Earthfall

by Mark Walden

  ‘And now they’re just going to use all those people to do what? Strip the whole planet of anything useful? They’re like locusts,’ Sam said. ‘Why would anyone want to help them? What does the Foundation get out of this?’

  ‘The usual things that lie behind any great act of evil: money, power, even ideology,’ Stirling replied. ‘For the men and women who serve them now, though, it’s simpler than that.’

  ‘Survival,’ Sam said. ‘At least, that’s what Fletcher said.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds like Oliver,’ Stirling replied. ‘He’s always been good at surviving. When we found out what the Foundation was planning, at first we couldn’t decide what to do. It seemed too big for us to do anything about. That was certainly what I felt, but Daniel was determined that we had to do something to try to stop them. Oliver didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind – or that’s what we thought at the time. Daniel persuaded us both that we had to try to convince someone in a position of power of the threat that we were all facing.

  ‘His plan was simple; he would develop a nanobot that would block the transmissions from our implants so that the Foundation would not be able to track us down. Then we would go on the run with the most advanced pieces of Voidborn technology that we could get our hands on and hope that we could use them to convince someone in authority of our story. Daniel put the nanobots in us to block the transmissions from our implants, but he didn’t activate them immediately. He waited, I think, because he was suspicious of what Oliver was going to do. He was always a better judge of character than me.

  ‘Two days before we had planned to go on the run, Daniel turned up at my house and told me that he had just overheard our section chief requesting permission to order our termination. Oliver had told them everything. Daniel had grabbed what Voidborn technology he could and fled the lab. That evening we both turned ourselves in to the British intelligence services and prayed that we had not made a mistake.’

  ‘Did they believe you?’ Sam asked. ‘About the Voidborn, I mean?’

  ‘Would you have done?’ Stirling replied. ‘I certainly wouldn’t. The technology we’d brought with us was analysed and it raised enough eyebrows for us not to be just dismissed as lunatics, but no one believed us when we told them where the technology came from. Perhaps we’d spent so long knowing about the Voidborn that we’d forgotten that to anyone else what we were describing would just sound like the ramblings of mad men. They very much wanted to know where it did come from, though, as anyone with access to technology like that was clearly a threat to the defence of the realm. We were both kept in solitary confinement in a military prison for several months while they tried to work out what to do with us and their scientists tried in vain to reverse engineer the Voidborn technology. I suspect that we would have eventually been thrown to the wolves if it hadn’t been for one thing. Inshore.’

  ‘Who’s Inshore?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Not who,’ Stirling said, ‘where. Inshore is a remote spot in the Scottish Highlands where a Voidborn scout vessel crashed. They sent a full platoon of marines to investigate the crash site and only two came back. As snipers, those two men were lucky enough to stay out of the range of the control signal that the damaged ship was transmitting. The rest of the platoon turned on each other and killed their own comrades for no apparent reason. The exact same thing happened with the second platoon that was sent in except that time there were no survivors, despite them all wearing full NBC protective suits.

  ‘Eventually the RAF were called in and the entire site was carpet-bombed. There was enough left of the wreckage that the two crazy men talking about a race of mind-controlling aliens planning an invasion of Earth suddenly started being taken much more seriously. We were given carte blanche to spend as much as was necessary on finding a way of blocking the Voidborn mind-control. As far as we knew, the only way was to have a Voidborn implant in your head – everyone else was defenceless.

  ‘The SAS raided the Foundation facility where Daniel and I had worked, but there was no trace of anyone or anything left there. They’d probably evacuated on the day we’d run, so by the time of the raid the trail was well and truly cold. We set to work immediately and we quickly realised that we would need an active implant that we could work with if we were going to make any real progress. Unfortunately, the only two we had were inside my and Daniel’s heads.’

  ‘I can see how that might have been a problem,’ Sam said with a frown.

  ‘I surgically removed Daniel’s implant,’ Stirling said. ‘That left us with one intact working Voidborn implant with which we could experiment. We made several attempts to recreate it, and eventually we had a prototype that we felt would be capable of blocking the control signal without immediately transmitting its own location to the Foundation. That implant was largely our own creation, but parts of it were taken from Daniel’s original implant. The first implant procedures with this prototype were not successful. There were a couple of fatalities and it was beginning to look like we would never be able to work out exactly how the Voidborn got the implants to bond successfully with the nervous system.

  ‘Daniel and I spent five long, frustrating years working on the problem and eventually he made a breakthrough. He discovered that our version of the implant would not bond successfully with fully developed neural tissue. Instead, it needed to be implanted into freshly formed, undeveloped neural tissue. His rather controversial suggestion was that we try to put one of our new implants into a child, specifically a baby. I know, it sounds dreadful, but we were desperate. If we couldn’t find a way to make these devices work, it would leave the whole of humanity vulnerable to the Voidborn. The incident at Inshore had shown us what that would mean. A suitable test subject was found, an orphan, and the procedure was carried out. Daniel was right. The implant bonded perfectly with the child’s nervous system and we had what we needed – a base upon which we could build our future research. That’s how we found you, Sam. Because you have one of these.’

