by Hatchett
Harry turned to John, Paula, Daniel, Di and Jess. “What are you going to do?”
“Robert has said we can use his cars,” John replied, and as we don’t live far away, we’re going to drive home. You’re all welcome to come and stay if you want. Tomorrow I’ll have to go and try and find the Viano I parked somewhere at the airport and I’ll also need to get the Transporter back from Dogmersfield before it’s impounded as an eyesore.”
“I think we’ll get off home too,” Daniel suggested, to nods from Di and Jess.
“I guess that means we should too,” Harriet suggested, “But I’d like it if we could all keep in touch.”
“You can count on it,” John replied, getting up from his chair to shake their hands.
Once home, Jess was helped out of the car borrowed from Robert and was carried into her house by Damian. She was tired and asked to be taken straight to her bedroom.
It was the first time in nearly two years since she had last been in her room and had laid down on her bed. She kissed her parents goodnight and they left her alone, with just a nightlight on the side table providing some weak light.
Jess looked around the room slowly and carefully. No, she didn’t recognise anything.
The End
SAVANT – RISEN
1
Jess awoke to bright sunshine coming through her thin curtains. She looked around her bedroom, which she couldn’t remember, at the posters of The Wanted and One Direction, again which she couldn’t remember. They must’ve been there for years, before she went to Guildford University to study Computer Science. Did she used to have a crush on Harry Styles? She couldn’t remember but guessed she might have done judging by the various images of him plastered all across the wall. Maybe her tastes had changed because she just couldn’t see the attraction anymore.
Jess had been nineteen when she was involved in a serious car accident on the M3, heading back to Guildford in the early hours of the morning following a party at a friend of her boyfriend’s. Nick, her boyfriend, had died in the crash and Jess had ended up in a coma for eighteen months.
Jess was five feet eight inches tall and before the crash would have been considered a very good-looking young woman with straight long brown hair which went half-way down her back, a soft-featured and friendly face with deep brown eyes, a small straight nose, full lips and a slim, sporty figure.
Now, aged twenty-one, she looked and felt much older. Her hair had been shaved close to her head during her hospital stay so that she now looked more like Sinead O’Connor from the 1990 video of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. She also had scars all across her body from the injuries sustained in the crash and the subsequent operations to put her back together again. Her athletic frame now resembled a famine victim, and although physiotherapists had tried their best to keep her body in reasonable condition, her muscles had atrophied to some degree through lack of use.
Since waking a few days earlier, her physical improvement had been nothing short of astounding, but there was still a long way to go before she would be anywhere near back to normal. Indeed, the Doctors who had looked after her didn’t think she’d ever regain consciousness, and if by some chance she did, they thought she’d almost certainly have brain damage and be incapable of moving from the neck down or looking after herself. But she’d proved all the doubters wrong, and then some.
Jess sat forward to push her pillows back against the headboard, so she could sit up. It was not as easy as she thought it would be. Although her arms, hands and fingers were working to some degree, there was little strength in them, and it was all she could do to use a knife and fork. As for her legs, well, she could wiggle her toes and move her foot up and down a little if she really concentrated.
In the end it took a fair bit of effort and a lot of huffing and puffing to drag herself upright.
She leant over to turn off the nightlight on the bedside table then sat there staring at the wall opposite and thinking about what had happened over the past few days. It seemed surreal. Like a dream.
Images flashed through her mind as she thought about her parents, Di and Damian. Then her benefactors and now friends, John and Paula Barrington, who were the parents of her late boyfriend Nick. Dr Joshua Raven, her doctor, but an alien in human form. The Underground and the two Harrys’, Pete, Sam, Jimmy, Hilda, George, Hannah, Jason, Kate and Andy. The house in Wiltshire. The attack by a small faction of aliens, the killing spree and eventual capture of their renegade leader, Mason. Perhaps if she clicked her heels three times, she would wake up and find it had all been a bad dream.
But she was not dreaming. She wondered what would happen now. Most aliens who had taken over human hosts had been killed or they had fled back to their Mothership. Most of the human population now knew how to spot them and how to deal with them; electric shocks. It would now be up to the Governments of the World to sorts things out, but where the negotiations would end up was anybody’s guess.
Jess thought of her newfound abilities. She could see auras and read the personality or mood of someone. But that wasn’t the half of it. She’d found that she was telepathic; she could read minds, send thoughts to people and, to some degree, bend them to her will. Sam had suggested that she might also have telekinetic abilities, but so far, she hadn’t been able to move her limbs much by thought alone, never mind anything else.
She looked back to the nightlight and willed it to move an inch or two. Nothing. Well, what did she expect? She was hardly Supergirl. Still, she was convinced that if she could bend people to her will, she should be able to get her own legs to work properly, and that would mean she could dispense with the wheelchair.
