A moment later, the van was moving again, followed closely by their two other vans with Aviary and the surviving resistance squadrons. Damien was silent for the entire trip, and when it finally came time to change vehicles, he stepped out of the van without a word.
‘Thank you,’ Sophia said to Aviary.
She looked shaken, but uninjured. ‘Glad we could help,’ she said. ‘This isn’t over, is it?’
Damien and Jay exchanged a knowing glance.
‘Not for a while yet,’ Sophia said.
Aviary nodded and turned to join the resistance squadrons, who had since shed their uniforms down to their original civilian clothes and now moved into a mall parking lot across the road. The vans couldn’t be used any longer, everyone needed to source alternative transport.
Nasira handed Jay a piece of paper. ‘Be at this diner tonight, at nine.’
Jay took the card. ‘Why?’
‘To question the meaning of life,’ Nasira said. ‘Why do you think? Debrief.’
***
Sophia was relieved when the diner’s door jingled and in walked Damien and Jay. She checked their expressions as they approached. They looked tired, but nothing that suggested danger. If there were anything wrong, they’d have given her a signal by now.
They sat down opposite Nasira and herself and the waitress came over.
Jay flashed his best smile and ordered bacon and eggs over medium with black coffee.
‘It’s night-time,’ Nasira said.
‘Third breakfast,’ Jay said. ‘Shh, I haven’t eaten in a whole day.’
‘Shush me again and I’ll serve you over medium,’ she said.
Jay turned to Damien. ‘Is that flirting or does she hate me?’
‘It’s more or less the same thing,’ Sophia said.
‘OK,’ the waitress said, looking at Damien. ‘And you, sir?’
‘Same,’ Damien said. ‘Scrambled.’
‘Is that all?’ she said.
Damien nodded, his eyes glazed over.
The only other customer in the diner was a truck driver, and he seemed more interested in the televisions than anything else. Sophia turned to the screen nearest her. There was no sound but she’d been reading the subtitles for the last hour.
‘The riots have dropped off,’ she said. ‘Since we destroyed the transmitters and the super-array.’
‘Blamed it on the terrorists,’ Nasira said.
Jay shrugged and, as the waitress returned with their coffee, spooned in an obscene amount of sugar.
‘So Denton pretty much just hired us as his clean-up crew,’ Damien said.
‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Nasira said.
‘What happened to him?’ Damien asked Sophia.
She didn’t know what to say. ‘He vanished. I don’t know where he is.’
‘Will he come for us again?’ Damien asked.
‘To kill us or work for us?’ Nasira said.
Damien shrugged. ‘Neither sound appealing.’
‘Is he back in the Fifth Column now?’ Jay added.
Sophia shook her head. ‘I wish I knew.’
‘I wish I didn’t,’ Jay said. He slumped back in his seat, pulled a twenty from his wallet and added it to the modest pile in the middle of the table. ‘I’m guessing we don’t get paid for this one?’
‘Afraid not,’ Sophia said. ‘All the Akhana accounts disappeared overnight.’
‘Motherfuckers cleaned it up real quick,’ Nasira said.
‘I just wish we could’ve done it differently,’ Damien said, stirring his coffee.
‘You can’t wish that,’ Sophia said. ‘You do what you’re trained to do, you adapt to the situation and you find a solution.’
‘Yeah, but what if you don’t like the solution?’
She reached over and held Damien’s spoon still. ‘If you couldn’t adapt, you wouldn’t be here. None of us would be.’
She knew what he was going through because she was going through the very same thing. She wouldn’t dare admit it, but everything she had was sitting at this table.
‘We just, like, totally saved the world from the brink of collapse, huh?’ Jay said.
‘No.’ Sophia reached into her jacket pocket and touched the cool glass of the tangerine vial that contained the anti-Chimera vector. ‘But we postponed it.’
Acknowledgements
A big thanks to my writing buddies Melissa Cranenburgh, Danika Hadgraft, Jess Howard, and Toni Jordan for reading my endless drafts in various states of disrepair. And a long overdue thank you to my close friends, Luke Galanti, Ben Lollback, Wayson Ly, Aaron Sansoni, Michael Mei and Michael Tran for always being there when I needed them most.
A notable thank you to the late Andrzej M Łobaczewski, who endangered his life and career to unravel the nature of psychopathology, and to Laura Knight-Jadczyk, Harrison Koehli and many others for continuing the research and sharing it at no cost to anyone but themselves.
Thank you to those who believed in me: to Xavier Waterkeyn, my literary agent and exceptional mentor for seeing potential in my debut novel and nurturing that potential. My publisher, Joel Naoum, for believing in me from the beginning and taking the chance. And my editor, Nicola O’Shea, for her patience and exceptional work.
And finally to Sam Linton-Smith and my mother, Loretta Farrugia, for encouraging me to pursue my passion from a young age.
About Nathan M Farrugia
Nathan Farrugia served in the Australian Army in infantry and reconnaissance, and studied film, television and professional writing. He worked as a post-production video editor, colorist and copywriter, where he earned the nickname Fagoogoo because no one could pronounce Farrugia.
Nathan lives in Melbourne, Australia. In his spare time he discovers hidden places around the world with urban explorers, practices lock picking and escaping from plasticuffs and straitjackets (you never know when that will come in handy, right?) and studies Systema, a little-known martial art and closely guarded secret of Russian special forces. Nathan has trained under USMC, SEAL team and Spetsnaz instructors, the Chiricahua Apache scouts and Australian Aboriginals. He also drinks tea.
nathanmfarrugia.com
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@nathanmfarrugia
Also Available from Momentum
The Chimera Vector
Nathan M Farrugia
“Farrugia! Bringin’ the awesome from the first headshot to the last ’splosion.”
– John Birmingham, author of the Axis of Time and Disappearance trilogies
The international bestseller that started it all, The Chimera Vector is the prequel to The Seraphim Sequence.
The Fifth Column: the world’s most powerful and secretive organization. They run our militaries. They run our governments. They run our terrorist cells.
Recruited as a child, Sophia is a deniable operative for the Fifth Column. Like all operatives, Sophia’s DNA has been altered to augment her senses and her mind is splintered into programmed subsets.
On a routine mission in Iran something goes catastrophically wrong. Bugs are beginning to appear in Sophia’s programming and the mission spins out of control.
High-speed chases, gun fights, helicopter battles, immortal psychopaths, super soldiers and mutant abilities are all in the mix in this edge-of-your-seat action-packed techno-thriller.
Perfect for fans of Matthew Reilly, The Chimera Vector melds sci-fi with sizzling espionage action.
Find out more and purchase online at
http://www.momentumbooks.com.au/books/chimera-vector/
First published by Momentum in 2013
This edition published in 2013 by Momentum
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Copyright © Nathan M Farrugia 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia
The Seraphim Sequence
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The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 Page 54
