He turned up the brightness on the television monitors, so Will could see the horrific images. The middle screen showed a female who was slumped forward and her face, completely obscured by long blond hair matted in blood.
Ally Palmer-King was dead and the gun belonging to her captor was still smoking at the barrel. Two of the hostages, Wes and Kimmie were still alive but gagged and tied to their chairs. They were writhing about in their seats frantically, waiting for their turn.
Cameron motioned for Nathan and Maya to leave the room, and signalled the guard to lock the main doors. When no one was looking, Maya wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes. Will was now alone and Cameron had the final word,
“Try to get some sleep son,” he said simply “You’ve got a busy day tomorrow,” as he closed and locked the doors behind him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Chapelsfield
Mentally and physically traumatised, the pain of his losses had nearly broken Will. The image of Ally dead was one too many, a disturbing stain on his mind. However, he knew he couldn’t surrender to that weakness because it wasn’t going to bring his friends back.
It was now late afternoon, two days later and he’d reluctantly accepted his mission. As Cameron gave him final instructions, Will merely acknowledged them with expressionless nods. Cameron accepted his obedience with his customary smugness.
The green, quilted landscape of the countryside flashed by unceremoniously, as the three vehicles hurried eastbound towards the Chapelsfield Nuclear Facility. In two vans, there were two Prometheans, a male and a female. They weren’t dressed in their typical black attire but instead they wore overalls of a bogus engineering company.
Inside the dark SUV that was trailing, Nathan Walker sat in the passenger seat, going through the final preparations on his tablet; Maya was driving. Every so often, she’d look into the mirror and exchange glances with Will who was sitting in the back.
The events of the past twenty-four hours had also taken a heavy toll on Maya. She now understood that Cameron’s ambitions transcended family, friends or loyalty. The Promethean organisation was a hollow shell with no true purpose. It was a means for Cameron to carry out his anarchical deeds.
Maya realised like everyone else, she was nothing more than Cameron’s puppet. After the events of the past few hours, she felt weighed down by the burdens of her own guilt. ‘Could I have steered Will in a different direction? Should I have reconciled him with his mother sooner?’ wondered Maya.
She regretted all the missed opportunities to kill Cameron, when she could’ve done so. Maya felt she’d betrayed her friends and her soul was torn. As she drove silently, Maya wondered what more she could have done. A tear trickled down her face, as she remembered meeting Will’s friends back at the RC and immediately came to love them as Will did.
Maya Walker wasn’t lucky with friendships as Will was. Perhaps it was because of her overtly cautious nature or maybe it was because she didn’t let many people in. It wasn’t long ago when she lost two of her oldest and dearest friends on a different mission.
The image of Ally Palmer-King slumped forward and tied to a chair with her bloodied blond hair wrapped around face, also haunted Maya. Like Will, Maya too had to bury her guilt so she could function properly. Besides, she’d already planned her redemption and wasn’t going to allow any more harm come to Will, no matter what.
Cameron was wary of Maya but she knew that already. She’d suspected he’d been watching her closely or his people had been. Cameron praised her zealously when she’d incapacitated Will with her Taser but he hadn’t fathomed her true intentions.
An old acquaintance of Maya’s, who was an engineering graduate from Caltech, had modified her Taser. It carried an amperage strong enough to disable the implant in Will’s body. She knew if it was applied anywhere around the neck or cranium it would fry the implant and Cameron’s signal to it. Maya had deliberately zapped Will twice, for sustained periods.
Will was sitting quietly next to Cameron, with his hands zip-tied. As the SUV sped towards its destination, he was recalling part of their last conversation in the morning.
✽✽✽
“So you’re going to make the entire South East of England uninhabitable for what, the next thirty years? And that’s notwithstanding environmental damage to the rest of the country?” he said to Cameron.
“It worked in Japan and Russia,” Cameron had replied, unconcerned.
“Did it?” responded Will. “Millions of people, men, women and children born with life-altering deformities and cancers... Do you think the people will remember you favourably for what you’re about to do?”
Will looked at Cameron and smiled wickedly when he saw the look on his face. It was as if though part of him believed that he was doing was righteous. Of course, Cameron hid the fact that Will had once again touched a raw nerve.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he remembered Cameron saying. “You see William, regimes come and go the world over and ultimately, the people are the ones who always suffer. Do you know how much it costs to run this country, especially on nuclear fuel? Have you any idea of the impact that it has on the economy? Who do you think pays for it? It’s not the government,” preached Cameron, trying to justify himself.
Will realised that Cameron had an overinflated ego. He figured as long as his father’s ego was stroked he’d keep him talking. So Will bided his time, he exploited his father’s tendency to gloat and gather information.
“So, it’s anarchy then,” Will simply said. “You don’t really like what the government’s selling, so you want to change it indiscriminately.”
“Like Zeus, they give with one hand and take away with the other!” declared Cameron. “Fyodorgrad and Satoshima proved how far we would go and what we could achieve,” he bragged. “Someday soon, I will bring this country to its knees… Take it back to the dark ages!”