She focused on her legs and concentrated hard. She imagined them lifting off the bed. She closed her eyes and concentrated harder, feeling beads of sweat form on her brow. She felt some slow movement and opened her eyes to find her legs hovering an inch above the mattress. She smiled to herself and let her legs fall back down. Practice, that’s all it needed. And patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Jess closed her eyes again and thought about how she’d sent her thoughts to people. She wasn’t sure how she did it exactly, it just happened. She wondered if she could send a message when she couldn’t see the person and focused on her mother. She imagined sending a probe out of her head to deliver the message, but it didn’t seem to work. Whilst she could see her room in her mind’s eye as if she had her eyes open, she couldn’t see anything the other side of the bedroom door. She wondered if she was just ‘seeing’ a memory of the room or whether she was actually looking around with her eyes closed. She couldn’t tell.
‘Wait a minute’ she thought to herself. There had to be something in the room she hadn’t seen before when she’d looked around. No, that wouldn’t work, her subconscious mind might have seen it. She’d have to think of a way to test herself properly.
She opened her mouth to shout out but remembered that she couldn’t speak. She tried making different noises, before trying to form words. She could sniff, snort, click her tongue against the roof of her mouth and make popping sounds with her lips, but words were harder to come by. She had little doubt they would come; it was just a matter of time.
There was a quick tap on her door before it was opened, and her mother Di entered. Di was five feet eight inches tall and closing in on fifty, although she was still a good-looking woman with brown eyes and short brown hair cut in a bob. You could definitely see where Jess had got her looks. The last eighteen months had been hell for Di; she’d been by Jess’s side every day and it had taken its toll; she had put on a little weight and the first signs of grey hair and wrinkles had started appearing.
“Did I hear you call me?” Di asked with a frown.
Jess shook her head, her own frown appearing.
“Didn’t think so,” Di continued, “although I could have sworn I heard you.”
Jess considered it, a small smile playing across her face. Maybe it had worked after all?
“Are yo
u ready to get up?” Di asked.
Jess nodded, and Di helped her to get up and get ready for the day ahead.
Once she was ready, Di called Jess’s father Damian into the room, so he could carry her down the stairs and place her in the wheelchair sitting at the bottom.
Damian was fifty-two years old and six feet two inches tall. He was self-employed and ran his own courier company, although he now accepted that a lot of the day to day running of the business had been left to his partner. He had put on some weight over the past eighteen months, mainly because he had given up the active sports life he’d previously used to enjoy.
“How are we doing this morning?” Damian asked brightly, leaning over the bed to pick Jess up.
Jess smiled and sent a thought to him.
‘I’M FINE, I HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP, WHICH IS A BIT OF A SURPRISE AFTER ALL THAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY, BUT I WAS VERY TIRED.’
“That’s good,” Damian noted, “you need your rest.”
Di watched her husband and her daughter with a small smile on her face. She knew that Jess was directing her thoughts to Damian but all she could hear was Damian’s side of the conversation. She guessed that she’d get used to it over time.
Damian carried Jess down the stairs and carefully placed her into her chair and fastened her in.
“THANKS.”
This time, Jess’s robotic speech came from the speakers of a voice box sitting on the removeable ledge now sitting across her lap. It was a Tobii Dynavox ‘I-15+’ flat screen portable speech generating device which Jess could use by hand or by eye movement. It was a wonderful machine and Jess could use it for playing music, playing games, searching the web, making calls. Pretty much everything she used to do on her iPad or iPhone. Because the last few days had been so frantic and with the device being new, she was still learning how to use all the functions properly, rather than just as a voice box.
“Let’s get some breakfast,” Di suggested and headed towards the kitchen, where the smell of fresh coffee permeated the air.
Damian waited for Jess to manoeuvre her wheelchair before following on behind.
As Jess directed the chair toward the table, Damian placed a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster and Di sorted out the coffees.
The TV on the wall opposite the table was showing the news and, as expected, everything was about the aliens. Footage of the death and destruction caused by Mason and his renegade Stormtroopers was shown, followed by confirmation of their capture.
There was plenty of speculation about how many people had been taken over by the aliens and it was reported that hospitals all over the country were inundated by people reawakening, many of whom were now mentally disturbed and unlikely to fully recover.
The biggest question on everybody’s lips was ‘what happens next?’ Cameras and correspondents were camped outside Number 10 Downing Street waiting for the Prime Minister to provide an update. The surrounding area had been hastily cleaned up and restored to its usual state following Mason’s rampage the night before, and if you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have thought that anything had happened.
At 9.00am exactly, the large black door to Number 10 opened and the PM strode out and walked to a lectern set in the middle of the road, flanked by her personal protection detail and assorted other suits.
The Right Honourable Samantha Jane Crowley waited as questions were shouted out from the gathered throng of reporters behind metal barriers on the opposite pavement and cameras flashed from all angles, bathing the area in an unnatural kaleidoscopic strobe effect of intermittent brightness and colour, like those you saw with lightning strikes. The PM was fifty-four, five feet nine inches tall in bare feet and had short hazel coloured hair and dark green eyes. Her face was chiselled, almost gaunt, but it was clear from her demeanour that this was a lady who was fully in control of the situation.
