The Shadow Project (14 page)

T
hey bandaged his neck and leg and put him in jail.

Fortunately they locked him in the same old cell.

Danny wandered casually to the door and examined the lock. They'd taken away his lockpicks, of course…except for the one he'd concealed above the lintel. Danny grinned to himself. Hiding a pick was an old habit, in case he got interrupted and his stuff was confiscated. Last time he got out of this cell, he'd been so intent on escape, he forgot to take the hidden pick with him. Lucky lapse.

You had to look closely to see the way he'd sabotaged the lock. The door still closed properly, the key still turned, but if you tickled it with the pick, like
so…
it was even easier than the first time. All he had to do was turn the handle and step outside. But first he had to find out what guards they'd posted this time.

Danny walked back to the bunk bed and lay down.
Although his insides had settled a bit since poor Fran had switched on that standing wave, they still felt shaky and his stomach was queasy. His instinct was to ignore it and hope that it would pass. But now he began to concentrate on it. The feeling of unease grew worse.

What was it Nan always said? “What can't be cured must be endured”? Let's see how well he could endure this lot. Danny closed his eyes and fixed his attention even more firmly on the discomfort inside him. Almost at once, the shakiness turned into a vibration. Danny lay there, letting it all happen. He felt as if his whole body was shivering, but not actually moving. It didn't make sense, but he'd been here before so he didn't waste time trying to make sense of it. He waited while the vibration became almost unbearable. Then, just as he thought it was going to shake him to pieces, it stopped.

Suddenly he couldn't move a muscle. But instead of fighting, he willed himself to relax and waited for the bats. After a few minutes they arrived, flitting briefly near his head, then the paralysis vanished as abruptly as it had come, and the bats disappeared again.

Danny sat up, swung his feet onto the floor, and walked across the cell, leaving his body stretched out on the bunk.

It felt different from the way things worked with the psychotronic helmet. His second body felt a whole lot
lighter, for a start, and when he looked back at his physical body laid out on the bunk, it was positively spooky. The thing lying there looked just like him, only dead. He could see his chest rise and fall with his breathing, but he
still
looked dead.

Danny turned away and floated through the wall of his cell. If there were guards, it didn't matter: he could see them, but they couldn't see him.

There was somebody in the corridor outside, but it was definitely not a guard.

The gray-haired man had his back to Danny and was dressed in robes and turban. If he was a guard, that made him the oddest guard Danny had ever seen. But he probably wasn't a guard, probably a visitor, or possibly an MI6 operative in disguise for an overseas mission, although that didn't make much sense since the missions here were all RV so far as Danny understood it, and—

The man walked through a wall, and Danny stood there, mouth open, staring at the spot where he disappeared.

After a moment Danny's mind started to work again. This guy was out of his body! He could project exactly the way Danny could. But he wasn't a Shadow Project operative—they only used teenagers. This was somebody with special talents wandering around the Project complex, and you could bet he was up to no good. Danny's
mind raced. If he couldn't break out for any reason, or got caught and brought back like the last time, then maybe he could bargain information that somebody was spying on MI6, exactly the same way MI6 was spying on the bad guys. Danny dove for the wall and followed the stranger.

Danny emerged on the other side of the wall into a second corridor. The man had only to turn his head to catch sight of him, but Danny kept his distance and, as it happened, the man did not turn around. It obviously never occurred to him that he could be followed.

When they left the building, the stranger took to the air. Danny looked up after him with a sinking feeling. Carradine had told him about flying, but didn't explain how. What had he said? “Gravity can't hold you?” What sort of instruction was that? Danny tried to launch himself in the air and stayed firmly on the ground. He tried again, concentrating hard this time, and still nothing happened. Above him, his quarry was getting smaller in the sky. Danny imagined himself as a airplane. Nothing. The man was getting away. In a moment of mad panic, Danny tried jumping, and to his astonishment, took off like a bird. In a moment he was at the same altitude as the flying man, keeping his distance. The stranger, fortunately, still didn't look around.

In minutes they'd left the Project far behind.
Eventually they came to a run-down house along a lonely road. The man swooped in like a ghost, and Danny slid down directly after him…

…and stumbled on something that made him wish he'd never left his cell.

G
ary Carradine pushed the laptop forward. “Is that the man who trapped you?”

