by Gareth Otton
“You guys have to see this,” Lizzie said, waving around a small black box like it was a smoking gun. “Have you got a TV I can plug this into?”
“Give it here,” Amelia ordered and Lizzie handed over the hard drive to the stoic woman, who plugged it into the laptop that was perched on the coffee table near where she had been sitting. “What am I looking for here?”
“Can I?” Lizzie asked, looking like a kid who’d consumed far too much sugar.
“Lizzie, are you alright?” Tad asked.
She just waved him off in annoyance before she fell into the spot that Amelia vacated and started playing with the computer. The computer was facing away from most of the people in the room, so they couldn’t see what was happening. Amelia, however, was standing behind the reporter, and when her eyes widened and she gasped, Tad knew that whatever they were about to be shown had to be good. Normally, the woman never had even so much of a hint of her aura showing through, but right now it blazed with white light that made Tad sit forward on his chair, eager to see whatever was on that computer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Norman lean forward as well, and Stella was no better. Soon they were all leaning forward impatiently to find out what Lizzie had to show them.
“Here, look at this,” Lizzie said, tapping on the space-bar and then spinning the laptop around so that everyone could see what she was talking about.
At first, Tad didn’t know what he was looking at. There were a group of men in suits surrounding a woman who looked like the President of the United States, only it couldn’t be her because these men had guns pointed at her head. Tad was about to ask what he was looking at before a niggling doubt in the back of his mind told him this might actually be the president. A moment later, an elevator door opened and a tall, broad shouldered man in an expensive suit strode out.
Tad had flashbacks to Joshua King in Dream on the night that Charles died. In that place, he had changed his appearance to that of something resembling a Greek god, but the effect paled in comparison to this guy. The dark beard and brilliant eyes that shone only as an eidolon’s could told Tad that he was looking at the real deal.
Tad watched in fascination as he started shouting at the President like she was some kind of misbehaving schoolchild, then jumped out of his skin when she tried to argue back only to be cut off with a lightning bolt that destroyed a piece of furniture. For a moment the screen went white as it failed to cope with the sudden bright light, but when it faded back in again Tad saw the man was shouting at the woman, but they could no longer hear what she was saying.
“Where’d the sound go?” Norman asked.
“Miles said that the electrical interference from that lightning fried the circuitry for the microphone and we should just be lucky the camera was still working. Does it matter though? You all know what this means, right?”
“The eidolon are behind this war,” Stella said, putting together the clues that Tad was only just now making sense of. “This is what we’ve been looking for.”
“Exactly,” Lizzie said. “We show this to the world, and support for this war goes away like that.” Lizzie snapped her fingers.
Tad just stared, trying to get his head around what she just said. However, the thought was sinking in and he realised she might be right.
“We can use this,” he said, verbalising his inner thoughts. “The Americans won’t like that they’ve been manipulated into this war by a corrupt president and her puppet master. Couple that with everything that Kuruk has been doing, and this might be enough to actually call them off.”
“This video looks more like coercion than corruption,” Amelia pointed out.
“So? It doesn’t change the fact that the Americans are engaging in a war for false reasons,” Norman said. He was standing now, excited as he ordered Lizzie to play the clip again. “This is brilliant. We need to get this out to the public as quick as possible. How soon can you go live?”
“I’ve got my crew coming in to set up right now. I wanted to run this past you guys first, see if you want to be a part of this. I thought that—”
She opened her mouth to keep speaking, but whatever she was about to say was swallowed up by an enormous boom that was so loud the windows rattled and the walls shook, giving Tad flashbacks of his eardrums bursting while standing next to the thunder clap the other day. Instinctively he turned and threw himself at Stella, diving to the ground and shielding her with his body even as he called to the ghosts he was still merged with so that he could use his full power to erect a shield of air around them all.
One moment there was rumbling and car alarms, the next silence fell over the room as Tad’s shield blocked out even the sound of what was going on.
Tad waited for the pain that would follow the explosion, but strangely, there was nothing. Looking up, he saw Growler standing over him like he was shielding Tad just as Tad was shielding Stella, but other than that, nothing looked unusual. Norman had fallen back into his chair and Lizzie looked a little unstable on her feet, staring out the window towards the source of the sound. Of Amelia there was no sign.
“What the hell was that?” Stella asked, pushing Tad away and climbing to her knees, looking around with wide frightened eyes like she was having flashbacks of her own. Considering what had happened the last time there was an explosion near her, Tad didn’t blame her for the way that her voice shook.
“That had to be an explosion somewhere,” Norman muttered.
“That felt like more than an explosion,” Lizzie answered in a distracted tone that made Tad look at the young reporter. She was looking at the dust that was settling on the edges of the shield he was holding in place. Seeing that it was no longer necessary, he relaxed his hold on Dream and the shield vanished, the dust falling down onto Lizzie’s upturned face, making the young woman sneeze even as the sound of car alarms filled the air once more.
