Contest

Now there was only one other contestant left -- and he still hadn't found Holly and Selexin.

Swain took a deep breath and heaved himself off the car. His feet hit the concrete with a soft splash.

It wasn't over yet.

----ooo0ooo------

'We have to,' Selexin said urgently.

'You can. But I'm not,' Holly said.

'I am not going to leave you here.'

'Then we can just stay here together.' Holly folded her arms resolutely.

They were still standing on the Third Floor landing of the stairwell, outside the study hall.

After seeing Hawkins' mutilated body suspended from the ceiling and throwing up, Holly had slumped down against the nearest wall and stared off into space. Now she was flatly refusing to enter the study hall, which meant walking past the body, and -- worse still -- through the blood.

Selexin looked about himself nervously. Down the stairs, he could see the open door to the Second Floor. Inside the study hall, upside down, he saw Hawkins' body swaying gently from the ceiling.

Whatever had done this -- Selexin suspected it had been Bellos and his hoods -- it had ripped his arms right out of their sockets and torn off his head, accounting for the enormous pool of blood underneath the swinging body. Clusters of parallel gashes cut across Hawkins' body -- claw marks. Hood marks. When combined with the ominous yellow glow of the fire in the study hall, it made for a particularly grisly sight.

'You can shut your eyes,' Selexin suggested.

'No.'

'I can carry you.'

'No.'

'You must realise, we cannot stay here.'

Holly remained mute.

Selexin shook his head in frustration and again looked down the stairs.

He froze.

And then he turned back to Holly, picking her up roughly whether she liked it or not.

'Hey--'

'Shh!'

'What are you doing--?'

'We're going inside. Right now,' Selexin said, pulling her toward the door, looking over his shoulder.

Resisting, Holly followed his gaze down the stairwell. 'I said, I don't want--'

Her voice trailed off as her eyes came to rest on the door to the Second Floor. She fell silent.

A faint rectangle of light stretched out onto the Second Floor landing, and slowly -- very slowly -- Holly saw a dark shadow extend into it.

The source of the shadow appeared and Holly watched in terror as a hood stepped out onto the landing and looked up into her eyes.

The M-16's underslung unit had writing on it: taser BAYONET-4500.

Jesus, Swain thought, as he stood over the body of Harold Quaid, it made it sound like a new model motorcycle.

Swain had seen Taser shock victims before. Usually you recovered with a monster of a hangover, chiefly because police Taser sticks were unchangeably set at minimum voltage.

But this rifle-mounted Taser unit was not standard police issue. And if Quaid really was NSA, who knew what sort of voltage it was packing.

Swain looked down at Reese, lying face down in the shallow pool of water. One thing was certain: NSA Tasers weren't set to simply stun. This one had carried enough voltage to kill Reese.

Swain held the M-16 in his hands. With its magazine empty and the Taser shorted out, it was useless. He discarded the assault rifle and bent down to examine the bodies of Quaid and Martinez. They might have something else on them.

Martinez's SIG-Sauer pistol, or what was left of it, lay half-submerged in the water. It had been completely flattened -- Swain guessed Reese must have stepped on it -- and now it was little more than a collection of bent metal and broken springs.

Swain rummaged through the pockets of the two NSA men's uniforms. He found a pair of small Motorola walkie-talkies, four extra batteries for the Taser unit, extra clips for the SIG-Sauer, two telescoping truncheon sticks, and each man had two CS tear-gas grenades.

Swain wondered if Karanadons were susceptible to tear gas -- probably not. Hell, if he used the grenades, Swain thought, he'd probably only succeed in incapacitating himself. The radios were no help -- after all, who was he going to call? And he didn't like his chances with the truncheons against someone like Bellos. No, Harold Quaid and his partner had little to offer him.

He wondered how they had got inside the library in the first place. The parking lot presumably. But something must have gone wrong -- otherwise they would have had ten more guys with them, and much more artillery. Surely they wouldn't come searching for aliens with only two guns between them.

Then Swain found something.

In Quaid's back pocket. A sheet of paper. A list:

LSAT-560467-S

DATA TRANSCRIPT 463/511-001

SUBJECT SITE: 231.957 (North-eastern seaboard: CT, NY, NJ)

NO. TIME/EST LOCATION READING

1. 18:03:48 CT. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:09

2. 18:03:58 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:06

3. 18:07:31 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:05

4. 18:10:09 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:07

5. 18:14:12 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:06

6. 18:14:37 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:02

7. 18:14:38 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:02

390

S. 18:14:39 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:02

9. 18:14:40 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:02

10. 18:16:23 N.Y. Isolated energy surge/Source: UNKNOWN

Type: UNKNOWN / Dur: 0.00:07