Extinction

by J. T. Brannan

  Jack would be accompanying the preliminary assault party, leading them into the base with Anderson. He had apparently already adjusted part of the system remotely, but the closer he got, the more he would be able to do. As Anderson had hoped, he would be able to make them invisible.

  When the aircraft landed, Alyssa was surprised by Tomkin’s humanity when he allowed them a few brief moments together before Jack left. Tomkin, too old now for such an assault, would remain with Alyssa to keep an eye on her.

  She knew she was unlikely to ever see Jack again, which made these last few moments so especially painful.

  She pulled him close, looking into his deep blue eyes. ‘But I want you to know, whatever happens . . . I love you.’

  And with that, she kissed him once on the lips and turned back inside the aircraft, not waiting to hear his answer.

  It would have been too painful to bear.

  During the flight, Anderson had been in touch with the director of Allenburg Airport. Upon landing, the entire team and their equipment were transferred to helicopters, which landed in hidden clearings in the forest just outside the base perimeter.

  A control tent was set up in one of the clearings, where Tomkin took command of the radio communications equipment, enabling him to give direction from afar.

  Alyssa was secured to a chair, and the soldiers received their final mission briefings and disappeared into the forest like silent wraiths, Jack right next to Colonel Anderson.

  Alyssa’s face burned in the cold night air. All she could do now was sit and listen to the counter-attack as it unfolded live over the radio.

  3

  THE SOUNDS OF violence that penetrated the cool mountain air were horrific.

  Over the radio, Alyssa heard the screams of dying men alongside gunshots, explosions, and the shriek of tortured metal. Some of the same noises came to them through the surrounding trees too, echoing strangely. She heard the shouts of men issuing orders, fire commands, positions. She heard Colonel Anderson shouting at Jack, telling him to get the cameras sorted, how they were walking into a trap, an ambush . . .

  Tomkin listened too, helplessly. He tried to issue orders over the radio, but to no avail. It was too hard to keep track of what was happening; there were too many people who had never worked with each other, following section leaders they had never met, putting into action a battle plan created on the run, against a completely unknown enemy force. It had been a recipe for disaster right from the start. But it had been all they had, and the first few minutes – after the teams had reached the perimeter and entered the base without sounding the alarm – looked positive. It seemed the electronic surveillance was on their side, and they might have some sort of chance.

  Then the explosions had sounded, and Alyssa had seen the night sky light up through the trees. But it was too early to be their own troops, and Alyssa and Tomkin both realized that the teams had been compromised.

  The firefight that subsequently broke out was terrifying in its intensity, and Alyssa shook with horror as she thought about Jack, there in the middle of it all without even a simple pistol to defend himself.

  ‘Come on, Jack!’ she heard Anderson shout over the live network. ‘Get that computer over here now!’

  As he waited – presumably for Jack to get to him – Anderson reported back to Tomkin. ‘We’ve been ambushed, sir,’ he said desperately. ‘We’ve already lost most of our men. They must have known we were coming.’ He breathed heavily, and gunfire momentarily interrupted the transmission. ‘But I’ve made it as far as the radar array. I’ve still got two men and Jack with me. I— Jack! Jack!’ Anderson called, his report forgotten.

  Alyssa’s heart stopped as explosions and gunfire drowned out Anderson’s screams, leaving only silence at the other end of the radio.

  ‘I’m going,’ Alyssa said.

  Tomkin shook his head. ‘It’s out of the question. They’ve been defeated. We’ve lost them. The best thing we can do now is find some place to take cover. Even if they do use the weapon, this is going to be the last place to go, so we’ve got time. And what are you going to do anyway? Fifty men have just failed.’

  Alyssa stood her ground, adamant. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I know he’s in there. I know he’s still alive.’

  ‘Murray?’ Tomkin asked in disbelief. ‘Not a chance. He didn’t even have a gun.’ He looked at Alyssa. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.’