“Where’s Amelia?” Norman asked.
“She ran out of that room before that shield went up,” Lizzie said. Before she could say more, Amelia was back, barging through the door with an expression on her face that was the most pronounced of any that Tad had ever seen there before. The woman was in an obvious state of shock, but that didn’t stop her from searching out Norman and delivering her news.
“It’s parliament.”
“Shit, what happened?” Norman asked. “Did someone detonate a bomb on the bridge or something?”
“No, Norman. It’s parliament. It’s gone.”
“What?” Norman asked, laughing like she was joking.
“It’s gone,” Amelia repeated, and her shock was too much for her and she sank into the nearest chair while the rest of the room just looked at her in amazement, none of them quite able to believe what they were hearing.
Stillness settled over the room as none of them had it in them to form a valid response, and it was Lizzie who broke that stillness first. An expression came over her face that made Tad’s stomach do flips as he guessed her intent, then she was gone, blinking out of existence with nothing more than a pop and the after effects of Dream that tickled Tad’s senses.
He didn’t even think about his actions as his worry for his friend took over, and he too blinked out of existence, appearing first in th exit room at Ten Downing Street, and then on Westminster Bridge looking for signs of his friend. He knew she would be here because what reporter with any kind of journalistic passion could stay away from such a thing. However, he soon stopped looking when something much more monumental caught his attention.
Where once there had been a building so famous it was easily recognised the world over, there was now little more than a smoking pile of rubble that looked more like a crater than a building. And it wasn’t the only damage. The explosion had been so violent that nearby buildings had smoke rising from gaping holes, and the bridge itself was covered in rubble. Cars had been overturned near the building, and the backed up traffic held either stunned drivers or were empty as their passengers had long since fled.
>
“Can you believe this?” a familiar voice asked, and Tad looked up to find Lizzie looking into the screen on the back of a digital camera, filming the wreckage with wide, horrified eyes. She opened her mouth to say more, but movement up ahead caught both of their attention. This time it was Tad who reacted first, blinking out of existence one moment and then appearing again a hundred feet closer to the blast site, calling on Dream to augment his strength before reaching for a giant chunk of ancient wall that was pinning a desperate figure to the ground.
“Help me,” a youthful voice said, and Tad tried not to think how the girl sounded barely older than Jen as he focused on moving the giant chunk of stone. Even with the ghosts lending him strength, it was impossibly heavy and no matter how much he roared in effort, he only lifted it a few inches, not enough for the girl to slide out.
However, suddenly it became so light he almost fell as he lost his balance. The enormous chunk of wall was moving as if on its own and Tad changed the direction of the Dream he was calling over. Instead of augmenting his strength, he augmented the momentum of the wall, speeding it up until the huge thing flipped over like it was the world’s largest playing card. It collapsed back onto the street with a crash that caused the wall to break into smaller sections that would have been much easier to lift.
Waving his hand in front of his face and calling to Dream again to augment the movement of the air to blow away the dust, Tad looked over to whoever it was who had helped him flip the giant stone, and was surprised to find Stella standing beside him.
“I think Lizzie’s video is paying off,” she whispered, staring at her hands in awe, as though she couldn’t believe what she had just done.
Tad didn’t answer, his eyes instead moving to the young woman who had been pinned under the stone. It wasn’t good. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old and where her legs should have been, there was something that resembled a pair of jeans filled with red jelly. Tad had to look away so as not to lose his nerve as he rushed over to the young woman’s side and knelt next to her.
“What’s your name?” he asked. At first the girl didn’t hear him as she moaned in agony, but when he asked again, she gave him an answer.
“Gemma.”
“Hi Gemma, I’m Tad. I’m going to help you, I promise. But first, I need to find someone to make sure you’re okay to move. I need you to be brave for a second while I disappear. I’ll be right back.”
“Wait, my dad. He should be around here somewhere. Please, help me find him.”
Tad looked around and the more he looked, the more damage he saw and the more injured people he found. Finding one man in all this was going to be a nightmare.
“Tad,” Stella called from behind him.
“One second,” he called back, still searching for the man while thinking about what on Earth he was going to do to help these people.
“Tad!” Stella yelled, the note of urgency in her voice making him turn this time. It wasn’t like her to shout, and he didn’t like the look on her face.
“Growler, find her dad,” he said to his dog who rushed over to the girl and sniffed her once before putting his nose to the ground and rushing off into the rubble as Tad stepped up to Stella’s side. “What’s going on?”
“We need to get out of here.”
“What? Stella, look at these people. There are so many injured here that we can’t leave right now. We need to organise the rescue effort. We need—”
“Tad,” Stella interrupted, grabbing his arm to get his attention and shut him up. She waved her phone in his face and said, “I just got a call from Miles. We need to go. This isn’t the only attack.”
Tad’s skin prickled and his stomach started twisting itself into knots as he asked, “Where else?”
