by Nick Cook
‘And as if all of this isn’t bad enough, I’m afraid the outlook is even worse.’ Williams clicked the remote and a computer graphic of Earth appeared. On it, a black zone extended around New York in the middle of the screen. ‘This is a live satellite feed relayed directly from GCHQ. Based on what’s already been observed, and extrapolating from that data, the team believes that the entire world will be engulfed by the Shadowlands within five hundred days.’
Nearly everyone looked shocked, many with tears in their eyes. We’d never planned for this sort of timeline; we’d only expected a single DEC-based attack, certainly nothing of this scale.
‘How the hell are we going to build the five thousand Waveriders necessary to protect every major city in such a short space of time?’ Dad asked.
‘We will have to find a way,’ Hammond replied.
I fought the urge to be sick and forced myself to ask a question I was already dreading the answer to. ‘General Hammond, have you got a projection for the surviving world population, even if we manage to get the entire network of Waveriders online and distributed around the planet?’
Hammond gave me a grim look and gestured to Williams who clicked the remote again.
A black screen appeared, with the total world population written in blue: around eight billion. Below that in red was another figure of six billion, and the difference between the two numbers was in green at the bottom: just under three billion.
I stared at the numbers, praying I wasn’t reading them correctly. ‘And the green number at the bottom represents?’
‘The projected number of survivors,’ General Hammond replied.
Several people were openly sobbing now as Claire scraped her chair backwards. A third of the world’s population might survive, and that was our best-case scenario.
‘This is practically genocide of the human species,’ Dad said, pale-faced.
‘I’m afraid that’s exactly what this is – and not just human, but all life as we know it,’ Hammond replied. ‘But without what you, Claire and the Awoken are doing, that number of survivors would be zero, so as awful as this information is, please don’t lose sight of that.’
It felt as if the floor had started to tilt beneath me.
Dad gave me a desolate look, guilt written across his face – he felt it was his fault the Shade had slipped into our world in the first place.
This wasn’t on him, because he hadn’t known and he certainly hadn’t done it deliberately. But I knew that Dad would never see it that way. Claire cupped her hand over his shoulder, reading him like I was.
A chime came from the screen and Williams gave the remote a confused look. The next moment, the numbers dissolved and Sentinel’s head appeared instead.
The AI gazed out at us. ‘I realise how badly you must be taking this, but this is exactly what the Shade do. They exterminate life of every sort anywhere they find it. However, I have found something that may swing this situation in our favour.’
‘Any edge you can give us we’ll take, Sentinel,’ I said.
‘I have finally been able to crack another level of encryption within the Shade’s Lodestones. It appears that, with the right programming, we will be able to use these devices to communicate with each other.’
‘You mean that we have a way of keeping contact with a city that’s already been swamped by the Shadowlands?’ Hammond asked.
‘Precisely,’ Sentinel replied.
‘I get that communication is important, but compared to losing six billion people on this planet…’ I said.
‘That’s not all,’ said Sentinel. ‘Buried within the Lodestones is an algorithm that appears to contain runic code for an emergency shutdown procedure.’
‘Shutdown procedure for what?’ Dad asked.
‘For Dark Sunset itself. It seems that each Lodestone contains an Immortal runic key designed to shut down the singularity.’
Hammond’s eyes widened. ‘You mean you’ve found a way to stop what’s about to happen?’
‘We won’t know for sure until I crack the final encryption and that’s going take me a little bit more time.’
‘How much?’ I asked.
‘My current estimate is seven days on my existing systems.’
My heart sank. ‘In other words, too late for the neighbouring states of New York.’
‘Yes, if I ran my decryption algorithms on my current systems. However, if every supercomputer on this planet was thrown open to me, then that additional processing power should help me to crack the shutdown key within twenty-four hours.’
I took a breath. A lot of lives would still lost, but many more would be saved if this worked. In the middle of this nightmare facing humanity, could we really have found a flicker of hope?
General Hammond gazed up at the AI. ‘Then I will do everything in my power to make sure the computer access you need happens. I imagine that with the prospect of what every country is facing, there will be nobody who won’t help you in this.’
Dad stood, fresh fire in his eyes. ‘In the meantime, we need to push on as fast as possible with the roll-out of the rest of the Waveriders we have already built to the immediate danger area around the New York Bay. I have no doubt in Sentinel’s abilities, but we also need to plan for the worst.’
Hammond nodded. ‘And that’s the other reason that I’m here: to inform you that every government’s military – including NATO, Russia and its allies, and China – have all agreed to help with the transportation. Hopefully, with that combined effort, we should be able to speed up the deployment by a factor of twenty, obviously prioritising the United States and adjacent countries first.’
Dad turned to Claire. ‘It looks as though nobody here will be getting much sleep any time soon.’
She shrugged. ‘Sleep is overrated anyway.’
I looked at everyone in the room with fresh determination in my heart. ‘So let’s get out there and save our world, people.’
