by Paul Teague
‘Your family and the bunker staff from the cottage may have got caught by the darkness as they made their way into the bunker when the sirens went off. It’s essential that they remain in the pods for BioFiltration, it’s for their own health – and safety,’ she adds at the end.
‘Health and safety,’ I think. ‘Even at the end of the world we have to do a risk assessment!’ I keep my thoughts to myself and ask, more intelligently I hope, ‘What is BioFiltration?’
‘Great question!’ Kate replies.
She knows she has won this exchange by engaging my curiosity. Have you ever noticed how brilliant you feel when someone says ‘Great question?’ It happened to me at school quite a lot. I’d put my hand up, ask something pretty obvious, like I was paying full attention. And the teacher would enthusiastically reply with a ‘Great question!’
Now, don’t get me wrong, I knew it really wasn’t a great question. It was a diversionary technique I’d mastered many years ago. Be proactive with questions that you control, that way the teacher will see that you’ve participated in class. And when it comes to them asking questions over which you have no control, they’ll pass you by. After all, you've already contributed. Diligent student that you are. But the ‘Great question!’ reply always works on me. It always makes me feel as if I’ve just done something amazing. When I know I haven’t.
So while I’m patting myself on my own back for my great ‘What is BioFiltration?’ question, Kate gives me the answer.
‘We don’t have full information yet about what’s happening outside the bunker, as you know, Dan, but we do know from the medical teams that the darkness itself is not harmful.’
Okay, so far so good, once again. She’s very skilled at this reassurance lark.
‘However, all of the people in this room were partially exposed to the darkness, when they’re supposed to be either fully exposed, as with the people outside the bunker, or not exposed at all, as is the case with those of us who were inside all of the time. These BioFilters are removing the contaminated elements and restoring all vital signs to normal levels.’
Wow, I actually understand all of that. Maybe I am cut out to be a futuristic bunker worker after all.
‘So in summary, Dan, your family are fine; all of the people in this room are fine. They just need to stay here for a little while longer while the process is completed. After that, we’ll wake them up and you’ll all be able to chat.’
‘Great news!’ I think to myself, and to be completely honest, although everything that’s going on here is completely unfamiliar to me, I’m still not unduly worried. What Kate tells me all adds up. What I hear and what I see makes sense, I’ve no reason to doubt it.
We’ve all been standing still while we’ve been having this conversation and at that moment the movement-sensitive lights turn themselves off again. It’s only a moment until somebody moves and they’re back on again. But for the few seconds that the lights are out, I catch a glimpse of something. I’m sure that I saw a faint light where Kate’s neck was in the darkness. Unusual, because it appears to be pulsating.
I can’t see it as clearly now the lights have come on, though I am pretty sure that I’ve just seen it in the darkness.
It’s a pulsating, faint light just at the side of her neck and it’s coloured red.
Solo Mission
He stood up at his terminal and walked towards the exit. Nobody seemed to notice him. They saw him moving, but they were unable to detect the significance of what he was about to do. It was an unusual situation in the Control Room. They just seemed to be waiting.
They were waiting of course. The full mission briefing was coming in the next few hours. They knew that the mission was connected to that. They knew that their loved ones beyond the doors would be fine. They’d had the advantage, they had been able to engineer things so that their families were at home when it began. Their initial instructions were simple. Just like they’d practised in training. Familiarize yourself with your workstation. Perform the routine tasks on your initial work schedule. Basic things such as ‘Check the perimeter’ and ‘Ensure all terminals are operating correctly’. Then, use the time to familiarize yourself with the bunker layout and other team members. It was a simple holding pattern, prior to the full briefing taking place.
There was an atmosphere of hesitant expectation in the building, but assurances had been given, training had been thorough and all was as it was supposed to be. Except for James or ‘Roachie’ as his closest friends called him. He now had a personal mission which had to be completed secretly. This mission hadn’t been communicated via his terminal or through any of the routes that were considered ‘normal procedure’. James’s actions were taken as a consequence of the device that was faintly pulsating beneath the skin on his neck. Barely perceptible unless you were looking for it. Its blue light seemed to suggest that information was being transmitted in some way. Unknown, invisible, undetected. James knew what he was doing, but he didn’t understand the implications of the solo mission that he was about to carry out.
Had his consciousness been entirely under his own control, he would have known to alert his Control Room colleagues as to what he was about to do. He would have registered his whereabouts on the staff rota terminal as he left the Control Room. And he certainly would not have disabled the surveillance cameras and the alarm systems connected to the main bunker doors.
Impenetrable
If you could see through this blackness, you would have been able to view the lives of millions of human beings paused, as if somebody had just stopped time. The darkness was impenetrable. It was neither liquid nor gas, yet it crept across the surface of the Earth in a dense cloud and it sat in the atmosphere as if it were a heavy shroud.
If you ran your hand through the blackness you would feel nothing, neither would it be displaced, as it would have been if moving through smoke. It was dry to the touch, even though the atmosphere around it was not devoid of moisture.
