The Faceless Stratagem (Tombs Book 2)

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Standing at the bottom, she shone her torch looking for any evidence that the detectives had been down here. Ned had taken the lead up to the first junction and was scanning his torch from side to side.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting the power back on?” Jaq asked from behind her. She’d pulled out a tablet and was sliding through schematics of the facility.

  “How old are those?” Linwood asked.

  “I pulled them from the servers before we left.”

  “They’re out of date.”

  “How can they be out of date?”

  “Trust me. Don’t believe them. We haven’t submitted any updates to this place for years. We gave up after being here—”

  A clanking sounded up ahead. “It’s the plumbing,” she said doubtfully.

  “How large is this place?” Payne asked.

  “It’s difficult to keep track,” she replied.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on, let’s get moving.”

  Linwood led them to the first junction. Ned glanced at his own tablet and pointed out where he thought they were on a wireframe schematic of the facility. “Any idea which way we should head?”

  Linwood had been thinking about this for some time. “If we restore the power, the security systems should reboot automatically. The base will be secure then, and we’ll be able to use those systems to track anyone down here. The power plant is down a level. The nearest stairwell is in this direction.”

  She gestured to her right, and they began walking. The base was colder than she’d ever known it. The place didn’t feel like anyone had been down here for decades. It was almost as though the old place had given up.

  Ned stayed ahead of them, keeping his light steady. “I’ve found something,” he said. His beam had picked out a doorway. The doors lay broken on the floor.

  “It’s the operations room. We should be careful.”

  “Is this where you last saw Thadeus?” Payne asked.

  She bobbed her head. “This is where we were when the power systems exploded.”

  Ned entered first, “It’s clear,” he called. “But, there are bodies.”

  Linwood hesitated on the threshold, remembering how she’d felt the last time she’d been here. Yesterday, her heart had been beating like it might have exploded. Yesterday, she’d been walking into the unknown, trying to determine which of her team were loyal and which were working for Thadeus. Today was a final reflection on all that she’d failed to achieve—all that she’d failed to save.

  Today, was the beginning of the end.

  She crossed the threshold and spotted Thadeus immediately. His broken frame trapped under a layer of rubble.

  Ned had found Emma, killed by Thadeus in a moment of spite.

  “Thadeus?” Jaq’s voice by her ear made her jump. “I’m sorry.”

  Jaq moved past Linwood and across to the man’s body, using her torchlight to find a safe path over the rubble and plaster. She crouched beside Thadeus and touched the side of his neck. “He’s dead,” Jaq told the others.

  Payne said, “We should hurry. Nixon and Carter could still be down here. There’s nothing else to be done for him now.”

  “You know he wasn’t always like this,” Linwood said thoughtfully. “He was dying of cancer. Irulal promised him a cure, not just for him, but for the whole population. What he was trying to do was save everyone one last time.”

  “He lost his way. Fear can do that to any of us. But, if we’re to make right any of this, we need to focus on the future. There’s a country in terror right now and that will only get worse the longer they’re left not knowing the answers.”

  “What are we meant to tell them, though, Spencer? They can’t be exposed to this world. That would terrify them even more.”

  “Perhaps we should let the people decide what they need to know.”

  Jaq glanced at Payne and Linwood knew what she was thinking. The country wasn’t ready for the truth.

  “We should go,” Linwood suggested. “We’ll need to organise a recovery unit for the bodies. Let’s try to get the mains back on.” She gestured for Ned’s tablet and he handed it over. “This way. If we go this route, we’ll end up at the level 2 staircase.”

  But out in the corridor, Linwood hesitated. She flicked her head round to the corridor on her left.

  “What’s up?” Payne said, looking anxiously behind them.

  “Nothing. Ghosts, that’s all.”

  14

  7th May 2013

  At the crumbling staircase, they aimed their torches at each tread and made their way carefully. The metal frame creaked alarmingly. “You sure this thing is safe?” Payne asked.

  “As safe as the rest of this complex.”

  At the bottom, they stopped to take their bearings. Ned had the tablet out again. “There’s something wrong with this. It’s not updating.” He banged his palm against the side of the unit.

  “If you’re relying on outside signals, you won’t get them down here. There’s shielding. This way.”

  Linwood led the way to the right, taking point. The chill air made her tremble. At the next junction, she took her party left.

  “There’s less damage down here,” Jaq remarked, using her torch to make out the state of the walls. Although old, there was none of the damage that they'd seen upstairs.

  They reached a pair of rusted metal doors. It had been months since she’d even come down to this level, and longer still since she’d stepped inside the power station.

  “This is it,” she said to the group and pushed on the doors. They creaked open on dying hinges. Ned ducked in front of Linwood, gun aloft, sweeping the corners, looking for threats. But there was nowhere to hide. A bank of old-fashioned computer terminals was sunk into purpose-built cabinets along the left-hand wall. On the right, larger industrial cabinets with dials and power metres.

  “Do you understand what you’re doing?” Jaq asked. “This looks ancient.”

