by Nick Cook
Death of Light
Book Three in the Fractured Light Trilogy
Nick Cook
For Karen who became my wife during the writing of this series. You will always be my Jules, Chloe, Gem and Lauren all wrapped up into one astonishing human being.
‘Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.’
Anne Frank
Copyright 2018 © Nicholas P Cook
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published worldwide by Voice from the Clouds Ltd.
www.voicefromtheclouds.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Afterword
About the Author
Chapter One
I leant against the granite harbour wall, face turned into the breeze blowing off the sea as I tried to combat the stifling warmth of the late-summer heatwave. The gentle waves sighed against the other side of the wall, rhythmic and hypnotising. If the ferry didn’t arrive soon, I’d be asleep – not the best way to meet and greet our group of latest Blue Sky Foundation recruits.
I lifted the small bird-spotting telescope I’d borrowed from Kelly and returned my attention to HMS Iron Duke, a Type 26 Royal Navy frigate, all grey rectangles and hidden missile batteries, anchored just offshore from Alderney. That ship had become our constant companion thanks to General Hammond, who’d been pulled out of early retirement and given a key role in overseeing the security operation to combat the threat from the Shade. But whatever Hammond’s good intentions, I seriously doubted a frigate, however many guns it had, could do anything to truly help us against a Shade attack. Though I had to give the general credit for his other idea, which had made a huge difference in keeping prying eyes away from the island.
I glanced up at the sign mounted at the harbour entrance in clear sight of any approaching boat.
Alderney is a hand-foot-and-mouth contagion zone. Only personnel with official clearance are permitted access.
Simple but effective.
I glanced at my mum’s old diver’s watch. How much longer?
Nearby, Captain Ericsson, wearing a black T-shirt and sunglasses, was speaking into his radio. He was our military advisor. At least, that was his title, although in my mind ‘dictator’ would have been nearer the mark. The guy seemed to stick his nose into everything that we did. It sometimes felt as if we couldn’t do so much as fart without getting this guy’s permission first.
Ericsson turned round towards me. ‘HMS Iron Duke’s radar has just picked up the ferry and the intercept craft has been launched.’
‘About time,’ I replied, stifling a yawn.
We both watched the Royal Navy rigid inflatable boat speed out from HMS Iron Duke towards a white ferry now visible in the distance.
The launch slowed as it reached the other boat and pulled up alongside it. I knew that Sam, one of our new Awoken squad leaders, would now be boarding the ferry, along with the Royal Navy officers.
This was a regular routine for every vessel approaching Alderney. The local fishermen had grumbled at first, but had eventually come to accept it as the new reality of life on the island, especially as they all had brand-new boats – part of the pay-offs from the newly elected government.
Tension rose across my shoulders, as it always did as I waited for this moment to pass. If the Shade did ever track us down, this might be the first we’d know about an attack – and that was why Sam was on the boat right now.
After the usual few minutes of mental fingernail-chewing, the Royal Navy launch set off back to the frigate and the ferry continued on its way to Alderney’s harbour.
And relax…
I let out a sigh and Captain Ericsson cast me a sideways glance.
‘Yet another uneventful day in paradise,’ he said.
I resisted the temptation to give him an eye-roll.
The ferry churned its way towards the harbour and drew close enough for me to make out the faces of the people on board. Some I immediately recognised as locals heading to the other islands on their daily commute. But the rest of the people crowded onto the boat would soon be with us at Eaglehurst. Whether they chose to stay or not was another question.
One of the ferry’s crew jumped off onto the dock’s ladder and climbed to the quayside. Another crew member threw him a rope and a short while later the small ferry was moored up.
I pushed myself off the wall and dug my handwritten notice from my rucksack. It was hard not to feel like a tour guide, holding a sign with Blue Sky Foundation scrawled on it, although in some ways that was exactly what I was.
Join the Awoken army and see the world before it’s destroyed. Maybe I should have considered writing recruitment slogans for the Royal Navy. I smiled to myself.
After a few minutes, I had a cluster of people around me of all nationalities, after they’d been checked off by Ericsson. Most of the newbies looked excited, but some clutched their Blue Sky welcome packs to their chests like shields. Of course, what they didn’t know yet was that Blue Sky was merely a front.
The last woman off the boat, a platinum blonde who looked as if she’d walked straight out of a girl band, dragged two huge silver suitcases over the uneven stone quayside to join us. By the look on her face I could tell she was already pissed off that a personal valet hadn’t met her from the ferry. But that was the thing: whatever your background, everyone got treated the same at Eaglehurst.
I shoved my cardboard sign back into my bag.
‘Hi, everyone, my name is Jake Stevens.’ A number of blank faces stared back at me. I mentally slapped my forehead. I always forgot to hand out the eBuds.
