Shadow Creatures (24 page)

Calum held out the tablet, and Pournell reached out and took it. He stared at it for a moment, and then looked back at Calum.

‘Thanks, kid. I’ll have a word with Dr Laurence. He really shouldn’t leave these things lying around.’

He pulled open the door, then turned to glance back at Calum. ‘Did you know you talk in your sleep?’ he asked casually. ‘Well, if you’re sedated, anyway. You had a lot to
say about Hong Kong, and a cryptid that your little friends are looking for. It was so interesting that I decided to put together a little team of my own to find it. Much better equipped than your
friends, and much more . . . professional. I’ll let you know how it all pans out.’ He walked into the corridor, pausing only to reach down and tear off the strip of adhesive plastic
that Calum had stuck across the lock. ‘Messy,’ he said quietly. ‘I do so hate it when things get stuck over walls and doors. I much prefer a clean working environment.’ He
left, and the door shut behind him. Calum very distinctly heard the
click
as the tongue of the lock engaged with the hole in the door frame. He was locked in again.

He waited for a few moments, until he was sure that Pournell wasn’t going to come back, then he reached down and reassuringly felt the edge of the second tablet computer that he had taken.
He had slid that under the mattress so that it would be harder to find.

He didn’t mind losing one tablet – in fact, he had almost expected it. He still had the second left, and he intended to keep on using it.

Calum had a dilemma now, and he wasn’t sure what to do. His dream ever since the accident had been to get back the ability to walk, but he had assumed that it would take a lot of time and
a lot of work. Now he was being handed the solution on a plate, and all he had to do was give up on his moral position with regard to the Almasti genetic material.

Which was, he thought, what it must be like being offered eternal life by the Devil, at the small cost of your soul.

I
t was next morning, some indeterminate time between breakfast and lunch, that Dave Pournell came back to visit Calum.

The tablet computer was hidden beneath Calum’s mattress. He had already realized that daytime was the riskiest time for using it. Instead he just sat there quietly in bed, apparently
staring at the wall but in reality working through in his head all the possible permutations of what might be happening to his friends, in England and in Hong Kong.

Pournell stood in the doorway. He was still neatly dressed in suit and tie. He checked the edge of the door to see whether Calum had ‘fixed’ it again, and then grinned at Calum as he
entered the room.

‘Hey, kid, how’s things?’

‘What can I say?’ Calum responded with a shrug.

‘The standard phrase is “Same old, same old”,’ Dave said. ‘But, just to save you the trouble, let me say that I know what you’re going to say –
you’ve been kidnapped, you can’t communicate with anybody, you want to get out of here and go back home, blah, blah, blah. Am I right?’

‘Pretty much,’ Calum admitted. ‘I
was
going to complain about the lack of entertainment as well. Would it kill you guys to put cable TV in these rooms?’

Pournell laughed. ‘I like your spirit, Calum, I really do.’ He walked to the end of Calum’s bed and put his hands on the rails. ‘It’s crunch time, kid. I offered
you a bargain, last time I was here. Now I need your answer. It’s a very simple choice: you can walk again, or you can keep the Almasti DNA to yourself.’

Calum was silent for a few moments, staring at Pournell’s smiling face. He had been mulling the choice over for hours, and it all came down to a very basic question – was he
searching for cryptids so he could use their DNA to help cure a whole load of people of a whole load of diseases, as he had told Gillian Livingstone, or was he in it just to cure himself and damn
the rest. If it was the former, then he had to keep the Almasti DNA to himself until he could get it into the hands of a laboratory that would sequence it for free and distribute it widely. If it
was the latter, then he might as well give the DNA to Nemor Inc. in return for them treating him with their stem-cell technology – if it existed and if it worked as well as they said it did.
Was he as altruistic as he liked to think in his better moments, or as selfish as he believed himself to be in his darker moments? What kind of person was he?

‘Can’t do it, Dave,’ he said, surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to say anything, not that quickly anyway, but it seemed as if his subconscious mind had already decided
for him. He was a better person than he had feared.

