by Ian Williams
Phoenix began speaking again, this time with a noticeable increase in excitement. The idea had apparently achieved Luke’s approval.
“You’re a fucking genius,” she said.
Chapter 25
Relentless
Graham stared into the tornado of matter spinning around within the doorway as if caught in a tumble dryer. This was the exit, their last escape before reaching the puzzle maze hidden beyond. Once they were through, the rest of the journey would be a quick dash to the end. The creatures still trying to stamp them out of existence would have a hard time getting ahead of them after that. Unless they were a step in front and were waiting on the other side. They would not know for sure if that was the case until they stepped through.
As they approached the doorway, with the enemy’s unrelenting attack coming from all sides, the attention of the group focused on the back half of the barrier. The plan was to merge the front of the shield with that of the doorway. Alex would then be their only hope of getting past it while the fight continued around them. It was risky holding position for too long, but in this case they had no other options.
The ground led down a slight decline before it reached the edge of the doorway. After cresting the hill, they had begun to take this small slope and were quickly increasing their pace. They moved along it like a ball rolling down a hill, taking on more speed as they travelled. Seeing the doorway right in front of them boosted their progress through sheer determination alone.
Kindness had decided to join Alex at the front as they neared their destination. While in his new position at the side of the group, Graham had been doing his best to strengthen his part of the barrier. Now they were nearing the end, he could suddenly feel a sense of expectation. They were going to make it there irrelevant of what the enemy tried next. The time had come for him to begin planning his own escape again.
He left his area as soon as the two protective shields started to merge, like bubbles being carefully pushed together; too firmly and one would surely pop. The front was now the place to be.
“What happens now?” he asked the moment he took his place beside Alex, Kindness and then Stephen straight after.
They were only a metre or so away from the doorway’s entrance, but its own force field still kept them back. It was a frustrating situation to be in, with the way out less than a few steps away. For now it was out of reach.
“Alex, are you able to remove the barrier from the exit?” he said after the others had struggled to answer his first question.
She stood with a stern look on her face as the doorway stretched high above. The sight of it clearly scared her. “I will try,” she replied with a child-high kick of the shield blocking her way. “I need the creatures kept as far away as you can manage. While I do this, they will become increasingly agitated and will try anything to stop me. The protective barrier must be maintained at all times. No drop-outs whatsoever, OK?”
Kindness gave no reply, but instead left them once Alex had finished her orders. His place was to be with his own fighters as they fought off the enemy. One false move now would leave them open to another massacre – possibly the last they would ever face, before their extinction. It left Graham and Stephen with nothing to do but watch as the small being in front of them unlocked the doorway from a distance.
While the enemy continued its barrage just behind a thinning layer of shield, Alex knelt down, with one hand placed firmly against the shimmering surface holding them at bay. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard, her eyes squinting at the sides from the sheer energy required. The resulting flashes of light were much brighter than any the creatures could manage from outside. Not even the fireballs racing across the landscape could compare. She was showing her true strength for the first time.
“Once we’re through, what then?” Graham asked Stephen, a hand held up in front of his eyes to block out the glow.
Stephen did the same with his own hands. “It will be a short distance before we reach the tunnel. Alex assured me it was still there.”
“Still there?” Graham raised his voice as another deep thud vibrated through the shield above them from the enemy’s latest attack.
“She made the tunnel, Graham. It is how she found you. The place you were hiding, and the location of the puzzle maze, are contained within a small offshoot of this level. It exists between layers of the Sentient world. There are many that do this, including the one these Sentients were hiding in. The difference with yours is that it holds the only remaining safety within this world. Isaac will find it almost impossible to break into. That’s if we can get through this blasted force field of course.”
It sounded easy enough to Graham. The rest of the journey was set to follow their plan without much chance of deviation. In fact the enemy had reacted almost exactly as Kindness had predicted. If anything, things were going slightly better than expected, at least from Graham’s perspective.
Rather than stand around, Graham decided to help Alex – if it was even possible to do so. He lowered himself to her level and touched her arm gently. For a tentative few seconds she appeared not to know he was there at all. When she opened her eyes and acknowledged him, it was only for a second before her entire concentration was stolen away again. All he could do to help turned out to be exactly what she needed; he was there to offer moral support.
“You can do this, Alex, I know you can,” he said, squeezing her thin arm softly.
His attention then switched to what he hoped was happening in the real world. The conversation with Phoenix had ended with the possibility of uploading Luke back into the Sentient world. He had no idea how they were going to do that, or whether it was likely to work. If they could do it, then his escape would be the next thing to work on.
But again the quietness was broken with ease.
A ripple raced along the structure of their dome as an airborne fireball impacted the rear. Graham was horrified to see a gaping hole in their protective shield. The enemy had found a weakness somehow. He raced toward the break to find Kindness already holding back the attempted invasion alone, his arms spitting energy out like a faulty wireless power relay.
