The Hunting (28 page)

‘Believe me, you’re going to find Whistler in total darkness. We probably sucked power from the whole of B.C. I can’t believe how bright it was.’

‘Genie, press now, press now!’ Cary shouted as he began to stir.

I
t was bad enough that all the power was out right across the city, but the first indication was that the source of the failure pointed directly to the All Seasons Hotel itself.

Strindberg was on his way down by the stairs – and there would be hell to pay.

A Fortransco employee met him coming up the other way on the twentieth floor. He was out of breath and frankly scared of his boss. His hands shakily clutched the flashlight, which illuminated the space around them.

‘Where are the emergency lights?’ Strindberg demanded to know. ‘There’s a lot of panicky people in this hotel who are not happy with you guys.’

‘We’ve identified the source of the brownout, sir.’

‘Good. What was it? Generators? I can’t believe our generators could take out the whole city. Besides, what happened to the thermal generators? They never fail.’

‘The spike has blown everything out. It’s not just here in Whistler. It’s right down to North Vancouver as well.’

Strindberg frowned. ‘You’re telling me that our generators failed and it knocked out most of B.C.? That makes no sense.’

‘The energy spike was right off-scale; only the Fortress uses that kind of power, sir.’

Strindberg shook his head. ‘There is no connector. They were scheduled for a test at twenty-one hundred hours tonight. They shouldn’t have been draining power and, besides, you know it’s not connected to the grid. This is bull.’

‘Fortress experienced a full-strength transmission at sixteen-thirty-seven hours, sir. I got them on the satellite phone. The system suddenly booted up and there was a huge burst of energy for nearly seven minutes. There’s been an incident. I don’t know the details yet.’

‘Seven minutes?’ Strindberg protested. ‘That’s crazy, it would burn out circuits, the heat would be—’

‘And the power spike was channelled down to something called Radspan.’

‘Radspan! Impossible. It was mothballed years ago. If that amount of power was channelled through Radspan it would burn out …’ He suddenly realized the implication. Radspan was connected to the grid. That had always been its flaw; it could never generate enough power.

That kind of energy burst sustained for a whole seven minutes would overheat cables, there would be fires burning underground, and if it jumped stations – absolutely it could bring down the whole power system.

‘There’s a Radspan station under this hotel,’ Strindberg informed him.

‘Sir?’

‘There is a mothballed Radspan station under this hotel and it’s connected to the grid. They were right; we are the source of the power outage. God, get some men down there. It’s probably on fire right now! I knew we should have dismantled the damn thing.’

‘I don’t understand, sir. There’s a car park under the hotel. That’s it.’

‘And below the car park there are sixteen more levels. The generators are on Sixteen. You’ll need a team of fire-fighters and they will all have to swear to secrecy. You understand. This won’t be a picnic.’

‘I don’t think I have a team. They’re out inspecting damage. There’re fires breaking out all across town.’

‘Then get them back, get them back,’ Strindberg shouted. ‘We have a fire brewing down below and if it gets out of hand this whole hotel will go up with it. You understand? Get the evac plan in action
now
!’

Strindberg wasn’t sure what to do. Go down and find out how bad it was or head out of town. He didn’t want to be here when everything imploded.

‘I’m going to go up to my chopper on the roof. I’ve got good communication links there. I’ll get some experienced help for you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get moving, man. You’ve got a fire to put out.’ Strindberg turned and started to climb the stairs. It was time to abandon ship.

G
enie tried to send herself back, wake up in her own body, but nothing happened. She’d opened her eyes and found she was still in the control room and the Fortransco staff had broken through the outer chamber door. She was frozen there, afraid. There was absolutely nowhere to hide and they’d kill her if they found her and knew she’d been sending her friends to Radspan.

She wasn’t alone after all, she realized. Denis was still with her, smiling, casual as anything.

‘You’re still here.’

‘Can’t leave you to the wolves, can I?’

‘You should have transmitted. Denis, this is wrong. We came to save you.’

He smiled. ‘
I’m
here to save
you
. Watch this.’

‘What are you doing?’ She realized he was manipulating the computer.

‘Doing what we should have done a long time ago.’

