Return of the Ancients by Greig Beck Read Free Book Online

wrong way, dummy.
    Arn groaned. Heads you win, tails I lose , he thought and kept walking into the breeze.
    *****
     
    No one spoke or moved for many minutes after Arn had vanished from the observation screens.
    Edward was in shock, but excited – an idea forming in his mind. Becky closed her mouth, and pushed through the crowd of bewildered teenagers, scientists and administrators, to stand before one of the large screens.
    ‘What happened? Where did he go?’
    One of the technicians got to his feet. ‘Vaporised.’
    ‘Stop that sort of talk.’ Dr. Harper frowned and took a step towards the screen.
    Beescomb was still regaining his wits. ‘Where . . . where’s my student, Harper? What just happened here? Can we get someone down there?’
    Harper ignored him and squinted at one screen, then the next. He barked some instructions to his team, and moved to a control panel, quickly ordering a lockdown of the facility. One of the screens began to flash, and Harper said to his senior scientist: ‘All right, Takada, shut it down . . . All of it.’
    Jim Takada nodded, rapidly tapping in the command sequence on his computer, before stopping and frowning, and then repeating his movements again, this time with more care. He swore under his breath and lifted his hands from the keys for a second, and then he tried it again.
    Harper, dragging his eyes away from his screen, noticed Takada’s frustration and turned to him. ‘What’s up? What’s wrong?’
    Takada shook his head. ‘It’s just . . .’ He entered an alternative sequence into the computer, then shook his head again. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, ‘It’s just not shutting down. In fact it’s still running as if there’s a high-speed, high-energy collision taking place – but that’s impossible. The energy draw is phenomenal . . . and it’s building.’
    Harper looked back at the screen, and then brought one hand up to his face. ‘Oh no, no, no – where’s our diamond? What the hell happened to the acceleration lens?’
    Takada spoke over his shoulder. ‘The kid must have it. Maybe that’s why we can’t shut the track down; he’s done something to the collision acceleration instrumentation.’
    The rise and fall of a siren could now be heard in the corridor outside. Further along the room, a female technician in thick spectacles skidded along the floor on the wheels of her chair to a different position at a long wall of electronics. She flicked some switches, then read some numbers off one of the small screens – speaking loudly, trying to be heard over the raised voices, the pulsing beeps now coming from most of the control panels in the room.
    ‘I’ve got radiation – something is bleeding high gamma down in the pipe room.’
    Edward heard Harper swear, and then saw him rub his chin in nervous indecision. That concerned him more than anything he had seen – if Harper was worried, then so should they be.
    Edward felt a rising panic, and looked back at the screens that had showed his friend disappearing only moments before. The more he stared, the more the image looked . . . wrong.
    Harper also looked along the bank of screens, shaking his head slowly. He turned back to the bespectacled technician. ‘I don’t see anything. There can’t be a leak . . . There should be nothing to leak.’ He shook his head again. ‘Doesn’t make sense at all. Regardless, I’ll have a team go in and shut it down manually.’
    ‘Well, we’d better hurry; we’ve got an enormous power drain going on.’ She turned back to her station; between her and the other technicians, the activity was now furious.
    Edward took his glasses off and wiped them. Replacing them, he moved closer to the screen. He frowned, took his glasses off again, and rubbed them even harder on his shirt. This time after he put them back on his nose, he squinted and then spoke softly, ‘Look.’
    Even in all the confusion, Harper must have heard him, and turned to stare