by Sam Nash
The low sunlight cast long shadows of the construction fencing surrounding a partially demolished cottage hospital site. Yelena Plender stepped out from the unlit seating area at the rear of the room, uncharacteristically dressed in a jersey hooded jacket and jeans. Behind her, scratching his overgrown stubble, sat Parth. He glanced up and saw Mary.
“Mary, honey. I have been so worried. Thank God you are safe. Did they hurt you?” Parth rushed to greet his wife, throwing his arms around her, squeezing the air from her lungs and smothering her in eager kisses. With her movements restricted, she managed an awkward back pat before he released his grip.
“You knew? The news article reported me as dead, but you knew that I was alive all the time?” Her emotions back pedalled from the cool detachment she had conjured during the journey. Transient confusion suffused with immense relief balled up in her throat.
“Of course. Did you think I would be fooled by that poor woman’s disfigured body? I was upset for her certainly, but I know every inch of you. Yelena and I have been working night and day to get you back. Why did you go to Dan and not come to me when you escaped?” Parth held onto to her waist, his grip tightening.
“I heard you speaking Russian on the telephone.” Mary felt her face redden, her voice tapering off as she spoke.
“Yelena has been teaching me. It comes in handy when Plender sends his postgrads in to spy on me.”
“Very glad to have you back with us, Mary, but there is no time for discussion now. Please, would you all take a seat?” Yelena directed them to the chairs and nodded a command to an agent watching her every move. Dan shook Parth’s free hand and joined Flynn in the front row of chairs, stretching his legs out in the limited available floor space. Parth pulled Mary to an adjacent vacant seat, periodically pecking her hand and clasping it close to his abdomen. With her arm outstretched and trapped, Mary grappled with her conflicting emotions and watched the action unfold on the screen before them.
“Go, go, go!” The commander of the unit batted the doors of the disused hospital open, allowing his troops to charge into the main corridor, taking up positions behind nurse desks and doorways, clearing the sections one stage at a time. Mary could feel the tension and anxiety building in her tall friend, who had heard no more about the fate of his girlfriend since their time on the beach. She saw him grasp the steel armrests of his chair until his skin stretched white and taut across his knuckles.
The troop reached the ward Mary recognised as one of those supporting Hive Operatives. The helmet camera panned around, stopping to view the medical waste strewn on the otherwise empty floor and a single black body bag, domed in the middle. More silent hand gestures and the unsteady video feed moved further down the corridor towards Alexi’s laboratory. Evidence of their hasty departure was everywhere, broken glassware, spilled chemicals, spattered coffee mugs and loose cables dangling from electric sockets like severed umbilical cords.
The headcam view bobbed cautiously around the edge of a wall, scanning for potential threat. The scene was a little more than a blur. A second glimpse showed the back of a figure, bound and slumped in a desk chair. Dan held his breath. Connie’s head bowed to the side, her hands taped at the wrists, then attached to the backrest stem. Her blonde locks, dull and matted. A single navy shoe had slipped from her foot and lay against a wheel of the chair.
Mary felt Dan’s anguish as acute pain radiating from her chest. Her eyes reddened, flushed with restraining the stinging tears. She was a neural hitchhiker, watching the visions his mind scrambled through. All the hopeful dreams he had envisioned for their future together; of pushing the playground swings for their bubbly daughter, welcoming their son into the world at the maternity unit, attending the awards ceremony for Connie’s Pulitzer Prize - all extinguished, along with her vibrant giggle and agile mind.
The commander signalled his men to spread out and continue clearing the building, while he paused over Plender’s bloody remains. In the confines of the Tactical Room, all eyes fell on Yelena, waiting for her reaction. Mary shifted in her seat, poised to leap to her friend’s side in her moment of grief, attempting to gauge the depth of despair. She reached out in pity, tapping into Yelena’s brainwaves and synchronising to her frequency. She felt nothing. Yelena continued to observe events dispassionately. “Oh Yelena, I am so sorry.” Mary offered, by way of solace.
