Carefully, he squeezed through the rectangular hole in the wall and into the room. At the last minute, lying on his stomach with his feet dangling below, he reached for the grill and set it back in place. Provided nobody looked too closely, they wouldn’t see anything wrong. The ground was a long way away, at least twice his own height, but that wasn’t going to stop him now. He dropped down and landed, catlike, on the balls of his feet. The throbbing was louder, coming from somewhere outside. It would cover any noise he made. He went over to the nearest of the silver boxes and examined it. He found two catches on the lid and pressed. The box clicked open in his hands, but when he looked inside, it was empty. Whatever had been delivered was already in use.
He checked for cameras, found none, then crossed to the door. It was unlocked. He opened it, one inch at a time, and peered out. The door led onto a wide corridor with an automatic sliding door at each end and a silver rail running its full length.
“Nineteen hundred hours. Red shift to assembly line. Blue shift to decontamination.”
The voice rang out over a loudspeaker system, neither male nor female; emotionless, inhuman. Alex glanced at his watch. It was already seven o’clock in the evening. It had taken him longer than he had thought to get through the mine. He stole forward. It wasn’t exactly a passage that he had found. It was more an observation platform. He reached the rail and looked down.
Alex hadn’t had any idea what he would find behind the metal door, but what he was seeing now was far beyond anything he could have imagined. It was a huge chamber, the walls—half naked rock, half polished steel— lined with computer equipment, electronic meters, machines that blinked and flickered with a life of their own. It was staffed by forty or fifty people, some in white coats, others in overalls, all wearing armbands of different colors: red, yellow, blue, and green. Arc lights beamed down from above. Armed guards stood at each doorway, watching the work with blank faces.
For this was where the Stormbreakers were being assembled. The computers were being slowly carried in a long, continuous line along a conveyor belt, past the various scientists and technicians. The strange thing was that they already looked finished … and of course they had to be. Sayle had told him. They were actually being shipped out during the course of the afternoon and night. So what last-minute adjustment was being made here in this secret factory? And why was so much of the production line hidden away? What Alex had seen as he crept around Sayle Enterprises had only been the tip of the iceberg. The main body of the factory was here, underground.
He looked more closely. He remembered the Stormbreaker that he had used and now he noticed something that he hadn’t seen then. A strip of plastic had been drawn back in the casing above each of the screens to reveal a small compartment, cylindrical and about five inches deep. The computers were passing underneath a bizarre machine—cantilevers, wires, and hydraulic arms. Opaque, silver test tubes were being fed along a narrow cage, moving forward as if to greet the computers: one tube for each computer. There was a meeting point. With infinite precision, the tubes were lifted out, brought around, and then dropped into the exposed compartments. After that, the Stormbreakers were accelerated forward. A second machine closed and heatsealed the plastic strip. By the time the computers reached the end of the line, where they were packed into red-and-white Sayle Enterprises boxes, the compartments were completely invisible.
A movement caught his eye and Alex looked beyond the assembly line and through a huge window into the chamber next door. Two men in space suits were walking clumsily together, as if in slow motion. They stopped. An alarm began to sound and suddenly they disappeared in a cloud of white steam. Alex remembered what he had just heard. Were they being decontaminated? But if the Stormbreakers were based on the round processor there couldn’t possibly be any need for such extremes—and anyway, this was like nothing Alex had ever seen before. If the men were being decontaminated, what were they being decontaminated from?
“Agent Gregorovich, report to the biocontainment zone. This is a call for agent Gregorovich.”
A lean, fair-haired figure dressed in black detached himself from the assembly line and walked languidly toward a door that slid open to receive him. For the second time Alex found himself looking at the Russian contract killer, Yassen Gregorovich. What was going on? Alex thought back to the submarine and the vacuum-sealed boxes. Of course. Yassen had brought the test tubes that were even now being inserted into the computers. The test tubes were some sort of weapon that he was using to sabotage them. No. That wasn’t possible. Back in Port Tallon, the librarian had told him that Ian Rider had been asking for books about computer viruses.
Viruses.
Decontamination.
The biocontainment zone …
Understanding came and with it something cold and solid jabbing into the back of his neck. Alex hadn’t even heard the door open behind him, but he slowly straightened up as a voice spoke softly into his ear.
“Stand up. Keep your hands by your sides. If you make any sudden move, I’ll shoot you in the head.”
He looked slowly around. A single guard stood behind him, a gun in his hand. It was the sort of thing that Alex had seen a thousand times in films and on television, and he was shocked by how different the reality was. The gun was a Browning automatic pistol and one twitch of the man’s finger would send a 9mm bullet shattering through his skull and into his brain. The very thought of it made him feel sick.
He stood up. The guard was in his twenties, pale faced and puzzled. Alex had never seen him before, but more importantly, he had never seen Alex. He hadn’t expected to come across a boy. That might help.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m staying with Mr. Sayle,” Alex said. He stared at the gun. “Why are you pointing that at me? I’m not doing anything wrong.”
He sounded pathetic. Little boy lost. But it had the desired effect. The guard hesitated, slightly lowering the gun. At that moment Alex struck. It was another classic karate blow, this time twisting his body around and driving his elbow into the side of the man’s head, just below his ear. The guard didn’t even cry out. His eyes rolled and he went limp. Alex had almost certainly knocked him out with the single punch, but he couldn’t take chances and followed it through with a knee into the groin. The guard folded, his pistol falling to the ground. Quickly, Alex dragged him back, away from the railings. He looked down. Nobody had seen what had happened.
But the guard wouldn’t be unconscious long and Alex knew he had to get out of here, not just back up to ground level but out of Sayle Enterprises altogether. He had to contact Mrs. Jones. He still didn’t know how or why, but he knew now that the Stormbreakers had been turned into killing machines. There were less than twenty-four hours until the launch at the Science Museum. Somehow Alex had to stop it from happening.
He ran. The door at the end of the passage slid open and he found himself in a curving white corridor with windowless offices built into what must be yet more shafts of the Dozmary Mine. He knew he couldn’t go back the way he had come. He was too tired, and even if he could find his way through the mine, he’d never be able to
