Daniel turned suddenly. He had noticed something but wasn’t sure quite what it was. Something peripheral.
Nothing had changed. The ruin was still precisely as it had been a moment before. But.
Aidan had stopped talking and was watching Daniel. The rest of them fell quiet. Aidan gestured, giving a subtle hand signal only they could read. Get back, it said.
Daniel stooped, as if he were flicking something from his boot, then straightened, throwing a handful of dust at the door. As the cloud of dust struck it, the door exploded into life, the whole frame loosing itself from the surrounding brickwork and hurling itself at Daniel, its long claws flicking up to reach for him. But Daniel was already diving to one side as Aidan blasted the thing, blowing great chunks of it away. As the dust settled, Daniel pulled himself up, shrugging off fragments of the mimic.
“Shit!” Johann said, and beside him Christian laughed nervously. They all knew about mimics - machines that looked like common objects but waited patiently, like living mines, to claim a victim - but none of the younger boys had ever seen one. Now, Daniel knew, they would find it hard to trust the appearance of anything.
Aidan was staring at it thoughtfully. After a moment he looked up at Daniel.
“Why didn’t it attack earlier?”
“I don’t know.”
But Daniel did know. It had been triggered, and not just by the handful of dust he had thrown at it Whoever lay behind this had been after him. Had wanted to take him out -specifically him. And had wanted to do it when all the team were there to witness it.
He looked up at the tiny probe that hovered at the level of his eyes.
Why now? he wondered. Are you tired of watching me?
Or was he simply being paranoid?
That last thought brought a smile to his lips. Aidan saw it and frowned. Don’t crack up on me, his eyes said.
“I won’t,” he answered out loud, wondering what they’d make of those two words. “Then lef s go,” Aidan said. “And remember ... call any earth-movements. There are burrowers out there.”
“Leon ... Leonl Sit down!”
Leon turned, glaring at Aidan, then, seeing from Aidan’s face that he would brook no further argument, did as he was told. Even so, he sat there hunched forward, picking at the floor with his gloved fingers, unable to rest, his eyes twitching here and there as if he suspected the stones themselves to transform into sudden enemies.
Delirium, Daniel thought, studying him a moment, noting how the swelling behind his right shoulder had grown this past hour.
They were crouched on the rocks above the fall, the roar of the water filling the air all around them. Half a kilometre behind them was the bridge and beyond it the tap. But there had been a host of machines at the tap - many more than were usually there - and to attempt to cross there would have been foolhardy, even if they hadn’t already lost Benoit in the woods. Aidan had decided to press on along the bank and cross further up, then double back, coming upon the tap from higher ground.
But it was as difficult to cross the river here as it had been back by the tap. More so, if anything, for the current seemed twice as strong and the sides of the ravine through which it passed twice as steep. And then there was the problem of Leon.
Leon stood once more, looking about him. A low growl escaped him. “Leon?” Daniel kept all anxiety from his voice. It was important now to keep calm. To act as if things were perfectly normal. Leon twitched round, looking at Daniel, his gun pointed straight at Daniel’s chest Stepping up to him, Daniel pushed the weapon’s muzzle aside. “If s okay, Leon. It’s okay.”
Leon seemed to shiver. Then, with a small, self-conscious nod, he squatted down again, his weapon balanced across his knees. But his eyes still flicked from side to side nervously, a deep anxiety in every line of his face. From the look of it there were poisons in his bloodstream.
Daniel stepped behind him and bent forward, looking at the swelling. As far as he could see, it now stretched right down his back. Through a crack in the armour Daniel could see how dark the flesh was, almost purple-black in colour, and as he looked he saw something within that darkness move, something small and mechanical, one tiny, fork-like limb snowing its outline briefly as it pressed up against the outer skin.
Aidan, standing at the lip of the fall, had seen nothing. He was staring out across the mist-filled gulf, his head turning now and then to consider possibilities.
There was another tap, three kilometres to the west, but they would never make that. They had to recharge, and soon.
As it was they were low on shells and grenades, and the Exit Gate was still more than fifteen kilometres to the north.
Aidan turned, looking to him, then spoke into his helmet “We need a rope.”
“True. But we haven’t got a rope.”
“So how do we get across?”
“We blow it”
“What?” Aidan came across. “Blow it?”
“Sure. We can’t wade it, and we can’t jump it and we haven’t got a rope. But we could block it Temporarily, that is.”
“You mean, blow a chunk out of the bank?”
Daniel nodded. “And as the dust settles we quickly skip across. Before the water builds up again.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“I haven’t a clue. But nothing else is going to, is it?”
Aidan smiled. “I guess not”
“Then lefs not wait.” And, taking a grenade from his belt, Daniel primed it and lobbed it down onto the bank some fifty metres below the ledge they were on. “Come on!” he yelled, as the others scrambled to their feet, realising what he had done. “Lets get down there, before the whole lot comes down on our heads!”
“You think this is it?” Aidan asked, turning to Daniel.
“Looks like it,” Daniel answered.
There had been rumours among the boys of an armoury, somewhere in the region of Buchenbach, but no one could swear to having seen it Like much else it was thought of more as legend than true fact But here it was, a strange bunker-like building, cut into the side of the mountain, below which ran a stream. And astonishingly there was a bridge. A new bridge, made of solid wooden slats.
CROSSING THE RIVER
Daniel looked about him suspiciously. They were gambling now. The darkness was falling, and Leon was going mad, and ...
He swallowed deeply. He had thought he was imagining it at first, but then he’d checked a couple of times and seen that it really was so. They had three camera bugs on him now. Three!
Was the Man himself watching? Was that it? Were they putting on a show for him?
He gripped his gun tighter, then looked to Aidan again. “Well?”
“Okay,” Aidan said, his eyes briefly uncertain. Aidan had not wanted to come this way. He’d wanted to go back and take the tap, whatever the cost But Daniel had persuaded him. After his luck at the river he seemed to have been on some kind of a roll. So why not? Because I was guessing. And that guess might cost us all our lives. He did not know why he had persuaded Aidan, but he had. It had been the same kind of instinct that made him turn left and loose off a round even before he saw or heard the threat from that side - a “sixth sense” some called it The same thing that got him through this living hell each time. He stared hard at the building, certain now that it was the armoury. And even if it was a trap, they would survive it He’d take them in and bring them out. And why? Because he had an instinct for it Aidan had not moved. Thirty seconds had passed and Aidan had not moved. Behind him the four boys waited in a line, stretched out a good three metres between each of them as they faced the armoury.