Lincoln Child - The Forgotten Room

“Control to Variable One, give me a sitrep,” a voice crackled.

“Variable One,” the man in the corridor said. “I’m near the source of the noise.”

“Anything?”

“Negative.”

“Keep looking. He must be close. And shoot only as a last resort.”

“Roger that.” This was followed by a metallic clicking noise. For an agonizing moment, the man stood in the corridor, waiting, listening. And then — slowly, stealthily — he moved on down the hallway, back in the direction of the T intersection.

Logan waited: a minute, two minutes, five. He didn’t dare wait any longer; at some point the man would return, probably with the other two.

Emerging from beneath the table, Logan crept silently to the door, then paused again, listening. He hazarded a glance into the corridor, which was empty. He slipped out, past Benedict’s now-empty lab, until he reached another intersection. This, too, was deserted. But it made him nervous: if all these various corridors were interconnected, the chance of meeting up with one of his pursuers — either from ahead or from behind — increased dramatically.

He darted left and trotted quickly down the hall, opening doors and turning on lights as he went. Reaching another bend, he peered carefully around it — empty — then proceeded around the corner.

There it was: perhaps twenty yards ahead, the corridor ended in another steel door. Above it glowed a red EXIT sign.

Moving as fast as he could, making no further attempt to conceal his footsteps, Logan ran toward the door. Just as he reached it, movement sounded from behind. Slipping the satchel off his shoulder, Logan threw it into the open doorway of a nearby computer lab as a diversion, causing a tremendous racket, but it was too late — as he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the man in the waterproof jacket at the bend in the corridor, yelling into his radio and sprinting in his direction.

Logan opened the door at the end of the hall with the EXIT sign above it — the door was labeled BRONSTEIN — then dashed inside, closed and locked it behind him, and looked around quickly. This was clearly some kind of physics laboratory, its tables covered with spectroscopes, digital strobes, microburners, and something that looked, most bizarrely, like an oversize timpani mallet stood on end, surrounded by a chicken-wire enclosure.

At the far end of the lab was another door. This, too, was marked with a red EXIT sign.

Behind Logan, the doorknob rattled as it was tried from the far side. This was followed by a heavy thud.

Skirting the lab tables and equipment shelves, Logan raced across the floor and opened the far door. There was a short corridor beyond, its walls bare save for a large ventilation grate set near the floor. At the end was still another steel door.

Beside it, mounted on the wall, was a security keypad.

He ran forward and tried the door anyway, hoping against hope. It was securely locked.

Logan took a step back, then another, almost dazed by this bad luck. He glanced over his shoulder, across the physics lab, to the window of the door he had locked. He could see the man in the waterproof jacket throwing himself against it, again and again. The Taser in his hand had been replaced by an automatic weapon. A silencer had been snugged into the end of its barrel.

Logan stood there, frozen, as the pounding continued. Now the man was being joined by the others, and he could hear the sound of overlapping voices. And still he could not move.

There was no way out. He was trapped.

Logan stood in the open doorway, surveying the lab. At the far end, through the security glass, he could see the three men attempting to force the door open. He had only seconds until they were through.

The overhead lights dimmed; brightened; dimmed again — the full fury of the storm must be on them now. As the lights once again returned to normal, he looked around the lab in desperation. There was the phone: fixed to the wall... on the far side of the lab, near the door he’d locked. Near the men, desperately trying to get in.

Could he get to it in time?

As he stood, frozen in place, one of the men pulled out his gun and aimed it at the door lock. The sound of the shot reached him as a sharp crump.

At the same time, Logan’s gaze fell on the strange device he’d noticed earlier: the oversized timpani mallet. He peered at it more closely as another shot sounded. It consisted of a spherical metal ball atop a red plastic belt, the belt looking almost like the ribbon cable of a personal computer, fastened at the base to what appeared to be a comb-shaped electrode. The entire thing was encased in a wire cage.

It was familiar. He’d seen something like it before.

A third shot sounded. With the whine of a ricochet, part of the door lock spun back into the room, leaving a small, ragged hole.

Logan did his best to ignore this as he stared at the device. Where had he seen this?

And then he remembered. It had been at a Yale freshman fraternity rush, back before the practice was banned. An electrical engineering club had exhibited just such a device: its metal globe had shot out sparks in all directions, eliciting shrieks and cries and making people’s hair stand on end.

A Van de Graaff generator. That’s what it was called . And that wire enclosure: it was exactly like the Faraday cage Kim Mykolos had speculated about, in the faceplates of the suits hanging in the forgotten room. What was it she’d said? An enclosure, made of a conducting mesh, that ensures the electrical voltage on both sides remains constant .

A fourth shot. This one had the effect of knocking out the rest of the lock, sending it scudding across the floor.

Logan was thinking furiously, cursing the time he’d spent as a junior, snoozing through Dr. Wallace’s physics course. The cage surrounding the Van de Graaff generator — it acted as a protective device. If the generator was turned on, and the cage removed, the generator would produce a rapid buildup of negative electrons...

He rushed up to the lab table. Knocking away the surrounding cage, he saw the device was powered by two small white wires and a toggle switch inserted into the base. The wires led away to a standard electrical plug, which he picked up and slid into an outlet in the side of the lab table. Nothing happened. He pressed the toggle switch. It must have acted as a fail-safe mechanism, because immediately the generator came to life, humming and vibrating. He fell back, ducking down into the doorway and out of harm’s way. As he did so, the door at the far end of the lab flew open with a violent slam.

As the three men stormed into the room, the Van de Graaff generator went crazy; freed of the restraining mesh, it began shooting out bolts of lightning in every direction, glancing off metal chairs and tables and racks of equipment, the blue and yellow tongues licking their way up the walls in uncontrolled, spastic gestures.

The men paused a moment, staring at the awesome display of electricity streaming out in a hundred jagged lines from the metal sphere. Then one of them — the man in the waterproof jacket — stepped gingerly forward. Quick as a striking snake, a jumping, dancing bolt of electricity shot out from the generator and almost encircled him. His body jerked for a moment under the current, and then he fell to the ground, temporarily stunned.

Logan backed away still farther, out of the lab and into the short hallway. It was as he’d hoped: with the generator running, the constant stream of negative electrons it produced would jump to any conducting material... for example, a human body.

“Thank you, Dr. Wallace,” he murmured. One down, two to go...

Suddenly, silently, the lights went out.