Extinction

by J. T. Brannan

  But now she was back, where was she going to go? Anderson would have people at her apartment and at the office. She daren’t risk contacting James Rushton, as they would no doubt expect her to do this and have his phone lines bugged.

  Everywhere she went in the city she saw soldiers in full body armour, assault rifles at the ready. She’d never seen anything like it, and asked a man working at a news stall what was going on.

  The old man looked surprised, peering up at her from his mug of hot coffee. ‘You’ve not heard?’ he asked. ‘Oh, well, it’s really only kicked in during the past couple of hours.’

  ‘What’s kicked in?’ Alyssa persisted.

  ‘Full martial law is in operation,’ he told her, ‘at least in this state. A few others too, although it’s not national yet. But the city’s pretty much under siege from rioters, protesters, you name it. The National Guard were called in, then the regular army. It’s happening all over the country.’

  Alyssa had seen signs of increased military activity during her long drive south, but nothing like this. She thanked the man and left.

  She wondered whether there was the manpower to launch martial law everywhere. Surely there was a limit. And what if the soldiers started to ask questions? What if some of the commanders began to believe in this end-of-the-world talk? She shuddered to think of it. As it was, her home had been turned into something of an urban dystopian police state. It terrified her even more when she thought that many of these same people might be actively searching for her.

  And yet she had to be here; Jack had told her to meet her ‘back home’, at the picture in his office – the train crashing through the wall of one of the city’s most famous landmarks. The nearest café to that was the Grand Café, a beautiful coffee house situated in the main foyer.

  If there was any chance that Jack had escaped capture, she had to try and meet him. She’d got him into this, and she wanted to help him get out of it if she could.

  Avoiding the concentrated CCTV surveillance of the subway system, she walked across the frighteningly unfamiliar, militarized city to her destination, hoping against all hope that Jack would be there to meet her.

  Four hours and eight coffees later, Alyssa realized that Jack wouldn’t be coming today.

  What did that mean? Did it mean that he wouldn’t be coming at all? Had he been captured? Was he dead? Or was it just taking him longer to get down here?

  Pushing away her last coffee cup, she rose to leave, vowing to come back first thing in the morning.

  But the hours until then wouldn’t be wasted, she thought. It was time to find out just what the hell was on the flash drive in her pocket.

  ‘So when is the big day?’ asked John Jeffries over the secure satellite link. The Secretary of Defence had been receiving regular updates, but due to the political nature of his job he was always one stage removed from the day-to-day practicalities of the project.

  ‘I’ll let Niall answer that, John,’ said General Tomkin, who sat behind his desk staring at the live images of the men he was talking to on the dual-screen videophone in front of him.

  Dr Niall Breisner cleared his throat. ‘After the successful stage three testing of the device, there just remains some basic system debugging to complete, as well as the final analysis of the test data. But we’re talking a matter of days.’

  ‘I want the project signed off by the fourth,’ Jeffries said immediately.

  ‘That’s just six days away,’ Breisner said with concern. ‘Why the sudden push?’

  ‘We need to deal with matters on a political and tactical level, as well as just technological,’ Jeffries answered. ‘And with our own citizens rioting across the country, it’s been decided that we need to strike soon, get this thing wrapped up immediately. My colleagues feel that if we do not use the device as planned within the next two weeks, we may have a civil war on our hands.’

  ‘And that,’ Tomkin added, ‘is unacceptable. We’ve started this, and we need to end it. At the moment, we have the political will to go ahead with the plan. How long that will last, we don’t know. John is a strong-minded sonofabitch but we all know people on the team who might not have the belly for what we need to do, especially if it takes much longer. We need to strike while the iron is hot.’

  ‘The fourth,’ Jeffries stated again. ‘Six days’ time. Can you do it?’

  There was silence as Breisner seemed to weigh things up. ‘Yes,’ he answered finally. ‘The device will be ready by the fourth. The plan can proceed as proposed.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Jeffries said. ‘Thank you, Niall. Our country will soon be a safer place.’

  15

  ALYSSA WALKED THROUGH the main concourse of the central train station the next morning, her head a swirl of conflicting emotions.

  She hoped she would see Jack today of course, but she was also horrified by what she would have to tell him if he was there. The information on the flash drive was just beyond belief.

  The night before she had secreted herself in an internet café and opened up the disk, poring over the downloaded documents for hour after hour as she pieced together the mystery behind Spectrum Nine and what it might be capable of. What she found was simply terrifying.

  She was now disguised yet again but she was more than ever aware of the personal danger she faced. This was actually quite a good location to meet Jack. The central station was as public as any venue in the city, and it was unlikely they would be executed in such a place. It was also secure, guarded by members of the city’s municipal police, National Guard, and the regular army. Alyssa knew that Colonel Anderson was part of that same army, and the station could therefore very well be the lion’s den, but she had decided to work on the premise that the project was not fully authorized, and Anderson’s forces were limited in number. If the project was fully approved and everyone was in on it, she would be arrested or killed soon enough anyway.

