‘You know I can protect myself against a bullet,’ I said, taking a step closer to Geri. ‘And you can’t keep me and Nico down here forever. It must be nearly morning . . . people will be coming to work in a few hours. Plus, there’s a guard outside . . .’
‘I shot the guard with a tranquilliser dart, just like I did Nico,’ Geri said. ‘They’ll both be out for another fifteen minutes. Which is more time than I need.’
‘More time than you need to do what?’ I said, edging closer again.
Geri put the disk in her bag.
‘More time than I need to make sure that you and Nico are dead,’ she said.
25: The murder plan
I gasped. Was Geri serious?
‘You won’t kill me and Nico,’ I said. ‘You need us. We’re your Medusa Project.’
‘You’ve become more trouble than you’re worth,’ Geri said bitterly. ‘After this, I want nothing more to do with any of you. You and Nico won’t really be missed. Well, Fergus may make a fuss for a while, but I can handle him.’
‘What about my aunt and uncle?’ I said desperately.
Geri smiled pityingly at me. ‘We both know they couldn’t give a fig about you, dear.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose you’ve already been in remote contact with Ed?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Geri sighed again. ‘Which means, of course, that Ed and Ketty will have to be dealt with, too . . .’
Was she threatening to kill them as well?
Geri held up the minidisk and smiled . . . ‘Still, so long as I’ve got this, there’s no proof I ever did anything against the law.’
‘Then killing us doesn’t make sense,’ I protested. ‘We’ll be found and . . . and . . . people will know you were here. There are cameras . . . alarm lights were going off earlier . . .’
‘You disabled the cameras when you came in, remember? And the red flashing light above the door was just an emergency light panel,’ Geri said. ‘I must have arrived outside the building shortly after you’d turned on the generator. I have to say I was impressed, Dylan. I knew Ed would hypnotise the guard, but I was banking on you not knowing about either the guard dogs or the generator.’ She smiled. ‘I had no idea you were capable of such a clever move: shutting down the main power supply to get inside the building, then activating the back-up so you could operate properly inside.’
Again, I wondered where Harry was. It was him who’d found the generator and managed to get it working.
I shook myself. It didn’t matter. I had to try and catch Geri unawares myself . . . make a leap for the gun . . .
‘There’s just one more thing,’ Geri said. ‘I want the code for the Medusa gene.’
I stared her in the eye. ‘I destroyed it,’ I lied.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Geri drew a hand-held scanner – a smaller version of the one Jack had used – from her pocket. She held the scanner towards me. Instinctively, I surrounded my whole body with my force field.
Geri laughed her high, tinkly laugh. ‘This is a very powerful reader,’ she said. ‘It can pick up the microchip’s signal from four metres away. Your force field can’t touch it – just wait for the beep.’
The microchip reader remained silent. Geri’s smile faded. She pointed the reader at Nico, then looked up at me, her mouth set in a thin line.
‘Destroying that code was foolish, Dylan.’
‘No way,’ I snarled. ‘Foolish would have been letting a toxic cow like you have it.’
Geri waved her hand dismissively, then stepped backwards, into the doorway. She was still pointing the gun at Nico. ‘Goodbye.’
My heart thudded. I was still at least two metres away from her. No way could I reach her before she pulled the trigger. I took another small step forwards. I had to buy more time. ‘What are you going to do?’ I said.
Geri indicated all the filing cabinets she’d emptied . . . the contents strewn across the floor.
‘A couple of kids came into the building last night. They knocked out the guard, smashed up the security systems and got into the basement. Then they vandalised a bunch of files . . .’
She stood, the door handle in her gloved hand.
‘Then what?’ I said, edging forward again. ‘You’re just going to leave us here?’
