Tunnels 05 - Spiral

the lake, to where the land rose sharply.

    Chester’s face on the monitor contorted. As the boy screamed so loudly that the sound track broke up, Elliott shifted in her chair. She crossed her arms and hugged herself, massaging a shoulder with her fingertips.
    “Is this hard for you to watch?” Drake asked, pausing the film.
    “No, it’s not that,” Elliott answered. “My back’s been a bit uncomfortable recently.”
    Elliott had been the last to be treated with Danforth’s Purger, although it had produced no reaction in her whatsoever, establishing that the Styx had never used their mind control on her. Everyone else on the estate had been purged, with three exceptions. Drake was concerned that it would be too traumatic for Mrs. Burrows after the excessive Darklighting she’d received in the Colony, so he excused her from it. And nothing on Earth would induce Parry to undergo it — he told Drake he’d never let anyone near his brain, not even Danforth, whom he trusted implicitly. And Jiggs, because nobody knew where he was.
    Drake had brought back copies of the footage taken in the Professor’s attic, and he and Elliott were now reviewing them on a monitor he’d set up in the billiards room. Danforth had made two versions of each clip; one was a straight recording, while the other played in reverse because the more intensely Darklit victims, including Drake and Will, appeared to be speaking backward.
    “It’s so weird hearing Styx coming from Chester and all of you,” Elliott said.
    They’d already been through the films of Drake’s, Will’s, and Colonel Bismarck’s sessions with the Purger, but Elliott hadn’t been able to glean much more than a few highly garbled and completely meaningless sentences. Certainly nothing that gave a clue about the nature of their programming.
    “OK if we go on?” Drake asked.
    Elliott nodded.
    Drake pressed the remote, and they listened to the rasping Styx words emanating from Chester.
    “It’s just rubbish.” Elliott gave a small shrug. “Mostly odd words, and even when there’s more, it still doesn’t make any sense,” she said as she listened carefully. “It’s like someone talking in their sleep.”
    Drake took a deep breath. He’d resigned himself to the fact that the recordings weren’t going to reveal anything significant. “We’re coming to the end of Chester’s session anyw —”
    “Wait!” Elliott shouted, sitting bolt upright. “Rewind that!”

    Will and Chester had climbed high enough up the hill that they could look across to the house, although it was far in the distance.
    “Bart! Are you there, Bart?” Will called as Chester dawdled along behind him.
    They heard a squeak, and someone stepped from behind a large oak.
    “Stephanie!” Chester burst out.
    She had a cell phone in her hand and was wearing a dark blue trench coat with the collar turned up. She’d tied a ribbon around her lustrous red hair to keep the wind from blowing it about. Will noticed that she was wearing a pair of black high heels, which seemed more than a little incongruous, given that they were in the middle of nowhere.
    “Oh, hi,” she said begrudgingly, trying to conceal the phone behind her back. “What are you doing up here?” She nodded. “Wait — I know — you’re searching for this dog thing Parry’s lost. Gramps has been looking for it, too.”
    “We are,” Will replied. “The dog thing’s gone missing.”
    “Well, I haven’t seen it,” Stephanie said indifferently. She looked the boys over with a slight suggestion of a sneer, then whisked her head away from them as if they had no right to be there.
    “And what are you doing here?” Chester said, in an effort to be friendly.
    She didn’t reply, glaring at him as if it was impertinent of him to ask.
    “You were using your phone, weren’t you?” Will said in an accusing tone.
    Realizing she’d been caught out, Stephanie’s manner softened. “I’m trying to get a signal on this stupid thing,” she confessed, producing her cell from behind her back. “Gramps is, like, totally unreasonable — he says Parry has these enemies, and that phones are totally forbidden on the estate.” She shrugged. “And I’m, like,
who
do I know who’ll even care?” She gave Will and Chester a coy look. “You won’t tell Gramps, will you? Or Parry?” she added, as if she’d already won them over and her secret was safe.
    “Course not,” Chester agreed readily.
    “So who were you