  Linwood pressed a couple of buttons on the terminal closest to her and it came to life. She ran through the main diagnostic screens looking for a history, something to explain what had happened down here. She saw nothing on the first screen, so went to the back of the room and shone her light over the dials on the larger cabinets.

  “Anything?” Payne asked.

  “Nothing I understand,” Linwood replied. “According to those readings, there’s still power. I thought this was some kind of sabotage. Perhaps I was wrong.”

  “It can’t have been a coincidence that this happened when you were having a confrontation with Thadeus. What else was going on?”

  “Irulal had entered the room. She was explaining how she’d been manipulating Thadeus.”

  “And then the power systems blew?”

  Linwood nodded, then realising that they might not be able to see that, answered, “Yes. That’s what happened.”

  Payne went quiet. He fiddled with his collar and paced the room. “Irulal could have left as soon as Max released her. Why didn’t she? Why did she seek a confrontation with Thadeus? What was she afraid of?”

  Jaq spoke. “Assume she wanted more than to escape. Thadeus was a threat to her. He knew her plan.”

  “Not all of it,” Linwood said.

  “No, but perhaps enough to make her want to silence him. And then there was you. You’d just entered the base.”

  “I would have shown up on the security system the moment I crossed the perimeter.”

  “And Thadeus had access to the security system.”

  Something clicked in Linwood’s mind. “Thadeus and Irulal were linked in some fashion. The nanites she was using to slow down his cancer. She was monitoring him in the same way that Thadeus was able to monitor Carey.”

  Carey had been another one of her team that had been unfortunate enough to be coerced by Thadeus to join his revolution. But, he’d paid the price for it in a prison cell.

  Linwood addressed Payne. “Yo
u watched Carey disintegrate. That was Thadeus. He was controlling the nanites in Carey’s body.”

  “The silver?”

  “The silver is the nanites. It’s just a form they take when Thadeus wanted to control somebody. I don’t know how, but Thadeus was linked to everyone he’d infected with these nanites. And Irulal was connected to all these nanites as well. She knew I’d entered the base.”

  “If there was someone that was a threat to Thadeus, then it was you. Do you think she’d have felt that too?” Jaq asked.

  Linwood nodded. “It would explain why she waited for us all to be in the same room before showing her hand.”

  “You think she blew the power? She got killed for it.”

  “But she didn’t did she?” Linwood’s mind was racing. “She already had an escape plan. Cindy was already infected, hell she was more than infected, she was a vessel constructed by Irulal to act as a field agent for her, setting up all the telephone nodes that needed to be changed. The girl Irulal that we knew, was happy to have her body destroyed as she would just move her consciousness to the next available vessel.”

  “The power systems could have been a distraction,” Payne added. “Confusing us all long enough for her to get away. A smokescreen.”

  “But how did she do it? I mean, blow the power? She was locked up wasn’t she?” Jaq asked.

  “Ever since she was brought down into the Tombs, we’ve suffered bizarre system failures. Maybe these nanites aren’t confined to people. What if she had them do this for her?” Linwood took a long last look at the control units. “We will need a team in here to replace every damaged system on the upper level. Maybe that will be enough to bring things back online.”

  But, as to whether that was even a safe course of action with what she suspected about the nanites in the facility, she didn’t know.

  “Come on,” she led then out into the corridor and found Ned waiting patiently.

  “Anything unusual?” Jaq asked.

  “Nothing,” Ned replied. “This place is quiet as the grave.”

  “We should search for my people then,” Payne said, sombrely. “I don’t like the thought of them being lost down here.”

  “Understood,” Ned answered. “We should head back to the stairwell and branch off in two teams. We’ll cover more ground.”

  “Agreed,” Jaq said, and they headed back to the stairwell. Linwood let the three of them get ahead of her. If she was going to do this, she’d have to do it soon. She wasn’t far from her goal and didn’t want to have to explain herself to Jaq.

  When they began walking up the stairs, Linwood let them lead the way, then she backed slowly out of the stairwell and crept off, picking up her pace to a run at the next intersection.

  15

  7th May 2013

  Slipping away had been easy. The Tombs base was a new experience for the others and their senses were on high alert, but directed outward, away from the group. They’d never considered the possibility that Linwood might want to ditch them.

  Coming down here was a necessary but dangerous plan. She had no idea if Payne’s people were here or not, but this expedition was useful, regardless. She doubted that the place held any more dangers. The Tombs had always been a somewhat risky place to work, and after 1984, when the place had been partially flooded, it had taken on a character of its own. She didn’t think there was anything else left to hurt her.

  A part of her still thrilled that the others were impressed by the size of the Tombs. It never stopped amazing her how adventurous Churchill’s people had been back in the forties when building this place. Since then, expansions had happened—sometimes with no one noticing. It was a strange feeling turning up for work and discovering a new section had appeared overnight with no explanation. It all made it easy to get lost down here. You needed a map some days. Linwood was blessed with a photographic memory and a detail for the mundane.

