Contest

southern side of the parking lot. A few letters were missing from its nameplate. It simply read: -- LER ROOM -- NO ENTRY.

And there was a car in this parking lot.

A single, solitary car.

A tiny Honda Civic turned silently into the northwest corner, waiting patiently for its owner to return.

Swain tensed at the sudden thought that perhaps there was someone else inside the library. The owner of the car, somebody they had not seen yet.

No, he told himself. Couldn't be.

Then he began to think of the other possibilities -- like sending the little hatchback blasting through the electrified grille in a fiery blaze of glory, and maybe getting out of the library.

But as he came closer to the little Civic, all his grandiose thoughts faded to nothing.

He sighed.

The car's owner would not be here.

And the car itself would not be blasting through any electrified grille.

This car wouldn't be going anywhere.

Swain looked sadly at the two heavy yellow clamps that held the little car firmly to the concrete floor of the parking lot, and then at the painted blue stripe on the concrete beneath it.

The car had been parked in a handicapped zone, and since it didn't have a sticker on the windshield, the authorities had put the clamps on it.

Swain smiled sadly at the useless car in front of him. At the hospital he'd seen it happen a thousand times, and he always felt that the creeps who parked in the handicapped zones deserved to get clamped.

But now, in the parking lot of the New York State Library, this car offered him absolutely nothing. A gun without any bullets.

It was then that Swain noticed the low hissing noise.

He turned around.

'You never give up, do you?' he said aloud.

For there, standing at the base of the down ramp -- her tail slinking back and forth behind her, her antennae clocking from side to side, and her four-sided jaw salivating wildly -- stood the very first contestant Stephen Swain had met that night.

Reese.

Holly and Selexin clambered up the dark stairwell and stopped once again on the Third Floor landing. From the bowels of the stairwell came another deafening roar.

The Karanadon.

Somewhere down there.

Selexin stopped in front of the closed door to the study hall, remembering the thin shadow he had seen in there before -- the shadow of the Codex.

'The door's closed,' Holly whispered.

'Yes...' Selexin said as if it were quite obvious.

'Well--'

'Well what?'

Holly leaned close. 'Well, we didn't close it. When we were here before, we just left. We didn't close the door. Remember?'

Selexin didn't remember, but at the moment he didn't care whether the door had been closed or not, they had to go somewhere.

'You are probably right,' he said, gripping the door handle. 'But right now, there is nowhere else to go.'

The little man turned the handle and opened the fire door. He pulled it wide.

And then he fell instantly backwards.

Beside him, Holly turned and vomited explosively.

'Bring it over! Bring it over!' Quaid called. It had started to drizzle softly and a light rain now fell on his head. Quaid didn't even notice it.

The four NSA agents carrying 'it' heaved and grunted as they lowered it to the ground beside the electrified grille.

As they did so, Quaid looked down at the silver box with the counters.

The middle counter read: 120485.05.

One hundred and twenty thousand volts. One hundred and twenty thousand volts of pure, borderless electric current. Kind of like an electrified fence, only without the fence.

Quaid turned his attention to the object that the four agents had just put down beside him. 'It' was the thick lead casing for Sigma Division's portable Radiation Storage Unit.

A portable RSU is basically a pressurised vacuum set inside a four-foot-high lead cube. It is used to contain any radioactive object discovered in the field until it can be brought back for study at the huge electromagnetic Radiation Storage Facility in Ohio.

In other words, it was a glorified thermos flask, surrounded by a thick, waist-high lead casing.

Quaid had ordered that the portable RSU in the van be dismantled and the heavy lead casing be brought out.

'It won't work,' Marshall said, looking down at the big lead cube, which now had its top and bottom faces removed.

'We'll see,' Quaid said.

'That electric field will cut right through it.'

'Eventually, yes, but maybe not right away.'

'What does that mean?'

'That means that it might buy us enough time to get a couple of men inside.'

Marshall frowned. 'I'm not sure...'

'You don't have to be sure,' Quaid said roughly. 'Because you are not the one who'll be going in.'

Selexin never took his eyes off the doorway. Beside him, Holly was still retching over a puddle of vomit, tears welling in her eyes.

Slowly, clumsily, Selexin got back to his feet, all the while staring wide-eyed up into the doorway.

There, silhouetted grimly by the blazing yellow flames inside the study hall, hanging upside down from the ceiling, drenched in glistening blood, was the horribly mutilated body of New York Police Officer Paul Hawkins.

In the lower parking lot, Swain kept his eyes fixed on Reese's tail, trying to avoid eye contact with her paralysing antennae.

She moved forward.

Toward him.

Slowly.

Then abruptly her forefoot tripped and she stumbled slightly.

It was only then that Swain remembered where he had last seen Reese. It was back on the First Floor, when the hoods had attacked her, and he and the others had fled for the stairs.

There was no doubt about it. Reese was injured. Battered and bruised from a fight with the hoods that she had only just survived.

Swain looked at himself, covered in the filthy black grime of the elevator shaft and the subway tunnel. He glanced at his wristband.

INITIALISED--3

Another contestant was dead. There were only three of them left now. The Presidian was nearing completion and the remaining contestants were injured and dirty and exhausted. It was now a battle of endurance.