Free Different by Tony Butler Page B

felt a moment of fear. She looked out of the window and saw a hole in the wire mesh security fence that led onto the Devil's Footprint.
    "Adam! Ben! Eve!” she called but there was no reply, just the silent writhing mist. Turning on her heel, she ran out of the room and upstairs to the laboratory and as she expected, and despite the fact that it was only seven in the morning, Richard Anderson was sitting at a bench and peering into his microscope.
    "Richard, the kids have gone,” she cried.
    He looked up at her and frowned, “Gone?"
    "Yes. You'd better come and see this for yourself,” she said, “Otherwise you're not going to believe it. The bars and the glass in their window appear to have melted, and there's a hole in the security fence."
* * * *
    Senator Henry Matherson and his business partner and friend, Russell Downey, flew into the East Midlands Airport on a direct flight from New York. Jeremy Marchant MP and the scientist Richard Anderson were waiting for them in the lobby.
    They shook hands and Jeremy led them over to a chauffeur driven limousine but not until after the driver had stowed their luggage in the trunk and returned to his seat behind the wheel, did Jeremy speak.
    "The children have been missing for over a week now,” he said. “The three of us, Janine, Richard and I have searched along the main paths but have found no trace of them. The problem is, of course, if they've been injured or killed finding their bodies is essential. We can't risk them being found by anyone except us."
    "I told you we should've sanctioned them when we terminated the experiment, three years ago,” Russell grumbled. “But no, you were too squeamish to do what needed to be done."
    "Damn it Russell, we don't just go around murdering kids,” Henry said. “There's no way they can get off the Devil's Footprint, well not unless they've grown wings that is."
    "Tell me about the weird stuff,” Russell said. He was the head of Henry's security team and never missed a thing.
    When Richard had finished telling them about the window and the hole in the security fence, Henry frowned. “You're sure there's not another hole in the fence somewhere that the kids could have escaped through?"
    "Yes, we called in an outside firm to check it out, from the outside of course, and they couldn't find one."
    "Which means they're still on the land somewhere,” Jeremy said. “But how on earth do we search a hundred and twenty six square miles of heavily timbered land that's also riddled with unmapped mine shafts and boreholes?"
    "Dogs,” Russell said. “We set some tracker dogs on their trail."
    "Hmmm, yes that would make sense,” Jeremy conceded, “but I'm not sure we have tracker dogs in England, except for the police and the military of course, and we can hardly go to them."
    "I've had the best team of hunting dogs in Georgia flown in to one of our military bases,” Russell said. “They'll be arriving in Catherstone about the same time as we are. One thing's for sure though, there's no way the kid's got out of that room on their own. That means somehow someone has penetrated our security and is out there on the Devil's Footprint. So, unless you want to risk doing some serious time in prison we're going to have to flush the bastard out."
    Henry nodded. What Russell had said made sense. “What do we do when we find him, or maybe her?"
    "It's a fair bet that whoever it is hasn't been in contact with the law, otherwise this place would be crawling with police. No, we're dealing with a maverick, possibly a reporter who's working on his own. We'll know for sure once we've caught him, but there's only one solution either way. The intruder has to disappear permanently, along with the kids."
    "No, we've discussed this before,” Jeremy said. “We agreed to let the kids live out their lives here in isolation."
    "Russell's right, Jeremy,” Richard said. “We can't risk them being found. It's been three years since we abandoned the Primeval