  She saw a large group of people on one side of the foyer, listening to white-robed preachers of the Order of Planetary Renewal. There were several of them, and they were preaching their message to as many as two hundred people. The armed patrols watched them with curious eyes. Would some of the soldiers pay attention to the message? Alyssa hoped not; the result could well be chaos and anarchy.

  She sat down at a free table in the Grand Café and ordered herself an espresso. She’d not slept well; she’d used some of the cash from the friendly woman driver to rent a room in a cheap hotel, but her mind would not relax.

  She checked her watch. It was 8.28 a.m. She sipped her drink, wondering if today would be the day. How much longer would she give him?

  She had information, but what was she going to do with it? If she approached Rushton or anyone associated with the media, she would be found and killed. Her email accounts had been deactivated, as well as her blog and website.

  Could she go to the police? Maybe the feds? But HIRP was an authorized government project. Maybe Spectrum Nine was too. Which meant she would also have to stay clear of federal law enforcement.

  She hoped Jack would show up; he might be able to circumvent computer security protocols, get her accounts reactivated, allow her to post some of this information in plain sight, see if anything came of it. But it wasn’t a course of action guaranteed to get results. She knew what they really needed was to find out who was behind the project, something that the documents she’d downloaded did not reveal.

  Again, she knew that Jack would be able to help her access the information.

  But these weren’t the only reasons she wanted Jack to be there, she finally admitted to herself. She wanted him close to her, simply because of the way she felt about him.

  ‘Where the hell are they?’ Anderson exploded at Bill Jenkins, his chief intelligence analyst.

  ‘I’m afraid we just don’t know at this stage,’ Jenkins said apologetically. ‘After they got away from the roadblock, they might have done anything – hitch-hiked, caught a bus, a train; hell, they might still
be hiding out in the woods, for all we know.’

  ‘You’ve got a description out?’

  Jenkins nodded. ‘Yes, to those people we can trust. As discussed, we’re not going to widen the loop until we know what they’ve managed to find out, until we know just how compromised we are.’

  ‘How’s it going with that side of things?’ Anderson asked, calmer now; he knew that Jenkins was doing all he could.

  ‘We’re just reconstructing the computer records now,’ he answered. ‘We’ll know soon enough what they managed to get.’

  ‘Good,’ Anderson said. ‘As soon as you find out, let me know.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Best guess as to their location?’

  ‘You know how these things go. People on the run typically go back to their home base. Not every time, but nine out of ten. No reason to suspect they’ll be any different.’

  Anderson nodded, having come to the same conclusion. He turned his back on Jenkins, picked up his phone, and started to make some calls.

  It was just before nine o’clock when Alyssa saw the familiar figure emerge from the subway stairs into the grand marble foyer, striding purposefully towards her.

  ‘Jack!’ Alyssa exclaimed as he got to the café, unable to help herself. They hugged, and Jack kissed her on the cheek. Alyssa could see that he was exhausted, with a look in his eye that reminded her of a cornered animal – fearful, but in its own way still dangerous.

  ‘How did you get away?’ Alyssa asked. ‘I thought I might never see you again.’

  Jack shrugged his shoulders, taking a seat opposite her. ‘After I got into the treeline, I lost the cops pretty easily. Spent the night in the woods, almost froze to death.’ He grinned. ‘Then I headed back to that first town, thought it would be just about the last place they’d look, and caught a bus again, same as the first time. Had to pawn my watch to buy a ticket, but what the hell. Changed buses a few times, and here I am. How about you?’

  ‘Hitch-hiked,’ she said, smiling at him.

  Jack ordered a coffee, and then Alyssa leant forward and gripped his hands across the table, looking into his eyes with an intensity that he could literally feel. ‘It’s real,’ she said.

  ‘It’s real?’ he asked. ‘The weapon?’

  Alyssa nodded her head. ‘It’s codenamed Spectrum Nine,’ she whispered. ‘They’ve discovered something they refer to as the “ninth spectrum”, a group of soundwaves that can be used to produce controllable fluctuations in the weather. They’ve programmed the radar array to reproduce this soundwave pattern, and when they transmit it up into the sky, they can transfer it across the ionosphere to any point on the globe they want. Nobody else even knows about the existence of this ninth spectrum, which is why nobody can see any link between the strange events that have been occurring. Nobody can detect it,’ she breathed. ‘It’s perfect.’

  ‘That explains how the statue moved,’ Jack said. ‘One of the only possible explanations was soundwaves, but of a type unknown to current science. This ninth spectrum must be powerful enough to cause the atomic structure of solid state objects to alter.’

  ‘But who’s behind it?’ she asked. ‘That’s the question we really need to answer. Obviously Niall Breisner is in on it, as he’s the one that’s been signing off on all the testing. And Anderson almost certainly knows about it. But who’s really behind it?’ Alyssa held up her hands. ‘I’ve got no idea. But if we’re going to stop it, we need to find out.’

  ‘Stop it?’ Jack asked, surprised. ‘I thought you were writing a story on it. Once it gets out, they’ll have to pull the plug. You’re talking as if we have to stop it ourselves.’

  She looked at him, her eyes serious. ‘We do,’ she said gravely. ‘They’re going to use it again. We have five days.’

  Anderson was with Dr Breisner on the radar field when the call came through from Jenkins back at the command centre.