The photograph had been taken at some sort of formal function, and most of the men in it looked like Saudis with a scattering of Westerners in well-cut suits. The Skull was in the Western group. Carradine tapped the image of the man beside him, an elderly Lusakistani with staring eyes.

“That's him,” said Opal at once. She leaned forward to look more closely, but there was never any doubt. “Who is he?”

“Exactly who you said he was,” Carradine told her. “Hazrat Farrakhan, the Skull's chief adviser. We've a file on him six inches thick. Sounds bizarre, but before he joined
Épée de la Colère
he was a marabout.”

“What's a marabout?” Michael asked.

Carradine frowned. “It's a sort of holy hermit—we've
no exact equivalent term in the West. The Russians would call him a starets, like Rasputin. The thing is, he's a devotee of
ilmu al-hikmah
, Middle Eastern occultism.”

Opal's eyes widened. “He told me he was a student of ilmu al-something. I thought it was a person.”

Carradine shook his head slowly. “No, not a person.”

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” George Hanover asked.

The phone on the desk began to ring, and Carradine picked it up. “Yes?” After a moment he said, “We'll be right up.” He cradled the receiver. “Lab's finished work on the surveillance tapes.” He pushed himself to his feet. “They're set up, waiting for us.” As he headed for the door he paused. “Apparently we may have been a little hasty about young Danny.”

The lab technicians had cleared out by the time they reached the viewing room. Roland clicked a remote control, and the screen on the wall lit up. “I'm afraid this may prove rather disturbing,” he said, glancing at Opal.

Opal fumbled for a chair, only vaguely aware of Michael sliding into a seat beside her. On screen she recognized G.R. 1. The
G.R.
stood for generating room in Project jargon, and G.R. 1 was where the Project kept its collection of historical devices. At first the room looked exactly as she remembered it, everything neatly displayed
on tables or in cabinets like a museum exhibit. Then her father fast-forwarded, and Fran Hitchin came in with Danny, both walking like Charlie Chaplin because the tape was speeded up. Opal felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach. She couldn't believe Fran was dead.

There was a slight picture jolt, then Danny looked around at normal speed and said, “What's this, then—the Project Museum?”

“Looks a bit like a museum, doesn't it?” Fran said. Then the picture speeded up again, the voices high and squeaky. Roland slowed it again at random. “—standing wave,” Fran Hitchin said.

George Hanover frowned. “You don't think she decided on a standing-wave experiment, do you?”

“Might have,” Carradine said, frowning. “See if you can find any more references, Roland.”

“Do my best,” Sir Roland murmured. He speeded the tape again, but in staccato bursts now, through a conversation between Danny and Fran. Only short phrases broke through “…threshold…vibration…wave…” Danny was seated in a chair in the middle of the room. Fran was by the control panel.

“Here we are, I think,” Sir Roland said, and slowed the picture to its normal speed as Danny was saying: “I'll wave to you as I come out of my body.” Opal noticed that he was gripping the edge of the chair, probably because
he was nervous. But he didn't look as if he was about to attack Fran. He wasn't even looking in her direction.

“That would be nice,” Fran said. “Are you all set?”

“Hit the juice!” Danny told her cheerfully.

The overhead camera showed Fran reaching out to the control console. The microphones picked up the low growl of an electronic organ. Beside Opal, Michael leaned forward. Danny looked around vaguely as if trying to discover where the sound was coming from. Then it stopped.

Opal gasped out loud. On the screen something struck Danny Lipman with such force that he was bowled over onto a display case. Broken glass sounded from the speakers. “Jesus!” George Hanover exclaimed.

“What the hell is that?” asked Carradine. He was leaning forward, his eyes locked on the screen.

Michael hissed something under his breath. Opal thought it might have been
demon.

There was half a heartbeat as the creature stopped and Opal could see what it was: a gray, naked, apelike thing with vaguely feline features, clawed hands, and reddish, hate-filled eyes. It tilted its head briefly to one side as if listening, then launched itself across the room with superhuman speed. For a split second Opal thought it might attack Danny again, but it ignored him in favor of Fran. Its limbs actually blurred as it attacked her. Fran
screamed and blood spurted across the room. Opal felt suddenly, violently sick and turned her head away.

