The Shadow Project

Chapter Sixty-Two

Adam was bleeding all over the floor and fighting to keep from fainting with pain and nausea as Pelham stood over him with the pistol and forced him to reassemble the Kammler machine.

‘There,’ he gasped when the last bolt was tightened on the service hatch. ‘It’s done.’

‘Make it work,’ Pelham said through gritted teeth.

Adam thumped the red activation knob with the heel of his hand.

Nothing.

Of course, nothing.

The silent scream of frustration had to be vented. Not even caring about the gun in Pelham’s hand, Adam snatched up a heavy lump-hammer and whacked the machine’s casing with all the strength that was left in him. The clang filled the vault. He dropped the hammer on the floor. ‘Look, just fucking kill me,’ he panted.

And he and Pelham both stood back in amazement as the machine started to hum.

It was a low vibrating throb at first, rising steadily in pitch. The upper section of the bell started to rotate like the turbine of a jet engine. Faster and faster, and it suddenly seemed to Adam as though the metal was beginning to glow with a strange blue-tinged light.

Both men were too astonished to speak. Then, as the rising hum became a tortured drone, something happened that nothing could have prepared Adam for.

The hammer moved – by itself. It was dragged across the floor, then suddenly sailed into the air and flew towards the machine. It slammed against the metal casing, ten times harder than Adam could have swung it, and stuck fast. Seconds later, the mess of spanners and screwdrivers and other tools that littered the floor, every metal object in the vault, went flying through the air, sucked towards the machine with incredible force. The pistol was torn out of Pelham’s hand. He ran to the machine, tried to prise it off, but it was as though it had been welded to the casing.

Adam was sure he could feel strange effects inside his body. The electromagnetic field that the Bell was generating must be way off any Tesla scale, hundreds of times greater than an MRI scan. But something told him that the machine was only just beginning to power up. It was nowhere near its capacity yet. He stared at it. Everything that he and Michio and Julia had dreamed about was actually happening right there in front of him. The Kammler machine was drawing energy from the hidden dimensions within empty space, sucking it in like a giant lung taking in air, initiating the process of converting it into pure power. Terrifying, limitless amounts of power.

The drone was turning into a howl. Adam’s vision was beginning to blur. Pelham staggered away from the machine, the incredulous look on his face lit blue by the intense glow coming off the casing.

Then the machine suddenly went quiet.

Oh, holy shit. Adam instinctively cringed down close to the floor. Pelham opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came out.

The room seemed to explode as the magnetic field surrounding the machine suddenly reversed polarity. The metal objects stuck to the casing burst outwards in all directions like shrapnel from a bomb. Adam threw himself down flat as the steel toolbox went flying over his head like a missile and punched like a tank shell through the vault door. In the same instant, the lump-hammer spun violently through the air and took Pelham in the back of the head with such power that it went right through. Adam caught a nightmarish glimpse of the man’s face disintegrating as he went down.

Now the whole vault seemed to shake. Rays of strange blue light shone through the dust that filled the air. The howl of the machine had resumed, building to a terrifying scream, and Adam could feel the force field vibrating his ribs. He could feel it in the very tissues of his organs. He scrambled to escape, crying out in pain from his injured leg. Pelham’s pistol was lying in the dust. Adam had never so much as held a gun in his life, but he scooped it up and gripped it tight as he tumbled out through the ragged hole in the door.

He hobbled in flickering strobe-light down the passage leading to the circular gallery around the lift shaft. Jerked open the steel cage door, threw himself into the lift and slammed his fist against the Bakelite button, praying that the thing would work. Slowly, much too slowly, the lift began to grind upwards.

Nausea was pounding through his head, and it wasn’t just from the gunshot wound. He was sure he could feel the solid rock around him vibrating.

He didn’t know what was going to happen. All he knew was that the machine was out of control.

He had to find Rory. He had to find his boy.