  He tried to control his expression, trained never to reveal anything to anyone who might be observing him, but a muscle beneath his eye started to twitch involuntarily. He tensed his face to get rid of it, but this only made it worse. Damn them. Damn them to hell!

  Jenkins’ news was the worst it could have been. He had managed to decipher Murray’s computer files, find out what he and Alyssa Durham had been looking at. And, as Anderson had feared, they had hacked into the secure HIRP database and accessed the classified information about Spectrum Nine. So now they knew everything. Well, everything technical anyway; there was next to no information on the base’s files about how the device was going to be used operationally or tactically.

  He would have to inform Tomkin, who may or may not then decide to inform Jeffries. Doubtless Tomkin would throw more men at the task of finding Durham and Murray, before the pair revealed anything.

  Anderson just hoped – for his personal satisfaction if nothing else – that his own men would find them first.

  16

  ‘I NEED TO get a look at the data on that disk,’ Jack said over a plateful of food, his suppressed appetite suddenly returning with a vengeance. ‘Maybe I’ll see something that you missed.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Alyssa agreed. ‘We can’t use any of my resources at the paper but we can hire a computer at an internet café. We don’t need to connect to the web, so they won’t be able to trace us.’

  Jack nodded, bowing his head back to his food, and Alyssa watched him as he ate; then he raised his head once more to speak, but something behind her left shoulder caught his attention.

  Alyssa tensed as she saw his eyes widen in shock.

  Major Rafael Santana was an ex-Special Forces operative, semi-retired and now a unit commander with the local battalion of the National Guard.

  He had served under Easton Anderson back when the man was a major, both in central Asia and the Middle East, and they had remained close ever since. Santana had received the call from his old commander just an hour earlier, along with a picture of a man called Jackson Edgar Murray and a woman named Alyssa Durham. These characters were supposed to be agitators, people who wanted to cause some sort of disturbance; home-grown terrorists, apparently.

  Anderson had contacted many of his old colleagues, asking them to keep their eyes out for this man and woman, and to ‘terminate’ the subjects on sight if possible. Santana was told that General Tomkin was willing to issue a nationwide arrest order for the man if necessary, but due to ‘sensitive’ issues, everyone would prefer the problem to be wrapped up with a minimum of fuss. Santana hadn’t asked questions; he knew the score. It wouldn’t be hard to kill the pair if it came to it. He could always say that he thought the subjects were armed, and were reaching for a weapon. It happened all the time, and in a nervous, keyed-up environment like the city was at the minute, nobody would bat an eyelid.

  And so it was that he had spent the morning scouring the train station for Durham and Murray. He had provided the pictures to his section of soldiers, and they were also out there looking for them. They didn’t know that Santana was going to kill them, but they would alert their chief as soon as they found the pair, and Santana would do the rest.

  And there, across the foyer, as arrogant as you could get, the little terrorist scumbag was sitting having coffee with a woman. Who was she? She looked different from the picture, but it had to be Durham.

  ‘Targets located,’ he said into his two-way radio. ‘Grand Café, central concourse. I’m approaching now.’

  He edged forward, past the crowd of worshippers who were taking up one side of the hall, tuning out the white-robed preachers’ messages of death and destruction. He would soon be doing enough of that himself.

  As he moved forward he took the safety off his automatic assault rifle, but then he stopped dead in his tracks. Murray had looked up from the table, looked over the shoulder of the Durham woman.

  He had been spotted.

  Jack saw the soldier headed towards them, watching in disbelief as the man started to raise his rifle to his s
houlder, aiming it towards them.

  ‘Get down!’ he screamed, grabbing Alyssa and pushing her to the floor as the air above them erupted in gunfire.

  Jack quickly upended the table, using it as a temporary shield between them and the soldier. Alyssa peered round the edge of the table, pulling her head back quickly as another barrage of high-velocity rounds impacted the steel that protected them.

  Jack and Alyssa exchanged looks of terror, but then Alyssa heard a click. ‘He’s empty,’ she shouted at Jack, over the screams of the other patrons of the café, who were running away in all directions, or else cowering behind tables and chairs.

  Alyssa grabbed Jack by the arm and pulled him further into the café, through the double glass doors that led to the interior. They heard the glass shattering behind them – the solider must have reloaded – as they raced past the counter towards the rear.

  She didn’t know exactly where she was going, but there had to be some sort of rear service access for the café. Jack was looking for the same thing. ‘Here!’ he shouted, pushing through a swing door into the kitchen.

  As Alyssa and Jack raced into the busy, hot kitchen, they had to jump over the people who were cowering on the floor, keeping their heads down at the sound of gunshots. They crashed through another door at the end of the kitchen, and found themselves in a long concrete corridor that accessed all of the retail and restaurant units along this side of the terminal.

  ‘Come on,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Santana cursed out loud. He’d missed them. Luckily he’d not shot any civilians, but the café was a mess.

  He got on his radio instantly. ‘All team members to converge on the main concourse,’ he ordered. ‘Louis,’ he said to his communications specialist, ‘get on to the security chief here, inform him we’re in pursuit of suspected armed terrorists.’