by Nick Cook
‘I know, but there’s not exactly a lot we can do about it. Above our pay grade.’
‘Maybe it is, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.’
‘Yeah, me too, bud. Anyway, let’s get our debriefing out of the way. The sooner we do, the sooner I can have that drink with the ever lovely Julie, followed shortly by a much-needed kip.’
Yes, both of these men would have been my allies in a parallel world.
I watched them unbuckle their harnesses and then heard their footsteps fade as they headed away down the ramp that Don had lowered.
I was just about to push the locker door open when I heard the pilots through the open ramp talking to a woman.
‘Just give her an oil change and wipe down the windshield please,’ Don said.
Laughter. ‘If only it were that easy keeping these birds in the sky,’ the woman replied.
A moment later lighter footsteps came up the ramp and a woman in her thirties appeared in the cockpit. She was wearing oil-stained grey coveralls and her dark hair had been tied back with a scrunchie. She leant over the displays and began to note things down on a tablet she had with her.
I almost groaned out loud. I hadn’t factored in any ground crew. I sat thinking, and soon realised it didn’t change much. All I had to do was wait until she was gone and then sneak out of the TR-3B. Then, god knew how, but I’d make my way back to the surface. Oh so very easy.
But then that sketchiest of plans even by my standards was blown away as the woman walked straight towards the locker I was hiding in. I just had time to raise my LRS at her as she opened the locker door.
My heart thudded as we stared at each other for a full second. I wasn’t quite sure who was more shocked, her or me. But then she whirled round and dived towards the pilot’s chair. She stabbed her finger down on the button that Don had used to contact the control tower.
A rush of adrenaline surged through me as I stumbled out of the locker, my muscles screaming with cramp as I pointed my gun at her head. But even in that split second I felt something slump inside me. This woman wasn’t a soldier and I knew there was no way I could shoot her.
‘Control here, what is it, Archangel?’ a woman’s voice asked. ‘You’re not calling off our date, are you?’
I reversed my LRS and slammed its stock on the back of the engineer’s head. With a soft moan she slumped down over the chair.
I held my breath.
‘Archangel?’ the woman’s voice repeated over the radio.
The next few seconds seemed like an eternity as I waited for her to speak again.
A sigh finally came over the radio. ‘Get a tech to check Archangel’s ride. Seems as if the comm system is on the blink.’
I heard a click and the cabin speaker went quiet.
I let out my breath and stared down at the unconscious woman. It had definitely been the right call, but when she came round she would tell them exactly what had happened. I dug into my bag and unloaded one of tranquilliser darts from Mike’s pistol and carefully pressed it into the woman’s arms. That would buy me some more time, but not much. I set to work on pulling off her coveralls as quickly as I could.
Chapter Twenty-Two
With my dark hair tied back with the engineer’s scrunchie and wearing her coveralls, I bore a passing resemblance to the woman, maybe even good enough to pull this off. I had her blue ID badge round my neck and her tablet tucked under my arm to complete my impromptu disguise. But what I wouldn’t give to be able to shift into the twilight zone right now.
A number of hoses had been connected to the TR-3B, but thankfully no other ground crew were around as I emerged. I quickly saw that most of them had clustered round the Tic Tac on the adjacent pad in this vast underground hangar. Hopefully, thanks to that, it would take them a while to discover the woman I’d knocked out and tied up with duct tape back in the locker.
In the wide-open and well-lit hangar I felt very exposed. There were no shadows for me to hide in. I needed to do my best to brazen this out.
I headed past the Tic Tac, where the ground crew’s attention was on a man with greying hair wearing a flight suit. He had epaulets on his shoulders, suggesting a senior military rank. As they listened to him, no one so much as cast a glance towards the woman in grey coveralls walking briskly across the hangar. Even so, my heart was thundering in my chest so fast I swore they were going to hear it.
I walked towards the corridor I’d seen the medics take the Grey, which had a fire-exit sign above the doorway. Thank god for health and safety, even in a workplace like this. I hoped if I followed those signs they would eventually lead me to a stairwell that would get me back to the surface. The rest I would just have to wing from there. There was nothing new about that.
My mouth grew drier by the minute as I strode into the corridor. It was then that my mind decided to make a flit back to the events at the crash site. How were the rest of the team doing? Had they even escaped? Had Jack managed to stabilise Mike in time? A hollow feeling filled my stomach. What if none of them had made it?
I swallowed down a knot of fear. I told myself that Jack and Ruby were both formidable. And I couldn’t afford to second-guess the situation. I could only deal with absolutes right now and I absolutely had to get out of here as fast as possible.
The long corridor had doors on either side of it and what looked like a hundred internal windows. Just how many secrets were hidden down here behind those doors and windows?
My attention focused on a man wearing a white lab coat who’d emerged from a door just ahead of me, heading my way. No way was he not going to notice me.
I clenched my hand round my LRS hidden in a pocket of the coveralls. But the guy didn’t so much as look up from his tablet as he walked past me towards the hangar.
I felt myself relax a fraction. Of course, just like Eden, there were probably thousands of people working down here, and they wouldn’t all know or recognise each other. So for now, if I didn’t mess this up, I was just another face in the crowd.
