CHAPTER FIVE #2
He completely guts the old CCTV and refurbishes the Control Room, updating an archaic system with fibre-optics in the lawns, flowerbeds, gravel paths and hedges as well as state of the art technology for monitoring and communication.
All newly installed cameras now employ 3D lidar with shadow-tracking and environmental-response capability.
He enormously tightens security for access to the hidden road leading into the driveable tunnel, creates a choke point.
There’s one additional measure he ultimately decides against even though he thought it up.
Jolene says it’s an Acoustic Perimeter Field, but Lachlan names it the Hush Line when he explains his idea to Jolene after Julian was an absolute brat all fucking night, tripping window alarms and lying about it.
The Hush Line is an ultrasonic salt circle he would theoretically have put around the Estate grounds. Approaching the boundary would hit the person with a sudden spike of vertigo and sharp inner-ear pain that would create a nauseating pressure behind the eyes, debilitating balance.
It would force the body to recoil and retreat.
His restraint comes from a murky place inside himself that Lachlan Tanner rarely visits. The grim knowledge that, once informed about the existence of such a deterrent, Mr Penhalyx may take it to extremes in subduing and controlling his son.
It sits unused, never even brought to the Estate.
Lachlan, despite being given free rein, decides against using physical force with Julian in anything less than extreme circumstances and this Hush Line, no matter how impermanent the effects are, would be a step too far.
Whatever else, Julian should feel safe, not shackled and the use of this against him would hardly help ease his searing hatred of Lachlan which is the underlying cause of everything that has not gone swimmingly this past month.
At every possible turn, Julian makes it his life’s mission to undermine Lachlan and, true to his father’s warning, he is exceptionally creative.
Overall, he mounts a general effort to get Lachlan fired, so he stages failure whenever he can.
Standout times include the three hours he crammed himself into a fucking laundry chute and got stuck on purpose claiming he was “hiding” from Lachlan’s violence, and the time he tried to short out the bracelet by diving to the bottom of the lake on the grounds and almost drowning himself.
Perhaps the best attempt so far, one that did result in Lachlan being reprimanded,was the crawl.
Ever since that first week, Julian has been methodically cry-wolfing Lachlan and Lachlan has been fully aware of it, will not allow the attempts to stack towards learned disbelief.
He takes each fake threat seriously. He never lets himself become jaded.
There was, however, an angle he didn’t anticipate to this.
He’s lost count of the number of times Julian has faked being attacked, faked intruders, faked injury, triggering the window alarms frequently.
But he didn’t realise Julian was timing his responses.
Suffice to say that Julian anticipated almost everything about the trick he pulled, including how long it takes for Lachlan to reach his room after a danger ping from the bracelet. He used that window of time Lachlan was in transit to try a new journey.
The ventilation shafts.
Lachlan had not only created additional secure elements to keep both children inside the East Wing, but also in the event of a home invasion, a way out.
Julian wasn’t supposed to know anything about this, but that seemed to be Lachlan’s first mistake.
He installed Directional Vent Protection, or DVP, which uses a series of articulated micro-teeth embedded in the lower panels of the ventilation shaft, lying flat under outward movement but rising sharply against any inward force, creating a one-way passage that permits escape but physically rejects entry.
These “teeth” are made of tungsten and they’re designed to shred.
It takes thirty seconds for Lachlan to get to Julian’s room, and he’s raised the alarm by then. Once he realises Julian is gone, he checks the tracking bracelet which, to his surprise, matches the location of the threads.
It’s hard to pinpoint him at first because it leads Lachlan into rooms where Julian is not. He makes a big mistake in activating 3D tracking a whole minute after Julian triggered the ping, because by the time he sees exactly where the kid is… it’s too late. He’s in the shafts.
And worse, he’s not moving.
Julian is far away enough that he’s smack bang between his room and where the shaft leads to an emergency gather point in the exterior of the Estate, but he’s not moving so Lachlan calls Rook and Blaire to him, the latter pales slightly upon Lachlan roughly informing them of where the boy currently is.
‘Can we cut into the vents from underneath or above?’
‘They’re reinforced with maraging steel, so no.
I built them to be impenetrable.’ Lachlan is headed to Julian’s location regardless.
Once he’s identified where he is, Lachlan has them bring a ladder and several tools.
The noise of him and three others smashing out plaster and wood to access the shaft wakes Mimi, whose cries he hears coming down the halls.