Eventually the press quietened down, and the PM drew a deep breath before starting her hastily prepared speech.
“As I am sure from all the recent coverage on the television and radio, you will be aware that an alien race, known as the Laakuu, has been living amongst us for some time, undetected until the last few days. I can now advise that I have spoken to many of my fellow leaders around the world, and the leaders of this new race, and further discussions are planned. I will keep you informed of developments. I appreciate that this is an unusual and worrying time, but please remain calm and go about your normal business.”
With that, the PM turned on her heels and headed back towards Number 10, unaware that there was already a large crowd of protesters, naysayers and doomsayers congregating in Parliament Square Garden, opposite the Houses of Parliament, just a short distance away.
The attendant press were caught off-guard by the shortness of the speech and the lack of detail provided. They had been waiting patiently for more information before realising that the PM had finished and was almost back inside Number 10. They belatedly started shouting questions at her rapidly retreating back.
‘Who are these aliens?’
‘How long have they been here?’
‘Did you know about them before all this happened?’
‘What have the other World leaders said?’
‘Is there going to be a war?’
‘What is happening to the alien who attacked us?’
The shouts went on until the PM had disappeared and the door to Number 10 was firmly closed behind her, then the correspondents were phoning their offices or preparing themselves to speak into cameras. It was a circus, and everyone wanted a ticket.
Crowds had gathered outside the gates of Downing Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the PM and watch what was going on. There were smart phones everywhere you looked and social media was buzzing; video clips were going viral even before the professional journalists could get word out through the usual news channels.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Damian commented drily, looking at the TV. “I could have told them that.”
2
Thames House occupied a large plot on Millbank, on the Northern side of Lambeth Bridge, overlooking the River Thames in the centre of London. It had been the Headquarters of MI5 since 1994.
Four levels below the ground floor sat the cells and interview rooms, usually reserved for suspected terrorists and the like; effectively anyone who was deemed a danger to the country.
In Interview Room 4, Matt Stevens and his colleague Karen Robbins sat across a solid metal table from one of the Laakuu captured in the attack on Downing Street the previous evening.
Matt was thirty-seven and had been an interrogator with the service since leaving university, and he was excited by the prospect of grilling his first alien. He was six feet tall with short blond hair and blue eyes, a good-looking man with a fit and toned body.
His colleague, Karen, was thirty-five, five feet eight inches tall and also had short blond hair and blue eyes. She was a psychologist and had worked closely with Matt on a number of cases, although all of those paled into insignificance compared to what sat before them.
The Laakuu was currently handcuffed with a chain looping through a metal hoop secured to the table. Another set of restraints kept his feet and ankles close together. The Laakuu was wearing the same police riot gear that he had been captured in, albeit the Kevlar inserts and headgear had been removed. He was an imposing figure; around seven and a half feet tall and rippling with muscles. His head was larger than those of his human interrogators and was slightly elongated, he had a greyish skin colour, larger oval eyes, a larger ribbed nose and razor-sharp teeth. His arms were longer, culminating in a ‘hand’ with three fierce looking claws or talons instead of fingers, and there was no body hair whatsoever. Although hidden by his clothes, his torso was outwardly similar to a human’s, but internally it was very much different, as witnessed by the doctor who had examined him earlier.
This Laakuu had taken over the human body of the Right Honourable Robert Mason Stephenson MP, co
nservative MP for Guildford County Constituency in Surrey. He had been known as Robert to his human friends and colleagues but Mason to his Laakuu brethren and he had been the Laakuu leader in England.
The real Robert Mason Stevenson MP was currently in hospital undergoing a battery of tests to ensure there was no lasting effects from hosting the Laakuu and, more importantly, to ensure he was still sane.
“So, Mason…may I call you Mason, or would you prefer me to call you something else? Perhaps your Laakuu name,” Matt began.
Mason stared at him for a moment, the semblance of a grin beginning to form around his mouth. “You can call me whatever you like, but Mason will do.”
The sound was guttural; the Laakuu language was more a series of grunts, hisses, gnashing of teeth, clicks and tutting, but all Laakuu were taught English on the Mothership from a very early age. Indeed, Laakuu new-borns developed very quickly and within a couple of years of birth they were what humans would consider adult.
“Thank you. So, in your own words, would you like to tell us your story?”
Mason just stared at each of them before turning to one side and looking at the one-way mirror set in the wall. He then turned back to face them.
“No.”
“Is there anything you would like to say?”
“No.”
“You do realise that within a matter of hours you will be taken back to your Mothership to face the Council of Elders.”
Mason laughed.
“I do not recognise the Council. I do not fear them. There is nothing they can do to me.”
“What makes you think that? I would have thought that a death sentence would concern even the strongest of personalities.”
Mason just stared at Matt.
“Don’t you fear death?”
Mason looked around the grey walls of the room, seemingly bored, before turning back to Matt.
“Have you finished?”