Pournell looked disappointed. ‘You sure? You’re throwing away a lot.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I wish I could say I respected your principles, but I don’t. I just think you’re being stupid.’

Calum shrugged. ‘What can I say? Look, there’s no point in you keeping me here any more. You’ve tried your best, but I haven’t played ball. Take me back home, and
we’ll call it quits. I won’t make any trouble over the kidnapping. If you can’t take me home, at least take me to an airport, and I’ll find my own way back.’

Pournell stared at him for a few long seconds, and Calum realized as he watched the man that his smile was just a muscular reaction. It didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t happy,
cheerful, friendly, or anything else that a smile might indicate. He was a deeply dangerous man, behind that mask.

‘You know, let’s not do that,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to plan B instead.’

‘Plan B?’ Calum asked, feeling his spirits drop.

‘Yeah.’ Without turning his head, Pournell called, ‘Hey, Kircher, get in here!’

Dr Kircher hurried through the door. ‘Yes, sir, what is it?’

‘You were telling me earlier about some conclusions you’d come to about that mental link to the bionic legs.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Kircher sounded as if he was reading from a script. ‘I think that the problem with the stray signals affecting the ARLENE robot can be solved by
reducing the wireless signal strength.’

‘Great!’ Pournell said. ‘And how do you go about doing that?’

‘Well,’ Kircher went on, ‘having the sensors on Calum’s scalp gives us a level of signal blockage that has to be overcome by high sensitivity. If we can actually implant
the sensors in Calum’s brain, then we can reduce the sensitivity by a factor of a hundred or so.’

‘Wonderful! So brain surgery is the answer. Let’s start preparing the operating theatre!’

Kircher looked uncomfortable, but all he said was, ‘Yes, sir!’ He turned to leave, and didn’t even look at Calum as he went.

‘For the record,’ Calum said in a shaky voice, ‘I don’t want brain surgery.’

‘Nonsense. You want this problem fixed, don’t you?’

‘Not this way!’

‘Unfortunately, that release document you signed – you really should have read the small print – it gives Dr Kircher carte blanche to do anything he needs in order to get those
bionic legs working, up to and including radical surgery. Of course, there
is
a risk of possible side effects, including brain damage, coma and death, but then any serious surgery carries
risks. I’m sure you understand.’

‘I looked at the small print. I’m a fast reader. It didn’t say anything about you being able to conduct surgery on me.’

Pournell smiled. ‘It does now. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to add an extra page or two to a document that’s already been signed.’

‘I want to rescind my permission,’ Calum said. His stomach was churning, and he could hear a loud buzzing in his ears.

‘No can do, kid.’ Pournell turned to go, and then turned back. ‘You can stop this any time you want,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Just tell us where that Almasti DNA
is.’ He stared at Calum for a moment. His smile faded, and Calum got a clear sight of the single-minded insanity underneath. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘is it
really
worth losing your mind over?’

He turned and left.

Calum sat there, trembling, unable to believe what had just happened. This wasn’t going to end until either he gave in or Nemor performed whatever torture they could on him. And it seemed
there wasn’t any limit to the torture they were prepared to perform. Eventually he would crack, but would that be too late to save himself?

He didn’t know.

By the time Gecko and Rhino got back to the hotel it was well after midnight and Rhino was furious.

‘Natalie tipped the police off,’ he said as they entered the lobby. ‘I know it was her.’

‘I doubt that she alerted the police,’ Gecko said, trying to calm Rhino down. ‘Your reasons for not involving them were good. However, I think she may have followed through
with her second option of alerting the United Nations. If they have an office covering illegal animal shipments here in Hong Kong, then they may have been able to mobilize the police through their
own contacts and move quickly.’

‘The UN!’ Rhino snarled, making it sound like a curse. ‘When you actually want them to do something, it takes nine months and a unanimous resolution to get them moving, but
when you
don’t
want them to move they’re like greased lightning!’

‘To be fair,’ Gecko interrupted, ‘I think Natalie
did
want them to move. She has taken this animal stuff to heart. I think it has hit her somewhere personal.’