Yelena shrugged. “Divorces are expensive and messy.”
The headcam drew closer to Connie and rounded her side. Her porcelain skin looked almost translucent, brittle and fragile as an ancient artefact. Her exposed neck bore the red finger marks of savage strangulation. Dan faltered, his composure failing him, he broke down into noiseless weeping. Mary rushed from her seat to comfort him, but he pushed her aside to see the screen. Connie’s face filled the wall in front of them. Even in her tortured state, she looked beautiful. The commander gently peeled back the duct tape from her mouth, pulled off his glove and positioned two fingers on her damaged neck.
“I have a pulse…get the medic.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Can’t somebody take Dan to see Connie? She shouldn’t be alone in hospital.” Mary implored, but Yelena was adamant.
“We will arrange a Facetime chat when she is Out of Woods. We have the best doctors attending her. She will be back to normal in no time. For now, we need both you and Dan to stay here.” Yelena was leaning over Flynn’s computer monitor, watching him use sophisticated tracking software on all routes leading from the disused hospital site. “Our focus must now be on finding Visser and stopping his next attack. What were the coordinates you saw in your walking dream?”
“Oh, yes. It was um… N39°45′00″ and er…” Mary closed her eyes, trying to visualise the numbers in her head.
“I scribbled them down.” Dan drew a wrinkled till receipt for two rounds of sandwiches, a pot of tea and a flat white coffee from his pocket. Scrawled across the back, were the coordinates Dan had witnessed from Mary’s mind during her extra corporeal journey to Visser’s hospital. Flynn took it from him and began typing the digits into his computer. “There was a word too. It said ‘Wasatch’.
Flynn stopped typing and looked up at Yelena. “This is his next target?” he queried. Dan and Mary nodded in unison.
“You know this place, Flynn?” Yelena asked, a puzzled expression dominating her features.
“I do. Wasatch is the name of the mountain range and corresponding earthquake fault line in Utah. It is very close to the Data Centre at Camp Williams.” Now, Dan and Mary looked perplexed. Yelena’s stony face looked up at them both. Her eyes widened in recognition of the place. “They are targeting Stoneghost.”
“Yes. That would seem to be the case.” Yelena turned back to Flynn. Get me a secure line to GCHQ at Bude. We have to warn them to follow contingency protocols. How long have we got?”
“It’s a little under six hours to midnight.” Flynn handed his boss a headset connected to ports on the console desk.
“No wait.” Mary interrupted. “Alexi said, midnight THEIR time, before something about Five Eyes backup.” She looked to Dan for confirmation. He nodded agreement. Flynn calculated the time differences. Midnight in Utah, USA, would be seven in the morning, British Summer Time. They had twelve hours to find and stop Visser, Alexi and the Hive from actuating an earthquake along the Wasatch Fault.
A junior agent called Flynn over to their computer terminal. He replayed black and white video images of cranes hoisting shipping containers from trucks at East Midlands Airport. “I have requested the flight plans for the private charter but their system has just crashed, sir. Looks like we have lost them.”
Flynn left Yelena to deal with a heated discussion with her superiors and ushered Parth, Dan and Mary from the Tactical Room and into a nearby office. “Mary, you must tell me everything you can remember…and I mean everything.”
“I don’t understand. What is Stoneghost? I heard Alexi say it when I got the numbers.” Mary perched on the edg
e of a desk, shortly followed by Parth. Dan stood towering over the stocky Jasper Flynn, who was ruffling his hair with both hands.
“It’s a secure network of surveillance equipment, between collaborating nations. It encompasses many systems and bases, from satellite transmissions to internet trawls and everything in between.”
“So, there really is an all pervading Big Brother then?” Dan snarled. “That was what all those Wikileaks were about wasn’t it? The existence of Echelon and Tempora, the systems which harvest tonnes of data from the telephone, satellite and internet systems”
“And there really is a major terror threat that it is trying to counter. Look, I’ve heard all the arguments from both sides and this is not the time for debate.” Flynn had not slept for twenty-four hours. His snippy tone reflected his anxious state. Arguments were a fruitless waste of energy.