Most striking of all was how dark it was. You could not see anything through it. It was all consuming, there were no gaps, no chinks of light, no areas untouched. And it just sat there, awaiting the moment when its purpose would become clear.
Army Life
She’d barely had a career in the Army before she was made redundant. It came fairly quickly after the incident. So while the HR people called it ‘redundancy’ she knew that there was really another reason why. Probably because she didn’t do what she should have done. What else was she supposed to do?
She was a recent and very raw recruit, she’d had limited training and had received very little in the way of guidance from her superiors. She had just reacted on instinct. An ordinary, average person doing extraordinary things in a situation that they’d never encountered before. Most people would have been given a medal for what she did. But whatever it was that she’d done wrong, it must have caused a lot of trouble higher up. And look at the personal price she’d paid on that terrible day eighteen years ago. Not that it mattered of course, just look at her wonderful family now. Still, in spite of what happened and all of the fallout afterwards, at least there was one great result from that day. One thing that she’d never regretted, in spite of it all.
She’d saved a man’s life that day. James was still alive because of her.
Chapter Twelve
On The Move
I’m not sure what the red light means, but now I’ve spotted it in the darkness, I’m finding it really hard to keep my eyes off it. With the lights on, knowing it’s there, I can see just beneath the skin on Kate’s neck. Interestingly, the two guards also have the same thing. I need to get to a mirror quickly. Do I have one of these things fitted? Is it part of whatever is going on in the bunker? Unusually for me, I decide to keep my mouth shut about it. Kate seems unaware of its presence, and like so many other things in this unfamiliar environment, it may just be something that all the staff have. I resolve to keep my eyes open to see if everybody here has one fitted.
I’m ready to excuse myself and head for the bathroom facilities along the main corridor so that I can check out my own neck. But Kate has other things in mind. She’s explained what is going on here, but I’ve still been discovered in a Red Zone. Okay, I had clearance, but she’d explicitly asked me not to enter these areas.
‘Dan, I need to make a very special request of you, is that okay?’ she asks.
Interesting way of phrasing the question. Is ‘No’ really an option here?
‘Yes, of course,’ I reply. What a sucker.
‘Although you have Red Zone authorization at the moment, I need to ask you to stay out of those areas for your own safety.’
I don’t like the sound of those words: ‘At the moment’. She sees this as an anomaly, a temporary thing.
‘We’re only a few hours away from receiving a full briefing, and what’s going on beyond the bunker lies entirely in our hands. I’m sure an intelligent lad like you understands how important this is and that it’s really crucial that we don’t interfere with any mission critical issues before then.’
The ‘intelligent lad’ works just as well as the ‘Good question’ technique. I really must try to be less easily flattered.
‘So what I’d appreciate is if you could restrict your access to Green Zone areas only until we receive the briefing? Is that a reasonable thing to ask, Dan?’ she finishes.
Of course it’s a reasonable thing to ask. But remember Kate, I’m a sixteen-year-old boy. I know what ‘reasonable’ is. I understand what ‘reasonable’ is. But I don’t always like being ‘reasonable’. However, I’m not going to pick any fights right now. I agree to restrict my movements to the Green Zones and keep out of the Red Zones until we get the full briefing. I reassure Kate that I don’t want to put the lives of my family at risk. I tell her how important it is to me that we find my mum safe and make sure that she’s properly looked after. And I hope she doesn’t spot me using her own techniques on her. I’m a quick learner.
‘I think that’s a really great plan, Kate,’ I smile.
Trapped
How could she have been so stupid as to go back for the tech? If she’d followed her instincts, they would have just had the time to get inside those doors before they closed. As it was, the darkness was swiftly closing in. Beyond the cottage it was beginning to look dark outside, even though it was mid-afternoon. Inside the cottage, even the lights were struggling; this was like no other darkness she’d ever seen before. She felt fine and her young companion seemed fine. She knew that she needed to seek shelter and the bunker seemed the best place to do it.
There didn’t appear to be an immediate risk to them. What would she have told the kids to do? Wait by the entrance. It’s the safest thing to do. If anybody comes out of there, that’s where they’ll exit. If anybody goes in there, that’s where they’ll enter. In a situation where the options were very limited, the best thing to do seemed to wait by the entrance. Unknown to her, Dan had made exactly the same decision on the other side of the doors.
So they waited, sitting down in fearful silence outside the huge red blast doors as they became surrounded by the darkness. It neither harmed them nor stopped them breathing, but its impenetrable blackness was completely debilitating. Any movement was completely out of the question.
She imagined that this must be similar to blindness, only her mind allowed her to picture the doors in front of them, the corridor behind them and her son only metres away, but all alone.
Waiting
He’d seen his chance when he was able to reconnect with the mother at the training centre. Driving her to the hospital and checking her in, she seemed as if she’d recovered okay after the accident. He didn’t really converse with her, just did his job, but on the surface she looked to be fine.