“Miles said the emergency services switchboards are going mad. This attack, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Where else, Stella?” Tad asked again, his impatience getting the better of him.
She stared at him, mouth opening and closing as she struggled to find the answer he was looking for. Those twisted knots in his stomach became full blown cramps as he recognised the panic in her expression and understood what that meant. Stella was not someone given to panic and if she was so shaken by this news that she couldn’t form words, Tad wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Where?” he asked one final time.
“Everywhere,” she whispered. “They’re attacking all over the country all at the same time.” Swallowing hard as she stared at him in horror, she asked, “What are we going to do?”
Right then, standing in the middle of Westminster Bridge surrounded by rubble, smoke and wailing people, Tad struggled to get his head around what she just told him and though he really wanted to, his brain just couldn’t form an answer to her simple question.
Instead, all he could do was look around in horror as he took it all in and once more felt that crushing weight of responsibility.
What are we going to do?
Stella’s question echoed through his mind and with ever increasing horror, Tad realised he didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t know,” he whispered as the hopelessness of their situation consumed him.
32
Friday, 30th December 2016
22:39
Growler’s deep bark pulled Tad from the overwhelming thoughts that were locking up his mind. Looking up, he saw his dog standing over an enormous pile of rubble and the memory of what he asked Growler to do resurfaced.
He’s found Gemma’s dad, Rodney said from within his mind. Focus on that for now and you won’t feel so overwhelmed.
Accompanying his words were memories from Rodney’s life and the unbreakable focus that made him an excellent candidate for SAS selection. Calm settled over Tad like a comforting blanket and he spun to face Stella, who looked just as shocked as he had been a moment earlier.
“Stella, you need to go find Miles,” he said, gripping her arm and turning her to face him. “You’re always telling me we can’t act until we know all the information, well the same is true here. Find out what the hell is going on, and then we’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Stella blinked in a way that made him worry she wasn’t hearing him, but then her eyes cleared and her expression firmed up. She nodded once, then asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to help Gemma and her dad.”
“Alright, but then you need to come find me. I know you want to help these people, but there are other ways you will be more useful right now.”
“I know,” Tad said. “But by the time I’ve helped these two, you’ll have figured where I’ll be needed next, so I’ll be one step behind you.”
“Good,” Stella answered. Then, taking one last look around at the bridge, the destruction and the injured people, she said, “Stay safe and don’t do anything stupid.”
“Likewise,” Tad said, forcing a smile that she returned briefly before blinking out of existence.
Tad turned, looking for his dog again before changing the channel, appearing alongside Growler.
“He alive under there?” he asked, looking at the enormous pile of rubble and unable to see how anything could survive under so much debris. Growler chuffed in a way that told Tad he shouldn’t doubt him and just to do something about this rubble to help the man. Tad didn’t question him further and turned his mind to the problem of getting him out so he could get both the man and his daughter to a hospital as quick as possible.
◆◆◆
Ten minutes later, Tad arrived at the temporary HQ for what remained of the Dream Team, and found things were no less chaotic here. Despite his promise to Stella that he would be right along, he couldn’t leave all those people. He kept going back until enough normal help had arrived that his efforts wouldn’t have made much of a difference. By the time he left, the bridge was lit up by flashing blue lights and there were emergency services working their way through the destr
uction with promises of the army mobilising to help the rest.
“You’re late,” Denise accused as soon as she spotted him, snatching his arm like an angry mother grabbing her disobedient son who stayed out after curfew. “Come on, Stella’s waiting through here.”
She marched him through the chaos without caring who was in her way, and Tad had to wave apologies to people caught in her path. He didn’t have a chance to protest because her grip was so strong that Tad felt like she had super strength as well, and it was all he could do to keep up.
She led him out of the main room where he expected to find Stella with Miles and into a smaller room where there were groups of men and women gearing up as though getting ready for war. To Tad’s horror, Stella was at the centre of them with Leon by her side, both of them dressed in tactical gear like they were about to head out.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tad demanded.
“Finally. You promised you’d come straight here,” Stella accused, ignoring his question.
“I got distracted,” Tad answered. “What’s going on?”
“Kuruk, the children of ADaM and what looks like American soldiers have co-ordinated attacks all over the country. The soldiers have focused on military installations, the Children of ADaM are just causing as much chaos as they can, whereas Kuruk’s guys are focusing on mass scale destruction.”
“Like parliament,” Tad guessed.
“Exactly like that. They’re going in hard, blowing stuff up, then heading off somewhere else to cause even more mayhem. In most cases, they’ve been and gone without resistance, but we have them pinned down in four locations that were close to quick response points and that’s where we’re headed. I’ve sent Chakikra to Birmingham with her own team to deal with what’s happening there, Gary is in Manchester, and that leaves Edinburgh for me and Leon, and Cardiff for you as you don’t need to take the time to familiarise yourself with this location.”