, he ducked beneath the tarp and walked a few yards down the rubble-strewn corridor until he found what he was looking for: a recessed wall panel containing an extinguisher and a fire ax. Shoving the third firearm into his waistband as well, he reached out for the ax; hefted it once, twice. Then he ducked back under the tarp.

  Two of the men remained where they had been when he left them. The one with the glasses had stopped his ghastly top-like spinning and collapsed to the floor. The leader—the one in tweeds—was still shuffling robotically, bumping into things, turning away again, staggering off in another direction. All three had blood running from their noses and ears—and now, most horribly, leaking from their eyes as well.

  Logan regarded them for just a moment. And then he turned toward the Machine. Bending down, he snapped off the switches that disengaged the electric current. He rose again, fingers tightening on the ax. There was a moment of stasis. And then—with a grunt of effort—he swung the ax down onto the Machine. There was a shriek of something like pain as the blade buried itself in the metal. He freed the blade, raised it, and swung the ax down again, taking out the front panels and the control mechanisms. Another several swings destroyed the strange, futuristic devices that sprouted from the lateral cowlings, the field generator and the rotatable pickup coil. He hacked at the device again and again, as if all the uncertainty and fear and pain of the past two weeks was now compressed into this single convulsive act, burying the quickly dulling blade into the metal flanks of the terrible device as large and small pieces—metal, glass, Bakelite—went flying in all directions. Finally, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps, he lowered the ax and looked toward his attackers.

  The man in the waxed jacket wa
s now stretched out on the floor, immobile save for occasional involuntary spasms, a pool of blood spreading away from his head. The man with the glasses was crouching in a corner, his own face a mask of blood. He was batting his hands in front of his face, as if to ward off some unseen attackers, and he was making strange gurgling noises—as if trying to scream from a throat whose voice box had closed in on itself. And the ringleader—the hawk-faced man—was now seated awkwardly on the floor, as if he’d dropped there, slowly and methodically tearing the hair from his head in ragged patches. As Logan watched, the man stared at one of the clumps, bloody scalp still affixed to the roots—turned it over curiously—and then stuffed it into his mouth.

  Now, moving gingerly forward, Logan stepped beneath the spot where the elevator had come to rest. Its contents unloaded, it had already spiraled silently back into the ceiling, waiting in the abandoned third-floor closet for such time as it would be needed again.

  From above, he heard—or thought he heard—the sound of quiet weeping.

  Logan stared up at the decorative circle that marked the elevator’s base. Then he cleared his throat. “Dr. Benedict?” he called out. “You can come down now.”

  EPILOGUE

  The tall casement windows of the director’s office were flooded with sunlight. Beyond the leaded glass, the impossibly green lawn sloped slowly down toward the rocky coast and the Atlantic—remarkably calm today, as if penitent for the angry histrionics it had so recently displayed. People in Windbreakers and light jackets walked in groups of ones and twos along the manicured paths—now rather disheveled—and a painter had set up her easel down near the shoreline. Here and there, groundskeepers and maintenance workers were picking up twigs and other debris and, in general, repairing the damage done by Hurricane Barbara. Despite the brilliant sunshine and the tranquility of the scene, there was something in the very sharpness of the azure sky, the way the people bent instinctively forward into the occasional puffs of wind, that spoke of winter.

  Jeremy Logan walked across the office carpet, favoring his right leg slightly, and took a seat in one of the chairs across from Olafson’s desk.

  The director, who’d been on the phone, hung up and nodded. “How’s the leg?”

  “Improving, thank you.”

  For a moment, the two sat in silence. So much had been said over the last few days—so much done—that now it seemed speech was almost superfluous.

  “You’re all packed?” Olafson said.

  “Everything’s in the Lotus.”

  “Then I guess there’s nothing left but to say thank you.” Olafson hesitated. “That sounded a little facile. I didn’t mean it to be. Jeremy, it’s not too much to say that you’ve saved Lux from itself—and in so doing, I think you may have saved the world from a very serious situation, as well.”

  “Saved the world,” Logan repeated, tasting the words as he spoke. “I like the sound of that. Then perhaps you wouldn’t object if I doubled my fee?”

  Olafson smiled. “That would be most objectionable.”

  Another silence settled over the room while Olafson’s face took on a serious cast. “It seems almost unbelievable, you know. When I first returned after the hurricane, saw you staggering out of the West Wing, Laura Benedict huddled under your arm—it was like something out of a nightmare.”

  “How is she doing?” Logan asked.

  “She’s responding to stimuli. The doctors liken it to an extreme nervous shock. They predict a full recovery, although it may take six to eight months. Her short-term memory, however, is irretrievably gone.”

  “So she did get a significant dose of ultrasound,” Logan said. “That’s a shame.”

  “It was unavoidable. In any case, our debriefing is long over, and there’s no need to revisit it. You did what you had to do.”

  “I suppose. Still, perhaps the memory loss will prove a blessing in the end.” Logan had been glancing out the windows, not looking at anything in particular. Now he looked back at the director. “What about the other three, from Ironhand?”