I stuck my hand into my rucksack again and withdrew a handful of sealed envelopes containing little black plastic earpieces and name-badge lanyards. I held each ID up, waiting for their owners to claim them. When all the bags were shared out, I scraped back my hair to show my own eBud already in my left ear. The recruits followed my lead, and soon all had their own electronic earpieces in place, each set to whichever language they spoke.
‘OK, let’s try again. Can you all understand me through your eBuds now?’ I asked.
Everyone nodded, with lots of wide eyes meeting mine, although a few looked less impressed.
‘Great. So my name is Jake Stevens and we’re about to head up to Eaglehurst.’
A woman, called Yu Yan according to her name badge, started to speak to me in a language that I guessed was either Japanese or Chinese. Of course my eBud was already working its magic and translating her words to English into my earpiece in real time.
‘What’s this device?’ Yu Yan asked.
‘The eBud is designed to instantly translate any other language into your own,’ I explained.
A Moroccan-looking guy named Mosi shrugged and began to speak, with the eBuds translating his words for me and everyone else. ‘It’s not really that impressive. You can do that s
ort of thing with an app on a phone.’
‘True, but an eBud operates independently of any phone or computer and all its software runs on an inbuilt chip. It also lasts for three months from a single charge.’
Mosi gave me a wide smile. ‘Now that is certainly more impressive, Jake Stevens. I would like to meet the inventor of such an incredible device.’
‘And you will by the end of this tour, Mosi. Meanwhile, I suggest that everyone wears their eBuds at all times as they will help to deal with any language barriers between you and the other recruits already on the island.’
‘So are there other recruits apart from us?’ asked a raven-haired woman called Ellie in a soft Welsh accent. ‘What exactly is this project you’ve been so mysterious about?’
‘Nearly thirty thousands recruits are already here, yes. And as for the mystery, you’ll soon get all the answers you could ever wish for – and will understand the need for secrecy. Talking of which…’ I dipped my chin towards Captain Ericsson.
He nodded back and turned to face the recruits. ‘All right, everyone, can I have your attention for a moment? As Jake just mentioned, secrecy here is paramount and for that reason I now need you all to hand your mobile phones and any other electronic devices over. They will be kept safe and returned to you if you decide to leave the island at any point.’
‘You have to be kidding me,’ the girl with the giant silver suitcases replied.
‘I’m very serious,’ said Ericsson. ‘Unless you hand over your phones right now, you won’t be allowed any further onto the island.’
The girl crossed her arms and drummed her fingers. ‘I’m so not happy about this.’
I glanced at her name tag: Jess. ‘You’ll understand why we need to do this once we’re at Eaglehurst, Jess.’
She gawped at me. ‘But my YouTube channel followers—’
‘Will have to take a rain check for a while. You’ll soon understand exactly why contact with the outside world has to be kept to a minimum.’
Ericsson picked up a plastic crate at his feet and waved it under her nose. ‘Your choice, miss. Phone or you’ll have to leave.’
Jess threw her hands in the air. ‘Uh!’ With her face set in the strongest sulk, she dropped her jewel-covered phone into Ericsson’s box. Fortunately, no one else gave us any attitude and handed over their phones without a word.
Although I thought it was heavy-handed for Ericsson to take their phones away like this, it did encourage everyone to actually talk to each other, rather than be lost in their screens.
‘You see, that wasn’t so hard,’ Ericsson said to Jess.
Jess shook her head at him.
I felt a spike of irritation towards the guy. I knew he was just doing his job, and Jess was certainly annoying, but even so…
The captain and I began shepherding the group into the fleet of four minibus taxis waiting for them. I sat in the front passenger seat of the lead vehicle, as conversations began to break out behind me. In my experience, people who could talk to each other were always much happier than those who couldn’t and like usual the eBud translator was working its magic. By the time we’d reached Eaglehurst’s driveway, those in my minibus were talking and even laughing with each other.
Result.
We pulled to a stop in front of a large steel gate set into a crowd-control metal barrier, hundreds of which now surrounded the entire Eaglehurst site, high enough to stop anyone seeing what were up to on the other side.
I waited until everyone had emerged from the minibuses and the taxis had driven away.
Ericsson pressed a button on his radio. ‘The latest recruits are now cleared for entry. Code word “Coventry”.’
‘Affirmative,’ a voice came back over the radio.
With a whine of motors, the steel gate started to roll back, revealing two of the captain’s squad dressed in jeans and loose-fitting shirts. What the recruits hopefully didn’t realise was that they were both SAS soldiers with pistols concealed under their shirts, doing their best to blend in and not raise too many questions if spotted by locals.
