Again, we nodded. She nodded back, the eyes in her blank face quietly reading ours.
“That’s a shame. We do have some more possible options, though, options that we were quite close to bringing in when we couldn’t get hold of you, Mr Pointer.” Seeing our surprise, she carried on. “As you know, several others came forward after the First Arrival, and two or three accounts checked out in a similar way to yours, at least in terms of correlation with energy readings et cetera. Not as strong, or as dramatic as yours, but worth investigating, nonetheless. Of course, many more have come forward since your account became well known in the media, but they have to be dismissed, naturally. But the few we have … they might hold promise if, in fact, you two are cut off altogether in the event of a Third Arrival.” She looked back down the street again, and audibly sighed, pausing. “I don’t like being lied to, Mr Winter, and I know that’s what you did. I didn’t even need to check the energy readings to know; when I thought about it afterwards, it was obvious from the way you led Mr Williams straight out of his house and onto the street. You didn’t even think about your story, did you?” She looked back at us now, and we still sat in silence. Was this an introductory speech before our punishment, or something else? I barely dared hope it was the latter.
“I should have seen it at the time, and it’s to my great professional shame that I didn’t. I, like everyone else, expected to find another target in the same mental shape as the last one. I allowed myself to be … distracted, I suppose, by what we did find. Rest assured,” she said, turning back to the preparing units at the bottom of the road, and taking a few steps in that direction. She obviously didn’t want us to see her face as she said this next part. “Even if you hadn’t been ‘cut off’, as you say you have been, you wouldn’t be going in this time. I’ll be honest; despite my words in Edinburgh, and your blatant insubordination, and you knowing what the consequences would be … in that situation, I think it worked out for the best. I think I’d rather it went down the way it did. That one time.”
I didn’t need to ask why. My skin went cold as relief washed over me.
“Thank your lucky stars—for the rest of your lives—that it went off without a hitch up there, gentlemen,” said Straub, her voice growing slightly colder. “Believe me. You have no idea. And also believe that if you ever lie to me again, regardless of the outcome, that it will go very, very badly for you. I can write off your behaviour once—once—as you are civilians, after all, and witnessed a very traumatic incident with C.I. One that, in hindsight, you shouldn’t have. I can see how that would have clouded your judgement, and I would be a liar if I said that I didn’t understand your reasons. But that allowance has passed, and will not be given again. I’m not going to bother repeating myself. Try it, and see what happens. My conscience will be clear.” The sweep units all appeared to be ready now, and so she raised her walkie again, and spoke into it. “Wallace, proceed when ready.”
As Paul let out a quiet but long breath of air, slumping in his seat and putting one hand to his forehead (whether this was from relief, or from dismay at seeing the beginning of another extraction, I’ll never get to know) the shout went up at the other end of the road, and the units moved forward as one to surround each house. The probe had begun, and Straub stood with her back to us to watch. She seemed far more relaxed than before for some reason. Given that we were still hours ahead of the time it had taken for the second energy spike to occur, there was a strong likelihood that Target Three could be taken directly to their relevant Stone Man in the same manner that Henry had been. Thus the second of the day’s tasks could be wrapped up quickly and efficiently, and this had seemed to ease her tension whilst on a mission. It was a simple extraction job after all, and after two successful rendezvous (Patrick and Henry) she had to be more confident that it was a straightforward process. They must have known all the units were unlikely necessary, but they were taking no chances and it would also be a quicker way of searching several houses at once, I suppose. I almost felt compelled to remind her that there was a still a third Stone Man that we couldn’t neutralise without knowing where Target Three was (Not we, I had to remind myself. You’re out of the loop) and worse, we didn’t know where it was going once it got past Birmingham.
As if she’d read my thoughts—so much so that it was eerie—Straub spoke without turning around. What she said was big news indeed, almost as big as the Stone Man returning in the first place, but I didn’t know how awful the truth behind it would be. Yet.