Chapter Twenty
General Hammond had been as good as his word – thanks to him petitioning governments throughout the world, every single country with supercomputers had given us direct access to them for Sentinel’s number-crunching. He hadn’t lied about the military helping with the Waveriders either – the skies around Culham now constantly thundered with the sound of rotor blades ferrying Waveriders and their teams away.
Through the window, I watched a Russian Mil Mi-26 heavy airlift helicopter, as its pilot had proudly informed me, take off, destined for Las Vegas with its L3 cargo.
The world really was starting to pull together over all of this.
But nearly a day on, New Jersey and Massachusetts had been swamped. Thankfully, the other cities in the firing line had their L3s up and running before the Shadowlands had hit them too. The sooner we could stop Dark Sunset with the Shade’s shutdown protocol, the better.
I turned away, back to the monitor displaying Sentinel’s avatar. ‘So how’s cracking that encryption coming along?’
‘Much better than I could have hoped for, Jake. With all this additional computing power, I’m only about twenty minutes away from having the final key.’
My shoulders dropped a fraction. ‘That’s great news.’
‘I do have one concern, though.’
‘Which is?’
‘Maybe it’s been going a little too well. I should have run into far more roadblocks than I have by now. I would have also expected some deliberate dead ends built into the code to slow down any hacking attempt like this.’
‘So maybe the Shade got a bit too confident in their own abilities? Like they say, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
Sentinel nodded. ‘Yes, maybe you’re right, Jake. Sometimes being a sentient AI that’s billions of years old makes you a little paranoid.’
I smiled. ‘I can only begin to imagine what your headspace is like at times like this.’
‘Oh, it’s a regular carnival, I can assure you,’ Sentinel replied with a smile.
&
nbsp; Dad entered the room. ‘Jake, I need to catch you before Claire and I head off to Oklahoma.’
‘Another Waverider glitching out?’
‘Yes, and it’s the sixth one out of the fifty already deployed. Not the best track record when all those cities are depending on those machines, not helped by having to rush the systems out to them. Although, thanks to plenty of redundancy built into the design, once the systems are up and running they seem to be very stable. Our main problem is that some of the units have lost their calibration during transport. They’re sensitive bits of kit and in some cases they’ve been knocked around a bit, meaning that the system needs to be retuned once installed.’
‘As Chloe would say, even the best code always needs some final debugging,’ I said.
‘Is she still giving you the cold-shoulder treatment?’
I dragged my teeth over my lip. ‘You know about that then?’
‘Chloe spoke to Claire about it. She tells me that Chloe’s in a real mess.’
‘Anybody would be after what happened.’
‘I know that, but you need to make things right between you. That’s the other reason I’m here. Chloe’s about to ship out with the Tiger squad, and if I’ve learnt anything in life, Jake, it’s to not leave something like this hanging in the air. Go and grab your chance to speak to her while you still can or you may end up always regretting it.’
I sighed. ‘You do know I’d rather wrestle an entire army of Shade than face Chloe right now?’
‘So lean into your fear and do it anyway. Always the best strategy.’
The pure hatred on Chloe’s face when she’d looked at me last filled my mind. The problem was I also knew that Dad was right.
I pushed myself off the windowsill. ‘OK, I’m on it.’
He patted my shoulder. ‘Good luck.’
Across the production floor, the final touches were being made to the next fifty Waveriders, which would bring the total to just over a hundred L3s. It was a small dent in the five thousand we needed to cover the major cities of the world, not to mention all the L2s for smaller populations. But all the latest projections indicated we should just have time to build all the Waveriders we needed, especially if we used some extra factories just to make sure – as well as train up extra Awoken teams too.
People seem to be dashing everywhere, from squad members and soldiers to engineers and technicians who’d been drafted in to help out. To help motivate them, not that it was really needed, a large screen had been mounted in the production room showing a real-time feed from GCHQ of the spread of the Shadowlands. People fell silent whenever a major city was overtaken by the Shadowlands, but at least we’d so far been able to keep ahead of the expanding wave of dark fog as it worked its way across the planet.
At the bottom of the screen, a red number ticked up past one hundred and fifty million – the projected dead so far. A much smaller green number of forty-five million showed the number that had been saved – those who’d managed to shelter within the dome-protected cities. And that was all the motivation people needed to keep working way beyond what should have been humanly possible, although many did look dead on their feet.
In the gathering darkness outside, I spotted Chloe directing a small tractor unit to tow her team’s crate to the waiting helicopter.
I didn’t have long if I wanted to grab a moment to speak to her. My heart was already pounding as I headed outside.
‘Chloe, can I have a quick word with you?’ I said as I neared.
Her back stiffened as she turned towards me. ‘Jake, this isn’t the time.’
I caught Dad and Claire watching us through the open door to the production floor. Dad dipped his chin slightly towards me.
Lean into your fear…
‘Please, Chloe. I can’t let you head off and leave things like this between us.’
She looked crossed her arms. ‘I don’t have the headspace for this, Jake.’
‘But what if there isn’t another time?’ I said before I could stop myself.