Ericsson hung back to speak to the guards as I ushered the recruits past and through the gate into the transformed landscape around Eaglehurst. A tent city radiated out before us, up and over the hillside, the fabric structures crammed into every single field that Kelly owned around her house. Not just that, but with so many people to accommodate, the government had stepped in and rented extra fields from neighbouring farmers for a suitably eye-watering fee.
The look of confusion on the recruits’ faces only increased as they took in all the tents stretching away around them. Even I found it hard to fathom that there were over thirty thousand people in our encampment.
We reached one of the major junctions in the tent city, where a sign on a post read, Muster Point 51, with a number of handcarts beneath.
‘Right, everyone, if you’d like to leave your stuff here, it will be transferred to your accommodation – that is if you decide to stay with us.’
Jess scowled and pointed at the tower of Eaglehurst peeking over a line of trees. ‘That looks like a really small place for all of us.’
I gestured towards one of the thousands of green tents that were passing. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be in one of these.’
Her jaw actually dropped. ‘You have to be kidding.’
‘Nope. Totally serious. But I can assure you that you’ll be perfectly comfortable in one of these tents, along with the seven other people sharing it with you.’
Jess’s eyes hardened to marbles. ‘Seven? Nobody said anything about staying in friggin’ tents when the scholarship was awarded. Do I look like a Girl Scout?’
‘I’m afraid we haven’t got the equivalent of a swanky hotel for you. You need to understand, Jess, that the only way to cope with so many people here is for them to be roomed with their other squad members.’
Jess just stared at me as if I’d gone insane.
‘Squad?’ asked Adam – a broad-shouldered, blue-eyed guy with a Scottish accent. ‘You make this sound like some sort of army.’
‘Yes, in a way that’s exactly what it is,’ I replied. ‘You’ll train, eat and sleep together, bonding as a group of people.’
Ananya, a young Indian woman with deep brown eyes raised her hand. ‘In the welcome pack it said something about our gift being tested so it can be fully assessed.’
She was referring to another part of our necessary deception. As far as all these recruits knew, they had each been identified as people with an exceptional skill who’d been spotted by academic talent scouts. But once they arrived, the recruits soon learnt that their actual skill was so much more than any normal ability.
‘Yes, you’ll be assigned to a group that your ability complements,’ I replied.
‘So you mean this is some sort of aptitude test?’ Ellie asked.
I tried not to smile. ‘Something like that.’
Jeanne, a mousy-blonde woman, began speaking in French.
‘I assume we’re talking about either female or male groups?’ my eBud translated.
I shook my head. ‘No, nearly all groups are mixed.’
Most of the women gave each other sideways glances, some looking horrified at the prospect. But nearly all of the guys looked as if Christmas had come early. They’d soon be disappointed. There was no time for any sort of romantic involvement here.
‘Look, I know it’s a lot to take on board,’ I said. ‘And no doubt some of you are already having second thoughts.’ I tried not to look specifically at Jess. ‘But please give us a chance to show you what we’re doing here and why it’s really important. And then, if you’re still not convinced, you are perfectly free to go. How does that sound?’
Jess raised her eyes back to mine. ‘OK, we’re listening, although so far this is a pretty lame sales pitch.’
So Jess had become the unelected spokesperson for the group. Fine. If we could harness that confidence, one day she might make a great squad leader.
>
‘Let’s see what I can do to oblige,’ I said. ‘Follow me.’ I waved the group forward before anyone else could leap in with another question.
I paused when we came to an entrance through a hedgerow. ‘Jess asked me to up my sales pitch – well, I’m about to do exactly that.’
Jess gave the others a shrug and crossed her arms. ‘I have to warn you – I’m not easily impressed.’
‘We’ll see about that.’ I turned to face the others. ‘You’re about to see other recruits being trained by a mentor. Each of these people has a similar gift to you – an ability that currently you have no idea about.’
Conversation exploded behind me as I stepped past the hedgerow. How would I feel in their place? Intrigued, deceived, excited, confused, frightened? Probably all of the above.
Chapter Two
The first person we saw in the garden was Kelly in a beekeeper’s outfit, which raised a few eyebrows among the recruits. She pulled up the protective screen hanging from a hat and smiled at the recruits. ‘I’m Kelly. Welcome to my humble home. I hope you decide to stay with us.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Jess replied.
Kelly sniffed at me. ‘There’s always one.’
Jess just scowled at her as Kelly headed off between her animal sculptures that dotted the lawn, towards one of the hives.
The garden was full of trainees, from kids up to people in their mid-twenties, split into four groups. Everyone was listening intently to the person standing at the front of their group. But this was just a small sample – as we stood there, I knew this scene was being replicated hundreds of times across the entire site.