  ‘Look, General,’ Alyssa said. ‘You give up if you want to. What do you care now what I do? Just untie me and let me try.’

  Tomkin sat back and considered her words, then leant forward and cut her restraints. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter to me what you do. I’ve got more important things to worry about.’

  Alyssa inclined her head in thanks, about to race into the woods, but Tomkin put a hand to her chest to stop her. ‘But please,’ he said, holding a pistol out towards her, ‘at least take my gun.’

  Twenty minutes later, Alyssa wondered what the hell she was doing.

  She had remembered the cliff from her previous visit, how she had been told that it was all but unclimbable, and how guards didn’t even bother to patrol that section of the fence line.

  She knew that the assault teams had not chosen this route but tried to enter from the three flat sides. She wasn’t surprised – time was of the essence, and such a climb could only be made by an expert. They couldn’t have taken the chance of losing people before they’d even made it to the base. But she had decided it was worth a shot, and she’d raced through the forest that encircled the facility, following the trails down in a wide, sloping arc to the foot of the cliff.

  She gazed up at it now with foreboding. It looked treacherous as hell. She rotated her head, her neck clicking, then shook her entire body, getting the blood pumping, the adrenalin flowing. She knew adrenalin would be her friend on the cliff face.

  But she found it hard to move, hard to take those first few tentative steps. Scenes from the past flashed before her eyes – falling in the tractor from the top of the cliff just a few days before; another cliff, the one she had been climbing that day long ago, in other mountains; her race up the ladder to the chair lift cables; Anna’s death scream filling the valley.

  She snapped out of it, forcing herself to look at her watch. Just half an hour to go before Spectrum Nine would be switched on. For a horrifying second, she vividly recalled the radar array blasting that beam of concentrated energy up into the sky just a few short days before, a reversed bolt of lightning that had presaged the destruction of an entire island and many thousands of people.

  And then she set off up the sheer, icy rock surface, her face set in grim determination.

  4

  FOR THE NEXT twenty minutes, Alyssa climbed like she had never climbed before. Barely daring to breathe for fear the passage of air would push her off the treacherous surface, she traced her hands along the icy rock to pick out tiny fissures, small imperfections in the wall which would have been unnoticeable to most other people. On any other occasion they may well have been unnoticeable to her; but tonight, she was filled with a startling clarity of vision. Indeed, it was as if her very fingers could see, and her feet too. She was almost becoming one with the cliff face, as if she had climbed it every day of her life, she knew it so well.

  As she climbed higher and higher, she barely noticed the cold wind that whipped at her and threatened to rip her off the rock wall; she was unaware when the first signs of frostbite started to attack her shredded fingertips. All she could see was the wall, disappearing beneath her as she devoured it step by step.

  Jack, she repeated in her head like a mantra. Jack.

  Before she realized what she had done she was at the top, pulling herself onto the rocky precipice.

  She paused only momentarily to get her breath, her mind focused entirely now on getting to the base. Getting to Jack. Together, she was sure they could stop this thing.

  Keeping low, sh
e crept along the grass of the cliff top towards the seven-foot-high barbed-wire fence. The radar array was directly on the other side. She looked at her watch again; less than ten minutes to go.

  She checked that her pistol was secure in her belt and raced towards the fence; there was no time for anything more subtle. She leapt high as she reached it, hands reaching out for the top. She grasped the barbed wire, ignoring the pain which shot through her cold-numbed hands, and pulled herself up and over.

  The barbs caught in her stomach as she pulled herself across, cutting through her jacket and lacerating her flesh. One of the barbs caught deeply, and she moaned, pushing herself back to free it, blood running down into her trousers as she dropped heavily to the ground on the other side, her hands ripped to shreds.

  Undeterred, she moved on, legs pumping as she skirted the inner wire fences of the huge radars, heading for the site’s main control room.

