Stormbreaker (14 page)

But the guard wouldn't be unconscious long and Alex knew he had to get out of here, not just back up to ground level but out of Sayle Enterprises altogether. He had to contact Mrs. Jones. He still didn't know how or why, but he knew now that the Stormbreakers had been turned into killing machines. There were less than twenty-four hours until the launch at the Science Museum. Somehow Alex had to stop it from happening.

He ran. The door at the end of the passage slid open and he found himself in a curving white corridor with windowless offices built into what must be yet more shafts of the Dozmary Mine. He knew he couldn't go back the way he had come. He was too tired, and even if he could find his way through the mine, he'd never be able to manage the swim a second time. His only chance was the door that had first led him here. It led to the metal staircase that would bring him to Block D. There was a telephone in his room. Failing that, he could use the Game Boy to transmit a message. But M16 had to know what he had found out.

He reached the end of the corridor then ducked back as three guards appeared, walking together toward a set of double doors. Fortunately, they hadn't seen him. Nobody knew he was here. He was going to be all right.

And then the alarms went off. A siren wailing electronically along the corridors, leaping out from the corners, echoing everywhere. Overhead, a light began to flash red. The guards wheeled around and saw Alex.

Unlike the man on the observation platform, they didn't hesitate. As Alex leaped headfirst through the nearest door, they brought up their machine guns and fired. Bullets slammed into the wall beside him and ricocheted along the passageway. Alex landed flat on his stomach and kicked out, slamming the door behind him. He straightened up, found a bolt, and rammed it home. A second later there was an explosive hammering on the other side as the guards fired at the door. But it was solid metal. It would hold.

Alex was standing in a metal passageway leading to a tangle of pipes and cylinders, like the boiler room of a ship. The alarm was as loud here as it had been in the main chamber. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. He leaped down the staircase, three steps at a time, and skidded to a halt, searching for a way out. He had a choice of three corridors, but then he heard the rattle of feet and knew that his choice had just become two. He wished now that he had thought to pick up the Browning automatic. He was alone and unarmed. The only duck in a shooting gallery with guns everywhere and no way out. Was this what M16 had trained him for? If so, two weeks hadn't been enough.

He ran on, weaving in and out of the pipes, trying every door he came to. A room with more space suits hanging on hooks. A shower room. Another, larger lab oratory with a second door leading out and, in the middle, a glass tank shaped like a barrel, filled with green liquid. Tangles of rubber tubing sprouted out of the tank. Trays filled with test tubes all around.

The barrel-shaped tank. The trays. Alex had seen them before-as vague outlines on his Game Boy. He must have been standing on the other side of the second door. He ran over to it. It was locked from the inside, electronically, with a glass plate against the wall. He would never be able to open it. He was trapped.

Footsteps approached. Alex just had time to hide himself on the floor, underneath one of the work surfaces, before the first door was thrown open and two more guards ran into the laboratory. They took a quick look around without seeing him.

“Not here!” one of them said.

“You'd better go up!”

One guard walked out the way he had come. The other went over to the door and placed his hand on the glass identification panel. There was a green glow and the door buzzed loudly. The guard threw it open and disappeared. Alex rolled forward as the door swung shut and just managed to get his hand into the crack. He waited a moment, then stood up. He opened the door. As he had hoped, he was looking out into the unfinished passageway where he had been surprised by Nadia Vole.

The guard had already gone on ahead. Alex slipped out, closing the door behind him, cutting off the sound of the siren. He made his way up the metal stairs. They led him back to the glass corridor that joined Blocks C and D. Alex was grateful to be back above ground. He found a door and slipped outside. The sun had already set, but across the lawn the airstrip was ablaze, artificially illuminated by the sort of lights Alex had seen in soccer stadiums. There were about a dozen trucks parked next to each other. Men were loading them up with heavy, square red-and-white boxes. The cargo plane that Alex had seen when he arrived rumbled down the runway and lurched into the air.

Alex knew that he was looking at the end of the assembly line. The red-and-white boxes were the same ones he had seen in the underground chamber. The Stormbreakers, complete with their deadly secret, were being loaded up and delivered. By morning they would be all over the country.