  Stirling turned his head and parted the hair on the back of his head to show Sam a small scar at the base of his skull.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sam said, feeling a chill run down his spine as he reached up and touched the identical scar on the back of his own head. ‘You mean –’

  ‘There’s a Voidborn implant in your skull too, Sam,’ Stirling said.

  ‘But this scar is from an implant that controls my epilepsy,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘It’s not . . .’

  ‘That’s just what you were told,’ Stirling said, interrupting him. ‘You were the baby that received the Voidborn implant.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Sam said angrily. ‘I’m not an orphan. My mum and dad are out there somewhere, wandering around as slaves of the Voidborn.’

  ‘I warned you that this would be difficult for you to hear, Sam, but please let me explain. As you grew older, Daniel spent more and more time working with you and seeing if you were developing an ability to access the more sophisticated aspects of the implant’s functionality. Obviously, we did not want you communicating with the Voidborn. In fact, our implant was supposed to avoid that possibility altogether, but we were still keen to see if you would, for example, be able to communicate with the implant that was still inside my head. Daniel grew very attached to you and he told us that he thought it was wrong that you should grow up within the confines of a research facility and that we should find you an adoptive family. A family where you could grow up normally, while still remaining under observation in case any unforeseen side effects should develop.’

  ‘You’re telling me that my mum and dad aren’t my real parents?’ Sam said, feeling a sudden sense of disorientation. ‘That I’m adopted?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ Stirling said. ‘Your mother and father were going to discuss this with you when you were slightly older, but obviously the arrival of the Voidborn meant that they never had the chance.’

  ‘So you knew them?’ Sam asked. ‘You knew my mum and dad?�
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  ‘Yes, of course,’ Stirling said with a sad smile. ‘When I went on the run from the Foundation I had to live under an assumed name. Our governmental handlers put us into a witness protection programme so that we could continue with our lives without constantly living in fear of the Foundation. I was James Taggart as far as anyone else in the world was concerned and Daniel . . .’ Stirling paused, looking Sam in the eye. ‘Daniel was Andrew Riley.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sam said quietly. ‘My dad was Daniel Shaw?’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ Stirling said. ‘And he loved you very much. He had met your mother not long after the event at Inshore and they had already had a daughter of their own.’

  ‘Do you know who my real . . . my biological parents were?’ Sam asked, feeling dizzy as he began to comprehend the consequences of what Stirling was telling him.

  ‘No, we were never told and Daniel never asked,’ Stirling said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So are the others like me?’ Sam asked. ‘Have they all got implants in their heads?’

  ‘Yes, but theirs are not the same as yours,’ Stirling said. ‘Once we’d had the success with you in getting one of our implants to work, it made the job of improving on that design much simpler. We developed several new generations of implants that we could introduce into a person’s nervous system without invasive procedures. Daniel developed nanotechnological solutions that meant the next generation of implants could build themselves inside a person’s body without the need for surgery. All it required was an injection, and over the course of the next ten years we successfully placed working implants in nearly a hundred different test subjects. They were all children like you, but we were implanting the devices in older and older children, working our way towards a viable solution for the adult population.’

  ‘And the parents of these children let you do this?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No, they never knew what we were doing,’ Stirling said, looking uncomfortable. ‘We implanted them during the course of routine surgeries, and then later during vaccinations, once Daniel had perfected the technique for nanotech construction of the implants within the body. Don’t forget that we had the full backing of some of the darker elements of the government. You’d be amazed at what they will allow you to do in the name of national security.’

  ‘So that’s how you justify it to yourself?’ Sam asked angrily. ‘That this was all done for the greater good.’

  ‘You have to remember how important this was,’ Stirling replied. ‘The plan, once we had successfully developed an implant that would work for everyone, was to place implant nano-seeds in the water supply and instantly and simultaneously make the entire population immune to Voidborn control.’

  ‘But it didn’t quite work out like that.’

  ‘No, the Voidborn arrived,’ Stirling said with a sigh. ‘We always knew they might. It was a race against time to develop the solution before they did, but we were too slow. I was immune to the effects of the first control signal thanks to my implant. Daniel, your father, would not have been so lucky since his implant had been removed. At first, the only other people who I knew had escaped the signal’s effects were the two marines who had survived the event at Inshore and gone on to be the heads of security for our research facility.’

  ‘Jackson and Redmond,’ Sam said, putting the pieces together.

  ‘Yes. When the Voidborn arrived it was a Saturday morning. Jackson, Redmond and I were the only three people at the facility. Daniel and I had been working on an experimental system that he thought might be able to place a shield around a small area and effectively block any Voidborn control signal. He had installed it in the bunker beneath the facility, which had been designed to provide us with a secure, hidden workspace in the event of an invasion. The very same facility where we used to live. It was really just an experiment. It used huge amounts of power and was far from portable, but it protected Jackson and Redmond from the signal. At first, we were as shocked and horrified by what happened as anyone, but we knew that there should be others who had not been affected by the signal and that they would need our help. Nineteen of the children who had been successfully implanted with signal-jamming devices were out there, somewhere in London, almost certainly frightened and alone.’

