Fading Light

by Nick Cook

  ‘Why not? Sentinel said that other Awoken should be coming into their powers right about now, after being infected by Zoom.’

  ‘But if that’s true, why aren’t you hearing her as well?’ I replied. ‘And anyway, wouldn’t Sentinel have mentioned something about telepathy being an Awoken ability?’

  ‘Maybe not. Don’t forget that although he’s incredibly intelligent, he also has huge blank spots in his memory banks. You say this woman sounded frightened?’

  ‘Make that terrified. I could feel her emotions as if they were mine. I’m certain that something really bad was happening to her.’

  ‘OK, so if this really is telepathy, perhaps there’s a way for you to communicate with her.’

  ‘How exactly? She didn’t exactly leave me her mobile number!’

  Chloe pointed to my head. ‘Maybe try to contact her like she contacted you. If you really concentrate, you might be able to reach out to her.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s certainly worth a go.’ I screwed up my face in concentration… Are you OK? I said in my head.

  But all I got in reply was the murmur of my own thoughts. ‘Nothing,’ I said to Chloe.

  She chewed her lip. ‘OK, you know how hit and miss it is for us to control our abilities, especially when they’re new. It could be the same for her. She may not even be aware that she’s using telepathy yet.’

  ‘True, but we need to do something. She sounded terrified. If I can’t reach her, we’ve got to get the Summoning online to help her.’

  ‘But it’s not fully debugged yet. Plus the range of the sim only extends to the Channel Islands at the moment, while I iron out the code.’ Chloe paused and added, ‘But I guess we could try in case she’s on one of the islands.’

  ‘You think she could be further away than that?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea, but who says there’s a range limit on something like telepathy?’

  ‘So best case is that we find her nearby and send help.’

  ‘Fingers crossed. Even if it doesn’t work locating her first time, a shake down of the system will only help debugging it and ourselves, making it easier to find her on a subsequent attempts.’

  ‘What do you mean by shaking ourselves down?’

  ‘It’s part of the Summoning – something both of us will have to learn to make this work.’

  ‘So let’s get to it.’

  Chloe nodded and we set off at a run, skirting a large laurel bush on to one of the lawns.

  It was littered with some of Kelly’s numerous sculptures, including a bronze deer frozen in the act of tearing its way out of the ground with its antlers, as if it had been buried alive. Nearby, a bronze falcon, its wings mid-beat, was mounted on a rod drilled into a massive boulder. Beyond it, a five-metre-long dark salamander prowled through the summer flower beds.

  Each of Kelly’s sculptures was extremely cool and it was easy to imagine them in a major art gallery. But Kelly had once told us as her glass of red wine sloped over its rim, ‘I’m not after fame. My sculptures are just part of who I am and what I need do with my life.’ I still wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but Chloe had nodded and given Kelly a fist bump.

  We passed a single-storey wooden building in the corner of the garden. It had been Kelly’s studio until we’d turned up, but now it was a lab for Dad, where he often slept after working late into the night.

  I spotted Dad silhouetted against one of the frosted windows. He barely surfaced for anything now as he worked on Waverider. Somewhere out there the Shade were almost certainly building new DECs in another attempt to open a portal to the Void. Dad’s work was our best shot at stopping them.

  To say he was driven would be a serious understatement. I saw little of him, except on the occasions when he caused yet another power cut that once again plunged Eaglehurst into darkness. He was the classic mad scientist who hardly left his lab.

  Beyond the studio at the edge of the lawn, Allan was sitting on the heavy mahogany bench that he’d claimed as his own since our arrival. I was sure that its fantastic views of the surf breaking on the shoreline below had everything to do with that. Since he lost everything with the destruction of Celestial Skies, his astronomy shop, I often caught him gazing out like this. Sitting there, he always looked at peace. Right now, he was listening to classical music from a Bluetooth speaker balanced on the arm of the bench, next to his propped-up walking stick.

  Hearing the crunch of our feet on the gravel, Allan turned towards us.

