Matthew Reilly - Area 7

locked me in here!"

"You know this facility?" Book II yelled. Beside him,

Juliet stole a glance at the heavy door leading back to the animal

cage room. It was banging from the other side.

"Yes!" the man named Franklin said.

"What do you think?" Book II asked Juliet.

She pondered it for a moment.

Then she shouted up the ramp: "Curtis! Quickly! Get

back here! I got another lock I need opened!"

Two minutes later, they were all heading up the ramp,

now with a new member added to their group.

As they raced up the sloping walkway, however, making

for the next floor, none of them noticed the layer of expanding

water that lapped up against the bottom of the ramp.

when schofield's runaway AWACS plane had crashed

down onto it, the massive aircraft elevator platform had been

parked on Level 4—at the spot where the President's entourage

had left it nearly an hour earlier.

Now, the crumpled remains of the Boeing 707 lay

sprawled across the width of the elevator platform.

Gnarled pieces of metal lay everywhere. A couple of

tires had been thrown clear with the impact. The plane itself

lay pointed downwards, tilted over on its side, its nose

dented sharply inwards, its left-hand wing broken in half,

crushed beneath the plane's tremendous weight. Miraculously,

the AWACS plane's thirty-foot flying-saucer-like

rotodome had survived the fall completely intact.

Shane Schofield stepped out of the wreck of the plane,

followed by Gant, Mother and Brainiac. They jumped over

the debris as they ran for the giant steel door that led to

Level 4.

A smaller door set into the base of the gigantic door

opened easily.

No sooner had they opened it than Schofield raised his

gun and fired. The shot smashed into a wall-mounted security

camera, blasting it to oblivion in a shower of sparks.

"No cameras," he said as he walked. "That's how

they're following us."

The four of them made their way up a short upwardly

sloping corridor. A squat solid-looking door loomed at the

end of it.

Mother spun the flywheel on it and the big door swung

open.

132

Matthew Reilly

Schofield stepped through the doorway first, his nickel

plated pistol leading the way.

He emerged inside a laboratory of some sort. Supercomputers

lined the walls, their lights blinking. Keyboard

terminals and data screens and clear-plastic experiment

boxes occupied the remaining bench space.

Otherwise, the lab was deserted--

Blam!

Gunshot.

Blam!

Another.

It was Gant, exterminating a couple of security cameras.

Schofield continued to scan the wide room.

The most dominant feature of the laboratory was a line

of slanted glass windows that lay directly opposite the entrance.

He stepped up to the observation windows and peered

out through them--

---and found himself looking out over a wide, high

ceilinged room, in the center of which stood a gigantic glass

cube.

The cube was freestanding, occupying the center of the

hall-like room, but without touching its ceiling or walls.

The wall on the far side of the cube--a wall which divided

this level in two--didn't quite reach the ceiling.

Rather, it stopped about seven feet short of it, replaced by

thick glass. Through that glass, Schofield saw a series of

crisscrossing catwalks suspended above whatever was on

the other side of the floor.

But it was the cube in front of him that held his immediate

attention.

It was about the size of a large living room. Such a conclusion

was easy to come to, given that the glass cube was

filled with regular household furniture--a couch, a table,

chairs, a TV with PlayStation 2 and, most strangely of all, a

single bed draped with a Jar Jar Binks doona cover.

Some toys lay strewn about the glass-enclosed living

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room. Matchbox cars. A bright yellow Episode I spaceship.

Some picture books.

Schofield shook his head.

It looked like the bedroom of a little boy.

It was at that precise moment that the occupant of the

glass cube ambled casually out from a discreetly curtained

off corner of the cube--the toilet.

Schofield's jaw dropped.

"What on earth is going on here?" he breathed.

there was a set of stairs on the northern side of the elevated

lab leading down to the cube.

When he reached the base of the stairs, Schofield

walked alongside the dividing wall that sealed this section

off from the eastern side of the floor. Gant walked with him.

Mother and Brainiac stayed up in the observation lab.

Schofield and Gant came to a halt before the giant freestanding

cube, gazed into it.

The occupant of the glass cube saw them coming, and

casually walked over to the edge of the completely sealed

structure.

The occupant arrived at the clear glass barrier in front of

Schofield, cocked his head to one side.

"Hey, mister," the little boy said.

"--SIR, I HAVE COMPLETE VISUAL BLACKOUT IN THE LABS ON

Level 4. They've started shooting the surveillance cameras--"

"I'm surprised it took them this long," Caesar Russell

said. "Where is the President?"

"Level 5, moving up the ramp to Level 4."

"And our people?"

"Alpha Unit is in position, waiting in the decompression

area on Level 4. Delta Unit has been stopped in the animal

containment area on Level 5."

Caesar smiled.

Although Delta was momentarily halted, the theory behind

its movements was sound. Delta was forcing the President

up through the complex--to where Alpha was waiting ...

"Tell Delta to get through that doorway and push up the

ramp, and cut off the President's retreat."

he couldn't have been more than six years old.

And with a bowl-shaped shock of brown hair that came

down to his eyes, Disneyland T-shirt and Converse sneakers,

he looked like any of a million American kids.

Only this kid lived inside a glass cube, in the belly of a

top-secret United States Air Force base.

"Hey there," Schofield said warily.

"Why are you frightened?" the boy asked suddenly.

"Frightened?"

"Yes, you're frightened. What are you scared of?"

"How do you know I'm frightened?"

"I just know," the boy said cryptically. He spoke with

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such a serene, even voice that Schofield felt like he was in

some kind of dream. "What's your name?" the boy asked.

"Shane. But most people call me Scarecrow."

"Scarecrow? That's a funny name."

"What about you?" Schofield said. "What's your

name?"

"Kevin."

"And your last name?"

"What's a last name?" the boy asked.

Schofield paused.

"Where are you from, Kevin?"

The boy shrugged. "Here, I guess. I've never been anywhere

else. Hey, do you want to know something?"

"Sure."

"Did you know that Twinkies give kids half their daily

glucose requirement as well as giving them a tasty snack?"

"Uh, no, I didn't know that," Schofield said.

"And that reptiles are so sensitive to variations in the

earth's magnetic field that some scientists say they can predict

earthquakes? Oh, and nobody knows news like NBC,"

the boy said earnestly.

"Is that so?" Schofield exchanged a glance with Gant.

Just then, a loud mechanical noise echoed out from the

other side of the dividing wall.

Schofield and Gant spun, and through the glass section

at the top of the wall, saw the lights on the other side of

Level 4 suddenly and unexpectedly go out.