Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [35]
The seeker.
There were more out there, faint and far off, drawn to him as if they could smell his presence, like sharks smelling blood. Perhaps the first seeker had silently called out to them that there was something here for them all to share.
Oh Mary-Mother-of-God … they’re going to rip me to pieces!
The nearest seeker swooped still closer to him and the faint cloud of grey began to take form. He thought he could make out the head and shoulders of the indeterminate shape, almost human-like. And a face that took fleeting form.
Beautiful. Feminine.
He almost began to think he was right first time, and that this was Heaven and those swooping forms were angels coming to escort him to the afterlife. Then that vaguely familiar feminine face stretched, elongated, revealing a row of razor fangs and the eyes turned to dark sockets that promised him nothing but death. It lunged towards him …
And then he was staring up at another face, framed with hair dangling down towards him, tickling his nose, with piercing grey eyes staring intently at him. ‘Liam O’Connor, are you all right?’
‘Becks?’
‘Affirmative. Are you all right?’ she asked flatly. ‘You appear undamaged by the explosion.’ He felt her strong hands running up and down his arms and legs, around his torso. ‘No apparent fractures.’
‘I’m OK, I think. Just a little … dizzy, so I am.’ He began to sit up and she helped him.
‘You are disorientated,’ she said.
He looked up at a clear blue sky and a dazzling sun. He blinked back the sunlight – a curious vaguely violet hue to it – and shaded his eyes with a hand. ‘Jay-zus, where are we? Is this another world?’
‘Negative.’ She looked at him, then corrected herself. ‘No. We are where we were,’ she replied.
But when? The spherical chamber and laboratory buildings were gone. Instead of the institute’s water-sprinkled lawns and flowerbeds, there was nothing but jungle. If this was the same place, then it had to be some significant time in the future or the past. It certainly wasn’t 2015.
‘The tachyon interference caused an explosive reaction,’ said Becks. ‘We were pulled through the zero-point window into what is known as chaos space.’
‘Chaos space?’
‘I am unable to define chaos space. I have no detailed data on it.’
‘And then what? We were dumped out into reality again?’
‘Correct.’
He saw another head suddenly appear above a large lush green fern leaf. Somebody else, dizzily sitting up and wondering where on earth they were. It was one of the students: a black girl, her hair neatly thatched into corn-rows. A gold hooped earring glinted in the sunlight.
‘What the –?’ she muttered as her eyes slowly panned round the tall green trees and drooping vines. Finally her eyes rested on Liam and Becks.
‘Hello there,’ said Liam, waving a hand and smiling goofily.
She stared at him silently with eyes that still seemed to be trying to work out what she was seeing.
He noticed another head appearing out of the foliage several dozen yards away. He recognized the receding scruffy hair and sparsely bearded jowls of the teacher who’d been with the group of students during the tour of the institute.
Other heads appeared, all looking confused and frightened, spread out across a clearing in the jungle, a hundred yards in diameter. Liam recognized the institute’s smartly dressed tour guide, one of the technicians who’d been in the chamber and the rest of the students.
‘Wh-what happened?’ called out the teacher.
The guide’s carefully groomed silver hair was dishevelled, his smart suit rumpled and dirtied with mud. ‘I … I … don’t know … I just …’
Liam looked at Becks. ‘We’re going to have to take charge of things, aren’t we?’
She looked at him blankly. ‘The mission parameters have changed.’
Liam sighed. ‘No kidding.’
He was about to ask her if she had any idea at all of when in time they were when he heard a shrill scream echo across the clearing.
‘What was that?’
It came again. Sharp, shrill and terrified. He got to his feet, as did several