‘What? We’re supposed to dump all the data off the servers. Marshall thinks it will be—’

Denis shook his head. ‘There’s no one left we can save. They’ve been making sure of that. The others were lucky to get out. Their core DNA was stored on Level Three servers. They’ve been upgrading and dumping data. Marshall is right about one thing; we were stored on at least forty thousand servers. But everyone A through to G is already deleted.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. I promise I’d save them if I could.’

‘But that means you …’

Denis smiled. ‘I am now stored on the nuclear research facility in Nebraska. I looked for the biggest capacity I could find and that’s where I am. I‘m not going to lose anything, from now on. They can’t touch me.’

‘You’ve changed so much.’ Genie regarded Denis with awe. He was so confident now.

Denis grinned. ‘You started it. I’m learning everything I can. I was so obsessed with getting home and seeing Mom and Dad I never really thought about what I really wanted. When they snatched me back – I discovered I could be anything I wanted.’

Genie watched the Fortransco technicians gather in the transmission chamber. They seemed to stop and gawp as they saw Genie and Denis inside the control room. Denis waved, just to annoy them.

‘The door’s locked. Don’t worry, they can’t get in. Just got one more thing to do and then we’ll leave,’ Denis told her.

Genie looked at the faces of the technicians as they argued about what was the best thing to do. She turned and watched Denis.

‘What are you doing now?’

‘Sending every test transmission to YouTube and a link to every news-broadcaster I could think of. One of them has to take it seriously this time. I already sent them all of Dr Milan’s tests. They are going to look so sick around here when they find out.’

Genie stared at him with astonishment.

‘Mine and yours too?’

‘All of them. We’ll be famous. In my case, dead famous.’ He grinned as he glanced over at her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a way out of here. They aren’t going to get you.’

Genie didn’t want to say that she didn’t want her transmission on YouTube, but she understood why he wanted to do it.

‘Every missing kid, every missing dog or cat,’ Denis was saying. ‘If this doesn’t stop the Fortress, nothing will. People may not care about us kids from Spurlake, but they care a whole lot about their precious pets. You can bet on that. There might be riots.’

A chair slammed against the control window, making Genie jumped out of her skin. The glass didn’t even crack.

Denis laughed. ‘It’s bulletproof glass.’ He waved at the technicians. ‘Try again, suckers. I’ve got one more surprise for you.’

Denis pressed a button and suddenly everything came to life. The transmission platform was active; the technicians suddenly realized this. They were in the teleport chamber, they could be transmitted. Some instantly began yelling and screaming to shut it down, but the control room was soundproof. Genie could see the power indicator was rising. It began a countdown to transmission at ten seconds.

‘Video cameras on,’ Denis said, a smirk on his face. ‘This won’t be pretty.’ He turned to Genie. ‘Let’s go.’

He moved past her and ducked under a table. ‘Come on.’

Genie looked back at the transmission room. Saw a woman pressed against the wall trying to keep out of range, saw two men trying to get back out but the door was locked and, as the countdown reached one second – a man turned to run but he disintegrated before her eyes and vanished into thin air.

‘Now, Genie! This place could get real hot in a minute.’

There was a panel in the wall, which led to the air-ducts. It was wide enough to crawl into. Genie hesitated.

‘You have to crawl along for two metres and there’s another panel. Kick it out and I’ll meet you there.’

Genie took a deep breath. Suddenly there was a loud wet slap on the window behind her. She didn’t have to look back. Carbon blowback! Someone’s DNA was plastered over the control-room glass.

She climbed into the air-duct and quickly moved forward into solid darkness. Her fingers found the outline of another panel and she turned round to kick. Her mind could never quite get a handle on how she was just as solid here as back in Radspan. If she was a ghost, how could she kick anything?

‘Kick harder,’ Denis called from the other side.

Angrily she kicked again and the metal panel fell with a clang to the ground below. Burning fumes immediately invaded her nostrils.

Denis pulled her out. ‘We’re in the tunnel that leads to the first Radspan station. The cables have overheated and the plastic’s burning. Cover your mouth and nose and follow me close.’

‘Thanks …’ Genie began, but started to cough.