‘As you pointed out earlier, I can’t kill you with a bullet, Dylan, and a bomb would attract too much attention,’ Geri said. ‘This way you’ll be trapped and the Wardingham defence system itself will kill you.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Geri laughed her false, high laugh again. ‘The floor plans from the file at Bookman’s house were most helpful,’ she said mysteriously. ‘On top of which, I don’t even have to lock the door. There’s a fire hydrant out here that you “vandals” were messing about with. It fell and jammed the door from the outside, preventing you from getting out of the room . . .’
I frowned. Geri had already said that the guard would be coming round in fifteen minutes. So what if we were trapped in the archive room for a while? What on earth was she planning?
Geri shot me a final, enigmatic smile, then left, pulling the door shut behind her.
I raced towards it. As I grabbed the handle, there was a thud outside. Was that Geri, jamming the door? Yes, it was totally stuck. I rattled the handle again, tugging for all I was worth.
The door stayed firmly shut.
I seized my flashlight and crouched beside Nico. He was out cold. I shook him, but there was no response. Geri had said he’d be unconscious for another fifteen minutes. At least then he’d be able to shift whatever was blocking our way out.
I put my ear against the door. There was no sound from outside. Geri had left. I turned back to the room.
‘Harry?’ I whispered.
‘Has she really gone?’ His voice was shaken.
I’d never been happier to hear anything in my life.
‘I think so. Are you okay?’ I said.
‘I’m fine.’ I could hear him moving across the room. ‘I hid over in the corner by the air vent.’
I turned my flashlight, finding him in the darkness. He was picking his way across the filing cabinet Geri had tipped onto the floor. He reached the door and pushed at the handle.
‘It’s stuck,’ he said.
‘I know. Maybe if we both try, we could ram it open.’
We stood together. Harry counted to three. I engaged my force field and we slammed our shoulders against the door. It barely moved.
Harry stood back, panting. ‘Nico told me you drilled your way through a wall when you were on a mission in Africa,’ he said. ‘Won’t your force field work here?’
‘My force field just protects me,’ I explained. ‘It doesn’t mean I’m able to get through every type of material and this door’s made of something stronger than plasterboard. Plus, it took all the others to get me through that wall back in Africa.’
I shone my flashlight around the room, hoping against hope that I might see a window we hadn’t noticed before. But there was nothing.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘Why leave us all down here? I mean the power’s out, but all we have to do is sit tight and at worst, we’ll get let out in a few hours, free to tell our side of the story.’
‘She said she was going to kill you.’ Harry shuddered. ‘I don’t think she was bluffing.’
‘Okay, but how?’
‘I don’t know.’
My mind ran, rapidly, over ways in which Geri might think she could hurt me. She knew everything about my ability except the way, earlier tonight, I’d managed to extend my force field beyond myself to protect another person.
‘She knows I can survive things I can see coming,’ I said.
Harry stared at me. ‘What about things you can’t see?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Come with me.’ Harry grabbed my hand and raced to the far corner of the room. My flashlight created jerky shadows as I ran past rows of filing cabinets. Harr
y pointed to a tiny space between the final cabinet and the end of the room. A grille was fixed to the bottom of the wall. He pointed to its bars. ‘There.’
‘This is where you hid?’ I said, wondering if he’d gone mad. ‘Why are you showing me?’
Harry turned to me, exasperated. ‘Don’t you get it, Red? It’s a danger you can’t see.’
I stared at him, running through the options in my mind. What danger would I not be able to see? Not solid objects. Not fire. Not water . . .
‘Oh my God,’ I said. I looked down at the air vent, then held my hand over the thin metal bars that covered it. A slight draught cooled my palm. I turned to Harry, the horror of the situation hitting me fully.
‘It’s gas,’ I said. ‘She’s sending in poison gas to kill us.’
26: Breathing
As we watched the vent, I caught the faintest scent of disinfectant.
Was that the poison gas? I backed away from the wall.
‘This gas must be what Geri was referring to when she said the Wardingham defence system would kill us,’ Harry said.
‘You mean these vents were designed to release gas into the room?’ I said.