“I received a report, a few moments ago, about the third Caementum, the other blue one. I assume you’re interested to know.” She sounded airy, almost casual. I wondered if she’d had much sleep. “It stopped moving around two minutes back. Just stopped dead. If you know anything about that, I expect you to tell us. I don’t think you do—I believe you about being cut off, the dismay is plastered all over your face, Mr Pointer—but if you even have as much as a snippet of anything about that, pass it on. It could be important.”
Paul and I exchanged a glance, and shook our heads at each other.
“Not me,” said Paul, directing his comment at Straub. He slowly sat up, almost excited at the possibility of hope for the remaining targets, but not believing it. “What about the other one? Is it still coming?”
“Unfortunately so,” said Straub, genuine regret in her voice. “The two Blue were definitely on the same path, up to a certain point at least. They were walking side by side—Coventry is a hell of a mess—but when one stopped, the other just carried on, like it had been on its own all along.”
“A mistake, then?” I asked, thinking fast. What the hell could that be about? “Two of them following the same signal by accident, maybe? One realising, or its controllers realising, that it wasn’t needed?”
“Possible,” said Straub, watching as the soldiers—their brief attempt to communicate via megaphone to anyone inside the houses at an end—now lined up police-on-a-drugs-bust-style battering rams and opened the houses themselves. They began to file into each house quietly but efficiently. They weren’t going in heavily, once the initial destruction of the houses’ front doors was complete, but I was still deeply glad that we’d taken the path that we had with Henry. I wouldn’t want him to see this in his home. “It would make sense. My gut feeling is that it’s a suicide. Someone who didn’t handle the fear in the same way that Mr Williams did, and worse even than Target One. If I’m right, and they’ve got the job done early themselves, we get to see what that stationary Blue does next as a result. We couldn’t take the risk of terminating a target early ourselves, but now it’s happened on its own; we’ll see then, does Caementum reset and go after someone else, in which case we have a larger problem, or does it go home like its predecessor, in which case the problem is, temporarily at least, solved? Time will tell, and hopefully soon. And we’ll know what happens if the targets die early.”
“If it’s a suicide,” said Paul, “maybe they did it for that reason. To help.”
“Again, possible,” said Straub, nodding, but sounding slightly bored by the exchange now. We weren’t relevant any more, and our insights weren’t valuable. She’d only brought it up to check if we knew anything, after all, and it was clear that we didn’t. She had more important things to worry about at that moment in time. “We won’t know unless a note comes up in a police report, but even that’s extremely unlikely. We don’t know where it was going, after all, and the number of suicides related to Caementum’s appearance are comparatively sky-high anyway.”
We could hear the reports beginning to come in over Straub’s walkie. Three of the five houses were announced to be clear, and shortly after that a fourth house was also announced to be empty. As the silence continued from the fifth house, and the soldiers didn’t reappear, I began to feel uneasy. I obviously wasn’t alone, as Straub spoke into the walkie.
“Unit three, report,” she said firmly, and after a pause the walkie crackled into life. It would have been hard enough
to hear the soldier on the other end as it was, due to the shaken, quiet voice he spoke in at that moment, but the screaming in the background made it even more difficult. It was a woman.
“Unit three departing … uh … escorting …” The voice paused for a second, and carried on. “One civilian, escorting one civilian … immediate medical assistance required, Carter has been stabbed, he’s coming out now.”
The confusion only halted Straub for the briefest of moments.
“Roger that, unit three, assistance on its way, take the civilian to transport as instructed.”
Straub hurried off without looking at us again, barking orders, and Paul stood up in his seat to get a better look at the house. We were parked perhaps eighty feet away.
“What the fuck …” he said, straining to see, and I followed his lead. As we watched, three soldiers hurried out of the front door, two holding a man up between them. The one in the middle—presumably Carter—was holding a heavily bleeding wound in his stomach, his face contorted in pain. A stretcher was already being rushed over to them, and Carter was quickly escorted away, but already the remaining soldiers were emerging behind them. You could hear their arrival before you could see it, as the screams of the woman carried far more clearly once she’d been brought downstairs. They had their target.
