by Dan Smith
‘Don’t give up. You’re almost there.’
Startled, Zak whipped around and stared at the figure standing not far away from him. It was the same person he had seen before, the one wearing ancient all-weather gear, like in those old photos. His head was covered by a woollen balaclava, with a hood pulled over it. Goggles protected his eyes.
‘Who are you?’ Zak was too tired to be afraid any more. ‘What do you want?’
The figure didn’t speak again. Instead, he lifted his right arm and beckoned with his hand.
‘You want me to follow?’
The figure turned and walked away.
So Zak followed. His feet dragged, and his body shivered. He had no idea where he was going, and he wasn’t sure if he even cared. He just didn’t want to be alone and he didn’t want to die. But his body was starting to fail him. He couldn’t feel his face, his fingers were numb, and his legs were growing weaker by the second. His mind was vague and unfocused. The cold was forcing its way in. Hypothermia was winning, and Zak began to think dying wouldn’t be so bad. If he gave up and fell into the snow to lie still and let the cold take him, all of this would be over. All the fear and the pain would disappear.
What a relief that would be.
But he didn’t stop. He trudged on and on, following the figure towards a rise in the perfect landscape. And as he came closer, Zak turned his head slowly left and right, peering along the length of the ridge. It was at least a hundred metres high, and stretched as far as he could see in both directions. A perfect white wall with smooth sides. The only way to climb it would be with ropes and spikes.
He had reached a dead end.
‘Why?’ Zak shivered violently and looked at the figure that had led him here, but instead of seeing the ancient explorer, with its face covered like a ghoul, he saw his sister.
May.
Now I know I’m going mad . . .
She wasn’t dressed as she had been when he last saw her. Instead, she was dressed how he best remembered her. Tight black jeans with knees so ripped it was a wonder they didn’t fall apart when she wriggled into them. A black T-shirt with The Walking Dead printed in bold white letters. A leather biker jacket with pin badges on the lapels. One of the pins was completely yellow, such a happy colour, with two black dots for eyes and a big smiley mouth. There was a splash of red blood on one side. She wore her favourite Dr. Martens boots, and a black beanie with a picture of a white hand holding a red heart-shaped hand grenade. Her hair was hanging loose from the edges of the beanie.
May had her arms crossed and was staring at her brother as if she couldn’t understand why the cold was bothering him so much. ‘Come on, you loser, what are you waiting for?’
Zak didn’t know if she was actually there, or if he was even hearing her voice for real. He had seen so many bizarre things over the past few hours, this was just another one to add to the long list.
‘What are you waiting for?’ May spoke (thought?) again, and a wide door slid open in the endless white wall beside her. When the door was open enough for a person to pass through, May lifted a hand and swept it towards the entrance and the darkness it had revealed. ‘Get inside, you freak. You’re the only one who can see this. The only one we can tell. You’re the only one who can know.’
Zak frowned and hesitated. It might be some kind of trap, but what did he have to lose? There was nowhere else for him to go.
So he stumbled forward, and followed May into the unknown.
Zak found himself in a rectangular room carved into the ice. White light shone from tiny bulbs fitted into the perfectly square corners, and an Arctic Cat snowmobile sat idle by the door. On the other side of the room a sloped corridor led deeper into the ice. There was no heat to warm his body, and Zak struggled to control his shivering as he followed his sister along the ice-corridor. A harsh draught moaned around him like the ghosts of the unhappy dead.
Zak made his way down and down, deeper and deeper into the ice until he came to a vast cavern with perfectly smooth walls of ice and a high, flat ceiling. The space was at least three times as big as the assembly hall at school, but instead of being stuffed with stacked chairs and smelling like school dinners, it was filled with horrors and stank like a slaughterhouse.
Bugs, like the ones that had smothered Mum, Dad and May, were everywhere. They crawled along the walls, they carpeted the floor, they clicked and rustled and fluttered as they scuttled over each other or took to the air. Littered among the insects covering the floor, there were parts taken from the dismantled plane and Magpie, and cobbled-together machines clattered with gears and glistened with grey cords of muscle, but all these were dwarfed by the giant monster towering over them.
Zak guessed it had been one of Mum and Dad’s Spiders, but it was hardly recognizable now. Instead of shining steel and alloy, the drone was encased in a hard outer shell similar to the kind covering the bugs. Grey translucent sinews twisted at its joints, and criss-crossed the creature’s underside. The monster was a demented mix of mechanical and biological. Metal pincers protruded from its face, coarse hairs growing around them. It was part-Spider, part-bug, all gross. Insects swarmed over it, disappearing beneath the shell, crawling over its fleshy parts, shedding their armour and melting into the monster, becoming part of it. They were giving it life. The smell rising from it was like wet soil and fresh meat.
On the other side of the cavern, opposite the corridor, May stood in a place where the world fell away into nothing. An immense and jagged rip ran from left to right like a monstrous mouth, its edges like dangerous teeth. A tear in the ice so wide it was impossible to see the other side.
The Chasm.
Zak crossed the huge room and went to his sister. He peered over the edge of The Chasm and stared into the endless depths of the Earth, thinking that if he toppled forwards and fell, he would be falling for ever. But the longer he stared into its eternity, the more he began to see.