Will took this moment to expose the flaws in Cameron’s logic and lack of knowledge about Greek mythology. He explained to Cameron that Prometheus stole fire from the Zeus to give to the people not blow the people up. Prometheus martyred himself for good and was thus, selfless. Will’s last dig was to brand his father a hypocrite without a cause.
Of course, an enraged Cameron backhanded him across the face in an uncharacteristic loss of control. ‘It was worth it!’ Will thought, as he smiled. He burned that moment into his memory and put his earlier conversation with his father to the back of his mind.
✽✽✽
Now, Will was staring out of the window, as he allowed the sounds and smells of salty sea air to waft up his nose. He could tell they were approaching the coast, by the seagulls cawing and swooping overhead.
Cameron was jabbering last instructions. Outwardly, Will was a mask of humiliation and subjugation but inwardly, he was seething with rage and retribution. When the time was right, there’d be a reckoning.
The plan was simple, as Cameron saw it. Will would enter Chapelsfield as part of a six-man team, posing as engineers. Once inside the nuclear facility, they’d attach explosives to several key areas and detonate them remotely. Their target was the used nuclear fuel pools.
When the vehicles were within a mile of their destination, everyone could see the white dome of Chapelsfield. They pulled up half a mile away from the Chapelsfield, got out of their vehicles and made their final preparations.
They stripped the stickers off the side panels of the vehicles to reveal their bogus name, Softer Line Electrical Engineers. On the breast pockets of their overalls, they also tore off the Velcro patches to reveal their company badges. Will watched as each of the Prometheans took handguns from their kitbags, cocked them and flipped their safeties on.
“Softer Line Electrical Engineering,” Will said drolly. “Sounds very cheesy,”
“It’s an anagram, of course,” said Cameron, as if Will should’ve guessed.
“Of course!” said Will, who’d tilted his head to read the sign again. After
a few seconds, “Stolen fire!” he added flatly, “How unremarkable!” Cameron pulled out a huge hunting knife from its leather sheathe and Will understandably flinched. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked nervously.
Cameron smiled and cut the zip-ties around Will’s wrists, “Just remember William, no tricks!” he said. “Plant the charges and nothing more.”
“And after?” asked Will.
“After, you can go and sit in the cafeteria,” said Cameron ironically. “Have a coffee.”
Will drilled his eyes into his father bitterly. He desperately wanted to throw a witty comeback but the moment was lost. As he walked towards one of the vans, he thought about the dreams that used to haunt him. Unfortunately, for him it seemed as if they were now going to come true.
He looked over towards Maya, who was sitting between two surly-looking Prometheans in the other van. She could barely turn her head but managed to give him a hopeful look before he got into his van.
“Remember William, there are other lives a stake,” warned Cameron, referring to Kimmie and Wesley. “Don’t let them become casualties too, like your other friends!” he shouted.
Will didn’t bother to look back as he headed to the van. As far as he was concerned, his father was dead to him. As the vans pulled away, stone chips flew up in a whirlwind of dust, and they headed off towards Chapelsfield.
✽✽✽
In less than an hour, the vans slowly approached Chapelsfield. Silently, everyone got out of the vans and prepared themselves in teams. Will looked up at the distinctive white hemisphere of Chapelsfield, smiled ruefully and then steeled himself.
Inside, he was relieved Chapelsfield-B wasn’t the main target of his father’s organisation. The purely ridiculous reason for his relief was he simply liked the shape of the spherical dome, sitting atop the building. Will thought it gave the east coast of England character, it was a distinctive landmark.
However, this wasn’t the first attempt to bring Chapelsfield to its knees. Cameron had bragged to Will shamelessly about his previous attempts to shut down the plant. Six years ago, a pressurised electrical heater fault caused high moisture levels in a containment building causing the plant went offline for an extended period.
Four months later, a minor fire broke out on the third floor, in a building that housed charcoal adsorbers. It took a vast workforce of emergency services seven hours to bring the fire under control. The following day the charcoal adsorber, which is essential for capturing and using waste heat, was flooded.
Three years ago, “we got even closer,” he recalled Cameron boasting. The Chapelsfield-B site nearly closed due to an unknown electrical fault. Fortunately, they were able to restart the plant two weeks later, albeit at half capacity.
Four months later, Chapelsfield would become a more tightly controlled operation, especially, in the wake of the Satoshima disaster in Japan. The UK government ordered the construction of a remote Emergency Response Centre, the following year.
Not long after, Cameron realised that he’d been looking at the problem all wrong and turned his attention to spent nuclear fuel. The UK had been far behind countries like the US, who’d developed deep geological sites in mountainous areas. This allowed them dispose of radioactive waste more effectively.
For the last two years, Cameron had looked into spent fuel pools and storage installations. He found that potentially, any long-term radioactive decay could take in excess of several hundreds of thousands of years. In an nutshell, this meant that the pools were highly radioactive and extremely useful to his plans.
“Let’s go,” said the female Promethean, as she nudged Will in the back.