“It wasn't Danny,” said Mr. Hanover in surprise. “Danny didn't kill her.”

Opal forced herself to turn back to the screen. Fran was clearly dead. She was lying on her back, eyes open, her clothes shredded and blood oozing from a dozen wounds. The thing was actually squatting on her chest. Then over an endless second, something almost unbelievably frightening happened. It turned its head to look toward the camera lens so that it seemed to stare directly into her eyes. Then it turned away and…

Opal felt her stomach convulse and retched violently. But now there was no question of looking away. She was paralyzed by the sheer horror of the scene.

“Hey!”

It took Opal a moment to realize where the exclamation came from. Then she saw that Danny had climbed to his feet and was moving unsteadily toward the beast. The thing climbed off Fran's bloody chest and loped with slow, horrid determination toward him. Even watching the security tape, Opal wanted to scream at Danny to run, but Danny didn't run. Instead, he threw himself toward it.

The sheer speed of the creature was terrifying. Danny
didn't lay a hand on it, and suddenly there was blood oozing from his thigh. He half fell backward, against a table. The thing crouched and leaped. Danny's hand came up and there was something in it, a knife or dagger of some sort. He stabbed the creature as it struck him.

The screen went blank.

“What was that?” Opal demanded. She looked desperately from one face to the other. Michael was still staring at the blank screen, his mouth open in shock.

“This is the point where the alarms went off,” said Carradine.

“There seems to have been some sort of electrical discharge,” Mr. Hanover volunteered. “It set off the alarms and burned out the security cameras.”

“Yes, but what
happened
?” Opal demanded.

Her father shook his head. “You know as much as we do. Danny said this was what happened—something attacked them…some
thing
attacked them—but he was fairly incoherent and his whole story sounded utterly fantastic, so we didn't believe him.”

Opal swung around to Carradine. “What
was
that?”

Carradine had the look of a man in shock. “I don't know. When my men reached G.R. 1, there was nothing there. Obviously. Otherwise we would have believed Danny.”

Opal blinked. “Do you think it escaped?” She only just managed to suppress a shiver. If the creature was on the loose…

But Carradine was shaking his head. “There was nowhere it could go. You know the sort of security we have in the operations rooms. I think we have to assume Danny killed it.”

“What did Danny say happened?”

“He said there was a wild animal and it disappeared in a flash of light. It didn't sound all that likely until now.”

“Can we see where it came from?” Michael asked suddenly. The shock was gone from his face, and he was looking grave but in control. Opal admired his aplomb.

“Ah,” said Opal's father. He picked up the remote again. When the screen flashed back into life, the tape had reverted to the scene where Fran and Danny entered the room. In a moment Sir Roland had forwarded it to the point just before the appearance of the creature. “At normal speed, the impression you get is that it jumps out of a cupboard. I'm going to slow it down.”

He pressed the button and the picture slowed. “Hit the juice!” Danny said in a deep bass voice.

Opal's eyes were glued to the screen now that she knew where to look. Even so, the creature seemed to leap from a cupboard—a
closed
cupboard—albeit in slow
motion. Then the picture reversed and the speed dropped again to frame-by-frame. There was no sound: the picture simply jerked forward one step at a time. Danny sat in his position looking vaguely uneasy. Fran's hand edged toward the controls. Opal watched the cupboard and nothing else.

Flip!
It happened between one frame and the next. In the first, everything was as it should be. The cupboard was closed. Fran Hitchin's hand was on the switch. In the next, the creature was there, hanging in midair outside the cupboard. It hadn't jumped out of the cupboard at all. It seemed simply to have…
materialized
in the room.

There was a drawn-out moment of stunned silence; then Sir Roland said, “We'd better let young Danny go.”

Carradine pulled a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Opal, who caught them reflexively. “Usual cell,” he said.

“You want
me
to release him?”

Carradine said soberly, “He'll be less angry with you.”

Michael put a hand on her shoulder. “I'll go with you.”

She appreciated that, whatever his earlier behavior. The sooner Danny was released, the better. If everyone here was in shock from watching a replay of Fran's
violent death, imagine what Danny must feel, having lived through it. And he'd been injured in the process. She stood up. “Yes, all right.”

But when they reached the prison block, the door of Danny's cell stood open and the cell itself was empty.