Jacobs smiled warmly at him. ‘We really must stop meeting like this,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no time for pleasantries, so we’ll get straight to it. What is the information you have?’
‘Is Lynn still alive?’
‘Yes,’ Jacobs answered simply. ‘We thought it best to keep her alive as collateral in case you decided to come here. Now what is the information? Where did the Anunnaki come from?’
‘Not until I see her,’ Adams responded.
Jacobs nodded to Eldridge, who grabbed Adams’ head and slammed it into the glass conference table, before pushing him back in his seat, blood leaking from his nose.
Adams just held Jacobs’ gaze, silent.
Jacobs watched Adams for several moments, searching for any sign of weakness, but found none.
Finally he tutted to himself and gestured to Eldridge. ‘Go and get Dr Edwards, please,’ he said in resignation.
Philippe Messier had retired to the control room to oversee the operation of the wormhole, but his voice could still be heard on the speakers dotted throughout the viewing gallery.
‘The energy that will be generated in the chamber will be enormous,’ he explained over the PA system. ‘The viewing glass in front of you is ten inches thick. Without it, and without the protective bedrock surrounding the cavern, this whole level would be destroyed when the wormhole becomes active. But don’t worry.’ He chuckled. ‘You’ll be fine right where you are. It has all been modelled and tested a thousand times before.’
In her seat, Lynn laughed to herself. Tested before? Maybe by a computer, but for real? It was hard to make predictions about a technology that had never been used before.
‘We are now about to start our lead-up procedure,’ Messier explained. ‘You will now see some of the power that we are able to generate by harnessing the antimatter produced by the LHC above us.’
There was a short lull, when everyone went quiet and the lights flickered off and on; and then a sound like an electrical generator, only much louder started up. It was a loud, deep, throbbing hum that passed through her body like a physical blow to her gut. And then the viewing gallery lights dimmed again, but stayed dim this time, revealing the chamber beyond in even greater clarity.
Seconds later, the lights went out in the chamber itself, and Lynn could hear the groans of disappointment around her.
‘Just wait,’ she heard Messier say. ‘One moment.’
And then lights appeared far into the recesses of the chamber’s cavernous roof. They were just sparks at first, but then they blossomed larger, each one bright enough to illuminate the entire chamber. Before long, the whole cavern was sporadically lit up by these energy sources, like trapped lightning, flickering with vast energy.
Lynn was transfixed, and then felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘Come with me,’ she heard Eldridge whisper in her ear.
Adams’ heart fluttered in his chest when he saw Lynn enter the room. She was alive!
He saw the excitement in her face too, which turned to a wince when she was unceremoniously dumped into the chair next to him.
‘Now, Mr Adams,’ Jacobs said, ‘tell me what you know.’
‘Not until Lynn is safe,’ Adams said. ‘She leaves CERN now, escorted off the premises.’
Jacobs nodded to Eldridge, who grabbed Lynn back out of her chair, a blade appearing in his right hand, held close to her right eyeball.
‘Or you could just tell me now, and Eldridge here won’t cut out the bitch’s eyes,’ Jacobs shouted angrily, aware that the device was already starting to become operational in the next room.
Adams looked around the room. The door to the gallery ahead of him was guarded by two men of the Alpha Brigade, as was the door to the elevator behind them. Then there was Eldridge, holding Lynn in his strong grip just a few feet away, and Jacobs directly opposite him, across the table.
A light started to flash above the double doors to the gallery, and an electronic voice came over a PA system. ‘Three minutes to wormhole opening,’ it said without emotion. ‘Everyone to their stations.’
Jacobs turned to Eldridge. ‘Cut her!’ he ordered, tired of playing games.
Adams saw the glint in Eldridge’s eye and reacted an instant before he did.
The darts were in the roof of Adams’ mouth, and had thus been missed during the two body searches. Adams had picked up the wood at a hardware store in Geneva, along with a knife, and had worked them himself before setting off for CERN. They were small yet heavy, and very sharp. Dropping one from the roof of his mouth to his tongue, he curled his tongue up and round it, and blew it out of his mouth as hard as he could.
He had learnt the technique as a boy, and had spent hundreds of hours training to hit a one-inch target from twenty feet, until it had become second nature. It was possible to hold up to half a dozen poisoned darts in the mouth without risk, although he had been unable to source any poison in the short time he had had to prepare. But he had coated the tips of the darts with chilli powder, and when the first dart entered Eldridge’s right eye, it made the man recoil in agony, screaming at the top of his lungs.
He let Lynn go instantly, dropping his knife to the floor, his hands going to his ruined eye, legs going weak with the shock of the excruciating pain.
Adams turned to Jacobs, knowing he had only one shot at the man before he would have to deal with the guards. He fired out another dart, but Jacobs was quicker to react than Adams had expected, diving for cover behind the table, and the dart whistled away harmlessly over his head.
Adams swooped down to pick up Eldridge’s knife and hurled it across the room at the guards by the double doors. Then he swivelled to the two men by the elevator. Their weapons were already up and aimed, but Adams loosed two darts in quick succession, both of which struck the men in the face. They weren’t disabling but were sufficient to take the guards’ attention off shooting him for a few vital moments.
He heard a muffled cry behind him and turned to see the knife he had thrown sticking out of the chest of one of the other guards. The man fell to his knees, eyes wide with surprise, while his partner opened fire on full automatic.
As Adams and Lynn took cover behind the metal struts of the glass table, Jacobs scurried for the double doors.
Glass shattered and bullets ricocheted off the metal legs. Adams pulled the near-blind Eldridge towards him with his bad hand and punched him on the jaw with the other, knocking him out cold. Adams reached to get his gun, but Lynn was one step ahead of him, the pistol already in her hand, aimed at the men by the elevator.
The two guards were now recovering from the darts in their faces and were raising their guns again, but they were rocked backwards into the metal door of the elevator as Lynn loosed off four rounds, two bullets hitting each man directly in the chest. Plumes of blood exploded across the polished wooden floor.
Adams looked at Lynn with momentary surprise, then turned back to the double doors.
‘Damn!’ Lynn said as she saw Jacobs disappearing through the doorway into the safety of the gallery beyond. The remaining guard opened fire at them again, and then Lynn drew his fire by rolling one way, returning fire of her own, while Adams rolled to the opposite side, loosing off his two remaining darts.
The last guard was punched to the side as one of Lynn’s bullets struck his hip, and then he keeled over backwards as both of Adams’ darts entered his throat.
‘Two minutes to wormhole opening,’ the electronic voice announced.
‘Come on,’ Adams said, getting to his feet. ‘Let’s get in there, now!’