Nightrise (8 page)

What do I mean by that? I'm talking about kids with special abilities. Jamie, I won't beat about the bush: These were kids with paranormal powers. I know it sounds crazy. You're not supposed to believe in these things anymore — not in the twenty-first century — but even so, there was a definite link…"

Alicia got up and went over to the sofa. She opened a briefcase and took out a sheaf of documents. She spread one of them in front of Jamie. It had been taken from a local newspaper and showed a photograph of a rather intense-looking boy with cropped hair. The headline read: jack has a flash of the future.

The story didn't take itself too seriously. Apparently, there was an eleven-year-old boy named Jack Pugh who lived on his father's farm in Kentucky. He'd had a dream and had warned his parents that a local church was going to catch fire. Twelve hours later, the church had been hit by lightning and had burned to the ground. Fortunately, nobody had been hurt.

"Six weeks after the paper printed that story, Jack vanished," Alicia said. She took out a second sheet of paper.

This time it was a girl. Her name was Indigo Cotton and her story had been reported in the Miami Herald.

It seemed that she could bend spoons and stop watches just by looking at them. There had been a picture of her in the back of a paper, leaning against a grandfather clock. The clock had stopped at exactly midday. According to the story, she had been responsible.

"She disappeared too," Alicia said. "Two months after the story ran."

She added more pages to the pile. There was a boy who had managed to predict the winners five times in a row at a local racetrack. Another boy who, without moving, had fused all the lights in his school. A girl who talked to ghosts. An autistic boy who knew the names of everyone he met before he was introduced to them. Another pair of twins who seemed to live in each other's minds.

"They all disappeared?" Jamie asked.

"A dozen of them in just six months. That may not sound like a lot to you, Jamie, but I know how statistics work and I can tell you it's completely incredible. Of course, loads of other kids went missing too. But this was something quite different. It seemed clear to me that someone was deliberately targeting these kids."

"So did you go to the police?"

"No." Alicia sat down again. "Read the articles. None of them are serious. I mean…a kid who can bend spoons? Another who talks to dead people? 'TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE: GRAVE BUSINESS

OF GIRL WHO GOSSIPS

WITH GHOSTS.' Read it for yourself. Of course, once these children disappeared, everyone treated them very seriously. But the paranormal stuff was just forgotten. It wasn't important. In fact it was hardly even mentioned."

Jamie thought about it for a moment. Then it suddenly occurred to him. "What about Daniel?" he asked.

Alicia nodded. "There was a piece about him too," she said. "At the time, I didn't want it to appear and I was annoyed when it did. But the thing is, quite a few strange things happened with Danny too. He used to have these premonitions. They weren't dreams…they were just feelings. He once stopped me from going on a train. He was only six years old and he got quite hysterical about it. Like, he was throwing stuff around the room, and in the end I gave in. I couldn't leave him with Maria…not like that. So I didn't go. And you know what happened? A few days later I learned that there had been an incident on the train. Some guy out of his mind on drugs shot someone. If I'd been traveling that day, could it have been me? I don't know…

"Then he did it again, only this time he did it at school. He warned a boy not to go home. That same afternoon, a bus skidded off the main road and went straight through one of the walls of the boy's house.

Smashed into the kitchen and brought down most of the upper floor. Of course, everyone at the school was talking about it and a local paper picked it up…"

"And you think someone may have read it," Jamie said.

'Yeah. I think someone read it. I think someone came for Danny because he was special. And for the last few months, I've been scouring the newspapers, looking for kids like you. Because, you see, if there really is someone out there searching for kids with powers, maybe I can get there ahead of them. Maybe I can find out who they are and discover what they've done with my boy.

"So now you know why I was in Reno. I happened to see this piece in a tourist magazine. It was about two boys performing a mind-reading act. The writer said he'd seen them twice and he couldn't work out for love or money how they did it. So I came over to see for myself…"

"And you arrived just in time," Jamie said.

"I couldn't believe it when those men came after you with stun darts and bullets." For a moment, Alicia's eyes lit up and she couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice. "But it proves what I'm saying. There is somebody out there who really is going after these special kids. They got your brother and wherever they've taken him, that's where Danny may be too."

"There's one thing I don't understand," Jamie said. "Suppose you're right and somebody is kidnapping kids with special powers. Why would they do that? What's the point?"

"It could be the government, the CIA or someone like that. Think about it for a minute: If you could really read someone's mind, you'd make a perfect weapon. You could be a spy. You could be anything!"

'You really think they'd believe in that sort of stuff."

"Of course they believe in it, Jamie. They spend millions of dollars every year experimenting with the paranormal. And there are major corporations out there who run programs, working with special children and their families. I

even got in contact with one. I thought they might be able to help."

"Who was that?"

Alicia put down her beer. "They're a huge multinational. They're into communications, health care, security, energy…just about everything. But they also have a division that specializes in paranormal research." She paused. "They were the people who came for you in the theatre. Their name is Nightrise."

SIX

Business as Usual

The boardroom was on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail — which was the name of the newest and most spectacular addition to the Hong Kong skyline. The Nail had been constructed at an angle so that it slanted toward Orchard Hill and away from the waterfront. It seemed to be made of solid steel, an illusion caused by the one-way glass in all its windows. The top three floors, sixty-four to sixty-six, were circular and wider than the rest of the building. Viewed from Kowloon, on the other side of Victoria Harbor, it really did look like a giant nail that had been hammered into the heart of the city.

There were just three men in the boardroom, although fifty could have fitted in easily. A conference table made of black, gleaming wood stretched the full length of the room with black leather chairs placed at exact intervals. Two of the men were already seated, going through papers, preparing themselves for the conference that was about to begin. The third was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, which curved around in a great arc, enjoying the view.