‘We can’t get in but we can talk to him. ’
Lachlan bangs on the metal, locating the duller thud and when he finds it, stood atop a ladder because these fucking ceilings are high, he closes his eyes. ‘Julian? Can you hear me?’ No response, so he raises his voice. ‘Julian?’
Nothing.
Lachlan checks the monitors. Pulse is a little elevated, but not much. He takes the risk with the threads, localises the transmitter ability to the bracelet and activates it. ‘Julian, can you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ the boy answers through Lachlan’s handheld tracker.
‘Good,’ Lachlan tells him, scanning the vent for movement. ‘I need you to listen to me very carefully—’
‘I’m stuck,’ he whines, sounds drastically younger. ‘The metal’s hurting me.’
Lachlan stares blindly ahead, scanning through possibilities, outcomes, scenarios. He lands on a grim but likely one.
Julian knew about the teeth.
He can’t be dragged backwards. No one can get in from the other way to pull him out either.
The one rule Lachlan can’t break is scarring Julian or drawing his blood.
If he gets cut from this, Lachlan will be fired and God only knows what else from that hellish contract, because it will be directly Lachlan’s fault.
Julian timed Lachlan’s responses, he knew the emergency ping would drown out the vent entry notification. He planned it all.
‘You were trying to get out?’ Lachlan asks, very calm.
‘Was trying to get away from you,’ the boy sniffles and Lachlan buries a grimace. Little fucker should be an actor. ‘Please, I’m scared.’
‘Mimi is scared too. She’s screaming for you.’
Silence.
Maybe Julian didn’t anticipate this part.
‘Don’t you go near her,’ he warns, all of a sudden not so babyish. ‘Don’t you fucking dare—’
‘Listen carefully to me,’ Lachlan interrupts coldly. ‘I can send people in to push you out the rest of the way. The teeth are directional. If you keep going, you’ll be fine. They’re built for you and Mimi to safely get out.’
‘I’m stuck on them.’
‘How?’
‘I changed my mind and tried to go back.’
‘Julian, I’m sending someone in behind you—’
‘No, you can’t send men to hurt me! I’ll kick them! I can’t breathe in here! You made a trap!’
The little fucker.
Lachlan calculates distance from where Julian is to the exit.
He has a plan.
To Rook, he says, ‘Get the Somnex-V.’
Blaire’s eyes widen. ‘You can’t seriously—’
Lachlan ignores her. ‘Get it now.’
‘You won’t be able to push him out if he’s unconscious,’ she tells him. ‘He’ll fold and get stuck.’
Lachlan nods grimly, headed for the armoury. ‘I know.’
Somnex V is odourless, harmless and it works fast to knock anyone unconscious.
Jolene made it for him, useful in case of a closed-room hostage situation.
While Rook retrieves the sedative aerosol, Lachlan suits up in tactical tape, Kevlar and compression wraps.
His forearms, thighs, wrists, lower stomach, knees and elbows are going to take the worst of it.
Somnex doesn’t last long so he knows he has to be quick, which means he doesn’t have the time to lay down material to compress the teeth and even if he did, once he’s deep in, whatever he’s using will snag.
The shaft is purposely not big enough for a ceiling crawl method, even with magnetic plates.
Any metal protection on his hands will prevent him from creating traction to drag himself.
It’s a really clever trick.
He just wasn’t expecting Julian to use it against him quite so well.
Rook deploys the Somnex while Lachlan makes his way to Julian’s position head on.
It takes three minutes of excruciating pain and torn skin to reach where the boy is unconscious in his fucking pyjamas.
Lachlan buys himself a few seconds to stabilise.
He’s lost a lot of blood and passing out would be just about the biggest mistake of his entire life, but he always excelled at resistance training, so he gets solid hold of Julian’s wrists, ruined gloves removed and pulls hard…
only for the hands to slip instantly free.
Lachlan’s blood makes it nearly impossible for him to grip and hold Jules.
‘Fucking great.’
Gritting his teeth, Lachlan ties rope around Julian’s wrists, knows it’ll hurt but he wrapped the wrists with bandages first to prevent lasting damage.
Then he pulls backwards.
The relief of going with the grain of those teeth is instant and, in a macabre way, his own blood helps the glide.
They’re almost out when Jules wakes up, groggy and confused.