  She could make out roving patrols of guards, and kept close to the shadows to avoid them. If they had night-vision goggles, her tactics might still be foiled, but none of the guards seemed interested in looking in her direction. They would have been briefed that the cliff-side area was impassable, and would keep their attention focused on the other side.

  As she moved down past the rows of giant radars, she felt the ground shake as a powerful humming sound started to emanate from the array.

  She increased her pace, her head down low, watching with horror as the vanes at the tops of the radar posts started to buzz with electricity. No, she thought. Please no.

  Sounds of gunfire erupted from over the hill, towards the central control room at the front entrance. Glad that some of the good guys were still alive at least, she watched as the remaining guards moved to help their comrades, and took her chance, sprinting the remaining distance to the now unprotected cabin that housed the radar array’s command centre.

  She had to step over a mangled, dead body on her way in and paused for a moment, shocked as she recognized Colonel Anderson, half of his face blown away. But where was Jack? Had he managed to escape? Had he made it inside, only to be killed?

  Pulling Tomkin’s pistol from her belt, her frozen, ripped hands struggling to get a grip on it, she threw the doors open and entered the nerve centre.

  5

  IN FRONT OF her lay the complex machinery of the radar array’s control room, completely empty except for dead bodies. She gasped as she recognized Niall Breisner and Martin King among them.

  Then a door opened at the far end and a man came through.

  Their eyes met, and in that split second the man began to raise his assault rifle. But Alyssa’s gun was already up, and she fired once, twice, hitting the soldier in the chest; she watched in horror as he slumped to the floor, knowing he was dead.

  She had never killed anyone before, but she knew she had to quell the feelings of sick, fierce guilt that burned through her; there was no time for it.

  She raced for the door the man had come through and pulled it open, wondering where it led, and if anyone had heard the shots. As she pushed through the doorway, she noticed it was a small room, like a pressure chamber. And, like a pressure chamber, there was a hatch in the floor.

  She bent down and hauled the hatch open. An access tunnel, with a ladder attached to its side, descended deep into the bowels of the earth. Outside, she heard the hum and vibration as more and more radar units powered up. Steeling herself, she entered the vertical tunnel, knowing it might be the last thing she ever did.

  6

  AT THE BOTTOM of the ladder Alyssa paused, breathing hard, one bleeding hand gripped round her gun, the other on the handle of the lower access hatch.

  Summoning all her self-control, all of her considerable willpower, she pulled the door open and strode out into the brightly lit room, pistol raised in front of her.

  The room was large, much like a nuclear bunker hidden deep underground. She ignored the people around the room, her eyes fixed on the man behind the computer console.

  She recognized him from the television: Oswald Umbebe, the high priest of the OPR. If she could kill him, there might still be a chance.

  Maybe Jack was still alive somewhere in the grounds, and when this whole thing was finished, he would be found and saved. But for now, Alyssa could only see Umbebe.

  The large, impressive man turned in his chair to look at her, and for a moment she was frozen by the look of utter calm in his eyes. It was the look of a man who knew he couldn’t be stopped.

  And then she noticed a shadow move on the tiled floor beside her feet, and knew with a sickening feeling that someone was standing right behind her.

  7

  ‘JACK!’ ALYSSA CRIED. ‘You’re OK!’ She opened her arms, so happy to see him in one piece that she all but forgot about Umbebe sitting in the chair behind her, hands on the controls of Spectrum Nine. How had Jack done it? But it didn’t matter, he was here, and together they could—

  She froze. Jack was holding a gun and he was pointing it at her. ‘Jack?’

  ‘Alyssa. . .’ he said softly, almost regretfully, and, although his eyes looked sad, the gun never wavered from her chest.

  ‘Jack works for me,’ Umbebe’s deep baritone broke in from behind, and Alyssa’s head snapped towards him, disbelief across her face.

  ‘You’re a liar!’ she screamed at him, her own gun raised once more. ‘Tell me he’s wrong,’ she said to Jack pleadingly.