She was of average height and build, but even with her hands secured behind her back, it took three of them to escort her as she thrashed and screamed in their grip. She had long black hair that was frayed and sticking out in various directions, and wore what was probably her about-the-house clothing; a baggy red hoodie and non-matching navy blue jogging bottoms. From here I could see the stains on them. Her feet were bare, and her eyes went rapidly from screwed up shut to manically wide eyed, opening each time she had enough air back in her lungs to let out a fresh bellow. Her face was bright red, and her skin was slick and shiny with tears. She was the most hysterical-looking person I had ever seen. The soldiers’ faces, the ones who were dragging her out of the building, were determined but also pale, as if they’d seen something awful in that house.
After she’d been taken away, and our sight line to the front door was clear again, we saw the last, remaining soldier emerge from the house. He was moving very slowly, and seemed unsteady on his feet. In his arms was what looked like, at a distance, some sort of parcel. No-name ran up to him, and we could see them talking; the officer’s body blocked us from seeing what the soldier was carrying, but we could see from the back of the no-name’s head that he was looking down at it. They both stood very still for a moment.
Straub approached the pair now, and we saw her gently put her hand to her mouth, but only briefly. She then took her hand away and spoke to both of the men, but we could see that she was staring at the parcel in the first soldier’s arms as she did so. No-name took the parcel, and headed off in one direction, whilst Straub remained and spoke to the soldier. It seemed personal, sincere; she even put one hand on his shoulder briefly. He nodded, seemed to take a deep breath, then straightened up sharply and saluted her. He then began to head towards the personnel transports parked behind us. As we watched, no-name approached Straub again; the parcel was gone. They stood talking, but my eyes drifted towards the soldier who was heading in our direction. His head was down as he walked, and walking very slowly at that. Whatever had happened in there, it had clearly been deeply traumatic for him, and I didn’t think it was the stabbing of his comrade.
“Jeeeesus,” breathed Paul, sitting back in his seat. “Did you see the state of that soldier? I hate to say it … but that could have been us. Guess we were lucky we only went in the first time.”
I didn’t answer, but instead looked from the soldier to the still-talking Straub in the distance. The walking soldier was beginning to veer towards the transport on the opposite side of the street, parked several feet behind us. If I was going to do anything, I needed to do it now whilst it was easy.
“I’ll be back in a second,” I said to Paul, and climbed down from the jeep before he could reply. I sprinted across the few feet between us and the soldier, and stopped just in front of him.
“Excuse me,” I said quietly, and the soldier jumped slightly at the sound of my voice. He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed me standing there. “Andy Pointer, special adviser to the Caementum project,” I said sternly, holding out my hand. I’d thought that title up on the spot, but in hindsight it probably wasn’t necessary. I was world famous, after all, for the little that now seemed worth. The soldier stared at me for a second, and then took my hand in a limp handshake. He was young, very young, I could see; twenty-one at most. His face was pale, and his blue eyes squinted at me from under his blonde eyebrows. I realised he’d be staring into the sun slightly; it was getting late in the day by now, and I could see from my lengthening shadow that the sun would be shining right over my shoulder and into his face. I moved sideways slightly to oblige, and his eyes relaxed slightly as my shadow covered his eyes. I chanced a brief glance over his shoulder at Straub; she was still in conversation, and the two vehicles she’d brought with her were starting their engines up, one about to carry the latest extracted target to its rendezvous, presumably screaming all the way until they sedated her.
“Sorry to ask this of you, my friend, as I can tell you’ve had a rough experience just now,” I said, trying to sound officious but sympathetic at the same time, “but I need to get the quick lowdown of what just happened whilst it’s still fresh in your mind. It all helps, I assure you.”
Dazed, the soldier blinked at me, and then turned his head in a lazy motion to look at no-name. Before he could say anything or turn back, I shut down that train of thought for him
“It’s okay,” I said, “I have full clearance, I assure you, and I don’t think your commanding officers would be too pleased about being bothered right now. Just give me the quick rundown and we’re done here.”