“What happened?” he screamed above the gnashing teeth of one of the creatures still trying to push through.
“There are too many, Graham Denehey, we cannot hold them for much longer. Alex must open the doorway before the entire barrier collapses. We have already lost almost ten of my fighters within the shield. Soon there will not be enough energy to sustain the attack.”
This had been the bad thing Graham was waiting for; suddenly things were not quite as safe as they had seemed. Their combined energy had begun to drain faster somehow. The enemy had found a way of robbing them of it.
* * *
Conrad stepped into the heart of the operating centre, where the real work was being done. He was surprised to find himself standing before a floor to ceiling screen, curved to allow a 180 degree view that filled his world suddenly. It contained a frenzy of information, all whizzing about and mingling where the two people operating it dictated with their limbs. Impressive, but a little daunting for Conrad too.
“This is the brain of our team, Conrad. What do you think?” Derek said, the collar of his white shirt pushed up by his reached out arm.
“I’m not really sure.”
“Well, while you decide, allow me to introduce you to the others. Please.” Derek gestured away from the screen and to a collection of tables, setup against the far wall.
Conrad followed his orders, but kept his eyes fixed on the confused display of data spanning the large screen. He could see the full extent of Derek’s spying right there in front of him. They had everything; photos from his own crime scenes, records of witness statements, even detailed backgrounds for the many victims. The two operating the system were like a pair of athletes locked in some form of competition. They moved their bodies together to shift the information around, their limbs acting as the inputs.
Som
eone there had access to the police database, or at least was an incredibly competent hacker.
“Conrad?”
He turned away from the dancing pair and settled his gaze upon each of the three he faced in turn. Two women and a man, all with a visible nervousness painted across their faces. They sat at another bank of sizeable screens, these much more recognisable in design, with ordinary touch screens too.
After a nod of encouragement from the man in charge, the three introduced themselves. From left to right, their names were Jason Mitchell, Sandra Hobson and a cute little thing named Nessa Nayak. Conrad reacted to the mention of the surname Nayak instantly.
“Nayak, as in related to Rama Nayak?” he asked. It never occurred to him that bringing up the dead man’s name might have caused some emotional pain. After all, he had not been dead for long.
Nessa lowered her head and dropped her big brown eyes to the ground. “He was my brother,” she replied, her hair dark as night and shining beneath the bright light of the room.
Derek quickly stepped forward and gently touched Nessa’s back. “The wound is still raw, Conrad.”
“What happened to him?”
Jason stood and then answered bluntly. “He was murdered. We’re being hunted by whoever’s behind it all. They killed Oliver at one of their warehouses, after he found their supplies, then tracked Rama down and did the same to him. We’d only cleared his apartment the day before. You arrived before we could return and finish the job.”
That made perfect sense to Conrad. Witnesses had seen two men removing black bags from the apartment, which meant the second pair seen on the stairs had to have been the killers. It was all adding up now. Two factions were at war, one of which had sustained severe losses recently and tried desperately to evade the other.
“We found remains of paperwork everywhere, and a data coin. Was this the evidence you’ve gathered so far?” Conrad said.
Jason nodded. “We have it all here, as well. But Oliver, Rama and I kept our own copies at the apartment too. Now none of us can go back there, just in case they catch us.”
“That data coin you stole had everything about our plan to grab the Mayor at his speech.” The other woman, Sandra Hobson, was now speaking. “When you hacked it to get the activation code for the dead-drop, you almost gave us away. If the enemy had found it, we’d have been screwed. Do you still have it?”
Conrad swallowed hard. “The Mayor’s new taskforce has it.”
“You moron,” Sandra yelled at him, then spoke to the man in charge with a nervous increase in volume. “Sir, we should move to another location immediately. This place might not be safe anymore.”
“That won’t be necessary, Sandra,” the man in charge began. “All of the information on the data coin will self-delete if anyone tampers with it.” He smiled before continuing. “We’ve been doing this for a while, Conrad, more than a year in truth. What we’ve discovered has put us all at great risk. There are people out there who want us dead. We’ve been hiding here since the beginning.”
“Hiding from who? Who are these people you’re talking about, the killer-cult? Nothing you’ve told me explains that. Why are they after you?”
“Sandra, show him,” he said. “I’m needed elsewhere. Come find me once you’re finished.” As he went to leave, he stopped himself and hesitated for a second. Finally he added, “Oliver and Rama were good men, Conrad, good men. Such a shame.”
Conrad watched him leave and was instantly set upon by a bout of nervous shakes.
“Jason,” Sandra began – a scornful look at Conrad while she spoke. “Fetch the evidence.”
Sat on the ground beside the table was a knee-high metal lock-box with a palm-print-reader installed on its lid. A few alterations – the odd reinforced panel here and there, and thick steel corners – had made it into something even more secure. It was no longer intended for jewellery or loose documents anymore, but something worth killing over. Jason slapped his hand onto the smooth surface of the palm-print-reader and waited while a quick scan was taken. With his access granted a moment later, he swung its hinged lid open. He then removed a small black box, which he placed in the centre of the table.