‘Why does she choose
now
to suddenly get a conscience?’

Gecko shrugged. ‘I think it has been building for a while.’

‘I ought to go up to her room now and have a strong chat with her, culminating in her flying straight home, alone! I can’t have her undermining our missions like this!’

Gecko held up a warning hand. ‘That would not help. I’m sure she didn’t mean to undermine our mission. I think she was just trying to do something for those animals.’

‘Maybe that’s the case, but because of her those two giant centipedes have escaped. Who knows what they’re capable of?’ Rhino looked at Gecko with sudden interest.
‘You live in Brazil, don’t you? What do
you
think they’re capable of?’

‘What?’ Gecko said, feeling a flush of anger. ‘Just because there’s a rainforest within fifty miles of my family home, you think I’m some kind of expert on strange
animals?’

‘Yes,’ Rhino said, looking confused, ‘of course I do. You knew about capybaras and coypus, didn’t you? That’s more than I did.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I was
born on Canvey Island. I can do seagulls and that’s about it. At least you
have
exotic animals in your country.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘My point is that I can predict people. I can’t predict animals.’

Gecko nodded, calming down. He knew that Rhino was frustrated and angry, and didn’t really mean what he was saying. ‘I guess I understand. OK, then, the centipedes are carnivores,
yes? And they have a poisonous bite. They have presumably not had very much food during their captivity. They will be hunting.’

‘Hunting for what?’

Gecko closed his eyes briefly. Images of what the centipedes might be hunting for were flashing through his mind, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. ‘Live food,’ he said
quietly. ‘Smaller centipedes hunt other insects. For ones this size, insects won’t be enough. I would imagine that their usual food, wherever they come from, is likely to be small
mammals – monkeys, maybe, or rodents. In a city like this –’ he shrugged – ‘cats, maybe. Dogs. Even small children.’ In his mind he was imagining the carnage
that could result from the release of the two centipedes, and the thought made him feel sick. ‘Rhino, it’s worse than you think.’

‘What do you mean?’ Rhino asked warily.

‘What if they are male and female centipedes – a breeding pair? What if they mate, and lay eggs? In a few months’ time Hong Kong could be swarming with these things!’

Rhino didn’t reply for a moment, but he lost colour from his face as the thought hit home.

‘We have to do something,’ Gecko urged. ‘We have to kill them, or recover them somehow’

Rhino nodded. ‘You’re right. We caused this situation. We need to fix it.’

‘But how are we going to find them?’

Rhino thought for a moment. ‘We obviously need to know more about them.’ He lifted his hand, which was still holding the hard drive that he had retrieved from where the fleeing Tsai
Chen had dropped it on the warehouse floor. ‘There might be something on this about the centipedes, if we’re lucky – their likely habitats, their diet, something we might be able
to use. I’ve got a laptop in my room – I’ll connect it up and see what I can find. Do you want to join me?’

Gecko shook his head. ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes. Can I join you in half an hour?’

‘OK.’

The two of them split up, each heading to his own room. When Gecko entered, he saw that his mobile phone was sitting beside the bed where he had left it. Instinctively he checked it for
messages. There hadn’t been any calls – which was strange, because he would have expected to have heard from Calum or Tara by now – but he had received a text message. It was from
an unknown number. Gecko half thought about deleting it, on the basis that it was probably some kind of advertising scam, but he clicked on it anyway, just in case.

The message was very plain and simple:

It was not signed, but Gecko was pretty sure he knew who had sent it.

He felt as if he was standing on the deck of a boat in a storm. The ground seemed to be moving beneath his feet, rocking up and down, and his stomach was churning. He didn’t want to watch
the video file, but he knew he had to. So he pressed on the
Play
button.

He watched with increasing feelings of nausea and guilt as Tara read out her brief message. He listened to the words, but more importantly he watched her expression as she spoke them. She was
frightened. She was trying to hide it, trying to put a brave face on things, but she was frightened.

She had good reason to be. He knew what these men were capable of.