“Would it be so disastrous if this Visser bloke downed a few servers or disabled a few networks?” Dan said, his less sedate side grumbling its way to the surface.
“If what Mary said about inducing earthquakes along tectonic fault lines is accurate, then yes.” Flynn raised his palm to his forehead. “There are approximately one point five million people living along the Wasatch Fault.”
***
Mary found herself in another windowless room. This time, her husband was attaching cables to the neural cap on her head. “Can’t they just shut down that research facility in Alaska for a while? That would stop Visser activating it.”
“Not really, darling. There are quite a few Ionospheric Heaters in the world. There is an enormous one in Norway and similar ones dotted all over the place. We can’t be sure that they will use the Alaskan one again, especially since you know about it.” He sank the jack plug into a port on a small box of electronics and clipped it to the reclining chair where Mary lay.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do? You stand a far better chance of locating them with conventional methods. Track their flight paths or something.” This was not what she had envisioned when she relinquished control of the situation to MI6. Parth seemed more thrilled to have her back as his patient more than as his wife.
“Yelena’s people have tried that, love. They seem to be able to cover their tracks. If Visser and the Hive can infiltrate minds, they are probably instructing British air traffic controllers too.” Parth patted her leg and offered her more consoling tea. She declined and removed the cap, hooking it over the end of the armrest.
“Alexi uses shielding technology, something to do with solenoids, to prevent any device from detecting the electromagnetic flux of the Hive. He only switches it off when they are broadcasting. I can’t hear them when it’s activated. Besides, I wouldn’t have a clue where or how to start looking for them.”
“Solenoids? Of course. Cancelling out the fields. Sneaky bastard.” Parth stopped moving, staring into space while he considered the scientific ramifications. Mary analysed her husband. He looked weary and unkempt, lean and a good deal older than last she saw him. The scientific fervour had not dampened though. He was still driven to achieve the manifestly impossible and that seemed to depend on her cooperation.
“Are you surprised by the things I can do now?” She sat upright and looked directly at him, observing every muscle group in his face that could betray a lie.
Parth cupped his hand to her cheek as a languid smile took shape on his lips. “I had a notion that you had capabilities. I’m just saddened that you had to discover them under such unpleasant circumstances.” He pushed her legs aside and sat on the edge of the chair, sliding his hands around her back. “I have missed you.” He touched his forehead to hers, closing his eyes and breathing her in. He moved in to kiss her. Mary snapped her head backwards and raised her arm between his chest and hers. She would not let him worm back into his affections that easily.
Dan wandered in. “Yelena sent me to help you…oh sorry, bad timing. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” He backed out of the room, swinging the door closed by the handle.
“No, it’s okay, Dan. Come in.” Parth said, jumping up and stilling the progress of the closing door. “I wanted to thank you for being so kind to Mary. I don’t know why she came to you at the bookstore last night, but she obviously trusts you.” Parth extended his hand for Dan to shake. “Please, come in.” He repeated, beckoning Dan towards a second reclining chair by the wall. “Yelena had me set this room up as soon as you were both sighted. You can’t imagine how relieved I was to hear that Mary was safe.”
Dan frowned and sat down on something resembling a padded dentist’s chair, bewildered by Parth’s change of attitude towards him. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“But you are not just anyone, Dan. I have something I need to tell you both, but I am not sure how you will react.”
Dan’s forehead pinched tighter. They sat motionless, waiting for him to continue.
“You remember that we took blood samples from you both back in the Neurosciences department?” Mary and Dan did remember. “Well, after that remarkable experiment, when Dan drew Tower Bridge in London, I had your blood tested for genetic markers.”
“And?” Mary growled.
“It suggested a remarkable degree of genetic congruence.” Parth beamed, expecting them to have ascertained the rest.
“Which means?” Dan sighed his impatience, slowly shaking his face from side to side.
“It means that you two are closely related.” Parth clapped his hands together. It was obvious that the news had delighted him and was anticipating their corresponding elation.