It had been what the police called a ‘cold case’ since that horrible day when the car had hit the child. When he’d hit the child. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d been the one in the car at the time. That sickening sound would live with him forever. Out of the blue, the mother of the dead child had ended up as a passenger in his car.
What were the chances of that? Very high as it turned out. He knew that in this line of work, things had a funny way of connecting. Often, completely unrelated people and events would come together.
It wasn’t the actual car. But the same make. More gadgets, more tech, more devices than three years ago. But still the same car, same design, same black colour. The original had been destroyed of course. DNA – a great thing or a dangerous thing. All depends who you work for of course. He’d had time to plant a tracking device on her before he left her in the hospital. One that couldn’t be traced by anybody else.
You didn’t work in this line of business for so long without learning a few tricks. He’d actually bought it from a high street electrical store. Hilarious! They had all this kit, but never thought anybody capable of buying a few bits of electrical circuit from a local store. International espionage foiled by a tech junk. Sure, he’d had to adapt it a bit. But you could fool the organization using bits of kit that anybody can buy for less than a tenner. He knew that if she had surfaced again, then the story was just about to become clearer.
Yes, you had to be very patient in this business. Random threads could appear from every direction and seem to have nothing at all in common. But he knew that the threads in this particular story were just being drawn together. He was sure that he’d discover the reason for the accident and how it all tied in together.
The tracker would help him to figure out why she had appeared back on the radar after three years away from it completely.
But when he realized where the tracker was taking him – following in his car a mile behind – he knew that this wasn’t just going to be the conclusion of any old story.
This was where all the threads from his work were going to lead. This was the end game.
Chapter Thirteen
A Lucky Hunch
I’m amazed that Kate and the two security guys just let me go after that. I suppose that they’ll know exactly where I’m going and what I’m up to from the surveillance cameras that are positioned wherever I go in this place. I assume that virtually every room I go into must be monitored too.
This place seems to run on biometrics and although I’m not entirely sure what that means, I suspect that everything I do here is directly tracked back to me. Which means that I can’t really get away with anything. The best bet, as far as I can tell at present, is to carry on exploring and get a feel for this place. Really, we’re all waiting for that mission announcement which must still be a few hours away. Plenty of time to have a good snoop around.
First though, I decide to head directly for the bathroom and shower areas because I want to get a look at my neck. I’m not really sure what happened to me in the MedLab earlier, I assume I was just checked over to make sure everything was fine.
That reminds me of another unusual thing that happened earlier. How come the darkness didn’t have any impact on me? I was in the entrance area at the same time as Dad, David and Harriet, and the bunker staff from the cottage area were also coming below ground at that time. So why are they in the glass pods and I’m not? I’m feeling totally fine now. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that after the temporary discomfort of being all alone in that corridor for so many hours, and having stuffed myself with food, I’m back to 100 percent Dan. If they have put one of those weird, glowing things into my neck, I certainly can’t detect it. Neither does it seem to be making any impact on me. I can’t feel it pulsating or vibrating in any way, so I assume I don’t have one. I enter the bathroom area and head straight for a mirror.
The light is unusual below ground, you can’t quite catch the full light that you would if the area had a window. I inspect my neck closely, on both sides, but I can see and feel nothing. I’m reasonably sure I’m clear. I see a mirror that is lit better, so I go over to it and check again. Everything is fine. Whatever Kate and the secur
ity guys have going on, I seem to be well clear of it. I reckon it’s probably just something bunker related. A communication device or something like that. But I resolve to check out everybody that I encounter from now on to see if they also have one of these devices fitted.
Satisfied that all is as it should be, I leave the bathroom area and start to walk along the corridor once again. It’s very quiet here, the main hub at present must be in the Control Room, which I’m guessing has changed quite a lot since I last saw it. I’d expect that to be a Red Zone area and although, in theory, I’m allowed in there, I decide that the best strategy is to explore as many Green Zone areas as I can and just to take a mental note of anything unusual that is Red Zone.
There are two levels to the bunker; we explored them both thoroughly when I was here with the family. That was only a day ago, but so much has happened since then. I haven’t really had time to think about what’s going on outside. It’s easy to forget down here, with no windows or view of the world beyond these thick walls. It’s a strange sensation; it really does feel that outside doesn’t exist anymore.
I’d really like to know what’s being done about Mum. I was so distracted by trying to take care of my own interests in my last exchange with Kate that I didn’t push that point.
It’s good to know that she’s okay, but I picture her locked outside the blast doors and hope that she’s really alright. She’ll probably end up in one of those pods before I get to see her, but at least if she winds up like Dad, David and Harriet, I’ll know that she’s safe. And who was that who was with her? I only caught a glimpse. Whoever it was, they were my sort of age and my sort of height. I’m doubting my judgement now. It can’t have been Nat – that would be ridiculous. They certainly had the same look and hair colouring though.