Her eyes locked on to mine. ‘You can’t talk like that.’
I shrugged. ‘Why not? It could be the truth.’
She stared at the sky for a moment before looking back at me. ‘If it’s the truth you want to talk about, then how about this? Right now it feels as if a chunk has been torn from my soul, so excuse me for not giving you the big forgiveness thing at the moment. Sorry, Jake, I just can’t do this right now.’ She turned round, her back a wall to me.
Any plea died in my throat as she returned her attention to the German flight crew beginning to connect the crate to a harness at the bottom of the helicopter. The next moment she was boarding that same Chinook with her Tiger squad. No arm was raised in farewell. No final glance over her shoulder as the helicopter’s door closed behind her.
A stone filled my gut as the Chinook roared into life, its rotor blades beating the air. The grey machine started to rise and took up the slack in the cable. Then the L3 rose too, the Chinook lifting it slowly into the air. I kept watching until the helicopter’s navigation lights receded to a dot, my heart breaking further as it grew smaller.
My eBud buzzed.
‘Jake, there’s been a development online that you need to be aware of,’ Sentinel said.
‘Such as?’ I asked.
‘It’s best if you see it for yourself. I’m transferring an image to your mobile now.’
I tore my gaze away from the Chinook pinprick and took my phone out of my pocket. It showed an image of a black bank of fog rolling along a street lined with white clapperboard houses. Abandoned cars lay in its path, a child’s bicycle tipped over on a driveway. All evidence of people fleeing for their lives.
‘As awful as this is, why is it important, Sentinel?’
‘Because of the next photo,’ Sentinel replied.
The new image appeared: a zoomed-in shot of the leading edge of the black fog bank. Within it, I could see hundreds of shadow crows that looked almost solid.
‘Hang on, how can someone have caught a photograph of shadow crows? This is a normal camera image and not thermal imaging, right?’
‘Precisely, Jake, and that’s why this is significant. It seems as if the Shadowlands are now far denser than before, no doubt because of the power of the singularity portal that now connects the Void to our world. According to my analysis, it looks as if the regions covered by the Shadowlands have become a twilight area where the two realities overlap. And within those regions, shadow crows have taken on a physical form so that even Normals, to use your vernacular, can see them.’
‘And does that make them more dangerous?’
‘Almost certainly. The other complication of this development is that this latest photographic evidence has punched holes straight through the American government’s cover story of this being a terrorist-related incident. Images like this and others have gone viral, some even claiming this is some sort of alien invasion that the government are trying to hush up.’
I shook my head. ‘Which is what it is in every sense – apart from the fact that the Shade don’t use UFOs. So how is the US government responding?’
‘They’re claiming that these photographs are hoaxes put out by some unnamed foreign governments determined to spread panic across America.’
‘Still spin rather than the truth in other words.’
‘The one thing that’s certain is that the authorities can’t keep a lid on this much longer.’
‘They should have just told people the truth in the first place.’
‘I agree, but as has often been the case in humanity’s history the authorities think they know better than their citizens. However, I do have a much better piece of news – something that should make all of this go away.’
‘You’ve cracked the shutdown protocol?’
‘Nearly – in about sixty-five seconds to be precise. I thought you might like to witness the moment for yourself.’
‘Something that is about to save humanity?
Oh, you bet I do. On my way.’
Moments later I ran into the computer room, Sentinel’s avatar turning towards me as I entered. ‘Perfect timing,’ he said. ‘Ten seconds…nine…’
On another screen I saw a scroll bar had reached ninety-nine per cent and the Lodestones sat on the bench opposite.
Hope flared inside me. ‘We needed a miracle to save us and it looks as if you’re about to provide one.’
‘I just wish that I’d cracked it sooner.’
‘I know, but you’re about to save the rest of the human race. That’s huge.’
‘I hope your confidence in me is warranted… Here we go – decryption has been completed.’
The scroll bar ticked up to a hundred per cent and every light in the room faded for a moment.
‘What happened there?’ I asked as the lights came back on.
‘There was some sort of power surge just as I finished the decryption process. However, everything seems to be all right now.’
‘So what about that off switch for Dark Sunset?’
‘I’m examining the code as we speak.’
I tried to be patient as a minute passed, then two. Still Sentinel remained silent.
‘Problems?’ I finally asked.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. There doesn’t seem to be any kill code in here.’
‘But I thought you said—’
‘I know what I said,’ Sentinel replied, uncharacteristically interrupting me. ‘However, something is very odd with the code…’ His avatar flickered on the screen. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any kill code in here.’
I peered at the screen. ‘You already told me that.’
‘I did? I have no record of that in my –’ his avatar glitched again – ‘memory.’
‘Are you having some sort of technical problem?’ I asked.
‘I…’ Sentinel’s avatar broke into pixels for several seconds. When his image reformed, his eyes had widened.
‘I am under attack, Jake,’ he said in a mechanical voice, his usual fluid tone gone. ‘Shade worm virus…attacking my core systems.’