Mary curled her lip at both sides. “As in distant cousins?” She looked at Dan. He certainly had a similar complexion. There was a passing likeness in the contours of his nose and the dark mahogany eyes. Perhaps a fleeting resemblance was evident.
“No, closer than that. It suggests that you are siblings.” Parth returned to Mary’s side, resting on the seat next to her knees and touching her thigh.
“But I’m an only child. How can that be possible?” Mary’s thoughts switched back to her childhood. Flashes of long summer holidays spent pottering about the garden, alone but for her stuffed animal friends. Of Grampy reading to her on Brighton beach while her father was away on research trips and her mother prepared lessons for the following term of teaching. Could it be possible that her father cheated on her mother during one of his many trips? The thought unsettled the hero status she had always assigned him, the overhead lighting strobed, snapping her thoughts back to Dan. “Are you saying that we share the same father?”
“I suppose it could be possible.” Dan said, folding his arms defensively across his chest. “I have never attempted to locate my biological parentage. It always upset my adopted mother whenever the subject arose.”
“No, that’s not what I am saying. The genetic markers match too closely. You have the same mother and father. You are fully brother and sister.” Parth looked up at the flickering lights overhead then back at Mary. “Try to stay calm, honey. I know this is a bit shocking.”
“But that would mean that mum was pregnant with Dan…”
“While they were at University,” Dan said, chewing again on the edge of his thumb. “It might be worth asking Flynn to trace my registered biological parents from the adoption papers when all this Visser stuff is over with.”
“Does that mean that having these odd abilities is genetic? Do you think Dan and I inherited them?” Mary shuffled forwards on her seat, stood up and wandered around the room. “Is that why you were testing us in your department?”
“It would indicate that, but we could find no anomalous genes or alleles that would point to new traits. But then, it could be hidden in the redundant DNA. Honestly, I haven’t been able to find the causal link.” Parth’s voice tailed off, the solitary passenger of a new train of thought.
The air conditioning unit switched on, whirring mechanically. It drew Mary’s attention, highlighting the lack of windows and the overt security surrounding them. She
felt trapped. The expectation that she would conform to their demands was a burden of increasing intensity. They had replaced Visser’s threats of torturing Parth to the heavier accountability of one and a half million lives in Utah.
Feeling the heat, she peeled off her cardigan and gathered up her hair in a bunch, holding it in a ponytail and fanning her neck with her free hand. The bruises from her own brush with death, were still visible around her throat. Had Parth even noticed them? She scanned the room erratically. Were the walls closing in? Her stomach gurgled.
“So, what was the point of you killing all those people down in Zone Six?” Her tone dipped a few degrees lower than frosty. Parth visibly twitched, as realisation dawned that he too was a target for observation during her bodiless flights. A fox caught in the hen house with two powerful weapons bearing down on him.
“Those people were already clinically dead. They had donated their bodies to science so technically, I am not responsible for their deaths. I had to redirect projects to focus on the pineal gland after your scan. It seemed too much of a coincidence that DiMethylTriptamine, ingested in tribal cultures, induced anecdotal evidence of extracorporeal travel. In some instances, there have been reports of other abilities that mirror yours, Mary, and a level of introspection not seen with any other type of recreational drug. When you started having peculiar experiences and we discovered your enlarged pineal gland, a site of natural DMT production, it became the focus of study to pinpoint the triggering factor.” His eyes followed his wife as she paced about the room with a dissatisfied scowl.
“To what end? Supposing you did find the trigger? Presumably that was why you were all set to augment more unsuspecting volunteers and saturate their brains with drugs. What were you supposed to do with these specially activated lab rats?” A fluorescent tube blew out above her, showering her head in fleeting sparks and glass fragments. She stepped clear, shaking the tiny shards from her hair and clothing.
“Darling…please. Don’t get yourself all worked up like this.” The rest of the lights continued to flash and whine around them. Dan could not refrain from grinning at Parth’s unease.