  At once his attention zeroed in on our faces. ‘What’s up, guys?’

  ‘We think another Awoken might be contacting me using telepathy, and she sounded as if she was in trouble,’ I replied.

  Sentinel’s voice cut into the music coming out of the speaker, asking, ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘No, so you need to power up the Summoning code for its first field trip,’ Chloe told the AI.

  ‘But we’re not ready, Chloe. You know we still have all those tests to run.’

  ‘Which will have to wait.’

  ‘But the risk—’

  ‘For god’s sake, Sentinel, we haven’t got time to debate this. You may be able to live with another death on your hands, but I’m bloody not.’

  I winced at Chloe’s tone, but totally understood where she was coming from.

  There was a pause before Sentinel replied. ‘OK, powering up the system now.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ Chloe said with a headshake to me.

  We rushed along the gravel path towards the large blue front door, its sea-eagle knocker gazing out at us. We opened the door and stepped through into the hallway as a webcam mounted on a table swivelled towards us. This was all part of Sentinel’s sensor network that he’d had us build for him. He didn’t have a camera or smart speaker that he could use, so he frequently hacked into any available electronic devices. Even the TVs in the house, which was especially annoying if we were in the middle of taking a rare break from our training to watch a film.

  Chloe and I rushed off down a corridor. After weaving down several right-angled turnings through the maze-like interior, we eventually arrived at what appeared to be a dead end with a bookcase.

  I tugged on the right side of the shelves and, with a click, the whole bookcase rotated out on hinges to reveal a hidden doorway behind. Kelly had told us that this was her bit of ‘architectural fun’ in the house. Kelly had been watching way too many movies.

  We stepped into a round library that stretched up towards a mezzanine floor at the top of Eaglehurst’s single tower. This room had seriously blown my mind from the moment that I’d first laid eyes on it. The sheer quantity of books in here was mind-boggling, lining the curved walls all the way to the top. If that wasn’t impressive enough, its crowning glory was an ornate glass dome of night sky picked out with yellow stained-glass stars. It was a jaw-dropping piece of design and yet another illustration of Kelly’s artistic talents. She’d designed and built the roof herself. She might have had a problem saving money, but she had quite the lifestyle to show for it.

  Another motorised webcam mounted on a tripod swivelled towards us.

  ‘Do you have any idea what’s wrong with this woman?’ Sentinel’s voice asked from its speaker.

  ‘None at all,’ I replied as we started to climb the spiral staircase towards the mezzanine level at the top of the tower.

  As we reached the landing, we stepped into a mosaic of stained-glass light from the dome above. But it was the object that sat in the middle of the room which really caught everyone’s attention.

  A black box about a metre tall, with cooling fins radiating out from it, hummed with a low-frequency noise. This device had been a key part of the Sentinel’s phase three plan – to build a supercomputer far beyond anything that human engineers had ever been able to build. The components had been fabricated in 3D print studios around the world, and the special custom processors manufactured by Korean chip-designers as a one-off order. It had all been put together b
y Chloe under Sentinel’s supervision. If any of one of those different companies had actually realised what they were helping to build – the most powerful quantum computer on the planet – they might have been tempted to hang on to those components.

  The parts had arrived in a stream of parcels. Steve, one of the island’s most overworked couriers, had had his workload tripled by Sentinel.

  The new computer’s design was pure minimalism. Chloe had announced she was in love with it from the moment it had been finished.

  A thin ribbon of LED lights ringed the top third of the cube-shaped structure. Currently blue, the lights changed colour to indicate how under load the system was. Chloe had explained that if we ever saw them go red, which so far we hadn’t, it meant that the system was having to run flat out.

  I headed over to my usual seat, a large white circular sofa by the windows with a three-sixty-degree view of the island and its coastline. Kelly had mounted a telescope up here to make the most of the view. Through it, you could clearly see the cliffs of Dover, normally barely visible to the naked eye.