Keeping low, he ran past the fountain and across the grass. He thought about making for the main gate, but he knew that was hopeless. The guards would have been alerted. They'd be waiting for him. Nor could he climb the perimeter fence, not with the razor wire stretched out across the top. No. His own room seemed the best answer. The telephone was there. And so were his only weapons, the few gadgets that Smithers had given him four days-or was it four years?-ago.

He entered the house through the kitchen, the same way he had left it the night before. It was only eight o'clock, but the whole place seemed to be deserted. He ran up the staircase and along the corridor to his room on the first floor. Slowly, he opened the door. It seemed his luck was holding out. There was nobody there. Without turning on the light, he went inside and snatched up the telephone. The line was dead. Never mind. He found the cartridges for his Game Boy, his yoyo, and the zit cream and crammed them into his pockets. He had already decided not to stay here. It was too dangerous. He would find somewhere to hide out. Then he would use the Nemesis cartridge to contact M16.

He went back to the door and opened it. With a shock he saw Mr. Grin standing in the hallway, looking hideous with his white face, his ginger hair, and his mauve twisted smile. Alex reacted quickly, striking out with the heel of his right hand. But Mr. Grin was quicker. He ducked to one side, then his hand shot out, the side of it driving into Alex's throat. Alex gasped for breath but none came. The butler made an inarticulate sound and lashed out a second time. Alex got the impression that behind the livid scars he really was grinning, enjoying himself. He tried to avoid the blow, but Mr. Grin's fist hit him square on the jaw. He was spun into the bedroom, falling backward.

He never even remembered hitting the floor.

THEY CAME FOR Alex the following morning.

He had spent the night handcuffed to a radiator in a small dark room with a single barred window. It might once have been a coal cellar. When Alex opened his eyes, the gray first light of the morning was just creeping in. He opened them and closed them again. His head was thumping and the side of his face was swollen where Mr. Grin had hit him. His arms were twisted behind him and the tendons in his shoulder were on fire. But worse than all this was his sense of failure. It was April 1, the day when the Stormbreakers would be unleashed. And Alex was helpless. He had let down M16, his uncle-and himself.

It was just before nine o'clock when the door opened and two guards came in with Mr. Grin behind them. The handcuffs were unlocked and Alex was forced to his feet. Then, with a guard holding him on each side, he was marched out of the room and up a flight of stairs. He was still in Sayle's house. The stairs led up to the hall with its huge painting of Judgment Day. Alex looked at the figures, writhing in agony on the canvas. If he was right, the image would soon be repeated all over England. And it would happen in just three hours' time.

The guards half dragged him through a doorway and into the room with the aquarium. There was a high-backed wooden chair in front of it. Alex was forced to sit down. His hands were cuffed behind him again. The guards left. Mr. Grin remained.

He heard the sound of feet on the spiral staircase, saw the leather shoes coming down before he saw the man who wore them. Then Herod Sayle appeared, dressed in an immaculate pale gray silk suit. Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones had been suspicious of the Egyptian multimillionaire from the very start. They'd always thought he had something to hide. But even they had never guessed the truth. He wasn't a friend of England. He was its worst enemy.

“Three questions,” Sayle snapped. His voice was utterly cold. “Who are you? Who sent you here? How much do you know?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Alex said.

Sayle sighed. If there had been anything comical about him when Alex had first seen him, it had completely evaporated. His face was bored and businesslike. His eyes were ugly, full of menace. “We have very little time,” he said. "Mr. Grin...?”

Mr. Grin went over to one of the display cases and took out a knife, razor sharp with a serrated edge. He held it up close to his face, his eyes gleaming.

“I've already told you that Mr. Grin used to be an expert with knives,” Sayle continued. “He still is. Tell me what I want to know, Alex, or he will cause you more pain than you could begin to imagine. And don't try to lie to me, please. Just remember what happens to liars. Particularly to their tongues.”

Mr. Grin took a step closer. The blade flashed, catching the light.

“My name is Alex Rider,” Alex said.

“Rider's son.”

“His nephew.”

“Who sent you here?”