I headed along the corridor and my confidence began to grow as more people passed me without so much as a second glance at me – even the numerous soldiers carrying pistols.
At last I spotted a fire-exit sign above a doorway to my right. I was about to step through when my attention was caught by a large window next to it.
Beyond the window, was a white room that looked like some sort of lab and in it was a dark-haired woman I recognised instantly. Cristina, the woman that Alvarez had abducted back in Peru, who had a similar synaesthesia gift to my own, which might have explained her presence here.
She was sitting in a chair wearing some sort of skullcap with wires trailing from it. Those wires were linked to a bank of machines that a guy in a lab coat was currently studying. And then I spotted something even more important. An unmistakable tetrahedron-shaped crystal stood on a plinth: a micro mind.
How in the hell had they secured an operational one?
The implications were huge and all bad.
The micro mind had been wired up to the bank of machines. Presumably they were running tests on it and Cristina. But this micro mind was emitting a dull red light, not the strong blue I was used to.
The technician turned round and his eyes caught mine as I stared openly at him. I quickly ducked through the adjacent door – the one with the fire-exit symbol and found myself in a concrete stairwell. This was it – I’d found my way out of this labyrinth. Yet I felt like groaning.
The moment I’d seen Cristina and the micro mind I’d realised my priorities would have to change. An opportunity had fallen right into my lap. Our highest priority that overrode everything else was finding Lucy’s missing micro minds – and this one looked operational.
Then an astonishing, this-changes-everything thought struck me. The micro mind was in the lab right next to the stairwell, so that should mean…
I took the Empyrean Key out of one of the larger pockets in my coveralls and found the tuning fork in a
despatch riders bag I’d found in the locker. I mentally crossed everything I had as I struck the stone orb with it.
The note rang out and my heart leapt as two icons appeared in the air hovering over the ball – the self-repair and wave icons. I stifled the urge to whoop. This would so give me the edge I needed as I could shift into the twilight zone and become invisible.
I selected the wave icon, flicked my wrist forward and held my breath. Almost instantly the world shimmered and blurred around me.
Yes!
I turned round in the twilight zone and my hand partly merged with the door handle as I tried to grab it. But there was just enough resistance for me to turn the handle. I quickly stepped back out into the corridor and saw the guy in the lab clearly panicking and heading towards the door. He was almost certainly on his way to call security. I waited for him to press the door-release button and then grabbed my chance as he stepped out into the corridor. I ducked into the lab before the door swung closed behind him.
Cristina was gazing into empty space, as if she was in a trance. What had those bastards done to her? Probably some sort of serious sedative to keep her in a comatose state.
The last time I’d seen Cristina had been in less than ideal circumstances. I’d forced the car she was travelling in with Alvarez off the road, nearly killing her. I’d had no choice at the time. And I’d explain that to her now. I needed to tell her she could escape with us and be reunited with her husband, Ricardo, and their child back in Peru. This was my chance to make things right at last.
The lab shimmered around me as I approached her. I selected the dot icon to move into particle reality and activated it.
As I dropped back into the real world, Cristina’s gaze snapped immediately to me. Then her eyes grew wider. ‘You!’ she shouted.
I held up my hands. ‘It’s OK, Cristina. I’m a friend. I’m going to get you out of here.’
‘But you tried to murder me!’
‘Look, you don’t understand…’
Cristina leapt up from the chair. She tore the wired skullcap from her head and before I could stop her, she slammed her hand on a red button on the wall. At once an impossibly loud alarm shrieked out.
She spun back to stare at me, her eyes wild. ‘You have everything that’s coming to you, bitch!’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘What the hell have you done?’ I shouted at Cristina over the shrill cry of the alarm.
She placed her hand on her hips, squaring up to me. ‘Are you really surprised after you destroyed my life?’
I gawped at her, trying to process what she was telling me. ‘What do you mean?’ I glanced back out of the window and saw several guards in black uniforms already rushing down the corridor towards the lab. There was no time for me to argue some sense into the woman.
I struck my tuning fork against the stone orb and immediately selected the waveform icon.
Cristina stared defiantly at me as the world started to blur. ‘That’s it, run like the coward that you fucking are.’
I glowered back at her as the world shimmered into the twilight zone. Immediately, I turned and bolted for the door. Invisible or not, if those guards trapped me in here it would be over for me. My palm slid into the door-release button several times before I was finally able to make it move. The door swung open on its actuator and I burst out of the lab, the group of guards less than twenty metres away along the corridor.
Cristina raced out of the room behind me. ‘She’s invisible!’
The guard at the head of the group nodded, not at all surprised by this revelation, and grabbed a radio from his belt. ‘Initiate an immediate lockdown in Corridor Twelve, Sections A through to C.’
A clunking sound came from the fire-exit door. Sure enough, when I tried the handle, the tingle of metal merging into my fingers, it was locked.
Another alarm, this one more like an air-raid siren, began to cry out in a long mournful rising and falling call. A loud grinding noise came from a massive blast door at least a metre thick began to slide down from the ceiling. A similar metallic grinding echoed from behind me. I spun round to see a second blast door nearer to me beginning to lower. A group of people beyond it in the corridor were scattering through doors.