  ‘I know how that felt,’ Sam said, remembering the panic and fear he had felt when he saw what had happened to the people around him. ‘Were we the only ones who weren’t mind-wiped by the Voidborn?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say. There may have been people out there who had natural immunity of some kind, but we’ve never found anyone who wasn’t affected who didn’t have an implant. I immediately set to work trying to find our test subjects. I came up with a way to use the transmitters on the facility’s roof as the centre of a passive scanning network that would search for the unique tracking signals that we had designed our implants to transmit.’

  ‘So that you could keep tabs on us all?’ Sam asked with an eyebrow raised.

  ‘Actually, yes,’ Stirling said. ‘We knew that it might be difficult, if not impossible, to find you all if the Voidborn invaded without warning. It was a sensible precaution.’

  ‘Or you could use it to track us down if any of us found out what you’d done to us and run away,’ Sam said angrily.

  ‘That wasn’t the intention,’ Stirling said, ‘but I can see how it might appear that way. We knew that we had to try to find the children with implants as quickly as possible, and so Jackson and Redmond made the first of many trips to the surface to try to locate them. We had used the signal tracker to find half a dozen of the implanted children when disaster struck. We’d always known that it was possible that the Voidborn might transmit the control signal again at some point so it was risky for Jackson and Redmond to leave the shielded bunker, but what we didn’t know was that the Voidborn drop-ships could transmit a control signal too. The signal is much weaker and has a more limited range, but is no less effective. Jackson and Redmond were conducting a search sweep when a drop-ship passed over Redmond’s position and he was immediately enslaved.

  Thankfully, Jackson was sweeping another sector, but he found Redmond walking towards the centre of the city, his mind gone. He knew that he couldn’t let Redmond fall into the hands of the Voidborn; he couldn’t be sure that they might not extract the location of our bunker from him. He was forced to shoot and kill his best friend. I’m not sure he ever forgave himself; he certainly never returned to the surface.

  ‘From then on he simply trained the most capable candidates from the implanted children we had rescued, and we sent them out instead to retrieve any other test subjects we located. As you know, you were the last one we found. You proved to be particularly elusive. I was desperate to find you – I owed Daniel that much. At the time I didn’t understand why you were so hard to track. Now I think I do.’

  ‘I spent most of my time underground, hiding in the sewers,’ Sam explained. ‘That’s probably why I was hard to find.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ Stirling said. ‘Do you remember, a few weeks before the Voidborn arrived, you started to experience headaches?’

  ‘Yeah, Mum and Dad took me for a scan,’ Sam replied. ‘They said it was just a precaution, that they needed to check there was nothing wrong with the implant that controlled my epilepsy. Which I now realise was all a lie.’

  ‘Well, there was a reason for your headaches. The Voidborn components in your implant were starting to grow. We didn’t understand why or how it was happening, but your father was deeply worried. He spent a week developing a new type of nanobot that would greatly inhibit the growth of any Voidborn technology. He wouldn’t give me any details of exactly how they worked and I strongly advised him against using such an unproven and untested technology on you. The nanobots were highly experimental and using them without much more rigorous testing was extremely risky, but he was desperate. If the growth had continued, it would almost certainly have caused you irreparable brain damage. At some point, and without my kno
wledge, he must have administered those nanites to you.

  ‘When Rachel and Jacob first brought you to the bunker and you were fighting the effects of the Hunter sting, I ran blood tests on you. Your blood was swarming with the nanobots. They were fighting with the Hunter venom, which is itself made up of self-replicating nanites, and you were winning. I’ve been researching the nanites I found in your blood for the past couple of months now and I believe that I’ve come up with a way in which we can use them as a weapon against the Voidborn. Something that could make a real difference.’

  ‘And these things are inside me right now?’ Sam asked, looking down at his hands with a slightly bewildered expression on his face. After a couple of seconds he looked back up at Stirling and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe this – it’s too much to take in. It’s like my whole life has been a lie. Why are you telling me all this now?’

  ‘Because someone has to know,’ Stirling said. ‘With Jackson dead, I’m the last person on Earth who knows what the Foundation did, how they handed the planet to the Voidborn.’

  ‘But why tell me?’ Sam asked. ‘Why not tell the others?’

  ‘Because you were the first, Sam. You gave me and Daniel hope that we could protect people from the Voidborn, maybe even beat them and . . . well . . . because you’re right: you deserve answers, no matter how difficult it may be to give them to you. I’m tired of carrying around secrets. I feel like that’s how I’ve spent my whole life.’

  ‘You know I have to tell the others what you’ve just told me, don’t you? They all deserve to know the truth.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Stirling said with a nod. ‘I know I should tell them, but it might be easier for them to hear it coming from you. Besides, as I said, I need time to think about our next move.’