“The same people who sent him.” There was no point lying. It didn't matter anymore. The stakes had become too high.

“M16?” Sayle laughed without any sign of humor. “They send fourteen -year -old boys to do their dirty work? Not very English, I'd have said. Not cricket! What?” He had adopted an exaggerated English accent. Now he walked forward and sat down behind the desk. “And what of my third question, Alex? How much have you found out?”

Alex shrugged, trying to look casual, to hide the fear he was really feeling. “I know enough,” he said.

“Go on.”

Alex took a breath. Behind him, the jellyfish drifted past like a poisonous cloud. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. He tugged at the handcuffs, wondering if it would be possible to break the chair. There was a sudden flash and the knife that Mr. Grin had been holding was suddenly quivering in the back of the chair, an inch from his head. The edge of the blade had actually nicked the skin of his neck. He felt a trickle of blood slide down over his collar.

“You're keeping us waiting,” Herod Sayle said.

“All right. When my uncle was here, he became interested in viruses. He asked about them at the local library. I thought he was talking about computer viruses. That was the natural assumption. But I was wrong. I saw what you were doing, last night. I heard them talking on the speaker system. Decontamination and biocontainment zones. They were talking about biological warfare. You've gotten hold of some sort of real virus. It came here in test tubes, packed into silver boxes, and you've put them into the Stormbreakers. I don't know what happens next. I suppose when the computers are turned on, people die. They're in schools, so it'll be schoolchildren. Which means that you're not the saint everyone thinks you are, Mr. Sayle. A mass murderer.A bliddy psycho, I suppose you might say.”

Herod Sayle clapped his hands softly together. “You've done very well, Alex,” he said. “I congratulate you. And I feel you deserve a reward. So I'm going to tell you everything. In a way it's appropriate that M16 should have sent me a real English schoolboy. Because, you see, there's nothing in the world I hate more. Oh yes...” His face twisted with anger, and for a moment, Alex could see the madness, alive in his eyes.

“You bliddysnobs with your stuck-up schools and your stinking English superiority! But I'm going to show you. I'm going to give you what you deserve!”

He stood up and walked over to Alex. “I came to this country forty years ago,” he said. "I had no money. My family had nothing. But for a freak accident, I would probably have lived and died in Cairo. Better for you, if I had! So much better!

"I was brought here and educated by an English family. They were grateful to me because I'd saved their lives. Oh yes. And I was grateful to them too. You cannot imagine how I was feeling then. To be in London, which I had always believed to be the heart of civilization. To see such wealth and to know that I was going to be part of it! I was going to be English! To a child born in the Cairo gutter, it was an impossible dream.

"But I was soon to learn the reality. . . “Sayle leaned forward and yanked the knife out of the chain He tossed it to Mr. Grin, who caught it and spun it in his hand.

“From the moment I arrived at the school, I was mocked and bullied. Because of my size. Because of my dark skin. Because I couldn't speak English well. Because I wasn't one of them. They had names for me. Herod Smell. Goat-boy. The dwarf. And they played tricks on me. Pins on the chair. Books stolen and defaced. My trousers ripped off me and hung out on the flagpole underneath the Union lack.” Sayle shook his head slowly. “I had loved that flag when I first came here,” he said. “But in only weeks I came to hate it.”

“Lots of people are bullied at school-” Alex began and stopped as Sayle backhanded him viciously across the face.

“I haven't finished,” Sayle said. He was breathing heavily and there was spittle on his lower lip. Alex could see him reliving the past. And once again he was allowing the past to destroy him.

“There were plenty of bullies in that school,” he said. “But there was one who was worse than any of them. He was a small, smarmy shrimp of a boy, but his parents were rich and he had a way with the other children. He knew how to talk his way around them ... a politician even then. Oh yes. He could be charming when he wanted to. When there were teachers around. But the moment their backs were turned, he was onto me. He used to organize the others. 'Let's get the goat-boy. Let's push his head in the toilet.' He had a thousand ideas to make my life miserable and he never stopped thinking up more. All the time he goaded me and taunted me and there was nothing I could do because he was popular and I was a foreigner. And do you know who that boy grew up to be?”