I lowered my head and raced towards the closing door nearest me, arms pumping the air. The gap at the bottom was already less a metre deep. I sprinted, my hands clawing the air as I threw myself forward, sliding over the polished floor. In the mirage world of the twilight zone I felt the tingle of the steel door on my heels as I slipped beneath it just before it slammed shut behind me with a shuddering bang.
I sprang back to my feet and saw the next security door a hundred metres along the corridor closing. This one was too far to reach. That was it – I was trapped in this section. As soon as those guards worked out I’d managed to slip away from them, they’d search this area next. I needed somewhere to hide.
Ahead of me, two guys in scrubs were pushing a trolley full of equipment seemingly as fast as they could, heading towards a door being held open for them by a colleague in a lab coat. He frantically beckoned towards them.
I veered towards the group, intending to slip in behind them. A familiar feeling of pain and distress slammed into me, the emotions only strengthening as I neared the room. The Grey, it had to be.
What the hell was happening in there?
The two guys had already pushed the trolley into the room. I didn’t have time to think as I stumbled towards the door and squeezed through it before it slammed shut with the sound of a bolt locking into place.
I gasped as the feelings of the Grey pressed into my skull.
With nausea spinning through me as I fought to keep standing, I crossed to the right-hand-side wall, the room rippling around me as I steadied myself against it. The group with the trolley had already disappeared through a gap in the racks of equipment that lined the room.
I took deep breaths, trying to fight the pain coursing through my body, and tried to focus on the room I’d found myself in.
In contrast to the bright corridor outside, it was dark and lit with blue light. Large glass cylinders lined the walls with some vague dark shapes inside, but I could barely focus on them with the fear that radiated through the air, almost as if I could taste it. I found myself shivering despite the warmth. With a growing feeling of dread I crossed to one of the glass cylinders and peered into it.
Through the thick glass the dark shape resolved itself into a small humanoid figure with a large head. A dead Grey. My eyes darted to the other cylinders and the forms within them. They were all Greys. I gagged when I realised I could see exposed skeletons and internal organs in. In one I could even see a brain, considerably larger than a human one, its stem floating in the liquid.
The fear ratcheted up even further as I struggled to push down the rising bile in my throat.
I turned towards the bank of equipment obscuring whatever was happening in the middle of the room with a very bad feeling. I steeled myself as best as I could as I headed towards the space between two large equipment racks.
In the middle of the room was the Grey from the crash, strapped to a gurney, the equipment trolley beside it. That was of course the source of all the emotions that had been hammering into me since I’d entered this room. Somehow we were still mentally connected.
The Grey blinked up at the masked surgeons hovering over him. Tubes with black blood ran from his arm into some sort of dialysis machine.
A fresh sense of horror swept over me when I saw that a section of his skull had been removed to expose a glistening grey brain. The bullet wound in his chest had been patched with some sort of transparent plastic through which I could see his heart beating.
A soft keening came from the Grey and once again a wave of dread crashed into me. I could feel his trauma like my own. But how and why had it chosen to link to me in this way?
‘Get a move on! We need to extract the information from this thing before it dies,’ said
one of the surgeons – a man wearing round glasses.
I felt my hope crumble for the Grey, understanding exactly why it was so afraid.
One of the other surgeons manoeuvred a metal arm with two large electrodes on flexible metal rods to each side of the Grey’s cranium.
The surgeon leant over the alien. ‘Last chance. Tell us what we need to know. Why has there been a significant increase in Tic Tac activity in the past year? Is this a precursor to a full-blown invasion of our world?’
The Grey just looked up at the man, blinking his big dark eyes.
The surgeon stared down at the alien. ‘If you’re not going to answer me, then we’ll just have to loosen your tongue.’ He nodded to an older grey-haired woman with a pinched face standing next to the trolley. She flicked a switch on a control panel and a humming sound came from the device.
‘Stand clear,’ the woman called out.
The surgeons round the gurney took a step back, their hands raised, and she pressed a button. Flickers of electricity lanced out from the probes each side of the Grey’s head into his skull. The alien spasmed, his features twisting as his heart beat faster, the voltage flooding his body. Excruciating pain roared through my own body and I had to grip the equipment rack to stop myself toppling to the floor.
The woman flicked the switch and the crackles of electricity faded away. I gasped in air, tears filling my eyes.
‘Vitals?’ the surgeon with the glasses asked a man standing next to him.
He scanned the screens next to him. ‘BP is dropping fast. The subject won’t last much longer.’
The doctor sighed and leant over the Grey. The alien was once again gazing up at him as pools of black blood dripped from his small nostrils and ran down over his cheeks.
‘Tell us what we need to know and we will stop all your pain,’ the surgeon said. ‘Look, you’re going to die anyway, so why extend your suffering?’
The alien just blinked again, utterly helpless. Out of nowhere a mental image came to my mind. I could clearly see the grey-haired flight officer who I’d spotted back in the hangar discussing the Tic Tac with the ground crew. As his image strengthened, I somehow knew I could trust this guy. The image vanished and my attention snapped back to the room as the surgeon spoke again.
