Dr. Silas Mendel's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The next morning, Silas stood before the reinforced pens and knew they would not hold. He had counted every escaped subject last night. But Elena's words stuck: if the creatures could plan once, they would plan again. The old latches were cut wire and bent metal. His transformed animals had hands now, and minds sharp enough to use them. He needed a lock no tool could open. Elena found him sketching by the pens. She wiped grease from her hands and looked at his drawing. "Bolts won't stop them," she said. "They'll pick any lock you build." "Then I stop building locks," Silas said. "I want a seal with no moving parts. No hinge to pry. No latch to cut." She frowned, then her eyes lit. "Magnetic clamps. We run them off the foundry's main line. No handle, no seam. The door only opens from the control panel across the room." She pulled the goggles down over her eyes. "They can't reach a switch behind a wall." They worked through the day. Elena tapped power from the city's foundry system, that towering machine that fed the whole complex. She mounted flat steel plates on each pen door. When she fed current, the plates locked tight. No gap. No edge. Silas gripped a door and pulled. It did not move. He tried a pry bar in the seam. The bar slipped free. There was nothing to catch. "Test it against them," Elena said. "Or you're guessing." They moved the lion to a sealed pen. Silas watched through the glass. The creature circled. It pressed the door, ran claws along the frame, hunting a latch. It found only smooth steel. It pushed harder, then sat back and stared at the seam for a long time. It could not solve what had no seam to solve. Silas exhaled. The seal held. His mind-link work was safe. No escape would smash his equipment again. He set his hand on the glass and felt the current hum beneath the plate. Then the yard lights flickered. The pen door buzzed and held, but the hum dropped low. Elena checked the panel and her face went tight. "The clamps drink power," she said. "A lot of it. Every pen sealed means less for everything else." She pointed at the foundry line on her screen. The load bar climbed near the top. "Your mind-link machines run off this same source. Seal the animals in, and there won't be enough current left to link their minds." Silas looked at the caged lion, safe behind steel that no tool could open. He had won. The creatures could not escape now. But his capital needed their linked minds, and his linked minds needed power he had just spent on the walls. He had traded one problem for a harder one.