Vortex

'Ah,' Joseph purred, 'Vortex, you mean? A grand name for such an evil device. I'm sorry to tell you, however, that by now Vortex will be destroyed, or at the very least in safe hands.'

Lucian blinked. 'Destroyed?' he repeated. 'Impossible. It's on its way to the delivery point as we speak.'

Joseph shook his head. 'Not if Ben and Annie have anything to do with it,' he said softly.

'Ben and Annie?' Lucian laughed. 'Those kids? Don't be ridiculous.'

Joseph shrugged. 'Clearly I have more confidence in them than you do. All this, however, is rather academic. I am going to destroy this place, Lucian. Whether or not you come with me is up to you.'

A tiny smile of triumph flickered over Lucian's face. 'But you won't leave me alone with the bomb, Joseph,' he taunted. 'You know I will just remove the detonator. If you try and kill me, you'll kill yourself in the process.'

Joseph raised an eyebrow. 'All that intellect, my brother, and you truly suppose that that hadn't crossed my mind?'

Lucian's eyes narrowed. 'You won't do it,' he whispered. 'You won't sacrifice your life to get back at me.'

'To get back at you, Lucian? Haven't you been listening to a word I've said? What I'm doing is not to get back at you. It's to protect the thousands of innocent lives that you would destroy if you were left unchecked.'

He closed his eyes briefly, then looked back at Lucian. His brother was scared now. Terrified. It gave him no pleasure, but there it was.

'Besides,' Joseph said, his voice cracked now, and trembling, 'do you call this hollow existence you have left me with a life?'

The question remained unanswered as a wave of indecision crashed over Lucian's face.

'Please, Lucian,' Joseph begged. 'Please. You know what the right thing to do is. This can end now. I don't want revenge, and I forgive you for what you have done. Make the right decision, Lucian, for once in your life.'

His brother was looking down at the floor now, his shoulders slumped. Finally, he moved his head up. His lips were thin; his face was white.

'OK, Joseph,' he whispered, his voice suddenly frail, betraying his age. 'You win. I'll come with you.' And with that, the elderly scientist stepped towards his brother. As he walked past the suitcase he paused, as though contemplating doing something; but a quick glance at Joseph, his finger firmly on the detonating button, clearly persuaded him otherwise.

Joseph looked towards the door. 'You go first,' he said. 'I'll follow.'

Lucian nodded, and stepped towards the door.

What made Lucian do it, Joseph would never find out. Perhaps he thought he could overcome his brother; perhaps the thought of his laboratory being destroyed, with all the research and secrets that it contained, was too much for him. Whatever the reason, as he approached his brother, Lucian hurled himself towards Joseph. They fell heavily to the ground, and Joseph felt his brother's hand clasp firmly over his own, pressing down on his thumb so that he could not release the button.

'Get up!' Lucian hissed as they struggled on the floor. 'Get up and walk to the suitcase. We're going to disengage that detonator.'

Lucian had the upper hand, and with all his might he dragged Joseph up to his feet. 'You're as crazy as you ever were,' he whispered as he did so. The old men staggered slightly as they stood up. Joseph found that the room was spinning, and it was all he could do to keep his attention focused on his button thumb, which Lucian was keeping firmly pressed down. But as they edged awkwardly towards the flight case, their legs became tangled and they tripped. As they fell, Joseph's head cracked hard on the corner of the table.

Instantly he went limp and lost consciousness.

Lucian fell too, pulled to the floor by the dead weight of his unconscious brother. And as he did so, he lost all sense of co-ordination. His knees buckled, and his hand slipped from over the thumb of his brother.

The detonating button made a small click as it was released, and that click was the last sound Lucian Sinclair ever heard.

Chapter Twenty-one

'We know you're there!' the soldier's voice called up from the ground.

Silence.

'You've got two options. Climb down quietly, or have us shoot you down, like birds.'

Ben and Annie glanced at each other, and each of them shook their head. If the soldiers wanted them, they'd have to come and get them.

'I'm going to count to five,' the soldier shouted. 'If you're not down by then, we open fire. One.'

Ben gripped onto the bark of the tree. It hurt his hand he was holding on so hard.

'Two.'

Annie looked frightened. Ben didn't blame her: he was frightened too.

'Three.'

There was a barely audible click from below as the soldier readied his weapon. Ben bit his lip, desperately trying to think of a plan.

But they never heard him say 'Four', because suddenly there was an immense explosion. It was in the distance, clearly, but it was loud enough to make startled birds rise out of the trees in great flocks, squawking with alarm.

'What was that?' one of the soldiers shouted. Even as he spoke, however, Ben and Annie looked sharply at each other and whispered one word.

'Joseph.'

From their vantage point at the top of the tree, they looked back towards the bunker. A huge black pall of smoke was hovering above it, and the whole place was a scene of devastation. Ben squinted his eyes — he thought he could see figures running away from the area. Somehow he knew, without quite understanding how, that neither Lucian nor Joseph would be one of those figures.

Below them, the soldiers had started to talk heatedly.

'The bunker — it's blown!'

'We have to get away from here. This place is going to be crawling with people before we know it.'

'No,' another voice said harshly. 'Those kids know about Vortex. If they tell anyone…'

'Then what? Vortex has been destroyed. So has the bunker. There's no evidence it ever existed. Let's just get out of here before any of our colleagues ask us what we're doing. We can forget about our money, if that's what's worrying you.'

'I agree,' said a third voice.

'Listen, I'm the ranking officer here. I'm giving you an order.'

'You can give us as many orders as you like. What are you going to do, court martial us? We're getting out of here.'

As he spoke, a mobile phone rang. The ranking officer answered, then listened silently to whoever was at the other end of the phone. 'Get back to barracks,' he instructed. 'Now.' He clicked the phone shut. 'Lucian,' he said to the others. 'He was in the bunker when it blew. He's dead.'

There was a brief pause, then one of the other soldiers spoke. 'We really have got to get out of here then. There are going to be questions, and we don't want to have to answer them.'

A moment later, through the treetops, Ben saw the three soldiers leaving. They ran back to the waiting trucks, and drove off out of sight. Half of him wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. Instead he found his eyes fixed on the cloud of smoke drifting away from the bunker.

'There was a room of explosives down there,' he said numbly. 'Joseph must have found it and…' His voice trailed away. In the past couple of days he had gone from fearing Joseph to respecting him; he couldn't bear to think of the old man meeting his final moments in that hated underground bunker.

'Maybe he wasn't down there,' Annie said quietly. 'Maybe he escaped.'

'Yeah,' Ben replied. 'Maybe.' Deep down he knew the truth.

They fell silent and continued to watch the smoke as it drifted across the wild Spadeadam landscape.

How long they sat there, uncomfortable among the upper branches of the tree, Ben didn't know. He was too busy thinking about Joseph. Had it really only been a couple of days ago that they first saw him, alone and haunting on the bridge of the railway station? He had seemed so mysterious then, mysterious and scary. And that hadn't really changed, Ben realized as he thought about it. All that had changed was that they had started to understand him a bit better. Maybe that was why the old man had seemed to trust them. For fifty years, nobody had taken him seriously; for fifty years his ramblings had been dismissed as the paranoia of a madman.