She couldn’t see anything. She stumbled after Denis, trying to keep up with him, her throat getting tighter, her eyes stinging. Denis reached back, took Genie’s hand. The smoke was overwhelming. She could barely breathe. Her eyes were tightly closed and she stumbled over melting cables towards a door. She didn’t understand why she hadn’t gone back. She was done. She had sent Cary. She didn’t know if Julia had transmitted; the feedback said only ninety-nine point one per cent of her was sent and zero point nine per cent of a person was going to be a lot, wasn’t it? They were in a panic, trying to rush it. Cary could only save those he could find – and then there was the shock of Denis saying he didn’t want to go. She didn’t fully understand it, couldn’t persuade him that he’d grow, that in just a couple of years he’d be at his normal height. She still couldn’t believe he’d got her out of there.

Denis reached some steps and negotiated with the door lock, seeming to listen to something inside his head for a moment before entering a code.

The door swung open and they both ran in, quickly closing it after them, sealing out the smoke, Genie coughing and gasping for breath. ‘God, can’t see,’ she muttered, spitting out a nasty taste in her mouth. ‘My eyes … Thanks, Denis. Thanks.’ She coughed some more and staggered back against the door, clutching her throat.

There was a single blue light hanging from a wire in the ceiling. There were in a storeroom filled with dusty computer parts. Denis went towards the emergency exit door.

‘You have to climb from here. It’s sixteen floors,’ Denis informed her, turning round. ‘Genie? Genie?’

Denis realized that she’d gone. He frowned and sat down, feeling very bad suddenly. He could have gone with her; he could have transmitted before Cary. This was what he wanted, right? So why did he suddenly feel so utterly alone?

‘I’ll miss you, Genie,’ he mumbled sadly, a lump in his throat.

T
hey were on the tenth floor and already exhausted and sweating from the exertion. Carrying your own weight up stairs whilst acrid plastic smoke drifts by wasn’t easy.

So far only one of the teleporters had fully revived. Miho still seemed confused and Julia limp. Cary was struggling to climb the stairs on his own, but his legs were like jelly and he felt nauseous.

Rian carried Genie up a few steps and then went back for Miho, who could walk now, but not without help. Then repeated the process. All the time his lungs were filling with smoke and he was getting weaker. Renée managed Julia, and Mouch was already at the top barking for them to hurry up.

‘Any way we can get Mouch to shut up?’ Marshall asked. ‘I don’t want people to know we’re down here.’

‘Someone must know we’re here, the smoke must be coming out somewhere up there,’ Renée said, coughing again. She had one hell of a headache from the fumes.

Suddenly it was as if the sun exploded down below and they all had to cover their eyes again.

‘What?’

‘Another transmission,’ Marshall answered. He couldn’t face going down those stairs. But who had transmitted, how? Cary was supposed to be the last? Had Denis changed his mind?

‘I’ll go,’ Rian said, waiting for his eyes to adjust again.

Marshall grabbed his sleeve. ‘No. Stay … They won’t survive one second down there in those fumes. Nor will you. It’s too hot down there now. We have to keep going up. It could turn into a fireball any minute.’

‘But—’

‘Absolutely not, Rian. It would be stupid. Utterly stupid. Get us all to the surface. That’s your job. There’s no one to save down there. Believe me.’

Rian could sense the air was growing more choked and polluted by the second. Reluctantly, he had to accept Marshall was right. He went back up the stairs, trying to blot out an image of someone lying on the platform, gasping for air.

On Level Fourteen the platform was red-hot. The air stank and hung heavy with melting plastic fumes. A twisted heap of newly arrived body parts lay on the platform. Something stirred for just a second, something no longer human, something wearing a lab coat. Someone died. No one saw. The air suddenly ignited with a
whoosh
. A flash fire leaped across the whole floor, consuming the oxygen and everything in its path.

Marshall had to rest. His leg was in agony and he was afraid he’d have one of his fits. He was as disappointed as the rest of them that they hadn’t saved as many as they hoped. He was worried about their reception upstairs. It wouldn’t take long for someone to realize the problem came from Radspan and someone had to remember it was down here.