Harry gave a grim nod. ‘It’s a way of dealing with intruders, I guess.’ He bit his lip. ‘At least we’ve worked out what it is before it kills us.’
‘Awesome.’ I turned to him, panic rising. ‘We’re going to die. All we need to figure out now is when.’
Harry stared at the air vent. He sniffed, breathing in. ‘Can you smell that . . . that . . . like a swimming pool smell?’
I nodded. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Your force field can protect you, can’t it?’ Harry said anxiously. ‘That gives us a chance to get out of here. I mean, maybe it’ll make me unconscious for a while before it’s actually fatal, and in the mean time—’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘The energy force I put around myself doesn’t provide air for me to breathe. I still need oxygen. My force field offers zero protection against poison gas.’
Harry backed away from the vent, his eyes darting around the room. ‘But this isn’t a big space,’ he said, ‘We’ve probably only got a few minutes. Geri Paterson said it would take less than a quarter of an hour, remember?’
His eyes rested on me again . . . I couldn’t bear to see the horror that filled them.
‘We’re going to find a way out of here,’ I said.
‘How?’ Harry’s voice rose. ‘There are no windows and the door is jammed. The only other way out is through the air vent – and that’s precisely where the gas is coming from.’ He coughed. ‘God, the smell’s getting stronger.’
It was – an acrid stench, like bleach.
I backed further away from the air vent, trying to clear my head so I could think it through logically. My thoughts returned to the African prison we’d been holed up in a few weeks ago – and how the others had used me as a battering ram to force a way through the thin, hollow wall. Maybe the walls here would be really flimsy, too. After failing to punch through the door, I didn’t hold out much hope, but it was worth a try.
Using all my strength, I struck the wall in front of me. Solid. Even with Harry’s help I wouldn’t make a dent in it.
Holding his breath, Harry pulled off his jacket, ran forward and shoved it over the air vent. He raced back to my side, pulling out his phone. ‘That’s not going to stop the gas, just slow it down. I’m going to call my mum. I want her to know what . . . what’s going to happen . . .’
‘Wait a second.’ I glanced desperately around the room again. An idea was clawing at the edges of my mind. ‘The room is a box,’ I said.
‘What?’ Harry held out his hands in disbelief. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The room is a box . . .’ I muttered again. ‘A box has six sides . . . four walls . . . a floor.’ I looked up. ‘The ceiling.’
Harry followed my gaze. ‘The ceiling?’
‘Yes.’ The ceiling was made up of styrofoam panels. There would probably be a gap between the panels and the floor of the room above. If Harry and I could move one panel, then maybe we could somehow climb inside the ceiling, drag Nico up with us and replace the panel. If it would keep out the gas, then we’d at least buy ourselves a little more time.
I explained my idea to Harry.
For a moment he looked at me as if I was crazy. ‘But how the hell are we going to get up into the ceiling and replace the panel, even if we can remove it?’
‘I don’t know, but have you got a better idea?’
We looked at each other for a second, then Harry shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t. Come on. Help me get up on top of this filing cabinet.’
I helped him climb up, then rushed over to Nico while Harry pressed gently around the edges of the panel immediately above his head. Nico was still out cold. As I straightened up from his body, I caught another, stronger scent of bleach. As I breathed it in, my head spun. The poison gas was starting to work.
‘We don’t have much time,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Harry grunted. ‘I can smell it, too.’ He pushed at the panel above his head. With a faint screech, it shifted.
‘Look!’ Harry exclaimed.
I looked. There was a sixty-centimetre gap above the ceiling, criss-crossed by metal girders that looked easily strong enough to bear our weight.
‘See?’ I said. ‘It’s going to work.’ I dragged Nico across the floor to the filing cabinet while Harry carefully lifted the panel out of position.
‘Help me get Nico up there.’
Harry jumped down. Together we lifted Nico into a standing position. I propped him against the cabinet, while Harry climbed back up on top. He reached down to heave Nico up. But even with me pushing with all my strength from beneath, it was impossible to move him. He was a dead weight.