There was something moving down there. Flickering fluorescent lights flitting backwards and forwards like fireflies in the darkness.
‘Let us show you.’ May spoke again, but Zak knew it wasn’t May, and when he looked at her, she faded and shimmered like an old memory. She was an illusion, put into his head by something he didn’t understand, but she was trying to tell him something. Whatever lay beneath the ice, it wanted Zak to understand.
Zak stared down into The Chasm once more, and saw the flickering lights lifting towards him like tiny lanterns in the night. The hum of insects grew louder as the swarm approached from below, and then they were rising up, surrounding him. And as they covered his body, Zak felt warm, and the familiar darkness of another vision came to him. But he no longer felt afraid, and this time he didn’t fight it. Instead, he let his mind go.
Zak surrendered himself to the vision.
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
As the vision slipped over him, Zak was surrounded by darkness so complete, so solid, that it was as if he was buried deep in fine black powder. Except, it felt like he was floating. Like his mind wasn’t in his body any more.
Weirdest. Feeling. Ever.
Zak wondered if he was dying.
No. This isn’t death. This is something else. This isn’t even real. This is all in my head. This is the vision – the thing they’ve been trying to show me.
Standing on the edge of The Chasm, with insects crawling over him, Zak’s mind joined with theirs, and he saw everything they wanted him to see. Their message came to him in a flash of images, racing through his thoughts.
He saw lights moving in the darkness below him, thousands of insects flickering and fluttering in the freezing, black depths. He saw a river of them flowing through the ice beneath his feet, swarming over each other, their legs intertwining, their wings struggling to open in the tight space. And the mind of every single insect was connected to the mind of every other insect, all of them acting together as if they were one.
I was right. A hive mind.
An
d now, in a way, he was part of that collective mind too. They could reach his thoughts in a way they couldn’t reach anybody else at Outpost Zero.
Because I’m different. My mind is different.
His illness weakened him; it made him vulnerable.
The insects showed him the river of seething bugs flowing away beneath the ice, flooding into a shimmering, glowing sea of them. A sea that pulsed with a fluorescent glow. The number of insects was impossible to grasp. More than thousands. More than millions. More than billions. All of their minds connected. All of them trying to free themselves from the ice directly below Outpost Zero.
BioMesa had discovered them, and now they had to protect themselves. They had to survive. They had to escape and find somewhere new – somewhere safe to hibernate.
And in the vision, Zak saw how their light was creating great heat, melting the ice that entombed them. The insects were almost ready to escape, but above them, Outpost Zero was perched on ice that was growing thinner and thinner.
Their freedom would destroy Outpost Zero. That was what they wanted to tell him. They wanted to warn him.
But what are you? Zak needed to understand.
So the insects showed him.
A blinding blast of light and heat erupted in his mind, and in that energy, a billion tiny explosions created a cloud of gas that twisted and snaked like the tendrils of a smoky giant. When the gas faded into nothing, Zak saw the cold darkness of space, he saw planets form and break apart, he saw stars burning bright in the unreachable distance.
This is the beginning of everything, he thought. This is how the universe began. Why are you showing me this?
More images flashed through his mind like a movie played on fast-forward behind his eyelids. He felt as if he were cascading among the planets, passing through rock and space and stars, gaining speed, faster, faster, until it was impossible to focus, and everything was a blur of dark, light, time, energy and—
Everything stopped.
For a second, his thoughts were blank, and then his mind was filled with an image of a planet hanging in space. Earth.
On the surface of the planet, a swirling, white-crested blue sea crashed and foamed. Above it, two spirals of light twisted around each other, a double helix of glowing insects rising up. And as the insects reached the top of the spirals, they shed their hard casings, letting their bodies fall to the ocean, decomposing into a soup of cells that split and grew and became life.
Every creature on the planet came from these insects. The information Dad found in the lab – the DNA, the genomes, the stem cells – that’s what the insects were. They were the beginning of all life on earth, and in his vision Zak saw their cells grow into mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects . . . everything.
When Zak opened his eyes, he was back in the ice-cavern. The insects had returned to The Chasm, but Zak felt the ghost of their presence in his mind. He felt remnants of their fleshy bodies on his face, their life-creating cells soaking into his skin. It ran warm in his veins, moving through his body, filling his mind. He felt a calming release of pressure inside his brain, and when he looked around, he saw the world with new eyes. The insects had more right to be here than he did.
‘I think I understand,’ Zak said. ‘I think I know what you are.’
APPROACHING OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
‘We’re about thirty minutes out,’ the pilot said. Lazarovich leant forward to see along the interior of the Osprey and into the cockpit.
‘Storm’s passed, weather’s looking good,’ Captain Jackson continued. ‘Maybe we’ll reach Zero a little ahead of time. Approaching from the south.’
‘Copy that.’ Lazarovich settled back into her seat and cast her eyes over the other operatives sitting either side of the Osprey interior.