  Around Alderney, and the other nearby Channel Islands, the sea was starting to foam white from the approaching storm. It would be quite a view from up here when the storm finally hit.

  One of Sentinel’s infamous large candles sat on a low coffee table. He had made Chloe and I stare at these more times than I care to mention, all in the name of perfecting the control of our abilities through meditation. The AI had even promised us that if we stuck at it we’d eventually get good enough to be able to still use our abilities near a portal, something that we’d quickly discovered we couldn’t when we’d faced Archios, the leader of the Shade’s invasion force, in the old lab.

  From a stupidly large flat-screen TV, Sentinel’s avatar – a 3D chiselled face – peered down at Chloe. ‘Diagnostics have all checked out and the feed is stable, Chloe.’

  ‘Good.’ She headed behind the supercomputer, which she’d named Deep Thought Three – DT3 for short – and picked up something out of my line of sight.

  Inside that beast of a computer was a greatly enhanced version of Chloe’s game engine, Ember. Sentinel had been building on the core simulation work that he’d first started in Stoneham. But back then, he’d just modelled the town and its people in intricate detail, out to a fifty-mile radius. But now with the computing power of DT3 at his disposal, Sentinel had been working on extending that level of coverage for the whole planet – to include every man, woman and child. This would help us with the Summoning, giving us the potential to locate and make contact with every person who’d been successfully Awoken by the Zoom virus. That was the plan at least.

  Chloe’s head popped up behind DT3. ‘Jake, I promise that what you’re about to experience is seriously going to rock your world.’ She walked round the computer, holding out one of two futuristic-looking white headsets. They reminded me of the face huggers from the movie Alien, with white plastic legs protruding from each earpiece to cover most of the user’s head.

  I took one headset from her and turned it over in my hand. ‘And these are?’

  ‘Advanced prototype brain scanners that Sentinel managed to “borrow” from a certain development lab run by one of the biggest tech companies in the world.’

  ‘No wonder the design is so lame then. But you said these are prototype, as in not fully tested?’

  ‘And that’s why I strongly advise against proceeding without checking them fully first,’ Sentinel said. ‘By rushing ahead, there is a risk to both of you.’

  ‘It’s great to know that you’re worried about the well-being of at least someone on this bloody planet,’ Chloe replied.

  Once again, I winced at her attitude towards Sentinel.

  ‘You need to cool it a bit, Chloe. I know you’re angry at him, we both are, but that was a low blow.’

  She sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ She waved a hand. ‘Sorry, Sentinel, not the time or the place.’

  The AI just nodded. He obviously had thicker skin than I had.

  ‘But why should these headsets be a risk to us?’ I asked.

  ‘Because they convert your brainwaves to computer data that can be interpreted,’ Sentinel said.

  ‘That doesn’t sound so dangerous.’

  ‘Well, there is an infinitesimal risk that it could scramble your brain,’ Chloe said.

  ‘And you weren’t going to mention anything about that?’

  ‘I thought we were all big on taking calculated risks these days. Or does that just apply to all those poor people who were killed by the Zoom virus?’ Chloe glowered at Sentinel.

  I shook my head at her. ‘Can’t we use an old-school monitor instead?’

  Chloe tore her eyes away from glaring at Sentinel to look back to me. ‘No can do. These headsets are crucial to the Summoning because they can work in conjunction with our Awoken ability.’

  ‘Right.’ I tightened my gaze on her. ‘But despite Sentinel’s concerns, you feel that they’re safe enough for us to use?’

  ‘Look, I have total faith both in my code and Sentinel’s, even if he’s gone all mother hen on us.’

  ‘In that case…’ I clipped the headset over my ears and the sensors pushed gently into my hair.

  ‘I really must protest,’ Sentinel said. ‘You’re both exposing yourself to unnecessary danger here.’

  ‘At some point we need to run through what it means to be an Awoken,’ Chloe said. ‘We can’t put it off for ever.’

  ‘I have faith in Chloe’s judgement. You should too,’ I told the AI.

