John Saul - Shadows

His mind began working quickly, examining the possibilities, savoring the opportunities for new research that the condition of Amy Carlson’s mind offered him.

The brief moment of excitement faded away, though, as he realized what he had to do, for he would never have the opportunity to work with Amy’s mind now, nor Adam’s, either.

It was time to shut them down, time to cut the support systems that gave them life.

Time to let their brains, like their bodies, die.

Should he tell Adam what was about to happen?

No.

There was no point to it, and possibly no time, either. He began tapping instructions into the computer, knowing that this time Amy wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Adam, he was equally certain, wouldn’t dare. Adam was too used to obeying instructions.

With Jeff Aldrich next to him, watching, Engersol finished typing in the commands, and entered them into the computer. Instantaneously, Adam’s image appeared on the monitor, his eyes cold and angry.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Engersol froze. On the computer screen the commands that would end the lives of Adam and Amy had stopped scrolling up the screen almost as soon as they had appeared.

“Adam,” he said quietly, “we’re going to have to close down the project.”

On the monitor Adam’s expression darkened. “Close it down? I don’t—”

“It’s not a secret anymore, Adam. Josh MacCallum knows what we’re doing, and he’ll tell others. So we have to end the project, Adam. We have to be able to show them that Josh was wrong about what is happening here.”

“But—”

“You understand, don’t you, Adam?” Engersol went on, his voice taking on the same hypnotic tone that had convinced Adam to volunteer for the project last spring. “You always knew there was a certain risk. We talked about it.”

Adam’s eyes flashed from the image on the monitor above his tank. “You’re going to kill me.”

“I don’t want to, Adam,” Engersol told him. “I don’t want to at all. But I have no choice.” He was silent for a moment, then: “Would you like me to give you a drug? I can put you to sleep first You won’t feel anything, won’t even know anything is happening to you—”

“No!”

The word crackled from the speaker. Both Engetsol and Jeff stepped instinctively back, glancing at each other.

“I’m not going to let you do it,” Adam said, the image on his monitor reflecting all the pent-up fury inside him. “I won’t let you kill us!”

Josh stared wide-eyed at the monitor on the desk, and listened to Adam’s words with growing panic. He had to do something, had to stop what was happening in the laboratory beneath the basement. But how?

He tapped frantically at the keyboard, but there was no response. Turning away from the computer, he ran to the bookshelf from behind which he had heard Hildie’s muffled cries. He pulled at it frantically, trying to find a way to open it, but it held fast He began yanking the books off the shelves, scattering them over the floor, until finally, on the third shelf from the top, he found the button that would release the bookcase. It swung open, and he pushed the button that would summon the elevator.

Nothing happened.

His mind reeled, and once again panic welled up, reaching out to grasp him. He fought it off, his eyes scanning the room. There had to be something—

The telephone!

He ran to it, jerked the receiver off the hook and pressed three keys. On the second ring the 911 operator answered.

“Help!” Josh cried. “He’s going to kill them! He said so!”

The voice at the other end replied calmly, “Who is this? Tell me your name and where you are.”

Fighting back the panic that still threatened to overwhelm him, Josh tried to explain what was happening. “They’re still alive,” he said. “Adam Aldrich and Amy Carlson. They’re not dead at all!”

As the operator at the other end listened incredulously, Josh blurted out his story.

• • •

Jeff Aldrich stared at the image on the monitor over the tank. The face that was etched there no longer looked like the brother he remembered, the soft-eyed boy who would do anything he was told. Was this really Adam?

His eyes moved to the mass of tissue within the tank itself.

A brain.

That’s all his brother was now. Just a lump of gray tissue in a tank of nutrient solution. Not a person.

Not a person at all.

And that’s what he would have become, too, if he’d been the one to go first

Adam had gone crazy, just like Amy had.

“You can’t do anything to us,” Jeff said, his voice etched with contempt. “You’re dead, remember? All that’s left of you is a piece of tissue in a tank!”

Adam’s rage congealed into hatred as he heard his brother’s words. Finally, he understood Jeff. Jeff didn’t care about him — had never cared about him. Any more than he’d cared about their parents. “You thought I was going to die, didn’t you, Jeff? You thought I’d die, and Dr. Engersol would figure out what had gone wrong, so when you went, you’d survive. That’s why you killed Mom and Dad, isn’t it? So you could come back and go into the tank, too?”

Jeff’s lips twisted into a sneer. “And wind up like you? Man, you are nuts! Who’d want to be where you are?” He turned and started out of the lab.

“You can’t leave,” Adam said.

Jeff stopped, turning around. “Yeah? Who’s going to stop me?”

He turned away again, starting once more toward the elevator, when he felt George Engersol’s hand on his shoulder. “No! That’s what he wants us to do. Hell do to us what Amy did to Hildie. Come on!”

Pulling Jeff with him, Engersol started back toward the lab.

He paused as he heard a sound from one of the other rooms.

The sound of a generator starting up.

Dropping Jeff’s arm, he punched his code into the security pad on one of the doors.

Nothing happened. Instantly he realized that Adam had used the computer to change the codes, locking him out.

He peered through the small glass window set at eye level in the door.

Inside, he could see that the emergency generator, which he himself had caused to be installed down here to keep the computers and life supports functioning in case of a power outage, was now running.

But why? What could Adam hope to accomplish?

Then he thought he understood. If the police were coming, and discovered what was happening down here, they might cut off the power to the building. Without the generator, Adam would die.

He moved on into the lab.

“It won’t work, Adam,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’ll find you.”

“It’s not for me,” Adam said. In startling contrast to the fury of only a moment ago, his voice was now placid. “It’s for you. Don’t you smell anything?”

Engersol frowned, then sniffed at the air.

Exhaust! But that was impossible — the generator room had its own ventilating system, automatically controlled.

“I’ve been experimenting with the ducts,” Adam explained in the same conversational tone he’d used a moment ago. “It wasn’t very hard, really. All I had to do was close two of them, and open two others.”

Engersol stared at the image of the boy above the tank. Behind him, Jeff Aldrich was already coughing and choking, and Engersol, too, was starting to feel the effects of the carbon monoxide that was quickly replacing the oxygen in the room.

Grabbing Jeff’s arm again, he ran back toward the elevator, but before he was halfway there, the doors slid closed, and didn’t respond as he frantically pressed the button next to them.

“No!” he bellowed. “You can’t do this to me!” Dropping Jeff’s arm, he lurched back to the lab, fury — and panic-building inside him. He tried to hold his breath, refusing to inhale any more of the deadly fumes. Eyes darting frantically about, his mind working furiously, he tried to think of some means of escape, sickened with the realization that these rooms, for so long his favorite retreat, had suddenly become his execution chamber.