Every one of them was faceless behind the visor of his or her battle helmet, but her own visor sensed who she was looking at, and their name appeared, as if by magic, floating in her vision. She didn’t need it though, didn’t need the technology to tell her who they were – Lazarovich knew them as well as she knew herself. She knew their strengths, their weaknesses, their build, their mannerisms. She had worked with them, lived with them, trained them. If they had all been wearing overalls, standing in a darkened room with sacks on their heads, Lazarovich could have picked out each one of them by name.
What she didn’t know was what to expect when she landed at Outpost Zero. As usual, Phoenix had given her as little information as possible. Secure the base, secure whatever those people had found under the ice, eliminate everyone, and await further instruction.
Most of it sounded straightforward – if there was one thing Lazarovich and her team knew how to do, it was to secure an enemy placement and leave no survivors – but one part of it was bothering her. The ‘secure whatever those people had found under the ice’ part. Something about it felt . . . off.
An alert symbol appeared in the top right of her visor display. The word ‘PHOENIX’ was written beside it.
‘Open message,’ Lazarovich said, and an image popped up in place of the alert. It appeared to be hovering in the air on the other side of the cabin.
Lazarovich studied the updated thermal satellite image. It was immediately obvious that the heat signature below the ice had grown. The river of red now stretched from The Chasm in the east, all the way across to the centre of the natural basin in the land, where it ballooned. Outpost Zero was right in the centre of it, as if it were hanging over a giant sea of lava. Whatever was down there was big. Huge. Securing something that size could be problematic, especially when they didn’t even know what it was.
The airstrip was showing as pale blue on the edge of the red sea. It was cold and hard, ready for a good landing, but the Storage building was glowing dull orange – they would need to check it out. Lazarovich was thinking it might be where the base personnel were hanging out.
‘Close image.’ The image disappeared. ‘Open comms.’ Lazarovich waited for the click to indicate she was speaking to the whole team. ‘OK, listen up everyone. We’re thirty minutes out. Time to wake up, stop thinking about your comfy beds back home and your families waiting for you. I need full concentration.’ She paused. ‘I want a clean dispersal when we touch down. We’ll secure the landing zone. Team Two, you take The Hub, split two ways and sweep in both directions. You know the layout, I want the East and West Tunnels cleared. Eliminate everything. Team One with me on the ice – we’ll maintain the landing zone and sweep the outlying Storage building, then we’ll see what we’ve come all this way for. I want this clean, clear and careful. No casualties on our side. All eyes open and alert; I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’
‘Leader, you always say that.’
‘I know.’ Lazarovich focused on the operative sitting opposite her. ‘But this time I mean it.’
JANUARY ISLAND, SOUTH CHINA SEA
NOW
The lights were dimmed in The Broker’s ‘War Room’ and the temperature was exactly how he liked it. Beside him, on the table, was a mug of green tea. The design on the mug said ‘World’s Best Dad’. He picked it up without taking his eyes off the ultra-high-definition screens on the wall in front of him.
The display on the left showed a regularly updated satellite image of Outpost Zero. On the right, the last ten images were stacked together so he could see the growth of what was beneath the ice. Whatever it was, it had begun to increase in size at an incredible rate.
The centre screens showed images fed directly from Lazarovich’s team. Each operative had a camera set into their battle helmet so The Broker could watch them every step of the way. He never spoke to them, never communicated with them, but he was always watching. He saw what they saw.
Their eyes were his eyes.
The Broker sat back and cleared his throat. He raised his mug, but before it touched his lips he stopped and glanced at his hand. There was a slight tremble there, the tea rocking from side to side. He smiled, and allow
ed himself a moment to enjoy the buzz of nervous anticipation. After all, life and death was about to unfold on the screens in front of him. What could be more exciting than that?
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
Zak left The Chasm with a sense of wonder. He wasn’t forced to leave. His body wasn’t controlled, and his mind was his own. He left because he knew he was safe from the hive below the ice, and that Mum and Dad and May would be safe too. He knew the people of Outpost Zero would be safe as long as they stayed in Storage. And he knew what the insects wanted.
He crossed the ice-cavern, and made his way up the incline towards the large door he had first entered through. As he reached the top, the door slipped open and Zak looked out across the calm desert of snow and ice stretched in front of him. In the distance, Outpost Zero was crowned by the green and purple glow of the Aurora. He watched the lights dancing in the sky, then glanced at the Arctic Cat snowmobile beside him.
He had driven something similar once before, so he climbed on and turned the key. The engine jumped into life. Zak twisted the throttle and drove the snowmobile out on to the ice. He accelerated away from The Chasm, closing the distance to Outpost Zero in just a few minutes.
It was time for him to join the others; to be safe from the swarm’s great escape.
The air inside Storage was warm and there was enough light for Zak to make out the silhouettes of the figures standing at the far end of the room. Dima was there, some of the others he had seen out on the ice too. Mum and Dad and May were standing at the front, eyes closed as if they were in a peaceful sleep.
‘It’ll all be over soon,’ Zak said as he approached them. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be long now.’
They remained motionless, eyes closed.
‘You should have seen it,’ Zak said to May, leaning in to whisper in her ear. ‘It was amazing. Kind of gross, but amazing.’
Something moved behind him and he turned to scan the room.