  ‘Tell her, Jack,’ the deep voice commanded.

  ‘Drop the gun, Alyssa,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Jack,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t understand. . .’

  ‘I work for Umbebe,’ Jack said. ‘I’m a believer.’

  Alyssa’s mind seemed to buckle, along with her body.

  ‘I’ve been with Oswald since I was a boy,’ Jack explained. ‘My parents died, I had nothing, I was bounced from one orphange to another. Then he found me, took me in, gave me a home, taught me about the world, the universe. What he says, what the order believes in – what I believe in – it’s true.’

  ‘But why did you help me?’ Alyssa asked, so bewildered she did not notice the bustling activity in the operations room around her.

  ‘What choice did I have?’ Jack responded. ‘I’d been in place for years, feeding Oswald information. I’d found out about Spectrum Nine when it was still in its infancy, and Oswald saw the potential right away.’ He shook his head. ‘I was supposed to be here when the attack took place, help them by sabotaging the security systems. It was only sheer chance that I ended up back here anyway.’ Jack smiled wryly. ‘Anderson brought me here himself, and he never realized that instead of helping, I was feeding information to the order.

  ‘I was also supposed to get the access codes from the secure computers here. But when Anderson saw me with you, the plan changed. I had to escape with you, or else I might have been killed, and then I couldn’t have helped at all. After we split up, when we escaped from the motel, I managed to let Oswald know what was happening, and he told me to keep trying to get the codes. But I’d already decided to do that anyway.’

  ‘Is that why you came to meet me in the station café?’ Alyssa asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Jack replied levelly. ‘I knew you had information from the base on that flash drive, and I wanted to see if the codes were on there. But that wasn’t the only reason. I know you won’t believe me, but I wanted to see you again. I knew the world was going to be destroyed anyway, and I wanted to spend my last few hours with you.’

  Alyssa tried to ignore this last statement. ‘So you weren’t trying to get the information out to the media at all?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, I was never trying to get the information out, I just wanted the codes. As it happens, the codes weren’t on the disk anyway. That’s why I came up with the plan to break into the DoD.’

  ‘But what were the chances of that being successful?’ Alyssa asked. ‘We did it, but the odds were against us. What if you hadn’t got the co
des?’

  ‘The back-up plan was for Oswald’s men to torture Breisner and King until they gave them up,’ Jack said. ‘But that would have taken time so it was never the preferred method. Oswald would have found a way to work the system one way or another. My way was just a lot cleaner. And besides, it was worth risking my life for. We’re all going to die anyway, remember?’

  ‘Why didn’t you just meet up with Umbebe and join the team? Get the codes here at the base like you’d originally planned?’

  ‘Oswald had already left; he was with the assault team up here where they were making their final preparations. I’d spent too long escaping from up here, and it would have taken forever to get back. And with everyone looking for me, there was no way I could have travelled by plane. And I meant what I said earlier,’ he said seriously. ‘I wanted to spend my last few hours with you.’

  Alyssa shook her head. ‘But you were never helping me to get evidence.’

  ‘No,’ Jack admitted. ‘I hacked into Tomkin’s computer to get the codes for Spectrum Nine. But I knew you wouldn’t have long to live anyway, so I thought I may as well let you have the evidence, at least give you hope in your final hours.’ He paused, looked straight into her eyes. ‘You mean a lot to me.’

  Alyssa’s mind spun. Who was this man in front of her? Not the man she’d thought he was, that much was certain, and the betrayal hit her like a spike through her heart. And yet, under the pressure of the chase, when their lives were at stake, she had genuinely felt that Jack loved her; she had felt it.

  ‘Jack,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t let him do this. This isn’t you. He’s manipulated you, used you, don’t you see? We can’t let the world end this way. Who are we to decide?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not we who decide. It’s the universe itself. It’s written in the stars, Alyssa, don’t you understand? It’s inevitable.’