Will looked over to the adjacent building Chapelsfield-A, the real target and sighed apprehensively. A range of emotions washed over Will. He was angry that his father for placed him in this predicament. He was angry he couldn’t save his mother and he was angry about the deaths of his friends.
Deep down though, Will was mad at himself for not getting hold of the situation better. As he walked over to the others, he’d knew the reality was that he was never ever in control of anything.
Gaining access onto the site was straightforward and the level of security was unusually poor. Will had hoped for better and raising the alarm was going to prove challenging. However, he was resolved in one belief, ‘That Cameron would atone for everything he’d done,” he thought. ‘One day, he’ll do penance for his actions and I’m going to be there.’
The large security gate had two CCTV cameras perched on pillars either side and there were guards standing by. This wasn’t an issue for the group, as they’d now manoeuvred themselves around to the longer side fences. They laid in wait, where they knew were several blind spots between the security cameras.
There was also a nature reserve on their side fence, which provided natural concealment. About thirty metres on the other side of the fence, directly opposite was their access point into Chapelsfield-A, they waited for their signal.
Cameron Cox had been a long-time contributor to the National Trust, especially after he’d concocted his grand scheme. After unsolicited visits the nature reserve, he theorised that no one would perceive a threat from that point in the perimeter. The only barrier of concern was high electric fence, which surrounded the perimeter. There was sufficient voltage to deter any hostile or potential threats from attempting to breach the facility.
The group had split into two teams, alpha and bravo. Alpha team consisted of one male and female Promethean alongside Will. Their primary goal was to locate the spent fuel pools and attach their magnetised explosives to the outer casing.
Bravo team, which consisted of Maya and the other two Prometheans, had to access the spent nuclear fuel pond from the ground floor. Once they reached the pool, which was directly above an old laundry, they would place their charges against the old mains pipes.
To Maya’s dismay, her father’s expertise was critical in determining where structural integrity would be the weakest. Spent fuel pools had in excess of a hundred thousand gallons of radioactive coolant flowing through their pipes. Nathan had calculated it would all spill into the North Sea with the right amount of explosive pressure.
Years ago, during the decommissioning of Chapelsfield-A, an unconfirmed source stated that a contractor had discovered water leaking onto the floor of the laundry. It turned out cooling water from the spent fuel pond had fallen over a metre without triggering any sensor alarms.
Nathan Walker had secretly acquired the HM Nuclear Installation Inspectorate’s report, which wasn’t made public. It stated that the contractor had inadvertently prevented a major event. If the pool had drained before the next inspection, exposed radiation could have ignited, thus releasing harmful levels of radiation into the atmosphere.
Upon reading that sensitive information, Cameron formed the beginnings of a grander, darker plan. When Maya realised that her father proposed the Chapelsfield-A operation, it strengthened her desire for intervention.
Maya was horrified to learn that her father was the technical mastermind behind the tragic ecological events of Fyodorgrad, Tlilatl and Satoshima. Begrudgingly, she praised her father’s ingenuity but inside she cursed him. She was formulating her own plan to stop her Cameron and her father, as well as save Will.
From the van, Nathan Walker steered the robot that he’d created towards the fencing. Electrical sparks flared outward dramatically and showered the ground as the metal arm contacted the high voltage. Normally, a highly person during operations Nathan afforded himself a half-smile, as his plan worked to perfection.
He correctly surmised the next three things that would happen. Firstly, the silent alarm would go off, second, the high electrical fence would need to be deactivated and third, the security guards would deploy to that sector. In the next instance, the Prometheans received a signal in their earpieces,
“Alpha and bravo teams, you’re a go!” said Nathan. “I repeat you’re good to go.”
“
Acknowledged!” replied one of the female Promethean’s. “Radio silence from here on,” she said firmly to everyone.
As if on cue, a hand from one of the maintenance team pushed open the access door. His hand was thick, slightly hairy and weathered but it was the hands of an experienced professional, a family man. Unfortunately, he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The large black hunting knife was thrusted into his back and he collapsed limply into a heap of lifelessness. The two male Prometheans dragged his body into thickets, while Will and Maya looked at each other stunned.
Once inside the building, they checked around and then quickly put on their protective radiation suits. The suits covered their bodies from head to toes and secured around the ankles and wrists. They also wore facial masks with special filters to protect them in the likelihood that harmful radioactive substances were present.
Just before the teams parted, Maya looked at Will again but discreetly. As far as the Prometheans knew, Maya rubbing her eyes, tapping her temple and adjusting her belt meant nothing. Somehow, Will understood Maya’s message and realised they were being monitored but not just by the Prometheans with them.
The male with the thick black-rimmed glasses had a sophisticated micro-camera built into it. One of the female had been wearing had an unusual pin fastened to her clothing, which concealed a sophisticated micro camera.
As the Prometheans walked behind him, Will glanced over at them and clocked most of their devices. When the large male Promethean cajoled him along, Will smiled wryly, as he started forming his own plan of action.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Willpower
Both groups worked as quickly as possible to get their explosives in their designated points. Their bodies perspired, as they started to overheat inside their protective suits. During the entire time, no one spoke and both groups maintained radio silence until the job was completed.
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