The Nail was the worldwide headquarters of the Nightrise Corporation. The man standing on his own was its chairman.

Unlike the office, he had no name — or if he did, he never used it. He was simply the chairman, or Mr.

Chairman when he was directly addressed. He was a man in his sixties, although he had done his best to disguise his age with extensive plastic surgery. This left him with a face that was younger than it should be and yet strangely unnatural, as if it belonged somewhere else. He had thick white hair which could have been a wig but was actually his own, and silver, half-moon spectacles. As always, he was wearing a suit, made to measure by his own personal tailor.

It was seven o'clock in the morning and the sun had not yet fully risen. The great sprawl of Kowloon was still half asleep, the bars and electronics shops briefly shuttered before the start of another day. The sky was a blazing red. The chairman thought it appropriate. Kowloon means "nine dragons," and it seemed to him, looking out from the window, that they had all breathed at once.

Behind him, one of the other two men spoke.

"They're coming online now, Mr. Chairman."

The chairman walked to his place at the head of the table and sat down. He rested his hand on the polished surface and composed himself. There were thirteen plasma screens mounted all around the room, and one after another they flickered into life as the other executives, in different parts of the world, came online. A webcam, standing on the table, pointed at the chairman, carrying his own image out. In Los Angeles, it was two o'clock in the afternoon. In London it was midnight. But the time of the day was unimportant. This was the monthly meeting of the senior executives of the Nightrise Corporation and none of them would have dared to have been even a minute late.

"My greetings to you, ladies and gentlemen." As ever, the chairman was the first to speak. He had an unpleasant, throaty voice, as if he were ill. He spoke very softly and his voice would have to be amplified as it was transmitted. He had no obvious accent. This was an international businessman and he had managed to develop an international voice.

"I don't think I need to remind you that this is a critical time for us all," he went on. "It is a world-changing time. Everything we've been working for all these years is about to come to fruition. Business has never been better, but right now there is so much more at stake than simple profit and loss. We have the Psi project. We have news from South America. And, of course, we have the upcoming election…

the race to become the most powerful man in the world." He paused and it was almost as if a thin mist passed across his eyes. "I hardly need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is one time we can't afford to make mistakes."

He stopped. Nobody moved. The images on the television screens were so still that they could have been accidentally frozen. Two thousand miles away, the private Nightrise Corporation satellite that was making this conference possible continued its orbit around the world, picking up the signals and beaming them into the different countries. And it was as if something of the black emptiness of outer space was being sent with them. The images were dead. The dozen offices with their dozen televisions seemed to contain no life at all.

"Let's start in New York. The election. What can you report?"

The New York executive's screen was about halfway down the table. He was a solid, square-shouldered man who had spent twenty years in the army before moving into business — and it showed. His name was Simms. "This is a hard nut to crack, sir," he reported. "And whatever happens, it's going to be close…maybe as close as one or two states. Our guy is doing better than expected but so far we haven't been able to do serious damage to Trelawny."

"Advertising?"

"Sir, we've taken out advertisements that suggest that Trelawny is soft on crime and soft on immigration.

We've said he's a coward and a liar. We've even managed to plant newspaper stories that hint he might be gay. But nothing seems to hurt him. For some reason, people like him and right now if both he and Charles Baker get their party's nomination, they'll be neck and neck in November."

"Baker must win. There can be no other result. Trelawny must not become president."

"Well, short of assassinating John Trelawny, I'm not sure what we can do."

"I think, Mr. Simms, you should be considering every possibility."

'Yes, sir."

Next, the chairman turned his attention to a screen that was next to him, on his right-hand side. "Could you please make your report," he said.

"Certainly, Mr. Chairman."

The woman on the plasma screen gazed directly into the room. She looked more like a schoolteacher than a businesswoman, with glasses that were too big for her face, closely cropped, gray hair, and a long, thin neck. She was dressed in black. She was speaking from an office in Los Angeles, and although outside the sun was brilliant, none of it had been allowed to reach her. There was a shadow across her face. Her skin was pale. She could have been lit by the moon.

Her name was Susan Mortlake.

"I have good news to report, and also bad news," she began. "It's now been almost a year and a half since we began the Psi project but we may have had a breakthrough. It seems that we have finally managed to track down two of the Gatekeepers."

This caused a stir around the room. The disembodied heads in the television sets turned, even though they couldn't actually see each other. The two men making notes scribbled furiously. One of them turned a page.

"It's still too early to be absolutely sure that they are who we think they are," the woman went on. "The fact of the matter is that we've looked at hundreds of children who have demonstrated any measure of psychic power. Telepaths, fire starters, clairvoyants…anything out of the ordinary. Half of them, of course, have turned out to be a waste of time. A few of them have moved away before we were able to track them down. But as for the rest…we've managed to take possession of seventeen of the most promising subjects and we've been experimenting with them in our facility at Silent Creek. However, it now looks as if all our efforts may have been a waste of time. We have one of the Gatekeepers in our power. I'm sure of it. So far, we've only been able to begin a brief examination, but it's already obvious that his powers are far greater than anything we've yet encountered."

"Why do you only have one of them?" the chairman asked.

"That's the bad news, Mr. Chairman." Susan Mortlake paused. "The two boys — Scott and Jamie Tyler

— were performing a telepathy act at a theatre in Reno, Nevada. It was their guardian, who was also the producer of the show, who first brought them to our attention. He was quite happy for us to take them in return for a sum of cash although, of course, it was always our intention to kill him. This we have done. I arranged a fairly simple operation to pick the boys up but unfortunately something went wrong. It may be that their power was even greater than we had imagined. At any event, they knew we were coming and one of them —Jamie — managed to get away."