  Olafson’s face became clouded, and he glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk. “Not good. One is ‘floridly psychotic—presenting with extreme homicidal paranoia, delusions, ungovernable mania.’ Another is in a state that the evaluators in the psych ward at Newport Hospital, frankly, have never seen before. There is no analogue for it in the DSM-5. One of the doctors characterized it”—he quoted again from the sheet—“ ‘as if the action potential of the serotonin receptors are always in transmission mode.’ Basically, the man’s brain is being flooded by sensory signals—grotesquely enhanced, distorted, and unavoidable—that are simply too overwhelming and violent to be processed. They have no idea how to treat him except to keep him, for the time being, in a medically induced coma.”

  “Long-term prognosis?”

  “They wouldn’t say. But reading between the lines, it would appear the condition, barring some miracle, could be irreversible.”

  Logan took this in for a moment. “And the third?”

  “ ‘Severe catatonic disorder, marked by stupor and rigidity.’ Again, the doctors are at a loss for an explanation, because CT scans show none of the damage to the limbic system, basal ganglia, or frontal cortex that would normally explain catatonic schizophrenia.”

  Logan let out a deep sigh. Slowly, he returned his gaze to the window.

  “Fortunes of war, Jeremy,” Olafson said in a low voice. “These were bad, bad men. They were responsible—directly or indirectly—for Will Strachey’s death.”

  “And Pam Flood’s,” Logan added grimly.

  “Yes. If you hadn’t acted, thousands—tens of thousands, perhaps—might soon be living under threat of similar fates.”

  “I know.” After a moment, Logan turned his gaze back toward the director. “And what of that? Has the threat been neutralized?”

  “In the aftermath of the storm, I had a few well-picked men, under the direction of Albright, remove everything from the room. They also dismantled the central machine—although you’d already done a pretty good job on it—and had it destroyed in the ovens of a foundry in Wakefield.”

  “What about Benedict’s work?”

  “Again with Albright’s help, our security staff performed an interdiction. We cleaned out her office, her basement lab, her private quarters. Burned everything. With the help of the local authorities, we also emptied her family home in Providence, which she’d inherited—that was where we found most of the notes and files, actually.”

  “Local authorities?” Logan repeated.

  “There aren’t many large cities up and down the New England coast that don’t owe Lux at least one favor.” Olafson paused. “We’ve also taken the precaution of destroying all other paperwork in our own archives relating to Project Sin. And I’m not speaking merely of those files in my safe—I’m talking about the early work that led up to the project’s formation in the late 1920s. Anything and everything, no matter how indirect or remotely linked.” He glanced at Logan. “I hope you agree.”

  “Enthusiastically. But what about Ironhand?”

  Olafson’s expression clouded again. “We’re in discreet conversation with the Feds. We’ve destroyed all evidence we can get our hands on, done all we can to put a protective bubble around anything Benedict might have accomplished.” He paused. “What do you think?”

  “I think that if she had enough material to continue her work off campus, say in the Ironhand labs, she wouldn’t have acted with such desperation—neutralized Strachey, tried to kill me, done her utmost to buy the time necessary to reduce the footprint of the weapon, get it off premises.” He shook his head slowly. “No—if you’ve destroyed all the equipment and burned all the paperwork, Ironhand won’t have enough to restart her work.”

  “Not on their own, perhaps,” Olafson replied. “But that won’t stop them from trying. I’d be lying if I said they’ll go away easily.”

  This observation hung in the air for a moment. At last,
Logan rose to his feet. Olafson did the same.

  “Can I walk you to your car?” the director asked.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got one final errand to take care of before I leave.”

  “In that case, I’ll say good-bye.” Olafson shook his hand warmly. “We owe you more than we can repay. If I can ever do anything personally, as director of Lux, just let me know.”

  Logan thought for a moment. “There is one thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “The next time I come here to undertake some open-ended research project, make sure Roger Carbon is on extended sabbatical, far away from Lux.”

  Olafson smiled. “As good as done.”

  —

  Leaving the director’s office, Logan made his way slowly down the elegantly appointed corridors and sweeping staircases. In the three days since the storm, the think tank had returned to normal—scientists speaking in hushed tones as they passed by, wide-eyed clients waiting for an audience in the Edwardian splendor of the main library. Passing the dining hall—the clanking of silverware and porcelain beyond its closed doors indicating that lunch would soon be served—he turned down a side corridor, went through a set of double doors, and stepped out onto the rear lawn.

  The bright sunshine, and the unmistakable undercurrent of chill in the air, hit him immediately. He made his way past the small knots of strolling scientists and technicians, the painter at her easel, until he reached the long scatter of rocks that marked high tide, flung carelessly along the coast as if by a giant’s whim. Kim Mykolos sat on one of the larger rocks, hands in the pockets of a gray trenchcoat, staring out to sea. An ugly yellow bruise, just now beginning to fade, stood out on one temple.

  “Hello,” Logan said, taking a seat beside her.

  “Hello yourself.”

  “I hear this sea air is great for convalescing.”

  “It’s not the sea air I have to thank, Dr. Logan. It’s you.”

  “Please—Jeremy.”

  “Jeremy, then.”

  “Why should you thank me?”