Josh stared wide-eyed at the monitor on the desk, and listened to Adam’s words with growing panic. He had to do something, had to stop what was happening in the laboratory beneath the basement. But how?
He tapped frantically at the keyboard, but there was no response. Turning away from the computer, he ran to the bookshelf from behind which he had heard Hildie’s muffled cries. He pulled at it frantically, trying to find a way to open it, but it held fast He began yanking the books off the shelves, scattering them over the floor, until finally, on the third shelf from the top, he found the button that would release the bookcase. It swung open, and he pushed the button that would summon the elevator.
Nothing happened.
His mind reeled, and once again panic welled up, reaching out to grasp him. He fought it off, his eyes scanning the room. There had to be something—
The telephone!
He ran to it, jerked the receiver off the hook and pressed three keys. On the second ring the 911 operator answered.
“Help!” Josh cried. “He’s going to kill them! He said so!”
The voice at the other end replied calmly, “Who is this? Tell me your name and where you are.”
Fighting back the panic that still threatened to overwhelm him, Josh tried to explain what was happening. “They’re still alive,” he said. “Adam Aldrich and Amy Carlson. They’re not dead at all!”
As the operator at the other end listened incredulously, Josh blurted out his story.
• • •
Jeff Aldrich stared at the image on the monitor over the tank. The face that was etched there no longer looked like the brother he remembered, the soft-eyed boy who would do anything he was told. Was this really Adam?
His eyes moved to the mass of tissue within the tank itself.
A brain.
That’s all his brother was now. Just a lump of gray tissue in a tank of nutrient solution. Not a person.
Not a person at all.
And that’s what he would have become, too, if he’d been the one to go first
Adam had gone crazy, just like Amy had.
“You can’t do anything to us,” Jeff said, his voice etched with contempt. “You’re dead, remember? All that’s left of you is a piece of tissue in a tank!”
Adam’s rage congealed into hatred as he heard his brother’s words. Finally, he understood Jeff. Jeff didn’t care about him—had never cared about him. Any more than he’d cared about their parents. “You thought I was going to die, didn’t you, Jeff? You thought I’d die, and Dr. Engersol would figure out what had gone wrong, so when you went, you’d survive. That’s why you killed Mom and Dad, isn’t it? So you could come back and go into the tank, too?”
Jeff’s lips twisted into a sneer. “And wind up like you? Man, you are nuts! Who’d want to be where you are?” He turned and started out of the lab.
“You can’t leave,” Adam said.
Jeff stopped, turning around. “Yeah? Who’s going to stop me?”
He turned away again, starting once more toward the elevator, when he felt George Engersol’s hand on his shoulder. “No! That’s what he wants us to do. Hell do to us what Amy did to Hildie. Come on!”
Pulling Jeff with him, Engersol started back toward the lab.
He paused as he heard a sound from one of the other rooms.
The sound of a generator starting up.
Dropping Jeff’s arm, he punched his code into the security pad on one of the doors.
Nothing happened. Instantly he realized that Adam had used the computer to change the codes, locking him out.
He peered through the small glass window set at eye level in the door.
Inside, he could see that the emergency generator, which he himself had caused to be installed down here to keep the computers and life supports functioning in case of a power outage, was now running.
But why? What could Adam hope to accomplish?
Then he thought he understood. If the police were coming, and discovered what was happening down here, they might cut off the power to the building. Without the generator, Adam would die.
He moved on into the lab.
“It won’t work, Adam,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’ll find you.”
“It’s not for me,” Adam said. In startling contrast to the fury of only a moment ago, his voice was now placid. “It’s for you. Don’t you smell anything?”
Engersol frowned, then sniffed at the air.
Exhaust! But that was impossible—the generator room had its own ventilating system, automatically controlled.