LITMIR.BIZ

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did so.

      Machinery whirred into life underneath their car and they began to move. They stopped after an unknowable distance, and then the car was enveloped by a pressurised cloud of white gas that billowed from beneath them, the noise of its release deafening in the enclosed space.

      Jamie instinctively reached out and grabbed Frankenstein’s arm.

      “What’s that?” he cried.

      “It’s a spectroscope,” Frankenstein replied. “It detects the vapours released by explosives. It’s making sure we aren’t booby-trapped.”

      He gently lifted Jamie’s hand from the sleeve of his coat and placed it back in the boy’s lap. The artificial voice spoke again.

      “Please state the names and designations of all passengers.”

      Frankenstein rolled down the driver’s window and spoke loudly and clearly into the darkness.

      “Frankenstein, Victor. NS302-45D. Carpenter, Jamie. No designation.”

      Two halogen spotlights exploded into life, enveloping the car in a circle of blinding white light.

      “Non-designated personnel are not permitted access to this facility,” the artificial voice said.

      This time Frankenstein roared through the window.

      “Non-designated personnel present on the authority of Seward, Henry, NS303-27A.”

      There was a long, pregnant pause.

      “Clearance granted,” the voice said. “Proceed.”

      The spotlights disappeared, replaced with warm electric light, and Jamie’s eyes widened in amazement. They were in a tunnel at least fifty metres long and ten metres wide. Covering most of the floor was a dark grey treadmill, in the middle of which sat their car. Two white concrete paths ran the length of the tunnel, on either side. The walls were immaculate white, stretching up to a ceiling that had to be at least six metres high. Where the walls and ceilings met, lights of numerous shapes and sizes pointed down at the treadmill. Jamie could see the wide circles of spotlights, and rows of thick rectangular boxes with purple lenses.

      Frankenstein breathed out heavily, filling the car with warm air, and drove forward, along the treadmill. As they neared the end of the tunnel, another gate, as silent as the first, slid open. They drove through the gate, and Jamie got his first look at a world very few people knew existed.

      Light bathed the car, purple and yellow, creating an atmosphere that was both cold and warm. Ahead of the car, at the end of a strip of tarmac lit by lights that stood at five-metre intervals, a wide, low grey dome rose out of the ground, like the visible part of a ball buried in the earth. To the left of the car, and far to the right, a pair of enormous red and white radar dishes revolved slowly atop squat grey buildings. Beyond the dishes lay a long runway, lights flashing at intervals along its length, two huge beacons shining at one end. Sitting on this runway, partially hidden by the low dome, was a white airliner with a red stripe running the length of its fuselage. As Jamie watched, a steady stream of men and women, dressed in civilian clothes, appeared from behind the dome and walked up a ladder truck to the plane’s door. He could hear voices and laughter, carrying on the night air.

      Frankenstein pressed the accelerator and the car moved slowly forward. As it did, Jamie craned his neck, looking for the tunnel they had emerged from. He saw it, a wide black semi-circle disappearing as the gate they had passed through slid back into place, but what lay to the sides of the tunnel caused him to gasp, audibly. A road, branching off the one they were slowly travelling along, curved back and ran parallel to the tunnel, the exterior of which was a flat, nondescript grey. Fifteen metres before the tunnel disappeared into the tree line it curved again, this time into a long, shallow arc that ran parallel to a huge metal fence. Jamie’s eyes widened.

      “Wait,” he said. “Stop the car. I want to see.”

      Frankenstein grunted, and shot him a look of annoyance, but he drew the car to a halt. Jamie threw open the door and stepped out. His head was spinning as he tried to take in what he was looking at.

      The inner fence was at least fifteen metres high, made of thick metal mesh and topped with vicious snarls of razor wire. Set into the fence at one hundred metre intervals were guard towers, cubes of metal on top of sturdy-looking pylons. There were no lights in them, but Jamie’s eyes caught movement in the one nearest to him. He turned to look at the next tower, a hundred metres further away, and the next, and the next. The fence ran for as far as he could see, in what appeared to be a vast circle. It passed the end of the runway before it disappeared from view beyond a series of low rectangular buildings on the far side of the landing strip. He turned slowly, taking everything in.

      Past the low buildings his view was obscured by the dome. Further to the right, a large building sat flush against the runway, its huge metal doors closed. Beyond it Jamie again picked up the path of the fence, the towers evenly distributed along its incredible length. He continued his turn, ignoring Frankenstein, who was looking at him with a certain amount of gentle bemusement. The road running along the inside of the fence continued until it met the tunnel again, then curved back to join the central road no more than twenty feet from where he was standing.

      Beyond the inner fence was a wide strip of dirt, crisscrossed with hundreds of thousands of red laser beams; the complexity of the patterns would have made the world’s greatest jewel thief weep. This strip of no-man’s-land was bordered on the other side by a second fence, almost as high as the one by the road. Beyond it lay the woods, a wall of twisted branches and leaves, running a perfectly even distance from the outer fence. Every square inch of the space between them, a dirt run five metres wide, was illuminated by bright purple ultraviolet light, shining down from black boxes set at three-metre intervals along the outer fence.

      Excitement surged through Jamie as his eyes drank in the sheer strangeness of what he was seeing.

       What is this place? Why are there so many fences and lights and towers? What are they keeping out?

      As his eyes adjusted to the brilliant red and purple illumination before him, he saw that set in between the flickering laser grid was a series of giant spotlights, the wide round lenses pointing into the sky. He looked up, and his mouth fell open.

      “Oh my God,” he whispered.

      There were no visible beams rising from the spotlights, but their purpose was clear as soon as he tilted back his head. Above him, shimmering gently in the night air, an enormous canopy of trees hung in the sky, extending seamlessly from the edges of the woods and covering the whole of whatever this place was. From underneath the image was flat, and faintly translucent, like a film of oil on a puddle of water, but he could see erratic shapes and uneven rises bristling the upper side. The effect was disorientating.

      “What is it?” he asked, his voice full of wonder.

      “It’s a hologram,” Frankenstein answered. “It keeps away prying eyes.”

      He fought off the urge to ask who those eyes might belong to, and instead asked how it worked.

      “There’s a suspended field of reflective particles that lies over the whole base. The spotlights project a moving image on to it from underneath.”

      “Like a big cinema screen?”

      Frankenstein laughed, a strange barking noise that did not sound as though it came naturally to him.

      “Something like that,” he replied. “From above, all anyone sees is the forest. Have you seen enough?”

      Jamie hadn’t, nowhere near enough, but he told his companion that he had, knowing it was what the giant man wanted to hear.

      “Good,” Frankenstein said, not unkindly, and got back into the car. Jamie did the same, and they moved forward, towards the low grey dome.

      In front of the building were several military vehicles, a heavy-looking truck with an open rear, a row of jeeps and a surprising number of civilian cars. Between one of the jeeps

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