  But now it was dark, and she was tired and the others had unsettled her with talk of what else might be lurking. When she’d confronted Irulal in the boardroom right before the explosion, the alien had been typically smug and self-righteous. And she’d managed to survive the explosion she’d caused herself as a diversion for escaping from the Tombs unnoticed. Hadn’t worked. That bitch was dead now. At a stupidly high price, but at least she was finally out of the picture.

  Max Harding had spoken about a roomful of Faceless and that was more disturbing. If Thadeus had known—and there was no reason to suspect he hadn’t—then what had he been planning to do with all of them? They couldn’t all have been necessary research subjects. If she had to guess she’d hazard he’d been building an army. But, why was an army necessary when you were about to wipe out the human race with a signal?

  Perhaps she would never sort this out now that the two that could help were both dead. Perhaps it didn’t matter. She had a job to do, and she needed to keep herself focused on that.

  But still, it was very dark down here and even with her memory, the lack of lights and the racing adrenaline around her body were proving challenging obstacles.

  For the first two minutes after she’d left the search party, she’d confidently headed down to level three where her objective was located.

  The MI18 strongroom.

  It had been installed back in 1979 and stored all of their most sensitive finds. Much of what was in there was extra-terrestrial. Some of it was dangerous. All of it was valuable. She didn’t like the idea of TALOS snooping around. After the explosion, she needed to know that the strongroom was secure but didn’t want to draw Jaq’s attention to it. The woman was a strong character in her own right but paired with Trenton Winborn... It was an odd dynamic. Her meeting with Winborn at Jodrell Bank had been unnerving. She wondered if Jaq was intimidated by him at all, remembering how subdued she’d become in the man’s presence.

  If Winborn got hold of the contents of the strongroom, it would be like all his Christmases coming at once. Too many secrets. Too many people seeking to take advantage.

  There was a destruct system in place for the strongroom. A system she herself had installed against Thadeus’s wishes. She’d kept it quiet though. The rest of her then team weren’t kept informed, and she’d kept the information from her superiors.

  If she’d had the opportunity two days ago, she’d have used the device. A small explosive charge would set off a series of controlled explosions in the storage facility, destroying what it could. This would be followed by high concentrations of sulphuric acid. It should be enough to render what survived the initial blast impossible to use.

  But there was something else she wanted to retrieve. It wasn’t time to use the failsafe now. If things went awry, there were items in that room that could help them and she wanted to be able to reach them. There was information. Stuff she’d gleaned from her interviews with Irulal in 1984. Stuff she wanted no one else to know about. But also stuff she couldn’t bring herself to destroy.

  Too many secrets.

  A noise behind her pulled her out of her memories and made her hesitate. Jaq’s party would know she was missing by now. Could they have caught up with her so soon?

  “Hello,” she called into the darkness. The light of her torch stretched twenty metres, all the way to the junction she’d turned at. There was no sign of anyone following.

  The hair on the back of her neck tingled, like the breath of a lover. She got the chills and shivered. The Tombs could do this to a person. Make you feel unsettled. Watched.

  There were another three hundred metres to go before she reached the strongroom and Linwood increased her pace. At the next junction, the corridor split four ways. The way ahead to a spiral staircase leading up to the third floor; to her right, a corridor led back to various power relays and temporary accommodation should any of the team ever of needed to sleep in the Tombs. That was an option that, understandably, was rarely taken up.

  She turned left and saw up ahead, the green circular vault door that was the entrance to
the strongroom.

  A shuffling from behind. She angled her torch back the way she’d come. Her hand hovered by her waistband, then she slid out the firearm Ned had given her.

  Her heart raced. Everything she’d been telling herself about not getting scared in this place was a lie. A good lie. Something she’d tell herself to get down here and work every day. The truth, hell you know the truth, was that this place terrified her. Always had done. She’d pushed during her entire tenure to relocate the section headquarters somewhere else but there had always been a reason to keep them based in Southport. The Tombs was a low-cost option, and it seemed to draw events to it.

  They should never have restored the place after the flood.

  “Who’s there?” she called, knowing that the noise approaching didn’t belong to the search party. Search parties didn’t scramble in the dark, not talking.

  A groan, or a noise that might have been a groan, came then. The tiles lining the walls did a fantastic job of funnelling echoes around her, making her spin around to check she wasn’t going mad and the thing approaching wasn’t actually behind her instead.

  “Spencer, is that you?” she asked as calmly as she could. She lowered the torch just long enough to pull her mobile phone from a pocket. Depending on how the Tombs was feeling, it might let her have a signal. She thumbed the power button, the screen came on. Damn. No bars.

  The shuffling was closer now. Footsteps of a kind.

  When the Faceless entered the torchlight, Linwood had to stifle a scream. She’d last faced one at Payne’s house, but that had been in relative light and she’d had him with her. They’d been able to work together to get away from it.

  There was no forgetting she was alone.

  Entering the strongroom occurred to her, but she didn’t want to turn her back on this for a second. Any second it might come for her.

  She stepped back, kept walking backwards until she reached the cool metal of the strongroom door, but even then she thought if she could continue to push hard enough, she might push through the door itself into the room beyond. And then she’d be safe.