I look at it now and wonder why I was asking. Was there any point, other than my own curiosity? It wasn’t to help make more money; I had more than enough, and I was only risking Straub’s further anger when I’d already dodged a major bullet on that front. But I needed to know. Curiosity is one thing I’ve never had any trouble feeling.
“She … she was on the floor,” the young soldier muttered, eyes flitting in any direction other than mine. “She was upstairs, in the front bedroom. Curled up … making these little noises …” He rubbed his face quickly with his hand, and carried on, seeing it happening before him again. “She was shaking, but she wasn’t responding to us. The corporal kept asking her name, trying to get her attention … and then he got in close … and her hands were out of sight, like, tucked in front of her. He shouldn’t have gone in close, but it was … she was a woman in a nice house …”
He turned, and looked back for a moment, shaking his head. I checked again; Straub was still busy.
“When Carter touched her, she must have been waiting,” he said, looking at the house, perhaps even at the window of the room where it had happened. “Waiting until he was right over her, because when she pulled the knife … he didn’t have time to move. She buried it right in his guts. Right up to the hilt, man, and pulled it out again. You shouldn’t pull out a knife once it’s in you, you know. Makes it worse.”
“So I gather,” I said, trying to get him back on track. His shock would easily lead him off down all sorts of side avenues if I let it.
“She didn’t start screaming until she’d done it,” continued the solider, now turning to me with a look of confusion on his face. “Like … like she knew … she knew she’d used her only trump card, and realised it hadn’t really done anything. But I could see it in her eyes, man, even before the screams, I saw her face when she stuffed that knife into Carter. She’d lost it. She was way, way gone. That was why it made sense when I saw …” His voice faltered, and he sniffed inwards through his nose.
“Saw what?” I asked. This was the crux of the thing, not the stabb
ing. This was what had really gotten him messed up. He looked at the floor when he spoke again.
“In the corner of the room, right next to the wall. Nobody had really looked inside it because, I dunno, we were more worried about her, and there was no sound coming from it. That was the thing, if we’d heard something we would have looked, but it just seemed empty. I took, like, just a glimpse, and didn’t see anything at first, so we thought it was just her in the room. We thought the thing was empty because … no sound. We never thought it could have been because …”
“Because what? Wait, wait. What was empty? What was in the corner of the room?”
“The crib. The crib was in the corner of the room.”
I thought of the parcel, and of the size of it, and of the second Blue Stone Man suddenly stopping walking, and hoped as an awful, sick feeling began to grow in my stomach that the connection I was making was wrong.
“After they’d taken her out, I just had a second look,” the soldier said, his voice cracking as he spoke. “And, you know, no wonder everyone had missed it. The pillow covered most of the view, you see. She’d used a pillow. That’s why it was so quiet.”
I looked at Paul in the jeep, and upon seeing the expression on my face, the one on his changed from an annoyed What the fuck are you doing to a worried What’s happened? I could only shake my head, slowly.
“How could she do that, man?” asked the soldier, a pleading tone coming into his shaking voice as tears sprung up in his eyes. He was looking at me for an answer. “I know she’d gone crazy, I—I mean, I mean, I know like, if this thing is coming for you it makes you freak out but, but … why do that? How do you do that? Huh?”
I thought I knew, but I couldn’t say it. This was too much, and I suddenly just felt very, very tired. This whole day, this whole business … insane. Like the woman. Did she know, then? Some kind of connection between mother and child, knowing that not only was she a target but that her child was too? I think about it now—I’ve thought about her a lot in the time since, thought about her and Patrick and fucking Henry, that fucker got me the worst, fucking bastard—and I think that maybe her course of action wasn’t insane, even if she was. A giant, unstoppable, stone murder machine coming for me and my child? It would only take one of us, I think, had I the chance of a say in the matter. But, again … who can say?
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