Tunnels 05 - Spiral

sine wave. Then he held up what was evidently some form of harness for a head, with two pads to cover the eyes, and numerous wires connecting it to the equipment on the trolley.
    “Did I get anywhere?” Danforth said once again with indignation, waving the device in front of Drake. “Of course I did. Here’s what you asked for — an antidote to the Dark Light.” He pressed a switch on the back of the harness, and with a hum the eye pads began to glow an intense purple. As Danforth turned with the harness still in his hands, Will caught sight of the purple light. He felt a prickling behind his eyes, then a rapid swell of pressure as if something — a traction beam — was trying to drag both his eyeballs from their sockets.
    He let out an involuntary breath and staggered back. He’d only caught the briefest glimpse of the light, but it was as though the spiked ball of energy had pushed its way inside his cranium again. “No,” he grunted, overwhelmed by a welter of unwanted memories of the Dark Light sessions that the Styx had put him through when he and Chester had been imprisoned in the Hold.
    After he recovered, he found Drake was watching him. “It affected you, too?” Drake asked.
    As Will swallowed a “Yes” in response, Danforth was making a trilling noise. “Good, good. It’s far more potent than the Styx’s efforts,” he said, sounding delighted.
    Keeping his eyes shielded from the glowing pads on the headset, Drake addressed Danforth. “So you’re saying this apparatus will purge anyone who’s been Darklit?”
    “Theoretically, yes,” Danforth replied as he turned the headset off. “The ancillary sensors take a reading of the subject’s normalized alpha brain activity,” he said, glancing at the green wave flowing across the small screen. “Then I employ a feedback loop to erase anything extraneous — anything extra the Styx might have implanted.”
    “And you’re sure it works?” Drake asked. “Without any unwelcome side effects? No memory loss or mental impairment of any kind?”
    The Professor gave an impatient sigh. “Yes, according to my calculations, it’ll work. And when have I ever been wrong?”
    “I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” Drake decided on the spot. Shrugging off his jacket and dropping it on the floor, he immediately climbed into the chair. “Let’s do it.”
    Will and Chester were flabbergasted. “Drake, do you really think this is such a good —?” Chester began.
    Drake cut across him. “How else can we tell if it works? We can hardly test it out on a rabbit, can we?”
    “But we could try it on Bartleby first,” Will suggested. “He was Darklit, too.”
    Danforth had no time for such objections. Gingerly proffering the harness to Chester because he didn’t want the boy too near him, he inclined his head toward Drake. “Put this on him. Make sure the sensors are fixed firmly on the temples or the readings won’t be reliable,” the man ordered.
    “OK,” Chester agreed reluctantly. He seated the harness on Drake’s bald scalp while Danforth made adjustments to the controls on the boxes of electronics.
    “Help, will you?” the Professor snapped at Will. “Strap him in. Make sure he’s buckled tight.”
    Will looked at Chester with a blank expression, then he did as he’d been told, making sure Drake’s arms and legs were secured to the chair by the various straps.
    There was a moment of silence as the Professor made the last adjustments. Again it struck Will how much like his dead father the scientist was �� it didn’t seem to matter to him one jot that there was a person in the chair who, if the process backfired, could be hurt. And, more than this, Danforth had known Drake from the time he was a child, and had evidently had a huge influence on him. Drake’s specialization in optoelectronics and his time studying it at university must have arisen from Danforth’s influence, and yet the Professor was only interested in finding out if his contraption worked. Dr. Burrows had been the same, sacrificing anything and anyone around him if it was necessary in his quest for knowledge and discovery.
    “All systems go,” Danforth announced, clicking a switch. For several seconds nothing happened. Drake remained still in the chair, his eyes covered by the pads.
    Will’s anger and resentment grew to the point that he felt like punching Danforth. He wanted to call a stop to the proceedings and free Drake from the chair,