  Sentinel peered down at me and then slowly nodded. ‘Of course. Then I will assist you in any way I can.’

  Chloe gave me a grateful smile for the vote of confidence as she put on the second headset and settled herself into her chair. ‘So let’s do this. Ready for the biggest rush ever, Jake?’

  ‘I guess so…’

  ‘Sentinel, can you please jack us into Ember?’

  ‘On your marks…’ Sentinel began.

  Chloe took a deep breath. ‘Three, two, one…’ She dug her fingers into the chair. ‘And we have lift-off!’

  Chapter Three

  A whir of hidden cooling fans started up within DT3’s cube as its light turned red.

  ‘This is about to get real, Chloe,’ I said.

  She grinned at me. ‘It most certainly is.’

  Bright light flooded my vision and I felt a tingling sensation deep within my head. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m beginning to map the synaptic links of your brain in real time and interfacing it directly into the system,’ Sentinel replied. ‘Once I’ve done that, I can feed all that information from Ember directly into your mind.’

  ‘Erm, can someone explain that in a language that isn’t pure geek?’

  ‘When Sentinel has finished mapping our brains, we’ll be able to experience Ember as a form of augmented reality,’ Chloe said.

  ‘OK, that’s a bit clearer, but don’t we need glasses with a built-in projector or something for that?’

  ‘Oh, this is so much cooler than that ancient tech,’ Chloe replied. ‘Sentinel, are you ready to demonstrate what we’ve been working on?’

  ‘Yes. Now I’ve got both your brainwaves in sync, we can begin. Handshaking with the Ember sim now…’

  Data appeared in mid-air, floating before my eyes. I jerked my head back but the overlaid information tracked with it. ‘Whoa!’

  Chloe grinned at me. ‘Welcome to the bleeding edge of technology, Jake.’

  ‘Very cool.’ I concentrated on the data before me. It showed my heart rate and blood pressure. There was also an indicator displaying my theta brainwaves – a graph moving up and down. Chloe’s position was shown by a blue marker hanging above her actual head, Sentinel’s symbol for an Awoken.

  ‘So this is my very own information overlay, a bit like the sort of HUD display that military pilots use?’

  ‘Exactly, although there is so much more to this,’ Chloe replied
. ‘The data you’re seeing is being integrated directly into your visual cortex.’

  A sense of awe filled me, because the possibilities had to be endless. But immediately another question started to surface – just how far could this system be pushed?

  ‘So if this is being projected into my brain, does that also mean I can still use this HUD while I’m shifted?’ I asked.

  Chloe smiled. ‘You’ve nailed it. And that’s why this interface is much more useful to us than a standard monitor display. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. But maybe give X-ray a miss this time, hey?’

  ‘Look, it was entirely accidental that I happened to be looking at you when I tried that wavelength for the first time. How was I meant to know it was possible to fine-tune it so I could see straight through your clothes?’

  ‘Yeah, likely story.’ Chloe shook her head, but smiled at me. ‘Anyway, maybe try one of the other flavours available to us – ultraviolet, gamma or even radio waves. It’s always very cool to watch radio signals pulsing as ripples through the air.’

  ‘Endlessly. But maybe I’ll stick to thermal for this attempt. It’s what I’m most familiar with after all.’ I lit the candle on the low table, because it was the way we always started our sessions together. We might have hated the candles, but Sentinel had constantly explained that they were a simple device to help us focus on using our abilities.

  Now, with practised ease, I slowed my breathing and let the noise of my thoughts quieten. The sound of the wind fell away and I felt the usual rush of vertigo as the view of the world around me shifted. Now the room was bathed in the blacks and whites of infrared, one of the first Awoken abilities I had unlocked. This was what we called the Shadowlands – a nickname for this alternative infrared view of our world.

  Partly out of habit, I concentrated on the white glowing blob of the candle flame. Like always, it brightened to my mind’s touch and the flame grew.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw a seagull land outside the window. It turned to look directly at me and began moon-dancing backwards along the windowsill.