Conrad almost choked when he realised what it was. “Holy shit, where did you get this from.” He could not hold himself back, he had to touch it and turn it over in his hands. On the front it appeared nothing more harmful than a piece of useless plastic, but on the other side it was a different story. Four screw holes and two larger cut-outs told him what it was.
“Matches the marks on your victims, doesn’t it?” Jason said proudly. “One of these was attached at some point, we think, which left the holes and the rectangular impressions on their skin too. We reckon it didn’t work right, so they dumped the bodies. But since you’ve found a few dump sites I guess they’ve continued to try.”
“We thought the marks were left by some form of ritual. They weren’t mutilated at all, they were experimented on.” Conrad said before changing the subject slightly. “How on earth do you know about my case? No-one outside the force should be aware of any of this?” He was enraged by the suggestion that his secrecy had been for nothing.
“We’ve been digging around for a while, Conrad,” Sandra said. “We thought the marks were left by a cult-like ritual too, at least at first. That isn’t what this is though. But you don’t find anything out unless you really look. Of course, we’ve not always acted within the confines of the law during our search for the truth.”
“But you have everything I had, every single thing I found and catalogued on the police system.”
“The security protocols you lot use are pretty useless. I cracked them in one afternoon,” Nessa added with a smirk. “We’re in your police network, have been for a while.”
“That’s why we initially believed you were part of the problem,” Sandra said. “We could see what you had and what you were keeping from the public.”
“So why didn’t you take it to the press?” Conrad was certain he would have in the same position.
“Didn’t you hear me earlier,” Jason interrupted with. “We can’t trust anyone, we’re being hunted.”
Disbelief from what he was hearing only made what Jason pulled from the container next, that much more difficult for Conrad to take on board. He produced a violent looking submachine gun, then offered it over.
“What do you make of this?”
Conrad declined the offer and instead chose to answer empty handed. “I’ve never seen a weapon design like that before. But I’d say the ball at the end allows it to fire at multiple angles, and probably at the same time too. Where did you get these things from?”
“GEL.”
“What? I found a shipping manifest for GEL, at least the remains of one. Are you telling me that’s where this was?” Conrad was furious to learn this. He had sent Ericsson and Roberts to check the place out only to be disappointed in the end. Once again the authorities had been a step too far behind.
Jason called over to the pair still swinging and swaying by the large screen. The way they interacted with the computer still engrossed Conrad. “Hey, can you bring up the video record we took at the GEL warehouse? I think Conrad needs to see for himself.”
“Sure,” the woman answered without a single stutter to her flowing movements. A second later and the entire screen burst to life. The sound crackled as the video began to play of the inside of the GEL building.
Instantly Conrad spotted the rows of wooden crates lining the inside of the warehouse. Each was around a metre in width, large enough to contain many thousands of the small black boxes. Or, he considered with a shudder, a small army’s worth of weapons.
When the video peeked into one of the open crates, Jason froze it in place with one command. “Hold it there. See, Conrad, we found them just sitting there. Once we’d gone through all fifty we had a complete record. Two were filled with these boxes and the rest had these guns, all stacked up neatly together.”
&n
bsp; “Why didn’t you report it to the police? We’d have had it all confiscated by now,” Conrad said, his disapproval obvious in tone as well as words.
“Fast forward to the end, show us the last minute or so,” Jason ordered of the operators at the front.
Conrad kept his stare on Jason as he waited for a reasonable answer. While the video restarted, he tried his best to ignore it. Only when a gunshot rang out did he turn to watch. He blinked in shock as he noticed Oliver Bennington land heavily on the floor. He had been shot in the head, execution style. Standing over the body was a large man, gun still smoking in his hand.
Jason began to explain as the video played on. “We were discovered during our search. Rama and me only just got out. We had to watch from the street corner as one of these bastards murdered Oliver, then took him away. You know what happened to him next.”
“So after they found you they attacked and killed Oliver?” Conrad said. He waited for a nod before going on. “Then dumped his body. I found it days later, but without any signs of mutilation. They didn’t try to put one of these on him, they just caught him and murdered him.”
“Yep,” Jason said.
“OK, so now, who the fuck are these people? Are they the same terrorists from last year? And what are they planning to do with these boxes and weapons?”
Jason remained tight lipped, instead looking to Sandra for guidance. She answered on his behalf.
“We’re done here,” she said.
“What? No, I’ve still got so many questions.” Conrad gripped the small black box tightly in his hand. He was not about to give it back until he understood it all.
“Derek wants you in on the next interrogation. You’ve seen all you need up here, now follow me.”
“Interrogation, you mean of Mayor Crawley?”
“That’s the one. Guys, keep working while I take Mr. Robinson downstairs. I’ll be right back after.”