By the time we’d had two or three tries at getting Nico on top of the cabinet, the bleach smell filled the air. I was starting to feel light-headed.
‘You look like you might faint, Red.’ Harry said anxiously. ‘D’you feel okay?’
‘Awesome.’
‘Liar.’ He paused, making a face. ‘I feel really weird, too. I don’t think this is going to work. Even if we could move Nico, it’s taking too long for us to climb. By the time we’re all up above the ceiling, the gas will be up there, too.’
I stared at him. He was right. I could feel the gas working on me, making it hard to think. How much longer did we have until it left Harry and me as unconscious as Nico?
‘Wait. Get down here, I’ve got an idea.’
Without a word, Harry slid back down to the ground. ‘You know . . . I was thinking . . . this gas probably isn’t traceable.’ He coughed, then blinked, clearly trying hard to focus. ‘The police are going to turn up and we’re just going to be dead and there won’t be any clues about what happened and that woman . . . Geri Paterson . . . she’s going to have got away with all of it. Your dad and your mum and . . . and us, too.’
‘No.’ I hauled myself past him, up onto the cabinet. ‘Geri’s not getting away with any of it. We’re going to get out of here and I’m going to track her down and make her pay.’ I reached up, through the gap in the panels that Harry had made. The girder immediately above me was wide enough to hook my knee over. I pulled myself up, then crouched on the metal bar, shining my flashlight along the space above. The boards that formed the floor to another room were just a few centimetres over my head. Summoning all my energy, I created a force field around my fist and punched upwards. My hand smacked against the wood. It didn’t even leave a scratch.
Still crouching, I moved to the next girder. More floorboards above my head. I shone the flashlight along a bit further. The smell of bleach was real strong now. I held my breath and moved along again.
I shone my flashlight into the corner of the space. A large, square, aluminium pipe met my eyes. An air vent leading to the room above. I knew the vent into our room was cont
aminated, but surely the poison gas wouldn’t have reached the floor above yet. I wriggled across the girders, still holding my breath. I reached the metal air vent, made a fist and punched at the nearest seam. It shook.
That was a start. I punched again. And again. The vent was only made of thin aluminium. Another punch and it cracked at the top . . . another punch . . . another crack . . .
I took a quick breath. It made my head spin. I summoned the force field again, and slammed my fist, hard, right into the heart of the biggest crack. With a snap the piping came apart. I gripped the sharp aluminium sides, forcing them far enough back so that I had room to crawl through.
‘Harry!’ I yelled. ‘I’ve found a way out.’
‘You go on.’ His voice sounded really weak. ‘I . . . I can’t . . .’
I hesitated for a second. Should I go back?
No. Harry’s best chance was for me to get out of here and make my way back downstairs as fast as I could.
Force field fully charged, I hauled myself into the vent. The walls were tight against my body. I crawled, commando style, as fast as I could. The pipe sloped upwards. Totally dark.
And then I felt a blast of cooler air coming from up ahead. It was lighter there, too. I must be coming to another room. I risked a breath.
The air was much cleaner.
Straight ahead of me was an aluminium grille, like the one the gas was coming through in our room below.
Force field engaged, I punched at the bars with all my might. One. Two.
I broke through on the third punch. Grabbing the outside of the grille, I hurled myself through, slithering onto the floor of the room on the other side.
I got to my feet and raced to the door. I ran left. Dead end. I turned right. Stairs.
I pounded down to the basement level again, hoping the room Harry and Nico were still trapped in would be easy to spot.
It was. As I leaped off the bottom step, I saw the fire extinguisher Geri had jammed against our door handle.
I raced over and hurled it out of the way. I flung open the door. The powerful smell of the poison gas hit me straight away. Harry was on the floor beside Nico, his head hanging between his knees. He looked up as I ran over to them.
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